It’s been nearly a year since a dear friend passed away. I think about her frequently, of course, and wonder what she would say about this and that. She was a wonderful person, kind and impatient, loving and direct, hopeful and pragmatic. I am slightly ahead of her family on the grief timeline but, of course, grief isn’t linear. Some days are fine and some days are a fog of grief and loss that no one else could understand. Her mom reminded me recently that grief is an open wound but “… that it doesn’t have to get larger.” Wise words from a woman who had to bury her child.
One of my kids cooks at a restaurant and goes to school at night. Occasionally, I go out to breakfast where he works. There’s a big window between the restaurant and the kitchen so I can see him at the grill, teasing the servers and hustling to get the orders up. If it isn’t busy, he takes his 10 at my table and we chat about his day, the amount of pancake batter on his apron, upcoming tests/papers/presentations at school. This is what we hoped for our children as Ken and I raised them: that they would work hard, be kind, make a difference in someone’s day. I don’t know where my son’s life will take him but I wish I could tell Ken that I think our boy is going to be okay.
My youngest son goes to a laboratory school on a local college campus. It tops out at 8th grade so we’re deep into high school selection now. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh city schools don’t rank very well compared to suburban schools but we’re committed city residents so we’re considering a variety of options. I’m dreading — is there a word to express that more intensely? — because I am DREADING the end of the school year even more than teachers dread the end of summer, even more than tax preparers dread February 1st, even more than soda-drinkers dread going to the dentist … yes, even more than my dogs dread a trip to the vet (right turn = the vet, left turn = adventure).
We’ve had kids going to that school for 18 years straight. The inexorable approach of his last day signals the end of yet another chapter in our journey. On that last day, I know that I’m going to just flat-out sob because I’m crying RIGHT NOW as I type this. We’ll have another event with Ken missing from the picture, we’ll leave a familiar place for yet another unknown, and we’ll start the final chapter to the empty nest that I’ll be living in by myself.
We had big plans, you know, like many parents do. We wanted to take a trip across Texas (a state whose beauty Ken really came to appreciate when we visited a few years ago). We were hoping to drive across the country again – a Blue Highways trip, exploring all the weird and wonderful bits (including as many used book stores as we could find). We wanted ….
Don’t think me unappreciative of the lovely invitations from several friends to join them on their adventures. It’s kind and not at all what I want. I mean that with a great deal of affection for the people who have invited me. I really do! But I can’t imagine a more painful experience than traveling as a third (or fifth) wheel. I’ll never feel comfortable, trying to fit into other peoples’ travel behaviors. I want to walk through the butterfly forest 15 times in one trip because I love it. I want to meander, not hurry to keep on schedule. I want to spend so long in front of the jellyfish exhibit that we miss lunch. I want to explore the side streets and the crappy little diners. I want to negotiate the playlist and play stupid car games. I want to travel with Ken.
The funny thing about traveling with my husband is that he actually disliked leaving home. It made him anxious to be away. One time, while he was home but I was away on a business trip, there was a bad storm and a huge tree limb fell in the front yard. It took out the power lines and damaged the neighbor’s tree too. For Ken, it was further validation that vacations are magnets for disasters (even though he was home and I was NOT on vacation). Not at all rational but funny … still funny.
He frequently would pack at the very last moment for our trips, forgetting really important things like shirts or shoes. One time he even forgot his medication and we had to find a pharmacy in the middle of nowhere. (They were wonderful, by the way; I have a feeling this is a common problem.) Later in our lives, he didn’t travel with us as frequently. We were caring for his mom and of course, she couldn’t travel so we’d take turns being at home. One year, the kids and I took a trip to the Grand Canyon. Ken found our pictures and stories so appealing that he went there after we got back and added a train trip through the northwest, sharing wonderful pictures and stories of his own adventure.
Can you guess which vacation Ken hated with the fire of a thousand suns? Disney. It’s true. He hated everything about it — rampant commercialism (As Alfred says in Miracle on 34th Street, “there is a lot of bad ‘isms’ floating around this world and one of the worst is commercialism”), noise, crowds, simply everything. I used to be a cast member there so I have a soft spot for the parks. I usually worked the closing shift and would wander through Epcot after hours, back when the parks were open until 1AM or later. The garden lights stay on all night and when the parks are empty of visitors, they have their own quiet beauty. Of course, most people, including Ken, never get a chance to see that. More importantly, that quiet beauty isn’t why people visit Disney!
I’ve been there once since our awful, though memorable, trip and I might never go back. We discovered, as a family, that we find more joy in watching baby turtles crawl toward the ocean, wandering a bookstore while the owner snoozes in a comfy chair in the corner, or catching (and releasing) frogs in the pond at Colonial Williamsburg (you can go to the pond for free and since it’s completely overlooked by most visitors, you can sit at the water’s edge for hours undisturbed). I’m not going to share more of the hidden treasures we’ve found in our lives together. First, they wouldn’t be meaningful to anyone else. Second, life is very short; you should discover your own, while you can.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
Wishing you many hidden treasures.
