A Wayward Winter's Eve

This always happens to me: the first days apart from Anna and Ada I drift about in purposelessness. It's embarrassing to admit, but when I'm finally left to myself, loosed from the mooring of daily family life, it's as if gravity and discipline has been lifted away and I can't put one foot in front of the other. For a spell I become languid, indulgent, wistful in a vacuum of solitude, books, beer, and of course some English Premier League on the old telly.

After seeing the girls off at the airport I sat in the car outside the Coop, unable to go in, reclined in melancholy as I watched pigeons whirl about the steeple of Saint Johns Cathedral in the metallic light. Finally inside the store, I struggled to buy a few desultory items: two Fuji apples, a gallon of milk, a six pack of beer, a head of broccoli, a half pound of chuck. The poor things looked woeful riding the conveyer into the checker's hands. I had plucked them out of their gleaming bins to orphan them in my wayward house.

At home things hardly got better. Ignoring the many chores and renovations needing to be done, I sat on the couch and read Sartre. The weight of responsibility loomed overhead like a Hokusai wave clenched before the moment of explosion. To relieve the pressure I opened a bottle of beer, watched out the windows at bright leaden clouds above the black trees and thought of the skies of France, Italy, Berlin. Italy's dreamy, humid, water-color skies above distant poplar trees. Berlin's monumental skies of towering cumulous, humming with the weight of history, the stormy moods of the North Sea.

Thinking of Europe, then of good urban design, I popped another beer and wrote an email to the Ada County Highway Department deploring the crap design of a certain 'boulevard' in town: a bike-lane-less thoroughfare of parking lots and business malls that was once pretty countryside along the Boise River. A livable city, when moving traffic to outlying neighborhoods, must not do so at the expense of existing neighborhoods. We all know that; all of us but the traffic engineers who seek volume over quality.

Now my blood was up. So there: I'd done something. The boulder was moved a hair. Just enough to break my inertia. Next I put on Radio Boise, got moving to the music, Youth Lagoon, Mason Jennings, and disconnected the gas logs and piping from the fireplace. Why pay for gas when I've got all the lumber I can collect from the job site? Why heat the house at all when it's only me here, me and Ada's little red soccer ball sagging on the hardwood? Me and my big ideas, the glinting sky, another beer and all the time in the world to do nothing with the life in front of me.

I paced the house, I tidied up the slovenly leftover things that I'd never have let gather had Anna been here. Coffee grounds and newspaper sheaves on the counter. As dusk settled my energy mounted: a whirling, unfocused energy, like a squall that pings your face with dust and ice. I put on coat, scarf and gloves, and bicycled downtown to Boise Bicycle Project. It was their annual members' meeting. Lots of good people, hip younguns, cute old folks, people of benevolence and beards, tight jeans and idealism. A keg of Ranger IPA in the workshop; pizza from Pie Hole. Everyone brought together by love of community and bicycling. Jimmy and Nate gave inspiring, quirky presentations of the organization's achievements in 2013 and goals for 2014. BBP has launched a project with Mayor Dave Bieter called Ride On Boise, which will include a citizens' advisory committee and advancements of all kinds.  (I don't recall the details due to the beery atmosphere, but they can be found at the BBP website.)

Afterwards everyone hung out, made certain the keg didn't feel neglected. Inspired, I couldn't go home. Or was I fearing the vacant house? I rode over to The Modern, had a whiskey at the bar, then felt restless to move again. Outside, it had begun to snow.  Light, icy flakes twisting out of the blackness, refreshing my spirit as I rode over to Penguille's for a night cap. A country-western band was playing on the little minstrel stage. The place was pleasantly crowded, the tiny wooden stalls full of revelers. The barkeep poured me a Bushmills and I walked about taking in the collection of Western Americana art on the walls: naive heroic oil landscapes of alpine lakes and poised bucks; freemason banners full of classical oddity. Calmed, centered by history and place, the avuncular old timey atmosphere of this outpost in the modern world, I sat at the bar and took in the band.

Stand up base, steel electric, drum set, slide guitar. They played the Bob Wills classic Rolly Polly, about the hungry growing boy who "eats everything from soup to hay . . . as long as he can chew it, it's okay." The song made me think of Ada and Anna, of our family life far away from this wagon ride through the snowy night. I had forgotten how homey a bar could feel, how important such places are to those who can't or won't go home.

Somebody brushed my shoulder: it was the singer in the band. They were making their way to the bar on their break.
You're good, I said to him.
Thanks, he said.
You play here much?
Now and then.  We play again next week.  You should come.
I will, I said, being polite, knowing that by then I wouldn't need to.