In my memories, this house was always filled with family and people stopping by, always laughter, always spirited conversation, always warmth.
“Look at the price for two nights” says Janyce, handing me the cellphone to show me the screen.
“Wow, it’s that much?” I say.
“Yep,” says Janyce.
“Let me look at the invitation again,” I say, flipping open the laptop I have balanced on my legs.
I’m sitting in bed drinking coffee on a weekday morning. It’s cold in the house and my spouse Janyce is beside me with the covers up to her chin wearing her grey knit hat. A couple days ago, on Saturday, we looked at each other from across the living room. “What the heck was that?” she said. “I don’t know, it sounded like a groan coming from the furnace,” I said. I found her a few hours later, pausing by the sliding glass doors, her head cocked sideways with one ear toward the floor, “There it is again,” she said. Later that night we started smelling an acrid smell as if wires had sparked and started a fire in the heating ducts.
“It looks like there are a couple of options for other places,” I say, and click open the link to view another beach hotel. “This one is fine, but don’t you want to be in the middle of everything?” I say. “I know I do.”
“It’s expensive,” says Janyce “I just spent $400 on the plumber and who knows how much the furnace is going to cost.” The two of us look at each other for what feels like a long three seconds.
“I’m not going to miss this wedding because of a furnace,” I say. “Let’s just do it. We’ll make a mini vacation of it. Look, it says semi-formal beach attire. You’ll buy linen pants and I’ll get a long swingy dress. We could drive, but nah, that would take too long. We have time to look for flights.”
Our dog is awake and wedging his way in between us, signaling that he’s ready for his breakfast. Janyce starts crawling out from under the covers directing him with her hand toward the stairs at the end of the bed.
“Should I put it on my credit card instead of yours?” I say. “Why don’t I put it on my credit card.”
“That would be great,” she says.
The tip of my nose is cold, and oh yeah, that’s right, the heat won’t be kicking back on this morning. I grab my phone and take it with me under the blankets and open up the digital invitation again. The bride-to-be is the only daughter of a dear friend of mine whom I have known for 30 years. In fact, I know the whole family, the kids of the siblings, some of the relatives that fly in for holidays. We’ve been guests at the Seder table in the Newton house with its welcoming plant-filled entryway, we’ve sat many a time on the couch admiring the glass ornaments that hung in the corner windows.
In my memories, this house was always filled with family and people stopping by, always laughter, always spirited conversation, always warmth.
Now, I’m grateful to have some of those very same cherished plants in my own house. The parents have both since passed away, the house has sold to new owners, and the kids of the siblings have all scattered—my own kids, too— everyone all grown up and living their lives, the way it is meant to happen. So many pictures flood my mind of my friend and her daughter through the years: the Roslindale house, the Needham house, and long lingering dinners at all of the dining tables. I whip out my credit card to book our room in the main hotel for two nights and while I’m at it, I’ll just order both of the wanted dinner place settings from the registry and have them sent directly.
“You don’t know how happy I am to get an invitation to this wedding,” I call out to Janyce in the other room.
It’s a Monday morning and the week is full of potential, only that’s not how I’m feeling at all. The Noom app on my phone reminds me to jump on the scale and log breakfast. I’m scrolling through my gmail, making a mental list of “all the things” for the week: check on my son’s itinerary and book us a family dinner for when he’s home, respond yes to the NYC writers meeting (I can make that work), an appointment on Tuesday, an appointment on Wednesday, the car needs service, I’m late for the dentist, I have unused but paid for yoga classes, an unused but paid for gym membership, my “get fit minutes” at work start this week. I pause to listen to the NPR newscast call for milder than normal February weather, although somewhere in there we’re getting an ice storm and windy rain by the end of the week.
Janyce whizzes back through the bedroom on her way to the shower.
“I have this idea,” she says. “Why don’t we both join the Wednesday night running preparation class. It’s something we can do together. And it will get us ready for the 5Ks we both said we wanted to improve on this year.”
I look at Janyce standing before me in her underwear. Years of consistent exercise have toned her legs and shoulders, flattened her stomach and kept her weight in check.
“I have to think about it,” I say, and switch back to my computer, pulling up the New York Times article with the daily coronavirus updates. I click into the same digital model I have viewed at least thirty times now. Mesmerized, I watch it amplify on my screen.
I recently listened to a Radiolab podcast in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep with one earbud jammed into my free ear. It was about a man looking for a 1000-year-old Pueblo seed jar he had found years ago on a hiking trip in the canyons of Utah. For years he had been wondering about it, dreaming and planning to take this trip again. His goal was to find the pot and relive the memory of his first trip. But to his shock, he discovered that the very same cliff face of rock, where he left the pot untouched, and where it had been for probably a thousand years, had since crumbled to the ground.
By trying to recreate a cherished memory about a mysterious object, what he actually discovered was how impermanent memories really are.
I don’t have the same attachment to objects like some people do, but because I’m a writer, I do have lots of visual pictures that I hold in my mind. I think that’s part of what propels me to write. I’m motivated to make them tangible just like the man with his seed pot was trying to do, my way of holding on to them, of not letting them go.
“Just think about it,” says Janyce. “I think the class starts sometime in mid February.”
I nod to her, but I’m watching the model mutate instead of getting out of bed. I think at least part of my obsession to check on the virus every day and see how much more it has spread is a way I can put off doing all the things I have on my own plate, sinking into the distraction of a major catastrophe instead.
It’s clear to me now that some of these things I have scheduled into my life have got to go. I have to let go of something. But not the big ones, not those. Not the dinners at my friend’s extended family table, not the funerals, the special vacations, the college move-in days, the high school graduations, and not the weddings.
Definitely not the weddings.