to find two of my three men asleep
and the other openly apathetic about dinner.
At first I was mildly annoyed, but then...
I smiled, and sank into my favorite chair,
pulling my laptop onto the top of my lap
(because...what is the bottom of one's lap??)
so that I could spend some time here.
Saturday we wound our way across a part of this state I haven't seen much of;
we went to an orchard in...Morgantown?
and then on to Bethlehem.
Not to give birth in a barn, fortunately,
but to satisfy a primal urge for pastrami.
Hot pastrami on rye, in fact--
(and this immediately brings to mind
that time, when I was 4 years old,
riding in the "way back" of my Mom's yellow Datsun station wagon,
as we rounded the north end of Rockland's Main St.
and headed back south on opposite one-way street toward home in Owl's Head;
I was looking out the back window, free-range in the glorious wild west before seat-belt-laws,
and soon I was hiding under a blanket with a song,
"Hot pastrami on rye-eye," was the refrain,
repeated over and over until I soothed myself to sleep).
So, we headed west and/or north from the apple orchards
(and their decadent donuts)
through Reading
(I love this name, because it looks like my favorite hobby)
and onward to the
gross
smoke-filled
casino
which houses the only remaining Carnegie Deli on the East Coast.
The casino was...gross, did I mention that?
Intentionally polluted air choking us as we wended our way
through the maze that couldn't outsmart us
(after all, this isn't Vegas)
and slid into a booth in a happy little slice of New York.
The sandwiches were not all that we had dreamed of,
but the pickles were,
and the sweet old lady who saw my husband taking a picture of his sandwich,
stopped by and showed him the picture she had taken of a far superior pastrami
at the 4th St. Deli in Philadlphia,
which filled us with longing....
and so...
the quest continues.
We drove home through the dark evening on the winding roads
that connect Bethlehem to wherever it is we live,
(a route I know well,
from that winter I spent driving away my worries for O.
as I drove the hour-long tortuous route once a week until he said, "Enough!"
even though it wasn't).
The Mr. and I glided over those tiny, twisting roads,
bathed in the notes of Graceland,
(with diamonds on the soles of Chevy Chase's feet, calling me Al)
and I was lost in my own thoughts and daydreams,
and everything felt golden and right.
No comments:
Post a Comment