introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the sjones september road show part 1: 5 states, 2 days 2 roofers roofing - 9 september 2014 "if I was a poet or maybe a king / then I could explain to you how my heart sings whenever I look in your eyes / like a hummingbird trapped in my chest, I would say /is just how it felt on that glorious day/ when I first...when I first saw you."~eef barzelay on saturday morning, after only a handful of hours of sleep, i got up, threw together my overnight bag, kissed my old dog on the head, and headed out the door. my pillows were on the back seat along with my magic cards and some other games. i queued up the last few chapters of one of my (favorite thus far) pregnancy-audiobooks, Magical Beginnings, Enchanted Lives (Chopra), picked up iced coffee, and headed south down 95. i cut across new hampshire and into vermont in about 6 hours, snaking between mountains cut with ski slopes and rivers of hiking trails spilling out to trailheads along the state route. it was a pretty drive at a very slow speed but i made it to rutland, vermont in one piece. my feet were a million times more swollen than they've been so far, barely recognizable as human feet. i tried not to look at them too much...the discomfort seems to go away if i don't look at them. i got out of the car and happily hugged my friends hello....dennis and amy never look much older, really, no matter how many years between our visits...dennis only looks more grey in his beard. two little girls, aged 3 and 6, yelled my name repeatedly until we were introduced. they invited me to play in their rooms and bombarded me with questions and both reached out to hold one of my hands...i found this to be particularly weird only because that never happens. kids that age don't dislike me but i think i've maintained a pretty good 'don't touch me with your sticky' vibe that kept most kids out of my personal space. there have been exceptions, of course...but mostly, most kids just aren't interested in me until they realize i'm probably the weirdest adult in the room. but that's top-secret information. more recently, kids seem to want to talk to me and, weirdly, touch me. i've done well to dodge the random stranger or friend who wants to feel the baby so far but this weekend, i explained several times that yes, there is a baby in there as a little hand tried to locate such a thing. it didn't weird me out as much as i might have thought but still...people really do often invade pregnant ladies' personal space and this was the first time i was so aware of it happening to me. ella, the littlest of the 2, was also fascinated by my breasts apparently, grabbing at them pretty constantly every time we sat down. i can't blame her...they're ridiculous looking and hard not to notice. when her dad told her to stop several times, i laughed it off and told them that i couldn't stop doing it either...which is kind of true. nothing about my body seems like my body lately...and it's fascinating when it isn't freaking me the fuck out. we had dinner in a little irish bar restaurant at the bottom of a mountain. we did play a game of zombies but never cracked into the magic cards...only slightly disappointing. i'll find someone with whom to play eventually. we talked about the other fellas that were from that time...norm and beth in dc had come up around the same time the previous year. "have you heard from chris?" "no, i heard he got really weird." i don't know what that means...everyone gets weird sometimes, i guess. i told them about susan's baby coming and nacho out in seattle. we passed around dennis' ipad and took our turns at the game, the same joking around about amy taking too long to take a turn, the same snacks of cheese and mustard....just a different time and place. it was comforting in some ways to see that not much changes. on sunday morning, amy and i left dennis to his computer woes and ran out for some groceries. i'm not entirely clear how this little town in vermont gets to have an aldi's but bangor, maine does not. i grabbed a few things that didn't require refrigerating and we went back to the house. the girls had been promised a visit to the vermont state fair so we all squeezed into one car and headed there next. there are no rides for pregnant ladies (not that i was ever too into rides at fairs...people watching, tractor pulls, and demo derbys are more my speed.) i was relegated to holding ella up to watch her sister and parents on rides for which she was still too small and holding amy's purse. i enjoyed the sunshine and the mountains and the sense that every state fair has the same kind of people no matter where you go. america, you get awfully strangely like a charles wysocki painting only with more cigarette smoking old ladies and teenagers with kids of their own. the fair will always draw a certain type of crowd, i guess. after rides, we ate some fair food and headed back to their house. i changed clothes, packed my overnight bag back up, hugged my friends and their little girls goodbye and headed in the wrong direction from home to lake george, ny. it wasn't a far drive. i passed through whitehall, ny--which turns out to be only one of several places in the country that make the claim of being the 'birthplace of the united states navy.' i thought this seemed odd given the basic land-locked-ness of the area but their proximity to lake champlain gives them some (shaky) ground, i guess. i'm not buying it, whitehall, ny. sorry. i passed by some amish carriages heading home before sunset and it made me a little homesick. the apples are ready for picking in upstate orchards. the sun dips awfully fast now that summer is ending and i just wanted to get to where i was going before it did. so the best part of my weekend was in a little tourist town in the adirondacks where, despite spending weeks and weeks of my life in those mountains, my family never spent any time. lake george has it's own sort of boardwalk feel with a bunch of t-shirt shops that remind me of the beach, an arcade where kids likely spend their rainy days and their parents quarters, a few bars, and a fleet of small sightseeing ships that make their way up and down the length of the lake. the mountains are close in a way that you know you're right in the thick of them...not just viewing them from afar. when the sun sets behind one of them, it gets dark quickly. before sunset, though, i managed to "eat free tacos in the empire state and pour water on some guy." that's pretty much how i'm going to remember it. only it wasn't just some guy, guys. after a summer of messages and picture-swapping, i finally got to meet him. he was right...i don't think it was awkward. i was nervous, sure...but i don't think i recall a single date (date? heck, i don't ever know) where i haven't been nervous. usually, though, it doesn't go like this. usually, i'm the one coming up with conversation...instead, he made me feel comfortable. we found some adirondack chairs in the park by the lake and talked for awhile. i was aware of myself stealing glances of him when i could and i think i laughed at myself in my head a great deal about it. the sun started to disappear and it got a little cool out. we went back to my car for my sweater and then decided to get some dinner. i know this is probably strange to say at my age but i've really thought about it because it was sort of a novel thing (and because i had a six hour drive back home that night to reflect, i suppose)...but i don't recall a fella ever buying me dinner the first time we went out. not once in my life. maybe because i haven't let them? i'm not sure. i suppose most women have had their share of free drinks and free dinners under the label of a date night but that hasn't been my story and i've always felt a little like i couldn't relate to that at all though i never put my finger on it before. in toronto when i was 19, some indian fellas bought me beers but they just wanted to swap for american cigarettes and i was fine with that. the only time i've heard 'can i buy you a drink?' was when i was 30. it was the brown hotel. i'd just rolled an herbal cigarette and was talking to my friend ashley. he asked me what i was smoking, i explained. he was a lawyer...probably in his late 40s or early 50s. his name was dave. we ended up talking at the bar for an hour or so. he was also a musician and invited me to come see him play at another bar the next weekend but i was too chicken to go. what stands out about that drink was that it was open mic night at the brown that night...and a man reading his poetry was going on and on and dave turned to me and said that it was crap. he was right, i agreed. i laughed...and moments later, he was whispering a shakespearean sonnet in my ear, loud enough for only me to hear. perhaps it was because it was the only time something like that ever happened to me that it remains so indelibly marked in my memory. it was one evening. nothing came of it but i remember how it made me feel. i've never felt like that and it was tied to a stranger buying me a drink. i suppose that something that would be trivial to most ladies--having someone buy dinner--wasn't so trivial to me. i don't know...not that big a deal, i know...but i know it'll be marked in my brain now, too. i managed to get a bottle of still water to explode all over him across the table so that was cool payback for a nice thing, i guess. i'm the most graceful lady on the planet. i deliberately ordered soft tacos so i wouldn't spill them all over myself but i still couldn't manage not to get them on me. that was awesome. i was nervous but i was really happy to just be there...and that's how i know i want to do it again. remember that guy from the whoopie pie festival? i knew right away i'd never see him again because i wasn't nervous at all. i don't know what it is about this fella but he makes me feel comfortable and nervous at the same time...it's pretty novel to me, anyway. he made me laugh so there's that. i love pregnant lady murder jokes, guys. i'm not right. i like feeling like it's time to start having adventures with him. i feel like he is the kind of person i can contentedly be with quietly...but who surprises me because he is pretty funny, too. only certain kinds of people make me laugh. it was a long drive home after that but i never got a cup of coffee. i was pretty up on happy and thinking too much and singing along with all the songs that came through the speakers. i landed home around 3am and fell into bed minutes after hugging my dog hello. the roofers were on the roof by 7:45am. they've been up there again this morning. their nail gun and compressor end up making my dreams weird and murdery so i've been trying to wake up when they start but i feel slow and sleepy and accomplish virtually nothing. dammit, i want my morning coffee back, kiddo. these last couple months are going to fly and the baby will be born and then i'm going to make a pitcher of cold brew coffee just because i've missed it all summer. add that to the list of Things I'm Doing When I'm Not Pregnant Anymore. i don't feel so rested right now and there is a lot to do to get ready for my trip. my mother keeps weighing in on my plans, my aunt wants to know when i am coming, i'm trying to figure out how to do this and maximize the single evening in pittsburgh. i am taking myself to the east end overlook no matter what. by myself. i want to look at that beautiful city when i'm feeling exactly like this...i'm deliberate and content. that wasn't how i left the city behind...i was scared and nervous and felt more alone than i ever have. i want to take in that view now and hold that with me until i can get home again for a real visit. oh, and you know...i've got the beach on my mind. the beaaaaach with mom and old man walker and my sister. sharks, guys. it's almost time. xo, jones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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