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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 day
You pull me like the moon pulls on the tide You know just where I keep my better side
What 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.
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.
