|
New title to reflectchanges
On the Divide
By Jessica Rogers
We've been six months out of Egypt, and the time has come and gone for a new name for this column, as we're no longer experiencing Life in Egypt.
Dad came up with the idea for the new name back at Thanksgiving, but my attention span being what it is now, it's taken me this long to adopt it. "How about 'Life on the Great Divide,'" Dad said, explaining he'd heard this particular area of Valley Center was once called The Great Divide.
It seemed like a good name. I love the continuity of the place name, and the history. Besides we're definitely on a divide in our lives right now, bridging that space before and after our new baby arrives.
It seemed like a shoe-in.
But I wanted to tell the story of the name, and I didn't know it. Turns out, I'm not sure it exists. I have contacted all the folks around here who usually know things about the area, and not a single one has heard of this farm being on "The Great Divide."
I tracked the germ of the story back to our neighbor Mike, but he only vaguely remembered a reference to it, from a neighbor long gone, and said the description could be due to diverging paths of rain waters here.
Most of my sources agree it is a divide, though not a great one. But none has heard the name used.
I checked at the historical society, and got director Crysta Stanton on the trail with me. We looked through books, over maps, and found nothing.
It's so easy to lose those little fragments of history, those bits of stories that get passed down until they stop - they stop somewhere unless we listen hard and keep the pieces intact.
Along the way, I became attached to the title, "On the Divide."
We are perched on a divide, physically and metaphorically, though it may not seem like a great one to some. Things are changing for us. Our lives are moving in a new direction.
I was pregnant when we moved into this house, ready to start this new chapter of life in many different ways.
So I will use the title, even with its dubious historical background. Maybe the place was never called the divide, but it is one, sort of. And I will use this space to capture the nuances of our lives here, recording the bits and pieces so easily lost.
By the end of the month we'll have a daughter. My focus will be inexorably changed. My columns may not come every month for a while. But I'll be taking it all in and jotting some if it down, keeping our lives from slipping into that murk of memory that retains so much less than we think.
| 
)