sick house, take two

She hates to be sick, more than anyone I know. She tells me today that she secretly fears she’ll die, like Beth in Little Women, so she doesn’t want to rest in the dark, by herself. I wrap her in a big hug and assure her she will wake, but if she doesn’t rest, she’ll be sick much longer. Life—this very hour—is so hard to let go.

And she can never sleep when it’s daylight, she says. I remind her she is saying this at 8:30 a.m., and she’s often slept past nine or even ten in the morning.

But that was different, she says. And I suppose that’s true. Still I walk her into her room and set her up a little nest, pulling the dark curtain, kissing her on the forehead, and shutting the door.

Her brother is an excellent patient: he sleeps until the sickness is over, and he does not fight it. This illness took five hard days of recovery for him, with rest. I was unpacking and cleaning the house, and he was no trouble. I resign myself: she will require a week of care, too, and my work will be set aside. I wouldn't trade her care to anyone else, this morning.

The day is so striking, gorgeous blue and clear after yesterday’s downpour and gray. I slowly trace out the steps of my breakfast dance, knowing she hears me set the skillet on the stove, light the fire under it, gather the saucer. I'm still learning my way around, calculating where the cooking utensils should go. I don’t dare check on her—she will throw me a list of cranky complaints, and wake herself up all over again with protests.

After breakfast, my phone rings and I head upstairs to my writing corner. I listen for her footsteps, poor girl. She was just home for a week with February break, and she was hovering near boredom. She resents this flu for taking her away from her school friends.

I’ve written so little. Moving—I’d forgotten how this feels, how unsettling it is to un-settle from one dwelling, how long it takes to settle in another. I wake happy, every day, to look out the window and see for miles, or to examine the fog. I wake rested—the new bed is a good change. And I wake hungry for this hour or so of quiet.

So far, no sound of stirring below. I will sneak around quietly and make coffee, and see if I can dig into writing a little more.  

two months of cardboard, transition and joy

On December 23^rd, I found an ad for a house rental on Craigslist. I was looking for something else entirely, but I knew the name of the realtor who was showing the house. I phoned at 9 p.m. and set an appointment to see the house at 9 in the morning, on Christmas Eve. As soon as we opened the door, we said yes, and drove home hoping our deposit check wouldn't bounce. We celebrated Christmas, saying nothing to the kids. We signed papers to sell our condo, three days later. And I started packing, first, and buying stuff on Craigslist: bookcases, a sofa, a bed that can fit up a spiral staircase, a five -dollar push-reel lawn-mower, a four-drawer lateral filing cabinet, a free skee-ball game.

Our lease began on the first day of February, after weeks of heavy snows and storms, after my weekend with the stomach flu. I painted for the first two days. Scott rented a truck for the weekend and hauled furniture and boxes through the snow, while I fed children and helped keep them to as normal a life as possible. Snow days (three), and kids home with fevers (five days), and then me, down with a respiratory flu and 104 degree fever. Then an out-of-town speaking engagement in Pittsburgh, February 17, 18, 19.

I returned to February break and a blessed mix of moving-in and laziness. We have ROOM!

Each day I wander around with a box, finding the right home for objects I may not have seen for a decade or so. Today I found my poster collection from my days as a college residence director—20-some years ago. Concert posters from Dan Fogelberg, John Micheal Talbot, and an opening-night poster from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Prints from museums, of Tiffany windows and Monet paintings. Another life, all of it. I will take photos, then most will go to the burn pile.

After the poster box came a box of doll-house furniture, all rejected by my children now. Somehow with this move, we have left an era behind. We are in the teen years, now, and I don’t know where the stuffed animals will go.

I noticed yesterday that I’m itching to get my writing desk set up. I’ve built a homework desk for everyone in the house but me, and I will need to concentrate on my own little nook, soon. While I don’t have a dedicated writing room, mine is a nice corner with a view.

Not bad for eight weeks of work! We have a burnt orange living room with purple furniture (it looks GREAT!), and a purple kitchen with cabinets worthy of a bonfire. We have a red woodstove in the den and Bonanza-style wood trim from the 1970s. We have a whole-lot-of HUGE in all of the rooms.

I will tell you more as we go. For now, we’ve made the move and we are charmed by the wind, the views, the sunlight, and this funny-enormous house on the marshes.

the new view

We will be trying to snap a photo that does justice to our view from our bedroom window. So far, the beauty remains ethereal, but we will keep trying.

winter rose sky

 

A pair of boys are playing nerf basketball in the bedroom, and I hope no one gets a concussion from all the possible hard surfaces. The dryer drowns out most of the thunderous footfalls, and I’ve not yet looked to see if my downstairs neighbor is home. Me, I’m sitting in my comfy chair watching the last-of-the-last of the sunsets over Gloucester Harbor. Pink winter sky paints alpenglow on the snowy rooftops and house fronts across the water, and the windows across the way flare with gold. The prettiest light, today.

More than ever, the condo is full of things that need repair or cleaning or sorting or just packing. My hands are spotted with white latex paint from my morning move-in project, and I need to a) figure out dinner and b) figure out what to wear to a play tonight, with a gaggle of 7^th graders.

Pink turns to that blue-lavender, periwinkle edged with magenta. Why is there only one grey gull out there tonight? The rest must be napping.

Tomorrow, I paint again. Then I lead my last class on “recycled wool garment design for sixth-graders,” then I throw myself back into The Big Move.

The sky is still beautiful, though the light will go fast, now. I wish I could sit here longer.

The next place is beautiful, too. Nothing like this view I’ve been watching for 13 years. But truly, truly beautiful. I’ll write you from there.

The Book Club at TheHighCalling.org

I can’t offer a close read of five chapters, today, though I may do so later in the week. For now, I want to quickly paint for you the difficulty of discussing four or five stories per week from The Spirit of Food:

Chapter 2: I’ve eaten October tomatoes at Brian’s house.

When I first walked into Brian’s house, I spied a pan of steaming bruschetta, fresh from the oven: little rounds of bread topped with yellow and red tomatoes, smelling of olive oil and basil. We’d been eating at restaurants for days, on the road. My children and I were on a long October road trip, from Boston to Pittsburgh for a wedding. My husband Scott drove with us to that celebration, then he flew back home while the kids and I traveled further west toward my dad’s house in Indiana.

Sometimes a visit “home” tears me to pieces. “Well we’ll put you back together as much as we can, then,” Brian had said when I planned the trip. “And we’ll probably enjoy doing it.” We stayed for one night before visiting my hometown. And we stayed another night before the long drive back to the coast. I overheard an earnest argument between Brian and his wife over who was getting more time to talk to me. They played my favorite music on the stereo, just by guessing, and they plied me with wines from Wendell Berry’s vineyards. To be “at home” while traveling—I found myself near tears, eager to soak up their hospitality. It wasn’t my last visit. The next time I brought my husband Scott, so we all could be charmed.

I saw this essay in process, long before I knew of any food book. I can see Art, with the thumb’s worth of dirt above his brow. I love how beautifully-edited the story is, now. I suffer good-family-envy when I read the story. And I also see the marketplace, the faces of the people who greet Brian on the street, his vibrant wife, the backyard garden.

Chapter 3: Jeanne has a magical voice. Go listen to it on the Image Journal website!

I love how her prose sounds exactly like how she speaks. I’ve been through an ugly church breakup, and I’ve seen how some non-religious communities feel a lot more like communion than some churches. I feel like I’m with her.

Chapter 6: Robert Farrar Capon is one of the true loves of my life, and I say so later in the book.

Chapter 9: Someday I will tell you how I came to be a part of this book.

Chapter 11: When I met Alissa, she was just entering the health crisis that would challenge her way of eating, but you wouldn’t look at her and say “crisis.” I saw her shinny up a tall lamppost in the pouring rain—the lamp shone all night, and we’d all been complaining about it. She covered it with a garbage bag. While climbing, she wore a long knitted duster and her cat-eye glasses glimmered. She looked like a superhero to me, when she returned dripping, triumphant. Last summer I heard Alissa read this essay aloud for her graduation from the SPU MFA program.

Chapter 12: Nancy Nordenson read this story in a small circle of friends in a hotel room, after a day at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. I realized, then, that she’d experienced this disaster while we were both in Santa Fe—she, for her last graduate residency, and me for my first. I had been so wrapped up in my own life as a new student, I knew nothing of what she endured. I continue to admire how she weaves stories together. Such a rich thinker! See her story in Comment.

Chapter 14: Kirstin was the first editor who accepted my work without knowing me in person. She wrote such a glowing letter of recommendation for me—I carried it around in my journal for years.

This is how The Spirit of Food goes for me. I could keep numbering a paragraph or two for each of the chapters, each remarkable essay. I know exactly how lucky and blessed I am to have my writing included in this collection. I think Brian said something like, “I will hope to live up to this.” Yeah. The Great Cloud of Witnesses, that’s what I sense when I read the book. We are all—those who write, those who read, those who eat—so deeply blessed by Leslie’s editorial vision. 

january

Thank God, Thank God, Thank God and without thinking too hard the words ring out through my condo, Thank God Almighty, free at last.

I step onto the chair and onto the kitchen counter. I grab one handful of cookbooks, and a second handful, dust the tops and place them into the box waiting on the counter. In goes the waffle iron, clean from our Christmas breakfast, and the ice cream maker ball.

I will not eat from you until you are in a new kitchen.

And the books are tucked in, and the lid is fit on: I have packed the first box. I take a moment to dance and sing.

Early on the morning of December 24^th, Scott and I met with the owners of a rental house in the town where we hope to live. When the doors opened to a wide hallway, both of us grinned—the place is so NOT perfect, so different from the homes we’ve been looking to buy. And we liked the place. And it seemed huge, in comparison to our condo. We signed a check and left in a daze. We’ve leased a house with enough space for us to live.

My glee is tempered by the expense of rental, and what could be a free-fall into permanent status as renters, not home-owners. I can’t get purely excited without reminding myself of the risks.

On the other hand, it is morning of the first day, and I have packed the first box. We are moving. We are moving.