Okay, 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.

More tomorrow.

my summer non-vacation, part II

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Note from Saturday...

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.

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.

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.

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: it was perfect. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 is doing something else without me—for these tasks, I’m all in.

blogging jumpstart: how I spent my summer vacation

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.

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.

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.

I spent my summer, gave my summer, invested my summer…

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.

For today, I am still finding my footing, foggy-headed, adjusting. Time for coffee. See you tomorrow.

Hi dear Blog.

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.

I'll be back!

Denise

what gets left behind

“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.

“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.

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.

They will leave for the airport in ninety minutes, and they need showers. They refuse cold beer—they are that serious.

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.

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.

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.

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.   

“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.” 

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.

Summer reading

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.

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. 

What are you reading? What's next on your list?

My June reading list:

The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, by Erin McGraw

Still, by Lauren Winner

Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

Edge of Dark Water, Southern murder mystery, tense and terrifying writing. Will find the author name. 

Bayham Street: Essays on Longing, by Robert Clark

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.

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.

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.)

What new book friends have you recently met?