Today was not the day I expected. Not one bit of it went as planned, except possibly that I woke on time with my first alarm. It all went sideways from there. I hadn't even finished dressing when I got a text that our flight was canceled. After checking in with the airline, our choices were to wait a day, or spend five times as much on same-day tickets. So now we lost a day with the kids, and I can't guarantee now that we will arrive in time to make tipoff for the game I swore was all I wanted for Christmas. And we paid for a day of dog boarding we didn't end up needing.
But not everything was a loss. We had a second chance to see the movie we missed the other night, the remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It was worth the wait. I have lived with a dreamer and schemer for a quarter of a century. This movie was made for him. I'm not so sure it wasn't made ABOUT him. Visually, this was one of the most beautiful films I've seen in the last couple years. I wanted to watch it again, as soon as it was over, and I wanted a remote so I could freeze-frame and study the shots. But more than that, it followed the discussion we had days ago, that we wanted to take off in a converted bus to experience the world and capture it in photos. This was like an instructional video. This is our play book.
We still had time for impulse after the flick, and the man decided to point the car vaguely west, and try to look for an historical display that he had heard about. The information on the Internet was sketchy, so when we arrived at the address for the museum we thought we wanted, it wasn't there. We found its new location, and walked through. The piece we sought wasn't on display, but the artifacts that were there were compelling in their own right. I had a few Walter Mitty moments of my own when I saw the clothing that was featured in a few displays. There were tiny little dresses worn by a senator's wife in the 1960s, wedding dresses from the turn of the last century, and a nightgown from the 1880s. The longer I stared at them up close, the more I could see the women who wore them, as if they were still living, breathing, and moving around. I swore I could feel emotions still attached to the wedding dresses (some hopeful, some anxious, and some smug, actually). Those feelings eventually chased me out of the room, feeling uncomfortable.
As we drove down the country roads, I played one of my favorite car games. I love seeing houses from earlier times, in various states of preservation, and I wonder what they were like at the time they were built. I love imagining the first residents marveling at their brand new homes, when everything in them was stylish and innovative. When all the siding was intact and freshly painted, when all the brick was clean with sharp corners. I wonder what it felt like inside. Was the insulation sufficient? Did it feel warm in the winter there? Were the summers unbearable? Did the windows open smoothly? Did the original electric outlets and wiring seem safe at the time? The houses zip by the car windows so fast, I don't get time to really study them. I have just enough time to get a flash of a dream of what they were like, and then it is on to the next one, or to miles more woods and wild, that does nothing to stop the day dreaming.
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