32
Saturday, April 3rd 2021.
Syracuse airport, 5:10am, two hours early for my flight, because well, if you’re 15 minutes early for anything you’re late. Two hours of sleep, air in my tires the night before my drive, things for my meetings printed, ready with coffee, prepared to roll the windows down for cold air to wake me up if needed, playing the radio loud. I am after all my father’s daughter.
Dad to little girl: That’s a sausage, egg and cheese. Wanna split one?
This is exactly what my dad would have said to me. I already had a sausage egg and cheese and was dressing it with Tabasco and grabbing ketchup packets. Smiling to myself at this familiar father-daughter dynamic, that you really don’t notice until one of you is gone. I noticed it when he first started getting chemo treatments, but my dad loved a sausage egg and cheese, mainly from Sunoco. Though he yelled at me once after a Chemo treatment for holding the door for him; I’m sure he wouldn’t want that memory printed. The Chemo making him unfamiliar to us both.
The purpose of writing would be to put readers into a moment of time. It’s not that my journey would be any more important than anyone else’s but that I was writing it down like so many others had.
When we first broke up I wished I had written down every day of those two weeks. The walks down to the river between the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges; going down to the water to sob and call Liz or Jill in my running gear.
Memoir vignettes was what Lorriane, an author in her eighties, called the writing style I once disliked and now was into— essays and moments. Emma got me into Muji pens and was working on her own as well, Liz too; isn’t there enough to go around for everyone? We read Joan Didion, which this book is a response to my own year of magical thinking, Vivian Gornick, Lydia Davis, Maggie Nelson, Durga Chew-Bose, Rachel Cusk, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sheila Heti, Chris Kraus, Eve Babitz, Jessi Klein, Meg Wolitzer, Constance DeJong.
I wanted to read Henry Miller, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins but I imagine they were just writing about their times as well. Aren’t we all in the footsteps of someone... even if it’s your future self.
I was trying to live simply, without even trying. It was a confidence in knowing what I liked. A specificity I had always admired in my cousin Liz. She did things a certain way which could easily be made fun of as being a pain in the ass. Alt: She did things in a certain way, like with how she ordered a meal, that could easily (and I say this lovingly) be misconstrued with being a pain in the ass.
Emma is setting up an Eno hammock. I had grabbed an open bag of watercress salad from my fridge which we had over fried eggs with chili oil sauce from a jar we had brought back from Mexico City’s Ojo de Agua. I don’t mean to brag or “be one of those people” but you see what I mean about things being a certain way.
I am living in a time of true appreciation for where I come from and who I am.
Emma recently went to a wedding in which Esther Perel spoke about there being two types of people, those that value their roots and are able to, I imagine, find a home in their hearts wherever they are. And then those who resist, who don’t admire or seek to emulate where they are from; they are perpetually dissatisfied. As Liz would say— there are “finders” and “seekers”. Which I wonder if is the same as givers and takers. Grievers and makers.
We have a plaid picnic blanket that is Jon’s (Emma’s now husband) and we’re missing camping chairs. We have another blanket, a bright red striped textile I had brought Jon and Emma back from Madagascar. Portugal and Greece trips are top of mind. Even though “it’s over” I want to walk down the aisle to Ariel Pink’s “baby” which is currently playing. We have chicken on foil on the grill over the fire. We’ll make chicken salad with celery, apple, pine nuts, craisins, red onion, mayo, salt and pepper.
The debate is client (web) services versus product (books, clothes) and what selling out and making ends meet both mean. I want an inn, a whiskey bar with friends, a second hand shop with a tailor on site with Liz, and I wonder how similar we are in 2019 as people were in the 70s.
It could be a chore, writing down moments of clarity or the feeling of wanting to write; Instagram made it so easy to capture, caption and share a place and time. Does anyone else find Jia Tolentino hard to read? Though I loved Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener.
It was a luxury to read out-loud what we were all working on and I think of all of my friends as my contemporaries. It’s being confirmed the importance of pen to paper; tangibility. I’m thinking of all the “notes” I have written in my iCloud that will never come together cohesively to join this. I’m writing in a light blue notebook with zinnias on the cover. A notebook I found with my Grandmother, mom and Aunt on a girls weekend to Sackett’s Harbor in upstate New York together. I knew when I saw it I would stop randomly writing in the notes app and start writing this book.
32 is a time for kids?
Moments in time quite beautifully pictured here! I think you would enjoy Tom Robbins.