April 15, 2009

Exeter Inn, Exeter, New Hampshire.

I’m wrapped in one of the white robes places like this provide, watching TV as the night moves forward to the West. I never do this at home, so I suppose it counts as a vacation. The flights were easy, the drive from Logan no worse than it might have been. Arriving in Exeter after all these years was not the painful experience I half expected. Memories, and orientation, flooded back. The memories were happy. No great sorrow arose here. There were lovers, but I couldn’t find their houses now, so there will be no moping. I wasn’t here long enough for things to go memorably awry. Besides, the place is so full of youth and joy that everything else would be wiped clean. I stared up into the windows of my old digs on Tan Lane. I walked beside the mighty Squamscott at high tide. I don’t know where all the students were; perhaps it was supper time; perhaps it is spring break and they are gone. I smiled and was happy. Should I have struggled to remain here? Good Lord, no. I remember looking for apartments down at the Hamptons, thinking I would live above a seaside arcade and write. But it is a joyful place, and I am glad to have returned.

The obligatory cock-up was my getting on the bus to Budget Rent a Car when I had actually made a reservation with Thrifty. Budget, Thrifty, how to tell them apart? Budget could accommodate me, but for $100 more than my reservation had been. I took it, the alternative being too exhausting. The clerk and I agreed that nothing happens without a reason, and there must have been–or will be– some reason for the mix-up, something, I hope, more elevated than the assurance of more careful scrutiny of documents.