These Days by Stephanie

Yesterday my husband said that he would like to take me and our dog Walter, get in the car and just hit the road for parts unknown. It was something along the lines of Lobo’s old song “Me and You and a Dog named Boo.” I confess: All I could think when he said that was how we’d have to stop and walk Walter, find motels that accepted dogs, and somehow I would just be taking responsibility on the road with me. What I didn’t say was that these days there’s a part of me that would like to hitch an Airstream to the back of the car and hit the road solo. Of course, the latter is pure fantasy, and a weak one at that given that I would not leave my husband, the dog and, of course, my three kids. Although vanishing is rather tempting lately. I seem to have gone from the throes of motherhood to being my father’s chief cook and bottle washer, accountant, and care giver without a respite in between. This is where a deliberate effort to compartmentalize enters the equation: Don’t confuse what are the typical trials and tribulations of life with the life that’s throwing me unanticipated curve balls with no training as a batter. I find myself swatting at the ball, spinning, stumbling – and wishing I wasn’t the hitter.
And so, this week, rather than hitching up an Airstream, I went out each night. Twice with my husband and twice by myself – didn’t cook once, and didn’t worry as I typically would have as to what my husband would have for dinner. There was a time when I would have cooked for him and left dinner wrapped in foil and sealed in Tupperware, and this past week, I figured the man won’t starve and can fend for himself. A stab at independence…my figurative escape in the Airstream.
On Tuesday night, I met my husband at a place on MacDougal Street called The Groove, a Greenwich Village bar with a small stage, redolent of the 1960’s and 1970’s – the kind of haunt I went to when I was an NYU student, and Greenwich Village was our campus. When I got off the subway at West 4th Street, it occurred to me that once the neighborhood was familiar and simple to navigate. I had to stop and get my bearings as I stood on the corner of 6th Avenue, figuring out which way was East. Once I walked those streets wearing my trademark black leotard top beneath a peasant blouse, jeans and Frye boots, hair nearly to my waist. On Tuesday it rained so I had an umbrella, wore a black rain jacket, wiped down my hands with Purell as I walked from the subway, hoped the man coughing behind me on the train wasn’t carrying the flu along with his briefcase.
At first, I was hesitant to enter The Groove where “The Guitar Club for Men” and two of the four “Young Rascals” were playing. As it turned out, only one (Gene Cornish) was there that night – Dino Danelli was absent. Session players of the same vintage made up the rest of the band. As I said, I was hesitant, thinking that some things are better left behind with the memory wrapped in gossamer. As the band “tuned up” and I heard strains of “Groovin’ “ it took me back to 1967 with a swiftness that felt almost jarring. I watched the musicians, huddled together as they tuned up and glanced at sheet music, noticed they all wore hats, presumably to cover a lack of hair (and even saw some balding spots peaking through their baseball caps and on the sides of their berets).
So, back to 1967 when I was with my first love, Tom, and my best friend Leslie – both of whom I never wanted to be without. Oddly enough, we’re still in touch. When Groovin’ hit the charts back then, I was certain it was written for the three of us as I misheard the line, “That would be ecstasy…you and me endlessly” as “That would be ecstasy…you and me and Leslie” – just the three of us “groovin.” Strangely, the female singer omitted that line in the song, making me wonder if it wasn’t best (for me) left in 1967. Truth is, Cornish and the band were great – and yet it was bittersweet: The juxtaposition of 1967 and 2009 – so much happening in those 42 years. The “lifetime ago” syndrome.
On Wednesday night, I met my friend Leni at an upscale restaurant in Tribeca. I waited for her in the bar where middle-aged men in business suits huddled (men do tend to “huddle,” pack animals that they are) in front of silent flat screens, drinking Martini’s. I noticed that too many of their suits tugged at the shoulders and too many belt buckles faced down beneath protruding “guts,” and in the background, the bar was playing Dylan. Positively 4th Street (how odd that I had been there the night before) and then Blowin’ in the Wind. I wondered if the men heard the music, if it brought them back to another time. I decided they weren’t listening…focused more on the Yankee game, and trying to let go of their day as they fished out the olives from their drinks. What, I wondered, were they once doing in, say, 1967? I tried picturing a few of them with long hair, wearing blue jeans and sandals, sinewy physiques…And then I sighed, so audibly that the man standing next to me asked if I was OK.
Great, I thought. It’s gotten to the point in my life where a sigh isn’t just a sigh but perhaps time to haul down that defibrillator from the shelf over the bar.
Tomorrow morning, Mark and I will take Walter and head upstate for an overnight. I have asked Mark to pretend he has a tee time so we get out of the apartment early. Not exactly a road trip with total abandon, but a night and two days away from the city, computers and cell phones.
Last night I dreamed I was running in a field with a cold wind in my face, and ended up in my parents’ kitchen where my mother was standing at the stove. My friend Rose (who is 14 years younger than I) and whose mother has been dead for three years, says she, too, still dreams of her mother nearly every night. In my dream, my mother put her warm hand on my cold cheek and said that my skin looked wonderful.
“The air is so good for you,” she said in my dream.
It was perhaps just what I needed – a dose of fresh air and my mother’s warm hand on my cheek. Freedom. Nurturing. Ecstasy. Endlessly – if only in my dreams.