Oh, man. I just dropped Carl off at the airport to fly to Alaska for his two week Alaska Adventure! He got in late from DC Wednesday night and spent yesterday running around Seattle getting boots and skis and sunscreen and oh my lord in heaven don’t forget the lip balm and what about the gaiters, what about the gaiters! I conned him into taking me out for a schmancy dinner for a couple of hours but then it was packpackpack mode for the rest of the evening. The pack. The other pack. The fuzzy fleece. The other fuzzy fleece. The backup fuzzy fleece. The hat I knit him…and it’s a good thing I did that a couple of weeks ago, let me tell you, because it has literally been too hot in Seattle to touch wool, and I was going to knit him a scarf too, but I guess he’ll just have to wear it to Burning Man or something. Socks. Glacier goggles. On and on and on and on, before heading out early this morning.
He’s really excited to be going. This is the same glacier he went to ten years ago, right before he came to college. He’s officially some sort of assistant professor for the duration of his stay, even, which I think means he’s going to give a couple of talks about database backed websites to a bunch of grubby geology students in a shack somewhere on a glacier. I think that’s pretty cool. I know that one can’t do everything with one’s partner…well, at least I can’t…but I have to say, knowing how happy Carl is when he’s outdoors, covered in grime, hacking his way up a trail with his watch altimeter egging him on every couple of steps, looking forward to sleeping on the hard ground in a thin sleeping bag after a bracing meal of freeze dried lentils, I often wish that I was more outdoorsy and a better hiker and camper. It’s really something to see his eyes light up once he gets to the trail head, and I know I could see that more often if we hiked together more often, or if, heaven forfend, I was on that plane right now with him. True, I would see that happy excited look in his eyes right before I fell into a crevasse and died, but we’re not talking about me here, are we?
Though this is my second semi-singleness summer in a row, this next two weeks feels as though it’s going to be a little more lonely than the past four have. I have gotten used to his being far away, but we’ve talked on the phone almost every single night. I’ve really enjoyed that, probably as much as I did in high school when I would talk all night with boys I liked who never liked me back. Before Carl and I got back together we spent a lot of time talking on the phone Claremont to San Diego and I still remember this little thrill I got every time I picked up and it was him. We’d settle down and chat and laugh for what felt like hours. It was so great. When you see someone every day phone conversations get boiled down to “Okay, is it Pike or Pine? Pike? Are you sure? Okay, but where are you parked?” or “I’m about to go to the grocery store, you want some of that hominy bread again?” You spend most of your quality time actually in each others’ presence, which is in itself a very fine thing. And frankly, given the option, I would choose hanging out with someone I like one on one as opposed to over the phone every single time. But let’s say your boyfriend goes away to DC for a month for work and you can’t go out to visit him for the weekend and spend the whole time in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum the way you’d like. It’s an excellent opportunity to get reacquainted with the quiet joys of the phone relationship, where your hand gets all cramped up and you get cauliflower ear and you do the “Okay, I’m hanging up now” thing about four times and then go “Okay, on the count of three, ready? No, hang up after three, not on three. Are you ready? Ready? Okay, onnnnnnnnnnne…twoooooooooooooooooo…threeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee okayiloveyoucallmetomorrowbyeCLICK.” It’s good stuff.
But of course there’s no cell reception or email on the glacier, which is exactly as it should be, so I am cut off from communicating with him for seventeen days, and you know I can’t really even remember a time in the last four years where that’s happened. It’s so strange. I’m going to be going about my normal business for all that time and he’s going to do all these amazing adventuresome things, and I won’t know a thing about it until he gets back. We were saying that we won’t be able to really talk until we’re in the car on the 5 south on the way to Nevada…the five days between his getting home and our taking off are going to be given over to another rendition of “Oh My Goodness, We Have Simply Got To Get All This Stuff Organized.” It’s been such a short time, historically speaking, that we’ve all been (in the Western world, I guess, at least) all so connected all the time, but you get used to it faaaaaast. The last time Carl was on that glacier I hadn’t even heard of the internet and I didn’t know anyone who had a cell phone except my dad (and his was literally the size and shape of a brick) and it’s only taken ten years for seventeen days to feel like complete separation. It’s going to be fine, and it’s really not that big a deal, I know this, but still, weird, isn’t it? Have a great trip, then, Carl. See you in two and a half weeks.
It’s also my sister’s birthday today. She’s turning twenty-six, which is absolutely insane as I am myself only about fifteen. She’s just about to start her post-bac year as she has reluctantly come home from Greece and I think is celebrating her birthday by moving herself, her cat, and her rabbit into a new apartment in the hot Florida sun. Ugh. If I’m fifteen, she must be around thirteen, and is it bad if there is consistently this small part of me that is always surprised that she is allowed to drive a car? It was so crazy being in her apartment with her for her graduation…like, she’d get me a glass of water and I would say thank you and then think, “Wait, she has glasses? For water?” I mostly see her when we’re both home for Christmas or something so the idea of her having her own life and friends and pursuits is ever so slightly foreign to me. I’m sure the same is true of her; I’m sure she’d be shocked to know I have my very own blender and everything. Maybe we’re not fifteen and thirteen anymore, but there’s still the sense that either one of us could be coming home from college any day now. I am very glad she’s not on a glacier right now…I mean, as far as I know…so I can actually talk to her today. Unlike other people I could name.