Our US Tour Week 7: MA NY MD DC

2006-11-12

Join us for a trip through New England...

Thursday, October 19 Augusta ME to Cape Cod MA:
It was Nicole's birthday and no anniversary has ever been more talked about as it approached than this one. Recall that, last week, Nicole celebrated turning 8 with her cousins in Halifax with tacos and cake, that she feted it in Fredericton with her grandparents with lobster and pie. Still, she hangs on to the history that her birthday has always fallen on a day on which her parents were either out of town on a junket, or she herself couldn't be home to hold a proper birthday party with school friends. So, she still looked forward to this day as if it were entirely new again.

The day began with swimming in the hotel pool - a chilly, austere little rectangle designed for only the most serious of lane-swimming business people. Still, I might even have considered doing a few lengths if Isaac hadn't joined us. Have I mentioned Little "i" and water..? If, from our accounts, you think of him as an impulsive, devil-may-care kind of guy, this is nothing compared to the personality enhancement of the pool. He jumps like a parachuter off shallow and deep ends - no parachute. He laughs as he goes down. He does not close his mouth to laugh when his head follows him under water. He rises still laughing, water pouring out of his teeth like drainage from a risen shipwreck. He cannot be trusted. So, I played with him for our half-hour dip time and we survived yet another trip to the pool.

The next birthday adventure was a make-it-yourself waffle breakfast in the hotel. Pre-prepared cups of waffle mix (I'm sorry to be so trivial in such a deep and profound travel-ogue..!) were available to pour into a spit-hot waffle iron on a turning arm. Clockwork timing allowed each of us to make an equally perfect waffle for breakfast. We HAD to do it. It was Nicole's birthday. And we had paid a hundred and thirty bucks for the flippin' hotel..!

The day was basking in gold as we drove off from Augusta toward Cape Cod. It was a perfect day of sun and east coast crisp autumn air for the whole day of driving - and we hoped it would live on forever. But the sun went ahead and began sinking as we cruised over the Sagamore Bridge just on the ankle of Cape Cod. Yes, others may look at the graceful spray of land on the end of the Massachusetts coast and call it an arm with an elbow and wrist, but, because that gives the arm a fallen bicep, I prefer to call it an elf-shoe. Thus: we had just entered the ankle of the Cape Cod Elf Shoe, when it became crunch time for finding a place to camp. Not willing to shell out hotel bucks again, we sat in the closed Chamber of Commerce parking lot, thinking (OK, staring off into space and blathering). However, a local walked by (you can spot the locals by their intransigent resistance to changing out of their shorts in windy mid-October) and offered advice. Turned out that the state park/camp that we were considering was closed for the season and that folks camped in it for free. That was all we cheapskates needed, and we headed there ourselves.

The evening was gentle. While David heated up a wee supper of stew and bread on the Coleman, in warmer temperatures than we had had in the Maritimes, I took the three children on an adventure walk in which we discovered all toilets locked (horrors for the girls!), yet running water, we sat on the Cape Cod Canal and gazed at the facility on the other side, which we later learned was an oil-burning power plant, and made up names for where we were: sitting on Root Canal in HowshouldIknow, Massachusetts. David has been telling fake Star Wars stories with musical accompaniment on the guitar to the kids each night. He's a hit.

Friday, October 20/06 Cape Cod to Beacon NY:
I suffer from a certain failure of imagination; it never occurred to me that today might dawn rainy! By the dawn's early light we did begin to hear sprinklings of rain, which unfortunately, I didn't translate into: Take Isaac's car-seat down from the roof of the van. All our plans for Cape Cod bike-renting and boardwalk-strolling quickly dissolved in the salty rain. Breakfast was dispatched, holes were dug in shrubbery patches nearby (I won't say more) and I gathered Isaac's seat from the roof and yesterday's bathingsuits from the line (now wetter, of course). We were nicely early to be on the road, in search of a "true" Cape Cod experience.

You know, it is a lot of pressure to try and have a "true" experience in one morning. I'm sure the whole tour will be like this - barreling through lovely highways, taking blurred photographs of foliage, stopping and having a "true" experience of a place and hightailing it out again. I'm surprised and thrilled at how good our experiences have been given the short amount of time that we have had in places along our journey. No day has felt wasted. Yet, a rainy day like this one allows anxiety to drip through me like drizzle gathering on the windowpane. We lost small highways, we ended up down country lanes, wending our way through a town and back out of it without finding what we wanted or exactly knowing where we were going instead. A missed turn in Bourne, trying to find a wireless hub at the local library, put us on the road to Falmouth, after which we drifted off the path twice and (having completely given up) neatly found ourselves full circle driving in to the Bourne Library parking lot..! Weird, really.

As we walked in - a little drippy - and I sat down to collect e-mail and send anew, a woman in the children's department poked her head around the door and asked if Isaac were there for story time. It was perfectly 9:30am and stories were beginning. It was his day! He wrote his name on a green circle and joined the children for pumpkin stories in a room painted with castles and a reading dragon. What a gift. We were invited back, and I scarcely had the heart to say we were from British Columbia and it might be a while before we made it..!

The rain came down in droves, as we headed out again - this time for a very scheduled stop at the Sandwich Glass Factory and Museum. The little town of Sandwich (name hilarious to the kids) is quaint, gorgeously Cape Cod, with winding streets, wood-sided buildings, heritage homes each named for historical figures known even to me, a stocks and pillory in the front courtyard of the Daniel Webster Inn, gift shops and treasures. I hoped we weren't being Canada's biggest idiots for bringing the baby bull to the china shop.

Our timing was inspired. As soon as we entered the brick building, it was time for a 20 minute presentation to begin in the viewing room. This sound and light show, with wings that opened from a central video screen, had an almost holographic style of projections of people telling us their story of the time. A woman told us about life in the colony, while she "quilted" on a quilt that stuck out from the wall onto which she was projected. At one point, she stretched her feet and the quilt moved! The entire presentation managed to situate the growth of the Sandwich glass blowing factory in the history of America (and Britain) - all through story. It was SO good!

This was followed by a glass-blowing demonstration in the middle of the hall, at a small brick oven, whose tower reached a storey above. Temperature: 2000 degrees. The children were mesmerised. The glass-wright was a soft-spoken man who explained why he was doing various things as he did them to his glob of molten glass, slowly turning it into a rounded bowl with undulating edges. Having switched the piece from one glass tube to another at its opposite end, he explained to us that he was going to let gravity have its own effect on the glass, so that the bowl would have a thin lip and a wide bottom. The man sitting next to us on the visitors' bench turned gleefully to his wife and said, "Say, that's what I like about you..!" Patrick made me tell him later, I laughed so hard.

After a sandwich lunch at the Sandwich Bar in Sandwich, we left a trail in the rain and drove solidly through Providence, Rhode Island, into Connecticut and up and into New York State by nightfall. There, awaiting us in Beacon NY were Carol and Doug Osgood - new friends introduced to us via e-mail by April Hall Cutting (again!) April's recommendation of people to know is 5-star to us since we met her congregation in Sweet Home and Ernie and Beth Cutting in Minneapolis, so when she described her NY friends/former colleagues as "magnificent people", we had to visit them. They awaited us at their townhouse, windows ablaze with welcome, an unscheduled dinner hastily put together but suddenly filling the length of their dining-livingroom table.

Doug is a retired United Methodist pastor who has always served in the New York area, and now serves in several local churches (you know what retired means). Carol, a musician and piano teacher, has a full-throated New York laugh and, while cooking a dessert for the next day's church fair, orienting David to the laundry machine and directing the flow of bedding to ends of the house, shared her concerns for the state of the environment and the war that her country is in. "I couldn't live with myself if I thought that, one day in the future, my great grandchildren might look at the earth's damage and say, 'You mean my great grandparents knew about all of this and they did nothing..?!' Kids slept on couches and floors, and we tried not to keep Doug and Carol up late.

Saturday October 12, New York City:
It was a nippy autumn morning. Our challenge was to pack the absolute necessities for a trip to the Big Apple with no van or even suitcase. Each of us except Isaac had a backpack - mine with computer still - and we brought a small amount of sandwich fixins and a knife to make our lunches. Doug and Carol's house is a short block down to the train station - magnificent! Still, it only took that long to recognise that travelling around a big city on foot with a 4-year-old was going to be a challenge. I am not really an anxious Mom, mostly, but seeing Isaac next to train tracks is definitely cause for coronary contortions. The train ride was an hour and 20 into Grand Central Station, and I thought about this quite a bit of that time.

David and I have a joke; have I told you it before? I say, "I'm leaving and I'm taking my third of the brain with me!" Grand Central Station is a huge, high-domed edifice which is marked with directions clearly indicating things that make sense to New Yorkers. Here was David's and my first experience of personal paralysis. Not only could we not find our way to the subway, or figure out how or who to ask for directions, we couldn't seem to get our minds around the issue of who was even doing what. With a group this size (well, OK, with little children at all), one person has to attend to children and one runs about doing the research and directing the next moves. This we do fluidly most days, without much thinking about it. Not at Grand Central Station. When, after 4 sets of conflicting directions, we finally realised we were in vacation stasis, we managed to get our wheels in motion and get out the darn door to find the Children's Zoo in Central Park. Thought I'd lost my mind.

Now, I want to tell you the most mysterious and wonderful event of the trip. As we began to make our way up the steep stairs leading from the underground into the outside world of New York City, I cast my eyes to the top of the stairs and - I mean it - I prayed. I asked for a stroller. I imagined an umbrella stroller, so that we could survive the big city. No lie - as we came to the top of the subway stairs and crossed the street to begin the long walk of the weekend - THERE IN A GARBAGE CORNER WAS A DOUBLE STROLLER. With a bag of garbage sitting on top and parked beside a bin of trash, it was clearly consigned to perdition. I strode over to the stroller, looked around to see that no-one actually appeared to own it, dusted it off and it was Isaac's chariot.

Prayers for small things are crazy, and fly in the face of the great needs of the world. But, it gives me pause once again to reflect on those ancient words: Where your treasure lies, there is your heart. I do spend a lot of time thinking about trash (If you know me, you'll know I am a lover of all things yardsale, garbage, recycling, and compost..!). My attention is on it ALL the time. To the dumbest, trashi-est edge of the Spirit's wave of healing, I am connected. I know this, because it happens to me all the time. WHAT if our attention were on the health of the environment - ALL the time..? Not just our anxiety, moments of denial, rants or despair, but our abiding attention? Think what a conduit we might be for God's renewing action.

But, I am preaching on the streets of New York - and it's not even Times Square! I pulled myself together and we strode off with our double-wide (I think I'll be careful next time; perhaps I'll pray half as hard, 'cause we only needed the single stroller...)

Armed with buns from the closest bakery, we headed immediately for the zoo to fulfill Nicole's birthday dream. Having seen the movie "Madagascar", her only plan for this entire tour over the past year has been to see the movie stars Gloria, Alex and Melman. I have not spent a lot of time reminding her that they are merely animated characters; why state the obvious? We sat on the stone seats watching the sea lions frolic while we ate sandwiches in the sun. Nicole was thrilled to find the penguins and then the polar bear, mildly reminiscent of the movie. A tropical area had little white (endangered) tamarin monkeys, elegant scarlet ibis birds, a red-footed tortoise and, significantly, a story corner for Isaac.

All was well until we went for one of our million-a-day bathroom visits. I now know the bathroom to be the place where I am the most vulnerable, because Isaac can leave the cubicle while I'm sitting and I cannot really get up in time to follow him. This time, I saw his feet follow Nicole's out the door of the bathroom and neglected to worry about that. When I found Nicole alone in the courtyard of the zoo, I felt the blood rush out of my head. Isaac was gone. I think I mentioned that I am not really an anxious Mom and I don't immediately go to the horror shelf of my imagination video selection at such a time. But, it was New York City, it was Central Park with probably 100,000 people in it, and it was time to freak. I greeted David as he came out of the cafeteria, two teas in hand, with the news. The kids and I rushed around calling out Isaac's name until I found a security guard, who quickly alerted all the security in the zoo about a missing 4-year-old in a yellow rain jacket. I was made to stay in one place while David and the security people looked. And I hate standing still. After 10 minutes of rising panic, I spotted him myself. He was playing on an eagle statue, seemingly without worry. I had imagined him crying and calling for his mommy. O brother.

Spotted Uma Thurman with baby as we left.

I was a frayed knot by then. We talked, as a family, about what we would do if any one of us got lost again, and David and I clarified the bathroom protocol. Then, we walked through Central Park until a street juggler named Abraham provided hilarious diversion from that experience. The subway took us all the way down to the bottom of Manhattan Island, where Patrick was pleased to get a New York hoodie, we walked along the waterfront and viewed the Statue of Liberty, hiked around Battery Park, saw the Staten Island ferry and Ellis Island. Nicole loved the street "performers" who are made up like the Statue of Liberty and would have their photo taken with people for a price. Everywhere different languages were being spoken and street vendors were selling t-shirts and art-photos of the city, Asian-style illuminated letters spelling your name, caricatures and portraits. The smell of hat-doags was ever-present. [Canadian translation: Hot Dogs]

The sun was beginning to dip when we found our way to the site of the vaporised World Trade Centre twin towers, giving the place an even slightly more eery feel than it already had. I had read that there was really very little rubble after the towers fell, and I guess the remainder is gone, as they have reconstructed only the subway lines that ran underneath the buildings. A visitor's centre was available, a firefighter at the nearby station was busy talking to groups of people, a plaque on the side of its wall commemorated those who had died and those who carried on. It was dark and we were already exhausted by this hour, so we chose to let the pilgrimage and viewing be enough.

Too, too much walking for little feet, past City Hall, skyscrapers and noble state buildings, finally led us to a sandwich joint, where I was surprised to find what I had been looking for all along - not only food, but internet access. There the kids ate, David refereed, and I cast around for a place to stay overnight. After hearing from the cheapest hotel in the city (their self-description) that rates ran from $400-$800 a night, and finding that almost every place I called was fully booked for the night, (and imagining how comfy we could make ourselves on a Central Park bench together), I suddenly found a friendly voice at the "Jazz on Harlem" hostel and a very reasonable overnight price.

We (now boldly) took the subway up to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, stopping only once in the marble halls of the underground to watch a group of young black break-dancers strut their stuff. Then we shoved that double-stroller through the dark streets of the African-American part of town to our home. When a woman called to me, "You keep that husband of yours, honey. He's beautiful!" I called back, "You better believe it!" Our room was a skinny little piece of real estate with high ceilings, a window sealed to the street, a bunkbed by the window and our double bed at the other end. The children were asleep almost before David finished his (guitarless) star wars story.

Sunday October 22, New York City:
I don't believe I have slept in past 8am once on this tour. This morning's 6am rising worked out well as breakfast was not included in the good overnight deal. We knew from yesterday that asking people to walk for hours to find the perfect meal-stop only creates personal wear and tear, so we stopped at the first place that served a meal. McDarn. As we ate, a woman knocked on the single bathroom door beside our table and called out in annoyance to the man inside. "He's washing up for the day," she said, I guess expecting that he would be in for the hour taking a shower in the sink. Doug had reminded me that the homeless who come to the church's downtown shelter were often either people who had no resources whatsoever or people who got up, showered, dressed and went off to work.

So, we made it to church an hour early. Driving our double-stroller up the ramp of St Paul and St Andrew's (SPSA, they call it) United Methodist Church, we immediately met Emily Peck-McLain and K Karpen, pastors, along with very friendly greeters, members and an unlikely number of young adults. I had spoken to K the day before, when Doug called him up to ask if his congregation could stand an addition to their worship the next morning. Now, you think I have written "K" because I have forgotten his real name, but I have not. "Is K your real first name?" I asked him on the phone. "Well, my parents named me James," he said, "But that was back before they knew me very well." The church is eclectic.

Turned out (oh, what a coincidence) that this day was the one on which the children would lead the adults in worship. Children's pastor, Kathleen Seiter, told me that I might sing while the children passed out thank-you offerings to all who had ever worked with children (turning out to be everybody, of course). As their scripture was the Mark story of James and John asking to get the loveseats beside Jesus in the hereafter, it was absolutely perfect to sing "Let the Children Come to Me". Having decided that in the first 5 minutes, I had some time on my hands. "Join the choir!" they said. Oh, what a treat! The choir is not large, but is very good, so it was my pleasure to sit between alto and tenor sections and read along.

The new doors and (double-stroller size) wheeling ramp up to the church were actually inaugurated with the public after worship, and we strolled importantly down it to emphasize to the gathered people how fabulous the changes were, as we left for lunch. We felt qualified.

The American Museum of Natural History was within walking distance, so we made that a priority. All of us were probably beyond really being able to focus very well, but the section on the universe was spellbinding nonetheless. A meteorite my height stood in the middle of a towering domed room, like a pocked iron fist. A short video presentation showed us how black holes warp the universe around them as they pass, and a darkened upper floor led us from window to window of taxidermied animals with their habitats created around, and painted behind, in striking, absolutely lifelike detail.

My poor brain. The children have been amazingly patient, given the relentless tourist routine that we have been on. We spent a half-hour at the Diana Ross Playground while they ran it off. I discovered wireless (aren't I a boring writer..?) at the park and bolted off a few more letters as the sun went down and the damp moved in. We pushed the stroller (double-kids!) across the width of Central Park, past the Shakespeare Theatre and lovely long stretches of lawn and playing fields until we came to our subway stop. By the time we arrived at Grand Central, we had promised absolutely that we would eat supper at a hotdog stand, and I added a potato knish to the order - having never had one in my life. We ceremonially left the double-stroller inside the station, while the booth attendant's attention was being drawn by a shouting patron. With ten minutes to spare (and feeling pretty savvy about the transit system by now), we barreled down track 36, brushing fried onions off our shirts, and landed in train seats just in time to pull out of the station to Beacon.

Doug and Carol had offered us the option of returning to the house rather than staying over a second night in the city, but we had assured them we'd not need the extra night at their place. When we arrived back at their home (after leaving phone messages but not actually managing to warn them that we'd be back), cupcakes were out on the counter and an umbrella stroller at the door. Not long after, our hosts walked in the door to find us with sleepingbags in their livingroom, and Carol said, "I asked Doug as we were driving down the street, 'Are there lights on..?'" They knew.

Monday October 23/06 toward Washington, DC:
Yup, those cupcakes were for us! Carol packed us up with milk and bread and snacks until I had to stop saying thanks and say no. Doug put print-outs of a couple of camp sites in David's hands and the umbrella stroller was ours! Carol said, "You know, my belief is that none of this belongs to me anyway. It's all on loan in life, so I just keep giving away." I'm going to keep that with me as one of this trip's great teachings, which both Doug and Carol showed us with more than words.

The entire day was spent driving through Delaware (a blink), Maryland (which surrounds Washington DC) and down, by dark, into Virginia where we found our campground. The sun was shining, the day was orange with only the slightest edge of winter beginning to dry the brilliant yellows of the autumn leaves. David and I both spotted a sign for the "Decoy Museum" along the drive and I couldn't stop laughing at David's impression of a tourist's arrival: "Yessir, thought this was a museum, didn't you! Heh Heh. Lotta people think that. No, this isn't a museum. This is a decoy museum; it's really an auto parts outlet. The real museum is at Exit 89, not exit 88. Yessir - good trick, eh?!"

Patrick, whose role it is to be the Asker of Truly Excellent Questions (ATEQ), carried out his job by asking: Why it is that something thrown through the van doesn't whip backwards like it does if you throw it out the window?" Now: which of you can answer that in the language of a 9-year-old?

The campground was almost pitch-dark and the air beginning to bite, but the lack of propane in the camper (which had fortuitously allowed us admittance through the Baltimore Tunnel) meant that David had to heat up supper on the Coleman outside. We decided that it would be OK to have a bit of a leisurely start to tomorrow, despite the importance of Washington.

Tuesday October 24/06 Washington DC:
The day dawned bright and COLD. I lay in bed quite past my usual wake-up time, feeling small pins of winter trying to make their way through the comforter corners. I'd be there still if nature hadn't called. David had had a hard night, cold and uncomfortable, probably wishing he'd taken my suggestion and worn his toque to bed. (I guess we all secretly think the paparazzi will sneak by when we aren't looking, and put our photo in People Magazine's "Worst Dressed Stars at Camp by Night" section..!)

But, again, bright sun illuminated orange and yellow trees with a slow fire that warmed us by the time we reached the nation's capitol. David (who is connected to the parking gods just as I am hooked up with the Spirit's renewal of trash) found us 2 conjoined parking spots (camper and trailer) on a city street (!!) and we pulled out the blessed Beacon Stroller to walk to the White House.

It's wonderful to visit places and site that you have seen so often in movies and the news. You feel that you are merely re-visiting a place you have been before. (Well, actually I had been to Washington when I was small and have vague memories of tall steps and asking my dad if I could sit on Lincoln's lap) A security guard at the back gate told us, as I'm sure he has told 100,000 others before us, that to be admitted to a White House tour, we would have to contact our embassy - since 9/11, of course. This is of a kind of advance planning that surpasses my abilities for this on-the-fly tour, but it also occurred to me what a nightmare that must be for OUR embassy. The threat to US security has involved and necessitated so many changes to Canadian processes. Remember how we used to proudly say that ours was the longest undefended border in the world? What do we say, now?

We stopped on a south lawn and sketched the White House and the tall monument to the veterans of WWI, having decided that today would be a sketch-tour, rather than a too-much-talking tour.

The Smithsonian Institution has a strip of museums near the Capitol Buildings that are world class and absolutely free admission. By the time we reached the Museum of Air and Space, our parking time was running out so I had just a bit of time to run around some extraordinary and real-life items in the two-storey main entry of the building before Isaac and I left. The first - encased in plexiglas: John Glenn's Mercury capsule - the first American in space. There was a small slice of moon rock that each could touch. (I'm told that dustbunnies under the bed are made up of skin cells and dust from outer space, so we really shouldn't be that awestruck, but we were). A real Skylab whose 2nd floor one could walk into provided the highlight of a centrifugally operated shower for anti-gravity environments (Wouldn't a sponge-bath have worked..?)

The children tried to make it to the Flight Simulator, which would have been incredible, but the kid line-up was too long. Isaac and I ran away, vowing to return. Which is saying a lot because I am not gifted with an innate sense of knowing where I am on planet earth - at least in relation to all other objects. In short, I get lost lots. I took off at the speed of a big city businesswoman with the stroller motoring ahead of me, muttering quietly under my breath about the north-south, east-west of numbered and lettered streets. But it was not hard to find the parked van, and besides, Isaac hummed the instrumental solo from "I Will Survive" over and over again the whole way - happy as a rickshaw customer.

However, I am new to driving the van and trailer together, our wing mirrors have an inexorable droop and there is no return in small places that require backing out, when you are on your own with a small trailer in tow! As soon as I pushed forward on E street, I was immediately headed on a highway, either to Virginia or Maryland. Luckily, birthing 3 babies has prepared me for deep breathing. I continued the internal dialogue, this time out loud and with a steely and frightening gaze at the traffic ahead of me. Only two truly illegal moves later, I was on the street toward the other half of my family - who met me without even knowing what a remarkable feat I had just accomplished. Don't you hate that.

We decided to save time and effort by returning to Burke Lake Park, yet it was as dark as the night before when we arrived at our campsite. And just as cold.

Wednesday October 25 to Kirkridge Center, Bangor PA:
David emerged from the van in his toque, a happy man.

We had had some plans to return to Washington in the morning, but some other circumstances converged to change our plans. In the comfort of the nearest Best Western (I mention their name because they have unwaveringly allowed us to take up space and internet facility all across the country), I received e-mail and learned of an invitation to come a day early and take it easy in Pennsylvania and phoned ahead to our Thursday hosts in Bangor PA to ask if they could switch and become our Wednesday hosts instead.

Our - now - Wednesday hosts were Jean Richardson and the staff at Kirkridge Retreat Center - people and a place introduced to us by our friend Carolyn McDade. In the warm way typical of places of retreat, Jean and hospitality staffperson Nancy said to come along, regardless of the day change. We drove up through toll booth after toll, as I wondered what had possessed me to come to Kirkridge after our trip to Washington, rather than on the way down from New York - which it was. Either it was Spirit-led timing or Linnea's Dorky Sense of Direction - a fine line I am always running.

We couldn't see Kirkridge by the time we reached it, as it was nightfall. But Nancy met us at the door to show us around the Hermitage cottage, bade us make ourselves at home and left us to move in for the night. Aren't you just tired reading about the week..?

blessings, all!
Linnea

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