Why Am I Dreaming of Kerrville, Texas?

Stonehenge II, Kerrville, Texas, USA

Last night, I kept dreaming the same two dreams in succession. In one, I was in Kerrville, Texas. In the other, I asked everyone, “Why I am I dreaming of Kerrville, Texas?”

I’m not certain, but I may have been in fifth grade when we arrived in Kerrville (pronounced cur-vl). I don’t remember where we lived before that, but my parents had heard that Kerrville was a nice town and they wanted to settle down there. (It was my first trip to Texas and we’d been driving around for quite a while... or was that some other trip, some other time?)

The morning after we arrived in Kerrville, my parents enrolled me in school. The old, WPA building was the most beautiful structure I’d ever seen. Four girls immediately befriended me. It was a tough place, they said, and I'd need friends to look after me.

The classes were neither strange nor too easy; they were fun. I’d never seen a gymnasium before; the floor was shiny and I wondered what playing basketball would be like.

Each class was held in a different room and I liked walking down the tall, dimly lit hallway. I remember the English teacher smiling at me as I sat in the back of the class next to the ceiling-high windows late in the day.

After school, my parents were waiting in their car in front of the green lawn. I climbed into the car with all my textbooks and talked non-stop about my new friends and the classes. Back in the hotel room, they told me that we weren’t going to stay.

Of all the places we lived during my childhood, I only let myself cry when we left two of them. This time, I was very dramatic; I wanted to convince them to stay.

My father said he would take my books back to the school the next morning. I insisted he take money for the girl who had loaned me some when I hadn’t had enough to pay for my lunch. (I still worry about whether he did.)

We left Kerrville behind and, a short time later, I started school in Abilene. The first day of school, I wore the same clothes I’d worn the first day in Kerrville. “Why do you dress like that? You’re weird!” There were three groups of kids there and I didn’t belong to any of them.

My parents bought a house right away, but in no time, they hated Abilene. My father ended his retirement yet again and found work elsewhere. My mother and I stayed in Abilene a few more months, in the snow and ice, while she tried to sell the very large, very odd house, and directed all her fury at me.

It's a few decades later and I have a choice: Prescott (pronounced press-kit) or Jerusalem (pronounced yuh-roo-sha-ly-yeem). I don't know whether to trust myself to make this decision or what criteria I should rely on to make my choice.