Sunday, February 21, 2010

Found in the Coat Pocket

I wore my good winter coat yesterday.  It's quite the dress-up coat.  It's black wool with a fur collar and cuffs, goes down to my ankles.  And it twirls.  It's a coat for city people.  I wore it a lot when I lived in Washington DC and in The Hague because it's perfect for walking.  This coat has absolutely no place in my current life and so I keep it upstairs in the back corner of the back bedroom.  Until yesterday.

After I fed the animals, did my chores, hauled wood, loaded up the woodstove and finished all the dirty things I needed to do, I put the wool coat on on my way out the door.  And found these two pieces of paper in a pocket, reminding me of the last time I wore this coat.

It was April 17, 2008 when I bought a train ticket from The Hague to Schiphol, which is the Amsterdam airport (pronounced skip'-ol).  It's 7:32 in the morning and I bought the ticket with my ABN AMRO bank card for 13 euros, 40.  The train trip takes about 45 minutes.  The top piece is the ticket and the bottom piece is the receipt.  The ticket was validated by the conductor at 7:45 along the right side.

I traveled a TON when I lived in The Hague.  So much so, that for the first 8 months of the job, I didn't have an apartment.  I spent a month in two different hotels and over 6 months in other countries before I got my apartment.  And then I still spent much of my time in other countries but at least I had a place to come back to.  I never saw myself as the kind of person who needed roots, but that year when I didn't have a home really made me see that I like having one.

This particular train ticket is for a whirlwind trip I took to Cleveland, Ohio to interview for a job, which would have had me living fairly close to where I live now, but traveling all over New England to various factories.  I spent a few hours at the interview and the rest of three days with various old friends.  I'm glad I didn't get that job, because here I am with 2 dogs, 2 cats and 5 chickens and I don't travel at all any more.

The coat is back in the back corner of the upstairs back bedroom now, after giving me a memory trip to a far away place, that was not so long ago.  I don't think about that time very much anymore, so it was a nice little journey.

4 comments:

  1. My goodness, Jordan, that was less than 2 years ago!

    It's amazing, the changes since then.

    How long do you think you will be where you are now?

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  2. Hi Kate - this is the first place I've ever lived where I feel like I want to stay here the rest of my life. Many people are younger when they feel this way, but I guess I had a lot of places to see first!

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  3. Hee, hee. I'm laughing over here because I have a train ticket in my purse dated "14-10-2009" from Deventer to Schiphol for EUR 16.80. Sometimes finding memories in our pockets is waaaay better than finding extra cash!! Too funny.

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  4. Conny - It seems like the whole world goes through Schiphol. You weren't there long ago at all!

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