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2 janvier 2023
I went to sleep last night knowing that there were two days of travel. Knowing that it would be hard and stressful and confusing and unnerving and all the things that travel is … but also knowing that I would survive it and when all was said and done, we would be home and reunited with our little boy.
I realized – upon revisiting the blog last night – that I stopped posting a few weeks before we drove to Honeybrook and adopted an eight week old puppy whom we promptly named Eli.
He turned five months old the day we flew to France and has been spending every day chewing my Dad’s shoelaces, going on walks with Bob (Erin’s husband – Erin of Zavino and Tredici days who began her own pet business last year) and curling up to sleep with my Aunt on the couch, all while enchanting everyone to fall promptly in love with him.
After today – fighting to get on the shuttle to Geneva and enjoying the most expensive burger I’ve ever eaten at the Geneva Hilton Hotel – and tomorrow when we fly home via Madrid and a four hour layover, we will be reunited with our tiny terrorist (and massive love bug) Eli Emerson.
The shuttle ride was a little over an hour and all I thought about was that it doesn’t do much good to look backwards. Time and life march forward and nothing and no one has ever been able to change that. The seconds tick into minutes tick into hours and then days ….. Life goes by bit by bit. And all we can do is appreciate the time we have, make the most of the seconds and minutes and hours and days.
Before we know it, we’ll have a brand new house in Bellefonte and Eli will be a year old and life will keep slipping by. The good times won’t last forever, but that bad times won’t last forever either. It all goes by, bit by bit. And all we can do is try to soak it up and enjoy it as much as we can.
That’s what I tell myself when the going is tough or rough or just overwhelming. This too shall pass.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Xox, g
1 janvier 2023
Three years ago John and I travelled to Japan after Christmas and spent the first anniversary of my mother’s death climbing and exploring Enoshima. Then Covid happened. And this was the first year we could travel again. We booked a trip after Lucy died and before we spontaneously adopted Eli, to spend Christmas with my brother and his wife in France. They’d just bought their first French house and John’s company shuts down between Christmas and New Year. It felt fortuitous.
It’s been an incredible trip and we are now packing up and readying to begin our two days of travel home. It’s trips like this that remind me I should journal more. And since I don’t have anything else to write with, I popped open this blog and decided to stretch the writing muscles again.
We spent today with a very hungover Dave and Jojo. We had lunch and went for a gorgeous walk. And wound down the evening in their cozy kitchen, eating bread and cheese and anchovy cream. We talked about life and relationships. We talked about four years ago when Mama Bear died. It’s not something we talk about a lot. We allude to it. We acknowledge it. But today we talked about it. The awfulness of losing a mother. The shit way it happened. The pain, the memories, the *lack* of memories. It felt nice to have those conversations with my brother – the person who has been witness to my life the longest. The only person who shares some of my memories. The only other one whose mother was also mine.
Earlier this week we talked about South Africa. I don’t like talking about South Africa. But it also occurred to me that Dave and I have never talked openly and frankly about what happened. And it felt cathartic. Necessary even. Jojo’s eyes widened at some of the pieces of the story. John looked solemn. We relived it but we didn’t. There were truths that were shared. It was important. It is a part of our history.
The same can be said of when Mama Bear died. We needed to talk about it. Between the four of us. Without censoring or editing pieces because of the pain of Dad or Lenny. Just siblings and spouses clearing the air about that time. Confessing the pain and blurriness. The quickness. The bottomless sadness.
All in all it was a good start to a new year. I feel closer to my brother and my sister-in-law. I feel honored to have seen and experienced the life they have built in this beautiful mountain town. It was a worthwhile trip for a million and one reasons, but that part – to me – is the most important.
20jan22
Life is wild.
It snowed this morning. It was beautiful.
I also got the awful news that a friend – a dear, beautiful, powerful, funny, sharp, successful, vivacious friend – has breast cancer.
Juxtapositions.
Surgeries and disease and stress and angst. Broken furnaces and agoraphobia.
But also snow and hitting financial goals. Second homes and new trucks. International flights booked to see family.
Life is wild.
Xox, g
19jan22
Last night John + I spent four hours (yes, four) on the phone with American Airlines. Truth be told we spent most of that time on hold – first to get a person and then because that person was on hold with another person. Long story exceptionally long, we hung up just before ten having eaten dinner standing up and most of our time pacing back and forth waiting for someone to come back and talk to us.
The end result is tickets booked to the U.K. And no more tickets to France. I am both happy and sad. I wanted so badly to visit my brother in the Alps. I practically strong-armed it into taking place. To change those plans hurt my soul.
On the flip side, I haven’t been to England since 2015. When my mother was still alive. Most of my aunts and uncles I haven’t seen since before. Covid has been going on for so long … our original flights were booked for September 2020. Nearly two years later and we are finally (hopefully) going. I just want to eat sausages and crumpets and pork pies and walk the walls of Berwick. I want to breath in the salty sea air and remember my mother. I think part of me is hoping she feels closer somehow. Even though my rational brain knows that won’t be the case. My mother was an American and she was proud to be one. England is more for me and my Dad and Dave than it ever will be for her. We are all searching, hoping, missing her.
I hope we go. I hope we are able to board the plane and land in the U.K. I hope I am able to see my aunts and my cousins and talk and laugh and hug and tell stories and show John things he didn’t see last time.
My fingers are crossed. Maybe third times a charm.
Xox, g
8jan22
I was thinking about Paris yesterday.
My sister-in-law is from Paris and she is both so inherently French that it’s impossible to articulate, and also impossibly not French at all – or rather, not stereotypically French. She’s absolutely lovely – funny and kind and always open. She intuitively knows how to cook and she always looks stylish in the way French women always do – effortlessly and understated.
J+I were supposed to be flying to Paris in a few weeks but we won’t be doing that anymore and my heart is heavy and oh so sad. Life happened, which is the way of things, but it doesn’t change my soul-deep disappointment.
The last time I was in Paris …. Well, it was *also* February and it was cold – snow flying horizontally along the Seine. I’d forgotten my coat (Philadelphia had been unseasonably warm the day I flew) and no shops were open on Sunday for me to buy a new one. So I spent my first day in Paris freezing, holding a sweater tightly around my body and breathing into a scarf that never left my neck.
I’d been there with a dear friend – a friend I traveled with frequently back in those days – and we’d explored Paris in winter. Art museums, yes, but also cemeteries and hot cocoa and falafel and churches and movie theatres. I have such fond memories of that trip. I had been so looking forward to sharing Paris with John.
One day.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Xoxo, g
4jan22
Last year I decided that spending time trying to think of blog post names was unnecessary. The point, I rationed with myself, was that I needed to blog. And I needed to do it more consistently. I could write about anything or nothing but I had to write.
Those are my parameters this year – I just need to write. I need to be consistent. I need to remember how to be disciplined. To introduce, provide content and then summarize everything in a tidy conclusion. Some of my posts last year did that – some were even good. What mattered to me was that they existed. That was all. And that’s what still matters — although the good ones do make me a little proud.
Today, as we drove from one house to another, certain thought patterns played over and over again in my head. Pennsylvania countryside sliding by, bright winter sunshine and frigid temperatures. Chris Stapleton in the background. I thought about how I didn’t acknowledge the new year, how I didn’t acknowledge Ben’s last Pittsburgh home game. How would people know that it mattered to me if I didn’t post on social? How would they know?!?
And then I reminded myself that people — whoever they are — don’t need to know and I don’t need to tell them. It doesn’t matter if strangers see a social media post of mine proclaiming a great afternoon lunch or a sports team allegiance. My life should just be my own and my joy should come from my own genuine enjoyment of whatever I am doing — without the need to tell the world and — either consciously o r unconsciously — ask for ‘likes’.
It’s a very hard lesson. I haven’t successfully learned it. I find comfort in the feedback — the public’s approval of my curated online life.
Blogging feels different for me – a little piece of my soul, my words. And people don’t read blogs anymore, anyway. Too much content, too much time commitment. Twitter is better – podcasts are better.
That’s okay. I find comfort in writing. I find comfort in screaming into my particular void — this blog, this platform that no one reads. (Well, I read it. It’s like re-visiting different versions of myself through time).
Anyway. We’re ‘home’. Y’know, our other home. Which is weird but also joyful. Tomorrow life revs its engine and Thursday it shifts into gear. Back into routine, husby back to work. Me back to trying to figure out what I’m doing and what I’m working toward.
Don’t worry, I’m figuring it out. 🙂
xox, g
Day 10
Lucy woke us up this morning at 4.51a.
The irony was that twice before we went to sleep we semi-joked about getting up at 5a to pack and head home. Clearly, Lucy not only listened but thought it was a terrific idea. After three nights of troubled sleep, issues with the heaters and the drinking water and two days of stress stress stress, we decided to call it.
We pulled out in the darkness, creeping slowly down the icy driveway and turning onto the main throughway. The sky was still blue-black and the moon hung low in the sky. We were tired. Mentally, physically, emotionally. It had been a long … long weekend.
I often write that time is a funny thing. I think about it a lot. Perceptions and viewpoints and the slippery nature of it. Tonight it feels as though the past two days are decades away. We merged onto the turnpike from the northeast extension and I felt the tension drop from my shoulders. We felt lighter, our conversation bubbled, we laughed.
John slid the truck beside the curb across from our driveway and we fell out, setting to the task of unpacking. Lucy stretched her legs and nosed the grass. Four hours and a lifetime in that drive. Four hours and the slow unwinding of anger and frustration, miscommunication and disappointment.
Four hours and the sun cresting the horizon, the terrain changing from snow covered to green and brown. Four hours and we came back to ourselves after somehow crossing over into a twilight reality of people who look like us but don’t feel like us.
It was a long weekend. And now, we are home.
Day 9
I miss Instagram because some days don’t need words. They need pictures.
Pennsylvania roads. Snow. Reminding me of joy, of gratitude. When joy and gratitude seem to elude me.
Xox, g
jack of all trades, master of none
It’s September.
I keep getting older, but I swear, time also goes by much faster! That’s a thing, right? Time speeds up as we age? I think it is.
We spent the last week of August in Hilton Head. We were scheduled to spend the first week of September, but Dorian interfered and HHI was mandatorily evacuated. So, that was a fun, unscheduled 13 hour drive (haha!).
On Wednesday August 28, with my Dad and my brother and my husband and my aunt and uncle (my mother’s siblings) and Jojo, we scattered some of my mother’s ashes. It was a beautiful evening, a perfect South Carolina sunset. We all felt the weight of the situation as we walked slowly toward the water. We didn’t speak. And my father, his voice broken and soft, scattered her ashes into the sand and sea.
Sometimes, it doesn’t feel as though she is gone. I feel like I haven’t talked to her in awhile, but that she’s just at the other end of the phone. And then I remember, or I go to the house and it feels hollow, as though something truly vital is missing. Because, it is. She is missing. She is gone and she will never come back.
I hear her voice in my head sometimes. Her laughter, though faint and faraway. I feel her expectations for my life, and I feel as though I am failing her.
I think about all the things I wish I had done, all the things I haven’t accomplished … and often, it just makes me feel tired. What is worth all that work? What exactly, is worth the time and money most things require? Anything?
I think about applying to law school, studying for the LSATs. I think about not going. All the debt, all the time … it didn’t, in the end, feel worth it at that time in my life.
I think about the restaurants, and the company I helped to build. I think about balancing checkbooks, and studying spreadsheets about food costs and labor percentages. I think … yeah, I did that for awhile. It was interesting. But I don’t want to do that any more. It isn’t fulfilling.
I think about grad school, and taking classes and getting a masters or a PhD. And then I wonder … why? Just to prove to myself that I can? What do I plan to do with all that knowledge? … Nothing. I have no plans for it.
In our ever-changing society, it beomes hard to know what the best choice is — becoming an expert in something (anything?) or knowing a little bit about a lot of things and leveraging that toward success. Also, do I need a masters in creative writing to write? Elizabeth Gilbert says that I do not. So why spend the money?
It’s really about discipline. It’s about drive. What do I want to succeed in … and how can I go about doing it? If there was something, I’m sure I could find a way. I mean, I leveraged fifteen years of waiting tables to do what I did for seven years in restaurants (not important, but director stuff). I made that a success when i could have kept taking people’s dinner orders. I just don’t know what I want to do. I have no idea.
Anyway. That’s what’s on my mind today.
xox, g
Life lessons learned riding Septa
It was a long ride home last week.
I am at the very end of my current employment, and the train ride from our home into Center City is brutally long. It’s long when the train is an express, usually clocking in around an hour and ten minutes. But when it’s a local, it’s closer to an hour and forty minutes. And that’s just the time I spend on the train. Not waiting for it, not walking or driving to and from. Just me, sitting in a pleather seat, watching South Eastern Pennsylvania slip by, day after day.
I began thinking, as I watched all the other passengers riding with me on the Paoli/Thorndale line, about all the lessons I’ve learned. About myself, but also about life. While commuting on Regional Rail for the past year and a half.
First, timeliness is everything.
Y’know that saying, early is on time, on time is late, and late is fired? It applies to Septa. And it should apply to all aspects of life. I used to be habitually late. I mean, you could set clocks knowing that I would be fifteen minutes late … at the very least. But I learned really fast: that didn’t fly with Septa.
Think about it this way. If your train is at 6.50am (which mine is) and you arrive at 6.50am, the train is gliding away from the station. You’re late. I mean, technically, you’re on time. But you’re actually late. If you get there after 6.50a you are just plain out of luck. In order to be on the train, making your way laboriously into the city, you have to be early for your 6.50a train. It’s not negotiable.
Now, Septa can be late. And without fail, they are.
But YOU can’t be late. And knowing that, living your life by that, helps give structure, and teaches you to appreciate timeliness. In all aspects.
On that subject, when I made the adjustment from driving to commuting via train, I began to prioritize my life. When you drive, time is loose. Maybe you stop for a coffee en route. Maybe you sleep in one morning. Maybe you leave the office at 5pm. Maybe you don’t. You have a lot more freedom, but with that freedom (let’s say it together now) comes responsibility.
When I started to have a set time for work, I began to be more efficient with my tasks, prioritizing things that needed to be completed in the morning, things that could wait until the afternoon, and projects that could be spread across a few days. I began to know exactly what needed to be done when, and how to do all of the things I needed to do within the time allotted.
I began getting home at a reasonable time every night. Eating dinner with my husband. Taking my dog for a walk. Knowing that I did the best work I could during the hours of the day that had been ear-marked for work. And that my evenings were my own. (Sort of. I work in the restaurant industry, so really, no time is truly your own. It’s all the restaurant’s time).
All because Septa only goes to Thorndale once an hour — even during peak hours. If I missed a train, I had to wait an entire hour, and get home even later. That stopped being okay in the first two months. It was exhausting, and I had no quality of life. At all.
Something else about Septa.
Everyone is equal. There isn’t a first class. There are no special seats. We all shuffle in, grab a seat, and hope that our seat mate showered that morning. When the train is overly packed, the conductor speaks to the car like everyone is an adult with a brain. He tells us that he’s not coming through to check our tickets. To please show him when getting off the train. He thanks everyone for their cooperation.
Everyone.
Not just me, the thirty-something white woman. But the Indian and Hispanic people, the black men and women. The Asians and the Arabs. The women wearing hijabs. The mother with three children. The man with the seeing eye dog.
All of us. As equals.
Every person riding Septa has a story. Mine is pretty basic. I live in the countryside of Chester County, but I work in Center City. I commute during peak hours. Sometimes later, when I stay to have dinner with my girlfriends. Sometimes earlier, when I have to be at Penn for medication. There are other people like me. But there are other stories, as well. Students riding in for classes at Drexel, Penn or Temple. Men and women traveling to see a relative or loved one. Someone commuting to the airport. Someone who just got divorced. Someone who just lost someone. Someone suffering through IVF. Someone with cancer.
Septa is the great equalizer.
We all show up on time. Or we miss our train. We all share seats. We all smile when someone sits down, or gets up. There are some exceptions (Septa isn’t utopia, people) but there are common courtesies that are observed on Septa. Every night, the conductor wishes me a pleasant evening. When people are lost, or confused, he helps them. He maintains order in the microcosm of Septa.
I bet I’ve sat next to many a Trump supporter on the train.
I shudder thinking about it. But I also think about how we are all just people on Septa. Just people making our way through life. I’ve had so many people help me on Septa. When I was new, and completely terrified, people pointed me in the right direction. When I jumped on a train, people let me know where it was going. When I haven’t been able to lift a bag, someone has helped me.
And even when trains are delayed, or schedules are modified, or trains are pulled off the tracks or strikes affect travel… People band together on Septa. People watch out for each other. It’s sort of heart-warming.
Anyway. I am eternally grateful to Septa for making the past year and a half bearable. I am grateful that instead of gripping my steering wheel in utter frustration, I could lean my head back and close my eyes. I am grateful for learning timeliness. And the greatness of people.
Thank you, Septa Regional Rail Paoli/Thorndale line.
D5 Creation