A Girl With a Sword

wandering around our interstate system

I love being free to wander about the country. The fall semester ends and I get in the car with some friends and drive up to Boston. Boston, a city I had absolutely no experience with a couple weeks ago. This amazes me. I love how easy the interstates are to navigate with a good atlas. It's like having a treasure map--"Now, fifty paces until we come to the place where the men hang high . . ." Driving over the George Washington Bridge at two in the morning, seeing The City all lit up and beautiful, even though I wasn't going there, is one of the greatest moments of this Christmas break. I think the best time, though, was singing in a Messiah Sing in Boston and feeling part of this city that I wasn't part of and feeling at home with these people I didn't know. It was beautiful.

Flying home on Wednesday was another experience of feeling at home with strangers. I had never traveled that close to Christmas before and I was suprised and how cheery all the airport and airplane staff were. The man who announced the flight in Providence asked the passengers for a holiday poem he could read so a lot of people wrote one for him. I wrote one. Heh heh, not my finest creation. But the whole poem reading in the terminal made everyone feel more open and I had a nice little chat with a man who I think is a designer for statues for public parks and stuff. He said they're going to erect one in Chattanooga next summer. When I got to Omaha I realized my luggage had gone missing so I had to wait in the lost luggage office for a long time while people harrassed the poor man in there. He sent me to go look for my luggage with that from another plane, but then rather sheepishly brought it up to me later. Hurrah for arriving in one piece! And now I am having a jolly time in my warm house with my family and Jimmy Stewart and Patrick Stewart and their respective Christmas movies.