tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-112902472024-03-07T17:52:16.063-05:00vivid just like youDenisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.comBlogger369125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-5538647391644527202018-12-14T09:43:00.001-05:002018-12-14T09:43:12.742-05:00Mid-December 2018: long time no blog! Hello out there!
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The cat meows pointedly at me, after I place the can of food in his bowl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My pomegranate tea is brewing in the thermal mug. I add a little stevia, some grapefruit bitters. I’ve already drunk two cups of coffee and caffeine is not helping me this morning, after a late night of grading. I woke too early, finding Scott still at home, asking for necessary money tasks before the caffeine could set in. An hour had passed by the time I moved cash from one account to another, checked the PayPal balance, emailed the woman selling an Amish yarn-skein device, emailed the other woman who sells me yarn. Scott is at work now, and Madeleine sleeps after her own late night working on one of her finals for the semester.</div>
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I translate the cat, talking to him as I do when there’s time to breathe, when I’m not hurrying. “Grateful to be alive? Sort of?” He meows again, firmly. “Me too. Sort of.” Another meow with direct eye contact. “Disappointed, maybe? Low mouse count this winter? I get that. I really do. But I know you work hard.” He meows again, looking over his shoulder as he walks to the sunbeam and flops himself on the floor to wash his feet. Vain and handsome creature.</div>
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Today is the day for the pom-pom hat with its extra layer of mohair fuzz for insulation. Mittens—I never wear mittens and in seconds I’ve caught the car keys in the tender yarn at the thumb. Alpaca yarn, hand-dyed, not good in wet conditions but perfect for a crisp day. I take off the snagged mitten and slowly circle the key fob until the snag is released. These were the first mittens knit on my machine, and I’ll experiment more with this pattern before next winter. Down puffer coat, Blunnie waterproof boots over wool socks.</div>
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Out the front door at a stalking pace.</div>
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I haven’t walked at speed since shorts weather in October, twenty pounds ago. The steam rises when I pop open the mug. I wonder why the compost pickup folks left all the grossness in the green bin this morning—then I see that the compost is frozen to the bin. Too late now. I wheel the bin to the porch: maybe next week I’ll solve that. My neighbor Diane and her husband frown at jumper cables between two cars. I round the corner on the busy causeway for just a minute before turning onto a trail through conservation land, open and rolling greenish fields. Just last week I nearly sank above my boot tops, but today I stalk over the frozen landscape, sticking to the sharp grassy tufts so I don’t slip.</div>
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I pull up the down hood—I hate the slippery sound near my face, but the wind sharpens and bites. With one mitten off, I pull my turtleneck over my nose for just a few minutes before it slides back down so I can sip my tea. Hamstrings tight, hips stiff. I reach up to tap each of the low limbs of a tree over the path, hello, hello, hello, too cold to stop and offer a proper greeting. At the rise I turn right down a shaded tunnel of brush and cold wind, the path to the island in the middle of the marsh. There are two islands, and the other is called Bakers Island, but this one is My Island, whose name always scatters. A rotted board is frozen in place to cross the mud in fairer weather. The path opens to scouring wind and bright light. The two windmills tower above the landscape, one elegantly turning, turning in the sun, and the other frozen. Like me, I think. I pull the edge of the hood across half of my face, reminding myself not to keep my hands in my pockets, wind cutting through my mittens.</div>
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Strange, after six weeks of working so hard, day after day, my exhaustion transforms itself to a shame that is not normal for me, not reasonable. I feel as though my soul has been removed from me, so profoundly empty. I remind myself it’s December, mid-December, and I’ve been pushing harder than ever at all the jobs. Last week, saying “I won’t have your research essays graded until the semester is done,” then sitting up grading them, knowing some students will panic over points and scores, and my next few days will be ruined. But I want the grades done. I want the stakes for final essays to be clear. Last week, saying “No I absolutely cannot take another college application client. I can’t.” Then thinking about the money, and the reason why I coach these students, which is love and hope. I texted back to say, “get back to me after December 17<sup>th</sup>, okay? Okay.” Last week, leaving the knitting machine packed up in its rolling case so I won’t be tempted to just keep knitting through the stress and weariness. Then the weekend, fourteen hours of driving until I saw hallucinations about two hours from home. I know I drove safely in those last two hours, but I remember none of it.</div>
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There is no reason to feel ashamed of what is undone, except that I want to do everything—more than everything. I’m not afraid of doing nothing: I just don’t remember how it works, right now. And I’m eager to recall it. Soon.</div>
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A flock of birds startles from the crabapple tree as I walk by—hundreds fly and my head lifts to follow them, tossing back the hood. Four wise birds stay in the branches, eating. They can see I’m no threat, or they don’t care.</div>
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As I walk to the island—someone’s pet island with a well-mown clearing and a new bench overlooking the river-- I forget to look for the tall asparagus fronds—that is work for April, though I mark them most times of the year like a treasure map. This year the spring was cold, and the asparagus didn’t show until June, late and sparse. Next walk I will remember that the world exists beyond this nadir of cold. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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I haven’t been to the island for months—the path has been underwater for much of November, the mud clay-filled and still clumped to Madeleine’s waterproof boots in the mud room entry. To the west, a man stands ankle deep in the river mud, digging clams without a heavy coat, his small boat moored nearby. Working, working—like the windmill, working, working. Me, hamstrings still tight, hips still stiff, punching my heels out and pulling my toes up as I walk, hoping to stretch something loose.</div>
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I can choose the long way to return home, with more sunny fields, or the short way that cuts through the riverbed—my nose is running and I’ve brought no tissues, and I choose the short way, thinking I might see a neighbor, even though it’s not dog-walking hours, but I only meet a fat squirrel scurrying through the riverbed. They’ll be hibernating soon—the solstice, I think, so a fat squirrel is a squirrel who might live through the winter. I drink the last of the tea and pop open the front door. The mud room gathers the sunlight directly onto the new wreath of dried flowers—red sumac and lavender—atop the brass pineapple door knocker. Not a Christmas wreath, but a welcome. Inside the furnace warms all. Put aside the mittens, the hat, the down puffer, the boots, take the thermal mug to the kitchen sink (overflowing) and march past the work-couch (overstuffed with stacks of papers), and find the last rays of sunlight in the reading chair.</div>
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The year is 2018, nearly 2019, and this is my home—in my name as well as Scott’s, regardless of whose paycheck is larger.</div>
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It is five years after the first hint of Madeleine’s health scare, three years after the peak of her migraine season, two years after I knew she would be okay.</div>
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It is five years after the home-buying scare, five months after the re-fi allowed me to settle into home ownership without a nagging sense that it could all fall to hell.</div>
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It is my ninth year of teaching part-time, with a contract that still moves from year to year, now, rather than semester to semester. My department head says she will keep asking for a permanent half-time position each year—she swears she will copy and paste the same request until the budget relents, but still there is no real hope of full-time employment. It is my fifth year of college application essay tutoring, at a school for international high school students and from my home. My checking account reminds me I’ve tutored more than 30 hours over the past six weeks. It is my third year as a small business owner with Stockingfoot Knits—my second profitable year after the initial crowdfunding campaign. I could be winding that special hand-dyed yarn right now, for my family’s Christmas presents: at any moment, I know the next step, and the next, for producing more socks.</div>
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This is the first year in which I have not been job-hunting, at all, because there has been no time. Last summer, a retired headhunter said to me, “it’s not impossible to think you might find the right fit at a college, but you need to know the path is far from certain.” I nodded. It would need to be special. It would need to be timely. I am good at my work, but colleges choose younger people, ambitious people with PhDs. They would have to meet me, and so far, my resume has not charmed anyone into meeting me. </div>
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[I added a friend's story of job-hunting, here, in my earlier draft-- and a demand to create an entirely new curriculum as a part of an interview process. That is his story-- not mine, and I may come back to that later, but I think about the audacity of a request that explosive, at THIS time of year. How I might burst into flames if anyone asked anything of me, right now.] That is where I am right now, empty after six weeks of hyper-dedication to my three jobs—and I am relieved NOT to think about what is next. I am sick with something akin to self-loathing that is only related to self-neglect, and it’s no different from every December, when the Christmas music and tin-foil decorations mock me with a cheeriness that is trying too hard. Even my own tradition includes Advent, a time of preparation, and I remain unprepared, overstretched, near breaking. I am more like the squirrel, still gathering nuts and preparing for a week-long nap to reset and rekindle some sort of life. Much to do, much to do, much to do, SLEEP. That is what I want: knitting and sleep. </div>
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Meanwhile the boy finishes his semester and plans his own ride home. The girl wakes and begs to make gingerbread houses with her girlfriends (yes, the kitchen is free—yes). Scott plans a special birthday extravaganza on Broadway with our best friend Hank, and I decline the invitation, with a bit of envy. Deadlines. Must meet deadlines. And the quiet weekend will do me good. Perhaps I can finish some work then clean the house, before we return to a four-person family, and some stews in the slow-cooker, and baked stuff.</div>
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The sun shines. That one windmill keeps turning. The clam-digger is gone, making chowder by now. The cold wind whips. And I have stuff to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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First of November, and I can’t get the house warm
all-the-way-through. I turned the thermostat to 70 for fifteen minutes, and
then I felt too guilty and turned the dial back to 68, added wooly socks and a
big sweater. </div>
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The cat crosses his front paws these days as he settles into
his daytime nap on the back of the couch. His ears swivel at the sound of my
keyboard flurries and mutterings as I type. He would like to be close, beside
my left leg, but he can’t bear it when I stretch or sneeze or reach for a book
in my bag, so he settles nearby but out of reach. </div>
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I ran out of yarn in my mitten project, which means I’ll
need to change it to a mitt project, sigh. I ran out of yarn for the socks I
was knitting, which means I’ll need to unravel the toes and replace the toes
with a contrasting color—which will be brilliant, but it takes a little
figuring and fiddling, and what I like about knitting is continuity, without
figuring and fiddling. </div>
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The cat, the knitting, the grading projects for classes,
these all make me want to go back to bed, but then I remember how precious this
light is, how short the days are, how much coffee I’ve already consumed. The
go-back-to-bed wish is shorthand—wish I felt at leisure, today. </div>
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The cat stretches his long neck and head over his crossed
front paws in a miracle of cat-yoga. I see his hips stretching out like bellows
as he breathes in, breathes out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I love
that he can sleep like this, pretty creature, sleep like a prayer, sleep like a
sigh. I roll my shoulders a few times and dig into my stack of student essays,
while I have the light. </div>
Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-54250745463780284582014-09-12T11:11:00.000-04:002014-09-12T11:23:21.247-04:00a porcelain cherub in a rough world<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7tpUQDTwKLXpuC6HHKcu7sFH918IUaweH11YLCo5-eRPCVKBZ22e8hVP1NCwkg7ppbS9lNkHIn6U-f6y2CyIA2RLX-XC_LDRc4dD2thAOWXRr4XrlVMx3-mFKWA5beYIHZMP/s1600/10387303_10152492364633411_8064635477464230003_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7tpUQDTwKLXpuC6HHKcu7sFH918IUaweH11YLCo5-eRPCVKBZ22e8hVP1NCwkg7ppbS9lNkHIn6U-f6y2CyIA2RLX-XC_LDRc4dD2thAOWXRr4XrlVMx3-mFKWA5beYIHZMP/s1600/10387303_10152492364633411_8064635477464230003_n.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
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My mother loved auctions, and really—what was not to love?
Sometimes she would pack my brothers and me into the station wagon and drive,
just because she liked one of the auctioneers. A big auction would have a food
table with chili and hot dogs, and pie by the slice, which we kids would notice
right away, as my mother drifted where her curiosity took her. She upholstered
furniture, and people always needed couches, if she could find a good one. She
had a friend who refinished dining tables and fine furniture, and perhaps she
could find him a deal. And of course, my mother was a player in the day-to-day
history of my town. Everybody loved Pat, and she made people laugh. I could
hear her from such a distance that I never worried where to find her. </div>
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She would give my brothers and me two dollars apiece, and we
would see who could buy the best prize, and we would shoot off in different
directions to rummage through the tents and the tables of treasures, on a dusty
hot day with nothing better to do and nowhere better to go. My brothers would
head to the electronics, and I would head to the household goods. </div>
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I craved the old trunks, the quilts and old lamps,
especially—anything that looked like it had a life before 1950. My mom would
bid for me, but only up to a limit, and always my dream furniture would go to
another bidder. My best bet—for coming away with anything at all—was to rummage
through the tables of small stuff sorted into lots, to be sold by the box. I
worked in polite silence, as a ten-year-old, pulling down each box and laying
out the goods on the grass to examine them. Then I would repack the box and
lift it back onto the table. </div>
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Unpacking yet another box of junk, I found it, this tiny
blue porcelain vase with a pink cherub and roses, sweet sculptured leaves and
gold-painted edges. I remember the gasp, and sitting down on the grass to look
it over. Vase? So tiny, so detailed. What could it possibly be FOR? The world
went wobbly around the edges as I sat for a moment, before I remembered that
other shoppers COULD SEE ME looking at this blue bit of bliss. And they were on
the hunt for buried treasure, too. I put the sweet thing under a crumpled piece
of newspaper on the very bottom of the box, and stacked on top of it a glass
maple-syrup pitcher with pouring lid—the kind that could be found at any diner.
Then I straightened my shoulders and put on my best auction-goer face, glancing
from side-to-side with a face that I hoped would not betray how deeply I had
fallen in love with this cherub beneath the paper, beneath the syrup pitcher. </div>
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If I were a film-maker, I would put that little girl in
pigtails, the curls of her hair escaping the bright beaded ties. She would be
pale as expectation, freckled as only a child can be, when the freckles can be
counted like constellations. She would be fully believing that she’d hidden her
desire because she only glanced at that box every few seconds. But she would be
shaking as the auctioneer moved from the farm machinery to the auction tent,
from the big furniture to the boxes of the small things. She would step forward
so the man could see her plainly, when her box was lifted by the auctioneer’s
assistant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man showing the box would
pull out the syrup jug and a brass candle-holder to show the buyers what kind
of kitchen stuff to expect. And the bidding would begin at fifty cents. The
girl shoots her hand up. </div>
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“Fifty cents and-a-dollar-now, dollar-now, dollar-now,
not-gonna-let-this-purty-box-go for a-dollar-now, dollar…” </div>
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“HUP!” shouts the assistant, pointing to a man at the back
left of the crowd.</div>
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“Na Five-doller-five-dollar-five, who’ll gimme five?” He
looks at me.</div>
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“TWO,” I shout, nearly leaping with effort, fists down by my
sides, stepping closer. </div>
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“Three, gimme-three, gimme-three, and YES!” the auctioneer
points to the back and I gasp for the second time in the day, spent, the
end. I don’t have three dollars. I step backward into the crowd, face hot,
trying to find someone to hide behind. </div>
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“Na FIVE-dollar five-dollar who will gimme five? HUP!” He
points to the back right. “Now TEN dollar-ten-dollar who will give me ten for
this fine box of household goods including this darling maple-syrup pitcher,
who will give me ten? Ten dollars? Who will give me ten?” I know he looks to the man on the back left, and I know he looks for me, because that is his job, but I am hiding, defeated.
“SOLD to the lady in the blue shirt for five dollars, now onto box number
seven—can you bring me the next box? Who will give me fifty cents?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am not a film-maker, and I can’t say what the scene looks
like, only that crying is a hateful thing on a sunny bright day, and I know
that girl would sniff back tears with a fierceness nearing violence, willing herself not to cry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wandered to find my mother. Maybe we could have that hot
dog now, and maybe I’d feel like it wasn’t the end of the world if I could have
a slice of pie. Maybe. How could that sweet little thing sell for more than
twice as much money as my mother had given me? The world was so unfair. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hey, hon. What was in that box you were bidding for?” I
sniffed and trembled as I grabbed the hem of her shirt. “Now, it doesn’t
matter—it doesn’t matter,” she knelt and put her hands on my shoulders. “I saw
you bidding. You did a good job, but you have to go slower, so you don't use up all your money so fast.” She held me close to her side, walking with
me in some direction I could no longer see. “I’d like to pay,” she said to the
lady at the table with the cash box. “That’s two-dollars for Burl’s stereo
speakers, and two-dollars for David’s tools, and five dollars for box number
six in the kitchen goods.” I looked at the hem I was still holding—the blue
shirt. My mother was wearing a blue shirt. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The box? You got my box?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I knew you’d bid everything you had, so I figured it must
be something more important than a syrup jug.” We found box number six, just sitting there on the table where the auctioneer left it, with the name "Pat" on a piece of paper taped to the flap. I stretched my hand down into the corner, under the crumpled
newspaper, to show her my treasure. She took it in her big hands and turned it
in the sunlight. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, now. Isn’t that a pretty thing? I think this is
probably for holding rings by the sink, so that fine ladies don’t lose their jewelry
while they wash the dishes. You’ll want to wrap that up in paper again, so we
don’t break it on the way home.” I told her I thought Burl would like the
maple-syrup jug, and the rest of the box was just junk. “Well it’s our junk
now, so we’d best get some pie and call it a day.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sweet world, where someone, somewhere, can dream up an odd
little holder for rings and make a cherub and roses from porcelain, for fine
ladies who probably never shop at dusty auctions on a hot July day, for my
mother who knew five dollars was a small price, even if I didn’t know that
then. I smile every time I look at it, just for its dearness-deep-down-things.
I’ve only ever used it to hold the little papers from fortune cookies, and
maybe a button or a bead. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The wind blew last night, and threw down a hand-made glass
trivet from my brother, down from the window-sill, into the thumb-sized terra
cotta spirit-man from Santa Fe, into the wee ring-holder. One more gasp,
finding the cherub separated from the tiny vase, but the break is not a bad
one. It’s a miracle that the delicate thing has lasted this long, in a world of
packing boxes and crumpled newspapers, era after era, home after home,
blustering wind crossing over yet another window sill, a little blue holder for dreams. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirk1vpbXtIrBtJ7euIQvhAAhGwhO6id2JPgJuWLmTmHJAr_-kSiojztxI1QkbDKM-PqGS6CgaWrTku3ILcjVoROTm8wT7rpqdBNKD1Wnl51-OwCoYKb5JpCIUN9ycfbhyphenhyphenk-jh9/s1600/10559889_10152492364628411_3470657030417383351_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirk1vpbXtIrBtJ7euIQvhAAhGwhO6id2JPgJuWLmTmHJAr_-kSiojztxI1QkbDKM-PqGS6CgaWrTku3ILcjVoROTm8wT7rpqdBNKD1Wnl51-OwCoYKb5JpCIUN9ycfbhyphenhyphenk-jh9/s1600/10559889_10152492364628411_3470657030417383351_n.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-28310765357934184992014-09-08T19:21:00.000-04:002014-09-08T19:21:09.141-04:00Okay, so that last post was an experiment: I put a draft into a folder on blogger, and put in on a "timer" to publish itself the following day-- I REALLY intended a second post on Saturday. Not fibbing, that's what I'm saying.<br />
<br />
More tomorrow. Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-78360788119667320872014-09-06T13:43:00.000-04:002014-09-08T19:17:01.707-04:00my summer non-vacation, part II<style>
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Note from Saturday...<br />
<br />
Did I tell you I was once a college residence director? I
lived with college students for six years after I graduated from college, for a
grand total of 10 years in college dormitories. I think I loved my work more
than any other residence director I’ve ever met. I came to college just
starving to be with people who were vibrant, growing, questioning and questing,
and I found my joy living with hundreds of those people at a time. For six
years I listened, trusted, gave my heart, gave solace. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What was I trying to do, there in those dorms? I was, on one
hand, compensated with free room and board, no small thing for a woman without
a car, without money when I started. I was also hoping to pass along the gift
of friendship—my own college friends helped to quench my deep thirst to be
heard, to be accepted, and I thrived under their care. By the end of those six
years, I knew I would never live in a college dorm again—knew that I was done
at that job, spent, burnt-out, a little triumphant and a little defeated,
because I didn’t know what I would do next. But while my dorm-life lasted, my
heart was yearning to step alongside the next young person who needed me. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later, Scott and I would temporarily take 9-to-5 jobs in an
office—I remember how we would laugh on the evening commute, laugh at the
miraculous lightness of being DONE with work, of leaving the office behind. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When we discovered I was pregnant, we moved from the
historic home where we were tour guides, into a sweet little condo with a view
of Gloucester Harbor. We called it The Baby Pod. I was working a sales job and
finishing a full semester of classes when my hands and arms went numb, and the
doctor said “rest.” By the time Madeleine was born, I moved into my next
all-encompassing job in hospitality, right there in the tiny condo. My work—as
a parent and creative home-maker—was exactly right for my skill-set, except for
the exhaustion and the lack of income. But some part of me wants to delete that
last phrase: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it was perfect</i>. I could
sing a song here, to the imperfect/perfect mess of parenting infants and
toddlers, to the love of home and neighborhood, to being a college residence
director for my several beloveds, then and there. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A friend I admire reminds me from time to time that we
parents need to grow out of that kind of intensity, to give our children room,
to listen without hovering. To remember that we no longer need child-proofing
devices as much as our families need learners’ permits and wifi passwords.
Thank God, thank God. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the midst of this growing-out, my teenage Madeleine woke
up with a severe headache and sore throat, sick for the third time during the
same school year. The sore throat subsided with the second round of
antibiotics, but the headache stayed. She contracted another illness, a
mono-like virus, and my days returned to that earlier kind of parenting,
around-the-clock, filtering the outside world, deciding from the day-to-day
symptoms whether to push the child out to the schoolbus or to cocoon the child
in swaddling blankets. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the same time as this bout of headaches, I got word that
my summer work had been cancelled. I applied to teach in another summer
program, that was also cancelled. And Madeleine met with a neurologist who
called this on-going headache a migraine. She started a prescription migraine
preventative with a terrifying list of side-effects, hand-tremors, dizziness,
nausea, violent mood swings, all possible. Without too much thought, I quit looking
for summer income to stand alongside a young person who needed me. Vibrant,
growing, questioning and questing—an irresistible calling, really, and a joy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But unlike my time working in the dorm, I worried for the
whole summer, as her headache stretched on and on. And I am worried now, too.
So yes they left for school. Yes they completed an entire school week and her
headaches are considerably lessened. And yes I stumbled into the first day that
feels like a day off from urgency, the first day since I can’t remember when. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember that first day of Brendan’s nursery school, ten
years ago. I told my friends that I would walk, I would weep, and I would write
until I figured out what to do next. Can I really be at that same point again? So
much catch-up to do, but I want to rest, to be alone, to come down. The first
day of a new school year, in which things might work out for good, like a
normal school year. If things don’t go smoothly, I know what to do, how to
stand alongside, how to love my children as needed. But if things go right, I
can do the deeper work of writing that I’ve been longing to get to, for more
than a year. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So we come to today, to a new beginning. Today. It’s 90
degrees again, and sunny, and I have a beach pass. Not sure if I will cry, as
ten years ago when I so hungered to hear my own thoughts again, but I might. Walking
the beach and writing, while my family <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is
doing something else without me</i>—for these tasks, I’m all in. </div>
Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-19197019168886890172014-09-05T13:10:00.001-04:002014-09-05T13:10:32.782-04:00blogging jumpstart: how I spent my summer vacation
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wake late to a quiet house—late, at 7:40 a.m., in a panic
that maybe everyone has slept through their alarm clocks and maybe I will need
to marshal kids to school, to drive in my bathrobe before I’ve even had coffee…
and within moments, I push aside the sheets to find I’ve been spinning my
worst-case scenario, like the good midwesterner I am. I’ve
simply slept hard, harder than I’ve slept in days, after the SAT-prep center
opened to some small measure of success, after the first week of the college
courses I’m teaching. None of my workplaces seem shiny or perfect—I feel a
little bit behind on copies, files, names, record-keeping on all of my classes,
and I forgot a meeting with my teaching assistant last week. I can’t say how
many days I’ve forgotten to eat breakfast, forgotten to eat lunch, forgotten to
plan a dinner to fit in the 90-degree afternoons, between school pick-up and
soccer drop-off. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wake late, to a quiet house, because everyone in my family
is all right, is exactly where each person needs to be. And I am here, with the
cool edges of morning still lingering on the shady side of the house. Here.
Thank God, thank God. While the sun will swelter today, we’ve begun the autumn
schedule so well that I slept through the morning rush in the downstairs
hallway. September, perhaps the most beautiful of all the months of the year,
at last; like a finish line, we’ve reached September.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How I Spent My Summer Vacation, I type, the stupid irony of
the non-vacation. How I Spent My Children’s Summer Vacation, in which I did not
vacate. In which I apparently did not breathe, in retrospect. I would say I'm breathing now, but I'm just getting started. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I spent my summer, gave my summer, invested my summer…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More tomorrow. I haven’t blogged for years, but I’ve been
thinking about blogging all summer. I need to remember not to say everything
all at once, dear ones. Remember, I used to write letters, and I need to return
to that kind of beautiful discipline again. Let me tell you a story, but maybe
not all at once today. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For today, I am still finding my footing, foggy-headed,
adjusting. Time for coffee. See you tomorrow. </div>
Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-51909227100431152032012-08-12T12:52:00.001-04:002012-08-12T12:52:39.363-04:00Hi dear Blog.<br />
<br />
I am traveling much of this month, and I will get back to you once I've settled into the regular fall schedule. While I've been away from blogging, WOW have I gotten a lot of revision work done on some of my longer stories.<br />
<br />
I'll be back! <br />
<br />
DeniseDenisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-73562971722430441322012-07-10T13:45:00.000-04:002012-07-10T13:45:36.953-04:00what gets left behind<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
“Take them. Take them. Otherwise the little plants will
die.” Mimi presses a flat of 16 tomato seedlings into my arms and I say sure.
Sure. I thrust the flat onto the deep dashboard of the minivan, watching a
handful of black ants stream from the undersides and into the creases. The rest
of my car is full: a bookshelf. Two boxes of paper and office supplies, fancy
scissors and markers and crayons. In the passenger seat, three rosemary bushes,
sage, one fragrant thyme, a start of spearmint. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I grew the tomato plants from seed. They are small.” Yes,
only as tall as my thumb, and it’s nearly July, and no tomatoes will ever grace
these poor foundlings. Days ago, Jim wrapped pallets of their belongings for
the container ship, and I get the feeling they’ve not slept since then.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I say no to a luxury air mattress with only one leak which
could easily be repaired (I have one of those already, in exactly the same
condition.) I say no to a document scanner that is no better than the one I own
already. I apologize that I can’t take another load to Goodwill, can’t find a
home for a perfectly-good working sewing machine, can’t take on multiple steps
to get good stuff into the hands of people who might need good stuff. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They will leave for the airport in ninety minutes, and they
need showers. They refuse cold beer—they are that serious. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I came for is the outdoor fireplace, now filled with
ash—they’ve been burning papers they won’t need, she says, night by night,
while deciding what things they will need for the rest of their lives in Costa
Rica. Shedding America, layer by layer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She panics when I look at the huge metal bowl of ash. “But
we have no place to put the ash!” I ask if I can’t simply dump the ash in the woods
next door, and she says no, something about the landlady. I can tell that her
English is tired by the way she searches for words, places her hands on both
sides of her head. Jim comes out of the door and panics, oh my gosh we didn’t
even empty the ash! I bring my own hands down, an epiclesis, bringing down the
Holy Spirit to soothe, to calm. I tell them I can find a bag, I can clean it, I
don’t mind at all. I brought gloves, I say. “We use a, a thing to scoop out the
ash…” I find the large metal spoon next to the fireplace and determine the
direction of the wind, so I can get to work. I line a box with a grocery bag,
and shovel ash with the spoon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After I nestle the scrolled metal base, the bowl of the
fireplace, and the screen cover into the backseat, Mimi asks if I can help her
empty the frig. Thank goodness I brought empty boxes. After asking, “do you
want these? Can your family use these?” I say, give me everything. Mimi shrugs
and says, “well, we all need containers, right? If you don’t need the food, you
can just use the containers, then I don’t have to think anymore.” I nod: that’s
the best way. Let me take it all, take all the worry, all the decisions I can
bear away in a few boxes. My effort is not much, not as much as they need. They
tell me someone is coming to pick up the last loads, later. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We talk a little—not much, not sentimental. A month ago, my
daughter insisted before her eighth grade graduation: NO TEARS. And it took
effort, but I did what she wanted. Good training for today. My friends—soon to
be my Costa Rican friends—are too tired for weeping, and I must let them go
with a simple hug, sweaty, not too close, after I cram the box of food into the
last inches of space in my van. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You will remember us in fire,” she nods at the fireplace in
the backseat of my van. “I like that. You will remember us in salads and soups.
I am glad your children will remember us everywhere.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am tired and spent,
myself, but I think to lean out the driver’s side window, for one last word. “You have been a blessing, from the first time I met you
until now.” A last wish for safe travels, and I am on my way, holding a flat of
tomato seedlings against the dashboard with one hand and driving toward
remembrance with the other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-60357345568820260942012-07-05T11:03:00.002-04:002012-07-05T11:03:55.556-04:00Summer reading<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The paperbacks curl in this humidity. I tell myself the
covers will flatten—they will—but the buckling pages make me panic a little.
All these beautiful words, sentences, paragraphs, transportation into the minds
of other people. What a strange way to make a life, reading, writing,
encouraging others to do the same. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t teach people
to make stuff, instead. Sometimes I DO teach people to make stuff, and often as
we make stuff, we talk about books. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Frederick Buechner says, “some of my best friends are books.”
I could ask why it’s so, for me, for him, or I could just nod. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What are you reading? What's next on your list? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My June reading list:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, by Erin McGraw</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Still, by Lauren Winner</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Edge of Dark Water, Southern murder mystery, tense and terrifying writing. Will find the author name. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bayham Street: Essays on Longing, by Robert Clark </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Plus books for my classes: Cry the Beloved Country, Mere Christianity (it's been awhile), and a giant text about writing in higher education, titled Engaging Ideas. The latter title is surprisingly accessible, and even a little exciting. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm eager to get to the new Debra Dean book, plus my yard-sale book finds: What is the What by Dave Eggers, and The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. It might be the summer for The Sparrow. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm also working to reacquaint myself with the Audubon Field Guide to
New England, so I can better name the flowers, birds, and river creatures. (Moon snails, ew. Egrets, lovely. Spotted jewelweed, an old favorite.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What new book friends have you recently met? </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-80176050623361295842012-06-21T13:25:00.002-04:002012-06-21T13:25:40.544-04:00letter from a late-June heat wave<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I want to rush at this letter with arms thrown open: we are
well. Our house is so suited to summer. All of our school schedules have ended,
for this one week, and we are home, sleeping late, eating meals on a whimsical
non-schedule, walking the hallways barefoot and mumbling. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Swimsuits are still draped on the porch railing, though the
90-degree weather surely baked them dry hours ago. We are fine in our
un-air-conditioned house, as long as the wind blows. Like now, the trees
rustling, the wind moaning over the metal fence posts and rain-spouts, the
pipe-organ of the neighborhood playing strange chords high and low. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yesterday the thermometer stretched to nearly a hundred
degrees, and then the wind stopped, mid-afternoon. We packed our kids plus
three more, and drove to the beach, fingers crossed for a parking space, for
mercy. When we returned home for a late dinner, still no wind, and when we
decided to sleep, still no breeze. My son came by to chant, I cannot sleep. My
daughter, too, said the birds would not stop singing, and I swear the birds
sang all night. (Is it the warmth that signals their singing? Not the light?
They sang all night, or I dreamed them singing all night.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We parents are trained to survive lack of sleep, but
children do not recover this way. They are spending the day in bed, with books
and music (one of them), or continuing to nap off the swelter. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While I was standing in the icy blue ocean, yesterday, as
ever I found myself singing a melody line of thanks, smelling the salt-cucumber
scent of summer with Innocence Mission in my head. And again at night on the
downstairs couch, under the blessed ceiling fan, a melody of gratitude for all
that is, and for rest (or even a half-rest) of birdsong and sweltering heat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometime in the wee small hours of morning, the breeze
kicked up again—Scott rose from the second couch, across the room, and left for
the bedroom upstairs. I woke late to this quiet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One child rustles through, now. Scott leaves for errands in
the air-conditioned car. A second child wanders by to ask about a box of
muffins our houseguests left. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
SO MUCH to unpack from these last few weeks, huge events,
gatherings of friends and acquaintances, visits with writers and artists.
Concerts. Speeches. Ceremonies. And maybe best of all, quiet times sitting with
friends, with nothing terribly important to say. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Much more to write, but for now, cool drinks call. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-32754574495680497042012-06-07T09:02:00.001-04:002012-06-07T09:02:40.196-04:00june morning, graduation nears<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I let the oregano go, this spring, and now it’s taller than
my knees. The thyme is overgrown with stray grass, flowering, going to seed. I
trimmed the rose bush down to almost nothing last fall, tired of the thorns and
barrenness, and here its long arch has fallen across the front yard, covered
with burgundy blossoms. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I walk my son to the bus stop in the morning, I praise
the family on the corner for leaving so many weeds growing around the mailbox,
the fringes around the trees, the tall grass. I am happy that the elderly
neighbor’s children don’t fuss too much, anymore, and a spray of wild beach
roses arches like a waterfall from between the tall spruces, alongside another
spray of grapevine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I envy the manicured lawns, the well-tended perennial beds.
The Joyful Noise landscaping truck arrives on Wednesday and makes its way down
the street, around the corner, marking property lines like a Bingo card, mowing
diamonds and squares into the nearly-million dollar properties. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We grow white clover around the pitcher’s mound, and the
muddy home plate won’t grow anything. We keep planning to buy a hammock, but we
don’t know how to hang it. We’d need tiki torches for the bugs, and where would
we put them? I bought lettuces for the window box, but I forgot to buy potting
soil. I will. When I get a minute. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The children grow like weeds. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He dresses himself for the choral concert, now, without my
help. He dons a tie in lovely spring greens and sky blues, and when he sings
the high notes, he closes his eyes like a choir boy. Then he grabs his cleats
and runs. The next day he crafts a cow-shaped sculpture from brown wool, then
throws it across the table—it’s supposed to be a bison, he says. It’s perfect,
I say. It just needs more shoulder, here and here, just like your drawing. I
pull out some shiny curls of mohair, hand-dyed by someone, somewhere, and we
add the shoulders, the beard, the tail, the horns. He smiles and starts
crafting a box for the diorama, figuring out the balance of sky and grass. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She needs help with the hair dryer, she says, and I oblige.
She could learn to do this herself, but there is plenty of time for
independence, later. Even though we can’t talk while the dryer is blasting, we
are eye to eye, faces close and thankful. She needs help with the new earrings,
real pearls, real garnets, a consignment shop find. She promises to pack a pair
of socks and flats to school, but she walks out wearing heels, swearing she is
comfortable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve not pulled back, yet, to survey the endings of our life
with the little school, the weed-children who have outgrown the desks, the
swings, the small stage. They strut and preen, while the first-graders look up
with dreamy eyes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We parents watch, listen, marvel. Who ARE these children? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maureen, yesterday, asked plaintively, “When will I see you,
next year, when our kids don’t go to school together?” Beautiful Maureen. I was
just picking up my vegetables and milk from the farm co-op, thinking only about
the next minute and not about next week or next month, let alone next year. We
will plan something, I say, aware that I plan very little, and then I remember,
“you live near our favorite beach—it’s not that far.” Like weeds, I hope these
moments can grow untended, unplanned. Her son once coached my daughter in
sword-fighting, for a play, pledging he’d “put the man-stink on her,” her wee
ponytailed self. She stunk well in that play, shouting about horse-piss in her
best Shakespearean English. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Forgive me the imprecision of this post, friends. A shower
just washed through and sent me rushing to close windows—just a veil of rain,
the river still shimmering blue in the distance. Must eat the toast I left
standing in the toaster. Must shower. I find the stack of Innocence Mission
CDs, and turn it up on high, as Karen Peris sings “Where Does the Time Go.”
Must buy pocket packs of tissues. I can do this, can live with slender green
stalks, stretching, thriving. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-86989269168724434292012-05-17T13:06:00.002-04:002012-05-17T13:06:39.699-04:00starship oak table<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I haven’t yet adapted to story revision in my new place—it’s
been a year, with my tiny wooden school desk in the corner near the spiral
staircase, and I am still figuring out how I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> this, here. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the three-room condo, I understood exactly what to do. First,
everyone would need to clear out of the house for hours, so a schoolday offered
a perfect opening. Next, I’d need to shake off the trauma and mess of their
leaving process by clearing the dishes, stashing the unfolded laundry, making
the beds. Then I’d wash the oval dining table and shove it into the living
room, lengthwise against the bay window, where the table formed the wings of my
biplane, or the console of the Starship Enterprise. I propped the laptop up,
grabbed my three-legged stool and spread pages of essays across the expanse of
oak. A candle, maybe, would restore some sanity, if there was time. I might add
the geranium from the window above the sink. But the extras didn’t really
matter: once the table was in place, the pen was running. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I worked, circling and underlining with my 8-color pencil. I
could wander to the bathroom, throw on a little makeup while still mulling a
sentence or a storyline. I could sweep the kitchen, unload the dishwasher, pace
for a moment and then return to my console at the center of the world. If I was
smart, I set the alarm for 1:30, giving me time to get dressed, grab cashews
and a water bottle, shove the table back into its normal location, and leave to
pick up children, still working, still half-gone to the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh, the days I flew! The hours, soaring! Whatever the
results, the work felt symphonic and magnificent, right up to the
mommy-mommy-mommy’s in the school playground. If I could only get them to go to
the park, I could extend the hum of editing and revision for another hour, and
get some sun and fresh air, too. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My house, now—my desk suffers an embarrassing problem: it’s
too damn beautiful, here. The clam-diggers are busy at every low tide, mocking
me with their productivity. The wind turbine, too, creates energy all day.
Really Loud Birdsong, something I never considered as a problem. I need to be
careful about sleepwalking while my head is still in a story—the spiral
staircase is lethal. I can’t shove the dining table to my window, and the
kitchen does not lend itself to a meditative mindset. Coffee shops are too loud
and the music is unpredictable: I really do need to be home, to work, and I
really need solitude. I know of many basement-writers, but I can’t do
windowless spaces. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the revision space has not worked out, yet, this
gorgeous upper room is so rich in beauty, and in that way it’s good for my
soul, through and through. I wake with the sun, slowly and happily, and the
birdsong is a dream. Parenting teenagers, too—mostly, they leave me alone in
the afternoons while they do their homework. It’s possible to work a little,
even with them home!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m trying, now, to revise in my reading chair. I shove it
toward the biggest set of windows, and I bring my lap desk with me. Often I
arrange stacks of working papers on the end of the bed, behind me but within
reach. It’s not perfect. I’ll keep trying. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One story sent to The Sun. (Done!) One blogpost-in-progress,
two sent. (Two-thirds done!) One essay dropped off with two friends, awaiting
comments, and then I will send it off, too. One essay deep in revision. Two
summer classes secured (more-or-less: I am hired, now waiting for enrollment). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I need to keep combing through the files on my computer,
remembering the stories I’ve abandoned someplace in mid-revision. I need to
cull some posts from this blog and connect it to my website, and connect the
website to Facebook and Twitter. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, I’ll watch that shower of maple helicopter-seeds,
and the hummingbirds in that flowering bush. I’ll get back to revision,
tomorrow. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-80115752103265318492012-05-12T20:48:00.002-04:002012-05-12T20:48:29.482-04:00wild asparagus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHO5eTL-KE9GwMBwkg9wwgjR4eaGI0uE7WCV3cytKmefkq0tk8rB5IISmWd1jf67UerXrrls3TCcvxEzqgKFSJLYha14A0MkO19uS-DSPKGGBZiu6cF9fI6gT8qR-OfjpzNZo/s1600/Photo+on+2012-05-12+at+20.40.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHO5eTL-KE9GwMBwkg9wwgjR4eaGI0uE7WCV3cytKmefkq0tk8rB5IISmWd1jf67UerXrrls3TCcvxEzqgKFSJLYha14A0MkO19uS-DSPKGGBZiu6cF9fI6gT8qR-OfjpzNZo/s320/Photo+on+2012-05-12+at+20.40.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Found these on my evening walk-- I've been looking for weeks! I think I need to learn more about how to look for asparagus. Quite a few stalks had already gone to seed. But the rest are very tasty. <br />
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<br />Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-77548084151773008242012-05-08T12:03:00.000-04:002012-05-08T12:03:48.647-04:00Tuesday, spring green morning<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Gentle rain, here. I will brave the damp to go pick some
lily-of-the-valley, in a moment. I can see the tiny white bells from the second
floor window. Glad, also, for the violets which seem to be spreading
everywhere. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I woke at 2:30 a.m., thinking I was still revising a story
I’d put down hours before. I woke again at 6:30 in the morning, half an hour
later than I intended, planning to put that motivation into the hard copies and
the colored pencils I use when I revise stories. First I needed to cook oatmeal,
make coffee, walk a boy to the bus. Then I learned that Maurice Sendak died,
and I needed to listen to the stories on the radio. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I did write a cover letter and print a hard copy of 1) story to send to The Sun magazine. Even though I am not good with the U.S. Post
Office. Stamping the SASE, now, and sending, today. Maybe alongside a stack of
packages I’ve sworn to mail soon? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2) A story published online this week, with 3) a second
connected post going online soon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am deep in the “wild revisions” of 4) a shorter story
and 5) one really long essay, trying to keep my paper copies straight as I
literally cut and rearrange pieces. Circles, slashes—so far it’s all in good
fun, and I don’t realize how out of control the process feels, until it’s 2:30
in the morning and I am bolt upright in bed. Remind me to finish these submissions before I start to revise
everything I’ve ever written… </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What else can I tell you? I turned 50 on a quiet day, and my
family took me out for a night of Celtic singing and fabulous food. The kids
agreed to take off their hats and to stop insulting one another, mostly. My
friend Emily is helping me to tweak the website. I just interviewed to teach
high school kids for the summer. My house is a wreck. My garden is… not really
a garden yet. But the writing is going well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, most days I just want to scrawl the words “I am so
boring,” on my blog, on Facebook. Thanks for enduring, with my boring self! I
am working my way through the clothesline of submission goals, and maybe finding
work, too. Boring. But moving along. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-68149239397589981402012-04-28T11:53:00.000-04:002012-04-28T11:53:59.307-04:00saturday morning, as the wind finally settles<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I used to write letters, I would stop at six full pages
of script, fearing I might overwhelm the person to whom I was writing, and of
course I was right to fear. I go long, often, when I describe. When friends
wrote me back, I would carry letters around in my pocket, reading and
rereading, feeling the companionship of that particular friend, that hand,
writing on that page, to me. I miss those days. No post online is the equal. But I try anyway. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In effort not to exhaust you, let me sketch a catch-up list:
</div>
<ul>
<li>Google my full name and you should find my new website. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Moved to a rental house on The Great Marsh in Ipswich, last
year. Unless something marvelous comes along, we will live here for the next
five years. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Surprisingly at home at Christ Church. I am done teaching
church school—done for a long time, though I do think The Catechesis of the
Good Shepherd might have saved my life in my time at our beloved St. Mary’s. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Kids: I love parenting teenagers. They still love us so
openly, which is a gift. However, I’m posting less public writing about them,
as their need for privacy grows. </li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li>Scott is well and busy, enjoying sixteen years of teaching
junior high students. Happily distracted by baseball season. He is also writing
for the alumni magazine of his school, and he’s good! </li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li> Money is an ongoing question, while parenting, teaching
part-time, and writing. While this question gnaws at me, this seems like this
is the moment in which we live. So many people are wrestling with mortgages,
income, student debt. I hope I can write into this, in a way that other people
can embrace. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>I love teaching my two sections of incoming students each fall semester. I felt I was at my best, as an educator, last fall. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Temped full-time in the editing department at a gorgeous
corporate publishing headquarters in January, February and March—great company,
but the work itself was so dispiriting. (For the last three weeks, I inched
away at a 500,000 item spreadsheet of date formats that needed corrected. Hell.
Just hell.) We were glad for the money.
</li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am writing, revising, working on stuff for publication,
thinking about the future and thinking about loving this place where we live. I
need to put in a garden, soon. I need to unpack from last week’s trip. I need
to be a more disciplined lover of God, but God is very patient, very present
with me. In six weeks, kids will be out of school for the summer. I am applying
for a summer school teaching job, and they are applying to be volunteers at a
day camp for four weeks. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the point in the letter when I would become bored
with the natter of talking about myself. Will it surprise you if I say I’m
taking a notebook outside to write by hand, now? Saturday morning, and the wind
has kept me awake for two nights, whistling through windows, shaking the walls.
Kids are sleeping late, because they need to. Coffee and sunlight and a
notebook, my friends. And maybe a novel, too? So much good in the world. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-43405005574034114262012-04-26T13:30:00.002-04:002012-04-26T13:30:26.482-04:00Clothesline window<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFLarypNDUBje0nMKMfeEO4NNueeK-cv81w_NzSaaB1BpwD89hnolEYqAFrdX-EsMKRlVBfrPrQ-qaLvj5EpEbZjSndI3ibfqPkfm_T71Z-2pO11NRNLsEAtzujKU9IgoJXVp9/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFLarypNDUBje0nMKMfeEO4NNueeK-cv81w_NzSaaB1BpwD89hnolEYqAFrdX-EsMKRlVBfrPrQ-qaLvj5EpEbZjSndI3ibfqPkfm_T71Z-2pO11NRNLsEAtzujKU9IgoJXVp9/s320/photo.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br /><br />Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-57026581320066245872012-04-25T12:08:00.001-04:002012-04-25T12:08:13.216-04:00the clothesline over my desk<style>
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<br />
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
8:20 a.m. </h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For my 50<sup>th</sup> birthday, I asked for the
Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. Now I am home and back at my writing
desk, distracted by the thank you notes I hope to write, blissfully interrupted
by memories of good conversations with people who love books, people who write
books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I return freshly determined to submit my stories for
publication in literary journals. One of the challenges to story submission:
it’s important to know the publication, to see a sense of “fit” between the
story and the journal. And the differences between journals are subtle. I invested a few hours at the festival visiting booths sponsored by literary journals, leafing through pages, trying to get a sense of each publication. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could
aim my work to smaller publications with more likelihood of success. Or I could
aim for exquisite journals, where my story will be added to the slush-pile of
unsolicited work, where the submission guidelines say I should not expect to
hear from the magazine for six months or longer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I need a visual record of what I’m doing, where I’m sending
stories. I could easily spend a day crafting a lovely bulletin board, the dream
board in my imagination. But the need to get started is far more urgent. I rush
through the morning house, ignoring the mess and disorganization. (Why are the
pliers in the pencil jar by the phone? Is there an unpaid bill hidden in this
stash of old mail? Don’t look in the frig, don’t look in the frig, don’t.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
return to my writing desk with a length of yarn and two pushpins I wrenched
from the wall. I make a clothesline across my window. I write the name of a
story on a 3 x 5 card, along with the name of a journal, and secure it with a
clothespin—the clothespin still bearing the crayon marks from some long ago
rainy day project. Two cards pinned. Now I must riffle through more story files
for two more stories that are ready for final edits. My goal is to submit four stories
by Friday morning, though some submissions require hard copies, envelopes, post
office visits, and I am not good with the US Mail. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
11 a.m. </h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now eating my forgotten breakfast of rice with
golden raisins and cinnamon, now wishing for another cup of coffee. I have a clothesline. Cards are pinned to it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Story 1 I will send the hard copy without looking at it,
because I remember it as perfect. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Story 2, Smoke Rings, begins with two boring sentences.
Printing a hard copy so I can do some final edits. Still wondering which
publication. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leafing through files for stories 3 and 4, and I found a
gem! Already published on Catapult magazine’s site, <a href="https://www.catapultmagazine.com/measuring-cups/article/an-un-quiet-existence">An Un-Quiet Existence</a>. If you go look at it, look at the current edition of Catapult, as well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now
I’m off to look for more unpublished stories in my files. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
</h4>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-11533674492677944572012-01-12T19:27:00.000-05:002012-01-12T19:27:02.693-05:00happy 2012!I shall return!<br />
<br />
I enjoyed teaching this fall, then enjoyed Christmas break with kids. Much to talk about.<br />
<br />
Soon.<br />
<br />
DeniseDenisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-36628175738434675772011-08-15T11:24:00.000-04:002011-08-15T11:24:58.423-04:00one last note from Eureka Springs <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">I ran out of coffee beans two days ago when I invited Chere for a lunch of mushroom/cheddar omelettes, in <a href="http://www.nsartthrob.com/2010/06/04/writers-colony-offers-solitude-and-spice-amid-local-charm/">the culinary suite at DairyHollow</a>. Her suite has a practical electric stove, whereas my KitchenAid Dream Kitchen has a six-burner gas stove, pans, and everything a cook could wish for. So we cooked and brewed coffee, and sat in the wicker chairs talking—like it was my fabulous living room. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So today, I found some old ground coffee in the canister above the KitchenAid coffee maker, and it will do. Made a big bowl of oatmeal as my final “hurrah” breakfast (hours ago) and now I’m cleaning up the fresh cherries and blueberries. In a few minutes, I will walk to the Grotto Spring down the road, and the lovely silence of morning will be broken. When I return, I must clean and pack and look at the instructions for checkout and leaving. I will need to go downstairs to the office and talk with people. I’m surprised how much I long to keep this silence for just a few hours more, even after eight very quiet days. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What this writing residency has given me is just that: quiet, for reading and writing and hearing myself think, and a quieting of the soul. I’ve written dozens of pages, and I’ve revisited some work from the past few years. I’ve enjoyed research about cooking writers MFK Fisher and Robert Farrar Capon—I hoped to come away with a draft of a book about these two, but I’ve only ever written much about me and my life, so I’m still learning how to approach a long project about other people’s lives and work. I’m certain this is a problem I WILL solve, over time, and meanwhile I’ve been nurturing my love of the two books I’m comparing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(I picked up a biography of Fisher at the library, and it told me some of the details I wanted to know about her life, but these details were stuffed deep into a veritable encyclopedia of facts and family maps and awkward reading. Okay, I invested a day and a half in that fat book, to find out three or four important things, but I’m saying it was worthwhile research.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some part of me wishes I could hold up a finished manuscript to show for this stretch of days, but the finishing will come later. This has been a time of renewal, a reminder of my calling to write. It’s been a rest, a Sabbath from my other kinds of work. A Sabbath from people needing me. Whatever I’ve accomplished or not-accomplished, I will return home restored by this quiet, clean temporary home, and restored by this vibrant little city in the hills. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I could tell you more about how much I love this town, but I’d better walk before the day heats up, and I’d better pack, so I can relax, read and write a bit more this afternoon. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Thanks for sticking with me, my friends. I will be far from the Ozark hills when next I write. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-44933535097042230042011-08-14T14:39:00.000-04:002011-08-14T14:39:38.481-04:00the long ride from Sleepytown <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">My father could lift me like a feather, with his whisper, “go back to Sleepytown” lulling me. I mumbled about my teddy. “Your mother has it in the car.” In the car, then. Vacation, worth a smile before dozing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My bunk was the back window of the sedan in a nest of blankets, my back against the glass, my teddy shading my eyes from the streetlamp. Next he would lay my older brother Burl stretched along the bench seat, already dosed with Dramamine and gone to the world. My younger brother David fit in another nest of blankets in one well beneath the backseat, with his knees propped up over the hump. When my parents settled into the front, David would feel the rumble of the engine through him, and he wouldn’t hear another thing. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And I could choose, as we left our driveway in the true Sleepytown of Farmland, Indiana. I could choose a delicious sleep, with the sounds of late night radio drifting in and out, or I could choose to concentrate hard on my parents’ quiet conversation—I was an excellent spy. Or I could watch the night stars once we were away from the lights of town. Every option seemed almost too good to be true, in the romance of vacation driving. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The romance would break when the sun began to heat the car, our limbs unable to stretch. By then we would be miles away from our humdrum lives, navigating by the spiral bound atlas, looking for a breakfast diner. The first day’s goal: a motel in Effingham, Illinois. We would arrive too early to check in, but my father could park in a shady spot and sleep while my mother took us to the swimming pool. By the time my father hauled our suitcases in, we’d be sunburned and water-logged and ready for a nap in air-conditioning. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">On some years, day 2 included a tour of the St. Louis Arch, which I loved. On some other years I watched the Arch from the distant interstate, and I pined to return to its heights. Either way, we were bound for the Missouri/Arkansas border, to visit my Grandpa Ruby and Grandma Mae, in a place even hotter than Indiana in summer, and we needed to arrive by the end of day 2, so we could avoid more hotel cost. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-82176419240372296572011-08-10T04:38:00.000-04:002011-08-10T04:38:42.526-04:00for Chris Fredericks, wherever you are <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"> <i>a sketch for the Farmland Elementary crowd. </i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not only did he never give a straight answer, but Mr. Fredericks, my third-grade art teacher, could stun people to silence, send a shiver up listeners’ spines.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Mr. Fredericks, are you married?” I only heard this question <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">once.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Her name is Captain Midnight. She is six feet tall and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">black as coal,” </i>he ended with a whisper, eyes wide as when telling ghost stories. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The questioner was my bold friend Shelley, polar opposite of my shyness, but I witnessed the whole interchange. No one said, “So what do you mean by that? Are you really married? Is she African-American, is that what you mean? What is her real name?” No one said a word. Mr. Fredericks was perhaps five-foot-eight, but larger than life—or at least larger than life in my little town. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Up to that point I had not found anyone of the male half of the species to be even remotely interesting, with the possible exception of my dad, but that hardly counts, as dad was strong enough, handsome enough, and very smart, but very interior, so as a third-grader, it was hard to feel like I knew him. Dad’s a non-fiction kind of guy, an adult, and I thought all men were non-fiction kind of guys. Something about Mr. Fredericks spoke of a story, a mystery, an adventure. He would be a good pirate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will admit that it does not take much effort to “stand out” in Farmland, Indiana. No pirates there, under most circumstances. He embodied difference in a dozen visible ways— unkempt hair and a sense of style, beginnings of a beard—but on a deeper level, he was playful and funny, which added up to mystique, at least in the heart of a third-grader. My brothers admired him as much as I did, but I found Mr. Fredericks not charming, really, but rather fascinating like a well-written book. It was hard not to follow his every movement around the room when I was supposed to concentrate on my art projects. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Later, my brothers and I would try to fill in the back story of why such an unusual man chose to teach in a rural backwater—how did we get so lucky? One possible clue, better for a novelist than for a simple story-teller: Mr. Fredericks would kick the wooden benches in the art room with an imposing thunk when he felt he needed our respectful attention, and it sounded like the crack of a bat. He kept a psychedelic-painted wooden leg in the closet, a spare, with a funky dress shoe and sock. And he also had a temper, when provoked, and a bit of what we would call An Attitude Problem. On the other hand, if I was teaching creativity to the dusty children of farmers and factory workers in some poverty-stricken flatland town, I would develop an attitude problem on arrival. A missing leg, a temper, a country locale: I wonder if perhaps he was a veteran of the Vietnam conflict, an ex-soldier in the process of healing. The year was 1970.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When my mother, my brothers and I registered for classes and picked up our text books for the year, Mr. Fredericks was penciling lines on the huge art room walls, using an overhead projector with a stencil of a Mt. Rushmore for activists: Lincoln, the Kennedy brothers, and a face I found out later to be Martin Luther King. Note: he was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drawing on the walls</i>, as if people were allowed to draw on walls. Privileged sixth graders would assist in developing this Peter Max-style fantasy in vivid primary colors, beams of yellow light stretching over three walls. But I was in third grade, and I was in stunned awe. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Our art teacher could not actually draw, which is strange for an art teacher. He drew lollipop trees, a circle on a stick with no pretense of being tree-like. He was talented with graphics, block prints, large-scale projects. And he taught photography so creatively I still remember his crazy lessons, with characters opening doors and giving people black eyes to illustrate how film takes in light but actually turns black. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I do know Mr. Fredericks moonlighted as a freelance photographer, and that perhaps his real mission or real joy was to photograph children producing art. He offered my parents a candid Kodak slide of me, sprawling on a sidewalk on a warm spring day, tongue poking out of the side of my mouth in concentration, crayons strewn. The light was perfect that day, and we had started Art Class outside, Mr. Fredericks with a guitar singing, <i>Ain’t a Gonna Study War No More</i>. In the photo, strands of hair curled across my face, just as my mother would hate it, but just as it always did. There was a fierce look in my eyes, a force of will bending the page to some inner vision—I never noticed the sneaky photographer, never heard the click of the shutter. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One winter night as we viewed a slideshow in my family living room, the carousel stuck too long at that photo of me, and it bubbled and dissolved before our eyes. I was heartbroken, my last trace gone, along with the nicest photo of me ever taken. Somehow it seems fitting, though, a self-destructing trail, for the mysterious Mr. Fredericks. He would be in his mid-sixties now, and I wonder where he went next. Somehow I bet he never taught elementary art again, or at least not in a small town. I wonder where he ended up, if he is happy with Captain Midnight, if he still has a box of Kodak slides labeled 1970, Farmland Elementary, or if his copies, too self-destructed without a trace, leaving dust motes in the light of the projector beam, a little disappointment, and a little puzzle over what on earth really happened back there, anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-58428892371714839772011-08-09T13:06:00.000-04:002011-08-09T13:06:21.424-04:00letter from the exotic faraway <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Good morning! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Isn’t it miraculous how traveling peels back the surface of ordinary life? Every setting, every minute feels new like a freshly-cracked egg, and just as liquid. Anything could happen. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m writing from my studio, my three-room writing paradise at Dairy Hollow Writers Colony in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. While I’m still taking it all in, Eureka Springs feels to me like a mix of Rivendell (Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings) and Madrid, New Mexico—maybe with a bit of Farmland, Indiana thrown in there, too. Everyone greets one another. People talk to strangers. While the writers’ colony is located in town, the space between houses is wild and wooded. From my living room porch, I watched a fox cross the street this morning, and I saw a deer on the way to church. Neither of them looked too nervous about my presence. Public walking paths travel behind old haunted inns, past the towers of Victorian houses, right through the backyards full of cliffs and healing springs with mythical qualities. Everyplace is uphill, both ways. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My home for the next week is “the culinary suite,” a pale green and cream living room/office, arranged around a rustic fireplace of local stone. My suite also includes a KitchenAid dream kitchen, with a six-burner stainless steel stove and an array of cobalt blue appliances. Surrounding the dream kitchen is a patio.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I arrived Saturday to an outdoor temperature of 104, so I unpacked and napped in the air-conditioning. (Folks here tell me this heat is not normal for this place—Eureka Springs is typically the cool and shady part of the state, a vacation hub in summer.) After walking through the crowded downtown in the evening, I found a small pub with a menu of “little bites.” The lettuce-shrimp wrap reminded me of Vietnamese summer rolls in Chinatown, and the olive tapenade reminded me of a favorite restaurant on Eastern Point in Gloucester, a restaurant my husband and I frequented many years ago—now long gone. Is it travel that knits all of time together into one story? Gloucester friends, one of the pub’s specials of the day was a lobster tail dinner for $65. What on earth can one do to a lobster tail to make it worthy of that investment? My little bites added up to $10. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">St. James’ Episcopal serves Sunday brunch after church—eggs, fruit, and sticky buns from heaven. I met twenty new people who all love Dairy Hollow writing center, and they all wanted to know about what I am writing. I almost got to meet a retired author of Harlequin “super-romances,” but she was busy with the altar guild. (I am so NOT a romance-reader. This near-miss might be providential for her and for me. What is a super-romance? Anyone? Another of my writing companions enjoys a sub-genre called “cozy mysteries,” which include recipes. Who knew?) The church feels much like St. Mary’s Rockport, a place filled with artists and people who chose to live here instead of living anyplace else on earth. When I returned to my studio, I worked on research, journal writing and just catching up with myself. Went back to the pub for lettuce shrimp wraps and tapenade with my two colony compatriots—shared a bottle of wine and talked about our work. A nice introduction. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then I hunkered down yesterday—all the world was waiting for rain to break this miserable heat wave. Spent the morning writing, reading, researching. Spent the afternoon finding a ride to the grocery store (good coffee, rice crackers, juice, pinot grigio). After my first Dairy Hollow dinner, more work and a little knitting. It took me a few hours to realize how silent this place is, aside from the cicadas, and to remember how much I love silence and solitude as a respite from my regular day-to-day life. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The rain came in the evening, pummeling, pounding, an all-night deluge. I woke to 72 degrees, outside—my online weather forecast said the cool temps would only last an hour, so I found the shortcut path through the woods and walked downtown. Most stores are closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I’ll make a date for the yarn shop tomorrow. Meanwhile I returned drenched with sweat from walking uphill both ways again. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Later this week I’ll tell you more about the project I’m working on. For right now, the temperature is climbing again, and I’m watching the butterflies on the porch. I tossed this morning’s coffee over ice and I’m sitting with my feet up on the hassock, my stack of books, and my notes. This time is a gift, and I’m enjoying myself and enjoying my work greatly. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Denise</div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-76815682747945110962011-07-13T09:25:00.000-04:002011-07-13T09:25:54.753-04:00from the corner of Birdsong and Windy River<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Dear friends, </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Happy summer to you! </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My writing desk faces north over the Eagle Hill River, where I see the clam-diggers are parked on the point this morning. I’m situated on the second floor, with large maples shading me to the east, with vistas to the north and west. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The marshes flourish, grasses of chartreuse-green along the river, a bright contrast to the deep green of our lawn and the trees. Sometimes the birdsong threatens to overtake me—beginning at 3:30 a.m. rising in slow crescendo through six a.m. Then we adapt to the ongoing symphony, and even the cat sits to watch the mourning doves on the porch rail. At the end of the day, I know I should get to bed early since the birds will wake me repeatedly, but I love the night sounds, too, and I wait for the summer heat to relent a little. The house is uniquely unsuited to air conditioning—odd windows, few doors. But we are uniquely situated to catch any breeze. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Breeze, birdsong, spectacular views: am I painting a picture, here? I don’t know if I need a larger writing desk in my corner perch in the master bedroom, or if I need to go hide in the basement to get some work done—like Annie Dillard covering the window of her cinderblock writing cell. So far, I’ve indulged myself in the beautiful world with only a little self-discipline for my writing. This past year has been so very hard (the move, the loss of hope about buying a house, the long wait to hear about my adjunct teaching position). I am soaking up the beautiful world like a balm, reading books to feed my writing life, helping kids adapt to our new neighborhood and our new town. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I pulled together a ragged story for <a href="http://imagejournal.org/page/events/the-glen-workshop/">The Glen East Workshops</a> in early June, where I studied with <a href="http://www.scottrussellsanders.com/">Scott Russell Sanders</a> and a room full of talented writers for a week. In a writing workshop, each writer brings 20 pages, and we discuss each story around the table: what works? What prevents the story from working as well as it could? Watching SRS draw out insights and form mini-lectures from the content of these stories—that was well worth the investment of time and money to attend these workshops. My stack of notes will help me root out any traces of self-indulgence, and to clarify some confusing sections of my story. I highly recommend Sanders’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Private History of Awe</i>, and you can find some of his shorter works on the website of <a href="http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/80/">Orion magazine.</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While staying at The Glen Workshops, I roomed with Andi Schrader, a woman who is dear to me from a dozen different points in my life. We lived in a dorm, ate in a cafeteria with endlessly fascinating conversationalists. Throughout the week, I drank in the readings and lectures by SRS, by Brett Lott, by Gregory Orr and Sara Zarr. And by the end of the week, I was enjoying the artwork Andi created in her <a href="http://www.timbotts.com/">calligraphy class with TimBotts</a>, and the galleries of art created by the fiber arts and figure drawing classes. I haven’t even touched on my phenomenal classmates—this post would go on forever—but I’ll say that <a href="http://www.justinmcroberts.com/home">Justin McRoberts</a> was in the room, and <a href="http://www.amytimberlake.com/">AmyTimberlake</a>, and <a href="http://www.janvallone.com/2009/11/thanksgiving-2009-one-of-last-things-my.html">Jan Vallone </a>was nice enough to give me a copy of her memoir.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In the past, I’ve been lucky to attend four Glen West workshops in Santa Fe, in conjunction with my masters program, and it’s a delight to be a part of the very first Glen East. It does me good to take my writing vocation seriously, along with other writers who me seriously, too. I will continue to mull how “the Glen” --the community of people working hard in the arts, wrestling with questions of faith—makes my life sane and rich and solid. I’m not sure words can frame this yet. And I'm still asking myself how my picture of The Glen is shaped by people I didn't see this time: I missed the SPU MFA crowd, and the Overstreets, and the Huppert-Volcks and the Guslers. And Mary and Nancy and Ann and Allison. I send unending thanks to IMAGE for hosting the Glens, all of them. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">During the rest of my summer, I will teach conversational English for three weeks. Then I travel to Eureka Springs, Arkansas to accept The Duncan Eat/Write Fellowship for 2011—my award is two weeks of writing time in a private studio, and I’ll tell you more about that, soon. When I return, I’ll be preparing for my professor-life and I’ll be traveling a bit more with my family. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A full summer. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I need a second cup of coffee, friends— the breeze is sweet and cool, and I’m so glad to emerge from the heat wave. Scott went to work hours ago. Kids will continue to be draped across their beds for another hour or so, and I must dig into my journal with a pen. I’m hitting send, and not editing. You have a good summer, too. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Denise</div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-46200963169903538402011-05-09T13:52:00.000-04:002011-05-09T13:52:12.364-04:00snippets from journals past<i>Hello, dear readers! </i><br />
<br />
<i>We moved. I didn't forget you-- okay, I kinda forgot you in comparison with all of my other obligations. I've taken to writing by hand, as often as possible, which makes it more work to find my blog-post pieces. I am digging through journals, now, finding paragraphs for a long essay about moving. </i><br />
<i> </i><br />
<i>Found this. Thought you'd might like it. I'll keep looking for more. </i><br />
<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">Every day that passes brings a touch of nostalgia, not for this outgrown nest of a home, but for the ghosts of childhood past, for the images of childhoods fully lived, here. Already Brendan’s workbench sits abandoned, much of the time. When we bought it at a yard sale, how he loved it and how lucky we were, happy with our ten dollar investment, happy for a place to park his handsaw and his hand-crank drill. When we returned home, the workbench was wedged between the stove and the washing machine in the kitchen. I tacked a child’s apron to the front, to cover the storage area below and to provide pockets for cat treats. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">When we move, he may find he’s outgrown the bench entirely. We will prop it up on blocks, to raise it to the right height, but I will miss its presence in the kitchen, where we kept one another company, each at our own work, him with his hammer and paint, me with the flour and the rolling pin. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A childhood passes. And one half of motherhood passes—not nearly all, and perhaps not nearly the hardest part. </div> <i><br />
</i>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11290247.post-60974519679060713812011-03-29T13:13:00.000-04:002011-03-29T13:13:36.278-04:00luggage<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">When I claimed Shelley Wallace as my best friend in third grade, it was because she was new, and somehow she never learned that I was considered a social pariah. She liked me, and we laughed, and it was wonderful. I didn’t care so much that she was popular, and she didn’t care so much that I was not. No one told me that basketball coaches move—along with their wonderful daughters—every two years unless they can produce a winning team. So at the end of fifth grade, Shelley announced her family was moving. I suggested that she lash herself to the bedpost and refuse to leave our town, but she shrugged. She’d moved before. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I didn’t move. I lived in the same house until my 18<sup>th</sup> birthday and my graduation from high school, when my parents put the house on the market and bought me a set of luggage. By then, luggage was exactly what I wanted. I would laugh with my college friends when they said they’d “go back to square one,” which meant going home. I had no square one, and there was no going back to anything, anywhere. My mother shared a trailer in the country with her new husband, the trucker whose company I loathed. My father had moved on to his new step-children and their teenage dramas. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I could form a homey room from the sterile cinderblock walls of a dorm cell. I never traveled light—I carried everything with me. I became my own square one, forming my own path through college and summer breaks. And I was infinitely happy with my independence. Luggage: I was all about the luggage. </div>Denisehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04795891854497157302noreply@blogger.com0