Memories – Page 3 – My Truant Pen

Welcome Yule!

Christmas arrived abruptly on my street today. It felt like a scene in a Suess/Rockwell/Orwell tale where walking down the street shows happy families trimming trees in window after window. Wreaths appeared on one or two doors. They will appear on many more as soon as the enterprising young Boy Scout who sold to at LEAST four of us on one Sunday afternoon returns with his wares. (Rockwell, I’m telling you.) We’re all just trying to get it done before the Stoneham town Tree Lighting and Trolly Ride to the Zoo Lights. (Seriously, I can’t make this stuff up folks. The Town Council is contemplating a skating rink on the town commons, as soon as they can figure out who will pay for maintenance.)

Anyway, as my Thanksgiving redux involves massive insights like “turkey is tasty” and “pie is good”, and Grey had a medical procedure which is fine and everything’s good. But let’s just say that I really love Dr. Yu – a urologist at Children’s Hospital Boston. Great guy. Top notch doctor. Enough said for the internet.

This year's tree. Thane really wanted colored lights. — This year’s tree. Thane really wanted colored lights.

I figured that for your entertainment, I might talk about a few of the ornaments that adorn our Christmas tree. Our ornament collection started at college graduation, when my parents and his packed up our childhood ornaments for us. In my family, in our senior years we were given leave and budget to recreate the family Christmas tree. I recall I bought some ornaments… but mostly I liked the tree the way it was. After marriage, Adam and I bought a bunch of glass bulbs at the now defunct Ames (many of which bulbs still survive), and had a few nice ones given to us as wedding presents. We’ve continue to add to the collection (in part by stealing them from my mother-in-law). I also like to try to pick up one a year. And of course, we are now adding clay and pipe-cleaner ornaments crafted by my sons.

This is a silver ornament my father’s parents gave me at my birth. (Or, well, one presumes sometime well after my birth, since my birth was in September on another continent. I do not remember the actual giving well.) Each of us had a silver ornament: my sister a reindeer mobile, my brother a teddy bear I think, and myself this snowman. For a significant portion of my life, I believed this ornament – crafted of the precious metal as it was – my single most valuable possession. I was obsessed with the “kid living on their own” concept (a la “Box Car Children” or “My Side of the Mountain”) and this astonishingly valuable piece of silver was often my mental ace-in-the-hole to be pawned off for real estate, or a bucket and seed corn, or moccasins… you know. What the moment needed. I used to really like polishing it. When I got older, I used my trumpet polishing cloth. I think I did that as recently as last year. My grandparents are gone now, but their birth-gift still hangs on my tree in a place of pride (even if I don’t stake my retirement on it).

At some point in his youth, Adam met with a man who had done the origami Christmas tree for the White House. This star was part of that tree, and at the time my husband learned it, few people knew the secret of this fold. Adam has been patient with me since then. I love holographic paper, and the growing collection of origami holographic stars on my tree does nothing but please me. About once a year I’ll find a scrap of particularly pleasing paper, and beg him to make me a star. He usually obliges. Both sides are lovely. Some of these stars are now ten years or more old.

I am not sure if other people use their trees this way, but we store some of our most important – and most painful – memories on our Christmas tree. This ornament is the most important one on the tree. The inscription reads, “Keitha – 1973”. Keitha was Adam’s older sister, born terribly premature, who lived only a few hours. This little angel, holding its little bell, reminds Adam and I (and now our sons), that she was here. That she lived. That she was loved. And that she is missed. I’m not sure if, without this annual reminder, my sons would know they had a little aunt.

I also have an ornament – not quite as perfect – that I first hung on the tree the year I miscarried two.

I wasn’t the only one with special ornaments. This is a baby-ornament of Adam’s. My sister was also a bicentennial baby, and I remember being jealous because it seemed like a big deal to be a bicentennial baby! Adam’s ornament reminds us all of how special he was. How far away it seems now!

I have actually looked for special ornaments for my nieces and nephews when they were born. You know, silver preferably. Enduring design. Engraveable. Seriously – this has been impossible to find. The best I could do was pewter. (I didn’t WANT pewter. I wanted SILVER.) My sons have Swarovski crystal snowflakes from their grandparents, which are lovely. Actually, Grey’s snowflake might be my single favorite ornament on the tree for how it catches the light, but it doesn’t photograph well. I consider it a loss. Look people! I want to buy something expensive? Does no one wish to take my money? Guess not.

So, what are your favorite ornaments? Which are most deeply sentimental to you? Do you have styles of ornaments you particularly like or dislike? (Blown glass? Dinner-plate-sized?) Do you keep your deepest memories shinily on display on your Christmas tree?

Love that will not

In August, I packed my boys into a car an went on a road trip to Middletown, New York. My husband was off killing orcs and aliens at Gencon in Indianapolis. My mouth felt dry as I belted the kids in the car. I felt tired and very grownup and a bit alone as I drove across I90 through thunderstorms in the dark.

I’d been meaning to visit my brother for months. He was installed as a part time pastor in a small congregation in January. For the first time, my brother and I were both out of school, both professionals, both grownups. (Although I will never confess that to him! Tragically, he reads my blog.) Saturday, we schlepped the boys around. I felt bone-weary, the way it’s only safe to do around family. We watched tv, went out for lunch, watched JourneyQuest, ate at the Texas Roadhouse. Thane fell asleep in the booth to the dulcet tones of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” with the Yankees on the overhead tvs.

When the night was finally quiet, my brother and I talked. There is an ease that comes to talking with one of the few people who grew up in the same strange world you did: this is the great consolation of family. I never have to consider my words or my references. I have this narrow set of humans who also grew up in a town of 400, know the legends of Tuffy Suter, sang the old old hymns that even the elderly have forgotten in the mountain church we attended, consider Georgette Heyer, DE Stevenson and Patrick McManus to be canon, know the winding paths and theatrical finer points of the Oregon Shakespeare festival, and think of “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump” Alberta as a top-tourist-destination. This is what it means to be family.

At some point, we started talking about music. I have an odd relationship with music. I love it, of course. I’m particularly fond of classical music, but I rarely listen to it. (I like to listen to radio with voice, in truth.) I do end up listening to a lot of folk/celtic music, but have no reliable sources of new introductions to music. I have always considered myself not a person who listens to popular music. You can have a lot of fun plumbing the depths of my ignorance, if you choose.

So my brother said, “You have to listen to Mumford and Sons” and he put on “Sigh No More”.

I was hooked. In return, I turned him on to Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span.

I immediately loaded “Sigh No More” onto my various devices of digital distribution and have not stopped listening since. The voice, the banjo, the lyrics have embedded themselves into the warp and woof of this time of my life, and I shall likely never hear them without being once again at this time of my life when my sons were young, my parents healthy and my love strong. The title song, in particular, speaks to me.

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you. It will set you free to be more like the man that you were made to be.

“Yes” I think. “That is the standard to which we should hold anything we call love.” I find myself wondering, is that God’s love? Is that my love for my sons? Is that my love with my husband? Does the love I give conform to this high calling?

May I confess that I was shocked _SHOCKED_ when their next album beat out Bieber in popularity? I hadn’t intended to be listening to music that was actually popular. Ah well – so were Simon and Gurfunkel in their time.

I’m looking forward to delving the depths of their music. So far, I have what shows on the surface of the songs, and questions they raise. Are they Christian? Use to be Christian? Using Christian language? They are certainly not priggish. (Hey mom, that’s a warning that you might not totally like them. Let’s just say some of their songs cannot be played on radio.) There are allusions running through their music to Shakespeare. When you tie those allusions out, how do they change the meaning of what I hear?

I deeply appreciate this new music. It makes me aware how well I know the music I listen to, and how my ears seek out new songs. So… have you heard these guys? What questions do they raise in your mind? Do songs tie you to place-in-time, like they do me? Do you ever try to manipulate that, by introducing new music to something you’d really like to remember? And critically – who else should I be listening to?

Great Justice

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a newly-wed, I talked my husband into getting a cat. A friend of ours had a connection to a woman in Connecticut who ran an informal shelter, and we went there to select the animal that would be our companion. It turned out not to be much of a selection process: Justice hopped up on the counter and went to lay down in the cat carrier. The message was clear: stop yapping and take me home with you.

We did.

I am oh so tremendously sorry to tell you that Justice died today, and the universe is a bleaker place for it.

Justice was a remarkable cat. Many of you knew him well. He was rescued and neutered a little late in life, so he had quite a bit of the rakish Tom left in him. He was without exception the most gregarious cat I’ve ever met. During parties with 30 or more people, while his sister was hiding under the bed, he would be in the middle of the crowd, hamming it up and demanding scritches from whomever in the room had the worst allergies. He was impossible to ignore, and would drape himself over you, your keyboard, your book or whatever triviality you were attempting.

Justice was a very adventurous soul. When we originally got him, he started going crazy in the confines of our apartment. We got Magic to help burn off some of his kittish energy. It didn’t work. He was very unhappy as an indoor cat – always trying to escape and looking longingly out windows. When we finally accepted that our grief tonight was a price we would be willing to pay for him to have the life he wanted to live and let him outdoors, he was much, much happier. He followed us on walks around the neighborhood. People would stop us and ask if we had him on a leash – but we didn’t. He just followed us non-chalantly, as though we happened to be going the direction he was headed anyway.

Justice excelled in all catlike arts. He was an excellent hunter – often expecting us to be impressed by the rabbits and squirrels he offered to us. He spent many an hour napping in a finely cat-like way. But oh, he was so gentle and patient with people. He excellence with children was unsurpassed. He never offered violence at any but the most outrageous treatment. He liked to sniff the heads of babies to see if they were tasty. He was incredibly patient with kids, and their attempts to play with him.

Justice welcomes an infant Grey home from the hospital

Justice had his trials of course. There was the long bout with urine crystals that ended up with a full abdominal surgery and ignominious shaving. There was the broken leg. The tattered ear predated our acquaintance, but bespoke a more than passing familiarity with pugilism. He bore them all with great dignity and pride: charming the staff of the veterinary clinic, and making friends wherever he went.

He was well loved throughout the neighborhood. When we left our last place, the neighbors brought over the toys they’d kept for him, and the treats. He invited himself into many a home, assumed his place on the guest list at many a gathering and was a well known local figure.

Last night he slept at my feet – crowding me so that I had to contort myself in bed. The night before, I’d cuddled him as I put him on the porch so he wouldn’t follow me on a longer walk that would take him outside his territory. Tonight, he has left us and is gone. I confess myself completely bereft.

Last night, I went to Grey’s back to school night. In one drawing hung on the wall, Grey drew four things: one thing he liked to do (read), one thing he liked to eat, I forget the third. But the fourth was one thing he loved. And he drew a picture of his beloved cat Justice. When I sat the brothers on the couch and told them their cat was dead, Thane did not really understand. But Grey did, and he burst into tears. “He was my best friend,” he said. “I loved him so much.”

I know child. I did too.

May you never be forgotten, beloved friend

A life full of remarkable events

Random picture, because this topic does not lend itself to photography

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend and I said, “A remarkable thing happened to me the other day!” With a loving exasperation in his voice he replied, “Of course it did. Remarkable things are always happening to you.”

“Huh.” I thought. “Is that true? And if it is true, why is it true? And if that is not true, am I causing people to think I’m more exciting than I am?”

I remember when I was a young girl, just WAITING and YEARNING to be in the midst of scintillating adventures, just like my older sister. I mean, around her people said the funniest things with the best timing, and there were remarkable happenstances and meaningful events and symbols. Obviously the world was a more interesting place when you were [two years older than I was]. Then one day, at the edge of the age of innocence, I heard her tell someone else a story about an event that she and I had both been to together. And it sounded so awesome – so much cooler and sophisticated than the standing around doing little and feeling awkward and out of place that I remembered. Then I realized. I was never going to get old enough that my life would be as exciting as hers. The difference was not that she lived in some glamorous world – it was that she was a much, much better storyteller than I am. (Still is, truth be told. All of you should bug her to resurrect her blog writing. Until then we’ll all just have to content ourselves with her book reviews.)

In some ways that’s what an online journal, or blog is. It’s a distillation of the good parts, with an editorial judgement leaving the trivial, mundane and unpleasant on the cutting room floor (unless they’re funny). The blogs that tell the reader a narration of “what happened in my life today” – unless you are Samuel Pepys – are for the most part only of interest to those who already know (and love) the writer. I’ve written one of those too. This kind of blogging is taking a moment (preferably with pictures) or an idea (preferably with pictures) and writing a sort of modern-day essay on the topic. My best blog posts have theses that I develop and conclude. Sometimes there are more than one. This one has two. See if you can find them. But anyway, unless my misfortunes are really funny or thought-provoking, I don’t tell you that I had a lousy commute today, or I’m trying to schedule my laundry a week in advance looking towards my next free night, or that I ran out of patience before bedtime hit tonight. Instead, I spin an entire story – up all by itself for a week – about the 15 minutes we sat on the lawn waiting for the parade of bats and making up stories about the pictures in the clouds. Or I tell you about what it means to me to have finally graduated to “bad guitar player”, who can play “Scarborough Fair” and “They Call the Wind Mariah” on the guitar. (I got taught the F chord today, for those of you following along on Facebook.)

I try to tell you fun stories. (With pictures.) And to tell stories, you must live stories. To write this way about your life is harder (unless you are Emily Dickinson) unless you are out doing stuff, preferably new stuff, often. I have always had a bent towards adventures – big and small. My children feed in to my desire to go out and do things. It’s a long, long day when we’re all home all day. In fact, I’m not sure I remember the last time that happened when no one was contagious. But part of how I experience those adventures is in the role of a narrator – your narrator. I see and adventure, or a journey, or a beautiful moment not only as a participant, but as a recorder. This might seem to cheapen the experience, but for me it actually deepens it. Without the writing down (and being reminded later when some random Google search brings the post back up), and the pictures… the memories become indistinct and no matter how lovely, they fade into the golden wash of these young-child-years. I’ve lost more beautiful moments to that indistinct fog than I care to count.

But I’ve saved from the compost of memory so many others; carefully canning them with words and a sweet jelling of photos. A little pectin and pressure, and I’ll enjoy those memories for years. Yes, they’re idealized. I throw out the bits I don’t want to keep by not writing them down. No, my life is not that perfect/organized/sophisticated/profound. And yes, perhaps my life is a little more adventurous (and a little more photographed) than it would be without the motivation of putting it all down here afterwards.

For mother’s day, my eldest son made me a huge card with a silhouette on one side, and a personal letter from him on the other. I must say that he hit on the parts of being his mom I think I do best:

A remarkable thing happened to me

I’m not sure I’ve ever gone into my own origin mythology in this venue, but it goes like this. I was born and raised in the middle of nowhere. Well, actually several middles of several nowheres. But I was born in a small village called Tshikaji, in the Kasai Province of what was then the Zaire and what is now the People’s Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was the bush of a rural province in a shockingly underdeveloped country in the very middle of Africa. For context, it took my grandparents six weeks after the fact to learn I had been born… in 1978.

Tshikaji - a long way from Boston in every sense — Tshikaji – a long way from Boston in every sense

There is very little emigration from DRC Congo to the US. It got hit hard and early by the AIDS epidemic (that’s where it started, folks). I have met Kenyans, Ghaneans aplenty, Ivorians, South Africans, Algerians… but in my entire adult life, I do not believe I have ever “run into” someone from Congo – even the bustling capital city Kinshasa – never mind the remote corner that nurtured me.

With that complete not-foreshadowing, let me look back to last weekend. Saturday was the day of the Stoneham Family Fun day! (Yes, that’s what it is really called.) Last year we had fun on the rides, so when a neighbor texted that they were headed down, I rallied the troops and we went down ourselves. To my disappointment, there were hardly any rides but way more booths. Fortifying my children against disappointment with various sugary snacks, we wandered around, talked to our friends, and desultorily walked through the booths. Grey tugged at my arm and said he wanted to show me a mask. I followed him.

The booth he lead me to was full of African art. I stopped, stilled with the stunning familiarity of it. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind, at one glance, this was Congolese art. I went up to the proprietor and asked, “Where is this from?” “Africa,” he replied. My heart ached that this would be the level of detail he finds appropriate. “Where in Africa?” “The Congo.” “DR Congo or Republic of Congo?”* “DR Congo”.

I knew it.

“I was born in DR Congo” I told him. “In Tshikaji, in Kasai”. Congo is a Biiiiiiig country. Odds were very good he was from the capital and had never been that far South.

His face lit up! Ahhh! He cried! My home!

He explained to his lady-companion in Tshiluba – a language I have not heard spoken by a native speaker in 31 years – that I was from his home. Oh, the reunion we had! I trotted out my 15 words: counting to 10, the word for buttermilk, the name that had been given to me as an infant. With every discovery of shared experience there were exclamations of astonishment by both of us. He was from Kasai. He had been to Tshikaji. I believe I caught that he was born in the same hospital I was born in. I named the pastor who had baptized me, and the tears streamed down the face of his lady. They knew that pastor well. I made my son sing the one song I carried over with me, Grey parroting phrases that I myself parroted. The recognition of it washed over them.

I cannot tell you what it meant to me, to meet these people. I cannot tell you how strange it was – to see new versions of art very like the ones my parents have had on their walls at every home I lived in – that are up right now in the living room of their house. I cannot explain the flush of recognition at this language I spoke once, as a child.

I can say that I was tempted to buy one of everything. I bought some things – particularly lovely, or that really reminded me of my childhood. We said farewell. Still dazed by recognition, I called my mom. “You’ll never guess what just happened, mom.” I returned, brought my cell phone to him and he and my mom had a conversation in Tshiluba. (He told me her Tshiluba is very good. She told me she understood maybe one word in four.)

And that is the story of how, under the tolling bells of the carillon in a sleepy New England town, I met Jean Pierre Tshitenge and was transported to another time and place, as far from the Town Square as it is possible to go.

*Note: there are conveniently two Congos in Africa. I come from DR Congo or Congo Kinshasha. If you’re older than, say, 50, you probably know it as the Belgian Congo. The name changed from Zaire to “Democratic Republic of Congo” in 1997 as Mobutu Sese Sako’s kleptocracy was toppled. When I applied for a passport in 1999, I entered my place of birth as Zaire because, well, that’s what it was then. The State Department actually noted my birth location as Congo-Brazzaville. The wrong one. I did eventually get it fixed, but I thought it was funny that it was so obscure and rare that the State Department got it wrong.

The Magic is gone

Some animals are exceptional, at least in their owner’s eyes. Our cat Justice, for example, is the friendliest and most social cat you’ve ever met. He invites himself in to new houses, makes friends, and may be better known in the neighborhood than I am. Other pets are just who they are – not exceptional but no less loved.

Magic was just such an animal. After noticing Justice was going completely crazy at home by himself, we decided a logical solution would be to get a second cat for him to play with. We went to a now-defunct animal shelter in Arlington where one of our friends volunteered. Magic was always a little funny looking – she had a tiny head with ginormous eyes and a big body. At first glance, she looked a lot like Justice, but further examination would show she was nothing at all like him. She was purry and affectionate from the get-go, but only tolerated a certain amount of petting before suddenly baring claw or fang to the offending hand. Magic loved to eat and to sleep. She was a comfortable house cat – a fixture on cushions, with a funny wheezy snore. She never longed to go outside, happily lounging inside where it was comfortable, like a sensible and comfort loving cat.

This morning she died. She was an elderly cat, and has been on medication for several years. She had gotten less and less active lately. Last night she began throwing up. As we got ready to go this morning, she was trembling and looking terribly unhappy. I had the boys talk to her, telling her they loved her and petting her. Adam took her to the emergency vet this morning, but she died as she was brought in, with his kind and loving hand touching her.

The house is quiet now. No snoring cat lies in the corner. An extra food bowl and litter box can be put away now. Justice’s sister and friend will no longer play with him. My sons face a feline farewell for the first time, faces grave.

Farewell, Magic. May there be sunbeams where you are, and bowls overflowing with food. May no one clip your claws, or want to sit on the seat you’re sitting on. May they leave cans of tuna unguarded on the counter. May you have scritches under your chin and behind your ears – but not too many. You will be missed, and your absence keenly felt.

Those of you who knew her: do you have any favorite Magic memories or pictures?

Has your family tried them, powdermilk?

We were driving home from church today. It’s a bright, sunny cold February day here in New England, and the roads were clear of traffic as we came home. It had been a good church service: an excellent sermon on Sabbathing even from church commitments, both my husband and I in the pews for once, a series of hymns with modern words and ancient tunes, and a little bit of honkey-tonk piano to round it out. I had my traditional post-service “Grande two-pump nonfat extra hot no whip mocha” in hand. The boys were goofing off in the back seat – being brothers. Thane has not had an “incident” in 24 hours. And Garrison Keillor was on the radio talking about Powerdermilk biscuits. My, they’re tasty and expeditious.

And I was washed over with a sense of well-being and contentment.

Well-being and contentment are not such common emotions to me that I fail to notice them. In fact, it’s been quite some time since I’ve felt them without threat looming at the edges of them, as though I better enjoy them now, quickly, because if I start thinking about the wrong things they will go away. No, I just felt happy, and like I very well might stay happy all the way through the end of the Superbowl tonight (and beyond, when the Pats cream the Giants!)

By the time the Ketchup Advisory board commercial came on, we were eating funny curly spaghetti-type pasta (bought from our local butcher), and giggling around the kitchen table. Garrison made a joke about radio, and how no one was listening to it, and it got me thinking.

I remember when NPR started being part of our life. It was shortly after we moved to Mineral, perhaps 1988, with the long car rides that entailed. Before that, we listened to oldies on the radio, and tuned in specially to listen to Paul Harvey. It was before the real rise of talk radio. With NPR, suddenly, the news entered my life. I struggled to catch up and figure out what the Iran-Contra affair was. I was completely snookered by an April Fool’s joke announcing that Starbucks was building a trans-continental coffee pipeline. I joked that I was getting my NPR PHD, and I listened all the time, even during lunch at school to Ray Suarez (who was infinitely preferable to Juan Williams IMO) while eating a pizza pocket and drinking apple juice. The theme song to “Talk of the Nation” still generates a Pavlovian mouth-water reaction and a great desire for pizza pockets.

These NPR shows were a very important part of my family’s lives. Every week we listened to a somewhat younger Garrison Keillor, after our own Protestant church services. He spoke of a world more familiar to us than the urban and urbane one that dominates most media. We too lived in a small town with a lake and a good network of gossip. Saturday mornings were also precious radio-wise. I woke early and joyfully (those of you who know me know how incredibly implausible that is – but true!) on Saturdays to take the hour and a half trip in to Tacoma to the Tacoma Youth Symphony rehearsals. My commute was accompanied by “Rewind” and “Car Talk”. I usually passed the Tacoma Dome as they ran the Car Talk credits. I remember I was leaving a rehearsal the day that Yitzak Rabin was assassinated, and was just old enough to weep for the chance for peace that bled out with his assassin’s bullets. My family would again gather in the evening to hear “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” trying to guess the quiz answers before the guests. If we perhaps scheduled it so we could be sure to catch our shows, well, that only made sense.

As I shared some of those same moments with my young and growing family, I thought of how lovely it is. The most precious of these radio shows are still on, with their original casts. Click and Clack are still there. Garrison somehow still finds new material in a gentler age that fades into memory. “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” is still wicked funny. (Rewind didn’t survive, but you take what you can get.) In tv, even the best shows only last a decade, if that. M*A*S*H only lasted 11 seasons. The entire world of media has fundamentally shifted in the fifteen or twenty years since I was a kid at home listening with my parents. Everything is change and newness. Except these things, which mean so much to me.

But for now, for at least this bright cheerful Super Bowl Sunday, Dusty and Lefty are still out there herding cattle on the prairie, just like they were when I was a girl. You can still win Carl Kasell’s voice on your home answering machine (as if anyone has one of those), even though he laid down his serious news microphone. And Car Talk’s official statistician is still Marge Innovera. And there are still bright Sunday mornings to be filled with the joy of living and family.

Tongue-tied

Some of what I've missed telling you about

When you get out of the habit of frequent posting, you get tongue-tied. There’s a pressure behind your speech, of all the things you meant to say that are unsaid. This blog is part friendship, part letter home, part baby-book, part journal and part sanity check. But it also only touches a portion of my life. There are realms of my life that go unsaid and undocumented here. For example, I rarely talk about work in any but the vaguest of ways because, uh, not to put too fine a point on it but it’s really dumb to talk a lot about the details of your work in your personal blog. (See also: Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Why haven’t I written very much lately? There are a few elements. First of all is the sheer time/energy factor. I’m really crazy super annoyingly busy. I just simply don’t get much downtime between a full time job, obnoxious commute, small children, real dinner, housework, church work (another place I’m horrendously behind/lax) and needing 8 good hours of sleep a night.

Second is, truly, that tongue-tied factor. It’s harder to restart than it is to continue.

Third is the stoooopid leg. OK, a bit more story here. We all remember how I brilliantly busted my knee leaping off a 5 foot stone wall. Right. Then we all remember how much BETTER I was getting. Well, about a week and a half ago, doing yoga as prescribed by the orthopedic surgeon to restore my flexibility before I hurt myself, I stretched the opposing tendon to my injured one. It seemed minor. I went to PT the next day and we got some stretches to work on that. Look how GOOD I was being people! Then on Thursday night I went to dinner with people I totally didn’t know. It was fun. I sat with my knee bent, which was sort of novel and fun because I hadn’t really been able to sit that way for two months! When I went to get up, uh, I couldn’t. I really, really, really couldn’t walk. I couldn’t put any pressure on that leg. I needed help to get to my car, which sheesh. Talk about embarrassing! Then my knee blew up to balloon size.

I did the only logical thing I could do. We left the next morning to go camping.

Then my stoooopid lower back which I’ve totally had completely under control since Thane was born decides that one bum joint isn’t enough. I have kept my lower back issues under control with a combination of massage and core strength. With the enforced inactivity, the core strength has been compromised, and the additional pulling off of significant limpage has caused some serious back issues which infuriates me past speech.

So yeah, things have taken longer than they usually do and I’ve been in pain.

And fourth? Well, there are big things afoot in the parts of my life I don’t talk about here. And that’s where I’ll leave that, in incredibly tantalizing and confusing form. Best of all, from an annoying-my-readers point of view, if this thing doesn’t pan out, you’ll never know what it was! Muahahahah! If it does pan out, it’s too big to not be mentioned here. So you should cheer for success with it (which makes it clear, I hope, that the THING is an opportunity not a threat).

So what haven’t I told you? Well, we went to The Gloucester Fiesta with our neighbors the weekend before last, and had a complete blast. Watching our kids play together in the surf (in their diapers, the weather was supposed to be awful but turned amazing!) in the foreground while the walking of the greasy pole went on the in the background totally made my day.

Grey has started summer camp. It seems fun, but extremely tiring and logistically challenging. Each day is different and requires different gear! On the other hand, they get two fantastic field trips a week!

I am on my third batch of jam for the summer. So far there’s two strawberry and one strawberry rhubarb.

We went camping for the 4th weekend (see also: things that are challenging with one leg). I took no pictures. Our Saturday was fantastic. Our Sunday was good. We came home Sunday night, and then had fun watching fireworks with Crazy Unka Matt on the 4th proper. Grey fell asleep in the kitchen chair eating a post-fireworks snack.

The meeting I was at when my knee conked out was a really neat one about setting up a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program in Boston focused on food justice. The best part was all the locally sourced dishes that were fed to us there. YUM!!!! Or maybe the best part was the fun and interesting ideas tossed around. It’s hard to pick.

We’re getting ready for our summer vacation. My knee has BETTER behave, but I find it oddly prescient of myself that for once I opted NOT to go backpacking this summer. Instead, we’re going to Ashland Oregon. We’ll be seeing 5 plays in a week for our vacation, and I can’t wait.

OK, those are the big things I’m willing to talk about. What’s going on with YOU?

America, Libya, War War War

Like people around the world, I’ve watched the unfolding events in the Middle East with an uncomfortable combination of pride, hope, fear and confusion. None of us know if we’re watching the American Revolution, the French Revolution or the Cuban Revolution sweep across the historic sands. Those involved don’t know. They stand up to announce that they are unsatisfied with what they have, and that change must happen. Change will happen. We hope and pray that it is a change that leads to freedom, liberty, stability, education and joy for the people involved.

Now as the eyes turn to Libya, I keep finding myself brought back to my first or second grade year. I remember much more of the playground at the school that year than I do of the classes. There were huge concrete pipes and tractor tires set into the ground. There was a large grassy fenced in field. Jump rope was popular, and with it the jump rope songs that mysteriously pass down from generation to generation of braided-haired girls.

Sometime, I think in early spring or late winter, the rumor began on the playground that we were going to go to war with Libya. The dark, uniformed figure Gaddafi was set as the villain in the playground make-believes. The boys became bombers – arms spread wide circling around the uneven soil. Their well-rehearsed rat-a-tat-tat resounded across the monkeybars.

We girls, with the rhythms of the jump ropes, became the propaganda machine. I still remember (I wonder if I am the only one to remember) the modified chants we came up with. The first was simple: “America, Libya, War War War”. It was almost gleeful — egging on our government and soldiers to glory. The second was rather more creative, and alarming from the point of view of a peace-loving mother (as I now am).

(To the tune of “Say say oh playmate”)

Say say oh soldier,
Come out and fight with me.
And take my cannons three,
Climb up my poison tree!
Slide down my razor
Into my dungeon door
And we’ll be jolly enemies
Forever more more more.

Who wrote this? Was it me? One of the bigger kids? Was it an incredibly local phenomenon, or was this song spread through the network of cousins and old friends across four-square and hopscotch groups? I was like six or seven (which might help explain the scansion on the second to last rhyme). Why were we jumping to self-made battlecries? I find it even more perplexing now, with the help of Wikipedia. This must have been 1984 or 1985 — I was in a different school by 1986. Export controls seem insufficient reason even for fertile childish minds to leap ahead to war and enmity.

Decades have passed since then. I have gone from a child to a mother of a child about the same age. We’ve gone to war several times since then, but never with Libya. Still, that old colonel stands, unpromoted to the last, and declares that he will die a martyr rather than relinquish the smallest part of his power, while a wave of freedom-fighting rebels gathers to crash against the walls of Tripoli — there to be spent, to triumph, or to begin the long siege. None of us know where it will end.

Will my son remember? Will the name Gaddafi mean “the enemy” to him as well? Has that moment already happened, but with the Taliban, or Saddam? Do they sing war-songs in their private play in his school?

Ten and a half years later

This year marks my decade on a number of milestones. I’ve now been married ten years and change. And it’s been a few months longer than that since I graduated from Connecticut College with a Double Major in English and Medieval Studies. It’s brought to mind because this month marks the very final time that Sallie Mae is authorized to take a chunk of change out of my checking account. It’s funny, that a form letter with a strongly serif font, printed in black and white, actually inspired a number of emotions in me.

First and foremost of course, is satisfaction. It’s nice to finish things. To finish paying off a debt, that’s extra nice. And then there’s the fact that I get a little bit more money now. (Not that much more. Thanks to good stewardship in the pre-kid era, I’d prepayed a significant amount of the loan and halved the payment from what it was originally.) And finally, I confess, I have a little chagrin that I’ve never gone back to school – not for even the smallest class. I vacillate between being slightly embarrassed by my lack of graduate degree and going through the logic again that shows it’s a sensible decision for me. In many programming careers, work experience is more valuable that education. Education is how you break in, but once you’re in it doesn’t matter as much.

I got to thinking, though, about what I’d gotten for that debt incurred. In serious retrospect, I think it was a superb investment in all the ways that matter. From a career investment point of view, I have no complaints about the career I’ve had so far, or about the opportunities for advancement that I have. In a surprising turn of events (another post for another day) I’ve even started to use some of those hard-won analysis and writing skills!

But those four years in college gave me some of the most important things in my life. For starters, and in the obvious camp, I met my husband there. That relationship has been the foundation on which so much of the rest of my life (and my joy!) has been built. I made many of the friends who still roll around for Mocksgiving and Piemas. Connecticut College gave me “Make We Joy” and Chaucer (at the same time – I’ve associated Chaucer with Christmas ever since). I wandered its hallowed greens under the faint luminescence of the Hale-Bopp comet, freezing time to memory. I read American Literature basking in the sun on the roof of Smith, becoming increasingly dismayed that Robert Service was completely unrepresented! I discovered that a hatred of science and mathematics was not actually inevitable for the literary-minded. I worshiped in a small, meaningful service on Wednesday nights with the faithful few. I learned how to write. I learned how to read. I learned that grilled bagels are way better than toasted bagels and had lobster for the first time ever.

In retrospect, my college experience lived up to the billing, and I’d likely be one of those nostalgic alumni who wandered through the gray-stoned campus stopping to tell sophomores to enjoy it because it’s the best four years of your life! … if I didn’t remember how alien and obnoxious those interlopers are to the currently-being-educated.

Staring at that last bill, I am completely satisfied with the investment I (and my parents) made and would decline to return the product, even if that was offered. I only wish my car loan and mortgage carried the same sense of satisfaction!