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.

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.

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.

After Martin received his letters informing him that he'd been denied tenure, the journal that he advised, (and the biggest reason his career here ended), was left without a faculty advisor.  But completely without his knowledge, an amazing issue was just released, completely student-produced.  Read it here:  UNDERGROUND MUSE & STONE.

It doesn't feel like March.

70 to 80 degree weather, warm nights, and our world is gaudy with color--crabapples the color of pink lemonade, Bradford pears in lacy pompoms, magnolias opening their saucer blooms to a robin's egg sky, bedecked daffodils (Happy late Daffodil Day, by the way), and the forsythia going absolutely lemon-wild. Some of you will remember that I thought "Forsythia" would be a gorgeous middle name for Bea, who was born almost at this time four years ago, but she took "Fern" instead, much more sensible but not as fraptious.

I do love forsythia, even though they are only truly glorious for a week. I don't understand why people dismiss something because its beauty is short-lived; you'd have to pooh-pooh the butterfly, and that's just the beginning.

I can only think that we as middle-class consumers look for the most enduring bang for our buck, so to plant a row of forsythia, which can grow quite gangly and only blooms yellow for about 1/52.18 of the year, seems like a meaningless extravagance.

And I suppose too, that in the same attitude of economy, you could dismiss a whole cornucopia of magnificence, but as Babette's Feast or simply being in love teaches us, we often find grace only when we allow ourselves to embrace extravagance.

I remember someone telling me once that they found themselves holding back active friendship from a dying person, because of the energy expenditure and the output of love that would only end in loss. It's a cliche--"'tis better to have loved. . ." but it's true that it's always better to exhaust myself loving well, though it opens me to pain.

It would be easy to take what has happened to us in the past three weeks--a horrible, dark thing of injustice--and throw it over our last seven years here. But that would be like throwing a cloak over our garden, snuffing out every lovely flower blossom, sorrowing over the whole thing because the end was disappointing. I refuse to do it. As I told an about-to-graduate student the other day, we won't let this ruin things for us; we'll celebrate every good thing that has happened and leave knowing that this was, indeed, a good place, where we came to love better and where we were loved well.

At the grocery store today, waiting at the deli, I chatted with a woman who, like many people I've talked with lately, shook her head warily over the amazing days we've been having, warning that it will only end badly with a freak snow storm or a summer of swarmy mosquitoes. It's beautiful now, sure, but in a couple months? Pestilence!

Meanwhile? Meanwhile, I'm enjoying every minute, gobbling this feast of beauty while it lasts, and I won't stop until I have to.

It's Sunday and the children are a'bed. Last night, a good friend of ours (and a colleague of Martin's), wonderful poet and wise fellow Bob Randolph (his wife, Amy, is also a lovely poet and songwriter with whom we have sung many a time), sent us this e-mail after we potlucked with some good friends on Saturday evening. . .Thought I'd share it with you.

*

Hi Martin and Kim,

Amy told me that at Noah's house the other night, when Amy was there, Martin told about writing a poem and reading it to Kim as she stood working with something on the stove, her back to him. He said he finished reading and there was no response, so he asked what she thought of it. She turned around with tears in her eyes because the poem was beautiful.

Amy said that at that point, when she heard Martin recount that, she said to herself, "Ah, yes--they'll be ok."

I agree and want to amplify that a little. Tenure or no tenure, as important as that may be, is not the core, neither is promotion or not promotion, and where a person works or doesn't work isn't the core either--Stevens sold insurance, Ginsberg got kicked out of college, Snyder sailed around all over as a merchant seaman--writers write; to a writer what can matter more than writing something so beautiful it brings tears to your soul-mate. That's what we do. That's what we build our universes out of. The rest is stuff, but that's the heart of it.

So I'm with Amy on this.
The two of you standing by that stove may not be much to some people, but to me, Martin, it's exactly why you should be hired at Harvard, or anywhere else.

(At least, that's the sort of thing the universe I bank on comes from.)

In the midst of talk of . . ., talk of abiding sorrow, a man reads a poem to his wife in the kitchen as she is cooking, and the poem is so beautiful it makes her cry. That's the diamond and the truth.

Bob

When I came in late from eating pie (Happy Pi Day!) with some good women tonight, I ran upstairs to say goodnight to the restless girls and noticed Beatrix's neck was sunburned. I hate to celebrate a sunburn, but it is a the mark of one unbelievably gorgeous, summery day, with the daffodils waving like gospel singers and the grass busting out so green it's almost bad taste and the robins taking back the neighborhood. It was THAT sort of March day, the kind of day that makes you want to forget all your troubles and fly off into the lonely white cloud in the azure sky.

Though I did not fly, I did walk quite a bit and sat in the sun and continued with the forever job of tidying the winter-weary yard. I pulled on Martin's thick hide gloves and went at the piles of nasty thorns, trying to wrestle them into big garbage bags (a tricky task). Soon after the buses pulled through the the streets, Roberto, Nancy's middle son, arrived in our driveway on his bike. Roberto, middle-school, big-talker, sweetly handsome young man (originally from Guatemala, with a sweep of dark hair, big, brown eyes, a bit shorter than many of his peers), is a good story-teller and is extraordinarily skilled with wee kids. And my two little girls love him. They've both grown up with him, calling him either "Berto" or "Bobo." One night two-year old Bea prayed for "Uncle Berto," which Merry and Catherine thought was hilarious. Elspeth and Bea love to torture him in a good-natured way, pulling on his legs and slugging him once and a while (this is not encouraged by their mother, by the way.)

This afternoon he somewhat awkwardly hung out with me for a few minutes while I shoved rose branches into a trashcan. He responded politely to my stock questions--How was school today? Do you have testing this week? That means no homework, right? Etc. (How boring I must be, just like the grown-ups I remember from my childhood; I'd answer with a smile, wishing they would ask about something other than school. . .and mostly they never did). After a genial interlude, Roberto disappeared down the hill and the next thing I knew, he was hitting around a plastic baseball with Elspeth. I looked up again and he was pitching to her, slowly and patiently. And then Elspeth gathered some black walnuts from our big tree and began throwing them to Roberto, who knocked them to kingdom come, down our chimney and off our roof.

"Home run!" I heard Elspeth yell, and then to me up the hill, "Mommy! Roberto's GOOD!"

I gazed down at them in the sea of emerald grass, six-year old Elspeth (often a handful) and Roberto (often discouraged by his lack of ease with sports), both middle children, and they seemed to be glowing like suns. I could feel the warmth.

John, Roberto's father, had told me a few days ago that Roberto had come home from playing baseball at a friend's house discouraged and in a bad mood. Today Roberto admitted to me he can't hit a baseball. But he could sure hit those walnuts Elspeth was pitching to him--boy, was he slugging them. And to Elspeth down in the field by our creek, Roberto was Babe Ruth.

It struck me: we all should be so adored. Adoration is wonderful. When we know it from another person we love, adoration transforms us, helps us come closer to understanding who we really are--worthy of celebration. And when we see it in the pure, loving adoration of another, and it moves us to strive to be more generous givers.

"Well, I think I'll just come back tomorrow," Roberto told me a few hours later, after he had hung out in the garden, eating graham crackers distributed by Beatrix, who warned him "not to get a tummyache" and then on the porch with Elspeth as she cut out a paper crown.

"That would be wonderful," I smiled. "You're really good with the kids, Roberto."

He shrugged a little. "It seems like you could use someone to play with them," he said. And as he inched toward the door, he added, "I'll just come over after school."

"You can come over any time," I said.

"I told Elspeth I'd bring my aluminum bat."

I remember what my dear childhood friend told me when she fell in love with the man she will marry this summer. Her eyes were full of a new place, as if she'd just travelled to the most beautiful country she had never known existed. "It feels so good to be loved like that," she said. "I didn't know how good it would be."

We all deserve to be adored, not in a sentimental silly way that clouds our faults and coats us with sugar, but in a real way, a way that strips off our veils and shows us who we really are, and we realize that we are, after all, worthy of being loved sacrificially. Perhaps the adoration that I silently celebrated this afternoon is a glimpse of the eternal, where we will be at last truly joyful without reservation, where we will love without having to draw back, where we will accept the love that has always been waiting for us, that has surrounded us from our birth.

This is a reflection I wrote for our Mennonite church about giving, and, by jove, it seemed so appropriate I thought I'd paste it here.


Right away I think of this story: my first truly sacrificial gift, and how it was given in ignorance that ripened into bitter regret.

I was about six, old enough to know how rare and wonderful a silver dollar was. My granddad gave these gleaming discs to us on our birthdays, and they were precious things. My sister never spent hers’, and I once bribed her out of one, but that’s a different story.

We were at our grandparent’s church—a place of plush carpet and gleaming wooden pews softened by long red cushions. When the offering was taken, I fumbled in my pockets for a quarter—then, as now, I felt a compunction to place something in the offering, even if it was from a panicky impulse not to be embarrassed in front of the solemn offering men in their suits, looking like Mafia envoys. As the velvet plum-colored pouch, split in half by slick walnut handles, passed me, I slipped in a quarter—a small offering, perhaps, even for a child like me who received allowances, but enough to get by, I thought, much better than a dime, say, or a handful of pennies, pathetic as they slide from the palm. In any case, I’d be guilt-free at least until communion, when my mother would cry and I’d struggle to come up with a list of sins to confess silently to God so I’d not drink unbearable punishment on myself. At least offering was over with.

But my sister passed the pouch to my father, as it disappeared out of reach down the aisle, I realized what I had done. Oh, no! My silver dollar. Given to me by the warm, old hands of my grey-haired grandfather. Given to me in love and in trust. I’d put it in a pouch with other meaningless coins, and it would be counted and dropped into the church coffers by more men in suits. Nobody would know how precious it was to me—nobody.

I pulled my mother’s ear down to my mouth and whispered, “I gave away my silver dollar. Into the offering!”

She sensed the desperation in my voice, I knew it. Would she help me retrieve it? God didn’t care what denominations the money came in, after all! Couldn’t I just give four quarters, the same amount of money but not the monumental treasure that my Granddad’s silver dollar was? I only got one once a year, and not even that often, since we lived overseas. Granddaddy had to go to the bank especially and exchange regular paper money for the silver dollars he’d place in his grandkid’s palm. Surely God would understand that this gift was too precious?

My mother leaned over in the church-way she had, where she could whisper in our ear without moving her eyes from the front of the church. “Never regret giving anything to God,” my mother whispered back.

What? Why did parents never understand?

I spent the rest of church—the scripture readings, the long sermon, right through the last hymn—in agony over my loss. I pictured how it had happened over and over again. I’d felt in my pockets, yanked out a silver coin, and tossed it in the offering pouch. I saw it disappear down the aisle again and again, and I thought about what my mother had said—never regret, never regret, never regret.

I still think about this moment. I don’t know if the loss of my silver dollar, which was of utmost significance to me at six, was a defining moment in my life, but the memory still defines me today, when I struggle to give away what’s precious. The giving, done in a moment of spirited generosity, perhaps, is not as hard as the trusting—the trusting that the one to whom I give can appreciate the gift enough, will be careful with what I have given—my money, my time, my children, my love.

God will take it all—and in my clearer moments, I realize it was never mine in the first place. I realize that there is no such thing as possession in the Great Story—that all things are entrusted, but not given away for keeps. God is not trustworthy in the way I want God to be. I want to receive a gift and hunker down in my favorite chair, savoring it without fear that a thing I love so much will be taken from me. But there are no such promises, and love rarely makes such promise. I can’t tell my children that their lives will be easy. I wish I could, and believe it, but I can’t.

One thing—no, two at least--that have not been given to me with any conditions. Love and grace. Love and grace—they are the sky, the stars, the ground, the ocean, the very air I breathe. No one can take these from me, and these I can give freely, freely, forever.

It’s the silver dollars I’m still struggling to find in my pockets, and knowing what I give, slip them into the offering basket. Today my silver dollar is my sense of security, control, and my knowledge of the future. Surely something else would do just as well. Surely it can’t be expected of me. Perhaps it’s not quite clear how much it means to me. And yet, I fumble about in the darkness of my pockets, untangle it from my grasping fingers, and let it go.

And as I watch it disappear down the aisle, as I watch other hands dropping coins—gifts that I cannot begin to understand or know—I feel panic, fear, grief—and then a growing sense that all is okay, not perhaps in the particulars, the lists of worries I love to obsess about—but in the large sense. I ask regret to leave me. All will be well. And all will be well. All manner of things will be well.

I found myself heartily upset that Martin has had to spend his spring break in front of a computer screen, looking for jobs. Mostly I've felt this positive energy, even if it's only simmering, through all of it, but the beginning feeling of crisis has waned into a daily reality--one where my dear friend and companion is often glued to a screen, trying to make sense out of the future. I guess since Mom left a couple days ago, this afternoon was waiting for me--an afternoon of sadness, punctuated by a few hot pops of anger. Sometimes it feels rather like a dream I'm waiting to shake myself from.

But now I feel better. We took a crock pot of pork and sauerkraut over to Kevin and Sally's house, drank a bottle of wine, ate well, and then challenged four pints of Ben and Jerrys--and won! (I don't think we quite finished off the ice cream, though we made an impressive dent). And we laughed a lot--the best medicine of all. And they gave us a disc of "Chopped--" seven episodes of culinary competition. I think I can tear Martin away from the applications long enough to watch one before bedtime. Who will survive to the dessert round? I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

There are unbearable sweetnesses that I will miss. Sitting in the sunroom, the windows flung upon to the garden, robins and cardinals hopping about in the paths softened by leaves, a cup of tea warming my hands. The swelling music of the teapot at night mingling with the quiet roar of the heat kicking on; the creak of stairs, known to me in the dark when all the lights have been turned off before bedtime. And of course opening doors to houses that are not ours and seeing welcoming smiles encompassing us and our children, a scrape of a kitchen chair, long mornings of talk and evenings of laughter.

Now that I know there is an end to this chapter in our lives, I am struggling to remain in the sweetness of each moment. Sitting in the sunnroom this afternoon, I remembered what it was like to look at the garden and see years of work unfolding, wondering how tall the quaking aspens--planted our first fall six years ago--would grow and plotting paths and new beds. I found myself longing for that safe, warm feeling of time unfolding gently in front of me.

I tried to express some of that feeling to Martin, because it made me feel as if I was succumbing to an easy smallness. Martin looked over the rim of his teacup and said, "It's funny, what's happened to me since I found out we'd be leaving. I began to look at all this, and realize it for what it was--a stopping place for us, not a permanent place."

Tonight in my inbox I received a message that should have gone to spam, from the Highlights Foundation. I didn't open it but the subject line caught me: "In revision lies the story." Our lives are constantly being revised, in small ways or large, whether we welcome the changes or not. I don't ever want to find myself in a place where I refuse revision--then I will be looking at that blank, horrible wall that means I have welcomed mediocrity. But I am astonished at the big revisions that life has thrown at me, and most of them I have not sought.

Thankfully, with each revision there is much grace--more than the spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. There are unexpected rainstorms of mercy, and they often soak me when I am feeling most barren.

So though I have counted multiple, hitherto-unseen white hairs on Martin's head in the last two weeks (not a joke), I am trying to both dwell in the sweetness of each moment here while keeping my hands open. I just want to be ready to walk through the next door, weary and a little travelworn, but with my fingers ready to receive what is next.

In the meantime, I am enjoying the solace of our dear family--my mother who took care of our kids while Martin and I went to a conference for a few days, and then helped me clean out some of the darkest, dingiest places in my house--and our dear friends who have practically bombarded us with their generosity. I keep saying, "Yes, yes, please!" I think it's my duty and my pleasure, at this point in our lives, to take all the grace handed to me without dithering.

I also enjoyed, quite unexpectedly, learning of a petition site for Martin--just look up Martin by his first and last name and add "petition." I don't know who set it up, and Martin won't look at it--he's trying to keep out of the fray as much as possible--but I found it a lovely experience, to read notes from people who have known and loved him. I don't read it with any anger, just with a deep appreciation of our time here, the students Martin knew, many of whom who have sat in around our table and shared their lives with us. We are so grateful.

I'm sitting in our sunroom, which is warm as an oven, listening to my mother reading Curious George to Bea and her friend, Ethan. That is a true act of love--this particular Curious George book goes on and on, a series of incidents loosely connected by careless disasters. . .hmm. Sounds familiar.

It's been an exhausting few days here. I have been forcing myself to eat regularly, even when my stomach feels as though it's been shaken. I don't even know what to write here. Details have unfolded which are bewildering, shocking, and deeply troubling. Those of you whom we know well here, please don't hide your anger or sadness when you are with us. It helps us to live vicariously through you as we continue to try to live through this with grace.

In the middle of all of it, I feel protected, as if each of you who love us have built thick walls of love around us. Like Ethan or Bea inside of their tent this morning that I built for them out of chairs and blankets, I sit inside of this shady, precious place, and I am so grateful.

I wish I could write more, I wish I could explain more. Maybe someday, hopefully soon.

In the meanwhile, we've had some good belly laughs. Some things are humorous, especially when we can step back and look at things objectively. Some things are too sad to laugh at, but we're trying to find a way. On Saturday night, we attended a magic show at the University. During the amazing finale, the magician asked for a volunteer. Martin sprung up on the stage with a jaunty step.

The magician shouted, "For my next trip, sir, I will need to borrow your career."

Martin obliged.

The magician held it up--a heavy thing with carefully sanded sides--for the audience. "Look carefully at it from every angle," the magician said. "From the top! The sides! The bottom!" We gazed at it. It was a beautiful thing.

Then the magician whisked his cape over it. "Presto!" he shouted, and there was a puff of smoke. The audience gave an audible gasp. It was gone--disappeared into thin air. Slight of hand, the magician bowed and Martin descended the stage. Nobody knew why it had disappeared. Nobody knew how or when.

Surprisingly, Martin seemed intact, even though he'd lost this wonderful thing--he sighed deeply as he came back to his seat. "Well, I guess this isn't the place for me any more," he said. The audience was done, too. They stood up and left with us, and we all went out for a drink and to wonder about how the trick had been executed.

And over the next few days, we learned about the trick that made the thing disappear into thin air, and it wasn't such a great mysterious magic after all. And Martin walked back to the stage and found it where it had dropped to the floor, and it was better, smoother, and more beautiful for its fumbled fall--and he put it under his arm and we left again, to walk on to a good place.

It was supposed to be funny but now it just seems tragic, especially after I talked to Martin this afternoon, and heard his voice--exhausted, wearied, drained. I keep thinking things will get easier, and they will. When I think of how fast our lives have changed, I feel dizzy and nauseous. I'll keep returning to the tent to sit for a while, to center myself before walking back out into the fray.

On Thursday, I walked home from Sally's house through an unusually warm, beautiful afternoon. The sun illuminated the roofs of the University on the hill and the earth smelled warm, of thawing and early spring. The first robin I've seen in months hopped toward a round carpet of delicate white snowdrops. Beatrix ran up and down hills that I have come to know so well.

Earlier that afternoon, Sally and I had been raking leaves away from her bulbs, clipping back a bush already studded with pink buds. Bea and her buddy, Will, ran around the yard, yelling to each other, making a muddy hill covered with sycamore sticks. They have known each other since Will's birth three years ago. Sal and I have known each other like sisters through many years. In many ways, she is my link to the wider community of Greene County; she is my thread to her fine family, whom she shares with me generously, but more importantly, she has been my sister through the many happinesses and griefs of the past years, one of many dear friends here who have brought us so much joy.

Finally we reached home; the bus whined by and Elspeth and Merry burst in the door. Shortly after their arrival and the flurry of snacks and school news, the mail carrier arrived and rang the doorbell. "Certified letter for you," she said.

I signed the form. "Isn't it a lovely day?" I asked, and she agreed.

We met Martin out on a little bricked street not far from our house, where we extended our walk through the warm afternoon. Elspeth and Bea ran ahead down the broken sidewalk. Martin told me about his day; we discussed how, despite its many imperfections, this place where we live is a good place, full of beauty and grace.

At home I handed him the envelope from the University, where he has unconditionally poured his energy, love, and thought for the last almost seven years. He slit the envelope and pulled out one piece of paper. There was a moment of silence as we stared at the letter. Martin looked up at me with stunned eyes. "I was not granted tenure or promotion," he said.

In that moment, our entire reality shifted, almost as if the room had comically swung around in a full circle. It was the singular feeling that I have experienced only a few times in my life: the sudden shattering of what you hoped was certain, the entrance of a new and unwelcome reality.

For those of you who are not familiar with academia, this letter means that Martin will be employed at the University for one more year. After that, we are cut loose.

In the past day, we have reeled with the new reality of our situation. We have felt upset but mostly we have felt deeply grieved, faced now with the very likely conclusion of our time here: a sudden move, the uprooting of our children from people they have known since birth, or for Merry, since she was two; the departure from a community that we have tirelessly invested ourselves in. There are many things that we weep for.

But we are overcome by gratitude for the support of our community, both here and elsewhere. Martin feels support from his colleagues; we can't get into the details of the situation, but suffice it to say that Martin does not feel betrayed by anyone whom he deeply trusted, and so the sense of betrayal is small and much easier to forgive; betrayal by those whom you trust and love is shattering and that, mercifully, we have been spared in every respect.

Martin and I both reflected that this past 30 hours has been much like being at your own funeral, annointed by the love of many good people. Martin's job may have been taken from him, but the things that really make us who we are--our family, our vision and convictions, the many threads of love from so many people--these things nobody can ever take from us, not really, because they are held by God's hands, and in that place, we are truly safe.

Last night, Sally saw Luis, Nancy's oldest son, at the grocery store. "Did you hear about Uncle Martin?" he asked her. "I'm going to do what I can for him," he said, "Because he's family."

What more could we ask for? Family, near and far, surrounding us with the currents of their love. We are more grateful and humbled than we can express.

More from Red Barn Farm, the small paradise belonging to Llew and Jeannie Williams. Of course, it's a paradise they have to work at morning, noon, and night, and therefore one that I was happy to experience but happy to leave in their capable hands.

Martin took all the photos in a visual journal that is incredibly lengthy for the brief half day we spent there. He saw the farm through the camera lens and I saw it through my tape recorder, which I took along with me to help me with an article later. Much of our lives, I guess, are filtered through such lenses; I realized lately when I started working on a new project that everything I have been collecting and haven't had the time to translate into story had come pouring out, rather too crystal clear for the comfort of fiction. So I took the truth and looked at it slant, as a writer once put so well. Fiction is wonderful for taking all the details of our lives and shaking them up like a Boggle game, rewording them all.

Beware, friends of writers, for what you say--the stories you tell and the landscapes you reveal--are all tucked away, squares for an upcoming quilt. Every feather, every little chicken step. :)

Off to Red Barn Farm

We spent last Sunday at Red Barn Farm, a self-sustaining dream come true. Jeannie Williams, a burnt-out preschool teacher, was inspired by Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable. . ." and went to work with an astounding energy. I wanted to glean a couple of articles so I carried around my tape recorder all morning, in the chicken coop and goat pens,
up muddy hills, and in the warmth of a hoop house lined with spinach, bak choy, and other gorgeous winter crops. Look at those nannies, so protective of their kids; they could hear them from across the barn and would charge off looking for one, nosing it back safely among the other babies. Here's Elspeth standing in front of a cunning structure built by a local artisan, all by hand with stone, into a hillside. It looks like a hobbit should live there but it's actually a cellar where Jeannie Williams stores her jams.

To read the sweet, syrupy story of our trip to Red Barn Farm (which is mostly about Llew Williams' maple tapping operation), click here.

Ritual

Yesterday on the phone my mother described her and my father's new Wednesday routine. She calls it "Bastard Sabbath." Now those of you who know my mother will know that she never uses slang (unless she's attempting an idiom--attempting and failing) and that she always utilizes words in their original, simple meaning. I say this to let you all know that "Bastard Sabbath," though it sounds like the name of a rock band from the 1970's, means that she and my father are approximating, or interpreting, their own sort of sabbath day. They've been reading a book by a Jewish rabbi about the concept of taking Sabbath days and decided to create their own sacred day in the middle of the week when they can discard their routines in the evening and replace them with simplicity, contemplation, and a book discussion.

"We'll fast during the day--not just from food, but from the media, and then at night we'll eat good soup and hearty bread and drink wine."

"You're going to be absolutely loopy," I said. "Nothing in your stomach all day and then wine."

"We're going to drink it slowly," she said, and began to laugh. "Like Shabbat--four glasses, but slowly."

"What?" I started to laugh, too. "Four glasses? It's going to be some kind of contemplative night all right!"

"Well, maybe we'll have to rethink that part," she said.

All drinking aside, my parent's attention to Ritual is something that Martin and I have tried to adopt over the years. Ritual is different than routine. Routines are ways of doing things you fall into without thinking too much about them; they become rote, and often even tyrannical things that eventually disgust you. But to nurture Ritual requires careful forethought, an attention to space and time, and a tender attitude of love.

Our days are full of small rituals that make each day extraordinary in some way (though they don't always happen as peacefully as we hope). Martin and I love tea time together, once in the morning and once in the evening, and that has become one of our most important rituals together: putting the kettle on, heating the teapot with a splash of boiling water, steeping the tea under the cozy, and sitting down together, taking a long, precious fifteen minutes (more if we're lucky) to discuss our day, our writing, our ideas and frustrations.

At night, we get the children to bed, put the house to bed, make lunches for the next day, set the table for breakfast, and finish the writing/grading work that we have inevitably still waiting for us. Then we always meet together, to play a game or watch a program on TV. Our ritual is always the same: one of us gets Sleepytime tea for the other, someone gets a snack. As we watch TV I scratch Martin's back, and he always gets up to get me another cup of tea. It's a simple ritual that I look forward to every day.

In Andre Dubus' short story, "A Father's Story," the narrator, whose marriage has dissolved, wonders about how that relationship might have been saved:

“I believe ritual would have healed us more quickly than the repetitious talks we had, perhaps even kept us healed. Marriages have lost that, and I wish I had known then what I know now, and we had performed certain acts together every day, no matter how we felt, and perhaps then we could have subordinated feeling to action, for surely that is the essence of love.”

Emotion fluctuates from hour to hour; our rituals are like pillars in our days, pulling us back together to focus on what's real and good.

What Tecumseh Can Teach Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. I drank tea

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

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

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

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

to this.

Saucing

This morning I spent the hours with a couple of good women, saucing a mountain of garden tomatoes into deliciousness. There's nothing more soothing than a pot full of homegrown tomatoes, simmering slowly, or more glorious than a cutting board crowded with two-foot stalks of basil. I even love the smell of garlic that clings to my fingers and the sizzle of the red wine when I drown the onions and peppers.

Slow food. It makes fast friends. It makes the heart happy. It hinders the spinning of the crazy world just long enough for a good laugh.

Three heads of garlic, man. I mean, what's better than that? Makes me feel like a truly rich woman.