Elizabeth and I had driven up again after Thanksgiving to Massachusetts for the Christmas and New Year holidays. We were all going up to visit her maternal grandparents in Maine. The actual travelling time from Pittsburgh to Wilmington and then to Lubec is a total of twenty hours. Twelve to Wilmington and an additional eight to Lubec. It is roughly about the same number of hours from the United States pilot travel center to Malaysia by flight.
For the trip up to Maine, the Morrisseys decided to bring the entire menagerie to Maine. This included all but the fishes and the turtle. Guinness, the cat-sized dog came into our red Ford Taurus. Elizabeth s father, Clayton drove. It was just me and him and folk music. The two cats and the two parakeets were in her mother s mid-size SUV. Elizabeth and Robert were planning to spend the drive up listening to Japanese pilot travel center Gothic Rock music, subjugating their poor mother to it. I would have none of that.
Clayton tends to be more chatty and animated in the presence pilot travel center of a group of people. I am usually pilot travel center the opposite unless I am at the centre. My personal prefence leans towards one to one conversations. Our drive up was rather peaceful. Though, once in a while Guinness would get excited by the moving scenery. I discovered the band, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians pilot travel center during that drive.
We left two days before Christmas. There was hardly snow and we wondered if we would be blessed with a white Christmas. The road up to Maine was a little tricky once we passed Machias. Being dark, desolate and snow on the road made it all the more difficult. The glare from the opposing headlights made it worst.
We arrived safely and a little later than usual due to the fact we planned to leave in the afternoon instead of morning. That morning, we attended a funeral of the late Fr. Francis pilot travel center X. Sarjeant. He was Elizabeth s mother, Andrea s spiritual director pilot travel center at Campion Renewal Center. He had passed away on the nineteenth and coincidentally the funeral service was on the twenty-third.
The center was a beautiful place. The service held was also done with the highest grace. Since he had once served in the army, two female soldiers presented the American flag at the end. After the service, Andrea had the chance to meet the other people she knew. Shared condolences, good memories and tears. We then walked to the graveyard and waited for the crowd and the hearse. The priest said a few words, pilot travel center the family members placed flowers and dirt from a silver cup onto the coffin, and it was then lowered.
For some strange and obscure reasoning, I did not pack my suit for this trip. I had wanted pilot travel center to pack light this time. In our usual trip we tend to have the car stuffed by the time we return pilot travel center to Pittsburgh. For some reason without much thinking, I thought I could go casual in jeans not realising that the festivities meant lasting pilot travel center photographs and memories. Looking presentable in them meant a lot to me.
The SUV was packed with mostly a third of both Elizabeth s and Robert s wardrobe. I felt rather embarrassed at the funeral being the only one not in proper attire save for the two labourers who would fill the burial plot with earth. My yellow shoes stood out like the caution pilot travel center sign at traffic lights and train platforms. I felt slightly comforted by a lady who wore a red overcoat.
That self-embarrassment and personal regret carried through to Maine and back. It throbbed when we attended pilot travel center the Christmas Eve evening mass and during the family photos. I was upset mostly pilot travel center at myself and had wished Elizabeth would have counselled me better.
pilot travel center The feeling of being under-dressed for the occasion was not purely due to vanity. Quite a lot of it was an indirect manifestation of frustration from isolation and missing familiarity. It was something that built up over the months. I do not think it was necessary any party s fault per se. The answer materialised only after meeting with Leonard again.
I am unsure how to phrase what contributed to how I felt at that time. I felt grumpy, moody, extremely lonely, isolated, exhausted pilot travel center and feeling different from everyone else in terms of social interaction. However, the opposite pilot travel center is true from my surroundings. Everyone was warm, welcoming and loving. It was festive and abundant in all things. I had no reason to feel that way and it added to my frustrations.
I guess in some ways, I felt left out. Elizabeth is very close to her brother, Robert. They have a lot in common. Their interests almost identical. So at family gatherings, she tends to hang out with him a lot and I often feel quite neglected and left out during their conversations. The conversation topic usually either overwhelms me or not in my scope of interest. I usually end up feeling bored and wander around by myself after that. I was hoping to do some reading. I brought a copy of Endo Shusaku s Silence with me. But I felt mostly tired and worn out. Unlike the rest of the family, we didn t have a room to ourselves. Ours was a comfy pulled out sofa bed in the living room. During the day, it is inhabited by the family with a large coffee table with a lot of German chocolates. They had another room but it was the only place to store items they had removed from the other guest rooms to make way for the parents and Robert. When I felt tired, I could not lie down.
While the internal arena was in discontent, the external world embodied pilot travel center a realm where beauty originated. Christmas Day it snowed a good two inches or so. We could witness the first sunrise in the country. Nature was lovely even blanketed with snow. It was most importantly serenely quiet and still. pilot travel center Standing with Guinness in the middle of the main road with no fear of cars is something very rare being brought up in the surroundings of concrete. Most of the houses here are summer homes for the lesser of the rich from New York or so. It is quiet here during winter.
We even spotted a white weasel during pilot travel center our hike near West Quoddy Head. Robert had missed that spotting as he was cold and headed for the car first. It was really freezing out, I would not blame him. He was a little bummed about missing out on that. So that evening, I took him out for a walk to discover pilot travel center Lubec town and we saw a few interesting things. There was a street called Horror Hill , a fireman s museum, and a grocery store that also functions as a kindergarten and grade school. It is a place that grocery shoppers would fight over the last dozen of uncracked eggs.
In another visit to West Quoddy Head, it was just me and Andrea. She had wanted to go there again to take some photos. Partly for leisure and the other half for her biology students benefit. I had accompanied her because the siblings were too exhausted and preoccupied with Baldur s Gate. I figured it would give me some time to get away from it all. It was an enjoyable hike. We almost got lost but we followed previous footprints of other hikers and my sense of direction with landmarks were good. Dark clouds starting moving in and we decided to head home after visiting a lake. On the way back, Andrea stopped the car by the side of the road. She had spotted a bald eagle. They have protected habitation spot in a small island from view of the deck. One was out today and she went out to snap a few shots.
In Opa and Oma s residence, they have a very cosy little enclave next to the kitchen and towards the deck. It has a very clear view of Johnson Bay s eastern portion and Canada s Campobello Island. It is cosy enough to sit three. It is a roomful of cute trinkets pilot travel center from mostly Lubeck, Germany and other memorabilia related to the season. They used to run a bed and breakfast which explains the three guest rooms and a host of other things necessary pilot travel center for its operation. Plates, utensils, napkins, decorations and etcetera. pilot travel center A really fine establishment during its day until the dawn of the millennium when they decided to retire pilot travel center their services.
During the day, we watched some movies or channels on their international satellite television. I finally got to watch A Christmas Story . It was as good as I had imagined from the trailers I have seen as a kid. Fra-gi-le.
At night, Guinness would sleep next to us on the sofa bed. He is a nice dog and I am very fond of him. I think he is very comfortable with me. Clayton confirmed that it seems every time I take him for a walk, he poops. It must means something.
If I could say that I had put on a few inches, it is testament the food was good. The chocolates were a landfill. Smoked salmon made me feel like heaven. Wine in boxes with never an empty glass. I learnt how to make schnitzel from Oma. Cakes abound. Rouladen all around.
Oma is fun to talk to. The night before we departed, she was feeling a little down. I guess she did not want us to go that soon. Part of the reason of leaving before the New Year was that Elizabeth s schedule at her University would commence on the fourth of January. That meant we had to return to Pittsburgh just after New Years Day on the second.
I stayed up with her that night until daybreak just having a heart to heart talk about whatever came to mind. We share a lot in common. Kindred spirits pilot travel center she would later say. I had often felt that I was from the previous generation. I could have sworn I must have died in 1965 or the late seventies and reborn pilot travel center again in 1982. Prior to that, I must have been in Germany in 1945 from a vivid dream and conversing in German.
We sort of made up for not being able to stay up late to party after the wedding. She had commented before in passing during the night before the ceremony that Americans tend to end parties very early unlike where she was accustomed to, that went into the wee hours of the morning. She said just as one is getting to know someone else and warming pilot travel center up, the party has ended and everyone goes home at ten.
I slept most of the way back to Wilmington. Elizabeth joined her father and I in the red Ford Taurus this time. With the cat-dog, Guinness. Clayton was puzzled pilot travel center as to why I was so exhausted. He realised late
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