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

you're gonna rise up singing

Summertime, and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.....one of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky.  —Summertime from the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, lyrics by DuBose Heyward.

midnight wind, a howling and demanding wind, sucked air and tent fabric in, and then, in giant bursts, expelled them again, displacing oxygen like the lungs of a colossus, or a bellows of cosmic proportions. this was no weakling storm lashing at us during the height of summertime on a beach on prince edward island.

we were camping in the dunes on a lonely stretch of that lovely island in the late 80's, a thing unheard of in the united states due to strict dune preservation measures and laws to protect piping plovers and other birds nesting in the sand (probably isn't allowed in canada anymore, either) when a mighty gale and torrential rain blew in and pulled several of our tent pegs and poles out of the sand, toppling one side of the tent. needless to say, we survived in the tent (but of course in the tent....we would never abandon our campsite and head for the nearest hotel, well, not on that camping trip anyway), and the kids had great tales to tell when they got back to school.

a beach made of sand or pebbles or a bold rocky shore or any up close and personal view of the sea—doesn't matter where it is as long as it's not mobbed—i'd travel a distance to find a sea view like that.

where you'll find me in the summertime—where i'd like to find myself—could be the wild and blustery shore of embleton beach in northumberland in the north of england (where the signs on the motorway pointing you in a northerly direction actually say THE NORTH, and going south it's THE SOUTH). the huge, imposing, romantic ruins of dunstanburgh castle (this ground felt the likes of john of gaunt, and the wars of the roses) in the distance beyond the golf course didn't look that far, but as i walked on the beach i realized they were farther away than i thought. that walk was a long time ago, way back in 2004; i have every intention of walking there again.

or it could be on fox island, a hill of granite ledges and boulders—and not much else—deposited by glaciers, only accessible at low tide in phippsburg, maine. climbing and poking around up there is an annual thing i like to do to mark and celebrate the arrival—the essence—of summer. the rocks, wearing skirts of sticky seaweed, periwinkles and barnacles, show off exposed backs and arms and thighs tattooed with colorful lichens.

seagulls do a lot of screaming, and they'll steal your picnic lunch—i've even seen them tugging on tote bag and backpack zippers—if you don't watch out. have to keep an eye on the tide, too; it looks harmless but it's not. i leave enough time to get back when the tide turns, and i stay on the sandbar. a tempting shortcut beckons through the water, yet even for a strong swimmer who doesn't mind cold water, it is not recommended since the swirling waves can pull you under and away. if fog rolls in, foghorns—like the one at seguin island and another one at pond island—are some of my favorite sounds of summer—eerie and forlorn, but wonderful, if you like that kind of thing.

remembered beaches—crane, plum island, embleton, jasper, reef bay, singing sands, goose cove, sea glass, crescent, reid, kitty hawk, higgins, pink, seawall, tarpon bay, popham, gulfside, bamburgh—and all the beaches in between with names i can no longer recall; names forgotten, adrift, blown away as if by a distant sea breeze, but to whose shores i will always return in the sweet lullaby of memory, smiling and singing a little song of summer.

~ photo of the dunstanburgh castle ruins by ed montalvo.

snip, snip, gather them in

last week.....

the first day of summer. ninety degrees and steamy at eleven o'clock in the morning. not a typical maine day, no, not at all. joe cupo on channel 6 predicts three more days of this. i stand in the garden, glance around, shake my head. in addition to the heat, there's something else that's not quite right, something else that's off.

silence. dead silence. not a chirp, not a song, no buzzing of bees or dragonflies or the low hum of an incoming hummingbird over my head, no wind, only the faint burble of the little stream as it meekly shushes and tumbles, seeking its way through the forest.

i stare at them. they are starting to appear defeated, heads drooping low. i know if i don't take some action many of the splendid buds won't bloom properly, and those that do won't last. they will be seared and cooked right on their own stems until they're well done and finished. i mutter to myself this isn't good, not good at all.

it's too much for them. (it's too much for me. i don't know how i would deal with the heat if i lived in the south. james and megan won't see me visiting them in texas in the summer, that's for sure.) they will wilt, wither, waste away, if left alone to fend for themselves against the heat wave that's overpowering everything, myself included. but there's one thing i can do to save them—get the scissors and start cutting.

we don't get a lot of oppressive days like this along the southern maine coast—maybe 3 or 4 of them a year—and by oppressive i mean where there is no reprieve from the heat, no afternoon sea breeze, the humidity staying high and the temperature barely dipping and there's nothing to help air out the house and cool it down in preparation for yet another day of heat. we used to tough it out when there wasn't a breeze—we didn't even have an air conditioner in the bedroom until two years ago—but we've become wimpy. no, not we, me. i'm the wimpy one; ed doesn't mind the heat.

i grab an old pair of slightly rusty scissors i use for the garden out of a terra cotta pot on the porch where i also keep the garden trowels and some string. snip, snip, gather them in before they fall to ruin. i whisper to them, to myself, in reassuring tones, fill the basket, carry them into the cool house and put them in fresh water away from the sun. i have closed the shades and curtains—it is as cool and dark as a crypt. i don't like it; i would much rather be able to leave the shades open and live in the light.

the silky, multi-layered white flowers, with bits of deep pink hidden like little surprises inside their frilly ruffles, are my favorites. they smell particularly sweet—they make the whole room smell sweet. i don't remember its name, but that plant is my most prolific. i am having some trouble with the raspberry/fuchsia/magenta/rose ones—what color are they exactly? i get confused, almost color-blinded by all the names—way too many shades of pink—which are bush-like and exhibit fine green leaves but not many blooms. do they need more manure? more mulch? more love?

the name—peony. i like saying it even if it's just in my head.

what do meteorologists know. the next day a cold front from the north lands on our doorstep and brings with it some clouds and a breeze, and much lower humidity and temperatures. comfortable. shades up, windows open. (we are, as they say, on the leading edge of the front. just 25 miles south of here, and a few miles to the west, it's still sweltering.) my snipping was completely unnecessary; i could have left the peonies alone. but never mind—they keep me company indoors instead, where i see them both night and day.

this week.....

the inevitable falling of petals, the bottommost ones heart-shaped and crumpled and lying in a heap.

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.

magnetic

she watches NOVA, he watches football. she prefers tea, he prefers coffee. she is short and blonde, he is tall and dark. she sighs over red sunsets, he sighs over red ink. she loves modern art, he loves vintage cars. she takes note of new flowers, he takes note of new technology. she makes friends easily, he makes friends cautiously. she likes the heft and smell of a real book, he likes the [nonexistent] heft and smell of a kindle. she makes plans in advance, he makes plans at the last minute.

she thinks the weather is perfect for working out in the yard, he thinks the weather is perfect for working out at the gym. she is thrilled by incredible words—how about rosanna warren's from new hampshire—he is thrilled by incredible numbers. she stares at her books, he stares at his iphone. she's messy and leaves clothes and papers heaped in piles, he's tidy and never leaves clothes and papers heaped in piles. she was raised a fresh-air-and-forest country girl, he was raised a smog-and-pavement city boy.

but when all is said and done, they are both at home, sitting beside each other in the evening, two opposites attracting.

cracked

last may i was in massachusetts at the house on the hill where my parents live. the house is situated above what i like to call our golden pond—that's beck pond on a map—the place where i grew up and still, to some extent, consider home.

the weather was pleasant and sunny but not yet warm enough for swimming. my dad, a fit and healthy eighty year-old, was busy preparing lunch while i visited with my mother. over the last few years my mother's health has been steadily deteriorating, slowly diminishing under the silently prowling brain thief that is alzheimer's disease. speech is cumbersome for her—her ability to express even the simplest of thoughts is disappearing, and the few words she does manage to say are arrived at only after a great struggle. but on that day we were, in our own figure-it-out-as-we-go-along fashion, "conversing", with me holding her hand and guessing—do you mean this, mom? or this? no? how about this?—and filling in her blanks, trying to get the answers right like i was taking a bizarre multiple choice exam.

after lunch, my father and i made my mother comfortable on a chaise lounge on the patio overlooking the pond—she walks with difficulty and staircases are treacherous for her—and went down the stairs to the water, with my mother in our sight the whole time. we came back up and walked by the vegetable garden, checked to see if my mother needed anything, and continued around the other side of the house past my parents' beautiful stonewalls and up a long stone staircase—all built by my father (my mother helped) using stones they found on their property. (when you need rocks for a landscaping project it helps to live in new england where backyards can be full of them.)

it was then that my father pointed out the nest.

a large robin's nest filled with four gorgeously blue eggs.

but it struck me that something was wrong, horribly wrong.

i couldn't believe what i saw.

why—oh tell me why?—would a bird build its nest on the ground? i've seen nests built quite low in trees and bushes, but never on the ground, and this one was next to the foundation with no bushes or plants or anything to camouflage it, no protection whatsoever from predators.

when i looked at that nest, so utterly, hopelessly, exposed in a corner by the chimney, i was overcome with sadness, a deeper sadness than the situation called for. after all, birds and animals die all the time—nature is cruel, nature is unsympathetic. that's life. those are the facts. i knew that, knew it well. i thought get a grip; get over it. but in that moment i couldn't. i was hit hard by what i believed was the nonexistent future of the tiny lives contained within those shells; i was overcome by inexplicable and somewhat irrational emotion. i just wanted to be able to do something to fix things, to make things right, and yet there was absolutely nothing i could do, no way to change the outcome fate had in store for the baby birds.

a few weeks passed. one day i was on the phone with my father and suddenly i thought of the robin's eggs. i asked him if, by some miracle, the babies had hatched without incident. of course, i already knew the answer, but i waited for him to tell me exactly what happened.

there was not much to tell—events unfolded quickly. turns out, it didn't take long for what some people might call a bad luck disaster, and others might call a good luck opportunity—depending on whose side you're on—to come skulking along. the possibility of life for those unhatched-lings, which had been in doubt from the start, was like a dream—like something longed for, hoped for—with the dream coming to an abrupt end about a week after i left massachusetts. when hungry bellies demand sustenance and the brain yells go find food, what choice does any creature have?

my father informed me that the interior of the nest was in shambles—of the four eggs only three were left, and those were cracked wide open, their warm, wet interiors sucked dry, signaling fullness and contentment for a crow or a bluejay, a raccoon or a skunk. (he never did find the remains of the fourth egg.) not such a tragic situation, really—lives given up so other lives could manage to make it through another day. that's the way it goes.

i felt nothing after he told me the news—my emotional overdrive had been spent when i saw the nest.

actually, that's inaccurate. i no longer felt emotion for the ransacked nest, but i did experience an emotional response after i hung up the phone. i thought about my mother. it occurred to me that she had no idea about what had happened, no idea how events played themselves out after the nest's discovery. the story of the nest and its contents remained with her for a short time and then was lost—it became part of the realm of mystery—unless she was reminded of its existence.

in her world, facts such as these don't matter—they are completely useless to her. the facts remain for me and my father to decipher—we alone can break into them and get at them, allowing them to signal the beginning of another chunk of time, another chunk of reality different than hers, one where life has a before and after. we've become sharply aware of our own lives: it's as if we're in a kind of passage and, in order for us to avoid losing our way in this brittle existence, we need to know where we've been to help us figure out where we're going.

~  i took the photo of the nest on the day i saw it last year. my father was kind enough to save it for me after it was raided so now it's one of the nests i put on the christmas tree every year. the nest reminds me of a year of changes, and it always leads me to bittersweet thoughts of my mother.

this missive: pulverized scabs

when abigail got down on her knees with her head bowed low, it could easily have been assumed—given the circumstances—that she was about to pray, that she was yet another whispering supplicant begging for a merciful god to save her children from a deadly epidemic. but the fact of the matter was she was on her knees searching—the praying would come later—bending over the floorboards muttering about the piece of thread she had inadvertently dropped—and the physician urgently needed—for the planned inoculation against smallpox in her boston household.

abigail adams made the decision in favor of inoculation on her own; her husband, john, was on a diplomatic mission overseas and already inoculated. besides, she knew he believed in its benefits. his wife was determined to take the risk of having herself and their four children deliberately infected in the hope of causing a mild case, rather than wait in fear for the disease to attack with its full fury.

by candlelight, after the children were tucked safely in bed, she inked pages and pages to john, unburdening her soul of doubts and fears and daily dramas, sometimes adding her dry humor or a quip about the shortages they suffered in 1776—god grant that we all may go comfortably thro the distemper, the phisick part is bad enough i know[....] a little india herb would have been mighty agreeable (suggesting john should place an order and get the damn tea home in a hurry)—until her hand ached and she put down her quill. her nights continued to be sleepless.

such a simple thing, and yet how frightening, this new medical procedure called inoculation: drag a piece of thread through the pulverized scabs and pus from the sores of an infected person, make a tiny incision in one who is healthy, and dip the bacteria-laden thread into it. done. wait for the arrival of pocks.

fat dispatches—paper covered with the sometimes blotchy markings of her dense script—held abigail's hopes and dreams and insecurities—and, at times, her deep loneliness and despair; they contained the passionate expression of her copious thoughts which ranged across the war and the children and the news of scabs and fever, but also other endless details from the management of her home and farm: the buying and selling of livestock, hiring help, construction projects, purchasing seed and equipment, planting and harvesting, drought and flood. details, details.

in past centuries, these missives were bound and sealed with wax and came to rest in the belly of a ship's wooden hull, sailing months upon the sea in the hopes of landing safely in europe or some other distant place.

i don't have a quill—but i have a keyboard. as i write i wonder what would abigail make of a keyboard? what would she think of my online missives—of all our online missives? would she think oh how i could have written! and exclaim oh, how wonderful! to have my thoughts and my news passed on fresh, not dreadfully outdated, by using this unimaginably timely mechanism, and to know that one's words will not be lost to the bottom of the sea but will be read and understood and that someone, hopefully, will find they matter and be glad to read them.

our words—the many, many viewpoints describing the funny, sad, reflective, exuberant, poignant, interesting, happy, thoughtful, crazy, introspective slices of our own lives—don't encounter the old dangers of mail delivery that awaited ships sailing on the high seas, or the perils pony express riders ran into crossing the great plains and the high sierra, or even the small problems of the modern day postman or UPS employee who must also brave weather and, occasionally, barking—and quite possibly biting—dogs.

in our century, words are mostly safe. in this, our unusual correspondence, the written tradition lives on and our "letters" journey free and easy, zinging across incredible distances through cyberspace where, in fact, there is no such thing as distance. instead of sinking or burning or being lost forever in a snowy mountain pass, our missives are transmitted instantaneously for the whole world to see. the snippets of our lives—the rendering of these astonishing pieces of minutiae, these bits of pulverized scabs—remain intact.

hit the orange rectangle and it's done.

you see? isn't that something? this missive—and yours, too—has already arrived.

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.

hidden in the lady's house

whoosh. here's june.

my woodsy maine garden really begins to heat up in late spring. unfortunately, after many thunderstorms and torrential rain and kisses from the sun, the weeds are quickly outpacing me. i try to keep up—things look okay—just too bad the weeds will always be several steps ahead. it's a jungle out there, but—if you'll permit me to say so—it's a nice jungle.

bees, bats, butterflies, dragonflies and hummingbirds make the rounds. there's a welcome crowd—a busy, boisterous, hard-at-work crowd—amongst the shoots and blooms, swooping in and out and about the plantings, the buds, the leaves.

crazy overabundance, spilling over. that's what it is; that's what's visible.

but then there's the invisible.

those secret places. the inner sanctums. the private abodes. when male and female are together inside the soft, delicate folds of the petals. look closely—it's a steamy, x-rated place. love, green-style. seeds, birth, new generations.

take the azalea. look at her. what you see is no blushing bride, no shy innocent stigma. she is fiery and brazen, that one, and throws herself wantonly toward the sky to receive his pollen. what a delight.

below her stigma—near her middle, around the style—a ring of courtiers surrounds her (many male and female parts all in close proximity to one another—i would guess it's a good life for everyone playing inside this flower) each one a dusty anther where pollen is produced—the man's house, androecium.

a hidden place, unseen, lies below that. the gynoecium—the lady's house—with the ovaries, the eggs.

i don't need to tell you the details of what happens next, once the pollen grains travel down the style. they'll do their thing and not a single person will take notice. not a single one. it will simply be done.

and that's just one flower. how are your math skills? count, then multiply.

what can i say? i'm a hopeless romantic—there's no stopping love.

speaking of no stopping love—but in this case a bluesy kind of love mixed with some real rockin' love, too—last night ed, hannah, christina and i saw marc cohn and bonnie raitt in portland. she, like the name of her song, is something to talk about. man, can that lady perform. at 63 she's lookin' good and she's still got it in her—such a talented guitarist and singer. she and her band put on a fantastic and long—hand over mouth covering yawns this morning—show.

oh canada

driving down the road recently i saw what i thought was a duck lurking behind some reeds about seventy-five feet away from me in a small marshy pond. the lily pad and tree reflections on almost still water under the light cloud cover of morning sky were stunning. i had the urge to record this beautiful moment so i pulled over and rummaged around for my camera and then realized i had left it at home.

i quickly turned the car around in the next driveway and backtracked to get it, keeping my fingers crossed that during the less-than-ten-minute round trip the wind wouldn't pick up and the muted light would remain and the duck would come out from behind the reeds.

i was in luck. the scene remained the same as when i left it with, however, one notable exception—the duck, which had swum out into the middle of the pond, was in reality a goose, a large male canada goose. how could i have possibly mistaken a goose for a duck? (is it time for new glasses?)

and how, when male and female canada geese are identical except for size, did i know it was a male?

because, upon closer inspection, i observed the unmoving head of another goose behind the tall grasses on the other side of the water, this one obviously sitting on a nest. while a female canada goose incubates the eggs, the male keeps watch—and this guy did a superb job.

he did not take his eyes off me as he swam closer and closer and started to come out of the water. i was afraid of getting hissed and honked at, or even lunged at by this possibly wings a-flapping goose dad, so i took a few more pictures and left him in peace to watch over his mate and the eggs. female geese always return to the area where they were born and unless something happens to one of them, those two will be hanging out together for what i hope is a good, long life.

good morning perkins cove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lola —after the painting by picasso

the title is incorrect. it should read lola —after the painting by ruiz, since that was his name until 1900 or so, but who would know ruiz? i didn't—later he liked his mama's name better hence the change. lola, the younger sister, a shy girl already marveling at her older brother, already knowing he was going to be big, real big, a sensation. of course this is not the painting of lola from the painter's early days, but you have to understand it was the blue i was after from the start, it was the blue i liked, a deeper blue, deeper than the timid blue surrounding lola as she sits on a white chair (or is it a bed?) sideways to the viewer, pale pink layered sleeves and a long white shawl bunched near her neck, draping into her lap, her blue lap, her head a profile of dark hair pulled back in a bun like her mother's hair minus the streaks of gray—maybe she's holding something in her tidy little hands which rest quietly on her lap? i can't tell—eyes focused on the golden evening lights in the darkness beyond the window. i'm sure she is daydreaming about that boyfriend of hers (she's such a typical teenager)—why didn't he stop by today?—she is in a bad mood (too much grouchy pout) while pablo paints, more blue, more blue, sit still will you? along with blue and white there are bits of green and pink and i think it is sad, melancholy, the way the colors combine and the whole thing looks like the painter was outside looking in through a rain streaked window, or maybe he was standing inside at his easel but rain kept getting in the way, dripping through a hole in the roof—oh the loneliness of the pale blue haze, a washed out weariness like grief moldering the scene. lola looks as if she might melt off the canvas any minute—watch out, don't slip on the slick paint where her chair and dress and mouth and breasts collapse becoming startled geometrical shapes straddling a wet pavement coursed by neat black boots, tiny buttons running up the ankle, and staring into street lamps lit over an hour ago during dinner when lola grumpily mumbled pablo would you please pass the salt?

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.

swirling in a petri dish

that's what it feels like some days, an experiment. i'm talking about this existence where we put one foot in front of the other and take tiny baby steps, trying to reach out and figure out how to move along, sometimes barely muddling along, and do the best we can.

who am i? i started out as a daughter—someone's child—then became a friend, a sister (also cousin, niece, granddaughter....), a lover, a wife, a mother. now i am on the verge, on the very cusp, of something brand new, too.

do i define myself by my relationships or do i define myself by what i do? am i a fireman, a nurse, a business manager, a pilot, a teacher, a lawyer, a shopgirl, a student, a bureaucrat, a writer, an artist? (a list like this reminds me of that game of jumprope we girls used to play as children where we sang out doctor, lawyer, indian chief, hobo, bozo, millionaire, thief.....or something like that, and the word we were saying when we tripped on the rope described with a single word the entirety of who our husband would be.)

i look through the glass and into the dish. what's in there? who's in there? who is struggling to get out? describe her. at this stage in my life i am finally realizing i am all these things and many, many more—they are the chunks that form the foundation of me.

when those sections of ourselves—of me, of you, of us—that ultimately combine into the whole swirl around—oftentimes blindly—they encounter trouble and hurt and frustration and failure, but also great joy. i guess what i'm trying to say is we never know where we'll end up or how much we'll stumble and fall trying to get here, there or anywhere, but the point is we're all doing it together, we're in this thing together. we humans are always falling down and getting up again, we're peeking over the top of the dish ready to pop out any minute and move on, hopefully not looking back too much, but rather focused mostly on forward. onward. completion.

i am in constant motion, cruising from being a daughter to a friend to a mother to a neighbor to a wife and now—oh happy day—almost a grandmother. one more description of me to add to my long, developing list, a compilation of the fabulous, thrilling mix, the experiment that is life here on earth.

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.

bullseye

all women have their idols—sex, song, silver screen, sports, take your pick—
predictive symbols of youth, reminders of the good old days—let's order another drink, 
light another cigarette, dance to another song, saturday night in the bars days.

in the 60's girls cried and screamed for the beatles—ed sullivan,
stiff, struggled to announce four names. flash forward: 2012: new
english and irish boys on the block during matt and ann and al's

time slot on today fill the plaza with girls, girls, girls, cellphones held high a chorus
of burning love, while hidden, peering from behind their daughters' shoulders, mothers with cellphones but smaller voices sing their own songs

the notes wafting between the tall buildings where i escape
to discover my own idol who fires ping right on the bullseye
i don't have time for a pop culture god

a media-made celebrity chirping thumbs-up-likes

i'd never fall for one of those

give me instead

                   a gritty wordsmith i can sink my sharp teeth into

one at whose unlocked door i can hear
come in! and here i go pressing the button

                   up, up, up

where i linger inside the glass walls of an examined existence, a scheme

of finite dots, sketched pointillistic humanity, tinctured downsideup hope
capturing, losing my invisible slipping sliding self—
it is then, when i am again at ground level, i notice on my shirt

a smudge as assertive as punctuation, incisive wound
of an ending and a beginning, token of dried blood
nodding where the arrow met its mark.

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.

the color of morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i respond "yes, it certainly is."

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

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

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