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.
Being raised by the daytime soap operas of NBC (‘Days of Our Lives’, ‘Another World’ and ‘Santa Barbara’) and the nighttime soaps of CBS (‘Dallas’, ‘Falcon Crest‘, and ‘Knots Landing’) I’ve rather dramatically viewed my life – and the cast of characters parading through it – as its own dramatic television series. Sometimes it’s a situation comedy, sometimes a serious drama, and sometimes a hellaciously-campy variety show – and always with an eye for an ensemble.
Most people think of me as striving to be the unequivocal star of any given moment, but the somewhat sad truth – sad for its refusal to be believed – is that I’m at my best and most comfortable when I’m part of a bigger story, and just one member of a singular group sensation. Casual observers still won’t believe that, but friends that have known me for decades will begrudgingly agree if they really think about it.
To that end, a quick glimpse into our current cast of characters for this trip to Virginia makes this one of my favorite posts in a long while. Getting together with any combination of this crew is a joy, and a happy reassurance of what really matters in this wayward world.
Our tribe has expanded exponentially over the years, as the children of my friends grow into young adults, and I’m finally able to relate and engage with them as the teenage girl I remain at heart. This was the first time I got to spend some quality time with Ruby and Luca – part of Kristen and George’s merry crew – as well as my first decent chunk of one-on-one time with Anu and Cormac’s youngest daughter Sona – and in the words of Amy Poehler’s ‘Mean Girls’ Mom, “You girls keep me young – oh I love you so much.”
If you want the rest of the story, you’ll have to pry it out of the Connors’ dog Milo – and in my limited experience, dog lips sink no ships. More to come…
Initially appearing in a cloak of darkness on the previous night, the river didn’t reveal itself to us until the next morning, when I hastened out of my private outside door and captured a few photos before joining the rest of the house. I’d been told we were all ‘sleeping in’ that morning, but as is the case with all my friends who are parents, that meant everyone except me was awake by 8 AM as I dragged my groggy ass up from the beautiful depths of a peaceful slumber. (Water of any kind – ocean, lake, sea, river – inspires sleep as much as it reinvigorates appetite. It makes all aspects of living a little keener.)
There, in the light of morning, the river wound its beauty and wonder through the edge of Anu and Cormac’s backyard. The water was one thing – the light was quite another. It would change, evolve, shift, and transform myriad times during the day – meriting multiple walks around the property and many moments of contemplation. We managed to catch it on an ideal day too – sunny and warm, with just the slightest breeze that occasionally caused a few oak leaves to drift dreamily down to us on earth.
Oaks festooned in rusty brown and gold still held onto their fall wardrobe, but had deposited a bumpy layer of acorns on the ground a while ago. Here and there a tiny oak tree rose from the lawn – out of hundreds of acorns, only one or two would sprout into trees. Who knows how such a forest ever came to be from such odds? And how strange that we don’t routinely marvel in its mature existence?
This idyllic morning was made all the more magical by a serendipitous arrival of a loveliness of ladybugs. Yes, as Ruby researched it, a group of ladybugs is indeed called a ‘loveliness‘ – and while Anu and Cormac and Sona may not have been thrilled to have such a swarm descend on their home, it was only for a day, and one of those once-in-a-lifetime events of nature that makes you feel lucky to have witnessed it. Ladybugs in the home is a sign of luck.
While they worked on coaxing them back out and preventing more from getting in, I did my daily meditation and took an indulgent nap – taking full luxurious advantage of not being the host for the first time in forever.
When last our tribe gathered during the summer days of summer, Anu made us make a plan for a fall visit to her River House in Virginia. That felt far away in every sense, though the best destinations often require a certain amount of work to reach. In the case of Anu’s River House, the work was a nine-hour car drive South with Suzie at the wheel – and the only work I had to do was keep her awake and stocked with sub-par Chex mix and beef jerky (as I was not about to drive an unfamiliar car on the New Jersey turnpike, for everyone’s safety).
We stopped for a lunch of French sandwiches I’d made for the trip (fancy European butter and thinly-sliced cornichons included) at the Connie Chung Rest Stop – because if such a thing as a Connie Chung Rest Stop exists, you fucking stop at it and eat a sandwich. I was not fully aware of Connie’s cultural sway in this country, nor of her place in the New Jersey rest stop landscape, but there she was plastered larger than life in a grand poster right above the rest rooms. Go Connie.
The sandwiches had a tad too much butter on them for my liking, but Suzie gamely had one, and the it was back on the road. The final stretch included that brutal Chesapeake Bay Bridge, wherein one practically kisses the roiling water below and to your side – I remember going over it as a child, and how little my Mom enjoyed it. Anu felt the same, as she indicated in a check-in text as we shared our current location.
By the time we reached the River House, it was deeply dark, but the company was good, the food delicious, and the bed a respite of immediate sleep and rest. A day of travel usually grants instant slumber, and this was happily the case. The river slept along with us, waiting to surprise me with its grandeur the next morning…
When they see that you genuinely don’t care, and they realize that they’re not going to get a rise out of you, people tend to either up the ante and go for the jugular, implode in their own zeal for a reaction of some sort, or confusedly retreat in awkward motions of apology or pretend. Whatever the result, I’m already beyond the bitterness or bother, and it still seems to flummox those who have found great sport with agitating me to the point of retaliation.
There was a time when fighting back would have given me just as much satisfaction as it gave them – my own thirst for being right a perfect match for their thirst for forcing my hand. The unhealthiest sort of symbiosis set in perpetual motion. Staying in that merry-go-round would have gotten me more than dizzy, and almost ended up grinding me to a halt. Mixing metaphors like the jumbled mess of a mind during Mercury in retrograde is the province of mad genius. Surely I’m onto something here, even if I can’t quite make total sense of it. I feel an ease in this new view, a freedom, and a sense of renewed purpose. It pours out of me creatively, and instead of directing energy and effort to those who seem hellbent in fucking with me, I can put it into more productive endeavors, such as a new project, and these daily blog entries – a mini-project, sometimes, unto themselves.
These brave azaleas, tricked by the twists of weather this month, as seems to be a new trend, have decided to bloom now rather than wait for spring – which means less flowers then, but a little more cheer now. I’m not sure which is the better decision anymore. I used to believe in delaying the gratification, but with all that’s happened in the past five years I’m leaning toward getting our joy as soon as we can get it and making the most of it then. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone.
That’s a serious sea change in how I view the world, one which has been a few years in the making and shifting. It started with COVID and has been re-enforced and impelled by all that’s happened since. And it’s a good thing, I think. Planning only gets you so far – you have to be wiling to go with the flow and adapt and change as things unfurl differently from what you may have imagined. This is a good life lesson, and I feel it in the blooming of these beautiful azaleas – yes, their petals are crinkled with cold, and true, they may be frozen into wilted oblivion, but for a gray day in November, they made things beautiful, they gave us a peek of spring, they did their best even if I would have done things differently – and who’s to say they’re wrong?
The first time Andy met my parents he was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Get Wicked Tonight‘ – and we’ve had many wonderfully wicked date nights since then – including this past Monday’s advance screening of ‘Wicked: For Good’. One of our favorites was the night we saw the original cast of ‘Wicked’ very early on in its run – it had opened around Halloween, and we had tickets for a night in November 2003. It was as magical as you might imagine, and since then the show has held a special place in our hearts.
For those wondering whether the sequel to the first ‘Wicked’ movie measures up, rest assured it does, especially for fans. While Andy thought the first third took a while to get going (after an exhilarating opening sequence, and I don’t entirely disagree) the bulk of it rises to the promise of the first round, with a darker and more potent emotional bite as the witches leave the innocence and safety of school behind and make their way in an adult world.
I won’t go into specifics – as this should be seen without being prepped or shaded – but I can say that this powerfully concludes a story that was always centered around friendship, and the possibility that being good – truly good – might be its own sort of magic.
A new moon and Mercury in retrograde have the heavenly bodies wreaking a wreck of havoc for certain signs, and unfortunately Virgo is one of them. I’ve felt that this week, and have been doing my damnedest to lay low, remain calm, and carry on with the least bit of provocation possible. That’s not always easy for me, especially in the face of wild injustice in so many ways, but I’ve evolved new methods of dealing with such issues.
While my not-so-distant past antics tended toward the fiery, especially when facts aligned to unfairly malign me, I no longer go through the trouble of screaming and yelling and throwing fits to make my points. When you have truth on your side, it’s not necessary to be so bombastic, and yelling into voids is entirely pointless. I’m not sure why I ever decided to huff and puff so much in the first place. Let everyone else live in their own mess and deal with their own entanglements; they will or they won’t work it out in their own way.
That makes for a much calmer living, a much quieter atmosphere, and a more peaceful existence. It also allows me to be better company as I don’t allow myself to get riled up or bothered by all the nonsense. A delightful way of dealing with the holidays to come, and a new lease on life – perhaps courtesy of a new moon and a new way of letting go.
A new rule for myself at this ripe old age: do not put anything down if you will need it within the next hour. You will forget where you put it ten seconds after you turn your back.
Repeat: do not put that down if you are going to need it in the next hour. You will not find it again.
Next week marks Thanksgiving – something that doesn’t quite feel possible but the calendar tells me it is so. I don’t recall turning my back long enough for this to have happened. That tricky, fickle hand of time. With any luck, this rushed acceleration of the fall season is not unwelcome, especially if it means a speedy rush through winter. All of this makes it sound like I’ve soured on the holiday season, which may very well be the case, but I don’t really want that out there (he said as he set the public post settings for this blog entry).
Rather than fight what is already at hand, this new box of tea is my way of welcoming the holidays for 2025 – a cup of decaf green tea with a peppermint accent. Simple, slightly festive, and just enough of a twist to set it apart from the rest of the days.
The artwork of the box, a whimsical Trader Joe’s creation, is a fun way to steer us into holiday territory without going too extreme into some overhyped Ralph Lauren Christmas vibe (also known as Basic Christmas for those of us who have been aware of Christmas decor for the past half-century).
Kids today are so stupid they think that ‘low-key’ means the exact opposite of what ‘low-key’ actually means. I fear for the future, and then I remember it’s all theirs.
