Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
Precious out of town company
Late last year I got an email invitation from my intrepid friend, Cassondra. All the way from where she lives in New York City, she proposed a small adventure. Keep in mind that my usual invitations from her are to join her for a trip to Uzbekistan or Morocco. She loves to travel and takes any opportunity to hop a plane and go someplace exotic. When I started reading the email, I thought it was going to be one of her typical proposals that I always, sadly, have to refuse. Nope. This was an invitation to watch today’s solar eclipse, right here in little ole Missouri. We exchanged a flurry of emails because this is one opportunity we can actually share. She made flight arrangements and a hotel booking – our place is simply too small to comfortably house most people. There it was, a done deal!
She jetted in Saturday morning. After a little confusion around where to pick her up, we found each other. I am totally clueless about terminal 1 at Lambert because I much prefer to take Southwest flights from terminal 2 and I know exactly where to pick up a weary traveler at that location. Anyway, she was a bit of a weary traveler, having gotten up at 0300 and taken a bus and a subway and probably some kind of train to get to the airport. When you live in New York City, a good deal of life is spent underground in the subway tunnels and it becomes second nature to get anywhere in Manhattan or the other boroughs.
Cassondra always does research before she travels, so one of the recent emails from her was a list of St. Louis barbeque joints where she could get some good St. Louis style meat. We went straight from the airport to the Sugarfire restaurant in Olivette. It is a small but very busy place. I ordered my choice and Cassondra had a conversation with the man behind the counter who was slinging barbequed meat on to people’s trays. She told him exactly what kind of burnt ends she wanted and I was surprised that she is versed in barbeque lingo. We had a lengthy catch-up time sitting and enjoying the cuisine.
We go way back to my Deaconess days in the 1970’s. She was dating a consciencious objecter who was an orderly on the Psych floor where I worked. That’s how I met her, through Merlin Mueller, who is a pastor somewhere in Nebraska these days. Anyway, it’s a friendship that survives long periods of time without much contact. When my first-born child chose to live in the Bronx in 2005, I asked Cassondra to look out for Jackie – she did, and I was relieved to know that someone in that behemoth of a city had Jackie’s best interests at heart.
Saturday night I took her to the Rep to see “August: Osage County”. It is a dark and very intense piece of theater craft and we both were quite taken by the performance. Keep in mind, please, that Cassondra judges things by New York City standards. (When you are a New Yorker, you just believe that it is the center of the Universe). Anyway, she approved. Yesterday she went with me to my Unity church and declared that she enjoyed the service. For a spiritual “atheist” that is a high compliment. Then in the afternoon we watched the women’s championship basketball game. Last night I played the movie “Origin” for her. She was quite moved, because it is that kind of film.
Today we are driving to Perryville which is in the “path of totality” for the eclipse. We will leave in plenty of time to find the Super Walmart parking lot and hopefully find a place to park. We have sandwiches from Pickleman’s going with us for sustenance. Cassondra brought the right eyewear through which to witness the celestial event. We have been watching the weather reports carefully and in typical Missouri fashion, we have no idea what conditions will be at 1:58 pm in Perryville.
I vividly remember the eclipse of 2017, because it happened just days before my first grandson was born, and I was in New Jersey for the occasion. Today’s picture is the only one of my grandson you’ll ever see on social media. He was comfortably still tucked in to Jackie’s tummy. On the day of the eclipse we stood out on their deck with boxes on our heads because no one thought to get special glasses. Not Cassondra. She schlepped ours all the way here from the center of the Universe.