Seattle 120, or Snapshots from a Birthday

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I'm shaking halfway up the ladder, heading for my first jump in my second trapeze lesson. All the failure of last class is with me. I've been going over the moves in my head all week, visualizing the trick perfectly. But what if I grab onto the bar and fail again?

At the top, one of my instructors from last time greets me. She says, you'll get it today. My feet are worryingly slippery. The platform shakes, held in place by cables instead of bars. She hooks me into the safety line, reminds me to keep my hips forward. Today, a woman is acting as the main caller. Ready! Hup! Good! Knees up, get 'em up! Good! Hands down! Good! Grab the bar! Good! And drop your legs! Get ready to flip - kick back! - forward! - back! - leggo!

The trick goes flawlessly. I do it twice more, just to prove I can. The teacher from last week says Have you been doing crunches? You're a different person this week - so much more confident! She teaches me a new trick to work on: the "Heels Off" dismount. It looks like this:



I screw it up - mostly by looking down at the net instead of up towards the catcher when I let go. When I learned to steer a boat, Dad taught me "you drive where you look, so don't look anywhere but where you're headed for more than a second." Same is true for trapeze - if you let your head drop, you'll go down - headfirst. I scraped my nose on the net.

But when it came time to test my knee hang with the catcher, it went off without a hitch - Ready! Hup! Good! Knees up! Hands down and - good! But as soon as he caught me, the catcher howled Why are you wearing your glasses?! Whoops. I laughed as he dropped me into the net. Tomorrow will prove whether or not I really got better - we'll see how sore I am in the morning.

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I curled up in the bookstore for a few hours, read old novels and rested. The orange cat that prowls the stacks slipped me a moment of his silky head each time he walked by.

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Ate at the bookstore for dinner, decided spur-of-the-moment not to go with my original plans. Why? Because as I was getting ready to go eat dinner, a Chopin nocturne started playing. Nocturnes are my special pieces. I took it as a sign. Why not. The waiter was fabulously gay, called me darling, stumbled over the Greek word for the night's special -

Avgolemono? Avgolemono soup?!

Yes, that's it.

I ordered a cup, with a tomato salad on the side. He gave me thin slices of sourdough with a sharp, peppery olive oil. The soup was not the bright yellow broth I'm used to - much paler, with chunks of chicken and carrot, and well-cooked rice, so soft and creamy. Just enough lemon - more than enough pepper. Homesick-for-Dad soup. The salad, sweet heirloom tomatoes with sherry and parsley and grilled halloumi cheese and toasted bread - a well-executed lesson in simplicity. Ate with my eyes closed.

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Came home to find Housemates and Friend around the table. Happy Birthday! they said. Have some, uh, curry. We played card games and laughed until I couldn't keep my head off the table. Z made banana chocolate chip muffins with twice the butter she needed. They ate my imperfect bread. We made jokes and talked in funny accents.

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