Victoria Station, London
[This is a rewrite from August 2021 of the first half of the original “Solo” chapter, now broken into two chapters.]
It was Tuesday September 25th as I walked alone now, my big red backpack on my back, through residential streets of west London to the subway stop that would take me to Victoria Station and my train to the Continent. I felt the locals I passed were looking at me like I was some sort of oddball. If Angie were still with me, they would have seen instead just another couple young “hippie Yank” travellers, a matched set. I was an unmatched set of one.
At several points along the way I almost turned around and went back to Angie in the hotel. This grand adventure with my comrade Angie was now something utterly different, a solo odyssey that was feeling like it was going to be an ordeal. But I could not bear the sense of defeat I knew I would feel if I gave up. The most painful thought of all, was like it or not, for my own still tenuous self respect, I had to continue. I knew at some level I was throwing myself into a hugely developmental “deep end”, that I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready for, but couldn’t NOT do at this point. So somehow I had to traverse this journey so I could return home transformed, the triumphant European traveler.
[This is part of a rewrite in August of 2021 of my autobiographical novel “Two Inch Heels”. It is the second half of what used to be “Part 1 – Angie”]
I woke up. I heard the sounds of guns shooting and people yelling.
It was summer, and we kept the windows open all the time, except when it rained, because mom loved “fresh air”. She said it “kept her going” and she didn’t like “feeling all closed in”. Every morning mom would do chores in the kitchen and the basement. She said there was “twice as much laundry” because of all David’s clothes and especially his dirty diapers. Dad was usually at his desk in the basement typing on the typewriter trying to “finish this damn dissertation”. He would work on it all day, though he would always read to me and David at bedtime and also sing songs.
I woke up and I knew it was a special day, my birthday PARTY day! My real birthday was two days ago, but mom said today was a better day to have the party, because it was the “weekend”, and more people could come.
When I woke up this morning I knew something was different. It FELT different. David was standing in his crib looking out the window across the room from my bed. The sunlight was coming in that window and shined on him. I couldn’t remember the last day when there was sunshine and not just clouds. I looked out the other window, by my bed that looked into the backyard, and the grass where the sun hit it looked extra green, like it was glowing. I heard birds chirping outside.
Mom, dad and I crossed the street from our house walking through lots of snow, which mom said was “fresh” and also “beautiful”. David had stayed at home with Margie, who was “the babysitter”, and mom had told her that this was the first time she and dad had gone out together without him since he was born. Margie had stayed at our house a couple times to play with me when mom and dad went out to a party or to “play bridge”, whatever that was. I liked bridges too, because you were up high and going over something below, but I wasn’t sure how grownups would play on them. I also liked Margie because, like Aunt Pat, she was bigger and older than I was, but still I could tell she was a kid and not a grownup.
It was still dark in the house and out the window in grandma and grandpa’s backyard. I so wanted it to finally be morning, Christmas morning, that I could hardly sleep all night. I just kept having things that I had to think about or just wanted to think about over and over. I knew I was going to get to open my presents. I had looked at them carefully and had ideas about what they might be, at least which ones were likely to be toys, the thing I wanted most.
It was still dark but mom and dad said it was morning. I wondered if in this “Binghamton” place it was dark in the morning. Mom had David in her arms, and he looked around trying to figure out this new dark place too. Mom just kind of stared in one direction, blinking her eyes a lot, which weren’t open as much as they usually were. I heard a person calling out.