country mouse comes home
Posted on May 8, 2007
Filed Under another dread disease, marriage, parenting, snark | 9 Comments
I did it. I went. I abandoned ill children and carried my guilty self to New York for my 48 hour dose of Bright Lights, Big City. And it was wonderful and exhausting and not entirely worth the drama of my return, but I’m glad I got away, if only briefly. And it’s true what they say about NYC; it’s the city that never sleeps and how could it with road crews working with jack hammers in the streets all night and sirens blaring and someone in the apartment upstairs either sharpening huge pencils with an industrial strength contraption OR chopping up their spouse into tiny pieces with a rotary saw at 3 a.m.? There’s also the issue of space and makeshift guest arrangements that include blow up mattresses that simulate sleep on a raft but without the gentle roll of waves and only a hard floor and that noisy neighbor as accompaniments.
Settling into an evening with high school friends proved comfortably familiar. Truthfully, nothing has changed much at all in fifteen years even though there are now spouses and children and careers that should somehow make it all different. It was easy and cozy, like slipping back into an old and favorite sweatshirt. And never mind that the restaurant at which we had a reservation for 17 had double booked our table and we all had to cab it across town to find a place that could accommodate such a large number on such short notice or that drinks at the Bowery Hotel cost $15 a pop even though they’re stingy with the alcohol.
I like to think we could go another 15 years without a re acquaintance and it would be as simple and effortless to pick up where we left off on Saturday night. I will make a quiet comment that I think the bartender forgot the Kettle One in my Kettle One and tonic and my dear friend Jess, who I’ve know since I was thirteen, will, again, just as he did at 2 a.m. on Saturday night, grab my glass and pour half of his own drink directly into mine and say, “I’ve learned to order everything straight-up, no mixers. Let me fix that up for you.” And I will think, now that’s friendship.
As I drove the Mass Pike towards home yesterday evening I began to run hopeful scenarios in my head. I played out the return in myriad versions: dinner prepared in a tidy house, the great mound of mulch having been spread into neatly raked gardens beds, grass seed sprouting, having been watered in all weekend, squealing relief from mom-sick children, a thankful Better Half who had shrugged off his usual weekend slacker role and really stepped into my shoes to make my vacation all the better for having returned to order and accomplishment.
But, while driving alone, head full of mucus and about two hours of sleep under my belt, I really was just setting myself up for a huge let down. Somewhere between New Haven and Hartford I had to stop for a caffeine infusion, something to keep the thoughts of my joyful homecoming from lulling me to sleep. Now shouldn’t there be some law that the highway sign advertising the Dunkin Donuts at the Wallingford exit must disclose that the restaurant is actually ten minutes out of the way and in the middle of absolutely nowhere? AND shouldn’t Dunkin Donuts be required to post an addendum to their highway signage disclosing the fact that the Coolata machine is broken? No Coolata. Only yesterday’s ice coffee and a chocolate donut hole to tide me over until I returned to the true disappointment…an empty house with the wastebaskets overflowing, the floors covered in pet hair and dried mud and a weekends worth of cracker crumbs and cornflakes. The mulch remained in a huge heap beside the garage. The screens were stacked on the front stoop having made it up from the basement and no further. There was no new hose or working sprinkler or sprouting grass seed and the cats swirled at my feet crying for food and a clean litter box and fresh water.
The children and My Better Half returned from the hardware store where they had finally bought that new hose and sprinkle set, some ten minutes before my return, to find me mopping and vacuuming, weeping, blowing my nose and FUMING. The resulting colossal argument goes down on record as the single most contentious feud of our ten years of marriage. And I didn’t sleep again last night, not because of raft like accommodations or the sounds of dismemberment from upstairs apartment, but because disappointment and resentment are profoundly energizing. No matter how few hours of sleep one has had in the past two nights, or how vicious and debilitating the cold one has caught from her children, there’s just no way one can relax into a rage. And so I’m very tired, feeling evil and serpent-like today.
Oh, and did I mention that this morning when I crawled from bed stiff with the anger that has settled in my joints and made my way down to the mudroom to let the dog out, she bolted from the back door in pursuit of a small duck that had lost its way, injured and confused and roosting on my lawn. The duck tried to fly to safety and instead crashed into the garden shed and hobbled off to die in the bushes beside the driveway. So I have a dead duck, a deadbeat husband and 100 yards of mulch to deal with. Good times.
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