Travel Journal 2 8/31/05

8.31.05 - At SeaTac Airport, Seattle.

We're finally here!! Sitting at the airport, sipping a white chocolate mocha, glancing around at the other passengers. One older couple are pouring over their Rick Steves guide book. A man and his 3 year old daughter are heading home to England after visiting Spokane and Portland. She has the most adorable British accent.

Larry has on his "Flippin' Sweet" Napoleon Dynamite t-shirt, and just came strolling back to our seats in the waiting lounge with a Seattle Times newspaper. The headline is regarding New Orleans and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"Desperation Grows: We've Lost Our City"

Hard to imagine the tragedy of that, as we sit here waiting to go on the trip of a lifetime. My heart goes out to those poor people.

I'm surprisingly calm for being scared of flying. It hink reading up on the facts of air travel on scaredofflying.com has helped alot. Well, time to put this away, and get ready to head out over the clouds. England, here we come!!

Travel Journal 1

Alright, at last - I am posting the first few pages of my travel journal! :: insert the scream and roar of a hungry crowd here::: heheh.

Now - the first two entries are from a hand written journal I took with me. After the first night, I realized that I would end up with curlykew fingers and lost memories if I tried to write everything out. So, after the first two entries... I switched to keeping my journal on my laptop. Things get much more detailed after that. ;)

So, on with the show!!

So we're sitting at the DMV, waiting to get the husband's license renewed....when the following conversation ensued:

Him: "After it gets dark tonight, I want to light some candles in the kitchen, get out the silverware letters, and experiment with taking some pictures of them in that light."

Me: (Nodding slowly...looking at him, trying to figure out what 'silverware letters' were, and not wanting to admit I had no clue) "Yeahhhhh. Sure....that'd be cool."

---- silence for a few minutes, letting us absorb the smell of Lysol from the plastic seats we were sitting on, along with the dozen other people sitting and staring at the walls with zombie-wide eyes ------


Me: "Um.... what are silverware letters?"

Him: (Turning slowly to me, cracking a big grin) "CI-VIL WARRRRRRRR letters."

Me: OHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (Lots of stifled laughter, eyes watering, and shoulder shaking).

Him: "Dearest Mother, it sure would be nice to have a fork...."

Summer

I was driving into town yesterday, with the air conditioning in the Jeep on so strong my hair was whipping back like a fashion model at a cheesy photo shoot. It had reached 97 degrees in the valley, which meant flipflops would be melting on asphalt between the car and the glorious cool chill of the grocery store.

I contemplated the marvel of being icy cold in my car while in the middle of such blazing heat, when I had a 'eureka' moment. I realized, as I sat in bumper to bumper traffic in my little icebox, that summer whisked by at lightning speed not because of being older, not because of being busy... but because of air conditioning.

Yes. You read it right. Summer has been stolen by the air conditioner.

As a young kid, summer's triple digit temperatures drove us all outdoors. Not only during the day, but when we slept as well. The upstairs of our big two story house became a virtual furnace during the summer months, when only a brave soul would spend more than a few minutes up there in the stale air... grabbing some clean clothes off the pile on the floor before bolting back outside. Downstairs, windows were open wide, jars of sun tea sat on the counter, and screen doors served their purpose of keeping flies out, while providing the squeek-BAM soundtrack to the day.

I lived outside during summer break. I would drag a blanket outside, spread it out on the ground in half sun, shalf shade... and that would be my touchstone for the rest of the day. Whatever book I was reading was always nearby. A radio would be propped in the kitchen window, facing outward so I could hear the music. Sprinklers would be on, so that at any moment I could go racing through the fresh mowed grass and dance in the cold ditch water spray to cool off. If I was thirsty, I'd drink straight from the hose attached to the house well, with mom's words of "make sure you turn the spicket off tight, or the pump will run all day!!" ringing in my head. There has never been water so crisp and cold as the water that poured crystaline clear from that green garden hose.

Impromptu trips to the lake were always a treat. Mom would fill the cooler with a six pack of Tab, slice some cheese to top our Ritz crackers, throw in some Oreo cookies for desert, and we'd be off. Or, if it wasn't the lake, my best friend and I would be dropped off at the city pool, where we would join the rest of the thrashing amoebas in the chlorine rich waters for hours.

Even when Dad got home from work, he would join us outside more often than not, having a cool drink and talking about nothing. I'd do handstands out by the blooming hollyhocks, and catch grasshoppers as they skipped by. Mom would pluck weeds from the garden, and hand water the flowers. Nothing was so pressing that it couldn't wait until we had a leisurely evening.

Drives into town meant being blasted in a wind tunnel of hot air. Every window rolled down, arms hanging out the windows - you could tell which side of the car a person normally sat on because one arm would have a darker tan on it than the other. Car radios would be tuned in to the same local station, and you could hear all the cars in synch when we stopped at red lights.

And the stores were our oasis. The frozen food section was nirvana. That cold tile floor was heaven to my bare feet.

Evenings would be spent outdoors. We would sit back in the rust colored Adirondack chairs, eating popsicles and enjoying the cooling breeze coming down off the mountains. How I wished we could lift the roof off the house, so that breeze would push the stagnate heat out from within... but the rotating fans could only do so much.

Bedtime would find us dragging out the tarp to lay the sleeping bags on. There was no question of whether we were going to sleep indoors or out. Unless we wanted to spend a night sweating off five pounds, we were going to be closing our eyes beneath the stars. Pillows, blankets, dogs, cats.... everything was piled onto the sleeping bags, until finally I would zip myself up inside. Staring at the constellations and orbiting sattelites would lull me to a slow and deep sleep, interrupted only by an occasional peek through slitted eyes to see how far the Big Dipper had travelled since I last looked.

And then we got an air conditioner.

Suddenly, the house wasn't so uncomfortable to be in. The contrast between the chilly cold of the livingroom made the heat outside seem doubly intense. Time spent lounging on lawn chairs was traded for laying on the couch, watching TV. We still went to the lake, but instead of coming home and stretching out on the hot sidewalk to dry... we'd rush inside, shivering in the cold air while we changed into clean clothes.

Dad insisted on keeping every window shut, every door closed, so the air conditioner could do it's thing. He'd come home from work, fall into his Lazy Boy chair, and not budge from in front of the TV until we were all heading to bed. We still slept outside on occasion, but mostly just for amusement. Rides into town were climate controlled, and the grocery store slid back into it's mundane role, because it could never match the cold of the prized air conditioner at home.

So, one degree at a time, the air conditioner sucked the life right out of summer. Iced tea and lemonade didn't taste as refreshing, and I stopped drinking out of the garden hose. Sprinklers ran simply for the sake of watering the lawn. Books were read on the couch, and the blankets stayed folded in the closet. The sound of wind in the trees, and rainbird sprinklers chk-chk-chk-ing on the orchard trees around the house was replaced by the droning hum of the Whirlpool.

Of course, at the time, I didn't realize this transition was taking place. Days went by faster, and I couldn't put my finger on *why*. I sensed something was different, but mostly... I didn't care. I was young, the air conditioner was new, and comfort was key. I just didn't understand that it wasn't a fair exchange... that cold air, for the true essence of summer.

I think I'll slow summer down a bit, now. I'm going to turn the air conditioner off, and throw open the windows. Let the screen door reclaim it's squeeky-hinge glory. And you know what? There's a sprinkler going, and a good book is calling my name. Time to get a blanket from the closet, and work a bit of magic by slowing summer down to a crawl.

Once more, with feeling!

Schubert's Serenade

Guess what I did this morning?

I played the piano.

That might sound like a simple thing, but... if you peruse back through these archives enough, you will come to realize that it is quite an occasion.

You see, I was rooting through the attic today, digging out some dishes that my older sister had stored here. As I crawled through the darkness, looking for boxes marked "Depression Glass", I found an open box with a blue plastic binder stuffed in the top. I pulled it out, leaned back toward the light filtering in from the attic door, and saw my name written on a file label stuck to the front.

I knew immediately what I had found. My old sheet music binder!

I set it aside, and fished out the rest of the boxes for my sister. Then, just before I closed the small attic door, I grabbed the binder and tucked it under my arm. I could almost hear the melodies drifting out of it already! All the songs I used to play by memory, saved here with all my old handwritten notes and reminders.

I went downstairs and sat at the piano, and opened up the folder. It still has the note in the front from my piano teacher, making note of eight songs which were to be played at my own private senior recital (which never happened).

The first pages of sheet music are actually copies, and for some reason the title is cut off. I believe that this piece is "Invention No. 14 in B-Flat Major" by Johann Sebastian Bach, Allegro... very lovely.

The next is a song by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, called Solfeggietto. An infamous little piece that I once played at a recital, nearly double the speed it was supposed to be played. My teacher said I nearly set the keyboard on fire with that one.

I flipped to the third piece, and smiled as I remembered the haunting Prelude in E Minor, Opus 28. No. 4 by Chopin. I instantly fell in love with this music when I was selecting a new recital piece all those years ago. Every time I played it, I could imagine Chopin playing the same notes, making them ring through the old monastery in Majorca that he was staying in at the time, in 1839. There was something so meloncholy about this melody... it almost seemed too much for a teenage girl to tackle, with any sense of what it really was trying to convey.

The fourth piece is a light, airy little tune by Homer Nearing, called "Falling Leaves". At the time, this was more of an 'intermission' song than anything. Something to break apart the heavy classical songs I favored, with something a little less demanding on the ears.

There there is the Waltz in A Minor by Chopin. It never struck me as the bright, rousing waltzes that were played at glittering galas. Rather, it too has a bittersweet ring to it... as if this is simply the memory of a grand waltz once danced, being recalled in the grainy light of a fading dream. Another reason I adored it.

Schubert's "Serenade" is the next. I have to say that this is probably one of my favorite songs I have ever learned. It can be played with all sorts of emotions, and the notes seem to form perfectly around whatever I am feeling at the time.

Then there is the fourteen page Sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven, Op. 49, No. 2. The beast of all songs I've ever learned. It took me the better part of a year to learn this song, and although it was never one of my true favorites... once you've played a fourteen page Beethoven song, you feel such an amazing sense of accomplishment. After I memorized this one, my teacher allowed me to leave the basement studio of her house, go upstairs, and play this on her mirror black concert grand piano that she had shipped over from Germany.

At last, another Chopin piece. Valse, Op. 70 No. 2. As I go through my songs, I see how much I leaned toward the languid melodies... always tinged with a bit of dramatic sadness. They were always so much more challenging than the 'tried and trues' of piano lessons, like Fur Elise. Come to think of it, I specifically never wanted to learn Fur Elise, simply because everyone else already had.

There are many other songs, but these... these are *my* songs. I sat down today, and was astonished to find that I remembered far more than I would have wagered on. And for the first time in many, many years... I felt that same excitement at thinking "I might even polish these up to perfection again". I even got a little twinge of anticipation at perhaps playing them for my family after so many years.

So, yes... a dig through the attic gave renewed life to my past as a mistress of the piano. Makes me realize how we can find priceless treasures in the most unexpected places, if we just open our hearts and let it happen.