5/24- Food and Friends

Stacey was long gone by the time we woke up at 11am, but she had left her house open for us to use. Inside she'd made coffee for us and left an offering of plums and apples for breakfast along with a little note. We took advantage of the shower, drank our coffees, and just generally relaxed a bit for an hour or so before shuffling off into our day. At the head of her street was a Friendly's restaurant, so we decided to kick back there with some breakfast and more coffee.

I immediately liked our waitress, Kianna. She had an empty section that we were in, and virtually sat down with us as we joked through our morning haze brain. Over the next few hours there Todd and I brain stormed out a new sitcom called "The Christs'" and with Kianna's help cast out each of the characters of this Holy family drama. My favorite was Noah, the drunken neighborhood mechanic.

Once we'd had our fill of Friendly's we walked a little ways to the Chicopee River nearby. The agenda for the day was more dinners and barbecues. Gus was having a Memorial Day barbecue starting at 2pm, and Dave had arranged for me to have dinner with his family at his Mom's house which I was really looking forward to. Todd opted out of that, feeling a bit out of place for that sort of setting, and figured he could hang out with Gus on his own while I did that. It worked out quite nicely, actually.

After an hour or so at the river Dave called and picked us up at a CVS nearby. He dropped Todd and Gus' then took us to his Mom's. I was hoping the whole family would be there, but was quite satisfied with just hanging out eating on their porch with Dave, his Mom, sister Olivia, and her friend Allie. Olivia had been 2 when I left town so I'd never really known her. The only thing I really thought of when I thought of her was Dave's senior picture in which he's holding her in his arms looking all bad ass and sensitive on a beach. They apparently did a recreation of it fifteen years later that left a bit of a different tone.

Francesca was the only one of Dave's siblings, other than Evan, who I'd really sort of known and sadly she couldn't make the dinner. She was probably about 12 when I left town so she had always been the little one hanging around who we would, of course, pick on as the big teenage kids we were. It was great, however, to reconnect with Dave's Mom, Robin. She was always one of those really cool parents that was great to hang out with as a kid, and great to revisit as an adult. We spent the night telling stories, me of my travels and them of their various adventures in the past fifteen years. It turned out Allie also had a connection to me in that she claimed my Dad was one of her favorite teachers in middle school. She was a bit shocked to find out I was his son.

By the end of the night we turned to telling stories about Evan. It was amazing to me to see how well they all were handling his death. Olivia and Allie disappeared after a while and the conversation get well into what had happened, who he was and what the motivation behind it was. I was stunned to hear the level of preparation that Evan put into this final act that exuded nothing but care and concern for how it would affect his family and friends. Robin even showed me the note he left behind which oddly comforted me, as she said it had many others as well, in the way he described why he just didn't want to be around anymore. He was emphatic on saying it wasn't sadness, loneliness, or any of your other traditional cop out reasons; it read to me that really he was just here at the wrong time as odd as that may seem and he wanted to make sure no one was hurt or left blaming themselves by his departure.

We wrapped up the night and, after dropping Olivia and Allie off at some party, Dave swung by Gus' BBQ with me to hang out for a while. I found Todd, as usual, among about three people tucked away from the party questioning them about various legalities, as the other two were lawyers. I'd later hear about a dramatic discussion on morality, social responsibility, and the rest that had happened earlier. Once Dave left an hour later, Todd and I both retreated to the corners of the party and simply relaxed. Many things were taxing me subconsciously from this visit home on a whole, and guzzling beer dancing to bad 80s wasn't quite tickling my fancy.

Once the party did breakup, however, another political burst exploded inside. We all were relaxing post-clean up eyeballing the sleeping arrangements when somehow Obama came up. Voting, taxing, and "your duty as an American" ensued and soon one of the more idealistic lawyers were launching at Todd saying he had no right to complain since he hadn't voted, and wasn't actually a citizen because he didn't work, thus not paying taxes. Todd sprung up to a stand in full tirade stance, then caught himself seeing a dumb, over argued, argument coming out of that and simply walked out with Gus. I stayed long enough to calmly clear up a bit of his end of the argument, not really caring if she grasped the concepts of it or not, but more just to stick it in her craw, then I left too.

Good thing for our bivys and desire to return to the woods, because neither of us had any inclination to sleep anywhere near her raving slogans. We rolled out our beds and went down for the night.

Click here for Todd's perspective.