the lost key

~ FOR MEGAN AND JAMES


in the clearing beside the hall called mercury
amidst the ancient industry of living things,
the buzz and song and whir of insects
and birds, stands a craggy crowd
live oaks and post oaks with sun scorched
wind hardened bodies marked

with many rings, lines in endless circles
rough brown arms and elbows and living hats
of vivid green tip toward earth and eavesdrop
glad, bright and shining in the celebration's glade
where the old fragments we are certain and you are lodged
now reach them and the company gathered below them

now find their way new again, the way of remembrance for,
remembrance of, remembrance toward, forward, beyond 
remembrance because this day when the key is lost is the day
we witness two beings offering words engraved
round and round eternity, the day come, the day gone again
the trees motionless in the blossoming hush of evening
the stars a rising flourish in the southern sky
unlock delight in the vow stay there forever.

insert poem here

it's that time of year again—the academy of american poets poem in your pocket day is TODAY.

discover a poem, fold it up, put the wonder of it in your pocket—or at least put it somewhere where it might be conveyed—and carry around a little inspiration, a little mystery, a little memory, a little experience. read and reread. feel the pull of an imaginative journey offering, perhaps, a secret, and always pleasure. whatever you do, don't forget to share it.

here's a poem by mary oliver that's in this, my virtual pocket....and in my real one, too.



~Mary Oliver~

ONE OR TWO THINGS 

Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.


The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes


for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.


The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening


to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever,


which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.


One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning—some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.


But to lift the hoof!
For that you need an idea.

what word shall it be?

after astrid and willa went back to texas i discovered a piece of creased notebook paper written in pencil and submerged in a pile of odds and ends. as i held the paper portion of the accumulated stuff over the recycle bin—ready to release my hold and let it all slip away—i stopped. i decided to leaf through the detritus to verify that it was, in fact, junk, and not something of value in need of being saved. i'm glad i took the time to do so because under the advertising circulars, magazines, and envelopes enticing me with offers of credit cards, vinyl siding and replacement windows, i found this small gem, a gem from the mind of a young child on vacation in a place she had never before experienced.

astrid had begun to form ideas off the letters that spell "maine" (is there a name for doing this? an acrostic or something?) and then, at some point, seems to have been abruptly interrupted. she might have left her writing behind to eat dinner, or to head out on a fun excursion, or to get ready for bed; or she might have been distracted by her sister or the dog or the lure of a campfire and s'mores. whatever the case may have been, she never resumed her writing and the paper was forgotten and abandoned.

as i read the words i had found, i smiled. the girls had only left two days before, but already the events of the previous fourteen days had formed themselves into a prized collection of memories, the kinds of memories that are sweet and persistent and insist on being mulled over.

for your information, maine, it turns out, is "mainly cold"and yet it is also an "amazing place"; it is where imaginings and dreams are sparked, and the "not a warm sea" stretches to the horizon.

but then what? what about the last letter of the word m-a-i-n-e? what about that final "e"? astrid's writing suddenly ends, leaving the sorry looking "e" hanging there, and leaving me wanting more. what else were you going to say, little girl? the incomplete "e" stands by itself, lonely and unfinished at the bottom of the page. what could have come next in her thought process about maine? what might she have been thinking? what would the "e" have become? what else could she have added?

perhaps the "e" might have started off the word enjoyable. or energetic. or easygoing? or how about exquisite, extraordinary, eventful? maybe excited to explore someplace new. maine overflows with all these words.

or eating perhaps—we did a lot of that. the girls tasted lobster for the first time, although willa didn't particularly care for it. but that was fine with me—i love lobster and got to devour her leftovers.

i have taken the delightful piece of work and, for the time being, have tucked it away in a safe place. perhaps the author might finish it at a later date—at least i hope, i really hope, that's what will happen.

yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

some things never get old. some things are always fun.

when little amelia comes to visit, the first toys she usually pulls out of the toy basket are the baby-hand size, square duplo blocks. she loves to click them together into tall, wobbly towers and take them apart again, one block at a time. my kids played with the same colorful plastic squares and rectangles she plays with—such sturdy and long-lasting toys, good stuff, these chunky danish blocks for toddlers.

we went to legoland in denmark when the kids were little and the opportunity presented itself. we'd always had a house full of legos, so what fun it was for them to walk through miniature lego villages and see those intricate plastic creations made entirely of snap together bricks, and then to drive a legoland car and get a legoland driver's license. that was the time we were visiting our danish friends and business associates who lived a short distance away from the theme park. (today their son, martin, actually works for lego.)

then there was the time the danes came over here, intent on heading into the wilds of maine. i remember when ed, city-boy bjorn, james, martin and a few other guys (including two more danes) went on a father/son, canoe/camping trip in "our" wilderness. that was the second time (the first one was also a maine canoe trip) and final time bjorn ever did anything quite as, shall i say, rustic and primitive as that in his life. (five days of no showers—but there was great swimming—no outhouses, and rough spots along the beautiful river, with just enough room under the trees for tents and a campfire, to call home for the night.) early in our marriage i also enjoyed doing this trip a few times, paddling along the remote west branch of the penobscot river and down wind-whipped chesuncook lake. i wonder why we could never get bjorn to set foot in the maine woods again. two visits that included roughing it were enough, i guess.

but back to the legos. james was addicted to legos and played with the smaller bricks until he was about eleven, building his way through the age levels, patiently putting together many boxes of intricate pirate and space and technic sets. once, when he was home from college, i looked wistfully into a box filled with the broken-apart, mixed-together colored bits of two wrecked pirate ships and asked him if he could please reconstruct them into their original glory. james was happy to do so. he rebuilt one ship (with hardly a glance at the instructions) and promised to do the other one soon. (that was almost ten years ago—i really need to get after him to rebuild the second one when he's home in maine.)

i like to look at the pirate ship, that remnant of fleeting years—complete with scruffy little eye-patched pirates ready to fire a canon or pistol in your face—from time to time. occasionally i run a dust cloth over it, but i quickly lose my patience. the spaces between the round connector bumps are impossible to get completely clean without picking at them for an hour with a Q-tip, or soaking the whole thing in water. (who the heck has time for that?) the pirate ship remains, as always, displayed on a shelf—dusty but intact—a relic from the past lives of children, a reminder of halcyon days spun from seemingly endless childhood.

four fourteen

so this is it, this is what it feels like to be the male of the species, a male who's about to become a father. this is what it's like to be standing on the other side, to be on the outside looking in, watching the person you love pass through a range of stages and emotions—bored, uncomfortable, in incredible pain, distracted, apprehensive, jubilant, impatient—not being able to do much to help, and feeling somewhat invisible, useless, helpless.

a few words—kind, soothing words, softly spoken, mixed with a little humor—that's pretty much it in my bag of tricks, although i suppose that's better than nothing. after all, in the "old days", days not very long ago, i wouldn't even have been allowed this, to be here in the labor/delivery room touching my daughter's shoulder, her head, her hair, trying to come up with the right words to say.

earlier in the day—nine hours earlier, to be exact.....

i hear a ringing sound. ringing—is it that, or is it something else?

my sleep remains heavy and undisturbed on this night and into the early morning hours, the sleep of the dead, as they say. far, far in the distance i hear bells; no it's music—that's it, music, not bells—almost inaudible violins playing beside a river, and the sound is traveling along the water toward me. or is it the sound of guitars, both sad and sweet, that i hear? no, i was right the first time. they are bells, cathedral bells, high above this ancient city built with many hands and heavy sweat and ancient stones.

i stir. sleep lifts. i begin to come out from under muffled slumber and dreams. i realize it's not bells, it's the phone that's ringing, brrrring-brrrring-ing in my head. i have been waiting for this call for what seems like forever—twenty months plus another nine—since the beginning of failed effort, and then when the words infertility and IVF—harbingers of both horror and hope—were introduced, and IVF was considered and tried, failed, and was eventually successful.

when the call comes i am unprepared. i have been prepared for weeks, ready for the call, but now, on this morning when it finally comes, i happen to be in the deepest of sleeps. i am disoriented in my drug-like slumber. why is the phone ringing at such an odd hour? my fingers blindly claw at the table beside my bed. at first i can't find it; when i finally do, the numbers on the dated (translation: ugly—it really should be tossed), 1980's general electric, brown plastic clock/radio/phone shine a bright and cheery four fourteen at me. then i hear her tired, happy, slightly quavering voice. mom, we're at the hospital. my water broke at 1 a.m..... and i wish i had wings and could fly to burlington to be at her side this instant. i am still groggy when i say we'll be on the highway by eight and hang up the phone. but, suddenly, i am wide awake. for me, the world is going to be different from today onward. i am going to be a grandmother.

the drive to vermont feels endless. when we're within a half hour of our destination we have to stop to let alex and kevin's dog, montana, out for a pee, and fill up her food and water dishes before we can continue on our way to the hospital.

and here we are. after many hours of keeping alex company, three of us must leave the labor/delivery room with the bird's eye view of lake champlain—it's time for her to start pushing her baby out. we try to wait patiently. i feel abandoned, left out—once again, male-ish—like fathers must have felt until about 40 years ago when they were finally allowed into the inner sanctum of blood and pain and joy. i wait, staring at the old-fashioned wall clock, watching the second hand's annoyingly perfect round and round promenade, for this most modern of fathers to walk through the door of the waiting room—once he has cut the umbilical cord and done some bonding—and announce the birth of his baby. (i have honestly never glanced up at a clock or at a door so many times in my life.) it will be near sunset when the waiting is over.

i marvel. the tiniest humans, the newest arrivals on this planet, carry with them such small parts—miniature orifices, appendages and limbs—parts that have never before felt the earth's warm air, or their mother's or father's touch. their noses have never smelled this world or any world, nor have their tongues tasted warm mother's milk. their eyes have only known darkness, their ears only muffled vibrations.

in the morning light his eyes open and he gazes at his mother as she holds him in arms that have ached for him. i try to handle my emotions. i blink away tears and blow my nose. i am convinced his infant stare is deep and knowing, like that of an old, old soul. but, of course, that cannot be. that's impossible.

an old soul in a new body. why impossible? maybe it's not such a far-fetched idea. within even the tiniest of newborn babies, under the soft, delicate, brand-new skin, lies the ancient, the unknown, the unfathomable, some small inkling of what we are, where we come from, how we have come to be. hidden inside each infant is a kind of universe, the hint of a thing that is old, very old—the origin of us all—and also a foretelling of what has never been seen, but, in time, may be.

every baby is a beginning, but he also contains the possibility of beginnings—the possibility of life for the next generation—inside him. he is who he is, but he is also the past and the future combined into one. as he journeys into his new world, he brings with him an unbroken link to an old world—those souls in his line who existed before—and an extension into the future, to those who will exist in a time far off, a time which has not yet even been imagined.

welcome, my little boy. welcome.

good morning perkins cove

when too much time passes between visits with old friends it becomes a kind of dangerous time, time that's barely hanging on by its fingernails, dangling above the great abyss of no time left and scrabbling to hold on. time like that begins to feel perilously long, especially the older we get (as opposed to the way most things these days seem to fly by in a flash), and suddenly an email or a phone call every month or so isn't good enough and it's necessary to make adjustments, to tweak schedules, tinker with calendars—those nasty little calendar squares that snappishly admonish dearie,
you're not getting any younger, you know—so what are you waiting for?—and extend a hand, mark a time in a box and say we're gonna do it, we're just gonna make plans.

such was the case with annemarie and me a few weeks ago. she was going to be staying in the area—turns out longer than i knew or expected, all having to do with her job—and we arranged getting together. annemarie's been my bosom buddy (bosom meaning the stickiest, never-to-be unstuck kind of friend) since we were both eleven years old. (ah, those thrilling days of junior high school when it was not going to be too long before we begged our mothers to let us get pierced ears and wear mascara and slip on oh-so-grown-up nylons.)

what's fantastic about our relationship is that whenever we see each other it's as if there's no such thing as time and we have somehow miraculously managed to connect with each other almost every day since that first day of friendship in 6th grade—as if hardly a few weeks have elapsed between visits since our school days to these days of our middle age.

we've always been there for each other, through the fun times and through the tough times, no matter what.

i drove down to oqunquit where she had rented a cottage at perkins cove and we picked up where we left off, progressing through the things that have flown by us in the intervening year and a half since we last saw each other.

it was good; dinner out and then the next morning a walk down from the house to the path above the rocks and along the shore. this was still the off season—most of the shops and restaurants were locked up tight—and it was quiet, quiet just the way i like it. annemarie and i were disappointed that the little breakfast place with outdoor tables was not going to open for a few more days, so we enjoyed a simple repast—tea and toast and fruit—back at the house.

it was good, that time together to laugh and reminisce and tell stories. always the stories. it was good, that continuation of last week and the week before and all the weeks before that. good and sticky.

bird rock or not

 a calydonian boar greets visitors at the entrance to the household wing at osborne house

our english friends, the lovely lady katherine and her handsome husband, john—a commoner like the rest of us—from horton, northampton, were recently in maine at their cottage in cape elizabeth. they took time away from their rigorous relaxation schedule—drinking a lot of tea (english habits die hard), reading books, going for walks along the beach, and barbecuing hunks of bloody, meaty things—and favored my husband and me with a few hours of their company. we met at—where else?—gritty's, our local brew pub.

lady katherine was the one who insisted i go to osborne house (!) on the isle of wight—my husband and i were overseas for a few weeks last june and he had a business meeting on the island—to see queen victoria's summer palace and the walled garden. i assumed she had been there; turns out she has never set foot in the place. the things you learn. so the four of us laughed about that, and talked about life in northampton, life in maine, life in general, and swapped stories about our aging parents and our grown children and their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands—all the usual catching-up topics.

later, after we had said our goodbyes, i thought about the house they used to rent in cape elizabeth. i smiled to myself when i remembered how the seagulls would line up side by side, perching from one end of the roof to the other, like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. they always seemed to be resting on lady katherine's roof, but not on any others. i guess the birds liked lady k's view the best.

funny, isn't it, how you'll have something random on your mind and then that will conjure up more similarly random thoughts. thinking about the cape elizabeth seagulls brought to mind other maine places where birds like to congregate in large numbers—the shorebirds at popham beach and in the nooks and crannies along our rocky coast, the great gatherings of puffins on eastern egg rock, and the seagulls and cormorants on the thousands of ledges and anonymous, vaguely egg-or-dumpling-shaped rocks in the ocean which are often surrounded by rafts of eiders and nosy harbor seals—also found on the "seal rocks" near portland—in the bay's rolling tide.

my train of thought kept coming back to eggs and rocks, and rocks and eggs, and rocks that, by scrunching your eyes into a good squint, resembled eggs. of course, once eggs got in my head, i had no choice but to think of birds.

i was given an animal picture book when i was a child which had a nice drawing of a large rock with lots of birds on it. that rock was the first rock—in what would become a long line of rocks—i knew to be called egg. i asked my parents why the author called it egg rock and they said can't you see why? it's obvious—it's shaped like an egg. that answer might have been obvious to them, but it was far from  obvious to me—it did not satisfy me then, and it still doesn't satisfy me. in my opinion, the rock in question appeared egg-ish or egg-like but it also appeared quite dumpling-ish or meatball-ish since it was basically roundish and therefore only an approximation of an egg's shape. i thought how dumb can parents be?

i argued with my parents that the rock in the picture book had birds all over it so wouldn't it only make sense to call it bird rock. (this was long before i knew about seal rock, which would have helped my argument immensely.) that's an obvious name, i told them. besides, some giant, mythical mutha of a bird had to lay that monster egg of a rock in the first place, and now the rock was covered with birds. everywhere birds, birds, birds. it's a bird rock, i insisted, like it or not.

my parents said to me bird rock or not bird rock, you're so argumentative you should become a lawyer. (they said that many times while i was growing up.)

maybe i should have, but i never did.


~ congratulations. you made it to the bottom of the page. now you get to hear the truth. i have a confession to make: my friend katherine is not a lady at all.... well, i mean, she is a lady, a lovely lady, just not a royal lady. i call her lady katherine because someone actually thought she was a royal lady once. but that's a story for another day.

the color of morning

what color is 9 o'clock on a sunny weekday morning?

is it a sea blue sky? a rich brown dirt? a shimmery green hummingbird? or an indifferent gray sidewalk like the sidewalk that will soon support my feet as i walk up the little hill to sherman's book shop on main street in freeport?

yet in order to step on the gray sidewalk i first must slide out of the car, close the door, press the lock button on my key and hear the all's locked up safe and secure beep. that's when i turn and notice a man in his late twenties (or early thirties? i can never tell, i can never estimate anyone's age well. is that because it's not on my radar screen, it's not important to me?) jogging toward me.

in the millisecond it takes for me to glance at him and note his uncertain age, my brain registers that he is a complete stranger—does he live here and i just don't know him, or is he visiting friends, or is he staying in a hotel or a b&b in town?—and that he is asian, of average height and build, and is wearing shorts, t-shirt, sneakers. that's all i think there is.

as he runs past me on his way up the hill he turns his head and looks me in the eye. he's a good-looking guy.

he smiles and says "beautiful morning, isn't it?"

this beautiful morning reminds me of atlanta's friendly streets last september, and also of the pathways winding around phillips exeter academy where students habitually nod and greet and offer thoughtful recognition of fellow students, faculty and strangers in their midst by using their eyes as well as their voices.

i respond "yes, it certainly is."

by the time i put my keys in my handbag and arrive on the sidewalk he turns a corner and is gone.

what color is 9 o'clock on a sunny weekday morning?

i now see that it is the color of the wide, wide world and honest words and a smile on a stranger's face.

go find elephants and kiss them

i saw this somewhere on the internet and unfortunately no credit was given for the image or the colorful sentences. it looks like a frequently utilized classroom activity, this time with maybe first or second graders, where the teacher goes around a circle of students and asks each child the same question—in this case how can people show their love for a child?—and then writes down exactly what the child says.

the wonderful and creative insights that come out of the mouths of very young kids is astonishing.

i would now like to take this exercise one step further.

i think where it says how to really love a child the addition of and also an adult could get us all thinking and behaving in many new new and unique ways.

what if adults—in particular, one's own family and friends—were to always keep the gleam in their eye and be there for each other, invent pleasures together, express their love a lot, search out the positive and try to say yes instead of no whenever possible, go find elephants and kiss them ( i just love that), stop yelling, and—love these, too—giggle a lot and encourage silly? wouldn't that be great?

adults need these instructions on how to love (and live) for themselves as much as for children. i think everyone would be healthier and happier if they incorporated even just a few of these words of wisdom into their lives.

well, i ask you, wouldn't you love to see people in their pajamas at the movie theater? well, okay, maybe not.

nevertheless, when i first came across these sentences i wrote them down with colored markers and stuck them on the refrigerator with a magnet. they are a daily reminder of some little things that i believe are actually much bigger things.

at this point in my life i think my task has become very clear. i need to (1) go find elephants and (2) talk the person in charge into allowing me to kiss them.

island syllables

a few words spoken, or unspoken—but always in my head—during the lazy winter vacation days on sanibel. i'm in maine again, but recalling these simple syllables will keep me warm for a long time:

barefoot       lazy

waves          sunrise

iced tea        oysters

hibiscus         beer

sunset          SPF

crabs            sand

towel           waves

starfish         breezy

salty             iced water

pelicans       palm trees

waves          dolphins

swimming    tide

fish              calamari
reading         fishing 

seashells      waves

barbecue      laughter

herons          ibis

green            blue

sighs             happy

sunshine       waves

surf               walking

tide pools      sweatshirt

family           together
flip-flops     ocean     

a christmas tree surprise

every family has their own holiday and christmas traditions, and searching for and selecting that "perfect" tree is certainly an important aspect of getting ready for celebrating the season.

ed and i pick out our christmas tree together (when our kids were little they helped, too), but we don't have a tradition as far as where we get the tree. in past years we've purchased trees from the freeport rotary club or our local plant nursery, or we have found trees on our land or ed's mother's land in harpswell.

the bought trees are always tree farm lush and perfectly formed with dense fingers of needles and a thick coat of branches. the wild trees are more of the charlie brown variety—thin, scraggly, lots of space between the branches (ornaments actually hang better and are more visible on these evergreens), sometimes a gaping hole on the spot where a branch should have grown but couldn't because the tree didn't get enough light or nutrients or something.

personally i have a fondness for imperfect, unwanted wild christmas trees, but we often end up buying  a tree because it's easier—we can be awfully lazy—if we don't feel like going all the way up to harpswell and searching for one, cutting it down and dragging it out of the woods; or if we don't have any trees that are the right size in our woods in freeport.

one year i sent ed out alone to get a tree (i believe that was the first and only time he's gone by himself). i don't remember why i didn't go—i was either sick or busy doing something else. he promptly came home with a fine 10 foot tree he purchased from a church fund raiser.

as we put up the tree together—me making sure it was straight in the stand and ed tightening it securely—i looked up and noticed something on a branch in the interior of the tree. when i leaned in closer i discovered a lovely, well-shaped, 5 inch bird's nest. ed had unknowingly bought a christmas tree with a real bird's nest hidden in it! i kept the nest in the tree and put in a little stone bird. since then, when i see abandoned bird's nests or ones which have fallen on the ground, i save them and place the nests in the christmas tree, a small bird nestled in each.

i've never in my life, either before that day or after, found another christmas tree that carried the marvelous surprise of a beautiful nest tucked in its branches.

i wonder, have you?

phloxie poppers

standing in monday's warm sun, a good stiff breeze ruffling the oaks and poplars—the only trees with leaves still displaying a resoluteness and fixedly holding tight to the branches—i overheard a steady pop! pop! going on in the greenery.

the first time i heard that odd sound was years and years ago when my garden was new and i was new to gardening. gardening—that wonderful mucking about in pungent soil and tangles of weeds and fall's dead leaves, that exploration of the hidden worlds of smooth roots and bumpy rhizomes and chubby worms alive under the ground—and a love for the outdoors are in my genes. i am descended from generations of men and women who worked on the land, their own (in recent history) or belonging to the neighborhood duke or lord or whatever other landed gentry, and made their livelihoods from crops and cattle and horses and sheep (lots of sheep) .

when i garden my hands become dirty and sandpaper rough (you don't want to touch my sea urchin-like palm and fingers—i should wear gloves but i rarely do because i need to feel the good earth), my nails split (no glamorous nail polish for me) and crusty with black soil like one of those old farmers but not really, since my garden patch is smallish and unmechanized and suburban. there is no rise-up-at-dawn to milk the cows here; there is only me. my husband does not garden. he is without a green thumb but he helps me with heavy hauling and cutting—any yard work requiring a chainsaw and bigger muscles than i have.

and the pops? those were phlox seedpods—small, oval, ripe, ready—the ones which have gone from green to brown—wantonly bursting again and again in the afternoon sunshine (always in the sun's heat, never on a cloudy day) providing food for birds, mice, moles and voles and sending forth an unwavering new generation.

dining with dinosaurs

i never before imagined that i would experience such a thing—eating with dinosaurs, or, to be more specific, under dinosaurs—the kind of thing that is a unique, interesting, once in a lifetime occurrence.

a few weeks ago in atlanta, georgia, at a fabulous wedding reception for our dear friends' son and his lovely bride (9.10.11 was a very popular date for weddings this year) at the impressive fernbank museum of natural history, i enjoyed dining with behemoths for the first, and most likely only, time. oh what a night.

the dancing never stopped because the music never stopped. three (!) great bands played during the evening and, except for a break to announce the entrance of the the bride and groom and their wedding attendants and immediate families, there was hardly a pause in the music. the bands took turns playing and the music flowed seamlessly until one in the morning. everyone, myself most certainly included, had such an impossibly fun time.

a theme at the reception seemed to be hats, with crazy hats in the photo booth prop box and an even crazier variety of hats—including huge sombreros—whipping wedding guests into a booze inspired frenzy while trying to snag a hat as they were distributed at intervals later in the evening. we danced so much that my muscles were a little more than a tad tired the next day, and my right foot with the surgical pins in it had mild tingles and aches, too, but, man-oh-man, it was worth it.

i sat down every now and again to rest my tootsies, and when i did i took a moment to look around and ponder—how i managed even a little pondering with all the excitement and loud, loud music i don't really know—but anyhow, that's me and ponder i did.

as i looked up at the tail end of the gigantic beast above our table, i wondered as i pondered and pondered as i wondered about the remnants of this leviathan. then it struck me—not the beast, a thought. i thought holy crap (that too) i'm glad these are just old, dead bones! there's no oozy blood, no pea-sized brain, no mass of thick hide, no powerful muscles, no smelly teeth, no sharp claws, no hot breath attached to this monster.

but my mind works in weird ways and, out of nowhere, in flits this: ok, think of it—she was once a mother, a real mutha, with many offspring, and like her mother and all the dinosaur mothers before that, she, the large, strong, buxom, muscular lady high over my head, once cared for and nurtured and hovered over her frisky, young dinosaur brood.

whoa. i suddenly felt the need to gulp down a few big mouthfuls of my g & t. then i got up and happily, happily, danced the night away.

surgeons and blogs

thank you dr. asherman for prescribing pain meds after my foot surgery last year which caused me, as i was flying oh-so-high, to think "a blog, what fun! what's a blog?"

thank you christina for suggesting i ought to look at jill's blog to help relieve my boredom ( right leg in a cast, no driving for 8 weeks) and to find the answer to my nagging question "what's a blog?" you are a sweet and thoughtful niece.

thank you jill for answering that infernal question and for being supportive. your blog inspired me to start my own blog. good to see you this weekend and congrats (again) on your engagement. your ring is awesome.

i ask you, where has the year gone?

worm city

the day lilies in our yard have become unruly. their behavior is out of control. technically, fall is the time to thin out the flower beds, but those lilies of mine are strong, stubborn and bossy; they like to jostle the other plants out of the way. i need to tackle their aggressive tendencies whenever i can in order for the other plants to have room to grow.

i was poking around with my shovel in a particularly crazy patch of lilies, trying bring some kind of order to the jumble out there. i dug out big clumps of spindle-shaped tubers with lots of roots attached. as i shook off the dirt and struggled to separate the dense root structure of the plants, i noticed a wonderful sight.

there were delightful worms wriggling around all over the place in the root ball. many, many worms. neighborhoods of worms living in my dirt.

i had discovered a genuine worm city. this made me very excited.

most people say yuck icky to worms and think they are disgusting. those people, of course, are entitled to their opinions. i, however, think worms are grand. they are not drop-dead cute, i guess, and maybe you wouldn't want to hug and kiss one like a puppy, but in the natural order of things they are most valuable.

earthworms aerate the soil with their burrowing. in addition, when they break down organic matter, like dead leaves, stalks, grasses, weeds, insects, seeds and roots, with their voracious chomping, soil nutrients are enhanced. and then there are the highly beneficial worm droppings. the activity of microorganisms is greatly increased due to the fact that those guys really love worm poop. quite simply, life in the dirt is good, it's a happy place, when worms are around.

all i can say is, a community of worms residing right outside my window makes me happy too, ok?

i'll sing you songs

do you ever find yourself hungrily inhaling familiar air, gulping down great whiffs of it? and when you do, the smell you draw into your nostrils hits you hard, provokes a memory? does a scent fill you up and lead you back across the years to a spot which had a hold on you, perhaps still does, unleashing images and feelings forever imbedded in your psyche?

when my sense of smell is awakened by anything resembling a pineneedley-mountainy-woodsydirt mixture i am transported to where i spent summer after childhood summer. i sniff. i slowly drag the scent deep inside my nasal passages.

i am at the river. i remember this.

down by the rocky swift river in the white mountains of new hampshire during one of the hottest julys on record—according to my mother—my cousins and i wiled away the hours in that happy summertime land of childhood where our only responsibility, our only steadfast endeavor, was to play, to play hard.

so we did.

our daily attire for the hard work of river play consisted of rapidly fading and fraying bathing suits. there certainly wasn't a lot of  laundry to be done since we existed in suits which were soaked river water fresh every day. yet our day in and day out routine of sliding down boulders and pulling ourselves up boulders took its toll on our suits—when we got back to boston my mother promptly tossed mine in the trash.

we stood knee-deep in the rushing river which, back then, was clear as gin—fresh and clean enough to drink!—and hauled rocks off the sandy bottom to build our own private swimming hole. the river wasn't too deep or wide and it was full of rocks and boulders so we could, in places, hop-scotch across the rapids and tumbling whitewater without getting our feet wet if we were careful. the daily game was: who can get across the river first -without falling in!

we worked off and on for a few summers, repairing, excavating, enlarging, to create our perfect swimming hole, humming and singing to pass the time. (we'd sing i've been working on the river to the melody of i've been working on the railroad.) we called it "ye ole swimming hole." our parents wondered why we spent all our time on such a project when the river offered many of its own nature-made pools to swim in. oh dear silly parents, the answer was obvious: we want to make our own swimming hole, one we design and build all by ourselves! 

the site for our engineering feat was carefully chosen near an isolated place on the river where we pitched our tents. for years my parents had loved to camp out in the summer. they were back-to-nature, back-to-the-land kind of folks, people who recycled and composted way before that became the thing to do. in the summer during my early years, while my friends went to organized camps and their parents played tennis and golf, i lived in a wilderness camp; i built swimming holes, rode down the river on an air mattress, swam and hiked. my parents chopped wood, bought food from local farmers and also swam and hiked. in addition, we had a very basic—no plumbing or electricity—very old and run down, but perfectly dry, hunting cabin where the adults sometimes slept.

ye ole swimming hole boasted three large, grand, slightly angled boulders with flat tops which circled the perimeter where we were building up the sides with rocks we dug out of the middle. on the far side of one of them the river fell off and a three-foot-high waterfall cascaded over the stones. below the falls was a small, calm, bath-tub sized pool surrounded by the gushing whitewater. even with temperatures in the 90's, our bodies soon became icy in the mountain water. we would flop on the hot, hot sun-baked stones to warm up, then head back into our pool once we had toasted all sides, and swim or sit under the waterfall and freeze our heads off. then back up on the hot stones again, joyfully repeating this scenario over and over.

another memory is sparked by a black and white photo of me from those river years: i have medium length, straight blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. i am about seven years old and i am wide-mouthed, singing a song while dancing around the campfire at dusk. someone had a guitar and i remember singing songs. first i would belt out the real words of the song, then i would sing my own crazy made-up version until my wonderful song started to get on everyone's nerves and—according to my mother—my mother would politely tell me shush, it was time to sing the real words again with the rest of the people gathered around the fire.

pshaw! those people just didn't appreciate a good song when they heard it!

songs of summer, songs of the river, songs of the way it was, all part of the melody of childhood.....

oblio and ophelia

back when i was a kid we always had a dog who barked properly, like any good watch dog should, when people came up the driveway. and for a while we even had two watch geese who honked properly....... at everything! i named them oblio and ophelia because one was male and the other female, and because i liked the sound of all the sweet o's in those two saucy names.

a friend of my brother's had some baby geese hatching over at his house. the family didn't live on a farm, but they had a lovely large man-made pond on the lawn, perfect for geese. we lived on a real pond and suddenly one day we had real baby geese swimming around in it. why we got the two adorable goslings in the first place is a mystery to all of us. did we have a dinnertime discussion about adding two new members to our family? isn't that an important discussion to have? after interrogating my parents thoroughly, neither seemed to have an answer except we thought they might be fun. (why else would you adopt geese?) oh how right my parents were! oh what great times we had with them! we really enjoyed having those two honkers around. oblio and ophelia were sometimes annoyingly noisy, but they were also smart, lovable, loyal, funny, and they were inseparable.

even after they were no longer goslings, they followed my mother around like silly puppies wherever she went in the yard, down by the pond, or on the trails in the woods near our house. ophelia loved to sit on laps. she would burrow her velvety soft sleek head in your armpit and wiggle it around. it tickled like crazy and sent us into giggling fits. imagine snuggling with a large, fully grown, goose baby! she would also move her bill lightly over your arms and neck and give you nibbling goose kisses, causing a cascade of goose bumps.

the two new members of the family always walked side by side, and looked like fat, white, waddling soldiers in a military parade. oblio and ophelia were also stunningly beautiful as they ran, opened their wings wide, and glided low over the pond, their shadows shimmering on the surface of the water as they gracefully landed for a swim. they always swam together; in fact, the goose and the gander always did everything together.

the geese could also be rather frightening as they undertook what they obviously thought was their duty to the family, turning their squawking, blasting duets into a feathered security team assault weapon. anyone who drove or walked up the drive was in for it. those plump, strutting, webbed-footed terrors would begin their organized onslaught by hissing and honking wildly, and then surrounding the "intruder" until they were called off by a member of the family. woe to the person who extended a hand without a proper introduction. those long orange bills could snap at unsuspecting fingers like a mousetrap.

ophelia laid many eggs in the nest she built in the large goose house/pen my dad constructed for the geese. we let her sit on them for a bit, then we took them out. (one of my chores was gathering the eggs.) oftentimes my mother would use an egg or two in cakes, pancakes and omelets. those giant eggs helped to create the most light and fluffy culinary delights. i also painted the eggs for really nice egg decorations at eastertime. i still have some of ophelia's eggs in a basket in the kitchen.
[my next post will tell how to keep easter egg artwork around for a while. some of mine are over 35 years old!]

for almost seven years the oblio and ophelia team were the guardians of our corner of the pond. the geese were cautiously, warily, loved by all. then one winter day, disaster struck.

a large, male alaskan husky showed up at the pond out of nowhere. my parents had never seen him before. when the geese sensed danger, they always flew into the pond for safety. but the pond on that fateful day was frozen solid from end to end. the geese lifted off for some take-offs and landings, hoping to frustrate the dog and send him on his way. but the inseparable pair were, unfortunately, no match for the wily pup. they tired quickly and the dog grabbed oblio as he attempted a hissing and biting ground assault to protect his mate. the dog trotted off into the forest with the valiant goose clenched between his jaws. luckily my parents were home and arrived on the scene just in time to see the husky's backside slinking away. they quickly locked ophelia safely in her cage.

ophelia lived for several more years after she lost her mate, and died peacefully in her pen. but ophelia was much quieter and less feisty after oblio died, as if her fighting spirit had departed right along with oblio when he was killed on that cold winter day at the pond.

along the trail

along the fine veil of memory there are millions of individual threads. these threads occasionally become frayed and some get loose and, over time, wiggle free, fall away, and are lost forever. other threads separate a little from the veil, just enough to get noticed, but they stay attached and remain smoothly intact. the trail of memory threads is often intricate and rich and invites examination.

i see a place in the mountains of new hampshire. it is one of my earliest recollections. i am about five years old and it is the middle of summer. my parents pack up the car for a camping trip to the white mountains. i remember this part so clearly: i am unbearably excited to finally get on the road....the road is boring until we see the mountains....i help set up camp....the next day i am thrilled beyond words to be hiking up mount chocorua on a trail in the very dark spooky woods. (spooky to me, anyway - at this point in my life i am a little city girl from boston harboring the most vivid imagination; believe me, the trail is a perfectly ordinary hiking trail.)

[note: the mount chocorua area in 1963 was not the crowded place it is today. then, as now, the miles and miles of interconnected trails allowed hikers the benefit of exploring multiple trails and summits without ever leaving the woods. in those days there was plenty of space for everyone to roam around and not bump into too many other hikers along the way. it was still a real wilderness; a bit of solitude could be had in those woods back then. the word spread about the chocorua area, though, and now many hikers populate the trails.]

we are all alone. i ask my dad will we get lost? he holds up a small detailed guidebook with trail maps of the area, and assures me there is no chance of getting lost. i am reassured. i skip ahead along the trail, my head immersed in the formation of my own little collection of stories. the trail becomes steep. we are high enough to see the summit in the distance. it looks like a pyramid. my dad tells me how the shape of the mountain's peak changes depending on where you are standing. from the east chocorua is like a camel's hump; from the north it resembles a shark's fin.

we grab at birch trunks to pull ourselves up giant granite boulders. we stop and take a rest and drink big gulps from our silver metal canteens which are covered in dark gray boiled wool with snaps and a loop to hook on your belt or knapsack (back then we never said backpack, only knapsack). i love my own special canteen. we pass through scrubby woods of short pine and spruce and finally get to the top of chocorua. my parents oooo and ahhhh over the view of the swift river valley. i am sweaty and the refreshing summer wind feels good. i cool off and put on my sweatshirt.

on the way back down we head east on a spur loop trail to see champney falls and pitcher falls. one of them (i don't remember which) has flat step-like slabs of granite where the water gently tumbles down into shallow pools filled with smooth stones, and lined with large mossy ones spread out like sleeping, prehistoric beasts, cracked and bumpy gray with pink, green and black mottling. my dad says in the spring, unlike summer, a torrent of water gushes down the mountain and hurtles over the falls forming deep, dark, icy pools. i take off my sneakers and socks and stick my hot feet in with the stones in one of the chilly pools.

we are tired so we decide not to take a side trip along the trail over to middle sister today. we will hike again soon. we go back to camp and get a campfire started. it gets dark and i catch fireflies and put them in a jar.....but just for a while.....then i set them free.....

the light gets in

walk down any road, in any town, in any country, and there, before our eyes, is evidence of varying degrees of falling apart, tumbling down.

the paint peels, the siding rots, the roof leaks, ants eat away at the beams, stones on the chimney chip and crack and fall away, bombs drop, the wind blows, the earth moves, lightening strikes, waves crash, the whole structure comes tumbling down. in our lives the things around us have a tendency to break and crumble; we are helpless, unable to stop the gradual decay. we, each of us, scramble to repair the damage, to stop the assault on the infrastructure that shelters us, helps us to survive, makes us human, keeps us civilized.

on the nightly news with brian williams we are witness to a demolition project, a fire, a flood, a squall, a tsunami, a snowstorm, an earthquake, an avalanche, a hurricane, a war zone, all contributing to the piles. surrounding us are heaps of rotting rubble, the debris of humanity, either of our own making or created by forces beyond us.

and yet, stop for a minute. see it? through the splinters and shards and piles of our broken lives, light still somehow manages to squeeze past and get to us. no matter what, no matter how bad things become, light gets in, darting into the many gaping cracks and holes. the cracks provide a place where light can move, always illuminating, always finding a way, an opening, into the crevices and the damage, blazing by the shadows, to tumble through and shine the darkness away.

fishing for bony fish

the beech tree rises up tall and wide like an umbrella on the hill beside the water at the old homestead on boston's north shore. it can be seen across the pond, a majestic sentinel for all seasons. in mid-february it stood in three feet of snow, but the big old beech by the pond already had tiny buds forming. the wind whipped up across the frozen, snow covered water, and sent shivers through the naked, budding branches, daring spring to arrive in another month. the beech tree stood firmly in the snow. spring would arrive.......eventually.

northeasters make a mess of the frozen pond. growing up at the pond, in order to ice skate and play pond hockey, we had to work hard clearing off the snow to make a spot for ourselves. when i was in high school, before i had my driver's license, the pond was my short cut home, reducing my one mile walk from the school bus stop in half if i could get across it. i had to stick to the road when deep fluffy snow blanketed the ice. sometimes ice fishermen set up their huts in the direction i was headed. then i was in luck: the fishermen made great snow shoe trails over the snowy expanse. if the snow was heavy and wet during a raging storm and then the temperatures dropped, i did ok, too, because i could walk on top of the frozen deposits of snow.

those little make-shift houses perched on the icy pond were cozy, with unexpectedly homey touches. the fishermen "decorated" with comfy chairs and tables, radios softly broadcasting sports talk or country music, bags bursting with beers and sandwiches, thermoses containing steamy fresh coffee, portable heaters pulsing hot air - a brief tenuous intermission from the frozen drama that is winter.

the ice fishermen were friendly and waved and said hello. i usually didn't know them; they were from other towns and were willing to drive the distance to our out-of-the-way pond because it was so peaceful and pristine, not at all built up, with only a few houses and one road leading to it. and oh yeah, i almost forgot, the fishing was great, too.

those guys pulled out eel, black bass, pickerel and other pike, perch and catfish (and sometimes a small pondweed/pickerelweed encrusted snapping turtle!) from their carefully drilled holes. good stuff, except for the turtles. what we called sunfish were actually yellow, flat, round perch, tasty but full of bones. same with pickerel - nothing but bones, bones, bones! plus, watch out for pickerel. in addition to a body full of bones, they also have a mouth full of teeth. i have never had patience with eating bony fish. all those tiny, piercing splintery bones! what a nuisance! too much work! too awful if you swallow a bone and it gets stuck (yuck) in your throat! besides, what kind of self-respecting fishermen bring home small yellow sunfish (so manly sounding!) after a day of fishing, to proudly show off to family and friends? i only know two fishermen who fit that description.....

in the summer when we were kids, my brother and i dug up worms, pierced a bit of gooey worm body on a hook, and fished from our little rowboat, usually tossing back the fish we caught, unless our grandmother was visiting from germany. when she was in residence we were only too happy to present her with a bucket full o' fish. she liked to fry up our haul, bony sunfish and all. she removed most of the bones for us after she cooked the fish. bless her. we would sit in the shade under the beech tree and with our fingers pick at and eat the delicious fried pond fish. finger licking good! to this day, eating any kind of fish reminds me of summer, even if a snowstorm is howling outside.

my grandmother and my parents, however, knew how to eat tediously bony fish by removing the bones one by one with the proper fish forks you used to be able to buy. i wonder, can you still buy those fish forks? in europe you probably can. we americans have no clue about fish forks; we seem to only eat the wonderfully "boneless" species of fish, such as salmon, cod, trout, sea bass, and haddock fillets, swordfish, tuna and halibut steaks. we opt for shells instead of bones when having to commit to the serious and time consuming work of eating certain fishy types of food: i say bring on the clams, mussels, oysters, shrimp, and *yum* lobster.

the days of fishing for and then nibbling fried bony fish near the big old beech at the pond are long gone. no more bones to stick in my craw! hmmm....i wonder, wherever did our clever little fish forks go, anyway?