Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
The Last Bit
Our Penske truck loomed outside our house, parked illegally on the street by our red front gate. Its back end gaped open. I wasn't sure that we'd fill it, and I certainly wasn't sure we'd fill it in time. We had to move everything that remained out of the house, which was, despite our sale and numerous ruthless clean-outs, still significant. Then we had to clean--after moving into a series of dirty houses, I was determined to leave the house sparkling. And we were a day behind schedule. Our hotels were booked from Chicago to Montana, and there was no going back.
It was hot. If you live east, close your eyes and remember July. Got it? Feel the sweat trickling down your back?
Martin was at the U, anxiously twiddling his thumbs while an IT guy wiped his computer clean, and I had snuck out to eat lunch down-town with friends. Lunches with friends had become funny things of late. Back when all looked clear for the next twenty years or so (our kids would go to school together, possibly but not probably fall in love, and we'd grow old in the long Pennsylvania summers), we'd chat easily about the endless details that sharing daily life affords. But now, with the house in a constant state of upheaval and an impending move in the air, easy chat, though we tried for it, felt like a sailboat perched in denial on a rolling, stormy sea. On board we were still toasting each other and eating finger food but we knew the storm, and the tossing overboard, and the ending-up-on-different-islands, was imminent.
All the same our lunch was good and we browsed through the Artisan's Shop afterward, just as if there was nothing pressing to do--no empty moving van, no house to empty and clean.
By three o'clock, the moving truck still looked mostly empty. The reality of staying up most, if not all, of the night, seemed closer and closer when, around four o'clock, our community began trickling in the door in earnest. Soon the house was full to bursting with people moving furniture, brandishing brooms and huffing down stairs with boxes. And before you knew it, seven o'clock rolled around and there was only detritus left behind, a few wisps of us in the corners of echoing rooms, empty mantels and cupboards and drawers.
We sat on the floor in the kitchen and popped the cork from some champagne I'd been saving since my birthday, and then we filled plastic cups and stared at each other. I raised my cup and bungled a toast: "To the best friends a person could have," I said, and we drank up. The children I'd known since they were in strollers, one since birth, tore around the empty rooms in the tricycle and little car I'd left out until the last minute.
Martin raised his cup: "When we first moved here," he began (oh! An articulate toast! Bully for him), "Next to the coal mine, when the black dust covered our windowsills, I said, 'We'll give it one or two years, tops, and then we'll be out of here.' But soon that year turned into a plan to stay for twenty years, and we were happy about it. We have all of you to thank for that. Of course now our plans have changed again, but we love you all and thank you for being part of our lives."
At this point I whipped out the tequila and we finished that off--but there wasn't that much left after all--and I began to feel the reality of what was happening sink in just a bit. That's what happens when you sit down at the end of a day--you can go, go, go, but then when you stop, what's real is still waiting for you. And what was really waiting for us now was goodbyes.
Sally had asked us to cry just once before we left, and it turns out that wasn't hard at all. But as grief can so easily slip into sentimentality, let me skip to the next morning, on our way out of town.
Perched high on the seat of that Penske truck, we surveyed the mess the raccoon had left in front of our house. We'd just watched the garbage collectors take the twelve or so enormous bags of garbage that stretched from one fence post to the next but they had not deigned to scoop up the disgusting trail of raccoon leftovers.
We never had caught the raccoon--I called him Rocky--who intermittently disturbed our garbage and whom, one day, I'd seen meandering thorough the garden, apparently shooting the breeze with our well-fed groundhog. We'd generally opted for a "live-and-let-live" philosophy with the considerable wildlife that kept Wazoo buzzing along, and now Rocky Raccoon had enjoyed the last laugh.
By this time, too much crying had rendered a splitting headache, so every time I bent over to pick up another used, chewed bathroom item, my head felt as if it were going to explode. But finally the front lawn was clean and Martin turned the key and the Penske shuddered to life. We pulled away from our curb and left town far behind, sped past the sheep grazing on the hill bisected by a new gas pipeline, looped through the densely forested roads up to a ridge, past familiar farms. Finally the road spat us onto the Interstate and we were well and truly on our way west.
I shared a generous squirt of hand sanitizer with Martin. We rubbed our palms hard to free ourselves from raccoon and garbage. "Somehow that seemed appropriate," I reflected. Our last act in our beloved, imperfect home had been cleaning up biohazard trash from our front yard. It wasn't a stylish exit, but it was perfect for us, an act of service to the critters who will live on in our garden long after we settled somewhere else far away.
And we aren't stylish people, either--we live as fully as we can, love people with as much energy as we can muster, and collect in the warmth and comfort grace and love brings to us. In the end, we were filled with thanksgiving, more than we could express fully to those who deserved it, and who could have asked for more than that?
And so the miles fell behind us and the tight hills of Pennsylvania unwound into plains, and the plains broke into buttes. Four days and thousands of miles later, a scrabbly desert burst into mountains. But that's another story.
It was hot. If you live east, close your eyes and remember July. Got it? Feel the sweat trickling down your back?
Martin was at the U, anxiously twiddling his thumbs while an IT guy wiped his computer clean, and I had snuck out to eat lunch down-town with friends. Lunches with friends had become funny things of late. Back when all looked clear for the next twenty years or so (our kids would go to school together, possibly but not probably fall in love, and we'd grow old in the long Pennsylvania summers), we'd chat easily about the endless details that sharing daily life affords. But now, with the house in a constant state of upheaval and an impending move in the air, easy chat, though we tried for it, felt like a sailboat perched in denial on a rolling, stormy sea. On board we were still toasting each other and eating finger food but we knew the storm, and the tossing overboard, and the ending-up-on-different-islands, was imminent.
All the same our lunch was good and we browsed through the Artisan's Shop afterward, just as if there was nothing pressing to do--no empty moving van, no house to empty and clean.
By three o'clock, the moving truck still looked mostly empty. The reality of staying up most, if not all, of the night, seemed closer and closer when, around four o'clock, our community began trickling in the door in earnest. Soon the house was full to bursting with people moving furniture, brandishing brooms and huffing down stairs with boxes. And before you knew it, seven o'clock rolled around and there was only detritus left behind, a few wisps of us in the corners of echoing rooms, empty mantels and cupboards and drawers.
We sat on the floor in the kitchen and popped the cork from some champagne I'd been saving since my birthday, and then we filled plastic cups and stared at each other. I raised my cup and bungled a toast: "To the best friends a person could have," I said, and we drank up. The children I'd known since they were in strollers, one since birth, tore around the empty rooms in the tricycle and little car I'd left out until the last minute.
Martin raised his cup: "When we first moved here," he began (oh! An articulate toast! Bully for him), "Next to the coal mine, when the black dust covered our windowsills, I said, 'We'll give it one or two years, tops, and then we'll be out of here.' But soon that year turned into a plan to stay for twenty years, and we were happy about it. We have all of you to thank for that. Of course now our plans have changed again, but we love you all and thank you for being part of our lives."
At this point I whipped out the tequila and we finished that off--but there wasn't that much left after all--and I began to feel the reality of what was happening sink in just a bit. That's what happens when you sit down at the end of a day--you can go, go, go, but then when you stop, what's real is still waiting for you. And what was really waiting for us now was goodbyes.
Sally had asked us to cry just once before we left, and it turns out that wasn't hard at all. But as grief can so easily slip into sentimentality, let me skip to the next morning, on our way out of town.
Perched high on the seat of that Penske truck, we surveyed the mess the raccoon had left in front of our house. We'd just watched the garbage collectors take the twelve or so enormous bags of garbage that stretched from one fence post to the next but they had not deigned to scoop up the disgusting trail of raccoon leftovers.
We never had caught the raccoon--I called him Rocky--who intermittently disturbed our garbage and whom, one day, I'd seen meandering thorough the garden, apparently shooting the breeze with our well-fed groundhog. We'd generally opted for a "live-and-let-live" philosophy with the considerable wildlife that kept Wazoo buzzing along, and now Rocky Raccoon had enjoyed the last laugh.
By this time, too much crying had rendered a splitting headache, so every time I bent over to pick up another used, chewed bathroom item, my head felt as if it were going to explode. But finally the front lawn was clean and Martin turned the key and the Penske shuddered to life. We pulled away from our curb and left town far behind, sped past the sheep grazing on the hill bisected by a new gas pipeline, looped through the densely forested roads up to a ridge, past familiar farms. Finally the road spat us onto the Interstate and we were well and truly on our way west.
I shared a generous squirt of hand sanitizer with Martin. We rubbed our palms hard to free ourselves from raccoon and garbage. "Somehow that seemed appropriate," I reflected. Our last act in our beloved, imperfect home had been cleaning up biohazard trash from our front yard. It wasn't a stylish exit, but it was perfect for us, an act of service to the critters who will live on in our garden long after we settled somewhere else far away.
And we aren't stylish people, either--we live as fully as we can, love people with as much energy as we can muster, and collect in the warmth and comfort grace and love brings to us. In the end, we were filled with thanksgiving, more than we could express fully to those who deserved it, and who could have asked for more than that?
And so the miles fell behind us and the tight hills of Pennsylvania unwound into plains, and the plains broke into buttes. Four days and thousands of miles later, a scrabbly desert burst into mountains. But that's another story.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Just a note: The post, below, turned out to be terribly long. I'm not sure if it's interesting or as dull as pocket-lint. In any case, Notes. . .is winding down. One more post, I think, and then I'll hip-hop over entirely to Wazoo Goes West. So please, in a day or two, consider subscribing over at that blog. I'd hate to lose all of you when I move.
Also, at the urging of some, I'm thinking over turning Notes from Wazoo Farm into a book. I have a few other pots bubbling right now, but I'd love for you all to mull, too, about what you've loved best about Wazoo. Which posts, which story-lines, which bits and baubles? I'd love your input, and thanks, all of you, for being such wonderful readers.
Also, at the urging of some, I'm thinking over turning Notes from Wazoo Farm into a book. I have a few other pots bubbling right now, but I'd love for you all to mull, too, about what you've loved best about Wazoo. Which posts, which story-lines, which bits and baubles? I'd love your input, and thanks, all of you, for being such wonderful readers.
Here's what I wrote, hunkered down at the kitchen table on the day of the big sale--the grand shave of all our worldly possessions--on a shopping list pad, in between totalling purchases. I was feeling under the weather (think of the book The Red Tent; that's where I should have been hunkered with a cup of herbal and a good book) and Martin was stationed outside, so it was just me, mighty I, in charge inside. The main floor of the house (except the kitchen where the 'check-out' was), the porch, and the sizable driveway overflowed with everything from furniture to books to our Ford truck. And it got busy, busy, busy. We'd advertised in the paper and posted signs all over town. In hopes of bringing in more earnest buyers, I'd posted adverts for an ESTATE SALE, GOOD PRICES. . .but Martin informed me that you can't have an estate sale unless someone has died. Our particular endeavor, he said, was a MOVING SALE. But it was too late. So outside I'd thumbtacked a huge sign reading, MOVING/ESTATE SALE (NOBODY DIED). Before we'd drunk our first cup of tea early in the morning, the first buyers had pushed by our barrier and were asking about prices.
Here's my constantly interrupted write-up, spanning about eight hours:
* * * *
There's a big sale going on and I am in the kitchen wishing I were elsewhere. How strange to have your house filled with people buying your things! I have--count them--six signs in the kitchen telling people nothing in here is for sale and yet a few people keep wandering in, asking--yes!--if anything is for sale. SIGNS, people, SIGNS. Martin, bless him, is outside working the crowd. A lady just told me it's supposed to rain this afternoon, so she, and I, hope that our stuff is sold by then. Otherwise there will be a lot of soggy books. I wish Martin and I could communicate by mental telepathy. He just came through on a mission with a phone to his ear. Martin says MADNESS OUTSIDE so I am very glad that I am inside--albeit alone--after all.
9:42. Much of the less expensive furniture has been hauled off at a bit of a discount. It's better not to think of how much one paid, originally, for items. It's certainly best to get thing gone as fast as possible. . . .I just had this absolutely absurd urge to keep a black cat candle holder for Halloween. Maybe I'll nab it and--I DID nab it--and take it out this October and WONDER why I saved it from being sold! It was hand-made in India, after all. I will pay myself a dollar for it.
Someone just bought the giraffe book-end and the jade good luck charm that our foreign-exchange student from Hong Kong gave us. All the mattresses [our guestroom beds which we gave away] are gone now. The queen got taken by two fellows, one very tall one in a sleeveless T-shirt with luxurious, long, curly hair--"Y'uns leaving Greene County?" he said, and addressed me as "Miss" which I thought was quite nice and archaic, really.
Quarter after ten and I am very warm but the house is just a big lighter. I just gave away three books to a rather nervous young Elementary Education major who had a lovely smile after she began talking. IKEA bookshelf is gone! Someone sat on the twin leather chairs and seemed to like them but decided not to buy. The camping mats are gone to a hunter-looking fellow who seemed a little doubtful about the rock-bottom price (how could I go any cheaper?) For a minute, all is quiet.
10:32. An older lady with a cane just picked up the mop [almost new with a big new bottle of cleaner--I wasn't selling anything nasty, promise] and put it down again. 10:42. A woman loved the big white mirror from Texas but decided against it. I had high hopes because she looked like a hippie. Microwave cart and bookshelf, gone! Drying rack is gone.
Martin says to stay firm on prices but I just want to get rid of everything and see it all go to good homes. Otherwise, we'll just end up giving it away anyhow. A man with a prosthetic leg walked in--"Just lookin'!" Wonder if he'll find anything that interests him? How about some doilies? Four wine glasses? An antique shabby chic mirror? He found the poker chip set--still almost new--I bought Martin some years back. Turns out that we don't play poker all that much and you don't need to ante up for Scrabble.
I have been smiling and being pleasant to beat the band. Martin, by his account, is a total stickler and does not back down on prices. I cannot say the same for myself. The old woman who bought the mop--her husband held it at arm's length and said, "Don't we have these all over the place?" Mops? How many mops does she have?
I think we should slash down everything by half and move it out of here. A lovely woman just poked her head in and told me her daughter used to live in Seattle but now she's in New Orleans. It's so hot today, I can just imagine what it's like in New Orleans. Just let the drop-leaf desk go for ten dollars under. Sold the small antique table, some lamps, a couple of pretty plates.
The amoire--the beast--must go!!! An older woman just walked in with a wad of chewing tobacco in her cheek. Martin is "trolling" as he calls it. How much is the bike trailer? What is the Pack 'n Play? Lots of stuff still for sale, Martin is telling a man, but no corner stands, which is what the guy's looking for. Somebody wants to trade our truck for his motorcycle. "I don't do motorcycles," Martin told them. I'm getting reading to just pack this stuff up and take it to Goodwill. Two more folks coming up the front stairs. 11:55. Boredom sets in. At some point I'll have to eat.
People are comforted by chatting about the weather. "It's a hot one," a woman just said, no exclamation mark, just flat. That last stair to the front porch is a real doozy. An older woman just struggled up it and into our living room where she collapsed on our front porch. Sold the mirror to a young couple for half the price. He said he's going to hang it over the couch and I warned him repeatedly to anchor it--it's huge--so it won't brain anyone. He's a former boxer and looks rather tough so hopefully he really knows how to anchor.
4:07. Not much left. The amoire is still there. It will never leave apparently and we will have it in our driveway forever. Lots of looking from a family of ten from Arizona who has bought the notoriously huge but beautiful historical home on Sherman Avenue and High Street with the stained glass window. Wow, Martin is so great at chatting with strangers. I am tapped out at the moment. Just sitting here, having my period and watching the house empty out. . .too bad the family from Arizona is squeezed into a tiny apartment in West Virginia--is that legal?--while they wait for the house. Oh, man, I could really use a cool shower. At some point we will have to shut down but for now, here I sit, hiding. . .again, and counting the money. We made over a thousand dollars!
* * * *
We ended up finally selling the amoire for a song to a single mom with two kids who offered to take anything else we wanted to give them. The daughter followed me around, asking "Can I have that? What about that?" as I unstrung the curtains and piled things for them in the corner of the driveway. The family settled down on the furniture there and the mom smoked and waited for a brother and his pick-up but I couldn't make any more small talk.
At last, I shut our front door and locked it. The house echoed. It's amazing how you can lighten yourself in one day, let go of a thousand things that you held onto for almost a decade. And nobody misses any of it, bar Bea who noticed her little telephone has mysteriously disappeared. I promise myself never to accumulate like that again. Freedom is a more wonderful thing and the getting-rid-of process is such hard work.
The day after the sale, a couple of people dropped by to check out a few remaining pieces on the porch. As I spoke with them about my antique banker's table where I'd done years of writing, I realized I was seeing only half of each their faces. I couldn't really tell what they looked like, because I could view either their noses and eyes or their mouths and chins. Then my vision completely dissolved into waves--a classic migraine, which I used to suffer through frequently in high school but now only get during periods of extreme stress, like the time I fell down the stairs when I was pregnant. I lay down with my eyes tightly shut, turned on the air conditioning, and tried to forget where I was. Four days later, we would truck out our remaining belongings and head west--and we would still be surprised by how much we had kept.
The money from the sale went to new bikes when we reached Washington. And the truck? Our beloved old Ford stayed "in the family," so to speak--Tonya and John bump around the ridge with it, and their girls have found "Ole Bessie's" wide bed a perfect perch from which to swing from the barn rafters.
Here's my constantly interrupted write-up, spanning about eight hours:
* * * *
There's a big sale going on and I am in the kitchen wishing I were elsewhere. How strange to have your house filled with people buying your things! I have--count them--six signs in the kitchen telling people nothing in here is for sale and yet a few people keep wandering in, asking--yes!--if anything is for sale. SIGNS, people, SIGNS. Martin, bless him, is outside working the crowd. A lady just told me it's supposed to rain this afternoon, so she, and I, hope that our stuff is sold by then. Otherwise there will be a lot of soggy books. I wish Martin and I could communicate by mental telepathy. He just came through on a mission with a phone to his ear. Martin says MADNESS OUTSIDE so I am very glad that I am inside--albeit alone--after all.
9:42. Much of the less expensive furniture has been hauled off at a bit of a discount. It's better not to think of how much one paid, originally, for items. It's certainly best to get thing gone as fast as possible. . . .I just had this absolutely absurd urge to keep a black cat candle holder for Halloween. Maybe I'll nab it and--I DID nab it--and take it out this October and WONDER why I saved it from being sold! It was hand-made in India, after all. I will pay myself a dollar for it.
Someone just bought the giraffe book-end and the jade good luck charm that our foreign-exchange student from Hong Kong gave us. All the mattresses [our guestroom beds which we gave away] are gone now. The queen got taken by two fellows, one very tall one in a sleeveless T-shirt with luxurious, long, curly hair--"Y'uns leaving Greene County?" he said, and addressed me as "Miss" which I thought was quite nice and archaic, really.
Quarter after ten and I am very warm but the house is just a big lighter. I just gave away three books to a rather nervous young Elementary Education major who had a lovely smile after she began talking. IKEA bookshelf is gone! Someone sat on the twin leather chairs and seemed to like them but decided not to buy. The camping mats are gone to a hunter-looking fellow who seemed a little doubtful about the rock-bottom price (how could I go any cheaper?) For a minute, all is quiet.
10:32. An older lady with a cane just picked up the mop [almost new with a big new bottle of cleaner--I wasn't selling anything nasty, promise] and put it down again. 10:42. A woman loved the big white mirror from Texas but decided against it. I had high hopes because she looked like a hippie. Microwave cart and bookshelf, gone! Drying rack is gone.
Martin says to stay firm on prices but I just want to get rid of everything and see it all go to good homes. Otherwise, we'll just end up giving it away anyhow. A man with a prosthetic leg walked in--"Just lookin'!" Wonder if he'll find anything that interests him? How about some doilies? Four wine glasses? An antique shabby chic mirror? He found the poker chip set--still almost new--I bought Martin some years back. Turns out that we don't play poker all that much and you don't need to ante up for Scrabble.
I have been smiling and being pleasant to beat the band. Martin, by his account, is a total stickler and does not back down on prices. I cannot say the same for myself. The old woman who bought the mop--her husband held it at arm's length and said, "Don't we have these all over the place?" Mops? How many mops does she have?
I think we should slash down everything by half and move it out of here. A lovely woman just poked her head in and told me her daughter used to live in Seattle but now she's in New Orleans. It's so hot today, I can just imagine what it's like in New Orleans. Just let the drop-leaf desk go for ten dollars under. Sold the small antique table, some lamps, a couple of pretty plates.
The amoire--the beast--must go!!! An older woman just walked in with a wad of chewing tobacco in her cheek. Martin is "trolling" as he calls it. How much is the bike trailer? What is the Pack 'n Play? Lots of stuff still for sale, Martin is telling a man, but no corner stands, which is what the guy's looking for. Somebody wants to trade our truck for his motorcycle. "I don't do motorcycles," Martin told them. I'm getting reading to just pack this stuff up and take it to Goodwill. Two more folks coming up the front stairs. 11:55. Boredom sets in. At some point I'll have to eat.
People are comforted by chatting about the weather. "It's a hot one," a woman just said, no exclamation mark, just flat. That last stair to the front porch is a real doozy. An older woman just struggled up it and into our living room where she collapsed on our front porch. Sold the mirror to a young couple for half the price. He said he's going to hang it over the couch and I warned him repeatedly to anchor it--it's huge--so it won't brain anyone. He's a former boxer and looks rather tough so hopefully he really knows how to anchor.
4:07. Not much left. The amoire is still there. It will never leave apparently and we will have it in our driveway forever. Lots of looking from a family of ten from Arizona who has bought the notoriously huge but beautiful historical home on Sherman Avenue and High Street with the stained glass window. Wow, Martin is so great at chatting with strangers. I am tapped out at the moment. Just sitting here, having my period and watching the house empty out. . .too bad the family from Arizona is squeezed into a tiny apartment in West Virginia--is that legal?--while they wait for the house. Oh, man, I could really use a cool shower. At some point we will have to shut down but for now, here I sit, hiding. . .again, and counting the money. We made over a thousand dollars!
* * * *
We ended up finally selling the amoire for a song to a single mom with two kids who offered to take anything else we wanted to give them. The daughter followed me around, asking "Can I have that? What about that?" as I unstrung the curtains and piled things for them in the corner of the driveway. The family settled down on the furniture there and the mom smoked and waited for a brother and his pick-up but I couldn't make any more small talk.
At last, I shut our front door and locked it. The house echoed. It's amazing how you can lighten yourself in one day, let go of a thousand things that you held onto for almost a decade. And nobody misses any of it, bar Bea who noticed her little telephone has mysteriously disappeared. I promise myself never to accumulate like that again. Freedom is a more wonderful thing and the getting-rid-of process is such hard work.
The day after the sale, a couple of people dropped by to check out a few remaining pieces on the porch. As I spoke with them about my antique banker's table where I'd done years of writing, I realized I was seeing only half of each their faces. I couldn't really tell what they looked like, because I could view either their noses and eyes or their mouths and chins. Then my vision completely dissolved into waves--a classic migraine, which I used to suffer through frequently in high school but now only get during periods of extreme stress, like the time I fell down the stairs when I was pregnant. I lay down with my eyes tightly shut, turned on the air conditioning, and tried to forget where I was. Four days later, we would truck out our remaining belongings and head west--and we would still be surprised by how much we had kept.
The money from the sale went to new bikes when we reached Washington. And the truck? Our beloved old Ford stayed "in the family," so to speak--Tonya and John bump around the ridge with it, and their girls have found "Ole Bessie's" wide bed a perfect perch from which to swing from the barn rafters.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
One big farm house packed to the gills
+ one moving van
+ small house at destination
(X astronomical gas prices)
=one huge moving sale
This was an equation even I, math-challenged as I am, could figure out. Martin and I gave ourselves one week to fly back to Pennsylvania and (sans kids) unleash a fury of fixing, cleaning, selling, and packing on our big old Dutch Colonial.
When we walked in the doors, our home smelled the same, of herbs and sleep and rich old wood. The stairs wound up to the second floor as they always had, and at the top, the childrens' beds were made, ready for their travel-weary bodies to slip between the sheets. But they weren't with us, and Martin and I gazed at our house--everything clean, everything in its place--and thought of the work that lay before us. We gazed up at our ceilings where the electrician had rewired the house in our absence, and big holes in the plaster gaped back at us.
The very next day we dismantled the childrens' rooms. Then we plunged onto the rest of the house. That week felt like a dream, punctuated by sweet breaks with friends, a last dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant and a midnight trip to Walmart to collect packing boxes. I realized that the west had already made me soft; the massive, dirty trucks that have clogged the county's streets since the gas boom and the poverty that marks the hilly, green county that we grew to love so well shocked me again. The houses of my friends and our garden, nearing the peak of summer color, spoke of home but didn't quite feel like home.
Early in the week Sally dropped into our house, a mess of cardboard boxes and plaster dust, and before she left she said, "I want to see you people cry just once before you leave."
Of course we'd grieved plenty by this time, but as a veteran mover--I've moved sixteen or more times now--I know you can't pack up a house and cry at the same time. You have to be able to see the teacup you're wrapping, damn it. You pack like crazy and then you leave yourself a little space to let the transition sink in before you jump into the next world--a couple hours at the end to say goodbye, goodbye to the house and your friends and all the goodness that has surrounded you like a choir of voices. But the packing and the moving is hard work and you have to be wiry and go back to your peasant roots and show a little sisu, as my muscular Finnish ancestors would say.
My parents call this in-between space--and so I've come to think of it--"the wood between the worlds." You Narnia buffs, you know what I'm describing; in The Magician's Nephew, Digory and Polly slip the evil uncle's rings on their fingers and find themselves splashing up through a shallow pond into a forest. The world--which has a series of ponds, or pools, is comforting in a way--it makes you a bit sleepy and complacent, but there's a feeling of discomfort, too, as if you're not quite anywhere specific, but in a waiting place. You're neither here or there but somewhere else all together. Digory and Polly must plunge into another pool to access the next world, full of adventures (frightening or pleasant).
I have been in dozens of woods between worlds, and the feeling is one of waiting, caught up in suspense between one reality and the next. It always feels as if I'm dreaming (almost jetlagged) and if I have to wait too long in the wood between, I begin to feel lost and frustrated. So I take a breath, grope toward the next pool, hold my nose, and plunge in.
In our wood between the worlds, we had to cut all our belongings in half or more. We'd done much of that already; we'd excised about 2/3 of our books, clothes, toys, and miscellany. The furniture had to be rooted through, our beloved old pick-up sold, and our house still felt as if it were at capacity. Ah, sigh. I began to think it would be a relief if the house burned to the ground. We'd book a flight back and arrive completely unencumbered.
And that was a pretty good rule of thumb, in the end. If the house burned down, what would we miss? The answer was, not much. We tried to marry that somewhat reckless rule with the check of practicality (don't burn the mattresses; they are too expensive to replace), and then we began pricing the house. Soon the entire first floor, the porch, and the driveway were jammed with things we no longer wanted. Too much stuff had become a price to pay for freedom, for the wind at our backs and our feet shaken free of the wretched dust (the untimely, sad end to a job) that still clung to our feet.
Now we only needed to sell it all, and that I dreaded more than anything, not because I didn't want to see it go, but because selling my own stuff makes me skin-crawlingly uncomfortable. (Once we listed a couch on Freecycle and when a family came to pick it up, I made the children hide with me under a table so we wouldn't have to face them. There was nothing wrong with the couch; it was a great giveaway.) I just have a paralyzing sort of embarrassment about passing on my stuff. Maybe it was growing up in developing countries. Maybe I feel guilty about owning things. Whatever it is, it made me hate the upcoming sale--which was necessary for our resettlement elsewhere--with a vengeance.
In the end, I made it through by writing a running narrative on a shopping list pad while two hundred people or so tromped through our house. I'll include the best bits in the next post.
Thanks for rehashing it with me. Soon we can all move west.
+ one moving van
+ small house at destination
(X astronomical gas prices)
=one huge moving sale
This was an equation even I, math-challenged as I am, could figure out. Martin and I gave ourselves one week to fly back to Pennsylvania and (sans kids) unleash a fury of fixing, cleaning, selling, and packing on our big old Dutch Colonial.
When we walked in the doors, our home smelled the same, of herbs and sleep and rich old wood. The stairs wound up to the second floor as they always had, and at the top, the childrens' beds were made, ready for their travel-weary bodies to slip between the sheets. But they weren't with us, and Martin and I gazed at our house--everything clean, everything in its place--and thought of the work that lay before us. We gazed up at our ceilings where the electrician had rewired the house in our absence, and big holes in the plaster gaped back at us.
The very next day we dismantled the childrens' rooms. Then we plunged onto the rest of the house. That week felt like a dream, punctuated by sweet breaks with friends, a last dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant and a midnight trip to Walmart to collect packing boxes. I realized that the west had already made me soft; the massive, dirty trucks that have clogged the county's streets since the gas boom and the poverty that marks the hilly, green county that we grew to love so well shocked me again. The houses of my friends and our garden, nearing the peak of summer color, spoke of home but didn't quite feel like home.
Early in the week Sally dropped into our house, a mess of cardboard boxes and plaster dust, and before she left she said, "I want to see you people cry just once before you leave."
Of course we'd grieved plenty by this time, but as a veteran mover--I've moved sixteen or more times now--I know you can't pack up a house and cry at the same time. You have to be able to see the teacup you're wrapping, damn it. You pack like crazy and then you leave yourself a little space to let the transition sink in before you jump into the next world--a couple hours at the end to say goodbye, goodbye to the house and your friends and all the goodness that has surrounded you like a choir of voices. But the packing and the moving is hard work and you have to be wiry and go back to your peasant roots and show a little sisu, as my muscular Finnish ancestors would say.
My parents call this in-between space--and so I've come to think of it--"the wood between the worlds." You Narnia buffs, you know what I'm describing; in The Magician's Nephew, Digory and Polly slip the evil uncle's rings on their fingers and find themselves splashing up through a shallow pond into a forest. The world--which has a series of ponds, or pools, is comforting in a way--it makes you a bit sleepy and complacent, but there's a feeling of discomfort, too, as if you're not quite anywhere specific, but in a waiting place. You're neither here or there but somewhere else all together. Digory and Polly must plunge into another pool to access the next world, full of adventures (frightening or pleasant).
I have been in dozens of woods between worlds, and the feeling is one of waiting, caught up in suspense between one reality and the next. It always feels as if I'm dreaming (almost jetlagged) and if I have to wait too long in the wood between, I begin to feel lost and frustrated. So I take a breath, grope toward the next pool, hold my nose, and plunge in.
In our wood between the worlds, we had to cut all our belongings in half or more. We'd done much of that already; we'd excised about 2/3 of our books, clothes, toys, and miscellany. The furniture had to be rooted through, our beloved old pick-up sold, and our house still felt as if it were at capacity. Ah, sigh. I began to think it would be a relief if the house burned to the ground. We'd book a flight back and arrive completely unencumbered.
And that was a pretty good rule of thumb, in the end. If the house burned down, what would we miss? The answer was, not much. We tried to marry that somewhat reckless rule with the check of practicality (don't burn the mattresses; they are too expensive to replace), and then we began pricing the house. Soon the entire first floor, the porch, and the driveway were jammed with things we no longer wanted. Too much stuff had become a price to pay for freedom, for the wind at our backs and our feet shaken free of the wretched dust (the untimely, sad end to a job) that still clung to our feet.
Now we only needed to sell it all, and that I dreaded more than anything, not because I didn't want to see it go, but because selling my own stuff makes me skin-crawlingly uncomfortable. (Once we listed a couch on Freecycle and when a family came to pick it up, I made the children hide with me under a table so we wouldn't have to face them. There was nothing wrong with the couch; it was a great giveaway.) I just have a paralyzing sort of embarrassment about passing on my stuff. Maybe it was growing up in developing countries. Maybe I feel guilty about owning things. Whatever it is, it made me hate the upcoming sale--which was necessary for our resettlement elsewhere--with a vengeance.
In the end, I made it through by writing a running narrative on a shopping list pad while two hundred people or so tromped through our house. I'll include the best bits in the next post.
Thanks for rehashing it with me. Soon we can all move west.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
There's nothing to make you fully present in a place than killer exercise. I couldn't resist writing the present today. . .check out Wazoo Goes West HERE. I'll be back here again soon.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
So, to pick up from yesterday. . .
We began to think about leaving. How do I begin to describe the mixture of emotions that accompanied our choice to pack up one year early? Elation, grief, a dogged determination to work hard and quickly, dread, hope. . . .
The worst part was telling our community. I thought we'd wait for a few days until details began to settle more quickly but I couldn't stand it. I'm a terrible secret-keeper generally--secrets (unless they're pleasant ones, delicious to hide away until a joyful revealing) crush me like a cider press, work me like gears, until I yield them up. And so the day after we reached home, Sally came over and I felt as if I would crack in two if I didn't tell her and get it over with.
You must understand that Sally and I have seen each other every day for the past five or six years. Beatrix reminds me if I forget ("I want to go to Will's--her best buddy ever--house!") but there's not much chance I could forget a constant source of sanity, irreverent humor, and tender compassion that comes in the form of my friend Sal. She kept my life in order, reminding me of forms that were due, snack times I promised to provide and would have missed, children I forgot to pick up at preschool, and she told me the truth when it needed telling. One especially kid and cleaning and monotonous morning I doubled over on her floor in tears: Surely there's more to life than this! I cried. . .she consoled me and then she sent me downstairs to run on her treadmill, which did me a world of good.
We were not of the mall-crawl moms. We did the occasional lap around our local Walmart in the winter when all was dreary and there was no other place to go, but our days subsisted of cups of tea and library trips and watching her son, Will, dress in Bea's pink pjs and Bea dress in Will's cars pjs. Dressing in each other's pjs was an especially highlight for our kids and they usually got busy doing just that the moment they stepped over the other's threshold.
When I was gone on the west coast during our dear friend, Nancy's passing, Sally sat with Nancy every day, rubbing her back and keeping up a flow of cheer that I wished I had been there to help provide. I'll never forget how she told me that she was there for both of us, and when I arrived home, too late to say goodbye to Nancy in person, we cried and laughed and ate and then we cleaned Nancy's room together. We cleaned each other's kitchens, cooked together, huffed up hills, red-faced and cursing, to try to lose a little winter weight. She drove me on endless interviews through the winding roads of Greene County and I believe I probably owe her about a thousand dollars in gas. She was my companion through the crazy, bizarre, hilarious, and trying young-children days. Our families knew each other in the daily sort of way families used to and I have yet to meet more generous, sacrificial people. We made it together until our children were in preschool, and for that I am grateful.
But I was the luckiest of all women, for I had other dear friends, too, who bound me up day after day and filled my life with the peculiar scents of their personalities and. . .also somewhat irreverent humor (there's a link here--you can't make it through parenthood without somewhat wicked friends). Tonya is a bad-ass farm girl who butchers her own chickens and smacks rabid possums upside the head with flashlights. She lives up on a ridge in Greene County and manages a passel of chickens, two cats, two daughters, endless laundry (of course she hangs it all up to dry on a quarter-mile laundry line), a rotating schedule of canning and preserving and freezing, an enormous garden, a part-time P.A. career, and punctual thank-you notes and social events. She also home-schools and hunts.
I spent one lovely evening with her up in a tree blind. I was there to record the experience (the sound of a stream, the autumn colors, the smell of leaves) and she was there to blow the brains out a doe. That evening, I left her crashing into the dense undergrowth in her orange vest, a rifle under her arm. I am not joshing you. Tonya's from good, work-til-you-bleed Mennonite stock and her house and yard is always neat as a pin. You would think all of this would equal a totally crazed, secretly bitter woman, but it doesn't. I love spending time with Tonya. She's ruthlessly honest about herself and her life. I am about to scream, she will tell me on the phone. Do you think it's too early for Kahlua? Needless to say one of my favorite things to do with Tonya (and her dear husband John) is drink and eat late into the evening until I almost feel sick but mostly feel blissful and sated.
Then there's Michelle, a ravishing beauty who, on her first visit to our house, sat down fully clothed on our homemade slip-in-slide and scooted down our hill to the bottom. When I first met her at a University picnic, a fly-accompanied affair where I usually smile at people until my jaw aches, I felt that instant draw that I will occasionally feel with a potential dear friend. My mother describes the feeling as souls leaping toward each other. I dropped off a bouquet of herbs at her house and we--and our families--were wonderful friends from then on. It was with them that we fixed homemade truck balls to the back of Sally and her husband, Kevin's car, and it was with her that I heard the most revolting stories of her PA experience. I oft liked to ask her: What is the grossest thing you did today? I liked affirming my choice never to dabble in any of the medical professions. She took Sal and me to New York City, showing us how to move with alacrity through the subway and sharing a steaming cup of hot chocolate spiked with cayenne. The only time she left us in that metropolis was to duck into a disappointingly-well-lit palm reader's to do a little research about how palm reading is done. Sal and I stood outside, shivering and watching. Maybe there's more of an art to it generally, but mostly it was a useless counseling session where Michelle was informed she'd be happy for the rest of her life. And so I hope she will be.
There was Nancy's precious family; her children who I'd promised Nancy I'd love and care for, most specifically, her daughter Catherine, who spent much of her time at our house and had become a fourth daughter to me, bound up in my heart with my love for Nancy and my trust that I had been in the right place at the right time to wrap up Catherine in tenderness. I couldn't understand why the non-tenure had happened, why we were being moved on from a place that seemed, for all purposes, like a place we were needed.
And there were more good women and men and children who wove our lives up into a fabulously diverse, wonderful rope of goodness that kept us truly safe.
So that morning I sat with Sally on the porch as our kids ran from inside the house down the stairs and back again with brimming cups of water (they were making a pond or something) and I said, "I have news and I don't know how to tell you."
Her face immediately fell. "Just tell me," she said.
"We're leaving a year early," I said, and then we both started crying. "Are you angry with me?" I asked.
"Of course I'm not," she said, and then we sobbed for a while.
I told Tonya on the phone and she was surprisingly calm, but then she told me later that's what PAs are trained for, and that she'd scrapped her work for the afternoon and sat on her porch, watching the sky.
Michelle looked me straight it the eye. "Why?" she asked, and I explained, and nobody slept well for a while, especially because others we loved received notice, too. It seemed that with one fell swoop our lovely, beautiful community had been mangled.
But, as I so often told Martin, big powerful people can only take so much away from you. They can make you move and shake up your world but they can't change what's deeply true about you--and here, buckle up for a Disney moment--they can't take away your love for one another. Our community poured more generously than ever into our preparations to leave. From the time our house went on the market, it was under contract in two weeks. Care for our children (my family in Washington) was already in place, so we made two trips across the US, one with the children and then another--just Martin and me--with our very pared-down possessions in tow.
I have a few favorite memories of leaving. One is the night that Martin was gone doing a two-week job in Kentucky right before our first house-showing. Our friends turned up just in time and we worked on our massive yard for hours, cleaning, trimming, mowing, tidying and tying up trash while our children played. Then when twilight finally began settling in, just before the fireflies began to prick the darkness that collects down at the Black Walnut tree, we all sat in the yard and drank wine together. Michelle's husband, Noah, said, "This is a beautiful piece of land. I'd jump at it if I were looking to buy."
"It's like a park," I agreed. "Maybe we'll stay here forever." And then I laughed--a good belly laugh, not a thin, bitter laugh--because we weren't staying forever. Our move had been decided, and for those of us who were staying behind. . .well, nobody stays anywhere forever, do they?
And that's what it is when you really love a group of people. Grief turns easily to work and work together yields laughter, and joy, too. And you take that with you wherever you go.
We began to think about leaving. How do I begin to describe the mixture of emotions that accompanied our choice to pack up one year early? Elation, grief, a dogged determination to work hard and quickly, dread, hope. . . .
The worst part was telling our community. I thought we'd wait for a few days until details began to settle more quickly but I couldn't stand it. I'm a terrible secret-keeper generally--secrets (unless they're pleasant ones, delicious to hide away until a joyful revealing) crush me like a cider press, work me like gears, until I yield them up. And so the day after we reached home, Sally came over and I felt as if I would crack in two if I didn't tell her and get it over with.
You must understand that Sally and I have seen each other every day for the past five or six years. Beatrix reminds me if I forget ("I want to go to Will's--her best buddy ever--house!") but there's not much chance I could forget a constant source of sanity, irreverent humor, and tender compassion that comes in the form of my friend Sal. She kept my life in order, reminding me of forms that were due, snack times I promised to provide and would have missed, children I forgot to pick up at preschool, and she told me the truth when it needed telling. One especially kid and cleaning and monotonous morning I doubled over on her floor in tears: Surely there's more to life than this! I cried. . .she consoled me and then she sent me downstairs to run on her treadmill, which did me a world of good.
We were not of the mall-crawl moms. We did the occasional lap around our local Walmart in the winter when all was dreary and there was no other place to go, but our days subsisted of cups of tea and library trips and watching her son, Will, dress in Bea's pink pjs and Bea dress in Will's cars pjs. Dressing in each other's pjs was an especially highlight for our kids and they usually got busy doing just that the moment they stepped over the other's threshold.
When I was gone on the west coast during our dear friend, Nancy's passing, Sally sat with Nancy every day, rubbing her back and keeping up a flow of cheer that I wished I had been there to help provide. I'll never forget how she told me that she was there for both of us, and when I arrived home, too late to say goodbye to Nancy in person, we cried and laughed and ate and then we cleaned Nancy's room together. We cleaned each other's kitchens, cooked together, huffed up hills, red-faced and cursing, to try to lose a little winter weight. She drove me on endless interviews through the winding roads of Greene County and I believe I probably owe her about a thousand dollars in gas. She was my companion through the crazy, bizarre, hilarious, and trying young-children days. Our families knew each other in the daily sort of way families used to and I have yet to meet more generous, sacrificial people. We made it together until our children were in preschool, and for that I am grateful.
But I was the luckiest of all women, for I had other dear friends, too, who bound me up day after day and filled my life with the peculiar scents of their personalities and. . .also somewhat irreverent humor (there's a link here--you can't make it through parenthood without somewhat wicked friends). Tonya is a bad-ass farm girl who butchers her own chickens and smacks rabid possums upside the head with flashlights. She lives up on a ridge in Greene County and manages a passel of chickens, two cats, two daughters, endless laundry (of course she hangs it all up to dry on a quarter-mile laundry line), a rotating schedule of canning and preserving and freezing, an enormous garden, a part-time P.A. career, and punctual thank-you notes and social events. She also home-schools and hunts.
I spent one lovely evening with her up in a tree blind. I was there to record the experience (the sound of a stream, the autumn colors, the smell of leaves) and she was there to blow the brains out a doe. That evening, I left her crashing into the dense undergrowth in her orange vest, a rifle under her arm. I am not joshing you. Tonya's from good, work-til-you-bleed Mennonite stock and her house and yard is always neat as a pin. You would think all of this would equal a totally crazed, secretly bitter woman, but it doesn't. I love spending time with Tonya. She's ruthlessly honest about herself and her life. I am about to scream, she will tell me on the phone. Do you think it's too early for Kahlua? Needless to say one of my favorite things to do with Tonya (and her dear husband John) is drink and eat late into the evening until I almost feel sick but mostly feel blissful and sated.
Then there's Michelle, a ravishing beauty who, on her first visit to our house, sat down fully clothed on our homemade slip-in-slide and scooted down our hill to the bottom. When I first met her at a University picnic, a fly-accompanied affair where I usually smile at people until my jaw aches, I felt that instant draw that I will occasionally feel with a potential dear friend. My mother describes the feeling as souls leaping toward each other. I dropped off a bouquet of herbs at her house and we--and our families--were wonderful friends from then on. It was with them that we fixed homemade truck balls to the back of Sally and her husband, Kevin's car, and it was with her that I heard the most revolting stories of her PA experience. I oft liked to ask her: What is the grossest thing you did today? I liked affirming my choice never to dabble in any of the medical professions. She took Sal and me to New York City, showing us how to move with alacrity through the subway and sharing a steaming cup of hot chocolate spiked with cayenne. The only time she left us in that metropolis was to duck into a disappointingly-well-lit palm reader's to do a little research about how palm reading is done. Sal and I stood outside, shivering and watching. Maybe there's more of an art to it generally, but mostly it was a useless counseling session where Michelle was informed she'd be happy for the rest of her life. And so I hope she will be.
There was Nancy's precious family; her children who I'd promised Nancy I'd love and care for, most specifically, her daughter Catherine, who spent much of her time at our house and had become a fourth daughter to me, bound up in my heart with my love for Nancy and my trust that I had been in the right place at the right time to wrap up Catherine in tenderness. I couldn't understand why the non-tenure had happened, why we were being moved on from a place that seemed, for all purposes, like a place we were needed.
And there were more good women and men and children who wove our lives up into a fabulously diverse, wonderful rope of goodness that kept us truly safe.
So that morning I sat with Sally on the porch as our kids ran from inside the house down the stairs and back again with brimming cups of water (they were making a pond or something) and I said, "I have news and I don't know how to tell you."
Her face immediately fell. "Just tell me," she said.
"We're leaving a year early," I said, and then we both started crying. "Are you angry with me?" I asked.
"Of course I'm not," she said, and then we sobbed for a while.
I told Tonya on the phone and she was surprisingly calm, but then she told me later that's what PAs are trained for, and that she'd scrapped her work for the afternoon and sat on her porch, watching the sky.
Michelle looked me straight it the eye. "Why?" she asked, and I explained, and nobody slept well for a while, especially because others we loved received notice, too. It seemed that with one fell swoop our lovely, beautiful community had been mangled.
But, as I so often told Martin, big powerful people can only take so much away from you. They can make you move and shake up your world but they can't change what's deeply true about you--and here, buckle up for a Disney moment--they can't take away your love for one another. Our community poured more generously than ever into our preparations to leave. From the time our house went on the market, it was under contract in two weeks. Care for our children (my family in Washington) was already in place, so we made two trips across the US, one with the children and then another--just Martin and me--with our very pared-down possessions in tow.
I have a few favorite memories of leaving. One is the night that Martin was gone doing a two-week job in Kentucky right before our first house-showing. Our friends turned up just in time and we worked on our massive yard for hours, cleaning, trimming, mowing, tidying and tying up trash while our children played. Then when twilight finally began settling in, just before the fireflies began to prick the darkness that collects down at the Black Walnut tree, we all sat in the yard and drank wine together. Michelle's husband, Noah, said, "This is a beautiful piece of land. I'd jump at it if I were looking to buy."
"It's like a park," I agreed. "Maybe we'll stay here forever." And then I laughed--a good belly laugh, not a thin, bitter laugh--because we weren't staying forever. Our move had been decided, and for those of us who were staying behind. . .well, nobody stays anywhere forever, do they?
And that's what it is when you really love a group of people. Grief turns easily to work and work together yields laughter, and joy, too. And you take that with you wherever you go.
Monday, September 10, 2012
It strikes me that perhaps I should give a brief overview of the events of the past few months. In many ways, it seems as if magic has dropped us in this little red house, trimmed in wisteria, just a walk away from the water. On clear days the Olympics, framed by cedars, rise dark above the bright glimmer of Poulsbo's harbor. . .but that is for later.
Here, on this page, at least for a while, I am still at Wazoo Farm, though that beloved, rambling, hard-won old house and yard belongs now to two young women, who, on their free time, have been refinishing the floors and doing who-knows-what. . .there was always another job, or two, or six, waiting. So let me back up: it's early-June, and a hot early-June it is, too.
As most of you know, in a series of most unfortunate, rather awful events that had nothing to do with his excellent work or much-loved reputation, Martin did not receive tenure, and this signalled to us the beginning of an end. As some of his beloved colleagues began to lose their jobs as well, we realized that the University was taking a road we could never, ever walk (at this point, the decision had been made for us anyway, so in a way, that was a great relief). It became harder and harder to live in a town where we had invested everything with feeling that our departure, and the sale of our house, and all the work that leaving such a life would entail (mentally and physically) was imminent. Indeed it hung over us like a great heavy cloud.
We also realized that Martin's "sabbatical" year, for which we'd been tentatively planning, was suddenly upon us: a full year, at full pay, without any teaching obligations. We'd talked of travel and spending time near family; now there was no promise of work at the other end--so why not have the adventure we'd been dreaming of?
We came to all these conclusions, at the same time, silently and independently, on a hike in the mountains of West Virginia. The weather had been utterly sweltering and our lovely old home had no air-conditioning. Every time I looked out the window at our garden I despised it and all the work it entailed; it was so longer ours, it seemed, but we were still responsible for readying it--and the whole house--for someone else. We'd planned, of course, on pouring the next twenty years into it; now we had a year.
Our house was bursting with house guests, one of whom was in a life-changing crisis. A woman had verbally abused us on our front doorstep and threatened us and the police had awakened us one morning at one o'clock. (That's a whole story unto itself). We hadn't spent any quality time with our children in goodness knows how long and we felt unbraided and unravelled. So we escaped. We packed our car and drove up into the mountains and stayed in a little forest-service cabin, our first family vacation in what seemed like years. I hadn't been able to do any work so I planned to pack my laptop and squeeze in some good writing time, but Martin was adamant: no technology. No computer. No phone. Only a few games, our swimming suits, and groceries.
The first evening, after unpacking, Martin took the girls down to the swimming pool. The evening was cool and I searched around under the maples and oaks for kindling. Then I built a fire, sat back, and stared at the flames. Inside I felt a great knot, one that I'd felt looping and tightening in February, when Martin received his letter, finally beginning to loosen. I hadn't known it was there. I fixed a simple dinner in the tiny kitchen; I made the beds in the two rooms. Everything smelt of wood and woodsmoke. There was no noise. The girls came home, happy and flushed, and soon we were eating together around the chunky, awkward wooden table. We played a game and drank hot chocolate. That night I read a book silently with Martin in front of the fire.
I realized I hadn't spent such a simple, wonderful evening with my family in many months. Our house, our schedules, our hearts and minds--they had been full and frantic, so good and blessed, a basket always overflowing, that this evening felt almost ascetic, as if we'd walked out of a bizarre and fabulous and noisy carnival into a monk's cell.
The next morning we hiked together. The day was overcast, the path sylvan and full of wonder. We meandered around deep seas of green moss and gnarled, old roots that tumbled and twisted over each other. Here and there we found smooth, grey rocks balanced on top of each other in piles, and it seemed to us that other-worldly creatures, not hikers, had stacked them there. A wooden bridge curved over a clear sandy bank, crisscrossed by a clear stream. At the turning-about point, an impossibly large boulder balanced on a tiny rock. Then, at the very end of our hike, we found a thousand piles of zen rocks, all balanced perfectly. We stacked our own. Martin and both knew--independently--exactly what we must do.
On the way back to our cabin, I looked at Martin. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said in a low voice. I didn't want the children to hear.
"I think I am," he said.
Sure enough, on the way home as the children slept, we began to plan our departure. It would be a quick, easy escape from all the heartbreak but it would be a tearing wrench to leave our community, whom we loved as our own family, behind. But the more we spoke, the more we realized that a flight northwest, thousands of miles away and without a long term job waiting for us, was an inexorable reality. For our family, for ourselves, for reasons we couldn't even articulate. We'd been planning to spend our lives invested in one place; we'd been released from those plans; we felt God's loving but insistent boot in our rears and felt the wind from an open door. Take as little as you can and leave as fast as you can. Go. You're released from all this goodness and heartache; there is new good waiting for you. Go.
Here, on this page, at least for a while, I am still at Wazoo Farm, though that beloved, rambling, hard-won old house and yard belongs now to two young women, who, on their free time, have been refinishing the floors and doing who-knows-what. . .there was always another job, or two, or six, waiting. So let me back up: it's early-June, and a hot early-June it is, too.
As most of you know, in a series of most unfortunate, rather awful events that had nothing to do with his excellent work or much-loved reputation, Martin did not receive tenure, and this signalled to us the beginning of an end. As some of his beloved colleagues began to lose their jobs as well, we realized that the University was taking a road we could never, ever walk (at this point, the decision had been made for us anyway, so in a way, that was a great relief). It became harder and harder to live in a town where we had invested everything with feeling that our departure, and the sale of our house, and all the work that leaving such a life would entail (mentally and physically) was imminent. Indeed it hung over us like a great heavy cloud.
We also realized that Martin's "sabbatical" year, for which we'd been tentatively planning, was suddenly upon us: a full year, at full pay, without any teaching obligations. We'd talked of travel and spending time near family; now there was no promise of work at the other end--so why not have the adventure we'd been dreaming of?
We came to all these conclusions, at the same time, silently and independently, on a hike in the mountains of West Virginia. The weather had been utterly sweltering and our lovely old home had no air-conditioning. Every time I looked out the window at our garden I despised it and all the work it entailed; it was so longer ours, it seemed, but we were still responsible for readying it--and the whole house--for someone else. We'd planned, of course, on pouring the next twenty years into it; now we had a year.
Our house was bursting with house guests, one of whom was in a life-changing crisis. A woman had verbally abused us on our front doorstep and threatened us and the police had awakened us one morning at one o'clock. (That's a whole story unto itself). We hadn't spent any quality time with our children in goodness knows how long and we felt unbraided and unravelled. So we escaped. We packed our car and drove up into the mountains and stayed in a little forest-service cabin, our first family vacation in what seemed like years. I hadn't been able to do any work so I planned to pack my laptop and squeeze in some good writing time, but Martin was adamant: no technology. No computer. No phone. Only a few games, our swimming suits, and groceries.
The first evening, after unpacking, Martin took the girls down to the swimming pool. The evening was cool and I searched around under the maples and oaks for kindling. Then I built a fire, sat back, and stared at the flames. Inside I felt a great knot, one that I'd felt looping and tightening in February, when Martin received his letter, finally beginning to loosen. I hadn't known it was there. I fixed a simple dinner in the tiny kitchen; I made the beds in the two rooms. Everything smelt of wood and woodsmoke. There was no noise. The girls came home, happy and flushed, and soon we were eating together around the chunky, awkward wooden table. We played a game and drank hot chocolate. That night I read a book silently with Martin in front of the fire.
I realized I hadn't spent such a simple, wonderful evening with my family in many months. Our house, our schedules, our hearts and minds--they had been full and frantic, so good and blessed, a basket always overflowing, that this evening felt almost ascetic, as if we'd walked out of a bizarre and fabulous and noisy carnival into a monk's cell.
The next morning we hiked together. The day was overcast, the path sylvan and full of wonder. We meandered around deep seas of green moss and gnarled, old roots that tumbled and twisted over each other. Here and there we found smooth, grey rocks balanced on top of each other in piles, and it seemed to us that other-worldly creatures, not hikers, had stacked them there. A wooden bridge curved over a clear sandy bank, crisscrossed by a clear stream. At the turning-about point, an impossibly large boulder balanced on a tiny rock. Then, at the very end of our hike, we found a thousand piles of zen rocks, all balanced perfectly. We stacked our own. Martin and both knew--independently--exactly what we must do.
On the way back to our cabin, I looked at Martin. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I said in a low voice. I didn't want the children to hear.
"I think I am," he said.
Sure enough, on the way home as the children slept, we began to plan our departure. It would be a quick, easy escape from all the heartbreak but it would be a tearing wrench to leave our community, whom we loved as our own family, behind. But the more we spoke, the more we realized that a flight northwest, thousands of miles away and without a long term job waiting for us, was an inexorable reality. For our family, for ourselves, for reasons we couldn't even articulate. We'd been planning to spend our lives invested in one place; we'd been released from those plans; we felt God's loving but insistent boot in our rears and felt the wind from an open door. Take as little as you can and leave as fast as you can. Go. You're released from all this goodness and heartache; there is new good waiting for you. Go.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Today, in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, I peeled and chopped tiny yellow apples, a crop the girls and I had piled into Bea's bike basket days before at our nearby communal orchard. I added peaches that were so ripe the skin slipped easily under a hot stream of water, and I broke them into a pot with my fingers. The girls scooped up a pile of windfalls from our own apple tree and I added them, too, still hard and green. As the sauce simmered and filled the house with a familiar heady scent, I thought of long mornings in Pennsylvania, a bushel of apples between my feet, bent over the peeler as I chatted with Nancy Thompson and we sipped tea. I thought of winding through roads swept with yellow leaves with my friend Tonya (or Sonya, as she appeared in my columns), on our way to the local apple and peach orchard.
I think, too, of a brilliant day when the sky was the color of my daughter's eyes, swinging myself up into an apple tree not far from town as Sally (or Sal, as she appeared in my columns) snapped photos of our children.
Our little house smelled wonderful and as my sister and brother-in-law, my cousin, my nieces and nephews and my own family spilled in the door from the chilly outdoors, I relished sharing it with them. This process--harvesting, cooking slowly, eating together--the smelling and the stirring, the sugaring and the spicing--all of it recorded my belonging in a new place.
Tonight, stepping out of a hot shower, I looked in the mirror and read much of my life on my body: a series of maps that trace my daughters' first growth as they stretched and pushed from inside my belly. I suddenly realized that each day in my life never feels truly finished unless I've processed it somehow, and as a writer, I do that by recording, by mapping. When life is busy, I write the stories in my mind in a quiet moment, but that feels incomplete. Settling myself here, then, must mean that I have to return to this place to find these words and share them with you.
Writers often advise their students to let a life-changing experience stew for a while. Walk around it slowly, smell it, taste it, let the flavors mingle. Then offer it up. I've waited for a few months now. We're well and truly moved, but so much of my soul lingers behind. How will I center myself in this new place? Write, write, write. It's time. Thanks for waiting.
"Wazoo Goes West" will wait as I find a way to leave "Notes From. . ." behind. Bodily, I left it some time ago, but the recording must still be done. I'll try for as long as I can stand it and then I'll move on.
I think, too, of a brilliant day when the sky was the color of my daughter's eyes, swinging myself up into an apple tree not far from town as Sally (or Sal, as she appeared in my columns) snapped photos of our children.
Our little house smelled wonderful and as my sister and brother-in-law, my cousin, my nieces and nephews and my own family spilled in the door from the chilly outdoors, I relished sharing it with them. This process--harvesting, cooking slowly, eating together--the smelling and the stirring, the sugaring and the spicing--all of it recorded my belonging in a new place.
Tonight, stepping out of a hot shower, I looked in the mirror and read much of my life on my body: a series of maps that trace my daughters' first growth as they stretched and pushed from inside my belly. I suddenly realized that each day in my life never feels truly finished unless I've processed it somehow, and as a writer, I do that by recording, by mapping. When life is busy, I write the stories in my mind in a quiet moment, but that feels incomplete. Settling myself here, then, must mean that I have to return to this place to find these words and share them with you.
Writers often advise their students to let a life-changing experience stew for a while. Walk around it slowly, smell it, taste it, let the flavors mingle. Then offer it up. I've waited for a few months now. We're well and truly moved, but so much of my soul lingers behind. How will I center myself in this new place? Write, write, write. It's time. Thanks for waiting.
"Wazoo Goes West" will wait as I find a way to leave "Notes From. . ." behind. Bodily, I left it some time ago, but the recording must still be done. I'll try for as long as I can stand it and then I'll move on.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
More to come, but for now, read my last column for the Observer-Reporter by clicking HERE.
Changes are imminent, transitions are afoot, and the end of chapter still needs to be written.
Changes are imminent, transitions are afoot, and the end of chapter still needs to be written.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Beatrix & Bouquet May 2012
Now, in the great tradition of "Beatrix and Bouquet Photos",
which I began shortly after Bea was born,
here are a few new ones:
The difference, now, of course, is that Bea is picking the bouquets. I used to lie her down or prop her up by the bouquets I arranged. Things have changed. Bea is the main supplier of freshly cut flowers for our house. She has an impeccable eye for color. Yesterday she brought in a bouquet compiled entirely of different shades of purple. . .beautiful.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Happy Land
I sat down hoping to share with you. But I'd prefer to share not my words, but my cookies. All the gingersnaps our friend and once-student Natalie (who is staying with us for a month or so) and the girls made, the vegan chocolate cake (safely covered on the back porch) for a dear friend and precious colleague of Martin's, and the banana bread waiting in its foil for breakfast tomorrow. These are my offerings for today. I have little to offer in the way of words but I have a lot to feed you.
So I'll clip another little e-mail that my mother wrote to Merry and let that suffice for this evening.
Grandaddy and I went to Happy Land this weekend. We went for a walk and ended up there…lot’s of slimy mossy green water with boats with duck heads that you pedal to make it go. It was lots of fun; it cost us about 30 cents to get in and another dollar to rent the boat. There were funny statues that we will send you pictures of.
Fancy a trip to Happy Land? It will only cost you a mere thirty cents, which doesn't seem like anything to us--but from my quick research, is far too expensive for most Burmese families to afford. If your daily wages are less than a dollar a day, Happy Land is not going to be on your agenda. I did find a photo HERE. Pretty crazy.
Martin and his father worked on our 3/4 acre today, mowing and weed-whacking until they could barely walk straight. But this last bit from my mother's e-mail certainly puts things into perspective:
Today I went a lovely long walk first thing in the morning, because it gets hot early in the day. There were lots of people cutting grass…all with scythes, long knives, no lawn mowers here. Can you imagine if your mom and dad had to cut your big yard that way? And then there were women wearing bamboo hats who squatted down with smaller knives and went inch by inch pulling up each weed in the lawn. They do that every day, all day long; they put kind of white paint on their faces so that the sun won’t turn their skin dark. I carried an umbrella even though it wasn’t raining, to shade me from the sun.
So I'll clip another little e-mail that my mother wrote to Merry and let that suffice for this evening.
Grandaddy and I went to Happy Land this weekend. We went for a walk and ended up there…lot’s of slimy mossy green water with boats with duck heads that you pedal to make it go. It was lots of fun; it cost us about 30 cents to get in and another dollar to rent the boat. There were funny statues that we will send you pictures of.
Fancy a trip to Happy Land? It will only cost you a mere thirty cents, which doesn't seem like anything to us--but from my quick research, is far too expensive for most Burmese families to afford. If your daily wages are less than a dollar a day, Happy Land is not going to be on your agenda. I did find a photo HERE. Pretty crazy.
Martin and his father worked on our 3/4 acre today, mowing and weed-whacking until they could barely walk straight. But this last bit from my mother's e-mail certainly puts things into perspective:
Today I went a lovely long walk first thing in the morning, because it gets hot early in the day. There were lots of people cutting grass…all with scythes, long knives, no lawn mowers here. Can you imagine if your mom and dad had to cut your big yard that way? And then there were women wearing bamboo hats who squatted down with smaller knives and went inch by inch pulling up each weed in the lawn. They do that every day, all day long; they put kind of white paint on their faces so that the sun won’t turn their skin dark. I carried an umbrella even though it wasn’t raining, to shade me from the sun.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Two hours of editing is nothing. Two hours of writing is even less. Sometimes I feel as if I could write for about twelve hours straight. For about twelve months straight. But, alas, and hallelujah too, school is almost over and soon my beautiful girls will be home with me. All day.
Right now I have, at the most, five minutes to scribble a blog post. Let me begin with Rilke's line, or the imperfect remembered version: "Though we strain against the deadening grip of daily necessity, we sense this mystery: all life is being lived. . ."
This morning, robin's song. Sunlight caught by curtain. A yellow butterfly among the climbing rose, just now bursting with deep pink blooms. Blue paths in a cloudy sky, the passing roar of cars outside, the hum of a lawnmower. All life is being lived, a million lives just outside in the garden, and so many more in widening circles from this one point, where Martin and I sit and record more unfolding life, the life of characters--fourth grade Maple Mullihan who must try to find her talent, must find the key to the locked door that leads to the extraordinary. Across from me, Martin ignites word after word on a blank white page, tending the many tiny flames that make a poem.
And now my minutes are up, and I must go and make myself presentable for the world, shake off the cloak that quiet writing wraps me in, put on my company face. Two hours, such a very short time.
Right now I have, at the most, five minutes to scribble a blog post. Let me begin with Rilke's line, or the imperfect remembered version: "Though we strain against the deadening grip of daily necessity, we sense this mystery: all life is being lived. . ."
This morning, robin's song. Sunlight caught by curtain. A yellow butterfly among the climbing rose, just now bursting with deep pink blooms. Blue paths in a cloudy sky, the passing roar of cars outside, the hum of a lawnmower. All life is being lived, a million lives just outside in the garden, and so many more in widening circles from this one point, where Martin and I sit and record more unfolding life, the life of characters--fourth grade Maple Mullihan who must try to find her talent, must find the key to the locked door that leads to the extraordinary. Across from me, Martin ignites word after word on a blank white page, tending the many tiny flames that make a poem.
And now my minutes are up, and I must go and make myself presentable for the world, shake off the cloak that quiet writing wraps me in, put on my company face. Two hours, such a very short time.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Perched on a Strand of Buddha's Hair
Picture from Wikipedia--The boulder is covered with gold leaves adorned by devotees. Read more about this amazing pagoda and its mythical story by clicking HERE.
From my parents in Myanmar:
I just heard a gecko revving up with his obnoxious call, kind of gargling at the first and then going into a loud, nasal geck-ooo, gecko; took me right back to our early days at Kamalganj. Inside our room we have a little tik tik lizard who chirrups occasionally. We traveled north from Yangon today to Mon State and got here a couple hours ago; I expected to drive up to a little hotel downtown on the main street, but instead we pulled up to an incredibly lovely “resort” in the middle of lush trees and flowers. We had driven through mile after mile of rubber plantations, and suddenly pulled into this wonderland.
Driving up to the resort, we drove through rubber trees, rows of papayas, lemon trees, and interestingly, pan vines…the leaves they wrap betal nuts in. The pan leaves and the nuts are slightly narcotic and a hot item all throughout Asia. The dining area is a large open veranda with a teak floor…you leave your shoes before stepping onto it. It is surrounded by bougainvillea, frangipani trees, banana plants and coconut trees with orchids growing out of their bark. The air is dense with sweet smells and almost dizzyingly exotic. The hotel isn’t what you’d think of as a 5 star place; the rooms are semi-attached at the top of the hill, each with a sweet little veranda with two heavy wooden chairs, where we sat and watched the wind rustle the coconut palms for as long as we dared as darkness fell (it’s a malarial area). Our room has a small airconditioning unit that barely cools the room, two dim lights and no mosquito nets . There is a TV but no reception.
~
~
Now it’s Monday afternoon. We ate fried rice and egg for breakfast and took off by 6:30 a.m. to see the local attraction; it’s a big one. The Kyaikhtiyo pagoda rests on an unlikely foundation; an unwieldy rock balanced crazily upon another rock on top of a mountain. It is at this site that Buddhism came into Burma, and it is their most revered site. To get there, you leave your car at the foot of the mountain, climb a wooden platform onto a flatbed truck fitted out with two x four benches, each about five inches wide, jammed in at one foot intervals. After jamming every single person that can possibly sit on this arrangement--Meredith was sitting with his legs splayed out because there simply wasn’t enough space between benches to accommodate his legs--the truck lurched off up the mountain.
It was a crazy, amusement park kind of ride for the next 25 minutes, the truck went as fast as it could around hairpin turns, bouncing over potholes and careening from side to side. Everyone in the back of the open truck gripped the person next to them, braced to offset the current turn as one collective body, a strategy that was pretty good except when we hit a pot hole everyone bounced into the air and came crashing down into new formations. Meredith was holding on to the low rail as he was on the outside and I was clinging to his leg so I wouldn’t smash the old man behind me. It was a very entertaining ride and incredibly beautiful, reminding me of the pictures I have seen of the heavy forests in Rwanda, with mist coming off the hills. I almost expected to see gorillas coming out of the trees.
When we got to the end of the line, there was still close to a mile to hike up a very steep incline that zigzagged to the top. We could see the golden pagoda in the distance and knew we had better get going, as it was only going to get hotter. I think that I was about as hot as I can ever remember being. To our astonishment, there were curious contraptions right out of old, old pictures; a reclining bamboo chair on two bamboo poles, carried by 4 porters. There were plenty of them and one attached itself to us, asking if we would like to ride. We declined repeatedly, but they patiently and discretely walked behind us, much like vultures who knew we would fall eventually. It was so hot and steep, the air so thick that we were streaming with perspiration, I in my long skirt that was prerequisite for this area.
Your dad takes blood pressure medicine that dehydrates him when he is in the sun, and it was clear that this was not going anywhere good. He began to get nauseous and dizzy and his vision was swimming. (it was about a constant 30-40 degree incline on a concrete road in the full sun with little shade. The temperature was probably in the mid-80’s as we began and became hotter as the day wore on. Dad really did not want to get into one of those chairs, but finally I persuaded him…I was afraid he was going to have heat stroke. He finally gave in and I DID NOT MAKE A JOKE OUT OF IT because he felt really bad. A staff member with us said she couldn’t go on and we finally persuaded her to take a chair as well. That left me, the government doctor and the driver and we took it carefully to the top.
There were lots of fancy buildings, one honoring the goddess who is believed to be looking after the mountain, and the pagoda, which is believed to be 2000 years old.
There were lots of fancy buildings, one honoring the goddess who is believed to be looking after the mountain, and the pagoda, which is believed to be 2000 years old.
When we all got to the bottom again around 11:30, we bought drinks and expected to be able to get on the truck and return to our car, but it turned out that the truck only went when it got full. So there we waited for nearly two hours.
~
~
Mom and Dad finally got back to their rooms, where they drank water all afternoon.
Friday, May 11, 2012
This afternoon I balanced two cups of tea and two gingersnaps on a little tray and managed to carry them, without spilling, to the red adirondacks under the birch trees. The birch trees! Queenly trees with fluttering skirts and sunlight dancing in each leaf. Or perhaps they're more like dancers with streamered tambourines. We are in love with them. We planted them six years ago and today we sat in their shade and drank our tea and talked about what is most important in our lives.
And it's not the trees, or the house, or the programs and classes Martin developed over the last seven years. And it's not our work, either, though we love it, and it's not our poems or stories or our small successes. What is most important for us are the people we love and transform by our love--and the people by whom we have been transformed. We pour ourselves and our work and our energy into people. The rest is important, but by contrast, the rest is temporal; it can blow away in one mighty gust of wind. And much of it has. Martin came home from cleaning out his office disconcerted and sad. I think it surprised him, how depressing it was. All his beautiful programs, the ones he envisioned and worked so hard for--the literary magazine, the open mics, the reading series, each class sculpted and labored over. And for what? he asked.
But the birch trees spoke to us with their music: It's not the programs themselves that matter; programs are for people. Programs inevitably disappear. But the impact they have on people, the ways they change those who experienced and participated--that is the lasting thing.
If we've been taught anything by all of this, one lesson driven home directly and mercilessly would be: very little is ours. I keep rehearsing it. I knew it, or thought I knew it. Now I know it even more. We are given gifts, we love them, we do our best with them, but they are not ultimately ours. Not even our writing really belongs to us; we are stewards of a poem, or a story, but we walk alongside them; we do not possess them, and by trying to possess any of it, we ruin all of it. I guess that rule goes for just about everything I can think of, including people--friends, spouses, children, parents. We must perpetually let go if we want to find the core of what really matters, if we want to hold tightly to what makes life real and miraculous and lasting.
We did some haiku with a bunch of fourth graders today, and that was healing: experience a moment; love it; let it go. Also healing was the fact that every haiku master we came across loved talking about bird droppings. Bird ---t in sake and on rice cakes. One haiku basically read: the happier the sparrow, the more he s---s all over you. (Insert appropriate word--not for young audiences). So when one fourth grader wrote about a seagull pooping on his potato chips at the beach, we said, Ah, welcome to the fold, young poet.
Haiku is the only writing assignment in college I ever got assigned a B for. I was crushed. I have been intimidated by haiku, probably since then. Apparently I stink at whittling a moment down to three, spare lines. That's Martin's cup of tea. Maybe I'll try it as a sort of spiritual discipline. Maybe you should. One freeing tip: what you heard in elementary school, that the lines must be 5 / 7 / 5 syllables--you can forget that tyranny. What you're looking for are three short, simple lines.
Birch leaf--
coin of sunshine on my shoulder
We drink tea all afternoon.
Oh, I'm still terrible. This will, perhaps,be a private exercise. (I just had to slip in the bit about drinking tea.) I think the fourth graders haikued me right under the table today.
And it's not the trees, or the house, or the programs and classes Martin developed over the last seven years. And it's not our work, either, though we love it, and it's not our poems or stories or our small successes. What is most important for us are the people we love and transform by our love--and the people by whom we have been transformed. We pour ourselves and our work and our energy into people. The rest is important, but by contrast, the rest is temporal; it can blow away in one mighty gust of wind. And much of it has. Martin came home from cleaning out his office disconcerted and sad. I think it surprised him, how depressing it was. All his beautiful programs, the ones he envisioned and worked so hard for--the literary magazine, the open mics, the reading series, each class sculpted and labored over. And for what? he asked.
But the birch trees spoke to us with their music: It's not the programs themselves that matter; programs are for people. Programs inevitably disappear. But the impact they have on people, the ways they change those who experienced and participated--that is the lasting thing.
If we've been taught anything by all of this, one lesson driven home directly and mercilessly would be: very little is ours. I keep rehearsing it. I knew it, or thought I knew it. Now I know it even more. We are given gifts, we love them, we do our best with them, but they are not ultimately ours. Not even our writing really belongs to us; we are stewards of a poem, or a story, but we walk alongside them; we do not possess them, and by trying to possess any of it, we ruin all of it. I guess that rule goes for just about everything I can think of, including people--friends, spouses, children, parents. We must perpetually let go if we want to find the core of what really matters, if we want to hold tightly to what makes life real and miraculous and lasting.
We did some haiku with a bunch of fourth graders today, and that was healing: experience a moment; love it; let it go. Also healing was the fact that every haiku master we came across loved talking about bird droppings. Bird ---t in sake and on rice cakes. One haiku basically read: the happier the sparrow, the more he s---s all over you. (Insert appropriate word--not for young audiences). So when one fourth grader wrote about a seagull pooping on his potato chips at the beach, we said, Ah, welcome to the fold, young poet.
Haiku is the only writing assignment in college I ever got assigned a B for. I was crushed. I have been intimidated by haiku, probably since then. Apparently I stink at whittling a moment down to three, spare lines. That's Martin's cup of tea. Maybe I'll try it as a sort of spiritual discipline. Maybe you should. One freeing tip: what you heard in elementary school, that the lines must be 5 / 7 / 5 syllables--you can forget that tyranny. What you're looking for are three short, simple lines.
Birch leaf--
coin of sunshine on my shoulder
We drink tea all afternoon.
Oh, I'm still terrible. This will, perhaps,be a private exercise. (I just had to slip in the bit about drinking tea.) I think the fourth graders haikued me right under the table today.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Apparently I've become a weeding weakling. A season of sitting on my bottom and writing and doing little else has rendered my wrists shaky and my legs jello. After only thirty minutes of weeding. Ach!
We were sad to see Maurice Sendak had died. He would have been pleased to hear Merry, at age three, recite Where the Wild Things Are complete with sound effects. This morning we sat in the sun room and drank our third cup of tea as Martin read his obituary out loud. I will read Micky in the Night Kitchen with just a twinge of sadness from now on.
The house smells of baking sweet potatoes. Yesterday, before rain filled the night with a wonderful, healing song, Martin mowed a path through the garden so now at least I can see the blue haze of speedwell and the white azalea petals among all the weeds.
Martin is packing up hundreds of poetry books and bringing home lamps and rugs and pictures and all that has filled his office for seven years. It is a mercy that the Fine Arts building is slotted for work this summer due to asbestos, because he is only one of a great crowd packing up their offices and filling the elevator with boxes. It feels better to be part of a crowd surging outwards than one lone fellow, the one who was not tenured, stumbling down the stairs under a tower of books. Of course he'll use the elevator. It just seems sadder to stumble down the stairs.
I am filling the basement with boxes and furniture, as well, for the first of a series of clean-outs that will eventually end with a pod, or a moving van, or the back of the pick-up, if need be.
Merry loves to chat about where we might live next, especially the house we might occupy. Finally, after a long discussion one morning, I said, "Well, maybe we'll just sell everything and live in our car."
Merry made a face. "That might be a little too small," she said.
"You can have your own seat," I pressed. "All to yourself. Some people live in their cars."
"I don't think they live in a Subaru," she said, "Not a family of five. Besides," she continued, "Can you imagine what would happen to me at school when my teacher asked me to draw a picture of myself and my house? It would be me, in front of a blue Subaru!"
Ach. So scratch the car. And scratch the almost-acre garden. What were we thinking? We're not big garden people, I've decided. Just enough. It will become my new mantra. Just enough, and maybe, some days, a little more.
We were sad to see Maurice Sendak had died. He would have been pleased to hear Merry, at age three, recite Where the Wild Things Are complete with sound effects. This morning we sat in the sun room and drank our third cup of tea as Martin read his obituary out loud. I will read Micky in the Night Kitchen with just a twinge of sadness from now on.
The house smells of baking sweet potatoes. Yesterday, before rain filled the night with a wonderful, healing song, Martin mowed a path through the garden so now at least I can see the blue haze of speedwell and the white azalea petals among all the weeds.
Martin is packing up hundreds of poetry books and bringing home lamps and rugs and pictures and all that has filled his office for seven years. It is a mercy that the Fine Arts building is slotted for work this summer due to asbestos, because he is only one of a great crowd packing up their offices and filling the elevator with boxes. It feels better to be part of a crowd surging outwards than one lone fellow, the one who was not tenured, stumbling down the stairs under a tower of books. Of course he'll use the elevator. It just seems sadder to stumble down the stairs.
I am filling the basement with boxes and furniture, as well, for the first of a series of clean-outs that will eventually end with a pod, or a moving van, or the back of the pick-up, if need be.
Merry loves to chat about where we might live next, especially the house we might occupy. Finally, after a long discussion one morning, I said, "Well, maybe we'll just sell everything and live in our car."
Merry made a face. "That might be a little too small," she said.
"You can have your own seat," I pressed. "All to yourself. Some people live in their cars."
"I don't think they live in a Subaru," she said, "Not a family of five. Besides," she continued, "Can you imagine what would happen to me at school when my teacher asked me to draw a picture of myself and my house? It would be me, in front of a blue Subaru!"
Ach. So scratch the car. And scratch the almost-acre garden. What were we thinking? We're not big garden people, I've decided. Just enough. It will become my new mantra. Just enough, and maybe, some days, a little more.
Friday, May 4, 2012
I just finished writing an e-mail to a friend: The plates of the earth shift; another crack appears. Then you have to wait for everything to shift back again. That is what being a parent of three children is like. But you don't have to be a parent to feel an earthquake, of course.
I see people on porches with their children, planting spring gardens, walking around houses and yards that have been theirs for twenty or more years. I wonder that they have been allowed to be rooted. What is the magic formula that gives so many in this town a heritage of being, of family and friends, of land and home?
And then I wonder if that's what I really want. Deep roots in one place. But at the expense of what? Adventure? Opportunities? Courage?
And of course I'm speaking for nobody but myself; of course being in one place does not have to limit your life. But I told Martin that I should have known I wouldn't have been allowed to stay here for twenty years. The curse, or the blessing, or the fact of existence, is on my head like an invisible crown: this woman is part of the wandering crowd, heritage of fleet feet, of gathering and walking on.
Nobody in my family has ever lived in one place for over seven years. Seven years is our family's biblical number. And after seven years it was ordained that they should take up their children and travel. . .I lived for six in Bangladesh and seven in Kenya; those two periods (and now this one), are the rivers that connect the many tributaries: Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Montana, Iowa, Illinois again, Texas. . . .
It all takes a great amount of energy. But why was I surprised? I'm actually breaking a record by soon beginning on my eighth year in Pennsylvania next year; part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eight years? Two shy of a decade? Surely that's more than a child of my heritage can ask for.
In the meanwhile I'm realizing afresh that what I said a year ago is true. I can simply not get my house clean or my possessions streamlined without moving. And that's the task I'm pursuing. When it comes down to it, there are only a few things in my house I really want. The rest could go up in smoke and I would never miss them. Martin's Grandmother's quilt, my good Wustof knife, a few photographs. My pillow, a few books. And now is my chance.
I wish I could gather my favorite things from the garden, though: the peonies, just opening, the aspen trees, so beautiful and delicate, the purple-headed alliums.
But they are, by nature, rooted things, and belong where they are.
As I wrote years ago in an erstwhile book: Home is something I carry inside myself. I can encounter home in the face of a friend, my mother's hands, the smell of a favorite book, in a peony opening its petals, no matter where I am. Another mantra. It remains true, even after endless transitions.
I see people on porches with their children, planting spring gardens, walking around houses and yards that have been theirs for twenty or more years. I wonder that they have been allowed to be rooted. What is the magic formula that gives so many in this town a heritage of being, of family and friends, of land and home?
And then I wonder if that's what I really want. Deep roots in one place. But at the expense of what? Adventure? Opportunities? Courage?
And of course I'm speaking for nobody but myself; of course being in one place does not have to limit your life. But I told Martin that I should have known I wouldn't have been allowed to stay here for twenty years. The curse, or the blessing, or the fact of existence, is on my head like an invisible crown: this woman is part of the wandering crowd, heritage of fleet feet, of gathering and walking on.
Nobody in my family has ever lived in one place for over seven years. Seven years is our family's biblical number. And after seven years it was ordained that they should take up their children and travel. . .I lived for six in Bangladesh and seven in Kenya; those two periods (and now this one), are the rivers that connect the many tributaries: Illinois, North Carolina, Georgia, Montana, Iowa, Illinois again, Texas. . . .
It all takes a great amount of energy. But why was I surprised? I'm actually breaking a record by soon beginning on my eighth year in Pennsylvania next year; part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eight years? Two shy of a decade? Surely that's more than a child of my heritage can ask for.
In the meanwhile I'm realizing afresh that what I said a year ago is true. I can simply not get my house clean or my possessions streamlined without moving. And that's the task I'm pursuing. When it comes down to it, there are only a few things in my house I really want. The rest could go up in smoke and I would never miss them. Martin's Grandmother's quilt, my good Wustof knife, a few photographs. My pillow, a few books. And now is my chance.
I wish I could gather my favorite things from the garden, though: the peonies, just opening, the aspen trees, so beautiful and delicate, the purple-headed alliums.
But they are, by nature, rooted things, and belong where they are.
As I wrote years ago in an erstwhile book: Home is something I carry inside myself. I can encounter home in the face of a friend, my mother's hands, the smell of a favorite book, in a peony opening its petals, no matter where I am. Another mantra. It remains true, even after endless transitions.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Daddy's Garden
This month, if you flip open the covers of the national children's magazine, Ladybug, you'll find a story called "Daddy's Garden" about a gentle Daddy who finds a snake in the family garden. A girl named Merry narrates the story, and there are three more characters--Elspeth, her little sister, the baby, and Mommy, who tends to be a bit cautious around animals.
Coincidence? Happily, no. Though I've seen my work published many times in other venues, receiving my copy of Ladybug was, by far, the most satisfying and rewarding.
Here are a few of the photos that accompanied the first draft of the story, which I wrote as a birthday gift for Martin many years ago (check out Martin's long locks). You can visit Ladybug's website by clicking HERE, though you won't be able to see the gorgeous illustrations (the Daddy character is especially handsome) by talented artist Betsy Wallin (visit her website HERE) unless you buy the magazine. I had no idea what illustrations would accompany my text, but when I opened the magazine (breath held) I was ecstatic to see seven beautiful watercolors.
Monday, April 30, 2012
This last Friday, Martin taught his last class ever at Waynesburg University. Seven years of dedication to his students, to scholarship, to building programs. Seven years of packed schedules with committee work and envisioning a better place and working long hours to create community. Seven years of parenting alone when I had to so he could devote himself to his work. Seven years of students in our home, for dinners and tea and long nights of discussion.
And life goes on.
When he came home, sad and resigned, we strapped Bea in the car and drove to Morgantown, WV for sushimi and miso soup. We ate with three different sets of people over the weekend, including a lovely, long dinner with a few students. We wrapped Chinese dumplings and Martin cooked up three different stir fries. We drank lots of tea. We spent a wonderful afternoon with two beautiful people yesterday in their log cabin, decorated with artwork from over fifty years of world travel. We sat under huge poplar trees while the girls caught salamanders in a pond.
And life goes on.
Today we prepare Martin's poetry manuscript for half a dozen contests. We'll lick the envelopes and send them off. Hoping.
Now this remains: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
And what can we do but fight to love all of it, to pull people into love, to accept that we too are loved.
There's a kitchen full of breakfast dishes, a floor scattered with blocks, laundry, showers to take, manuscripts to compile and post. Another day, full of dayliness. Maybe a miracle or two if I open my eyes a little wider. Maybe. Whoever compiled my personality in the dark before I was born must have had themselves a good chuckle: She'll still be looking for magic when she's thirty-four, when her husband's out of work in a year and she's gained ten extra pounds over the winter.
Or maybe that was the blessing laid on me at birth.
I'll take the latter today, the invisible train headed for someplace good. With a flask of tea along, of course. And the whole lot of you for company.
And life goes on.
When he came home, sad and resigned, we strapped Bea in the car and drove to Morgantown, WV for sushimi and miso soup. We ate with three different sets of people over the weekend, including a lovely, long dinner with a few students. We wrapped Chinese dumplings and Martin cooked up three different stir fries. We drank lots of tea. We spent a wonderful afternoon with two beautiful people yesterday in their log cabin, decorated with artwork from over fifty years of world travel. We sat under huge poplar trees while the girls caught salamanders in a pond.
And life goes on.
Today we prepare Martin's poetry manuscript for half a dozen contests. We'll lick the envelopes and send them off. Hoping.
Now this remains: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
And what can we do but fight to love all of it, to pull people into love, to accept that we too are loved.
There's a kitchen full of breakfast dishes, a floor scattered with blocks, laundry, showers to take, manuscripts to compile and post. Another day, full of dayliness. Maybe a miracle or two if I open my eyes a little wider. Maybe. Whoever compiled my personality in the dark before I was born must have had themselves a good chuckle: She'll still be looking for magic when she's thirty-four, when her husband's out of work in a year and she's gained ten extra pounds over the winter.
Or maybe that was the blessing laid on me at birth.
I'll take the latter today, the invisible train headed for someplace good. With a flask of tea along, of course. And the whole lot of you for company.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
To our students over the past seven years:
With exam week right around the corner and the reality of the end of this year coming into focus, I wanted to write you all a letter that communicates just a little of our gratitude to you all.
This has been a good place for us. We hope and trust that it has been (and for many of you will continue to be) a good place for you too, a place of learning and growth in understanding—and most importantly, a place where you find safety and love as you continue to become who you have been made to be: unique, loved, imaginative, powerful with words and exacting in expression.
Please know that it is with deep sorrow and gratitude that we say goodbye to each of you. I have not had the privilege of knowing most of you as well as Martin, my husband, but let me speak for him: he has felt deeply honored to be in your company, to teach and to know each of you. His years here were busy beyond my expectation, but that is because he was fully dedicated and genuinely concerned about each of you as scholars, writers, and people. He has loved living among you, teaching you and growing as a teacher and as a person.
These years have been years of learning for us. Many of you come from hard backgrounds and situations that we have never encountered. Whether we are from easy or difficult backgrounds, writing gives us a voice to claim our histories and begin to understand not only ourselves but those around us. You all give Martin and me courage as writers to continue to seek our own voices and to articulate all that is ours.
I know you are all from very diverse spiritual backgrounds and convictions, and that has made our experience here richer. As Mennonite Christians, Martin and I believe that we are charged to find God’s presence in everyone and everything and to value each part of God’s creation as good, charged with God’s grandeur and filled with God’s light, even if that light is very hard to see. As writers, we believe that we are called to engage with every part of life, ugly and beautiful, difficult and easy. We hope for humility and for wisdom, but if we take Jesus’ life and teachings seriously, we must extend our hand in greeting to everyone; with God’s help, we must wrap our imagination even around darkness, trusting that God is there, too. This is a hard task, and one that I continue to approach with trembling. But Jesus charges us not to be pleasant and uncontroversial; on the contrary, his teachings are hard. They point us to a suffering world.
In this way we have not sought to retaliate or even to seek justice. We do this not from a place of weakness but from a place of love. As followers of Jesus and as artists who seek to create and not to destroy, we feel that we must seek peace and reconciliation wherever we can, even—and especially—when it is difficult. Many battles are worth fighting--battles for ideals and values and vulnerable people. None of those precious things have been destroyed for us--they can't be taken from us so easily. As we prepare to leave, we are filled with a deep sense of gratitude for our community here, a place that has fed us with unexpected grace. You are, and have been, an important part of that community. Your creativity and courage leaves us speechless. Our daughters have enjoyed having “the students” in our house and Martin has looked forward to each year of interacting with you with joy.
We wish for you the same sense of abiding peace that we also seek, one that is stronger than anger or grief, a peace that floods into every part of your being, points you to all that has been truly wonderful and gives you the clarity to choose a future filled with hope--and yes, a lot of writing.
Thank you for all you have done to make our sojourn here—a much treasured chapter in our lives—so precious. We are thankful.
With exam week right around the corner and the reality of the end of this year coming into focus, I wanted to write you all a letter that communicates just a little of our gratitude to you all.
This has been a good place for us. We hope and trust that it has been (and for many of you will continue to be) a good place for you too, a place of learning and growth in understanding—and most importantly, a place where you find safety and love as you continue to become who you have been made to be: unique, loved, imaginative, powerful with words and exacting in expression.
Please know that it is with deep sorrow and gratitude that we say goodbye to each of you. I have not had the privilege of knowing most of you as well as Martin, my husband, but let me speak for him: he has felt deeply honored to be in your company, to teach and to know each of you. His years here were busy beyond my expectation, but that is because he was fully dedicated and genuinely concerned about each of you as scholars, writers, and people. He has loved living among you, teaching you and growing as a teacher and as a person.
These years have been years of learning for us. Many of you come from hard backgrounds and situations that we have never encountered. Whether we are from easy or difficult backgrounds, writing gives us a voice to claim our histories and begin to understand not only ourselves but those around us. You all give Martin and me courage as writers to continue to seek our own voices and to articulate all that is ours.
I know you are all from very diverse spiritual backgrounds and convictions, and that has made our experience here richer. As Mennonite Christians, Martin and I believe that we are charged to find God’s presence in everyone and everything and to value each part of God’s creation as good, charged with God’s grandeur and filled with God’s light, even if that light is very hard to see. As writers, we believe that we are called to engage with every part of life, ugly and beautiful, difficult and easy. We hope for humility and for wisdom, but if we take Jesus’ life and teachings seriously, we must extend our hand in greeting to everyone; with God’s help, we must wrap our imagination even around darkness, trusting that God is there, too. This is a hard task, and one that I continue to approach with trembling. But Jesus charges us not to be pleasant and uncontroversial; on the contrary, his teachings are hard. They point us to a suffering world.
In this way we have not sought to retaliate or even to seek justice. We do this not from a place of weakness but from a place of love. As followers of Jesus and as artists who seek to create and not to destroy, we feel that we must seek peace and reconciliation wherever we can, even—and especially—when it is difficult. Many battles are worth fighting--battles for ideals and values and vulnerable people. None of those precious things have been destroyed for us--they can't be taken from us so easily. As we prepare to leave, we are filled with a deep sense of gratitude for our community here, a place that has fed us with unexpected grace. You are, and have been, an important part of that community. Your creativity and courage leaves us speechless. Our daughters have enjoyed having “the students” in our house and Martin has looked forward to each year of interacting with you with joy.
We wish for you the same sense of abiding peace that we also seek, one that is stronger than anger or grief, a peace that floods into every part of your being, points you to all that has been truly wonderful and gives you the clarity to choose a future filled with hope--and yes, a lot of writing.
Thank you for all you have done to make our sojourn here—a much treasured chapter in our lives—so precious. We are thankful.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Last evening I sat on the porch swing, looking out over our yard through layers of green: the climbing rose arching against the brick of our porch, then the lilacs, bursting with first purple blooms, then the peach tree's long fish-shaped leaves; behind that the flutter of the quaking aspens, lime green against white bark, and finally across the street, the velvet backdrop of a purple plum. Beatrix played at my feet with a pile of sticks and rocks, building a house. The weather was perfect, all was beautiful, beautiful, and I found myself just able to enjoy it.
In the last few days I've realized that my joy, a pool I've always bathed myself in, managing to find at least a few drops on a dry day, has been running quite low. I didn't know.
And I write this next bit unspecifically, with no identifying details: Our situation has wearied me, the knowledge that one rash decision by a few men--that their decision has ended our lives here--this continues to sap my energy. That the petty cruelty continues (before the 'sheets are even cold' they've listed the position, packed with pretty Christian descriptions of an ideal candidate), tires me. I have forgiven, shrugged off, let go of a need to retaliate, but all the same, my mind is changing, readying myself to leave. When I look at the house I see resale; when I look at the garden I'm filled with the heaviness of what needs to be done before another can begin to love it as we have; when I slip into full enjoyment of our community, an undercurrent of encroaching departure checks me. And in all this, I've tried to cling to the kernels of truth that are stronger than the diminutive evils at play: we love one another, we are loved, a new place waits for us somewhere. To imagine a different life--this is what we must do, all while enjoying every moment here in the fullest way we can. It is a hard task!
This morning I steeled myself again: I will not let small, miserable people rob me of my joy.
I realize afresh that turning toward joy, when to snap to anger and justice would be so easy, is a choice I must make day by day, moment by moment. When I tell people that we're doing fine, I mean it. On good days I revel in all the goodness that is mine, and I believe it and I am grateful. On other days I look at what is beautiful and have to squint through the smut to see it fully.
Martin and I were talking the other night about the Quaker idea that everyone bears a light within, the light of God's image, the stamp of being fully human and inherently worthwhile. It is this belief that convicted the Quakers that Native Americans must be treated with respect; it is this belief, too, that filled them with the courage to fight slavery.
When I look at certain people, I admit I find it very hard to find their inner light, especially when it seems they have done everything they can to deaden their own light. Of course my eyes are cataracted by my own pettiness--what I want, what I feel I deserve, anger. But I believe in the inner light in everyone and everything; I believe that all that is created contains at least a small pebble of goodness, and probably much more if it is loved. So then, is that what I must do? Is it possible to really see without love? People say that love clouds perspective, but I think, in the case of inner light, that it is the other way around. I think love gives us the eyes to see light burning in another person, and when I am given the task of loving something unlovable, then I must call on courage. Nothing is transformed, least of all my own sight, without love.
The other day I found myself taking care of a baby who was not mine. I was the best candidate to hold him and try to coax him into sleep, but I was tired, overwhelmed by children (also not mine) who were acting badly and whom I could not wait to leave behind with their parents. Someone handed me a bottle filled with bright red punch to feed to the baby, and the idea of feeding a sugary drink to a child repelled me. When I was honest with myself, the baby repelled me as well; his nose was runny, he was rather unattractive (seen by my frustrated, weary eyes at that moment), and he kept reaching up to put his hand in my mouth, as babies do. I saw my own repulsion, and it was horrifying to confront. I asked for eyes of love. I had to. I had no natural maternal feelings or compassion--those were all spent. And I sat in the rocking chair and held the baby and sang "You are my sunshine" and fed him his terrible sugar drink. I noticed the way his jaw trembled when he slipped into sleep, the last sucking instinct, the same one my babies had when I breastfed them. And while my love for this baby was not perfect, while I still feel troubled at my unimaginative coldness, I was given enough love to hold that baby, to act rightly, not to pass him off until he was soundly sleeping. And that was, I suppose, enough, and perhaps all I could receive at that moment.
So today, Kim, call on courage. Joy, love, courage--all three. I'll try.
In the last few days I've realized that my joy, a pool I've always bathed myself in, managing to find at least a few drops on a dry day, has been running quite low. I didn't know.
And I write this next bit unspecifically, with no identifying details: Our situation has wearied me, the knowledge that one rash decision by a few men--that their decision has ended our lives here--this continues to sap my energy. That the petty cruelty continues (before the 'sheets are even cold' they've listed the position, packed with pretty Christian descriptions of an ideal candidate), tires me. I have forgiven, shrugged off, let go of a need to retaliate, but all the same, my mind is changing, readying myself to leave. When I look at the house I see resale; when I look at the garden I'm filled with the heaviness of what needs to be done before another can begin to love it as we have; when I slip into full enjoyment of our community, an undercurrent of encroaching departure checks me. And in all this, I've tried to cling to the kernels of truth that are stronger than the diminutive evils at play: we love one another, we are loved, a new place waits for us somewhere. To imagine a different life--this is what we must do, all while enjoying every moment here in the fullest way we can. It is a hard task!
This morning I steeled myself again: I will not let small, miserable people rob me of my joy.
I realize afresh that turning toward joy, when to snap to anger and justice would be so easy, is a choice I must make day by day, moment by moment. When I tell people that we're doing fine, I mean it. On good days I revel in all the goodness that is mine, and I believe it and I am grateful. On other days I look at what is beautiful and have to squint through the smut to see it fully.
Martin and I were talking the other night about the Quaker idea that everyone bears a light within, the light of God's image, the stamp of being fully human and inherently worthwhile. It is this belief that convicted the Quakers that Native Americans must be treated with respect; it is this belief, too, that filled them with the courage to fight slavery.
When I look at certain people, I admit I find it very hard to find their inner light, especially when it seems they have done everything they can to deaden their own light. Of course my eyes are cataracted by my own pettiness--what I want, what I feel I deserve, anger. But I believe in the inner light in everyone and everything; I believe that all that is created contains at least a small pebble of goodness, and probably much more if it is loved. So then, is that what I must do? Is it possible to really see without love? People say that love clouds perspective, but I think, in the case of inner light, that it is the other way around. I think love gives us the eyes to see light burning in another person, and when I am given the task of loving something unlovable, then I must call on courage. Nothing is transformed, least of all my own sight, without love.
The other day I found myself taking care of a baby who was not mine. I was the best candidate to hold him and try to coax him into sleep, but I was tired, overwhelmed by children (also not mine) who were acting badly and whom I could not wait to leave behind with their parents. Someone handed me a bottle filled with bright red punch to feed to the baby, and the idea of feeding a sugary drink to a child repelled me. When I was honest with myself, the baby repelled me as well; his nose was runny, he was rather unattractive (seen by my frustrated, weary eyes at that moment), and he kept reaching up to put his hand in my mouth, as babies do. I saw my own repulsion, and it was horrifying to confront. I asked for eyes of love. I had to. I had no natural maternal feelings or compassion--those were all spent. And I sat in the rocking chair and held the baby and sang "You are my sunshine" and fed him his terrible sugar drink. I noticed the way his jaw trembled when he slipped into sleep, the last sucking instinct, the same one my babies had when I breastfed them. And while my love for this baby was not perfect, while I still feel troubled at my unimaginative coldness, I was given enough love to hold that baby, to act rightly, not to pass him off until he was soundly sleeping. And that was, I suppose, enough, and perhaps all I could receive at that moment.
So today, Kim, call on courage. Joy, love, courage--all three. I'll try.
Monday, April 16, 2012
I just wrote an e-mail to some friends of mine about how absent-minded I've been lately (writing can make you schizophrenic). I cut this bit for your benefit:
I've been spending a lot of time with Maple [the character in my book for young readers] these days. So much, in fact, that in the car I couldn't get out what I wanted to say to the kids, which was, "Roll up your windows!" What came out of my mouth was, "Boil your seats!" I wish the kids just knew what I meant. Mental telepathy, while dangerous, could be helpful.
And then tonight when Elspeth hurt her pinky finger I said, half-paying attention, "Don't worry, honey, you'll get a new pinky soon," and she stared at me blankly and a little worried and said, "What?" Oh, man. I'm losing it.
In other news, my friend Sal fulfilled a life-long dream of mine and rented a rollerskating rink for my birthday. What do you get when you combine a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings with a bunch of kids ten and under? We were falling like flies. One of my friends ended up wrapped in heating pads and she and her daughter, whose sprained ankle was on ice, watched a "Mythbusters" marathon as they recovered. But baby, all those years of skating on cobblestones in Kenya paid off--I had the time of my life and even remembered how to skate backwards so I could finally fulfill a fantasy--skating in my true love's arms. Martin looked a little less than relaxed and we weren't terribly close, but we made it around the rink one entire rotation without wiping out. Sheer bliss. Check out Bea 'n friends "shaking their grove thing" by clicking HERE.
I've been spending a lot of time with Maple [the character in my book for young readers] these days. So much, in fact, that in the car I couldn't get out what I wanted to say to the kids, which was, "Roll up your windows!" What came out of my mouth was, "Boil your seats!" I wish the kids just knew what I meant. Mental telepathy, while dangerous, could be helpful.
And then tonight when Elspeth hurt her pinky finger I said, half-paying attention, "Don't worry, honey, you'll get a new pinky soon," and she stared at me blankly and a little worried and said, "What?" Oh, man. I'm losing it.
In other news, my friend Sal fulfilled a life-long dream of mine and rented a rollerskating rink for my birthday. What do you get when you combine a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings with a bunch of kids ten and under? We were falling like flies. One of my friends ended up wrapped in heating pads and she and her daughter, whose sprained ankle was on ice, watched a "Mythbusters" marathon as they recovered. But baby, all those years of skating on cobblestones in Kenya paid off--I had the time of my life and even remembered how to skate backwards so I could finally fulfill a fantasy--skating in my true love's arms. Martin looked a little less than relaxed and we weren't terribly close, but we made it around the rink one entire rotation without wiping out. Sheer bliss. Check out Bea 'n friends "shaking their grove thing" by clicking HERE.
I'm entrenched in my own vocabulary.
When Martin told me that it's 90 degrees today for the Boston Marathon, I said, "That's terrible." I thought about it some more. Ninety degrees for a spring marathon! It was unusually warm in southwest Pennsylvania, too; we were driving with large gas rigs into town and the roads gleamed with heat and the sky darkened with the threat of a thunderstorm. I imagined running, a sport I detest unless I'm being chased by dogs, and I said again, "That's terrible. Terrible. Ninety degrees." There was a pause. "That's terrible."
My thoughts shifted from the terrible April heat to my vocabulary, so lacking and barren. I spent the next few minutes in despair.
I have been working hard on a third draft of a book for young readers, and there's nothing like writing a novel to realize how limited your bank of words really is. Last night I took a break to read a book--a published, popular one, and though the writing comes with its own set of predetermined words, they're different than mine. I read the word, "preternatural." Of course I've used it before, and it's not exactly a grandly unusual word, but I mentally flogged myself. Why can't you use that word sometimes? You're terrible!
I've been combing through my novel with the aid of the "find and replace" button. I type in "sparkly" and I find all one dozen mentions in the 170-page book and replace them with glitzy, shiny, twinkly. . .I was never aware of how predisposed I was to "sparkly." Or "miserable" or the idea of someone's ears burning when embarrassed. Now I know. It's not a pretty discovery.
If you have any favorite synonyms for 'sparkly' or 'miserable' that are appropriate for young readers, let me know. I need help. Don't give me any for 'terrible,' though. I'm on a roll with that one.
When Martin told me that it's 90 degrees today for the Boston Marathon, I said, "That's terrible." I thought about it some more. Ninety degrees for a spring marathon! It was unusually warm in southwest Pennsylvania, too; we were driving with large gas rigs into town and the roads gleamed with heat and the sky darkened with the threat of a thunderstorm. I imagined running, a sport I detest unless I'm being chased by dogs, and I said again, "That's terrible. Terrible. Ninety degrees." There was a pause. "That's terrible."
My thoughts shifted from the terrible April heat to my vocabulary, so lacking and barren. I spent the next few minutes in despair.
I have been working hard on a third draft of a book for young readers, and there's nothing like writing a novel to realize how limited your bank of words really is. Last night I took a break to read a book--a published, popular one, and though the writing comes with its own set of predetermined words, they're different than mine. I read the word, "preternatural." Of course I've used it before, and it's not exactly a grandly unusual word, but I mentally flogged myself. Why can't you use that word sometimes? You're terrible!
I've been combing through my novel with the aid of the "find and replace" button. I type in "sparkly" and I find all one dozen mentions in the 170-page book and replace them with glitzy, shiny, twinkly. . .I was never aware of how predisposed I was to "sparkly." Or "miserable" or the idea of someone's ears burning when embarrassed. Now I know. It's not a pretty discovery.
If you have any favorite synonyms for 'sparkly' or 'miserable' that are appropriate for young readers, let me know. I need help. Don't give me any for 'terrible,' though. I'm on a roll with that one.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
More news from my parents, this time from my childhood home (see above), where my mother brought me back from the hospital after my birth. I remember so much though I was young. Note the lovely old brick paths--I can almost feel them warm under my bare feet.
One of my favorite memories or stories (when you are a small child they are often the same thing) is about Ebrahim, our old Bengali gardener who kept me out of trouble. My mother sent me this e-mail on Easter, for my birthday: "Here's a pretty gift. We were sitting under a shelter in the yard between what was our house and the guesthouse when a slight figure of a man with white beard and lungi walked up to us. My heart took a turn-it was for all the world Ebrhaim who was coming toward us. Turns out it was his son who insisted that we must come for a meal the next day. And we did, and they laughed and asked about Kimberly. You were born as the baby of the whole project, but as the special charge of Ebrahaim, who followed you devotedly as you went visiting house after house, spreading your joy."
I had just finished editing a poem about Ebrahim the night before, where I thank him for his tenderness with me and wish I could know him now I am grown up, a gardener myself with my own children. There was something so lovely about being remembered by people I have not seen in thirty years--when you grow up overseas, you rarely encounter anyone but your own family who has known you for that long. It made me long to see them again--Ebrahim himself, who died twenty years ago, and all the people who gifted me with their love so early, made me feel precious and worthwhile. I am deeply grateful.
Here's another photo, which took both my sister and I back to this familiar place--the jungle that Heather used to pull me away from, reminding me of snakes and death, the jungle that hung with orchids!--though in my memory the colors are purer and more vibrant.
But here is more of my mother's wonderful e-mail (just a part of the longer story of meetings with people we once knew):
So many memories flooded in as we walked from house to house...here's where the Ragans, etc. lived...here's the nurses' house where we went for tea and gamma globulin shots...here's the road (steep) where Meredith was on his freshly repaired bike, brake shoes installed backwards, went hurtling down the hill, across the main road, tossing him into the rice paddy....here's where the water buffalo went poggle (crazy) and stampeded down the path...remember taking the girls motorbike riding along here... We walked down to Mokamtilla, veering off up the hill where we would take Koolaid and M&M's on Sunday afternoons to picnic and watch the 4:00 o'clock train come by. It was stunningly lovely, walking along the crest of the hill, looking down across rice paddies, a cow here and there, ducks and woman w/her water buffalo, listening to a bird singing his 4-note song again and again.
In one of the houses, a leprosy patient still lives (illegally). She stepped out with her 12 year old daughter. The mother was bald and with only stumps for hands, and cradled her daughter with Down's syndrome so she would have the courage to step out. Meredith took her hands and talked to her until she began to smile; she was lovely. We rounded the corner and encountered Demond, who looked at Meredith in a shocked way and said, "Long Sab!" He had been a watch man while were there. I couldn't believe he remembered.
[My parents visit with people at two houses, and are fed well at both. At one of the homes the electricity goes out and they all sit on a bed and watch a magnificent storm through an open door].
Then on to Ebrahim's son's house, a welcome walk down the main road and across rice paddies to a surprise...a strong, cement house set up high in the middle of the rice paddies, complete with solar power lights. We were so happy to see how well they were living; they talked and laughed as they remembered you girls and we remembered Ebrahim together. They served us a bowl of noodles even before the curry meal arrived, and besides a chicken curry and vegetable curries, a special treat, fried duck eggs. We took pictures together, give them a gift in honor of Ebrahim and he hugged Meredith for a long time and cried. It was a precious visit.
___
After this my parents went on for yet another full meal--"We just couldn't keep up that level of eating," Mom wrote. "We are overwhelmed once again, at the deep hospitality of Bengalis and realize how much we were shaped by the years we lived here. How rich it was and how privileged we were to be here."
Friday, April 6, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Airports, Poop Tea, and a Familiar Place
My parents have arrived back in the place of my early childhood. I received an e-mail from Dad this morning. I feel memories about me suddenly as if someone laid a coat around my shoulders--dusty Dacca (as it was spelled when we were there almost thirty years ago), the call to prayer early in the morning, marketplaces with oddly- shaped, wonderful balloons, the sounds of afternoon--planes high in the sky outside my window, calls in the street from beggars and peddlars, the clink of tin:
We're in very dusty Dhaka-in the Baptist Guest House. We get here about 1 am this morning and were in bed just after 2. Portus, the cook and helper has worked here for 25 years, and remembers seeing us before. Water shortage for flushing the toilet but things pretty much the same except the house is now surrounded by high rises.
Off to the office shortly.
Much love,
Dad
My mother wrote to us from Bangkok, and her memories are much stronger than mine:
So, we have just come from a swim in the lovely flat pool on the roof of the hotel, swimming in bathtub water, surrounded by banana plants, looking u[p at the moon and evening star and feeling as though we were in paradise. We walked into the evening air last night 24 hours after we had left home to the familiar thick air, sauna like and layered with rich and haunting smells. Suddenly I was back 25 years ago, a young woman with our children living a great adventure. Even the fact that the person in the plane in front of us had poured his tomato juice down through the seat over my sweater and carry-on case not to be discovered until hours later when it was coagulated and clinging, even though the hotel had put us in a smoking room...it was dizzyingly happy to be here.
We are back in the land of showers that simply happen on the bathroom floor, where you need to remember to close your mouth and not drink the water. Our hotel is across the street from the Dang Lee Massage Parlour, where the ladies lounge out front, extending their lovely legs out from their sarongs to attract passersby.
The sidewalks are crowded with tables with people eating wonderful things and the cars dart in and out between the people and motorcycles, and amazingly it all seems to fit together. We walked to the office past great piles of mangos...in season!...and vegetables I couldn't identify. At lunch we walked with others to an outside shelter about the size of a football field filled with long tables and chairs, edged with dozens of food vendors. We pushed our way through to a woman who let us point to what we wanted: fish, sticky rice and spinach. For about $1.10 we had a delicious meal in the happy chaos of all the noise and comings and goings of others. On the way back to the office, Kim Ta Teet, a beautiful Thai woman in her twenties, said she was going to a shop for tea, and would I like some? Yes, definitely. The tea turned out to be a milky tea in a large plastic cup with ice. Bouncing around the bottom were a pile of black pellets...with a laugh she said that she called it "poop tea". The pellets were like gummy bears, so you sucked it up with the tea and then chewed them. The children would have loved it!
Dad and I were really fading after lunch for a while; we had had about 4 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours.
And then I received a funny e-mail from my parents from the Kuala Lupur airport, which sounds like an incredible place:
Hi dear people. We are waiting in the Kuala Lupur airport for a flight to Bangladesh. The Bangkok airport is amazing with hundreds of glitzy shops, like a sophisticated mall that happens to have airplanes coming and going. This one too. There's a stunning jungle walk in the center of this concourse where you go through a mesh that is designed to keep birds in and you actually go outside into a jungle environment with big trees and vines and calls of birds and roaring waterfalls. It is surreal.
I suspect that the Bangladesh airport may not have reached this level yet.
This e-mail, which seems to have been written in a tearing hurry (I corrected some funny errors, such as "treesn vinesn calls of birds. . .) was followed by a pithy note from my father:
Mom hit the wrong button and we need to finish our $5 bottles of water!
Love,
Dad
I love that my mother is along with my father on this two-month trip; though they're both working hard the whole time, I think my mother will take time to write us detailed accounts of places we haven't seen since we were young children. Heather was eight when we left Bangladesh; I was turning six; and my brother was a toddler. Both he and I were born in Bangladesh.
Well, my own child summons. She's trying to make a "clam shell" out of two pieces of string and a paper plate, to very little success.
We're in very dusty Dhaka-in the Baptist Guest House. We get here about 1 am this morning and were in bed just after 2. Portus, the cook and helper has worked here for 25 years, and remembers seeing us before. Water shortage for flushing the toilet but things pretty much the same except the house is now surrounded by high rises.
Off to the office shortly.
Much love,
Dad
My mother wrote to us from Bangkok, and her memories are much stronger than mine:
So, we have just come from a swim in the lovely flat pool on the roof of the hotel, swimming in bathtub water, surrounded by banana plants, looking u[p at the moon and evening star and feeling as though we were in paradise. We walked into the evening air last night 24 hours after we had left home to the familiar thick air, sauna like and layered with rich and haunting smells. Suddenly I was back 25 years ago, a young woman with our children living a great adventure. Even the fact that the person in the plane in front of us had poured his tomato juice down through the seat over my sweater and carry-on case not to be discovered until hours later when it was coagulated and clinging, even though the hotel had put us in a smoking room...it was dizzyingly happy to be here.
We are back in the land of showers that simply happen on the bathroom floor, where you need to remember to close your mouth and not drink the water. Our hotel is across the street from the Dang Lee Massage Parlour, where the ladies lounge out front, extending their lovely legs out from their sarongs to attract passersby.
The sidewalks are crowded with tables with people eating wonderful things and the cars dart in and out between the people and motorcycles, and amazingly it all seems to fit together. We walked to the office past great piles of mangos...in season!...and vegetables I couldn't identify. At lunch we walked with others to an outside shelter about the size of a football field filled with long tables and chairs, edged with dozens of food vendors. We pushed our way through to a woman who let us point to what we wanted: fish, sticky rice and spinach. For about $1.10 we had a delicious meal in the happy chaos of all the noise and comings and goings of others. On the way back to the office, Kim Ta Teet, a beautiful Thai woman in her twenties, said she was going to a shop for tea, and would I like some? Yes, definitely. The tea turned out to be a milky tea in a large plastic cup with ice. Bouncing around the bottom were a pile of black pellets...with a laugh she said that she called it "poop tea". The pellets were like gummy bears, so you sucked it up with the tea and then chewed them. The children would have loved it!
Dad and I were really fading after lunch for a while; we had had about 4 hours of sleep in the past 36 hours.
And then I received a funny e-mail from my parents from the Kuala Lupur airport, which sounds like an incredible place:
Hi dear people. We are waiting in the Kuala Lupur airport for a flight to Bangladesh. The Bangkok airport is amazing with hundreds of glitzy shops, like a sophisticated mall that happens to have airplanes coming and going. This one too. There's a stunning jungle walk in the center of this concourse where you go through a mesh that is designed to keep birds in and you actually go outside into a jungle environment with big trees and vines and calls of birds and roaring waterfalls. It is surreal.
I suspect that the Bangladesh airport may not have reached this level yet.
This e-mail, which seems to have been written in a tearing hurry (I corrected some funny errors, such as "treesn vinesn calls of birds. . .) was followed by a pithy note from my father:
Mom hit the wrong button and we need to finish our $5 bottles of water!
Love,
Dad
I love that my mother is along with my father on this two-month trip; though they're both working hard the whole time, I think my mother will take time to write us detailed accounts of places we haven't seen since we were young children. Heather was eight when we left Bangladesh; I was turning six; and my brother was a toddler. Both he and I were born in Bangladesh.
Well, my own child summons. She's trying to make a "clam shell" out of two pieces of string and a paper plate, to very little success.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
