Hymn to the Fallen

This morning feels very, very long ago indeed. I went to bed at 12:30 last night, waking 3 hours later to take my parents and brother to the Milwaukee airport, where they flew to Idaho to visit my oldest brother, whom I have seen once for a few hours in the past 3 years. It's been a day to romanticize about, starting with a sunrise through the van windows that I described in my journal as making me feel "touched by God's fingertips just as the clouds were with rays of light. To be such dusky blue and filled with pink and peach and glorious white is a transformation of sheer brilliance, and I marveled at it, both in myself and the sky....God somehow seems nearer in that peaceful transition, the calm before the day begins. I love His nearness."

After leaving my family at the airport, I drove to Bayshore Town Center and parked behind the Cheesecake Factory in anticipation of its opening at 11 a.m. Five hours was a long time to wait, but Milwaukee is almost an hour away and I wanted to take advantage of my being there, for "I shall not pass this way again." (If this blog were a Barnes & Noble Classic, it would have a little asterisk next to that quote and a footnote explaining that it derives from a poem I don't even remember reading, save for that one line. Only B&N would go into more detail than that. Once in Persuasion they defined the word "graceful." Uh, if the reader doesn't know the definition of graceful, he probably shouldn't be reading Jane Austen.)

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, it was about 20 steps down from the Cheesecake Factory, and opened 2 hours earlier! So only to wait from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., I read my Bible (the boys in Acts amaze me to no end), took a nap in the back of the van with my pillow and blanket (you'd think after 3 hours of sleep I would've slept longer than a half an hour, but I think the radiance from the Factory flowed through my veins), journaled, and emerged from the van at 8:30 to meander around the town center. I browsed Kohl's (it being the only thing open), telling the cashier, "I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I saw how bored you were and thought I better," then turned the corner at 9:03 to enter Barnes & Noble. I wish I could explain the joy that fills my heart upon beholding B&N. My breath caught in my throat when I realized it was two stories. The utter joy.

I sat with my knees and back resting against opposite arms of a cushy chair by a second story window, the morning light streaming onto the floor. A lady sat down next to me, a man a few chairs away, and a pre-teen boy and teenage girl across from me. I could only read a chapter before the high-pitched chatter of the girl on her cell phone drove me to distraction, and I abandoned my relaxation to purchase my items and retreat. (Didn't I sound like Jane Austen just then? What does "relaxation" mean??) I walked out with Barnes & Noble Classics of Howards End (I think E.M. Forster is vast becoming a favorite of mine), Wives and Daughters (I had no intentions of buying Elizabeth Gaskell's unfinished novel [she died before she could finish it], but it was so luscious and pink that I couldn't put it back on the shelf), and Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen, to me, is like those chocolate chip cookies that you don't really like, but you keep eating them anyway, and you never find out why. What does "cookies" mean??). I love "buy 2 get the 3rd free" days at Barnes & Noble.

Trader Joe's was next on my list, where I resisted organic fruit and spinach lasagna and grabbed a bag of whole grain pretzels I first sampled at Annie's apartment in May. I decided to pass on the chocolate covered soybeans, though. Sorry, Annie.

Upon passing Bath & Body Works, from somewhere in the deep cavernous recesses of my mind I pulled the memory of Mrs. Jespersen's hand soap, which I remember loving the smell of over spring break. So I entered the store, not remembering what it was and smelling every bottle I came across until I recognized the scent of Japanese Cherry Blossom. Rubbing it on my hands brought back chocolate cake and singing by the piano and Enchanted and overflowing toilets and tired feet after hours of walking around big, cold, and windy cities. Of course, on the path of finding Cherry Blossom, I also found Plumeria, which was sweet and feminine and summery, and made me think of pink parasols and canoes, for some reason. I couldn't choose between the scent of memories made and the scent of memories to be made, so I resolved to shell out the cabbage for both bottles. Turns out they were on sale (wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles) and I saved a whopping $11. Golly gee whiz Pete cow Sam Hill.

So with my Connecticut in a Bottle and Scent of 1910 (which I affectionately nicknamed them) in tow, I finally entered the Cheesecake Factory. I took my piece of heaven and carefully tucked it into my pre-prepared cooler in the van with the care of buckling a little child into a car seat, and headed for home. I thought about my day, and remembered the tragic sight at 4:15 this morning when we'd pulled out: my dad had stuffed our old G.I. Joe case we've stored our plastic toys in since the womb into the green garbage can at the end of the driveway. I had fretted over its demise, wishing I would've known it was there earlier so I could've saved it to store journals or letters or simply save a box of memories from being tossed into a landfill. So when I remembered it on my drive home, I suddenly became anxious to return home before the garbage men had their way with it. I wondered how the police officer would take it when I explained the reason I was speeding was to dig a wooden case with a G.I. Joe decal on it out of our trash. "Ah," he'd respond, "American heroes." Of course he'd understand. Policemen themselves are American heroes.

Still a ways from my house, I saw that trash cans and bags were still piled at the end of peoples' driveways. I've never been so happy to see garbage before. I wasn't soothed until I had pulled into my driveway and plucked the dusty, worn, half-falling-apart case from its plastic green coffin. I opened it for nostalgia's sake, releasing the scent of Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Spider-Men and G.I. Joes, though it was empty now of all but a few dust balls and cobwebs. I'll clean it off and find something to put in it, and I'll remember the sound and feel of our childhood hands rustling over their plastic action figure bodies with loose joints at the knees and worn paint on their feet and hands, as we searched for the right sword or torch or mask to equip our men. I'm not a pack rat, by any means, but there are some things that should just not be gotten rid of.

However romantic my day has been, I sit here now in an empty house pitying my loneliness. My cheesecake was eaten to a Jimmy Stewart movie, and the cat won't answer my conversation starters. ("Wouldn't it stink if I fell down the stairs? No one would know I was here." "I'm going downstairs. The DVD player won't work." "I will not feed you tuna fish, so don't bother asking.") I guess listening to war movie themes (We Were Soldiers is probably the most depressing) and songs like "Alone Again, Naturally" and "Mr. Lonely" doesn't help my mood much. I don't think I was meant to be alone. And this is only day 1 of 11.

My hands smell like spring break.