August 27, 2004 - 12:20 AM

The Last Goodbye

This is the last night that I'll be spending in this house, this home. My last night where I can say "I'm from Maryland". I mean, the fact still remains that I was born and raised here, so I can say "I am FROM Maryland" as in, I originated in this state; I just can no longer say it to mean that this is my homebase, my familial touchstone, the place where I return for the holidays.

Tonight, as I was waiting for Mark to pick me up so that we could go see Aliens Vs. Predator (oy, my mistake), I stood outside our house in the dark. I walked across the lawn and studied the trees. My eyes lingered over the front of the house, refamiliarizing themselves with the white wood and red brick exterior. The sweet smell and velvet feel of late August humidity wrapped around me. Wistfulness.

My mom and I split a dozen Steamed Maryland Blue Crabs for my last dinner. What an appropriate feast. I spent much of the early evening going through several boxes of my miscellaneous stuff, weeding out the papers and magazines that didn't need to be moved with my parents to Arizona. I ended up with 3 boxes packed to the brim of old notes and music related magazines that are now squatting next to the recycling bin outside.

For lunch, I drove up to The Point in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania to see my friend Whitney and her 8 1/2 month old son Nate. Oh. My. God. It was brilliant. He was soooo cute and well-behaved and fun and happy and BIG. Whit says that he's off-the-charts in terms of size, even though he eats the same amount as other babies his age. Must be the tall-genes kicking in from his dad's side.

I was enthralled with Nate. As Whit and I talked about what's been going on in our lives, I could not take my eyes off the little dude. Involuntary smiles kept finding their way across my face, and he'd lock onto my eyes with his and break into a corresponding grin. When I stuck my index finger out and wiggled it in front of him to say hi, he grabbed it and pulled it towards him as he smiled and rocked back in his chair. *aaahhh* If you've seen the movie Grosse Pointe Blank, you remember when John Cusack and Minnie Driver are at their High School Reunion, and Cusack stops to say hi to a friend who is holding a baby and the baby makes the cutest inquisitive faces at him, and then he holds the baby gingerly, afraid that he might drop it? And the whole scene just makes your heart want to burst? That's how I felt watching Nate and Whit. Yay!

This is the first time I've met the child of a friend who is around my age, and it was amazing to see how totally into Mommy Mode Whit is, how much she's changed. Her love and adoration for this child was transparent and total and heartwarming. I can't wait for Phil and Jen to make me an uncle. :)

As for yesterday, I woke up around 1 PM, rifled through all the boxes in the house and dewired the stereo system, trying to label the ins and outs so that my mom would be able to hook it all back up again once they're moved in to the new place. Around 6:30, Mark picked me up and showed me the changes that have been going on in Aberdeen and Bel Air as the suburbs of Baltimore continue to explode. We walked around the Avenue at White Marsh, stopping inside Barnes and Noble to browse (man, the listening station in the music section has almost every single CD commercially available listed with song snippets for most of them. Amazing) for a while before we met up with Y and her boy Matt.

We had a decent dinner at the Red Brick Station on the Avenue, although our waitress was having a bad night and fumbled our orders several times. Still, the company was what made the night grand, especially the sarcastic barbs that were flipped around the booth. Y's moving up to NYC for her new job in a couple days, just as Matt's moving up from Florida to D.C. for his job with the Government's patent office. Good luck with the new life in New York, Y. You and Matt have to come visit me at some point in the near future, ok?

Now Listening To : Keane-Keane (Coldplay meets Travis meets the Beach Boys)
Random Thought : Everytime I hear a creak in the house, I expect to hear Newt's chirp, and then to feel her jump up next to me.

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