In Transit
On Sunday, I landed at the Philadelphia airport, still glowing from the joy of my writing retreat, my first time there without any worries about school distracting me. It was a wonderful 3 ½ day immersion in words and vulnerability and support. I may no longer be a headmistress, but I am still a writer–and I needed this time with those women to remember that.
I flew home early in order to get up the mountain for a Monday morning meeting of the Eagles Mere Museum board, even though this meant making the drive from the airport to Eagles Mere at night.
My worry about which shuttle station is closest to my car diminished when the van driver cheerily yelled, “For all you people who don’t know your station, tell me the letter and the number.”
“M-17,” I bleated, clutching my suitcase as others squeeze past me.
“That’s Shelter 9,” she hollered.
I found my car, loaded my bags, grateful that it was not pouring and started the drive into my next chapter.
All summer, we lived in my mother’s house, though she’s been gone for a long time. This is the house where I spent my childhood summers, the house our kids spent their summers in–heck, the house my mother spent summers in. It faces the lake and its curved porch is, perhaps, my favorite place on earth. Being there this summer–after we left Ohio with the moving vans and after Cordelia and Cole’s wedding in Montana–felt normal. We always spend a portion of each summer in Self Help Lodge; it was easy to imagine our old life waiting for us. We also began the process of moving into our “winter” house–the one we had bought and renovated some years back–but we didn’t accomplish as much as I had hoped; it was a long, overwhelming process.
In September, we traveled to put some distance between me and the start of a new school year. For 61 years, the first day of school has been a predictable ritual; it was strange to be unloosed from it, so I was glad to be distracted by an amazing trip. When we returned, we continued moving into the winterized house at the foot of the driveway of the “big” house, but more travel, the death of a dear friend and the death of one of our rescue pups slowed our progress. To date, I’d still characterize the decor as basic box. It’s not that we haven’t been trying–logging boxes and boxes of books into a database and showing them onto shelves,; purging and donating more stuff: dishware, odd glasses, clothes and shoes I’ll never wear again, but it’s a two steps forward, 700 steps back situation.
With the temperatures dropping and our need for heat increasing, Seth started acclimating our pets to their new living situation while I was in Wisconsin,. He reported by text that the two cats were doing fine with their new digs. They seemed to understand how to get in and out their fancy electronic pet door; they knew where their food dishes were and how to find the litter box–in the basement, mercifully. Our two rescue dogs, on the other hand, were not adapting quite as fast. While I was away, they escaped from the fenced yard of the new house; Seth discovered them, drenched, waiting on the top step of the big house, unable to push open the gate to the porch. He did not know how long they had waited for him–he’d been gone several hours.
Asclepia does not like the hard wood floors, she is afraid of the stairs, barking when Seth moved from one floor to the next without carrying her, so when I got back, we went to see Mr. Reed, who has installed a lot of carpet in the big house over the years. We chose a sort of muted sage green that we hope will go well with the mulberry paint of the living room. Our children chide us about all the colors we chose, but it’s our house, and I like color.
“You realize we are carpeting the stairs for our dog,” I said to Seth over grilled cheeses and a milkshake at May’s Drive-In.
“We are,” he confirmed.
Driving in the rain up the Northeastern Extension on my way home from the airport, I thought about how strange it was to approach Eagles Mere from this direction. I haven’t lived outside of Philadelphia since I was a girl. But there I was, passing Swarthmore and Media and St. Davids, using the wipers constantly, grateful when the rain lessens. Everything looks weird at night, glare-y, and I don’t like driving at night anyway. On Rte. 80, approaching Bloomsburg, I thought briefly about my brother’s accident fifty years ago, but tamped down my ever-anxious highway driver self, channeled my courage, and repeated the mantra I often told the girls at school: “You can do hard things.”
.
When I arrived–three hours even, no stops—my headlights caught two deer standing on the road right outside the new house. They sauntered away. Then, I saw Seth, framed in the doorway, lights burning to welcome me. The dogs scampered out to greet me. We are home, our first real night of the rest of our lives.
Since I returned, we’ve moved furniture, re-arranged boxes, brought stuff down from the big house, selected carpet, taken naps. Seth finally found our silverware, which I unpacked. It feels Sisepheyan, this moving in. It will take months. Christmas is the first real deadline since we want the children to come to us—and that means having room for all of them.
Last night, Seth, who aspires to become and EMT and a fireman, went off school. I aspired to unpack more boxes, but took a break to write,. Sclepi snoring softly near me.
All along Seth’s mantra has been, “We’ll figure it out,” which has sometimes made me want to punch him, but with my writer friends, far away in Wisconsin, I wondered what might happen if I simply surrendered-–-to joy, to chaos, to all that might be waiting for me in this new era.
