This last weekend I saw two friends from High School, one of whom (because I am oddly paranoid about mentioning anyone's real name on the internet except mine) I will call S, and whom I have never before seen in the United States (which, translated, means in this case that I saw her last in 2004), and the other (K) who is (somehow un-awkwardly -- I suppose because we were friends first, which lasts longer, especially in high school and early college) my sister's ex and who I last saw during the weekend of his wedding four and half years ago (at which time I stayed with his wife-to-be (M) and her bridesmaids despite never having met her before that weekend).
Wow, that paragraph had a lot of parentheticals.
Seeing the second friend was the trip I mentioned a few days ago, when I said I had arranged something to take the edge off of the travel itch when I talked about buying Christmas plane tickets. The first friend was a bit of an exciting surprise -- she left me a message on Facebook Thursday saying she was coming to my town (so that her art class could pour molten iron -- a field trip I found both reasonable and oddly specific to drive over 3 hours for) on Friday. I was quite excited and delayed my own trip to hang out with her for an hour, but my trip was also a 3 hour drive, so I didn't want to stay too late, because K has a young child and I told them I'd be there before 7. I felt torn between wanting more time with S and not being rude or inconveniencing K after he and his wife invited me to come stay in their guest room for a night.
Seeing S (and meeting some of her friends in the class, too) was good. All I really knew about her life before we talked was what I could glean off of Facebook, which usually provides specifics that "Facebook stalkers" have to then use inductively to figure out the general shape of a friend's life. For instance, she mentioned that one of her dogs had puppies. I could tell by the post (and a few of the pictures) that she had more than one dog. Another post many days and posts apart that I vaguely remembered mentioned cats. When I saw her, one of the questions I asked was concerning how many pets she had and what they were and whether her dog had really had puppies because it seemed there was a pregnant dog post after the puppy post. There was, indeed, a second dog pregnant. She explained about the 6 adult dogs, the one puppy that was going to be kept of the litter, the two cats, and a couple of hamsters. And that they were all going in the car when she moves across the country in December. We talked about things of more weighty import as well, of course. It was as good as a visit that is too short and conducted in the middle of an art gallery where she was with her class and professor as they waited for the iron pouring could be.
The visit with K and M (and their 17-month old who is -- quite appropriately -- obsessed with airplanes) was also good. Another friend from overseas was there when I arrived -- they live right over the place (hanger? school?) where he is a flight instructor. The commute is a flight of stairs. We had a good dinner and a delicious (really rich) dessert that was layers of Oreos and peanut butter and Reese's and chocolate pudding. And chai, which I think I'm going to buy next time I go to the store -- mostly I drink the herbal and fruity stuff for hot drinks in the winter, but chai really hits the spot sometimes. Slept really well, woke before them because their son had been up in the night and actually got some papers graded (I took them along with me just in case). I got a tour of the facilities and the simulators and the little training planes. K and I compared our experiences teaching 18 and 19 year olds, and discovered there were many more similarities in teaching someone how to fly and teaching someone how to write than might be expected. M made "Dutch pancakes" (a lot like crepes) for breakfast, and K explained the (according to him, anyway) common custom of putting cheese and maple syrup together in one. It actually tastes much better than it might sound. (It feels as if I'm talking about food too much, but M is really a wonderful cook -- and host).
And while both visits were good and fun and a nice break, especially as it seems that I won't be getting a real break for Thanksgiving, but will be working the whole time, the drive -- first there Friday evening and then back Saturday afternoon, a little over 3 hours on mostly one-lane highways with a few "loops" and switches, but mostly through the middle of nowhere -- would have been worth the trip all by itself. As a result of a long trip alone in the car, I feel much more settled than I have for the past month or so, and ready to plunge into hyper-scholar-mode until Christmas break. It feels like the drive was the deep breath before the dive.
7 things on the drive that were moments of beauty:
1. The sunset in my rearview mirror. It turned everything I was driving by that warm orangey-pink. Because of the drought and the fact that it is November, a lot of the grass and trees around here are dead and brown and dry and normally quite ugly. But the sunset softened the starkness and deadness and made it beautiful again.
2. A deer on the side of the road. I've seen them before of course, but not so often that they are common place. It was about four feet off to the side -- a doe, I think. I went by her the dusk and my headlights hit her side -- not her eyes, so they didn't do the creepy green thing, just her side.
3. The rising full (or almost full, not sure) moon in front of me. It was huge and yellow and heavy as rose, and I kept on getting glimpses of it through the trees, and wasn't sure I believed how large it looked until I kind of crested a hill and saw it just fully risen and whole and looking like the most typical "harvest moon" imaginable. It kind of shrunk as it got higher in the sky.
4. On the way home, I saw actual, real fall foliage that I had passed in the dark. I couldn't help but notice the different types of trees and the different types of ground that 3 hours covered. That end of the drive was slightly hilly and full of thickish forests. There were a few trees whose leaves were actually crimson and some various shades of orange which contrasted nicely with the deep green of other trees. Not dry and dead there -- or at least not as much.
5. Huge flocks of black birds (crows? some other dark colored bird? or possibly bats -- couldn't quite tell) within a few hundred yards of each other. They circled and swooped and reminded me of the way that schools of fish swarm and move without running into each other. There was an edge of a field where they had landed and were covering perhaps the size of a basketball key so much that the ground looked black. There were so many I could hear their wings over the sound of the car.
6. An old school. The Echols school. It is marked in a Texas handbook I found, but I have no idea how it is significant. However, it was a roofless old building with a flag still in front... It impressed me as somehow sad and melancholy. I stopped and took a picture. Or 10. Here are some of the ones I like the best.
7. After I got back in the car, the sun started sinking rather faster -- or so it seemed. The camera was out and resting on the passengers seat, so here are a couple of shorts I took through the windshield as I drove. It was a nice sunset to drive into -- not too bright so that it was hard to see and kind of peaceful.
And when I got home, I realized I was too late to answer a third friend's note that he was going to be in town, which was a little disappointing, but mostly funny that all three friends from overseas were around and/or available for a visit on the same weekend.
I put off writing this post, even though I composed most of it in my head on the drive, partly because I was tired, but partly because I felt a little like hoarding that stillness that the drive ended on for a bit. Peace, I suppose, is a good name for it.
I heard some kids singing last week somewhere, but I can't remember where. They were singing Dona Nobis Pacem. And what with everything in the world and politics and last Friday, I've found that running in my head quite a bit recently. And this weekend, a bit was granted.
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