Red Room Where the Writers Are

One can never go home again.  I tried it a few months ago. 

I've lived most of my life on the East Coast and I took a valuable, needed "Spring Tour".  I had to fulfill a promise made over 43 years ago.  I never dreamed time would go so fast and mans' "red tape" and idiocity would take so long. 

Along the way up the East Coast, I stopped with friends of decades.  Some I see more often than others.  My American made vehicle hates gasoline and loves to speed. I roll up I-95 at the posted speed limit on cruise control.  If not, for cruise control, that car would be at 80 and I'd not notice it until I'd spot a patrolcar. 

Those visits with often seen friends were as always easy and jubilant.

Leaving them heading north was something I'd not done in over 20 years.  I stayed with a dear friend that God made my sister in 1970,  for a few days.  I'd lived in that area for over ten years before heading south.  I loved it.  However, I'd let relatives talk me into leaving my very happy environment to be near relatives.  If I could only relive a couple of those ambivalent days again.  The southern relatives would have only seen me coming off a jet going to or coming from someplace  on a planned layover as they had in the past.

I'd returned a few times to the place my late husband and I had carved out our piece of paradise on the Delaware River.   Oh, how the trees had grown.  The farms are now overpriced neighborhoods.  The woodlands are strip malls.  The once nice store keepers are long gone replaced by rude money grabbers.   Even the postal clerk had an attitude about me having the correct postage on an envelope and asking him to hand cancel it.  Had the postage been wrong, the envelope would have been returned to the south and the intended receiver and I would have had a falling out, because I knew it was mailed from NJ.

So we wonder why people on their last nerve flip. 

My Dad's wife has yet to tell me he is dead.  Mom had divorced him when I was little.  He was a character in every sense of the word.  Near genious on paper and with his profession, but stupid in many other ways. He died in 1996.  The southern relatives were at his funeral. 

Me, his first born from his marriage to my Mom was not wanted at the funeral, I learned.  A dear friend via telephone read me his obituary from the local paper the day before his funeral and because she'd been in his presence a few times mentioned how handsome his photo looked.  It should.  When he came for a visit I had a now deceased world reknown photographer make our portraits separately and together.  It was worth every cent.

That wife had him buried in a private cemetery.  I was prepared to do battle with the guard.  Time had removed the guard house.  It is now a small chapel and across the lane is a nice office.  The manager, with a sweet spirit, could not understand how I could come in with so much information and not know where he was buried.  I told her and she was flabbergasted.

One of Dad's now deceased cousins mailed me a copy of his "Order of Service"  and from the newsclipping my friend sent me I had all I needed.

Of course a few tears rolled down my cheeks after a groundskeeper assisted me in locating his spot.  I knew only his earthly remains were there, but we still had one of "our chats".  In life we had a few.  I left him a toy replica of something we were supposed to own one day.  I knew "we" would not, [his wife!] but maybe, I'd rent one for a week or so and Dad and I would enjoy the experience.   I departed knowing I'll never return.  I no longer have the need or desire.

After doing all I needed to do for a few days in New Jersey, I drove home to Massachusetts. 

I spent a few days with a classmate of days gone by.  One of the last photos of us together were descending the stairs of our all girls' school after receiving our high school diplomas.  Over the next four years, we had parted company but never from each other's thoughts.  Thank God for telephones, e-mail and cellphones.  Our 43 year absence from each other vanished the moment I drove into her lane and she opened the door.  We were school kids again.

I left her and headed to my "bestest" friend's residence which has been home for me since I left Boston with my late husband for NJ.  We will be 93 years old and still the two little girls in the school yard playing hopscotch. 

I had not been home since October, 2001 for our Alumnae Association Meeting.  I refused to let some S-O-B keep me off an airplane and my ticket had been paid for long before "9/11".

This was the first time I'd driven from the South.  From NJ I'd leave my work and be at my "bestest" friend's home in time to watch the 11p news.  I'd only do that when my Darling was on military duty far away.

So many we loved dearly have made their Transition.  The once sapling of trees have turned the old neighborhood streets to arbors with houses.  We were all multilingual children.  The languages I heard this Spring were not soft on my ears.  Different people with their own cultures have replaced what we had. 

Growing up in Boston the saying was, "If you can drive in Boston, you can drive anyplace."  It is definitely true today.

For years, only Heaven knows why, I've wanted copies of my Nana's and Grandperé's Death Certificates.  I called vital statistics at City Hall and the woman told me there was never any such names in their records.  Because the surname is not common it should have popped up and hit her in the face.  I still don't believe she looked for the names.

I left Boston without the papers that I really don't need.  I still see my grandparents and feel them with my heart.  I was loved and pampered, not spoiled!!!

I enjoyed the time I had roaming around Boston and suburbs.  All time vanished visiting other friends.  I'd promised myself that I'd not see the house where Mom and I lived.  Mom died weeks before our wedding, so Darling and I lived there.  The house was still there, beautiful with a fortune of annuals gracing the yard and the very old hedges still neatly trimmed.  I said a prayer that all would be happy there. 

The day I locked the door for the last time, I forgot and left Mom's mezuzah on the doorjamb.  I guess I was supposed to leave it for the next family.   

I returned to NJ for the completion of long overdue ceremonies. 

"I will fight no more, forever."  My battles are over.

After many stops visiting relatives and friends along the way south, I returned to my nest in my Dad's family's forest. 

This forest affords me privacy.  I'd left for a month and no one around this county knew I was gone.  Mail is not delivered in these woods.  I do not go to the Post Office often enough to be noticed as missing.

Today, I awoke to the feel of Autumnal Boston in the air blowing through these pines.  I've seen the deer tracks from their nightly visits.  Nature's other creatures had left me their spores overnight to clean from the front porch, sidewalk and carport.   They are all my Black Lab's playpals.  I'm convinced the dog runs a nightclub for wild animals.  The motion lights go on and off like a Nevada barroom. While cleaning, squirrels are scampering up the water oak trees and using the acorns as grenades tossing them at the house.   

This is where I hang my jacket and rest my head on my pillow, but it will never be home.