The trip home from a convention always feels much shorter than traveling to get there. The oddness of this phenomenon is increased by the fact that I spend the trip out reading and generally trying to keep myself occupied. On the trip home I spend most of the time staring at nothing with only my thoughts to entertain me. Conventions are a serious overload of stimuli, new situations, new people, new ideas, and new information. On the trip home I begin to sort it all, rarely do I get the sorting done before the end of the trip.

***
As we were leaving the hotel room on the first day of the convention, I saw Mary take out two dollars and leave them on the bed for the housekeeping staff. It was one of those “of course I should be doing that” moments. Housekeeping staff often changes from day to day, and each one does helpful tasks. I happened to come up to the room about an hour later just as the cleaning cart was about to get to our room. The tiny woman pushing the cart nodded and smiled at me asking “I come back later?” I smiled back and answered that now was fine, I was just grabbing something. She smiled and nodded several times to me. She had a beautiful smile, it made all the wrinkles of her face into joy lines. Throughout the weekend our room was always cleaned first. She smiled and greeted us every time she saw us. Mary says there were even little thank you notes in broken English. So much gratitude to be purchased at the low price of $2 per day. Sometimes little things make a huge difference.

***
The whole weekend was remarkably free of guilty moments. In the past I have always received a phone call from a child who is having some sort of emotional crisis. The child cries, I attempt to figure out what happened and to problem solve over the phone. Usually I can only help things calm down some and I have to hang up without knowing how it will all be resolved. Then I feel worried and guilty for an hour or the rest of the trip. This did not happen during the weekend.

I liked the lack of guilt and have been trying to deconstruct why it stayed away so that I can repeat the experience. It is possible that everyone was focused on letting me have a break and so they made extra efforts to solve their own problems. If this is the reason it means that I have been assisting in the creation of these crisis moments by placing myself in the center of every crisis resolution. I need to be stepping back more so that they can learn to work things out for themselves. I must think on it further.

I was sitting at lunch with Mary and Kimmi. For them it was a discussion about Mary’s upcoming GoH interview with Kimmi as the interviewer. I was along for the food. The con was not in full bustle around us, but there were lots of interesting distractions. This was when my phone rang. The kids at home had locked themselves out of the house. I directed them to our backyard neighbor who has a key. I also spent several minutes calming a distraught Gleek, who was afraid that she would have to spend the night without the backpack full of security objects which had been locked in the house. They got the key, liberated the all-important back pack, and the kids went off to their aunt’s house for a sleepover.

I’ve gotten phone calls from home mid-convention before. I have one pretty much every convention I attend. It is often quite hard for me to stay calm because the calls bring out into the open whatever guilt I may be feeling about leaving the kids to attend the convention. This time I was not rattled at all. While the fate of the backpack was in question, I knew that two responsible adults were right there to help the kids deal with whatever outcome there might be. It was more amusing than anything else and gave me a story to tell when I got back to the table with Mary and Kimmi.

***

Mary’s signing here at the convention was pretty much the antithesis of the perfect signing. It was held during the dinner hour, wasn’t in the program book, the dealer’s room had already closed (so no one could buy books), and she was tucked away in a corner room far off the beaten path. Mary was cheerful and amused about it. She and I sat and talked for an hour. We were joined after awhile by a member of the convention staff with whom we had a lovely conversation. He took notes about how things should be different in other years. As Mary said it, conventions always have troubles of one sort or another. Things get mis-communicated, double booked, or overlooked. The key is for everyone to learn from the errors. And the Baycon staff have been wonderfully attentive in every interaction I’ve ever had with them.

***

I sat at a table in the lobby next to the bar with an ever-shifting group of authors and editors. I’d been there for several hours already and never once been bored. As people came and went I always had someone new to speak with and learn about. I had several quite-extended conversations with people I’d never met before, but with whom I hope to keep in touch. The night extended into early morning and I was still in my chair half from inertia, I finally pulled myself from the group and made my way upstairs. Tomorrow I have plans for tracking down my new acquaintances and visiting more.

I meandered through the San Jose airport looking at shops and pausing to admire several art installations. I had no one to mange but myself. It was odd. I counted back through my memories and came to the conclusion that I have not traveled solo since I was 19 years old, single, and a college student. Even then my parents came with me to the gate and Howard met me at the other end. (We were dating, but not yet engaged.) I was not afraid to be in an unfamiliar airport by myself. I’ve done enough traveling to know what to expect even when I don’t know the exact locations of the things I expect.

San Jose is a mix of things familiar and things new. I grew up only 45 minutes from here. I see the palm trees, ground ivy, yellow hills, and part of my brain says that I’ve come home. Right outside my hotel window is the Great America amusement park which was the cool place to go when I was a middle school kid. I was looking at the architecture as I rode in a taxi to the hotel. It is quintessentially California with all those early spanish influences. The colors and red tile roofs would be exotic except that they are so familiar.

Baycon itself is also a mix of things different and familiar. Other than Mary Robinette Kowal, with whom I am staying, and John Picacio, whom I’ve met briefly on a couple of occasions, I didn’t know anyone. I do now. Conventions are like that. After the Mingle with the Guests event, I have new blogs to look up and people with whom to keep in touch. The feel of convention hotel is very familiar. The vibe of the attendees is comfortable. Yet everything has a slight spin which reflects the local aesthetic and zeitgeist. The most different part is being completely at my own disposal.

On the first evening I discovered yet another small adjustment I need to make professionally. The very first moment I was called on to introduce myself I said “I’m Howard Tayler’s wife.” It was a useful hook because the other person then connected me with where they’d seen me before, unfortunately it also emphasized the wrong part of who I am. Here at Baycon I’m trying to be Sandra Tayler, writer rather than Sandra attached to Schlock Mercenary. Mary helped me rehearse a better introduction and has flawlessly introduced me to many people in ways that make me sound interesting. There was a moment at breakfast this morning where someone I’d been talking to for an hour finally connected me to Howard and lit up with delight. It made me happy, in part because having someone be delighted at you is always a positive experience, but also because it meant that the respect I’d been getting before was all earned by me rather than bestowed upon me by my association with Howard.

I was at the Mingle with the Guests event and Mary introduced me to a friend. I ended up telling about my writing for a little bit. In a moment when the friend was distracted by something else, Mary leaned over and said “Do you realize that you keep stepping backward like you’re trying to flee?” I looked down and realized that I was indeed at least two feet from where the conversation began. I had been slowly moving the conversation because I’d take a tiny step back and others would step forward to keep within good talking proximity. It wonderfully expressed the tentativeness I feel when presenting myself for my own works rather than the associations with others. I think I shall also find comfort in it because they did step forward so that we could continue to talk.

Thus far my conventioning without Howard experience has been a good one. There are edges of missing home and kids, occasional moments when I feel odd or misplaced, but on the whole I am having a great time.