Fredericksburg and the beginning of a happy birthday
It's nice to have a healthy dose of spontaneity in one's life, so I hopped the metro to union station and caught a local train to Fredericksburg to see a friend that I hadn't seen in a good couple of years. After a brief phone call at a quarter to 11 that ended with "ok, i'll see you at 2:28" I left DC.
I was more than a little bit nervous. I knew very little of Alice's life after high school. I knew only that by the time we graduated, the thick sludge of cynicism had so completely coated her group of friends that we lost touch even before we left the state. One of the few times we spoke since then she told me she had found Jesus. And I asked her where he was. At least she thought that was funny. She found Jesus and I found...King House. I was more than a little bit nervous.
I left my luggage locked in syrena's house protected only by a double lock and a hastily scrawled note "I'm in fredericksburg. I left my stuff with you. Hope i'm not being too presumptuous. See you upon my return" and other such things. I packed my essentials in my bookbag--a days worth of clothes, knitting, CDs, Vladamir Nabokov's Lolita, Snuffles, a toothbrush,[no pajamas...oops].
---
You can see the cherry blossoms from the top level of the double decker train as it passes by the monument and out of the city. I don't think that, until that moment, I ever gave much thought to the term Breathtaking but as we passed I wondered when the rhythm of the inhale-exhale-inhale would return to its unsyncapated self. The reflecting pool shimmers pink and white and the trees look like clouds in the glossy paintings in books of saccharine fairytales. This is going to be good. I can feel it.
---
I called her when I got off the train.
"I'm here" I tell her.
"REALLY?!?!" She asks/exclaims.
"yeah really"
"Really"
"Yeah, really"
"well, then I'll come get you."
She pulled up in a car I didn't recognizes and screams "Holy, shit your hair is all gone!" and I get in and we drive to a coffee shop named after the original greek sun god Hyperion where her friends greet us with screaming streams of energy and demand that I take on a new name, Something Flowers. We talk in bursts of light.
---
There are people in fredericksburg. People like you can't imagine. People, with names and epithets, and small-town eccentricities. There was The Pirate; The Peglegged Man Who Looks Like Santa Clause; The Bird Man; the Redneck Waitress, who made endless fun of me, helped me with my crossword puzzles, and mused about her boyfriend in Jail; The Greek Immigrant woman, who spoke in gruff english and shouted instructions across the diner. There was the man with the vaguely slavic accent who showed us beautiful slides of The Birdman's owl and falcon. There was the professor who read palms and tapped his foot to bluegrass music. There was the man with the leather hat and the big hands who played the harmonica and spoke in a late-night-radio-scratchy whisper. And there were stories of the Beautiful Orphaned Coast Guard Boy who just wants to be a librarian and a good man (and beat up Protestants). There were stories of the man who gave Alice a hickory box with switches and sharks teeth and her name carved in the bottom. There were stories of the newspaper editor who owned the 1950s ford victoria that Alice is trying to buy.
And we saw them all. And they waved. And everyone, everyone talked to me. And Alice knew them all by name.
---
We finished at the coffee shop, ran home, spent four hours at the diner. I got to know The Rednecked Waitress, and got the whole place to help me with the crossword. or at least talk about crosswords.
Conversation travels here in ripples like water, through the tiny diner, through the tiny town.
Then we got delicious homemade softserve icecream. Then we went to the Rec Room and listened to the blue grass open mic night. I didn't understand at least half of what was being sung. It sounded like "Tonight is the singeringelangidontongmore" or "I think maybe lamminhanginrondinonintangintan." People sang along. It was beautiful foot-tappin' music, and I wish i could have sung too. I could have stayed there forever, but places in frederecksburg don't stay open forever. So we left and headed to the "truck stop diner" where we swapped stories for hours, and broke Alice's windshield wiper.
We went home then, and feigned sleep until morning when I went back to Hyperion and then caught the train back into DC.
---
I'm back today and it's my birthday. Snug and content but tired I type on syrena's keyboard. Tonight I am not going to the leather bar as originally planned, and instead spending the evening first at dinner with Brian and Robin, then at ladies night at a gay club. It should be a blast.
Besides, I'm still glowing from Fredericksburg.