I'm in the garden. . . .

Where have I been? In the garden, drinking mojitos, unloading small mountains of topsoil, planting seeds, handing out popsicles to children, in the garden. . . .well, you get the idea. Gardening weather wreaks havoc on writing, as do the company of good people, cold minty mixed drinks, good food(as at our dear friends' house tonight) and hot days when the LAST thing you want to do is sit inside and stare at a computer screen. Winter is far better for writing.

I must fill you in soon about the small flood in our bathroom as well as the inauspicious preparation for our gig/poetry reading the other night. All to do with inexplicable things children do.

Two things. Sal took this photo of our little preschool graduate. Look at that snaggletoothed beauty. Hopefully she will not be missing any front teeth in any of her future graduations.

And happy birthday, Josiah. Many happy returns, dear one.

Racquetball and Peonies

Beside me, Martin studies racquetball techniques. I glance over once and a while and catch phrases like "Crotch Serve," "Blast Rule," and dense labyrinthine passages about three-foot lines.

The day was hot as summer but now the ceiling fan is picking up enough cool night air to make me feel like finding a blanket. We have no air-conditioning, and while one week every summer typically makes us feel like crawling on our hands and knees, we prefer our open windows to the blast of cold air. We can hear a distant train, smell the sweetness of the peonies. Oh, those peonies are so sweet--I prefer their delicate, thin smell to lilacs, which are so heady they almost make you blush. Peonies make me think of old women dressed in aprons, opening their arms to grandchildren. I wonder if such a woman planted these same bare roots one autumn, dreaming of these huge ruffled white blooms. Lilacs and peonies both seem like they should always be heirloom plants, and it's magnificent to think of the first people who lived in this house in the early 1900's sitting in this front room, pausing to close their eyes and breathe in the scent of these peonies under the window.

I wonder what they would think of our huge rambling garden in their side lot. Apparently some of the first owners allowed horses to run about and later, when times were rough and food scarce, sheep were allowed to graze on our grass, sheep that would supply the college nearby with food, or milk. . . I'm unclear what they actually provided. Maybe some really warm sweaters.

Martin's watching racquetball now, young guys in baggy athletic shorts furiously slapping a little rubber ball around. I like racquetball, but I prefer a more leisurely game, serves you can actually return while chatting or hooting to your opponent.

Why is the audience booing so vehemently? Never mind. I'm going to shut my computer, shut my eyes, and enjoy the peonies and a cup of tea. Peace.

Owl Creek Farm

A big thank you to Eric Coffman, who took these lovely photos.
This past weekend, we considered standing on a hill top waiting for the heavens to part like curtains. We thought about waiting for the fire to pour from the sky. But we opted to spend two beautiful days at Owl Creek Farm instead.

Elspeth spent her entire weekend at the pond, perched at the end of the pier, where she caught a whole slimy pile of gorgeous salamanders. At the most, she said two words to me all weekend. Martin and I hollered out our tent mesh to make sure the two older girls were in their sleeping bags in the other tent; we spent an interminable night with Bea, who had a rocky transition to tent-sleeping, to say the least. As Martin said, it was like trying to share a tent with a bobcat. At another low point, I heard him mutter, LEGION! That might have been one of the times when she was flinging herself at the tent walls, clawing at her stomach and howling. No, I am not joking. The other twenty-two campers in the hay field would testify that I am telling the truth.
The next morning, she popped out of her sleeping bag, pointed at the mesh roof of the tent, and announced, "It's morning time! Look! The sun!" And she was perky and happy to be riding on the farm golf cart with Torin and the other kids.

We walked to an enchanting little waterfall and drank tea on the porch of our hostess' historical cabin. After the endless rain, the days shimmered.

And today, home again, I finally tackled the garden with a will. When I close my eyes, weeds and gnarled grass dance on the backs of my eyelids. Welcome, sun.

Today I pulled out a thick manila envelope with two copies of Louisville Review's latest issue. And my poem "Juniper Tree" was inside! I'll include a link once the site is updated.

Check out the seven boys (one is taking the photo), out at a Pittsburgh Pirates game. Around five, they stood in our driveway, chatting like college freshmen with their bright faces and excitement quivering in every muscle. Finally I said, "Go!" and they piled into the silver minivan, limbs hunched and folded up next to each other, and grinned.

The available mothers stayed behind, drank mixed drinks of questionable quality (I hate to follow a recipe), ate pizza and chocolate, and watched the children spread out over Wazoo Farm during the first clear, sunny evening in a cow's year. Foam noodle fights and all kinds of mischief occurred, including some that landed Bea in the kitchen sink for a bath and Elspeth in bed.

And Merry carried out her electoral process, in which Lily was announced president by vote, with Asher as vice-president until Lily moves, when Asher will assume the presidency. It was all very civilized; the children sat cross-legged in a ring on the lawn by the blue shed and listened to campaign speeches and then marked their ballots. I wondered at the possibility of a coup, but Merry had everything well under control.

And now I must go tackle the downstairs before sitting on the couch, watching junk TV, and folding laundry. It's a glamorous life but someone has to live it. . . .I've barely had time to think about my short story, "Empress Chicken" lately, but then again, perhaps that's a good thing, since I think I may have killed it. It may be dead, and you know what they say about dead things over time: they begin to STINK.

Hail, Heather!

Well, Heather my sister,

Remember, in Bangladesh (and then in the half-dozen other places we grew up), when the sky would begin to darken, and you'd say, with your eyes half-full of hope and half-full of a wild light, "I think it's going to hail!"

Well, I wish you would have been here, sister mine, for I just witnessed the most impressive hail storm known to my own memory. Of course, the one in Bangladesh would have been even more dramatic with its tennis size balls, but I can't remember it well, if at all. I'm sitting in the sunroom, looking out on the garden, which seems to be covered in snow--but it's not. Thunder still rumbles across the hills and lightning stitches the white sky, though the storm seems to be retreating.

I was out in the garden for the first time in a while (we've had days upon days of rain and it's all mud and too wet to fool with the soil, though it's a good time to weed), and I was enjoying some quiet time whipping a bed into shape. I didn't even mind being scratched by a rose bramble, nor the fact that my shoes were deep in mud. . .

Ah! Did I say the storm was retreating? I think that was the eye, the calm before the next onslaught. Thunder just crashed so near and loudly I can feel it reverberating in my chest.

Anyway--I sensed the sky was darkening, and I heard low grumbles, but I was so engrossed I just ignored it until rain started to fall, and by the time I was settled on the porch, the drops were so huge I began to wonder if they were actually rain or not.

Inside, Bea and her friend, E, were still fast asleep, and they slept through the racket of grape-sized ice hitting the metal roof of the sunroom and ricocheting off the windowsills. Our table outside was covered in piles of ice balls; it swept down the driveway among all our mud and debris. I so wish you had been here to sit down and have tea with while we watched it all. It was such a good show.

Can you spy the yellow cat? She scrambled like a crazy thing until she finally reached the calm of the old truck's underside, where she slunk until the storm was over.

Can you see her hind legs and tail? She may be there, still. . . .

Flooding downtown; ankle-deep water; the creek is about to foam over its banks. Glad to live on a hill!

Wish you were here,

Kimby

Concerned Citizen, Age 9

Merry, our oldest, became distraught when she heard about the governor's budget cuts to education. They are distressing--the budget was cut by 50% and the money was reallocated to prisons and to huge incentives for corporations--many of which, by the way, are bleeding our counties dry of their natural resources and not paying any taxes. There's talk of laying off teachers, closing schools, cutting kindergarten, increasing class sizes, slashing benefits like free lunches for kids. Pennsylvania's future, especially for the large percentage of children from less privileged backgrounds, looks bleaker.

We hadn't talked to Merry about the budget cuts, but she found out about them at school and during the week that followed, she became more and more convicted that she should do something. So she wrote this letter, without any help from us. I helped her correct spelling and punctuation errors, and she wrote a final draft, sealed and addressed the envelope, and sent it to our governor. (To read the letter, click on the photo to make it a bit easier on the eyes).

"Do you think he'll read it?" she asked.

"I hope so."

"Well, he should," she said staunchly. Merry, I think he should, too.

Sunday Night Musing

After a day accomplishing many things, it was wonderful to rest my chin in my hands in the silence that settles over the house when all three girls are in bed. I'd just left Merry and Elspeth in clean sheets, their noses in books and lamplight flooding their freshly showered faces. Bea had shown me her last trick for the evening ("I do it for the Show," she promises me every night, arching her back). Martin was outside mowing in the last of the daylight, and I hunched over my desk at the second floor window and studied the garden. Sky blue spires of lupines rose next to glowing dark plum trees; spiky purple alliums popped by the budding tea roses. How long will it take until our pears and apples bear? How big will the oak and maple trees grow, and what will they hide with their dense leaves? When they are so huge I can barely remember when I planted them, where will Elspeth, Bea and Merry be? Far away, I'll warrant, if their independence is any indication. And good adventures I wish to them, too!

Take courage, heart: the weeds will always be with us. Did I mention the weeds? So many, many weeds, growing in profusion after endless rain.

Still, I'll not be twisted over some crab grass; soon I'll be out there armed with piles of newspaper and shovels full of mulch.

And now I've got to beat Martin to the shower.

Take Me Out [to my own couch] to the Ballgame[s]

If you sat in the brown chair near to me here in the living room, you'd hear the clock ticking. In the far distance, the faint, ever-present whine of the coal mine. The sound of car wheels on a wet street. But no baseball.

Baseball has created a new white noise in our house every night for the past month. Martin discovered he could order the entire MLB season on our Roku, and this translates to more games than one person could possibly watch. Baseball players never take a night off, apparently. Every night Martin tucks the girls in and then almost falls over his feet on his way to the TV, where he flips on yet another Astros game. Ah, the sound of the crowd; the sonorous voices of the announcers; the applause when Pence Whathisname makes yet another fabulous base hit.

I am being a good friend to Martin, and I have watched quite a few hours of baseball at his side, even though I have no natural interest in the sport or in any sport. I've eased into the rhythm of the pitchers, hitters, RBIs, the catcher signalling pitches into his crotch with two or three fingers. There is a certain narrative quality to the sport, and this I respect and even enjoy. But let me ask you all a question. Why is it that baseball players feel feel compelled even to engage in socially unacceptable behaviors? I'm not referring to the occasional yelling between coaches and referees on the mound. I'm talking about the endless clothing adjustments (particularly to one sensitive area), and the eternal spitting. Who needs to spit that much? In what world is scattering the hulls to sunflower seeds along with your own saliva okay? And as for the scratching, the pulling, the shaking of the crotch, why? I started to wonder, do the uniforms just not fit anyone? Are they made badly on purpose? Or is it all just part of the glorious baseball tradition?

I have a favorite player, though I can't remember his name. Hold on, let me ask Martin. Brett Wallace. I like his face and his boyish eyes; he always looks like he's trying to be serious as befits the occasion.

Baseball is back on. Martin was out with our friend Kevin, checking out some flooding in our county. They didn't get very far because an emergency vehicle that was blocking a flooded road. Martin reported briefly that the roads were deserted and the fog made the countryside eerie, and then he returned to baseball.

It's like we have a house guest who will never leave. And Baseball season is not particularly brief. It ends (wait for it) in EARLY OCTOBER!

And then comes the playoffs. Good times. There's a lot more crotch grabbing in our future. Guess what? David Wright just hit a homer. The Mets are ahead, 5-4. We're on the edge of our seats. Ooo, my man Brett Wallace is up to bat. (According to the announcer, Wallace's legs are like tree trunks). He swings. . .gotta go.

My story, "The Weight of Birds," has been published by Prism Review in California. You can see samples of Issue 13, including my story in full, by clicking HERE. It's a quirky one--enjoy!

Mojito Breeze at Wazoo

"Hello, this is Equitable Gas!" the friendly, male automated voice interrupts my last cup of tea. "You're going to be up bleeping creek without a paddle if you don't remit payment soon, sucker. Like hot water? Well, it's GOOOOONE."

See, this is the problem, mateys. We have the money to pay our bills but I, the bill payer, have procrastinated her duties endlessly. We've gone all soft around here in the past day and a half. Martin's done grading poetry portfolios and last exams and we're feeling the mellow, mint-tinged summer breeze of change. Nobody wants to do anything they're supposed to anymore. I've got a column to write and I'm on my little spiffy Netbook, writing this instead. I'm still in my pjs. Martin is looking for bike tires on the internet. Bea is standing on a kitchen chair, shouting, "Could I just have ONE?" (One M&M, that is). I tell her, you can have one if you go to the potty. Too late. Apparently the post-school lazies are affecting us all in different ways. Thankfully, there is only one of us here at Wazoo who thinks a good time includes pooping her pants.

I did pay the gas bill this morning. I love hot water too much. And Mojitos. I love to say "moJIto," I love to fill my hands with tender spring mint, I love to sip languidly in the company of good people on our back porch, listening to the wind chimes and the jealous birds begging for just a sip. For a few days I've been awakening with a feeling of cloudy doom lingering over my head, a leftover of stressful, busy last work weeks. And then I tell myself, "All is well," and the clouds thin out to wispy cirrus high up in a hot blue sky.

Come by and celebrate with us. Bring a lime. We've got the rum.

Happy Mother's Day

Three reasons I get to celebrate Mother's Day. Here they are, in all their quirky glory.

That blue glow on either side of the path are wildflowers called Blue-Eyed Marys.


All these photos were taken at Enlow Fork, the beautiful place we went hiking a week ago; my column last week described our meandering trip there and then the incredibe richness of this place. I wish my own mother and Martin's mother could join us for a hike, to celebrate all our happinesses. Here is a trillium and some Blue-eyed Marys for you.


Happy Mother's Day, you lovely ones, our sisters and our mothers, our dear friends and all who mother us and our children. Much love.

My HEART leaps UP when I beHOLD

Merry just finished shouting out Roald Dahl from her bed upstairs, where she's been reading every book the man ever wrote in quick succession over the last couple weeks. When she comes to one of Dahl's cunning, rhyming ditties, she always yells the lines to establish the rhythm. It takes me back to high school, when our literature teacher had us line up and march, shouting as if we were in boot camp: My HEART leaps UP when I beHOLD a RAINbow IN the SKY. So WAS it THEN when I was YOUNG; so WILL it BE when I am OLD!

That particular literature teacher, who had been sent to Kenya by the Assemblies of God, was the most excellent of teachers. I say this despite two offenses: a memorable, hateful comment about gay people, and her failure to read or award a grade for my independent study, which was a novel I had written in the style of E.M. Forster after reading every book of his the library had, (which, ironically, excluded Maurice--I had to read that one after returning to the US). This teacher, slim, with long wavy hair, and a thin, precise looking face, was probably not all that much older than I am now, but to me then, she seemed like a career single woman. She didn't play favorites as much as some of the other teachers, like another AOG (Assemblies of God) woman who had taught me literature the year before (and terribly boring grammar) and oversaw the yearbook staff and who luckily liked me.

The AOG teachers were generally better than the Baptist teachers in our school full mostly of missionary kids, though we did enjoy some diversity from children of other, nonreligous expatriates, including kids from Eritrea, Zambia, and Ethiopia who apparently valued an American education and testing in order to make transition to US Universities easier. The Mennonite teachers were by far the most sensible and interesting--there were several Millers, including the superb music teacher who made us memorize a hymn every week and whose wall read: Can't never did anything until he took off his tail and became Can. I never really understood that saying though I carried it in my head forever after; how could a word have a tail? I was all for personification in general, but Can't becoming Can in an seemingly meaningless omission of a body part seemed absurd.

The AOG teachers were a breed unto themselves. They believed in second baptism by the holy spirit (the first was by water, of course), and encouraged speaking in tongues, though I never heard any of them bust out the tongues during school. Our chaplain was AOG and we had sat (or raised compliant hands) through numerous altar calls and heeded his warnings that the devil was a lion seeking to devour one of us.

The female AOG teachers lived on a compound together. When we visited, I was astonished that everything in their houses, from toilet paper to door handles, had been imported from the US. Visiting them was like stepping into an air conditioned Georgia suburban house. One teacher's bathroom even sported a special roll of tissue; every perforated cube bore a different FarSide cartoon. I'd only seen deep carpets with matching drapes like this in the JC Penney catalogs my grandmother would send back with my dad from America on one of his trips.

I'd had a few literature teachers before Miss Middleton. The first I remember well was a thin Baptist woman with dark patches on her face who warned us to skip the Edgar Allen Poe story in our anthology. The Telltale Heart was dark and of the devil. She leaned over her desk and said, in a quiet voice edged with sadness, "You may read it if you wish, but I don't recommend it." I think she was grieved because although she'd offered us her best advice, she knew some of us would foolishly engage in bad judgment and read it anyhow. We capped that year by rewriting the end of "Romeo and Juliet" so everything was okay; Romeo and Juliet didn't end in juvenile tragedy but lived on in love. I'm sure I rewrote it with the rest of the class, and while I breezed through and skirted around the edges of Poe, I never actually sat down and read the story. Back then I was a good kid who wanted to please her teachers, and I guess I'm still that way, though I hope I've been able to pump my moral courage with some wisdom by this point.

Fast forward some years and I'm a senior in Miss Middleton's AP Literature class. She has us read and read and read and she is a perfect stickler for passive verbs and sloppy sentences. She docks us points for every passive verb we utilize until we write so actively our figurative hair blows in the wind of our brilliance. (She would have hated that last silly metaphor, by the way). I read Wuthering Heights and fall deeply in love with all the dark drama--I end up writing my AP essay on the ending of Bronte's novel--Heathcliff and the moors fit plumb with the rather violent, shadowy phase in my own writing (barring the E.M. Forster novel). But Miss Middleton does not treat me like the genius I think I am; she discards my dramatic poetry for one clear-headed, simple piece that I write one day while staring at a painting, which portrays a Spanish man about to be executed. I can still see the strong colors of that painting in my mind, the astonished eyes of the doomed man in his white shirt, arms flung wide, as he looks at the cold, exploding line of the firing squad.**

Perhaps my best memory of Miss Middleton is when she perched on the edge of her desk and summoned us all to gather close. Then, in a breezy classroom in our school full of missionary kids and conservative teachers, she cracked Chaucer and read us The Miller's Tale, unabridged and unedited, with farts flying forth and all the splendid vulgarity old Chaucer could muster!

By the time I stumbled onto a college campus one year later in a suburb of Chicago, I was ready for three-hundred level courses. And thanks to Miss Middleton, I could write a literary analysis that was as tight as a clam. But more than this, during that last year in Kenya, my heart had leapt into a world of stories and words so magnificent that my imagination would never be the same.

__________________
**(I have been trying to identify this painting and the painter and have not been able to--can anyone out there illuminate me? I could sketch it for you--badly--but the title I remembered was a Manet painting and not the right one at all).

Aunt Sally took this picture of dear Elspeth at school. I'd write more but I'm post-weekly-column weary. I will treat myself to a shower, however.

Another Poem (It came to me and Prose didn't): Request

Robin in the black walnut, turning beak to wet feathers,
you who know nor care about deaths of evil men
who were also grandfathers and fathers, who were glad
for things--

An hour in morning, steam rising from tea,
even a bird in a tree, shining with rain.
Men who kill, when they choose death, do they also conclude
tiny joys, goodness flashing like the sudden spread of robin's
wing? Or do they sometimes catch movement, wonder at the grace
of a beautiful thing?

And robin, who cares for nor knows my heart,
this thing I hold like a curled shell in my hands,
following tunnels, pearling and shining as it mazes
to shaded, dark places--

Robin, in your graced
birdness, your preoccupation with turned, furrowed soil
and nests spun from plastic scraps and cast off threads,
you who love the rain, know how to open wings
who have never known falling--

teach me, bird, how to step into this suspended
sadness, how to stand in this late spring rain
in a morning of green you never doubted,
even on the coldest January night, would come again.

I just found out--my story, "If You Stopped," published in the Fall 2010 issue of Apple Valley Review (you can find it by clicking on the link under "My Scribblings. . ." has been included by judges in storySouth's Notable Stories of 2010. Find the complete list HERE.

Hello, Prose

I'm not sure how I feel about you, Prose. At your worst, you're dull, you sprawl, you're ungainly. After such a happy journey with poetry (the pinpoint, pencil tip, pollen of language), I'm not sure you and I can be such good friends anymore.

Oh, all right, I like you well enough. Truthfully, I'd much rather sit around a campfire with you than with poetry. You're a more laid back and mellow. Poetry gets a bit intense and can make your eyeballs hurt.

A few of Martin's students still sit around the glowing campfire down our hill. As the night tipped into 9:30 and after, I thought the children really should head up to bed. Martin had finished playing snatches of Blackbird, singing in the dead of night. . .and really, when the Beatles are finished, you should be, too. I'm glad they've stayed, though--they're a bright group of people and I enjoyed them, especially Megan and Janelle, who played badminton with the girls AND went down our formidable hill with them in the red wagon. Impressive. There was only one tip-over and shortly afterward, Megan stopped fanning our dying fire and said in a sensible, calm way, "Do you have a bandaid? My foot seems to be bleeding." Merry insisted on accompanying her up the hill into the house as her personal nurse.

So now after a day that plastered me with grass (from mowing and mowing and mowing some more), sweat (from weeding the garden, shopping, and keeping up with extra children), and finally smoke and marshmallow goo, I am freshly showered, hair wrapped up in a towel, and in my pyjamas. I don't think I ever ate dinner. No, I did not. Maybe I'll have a cup of tea and call it a day.

It's not been an exciting reentry into Prose, but I'm too tired to care. I have no profound images or moving words for you. Just a cup of tea, a yawn, and a sleepy smile.

I wrote more than a poem about our trip to Enlow Fork. Please click HERE to read my column in the O-R. And stay tuned for photos of that wonderful day. . .