My mother had Wednesday day off and so I had asked her for Wednesday and (not through) Saturday. This was agreeable, and we spent several hours of Wednesday together. I woke at 7:00 to find the car in the driveway but the house empty, including the cellar, where by this time I did not want to find her collapsed. Nor at the clothesline nor in the camper but finally around the front of the house weeding. She did not garden at all when I was growing up, and it's nice that she is now. One of the awkwardnesses in conversation is that she is so focused on her chemical-induced successes and proud of the open spaces created by murdering perfectly healthy century-old hardwood trees. I cannot encourage chemicals or slaughter, nor do I criticize (to her face, behind her back being so very much more admirable), so I am left with "Ah" and "This is a very large tomato" and similar inanities.
Over breakfast my mother (asked to see and) looked at some of my photographs of the house and garden and of southwest Colorado last month and of Emlet in May. She declined help in the creation of pancakes but glanced at me where I sat at the dining table assembling an iPhoto album to demand that I smile, Lisa! Because when someone isn't smiling, for whatever reason, decreeing that she do so is kind and effective. She showed me Granny's photograph albums and allowed me to select a few--so now I have family photographs from both sides! She had already let CLH go through them and I lusted after one on CLH's wall, of Granny in her 20s perched laughing and leggy on the hood of a car. This is why I need a scanner, so all of us can have all of them.
Then we went to the beach and walked farther than BJWL had ever been, past the sundial even. I showed her where Griswold Point used to be and remarked on the cormorants, which I don't remember seeing before. She said they have always been around. Maybe they have and I used to think they were loons, because I knew loons swim low in the water. But loons are farther north and fresh water. I wasn't much of a birder before I moved to Colorado--but wait (it occurs to me now, almost two weeks later): if, as she herself said, she had never been past the sundial into the bird sanctuary, how would she know whether cormorants had always been there? It was another spectacular, crisp, sunny, breezy, exactly warm enough day.
But not one that couldn't be improved by criticism. I picked up some litter, a shotgun casing and other bits of plastic, as I had the day before both here and at Uncas. She actually asked why I was doing that. "Because it doesn't belong here?" I responded, surprised why? at the question. She tsk'd about how dirty it must be--she was picking up seashells from the same beach--and forbad it on her property and didn't know why I should do it. "It's everyone's responsibility," I said, evenly: I am much less likely to make like a blowfish--puffy and spiky--at her concerning unmotherlydaughterly things, especially things as impersonal as litter, and particularly when I am perfectly confident that I am doing right.
I left at 4. RPR had called to change her day, and when I called Charenton to change their day, JUMB said that was swell--though she wouldn't say swell--and if I arrived in time could I accompany her in her car to the garage and drive her home. Of course.
I stopped just north of Norwich to gas up, and this is when the vacation took a u-turn. I think I mean that in the U-Haul sense, not in the shape sense. I pushed the button in the door panel that released the fueling door, a feature new to me, and I thought the button should have popped back up but then figured maybe it wouldn't until I clicked the gas cap closed--CLH had told me you have to turn it past where it feels shut. I gassed up, I turned the gas cap and clicked it closed, I closed the fuel door (mistake number two). When I got back into the cabin, the button had not popped back up. I tried to manipulate it up, but, ham-fingered as I am, managed only to dislodge it entirely from its mount. There was now a gaping hole in the door panel. Huh.
I drove to Charenton, JUMB and I drove to Tony's and dropped off her car and asked the mechanic to look at mine. He tried the ignition key a couple of ways as a work-around, but no dice. If I would leave the car there, he could try to fix it, but he had a full day tomorrow so he couldn't promise it would be done then. Huh.
I drove us back to Charenton, at which point the fuel gauge read 3/4. Norwich to Charenton to garage to Charenton: one quarter of a tank. Yoikes. I didn't remember how much gas I had leaving Boston, but clearly until the door was fixed I couldn't leave Storrs, not even to drive three towns north to see RPR, nor drive anywhere but Boston. I calculated: I would drive to the garage in the morning and walk to campus--three or four miles?--and walk back at the end of the day. JUMB suggested that LEB might be able to pick me up from the garage, and I called and of course she was willing to do this. So I tried to put i broke my sister's car out of my mind for the time being and enjoy my evening at Charenton.
We had shad and conversation and JUMB's bread and APB's stories and conversation and tarte aux poires and pictures of Emlet's visit in August and of the play ZBD had written and directed (full of princesses and dragons, of course), starring SPG, and conversation. My heart went pitter-pat: I had gorgeous weather and good swimming but no Emlet, no Nisou, no SPG, and now maybe no RPR and MPR, TJZD and RED and Soulmate, or UncasCon. I proudly showed my pictures of Bump-bump and Granny and got to explain how Bump-bump got his name (he bumped foreheads with CLH, whom he adored, and she named him), and APB brought out some of theirs going back four generations, and we hot-tubbed under a full moon and a blazing Mars. And I woke up even before the rooster, an efficient sort who crowed while it was still pitch dark.