Seattle Summer

I thought I'd start with Seattle photos and move up the coast toward Canada. Look for: the Space Needle, the International Fountain, and the Rock n Roll museum. Should be a three out of three for all of you. :) The kids that are not mine are my niece(s) and nephew.

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.

Hello Again

Ooo. This is a little awkward. I've thought about you plenty of times over the last month, but I didn't write. I kept waiting for the right time. I had so much to share I didn't know where to begin or end, or--do you still remember me? I'm at the edge of the water; it's cold; my arms prickle with goosebumps. I'd better just jump in!

It's coooold in here.

After rain, the trees that have sprung up all over the hill gleam dark in the blank, white humidity that I will always associate with Pennsylvania summer. Insects are so loud that when Martin recorded a poem for the British literary magazine Anon the other evening, his voice was a stone at the bottom of a river of crickets' song. We had to shut all the windows.

Let me reach into the last busy week and pull a few things to show you: Elspeth's starfish, wrapped in tissue, perfectly intact even after a day in airports. Beatrix poised on the landing, riding her tricycle down our stairs. Elspeth boarding a big yellow bus for her first ride during kindergarten orientation. Martin swapping his yard clothes for a dress shirt and tie, heading off to work again. I, buried in books and papers, my eyes crossed in the effort of figuring grading percentages for a syllabus for the class I'll be teaching, "Life Writing." Merry at the edge of a circle of adults, her long limbs never still, not quite knowing where she belongs.

Last night, I just about finished my syllabus, and now I feel as if the world is opening up again. I feel as if I should throw myself a party. Martin's not quite in party mode yet.

Brr. It's a little chilly in here yet, though I'm stroking as fast as I can to build up the heat. I haven't written regularly in so long, my limbs are stiff.

I find myself thinking of Nancy all the time, tucking away tidbits to share with her or reminding myself to save a magazine to pass her way. It's strange to be back, walking up her front steps by the garden she watched carefully, planned at one point, picking out plants, digging holes, settling them into the ground. Her garden is still blooming, still producing fruit and vegetables. At one point as I fell asleep, I started, as if jerking to the surface of water, realizing afresh that she was gone, that her body was buried, under a tree, in a graveyard outside of town. Most of the time, though, the strangeness of her absence feels less profound than the presence of a new reality: her smiling face, her body moving as it often did through my house, settling at the kitchen table for tea--all so strong in my imagination it feels as if it must be true that she is still with us, that if I could only open the doors to what is truly real I would understand how she can be gone and here at the same time.

It can all be chalked up to wishful thinking, to love, to denial or the wanderings of hope. I realize too that I will always be partly the skeptic of my own faith, raising an eyebrow and shaking my head at my childlike imaginings. But I have lived so often in the world of my faith that it is almost more real than the shifting plates of this earth, vibrating in the air filled with cricket song, under my hands when I lift a plant from the soil, waiting for me in the morning when I step outside, in the far-off call of a bird or even in the ants that cover my kitchen counter in late summer. "The world is charged with the grandeur of God," Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, and at times I feel that charge so acutely I can believe in the unseen, believe in the eternal depths of a small stone or a lifted voice--believe it with every fiber of my material existence. At times. At times I feel a sort of murky sadness or dullness that is hard separate from my joy, and the older I grow, the more I realize that this is okay, and should not go away. I can be comfortable with this question, just as Rilke encourages, to live questions.

And. . .speaking of shifting plates of this earth, I experienced my first earthquake two days ago. . .sitting in a chair in the sun room, I felt a wave pass underneath me, as though someone had taken my chair from behind and tilted it first one way and then the other. I hushed to hear the sound of rattling or shaking, but there was nothing else. Martin was evacuated from his building for a half an hour, but I went on drinking tea in the bottom floor of our brick house, trusting that one little wave was the end. And so it was. We felt just part of the quake that brought down the National Cathedral's spires in DC, and many of us, including Merry and Elspeth, who were playing upstairs, didn't even notice.

Better get the water going for mac n cheese. Oh, one last thing: yesterday I looked outside through a morning rain, and there were the girls, with three good friends, huddled under a little lean-to of rugs, one pink umbrella titled toward the wind, their faces upturned like a little crop of wildflowers. I felt indescribably happy. Childhood should always be so sweet.

Snatched from an e-mail from Martin to his staff at the literary magazine back in PA

Hello, Editorial Staff!

I'm writing you from a craftsman bungalow on an island just west of Victoria, Canada, in the shadow of the North Cascades and towering Mt. Baker. Yesterday I kayaked around a rocky point, water clear to depths of ten or more feet, seals bobbing their heads all around me. At one point, both a bald eagle and a sea plane flew over me at the same time.

This is part of why I haven't been as motivated as I should be to get things going for the fall.

Pittsburgh Airport Note

It is 5:19. We're waiting with fairly subdued, sleepy people for our flight to Chicago. Martin's already eaten half of his sandwich and we still have 18 hours of travel stretching in front of us. But I feel as though we could fly to China and back without much trouble--so easy is it to fly without children!

Our time at home was marked by sorrow, grace, and an astounding outpouring of love. We saw all our dear friends, ate wonderful dinners full of healing humor and good food, stayed with friends who feel like family, who mourned and laughed a lot with us.

Nancy's funeral was extremely moving, led by several Orthodox priests who sang the liturgy in English. Her grave is under the shade of a big pine tree. The whole time I was back at home, moving through her house, walking down their familiar street, loving her children, I kept seeing her face, and her gentle blue eyes were laughing and loving, just as they so often were. I continue to mourn for her, and grief catches me throughout the day at different times. Nancy was so tender that her eyes would suddenly fill up with tears spontaneously when she was talking about her children or recounting a moving book she had read. Nancy knew loss intimately and turned that grief into a desire for compassion, a wonder for the world, and gentle, quiet spirit. I hope I can do the same.

The children are doing okay, wrapped up by the love our community, the intensity of the week, and the calm, peaceful presence of John, but they will need our love especially when everyone has gone home and the house is quiet. Then Nancy's absence will ring loudly and we will have come into that space and help to fill it.

We'll board soon, and at the end of this day, we'll be with family again in the San Juan Islands. Thank you to all our dear friends, and to our wonderful family for caring for our three daughters.

Seattle Airport Note

We're in the Seattle airport, waiting to board a huge jet, a 737. It just came in from Tokyo, unloaded at the customs dock, and rolled on over here. A cluster of anxious people crowd the gateway, but Martin and I are still sitting, unconcerned, buried in our books. Such a luxury when I am used to travelling with children, all three lovely girls home with Grandma, splashing in the Puget Sound today.

A perfect, wonderful barrage of loving offers to pick us up at the airport in PA has arrived, and we feel so loved I almost teared up over my last Seattle Starbucks, at least for a few days until we are back. To go back to a place I know so well and not to see Nancy there seems terribly strange. But there's such a wall of love there, strong, wonderful in its solidity, that I am filled with peace and gratitude, and it puts me at peace. A community like ours, moving together, is so rare, and I feel enveloped in grace.

I am so grateful too for a family to leave the girls with, so happy that we did not have to drag all three girls from the ferry to the train, from the train through the airport.

Gotta go. We're really boarding now, even the relaxed, unconcerned people without kids.

Nancy

I am sad to tell you all that our dear friend, Nancy, passed away today at three in the afternoon. She battled cancer for three years, and most of that time, she felt relatively little pain, which was a miracle, considering the nature of her illness. During a rapid decline, hospice was there to keep her comfortable and free from pain, and she was surrounded constantly by people who loved her. Thank you for all your prayers and thoughts; now, please turn them increasingly and faithfully to her three children and her husband, John.

Martin and I will fly back for the memorial service on Thursday, stay for a few days, and fly back to Seattle. In mid-August we will conclude our summer travels and settle back at home. I have felt so torn in the past week, knowing Nancy was so sick and I was so far away. I thought for a while I would be able to reach home in time to say goodbye to her in person, but her body's decline was astonishingly rapid. I was so grateful I was able to talk to her on the phone, to say goodbye and tell her I loved her.

Nancy and John were the first friends we met in Pennsylvania--they walked up our front steps with a plate of cookies and their children days after we moved in. She and I had many long, warm conversations; she often took care of me when I was miserable early in my third pregnancy; we could chat about gardens for hours, and I named her "Nancy Greenthumb" for her productive gardens and her love of all vegetables grown in good dirt.

Her mind was constantly alive and fertile, and not only did she care deeply about the education of her children, but she loved books and new ideas. She and I even audited one of Martin's writing classes together, and she also attended one of his summer writing classes with members of our community. I loved cooking vegetable curry for her and making her desserts with no sugar or fats (first she was vegan and then she was on a very restricted diet). She was gentle and kind to my children, she laughed often, and very near the end of her life, she was still walking about the neighborhood. I remember clearly watching her and her daughter walk away from my house, her daughter slipping her arm through her mother's.

Nancy helped me think about God in challenging and wonderful ways; she painted icons and understood incarnation in many ways; she loved her children and my children, and she was a woman I could call sister. I feel fortunate indeed to call Nancy my friend. I will celebrate her for the rest of my life.

Mixed up

Now is the time of mixed-up things. I am in Washington, on a clear, cool evening. My sister, her husband, Martin and the children chat, clink silverware, laugh and raise their voices in a political discussion of some kind. Today was so brilliant that Mt. Rainer shone brightly on the horizon; we could even see Mt. Hood behind its peak.

Back at home, in her familiar green house with the garden full of tomatoes and the herb bed that I know so well, with its climbing rose by the porch--in a place where I often chatted on the steps with my dear friend, Nancy, after pushing the stroller down the road or parking and letting her daughter climb out--here in this house my friend Nancy talked to me on the phone today from her hospital bed, and told me, somewhat lightly and humorously, "I've got hospice!"

And I, in my mind, had all the things I wanted to tell her so clear, in paragraphs. But over the phone I was choked, emotional beyond my own expectation, full of sadness, and all that I wanted to say tumbled out. I am unclear as to how all this works, losing a friend I love. It is hard to be so far away. I am comforted that Nancy is surrounded by good people, her community and family; I was able to talk with her though it was over the phone when I long to be with her and touch her arm, hand, lean over and give her a hug.

Mostly I am comforted by the knowledge that God is with her, beyond my own understanding, full in her, speaking in voices that flow through her like warm, comforting waters. When she can't hear her own family, she will hear God, and the voice will be sweet, as familiar as her own breath, the arms of her mother, the singing of her children. God will never leave her alone, nor will God leave her family alone, and this I hold to even in my deepest sadness.

Then there is waking and sleeping and laughing and crying for the rest of us, and that is good, too, though under it all these days, flows always a current of loss, a sense that something that should not have occurred happens now in spite of our longing, and in this brokenness God is there, too.

Beatrix, running on mountains overlooking Missoula, Montana
Photo snapped by Elspeth

I just finished a small mountain of spanikopita (did I spell that right? I'd check but dinner is imminent) and a glass of Riesling. We are waiting for dinner to brown sufficiently; today I bought two fabulous salwar kameez (one ridiculously pink) from a local and splendidly stocked thrift store. I wonder where I might wear these in our little southwestern PA town? Perhaps at the local grocery with the farming and coal mining clientle (mixed with neighbors I know): me in my sequins and poofy pink pants, selecting corn on the cob. I think dinner parties are in order.

I miss home but I am enjoying myself immensely. Not reading as much as I should. Today I began rereading "Woman Warrior" for a class I'll teach in the fall.

Ah, I hear my mother clinking silverware, which means my time at this keyboard is limited. For more complete thoughts on home, a glimpse into our travels in the south, and a bit of sentimentality, read my O-R column from last week by clicking on the geranium at right.

And in personal news: rejections continue but silver linings include an award of distinction from Midwest Literary Magazine for my story, "Birds in Snow" and an upcoming publication in the children's magazine, "Ladybug." Hurrah. Children's stories are such lovely fun.

Summer Tomato Girl

Taken by godmother Kara
Missoula Farmer's Market
Elspeth with luscious yellow tomato

It was a very bad day. . .

We're back in Edmonds, Washington, on a warm day so clear you can see the craggy, snow-capped peaks of Mt. Baker. The Puget Sound reaches sparkling to the foot of the Olympic mountains. We spent the day sitting on driftwood, watching the children wading deeper and deeper into the cold water and eating tart cherries from my sister's garden.

Now we're back in my parent's lovely little apartment, enjoying the breeze through the open door. Martin's doing the Sunday crossword, my Dad is snoozing with the Economist open and limp on his lap, and Merry's eating chips and chatting up a storm with my mother, who is making tea.

Mom just told us a funny little story about my sister's youngest little girl, Eliora, who is three. On a trip to Germany recently to visit her other grandparents, she surprised my sister when, late into the flight, she looked up into my sister's face, and said, "Let me tell you something. When we land, the plane will break into a hundred little pieces."

"Why would you think that?" my sister asked.

"Because," Eliora explained calmly, "The plane has no wheels."

"Yes, it does," Heather reassured her. "They'll come down soon, with a big thumping sound."

"No." Eliora extracted the safety information from the seat pocket. "The plane has no wheels and when we land, it will break into a hundred little pieces. See?"

Heather perused the safety pamphlet and Eliora was right: in every picture depicting the plane, there were no wheels. Apparently Eliora had been studying this pamphlet a good part of the long flight and had come serenely to the conclusion that it would crash when it hit the tarmac.

"Let me tell you a story," Eliora said. "Once there was a family who went on a plane. The plane flew and flew and then it landed and broke into a hundred pieces. The family landed in the mud. It was a very bad day."

Thankfully, Eliora's research, though thorough, did not yield the conclusion she believed it would, and Heather and the children landed safe and sound in Germany. And in the end, it was a very good day.

sentimental postcard from missoula

I'm sitting in bed beside Martin, who is hunched over a Richard Russo book. Behind me a cool breeze moves through the window; beside me, two cups of chamomile tea on a trunk. A kanga covers the trunk, on which three African violets reach their fuzzy green leaves toward the light from the lamp. On the opposite wall, a row of wraps and scarves.

The children finally sleep, the dryer knocks and clicks, and Chopin plays eternally. My head echoes with the voices of dear friends who deeply rooted in my being: Kara, my constant friend since our childhood in Kenya, who is now content in love with a good man; Lindsay and Tim and their children, who we have laughed with now for eleven years since that time when Martin and I were first making our way as young newlyweds and then as new parents. Tim and Lindsay are godparents to Merry; we are godparents to their son, Corin, and Kara is Elspeth's godmother. I even got to spend time with Kara's brother, Nathaniel, who used to be a gangly little brother and now is a strapping, handsome man with a beard. And we were able to meet Tim and Lindsay's precious and beautiful new adopted daughter, Birdie, who just arrived with them from Ethiopia.

And all in Missoula, happiest of cities with its broad rivers and sweeping paths, mountains and enormous sky.

And here I close, because I have too much to write, about wonderful adventures in Washington and so many faces and voices that I wrap in joy, joy that is steeped in gratitude and marked by sadness that these precious ones must often be far away.

And too I remember the love and joy that waits for me in so many places: here; with my family in Washington; with Martin's family in Texas; at home in Pennsylvania. I am blessed with this embarrassment of love, for places contoured and mapped by the voices and open hands of all these dear ones.

Elvis waz here

We're in Mississippi, tucked up in bed in a lovely old hotel built on the edge of the bayou. We may be sleeping in the same room Elvis slept in--who knows? I do know that he frequented this hotel from 1951-1957. He had a girlfriend down in Biloxi who "was a knockout in her black suit" as the hotel manager told me (she worked here in the 50's). Elvis played gigs at the same restaurant where we ate a pile of fried seafood tonight.

The hotel was built with mob money and appears in PBS specials about Al Capone. It seems to have quieted down quite a bit now, and the fabulous old pool that looks like it's right out of a Poirot set was filled with laughing children this afternoon.

We visited downtown Ocean Springs and explored an art museum full of pieces by a man named Walter Anderson. Some of his watercolors had been damaged in Katrina. Martin talked to his cousin about the hurricane, which was even more devastating than anything we could have imagined up in the east where we watched the coverage on TV. He has a scar on his arm from a flying piece of roof--he ducked out to try to move his truck and the air was full of debris, like mattresses. His friend actually floated for hours and then swam about a mile to reach his mother's house, where, three days later, he died from water contamination--and Martin's cousin says these stories are common. He describes it as seeming like the end of the world.

Martin, his sister and husband, and I wandered around a neighborhood this afternoon looking for Martin's cousin's old house, and we noticed that the streets, so shaded in Martin's memory, were flooded with hot sunlight; and then we noted the roofs of the houses were all new and the trees were almost all small. Evidence of Katrina is everywhere, not in debris or mess, but in small attentions, like the single red line drawn on the wall of the seafood restaurant we ate at the first evening we were here: Katrina, a red pen had noted, about eight feet up the wall.

Well, the children have fallen asleep, and I'm rather tired myself from swimming and walking and visiting, so I may follow. It's wonderful to be in such a different, fascinating, and beautiful part of the US with such good people. Maybe I'll dream of Elvis tonight.