We've returned to our regularly-scheduled June, seventy-six degrees, cool breeze, drinkable weather. A round of antibiotics returns me to my regular head, too, and my voice is returning though my throat is still raw. The yellow pollen is still visible on the street, though I've washed it from my car-- we need a good rain.
A mom's life in summer: there are little league games to attend, playdates to arrange, camp applications to complete, and a zillion piles of laundry to fold. But it's the first week of summer vacation, and the laziness is still delectable. Perhaps I'll get that last annotation finished today.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
annotation draft for Annie Dillard's The Writing Life
Here is a peek at the grad school process: for each of the thirty-two books I've read this year, I need an "annotation," which is an odd species of writing, "like a writing journal, but thoughtful," said one person. "Everything you'd need to know from a book" said another-- but the annotation is supposed to be less than two pages long. "Everything I'd need to know" is much, much longer! I feel like each annotation is closer to a draft than to a review, because I also turn in creative writing, which is the real focus of my studies, and three critical papers each year, with the annotations taking the lowest priority.
So here's my annotation for The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
…the manuscript revealed the usual signs of struggle—bloodstains, teethmarks, gashes and burns. p 29
Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world…. Writers…surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper. p 44
Seven chapters, one hundred and eleven scant pages, not much of it encouraging, most of it fearsome—this book is one of the wittiest I’ve read, and the most dead-on discussion of writing. Had I read this book sooner, it would’ve scared the bejeezus out of me. Later and I might hang onto romantic notions about writing longer than I can afford. At the end of my first year in the MFA program, this must be the right time.
Chapter One introduces “a line” for the writer to pursue, and a handful of metaphors for building and testing that written line. The chapter is nearly unbearable, damning the foolishness of writing:
…your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one cares whether you do it well, or ever….Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality. p 11
Chapter Two exposes a writer’s daily grind of isolation and sensory deprivation, stripping the writing “nook” to its cinderblock necessity. Chapter Three describes how to chop wood—and write-- ineffectively. Chapter Four tells the self-combustion of a typewriter. Chapter Five invokes mastery as a slow process in painting as well as literature. Chapter Six answers “how’s it going?” with the self-same slowness described in Chapter Five.
Today, this book is like a beating—I am tired and perhaps I’ve only truly just begun at the work of writing. I’m okay with being a beginner of sorts—I am. (This is what education does: prove that The Task I’m learning is more complicated and subtle than I could’ve known.) Over two days I’ve started reading the book, stopped, taken a break, considered quitting the book altogether for fear that I’ll be too depressed to go on—and then the sentences I’ve noted are so apt and funny that I need to read the next section and the next. Writing IS absurd. But Dillard gives herself over to it, and her irritation with her calling is fun to read. It won’t get any worse than she describes, and she’s really good at this art. She never once says she loves writing and in fact she admits that she hates it and she can’t explain why she does it. There is some weird joy to the head-banging process of writing, some weird joy to her obvious devotion.
The pull of The Writing Life is beautiful sentences, odd but not overwrought (as I felt The Maytrees was overwrought). I could underline the entire book or read it out loud, the language is so playful.
Chapter Seven never mentions writing: it is about flying “a line” for the sake of beauty. And now the whole book is about flying, carving, looping, redefining what a line is. The whole book is about cracks and fissures and volatility in mountains, flaws that might destroy, fires in typewriters, dizziness, speed, hardnosed devotion and mystery. The whole book must be read again to “prove” the final chapter. I am the one thrilling like a spectator at a flight show, watching someone do this writing thing spectacularly well. Dillard is clear that writing this way is a dangerous undertaking. She lays down the gauntlet: are you a woman or a mouse?p 4. You can waste a year worrying about it or you can get it over with now. The brute edge of the truth is helpful. I am definitely not a mouse, and I’d best get over it now. I started reading, glum and getting more so by the minute. But there is something odd and perfect about this book. I end exhilarated, hungry for more reading and hungry for the next writing pursuit.
So here's my annotation for The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
…the manuscript revealed the usual signs of struggle—bloodstains, teethmarks, gashes and burns. p 29
Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world…. Writers…surround themselves with other writers, deliberately to enforce in themselves the ludicrous notion that a reasonable option for occupying yourself on the planet until your life span plays itself out is sitting in a small room for the duration, in the company of pieces of paper. p 44
Seven chapters, one hundred and eleven scant pages, not much of it encouraging, most of it fearsome—this book is one of the wittiest I’ve read, and the most dead-on discussion of writing. Had I read this book sooner, it would’ve scared the bejeezus out of me. Later and I might hang onto romantic notions about writing longer than I can afford. At the end of my first year in the MFA program, this must be the right time.
Chapter One introduces “a line” for the writer to pursue, and a handful of metaphors for building and testing that written line. The chapter is nearly unbearable, damning the foolishness of writing:
…your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one cares whether you do it well, or ever….Your freedom is a by-product of your days’ triviality. p 11
Chapter Two exposes a writer’s daily grind of isolation and sensory deprivation, stripping the writing “nook” to its cinderblock necessity. Chapter Three describes how to chop wood—and write-- ineffectively. Chapter Four tells the self-combustion of a typewriter. Chapter Five invokes mastery as a slow process in painting as well as literature. Chapter Six answers “how’s it going?” with the self-same slowness described in Chapter Five.
Today, this book is like a beating—I am tired and perhaps I’ve only truly just begun at the work of writing. I’m okay with being a beginner of sorts—I am. (This is what education does: prove that The Task I’m learning is more complicated and subtle than I could’ve known.) Over two days I’ve started reading the book, stopped, taken a break, considered quitting the book altogether for fear that I’ll be too depressed to go on—and then the sentences I’ve noted are so apt and funny that I need to read the next section and the next. Writing IS absurd. But Dillard gives herself over to it, and her irritation with her calling is fun to read. It won’t get any worse than she describes, and she’s really good at this art. She never once says she loves writing and in fact she admits that she hates it and she can’t explain why she does it. There is some weird joy to the head-banging process of writing, some weird joy to her obvious devotion.
The pull of The Writing Life is beautiful sentences, odd but not overwrought (as I felt The Maytrees was overwrought). I could underline the entire book or read it out loud, the language is so playful.
Chapter Seven never mentions writing: it is about flying “a line” for the sake of beauty. And now the whole book is about flying, carving, looping, redefining what a line is. The whole book is about cracks and fissures and volatility in mountains, flaws that might destroy, fires in typewriters, dizziness, speed, hardnosed devotion and mystery. The whole book must be read again to “prove” the final chapter. I am the one thrilling like a spectator at a flight show, watching someone do this writing thing spectacularly well. Dillard is clear that writing this way is a dangerous undertaking. She lays down the gauntlet: are you a woman or a mouse?p 4. You can waste a year worrying about it or you can get it over with now. The brute edge of the truth is helpful. I am definitely not a mouse, and I’d best get over it now. I started reading, glum and getting more so by the minute. But there is something odd and perfect about this book. I end exhilarated, hungry for more reading and hungry for the next writing pursuit.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
beach season
As we unpacked our small stash of beach gear, my daughter’s playmate pointed out the thick slick of yellow pollen creating yellow-green foam on the crests of waves. That’s the stuff—that’s the yellow stuff wreaking havoc on my sinuses.
Eighty-six degrees with a delectable breeze, a layer of lavender sky on the horizon, and the beach miraculously cleared of big rocks and debris, children miraculously free of bickering. If I have to suffer, I may as well suffer in paradise. The doctor is talking to me on the cell phone, about sinus infection and antibiotics, sigh. Meanwhile I read under the shade of the giant sun hat on this gorgeous, gorgeous day, while the children remember favorite water engineering projects, requiring much digging, while I sip hot tea from my thermos to ease my throat.
The book is Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, terrifying, hilarious, powerful. I have to stop midway and open a magazine, rest my eyes on some photos.
The water is warm, the engineers say—which might not be “warm” to you, but it means I won’t turn blue and shake. Swimming will mean parting the veil of yellow on the surface, risking full-body coverage of pollen. I smile at the engineers-- okay. I’m going in if you are.
Beach season has begun. Hop in the car and drive, friends. The water is warm enough. By the time you arrive, the antibiotics will have kicked in, my head will begin to clear, and perhaps it will feel like vacation for all of us.
Eighty-six degrees with a delectable breeze, a layer of lavender sky on the horizon, and the beach miraculously cleared of big rocks and debris, children miraculously free of bickering. If I have to suffer, I may as well suffer in paradise. The doctor is talking to me on the cell phone, about sinus infection and antibiotics, sigh. Meanwhile I read under the shade of the giant sun hat on this gorgeous, gorgeous day, while the children remember favorite water engineering projects, requiring much digging, while I sip hot tea from my thermos to ease my throat.
The book is Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, terrifying, hilarious, powerful. I have to stop midway and open a magazine, rest my eyes on some photos.
The water is warm, the engineers say—which might not be “warm” to you, but it means I won’t turn blue and shake. Swimming will mean parting the veil of yellow on the surface, risking full-body coverage of pollen. I smile at the engineers-- okay. I’m going in if you are.
Beach season has begun. Hop in the car and drive, friends. The water is warm enough. By the time you arrive, the antibiotics will have kicked in, my head will begin to clear, and perhaps it will feel like vacation for all of us.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
hunkering through the heat wave
I woke with the mockingbird calling at 5:30, then returned to sleep for two more hours, an incredible luxury, and today a necessity. Though ill-advised, I slept with the window open to the scent of night and morning.
The children slept late. Is there a more beautiful sentence in all of parenthood, in summer, the first week of school vacation?
Yesterday the thermometer registered 91 degrees here on the New England coast. Didn’t the lilacs just stop blooming? June is usually considered “spring,” and just a week ago I scrambled to find turtlenecks, jeans, socks for a high temperature of 56 degrees. Now we are hunkered indoors with the air conditioner while I escape the layer of yellow pollen I can plainly see on my grill, my porch, my car. I want my children to play outside, but I can’t breathe out there, not even here with the ocean breeze blowing inland. Big headache yesterday-- it’s been a long time since the last migraine, long enough that I’d forgotten to note the buzzing in the bridge of my nose before it became something bigger. By dinner I was in bed with hot tea and ginger, and by kid-bedtime I was asleep.
Children woke at nine-thirty, more rested than they’ve been in weeks. Summer days mean the all-kitchen production of a fruit salad, being constructed right now from cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes and bananas. Summer means coloring projects for this few hot-and-pollen-filled days, and then we will return to the usual rituals of beach-going and walks and playgrounds. For now they love being at home, letting time spin out endlessly. By next week they will be using the word “boring” and we’ll be ready to move on. I'm looking at my dull prose here, thinking "boring" is right! But I'm medicated, so...
I ended the grad school quarter “behind” by four book annotations, but I’ve since finished Haven Kimmel’s Used World and am knee-deep in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. I’m pursuing a book called Bewildered Travel and I just reread Robert Farrar Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb, which is a vacation unto itself. Next come my summer readings. It’s do-able.
And now the conversation in the kitchen raises a few decibels and Madeleine asks if I’m ready to partake of the lunch buffet. Not satisfied, Brendan marches in to announce that the buffet is open, with a trumpet flourish. Welcome to summer vacation, while it’s still fresh to all of us.
The children slept late. Is there a more beautiful sentence in all of parenthood, in summer, the first week of school vacation?
Yesterday the thermometer registered 91 degrees here on the New England coast. Didn’t the lilacs just stop blooming? June is usually considered “spring,” and just a week ago I scrambled to find turtlenecks, jeans, socks for a high temperature of 56 degrees. Now we are hunkered indoors with the air conditioner while I escape the layer of yellow pollen I can plainly see on my grill, my porch, my car. I want my children to play outside, but I can’t breathe out there, not even here with the ocean breeze blowing inland. Big headache yesterday-- it’s been a long time since the last migraine, long enough that I’d forgotten to note the buzzing in the bridge of my nose before it became something bigger. By dinner I was in bed with hot tea and ginger, and by kid-bedtime I was asleep.
Children woke at nine-thirty, more rested than they’ve been in weeks. Summer days mean the all-kitchen production of a fruit salad, being constructed right now from cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes and bananas. Summer means coloring projects for this few hot-and-pollen-filled days, and then we will return to the usual rituals of beach-going and walks and playgrounds. For now they love being at home, letting time spin out endlessly. By next week they will be using the word “boring” and we’ll be ready to move on. I'm looking at my dull prose here, thinking "boring" is right! But I'm medicated, so...
I ended the grad school quarter “behind” by four book annotations, but I’ve since finished Haven Kimmel’s Used World and am knee-deep in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life. I’m pursuing a book called Bewildered Travel and I just reread Robert Farrar Capon’s The Supper of the Lamb, which is a vacation unto itself. Next come my summer readings. It’s do-able.
And now the conversation in the kitchen raises a few decibels and Madeleine asks if I’m ready to partake of the lunch buffet. Not satisfied, Brendan marches in to announce that the buffet is open, with a trumpet flourish. Welcome to summer vacation, while it’s still fresh to all of us.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
last Saturday of May: mulch, rain, lilacs
The neighbors on the street above mine are speaking streams of Portuguese over one another at such a pace I can’t discern if they are arguing or agreeing enthusiastically—I can’t tell if they hear one another. My little neighborhood has ordinances against clotheslines, unfortunately for us, but the street above has no such compunctions, so Maria hangs her laundry (including her husband’s skivvies) to dry from the chain link fence that tops the stone terrace above my vegetable garden, eye level from my third-floor bedroom window. My downstairs neighbor threatens to cover the chain-link with willow-fencing for privacy, but that seems a little drastic. They are nice neighbors, friendly through the language barrier and the chain-link fence, and I can’t imagine asking them to change laundry habits for me.
Some years I’ve managed to grow enough Morning Glories and green bean vines to block the sight of drying jeans and tshirts and skivvies, but some other years the green beans don’t even sprout. The women talk rapidly and loudly while Maria hurries to pull her laundry before the rain begins in earnest.
We woke with the sound of the mulch delivery truck and Scott hurried to organize the weeding of our front and back terraces, the layering of mulch in the places not yet filled with plants. I do the slow gardening tasks, splitting perennials and weeding between plants. Scott does not know a weed from a desirable plant, but he knows roughly where paths ought to be, and he has the desire to cover things with a new layer of brown, like a new coat of paint. It's fun to see his gardening motivation. Because I’d obsess over every ripped up Forget-Me-Not, I let him do his work outdoors. Madeleine is planning for a class camping trip and we have enough work to do, inside.
Monday marks the end of my first year of graduate coursework in creative writing, and while I’ve been wrapping up my creative work, my critical paper, and my book annotations, I find myself itching to step back and observe how my life has shifted and changed with this new adventure. Not yet—need to turn in these assignments first, need to finish my own school year and the children’s, first. Need to plot out summer camps and plans, first. But soon. It’s been quite a year.
I type with the timer set to five minutes, when the coffee will be finished brewing, also, and it will be time to get back to work on my writing for class.
True to form, a due date for homework sets off the need to clean house, just as it did when I was a college student. After Madeleine and I pack for her trip, I set her to cleaning her room. We’ve still not quite recovered from the bunk-bed-building project in April, and each week I find homes for another round of her stuff. Today she patiently sorts four bags of recycling, art supplies, old projects long forgotten, lost treasures. And I clean the sand from the futon and floor for another week, pack up another four bags for the thrift shop, make a few small repairs.
Thanks for being a part of my ongoing letter home—I know these quick missives are anything but deep. Still I remember my senior year when a classmate named Eileen babysat me through my final project for statistics, the only course I nearly failed in all my school years. She brought me a bucket of lilacs and sat at the typewriter at my very clean desk, taking dictation while I leafed through our class project. I’m leaning into the scent of lilacs today, likely the last bunch of the season, writing and editing as hard and fast as I can toward Monday. It's amazing how much one small goodness (lilacs in bloom) can make such a difference. I move a bouquet from the kitchen into my bedroom, where the bed is spread with books and notes and my laptop.
The timer goes off, my coffee is ready, and now my fingers and words are warmed up well. Scott and the kids left their mulching to paint flowerpots and eat pizza at a neighborhood “spring party.” I see Maria finished taking down her laundry before the storm, which is starting up well, just about now. The lilacs remind me: Time for me to get to work.
Some years I’ve managed to grow enough Morning Glories and green bean vines to block the sight of drying jeans and tshirts and skivvies, but some other years the green beans don’t even sprout. The women talk rapidly and loudly while Maria hurries to pull her laundry before the rain begins in earnest.
We woke with the sound of the mulch delivery truck and Scott hurried to organize the weeding of our front and back terraces, the layering of mulch in the places not yet filled with plants. I do the slow gardening tasks, splitting perennials and weeding between plants. Scott does not know a weed from a desirable plant, but he knows roughly where paths ought to be, and he has the desire to cover things with a new layer of brown, like a new coat of paint. It's fun to see his gardening motivation. Because I’d obsess over every ripped up Forget-Me-Not, I let him do his work outdoors. Madeleine is planning for a class camping trip and we have enough work to do, inside.
Monday marks the end of my first year of graduate coursework in creative writing, and while I’ve been wrapping up my creative work, my critical paper, and my book annotations, I find myself itching to step back and observe how my life has shifted and changed with this new adventure. Not yet—need to turn in these assignments first, need to finish my own school year and the children’s, first. Need to plot out summer camps and plans, first. But soon. It’s been quite a year.
I type with the timer set to five minutes, when the coffee will be finished brewing, also, and it will be time to get back to work on my writing for class.
True to form, a due date for homework sets off the need to clean house, just as it did when I was a college student. After Madeleine and I pack for her trip, I set her to cleaning her room. We’ve still not quite recovered from the bunk-bed-building project in April, and each week I find homes for another round of her stuff. Today she patiently sorts four bags of recycling, art supplies, old projects long forgotten, lost treasures. And I clean the sand from the futon and floor for another week, pack up another four bags for the thrift shop, make a few small repairs.
Thanks for being a part of my ongoing letter home—I know these quick missives are anything but deep. Still I remember my senior year when a classmate named Eileen babysat me through my final project for statistics, the only course I nearly failed in all my school years. She brought me a bucket of lilacs and sat at the typewriter at my very clean desk, taking dictation while I leafed through our class project. I’m leaning into the scent of lilacs today, likely the last bunch of the season, writing and editing as hard and fast as I can toward Monday. It's amazing how much one small goodness (lilacs in bloom) can make such a difference. I move a bouquet from the kitchen into my bedroom, where the bed is spread with books and notes and my laptop.
The timer goes off, my coffee is ready, and now my fingers and words are warmed up well. Scott and the kids left their mulching to paint flowerpots and eat pizza at a neighborhood “spring party.” I see Maria finished taking down her laundry before the storm, which is starting up well, just about now. The lilacs remind me: Time for me to get to work.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
snapshots from 2,200 miles in a very small car
Sometime I will write about “road trips that changed my life,” but for now I will simply say that road trips DO change my life. I am always ecstatic about the last one, dreaming about the next one, recalling many past trips as adventures.
I planned to visit friends, thinking “respite” and to change the scenery of our lives for a few days. Over the Rhine’s OHIO concert (once in a lifetime opportunity) provided the excuse, time-wise, but the concert is merely an excuse for making this trip now and not another time. The concert is an excuse to see friends who give life, who take us in, who make our lives delightful. I thought our extended families would be the third priority, and I thought nothing at all about the weather. As a family, I tend to think we will endure, and we will enjoy things enough to be fine.
But put me in a car with a brand new spiral-bound atlas, with tunes on the iPod (placed on “random shuffle” through all 1,200 songs) and everything can change. My son falls asleep with his classic chocolate-milk mustache and my daughter pulls out her recorder to learn Handel’s Messiah by ear, and Beetoven’s 9th (that’s “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” to her), and Scott and I look at each other, turn off the iPod, feel the wind from the moonroof, pass the cool drinks around. Anything could happen.
My son had an Evil Tantrum about which shoes to wear to church in Cincinnati, and drew blood on my arm with his unkempt fingernails—I made us late by rushing to change out of sweat-soaked clothes after the tantrum, but we walked into church to strains of Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling, also known as our wedding waltz. When the congregation held hands for a brief prayer (my friends’ congregation, where their voices can be heard as we sing and pray), my son was sitting behind me, sulking, but he lifted his face and wrestled his hand into mine and the anger melted, and I knew we’d be okay for the rest of the service.
At various moments in our travels, my children shined for others, brought out the best in others. The same son offers me the first sip of his root beer, which I don’t accept but I love his generosity just the same. My daughter eagerly courts a cousin she’s never met, making a new penpal of a girl who doesn’t like writing much. Time with my father, my stepmother, my brother and sister-in-law—my children were like movie-children, curious, helpful, asking good questions about PaPaw and NaNa’s favorite crafts and projects.
A “grown-ups only” breakfast allowed Dad and Ann and David and Jan to be as bawdy as they like to be, without taming themselves too much for me—I love it when they are “themselves” and not too cleaned-up for the “minister-girl” they still see me to be.
I didn’t think the trip would be “about” us as a family, but of course it is—the way we fail to rustle up a fast-food dinner fast enough and children are whining, and the way we say “yes” to the hotel swimming pool at 10:30 at night, yes to children who want to find the ice machine down the hall “by themselves.” The way Brendan begs for “healthy food” instead of fast food, and he devours brocolli and steamed carrots and chicken noodle soup and a fruit cup after too many chicken nuggets on too many days.
And the trip is “about” our extended family, the people we moved “away” from without half thinking about it. Bodies fail the people we love. I can’t write about it much yet. My husband spends time with his father and brother but I sneak off to get a tour of Uncle Irish’s garden, to cut rhubarb and let him talk to me about pears, about garlic, about the right fertilizer for tomatoes, about fishing. I can talk to Scott’s brother and his wife on the phone, but I can only be with Irish this way in the garden. I find Aunt Peggy all folded up in pain on the porch swing—when I met her she played the ukelele and sang, and she would send me home with jars of pickled beets. I wanted to help her walk this time, but I don’t know enough about where she hurts and how. Her hands don’t unfold to hold mine. In my mind, I drew a cross in oil on her forehead but she might think such a ritual to be superstitious—I wish I’d asked her, wish I’d offered. I tell Irish and Peggy they are two of my favorite people on earth, but I don’t know that they believe me.
When my children start a dual tantrum, Scott and I hustle them into seatbelts for the long drive home, and Peggy begins to cry about us leaving. There is no way to soothe her, though I place myself on my knees at her feet and hold her beautiful old face. “It’s okay that it’s hard, Peggy…” I find myself whispering. She tells me banker’s daughters don’t cry and I tell her I cry all almost every day. “It’s hard that things change, Peggy, that we lose so much.” The children get louder and we reach a quieter moment. I sit in the car and see that my husband is weeping, too, but we need to get out of the parking space or extend this scene longer. I think the words “child sedative, there needs to be a child sedative” and we drive to the grocery, park in the thin line of shade so Scott can rush in for cold chocolate milk. I open the car door, threatening children to an inch of their lives if they undo the seatbelts or hit one another, then I stand and lean my head on the roof and sob. They are so loud they don’t notice, and I’m oddly thankful. Scott returns with the sacred chocolate milk and they chug, and they do become quieter. I check to make sure Scott is good to drive, and he assures me it will be good to focus on the road. We drive south down the winding road to the interstate. The children are asleep in minutes. There are still ten hours of driving—and several expected tantrums—left to get us home.
Before all that, though, the time with our friends was the highlight of our trip, the highlight of our month, our spring, maybe our year. If I say “friendship is the dearest thing on earth,” I will sound like a Hallmark card and I can’t bear that. If I say “they save our lives,” that too may sound saccharine. Do you know what I mean, though? First I am taken in, in friendship, by a new classmate, just a few months ago. Then my whole family is sheltered by this friendship, too, and my friendship extends to his family. Not only do these “new” friends love us, they are astounding people who inspire us, challenge us, and make us laugh, spill their generosity over our heads. And they were never “new” friends—from the beginning, we have been old friends. And old friends, by their very nature I think, heal.
These are just scenes, unorganized and too raw to see what they mean. I got no work done because the weather was so beautiful, the hills so green, the trees in bloom and I couldn’t take my eyes off any of it to look at the pages of even the best book on earth. I am working hard at my essays and I will get you a report, soon, of how I end my school year. Pray for me if you are the praying type—I grow more scattered the more I need focus, it seems. Walking helps—I need more of that, too.
I planned to visit friends, thinking “respite” and to change the scenery of our lives for a few days. Over the Rhine’s OHIO concert (once in a lifetime opportunity) provided the excuse, time-wise, but the concert is merely an excuse for making this trip now and not another time. The concert is an excuse to see friends who give life, who take us in, who make our lives delightful. I thought our extended families would be the third priority, and I thought nothing at all about the weather. As a family, I tend to think we will endure, and we will enjoy things enough to be fine.
But put me in a car with a brand new spiral-bound atlas, with tunes on the iPod (placed on “random shuffle” through all 1,200 songs) and everything can change. My son falls asleep with his classic chocolate-milk mustache and my daughter pulls out her recorder to learn Handel’s Messiah by ear, and Beetoven’s 9th (that’s “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” to her), and Scott and I look at each other, turn off the iPod, feel the wind from the moonroof, pass the cool drinks around. Anything could happen.
My son had an Evil Tantrum about which shoes to wear to church in Cincinnati, and drew blood on my arm with his unkempt fingernails—I made us late by rushing to change out of sweat-soaked clothes after the tantrum, but we walked into church to strains of Love Divine, All Love’s Excelling, also known as our wedding waltz. When the congregation held hands for a brief prayer (my friends’ congregation, where their voices can be heard as we sing and pray), my son was sitting behind me, sulking, but he lifted his face and wrestled his hand into mine and the anger melted, and I knew we’d be okay for the rest of the service.
At various moments in our travels, my children shined for others, brought out the best in others. The same son offers me the first sip of his root beer, which I don’t accept but I love his generosity just the same. My daughter eagerly courts a cousin she’s never met, making a new penpal of a girl who doesn’t like writing much. Time with my father, my stepmother, my brother and sister-in-law—my children were like movie-children, curious, helpful, asking good questions about PaPaw and NaNa’s favorite crafts and projects.
A “grown-ups only” breakfast allowed Dad and Ann and David and Jan to be as bawdy as they like to be, without taming themselves too much for me—I love it when they are “themselves” and not too cleaned-up for the “minister-girl” they still see me to be.
I didn’t think the trip would be “about” us as a family, but of course it is—the way we fail to rustle up a fast-food dinner fast enough and children are whining, and the way we say “yes” to the hotel swimming pool at 10:30 at night, yes to children who want to find the ice machine down the hall “by themselves.” The way Brendan begs for “healthy food” instead of fast food, and he devours brocolli and steamed carrots and chicken noodle soup and a fruit cup after too many chicken nuggets on too many days.
And the trip is “about” our extended family, the people we moved “away” from without half thinking about it. Bodies fail the people we love. I can’t write about it much yet. My husband spends time with his father and brother but I sneak off to get a tour of Uncle Irish’s garden, to cut rhubarb and let him talk to me about pears, about garlic, about the right fertilizer for tomatoes, about fishing. I can talk to Scott’s brother and his wife on the phone, but I can only be with Irish this way in the garden. I find Aunt Peggy all folded up in pain on the porch swing—when I met her she played the ukelele and sang, and she would send me home with jars of pickled beets. I wanted to help her walk this time, but I don’t know enough about where she hurts and how. Her hands don’t unfold to hold mine. In my mind, I drew a cross in oil on her forehead but she might think such a ritual to be superstitious—I wish I’d asked her, wish I’d offered. I tell Irish and Peggy they are two of my favorite people on earth, but I don’t know that they believe me.
When my children start a dual tantrum, Scott and I hustle them into seatbelts for the long drive home, and Peggy begins to cry about us leaving. There is no way to soothe her, though I place myself on my knees at her feet and hold her beautiful old face. “It’s okay that it’s hard, Peggy…” I find myself whispering. She tells me banker’s daughters don’t cry and I tell her I cry all almost every day. “It’s hard that things change, Peggy, that we lose so much.” The children get louder and we reach a quieter moment. I sit in the car and see that my husband is weeping, too, but we need to get out of the parking space or extend this scene longer. I think the words “child sedative, there needs to be a child sedative” and we drive to the grocery, park in the thin line of shade so Scott can rush in for cold chocolate milk. I open the car door, threatening children to an inch of their lives if they undo the seatbelts or hit one another, then I stand and lean my head on the roof and sob. They are so loud they don’t notice, and I’m oddly thankful. Scott returns with the sacred chocolate milk and they chug, and they do become quieter. I check to make sure Scott is good to drive, and he assures me it will be good to focus on the road. We drive south down the winding road to the interstate. The children are asleep in minutes. There are still ten hours of driving—and several expected tantrums—left to get us home.
Before all that, though, the time with our friends was the highlight of our trip, the highlight of our month, our spring, maybe our year. If I say “friendship is the dearest thing on earth,” I will sound like a Hallmark card and I can’t bear that. If I say “they save our lives,” that too may sound saccharine. Do you know what I mean, though? First I am taken in, in friendship, by a new classmate, just a few months ago. Then my whole family is sheltered by this friendship, too, and my friendship extends to his family. Not only do these “new” friends love us, they are astounding people who inspire us, challenge us, and make us laugh, spill their generosity over our heads. And they were never “new” friends—from the beginning, we have been old friends. And old friends, by their very nature I think, heal.
These are just scenes, unorganized and too raw to see what they mean. I got no work done because the weather was so beautiful, the hills so green, the trees in bloom and I couldn’t take my eyes off any of it to look at the pages of even the best book on earth. I am working hard at my essays and I will get you a report, soon, of how I end my school year. Pray for me if you are the praying type—I grow more scattered the more I need focus, it seems. Walking helps—I need more of that, too.
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