My mom’s own boss, whom she didn’t get along with, wrote her a glowing, superlative recommendation when we moved away, because that’s just the kind of thing you did for folks. When my mom went into labor with my brother, a coworker of hers somehow got word, left work in the middle of the day, and raced to the hospital to sit by my mom’s side. She cut my brother’s umbilical cord. Once, a distant acquaintance invited us to his family reunion, where we caught catfish and ate ice cream that ran down our arms in the heat.

“I think in Midland,” she said, “those were my kind of people. They were truly my friends.”

She even felt more comfortable in Midland than she did in the Dallas suburbs, where weirdos of all stripes are more plentiful. I was surprised by this, since they are culturally similar places. These days McKinney is somewhat of a Sunbelt boomtown, but when we moved there, it was small and sleepy, just like Midland.

But I suspect Midland’s extreme geographic isolation worked to its advantage, in this regard. While newcomers to Dallas might find various weekend activities or social groups to join, arriving in Midland is like docking to the International Space Station. No one discriminates against the Russians or Japanese or Americans up there, in space. You are in an inhospitable, difficult, boring environment. You are relying on each other to live. For entertainment, people my parents knew in Midland would invite everyone from the office—it was usually a small office—directly to their backyards. That was the extent of the entertainment available. You enjoyed whoever was around, weird or otherwise, because whoever was around was all there was.

Midland, despite its cultural tightness, was itself a weird place. It was a brotherhood of loners. It was unusual in that it made a home for whatever weirdos, exhausted from a long journey, landed bemusedly on its dusty steppe. There was no other choice.

Deana, Part II

I met Deana one summer day at a—perhaps the—hip coffee shop in Wichita Falls, where she, too, was now living and working as a psychologist. Deana doesn’t try that hard to fit in anymore. People can accept her or not, it’s up to them. She still has a Slavic inflection to her voice, but her bright red hair and button-down shirt made her look more like the frontwoman of a punk band than a traditional Russian lady.

She told me her background actually helps her with her therapy clients these days. Many people feel “like the outsiders in their current context,” she said. “They feel isolated and alone.” The obstacles she’s overcome allow her to connect with her clients’ struggles. For instance, if someone is gay and grew up in a homophobic family, she can empathize with them because of her experience with anti-Semitism.