The thought of coming back here so soon seemed as likely as, say, skydiving or being hooked to a 2000-feet-long metal cable and speeding over trees at 60 miles per hour 250 feet above ground.
I’m staying at L’s house, my dear friend whom I’ve missed. She picked me up at the train and when we rolled into Northampton, I had an odd but pleasant sensation: Everything is familiar but it’s no longer mine. Sort of like what new grandparents say about being able to play with the baby and then hand it back when it needs a diaper change.
L.'s adorable dogs P.(etey) and L.(ulu)
Friday, 10/8: I’m borrowing L’s car for appointments. My health care is still based in Western Massachusetts, so I’ve crammed in the dermatologist, gynecologist, and a mammogram. Today I get squished, laser burned, and probed.
Before my appointments I drove past my old house. I did what I think people tend to do – drove past nervously, turned around, drove back, stopped and looked. I felt nothing. The giant 150-year-old maple in front was gone. Granted, it was weak and M.T.B. and I paid thousands to have the branches cabled but they took it down because they’re women riddled with drummed-up syndromes and the tree had bees (that never bothered me in 10 years). I could see inside the house. They painted every paintable surface inside and out, white. It looks awful to me. Like a little house turned into a sanitorium.
I drove away thinking about what is "home" anyway? Was it in that structure? Is it in a person? Place? Both? Neither? (My Buddhist friend, M.M. says, "in oneself.") That was my home for a decade and although I can navigate it and I know what it feels like to have the hot afternoon sun coming in the SW corner window while trying to meet an editing deadline – there is no longer a me, nor my children, in there. The house has been a house since 1898 but it holds no ghosts or remnants of us, nor the people who came before us.
Ironically, if I go on anymore about the house being just a structure, it makes me sad for the house. Maybe I do believe in the soul of a house. I have to think about it.
After my second appointment I met L. for lunch. We didn’t go to any of the regular places because I want to remain incognito here, so we had a hamburger at the Friday outdoor grill at a little independent grocery store on a side street. The usual suspects were there – the elderly and mentally ill from nearby residences, and the "Hamp" folk; people of farming stock, often Polish in origin, who’ve lived in Northampton for generations. Many are civil servants and tradespeople in the area.
Next to the grill was an ice cream freezer and a Hamp ice cream monger who told me it was locally made in small batches and he wanted to get the store to carry it. I joked with him that in Brooklyn they’re packing up the ice cream for the year and in New England they’re promoting it. (I always found that to be a weird New Englandism, ice cream in winter). He gave me a huge "sample" -- a toppling over ice cream cone. I took it to be polite and tried to keep it upright with my tongue when up the street, lo and behold, was my ex, M.T.B., smiling at me and shaking her head. I gave her a slight smile – not because I’m really that polite, but because I knew that she knew that I don’t eat ice cream and I make fun of New Englanders who do once summer has past. It was a frisson of recognition.
Now this brings me back to the topic of home. M.T.B. is like the house I lived in. I no longer know her or her interests or friends or pastimes, but at one time she was as familiar as a person can be. I might have thought of her as home. I know the landscape, the footprint -- but now she is, well, painted white and the big tree is gone.
Maybe home is a free-floating concept, ephemeral, not something reliable that you can go back to or that is waiting for you. Maybe as a metaphor it’s a resting place for mind, body, and soul and it can be anything, anywhere, anytime. It can also be the place where your bed is, though my last house and this town were never quite home.
If I do see someone from long ago or who knew me well, I know there’s a little of me there. Something intimate that they know. On the other hand, I’m not nostalgic or sentimental and I don’t walk down memory lane. This makes some people crazy because "reminiscing is like comfort food of the soul" -- and I hate reminiscing as much as I hate what I just wrote. I don't have time to go backwards, there’s way too much I need to catch up to in life. A 102-year-old swami with whom I once took a yoga class on 59th St. said in his age-shaky voice, “never go to a yoga retreat; you need to advance not retreat.” Right on, Swami B.! But back to the ice cream encounter: Just to contradict myself, that was a moment of nostalgia and it was kind of funny. It was a memory shared across time and the length of a sidewalk. I’m also glad I had that surprise encounter. It made me feel easier about being here. I don’t live here. I can leave. I can have fun. Mostly I was glad I looked cute when she saw me.
After my final appointment I met former-client-now-friend, N., for a coffee in the mob-owned deserted pastry shop with awful squishy faux-Italian pastries that are really there as props for a money laundering outfit. It was her idea since she knew without me saying so that I wanted to be incognito. I adore N. I miss seeing her every week. That’s a hazard with my profession as a personal trainer. I love my people. I don’t know how therapists let anyone go. At least we can be friends after I cut them loose to exercise on their own (or I move to Brooklyn).
That evening, my butch friend D.-aka-F. took me to dinner at a little place in the next town. I like that she wore a pink button-down shirt. It’s one of those subtle butch/femme things – that two females can wear pink but the waiter knows who gets the check. (Not that I can’t pick up the tab [at some point in my lifetime]! It’s a commentary on masculinity and tradition.)
Afterward I met my daughter, R.-formerly-M.R.-or-M., for dinner, again. She ate and I had dessert. I met her right in the middle of town. She is home. There is no question.
Saturday, 10/9: I was up at 6am and M.C. arrived at 7:30am to take me zip-lining in the Berkshires. I don’t know what compelled me to do this but I trust M.C. and I have to stop turning down offers of high adventure. She convinced me that the tallest, fastest, longest zip-line would be great for me because I am athletic. (Though she didn’t phrase it as the “tallest, fastest, longest…”.) That appealed to my inner jock’s ego which is separate from mine, like a little tomboy living inside me, so I consented. The athletic part was actually the hike up the mountain. Once there, a guy with broken front teeth and a "yo dude" attitude like Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High hooked me to a metal clothesline, the end of which I could not see, and told me to run and jump off a cliff and curl up into a ball in my little nylon harness as I held on to a rope that was strung through a giant hook connected to a pulley that catapulted me down down down FAST over a ravine through a valley and over trees in their gold, red, yellow plumage.
That was the fourth of the 6 zip-lines. I did it. And the next one, higher up the mountain, and by the time I got to the last one, I was terrified at the drop and the distance but I did that too. And about halfway across I started to enjoy it and wanted it to go on a little longer so that I could drink in the scenery along with the wind-induced tears streaming from my eyes. M.C. took lots of photos of me smiling a smile that says, Help Me. She was trustworthy and reassuring as I knew she’d be. Thank you, M.C. That was a special and wonderful treat. :)
The last zip-line. It started at the end of the line that you can't even see in the background.
Afterward, we grabbed a bite to eat and she dropped me at L.’s. I had a couple hours to kill before the train. We went to the Paradise City Arts Festival. Lovely. I saw people there that I like, such as my favorite sexy femme dance partner, M. and her doting partner G. L. and I shlepped 'til I dropped.
By the time I walked in my Brooklyn door later that night I was glad to be ho… in the place where my bed is.
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