the business was closed as we walked by on the sidewalk. the luminescent sunset over the harbor was beckoning. but i stopped when i saw the sign – facing out the window: “work hard and be kind“.
i’m not sure what kind of office it was – maybe a realtor, maybe insurance, i don’t know. it doesn’t matter, though. the message was clear and we so appreciated it. it was like a combo quote – of my sweet mom and poppo smushed together. there were other signs of my mom and dad here and there. simple gestures from another dimension.
when big red’s windshield started to high-pitch-whine, there was no way to ignore it. with no time for an official windshield rubber seal repair, we pulled off and found a home improvement store. i could hear my dad as we purchased and then tacked black gorilla tape all along the top windshield seal. his instructions were clear – trim the spots where there is a little gutter so that rain doesn’t accumulate there (good advice considering we were about to be driving in the torrential tropical-storm-turned-nor’easter), be sure to bring the tape all the way across and down into the well created by the driver and passenger doors, press it all down firmly and eliminate as many air pockets as possible.
i couldn’t help but remember the time – more than five decades ago – that my dad and my big brother and i had a breakdown upstate new york and they cut barbed wire from a fence for our pink-painted lilco-van-turned-camper to fashion some kind of engine fix that would get us home.
we laughed as we applied my dad’s version of a rube goldberg repair. and we laughed even more, clear that columbus and my dad were having a good chuckle together watching us from the other side. mostly, we worked hard together at trying to solve a problem, at staying calm and being kind to each other in the process. because a screaming (and later, leaking) windshield can most definitely cause stress and grumpiness.
only a little water managed to get past our super-duper-3-times-stronger-heavy-duty-all-weather homemade seal, which is pretty impressive considering the torrents of rain and wind it endured.
by the time we were walking on the sidewalk down toward the harbor and the sun, we had forgotten about the windshield challenge. we were immersing in a little harbor town i have always loved, intentionally appreciating people who were working hard and people who were kind to us.
but back in big red, on the way back – sans whistling windshield – we talked about our rube-goldberg-ing on the way out.
it all seems pretty basic to us.
gorilla tape won’t fix everything but working hard and being kind can.
these stunning plumes rise above the grasses, catching the breezes, the last vestiges of light as the sun sinks, a place for lagging butterflies to linger a moment, catch their breath.
but – the tiny seeds that form these stunning plumes are actually tiny swords that find their way onto clothing and dogga and into every manner of places and stab us time and again. they are inescapable. they are incessant. they seemingly multiply like the needles from a fresh-cut scotch pine in december – and january and february and even march.
it’s a problem.
reluctant to deal with it, we put up with the pointy seedheads for a while, poking fun at their stubborn ability to show up – simply everywhere – even while suffering.
until it just seems silly that we are enduring this pointed attack on our peaceful existence – capitulating to these ornamental grasses – these beautiful, elegantly flowing sculptures around our yard.
but it’s solvable.
and so, we decide to snip off the plumes that bend over, arcing to attach themselves to dogga or our passing-by. we decide to snip off the plumes that block the sidewalk to our front door. we decide that we can have it both ways – gorgeous grasses with upright plumes catching the light, the wind, the creatures but no low-hanging attack plumes. we figure out what to do with our – beloved – grasses.
because that’s what adults do when faced with – even the smallest – problem. we negotiate a solution that will not cause more pain.
on the side of the willis tower – downtown chicago – is affixed the atmospheric wave wall. created by the same artist whose rainbow bridgewe loved at the milwaukee art museum, olafur eliasson’s piece is striking and imbues the colors of the lakefront – sky, clouds, water in all its moods.
in speaking about his piece, olafur – also a climate and community activist – says, “what we see depends on our point of view: understanding this is an important step toward realizing that we can change reality. it is my hope that this subtle intervention can make a positive contribution to the building and to the local community by reflecting the complex activity all around us, the invisible interactions and minute fluctuations that make up our shared public space.”
the steel catches the light of the sun. the piece seemingly shifts with the movements of everything around it, with time as time passes.
we have not yet seen it at night – lit from behind – but i imagine it is stunning – with light escaping from the intersection of the colored tiles. the places of light: in-between.
just as weird as it was to sit on the train it was equally with wonder to move freely about in the city – after all this time and so much that has happened in our country – sans innocence. it is with a bit of heightened awareness we move in the world now, though i don’t suppose heightened awareness helped any of the victims of the latest violent rages at the hands of angry out-of-control people. it is impossible to figure out why the wrong front door or the wrong driveway or the wrong ask-of-a-neighbor could elicit such unconscionably brutal responses.
we were driving to the grocery store. we took the route we usually take, a side street. two-thirds of the way down this road – before the traffic light – our attention was driven to a guy on the sidewalk, staring at us. brandishing something – we don’t know what – he flailed his arm around, pointing to the sidewalk, swinging, pointing, staring at us.
pre-whatever-phase-one-would-call-the-phase-that-this-country-is-in we probably wouldn’t have thought twice. we might have wondered what he was doing, might have wondered why he stared at us, might have pondered what he was brandishing. but we wouldn’t have been entirely creeped out and we wouldn’t have planned a different route home and, perhaps, a different route to our store for the continuing future. it felt like the place between was unsafe. and i find that devastatingly sad.
we live in a normal midwest town. only – i guess – not so much. our town is now known – in these last years of the more-unsafe-phase – for a plethora of events that have no light in-between. our small city is as broken as every other small city, as every other big city.
were there to be a wall of art to represent this phase of our world what colors would it be?
in his rush to get one of the coveted front spots at costco, the guy in the infinity cut me off in the parking lot. i parked in a different row, but watched as he got out of his car. he bent down and pulled out some kind of revolver, tucking it into the back waistband of his pants. then he walked into the store.
i must say – i haven’t ever felt a need to protect myself in costco. maybe from overspending, but never from violence. it was disturbing – almost to the point of turning around and going home – to know this guy was walking around – maybe getting a rotisserie chicken or ribs or a bottle of wine or eddie-bauer-sweats or glucosamine-in-bulk – with some big handgun in his pants. i told d about my reticence to go into the store.
we have a code word for anytime we are in a situation that suddenly feels unsafe. post-parade-massacres, post-grocery-store-shootings, post-concert-devastation, post-festival-tragedies, post-school-maulings – post-all-of-it and in the middle of all of it – we know to drop everything and get out or get away if either of us senses danger. no questions asked. no lingering. just go.
it is without light in-between that this country has come to this point. the intersections of peoples and genders and ethnicities and belief systems and economic statuses and, apparently, any differences whatsoever, seem to have no light. they are not backlit nor are they reflective of the sun streaming over this land.
“our shared public space.” shared. from sea to shining sea.
how do we create the invisible interactions and minute fluctuations of a safe shared public space? how – in a country that seems to have insidious anger and no shortage of violence – do we find the light in-between us? because “we can change reality”.
my poppo would likely have agreed with sue aikens. he was a solution-finder. i will, right-here-and-now, brag about his ability to fix absolutely anything; he would find a way, even if he had to make it up. well, mostly because he made it up.
i’m not sure how he learned everything he learned; his knowledge base was incredibly practical. give him any problem and it became a challenge for him – an undertaking he never-ever thought of as insurmountable…it was simply a solution he hadn’t yet found. and so, i hear sue aikens (of national geographic’s life below zero fame – living a solitary life out on the arctic, solving problems i will likely never encounter) and i think of my dad, whose list of favorite places on earth included his workbench out in the garage (or in the basement in earlier years when they lived up north.) he saved every screw and nut and bolt and tool that crossed his path “just in case”. he was a re-purposer before it was vogue. and he was an expert at turning cardboard boxes inside out or fashioning a new box from old in order to ship or store any thing. his rube goldberg fixes were always pretty amusing, but they all worked and i can hear him in my head pondering and strategizing when i look at something-that-needs-fixing. sue aikens would be proud. her glass-half-full attitude is pretty amazing, considering the elements she deals with. she’s pretty black and white about things; a lack of grey is something i can’t really relate to, but maybe that’s why she solves things more easily – she doesn’t get lost in any part of the emotional response to the problem.
i have to say, though, that i wish i could look at problems in the same positive way as sue. yes, yes, yes, i know how much we all grow from problems and solving problems and blahblahblah. it’s the stress of problems i’m talking about…the worry. there was a prayer yesterday in the bulletin that said, “help us resist the reflex to worry constantly about every single detail of our lives…” wow. i double that. mmm. make that triple. it is a reflex. we know that the moments beyond problems will come. more than likely we will be on the other side sometime soon, sitting in the middle of the solution and looking back, shaking our heads at how befuddled and stressed we felt. but in the meantime….
in the meantime, i would like a collection of some straight-up solutions for the problems that lurk…a (metaphoric) closet full of how-to-do-its or at least how-to-make-it-ups. oh, and a better attitude about problems. they are just solutions we haven’t found yet.
reverse threading 