Adieu Janet

 

One can only hope we are each heading off to greener pastures.

A man named Dan who is about my age bought Janet Weiss earlier this month, and took her to Medford. He was as excited about her as could be, and I think he has the situation and means to take better care of her than I am able to do here. I am not willing to move to a less expensive town somewhere in the United States, and in fact am leaving for a new home in France in a week. Janet Weiss and I joined paths in April of 2011, so for fifteen years that turned out to be a very challenging chapter of my life she was my one constant, my biggest responsibility, and my only asset. I did sell her for more than I bought her, after putting about 130,000 miles on her. It is a relief to know someone cares enough to keep her up as well or better than I did. 

This is my first morning in her,  May of 2011, taken with my flip phone, in Crescent City, California. I was jubilant, because I had lit her stove for the first time, and had not blown up. I am not sure if I learned anything important from that book, and smile at my unwillingness to get rid of my iMac. My daughter chose that dishtowel for me, and I was on my way to visit my son in Northridge. Our first camping trip in her was to Joshua Tree National Park, the site of the featured photo. My only plan was to explore California to my heart’s delight, while interspersing much needed visits to Oregon and my daughter and first baby grandson, up to Washington to visit a friend, and even to British Columbia to see an aunt and uncle.

I was very excited to get to California, and sent a photo on the fly back to my coworker, friend, and future research department, who took my place at the job I had just quit in disgust.

 

 

 

I spent most of that first summer going up and down the west coast. I went to San Francisco to look at the big TRUTH mural again. I went all the way to San Diego, looking at places that had piqued my interest. At Idyllwild I thought of the people I knew from the Pacific Crest Trail, and while camped there, met my first Tea Party member. He was very kind, and I thought him silly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made desultory stabs at the website and blog I’d planned.  I didn’t understand my woundedness, but knew that keeping up an image was the wrong thing to do. I tried to enjoy my new equipment on my own, because those I knew didn’t seem to find the same delight in it, when I did share it. I wasn’t finding the Truth I wanted to find.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I pulled into myself, my sights lifted and my horizon expanded.

 

 I think buying Janet was the first time I’d said ‘yes’ to just myself, and it seems now that this cast me adrift forever. I found another quote I’d written at the time, ” Sometimes the catastrophe you fear the worst is actually the end of an impossible situation.” 

At any rate, I went up and down from L.A. to B.C. Somewhere in the Central Valley of California I wrote, “These towns don’t seem to have any self-respect.” Janet got to be an ambulance on the football field of Pierce College, in Woodland Hills, where my son’s teammate had suffered a concussion. (She played that role again for a roommate’s big dog, years later, after it had been attacked on a sidewalk in Oregon.)

I spent Labor Day weekend out of cell service, on the Metolius River in Oregon. I wrote, “Red columbine, blue forget-me-nots at water’s edge, purple wild asters, fine blue-green bunchgrass, green horsetails and sedges, deep turquoise slots of water between volcanic bedrock under glass-clear rapids…I feel so much love here. Can trees love a person?”

Coming back down, I found that things were at an impasse in my hometown (a Truth that appears to have never changed), that plans had been cancelled, and that my cat Suzie had finally died, in her sleep. Someone else helped to bury her. I went south one more time. New York City was in my sights, and my son said ‘good luck’ and seemed bemused by my grief-stricken sobbing. He said ‘Keep in touch’ and then didn’t respond any more.

Janet took me across the Mojave Desert, with a stop at the Hotel Nipton.  Next I showed her Zion National Park, which she seemed to like better than Yosemite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I got my wallet stolen at the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, and opened new bank accounts in New Mexico. I enjoyed the gentle, simple feel of New Mexico at that time. In Taos, I found a place that could do an oil change on Janet. It appears I was still using paper maps. I didn’t yet have a smart phone. Hmm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The issue of servicing Janet is increasingly important, and even fifteen years ago I felt lucky to find a garage who could fix her when she had her only breakdown ever, on the road with me. After filling up in Illinois, her gas line broke, and I ran away down the side of an interstate freeway, calling a tow truck from a distance I thought safe from explosions. 

The tow truck driver had no such fears, and off we went to Bettendorf, Iowa. Only an hour and $95 later, we headed for Chicago, where Janet demurely rested herself in a downtown hotel parking garage while I decided that Chicago was not for me, impressive as it was.

It only rained once on us, in the six months we crisscrossed the country, in Ohio. I fell back on Motel 6 again, and after another entirely beige plate of ersatz down-home cooking, decided that not only was there no country cooking to be found in the country, but there wasn’t even a call for it. Red-roofed chains and cute signs, “Country cooking makes you good looking” are good enough for the average American. How disappointing that it felt more counterfeit than city food.

Next, a visit to Vermont, where the fall colors were ruined by Hurricane Irene, and a long stop in Brooklyn, where Janet learned about Alternate-Side Parking tickets. I visited the then festive Occupy protests at Zucotti Park, and applied for my next home, in Harlem’s not-yet-fully-gentrified Sugar Hill, on Convent Avenue. 

While waiting to hear if I’d got the apartment, we made our way down the east coast, with a special stop in Bath, North Carolina, and the Outer Banks, to make up for missing it the first time I’d been in that state, as a captive of my in-laws-to-be, many years before.

Charleston was rather elegant, and there I got a call from my broker, telling me I’d gotten the apartment.  Florida was pleasant in what was now October. We kept going, and hit the end of the road in Key West.

 

I expressed back the signed lease, and headed back north, northwest as fast as we could. Which was not fast at all, of course. 

I decided then that I like Nebraska, for some reason, and that it is while crossing that state we re-enter the West. That fall, I noted its subtle impressions. “Tawny gold, russet, taupe. Threaded with a somber green remnant, spangled with the white and silver geometry of buildings and silos. Set off by October morning sun, washed with late…” and it ends there. The flip phone didn’t do it justice, really. I think you have to be there, under that sky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week of nine-hour drive days saw us back in Portland, where I arranged for moving my things to New York City. 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon after starting this site in 2018, I have an entry about a sign I saw, when searching for guidance before leaving my hometown once again. It seemed to say that my life as a mother was over. Janet then was to carry me to four more homes, and across the country two more times. I struggled and resisted and made many ‘false’ starts and ‘final’ exits. I am indeed Tenacious, the name a friend said I’d have if I were a Roman emperor. 

But the purpose of this time with Janet Weiss was there in this journal from fifteen years ago, right when I bought her. I found this long-forgotten entry:

“Dream on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 (or Wed. AM)

Was with son–he seemed younger, say 13–and had been around a lot of people (friends, family, strangers) at a resort type of place. Night was falling and we had come back from an outing when he looked down the hill and said “Oh, there’s that dead body.” I said “What???” and he said, “You know, that dead girl.” I looked and she was on her back, her face still. She was silvery white and kind of shone, like the moon. I looked away really quickly, toward him, gasping. He was staring intently at her, but calm. I wondered how he could not be afraid to look at her. I was so scared of what happened, I woke up.”

I am very much alive. And I am very much a mother, and always will be. And I slowly healed enough, and learned to enjoy my solitude, lounging on Janet’s couch in all of the many, many beautiful places we visited.

And if I’d really known what an ordeal was in store for me, what else would I have done?