June Second

 Hi There. I wrote a short bit on June Second and I put it up on Substack.  I think I might be moving to that space. If you want to follow me there that would be nice. xo I'm still here, thinking more than writing, reading more than thinking, okay not true, but that sounded nice. 

          My mother’s prized peonies bloomed on the day she died. 

June Second. 

                     “I want to run them all over in my car,” my aunt remarked. 

         I have a picture in my head of her Chevy Tahoe 

peeling back and forth,

                                     back and forth,                         plowing them down, 

skid marks in the soil.                            That was fourteen years ago. 

          June second comes again and again 

                  Tomorrow                                           

                                                                 The peonies are about to burst. 

Robin Hood

We are reading “The Chronicles of Robin Hood” by Rosemary Sutcliff in the evenings out loud before bedtime. The timing could not be more apt, though that was not the reason we opened it. It was recommended to us by my nephew who sings the praises of Ms. Sutcliff and whose titles were first offered by his beloved British English teacher who lives in infamy among our close relations as we all like to consider ourselves Anglophiles to a certain degree. And, now as we wade through the thick waters of defining a white normative culture and righting the never-ending list of wrongs done through centuries of systemic racism, I’m sure that can no longer be where we long to be. But, cottage, people. And Literature. And London.

So in these evenings when the worries and fears fight to slip into our hearts and minds and souls, we escape to Sherwood Forest with Robin and his merry men and ladies. 

Things get a little less poetic and a little more real when I think about the need for a current day Robin Hood and my longing for those deep pockets to be pillaged.

Quantifying the Quarantine

Things said in April:

-You are developing a habit of feeding yourself while you are speaking a sentence.

-You won’t be having any screen-time before you get a letter in the mail to Daddywest.

-And don’t forget what I said about first and second drafts.

-Why are you looking at me? Don’t look at me, PLAY.”

-But we have to write a book about sting rays, i mean great white sharks, i mean short fin maki sharks, i mean dinosaurs.

How are you doing? Okay, how are you? BAD.

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An entry from a day in early May:

-Today is not a funny day. Which means there’s a chance that tomorrow will be. We are on a good day bad day good day bad day sequence without missing a beat. 50/50. Not too shabby.

I bought Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mister Fox from audible because the library wait list was something like 20 weeks long. It was do or die.

Naomi wrote two letters. See above. And practiced her violin. 

We broke a code in Nancy Drew’s The Captive Curse Video game.

Verity practiced her piano virtually with the lovely Ms. Armine. 

I made egg salad for lunch and read Abel bits from Richard Scarey’s What Do People Do All Day that was loaned to us by the neighbors. 

Eric’s making pizza for dinner. 

It’s Friday. The end of a long week. The end of a vacation week when the children and Eric had plans to go see his parents. I was going to stay behind because I could. 

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Now we are staring at June. The masks have been ordered. The summer camps have been cancelled. I'm digging up bulbs and wondering if my hollyhocks will take root. I ordered a Concord grape vine to plant in our backyard and I took down a chainlink fence. I ordered some cheap rugs and finally hung curtains.

There is a welcomed dullness that comes with being accustomed to the new normal. Okay fine we all say. That might be just the mood of today though. Every day is the same and also vastly different. I hear there is a vaccine being developed and meander into a realm of hope. Then I read that this virus will be with us for our lifetime.

That's when I close out the news tabs and look for seedlings instead.

I was on the phone with a friend who reminded me that the Black Death came back and back and back for hundreds of years. We laughed. Or did we cry?

Oh Canada

What does it come to: an existence with so many thoughts and so few words. I don't want to keep them all bottled up, though some of them should never escape. It's probably much to do with laziness and time but not really even.  I feel one way and then I feel another. Up and down, back and forth. It's hard to know what to give a voice to. By the time I sit down to write about whatever it is, it's then changed to whatever it was and then it feels too late. I've moved on and poo-pooed whatever feeling or response I had as self righteous mumbo-jumbo.

My moods and melancholy came with me on our family vacation to Canada. Trusty companions they have always proved to be. Is that a sentence I've been handed or is it something to overcome, to medicate, to ignore and look beyond in a quest for contentment and gratitude and joy. I can see my joys; they stand before me.  Three heads looking to me and learning from me and showing me in the flesh my strengths and my shortcomings, my preferences and my tendencies. They cheer me on and they drag me to the ground. They are wonderful creatures. And honestly, we are happiest at home. Though I'd like to test that theory in a serious way. 

Pictures to come..

Piano Lessons

We've been going to Verity's piano teacher's house for lessons since school let out.  It's becoming one of my favorite places. In her living room that can hold little more sit two enormous pianos.  Verity joins her at the bench of one and the rest of us get comfortable on a long, deep couch covered with a sheet and pushed up against the side wall.  We all bring a book to read but mine can't hold my attention. Too many curiosities creep into my mind. 

Large, antique paintings hang on the walls. 

From behind the curtain that hangs in the doorway to the kitchen there is movement.  A young woman quietly moves aside the curtain and walks upstairs.

A bouquet of pink daisies fill a beautiful, antique vase which sits upon a heavy and scuffed coffee table.  

I decide the vase came with her from Armenia, the table did not.  

Then there's Verity. Silently sitting next to her teacher. We all wonder what has her attention because it's clearly not her piano lesson. Silence. More silence.  After much prompting a note is played. An answer is given. "C?"  "Yes, my love." It continues on like this for endless minutes. 

She is such a gentle, firm teacher.  After the lesson is over she declares with certainty that the problem is focus. It's like a doctor's diagnosis. A matter of fact. She says that next time we will close the curtains.  After that assessment we chat comfortably.  She talks to Abel. I manage a question or two and I learn that one of the paintings is of her childhood piano teacher. "Is she dead?" Verity asks. "Yes, she is." Amine answers without flinching. Then she looks at me and tells us the countless hours she spend with this woman. When her parents went on vacation she would live with this teacher. She was her family.  

She points to another painting on the wall and tells us that it represents the Armenian genocide but she didn't realize that when she got it. She thought it was beautiful. It is beautiful. 

"Do you ever go back?" I timidly ask.  "Oh, no." she casually answers. We leave it at that.

Credentials

My passport expired in 2013. I am ten months too late to be able to renew it which means I have to reapply for one in order that I might accompany our family on a camping trip in Canada this summer.

So into the late hours of last night I began the futile search for my birth certificate standing under the light of a naked bulb and looking through boxes strewn with damp papers, expired documents, report cards, and trivial things I thought worth saving in 2005.  Not among these papers and pictures was my birth certificate.

Instead, I found this newspaper article which holds far greater significance to this motherless daughter. "Grocers finding upscale shoppers seek upscale food." Beside this byline is a picture of my beautiful, smiling mother wearing a gorgeous fair isle sweater with my brother in a bonnet and cardigan sitting in a shopping cart reaching for a sample of food.  There she is. An upscale shopper. My mom and my brother miles from our home buying interesting food somewhere in Snellville.  It's a small glimpse of an ordinary day in her life.  I've made similar treks. I'm treasuring this trace of of her existence in a world that longs to forget.  

We dropped Naomi off for camp!  I'm so excited for her and all the fun she'll have. 

And summer carried forth for the rest of us at Walden Pond today. 

Verity seized her moment and moved to the top bunk and Abel took over Verity's former bunk for the time being. We'll see what happens when the wind changes. 

Gratitude as a Found Object

Yesterday I woke up with a feeling of gratitude.  

It was acute, encompassing and even startling. For a minute, maybe more. 

It was if I had stumbled across an object given up as lost but then found right at the foot of my bed where I had looked a hundred times before. 

I gave it some more thought as the day progressed and came up with some very unromantic reasons for why this thankfulness might have shown itself.  Like for one I had prepared lunches waiting in the refrigerator to be placed into bags before walking out the door. Snooze. My children had outfits laid out all ready for the new day. Boring. Did these very practical steps of preparation lead to a brief moment of bliss?

I woke up this morning hoping to be greeted by the same wee slice of euphoria, lunches were again packed and outfits laid out almost superstitiously and of course it wasn't there. 

It eluded me, but I held close to the hope of yesterday's discovery. 

Like a pebble in my pocket. 

And remembered to be thankful.