Chapel Hill- part 1

I drove to Chapel Hill from Mom’s house in Greenville. The heat was punishing, despite the newly repaired air conditioning in my nine year old car. But I made it in good time, checked into my hotel room and was pleasantly surprised by the decor. Bold modern colors and lighting fixtures, computer desk and chair, nice cotton sheets, mini-fridge and microwave neatly stowed in their own cabinetry and not merely stacked one on top of the other like you find in most highway hotels. I was pleased, and hardly noticed that there was no coffee maker. Nothing is perfect, and Starbucks just down the road.

Just as I was getting in to Chapel Hill, my cell phone ran out of power, and when I got into my room, the first thing I wanted to do was to charge it up. I discovered that I had left the charger at my mother’s house. Arghh. The process by which I discovered this was basically tearing apart all my luggage across the king sized bed, but first I had to get all four pieces to the hotel room, on the third floor, and all this while holding onto the dog’s leash. She cries when I leave her in a hotel room or pretty much anywhere else: she has separation anxiety. Thank god there was an elevator. It was a nasty sweaty business nonetheless. Then there was a lot of phone calling, to my mother, to Ann. This was all complicated by the hotel’s phone system, which thwarted Ann’s and Mom’s attempts to reach me directly. It was a mess, but I got it all sorted out in due course. I had planned to get to Ann’s by six, but somehow I didn’t manage to get cooled down and cleaned up and on my way until almost seven thirty. I was annoyed with myself for not remembering that I would need a hostess gift until I had left Greenville and was on my way to Chapel Hill, but near my hotel, I had passed a Home Depot and remembered that they often have very pretty potted orchids in decorative planters, so I flew in there(still holding the dog’s leash) only to come out with a plant arrangement in a painted bucket. Good enough. Can’t show up empty handed for dinner. The directions from mapquest indicated that it would only take seven minutes to get to Ann’s house from my hotel, and I suppose that would have been accurate had I executed any single step of the those directions correctly, but in an apparent fit of uncharacteristic navigational disorientation, I made every possible wrong turn I could make, and finally rang the doorbell at eight fifteen, apologizing profusely for my lateness. I was warmly and graciously greeted by Ramsey, Ann’s husband.

Ramsey makes custom cabinetry, really high end stuff. Or rather I should say, he has a company that produces such items by his design.If Donald Trump or Oprah Winfrey were going to design an office with built-ins and custom pieces, they might go to Ramsey. The house is a stunning showcase of his work. Every square foot of their home shows their warmth and love of beauty and attention to detail, as well as their mastery of function, down to the special stand for their cellphone chargers. Tray ceilings and recessed lighting and earth tones and stainless steel and oriental carpets and painted furniture and lots of plants. Family heirlooms blended with more contemporary pieces made by Ramsey: the dining room table which could easily fit twelve people and it's matching buffet which holds all the china and linens, their bed which is a brilliant combination of art deco and prairie style, with it’s suggestion of a sleigh bed and it’s inlaid wood curves. These are very thoughtful and deliberate people and it’s abundantly reflected in the atmosphere with which they have surrounded themselves. I felt comfortable immediately.

Ann has the look of Sarsfield, the square jaw that her brother and her father had...I don’t have that jaw, I don’t think. I do, however, have the green blue grey eyes that Ann and her kids have. This is remarkable to me because I have always wondered where my particular color came from...my mother’s eyes are much more intensely blue, no green or grey. To date that square-jawed, blue eyed look has been called the “Hill” look, but I’m not sure that this association is accurate, I think it may actually be the “Clark” look. Terrance was described as square jawed, and his service record states his eyes were blue. Ann’s face is symmetrical in a way that reminds me of a Federal style house. She doesn’t wear makeup or color her hair, which has turned gently from ash blonde to silver, and her skin glows with a dusting of light bronze from playing tennis....the effect is soft and natural and authentic. She doesn’t wear much jewelry at all, little pearl studs in her ears and the slimmest gold wedding band....like the one I wore when I was first married. She is the absolute opposite of ostentation. She’s thin as a rail. She seems very much at ease with the signs of aging on her body and face; she knows her legs are still quite good at the age of sixty-six and wears her short tennis skirts with quiet confidence. I think she wears sexy underwear...her bra seemed to match the lime green of her skirt and her Crocs and was just barely discernible beneath her white shirt. I wonder if she wears thongs. If any woman her age could carry it off, she could. Physically she reminds me of Janas. I told her she has arms like a guitarist....like a rock chick. She says when her son, Will, died, she got very thin. She says it as though it’s somehow remote from where she is now, as if she’s improved, but it’s really hard to imagine her any thinner. Her husband seems to have taken on the task of mandating her nutritional intake, and admonishes her to take another tuna steak and not to forget her yogurt...she is diabetic as was her brother Bunky, but she, unlike him, keeps herself to an informed and strict regimen of foods that undoubtedly contain the effects of her condition and will in all likelihood prolong her life rather than abbreviate it.

Our chat meanders from topic to topic as I try to be as animated and charming as I can be, and I don’t do too badly, I think. I told Ramsey one of my favorite (good) Joe Fox stories, about the time Joe and Ron and Dave were sitting around the kitchen table in Center Moriches discussing what we would like to do with the kitchen, and I offered to buy them all lunch with my paycheck to thank them for the work they would be doing for us for free. Being men, they sent me to three different places, and by the time I returned home, Ron was standing on my antique farmhouse pedestal table with a sawz-all in his hands, and having already demolished the kitchen ceiling, he was now cutting a hole in the roof. Joe cheerfully announced that they had decided to put in a skylight. I looked around at the piles of sheetrock and the insulation falling into a sink full of dirty dishes from breakfast and dust settling over the bowl of fruit on the counter and said rather grimly “You guys know it’s snowing, right?” Ramsey enjoyed the story, complete with exaggerated Long Island construction guy accents.

Ann talks about her son Bear a lot. They seem to have an especially close relationship. He has been in Mexico for the past month or so, studying Spanish intensively in preparation for teaching science there this fall, and in lieu of astronomical cell phone bills, they corresponded by e-mail; writing each other long and thoughtful letters on such topics as the nature of courage. I thought this to be remarkable. Ann explains that Bear is very gregarious, yet periodically solitary, content to occupy himself with his reading and his music. “He’s just like Daddy,” she says in her high soft southern voice “Daddy could pick up his guitar, lean back in his director’s chair with his feet on the counter and play any song, and he never had formal lessons.” On this night Bear is returning to Chapel Hill from Mexico and his flight into Houston has been delayed. Ann is supposed to pick him up at the airport; his car is parked in her driveway. It is feared he will miss his connecting flight, and his arrival will be later than is considered acceptable for Ann to be out driving. The entire family of five surviving sons (she lost her eldest, Will, last September) call to weigh in on the matter...the phone rings and rings and rings. One of the boys asks if they can all have dinner at their mother’s the following night, and then go over to listen to music on the lawn at the Carolina Inn together, which provokes further negotiations until someone suggests that they eat at a restaurant where one of the brothers is manager so their Mom doesn’t have to cook, and just like that, a family outing is planned to say goodbye to Bear, who will be leaving the day after that to drive up to the family cabin in Maine for six weeks before returning to Mexico(the rest of the family will join him there one by one until they are all assembled for their two weeks customary summer family vacation)...Bear’s large circle of friends will also come to the Inn for the music. I think about my own family and the fact is that we can’t get more than three of us together at any one time without a huge row ensuing. Ann invites me to be included for dinner and music to meet “the brothers” as she calls them, for which I am grateful, but I demur. The thought of it is overwhelming to me...it gives me a slightly panicky feeling. Coming to meet Ann and Ramsey was the limit for me...despite my big mouth and my forthright manner, I am actually pretty shy of meeting new people. I blunder through but I never really know what to say, and I am very self conscious about how I look, and whether my manner is too brusque, or my voice is too loud, and so forth. I am not one of those people whom everyone likes, in fact, some people seem to take an instant dislike. No matter, it is what it is, but I guess I’d rather meet the Band of Brothers in a more intimate setting than the Carolina Inn. Besides, by this time, I really am ready to go home.

...more later....