Path to Grove City
Since I can’t read without dozing, having tried it at intervals throughout the eve, I will instead endeavor to write my “Path to Rome”, hoping I can keep at least myself awake. Taking Belloc’s travel/pilgrimage/hike from France to Rome as the inspiration I will write “Path to Grove City” in which I make note of the journey from one small suburb to another small suburb to the south. Perhaps only Thomas and Bone and Steven will appreciate the enormity of the undertaking.
One of the things I treasure about Belloc’s book is his license to roam about changing the subject matter until you forget he’s hiking at all. My goal will be to do likewise. As I contemplate the journey, I remind myself that it’s not that a man can be broken that is problematical, but that he can be broken so easily.
I’d planned to set out on Friday, a glorious day of vintage bellwether until my wife reminded me of the graduation party set for Saturday. Indeed, as host it would be inconvenient for me to be somewhere on I-71, looking for the lost City of Grove. The honey-dew list threatened to break me, but then a man is so easily broken. I arrived home at noon having picked up ten 40-lb bags of mulch and eight 5-lb bags of ice. I mulched like I never mulched before, and found that I had not bought enough of it. This required thinner and thinner layers of mulch until I was threading it upon the ground with minute care, as a doctor sews wounds. Carpal-tunnel soon affected my right hand and I switched to the left, and because I’m no southpaw the mulch grew clumpier and my quest for perfection gave way though the beds looked fine enough.
From the mulching beds to making beds, the next transformation was internal. I vacuumed like I’d never vacuum’d before (‘never gets old’ to quote Ham) and the bathrooms were cleaned and all the various & the windows spit-shined (ok, Windex’d) and so it went, ad nauseum.
It was now 5pm and we collapsed only to find it time to get ready for the graduation ceremony, which was held at 7. Graduation was sweet, the graduate proud, “Pomp & Circumstance” nostalgic. Afterwards there was dinner for eight at a nice Italian place and it was half-past eleven before repose.
Saturday dawned, as it weekly does, and this meant preparation for the imminent Party To End All Parties, involving the catering of nations, a United Nations’ choice of beers and wines, tables and chairs and of every denomination, and the cakes of multiple varieties. Okay so I exaggerate, the party was for sixty not six hundred. Did I not say that man is so easily broken?
The sun it was warm and there was no rain in sight which was a great relief. The people came and we did not run out of food or beer or soft drinks and I, as host, graciously wore an egregious Hawaiian shirt that my wife asked me to wear because she doesn’t like being the centre of attention. At least that’s my theory. Also as host I was required to mingle, which I did sparingly because I also felt it was incumbent upon me to be with my peeps, who otherwise would not know anyone else.
But it was in mingling that I met my great former nemesis; the lady who caused my then-girlfriend, now-wife to throw out the Christmas tree her brother gave her. Some explanation is in order. This woman once had great influence on my wife on religious matters and is of a fringe Dispensationalism such that Christmas trees are considered pagan (I never thought to see if she wore a wedding ring, that also being of pagan origin). Needlessly to say the woman was virulently anti-Catholic, believed the world was ending in 2003, and that alcohol usage is intrinsically evil. So the Bud Light in my left hand felt like a Great Wall of China between us, but we chatted about the weather and she complimented our landscaping and she was pleasant and charming, as was her husband.
The hours wore on and after an extended game of h-o-r-s-e (did I mention I won?), the last of the partygoers left and we collapsed and I was reminded of how easily man is broken (have I beaten that h-o-r-s-e yet?). Clean up? Of course not. Where would we summon that energy? Besides, it was decided we’d host Mother’s Day since we had leftover food & drinks and a billion chairs still dotted the back yard.
Sunday morning meant church and then at noon o’clock we did it again, same foods, same cake, and by this time I’m running on exhaust. The little rituals like jogging were now felt-misses and I thought it odd that I was apparently so tired by simply talking. By 3pm I had a headache that was a spike between the eyes and it laughed at the three Advil I fed it. (This despite not having drank much at all over the weekend; a hangover without the hang glide.)
The cleaning-up-afterwards commenced and by 5pm flesh could not meet recliner without dozing off. My journey to Grove City would have to wait.
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