It is 8:51 on a Monday morning. I am still in pajama bottoms and slippers, taking a break from chasing kittens out of the Christmas tree where they've already broken one antique Corning ornament, to write this blog. It is slate gray and cold outside, pretty much standard for the Southern Tier in December. I have plenty of paying work to do, which is a blessing, but part of me just wants to lie on the couch and sleep.
P and I did our best to stave off this malaise yesterday, with P mourning a loss in her life on that December date over five decades ago, and me just out-of-sorts and crawling the walls of this lovely cell where I spend 95% of my time. After our second brunch libation (a favorite we found while stuck in Dayton, Ohio during Hurricane Irma--one bottle Underberg, one part orange juice, one part pomegranate juice, Grand Marnier, Amaretto, and champagne, all served over ice), I announced it was time for a road trip, and we piled into the rental car to drive to Wellsboro, Pennsylvania for no particular reason other than the fact that it was somewhere other than here.
We missed Wellsboro's annual Christmas to-do the day before, when they all dressed up as Dickensian characters and sent carolers up and down the main drag to encourage visitors to show up and buy things. They call themselves "the Town that Saved Christmas" because Corning once had a Christmas ornament factory there during World War II that ramped up production because we could no longer buy our baubles from the Nazis. Any year other than this endless parade of Blursdays that have comprised 2020, we would have shown up and wallowed in all that cheer. Instead, we drove down a day later, when no one was around and the town's viral load was a little more manageable. Pennsylvanians are not known for their assiduous mask use.
As an aside, I've learned that New Yorkers have a certain disdain for their neighbors to the immediate south. Every time a Covid patient comes through the door of the local hospital, the surmise is that the infected person probably crossed into Pennsylvania to attend a Trump rally or some such a couple weeks before. One doesn't see many masks down in the rural reaches of the Keystone State, and MAGA signs and flags are everywhere. It is the northeast's version of Alabama.
But Wellsboro was awfully pretty.
I've written about these places before, which one encounters all over the region--picturesque little towns with tidy shops that even have glass in their windows, unlike the plywood one encounters in much of the shuttered, small town South; manicured town squares, stone gothic churches from another century, well-maintained Victorian homes. It's all quite idyllic, and Wellsboro may be the prettiest of the lot.
As we were pulling onto the main drag, I noticed a sign that announced the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania was a mere ten miles down the road. Neither of us had heard of such a place, and we decided to set off on a new adventure.
We arrived to an empty visitor's center, with a paved path leading down to a spectacular lookout down a long, deep valley cradling Pine Creek.
The internet is filled with photos of the place during the summer and fall, but this was the only one I could find of the canyon as we saw it, on a clear, cold day after the leaves have long fallen away. The photo doesn't do it justice--the vistas are spectacular, although it is no Grand Canyon compared to the ditch in Arizona. I recall flying over that one during a Red Flag over three decades ago, refueling off a KC-135 with dozens of fighters around us, late afternoon sun illuminating red and orange striations of rock below, and thinking it was maybe the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
Having taken our stock of the park, Peg and I drove the half-hour or so back to Corning, and settled in to address Christmas cards and watch It's a Wonderful Life. Until last night, I am fairly certain I was the last adult left on earth who'd never seen the Frank Capra classic. It was better than I expected, deeper and sadder but redemptive in the end. Not your typical holiday saccharine high. But you've seen it yourself, so you know that already.
And man, do I need some cheering up lately. We are coming up on nine months spent almost entirely sheltering-in-place. P and I have had a great year in so many ways, and are blessed that we can still make a living and were able to spend most of our isolation roaming 80 acres of rural bliss together. Now we're here, and I am ready for a return of those facets of life that have been on hold for so very long:
-- ready to put on a suit and include the trouser bottoms, rather than appearing for a Zoom hearing in my usual plaid flannel pajamas from the waist down;
--ready to eat a meal in a restaurant crowded with faces and voices enjoying the evening;
--ready to sit at my desk every now and then, and hear from my law partners face-to-face about their kids and their lives;
--ready to climb into the Cardinal with P and go find a $100 hamburger at some little airport we've never visited;
--ready to cross the border and see Quebec City, P's favorite place on earth besides Wyldswood;
--ready to spend a holiday with my beloved parents, and to laugh on the couch with my sister again while P wonders bemusedly what's so funny about South Park;
--ready to stand up in a real courtroom and smother some poor judge or jury with my charm;
--ready to subject the Perry Elks Lodge to my very special rendition of Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother on karoake night;
--ready, maybe, to plant myself on the kneeler of a brick-and-mortar church and feel the Spirit move through the space and the people around me;
--ready to see my boys again, whom I miss every day;
-ready to two-step across a crowded dance floor at Stinky's on a Thursday night;
-ready to eat wings and deviled eggs with the local Bulldog Club on a fall Saturday or, better yet, to cheer on the Dawgs with 92,000 like-minded folks at Sanford Stadium on a perfect Athens afternoon;
--ready to head back to the gym and resume the workout routine that lasted from my sixteenth year until March of 2020, and re-inflate these droopy dugs where my chest used to be;
--ready to see what lovely sartorial statement P will make when we actually have somewhere to go that involves socializing with other people;
--ready to attend a Christmas concert, or a play, or tour an art gallery with P.
Ready for this to be over, I am. My guess is that you are, as well. Maybe soon. Maybe soon.
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