Category Archives: Travel

Jan24

Flashback Friday: Ghost Ship

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The House Bar, Kilkenny, Ireland

The House Bar, Kilkenny, Ireland

[Another Friday, another flashback. Here is another chapter from the Irish adventure with my friend Belle. As with most of my Irish posts, you should imagine Van Morrison (or the Saw Doctors) playing in the background.]

 

23 March 2006

Crystal is expensive & its absence of color bothers me, but when you are at the Waterford Crystal Factory and you’ve watched the film about how it is the MOST perfect crystal in the world—how, in fact, imperfection is not tolerated—suddenly it seems like you need to own a piece and like maybe your cousin who is getting married next month needs a piece. And maybe your mother. Maybe an aunt. Maybe a neighbor. If you find yourself in this situation here is my advice to you: don’t do the euros-to-dollars conversion in your head. Pretend that the sticker that says ’85’ means eighty-five dollars and be done with it. Later, when your Visa bill comes, you can worry about the math and bad exchange rates. At which point, the prisms dancing around your living room and your cousin’s note of thanks about how her marriage would not have been so happy without your gift will soften the blow.

It really is just the most awful kind of extravagance there at the Waterford Crystal Visitors’ Center. For instance, I mailed ten postcards by dropping them into a giant crystal mailbox.

When you walk in, you are at the highest level of the show room, looking down on the chandeliers. This level has replicas of the various trophies that have been created (one in the shape of a football, most in the shapes of loving cups), place settings of goblets and doo-dads that Queen Elizabeth (or Oprah) couldn’t afford. It’s gorgeous, but excessive.

The next level down is where the goods are sold. I walked around this area for an hour, trying to do the math that would make it possible for me to spend money in a cost-effective way, get a wedding present, a shower present, some other small gifts, and spend the 200 euros needed so I could ship everything home for free. (For the record, other people are going in with me on the wedding gift. I’m not THAT extravagant. I do just teach at a small Midwestern university.)

I couldn’t decide, so I went to the next level down where the Wedgewood is sold. I’m not buying English china in Ireland. I’m not. So I scooched on into the room where other bits and bobs were sold. The space started feeling a lot less posh and a lot more like a basement. I was more comfortable. Here was the tourist tat that is sold everywhere in Ireland, of which I own too much because in those last minutes before a plane boards, suddenly it seems imperative that I have a Claddaugh apron or sixteen bumper stickers that say ‘Póg mo Thóin’ and key chains and coasters with my family’s supposed crest on it. It disturbed me that Waterford Crystal, an entity that couldn’t be more Irish, has the same class stratification that the Titanic (another Irish creation) did. So there I was in the basement in my scuffed up clogs with my hair in a ponytail and my black ‘just say no to troops in Shannon airport’ Shamrock button, KNOWING that I belong—and always will—in steerage. But for the sake of my cousin and her impending wedding, I clawed my way out of the ship’s hold before I was tempted to buy her a shamrock covered teapot with ‘Eire’ written above a facsimile of Brian Boru’s harp.

I made my choices, did the euro-only calculations, and then at the last minute asked the woman how long the free shipping would take on these items. Six weeks, she says. The wedding is in three weeks. Guess what’s going to be in my carry-on, wedged under the seat in my own little hunk of American Airline’s version of 3rd class travel?

An interlude: yesterday in Kilkenny, I saw a pub with a blue sign that said, “The Mouse Bar.” It made me laugh and imagine tiny rodents sidling up to the counter, asking for a pint, so I took a picture. This evening I mentioned it to Belle and Himself and showed them the picture. Isn’t this funny, I said. The artist looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “It’s the HOUSE bar,” he said. “Not the MOUSE bar. I told you about it before you left, said it would be a good place to eat.” Belle got so tickled she couldn’t quit laughing. Her face was red and Himself said, “Get control of yourself, woman.” For the rest of the night, all either of us would have to do was softly mention “mouse bar” and the other would start cackling.

Back to our regular scheduled programming:

This afternoon, Belle decided that I should see the famine ship in Dunbrody. She’d tried to see it last spring but it was in dry dock, and then later in the year she’d made the trip and found it worthwhile. She’d even checked the web last week to make sure it would be open this time of year. It is a replica of one of the ships that brought over emmigrants who were trying to leave an inhospitable Ireland in the mid 19th century. The night before she’d pointed me to a few sights to find information on a great-great grandfather no one in my father’s family knows anything about, and she said that at the ship I could search manifests to see who traveled from where and when. Though I’m not big on re-enactments of such things (can we really know how horrible the insides of those coffin ships were in 1847?), the genealogical aspect seemed excellent, so today we drove the 20 minutes or so down the road to New Ross, and as we were crossing the bridge, she said, “I don’t see the boat.” It was misty out and I figured she’d just forgotten where it was. The closer we got to the dock, the more sure it seemed that it wasn’t there.

The visitors’ center, however, was opened. People were there having sandwiches in the little shop and the ladies running it were dusting off the souvenir erasers and sterling silver Celtic crosses in hopes of making a sale. It was as if they were unaware that the boat wasn’t there. As if, perhaps, it were a ghost ship that only they could see. There were two computers there and I momentarily got my hopes up that I could do my search anyhow, but then quickly saw the ‘out of order’ signs hanging on both. Belle asked about the ship. It’s in dry dock again for some big sailing thing later in the spring. Belle pointed out that she’d just checked the website. The lady said, “But it only went into dry dock last week!” Belle said that yes, perhaps that was the case, but last week was when she checked the website to see if it was worth making the trip (FROM AMERICA) and the woman said, “But it will only be in dry dock for a week!” as if that explained it away. She then offered to show us a ten-minute video about the boat we wouldn’t be able to see. I said, ”No. I’ve gone off it,” and we left. And then we laughed most of the way back to Waterford. It was annoying, but I can’t really be too annoyed in Ireland about anything. Everything just seems sort of funny. Going to the wrong church. Having a pint at a mouse bar. Visiting a ghost ship.

To save the day, Belle then drove me to East Dunmore, a resort town that Maeve Binchy writes about and where movies of her books are filmed. Lots of cottages with English thatch. It was a windy, misty, cold day, and the sea was crashing against the rocks and roaring. We saw a monument to the sea-dead from the area that one of the Artist’s co-workers designed, and drove around the high road looking at the view. It was breathtaking, and there, without benefit of ten-minute films or faux famine ship passengers, I could think about what that voyage must have been like, how desperate a person would have to be to leave family and home to brave a sea that could be so violent. How optimistic. And while I’m not ego-centric enough to think they imagined their future generations drinking Coca Cola out of crystal goblets, I wonder if maybe they weren’t wanting something a little more close to perfect than what they’d been born into.

Isn’t that why we’re always scratching and whinging and charging things on our credit cards? Don’t we have some idea that things could be better if only we….

East Dunmore Memorial

East Dunmore Memorial

Jan22

Borderline

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Peace Arch

Peace Arch

This weekend, Z and I went to British Columbia to celebrate, belatedly, our 4th anniversary, which we had to spend apart last month.

Z has a freshly minted Canadian visa burning a hole in his pocket, and he’s never been north of the 49th parallel in North America, so it seemed like the best place to celebrate. (Also, I like to think we were celebrating the occasion of my 50th blog  post with a little international travel.) It wasn’t my first trip there; a conference in Vancouver almost a decade ago was my first introduction to this part of the world, even before I met Seattle, so I was anxious to see it again now that we’re neighbors.

 

Because I grew up smack in the middle of the country in a town situated on the National Road and I-70, it often felt as if there was nothing but wide-open space and an open road that led to other more exciting kinds of lives. Since moving to Seattle, I’ve sometimes felt the pinch of this geography. It’s not exactly that I want to run anywhere, but the close(ish) proximity of the Pacific to the west and the Canadian border to the north, has, at times, made me feel hemmed in. I have elaborate apocalyptic fantasies that I blame on being raised during the End Times crazed 1970s, so while we were sitting in line at the Peace Arch waiting to cross into Canada, my brain got a little overactive, thinking about how our twenty minute wait would be hours and hours if we ever had to run away from home because of some sort of Red Dawn style invasion or Zombie attack or what have you. And that “Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity” etched across the top didn’t soothe me so much as make me imagine ways in which this would become a mockery in some dark future, not unlike that scene of the decimated and mostly submerged Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.

 

Is there a word for being simultaneously creeped out and fascinated by something? Someone should invent one if there isn’t. (And if there is one, someone should tell me. I can’t figure out how to google such a query.) Aside from end-of-the-world concerns, I’m also weirdly drawn to and repulsed by those places in our lives that are neither here nor there: airplanes in mid flight, waiting rooms when someone is in surgery, the place where the sea and land meet, the gloaming. It’s magical and kind of terrifying. What is that no man’s land, that is neither one thing nor another?

 

While we sat in line waiting to cross into Canada, where were we exactly? We were, I think, still technically on US soil, yet the houses we were looking at beyond an inconsequential fence seemed to be in Canada. The yards looked Canadian, if that’s possible. And if we got out of our car and walked in the roadside park, where exactly were we? Would anyone want to tackle us to the ground for stepping over some line we shouldn’t?

 

Also, I felt really geeky that at this friendliest of borders, the adrenaline rush I was feeling was tantamount to moving between East and West Berlin before the wall came down. When we finally made it to the border patrol agent and he asked us a few questions about how we knew each other and what our plans were, in my mind the whole trip had grown into some caper we were trying to get away with. All we really wanted to do was get to our hotel in New Westminster, eat some food, see some sights in Vancouver, relax, and after two days, return to Seattle in time to see the Seahawks playoff game from the comfort of our own sofa. Yet as the questions got fired at me, I felt more and more like we were smuggling  someone across the border in our trunk. Also, because Z doesn’t yet have a green card, I often worry that someone with a badge will decide we aren’t legitimately married and make us live apart. (Why I thought a Canadian border agent was the person to do this, I don’t know.)

 

The guy looked at Z’s documents and asked a few more questions about why he’s here and not in Zimbabwe, and Z, being Z, answered with authority and reminded me of Obi Wan Kenobi when he does that Jedi mind trick on the storm troopers and says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and the storm troopers sort of shrug their shoulders and give up the hunt for R2-D2 and C-3PO. Z is amazing. Meanwhile, even if I seemed calm, inside I felt as if I had baggies of heroin stashed in unmentionable places, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice the sweat on my brow.

 

Something snapped inside me though when the agent asked why we had a rental car instead of our own. I can’t say why it annoyed me so much except our lack of car here sometimes gets under my skin. I miss Hilda, my beloved CR-V that is parked in my parents’ drive-way currently covered in snow, waiting for my return, and I love the ease with which you can drive places back in Indiana. So it was kind of a sore spot, frankly. I was pleasant, as is my Midwestern training, but for some reason, I wanted to say, “Screw you. We’re going back to Bellingham where we’re wanted and no one questions our life choices.”

 

In retrospect, I wish I’d acted morally superior about carbon emissions and how we don’t own a car because we love the planet more than most people.  (Though just between us, the reason we don’t own a car is because parking in our neighborhood is $4 an hour, traffic is tedious, and Z walks to work.) Anyhow, he seemed to believe me and waved us on.  Never mind my body cavities filled with imaginary drugs or the imaginary Peruvian in our trunk, trying to get into the country illegally.

Jan11

Flashback Friday: The Moose at the Gate Should Have Told You

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Kilkenny 2006

Kilkenny 2006

[Technically it’s Saturday and not Friday, but I got a new iPhone yesterday and so the day disappeared while I figured it out. So far, the only drawback to it that I see is that it’s becoming apparent I might need reading glasses. Anyhow, I’m continuing the Irish sojourn with Belle here.]

 March 26, 2006

This morning I woke to the sound of Belle scratching at my door, singing Morning Has Broken and saying that the musical wake up call is just another of the services offered here. I had a train to catch for my solo adventure to Kilkenny and she’d been given orders from the Artist to leave forty minutes early ‘just in case.’ She rolled her eyes at his caution, but it was harmless. Both of us were secretly pleased to have someone Irish clucking after us, I suspect.

My reasons for wanting to go were three-fold: 1) my need to go places alone periodically so I feel adventurous 2) Rick Steves’s (my former travel god) recommendation that it is the most beautiful inland medieval city in Ireland 3) a song of the same name that I love to torture myself with.

In terms of adventure, I’m more like a toddler who is just learning to walk, being shunted across a narrow living room between parents. I like the independence of mini-solo travel when I know at the end of the day someone is going to be waiting on me and will know if I’ve been hit on the head with a piece of Connemara marble and left for dead in a bog.  I KNOW adventurous people. I am not one. But this affords me the illusion.

My mother thinks I have amazing traveling acumen because I can navigate the Dayton International Airport without studying signs overlong. She finds this ability akin to a sixth sense or messages from the Holy Spirit, but the reality is that everything I know about getting from one place to another I learned at amusement parks. I think parents who don’t take their children to Disney World or Six Flags or even Kennywood should be brought up on child-endangerment charges because of the life-coping skills that can be learned there. When I go somewhere new, the first thing I do is look for the ‘park’ map, find the key things I want to do and make a plan of attack (to avoid lines, excess walking, or midday sun), and then search for a landmark by which I can navigate. ‘Tram’ service of some sort is operational most places. ‘Concession stands’ (most here selling pub grub instead of corn dogs, admittedly) are every two feet, where you can also find restroom facilities. Souvenirs can be purchased anywhere, though balloon animals in this location tend to make you look a bit touched in the head.

So this morning when I got off the train in Kilkenny (population 10,000), I immediately searched for castle turrets and got my bearings. Irish Frontierland. It was about a ten minute walk and on the way a car pulled up beside me and asked how to get to the castle. I said, ‘Straight ahead and turn left. You can’t miss it.’ I didn’t KNOW this for a fact (I’d left the guidebook back in Waterford, even) but the truth is these are basically always the directions you get in Ireland anyhow, so why not give them like a native? Sure enough several minutes later, I was standing behind the folks I’d given directions to, waiting to get my ticket for the Kilkenny Castle tour. They thanked me; I smiled, secretly pleased with my own navigational brilliance.

Kilkenny Castle is nice. I’m not a fan of Irish castles because I always think of oppression and audacity instead of the romance and adventure. In England, it is easier to buy into the whole chivalry thing without worrying too much about serfs and thralls. Maybe a beheaded wife will intrude on your Arthurian fantasies. Here, you can smell it for what it was–imperialism with a helping of genocide. Rich people (living richly) on the backs of the poor. But I digress. The castle is lovely. It’s 800 years old, has beautiful grounds, and has been refurbished impeccably in Victorian decor, the last era it was used before falling into ruin. The town was beautiful too. Bustling. Narrow, cobbled streets. Brightly colored store fronts. Just what you expect to find.

I ate lunch at the Irish equivalent of Subway, and when I was finished asked for directions to the cathedral. Which cathedral, the sandwich guy wanted to know. I don’t know–the cathedral you’re supposed to see when you are here, I said. He chewed his lip, consulted with the sandwich girl, and they decided it must be St. Mary’s I was after. I asked how I got there and they said in unison, Straight up the street, turn left, you can’t miss it.

I walked to the cathedral, humming ‘Kilkenny.’ It’s a song that you listen to when you feel you need to cry but can’t quite get yourself over the hump. Three lines from it and you’ll be wiping your nose on your sleeve. After the first round of the chorus, you’ll be belting out great hiccuping sobs. It’s like an old-timey Irish version of ‘Cats in the Cradle.’ So I sang it, walked to the cathedral, peered in the door and felt generally unmoved. I like Catholic churches when they aren’t in session. I like the smell of incense, the candles flickering, the sounds of the kneelers creaking under the weight of the devout. But this church didn’t feel like the one I was supposed to see. I shrugged and headed back toward the train station. On the walk I started thinking that ‘Kilkenny’ didn’t sound right either. It didn’t sound right at all. I hum-sang a few more bars and realized it WASN’T ‘Kilkenny.’ It was KILKELLY. ‘Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 60, my dear and loving son John/Your good friend the schoolmaster Pat McNamara’s so good as to write these words down.’

Sniff. Wipe.

So, while I had managed to get myself and a family of four I’d never met to the castle, I had basically gone to the wrong town in the first place and while in the wrong town I had hummed and fantasized about a song that was, apparently, inappropriate, seen a church that was not recommended by Rick Steves, Esq. Still, it was a good day. I’d seen some things, I had people waiting on me when I got home, and in my fake-out amusement park world, no humans in giant furry animal suits tried to hug me as I departed the magic kingdom of Kilkenny.

Jan7

A Little Birthday Luck

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A Reluctant Girl Scout Turns Five.

A Reluctant Girl Scout Turns Five.

Yesterday was my birthday. The thing about an Epiphany birthday like mine is that it signifies the real end of the holiday season, so as a kid, I was always torn between joy and feelings of melancholy because I couldn’t reasonably expect to have another wrapped package in my hands for eleven and half months. Last year, my nephew was born on Christmas night, and while it seemed like a great score for the family, I instantly felt a connection with the little guy in terms of future birthday disillusionment.

As an adult, what I’ve discovered is that in my head, I get a buffer week on New Year’s Resolutions. While the rest of you were slaving away on the gym treadmill and learning Portuguese, I was still planning my new year and eating Christmas cookies. I don’t count the first week of January as time I should be doing “X”.  Instead, I wait until my age changes and then it’s a complete clean slate and time to get down to business.

On the birthday downside this year, I did not turn five, Raggedy Ann was not accompanying me throughout the day, and I did not have a jazzy pink pantsuit to wear. And it will be eleven and half months before I get another proper present.

On the birthday up side, Z and I went to Tulalip Casino Resort  the night before, so I awoke in luxurious splendor to a “Happy Birthday” banner, presents and cards, and the promise of an excellent breakfast at Cedars Café in the resort before we drove back to Seattle so Z could teach his first class of the new quarter. Later that night we had dinner with Hudge and I was slightly mortified that the waiters sang Happy Birthday to me. But back to Tulalip.

We aren’t high rollers, and though Z would laugh at me, I would argue we aren’t really casino people.  We spend $20 each on penny slots, and after an hour, we get overwhelmed by the smoke, pinging machines, and flashing lights.

I always sheepishly tell people we went to a casino, and I am also uncharitable in the way I present the information, as if we only go because Z likes it and I am only humoring him.  I’ve apparently got just enough Puritan or Quaker genes in me to feel a little guilty every time we go. I can’t specifically name the guilt because it’s different every time and ranges from “wasting money” to “wasting time” to “wasting paper cups at the complimentary soda fountain.” But there is also a thrill that comes from it and an engagement of imagination that is good for us. That is, I like the period of time right before we go when anything is possible, and we imagine both how we might win it big on Lucky Lemmings and what we will do with our new wealth. It’s not unlike buying a lottery ticket and imagining all the stuff you’ll buy and the people you’ll help out as soon as the check clears. We’ve taken ourselves and family members on so many trips around the world in our minds, I can’t even count them.

Like most things in life, I’m learning that it is all a matter of perspective (and moderation). I could go to the casino with my lips pursed and an eye on everyone else, imagining all the ways I’m not as desperate as they are with their frequent player cards on lanyards, or I can loosen my grip on that twenty dollar bill and enjoy myself the way Z does. We rarely play serious slots with fruit and numbers, but instead tend towards the one with “bonus features” that involve small woodland creatures. Oh, I wish you could see the glee on Z’s face when he gets a bonus feature. It really is like Christmas morning. That’s the real reason I like to go, and why I often find a machine right next to him, even if he’s playing a boring machine that I don’t really approve of. It’s worth $20 any day.

But I’m getting off track. My point here is that we aren’t high rollers and we’re never going to get a room comped. Lucky Lemmings players are never in the high roller suite to the best of my knowledge.  Fortunately for me, in January, the resort offers a “pay the date” deal to fill the otherwise empty hotel, so around my birthday, we can stay for less than we’d pay for a Holiday Inn.

I’m a sucker for a good hotel room—in fact, we’re planning a trip to Vancouver right now, and I’m way more excited about sitting in a hotel room with a view, peering out at the world, than I am in actually taking a trolley tour. Tulalip rooms are so lovely if we never went down to the casino, I’d be fine with that. They are rich with reds and golds and fabrics that kind of envelop you, with shout outs to the Tulalip tribe in native art work. If I could figure out how to steal the suspended bedside lights—blown glass—I’d tuck them into my over-sized hand luggage, though probably we’d have to book next year under a pseudonym.

Tulalip King Room

Tulalip King Room

I have two favorite spots in the room. The first is the sumptuous three-headed shower in a bathroom that demands you take about three showers a day simply because showering never felt so good (or clean). My second favorite spot is the chaise lounge next to the window. It’s the kind of piece of furniture I’d never have in my own house because it isn’t my style and seems so purposeless, but when I have access to it I realize the error of my thinking. It’s the perfect spot to read. And nap.

Tulalip Casino Resort

Tulalip Casino Resort

On this stay, an extra birthday treat rarely granted by the Pacific Northwest in January: a clear day that offers a Mt. Rainier view. Delicious.

Mt. Rainier from Tulalip Casino Resort

Mt. Rainier from Tulalip Casino Resort

So this is my post-birthday post.  This is me officially beginning my year of “showing up.” This is me, one year older, not particularly wiser, and $20 poorer than I was before we went to Tulalip. But it was a good time, and I’m hoping for more of the same in the next 365 days.

Jan3

Flashback Friday: The Bus Eireann Shuffle

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Ireland

Ireland

[This post continues the travelog from last Friday’s flashback.  I’ve traveled to Ireland with a friend a co-worker, Belle, and have spent a couple of days without her, while I visit Galway and my relatives before reuniting with her in Waterford.]

Monday, March 20, 2006

I spent the better part of the day on a variety of buses,and have finally landed here in Waterford with Belle and her man, the Artist. The house is a good sort, full of books and his art and his dead Swedish wife’s Swedish things. In fact, the house feels more Swedish than Irish for reasons I’m unsure of except a few of the rooms are bright blue and yellow. You can tell life was lived well here for their family before she died several years ago and before the Artist himself got sick with MSA, which has left him weak and with muscles that do not always cooperate as he’d like for them too.

 

Belle picked me up at the bus station and we went to pick up her man at the osteopath, who is about to turn 40 and to celebrate is going to Malaysia. This seems a bit like celebrating a major event with an eyelid-ectomy to me, but I am not that adventurous. Steven the Osteopath, however, looks like a man who does yoga in his sleep and who will return from Malaysia fully relaxed and epiphinized in ways I will never be. After that we went to Tesco to do some grocery shopping (brown bread, Kerry Gold butter, Dubliner Cheese, and Guinness for me, slightly more healthy things for Belle and Himself.) And now here. Tomorrow is an unknown. If it is sunny, a walking tour of Waterford. If it is rainy, I have no idea. Probably a walking tour of Waterford.

 

Saturday and Sunday with the  cousins was good. Saturday night we watched Ireland beat England in rugby and win the Triple Crown. (I know nothing about rugby but was told anytime the Irish beat the English at anything it is cause for jubilation.) John and his young son were both so into the match that they were dancing around the TV, screaming at it, and a few times when it got too unnerving, John had to go into the other room to talk to Ginger the Cat in order to calm himself down.

 

Sunday I got to visit with the other cousins who live at the Homeplace. They have a cozy farmhouse, and the kids entertained me. I left full of tea and Guinness and good stories. One thing I learned that I did not know is that there are World Plowing Championships. Did you know this? Gerry the Cousin goes to them. He says they’d be no use to Americans who can plow however they like because our hot sun will burn off the green bits, but in Ireland if you don’t turn a row correctly the vegetation will grow and then no more row.

 

His wife and two oldest children are going to be in Chicago in April. It would be fun to see them on American soil, so I hope to make the trip up there. His wife is convinced that I must come back in September to go to the matchmaking festival in Lisdoonvarna, though the other set of cousins warned me off of it later.

 

On the bus today leaving Galway, I listened to the Saw Doctors sing about the West of Ireland and realized once again, that it is my favorite part of this country. As the bus moved out of County Galway and into County Clare and then further in toward Tipperary, the stone fences and rocky landscape became less and less frequent. It’s all gorgeous, but there is something in Connemara’s harsh landscape that speaks home to me in ways the rest of the country don’t.

 

Also, I felt a bit hypocritical that I was enjoying watching the lambs frolic and just twelve hours before had been enjoying a lamb dinner. It’s not right. I won’t ever eat lamb at home, but when I’m here and it is served up, I don’t feel like I should refuse. And sadly, it is delicious.

 

So the six hours on the bus was not so bad. I listened to my iPod shuffle thru various Irish songs and watched the movie of Ireland’s landscape unfold to the soundtrack of my own making.

 

That’s what I know today.

Dec31

Happy New Year from Somewhere Over the Dakotas

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Skampy wants to know what your New Year resolutions are.

Skampy wants to know what your New Year resolutions are.

Either 2013 is ending well or 2014 is starting well, but the Delta gods blessed me with an upgrade to First Class on my flight from Indiana back to Seattle. I reckon this might be the only post I will ever get written on a flight. When you have bonus elbow room, you don’t sleep. You type. You knit. You do your taxes or practice a little Tai Chi. You order drinks and enjoy the novelty of a beverage in real glass. You yawn and stretch because you totally can; you aren’t going to slap anyone in the face.

Also, if you are me, you have Fergie on a continuous loop in your head sing-spelling G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S.

I have to say, life up here beyond the blue mesh curtain looks a lot less like a Mad Men cocktail party than I’d like. I always expect pearls and heels up here, but on the very few times I’ve been upgraded, the people look surprisingly like me. That is, like we all just stopped off at Big K after going to the VFW pancake breakfast and are kind of surprised to find ourselves on a plane.

The woman in front of me draped her hot pink puffy coat over her seat, which infringed on my First Class real estate and I find I’m feeling very territorial about it. I firmly flicked it back up over her seat and she gave me a dirty look, but I know my rights, and I also know without a doubt that she is up here on an upgrade too and doesn’t really belong here either. Let’s face it: if any of us were anybody, we’d already be at our New Year’s Eve party destination.

My destination: Rick in our messy First Hill apartment. It’s the only party I’m interested in this year.

This upgrade has taken the sting out of leaving home for Seattle.  It’s always melancholy, the leaving. Mom and I were both a little bereft at having to say farewell after being together for two months (I was in Indiana for a wedding, she came back to Seattle with me, and then I returned to Indiana with her for the holiday). It’s better to focus on the positive though: her house is going to be a lot neater without me in it, shedding hair like a cat and starting projects in the middle of the living room like jigsaw puzzles featuring the lunchboxes of my youth, or re-beading a wonky bracelet, a job  that went horribly awry and because of which, Mom will be finding blue beads all over the floor for the next 14 years.

Further balm will be seeing Z after three and a half weeks. He landed in Seattle two days ago, with, I am happy to report, his freshly cobbled shoes. Z-ma is tipping over less too, which makes us all happy. Here’s to her continued improvement in the new year.  Skampy sends his love to you all. He thinks this blog is about him.

I’ve spent a portion of this flight trying to figure out what my New Year’s resolutions should be. I’m expert at making them but rarely manage to achieve them, so I’ve decided to use a two-word motto as a sort of encouraging theme for the year. (I thought I invented this, but have discovered belatedly that it is all the rage to have a single word to claim what it is you want to focus your energies on for the year.) Here’s mine:

SHOW UP.

Obviously, I’m hoping to show up in Seattle in an hour and a half and the fine captain from Delta has suggested that we are on course for that target, so that isn’t really what I’m talking about. Instead, I mean that instead of distracting myself with endless google searches re: questions to which I am only mildly interested in finding answers, for example, I will show up at the page to write every day. I’ll show up regularly to this blog. I’ll show up to my house so it looks less like a way station where I dump things between travels and trips to Target, and more like a home where there are actual places to sit and not just piles of things. I’ll show up to meals without the distraction of a TV or cellphone. I’ll (try) to show up regularly to the gym. And finally, when I am in Seattle, or Indiana, or some other location, I will BE in that place—as fully present as I am capable of—instead of always longing for some other coordinates.

Here’s to 2014. May she be kind to us all.  Are you ready?

Dec20

Flashback Friday: Magically Delicious (or, At Home in Ireland)

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rgsgalwaycitycorrib

[This flashback follows on the heels of that earlier lament that I’d missed my chance to go to Ireland with my friend. At the eleventh hour, cheap airfare was found!]

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Ireland is still here. Sometimes when I leave, I wonder if it disappears in a mist. An Irish Brigadoon. Since I was here in November [for a week-long writing workshop hosted by the Aspen Writers’ Foundation at Kinnitty Castle, led by Hugo Hamilton and Colum McCann], not much has changed except the flip flops are in the stores even though it’s only 8 degrees Celsius out.

Uneventful flight. Uneventful departure from my poet friend Belle, as she headed off to Waterford, where I will meet her and her boyfriend later. Uneventful bus ride to Galway alone. I got here at 10:30, dumped my suitcase at the train station, and decided to pack as much into the day as I could before my cousin Mary and her husband collected me at 3:00. At home, I could spend a Saturday such as this doing nothing but painting my nails and looking at the window. That’s it. A day just disappears. So it is nice to know that if I really want to, I can move quickly and accomplish more than usual. Like this blog, for instance, which will end in approximately five minutes so I’ll have time to go to Charlie Byrnes, buy a postcard & a couple of books, and trot over to station to pick up my suitcase and catch my ride with my cousins.

So, I got here, I looked at the eyesore which is still an Eyre Square under construction, with fewer trees, but otherwise looking like it did before the city planners spent their millions refurbishing it.

Saturdays in Galway are market days–a sort of farmers’ market with cheese and veg and hand-woven bracelets from Guatemala (Genuine Irish). While there I found the baby shirt I had wanted for my U2-lovin’ Writing Program Director last fall when she had her baby. It says “U2: Rattle and Mum.” It felt good to be shopping like I belonged there, like every Saturday I popped down to squeeze produce and buy presents for co-workers.

 

Then I turned a corner and saw what looked like the poet Michael Gorman, who taught a summer course I was in four and half years ago at NUI Galway. He walked like him and wore a hat like him, so I yelled, “Mickey???” He snapped around, looked a bit frazzled, like perhaps he had enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day too much last night, and stared at me blankly. I didn’t expect him to remember me though I had had a quiet summer crush on him that was almost painful.  So I re-introduced myself, shook his hand, and he said, ‘Ah, yes! Beth!’ I’m not convinced he remembered, but it was nice to hear him say my name. The “h” doesn’t quite come out all the way. He said he was in a hurry to get the shopping done and something about a football match, but he wrote his number in my journal (“A Moleskine, I see!”) and told me to call him tomorrow for coffee. I won’t BE here for coffee and am sure he forgot as soon as he hurried off to fondle carrots, but boy if it didn’t make me feel good to bump into someone I knew here. Particularly him, still looking befuddled and artistic and cute.

In order to celebrate, I went to my favorite sweater shop and bought a new cardigan. The woman who owns it was back. In November when I’d visited, she had been out with a broken knee cap and her very charming son managed to sell my friend Isabella and me about 400 euros worth of woolens. So I asked after her knee, asked after her son, and then talked to her friend who now lives in Canada but is moving back. It was a perfect morning–making me feel, as I almost always do here, that I am HOME.

After I was warmed up by my sweater, I sat by the Corrib and watched it race towards Galway Bay. For lunch,  Fat Freddie’s for my favorite pizza. And then the Ninja Shopping commenced. Less bought than looked at, but two books, a notebook, some pens I like, and a birthday card for a kid’s birthday in June. Zipping in and out of shops on the aptly named Shop Street is invigorating in ways that shopping in the mall at home is not, though I don’t know why. My own romanticism, probably.

So, all in all, a very fine day indeed, and one on which I could reflect indefinitely about how the conundrum of feeling so home in a place so far from where I live. Instead though, I’m off to buy a few books at Charlie Byrnes Bookshop and then meet up with my cousins to find out how the Ireland-England rugby match went yesterday.

There is a hot whiskey in my near future.

Dec17

A Matter of Perspective

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RGSChristmaslightsinZim

Here in the land of excess, I am able to drive past sub-par holiday decor and curl my lip. Downtown on Tuesday there was an ice sculpture–lovely, lovely ice sculpture–and instead of being amazed that something so intricate could be cut from a block of ice, I sighed and thought, Oh, the Grinch. I was hoping for something more beautiful.

Meanwhile, in Z’s little hometown, people were camping out to see the lighting of the town Christmas decorations. It was cause for celebration. It’s a single string of colored bulbs stretched across a parking lot.  It is cheery and fun and also has pretty much cornered the market on simplicity. While I can’t personally imagine waiting outside for any amount of time to see them lit (with no guarantee that there would be power to light them), I appreciate that single strand of holiday cheer.

So my goal for the remainder of this holiday season is to think like a Zimbabwean. I will turn my nose up at giant, inflated snowmen, and electrified reindeer whose antlers move in time to Jingle Bell Rock. Instead, I will do my best to delight in a sprig of holly, a cardinal on the snow, a single strand of giant, 1950s style Christmas lights lining an eaves trough, which come to think of it, is all the Christmas I needed when I was a kid. My grandparents would hang those lights on the awning of their patio and just seeing them there, ushering in Christmas, gave my cousins and me the wriggles. I remember thinking, “These lights are so beautiful, why don’t they leave them up all year?”

Dec13

Flashback Friday: Our Bold Lies, Our Selves

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Now that you know the improbability of the fairy tale coming true, I thought you deserved a peek into darker days seven months before Z had his love epiphany.

Monday, March 13, 2006

It’s March. It’s hot. I hate summer, and today has been a painful reminder that we’re heading straight for the inferno. Kamikaze flies are buzzing around my lamp because I opened a non-screened window in hopes of catching a breeze. I’m thirsty and feel like I should sleep in mosquito netting tonight and go on safari.

A while ago I had a thing for an African guy I know. A friend. In my deluded, lovestruck state, I actually thought for the right man (and he seemed like the right man) I would be impervious to heat, to bugs, to dictators, to poverty, to eating crocodile. This is why women haven’t ruled the world for a few millennia: if a man is involved we believe the most ridiculous crap, and most of it is our own fabrication. This guy wasn’t hinting I should come home with him where we could make a home at the foot of the Ngong Hills with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Mostly, he wanted someone to go to movies with, someone to play miniature golf with, someone to drive him to the airport for his 20 hour flight home twice a year. I’m the one who filled in all the blanks.

No. It wasn’t any sweet nothings he whispered to me that made me imagine this Daktari-style future. It was all me. And yeah, I wanted him (he smelled good, he was funny, and I loved the way he said ‘banana’), but it is  possible that I also wanted to believe I am the kind of person who doesn’t require air conditioning and porcelain. A person who could say at cocktail parties, “Oh, yes. That’s when I lived in Zimbabwe.” But I’m not. I’m me. I need several months of cold weather to get me through July and August. I need a suitcase with wheels. I don’t really want to drink out of a canteen.

So I kind of know who I am, but what I wonder is this: who ARE those people we imagine ourselves capable of being? What’s the line between having a goal/overcoming personal obstacles and just completely deluding yourself? I’ve never really wanted to be a self-deluder, yet the evidence indicates that perhaps that’s exactly what I am. Perhaps that is the only way we are able to live with ourselves. I could admit–at nearly 40–that I’m never going to join the Peace Corp, yet I like the idea that I might. I might quit my job and join the Peace Corp. I might become a foreign correspondent. Or maybe one of those people who cashes it all in and lives on a sailboat.

This is how fairy tales (and heat) addle our brains.

Dec12

A Sort of Fairy Tale

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Zebra wedding cake topper.

December 12, 2009

 

Today is our fourth anniversary, and as you may have heard, Z and I are in different time zones and on different continents. I fully expected to be in a full-tilt fit of melancholia with a side order of pout as soon as the clock struck December 12th, but it turns out, it’s not happening.

 

Here’s the thing: we shouldn’t be together.  At all. If I wrote a book about my life (Oh, wait! I am!) and you were introduced to a character called, say, “The Reluctant Girl Scout”, and a character called “Z”, you would say to yourself, Who is this writer kidding? This would never happen. It’s just not believable!

It isn’t believable. It’s a fairy tale. Highly improbable.

1)   There is the improbability of geography. How many Zimbabweans did I meet before Z? Zero. People in Richmond, Indiana, do not meet people from Zimbabwe as a matter of course. Often people in Richmond, Indiana, aren’t even sure where Zimbabwe is or that it is a country. (There is a water slide at Holiday World in Southern Indiana called “Zoombabwe” and that’s about as close as we get.) Statistically, since Z came to college in America and stayed through two graduate degrees, there was a high probability that he might end up married to an American. But me? I haven’t crunched the numbers because I’m not that strong a mathematician, but I think the chances that I– a person who had mostly lived in Richmond and traveled primarily to Ireland and Indianapolis–would marry a Zimbabwean are about .00000000001%.

2)   There is the improbability of time. What are the odds that a visiting professor position in Z’s discipline would open up at the teeny university where I had just been hired full-time six months before? (Sub improbability: what are the odds that at this university, his discipline, which is often considered a social science, would be housed instead with the humanities, where I was, so we could sit next to each other at faculty meetings for the next two years, bonding via the series of disgusted looks we would flash at each other whenever our senior most colleague started clipping his nails in the midst of budget debates?) You’ll have to do the calculations on that one yourself, but I’m telling you, the odds are not high.

3)   There is the improbability of Z finding a cyber café with electricity (there are a lot of Zesa cuts in Zimbabwe) and then finding the ad for the position at my teeny university (not to mention the improbability that he would be hired via a phone interview alone).

4)   There is the improbability of me, an introvert, going to the beginning-of-the- year faculty party where I would have my first conversation with him and make the improbable proclamation to a friend that I was going to marry him. (I didn’t even believe in marriage at this point in my life. I thought marriage is where love went to die.)

5)   There is the probability of Z’s policies working against us. Z did not believe in dating co-workers (he says), so we were never going to happen. I did not know this, nor did I know that when Z has a policy, he sticks with it. (The only policy I’ve ever known him to break was his “I do not go to Starbuck’s” policy, which is hard to do in Seattle.  He let this policy lapse in 2009 when he was out with Z-ma  and she needed the loo.) The whole time we worked together, we never dated. Instead we had “outings”. The closest we ever got physically was when our heads bumped up against each others one night when I was helping him put together his new Kathy Ireland stationary bicycle.

6)   Z just wasn’t into me. We were friends. I was delusional. The end.

7)   I am not a tenacious person. If I have a goal and am met with opposition, I often just change my goal instead of fighting to meet it. Yet when Z left town for Zimbabwe after his job ended, instead of rationally assuming I would never see him again, I became uncharacteristically cunning. I suggested he store his belongings in my attic, thus ensuring at least one more meeting.

8)   The final, most outstanding improbability is that after five years of pining for a man who was only ever going to be my friend I was ready to admit defeat …just as he had an epiphany of his own.

 

 

So yes, we aren’t together today. Instead, we are in our respective countries looking at photos on our respective computers of our American-Zimbabwean wedding with the zebra cake topper and the fire in the fire place and the Christmas trees and the kissing ball and the hula hoops and the Scottie dog and my blue suede shoes and his rented tux that was so big it required safety pins and made him look like William Howard Taft.

 

We could be sad, but in the face of such dire statistics, wouldn’t that just be greedy?