I caught up with more friends from older posts

As July crawls to a close it’s become obvious that the AC in our rental townhouse just can’t keep up. Setting the thermostat all the way down to 70F (21.1 C) will take the basement down to about 72F, but the main floor will sit at about 74F and upstairs is now usually somewhere between 76F to 86F on the worst days at the worst times. Yes we have fans, and yes I’ll buy a window AC once next month’s rent is paid. Until then our options are to be outside of the house or not on the top floor when it gets really bad. Just to be spiteful, the clothes dryer also started to chew holes in some of my good work dresses and make horrible squeaking noises.

After I got the second job and before I started working weekends, Devon said I should visit my college friends in East Tennessee and sent me a Greyhound bus ticket. Devon didn’t know how bad Greyhound travel now can be, and I was happy to have a rare chance to see people I haven’t seen since before the pandemic, so I was willing to take the chance. There is a newly rebuilt Greyhound bus terminal at the Garnett MARTA station, and I let the revamped exterior fool me. While I spent most of a day waiting for the bus to Knoxville that was four hours late, I saw three different people get removed from the bus station by security for different problems, all loudly. When the bus did show, it wasn’t the remodeled “Flixbus” promised by social media advertising, but an old Greyhound with cracked seating and a hostile driver who, at one point in our trip, pulled the bus over by the side of a road to get up and yell at passengers for talking. There was no talking allowed on the bus, because our driver - who clearly was suffering from some sort of Greyhound driver specific PTSD - was on a hair trigger the whole time.

I hadn’t attempted a Greyhound bus trip in 25 years, so I didn’t know how far things had fallen apart for regional bus travel. There’s no Greyhound terminal in Chattanooga anymore, just a strange building surrounded by weedy lots on the edge of that city with no bathroom facilities for travelers. The only bathroom stop was in Athens, where a cinder block building in the parking lot of an Exxon had single toilets for each sex and no air conditioning, and smelled about how you would expect. Devon, on picking me up, was shocked to learn that Greyhound had no Knoxville terminal anymore either, the bus unloading in a random parking lot in a bad part of town where cops waited to greet the bus just in case violence should be waiting as we disembarked. I jumped in Devon’s car and we were off. I was grateful for the pickup and trip, but never again will I ride Greyhound - I don’t know how much worse regional bus travel can get, and I’m not anxious to find out.

I did get to see Devon and their family in their lovely house on a piece of land in Appalachia owned by her husband’s family for generations. The air smelled amazing, and Devon’s children and husband were gracious to the giant stranger who came to sleep on their couch. Elle drove down from deeper in the mountains to see me as well, who once went by another name in my blogs before transitioning about twelve years ago. Likewise I was able to visit with my friend Laura, who was once called Ford, and who survived breast cancer diagnosed just before the world changed for good. I hadn’t seen Elle or Ford in five years, and Devon in four, despite talking to all these friends fairly regularly by text or mail or phone. It was good to hug them in person. It was good to see how we’ve all changed. We all knew this time it was the last visit for a few years, where before the pandemic we would see each other about every eighteen months or so. This was the last time for a long time. So I tried hard to make it count.

I took a Lyft back, and what had possibly been a free trip will take me three or four restaurant shifts to pay back. The trip was worth the cost - everyone is so changed, we’re all so dramatically different. Laura who was Ford was the one I had been the most worried to see, but who looked in some ways the least changed. We all may be hanging on by our fingertips, but we are hanging on to our lives as hard as we can.

Appalachia blazed at me in wildflowers and green beauty while I was there. I was again reminded how nice it must be to feel at home in the mountains, but I never have. Knoxville is about as small a city as I’d ever want to inhabit, but is a proper city with architecture and good museums and street art and sidewalks full of people. I like Knoxville, but it’s not for me, it’s for Laura and Elle and Devon.

There’s probably dozens of slight changes in my life during my twenties that would have meant Knoxville was my city, that I would have learned to love the place on a deeper level and adopt it as my own. But none of those things happened, and I think I was destined for Boston once I met Dan in the summer of 1993 when we were volunteers with the National Park Service. Once I understood what Boston was, I was going to find my way there. When you’ve loved a truly great city like that, there’s no going back to much smaller, and of course I always knew I’d live in Atlanta since I was very small myself.

I wish Atlanta loved me back like my friends from college. Laura and Elle and Devon love me, and I love them, like true friends do. But Atlanta has decided that it is a Manhattan kind of city now, and librarians haven’t been able to afford to raise children in Manhattan for more than forty years. I came to Atlanta when it was still possible to live downtown and be a civil servant and have kids. The city has outgrown me, just as my Atlanta-born children are outgrowing me. So my season here is getting late.

There are other cities out there, ones like Knoxville but not in the mountains. There are cities where I can fit that are still affordable. I will spend the next three years finding my next place, unless Atlanta changes its mind about a great many things. The mountains were cooler and beautiful, but they’re not for me, even if they’re filled with people who I love. I need to find a path to my own autumn in a place with a lot of red bricks, books, and hopefully a proper riverfront. Until then - until my summer children are ready to leave the nest - I’ll be here in Atlanta, covered in sweat.