Remembering

San Francisco was lovely.

And that is currently, the only clear thought I have in my head.

Is this what ADD is? I have never been officially diagnosed, but it feels like what everyone says it is. When I’m away from the computer, I feel this tug — I need to come back and write. There’s that ice cream story I’ve been working on for three weeks. There’s the book I just finished that I’d like to process through verbalizing my thoughts. There was this little girl at the Minneapolis airport whom, while waddling towards the ladies, exclaimed with great pride, “I’m potty-trained! I’m potty-trained!” At which age do we hit, which moment do we experience, when all of a sudden, we become dissatisfied with ourselves and enough isn’t enough?

My flight was from Minneapolis to San Francisco. We had reached altitude so the lights turned off. I retrieved the book I grabbed in a hurry, chosen because it was thin — only 124 pages. It was Wendell Berry’s Remembering. He is one of Evan’s favorite authors; him and a few others were responsible for the little decisions Evan and I make daily when it comes to food and communities and nature. I read one of his short stories several years ago; I don’t remember what it was about, I just remember the feeling, and it was a good one. Does that happen to you too? I don’t remember the details in The Shawshank Redemption, but I remember the feeling that it was good.

My seat in the economy cabin is tight, but I’ve gotten used to it. With the reading light on, casting a direct beam of orange in the immediate parameter around my body (seriously, how did they get it so precise?), I feel as if I’ve been encased in a capsule. As I flipped through the pages, my body begins to accept the low hum of the aircraft and the stifling air as the new norm. I settle in as comfortably as I could, trusting my life in the hands of human technology that is defying gravity and transporting me from the middle of the North American continent to where it meets the Pacific Ocean.

Within the scope of the light, all there was, was his words and my mind.

The book begins with Andy, the main character of Remembering, waking up.

“It is dark. He does not know where he is. And then he sees pale light from the street soaking in above the drawn drapes. It is not a light to see by, but only makes the darkness visible.”

I find out later, Andy is in San Francisco.