delivery

I used to order organic flour, raisins, and peanut butter--things like that--from a wholesaler. I've fallen off that wagon now but I still receive e-mails alerting me to deliveries. Nancy used to send out the news but since she fell sick, a guy named Joshua has taken over.

joshua
delivery

This is what I see in my inbox every two weeks or so, and though I never click on the e-mail I'm rather fond of the subject line, especially since it's from Joshua. It makes me think of a Biblical prophet announcing my salvation.

I have some things Joshua could deliver me out of, don't you? I'd like to give him a catalogued list sometime. But then I wonder, as Merry has in the past about perfection, if that is something I really desire. "I mean, you wouldn't have anything to work on anymore," Merry has told me. She's right. If you were practically perfect in every way, what would you possibly find to overcome anymore?

There are so many small things that plague me, but the journey to overcoming them (which is a journey without an end, as far as I can tell), is worthwhile. For instance, even though I've been a writer for many years now, starting a new writing project is still daunting for me. The blinking cursor, the blank page. I feel as if I have to take a deep breath and jump that hurdle every time. And often my shins are all skinned by the end and I have to go back to the beginning and start over again.

Maybe, too, I secretly love my vices just a little bit. Sometimes it feels really good to lose my cool and shout, though afterward I feel as if I've lost something. Again--more than just my temper.

Joshua,today deliver me from the stress of the week into a long, cool happy hour.

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.

F & I

Top o the Monday to all of you good folk!

Today I must: write a letter to a man in Colorado about a guidebook he wrote about fifty years ago; interview the priest; buy more milk. And take a shower. I smell like maple syrup and I'm not sure how it happened. All last night I exuded the scent; while it seemed pleasant at first, it grew increasingly cloying, and now I can hardly wait to rid myself of it and go on with my day without thinking of pancakes every time I inhale.

It's deeply gray today, so gray in fact that I feel I could plunge my arm into the sky up to the elbow, grope around, and still not touch the hot orb of the sun. If I could I'd pull it out and bounce it across the county, sending sparks over us all and clearing our stuffy heads.

FIRE AND ICE

Merry held a late-birthday sleepover on Friday night. Two things of note happened: one, Martin, while mixing up some last minute enchiladas (Merry's choice) for about twenty people, leaned over to taste the sauce and realized he had put in two tablespoons of cayenne instead of chili powder; two, the sky decided to dump great quantities of ice upon us, so that everything looked like a set for the Nutcracker, charming until we almost killed four people on our front steps which looked as they had been dusted with a wee bit of snow but were coated underneath with an inch of ice. And the handrail was coated with ice as well, which translated to a lot of slipping and sliding and near calamity. Martin worked for about an hour to get to the rock salt I'd left in the Subaru. The car was also encased in an inch of ice which shattered like glass. Needless to say, our little guests got to stay for a while longer than planned, since nobody could get in their cars, let alone drive them along the roads. But the girls got some swift sledding in on our icy hill and we could hear the sleds swooping down even inside over the roar of the vacuum cleaner, where I was cleaning up the clods of cheese on the floor from the SECOND batch of enchiladas, sans cayenne.

Comfort at Any Price

This is how my night will culminate: trail mix, (maybe a bowl of cereal), Sleepytime tea, a little Dame Judi Dench on the TV, and my favorite red robe. Apparently I've dressed in this robe almost every (cold) night for the last thirteen or so years, at least that's what Martin claims. He seems to be ambivalent toward it, but I LOVE it.

It does not become me in any way. I found my enormous Land's End robe--red as holly berries--at an outlet center in Maine (I think--I can't remember now). It was far too big for me, especially at that time, but I didn't care. It was incredibly soft, not sensuously so like bird's feathers or spring leaves, but like a huge slipper--for my body. It has enormous pockets that are continuously filled with tiny choking hazards swiped off the floor or earrings removed at night or wads of kleenexes.

There is nothing attractive about this robe--it's 100 % polyester, bulky and voluminous; it completely hides any figure I might boast and the tie about the middle makes a big, unflattering knot. And yet it has been just the thing for three pregnancies and daughters who loved to nurse constantly and for as long as possible. It's as good as a blanket as I pad around our old, chilly house in sheepskin slippers where morning temperatures upstairs in our room waver in the 50's and 60's. I love this huge, ugly, comfortable piece of red perfection.

What's an ugly comfort you love? Give thanks for it tonight, as I shall when I wrap Good Old Red around me once again.

What's intimidating me today:
Baking Merry's cheesecake.

I have baked a cheesecake before, and goodness knows it's not too hard. But it's just a tad bit fiddly, and I don't 'do' fiddly. That's why I am not a good engineer. Measurements? Meaningless details!

Merry's belated birthday party is this weekend and she wants a Cheese Party: all her guests will sample cheeses and write down what they think of each one. If she pushes for this on her tenth birthday, what will she ask for in another ten? Caviar tasting party? Truffles from around the Continent?

My parents are eating cheese, too, but they may very well be locked this very moment in their tiny beach shack in Oregon listening to winds gust over sixty miles an hour and waves crash not far from their thin walls. But my mother, who sounded absolutely drunk on life yesterday when I spoke with her, and my father, who is more reserved generally but also sounded very happy, assured me that they had bought emergency matches and candles and would be quite snug with their Scrabble game, cheese, Dave's Killer Bread, and a bottle of the best wine I have ever, ever tasted: Angelico, a red so smooth that you feel like a baby again. One can't help being a little envious of the hurricane lovebirds in their empty nest. They've managed to feather it quite nicely.

Garden Plans

Martin was very busy over the weekend with a major project. He toiled over it until two in the morning on Saturday evening and spent at least five or six hours bent over it in deep concentration on Sunday.

The final project is now taking up half our dining room table, along with our computers, unfinished puzzles and hot cups of Sleepytime tea.

You'll never guess. It's a to-scale, detailed, topographic rendering of our garden plans, in. . ..LEGOS. Yes. You heard me correctly. The paths, the pots, even the compost bins and our white cat (we don't own it; it just likes our garden)--all carefully built out of legos. My favorite part is the woman sitting at a table under an arbor draped with grapevine. She did not try to design the garden, on paper or with legos. Her one attempt at building a pot was met with veiled derision. So she isn't patient enough to find just the right blocks--so she doesn't have an engineering bone in her body and her pots look like something from out of space--so what? She's happy in the shade.

The woman is me, of course, and she looks so content out there in lone splendor with her book, plastic ponytail, and pot of tri-colored flowers.

In contrast, there are three men, and I think they must all be Martin--one is watering the garden with a huge hose, one is raking over green matter in the compost bin, and one is jauntily starting up the main path with a broom in his hand (due to a cornocopia of legos from different sets, the broom used to be a spear. A barbarian gentleman with a shield and impressive facial hair used to lounge breezily on a garden bench as well until he was plucked and discarded).

There's even a little wheelbarrow and a woman in a zen position in front of a planter. That can't be me.

My little charge, Ethan, poured over the Lego garden today, and his little hands kept fluttering toward it. "No, we don't want to touch it," I'd say. "Uncle Martin made that."

Ethan couldn't wrap his mind around it. "You mean he made it when he was a little boy?"

"No, he made it this weekend." Of course, the impressive crop of legos are from Martin's childhood, and I am glad to report that he is just as delighted by them now as he was when he was ten.

We tromped outside in the garden in our snow boots and made comparisons between the lego garden and the actual garden. We agreed that though the height adjustments of our sloping garden had been tricky to achieve in the Lego replica, the actual toil output in our actual garden come spring thaw will be harder. . .a whole lot harder. But what's more fun than shoveling tons of clay?

I wish I had downloaded the photos, but they're still on the camera. . .maybe tomorrow. I know you'll wait with bated breath.

She will just ramble on. . . .

It's a very quiet MLK day here at Wazoo, though I just heard Merry cackle. Yes, cackle is the right word. It's supposed to be quiet time--Bea just looked outside and said, "It's very dark. It must be time to go to bed." The sky is a heavy white, a reflection of the snowy ground, though it's warming for evening rain.

Merry has saved her weekend homework until now and should be bent studiously over her tablet and book but Catherine is upstairs, too, and concentration is unlikely. Catherine is such a part of our family now that I no longer adjust my thought to fill four cups with water or ask four girls to scatter to tasks. I no longer "set an extra place" for Catherine but it is as if I have a fourth "sometimes" daughter.

It's been a short three or four months since Nancy died, but oddly it seems like much longer. In a way, death is like a boulder in a river; the river continues rushing on but there's new texture to it, an awareness of the way the rock has changed the course of the water. And, at least in this life, it's immovable. It will always be there and though everyone sees it, it is not often talked of. The first week I spent with Catherine after her mother passed away, I noticed that I did not speak of Nancy. At the end of the week, I felt convicted of the wrongness of this. Now I speak of Nancy freely with Catherine--when I see something that reminds me of her mother, I say so. When I remember something her mother loved, I tell Catherine. She must have many stories of her mother, and with these stories she will build a secret room of riches for herself. She'll need it--we all need secret rooms.

Catherine speaks easily and matter-of-factly about her mother, in the healthy, natural way that children have, or should have. It is only we adults, tied up so tightly by our own fears, who must adjust and choose to be natural instead of awkward.

I often think that we will someday realize that time is a flexible, boneless thing that wraps us now but will later be thrown from our shoulders like an old coat. It seems like such a rigid thing now--it pins us, storms at us, makes us dizzy and sad--but someday we'll find it to be a friendly, dynamic thing, with which we can play and relate and even laugh at. At least this is what I trust to be true, and it seems so much more obvious now that my friend has died, my children are growing quickly, and winter is here again, though the lilacs are already tightly budded. What if they were to bloom this afternoon and the air around them warmed until the grass went green and their corner of the garden was full of spring? Something like this happens in Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant." The North Wind and Frost punish the giant for being selfish, but one day the giant smells spring blowing in the window. When he looks outside, "He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children's heads." You can read the whole story, which begins with promise but ends by being unfortunately didactic, HERE.

(Please don't try to stick your children in icy trees to see if sudden thaw will occur.)

Now it feels like winter--snow flurries in furious gusts, eddies at window panes. Bea is snoring softly next to me. We are both bundled, she and I, her head thrown back into her pillow, mouth open, cheeks pink. The windchimes are making a glorious racket and the ill-fitted storm windows in the sunroom bang in the wind. It's hard to ever really wake up on a day like today, when the the sun is only a reality for others. (I'd like to be in Australia by the sea this afternoon). Sally and Kevin came for lunch this afternoon and we all sat and stared at one another. Conversation was not bright and the best I could contribute was lines of "I'll Be There," by the Jackson 5, which was to be one of the most inane songs of all time. Cloying and saccharine, it sticks to the roof of my mouth, and Bea loves the Jackson 5 beyond all others.

"Jackson 5!" she demands on a daily basis, and for TV, "Tom and Jerry!" and for lunch, "Mac-e-bo-bos!" She and I share a rather bland diet there but it's punctuated by good books and frenzied rides on her tricycle, which she can maneuver around corners with astonishing speed and accuracy.

I'm thinking of all the household tasks I now have time for: finally tackling a closet I've been dreading for years (literally); paring things down, getting rid of say, half our stuff. I have the time but none of the will, because, let's face it, it's so very dull. If Jesus were to come back and I was cleaning out a closet, (I told Kevin and Sally today), I'd feel absolutely gipped.

How in the world do you spell that word? Gypped. That's just worse. Oh, I've no idea.

The sledding hill beckons children perhaps this afternoon but not me. It's a windchill of perhaps 1 degree and though I had high hopes of becoming Pioneer Mary and taking walks in every sort of weather, I am hiding from my better self today and baking cupcakes, one batch of which was a miserable failure (despite two sticks of butter, they taste like cornbread) and the other which succeeded so well I don't want anyone to eat them.

Jipped. That can't be right. I've been literate for a while now and my spelling just gets worse. Why?

Happy Friday, and may Happy Hour rise up to meet thee.

PS. Just ran the spell check and lo and behold, Gypped is correct. What a silly looking word that is. I wonder if it's embarrassed.

I've been thinking about writing a lot. I've been writing only a little. I've been thinking about starting work on a novel; I haven't typed a single word. Last night I told Martin, "Why do it when there are plenty of people who have already done it well? And most of them I haven't even read yet!" I've also been meaning to start a writing group with students since I'm not teaching this semester. I ran into a student in the University hallway--straight from home, I was in my "plain clothes" of course--stained shirt, house sweater, comfy cordoroys, my hair hanging about my face--and Bea, though she was dressed, had left her coat at home and was in socks with no shoes (she did have a blister on her toe, by the way). I chatted with the student for a bit and then the writing group came up. "Yes," I said, "I will organize it. I plan to get serious again in. . .um. Four days."

The days are passing quickly with no signs of seriousness from me yet, though at least I've started blogging again.

It was certainly encouraging to find a review online of my short story, "Patron Saint of Trees," by Nichole Reber at her site, "The Review Review." You can read my very first review HERE.

Next week I will gather in my energy and be serious again. That gives me--let's see--about four days more. Perfect.

Truth is Overrated, Especially When You're Six

Tonight we gathered around our kitchen table and bowed our heads over steaming bowls of homemade chicken soup. This introductory sentence might make you feel as if this was a peaceful occasion. Much of the afternoon had been relatively calm--the girls were happy, they'd decorated some cookies and rolled some biscuit dough into pinwheels I slid into a hot oven. But the chaos that strikes shortly before dinnertime had indeed knocked us all upside the heads like clockwork and by the time I sat down at the table, all I could do was tip my head back in utter exhaustion.

Elspeth wanted to pray.

She told us they always pray in school before snack. "Really?" I said.

"Yeah," she said, folding her hands together. "Mrs. E. [her kindergarten teacher] makes us."

"I don't think so," I insisted. "That's actually illegal."

"Well. . ." she hedged. Maybe you should know that Elspeth is currently telling tales about everything under the sun. . .she drops a lie as easily as sneezing or shrugging her shoulders--lies to help herself out, lies too when there's absolutely no reason to lie. "Okay," she admitted, "Ben and I pray sometimes before snack." (I can't imagine this happening since she usually sinks her teeth into anything in front of her without so much as a "Thanks, Bozo," but who knows?)

Nevertheless, we bowed our heads and Elspeth began: "Thank you, God, that I had a good day today. Thank you for my sisters, Merry and Beatrix. Thank you for this food and I am so grateful to Mommy for being patient with me and also because she adopted me. . ."

I tried not to laugh behind my folded hands because most of it was such a nice prayer, but Merry spoke right up. "You're not adopted, Elspeth!"

"Yes, I am," Elspeth said, looking up. "Mrs. E. told me I was."

That Mrs. E. Apparently I'm going to have to write a letter into the school. According to Elspeth, she is the source of all kinds of craziness. But this is the same girl who, in preschool, tried to convince me that her teachers were making them climb through roof panels onto the roof. She also spun such skillful tales of utter hooliganism perpetrated by a poor boy named Thomas that I actually believed her for a while until another mother pooh-pooohed me.

I can only hope Elspeth can manage to stay out of jail in later life. Hope springs eternal since she recently asked me, "Mommy, can I be an artist when I grow up?"

"Absolutely," I said.

"And a teacher?"

"Yes, you can choose what you want to be. You can be an artist and a teacher." (Hopefully not a convict).

She looked as if I'd handed her the keys to her freedom. "Really? You mean they'll LET ME?"

Ah, my girl Elspeth. The killer of all my parent pride, the source of much joy and delight. You'd better be a mighty fine artist, my dear, to warrant your wild childhood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High Heels!

Brilliant musician Greg Scheer writes:

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

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

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

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


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

Advent Poem 2

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

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

Call for Poems

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

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

So write me.

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