sounds familiar

Waking up with a headache, when there’s no reason to wake up with a headache, is frustrating.

Lemme relate to you a story.

This past Sunday we dropped in on a church in northern Maine. We got up early, showered and dressed, and the ladies made their faces and hairs nice (boys’ faces and hairs don’t have more than the one mode). We made the RV into traveling mode and jostled the ten minutes into town over the awful Maine “roads.”

This church was in a highschool gymnasium, with folding chairs and put-up/take-down front pieces. Lots of people and a really good representation of kids of all ages were milling around finding seats and visiting as we arrived. In good church fashion, several folks came and introduced themselves to us as a visiting family, which I always enjoy. Inevitably we end up explaining our current road-trip lifestyle multiple times.

At one point, as I was happily chatting with someone, I glanced over at Keaton, our thirteen year old, and noticed her eyes glistening, wet. Upon further inspection, I could tell she was working diligently at not crying. Concerned, I concluded my conversation and, when the coast was clear asked her simply, “Is everything OK?”

“Yeah,” she replied. Liar.

“It’s just that you look sad,” I say. Dumb dad. That did it.

“I am,” she said, and the tears came easy, they were already brimming, and her face flushed quickly from the effort of finally letting go what she’d been holding in. Seeing that actually crying in church was obviously worse than almost crying in church, I didn’t press it. Put my hand on her back, watched her compose herself, and kept churching. But I was curious.

Later in the day, back in the campground, there was a moment where it was just us. I dared ask, “Hey what were you upset about this morning in church?” She considered for a moment, “I was sad that I didn’t have cute clothes.” A couple hours later she sought me out to say, “Dad remember when I said I was sad because I didn’t have any cute clothes? Well I wasn’t sad, I was embarrassed. Especially with all those other kids my age around.” The distinction seemed very important to her.

Oh, I see. I didn’t expect that.

And at first I thought how silly… and that I could never recall feeling that way, let alone crying in public, over such a thing as a kid her age. But then I found myself remembering how badly I wished I had one of the cool Billabong jackets everyone was wearing in 7th grade, and how much I wanted name-brand jeans vs. the discount store kind, and how my shoes needed to have air in the soles or I’d never make friends.

So, I found myself in a position to both offer sympathy and empathy. Re: empathy, I didn’t bother. From experience the parental “I know how you feel, I’ve been there too” tack isn’t well met in teenagers unless accompanied with a very specific story in which they can imagine themselves, and anyway this wasn’t the time. I didn’t really go heavy on sympathy, either. Instead I just said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“It’s OK,” she said.

And it was.

Kids.

Maine wins the “least cellphone reception in USA” award, for sure. It also ties with Louisiana for worst roads. Lovely, though… miles of untainted beauty. Too bad it’s under snow most of the year.

You ever wonder what signs and portents really are? Just simple confirmation bias? I’m sure there’s a doctoral thesis somewhere I could look up that’d give me the psychology or neurology of it, but it’s maybe more fun to imagine that the clouds are taking the shapes of the answers to all my questions.

Portents, though… if I went in for that stuff this trip would be rich with them. Things I read, people I meet, trees and mountains and water I stare into… the universe is on my wavelength, or I its, and we’re, like, communicating, man… And, it’s one thing for the air to tingle with personal messages for me…

… but it’s another thing entirely to listen.

That, dear friends, feels crazy.

Well, today is the day.

In a few hours from now, I’ll drain this coffee mug for the second time and we’ll drive away from Cobscook Bay State Park in Maine. And, if you know anything about downeast Maine geography, or US geography, for that matter, you’ll know that we really only have two of four cardinal directions available to move in.

Sure, we could go north into Canada, but that’s still a few days now. We could head back south, too. But no… today is the day we aim west and keep going… all our movement from this day forward starts with a capital W: W, WNW, WSW. Today is what I’ve been calling “the big turn.”

I’ve slacked on writing, I know. We had guests twice in the RV, people who flew out to stay with us for a week each. It was an excellent time both times but I wanted to be present and my normal morning constitutional time wasn’t as readily available. I think that’s why the writing took a hit.

Or maybe it’s this: I’m scared to go back and it’s all I want to write about, and not write about.

Not physically or geographically back. Worldview back, me-time back, wage-slave back. I’m still the same guy, just more potently so, having been distilled over the course of this trip, casting off the cruft that I’d invited to settle. Going back; regressing to ten hours days, corporate grade levels and titles… I finally just cast that chaff to the wind.

But keeping going is part of the process, the road has more refining yet for me, I think. Like I said before, moving in a particular direction doesn’t necessarily mean ending up at a particular place.

Hugs.

One time a long time ago, back in highschool even, I received a compliment that sticks with me to this day.

Y’all have that? Something you remember someone saying about you, the way you act or respond or do something, that was so nice and so meaningful that years later you recall it fondly and it still has meaning to your pride? It’s funny, how something so small, maybe even said offhand, can have such long-term ego boosting power.

In my case, I wouldn’t think Sharaun has any memory of what she said back then, let alone that I still think of it to this day. Yes, it was Sharaun, my then girlfriend now wife, who’s simple words then still make me feel good now, some twenty years later.

So what did she say? Well, we were jogging together (for some reason), and she turned to me and said something to the effect of, “You’ve actually got a really nice running form.” That’s it. Maybe something about my stride and arm movement, I don’t exactly recall.

If y’all know me, and how absolutely uncoordinated at anything physical I am (reference material), let alone how insecure I am about my physical and sporting prowess (reference material), you might begin to understand why this particular small comment meant, and means, so much to me.

I don’t know if I have good running form, and I pretty sure she’s not qualified to make such a judgment, but her saying that really made me feel great.

Still does. Hugs.

Oh, Lord, music on this trip is, like, a thing of incredibly delicate balance.

I love music. I mean really love. It’s an incredibly important thing to me and it gives me all kinds of energy and happiness. Luckily I married a woman who shares my passion for music. Sadly, though, she has no taste.

See, my wife’s taste in music is, to me, awful. You know the stuff: cliched dancefloor fillers, slightly robotic autotuned voices singing “may” instead of “me,” etc. Like for real, her “thumbs up” playlist is comprised almost entirely music I’d be happy to never hear again, ever. I mean I’d prefer if it didn’t even exist, so there’d be no chance. I’m not exaggerating much, either…

Whoever’s driving gets control of the music. This is a very fair system which I’d expect all humans would agree to. On her days I try, y’all, I really do. I mean I can see how happy this steaming manufactured trash makes her, so there’s something redeeming there, at least. But I just can’t do it.

No, everyone doesn’t like Rob Base and DJ EX Rock’s It Takes Two. We’re out here, those who, while we can appreciate the quality of her voice in her prime, think Whitney Houston’s catalog is incredibly boring. And I never, ever, want to, “zooma-zoom-zoom and-a boom-boom,” whatever the hell that is.

But, like my music makes me happy so does her’s her. And, just as I feel the world would be a better place if Michael & Janet never made that terrible white spaceship duet, so does she, I’m sure, wish that the Grateful Dead wasn’t committed to releasing every single sound they made over some thirty plus years.

I just close my ears and hope for one of the scant few tracks we both like to shuffle up. Some Ben Folds, Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, even Dixie Chicks. Something… anything but that God-awful Never Gonna Get It again… that song is from the devil.

So we take turns, all democratic like, driving, which is really only pretense for controlling the playlist, and suffer nobly through the other’s tastes.

That’s love, y’all. Peace.

Yesterday we stopped for dinner at a true greasy spoon.

A decades old faded sign marked the rundown building sitting in the dead middle of a massive, empty, poorly paved and potholed parking lot. A derelict pumping station on the back edge of the huge lot, and plenty of room for truckers to pull off on the muddy curtain.

Inside was that sort of brokedown familiar, you can probably see the joint in your mind’s eye before I even describe it. Walls and floors ala manufacturered home. Brown water stains swirl on the acoustic ceiling tiles. Counter straight ahead with stool seating, tickets hung in the kitchen window, tables in ordered rows in the open space and walls lined with booths, menus stacked near the register.

All the furniture of the sort that surely was the #1 selling brand to diner owners across America in the early 1970s. The penultimate diner booth: metal edging around the flecked-top laminate table, faux leather benchs, that black napkin dispenser with a layer of dust on top.

Nothing looks particularly clean, but maybe that’s just age. This place is established. I overhear the single waitress ask, “the usual?” at two different tables, exchanging pleasantries with the regulars.

There’s a board with specials on either side of the house, nice handwriting. Today there’s a choice of soups: ham & cabbage or ground beef macaroni tomato. You can get a cup of either with a tuna melt for $8. There’s also baked chicken, potatoes, and green beans or a chicken club sandwich, both also $8.

I opt for the tomato soup and tuna melt. It’s toasted white bread with a slice of cheese-food on either side, chunk tuna and mayo in between. I’m not even a big fan of tuna, but it feels right to order this here… like the institution demanded it. Ate it all gone, tipped 20%.

I’m not sick today so there’s that.

Excuse my absence.

Last week my mother-in-law came to stay with us, wanting to experience road life and see some of New England. We had a great time and the schedule worked like magic. We got to show her a little of Massachusetts, and a good bit of New Hampshire and Vermont.

I didn’t write much. One, because I typically write during the time where I’m up in the morning and the family is not, but Sharaun’s mom is also an early riser so we took to taking a walk each day instead. Two, because I used her time here as a tool to help me use this stupid phone so much. So, a little digital break & some morning walking instead.

Changing gears… one of this things I enjoy about this trip is learning the different ways each of us in the family is experiencing it. Not to get all cerebral, but I find that each of us had different expectations going in, is getting different things from it along the way, and we’ll likely each be changed in different ways upon coming back.

When we really talk about it together, I learn all kinds of things.

Yesterday evening, walking the shore of Lake Champlain with Sharaun, I said something that made me realize that, all along, I’ve been thinking of the trip as the time between the end of one thing and the beginning of a new thing, a transition. To Sharaun and Keaton, however, it’s more like a long pause; a break from, but a return to, a single, same, unchanged thing.

This is a big difference of perception, and explains a lot to me about my attitude towards the trip’s drawing to a close versus theirs. As our last months and weeks and days pass, a brand new start is what’s ahead in my mind – all the nervousness and uncertainty and fear. In their mind it’s a return to normal – a joyous reunion with anticipation and welcoming and familiar comforts.

OK so I painted that a little more black and white than it is for the sake of making the point. Still, it was a realization for me.

Hugs.