Memory prime

Things feel a little off balance right now. Here it is, the second week of September, the sky is that ridiculous shade of blue again, but I’m not in Maine. We’ve gone there around this time of year for four of the last five years, and it feels so strange not to be there now. It’s funny how quickly the human brain gets accustomed to a repeating pattern, to the point where you even start waking up a minute before the alarm goes off. Back in grad school, when we used to drive from Ohio to Virginia every break, it got to the point where I would look out the window at exactly the moment we were passing by a particular landmark, my eyes falling on it at just the same moment the impulse popped into my brain to wonder when we would see it. (My personal favorite was off the side of I-70 in eastern Ohio: a rusty sign for the “Sports Paradise” standing in the middle of an overgrown field, with smaller, crooked lettering at the bottom that said, gratuitously I think, “Closed.” Ah, the stuff of poignant, overemotive poetry.)

Our new place has been an interesting exercise for my physical memory. Since it’s laid out almost identically to our old place, I think I settled in here a lot more quickly than usual. (Our apartment in Columbus had corners that I never got used too, due to the weird layout and cobwebby, Victorian vibe. I think I vacuumed behind the staircase only one time in the six years we lived there.) But I do find myself sometimes heading to the location of the old fridge, or looking around and wondering what I’m doing in someone else’s house. Some of that is that I’d never paint my bedroom peach, but some of it is the back reaches of my lizard brain still getting used to the new surroundings. Still, I’m getting to where I don’t need to look for the lightswitch, and I almost don’t get irrationally pissed when I think about those clomping moose we used to live below. Actually, I take that back—I’ll probably always be irrationally pissed at them.

So why am I not in Maine? Well, the trip to Vermont we took instead was a total blast, so I’m glad about that. And it’s probably a good thing to break out of the routine, to make sure Acadia always stays special. But man I could go for a blueberry smoothie right now from Gaucho’s, or how about that mojito at Havana...Eden has the best vegetarian food ever...next year we’ll definitely have to cycle the Park Loop Road again...I miss Maine.