Dear lj, I just drove 10 hours to my grandparents house, ate wasabi peas once a minute for the last half hour just to stay awake, got here, turned off the light in the bedroom to go to sleep, dropped my phone, went to pick it up, and slammed my mouth into a desk in pitch dark, bled all over the place, cleaned it up, and went back to bed, but now I can't sleep because although its not bleeding all over, and its only the size of what your fingernail would make if it stabbed you, I think it's deep and it hurts like a bitch and I don't think it's closing up and oh my god what if it scars and bright red lipstick never looks good on me again? And I can't post my fears on Facebook because it will worry my mother. Oh, and long time no talk.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

nancy and her husband were a young childless couple that moved into the big house on the live end of my very dead end dirt road. As a curious only child, I equally enjoyed the company of adults, other children, and animals. Nancy loved friends, kids, and dogs, and it was not unusual for me to walk over to her house to hang out. Sometimes we would bake cookies, sometimes I would drink juice out of the coffee cup with the secret ceramic fish on the bottom while she cooked. Other times I would hang out with her 2 healthy and 1 arthritic dog in the back of her old pickup truck, being careful to lift Minnie's hips into the bed. Nancy's attic was transformed into a clubhouse for me, and the basement was a door that she'd open briefly, long enough for a cold breeze to escape the entry and a reminder from her that the basement was host to the ghost of Bruce, the dead teenaged son of the previous inhabitants.
Nancy had lots of dolls and told me stories of a little boy my age that she knew, who was a ski pro, and of two little girls that I would get to play with, daughters of one of her friends. Like I said, she loved children, which is why it was no surprise one day, when I was 6, that she showed me how she had painted one of her spare bedrooms pink, added some frills, and made it very welcoming for the little girl who was coming to live with them in just a couple days.
I understood the concept of adoption at that age, but I didn't ask if she was adopting. I didn't know what the term foster child meant, I certainly didn't understand its temporary nature, but I never asked about that, either.
My friend Tabitha was over the cloudy day when we were sent over to Nancy's house to meet little Carol. Tabitha was almost 2 years older than me, but we grew up together, and I was smart, so it didn't matter much. Carol was nearly a year older than her, but age was hardly the biggest obstacle in making friends, as I was soon to find out.
Once Tabitha and my family and I were introduced to her, the kids were sent to go play in her room, presumably while the adults talked about how her frost few hours settling in went. We sat on her bed, in silence. Th bedroom light was on, because it was such an overcast day, and I craned my neck around the room, taking in how pink the room was when this unnatural light was added.
"It's rude to snoop through people's things!" She called out to me, with a thick urban NJ accent that I had never heard before. I explained that I was not snooping, just merely looking around. "Its nosy!" She said. I made a mental note that pink and frilly didn't really seem to suit her. And then somehow we ended up in the driveway all riding bikes.
Al three of us rode in a small circle. Not a lot of small talk. The Tabby asked Carol what kind of music she liked. I honestly don't remember how she answered, but Tab followed up with asking her if she liked Bruce Springsteen. With Carol in front of us, Tab mouthed Bruce's nickname, "The Boss," to me, while pointing to Carol. The entire rest of that bike ride consisted of subtle and not so subtle references by Tab and I to Bruce Springsteen and his hits. We weren't trying to be cruel, we were just reacting to her prickliness, but perhaps had we been a little more understanding of what foster care was, we would have been more sensitive. Carol was tough though, and I don't know if she knew we were teasing her or not. I never did know what her situation was that brought her into the foster care system, and into my life.
She had huge brown eyes, thick bangs, and a giant smile. Her accent was very slight when she wasn't being tough and saucy. Despite our rough introduction, she was warm and kind-hearted. I remember that.
I don't remember when or how we became friends. To be honest, I don't remember much of our friendship at all except in small snapshots. Playing pool without sticks while Billy Joel was on. Her coming to meet me outside my classroom- she was 3 years older but only a grade ahead. Sitting on Nancy's giant bed with soft-faced cabbage patch kids while the 1984 election results were coming in. Camping in Nancy's backyard with my friend Angel in a blue tent and the three of us pretending there was a wolf outside. My mom putting ridiculous ribbons in her hair. Her running around, long-legged and tan with a fake machine gun. Playing on the patio while my dad unloaded the truck from a camping trip to Connecticut- I want to say she went on the trip with us, but my only memory is directly after.
It's frustrating to me, after all of these years, that I don't remember more. I can remember the shirt someone wore during an unmemorable conversation 20 years ago, or what bra I was wearing when I kissed a boy as a teenager. Hell, I remember way too much minutia from my life that is even older and certainly less important. But I don't remember much of the year or so that Carol lived on the live end of my dead end street, even though we were pretty inseperable.
What I do remember, is the party. Nancy threw a birthday party for Carol. Mostly adults, a few kids, lots of presents. I was told right before the party that it was also a going away party. Carol was going to go live with her sister and brother-in-law. Directly after the party, Nancy was going to drive Carol 45 minutes one way, and return to her house childless. I took the ride with them. I remember Nancy's striped shirt, her giant mirrored sunglasses. I remember from the backseat, where I was sitting, I could see the tears collecting under her glasses and running into her hair. I remember meeting Carol's family, but I don't remember the goodbye. I remember the silent ride home with nancy, who kept a smile, and never took off her glasses.
Like I said, I am good at remembering minutia. I remember the pink address book I had with her phone number and address in it in pencil, that 4736, or 4739, maybe not in that exact order, was part of her phone number. I remember holding a letter to or from her next to my aunt's refrigerator in the almost dark, a few months after she left. We stayed in touch, a little, and I remember 3 years later, long after nancy left the state, long after my family moved away, that I was writing a report on Cheetahs when I took a break to take a phone call from her and we made arrangements to have her spend the weekend at my house.
There's a much bigger difference, I guess, between 10 and 13 then there was between 6 and 9. In a time in our lives when music was so important, we had no commonality. Her music, Guns n Roses, hurt my ears. Mine, New Kids on the Block, made her sick. I grew up in the country and she had spent her whole life, with the exception of the time at Nancy's, in the shadow of New York City. She swore, I was not allowed to curse and I abided by that rule. I was excited that my mom agreed to let us walk to the candy store by ourselves, the first time she ever let me, and I thought Carol would think that swell too. She didn't, I'm sure in her home she could buy candy at 10 different places within a block of her house. Here we were walking a mile and a half each way, then cutting through a field, some woods, and apparently a swamp. I was let down, I guess, that my plan didn't impress her. We came home with wet boots and muddy jeans, and pretty soon she was on her way home.
She left her primary blue jeans, with studded snaps at the ankles, that my mom took to wash after the mud debacle, behind. Mom folded them up for her, to give them to her next time, but I never saw her again to give them to her.
Carol was a tough broad, and I don't know what kind of life she had before or after our time together when we were inseperable. Al I know, looking back, is that it probably wasn't ideal in the beginning, or we would have never met under to circumstances we did. She was both tough and also sweet and smiley, but I don't ever remember sad Carol. But in remembering her face, maybe I am romanticising, but I remember sadness in her eyes that I didn't recognize then. And when I started my adult life, I started wondering what became of her.
I started college 11 years after Carol's going away party, 8 years after we last saw each other. The very day that I got Internet access for the first time, I searched her (very common) name with no conclusive results. A couple times a year, throughout my adult life, I would continue this search with no success.
Then one day, three years ago, I got a job in the town she had lived in with her sister. One of my coworkers, who is a year younger than me, grew up in then bordering town. I asked him if he knew her, but he did not. Another coworker grew up in the town and also did not know her. Both of these coworkers were the kind of people who seemed to know everyone- so what did it mean? Dd carol move out of the area right after we lost touch? Was she around, and thy just didn't know her because of thane difference? Was she dead, in jail, or had she been shipped around? I didn't necessarily want to befriend her, who knew if we had anything in common, but I desperately wanted to know that she was alright, and that she was happy.
A week ago, I was riding through the residential area in the town that I work. I learned long ago that every street kind of looks the same there, and I've stopped recognizing houses as potentially the one we dropped her off at that May, over 25 years ago. It got me wondering about her again, so I consulted with google in the usual way.
Not only was her first and maiden last name common, but if she had been long married, her maiden name might not even show up in searches. The only relatives I knew of were her sister, who also had a common first name (of which could be spelled 10 or more ways, and I didn't know which!) and her brother in law (also common first name) and they both had a common enough last name. I couldn't flor the life of me remember what the sister or the brother in law looked like, however, I found a man on Facebook who used to live in the right town, looked the right age,with the right name. If he was married to someone with the sisters name, I was golden! Unfortunately, he was divorced. I looked at all of his friends who had the same last name. One of them was 25, and I got the impression that the ex brother in law was this girls dad- which means that the sister was likely the mom, that far back, which means this could be Carol's niece! A quick google search yielded a name for this girls mother- which ws a derivation of Carol's sister's name! I was moving more than I ever had in this search! The presumed niece had several friends named carol. One of them, which google told me had relatives with the same last name as her maiden name, had a great big picture of her on the page.
I expected instant recognition. I didn't have it. It could have been her, or could have not been. I think in my head, I was expecting to see a teenager. Carol was 13 when I last saw her, and my mother was 30. The woman in this photo, who looked great, was almost 10 years older than my mother when they last saw each other. The big eyes might have been a giveaway if she want wearing glasses, so I wasn't sure. I texted the photo to my mom, who didn't know about my search, and asked her to identify the person.
While I waited for my mom, I couldn't help but message her. "Did you live in [town] for a short period in the 80s?" And the photo, above, from some beach trip.
My mom texted back. "Is that carol? Did you get back in touch with carol??"
I was already 100% sure at that point but that just clinched it for me.
I googled one of the usernames that came up in my search. Not much came of it, other than a news story about someone doing wrong by a child, with a comment presumably by her (same username, same town.) with her spouting off about what a loser scumbag someone was. It was totally The Boss. That was the attitude I remembered for sure.
You can't tell everything from a Facebook profile, but it looks like she has a big family, like she belongs, and like she might be happy. That's really all I could hope for. The fact that she never responded to me makes me hope that her life is so good to her that she doesn't want to remember the darkness that must have brought her to the house at the live end of the dead end street, even if the times there were good.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

Cape Cod Rail Trail- Take Two

Today's trip was an "easy" (tell my butt that.) 36 mile trek in the opposite direction from yesterday, on the Cape Cod Rail Trail.  We headed south on the trail from Underpass Road, going from mile marker 8.5 to 3.5, going through the bike rotary in Harwich, and opting to take the Old Colony Rail Trail to Chatham, rather than finish out the CCRT, and then, at the end of that, we explored the town of Chatham a bit.

If yesterday's bike trip was more about nature, this one was more about opulence and summer luxury. Sure, we still rode through some wooded areas, but here we found public lake beaches with lots of visitors wasting the 75 degree day away, private beaches not inhabited by anyone, but giving away hints of what kind of extravagances they see. We passed an airport with private jets, a brand new retrofitted airstream, houses of old money, new, over-the-top construction, old graveyards, a library with an entire geneology department! A street art-fair, where one could buy as many paintings of
lighthouses and driftwood as their wallets could handle. Stores with names like "The Puritan" and "Kennedy's" abounded. Even the Ben Franklin shed its familiar logo for a fancy, more upscale facade.

The Old Colony Rail Trail seemed a little more advanced than the CCRT. A lot more hills- sustained hills. Fewer, more discreet mile markers- every 1/4 mile and hard to spot, unlike the mocking 1/10th of a mile markers on CCRT.


I mentioned awhile back, that going to see Jerusalem on Broadway brought me back to my late teens. Today I was brought back to a much earlier time, when bikes were transportation and leisure to me. There was a portion of the CCRT that reminded me of the campground my family used to go to when I was a kid. More importantly, I remembered some subtle nuances of biking that were lost to me for almost 20 years. I forgot the feeling of leaning left or right, of going down a hill and turning at the same time. I forgot what it was like to have a conversation with someone, almost side by side, on a bike. What it feels like going through patches of shade and sun and back again all within the span of a few seconds. Today brought me back there.

We stopped at a little place in Chatham called Sweet Tomatoes and had some pizza. I've always been a NY/Northern NJ pizza snob, but as long as you're not trying to make that style pizza, I can suspend that. Got a cheese slice and a spinach feta slice. The best thing about this pizzawas the sauce. It had giant chunks of really good tomatoes in it. The crust was thin and grilled tasting, the cheese adequate.

I swear my partner has a doughnut locating GPS embedded in his skin. We ended up just a few hundred feet up the road at the Chatham Bakery where the best doughnuts of the trip were consumed. We got a nice rest there, too. When we got back on our bikes, my right brake line was messed up and I only had front brakes.

The nice thing about Cape Cod is that there's a bike store EVERYWHERE. Even nicer, the closest one to us, about 1/2 a mile away, was Chatham Cycle, owned by the same place that we rented our bikes from, so they fixed it and off we went. We drove into the downtown of Chatham which wasn't really our cup of tea, walked around a few to stretch our legs, and began the long journey back. There was one hill that I was particularly dreading, but it ended up being a lot easier than I thought. As it was getting later in the afternoon, the wildlife started coming out. Squirrels (after seeing the bikekill one yesterday, I actually yelled "Aaaah, a squirrel!!!") and chipmunks, large shiny ravens, water birds, and a particularly suicidal bunny that wanted to run head-on into my bike but at the end opted not to. At one point I had a sparrow flying parallel to me which was kind of cool. In the end, we rested at the rotary in Harwich, rode the last couple of miles through Brewster, and lo and behold, we were at El Guapo's Taqueria just in time for dinner, and some liquid relaxation. After food in our bellies, and beer in our livers, we rode the final 3 miles through town in the setting sun, and called it a day.


How to Do it:

Same as yesterday, we just went in the other direction. At the Harwich Rotary, which you can't miss, follow signs for Old Colony Rail Trail.