Ethan Hawke Checked Me Out

On my return to the U.S. from Nova Scotia, I spied Ethan Hawke at the Halifax airport. I was working on my laptop, and he was approximately six feet away, interacting with his wife/girlfriend and two young children. He wore his hair pirate-style in a yellow, knotted bandana. As if he were on location, he was projecting his voice. He seemed to be in hyper-parent mode, as if he were playing the role of a father, rather than relaxing and being an actual father. I simply glanced at him from time to time. One woman approached him for an autograph. He didn't even look at her and said dismissively to his son, "This woman wants me to sign her book." Over the course of the next two hours, I was in very close proximity with Mr. Hawke, but I never approached him. Instead at one point, when he was sitting in a section with only his kids for company, he caught my eye, and I gave him a reserved smile, as one might smile at anyone. A simple acknowledgement of the person's humanity. Nothing less, nothing more. On the small plane from Halifax to JFK, Mr. Hawke and his entourage sat directly behind me. On the plane to LAX, he looked at me as I passed by his first class seat. He was now in a dress shirt and sunglasses, sans bandana and children. (They apparantly had been put on another plane.) The glance he gave me was the kind a man gives a woman he is intrigued by but wants to be discreet because his significant other is in close proximity. The kind of glance that a man uses to check a woman out. But Mr. Hawke was not checking me out in the usual sense. Rather, he was intrigued with me because I treated him as a human being, not a star. Doubtless, this is not the kind of treatment he is accustomed to and perhaps he was intruiged by a woman who was not ga-ga about him. A glance can mean so much, and I have not ever had quite the experience I had with Ethan. A glance of intrigue--Who is this woman who is so calm in my presense? A touch of normalcy and quiet in my unexpected, unrehearsed, unexpectant smile. One of the more beautiful interactions I have had in a long while.

After nearly two years’ hiatus, I have returned to my cabin in the woods of Nova Scotia. This is a quick trip as I was planning to spend two weeks in August here, but I will be working for an ad agency in Irvine beginning June 25, so I left yesterday (June 13) and will return the night before I begin the ad-agency gig.

I’ve made a fire in the wood stove. I have always been a little unclear about how to tell if the damper is open. It seems a bit smoky in here, yet smoke is coming out the chimney. A few logs are putting off a lot of heat. I’ll just let them burn out and not put any more on. I don’t want to smother myself my first night here!

The glow of a fire always takes me back to Pt. Arena, because fires were the way I stayed warm. I can’t help associating them with Mike and crazy sex.

Helma, Mike’s mother, is visiting a friend in Monterey Park for a few weeks. I spent last Saturday with her, listening to her talk for six hours straight about Mike, her other kids, her deceased husband, her youth in Germany, her former job at a daycare. Oddly, I didn’t mind this one-way conversation. I really wanted to listen to all that she said. I hadn’t seen her for something like eight years.

Helma really didn’t want to say goodbye to me. She had a look on her face that said she wished Mike had stayed with me, as if by looking at me she could see an entirely different fate for Mike, one that included me but not his death more than a year ago. Also in her look was a knowing that she would never see me again, even though I had said several times that she, Aaron, and I should get together before she left. (This was before I made plans to go to Nova Scotia.) This is the same knowing that I had when I said goodbye to Mike in January of 2000. I wept so terribly, and he wondered why. He said he had never seen me so emotional about a leave-taking before. Though my mind did not yet realize it, my heart knew that I would never touch him again.

I remember Mike saying to me one night as he held me in bed that it was his wish that we’d always have a place like this. At the time, he had meant a place like his trailer in the woods, where we could be quiet, surrounded by beauty, secluded enough for him to chop wood in the nude, as he had done that afternoon. Well, he had such a place until the day he died, and I have such a place now. Strange how people get their wishes, except not in the way they ever imagined.

White, pink, magenta, and indigo lupens adorn my table, picked this afternoon along the dirt road to my cabin.

As I type this, I’m looking out the dining room window at the dense tree cover in the waning light. This particular place and this place of Nova Scotia in general are so beautiful. I am looking forward to the end of the spring semester next year when I plan to drive here and spend six months. I’d like to see this cabin in fall, winter, and spring too.

I’m looking forward to a quieter way of life, one that includes, as I heard on the radio today, schoolchildren singing to butterflies in a garden they had planted especially to attract these winged beauties and news broadcasts that profile a crime wave in the province—a thief who steals flowers from graves in a cemetery outside Halifax.

I wish the dear son were here. I would like to share this cabin with him. Other families have vacation getaways, but we never did when he was a child. Now that I do have a cabin, I would like to instill in him a sense of place, somewhere he can always come to for quiet, beauty, and nourishment. As it is, he is job-hunting, as he wants to save up enough money to go to Europe in September.

The fire is dying, the woods are getting dark, and I am tired, having been up since 6 o’clock yesterday morning. Good night, Nova Scotia. I’m so glad I have this cabin, as it was my wish too to always have a place of quiet, beauty, and sanctuary.