Tag Archives: Travel

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Last Year, This Year and What Else Can I Say?

I am so good at pushing the wrong button and the wrong time!  And I am so good at procrastination.

2011 ended and 2012, started with a trip to my favorite poetry workshop in San Miguel de Allende. Took a car, then a plane, then a bus, then another bus and then a taxi much of which I had to do in my get-along Spanish. Nine hours of travel and I’m finally in the old-school style hotel, signing things. My friend Jennifer Clement, who created this wonderful week of poetry, walks in the lobby, “I have wormsalt!”

“Wormsalt, Jennifer?” I have not been in the lobby more than five minutes. She is in black velvet with candlelight hair, pulled softly to the back, with curls. I have not seen her in a years time.

“Yes! Wormsalt for the mescal!”  I took one of the plastic Dixie cups from her hand, touched my finger in what looked like damp sand, licked my finger and knocked back the liquor. My whole body smiled.

“Wow! You tossed that back!”

Nodding: “Well I’ve been traveling about ten hours at this point.” I tried the wormsalt again. . .it reminded me of swimming in the Atlantic and licking my lips when I came out of the water. “How’d you know I was here?” I asked Jennifer.

“Oh, I told them I wanted to know the second you arrived. We’re up on the patio, come get another drink! Then we’ll go to dinner and then fireworks at the Jardin!” Off she went to rejoin the small party and I went to my room. Changed into something more festive with salt and smokey mescal still on my tongue.  One year started and the new one began as I made my way back to the hotel, smiling at strangers, fireworks over head.

Nice, sweet, delicious memory. Woven into this week are moments of absolute confusion, chronic pain and old buttons. Woven into this week are threads like silk that shine and lay soft in my heart. New friends, skulking about the former home to the nuns. . . a midnight cloister walk. . . poems and readings and good food. I went home exhausted. A cluttered brain and somewhat defeated.

I had spent 2o11 ‘working’ on myself. I worked hard at work. I wanted so much to have 2012 be new. But I was stuck. . . and felt entirely alone with my confusion of who I am. Who am I now?

And the year brought me to Boston and my husband got to know our grandson. And then I helped the ‘kids’ pack up and move to a place near Boulder.  I drove with my son from Austin to Boulder and it was sweet. . . he was loving every inch of the thousand mile drive.  A drive, and week or so there, I was done. All done. Done in. It was sad and huge awareness that I don’t have the physical reserves that I had BC.  This came at 52, when I had always thought I’d have that awareness at 62.

The summer I had my sister here, my home, for six weeks. She was lost and needed quiet to figure out what’s best for her. As sisters we squabbled a little but mostly we drank red wine and laughed and poked around thrift stores.  Then after my adventure in moving, my other sister (by marriage) came for five days. She and I rearrange furniture and danced at night with my husband’s band.

This year, I found a choir. I found singing, my first and forever love, and oh god it was hard. Like Mexico hard, confusion and in articulation.  Wanting to belong and scared to death of belonging then to be rejected. . . but I went. I went and showed up. Every Wednesday night, choir then dancing at my favorite bar in Austin, Donn’s Depot.  I would leave choir mentally exhausted. . .just as I had been in my workshops in Mexico.

And then it got better.  This feeling of belonging filled me without the fear.  I could belong somewhere on Wednesday nights and that was great. And the pastor of this church wore clogs and quoted poetry in sermons. I can listen. I could follow.

Before 2012 ended, somewhere around Thanksgiving I realized I was happy in my own skin for the first time in what seems years. I am not the person I was before . . .I could not return to the past but in letting go, fully, I found a me.

In this finding are friends, steadfast and true. Some new, some old dear friends. In the kitchen my husband holding me saying: “I miss your laugh” early in the year and then “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had” later in the year.   A year when I felt like a family again with my son and daughter-in-law and grandson.

And, here I am, mid-way through the first month of 2013, focused on what I am and what fills my life with work and work with life. Cliche, perhaps. I still have a high-maintenance body I deal with every day. I get muddled and stuck. . . but I no longer judge myself for this and won’t hang with those who do.  But the best part is , I have a sense of potential in my life, sense of wonder. And how I have missed this. How I have longed to feel like this.

What else can I say?

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The True Story of Why I Forgot to Meet Jen at the Airport

There was a plan. Two of them. Neither worked out.

First was I heard from a dear friend whom I have not seen in years. She would be in Austin and San Antonio on business this past Thurs and Friday. The only way we could connect was to meet at the Austin airport Friday afternoon. OK. I had her cell number but alas alack it was in my FB messages.

Second was this. Read slowly for I will type fast. I had my six month regular set of appointments at M.D Anderson scheduled for Thursday and Friday mornings. EARLY. My husband I and are accustomed to these schedules and we worked it out so he could work his favorite gig (Donn’s Depot Wednesday night).

The plan was he would drive after the gig, leaving Austin around 1:30 and we’d arrive at our friend’s home around 4:30. He’d sleep in on Thursday morning because he didn’t need to go that day. I’d manage on my own with CT scan and blood work and such. Friday he’d get up early and go to the hospital with me for the EDG. . .which required anesthesia so some one had to sign me out.

That was the plan. So we were driving down RT 71, familiar route, and a mile west of the intersection of RT 21, the Caravan makes that ‘blown tire noise’. . .you know the one. Except the tire was shredded. Charlie called AAA. They were to call back. Oh the stars were beautiful as we where somewhere that looks a lot like nowhere.

We were of mixed emotions. I was gnashing my teeth some as I wanted to get these tests done. After twenty minutes go by I ask him to call again. A different person responds with, “The local people won’t come change a tire at this time of night.”  My husband is a patient man and accepts this answer, they are working on finding another company who will come. AAA will call us back!

A sheriff’s car comes up behind us, asks a few questions, asks us to move the car further off the road and then goes away.

A stranger pulls up just after the Sheriff in a beat up car but I am not judging a man by his car for ours is 13 years old with 206K miles. But it’s 2:45 AM and I am leery of this and grateful I am not alone. He’s helpful in attitude not in deed. Off he goes!

I am working really hard on not being pissy. I am finding the stars wonderful and there is this lovely scent in the air from some plant growing on the side of the road. I am thinking my sister will love the stars in this area when she moves here. I am thinking every pleasant though I can but beneath these thoughts are: “Charlie needs to call them again! I worked out this schedule so it works.” Sitting in the passenger seat, my darling husband comes to the window and I say something snarky and pause, he said something and I said something, he paused. . .to which I said, “You’re supposed to have something funny right now” And he said: “I was trying to think of something intelligent AND funny.”  To which I replied, “Well you’re not good at that!”  Peals of laughter. Release of tension.

“Why don’t we just try to change it?” and he gets out his lug-nut-remover-tool and those nuts ain’t going anywhere. . .so he calls AAA. And as he is talking to them, he looks under the car for the spare, “My spare is gone!” He says to the phone and to himself. . .”It’s not there.” And his face was so dumbfounded. . .you have to understand, he’s always ready for emergencies. . .his car is an extension of himself to some degree. A third time, still looking at where the spare should be, “I HAVE NO SPARE!”.  I start sniffling and coughing.

I have been enjoying the scent and now I am discovering whatever it is, I am allergic. I am coughing and snufffling. He calls our friend at this point, some time after 3:00 AM. I dig in my purse for my asthma inhaler, and any kind of antihistamine. . .took them. Took my Clonopin which I should have earlier. . .the weazing eases up. We are still on the side of the road and it’s coming up to 4:00 AM. I am stupid tired. I am tired and stupid. I am frustrated beyond words.

And then the sheriff’s care comes back around, different guy, asks for Charlie’s license and the Tow Truck arrives! It is 4:15. He says, “He giving you a hard time?” and we say no, just doing his job. . .the car gets attached to the tow truck and we are headed back to Austin. We are going home. In the cab small talk ensues.

This and that. That and this. . .but what it comes around to is he is from Rhode Island! He’s been in Texas seven years. Then I say my family comes from Fall River, MA. . .as does his. The world just shrunk a little. He says, his name is Machado. . .I say, Steven Machado. . .he says, ‘That’s my cousin.’  It’s five in the friggin’ morning, and his cousin and I went to high school together. WHAT! There was other chit-chat about television shows (He’s a Firefly fan!) and then we’re home.

I go in the house, try to reach MD Anderson to leave messages to no avail. I send a message via computer. . .drink warm milk, I got chilled in the wait. Went to bed at slept until ten.

I did get to do part of my tests on Thursday afternoon, which allowed me to get the invasive, important exam done on Friday.

And I didn’t call my friend Jennifer who now understands why!

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Organized thoughts of my Unorthodox Faith (1)

My sister was here for a good long visit this summer. Part of the visit was to give her space to sort through some serious life-stuff and part of the visit was to be with me. And it could be said that our relationship is life-stuff but we’re on the up-side of stuff.

My sister identifies herself as born-again Christian, socially conservative, hippy-Mom and former physical therapist. While she was here she showed me a book that she was re-reading, Christy by Catharine Marshall. I remembered the book around the house when we were much younger but I didn’t know that it was a book that gave shape and words to her own faith.

The following poem is the price of writing that helped shape my own faith. It is not one of the world’s great poems but to an eleven year old who was in love with the obvious music of older poems, it had a great impact for it was an echo from the little Catholic church we were raised in: “do unto others”. . .”faith without works”. . .”love thy neighbor”.

Abou Ben Adhem

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said
“What writest thou?” —The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.”

The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

I know now this Abou is probably Arabic, and/or Muslim.  I rather like that in fact. Years after that poem was just a part of my mind, I worked for a couple of years in a Jewish deli where I came to know the holidays and customs of that faith. (I also picked up a bit of Yiddish.)  Time in anonymous meetings lifted me out of dogma and into a self-defined faith.

What we have together as sisters is a faith in each other and a deep understanding of who we once were, and where we are going. Perhaps this is a by-product of being in our 50′s but I know it’s more for we have had very hard times. We’ve gone long time without speaking and when we did it was difficult.  Today, we laugh and dance and sip wine watching food shows. ;lkio

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Confessions of a Transplant: Heat

Heat is molecules moving very, very fast. That’s how I remember from some science class. Heat turns water into steam and the lack of heat causes snow and ice.

The universe moves, we move and we move to new towns, cities for love and/or make a living. We move our eyes across this screen to see the words. An object in motion stays in motion. Yet another thing learned in high school science and currently on some advertisement for weight loss.

Nine years ago, this week, I moved to Austin, Texas after 43 years in New England. And while I looked back, I did not turn into a pillar of salt. Little by little the best of what I had moved with me and have come to our yellow house.

Never, ever thought I would feel this way: the heat of Texas feels like home. I felt it on my skin as I walked up the jet way from a flight from Denver. It was not a pleasure trip. It was yet another adventure in parenting, love and ‘damn why didn’t I think to ask that question‘. I felt the heat and the music and the culture of Austin fill me as I returned. A friend hugged and hugged me at the baggage claim (hubby working).

I am home in Texas.

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Confessions of a Transplant: Seduction

It is my last morning in Boston, for the time being. And Mother Nature has washed the city during the night. The breeze is gentle and the humidity has dropped. The broad leaves on old tall trees are the kind of green that satisfies something deep within me.

This is the morning when I am a girl again exploring the woods around my childhood home in Connecticut. There was young tree that I could shake the rain off the leaves, pretending it was shower. I would take my Barbies under the mountain laurels, sit on thick moss and play house.

A part of seduction must be memory that is held in our skin. The touch of air that conjures a sweet ache. It’s too bad that the word in contemporary usage has a sexual connotation. Pragmatic and romantic, I sense seduction as a dance, a right of way, a process. Yes it can lead into temptation but I’m thinking of a two-step, face to face, a turn, a little girl spinning and spinning and falling into soft grass.

And Boston and I have been dancing for decade. Boston for the last nine years has been seducing me into returning. Mornings like this it is easy to forget snow. Makes it easy to forget the humidity just two days ago as I helped my son pack up his house, as I keep a busy toddler out of harms way from big trucks and moving men. Two days ago, waiting Park Street Station’s foul, stale air. Park Street where 19th century technology and 21st intersect underground. (Never liked Park Street, even when I lived here.)

I will not see this kind of weather for weeks and weeks when I return to my home in Austin. Geographical seduction will call to me as I long for deep shade that calls for a chair and reading.

This parting from this city this time is to let go and dance with tiger.

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Considering the Notion of Displacement

Maybe we’re all just ice cubes.

And when we travel we have our shapes which get, by some invention of work or pleasure or obligation, dropped into various solutions. The destination is the solution, not that travel leads us to existential solutions but this is a strong possibility.

We are ice cubes, crunchy ice, tubes, hunks, wee slivers. I’m a great fan of road trips. Big fan, in fact, because when you travel at your own pace, stopping here and there, sleeping at cheap motel chains that have numbers in the name, you experience a variety of solutions yet maintain your shape for your car is your container. It’s almost like being an ice cube that gets to try on different cocktails, ice teas, sodas or waters.

This is different if you travel by air. You are an ice cube picked up by the great machines and ministrations of air travel, slip into your seat, just like those old fashion aluminum ice trays. And you are popped out unceremoniously into a solution where you now visit or stay.  In a cosmic plastic forty-eight ounce cup, the world is shaken not stirred. And yes you may be excited as a (insert favorite metaphor here) but still you are a cube.

This cube flew from Austin to Boston yesterday and for me, displacement is the feeling of melting back into the season, the air, the movement of a city I know well. Yes, it’s changed but the soft air coming off the harbor in a light breeze was a lovely greeting. The breeze did not scorch. The scene was Logan, waiting for the bus that would take me to the subway, the taxis, the buses the people, nothing pretty but so familiar.

And then I got on the bus with my nine years of Austin cubism. It’s packed, a man is blocking the entry and he doesn’t move, nor does he help schlep my bag on to the bus. No one moves, others are trying to get on.  I wrangle my bag past other cubes but they refuse displacement even to look up and just acknowledge a fellow cube. Back of the bus, this cube realized a number of my expectations for public behavior have shifted. There I am crammed in the back with suitcase and travel bag, heavier at the end of the day, purse over my shoulder, taking up three seats, not by choice, when an older man, sees even more people crunch their way into the bus, starts looking around for a solution.

“There’s not enough seats.” ” Where will they fit?” and he turns his head in my direction. His look bewildered and yet not.  So I say, “I’d be glad to open up these seats if you will help me move my suitcase.” I smiled my nine years of Texas.  He swiveled his head away so fast and didn’t move.

In my mind the Bostonian in me said, “There’s room. It’s a city bus. We just fit or wait for the next one.” Knowing I would gladly move if I had help. Knowing in Austin, in Texas, some person, male or female would have aided my entrance to the bus in the first place.

As this ice cube sat on the bus, got her Boston game face one and dragged herself to the bottom of the cup, cube and solution. Austin into Boston. . .love that dirty water.

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Confessions of a Transplant: Foodie Fodder (1)

Who started the term: ‘foodie’?

Really. Maybe I’m to lazy to look it up on Google or Wickedpidia and if that is the case, then I don’t really want to know. As a self-admitted word-nerd, what ever happened to being a gourmet, gourmand or epicurean? Lovely words gone to dust with word that means nothing sounding way to close to my ear as fuddy-duddy. Which means, ‘why are you wearing that it makes you look old?” or in more contemporary vernacular: old fart.

One time after watching an ad for Church’s Chicken I asked my husband if he’s eaten at Church’s. And he said yes. So I asked “Why haven’t you taken me there with you?” and he said that I was a food snob. OUCH!

It has now become a joke between us. But I did start thinking about my relationship with food. And, well, no, I’m not much into fried chicken from anywhere because it doesn’t sit well in my gut. The grease. . .with one exception.

Flo’s in Portsmouth, RI. Island Park to be specific, for those reading may know the area. Flo’s is what ;most would call a clam shack. To me (and my siblings) it is a a taste of heaven. It sits across the street from the Sakonnet River, where it widens on its way to the Atlantic.  We could walk there from our grandmother’s summer house for fish and chip and clam cakes.

Let me explain that a clam cake in that part of the world is a  about the size of a tennis ball, savory fried dough that is filled with bits of clam. New Orleans has beignets, the Southwest has sopapillas, Rhode Island has clam cakes.  (You may have been thinking of a stuffed clam: spicy clam and sausage, bread crumbs filling a big old clam shell, but no, those are different).

When I was older and had moved to Fall River with my mother, every now and then my grandmother would ask to go for a ride to get “a nice piece of fish”. This meant driving to Flo’s and we’d get one order of fish and chips and one order of just fish. Thick white fish, cod or pollock, thin crispy batter fried and moist, perfect. She’d sprinkle malt vinegar and salt on hers, and three generations of women would eat in the car, licking fingers.  When my son was old enough to eat such delicacies, another generation joined in the shoreline feasting.

All this goes to say, I’m just picky about my fried foods, which may mean I’m a food snob.  I don’t like saying I’m a foodie. I’d rather be a snob, a connoisseur, especially of fish, shell or finned, cooked or raw, cooking or savoring.

This pondering rant all started by an off chance conversation while waiting for a cup of coffee here in Austin. A women behind me had a Trader Joe’s bag, and I said to her, “Oh you must be from the East coast or the West coast!” And she said no, she lives in Austin but spends time in San Fransisco. . . and like many here in Austin, she said, “Trader Joe’s is opening here!” I shrugged, cynically replied: “Ill believe it when I see it” and she ooh and gushed she knew it and they bought the property and blah, blah, blah and Wholefoods has been the main reason . . . I stopped listening. I’ll believe it when I see it. And that I’m not a fan of Wholefoods. She then said, “Well I’m a bit of a foodie. . . I want to buy ethically treated meats. . .” Abrupt me, boarding on rude, said: “Oh did the pig ask to be dead?” Which flustered her entirely. . .I was playing hard ball with her. . . all because she ‘knows the owner’ and ‘is a foodie”.

Not my shining moment but the barista grinned handing me my regular cup of joe.

More later, I need to stir my soup. Before I go, on last thing. When I was horribly sick from chemo, I’d plan in my mind a trip to Flo’s.  When we were done with all the trips to Houston, we did just that: a road trip to New England where I filled up on love and loving.

 

 

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Fractal: Mooning

One of the things I really like about living in Central Texas, and sitting on my deck (sipping something) is I can see the earth move, how the moon is a constant in the arc — no matter the phase.

It can be eclipsed but it is there. Lunatic.

Some see a rabbit in the moon. I hiked to the alter of the Rabbit God, in Tepotzotlan with my husband, years ago now, my sea-level lungs sucking air all the way, as abulitas just walked by me, saying sweet encouraging things in Spanish. Oh but how a smile can be endless. And then climbing this iron ladder, there I was, feral black cats greeting us, and the valley below, we sat. Bought tortillas to feed the cats. . .endless valley, beauty close up and distant. Fractal.

Some see a man in the moon. Some feel the energy from a moonstone gem.

When I was in grad school, I was driving home and came face to face with a huge, pale orange moon rising. I had to stop. I’d never seen the moon with such enormity. I could have driven right into it, wanted to. . .lunatic.

And then I continued to drive, said to myself: “Well there’s one good reason to live here!”

“I’m in love with the man in the moon
We’re going to be married next June
Behind a dark cloud
Where no one’s allowed
I’m in love with the man in the moon”

I hear my mother’s voice.

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Confessions of a Transplant: If there is water, I am home.

Home is where you know it is.

 

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I will listen until the trills fade and the light is old.