The Rooms w/Laurie

It was colder on Sunday. We bundled up and walked down to a coffee shop for chai and a bagel before heading to the museum to meet Laurie, my childhood best friend. My mom worked as a cook at her parents’ restaurant and traded childcare while attending university, so we spent most weekends and school breaks together. I had a feral summer living with my grandparents when I was 9 (my mom sent me home from Arizona while she took summer courses) and Laurie’s mom made sure I stayed fed. We were as close as two kids could be - especially in the 80s when that meant roaming wild and getting in fights with the neighborhood boys until the street lights came on. We are a generation of alley cats.

I ran up and gave her a long hug when I saw her, and we started talking nonstop for the next few hours, barely looking at the museum displays. Zenny and Lydia stared at each other and didn’t say anything, which is pretty much how Laurie and I met the first time, too. They’ll get used to each other if we stay for longer.

Laurie’s husband drove us over to my old house. We maybe worried the current homeowners a bit, yelling and pointing at things and posing for pictures in front of the driveway, but nobody came out to investigate. Everything was so small. Looking across at the huge field I used to trudge across in the snow to get to school every morning, I saw that it was so close we could jog it in about 30 seconds. The far-away fence that never seemed to get any closer as we hiked toward it was actually only about 50 feet from the road. Having legs the size of baguettes while wading through 3-foot snow is a whole other world.

We stopped by Laurie’s house, where her parents live in the basement apartment, and her mom came out to give me a long hard hug, squished to her bosom like I was a kid again. I teared up a little bit, I was so happy to see her. Laurie’s dad came out and looked confused, saying he remembered my mother (and her Black Forest cake)  but didn’t really remember me. “He was after being drunk whenevers we were there,” Laurie teased. Can’t blame him for that, we were very loud and acted out violent make-believe with her Lady Lovely Locks and Rainbow Brite dolls.

Laurie supports us moving back, but knows a body need to see what they’re getting into, so she bought us supper at Mary Browns (Newfie KFC with vinegar taters) and explained the underfunded Provincial medical system, yearlong waits for surgeries, and scarcity of decent fresh produce - being that nothing grows locally except potatoes and turnips, and Newfoundland is the last destination for food trucks from Mexico. I noticed my accent starting to creep back in while we were talking, which I took as a good sign.

No matter which way this next year goes, it can’t be another 35 years before we see each other again.

The Rooms (museum):

View from upstairs 

We didn’t see any bald eagles in the nesting grounds by Quidi Vidi, so I am counting this as a sighting.

There are very few 19th/early 20th century landscape paintings of Newfoundland - it would be cool to bring back tonalism and academic realism for a new generation of painters.

My old street (our house on the right, next to the white one)

It wasn’t like getting transported back in time, it was more like watching an old movie you loved as a kid and realizing you can see all the strings on the special effects. It’s not a bad thing, just weird.

Zenny is still enjoying it here, even after a taste of the cold gloominess and fried foods that would be more typical of daily life than being on vacation mode. It helps that we’re staying in a row house that feels like a home, as well. As a trial run, it’s going okay so far.