I’m back to the island of Addison County, VT for 2 weeks.
If this year confirmed anything for me it’s that I’ll never be able to leave the sea for long. But man, it’s nice to be back in Vermont (Green Mountains), back among the Vergennes (Green people, from the people?).
I was worried that Middlebury would be a huge culture shock for me, and of course in some ways it has been – took me 3 days and a best friend to get to a dining hall, where this micro-local-gossip life happens and the world screams at you so loud you can’t decide whether to scream back or right along with it.
At the moment I’m trying to silence the screams in my head. For the first time in my life I feel like I’m finding my voice and rather than keep it with myself, I’m going to share it with you. Thoughts, stories I have listened to, are fighting their way out. And God knows what words come first.
Today, 10ish a.m. it’s Panini.
Stepping into the dining hall (which has been remodeled but somehow looks the same, only shinier). And I’m frozen and walking at the same time.
I settle in when an old friend Abe Katz leaves our conversation to say Eid Mubarak to a Muslim woman he’s never met. That’s the power of speech and listening. Two words, just two words! Just wait till you hear him sing. Thanks Abe!
I know, Dad, got to get over myself. Come on down. How could I pass up a trip to the Panini machine?
But maybe that’s why I’m frozen!
(to clue you in:
#1: The Baker family is all about getting a good deal on your meal. Baker apparently comes from Beaker. Maybe we baked bread at some point (I’ve got the scars to prove it), but we also poured mead for Anglo aristocrats.
My grandparents have more coupons and two-for-one specials than my grandmother has baskets or molas or newspaper clippings of people who look like, but actually are not, her children, pets, and friends (to be continued). When you’re out to eat with my Grandparents, you get water and you get the special and maybe, just maybe, the dessert if it’s half-price or day-old.
Sure. Go ahead. You can look at the menus, count the blueberries in the trim or even exclaim over a meal that looks delicious…but you know it’s an exercise. It doesn’t matter if you’re at home or on the road: you finish everything on your plate, even if it’s T.V. dinner served on porcelain plates holding hands with butter dishes – veal cutlets and space potatoes and carrots that taste like chalk.
Got it? My cousin Andy once ended the famous all-you-can-eat promotion for fish-and-chips at a restaurant downeast (they made an executive decision to top it at 6). J He’s already a Baker family legend.
It’s not about being cheap. Maybe it’s coming of age in the depression. Or great-grandpa-what’s-his-name who talked like a blue streak and was imprisoned by those Yankees in the Civil War and survived a near fatal gunshot to the head. Or Grandma descending from Irish orphans, even if she can’t remember or maybe even chooses not to. Maybe it’s oatmeal cupookies. Either way, it’s a Baker rule, trait, and reality. And I’m not supposed to divulge this secret, it’s unspoken. But I want to let you enter my life, so I’m going to slip you a napkin with a few handy phrases.
So?
What would you like to drink?
Water, please.
I’m winking at you. We’ll get there, but I need to take a breath, take it slowly.
Thank you for listening.
#2: my Dad used to drive hours, hours!, to watch me play basketball at Middlebury.
#2a: It’s a 40 minute game and, if lucky, I might play 25 minutes.
#3: No matter how late we were running, he’d always try and catch a visit to the dining hall. If he was really late (more often than not J), he’d roll down the window and yell, “Better make it a sandwich!” And I’d jump in and we’d speed to Atwater. “I checked the menus!” he’d exclaim. “Me too!” By the time we’d arrived even Grandpa would admire our military efficiency. “How are you?” emerged somewhere between brussel sprouts and honey mustard at the sandwich island.
#4: Once, sprinting – juggling sandwiches, apples, a dream bar - to the gymnasium in January, me sliding over the ice in flip flops, he in dark sunglasses at last light (he’d lost them on the way), he shouted to some puzzled onlookers, “We’re bonding here!”
#5: I’ve never laughed so hard, or loved him so much. Now I can’t even remember when it was, or even the feeling of arriving late to the locker room (maybe I’ve purposefully forgotten). Nor do I mind that all of my best games at Home begin with this memory.
#6: This is what Panini machines made me realize yesterday: For me: deciding to leave basketball my last year of Middlebury was the most difficult decision of my college career not because of logics or commitment or turning in a uniform, or losing the people who may know me most - my mentors and my critics, or letting down a team, or winning or understanding my path in life (of course it was all of those things), but because of that moment, that rose-hued memory. Crackling ice, belly laughter, bruised apples, and wind caught in my throat.
#7: Basketball was something that brought my father and I together miles away from home; he loved to see me play and I loved to play for him. It didn’t matter if he showed up in the first five minutes, or more often, in the last five minutes, if we even spoke. I played to see him give me the….
I
See
You
You know: two-finger focus routine (pointing at first his eyes and then mine in the huddle or on the foul line, back forth, back-forth, until I cracked a smile). I’d hear him chuckle through the din and a line would be broken. In would rush my family and the world and life. I’d forget the committee upstairs in my head and remember my hook shot from high school, my hands.
And maybe that’s what courage, what bravery is. Being selfishly unselfish. Loving something so much you can’t remember whether you do it for you or for your father.
One day, Dad, I’ll buy one of the old Proctor Panini machines when I’m at a reunion. It will be at a yard sale run by a family with an Irish last name somewhere between Cornwall and Snake Mountain. Dave Birr will be driving in a car with 80s music, Catherine McCarthy will be singing and Elizabeth Bowman will be telling us about Greek Philosophy. Kelly Bennion and Alex Schloss will be on the phone on the quad giving us directions. And I’ll bring it home and we’ll call it Barney’s Burner or Cally’s Castle or Lo Lo’s Lair or Aylie’s Adoration. And Mom, you’ll say, “Oh Aylie, Stop it!” You can decide.)
My wonderful friend Kelly Bennion recently told me about a psychological study published about déjà vu triggered by familiar spaces. Not voices, sounds, tastes that bring us back, but the arrangement of a place. I disagreed with her at first – I have a keen memory for voices and faces, but being back has certainly given weight to her theory. You tell me: Can you think of someone (okay, admittedly more underclassmen) who can remember attending a party, visiting a friend in a specific Atwater suite? Stories about this region, this community, this “island,” almost always begin with – One time in Atwater suites….” Oh hi, architects who design prisons and dorm housing….
Well call it déjà vu, call it coming home, here in this wonderful confluence of a landscape and people I love (even in their absence) has been like looking at life with new eyes. After a year of playing an awkward game of solo paddleball or get-the-ball-in-the-cup, these last few days have been a riveting game of intellectual ping pong and I’ve got to reach to return each shot. Every person I’ve seen – old, new I’m inspired by.
It’s nice to remember knowledge and conversations as something beyond the classic game of slam dunk or knock out (sick of sport’s analogies??) I so often equated with class discussion groups – for once no one’s trying to hit the nail on the head or come away with all the answers or explain everything – all is gray (grey?) and confusing, and all the more wonderful for being so. Me most of all. No one strikes out. No one’s MVP or bench boy or under-committed or walkedallover or water girl. Play Ball!
(Quick side note: In case you haven’t noticed: I’m having an about face in my thinking about cliché.
What’s wrong with saying what’s already been said? It obviously worked perfectly when someone J wrote “Your love is like a red, red rose” way back when. And who knows if he was the first to write it? Our aversion to cliché might only be jealousy, hubris for not having discovered a more perfect way to describe emotion or situation.
I had a wonderful, completely unexpected breakfast with a new friend Fif (great hugger) and an old friend Mat Nakitare. I’m not surprised. Mat and I first met when he stayed over in Maine one night way back at the end of my first semester after driving home in a snowstorm for winter break. When my Mom and I returned from some errands that evening, we walked in to hear Mat and my Dad laughing and chatting in a living room without power or heat – but glowing by candle light and snow light and smile light on the couch in the living room).
We talked about how people express humor across language (totally confirming my complete loss and mourning of irony this year). I asked Mat about Kenya and we started talking about East African parables, sayings. Sometimes the easiest way to describe a funny, awkward, sad situation is simply worded, age-old. (Shit! My God! Holy Smokes! Sweet! Sketchy, man. What goes up, must come down, hipster, I can’t believe it!) Two of my all-time favorites from my time in Uganda: When the elephants fight, the grass suffers. All dogs have green eyes in the dark.
Cool one I found just now:
Baby not born yet, his eyeball big. Meaning: Do not be overzealous about what has not been entrusted to you yet.
You tell me: Why mess with that??
Thank you for listening.
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