12 June 1999: First Day

I hate myself. I hate having to deal with this stupid head of mine.

I am always anxious to fly, not about flying but about catching the flight, which makes "The Way Up to Heaven" one of my favorite Roald Dahl short stories, except that I shouldn't've read it so recently before this trip, except that I didn't know I was going to make the trip at all so it's not as if I deliberately tortured myself.

RDC dropped me off in plenty of time for my 8:05 flight and I passed through security and took the shuttle-train from the terminal to Concourse B and rode up the escalators and checked my departure on the monitor and turned left toward Gate B22 and had reached nearly the end of the first people-mover when I realized I had left my parka at security. I had my spandy-new, be-wheeled suitcase and my stupid purse stuffed with Hemingway, discman, pills, and glasses, but no lifesavers; I did not have my parka (the illegal third item) stuffed with dried cranberries and Nutrigrain bars and, most important, my DayRunner.

I turned tail and ran.

Screw the bewheeledness, I was faster with two feet than with two feet and two wheels. I cried on the train, which wasn't empty. I ran up the escalator to the main floor, found a sign that said "to concourse," and ran. But it was the other security post. I ran again. Someone heard my panting and allowed me to skip ahead of him. I flung down the bag and purse, tore off my bracelet, got through the portal again, grabbed my bracelet from the basket a guard held, and bypassed the security clerk when I saw my parka on the floor behind his desk. So much for immediately blowing up all unattended luggage, hooray! I retrieved my bags too and landed on the escalator just behind the man who let me cut and a woman whom I'd run past.

"Thank you, sir, for letting me in. It was kind of you."
A blank look.
"I'm sorry, wasn't it you who just let me ahead of you?"
He shook his head, looked away. Oops.
Then the woman caught my eye and mouthed "It was him," and we shrugged at each other.

I hadn't checked in (I had an e-ticket of course) though it was now after 7:00. I was certain I was going to miss my flight. You can tell I don't travel a lot, and RDC hadn't even dickered around with a little box wrapped up in white paper for CLH (it's a good Dahl story--read it).

The train didn't break down in its tunnel (which it has done, although never with me on it, and ask me if I'm claustrophobic, particularly when underground) and I was back at the gate not many minutes later than I should have been. There was a line at the podium and a sign soliciting volunteers to give up their seats, so I fretted again. Fretting and seeping stress-sweat, I pitied my seatmate. Because I would have a seatmate, damn it. I would be on that plane. Soon enough I stood before a clerk, identification and Visa and confirmation number in hand, and I came away with a boarding pass.

I peed and washed my face and hands and rinsed my neck, but I forgot to buy water. I was already at the carry-on limit; where would I stash water? If one parka pocket could hold a DayRunner, certainly another could hold a bottle. But I didn't go.

And that's what I wrote in my DayRunner while waiting, and boarding, and taxiing, and here we are, over the patterned farmland of the Great American Irrigated Desert. There is a dog that sounds like a very large dog in the hold. Now that we're airborne, its barking is very faint but I strain for it because the sound means the dog is still alive in the belly of that iron beast.

CLH picked me up at Logan and I peed and drank more water and we were on our way. Last year, RDC and I drove from Logan to Storrs so of course we took the Mass Pike to I-395; I don't know whether that or I-95 is better to get to Old Lyme. I hadn't been the 95 way in a long time, anyway. CLH wanted to stop for lunch and I suggested Newport too late so instead we chose Mystic. I had tried to think of a decent restaurant on the water between Mystic and Old Lyme, and while it's true I know very few restaurants overall, it's also a fact that very few are actually on the water and still less have al fresco seating. Why? In Denver and even in Boston, people will sit outside even if the only view is of traffic. So we ate at a place near the drawbridge in mystic Mystic and I heard the first Worcester accent I've heard in four years. This particular specimen might have been a particularly whiny one but I wondered if the Worcester accent is overall more annoying than that of Lon Gisland.

Mystic. When I first heard of the movie "Mystic Pizza," the title was lost on me because I immediately knew it was the town and not supernaturalism or magic or the like.

And so home. Home on a highway hemmed in with trees and undergrowth that flourish without irrigation, on a highway blasted through granite hills, on highway with turkey buzzards and crows instead of pigeons. Home.

As we came off the highway, I told CLH I hoped DEW's first words to me wouldn't be "Don't squeeze me!" as they were last year, as if she were afraid of me, and CLH pointed out that I do have a tendency to... "assault little old ladies?" No. "Or to be overenthusiastic?" More than that.

When we drove up to the house, I told CLH I was grateful BJWL had given us directions because if she hadn't, I wouldn't've recognized the place. Kidding. BJWL always alleges we wouldn't recognize the place. She's murdered more of the trees in the back acre and resided the house in a vinyl of a different color than the wooden shingles of yesteryear, but besides being reduced to a suburban stereotype the house is about the same as ever, besides being in the same place as ever.

The first thing that hit me entering was the reek of frying. I would be hungry for the next few days, and I was glad we'd eaten on the way. We all said hi and I stowed my bags, noticing happily that the hallways have been stripped of the nasty paper. So much for my talisman of rebellion. It wasn't even 6:00 yet but CLH crashed on the couch and threw her feet up on the back. I sat at the other end, head close to her feet. Her trained toes wandered casually toward my tender arm, and I snarled: being pinched by toes is about the most painful thing she ever did to me. The toes retreated but soon ambled close again. I seized my glass of water and threatened her and we giggled and fought. Our mother's voice cut in: "If you're going to get rambunctious, take it outside!" I think that was the word you wanted, I asked CLH?

My mother and her husband seemed too caught up in their putzing to talk to someone they hadn't seen in a year, so I went out for a walk. Walking up to the main road, I remembered that I had had an Apollo tree, a magestic oak in the middle of the neighbors' property line. Then back, past the house and up to the bit of road that had remained happily unpaved for so long, but not anymore. Why do developers throw up huge houses within spitting distance of each other, without trees? Why do people live in them? Why does it have to happen on my road?

And along under the hemlock forest, the hemlock forest that is now a stand of skeletons after the blight of bacterium that killed them all off. Elm 50 years ago, now hemlock, next maple?

When I got back to the house, Granny was awake and downstairs, sitting at the dining room table. Her face brightened considerably seeing me, and she gave me no warning before I lay an arm around her shoulders in a modified hug and kissed her withered cheek. I stayed talking until Granny went back upstairs either because she was tired or because BJWL and BDL made it obvious that company ruined their television viewing. The television has always been in sight of the dining table, which must be one reason my family has perfected the art of sparkling conversation. Though Granny went upstairs, I stayed at the dining table, willing to chat but only obscuring their view as they finished their fried chicken and white bread with margarine and nary a vegetable. When they craned their eyes around my offending blockhead one last time, again affirming my conviction that my mother might care for the physical presence of the lump of carbon she gestated and fed but has no interest in the mind within, I gave up.

I called my babysitting family.
"Hello?" said a voice.
"RKC?" I asked.
"No, this is CKC."
"Hey, big shot grad! It's Lisa."
General glee, then, "What are you doing?"
"I am in fact at this moment home, I am in the house, and I am desperate to get out."
"Then what are you waiting for, c'mon over!" When I lived in Old Lyme, I wouldn't've called first. I was pleased to know my reception was just the same though.

This level of enthusiasm I might have appreciated from my mother. My sister and grandmother showed it before their separate wearinesses overcame them; my mother had made no effort. Whatever.

So off I skedaddled through the woods, noting that my grandfather's car has been parked in the undergrowth behind a shed thus increasing its resale value as well as the aesthetic worth of the whole property. The trail has become muchly overgrown and I knew I would scamper home on the road like a reject. I brought the phone, wondering if their more open road, that much closer to I-95, would allow coverage. Nope. I scurried through the same yard we've been shortcutting through all our lives, hoping the same family still lived there (they do). I skipped up the road, past HPV's house, past houses of CLH's classmates, and finally up to 3SK's abode.

AAC and CKC sat waiting on the stoop, and they laughed as they saw me come from the woods instead of in a car and CKC flung herself at me, thanking me for the graduation card I'd sent (and fretted over). MAC was next, and CHC, and the five of us collapsed in the living room, just like grown-ups (it had been off-limits while growing up), and I learned all about my favorite girls' activities. Except they're not girls anymore, since every last one is over 18. I learned about CKC's job and MAC's upcoming trip for her honors biology program and why RKC wasn't home to receive me. I heard some Old Lyme gossip and told some embarrassing stories about myself and my family and my job.

I told them about my promotion and my CoolBoss rereading my references' recommendations and the comment she passed along made by a friend of CHC's: "She's not a dud," which I had never heard before. Dear old Joe.

It pisses me off that the comfortable, affectionate conversation that I can have with young women of whose daily lives I have not been a part for 13 years is an impossibility with my own mother. I might not be the most patient person with her, but I do make an effort, damn it. She doesn't even read my letters: I forgot, from Christmas to Easter, to send her RRP's address, which she wanted because RRP is getting hitched and which she refused to take down on the phone and finally this spring I did send it with some other matters of fact, and a few weeks ago she asked for it again.

When I got home it was nearly 9:00 but not quite dark yet and nowhere near even the 7:00 in my head. I was antsy. CLH woke up and we went to Hallmark's: I got a milkshake with coffee ice cream and chocolate syrup (and two Lactaid). Bliss. That's one thing Denver doesn't have: a good milkshake, unless RDC makes them. Then I went to bed.