It's a tender grey, overcast day in Somerville, Massachusetts. I'm sitting on the floor in the living room of our unfurnished apartment looking out through the bay window over the roof- and treetops of our neighborhood, watching the branches sway in a light breeze. The past two days have been bright and busy and swelteringly hot so the cool air and Sunday pace are a welcome respite from somewhat unforgiving conditions. I can hear little kids playing in the park downstairs but otherwise it is a quiet day on our little avenue and I am delighted to be here.
The cross-country drive was long and un-scenic, but apart from two atrocious motels out of four ("Dead Whore Motels", Stan's mom said) and the unhealthy feeling of sitting still all day eating road food, I found the drive relatively pleasant. Stan drove most of the way and we listened to books on tape: The Kite Runner and, of all things, Faulkner. It's been ten years since I last read The Sound and the Fury and I had forgotten it completely so when we picked it up of the shelf at the bookstore I was thinking-
Hey, this is a classic! A good old dose of Americana to enjoy as we
drive across a long swath of America, not realizing what we would be in for. It actually turned out to be the perfect road novel because it kept us wide awake for miles and miles if only because we had to listen *so hard* to figure out what the hell was going on. Also it prompted lots of good pit-stop plot discussion and jokes about nerding out on hard-core Literature as we go Harvard-ho (ha-ha!). Also regarding the road trip in general: this country over-subsidizes the production of corn. I thought so before, but now I REALLY have reason to believe it but that's another post altogether...
We drove I-80 to I-90, stopping to sleep in Cheyenne, Des Moines, Perrysburg (Toledo), OH and Liverpool, NY. There was much discussion of detouring to visit friends along the way (Hi Tom! Hi Chris and Sarah, sorry to have not seen you after all!), but with our inconvenient mini-van full of all our worldly possessions and with the poor time we made over Labor Day weekend, in the end we both felt like we needed to just keep on truckin', which actually was a very good assessment. At a steady pace and with a couple of brief stops along the highway for national landmark viewing (Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Disneyla- Niagara Falls) we rolled into Boston in perfect time to (fumble wildly at the last minute to try to figure out how to get from the highway to our neighborhood without a detailed city street map and to) pull up at our new place, find the keys in the mailbox, haul our little carload up three flights to our apartment, hop back in the van and (more wild fumbling) deliver it to the airport almost exactly 120 hours from the time we picked it up in Salt Lake (e.g. in time to not have to pay another red cent for the thing). That night we unpacked a fully-equipped kitchen, inflated the pads for our sleeping bags and tucked in on the floor. We did not bring one stick of furniture.
Our Big Agnes bags and pads were comfortable enough for sleeping but we were really hurting in the apartment for A) a place to sit and B) light sources, so we spent Friday Craig's List-ing and making trips to Goodwill and Family Dollar. (Thank God for ample WiFi freeloading opportunities because otherwise we'd be nowhere even by this point.) Friday night I dialed in the weekend yard sales and we spent Saturday hitting the pavement in meltingly hot weather in hopes that somebody's trash would be our treasure, as it were, and not too trashy at that. At the first sale we hit all we could do was laugh as we found ourselves buying EVEN MORE KITCHEN STUFF (sure it's great to be able to spin salad, but in the meantime what is a person to sit on?), which we then had to drop off at our apartment before we headed in to Harvard Square to hit a benefit sale.
Visiting the Harvard campus the weekend before orientation starts in the fall was an experience I'll never forget. It presented a quintessential snapshot of our cultural image of The University Experience. It was like every movie you've ever seen about college: scared-looking First Years arriving with their folks, driving up to the residence halls in minivans, checking and double-checking schedules and supply lists. There were parents everywhere, busting with pride over Junior, yet inventing excuses to delay, excited and nervous about leaving their babies at the mercy of this big, dog-eat-dog Ivy League world. And man is it ever prestigious- I could very well have tripped over the duffel bag of the future Secretary of State, and Stan swears he saw Chuck Schumer dropping off a daughter or somebody. This "Hahvahd" is serious business (yet the support/admin staff have turned out to be as chimp-like as anyplace; hopefully that bodes well for a bright bulb like me getting a job around here...). The whole scene is significantly difference from my own experience, but I recognize what it means, how significant it is to be associated with such a venerable institution. I'm really excited for Stan to be a part of it.
We bought two sturdy, non-atrocious wooden chairs at the benefit sale and then fled the insanity of the Harvard Square scene, taking our chairs with us on the subway, where we had our picture taken to document this particular aspect of the pervading Back to School theme that dominates the area at this time of the year. It was so hot that we decided to stop in for Lesbian Day (comforting to know they've got that here, too) at the hardware store in Porter Square and buy a little window air conditioner to make our lives more bearable in the sweltering weather, which lasted until exactly the end of that day, and then it turned chilly and overcast. Stan carried the AC home and I carried our two chairs; I am still sporting bruises on each of my hips from the wood knocking against them...
...Now it's many hours later and dark out and I'm sitting on my living room floor drinking espresso and eating three squares of bittersweet chocolate with hazelnuts. Stan is out in the middle of the room in the new-to-us ubiquitous Ikea armchair we bought today from a couple of grad students near Porter Square. Our square is called Davis and we walked back here from Porter in single file carrying our chair and its matching ottoman and getting The Look all the way. The Look is what people give you as you toil down the street carrying large, unwieldy objects. The Look is what they give before they refuse to budge- not even an inch- so you can pass them on the sidewalk to maintain the arduous pace that is barely getting you there with your quite large, very unwieldy object. This has been my first experience with The Look because The Look is distinctly NOTa western phenemenon, not this look anyway. Under similar circumstances a Westerner would simply look surprised, maybe a little confused, and probably offer to help. Not here. Here sometimes The Look is delivered with empathy and a sense of humor, more
often with annoyance, but most typically with a total ambivalence. Always The Look tells you, "This
is the price."
I was starting to hate The Look, but after three days of serious scouring for basic household needs- like, you know, something to sit on- I have already grown accustomed. This is the price- and now we have 2 sturdy kitchen chairs, 1 not-unattractive armchair, a small-but-useful folding table (temporary desk for me) and a nice new comfortable mattress to show for it. Oh- and a broom. I am starting to be a little stressed about not working since it seems like we're hemorrhaging money on home supplies. But that's what it takes to start a home and I can't tell you how happy I am to call Massachusetts my home right now. It's exactly where I want to be and I think whatever the price (and it ain't cheap in some ways [so long, friends]), it's worth it to have landed, here, in this particular place; I hope to make the most of it.
(P.S. Pics will be up on Flickr in the next day or two...)
