Being back at the beach always comes as a shock. I know that this world continues to exist when I’m not here. Its rhythms free for the taking, its palms swaying in the breeze whether I’m here to see them or not.
But the year is long between visits, and sometimes it seems like a mirage. Oh, no, though. It is still here, with all its differences and beauties.
It’s so lovely to be at the beach again.
That I’m an Annie Dillard fan will come as no surprise to anyone who glances at the title of this blog with its Dillard quotation below. It’s taken from my favorite of her books, An American Childhood. A more perfect evocation of growing up, of coming to inhabit one’s self, I do not know.
I’ve been less a fan of Dillard’s fiction. But a few days ago I picked up The Maytrees. It has a slightly standoffish quality that keeps me from fully digging in, but, like all Dillard’s works, it has lines that stop me in my tracks. Here’s a passage that did just that:
Often she missed infant Petie now gone … He fit her arms as if they two had invented how to carry a baby. … Later she washed his filthy hair and admired his vertebrae, jiggled his head in toweling that smelled like his steam. She needled splinters and sandspur spines from his insteps as long as he’d let her. Every one of these Peties and Petes was gone. That is who she missed, those boys now overwritten.
How beautifully does she say what parents feel as their children grow up. That as much as you love them, love them more each year though it seems scarcely possible, you miss them, too, miss their younger selves that flit in and out of their smiles and expressions, tantalizing just enough to let us know they’re in there still, somewhere. Thanks to Dillard, I have a new word for where they are. They are “overwritten,” stuck beneath layers like primary code.
The tomato plant on the deck is bending from the weight of its top-heavy stalk. There are almost a dozen little tomatoes-in-the making in various stages of fruitiness. Toward the bottom of the stalk one of a trio is almost completely red. It will no doubt ripen while I’m gone next week.
Meanwhile, in what seems like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk fashion, the plant continues to climb, with clumps of tomato flowers turning, magically, into tomatoes themselves, albeit still tiny.
As backyard garden operations grow, it’s not a big one. But like any backyard garden operation it’s a reminder that much of what we eat comes from the soil — or from animals who eat things that come from the soil — not from hermetically sealed packages in the grocery store.
Soil, fertilizer, summer sun and rain … when the combinations are right, there is growth, there is harvest — there are tomatoes on your plate.
I won’t say I wrote the first over-parenting book, but I did write an early one. So I pay attention when new volumes come out on the topic. One of the latest is Parenting Outside the Lines by Meghan Leary, which is excerpted in the Washington Post today.
Leary has her work cut out for her. The little I’ve been learning about the commercial assault on and considerable expectations of parents these days, the more amazed I am. Take the products and gadgets that are supposedly filling needs but are actually inflaming fears.
There’s something called the Owlet Smart Sock, which keeps tabs on baby’s vital signs so you can sleep in peace. Sleep in peace, that is, until baby kicks off the Owlet Smart Sock, at which point you run, heart-pacing, into the nursery to find your sweet babe snoozing in rosy good health. Of course, you’re awake for the night.
One thing I’m sure of — every parent wants the best for her child. The question is, how to achieve it. And the infuriating answer is .. we don’t really know for sure. Accepting that answer, believing in that answer, can take a lifetime.
Walking in the dark has always appealed to me, not so much for what I gain cardiovascular-wise, but what I see when I stroll. The shimmer of TV screens, the toys abandoned in the driveway, waiting to be picked up by children in the morning.
One house I passed last night has been empty for months, and the new inhabitants are just settling in. All I spotted in the dining room was a large potted plant. Seeing the emptiness of that brightly lit room, comparing it with the full-to-bursting condition of my own house, reminded me of when we first arrived here with a six-month-old baby.
The house felt like a mistake, a far-too-roomy abode that we’d never grow into. Four bedrooms? A living room, dining room and kitchen? And a full (though unfinished) basement? We would always be bouncing around in here like three tennis balls, I thought.
Obviously, we have filled the place up, no problem, and used every nook and cranny. But that wasn’t what affected me so much last night. It was a visceral memory of that younger self, and a sudden rush of realizing how long ago that has been. It was the biggest story, and sometimes I think the only story. It was time passing … that’s all.
It’s ironic that after months of wearing gloves for grocery shopping, a doctor’s visit and most any other time I’ve ventured into a public space, I wasn’t wearing them when I needed them most — in my own kitchen.
Last night’s dinner was a Thai shrimp dish I’d never made but which sounded good when I found it online. It called for a jalapeno pepper, two of them, in fact, with or without seeds. I settled on one and one-half without seeds. That was about right, flavor-wise. Blended with the coconut milk, fish sauce and Thai curry paste, they provided just enough kick.
But my hands told another story. Hours after I’d rinsed, de-seeded and diced the peppers my fingers and palms felt like they were on fire. A couple of hours of keeping them wrapped in a cool wet washcloth or on top of a bag of chipped ice left them little better than before.
When I finally googled the symptom, I learned that I should have been slathering my hands with milk or yogurt instead of cold water — and, most of all, I should have been wearing gloves. Now you tell me!
(Entries from a salsa competition last year at work.)
It’s easy to feel a failure at meditation, although I believe failure is a concept frowned upon in meditative circles. But despite the wandering mind I must constantly try to rein in during my brief sessions on Headspace, I stepped outside today to pick up the newspaper and felt a thrill just to be alive.
The sun was shining, I could walk barefoot to the street — the moment was perfect for celebrating the importance of all moments.
And as if to underline this view, as I write this post the hummingbird, elusive this year, seems finally to have decided our nectar is worth sipping. Already I’ve seen her make several passes at the feeder, dipping as well into the New Guinea impatiens, her needle-like bill stabbing the flowers with surgical precision.
A summer moment. A precious moment. Precious as all moments are.
Catching up on email, I learned from the Writer’s Almanac that To Kill a Mockingbird was published 60 years ago yesterday — and that it was not an easy book to write (if any book is).
If communication is the point, how our work is perceived by others, then perhaps Lee said everything she needed to say in that classic and her silence was justified. But if the point of writing is the doing of it … then Lee was robbed.
For months we have been mostly at home, not leaving at all except for groceries in March and April, tip-toeing out a bit more in May and June, and now, in July, a couple of full-blown trips are in the offing. The first of these is today. I take Celia to the airport in a few minutes.
It seems strange after a period of home-based quiet to suddenly be encountering the world again. The world has shrunk in these months. It’s now a creaky rocking chair in the kitchen, a yoga mat in the basement and my office chair pulled out onto the deck, looking incongruous there but oh so much more comfortable than the wrought iron patio furniture with the old blue cushion.
You’d think that after such enforced seclusion one might have startling insights. Maybe those are yet to come. My trip is next week, so … I’ll be waiting.
Since I work outside most days now I’m constantly reminded that there will always be work to do for those who lift up their heads and look around. I say this because of the weeds, which will always be with us.