Birthright Manhattan

Posted on May 19, 2013 by

Kat was here over the weekend.  Which was…The Best.

We had dubbed the trip “Birthright Manhattan” because her trip to NYC in January was essentially an extended layover between Minnesota and Israel.  I have (regrettably) not written much about that visit, save for a passing mention, because there were several Capital-C-Crises of Consequence happening simultaneous to Kat’s Winesday debut.

But this trip was a wonderful adventure-sans-crisis.  There was Thai food, and run-spectating, and study abroad (aka Travel to Brooklyn), and beer-drinking, and food-eating (Smorgasbord Williamsburg, hello to you).

That I was in an Outerboro three times in one weekend may mean that Hell has now frozen over.

For the record, I was in Brooklyn thrice to a) pick up my Brooklyn Half Marathon race number on Friday at the asinine “Pre Party” in DUMBO.  The whole affair was, for lack of a better word, dumb; b) I was in Prospect Park and Coney Island to run said half-marathon; and c) Strand and I went out to Williamsburg to regroup with Kat, her husband Marcus, and his friends over beers at Brooklyn Brewery on Saturday afternoon.

I digress.

But let me Begin at the Very Beginning (a very good place to start):

On Friday, a select contingent of the WoWs went for Thai food and Bengal Tigers and gabbed over dinner.  Delightful.

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(Strand and Kat.)

On Saturday, I ran the Brooklyn Half to avenge last year’s DNF, and Kat was kind enough to come spectate.  As I was leaving on Saturday morning at The Hour Before Dawn, Kat stopped me at the front door and inquired: What are you wearing?

(I did not tell her the tale of the last time someone asked me that question.)

I stood in the doorway and raised my outer shirt to try to show off my singlet.

It’s bright yellow, you can’t miss me.  Also, it has my name in giant letters across the front.

She met me at Mile 2, and despite my promise that she wouldn’t miss me, I damn-near ran right by her.  Despite the near-miss, I was thrilled and infinitely grateful that she came out.

IMG_1495Later that afternoon, after I was showered and changed, Strand met me and we headed back out to Brooklyn to meet up with the gang at Brooklyn Brewery.

Kat’s husband Marcus had to leave a bit early, as he was due out in Westchester for the prelude to a wedding, at which Kat would join him the following day.  But we all stayed at the Brewery for a celebratory tipple.  It was there that one of Marcus’s friends decided to educate me on what Belgium was.

(Trust me, if you’re reading that sentence, you’re probably having the same reaction I had, and am still having.  That Belgium-as-a-concept could need explaining continues to baffle me even now.)

After this explanation went on for a period of time that felt so long, I lost track of how long it actually went on, we moved on to Smorgasbord in Williamsburg.  For the uninitiated, this is essentially the Brooklyn Flea, except sans junk; only junk food.

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Things were wrapping up at Smorgasbord when we arrived, but we were able to snag some tacos before heading back to Manhattan, where Kat and Strand were going for coffee, and I was meeting a friend for a drink.

We regrouped later in the evening, and Kat and I admitted to ourselves that we were in no shape to handle anything heavier than Netflix and delivery dinner.  We attempted a romantic comedy, but wound up with What to Expect When You’re Expecting. 

(Spoiler alert: You should expect The Worst.  Particularly of the film itself.)

Then we felt asleep and slept like champions.

This morning, it was time for off-leash hours.  We walked in morning rain, semi-sheltered underneath the canopy of trees in Central Park.  We held our Starbucks cups in our damp hands, and Roo was trailing behind us.  It was a perfect, quiet, morning.  Everything was still, and the Park was swathed in that gloomy, bright green mistiness that was so beautiful in New York in Spring.

Magic.

After a walk, and after picking up some bagels, we headed back to my apartment.

I hate people who ask for scooped bagels, I said suddenly, reflecting on two girls we’d seen at the bagel counter, If you’re going to order a bagel, order a goddamned bagel.

(The tirade was, in real life, much more hostile and vulgar, but we’ll leave it phrased as such.)

Kat agreed.  And we sat and munched our bagels with lox, until I had to leave to take the dog to his vet appointment, and we said our goodbyes.

In sum:  a wonderful weekend filled with laughter; great food; excellent company — including the requisite, extraordinary number of blondes.

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Standing

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

You have been gone for eight years now.

Some days, it seems like an eternity; others, it seems like not very long at all.  Grief is the strangest thing.  Just when I think it is gone, it comes again and grabs me by the throat.

What madness to have always had someone there…

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…and then he’s gone.

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I miss you every day.

Thank you for teaching me to be generous, even when I didn’t think I had enough to give away.  And thank you for teaching me to be loving, even when I didn’t think I was worthy of being loved.

Thank you for holding me up through so many first steps…

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So I could grow up to take and make all the ones I didn’t expect to be taking and making on my own.

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The human heart is strange, and huge, and great, and elastic.  And in my heart, you will always be a part of me.

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Lady Mondegreen

Posted on May 16, 2013 by

A few years ago, I had a hilarious conversation with my mother.

We had both always loved Simon & Garfunkel; she had obviously instilled in me great taste in music.  And we were singing along to The Boxer in the car.  I was probably out in California for a visit.

Woah.  Stop.  Did you just sing “come-ons from the WARS on Seventh Avenue”? I asked her suddenly, turning down the music.

Yes, she said, That’s the line.  The WARS on Seventh Avenue.

It was like she thought Paul Simon was talking about PTSD or something.

It’s “whores,” mother.  The lyric is “whores.”

What?!

Yes.

Oh.  That makes so much more sense. 

A beat.

I’ve been singing “wars” since the late ’60s.

For obvious reasons, I found this uproariously funny.  Because…what did she think was on Seventh Avenue prior to the 1990s?!  I mean, seriously.

The point, though, is sometimes we hear things that speak to us where we are, and we don’t hear the things that are really being said.  And I suppose in the late ’60s, maybe “wars” made more sense than “whores.”

But, for what it’s worth, the line is about the world’s oldest profession.  And the fact that my mother had been singing the wrong lyric for a beloved song — and had been doing so for over 40 years — was awfully funny.

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Moveable Feast

Posted on May 14, 2013 by

But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.
- Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

In February, eee and PG and I had gone to Paris, on a platonic-romantic little mini-holiday.

Afterwards, eee had sent me a postcard with Hemingway’s line about Paris being an old city.  It was written in her high-peaks-no-caps hand, and I saved it, because it seemed a thing worth saving.

For our part, eee, PG, and I had that strange comfort of companions who could share a bed with nothing weird about it — like children do when they are young.  We were far too old to be so young.  And as bedfellows, I was the monkey-in-the-middle: eee on one side of me, and PG on the other side.

So the nights were long and cold and scary in a Paris February, but I was safe nestled between my two tall companions as I stood at the beginning of one of the most important moments of my career.

Nothing was simple.

Fast forward three months, through the ups-and-downs of February-March-April.

It is, today, The Day of Reckoning, and I am talking to a friend, who happens to be in Paris.  And for the eleventy-billionth time, I tell him my unfavourable opinion of the place.

Suddenly, he says: I would punch the bastard who coloured your view of this great city.

Paris, the City of (B)light.  Paris, where, each time I visit, some unfortunate series of events befalls me and leads me to believe that the arrondissements are some tongue-in-cheek metaphor for the various circles of Hell.

Nothing is simple in Paris; nothing is easy.  New York is straightforward in a that aggressive way that everyone expects.  The minute you step off the plane at JFK, New York slaps you in the face with its putrid air, and its offensive accent, and, if you’re lucky enough to be coming in from overseas, its intrusive American border control.  And London is straightforward in that way that always seems sort-of startled-but-pleased to see you like the bumbling Hugh Grant character in a rom-com.  However, it will always keep you at arm’s length and snicker at your accent behind your back.

I digress.

I double-back and tell my friend that I maybe I could stomach Hemingway’s Paris, if it indeed existed.  But I am not sure that it did.  And he tries to convince me that there is a Paris beyond the sad place I have known.  The place where hearts are broken, and people come down with foodborne illness, and my iPhone is stolen by gypsies at Notre Dame.

The thing is: All the men I know have gone to Paris to love women who are not me.

Wives, and girlfriends, and the City itself.

But not me.

What was it Hemingway said? I ask my friend, “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love”?

That was a lesson I had learned not in Paris, but in Innsbruck one Christmas many years ago, on the slopes at Axamer-Lizum.  We had flown into Zurich and taken a train through the Alps and into Austria, versus flying into Vienna and taking the much more boring train west-bound train.  I was still sick, and our marriage was ending, and I had flatly refused to attend Christmas with my then-husband’s family.  Innsbruck was a last-ditch attempt to Save Things.

It was Christmas morning, and the sun was brilliant on the snow.  Skiing is the only sport that has ever come naturally to me; all others require work and concentration.  And my then-husband refused to ski downhill.

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I have come to know that there are two types of people in this world:  Those who go take the plunge, and those who do not.

That Christmas morning, I pushed off and never looked back.

But back to Paris.

The night in Paris is ending and the work day in New York is ending, and my friend says:  There was a time when this conversation would’ve taken place over a single-malt and a dodgy sherry.

And it is true.  But he is kind enough to leave off the bit about the one time that I knocked a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream all over him; he mercifully fails to mention the time I almost threw up all over him.

I can’t believe it has been four years! I say, filling space.  And I do not mention the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur, or the New York nights, or Hong Kong to London, or meeting at the end of a jetbridge, or the lobbies and bars of luxury hotels, or all of the other strange and magical adventures.

All I know is that Paris is a terribly old city, but we will always be very young.

Posted in Adventures, musings, My Life in Airports, relationships, Stuff and Things, The Past | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Prodigal

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

“What you are looking for, is what is looking.”  – St. Francis of Assisi

Four years ago, we lost my brother’s best friend, Shane.

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Shane was…something special.  Precocious.  Prodigal.  I suppose it was hard to love him, but it was equally hard not to love him.

And just like that legendary, wayward son’s, his homecoming was a celebration of life.

Strangely enough, I had already had a trip to California planned for the weekend of Shane’s funeral.  It was as if the whole thing was pre-ordained.

My brother and Shane had gone through their addictions together; had tried to get sober together.  Sobriety had stuck with Matthew; it seemed to be just sticking for Shane…and then not.  So after Shane’s funeral, I went to Jade’s house, where she fed me, and we talked, and I stood in the sunlight in her driveway and made phone calls I didn’t want to make.

And now, my brother has lived without his best friend for four years, and I talked to mine just this morning.  Jade and I have shared the most meaningful moments of our lives.  We were attendants in and gave speeches at each other’s weddings for the marriages that didn’t quite work out.  We’ve travelled to other countries, and fought over big and little things, and together have dipped our feet in the North Sea at the top of Scandinavia, and the Pacific Ocean at the bottom of Australia.

It struck me that Matthew would never have those things.  That Shane would never give a silly toast at Matthew’s wedding.  The thought rattled me.

I love you, and I’m so proud of you, I messaged my brother, suddenly, because what else is there?  How else does one fill in that vast cavern of grief — that sinkhole — that just keeps eating up everything that comes near its gaping maw?  You fill it and you fill it, and you put up those orange cones around it, but the land is always a little unstable around the edges.

He told me how he was remembering his best friend; how he’d gone to lunch with Shane’s cousin; how they’d reminisced.  And I told him that, on Mother’s Day, I’d been flipping through albums to try to find a picture of our mother to post on Facebook, and instead the book had fallen open to a photo of Shane.  I had told my mother, and she had been the one to remind me about the timing.

It was like he was stopping by to say ”hi,” I said.

It’s no coincidence, he replied.

I suppose what I am saying is that I think it is relatively easy to love someone who is easy to love — who is perfect, and clean, and sober, and who loves you back most of the time.  It is harder to love someone who goes away; who runs; who hides; who keeps you at a distance.  It breaks and tears and batters you to watch someone suffer…and to keep loving in your suffering.

So since I am a woman who loves symbols and signs, I suppose that finding that photo at precisely the moment I found it reminded me of how important it is to keep loving, under even the most challenging, improbable, fucked-up, and awful of circumstances.  Keep loving even in the face of loss.  Keep loving even when the sides are caving in, and the memories make it hard, and the sinkhole is swallowing you up.

Just keep loving.  Because you are loved.

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Tradition

Posted on May 11, 2013 by

Last night, was the awarding of the Maraca of Doom; our annual Sinko de Winesday party.

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The Maraca is an award given each year to a member of the Winesday family who has made the best, or most noteworthy, or ridiculous, or embarrassing showing where alcohol was involved.

This year, there were three contenders:  KC, Rebex, and Matthew.  I cannot detail the specific circumstances of their nominations, but suffice it to say, each was legendary in its own right, and this year’s was a tough field.

The award went to Matthew.  And so, it was the beginning of the beginning — a steppingstone to other, great things to come.

I understand that the word “cinco” is not spelled “sinko” and I further understand that last night was actually “Diez de Mayo.”  I further understand that “Cinco de Mayo” itself is a made-up American holiday, and Mexican independence day is in September.

However, Sinko de Mayo derives its name from a Cinco de Mayo party three years ago, which I believe was actually on Cinco de Mayo, wherein someone vomited in grand fashion in my sink.

Last night’s event was tame in comparison.  A lot has happened in three years!

I would be lying if I said that I haven’t struggled through the ways that this group has changed over the past year in particular — because that change has been dramatic.  And I would be lying if I said that I felt like I should’ve had (or that I have wanted) some control.  I would also be lying if I said that I hadn’t sought counsel on this; if I said that I hadn’t gone to someone I trust and said: What am I doing wrong; what can I do better; what am I doing right?

And the answer:  Nothing.  Nothing is wrong; nothing is right.  But you, Meredith, can do better by sitting back; listening; accepting.

The waiting and watching and being and living — that’s all the hardest part.  Living through a transition?  Torture.  But torture is not always bad.

Er.  I mean that kind of torture is not always bad.  Nor is change.  Everything’s changing.  And I am not in control of that.  Which I am coming/have come to accept.

But the real point here is that last night was a tradition I cherish, and the company was lovely, and as we grow and become something bigger and better than what we ever have been, I hope that we do gather to celebrate this silly thing for a long time to come.

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International Woman of Mystery

Posted on May 9, 2013 by

Hello…

photoporter

Toronto.

Posted in My Life in Airports, On the road again | Tagged | 1 Comment