Mid-December 2018: long time no blog! Hello out there!

The cat meows pointedly at me, after I place the can of food in his bowl.  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.

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.

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.

Out the front door at a stalking pace.

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.

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.

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^th, 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.

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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

[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.

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.

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. 

All Saint's Day

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.

a porcelain cherub in a rough world

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.  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.

“Fifty cents and-a-dollar-now, dollar-now, dollar-now, not-gonna-let-this-purty-box-go for a-dollar-now, dollar…”

“HUP!” shouts the assistant, pointing to a man at the back left of the crowd.

“Na Five-doller-five-dollar-five, who’ll gimme five?” He looks at me.

“TWO,” I shout, nearly leaping with effort, fists down by my sides, stepping closer.

“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.

“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?”

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.

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.

“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.

“The box? You got my box?”

“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.

“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.”

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.

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.

  

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? 

letter from a late-June heat wave

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Much more to write, but for now, cool drinks call.  

june morning, graduation nears

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.

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.

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.

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.

The children grow like weeds.

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.

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.

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.

We parents watch, listen, marvel. Who ARE these children?

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.

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.

starship oak table

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 do this, here.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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!

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.

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).

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.

Meanwhile, I’ll watch that shower of maple helicopter-seeds, and the hummingbirds in that flowering bush. I’ll get back to revision, tomorrow.

wild asparagus

 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.

Tuesday, spring green morning

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.

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.

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?

2) A story published online this week, with 3) a second connected post going online soon.

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…

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.

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.

saturday morning, as the wind finally settles

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.

In effort not to exhaust you, let me sketch a catch-up list:

• Google my full name and you should find my new website.

• 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.

• 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.  

• 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.

• 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!  

•  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. 

• I love teaching my two sections of incoming students each fall semester. I felt I was at my best, as an educator, last fall.

• 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.

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.

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.

Clothesline window

the clothesline over my desk

8:20 a.m. 

For my 50^th 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.   

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. 

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.

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.) 

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.

11 a.m. 

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.

Story 1 I will send the hard copy without looking at it, because I remember it as perfect.

Story 2, Smoke Rings, begins with two boring sentences. Printing a hard copy so I can do some final edits. Still wondering which publication.

Leafing through files for stories 3 and 4, and I found a gem! Already published on Catapult magazine’s site, An Un-Quiet Existence. If you go look at it, look at the current edition of Catapult, as well. 

Now I’m off to look for more unpublished stories in my files. 

 

happy 2012!

I shall return!

I enjoyed teaching this fall, then enjoyed Christmas break with kids. Much to talk about.

Soon.

Denise

one last note from Eureka Springs

I ran out of coffee beans two days ago when I invited Chere for a lunch of mushroom/cheddar omelettes, in the culinary suite at DairyHollow. 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.

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.

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.

(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.)  

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.

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.

Thanks for sticking with me, my friends. I will be far from the Ozark hills when next I write.

the long ride from Sleepytown

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.