It was 9:00 PM as I sat in the Houston terminal waiting for the final flight home. According to my boarding pass, it was to have started boarding 15 minutes earlier but I had lost track of the time. I busied myself with the iPhone responding to emails and sending text messages, all the while keeping a casual eye on the muted Cowboy’s game on the T.V. overhead. Bursts of activity were periodically interrupted by daydreams of the perfectly wonderful weekend I had just left behind.
I attributed my pounding headache to a full day of travel and an anxiousness to get home. It was more likely to have been brought on by the weighty and emotional goodbye to dear friends, leaving behind a beautiful part of the country in which I believe my true spirit lives and such excitement from the rare opportunity to attend a research symposium. It could also have been brought on by the empathetic desperation I felt for Jeannette Walls and her siblings as I read her memoir, The Glass Castle. (A fabulous read, by the way!) The truth, however, was that it was a headache brought on by the mounting dread of heading back to reality. Weekend escapes from motherhood have been so few and far between and this particular weekend had been incredibly enlightening and reinvigorating.
Amanda and her youngest son, who snapped this photo of us, had met me at the airport four days earlier. We easily glided right back into step with one another as we caught up on the past six years since we last spent time in each other’s company. We parked ourselves in her kitchen all afternoon and evening recalling the many years and memories we’d shared. Sometimes it required both of us to assemble just one – half her recollection and the other pieces pulled from my bank. It’s hard to believe there was a time when we were 20 somethings, kidless and fancy free New Yorkers.
Her beautiful home is located on property with a backyard that slopes down to a creek; ideal exploring grounds for her three young boys. The school bus deposited the two older ones at the end of their driveway so none of our time together was interrupted by what in my world would require: a trip in the car down the road to circle for a parking spot on a side street across from the school, to exit the vehicle, travel to the cross-walk, greet the safety patrol, navigate the school hallway to LilGEE’s classroom, wait for the bell and an orderly dismissal, negotiate a rather upstream travel through the now overly crowded hallway, to BigGEE’s classroom before traveling the entire sequence in reverse back to the car.
All in all, it was a terribly short but perfect visit and I feel as connected to Amanda as I ever have. Some friendships are just like that.
The next day, I found my way to the first day of presentations at the Society for New Communications Research symposium. There I met Katie Paine. She was fabulous! I quickly became fascinated with the work of measuring both traditional and social media efforts. More about this conference later as my mind is focusing today on Vermont.
At the end of SNCR’s Day Two, Jim collected me from the Harvard Faculty Club and we set off on the two hour drive to his home there. 
He was the perfect host inserting me into what is usually a busy family weekend schedule. He had, however, planned ahead for everything from what we would eat, where we would go and what we might do – all the while offering alternative options to any or all of his carefully laid plans. Just like my time with Amanda, those 15 years since we last met melted away instantly, and we regaled a time before children and mortgages. Given that Jim’s a foodie, he’s raising daughters that eat fresh everything: breads, salads, dressings, butter, vegetables, salt. He’s a happy magician in the kitchen and each meal was perfect.
He loves living in Vermont and who could blame him? We traveled to Woodstock, a charming town with quaint shops, galleries and restaurants. Vermont makes entertaining out-of-state guests easy. Just driving around is beautiful. We traveled over the river and into New Hampshire to visit Hanover. It wasn’t hard to impress the Texas girl: state hopping within minutes, a backyard full of mountains, colorful trees, grazing horses and roads that twist and turn, curving up one mountain side and down another. It’s a bit of a roller coaster ride for one accustom to traveling many hundreds of miles on the same plane without any or just the slightest curves along the way.
He works at Dartmouth College an impressively beautiful Ivy League campus founded in 1769. I enjoyed a brief tour which reminded me of my own liberal arts alma mater, Southwestern University founded only 66 years later. I love those old gorgeous campuses. It was definitely coat weather that day and I took a few photos of fall foliage – one tree dressed entirely in red and another completely in yellow. I wanted to stay forever if only I could find a cafe that made “kid coffee”. Those New England folks drink the kind that will put hair on your chest.
And like my time with Amanda, it was time to say goodbye to Vermont and Jim after what felt like moments after my arrival. So I packed up the maple syrup flavored lollipops, homemade jams, and maple candy before we made the trip back to Boston’s Logan airport.
When in Houston, I finally glanced from my phone to the empty boarding counter at 9:01 PM, I panicked realizing there had been a gate change. I cursed the entire airline industry – all the carriers from A-Z - as I raced down the hallway to the adjacent set of gates. I could not miss my flight!
There was nothing I wanted to do more than to climb back on a plane to Boston returning to fabulous adult conversation, continuing education and the gorgeous sight seeing. But I pushed myself down the terminal onto the plane and added more tension to the pounding in my brain. I was on my way home and I needed to be a big girl about it.
It was 10:30 PM when I arrived. MrGEE was waiting at the airport. And while I was emotionally and physically exhausted from the travel, I was motivated, excited, reinvigorated – ALIVE. I had changed in the time since he last saw me and I didn’t know how to begin explaining why. It was a fabulous trip! I had learned so much. I had enjoyed so much. I had reconnected with friends vowing not to let time slip away in large chunks again. I was home but already dreaming of my next trip to New England.