Month/Year: July 1976
Location: Fenwick Isle, Delaware
Moment: Adolescent leaves Midwest
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Month/Year: July 1986
Location: Flanagan’s Harp & Fiddle, Bethesda, MD
Moment: Birkenstock sandals spotted under table by NYC friend of friend who responds to news about wearer (postbac young adult) moving back to Midwest: “You belong there.”
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Month/Year: December 1996
Location: Office near Hampden Lane/Arlington Road, 0.5 miles south of Flanagan’s
Moment: Coworker, recent MFA of Writers’ Workshop, and underemployed native of Bethesda living (hopefully temporarily) with his folks defends the Midwest to this not-so-young-anymore adult Midwesterner, also (hopefully temporarily) living (more northerly) with folks: “It’s not that bad.”
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Whatever reason(s) for coworker’s New Year’s pact proposal—that we both be somewhere else by next New Year’s—a reason for agreeing was shame, not from the mother’s Iron Country roots in host land (since 1969) to Paavo Nurmi Marathons, but paternal shame, I-M253 thick, maybe ancient as Doggerland, maybe mythical as Atlantis; more recently maybe it is Okie and Southern California and suburban Maryland where a father tried to affix to a daughter who was not ambitiously employed, nor suitably attired, married, or housed: “Adulthood means a mortgage and a commute,” and seemed not so long after Reagan intended to tell Gorbachev about all the little homes he could see from his Air Force One helicopter, some even with little swimming pools, then (thankfully) advised against challenging the Soviet whether he could do as well for his people; though in this world never far from everywhere, in a never ending now, or at least another Saturn Return, is it a shame akin to the intention of contrasting a beautiful, rental apartment in Berlin to a particular palace at the Black Sea?
The coworker pact, Tuesday, December 31, 1996, Bethesda, MD, 15:00 EST:
Chiron 0° 12′ Scorpio trine Lot of Fortune 0° 40′ Pisces
Moon 26° 45′ Virgo conjunct Mars 29° 11′ Virgo
Moon bi-quintile Midheaven 21° 02′ Aquarius
Pluto conjunct natal Ascendant
Images: Historical property—spelled correctly, ending in “le” not “el” despite German insistence otherwise even to East-Berlin-born relative by marriage, fluent speaker, and bearer of the name—from Business Insider: “Nobody wants to buy the oldest home in the U.S., a log cabin from the 1600s with a $2.9 million price tag” and an asymmetrical fireplace, a clue, according to owners, that the home was built by Finns.