trippy

We were supposed to leave for Montana today. We're still in Saint Paul. Greg and Oscar are sleeping upstairs, and I'm down in the living room, doing what I do best....procrastinating. The car is not packed, although the front bumper has been mended with duct tape so as to improve mileage, so that's something, I guess. My suitcase is packed upstairs, which is also better than I usually do. There is still much to be done before we leave. It's 1:30 a.m. and we have to get up before 7, but I just can't sleep. I'm a terrible sleeper under the best of circumstances, but mix in a healthy dose of excitement about the trip, nervousness about all we still need to accomplish before we can go, the compelling final volume of Harry Potter, and especially a thought-provoking letter received from an old friend, and I'll be lucky to sleep before sunup.

I almost died the first time I went to Montana. It seems so long ago, now, that we packed up Greg's old blue Grand Am and confidently and foolishly drove it straight west. We left school on a rainy March day, armed with a road atlas and a lot of Gatorade and oatmeal cream pies. The snow must have recently melted; I remember picking up an old leaf off the ground and handing it to Greg right before we left. It's the kind of thing I still do to this day, and whether it was the color of the leaf or it's size that attracted me to it I no longer recall. But I remember very much walking through those trees that I would never see again, and handing him that leaf that he would carry in his wallet for years afterward.

God, we were young. The weather improved as we progressed west, and we spent the first night in a Motel 6 in Rapid City. It was 50-some degrees, the warmest weather we'd felt in months, and we were off on a real adventure, having lied to our parents not only about where we were going, but who we were with. That's how young we were....it actually seemed to matter that we were traveling by ourselves and it certainly seemed to matter that our parents not know it. We awoke early the next morning, eager to head back on the road. Greg got the first shower, and I turned on the TV and opened the curtains in our tiny room and gawked: there was at least eight inches of snow in the parking lot and more falling fast. Happily I gathered snowballs and began chucking them over the shower curtain on a very surprised Greg. A few hours later was when we almost killed ourselves in a car crash in the Montana mountains. We lost control and swerved toward a drop off that would surely have killed us, gained control for a split second and swerved the other way, mananging to come out of it with only minor damage to the car and a totally blown front tire. Some nice guy gave us a lift into Bozeman, and though we were in quite a predicament, all I could do was stare out the window at those mountains.

As we did all we could to try to keep moving west, that same weather system that caused all the trouble in the first place was moving east. About 24 hours after we enountered it (and luckily lived to tell the tale), it apparently collided with a different system, producing several tornadoes, one of which destroyed our town. Our little road trip ended up longer than we'd anticipated....we didn't have to return to school for weeks, seeing as how much of it had been reduced to rubble. And when we did return, the part I missed the most was those big, old trees.

It just seems funny tonight, how much I didn't know back then. How I ended up marrying that guy I ate oatmeal cream pies and mini Babybels with in an old blue Grand Am on interstate 90. How my brother would come to call Montana home. How I'd never even met some of the people who I now recognize to be most influential in my life: C----, CAM, B---, the X's....I'd never heard of Storyhill, never read Pam Houston or Jon Krakauer or Barbara Kingsolver. I'd never been sick. I had no idea of the things I would lose, or the things I would gain precisely because I had lost others. I have a photo from that long ago road trip, a silly photo taken in the car of the side of Greg's head. It will look different tomorrow, that same head will have a couple grays at the temple. I just feel old tonight for some reason.

I've always kept a journal. Not an eveyday kind of thing, just a record of things I did or more often felt. Some of the entries now seem so trivial. I like to re-read these from time-to-time and refer to the corresponding years as "The Drama Queen Years." But some are not trivial at all, and when I re-read these they still have the power to move me to tears or long to talk once again with people from my past. One such entry detailed a nice morning walk up a mountain with an old friend of mine. Years old now, I still love to read it because I think it is the most honest thing I ever wrote in my life. In those days I was lucky if I even recognized my feelings for what they were, much less admitted them, even to myself, but on this day I did, and somehow all the words came out right on the paper. I sent that entry to my friend about two years ago, just to prove what my feelings once were, and how I treasured that pre-dawn hike and the sunrise we watched and the wine we drank and the rocks we sat against. Back in the day when we lived in my tent together and traveled in his old Toyota we used to read each other's journals anyway. But edited versions. There were entries we denied each other, and this was one of them. But years later, it seemed beautiful, and he thought so, too, and because of it we began anew, this time truly as friends (and nothing more). And this week, he sent me his version of that day, written years and years ago, but just recently found and photocopied for me. It was so hopeful. Mine was beautiful in its sadness and uncertainty, as if I knew even back then what would eventually happen, but his was all youth and hope and dreams that would never come true. I remember sitting in the tent by night and talking vaguely of the future and how confident we were that we would somehow manage to make a difference in the world, that our lives would be full of adventure and love and mountaintop sunrises, and that the ordinary things that trap so many people would never get in our way. But they did. We grew up, and he's trapped in med school, the path he swore he would never take all those years ago and I'm here in Saint Paul with a house and a husband and a body that keeps trying to fail me.

I just feel old tonight. All that thinking of who I used to be, and wondering if I am who I said I'd never be. I wonder what I'll think ten years from now. If I'll remember sitting up until 3 am reading Harry Potter and writing about getting old before a Montana road trip. Who knows? Trippy.

hooking

Today was a good day. I wasn't on the schedule for work, because Susie and I had requested it off to go to a work conference in White Bear Lake. We requested it off, promptly forgot ("Why did Mary give me an extra day off this week? Oh, well....SCORE!!!!) and never signed up for the conference. We've also been having a stretch of gorgeous summer weather here, the kind like we always used to have back home but NEVER have here....sunny, low 70s, low humidity. We remembered about the conference on Monday, and you could sign up to attend the day of, but I refrained from doing so, thinking that I could really use a "real" day off after all the wedding craziness, especially if the weather held. Wednesday night's weather forcast was for another gorgeous day. "I don't think I'm going to make it to the conference," I told Greg. "I'm going to hook....you should, too."

"Hooking" is our term for skipping work, you know, playing hooky. At least once a week (usually more often) we will wake up to the alarm and one of us will ask the other, "Wanna hook today?" To which the other always answers "yes," but then proceeds to get up and get dressed. Real hook days are few and far between. Our last hook day was March 1, which was an even better weather day than today. On that day, we had a huge snowstorm, and for once I actually had the day off. Greg got sent home from work early due to the snow, and we went out to lunch and then took Oscar for a long walk in the snow. I guess that was kind of a hook half-day, and actually not hooking at all for me, but it still felt like it. Another time the summer before, I was really sick with a migraine in the early morning, so sick even that Greg stayed home in case I needed to go to the doctor, but then the medicine kicked in and I felt fine by 11am, so that was kind of a hook half-day, too.

The hooking festivities started last night, when we went to the 10:45 showing of Harry Potter, ensuring that we wouldn't be home anytime before 1am. Then, we didn't go to sleep until almost 3. Stayed in bed forever this morning, woke up and went straight to lunch (we always eat hook-day lunch at Green Mill or Baker's Square, today it was Baker's). Then a long leisurely walk with the dogs, a little biking, some reading out in the sun, and that was our day. Nothing that special, but great because of the weather and what we should have been doing instead.

So there it is, the story of our happy little hook day. We also made a hook day date for the day of the first snow of the year in the fall. Everyone needs a hook day every now and again, don't they? (I know you'll appreciate this one, Jessie....as much fun as we had at the work conference in Duluth making rude gestures at Lynne on the mirror on the ceiling of the DECC, I know you appreciate a good hook day as much as me!)

the bug-bitten bridesmaid (and other stories of belonging neither here nor there)

I have pink fingernails. 10 of them, capping tanned fingers that I no longer recognize as my own. As I sit here typing this, I occasionally catch a glimpse of shiny pink flying over the letters and I think, "what the hell!" I have pink bugbites. 10 of those, too, confined not only to the usual legs and arms, but also the chest and earlobe (really what the hell!). 7 of the bites (one a bloody scab) are in prime view when I wear my bridesmaid dress. Beautiful dress and shiny nails or not, did anyone really expect I could make it through this last month without at least one sunburn and several bugbites? I was not meant for gorgeous expensive dresses. But I love it nonetheless. I want to wear that dress terribly; it's easily the nicest piece of clothing I've ever owned. But I'm not quite there, bridesmaidwise. Love the dress, but not enough to look good in it. Not enough to commit to the whole package. I'll be there wearing it all right, but I'll be the one with the bugbites and tan lines and chipped nail polish. I'll be the one in some kind of bridesmaid nomansland.

Kind of like coming home. I grew up here in Virginia, and Greg and I often talk of someday moving back (maybe not here, exactly, but somewhere like it). Then I come here and I think, "Who would I talk to? Who would my friends be?" Would I ever really be able to belong here again?" Certainly I have friends here, but still I wonder.... I walked Oscar all over town tonight, in that kind of mood that inspires way too much thinking, and I realized how many things are different about Virginia. But many of them are the same, too, the thing that has changed the most is undeniably me. I can step out of the car here at night, a fresh arrival from St. Paul, and spend several minutes just sniffing the air. I love that smell....those of you who live here probably don't even recognize it. I can spend hours in the woods around here and want nothing more than to never leave again. But viewpoints can be a little different here sometimes. You have to watch what you say a little more carefully. You always run into someone you know who is gossipping about somebody else you know. There is often not a very worldly perspective on things. Sometimes you get the feeling that the world may very well end in the mine pit on the edge of town.

I can stand in my parents' driveway at the end of a stay up north and tell Greg, "I just want to go home." And we go, and it feels like exactly the way things should be. Other times we can arrive home in St. Paul and I will almost tear up, and say, "I want to go back home (up north)." Sometimes I belong in one place, and sometimes in the other, and more often than not, I belong in neither. I call them both "home," but it's not really true of either of them.

I've always had a very profound sense of place. Even as a very young child, I always had a special place to go to. When I was freshly 18 and knew almost nothing about the world beyond my parents' front door, I met an unlikely friend. He was 20 years my senior, and I tell this story rarely because I know how weird that sounds. But really, we just shared something that I'm not sure there's even a name for. Soul maybe comes the closest, but that's not quite it. There was just a part of us that was the same. He was about the freest person I've ever known. What he owned he could fit in his Camaro. He moved from here to there, working seasonally wherever he could. I wished terribly to someday have a life exactly like his. But as I watched him a little more, I realized that he was searching for something, too. Right then and there, I decided that people basically follow one of three paths: place, job, or person. And that no matter how free somebody may seem, they are usually not free of the desire to follow one of those paths. My friend seemed not to care which of the three that would be, he just wanted one, and the rest would just fall into place from there. I guess I thought I would always be a place person. Certainly it's what I thought back then, and I guess I still think it today, even while knowing that is has to be false.

But I still search for that place I belong, often forgetting that it's not a place at all.

reign of the saturday hair

I don't like to get my hair cut. Professionally, that is. I have way more stories of haircuts I've given myself or Greg has given me in the last 10 years than any person my age should have. Most memorable among these is the 4 inches I cut off in Boston after an ex and I had spent 9 days wandering around in the White Mountains. We decided to head into civilization and have a nice dinner out (I even wore chapstick and heels, so you know it was an occasion!) and I wanted a new look. Believe me, just a shower and removal of my skanky bandana would have accomplished a lot in that department, but I remember standing in the bathroom with that awesomely clean feeling you only get when you've been dirty enough to make major bathtub rings, and cutting my long hair off with my Leatherman to about chin length. The thing is, I remember it looking decent. Of course, I've never really had the highest standards, but I liked that haircut. I also remember one birthday (24?) when I was simply going out to Old Chicago with Jess and Mary yet suddenly needed a haircut, and Greg cut several inches off right in our Robbinsdale kitchen.

Some people see little kids all dressed up and say, "Oh, how cute!" I see little kids (girls especially) with messy hair and say the same thing. I call it "Saturday Hair." Because Saturday is a day when you never need to comb your hair. You can be as messy as you want. No school, no church, no work. I love messy hair much more than I should, and sport it most days of the week. If "saturday hair" gets especially messy, the other name it can go by is "wild woman hair." I only go out to restaurants where wild woman hair is acceptable.

As most of you know, I'm in a wedding this Saturday. I was supposed to get my hair cut and highlighted tonight for the occasion, and I chickened out. I haven't had my hair cut since October 26 (I remember the occasion b/c it was Jessie's last day of work and Greg's birthday), so I really should have done it. But I like its mousy brownish-blonde color and my sloppy ponytail. Maybe there comes a time in life when you just get sick of playing by other people's rules, or trying to be somebody you'll never be. I'd rather look like me and be comfortable than look like somebody who's trying to be pretty or stylish (which I'm old enough to know I'll never, ever pull off). The reign of the saturday hair is not yet over. I don't think it ever will be.