Bridges

Back home again in the woods, to wiggly-waggy Black Labs, after a teaching stint in northern New Jersey. Spent the last three days in a town called Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is an old babe, as I will be some day, teeth falling out of her head, hair dyed way too often so she's not fooling anyone. She is what she is. Everything is as it should be.

My Irish grandmother Mary used to work at a clothing company in Elizabeth. As I drove about the streets this week, I recognized some of the places, the avenues. Used to hold my grandmother's hand as we walked down a road called Elmora. She shopped in that territory. She tried to teach me what to look for so one can get along with life. I have come to discover I need very little.

Back in Linden, where my grandmother lived, I would accompany her to the local butcher shop, and she taught me how to shop for the best meat. As a child I remember looking up at her as she negotiated her way through the best cuts, and thought to myself, "I wanna be like her when I grow up."

I have driven across the United States and back, visited Europe, sailed to Alaska, and have rarely gotten lost. Not so in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There are few street signs. This fact turned me around for at least an hour each way, getting to and from where I was contracted to be. I admit it. This place of the past dumbfounded me.

Northern New Jersey has petroleum tanks, hysterical traffic, and some of the most surprising people in the world. Monday, as I pulled up the ramp of a county parking garage, two Joisey security guards approached my rented car. Their looks were stern.

I rolled down the window, ready to explain my presence, as one has to constantly do in the Washington area.

The shorter guard said,

"Are you Mare-ree?"

Huh?

I replied professionally.

"Yep, that's me."

"We heard youz was comin'. Ya got Virginia tags. Now, go up the ramp, all da way to the sixth floor, and park anywhere. Except the Sheriff's Spot. He'll have ya towed. Now, have ya had your cawfee dis morning? If not, come on down and ask us. There's a Dunkin Donuts not too far around the corner."

All this, and I can get a large light. Nectah from the guards.

So there are bridges from here to there, and back again. Journeying home last evening, I swept behind the rabbit of a pickup truck with green Vermont tags as we motored over the windy Delaware Memorial Bridge. The sun was setting, and I watched the lad in the truck. He was singing, alone in his cab, driving on to stay somewhere not New England. But he seemed happy on his trip.

Neil Young was singing about prairie winds on the CD system of my car. The sky was pink, yawning, about to go to bed. And it got me thinking once again about the prospect of building a round house in Vermont, a Zen place, set somewhere in a hill. A place I will drive to some day. And there will be a horse in the barn there, Black Labs sniffing the ground, and green mountains to ponder.