Reunion

My vacation this year was a trip to go see Beloved Ex. Back in our day, BEx was in a band, and a few months back he mentioned to me they were planning a 30th reunion show, with the original lineup. Intriguing! I thought it'd be funny if I showed up, and ... ended up, somehow, deciding to actually show up.

I haven't seen that town or those guys in 24 years and a month. BEx and I split one week before our first anniversary, and though that wasn't quite the end of our marriage, it was the end of my time in Ohio. I never even saw my in-laws again, and only one of my friends from that time.

Driving into that city for the first time in all those years was cognitive dissonance extraordinaire. The old classic rock station was playing the same music they played back then (not "classic" at the time, I suppose ...). I knew how to get around, but the look of the place was alien to me. It was something like the reverse of a phantom limb - I could touch, I could see, but the sense was gone somehow. The texture, the earth from which the town rose and was built, was impossibly strange.

Being of a Certain Age, too, hormones got the best of me and I cried coming into town. Pearl Jam's "Black" didn't help, though the reasons for that are a bit personal to get into.

Before hitting my hotel, I spun briefly around my college campus - BEx was my "townie" back then - and was struck by how easily I found the places I lived and knew, and how strange they looked to me. And how TINY that campus is.

BEx and I had a date that night, and of course I wanted to look good. I got a bit of rest, cleaned up from the road, curled the oddly-colored hair, put on a dress. When he called to say he was on the way, I was ready. I saw him out the hotel window, and watched his car arrive, watched him get out and look about a bit, head inside. He looked good, but I knew that. How I look these days was a concern, but there's nothing you can do about that once it's time to answer the door.

I got a hug to "squeeze all the mean juice out of me" (he learned that one from my dad - aww), and we went to one of those places that was out of our price range in the 80s, has probably been there since the early 60s, and seems to have the same wait staff and decor it always had. The pizza was good, the service ... personal. Heh. Then we went for a walk on campus, through a night impossibly blessed with a lovely breeze and beautiful sky. He drove me around town until fatigue took over, and we called it an evening. I hadn't recognized much, beyond the walking-distance environs of my college years. Our stomping grounds after marriage, we didn't even get to.

Day two, something changed, and I operated more as if I were in a place I once called home. Whatever was different, my brain adjusted to, and it wasn't so strange.

I picked him up this time, and we spent a while with his mom. Let it be said here, if my Ex is "Beloved", so too were his folks. Though it made no sense on paper, his dad and I always liked each other, and his mom is a lovely lady it was always nice to have women's time with. They were generous, my F-I-L was really funny, and she was as sweet as BEx. Catching up on a drizzly morning was nice, and she seems to be well.

We wandered about for the day, among other things finding a GREAT bookstore, and came back in the evening to meet both his folks for chicken, which we brought along. Dinner was convivial, his dad more laid back than years back, and it felt like family. Maybe in some way it was family (hey, apparently I'm godmother to one of their grandkids; and we never did hate each other, so it works out). Even if not, it was just a nice, easygoing meal with people I enjoy.

The Really Big Show was Saturday, and the guys in the band had let BEx invite me to come see them and get the chance to actually hang out a little outside of the show. The drummer gave me the biggest, warmest greeting I got from anyone through the whole visit. Sweaty from loading out and some rehearsal, he grabbed me in a bear hug and rubbed his sweaty face on my face. Heh. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and I've always loved the guy, so that was pretty great. Hey, and - sweaty drummers - what're you going to do, hate 'em? Nope.

All the guys were good to see, generous and still the great guys I remember with a lot of fondness. Sound check was impressive, and I sat through a couple songs before wandering off to let them do their jobs.

Campus is just up the hill from the venue, so taking some time to go up there, I was serenaded by the band in the distance - walking the student union, heading up the hill to the chapel.

The chapel on this campus is absolutely filled with mid-century design and really amazing art, and as the rain stepped up, I stayed in there for a good while, taking lots of pictures. The stained glass windows, the floor, the meditation chapel, the whole sanctuary. Even the lights. I even tried to go up the steeple tower, but it was locked at the top. No harm/no foul, I was very glad the chapel was open.

Back down to my car in the rain, the whole campus was empty. Not silent, of course, though the reverb from down the hill was low. Here, the familiarity was at its height, and when I saw the statue of the undergrad I had forgotten existed, I was genuinely happy to see it again.

In the brick walk were a few memorial items ... my creative writing professor and his wife ... a girl whose unique surname and year of attendance might have made her the daughter of the one single "boyfriend" I had from the school itself. Huh. He was a nice guy too. Physics major, actually.

The show was perfect, and two of my best friends from those years, the other "girl with the band" and a singer from our crowd I always remembered with a smile, were there. "Come to my bosom!" the first said, which was hilarious and so absolutely her a thing to say.

The whole visit kind of felt like coming to a welcoming bosom, really.

I've shed my prejudices about that town - my snobbery towards it was bitter for long, stupid years - and never did resent the people in it. Seeing the place again, and those old friends, was a balm.



One of the things several people said to me, unbidden, was how much I needed to get away. Some knew I'd lost my stepfather, but that they could see how much that and everything since has been "on me" was a bit of a surprise. I don't know that BEx troubled to say anything other than to family - I would be surprised - so apparently, my sense of relief to be out on my own was pretty palpable.

And it was a blessing and a blast.

He and I wandered around again on Sunday, one more great bookstore (this one with a cat; I do love cat-owned bookstores) and an indulgent dessert at the local dairy. And that was it.



I'm grateful to have been able to see my friends, even my old school (of which I am less forgiving than this city I used to hate, though the grounds are not responsible for that), and my old home. I was there for most of almost nine years, which astonishes me to count out on my stubby fingers.

Geez, all those YEARS I knew that place. It was my home, even when I wanted to deny that.

And it welcomed me back and said, "Come to my bosom!"

Good trip. Good vacation.


And now ... back to work.

Collection

Strangely, considering how much I lean on them for content around here, it's been a while since I did a Collection post. Let's make up for that, shall we?

This post from Casey Karp is a funny bit of truism - on procrastinators, writers, and the facts of documentation. He has a nimble way with a word, go read his blog for this, or many other things!

Who watched Feud, the recent "anthology series" (we used to call these miniseries, kids) about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford? One of the things that captivated me was its production design. From the brilliant cutout-animation of the credits to the airless, sky-less sets - even the outdoors feels indoors in this film - there is a set-bound feel, for such a sprawling piece, covering decades and many cities. The returns to a single home for each star (Crawford had many over the years, but writing historical fiction does involve elision and compilation), the visitation of one windowless and symmetrically-posed restaurant booth, the sets within the sets. It's all among the most amazing visual arts pieces I've ever seen done in a movie or show; there is a realism to the details, but an overwhelming, airless enclosure about the whole.

Many of my friends and family know, I've barely ever been able to tolerate Susan Sarandon at all, but of COURSE she was almost literally born to the role of Davis, and she probably edges out Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford here. Vocally, neither of them puts in a full-time job of sounding much like the original stars, but Sarandon does provide several moments looking and sounding like Davis which are spine-tinglingly eerie. Lange never even attempts the flinty twang of Crawford, which is a shame given that Crawford's voice is so much a part of her persona for those of us who've really spent any time watching her performances, but she doesn't fail as utterly as Faye Dunaway did with her voice. The smoker's modulation she does use is at least entirely appropriate to Crawford's aesthetic, and makes sense as a character choice.

Okay, enough of that. How about the history of the American grin - and the import/export problems with it? Very cool piece by The Atlantic; nicely detailed, but not a long read.

(D)ata showed that flight delays got worse as more people based purchases mostly on price. Airlines didn’t have to compete at being good—they had to compete only at being cheap.

Who doesn't love a good victim-blaming? I don't! In "the evolution of how we do things" news: aaaaahhhhh, airlines. Turns out it's all our own fault we're miserable with air travel. There is a complex web of implications here; not all of it bad, and some of the worst of it perfectly persuasive. Personally, I'm creeped out and concerned about The Uber-ization of Everything, but the wider implications could be interesting, should they actually play out. Hmmm. Lots of hmmm.

Ten high-quality products manufactured in the United States - I had no idea ANY shoes were manufactured domestically any more, and will keep New Balance in mind for my next pair of sneakers. Which may be sooner now, just because I know this.

Delta'd

It's one of those "I was/wasn't supposed to be there" moments - like the time my uncle missed the massacre at the Dome of the Rock by hours because of a flight delay, or the eighty-year-old couple who never might have met but for one tripping in the park and the other coming to their aid ...

Originally, I had an American flight, on Sunday.

But American canceled on me, and booked me on the next-best option - which left the gate before I cleared security.

Dang.

They wanted to book me on the next flight, but that would not get me where I needed to be until 11:45 or something the next day! Horrors!

So I resolved to drive - 800+ miles, but I like a nighttime drive, and I'd be in control. Aces.

Along the way out of security, I sat down and called my mom to let her know what was up, then called my boss. "Use your best judgment" he said, but discouraged driving. I booked a 5:30 a.m. on Delta, it'd get me there HOURS before the American flight would! Yay!

And so, I went home to sleep just a few hours. The house fresh and clean so I could come home and not have that to think about, I didn't even sleep in my bed. Pulled up the couch, closed my eyes till 3:00 a.m.

I'd had a BAD night's sleep Saturday, and this was even worse, of course. For some reason, before the first planned trip out, I'd had butterflies constantly - not typical for me, for travel. I don't get *nervous* usually. Just sick.

I didn't wake up until 3:23 a.m. Ugh. Not the worst thing, honestly; my city's airport is much smiled-at for calling itself "international". It's not what you'd call the most challenging to travel through.

Still, I wasted no time. Brush teeth, braid hair, pull on clean shirt, get out. I was back and got a great parking spot before 4:00 a.m. easy.

I did decide to check in, so I could check my suitcase.

It was at this point, heading toward my gate, I realized: I'd left my phone charging at home. Clever girl. Our airport being what it is, I could have gone and gotten it, and I knew that, but ... sometimes, you just have to minimize your stress. How much do I need that phone, really? Not all that desperately. So home it would stay.

Gate. Sit. Relax.

After a while, they told us there was some sort of computer issue - worldwide. Hm. Oh.

... and there it began, fella babies.

I'll be honest, the flight out to Atlanta airport - my first leg - seems such a long time ago, I have no memory of how long it was delayed. Significantly, let's leave it there. But we got to Atlanta.

This was not, and did not feel like, a coup. Atlanta was every bit the cluster-festivity we expected it to be, and more. Everything you could dream of.

Initially, we did go to the assigned gate for the next flight out. Nobody imagined that would be the end of it, and it wasn't. Flight canceled of course, and then it was on ... to The Line.

The Line stretched down one of Atlanta airport's impossibly huge concourses. The Line was so extreme, all afternoon people walking by it offered condolences, were incredulous they'd have to be in it, recorded us on their phones, photographed us. I've seen news stories on airline outages before, and I can tell you, having my sweaty ass broadcast internationally was NOT on my list of things I was pleased to put up with that day.

Throughout our tenure on The Line, most of us made friends, chatted, smilingly rolled our eyes. We were a bit concerned about how fast The Line moved - because, in fact, it actually did. Not as reassuring as it might seem; we fully expected the end of The Line to be someone telling us we were up a certain excremental creek, thank you for playing, we're fresh out of paddles. (One suspects Delta might well have run out of paddles merely in the hopes nobody would turn them on any Deltoid fannies.)

It took about an hour and fifteen minutes or so to clear The Line. Throughout this time, I had my laptop on top of my carryon, kicking the latter along the way when we moved, typing on the former when we didn't. I emailed my boss, my mom, the hotel for our meeting this week, and a certain sports team, 67 of whose tickets I had for safekeeping on my person. "Can the tickets be reprinted?" Yes, for $5 each, but they'd cap that at $40. Whew. Hotel event coordinator was overwhelmingly lovely - she changed our lunch date to "what would you like waiting for you in your room?" and I may or may not have admitted a liking for hard cider.

The Line moved across a wet patch on the floor. My carryon is not wheeled. Ew.

Throughout the day, I reminded myself of two important things: unlike a friend of my family, who's been a part of our lives all of my own, I am not losing a foot today. And I don't work for Delta today.

As baselines for "how bad is  your day?" these things might seem almost extreme for comparison, but remembering our family friend honestly did keep me from turning into a freaking, stress-riding shrew. I prayed for her and meant it. I took NSAIDs for my headache and knew, whatever came, my problems would end - maybe even within just hours.

We came to the end of The Line around 2:30 I think. Maybe. One loses all sense of time, even dates, in an aiport, and that is of course very intentional. Can't have people aware of what's going on about them.

I got to the gate for the 3:32 flight before I really looked at the new boarding pass.

It was for August 9.

I was pretty out of it, but Monday, I was reasonably certain, was in fact August 8.

Two more compatriots from The Line appear. I ask them if they saw the date on their HOORAY, YOU REACHED THE END OF THE LINE release slips. They crumple when the realize our mutual mistake.

There is no going back to The Line and cutting it.

We turn to the nearest gate agent, and wait.

The problem being shared, so too is the solution. A 7:28 p.m. out of gate such-and-such.

We find gate such-and-such and settle in. It is a nice gate. Small, quiet, clean.

It is, naturally, too good to last.

There are three gate changes as the afternoon wears on. Atlanta is, by the way, the largest airport in the world. You need to catch a train to get from one concourse to another. You can, if you are especially sleep-deprived and castaway by Delta airlines (hometown carrier for ATL), miss the right concourse and have to get back ON the train again. These are things that can happen.

At last, I ended up at gate A1. I kept thinking about steak sauce, what it has that Worcestershire sauce doesn't, and that family friend. This gate is large, but crowded, ugly-lit, dirty - and low on seating. By this point in the day, my tailbone is hurting in any case. Air travel is hard on a fat lady's tailbone. Sitting too straight, sitting not straight enough. It's all very trying. Sitting on the ground is no better. I finally capitulate and try to lie down.

In that magical carryon - un-wheeled, as I have mentioned - what I have not mentioned is its very weighty contents. Apart from the laptop, it holds a presentation projector. Tiny, to be sure, but still. I'm hucking *equipment* all over G-d's creation, hung off my shoulder. It also holds my tablet computer.

Battery life still kicking, but sinking, on the laptop, I decide at last to fire up the Galaxy tab. It has updates. I let it update.

This takes roughly sixteen months, and renders everything on the tablet unusable. No email. No KINDLE. I poke at it listlessly less than half an hour, and finally just turn the thing off. I haven't so much as fiddled with it since. Some stress we tend to invite in. I was not feeling hospitable for tech issue frustrations, so. Shut it down.

The gate is moved again, but this time only across the way, to A2.

Right about here, for whatever reason, I indulge in that most heedless rashness: belief that this next flight is Going to Happen. It is from the chairs here, waiting, I say the most coherent prayer for our family friend. It is here I watch the most luminously beautiful lot of students, traveling together, laughing and finding their own flight has been canceled. They thread their way away, and the sun seems to be dipping slightly.

On the plane. It is a miracle.

I email my boss. My hotel. My mom.

And we sit at the gate an hour and a half. Some ticketing issue with a lady and her young son. They get on the plane very late in the game. They get off again. I can't pretend that my feelings at this point were completely charitable; whatever this lady needed to get to, or away from - she kept hundreds of others waiting, as if we hadn't all done enough of that by this time.

But wait. More waiting. Lady and son are long gone off the plane again, and it transpires; our weight paperwork is not right.

I don't know what time the plane pulled away - between time zone shifts and delays, I know it was well past the final delayed takeoff time for our flight. But we lifted away from the tarmac, and flew at long last.

I cannot tell you how good the beds are at the event property where my meeting was held.

I also still cannot tell you how Stella Artois cider tastes. (I most often drink Virginia cider.) There were two Stellas in my fridge; but no bottle opener. And none to be had with room service.

Just as well.



The thing about these massive airline outages is that they are genuine crises for too many passengers. As for me - I was on time for the meeting, it went well. I didn't get to the "rehearsal" session, I didn't get to tour the hotel nor the city, and I didn't get to test that projector I'd been hauling around - which turned out to be not bright enough for the room. So it goes.

But for some, computer outages like this lead to real-world consequences that matter. I'm inevitably reminded of Douglas Adams' character Trillian, who hitches a ride and gets the adventure of her life. But who, in another scenario, misses the flight as it were. This Trillian meets a group of aliens who've lost their brain. Literally - the master mission module for their spaceship is lost in space, and they have no memories, no mission, nothing to do ... but to settle on a distant planet(/oid) and monitor Earth.

I felt a bit like that Monday. After an initial surge of "I want to quit and go home" frustration, I fell into the day and went where it took me. Call that a buffeting - it might have been - or me being flexible - if I was, it was more from exhaustion than Zen-like philosophical limberness ... whatever it was, at some point relatively early on, I abdicated action and succumbed to passivity. There can be ease in that, and I needed all the ease I could get on Monday.

My time card runs from about 3:30 a.m. Eastern time to 11:30 p.m. for Monday. Yes, I am paid hourly. So two hours on Sunday for the aborted American enterprise. Twenty more Monday. Unlike most folks, I will be paid for this debacle. Whatever Delta chooses to do may not be super relevant to me, in time. A $200 voucher for future use - with Delta - is not as attractive as one might like. But they have their own problems.

And, as in politics, so goes travel. We have little choice - Delta will live on.

Collection

"Every resident, every visitor, every passing tourist sees a different Buenos Aires" ... Tom Williams' really lovely look at the city nobody ever truly leaves ...

Kate Lord Brown at The History Girls on sating her appetite for a particular rare book (to see the dreadful pun I just made there, click away!). Have you ever had the experience of finding a hard-to-find book? For me and my family, it was the full set of the Durants' histories of western civilization, via Bibliofind, which my college creative writing professor told me about at some point in our highly sporadic post-college correspondence.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
--William James

I remember the post at Isis' Wardrobe about an upcoming Plastic Fantastic party, which sounded delightful to me. For pictures of the effusively ahistorical event, and some eye-poppingly creative costume ideas, enjoy her post about the festivities!

Three hundred years and a few days ago, The Sun set in France. A brief remembrance of Louis XIV - ever popular autocrat, astoundingly long-lived ruler, possessor of some truly spectacular wigs and satins.

Happy Fun Times on the Job

Pretty much everyone who knows me is aware how happy I am at my now-not-so-new job, after having left a team I loved a bit over a year and a half ago. My professional loyalties run pretty deep, and only once in the past decade have I left a position with pleasure; though even then it took a long time for the realization to dawn on me, that I was a poor fit at that employer, and really unhappy with them. These days, though – having left a job I was proud to hold and coworkers who meant the world to me – it may be I am happier than I’ve ever been at work. And that says a GREAT deal.

This past week, I went on vacation. Planned back in May, it was a trip to see my brother and nieces, in a city I have come to enjoy very much. NEXT week, I travel for work. Planned much more recently: the business trip I have to go on *next* week. Yes, I have to travel for work.

You think being a secretary means making other people do meetings, and planning *their* travel. But every so often, the tables turn on you.

We’ve covered how much trouble I have with flying. (I almost typed flaying there, though the latter may be preferable to airsickness.) It’s not a matter of fear, nor even annoyance at the crammed-in anti-glamor of air travel. It’s the inescapable physical wretchedness of the experience; the trip out to my family was a 4-bagger. Coming home, things were significantly better, and I think I have acupuncture to thank for the relief … but, even with that, the physical experience of flying is still flat-out awful.

See also: I have caught a cold. Of course. (I intend to blame the shriek-voiced women behind me on the red-eye home, who talked for an hour and a half on in a blacked-out cabin filled with people trying to sleep, splashed water on my next-seat neighbor, and generally kicked and jostled my seat in for the four-hour night we had together.)

So I hab a code.

In its way, the timing could not be better, all inconveniences considered. I wasn’t ill while I was with my family. I was able to work from home today and not expose my coworkers to the crud. And, given a few days between now and the next flight, hopefully the worst of the bug will be over before I fly again. It’s my plan to believe the acupuncture that helped so recently may still have an effect for this next trip. And also to re-up the Dramamine, Bonine, and/or Sea Bands.

Please don’t advise ginger on me. The first person who tries to tell me how to manage airsickness I’ve been dealing with for 37 years gets the airsickness bag I once filled with ginger-flavored goodness as a thank-you gift, and a no-expense-paid flight – just a flight, doesn’t matter where to – because, GAH. FLIGHT.


As all this is going on, my boss has had his hair set alight for him just at a point things had gotten civilized with his own travel schedule. And his hair is at a premium.

It’s all exciting, actually; I enjoy being able to SEE the people I work with every day, many of whom are at distant locations. It’s especially gratifying that things seem to be going well – and, not for nothing, I’m getting exposure and earning up brownie points (and, one hopes, a bit of comp time perhaps, once this event is in the bag). For the first time, I’ll be in front of the CEO, too; not just my own guys.

We’ll be in a city known for great food, and our company has a certain amount to do with great food; we’ll eat very well, on an outing together and even during our meetings.

Even better, this will all be over a week from now, and I'll be able to get out and enjoy myself for the first time in a while. Yay! I like a good August night out, on my own or with pals.

Round Robot

One of the many evolving wonders of modern technology is JUST how many people you can get holding for each other at one time. Travel is an especially good matrix to get a truly spectacular Round Robot going; one person planning travel for another may be on the line with them while simultaneously on the line with an agent, the agent may be on hold with two entirely different air carriers looking for options … a single call can take well over an hour, easily.

If you’re truly lucky, you may be on hold with Orbitz, who have the most unbelievably suicidal-kitten hold music ever conceived; a short piece, but played on repeat, it begins with all the pathos of a sad, big-eyed cartoon pet in the rain, and ends on plaintive piano notes fading into nothingness, the only emotional response to which is bleak despair. As appropriate as that can be, if you make any part of your living working on travel for others, it feels almost aggressive.


Yesterday I indulged in the foolishness of reporting to work at 8:00 a.m., the actual time I am expected to be in. Usually, I’m a 7:30-er, but, lacking for sleep and unable to cope with it at oh-dark-thirty, I allowed myself that half an hour, with the result that the moment I walked in I was running at top sprint.

Today, I came in at my usal too-early, and had just gotten everything fired up and running when I decided to check an airline website for the status of my boss’s flights, when he emailed me himself to point out the ugh-worthy: first leg delayed an hour and forty six minutes.

This led to an hour and thirty-six minute Round Robot – if you don’t count the follow up discussions, and a second call to get him checked in on the latest edition ticket.

Starting off a day with this sort of thing means the day doesn’t get the chance to drag – at least, early on – which is nice, as when things move along you’re not hating the clock. Still, getting in at 7:30 works better for me in a long run. I don’t like being caught up short right at the start, and an early start often means I’m ahead of obstacles.

It’s also what I’ve become mentally and physically used to, over the past few jobs with flex schedules.

The discipline of early-ness was hard won and now seems to be difficult for me to shake. There was a time (it seems not so long ago, but it’s about a dozen years now) when going in to work at 7:30 was exceptional; the occasion of some special meeting or corporate event. Now, I can hardly see how it’s possible to show up at report-in time and really be effective. It can take half an hour just to get booted up, everything opened and organized, and to put on the day’s work shoes.

Today I got off my desk a series of invoices, processed expenses already spent, shifted risk items and fleet notices and provided titles to Finance. I secured several things that need to be shredded, and sorted a stack of outstanding items and one recall notice. Not bad, and constantly going (even if, sadly, not moving enough!).

I wouldn’t make a half-bad robot myself, some days. Only better.

I've Been to Armageddon

In 1982, right befor the shooting at the Dome of the Rock, and not long after I turned fourteen, my family went to Israel and Greece.  I’d grown up with Jewish friends, and one of them sat me down on the steps at his parents’ house, eyeballed me slowly, and pronounced that my nose was too small and I had freckles – but, because I had brown hair and brown eyes, I was allowed to precede him to the Holy Land.

Though that was the first eyeballing I got on that trip, it was far from the last, and one of the lasting legacies of my first and only foreign travel was the exposure to a cultural phenomenon which has shaped the way I approach (literally) life.  I learned to look people (men) in the face.  At age fourteen, that’s no small asset to come by, and this trip may have been the first fundamental step in creating the persona I’ve built now for nearly forty-seven years.  It may lie behind, too, my tendency to flat-out approach a guy, making my intentions clear.  I met my ex husband by conking him over the head with a club with a pointblank approach, and a number of my serious and less-so relationships began only because I crossed the space between me and someone else.  One I remember with fondness has always told me he NEVER would have spoken to me (regardless of an across-the-room smile and my making a point of standing a little away from the friends I was with) because he assumed I could not possibly be available.

Odd things, you can pick up in Israel.

I almost picked up a husband, to be sure.  When we went to tour Megiddo, our charming guide offered to betroth me to his son or nephew or some other relation; an opportunity my mother was most flattered to have to turn down due to geographical inconvenience.  (One thing I failed to pick up in Israel:  geographical undesirability as a deal-breaker …)

This was one of the interesting facets of our travel.  My family were Very Baptist, of course (are), and I was a little suburban kid of fourteen years of age.  But my experience of Israel in particular, but even somewhat of Greece (we were only in Athens for a very few days, compared to over a week in the Holy Land), was not much truncated by being with my protective family.

It may have helped that my brother, aged seventeen, was at the height of his Intimidating Guy years – but, the fact was, my mom and dad took care of us both, without taking tons away from the experience of travel.  Indeed, some of the freedom we got one night when they went to a schmanzy hotel and the mice played, I would happily have done without.

Fun fact:  we once figured out that Mr. X was living in Israel, pretty near indeed to the family we were visiting there, at this time.  However, it has also been determined (and thank Maud) that he almost certainly didn’t cross paths with us, mice or families or otherwise.

Second fun fact:  Mr. X also never developed the habit of staring openly at women.  Though he’s extremely skilled at covert glances.

Megiddo offered perhaps the most prominent matrimonial opportunities for me in Israel, but alas it was not time for my folks to hang out a white flag and marry me off, or so they felt.  I was heartily glad of it, though it must be said the options for betrothal (and Marlboro cigarettes, which actually originated in my own backyard, which amused me greatly) would have been rich indeed, if only we’d all considered it.  Child marriage and nicotene addiction, though, were not in store.

One of the more striking things about Megiddo in particular was this:  I had no idea until college, the name of the place is inextricably linked to Armageddon.  THERE is a fact I suspect would have not only blown my pre-pretentious little mind, but also quite influenced everything I ever believed in or would.  I mean, once you’ve been to Armageddon – before even actually living a life at all – everything else has to be a piece of cake, right?

As it stands (for millennia upon millennia), thirty-two years on and a lifetime away, my memory of that day comes to the high place atop the tel … the narrow tunnel descending into it (it was at this gateway to the underwold of Armageddon my mom helped me spurn matrimonial bliss) … and the madcap driving of the relation who took us to all the sites we went to.  Kinneret stands out, too, for its wide beauty and the food (“what kind of spice is that?” “BURN”) … glimpsing the Golan Heights.  Trips to the Old City.  I don’t think us kids really did anything in Tel Aviv, except perhaps land there.  Walking the walk that Jesus walked, on Good Friday.  Lazarus’ tomb.  And such churches …



This trip fed into my nascent interests in history and faith – or, more elementally, in The Past.  Where I probably never would have said I was much into “history” until at least my twenties, I’ve always had a sense of the presence of the past, if you will, and always preferred my stories well away in time.  My earliest conceptions of time were spatial and mystical, if only because so much IS mystical to the ignorant innocence of early childhood.  The Bible, too (and by this I refer to the Pentateuch, the “old” testament) has excited me from the earliest age, even if not generally in the way most people of faith would like to see.

One of the things many Americans tend to miss, or miss out on, is the physical manifestation of the past in our lives.  Few of the populations imported and immigrated in the past half-millennium consider those who were here before very often, and the conception of native life here is not abundantly accompanied by artifacts (though a click on the links above will provide a look at one of the most remarkable recent finds you can expect to see).  What architecture and sites we have rarely date back more than 200 years.

So, to be in the impossibly OLD word – of “armageddon” or Christ or the Patriarchs or Jebus or Canaan – to touch Roman glass and mosaic stones just lying on the ground, to walk stone steps so long in use their centers are worn away to nothing, to breathe the scented air in churches as old as *the* Church itself – is almost more than a kid like me can experience with no effect.  Not only is there incredible drama in the past, but there is such mystical power it is all but overwhelming.

I got over that; there’s only so long a boy-crazy girl can sustain interest in the ineffable when she’s impatient to get to high school and have crushes and hate her teachers and so on.  When there are no answers and her emotional obsessions lie elsewhere, early awe becomes fallow-shallow; gives way to more immediate moments.

But the interest never quite dies.  I still vastly prefer my history VERY much older than the American Civil War and my hometown have to offer.  Reworkings of the oldest stories, and reading Bronze Age fiction, history, and archaeology always captivate me.  Armageddon maybe less than Genesis – but the questions behind these oldest of human stories, and the ways they came to be and changed and are received, the worlds they rebuild (sometimes excitingly, sometimes with flaws, always with ambition) are places I will always visit, again and again.

I found a lifetime commitment in Israel, in my way.  Even if it wasn’t to the unseen, Marlboro-smoking sixteen-year-old promised to me at Armageddon.  Or even the unseen, cowlick-sporting, covert-gazing American boy of my dreams.

Research Travel

Ahh, the dream of being able to actually go to those places I write about ...

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

Drive went smoothly today, and didn't even feel terrible and long.  It stayed overcast, which is good driving weather, but not actually rainy apart from a couple extremely minimal spits in Carolina.  I'm home in time for lunch, but more tired than hungry - and still too restless yet to quite lie down either.  Suitcase and bag are upstairs neatly awaiting unpacking.  Dog is outside, quietly being outside.  I am here, post-travel disoriented and anticlimacted.

When I came in, The Lolly was quiet, and I went back outside, got my suitcase - still no noise when I dropped it.  So upstairs I went, and finally heard movement (reassuring!).  She met me at the top of the stairs, hardly the worse for wear (she LOVES our neighbor, who was looking on on her), but with the Saddest Eyes in the World, of course.

I moved toward the bed to dump my things, and found the cover rumpled up by the pillows, and a little bit furry.  Aww.  Siddy never gets on the bed without permission anymore, and usually not even when she does get invited to hop up.  She must've missed me.

*Melty doggy mommy*

Small Consolation

Well, re-reading that post from the last trip, it looks like I had TWO connections on the way home on that trip. Ew. This time, just one each way. And I did get aisle seats at least. Though well enough back in the row count, unfortunately.



I will not be able to stop myself looking and finding out there were direct flights, tomorrow. And I will not be able to stop KICKING MYSELF for what a moron I am, plunging in with my very hard earned money. Ack!

But: the thing is, I'm going to see Wow and Squee this summer.

That is a bunch of a lot to be excited about!

Dammit

I think I may have made a HUGE mistake tonight. I bought my tickets for vacation. Under the influence of a headache.

Idiot.

I didn't find any nonstop flights ... and it seems to me there ARE nonstops - and for about the same price I spent on a bleeding connector (both ways) through EWR. Oh if only I had looked beyond Travelocity ...

Oh my aching HEAD am I going to be upset if I look tomorrow (it would probably make me a little sick to even try to look tonight) and see that I could have done this an easier way. Gaaahhhh.

At the end of the day, I don't so much mind the timing nor the inconvenience ... and at least it isn't a stopover in Chicago. But Newark doesn't buck Douglas Adams' "no language has ever come up with the phrase 'as pretty as an airport'" theory either.

No, for me, the inconvenience is secondary. It's this that really bothers me. Barfing in public is actually the least of the hateful experience of airsickness ...

Gah. Someday, I'll find a better way to travel.


And still not be able to afford it. *Bleah*

In 25 Hours ...

I will be home again from vacation. Travel for most people is a matter of dislike and inconveniecne, the process being a necessary evil to the ends of whatever lies abroad. For me, it is a physical hell. Motion sickness is, for those of us who experience it, a genuine suffering. Descent is what gets me. The lurch of deceleration, the loss of power to the plane's AC just when your body begins to overheat, the extremity of inescapable, hideous nausea. I'm not entirely joking when I say to people I would rather break a bone than endure the incomparable nature of descent airsickness. It is a source of real dread, a deeply awful sensation in every way. And it LASTS such a terribly long time.

On the flight from Cleveland to the Pacific Northwest, a five-hour run, we spent fully one hour of that in descent mode. I sat on the plane, nothing on but a summer camisole top, my hair tied as high on my head as I could get it (the lower it is, the more heat it builds up just at the back of the neck - ugh), fanning myself with the emergency card. The poor old couple next to me surely thought me a drama queen. But I'd rather draw knit-browed attention from strangers than actually barf in front of them. And it has come to that, more than once, for me.

So travel isn't something I go for happily - and connections (I have THREE legs on the way home ... and three descents to look forward to - whoopie) are worse than an irksome necessity. It takes a serious draw for me to endure all this ... and that guy on the first plane, with the unfettered gastrointestinal distress - who, apparently, had been eating cotton candy and corpses for breakfast ...


***


My family are a pretty serious draw, is what I am getting at here.

My nieces are twelve and five, and have always entranced me. The elder one is brilliant, poised, hilarious, energetic, wonderfully dorky, and wonderfully self-conscious. I love that girl in a way I love no other person on this earth. She is deep in my blood, I admire her, she draws affection out of me as if I were merely a spool filled with an endless line of it. I think she's one of the neatest people I've ever met, and one of the loveliest of the lot I am related to.

The younger is vivid, effusive, endlessly inventive. I can never get over the font of amazing things her brain comes up with, nor the incredible ways she is so absolutely her own. What a unique creature! What a darling one.

I didn't expect Little Bit to remember me, actually. It's been two years since she saw me, after all - and that is a long time.


So. When I got out of daddy's truck, and she clung to me, it was lovely. Amazing.

When I discovered she was weeping, to see ME, it was perfectly unbelievable.

I'm an affectionate person, highly so. My attachments are almost indelible, and I treasure those I love in a very definite way. Physical expressions of my affection are incredibly important. I miss this, now the girls live thousands of miles away. All I have is my mom and my dog. It isn't the same, and life is less without affection.

That hug from my youngest niece is a ranking moment in my life.

It lies already next to the similarly emotional moment when I said goodbye to the elder niece, when they moved. She held me a long time, ten back then - and speechlessly wept as we said goodbye. It was acute, it was sad and beautiful. It is among those signal moments which I never will forget, and which perfectly reflect the relationships I've been blessed with. My niece's tears, now twice, are the unforgettable measure of my love of them.

And, amazingly, of their love of me.

Nieces are the best invention, EVER.



I didn't think she would remember me.

Now I can hardly imagine leaving here. And not having that little head right here, to scoop up and love on. Not having the elder to roll her eyes and then fall into a natural embrace, walking along, nothing necessary to say.