I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

Dear Sharron,

     So, how was your 3-day visit to Philadelphia? Did you totally relax in the quiet car on the train from Hartford to Philadelphia’s 30^th Street Station? Did you have fun schmoozing with your husband’s Philadelphia and California relatives, eating each and every meal at a different restaurant or relative’s apartment, taking the cousins for a stroll through Center City, and being ignored by your mother-in-law? Did you enjoy using your friend Janet’s FLIP camera to record as many relative events as you could, even though people gave you a hard time for videotaping them by snapping at you and yelling things like, “O.K., stop! That’s enough?” even though they continued to mug for the camera? 

     How was that subsequent trip to New York City? Did you enjoy taking your husband’s cousins for a long, wet, soggy walk through Central Park, in the rain? Did you pat yourself on the back for scoring discount tickets to Brighton Beach Memoirs, which you thought was excellent (even though the next day the New York Times reported that it was going to close), Finian’s Rainbow (which you loved, maybe because you were named after the main character by your mom, who saw the play a few days before giving birth to you), and Fela, which was funky, loud (I heard you wore ear plugs during some of it), dance-centric, and Afro-beatish? I know you were disappointed in The God of Carnage, which everyone you’ve every talked to or read raved about, because the actors weren’t up to snuff, your hearing device didn’t work, and you had to pay full price for the tickets. I hope you didn’t complain too much about it, because it wasn’t worth either the money or after-play analysis. 

    I bet you loved winding your way through the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim (and melting in awe over his later work and his work on paper), tromping on the hard floors of the Met to ogle the Oceania and Robert Frank exhibits, standing in front of Klimt’s glittering, glorious Adele Bloch-Bauer 1907 oil (in silver and gold) at the Neue Gallery, and strolling through MOMA twice to revisit all your favorites. What I don’t understand is how you could eat the same lunch at MOMA both times you visited. What happened to your adventurous foodie spirit? 

     I’m going to bet you that you didn’t tell your husband how much you spent at Babette for the hip, edgy, unusual black skirt and white top you bought (after trying on at least 20 different articles of clothing), or about the brunch of Eggs Benedict you inhaled at Balthazar, where you opted to sit at the bar instead of waiting for an hour for a table for one, because the place was overrun with young couples and their children (and their strollers). I won’t tell anyone you ate the potatoes that came with the eggs, because I know you claim you aren’t eating potatoes, white rice (which is part of the sushi you ate for dinner one night) or any other “bad” carbs, even though you do when you think no one is looking. 

     Did you enjoy eating dinner with your husband at a different restaurant each night? I hear you had Vietnamese banh mi @ Xie Xie, Middle Eastern/Mediterranean @ Taboon, Thai @ Wondee Siam, Japanese @ Gari Sushi 46, and New American @ Dovetail. I bet you also enjoyed eating macarons from Bouchon Bakery, and bread, pastry, and brioche from Sullivan Street Bakery. Again – I won’t tell anyone about the carbs you snuck into your supposedly carb-free body. I bet your scale will know, though, once you step on it after you’re back home. 

     I’m sorry to hear that you fell off your left Dansko clog on your last night in the city, right in the middle of the street, also scraping your right knee (aren’t you glad you wore that old pair of pants instead of the new ones you were thinking of wearing). I heard you twisted your left foot so severely that you could barely walk, so you decided to take a cab to the restaurant. But, it turns out you had to get out of the cab you hailed, because the New York Marathon let out and all cars were at a standstill. How did you manage to walk 23 more blocks without giving up and lying down on the sidewalk like a ragdoll? Wasn’t it nice of the restaurant manager to bring you a huge bag of ice, and let you use the staff bathroom, so you wouldn’t have to hop down 3 flights of stairs to the customer bathroom? Who’d have thought a restaurant manager and waiter could be so caring and solicitous? 

     What I’d like to know is why you decided to walk back to your hotel (Ink48 – where they changed your room so you didn’t have to hear those loud people next door’s every, single word), after dinner, instead of taking a cab, like any other normal injured person would think to do. I know you stopped at CVS to buy an ace bandage, which didn’t do a thing to stop the pain, but why you soldiered on and kept walking is a mystery to me. You must be a glutton for punishment. 

     I hear you walked (Again, walking? What is wrong with you?) to Penn station, dragging your luggage behind, limping up a storm, because it was your last day in the city and you wanted to get in one more hour of walking in before the long train ride home. I didn’t realize you were such a city-loving kind of gal. 

     I’m glad you got your own seat on the train trip back to Hartford, even though your husband’s seat didn’t have a working light, and the man sitting in front of you screamed on his cellphone for 45 minutes. (Weren’t you lucky that those earplugs you wore to Fela were still in your backpack?) How serendipitous was it that when you changed trains in New Haven that you sat down next to a neighbor and old friend’s daughter, who used to be friends with your son – and that since her dad was picking her up in Hartford and there would be room in his van for you, you didn’t have to pay for a cab? There is sometimes such a thing as a free ride, isn’t there? 

     I hear you and your husband had a lot of luck finding pennies and dimes on the streets of Philadelphia and New York City, and that you made a lot of wishes on those random coins. I hope your wishes come true – and that you don’t contract any serious, lingering diseases from handling such filthy things. 

    Welcome home. I suggest that you prop up your bad foot and watch all those DVR’d programs that are taking up all the space on your TV’s hard drive. I also suggest that you pack up your sorrows, because in a few days you are going to have another opportunity to turn back into your old self – Ms. Happy Husky Fan. Your UConn basketball-watching mania is going to quickly take up so much space in your migraine-prone head that it will displace all your negative, obsessive thoughts, making you forget you ever had them in the first place. That’s right. Help is on its merry way. 

      Goooooo Huskies!