The Edge

Two weeks ago, Mike, the kids and I moved to a new house--a house that we bought sight unseen in a small town in Oklahoma. The town occupies four square miles, a booming metropolis compared to the blips of civilization we passed in blinks driving our moving van through the arid deserts of New Mexico and Texas. The Air Force wives tell me that one starts to feel claustrophobic in days. After two weeks, I began to wonder if I would eventually feel constricted, if I could feel it creeping in even now. So when our errands took us a few minutes rather than an hour because everything is so close, I decided to drive around, and eventually drove west of our house until I hit the edge of town. Only a few blocks away. The kids and I sat in the car starring at the edge of things. Before us spread a dusty plain, whirlwinds of dirt gusting across empty, barren land, some railroad tracks disappearing into a blur of heat, the sky a hazy blue. I've never been on the edge before, never come to the point where something ends, and nothing exists beyond. We sat there in the idling car squinting into the sunlight, feeling strange.