The rain is raining all around, falling in sudden wind-blown drifts through the trees and my open window, onto my dusty floor. I should close the window. But then I would have to stand up.
I landed on Sunday evening at the Syracuse airport to the gentle sound of rain. Big fat drops slid sideways across the oblong portholes of that silvery insane metal tube conveying me, and 75 other trusting crazies, from one low slung inconvenient, badly lit monolith to another. It was not a 747. It was some other number, which I can’t remember. The man behind me–as I shoved myself down the narrow awkward aisle, past the first class–asked the elegant flight attendant what kind of plane it was and received an answer that I had never heard before and so don’t remember. You have to hear something seven times to hear it once. Whatever kind it was, at least it was more substantial than the tiny conveyances that shudder their way into rain soaked Binghamton.
The Syracuse airport is a mess. Central, useful portions of it are being ripped up, jack-hammered into oblivion. A wretched, broken figure stoops over a folding table behind a hand-scrawled folded sign. When you squint you can just make out the word ”Information.” She will tell you, when you finally gain her attention, that you must retrace your steps in the opposite direction in order to escape the airport’s halting, exasperating progress toward functioning modernity. When you smile in thanks she furrows her brow and hangs her head once more.
Still, it’s nice to be home, settling back into the clutter and laundry that, a week later, still beckons, though not very loudly, to be folded and put away. I had the children shove it all in my bedroom, so that I will trip over it for another week, cursing myself and the darkness. Instead, for the second time, I baked a cake in the pampered chef stone bundt pressed into my hands by a generous friend. It had never been used, and seemed a strange and unwieldy object, especially for one who only produces wrecks for cakes, especially at birthdays. But on both occasions that I’ve lathered batter into its squat stone depths, the result has been perfect–even after flinging the recipe to one side, trampling it down under laziness and bad planning. I had no idea, none, that all these years the failures derived from the perversity of a thin metal pan. I am not really to blame.
Kentucky was charming. So charming–her lithe gentle hills, vast restful sky, and heavy warmth inducing me not to blog, nor barely to look at my phone. Didn’t even, for the first time in my life, feel guilty for not glancing at my own neglected corner. Almost didn’t remember that it existed. But then, as I left her behind, careening from one mislabeled gate to another, past the useless tardy train, it suddenly occurred to me how much I missed writing, even after barely four days.
Natalie Goldberg, whose friendly, wide New York City drawl is still banging around in my head, says that you must write all the time, about everything. But then you must stop writing too. Which is very Ecclesiastes of her. But I never manage to actually stop. Except this once. I hope you found other things to read, and went to church, and enjoyed yourself. I finally finished reading Cold Comfort Farm, which was glorious. And now, I suppose I will arise and close that window, and use a clean, laundered, unfolded towel to mop up this now muddy floor. Pip pip.
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