I am nine and sitting in Mrs. Hussey's hot, dusty classroom. The floor is scuffed from the shuffling of 30 pair of brown oxfords and their correspondingly rubber-booted "going home" feet to a soft buff. I look at the floor a lot, trying to avoid eye-contact with Mrs. Hussey, and find this impression of softness comforting. The desks are wood, one piece, with a writing surface grooved bumpy with dozens of names and initials of previous occupants and connected to the seat by an iron arm. Beneath the seat is a wooden drawer, always too small for what it is expected to contain: textbooks, black-and-white speckle-covered exercise books and papers that are to be taken home but rarely are.
The radiators hiss and vibrate; the incandescent ceiling lights glow down on bent heads. In the cloakroom damp garments steam and outdoors the sky is the color of slate behind black branches lathered with new snow. In the corner of the room a faded American flag stirs gently in the heat.
Mrs. Hussey's back is to the classroom. Her wool sweater is ornamented with a string of yellowish pearls above which her red-brown hair curls in a militant ruff around her head. Her plaid skirt reaches to her calves; the heel of her left pump is worn slightly inward. I notice all these things because I can't get my mind wrapped around what she is saying. The chalk squeaks.
Oh, no! She has whipped around to face the class - is she looking at me?
"If a train leaves the station at one o'clock and another train leaves a station 60 miles away in the opposite direction, at what time will they pass each other if each train travels at the rate of..."
No, no! What is she talking about? When will I ever need to know the answer to this question?
I am sitting on the train waiting for it to leave the station in Albany when this scene flashes through my mind. I know how long it will take the train to get to Chicago...it's a long time: 16 hours. If there is a train traveling at the same rate of speed from Chicago, I know that we will pass each other at some point but I couldn't care less where. Right now my mind is focused with pleasant anticipation on the journey ahead.
I love trains, even though some of my experiences on them have been less than wonderful. There was the time we took the train to Florida when Lizzy was a baby. Awful. We broke down four times, and each time we were all told to de-train and stand along the side of the tracks, presumably for fear that another train would come upon us (at God knows what rate of speed from the same direction) and pancake us all into oblivion. There was the 20-hour trek from Chicago to Albany where we sat for 45 minutes looking at the station from 50 feet away, but we couldn't pull in because there wasn't a track available. To my mind, however, these were minor discomforts, compared to airline snafus - glitches in an otherwise pleasant history of riding the rails.
In Europe the trains were sparkling clean and fast. There was wine and fruit and cheese and the seats were large and inviting. On the Erie Lackewanna in New Jersey I took my very first train ride from Millington to Lyons Station (15 minutes of rushing woods, fields, horses, farms, a river and a trestle) where my Uncle Allen picked me and my grandmother up and drove us home. I rode the Erie Lackewanna many times after that when I was working in Manhattan - an hour and a half in and back. The seats were wicker and my stockings suffered, but I loved the old fashioned cars, the ironwork overhead luggage racks, the testy conductors, the sturdy-looking emergency pull cords, the scent of coal and oil and the way the engineer waved at departing passengers.
And in spite of time it takes to get there, I love the trip from Albany to Chicago and back again. A fellow passenger once remarked that the train is called the Lake Shore Limited because it travels along the lake shore of Erie and Michigan and the speed of it's forward motion is extremely limited. And sometimes this is true. So on the train I enter a state of suspended animation. I can't go anywhere except to the dining car. I can't concentrate much on the reading material I bring because of the fear of motion sickness. I am left with the options of napping or gazing out the window, watching the backyards of America blur by. I find a strange comfort in this moving forward without moving. Friends who fly cannot fathom my love affair with the train. But these days it takes a whole day flying or waiting in airports to get anywhere anyway.
Once, trying to articulate my reasons for taking the train, as I fumbled for an explanation my daughter said, "I think you just enjoy the journey." Bingo. Part of the enjoyment of travel for me is getting there, appreciating just how far it is to where I am going, the time changes, the people I meet, the sense of temporary community among the passengers.
Because of the length of the trip from Albany to Chicago we have to sleep on the train. I always go to sleep immediately in the oddly comfortable fold-down bed with the thin but warm blanket and the surprisingly plump pillow. But I often wake several times during the night, usually at a station stop. It's an odd experience at 1 or two in the morning to look out on a railroad platform (where are we?) and see travelers boarding or de-training in the dark. The early hour and the sense of not quite knowing where we are lend an aura of mystery to their behavior which would seem utterly ordinary in daylight. As the train pulls slowly out of the station I watch as the lights of whatever city recede. Along the way, no matter what the hour, there is always some car or truck waiting at a crossing, some light on in some lonely farmhouse, some watchman walking around a warehouse yard - some human activity to defy the night.
In the morning in the dining car we're seated with strangers and over eggs and bacon, cereal and juice, we soon begin to exchange information that finds common ground. Often, we become so engrossed in the urgency of learning as much as possible and sharing as much as possible of each other's lives that we have to be asked by the attendant to leave so someone else can sit in our place. This does not, I have observed, happen in airports, but it always happens to us on the train.
As we near our destination there is a purposeful bustle in all the cars, incoherent announcements over crackly intercoms, and a sense of departure that is at once more and less exciting than when we left our original destination. Here we part ways and go on to home or work or loved ones, to problems or joys unimagined or deferred. My heart always gives a little bounce at the end of the outward trip as I anticipate seeing my family and at the end of the homeward trek when I think about seeing Dick, if he is not traveling with me, waiting in the terminal for me to arrive.
There is a scary element, of course. At night the engineer may try to make up time lost during the day and I will awake to wild rocking and bumping and wonder briefly about infrastructure. And there are the moments when a passing freight or passenger train seems so close that I could touch it as it rushes by at some unimaginable speed - traveling in the opposite direction. Then these little alarms pass and I settle back and enjoy the ride.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Friday, October 2, 2009
Turning
By the end of August it’s obvious here that fall is coming. You can see it in the way the long grass leans over the roots of the trees where the mower can’t go; you can see it in the lengthening of the light across the lawn and hear it in the sleepy throb of the crickets. At night the far-off moon - a bright disc against a spray of stone-hard stars - shines down on pumpkin vines and the pale orbs of squash in the garden.
At the end of August my garden goes gray. The magenta, red, orange, yellow and vermilion of the summer border quiets and softens. Under the drooping faded heads of phlox and shastas soft mounds of lamb’s ear gentle the path. Lavender, artichoke, artemesia and gypsophilia break in gray and white waves over the feet of coneflowers, butterfly bush and rudbekia.
In the field heads of New England asters foam around the dried tassels of goldenrod and crest along the road in billows of white. When we wake in the morning it is more often than not to fog and the gauzy weaving of hundreds of little white spiders, each of their webs a handkerchief filled with droplets as tiny as the head of a pin.
Then our world is gray and white - and so quiet that birds questing among the grasses at the end of the road hear me turn a page in my book and spill gently up from the brushy border to arrange themselves in a neat line on the telephone wire above.
Late August is the time of year when the lights go down on summer; soon enough the curtain rises on fall.
Suddenly a spill of bright red leaves appears along the dirt road by the water and before we know it swamp maples are burning up the edge of the meadow and lavender clouds, thick and heavy with unshed rain, build and billow behind them. In the late afternoon when the sun is low, a bar of light reaches the tops of the trees - a stripe of gold as bright as a searchlight.
Now, blue wood asters cluster along the road, their bright purple eyelashes fringing yellow centers. Winterberries and wild rosehips light up the boggy places where last spring I noticed the first skunk cabbage emerging; Tarzan vines of bittersweet enliven the peaty blackness of the firs. Most days, the sky is as blue as the inside of a mussel shell and the water below it a deep navy. In the garden a final blush of nasturtiums, sweetpeas, coral bells and late anemones glow against yellowed spears of iris and lily. When I take my walk in the evening poplar leaves, as papery as flaked gold, whisper ahead of me along the road and swirl behind me into the woods.
The birds, busy at the feeder, are bright and light as drifting leaves: red cardinals and their golden-buff orange-beaked mates; blue jays and bold black and white woodpeckers, goldfinches already in their winter olive drab, cedar waxwings, classy in khaki and black.
On a fair early October day it is impossible to stay indoors. I sit on the bench in the garden where the sun pours down, syrupy and warm, all afternoon. It is so quiet and so warm in the sun - a better-than-summer sun. And the garden is somehow a better-than-summer garden - no longer a kaleidoscopic tangle with every shard tumbling over every other. Now each flower, yellowing leaf, seedpod and stalk is eloquent and individuated.
What we experience now is an ever-changing ribbon of color that will fade from the hectic scarlet of maples to the elegant burgandy and dusty gold of oaks; a gradual gentling of the landscape that prepares us for the monochrome of winter. In another month or so our seaside world will pare down to undulations of snow, gray green firs and black branches against the sky as one year tips into the next.
At the end of August my garden goes gray. The magenta, red, orange, yellow and vermilion of the summer border quiets and softens. Under the drooping faded heads of phlox and shastas soft mounds of lamb’s ear gentle the path. Lavender, artichoke, artemesia and gypsophilia break in gray and white waves over the feet of coneflowers, butterfly bush and rudbekia.
In the field heads of New England asters foam around the dried tassels of goldenrod and crest along the road in billows of white. When we wake in the morning it is more often than not to fog and the gauzy weaving of hundreds of little white spiders, each of their webs a handkerchief filled with droplets as tiny as the head of a pin.
Then our world is gray and white - and so quiet that birds questing among the grasses at the end of the road hear me turn a page in my book and spill gently up from the brushy border to arrange themselves in a neat line on the telephone wire above.
Late August is the time of year when the lights go down on summer; soon enough the curtain rises on fall.
Suddenly a spill of bright red leaves appears along the dirt road by the water and before we know it swamp maples are burning up the edge of the meadow and lavender clouds, thick and heavy with unshed rain, build and billow behind them. In the late afternoon when the sun is low, a bar of light reaches the tops of the trees - a stripe of gold as bright as a searchlight.
Now, blue wood asters cluster along the road, their bright purple eyelashes fringing yellow centers. Winterberries and wild rosehips light up the boggy places where last spring I noticed the first skunk cabbage emerging; Tarzan vines of bittersweet enliven the peaty blackness of the firs. Most days, the sky is as blue as the inside of a mussel shell and the water below it a deep navy. In the garden a final blush of nasturtiums, sweetpeas, coral bells and late anemones glow against yellowed spears of iris and lily. When I take my walk in the evening poplar leaves, as papery as flaked gold, whisper ahead of me along the road and swirl behind me into the woods.
The birds, busy at the feeder, are bright and light as drifting leaves: red cardinals and their golden-buff orange-beaked mates; blue jays and bold black and white woodpeckers, goldfinches already in their winter olive drab, cedar waxwings, classy in khaki and black.
On a fair early October day it is impossible to stay indoors. I sit on the bench in the garden where the sun pours down, syrupy and warm, all afternoon. It is so quiet and so warm in the sun - a better-than-summer sun. And the garden is somehow a better-than-summer garden - no longer a kaleidoscopic tangle with every shard tumbling over every other. Now each flower, yellowing leaf, seedpod and stalk is eloquent and individuated.
What we experience now is an ever-changing ribbon of color that will fade from the hectic scarlet of maples to the elegant burgandy and dusty gold of oaks; a gradual gentling of the landscape that prepares us for the monochrome of winter. In another month or so our seaside world will pare down to undulations of snow, gray green firs and black branches against the sky as one year tips into the next.
Monday, August 3, 2009
An Absence of Fog
We have been in the fog and rain so long, it's old news...beyond old news. It's boring news. Depressing news. Not even news any more.
But this weekend an amazing thing happened. The fog lifted and there was a whole world waiting behind the curtain. A world we had forgotten existed: a world without snails and slugs, frizzy hair, damp towels and a house that smelled a bit too much of Dog.
We emerged from our homes blinking, mole-like, at the unfamiliar light...and immediately began to take credit for the change in the weather. "We deserve this sunny day" is a phrase I have heard a lot over the last 48 or so hours...as if we had any say about what we deserve.
But such hubris can be forgiven. We are giddy with sunlight on grass, starlight on water, flowers blooming on top of flowers in gardens. There is a brightness, not seen in years, to the goldenrod along the road. Queen Anne's lace towers over alders. Dame's Rocket shoots up in sparks of bright magenta; woodland pools have cleared - insects have gone back to the misery of mud from which they sprang.
The boggy odor that clung to the low places along the road has been replaced with a crispness and tang reminiscent of early autumn and the mold has disappeared, as if by magic, from the bathroom ceiling.
For the first time in weeks we can actually see the top of the towers of the bridge that leads to our island and glimpse the frill of twigs at the peak of the north tower where the osprey have built their nest - see the osprey too, for that matter.
In fact the birds, which had been huddling in the copses and hedgerows and woods fluffed up against the damp, are now out in a profusion of feathery abandon: goldfinches, robins, jays, thrushes, killdeer, finches, nuthatches, cedar waxwings are all but running into each other across their mysterious skyways while eagles and gulls wheel above and the sun beats down.
Soon enough we'll wake to another gauzy day, but for now we'll take this summer gift and be grateful.
But this weekend an amazing thing happened. The fog lifted and there was a whole world waiting behind the curtain. A world we had forgotten existed: a world without snails and slugs, frizzy hair, damp towels and a house that smelled a bit too much of Dog.
We emerged from our homes blinking, mole-like, at the unfamiliar light...and immediately began to take credit for the change in the weather. "We deserve this sunny day" is a phrase I have heard a lot over the last 48 or so hours...as if we had any say about what we deserve.
But such hubris can be forgiven. We are giddy with sunlight on grass, starlight on water, flowers blooming on top of flowers in gardens. There is a brightness, not seen in years, to the goldenrod along the road. Queen Anne's lace towers over alders. Dame's Rocket shoots up in sparks of bright magenta; woodland pools have cleared - insects have gone back to the misery of mud from which they sprang.
The boggy odor that clung to the low places along the road has been replaced with a crispness and tang reminiscent of early autumn and the mold has disappeared, as if by magic, from the bathroom ceiling.
For the first time in weeks we can actually see the top of the towers of the bridge that leads to our island and glimpse the frill of twigs at the peak of the north tower where the osprey have built their nest - see the osprey too, for that matter.
In fact the birds, which had been huddling in the copses and hedgerows and woods fluffed up against the damp, are now out in a profusion of feathery abandon: goldfinches, robins, jays, thrushes, killdeer, finches, nuthatches, cedar waxwings are all but running into each other across their mysterious skyways while eagles and gulls wheel above and the sun beats down.
Soon enough we'll wake to another gauzy day, but for now we'll take this summer gift and be grateful.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Mower
Is there anyone who doesn't hate their lawnmower? Or is that just me? Over the course of a long marriage I have come to believe that the spouse who cuts the grass should choose the mower...but that has not been the case with us.
What I fondly call "Lawn Mower Wars" began early on when I realized my husband doesn't like to cut grass. Nor does he like to rake leaves, but that's another story for another season. I, on the other hand, used to like cutting grass. In fact one of my fondest childhood memories is of my patient Uncle Al teaching me to use his powerful self-propelled (as in take a dive into the woods) lawnmower and allowing me at age 8 to maneuver it over my grandmother's acre or so of a "backyard". Come to think of it there may have been an ulterior motive there too...
Anyway, lawnmower selection was done by my husband from year one - or rather three, when we bought our first house. Our first mower was a serviceable machine quite capable of cutting our big, country lawn that dipped in odd places and from which thorny patches grew. It is interesting to me that in all of the lawn-cutting pictures of that time, and there are many as it was our first house, I am the one behind the "wheel" so to speak. About that time Dick also bought an old-fashioned pushmower. As far as I could see it bent the grass over rather than cutting it, but he liked it so I didn't say anything, grateful for the enthusiastic, if infrequent, help.
I am not a fan of lawns in general. I have taken over more and more of ours for gardens, which pose their own set of problems of course. I have plans to dig up even more lawn this summer in an effort to conquer a back-breaking hill in front of our house. But a patch of green is nice in front of the flower border and I love the smooth, undulating expanse of our back field which is mostly grass and lupine. It gives me pleasure to see the neat line of mown lawn - a demarcation between the tamed backyard and the wildness of the meadow after the grass is cut. And of course the scent of newly mown grass is one that takes us all back to lazy days lying on our backs and watching the cloud circus roll by.
So lawns in their place are fine, and now we are back to the issue of the lawnmower.
When we first moved to Maine we bought a new one. We were assured by the man at the local hardware store that it would tackle "puckerbrush" and would be an excellent "bush-hog". This proved to be incorrect, although it did an average job on the lawn. The blades, dulled by frequent collisions with man-sized boulders lurking under the surface, had to be replaced regularly and the self-propel mechanism died the first year. It served us fairly well, but after several seasons of rough use it became apparent that we needed a new one. Let the Wars begin.
First, Dick resurrected the old manual from the barn. (I had thought we sold it at the yardsale we held in New Jersey before moving, but somehow it made it to Maine.) This lasted exactly a day when there was a major confrontation in the front yard regarding whose responsibility it was to cut the grass and who should be allowed, in consequence, the choice of weapons. Fortunately, the pushmower capitulated all by itself by jettisoning it's handle into the blades on the next pass around the lawn. We (I) struggled along that summer with the old gas-powered machine, but late that August Dick came home with a bargain "for you"...a mower he found at a yardsale for "only $75". Now my opinion of yardsale lawnmowers is not high, but when the machine started right up and roared off with him behind it across our lawn I began to feel better. The big wheels in the rear of the cutting area enabled us to hip-hop the machine over hummocky spots and the blades ground up roots and thorny shrubs with gusto.
I figure that when Dick bought that mower it was already about two or three years old. That was 12 years ago and "old reliable" as he calls it has outlived two newer more expensive models although now it is really showing its age.
About 8 years ago the handle for the choke fell off and we now have to jimmy the wire out when starting the machine, and in when we want it to stop. The pull cord for the starter broke years ago and was first knotted together and its handle replaced with a sturdy stick (not ideal) but has now, thank goodness, been replaced. The baffle on the back that prevents rocks and gouts of grass from shooting out from under the blades has been gnawed off in several places; the chute on the side that directs clippings into the non-existent collection bag (did we ever have one?) is hanging on by one fastener and there is an odd piece of unidentifiable but very strong and rigid metal projecting out of the opening. The sound the machine makes as it goes up hills is a terrifying rattle that always makes me think that at any moment some loose engine part that has been bouncing around inside the guts will suddenly propel itself through the housing and hit me in the eye. The padding around the handle has long ago disappeared and been replaced with foam fastened down with that machine maintenance essential, duct tape. It's rusty, moldy, and noisy. The front wheels are cantilevered at an angle that surely can't be intentional.
I hate the thing.
But it starts. And with the new blades Dick put on last fall, it cuts the grass. So what if I have to haul it around like a sack of concrete?
So what if I feel like I have been inside a jet engine and have trouble lifting my arms over my head after mowing the grass for an hour? So what if my sneakers and the cuffs of my jeans are covered so thickly, post-mow, with grass clippings that I have to use a paint scraper to clean myself up?
It starts. And it cuts the grass. And life goes on.
What I fondly call "Lawn Mower Wars" began early on when I realized my husband doesn't like to cut grass. Nor does he like to rake leaves, but that's another story for another season. I, on the other hand, used to like cutting grass. In fact one of my fondest childhood memories is of my patient Uncle Al teaching me to use his powerful self-propelled (as in take a dive into the woods) lawnmower and allowing me at age 8 to maneuver it over my grandmother's acre or so of a "backyard". Come to think of it there may have been an ulterior motive there too...
Anyway, lawnmower selection was done by my husband from year one - or rather three, when we bought our first house. Our first mower was a serviceable machine quite capable of cutting our big, country lawn that dipped in odd places and from which thorny patches grew. It is interesting to me that in all of the lawn-cutting pictures of that time, and there are many as it was our first house, I am the one behind the "wheel" so to speak. About that time Dick also bought an old-fashioned pushmower. As far as I could see it bent the grass over rather than cutting it, but he liked it so I didn't say anything, grateful for the enthusiastic, if infrequent, help.
I am not a fan of lawns in general. I have taken over more and more of ours for gardens, which pose their own set of problems of course. I have plans to dig up even more lawn this summer in an effort to conquer a back-breaking hill in front of our house. But a patch of green is nice in front of the flower border and I love the smooth, undulating expanse of our back field which is mostly grass and lupine. It gives me pleasure to see the neat line of mown lawn - a demarcation between the tamed backyard and the wildness of the meadow after the grass is cut. And of course the scent of newly mown grass is one that takes us all back to lazy days lying on our backs and watching the cloud circus roll by.
So lawns in their place are fine, and now we are back to the issue of the lawnmower.
When we first moved to Maine we bought a new one. We were assured by the man at the local hardware store that it would tackle "puckerbrush" and would be an excellent "bush-hog". This proved to be incorrect, although it did an average job on the lawn. The blades, dulled by frequent collisions with man-sized boulders lurking under the surface, had to be replaced regularly and the self-propel mechanism died the first year. It served us fairly well, but after several seasons of rough use it became apparent that we needed a new one. Let the Wars begin.
First, Dick resurrected the old manual from the barn. (I had thought we sold it at the yardsale we held in New Jersey before moving, but somehow it made it to Maine.) This lasted exactly a day when there was a major confrontation in the front yard regarding whose responsibility it was to cut the grass and who should be allowed, in consequence, the choice of weapons. Fortunately, the pushmower capitulated all by itself by jettisoning it's handle into the blades on the next pass around the lawn. We (I) struggled along that summer with the old gas-powered machine, but late that August Dick came home with a bargain "for you"...a mower he found at a yardsale for "only $75". Now my opinion of yardsale lawnmowers is not high, but when the machine started right up and roared off with him behind it across our lawn I began to feel better. The big wheels in the rear of the cutting area enabled us to hip-hop the machine over hummocky spots and the blades ground up roots and thorny shrubs with gusto.
I figure that when Dick bought that mower it was already about two or three years old. That was 12 years ago and "old reliable" as he calls it has outlived two newer more expensive models although now it is really showing its age.
About 8 years ago the handle for the choke fell off and we now have to jimmy the wire out when starting the machine, and in when we want it to stop. The pull cord for the starter broke years ago and was first knotted together and its handle replaced with a sturdy stick (not ideal) but has now, thank goodness, been replaced. The baffle on the back that prevents rocks and gouts of grass from shooting out from under the blades has been gnawed off in several places; the chute on the side that directs clippings into the non-existent collection bag (did we ever have one?) is hanging on by one fastener and there is an odd piece of unidentifiable but very strong and rigid metal projecting out of the opening. The sound the machine makes as it goes up hills is a terrifying rattle that always makes me think that at any moment some loose engine part that has been bouncing around inside the guts will suddenly propel itself through the housing and hit me in the eye. The padding around the handle has long ago disappeared and been replaced with foam fastened down with that machine maintenance essential, duct tape. It's rusty, moldy, and noisy. The front wheels are cantilevered at an angle that surely can't be intentional.
I hate the thing.
But it starts. And with the new blades Dick put on last fall, it cuts the grass. So what if I have to haul it around like a sack of concrete?
So what if I feel like I have been inside a jet engine and have trouble lifting my arms over my head after mowing the grass for an hour? So what if my sneakers and the cuffs of my jeans are covered so thickly, post-mow, with grass clippings that I have to use a paint scraper to clean myself up?
It starts. And it cuts the grass. And life goes on.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Alone
We're moving uneasily into a gentler season. I am happy to leave the winter behind. It's best not to think too much about winter until it's over. In winter I sometimes get the feeling that we are all hanging onto life by our fingernails, deluding ourselves that our little cardboard houses can protect us from the elements, that we won't end up sliding into a ditch, that the power will stay on. Obligations have required a lot of driving this year...weather worries have made the anticipation of long drives stressful, but once we get going I begin to enjoy and appreciate our transit of Maine, particularly the stretch of I-95 between Bangor and Augusta.
Along that route we pass through forests thick with second-growth fir, cedar and spruce. The early sun pinks up the bark of birch trees in groves; we pass by meanderings of black creeks winding into a softness of still-snowy woods. We pass over rivers and ponds; hedgerows of leafless trees make lacy patterns on the snow and across the new grass; beaver dams rise out of the marshes where sumac wands redden with a hint of spring. The sky on fine days is a wash of blue-gray and on cloudy days a creamy white expanding into infinity over the curving road. I love that drive. I, in fact, love most drives.
I have often thought that driving alone across the country would be a wonderful time of self-discovery and affirmation - I don't think I would be lonely doing it. Of course, being lonely and being alone are very different. Loneliness implies permanence, despair and a certain underlying sense of panic. But being alone is a temporary state that anticipates the eventual and inevitable embrace of others and as such, my moments alone are times I look forward to with pleasure.
The sense of the impermanence of being alone gives me the space to think comfortably, get things straight in my head (if only briefly) and then I can happily look forward to not being alone.
Driving alone I think long thoughts, appreciate the distance between things, feel the bones of the countryside and immerse myself in the waterfall of impressions glimpsed at 50 - 60 mph: the minutiae of backyards, little towns, clouds, distant city skylines, horses in fields, hawks sweeping over the road, and my own internal landscape.
And then, best of all, I can turn around and drive back home to the people I love.
Along that route we pass through forests thick with second-growth fir, cedar and spruce. The early sun pinks up the bark of birch trees in groves; we pass by meanderings of black creeks winding into a softness of still-snowy woods. We pass over rivers and ponds; hedgerows of leafless trees make lacy patterns on the snow and across the new grass; beaver dams rise out of the marshes where sumac wands redden with a hint of spring. The sky on fine days is a wash of blue-gray and on cloudy days a creamy white expanding into infinity over the curving road. I love that drive. I, in fact, love most drives.
I have often thought that driving alone across the country would be a wonderful time of self-discovery and affirmation - I don't think I would be lonely doing it. Of course, being lonely and being alone are very different. Loneliness implies permanence, despair and a certain underlying sense of panic. But being alone is a temporary state that anticipates the eventual and inevitable embrace of others and as such, my moments alone are times I look forward to with pleasure.
The sense of the impermanence of being alone gives me the space to think comfortably, get things straight in my head (if only briefly) and then I can happily look forward to not being alone.
Driving alone I think long thoughts, appreciate the distance between things, feel the bones of the countryside and immerse myself in the waterfall of impressions glimpsed at 50 - 60 mph: the minutiae of backyards, little towns, clouds, distant city skylines, horses in fields, hawks sweeping over the road, and my own internal landscape.
And then, best of all, I can turn around and drive back home to the people I love.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Eggs
Our neighbors now keep chickens. As I walked by this morning their rooster was in full voice and it struck me as so odd that instead of reinforcing the realities of our rural life here, the sound of the cock's crow instead took me back to the farm in New Jersey where I grew up. Memory is a strange thing. I have been thinking a lot about memory lately, having recently reconnected with people and places from the past and having just come home from a reunion of our tiny nuclear family: me, my mother, daughter, her husband and mine.
My mother's memory is getting more and more selective. She shared with us last weekend that as a toddler I was allowed to keep a brood of bantam chickens. I have no memory of this, although I do remember other babyhood occurrences. Nor do I remember the charming picture she conjured up of my Pop-Pop coming in from the coop and offering me a double handful of tiny, perfect eggs. I can picture this, of course, but I don't remember it and, if it happened, I wish I could. My mother may, of course, have me confused in this pretty picture with a younger sibling of hers and that may explain the otherwise perplexing undertone of jealousy in her voice as she told the story.
Connecting on Facebook and in other ways with former fellow "victims" of the educational system and of other past lives, makes me realize just how subjective memory is - something about hearing the rooster I guess, but I suddenly imagined memories as eggs; not the kind produced by Martha Stewart's perfect Auricana chickens, but the kind I used to find among the chocolate confections and jelly beans in my Easter basket.
This egg was always placed in the center of the green, green Easter grass - a kind of ovoid jewel - inedible sugar sparkling with glitter and smelling, oddly, of dust. Inside were scenes, sometimes enchanting - who could possibly be living in that tiny shimmering paper house among the paper daffodils; disturbing: giant paper bunnies towering over paper cherry trees; mysterious: an ornate, white paper cross glowing amid a flock of adoring paper lambs. More than anything else on Easter morning, I looked forward to that egg. It provided a glimpse of the ordinary made extraordinary and, in a way, perfect.
I think memory is like that: we lift the egg to our eye and make of the contents what we will.
My mother's memory is getting more and more selective. She shared with us last weekend that as a toddler I was allowed to keep a brood of bantam chickens. I have no memory of this, although I do remember other babyhood occurrences. Nor do I remember the charming picture she conjured up of my Pop-Pop coming in from the coop and offering me a double handful of tiny, perfect eggs. I can picture this, of course, but I don't remember it and, if it happened, I wish I could. My mother may, of course, have me confused in this pretty picture with a younger sibling of hers and that may explain the otherwise perplexing undertone of jealousy in her voice as she told the story.
Connecting on Facebook and in other ways with former fellow "victims" of the educational system and of other past lives, makes me realize just how subjective memory is - something about hearing the rooster I guess, but I suddenly imagined memories as eggs; not the kind produced by Martha Stewart's perfect Auricana chickens, but the kind I used to find among the chocolate confections and jelly beans in my Easter basket.
This egg was always placed in the center of the green, green Easter grass - a kind of ovoid jewel - inedible sugar sparkling with glitter and smelling, oddly, of dust. Inside were scenes, sometimes enchanting - who could possibly be living in that tiny shimmering paper house among the paper daffodils; disturbing: giant paper bunnies towering over paper cherry trees; mysterious: an ornate, white paper cross glowing amid a flock of adoring paper lambs. More than anything else on Easter morning, I looked forward to that egg. It provided a glimpse of the ordinary made extraordinary and, in a way, perfect.
I think memory is like that: we lift the egg to our eye and make of the contents what we will.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Garden
Last night we had a small dinner party to celebrate Dick's birthday. We're all hungry for spring, so I brought out the tablecloth with the embroidered roses and my aunt's Adams china with the stylized flowers and birds. This morning as I put the china away, I turned it over to see if the name of the pattern was stamped on the back and it was: "Country Meadow". I long ago realized, that although she was a career woman whose job and inclination took her all around the world and who lived in cities all her life, my Aunt Jean was a country girl at heart and collected things that reminded her of the country and her homeplace which actually was on a farm in New Jersey.
I have a lot of her things and they all reflect the tug of the country life: paintings of farmhouses and country cottages, books (especially the Stillmeadow series by Gladys Taber), transferware cups and saucers depicting country scenes and, of course, her china. Even when she traveled, the places she enjoyed the most were the ones that evoked memories of the gently rolling hills of Somerset county New Jersey where the rest of my family lived.
My grandparents moved to the farm on Valley Road in Millington after my aunt was grown up and in the Army nursing corps during World War II, so she never really lived there, but she visited nearly every weekend after the war. As a little girl I looked forward to her visits. She always had time to cook something special, carve a pumpkin, teach me to use watercolors, hunt for violets and wild strawberries or read to me. I now recognize that those weekends "home" were a way for her to enfold herself back into the family and so the farm became the focus of that connection and no matter where she lived or traveled, she thought of it as home.
I come from a long line of farmers. My grandfather, bless his soul, was a traveling salesman, but wore himself out on the farm after he got home from work each day. Driven by a need to feed a family of five, he grew vegetables, kept a cow and sold milk, tomatoes and corn from a roadside stand. His father was a dairyman, his uncles were farmers in Hunterdon and Union counties. My grandmother's people were farmers too - her relations had a big apple farm in upstate New York - so it's no wonder that I grew up with dirt under my fingernails and the scent of newly turned earth in my nose.
I have lived in cities all my life as well but always felt the tug of country life and that's undoubtedly how we ended up here in rural Maine. In a way, my whole family has led me back here.
In my daydream I am five or maybe six years old. It is late spring and I am sitting on the little step in front of the tool shed, or the “little house” as we called it. In my lap is a pot of earth and sprouting from the earth is the crinkled leaf that will be a marigold. I planted the seeds in Sunday school weeks ago and it has finally sprouted. When they bloom, the marigolds will be a bright, metallic yellow like the foil-wrapped chocolate coins I found in my Christmas stocking. The sun is very warm on my face and legs - and on my feet, bare for the first time this year. Behind me the little house is filled with tools, machinery, nails, and paint. It is cool and dark in there from having been shut up all winter and an intoxicating smell of machine oil wafts out the door and mingles with the lush scent of the lilacs blooming in the shade against the old house.
Straight ahead of me I can see my grandfather’s head bobbing along beyond the honeysuckle hedge as he maneuvers the old tractor up and down the field making rows for planting. I can’t see her, but I know that behind the tractor my Aunt Joyce is walking along, grumpily feeding seed corn into the furrows he is making. On this side of the hedge bordering the yard, the ample form of my grandmother bends over the flower border. She is weeding or transplanting or simply peering at the earth to see what is coming up there. Next to her stands her tiny sister, my Great Aunt Mame, holding an enamel bucket of scraps from breakfast to take out to the to compost heap.
Next to the house, in the shade of the lilacs, my mother is on her knees, her gloved hands patting bright red geraniums into the earth. Behind the geraniums is a thick growth of snowberry bush. My father is toiling along the strip of grass next to her cutting a crisp, pale path through dark, new grass with the old push mower. Behind me in the little house, my Uncle Al is tinkering with the gas-powered mower with which he will cut the big back yard.
My Aunt Jean walks up to me from the old barn and in her hands are the first red, ripe wild strawberries from the tangle out back. In the little basket swinging from her arm is a bunch of violets and lily of the valley that she has picked from the sunny corner near an old foundation where they are growing wild.
From my spot on the steps I can see the ancient catalpa tree in the front yard is just beginning to bloom - some of its orchid-like blossoms already scattering across the grass. And on a sudden breeze the scent of the sun-warmed strawberry bush out by the mailbox rushes over me. I breathe, and breathe, and breathe it all in.
We are all so different, my aunts and uncle, parents, grandparents and I. My grandfather is a hardware salesman, my Aunt Joyce is still in high school. My mother is a laboratory technician at the VA hospital nearby; my father, newly discharged from the Marines, works in the office there. My Uncle Al is a car mechanic, my Aunt Jean, home for the weekend, is a nurse. My Aunt Mame is a dental assistant and my grandmother is…well, my grandmother: cook, laundress, head gardener, seamstress, decision maker, and leader of the pack.
But at this virtual moment, which is really the distillation of so many moments from my childhood, we are all gardeners.
I have a lot of her things and they all reflect the tug of the country life: paintings of farmhouses and country cottages, books (especially the Stillmeadow series by Gladys Taber), transferware cups and saucers depicting country scenes and, of course, her china. Even when she traveled, the places she enjoyed the most were the ones that evoked memories of the gently rolling hills of Somerset county New Jersey where the rest of my family lived.
My grandparents moved to the farm on Valley Road in Millington after my aunt was grown up and in the Army nursing corps during World War II, so she never really lived there, but she visited nearly every weekend after the war. As a little girl I looked forward to her visits. She always had time to cook something special, carve a pumpkin, teach me to use watercolors, hunt for violets and wild strawberries or read to me. I now recognize that those weekends "home" were a way for her to enfold herself back into the family and so the farm became the focus of that connection and no matter where she lived or traveled, she thought of it as home.
I come from a long line of farmers. My grandfather, bless his soul, was a traveling salesman, but wore himself out on the farm after he got home from work each day. Driven by a need to feed a family of five, he grew vegetables, kept a cow and sold milk, tomatoes and corn from a roadside stand. His father was a dairyman, his uncles were farmers in Hunterdon and Union counties. My grandmother's people were farmers too - her relations had a big apple farm in upstate New York - so it's no wonder that I grew up with dirt under my fingernails and the scent of newly turned earth in my nose.
I have lived in cities all my life as well but always felt the tug of country life and that's undoubtedly how we ended up here in rural Maine. In a way, my whole family has led me back here.
In my daydream I am five or maybe six years old. It is late spring and I am sitting on the little step in front of the tool shed, or the “little house” as we called it. In my lap is a pot of earth and sprouting from the earth is the crinkled leaf that will be a marigold. I planted the seeds in Sunday school weeks ago and it has finally sprouted. When they bloom, the marigolds will be a bright, metallic yellow like the foil-wrapped chocolate coins I found in my Christmas stocking. The sun is very warm on my face and legs - and on my feet, bare for the first time this year. Behind me the little house is filled with tools, machinery, nails, and paint. It is cool and dark in there from having been shut up all winter and an intoxicating smell of machine oil wafts out the door and mingles with the lush scent of the lilacs blooming in the shade against the old house.
Straight ahead of me I can see my grandfather’s head bobbing along beyond the honeysuckle hedge as he maneuvers the old tractor up and down the field making rows for planting. I can’t see her, but I know that behind the tractor my Aunt Joyce is walking along, grumpily feeding seed corn into the furrows he is making. On this side of the hedge bordering the yard, the ample form of my grandmother bends over the flower border. She is weeding or transplanting or simply peering at the earth to see what is coming up there. Next to her stands her tiny sister, my Great Aunt Mame, holding an enamel bucket of scraps from breakfast to take out to the to compost heap.
Next to the house, in the shade of the lilacs, my mother is on her knees, her gloved hands patting bright red geraniums into the earth. Behind the geraniums is a thick growth of snowberry bush. My father is toiling along the strip of grass next to her cutting a crisp, pale path through dark, new grass with the old push mower. Behind me in the little house, my Uncle Al is tinkering with the gas-powered mower with which he will cut the big back yard.
My Aunt Jean walks up to me from the old barn and in her hands are the first red, ripe wild strawberries from the tangle out back. In the little basket swinging from her arm is a bunch of violets and lily of the valley that she has picked from the sunny corner near an old foundation where they are growing wild.
From my spot on the steps I can see the ancient catalpa tree in the front yard is just beginning to bloom - some of its orchid-like blossoms already scattering across the grass. And on a sudden breeze the scent of the sun-warmed strawberry bush out by the mailbox rushes over me. I breathe, and breathe, and breathe it all in.
We are all so different, my aunts and uncle, parents, grandparents and I. My grandfather is a hardware salesman, my Aunt Joyce is still in high school. My mother is a laboratory technician at the VA hospital nearby; my father, newly discharged from the Marines, works in the office there. My Uncle Al is a car mechanic, my Aunt Jean, home for the weekend, is a nurse. My Aunt Mame is a dental assistant and my grandmother is…well, my grandmother: cook, laundress, head gardener, seamstress, decision maker, and leader of the pack.
But at this virtual moment, which is really the distillation of so many moments from my childhood, we are all gardeners.
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