Oh it might be a clunky column this week, reader. In the spirit of the haunted holiday just gone by, be warned before you read on! There could be scary syntax, ghoulish grammar or dangling participles here.
I am writing to you from a hamlet in Western Massachusetts, Northampton, home of Smith College and my closest friend, who shall be known here as Trigger.
Although Portsmouth and Northampton have no formal municipal relationship, the two towns in my mind are sisters. I've been coming here for nearly 25 years, or as long as I've known Trigger, and I have come to think of Northampton as Portsmouth without the ocean. They may be "cities," but these girls give off a real hometown vibe. Their backdrops are different (mountain hamlet versus coastal community) but the similarity of their souls is unmistakable.
Despite my love of the place, I am not in my usual writing space, a spot also known as my bed, where it is comfy and warm. I don't dispatch my thoughts to you as much as smuggle them out of my brain. I write wrapped in a down comforter with my laptop propped just so, coffee to my right and my dog at my side. Doesn't sound much like a big deal; writing is the ultimate in portability, right? Wrong. I have been staring long enough at this blank document to realize that I have begun to attach my writing to place and creature comforts.
Writing may be a higher order behavior, but as a behavior, it really is just like any other repetitive act. Thankfully, the products of repetitive writing are more novel and generative than my other favorite repetitive behavior, smoking. Enter Trigger, aka many other names and nicknames; Marya, Myra, Ouij, Zekebird to list a few. We decided last night that I am a trigger for her and she is a trigger for me. In analyzing this positively, I figure someone can only attain trigger status if they actually trigger something. Even though in this case what is triggered is an undesired behavior, we can work to change it to something better, or focus on what is already there. Myra is also my trigger for moving my body (shhh, don't say the E-word).
She began to teach me years ago, when moving my body was somewhat more of a chore than it is these days, that walking in the woods is fun, interesting and smells good too. She taught me how to dribble, kayak and how to ski on the slopes at Stowe (that last just four years ago).
For several years, when I was commuting from Dover to Boston for work, I stayed with Myra two nights a week. This afforded us a grown-up opportunity to somewhat share a slice of day to day life, like we did all those years ago in college.
And even though she actually biked to work in Somerville from her apartment in Newton every day, she could always be counted on to share a smoke and a laugh at the end of the day. I still count on her for so many things. Our mothers had the same bizarre form of dementia (frontal lobe) at the same time. We would shake our heads together at the improbability of it, or share in joint envy of our age-matched peers who still had their parents and their grandparents.
Now, despite our acknowledgement that smoking doesn't serve us so well anymore, it is still something that is triggered in each of us, simply by the presence of the other. I called her one night last week to report I was getting restless. It was the time of day when most people's bodies and minds begin to wind down, but my mind was stuck in the groove of smoking, wanting to smoke and seriously contemplating a trip to the store to purchase smoking implements. When Myra gives support, it rarely comes in the form of "no, don't do that" or even "I don't think you should do that." Make no mistake, she has an opinion and she expresses it, but she doesn't tell me what to do.
Her prescription for my restlessness that night? To put off buying a pack until tomorrow. Brilliant.
Suzanne is getting ready to trade "The Known World" for the unknown world. Watch it happen here. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
