I could write about Mother, I could write about my summer of grief and pain- which I shall, eventually- but it is the final days of my birthday month- or it was when I started this post- and I'd rather write something cheerful. Nashville it is.
I enter Nashville on an airplane. I am here for foolish reasons, which should surprise exactly no-one. A friend meets me in her car, picks me up. It is Thursday.
The foolish reason I am here is NashYarns, a yarnfest. Yarn event. Gathering of yarn-adjacent goods and services, attended by yarn-interested parties. This is something I will need to explain to my brother-in-law two weeks from now. He will be astonished by the notion of a "yarn event." I will give an impromptu mini dinner table seminar about yarn and fiber arts in general. I do not yet know this, or I'd've actually prepared.
The fact remains that I need no new yarn, nor any of my old yarn either, as I've practically quit knitting altogether, in favor of more active activities. I'm no longer trapped waiting for kids this-and-thatting, and so am on the go-go-go, little time to sit still with sticks and string. I ordinarily would not make a journey of any length, not to Lancaster, Wilmington or Frederick, certainly not Nashville, for YARN.
I learned about the festival called NashYarns, because Franklin Habit is coming.
Who? Franklin HABIT. He's a cartoonist, essayist, dancer, knitter, photographer, designer, collector, sewist, creative, dollhouse enthusiast, ex-Chicagoan, current French citizen, and he's coming to the US for NashYarns, which is put on by a company now called Modern Daily Knitting, the amazing babes formerly known as Mason Dixon Knitting.
I check ticket prices. I can afford a ticket. I check my work schedule. My boss can manage without me. I make plans. I think I'm going by bus. I look at the bus schedule, the timing, the seating, the pricing. The price to purchase the next seat over so as not to be plagued for 17 hours by someone undesirable. I buy a plane ticket instead.
My ever-loving one relates a conversation he's had at work: "Why's she going to Nashville?" "There's a convention there, with an author coming to speak that she wants to see and he lives in Paris now, so this is probably her best chance." "Oh. What will you do if she runs away to Paris with him?"
And I will leave that just there.
A dear friend is in Nashville for the week doing family maintenance things. Readers of a certain age will know what I mean already, but for younger readers, 'family maintenance' is looking after elders who may be in care homes, their own homes, or someone else's home, in need of attention and support, and ALSO expressing appreciation and support to those local johnny-on-the-spot family and friends who are doing day-to-day support while we go about our lives in other cities, other states. When my aunt travels to the East Coast, she sometimes does a smitch of Family Maintenance, and it's a little bit nice. Being johnny-on-the-spot is exhausting, and having someone notice and share is like seeing a bright kite in a blue sky.
Our first stop from the airport is for a smoothie for our second stop, Momma's care home, which, in my estimation, is quite comfortable and even lovely. Momma is a dear and a delight, happy to get dressed and walk outside to sit on a shady bench, drink a shake and converse about this and that. I am at once pleased and devastated. The comparison to my own Mother's situation is stark. The grounds are pretty and well kept, and there are paths, wide ones, smooth for walkers and wheelchairs. When we leave, we settle Momma at a table with her friends in the bright dining room. I notice that the staff is almost entirely Black and the residents entirely White. In this ONE WAY, my Mother's care home in Baltimore is superior.
Our next stop is the grocery, then to Stepmommie's lovely home, an hour outside of Nashville. Stepmommy is a locally honored botanist, the kind who preserves and promotes local flora. She's won prizes. She is an extremely thoughtful host and appreciates the chocolates I've brought. We eat salmon and are about to watch a movie in the TV room when the power goes out. This stops us briefly to find flashlights, and we go about out evening more darkly and less electrically.
There is a commuter train that runs into Nashville with a stop only 20 minutes from Stepmommie's place. It is the very end of the line. My friend says, "I will get you there for the 7 AM train, because I love you. 7 AM is an ungodly hour for anything." Acquiring a ticket online for the commuter train confounded us all afternoon, and now the power is out, so we plan to show up hopeful that we can buy one on the spot.
We can, and I do, and the train is a double-decker. I ride on top, enjoying the scenery. The train drops me downtown, and a nice person directing traffic, whom I ask to help me find out how to get to the bus depot, speaks to a bus driver, who says "I'll take you," and waves me away when I reach for my wallet. Today is Friday.
We drive along a street full of carnival-colored signs, oil pastel coloring book beautiful, about half of the shops advertising boots for sale. I need boots about as much as I need yarn, so I'm glad I can look only at the outside of these shops. Hours later, I'm still thinking about those boot shops. Days later, I'm still thinking about those boot shops. Months later... dammit, I need to go back to Nashville.
The driver wishes me a blessed day when we reach the bus depot. I mentally gird myself for seedy characters, absent employees and the odor of urine. I find none of those. The station is a little run-down, but maintained. The bathroom is clean enough to use, and in working order. Everyone is nice. Everyone in line at the embedded DD where I choose a red-eye and breakfast sammie, the employees who urge me to take enough napkins, the bus terminal people advising me on bus lines and where it is permissible to walk, and the other folk waiting for their own buses. I keep my eyes open for yarnies, but spot none. Am I the only one journeying to this event by mass transit? I study the bus maps for ways to get 'home' from the yarn event today, and back again to the event on Saturday, when the commuter train doesn't run. I have a long wait. I explore the outdoor area a bit, climb some stairs toward what looks like a seat of government, sit awhile in the sun, and eventually return to the bus depot and descend to the lower level with my bus pass and day bag.
The bus drops me Here, the convention center complex is There, so I enjoy my walk in the outdoor weather, which is quickly approaching Too Hot, for the last time of the day. I join a snaking line to enter, study the map I've been given, message the local friend whom I will meet for the first time today. I enter and try my hand at knitting a nametag for myself, but large concrete structures with faraway ceilings bounce sound all over, and there are PEOPLE. The people are wearing OUTFITS. Often the outfits have ACCESSORIES. A textile junkie like me is hard-pressed to sit down, read something, understand and execute it when faced with this level of sensory onslaught. My friend arrives. We seem, as we converse, to be kindred spirits. I purchase a canned cocktail and, when I tuck the empty beverage can into my bag, discover the empty gin bottle from the airplane. Yes, I purchase a juice when I am near my gate and empty my gin mini into it. I tuck the gin mini or two in with my cosmetics. I tell everyone I do this, and still no one knows. I hate flying sober, and avoid it with some little effort.
My friend and I shop and talk, but not as much talking due to the faraway ceilings and barrage of sound. I show her the booth of a man who makes wooden things, reasonably priced, nothing I need, but he knows the story of every piece of wood in every item he has for sale, the walnut a woman in PA was using for firewood, the birch that came down in a hurricane near a waterfall, the grapevine that was not the grapevine he gathered from a Confederate cemetery, but just regular grapevine. Over the weekend, I visit there four times.
We agree that we are primarily interested in Franklin Habit's talk, which is tomorrow, and she says she needs to go home soon as her bum leg has fatigued her. At the time, I related in an abstract fashion, gained from an injury in 2017. Just now, I relate on a primal level, having just had a brief beach visit that was more arduous than necessary due to a recent frailty. A beach trip as I generally understand it involves walking that amounts to, in the words of Damon Runyon, 'more than some.' I tell her I'll be relying on an Uber for tomorrow, and she very nicely offers to transport me the next day. We agree on a time, I give her the address and she exits.
It is probably less than an hour later that I too am ready to leave. There is, for an additional fee, (and it's sold out now in any case) an evening Event called a Hootenanny, with three different musical acts lined up, but I didn't buy the hat, have no fringe whatsoever and my Doc Martens are absolutely the wrong sort of boot.
I exit the complex of buildings the same way I came in, through a little meadow of native wildflowers, which my host identifies when we are reunited. That will not be for some hours, though, as I wait at a bus stop in weather that is officially Too Too Hot for the bus that will take me to the depot, (missing the first one, as I do not know to stand to hail it), where I will take a different bus to the train station and take the train all the way out to twenty-minutes-from-Stepmommie's-house. My friend is doing Family Things and is unavailable for fetching me until nearly 8 PM. While on the train, I hunt up places I could eat when the train lets me off, and choose, based off a name that resembles mine, and several good reviews, a restaurant that serves fried fish and additional items I'd call PubGrub. It is a small, nice walk from the train station with Googlemap as my guide.
It is Friday night, and the locals are here to eat, drink and listen to a young woman whom my mind refers to as a Lounge Singer, because what else do I call her, here in the pub singing along to a kareoke machine? She has a nice voice and I like her selections. She asks the crowd for suggestions, and they are enthusiastic but unhelpful. Then she sings James Taylor. I nod approval from my Gunslinger seat and sing along under my breath, because no one wants to hear me sing, not even me. She goes along in the James Taylor vein awhile, which she executes better than somewhat, and I suggest "More Than Words," as it seems to fit her groove. It does. The waitress assures me I don't need to rush off once I've finished my meal, even though I do not, it turns out, want any dessert. I fiddle with figuring out Lyft, find I do not qualify as a New User and must scrounge up details of my account, dormant since 2021. I make additional suggestions to the singer, all of which she appreciates. I may be choosing songs that are suited to her range, something I've no training for, but I do have an ear. Having navigated the Lyft interface, I order a driver to save my friend a trip. When she calls, I am ensconced already in the vehicle, having departed the restaurant while Ms. Lounge Singer took a break. "I'mma need YOU to come back every week," are her parting words to me from the mic.
The driver insists on regaling me with stories of other riders, in particular a pair of paraplegics who became friends in rehab, having both executed ill-advised dives into shallow waters, and a man with a blind wife who loves to gamble. I make noises of mild interest with no intent of becoming A Story.
At Stepmommie's house, it is now dark and we must walk down the lane to fetch a dog from Brother's house, as Brother's family is later getting home than anticipated. Brother's house is three houses over, and it's half a mile. The house is lovely and huge, with a wonderful pool and bats casing the place. We stroll back to Stepmommy with the dog, and sort through an extensive CD collection, putting discs with cases whenever possible. Stepmommy has a memory of every CD and the circumstance under which each was acquired. I try to keep up with conversation, but it's been A Day, and I am shooed off to shower and bed after falling asleep in the middle of another sentence, this time my own.
In the morning, Saturday morning, for those keeping track, I load my gear into the Tesla van we'll travel home in later today before my new friend arrives to fetch me. Though it's early, Stepmommy is out among the botanical wonders of her front meadow. I have left a thank-you card and hope it is sufficient. My new friend, who pulls up approximately four minutes after we've closed the van doors, insists she has experienced no difficulties in finding me. Now, on the hour-ish drive we learn we certainly are kindred spirits, and by the time we park in the spitty half-hearted rain, it seems to me we've been friends always, only without having realized it before.
We claim a comfortable spot in the Lecture Hall, which wasn't open yesterday, as it was the site of the Hootenannny, and I do more than a bit of popping in and out all day. "I'll be your legs," I promise my friend, "coz I'm wiggly anyway." There are speakers scheduled all day, introduced by the enthusiastic, charming host. The topics are fiber-related, entertaining and great fun. Once person speaks of Slow Fashion and their journey to achieve and spread it, one person sings along with a sewing machine- okay it's seriously fiber-nerdy, but after decades as a textile junkie, this is my jam.
Franklin Habit is the closing act, because really, nobody ought to follow him. He says he's terrified, as he has never given this talk before, but I happen to know, having followed his media, that he has been preparing for it for six or seven years. He grows more comfortable as he speaks (and his audience responds with extreme warmth), gradually emerging fully from behind the podium, because he knows his topic and is passionate about it. He discusses historical date, scale, proportionality, and a commitment to period materials, none of which he intends to get, or put up with others being, terribly pedantic about because the bottom line is, this is a toy. A plaything. A non-serious matter. He is talking about his dollhouse. The fibery stuff is embedded: fiber arts in miniature, but he's talking about everything in miniature. He tells the story of the house, of not knowing what it was for, of acquiring the occupants of the house, of their stories revealing themselves gradually, of his priorities for the house, the representation he never saw in dollhouses as he grew up, the representation he wishes to be very intentional about now. He talks about various aspects incorporating fiber into dollhouses, including one of my favorite topics, drape. (Yeah, shut up. I KNOW.) It is absolutely a delight, and leads to me sharing online dollhouse antics with my yarn-oriented boss on my return.
After the talk, we line up for autographs, do a tiny bit more shopping and my new dear friend drops me at a bookshop where it will be easy for my longtime friend to fetch me so we can begin our journey Eastward. I use the time to reset from Festival mode to Travel mode. I'm driving a Tesla for the first time. It is significantly less exciting than I anticipate. The first place we stop to recharge- and we recharge strategically, someplace to pee, stretch, eat- because this is not a new journey for my friend; me being along is the new part- is a place called Buc-ees. I have heard of Buc-ees. It has a reputation. Even so, this Buc-ees is more... everything than I anticipate. It's astonishing. It's as if a Wal-Mart, a Fingerhut Catalogue and a Wawa wandered into Chernobyl to fornicate and produce one massive unholy offspring. I am horrified by neon farm animal art FOR SALE in the washroom, at prices in the multiple hundreds of dollars. There are miles of things to eat, and shopping that seems unending. My horror does not prevent me from spending something north of a hundred dollars, but includes several packs of cigarettes, which alone approach three figures when I purchase them in Maryland, something I never do anymore. My purchases also include a package of Beaver Nuggets. I ask the Gen Z behind the shaved meat counter whether these are Made Of, Made For, or Made By beavers. The aproned and hatted worker considers briefly, head tilted, and says "I'm gonna go with Made By," and obligingly makes a beaver face before grinning. "Sold," I say, which may have been a mistake, as they're unhealthily delicious.
This would be the most exciting bit of the evening, except we stop at what turns out to be a nice clean rest stop for a bathroom break about 40 minutes from our scheduled hotel room. This is not the exciting part.
The exciting part happens when we arrive at the hotel and my friend wants to text her husband, on what is technically now Sunday. Her phone is missing.
We call it, and her husband, from mine, try to contact the rest stop, and all the other things everyone does when a phone goes missing. We shower and settle to try and sleep. I contact my Vampire Child (who works night shifts, thus the name) asking about finding lost phones through technology. Turns out, my young offspring does the same thing I do, which is internet search for stuff. I though these kids had information like this downloaded directly to their brains every few months, but no, maybe that happens only with the youngest Named generation and it's Alpha now. Gen Z is heading toward Olds status.
We spend a mostly sleepless night until I get a text from someone working at the rest stop, contacting the most recent number that called the phone to say he has the phone and we can fetch it anytime. I relate this to my friend, who never did achieve a breathing pattern I identify as "sleep" during the night, and all is more or less well. We try to nap until daylight, and the rest of our whole journey is pleasant and fun, including being met near her house by my family member to retrieve me and all my stuff from her vehicle. It is still Sunday, and will be, for several additional hours.
So of course this is NOT about Nashville in any significant way, and I apologize if you were hoping for that. It's overly long, but it's too late now for me to edit any further if I want this to represent July and create a different, darker piece for August.
1979, Frank Zappa; Joe's Garage
