Good things
The kids who run the skateboard shop down by the waterfront, grow radishes, sunflowers, tomatoes and cucumbers in their graffiti covered store window boxes. Our neighbor knocked on our door yesterday in the early afternoon. She'd brought us spanikopita she'd made from scratch. We've barely met, and talked less than a half dozen times. THIS is what neighbors should be like.
Our other neighbor, across the street, works at the bike store we frequent. He gave us a 10% discount from the first time we shopped there, just for living across the street from him. Of course, we now swap power tools, gruesome bike stories, and sidewalk conversation.
Everyone smiles here, and they act like they really mean it. Like they're smiling because they love their lives, not because it's the polite thing to do.
Almost everyone rides a bike here. I've seen every type of person riding a bike into town, along the bike path, or on the highway. I've seen punked out, goth teenagers on bikes, with more metal in their ears than I have in my silverware drawer. I've seen pro BMXers and cyclists going the distance. I've seen retirees, riding cushy up-right bikes with padded seats. I've seen ladies in skirts. A man riding a lady's bike with a bell and a basket. A hard-core chica riding a tricked out mountain bike, and the scars to prove she's worth it.
People have nice dogs here. And other people--store keepers especially--are nice to them. There are bowls of water on the street, and sometimes baskets of dog biscuits too. A town with happy dogs is a happy town, in my opinion.
Kids and adults play in the big fountain at the top of the main pedestrian only street downtown. Invariably, there are little ones squealing and soaking wet---but there are also happy young couples, kissing with their toes in the water. Or, like this morning, an old biddy of a lady with white flyaway hair and a flowered dress, who washed her flip flops off in the fountain, and then lingered there for a moment, barefoot.
People in cars slow down for pedestrians here, instead of speeding up. Even when they have the green light. And people on the sidewalks step to the side for baby strollers, and say nice things like, "Take your time, any time. Enjoy your evening," if they catch you rushing to get out of the way.
Ben & Jerry's has a weekly outdoor movie night---where they project a film onto a screen in the middle of the pedestrian walk and people bring chairs and hang out together and laugh.
The farmer's market is heaven. Taking up almost a block, booths are filled with fresh veggies, soaps, meats, and handcrafts, and everyone offers free samples. We always buy fresh flowers and a weeks worth of greens.
One-liner good things:
There is a wood-fired bagel bakery within walking distance.
There are four bakeries within walking distance from our house.
The girl in the local coffee shop already knows our drinks.
People smile at our baby.
Moms breastfeed here, in public, without making a scene. And nobody makes a scene!
The sunsets. Over the lake. Sheer beauty.
There are more than 20 miles of bike path around the city.
You can walk to a wetland from downtown and see beavers.
Live music outdoors all summer. On the street.
Sidewalk sales!
Street festivals.
Is there no market for joy?
Word has it, parent blogging is dead. This might be a good thing for me because I not sarcastic, ironic, or depressed enough to be a big-hitting, angst-driven, new-mommy blogger. I have, on occasion irritated people with my good nature and exuberance for life. Which is not to say that I'm a total Pollyanna. I've had my share of harsh and difficult times, where I felt derailed and anxious and depressed. There were dark, dark moments during the first weeks after Bean was born. Times where his crying shredded my nerves, and made me write in my notebook, "I want to just put him out on the back porch for a while so I can sleep" in February, when it was snowing. And before him, choices out of urgent necessity, that linger with me, hungry for acknowledgment and full of emotion I cannot name. And I lost my father to cancer; spent weeks before he died sitting with him, watching him become emaciated and ghostly. But even from inside those dark times, I feel a part of me reaching upwards, like a bean plant in a box, growing towards the light at the top.
There isn't quite the same market for exuberance as there is for sarcasm. Especially coming from a first-time mom. It's almost assumed my experience should be a miserable one, or that at the very least, I should dwell on those times. Except for a graceful few, most parent bloggers seem propel themselves through the day with one agitated post after the next. And, like the rest of the world, I'm somewhat enthralled by the daily trials and disasters of other parents bold and depressed enough to smear the messiness of their lives across the Internet. If I'm not mindful, I notice myself using a writing style that mimics the tone of the blogs I'm reading. Taking the things that irritate and spewing them out as in the form of a humorous caricature of my life. Twisted circus balloon, full of hot air.
Which isn't to say that there isn't a vitally important place for this. There is great comedy in these small tragedies, and I have certainly had my share of glycerin suppositories, sticky poop everywhere, and intolerable screams in crowded restaurants. But most days it isn't the bitter fragments that matter to me in the end. Rather, it is the small morsels of joy: rain falling fast and hard and then clearing to blue skies, the wild Queen Anne's lace growing along the railroad tracks, the cool of the lake after a run, that I gather up carry with me like a bag full of bright river stones.
Maybe this optimism for life is because I think of pain and sorrow as sacred things. I understand that I grow in response to change, and to grief. Yet it seems of late, sarcasm and bitterness are overdone just a bit, at least in realm of blogs. Our culture seem to be obsessed with the misery of others. The rubberneck factor on the highway, the headlines always announcing the latest deaths, famines, insurgencies. This is our world, for sure. And I am not suggesting we shy away from the messiness of it, or sink less deeply into our many moments of collective anguish. But lest I lose touch all together with the things that keep us whole, joy will continue to have it's place here.
Wet Heat
The humidity was unbearable today. Dark billowing clouds hinted at thunderstorms in the stratosphere but no rain came to rinse the water out of the air. I felt like I had bathed in apple juice. Made me wish for impossibly cool things: iced tea in a limo, an arctic cruise, the chill of an Imax theater watching Shackleton's arctic adventures. Anything but the limp, raggedy, wet-crotch feeling of walking around in the heat. We took a walk a Bosnian deli near the waterfront. They sell homemade tiramisu cake and smoked beef paninis and all kinds of packaged European goodies. The proprietor was a gregarious lady with a curly mop of hair, bug eyes and an accent who spent the entire time she was preparing our food, ogling at Bean.
We brought our sandwiches down to the waterfront, where we sat on the lawn in the shade and pretended to enjoy ourselves. Only Bean, rolling around on his blanket in the buff, was comfortable in the heat. DH and I could talk of nothing but our discomfort: about the inevitable chaffing that comes with walking long distances on days with 90% humidity; about my hair sticking to my neck like a woolen shawl; about the prickly heat rashes on our legs from sitting on the grass. We had plans to go running and for a swim in the lake, but came home instead, and sank gratefully onto the futon couch where we watched yesterday's Tour De France results and fell into a heat-stupor induced nap.
Procrastinate, write, repeat.
When I sit down to write, I immediately procrastinate. I start thinking about lists. I put my hair in a pony tail. I take my watch off. If I'm even the slightest bit hungry, like tonight, I'll peruse the cabinets and the fridge, nibbling on bittersweet chocolate, fresh blueberries, lemonade. I'll read the paper, circling workshops I'd like to attend (on writing, of course!), bluegrass concerts in the park, mommy-and-me yoga classes, and rock climbing refresher clinics. I'll watch my marmalade and cream cat slink through her kitty door and sip water from her bowl, flicking at the water's surface with a paw before drinking. I'll talk to my husband about the Tour results, about my girlfriend, who's breaking up with her boyfriend, and about plans for tomorrow. And soon, 10, 15, 20 minutes have passed. Usually during this time I'll think of at least eight things I should google; I'll upload pictures to my family's web page; I'll instant message with my sister. When did I become this internally fragmented chatterbox? Running along the waterfront today with Bean in his stroller, I got to thinking about how self discipline and practice are the vital ingredients to success as a writer and an athlete, both. Like doing sit ups (which are ALWAYS easier to think about than to do) writing well requires tremendous self-discipline. Yet if I write daily, it gets easier, until I've acquired a certain amount of momentum, like good karma, that keeps me moving forward faster and more accurately towards my goal. That's partly why I started this blog. Good karma in the writing department. I need all I can get because I have some stories I need to write. Words haunt me, and I keep coming back to them over and over again like an addict. I realize I have put a great deal of passion and hope into the promise of words. Reading a well-crafted story makes me acknowledge that words author our perception of the world. Stories, the stories we all have to tell, shape our culture, and in turn our future.
So it is with some urgency and anxiety that I buck up against myself nightly---wanting to write, yet feeling incapable of doing so for a lack of internal discipline. I resent the babble of my mind:the easy slope of distractions. Yet, each day I must begin again. Sit down. Write. Keep writing. Until something happens. Until I reach the well water I'm looking for and the words show up: the right words, to tell some of the stories I've been needing to tell.
One hard piece I've been working on is about my father dying from pancreatic cancer three July's ago. But each time I sink my teeth into it I'm totally overwhelmed.
My life is full. Since he died, I've bought a house, gotten married, had a baby, quit my job and moved to a new city. Each day feels full with small details: dishes, bread, newspaper, basil plants, cats, hugs, phone calls. Three years ago, in July after my father died I took long walks on the little beach by my tiny house and thought about how I wanted to put down roots and really settle into the present. Then, my notebooks were full of substance and pigment and ideal. I wrote poetry daily. Yet I felt somehow ripped away from myself: as though I were the skin of an apple peeled from it's core.
So I bought a house with my then-boyfriend, now husband, and started planting tomatoes and sunflowers. Together my husband and I laid new floors and re-tiled the counter tops. We re-wired ever outlet, and took down a wall. And during that time I felt connected to a different aspect of my father---the side of him that was practical and grounded. I've spent countless hours of my life with him on projects. I learned how to use a chain saw and a table saw from him. I did my only stint with a jackhammer under his supervision, rewire outlets, plaster drywall, cut grass, kill rattlesnakes.
But sometime after our house was finished, I stopped feeling close to my father in that grounded way. And except for the occasional time when a pipe would burst in our basement, or an appliance would break, and I'd find myself talking to my dad in my head, asking for problem solving advice, my life has been so full of other things that I've been somewhat terrified and hesitant to go back to the story of his dying that I've been writing over and over again. It's time now though, I know it in my bones. This move signifies a huge psychological shift for me: its all new terrain from here on out. And it's up to me to learn to back stitch. To retrace the thread to where I left off and pick it up; to carry my memories of him into the present, so I can start finding my voice again. So I can start discovering what other stories I have to tell.
Our place here
The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs itsorbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.
The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arc seconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification. By August 27, Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the East at 10p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m. By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30a.m.That's pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month.
I have a distinct memory of seeing my first lunar eclipse. I must have been three or four, when my family still lived in a cabin in the rocky mountains. It was summer, I think, and the middle of the night. My parents woke me up, and I remember snuggling into my dad's arms while watching the moon slowly get swallowed in shadow.
A friend of mine sent me this reminder today. Bean will be too young to remember it, but I think DH and I will make a point of going somewhere in late August away from city lights, out in nature, perhaps on a mountain top, where we can watch that little firey spot glow its brightest. And I'm certain we'll marvel at our smallness, little specks in this huge galaxy. And yet, watching Bean grow, I marvel also at our greatness--each and every one of us humans, unique and bright and different in so many myriad ways.
The Process Begins--Written June 11
The night is frenetic with sounds. Jazz on the street, neon rushing up. I want to dissolve and pour myself around my son like a protective coating covering his little hands, his delicate eyelids with veins like a network of rivers, lashes delicate like a forest of ferns. We are moving. Everything in my life is uprooting, the soil of familiar things, shaken out, scattered. We're transplanting to northern New England where in the summer people swarm the streets and the mountains nestle down into the valleys like sleeping dinosaurs.
This move is a sacrifice. We own a house now in a decent neighborhood in a wealthy CT county. It has three bedrooms and paint we love. Moving is a lesson in letting go of attachment to the comforts and accouterments of an life grown easy out of habit.
Our apartment is smaller, without a dishwasher, or the clean lines of newly laid floors, tile, slate. The apartment is on a dead end street about five blocks from downtown, in the bottom story of an old creaky colonial with slanting floors. We are on the bottom story and I can hear the people walking above us, the ceiling creaking under the rhythm of their movement. I can grow used to all of this, but I feel myself bucking up against this attachment. I feel my heart like a fish out of water, flailing at the loss of things familiar.
It will take pictures on the walls and rugs; and it will take hours of walking around downtown to feel at home here. To create new routines to cradle our little family.
Tonight I am sitting in the empty living room in a bendy Ikea chair as Bean sleeps in his stroller and DH talks to his brother on the phone from Japan. The fan slaps around in lazy spinning circles. The shades are drawn. The house feels cool now, with a few windows open to the night air, cooler after the thunderstorms came.
This is the shape of my life now: living into this transitional time, and embracing it. I am afraid of the introduction phases of things. Afraid to meet people for the first time, to put myself out there in the terrain of risk and unfamiliarity. But my goal is to face this and alter this aspect of my personality: each time the fear rises, instead of backing down, confront it. I want to meet people. I want to join a mommy & me yoga class, and a biking group. I want to meet people at the Y, meet people everywhere. And here, for the first time, I see people everywhere that I would like to know.
Traffic
Traffic in the tri-state area is like an ant hill that just got rained on. Unlike the autobahn in Germany, in the US everyone feels like it's okay to drive any speed they want in ALL THREE LANES. The idea of a left lane for passing is completely unheard of. Over the weekend we had the delight of driving, with Bean, down to New Jersey with a 5x8 trailer in tow. We're in the midst of relocating to an apartment in a northern New England city moving from the house we currently are selling in the Connecticut suburbs, and it's a bit of a downsize. The trailer, fully loaded, made our car about as nimble as a drunk elephant, and on I-95, I was sure we'd either be killed by merging cars who didn't see our trailer, or totally flattened by truckers who did, but didn't give a damn.
Our usual 3 hour drive to Princeton turned into a 5 and a half hour adventure of screaming baby, high blood pressure and total traffic induced insanity. Finally, once we'd hit the Meadowlands in NJ, we started playing the alphabet game. This consisted of us trying to find billboards with a word starting with each letter of the alphabet, in order. It resulted in us saying things like "a, hmmm, appendectomy, anus, arugula, apocalyptic... " and then finally noting a sign with the words AMAZING PRICES. It kept us entertained.
On the return trip, sans trailer, there was a TWO HOUR DELAY on the George Washington Bridge, and about an hour and a half delay at the Holland Tunnel. This folks, is just one more reason we're moving North!