For My 32nd Birthday: The Weeklong Celebration, the BF took me to Newport–a place I have wanted to visit for years.  Any town with coastline, boat drinks, and mansions as its signature features is FINE BY ME!  We made our way through traffic that added and hour and a half to our trip, getting rear-ended (not a euphemism) once by a girl who seemed more concerned with her lollipop (not a euphemism) than the bumper of our precious zip car.  The bumper was unscathed and we made it the rest of the way uneventfully.  Besides getting lost.  But when you look at it philosophically, getting lost is part of the journey!  And we spend a lot of our time being lost without realizing it!  And sometimes googlemaps lies!

Our bed and breakfast was a block from Newport’s Cliff Walk, a scenic path overlooking the Rhode Island Sound and Atlantic Ocean (just googled for verification).  Turns out that the B & B was once the home of an artist named Beatrice Turner who painted about a million portraits of herself and half a million of her mother.  Awkward!  We stayed in the room named for her mother, Adele.  I was a little creeped out before we even got there by this fact, since it was coupled with the decorative touch of several of those Adele paintings.  Flashback:  As a child I firmly believed that my stuffed animals came to life whenever I left the room.  Consequently, I was very loving to them and always left them face up on the bed so as not to cause one’s suffocation and the mutiny among the rest that would follow while I was asleep.  (If you think that’s weird, you should see the file my counselor has on me.  Tip of the iceberg.)  Old habits die hard, and I was at least mildly concerned that I would wake up during the night to see Adele moving around in her frames a la Harry Potter photos, but scary.  This didn’t happen (BECAUSE I KEPT MY EYES CLOSED WHEN I WOKE UP DURING THE NIGHT), but we did happen upon some information about Beatrice’s eccentricities: she painted the house black while she lived there and kept wearing Victorian clothing as the styles of her era progressed.  Word to the wise:  bring friends if you stay at the Cliffside Inn.

The highlight of the trip was the sunset boat cruise we took around the harbor, complete with champagne toast.  We also got to tour the Breakers (like my family’s summer home, if we wanted to slum it) and walk along the beach and wharf.  Lowlight: dinner at The Wharf Restaurant, where the BF experienced a first–leaving without tipping the waiter.  OMG!  The guy was TERR!  We only went there because there was a wait everywhere else.  Travel tip:  when there is a wait at every restaurant in the vicinity but one, it means the place sucks.  RUN.

I love New England.  There is no shortage of history and quaintness in all its towns.  One thing I noticed while sitting in traffic and (silver lining) having time to read every road sign was the abundance of names starting with “New.”  New York.  New England.  New London.  Newport.  The early settlers showed up with new ideas and plans for a new life, but they kept a lot of what they already had by adding “New” to it.  It made me think about how I moved to New York to essentially start my own new life and, even more, become a new person.  What has happened in the meantime has felt like a combination construction/salvage/demolition project.  Building on what was worthwhile and solid, foundation-wise (faith, education, family–though they all ended up looking different once I saw what they could really be); tearing away what was weathered and shaky (prejudices, false confidences, insecurities, to name a few).  Leaving myself exposed (not a euphemism) as a great Author uncovered my real story.  I know it’s a process that is just beginning, but thank God it’s finally happening.  I feel like I’m at the part where a lot of things are finally starting to make sense.  All the waiting.  All the things I SO wanted but didn’t get.  All the things that should have worked out but didn’t.  Like when you’re stuck in traffic with the radio blaring, singing your (you think) favorite song and it ends and you feel sad because damn that was a good tune and now what and you hear the first few notes of the next song but you don’t know this one and then (THIS IS THE KEY MOMENT) the notes go from unfamiliar to familiar and you recognize this one and you realize it blows the other one completely out of the water and you start to sing along and the BF turns up the volume because your voice is beautiful and he wants you to sing louder to this song that it took a second for you to remember, but now that you have remembered it sounds different and better than it ever did and you’re so glad the DJ picked this one because THIS is the perfect soundtrack to your trip.  Kind of like that.

And obviously, the song I am talking about is “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey.