Sacrifices and Stones

This entry is from Linc’s dad, Sam.

I love Austin, Texas. I wasn’t born here, but once I had visited my older brother Barry here back in high school, I knew this was the place for me. Liz agreed. After we got married we moved here from Amarillo (in a snow storm) as fast as we could.

Live music and open green spaces spring up everywhere you look here. There is a deep connection to and a love of history. Austinites revel in their dedication to art and higher education and literacy, but they are also the first people to let their hair down at the mention of a party. On one block you can spot a scantily clad transvestite dancing down the street with nary a glance while the next block will be hosting a fundraiser for the most conservative candidate for president of the United States of America.

Austin is my kind of town.

So you can imagine my considerable panic when Liz suggested that we leave Austin just a few years ago. We were shopping for our first house and I wanted to only look at properties in central and south Austin. This was where the heart and culture of Austin thrived. We told our realtor our meager price range and our specific geographic preferences and he showed us all kinds of houses. I use the term ‘house’ loosely here. Most were dilapidated and falling apart. Some were actually pretty terrifying (I won’t go into detail about the room we found where I am fairly certain animal sacrifices had been performed). The houses we could afford were not the kind of places we could convince ourselves we could happily raise Nico (Linc wasn’t even a gleam in Liz’s eye yet) and the school systems were notoriously low-performing and violent.

After a couple weeks of frustration Liz asked if we could see some properties a little farther north. After much heated arguing I agreed, but I knew we would never find anything that could blast me out of my beloved funky capital of Texas. I was just going up north to show Liz how wrong she was, to shut her up so we could get back to looking at that elusive perfect house in the imaginary perfect neighborhood in south Austin.

Have you ever had one of those experiences where you were really really glad that you were wrong? Yeah, this was one of those times.

The houses we were being shown were amazing compared to what we’d been looking at. They were so much better than what we’d suffered through down south that I even acquiesced to Liz’s request that we take a look at a few houses in Pflugerville, a little suburb almost surrounded by Austin’s northern borders. Suddenly we were seeing huge houses with massive yards. I went from convincing myself we’d be able to learn to love the places down south to instantly smitten with these comparative mansions up north. There weren’t even any sacrifice rooms!

What had I been so scared of? What had made me so disdainful of this suburban life? How could I have been so blind?

We bought a great two-story house in a charming little neighborhood. As the years have rolled along we learn more and more how wise this decision was. We couldn’t really afford private school for the boys (and a lot of them wouldn’t take Lincoln anyway), and neither of us were cut out for home schooling them. Thankfully, Pflugerville has a phenomenal public school system. The teachers there are passionate, the class sizes are manageable, the ethnicity is diverse, and the sense of inclusion and joy is palpable.

We have parties here. We have celebrations and holidays here. We are forging the memories that our boys will have as benchmarks in their minds forever right here in this house that I was so reluctant to even consider worthy of a glance.

We’ve found a church that we are excited to raise our boys in, and we have made great friends with our neighbors. Our lives and our boys’ lives are more full and meaningful and fun than I had ever thought possible when I dragged my feet “up north” just to prove my wife wrong.

Sure, there are fewer transvestites parading around up here than on 6th street in downtown Austin. Sure my friends are a bit more conservative than the old hippies down in Pease Park, and it might take me an extra few minutes to get to work. But that’s okay. I like it here.

I didn’t know I needed to be here. I wanted to be somewhere else but I needed to be here, Lincoln needed to be here. So we are here. I’m not a big believer in predestination, that our stories are already written for us, but sometimes I believe you can end up where you were meant to be. You have to trust whatever god you believe in and you have to trust those that you love. Sometimes you have to stop fighting for what you think you want in order to find what you need.

Many of you who know me are aware that I am not a fan of being wrong. This is the exception.

I am so glad I was wrong.

I guess I should start listening to my wife more often.

As an auditory reminder of what I'm trying to say, a reminder that will stay stuck in your head for a few hours, I'll leave you with the Rolling Stones (and an explanation for this entry's title).



Wait, where are the backup singers hiding in this video? And where is the keyboard player? I can hear them, but I only see the five main guys. Wait a second! You don't think they made a stop at the house with the sacrifice room down in south Austin, do you?