Touch Them Only Gently

By happenstance, I took myself out to lunch today; the planned meeting at the diner waylaid, me without my cellphone, the timing of communications off. When I realized my friend wasn't coming, I wavered before deciding to order anyway, to sit and listen to snippets of conversations amplified in the specific way of diners that makes it almost impossible to know who is saying what.

"...so she had to, you know, totally disinfect the whole thing and I was, like, eeeewww! But, you know, what else..."

"I can't believe he said that! Can you? Can you believe he said that?"

Then this, from the booth next to mine: "You need to be careful with them because they're very fragile. So you have to touch them only gently, okay?"

It was the older of two brothers, a boy of maybe 6 or 7, at most.

Did I even know the word "fragile" when I was that age? It's a word I rarely use without casting some kind of judgment, usually harsh.

But fragile is exactly the right word for right now. So much time spent opening memory boxes, casting around in hope of finding what's hidden inside. So many of those I love suffering, managing, coping as best they can. So many blue sky September days resonating with what happened on that one particular blue sky September day.

The boys left with their mom and grandmother. I dipped my spoon into a bowl of split pea soup and thought about how good each sip tasted.

Labors

A breeze verging on "chill" is blowing, making music of the leaves and branches. Blue sky, sunshine--is there anything more lovely than these days when summer and autumn align in near-perfect tension?

My neighbors next door are leveling off a strip of their back yard, preparing to put down grass seed; there is also a small boulder that was just one of many they extracted from that patch--while she moves soil around with a shovel, he whacks at the stone with a sledge hammer. The whole yard is being tamed to within an inch of its life.

The people across the street are having their usual Sunday brunch gathering--yes, every Sunday. So someone is cooking (or at least putting out food).

The cats have been busy shedding so I ought to be busy vacuuming. And Nature knows there's plenty to do in the garden right now (the next door neighbors have been looking pointedly in the direction of my unkempt flowers and shrubs and rose bushes--the other day there was a not-so-friendly, "Wow! That's really going wild!" aimed my way).

But I'm writing and later I'll be grading papers and at some point dinner will happen. The fruits of my labors will not be immediately obvious to anyone other than me.

For Tom

Tom is my "agent provocateur" and the other day he wondered out loud about why I don't post any of my work here on this blog.

I thought what I posted here was some of my work, but he meant—quite specifically—things I've published and sections of the memoir I'm working on.

So here's a little something for him. It's actually a section I'm debating whether or not to include in the memoir. If you're so inspired, let me know what you think.

All This Lovely Stillness

This house is so quiet. It is full of the rhythms of calm habits, of a certain messy order designed to make things possible. Walls of muted colors, furniture chosen for its clean-lined simplicity or a certain funky charm, the beds piled with pillows and topped with comforters that live up to their name. Here the only disruption comes in the form of play—two cats (what were we thinking?) tumbling and batting and leaping up.

All this lovely stillness. I can’t believe it is mine.

Yet there is something completely familiar to this. Look carefully and the past asserts itself in small ways. Leather chairs in the living room, almost like those in the house on Covewood Drive. White linen curtains in the master bedroom, longer than those in my parents’ room, but still…white linen. The importance of coffee first thing in the morning, throughout the day. Even those things hidden from sight are placed where they have always been placed—the milk goes on the right top shelf of the refrigerator, every day dishes are stored in the cabinet above the dishwasher, the broiler pan lives on the top rack of the oven. A teakettle stays on the right rear burner of the stove, “where it belongs.”

There are even relics carried through all the years of chaos, brought along in every move, just waiting waiting waiting to be placed in specific spots. My portrait, the one I sat for when I was five, wearing that dress of polished cotton bought just for the occasion. The leather jewelry cases, hand-tooled, gold-embossed, are on my dresser and still hold the mysterious Mason’s pin, the coral necklace and earrings, the carved lapis necklace, my great-great-grandmother’s gold pocket watch. A photo of the farmhouse in Illinois, sepia-toned. My grandmother’s wedding crystal is in the cabinet, her silver in a felt-lined drawer; I use them for dinner parties and holidays and, sometimes, just to feel their history, at lunchtime when I eat alone.

All of my pots and pans and skillets hang from a rack, out in plain sight, but tucked inside a cabinet there is a single small Revereware pot, its copper bottom mottled, handle faded to a dusty charcoal—the perfect size for heating a can of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup to be eaten right out of the pot with a round soup spoon I have to search for every time. My father’s pot, his spoon, a certain comfort in the ritual of standing at the counter repeating his habit. On a shelf at the back of my closet is where I keep his last blue-plaid bathrobe; soft, full of holes, the belt frayed.

There is nothing of my mother here in this house. No talismans, no objects, not even a photo on display. Nothing.

That is a lie, of course. Everything here refers to my mother. Particularly the quiet. The echo of her insists on this quiet. I insist on this calm stillness. I want it. I need it to give me, finally, the chance to heal that still-raw wound inflicted by the loss of her, that endless incremental losing. I miss my mother, my irreplaceable beloved.

Plan B

So now comes rain—a blessing, surely, though the timing of it is maddening. After a steady diet of sunny Sundays today I wake to a sodden landscape and realize I have to seriously consider instituting Plan B.

The dinner for 14 may actually have to be served inside. Good thing we bought that pop-up shelter. Good thing I drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge for those tables to set up inside that shelter. Good thing Neil spent hours coaxing the parched yard look "presentable."

I've checked my weather site, noted the green bars predicting rainfall for the hours between 3 p.m. and midnight (oh, if they are right it will rain!), watched the radar stagger through the spectrum of orange (heavy) to blue (light). "Damn," I think. "And damn."

Good thing we had the foresight to buy a dining table that expands into the living room to accommodate a crowd. Good thing the living room has so little furniture in it.

Good thing life has taught me to always have a Plan B (and C and D).

And this: the point is not the perfection of the setting. The point is to gather together 14 for a celebration of all the unpredictable joy Life delivers.

Drought

According to a weather website I visit more often than seems reasonable for someone who is not a meteorologist, it has been seven days since the last rain fell in my town. According to my memory, when there has been no rain worth mentioning in far longer. We need a good soaking rain, the kind of rain that makes an obvious difference for the garden and, less obviously, for the spirit.

A washout of a day forces us to confront the fact of weather and can, if we allow it, force us into a kind of acceptance in a way blue skies, sunshine and a freshening breeze never will. "What are you going to do? You can't stop the rain," we say.

This site also tells me that there has not been a lightning strike since July 21 at 21:29:50 (approximately 9:30 pm). As I am currently considering lightning from different angles—lightning as metaphor, lightning as a natural phenomena with the hope of understanding the mechanics of them (if "mechanics" is even the right phrase—my shaky grasp of science comes into play, again), lightning as transforming energy—this seems significant to me. Not that I wish for lightning; I fear electrical storms even though I am fascinated by them. But there is a part of me that is hoping for a good long thunderstorm with a light show worth watching so I can pay closer attention, bear witness to the awesome spectacle of that white-blue flash knowing as I do now that it is hotter than the surface of the sun.

I want to see what effect knowledge has on my fear.

So while I certainly have been enjoying some elements of these rainfree days—the swimming, the grilling, the sitting outside in the gloaming watching the bats dance for their meals—I've also been scanning the skies for the storm that I know is coming.

Small Cakes

Perhaps it's because I've just come back from the 10-day summer residency for my MFA program—with what feels like a burgeoning summer cold—and the reality of the final semester looms large.

Perhaps it's because the Wondergrandchild is halfway around the world in South Africa, a trip she left on while I was gone, a trip I envy and which thrills me because just imagine that!

Perhaps it's the heat and humidity and the cicadas buzzing.

Perhaps it's that my mother-in-law is in the hospital, admitted for kidney stones and an infection, and is now dealing with sepsis.

Perhaps it is all of that, though I'm willing to consider that the underlying issue for my malaise is that I'm working on completing a first draft of The Memoir and I realize how much there is yet to do. No matter the reason, there is this: I am edgy, on edge, feeling as if my center is not quite holding.

But there is also this: Mr. Handsome Man has taken position on the section of desk I've designated "the editing room." He's sprawled out, appearing deep in sleep until I begin marking up the pages at which point he maneuvers his upper body onto the paper, wanting only to be as close as he can. His closeness is designed to keep me seated, available, working.

He needs me to stay with him as much as I need to stay with the work. But there are cicadas and there is the summer heat and there is the idea of one I love so dearly being so far away and there is the fact that one I love in a different way is in pain and there is the fear that I am not quite up to the task at hand.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that I keep thinking that operating a cupcake truck would be an easier way to live?

Articles of Faith

I've just returned from the 10-day summer residency for my MFA program—an experience that is always exhilarating and exhausting in almost equal parts. Just imagine the energy of over 100 writers—whose work is done in isolation—contained on a small island where every meal is shared, every morning is spent examining and discussing and defending our work, every afternoon is devoted to seminars on some element of our craft, every night is given over to socializing. It's a wonder that cinderblock dormitory is still standing on the 11th day.

One thing is certain: few of us leave that island without having shifted in some way. Another thing is certain: when many are gathered for a condensed period of time to grapple with the bare difficulties of writing, it is inevitable that conflict will erupt, feelings will get hurt, tempers will flare.

The centerpiece of every evening on that island are the readings by our faculty. They are held in the largest space on the island, the chapel with its crucifix, its religious icons—the Stations of the Cross, carvings of saints, some I cannot name because I'm not Catholic—its hard wooden pews designed to make one confront the bare difficulties of faith. Because I am not Catholic, because the closest thing I have to a religion is the craft of writing, I spend some certain part of each reading considering my faith—the quality of it, the mysteries of it, the challenges, the rewards.

Four times I have been to the island and four times I have been changed. Four times I have received some blessing that informs my writing and transforms me as a writer.

This time is was this: "Achieve Excellence Daily. Create."

Thus spake Da Chen—who I am proud to claim as my mentor and friend. It was one line from his seminar on memoir...could it be just two days ago? Yes, two days ago.

Achieve Excellence Daily. Create.

And so, to work.