Milestones

I led Jerry's "Sunday song" at a small but really good one-day singing over in Winston County today.  I didn't cry.  I didn't even feel like crying.  There was no trembling, no sniffling, no weeping.  It was also the first time I ever attended an all-day singing on my own, without Jerry and/or other friends traveling to it with me.  (That there were friends there when I got to the singing was just another example of why Alabama is a balm for my soul, if I may phrase it that way.)

So I wonder if the part where I could get through 77t calmly, as if it were any other song in the book, was a major milestone, or just another moment in whoever else's life I seem to be leading down here while my own is off hidden somewhere.  I hope it was a milestone.  I hope when I go back to Illinois in a week I'll take this... this... whatever it is...  back with me.  (Except that it feels so different from what I was feeling before that I can't help thinking it's just another grief-related weirdness.   I hope I'm wrong.  But it's hard to trust any other feeling than sadness these days.  "For some odd reason," as Jerry would have said.)

And that whole "going back to Illinois" thing?  Do. Not. Want.

Still having a lovely time down here.  I've visited sites in the old, pretty historic section of Huntsville, including a tour of the Howard Weeden House (didn't know who Howard Weeden was before last week.  Google her - yes, her - if you're curious), I tracked down a pair of b.o.c. boots that fit for a discount price at Belk (and yes, this was days after I posted on Facebook that I was done shopping on this trip.  And yes, this does now mean that I arrived in Alabama with two pairs of shoes in my bags and will be returning to Illinois with five.  And yes, this does mean that I am NOT BUYING ANY MORE SHOES FOR... SOME UNDEFINED PERIOD OF TIME THAT I'M NOT BEING MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT SO I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE TO STICK TO IT.  So there.

Yesterday Karen and David treated me to the national touring company of Fiddler on the Roof, which, despite having seen the movie version of enough times for none of it to be unfamiliar to me, I'd never seen on stage, except for a bizarre Russian translation of it I saw in Moscow in 1991 (which decided it was better to have Tevye accept Chava and Fyedka almost immediately.  Not sure exactly what the thinking behind that change would have been in what was still the Soviet Union:  I suppose it could have been pushing the myth that everyone gets along well with everyone else in the land of Friendship of the Peoples).  This production was a lot of fun and very well done.  As seems to be pretty standard, for some reason the Tevye had a sort of undefinable Yiddish/European accent, while the rest of the characters all sounded basically generically American, except for the Golda, who sounded like a New Yorker.  Very mysterious.

And today I drove, as I said, off to Winston County, a couple of hours southwest of here, via a route that took me through the lovely William B. Bankhead National Forest (William Bankhead, I now know, was the 47th Speaker of the US House of Representatives and the father of Tallulah).  The singing I attended was so solid and just really good.  If I lived in Alabama, just think of how often I could just get in my car, drive for a couple of hours, sing like that, and then drive home again.

(I have an interesting-sounding job waiting for me in Illinois.  A job in this dreadful economy.  A job that will give me editing experience newer than my old editing experience, which is from 1987.  A job that will include full medical benefits beginning in January.  I haven't sold my house yet.  I haven't been capable of even going through Jerry's things yet, let alone preparing the house for sale... in this dreadful economy.  All of which is by way of reminding myself of why I'll be heading back to Illinois.

For now.  For now.)

And by the way, Sugarland's "Stuck Like Glue" is stuck in my head... just like they promised.

And one more thing, speaking of country music.  I've been driving around flipping among country stations (I like a place with more than one country station) and today had a fun laugh at myself, when I heard the (not very good) Blake Shelton song "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking?" twice en route to Natural Bridge.  The lyrics include the lines "Do you pour a little something on the rocks?/ Slide down the hallway in your socks?/ When you undress, do you leave a path?/ Then sink to your nose in a bubble bath?"  First time it came on, I heard "Then sing through your nose in a public bath," which struck me as weird, but people do sing in the bathtub, after all.  On a second, clearer hearing I got a good few minutes of laughing aloud out of the deal.

Laughter.  From me.  It's happened a lot down here.  I like it.