What I Did On My Winter Vacation
My Winter Vacation
In New York, on this recent trip, I had the highest highs, and the lowest low. The Very Difficult Family Situation unfurled with a power and intensity I couldn’t prepare for, couldn’t metabolize. But my hotel was practically next door to the most amazing cathedral, Saint Mary’s, and every morning I went there, to Times Square of all places, to this sacred space. Usually I go to St. Thomas, the Cadillac of cathedrals, for services sung by the internationally beloved boys and mens choirs. St. Mary’s is the VW bus.
There, I sat before the crèche and I thought a lot about that image of Family, and I thought a lot about my own, so wrought by pain and disfigured by fear. It helped so much to sit, to light candles, to pray and pray and pray. Or whatever you might call it, when a person sits alone and still and whispers please and help and thank you.
Really by the end of the week I felt like a member of the congregation, known and welcomed and festive and belongingish. Partly because of the beauty of the services. Partly because the homeless sleep in the pews so softly. Partly because of all the pain held in all that beauty. This church, this space, the words spoken there, formed the spine of my trip. Everything magnificent that occurred, and there was much, spoked from Saint Mary’s.
The highest highs: the generous wisdom from colleagues in publishing. The plays: Next to Normal, a fantastic production about mental illness in the family. A View from the Bridge which hits hard, like a fist, and Time Stands Still, which I admit I went to only because I wanted to see Laura Linney in person. I saw Soledad Barrio, flamenco, in the Village, a refreshingly under-produced, wholly uncommercial enterprise, sweetly frayed at the edges and seering in the center. Only Next to Normal had that duende on Broadway.
I didn’t see art this time, like I usually do. I saw people. I made new friends.
I ate at Arno’s, Junior’s, Oceana, and Pigalle, and the Museum of Modern Art bar. I saw lots of friends and slept and walked slowly and found the boots I have been looking for ever since I moved to Michigan fifteen years ago—the boots, at last! On Bleeker Street. I dragged Wolf Hall every where I went. This is not a good book to travel with because it weighs twelve pounds. But I couldn’t leave it at home. I couldn’t put it down. And thematically, to see the Cloisters and stay at tudor Hudson View and listen to Anonymous Four and Ruth Cunningham, well Wolf Hall, though weighty and red and huge, fit right in.
Every night, I dreamed I was teaching. My teaching dreams are never anxiety dreams. I dream my classroom is large and full, and the students are happy to be there, and my only worry is the semester won’t be long enough. That it will end.
So I know in my deep soul I am looking forward to the semester beginning today, but I’m not ready to go back. I’ll be happy, back at Hope, happy teaching. And I love New York and when I am here, I never, ever want to leave. Both. At once.
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