Tag Archives: Writing

Aug26

Here You Come Again

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HOWTH, IRELAND

Remember that one time you marched into an post (the post office) in Dublin near St. Stephen’s Green and casually asked for 30 international stamps to mail postcards? And do you remember the raised eyebrows and Tirty? coming out of the mouth of the not that friendly postal worker? And then do you remember, after nodding your head enthusiastically, the smile you had to plaster over your face when she said, “That’s €118.50?” Do you remember how Z sucked in his breath as you laughed nervously, pressed your credit card against the pay point, grabbed your stamps and tucked them into your wallet next to your cash?

No?

Well, let this be a warning to you: postage in Ireland is very dear and you should probably just use Instagram like a normal person to share your love for the place instead of relying on the old-y world-y postcard experience.

Eight years have passed since Z & I have been here, and postage has increased significantly in that time. In fact, for years we’ve been outraged that in 2015 we had a stack of postcards written, stamped, and ready to send one rainy day in Westport. We were walking around, looking for one of the emerald green pillar boxes to drop them in, and at some point someone (me) set them down to look at something (books) and then walked away. As we’d addressed one of the cards to ourselves—something we do when we travel—we were pretty disappointed that it never arrived. Nor did any of the others we sent to friends and family. Not a soul in all of Westport bothered to drop them in a postbox.

I’ll be honest with you: Westport is beautiful—little stream, overflowing flowerboxes, the American ideal of a colorful Irish shop street—but Z & I went right off it and have stricken it from our “must return to” list. (Z did the same thing to Norway once when they were too slow in getting him his visa for a conference, though I’m still holding out hope that one day he’ll cave on that one.)

Decision Paralysis happens whenever I’m on vacation: shall I paint, write, read, or contemplate?

Anyhow. Hello. It’s been a while. One excuse: like half of America, I was officially diagnosed as having ADHD, and so now I can say with authority that I got distracted or my executive function hasn’t been working well, and that’s partly true. Though, in all fairness, it never has worked, I was just a masker.

There were big happenings I couldn’t figure out how to write about and then another happening and another, making the previous planned writing seem irrelevant. (Kind of like how I started this yesterday before Dolly Parton died and now significant light and hope have gone out of the world and who cares about my trip to Ireland, my $138.79 stamp purchase, my love of the sea and Tayto crisps, etc.?)  It felt wrong to acknowledge one big happening without the other and the job of writing about any of it snowballed.

One day I will write about the loss of Z-ma around this time two years ago and how I’m surprised daily by how much I miss her even though the amount of time I got to spend with her in person was negligible. Or the loss of my college roommate/best friend in college with whom I hadn’t been in as good of contact as I should have been and who should have, in my opinion, lived forever because of her genuine goodness and kindness and uniqueness and steadfastness. Or the loss of a writing partner to suicide. All of these within a span of about three weeks. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what it is I want to say about having done a drug trial for my wonky lymphatic system during 2025 that at the time didn’t seem dramatic enough (I wasn’t really sick) to write about but half a year since it ended (so far successfully, knock on wood), I’m realizing how tired I was, how much my hands (of all things) hurt, and how little I was moving until I burst forth from my Cocoon of Treatment to discover I’d gained some substantial weight, the opposite of what one expects from such treatment. (Perhaps if the movers had not broken our full-length mirror in the move to Oh-La-La in 2020, this would not have happened and it had nothing to do with tiredness and treatment.) Will I ever know how to write about Belle, my friend and former colleague who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s during the pandemic and now can’t remember that she is an award-winning poet, that she and I traveled to Ireland together in 2006, went to conferences together, that she visited Z and me every year for several years? Or losing my last maternal uncle, the one who called me Zoomy when I was a toddler and no one had yet realized as I aged I’d operate only on the slow speed?  And then there was the horror of the 2024 election and the general state of the world.

There were good things too. My teaching and writing coaching has been so satisfying. Z was promoted to full professor. (So proud!) Z was awarded research funds to explore race, culture, and identity in Ireland. Because of the drug trial we didn’t have to go into significant debt and our insurance is decent. We had a really good send-off for Z-ma in her home in Zimbabwe even though there was no power or running water while the house was full of guests. We have acquired our first great niece in South Africa and we got to meet her (she has no blog name yet, but in about every third photo or video I see, she reminds me very much of Z-ma). On that trip, I got to meet some of Z’s family members for the first time in our now almost 17 years of marriage. There were visits to Indiana where my people are mostly doing well (even with the record flooding that just happened there), and Jane is trying to teach me and Anäis how to play Mahjong, which is fun and something I’ve wanted to learn since reading The Joy Luck Club when it came out. We had some beach trips with Hudge, stayed on her houseboat for a staycation or two, and so on.

It hasn’t been an umbrella of sadness I’m living under.

My point is,I wasn’t just ignoring the blog—I was busy and stupefied. (I’m thinking of the year my mother was tending to her ailing in-laws, her ailing mother, working full-time, clucking after me and my stepfather, and thus the Christmas tree didn’t come down until February. For a time, she thought it might be easier to just rent one of those lighted marquis signs used for church dinners and arrange the letters to say, I have my reasons when people drove by and looked askance at her still-up Christmas décor.)

So here we are.

Seagull perched on a seaweed covered protrusion.
Seagull on ship wreckage.

What I’m finding on this, my 7th day in Howth, where we are staying at the apartment belonging to my writing mentor and friend & her husband, is that Ireland has always made me want to write, want to sift through my feelings and sort them into piles, and feel the weird joy of the melancholy that that is always with me and that is most at home here. It’s been eight years since I was here last—the longest I’ve gone without a return trip since my first visit here in 1999. Eight years is too long. So I’m glad I managed to negotiate an extra week with Z—who is here doing some assessment for a possible short study abroad. We’re calling this portion of the trip our vacation, and so we are looking out at the Irish Sea, having walks on the beach and keeping an eye on the tippy-top of a shipwreck from the 1950s that appears and disappears with the tidal shifts. (Our first night here, we thought it was a seal, and then a tree branch that seagulls liked to perch on, and then it started looking less and less natural as more of it was exposed.) The DART train that we took into Dublin yesterday so Z could do a little reconnaissance arrives and leaves within our view as do the planes flying into Dublin, and all of these things seem fascinating to us: the patterns of the sand as the water dissipates, the various airline carriers, how sound carries across the water, the number of people in the train cars, where it brakes, when it hoots.

When we arrived on Wednesday, a neighbor and her corgi, Gussie, met us to transfer the keys to our nine-day kingdom, so there was a warm welcome even though we don’t know anyone here. When I was working on my MFA, Howth was one of two possible Irish residency sites, but I chose Dingle in the summer over Howth, simply because I knew Dingle and could picture what it would be like, and in my imagination Howth was just a commuter town for Dublin, especially in winter.

But it’s much more than that. Scenic, lots of places to walk/hike if you are that way inclined, plenty of history. For seafood lovers, it’s also a gastronomic paradise, apparently, but I don’t believe in seafood as a concept.

Irish sea as viewed through trees with rocky cliffs.
If the signs don’t scare you off, you could walk down these stairs and find Balscadden Bay Beach.

Since being here, we’ve scoped out the town, walked out on the pier, checked out the one-room library that is just the sort of library I wouldn’t mind being in charge of despite my failed attempts at librarianship in the early 90s, checked out the post office here that is stuffed into a Centra (like a bodega or Gas America store without gas pumps or restrooms), took photos  of the remains of an old abbey, had my first pint In Country this trip, and side-stepped tourists. On one of our walks, we ran into Gussie and human mom, and that was a delight—to know someone on the street, to stop and talk and learn that the people in the shops were amazed by the number of tourists because it’s never this busy. Gussie let us do the petting and then quickly got bored, sighed, and had a look of quiet resignation as we kept talking.

We also investigated both beaches. We prefer the one right in front of us for ease of use, though it is shallow and you have to walk quite a piece to get to the water’s edge when the tide is out. The other beach is up a steep hill, down some steep, handrail-less steps plastered with warning signs about how you are entering at your own risk. If the signs hadn’t scared me enough, at the mid-point down there is a stone bench and a memorial plaque to a young woman who died recently. It’s unclear if the plaque is there because the beach was a favorite of hers or if she died on the way down those steps,  but seeing it was all it took for me to send the sure-footed Z down to the pebbly beach on his own while I watched from above. Afterwards, we sauntered back through town, peered into restaurants for non-seafood options, attempted to buy postcards, and stopped at Tesco—a daily occurrence—for our supply of Irish staples: brown bread, Taytos, and Crunchie bars (not technically Irish, but where I discovered them), and non-refrigerated eggs which disturbs me less now than it did on my first trip here.

In the near distance from our apartment perch is Ireland’s Eye, a small island inhabited only by birds and seals, though apparently at some point some humans were there centuries ago as there are the remains of a church, some Roman coins were once found in the soil, and there’s evidence of farming having happened. The Garland of Howth, a fragmented illuminated Gospel was created there and is housed at Trinity College, where The Book of Kells is. We had dreams of going out there on a boat trip, but there have been a lot of tourists (not us!—there were a LOT of Italians, French, and Spanish here this weekend, no doubt trying to escape the heat on the Continent) and the boats looked packed when we were sitting on the pier.

Martello tower on island.
It’s kind of a “One if by land; two if by sea” situation except it’s always going to be by sea.

On the island there is also a Martello tower, the signal towers/fortifications that the British used during the Napoleonic wars to keep their ports on alert. They are sort of squat towers, often placed somewhere high and close enough to the next Martello tower so that nighttime signal fires or a series of flags and balls/hoop system in daylight could tell the next tower the number of enemy ships approaching. Canons were involved to keep the port protected. As it turned out, Napoleon never invaded, so they weren’t used that long, and now are either ruins, museums/historic sites, or have been turned into fancy homes. (Bono and his wife, Ali, famously lived in one when they were first married—Anaïs and I got to see it from a slow-moving train tour in 1999.)

Even though the towers aren’t used for the original purpose, I find them fascinating. The notion that even before we had the internet and smart phones or even the telegraph, humans had figured out a way to defend themselves with some cloth or fire and a big cannon or two. It’s less the defense and more the communication that fascinates me. Hey, you over there in the squat tower. I see you. I have some information for you.

For me, Ireland is always reminding me of things I’d forgotten about myself and about life.

For instance, Z and I were on the beach the other day, and as the tide came in, I suddenly remembered that 25 years ago on Ireland’s other coast I decided maybe I should get a PhD in Irish Studies. I started investigating possibilities immediately, imagined myself in various programs in Ireland and in the U.S., and wondered how soon I could get my plan underway.  When I returned to Indiana, I met Z and promptly forgot my plans because all of my energies were spent aiming a signal flare at him. It just slipped my mind that I had another plan.

The singer Tommy Fleming was on a talk show called “Unfiltered” with Lucy Kennedy. She interviewed one or two people in addition to him and whoever was speaking had a hard story to tell about loss or sickness or depression or, in Tommy’s case, of having married a woman though he suspected he was gay and then came out later in life. It was intense and deep.  The exact thing I love in a conversation but that was, perhaps, a little too dark for Z. It was the sort of conversation you’d rarely hear between celebrities in America, certainly not one without lawsuits being filed afterwards anyhow. Hearing the richness of their conversation gave me the sense that I am not the only person out there who thinks there is value in hearing other people’s hard stories.  Melancholia is acceptable. You’re allowed to admit that sadness has come over you. Or that you made a bad choice. Or you hurt someone or they hurt you.

Whenever I’m in Ireland I bump into someone I know, see my cousins who still live where my great grandmother was born, hear a writer I admire, and I feel a link to something fundamental. A sort of balance between isolation and connection.

Like those Martello towers, I imagine us waving our flags, lighting our signal fires so we’re in communion with others who are enough like us that we are less alone.

Sep1

The Ill-Planned Grand Tour: Part 3

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A friend of mine and I used to be crazy for amusement parks. Every year we’d plan a summer trip around an amusement park, and we’d milk each day for all it was worth. We’d get up early to be with the first group in the gate, we’d attack all of the harshest, most death-defying rides first. We’d stay until the park closed, sweaty, exhausted, feet sore, heads pounding from being shaken and twirled within an inch of our lives. During the day, we’d make fun of the people who were going to “shows” instead of hitting all of the attractions and making themselves feel exactly how we did at the end of a day: sure we’d done all we could and completely sated.

About a decade ago, when middle age had probably arrived but I wasn’t claiming it yet, we went to Disney World and rode some beastly attraction meant to simulate weightlessness in space. I got claustrophobic for the first time in my life—an affliction that has stuck and now requires that I carry relaxi pills when I fly just in case the aisles suddenly seem too full and too close together—and my friend nearly threw up in the barf bags Disney had conveniently provided. The rest of the trip we avoided roller coasters and anything inclined to induce motion sickness. He recovered; I never did. If we went to an amusement park, I’d have heart palpitations and decide that I couldn’t brave a coaster that in my youth would have been a “baby” ride, and the attractions that were more entertainment based seemed like a better bet.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

London is striking me in a similar fashion: in my youth, I would have packed each day full to the brim with activities and thrills, but on this trip, at this age, I’m more interested in calm, quality experiences. I don’t need the dips and thrills. The two hours we spend at Westminster Abbey—looking at what is essentially an entombed eight century (or so) history of England in a beautiful gothic jewelbox—feel exactly like the first trip to England in that I am in complete awe of the political intrigue, royal feuds, religious wars, and writers deemed significant enough to land a burial spot in Poets’ Corner. (I’m happy to report that on this trip Thomas Hardy does NOT have a folding chair on his marker as he did in 1988!) But other than that, my very favorite thing that we do on this trip–the thing that seems so much better than the tourist “excitement”–is having dinner with people we haven’t seen for awhile. It’s not quite a “show” but there’s something about the human connection in a foreign place that pleases me and makes me feel like more than just a visitor, crammed on a tour bus trying to soak up buckets of knowledge and experience before being shuffled off to another.

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On the first night we take the Tube to Paddington Station and meet Z’s cousin Jaynie by the statue of Paddington Bear. I’ve never met Jaynie. When Z and I were just friends, I was especially disappointed not to be a couple at the time because he traveled to England for Jaynie’s wedding and I wanted to go, believing completely at the time despite all evidence that one day we’d be together and it was silly not to get the experience of a family event then because of something as inconsequential as his not yet realizing our co-mingled destiny. No invitation was forthcoming, and when he got home and reported that her wedding cake was shaped like Africa, I was bitter not to have seen it. (Incidentally, the idea of this cake would later plant a seed that resulted in our own wedding cake with a zebra bride and groom dressed in a tux and bridal veil.)

Mr. & Mrs. Reluctant Girl Scout

I’m glad to put that missed Jaynie opportunity behind me and forge new ground. Instantly, she reminds me of Z-ma, and I am at ease. She is friendly, chatty, and inhabits her body in a fashion similar to my mother-in-law. Even better than spending time with a Z-ma stand-in and meeting more of his family, I love watching Z interact with his cousin. They haven’t seen each other in six years, yet the easy way they talk to each other is delightful to witness. She’s taken the train in from Oxford (where she is staying for work) just to meet us for dinner. The evening passes too quickly, and as Z and I take the Tube back to South Kensington after she’s caught her return train to Oxford, I marvel at the world we live in: that I—a Hoosier whose horizons never really extended much beyond the Midwest—am married to a Zimbabwean and we live in Seattle but have spent the night at a little restaurant in London visiting his Malawian cousin who lives in Munich with her English husband. I used to believe it was improbable that that little bear from Darkest Peru had made his way to England’s Paddington Station with nothing but a “Please look after this bear” tag attached to his coat, but maybe not.

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The next day, after soaking up Westminster Abbey—where I spend too much time thinking about royal weddings and funerals and not enough time soaking up the communion service that is taking place— we walk up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square, have lunch in a pub, walk down Charing Cross Road so I can gaze upon #84, the site of one of my all-time-favorite memoirs and movies, though sadly it is no longer a bookstore but is in the process of becoming a yogurt shop or something similarly unbookstore-like. Food is a good way to soothe this disappointment, so we go home via a stop in Knightsbridge so Z can see the food hall at Harrods.  It is something remarkable to behold. There is an entire room full of nothing but chocolate, and children swarm around the counters like something out of Willy Wonka. There is a produce hall, a room full of teas, a room full of fish, half a room full of the most beautiful and delectable baked goods I’ve ever seen. We make our selections (pastries–delicious, delicious pastries) and head to the hotel.

Because Z lives in America, I rarely get to hear him reminisce with someone else about his life before he came to the States or see that “home” look on his face unless I’m eavesdropping on a phone conversation or we are in Zimbabwe with his family. So I’m glad when our dinner with J, a Z-family friend, and the friend’s partner, is so leisurely that we close down the Italian restaurant near the Kensington High Street. I like hearing them catch up, like hearing them remember the details of stories together, and like the fond way they talk about the other’s family. Because the only other time I’ve spent with J was our wedding weekend when I was not entirely of sound mind, I’m also happy to get to know him a bit better too. Again, I marvel at the tenuous way people are connected to other people—how those connections are a bit like a spider web in both their strength and delicacy, but also in the strange, unpredictable architecture of lives intertwined.

The next day, Z and I head to Covent Garden for no real reason other than Z has never been there and it’s in the guidebook as a place where you must go. It is a sort of multi-building art market/flea market that also has upscale shops and eateries. The original market was there in the 1600s with buildings that have clearly been around a few centuries, though this pedestrianized incarnation has only been in existence since the 1970s. I remember it fondly as the place I bought an antique garnet ring, and despite being in my twenties and thus smart enough to know better, I liked to imagine that it had previously belonged to some lady-in-waiting for Queen Elizabeth I and I really got a bargain.

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Though I’m not averse to shopping, this trip has not been about acquiring items, so Z and I do a quick spin around the place. We’re lured into another building when we hear an operatic rendition of “Hallelujah.” When we look into the courtyard below us, there is a man in a bowler hat, making balloon animals that he accosts diners and passers-by with, all while belting out gorgeous music. It seems almost wrong to laugh at his antics while he sings so beautifully, but still, we do as he chases people around the courtyard with a giant comb and puffs their hair with a balloon pump, as if he is some sort of insane, singing hairdresser.

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Probably I should admit here that my favorite thing near Covent Garden is the shop dedicated entirely to Moleskine journals. I don’t actually buy any while I’m there because I have at least six unused ones back at home in various colors, but I take pictures and I fondle several of them as I try to justify a seventh.

Peter Pan/Alan Cumming @ Leicester Square

Peter Pan/Alan Cumming @ Leicester Square

For lunch, we make a picnic for ourselves at Tesco Express and head to Leicester Square, the center of the theatre district. (We pass St. Martin’s Theatre that has been showing Agatha Christie’s The Mouse Trap for the last 63 years and at the end of every performance the audience is admonished not to share the secret of who the murderer is; I remember wryly that after seeing the play in 1988 I thought perhaps the real reason the secret had never been revealed was that the play is so boring by the time the murderer stands accused, you no longer care who dunnit). It is hot out and Z and I are grateful for the shade by the fountain, where we munch our food—Z is pleased to have finally scored one of his beloved meat pies and I eat fruit, bread, and crisps, which is as well-balanced as I get—and watch little kids splash around. One little guy looks like across between Alan Cumming and Peter Pan as he slices through the water with an inflatable sword as if he’s vanquishing dragons. I prefer this to standing like cattle in line for another must-see attraction. During the afternoon, Z has to do research, so I sit alone on the Strand, nibbling a pretzel and writing in my journal, though the people-watching possibilities makes it hard to focus on the page.

A Tube strike is on the near horizon, so Z and I make plans to bug out of London a day earlier than planned in order to miss it because neither of us can imagine what the city looks like when it isn’t functioning fully. Our plan initially was to stop in Bath on the way to Wales. On the map it appears to be on the way, but a train schedule reveals that if we go this route it will take ten hours instead of four, so we opt instead to investigate Shrewsbury  simply because it is at mid-point on the journey west (though I refuse to call it Shrewsbury and instead tell people we’re going to Shropshire because it makes me feel like Maggie Smith in A Room with a View).

London Skyline from Primrose Hill

London Skyline from Primrose Hill

On our last day in London, we decide to take in a view suggested by J, plus I want to revisit Regent’s Park and the nearby canals that I remember being fascinated by two decades ago. The only drawback to this plan is the rain, which is bucketing down when we leave the hotel, continues once we get to the park (which means we have the place virtually to ourselves), and doesn’t let up until we are halfway through the park. We have new, matching £6 umbrellas with the London skyline drawn on them, so we don’t mind. The lake we walk around is a bird sanctuary of sorts and the storks remind me of Tony Soprano’s crew, sitting outside Satrielle’s, smoking cigarettes and wise cracking.

Canal near Regent's Park

Canal near Regent’s Park

On our walk to the canals, we pass a guard with a machine gun standing in a driveway to a fancy house. He doesn’t seem bothered by us, but even so, you don’t really want to ask a dude with a machine gun what it is he’s guarding, so we take note of the sign on the gate, Winfield House, and look it up later, only to discover it’s where the U.S. Ambassador lives and was originally a house owned by the Woolworth heiress, Barbara Hutton. I’d wrongly assumed that ambassadors lived in an apartment–maybe in the attic–of the embassy itself.

Eventually, we find the canals, and they aren’t really the way I remembered them. The canals in my memory were full of colorful boats that maybe Johnny Depp circa Chocolat lived in. The only boats we see are full of tourists and none are brightly colored or playing guitar music. We walk along the canal while I try to figure out if this was indeed the canal I saw twenty years ago or if there was some other better, more Depp-inspired canal. I give up and we make our way to Primrose Hill. It’s a big hill and we are used to Seattle’s hills. We stop periodically to look back at the skyline but mostly to catch our breaths before plodding upward. When we do get to the top, the views are stunning. Because I’m never satisfied, I wish I’d seen the view on that trip a few decades ago before so many skyscrapers went up, though I’m happy that we can make out the outline of St. Paul’s, Parliament, and some other choice sights. It’s a good last tourist adventure.

Gloucester Road Tube Station

Gloucester Road Tube Station

Our final social engagement is to meet a friend of Hudge’s (FH, for our purposes) who used to work with Z but has recently taken a job at a sort of think tank in London. Instead of taking the Tube, Z and I decide to walk since it is at the next Tube stop from the one we use and discover that it is actually closer to our hotel than the one we’ve been using. The area is buzzing and has, to my mind, more charm than the street we’ve been walking down daily. Suddenly, I feel terribly sad that our time in London is coming to an end when I’ve only just discovered this whole area that needs exploring. FH arrives and we make our way to a pub that is the exact way you want a pub to be: not sleek and sparse and hip, but instead, worn out wing backed chairs around a table with water rings and stools made from barrels and dark wood everywhere. The people having a pint here seem to belong, and because we are meeting FH, it feels a little like we are here legitimately and not as tourists. The conversation is easy and moves from politics on Z’s campus to politics around the world to what neighborhood FH will be moving to and how he misses swimming off the dock at Hudge’s houseboat. Also, because he’s been a tour guide for my travel guru, Rick Steves, FH chastises me gently for not learning to pack light. “It will change your life,” he says.

Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed

When we say goodbye and go our separate ways, Z and I bump into a bookstore that looks intriguing. When I look at the name of it, Slightly Foxed, a light dawns. Slightly Foxed is the publication my mother gets regularly and raves about. It primarily covers books the store-owners believe are worthy of being read, most of which are memoir and autobiography. At least a few conversations with Mom a month cover her latest discoveries from Slightly Foxed. In a split second, I imagine the book bag or coffee mug I’ll get her from there as a surprise, but before I can get too far with the fantasy, I notice the closed sign on the door. I’m so disappointed. If only I’d made the discovery earlier in the week. When I get back to the hotel room, I text her with the news and a photo I’ve taken, and like me, she’s terribly disappointed that I’ve missed my chance to go inside.

Though two days before I would have happily paid money to leave London immediately because the muchness of it all overwhelmed me, while we pack our too-full suitcases and make our final arrangements for the morning’s train trip to Shrewsbury, I feel sad. I don’t know when I’ll be back in London. I don’t know why I’ve been so hard on it. I wish I had just a few more hours so I could eek out a little more juice from the place.

What I do instead to make me feel in control of the situation is set my alarm to go off an hour earlier than needed. The next day, while Z showers and finishes packing, I slip out on a solo adventure into a downpour and walk to Slightly Foxed, stand outside under my umbrella until the store opens, and as soon as I hear the lock click, I head in. For fifteen minutes I scan shelves for titles, look at artwork, and snap photos for Mom. Initially, I feel a little miffed that this store owned by two women seems to be in the hands of a young man, but when I ask if I can take photos for my mother, he warmly encourages them and points out various foxes I should photograph. I make a purchase that seems likely to be one Mom already has, but the book feels good in my hands and won’t take up much room in my suitcase. I tuck it into my coat so the deluge won’t dampen it as I make my way back to the hotel and feel slightly more satisfied.

Maybe when you hit your forties some people don’t need roller coasters for thrills anymore. Maybe it’s okay that a good meal with friends, a park with a view, a well-appointed bookstore surprise, and a good traveling companion are what satisfies.

Shropshire awaits.

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Jul3

Flashback Friday: The Wages of Sin

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[I’m annoyed with Paris Hilton because of her plane crashing terror stunt, and so this seemed a timely flashback.]

 

Saturday, June 09, 2007

 

Lord, I am heartily sorry.

I have been shamed. Not more than twenty minutes ago, I was clutching a book to my chest and having a cry because the book in question seemed so good and true. The shame part comes in because I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks publicly decrying the author as superior and unkind to her townsfolk and completely unable to string together a satisfying non-fiction narrative. And this after five years of being more silently contemptuous of her, in no small part because she was writing about Indiana during my era and she had the gall to have a nickname too close to one I had.

Also, I once went to a workshop she led and was annoyed beyond repair by the way people gushed over her when she was a mediocre teacher at best. So talented, so clever, so unique, they said. Bleh. I began to loathe her. I began to feel she had stolen away some title I deserved. The fact that I have not written a memoir of my Indiana girlhood for critics and readers to gush over did not alter my sense of injustice. The fact that I loved her fiction did not strike me as being a contradiction when I would curl my lip if someone dared mention the name Zippy to me.

So anyhow, I was fairly surprised when I slammed shut She Got Up Off the Couch and promptly burst into tears. All I can figure is Haven Kimmel got something right—some alchemy of description of a blizzardy Hoosier winter or growing up in the 70s or loving common items shrunk down to miniature size—that made my heart shift positions and not turn so bitterly against her.

I feel much better now that I have confessed that sin.

Other things that have been disturbing me today: I think Paris Hilton is robbing me of quality time with Z.

Since Z, I have a laundry list in my head of things to tick off until I see him again. In fact, when he was here last month, healing me of terminal hypochondria, I even happily ticked off his departure because I knew that meant I would see him all the sooner.

My shrink would say, “Why do you think you are this powerful—to speed up time?” and I’m not sure why except that my maternal grandmother soundly chastised me once for
wishing away my life, something I should never do, even if it was for a truly good thing, such as I wish summer vacation were here. (That one, I still contend, is not bad because life in the confines of the public school system was not worth living.) My grandmother’s belief that I had the power to fast-forward thru my life must have made an impression, because I do. I do honestly believe that when I see Z on Tuesday morning at the airport, it will be in no small part because I thought so long and hard on how to get through the minutes more quickly until I could see him again.

But then there is this: not only have I been wishing away my life, but it occurs to me, I’ve also been, with my desire for speedier clocks and quicker reunions, wishing away other people’s lives—Z’s, my mother’s, my aunt who dreads the passing of time because it removes her further from her recently departed husband, my other aunt who is now—with no thanks to me—down to about nine thousand heart ticks of her own—and so on and so forth. I’m pretty sure this makes me a selfish, bad person.

And the wages of such a sin is this: this flagrant speeding up of time that I have caused means that at the end of those paltry few days I’ll have in Seattle with Z, he flies off to Zimbabwe for…oh, I keep hoping there will be some papal dispensation that will make this untrue!…two months. No nightly phone calls; no reliable, multiple-times-a-day e-mails; no possibility of a mid-way weekend meeting place if the Travelocity deals are superior. Just me, my suitcase of abandonment issues and the void sprinkled with occasional emails when he has electrical power and occasional phone calls when I can manage to punch in the international codes correctly and the phones on his end are actually working, and daily news reports of how things in his homeland have slid so far past “pear-shaped” that they aren’t even in the fruit category anymore. That’s what I have to look forward to for not taking heed when Grandma told me to stop wishing.

No. I must require of myself and insist that others—including Paris Hilton who is no doubt in a hurry to get out of the L.A. County jail—QUIT WISHING THE DAYS AWAY. I believe if we are all united on this front time can be slowed to a crawl and Z will never leave my shores for his native ones. I’m not sure what the pay off will be for Paris or how she can be convinced to cooperate, but I’m working on it. Her money, power, and connections give her an unfair advantage in persuading the earth to rotate a bit faster, so I’m hoping she’ll see reason & find peace in her current unfortunate circumstances.

Apr30

Saigon Keeps Falling

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Forty years ago today, I remember playing with my Barbies on the braided rug of our living room with our little black and white TV blaring in the background. I was oblivious to whatever was on the screen, so the reports that Saigon had fallen and the Vietnam War was over must not have come during afternoon cartoons. Mom left the living room, stood at the kitchen sink, and sobbed. The newscaster’s announcement was less real to me than whatever drama was unfolding in front of me with the dolls, but the sound of Mom crying was different and distressing enough to halt my play.

 

I followed her into the kitchen and asked what was wrong, and because we are not the sort of women who can beautifully and coherently talk while crying, the only words I remember her eeking out were that the war was over. Though I think of myself even now as a child who had always secretly been an adult, the richness of her sobs momentarily had me convinced that the Vietcong would soon be coming to Indiana because we’d lost the war. I was terrified. I can’t remember how she comforted me: if I was a nuisance interrupting her grief or a welcome distraction. I only remember the sobs and the confusion I felt; surely the war being over was a good thing, so why the tears?

 

My father wasn’t in the military. None any of my uncles went to Vietnam. Though there may have been Vietnamese refugees who ended up in my hometown, none were at my school. I can’t say the war affected my life, but it was the background noise of the first eight years of it. My mother lost high school friends and one of her best friends lost her fiancé. I can still remember standing near his grave, kicking clods of dirt with my canvas shoes, not entirely understanding the level of adult sadness on such a beautiful day with flags snapping in the breeze. It was no more real to me than my GI Joe doll with the missing foot, who had, in my mind, been to Vietnam; he perpetually wore fatigues because he was too muscle-y to fit into Ken’s leisure suits–a good guy but so world-weary only the lesser Barbies with missing limbs or brown hair would date him.

 

So no, it didn’t influence me directly, and I’m not entirely sure why I spent a portion of this morning weeping over forty-year-old news footage of people clamoring onto helicopters, remembering something I didn’t understand when it was unfolding live. But it did give a melancholy flavor to my Gen X childhood, perhaps a weird obsession with China Beach when it aired twenty-five years later, a distrust of military actions, a strange mix of both respect for and wariness of the men my mother’s age who wore bandanas and fatigue jackets and looked down and out.

 

The catalyst for today’s tears was an on-the-scene interview with a man who had tried but failed to help his college friend and family—a friend he’d  met at Washington State University—escape Saigon in those last hours. He was reduced to tears. The reporter tried to suggest that maybe his friend would be okay, but the man stood there, choking back sobs and shaking his head saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I tried this afternoon to figure out some magic way to use Google that would answer the question of whether that man’s friend survived or not; I failed.

 

It’s the same melancholy I felt talking to my old  students returning from the Gulf or from Afghanistan, trying to make sense of the lives they were now supposed to assimilate back into. How I feel when I talk to Hudge about her military career and the affects, both positive and negative, it had on her life. How I feel when I think about the non-military personnel in faraway places just living their lives, trying to get by, while men with money and power–and some with questionable ideals–make decisions that will affect whether those people’s homes will become a battle zone.

 

I wish now–my Barbies packed away lo these many decades–that my over-read, over-reflective brain could make sense of such events. See some pattern, some unanticipated benefit, some reason for pain and suffering so I could say something wise about the disruption of lives that might have been otherwise lived, so I could feel more positive when my cousins’ sons consider joining up, feel more hopeful when they ship out.

 

But I don’t know. I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

Jan12

A 2015 Blurry Bluebird of Happiness to You

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Bluebird considering a move to East Central Indiana.

Bluebird considering a move to East Central Indiana.

So, here we are, nearly two full weeks into 2015. What do you think of it so far? Because of a tiny win at the casino and a melancholy-free birthday last week (very unusual for me), I was liking the new year a lot until things got hateful in Paris, and now I just don’t know. But still, it seems way too early to be pessimistic, doesn’t it? Maybe this is the year the world will get its act together.

For years, my mom and stepfather have wanted bluebirds to move into one of the birdhouses that litter their two acres, to no avail. So I took it as a good sign for the new year while I was in Indiana that a family of bluebirds momentarily poked their heads into the See Rock City birdhouse hanging on branch in the front yard. They usually snub us, but these seemed like they were ready to make a down payment. Then something spooked them off. The result is the same: no bluebirds, but I’m opting to see it as a positive sign that Mom was “this” close to bluebird neighbors.

My friend Jane and I were talking about how to us it feels like 2014 never happened. It was just 365 days of blur. Basically, I made a list of resolutions last year on December 31st, posted them to the blog, and then woke up and it was a whole year later with nothing of consequence achieved. I vaguely remember a stretch of several months where I made my bed every day and that felt like a real accomplishment, but beyond that? How did I spend those days? I didn’t change the world or even myself very much. Though I did discover Gilmore Girls.

* * * * *

One of my resolutions this year is to take advantage of this city I live in. In Seattle, I squander opportunities that I would have killed for when I was living in Richmond. Not a day goes by when there aren’t at least five good things I could do here. In Richmond, if there had been an author reading or Warhol exhibit or a chance for a ferry ride anywhere, I would have been over the moon. But here, I too often think I’ll do those things “next time.” So last Wednesday, in an effort to put one of my resolutions in action, I went to a neighborhood meeting around the corner at Town Hall which focused on what the city is planning to do to create more green space/park space on First Hill, where I’ve been living now for five years.

Full confession: because of the recent Gilmore Girls binge-watch, I was hoping that going to a community meeting for our little “downtown adjacent” neighborhood would make me feel like I was at one of the town meetings in Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow led by the insufferable Taylor Doose. I was looking forward to seeing Miss Patty, Sookie, Babette and Kirk, while tolerantly listening to some blowhard talk about his plans for our little patch of the city. I’d like to say it’s because I woke up on January 1st feeling more civically engaged, but there you have it: I went to feel like a character on a fictional show set in New England that aired a decade ago.

Sadly, Miss Patty, Sookie, Babette, and Kirk were not in attendance. Furthermore, despite my very middle-agedness, I brought down the average age at Town Hall by about twenty-five years, so there was a certain air of crankiness about change in the air.

We watched a Powerpoint presentation about possible plans for First Hill, and then we got to use clickers to give feedback on what was most important to us. Some of the oldest, crankiest citizens in attendance weren’t happy because only a little more than half of the clickers were working. The outrage expressed made it seem like a hanging-chad situation in a general election instead of an information gathering forum. Another, crankier attendee wasn’t happy with the plan to do the clicking before the different plans had been fully discussed by the masses. Her tch-tching was audible. One man was concerned that new park space would end up like current park space, which is to say a place that is overrun by junkies and pooping dogs and vagrants, while a younger man was concerned that the homeless would be further disenfranchised if the future parks were over-policed. Who knew there would be so many concerns about something as awesome as parks? Though admittedly, I felt a little twitchy when the presenter suggested they’d be removing a few parking spots from our street in order to extend the park frontage of a current park. We may not have a car here, but when we rent one, we like to be able to park within a three-block radius of our place.

A man came in late and sat two rows over from me reeking of garlic and—though I like garlic, it only really smells good on food you are about to eat yourself and not so much on humans—I found it hard to concentrate on which action plan should be acted upon first because I was trying to position myself so my nose was pointed away from him without seeming rude. It began to dawn on me that when the meeting was over, I wouldn’t be able to saunter over to Luke’s Diner and get a burger and a Coke with Loralei and Rory Gilmore. Plus, my friend Leibovitz had texted just as the meeting started and wanted to have a phone conversation, and I couldn’t help but feel my time might have been better spent talking to her since these parks won’t appear for several years if they appear at all, but a chat with her would have made me feel all warm and homey inside.

But hey, for an hour and 45 minutes there, I was an engaged citizen, and I was hopeful about the future.

* * * * *

Frankly, I was a little horrified when I read last year’s blog post and saw that I’d made a promise to myself, and you as my witnesses, that I was going to read something like 70 books and clear off the shelf behind the sofa that has my stacks and stacks of “what I’m reading next” books. It was a lovely post with photos as proof of how out of hand my book obsession is as well as my belief that shaming myself might make me more committed to meeting my goals. But apparently I forgot about my promise as soon as I hit publish. I read about five of the shelf books and everything else I read last year—which didn’t come close to 70 books because I was so busy reading Jezebel (and watching Gilmore Girls)—came from the library or off some other shelf of mine that is tidier with titles that were less pressing.

I believe I’ve mentioned the time-space vacuum I live in, in which I firmly believe that Future Beth will be a better, more accomplished person than Present Beth. Future Beth is like a superhero who not only gets things done, is more perfect, and better organized than I am, but who is also an extroverted humanitarian with networking skills as well being handy with household tools. Future Beth is my idol, but she just doesn’t come round often enough. She’s as elusive as Bigfoot.

I wish I could adopt Jane’s relationship to time, in which she has no faith that Future Jane will do anything but sit around flipping through magazines and eating bonbons, so she in her present state does everything immediately. Jane gets a lot more done than I do because she’s worried that her future, lazy, slug-a-bed self will bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.

But alas, Jane’s way is not my way. Doing something ahead of time is as foreign and awkward to me as when I try to use chopsticks or attempt to network at a conference. Future Beth’s failure to arrive is one of the reasons I didn’t get married until I was a Woman of a Certain Age (though I’m grateful for her delay since it resulted in Z instead of some of the less desirable options I might have ended up with). The fact that she is so often AWOL is also how I forgot to have children, buy a house, send out my manuscripts to publishers until I wore one of them down, or “Lean In” to a career at a Fortune 500 company. Strangely enough, I still have faith that Future Beth will take care of all of that—one day. Later. (Except maybe the kid thing. I think Future Beth knows I’m too tired for kids and possibly always was.)

Since you know my success rate with resolutions, it seems a little pointless to tell you about the reading pledge I made on Good Reads of 50 books in 2015, or the number of essays I’ll be submitting to various publications around the globe, or how clean my house is going to be at year’s end because of my commitment to Apartment Therapy’s January Cure. Why would I waste your time telling you all the ways I’m going to “show up” to my dirty dishes, my writing desk, my walks-to-better-health, my yoga mat, my meditation corner, or anything else, since there’s a good chance Future Beth is never going to arrive to make these things happen.

Still, I am nothing if not full of hope. Future Beth might show up. The lottery might really pay out. The inhabitants of the planet might wake up tomorrow and decide not to be such jerks to each other. And bluebirds, like the blurry ones up above, might decide not to just check out the available real estate at my parents’ house but actually take the plunge and move right on in.

Next week on my Resolution 2015 to-do list: give up my Indiana driver’s license for a Washington one, even though an Indiana license is much more attractive, makes an excellent conversation starter (you’d be surprised how many people out here have Hoosier connections), and contributes to my general sense of never having left home. I’ve lived here almost five years now. It’s probably time.

Dec18

A Tale of Two (or more) Christmases

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It’s that time of year when I drag out all the Christmas videos that put me in a happy, Christmas space, and force Z to watch them. I don’t always watch all of them—Little Women often gets a miss because I end up in tears when Beth dies—but, like clockwork, there will be a viewing of Christmas in Connecticut, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, A Holiday Affair, While You Were Sleeping, A Christmas Story, and eventually, my favorite, Moonstruck, which, honestly, I sometimes forget is set at Christmas because it’s also one of my favorite non-holiday movies. The script is great, the writing is tight, the scenery is wonderful, and the acting really was worthy of those Oscars back in 1988. The main thing all of these movies have in common though is the promise of a two-hour block of time when Christmas is exactly how you imagine it should be.

 

As you may be aware, I do my fair share of complaining about city life, but this is the time of year that while I miss home—the city…any city really—comes alive for me.

I first discovered this love for city-life-at-the-holidays in Chicago in the mid 1990s when I’d stand for an hour studying the window displays at Marshall Field’s and Carson Pirie Scott. The displays at Field’s were themed and you’d wait anxiously to see what would be revealed each year: Cinderella, Pinocchio, Wizard of Oz? I could easily get teary-eyed talking about Macy’s take-over of the main Marshall Field’s on State Street and subsequent refusal to retain the historical name and traditions and the bland, seen-it-before holiday decorations that are the new normal, or the Target logo that now hovers over the beautiful ironwork on the Carson Pirie Scott building. So don’t mention those stores to me please. Seriously. Can we just pretend it’s still 1997 and all is as it should be on State Street?

 

When I was in Chicago, I somehow didn’t mind the cold. I’d stand outside, purposeless, watching the ice skaters, guessing what might be in the bags and stacks of boxes people were carrying around on the Magnificent Mile as horns honked in what seemed like a less aggressive, more festive way than at other times of the year. I’d make time to go to one of the free weekly concerts at Fourth Presbyterian, staring up at the decorated sanctuary that was meant to look like the hull of a Viking ship, and listen with pleasure to carols and concertos. Then I’d get cocoa on the second floor of the now defunct Borders bookstore and stare down at the historic Water Tower and watch the carriages there, carting tourists around with horses sporting Santa hats. I was meant to be in the city for a man, but he was often at work or disinclined to venture out of his Bat Cave, so my time there was solitary and oddly delightful. I didn’t need to be doing the carriage riding or the ice skating; I was content to observe it, to walk amongst the revelers, to soak it in. There was nothing about Christmas in that snowy, blustery city that I didn’t love; even the labored breathing from the icy temperatures and difficulty walking on the snow-packed side streets seemed magical.

 

Rockefeller Center, 2010

Rockefeller Center, 2010

 

Chicago set the bar high. Four years ago, Z and I had a blizzard-induced flight delay when we were headed to Zimbabwe, and thus we ended up spending a few nights in New York City. For the first time ever, I finally got to see—in the flesh and electric lights—those famous windows at Macy’s, the tree at Rockefeller Center, wreaths on St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It made our interrupted—and thus shortened—trip to Africa almost worth it. Christmas in New York certainly rivals that of Chicago, but for me, it doesn’t quite win. Maybe a tie. I’ve seen Dublin, Galway, Rome, New Orleans, Harare, Seattle and the closer, Midwestern cities of my youth decorated for the holidays, but Chicago will always be the city that lives inside the flurry-filled snow globe in my brain. I try not to hold that against Seattle, which even managed to produce a few tiny patches of snow this year and get cold enough to keep little driftlets at the bases of about three trees.

 

But it’s no Chicago.

 

December hasn’t impressed me much this year. It’s my favorite month usually, but it seems like the whole world is coming unhinged. Normally, it’s the time of year when you can safely insulate yourself from the ugliness out there so long as you toss some money in the Salvation Army pot outside the door at the grocery and feel grateful for your own bounty. But it’s harder this year. People are mad and unhappy and in pain. There have been nightly protests in downtown Seattle to remind us of this. On the one hand, I want to be annoyed that the protestors made a bunch of kids at a choral concert at the tree-lighting ceremony cry at the beginning of the month, but on the other hand, I am sympathetic to the frustration of a faulty system. I am in awe of people who are inclined to let their voices be heard en masse. When I get outraged about something, I send an email and write in my journal or whine to Z, so this level of commitment and the possibility of being on the receiving end of violence—or at least pepper spray and handcuffs—is something to behold. Certainly, it’s making for a different sort of holiday season.

 

At the beginning of the month, Z and I made our first trip to Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, to hear the Pacific Lutheran University choir and orchestra perform a Christmas concert. We were excited to finally get into the building that for the last eight years has only served as backdrop while we wait for the #12 bus to pick up our tired backsides and cart us up the hill. I admit that I even had some Moonstruck fantasies that I was Cher and Rick was the (pre-crazy) Nicolas Cage, decked out in our finery, going to see La Bohème at the New York Metropolitan Opera, never mind Z’s lack of tux and my clomping around in Danskos and slacks instead of high heels and red velvet dress. We had box seats which we’d been assured were “awesome” by Hudge, and we were imagining something similar to the seats Princess Di used to sit in, looking down on everyone with a clear view of the stage. The view was good, though not Royal-Family private, but my seat was not befitting a princess or any other human. Possibly a potted plant would have found reasonable purchase there. For the duration of the concert my knees were pressed against the banister, my feet had to be tucked far beneath my chair, and during the portions where the audience had to stand up to sing carols, Z had to help me over to one side so I could stand without toppling over, which made me feel even less like Cher (or Princess Diana) and more like someone’s clumsy, ancient, slightly drunk aunt.

No Leg Room for a Princess

No Leg Room for a Princess

Still, the music drifted up to the rafters and the choir members sang their way out of the auditorium while holding electric candles, and we were both feeling extra Christmassy as we walked home. The flashing lights of cop cars monitoring another night’s protest were at the periphery, blending in with the other twinkling lights of the city. Everything appeared peaceable even if discontent.

 

The following night we went downtown with Hudge and friends of hers to experience the Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition, a yearly event in Seattle, wherein a variety of groups sing for donations that support a food bank and a senior center, and at the end of the evening the loot in the pots is counted and the “winner” determined. Though it is just a few blocks from our apartment, the streets were packed with, according to some accounts, 10,000 or more people. It was fun, in that it was nice to see so many denizens of Seattle happily bumping against each other in Santa hats, happily dropping money into buckets for a worthy cause. But it was overwhelming to my highly sensitive self. All those people! All those sounds clashing somewhere just above my ears so nothing sounded particularly melodious but more like an aural war being waged, or at least a border skirmish. The police were in full force for crowd control and also because there were rumored to be more protests (later, we learned the protestors and organizers worked out a deal since the event was for a charitable cause, so the protest happened later), but it was jarring to see so many cops at such a happy occasion. And then other little wars started happening inside of me, wherein I wanted to tell them to be safe and that I respected how hard their jobs must be while at the same time I wanted to give little smacks to the ones I thought looked most likely to be trigger-happy racial profilers. (Granted, I had no real data to determine who were the good cops and who were the potentially bad cops, but still, my brain raged to various choruses of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and I came to no solution other than to smile at anyone who made eye contact with me.)

 

Figgy Pudding crowd, 2014

Figgy Pudding crowd, 2014

The following day, Z and I had rented a car and found ourselves with some leftover Christmas spirit that we were uncertain how to expend. We tried eating pie, but that wasn’t enough to sate us, so at the last minute, we drove onto a ferry destined for the Kitsap Peninsula for an ill-planned visit to Poulsbo’s tree-lighting ceremony. It was so ill-planned we weren’t sure we would even make it as it was meant to happen as soon as the sun went down, and the sun was sinking rapidly as we dozed in our car, bobbing across across Puget Sound. (Ferry sleep is the best sleep you will ever have, fyi).

 

You may remember my earlier description of Poulsbo, the little Viking-inspired village that was founded by Scandinavians who arrived in the late 19th century for the fishing. It sits right on the Sound and has a quaint downtown with Viking murals and Scandinavian building facades and signs that are in Norse (or an English version of Norse). Z and I arrived just in time, and as we were racing down the hill to the city park by the waterfront, we saw a group of people in a wooded lot, standing around a fire in Viking headdress and furs, making plans for the ceremony. Though we knew during the day they were probably computer programmers or carpenters, it was easy enough to pretend we’d happened upon an encampment of soon-to-be marauding Vikings.

 

We left them where they were and continued down the hill and got to the city park, just in time to see Miss Poulsbo light the village tree. We were imagining some massive fir tree, because the trees grow big and plentiful in western Washington, but no, the tree in question was only about a foot taller than Miss Poulsbo herself, who Z briefly mistook for a snowman because she was wrapped so tightly in a white cape. We’d been imagining something much grander and briefly considered we’d made an error in choosing our evening’s destination. But there was a huge stack of wood in front of us that was intriguing and talk of Vikings escorting Saint Lucia in to light it, so we stood around with the townsfolk waiting. Compared to the night before in downtown Seattle, this group was much smaller, maybe 200 or so people, and many seemed to know each other. Some little boys dressed in skins raced around the wood and a young bulldog made friends with everyone who walked past. We’d recently binged on all seven seasons of “Gilmore Girls” on Netflix, and frankly, Poulsbo felt very Stars Hollow-esque. (Even the emcee was reminding us a little of the insufferable Taylor Doose.)

 

Z and I stood by the waterfront looking at the lighted houses across the Sound. And then, off in the distance, we saw flames coming towards us as the Vikings approached on the river walk, brandishing torches. (A kid behind us thought they were bringing us all giant, roasted marshmallows to help celebrate.)

Saint Lucia? Is that you?

Saint Lucia? Is that you?

 

The anticipation grew as they got closer and people made way for them to get to the wood that would become a proper big bonfire. As they arrived, in their midst were a variety of girls and young women, and we’d be hard pressed to tell you which one was St. Lucia, but my money is on the one with candles on her head because she looked the most regal. (The crowd surged towards the wood and we couldn’t see if Candle Head did the actual bonfire lighting, so I’m still none the wiser.)

 

Vikings lighting the jule fire, Poulsbo, WA

Vikings lighting the jule fire, Poulsbo, WA

Before the torches came down in unison to light the bonfire, one of the Vikings spoke about the meaning of the celebration, the importance of light reaching out in the darkness at a time of the year when the darkness is so vast. Even though it was a fun, silly sort of activity akin to going to a Renaissance Festival, I felt tears threaten because it seemed like the most apt of metaphors this dark, dark year when the world seems to be extra violent and angry and brokenhearted. Maybe this is why it is my favorite time of year despite the crowds and the way my eye starts twitching because I let myself get stressed about buying subpar presents or the guilt I feel that while I’m having a perfectly lovely Christmas, a score of people are depressed or hungry or victimized or not able to be with their families. Z, for instance, will be with me this year instead of in Zimbabwe with his family, and while I’m thrilled that we are together and thrilled that I’m destined for an Indiana Christmas, there is still a certain sadness that we are not with his people too.

 

But as the bonfire got higher and higher, illuminating the darkness around us (and some of the ash threatening to set those of us in nylon jackets ablaze), I was able to push those trickier aspects of the holiday season out of my mind and focus instead on the light, on the freshness of the impending new year and the possibility of the world getting brighter and kinder.

 

It was the best kind of holiday night. Maybe even better than a mid-December on Chicago’s wintry streets.

 

Viking winter bonfire, Poulsbo, WA

Viking winter bonfire, Poulsbo, WA

 

 

Sep19

Flashback Friday: Secret World

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

[FYI, this entry covers my inaugural trip to Seattle to help my friend Z celebrate his birthday. Keep in mind, at this point, I’d resigned myself to the notion that he wasn’t interested in me as anything other than “good buddy.” I’d been in love with him for four years and the boy just would not budge.]

There’s a reason why Meredith Grey’s hair is so flat and lifeless on Grey’s Anatomy. It turns out, everyone’s hair, especially mine, is flat and lifeless here. I assume it is the weather (rainy with a chance of rain), yet it seems like that would lend itself more to frizz.

I’m here visiting my Zimbabwean. I like saying that. It makes me feel like Meryl Streep in Out of Africa when she refers to the people she makes work on her farm as my Kikuyu. He’s teaching here, and I am in his bed. Before you get notions of me, spent from a night of international passion, you should know that while I was in his bed, he was on the an egg-crate mattress on the floor of his living room.

I ruin all the best romantic scenarios I create for you by telling the truth.

My college friend Jane emailed that her eleven-year-old son came home from school yesterday and said, “I’m just starting to realize that girls have their own secret world, and it’s FREAKY!” The Zimbabwean and I laughed and laughed over that last night when I read it aloud, but I could tell he has no idea. No idea despite advanced academic degrees that we women have secret communication-interpretation skills no Navajo code-breaker could ever crack. So when you open his refrigerator and see he has two Cokes and a package of Dubliner cheese, just for you, you swoon a little even though you’ve sworn off swooning over this particular man. When you lament how awful and Meredith Grey-y your hair looks and he says, “I don’t think so” it is, after several mental contortions, the equivalent of his saying, “Your hair is as the sun shining on the Zambezi, and I wish to spend my days basking in both the glow and beauty of it.” When he refers to his apartment as “our apartment” it is as if he has said, “I want to share my living space for the rest of my days with no one but you.” When he says, “I took off the roll of scratchy toilet paper and bought you the kind that those bears use” it’s as if he said, “I love you so profoundly that I want only the very best—softness, absorbency, and four-ply bathroom experiences—for you.” In this sick, sad world, even his choosing to sleep on egg crates instead of in his own bed with you seems like a declaration of love.

Poor eleven-year-old boy. How can he ever learn to cope in a world where half the population is this indirect, this given to fancy. . . this freaky?

So, Seattle. We walked over half the city last night and so I’m reserving judgment until we rent a car tomorrow and investigate it when my feet don’t hurt. It’s nice. Lots of coffee. The people are friendly. Somehow I had in my head that it would look and feel like Vancouver, but it turns out it’s a whole different place. Yesterday, my Zimbabwean took me to Pike Place Market. While I don’t like fish and do not like to smell them, eat them, watch them, or see them manhandled by the stall vendors, it was a unique experience. Also, there is a lot there that is not fish. Like huge bundles of fresh flowers for $4, and hippies selling art, and little dogs in plaid raincoats, and jam sampling, and fudge sampling, and street musicians singing protest songs (just protesting in general, with an undertone of “This war is unconscionable” and “George Bush sucks” thrown in for good measure), and all sorts of useless crap you don’t need like Oscar Wilde action figures, “Aunt Flo’s Tampon Case,” and cardboard cutouts of William Shatner. From there, we went to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, where you can buy other useless things and see oddities like mummified human remains and a stuffed two-headed calf. We took a bus to the Space Needle but opted not to go up because it cost $14 and was cloudy. My cousin G suggested I go up not because the views are spectacular or because it is a piece of post-Populuxe history, but because she didn’t go up when she visited in the spring and apparently the only thing people ask youwhen they hear you visited Seattle is, Did you go up in the Space Needle? I will wait for a sunny day. Or at least a day when there is a chance of sun.

Last night we walked up a San Francisco style hill to see his university. He wanted decorating suggestions for his office as some big wigs are coming to campus today, but it is a hopeless cause. I suggested he buy a plant and an Edgar Allen Poe action figure from Pike Market, but other than adding some doo-dads like that, it is a hopeless sea of glass and giant industrial office furniture in the space of a broom closet. While there, I met the man who hired Z, and he tried to entice me to their wine and cheese reception this afternoon. I will, instead, be buying a birthday card and maybe a cake or some gift-ish thing for Z’s birthday. Extroverts never seem to get that the invitation to spend three hours with total strangers whom you will never see again is like a prison sentence.

After that, we walked up Broadway in search of food and so I could see, as Z put it, “the freak show.” It’s a street that apparently delights in the counter-culture, so in the space of a single block you can see goths, hipsters, drag queens, the heavily made-up, heavily tattooed, significantly pierced and spiked, as well as people randomly dressed like super heroes.

Sadly, the freaks were not out, either because it was too early in the evening or two middle-of-the-week. I will have to save those human oddities for another day, though clearly I’ve got my own little freakshow happening right inside my head and don’t have to walk up any hills to get a front row seat.

 

Jul3

A Cure for the Simple Life

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rgsdesk

 

When we got engaged, we looked at two-bedroom rentals within walking distance of campus because we needed more space than Z’s little 1920s one-bedroom apartment offered. With his three pieces of Craig’s List furniture and five batik wall hangings from Zimbabwe, the place looked spacious, but I come with a certain amount of baggage. I wasn’t prepared to begin a new life in a new city without my precious things: Amish-built furniture, objet d’art, childhood sock monkey, a herd of bulky Irish sweaters (too hot to wear in Seattle, fyi, but I like having them available should the weather take a turn), and the cloud of paper that follows me wherever I go, like Pig Pen’s dust. If we had stuffed all of my things into his apartment, we would have instantly been candidates for Hoarders: Newlywed Edition.

 

I loved Z’s apartment. Loved the woodwork and the big bank of windows overlooking a shady tree, how it felt to live smack in the middle of things, but most importantly, I loved its oldness, its crookedness, its sense of history. I imagined a bevy of nurses living here in the 1930s, walking to work at one of the many hospitals here on First Hill. I imagined what it might have been like for them to look out our windows and down to Elliott Bay, a sight we can’t see now because of a high rise full of partying youth that sits between us and the ferry-laden waters. It seemed like a simpler time, and I liked being in Z’s apartment pretending we would be living a simpler life together.

 

Neither of us are that strong at math, but when the apartment across the hall from his became available, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it was cheaper to rent an entire bonus apartment in an old building whose only modern conveniences are electricity and running water than it was to rent one of those new, two-bedroom places with leather furniture and cappuccino machines in the lobby, triple-paned glass, walk-in closets, dishwashers, and personal washer-dryers that aren’t shared by the building’s inhabitants in a basement that some days smells like Satan’s backside. We decided immediately that the apartment across the hall would be a writing studio for me, a place to keep our newly acquired Kitchen-Aid mixer for our “baking center” (a use that had “failure” written on it before I ever tried my first batch of cookies—I’m not that strong a measurer, and it turns out a ring on a finger does not instantly make a woman domestically inclined), and guest quarters should family or friends decide to trek across the globe to see us. My only concern was that should Immigration Services ever get wind of our two-apartment lifestyle, they might make assumptions about our marriage that are untrue. (Though if they stopped by for tea and saw how often the bonus apartment is used as a storage facility, then they would believe! It is often nearly uninhabitable because of picnic gear, off-season clothing, stacks of finished books waiting to find homes, half-finished craft projects, and the other detritus of our life together. Plus Hudge parks her bike there when she rides over for a visit.)

 

The problem with having two living spaces separated by two locked doors is that often I simply forget to go to the other space. The apartment where we live our lives is like a Nest of Inertia, and I often find it nearly impossible to lift myself off the sofa and walk across the hall to write at my desk, as if there are 100 lb. weights holding me down. I have this idea in mind that if those locks did not exist, I would wake up every morning and skip across the hall, plop down at my desk, and write for a giddy eight hours before skipping back “home” to greet Z when he returns at the end of the day. Instead, I think about going to the studio. I think about the light I love and how much I want to be there at the desk, and still, I sit under the weight of the identical apartment that feels more like home. It seems lonelier in the studio that has less of Z in it, which makes no sense. Both apartments are empty—Z is at work. What’s more, I LOVE my writing space. I feel like myself—my pre-married self, my childhood self, the self I was before I was born—when I am at this desk, yet too many days I deny myself the joy of being here and instead curl up in a ball on my corner in the Nest of Inertia and write. Or worse, I don’t write and instead just think about writing and hate myself a little. Or even worse still, I don’t write, don’t think about writing, and instead, invent things to do that have nothing to do with writing at all, like reorganizing the cutlery drawer.

 

There is no time I like my writing studio more than when we have a house guest who takes up residence in it and so being in it to write is no longer a viable option for me. My brain becomes electric with ideas. My fingers physically ache to be on a keyboard that is sitting on my desk. The books that surround the desk suddenly feel like all the books I should be reading right this minute. I’m very nearly jealous of our guests because they “get” to live in a space that I have access to  every other day of my life but too often ignore. Their presence, perhaps, frees it from being a lonely place where I am meant to face myself on the page every day and suddenly becomes a vacation getaway, where my ideas suddenly seem 100% more creative. The guests sit on the sofa, and I sit in my desk chair, spinning around while we talk, noticing things on which my eyes would not even land if this were one of my solitary writing days.

 

Last week Belle was here, and we spent time in my studio talking about her latest poetry manuscript and the pile of papers I’m trying to turn into a memoir if only the fog would clear in my brain. While we talked, I spun and scanned like a cheeky six year old sitting in Daddy’s Office Chair, feet off the floor, twirling. The chair would slow and I’d zero in on a particular book I felt a need to steal away from Belle’s domain and drag back to my lair across the hall. One such book was one I bought exactly 24 hours after declaring to Z that I would never, with God as my witness, buy another self-help book again. It is called Simple Steps, and promises on the cover that in ten simple weeks you can gain complete control over your life. It joins a host of other books that promise peace of mind to the Highly Sensitive INFP #4 Child of Divorce who is also an Anxiety-Ridden, Meditative, Mystic Disorganized Writer with big plans to start and maintain an illustrated journal. But this one—only TEN weeks to a healthy, more organized, thinner, stronger, de-cluttered, spiritual lifestyle?–who wouldn’t want that?

 

I remember when I bought the book three years ago, Z just shook his head in amusement. Not only was I already back-peddling on my no-more-self-help-books proclamation, but we’d just gotten married and while Z knows I’m not perfect, he really does not understand why I’m constantly trying to change these inherent parts of my personality. I’ll never be particularly tidy. I’m never going to be the housekeeper my mother is. I’m always going to nod off when I try to meditate. Why can’t I just accept myself the way he does?

 

Who knows. Each self-help book is like a little bundle of hope about the person I could become.

 

Had I been alone in the studio when I re-found this as yet un-read book, what would have happened is I would have started another journal with the plan of changing my life. I would have spent the first week following the authors’ simple steps (Week #1: drink 64 ounces of water a day, walk 20 minutes a day, save $2 a day, and clean out a drawer a week, preferably at a time of day when you are hungriest so you won’t eat anything). Before the day was out, I would have felt exhausted and defeated by this simple list, probably while I was drinking a Coke, and sitting amidst the contents of a half-decluttered drawer.

 

But because Belle was here as witness—and because Belle is wise and knew from the title that this was not a good book for me—it became, instead, a hoot. I skimmed each chapter and would shout out the requirements of each of the remaining nine weeks of the “simple” program, and we’d poke fun at the ideas and howl. Each week added on another list of behaviors and activities to include with the previous weeks’ activities: keep a food journal, do isometric exercises as well as your walk, add another 20 minutes to your walk, work on your posture, do yoga, fix everything broken in your house, redecorate your house with stenciling, quit eating carbs, stretch, clean out your pantry. And my favorite after all of these activities, as if I’d have the energy or inclination: daily serenity time. When I closed the back cover, it was clear that the amount of pharmaceutical assistance I would need to accomplish all of these activities would be toxic, and I’m not convinced I would have had any time left over to bathe daily despite the section on cleansing routine and dental hygiene.

 

Simple my ass.

 

But, it has made my life in this set of little 1920s apartments seem a lot less complicated. Belle has gone home, sadly, but the studio is mine again. Week One: skip across the hall, unlock the door, write.

 

And P.S., other ways I’ve simplified my life include putting Simple Steps on the pile of books heading to Goodwill next time we rent a car.

 

 

 

 

Jan16

Stacked

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My desk (fantasy version)

My desk (fantasy version)

I used to have students who would say to me, “I’m a writer, but I hate to read.” Whenever I’d hear that—and I heard it too much—I’d always want to do one of those obnoxious cough talks, where you hold your hand over your mouth, bark a cough, and simultaneously say something rude. But I was a good teacher, so instead I’d suggest a book I was sure would capture their interest.

You can’t write and not read. I mean, I suppose you can, but I don’t really want to have to read what you write. And frankly, it seems a little rude to me to write something you think other people should read when you refuse to read yourself. I suppose you could be a chef who doesn’t like to eat anyone else’s food, but where would you get your inspiration and style?

I have no idea if I would have thought of myself as a writer if my mother hadn’t made being a reader non-negotiable. Maybe I would have been like those old students of mine, enamored with the idea of having my name on a book or a story or a poem published with my byline without having bothered to study craft or let someone else’s words inspire my own. It’s one of those unanswerable nature vs. nurture debates. I grew up in an apartment that was filled, floor to ceiling, with books crammed into a brick-and-board shelving system. I saw my mother reading and I was read to nightly. I had my own library card the moment I was allowed to have one, and I knew how to use it. (Brief aside: one of the saddest losses to me in this barcode age is the absence of the satisfying “Ka-chunk” sound when you checked out a book.) My childhood was spent at garage sales, used bookstores, and in the book sale section of the musty Salvation Army store, where Mom’s early collection got its start. Though I might have gotten bored during these lengthy browsing sprees at times, I was resigned. Books were holy and when you were in the presence of some that were for sale, you kept quiet and waited for selections to be made and the ting of the cash register that signaled the benediction.

I had my own bookcases before I had my own room. They were full of Little Golden Books, Dr. Seuss, the Little House on the Prairie Series, Trixie Belden mysteries, and all manner young adult books. The shelves grew. First three small ones, and then a desk set with adjoining shelves that were later cut in two, turned sideways, and had boards put across the short ends, giving my own library room to grow. When my  mother and step-father got married and bought a house, it wasn’t long before we’d enlisted him into building floor-to-ceiling shelves in my bedroom. When I was constructing my library, my belief was that it was something I’d carry with me for life, like scars and family photos. You might weed out the baddies, but even if you outgrew a book, you didn’t casually release it into the wilds. You hung on to it because it was part of the literary canon of your life.

* * * * *

When you think of me, I’d like for you to have the above photo in mind: my tidy desk with a row of writing books in front of me at the ready, should I need to find an answer about style or read a line for inspiration. These are all books that I’ve read in total or in part and know to be useful. When I look at my desk, these books bring me joy because this is the sort of person I always imagined I’d be: organized, controlled, and like a good Girl Scout, prepared.

But I’ve got a book problem. They multiply like rabbits. Despite the fact that I culled the herd when I moved here, and left half of my collection back in Indiana at my folks’ house, I’m operating at near maximum capacity here. When I was cleaning out my office this past spring after I resigned from my teaching position, I weeded extensively. There were a lot of books there that I had bought when I was just starting my collection, thinking that my life wouldn’t be complete if I hadn’t read the complete works of  ________________________________, but two decades later I no longer felt compelled. I’m beginning to recognize that I don’t have an infinite amount of reading days ahead of me, and so I’m trying to be choosey. (Which begs the question, why was I up until four a.m. last night finishing the latest Dan Brown novel.) But even with the weeding, every time I’m back home, a few more books leap into my suitcase, desperate to be reunited with their siblings.

rgsofficeshelves

So this is what my writing studio looks like, plus another set of shelves on the opposite wall where the books are double-stacked. Plus, a small set of cubes to go on top of these just as soon as Z and I figure out how to secure the shelves to the wall without wrecking our chances of getting our deposit back.

There wasn’t room for bookshelves in our living room, so for the first year or so that we were married, it was largely book free, give or take a coffee table book. Then I started getting books that I was planning to read “next.” So I put them on the windowsill behind the sofa. At first, it was just a few books and I definitely would be getting to them shortly, but then I went to a bookstore, used up an Elliott Bay Books gift card, went to a reading and felt compelled to buy the author’s latest title, had a birthday, and the next thing I knew, my “next” collection ran the length of the double windowsill. While the books in my studio are arranged in a very specific but intuitive fashion so I can easily find what I need, on the windowsill it is a free-for-all. I put books there as they come to me, so race car driver Janet Guthrie’s biography is right next to National Geographic’s Scenic Highways and Seven Secrets of the Prolific.

Book chaos

Book chaos

Books crept into the weird bar space behind our TV. Some appeared under my little wooden stool. We won’t speak of my nightstand, where the stack is currently so high, it threatens to block out my light. Nor will we speak of Z’s poor books, which I always relegate to hidden corners and alcoves. Any of these books could go live in the studio, where they might be more at home and so I would have more surfaces in my living room on which to set Zimbabwean objet d’art (read: stone hippos and wart hogs made of scrap metal), but I know as soon as I take them there, they’ll be lost to me. I’ll forget about them, find them in ten years and wonder what made me ever think I wanted to read a memoir about a Seattle mom who loves yoga or an American family who lived in Berlin before World War II.

And don’t even get me started on why it is I think I need to own every book about writing that was ever written. I’ve got so many books on how to be a productive writer, that I refuse to buy another unless the first line is: In order to be a more  productive writer, quit reading books about how to be more productive. It’s a sickness I have.

What I'm reading NEXT.

What I’m reading NEXT.

This is my most recent stack of books, compliments of Z and my folks. They came for both Christmas and my birthday. The desk behind them will open. Right now. But as soon as I cash in those holiday gift cards? Forget about it.

I know the world of e-reading makes for tidier living spaces, but I’ve got five books on my iPad and I can’t remember to read them. An iPad, to me, is not a book; it is a place to check my mail, watch Downton Abbey, and play “Ticket to Ride.” My brain doesn’t hear the start-up ping of an electronic device and think, “Oh boy! Time to read!”

So here’s my 2014 challenge to myself. I am going to show up to those books on the windowsill (and my new books, of course!) read as many of them as I am able, and report back to you.

If it were a real challenge, I’d make some outlandish promise about how they’d all be read and removed by December 31st, but I’m not crazy. Some books will probably always need to live there so I have easy access: The Art of the Personal Essay, The One-Minute Organizer, and You Can Heal Your Life (because sometimes I need to know what negative thought pattern I have that might be causing my big toe to hurt). That’s 68 books, plus the top two on my nightstand that I’ve got  to finish, which rounds it off to a solid 70.  And maybe, for good measure, I’ll read all the magazines I’ve been stockpiling since I got married. Joan Didion has been staring at me from the cover of Poets & Writers for two years now.

What are you reading? Oh, don’t tell me. The windowsill is already full.

rgsstool

Dec21

Please, Can I Have My Gold Star?

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I’ve got this big writing project that should be well under way now that I am over six months from the classroom and more than a few months into  my Year of Writing (YOW). Instead, I’ve been staring at a lot of blank screens and notebooks whose pages look too pristine to sully. I write a blog entry or a to-do list and it feels like an accomplishment some days. I do copious research on whether it is better to journal in long hand or if perhaps I should invest in a journaling ap like Day One, and I get so lost in the research that I fail to get a journal entry written in any format.

I’m convinced that 90% of being a writer is fighting the urge not to write, while simultaneously longing to get your fingers on a keyboard and thoughts out of your head. In fact, if building split rail fences were my passion, I’m kind of curious about all the ways I might try to keep myself from firing up the chain saw. Or, alternatively, firing up the chainsaw and cutting everything in sight but the logs that would make those split rail fences.

Worse yet, people ask how the writing is going and if I am able to resist my immediate inclination (to stab them with a sharp but non-lethal object…say a spork or particularly inflexible bread tie), then I say, “It’s going,” and I quickly redirect by asking them about themselves. Often, they become sidetracked at this point and I am left in peace. Then later, I feel guilty because they were nice enough to ask and sometimes I can’t even remember what their jobs entail.

Z is not so easy to redirect though. He’s got a razor-sharp memory and he can read me too well. Also, he is my champion, and a person should never, ever discourage her champion.

When we parted company at the airport two weeks ago, I told him that my goals for our time apart were fourfold:

1)   writing

2)   exercising

3)   cleaning out some of my stuff from my parents’ house because  no one should have to navigate around the specter of the spelling bee trophy I won in 1978

4)   and most importantly, really enjoying my people and my hometown while I’m in the same zip code.

So today Z and I talked on the phone briefly, and he asked how my daily goals were coming along. I had two choices: lie and tell him I was doing them all religiously and daily so he would heap  praise on my head, which would feel good briefly until I remembered it was undeserved, or I could tell the truth. You know my record on successfully lying, so truth seemed like the best option.

“The writing is so-so,” I said, but then added brightly, “I’ve nailed a couple of the other goals though!” He asked which ones, and I told him that I was definitely enjoying myself every day (managing to maintain calm, appreciate the sunsets, the snow, etc.)

“And the other one?” he asked.

“Reading,” I said.  “I’ve been reading every day, reading myself to sleep every night. It’s nice not to be so addicted to the computer.”

“I don’t remember ‘reading’ on your list,”  he said. “Was that a goal?

We wasted precious long-distance moments trying to figure out whether reading was on the list or not.  What was that fourth goal? Finally, Z says, “I thought you were cleaning out your stuff or something. Wasn’t that the plan?”

Oh. Yeah. Weeding. Not reading. Oops.

But I really do have that “enjoying myself at home” goal mastered now. Maybe it’s better to do one thing well than four things in a mediocre fashion.