our house

with thoughts of home, family, friends and the holiday season in maine.....

our house is a very.....(excuse me, but i could almost insert the word very two more times and then you could, maybe, hum to the tune of the crosby, stills, and nash song our house "....is a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard, now everything is easy 'cause of you...." except i won't and you needn't hum because it's not exactly what i mean right now anyway, but it's a wonderful sentiment—and a true one, except for the two cats, although in the past we have owned cats....), as i was trying to say before i interrupted myself, informal house.

i don't want to leave the impression that our house is some sort of idyllic paradise where one is free to do as one pleases—where anything goes and extreme and somewhat louche informality rules—where one can, metaphorically speaking, sleep all day, lounge around in one's pajamas, guzzle six-packs of maine's best IPA, roam through the house in muddy boots, and leave a trail of wet towels and dirty underwear and socks on the floor.

no, no, no, not that kind of informal. far from it. we are ordinary people trying to live a simple lifestyle, and we have the usual list of things that conspire to give us headaches.

this sounds confusing—it's actually quite simple. it all comes down to one thing: i think i am a wretched hostess.

oh, i can cook, and i am most welcoming, but after the first round of food and drink i frequently neglect to offer my guests more food and drink. (that's where the husband comes in. he's a great jeeves—he tends to these details...well, mostly he does.) i get so involved and distracted by fine people and interesting conversation that i forget to play hostess. that said, now this can be said: a lot of times around here if you need or want something you have to ask for it, and because of this deep flaw in my character, i tend to prefer (except at thanksgiving) serve-yourself pot luck or casual buffets.

but, come to think of it, maybe i'm not that flawed, not that wretched a hostess. maybe it's a means toward the informality i love, a subconscious tactic to get family and friends to relax and feel at home. translation: dig through the fridge, open random and unfamiliar cupboards, rummage where you will but please, if you need something, don't ask me—just help yourself.

at the heart of my concept of casual, at the core of my notion of laid-back, is the centrally located, historically significant, front door knocker.

hereabouts, the nonexistent front door knocker.

we don't have one, never have, probably never will. (although i like interesting door knockers—that  stern one up there looks as if it might bite. what, exactly, is that thing? a not-so-welcoming-looking, part human/part beastie which appears to have come straight out of dickens' a christmas carol?)

we don't have a doorbell either at what is technically the front door (it broke, we never fixed it). we hardly ever use the so-called formal front door entrance anyway. instead, people go around the side of the house on a curving path through the garden and into the screened porch to the back door.

once upon a time, a time in the days of yore—and if your house was large enough—the back door, or side door, or any door that was not the front door, was considered the entrance for servants and trades people only, to be used for the daily drudgery of domestic tasks alone—upper crusty people would never have entered there.

i don't view the back door as a lowly door. it is the only door (other than the garage) that we use, that family and friends use, on a regular basis. around here there is no stiff ceremony, no tradition of the traditional front door. (by this i don't mean to imply that people who use their front doors are stiff, formal traditionalists—most people i know use their front door most of the time. oftentimes it's the only usable door. our use of the back door is only meant as an example, a symbol, of our informality.)

so that's it. holiday or not, we'll greet you—and our sweet black dog will greet you, too—at the back door, the door for all people, with no fuss or formality, just an unpretentious and friendly welcome into the heart of our home.

use or freeze by

what remains are tall, straight-backed trees—dark statues on view until may—displayed in the hushed gallery of autumn's forest. the bright colors vanished (although this year, due to a lack of cold nighttime temperatures, the usually fiery colored maples in our yard were merely a ho-hum-so-so-washed-out red) right along with the built-up anticipation of the season. how i looked forward to those colors and to sweater weather, to the crisp tang of mcintosh apples, hot cider, and the snap-whoosh of fall wind spinning the leaves in a whirling carousel of motion.

colors i don't look forward to with eager anticipation are the insidious shades of gray and green that are hiding—make that residing—in my refrigerator. they're inhabiting what's been pushed toward the back, living and multiplying in forgotten jars and plastic containers containing the dregs and leftovers from weeks and weeks ago (how many weeks ago, i am ashamed to say) that i have ignored with a scrupulous avoidance similar to my avoidance of edges—edges of high places like cliffs and the tops of tall buildings. (although years ago i crossed the aptly named knife edge on mount katadin, facing my fear of precipices by staying as close to the middle of the narrow pile-of-rocks trail as possible. i tricked myself into believing that there was a middle when, in reality, no such place exists along most of the dizzyingly narrow ridge between pamola and baxter peaks.)

one of my favorite things about maine and new england is the change each season brings. call me crazy, but i think i would be bored senseless in a perfect paradise world of forever hot and warm and green and nothing else, no in-betweens, no extremes (except scorching heat), no variability, only the same brand of tropical sun and air day in and day out. what grows in tropical climates stays visibly growing for four seasons. that's it. not much anticipation for what comes next.

in maine, though, anticipation for what comes next is always ripe, even if, for now, the dormant kernels of life are hidden and will remain hidden for some time to come. they must wait—and i must wait with them for winter to have its turn—before waking up and announcing their appearance, making a grand show-stopping entrance into yet another season of change.

in my refrigerator the storyline is different.

dynamic new life forms are at this very moment hard at work, increasing their numbers by patiently building sprawling colonies of puke-colored fuzz in a few tablespoons of leftover rao's tomato and basil sauce, or cabot farm cottage cheese, or on top of boneless chicken breasts well past the "use or freeze by"or "best by"dates. these densely packed communities—a biology experiment unfolding right in my kitchen—live in an ideal environment, a utopia of jars and packages. they have no idea about the cataclysm that's about to annihilate their population. but i do, as i clutch a giant hefty trash bag and—grimace! shudder!—force myself to swoop into the depths beyond the open refrigerator door.

feathers

miniature replicas of gamla stan (old town) architecture in stockholm, sweden


One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.  —Henry Miller

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.  —Mark Twain

maybe the deep down anticipation and thrill of travel—enthusiastically packing that scarred old suitcase over and over again—is hereditary. my parents liked to travel, i like to travel, and it seems my kids like to travel, too.

i have been fortunate in my life thus far, if you count as good fortune the freedom to cross oceans in search of something different, something revelatory. from the time i was quite young i have had opportunities to see—and one time to live in—foreign lands. i will always be grateful for that.

wouldn't it be great if more people had the chance, and the ability, to venture beyond their backyards (in my dream of dreams, i envision something beyond couch surfing where everyone, not just students, would be required to swap countries with someone else for a short time and become a kind of life exchange student), to see farther than their own every day worlds. what if eyes could be opened early enough in life to gain a sharper perspective on the immensity of the earth—and yet the incredible interconnectedness and common ground we share with others—for it to make a difference (i'm thinking of the twain quote), a difference in how people view themselves in relation to other human beings in the world. we, in our villages, towns, and cities, are so small compared to what is out there in regions unseen, unknown, unimagined.

when people visit a place they usually like to pick up a memento or two, for themselves or someone else, as a reminder of time spent away from home. i am no exception.

ten or twenty or thirty years later i revisit mementos—both gifts from others and gifts to myself—that make up a life.

i go through the accumulations, the collections, the remembrances of times past, some of it useful and displayed (small framed pictures and drawings, wooden carvings, a teapot, a doll, brightly painted wooden horses, bits of pottery, an antique chinese jewelry box), some of it forgotten in corners of cabinets and closets (a necklace and bracelets made of beads, seeds and nut-like things and a huge colorfully woven "kenya" bag that my parents brought home from—where else—kenya; two strands of cloisonne beads and little cloisonne jars from china; black lacquer boxes, small fabric change purses and two kimonos from japan; a child's purse with reindeer fur from finland; booklets, brochures, ticket stubs.) if i was ever planning to paste the papers in a scrap book it never happened, and i guess it never will.

a realization: i hold on to things which are broken and/or useless. one time in stockholm we got caught in what we thought would be a quick downpour (it ended up lasting the rest of the afternoon). when we realized the weather would show no mercy, we ducked into a shop in gamla stan and bought a large umbrella—a lovely striped gray and turquoise affair with a curved wooden handle and tip. we also ended up with twelve whimsical little gamla stan buildings. (in those days i toted larger suitcases and could easily pack the umbrella away for the flight home. today i travel much lighter—that umbrella would never fit in my carry-on l. l. bean suitcase.) twenty-five years later the umbrella has a hole in it, though the buildings survive. and all those brochures....why do i keep things which have outlived their useful life?

since my suitcase is smaller these days, i don't accumulate many trinkets for myself, or others, anymore. i mostly return home with dirty, rumpled clothes and not much else.

yet even for someone who doesn't mind living out of a suitcase, eventually the time comes to wind up back in the place where it all started. there is no doubt about it: the best part of a journey is coming home, followed by crawling into one's own beloved bed. the real comfort of home lies in small, oft-repeated, unconscious acts: fluffing up the goose feathers in a familiar smelling pillow until the pillow seems—thank you, goldilocks—just right, and gently lifting off into dreams of faraway while remaining quite stationary and ensconced under a cozy comforter.

twelve

A room without books is like a body without a soul. —Marcus Tullius Cicero

twelve is a good number.

i'm not a superstitious person, nor do i believe in numerology, but for some reason i have always liked the number twelve. (i also like the number thirteen—i'm completely free of irksome triskaidekaphobia—it was the number i chose as my jersey number when i played field hockey in high school.) it is a good number because......well, it just is.

can't think of too many things having to do with the number twelve that make it stand out for me, but there are a few.

of course, the twelve days of christmas come to mind, and those are certainly wonderful. i like the song about the twelve days of christmas, too—twelve lords a-leaping and other very specific numbers of maids-a-milking, swans a-swimming, drummers drumming, ladies dancing and solitary partridges in pear trees, etc., etc, etc. lots of aerobic activity going on in that ditty—and lots of fun to sing horribly out of tune.

i can comfortably seat twelve people around my table. it's a bit tight—a comfortable elbow to elbow affair with twelve—but it's certainly cozy. twelve and cozy together are a satisfying combination.

eggs. i like eggs—especially in the form of vegetable omelets. eggs are mostly arranged and sold in dozens. twelve again.

how about a dozen? i could list a dozen favorites of this and a dozen favorites of that—gerbera daisies, cupcakes, peonies, lobsters, beatles songs, days of vacation, scarlet tanagers in the crabapple tree—ad nauseam.

one very special twelve is the day my last child was born. when she was little, there was this funny craze going around about "half birthdays." you were supposed to acknowledge the sixth month mark, halfway to the child's next birthday, with a happy half birthday! greeting and a teeny tiny present. (i wonder, are half birthdays religiously "celebrated" elsewhere, in other communities in the states and around the globe? i'd never heard of it when my two older children were growing up.) today, the twelfth of october, is her half birthday.

finally, there are my bookcases.

the truth is, i don't lust for clothes or jewelry or electronics or cars—i lust for books. we have twelve bookcases/shelves—built-in and free standing and one that's a ledge formed by a beam that runs along the top of a wall—in the house. we used to have thirteen but hannah took hers out of her room to free up some space. they're mostly my books (i include my favorite children's books with my books), but hannah and ed have books, too, so i politely share some of the shelves with them.

i think books on bookshelves are the heart of a home. books give a home warmth and life and tell so much about the occupants. the very book titles themselves—and the answers to the why, when, and where of the books—can yield interesting stories about the lives of the people who dwell within the house.

for me, browsing along those bookshelves (or some other spot in the house where writing can be found) for a story or poem or essay to read—and rev up my brain—completes the day. (sometimes i even discover little surprises tucked within the pages of a book, bits of paper with a poem or quote i've squirreled away.) books call to me. always have. i find pulling a solid volume out from between its mates is a satisfying act, as is sliding it back in again and selecting another.

the lovely warts

the day started out like any other day—phone calls, emails, dirty dishes, weedy flower beds, a dog patiently waiting to be fed—but then it turned, veered in a different direction, and left me face to face with the biggest, grandaddy-est eastern american toad i have ever seen. his (?) body length alone—i measured—was nearly four inches and—oh my—did he have fantastic bumps and warts. i was curious as to which bumps were warts and which bumps were, well, just bumps. his skin was dry and densely patterned with them, sprinkled with wonderful camouflage—an assortment of raised, large, small, brown, white, and black dots. to my mind he was indeed a splendid piece of living art. (after a quickie consultation with google i still do not have a definitive answer about how one identifies a genuine wart from that imposter, the generic bump.)

crouched low against the foundation in corner of the deck beside a planter (a large circle cut out of the decking into which a three foot deep concrete cylinder was inserted, ending up a few inches below the level of the deck and filled with soil, compost and flowers) this cute toad sat motionless, even with me leaning down and thrusting a camera in his face. 

i confess i have left the planter somewhat overgrown but, as it turns out, this neglect was a good thing because it probably provided a nice habitat for him—and who knows who else—and since i rarely remove the dead leaves and stalks from the container, but merely cut them up and leave them to rot into mulch, he may have hidden out in there for years.  

in this warm, dry, sheltered spot, the toad sat absolutely still. he blended in well with the patch of chipping paint between the edge of the planter and the house, but he wasn't moving at all. i wondered, was the chubby guy okay? suddenly i experienced a slight panic as i tried to recall where and when the exterminator had sprayed the foundation to get rid of carpenter ants. i don't normally use chemicals anywhere and it makes me cringe when an ant infestation necessitates the use of pesticides. i held my breath as i stroked him gently on his side with my finger. he blinked and turned his head. i withdrew my finger and exhaled—phew, thankfully he was alive and well.

judging by his size, the toad was old—old for a toad anyway—and to have reached such a grand old age i guessed that, in addition to requiring a place to call home, he must also eat rather well. i picked him up and held him on the palm of my hand. i stared into his golden and black jewel-like eyes for a moment and then gently placed him back on the deck. a tasty supply of mouth-watering spiders, moths, centipedes, flies, worms, and slugs reside in and around the planter, allowing the residents of the area to become fat and content.

i studied the patch of skin where the toad had sat on the palm of my hand. did it feel itchy or tingly or irritated? did i notice anything odd? no—there was no evidence of warts or bumps or anything sprouting on my palm. what is it about toads and warts? why the loathing, the fear? i don't pretend to understand a toad's skin, the purpose of it, and yet there must be a purpose, a reason, besides the obvious one, for it to have developed the way it has. i don't find a toad's flesh at all revolting—in fact, i like it. ah, but there is humor at work here, humor, as well as practicality, built into those bumps, into the very workings of the cosmos, is there not?

why are some people utterly freaked out by warts on toads, convinced there is a connection between a toad's lovely warts and the icky kind people get? toads do occasionally secrete a mild toxin which may cause minor skin irritation—but never warts—in some people, and of course we know getting warts from toads and frogs is an old wives tale. and yet, toads, and toad warts, still remain unpleasant for a lot of people to look at. we view them as disgusting; they make us uncomfortable.

there it is: humans are frequently made upset, uncomfortable and uneasy by what is harmless, inconsequential, and unimportant to this existence.

i imagined that beautiful old toad sizing me up, getting a good look at me while i was getting a good look at him. would he be critical of me—turn his head away in disgust—if i had a piece of spinach lodged between my teeth, or if he saw a fleck of mascara smeared under my eye, or discerned a small, hardly noticeable, pimple on my forehead?

an apology to vespula vulgaris

people have their own methods for handling stress—methods that perhaps aren't so much methods as they are involuntary brain responses, the old autonomic nervous system kicking in and doing its job—for determining whether a situation calls for an actual, all-out state of emergency, meaning panic mode has been activated, or not, and figuring out how they will deal with it. it may not be a newsworthy type of emergency, or one that requires lengthy telephone consultations or a trip to the doctor, or the kind that necessitates pressing 911, but it could be an emergency that is little, so little, in fact, that it escapes the notice of most people, but certainly not those for whom it requires immediate attention.

"oh my god, please hurry up! it's huge!" she yells from upstairs.

i don't know exactly when i became the go-to person for this particular kind of little emergency—it was certainly a long time ago—but i know that since i became that person i have had the joy of experiencing many intimate eye to eye and nose to nose moments with several species of buzzing and scampering bugs. i don't bother asking myself why me? because i already know why me.

oftentimes i am the only person—and that's including when there are males of our species on the scene—who will not flinch and just get on with the dirty business. whether it's in my own home, or the home of someone else, if there's a scuttling spider or a flying thing with a stinger coming out of its rear end (or, more accurately, its abdomen) i'm the one who is called upon to remove the intruder.

flying insects, spiders, beetles, centipedes, worms, slugs, ants, and other creepy crawlies don't bother me—they never have. (but i don't like lyme-disease-carrying deer ticks, and i especially don't like nasty black earwigs, with their scary looking curved pincers, that you sometimes see in drains or cellars; you know, those bugs that crawl in you ear, bore through your brain and lay a pile of eggs in there.*)

when the need arises—when errant bugs stray into the house—i am viewed as a kind of insect executioner, although, if i can avoid it, i generally don't execute bugs—i don't believe in execution—i merely relocate the offender.

the time has come. i am being summoned.

"it's in there," she says with a shaky voice, pointing an unsteady finger at the closed bathroom door. (this time it's hannah with insect issues, but it could just as easily have been alex or christina, or my mother-in-law, who is deathly afraid of spiders because she has always maintained she is severely—that's severely—allergic to their venom. i dare anyone to try telling her there are no venomous spiders anywhere near here.)

i am prepared. i have armed myself with a jar and a good, solid, just-in-case paperback.

then it's over. afterwards, i feel a little sad.

i was impatient. i was frustrated. i acted too quickly. i couldn't scoop vespula into the jar, and my attempts to capture the wasp were making it nervous, thus making me nervous (i don't mind bugs, but, like everyone else, i don't look forward to being stung.) i should have removed the screen where the wasp was focusing on its struggle, zigging and zagging and aiming for the light, only trying to get free, only trying to live. (wasps are, after all, beneficial to the environment, and are a welcome predator because they prey upon so many insect pest populations.) i should simply have let it out into the garden.

it's too late for should have, though, because i didn't.

*according to hollywood and nobody else

her art of another kind

Hannah Montalvo, Diary, 2012 (detail). Mixed Media on Board, 60 x 52 x 1 1/4 inches.

...the revitalization of experimental art following WWII signified a renewed interest in freedom of expression, spontaneity, and unorthodox materials—un art autre (art of another kind)—a radical break with all traditional notions of order and composition in a movement toward something wholly "other."  —Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue for Art of Another Kind, International Abstraction and the Guggenheim, 1949−1960. On view at the Guggenheim until Sept. 12, 2012.

my journey home two weeks ago began under sunny skies in vermont with me crossing my fingers and hoping that the day would stay dry, at least until i could get hannah's painting safely back to maine. (major thunderstorms were in the forecast for the afternoon.) the painting was too big to fit anywhere except in the back of the pickup truck so.... hannah and a friend carefully loaded it, wrapped it in a blue plastic tarp and strapped it down with bungie cords. i was now on my own—hannah would remain in vermont for most of the summer—and i had the responsibility of transporting my daughter's artwork home intact.

within an hour of unpacking her work and getting it in the garage, dark clouds brought thunder and lightning and rain which continued, on and off, for the rest of the afternoon.

last saturday ed and i hung the large abstract* painting. it took a few hours, including the time ed needed to locate, purchase, and attach the proper bracket hooks on the painting's frame and on the wall in order to mount and securely hold the 40 pounder on the only spot in the house where it would fit—the wall halfway up the staircase to the second floor.

i'm glad this piece from our girl's semester of work is with us. i joked with hannah that i should place candles and flowers under this painting, and some of her others also located in the upper hall, as a kind of shrine dedicated to her since she—and her creative spirit—dominate that space.

of course, the idea of candles and flowers and shrines was just meant to be funny, but the idea of a place where her creative spirit resides when she is not physically present is no joke.

she is with us.

within the combination and manipulation and transformation of basic materials—wood, paper, canvas, fabric, ink, paint—is inhabited space. her creative energy lives up there.



*some people call abstract art weird. sometimes they don't understand. sometimes it's hard to understand. some people say abstract art is disconnected from reality. that's true, if by disconnected from reality we mean it doesn't represent external reality, it isn't a replica of the obvious, of what we capture with our eyes, or the way a camera lens "sees." but there is more to reality than this. not all reality is beheld with our eyes, not all reality is witnessed externally. abstract art is disconnected from reality as we see it, but certainly not as we know it and discern it inside of ourselves.

the scent of the night stalks

 along the caloosahatchee river. florida. january, 2012.

windows, thrown wide open to receive the warm, breezy, new air of daytime, need to be closed before bed. it is turning chilly, a real maine evening, one of those evenings where sitting in an adirondack chair around the campfire in the backyard—zipped in a sweatshirt, feet stretched toward the flames—is a good thing, but once you're inside, the night needs to be shut out.

as i reach for the handle to crank the window i pause. a sweet smell lingers on the nightair, a scent heady as incense—though more subtle—not a scent that can be described or identified as one particular plant.

forget-me-not. fiddlehead fern. chive. columbine. lily. euonymus. dandelion. azalea. peony. vinca. lilac. phlox. meadowsweet. grass. oregano. iris. hosta. countless weeds.

i stand motionless. i inhale. it is none of these—and yet it is all of these.

the aroma originates below, in the darkness of the underground world—not only in my yard, but everywhere—each place with its own particular scent, sometimes pronounced, sometimes not. the scent comes from the night work of plants. a pervading smell—a heavenly smell—of what, i cannot be sure, of what, i cannot say, but it strikes me that it is like a clear, rippling liquid, so i will call it a night juice: the juice that rises up.

i breathe it in. night essence.

it begins its move beneath the surface as the rainwater that washes over everything is gratefully accepted by earth and roots. the roots drink and it slowly starts the ascent, the vertical suck, streaming into stems and stalks after the roots have done their work, the lifting of the juice as it continues to make its way into the tips of quivering leaves and blades—long and narrow, round and full, small and compact, shiny and pointed, slivers, a multitude—and then out onto the air.

in the silent evening the earth stirs with that restless climb of fluid and nutrients—with life itself—and brings its perfume to my nostrils. i remove the screen (damn the mosquitoes, but then without them the bats and wrens and phoebes would not be satisfied) and stick my head out, hovering by the window a moment longer to drink in the sweet flow, this mighty night therapy, and its ability to calm and soothe after a long day.

i savor it—the heaviness, the dark rush, the pulsing up. the evening, alive.

i pop the screen back in place, lock the window tight. i climb into bed.

dripdrop

dripdrop the weekend: in a word, rain. and more rain. nonstop rain. cold rain. isn't the weather what boring people end up discussing when they have nothing else to say, nothing better to talk about?

dripdrop saturday morning until mid-afternoon: hannah and i took care of amelia for a few hours while her mom had a photo shoot. when christina finished she brought jilly back with her and we enjoyed a really nice visit—so good to see you, jilly. how's it going with o's briefcase collection?—while we waited for the baby to wake up from her nap.

dripdrop late saturday afternoon: a little drama descended upon us in the form of an ominous phone call. hannah's summer roommate was at their apartment in vermont supposedly getting ready to move in and she called, distressed and in tears, to tell hannah (who was subletting from another student) that there were broken windows and rodent droppings and disgusting smells—the apartment was, in a word, uninhabitable. the landlord was indifferent to her roommate's pleas to do something about it. for hannah it was simply too late to negotiate; she needed to find another apartment posthaste since she was due back in vermont in five days to take a summer course and begin her job at the university as a teaching assistant in photography. hannah calmly told her roommate she was going to look for another place to live until mid-august when she returns home for two weeks before she heads out again for a semester abroad (london for a few days, then florence for a two-week orientation, then rome).

dripdrop quote of the day: thinking beyond these college days, hannah sighed and said "i need to get a real job. i need to start my life." (i don't know what, if not life, she has been living up to now.)

dripdrop saturday night: out for dinner and hannah's working the phone—apartment hunting in cyberspace—combing through craigslist and uvm's bulletin board in search of a place to call home in burlytown for the summer.

dripdrop sunday morning: road block ahead. the road was flooded one mile from the house. turn around and go the other way. breakfast at the freeport cafe with hannah, hannah's friend, molly, and molly's mom, vicki. good eggs.

dripdrop the rest of logy sunday: rain hitting the skylights and the rooftop like fingers tapping on a table that turns to rain hitting the skylights and the rooftop like a fist drumming on a table.

monday morning. no drama, just hot, black tea with a splash of milk and—ho hum, my dears—more rain, rain, rain.

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.

unlocked doors

it is a quiet crime—an unlocked door, nobody home except one ancient cockatiel and two gentle labradors who welcome anyone with lovely smack, slurp kisses—and a tidy crime, too—almost unnoticeable until you look real close.

come in; walk with me. do you see what i mean?

no mess, no untidiness whatsoever. this is not at all how i imagine a crime scene to present itself (too much hollywood in my head, i suppose). no drawers opened and riffled through, their private contents lewdly pawed over and exposed, raked and sprawling over the edge of the wood. no breakables broken, no lamps toppled, no paintings hanging askew, hardly anything out of place. no evidence of a ransacker (such an expressive word!) until.....

you get to the master bedroom where there is some damning evidence that a ransacking has indeed occurred. the burglar had inspected an antique jewelry box, and its contents had been partially, selectively, removed—why, i want to ask this person, pocket a few nice looking pieces of jewelry and not the others? even though some of the pieces may have seemed expensive, none were—everything in the jewelry box was cheap costume jewelry—except one piece which, quite inexplicably, was left behind. why did you do that? and another question for you: why remove an infant's silky pink hair bow from the box—a keepsake from when my youngest was newborn—and take it with you? you worked very precisely, whoever you are, nothing knocked down or tossed aside, or, in an effort to make a hasty retreat, dropped onto the floorboards on your way out the door.

next let's turn our attention to other areas of the thief's plunder. witness this: several pairs of fine gold earrings snagged from the top of a bathroom counter (normally my good stuff is in a safe place but, unfortunately, not on this day), one macbook pro deftly lifted from a desk, but another, clearly visible, left on the dining table—why? one large backpack was stolen, too (i presume, and the police presume, to carry all this stuff); i had left it on a bed (in another of the four rooms where items were stolen), filled with folded clothes, a couple books, paper, pens, and a cosmetic bag i was bringing on a trip with me in two days.

witness a totally neat freak thief: the clothes were not quickly, messily, dumped out of the backpack, as one might expect, to make room for the burglar's loot, but instead were neatly, and oh so tidily, removed and placed on the bed, still carefully folded and rolled the way i had packed them earlier in the morning. of the three sterling silver bracelets on the bed beside the bag (the only items of value in there), one was pilfered, the other two left behind. i say spooky. weird. a quirky thief?

people ask me if i'm nervous these days, they wonder if i feel sullied, violated—almost in a physical way—because my home, my private domain, was rudely invaded by a faceless stranger. i can honestly say no, i don't feel those things. i'm just glad no people were home and that the dogs are fine (if only the dogs could speak! if only they were fangy, snarling dobermans!)

at first i was angry—now i'm only saddened. i'm not saddened by the loss of mere material objects which can be easily replaced, but by the shear desperation of a human being who has sunk into such a mire and feels compelled to do something like this. for what? drug money? or just money? why? i want to ask the thief how did you get to this place where burgling is a normal and okay occupation? how did you reach this point in your life? what caused the plunge to this lowest of lows?

the police detectives continue to investigate. there have been nine other similar robberies—unlocked doors, stolen jewelry and computers—in neighboring towns.

things change. maine country life is not as idyllic as it used to be. we have to increase our vigilance and be aware of suspicious activity, strangers, the unknown. we have to remember to stick the key in the lock and give it a forceful turn, even if we only step out for a moment.

red

the calendar says it's almost march, it feels like it's almost april, but i'm stuck in some kind of time warp trying to figure out when february appeared and how, all of a sudden, it's almost gone. the thermometer reads 40, there isn't a storm in sight, and a vigorous sun shoots out long white rays like magic tentacles reaching down and turning the sloppy snow and dirty puddles into blinding shards of crystal which stab my eyes.

i walk up the driveway and, yet again, see that flash of red, and say to myself for the hundredth time in seven days christmas was two months ago, lady—where have you been?—you've simply got to take the wreaths off the lamp posts TODAY. 

i hate to take the wreaths down—didn't i just put them up? they look so pretty with their bright red bows and long, fluttering ribbon. they remind me of family, family snugly together, at home for the holidays.

okay, okay. i'll do it. i lift the still strongly scented and intact balsam wreaths off the posts and slip the giant green bracelets over my arms. when i get to the garage i put them on the floor, pick up one at a time, and unwind each ribbon's wire where it attaches to the wreath. but first i bring the wreath up to my face, stick my nose in the glorious woodland needles, and inhale—deeply, slowly, noisily, extravagantly—just like the dogs inhale, their noses wildly snuffling, searching the dirt with an urgent need to pick up a scent.

that's when it happens, but i don't know it's happening until after. my brain fires a series of millisecond pulses—an electric red spark: snap, snap, snap—and i smell cinnamon and brown sugar and christmas tree and wood fire; i see christmas all over again. i hear laughter, glassware clinking, the shelling of pistachio nuts, the crack, hiss of piney sparks, a pack of dogs yipping in excitement over so many people to lick and lick.

then, as quickly as i am offered this glimpse into christmas past, the memory picture falls away and is gone. i continue to untwist the slightly rusty wire and pull off the creased ribbon and think soon it will be spring.

excerpt on a clothesline

dealing with a constant barrage of dirty clothes is a universal human activity except, of course, for some lucky people in remote, tropical places who don't have to wear any clothes at all. in the warm weather it can be an inspiring sight to see a colorful (or not) display of drying laundry (ok i'll speak for myself.... i, at any rate, am a little weirdly inspired to ponder laundry) perching and flapping on lines like some sort of unusual upside down bird (bat?) species, especially when the garments are hung in an innovative manner. grab a pair of binoculars—only kidding—and take a look.

laundry on clotheslines puts the personal on display. it is both interesting and startling to see someone's belongings, often intimate belongings, draped and exposed out-of-doors for everyone to behold. after all, people inhabit and bring to life these otherwise innocuous bits of fabric—they work in them, play in them, sleep, love, die in them. clothes really make up a great part of who people are; personalities can be detected in them. are they bargain basement threads, ones with brand names—amazing that some people will only shop for very specific brands and no others—or ones with fancy designer labels sewn inside?

i always seem to be doing laundry, even with just the two of us at home, and the dirty clothes really start to pile up after we've been away for a while. there's the laundry i should have done before we left but didn't, and now there's the laundry from our trip that's falling out of our suitcases and backpacks onto the floor—and i even washed clothes while we were away. where does it all come from?

why do our clothes seem to get dirty so quickly, and are they, in fact, really that dirty—like we're lumberjacks, farmers, car mechanics or lobstermen or something....those people have a good reason for all their truly dirty clothes—or are we just too tidy or too picky about our clothes? a little obsessive/compulsive clean?

well, i think (hope) we're just typical/normal clean people. anyway, i have to stop now and throw in a load.

did someone just mention a swiffer?

when one (namely me) sprouts up as a brand-new bride (eons ago) and then one (me again) blossoms—in a simultaneous profusion—into a housewife, a mother of two (eventually becoming the mother of three children plus a bunch of dogs) and a graduate student (with an often absentee, on-the-road-doing-business husband), one can suddenly be hit over the head by the depressing realization that the demands of a hectic schedule and the goal of a brilliantly run household, a veritable garden of perfection (what lunacy is this?), might somehow be shockingly unattainable (gasp).

but that was before my mother arrived with a swiffer.

oh glorious day, the day when she presented me with a mysterious box. i opened the box, peered inside and said "what in tarnation is this thingamajig, mum?" and she, being the mostwonderfulofallmotherswhohaveeverexisted, replied "it's a swiffer, daughter dear" and proceeded to put it together. she wrapped the nifty, dust snagging cloth firmly in place and gave me a demonstration of what modern day squeaky clean housekeeping is all about.

ever since that day many moons ago, i have always had my swiffer ready for action, pushing it lazily—and certainly not often enough!—along these old wooden floors to snatch up the ever multiplying and enlarging clumps of dog fur and dust which seem to roll into these rooms like persistent tumbleweeds from an abandoned prairie town out yonder.

the electric hours

i looked up. it was almost dark outside. i blinked my eyes and rubbed them. they felt strained and achey. i glanced at my watch; i could barely see my watch. i realized i had been sitting at the table with the computer glowing and a pile of books and papers heaped in front of me, with no lights on. the dogs were fast asleep on their beds on the other side of the room. my husband had a late meeting so there was no supper in the oven or on the grill. a mound of dirty laundry waited to be loaded in the washer; clean laundry lay wrinkled in the drier.

it had been light in the room a few minutes ago, hadn't it?

i had completely lost track of the last two hours.

whoosh! two hours gone, escaped from right under my nose.

losing a couple hours could, on the one hand, be viewed quite negatively. i had two hours less of my life to live. but that's just being morbid. and ridiculous. a woman said to me once she didn't like to get too much sleep because she would get plenty of sleep when she was dead. really now. hmmm.....but that doesn't stop me from catching some zzzz's when i need them! or from getting so preoccupied i have no idea what time it is.

on the other hand, "losing" some time could be a good thing. i "lost" the hours because i was busy with paperwork. i was also reading over other people's fine words. and deciding which mound of papers to toss in the recycling bin. and, ok, i confess, maybe there was a little daydreaming thrown in the mix, too. b.o.r.i.n.g. (except for the daydreaming part; and the reading-over-fine-words part. i love lingering with words, surrounding myself with the shockingly good company of words written by strangers.) but productive, too. not a bad use of two hours. it was quiet and i got a lot done. the hours weren't wasted, but they had certainly vanished.

i pressed a switch and then there was light.

how easy electric lights are. how comforting. you go from dismal darkness into happy brightness. it made me think about the days of yore (like in that friends episode), when adults hung around in the darkness after sunset with not much going on except eye strain and nookie. come on, did everyone just go to bed if there were no dances or quilting bees or card games to enjoy?

i am going to have to think some more about electricity and the electric, electrifying (which means thrilling and exciting, right?) lives we lead today compared to a long time ago. isn't everything way more exciting nowadays because of electricity? since i never lived in the days of yore i don't have any proof that we have more fun now. i only have a thought or two about stumbling around in the dark—and heading straight to bed—versus not stumbling around in the dark.

sorry for all the rambling on and on. do forgive me. i'm about to run off to nether wallop and places like that for a while. i'll collect my thoughts later.

grocery shopping

the grocery store is, in a way, like a museum. it houses an impressive modern collection, albeit a perishable one, of food. it exhibits an array which boggles the mind with its infinite variety, color, form and texture; it contains a collection you can taste. (tell me, how many museums can make that claim?)

and, as you will see if you make it to the end of these scribbles, the grocery store offers a collection that speaks to you.

a few of the basic groceries i buy (and politely share with my husband), foods that are my sustenance, are things like tea, pomegranate juice, when pigs fly bread, apples, bananas, fresh pasta, skim milk, cheese, fresh fish, fresh veggies like zucchini, broccoli, baby spinach, tomatoes, greek yogurt and chocolate. and some wine. and some vodka (tastes good with the pomegranate juice).

the last time i was in the grocery store purchasing these items i decided to get a headache along with my groceries. that's not a typo; i'm serious. i thought i would pick an aisle that, to me, has the most variety of a single food item in it, and see if i could possibly take in all the colors and words and razzle-dazzle; make sense of the offerings, you know? i knew in advance an aisle like that would make me feel a little dizzy, a little giddy, a little nauseous, and i would experience a slight headache from all the stimuli.

can you guess what aisle i picked?

the one that is so packed with choices it almost mocks you? i dare you to pick just one box....

the cereal aisle.

for adults maybe these shelves don't pose a problem (except the headache part). but if you have kids with you.....

lucky charms and trix. kix. apple jacks, cocoa pebbles, golden grahams, froot loops (the spellchecker didn't like that one). reece's puffs (isn't reeses candy?), cinnamon toast crunch, frosted flakes.

also granola, raisin bran, special k, smart start, fiber one, bran flakes. i think these are supposed to be the healthy ones.

not only can you get cereal here, you can also be entertained. there are special messages just for you written all over the boxes. the cereal is desperately calling out with insistent exclamation marks! stop, look (and listen!). i did. here is a tiny sampling of what i saw:

save on pampers! (yum!)

no sugar or salt added! (tastes like the box it's packaged in.)

with natural and artificial flavors! (i would hate to have one without the other!)

crispy, glazed, crunchy, sweet! (all on, and maybe even in, one cereal box. if you ever need an adjective, forget the thesaurus. just visit the cereal section.)

rocks your whole mouth! declares a very bold box.

america's #1 source of wholegrain! (in all 50 states!)

kid tested (you bet), mother approved (questionable)!

download 15 songs free! (what does that taste like?)

crunch.a.tize.me cap'n! (ahoy! should kids even be reading this?)

win kinect for xbox360! what does that mean?

do you have a headache yet?

painted easter eggs

hurry up..... get out the paints and little paintbrushes and grab some real eggs. quick, quick.

a few of ophelia's eggs, the first ones dating back to around 1973, are still here today. all her eggs are painted, mostly by me and, along with some painted chicken eggs which have been added to the collection, are lovingly displayed on the kitchen counter in a basket, not just at eastertime, but all year. the eggs are simply too pretty, too fragile and too nostalgic for me to stick them in a cabinet.

large chicken eggs are about 2 inches in length. ophelia's goose eggs range from 3 1/4 to 3 3/4 inches!

here's how you have great fun and create painted eggs which last for decades:

*with a large sewing needle, gently tap and prick the shell on the large end of the egg to open up a hole about 3/16 inch wide. do the same on the small end, making the opening somewhat smaller, about 1/8 inch.

*poke and swirl around in the large opening with the largest sewing needle you have (a darning needle works great) to loosen up the egg white and yolk.

*put your mouth over the small hole and gently blow. it can be difficult, and may take a while, like blowing up a very small balloon. keep at it. the stuff inside the egg will start to ooze out of the large hole. pick inside the large hole every now and then with the big needle, and CAREFULLY shake the egg to keep the egg white/yellow moving out. when it's all out, dribble some water into the egg and swirl it around. shake it out and let the egg dry completely.

*now paint your egg. then wrap and glue fine ribbon around the egg to cover the holes. happy easter! enjoy!

lovely lulu

ah, lovely lulu. i love lulu. i hope to keep her around for a lot longer.

she is still an attractive thing, you know. for a mannikin, that is. but lulu is starting to get a bit worn out. she is showing her age. her glossy, black duct tape body is struggling to stay together after being tugged at, toted up and down stairs, dressed and undressed a million times, and shoved into corners when out of use. a small split here, a tiny rip there, is all it takes for her insides to begin to fall out.

i am sentimentally attached to lulu. years ago hannah lovingly and carefully crafted her out of this and that. lulu was the belle of the ball, the talk of the town, the cat's whiskers, the bee's knees, the snake's hips, etc., etc. but time marches on and, alas, she could use a lift here, a tuck there, something to smoothe out the wrinkles. couldn't we all?

lulu's body was fashioned this way:

hannah put on a long t-shirt. i wrapped her body, just over the t-shirt, round and round in black duct tape, overlapping neatly. then the torso mold, t-shirt attached, was carefully cut straight down the back. hannah took it off, and with the black duct tape she taped up the slit, formed the neck, and covered the neck and arm openings. then she stuffed the manniken from the bottom with poly-fill stuff (the kind in pillows), cut a piece of cardboard and inserted it to keep the stuffing in place, and taped the whole bottom up smoothly and securely. an old sawed-off metal floor lamp base became her stand. what fun.....lulu had arrived.....

ella's silver

ella's silver arrived at her parent's home more than a year before the ceremony was to take place. her sterling silver flatware was given to her as a wedding gift by her parents and her married sisters, in 1925 near lubeck, germany. many other items to help insure domestic bliss were purchased in the months before the wedding. at that time in germany it was required of betrothed couples to show proof before the wedding that they had the basic furniture and housewares to furnish the domicile they intended to inhabit. instead of today's online wedding registries, they personally kept notebooks with detailed lists and receipts of what was purchased or received as gifts, and what was still needed. in addition to filling up their future residence, the bride-and-groom-to-be also had to prove that they had, in fact, found a residence in which to begin married life together before the proper wedding documents could be procured.

all of this crazy bureaucratic red tape was to insure that the engaged couple were not some sort of gypsies, or bohemians, or hippies (perish the mere thought!), the idea being that one would be and should be responsible and establish a respectable home. of course, back then the word hippie had not come into the lexicon yet, but it gives those of us living in the u.s. today a frame of reference for how people who deviated from the norm, who did not measure up to the government's notion of "respectable", were treated (rather shabbily, i'm afraid) in a different time and place. no proof of respectability, no marriage license. tough luck. ella and wilhelm, i am happy to say, passed the test, got married, and fruitfully, dutifully, produced children who in turn produced grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

ella was my grandmother. a few years ago, my father and mother gave me his mother's beautiful silver flatware. the silver is heavy and the lustre is warm. originally there were twelve soup spoons, dinner forks and knives. today there are only eleven of each . (i suspect a relative in germany pinched one place setting as a keepsake before it was packed up and sent across the ocean by container ship after my grandmother's death.) there were never any teaspoons or dessert forks. those were collected separately, in another pattern, for use as part of a porcelain dessert, tea and coffee set. how complicated. how old world. i have no idea what happened to all of that.

i like to imagine the many special occasion dinners - birthdays, christmases, christenings, easters, anniversaries, new year's eves, or just meals with friends - those pieces of silver participated in. who was there? what did they talk about? one thing is for sure, ella used her silver. it did not lie unnoticed, in a state of delicate and careful preservation in a drawer in the china cabinet. far from it. my grandmother would never have used her ordinary everyday flatware for a special occasion, and she never had the notion that her silver had to be protected, and remain forever completely unblemished, without a single nick or scratch. (or even without a splatter of pockmarks or a shortened fork tine. more on that in a second, i promise.)

and so ella really used her silver - she got it out of the drawer and set it down beside the plates. that is not to say she was careless with her exquisite forks, knives, and spoons. quite the contrary, ella was such a careful person she never broke or damaged anything. (well, ok, almost never.) the idea was that the silver was meant to be used, to be eaten with, and that's what they did. they put the silver up to their mouths and ATE with it. and eat they did, with gusto! that's why the silver was made.

back to the story of the pockmarks and the dwarf fork tine. i keep my promises. somewhere along the way in the silver's eighty-five year history it looks like a child secretly took one fork and one soup spoon and did some serious scooping and shoveling in gravelly dirt. what fun! such a fancy toy! there are pits and pocks embedded in them. perhaps the same child also poked and stabbed at rocks with the fork, breaking off the tiniest bit of the top of one tine. who knows. what really happened remains undocumented. my own fictionalized account of what might have happened fills in the gaps somewhat satisfyingly, i think.

owning silver can be a pain in the neck because taking care of silver, especially old silver, is hard work. i used to think polishing silver was a hell of a job. my attitude has changed somewhat since ella's came into my possession. i don't use that nasty dipping stuff that is supposed to make your life easier. why would i want to do that? why would i want to make polishing easier? it is a labor of love, pure love. besides, the dipping stuff doesn't clean really well. real polish and a soft cloth work best, and polishing is the key word.

as i begin to clean the silver, slathering on the polish, you know the kind you actually polish with, and getting it all over a fork, i start to feel the heaviness of the metal. as i rub along the surface, lifting off the black tarnish, i am happy knowing other people have polished like this, the good old-fashioned way, before me. i start to get lulled into a daydream by the repetitive motion. i caress the old metal gently, over and over and over again, until i am satisfied with the gleam. each piece takes a long time. but i am not in a rush. i am proud of how good it looks.

the silver, without anybody really realizing it, has been loved. imagine, some hunks of silver metal, loved. it was not, is not, loved because it was costly, because of its value. the silver and its beautiful rich patina, only seen on old silver which has been handled and cleaned hundreds of times, has been loved because it has been out on the table, marking the passage of time, marking family togetherness. it has been witness to so much life, so much living, to good times and bad times, to births and deaths. and not to forget, witness to so much damn good food!

the silver was loved and cherished by my grandmother. now it continues to be loved by me, and because of that love it will be used often to celebrate all kinds of occasions, adding to the fine lines on its surface and increasing its sheen, reflecting the life of the family.

domestic bliss

a service call by our friendly plumber and his assistant a few weeks ago prompted my ernest contemplation of the absolute importance of plumbers (and electricians, carpenters, exterminators, roofers, snowplow and backhoe operators, everyone and anyone with important looking tools and big machines!), not only to society in general, but to one's domestic sphere as well. without them we are doomed, we are lost. without skilled handymen the smooth operation of the domestic realm would cease to exist. handymen (not to be discriminatory, ladies, but let's face the facts: most plumbers, electricians et al. in the category of handypeople are men), in my opinion, are gods who bring us ordinary, unhandy people the gift of domestic harmony, domestic bliss.

further along in my contemplation i realised domestic bliss and marital bliss form a union. the two are wedded together, which is really where all this is going. quite simply, a household, to be strong, unified, and functioning well, cannot have one without the other. marital bliss (therefore, domestic bliss - hopefully i won't have to repeat the fact that they are one and the same thing too many times, dear people) is like a well-oiled machine. to achieve marital bliss, all the parts of the bliss machine must be checked, rechecked, maintained, adjusted, lubricated (i'll leave you to your own lusty visions), and kept in good working order for the thing to keep running smoothly.

which brings me back to the plumber. in the bliss department, part of our bliss machine was not in good working order. were it not for our wonderful plumber jim (a master plumber, in fact), domestic bliss would have shriveled up and broken apart long ago. he has come to the rescue many times over the years, to tidy up dangling wires (he also happens to be a master electrician) and exposed pipes when we have torn various rooms apart in order to make them (hopefully) better than they were before (i think that's called save-a-few-bucks-do-it-yourself-never-ending home renovation). but this time it was different. this time the need was far more urgent. we were not renovating, but our domestic machine was in deep trouble. we had waited too long to fix the problem.

our problem was the master bedroom toilet. it was not functioning well. things were getting bad. the toilet issue had been dragging on for a couple years. at first the toilet wouldn't flush properly. then the tank wouldn't fill back up. then the handle always needed to be jiggled in a certain, very specific way to get a good flush. then the toilet just kept on running. and running. the water wouldn't stop. jeez louise, you had to lift off the back cover, plunge your hand into the deep dark recesses of the tank (the stuff nightmares are made of!), and pull up on a long thingamajig housed in there. ick, ick, ick! when our son was little he used to say there are slobs living down in there, mommy. such a wise child. i heartily agree - there was definitely something down in there causing us a lot of trouble!

the hard fact hit us one day: domestic bliss cannot be maintained with a broken toilet. that cranky old toilet was sorely testing the strength of our bliss, and the strain was too much. bliss was losing, the toilet was winning! why did we wait so long to do something about our problem?

thankfully dear jim arrived just in time with a sleek, high tech, top of the line, water-saving toilet. no more leaning over the toilet tank and staring into its murky nether regions! no more wondering if the bowl would ever be free of you-know-what! and the most delightful thing of all - no more flush handle! our new toilet has a nifty push button on top. (i think it kinda looks like a funny fanny. no joke. don't you think so?) oh, happy day! our home's harmony was restored and domestic (and marital!) bliss would continue merrily along until our well-oiled machine.....what? started to rust?