Days Five and Six: Defying Gravity (sort of)

Days Five and Six

I didn't write anything yesterday for two separate but equally valid reasons. First, I have to admit that the type of (mis)adventures so common on the rest of the trip heretofore simply didn't occur on the journey from St. Charles, Missouri to Zanesville, Ohio. The trip was remarkable in that it was wholly unremarkable. It was long, to be sure—10 hours on the road in total, including a stop or two for food and to satiate the velociraptor. Otherwise, not much to report. All in all, while it provides me little fodder for the type of self-satire in which I've been engaged over the past week, I find myself grateful for the respite.

The second reason has to do with what I suspect was a cruel joke played by either a previous guest in our Zanesville hotel room, the housekeeping staff, or...perhaps the Albanians are on to me. In any case, we are to meet Frank Dickson, my ex-father-in-law (or Beth's dad, as some may know him) for breakfast at—you got it—Bob Evans. After waking up and checking the clock, which reads 9:30, I call Frank and set a meeting time of 10:30. Despite the kids still being asleep, I've no doubt that they'll be easily roused when they realize it's time to hang with “Grandpa Pop.” “Grandpa Pop” is the name given to Frank by Harper, who couldn't quite wrap her 2 year-old brain around “Pap-Paw” when she first met him. It's actually a very wonderful name, though, because it's one that both of my younger kids have taken to calling a man who is no relation to them at all. Rather, as he's prone to do, Frank has adopted my two youngest as part of his own family—in exactly the way he's done for J, and in the way that he's continued to consider me a close relative despite having divorced his favorite daughter ten years ago.

I have cause here to reflect upon how unique and terrific our particular extended “family” really is. See, because some asshole set the clock in our room back by almost forty minutes (which means that when I'm talking to Frank it's actually after 10:00 already), we are 15 minutes late to breakfast. (Since I always write in the mornings, this precludes me from doing so today.) This is significant because it gives us a much better vantage point of the scene on the front steps of Bob Evans, where Frank awaits. It just so happens that he's joined by Beth's brother, Dan, and his two kids (although the moniker hardly applies any more since they're both so damn old now) Jessie and Slade. Also present is Beth's sister, Corinne, her husband, Rick, and their two boys, JC and Alex. We are in total shock. These people, unrelated to us in every way but the one that counts—mutual care and affection—have turned out to greet us on our cross-country odyssey. And on the 4th of July, no doubt. Our little group numbers 12, and we proceed to take over the Bob Evans for two hours. There is no awkwardness here. No signs of forced kindness, no disingenuousness. Just the wonderful Dickson clan, coming out to support some of their own. I cannot begin to describe how much this means to us, and how it buoys J and me as we prepare for the last legs of the trip. We make plans to host any and all of the Dicksons should they want to come to NYC, and also to drive out to Ohio sometime when we have Molly (or even when we don't) to stay a few days. I find myself missing them terribly as we drive away.

We drive to the Zanesville Lowe's, where I drop 800 bucks on two air conditioning units for our new place. As I later find out, it's supposed to top 100 degrees on the day of our move-in (welcome to the Big Apple, SUCKERS!) and our apartment has no built-in A/C. Well, this is simply unacceptable. Right? So I load up with about 1.75 times the BTUs we need to cool our 1,200 square feet. I throw both units in the back of the dinosaur truck (whose payload has now been completely thrust into disarray thanks ENTIRELY TO THE WONDERFUL STATE OF INDIANA WHICH CANNOT SEEM TO MAINTAIN ITS GODDAMN INTERSTATES AT ALL). We stop for gas (of course) and head out.

Harper is back in the truck with me, and we have a good time looking out for bridges, rivers, cows, and other roadside novelties. I find myself missing Liam a good bit. The only chances I've had to see him for the past week have been in hotels and restaurants, and in both of those types of places I've been far more occupied in my role as enforcer of social order than as dad and playmate. I've noticed that it's taken its toll, too—every time I go to push a straw through his kids' cup or buckle him in to his car seat he says, “I want Mommy do it.” Ouch. But I understand. I tell myself that one of my first orders of personal business upon our arrival in Brooklyn is to reintroduce myself to him. And to let him hit me in the balls with a baseball bat, which is something I suspect he misses doing a great deal. Ah, the old days.

The drive to State College, PA—where we plan to meet up with my friend Keith Bailey, who is the Director of the e-Learning Institute of the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State (helluva job title, ain't it?)--is great. We leave the comfort of I-70 in favor of a shortcut right up the gut of central Pennsylvania and the Allegheny Mountains. This shortcut, unlike any other I have EVER taken, works perfectly. It takes us through Greenburg, Johnstown, and other places I'd never have occasion to visit and culminates with a stunning view of the Alleghenies from I-99 as we drop into State College. We plan to attend the Penn State fireworks display (on its website listed as the third largest in the country), but are deterred by the huge crowds and our own fatigue. We settle for watching the display in NYC on the television. Jess asks if we could see it from our new apartment. I tell her probably not, but we could walk to where we could. She smiles. We share a “we're really doing this, aren't we?” moment; these have become more and more frequent over the past few days. Also, this evening the children discover fireflies. Harper first notices them outside the hotel window, and so, while the NYC fireworks shoot off on the TV, we dim the rest of the lights and enjoy fireworks of a more natural variety. It's as if the lightning bugs knew we couldn't see the PSU fireworks from our hotel, so they got together by the hundreds and put on a command performance for us. We'd like it on record that we are very grateful to them for that.

We briefly Skype Nana, who has her friends Mary, Betty, Susan, and Lee with her. This makes us all happy in different ways. The kids love to see their Nana, and think Skype's pretty damn cool. Jess likes to see the kids happy, and she's recently realized how much friendship she has come to enjoy with my mother. As for me, well, I have to admit that it's just good to see my mom. Dammit, we always fight like crazy but I do miss her a ton and have not an insignificant amount of mixed feelings about leaving her with no grandkids in Happy Valley. But she seems to be doing well, and I'm glad she's surrounded by friends. Betty had pulled me aside last Sunday when I went to say goodbye to my mom's crew at Immaculate Heart and assured me that they would take care of her. Again, another reason to be grateful.

So I suppose that's the theme of this. Gratefulness. Appreciation. For all of those people (and fireflies) who have chipped in to lift us up along the way, to give us a place to feel welcomed, and to overlook their own needs to help us through the long, strange, trip it's been. J and I talked the other night about our increasing excitement about arriving in Brooklyn. I noted that the farther away we've gotten from the gravitational pull of the Grand Valley, the closer we've come to that of New York City—so it would follow that our anticipation would be on the rise. What I didn't consider until now, though, is that those two gravitational fields are not mutually exclusive. That is, we'll always be pulled in both directions at once. We'll never be 100 percent at home in the City, just as we were never 100 percent at home in the Valley. This doesn't mean, though, that we belong to neither. It means we belong to both. And in so belonging, I suspect we'll find this balance we've been seeking.

At least that's the plan.