my cousin's america

Detail of Marc Chagall's America Windows, Art Institute of Chicago

on that late summer thursday in my cousin's america
midwest, illinois, land of state sovereignty, national
unity, after chicago, after art and people-watching
in millenium, the set changes to the fox river
i walk to the end of the path in st. charles, my toes
nearly touching the pudding mud, bite into
an apple, study a sign explaining non-point source
pollution—it seeks the lowest spot, the spot where
i stand, the entire riverbank. they say they will bring
the lost prairie back, since strip malls are rootless there's no
drinking the rot and wreck of runoff, clean the river
with angelica, aster, black-eyed susan, snakeroot,
blazing star, prairie clover, tall grass, wheat grass. how about it:
straight talk this time, no double talk, no song and dance.

i seize on this, my non-routine, this minute
compared to yesterday's minute and the minute that's coming
at me with the current's rush. look there, there: coasting—coasting—
wheeling in a chevron backlit by sky unspooling, the wild
geese land in a world-web much like ours: feed, fly, mate
talk, sleep. an earthbound journey dreaming itself, dreaming
the next stop on the map. press on the brakes, slow
the vehicle to let you pass, an almost identical story
to the one i tell of my america, only in maine it's wild
turkeys i try to save. together we multitask
alert to impending disaster, we fluff our feathers
train our beady little eyes on the arrival of what we call hope:
a timely procurement of our next meal.

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.

the coat

she had been on the verge of leaving for ages, lifting her coat off the hanger, wrapping a scarf around her neck, pushing her feet into boots, planting a hat atop her head.

our young selves—the child i was, that my children were—would hear her calling "go outside. enjoy the fresh air...but it's cold out there—don't forget your mittens and heavy socks," as she attempted to get me, and later her grandchildren, out the door.

winter turns to spring, summer arrives, fall, then winter is once again upon us and she, dressed in her coat, ready to go, lingers.

this image of my mother bundled up in her coat, impatient to move on but stuck and going nowhere, is what i have. it does not exist except that i make it exist. in my possession are real pictures of her—some recent, some from decades ago, some nice black and whites and early color ones that are fading to yellow—but today i don't notice those, i only notice the one of her in her coat and hat.

an abrupt little breath and she is ready, she is prepared for this final departure. "get going," she'd say to us. "you'll overheat and catch a chill if you stand around in the house too long dressed in all those clothes."

but now it's her turn to leave. "go, mom," i tell her. "please go. it's time."

her hand grasps the doorknob and finally—finally!—she turns it and opens the door. she hesitates a moment but does not look back over her shoulder. when i think of her leaving us i am standing in my kitchen viewing the impossible—a procession of snowflakes that defy gravity: the snowflakes don't head obediently toward the ground but fly free like small bleached bugs, higher and higher in the sky of an upside-down world, the world reflected on the granite countertop.

so many weeks buttoned up in preparation, so many hours spent waiting. when my mother steps out on the air to greet snow and sun and moon and stars, i bow my head, my face hot and wet. at last, for her, relief. she had been in that damn coat way too long.



In memory of my mother who recently died peacefully at her home after a long illness.
Dear heart, best friend, I will never stop missing you....

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.

the readers

in these days of ours, these crazy days of ours, when they make an announcement along the lines of yes ma'am, it's true, the big box stores will be open on thanksgiving day (for the first time in history—i'm actually surprised it took them this long to conquer the holiday), i can do nothing but sigh and sigh some more.

does everything, everything, in our society have to be linked to the marketing of products and the spending of the green? i need it, i have to have it, it's the latest, it's the biggest, it's the best, it will be on sale that day, it will be sold out if i don't grab it now and on and on. society's psyche, our very souls, coaxed in specific directions—aided and abetted by those persuasive entities that are paid to get inside our heads—causing us to believe we need to possess a surplus of material objects.

i've decided that instead of ranting about this any more than i already have—i really have no patience for rants, especially after having endured so many nasty political ones lately—i will go on a love spree.

i say, if you have to buy something, buy books. or take turns borrowing and lending books with friends and family. for the love of books, for the love of beautiful words, enchanting art and nourishment for the mind, get books for your children, your spouse, your grandchildren, your parents, your siblings, your nieces, your nephews, your friends.

ye gods, for the love of those you love, be still, stay home, snuggle and read a book.

just like kevin and aidric—hang out together. lift open the covers of books and turn the pages—kevin and aidric highly recommend the giving tree or tiki tiki tembo or fox in socks or chicka chicka boom boom or curious george or make way for ducklings or time of wonder—to name a few—and lose yourself in the vast landscapes that you will discover in there.

we'll see you when you find your way back.


~ photo of my grandson by aidric's mommy, alexandra mcaleer

the day the earth roared and a baby smiled

on tuesday night, the second night of my trip to vermont, the earth stirred. then it roared.

we missed it, though. didn't hear a thing. didn't feel the ripples radiating out from the epicenter three miles below ground, in the crust of the north american plate, twenty miles west of portland, maine. but much of new england did.

within a minute of the 7:12 p.m. earthquake there was even more rumbling. online rumbling. my daughter's facebook page came to life and vibrated with exclamations: wow, did you feel that? that felt like an earthquake! and we thought our furnace was exploding and sounded like a freight train tearing past the house. a friend of hers from down south knew about the quake before we were able to confirm that it was an earthquake. she wrote just heard maine had an earthquake. that had all of us—my daughter, my son-in-law and myself—checking our iphones for the latest news.

close to the epicenter in maine, hanging lamps swayed to and fro. silverware rattled in a drawer at my niece's house in portland. elsewhere windows shook as if poltergeists had risen out of the ground to cause a ruckus—a little preview of halloween. in freeport ed told me our dog, lille, ran to the door, hackles raised, and barked and barked. people felt and heard the earthquake in boston and new hampshire and in towns south of us in vermont. in the hills above richmond, though, everything was quiet. did the mountains surrounding us, and hills under us, act as a buffer and cushion the tremor?

on the day the earth roared i watched my grandson smile, and i smiled, too, as i listened to him coo his baby songs. the day the earth roared i took care of him while his mother was at work. the day the earth roared i fed him bottles filled with his mother's milk and wiped spit up off his chin and poop off his bottom and settled him in his bassinet and folded his newly laundered baby outfits into neat piles.

on that day, deep under the earth, rocks more than a billion years old—give or take a million—scraped against each other, heated up to the point of melting, split, and made a lot of noise.*

on that day, my grandson had been in this world for exactly three months.



*a scientist was on the maine show "207"after the quake. he brought in rocks found along maine's shoreline that had cracked and melted in earthquakes. they originated deep within the earth's crust, rose to the surface as mountains were formed, and were dragged to the sea when glaciers scoured the land. the rocks were marked with fissures and smooth dark lines where they had melted all those eons ago.

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.

sisters

as day turns into night i light the candles. that afternoon i had shopped and cooked taking a little extra care, putting some additional thought into my preparations. i don't see her that often; when i do, it pleases me to make the evening special.

from the time we were young girls, we have been the best of friends. i always look forward to talking and laughing with her when she visits, two middle-aged ladies giddy as schoolgirls whispering ghost stories—and boy stories!—at sleepovers.

plates and stemmed glassware sparkle in the candlelight. dinner for two. i pour red wine. there is something about a long, shared history—the bond between us is strong. we don't need to start out slowly with small talk and polite conversation. we don't need to ease our way into what's on our minds. we are reckless and dive in head first without a moment's hesitation. we talk about the mundane and about matters of consequence and many topics in between. we don't hold anything back. we are unafraid to reveal our deepest thoughts because we know they are safe. there is no judgement—only someone who listens, listens well. it's like free therapy, to have a friend such as this.

oftentimes i can't help being a bit envious of women who have close relationships with their sisters. my friend has two sisters, i have none. i feel a little sorry for myself when i think about that, but not for long.

i say to her you are the closest i will ever get to having a real sister. then i amend that to you are the sister i never had. she nods her head and drinks her wine and i am content .

p.s. i miss you

~ the wobbly bridge sent from hannah's iphone ~

september arrived and a daughter left for england and italy; shortly thereafter we left, too—for sea bright and sandy hook—and there was simply no time to feel sad. our friends' son got married on a beach to the music of the crashing surf—an excellent choice, in my opinion, courtesy of hurricane leslie—which played on and on. from new jersey we drove to old saybrook, connecticut, and dropped by katherine hepburn's old neighborhood to visit friends from college.

then, at last, the time came. the time to feel sad. the time to allow myself—to indulge myself in—sadness. home again. my gaping suitcase spewing forth dirty laundry and small pink packets of tissue, one of many wedding souvenirs, labeled for your tears of joy, stared me in the face. i sat down in the middle of the floor in the girl's bedroom and pulled out one of those—mislabeled!—tissues; her belongings haunted me and wouldn't leave me alone.

yup, it was time. a little cry was in order.

once i shed the self-pity and left my wallow of sadness, i was myself again. i am not the type of parent who would—or even could—hold my kids back or pressure them to do or not do something because it's what i, selfishly, want. i say, let them go, let them fly.

and fly they did.

and fly she did. while she was at it, hannah sent me a photo of the wobbly bridge that spans the thames, with st. paul's above one bank and the tate modern on the other. a few years ago we crossed that same bridge together after spending the afternoon at the tate. we never experienced the wobble, though—too bad, that might have been fun—because of course they had fixed the bridge by then. (we used to have our own very tiny version of the wobbly bridge, known as the "crikety" bridge, here in freeport. but they fixed that one, too, and now it is no longer rickety and it doesn't creak. personally, i kind of liked the old one better.)

the days and nights are getting cooler, grandbaby is getting bigger, and i am getting the hang (again) of dealing with a quiet house.

and there is just one more thing i have to say: p.s. i miss you.

full throttle

on land or on sea, those two words may be used to describe how we might—if we choose—live our lives in maine, or elsewhere for that matter, where both the expected and the unexpected can pop up at any time. in maine we have bears, and we have pirates—oh yes we do—and we have lots of waves. i also have it on good outside authority that maine is an amazing place and that it stimulates all kinds of imaginings.

to some people—especially small visitors from the warm south—that's the good news. the bad news is that the summer air may feel a tad too cold (80 during the day, 60 at night—but just wait a few months!), and the sea may not be quite warm enough (66 degrees in the middle of casco bay in the middle of summer). oh well, you can't please everyone.

our gaggle of guests observed many wild beasts during their visit, beasts which presently live in maine, such as moose, bears, lynx, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, owls, and bald eagles, and those which once inhabited the state, such as mountain lions.

the animals were viewed—some "sitting pretty" with their eyes masked!—in their natural habitats in the large, forested maine wildlife park in gray. many of them are being rehabilitated, and hopefully will be able to return to the wild someday, and others are being relocated, having been rescued from precarious situations (raccoons stuck in chimneys, skunks slinking around under porches, bats inhabiting attics).

on another day a large population of pirates was spotted aboard a pirate ship. in particular, a pretty and very—argh, matey—tough pirate hung on for dear life in the wildly pitching crow's nest while attempting to hoist the skull and cross bones at the portland children's museum.

and then there are the people who can never get enough speed, and for whom "full throttle" is a somewhat meaningless concept because it merely states the obvious to them—they believe as much of life as possible should be lived at full throttle. i must say, i concur.

and that, my dears, is just a small sample of the simple pleasures which may be experienced on a wild ride in the fabulous state of maine.

three girls from texas

Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you.  —Annie Dillard



there were once three girls from texas. one afternoon in july they (and james!) landed quite nicely upon our doorstep. i was glad that megan, astrid and willa (as in willa cather—is that great or what?—whose stories and novels about frontier life, and the early settlers on america's great plains, are rich and authentic and populated with intelligent and resourceful pioneer women) came to maine to spend many afternoons; they stayed with us for two glorious weeks.

when the girls (and james!) first arrived, it seemed as if the days stretched out forever in front of us and that we had all the time in the world to see and do the things we wanted to see and do: the portland waterfront, the children's museum, the maine wildlife park, some shops in freeport, a cruise around casco bay on denny's boat, a pool party, the all-day gentlemen of the road concert overlooking the ocean on the eastern promenade (that james and megan, and hannah and her friends, went to) and featuring mumford and sons and fireworks in the evening, a hop aboard mike bretton's lobster boat to watch him haul up a few traps and help him measure some lobsters to see if there were any "keepers", a backyard lobster feast, highly competitive games of ladderball, and a trip to vermont to visit the new baby and spend a couple of activity packed days at jay peak.

i had forgotten the boundless energy, curiosity, and high-pitched chatter of the five and seven year-old crowd, and even though i was exhausted every night—the second my head hit the pillow i immediately sailed into dreamland—i loved hearing the giggles and the make-believe play, and even the inevitable squabbles. the two little girls were completely delightful and endearing.

it never ceases to amaze me how children—and some adults—use their imagination and create a time of wonder for themselves. astrid and willa announced i had the biggest flower garden they had ever seen (an example of their sturdy imaginations—it is hardly that big). it seemed as if every few minutes during the first couple of days of their visit they were asking me if they could pick flowers. they wanted to fill jars and vases with bouquets and "make things pretty." i had to firmly but gently quash that idea and instruct them that the flowers, for the most part, were to remain attached to their stems so that we could enjoy—and be surrounded by—the garden's colors, instead of having to look at a barren backyard displaying sad decapitated stalks.

on their last day in maine, i made up a scavenger hunt for the little girls. they were to find things belonging to the natural world (bugs, a yellow finch, a hot pink flower) and also garden related objects (a blue flower pot, a garden sculpture, a watering can), all of it outdoors. astrid's and willa's powers of observation were wonderful. willa noted that there were little brown swimming things in rainwater that had collected in a stone pot. are those tadpoles? she asked. nope, those aren't cute tadpoles, i answered in an ominous voice as i peered into the water. i informed the children that the squiggly critters were in fact hundreds of baby mosquitoes, and, seeing as we have plenty of mosquitoes participating in the forest food chain around here, i promptly dumped the water out.



top photo credit: david stall

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.

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.

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.

let pandora play

~  my fat belly girl ~

dust bunnies have been multiplying around here at an alarming rate—but then it's spring, after all, and with spring comes much newness bursting forth hither and thither—and those bunnies are, at this very moment—there goes another fat one now!—hopping under couches and chairs and tables and beds making themselves oh-so-comfy-cozy. eruptions of clutter—books, notebooks, remote controls, magazines, cups, one hairbrush, receipts, shopping bags, nail clippers, scotch tape, mail, one fork, scissors, visine, camera, lotion—have also solidified on every available flat surface and are in dire need of an immediate excavation.

there's a party with friends and family happening on saturday for alexandra and kevin and baby-to-be at our address (but please don't call it a shower or it's off with your heads! BECAUSE it's not a shower BECAUSE it's a regular party—albeit a party with stylish details thanks to christina—BECAUSE this is not going to be a hen thing BECAUSE the men will be present BECAUSE, did you know, they play a major role in the bringing forth of new life? BECAUSE the women can't manage such a simple thing alone—witness the old worn-out-but-true saying it takes two to tango—BECAUSE we need the men to be here BECAUSE, lord help us all, we refuse to sit around expostulating on the best name brands in diapers and breast pumps and nipple creams and BECAUSE un-milk related beverages are good we will be drinking beer and wine and mimosas, well everyone except alex. nuf said...) and things need to be put shipshape in a hurry.

which brings me to this: many situations require music.

and this: for me to be in absolute tiptop form for cleaning the house, for me to get in the groove, so to speak, and to prepare for physical labor (no pun intended), it is imperative that music, a certain kind of music—music to make you move—be on the airwaves.

today pandora will get to play to her heart's content, unleashing her melodies throughout the house, except she will be encouraged to lean toward flamenco jazz latino—latin groove move your body jazz—and a little gipsy kings, carlos montoya, the buena vista social club, armando peraza and mark towns to help get this household in order.

bunnies watch out.

~ the weather is gorgeous and it's supposed to stay that way for days. i intend to get out of this house very soon and enjoy the sun and at the same time tackle the garden and the lawn. i'd so much rather be mucking around outdoors anyway, although i have a feeling that i'll be dipping into the bottle of advil by the end of the day.

in springlight

the light of late spring is a fine light—it is a warm and playful light that casts itself about in the right way. of course, that's just my humble opinion. at another time someone—and that someone might even be me—could very well write the same thing about the light of summer or autumn or even winter. the light of those seasons is also fine—it, too, accomplishes the task of pushing away the darkness, of thawing our bones, heating things up, making us feel alive.

the black metal chairs and tables were positioned on a patio amidst tulips in the clear cool mountain light of the trapp family lodge's terraced garden in stowe where my daughter and i had stopped for a good but—as it turns out—over-priced lunch. (the off-season beauty of the place made it well worth the higher price out-of-state and foreign tourists are willing to pay on a regular basis.) there were crowds of tulips in full bloom but hardly any people, and the afternoon arrived as if part of a carefully scheduled program, like the choir of birds were providing musical selections specifically for our entertainment. so we enjoyed the music and being encircled by mountains and sky—for me, mother's day arrived a week early.

the day was a day of capturing the light. the day was a day of being captured by the light. the day was a day of being in love with the light. then the light changed; it was time to go. the afternoon became quieter, the shadows longer. as we walked over the lawn and got closer to the parked car we could see  montana's black, furry head, her chin resting motionless on the back of the seat. as always, she waited patiently, hopeful that we would soon return.

bouquets of dandelions

except for a few small, isolated patches in the deep shade of overhanging ledges, the snow has finally melted from the trails around mount mansfield, the highest mountain in vermont. the melodic songs of waterfalls plunging down from the dizzying height of rocky outcroppings were a serenade to springtime, but the trees looked wintry, gray and skeletal—the buds tiny, embryonic and tightly curled.

on saturday my daughter alex and i played tourist in her backyard and drove up to nearby smuggler's notch after we helped the baby of the family, hannah, start to move out of one apartment in preparation to move into another.

at the higher elevations there was minimal green, but in the rest of vermont there was plenty of it, including bright green plastic bags which were sprouting up like cabbages along the road from richmond to the notch. the first saturday in may is green up day in vermont and many people were out cleaning winter's debris from the landscape. the bags were left beside the road to be collected later. we didn't participate, though. our excuse? we didn't have one, but i could say one of us was too pooped from driving for four hours and helping with the apartment and the other one was too pregnant (but too pregnant doesn't work as an excuse because the girl hiked the pinnacle at 30 weeks of pregnancy). plus we had other plans.

in addition to green there was lots of yellow—enough dandelions in fields and lawns and grassy ditches for thousands of bouquets. i always feel a little sad for the despised dandelion. i think they are very pretty (and useful—how about a yummy salad of dandelion greens and a sip of dandelion wine? no? ok, so i'll admit that to me, anyway, those aren't the tastiest of treats) and i find myself getting upset about the containers of nasty "weed begone" killers people douse them with in search of perfection. i generally have a hard time with unnatural weed-free golf course types of grassiness which leach lakes of harmful chemicals into the environment.

but in vermont the dandelions seem to thrive; people either like dandelions better here or they have made peace with the idea of their existence due to the severe cost to nature of attempting to eradicate them—they are an accepted and natural part of the landscape. the dandelions' sunny yellow faces will continue to keep on smiling until the day comes when lawnmowers are hauled out of sheds and garages and barns and revved up for that first mow of the season.

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.