there is a place on a washington island road where the rest of the world disappears. you are walking alongside forest and can see the sky as you look up, tall trees framing blue, the sound of sandhill cranes and red-eyed vireos accompanying your steps. and then you enter this place. the trees gently arc over the road and you are covered by a canopy; we have sheltered in this spot during more than one sudden rainfall. even in the bright day, the green above you – which turns to brilliant umber, rich red, flaming orange during summer’s release on the forest – allows for little light. and at dusk, while the sun sinks into the water hundreds of feet away, walking in the middle of the road, it is dark-dark, the canopy a lure for night creatures, safe in the shadows.
there is a place in a tree in the yard of my growing-up house outside the window of my old room where the branches invited sitting. for hours i would sit there, write, ponder. in the summer the maple seemed to grant me privacy from the world, its branches full of leaves and canopying my little spot. a shelter.
there was a place in the wooden structure in our backyard that had a yellow awning that made a fort. when My Girl and My Boy were little they would play up there for hours, The Boy lining up matchbox cars, The Girl often reading a book. a special space, this little fort, it was hard when it was time to dismantle it and pass it on to friends with little ones.
these places of shelter – places of canopy – provide such a sense of protection, a sense of being held from harm – from the elements, away from others, in our own private place. much like our homes, they can give us pause, a deep breath, safety.
in this time of distancing and stay-safe-stay-at-home, i look around our house and give thanks for its canopy of shelter, for the way it holds us from harm, for the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years it keeps us safe.
the ernie straw. this straw has lived in the kitchen drawer for decades. it served the sesame-street-zeal of My Girl and My Boy when they were little-little and has made various appearances back in the sunlit-world from time to time since then.
this summer when The Girl was here house-sitting i came home and into the kitchen to find her using it to sip her pre-workout drink. she laughingly told me, “it’s a good straw!” i can’t tell you how happy i was that ernie was still in the drawer when she went searching for the perfect sipping-utensil.
in the last week, ernie has become my constant companion. positioned carefully in my coffee hydroflask or perched in my water glass or teetering out of a wine glass, ernie and i have done beverage-life together.
they say necessity is the mother of invention and, particularly, this past week with two broken wrists, i would have to agree. stuck closer to the right side of my brain as a creative thinker (although admittedly there is quite a bit of ny-style-left-side there as well) i have had to sort out how to do things, let’s say, in-a-different-way.
i can proudly say that i can put on my socks, eat my own meal with a fork or a spoon, cut a steak (with the steak knife lodged into my RH cast), put on a little eyeliner and mascara with my LH steadying my right hand (not easy, but some things are just necessary), and type. last night i squeezed (!) the toothpaste out of the tube and surprised d with his toothbrush pre-pasted. in bigger news, i have played my piano four days in a row. i have 9 fingers to use right now; my right thumb is immobilized. but there are a lot of notes you can play with nine fingers, especially at the right angle and taking your time.
ernie and i are trying to keep a good attitude. his curlycue-ness is pretty cute and his smile engaging. he keeps me from feeling too sad, too limited. he reminds me that the constraints i feel right now are exercising my creative juju (he’s a ridiculous optimist). and he, most importantly, ties me to all the years backward, where he, yes, an inanimate object, has been a part of my life and the life of my children.
i couldn’t be more grateful to have found this life-gossamer-thread in our kitchen drawer last monday, the day i was injured. once again, something profound and something simple – and both remind me of what’s important.
i sent My Girl a photo of ernie in my coffee vessel. she quickly replied, “it’s a good straw!” yes.
we were watching out the window. a balmy 35 degree chicago late afternoon and we were waiting for The Boy to get home from work. the bus went by touting an ad for one of the universities. “you be you,” it read.
i personally cannot think of two people more dedicated to being themselves than my children so this post is in honor of their fierce ‘being you-ness’. it is celebrating their ever-continuing search for who that is and their ability to both stand in and walk through the fire of growth. it is lifting up their spirits of adventure and knowledge of what’s important. it is acknowledging that they often walk outside what would be comfortable or secure for others, confident that they are finding their way in the space beyond the edges. it is reveling in their zeal. i am infinitely proud of them. my beloved children.
1977. graduation. yashica fx-2. my most-prized possession and my constant companion was the 35mm single lens reflex camera my momma and dad gave me when i graduated from high school. it went everywhere with me and i made every reason to be out and about with it, capturing sunrises, sunsets, beaches, state parks, roadtrips, lighthouses, birds and other wildlife, my nieces and nephew. i loved this camera and still have it, although i haven’t used it in years. i learned about f-stops and aperture openings, film speed and depth of field – all with this camera.
somewhere along the way, automatic cameras began to reign supreme and i joined the ranks with a minolta that made taking pictures of My Girl and My Boy easier, faster, somewhat brainless. as they were little and moments passed in lightning speed, this camera made moment-seizing more possible, although one still had to wait till the film was developed to see if you were successful. sometimes it was the blurry photo, the funny face, the i-wasn’t-trying-to-get-that-picture photograph that are the prizes. they are the ones we couldn’t erase, delete, photoshop, filter. they were what they were.
i remember roll after roll, walking in to rode’s camera shop and taking advantage of their double-print deal, always sending photographs to grandparents, family and friends who were afar. having sorted through every one of the prints in recent years, i can honestly say that i have literally thousands of photographs of my children when they were growing up. perhaps this is the reason they roll their eyes at me now when i want to take pictures of them?
i can’t help but think of what i might have captured on film had digital cameras or cellphones with the exquisite-cameras-of-today been around back then. video without having a gigantic vcr camcorder on your shoulder or even a smaller, still cumbersome 8mm camera, instant photos that you can preview and take over, every photo or image or video ‘fixable’, ‘changeable’, ‘alterable’.
i have to say i am a little envious of the ability of parents today who are able to document their children, their travels, their, well, every move, not to even begin to mention selfies, and instantly facebook-post it, email it, text it, snapchat it, instagram it, tweet it, snapfish or shutterfly-book-it, sharing it with the world. it’s so simple. their documentation will be so much more complete, the phone-camera a constant companion with no real added burden of weight or case or extra lenses or film or a flash. the rise and ease of amazing technology.
it was with a sense of uh-oh-we-really-are-getting-olderrrrr that we happened upon the display of cameras and movie cameras in the antique shoppe. i wanted to pick each one up, look through the viewfinder, compose a photo or two. i was instantly transported back to crabmeadow beach with susan, climbing the fence to snag a few sunrise pictures. i was in the boat with crunch, cruising long island sound lighthouse to lighthouse. i was on the floor with my babies, catching their moments.
there was something magical about waiting for that old film to develop. something that made it sometimes easier to put the camera, the device, away. something that made it paramount to memorize -for your very own mind’s eye- the most precious of events, the most intimate details, the agonizingly briefest purity of a perfect moment in time.
day’s end is close. today was christmas. between last night’s eve and today we sang songs. we played carols. we lit luminaria in the backyard under an oddly warm midnight sky. we hiked in twilight woods. we gazed in the dark at trees we decorated and lit with strands of lights and glinting silver ornaments. we cooked meals and sipped wine. we watched as The Boy and The Girl opened gifts. we unwrapped presents and cards sent to us, set aside, waiting for today.
and in all of that? the common denominator?
love.
surely the spirit of the holiday season can help to mend all rifts, help to inspire goodness, help to heal us. in this world of hypocrisy, we can be united. it matters not which holiday we celebrate. what matters is heart and the rich universal tenets that march hand in hand with love.
the video from My Girl made me out and out cry. it was just a little hello, sent from around a firepit in the high mountains after a long day of working. and it was perfect timing. to see her face and hear her voice was pure joy.
we walked and walked and walked. miles from millenium park’s christmas tree and skating rinks, past beautiful ornate displays of lights and simple twinkling white branches. in a rare opportunity linking my arm through My Boy’s as we strolled, i was filled with joy. the loudspeaker music and dancing lights of the lincoln park zoo just echoed my delight.
as adults, the holidays carry a different set of qualities than they did as when we were children. much pressure, oftentimes grief, maybe a slippery slope feeling of never-doing-enough, some disappointment, a measure of jealousy or envy perhaps as others-with-family-all-in-town gather together in big festive celebrations. for those of us who work on christmas eve and christmas day, there is a yet another added layer.
we walked through the woods yesterday looking for the right branch laying on the ground. we don’t yet have a christmas tree up. we have other little trees – i have collected small trees through the years – but no true christmas tree. each year in these last years, we have chosen that “tree” carefully, always something we found, something re-purposed into a christmas tree, something that had meaning. there was the christmas-tree-on-a-stick – a christmas-tree-misfit – we cut down on the tree farm, a piece of the tree that fell into our backyard narrowly avoiding the house, a branch that had snapped off of our beloved tree out front, a star suspended over a straight trunk wrapped in lights to tease The Boy.
this year i thought about just going to a lot and purchasing a tree, thinking maybe, in the midst of the ending of a really tough year for many, that might put me into the holiday spirit. but i just couldn’t bring myself to do that. we figured that the answer would become obvious, as it has done in the past years. and it did. watching My Boy, clearly proud of the decorations of the neighborhoods north-of-downtown, agree with us about how simple, beautiful and truly elegant the white branches were, made up my mind.
last night we put the first coat of white spray paint on the two sets of branches we brought home. we’ll finish coating them with paint later today and wrap them in white lights. we’ll gently place silver ornaments as we play christmas music in the background. i will miss My Girl and My Boy like crazy. i will yearn for my parents, my brother and sister-in-law and sister and brother-in-law and nieces and nephew and all their families, david’s parents and extended family. it isn’t the christmas of christmas-past.
but there still is magic. those moments of joy – when everything else ceases to exist and joy eclipses it all.
linda and jim were doing the swedish death cleanse. linda was determined to de-clutter their home of anything that could potentially burden their children one day. once on a mission there is no stopping her, so they were diligent about going through every corner, nook and cranny of their home, eliminating anything that was not needed, anything that hadn’t been used in ages or was just simply extraneous.
now, we all talked about that around the table. with the sun setting on lake michigan and wine in our glasses, our little neighborhood group discussed how hard it is to let go of things, especially things that have some meaning or are mementos of some sort. add to that the fact that many of us were raised by parents who had experienced the great depression and you have people who are pre-destined to keep stuff, repurpose it, re-use it, save it for sometime you might need it, save it for when it comes back into fashion so you don’t have to buy it again, etc etc etc. (that’s definitely my experience and my excuse.)
many times i have entered the basement storage room and gazed at the bins. in years past, we have eliminated most of the boxes and traded them for these bins, throwing out some things, giving away some things, donating items that are useful, so we have made some progress. now there are bins with christmas ornaments, bins with artwork and stories and projects created by The Girl or The Boy, bins of things my sweet momma felt too guilty to give away, bins of sewing paraphernalia, bins of art supplies, bins of old music (for everyone gives the musician they know all the old sheet music they come across in their own basement and then that musician, who feels like it’s a mortal sin to throw music out, is compelled to keep it all in file cabinets or, yes, bins.)
from time to time i get a wild hair and go through a bin or random remaining box or pile in the basement workroom. sometimes i am pretty successful at eliminating clutter. trust me – i have been in peoples’ homes who have been hoarders and just seeing that makes me want to get rid of everything and live in a tiny house (well, one that would fit my piano.)
this winter perhaps we will tackle this once again. one more layer of cleaning out. it is possible. it’s just tough for me to be ruthless. i am too thready to be ruthless. touching memories or seeing them around me is reassuring and fills my heart.
one day in more recent days i went upstairs to look for something in the closet in the hallway. on the top shelf sat these slippers. stored here, they are my sweet momma’s and my poppo’s. they kept them here for when they would visit.
i know that they won’t visit our home again. noticing the slippers stopped me in my pursuit of whatever-it-was-i-was-looking-for. all the moments of having my parents present in my home swirled around me, the finality once again a reality. i struggled with what to do. i took them out of the closet and brought them downstairs to show d.
laying them carefully on the floor, i took this picture so that i could look at it and remember. and then, i placed them in a bag so that someone else – a woman with smaller feet than mine and a man with bigger feet than d’s – could have slippers. slippers with a bank of memories. slippers worn hugging my children as they grew. slippers worn around the christmas tree. slippers worn in the cold winter sitting by the fire or in the summer drinking morning coffee on the deck. slippers that lived here, just waiting for their owners, my beloved parents, to put them on. slippers with big heart. slippers with profoundly good juju.
“this is not goodbye. it’s just farewell to the you i recognize. i’ve got a long, long time to learn how to feel you in a new way.” (lowen & navarro: crossing over from pendulum)
thanksgiving dawns. 2019.
thanksgiving dawns. rewind. 1960s. 1970s. i remember waking with great anticipation to watch the macy’s thanksgiving day parade on our black and white tv. my sweet momma, having risen early-early to put the turkey on at some ridiculous hour and my poppo, trying to appear helpful, both dedicated parade watchers, sipping coffee and snacking on entenmanns crumb cake. made sweeter for us new yorkers by seeing it in person on the streets of nyc, my mom would recollect parades-gone-by with horse drawn floats and she would cheer aloud for the tv version, even in the den. dad would be quiet, but he would be grinning, waiting for bullwinkle or popeye or underdog. these were moments i didn’t memorize. i was too young to know that i should. i was steady in the world, surrounded by family who i loved and who loved me and not necessarily given to thinking in the terms “many years later”.
thanksgiving dawns. rewind. 1990s. My Girl and My Boy were little, in pjs, fully engaged in the turkey dance their dad performed with the turkey on the counter, happily catching bits and snatches of a colorful parade i was still enthralled with, waiting to lick the dessert beaters, while i was making a feast of turkey and casseroles and setting a table with candles and cloth. we let the wishbone dry on the shelf for days and sometimes longer, forgetting about it, but eventually, they would snap it, wishes in their hands. i’m sure they didn’t memorize those moments. they were steady in the world, surrounded by family they loved and who loved them and definitely not given to thinking in the terms “many years later”.
thanksgiving dawns. 2019. it is quiet. My Girl in the high mountains, My Boy in the southern hemisphere. we will prepare for a simple meal. we will hike. we will be grateful for all the thanksgivings of the past, for all the thanksgivings of the future. for the thanks-giving of every day. i know that, indeed, despite all our failings, our challenges, our sorrows and disappointments as well as our absolute joys and successes, we are steady in the world, surrounded by family who we love and who love us. they are all here. i memorize moments all the time these days. for later. and many years later.
i have said farewell to too many. but i have learned to recognize them in the kindnesses of strangers, in the serendipities and synchronicities of wondrous things that happen. i recognize them in the gentle breezes that sweep across my face. i am learning how to feel them in a new way. and i know they – my angels – are there.
ick. i would much rather be thought of as “swell” than “moth-eaten” or “chic” rather than “dowdy”. good grief. this is full of possibilities for an emotional breakdown, an inferiority complex in the mixing bowl.
in the show schitt’s creek, moira (the ever-present, loving and compassionate mom -NOT-) is speaking to the dad (equally as despicable in his own right.) she states that to their children they are “the polar antonym of hip”.
hmm. is this not a defining characteristic of parenthood? we simply cannot be hip like them. we are not them. our children have different hip-ness than we do; our children are swell – and will be swell – in different ways than we have ever been.
i hardly think that the well-practiced eyerolls that my daughter has given me (in my view or from a thousand miles away) are because she thinks i am “modish”. nor do i think the radio silence in-between my equally sweet love-professing text messages to my son are because he is thinking, “wow! my mom is supercool!” it is part of their job to think we are un-hip. it is part of their journey in life to think we are “antediluvian”.
it IS the circle of life. forget rafiki and mufasa and the lions and all. the circle of life is the circle of hipness. you are hip until you are no longer hip. the line is foggy and you will not be notified until it is too late. there is no expiration date or deadline for payment. it just happens. the crease between your eyebrows is deep and the waistline on your jeans slowly creeps up from your hips. un-hip.
but such is life, as my sweet momma would say. maybe it’s time to embrace being ‘the polar antonym of hip’.
i will not be whipping out the credit card to try and stay ahead of it. ‘hip’ is untenable. the silky threads trailing behind it escape grasp. my boots and flipflops and black shirts will have to be my new ‘hip’. my philosophy of less-is-more will have to be my new ‘hip’. driving big red and littlebabyscionwithhundredsofthousandsofmiles will have to be my new ‘hip’. listening to john denver and james taylor and carole king will have to be my new ‘hip’. trying to keep being an honest artist in this world of machinated stuff will have to be my new ‘hip’. and my jeans, sitting sort of on my hips, will have to be my new ‘hip’.
and i will hope-against-hope that maybe, just maybe, my children will think, “wow! mom’s pretty hip.” (only even the word ‘hip’ isn’t ‘hip’.)
my sweet poppo ended up in solitary confinement. shot down over the ploesti oil fields in romania, he was a WWII prisoner of war and was being held in a prison camp in bulgaria. he was courageously condemning the rat-eaten stale bread the prisoners were served, throwing it down, and he was hauled off to solitary confinement. after months of imprisonment my dad, along with others, was able to escape this POW camp and find his way to freedom. freedom.
each of us has our own freedom route, courage to summon up. i look at both of my children as they make their way in this world. they are courageously carving out their lives. they are scrappy and they make sacrifices to seek happiness and freedom from fear of any kind. my sweet poppo is cheering them on, both of them.
this calendar page hangs in the choir room. the words seemed particularly timely to us, for many reasons, on many levels. we looked up the person to which they were credited: thucydides. a studier of human nature, he: “also has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by, and constructed upon, the emotions of fear and self-interest.”
we owe the freedom of our country to the veterans, like my sweet dad, who we honor today and to wise, thoughtful, inspired leaders of this country. we have much to be grateful for.
and yet. these savvy words of this ancient greek historian…”the emotions of fear and self-interest”. this is relevant.
my poppo sat in a prison camp cell representing a country fighting against leaders filled with self-interest and the indiscriminate propagation of fear and atrocities upon innocent people. his courage was buoyed by the courage of his fellow soldiers. my father was staunchly determined to put others’ needs first.
i fear what is happening in our country today would sadden him; his response would be that our leaders are not acting out of courage, not out of a rallying call for equitable independence of all, but instead, out of bullying and grandiose self-serving.
and i believe my sweet poppo would throw down the rat-eaten stale philosophy of this current government. with his great courage. in true freedom.
reverse threading 