Nag, Nag, Nag

This is for Eleni and Jill, who are inexplicably pestering me for word from my journey East. I can’t imagine why. I’ll just put you to sleep.

[Editor’s note: I tried to post this last night, but I guess rural Vermont isn’t noted for its reliable Internet access, so I’m writing from the Manchester, New Hampshire airport.]

I’ve been gone for a week. Since, as you all know, I have no memory, I have no choice but to start in the present and see how far into the past I can go. Perhaps I’ll make it all the way back to this morning.

1. I am drinking lukewarm tea in my hotel in downtown Brattleboro. I made it in my in-room coffeemaker, so it’s got strong overtones and undertones and middletones of cheap, stale coffee.
2. A while ago I went to an Indian import store and, in conversation with the young salesperson, revealed my thoughts about getting an MA in education, but that I was worried I was going to be a million years older than all the other students. —Are you a Leo, by any chance? she asked. I’m not. —Leos make great teachers. And they like to surround themselves with young people, like a lioness with her cubs. —No, I’m a Gemini, I admitted. —Oh … well, happy birthday, then. It seems that many people in southern Vermont know about these things.
3. It is nearly dark out. My window faces the brick wall of a tall ugly building 40 feet away, and a painfully orange neon sign that says Sam’s. I would go close my curtain but then I’d forget to come back.
4. On the highways here they have signs that say Moose Crossing. But I don’t believe in them. I think they’re like those cutsie ones you can buy, like Elf Crossing.
5. Eleni e-mailed me she thinks my sister is funnier than I am.
6. I spent all day today at SIT Graduate Institute: touring the campus, auditing a class, and meeting with officials from admissions, the master’s program I’m interested in, and financial aid. Everyone was so wonderful it was almost scary. Even the class was fun, enough so that I participated up the wazoo: yack, yack, yack. A blissful silence must have descended at my departure.
7. At lunch I was introduced to a student who was assigned to eat with me, and was full of kindness and encouragement. He’s a fascinating guy from southeast DC who has taught in Sudan and Saudi Arabia. On meeting him I eagerly extended my hand to grasp his. He recoiled. —I can’t shake your hand. —What, do I have bugs crawling on me? I wondered silently. But he quickly added, “…for religious reasons.” (He’s a Muslim.) I was mortified at my gaffe. Here is a school that puts extraordinary emphasis on the importance of cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity, but you know me: I wasted no time putting my foot — actually, my hand — in it. Oh, but that wasn’t all. After lunch I asked if I could take his picture against the backdrop of the pretty campus. Oops. Another Islamic prohibition. I asked why and learned a lot. But I felt like an eedjit.
8. I was very impressed with and excited by the place: its philosophy, program goals, teaching methodology and curriculum.
9. After all my meetings I walked around the campus a while, along the edge of the woods, looking for hiking paths and wisdom, gazing out into Ireland-green rolling fields with dark, wooded ridges behind. I sat on the grass against a tree and let my eyes go soft, hoping for answers to the questions that are elbowing each other for attention in my brain: If accepted, should I come here in the fall? Would I be successful? Would I fit? Would I be happy? Would I find a new career path? Might it revitalize me? Answers came there none, unless it was in the form of the chorus of bird calls, in which case I don’t know what they were telling me.
10. Here: take a look around the campus…

I guess that’s it for today. While writing all that I ate an entire box of Vermont Snappy-Ginger-Flavored Cookie Buttons. Total calories: 660.

Yesterday I bid a sad farewell to Mom and Ed who were kind enough to drive us to the Philadelphia Airport. Anna and I hung out there together for a while, and then went our separate ways, she to her flight bound for Oakland and mine to Manchester, NH (which was an hour late). I sat next to a computer nerd whose brain I picked about cell phone service providers and G3 telephones. He’s all but got me convinced to go with Verizon and get a Blackberry Niagara (at first I thought he said “Viagra”) when they come out in a couple weeks. I was sure I wanted an iPhone. He and my other seatmate gave me driving directions to my destination. It took two kind of boring hours to get there. I’m staying in an art-deco-era hotel whose windows haven’t been cleaned since then. But I like it. If the windows weren’t covered with grey film, that Sam’s sign would be as blinding as a solar eclipse.

The day before that the key event — aside from going around Mom’s house telling her which possessions I wanted and continually having to bring her back to the task when she tried to escape — was visiting the “grownups” who, as my parents’ closest friends, have been in my life forever, and are very dear to me. Here’s a picture of them, with my beautiful mother and my beloved Anna wedged between:

My sister and family were supposed to have been there but unfortunately had to change plans at the last minute. So just before this photo was taken I’d had to say goodbye to her, which practically killed me.

Our day concluded with the traditional dinner at the Greenville Country Club, domain of polite society girls like me. In the first picture, photographer Ed told us to say cheese. In the second, he said, Say Brie, but while the others made it to the end of the word I was having too much fun with the plosive b.

I’m getting bored now. Here are just a few other highlights:

• I got to see my old high school friend Sam, which was a hugely gymatic treat. I marvel at the good taste I had in friends even way back then.
• Anna & I went to Baldwin’s Book Barn in West Chester, PA, which I’d last visited with my grandfather forty-five years ago. All I remembered of it was that he got a speeding ticket on the way home. While we were there, literally scores of emergency vehicles screamed past from the north and south. We found out later that two kayakers had died in a flood-swollen hole beneath a dam. I traded my beloved Nepali shawl that I was wearing to a woman who gave me a bag full of yarn, each skein a different type … which means there isn’t enough of any one color to make something out of. I’ll have to invent something. Maybe a Technicolor dreamcoat.
• At “cocktail hour” on our second night, Anna gave Mom and Ed a yoga lesson.

• I took Anna to Longwood Gardens. Roving docents kept trying to herd us to shelter due to a quickly oncoming and powerful thunderstorm which never appeared. But that’s okay. We had a glorious one just before dawn. In order, these pictures are: the fountains in the theater that I loved as a kid; rain on waterlilies, and a picture for Molly because the flowers reminded me of washed-out blue eyes:

On our first full day in the East we got to have dinner with KT and family. Here are: Peter beating up on his elderly and frail Auntie Ginia; Raychel, Ryan and Peter; and Anna & KT at the KT’s 1800s grist mill. Or is it 1700s?

Nedly: I’m really sorry I don’t have a picture of you here. It’s just that you always come out looking so funny-looking. But I still love you.

Here are three pix of the inside of the mill.

That’s all I have to say. Jill and Eleni: are you sorry you asked for an update?