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Wind-Walking

Wind-Walking

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It may come as no surprise that I take parenting advice with a grain of salt. But I do think about one bit of wisdom I once heard — that to raise children these days you have to walk against the wind. I’ve been doing a lot of wind-walking lately, both literally and metaphorically. Which is perhaps why it was strangely satisfying to pound the pavement this cold morning.

Yesterday the bitter cold took me by surprise. I was out early, had only one tissue in my pocket, and I sniffled and snuffled and tiptoed over icy patches all along my route. My hands were so cold I had to ball them up inside my thin gloves. I never hit my stride.

Today I was better prepared. More layers. Ears covered. Thicker gloves. Still only one tissue but hey, life isn’t perfect. It felt good to walk against the wind today. A shivering dose of reality. Always better when faced.

A Ritual

A Ritual

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“Here, Celia, you usually like to hang this one, right?” said Claire last night, handing her sister a bright pink high heel slipper ornament with glitter and feathers.

“I remember when I got this ornament,” Celia said. “It was one of those parties where you exchange gifts and people can take them from you and I wanted this one so bad.” And she got it.

Meanwhile, Suzanne found her cello ornament and attached it to a heavy branch while Claire hunted for her “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament.

Decorating the tree is a holiday ritual with little courtesies and observances I didn’t even realize we had until we did them all over again last night. Each one is precious.

At points last evening I found myself floating at the edge of the hubub, as Tom, the girls and their friends laughed and talked and decked out our full, fragrant fir tree (which, we all agree, is one of the most beautiful trees ever). I wanted to be enough on the edge of things to be aware that I was part of them. But I also wanted to be in the moment because such moments are rare. So I busied myself stuffing tissue back into the ornament boxes and carrying them downstairs. Even from our storage room I could hear the laughter — it was as clear and silvery as a Christmas bell.

Photo: wallpaperhd.org

Morning After

Morning After

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A house rises and falls on waves of conversation. When the words are flowing, as they were last night, all creation seems borne forth on a mighty tide. Together we can figure out what’s wrong with the economy (hah!), the school system (double hah!) or (the most complicated problem) when we can find time to get the Christmas tree.

The morning after a good conversation is peaceful and calm. Hopeful, too. As I write I hear the sound of a tiny bird chirping. Maybe a chickadee or a nuthatch or one of our other winter residents. Maybe it had a good conversation yesterday, too.

For Celia

For Celia

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Today is Celia’s birthday, my brother Drew’s too. They are in good company. Winston Churchill was born on this day, as was Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift and Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables.

Reading up on Twain a bit this morning, I learn that he loved cats. Celia is an animal lover in general and a cat lover in particular. So in her honor, here are some of Twain’s thoughts on cats:

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.
-“An Incident,” Who Is Mark Twain?

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.
-Notebook, 1895

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.
– A Tramp Abroad

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
– Notebook, 1894


Mark Twain’s cats
photo by Elmira photographer
Elisha M. VanAken, 1887
[Photo from the Dave Thomson collection]

Eastern Light

Eastern Light

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Here on the outer edge of Eastern Standard Time the sun is late to rise. But when it does, it floods the backroom with morning light. That’s what it’s doing right now.

A riot of rays spills in from the east, silhouetting the lamp and globe, which turn into out-size back-lit shadows.

It dawns on me that I can make hand puppets in this light, and I do, a long gangly goose that laughs and quacks his way into the morning.

The light promises a good day, a freshening season. No Black Friday for us. We are after sunshine and ice-skating, the three-mile trip downtown (yes, we can handle that, we suburbanites), and a little more family time.

Template and Canvas

Template and Canvas

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Today is the birthday of the British writer George Eliot, author of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, who was sent away to boarding school at age 5 but who was still able to write these words: “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.”

It’s an observation no one else I’ve read has made in quite the same poetic and pithy way, that the sights and sounds of growing up become the template and the canvas upon which our love of the natural world is painted.

I think of it often, remembering the awe of my early years in the world, the way an empty lot could become a fairy meadow, or a scraggly woods the forest primeval. It’s an awe that lives in me still and surprises me from time to time, the rallying cry of beauty.

Here’s Eliot again. I’ll end with her because she says it best: “Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.”

The Heart of It All

The Heart of It All

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This is a weekend of anniversaries for us. Tom and I have always celebrated the anniversary of our first date, October 22, as well as our wedding anniversary, and yesterday was a big one for us.

Today is Suzanne’s birthday. She came within two hours of being born on “our day.” And while back then I was rooting for this to happen, now I’m glad she waited. It’s good that October 22 is just for us.

It’s easy to forget — yet wonderful to remember — that our romance, friendship and love are the heart of it all.

Smooth Stone

Smooth Stone

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I become attuned to the Proustian moments of life. Not only the ones I read about — how the sound of a shovel hitting rock changed a man’s life; how the steam from a hissing iron takes a friend back into her mother’s kitchen — but also the ones I experience firsthand.

I had one this morning. It wasn’t so much a link to the past as it was an instant when time stopped and the eternal rushed in. I was driving Celia and her friend to school. We were running late (as usual) and the traffic was bumper to bumper (as usual) and the obnoxious people who take a shortcut and expect to be let in (also as usual — grumble, grumble) were making it anything but a pleasant drive.

But all of a sudden it didn’t matter. The car was purring slowly toward school. I was the only one awake. The 15-minute drive had lulled both teenagers to sleep. Their heads were nodding. In 20 minutes they would be taking the PSAT. In 20 minutes I would be crammed onto the Orange Line. But right then, we were as one. A moment of enforced togetherness not unlike the entire experience of raising teenagers, trying to treasure the moments, even when the moments are tense, silent and filled with strife.

I know this experience won’t banish the discord. But it can become a talisman, a smooth stone to keep in my pocket and hold when the hard times come.

Family Stories

Family Stories

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Betty Leet Bell is my Dad’s first cousin, which makes her my second cousin, or my first cousin once removed. One thing she is without question is a genealogist. She has spent years researching the births, deaths, marriages and deeds of those who can no longer tell their own stories.

Yesterday we went to visit Betty and she told us about a cousin who danced in the dream sequence of the movie “Carousel,” a great-grandmother (above) who died of the measles after giving birth to her tenth child, and another relative whose pet was a talking crow.

One of Betty’s stories concerned two store-front lots in Lexington. When she was researching the ancestors on her mother’s side, she learned that in the 1790s her great-great grandfather bought these two parcels of land for a hatter’s shop.

A couple years later, when Betty was researching her father’s side of the family, she learned that these were the exact same lots that her dad purchased in the 1930s when he was looking for a place to build his furniture store. One hundred and forty years (and several intervening owners) separated these purchases. It was one of those historical coincidences that Betty says is not that uncommon when she’s digging into the past.

Maybe it was just the commercial potential of these lots that spoke — generations apart — to these two very different men. Or maybe there was something about that spot, the way it looked in the morning light, or smelled after a good, hard rain; maybe there was something about that place that spoke to each of them.

Back to Barriers

Back to Barriers

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I write today, as I often do, with Copper curled beside me. Like many dogs, he likes to lie with his back against a barrier. The barrier might be a couch cushion, a bookcase, a cool metal filing cabinet or, in this case, my lap.

There is probably an entire literature on canine sleeping habits, the desire for warmth and closeness bred in pack animals. But from where I sit, it’s simple: I have his back. There is something solid behind him. He will not drop off into the void.

In this context, then, having one’s back against the wall does not mean a lack of choices, a last stand. It means backing, support and protection.

I think about my family, house and neighborhood — the bulwarks I’ve built, the people and places that stand behind me; the people and places I stand behind, too. They are my guard rails, my talisman, my way to fill the void.