Light Again

Ages ago, I said that all the holiday gifts this year would be handmade, but not many of them are after all. Driving home tonight I started to consider, for the first time this season, breaking down and doing that kind of holiday shopping where you just go, and walk around, looking at every thing there is to look at, trying to figure out if any of it could be something someone I feel I owe a present to would want. I wasn't quite to the mall stage, it would have been walking around the second smallest town nearby, but in the end I think I've decided against even that. 

I just want to hang out with my family, and then spend days in my pajamas.

Friday, 2011

There were things that needed to be made up for but we didn't talk about that. Part of what could have been bad was made into a story, and laughed at. I hoped for the ice to hold. Frog came to the table and showed us all how to make his kind of snowflake. We cut and bent paper, drew the edges together with little ribbons of tape, and all made something together. Jessica was wearing the hat I made for her last year. Two and a half years ago isn't far away, but so much has changed for so many of us. 

Last Penpal

She wasn't the easiest person to get a photo of. I like this one, just candid, taken during dinner out, with the twins sitting at the end of the table she seems to be looking at. 

When our other grandmother passed away, suddenly there were all this photos. Black and white, little square prints, people in bathing suits and with dogs I never knew, wearing hats and heels, lanky and younger than I'd ever known them. It was this reveal that never happened in any of the visits or letters that had come in the years she was Grandma. It felt like another way to know her, and I've been glad for it. She's tacked up on the bulletin board in my office, wearing overalls, fishing from a rock. Always.

I hope for some of that with Grandma Ellen, too, now that she's gone. I used to write to her sometimes with questions, things that probably seemed maybe a little rude, about when she was younger. What things were like, what was she interested in, back then? She was never very interested in answering those. But she did always write anyway, just about other things, whatever was recent. 

I miss owing her a letter. Last year was the last year of Belle Fourche calendars for Christmas. Glad we were there not too long ago, wish she could have been here more. She was always good to us.

Blue

The frost on the fields the other day was so thick it looked like snow from a distance. Someone at work was talking about Colorado the other day, how the high had been zero degrees somewhere there, balmy! and I remembered that and missed it. Coming home at night, the back porch hear is all glitter and treachery. Sunday morning was bad news, but later in town, David kept Tweets open late to feed us roast chicken and homemade noodles. It's what my dad would have made, if he were making my favorite thing, and even though he was the one who deserved comforting, it was the right thing.

Dark Enough

five years ago

I wasn't in a good mood from the start. Not a bad mood, exactly, a little crabby, less generous than I aspire to be, and no good at faking it. I skated by on wordsmithing and filling out forms and a little filing. Dinner was dried tortellini boiled up and covered in leftover sauce, even though I knew it would have made the night so much better to just go pick up Thai food. I was torn between that and just wanting to be home. We left the TV off, and it started to rain, and the wind sounded like rain too, and I couldn't decide what to knit. I had gotten to the part of the book about a character's depression and that seemed too apt no matter how well written it was. There is a night at home tomorrow, then the rest of the week a marathon, two trips to Seattle, and then a weekend that doesn't feel like the bullseye in the center of the target that they sometimes do. I've learned that there might as well be some cleaning that gets done, might as well get to the sleeping part of the day early, and start again tomorrow.

Let's Start Keeping Track Again

There were a lot of things I didn't manage to get done. This is what I think about on Sundays, it's inevitable. Even if the kitchen is pretty clean, and all the dry laundry is folded, and we've hosted thirteen people for Thanksgiving, had lunch out with Tom's parents the next day, gone to The Daffodils CD release party the next night and the show at the Longhorn tonight. Put like that, it doesn't sound like the week was all that lazy. I'm starting to like the house. Not that I didn't always love it, but liking it has more to do with feeling good about the way I deal with the house on a day to day basis. The spare room is starting to vaguely resemble some sort of order, and it is actually possible to clean up my bedroom in about fifteen minutes, generally. 

I still don't know what to get anyone for Christmas, though. Any hints? 

Eventually

Two months is long enough away. Driving home on Farm to Market at night, even with your high beams on, sometimes the speed limit is too fast. Too fast for the coyote flicking through your headlight, the owl exposing the underside of his wings, and worst of all, the skunk ambling his way so much more slowly than you would think possible. The coyote and the owl make it, the skunk, not always. 

Summer left quickly, and all of a sudden, it's frost in the morning and heavy coats, no shoulder season at all. Driving home one night, the wind blew the rain so far sideways that it looked like snow coming down in the headlights. In the garage, a small flood seeps into the boxes of files that were there for shredding, but is gone the next day. You can start to see where the puddles will form in the driveway again. 

The last year has been so long. This time last year I was just getting the new light fixtures in at the house, an ordeal that involved uncertainty and disagreements and one broken shade that I felt terrible about. The fixtures go unnoticed now, peaceful finally. Things in the house still change little by little, not quickly enough for anyone but Emmy, who just wants to know where the water, food and her people are. Beds she can make anywhere. No matter that I spend the night here every night, it still seems part-time somehow but I've learned at least to make my own coffee, and every day I do.

25a. There Aren't Enough Words For Home

On the way home from Quiet is the New Loud at the Longhorn tonight, I took what I think of as the back way. East to Chuckanut, then Thomas Road to Allen West. A small dark thing ran across Chuckanut, and then an owl flew from the top of one of the street signs on Thomas Road, out into the fields away from my headlights, wings all sepia the way everything looks in the dark out of the corner of your eye. I wanted to go back and see it again, not miss the moment when it had been sitting there, just before flight. I thought about all the photos I'd like to have but can't, and how I don't have enough, or the right, words for the way a bird flies, and for what those big wings do to you when you see them so close.

5. A Dream

I don't know where we were. She was visiting, a surprise. When I put my hand on her arm, it was so thin. Anyone could see that, but there was the feel too, warm and dry, the bones right there, unapologetic. I thought I might wake up to hear that she had gone, but that call hadn't come yet.

Cantaloupe always reminds me of her. Small dogs with underbites, and those snake-looking things that are used to clean swimming pools. Kidney shaped swimming pools. Orca whales, Shamu in particular, and those little sailor hats, like the one Gilligan wore on the island that bore his name. Matching skirts with extra twirl, corduroy vests. The desert. Small lizards. Tijuana and its brightest, cleanest souvenirs. Big tissue paper flowers, papier mache marionettes. White hair, fresh curls from the beauty parlor, baby blue slacks. The scar on the heel of my palm. A disdain for what she'd call "nasty neat". Pet rocks.  The phrase "Well, that's true," said in a certain tone. My own mother. The Lawrence Welk show, over football. Football too. The Arizona Cardinals and Matt Leinart. The black puffy vest I bought myself at the Gap from her one year, that I still wear at least a decade on. I can't think of her without thinking of her husband. I don't know how to know who is at peace with what, and what will surprise us later. I wonder if there's anything to apologize for, or if it's all okay. The town of Malmo in Sweden. Needles wrapped in a grosgrain pouch, tiny double-pointed sets for socks, single pointed in sizes for baby sweaters. I don't know why that's the thing I am most thankful for, I only know it is.

Blingin'

My Sparkly Golden Robot Nails

So, this summer I am spending time away from the twins for the first time since they were born. Well, actually, since I got pregnant. Four years of them virtually every day and night. That's a long time time to have two little people dependent on you for their comfort, care and feeding.

And then there's the part where they syphon off the majority of my patience and emotional energy. Though we are not physically tethered, I am convinced that there is an invisible vortex between us, sucking all of the vital emotional components out of me, to them.

I've had my trepidations about leaving them. Will they get fed? Put down for naps on time? Will the potty training continue? Who will wake up with them at 2 AM? Will the sunscreen be applied regularly? Will their teeth get brushed?

The long weekend in Southern California has come and gone and it was well worth the effort. The boys were fed, cared for, entertained and maintained. At least not broken or damaged in any permanent way — though they have now discovered the meaning of spanking.

That might be to my advantage, just as a threat of course.

For me, it was so fun to have a weekend where the only person I needed to be concerned about caring for, feeding and putting to sleep was me. When other wedding guests asked what I planned for the non-wedding activity time, my answer was simple: sleep, sleep, sleep.

And I did.

I also got a manicure, got a pedicure, got my hair done, drank some (a lot of) champagne, wore some new dresses, wore some new shoes, read some seriously trashy novels, perused some super trashy magazines and TOOK A BUBBLE BATH!

Now I have the weekend in Seattle coming up and I am really excited to get to visit without the constant planning around nap schedules (though the Reunion Schedule must be respected), at least not the twins nap schedules.

I may make a nap schedule for myself.

Maybe this time I will get to go to Larry's joint, or this restaurant, where our plans were thwarted by snow and scheduling snafus on the last trip. Maybe I'll get some Tracy Pucci eyebrows, or a glass of wine and some paté at Campagné.

Don't get me wrong, I will miss the boys every little minute.

But for the first time in a long time, I am getting to enjoy being by myself. With you, of course.

1. A Day

At work, I have a bias for candidates who tell me about what it was like to love a job. In friends, I have a bias for people who make me mix tapes, CD's, whatever. We've talked about this before. There's something else to say about it though, the way it signifies, to me, someone's ability to think about, oh, say, you driving your car to work in the morning, or, even better, about the more unpleasant drive home, that time of day when everything gets all gummed up and NPR drones and the Cedar Grove composting site in Everett goes all foul-smelling in the sun and you are so ready to be home and over it all. If there is a mix CD, or the first draft of the Daffodils new album, none of that is so bad. It's just what lies between you and avocado crab enchiladas from the co-op, and the blooming potato fields that surround the house, and everything the evening holds.

The accident on the way home today was two cars all the way over the guard rail, both right side up, surprisingly, one facing south instead of north. These things happen, maybe an accident this bad about once every three months, and they stick with me. Traumatic to me in some small, corner of the eye way, traumatic to someone else on a much bigger scale. I've been thinking about trauma a lot these days, both the big sudden kind, and the long sustained conditioning that tends to resonate through the years, surprising you with your own reactions to things. Surprising me with my own reaction to things.

Most days, I notice what happens when I walk in the door in one of the places where I am supposed to belong. At work there are two ways to go in, and I alternate depending on my mood. Walk past the exec offices, or stop in the lunchroom for hot water for tea? Those choices start the world in two different ways. In Bow, Emmy predictably barks, but sometimes she also gently nips at my hand as I reach down to pet her on the walk back to the front gate to close it for the night. Sometimes Tom is in the house, doing dishes, but most often he's out in the back these days, watering or piling dirt up around the potato mounds, and sometimes he leaves what he's doing to say hello, and sometimes he doesn't, sometimes he just waves. At the Ballard house, it was the same way, sometimes Kate and Jason on the couch, watching a movie, Kate knitting or playing words with friends or something like that on her iPhone. Sometimes they would stop the movie to talk, sometimes not. Sometimes I was Special Guest Star, and sometimes it was Tuesday. Sometimes it was a house full of guys with beards and stringed instruments, apologizing for being in the way of the door up to my space. Yesterday Jason saw me coming from where he sat on the couch, and got up to open the door and let me in. That was the first time he had ever done that, and probably the last. Moving day is any week night for the next few weeks, and then it's mini-farm forever after. 

THE EELS, Showbox, August 9, 2011

Some of the sounds were like a 6th grader, working on learning the flute. The horns section, two guys in what looked  like bellhop suits, turned towards the curtain behind the stage when they weren't working, kids in the naughty corner, only more dignified. There was La Marseillaise gone wrong, and something muppet-like about E's singing, and that potent pause right in the middle of one song, then the start-up again, loosely choreographed and bad-ass, that thing they did with the necks of their guitars, and there were other weird little bits of choreography, all of them getting up close to the drummer as though they were paying homage, and when E turned around to face his band instead of the audience it was like the center of gravity of the whole room had been lifted up and set down amongst the seven of them, and later there was another still part, just the drum going, rattling something so deep in my chest that my collarbone felt like a tuning fork. E didn't let a song end before he had the next guitar on, and in between  he'd call out things like "I LIKE HOW THIS IS GOING" and the whole show seemed wild and capable, precise and brutish and tender all at once, and made me almost wish I was a man.

Bare Bones

It's rare that I make my commute with nothing on the radio, no book on CD playing. For the first half of my commute this morning, I listened to Louise Erdrich read Lorrie Moore's story, Dance In America via the New Yorker fiction podcast and afterwards my mind was too blown to take in anything else. I flipped off the car stereo and drove the rest of the way in silence. I paid attention to the fire truck racing along the frontage road, an ambulance solemnly following. I thought about the difference between He leaves the room and He walks out of the room. I thought about secrets, and the way a story can be told by isolating pieces of information, leaving things out, like in a photograph where what makes it beautiful is the lack of extraneous details.

Tuesday

With Tom on Orcas recording with the Daffodils, the mini-farm is quiet. No Emmylou, no Mariners on the little radio in the garage. I do things he usually does, bring the garbage bin, the recycling bin back from the curb, cross Allen West Road to our little mailbox for the collection of junk mail and grocery store circulars that go straight into the same recycling bin. Before I go to sleep, I grind espresso for the little stovetop espresso maker, put the cilantro dip and poached shrimp in containers to put in the fridge. Tomorrow I have to remember to heat up the gooey cinnamon bread for breakfast, go out to the greenhouse, water the leggy tomato plants, the prolific pattypan squash, the little strawberry plants. Nothing to pack though, no forgotten cell phone charger, insufficient sock supply or wrong color shoes. Just home, every night for a week.

There isn't really a photo for this one.

On my way home from Port Townsend via Sea-tac, where I dropped Pam off for her flight back to Denver, then the ranch, I stop for groceries at the co-op. I load a cart with one of those giant packs of toilet paper, a quiche for Monday breakfast, a quarter of a watermelon, a loaf of bread, a gallon of whole milk, and two tall lattes. When I get home, Tom and I sit on the back porch in the sunshine, finally strong enough to make it warm at home in spite of the breeze, drinking the lattes instead of unpacking the groceries. I get to them eventually, but not until after we have wandered around the yard, looking at the kale Emmy has gnawed down to the bare stalk, the little path Tom has cut through the blackberries, the patty pan squash that just keeps coming. 

Tom puts up a clothes line and I cut the watermelon into huge slices and think about the essay Pam read at the closing day of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Centrum. Take note of the things that grab you in the world. Set them next to each, see what happens. A small part of what she had to say,  but I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

In the fenced-in dirt lot behind the state patrol just off our exit in Burlington, there are a dozen or so smashed up cars, totaled far beyond any insurance company definition of the word. Sitting at a big wood table inside on the nicest night of the summer, someone tells me about letting a family member go because of drug use. I don't realize at the time that I'm not hearing it, until it comes back to me the next morning and I do. "When I got involved, it was with my whole heart," she says "so eventually I just couldn't get involved." In some situations, there are no good choices, but hope springs eternal, we don't know what will make a difference, though we are reminded all the time of all the things that did not. For example, being there - for example, not being there. My friend's family member came back later with amends, from what turned out to be an island of sobriety in an ocean of not knowing when the next landfall will come, or when addiction sets sail again. That landscape is the same and different for everyone.

On the ferry to Port Townsend on Saturday, I couldn't decide where I wanted to be. Outside on deck, in sunshine, with the chill of the breeze generated by the boat, or inside, letting myself get lost in a book, sitting next to the window with the scenery only washing past me, unseen. I do both, not remembering later what I've read.

I come home from the co-op Sunday tired, not from anything bad, just the driving all weekend, just waking up early. I say to Tom "It's almost too hot to weed," and he says "It's too hot to weed," so I don't. I don't have the energy to tackle the kitchen myself but when he does, I pick up a towel and dry, something I never do. Usually it seems like a waste of energy, just let them air dry, but this time it's just about standing there, clearing the way, keeping things moving. It's also about not moving. About being home. My mind goes out and back again, but I work on staying. I work on finding some way to tend our place with what energy I have. I break down the boxes that have been waiting in the stairwell, put them in the recycling. I brush off the new fabric panels that James and Jessica have gifted us with, bring them in the house, look for a place to hang the bright one especially, a barn and fields in primarily colors, yellow sunshine, a green crop, a blue sky. Nothing broken, nothing burned. 

A summer wedding

I might be getting okay at this photo stuff. The portraits, I mean. It's hard to manhandle the Bronica, whose name is dinosaur-like, even, into a quick snap while people are milling about waiting for the hors-d'ouevres to be passed, or a drink to be retrieved from the bar for them. I managed it at Carolyn's wedding, a scant 33 shots taken in all and about a third of those I was happy with. I like that average, I don't expect more. I expect a roll of 12 to yield a shot or two that makes me feel like I captured the charm of the person I was looking at through the lens, and I expect 3 rolls of that same person to leave me confused about which shot is the best. 

Carolyn's wedding was a good place for looking at people I love to look at. Still shy, I stuck mostly to one of my classic models, Kate, and the people who were orbiting around her. I shot the boys playing lawn games in their dress Wranglers and sunglasses only from a distance, but I'll sneak up on them one of these days too. 

Of course I was most sorry I missed a good one of the bride. Carolyn just has one of those faces, large expressive eyes, wide smile, long slender neck, and a cap of shiny dark hair. She looked beautiful on her wedding day, a dress no one else could have worn as well, intricate and flapper-like without being too costumey. As I drove the two hours to North Bend, I thought about how happy I would be to cry about something happy, the cathartic way that works, sorting out a long week where there were plenty less happy sources of tears. Saying her vows, she fought back tears, but I didn't bother to fight.

Full On

Summer at last, and a weekend of laziness. I had all sorts of things in mind to accomplish, and ended up sprawled on lawns most of the daylight hours anyway. I like to think this accomplished something, however invisible. A recharge, some kind of helpful space, I don't know. I kept trying to talk myself into doing laundry, or packing for the week in Seattle, or doing some weeding. Nope. Lawn time. A trip to the co-op for groceries. That was about all I had in me. At least there will be lunches for the week. The rest I'll figure out as I go. 

A Birthday Message from a Biker and a Pirate

So, anyway...

Tom wore the vintage red western wear pants with a red and blue plaid summer shirt with pearl snaps, and a white belt and a flag bandanna. I hear Jess sewed something for herself to wear, and if I had known that in advance, it would have been harder to stay home from the 3rd of July party. But we also have a house full of people coming tomorrow, and no one has swept much lately and I wouldn't mind hanging a painting or two and Emmy does not at all at all like fireworks. None of them were close enough to bother her today, so she spent most of the afternoon gnawing on a bone from the meat co-op and I spent plenty of it stretched out on an afghan reading To Each His Home. That book is pretty perfect inspiration for cleaning house. 

In the summer, it's easy to ignore the inside of this house. Outside is all birds and sunshine and tall grass today, not enough wind to fly even a small kite. For tomorrow, we have water balloons and box forts and a good spot for a tent mowed into the back field and Jenny said she might bring s'mores. Tom's been saving marshmallow sticks - we probably have more of them than we have drinking glasses and that's a lot. Yesterday Susan and I ran errands across the valley and I bought hamburgers from that lady I like so much at the meat co-op where we get Emmy's bones, and two kinds of hamburger buns from Iris at  Breadfarm and both gouda and fresh Ladysmith from Samish Bay Cheese. Jenny's bringing the boys for an overnight, and little Bitty will be here, and mom and Tom's parents. Tonight when Tom gets home, we'll taste test the strawberry ice cream cones. If those are good pretty much everything else will be too, right? We'll eat some in your honor.

Magic

Max and Thomas at Fort Tryon Park May 2011

The boys are so funny these days. Speaking in full sentences, relating to the world around themselves in ways that constantly have me laughing, shaking my head or trying not to react because whatever they've just said isn't supposed to be funny... but it just is.

They alternately kiss and battle things out. They laugh one minute - usually hysterically giggling - and then they cry the next... equally hysterically. They are quick to cry, but quick to sooth too. No grudges here. Yet.

I think about all of the things from our childhood that seemed so magical - the corner of the backyard where those drippy flowers bloomed and ivy covered the ground, the bushes we climbed in on the corner of 16th and Prospect, the driftwood at Kalaloch, hopping up the hill at River Ranch to serve breakfast, the feeling in your stomach being swung around on the tire swing at Roberta's cabin, Azalea Way at the Arboretum, the little pond in the back yard of Grandma Ellen's house in Novato that always seemed to have turtles in it - random, random things.

And I wonder what the boys will take away.

Will they remember a drizzly Sunday morning with mom, wandering through the park and finding the stone arch? The Intrepid with Papa Gary and climbing inside (and refusing to climb out) of the space capsule? Finding the park in Vermont with the wooden train and galleon with Grandma Beeba? Riding the ski lift for the first time with Daddy? Their first taste of s'mores? Touring the Little Red Lighthouse? Face painting at the Central Park Zoo?

I wonder what they will think was magic.