simple joys | pull up a chair

July 12, 2013

heartbeat of this old house

coming home stirs deep appreciation. seeing through fresh eyes. as i wander about the house, sink back into the rhythms of living here, unfolding my day here, i find myself drawn, day after day, to particular sounds, particular light patterns. i open windows, just to flush the house with outside sounds. the chirping of the cardinals. the trill of someone else. i tiptoe into rooms, stand there, watching the way the sunlight plays through vines that have trespassed across the windows.

but more than anywhere, i am drawn, near suppertime each day, back to the old garland, my not-so-shiny stainless-steel dowager of a cookstove. she feeds us amply. she feeds me deeply.

i think of her, it appears, in the feminine — muscled, un-fancified, generous, forgiving.

weighty, she holds down the kitchen. she offers heat, flame at the turn of a knob. she is this old house’s heartbeat, and not just because of the click-click-click she sputters while the flame prepares to catch.

broad-lapped, with six burners and a grill top, she whispers no pretension. she was anchored here back in the 1970s, long before it dawned on anyone that an industrial-grade stove might belong amid a hungry family.

she was born to feed masses. and masses she did feed. first up, a family of seven, then a family that huddled three generations under this old roof. and for the last decade, merely us. with but two growing boys, i hardly feel deserving of her generous proportion, her capacity to provide. i’d always dreamed of a gaggle. but, as wise people sometimes say, God gives you what you can handle, and i suppose i was cut off after my lucky bookends, my eight-year span of boy.

so i up my ante through invitation. stay for dinner, i tell the little boys who wander by. the little boys with hand under cake dome, come three or four in the afternoon.

in recent afternoons, after long days reading and writing, i find myself stirring as the clock ticks toward five. i start poking around the fridge, seeing what’s available (or more often, what’s on the verge of wilting if i don’t use it maintenant). i eye the cutting board, and hear a beckoning. i’ve room aplenty, near acreage, it seems, after a year in the not-so-sprawling apartment kitchen. i’ve got my drawer of accoutrement again, a gaggle of whatchamahoojies and thingamabobs that help me get the job done. the cucumber peeler, the garlic crusher, the strawberry huller (a new addition, inspired by the little fellow who HATES a leafy cap adorning his juicy fruit and finds it a sport to sink in the hungry teeth of the huller and glide out the nettlesome middleparts).

after a year in which i confined cooking to a rare few nights (otherwise it was more along the lines of dumping trader joe’s oft-frozen magic in a skillet, and calling it dinner), i’ve rediscovered the therapeutic balm of chopping to the tune of NPR’s “all things considered.” although the syrian backbeat to the sauted apples last night proved a wrenching side dish.

i find i hum when cooking for my boys. and my old stove sings right along.

she and i, we’re quite a pair. she steams ahead where i stumble. tries not to scorch when i forget, get wooed away by the ringing telephone, let things blacken on the pot.

last night i was cooking merrily. whipped up all my little one’s favorites. straight through to baby peas in butter sauce, the fancy kind that come tucked inside a see-through pouch, one that bobbed along in boiling vat — deep-sea peas ensconced in thermal safety suit.

and, one by one, i was cooking for no one. the little one called to say he’d been invited out for dinner, and he was so so sorry, he really wished he could be there. then the tall fellow, the one now back to newspapering, he called from the chambers of city hall, whispering that he was elbow-deep in witnessing a landmark debate, and wouldn’t be rolling in till at least the 9 o’clock train.

no worry, no chagrin. i smiled at my cooktop, crowded with pans that were going nowhere. the buttered noodles with my grandma’s butter-bathed bread cubes, they were happily napping off to the right. the apple sausages swimming in cinnamon-spiked apple slices, they dozed. and the baby peas, ala jacques cousteau, they couldn’t have cared less.

by 10, the pots were cleared, their contents tucked in tupperware. no one had been around for the duet, me and my old stove. but that didn’t detract, not one iota, from the joyful percolating deep inside.

i was home, back at lady garland, and she and i twirled splendidly, all alone, entwined again.

what part of your house makes you hum? performs a lively duet with you, day after live-long day?

7 Comments

January 18, 2013

welcome mat. even when it’s borrowed…

dispatch from 02139 (in which dear old friend rolls beneath the transom, but before she does we whistle while we work, loving the art of red-carpeting for a friend…)

the coq au vin bubbled away. the flannel sheets, unfurled and tucked tightly onto bottom bunk (with nursing-school-acquired hospital corners as far as i could reach). even the bathroom mirror got spritzed with shiny polish.

i hummed the whole day long, from the moment i awoke (at 4 when the cat let out a yowl). till the last stalk of hyacinth was plucked into a vase, an olfactory and faux springtime attempt at masking the inconvenient truth that the kitty-litter bin has nowhere else to hide but alongside the claw-foot tub in the already itty-bitty bathroom, the one just inches away from the living-dining-conviving rooms.

a dear friend was flying into beantown, a friend from long ago and far away (we’ve been close as close since the day she wandered into the tribune newsroom back in 1985, and through the years we’ve weathered many of the bumps that life can bring).

all day long i savored the pure oxygen that is the art of putting out the welcome mat. even when it’s borrowed.

puttering for this particular friend is all the more delicious because a.) i ADORE her, but b.) she too loves the art of red-carpeting for a friend, or making like the keeper of a dreamy b & b, one who wholly grasps the concept that it’s the little details — a fresh pitcher of water by the bed, complete with lemony life rafts floating in the drink; a paperwhite bulb bundled in see-through wrap tied up with string and plunked atop a stack of fluffy towels, a token to take home; the red-wine clouds wafting from the oven — that whisper, “i love you, my friend, and i’ve taken every care to wrap you in the luxuries of deep, long friendship.”

if you’ve ever been taken care of in this particular way — and i hope and pray you have — you know the magic powers of this potion.

perhaps you too have been lulled into dreamy state as someone paved your way with the beautiful. as someone thought two steps ahead, and laid out a fluffy robe, filled a canister with bath salts and rubs. stocked the fridge with icy drinks, or left out a tub of cocoa, fat marshmallows and king leo peppermint sticks.

all in all, made you feel like the cherished guest they’d waited a lifetime to behold.

i’d long been an under-the-radar admirer of these domestic arts. didn’t want to let on (not too loudly, anyway) that i might secretly pine for martha stewart — her actual self, not merely her glossy pages — to be stationed at the back of my pantry. nor that i spent time dilly-dallying over fresh-picked bouquets or tucking lavender sachets between my linens.

but then, some years back, it was this particular friend — one of my most brilliant, certainly among the most widely and deeply read, harvard-educated and bayou-steeped, a newspaper scribe-turned-public radio news hound — who once confided that she was hankering to write a book on, not the influence of castro on miami’s cuban ex-pats and not the cajun roots of zydeco (which i might have guessed), but rather on hospitality, pure and, yes, holy.

it is, of the many nesty arts, one of the most exuberantly selfless.

it is about wrapping the ones you love in the comforts you might only dream about. maybe some of us tend to overthink it because we so deeply wish we were so wrapped. or, to be even more honest, because we wish we had the knack for being kinder and gentler to our very own selves. and so in doing for others we inhale, absorb, deep-breathe whatever afterglow seeps out.

i’ll not ever forget the long-ago weekend i spent tucked inside my radio friend’s coconut grove, florida, tile-roofed house. i can still hear the tumble of the tomato chunks as she poured that evening’s gazpacho from a chilled pitcher into wide-waisted goblets. can still feel the egyptian-thread pillowcases against my cheeks. still hear the jazzy soundtrack that played softly as we curled on the couch, catching up on whatever stories hadn’t fit in all the long-distance phone calls.

and so, two whole decades later, i still indulge in returning the indulgence whenever she comes to visit. and, even after all these years spent on far ends of the continent, she makes a point of doing so at least once every year, even re-routing her itinerary this week from LA (where she lives now) to DC’s inauguration with a stop in cambridge, so we could — together, on a chilly misty day — walk her old stomping ground.

and this time round, with my college-girl budget (meaning the few dollar bills that happened to be in my wallet), i got a bonus round of seeing what i could do without grabbing for the credit card. which somehow made it all the more delightful. the nice man at the flower stall in harvard square let me buy a single hyacinth stem, then threw in — for good measure — a clutch of laurel branches. i scrounged in the stairwell for the leftover bottle of bordeaux someone gave me for my birthday, and that — with a plop of chicken, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms — became my bubbling brew of coq au vin. clean sheets don’t cost a dime, nor do fluffy towels. nor bowls of oatmeal stirred and studded with cranberries and raisins. the fresh snow falling out the window came free too. and the long long hours of unbroken conversation. even the sumptuous global gala at the ambassador’s house, one filled with women peacebuilders from the world’s most war-torn countries (all in town for a one-week women’s peacekeeping colloquium, and with which a few scribes — including me — helped out), it all made for 36 hours of sacred time.

and 36 hours that will forever be tucked in our shared treasury of time magnificently spent.

although i’ll add to those heavenly hours the 12 that came in pre-amble, as i whistled while i worked. and, at every turn, thanked the angels for the gift of this most delicious company, a once-in-a-lifetime friend you forever love through and through and through….

what are some of the welcome tricks you tuck up your sleeve, for i happen to know there are a few masters at the art of hospitality who so benevolently pull up chairs? do tell. a girl can never ever have too many tricks in this divine department….

9 Comments

July 20, 2012

apple pie, poker & the afterglow of hardballs to the noggin

these odd chapters somehow always manage to creep up unawares. and so this one.

we were sitting the other eve, forks in mid-lift, i’m certain, when suddenly a skinny pair of sun-browned legs came swishing through the steamy jungle that these days is my secret tangled garden, the one tucked along the side of this old house. not many lopes behind him came another pair of legs, grown-up legs, a mother’s legs. but not his mother’s.

while it took my brain cells a spell or two to shake all this out, it all came tumbling clear once i saw the look of dazed despair on the little one’s face, and the ashen worry on the mama trailing just behind. then i saw the boy holding something to his dust-splattered head, and i needed little explanation to reach the quick conclusion that this was not how the evening had been scripted.

while the little guy stared up at me with those thirsty hazel-brown eyes of his, in that way that kids have of signaling simultaneous distress and “help me, help me, mama! this here’s your job,” the mama trailing behind him began to spill the dots.

there had been a game of stealing bases, and a hardball, one zipping through the air at 35 miles per hour, she figured (and, the mother of three ball-playing boys, she knows these things). that hard-beaned hardball made a beeline straight to my little guy’s forehead, which set him “crumpling” (her word) to the ground, upon which he couldn’t remember my phone number, and kept saying the same thing over and over. oh, and he was dizzy. and he thought he might throw up.

now, mind you, i’d just the week before heard a tale of precisely the same thing, a kid on the side of a ball field taking a bean to the head, how he got rushed to the school nurse, who thought not so much of it, so he went along to his after-school playdate, only to start getting droopy-faced within the hour. that poor kid wound up in emergency brain surgery before the sun set, and now, thank god, is a-okay. though he won’t be playing ball for a long long time. or ever, if his mother has anything to say about it.

so, with that fresh little spectacle shining in my head, i took in the scene with my very own head-bonked boy, and before you can spell “concussion,” i’d speed-dialed our trusty pediatricians, who wasted no time in sending me to the ER we live so conveniently close to. (note to mothers of boys: when house hunting, be sure to clock the door-to-door distance to your nearest friendly emergency room. it comes in handy.)

not-so-long story abbreviated: dear boy didn’t even need a CT scan, though of course they ruled his head bonk a by-the-book concussion. and, worth mention, his big brother did a memorable job playing ambulance driver, clicking on the bright red flashers only to be stuck in traffic behind the north shore’s slowest-ever driver, meandering lazily down the express route to the hospital. and, happy ending taken up a notch, we walked out of that ER into the arms of a thrashing summer’s storm. hallelujah!

but this wouldn’t be a tale worth telling if not for the prescription that came with the bump: no TV, no computers, no reading, no contact sports.

egad.

for how long we must endure this, we do not know. we see the concussion doctor monday. so for now, and through the weekend, we’ve turned back the clock and we’re playing like pioneers, minus the covered wagon.

yesterday we filled the day with this list of exotica: two boys — ages 10 and 11, mind you — baked, from scratch, an apple pie. yessiree, they sliced the apples, dumped the sugar, sprinkled cinnamon with vigor. they rolled out the dough, crimped the edge (in remarkably poetic undulations). then, because both share the initials TK, they drew out a lance from the kitchen junk drawer and lanced away at their letters, a cris-cross of hard-edged consonants nearly doing in the pie top.

while the apple pie did its oven dance, they did what bakers do: they tried their hand at texas hold ’em, a poker variation, then moved on to black jack and dominoes. ping pong served as minor interlude, along with a promise from our head-bonked one that he would not, absolutely not, come crashing down on the sharp corner of the table.

later in the evening, yet another little fellow wandered by. he took the bumped one out for ice cream, and, quietly strolling the lanes from there to here, they returned home for a long night of not-oft-seen board games. checkers, monopoly, and the fierce pursuit of plastic real estate.

so goes the old-fashioned, turn-back-the-clock life of the forehead compromised.

and, of course you’ve guessed that the point here is that gifts sometimes come wrapped in odd packages. say, ones with purple-green swirls just under a little boy’s forehead curls.

it is rather a refreshing, if taxing, way to spend a summer’s day, exercising the imagination, steering clear of pursuits that might potentially jar that tender brain of his.

deep inside, i long for just such summer days. for the gift of building tree forts (though at the moment, the fort is grounded, not cleared for take-off). for, perhaps, lying upon a summer’s couch, listening to the words of a mama turning the page of some fine adventure tale. and, pray tell, how about a lemonade stand, peddling from-scratch lemony-sugar potion, at the turn-back price of 5 cents a glass?

sometimes it takes a klonk on the head to get us seeing clearly. and if that’s the moral to the hardball story, well, then, i wish we could have gotten there without the goose egg hatching on my little fellow’s forehead.

how do you dream of spending a summer’s day? one spent the old-fashioned way?

16 Comments

July 6, 2012

practice realignment

those calls do not always come in the form of a phone ringing, but this one did.

it was early monday morning, i was minding my business, taking a stroll on the round-about that is the basement treadmill. phone rang. i answered.

“hullo, this is the lynn sage breast center at northwestern memorial hospital,” said the voice on the other end of the line. i felt a grand canyon of unanswered question gouge into the empty space between her last utterance and the silence that fell after it.

“yes,” i finally spoke up, voice creaking, begging to know what was coming next.

“the radiologist…,” i heard her say, then something about my last mammogram, the one two weeks ago. “abnormal… they’d like you to come back… as soon as possible.” so flowed the hyphenated string of words, the sound of my heartbeat drowning out whatever came between.

and so my week began with a crash and a boom. we scribbled in the appointment, the voice and i. it would be first thing the morning after the fourth of july independence holiday.

next up, the pounding of the digits on the phone face. tried to call the mate. he wasn’t there, and i wasn’t leaving that message. so i called my mama. rounded out my life list of swears-in-front-of-my-mother with a new addition, the f word. glory be to the heavens, she echoed it right back. it was a morning for firsts, all right.

and so began a 72-hour trip to heck and back.

that’s all it takes for a girl with an imagination like mine to see her whole life unspool before her eyes.

you thought you were headed to cambridge, i sassed myself. not without an oncologist’s phone number tucked there inside your pocket. you thought you liked your curly wild silver hair? imagine it missing. and so it went, through most of the week.

i saw fireworks through eyes that wondered what the morning would bring. i took a shower and barely glanced down, for fear that the sight of those troublesome lumps would make my knees buckle under right there beneath the pounding beads of shower stream. i pictured myself sprawled out on the couch in the bay window of the cambridge three-flat. wondered how i’d lug the groceries up the stairs. wondered if chicken broth and saltine crackers would be the mainstays of my cambridge foodstuffs.

it’s the reality check that tumbles us to the ground. it’s the fear of God that shakes us to our core. it’s that rare-enough interlude when we feel the world as we know it slipping through our fingers, when we can’t quite close the gap, can’t contain the fall.

i can’t say that it was wasted time, not at all really. it’s that top-to-bottom accounting of one’s life. weighing out all the bits, sifting through to what matters, what matters fiercely.

why, setting the table seemed a joy. grilling vegetables, pure pleasure. holding hands with the ones you love. listening to my college kid speak these words: “not you, mom, you’re invincible.” standing in front of the mirror, deciding that unruly mop atop my head, it’s who i am and i am not about to surrender it. not without a tussle anyway.

i consider all of it a practice drill for sizing up the joint. it’s not a bad thing — how could it be? — to take inventory of the whole of your life, to divide it into piles, this here’s essential, this does not amount to a hill o’ beans.

and in the end, all that mattered was boiled down to one short list, one simple prayer: dear God, let me live out my days being a mother to my holy blessed children. let me be there, God, on the days when they need me most. let me get that little one straight into high school, please. let me filter down into their backbones and their spines. let my sparks of light illuminate the darkest corners of their soul. dear God, give me sunrise skies in the mornings, and starlit domes at night. let me dwell, quiet, in the garden. let me smell the roses on the climbing vine. dear God, let me walk beside the ones i love. let me hear their voices, peals of laughter; let me brush away their tears when next they fall. dear God, give me the simple joy of sitting together at breakfast, of taking to the front porch with a tin of pie and two forks. give me blueberries piled high. and the unbroken blessing of a day without a worry.

but most of all, dear God, give me one more round with my little boy. he’s not ready yet to run without me at the finish line.

and sure enough, i signed into the special room yesterday morn, the one at the end of the long hall, the one already filled with too many other women with too much worry etched into their cheeks, their eyes, the corners of their mouth. we sat there, a sorority of holy desperation.

until at last they called my name. pointed the way down the long hushed hall. there, behind a door marked “A,” as i went to set my coffee mug on the top shelf of the skinny locker, as the nice lady handed me the hospital gown, instructed me to leave the ties in front, before i saw it coming, the coffee came tumbling down, all over me, on my once-white t-shirt and khaki shorts, dripping down my knees, straight to the tops of my garden-stained toes.

“may that be the worst thing that happens to you today,” said the nice lady, as she grabbed a hunk of tissues, mopped me up.

a long dull 45 minutes later, after the ladies with the magic wand pressed it back and forth, over and over, across the top of the lumpy place, at last came word that in fact the coffee spill had been the worst of it: “go home,” the attendant said.

simple as that. it was all over. the radiologist read the images, determined nothing lurked there.

“that’s it?” i asked.

“that’s it. you’re done.”

i climbed off the table. shoved open the door. walked back to the locker where my stained clothes hung.

i spent the rest of the whole long hot day whispering these simple words: thank you thank you thank you God. thank you, one more time, for the breathtaking chance to wrap my arms around my boys with not a worry in the world.

in the end, that was it, the only prayer that mattered. and the one that, this time, was wholly answered.

what was your last close call? and in the end, what’s on your short list of most essentials? the things you cannot, will not, live without?

13 Comments

August 12, 2011

the balm that is the rhythm of routine

i’ve known for years that i was a creature of habit, a girl who liked her days to unfold with familiar rhythm. you might call me a homebody. a nesty girl. or worse.

what i know is that the familiar soothes me. i sink into sublime inner hum when i unlock the door and come back home. when i hear the ticking of the clock i have wound 3,000 times. when my foot hits the one odd floorboard, just to the east of smack-dab middle at the top of the stairs, a creak that tells me i am here in the house that holds me. a creak i know is coming before i ever get there. a creak that sings the song of home.

i like when my car practically steers itself to the grocery. knows the corner where to turn, knows the bumps along the way. i like passing under the heavy limbs of oak and ash and elm along the way; limbs i’d notice were missing if the shadows weren’t there one morning.

i am a girl comforted by the balm that is my everyday routine.

and right in here, where all around me seas are roiling, shifting, shaking, i am soothed hour after hour by the little stitches in the whole cloth of my life.

in the living room, right now, five fat boxes stand in sentry rows. nearly two-thirds filled, they hold the whole of my firstborn’s college life. they’ll be sealed shut soon. a new address — AC # 1056; i’ve already memorized — slapped on front. shipped east. to be unpacked on one wobbly sunday coming soon, when for the last time i will try my hand at putting order to his life. or at least his dorm room.

my little one too is about to take a big step for a not-so-big boy. nearly lost in all the college swirl is the fact that the little one has left behind his “little school,” and is moving on to middle school, a school with many floors, and combination locks. a school where four times as many kids will roam the halls.

all around, the world i know is just about to change.

and i find anchoring, find knowing, in the simple building blocks of my every day, the way each morning i splash my face, slide into rumpled, hem-torn shorts, hip-hop down the stairs, click on the radio to the voices who greet me every morning. the way i make my coffee every day — five scoops coffee, three shakes cinnamon, water cold from the filter.

i find my shoulders wrapped, my back steadied, by that first stroll through the garden. find myself cheered by the pumpkin vine that’s set down roots amid my black-eyed susans. i like that i keep measure of its bold insurrection, the way it’s up and inching through the beds, hellbent on making a kitchen plot of my measly perennials.

i am heartened, too, by the red-cloaked gang of cardinals who chatter and pester me for more seed.

i am soothed knowing that they know they can count on me. i will be there, they must have figured out, like clockwork. i’m a girl they can set their clocks by.

i love knowing all the checkers at the grocery. love knowing them by name, by story. love knowing they know me enough to ask, “is he gone yet?” love knowing that when they see the volume of the grocery bags, they know the answer’s “not quite yet.”

when i think ahead to that spot around the bend that i can’t quite imagine yet — the morning and the days when his absence is first felt, when it’s raw, when the silence is so loud it makes me want to scream — i know already that my soothing, my balm, will come from all the little chores that steady me, that fill me.

i’ll cut stems from the garden, arrange the daisies and the black-eyed susans and the queen anne’s lace. i’ll fold the laundry. fill the pantry shelves.

i’ll try not to wince when i pass up the pack of cookies that he loves, knowing if i bought them they’d sit untouched till thanksgiving, when he comes home for a few short days.

i’ll try not to miss the teetering piles of his T-shirts, socks and gym shorts on the ironing board downstairs. try not to miss that the laundry basket won’t be nearly as heavy anymore.

and when the sting comes, when the salty stream of missing him fills the cuts and scratches on my arms and legs and heart, i will turn once again to the time-worn knowledge of my heart: i’m a girl who hums when i am bound on all sides by the familiar, the tick and tock of home. when my house and garden do their job, and shelter me from the storm that is life simply moving forward…..

for the blessing of home, of garden. for the gift of all these blessings. for the gift of a boy i love so much his absence will be a hole inside my heart. for all of this, i am so deeply grateful.

are you soothed by the familiar? do you find music in the same old sounds inside your house? are you a creature of habit? or do you find glory in the new, the exotic, the not-yet discovered?

1 Comment

December 24, 2010

making my list and checking it twice

i know how the fellow feels. being something of a list-maker and checker myself.

poor chubby ol’ elf. all those roofs on which to glide to a stop. all those sooty old chutes to get stuck in, what with a whatchamahoojie poking out from the pack.

after all these many, many christmases here, the jolly one is still making appearance. the little one teeters in that netherworld of probably not believing when he’s out on the school yard, but here, where it’s safe, where it’s home, where there’s no harm in extending the tease, he plays like he’s a believer.

uncanny, i know.

but sweet.

and so, as in so many uber-sized catholic families, as in the town where i grew up, when the gap between the top of the dozen and the wee one at the bottom was maybe 18 years, or 15, or for the gestational superstars, perhaps only 12, we are sending one off to college with drop-down from santa.

it’s the morning of christmas that has long been my favorite, those wee early hours stitched with suspense, with waiting, with listening for footsteps from the rooms up above.

i will be the earliest riser, if my christmas wish comes true. i’ll be alone in this old house where the whole of the morning wraps me in comfort and tidings of joy.

i’ll tiptoe down in the near-dark of dawn, plug in the lights on the tree. turn up the flame under the banged-up pot on the stove, the one that holds “smell,” my now legendary mix of orange peels and cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and cloves, all simmering in a murky pot of boiled-down clove water.

i’ll kerplunk into boots and trudge out in the snow. the birds, top on my list, as i call out, “merry christmas, babies, here’s breakfast.” i think for the holiday i’ll dump cranberries in with their suet bits and sunflower seed.

back in the house, now that the chimney will have been cleared, i’ll lay down the logs and kindle the flames. no fires allowed till the wide elf makes his delivery, but i’ll be the first to see that, by then, he’s sprinkled sweet somethings all about the room, one pile per each boy.

i’ll check the cookies and milk, left out the night before. and sure enough, there will be nibbles, and a ring in the glass. that ol’ elf never fails to leave crumbs and a dirty glass, besides.

but it’s all right, we understand. he’s places to go, and chimneys to climb.

won’t be long till i hear the percussive thud of the boy in the bed leaping awake (the one rare morn when getting him up does not involve trumpets and icy buckets of water). next up on the sound panel will be the little one begging the big one to please please get up. and the big one, inherently sweet, will oblige, will slide in his slippers, will wipe the sleep from his eyes, and together they’ll tromp down the steps, round the bend.

and i, in classic santa mode, will stand back and beam, watching the boys who i love with all of my heart take in the wonder and loot that fell from the sack.

and for the 18th christmas that i’ve been so blessed, i’ll feel my ol’ thumper fill up and spill–the magic of santa, indeed and indeed, is that every once in a very rare while we get to step into magic and let it play out.

same props. same story. year after year after year.

and may we all live happily ever after.

merry blessed christmas to you and to yours. to the little wee ones who fought to get here. to the big kids who climbed their own mountains this year. whatever are the stories that brought you to this holy winter’s morn, hallelujah and joy everlasting. may you find your bliss this christmas.

4 Comments

December 10, 2010

ho-ho-holiday nods

most every friday, i carve out an hour. or maybe more than one.

it’s the hour when i pull up a chair, and sit for a moment. wait for the bubbling up to begin. it’s when i sift through the landscape of the week, see where my heart trips up. where it wants to play a frame over and over again. it’s the hour when i capture some scene of my children’s lives, as that life rolls on. it’s where i stop and pause and stare at some God-given miracle, the flight of a bird, the droop of a bloom. it’s where i wonder out loud.

and so it comes today. at the far side of the day, instead of the start. a field trip pulled me away. and the bus broke down on the long ride home. but, on fridays, i never feel settled till i’ve pulled up a chair.

so here i am, just me and my words and my bubbling-up heart.

it’s quiet here, the way i like it best of all, the way that lets me breathe. deep in, and deep out.

the clock ticks. the tea kettle is almost to whistling. the back yard, where all my flocks come, where they chitter and squawk, it’s silver-blue light out there. the sun has slipped from the afternoon sky. there’s barely the barest tinge of pink-fingered sky off to the west.

oh, there’s the kettle.

and there goes the last of the light. all i see now is black against gray. the limbs of the trees stretched like veins against sky.

my night’s work will be filled with elf sorts of tasks. i’ve holiday bread, 10 loaves, to deliver. each one tied with a cord, pulled on a sled perhaps. depends when the snow comes.

i’ve decided this year that i am making all of december a month for quietly giving. none of this mad-dash rush at the end. i’ve made the stretch from the first through till christmas a time to turn to those who’ve made a difference, to say, with a loaf, or a word, thank you for all you bring to me on the unlikeliest of days.

thank you to the neighbor who left a basket of tomatoes at my back stoop.

thank you to the one who lets my boy play in her basement for hours on end.

thank you mister bus driver, for marking each ride with a wave and a smile. for giving me reason, each blessed morning we manage to get there, for walking home with my own smile inside.

thank you to the soulful women who type beside me, tuesday through thursday. thank you for giving me reason to want to come to work.

thank you to the principal who made sure my little one was safe at heart during his days in the woods (and typed out a furtive email to let me know that he was).

thank you, deeply and truly, to each of you who come here during the days of the year when, somehow, you carve out the minutes it takes to come and see what’s out on the table. maybe you nibble, maybe you pass. but back and again, you come and you come.

nearly four years it’s been (12.12.06, the very first entry). and here we are on the brink of that marker, and too, the brink of the eve when a boy who’s grown up here will find out the news about college.

it’s a big december, as always.

bigger than most because of the latter.

how did we get here, so many are asking? how did we get to this place where our just-born children were finding out about college–where they would go, where they would dream, where they’d spread wings and fly from our nest?

it’s a good time for quiet, this brink of so much. so quiet i’ve stitched. in a card typed and cut and pasted and stamped. in bread studded with almond paste and golden raisins and cranberries too. wrapped in bakery paper, the white waxy kind.

it’s a quiet i’ve carved in tiptoeing down the stairs early and all alone. it’s a quiet i find in feeding my birds.

it’s a quiet inside that comes when you learn, at last, to whisper, this is enough. this says it all.

and so you pull a sled through the ridges of snow. you knock at a door, and hand over bread and a card and a merry, merry that says in so many ways: thank you for making my days as rich as they are.

merry merry to each and every one of you. those who still come here, and those who’ve not been in a very long while. i never forget a one of you.

may your december days be blessed through and through.

what’s on your thank you list this december?

1 Comment

October 22, 2010

house day

in the annals of psychology, i’m not sure where this would be filed: ordering one’s house as sure cure for inner re-arranging, pacifying, lulling into seasonal harmony.

humming while you work, another way to put it.

what’s on the docket today is no mere flickering of dust rag, no mere spewing this place’s dust over to that locale.

no, today is deep and pure and utterly satisfying.

i’ve yanked itty blue bottles off the window sills, hauled window cushions clear of the vast and dreamy looking-posts that are my window seats, where i’m nearly nestled in the boughs of trees, looking out and down on all that stirs in the lane and yards beyond.

yes, i’ve cleared the way for that once-every-18-months ritual (a saner soul might do it with more regularity, but oh, life got in the way): the washing of every blessed pane of glass in this old light-filled house.

but why stop there when the garden just beyond is calling, too. when the shaggy, floppy stems of summer’s-glory-gone now beg for sharp-edged readjustment. when weary stems can no longer hold up their end of the equation, and beg to be cut to the crown, where they can assume the winter’s lotus wrap and settle into slumber.

it’s inside-outside cleanse and purge today. i’ve been at it all morning, my hands worn raw already.

oh, but my soul is bright and shining. humming, too, because a cleanse is all a girl needs at the end of a long hard summer, at the end of a string of weeks that make your wiry hairs stand on end.

i’ve spent my life claiming to be mostly irish, but fact is i am half german. latent german, indeed. except for this one rare sprout of me, where it all comes spewing forth. and i can clean against the best of ‘em, clean my heartache away, sweep away my worries, scrub my everlasting fears.

oh, i’ve been caught out front, with broom in hand, sweeping off my bluestone stoop like some weathered, babushka-wrapped eastern-european hausfrau. i once (okay, maybe twice or thrice) forgot to eat the whole day long because i’d gotten caught up in the hurricane of cleaning that is a clean-freak set loose on a day without distraction. at night that night i got all woozy, felt my heart thump-thump in a way that made me think my dying act might be squeezing out the squeegee mop.

a friend of mine, one i work with, just last week watched her husband die. and she tells me that she cannot keep from cleaning. has been up half the night all week long, with toothbrush to the grout, trying to rid her house of every last speck of muck and gunk.

the famous family tale, told for years now, is that when my husband went off to college, his father, bereft and adrift, took to endless cleaning of the garage. when he’d rinsed the garbage cans for the umpteenth day in a row, someone who loved him finally pulled him aside, and suggested he might find his solace elsewhere.

someone here had better lock the garbage cans away, for we’re due for a repeat performance by the next generation–that very son who next year will be the bereft father who’s left his firstborn off at college.

i only wish that every friday could be my day-long deep-clean-the-house day. oh, i get spurts and chunks. string my week with short blasts of vacuuming, sponging down the counters. why, even emptying the dishwasher has its medicinal gratifications.

but for the nooks and crannies of the soul there is no such balm as a dawn-till-dusk, sun-soaked, crisp autumn day awash with buckets of soapy water, and piles of garden clippings to haul to the compost bin.

there are rare few corners of our existence that we can polish to a shine, rid of that which mucks it up. and so, to the cleaning rag and the garden clippers, we must bow in fervent gratitude.

amen amen. there’s much left to be done here today, and so this quick meander. still adjusting to this itty bitty screen, now carried to the kitchen table, where i watch the windows glisten, where i sense the garden’s lifted from its end-of-season shearing. it’s been quite a week or three on the workfront, none of it easy to swallow. and so i come back to here, to the table, where it all keeps ticking along.

next week, a serious treat here at the table. i’ll be sitting down to coffee with the barefoot contessa—be still my heart, and here i’ll uncork the back story, and let you in on all the secrets of what it’s like to share a table with the contessa herself.

till then, anyone else find pure emotional repair and contentment in the cleaning bucket, and the garden clippers?

4 Comments

June 13, 2008

shaky all around

the news seeping into my little world isn’t so swell these days. nothin’ at all to do with today being that unlucky friday. phooey, i say to that. that’s ol’ superstition. and superstitious i’m not. not so much, anyway.

i’m talking about the front page of the paper. and, lately, the business page, too. they’re the ones spelling out the downs and the more downs; whole columns of type, sprinkled with words like recession, inflation, and war that won’t end.

oh, and bosses at work being shown to the door. and other ones, new ones, saying they don’t like what we do. and we don’t do enough. and, oh, by the way, they’re cutting the pages, and the numbers of people paid to fill the ones left.

all sorts of talk, all day in the newsroom, about what’s going to happen, and who’s going to leave. anyone left, we all wonder, still reading the news? anyone left who loves turning a page, not knowing just where your fancy might land, soaking up something wholly brand new you might never have known? getting grabbed by a photo, or maybe a headline. seeing a byline, sinking into the words of a friend you’ve not ever met but feel that you’ve known for ever and ever.

it’s all very shaky. and it’s not only newspapers.

here in the village where i now mostly walk, or pedal my bike, to save the gas in my tank, i see houses for sale. hear stories of folks needing to move.

i know my dear friend the breadman isn’t baking so much. because no one is buying quite so much anymore. and cash registers, all over town, seem to be rigged with an odd little button that makes all of the totals twice what they were.

even at home, there are reasons to worry. the tall one is stiff, with a pain in his back. and all of us grownups, on pins and on needles.

so what do i do when it’s shaky all over, when the world at my door gets blurry and buzzes and is all out of sorts?

i crank up the dial on the parts of my life that matter the most.

i pay attention to what i’m cooking for dinner. i set the table with just a little more care. i cut more and more peonies from out in the garden. i tuck them there by the bedside, even in rooms strewn with little boy’s clothes.

i walk to the library. i sit with my sweet little starting-out reader. we pluck books, chapter books now, from shelf after shelf, whole piles too heavy for one of us only. we take turns with each chapter. we take turns with the book bag. sometimes, each one of us takes one of the handles. we lug it together.

i buy pie for no reason. i promise to learn to make my own crust. i snip herbs from the garden, snip with abandon. it’s summertime now and i needn’t be stingy.

i work in the garden. i pull weeds and more weeds. i stand back and admire the one-inch-by-one-inch that‘s finally weedless.

i sit on the stoop. i let ice melt on my tongue. we stuff chocolate-chip cones with mint-chocolate ice cream. then, for no reason, really, except for the joy of redundance, we sprinkle jimmies on top, those bit-lets of bite-able sugar. then we try not to bite, but only to lick. not once have we made it, not once without biting. these are the games that we play when we play for no reason, ’cept for the pure joy of playing at play.

as the world around me feels all very shaky, i sink deeper and deeper into what i love most, on a scale that gets smaller and closer to home, closer to heart.

it’s almost, you might want to think, like whistling in the dark. only that’s not what it is if you look from the soul side. it’s whistling, all right, but with very deep roots.

it’s the whistling of grownups old enough and wise enough, and humble enough, to know that the whole of the world we most likely can’t change.

but we can keep the ones that we love from feeling the bumps and the worries, from noticing that all around the edge of this boat, the waters are sloshing, are getting quite queazy.

we can make this place we call home a fine and true respite. the place we come back to, because it soothes us and calms us. because in a thousand small ways, we can dust off the dirt, and polish the places that just might maybe shine.

we might not steal headlines. we might not cinch deals. we might not be brokers of peace ’round the globe.

but what we do with our days, and our hours and minutes, just might make the difference in just a few blessed lives.

and those lives, some of them, were handed to us, for just a short time, really and truly.

someone wiser and truer than i’ll ever be, someone infinite, someone you maybe call God whispered once upon a time, spoke to each of our hearts. said, this is my beloved, and this is yours, too. i’ve breathed in a life, i’ve sculpted with love. it’s your job, should you so choose, to cradle, to take by the hand, to teach the words and the poems and the stories. to tuck into bed with a prayer, to draw tight the sheets. to kiss sweet blessed heads, and send dreams off to dreamland.

give the gift of your calm. give the gift of your grace. give laughter. give whimsy. give ice cream with sprinkles.
make each hour count.

make it be simple. make it be rich.

and then that Someone reached out and gave us our loves.

a wise friend of mine tallied the world as some of our children have lived it: 9/11, afghanistan, iraq, columbine. then there’s tsunami, new orleans under water, virginia tech, and gas at 4-plus-bucks-a-gallon. and, sure as heck, i’m leaving out a thing or two that’s kept you awake.

now, in grade school and high school, even in pre-school, they practice drills year after year, in case of intruders. our cold-war atomic-bomb scares replaced with very real fears that a classmate, or passing-by kook, could burst through the door, carrying guns.

some nights, as i lie in my bed, whispering prayers, and begging for mercy, i ask for a cloak of untattered peace to fall on my house.

and then i wake up, and give it the whole of my heart: i crank up the oven, i tuck in a pan of cinnamon rolls. i wait for the sound of the feet that i know. the big ones and little ones. even the cat’s.

and i do what i think i do best: with all of my might, i aim to sew even though i can’t thread a needle (not anymore anyway, not without my old-lady glasses). i stitch this old house with gracenotes of beauty, and fumble for even a loose knot of calm. i pay attention to nooks and to crannies no one might notice. i iron out wrinkles. i wring out the worries.

it’s called housework. and mine is of and for the soul.

i owe it, i do. to the ones whose everyday stories are being inscribed at my old kitchen table.

and besides, long long ago, i promised: dear God, bless me with life, and i’ll make it most noble.

how do you make your world a little bit calmer, a little bit richer, when all around it feels like the walls are starting to crumble?

8 Comments

June 11, 2008

welcome to summer

the half-wheel of moon drooled down on us, peeking through the pines, half-lighting the peonies, bent from the rains. the summer bugs hadn’t yet started their chorus. but it was june. it was a monday. and it was half past nine, and no one was hurrying.

we were just slamming the car doors, trying not to spill cotton-candy blizzard and blue-raspberry arctic-something-or-other anywhere near the insides of the still-smelling-new new car, which was when i glanced at the clock on the dash, saw it was nearly an hour past school bedtime, and sighed.

“i love summer,” i said, tripping over a rock in the pretty-much dark.

to which the little one retorted, “how many times do i have to tell you? it’s spring. this is spring break. it’s not summer until june 21.”

well, doesn’t he know his numbers?

and yes, technically speaking, were i inclined to pluck words based on the alignment of sun and sweet spinning earth, i would be more precise.

i am, however, not.

i am more stirred by the poetics of these unstructured days than i am by the facts of the matter.

in fact, the minute i start swooning about this state of mind that has me wanting to plop up my crocs and do nothing more rigorous than turning the pages of two delicious books i am reading in tandem (“signaling for rescue,” short stories by marianne herrmann; and “mr. gatling’s terrible marvel,” by my genius of a friend julia keller), i am reminded that summer–like a storm that blows in off the lake, with no warning–suddenly can turn into a mad-dash morning where the manchild has only one way to get to his very cool summer gig slinging a camera: me and the old car i am very much driving to some faraway outpost that requires a map and a mantra–”i will not get mad that no one figured this out the night before.”

and, yes, one of these meanders we can devote to the cold hard truth of summer versus the make-believe version, but let’s–just for the whimsy of it–stick here and now to what summer can be.

think: lemonade stands and peach pie oozing with juice. think summer porch and peanut-butter-and-jelly on a blanket, generously dusted with sand.

and think, maybe, about making a pledge.

oh, no, you needn’t start moaning, thinking i mean to get out the girl scout sash, and work toward one of those neat little circles you tried so clumsily to sew on after checking off each one of the itty-bitty boxes in the ol’ girl scout guide.

let us, though, start out this seasonal dash by holding up the rest of june, all of july and a good chunk of august to their fullest possibility, and then maybe proposing to approach this all with a little more vim and vigor this year.

my thinking along these lines got a bit of a jumpstart when i was out strolling by moonlight on the very first night after the schools around here let out their very last whistle, and shooshed all the kiddies away till the end of dear august, which i’ve now come to understand is sooner than you’d care to think.

wandering down one of the leafy, cobbled streets around here, i looked up at a house with a rather broad porch, a porch like a mama wrapping her arms. there, taped on the front door, was a sign: “welcome to summer.”

two strands of crepe paper, by then sagging, squirmed in the wisp of a wind.

i nearly cried, brightened by the fact that i’m not the only kook who approaches these things with the ceremony they deserve.

but also, mostly, by the notion that summer is more than a stack of hot days, one piled on top of another, like wet swimming trunks dumped in a heap in the basement, just daring the mildew to come.

it got me to thinking about how summer offers the chance to break loose of not only the school year’s constraints, but all those unspoken rules that can make one season bleed into the next.

what if, i wondered, what if summer offered a wholesale new way of being?

what if we reveled in this short sweet reprieve, not by packing up and leaving, but turning inside out each and every day, slathering ourselves in summerness the way other mothers (read: better mothers) remember to grease their bare-backed kiddies with great gobs of sunscreen for a day at the pool?

in my head (where i do all my best work), i started a list.

so far, it goes something like this: wake up late/wake up early. head out to the screened-in porch. sip coffee. listen to the birds wake up. watch the sunlight catch on the lipstick-pink petals of the climbing roses.

make blueberry pancakes. enlist the wicker-basketed bike for all errands. rediscover calf muscles. make daily rounds of the growing things in the so-called garden. carry clippers. cut a new bouquet every day. tuck them in odd places, like next to the children’s beds, just to see if anyone notices.

tiptoe back to the summer porch soon as the afternoon sun starts its descent. keep two books within reach, no matter where i go.

make lazy summer dinners. grill. strip tarragon leaves with reckless abandon, stuff inside chicken breasts, lace through mounds and mounds of pasta.

walk to the train, with all available children. pick up daddy, and watch his face light up.

go to the library. often. sign up for summer reading club. invite neighborhood kiddies to read in the summer porch. bake cupcakes, or simply serve pretzels and lemonade, to accompany whatever we’re reading.

visit your neighborhood ice-cream shop. try hard not to spill in the car. make sure that doesn’t happen by walking.

open the windows. turn on the ballgame. let the little one watch till the end of the game, paying no mind to the time on the clock.

steal away while he counts runs and innings. read some more.

go to bed with all windows wide open. wear summer pjs. fall asleep to nightsounds.

wake up, start all over again. only scramble it up. do something brand-new each day. something you always wanted to do, but couldn’t find the time for back in the days when lost mittens had to be located, and snowboots mucked up the hall.

it’s summertime. welcome to all it can be.

what’s your idea of summer? how will you spend your days? remember this here is make-believe, what you wish it could be.
the challenge: to see how close you can come to making it happen. the pledge: to try really loosely to savor the notion of summer.

i’m thinking of a few ideas here: maybe a summer book swap, read something yummy and mail it along. we might all be delighted by what lands in the mailbox. surely, we’ll take turns in the kitchen. if anyone comes up with something soooooooooo easy and so good, we’ll post it. if a wholly serendipitous summer moment lands in your lap, do tell; it might inspire the rest of us.
till then, kick off your shoes, open the windows, crank up the fans. and go freeze some juice in the old ice-cube tray. remember biting into a sort-of crunchy, sort-of slushy kool-aid cube?
p.s. i think this might be rather meandery. but it’s summer, straight lines and clear thinking are not always the surest way to go. thanks for winding along…..

10 Comments

Category: simple joys