This morning’s post perhaps read a little darker and more melancholy than originally intended, so for those looking for a bit of a pick-me-up at this start of the high holiday season, here’s our annual turkey lurkey song and dance. If we can’t boil a day into a musical theater moment, what point is there to the day?
Do I have one more pre-populated post in me when we’re all due for a turkey-induced coma? I think I do, and if you come back tonight you may find it here…
“Over the river and through the wood to grandmother’s house we go…”
In some other timeline and universe my younger self rides the winding roads to Hoosick Falls to pick up my grandmother, as my Mom leads my brother and me in this holiday chestnut.
“The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow…”
Sitting beside my brother in the backseat of the station wagon, we are feeling all sorts of Thanksgiving anticipation – and filled with gleeful excitement at having Gram join us for a few days. When you’re a kid, those few days feel like a blessed eternity.
For a number of formative years, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ would be broadcast around this pre-holiday time – a comfort and enthralling thrill at once.
“Over the river and through the woods, oh how the wind does blow…”
How precarious our journeys of childhood were – and how lucky we were to not have any real realization of this. Blithely and blissfully unaware of the dangers along the way to grandmother’s house, and the imagined fears of flying monkeys on the television, we felt only the giddy happiness of the season – the promise of Christmas around the corner.
Revisiting these winding roads recently, the beauty felt muted, the strains of comfort felt distant, and the trees looked barren. We fill in so much of what we want to remember that the actual scenes of childhood are always emptier when we try to revisit them. The mind plays with memory to help us heal, sometimes.
The song repeats itself – over the river and over again – and it’s so short it bears the repetition until it becomes meaningless, until even the melody is lost and doesn’t matter anymore.
When I went away for my first semester of college I made a deliberate effort not to look back in any real or proverbial way. Part of me understood that if I was going to survive on my own at Brandeis, and more broadly in Boston one day, I would have to make a complete, and in some ways irrevocable, break from my hometown of Amsterdam, New York. That meant from family as well, even if I didn’t see that then and would have entirely refuted the notion. My greatest fear in leaving home was the very scary and debilitating specter of homesickness, which I had felt once before, and knew it might mean disaster again, at least when it came to starting over again and building my own life in my own way. Fortunately, once I set my mind to something I will absolutely accomplish it without fail, and almost always without compromise. When I arrived at Brandeis, I made the goal of starting a new life for myself, and getting mired in homesickness, or being held back by any beliefs instilled in me by others, would not be options.
Knowing myself, and heading off any emotional susceptibility to sentiment, I adamantly refused to return home until Thanksgiving break. Everyone else in my high school circle of friends had been back – for homecoming, or Columbus Day, or no reason at all – I was the only one who stayed at school for three months straight – and it worked. My pangs of homesickness were bearable, few and far between, and after a few weeks not an issue at all.
At least, that’s what I’ve led myself to believe all this time, and, yes, that’s still largely the main reason behind my delayed return home. Recently however, I’ve come to realize that unlike all my friends, and most people who go away to college for the first time, part of me must not have wanted to return home. There is something profoundly disturbing in that realization, something heartbreaking and soul-making too.
Two years after that, I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving at all – but that’s another story for another day of thanks…
It is now the season for ‘let’s circle back after the holidays‘ – and this has nothing to do with work.
This post should rightfully be helmed and fronted by some popular gay porn star to get us back to this blog’s racy roots, but instead a batch of kimchi fried rice and a fried egg topper takes the pole position. In a week that typically finds this cock-eyed country focused on food and stuffing ourselves silly, this feels like an appropriately-fitting/filling post.
There, that should fulfill my cheeky double-entendre quota for the year – and don’t skip any of the skintillating links embedded and embodied within.
Gobbledy-gobble!!
Leave me the fuck out of this.
There. That’s it. That’s all.
(Trust me, this works better than anything else I have ever tried.)
And it’s utterly ideal for the holiday season at hand!
The demise of society begins with someone who stands in a cafe line for ten minutes, and then when it’s their turn only begins to look at the menu that’s been posted in front of them the whole time.
Knowing the precise importance of the proper accessory, Mr. Oud understands that these things must be done delicately. He also deeply believes in the great Coco Chanel’s reported words of wisdom that one should take off the last thing they put on before leaving the house. It has prevented many a moment of unnecessary over-accessorizing, while giving him a reputation for streamlined elegance and understated sophistication.
People often give witty comment on how quickly and easily one can lose a reputation – but Mr. Oud has not found this to be the general case; rather, it has often seemed to him that once a reputation is made and established, it’s relatively difficult to erode or change it. And so he is extremely grateful for the image he’s earned as a sartorial aficionado – especially as he hasn’t put much effort into his wardrobe of late.
Image is fleeting and ephemeral – as is Mr. Oud, who has long ago left this discussion. Only the flimsiest scent trails of his namesake linger in the air…
While today opened with a mini-recap of my Virginia adventures, here is the proper weekly blog recap that encapsulates all of the entries from the previous week (for anyone brave/foolish enough to revisit such an atrocious collection of scenes in a time of new moons and Mercury in retrograde). As we enter the week in which we prepare to give thanks, here is our typical Monday look-back at the week that came before…
From the realm of pipes not being pipes, not all violets are violet.
A Japanese painted fern refuses to stop putting on its show.
Kids are low-key stupid today.
The holidays are announced by a pseudo-cactus.
A green tea peppermint beginning.
A new rule designed just for me.
A new moon and Mercury in retrograde madness.
Every season is ‘Auntie Mame’ season I suppose.
This is my sneaking suspicion.
Neither bitter nor bothered, whether bitten or bruised.
A weekend at Anu and Cormac’s River House is worthy of a recap all its own, and here is the collection of posts that brought me back to Virginia in a most beautiful and emotionally profound manner. It’s reassuring to realize that at age 50, our adventures are only beginning. With an eye toward my own retirement in the dim but discernible distance, travel becomes a long-loved goal again – and while I’m in no way saying I have another tour in me, I’m in no way saying I absolutely do not.
Here’s how our wonderful weekend in Virginia unfolded:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
Part 4: Shuck Off, Mutha-Shuckers!
Part 5: A Solitary Sunset Elicits Happy Tears
Part 6: Magic Moons & Shooting Stars
Part 7: Friendship By Firelight
Part 8: The Long (Very Long) Ride Home
These three have been friends for over thirty years, and they’ve been there for me, and each other, at every step of life along that journey. Spending any amount of time together is good for the soul, and in our 50th year on earth, I think we appreciate this a little more. As it usually does, Sunday morning came much too soon, the way time with your favorite people always passes too quickly.
We bid our farewells with long hugs and short goodbyes, as nothing else needed to be said. As we trundled out of the long gravel driveway that led to and from Anu and Cormac’s River House, Suzie and I settled into the lifelong camaraderie that would allow what would turn into the next eleven hours of driving to pass with relative enjoyment. In a field close to our right, another brush with natural wonder was in store for us on our way out, as a pair of bald eagles sat on the ground. The one nearest the road, and the closest I’ve ever come to one of these majestic creatures outside of captivity, was the embodiment of regal magnificence. You never realize how gigantic and immense these raptors are until you get close to them, and then you feel dwarfed and humbled by the experience. Wonder and might and grace… and maybe this world will be all right and maybe it won’t.
Such ruminations were fair fodder when you have a traveling companion like Suzie – and it still holds true that she’s one of the very few people who could withstand an eleven-hour car trip with me. And vice versa. As the day faded, too early as this time of the year insists, we found ourselves pulling over for a quick dinner of a Popeye’s Fried Chicken Sandwich. Suzie had suggested a stop at H-Mart, and I was eager to see what whether all the fuss over it was merited – and happily it was – a warmly lit stock-up moment of opportunity gave us renewed sustenance for a second wind at the almost-end of a long ride.
At least, I thought it was the near-end, but we still had about three more hours to go. Suzie gamely found us a Starbucks for a fast cafe culture moment – and my very first PM of the holiday season (that’s Peppermint Mocha to all you sick fucks who think PM stands for something much worse). We took the coffee on the road (decaf, of course) and on the final leg of our journey home listened to the entire ‘Like A Prayer’ album which had helped me through that tricky high school autumn when Suzie was away at Denmark and I was about to hold my own at our family’s holiday gatherings without her for the first time. The songs rekindled memories of when I would write to Suzie and record tapes of silliness and loneliness and just about every messy-ness other than happiness.
“You were the only person I could talk to at the time,” I told her, immediately returning to those lonely nights I whispered secrets and nonsense into a tape recorder before adding Madonna’s ‘Promise To Try’ to the mix. As our drive entered its eleventh hour, a sweeter and more fitting finale to a weekend of friendship could not have been conjured or crafted by the greatest of storytellers.
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
Part 4: Shuck Off, Mutha-Shuckers!
Part 5: A Solitary Sunset Elicits Happy Tears
Part 6: Magic Moons & Shooting Stars
Part 7: Friendship By Firelight
After our dock talk we returned to the fireside for warmth and light and more moments in friendship. Somehow, it’s easier to talk when there’s an atmosphere of crackling firelight and night wind. Not that any of us needed much coaxing into talking – when the years between us have grown this long, when the shared history extends decades, there is always enough to talk about – and too often the best talk is not about anything at all.
Behind us the moon danced with the pine and oak trees, flirting with the river as it wound its way back to the sea. Even with the fire and the moon, the darkness here was gorgeously deep, but friendship held its own illumination, carrying its own torches as the night did its damnedest to envelop us in its beautiful blackness.
It will never not amaze me that the world tells us all to go to sleep when we should, and then turns off its light without question or complaint.
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
Part 4: Shuck Off, Mutha-Shuckers!
Part 5: A Solitary Sunset Elicits Happy Tears
Part 6: Magic Moons & Shooting Stars
While the sun waits for no man, and the moon seems even more fickle, the odds of catching a shooting star are astronomically stacked against our favor. Still, the weekend in Virginia had already proven itself more naturally wondrous than any other in recent of distant memory. The loveliness of ladybugs in the main house, the pair of bald eagles that Suzie and I watched from the dock earlier in the day, and the perfectly sunny and warm atmosphere of an incongruously marvelous November day halfway down the Eastern seaboard had all indicated that something magical was afoot.
Following dinner and a firepit circle of s’mores for dessert, the moon called to us from behind the trees, and Cormac and I headed down to the dock to more closely view its splendor. It hung there brightly, a few days beyond its full Beaver Moon exhibition (said earnestly and without snickers) surrounded by a firmament of stars. The evening was fomenting the atmosphere for somber and serious conversation.
We began innocuously enough, with some silly superficial talk and comical references before a shooting star or some other-worldly object entered the atmosphere and streaked boldly and brightly across an immense swath of sky. Perhaps stunned by this sharing of such a sublime glimpse, talk turned more serious as we spoke of Cormac’s Dad.
We listened to the moon and the stars, and in between the comfortable stretches of silence the occasional splash and gurgle of a fish breaking the surface of the water reminded us that we weren’t alone. Suzie joined us after a while, her footsteps crackling through the fallen leaves the only indication of her presence until she spoke.
Three friends sat in the dark shooting the shit beneath the moon. A century and a half of life between us, plus whatever living the fish had beneath their scaly belts, we could speak honestly and openly, in the way only a moonlit night might invite.
Did we solve the world’s problems?
No. Not even close. We couldn’t even solve our own.
Did we make the world a little easier to bear in our shared wonder and puzzlement?
I think we did. And look… what a little moonlight can do…
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
Part 4: Shuck Off, Mutha-Shuckers!
Part 5: A Solitary Sunset Elicits Happy Tears
The best sort of guest houses and gatherings are those where it is just as easy to be alone as it is to be surrounded by loved ones. This is the ideal sort of stomping ground for an extroverted introvert who swings wildly between the worlds of wanting company and wanting solitude at a moment’s whim or whirl. While Anu, Kristen, George and the kids worked on dinner preparations, and Suzie and Cormac squeezed the last bit of light from the sky for their suddenly-dangerous shucking efforts, I found my way down to the dock just as the sun was setting.
This was the moment of calm and beauty I’d envisioned when contemplating the nine-hour car ride. My mind quieted from its oyster excitement and I settled gratefully into the silence. The light moved magically now, every minute revealing some wondrous shift of shade and shadow. Any silly concerns had dissipated earlier, and I felt my head happily clear of its clutter.
In calm and beauty, that which truly matters rises to the surface, like the little splashes of fish stealing their dinner from the space between water and air. As I sat on the edge of the dock, dangling my legs over the water like some version of the kid I never quite allowed myself to be, I thought of the people I loved, and some of those I’d lost. I realized then that all of our adult friends who were gathered there at the River House no longer had our fathers. A sad little club we all must join at some point. The beauty of our time with our fathers – however long or short – would always make up for the sadness of having to bid them goodbye.
I felt tears surprisingly swell in my eyes, but they weren’t tears of sadness or loss. They were tears of gratitude – to sit amid such beauty, to be with such dear friends, to feel so alive, to have such memories.
I didn’t want to let the light go, even as I understood that the sun waits for no man.
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
Part 4: Shuck Off, Mutha-Shuckers!
This old house is falling down around my ears
I’m drowning in the fountain of my tears
When all my will is gone, you hold me sway
I need you at the dimming of the dayYou pull me like the moon pulls on the tide
You know just where I keep my better sideWhat days have come to keep us far apart
A broken promise or a broken heart
Now all the bonny birds have wheeled away
I need you at the dimming of the day
Fresh-from-the-sea oysters are not often on our menu in landlocked upstate New York, so when Cormac offered to pick some up for veritable pennies, I enthusiastically supported the notion – especially when Suzie was offering up her shucking expertise (honed by restaurant work in Seattle, where she reportedly shucked oysters by the hundreds). As with so many of Suzie’s boasts, this one seemed tenuous at best, as I waited dozens of minutes between slurping these precious oysters. Cormac proved a much better shucker, and as the pile of half-shells grew higher, our stomachs grew fuller, and the sun began its daily descent behind the river, which marked my solitary sojourn to the dock while Suzie and Cormac finished their shucking business.
SEE ALSO:
Part 1: Driving South with Suzie
Part 2: A Loveliness By the River
Part 3: November Sweeps in Virginia
