The Move I looked at the pile of charge card receipts in my suitcase too big for my purse, the moving cube contract and supplies from U-Haul, the birthday celebrations with Lib, Danny, Peter, and Pat who was missing but always in our hearts. There were receipts for travel supplies including a phone charger and snacks, and receipts for memorable meals and hotels–the friends-and-family Marriott Courtyard bargain through my son Colins friend Todd, the miraculous last minute reservation at El Tovar, which is so close to the Grand Canyon it teeters on the rim. Its where I had the best pancakes of my life on a white linen table cloth while staring at the dark log interior decorated with western art. A wide picture window looked out from under the porch to the blue sky and tan and orange colors of the canyon. Then there was the huge senior citizen discount my cousin Pam found us at the Santa Fe Hilton. It was a few blocks from the downtown plaza dating from 1610 and the Spanish style basilica with two towers of bells, one of which broke into a peal of ringing while we were standing in front of it. We were about to go into the La Fonda Hotel, an early 1900s civilizing influence on the west, and have one of the best breakfasts in town–a French crepe stuffed with mushrooms, spinach, and Swiss cheese in a béchamel sauce. Then there were the nondescript but friendly Marriotts and Comfort Suites throughout the south with breyaaaakfasts that close by 9, but you heyaaaaalp yourself to coffee anytime, sweetheart. There were the many gas stations with cashiers who looked at us knowingly as we rushed to the ladies room after the third cup of coffee that day. This was the last day of looking at receipts of belts and placemats and candy, and was that a hand tooled western bridle sticking out of an overstuffed bag that Im not even sure will fit my horse? There were other things we shouldnt have bought but did anyway because Dad would like this or We wont be here again. But let me back up because writing about trips is hard while you are still on the trip. You dont have time to write because you are busy figuring out where you actually are or where you are going. You have to write about the trip after it is over, after it is a memory or soon to become a memory because you are constantly moving and looking, and you need to slow down to write, but you are driving across the country. You wont be doing this again any time soon. There is so much to see. The car is running smoothly. The roads are so straight. You are flying through the most magnificent scenery in the world and trying to stop it before its over, but you cant because it is unstoppable, and you are hurled faster and faster through it with your head turned back, looking at it as if you are on a train and trying to grab your child who has been left standing on the station. It started with Lib. She was the twin child who made it onto the train. Time out, she said. Time to come home. I flew out to San Francisco, happy to help her move out of her now too expensive apartment and try a sojourn at home in Connecticut. Rehab, she called it. We celebrated her birthday after I got off the plane, which was shared in silent memory of the child who didnt make the train. We had moments of contemplation. We had grown close in our grief over her twin brother Patrick who went to school near San Francisco. The memories of his life there pervaded us, his rap singing Stanford roommate who filled their dorm room with band equipment, his graduation in front of proud families in a tiled-roof quadrangle, his comment as he moved out of his dorm that if things did not work out in his new life in Berlin, he would not give himself another chance. But when we arrived at Libs apartment, we realized the amount of work yet to be done and we swung into action, packing furiously. What stays, what comes, what goes into the moving cube, what is left up for grabs on the sidewalk? Aunt Tetties china had to come home or at least go into the cube. It was a bear to pack. Again. We had just shipped it that year from Connecticut to make Libs apartment a home. It was Deruta china cracking with age and crystal glasses so thin they could break by looking at them. They completed the glass cabinets in her high ceilinged studio, but back into protected darkness they went. I bought bubble wrap by the case. The coffee wore thin. We collapsed by the end of the third day. Box after box piled high in Libs closet and along the walls of her one bedroom. She had filled it with the memories of her family–my fathers Danish modern desk and chairs, his music sheet cabinet, his book case and bureau, my mothers water colors, the plants we bought at Home Depot. And then there were the just plain memories: the couch she paid too much money for and now could not sell, the chair which was beautifully restored and matched my fathers desk, the bed which would soon sit on the sidewalk unable to fit into the cube. We welcomed the movers, but their cube, so enticingly advertised as big enough to move a studio apartment, did not hold a studios worth of furniture. Youre going to have to make some executive decisions, said a heavy set, sort of mover in charge. The bed? Easy. That was disposable as in could be left on the sidewalk at the risk of being fined by the city. The plants? Libs friend Danny would get the smaller ones, but the biggest, which would not fit in the car–again on the street. The antique crate, which held my fathers brass tray table from Turkey–outta here. The movers shuffled in and out of the second floor walk-up. I sprayed down cabinets and woodwork and floors and cleaned with a mission. Got to get the full deposit back by leaving the place in good shape. The movers stopped shuffling. A few chairs were left, and instead of telling Lib, they said they had everything and drove off. What? Now what? She made three trips in her small car with furniture hanging out the back. Plants disappeared from the street with a kindly man who knew a friend who would like them. The crate and another chair that Lib found on the street herself disappeared almost as fast as she put them down. Thats moving in San Francisco. Leave your stuff on the street for a minute, even in the cube, and its gone. But this is no surprise in a city where you can look for a parking spot for an hour as we did the night before. It was Halloween. People came from practically all over the world to dress up as Jesus or Spock or a sailer boy and party in San Francisco. Libs party was over. The city she loved with its millions of foodie restaurants and parks and running trails and coffee places and concerts and bike paths and hills which make you feel like Clint Eastwood–all this was no match for the emptiness she felt. Even the multitude of young, vibrant artsy friends who had stood with her after losing her brother were not enough right now. She needed home. She needed to hit the road. But first we had to find a parking spot so we could go to bed and begin the great studio migration the next day, which would end with a large chunk not migrating with us. Plants, crates, and family chairs deposited in less than satisfying new circumstances, we began our journey across the country. In spite of emails pouring in from job recruiters and even an unsolicited invitation to apply for a plum position, in spite of nearly perfect weather every single day of the year, in spite of wonderful friends and amazing family, in spite of happy memories with her twin brother Pat, Lib was done with San Francisco, at least for a while. She missed home. She was ready for nearly imperfect weather every day and a father and mother who were almost forty years her senior. Oh God, could this be what she really wanted? Yes, it was. For now. She would know when she didnt, and that would be the time to leave. For now, she was happy to be going, happy for a journey of driving her car across the country. That was another possession we couldnt figure out how to store or ship, and she would need it at home, especially for the couple of months she planned on staying. And so it was that we filled her car with the boxes of china that didnt fit in the cube and the gotta-haves for the next couple of months and headed south to my brother Doug who lived a short hop from San Francisco. He was one of many family members on whose doorstop we landed, sometimes when we estimated, but sometimes when we couldnt or didnt because we would get distracted by really good coffee or sea lions or Hearst Castle or the scenic route, or a national park we just had to see because we knew we wouldnt be back, at least not the two of us, at least not when we were driving, at least not when the time seemed so right, at least when we seemed to have an excuse. And so we let ourselves get distracted by the magnificence around us to the point that when we actually found ourselves driving home the last day, we wondered how it could be over. How could over 3,000 miles fly so quickly. We started November 1, 2013. It was November 13. We were seven hours from home. We looked almost wistfully at the rolling hills of Virginia along I-81 with silos and red barns plunked on green fields as if by an artist who placed them for maximum aesthetic effect, for perfect foregrounds and backgrounds and everything in between. There were no billboards as in Texas and Arkansas and most egregiously Tennessee where I was so preoccupied listening to an audio book of Bill Brysons Walk in the Woods that I missed the entrance to the Smoky Mountains National Park. There aint no finger pointin till were pickin out fine jewelry and belts, Lib said. That was our mood even though I caused us an extra hour or two, even though the north entrance to the park in Gatlinburg was so developed we thought we were in Disney World. Lib said there were so many signs you couldnt even see the sign for a place you might want to stop. In our case, for the perpetual coffee, the best of which we officially designated as from the Cattlemens Steak House in Stockyards City, Oklahoma where, spoiled by days of the finest coffee through five states, I stupidly asked, What kinds of coffee do you have? And the waitress calmly replied, Just regular ol coffee. No, this was the fabled hunt country of northern Virginia, which Jacqueline Kennedy preferred to the White House, where Kentucky Derby winners were bred, where the first fox hunts of the country were founded, where steeplechases and fox hound competitions were regular events, where private schools beckoned girls with college prep academics and horse shows, and where you could eat lunch in the Red Fox Inn just as Confederate generals did over one hundred and fifty years ago. Behind the board fences dividing the rolling green fields, behind the grazing cattle and the red barns with white trim, the blue-gray Shenandoahs beckoned gently to the east. Should we stop for coffee? Lib looked at me with a smile.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:13:38 +0000
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