Minor miracles

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The agent at the Air Canada desk wore red from head to toe, the exact hue of the maple leaf on the Canadian flag. Her hair was shiny and neat, with not a strand out of place. She had the serene countenance of a Madonna. She took Dave’s passport, printed his ticket, and checked his bag.

Then it was my turn. I smiled and made eye contact. I am a happy traveler. It’s a great day for flying. With every airport employee on the alert for indicators of a person who might create a disturbance or bomb a plane, I was aiming to project an air of cheerful normality. “It’s nice and quiet in here today,” I remarked.

“It’s early,” Madonna said. “It gets very busy later.”

Dave put my roller bag on the scale.

I am a confident human with good people skills who loves nine-hour flights. I handed her my passport. In the process my elbow contacted a plexiglass display. Brochures cascaded to the floor. “Sorrysorrysorry!” I said. “I’m a butterfingers!”

“Think nothing of it,” she said.

Dave and I retrieved and restacked the brochures. Madonna handed me my ticket. “Take care,” she said, and pointed us in the direction of the security line.

“We’re definitely in an airport,” Dave said as we left.

I’m a hot mess when I fly. Dave admits to feeling uncomfortable about holding onto his tickets and passport, but he masks much better than I can. Managing documents, getting through security, finding gates, paying for things, walking in the correct direction…these are activities that I can handle okay in most circumstances. However, when I’m especially nervous, worried about my plane falling from the sky, say, something happens to my proprioception. My fingers and arms and legs go hazy and drift.

I’d knocked over the display, but at least I hadn’t dropped my passport or ticket. So far. On this leg of the journey.

We cleared security without triggering a pat-down and located our departure gate. Then we went to a nearby place for breakfast. In the process of sitting down for my coffee Americano and Sacher torte—the last pastry of Vienna!—I tangled my right foot in my left sock. As I disentangled I bumped our table, causing a mini tempest in our coffee cups, but fortunately no spillage. “Close one, Jean!” Dave said.

I can’t wait to get on the plane and start Season Two of Succession. I am a happy traveler.

 Dave is used to it, but my clumsy tendencies must be annoying for the people movers at the airport. You’d think I’d have adjusted better, given that for the past ten days I’d been a person being moved constantly. Through castles, concert halls, and cafés; onto and off of trams, trains, and boats; to the cash registers of gift shops and bookstores. I’d mostly been able to avoid irritating others in a major way except in the airports of Boston, Toronto, and Vienna. Where I had repeatedly dropped my documents, presented the wrong tickets, tripped on the travelator, and failed to scan any item without human assistance.

We settled into seats at the gate. The caffeine and sugar had pepped me up. Way up. Jittery might be the word. Perhaps I’d grown too accustomed to the teeny cups of Viennese coffee (just four ounces, who can function on four ounces of coffee?) and the Americano had been too much. One-and Two-and Three-and Four! Happy! Travel! Normal girl! I tapped my toes and snapped my book pages in rhythm, loud enough to generate a small sigh from Dave.

As we lined up at last for the jet bridge I was thrilled to see Madonna, who had appeared to help sort us travelers into zones one through five. As she’d predicted, things had become very busy. Her hair was still sleek, and her face was calm.

“Hello again!” I said.

“Good morning,” she said. “Enjoy your flight.”

I will enjoy my flight! I am a happy traveler. Ahead there was a final obstacle, a pair of ticket scanners and turnstiles. My pulse ticked upwards. I am a competent person! I have successfully scanned many items. But I got the ticket a little crooked; it refused to scan. The man staffing the entrance told me to try again. My jittery fingers got the ticket going crooked in the opposite direction. The staffer reached a hand out to help, but before he could straighten it, a miracle happened. The light turned green and the turnstile unlocked. “You’re good to go,” he said.

I glanced back as I started down the bridge. Madonna was watching me, her mouth quirked. I was, for the moment, truly a happy traveler.

Report from Vienna

Have you ever been targeted by the kiosk salespeople at the mall? “Miss!—“ (or, equally likely in my case, “Ma’am!—“) they say, trying for eye contact. “Can I ask you a question?” Some of them open with a compliment, such as “Hey, I love your glasses!”

I’ve never found a comfortable way to say no, so I go into avoidance mode. I increase my walking speed to a trot, stare straight ahead, shake my head vigorously, even occasionally say “No!” much too loudly.

I feel terrible about doing this, but not as terrible as I would if I had to explain my purchase of Dead Sea face wash or a psychedelic yard ornament to my husband Dave.

I found Vienna’s version of the kiosk salesperson quite disarming. Maybe it’s because the tourist thing can be a little lonely. For most of the week Dave and I have sat and stood and walked from point to point, on planes and trains, next to people who are trying politely to ignore one other. Our social interactions have been with each other and with people who are trying to meet our tourist needs in a pleasant, but efficient, way so that they can move on to the next customer.

Every kiosk man (there are probably kiosk women and kiosk nonbinary people, but I don’t know if I saw any) has a brightly colored rolling suitcase that opens out to become a little counter. These counters are especially pervasive near the opera house and the palaces.

Our kiosk guy spent quite a bit of time trying to reassure us that his concert was going to be a spectacular event. Dave and I hung on every word. Picture it, he said: A historic hall in a historic theater, everything glittering! The orchestra dressed in 18th century-style breeches and colorful coats (I’d look up the name but I am pressed for time today—I am racing through this blog while Dave is taking a nap before dinner). The musicians would have buckles on their shoes and wigs on their heads, something like the wig our poor kiosk man is wearing himself. That wig had gone a little limp in the current heatwave, over 90 degrees every day so far, but it’s still a nice touch. He took us through the program, humming a theme from each piece.

He told us that it had just so happened that there were a few seats left, all good, some extraordinary, super-first class, with others still very good, just with a lesser view. All were a bargain for discerning patrons such as ourselves. We were  footsore and happy to stand still for the pitch, and we bought a pair of the still-quite-good tickets.

The concert hall was warm, but impressive. Lots to keep my eyes occupied: columns and sculptures and paintings and our fellow concertgoers’ lovely outfits. The musicians were in place for a downbeat at 8:15 exactly. The period costumes looked uncomfortably toasty. I was reminded of an octet I played in years ago. We performed tunes from the 1600s and 1700s at various events while dressed in colonial garb: white breeches, red jackets (or maybe blue—this was was a long time ago), and black hats. The costumes always felt unsuited for the ambient temperature, too hot or too cold, and my hat was too big and would tip to non-period angles, annoying the leader.

The Viennese musicians were too professional to reveal any discomfort, and the concert turned out about as expected. Beautiful music, competently performed, no number longer than eight minutes. Opera singers popped in with arias from time to time, and the conductor had the audience clap along to the Radetzky March and some other pieces. The wigs stayed in place.

The First District streets were much quieter late at night. The kiosk men had departed. We made our way back to the hotel in silence.

Foibles

Brown Sugar Crumble, Hazelnut Cream, Blueberry Cobbler, Mocha. I picked Brown Sugar Crumble and eagerly popped the top of the Keurig machine. There would rest a cartridge from the last person who’d used the device, either myself or, more likely, my husband Dave. Zing! It was a Brown Sugar Crumble, too. I had achieved my good luck for the day.

This silly habit livens up my mornings. Some might call it a foible, which is the term for the weakest part of a sword blade and has come to mean also “a minor weakness or peculiarity in someone’s character,” according to vocabulary.com. The Collins Dictionary agrees that foibles are considered “rather strange, foolish, or bad,” while the Cambridge English Dictionary reassures that the characteristic is, however, “seen as not important and not harming anyone.”

Peculiar but harmless—is that going to be my legacy?  At least I’ll have company. Dave was pottering about, fixing a snack, and I told him about my habit of checking for coffee pod continuity. He revealed that he does the same thing.

Isn’t it reassuring to realize that some foibles are shared? I do that too! is a pleasant surprise, a Zing. Not so satisfying when the reaction is a Ding: I never do that. Disclosing a foible is always a bit risky. If I’m driving at night and someone blinks their headlights at me, I don’t wait until they’re out of sight to turn mine on, as Dave does. And Dave—according to another recent, foible-related dialogue—doesn’t walk around our town’s streets trying to figure out how old they and the houses on them are. He chuckled, in fact, and suggested that I use my mad house-history skillz while we’re in Vienna. 

We’re leaving for Vienna soon; it’s this summer’s big adventure. None of the information I’ve absorbed about the streets and residences of Randolph will do me much good there. Our town is a mere 230 years old. Vienna’s official history dates to the first century A.D., when the Romans set up a military camp there and named it Vindobona, which camp became an official town (a municipium) in the year 212. The current layout of Vienna’s First District reflects the way that the Romans organized things. Eventually Vienna became a medieval trade center, and then the capital city of several empires (Holy Roman, Austrian and Austro-Hungarian), and then capital of the Republic of Austria. Over the last couple of millennia the city’s gobbled up surrounding towns, and as well it’s periodically rebuilt itself after various sieges, bombings, and occupations. Sometimes the rebuilding is done in an antique style so as to harmonize with what was destroyed. We’ll be wandering streets with Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Art Nouveau, brutalist, modernist, and neo-all-of-these constructions. “Older than us, probably,” I plan to tell Dave, if he asks about dates.

The architectural styles of Randolph aren’t nearly as varied. 230 is relatively ancient for an American town. Beyond trails that became the big roads, there’s not much officially left of the Cochato and Ponkapoag tribes, who called this area Cochaticquom. From 1793 through the Second World War Randolph’s inhabitants mostly subsistence-farmed and made shoes. There are still a few houses from before 1900, mostly on the old thoroughfares, some announcing their age on plaques next to the front door. The shoe business went bust in the 1990s, and highways were built, and the town became a Boston suburb. This required new streets and new houses. Subdivisions with tract housing were easy and affordable for builders and buyers. Slowly one thing became another thing, hard for its old self to recognize.

This spring I began looking up the construction dates of the neighborhoods as I walked them. I don’t know why I started; some rabbit holes just seem irresistible. Eventually I began to make my own guesses. Were the ranch houses with carports from the ‘60s? Mostly! Bungalows: ‘50s? Wrong! Mostly earlier than that. Split-levels: ‘70s, yup. Colonials with two-car garages: ‘90s. It’s built a sort of local history in my head, and I’ve had fun imagining what it was like on various streets when the homes were shiny and new.

My serial obsession with whens and whats. The compulsion to (over)share. Peculiarities or flaws? All that information puddling in my brain about writing instruments and maps and swans and holidays, does it really need to make its way onto paper? It’s got drawbacks, such as my disappointment when a pet theory proves wrong. Like my speculation that there had to be a scripture verse in some version of the Bible  prohibiting plaster lions and grottoed saints in the same garden. I couldn’t find any such verse, and it was a sad day, rather than the delight it should have been, when I happened on a yard with lions guarding a Bathtub Madonna.

This spring my silly brain has fastened on houses and my coffee compatibility rate, which is currently 68%. Vienna being famous for its coffee and its coffeehouses, I’ll be able to indulge these foibles simultaneously. I’m hoping that I come out of those coffeehouses with more Zings than Dings. 

Alien Sky

I drove west through spattering sun-rain, staring at patches of blue sky and scanning the clouds, which were gray. I kept a watchful eye out for anything orange. That afternoon a New York friend had posted a photo, taken by a professional photographer, of the Brooklyn Bridge. Everything was orange: the bridge, the river, and the sky. It looked as though aliens had bought the thing (the Brooklyn Bridge being perpetually on the market) and transported it to Mars; I wondered how much they might have paid.

My friend added a shot of the view from his workshop, where tangerine haze tinted the the buildings across the avenue. Not a pretty sunset color, streaked with purples and pinks and blues. It was the color of Tang made with the cloudy water you get when the town flushes the hydrants. The color of the end of the world, if the spirit of Robert Frost had his druthers.

“Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice” opens the famous poem. Frost bets on fire, and I hope this doesn’t reflect a preference. What sane person would rather burn than freeze? Especially someone whose last name is Frost. Who could prefer the fell, agonizing swoop of a burn to a beautiful, fatal blanket of snow?

Canada’s wildfires are raging, and their smoke plumes are settling all over the northeast United States. Maybe lightning strikes started some of them, but around 80% of wildfires are caused by humans, mostly by accident. In the most affected spots of Massachusetts, out in Worcester and west, the authorities are telling people to download air quality apps to their phones, stay indoors if at all possible, and wear N95 masks to filter out toxic particles. My part of the state had been relatively unaffected so far, but I was heading west and keeping a close eye. I didn’t want to breathe in something fatal, or to add that worry to my repertoire of obsessions.

Judging by his poems, Frost spent a fair amount of time dealing with bad weather, hornets, snappy tree branches, etc., all of which he seems to have taken in stride. Additionally, “Fire and Ice” is more of an academic poem, arising from Frost’s readings of Dante’s Inferno and conversations with a scientist about the end of the earth. The fire is the fire of an exploding sun, way off in the future.

I don’t worry about exploding suns—we humans are doing a fine job of burning down the world on our own, thankyouverymuch—but I do have unreasonable fears that are centered around unpleasant and painful ways to expire in the near term. Choking on a grape, drowning, crashing in a plane, and immolation in a burning building are some of the strongest. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that dying in a fire would be horrific; the unreasonable thing is for me to spend so much time dreading it. Still, every morning Channel 4 fuels my imagination with various local disasters: people drowned in a public pool, run over in crosswalks, shot outside of restaurants, etc. Burning buildings are the most photogenic and frequent.

Back in the safe part of the state, I was walking along one of my favorite streets, albeit breathing cautiously and glancing at the sky. There were normal bluish-white clouds. The street is just a block long and has the kind of features I like: oldish houses with varying designs and lots of outdoor furniture and garden statuary. There are plenty of tall trees and climbing vines, and, now that we’re in June, bright, big-headed summer flowers, va-va-voomers still fuzzy after a night on the town.

I harrumphed at a new place on the south side of the street. It had been a dark, quiet patch of trees and honeysuckle bushes two years ago, and last year a hole in the ground with a realtor’s sign stuck into the dirt, and this year an oversized, vinyl-sided colonial with a two-car attached garage and a big picture window above the front door, the exact design of practically all new construction in this town. For greenery there were some ornamental bushes on either side of the front steps and a spray-grass lawn. Someone had paid almost $900,000 for it last November.

I kept to the north side of the road all the way to the cul-de-sac. Enjoying the beach house with a festive deck a fairy lights. The farmhouse with a cute porch, the split-level with buzz-cut bushes. The rabbit nibbling near a driveway. Then there was a curve in the road that I rounded to find a blackened husk of a house behind a chainlink fence with keep-out signs. Weeds poked through the cracked concrete of the driveway. It looked as though no humans and nothing of this earth had ever lived there. At best it was a home base for Martians.

I walked back on the south side of the street. Back to the new colonial, trying to see it with hope. I felt shivery and wondered if some plume particles were getting to me after all. Maybe by next year the place would start to look like a real house, with a swingset or kiddie pool and a dog’s water bowl and some gnomes in the garden. Maybe its owners would paint the front door a better color than a strident red that clashed with the gray siding. You’d think that any red would go with gray, but it wasn’t true. This was an orangey-red, a hue for a cold world where color meant nothing.

Vienna waits

Dave and I are going to Vienna in a few weeks’ time. This came about almost by accident, as we were intending to go to France, or maybe Nova Scotia, instead. I’m delighted that Dave mentioned Vienna and that that idea popped for both of us. Soon I’ll see for myself the museums, the palaces, the cathedrals, and the houses of opera, coffee, and composers!

I’m prepping a bit, since that lets me indulge my list-making impulses. I have a packing list, a playlist of travel videos, a listening list, and a reading list. So far I’ve spent my reading time on mystery novels rather than guidebooks or Austrian history books, but I’ll get to those at some point. Maybe on the plane? I just finished Murder in Vienna by E. C. R. Lorac, a British golden age detective novelist. It’s set in Vienna in 1957, just two years after the end of the post-World War II occupation of Austria, and involves British diplomats, an aging soprano, a paparazzo, and a book manuscript. Just my cup of coffee!

Also I’ve been brushing up my German, which is terribly dusty. That last time I spoke the language regularly was in high school. Rather than a full frontal attack I’ve been sneaky, watching some episodes of a rather terrible German language-learning sitcom, Extra!, working through some chapters in a “100 German stories for beginners” book, and attending more to oratorio surtitles. My brain is catching on a bit, though more slowly than it did at age 15.

I found myself in the German 1 class my sophomore year of high school because the Latin 1 and French 1 classes were full. On the first day I was in a pouty mood. I only knew one person in the room, Erika the oboist from band. However, Frau Hefty, our teacher, gave us games and snacks as well as vocabulary lists and verb conjugations, and I wound up having a pretty good time.

I  sat next to Erika. It turned out that she spoke German fluently, since her parents were German immigrants. In terms of grammar and spelling she was as lost as the rest of us, but she knew what the words meant. Erika had some problems with the academics of the class—on looking back I think she might have had an undiagnosed learning issue—so Frau Hefty asked me to give her some extra help.

That’s how Erika and I became best friends. I got her from a C- to a solid B, and in the process we discovered that we were both obsessed with classical music and cute boys who played trumpet and trombone, and that we were both restless to wander and explore. We played together in several music groups outside of school, which helped in our wandering.  And once my vocabulary improved, we often spoke German to each other to keep our conversations more private.

Our friendship had an extra benefit during my senior year, when my father had to change careers and wound up with a new job in a new state. I spent my final semester of high school living with Erika’s family. My parents had been jail chaplain and housewife. Erika’s father was a piano tuner, and her mother was a classical guitarist with a weekly radio show on NPR. Our back yard was scrubby grass, and all of our food came from the grocery store. Their yard was planted with vegetables and berries, which made their way into meals. We spent six hours of our Sundays in church services; they slept in. We were teetotal; they had a liquor cabinet. We did laundry every day; they did it once a week. Our house was full of arguments and chaos and chores, especially after my mother left, with never enough time to get everything done. At Erika’s house they were busy but not frantic;  there was always plenty of time.

I’d never set foot outside the USA, and in many ways Erika’s house was my first foreign territory. Most of the time I liked it, but I didn’t pay as much attention as I could have. My mind was in the future, where I could finally start my life as a clarinetist, live in a city, maybe write a book. I could have used the advice from one of the tunes on my listening list, Billy Joel’s “Vienna.” It’s a beautiful song, worth a listen.

Slow down, you crazy child 

And take the phone off the hook 

And disappear for a while

It’s all right, you can afford 

To lose a day or two…

When will you realize 

Vienna waits for you? 

The song was inspired by a conversation Joel had with his father in Vienna about an old woman sweeping a street. Joel senior was a German who’d returned to Europe from the USA after his divorce from Joel’s mother. Joel’s realization was that “you don’t have to squeeze your whole life into your 20s and 30s trying to make it,” he said, in an interview about the song’s origins. “I kind of used “Vienna” as a metaphor, [that] there is a reason for being old, a purpose.”

With Vienna imminent, I took the tune more literally, as both reassurance and promise. And I made the promise, in return, to pay close attention, this time.