Tonight I ate a half a chicken, stuffed under the skin with herb butter, that made me feel like a new person. Or maybe it was the bottle of wine that we finished with my sister and my brother-in-law, or maybe it was the mocha creme or the walk through the woods to the candlelit restaurant near the Puget Sound. . .or maybe it was all factors rolled into one delicious experience that made me feel that life was full to bursting with possibilities, all at my fingertips. If the Italian owner hadn't told us we weren't allowed to dance on the tabletops, I might have.

Here in Washington it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, though there won't be any snow for us. Tomorrow we'll take the ferry into Seattle to see the lights and ride the carousel with my brother.

We were talking tonight about the temptation to dream up a new life for yourself, and that dreaming is okay as long as it doesn't make you discontent with your life now. And I'm deeply grateful for all this life is to me now: my close community, family, and employments, our big old house and out-of-control garden. But sometimes I imagine what I want life to be someday: a tiny, tidy house, a garden just big enough for a vegetable patch, flowers, and a patio with a tiny table and herb pots, long mornings to write followed by a long, rambling walk down a quiet path by. . .where am I when I imagine this? By the sea? Back on Orcas Island? In East Africa? I have no idea.

Life is so often what we could not have dreamed, what has been given to us and fallen to us by a series of blind turns, what we have bungled into. What is intentional, of course, is how we stumble along our paths, with joy or with suspicion. How many undiscovered rooms still wait for me to open doors? I wonder. . .

Meanwhile, I find my thoughts returning to next semester. I won't be teaching and I'll finally have the time to work on a book. But I can't settle on a project. I want to compile a book of poetry, a novel, a children's book, and a memoir, but I have to choose one and stick with it. And stick with it I must, even through the long February days when I stare into the grey sky and find the same things over and over again--mostly bright birds with wild feathers askance, mostly red birds. Maybe I will have to swear off birds this winter.

Today is my Elspeth's birthday. She had a wonderful coming. Martin and I sang Christmas carols through my labor transition and then I rocked back and forth on a giant exercise ball and laughed with the midwife, Martin, and my mom, pausing to work through contractions until they intensified to such a pitch that I knew she was coming. I began pacing up and down the room and then I held onto Martin's neck and pushed her into the air and the midwife caught her like a football. That night I held her until morning, and I remember feeling completely content and happy. Her little head, soft with reddish hair, nestled under my chin. She slept so well and soon I took her home and placed her in a shaft of winter sunlight, where Merry knelt down and read to her from a tiny book. She felt like a natural, seamless addition to our family. Today I picked her up in my arms and smoothed a blond tendril away from her face, and though she is full of the moments of her own life and can't remember her genesis, she squeezed me back, and her arms were strong, and I love her for being full of exactly who she is.

It's late and I feel as though I am writing terribly, but I wanted to post an update even though I am as luxuriously full as a stuffed Christmas goose and as stupid. I hope tonight finds you all with something pleasant to drink, something lovely to read, and someone comforting to say goodnight to. Goodnight!

High Heels!

Brilliant musician Greg Scheer writes:

I didn't write a poem about high heels, but I included high heels in a new song. I hope there's a prize or something, because I just ate up a half of a day on this absurd little venture: http://musicblog.gregscheer.com/2011/12/15/baby-youre-not-wearing-pants-again/

Listen to his song now before you hear it on Top Ten on your favorite radio station.

PLUS. . .Heather Long McDaniel submitted this beaute about a callous aunt from Pennsylvania:

There once was an aunt from PA
Who gave neices sharp heels for play
The aunt did not know
Of the pain in the toes
She doomed me to suffer that day


Don't be intimidated. Submit your art/poems/etc. about high heels and win Wazoo's fabulous (virtual) prize!

Advent Poem 2

Today I look for you in birch bark
and find your eye seared black into its trunk.
Perhaps you are the bird that bellied to my daughter’s window
and opened white wings edged with blue.
From the spindle of a black walnut
you watched me with marble eyes,
ticking your face left and right like a mechanical toy.
But when you flew you were like snow falling.
Later I heard you, clawing at the window, scratching
at the frame. I wondered what you wanted.

If you call me with warble from the top of the birch,
will I hear you? Inside there’s a roar of heat,
the calling of my children’s voices, the smells of dinner.
Your feathers fluff against the cold. If I fed you,
would I know your secrets? Every thistle
bears stars, the soil smells of God.

Call for Poems

While this is not really in the spirit of the Christmas season, and while I should be grading final projects, I've noticed lately that there's quite a bit of traffic to Wazoo generated by people hunting for. . ."poems about high heels." You faithful visitors may remember a poem I wrote about Merry's high heels last April, which was National Poetry Month.

High heels and I are not on intimate terms right now, nor do I know any women (or men) who wear them. But I'd love to post some fun, silly, or serious poems about high heels! You can leave them here in the comments section, with lines separated by back slashes ( / ) and I will publish them in their correct form. High heels in December? And why not? I've got a red pair the color of holly berries. They languish in the basement next to old seed packets. The girls try them on once and a while and trip and clomp around the laundry room. The girls LOVE them. Why? What is so inherently attractive about high heels?

So write me.

P.S. Weirdest search by a Wazoo visitor? "Bald flight attendants."

advent

Now is the time of waiting,
the hours of music in the womb,
of fields swept up, covered in sheets
of snow. Gathering, sheaf and boil
is done, now jars gleam with dilly beans
and gemmed berries. Lone cats paw
through the garden. I think of you
and gather seeds, each one a womb.
In the spring after the last frost
I will scatter them over freshly turned
soil, scented richly as coffee. But for now

They lie ponderous in my palm
and I am full of their weight.
Holy winter, heavy with waiting,
grow in me a green thing
strong as grapevine.

My story, "Name Finding," has been published at Literary Mama. Please read it (and leave a comment if you'd like) by clicking HERE. I hope you enjoy the site--it's not just for mamas, of course.

And. . .to read about my first experience hunting, check out my column for this week by clicking on the geranium at right. (Did I mention I never write my own headlines?) Also, while you may be the reader that takes the total reads to fourteen, the column is mostly read in print in this county and in the next. But online reads are important, too, so leave a message if you'd like! Finally, big thanks to Tonya for putting up with me as a novice hunter.

from Marial Thon in the Southern Sudan airport

Dear All,

I'm waiting in a jumble of people in the Juba Intl Airport, sweating from every pore as people crowd into one another, many human scents wafting from our places of origin. The airport is not air-conditioned. There is one big room for all of the flights, domestic and international.

While I am writing the desk staff comes and check-in is done efficiently. I step around people to the immigration counter where they stamp my passport and then I fill in their register to give them a record of my visit. I go to security. I am given a quick pat down ignoring the lumps in my pocket and then through a metal detector that does not work.

My computer bag goes through the X-ray and the man tells me to take out the computer battery, which I do though he never looks at it except briefly when I hold it up.

I then pass into the one room departure lounge with very worn but fairly comfortable overstuffed leather chairs and sofas with crammed in everywhere suplemented by a few plastic chairs.

But before I sit down I have to pee. The door to the men's room lies directly in line with those coming into the room from security but there is not a door that will close. So those coming in get to see me standing at the urinal doing my thing. No washing hands here.

There is a sink but the entire top of the faucet-the part with the handle to twist, lies at the bottom of the basin, broken free from its threaded bounds.

But I'm on my way back to Nairobi and home-just waiting for the plane to land.

It's the five month birthday of Southern Sudan today-a new airport is being built built just down the way and I rejoice in their growing time.

Love,

Mere/Dad

Today, from Nairobi:

Enjoyed your blog on time. I built my workshop completely around proverbs and stories. So to begin to help folk understand that proverbs reveal something about the culture from which the people who created it came, I gave them two proverbs to consider. One was “A log can be in a river for a long time and never become a crocodile.” And the other was “Time is money.” I asked what they thought it meant, where they thought it was created and what it might show about the people who created it. The discussion of the last one brought out the huge differences that you referred to in the blog. It is not only chronos and kairos but time as repeated cycles vs a line. There is not sense of time as a commodity but, in facing modernity——[both have to be understood].

My correct Dinka name is Marial Thon (Thon pronounced with a silent “H” but aspirating the “T” sound but not the “O” sound as in “ton” but rather in “tone”). It means a “bull with black and white color & strong bull at the same time.”

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Love,
Dad

Tuck Away Your Watches

One of my biggest problems when I returned to live in the US was time. In my memory, my childhood in Kenya is filled with expanses: expanses of savanna, only stopping at low mountains, dizzying expanses of sky scattered like a road with the brightest stars I have ever seen, moments stretched out like empty rooms full of slanting sunlight.

In Kenya, nothing ever began on time. Time was relational, not rigid. I remember my mother waiting at an intersection as two women chatted leisurely out their windows. You didn't go into any place, whether it was a home or a place of business, without first taking the time to exchange greetings. A handshake, inquiries as to health and family. Chai. Gifts. Meals. A place marked by an appreciation for relationship.

When I returned to college in Chicago, my heart constricted with clocks. I ran to classes and arrived breathless. I began to nurture what would be a life-long bitterness against time and its restraints, against the idea of being late--late to class, late to appointments, late to work. College was marked by intense heartburn, stress that resulted partly from over scheduled days. When I showed up a bit late for a meeting with a professor, she was curt and dismissive.

As an adult, I dream of those empty, unscheduled rooms of my childhood. As a writer, I thrive in spaces that are free from clocks.

My friend Carrie, who is also copastor of our Mennonite/Brethren Peace and Justice church nearby, recently spoke these reflections on time. Ironically, we'd jostled and pushed each other out the door to get to church on time not long before I sat and listened to her words. But sometimes you have to rush a bit to get to a place where you can be quiet and open yourself to being. I am not an advocate for sloth, just a passionate believer in time being surpassed by imagination, relationship, and a longing for open, quiet spaces. Madeline L'Engle discusses Cronos and Kairos. Kairos time, she writes, is the time of creation. We dwell in Kairos when we "lose time" as we create. Here's Carrie's take, just in time for the Advent season:

In Greek there are at least two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is clocks, deadlines, watches, calendars, agendas, planners. Chronos is where the word chonology comes from which gives the illusion of an ordered progression of time. Chronos is ticking of the clock, counting of shopping days until Christmas. . . Chronos makes us angry at our bodies when they don’t heal as fast as we think they should. Chronos makes us anxious about our self worth when our hopes and dreams haven’t been accomplished by the age we thought they would.

And then there is the other word for time: kairos. Kairos is the time when you are lost in the beauty of a piece of music or the reverie of poetry. Kairos is the moment you hold someone in their pain and when you’ve laughed so hard for so long your side hurts. Kairos comes in moments of meditation of watching sleeping children, of falling in love. Kairos means “opportune moment” and is used when referring to a different type of time, a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. …a time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. A time that doesn’t pass, but a time that is filled. . .

Kairos gives the soul a space to deepen when the body slowly heals. When our minds were set on certain lists of accomplishments that we thought we could control,Kairos presents us space to explore new possibilities . Kairos replaces counting down till Christmas with the patient waiting of Advent. And we can’t control it. No alarm clock will alert us to it. . .

You can find more of Carrie and her husband, Torin's, reflections by visiting their website HERE.

Better Late

I haven't had the heart to throw away our squatty little Halloween pumpkins. I thought they were appropriate to keep around for Thanksgiving, but after the Christmas tree came out of storage and the twinkle lights mingled with their old ornament friends, I knew something had to be done about the pumpkins. They were suddenly gauche, awkwardly crowding the counters with their generous rumps.

I kept them out of guilt. They are technically pie pumpkins and could feed a village for a day, and I felt as though I should be chunking them, roasting them, pureeing them.

And I've promised the girls, particularly Elspeth, a jack 'o lantern for the past three or four years. And we've never, ever carved one. I remember my dad covering our table in newspapers, I remember the sweet, spicy smell as my mother stirred the seeds in the oven. I always assumed they'd carry around this quintessential American memory too.

But I am mighty afeared of any kind of craft. Tell me we're going to cut out construction paper turkey feathers or tie dye tee-shirts and I break into hives. You think I'm joking? Ask the women who know me on a daily basis. They believe me when I say I'd rather clean toilets than scrapbook. So while other families sport their meticulously carved gourds, our pumpkins always remain unblemished by knife or marker.

Elspeth has made a couple attempts to take matters into her own hands. One morning two years ago, I came downstairs and found my Wustof Chef's knife, seeds, and orange guts all over the play stove. Her friend Ben cowered in the corner. "I told her we shouldn't do it," he whimpered. I checked and they both still had all their fingers.

This year Elspeth found a tiny pumpkin from a trash heap in some yard, brought it home, somehow worked off the stem, and began painstakingly fishing around in its belly with a table knife. "Don't touch my pumpkin!" she pleaded before leaving for school, suspicious of what all my daughters believe is a compulsive throw-away obsession. (Bea just found her Thanksgiving hat in the garbage can, pulled it out, shoved it down over the crown of her head and announced, 'I made this in school!' My friend Sal alluded to unpacking ornaments every year and how the children delight to see their paper Santas and pipecleaner reindeer--years of December school projects. 'You mean you KEEP them?' I asked, aghast. It had never occurred to me that I shouldn't be layering them with discarded papers and banana peels in the trashcan).

Yesterday afternoon, when our table was loaded with my netbook, papers, and crumbs still left over from lunch, Elspeth brought her pathetic little pumpkin to the table and began pulling out seeds again. Enough is enough, I thought, whipping out our paring knife. So there, on our Christmas tablecloth, without newspaper or ceremony, Elspeth and I carved our first pumpkin together. Then we carved a pie pumpkin, too, who Elspeth said was the little pumpkin's mother. We dropped in candles and Elspeth turned off the lights and put her little arms around my neck. "They're so beautiful!" she exalted. So the Advent season found our family eating dinner with the lights low, gazing at our jack 'o lanterns, happy despite the smell of burning pumpkin--someone hadn't quite cleaned out all the guts.

There was a bit of a problem with the bigger maternal pumpkin, though. I had meant to knife in some eyelashes but my attempts made the mama gourd look lost in anxiety. "That's because she's worried her son [the little jack 'o lantern with one tooth] is going to get cut up and eaten," Elspeth told me. Or maybe she's worried she's going to get thrown down the hill for the groundhog to feast upon, which she will just before Christmas. Crafts have a shelf-life, especially edible ones.

Our Christmas jack 'o lanterns. It's better late than never, right? Maybe next year I'll actually roast the seeds.

But let's not get carried away.

My dad recently left for Sudan. My mother told me he received instructions to bring food with him, since food there is sparse or nonexistent. . .so he took a big bag of trail mix. How long will this last him, I wonder?

Even in his remote location, he has access to e-mail, so he sent my mother a message that there is food though not much and the residents eat very small portions. I think he may lose quite a few pounds preChristmas. (It wouldn't surprise me if he gave away his trail mix--there's a family tradition of this. When she visited a refugee camp in Uganda, my sister boarded a UN plane back home wrapped in a tablecloth after leaving all her clothes behind. My mother has been known to slide curtains off the rod on the spot to gift them to a visitor who admired them. Keep an easy hold on things, my mother always taught us.)

Sudan gives me a bit of perspective; today, when I said, there's nothing for lunch, our refrigerator was full, our freezers packed. Our pantry overflows with cereal, cans, snacks, grains and pasta. We could survive for several months at least and eat heartily every day. What I meant this morning was, there's nothing prepared for lunch, as if making myself a pbj was a hardship. Or boiling noodles, or making soup, or defrosting a chicken.

On a lighter note, my mother just sent me this e-mail:
Your dad has been given a name by a group of Dinka women that is evidently a highly favored black and white bull, and they proceeded to teach him how to dance the bull dance. Sorry I missed that!

Maybe, she wrote in closing, he'll perform it for us this Christmas. Is that something we really want to see? My father, who has little inherent sense of rhythm, performing The Bull Dance?

Absolutely.

Dear Barnes and Noble,

Tonight, on our date to your M______ store, we expected what we always expect on what has become our favorite date: a tall hot drink, peaceful music, and a few hours to shop and concentrate on some work. We are parents of three and do not go out much since it is expensive to hire a babysitter. Tonight, however, we were plagued by some of the worst holiday music I have ever heard. Mannheim Steamroller, of course, operatic renditions of "O Holy Night," and saccharine cooing of the most banal songs imaginable--all at high volume. I must say that we felt assaulted in a place that we usually love--it almost forced us out the door early. PLEASE tell your stores to choose their music more carefully, especially in the evening when one hopes for a more peaceful, contemplative experience--especially since we evening lingerers are looking for an escape from the tiresome soundtrack of most stores that dogs us through the season.

Thank you.

M______ C______

This morning my friend Sal drove up to the curb and I loaded four huge IKEA bags of recycling into her car. Someone who shall remain nameless had forgotten to rinse the black bean cans and there was a stench of rot hanging in the minivan air as we drove the two blocks to the recycling trailer.

A quick run into a packed post office to mail some late packages and we were on our way. . .but where? Let me give you a hint: I never go to this place, well, almost never. When we parked and walked in, Beatrix yelled, "Seattle!" because we only go to this place when we are on vacation.

Did you guess. . .the mall? If you did, pat yourself on the back. It was pretty empty today and the kids took off down the wide, gleaming aisles. Sal hitched up an ancient LL Bean backpack on her back and we felt just a bit out of place with all the Mall Moms. For us, the mall is a cross-cultural experience. I bought little gift for my mother (which shall remain unspecified in case she's reading), and I felt as though the woman across the counter with the thickly painted eyelashes who handed me my bag should have been speaking a different language. She asked for my phone number, which really baffles me, and I said, "Could I not give you that?" And then she asked for a contribution to St. Jude's, and I'm all for charity, but it feels a bit weird in the context of flashing cheap-but-expensive jewelry and headless manikins. So I said no.

Malls do something a bit funny to me, and it's not just sensory overload. I begin thinking maybe I'd like to buy things, a bunch of things. This consumerist urge is balanced by the absolute repulsion I feel when I walk by a store with banners of half-naked teenagers, reeking of cologne with a sign that says "Holiday Hookup." I mean, really. Martin and I did a mall crawl last year at Christmas. We went into a shop that I thought might have some nice clothes but the music was so loud that it actually bounced us back out of the door. "I don't think we're the intended demographic!" I yelled as Martin grasped the door jamb before we were blown away back to the food court and the immorally large pretzels.

Anyway, we had a good time nonetheless. There were some guys from a prison with dogs being trained for veterans who have suffered from PTSD, and we pet them for a while (the retrievers, that is). The kids played on some soft replicas of a stethoscope and a tongue depressor (the playground was financed by the hospital) and we bathed them in hand sanitizer before we fed them a picnic at the food court. Good time all around. I'm beat. Oh, and they went and stood mute in front of Santa Claus, who was so warm there was a fan trained on his bearded face.

By the way, click HERE to see the best thing that ever happened in a mall. One can only hope that the Christmas spirit surprises us like this.

Post Thanksgiving

I fell off the bandwagon last week, blogging wise. Well, I'm back, for better or for worse.

How was your Thanksgiving?

Our turkey was a delectable homage to what a turkey can be if stuffed with apples, sage, and onions, if his skin is pulled from his breast and his flesh prodded with butter and garlic and a freshly ground spice rub, if indeed he is roasted slowly, breast down, then flipped and glazed with an apple reduction. This should have been enough to make me swoon but by the time I sat down to partake, I'd had a headache all day from telling the girls what and what not to do, and I was having a bit of trouble being grateful for anything. After dinner I lay down on the floor, lifted a limp hand to shove puzzle pieces across the floor to Beatrix from a catacomb of blankets. The turkey was a success (thanks to Martin). I was a Thanksgiving FAIL.

That night I lay in bed and searched my recent history to find just one kind thing that I had said to Elspeth. I came up empty. All day, and nothing but reprimands and grumpiness from me.

The next morning, however, I awakened renewed and determined to live the day better, and so I did. Elspeth and I got on like a house a fire all day, and I went to sleep much happier that evening. What is wrong with me sometimes? I can be such a cantankerous wench.

Our little Christmas tree winks from our sun room window, decorated with ornaments from around the world. We let the girls choose one new ornament every year from the Ten Thousand Villages store, and the "Elephant Tree" as I dubbed it for its preponderance of little Indian elephant ornaments, is a happy presence in our house.

I just taught my second and last class of the week, and as usually is the case, now that the semester is almost over, the students are open and easy with me and with each other. I should be conducting some interviews for columns but right now I'm happy to just sit for a while and contemplate magnetic poetry. Martin's mammoth metal desk has that one thing going for it: a big surface to craft some magnificent magnetic poetry. Here's my latest effort:

honeydrunk as a moon
some gift peaches
or white milk
but chanting spring
winds to winter moan
and dresses in bare sleep

Okay, the ending is a bit melodramatic. Indeed it is! But choices are limited, people.

Also, there are weird accidents that occur, such as the juxtaposition of these two words: boil mother.
or
vision friend
or
bitter afterpound,
which is what I am sporting postThanksgiving.

PS. To read a Thanksgiving reflection (around Tecumseh's prayer) in my weekly column, please click the geranium at right.

What Tecumseh Can Teach Us

Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee (died 1813), composed this exquisite poem that I introduced the other evening at a potluck. We took the third stanza and danced to it with the kids it a "Rite of Thanksgiving" (something we all need more of, I think). Tecumseh was no stranger to injustice or to the threat that outsiders brought to his people. He valiantly defended his peoples' rights even as they were stripped away. Stanza two charges us today to welcome strangers, just as a courageous group of Native Americans welcomed a bunch of cold, starving foreigners that first Thanksgiving.

There are some excellent challenges in his poem for us as we begin to ponder what it means to be thankful and live bravely.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion;
respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

She sailed away on a lovely summer's day. . .

Oh, there once was a puffin. . .

The owl and the pussycat went to sea on a beautiful pea green. . .

Can you finish the entire poems, preferably to a tune?

It just struck me that all three of these are about water, sailing or oceans. This doesn't surprise me, really, considering my mother (who grew up in the West Indies) and my father (who grew up in tidewater Virginia), are both obsessed with the ocean and feel happiest when standing in sand.

Sailing, sailing, over the ocean main; Many a stormy wind come up till Jack. . .

I remember my mother at some harbor somewhere, breathing in deeply of a wind that smelled (I thought) like rotten fish. "Ah," she sighed. "There's nothing like the smell of the ocean!"

Result: I find myself driving and panting up the tight green hills of Pennsylvania; she rides a ferry through the Puget Sound on a regular basis.

"And children, don't forget your toothbrushes." Where's THAT gem from? Kudos to you who know.

It's been busy, busy, busy, but with good things. And today it's dreary autumnal weather but at least the grass glows, and if there were leaves on the trees they would be glowing too. It's hard to say goodbye to color, but I suppose I should focus on tuning myself to the gradations of each color that is left: browns, greys, and soon, white. I will turn my eyes to this and try to appreciate what I can.

Of course, if you've seen my house, you know what a task this is for me. Our walls are blue, red, orange, two shades of yellow, green. . .I love primary colors ferociously. Maybe because I grew up watching bougainvillea clamber over trash piles and up hedges all year. You can't beat the colors of East Africa: Flame trees, all orange and red; jacaranda trees with purple trumpets; at school, always the sound of wind in tree branches, and the trees were never bare. Winter is hard. I long for color.

I was talking with a student and a friend this morning about grief--is it a colored thing? It surprises you, catches you like a bucket of water in the face, then sometimes like a wisp of smoke, thin and hard to smell. This student recently had someone who was like a brother die, and she was telling me how grief blindsides her in the middle of class, perhaps set off by a shred of conversation or a comment. I have found this to be true, too--perhaps I was most surprised at Catherine's birthday party back in early fall, when I was setting out plates and organizing food and readying the house for company--I suddenly lost all composure. Of course, I thought afterward, of course. In every previous birthday party for two or three years that I had hosted at my house because Nancy was sick, I would run around before everyone arrived, busy with details, but heavy deep down as I wondered, "Is this the last one?" I wondered that for three years while Nancy was sick. And suddenly, this year, it hit me: a birthday party for a girl whom I love without her mother, whom I also love. I remembered how Nancy always said that Catherine had been born on a beautiful, clear autumn day full of sunlight, a gift child.

Nancy believed in the cloud of witnesses--the abiding presence of those who have gone on before us who now stand all around us, reaching to us in support, celebration, understanding. They are not silent people; we just can't hear them, I suppose. They are much like the trees that circle me in winter time; I long to feel the warmth of their life, long to touch fans of soft green leaves, to sit in their shade. In winter time I remember green, and it is no less real because I cannot touch it. Faith for springtime, for buds opening and the ground thawing, faith that the trees are not dead even though they bow in wind and snow. Color hidden as a bird in a fist, glimpsed if only I could pry up one finger, find sudden joy in red feathers.

My story, Patron Saint of Trees, printed recently in Southeast Review, is linked online at their site, so now you can read it. . .please click HERE.

Braiding

My mind feels like it's stuffed with brussel sprouts, layers upon layers of words and images and shreds of things I'm supposed to remember and ambitions that are airless, unblown balloons.

Bea has burst two balloons in the last week, one because she was upset and banged it down on some pruned Russian Sage and the other, because she was having a lovely time and bounced it off the ficus tree. Only it didn't bounce--it burst and lay on the floorboards, nothing but a scrap of green rubber.

Parents, why do you give your children balloons? Why do you give them ice-cream cones? Who doesn't know the absolute heartbreak of walking out of the ice-cream shop, your heart full of a thousand licks and the thrill of ownership, and plop, on the concrete, melting fast, and your cone is just a cone with a thin ring of milky sweetness. Even those last drops are not sweet anymore; your riches are gone.

As an adult it is hard not to grieve these small losses when the sudden enormity is reflected in your child's eyes. Immediately I say, "Oh, honey, I'll get you another." If only all problems could be fixed so easily.

We spent a wonderful few days with Catherine, Nancy's beautiful daughter. On Saturday morning I braided her hair. It has grown long and lustrous through the late summer. The sunlight slanting through the window caught it, and I thought of the story of Rumplestiskin. The girls ran about the sun room and chatted and laughed, and I sat on the chair and the weight and privilege of brushing another's daughter's hair was full in me. Nancy, if it's possible, let your hands slip into mine as I touch your daughter's hair; let your fingertips feel the tug on her scalp as you draw three growing locks into one braid. Do not leave until the braid is finished, falling and shining down your daughter's back.

Poetry Daily's featured poet, Paul Henry, from Wales:

My window is full of leaves.

My window is full of bare branches today, but for a few last burnished reds clinging to the Japanese maple across the street.

What is it with poets from across the sea? Why do their poems always sound just a bit more luminous?

Read the poem by clicking on "Your Daily Poem" at right. The last stanza filled me with sweetness though the sky hangs with typical western Pennsylvania gloom.

RE: babysitting

Poetry reading tonight. We needed a babysitter. We found one. She wrote asking where our house was. Martin replied:

Super! We live on a hill and in a valley, everywhere and nowhere. On a tree and in an acorn. Squirrel mouth!

She never arrived tonight. I turned on the TV and told the kids not to climb counters or play with matches. I attended the poetry reading. We saved $20.

I just found Bea in her room (where the little angel is supposed to be napping), trying to clean up a sea of baby powder from her floor with a red bandana. And the baroque music plays loudly as she wipes in time to the harpsichord! It's enough to make a mother like me, who has a truck load of work to do, impatient. A shuffle, paper flipped by an imprecise hand. She's reading. Guess that's better than a million particulates in the air. Speaking of which, I wonder if she can actually breathe in there. . .

O blast it all.

Today is the third in a series of gloriously sunny days that peak in the mid 50s to 60s. Bea and I both have colds and were driving each other a bit batty this morning so off we went on a walk up through the neighborhood hills. We stopped for a while at Nancy's house, and I broke some leaves off her kale plants. Bea fanned the air with one; they were riddled with holes but still very beautiful. You can't tell we plucked any; the bushes are so dense and ruffly, planted right at the front step where I often sat with her.

And then I weeded. Nancy would have been sad to see the grass choking her bearded irises--she always gloried in their full, citrusy smell every year. She planted them in a wet corner of her yard along with purple echinacea (coneflowers) and something else feathery and green--fennel, I'm guessing. The echinacea has gone to seed, black spiky balls, and I left those, because I think they look pretty covered in snow. I made a small mountain of grasses and Bea ran up and down the lawn, eating (I later found out) at least one tiny purple berry that I think is poisonous. I watched her for signs of convulsions but she seems to be fine.

It was good to be alone in Nancy's garden with the plants she nested in the ground last spring. I pulled up the dried black stacks of basil, still redolent with scent. Bea picked the last of the tiny tomatoes and ate them and I walked home, the back of the stroller filled with kale leaves, which will be all the sweeter now after the first autumn frosts.

Across the street, a brown circle in the grass where the neighbor's inflatable swimming pool sat all winter. A Japanese maple weeps red on the lawn, the peonies I left in my mind are brown and papery. I need to go outside.

wednesday mishmash

I know this is bizarre, but I'm thinking how nice it would be to lower myself into a cup of hot cocoa, loop my arms around the edges of the cup, and push my face into a melting marshmallow.

Kind of disgusting but o so warm and sweet.

I interviewed two very intelligent zealots today who are leaders in the push for water quality, regulation and rights of land owners. I can't get them, or the issues, or the huge job of distilling almost two hours of interview into a few short columns out of my mind. Even when I was whacking back the hedges today--it was sunny and warm and perfect for outdoor work--my head spun with all I had heard. The chemistry is completely over my head but the urgency of the situation hits close to the heart, or should I say, to my mouth that I open to admit water, which, though it's filtered, is not as pure as I'd like and is certainly not good enough to give to my three daughters.

Sigh. Sometimes I think I was made to be just a poet and fiction writer. This journalism stuff is stretching me like taffy--see? What a terrible simile. It must be the stress.

One last thing. Last night I was taking a shower with the pocket door slid tightly to keep the bathroom as hot and steamy as possible. Suddenly, Elspeth, who was supposed to be sound asleep, burst through making a racket deserving of a large land mammal. "Mommy!" she said, as my precious steam leaked into the cold hallway.

"Mommy, Merry won't read me her WORDS and I want to hear them!"

Elspeth teeters at the brink of elementary fluency and not being able to read like her fourth-grade sister frustrates her sometimes. But I knew what she was talking about--Merry's teeny tiny journal--so diminutive, in fact, that Merry can fit only a few words on each page.

"She doesn't have to read you her words," I called from the shower. "She's writing in a diary, and diaries are private. You can have a diary too if you want, and then nobody can read what you write."

"Merry has a DIARY?" Elspeth was incredulous. "Like from her BOTTOM?"

"Go back to bed, and close the door after you." I had to grin, though--the lowest types of humor never fail to tickle a funny bone, even if its a hidden one you pretend you don't have.

16 oz jar: 13.25

Only three left in stock on Amazon.com.

But I bought mine at $2.50 a jar at Target a week and a half ago. Martin scoffed to see the kitchen counter covered in a small army of Smucker's creamy and chunky. But we'll see who's making fun of whom when February comes and peanut butter is costing us over ten bucks a jar.

Panic struck my peanut-loving heart when my mother arrived two weeks ago and informed me a peanut shortage was just around the corner. The farmers in Georgia did not have a good year.

I love a good PBJ with a glass of milk. I love peanut butter on pancakes, in cookies, smeared on apples. I left a token two jars on the store shelf, but I greedily scooped the rest into my cart. And now I'm glad I did, because the price on Amazon has doubled since I checked last week. Find your favorite peanut butter, people, and stock up. The day of reckoning is near. Read more by clicking: PEANUT BUTTER PRICES SKY ROCKET

World Concern, where my dear dad works, got a pretty great shout-out from the NY Times. Read about the good they're doing through food vouchers in a Somalian town struck by famine by clicking: World Concern

Last night, after the girls organized their heaps of trick or treat candy, Bea seized a Peanutbutter Cup and retreated to her Secret Place. (We trick or treat on Thursday--strange? Yes. It's a town tradition).

Secret Place is behind an armchair in the sun room. It looks as if Merwin the Mouse has taken up residence but it's Bea who discards candy wrappers, hides cell phones, and squirrels away her sisters' small toys.

Elspeth found the orange Reese's wrapper and produced it triumphantly. "Bea stole candy!" she announced, to which I responded with a stock line, drawn from many stock lines that I say to be a good parent even though they bore me:

"Well, since Bea chose to enjoy her treat early, she doesn't get any later."

Bea's face crumpled. "Mommy," she choked out, "You bweaking my heawt."

"What?"

"You're breaking my heart, Mommy," she said, beginning to sob.

So now I'm a heartbreaker. Better get used to it, girls. It won't be the last time.

We saw God today and I mean that literally

"I just saw God," Beatrix declared calmly. I looked around the shelves of budget books for a kid's Bible.

"You mean you saw him in a picture," I said.

"No. I saw him."

"You can't see God," I said. I was tired and feeling less imaginative than usual.

Bea smiled. "Yes, you can." She wandered toward the poetry section and pointed. "There he is!"

A man with a white beard and a button-down shirt stared at the spines of books.

"That man there?" I whispered. "That's not God."

She nodded her head and crossed her arms. I'd just read her Aladdin, King of Thieves, most awful of Disney books. I was ready to browse a little myself and go. Martin was engrossed in the poetry section and I'd replaced several pink Christmas books and sat on a tiny chair and sang nursery rhymes as Bea plunked on an electric piano. The books were of middling quality but they were cheap. And God was apparently interested in a deal, because he was there.

"It is God," Bea insisted.

"Let's go ask him," I said, pulling her over to the bearded man. I thought it was odd that Bea had picked out a white bearded man, the classic image of God from Michelangelo to the 1950's, especially because we have never presented her with any like images, preferring to leave the physical God qualities up to her. It's hard enough to explain "spirit" to an adult, let alone a three-year old who demands, "Well, where? I can't see!"

But she had found God now, in the stacks of Half Price Books.

"Sir?" I asked. "Excuse me, sir?" I stepped closer. "Sir!"

He looked up. "Yes."

"Sorry, sir, my daughter would like to know if you are God."

He smiled. Mildly. I was surprised--I thought he'd put his head back and roar with laughter. I would, if someone asked me if I were God. He acted as if he got this question all the time. Bea was just one more in a long line of kids who thought he might be God.

"No," he said. "I'm just an engineer. And I forgot my flip-up tie today."

What's a flip-up tie?

He went back to browsing.

On the way home, as I told Martin about the encounter, Martin said, "If you asked God, would God answer you directly?"

"Maybe not. The man said he forgot his flip-up tie."

"That's probably just what God would say," Martin said, flicking on cruise control. We had thirty minutes to get back for Elspeth's school party.

"He did say he was an engineer," I said. "I guess that squares."

As for Bea, her faith remains unshaken. When I put her down for a nap, she pointed to a picture of a man in a yellow robe that hangs on the wall of her room. "That's God," she says. "And he has a beard."

Which may explain why Merry, who easily feels guilty, was always terrified of men with beards.

On the other hand, Bea has never singled out a bearded man and called him God before, and we see plenty of beards in our parts. If God did make an unexpected appearance at a discount bookstore, I missed the biggest chance of my life. I would have asked him some questions and I would have waited while he answered, even if his answers were as weird as the flip-up tie. And if you've read the Bible, the chances are pretty good that the answers would have been full of bizarre. Still. . . .

My column this week seems to have stirred the pot a bit. Read it by clicking on the geranium at right. What do you all think about the gas boom in our part of Pennsylvania?

My father, who is currently waiting with his pants rolled up to his knees in Bangkok, wrote that though he was distracted by the flood waters rolling their way, he was nevertheless sorry to hear about poor Merwin's destruction.

Dad, Merwin's not DEAD. Merwin lives, at least he did when we slipped him from his black box, the clever TIP TRAP. Merwin enjoyed his tasty peanut butter snack until he bolted like a flash into the underbrush by our favorite cemetery, the one where Martin once fled from a threatening buck and where a stained glass woman with strange eyes and foreboding mouth terrifies college students. THAT cemetery, the one to which I hiked with you and Mom one sunny Christmas afternoon when the house was heavy and somnolent with pumpkin pie and turkey smells. We stood in the crisp air among the stones on the hill, watching the red-roofed houses sleep off Christmas dinner. On the way back you trapped yourself on the banks of Purman Run creek, rolled up your pants, threw across your keys, wallet and phone, and proceeded to wade the icy, rushing waters.

Turns out that western Pennsylvania adventure was good practice for now, now that you are waiting for a flood that hopefully won't reach you. Why do you end up in floodwaters? Wasn't Mozambique enough for you? Perched on a roof, throwing children and women into helicopters, didn't you decide then, "This is a thrill but perhaps not one that I should repeat." ??? Is mouse-catching and disposal and the thrill therein not enough for your sense of excitement? Must you go to Thailand for MORE?

In all seriousness, we're glad you're there helping; we hope you do not see water coming your way; and not to worry, Merwin lives and you can now concentrate your energies on survival. I thought I'd put your mind to rest.

I remain
your faithful daughter

PS. The kids and I wish you were here eating apple cake and pumpkin cookies.

Dear one,

I surprise myself: I miss you. Will this letter find you out in the grey cemetery? It's raining tonight, and I'm thinking of you, hoping you've found a warm place among the dripping goldenrod, beneath the deep sweet mat of maple leaves.

The night we finally realized you must leave, I made you a last meal--your favorite. Pouring peanuts into a bowl, Martin laughed at me for grinding them for you, but I knew you'd enjoy it. You never really appreciated my cooking but by golly, I knew you loved peanut butter.

The next morning, leaning over the long black box where you lay, we knew it was time to ease you into the car for our first and last trip with you. The box was so dark, we could barely believe you were inside. The girls wanted to come, but I told them I would describe the moment of your departure, and I vowed to memorize the trees, the way the road curved up toward the skyline, the way we said goodbye to you. I even brought my camera, but it would be to no avail--you left us much too quickly.

We thought it would be a safe place for you, the quiet of the grey stone. From the hill, you can see the whole town with its towers and steeples laid out before you like a sea full of ships. The morning was cool, the sky bright through layers of mist.

We stopped the car and stood around your box for a while. And then we said goodbye, and you were gone in an instant, dissolving into the underbrush. We got back in the car and drove slowly away, and the sky in my rear view mirror filled with illuminated clouds, so bright I stopped the car, jumped out, and watched them, wondering that they could look so much like another world passing over this one.

At home since you've been gone, I miss your face in the evenings, the way you stopped and turned your head as you looked at me. I miss the sudden sound of your entrance when you joined us in a room, the feeling that I was never completely alone with you nearby.

You were such a fastidious, unassuming presence here, dear Merwin, but it always seemed as if you should not be with us. And now you have gone and there are no more Merwins, no shadows of you, as I once thought. You, with your sleek brown face and cunning manners, were one of a kind.

I have to admit, I half hoped that perhaps you had thumbed your considerable nose at us and stuffed the box with a decoy, and that when we reached the cemetery we would suddenly find that it was not you inside, but some impostor, a limp doll or a scrap of blanket. I had faith in you, Merwin, as someone of letters and intellect. But I was mistaken.

I hope this epistle reaches you somehow, Merwin, and I hope that you have not wandered too close to the buildings next to the cemetery hoping for respite. I have heard they are cold-blooded killers there waiting for you and your kind. Much luck, Merwin, and may you have a litter of twenty, twenty times over.

Yours,

K Cockroft, Wazoo Farm

The Southeast Review's latest issue is out and my story, "Patron Saint of Trees," is inside. Click HERE to go to the site.

Season Change

In the garden, still a few globes of color
whirling in gusty breath that shakes trees,
catches bristle-tips of squirrel tails,
flickers like candles in gathering dusk.

Now is the fat time
before all is still
and winter holds the earth,
all the quiet beasts,
even fishes ice-suspended.

And I began to exhale until the release
is too much and I grasp it all up again,
the black pencil-lines of cosmos,
corn silk, raspberry stain
and like a child hoarding toys,
I hate winter--
softened now by summer days,
bare feet, rosemary hours
and the old maple, a grandmother
suddenly young again, her leaves
so tender and cool. I wanted dense
shade, rain, clockless evenings.

Some of us get fancy

dandy lion or

their version of Dandelion (original by Don Freeman)

Question

Beatrix just asked me: "What do cats do in the morning when they wake up?"

We are fresh from the shower, smelling of herbs and shampoo and baby powder. Our hair mops around our faces.

"Maybe they do the polka," I said.

"Like this, mama--" Bea held up her hands in front of her, fingers together, and washed the air with them. "Or like this," she added, dropping to the floor in her fireman pjs. "Meeeow, meeow."

"I don't know," I said, thinking that cats do not need to dress, or brush their teeth, or eat muesli. "What do you think, Beatrix?"

"You just ask yourself, mama," she said.

So I will be asking myself this evening, as we eat breaded cod and hot oven fries, as I drink another beer with Martin, What DO cats do when they wake up?

I saw a sleek white cat walk on tiny paws through our garden, around the lavender and beside the front bed. She brushed the cosmos struck to black seed by autumn. . . .

FYI: Ten Mile Creek Reading Tonight! Click HERE.
Exciting news on Merwin to come.

Martin's in Prairie Schooner!

In certain Northern cities, / that ting of unexpected thaw. . . So starts my beautiful poet-husband's poem just published in Prairie Schooner, one of the country's best and most competitive literary journals. How does he do it--nail images head-on, wrap them up in the ribbons of language, place them in perfect form, like divers lined up, poised, dancing through the air. . . .

My favorite line in the poem, "False Spring," above, reads: ". . .air / earthen, diaphanous / caught up in curtains." Actually, maybe my favorites are ". . .a math of sprung / windows, starlings inked on rooflines." But I'm a sucker for the word diaphanous.

Martin's second poem that appears in the fall issue is "Elephants," which is set just down the road from us here in Pennsylvania. The poem begins by comparing the hills to sleeping elephants, and continues "but then just yesterday I saw / light on Purman Run / so broad and pure. . ." And there's that perfect balance between the solid and the imagined, what is said and what lingers in the air between words.

After living with Martin for many years, I understand that the words that make these poems ring comes from really hard work. Last night I looked over and he was about pulling his hair out by the roots as he worked. Every word is chiseled out of a mass of stone, comes free smooth and miraculous in his palm.

A student of mine said today in class after I had shared yet another anecdote about Martin editing my work, "You make it sound like he's really tough on you." I answered, "Well, we've been married twelve years. By now, I really trust him. I know he believes in my writing. If he hands back twelve pages with one sentence circled, I've usually already sensed that this is the edit that I needed and couldn't admit yet. And I do the same thing with his poetry."

I really do feel lucky to be married to another writer, and what a happy surprise it's been to find out that we are two writers. . .when we first married, we were kids. We didn't know what we were going to be, really, and maybe you shouldn't, not right out of college, not in a way that means your shoes will be concreted to one place for the rest of your life.

You can't read Martin's poetry online, sadly, but you can order a copy of Prairie Schooner or drop by our house and read our copy. Congratulations to Martin!

Questions I'd Like to Ask M

Subject line just in from Mr. Patrick David, in my spam box: "OPEN THE ATTACHMENT AND GET BACK TO ME." No problemo, Patty. I'll just click on your bonny attachment and wait for your call.

I'm feeling pretty good at the moment because I just finished a feature article on the Town and Garden Country Club (it's their 60th anniversary); the sheer weight of information and expectation was hanging over my head like an anvil. So I began to chip away, evah so slowly, remembering all the while that tomorra is anutha day. . .and now it's done! Hallelujah! The first draft was so boring that Martin fainted into a deep sleep while reading it, but the second and final draft moves along at a crisp pace and even I am still interested when I read it.

Two people in particular fascinated me. The first was a woman in her mid 90's who has spent her life saving and then giving money (along with her husband) to colleges and other worthy institutions. Sitting in this woman's modest home, you would never guess the astounding amount of funds this woman and her husband have given away. I didn't see many ornaments in her home besides a vase her mother had painted, a painting she had done of bearded irises, and a pretty table runner she sewed. Her husband built the house and they have lived there for sixty years. She sat in the sunporch, laughing and chatting with me, light catching the plant next to her elbow. She described the sacrifices her father (who worked at a coal mine) and her family made to send him, and then herself and her brothers, to college. She was handing over all her extra pocket change to the bank teller when she was a kid, depositing it in her education account that would grow sufficiently over the years to send her to college and to graduate school at Duke. She was married during World War II, and seventeen days after the wedding, her husband, who had already returned to the service, was sent to Africa. For two and a half years.

Before I left she told me how she had taken a small handful of hollyhock seeds, planted and watered them in a box. All winter she watched the tiny stems unfold: two, three, four leaves. They bloom in a bright, majestic row in her garden this summer.

Though she is almost 101 and can't talk or hear much anymore (so I didn't get to meet her), M, another woman, intrigued me. She earned a degree in home economics, never married, and worked 19-hour days operating a ferry boat (it was part of an inheritance), a rough task that involved unsticking the ferry when needed and transporting miners across the river and back. In the photo, her face is exquisite: creamy skin and movie-star eyes, a hat turned back so she could see where the boat was headed. Amazing. The woman who visited and told me about M mentioned that M's eyes are still as beautiful and as captivating as they were when she was a young woman with an inherited ferry boat and endlessly long days in front of her. And I want to ask her a whole book of questions, want to hear her voice rising and falling as she explains what her life was like, why she persevered, if she enjoyed her job, whom she met, if she would do it all over again if she had the chance.

Before I change into my jammas, something I am anticipating with glee, I will give you a quick update on Merwin. Seen, once, at 7:00 as I sauteed onions, skipping with umbrella in paw from the kitchen cart under the piano. He was wearing a fake glasses/nose combo, but I recognized him, all right. Tomorrow, the trap comes.

I am a sentimental fool

Merwin miraculously appeared in two places last night at almost the same time. This is how I think he did it, but first let me describe Merwin's first appearance. Our friend John glimpsed him in the hallway. "You've got a mouse!" he announced, and offered to lend us a trap.

"Are you going to tell him?" Martin asked. Somewhat sheepishly, I explained how we had gotten to know Merwin over the past couple weeks and couldn't bear to kill him. John chuckled in disbelief and Merwin's neck was safe for another night.

Merwin must have heard our conversation and felt a little nervous at the mention of a trap because at that point, he scaled our heating pipe to the second floor, probably with the little ropes set he ordered from Amazon (it arrived yesterday morning, in a wee little package, with Merwin's name typed on the front. Next time I need to tell him about the Free Shipping option.)

Later that night, as I stood upstairs, poised to scratch Bea's back as she lay in her crib, Merwin streaked across the floor, almost over my feet.

"I'm getting used to that scream ," Martin said, coming into the room, kneeling down and singing to Merwin in the voice he reserves just for mice. "Come on, little buddy!"

The girls were delighted by my scream and my subsequent perch on the black four-legged stool, and they ran from their bedrooms and began a Merwin search.
But he was nowhere to be seen.

Not until. . .later still that night, when I was grading essays on the couch. Now, Merwin's got this routine down, so I should have been expecting him, and I should not have shrieked like a stuck pig when he scurried across the floor, almost over my feet again, and scooted under the couch. I set my feet on our coffee table refused to get up all night. It was a good excuse to beg Martin to serve me my Sleepytime Tea.

Either Merwin is getting really fast and efficient or there are more than one Merwin. I have to admit, I thought the Merwin I saw two nights ago lacked a certain perkiness about the ears.

After two attempts at setting up my own traps with bowls, spoons, a trail of Fruity Cheerios (which Merwin snubbed)--and then, an ingenious little track that led to a delicious peanut butter cracker plopped on the bottom of a tall trashcan, I have decided that my own inventions, though FANTASTIC, are not smart enough for Merwin, who is after all a poet and a mouse of letters.

So I ordered a live trap from a selection at Amazon, much to the relief of Elspeth, who begged me last night and again this morning, "PLEASE don't kill that mouse, Mommy!" Little does she know what a sentimental fool her mother has shown herself to be.

Waiting Breathlessly

Beatrix, missing as of ten minutes ago, was found buckled into her car seat out in the blue Subaru. I waved to her through the glass of the sun room window, and she waved back through the glass of the Subaru's window, grinning like a leprechaun. I wonder if she's imagining herself on an exciting trip. It's been grey in our county for about six days running, so maybe she's hoping I'll come out and drive her to Texas.

My father just sent me an e-mail that began, "Waiting breathlessly for an update on Merwin."

Last night, we heard him. Once again, he appeared only to me, running from behind the piano into the kitchen, from whence we heard, throughout the evening, rustlings and crunchings. We were bombed last night, my eye was dry and felt blasted by desert wind as I stared at my column, which was a jumble of facts that I had no energy to find a form for; Martin was grading a stack of student reflections and he kept groaning, "I don't know how long. . ." The appearance and bustle of Merwin actually perked us up somewhat. He was just starting his day at ten o'clock at night; he wasn't tired; he was feeling industrious and inquisitive. Maybe we could follow suit.

That night, I muttered from my pillow (into which I was dissolving and becoming one): "We've got to get rid of Merwin before he chews through an appliance. I know who's going to be cleaning up his poop, and it's not you."

"I can't just get rid of someone I'm starting to know," Martin said. (Apparently, during my absence this past weekend, Merwin appeared to Martin several times, and it gave him a sense of peace and comfort. For my part, I saw a row of dead, stuffed mice in the Museum of Natural History in NYC and lovingly tried to pick out the one that most closely resembled Merwin. It must have been because they were dead, but none of these mice had the same style or perk that Merwin possesses in spades). "I know him now and I can't just break his neck," Martin persisted. "It feels wrong."

Plans this weekend, then, include finding a "Have-a-heart-trap," in which we will hopefully catch Merwin and transport him to a place of safety. . .far away from our house.

But here's a postscript: Though I appreciate him on a personal level, I'm not too impressed with Merwin as a mouse. Today while rearranging a pile of blankets and pillows in the sun room, I found the remnants of a pretzel and a grape, abandoned by the children some afternoon a while ago, and not too appetizing for a human but pretty darn tasty if you're a mouse.

I know Merwin's been around and goodness knows he's had plenty of unsupervised playtime, but he hasn't touched the unintentional offerings. What is he, a gourmand? Is he waiting for his own cheese platter? A thimble of champagne?

Curious, very curious. . . .

Just drove back from NYC. I walked the busy sidewalks with two wonderful women, and we left our collective nine children at home with their three respective dads. What a good time it was. We even got in on the demonstrations you heard about this morning on the news. At the park next to Wall Street, we walked through the crowd, received some literature, and, having seen our fill, ducked into an Irish pub. Later that night on our way to Serendipity for the largest, most obscene banana split I have ever seen, we saw a bus full of the demonstrators, who had apparently spilled across Brooklyn Bridge, handcuffed and filing into the police station. This morning on our way back to PA, we heard the drums of the marchers and said, "Wow! We were right there!" Pretty interesting.

Photos will follow: Grand Central Station, Central Park, The Smithsonian, the Staten Island Ferry (which we sprinted from the subway to catch at 11:30 last night)--and much more. The short verdict: I LOVED it.

Update: Merwin the Mouse

If Merwin weren't so minute and darling, we would have less trouble doing away with him.

As it is, Martin and I spent a good deal of last night chasing Merwin around the house. Yes, after a last snide comment that the mouse was my spirit animal and only existed for me, Martin finally saw him. "He's a little guy," he said, and he is. He's like a storybook mouse; he's got tiny black pointed ears, an intelligent face, and gleaming black fur.

But he does NOT belong in our house, even if he is handsome. I can see Merwin in a little cozy hole under the garden, with a potbellied stove, a thick rug, an easy chair, and a cup of Earl Grey. Hold on. Maybe he's a green-tea mouse. It's hard to tell.

Anyway, last night Martin armed himself with a bowl and a plate. I went nowhere without a chair to stand on. At one point, we got Merwin cornered in the front hall closet. Martin crouched down with his bowl--I was terribly impressed at his bravery, but as he said with bravado, "I've been this close to a black bear. What's a mouse to me?"

Merwin kept poking his little black nose out into the hallway, whereupon I would shake a hand towel at him to make him retreat back into the recesses of the closet. We finally blocked off his escape routes, I perched on a chair, ready to inch the vacuum cleaner forward, thus coaxing Merwin to flee into Martin's blue bowl.

"All right, easy now," Martin instructed, as I lifted the Dyson. . .slowly, slowly. No sign of whiskers or tail anywhere. We let out our breath, studying an apron that had fallen in a heap, wondering how the little rodent had hid so well. . .and then--shazam! Merwin scrambled down from the bottom of the vacuum, where he had jammed himself into the roller, and he was off with a flash of brown fur.

Discussion followed as to where he might have hidden next; under the piano or in the sun room. Martin sauntered around the room in a non-threatening way, calling, "Come on, little fellow. . .come on. . ."

But Merwin was gone for the night. The problem is, we're getting a bit fond of him now. His speed and sneakiness is impressive and we're gaining a begrudging respect for his intelligence and downright cuteness. I even found myself thinking that I should perhaps leave him a little treat for the night--a bowl of Kashi Autumn Wheat crumbs. . .Yes, Merwin would love that.

But in the wee morning hours, I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. I had been awakened by the sound of tiny squeals, accompanied by the scattering of--not one--but many little feet. It sounded like a herd of mice, with Merwin right at the front, leading the brigade with a toothpick lifted like a sword. . .I found I did not like the reality of a full-scale invasion.

And what's the old adage? Where there is one mouse, there are always two? Or three? Or an army?

Martin tried to convince me the hubbub was only a group of swifts in our chimney, but I think he might be trying to protect Merwin with smoke and mirrors. The thought of our little mouse smashed in a trap does fill me with regret, but I know, no matter how admirable Merwin is, he has to be digesting food. . .and excreting. And when I find the little black pellets in my dishes or towels, Merwin's days will be numbered. Poor little guy. If only he would see reason and leave quietly. I'd even send him off with a good supply of Tetley English Breakfast. Or maybe Orange Pekoe? It's hard to tell.

I'm sorry, but I haven't had the time to post photos recently. I wish I could post a photo now of the stunning colors outside of my window, but the second-hand rendering would just be a disappointment, anyhow.

It's raining, so the garden path is a dense, layered, carpety sort of green, and the different tones of red and white in the brick path Martin lay are as faceted as a cut stone; then there's the lupine blue of the shed, edged with bright white, and the flowers themselves: pumpkin-orange cosmos against pink coreopsis, traffic-cone nasturtiums, the delicate, yellowy lace of dill, the Queen Anne's Lace ruffling up everywhere because we can't be bothered to pull it up.

And now I come to the real drama of our lives these days: one wee brown mouse. This chocolate-colored mouse appeared last week while I was watching TV; he scooted across the floor, spotted me, and skittered back into the sun room. Since that time, he has appeared multiple times and each time he is more brazen in his entry and less fast to disappear. Last night, while I was reading, he ran into the living room again, heard my voice, and came straight for my feet.

EEEEEKKK!

I am silly around mice.

I would not put my feet down for the rest of the evening, and Martin had to come into the room and fetch things for me.

Then Martin had a dream, in which the brown mouse appeared, pleading with Martin to spare his little life.

This morning, at BREAKFAST, mind you, while I, Martin, and Bea were drinking our tea, the mouse twirled across the pergo, gave a little bow, and ducked under the dishwasher.

EEEEEEEK!

The mouse! I yelled, The MOUSE IS HERE! He will be waiting for me when I return from class! I will never be able to put my feet on the floor again!

"He's just a little mouse," Martin said, "And besides, I'm beginning to think he doesn't really exist."

I have seen this mouse, in Martin's company or alone, about five times at least. Martin has never, ever, not even for an instant, spotted it. Except in his dreams, and those dreams are not helpful for one resident of Porter Street who KNOWS the mouse will march over her feet, playing cymbals and a bass drum and sticking out its tongue, with a whole band fleet of mice behind it.

It is kind of a cute little guy, and if I were desperately lonely or in prison for ten years, I would be tempted to befriend it. But, matters being as they are, I want him to just GO AWAY. Maybe I'll try to talk to it nicely and reasonably, or write a letter and leave it in the crack in the sun room floor. He seems like a pretty rational fellow.

I am hearing nothing on my creative writing these days.

At the end of the summer, I got a piece of fiction taken by Literary Mama and I am waiting for a contract from Ladybug Magazine for a children's story, so I'm excited about both those things. I also received about ten hundred million rejections, which is, in a way, better than silence.

And in keeping with my impatient personality, I would like to hear from some other journals, even though--and history tells us it is so--the answer will probably be "This piece is not right for our publication. . .Best wishes. . ."

Perhaps my impatience derives from a deeper source: the complete absence of my own creative writing right now; it makes me churn deep down. I feel as though I stop hearing, seeing, tasting as well as I do when I am writing. I am WRITING, of course, in the form of my weekly column for the newspaper, and I am teaching my class at the U, which I'm enjoying immensely, but something feels a bit off, as if I've left the kettle on or there's something sour in the fridge that I've been avoiding for a while. And it's forming a nasty yellowish pool that will stick to the sponge when I finally address it. . .speaking of which, I think I have some rather mature tuna fish on the bottom shelf. This is not a metaphor. I really do.

On a different note, Beatrix seems to have given up her naps, which means less quiet time for one mama. What in the world?

It seems I have given up titles. I never was any good at them anyway. Did you know columnists never title their own columns? It is done for them, and it feels a bit as if you're having your shoe laces tied for you after dressing yourself. It actually is because of the lining space and is a formatting issue. . .and Bea's up again, and I'm gone.

I just looked outside to the flash of blue and white lights sparking over the wet pavement.

"How we doing?" a male voice said, loudly, and with a certain weight of authority you only hear from police officers and such.

The guy didn't have his lights turned on, and an amicable exchange followed, closing with the two men wishing each other Bon Nuit before they coasted from the curb, one toward home, the other to prowl the streets for another few hours at least. I also saw a police car crawling through our graveyard tonight, its headlights flashing over grey gravestones. The cause? Drug bust? Maybe just a quest for some peace and quiet? It is a nice graveyard, up on a hill over town, frequented by deer and shaded by huge oaks and maples. I like taking guests there sometimes. We always stop by the mausoleum and look through the bars to the stained-glass window, which depicts a sour-looking woman in a stiff collar, two mounds of severe brown hair, and what I can only term "wall-eyes" though I don't suppose that's the right term anymore. One eye looks to the right and the other to the left, and the stained glass is lit from behind just right and flanked by rows of stone coffins on either side.

Did I mention I want to be cremated? Please, nobody preserve my image in stained glass. I think a nice park bench with my initials, under a tree but not covered in bird excrement, would be nice.

I was going to write about an awful thing that happened close to where we live--a murder/suicide--I interviewed a pastor who works in the community this afternoon for the column this week. But it's too heavy, a whole ocean of misery. Much easier is the tiny blips that color our moments: eating chips and salsa tonight with the girls, the rain that hit the back of my neck as I closed the shed doors, the flashing squad car lights just now, how it all turned out so amicably for a man who might have gone home with a ticket, but didn't.

In this world, mapped with sorrow, there is joy, flashing like sudden light off a window. It blinds me sometimes.

Mostly there are everyday moments of working, cleaning, sitting and rising, the talk, laughter and complaints of the children, the daily hum of routine: brushing teeth, showering, carrying plates from the kitchen table to the counter. There are little eddies of stress and fury, of disbelief in the craziness of my children. . .Oh, no, you DIDN'T. . . .

and then there are moments of wonder, like last night when I looked out of the upstairs window and saw our groundhog and our racoon perusing the brush pile together as if they were old pals out for a night on the garden, or the girls brushing our big stuffed lion's mane and loading him with bows just like Dandelion, or Bea finally falling asleep, swiftly and mercifully, after crying all evening. And too, there are moments of gratitude, like the first blast of hot water on the back of my tired neck, a cup of tea sipped hot instead of luke-warm, the flame of a candle in the evening, a familiar and welcome face unexpectedly at our door.

Ah, the days are too short. I drove up with a friend to the next county to pick up bushels of MacIntoshes and Johnnygolds and the trees and brush sang out that this world of ours is toeing the edges of summer, applying its last makeup and about to whirl out onto stage in full costume, no rehearsals anymore, and I was surprised. Is October really almost here?

Friday Night Picture Show

The water is vastly colder than it looks. Orcas Island, Puget Sound, Washington. Martin and our bro-in-law, Luke.










Feelin' groovy.

Energies

My loves, I have good news. Apparently the British lottery has awarded me their highest prize. I just got the message my e-mail. I have many, many plans. And I think all my friends will want to share in the cash cow so get your proposals together now. . .

Actually, I do have good news. We were granted an extra hour of time tonight, so instead of the hour closing on ten, it is only almost nine. Elspeth did not practice piano at eight, as we thought and cursed ourselves, the gods, and our schedules for our lack of time management, but at seven! Martin and I were generally starting to be a little grumpy until we realized that I had set the clock ahead by an hour--joy was ours. One more hour tonight to pursue our own peaceful edges, to make lunches, to drink Sleepytime tea.

Also in the jubilant Cockroft news: Elspeth can now play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on the piano all by herself. She was so excited by this that she sprung up from the piano bench and streaked through the living, dining, kitchen, and hallway rooms, giggling and clapping. Then she plopped on the bench long enough to plunk it out again, shouted, "CLAP FOR ME!" and did the lap again. This happened at least three times.

Merry, who also recently started piano lessons, approaches the instrument this way: seriously, with respect and a trembling sort of confidence that she will be able to read notes and some day run her hands over the keys like Keith Jarrett.

As I reflected over the phone to my mother, Merry's energy is like a stone, deep inside of herself. It's focused, private, intense, serious, still, contained. Elspeth's energy is like water, flowing like a mighty river that's skipped its banks, soaking everyone and everything in its path. Even when in her most intense concentration, when she's drawing, her energy is something wild to behold, and when Martin's dad walked over and looked over her drawings, he was astonished by their order and vision. "It looks like she's just scribbling over there!" he remarked, and indeed, Elspeth at work is a startling vision; she seems to tremble and jerk all over, her pen or crayon stabs the paper as if she's trying to kill it, and her hair falls into her eyes.

And Beatrix's energy? Maybe a brook? It's certainly not as wild as Elspeth's, though when she skips her nap, as she did today so we could drive down to an orchard to buy a couple bushels of Jonagolds, she's a force to be reckoned with. Here's a little piece of no-nap insanity; she stripped off her clothes, tore around the house, then froze in the hallway to hiss, "PISSHHHHH!" as she peed all over our wooden floor. I barely saved my slipper.

Martin's creaking up the stairs. Time to make lunches, I think. . .

Apparently, my left shoe is very squeaky. Every time I walk up and down the hallway of the English department, it speaks: scrinch, scrinch.

I pack my class of twelve into a tiny conference room for workshops. It's very cozy and very warm. I feel as though I should bring candles in glass jars and pass out hand rolled cigarettes (only in this room should we inhale deeply and into rattling lungs). Somebody should brew black coffee in an old rusty percolator and we should sip it with deep grunts. It should slide like syrup over our tongues and we should have at least a few brown teeth and some deep wrinkles around our eyes. Somewhere out in the hallway someone should be playing the accordion, slowly and sadly.

Someone should read an essay that sounds like Hemingway. There should be bulls and red capes and women who speak little. Red bottles of wine atop trains and on tables in dirty cafe corners. A cat who sleeps all day on the bosom of a large, wrinkled woman, a woman whose fingers stink of garlic, whose eyes are full of rivers.

I wonder if I could book such a workshop room?

I, the undersigned, promise in good faith to exclaim, "ZOUNDS!" as a matter of habit, starting twenty minutes after this troth is published.

Too, I will accompany said exclamation with an upraised fist and expression of genuine astonishment, thus convincing hearers of my absolute fidelity to said "ZOUNDS!" whether the occasion suit or whether it be of questionable timing.

Signed: Kimberly Long Cockroft
in the year of our Lord 2011

The Misfortune of Others: It Makes Me Laugh

The rain, it's a poundin' down outside the windows. Sounds like there's a wall of water headed our way. I'm struggling against the soothing white noise, actually, because Martin's grading a stack of poems and I should be writing reading questions but I feel so alienated from my blog writing lately I thought I should come by for a visit. And the warmth of my slippers and the weight of the day easing into the comfort of evening tempts me to slip into an early sleep.

I just read a funny blog entry on "Days Under the Sycamore" (link below right) wherein my friend Sally and her family go for a lovely stroll up a ridge, enjoying the September evening sunlight gleaming on fresh-cut piles of grass waiting for the hay baler. It all sounds pretty bucolic until their son, Will, withdraws a stick from the earth and lets loose a mass of swarming bees. The family of five, covered with these buzzing horrors, tear down the hill, shrieking all the way, and the boys sprint the half-mile or so to the van (leaving their parents in the dust) where at least one of them has to be strapped in practically naked because he's covered in bee stings. Once they've recovered, Sally has to wonder cautiously back up the road, retrieving the clothing they had stripped off and flung asunder in their hasty retreat.

The whole story gave me quite a chuckle, even though it includes bodily injury to people I love.

Martin is half-asleep now and resorting to food to keep himself awake through the rest of the poems. Last night I tackled a mountain of prose, so I have less sympathy for his poetry. Oh blast. He brought back chips. I have sworn to eat better and now the bowl of chips is. . .within. . .my. . .reach. . . .

I may have to get myself some Fruity Kix to stave off temptation.

And now, to Huxley and Africa.

Happy evening to you all, and if anything really bad but not permanent happens to any of you, please let me know so I can laugh heartlessly at your expense. Thanks.

Just an update to my wall obsession. Four things happened:

1. I drank tea

2. The sun came out and we went out and I commiserated with a couple root-bound house plants out in the clear, crisp air and then I freed them from their gloomy pots and introduced them to their new homes

3. My daughter, Elspeth, finally stopped talking back to me after every sentence that left my lips (she drew by herself for twenty minutes, a sure-fire cure for grumpiness)

4. I dropped my children with a couple warm people and attended a reading; listened to fiction from a talented college student in a vintage dress and poetry from a man whose craft and images blew me into another place entirely, where there are no walls that block the elements from me (it wasn't Martin; it was another man, Bob Randolph, who punctuated his poems with a little harmonica, guitar, and finally a pair of zennish cymbals)

So, basically, using Martin as my example,
I went from this

to this.

Take Down the Wall!

It's the kind of grey day that makes you long for new, sparkling things. Right now I am longing for a view from my kitchen, which entails knocking a wall down, installing a header, and building an island in the space. Easy-peasy, right??? Right? Well, the contractor who gave me a quote a year ago has since moved to Delaware and I am a defeatist who took that as a sign that it's not the wall's time. Listen, honey, all I want is some natural light in the kitchen. I have one window now over the sink that looks to. . .my neighbor's wall. It's pretty.

My mother is a big proponent of signs, of things that "aren't meant to be." This sounds wishy-washy on paper but it's actually a pretty good way to live, most of the time, because then you can just let go of something and move on. My mother's belief in signs is rooted in faith; my belief in signs is rooted in far murkier territory. An inner exhaustion that is too weary for my years? Yes. An edge of cynicism that gives way to laziness? Perhaps. For instance, if I nail up a curtain rod crooked, I can almost convince myself that was the way it was meant to be, after all, and that I can learn a lesson from living with a little imperfection: relax, take a deep breath, and let go.

But this wall in particular has been informing my weak longings for years. Maybe it's because we spend so much time in the kitchen, or regularly pack the space with dozens of people (not to mention Martin's students twice a year). When I say "regularly," I mean, often all week long. We have a very open house, which is lovely, but it makes me wish our kitchen were a little more spacious.

But fast on my heels is Guilt. How dare I complain of a perfectly pleasant, functional space? In some parts of the world, my entire family would live in a room that size, plus my Grandma and Mother and Father and an uncle or two. And maybe the goat. I am not being snarky, I am chiding myself as I will so often do, for the rest of my life. And that's not a bad thing.

Still. . .that wall. I've wrapped it in psychology (ie., I have inner walls I need to take down; I feel trapped; yellow wallpaper stuff, etc.) to explain my obsession. I've wrapped it in politics (take down the walls that separate us, barriers of ideology, etc.), and I've surrendered to the conclusion, many times in the past six years, that this wall needs to stay where it is. It's a thick, plaster wall that has existed there for over a century.

Once I told a contractor that I'd trade him one of my children for the removal of my wall. I was half-joking. I also tried to give him all our kitchen cabinets in exchange but he didn't bite.

Anyone know anything about putting in headers?