pull up a chair

all it took, really, was a trip to the store, three eggs from the fridge, and a chance to play with my still-in-the-box old-fashioned hand mixer.

all i wanted, really, was to hold the real world at bay. buy one more day-pass before the return to non-fiction living.

a yellow cake, i figured, was enough of a ticket.

it was a two-layered salute to the end of so-called vacation, a sugar-tinged slide into the hard weeks ahead. and besides there’s little so dreary as a monday back home, when rain clouds and laundry are piled too high, not far enough in the offing.

thing is, though, given the fact that the mixer was many months old and had yet to see a speck of light from the kitchen, this, clearly, isn’t my forte. the two-step from batter bowl to oven isn’t one my feet know by heart.

i am not, sad to report, much of a baker.

oh, i dream of such things. wish sometimes that i had it in me, that gene that would make me long to be clouded in flour, my cheeks streaked with chocolatey smears, from yet another turn at the stove.

but, alas, i am merely pretender.

oh, if you opened my cupboards, you might see i’m amply equipped. why, i’ve got pans with bottoms that vanish and side-rails that spring. i’ve got cutters of cookies in so many shapes, from simple to odd to odder-than-odd, an architectural replica, among others, of the downtown tower where every tuesday i type. enough bent-metal skyscrapers, in fact, to cut out and bake a whole skyline.

i’ve got aprons, too. and a french wire basket filled to the brim with sugars in colors and all sorts of sizes of crystals, from silky like snowdrifts to chunky like hail. even a stash of those wee silver balls that look just like the beebee my brother once aimed and shot at a window, while my grandma stood back in stunned disbelief and i, truth be told, snickered.

sorry fact is: nearly every time i think about baking–be it a pie, or plain cookies, or surely a cake–well, i give up almost before i begin.

i get tired.

i get sweaty there in the palms.

i think of the mess.

i think of the cake going stale.

i think of the big old beater i used to have to haul off the shelf. how it pained my low back to lug it from pantry to counter. how i’d nearly once crushed the least of my toes–and that was only the bowl tumbling down.

yes, when it comes to the baking department, i am purely illusion. not much crumb to my cake.

and so, when, despite my deep disinclinations, i somehow manage to pull off two layers, with a blanket of fudge in between, well, i just can’t help but stand back and marvel.

can’t but think to myself, “i need to do this more often.”

who knew that cracking three shells, dumping oil and water, watching the twin set of whirly-bird blades whip round and round in two minutes of circles, who knew i could pour, slide, and crank on the timer, and then, poof, in a mere 35 minutes pull out two golden-topped coins that, at least for a moment there, made me appear the very model of domesticity?

why, the whole house let out a whoop, in the form of a cloud of sweet-scented, vanilla perfume.

by the time the little one bound in the door–shouted, he did, did you bake? (incredulously, i’m not too ashamed to admit)–i’d even gone mad with the chocolatey swirls.

as always, i like the frills as much as the substance so i practiced the TV-ready twirls of the knife that made for an ocean of waves all over the top, and right down the sides. then, leaving well enough not alone, i unwrapped a whole flock of kisses, hershey’s that is, and dotted them here and there on my mid-afternoon’s quick-rising escape.

ahh, the sweet holy triumph of a boy home from school staring in wonder at his mama’s hard-won confection.

it’s not every day that i witness such hero-like status. i mean, never before have i seen the boy–nor his big brother, as a matter of fact–stand in awe, drooling, at the way i pile a verb onto a whole string of nouns.

nope, never once has anyone marveled at the skill with which i ditch the drips on the toilet seat. nor the dust on the lampshades. nor how i clean and fluff and fold all the laundry.

not even how i stay up till late, late in the night some nights, sopping up tears, unknotting worries.

but the cake……oh, the cake. it’s two days later and still i am riding the wave of that yellow-crumbed glory.

sure, it’s all turned to hard-crusted bits there on the chocolate-smeared plate.

but i’ve not tossed it out, nor will i.

i’m thinking this kitchen alchemy is one i might want to return to. perhaps i’ll nudge myself a little more often. who knows, there might be a pie crust not far in my future.

it’s a simple truth that these days i ought to employ: in three easy steps, plus 350 degrees, i can bring joy to the table, slice into two-layered heart of the matter.

there is little in life that so simply begins, and so deliciously ends.

i am struck, frankly, by the tangible construction and completion of something utterly swallowable.

i wonder, perhaps, if in our quixotic attempts to bring calm to our homes, and peace to the planet, some of us–me, in particular–might have missed the undeniable dump-stir-’n’-pour virtue of such bliss in a box.

the chance to exercise whimsy, to deliver up double layers of plain ol’-fashioned goodness, i’m starting to realize, is as boundless as the stash of sweet morsels tucked on my shelf.

in these endless months of not knowing our place on the planet, on occasion doubting our worth, so often dreading the morning, it seems that to whip up a cake, perch it high on a pedestal, well, so sweet a triumph it is, maybe i shouldn’t let the ovens stay cold for so long a spell.

it’s rather quite simple, isn’t it then?

sometimes little more is required than the goo it takes to fill up two 8-inch round pans. and the pure honest knowing that what comes to your lips on a fork is, well, much more lasting than the pile of crumbs turned hard on the plate after merely two days.

never did read that on the back of a box of cake mix.

some things you take a while to gulp. but when you do, you grasp forever their infinite wisdom.

do you bake for the joy of it? do you find deep delight in the simple stirring and pouring, letting your imagination and your recipes run wild? what have you baked lately? or brought home from the bakery dept.?

shabbat had tiptoed in, as it always does, praise be to God who promised it.

without fail, no matter what the week has washed up on our shores, shabbat graces our table, graces the earth, as the globe is shadowed in darkness, as sunlight goes out, and candles, one by one, house by house, city by city, flicker on.

we’d lit our two candles, as always we do. we’d gobbled our fish, as the hand of the clock was sweeping toward half past the hour, and we’d not had plenty of time.

prayers would begin any minute at the church, yes, where our synagogue dwells. the cantor would lift up a minor-key chord, the rabbi would open the book. and all of us, the few of us, gathered there would begin.

only this friday night i wouldn’t be there.

i knew, deep in the place that knows all these things, that a room with walls and a roof, even a room with windows taller and wider than i’ll ever be, it wasn’t big enough for my prayers. not this friday night. not at the close of this very long week.

so, while the man who i love went to pray in that room, i went to the edge of the lake. i went to where the trees reach into the night, finger the darkness. where the dome scrapes the edge of infinity. where no prayer is too big.
i went to the place where, uncannily, eerily, that night, the lake made no sound. not a whimper of wave. nothing, but stillness.

then, from out of the black, out of the dense deep thickness that is night at the beach, i heard the lone cry of a night-flying goose. i couldn’t make out its wings, couldn’t see a wisp of its shadow.

all i know is i heard it, high overhead. calling, and crying, and breaking the night with a sorrowful mourning song, not unlike the one in my soul.

i sat there, on the sand in the cold, looking up into the moonless night. not even the moon made itself known that dark night at the edge of the lake.

somewhere, though, i knew, it was out there, the moon, round and white, absorbing, reflecting, the light of the number one star. but this night it wasn’t for me to see. not this night.

nor the V-string of geese, heading for home, riding the wind, steering straight for the polestar. only the night-shattering cry, haunting, calling, sending chills down my bones.

and so it passed on the moonless night at the beach. prayers spilling like waves that i couldn’t hear. floating out to the heavens that seemed to be cloaked wholly in blackness.

fitting, i thought, as i sat there unfurling each and every petition. i couldn’t see God. couldn’t hear waves. couldn’t even make out the moon.

but in none of those instances did my lack of sensation suggest absence of any kind, nor mean that nothing was there.

just because i couldn’t hear flapping of wings, didn’t mean the geese were not flying.

just because i couldn’t hear luffing of waves to the shore, didn’t mean the lake had gone dry.

and so with the God whose moon was lost behind clouds.

it all surrounded me, every last bit of creation. and, yes, too, creator.

faith is the thing that comes to you when you kneel in the dark on the sand in the night. and the lone goose calls to you, tells you it’s there up above.

wasn’t long, that dark night, till the first star crept out from the clouds.

i never did see the moon.

but, in time, i turned and headed for home.

my prayers had poured out from me, filled up the night sky. branched far and wide beyond the limbs of the tree. skipped past the lone shining star.

i headed for home, safe in the knowing that moon and rippling water were right where they needed to be.

and, likely, God, too.

even though all around me was darkness. even though i couldn’t see but one step in front of me.

prayer is like that sometimes. so is life, too.

do you sometimes feel as if your prayers can’t be contained in a room, or even your heart? do they need to spill out on a canvas without any edges? where do you like to go when your prayers are so very big?

it’s hardly a bothersome little bird, its wings outlined in blue, slate blue, really. its bill and its legs, etched in the same confederate blue.

fitting, the civil war suggestion, for that ol’ hungry bird, a whole flock of them, actually, seems to have set off, well, a bit of a domestic squabble.

war, of course, would be going too far. it’s more a divide of two minds, the sort played out with very few words.

it unfolded something like this:

door clunks open ’round about seven o’clock this fair eve. in walks the one from the train. the one who knows a thing about architecture. who has something to say, and says it, most all of the time, when the subject is the look or the feel or the function of places carved into space, inside or out. why, heavens, they pay him to spout his learned opinions. so spout them he does, for pay or for free.

me, i just go with my gut, and my eye. always did get along, managed just fine.

um, maybe not now, though.

back to the squabble, er, story.

the little one, keen to impending drama perhaps, takes the tall one by the hand.

“wanna see the bathroom,” he asks.

“it’s covered with birds,” he happens to mention.

now, mind you, before leaping into the heat here, let me back up. this bird thing comes as no surprise. it’s not as if i just opened the cage, snuck in a chirper, let loose the whole squawking flock.

this had all been agreed upon. well, grudgingly maybe. but there was a green light. a nod. a certain shrug of the shoulders and with it a shake of the head in affirmative motions.

yes, yes, we all know that in the world of haute architecture, wallpaper ranks just above vines. or plain old ivy, maybe it is.

and we all know what ivy is in the realm of angles and planes, in the raising of walls and the shaping of rooms, houses, towers. heck, even skyscrapers.

it’s the architect’s equivalent of the schmatte, the rag that’s tied ’round one’s head to hide a bad hair day.

ivy goes up where architects blunder. it covers the goofs. frank lloyd wright, i believe, even said so.

and somehow, it seems, paper covered with colors and prints, God forbid covered with birds nibbling berries, well, it seems it’s just as godawful as old creeping vines. maybe worse.

back to the tale: so there in the nook of our stairs, where the steps take a turn, head from due east to due north, someone long, long ago, thought to tuck in a petite salle de bain. a powder room. a little spit of a joint jammed right in the corner.

when we moved here, till just at the dawn of this year, it was, well, aqua–bright aqua–down on the floor, and right ’round the bend up the start of the wall. we’d never quite managed to ditch all the pool-bottom blue. and didn’t do much with anything else in the wee tiny room.

until right after christmas, at the start of this year.

why not leap into a recession by redoing the bath?

so redo it, we did.

and then came the walls.

i, of course, being unschooled in these matters, had stumbled across a canadian place that sells quite lovely wall coverings. will morris wall coverings. quite a wall coverer, will.

only not so if you think like an architect.

which, i’ve mentioned, i don’t.

but the tall one does.

so, despite some willingness to back down from the plan, i did manage to leave will’s wall sample lying around, till one sunny day, when the tall one, he softened. said, oh, go ahead, it’ll be fine.

so i did, and, well, it isn’t.

a nice man came this morning, slathered the walls, cut strips of bird-upon-bird. i yelped i liked it so much. so did the man who slathered it on.

only he’s not an architect. he’s a wall slathering sort of a fellow.

he left hours before the little one took the tall one by the hand, said, here, come meet the birds.

all i heard next was: “oh God.”

then i heard nothing.

do you hate it, i called?

nothing.

more nothing.

finally: “i’ll get used to it.”

then dinner was served.

so was more silence.

could have cut that silence with the side of my spoon.

at moments like this i feel the full weight of the little glass prism, a chunk if ever there was, that sits on his desk. he once won what a young friend at the time referred to as “the polish surprise.”

it means to all the world that he knows of which he opines. it means to me, on occasions like this, that i’m cooked.

how can i, wobbling on the mere perch of my avian affections, stand up, in any survivable way, to the weight of that see-through chunk that, if it fell on your toes, would make you yelp, ouch, in very loud howls?

alas, i cannot.

the little one didn’t much help. says he: “i can’t go to the bathroom anymore. the birds are all watching me.”

so far, little else has been said.

but i did notice this: the bathroom door is sealed shut. i don’t think that happened by chance.

i still rather like it. in fact, i like it a lot.

i do think that’s a good thing. because i think from now till forever, the bathroom is mine. and so are the birds. mine, only mine.

it’ll be private, all right, the cage where i and the birds now trill to our hearts’ deepest content.

while outside the cage, the discontent growls like a bird-spitting cat.

or is that simply the grrrr of my own personal architect?

ahh, why not write to make yourself chuckle, especially when you’ve reasons to cry? i ask this night for most special prayers for a very dear friend and her 17-year-old. she’s a fireball, the girl, a junior in high school, who on monday spent hours and hours in surgery, as the doctors removed a malignant tumor from her liver. nearly the size of a football, but it’s gone now. the lymph nodes too are now gone. but they had traces of cancer, so a long saga begins. and it’s not the first for this family. already, there’s a boy we once prayed for here at the table, the little brother, who still fights leukemia, and who long ago lost a good half of his cerebrum, the front lobe of the brain. one family, four children, two cancers, one child bound to a life in a wheelchair.

suddenly our worries are nothing. i look to katie, my friend, the mama above, to learn grace in action, to know what it means to walk into battle unwilling to lose. she can’t lose. God willing, she won’t.

one other prayer tonight. brave jcv, whose little girl hears only with what she calls “the hearing maids,” wrote the text that became a bill that just today went before the illinois state senate’s insurance committee, in hopes that all hearing-impaired children in illinois would be afforded hearing maids of their very own. brave jcv, who doesn’t like doing so, got up and argued on behalf of her bill, said for crying out loud can we not make certain children have the means to hear birdsong, their mother’s voices, the wind rushing through trees? or words to that effect.

jcv, too, is unwilling to lose. and we salute once again the courage of mothers who won’t back down from the battlefronts where they are so needed, and so indispensable. amen to all of you, this night. and love, too. xoxo

no use keepin’ this to myself. that’d be stingy, wouldn’t it be?

nope, this is for sharing. hanging up on the wall. maybe i should rent out a billboard. slap up some glue. stick it there, on the side of the road.

maybe if every good soul in the world, every one that was hungry or hurting or split right in half, maybe if this swell paper heart, all zigzag and scribble and pink-upon-pink, got pulled out of all the old packs in the world, maybe then we’d not be so aching inside.

only hours ago, this appeared.

at the end of a day, at the end of a spell, when most all around, it was dreary, and grey-upon-grey.

mighty sad too.

i didn’t hear it. but gunshots rang out, not far from here. not far from where i spent the saturday typing away. police didn’t come, though, till just yesterday. knocked down the door. brought in the s.w.a.t. team.

that’s not supposed to happen. not here where the streets are cobbled in brick, and the trees, gnarled, maybe arthritic. i do think they groan, at least on blustery days, limbs centuries old, the poor hobbled trees.

they’ve seen too much now, those trees.

my little one doesn’t know. he’s not heard a word.

blessedly, somehow, he’s been nestled right by my side. sick with a bug that’s kept him at home. away from the news trucks. away from the street where the bright yellow tape squares off the sorrow.

as if it could be contained.

as if, when the big yellow bus rumbles by, packed thick with schoolkids, they wouldn’t turn to look out the windows, press noses to glass. ask questions. ask lots.

as if.

if he knew, he’d be calling me now, calling my name. “mommy,” he’d holler, from up where the sleep hasn’t yet come, “can i ask you a question?”

then he’d want to know more. want to know things i’d not want to tell him. how the man took the gun, a civil war musket, shot the boy, shot the mother. then a whole day, and 40 pages of diatribe later, he went and shot his sorry old self.

i’d not want to tell that tale to my little one. or my older one, either. but he already knows.

it’s hard to shake off, this sort of neighborhood news.

it’s one thing when a house is knocked down, or an odd-seeming one goes up in its place. it’s one thing when a coyote is spotted, or even a cougar.

but when the headline news comes from a house you pass every day. one where you walk with your mama, holding her hand, skipping along, well then, that’s a story that’s hard to take in big gulps.

so you do what you can.

you rock your sweet child. you rub his hot head. you squeeze honey on ice. you sing him a lullabye.

all the while, of course, you are thinking of a child not too far away. a child who’s gone now. through no fault of his own.

and then, there’s a knock at the door. a sweet little girl has brought home a pile of work for your child who’s sick.
so you pull out the papers. and there is the heart. the heart and the hand. the red and the scribbles in blue.

“that’s your heart, mommy.

“i’m holding it.”

that’s what he said.

and that’s what he does, all right.

the boy with my heart in his hand.

i tucked it there long, long ago.

it’s been safe ever since.

we all could use a little heart holding right in here. i know i could. this is for all of us, whoever we are, who are feeling the doldrums of winter and worry.

happy half century to a brother i love. mem, you’re mr. sunshine, all right. happy square root day. 3.3.09.xox

had to jump the clock a little tonight, as tomorrow, writing wednesday, will find me far from this keyboard, typing away down in the city. the little one’s headed back to school. God willing, he’ll be kept from the shadows that fall from the very sad house, too close to the school.

what’s brightened your heart in these blustery days?

just in time. just in the sweet holy nick of time.

just when you think the sides of your ribs are going to cave in, what with the hollow feeling inside. just when the gray-upon-gray gets to be downright bleak and not just moody, you walk out the door, maybe for some innocent, nearly archaic little chore–say, plucking the newspaper from down by the curb; who knew how suddenly that would seem quaint, going the way of the milkman, the knife sharpener, the man who sold brushes right at your door?

so there you are, minding your mind, traipsing along, trying to steer the toe of your slipper out of the way of the crash-course of mush that once was snow but now is all crusty and dingy and rather the hue of a staid banker’s trousers.

it’s then, somewhere mid-step, when suddenly the bright morning light is utterly shattered.

it’s papa, the bright crimson cardinal, the savior of so many graces. he is on high, and he’s warbling, all right and almighty.

he is belting out his sweet hallelujah, letting the notes land and melt on your near-frozen heart.

what he’s doing, in fact, is yodeling for chicks. uh-huh, that’s just what it is. it’s high time for hormones out there in the bird world, and just the same as if he was down at a corner on chicago’s boul mich, or smack dab in the thick of new york’s times square, and instead of a placard, front and back, “calling all girls,” he struts out his stuff with the cords in his throat.

he sings, darn it.

he sings so loud and so clear, and so stunningly vernally, you can’t help but spin on your spongey old slippers, and turn your eyes to the highest of heights.

he’s up there somewhere you know. you can hear him, all right. he’s waking the dead, for heavenly sake. or surely the tired, the ones who like you are just about run out of steam, who think just as you did the winter before that the spring never will come.

heck, you’re starting to think even the daffodil is folly, the figment of some fictional mind, and this year perhaps it might not come true, might not break through the crust of the earth after all. merely the stuff of fairy tales and make believe and frogs that turn into princes.

but you hear that bird, darn it. he is speaking to you, as much if not more than to all of the girl birds up in the limbs.

he is shouting down from wherever he is: do not despair, lady. yo, you in the fuzzy, coffee-stained slippers, there is reason for hope. don’t abandon your life raft.

you, the one with the duly-splotched fuzzies, you stand there, not minding one bit that your knees are now knocking from cold, and your arms are covered in goosebumps so big and so juicy it looks like you just stepped out of the pluckery, the place where the feathers are plucked from the hens that would be.

you stand there, you do, letting each one of his high notes, his song of the launch of the season, sink into each of your over-plumped pores.

the cardinal, you know, answers to a much higher light. he’s tied to the slant of the sun, yes he is. and he knows, way before you do, that just beyond this snow-crusted horizon, there is hope rising.

hope in the form of grass that’ll turn easter-grass green again. bulbs underground that’ll shove through the mud, reach for the clouds. maybe even unfurl, spread their petals, for crying out loud.

papa knows all that.

so you, the one who needs once again to remember, you stand there, rapt, paying attention.

you drink up his high notes, his middle notes and any old note in between.

he’s up there–you’ve spotted him now, on the highest darn branch in the landscape–he’s up there announcing the news: all is not this. faith, be not abandoned. you can’t see it at all, but good news is pulling out of the shed, hitchin’ the wagon. any old week now, you might start to feel zippier.

it is these nearly-missed moments, the folded-up notes tucked and dropped on the way, the treasure hunt that is the living of life, gretel’s crumbs in the woods, these are the things that keep us on course.

if we pause. pay attention. drink in the cups that are offered.

we can live by the squawks from the box. or the words on the pages that land on our stoop.

or, if we choose, we can align our ships with a whole other north star.

we can live by sunlight streaming in at a particular angle, little shoots poking through the tired old earth. or papa belting it out from on high.

papa who tells us in so many words: fill your lungs with my song, folks. it’s the song of the season to come. it’s the song that’ll carry you home.

some dreary mornings, it’s a bird on a branch who makes all the difference.

some days writing comes in fits and starts. some days i think it’s time to throw in the towel, take up auto mechanic-ing, maybe. or maybe get a job swirling the foam in someone’s grande skim latte. but then, i wander over here, and roll up my sleeves, and play games on the keyboard. i don’t worry too much ‘bout spinning in circles or darting in and out of the point. if to write is to roll up your pant legs and splash in the puddles, well, then i just got all sloppy wet again. by the day i feel more and more obsolete. just yesterday i sat in a meeting where a very young someone extolled the virtues of a new form of “writing.” well, no one called it writing, and it’s not really. you’re only allowed 140 strokes of the keys. then time’s up. your twitter is done. this, we were told, is the future. and i sat there feeling quite old. obsolete. heck, whatever happened to whole sentences, remember those ones that we’d diagram, with all the chutes and the ladders? so maybe my hours are numbered. maybe the paragraph is a thing of the past. thank you then, if you’ve stopped for a visit, for going along with the future of obsolescence. thank you for reading the winding road of a soul who has always found words the surest cure for what ails me, the only way i know how to pray. thanks for stopping by, here on the day of the red bird’s new song.

have you felt the stirrings of hope on the horizon? do tell.

seems time, people. for all of us to pull up our chairs, circle in tight, make room for whoever’s there to your left. seems time, people, for an economic summit of the chair kind.

news everywhere we turn is getting drearier, bleaker, less inclined to offer us the reprieve of sweet dreams in the night. why, as one of the smart newsfolk in my newsroom said just yesterday, “it’s like your arm is getting cut off and you have to figure out how to keep on going.”

that sad statement in reference to the 20 fine souls–some of them legends in chicago journalism, which long has been the stuff of legend, of course–summarily fired, out of the blue, late last week. told to turn in their badges and be gone from the building by 5 the next day. oh, and no more insurance besides.

in times like these it seems to me the only thing that’s going to ensure our survival is the one thing i’ve not heard enough of, though i know, yes i know, it’s happening under the radar.

what we need, people, is to begin thinking outside of the box. we need to search for and exercise random and unspoken acts of pure kindness. we need to be each other’s safety net, when the net that’s out there is pocked full of holes.

this, then, is a call to kindness. to get up off our couches, the ones that sop up our sorrows and the runaway kernels of popcorn besides. we need to immunize each other with booster shots of no-reason-really acts of outrageousness. or even just simple delights.

see someone standing there in the rain at the bus stop? pull over. give ‘em a ride. what, you think you’ll get mugged, there in your leafy small town? and for you who dwell in the big bad cities, well, give ‘em a once-over, use your brain, then pull over as long as you don’t smell trouble.

or, perhaps it’s simply that someone you know is extremely down in the dumps. maybe what you need to do is get in your car, steer over there, right now, and knock on the door. and then, just sit there and listen. or bring over a movie. an A-number-one tear-jerker, and then the two of you can sit there, sobbing and blowing your nose, and by the end, by the time the credits are rolling, you’ll feel, oh, 10 pounds lighter, at least. unless of course you brought along milk duds and you look down and see that the box is, hmm, somehow all empty. oh, well.

far as i can tell, we need to start this stimulus right here at the kitchen table. we need to be bold. we need to be daring. we need, most of all, to remember that we too can be the solution. or at least a little smidge of it.

know someone out of a job?

know anyone who might maybe be able to in some way employ that someone? well, then: ask. write a letter. put in a good word. and, heck, maybe a plea. while you’re at it, go back to the someone and remind him or her just how splendid they are. trust me, they’re not feeling so splendid these days.

maybe that out-of-work someone, or anyone else, could use a big fat care package. tucked full of things you sure wouldn’t buy if you were counting out your very last nickels and dimes. i’d put in bubble bath. for certain. and maybe a long skinny vanilla bean. because who doesn’t feel a whole lot better inhaling the tropical pod? i might toss in a sleeve of saltines, because around here lately they’ve been curing all sorts of ails. campbell’s soup, come to think of it, wouldn’t be a bad idea either. chicken noodle’s great for the slurps, and tomato is known to calm a bad tummy.

what i’m thinking–and remember i’m no engineer, haven’t a clue really what makes a car pull out of the alley–is that it’s all about momentum. we rev up the engine, do our one little random act of pure goodness, next thing we know there’s combustion.

my good thing inspires your good thing. my one thing leads to two things. suddenly, we take off the ground. we’re humming here. good things are flying like rockets.

before long, we expect that that’s the way the world works.

i know, i know. i’m still basically a cock-eyed optimist. thinking, like glinda the goodwitch, all it takes is the shake of a stick, and poof, frogs turn to princes.

well, maybe not quite.

but what’s the choice, people? we sit here wringing our hands, rubbing raw our knuckles with worry. we pace in circles. breathe so rapidly and shallowly we all start falling down on the ground, in sad little heaps?

or, we begin here a catalogue of kindness.

beware, it might be contagious, and it could spread without warning.

so, sign up below. fling forth ideas. each and every one is free for the taking. if you try one out, and it works, report back.

we’re looking to start a revolution here. be not afraid. timid, be not.

get goin’ people, think outa the box. think kindness. and don’t shy away from outrageous.

it’s the only sure thing.

this is a democratic society here. vote once, vote often. the more we catalog, the more chance of getting this off the ground and taking true flight.
your ideas, stories, dispatches…sign in below.

ah, yes, there it is, this miserable month at its most exposed: the whole topography of assaults, framed.

you see the snows retreating. the snows we thought would never ever stop. and thus, the detritus of winter, buried there, all those long weeks, is now–thanks to rare warm winds–revealed in all its gritty truths. peeled back. our winter sins laid bare.

my front yard, in fact, has unearthed a burying ground that suggests these things: someone in the neighborhood was havin’ hanky-panky, for they left their box of, um, supplies emptied at the border of my yard (i do not think the old stooped man who lives next door might have tossed it there); further, many, many folks did not think it necessary to scoop behind their pooch; and at least one someone was out there slicing bathroom tile into messy chalky bits (oh, wait, that was us). oops.

now, on top of all the dirt and soggy leaves and beat-up bird seed, there comes a february morning’s rain that’s gone from drizzle to downpour in just a few scant hours.

it is so unrelentingly dreary out there it makes me want to crawl under the bed and not come out till, hmm, how ’bout that far-off, fictive, balmy afternoon when the sun will be golden (not glaringly white, as it is when it dares to show nowadays) and easy like melted butter? when you’d have to be no longer breathing to not notice the uptick in the old earth’s pulse?

until that day that faith (and a little bit of globe-spinning science) tells us will come again, i think i’ll make like the groundhog and head back into my hole under the bushes.

what if we, like grizzlies and chipmunks and even spiders, were allowed to–heck, hard-wired to–spend our winter with our eyes sealed shut, and our snooze buttons scotch-taped temporarily into snooze position?

what if we weren’t expected to endure this annual misfortune, when our eyes want to turn inside out to keep from taking in the gloom? and our souls slink in line and take a number, hoping to be recycled, stuffed inside, say, a villager on the shores of lake batur, conveniently plunked down in the midst of paradisical bali?

instead, alas, we are left to do what we can to keep ourselves from getting pinned to the mat that is winter unrelieved.

now if all was snow and ice, i really don’t think i’d be complaining. i hold not a single grudge against white-on-white, the sin-less tableau. it’s this yanking back and forth, the sudden intrusion of mound-melting warmth that makes for climatological whiplash.

just get it over with, i say. do not dilly-dally here with days so warm the snow gets scared and shrinks into a puddle.

i’m not one to mind a day that’s gray. it’s when the ground is flecked with bits of mushy brown, and chards of black, and specks the color of a sooty chimney, that’s the equation that sets my skin to quivering. like a half-plucked hen, i am. cluckin’ mad and sassy in the henyard. scamperin’ here and there, looking for a hole to get me outa here.

ah, but there’s no escape.

so we are left to endure.

to make the most of these days in the month cut short, thanks to pompous emperor augustus, that roman show-off who highjacked a day from february to stick it onto august, the month so shamelessly named after him.

here’s a short survival list, in hopes we can hobble through till landscapes come in a color we can handle, white or green preferred.

eat strawberries.

or, in a pinch, merely stare at them. your friendly produce chap will sympathize if you simply whisper in his ear, let on as to how desperate you are for a vernal reprieve.

cut out paper valentines.

for extra fun, squiggle them with glue, then shake on glitter and watch it stick. this will get you through at least one long february afternoon.

stare out the window and wait for a plump red cardinal to land in a bush. on second thought, scratch that. you’ll notice the unrelenting gray-on-gray-on-gray and tumble deeply down in the dumps.

pour a fat cup of tea. steal away with the very most delicious book from the stack by your bed, the one that threatens to topple and knock you unconscious while you sleep. hmm, how do you know you’re unconscious when you are sleeping? see, february stirs such puzzles.

ditch it all and slink into the tub. don’t come out till your fingers look like raisins, a trick we love to play around here. anyone know the biochemistry of shriveled fingertips? just curious is all, and i have a little one who put that question to me just the other night.

sneak out to the store and buy a pot of daffodils. not the one-dollar bunch that will die in just days, but a pot–$2.99 at my grocery store–that’ll bloom like a teensy-weensy garden for at least a whole week, moving us that much closer to the next dreary month in the line-up.

pray for snow. but don’t tell your friends, because they might pummel you with snowballs once your wishes come true and it pours forth from the heavens.

lastly, move to new zealand, where february is the height of summer, veering toward autumn, the most flawless season that ever there was.

what gets you through the mucky month of winter exposed?

been burning lots of late-night kilowatts ’round here.

then, when the lights do go out, when the last ooze of lamplight is snuffed from the crack under the bedroom door, is snuffed from the last three steps up to where i try to sleep, i lay awake in the dark, worrying.

oh, don’t pity me, that’s not why i mention it. it’s a mama’s job, after all.

it’s just that what with all the late-night whisperings ’round here these past many days, well, i’ve been thinking an awful lot about this mama business. how it never quite eases. doesn’t let up.

seems the worries get bigger and deeper. what’s at stake matters more.

i remember back to the early days when the only thing keeping me up was the crying that some nights wouldn’t stop. the soft little lips, hungry lips, that nursed till the wee, wee hours.

and then how it was the run-away train, the one that charged through the darkness, came out from the corner, and in through the skylight. scared the wits, yes it did, out of my no-longer-little one, back when he was a boy.

and then, not so long after that, it was rough-and-tumble sorts of ordeals that, when you are the mother of a child with a tender heart, come only with tears. lots of tears.

these days the worries at my house come, at once, in two sets of sizes.

i go from one bedroom where the stories at bedtime are all about the boys who are teasing, singing lyrics ’bout boyfriends and girlfriends. where the whole class laughed along. and the substitute teacher did nothing. and the boy telling the story tells how he was near tears, but no one there noticed. and now, hours and hours after it all, he wants me to know. wants me to come to his rescue.

and i will.

because that’s what mamas do.

and, anyway, all week, he’s been watching me run through the house with my cape. the super-ma cape.

which, when you’re a grownup you know is a cloak of futility, though it looks supercharged, maybe, to a boy who’s gulping back tears. who doesn’t yet know: there’s only so much a mama can do.

though she can try. oh, she can try.

all week, i’ve been putting out fires. and lighting a few. trying to make sure, as best as i could, that a whole school was safe. and a boy i don’t even know. and a boy i call my own. a boy i love with all of my might.

what happened is, just like i said, worries come in all sizes. and last week, a big one arrived. the boy i love, the taller one, walked in the door and told me quite plainly that someone at school didn’t much like him. but that wasn’t all. he’d started a group, a hate group, he called it.

now i don’t know about you, but those there are words that explode in your head. you see great bursts of light. hear popping sounds. feel your arms, your hands start to shake.

you call the school. you tell them, in quite certain terms, that you are worried. and rather afraid.

you find out that, while once upon a time kids sat in classrooms, passed notes back and forth, nowadays they keep tabs on you, without even knowing you, from what you put on your internet page. they don’t like your politics, or your pictures, don’t like how you think? kaboom. they start up a hate group.

i’ve got a bit of a grasp on this now, after all of these days. but i tell you for a night or two there, i was worried as hell. couldn’t stop thinking, seeing scenes in my head. i’d been told a few facts, connected some dots. thought of columbine first. and then laurie dann, the mad gunwoman who burst in a school, killed a child and finally herself. right here on this very shore, north shore. leafy shore. shore that’s all dappled, shadow and light.

as if to hit me hard over the head, in case i’d not gulped the stunning fast-forward from baby-sized worries to ones that alarm every cell in your body, it so happened that the day all this unfolded was the day whole boxes of baby things were due to arrive, boxes from my house to far off in maine. where a baby is coming, where all will be pure, as it should be. as it was.

i couldn’t help thinking all that long day, just how quickly it changes. how one day you are worrying about diapers and colicky tummies, and then, in a blink, you are moving along, now thinking of kids whose scars you barely can fathom, how this is a world, frankly, that too often deals in what i’d call unfettered depravity. the vilest of words and of pictures.

i have a friend whose 7th-grade daughter got a note from a boy. he wanted to rape her, he wrote. this is the language.

just a month or two later, my firstborn comes home. tells me a story, tells me the words that were used. hate group and murder, the ones that alarmed me–and the school–most disturbingly deeply.

some nights when the dark settles in, i tiptoe from door to door of the bedrooms. i put my ear to the frame. i hear the sheets rustling, the pencil marks scratching.

it’s all i can do, really, to keep my two children safe. to stand there and listen and love them and pray.

some nights i wish i could lock all the doors, and keep out the bad guys. they come in all sizes, big ones and little ones.

they shake this house from rafter to rafter.

shake me too.

but i am their mama, so i tie on my cape and i lay there awake. i’ll not let a bad guy shatter the dreams of my children. so i’ll lay there all night, keeping watch on their doors, keeping worries and bad guys and run-away trains far, far away.

so help me, dear God.

are you, too, shocked by the stories our children bring home? are you afraid of so much that comes at them so soon? how in the world can all of us turn back this trash? i am taking a long hard look at what floods the lives of our children, what comes in on the internet, the language, the pictures. i’m lucky, perhaps, i write for a newspaper where i can dig for the truth and lay it out there for readers, in hopes that much comes out from the shadows, and we as grownups can begin to grasp what’s unfolding right under our noses. and what too often we don’t know, till the damage is done. time to wake up, i think. before too many sleepless nights pass us by.

i waited, of course, till a day so bitterly cold i needed an arctic parka to climb into the attic. but it was time, so i climbed.

the baby is coming.

the baby i’ve believed in all of these years. the baby i loved long before she was even two cells or a clump of cells, or a wee beating heart. i loved her back when she was simply an idea, a wisp of a dream ballooned into hope.

all these years, despite the groans of the attic floorboards, as they took on more and more weight from all of the boxes i stubbornly clung to, despite the urgings from my mama to give it away, to not hold on to things i no longer need.

i ignored the groans and the whispers. defiant, i was. believer, i am.

i knew–i hoped–some day that baby would come.

and now she’s two months away.

and so it was time, time to poke through the attic, to search through and find the box after box that held every fine thing you’d need for the start of a life with a baby.

there were diapers and burp cloths and wee hooded bath towels. wash cloths and socks the size of a match box. onesies and undershirts that tie with a ribbon.

there were blankets all soft and flannel and easter-egg colors, and ones that were woven and white and thick for a night that is chilly.

there was the one blanket, a patchwork of swatches, i wrapped both of my boys in, for the long drive home, three miles at best, from the place where they’re born to the place where you’re left all alone to figure out babies.

there were hats that had never been worn, and booties too. and the chair, checked and italian, that was the one place, besides my chest, where they’d sleep.

there were jammies so little they still make my knees go weak. and box after box, filled with fabric and stitches that all told a story.

took a long time, the corralling of baby things, the collecting of dreams. nearly each one i held and remembered. remembered the hot summer day, or the cold winter morn, when a round little bottom i slipped in those pants, or the bald wispy head i snapped into that white droopy hat.

wasn’t long, though, before i’d slipped into some sort of a trance, an auntie trance i suppose. a meditative prayer and a poem, a tai chi of memory and muscles, as i sifted through boxes and dreams, got ready to ship the whole load from my house to the one where she’s coming before the robins return.

i would have if i could have, slipped my whole self in those boxes, as i climbed down from the attic and dove into the laundering, the rinsing, the starting out fresh. the purification, a ritual unnecessary but wholly essential.

i bought a new box of dreft, just for the baby. hadn’t had reason to use it in quite a long time. and the scent from the box, the powdery softness of clean-baby pureness, well it filled up the washer, and all of the dimly-lit basement besides.

when it came time to fold and to pack, i remembered one final time, maybe. some of these things, i’ll not hold again, chances are.

each one of them, i’d known a very long time, since the days when my own dreams were born. even before.

and, at long last, there i was in the laundry room, letting go of my baby things.

but because i was packing for baby–we call her baby L, L is for light, among other ideas–i didn’t feel a pinch in my heart, well, not much of one anyway.

filled five boxes by the end of that fine afternoon.

each box i filled as if a holy chalice. lined the bottom with soft tissue paper. tucked baby soaps and powders and lotions, all in wee little bottles and paper-wrapped bars, into the stacks and the layers, so each box would, by the end of the trip, be a trans-continental sachet.

by the time it gets up to maine, why, it’ll smell just like a nursery should smell. the barest whiff of baby and sunshine, with a smidge of the honey of beehives.

on top of each box, as if a christening, i sprinkled a handful of dried peony petals, the palest of pink and the deepest of fuchsia, ones i’d saved from my garden back in july, when i couldn’t bear to let the blooms go straight to the compost heap.

and then, whispering blessings, i taped and addressed each box. marked one or two with very big hearts. finally hauled every one off to the shipping place.

oh, if i could have, i would have climbed right into one of those boxes, been there on the other end to keep watch from a corner.

see, i won’t be there every day for this sweet blessed baby. i won’t get to know which finger it is she most likes to suck on. or just how she stretches her arms. or pokes her bottom into the air when she sleeps. i won’t hear her coo, or hiccup. won’t watch her take in her very first butterfly or snowflake or daisy. won’t see her wrap her thumb ‘round my brother’s.

it aches me to think i’ll be only her faraway auntie. for she is, in so many ways, the answer to so many dreams. a bundle of so many chapters of love.

but i will, in my own folded-up way, get to be there, tucked on the shelves of the changing table, and slid on the shelves of the cabinet my brother is building from ash and from cherry.

i will be there as her mama slips on that white floppy hat, or slings on the backpack the color of glow-in-the-dark pumpkins. i will be there in the burp cloths, and maybe just maybe when she’s rubbed dry from the bath.

i saved all those treasures for all of those years. because i knew some day, i believed, there’d be a baby.

and i didn’t want to not be there at every burp and cry in the night. couldn’t bear to be merely the faraway auntie.

that little girl has my heart. i packed it up in one of the boxes. it’ll arrive with a thud on the doorstep any day now.

once we were a people who all hunkered down in the very same village, raised our children together, a dream my brother and i once shared, long long ago. now, we live whole land masses away. so we sift through our lives and find threads to connect us. do you have babies growing up far far away from your every day? how do you dwell in their midst?

don’t have a cow. or even a henhouse.

darn it.

don’t have a half acre even.

i can hardly call this my farm.

ah, but that doesn’t stop me.

you should see me, these soft snowy mornings. i climb into my boots, my big yellow rubber ones, before i climb into my clothes (oops. hold that image there. erase what you might see in your head, please, the skinny old legs, naked, goose-bumped, slid into floppy ol’ boots as bright as bananas. quake not, friends, i do wear my jammies outside).

back to the boots and where i go with them.

i make the rounds is where i go, make my way, clomp-clomp-and-more-clomp, through the drifts and the mounds as high as my shins.

i make like a farmhand out tending her flocks.

which, actually, is just what i’m doing. just minus the farm is all.

my flocks, though, aren’t peacocks or hens, not araucanas, those blue-laying beauties. my flocks are not geese or ducks. not even a rhode island red, though i long for one, and plot ways to wriggle ’round the village code.

my flocks are winged, all right. and feathered as well.

my flocks live up in my trees. or under the eaves of my roof.

my flocks come in red and in blue and in plain common brown. they line up like ellipses there on the wires that run into my house, from out in the alley. they chirp from on high, from on places i can’t seem to find, though i stand and i look and i look, till the chilly-cold tears run down my chilly-cold cheeks.

my morning rounds unfold thusly, early each and every cold winter’s day:

once the galoshes are on, and the snowcoat and mittens, i reach for my old coffee can and fill it to spilling from the bin i keep near the door.

as i step into the cold, feel the whoosh of the air down my lungs, i open my heart, call out to my friends, “g’morning everyone!”

i yell it loud and sweet enough to make the neighbors think i must have minions sleeping in my bushes, little people who curl up under the branches, wrap up in blankets, come out for morning gruel when i holler.

i shlop (that’s the sound the yellow boots make sucking through the snow) from trough to trough. shake out the snow from overnight. dump in the seed. look up, heavenward, to catch whoever’s watching.

quite often i find mama cardinal looking down on me. i suppose she’s checking out the menu, deciding if she’ll fly in the youngins for their breakfast.

sometimes, and this makes me quite proud, i find a brave little feathered one, one who doesn’t bother flitting at the sight of me.

i like to think they’ve come to know me, not mind me so much. they know that i’m the kook, the one in yellow boots, who comes bearing succulent sunflower and shelled peanuts and cracked corn. who sometimes comes with cranberries. or a fat chunk of suet from the butcher shop.

when i’m done with all the dumping, and the smearing of the peanut-butter paste that never fails to draw the downy woodpecker, i shlop back into the house to begin my water rounds.

i fill an old gallon jug with fresh warm drink from my kitchen sink (i only wish i had a well and i could pump it, creak by squeaky creak). i haul that sloshing load back to where my birdies bathe and sip and fluff their wings.

then, if it’s not too, too cold, i crouch and make like i’m a yellow-rooted bush. i stay still as i can stay. and i make not a sound, ‘cept for the fluttering of eyelids and a gulp or two, when the birds come down, when my flocks return, and i watch them partake of the communion i’ve put out for them.

it is a holy thing to tend the flocks.

doesn’t matter much if it’s a flock that’s winged or hooved, or wearing shoes, for that matter. a flock that bays, or clucks. or even talks behind your back.

it’s why we’re here, to tend the ones around us, most of all.

and these feathered ones bring me mighty close to God, is all i know.

i hear the whoosh of their gentle wings as they come in for what i offer them. i watch the papa bird feed the mama, drop seed one-by-one down her wide-open beak.

i watch the snows tumble down, and all my flocks huddle on the branches at the dawn. they wait for me, because they know i come.

that’s called faith, i do believe.

and it’s a two-way equation.

they believe i’m on my way, me and my coffee cans of sustenance, just as soon as the nightfall lifts and the morning light creeps in again.

and i believe, as i fill the troughs and, every morning, my very heart, that as i tend my flock, my sense of oneness with the gentle world, the world of ever-turning tide and clock and slant of sun, draws me and them, together, to a holy place called peace just beyond my windowsill.

do you have a daily ritual, a peace-filled round, that roots you, makes you feel like you belong, have purpose, on this holy blessed planet?

and speaking of purpose on the planet, i must note that any day now our beloved slj will be a bride, and walk down the aisle into the arms of her true love. it seems right for all of us who’ve been pulling up to this table for quite a while now to send much much love to the ever-wise, ever-heartful slj.
and while we’re at it, please shout or whisper a prayer for blessed jcv whose sister-in-law is fighting what might be her last battle with a stubborn leukemia.
and finally, oh, yeesh, dear susan is in the hospital as i type, an emergency surgery on saturday night.
seems there’s need for many prayers here.
and please don’t forget hh who just last week buried her sister-in-law, a champion for the poor of chicago’s rogers park.
anyone else?
xoxox, the chair lady