Dates & Time
This pic was from a million years ago, at Heather & William’s house in GR. I loved their house because all of their drinking glasses were mismatched. Literally, Heather said her goal was to not have even one matching pair. Also, they had a third floor that had once been a ‘ballroom’ level. BALLER. How fantastic. It felt old and unfinished, unpolished, and ready for exploration.
Yesterday I had an epiphany: I should just pick one thing and DO it. Something big, potentially life-changing. And then hammer away at it. I was, in that moment, vividly aware of myself as a capable human being, and also that for the first time in my life, really feeling the ‘what could you possibly lose’ phenomenon. I’ll turn 40 next year, and I’m probably not going to accidentally stumble into some fabulous career or travel lifestyle or interesting set of skills. But I also won’t even intentionally be able to achieve every single thing I want to do. But maybe if I picked one, the biggest, best one, and then just work on that shit every day, maybe there will be a chance? After digging through old journals, ruminating on old words and choices, I’m a bit disappointed that I currently spend the majority of my days hiding in the bathroom to avoid whining and looking forward to Sunday mornings because I get to sleep until 10 a.m.
I think I’m ready to be single-minded. Pick a goal. If a situation contrasts with it, remove myself from it. I’d like to look back at today’s pictures ten years from now and know that a series of positive decisions were made between the two dates.
Lists
- We all know I love lists. Pretend you’re reading all of this on a series on envelopes.
This week:
- Another thing died
- I thought another thing was dying but it spent two days in the hospital and was fine
- Another thing was badly injured but will hopefully live. Tomorrow will tell
- Everyone started school, except Ari, and he needs it the most
- If the cat dies I’m going to murder it
Things to do before winter hits:
- Kayak with the kids at Bald Mountain
- Walk Red Oaks with at least the babies
- Fix my hair
- Eat brunch with girlfriends
- Finish one full chapter about Charlie
- Pay for and design tattoo
The Earth is Full
“The Earth is full,” said the man on the radio. “It’s full of us, and it’s full of our stuff. It’s full of our waste. Full of our demands.” He had one of those fat British accents, the kind she imagined required a curled, contorted tongue to produce any words at all, and she didn’t know how talking like that didn’t wear a person out before they reached the end of a thought.
Gilding was his name, Paul Gilding. She’d have to remember to look up this Englishman to see what he did for a living. He wasn’t a farmer, that was for sure. Across the endless Iowa cornfields, jade, towering stalks were full of buttery kernels and ready to be harvested. Burnt tassels waved from their tops like little flags; we surrender, we surrender, come for us with the machines, we can’t possibly grow any taller. A marmalade sun threatened to dip into the horizon, burying itself under that full Earth for a quick sleep. The sky was a wall of color. But it didn’t seem full of people, or their stuff, or their waste. She hadn’t seen an actual living soul in hours, driving or walking. The world felt downright empty.
Interstate 80 stretched out before her, into the setting sun. For an ambitious moment, she pictured herself catching up to it. She could really lay into the Datsun, see what it could do, and instead of turning left when she hit Des Moines, she could keep going, play cat and mouse with the sun so that it never set, was forever a half moon of lava resting impatiently on the flat land. When she hit the Pacific she would concede to the salty border and let the sun disappear into the water. Or she could commandeer a very fast sea vessel, and keep up the chase. How fast could fast boats travel? The Datsun could hit but probably not maintain 80 mph; certainly a decent boat could go at least that fast. But anyway, 80 probably wasn’t enough speed to keep up with the sun. From her school memories she dredged up the Earth’s velocity as it traveled around the sun: around 67,000 mph. She would need a faster car.
Mr. Oh-So-British Gilding droned on about the unsustainability of human consumption and economic growth. He must be an economist.
“So, in 2012, Mom and Dad, what was it like when you’d had the hottest decade on record for the third decade in a row, when every scientific body in the world was saying you’ve got a major problem, when the oceans were acidifying, when oil and food prices were spiking, when they were rioting in the streets of London and occupying Wall Street? When the system was so clearly breaking down, Mom and Dad, what did you do, what were you thinking?”
Jesus, these TED Talk guests. What would she tell her kids? She would tell them that the world was huge and messy. That understanding basic scientific facts like ‘we will one day run out of oil so using that specific substance to make every conceivably disposable item is probably fucking stupid’ doesn’t equal some single mom in shitstown, USA opting for a locally blown glass bottle over of the BPA riddled version from Dollar General that takes $1.99 and two minutes to acquire.
That well-meaning mother will, along with 90% of the world, opt for the convenient and cheap solution. And Hannah will tell her children that it is not her fault. It is not even Hannah’s fault Education is a form of hope. But greed usually wins.
Late in the Day
We spent most of today at the beach. I didn’t really go in the water but the day was beautiful, and the kids had a good time. Christina brought Evie to join us and that made for good conversation and kid activity. She and Bill are getting married, sooner rather than later. It was warm but a little cloudy, and we shared a grill and a picnic table with some strangers for a few minutes.
This last week was so busy that it flew by; I can’t believe tomorrow is Monday. I decided that because of our excess of cucumbers I would make dill pickles for party guests this coming weekend.
First Batch:
Batch #1
I ordered custom labels for the top, and Cassondra gave me ribbon to embellish the jars. I think they will be cute.
Eddie and Rosie are back in the house as of yesterday, which is always warm and grounding. Eddie has been working a ton of hours at Kroger, taking an SAT Prep course at Sylvan over the summer, and is dating a new girl, a young Julianne Moore, a vegan, and a year older than him. She going to Western in the fall. ‘This one is going to be rough at the end,’ was the way he described feeling at the beginning of the relationship. (Obviously, he has his father’s unusual brand of fuck-it pessimism.) I adore her, and she seems to adore him, and that makes me happy. He is almost an adult. It’s odd to watch someone who was born an old wise man nearing the responsibilities and freedoms of an actual grown man.
Rosie is beautiful and moody and either creating art or engaging with it. From what I can gather. She is full and vast, an ocean of a person, and mostly unknowable, I think even to herself. We will walk or lay in bed or be running errands and she won’t stop talking for the entire hour or two about all of her loves and interests, but she won’t once actually mention herself. But it’s the closest you get to her, Rosie, Norah Rose, Alex Rose, all of the things she calls herself. So you listen with drippy anticipation to dialogue about Detroit Becomes Human and Lin Manuel Miranda and her new Photoshop brushes and you look at her inking and sketches and offer advice on her plot lines and you accept every bit of reciprocal interest and smile and laugh and thank her. Because it feels like a gift.
The littles are becoming people too, not just babies. Even June. She will fall and get hurt and when you offer her help she’ll slap your hand away and shout ‘WALK’ and get back up on her own, still crying and moaning, dusting off her chubby baby fingers as she rights herself. It’s awe inspiring, really. Ari is rowdy and impulsive as ever, but he will also double check with a hurt friend, ‘You OK?’ even after parental intervention and almost out of earshot. He will spend five minutes trying to make sure June gets down from the trampoline safely, even if she’s refusing his help. And Kaelen is at that age where he is SO filled with yearning for things beyond his years, and I think struggling with the tumult of living in two very different households. His world as a newly independent reader is big. He is filled with ideas and a want for things beyond his years, alongside a true extrovert’s desire to share his beloved life experiences with the people he loves. He is always the one to suggest a day full of exciting activities. And today he insisted he was ready to read The Hobbit.
Megan will be home from AZ in a few days. I want to share my porch with her again.
I’m getting a dress tailored. I finished The Handmaid’s Tale. Nick is looking at buying houses. We’ve lived here for four years. I think that’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere. I feel like moving a city away isn’t far enough. Does it count as moving if you can still circle your old neighborhood between the grocery store and the car wash? I don’t want to move and drive past here again. Either stay, or leave it completely.
Without fresh starts, I don’t know if I am even myself.
Work in Progress
It’s always hard to write when not much has changed. Events occur, the future is slightly altered, faces and streets swim in and out of my mind’s eye, only chance dictates which things will be remembered in two, five, ten years.
It’s always surprising to consider what I do and do not remember, when looking back over the years.
This last couple of weeks we rode bikes with my new bike (thanks Dad!) and trailer for the kids, saw a movie in the park, lost my keys at said park (found them in a hidden pocket in my bag after searching in the dark with Eddie after picking him up from work at Kroger), put a new picture display on the wall, planned the boys’ August birthday party, drove Eddie back and forth to an SAT prep course at Sylvan, drove Rosie back and forth to meet Dave with Sarnia, fought with Nick about a million times, made up with Nick just over a million times, read Dragons Love Tacos with June until she shouted ‘TACOS!’ all the way to bed and then blew me kisses, bought Ari ice cream and a trip to McDonald’s to play because it was rainy and his friend Maxwell canceled a play date and he was crushed, gave the cats flea treatments, managed to not run off to my dad’s to swim at the lake because I have too much to do, billed Amy for $60 or so for two weeks worth of not-enough work, went to Sully’s birthday party up the street with the kids, went grocery shopping at Meijer, listened to a very impactful news story on an immigrant woman trying to reconnect with her young son after being separated at the border for a month, watered my plants every day, mowed the lawn, bought new porch lights… Every day is busy from the moment someone pesters me (long before I open my eyes) until the moment I lay down at night. I think I need it to be more meaningful. More purposeful.
It’s not a new thought. It’s just constant.
My doctor told me a few days ago that his advice was that I ‘enjoy my life.’ I told him bluntly that I enjoy it too much, and that was the problem. But he seemed to think I was ok.
I’ll post final pics of that wall when its done. But here is the painting of the frames:
Work in Progress
Early Summer Grounding
It’s that raw time of year; the days are long and warm (last week hitting 90 most days without flinching), the teachers are putting on videos and handing out snacks instead of assignments, and we are all spent after nine months of worrying about grades and GPAs and making sure the alarm goes off at 6 a.m.
Rosie and Kaelen have been doing a daily countdown to the last day, varying total days between now and the 15th, to just school days, to whole class days only (not half days). Which sounds better? Which will make these last few hours go by most quickly?
Rosie cut all of her hair off and dyed it blue as part of her new and improved Ferndale High School version of herself. Her wardrobe is also suddenly very black and full of jagged edges. Eddie asked out a new girl last week and we have seen almost none of him. He will be a senior next year and is talking about SAT scores and an apartment and his hourly wages at Kroger and collwge applications. We are taking his final driving test next weekend and then he will finally have his license.
Kaelen blossomed as a reader this year and hunts down and devours every YA paperbook he finds around the house. He will be a third grader next year. Ari did so much better in preschool than I could have imagined. I am forever thankful for his teachers this year. He will be disappointed when he understands that school is over for the year. He has learned colors and numbers and how to quietly listen in a group and the shape of his name. He knows ‘A’ and ‘X’.
And June, baby June. She is already strong and silly and curious beyond her 20 months. We all dote on her and enjoy her little own language and affections. She finally says water instead of calling it ‘ice’, but she still calls outside ‘cold’ most of the time. You can watch her brain work to formulate language enough to communicate her desires through the windows of those wide, wanting eyes. I think she is very smart. Today she asked for a popsicle and pizza, unprovoked. So despite the questionable diet, her brain seems to be rapidly developing. Life isn’t all organic avacados and wheatgrass juice, kid. I’m glad you can thrive in a weedy patch. I promise to throw you some berries and filtered water along with the nachos.
Beyond the kids, what is life right now? Slow things, tedious things. Keeping up with the never-ending streams of dishes and laundry and driving while also watching closely how the vibrant, juicy green grape vine grows over the window above the sink… Smashing ants when they march across the dining room, looking for bits of toast and egg I missed at breakfast clean-up, sorting clothes into piles grown out of or not yet grown into. Sitting in the yard with Melissa in cheap platic lawn chairs, listening to the secret made up world of the kids playing with the hose, threatening them not to tattle.
I am working, but only a little bit. My world feels slow and stunted. Was it always this way? Am I failing?
Nick and I talk but mostly argue. I want to not be around him most days because the arguments disable me further. He doesn’t seem to allow for pleasant, meditative observation. He paces, shouts, picks. Even the slightest prying or rushing is, I think, exaggerated for me right now.
I want more than five hours of sleep a night… I want to listen to the wind move through the pregnant trees in the dark, I want to feel feeezing groundwater from the hose run over my toes until they are numb. I want to center myself. My greatest delight right now is watching the cottonwood seeds fill up the golden hued sky. I love it every year. When they are thick as snow, I first remember Bernie and his disdain for their habit of clogging up the pool filter (Goddamn Cottonwood!!), and then I remember the dream of the boy under the tree in the field, his conversation, his brief kiss on the lips. And both things make me happy.
All of the People Hate Poetry
Oh, Calm Pirate!
I free quiet, lurid dreams:
the acrid taste of your fingers
dry and tight, hands perfumed of tobacco and salt
the oiled air you breathe (in MY lungs!);
the metallic tang of fish and water
a million mops saturated in dim light,
valiant, hearty men at your command, steering away from land,
pulling the ship’s bow, your barrel chest, against waves.
Restless, now, but shy in a rose-walled box, you push from inside me
(a whisper at my ears, a pressure against my ribs)
you are rolled into new flesh,
hunkered in my shadow,
a subconscious persuasion.
the taste of your life lingers.
pale, dirty curls
soft eyes filmed over with fear
filmed over with anger.
years of white sun turned to ink under the pressure of your resentment, the pressure of
my bleeding pen, guided by firm hand, poured onto paper.
Your secrets hidden in attics,
earthen basements,
unknown dwellings out of sight
dusted with sealed mouths and averted eyes
A life carpeted in misgivings, a blanket of regret,
wrings my paper dry and rewrites itself,
over and over, purer, simpler.
Sea Captain,
You Were.
Otto And Eric
A few times, their mother left them in a land city and went out to sea without them. This was only when they were still young, and couldn’t be trusted to go to a water port that the pirates or other unsavory characters (probably the Mettes or the Slag, considering the time) governed. Places like that weren’t safe for children.
So mother would have to leave them with a land port woman wherever they were visiting. These ladies seemed made of children, didn’t seem to mind a couple more, and always needed money. So their mother would negotiate a few dollars, and swear up and down that she would come back, and then threaten the life of the woman were the boys to not be ok upon her return. This was the only part of the discussion to which they paid attention.
After seeing her out to sea, usually a tearful and dramatic event, they they had friends for a few weeks, ones that were more or less their own age. And land children were exciting, different different than boat children. Despite (what the boys considered) their confinement, they seemed freer.
During the day, they ran through the city and were excited to show off their friends and the tricks and corners of the town. Always there was a butcher who would scowl at them until they begged enough, and then he would toss them fat slabs of dried pork. The farmers were never friendly, but every local boy in every city knew how to crawl under a fence to steal potatoes or radishes or carrots. They knew every nook and cranny of every street and stone building, like magic tricks. They seemed sure of everything.
Tuesday 2
“Holy shit. That’s never happened.” And then he chuckled. It was half sigh, words formed on accident before thought had been put into them. His face was silver and blue in the shadow and streetlight. It was probably his most genuine moment with her, and the one she always came back to when she needed him.
What had he told her to say? She was a teacher. Say she was a teacher and they were for her students.
The black man behind the counter was short with a nice face. His head was shorn, just like Jon’s. She tried to picture him with his hair grown out. It would be like an afro, right? Would it make him look taller? Or is that the black guy equivalent of a comb over, but for shortness and not baldness?
He had five cell phones in five boxes next to his black keyboard on the glass counter, and he was pecking at that keyboard that was at least 10 years old while he glared intently into the boxy monitor. She wondered if he was actually a fast typist but the computers were just very slow. On cue, he shook his head and looked at her.
“Sorry, these things are so slow. Especially today. I think it’s worse when it rains.” He shrugged and hit another key. She relaxed.
“That’s ok. These are for my students. They don’t all have their own phones and some of them need extra help in the evening and so I like to give them an option to get in touch with me. I’m in no hurry.” She gave her very best patient, sweet smile, the one with genuine eyes that showed affection and interest.
“Mhm. Ok here we go,” he said, his face relaxing. “You can insert your card and hit the green button.”
She completed the transaction with Jon’s card and the nice man placed the boxes into a plastic bag with T-Mobile on the side and she walked out of the store with her heart in her throat.
Later, she would recall sunlight peeking through the clouds and dimpling the puddles, the smell of wet earth mingling with coffee from the shop next door, and she would wonder why she had just gone home to Jon the way he had instructed. She could have walked in the opposite direction and saved herself so much trouble.
“That guy only had one arm.” She raised her eyebrows, hoping someone else was up for this discussion. Jon and Tony didn’t hear her over the music, but Lisa did and she nodded and laughed.
“Yes, Charlie, YES HE DID.” She laughed so hard that she went silent. “He could still sling some mean chili! Oh my God Charlie you freak out over the weirdest shit.” Charlie laughed also.
What she had meant to say, to ask, was why do you think this man only has one arm? She wanted to talk about how he might have come to be the one-armed chili man with her friends, Jon and Tony and Lisa. She hadn’t had time to ask the man himself, or she would have.
She never ate the chili. The clumpy meat looked like the end of his arm. You could see it poking out of his sleeve, the pinched, purple flesh at the end of his forearm. He wasn’t born that way. That was a nasty car accident, or a fight with some animal, or someone ignoring OSHA in a factory.
Electric green vines grew up the brick walls of the walk to their apartment. There were ten steps for each level. She counted 20 steps, including the platform at the second level. Their door was unlocked, which she found interesting, considering how wound up Jon suddenly seemed about security. A cursory inspection of the potted plant next to the door confirmed that the spare key was still in its hiding spot.
Spring Break Book Break
It’s a snowy spring break day here, with a cold wind and intermittent sunlight that isn’t doing any kind of job warming things up. The house was full of kids this morning, all of ours and Sarnia too. The girls were on a futon mattress on the living room floor and on the couch. I had to make two pans of scrambles eggs along with raisin toast and blueberry muffins to make everyone happy.
I just dropped the littles off with Christina and the older girls at the movies and Eddie is visiting with Adam, and so I snuck off to the used book store that is across the street from our old place in Clawson for a little alone time. Honestly, I was surprised to see the open sign lit up. Back in the day we always assumed it MUST be on the verge of failing. If Barnes & Noble couldn’t hack it, how did this dark little shop lined with dusty paperback (mostly romance) novels stay in business??
Not only is it open, but it has changed owners and ‘rebranded’ and is now called The Grey Wolfe Scriptorium. They accept credit cards (that was always a hurdle before) and there was music playing, and the whole vibe was friendly and open and youthful. Call me sentimental, but I almost started crying. To smell a good book store was FABULOUS.
They host all kinds of writing and reading events, book signings, writing contests and the like. I had assumed that this great little place was just going to disappear like so many CD shops and video stores. Instead, it has evolved into something more modern but just as wonderful and filled with hidden treasure.
They even still had my trade-in card, in the same old wooden drawer. But they put me ‘in the system’ so no one has to dig through the old notecards when Rosie and I bring in a batch of books we no longer want, and they honored the trade-in discount price. And they gave me a punch card where I can work my way up to a free paperback.
I’m making this place a regular stop now, just to stay a part of the community and to support the biz. Maybe I will even try one of their hosted writing nights.
