Six new cookbooks on my coffee table, Jane. A nice haul from this year's conference, a sweet reminder that once again I managed to get home safely from yet another long road trip.
The big difference between my old trips and this one is that I rode in from Spokane last night without a notepad by my side. I did have a van full of boxes and bags and books to fret over, a co-worker by my side to chat with and a head full of fatique to keep me busy. I was tired from a too soft hotel bed, from too much wine the night before and a very long conference week. Somehow even that little speaking engagment I shared with my colleagues managed to take it out of me. I have to wonder how I ever handled all that storytelling I used to do as a children's librarian oh so long ago.
Riding and writing at the same time can be hazardous but it was something I did regularly during those Boise roadtrips back in the spring of '06. Once I got home home I would try to decipher the scribbles I managed to jot down at seventy miles a hour, then tried to figure out where and when I put them down along the way so I could match them up against my mental road map of the trip, then put two plus two together and wrap it all up in a email to you. Those road trips which I loved so dearly then seem so long ago now. The last trip I took back there in November ended up being a true dark night of my soul experience. I've already related to you how that old NWPTS57 email box was left open, how my small stack of letters to Mi Novia were discovered but how an even bigger cache of letters was discovered and opened up. Letters that I had written to you over the last few years. Seems that even now, four years after the fact, that you are still influencing my life.
Four years ago I took the very same trip that I took this last week. It was a strange conference for me. I only got to go because a fellow staffer dropped out, and so that put me on the road at the last minute. That round of travel, both coming and going, was done in the dark. I couldn't quite get the "feel" of that conference. I suppose it had to do with the fact that I didn't really know the in's and out's of conferencing back then outside of chatting with old colleagues, eating meals and attending workshops. The ride back home was a somewhat hard one, too, one that I shared in a tandem two car sort of way with a salesgal from some Seattle book concern that I met during the vendor's meet and greet. I think that small event somehow presaged the upcoming summer debacle and added to the already simmering pot of trouble that was stewing in my life at the time. You came into my life well before Spokane but were already part of the grand unraveling, we just didn't know it yet.
So, when I contrast those very rough and rugged times with the trip I just finished up, I have to wonder what sort of low grade level of maturity I was working with back then. "If I knew then what I know now" is a phrase that has been circling the wagons around in my head all week long. So much has happened between now and then that I feel like I'm living a completely different life in a whole new package of skin. Who was that man that went to that last conference? Certainly not the man who lives on Kitsap Street these days. I've had no choice but to change, to grow up, yet still recognizing that some things are outside my realm of influence. Such is life.
But know that somethings never change. I never bothered to do more than just check my email this week, leaving Mi Novia in the dark and more than likely enlightening her all at the same time as to the status of our relationship. I also maintained an almost daily phone connection with My Estranged One, if only to make sure that the phone bridge remained strong and unchanged for the sake of our kids and our good relations. And know that I once again became a victim of my ragged heart. I must admit to this small thing, to seeing someone from across a room that I wanted to talk to a bit more, so I left an email address with so that she could send me a bibliography of the materials she booktalked during her workshop. Stupid, I know, but let me tell you why.
She looked like you.
My life is turning into a Lyle Lovett song. I still remember that one February road trip I took, the one after that night the Muzurkas and Lyle seranaded our bliss. I took that Lyle Lovett and his Big Band tape along with me and played the hell out of it on those long and cold thousand miles. What song should be on it but "I married her because she looked like you". What song do you think was playing in my head all the way back home from Spokane? Yeah, that song.
What's funny is that you could have been that woman by now. You could have been in I-School this year, finishing up that MLS we talked about that spring. You could have been in front of that workshop on Friday talking up children's books. It could have been you, and from a distance, with these old eyes and this endlessly hopeful Mexican heart beating inside my chest, that gal practically was.
So, know that while I didn't write down any notes to you on this trip I was endlessly referencing you along the way in my mind and in my conversation with colleagues. That I found things to stick in an envelope to send along to you someday. And that I found some sort of peace with you that only comes with committed dedication to stilling the waters and wishing for some sort of salvation, a salvation that will only happen when I manage to reconcile the past and the present and make some sort of sense of my goals, needs and desires outside of those I had with you.
And while I can't write any more post trip emails to you or make any plans involving you in my life I can still take road trips and collect cookbooks along the way, and that, my dear Patroness of Cookbooks, is reason enough to say that you came along for the ride, both then and now.
Your WHMB
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