RAINY NIGHT IN GEORGIA

     Speaking for myself, I’d almost rather stay home than go on a vacation.

     I work from a checklist, which you would think would make shutting up a house a snap.  It doesn't.  What you do is go over the checklist twice, making creative marks beside each item to distinguish them from the last time you made marks.  You follow your 48-year-old husband to the bathroom to make sure he turns off the wall heater as he leaves.  The house thermostat is already switched off.  Our parakeet, Daisy, is settled with her night cover draped over one corner of the cage for her comfort and feelings of security.  My husband put a lot of thought into inventing a system that would keep her water clean and fairly fresh while we are gone.  She has plenty of food.  It's pretty certain few parakeets get to eat out of a variety of Limoges cups and saucers.

     At last! the open road. 

     Or nearly.  I am exhausted, having written notes to our executor, paid the weekly Leaf-Blower in advance, arranged to have the neighbors pick up our mail and newspapers, soaked special areas of the garden, changed our bedding and done all the laundry, and placed the house plants in dishes of water.  In my handbag, bundled separately from our airplane tickets, are bills I will pay while we are enjoying the fabled cities of Charleston and Savannah.

     Now that was another thing.  The weather reports hadn’t been too reassuring for the past month as I worked on our packing list.  Rain every other day, even snow, interspersed with sunny days.  Spring happens suddenly in mid-February in South Carolina, a neighbor told me; the dogwood and wisteria open up before your eyes.  This promised to be enchanting; in the meanwhile, there was the threat of snow and ice.  The one bag I allotted to each of us began to bulge with raingear and boots and sweaters; soon we had two more bags.  Upon our boarding the plane, the elastic straps and hooks of our luggage carrier behaved in their usual devil-may-care fashion--the more we tried to hurry, the more they grappled and clung to random passing targets.  I looked with envy at college students traveling with nothing but knapsacks and all-weather anoraks.  Also, those cabin-size, zippered wheelies with built-in handles looked better and better, so carefree and neat.  Perhaps it would not be too late to dump our bags and carrier and purchase two of those when we reached the next airport terminal?

     I fell in love with Charleston.  Even my husband, whose eyes had not begun to register his whereabouts (leaving the office in someone else's hands nearly killed him), looked appreciatively at the 18th-century homes laced with quantities of ironwork. 

     "Do you want one of those?" he joked.

     "Only if there's a central vacuum system," I replied.  But I was lying.  I wanted any one of those white beauties with the balconies and Spanish moss dripping off the live oaks that seemed to inhabit every misty green garden.  Spending the rest of my life painting exteriors and sweeping and polishing my door stoop seemed minor compared to the relentless admiration of tourists trundling by every 90 minutes in their tour buses.  I'd take one of those Adams houses, too, if it were offered to me.  I loved the idea of opening my front door and finding myself in the middle of the street.

     Through pelting rain I peered at Fort Sumter, invisible behind fog.  What came swimming through was the knowledge that I had left our medications at home.  I'd felt that our breakfasts that morning in a different setting had been missing something, the element of heedfulness, as routine as juice-and-cereal, that always accompanied them.  All that forethought for nothing: I'd purchased refills in advance because the date for that chore would have occurred in the middle of our trip.  Ah, well, a call to our doctor would take care of it.  All we had to do was locate a pharmacy, then wait there for his authorization.

     Irony of misdirected energy: I'd cleaned the crumbs and used birthday candles and reusable wire ties out of my kitchen drawers.  My will power implacable, I threw away 23 non-reusable champagne corks.  And, oh, the oven.  Why hadn't I cleaned it after the last turkey roast instead of leaving the job for now?  When that was done I sorted clothes to donate to the Goodwill people.  I mourned my well loved but unspeakable oven mitts, now moldering in a landfill somewhere.  At least none of my relatives would say, "You have to admit she kept a neat house if you didn't look too closely." 

     I was sure they would suffer fits of hilarity when they found my four novel (unsold) manuscripts in the fridge.  I have never been able to find another means of hiding their aggregate two thousand pages from harm's way.  The safe deposit box at the bank is three inches high by five inches wide.  It is already filled with the three pages of our mortgage and a few pieces of jewelry.  If I left the novels with friends, would they remember, even on pain of mortal punishment from me, to scoop them up in case of a fire?  But I had left Daisy, our parakeet, trapped in her cage.  Unforgivable.  This would not happen again.

     On to Savannah.  The rain did not abate, but it looked awfully pretty gushing out of the cast-iron gutter spouts shaped like dolphins.  The variety of town squares enchanted me.  Every two or three blocks the tour bus wound around a fountain, or a small park of flowerbeds, or another ancient live oak with its draperies of Spanish moss.  We dined at a lively seafood restaurant, where the uproar of conversation overlaid a mysterious rattling and clanking noise.  Soon enough we found out what that was and we too began flinging crab, oyster, and clam shells into a tin bucket provided by our waiter. 

     On the way out, I remarked to the cashier, "Rainy night in Georgia."  I'd always wanted to say that.  It was apparent to me he didn't think it was worth my while to shut up my house and travel across the country to tell him that.

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