Route 153

Denial December 8, 2015

It is not December. It is not a week til Tim’s birthday. It is not 17 days til Christmas. I do not have to decide whether I’m traveling for the holidays. It is not a 7- or 8-hour drive. I do not have consider whether presents will be shipped or hand delivered. I do not have to conjure gifts for three sets of parents. I am not related to hoarders or right-wing FOXNews-watching nuts.

It is not dark all the time.

Après Paris December 2, 2015

On October 19 I flew to London and on October 22 I took the Chunnel to Paris and on October 28 I took the Chunnel back to London and on November 2 I flew back to the United States. On November 13 I was on the road again, this time to Concord, Massachusetts, for a reunion of a childhood friends. My sister was driving, and my phone started alerting me to multiple messages. “I’m glad you’re not in Paris today. xo.” “Glad you are not in Paris.” “Jesus, I’m glad you’re not in Paris.”

What the hell happened? I started searching on my phone and turned on the radio.

That night, more Facebook messages.

It’s good to have friends, and it’s interesting to be thought of in connection with a city’s tragedy based solely on when you were there and how you managed to then not be there. (I, in turn, thought about a cyberfriend who was there and gone after I was.)

I felt so lucky that Tim and I had already been, that he’d gotten to Paris at long last and that he loved it. I felt lucky that it didn’t happen right before our plans so that we didn’t have to consider whether we should go.

Religious extremism. Easy access to guns. All over the world, people seem determined to end things.

Paris. Odéon.

Audrey December 1, 2015

I run into the post office on my way out of town, off to a staff meeting, and full-bearded Leroy is leaning on the counter talking to Sharon, the postmistress, and I need to mail a shirt priority to New York City, so I get in line behind him, then hear a voice behind me say, “I recognize who that is just by the hat,” and I know it is Audrey, and I know she means me, and I turn around and tell her that I do love this hat and have had it forever and will be very sad when it decides to up and leave me, and she takes a moment to tell me how much she loves seeing the lights on in our house at night (she lives across the street, but not in summer, when she stays at her camp on the lake, a camp that used to have paying campers and horses even, but stopped being that kind of camp some time ago, Audrey now being in her 80s), and I know what she means about the lights, because I too find it a comfort to look out the front door and see her lights and Dorothy’s lights and Martha and Thom and Emily’s lights (I would mention Lynda’s lights too but cannot see them out the front door, only from my living room side) and to know that we are all here close to each other, and it has been my heartbreak these past couple of weeks to stop on my stairway’s landing and look out and see a rectangle of darkness where Laura and Chris and Gigi’s lights used to be, used to always be, even in the middle of the night when I could still glimpse the light they left on all the time, but Laura and Chris and Gigi have moved and darkness dominates that patch of space, especially now, in autumn’s gloaming, as we squint and stumble toward solstice and fumble for light, so I know exactly what Audrey means, and we talk about it, and then she says, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, that she is thankful for the post office, where all we neighbors can run into each other just like this.