I might have been 10, and still thoroughly convinced that my grandparents possessed special powers – which others might have just called love, but I was too young to understand the warm feeling that their undivided attention created in my belly. My sister and I spent a week with them every summer in their magical house on a mountainside in Connecticut, and they did their best to fill our time with endlessly fascinating things and activities.
That afternoon, I’d gotten into Nana’s shell collection. She and PopPop and their two boys had spent myriad and epic summers on camping trips up and down the eastern seaboard. Both Nana and PopPop had eyes and hearts for beauty, and heads for detail, and in those days, there was still a bounty of beauty to be had at the seashore. They had gallon-size Zip Lock bags full of seashells, now stored in their basement. I wonder if this began my childhood fascination with the sea, or if it just augmented it. Even now, I look at these shells and wonder at a world in which beautiful, iridescent abalone shell is excreted from an otherwise slimy, unrecognizable creature.
I asked Nana about the shells and it was probably she who suggested that I pick out my favorites so that we could together create a mobile from them. Then, as now, I was stunned by her generosity. Surely, the shells must hold stories – where she was when she found them, the quality of the sea air the moment she plucked them from the sand – and how could she part with them, so beautiful, and perfectly imperfect – particularly the sand dollar that was as big as my hand at the time.
I chose the sand dollar, two pink and two cream colored shells, and then two mussel shells a otherworldly, purply color. Nana found fishing line, a short bit of driftwood, a small bit for the drill, and began - with hands now so delicate that the skin tears with a careless touch - to drill the tiny holes through with the fishing line would run. I stood at her side at the workbench, uncomfortably anxious, fully expecting my beautiful shells to shatter at any moment.
When they’d all been drilled and the lines run, Nana lifted the mobile for the first time, giving it an iridescent, tinkling life. My heart lodged in my tiny throat. I’m sure my 10 year old body quaked with an unsaid thank you, while this woman that I suddenly, fiercely loved admired a mobile that I treasure to this day.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Canada Goose
Late in March I went for a walk on the road above our house. I was surprised and saddened to find the body of a Canada goose just off the road, lifeless but still magnificent.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Writers! A Manifesto. (work in progress)
Writers!
Abandon the staid center, your faculty meetings and lattes, your unimaginative friends, your practical cars and shoes, your scramble to perceive the cultural norm!
Life is alive at its fringes!
Break through your glass ceiling to be solar-powered by the brilliance above!
Find the thing that makes your pulse burst in your ears every second, that moves you like a perpetual motion machine!
Corner your cowardice, loose the tethers, skyrocket to rock stardom!
Writers!
Lift the tool at hand!
Assume a mandate to observe and compellingly describe the minute and the miraculous!
Uncover your faith and wonder of the world with words resonant and rhythmic!
Bring people to their senses in the most bodily sense of the word!
Unearth your voice, and harness the river of words -
Be a conduit for whatever it is that rings through you!
Lift your voices to sing, tremble, wail -
Pierce people’s hearts, shake them by their lapels from the page, and leave us all on our knees before the beauty and terror of it all!
Writers!
The unhinged universe awaits your divine proclamations!
Abandon the staid center, your faculty meetings and lattes, your unimaginative friends, your practical cars and shoes, your scramble to perceive the cultural norm!
Life is alive at its fringes!
Break through your glass ceiling to be solar-powered by the brilliance above!
Find the thing that makes your pulse burst in your ears every second, that moves you like a perpetual motion machine!
Corner your cowardice, loose the tethers, skyrocket to rock stardom!
Writers!
Lift the tool at hand!
Assume a mandate to observe and compellingly describe the minute and the miraculous!
Uncover your faith and wonder of the world with words resonant and rhythmic!
Bring people to their senses in the most bodily sense of the word!
Unearth your voice, and harness the river of words -
Be a conduit for whatever it is that rings through you!
Lift your voices to sing, tremble, wail -
Pierce people’s hearts, shake them by their lapels from the page, and leave us all on our knees before the beauty and terror of it all!
Writers!
The unhinged universe awaits your divine proclamations!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
My Mother's Kitchen
There was nothing romantic, sentimental about my mother's kitchen. Built in the '70's, it reflected the time's prevailing attitudes - women weren't supposed to spend lots of time in the kitchen, and CheezWiz was food, anyway.
So her kitchen had elbow room for one, an 'L' shaped galley, and prep space provided by a floating island.
Regardless, she attemped ambitious meals, splattering cookbooks too close at hand, and melting Tupperware when absentmindedly she placed a piece on a still-warm, electric burner.
Afterwards, bowls empty, table clean, she'd wash the dishes and I would perch behind her on the island, both of us speaking to each other's reflections in the window over the sink.
We had big plans for me.
***
It's Monday night, a lifetime later, and I am making soup.
It's a meatball soup - or is it chowder - that my mom used to make, one of my favorites.
Full of herbs and veggies, there's some richness missing from it.
I call my nana for the recipe while I'm chopping leeks, and then my sister as I pour the broth over the now-translucent onions, but neither of them remember. They both want whatever recipe I come up with.
Chopped celery, shredded carrots, herbed meatballs, basil, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper, a dollop of wine. Broth to lips...
Perhaps what's missing is my mother's touch. She's 3000 miles and an addled mind away from my new, spacious kitchen, in which there's enough room for both of us to chop, and chat, and, now both adults, tilt wine glasses toward our lips, toasting our uncertain futures.
So her kitchen had elbow room for one, an 'L' shaped galley, and prep space provided by a floating island.
Regardless, she attemped ambitious meals, splattering cookbooks too close at hand, and melting Tupperware when absentmindedly she placed a piece on a still-warm, electric burner.
Afterwards, bowls empty, table clean, she'd wash the dishes and I would perch behind her on the island, both of us speaking to each other's reflections in the window over the sink.
We had big plans for me.
***
It's Monday night, a lifetime later, and I am making soup.
It's a meatball soup - or is it chowder - that my mom used to make, one of my favorites.
Full of herbs and veggies, there's some richness missing from it.
I call my nana for the recipe while I'm chopping leeks, and then my sister as I pour the broth over the now-translucent onions, but neither of them remember. They both want whatever recipe I come up with.
Chopped celery, shredded carrots, herbed meatballs, basil, thyme, oregano, salt and pepper, a dollop of wine. Broth to lips...
Perhaps what's missing is my mother's touch. She's 3000 miles and an addled mind away from my new, spacious kitchen, in which there's enough room for both of us to chop, and chat, and, now both adults, tilt wine glasses toward our lips, toasting our uncertain futures.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
A Memento
I'm taking Ellie Waterston's class, The Story You Came to Tell. The following was a writing prompt in class - what object are we carrying that we might consider a memento of sorts...
Blue fleece, reversible red mittens that I've had for at least 16 years - so durable, that polyester fleece. How many hands I've held in them, how many times I've swiped my runny nose and been grateful I could toss them in the wash - how much I've clung to them, the sheaths of my own hands, for their warmth, the memory of coming across them with my mom on a family vacation in New Hampshire when she was healthy and I was ready to rap on the door of the world as a high school senior.
They are big and a bit cartoonish, always at the ready, fetishized to the point that my partner and all my friends join my frenzy of looking for them when they've been misplaced. I am amazed that they've lasted and stuck around this long, companions on my journeys across time zones and states, through 3 cool seasons a year, and in contact with innumerable doors, banisters, steering wheels, snowballs...
Blue fleece, reversible red mittens that I've had for at least 16 years - so durable, that polyester fleece. How many hands I've held in them, how many times I've swiped my runny nose and been grateful I could toss them in the wash - how much I've clung to them, the sheaths of my own hands, for their warmth, the memory of coming across them with my mom on a family vacation in New Hampshire when she was healthy and I was ready to rap on the door of the world as a high school senior.
They are big and a bit cartoonish, always at the ready, fetishized to the point that my partner and all my friends join my frenzy of looking for them when they've been misplaced. I am amazed that they've lasted and stuck around this long, companions on my journeys across time zones and states, through 3 cool seasons a year, and in contact with innumerable doors, banisters, steering wheels, snowballs...
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Long Suffering Dog
We got Siri some Ruff Wear booties for winter wear. And then proceeded to laugh our heads off at her visible discomfort. We love her, really, we do!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo_piboXT5o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oo_piboXT5o
Monday, December 7, 2009
Tympanic membrane, anvil, hammer
I am squatting like an Indian, holding a tepid mug of tea in my two hands, rocking forward onto my toes, back on my heels, bouncing off the cushion beneath me, rocking back to my toes… In a flash, my writer’s block is relieved.
Rocking is medicine. Sometime over the summer I learned that any kind of mental congestion, overheat, can be resolved by swinging in a hammock. A lazy push is necessary, simply laying in the hammock isn’t enough.
~~~~
Most every massage session I’ve ever given began with my rocking my client on the table. It is a convenient way to introduce my body to theirs, an on-again, off-again touch, not an intrusive, immediate laying-on-of-hands. I think it is such an unusual movement for them after a full day of sitting stiff in an office chair, that it breaks their mental tunnel vision and allows them to be present once again in their bodies. It makes my job easier – rather than mowing down ranks of rigid muscles with lethal elbows, I can cajole a body to let go of its own accord.
There’s some science here. I tell my massage students about it, in hopes that they will employ compassionate techniques like these, saving their clients’ and their own bodies from agony. But is there any need, really, to dissect what every mother has known since the her first child drew breath - that gentle movement is grounding, and brings even the most recalcitrant child back to the safe haven of its body?
~~~~
I would gather and rock in my arms Tony, who slipped from a bridge weighted by deep and inexplicable sadness. I would rock the water from his ears and warm his body, pressed close to mine.
I would gather and rock my mom, with too many maladies to count, in hopes of healing cognitive connections, in prayer for miracles.
I would gather and rock my old friend Erin, rock until all her pieces came back together, sifted into their places, and made her whole again.
I would gather and rock all the people for whom there is nothing else I can do, but give of my body.
~~~~
In the depths of despair over losing my mother’s mind, I was saved by the love of my boyfriend. The rhythms of our heartbeats, the rise and fall of our breaths, were enough.
In college I sat one night in meditation with some dear friends. In the silence, listening to my heartbeat, I felt a slight rocking caused by the pulse of blood through my body. I was pleased to feel my own rhythm, permeating my entire being.
~~~~
We are outrageously out of touch with ourselves. In what other place and time have we so skewed the balance between body and mind, thudding heart and intellect, such that our bodies are merely the vehicle for our brains? Asses slung in office chairs, we touch just with the tips of our fingers, while our minds whir away about nothing to do with our being. Our bodies whisk our minds home at the end of the day. The car radio is blasting; maybe we don’t even use our ears – tympanic membrane, anvil, hammer – to hear it.
Or perhaps the music is unexpectedly moving – a holy choir chorusing out into a dark night – and one cannot help but listen, reverberation of another’s throat in ear – and what is that ache in my chest, suddenly, at beauty? The crash backwards into my body is painful. Where have I been? What have I missed, oh body?
~~~~
A violin string plucked will cause the instrument’s body to resonate for 24, and then 48 hours. After an hour of practice, the instrument will continue its steady, warm hum for two days, before falling silent, growing cold.
What if we are similar? Must we plow the furrows of each others’ fingertips to maintain a healthy resonance? Do we fall silent when we do not rub up against one and other?
~~~~
I know this – when I do not touch, when all is done for me, I lose the groundedness of being. Shivering in my skin, pouring morning tea, steam billowing toward my face… holy, holy, I am alive.
Rocking is medicine. Sometime over the summer I learned that any kind of mental congestion, overheat, can be resolved by swinging in a hammock. A lazy push is necessary, simply laying in the hammock isn’t enough.
~~~~
Most every massage session I’ve ever given began with my rocking my client on the table. It is a convenient way to introduce my body to theirs, an on-again, off-again touch, not an intrusive, immediate laying-on-of-hands. I think it is such an unusual movement for them after a full day of sitting stiff in an office chair, that it breaks their mental tunnel vision and allows them to be present once again in their bodies. It makes my job easier – rather than mowing down ranks of rigid muscles with lethal elbows, I can cajole a body to let go of its own accord.
There’s some science here. I tell my massage students about it, in hopes that they will employ compassionate techniques like these, saving their clients’ and their own bodies from agony. But is there any need, really, to dissect what every mother has known since the her first child drew breath - that gentle movement is grounding, and brings even the most recalcitrant child back to the safe haven of its body?
~~~~
I would gather and rock in my arms Tony, who slipped from a bridge weighted by deep and inexplicable sadness. I would rock the water from his ears and warm his body, pressed close to mine.
I would gather and rock my mom, with too many maladies to count, in hopes of healing cognitive connections, in prayer for miracles.
I would gather and rock my old friend Erin, rock until all her pieces came back together, sifted into their places, and made her whole again.
I would gather and rock all the people for whom there is nothing else I can do, but give of my body.
~~~~
In the depths of despair over losing my mother’s mind, I was saved by the love of my boyfriend. The rhythms of our heartbeats, the rise and fall of our breaths, were enough.
In college I sat one night in meditation with some dear friends. In the silence, listening to my heartbeat, I felt a slight rocking caused by the pulse of blood through my body. I was pleased to feel my own rhythm, permeating my entire being.
~~~~
We are outrageously out of touch with ourselves. In what other place and time have we so skewed the balance between body and mind, thudding heart and intellect, such that our bodies are merely the vehicle for our brains? Asses slung in office chairs, we touch just with the tips of our fingers, while our minds whir away about nothing to do with our being. Our bodies whisk our minds home at the end of the day. The car radio is blasting; maybe we don’t even use our ears – tympanic membrane, anvil, hammer – to hear it.
Or perhaps the music is unexpectedly moving – a holy choir chorusing out into a dark night – and one cannot help but listen, reverberation of another’s throat in ear – and what is that ache in my chest, suddenly, at beauty? The crash backwards into my body is painful. Where have I been? What have I missed, oh body?
~~~~
A violin string plucked will cause the instrument’s body to resonate for 24, and then 48 hours. After an hour of practice, the instrument will continue its steady, warm hum for two days, before falling silent, growing cold.
What if we are similar? Must we plow the furrows of each others’ fingertips to maintain a healthy resonance? Do we fall silent when we do not rub up against one and other?
~~~~
I know this – when I do not touch, when all is done for me, I lose the groundedness of being. Shivering in my skin, pouring morning tea, steam billowing toward my face… holy, holy, I am alive.
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