21 June 2024

In the middle chapter of Eudora Welty’s slim volume, One’s Writer’s Beginnings, she writes of “Learning to See”:

I think now, in looking back on these summer trips—this one and a number later, made in the car and on the train—that another element in them must have been influencing my mind.  The trips were wholes unto themselves.  They were stories.  Not only in form, but in their taking on direction, movement, development, change.  They changed something in my life:  each trip made its particular revelation, though I could not have found words for it.  But with the passage of time, I could look back on them and see them bringing me news, discoveries, premonitions, promises—I still can; they still do. . . . The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily—perhaps not possibly—chronological.  The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow:  it is the continuous thread of revelation.

Today, what would have been David’s and my 29^th anniversary, the first full day of summer, marks one month to the day since I got home from my big road trip, and I still feel I’m in transition. 

               Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
               mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
               ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Well on my way to age 72, I am hardly, like Dante’s protagonist, halfway along life’s path:  to paraphrase Kate Hepburn’s character in On Golden Pond:  “We are not middle aged!  People don’t live to be 140!”  But I do find myself in a dark wood, having lost the straightforward way.  The daily dumpster fire of news aside, I’m grieving, and fretting over new symptoms of physical decline as well as a real setback to getting my book into print.  I know, however, the way back to the light is action, not stultifying deliberation.  And so I look back to last month to conclude this account of my 3G1F trip, revisiting my past even as I move ahead in time, a complex chronology of my own.

On 15 May, brother-in-law Richard, nephew Daniel, and I loaded our cars and left “My Happy Place” cabin in Whittier, NC, all of us now outfitted with gps for the journey ahead.  Richard’s new mastery of that technology eased my concern for them; they got safely to Ocala, and I headed to my old Kentucky home in Danville, where I taught at Centre College from 1984-1995.  But first, I made a stop along the Blue Ridge Parkway at the Folk Art Center my potter sister Jane and I had once visited, checking out what her colleagues in the Southern Highland Craft Guild had to show.  Some of the pots on display were from Jane’s alma mater in Clyde NC, Haywood Technical College (now Haywood Community College); she’d like that.  I thought of how much our Blonde Wind loved her time in the mountains, and bought myself a souvenir pair of earrings to mark the visit, as David always had for me.

Soon after I left the Center, heavy rain clouds opened up, and I found myself in the kind of downpour even the fastest windshield wiper cannot negotiate.  I was in that curvy, over-trafficked part of I-40 that weaves through the mountains on two lanes without shoulders, replete with very large trucks that make pulling over or even slowing down a bit an impossibility.  In 1986, on a spring break drive to Chapel Hill to visit my then boyfriend, I’d encountered a sudden snow squall and ice-over of these same roads that caused some of those trucks to jack-knife and block the way forward; I was stranded in my Toyota Corolla overnight in freezing weather sans coat, gloves, or hat.  I clearly remember thinking how stupidly I’d set out, unprepared: “This is how people die.”  No cell phones back then, only truckers who mercifully prowled through the night making safety checks on us stranded drivers.  I had a full tank of gas at least, but dared not leave the car running, heater on, lest snow cover the tailpipe and carbon monoxide fill the cabin.  I emptied my carpetbag purse, wore it on my head for warmth, and toughed it out till mid-morning next day when the trucks were finally cleared and the road reopened.

This time I-40 served up a blinding rain storm; again I survived, however exhausted.  I stopped at the nearest Arby’s for a jamoca shake to celebrate/wake me up; the girl behind the counter automatically gave me the senior discount, so I’m sure I looked as sorry as I felt.  Sleepiness mandated my stopping again in a very hot high school parking lot, but the car was now too packed to allow my seat to recline, so I just had to persevere until I reached Danville and pulled into the Super 8 motel I had reserved.  Advertised online as “newly renovated,” that past tense was clearly aspirational.  The room I asked to see (a first for me) had a tv with no remote, and the hallways were filled with remodeling detritus.  Seeing my expression, the young clerk offered me my pre-paid money back.  Only then did I realize that the Wednesday I had arrived in Danville was the Wednesday before Centre’s graduation—the third of my trip—and I feared there would be no rooms available elsewhere.  A quick check at the next-door Holiday Inn Express DID oblige, however, and though I didn’t remember to ask for either my AAA or AARP discount, and once in the room discovered I’d left both my umbrella and my beloved L L Bean spreader knife back at My Happy Place, I finally had a place to rest. I then got my money back from the “Long Term Rat” receptionist, who confessed she was embarrassed by the state of her mis-represented workplace.  I got a baked potato from the nearby Wendy’s—a frequent practice during my early days in Danville—and at last got a good night’s sleep.

The next five days brought a happy series of reunions with old friends from three different periods in my life.  First, it was the Centre College crowd.  We were all 30-somethings when we first met; them that are now grandparents were then just beginning their academic careers and their families, and those bonds have stayed strong over these many decades.  Back then we often shared meals together, a tradition we’ve maintained.  On Thursday the 16^th, I drove to Lexington’s charmingly walkable Chevy Chase neighborhood where my classicist friends the Svarliens live.  Diane, triumphantly well after years of battling cancer, was her magnificent self throughout our lunch at Bella’s, showing off her new Carolina Wren tattoo. 

After lunch and a siesta back in Danville, I was treated to drinks at the Levins’ lovely home on Main Street, viewed Grazia’s collection of artifacts and some travel-inspiring photos from their recent trip to Japan, and enjoyed some really good enchiladas with a rich mole and some brews at Las Margaritas in downtown Danville—a no longer dry Danville, praise be, as it was when I lived there.  As ever, our reunion filled me with gratitude for such friends.

On Friday I rearranged my GTI’s contents, anticipating the possible need for a nap during the next day’s drive to the Columbus suburb, Gahanna.  I replaced my left-behind umbrella on a trip to Walmart, and then was able to visit with Bobbie White, one of the brace of mentors who befriended and looked after me when I first arrived at Centre.  Bobbie modeled so much for me:  how to run a program meeting, how to conduct a seminar (we team taught the English senior seminar on comedy), how to brook no nonsense, how to endure and triumph over loss and illness.  Stoically confronting and managing a grim cancer diagnosis these several years, Bobbie maintains her evergreen strength of will and sharp wit.  How good to speak frankly and openly to such a friend of how important she is to me!

And then it was on to Ann and Sheldon’s, and the deep pleasure of a wonderful dinner in the so welcoming setting of their art-filled home and exquisite garden, catching up with Jane and John, and enjoying how far we’d come together.

But I had further to go, both in distance and back in time.  The next morning began over coffee with Helen, who had joined the Centre faculty after I left. She delighted me with an account of anecdotes she’d shared with the Centre faculty the day before to honor retiring colleague Mark Rasmussen, not knowing that I (with Bobbie) was part of the MLA interview that got him hired, and the host of the Halloween party he attended as a Tri-Delt. Two such happy past points on my personal timeline were also a revelation of where I was now: the young prof I had helped to hire was retiring. Then friends Kathy and Jane joined Helen in seeing me off to revive a much earlier friendship in Ohio.

When I was 2 1/2, my dad George was drafted and posted as a captain to Fort Knox, so my mother and I moved from our new home in St. Petersburg to an apartment in Columbus to be closer to him and the Murphy family.

My first memories are from that time:  being in my crib, the guppies we had, the time my mother fell down the stairs, my baby doll Mark Burns being hidden in an oatmeal box by a mischievous neighbor boy.  My mom Virginia started taking basket weaving lessons from a blind man at the Columbus YWCA, and there met another mom, Janet, with another little girl my age, Sandy.  Janet and Virginia became life-long friends, and Sandy became my very first friend.  It was she I was now, almost 70 years later, going to visit.

My Saturday arrival proved not all that convenient for my hosts, Sandy and her husband Steve:  both had multiple duties at their church early the next morning.  But they couldn’t have been more welcoming, and I was immediately wrapped in full midwestern hospitality, shown around their charming, craft-filled home and my own guest quarters, briefed on the grandchildren and recent travels, and then taken to dinner at the local Hickory Steakhouse, where I ordered my midwestern favorite, meatloaf.

We watched tv together, totally at home and relaxed, first the Preakness (my colt, Seize the Gray, won!) and then an old Perry Mason episode about a college president’s past threatening an endowment (Season 5, episode 12, “The Case of the Brazen Bequest”):  right up my academic street.  I got a great sleep in their beautifully appointed guest room; they were already gone to church by the time I woke, but they’d left breakfast treats for me, some of which I toted to snack on as I drove north to Buffalo and my final visit before returning home.

My friend Martha lives in the carriage house of a splendid Queen Anne edifice on Linwood Avenue in Buffalo, a neighborhood of architectural wonders c. 1880-1910 and mature chestnut trees with the coral/pink blossoms I’d not seen since my time at Regents College, London.

When I arrived, nearly crippled by the cumulative stiffness of so much driving, I found Martha packing up a complete dinner for us and her family living just down the avenue:  son Derek, daughter-in-law April, and boys Sven and Onni.  We schlepped the dinner over there and I had the great pleasure of meeting Martha’s family for the first time.

Those clever, well-mannered boys inspired me with hope for the future I’d not felt for quite a while, and their parents made this stranger feel right at home.

As did Martha, who gave me her bedroom for my stay, choosing the couch for herself.  I was grateful; so near the end of my trip but still far from home, I’d pretty much depleted my travel reserves.  Like Sandy and Steve, Martha, who leads grief counseling at her church, had a busy next day, wrapping up a session and fashioning memorial candles for all the participants.  She’d already carefully printed labels for these, but I was too tired to trust myself to cut them.  So, after a substantial breakfast at nearby Vasily’s, I helped out by pasting the labels on the candles, a trickier process than you might guess. 

Martha took off to her session’s ending dinner; I took a nap, and then set out for a walk to Elmwood Village, like Chevy Chase in Lexington, a commercial district with shops, galleries, pubs, and restaurants abutting lovely residential neighborhoods.

I had a fine dinner with a local Great Lakes beer at Japanese restaurant Sato, and enjoyed the stroll.  The public decorum was classic “Midwestern Nice”; passersby smiled at each other, and made way on sidewalks.  I remembered NH Office Dexter’s crack about New York (when I replied to his questioning where I was headed, his response was “I should arrest you just for that”), and thought how his opinion of New York certainly did not apply to Buffalo.

Back at her apartment and waiting for Martha, I figured out how to watch Netflix on my phone, a triumph for this tech-impaired oldster.  And when Martha finally got home, she wanted me to walk/talk through with her the whole itinerary of my now concluding three-week tour as she took notes on the manifest I’d sent her,  unparalleled evidence of devotion—as if giving up her bed were not enough!   Friends since second grade, we parted the next morning with our friendship renewed and deepened.

And then, finally, Dear Reader, I made my way home to New Hampshire and my further progress along the pathway. BTW, on hearing that I had left my cherished L L Bean spreader knife behind at his My Happy Place cabin in Whittier NC, Zach, my host, found it and sent it back to me; it arrived in my mailbox last week. All’s well that ends well.