Buoyed and Sunk

Oh, Alaska Quarterly. How you've done me wrong.

What did Emily D. write? Hope is the thing with wings that pecks you in the eyeballs?

See, the thing is, journals can't do you wrong because they have no idea who you are. They don't know your name or your favorite vegetable or whether you yelled at your kids this morning or practiced deep breathing and acted mature. They don't care at all, and that's the nature of their journalness--like snakes or birds, you can't catch a glint of interest in their eyeballs; they may just slither or fly away, like they never saw you at all, or they might charge at you and bite you. You never know what they'll do.

The thing about hope--the words I say over seeds as I tamp soil over them, or the small secret thrill I feel as I print my name on an SASE and slip it into an envelope addressed to this or that journal--the thing about hope is that it can make you a fool. It can make you feel silly for wishing when you get just one more slip back printed with the dreaded words: Thank you for sending us. . .While we were. . .Good luck placing your. . .You know it as soon as you see your name, in your own handwriting, on a slim, weightless envelope. You know you're done for, man. You've raised your hand to wave happily at somebody in a crowd and it turns out they were waving to the guy with the handlebar mustache behind you.

You know you're just going to have to gird up your loins and send the manuscript off again, again, again, ceaselessly until somebody shocks you with recognition.

Since September, I've had a poem, a short story, an essay, and a children's story accepted in four different publications. I wish I drank beer in celebration every night, but instead I scan the pieces I have out, hoping, hoping. . .for what? Another nod from a journal? A sign that my career will not fizzle in total obscurity? And would that be so bad, as long as I've done my best and, most importantly, shaped and loved the people who have crossed my doorstep? Of course it wouldn't--I know that. I've got my values straight.

And it's only for the first ensuing moments or even hours after yet another rejection that I stick out my lower lip and pout. Then I shift gears, whip myself into shape, climb on another boat. And try not to wish too much.

Fathers, Daddies, etc.

I didn't realize Father's Day was upon us until yesterday! So I zapped off some silly Jibjab cards featuring my talented, kind father-in-law as a karate master and pasted my own dad's head onto a business suit next to Truman. . .or something like that. Love that Jibjab. Here's Martin's card:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

We spent Saturday night with generous, lovely friends up on their windy ridge. Martin cooked Thai food and we ate chocolate and watched movies while the girls slept. And then the next morning we feasted on a huge platter of dove-colored pancakes and crispy bacon. We must let our friends congratulate Martin on his exceptional fatherhood more often. I'm not sure I would have managed much more than a bowl of Frosted Miniwheats. Tonight, though, sitting next to Martin (who was sweaty and flecked with grass bits from weedwhacking), I informed him that he could choose whatever he wanted for dinner and we would make it happen (I trusted that he would not actually want me to COOK)--so we drove down to the empty parking lot of the local Chinese diner and loaded up on saucy, fried, salty, delicious food, which we all ate in front of the TV. We split an exceptional beer.

In two days, Martin's father joins us for the Big Summer Project: this year, it's a fence across the front of our side garden with six foot pickets. This may sound like the awful privacy fence and it is for privacy, but there will be spaces in between the pickets to afford walkers-by a look into our garden but will give us a much-wanted barrier from the motor cars. How quaint! Motor cars! Try the loud, horrible vehicles that roar by with no muffler or the young guys who stop speeding just long enough to lay on their horns or yell that Martin is a hippie. These people I do not care to hear from.

Dad C., Chester, and little Elspeth, who looks as if she might be about to help herself to a mouthful of fur, in Texas among the spreading pecan trees

Martin's dad is just a wonderful father-in-law and I can hardly wait to see him. When I first knew Martin's family as a pending in-law, Dad C. said, "Hey, Kim, you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway." Well, I'm not originally part of the Cockroft crew but they wanted me anyway, and the pleasure, (going on twelve years now), is all mine.

Daddy, with baby Bea, in Seattle

Well, for my own father, I thought I'd cheat and cut a piece I wrote for a writing group--Daddy, I know you've already read it but it's still true months later.

* * *
The gifts my father gave me are many-faceted but simple. As a doctor of public health he and my mother gave me the gift of a childhood overseas, in Bangladesh and then in Kenya. He gave me his damp and warm smell as he motored my sister and I over dusty roads that ended in the green swirls of rice paddies. He gave me the smell of the rain that rolled in a wall to wet our feet at our front doorstep. My father gave me the cacophony of crowded trains at midnight, the quiet of his voice, the gentleness of his hands. He gave me the faces of the poor, the hungry and downtrodden, and they are ever with me.

My father gave me the deep rivers of his voice as he wove adventures about we children and the Red-eyed Crocodile. He gifted me with the voices of Aslan the lion and Gollum and Piglet. He gave me a love for the trees that met over my head as we hiked. From him I learned a quiet determination to do right and be reconciled. From him I learned to be patient with answers that have no questions, to choose to risk love instead of choosing small certainties. When I turn my head to the words of Jesus, when I hear 'the least of these,' I imagine my father on his journeys far away from us, I see my father at our breakfast table, I feel him sitting next to my bed. These things and more my father gave to me.

9:10

The sweet and prolific Evening Primrose, blooming round the Pool Garden
Ten after nine. Evidently Paul said my last entry was strong in sentence--meaning, I can write a tight sentence but my composition was totally addled. Well, Paul, I don't know you, man, but you hit the nail square on the head. A day of children will do this to your composition. A week of children, rain and humidity minus a spouse or partner will do this to your brain. I can still talk but I don't make a whole lot of sense. Mom and I have been laughing at ourselves lately.

But tonight we are serious. We have seven more hours of Gilmore Girls until we close the door on season five. Please do not scoff, now. Or scoff. I don't care. We have been doing the Gilmore Girls like some people do a marathon. Seamlessly, at a break between episodes, Mom and I get up and sprint into the kitchen--she slips dishes in the dishwasher, I refill the tea cups--or she runs down to the laundry room and I rustle up more chocolate--it doesn't take us long, in any case, to park our deserving derrieres back in front of the TV. If we are feeling very ambitious we will fold laundry while we watch. But it is a relief to just sit back and let ourselves go--I don't even scratch any backs, since Martin is away. Martin makes few requests of our relationship but nightly back scratches is one of them. He refills my tea cup and gets me cereal, and I give him a good back scratch in return. I wonder who has been scratching his back in Kentucky? Not you, Paul? Or, Martin, did you find a tree somewhere in the parking lot, shimmy up and down so the bark did the job?

What have I to report of Wazoo today? An advanced tomato plant is fighting to live. I have not helped it at all, and for this I feel a shred of regret. I'm hoping a mellow, cool night will perk it up. The burpless cukes are still in their tiny plastic dividers and not in the ground; neither is the extra green and purple basil I bought over a week ago. Laziness!

We found a dead bird on our deck--I felt more than a shred of remorse for that tiny sparrow, but the girls stepped over it heartlessly and Bea said, "Dead bird! Yup!" And then she went on her merry way. Mom saved me from dealing with the carcass by carrying it down the hill, where she threw it into the creek. I do not have a brave or sane past with dead birds. Once, when Martin and I were dating, a dead bird on my parent's patio sent me into hysterics. As I held the plastic bag for Martin to drop in the body, I began alternately laughing and crying and shaking the bag like an idiot.

I am so sad when a tree or a bird dies--I don't cry or fall into a small depression, but I feel that something is deeply wrong and it is distressing. Birds and trees give me such courage and joy and never demand anything in return, and I am deeply grateful to them.

I just heard the stair creaking under my mother's footsteps; then there was a clunk of a laundry basket against the banister and quiet conversation in the girl's room, which probably means I am needed to correct a daughter.

Paul, Martin, all you good AP readers, big pat on the back for the--what was it? One million, one-hundred thousand essays graded? And Martin, I will give you a big Scratch on the back very soon, if your plane doesn't go down or you are raptured before 12:30 tomorrow. I trust neither of these will happen.

9:26. Over and out.

Is the Yellow Wallpaper moving for anyone else?

I'm wiling away the minutes, waiting for Elspeth to fall to sleep so I can finally become a REAL ADULT again. But wait--which is REAL? If children love you very, very much, do you then become REAL? If they wear wrinkles into your forehead and give you heartburn and drive you to deep breathing exercises, will you finally achieve immortality as a REAL PARENT?

It's been another warm day but now darkness finally obscures the garden beds--orange and pink lilies, blue and white bachelor buttons, the star-puckers of cosmos seedlings. Our window fan blows the heady scent of honeysuckle across my arms as I type. During the long, grey winters, I forget the humidity of summer, the way it drags my limbs down into the stairs as I climb, climb, climb, into the ever-warming heights of our old house, bearing laundry, a child, a cup of water.

Today my mother and a friend sat on the adirondack chairs having some scintillating discussion; the wind was blowing; the children were running around in various states of nudity, covered in sand; and I was climbing over garden beds, trying to capture the miracles of flowers and young vegetables and swollen sugarsnap peas with my camera and failing miserably in the bright afternoon light. On the way up the stairs to shake some supper out of the weary, hot kitchen, the wind blew hard and all the trees bent to the left, ruffling a whole sea of varying greens: young black walnut leaves, the tiny cottonwood, the old grand tree at the bottom of rose-covered Thistle Hill, and it was so beautiful that I shouted out loud.

I need to remember that moment of transcendence now as I wait, wait, wait, impatient with Elspeth's legs, which move restlessly over the covers. Ah! A yawn! Hope springs eternal!

All I want, people, is some time at the end of the day: a few hours filled with nothing more than TV, my mother, Sleepytime Tea, and something sweet. Has it truly come to this? Yes, yes, I'm afraid it has. Martin has been gone now for seven days and the children are all off school, every day! My desires are simple at this moment--

Ah! Another yawn! I see a firefly--soon the entire hill will be pricked with their tiny lights--every night before I go to sleep, the darkness outside my window moves with a hundred white sparks. . .

I am tingling all over, at this moment, with frustration. I have become a REAL PARENT, ragged, well-kissed, thrown under beds where I collect dust bunnies until someone yanks me out to hold me in their hot, fevered hands. If only the skin horse were here to give me some wisdom and tell me that though becoming REAL hurts, it is worth it to feel the night breeze on my ears, to jump and run with other REAL parents, to stay up long enough in the hollow to watch the fireflies come out.

If you are still with me, thank you for allowing me these minutes of lunacy. I believe sleep is imminent. You have been faithful, though silent, companions.

Virtuoso

Allow me one more. Bea, our talented virtuoso, early this spring. She has improved since then; she can now play her first sonata without any music.

bea gets down

In this video Bea is wearing three pairs of stockings--per her request; the song is the lovely "Come on, fatso, bust a move."

Everybody needs a little time away. . .I heard her say (Chicago style)

Martin and I have been married ten and a half years now. We love being with one another, and when Martin's gone, I often begin saying something truly stupid or want to sing a song in falsetto and there's nobody around to laugh. He is my best friend. And like best friends, we always benefit from a little time away from one another. You know, "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and all that rot.

It's not that we don't miss each other--I look forward to seeing him every day he's gone--but it's just that we do fine without one another. And I'm finally to the point where I don't go into a blind panic alone with the three children, though I was SO happy, after three days, to pick up my good mother from the airport. We have been eating junk--hot dogs and Sonic burgers and Sam's Club samples and chocolate cupcakes and Target popcorn (the children's clothes are stained with cherry Icee)--though tonight we went into detox mode and steamed broccoli and carrots for dinner.

When Martin calls I greet him with a jolly, And how was YOUR day? To which he answers, GRRRREAT. . .I graded (today it was in the hundreds of) essays. Basically he just hunkers down around a table with huge bowls of candy and bottles of water (for the record, he's been eating much better than we have and stopped after only two Starburst the first day!) and reads essays for eight hours straight. After hours he and his buckaroos stroll through Louisville finding good drinks and eats and telling writing/teaching anecdotes. And he and I have made a pact to send out manuscripts to at least five journals while he's gone (it's supposed to be one-two a night but I've been lagging after my mother's arrival. Who wants to spend time staring at a computer when you can be with your mother?)

When Merry was tiny, Martin took off for a month two summers in a row--once for a fellowship, and once to make us some money. That was a LITTLE long--long enough to get into my own swing of things and go into culture shock when he returned. A week is nothing. Merry asked why he had gone and I said, "To make money for your playhouse," which seemed to please her. And don't tell him, but a week is just long enough to enjoy a little girl time--though four of us in the bathtub at once was a bit too close quarters for me.

wonder woman

delicate 'The Fairy' rose in the back garden, near Thistle Hill

Yesterday was a bit of a low point: overwhelmed me, with sicky two-year old clinging to her at every turn, paralyzed because I realized that my driver's licence was expired--trying to clean the house for company arriving Sunday. I did okay, mind you; we went on a walk, watched Anne of Avonlea in sleeping bags, picked strawberries and sugarsnap peas from the garden. I even planted the peppers, beans, and a few herbs. I sent off something to an agent and was rejected four hours later. The children ate meals and I drank a whole beer. I did okay, but did not live up to my power-house ideals.

Today, however, we rolled out of bed--(all of us. With Martin gone, I was looking forward to spread-eagling, but the girls, like ground water, fill holes and in this case my bed). And then we strapped into the car, picked up some disgusting food and coffee at a drive-through, and arrived at the DMV BEFORE it opened. Just two men who were also waiting and the four of us females. I was in and out in fifteen minutes. Then we hit the park, then we went to the grocery, and now we are home. I am ON FIRE.

What next in my amazing day? Empty the dehumidifiers and take out the trash? Change the sheets? Do some laundry? Juggle the china? The world is my oyster!

Funny what things make you feel like a superhero.

Who's Driving this Tractor?

Due to rain and company, Martin was unable to complete the yard work before he left for Louisville.

I figure it's time for the kids to start earning their supper.

S u mm e r Sammies

One of my favorite summer pasttimes 'round these here parts: driving through the wooded hills.
The hope is that an airconditioned car jetting through absolute beauty will stir love between siblings.

I think all my post titles will be "Summer Something-s" because as I said in the previous entry, I am lazy about writing in this Outside Season.

After three days of rain I returned with a mixture of reluctance and relief to the BAD bed where I'd been cutting down weeds and planting perennials--and lovely-o, if it wasn't the easiest job ever to cut into the soft earth and plop those fellows in. As I headed to a pile of weeds I'd cut down before the rain, Sammy the Snake, (or one of his/her many offspring) slithered a portion of his green and yellow body and startled the stuffing out of me. After some seconds I was able to locate his two black eyes, staring at me--signifying what, exactly?--curiosity, coldness, warmth of friendship?--It's hard to tell with snakes. That's the thing about Sammy--I find him staring at me from odd places, and then I know he's been staring at me for possible ages, and I've just now noticed him. It gives me the creeps.

Sammy, or one of the Sammies, appears in the most startling places (by nature of snakeness, he is inherently startling no matter where he appears). Mostly he appears to me and then the rest of my family mock me when they hear my frenzied squeals echoing across the garden. Truthfully I do not mind Sammy, or the Sammies, in the garden, since they are garters, but I do not appreciate the quality of surprise that always accompanies their appearances. I coax aloud as I walk past his favorite compost pile, "All right, then, Sammy, here I come, so don't just jump out at me. I don't mind you being here but I just don't want you to scare the liver out of me. Okay? So here I come" [Here I whistle and make other silly noises to encourage him to hide].

As you might recall, Martin the Tenderhearted saved the first Sammy from being flattened by our handy-man's pick-up several years ago. It was the the height of August and the vegetables were oversized monsters, a snake heaven. Martin tenderly carried S. Snake into the garden, where the girls stroked Sammy's long brown body before Martin let him into the compost pile. So we have a fondness and relationship with the original Sammy and, theoretically, with his/her offspring.

The year after Sammy's introduction to our front garden, it was late spring and I was weeding Thistle Hill when I disturbed what appeared to be a nest of little Sammies, sending me into a miniconiption as I watched the little serpentine babies wiggle away through the brush. And ever since then our garden has apparently become a hotbed of snake love and procreation.
Thistle Hill, looking down to the badminton spot and fire ring

Like I said, garters are good for the garden; we have no rodent problems, and I am thankful as long as--EEEK--they just stop appearing in odd places in proximity to my bare toes.

A random Columbine for you

lazy update

On TV: Kipper the dog in green boots, a magic frog, a puddle, and an elephant. Beside me: Bea, opening the mail. On a chair: Elspeth, in frilly blue seersucker dress and flowered hat. Far away: most of you. Close enough: Martin playing racquetball at the U and Merry sitting in a classroom. In the garden: sugarsnap peas, plump strawberries, silky pink roses, tiny green tomatoes, sunflower seedlings. In my head: not much. In my stomach: good coffee and brownsugary oatmeal.

Such are the summers. Not much ticking around in my head except maybe a ceiling fan. Plenty of shite to spread on the garden beds, plenty of dirt in my toenails, plenty fresh fruit and herbs bolting to seed in soaring heat. The children naked in the paddling pool. Pressing concerns include: what to eat for dinner, sand tracked through the house, who's napping with the kids, what pass to buy at the pool.

In other news, Martin's off to Louisville for a week soon to sample good bourbon and grade APs (and make some good money for a fence!), Merry has one scant week left at school, a visit from my mother is on the horizon, and I got a copy of Cold Mountain Review with MY ESSAY PRINTED IN IT! Nice to hold it in my hands, and full of good prose and poetry by other people I've never met. I'll include a link when their site is updated.

early summer bliss