pull up a chair

a.a. milne wrote a poem about it. called it halfway down. “halfway down the stairs/ is a stair/ where i sit./ there isn’t any/ other stair/ quite like/ it./ i’m not at the bottom,/ i’m not at the top;/ so this is the stair/ where/ i always/ stop.”
it goes on. talks about how it’s the place where all sorts of funny thoughts run ’round his head.
it’s a poem i don’t have to dig out from a book. just from that little tucked-away place in my brain where i store all the essentials: my growing-up phone number, the feel of the velvety collar of my first scarlet coat, the poems my mother recited to me when the bees stung, the lightning cracked or i plain felt afraid.
many a night, here in the house of the peripatetic won’t-go-to-sleeper we act out the poem of the author of pooh (milne is, i suspect you would know, the one who penned the adventures of that silly old bear in the first place).
it happens like this: the prayers are said, the sheets are tucked, the head is kissed, the lights turned out and i climb down the stairs.
i round the bend, sigh a sigh, think thank God another day now safely put to rest.
and then the hoof beats up above. kerplunk i hear a sword or saber crashing to the floor. and then the little feets tumbling shortly after.
there is a moment’s pause sometimes. perhaps he’s gauging consequences (although that most likely is a mother’s far-fetched thinking, for it’s not yet clear if this sweet child worries much what’s around the bend in that department; he seems unfazed).
and then, of course, the pitter-patter comes. it’s soft, sometimes, as rain landing on a petal. other times you think the buffalo have returned.
often it stops. a trip to somewhere is suspended. or maybe it’s where he intended. safe landing, after all.
when the silence stretches long enough, the turn is mine.
i tiptoe then, around the bend, and nine times out of 10, i find him sitting there. on the step that pooh’s inventor put so utterly, trippingly to words.
he isn’t at the bottom, and he isn’t at the top. in fact we counted: he’s six from the bottom and nine from the top.
the stories that spill there are the ones that seem to have sprung like a seed in rapid-vision. some little speck of a worry, planted hours and hours ago, suddenly a fully-opened daisy there on the stair. ready to be plucked. needing to be plucked, petal by petal, as he recounts in precise sequential order just what happened and just how it hurt.
whether it was the boy who told him he cheated with that kickball, or the one who called him “the S word,” this is the place he is pulled when the stories need telling, need airing out before bed.
seeing as he’s my on-the-ground reporter for the inner life of the 6-year-old head, he explains how it is that he’s propelled out of bed, night after night, not long after the lights go out.
it seems, in his rube goldbergian thinking, that the light switch flicking down, triggers some rumbling up in his brain. the rumbling, in turn, makes the toes sort of wiggly. the wiggly toes lead to squirmy feet, which then, without conscious thought, begin ambulation.
“i just randomly go there,” he reports. “daydreams, nightmares, all kinds of stuff, that’s what comes in my head. usually my daydreams are happy, but my nightmares are not.”
and why, my inquiring self finds myself inquiring, do you plop on that particular stair?
“i just do.”
is there some unique aesthetic to that step, some je ne sais quoi that makes it so fitting to the bottom and brain that so often settle there, i ask my interviewee?
he shakes his head in the affirmative way; oh, golly, i think, something good might be coming.
“because,” he uncorks, all of one word.
hmm. oh well.
no one said 6-year-old analysts were deeply revealing.
being 44 years his senior, i of course have my own thoughts on the matter. first, i find it so apt that the stair is the place that he stops. in the interlude between night and day, it–the step–is neither here nor there. depending how you approach it, it’s the tumbling down of the day, or the spiraling into the nighttime.
it’s the nethertime, and he is traveling to a netherplace.
being perched on a stair, as opposed to a pillow, offers a few vantage points. (besides the fact that you can look down on your mother, who herself is primly plopped on the fifth from the bottom, the tenth from the top.)
he is just a bit closer to the action of the house that’s not settled below. how unfair it must seem, night after night, to be the first dispatched to bed.
and then there’s the innate architecture of a stair. it is a structure that begs the cascading of whatever’s tucked deep inside. it practically demands the step-by-step telling of stories.
and besides, it’s all rather tight and cozy. in the midst of ascension itself.
i myself spent many a night on the stair. but my preferred raison d’ stair was not storytelling so much as spying.
i loved nothing so much as to sit at the top on the nights when bridge and its better half, adult conversation, murmured below. the cigarette smoke. the crunch of the cashews in the cocktail mix, those nuts in the blue-colored can. the guttural laughs of the men and giggles from housewives dressed up in their lipstick and stockings. it all wafted up, swirled, made me dizzy for a world where i wasn’t admitted.
which makes me think that perhaps to a boy who is trying to get a grip on the world, there is indeed something more than appealing in finding a place on the map where you can look out, scan something of a horizon, set your dreams sailing on the landscape beyond.
it’s the pirate up in the eagle’s nest. the climber high in the tree fort. the man on the side of the mountain. we go to a place with a vista when we need to see things not quite so blurry.
and heck, it sure makes it easy for me. i know, if i can’t find him in bed, i need only turn to the stairs. chances are, there he’ll be, the boy with the dreams and the nightmares, sitting bolt upright. not at the bottom. not at the top.
right at the stair where the day gives way to the night.
when he gets sleepy enough, when we’ve talked it all through, then, only then, is he willing to stand, to relinquish his stair, and return to the bed where once, long ago, i had left him.
i tuck him again. kiss him quite softly. then it’s off to the land where there’s no need for a stair to make sense of what spills through your noggin.

have you a stair? a stoop? a perch where you too look out on the world? had you one as a child? have you a child who has one, or had one? tell your stair stories. let them tumble below….
it all makes me wonder, the prayer place yesterday, the story place today, what it is about the human essence that draws us like magnets to a particular place for a purpose that’s often repeated. how is it that a particular function of the soul, or the mind, is best lubricated in a single location? these are the things a soulful architect might ponder. i think i know one. maybe i’ll ask him. (although he is not an architect, he’s a critic of architecture, which in my book means he actually thinks these things through rather than sketching them…..)
have a lovely weekend. see you monday.

the people here first, the people long long ago, the ones who were blessed, who lived off its forests and lakes, the ones whose very skin knew the touch of the divine all around, the ones who gave names to each tree and each dip in the path, they would have had a name for this place. a name that rolled off the tongue.

my name is not so poetic. my name is simple. i call it the place where the prayers come.

i am pulled there, to the tall grasses that grow in the sand at the edge of the lake, the great lake. i am pulled there like some sort of tide in reverse.

the waves roll in one way. i roll in from the other.

especially these days. especially here in the autumn when the sun is offering up its very being. solar balm, just barely diluted. just enough so you can take it in doses longer than that of the summer.

it whispers, it pulses, the sun does, the promise of healing, of filling us up for the long winter ahead.

come now, i feel it saying. come to the place where the prayers come. come to the place where the wind whispers, too. where the wind in the grasses rustles and stirs and tingles your spine. and the gull cries. and every once in a while the geese fly, in their uncanny lines, with the one in the front squawking and honking like nobody’s business. like some bossy old thing i’d be tempted to bump out of line. go sit in a corner, i might want to tell that unruly gander, till you learn to behave. but then no one said it’s easy being in charge.

the october sun lures: come to the place where the lake never stops. some days it crashes, others it tickles. but the sound is incessant. no matter what else, there is always the play of the water on sand.

it’s a place where the sky is the dome and the vault is forever. the church has no walls. its very architecture demands the propelling of thoughts. there’s the rustle within, and the catapult beyond. a horizon that’s infinite. that has room for whatever flows.

there is no feeling cramped in the pews in this place. you can wiggle your toes in the sand, for crying out loud. you can feel like a ladybug, too. nestled there in the grasses that bob in the sun, play catch with the rays, turn golder than gold. and then dim.

you get caught up in the swirl here. in the sounds and the sun and the sand.

there is no sign that’s posted. other than the one about keep off the ice. but that belongs to a whole other season, and i pay no mind.

still, i notice, time after time, that i’m not the only one called here. there’s a sprinkling of others. all of us joined in the hushed and holy communion of publicly dropping our guard, unspooling what lays in our hearts.

oh, not a whisper is spoken. it’s quiet as any cathedral. at least in terms of the noises of humans.

it’s as sacred as church. maybe moreso. there is an unspoken knowing our thoughts and our prayers are not to be jostled. there are no interruptions of everyday small talk. that would be sacrilege.

some slip their fingers down the edge of a page, turn it slowly. others, like me, bring their prayers in free form.

there are benches for those who don’t favor sand. but me, i bury myself there in the grasses. like a quail in a rush, i go as small as i can. i like to feel little. against a sky and a God without beginning or end.

it makes me feel wrapped, held in very big arms.

as much as i love the tick-tocks and hum of my house, there is, i must admit, something about being out under the heavens. about being enveloped by the most blessed earth. even the sharp edge of the grasses serves to awaken some place deep inside. and there is no softer softness than the bump of the beach under your bottom. it’s as if i’m surrounded by a choir that won’t call it quits.

i never stay long. i don’t feel the need to. the fuel that comes there, in the place of the prayer, it is rather intense. it fills me quite fully. and it lasts.

till the whisper comes once again. come to the prayer place. come to the place where the prayers come.

and so i start walking. i never can wait till i get there. it’s as holy a place as i know.

and i think that the people from long long ago, i think they knew, too.

i’m not the first one, nor the last, i imagine, to be called to the place where the prayers come.

how blessed that amid all the horns and the sirens and the buzzing cacophony we’ve brought to these once sacred woods, i hear the whisper, i follow the call.

my beautiful friends, do you have a place where the prayers come? a place out under the heavens? tell us the tale of your place, one of now or one from long long ago…

if not for the culinary peculiarities of the little one, who demands them shamefully often, they would live on a shelf with all the emergency supplies–the flashlight, the batteries, the coil of rope.
and the nuggets. dehydrated, faux breaded chicken parts, cut in coy little legs to make you think you’re eating the very real thing. they too would be off with the back-ups. banned from public consumption. except in the case of a hurricane.
reserved for nights like last night. sad, pathetic, make-your-heart-pound nights like last night.
nights when dinner pulls every trick in the book in its wily attempt to escape.
ah, but it knows not who it’s up against.
i am fierce, i am nuts, when it comes to defending the dinner hour. i am, admittedly, a kook about gathering all of us, sitting us ’round the same maple slab, holding hands even, saying grace, digging in.
in to the occasional whining and actual snippets of real conversation. into the boy who’s been known to sink under the table. or the long stringy pastas that slide faster than he does in a race to the floor. it must be a game, see who gets there first.
oh, some nights it’s not pretty. but it is dinner, and it’s the knot in the cloth of our life where all the very loose threads come together. we twist. and we talk. and we tell all our stories.
given the age span, given as we dig into peas we are hearing who called whom “stupid” in kickball, and as we move on to noodles, what horror is being targeted by the global activist club, it can make your head whirl, boing like a little white ball, from one side of the plate to the other.
sometimes even the grownups get a chance to jump in. we might hear how the donald hung up on the daddy. or how mommy forgot, once again, to cancel the milkman because the global activist does not like the dairy man’s politics.
no matter the madness, there is a method. a crux of the matter. it dates back over a decade.
long ago, for my day job, i spent a very long time talking and listening to a truly fine family. i spent months, actually. i was there to record the emptying of their once very full nest; four children, busy lives, and then suddenly, two grownups alone in a very big house.
in the midst of reporting that story, the father once told me the single most fundamental thread of their incredibly tugged-apart life, a life that remained as entwined as any french knot, was their religious commitment to dinner, family dinner. if it was 9 o’clock before all stumbled in from wherever they’d been, they still made it happen.
the non-negotiables were these: a meal, a table, a carved-out hour at the end of the day. full attendance.
i had only one very young boy at the time. already, most every night we pushed that high chair up to the table, ate all together. it made as much sense to me as turning a spigot to fill a glass full of water.
but sometimes, even when you already know, the teacher speaks and the lesson is sealed. mr. grabowski, that was his name, is my muse for the coming together at the end of the day.
he didn’t let baseball or debate or that godawful soccer that seems to think it owns the hour from 6 until 7 get in the way of whatever was slopped on the plate, and spooned down besides.
and neither will i.
darn thing is, it’s not getting easier. the forces, it seems, are gathering. doing all they can to pull me and the dinner apart, into so many nuggets sucked down so many throats.
i’ll be damned.
last night it was the school newspaper. layout stretches right through the dinner hour, or so we’d been told. the budding young journalists move headlines, crop pictures, chomp pizza.
i had made a swift but lovely dinner for the rest of us. had stopped my workday with time to chop madly, saute, and let simmer. i even steamed up the broccoli, a famously ridiculed stand-by in this house. we managed to walk to the train to meet the commuter, sauntered home for a short respite before i dashed off to a book circle.
that’s when the phone rang. it was the manchild who’d been editing stories. he was ready for pickup, he informed. i looked at the stove, the pots and pans bright with so many colors. i looked at my husband, grabbing his keys.
that’s when my jaw dropped. that’s when i thought, no way, not now. can’t he wait? i mean i’ve gone to this trouble. can’t we sit down? can’t we at least shovel the food, pretend that we’re dining?
but i said not a word. he was gone before i could manage to banish some nagging counter-thought that of course we needed to pick up the child who’d gone off to school with three measly hours of sleep, a biology test and a 20-page paper to boot.
but then the phone rang again. it was the boy journalist. seems his eagerness to get home, to climb into bed perhaps, was a bit premature. he’d just been advised by the teacher in charge that it would be at least one more hour.
oops.
well, this is a world where we are all cellularly connected. except when we’re not. except when i dial the cell of my mate, and i hear it singing its song in the drawer in the desk in the kitchen.
oops. and oh no.
i had two choices: let the man wait by the curb at the school, wondering, not knowing, not having the means to call for a clue.
or i could haul the little one, hop in the other car, and drive like a madwoman to cut him off at the pass.
that’s where the nuggets came in.
the bright colored foods in the pot were not portable dinner. surely would slosh from the plate to the lap to the seat there in the back of a car being steered by a madwoman, a crazed woman, a woman who just wanted one thing from the day: a nice quiet meal before all of us spun our own ways.
alas, i zapped a few lumps of phony poulet, tossed the plate to the boy, and took off after the wagon.
so there’s me, the one who believes with every cell in her body, that dinner together is a very good thing. and i’m driving past one high school on the way to the other. i am passing very long lines there at the school, all these supersized vans filled with supersized carryouts, i wonder. given that it’s their dinner hour as well. and i am amazed at how many folks are not at their homes, at their tables, but there at the curb of the school, waiting.
but as i am thinking, i’m zooming. i too am clicking the clicker, turning the wheel at the hour that’s supposed to be sacred. the whole ride i am listening to a voice in my head, telling me, loudly, that i really have lost it. why not, it practically shouts, wave a white flag? why not let the dinner dissemble? why chase the man from the other side of the table back to the table? why the insistence on sitting, as many as we can possibly manage, together in that very fine circle?
because i am stubborn is why. because i will not let the world take away the one thing i deeply believe in, the sacred communion of slowing, of passing the bread, of pouring more milk. of asking, quite simply, so what was the best part of your day? what was the hard part?
i won’t give up listening. asking for seconds. or thirds, when it comes to the stories that simmered all day. that stewed. that are ripe, as we gather, for plucking.
we got home, yes we did. all three of us sat and we supped (the nuggets were starters for the backseat rider, who when we got home wanted more, i am sad to report).
the colors weren’t bright anymore. the sausage not terribly warm. but it was good. and it filled us, it did.
i might put in a call to mr. grabowski. ask him how in the world he so managed.

this here’s fightin’ words. anyone else fierce about guarding that hour? how do you do it? what grace do you find at the table? where and how did you learn that what unfolds as a family at dinner is, perhaps, the single most essential nutrient?

the reason my heart skipped, twirled, did a jig ’round the curb, is, i’d been waiting. holding my breath. praying. beckoning guardian angels to please get him home.
not ’cause i’m some sappy ol’ wife with nothing to do but wait by the curb in my curlers with bonbons.
heck, there were children to tuck into bed. and dishes to scrub in the sink.
but after the phone call, none of that mattered. not so much anymore.
you might recall–it was yesterday only–that the man who i love, the man we’ll call mr. parallel life, had grabbed the keys off the ring, hopped in the ol’ wagon, taken off for parts 200 miles away.
well, mr. parallel, late in the day, had wrapped it all up, was minding his business, steering for home. when all of a sudden there sounded a rather loud boom. that boom, he soon realized, had just come from him. or his left rear tire, that is.
thing was, he was out on the interstate where 18-wheel rigs think nothing of rolling by at, oh, 800 miles an hour. or so it felt. tucked off to the side, just after a bend, where the road starts to come up what we in the middle parts of the country call a hill. really, it was the slightest of slopes.
or so i know because i grilled him for every last detail.
but that wasn’t till later, when he and the tire in shreds had come through the fog, into my jiggety arms.
the hours between were, like the cumulus clouds of mist that rolled in, sifted through trees, settled on lawns, made of the street a scene from an old hitchcock movie, eery and quite rather scary.
he called right away, just before dinner. called to say, well, all is fine except that i’ve just blown a tire, and i’m out in the middle of nowhere, and the darkness is just ’round the bend. the trucks barreling by seem to think this is that stretch of ol’ indiana where the 500 revs up its engines.
and then maybe he stuck the phone out the window, ’cause all the way here, i could hear how those semis shimmied and shook down the highway.
let me just say, a girl with barely an ounce of imagination might see pictures of very big trucks veering awfully close to that shoulder. not me. i have imagination overdrive. i pictured right on to the front page of the newspaper, gathering the kiddies, draping my sorrowful self all in black.
oh, lord. time started ticking in very slow motion. here i was, scared and basically helpless. there he was, on the side of the interstate, in the dim-turning-to-dark, waiting for a tow truck to rumble out of the blackness.
i called here and there. tried to be helpful. offered to go buy a tire, drive it down there. called my friends at the gas station, who assured me the measly round object in the back of the volvo–the thing that looks like a make-believe tire–could actually safely hobble him home. thing was, he’d have to get off of the interstate. drive home straight through gary. which, if you were from this part of the world, you might know is not exactly a traipse through the candyland forest.
and so began the vigil for someone you love. that close encounter with what might go wrong that reminds us how essential is their breath in our ear.
we have, i imagine, all waited. and worried. not known how or when a drama would end. we have, some of us, seen dramas end achingly bad. we have stood in hospital hallways. heard doctors summon unspeakable words.
“i’m so sorry,” is all the doctor once said. i had to ask, “is he dead?” spell it out, tell me, because at this moment there’s fog and i am finding it terribly hard to wrap my head around what you are saying.
i have not yet–but i know it’s coming, can feel it too breathing right down my neck–waited for a child with keys and a car and a curfew that’s blown. maybe i’ll be lucky. maybe mine–the older one, at least–won’t blow a curfew. but still there will be minutes that turn into hours, where i am waiting. remembering news headlines. imagining.
maybe i’m wired with just enough fear that i am often tamping it down. putting out sparks before they turn into fires. i have a mind that takes off like a kite in a hurricane. it pitches and swirls, it crashes and splinters in pieces. it needs some sort of leash. and a short one, if you’ve got one just lying around.
to wait for someone you love is to sift through the core of your life. to realize the threads of the net that they weave, the net that keeps you from flailing, from falling.
you hold hands with your children at dinnertime prayers. you squeeze a little harder, remind them you’re there, and, while you’re at it, so is the God you are asking to bring home their papa.
you look then out the window. you see that it’s gotten all blurry. and no, it’s not you and your worry. there’s a fog, a thick one, rolled in from the lake. and it’s ratcheting up the equation.
now you have a husband hobbling home on a make-believe wheel in a fog thick as smooshed peas. and he’s taking the side roads, besides.
drawn somehow by the spine-tingling beauty, the mystery, really, of these clouds that have reshaped the landscape, this fog that has smoothed all the harsh edges, wrapped halos on each of the light posts, you step into it.
leave behind the warmth of the house. find yourself staring straight down the street, into the mouth of the darkness. you are imploring now. you think of the song you sang so long ago. “come home, daddy, come home.” you walked to the corner and waited to see his little blue falcon. the car that magically brought home your hero. every time. except for the last time. when the doctor answered, “yes, he is dead.”
you stand in the fog in the street. you know, any minute, you’ll see the lights in the distance. the little round glow, two glows actually. and the glow will come near you, will pull to the curb. and there will be someone’s daddy. someone wide-eyed upstairs in bed. ’cause his daddy was due hours ago. and he’s only just now coming in through the door.
the vigil is over. the headlights did come. they broke through the fog. they shimmered with halos the whole way down the street.
the one that you love made it home, wrapped in white light.
precisely the prayer you had prayed.

have you waited lately? or ever? do you find your mind racing into dark corners? or do you have some secret serenity, some faith that all will work out, until proven otherwise? do you remember waiting as a young child? do you recall how sweet the embrace when the vigil is over?

finally, the lazy susan is restocked with a nod to october. give it a whirl.

and now, tell me your stories of waiting…..

any minute now, in the pit-a-pat of the pitch black of a rainy morning, the man i love, the man i weave my life with, will grab the keys off the ring, walk to the curb and drive 200 miles away.

i will get boys out of bed, off to school. i will go into a classroom. work with first graders learning to read. i will see first-hand who reads and who doesn’t yet. i might well be alarmed. i might walk out of that room, thinking, hoh boy, we are sunk. or sinking.

the man with the keys and the old volvo wagon will be driving still. will be on his way to the world’s first green museum. often, by day, he fills his hours with the world’s first this. or the latest architectural that. he talks to people all day with broad sweeping visions. often, of late, he talks to that fellow from tv who builds very tall buildings, fires his minions, right there on the screen, goes by the name of “the donald.” you know, the one with the very bad hair.

sometimes i too talk to souls with incredible visions. sometimes my day job fills my hours with thoughts far, far away. but i layer my day jobs. i’ve got more than just one. oh, sure i write newspaper stories. and i care very much about every last word.

but the fact of the matter, the job that keeps me awake is the one that draws me to classrooms, to cafeteria lines. the one that has me keeping very close watch on the souls who are growing inside of this house.

that’s the one, i think, that takes every ounce of my intellect, and more of my soul than i ever imagined. that’s the one that has me sifting through sands, searching for stones on the side of the path, the ones left long long ago by the wise souls marking the trail. some days i feel lost in the woods; others, the direction is perfectly clear. even if lonely.

what amazes me is the invention of what we’ll call marriage, but really is two lives daring to buttress each other. the fact that two souls can lead such different lives by the day, yet come home, night after night, to the same table, the same couch, the same bed.

there are days, plenty, and especially of late, where our worlds just barely connect. he is off in a newsroom, battling battles. and i am at home worrying about consonant blends, how to teach that c and h sound like a train, s and h remind you to whisper and c and k echo each other.

there are days, spans of days really, when it feels as if whole chapters roll by. not a paragraph shared. oh, sure i know the essentials. what train he’ll be on. if he’ll be late.

but do i know the ins and outs of his soul?

often i do. not often enough, it might seem.

does he know mine? not unless he sits down and reads what i write here. (just a joke, just a plug for the chair, there.)

do i know at this minute, what he is thinking? how he lurched on the brakes because a car in the rain nearly collided with the one just in front? do i know the questions he’s thinking of asking, or why this museum is worth a three-hour drive?

the state of a marriage in the thick of these years, must be such that it can get by on fumes and wisps. for fairly long spells.

but then, in the unscheduled serendipitous sentence, in the sharing of a story, or hearing how deeply he listens, when really it matters, the whole deal is sealed. i remember why i, who clung to my all-alone time, gave it up. i recall how it is that he makes me more than i am, all on my own. i remember the feeling of spreading my wings. catching the updraft. some days, he is my wind.

it is, at best, an exercise in extreme empathy. putting yourself in the place of the one who you love. imagining the world as it comes crashing toward that other one’s soul. while keeping yourself as adrift as you can.

i choose–by mutual consent–not to explore here the ways it does not work. that is the subject of some other place. what amazes me though, what is worth examination, is simply the marvel of spiraling, always returning. how we find, in the dark of a cool rainy dawn, that place where we both draw our breath from the very same air.

how our keys can dangle in parallel, on two separate rings. we can go off for very long hours. and still want, very much, to come again to the same table. to intersect. to share the stories that over the years weave us together. to know there is much that pulls us apart, the drama of days, the simple equations of physics and math.

but to know, as sure as we know there is oxygen out there, that there is reason for both of our hearts to proclaim this the place where we lay down our heads and our dreams and our prayers. we’ve birthed more than two children.

we’ve birthed a path up the mountain that promises this: some days, we diverge, we climb over rocks, barely hold on in slippery places. but once in a while we meet up and look out together. what we see, it catches my breath. it holds it and draws out my lungs. but then it fills up.

then i know i am breathing the very pure air of parallel lives intersecting for one simple reason: together we climb to a place we’d not climb alone, not a chance.

marriage is not often the subject of discourse here at the table. i was simply struck, as we both stood in the dark, diving into our day, at how different are the lives that we lead for much of the daylight. yet somehow, we always find union. i think it worth putting out there because of souls who i love at various stages of union: a dear friend who after many long years has fallen in love, and has sent out a series of questions about how it is that we negotiate the deep and not-so-deep matters of this married state; another friend who seems to be circling ever closer to becoming betrothed; another dear and beloved friend who is in the depths of “un-marrying,” as she puts it. all three are souls who take nuance to heart. who mine all of life at its depths. i am groping, but the state of the union–the freedom to live parallel lives, the miracle of coming together, the negotiating and re-aligning so those paths don’t too widely diverge–is worth considering in the way that we do here…..if you can, if you care to: do you marvel, ever, at the contrast in texture and content of your day and that of your mate? is a married life one that holds virtue for you? how has yours buoyed you? or pulled you down under? what is it that reminds you of why you are there in the first place? what of the love that sustains you? what great marriages have you known, learned from, aspired toward? what seem to be the lessons worth carrying forward, taking to heart?

the cat, with his insistent little pawing at the side of the bed, beckoned me at what i started to mutter was some godawful hour last night. one of those hours where there are not enough digits to fill the face of the red-numbered clock that keeps me cued in to my risings and fallings.

2 something, it was. and i would have been cranky the whole way down the stairs, around the bend, through the kitchen, to the door in the back.

but right away i noticed the spots.

oh lord, i thought. now what? now what is wrong with the world? there seem to be splotches of white all over the yard. it’s the pox in reverse.

but then i rubbed my eyes, just long enough to make sure what i was seeing was real, and not some foreshadowing of the opaque-ing of my eyeballs there at the back where the light does or does not get ushered in.

this was real, all right. this was moon lace. and until you’ve had a cat with a hankering for full moons, or a baby who howled through the whole lunar orbit, you’ve maybe not seen what i mean.

you might want to set your alarm. to the cat-scratching hour. then maybe set out a lawn chair. on your deck, in your grass, on the escape of your building, perhaps. climb to the roof if you have to.

but i’ll warn you right now: this experiment might not be quite so successful if the moon in your ’hood is hardly the brightest bulb in the street. if, say, ambulance shinings and cat-burglar flashlights get in the way of the light of the moon.

you might want to borrow the moon from one of your far-out-there friends. someone like me. who lives where the moon gets its due. which was not quite the no. 2 reason i moved here, but, gee, seeing all the free entertainment i get, it sure was a bargain.

okay, so now that you’re perched, now that it’s 2 in the morning and you’re out there in your jammies, do not look up in the sky. that’s not where this show is.

oh, all right, if you must. but don’t dawdle. okay, see it? that there is the full harvest moon. but really, class, i’d like to direct your attention to the ground.

see them there puddles of white? it is not some oozy infection. it is, as i told you already, if you were listening, paying attention, it is the lace of the full harvest moon.

and it is something. beats chantilly, far as i care.

it is full-strength moonbeams, people, nipped and tucked by the leaves and the boughs on the trees. where the beams are not blocked by the shadows, there spills the light.

it makes you suck in your breath. it makes you think, what if i missed this? i wonder what else in the world is unannounced beauty? there were no ads, no spots on tv. no billboards along the expressway. tune in, they might have said, you won’t want to miss this.

not a word whispered. just a beautiful breathtaking something draped all over my yard. my very own grass and my garden dappled in inside-out shadows.

so, of course, there at the door with my hand on the knob, tapping my toe for the cat who is now mamby-pamby about going outside, i am not sated. staring through glass is hardly enough.

i was one of those kids, must have been, who, back before kindergarten, didn’t stand at the water table and just watch it. i’m sure if they’d yet invented a water table–or its cousins, the rice table, pasta table, sand table, marble table; you get the drift–i dove right in. got my dress soaking wet. right down to my sweet mary janes.

same with this moon lace. i didn’t care what the clock said, or that i was wearing my stripey pajamas. i opened the door, and along with the cat, out i pranced. leapt around like a kook under the moon. which, come to think of it, is just what i was. no simile about it.

leapt from white splotch to white splotch. tried to take pictures.

hmm.

seems i do not have what it takes to take filigreed moon light. so i took the cheap shot. point and click. hard to miss that ol’ moon up there in the trees. and it did set the mood. more or less. maybe less.

oh, and that’s when the bush moved. holy cow, i jumped practically right over that moon.

i never did see what it was, all lacy and white, with very big teeth, i assure you. i scrammed like a cat being chased. which, again, is hardly a simile. there was something furry, and it was rather unhappy.

i mean what wild thing expects his or her nap on the harvest moon night to be so rudely disturbed by a lady leaping through what she thinks is lace. when really it’s the same old, same old, that you, the sleeping wild thing, see month after month. what’s up with these two-legged leapers?

i’m pretty sure that’s what that critter was thinking, as it hurried me into the house.

then, once i was there, catching my breath, feeling my heart thump through my jammies, i do believe the whole backyard went back to its pre-moondance state of affairs. which means the wild things returned to their slumber. or their nosing through garbage. making midnight munchies of whatever littler, feebler creature they found. i’m telling you, it is wild out there.

and the moon, through it all, kept on shining.

now the very cool thing about the ol’ harvest moon, the one that’s starred–or should i say mooned?–in so many songs, is it is famous for being very big and very orange, early on in the night. much earlier than my cat bothered to bother me.

so while i missed that part of the story, it is a continuing saga, a moon show with nightly installments. and for the next few nights it’ll shine big and orange and downright delicious just for you, too.

the reason is this: this moon rises just about the time of the sunset. something about the angle, and catching more of the sunbeams. the moon is a really big sponge, don’t you know.

so if you’d like a really fine show, you will again need to haul out your lawn chair. and head to a place where the moon comes over the edge of the world. this time you will want to keep your eye on the sky. and stay put; you have nothing to do. it’s just like waiting for a pop-tart to come from the toaster.

depends where you live, but somewhere around 7 o’clock chicago time, is when the pop-tart will pop.

so there is your homework. you can do either or both. or, as always, none. a lawn chair and snacks is all you will need. oh, and access to the sky. if you cannot see the sky from your house, then, a.) i am so very sorry, and b.) it won’t work.

i promise you, whatever you do, if you do anything at all, will be worth the trouble it brings you. while the moon shines, somewhere, night after night, it is not always the full harvest moon. and the lace that is out there, you will wish you could wear it.

sewn onto your jammies, perhaps.

you can now see for yourself what a little moon dancing does for the morning. and for reasons that wholly escape me, i have not even made coffee. maybe i had too much of it yesterday. who knows. but i do know that i’m wondering, did i have any company? was anyone else out leaping through dew-sodden grass? being chased by big-enough furry things? or for those of you who dwell in big cities, did anyone call the police because of you and your lunatic antics? who’s on for tonight? 6:56 central standard time. set your clocks. moon rises. lace hits around 2, i assure you.

and the happiest of birthdays, to a true harvest moon of a friend. she is bright and beautiful. if not orange. mes, with the most blessed september birthday, mwah. that’s a big kiss. as dear friend jan says….

last thing: the full harvest moon, as always, marks the start of sukkot, the great jewish harvest festival, where a sukkah, or shelter, is built, and all meals are taken outside. considering what hangs in the sky, it’s no wonder the very wise jews thought to create the original cafe al fresco. we too shall be dining by moonlight as much as we possibly can. amen to the moon….

the morning it happened, the boy came down the stairs bleary-eyed. words came out more in grunts than real syllables. but i figured it out.
“k’i tr kff?
“plzzz?”
the grunts were distinct, there were four of them. one string and an add-on. each ended in a question. that i could tell from the upswing of the grunt. it was a request. and it was insistent.
translation: “mother dearest, could i try some of that black brew i’ve been smelling for years now, and that this morning i definitely need?
“please?”
i braced against the edge of the counter. held on as my knuckles turned a paler shade of pink. i’d been waiting for this. seen it coming in keen concentration, in the way that he watched how i did it.
not much to watch, since i’m straight-up with my brew. i make it so thick and so octaned, a spoon, if i stirred it, would stand without listing. might even salute, what with the hairs on its spine sticking straight up, at fullest attention, indeed. come to think of it, poor spoon might shimmy, buzzing from all that high octane.
i’ve no need for dumbing it down, my morning’s refreshment, that is. not a splash from a cow, nor a spoonful of sweet stuff. i put nothing in it. drink buck naked, i do. just me and the beans and a wee dash of water.
if i could get away with beans in a cup, i might try that. ah, never mind. it’s the sucking i’d miss. and the swirling around of the hot steaming brew before it goes down the pipe, rumbles my tummy.
i’d seen the boy peeking over my shoulder. caught him inhaling. the mug on the counter, i mean. the cumulus cloud of cafe-vapor that wafts from the pot as i pour.
ever since his manhattan auntie supplied him with his very own card, he’s been transgressing at starbucks, ordering frothy, whip-creamy concoctions, all with an undertow of c-o-f-f-e-e (maybe if i spell, i’m thinking, he won’t be quite so tempted). when he was little he didn’t mind a spoonful of haagen-dazs in the offending flavor; in fact, i’d find him licking that spoon. a kindergartner with a taste for the bean.
so i was hardly stunned at the question. it’s j-j-just, well, i wasn’t quite ready to share.
you see, when i went shopping for mates long ago, i specifically issued a bulletin that i was seeking a soul who would not steal my brew. not in the morning. not after dinner on the nights when the table was spilling with pies and cakes and good conversation, and a fresh pot of coffee seemed the perfect bedtime, um, lubricant. conversational lubricant, of course.
stingily, i have brewed me a pot every morning of my married life–oh, except for the 8-1/2 months of each pregnancy when i could not be in a room with the wretched concoction of colombian beans and lake michigan water–and not once have i shared so much as a drop. at least not with the tall guy who wanders the kitchen, searching for cereal bowls, avoiding the pot. he is strictly an orange juice man.
puffy-chested, i have boasted at the sheer genius of falling in love with a man who does not partake of my deeply personal habit. that brew is mine and mine alone. i make eight cups, i drink eight cups. no scuffling over the beans or the roast, or the straightup-ness of my own private method.
until now.
until the morning after the freshman in high school found himself with a mere four hours of sleep. and the stuff in the pot that his mama was clutching close to the heart, hmm, it smelled like just the right cure for his bleary-eyed blues.
so, near trembling, i poured. the occasion was worthy of cameras (which of course i grabbed). he needed a bit of a lesson, it seemed. knew this wouldn’t be going down straight, the way real drinkers drink it.
his virgin cup would be slow, would be easy.
i showed him the spoon and the carton. told him to pour till just the right color he saw. when brown turned to beige, he surrendered the 2-percent. i saw how his eyes brightened, though, when i mentioned that out in the real world he might bump into actual cream. the notion seemed not to alarm him. perhaps, after all, he was more of a man than i knew.
he asked for sugar. i gave him the raw stuff. some packet i’d stashed in my pocket, bored, i suppose, as i sat at some faraway table. carried it home for just such a crossing the threshold.
he sipped, and i knew right then i was sunk.
he smiled.
that smile i knew from myself. it’s the smile of deep satisfaction. when the brew hits your tongue, hits your brain, hits your soul. sort of a one-man-band of caffeine delight. the drums were drumming, the harmonica humming. even the cymbals were clanging. the boy was liking the brew.
i am working to keep him at bay. i don’t think it wise for a youth of 14 to go supercharging his innocent pistons.
he did report that the sip in the morning aided him all through the day. or at least the math test at 10, that unforgettable day when my hold on my pot was first loosed.
i am no longer the sole owner and proprietor of the one appliance that matters. me and the coffeemaker, we’ve got company. and he’s asleep in the bed just above.
perhaps i can teach him the wonders of tea. or, like his father, to face the world on nothing but orange juice.
but i fear that the ballots are already counted. me and the beans: 1. boy and beans: 1.
we’re in for a lifetime of sharing.
yo, kid, i ask only this: don’t, for the life of me, drink without thinking. do not, whatever you do, leave me to wake up to a house with no brew.
that might sink me, to reach for the black stuff and find nothing but syrupy goo that’s baked onto a pot when it’s thoughtlessly drained.

slow to wake up to the real world, i am wondering, those of you who share walls with more than your sweet little self, did you find it a challenge to let go of your stranglehold on what brewed? and those of you who live all alone, do you ever mind when company drains that there pot? any and all of you, do you recall your very first cup? what words of wisdom would you share with one just starting to octane? any refinements on the perfect coffee equation? do not hold back here, people. this is a whole lifetime of sipping we’re launching.

i can conjure few tasks where one of the essential ingredients is dried blood. but there i was, the lady in black, digging small graves all over the yard, one hand on the trowel, one hand in the pouch of dried blood.
like the wounds of some civil war battlefield, i sprinkled behind me a crimson-red trail. tossed blood to the wind, let it rain on each grave. a solemn benediction, indeed. a hope that what lay there would not be absconded, stripped from the tomb before its due time.
i felt the urge, but didn’t give in, to tuck little white crosses above each piled mound.
such are the demands of the autumnal garden.
just after the equinox cast its lengthening shadows, you see, i was out planting my bulbs.
i was digging for resurrection, come spring.
but this hot september morning, a morning that had me perspiring and red as a tulip in march, there as i dug in my great swaths of color-to-be, there was little to whisper of promise.
instead there abounded death and destruction. an odd mix of voodoo and witchcraft. with a pinch of botany to boot.
the bulbs, some fat, some not so, wrapped in a papery-sheath, looked each like a fat clove of garlic, or a whole stinky head. every last bulb, a life cycle on hold.
and the holes where i lay them were often disturbing a worm. a worm sliced in half, i would think, is disturbed. the mouth of my trowel, without warning or even a knock, had come crashing through roofs of many a subterranean bedroom. the worms, alas, were rudely awakened.
and then there was my sorceress’ phalanx of amulets and prescriptions: the dried blood; the bulb-booster fertilizer (actually bone and feather that’s ground to a meal, if you can stomach such sinister fuels); the odoriferous something i bathed each of the bulbs in, something they promised would keep the chipmunks and squirrels from making quick lunch of my tulips and squill and tete-a-tete daffodils.
such folly, this.
or is it?
if it works, if i cross my fingers, if the stars align, if just the right rainfall and snowfall bring drink to my bulbs, if the freeze doesn’t sink in too deep, if the blood does what it’s supposed to (and no, not bring on the vampires), well, then, i’ll have me a garden come march and april and may.
just when i’ll need it, i think. when i’m thisclose to pulling my hairs out, when i want to burn every boot in the house and all of the mittens and the scarves and the tassle-topped hats, as well.
i am planting my sanity-keeper, really.
that’s what a bulb does.
it gets you through the long, barren winter. the winter when white, darkening to sooty gray-black, is the prevailing hue of the world on the other side of the glass.
ah, but not when you’ve planted a yard full of bulbs. then, you see whole other colors. colors no one, besides you and your kaleidoscope eyes, can manage to see.
a bulb is license to imagine a landscape, to muse on the underground labor. to know that something’s at work, life is stirring, awaiting the bell for rebirth.
you look out your window in winter, you see the cobalt blue of the siberian squill, great pooling puddles of it. you see the double-white of the mount hood tulips, there by the path to the door. poking out through the soil, just after the snowdrops, that most blessed first wisp of survival.
you’ve made it, the bulb chorus will tell you. you survived the long cruel winter.
ah, but before there is resurrection, there must be death. it’s the very crux of the matter, the root of the definition, spelled out right there on page 1545 of webster’s unabridged: “a rising from the dead, or coming back to life.”
and so, on a day when the sunlight is golden. on a day when the leaves are just starting to blush and run out of green ink, i sink trowel into earth.
i am the digger of graves. into each wound in the dirt, i lay to rest all that i’ve gathered, all i could not leave behind.
stood there at the garden shop, i did, drooled over all of the choices. you would think i was picking penny candy. tossing this bulb and that in my little brown bag.
lord knows, i never remember which is which by the time i get home. that’s when the sorting begins. the purplish hyacinths, the bulbs that make your skin sort of sting, they go in one pile. and the all of the rest, herded like so many sheep. each kind to its own little flock. little bitty scilla–can something so breathtaking come from so little? dare i attempt a tulip at all, seeing as the squirrels come from miles for a bite of a tulipy lunch?
then in my head, the plotting begins. the mapping out of the graveyard. who gets buried where? what finds itself locked in solitary confinement? who gets tossed in together?
the interment could stretch on for hours, but i too often get tired.
by the end of the morning, there were lots of mass graves. i’ll leave my bulbs to wrestle it out. shove and push, make a fuss, all through the winter.
i won’t hear even a whimper. for i’ve buried them and muffled them too. the inches of compost, the droplets of blood, the piles of hoped-for snow, it is the buffer, it keeps me from knowing just how raucous a crowd i’ve buried out there in my cemetery masquerading as a bright blooming bouquet, come the months after the nothing, the silence, the waiting.

do you go bulb crazy too? do you ever feel like some sort of a witch, plying your botanical craft? partaking of wizardry there in your soils? i’m always amazed that what feels like so much on my hands and my knees some autumnal day, comes up so sparsely in spring. i do plant in the hundreds. must we go for the thousands and thousands to get what i call the shopping-mall swath? anyone yet picked up a trowel, dug up a grave for your garden-to-come? and, mostly, what of the promise of life to come, bounded up in a paper-sheathed, tucked-under-ground bulb?

that there seagull is eating my sin. more of a late-afternoon goute (that’s french for a taste when tummies are growling, a ways after lunch, not long before dinner). and if i were a beach-combing bird, i too, might dive for a nibble of honeycake, albeit spiced by the devil.

but, oh, dear mr. gull, that crumb was not meant for a snack; it was my sin and i’d tossed it away.

that, friends, is yet another one of the beauties of being the mama in a house where much of the world is seen through a lens that is jewish.

i now know from tashlikh.

of all the poetry i find in things jewish–from the lighting of friday night candles to bring on the sabbath bride, to the sanctification of each blessed moment of the day, from opening your eyes at the dawn to fluttering them closed at the nightfall–i think tashlikh is among the most poetic. practical, too.

at the start of the days of awe, the most blessed stretch from rosh hashanah, the new year, to yom kippur, the day of atonement, you walk onto the sands of the beach, or to the banks of a river, you take a fine hunk of bread (or honeycake; more on that later), and you toss it, casting away each one of your sins.

the custom, i read, has roots in antiquity. the romans had a similar ceremony. when the floods came, and they did, believe me, in the land of the aqueduct, before maybe all of the wrinkles were quite ironed out, the god-fearing romans would toss stalks of grain into the swift rising waters.

it was their fervent desire to unruffle the feathers of gods who might resent their wresting of foods from the earth, a.k.a. plowing the fields. sounds a bit like throwing a steak to the lion. but nonetheless, their grains they did cast.

up in old germany too, they tossed as well. petrarch, the 14th-century poet and thinker, tells of watching folks in cologne toss things in the rhine. (the book that i read doesn’t spell out what sorts of things, but i don’t think he means whatever was left of their picnics.) which means the christians borrowed from pagans. and now the jews have taken over the franchise.

except for the likes of me. i like tossing my crumbs and my sins, all in one swoop. i find standing at the water’s edge, on a day when the sun is strong on my back and the breeze is soft on my cheeks, rather superior to tiptoeing into a little dark closet, where to kneel on a kneeler is to feel all the bumps in my knees. and i rather dislike the sound of the sliding wood door. the one between you and the priest, and the baring of all of your sins.

i’ll take the beach, please.

and so will my little one. the one who seems to have deep theological stirrings, even if he can’t quite get a grip on his pencil. even if he can’t make a capital G that doesn’t look like one of his Os laid down and died before making it home.

he was all over the very first outing to the beach, old challah in hand. we all lined up at the water’s edge, dropped our heads. he thought we should all drop to our knees too. then stand up, raise our hands to the sky, in some sort of salute, before tossing.

then, as soon as the first of the chunks hit the water, he shouted what all of us saw. “it’s coming back. it’s coming back. the sin is not going away.”

he was right, all right. it takes a mighty fat hunk of the bread to beat out the tide (such as it is in a lake as opposed to an ocean). which is why, i suppose, the writings on tashlikh prefer that you stick to the rivers.

the boomerang factor in lakes is a bit of a problem. at least and especially when you are in need of the water to take away sin.

eventually, after a few sodden re-throws, we got one or two of our sins to float out to sea. or, in our case, farther out in the lake.

but the young theologian was never convinced. “they’ll come back,” he warned the whole ride home. skeptic. or commonsensical thinker?

sure enough. next afternoon, just after i’d finished using my outside voice inside, just after he’d trespassed across the wide-plank pine floors in his soccer cleats, he found what he was looking for: “mom. see. your sin came back. because you were just mean. i knew it would float back.”

it is one thing to feel heavy of heart all by your lonesome. it is wholly another to have your sins announced and broadcast, as if play-by-play in the top of the eighth. and you now are losing, 0 to 1.

me and the one trying hard to get a grip on this sin thing, we tried it again. went back to the beach. not on rosh hashanah when you’re supposed to, when we did it the first time. we went again on any old wednesday. this time i brought the honeycake. the getting-stale honeycake that no one wanted to eat. i figured it would suffice for the casting of sins, take two.

that’s when the gull came. gobbled that sin before it had even a chance to come back to the shore. but at least it is gone now.

my theological one, however, remains unconvinced. he thinks this casting of sins needs some revisions. lying in bed just last night, on his slow road to dreamland, he offered this six-year-old thinking:

“they just float back to you, the sins. in the sea water from far, far away, they go up and down, up and down, and then they come, back to our house. and then the seagulls and all kinds of stuff, it makes more sin when it gets all yucky. and then in the winter when snow comes it gets digged in. and it will rot in a hole in the beach.”

what he’s thinking might work is: “we can get a shovel, and put all of our sins in a hole, and before you cover it up, you crinkle it up, and then you put sand over it, and wait for a wave to cover it up.”

he told me a sin is when you say a bad word. then he offered examples. “dumb,” he told me, was the first bad word that he learned.

but then, the son of a catholic, he must have been pondering levels of sin, advanced and not-so-advanced, sort of like lessons in swimming. “mom,” he began, “what if you said the bad word quietly?”

the boy, clearly, has much in his head on the subject of sin. it is not such a bad thing, i don’t think. he is learning his way in the world, a world where a playground each day, brings new assaults. kicks in the shin. and words i wince to hear.

each one of us, somehow, needs to learn what feels right, what feels wrong. and what of forgiveness.

if it works for my boy to take a shovel and dig a deep hole. to toss all of his thoughts that aren’t so nice. and his words that are dumb. well then, we’ll dig. and we’ll crinkle it up. and we’ll chase away gulls. and any old bird that thinks a sin is a snack.

when really it’s garbage, and we don’t want it back.

seeing as there are scholars among you, does anyone know how other religions cast away sin? while sin is not something i think about every day, i have been thinking of late. and i think it worth pondering that in this increasingly secular world, there is room–and a ritual–for cleansing the parts of our selves that don’t get scrubbed in any old shower. i think watching a child come to understand that we all have impulses that aren’t so nice, but oh-so-human, is rather a blessed position. do any of you have a tashlikh sort of story to tell?
and for those of us who will spend tomorrow in fasting and prayer and atonement, may each one of us–and everyone not in a synagogue–find that place of forgiveness, and the infinite blessing to start over again. trying not to succumb to temptations dumb, or plain stupid.

don’t know about you, but where i live these are dangerous days. might want to don armor for walking to school. don’t even think about dashing. at least not on the sidewalk, where the volume of slippery droppings has grown to the point that it’s rather like walking on marbles.

which basically is what it is.

what i mean is: acorns are falling. are raining. are storming from high up above. this here’s a deluge.

and sometimes—like when i’m untwisting my ankle that just took a ride on the top of a marble, i mean an acorn–i think there should be signs. little warnings. “beware: acorns above and below, and fallings besides. tread at your own risk.”

now i’ve got nothing against them. rather like the chubby-cheeked nut that looks to be wearing a siberian hat, pulled down over its ears.

in fact, me and the nut go way back. a whole decade ago i tromped through the woods with a fellow who insisted we as a nation had the next great snack food laying thick in the woods. the squirrels, he suggested, were all over it. didn’t even need ads.

and the native americans, some 4,000 years earlier, had been hip to the next food sensation.

the man who i tromped with was convinced we should all be chomping acorns for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. and snacks in between. and he’s been chewing and spitting for 25 years, in search of the elusive sweet acorn.

ken asmus is his name. and it’s the woods near kalamazoo (now there’s a town with a name, don’t you think?), back over in michigan, where he does the bulk of his tromping. but he gets packets each week from folks all over the planet who think they’ve sunk their bicuspids into the nut of his dreams. he’s tasted acorns from romania, czechoslovakia, south korea, china, even from france. mais oui.

he has, by word of mouth and the strange ways things work in the world of botanical esoterica, become pretty much the planet’s chief taster of acorns. egad.

and for my day job, i got to taste with him.

blkkhh. is pretty much the thing i remember.

you see, the acorn is a snack you can’t just swipe from the ground, like you do with, say, maybe the saskatoon (the wild berry he’d eaten for breakfast, back on the day that i visited, and who ever forgets meeting a chap who gives you a chance to use saskatoon in a sentence?).

nope. the acorn is a food you must work for.

unless of course you are a squirrel, and then you come equipped with a something right there in your saliva that zaps out the bittery taste of the acorn.

that nasty taste, the one that might make you spit, is there by design. yup, back on the day when the whole world was created, the one who’s in charge even remembered to put in some tannin. that’s tannic acid, and it works as a natural pesticide. how nifty is that?

tannic acid, though, is water soluble. meaning you can wash it away. which the native americans figured out four millennia back.

as early as 346, after the year of our lord, north american natives had devised elaborate methods of crushing the acorns in bedrock mortars, then dunking them in sandy hollows of riverbanks where water was poured over the resulting fine flour until it turned from yellow to white. the natives then cooked it into a mush, eaten hot or cold, cut into squares, or wrapped in leaves and baked in a pit covered in mud.

acorns have been found in archeological digs dating back to 17,000 b.c. which pretty much makes it one of the oldest foods in the world.

a little more recently, in case this makes you want to run out and try some, henry david thoreau considered the acorn a favorite nosh, and called it, “the neglected nut.” john muir, the great naturalist, dined regularly on the acorn bread of the covelo indians in northern california.

so you might want to think twice before stomping your shoe on a nut with such lineage. (and do not fear here, before we go, i will give you my long-harbored acorn cheescake recipe, so you too can have acorns for dinner tonight. or maybe only dessert.)

beyond the pantry, the little nut of the day has much merit. considering it takes six to 24 months to mature up there on the limbs of the oak tree, it is, rightly i’d say, a long-pedigreed symbol for patience. and the acorn grows only in oaks of a certain maturity (that means old, but it’s a polite way of saying so), thus, all around, it is a nut you must wait for. the original slow food, perhaps.

back in rome, ancient rome even, the acorn was built into buildings, on the top of a column, alongside a door, a decoration reminding the anxious old romans, “patience, my friend, is a virtue.”

a bit farther north, the nut of the quercus (that’s latin for oak, don’t you know?) was not lacking either. there’s a fine norse legend that thor, something of a grand poobah in norse-land, once sat out a thunderstorm under an oak tree, and escaped without so much as a singe. so up norse-way, even today, an acorn might be set on a windowsill in the belief that no lightning will come strike your house.

in the 1600s, the acorn was used in sobering ways. literally. a juice extracted from that ol’ bitter nut was foisted on “habitual drunkards,” according to books of the times, and thought to a.) cure them, or b.) give them the strength to withstand the temptations of liquor.

so there you go. consider all that as you traipse through the traps set by all of the towering oaks. when you’re hit in the noggin, know that the nut that just poinged you, is not any nut but a nut of rich and considerable heritage.
then scamper around, collect all that you can, and in no more than a week, you’ll be cookin’. like some sort of squirrel, gone to culinary academy.

here’s the recipe promised, to get you back to your earliest tree-tasting roots…

oh, i should mention this comes from an ex-hippie up in the hills of northern california (but of course). her name, really, is sueellen ocean. and she ditched the san francisco bay, back 31 years, with two toddlers and the hope to live off the land. she learned the hard way, the tummy-ache way, how to turn acorns to dinner.

when she got electricity, in 1991, she sat down at a keyboard and typed up her recipes, into a 35-recipe cookbook and field guide called “acorns and eat ‘em,” which i had on my bookshelf forever, but seem to have squirreled away. hmm. i’ll have to call her, up there in the mountains.

do not fear. i scribbled this down, before the pages were lost. here, then, is her prize-winning guide to…

acorn cheesecake, the recipe:
start with a graham cracker crust. use a preformed crust or grind 2 cups of graham crackers and pat them into a glass pie pan.

filling:
1 8-oz. package cream cheese
1/4 C. honey
2 egg whites
1/2 C. leached, ground and strained acorns (see note)
1/2 C. applesauce
topping:
1 C. berries

let cream cheese soften at room temperature. mix filling. blend well. (a potato masher works nicely). add filling to crust. bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then turn oven down to 325 degrees for 25 minutes. it should set nice and firm. add your favorite topping, strawberries or blueberries.

note: for leached and ground acorns, do this: crack acorns and slip them out of shells. put in a blender with water, then grind to a fairly fine texture. pour acorn and water mix into a jar, with at least five times as much water as acorns. put in the refrigerator. each day, for seven days, pour off the water and add fresh water. on the seventh day, acorns are ready. strain and use in your favorite recipes.

have at it, friends. i just love being your very own missus euell gibbons. the wonders of nature, the lore underfoot, i bring it all to you gladly and full of light heart. there is grace, i’m convinced, even in nuts that fall on your head. if only we stop to consider. which is what you just did. anyone else ever chomped an acorn? or dare to try one? anyone with a nutty tale to tell? or your very own recipe for acorn lasagna (sueellen’s got one, of course…)