Chapter 8
Northampton MA
The next morning, Janet and I meet Janet’s friend Lori at Jake’s Cafe in our former, very funky, very lesbian college town of Northampton. Janet and Lori worked together for a Disability Management firm until both of them broke off and started their own consulting businesses. While Janet and I have systematically shrunk our own self-employed careers, Lori’s company has grown, internationally even, and we’re thrilled to hear about her plans and ideas and success. An LA native, she tells us to be sure to visit Cambria when we get to California. “It’s where I’d live if I could live anywhere in the world,” she says. I write this down in my appointment book. This won’t be the only time we’re given recommendations and advice about what to see and do. We’re partial to advice like this. (It’s a reason we drove ____miles out of our way to see our friend Terrell’s childhood home in _____Texas. We drove down his suburban street and past his 1950’s one story home for all of two minutes. We took a photo and sent it to him. “We’re here!” we said.)
With Mattie and her blue-cloud fleece blanket comfortably settled in the back seat of our locked car, we have a wonderful breakfast with Lori. Jakes is one of those special breakfast places that local students and residents keep secret. Their buttermilk biscuits are the best on the planet, and they’re giant. We order an extra six to take back to Marsha and Norm’s. Afterwards, with Mattie in tow, Janet and I drive along the back roads of Route 5-10 from Northampton to Deerfield. We snail along, past the flagship home of the Yankee Candle Factory, open to the public and worth a shopping trip. We breeze through the farming towns of Hadley and Sunderland and Ashfield, waving at the now-frozen tobacco and asparagus farms, until we wind up in our old neighborhood. I’m nostalgic for these back roads: along twenty-five miles or so, for a decade, we bought our garden supplies, plants, pumpkins, autumn mums and Christmas trees, all local, all fresh, on these roads.
We end the day on the cul-de-sac of our old house and leave a note for our former neighbor Lisa, who’s not home. We lived across from her and her husband Steve for almost nine years. We never socialized, per se, but we saw each another almost every day, crossing from our yard to theirs, just to say hello and catch up. When Steve developed cancer out-of-the blue, and died at home three months later, I went with Lisa to a remote country house that sat all by itself on flat spit of land. Lisa had made an appointment with the owner, Ellen Todd, a well-regarded psychic, and the hope was that, through her, Lisa could communicate with Steve from the ‘other side.’ Ellen spent several minutes with her eyes closed, and she barely moved. She then told Lisa that Steve ‘wants you to be happy,’ and “he wants you to know that he’s happy and at peace.” Ellen looks directly at a stoic Lisa. “He said when he died, he left his body so fast, ‘like a rocket,’ he had no time to say goodbye. But he loves you and he’s fine.”
When she finished, Ellen asked me if I wanted a past-life session, and I jumped at the opportunity. It would be my second: years ago, my hairdresser’s sister spoke softly to me as I lay on a small bedroom futon, and she ‘took me back’ several lives. I clearly remember, even now, walking through a gateway of some kind and finding myself somewhere familiar. I think it was a village of some kind, but before I could focus in, it was nighttime and I was outside, on a flat surface, surrounded by a large group of people who were moaning and praying. I was in the center, tied to a stake, ready to be burned alive.
“You were revered,” Ellen reported, “And when your power grew, you were burned at the stake.” I wasn’t surprised to hear this: in fact, I knew I was at peace. My strongest feeling was having to leave a community of people I dearly loved. I could feel their sorrow, and their helplessness.
Then I was back at that same gateway, and I walked back through it, reluctantly. It was the oddest feeling: I didn’t want to leave.
*****
On our second night at Marsha and Norm’s, Janet and I meet our friends Terri and Rose at our mutually favorite restaurant Milano’s in Northampton for dinner. We’ve eaten here dozens of times, all of us ordering off the $10.95 special menu. Rose and I are predictable: she gets the Bella Canto pasta and I get the Chicken Marsala. We met these two from mutual friends that I later had a falling out with. It was a hurtful break-up and, somehow sensing the need, Rose and Terri showed up one day and extended and reaffirmed their proverbial hands of friendship. Another time, after my knee replacement, when Janet and I were too overwhelmed to decorate for Christmas, they came and decorated for us.
Ever since Janet and I moved to Provincetown, we rarely see Rose and Terri, so there’s lots to catch up on. Rose is running state-sponsored homeless shelters and hotel placements for people and families who need them, and Terri’s a private psychotherapist in Holyoke, a factory town that’s the essence of a working class community in Western Massachusetts. Terri has opinions, especially unfavorable about misogyny , but mostly, her demeanor and her voice is so gentle, I’m certain she’s a very good therapist.
Rose tells us to be sure to visit Apalachicola on the Florida Panhandle. Like Lori, she says she could live there. I can’t pronounce Apalachicola, but I write it down in my appointment book.
In less than twenty-four hours we’ve managed to see six good friends and eat at three favorite restaurants, and it’s only our second day on the road. Thumbs up to our gallivant so far.
