Heading For Scranton via New Providence

Then, there was the green dress to consider. It hung in plain sight in Siss' upstairs hallway. I think it was on a coat rack or an old department store mannequin, standing sentinel art the head of the stairs just in case genius should burn. Although I didn't think that this would occur, it felt a little indelicate to ask for the dress back because I was afraid that Siss would do a bolt for whatever reason while we were in PA together. I really wanted it back, though, and it had been in my mind for several years that it was not being used in Lancaster County, as a muse or anything else. I wondered if I were just being a dog in the manger for wanting a dress that I hadn't worn in twenty-odd years. I had, in fact, used the dress for a costume for a solo dance work that I set on a student of mine. That counts for something. I had also told Sig about the dress and how I wanted to wear it again some day. This, I believe, constitutes a witness.

So....there were a couple of inner warriors plucking at me with the result that I did absolutely nothing about the dress and went to Scranton like a lamb to the slaughter. Forty years of the same old song went entirely unheeded, and I bought a plane ticket to Philadelphia for mid-August. I had to be back at the college for in-service week around the 22nd or 23rd, and we wanted (read, she wanted) a good five days of sisterly communion. Once again, things were arranged at her convenience, so of course my flight home would dump me back in Houston on the very day before I had to begin work. But then, remember that it was all about her, and always would be.

Siss had arranged this vacation just as I had done for her birthday trip. She was to pick me up in Philly and we would spend the night at her house in New Providence before driving to Scranton the following morning. I always liked staying at her house because of the fresh farm produce, meat and baked goods that abound in that area. The Amish farmers are very friendly and welcoming, and almost every farm has a roadside stand where they sell fruit, vegetables, breads, and the very delicious treat called "whoopie pies". Whoopie pies are large, soft sandwich cookies stuffed with a filling that is probably whipped, sweetened lard. They come in red devil's food as well as dark chocolate and probably account for the large number of cardiologists with practices around Lancaster County.

Anyway, Siss picked me up at the airport all excited about the dinner she had planned to kick off the trip. This dinner was to be rich in seasonal specialties which, in August, are tomatoes, berries, and assorted summer squashes. I was excited too, knowing that I wouldn't have to cook a thing. Not that I dislike cooking. I am, after all, a "foodie". Cooking is relaxing therapy for me, and I do it extremely well. But vacation is vacation. I intended to be a slug the entire time.

We talked a steady stream for the hour-and-a-half it takes to get to New Providence from the Philly airport. This is the usual for us, as our entire extended family is loquacious and tends to talk one over the other while still managing to understand perfectly everything that is being said. It is a talent we have all developed in order to protect our senses of self, for my father was one of nine Irish-Catholic siblings who produced a whopping total of twenty-nine first cousins in my generation. Siss and I are the two oldest of these.

It was a very engaging conversation. Siss is funny and witty and very quick to play different characters in her retelling of everyday occurrences. Of course, the main character is a nurse like herself, voiced like Lily Tomlin's telephone operator with a harelip. The voice can make even the telling of turning over a five-hundred-pound patient amusing, gory details and all. Of course, any mention of the obesity problem there in farm country must end with a litany of all the fatty foods that abound there, from whoopie pies to some deep-fried cake thing pronounced faasnacht and spelled god knows how.

By the time we reached New Providence and Siss' neat little two-story house, set close to the street and sporting a long, shady, open porch along the front, I was weak from laughter and hunger, but by no means all talked out. I prepared for round two by visiting her upstairs bathroom, its small window propped open with a lipstick and sheer white curtains moving in a late afternoon breeze. On the way down, I paid homage to the green dress, briefly tweaking the long skirt into a liquid shimmy.