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I have lost the art of writing every day. I swear to god or whatever that I used to understand and practice it.
New York felt foreign to me, and I think this is a good thing. We wound up along the east coast through dark quiet interstates, shuffling into rest stops with a tired, bleary happiness that felt like floating. Morning and Northern Pennsylvania happened at the same time, with all of these mountains and pools of illuminated fog. Gosh, the world can be pretty.
If New York's thoroughfares were a circulatory system, we stopped to get gas in a capillary at about seven in the morning. The air was chilly, and Nathan buttoned up a longsleeve over his shirt. I don't know anyone who looks better in layers, for serious.
I can't describe Norwich to anyone who didn't grow up in it. It smells clean after it rains. It has a good school system, I think. It is a story to me, and I know it in temperatures and colors and distances. I recognize its architecture. It changes infrequently. It has small streets and pretty cemeteries, two good restaurants and a whole bunch of white people.
This trip up was my first time staying in a motel in Norwich. (Maybe that's a lie. When I was little, my dad would come up once in awhile and stay in the Howard Johnson's. We would swim, and I would wear bright orange water wings and paddle around on this pink-and-purple flowery float. It had a clear plastic window and I could see through to the bottom of the pool... Yeah. Aside from those times, this was my first time.) Our room was brown and 70's and there were paintings of paris on the walls, and I couldn't have been happier to return to it each time we entered.
Some guy named Big Mike had been dating/living with my mom for three months prior to our visit, and no one had told me this. My little sister was calling him Daddy. Aside from an excursion to Kurt Beyer, most of my face time with Mom involved her and Big Mike sitting at the table chain smoking. I don't mean to make it sound worse than it was. A couple of nights, Mom got out her guitar and played and sang. Miranda taught me to ride a scooter. I saw David for the first time since last summer, and Lauren for the first time since Christmas.
Mostly, I just liked the experience as our first major road trip together. I came home (and by home, I mean here) feeling like I understood my place in the world. I didn't dream of driving over hills or into anyone's face. I miss Nina's, and Guernsey, and the quarry, and broadleaf trees, and even the cold, sometimes, but I want to be -all the time, and very specifically- where I am.
Or I wouldn't be.
EOS.
New York felt foreign to me, and I think this is a good thing. We wound up along the east coast through dark quiet interstates, shuffling into rest stops with a tired, bleary happiness that felt like floating. Morning and Northern Pennsylvania happened at the same time, with all of these mountains and pools of illuminated fog. Gosh, the world can be pretty.
If New York's thoroughfares were a circulatory system, we stopped to get gas in a capillary at about seven in the morning. The air was chilly, and Nathan buttoned up a longsleeve over his shirt. I don't know anyone who looks better in layers, for serious.
I can't describe Norwich to anyone who didn't grow up in it. It smells clean after it rains. It has a good school system, I think. It is a story to me, and I know it in temperatures and colors and distances. I recognize its architecture. It changes infrequently. It has small streets and pretty cemeteries, two good restaurants and a whole bunch of white people.
This trip up was my first time staying in a motel in Norwich. (Maybe that's a lie. When I was little, my dad would come up once in awhile and stay in the Howard Johnson's. We would swim, and I would wear bright orange water wings and paddle around on this pink-and-purple flowery float. It had a clear plastic window and I could see through to the bottom of the pool... Yeah. Aside from those times, this was my first time.) Our room was brown and 70's and there were paintings of paris on the walls, and I couldn't have been happier to return to it each time we entered.
Some guy named Big Mike had been dating/living with my mom for three months prior to our visit, and no one had told me this. My little sister was calling him Daddy. Aside from an excursion to Kurt Beyer, most of my face time with Mom involved her and Big Mike sitting at the table chain smoking. I don't mean to make it sound worse than it was. A couple of nights, Mom got out her guitar and played and sang. Miranda taught me to ride a scooter. I saw David for the first time since last summer, and Lauren for the first time since Christmas.
Mostly, I just liked the experience as our first major road trip together. I came home (and by home, I mean here) feeling like I understood my place in the world. I didn't dream of driving over hills or into anyone's face. I miss Nina's, and Guernsey, and the quarry, and broadleaf trees, and even the cold, sometimes, but I want to be -all the time, and very specifically- where I am.
Or I wouldn't be.
EOS.