Alecto's Ophelia

Heartshots

I don't even know where to begin. This post had multiple titles in the making (that would be thinking on the train) and even more as I looked at the photos. I'm tempted to just give you the captions.

Here is Cletus at camp in deepest, darkest New Hampshire (as it turns out) (someplace called  Mosquito Island):

Caption (it's a long one): There ain't no bugs on me, there ain't no bugs on me, there might be bugs on some of you mugs but there ain't no bugs on me (that will make absolutely zero sense if you don't watch television commercials which I absolutely adore):

We photographed Cletus's cat, Chuck (Chuck is a girl and Chuck used to be my cat, please do not ask me to explain any of this) in an attempt to make a LOL cat to put on Cletus's door when she came home to kind of explain the fact that I trashed her room, or at least meant to clear out the hazmat and I lost my soul in the process and I'm really trying to get it back. Anyway, here's Chuck, the LOL cat:

  Now I want to discuss the chicken house. You know, I am a serious offender in the Control Freak arena. Surely, if you've been around longer than, lets say, a month, you know this. So when my husband, Nomans, decided to foil my plans for mass backyard destruction and ordered himself a chicken, ahem, coop from the, ahem, Internet, I scuffled my considerable size nine feet around in the dirt and said, well yeah, OK, especially after El mentioned something about the avoidance of hammer throwing and all that and well, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THE DAMN DOG HOUSE? (really. I just had to get that out of my system)

Here's something amazing. Or maybe not. It was amazing to me. I had to look it up. Late last week I looked out the window from my upper porch and I saw an Egret in the trees. An Egret. I see all manner of flying wild life in my trees from bats to to ducks to hawks to those blasted fool crows that I swear I'm going to shoot out of the trees one Saturday morning - but never an Egret. I about lost my breath and fumbling for the camera this was the best I could do. I know you can't tell from this. But I saw it, I truly did (I looked it up just to be sure I wasn't high on Weston crack or something).

Here is some of my own deepest, darkest. Just because I love the woods, the deep dark damp fungusie woods and the swamp and the marsh and the trees looking out into the light and I see these old stone walls built by farmers not too long ago, clearing the New England fields of 90% of what it had to offer up and I wonder at the rate of the growth of these trees that think nothing of consuming it back to the earth from whence it come...

Here is about to be a bean. I think they are the most beautiful flowers and they make these lovely little green thingies that I like to sit in the dirt eating at the end of the day even though it's way too early to pick them but you see I've eaten all the Arugula so I've gone and moved on to the pretty, pretty, tender green beans...

And lastly, because El and Wendy said so (which means they did it and said it) I did it too and here is my pizza from the grill! (Because I STILL do not have an oven door and I'm not fighting that too hard either) And do you notice the brilliant blue I just want to run my tongue over and the fact that there is always a glass of wine in one of my mother's glasses (and now I'm in deep donkey dip because she's going to work out that I never gave them back when I borrowed them twenty years ago) and it's just so darn beautiful in the light and the color and taste and smell that is this life I love so well.

Oh, yes, one more. This will be the summer banner once I get around to making it landscape and all that.

The silence in between the notes

I had a day today. It was a day plucked right out of my known universe and taken free and clear,  if there is any such thing.

The memo came late on Monday afternoon. Vince declared a national holiday for C_Corp the day before the forth just because. I've never seen him do that but its not particularly relevant. I don't think. Anyway, I could have used a vacation day, a personal day or just told my boss I wouldn't be in on Thursday and he'd have smiled, asked if anything was on fire and then said have a nice weekend. The point is it doesn't occur to me. It almost never occurs to me. I'm fairly regimented. I have choices and I exercise them with some level of consciousness but to be honest, I'm not spontaneous. Way too much control freakiness going on for that.

So here's what I did with my day, which is only half over but the second half is significantly less spontaneous. I sent the nanny away, kept my kid home from camp and did stuff. You know, stuff. Like the kind of stuff you just kind of feel like doing (or the kid feels like doing) with very little if any clock attached and maybe interspersed with some stuff that ought to be done like picking up the vacuum cleaner. I tell you, I kind of felt like Huck Finn on the river for awhile there.

Little Girl and I had breakfast around nine. We ate together at the kitchen table, side by side talking about nothing in particular and no hurry at all. I don't know that's ever happened. There's always something has to happen right now hurry up and finish your meal we're halfway out the door already without you. We had cranberry walnut toast which I had to buy since my oven door is still welded shut (please, do not get me started) and eggs which I still have to buy because my chickens aren't here yet and even if they were they wouldn't be laying yet. By the way, the Internet provided coop is here and it is in parts and I kind of win, hee hee hee.... And breakfast was nice and then eventually complete.

We went to the garden and I couldn't tell you why except there was more grazing to be done by both of us, maybe to help digest the protein. Also we had to empty the compost into the compost bin and I discovered two very funny things and maybe I'll take a picture. There are potatoes and some kind of squash growing most prodigiously in my compost bin. Seriously. I don't know what all got dumped in there but they're taking off faster than that one rogue sugar pumpkin and quite honestly I hope they eat the next raccoon climbs the fence (and spit him out for the dog to chew). By the way, the raccoons, which have more stomach then sense, made off with a two gallon container (plastic) of organic weed killer and ate it. I am not making this up. The fuckers ate it. I can't even imagine the repercussions. Maybe they will stop dismantling my compost bin (which they could climb over more easily than dismantle) but I kind of doubt it.

Eventually we got out of the house and headed into town. First stop was the local bank where we opened up a savings account for Little Girl. I've been meaning to do this forever but that would require me home with her before 4 PM on a weekday and that's just about never going to happen. Until today. It happened, she has a passbook and that junior capitalist is happy as a pig rolling in it. I have a whole other blog entry devoted to the fact that we opened an account for money she played with in her bedroom as if it was meaningless.... I'll stop there.

We picked up the cat food and the lighter fluid and the vacuum cleaner and a prescription and stopped by the nursery to talk about my soil and buy some geraniums and marigolds and potting soil for the window box we just discovered outside Little Girl's window after cutting down that would be over sized decorative tree that never should have been planted that close to the foundation in the first place and we came home and ate like wolves and then packed the car and headed out to Bisceglie Scribner Pond which is pictured above in a very imaginary pristine state.

Bisceglie Scribner Pond is at the back of Bisceglie Scribner Park which is where Somebody's Mother burned herself up like a Tibetan Monk awhile back. I didn't want to go there but last weekend we did and it was OK. We did go there long enough to discover that the pond was not a terrible place at all (I had visions of a small watering hole gone to hell with too many people and too much sunblock and other things clogging the waterways and I didn't want any part of it). As it turns out it's a ceeeeement swimming pool. OK, ceeeeement pond fed by springs and pumped up and out into the Saugatuck River. Not sure what this is costing us environmentally or otherwise but there it is. Beach sand and all. And this is where Little Girl wanted to spend the day.

In the beginning there were only two other children she didn't know and she was sad but we stayed and spent some time examining this strange cement swimming hole. It had tadpoles. Tadpoles in multiple stages of development and we stood, she and I, side by side, and stared down in a pure state of wonder. She was afraid of them. I suppose I ought to march her into that swamp a bit more often because apparently she doesn't go there on her own (because really, when is she ever out there on her own?).

After awhile she made friends and more friends came and she lost her inhibitions and her fears and I sat on the shore and watched her. I just watched her and I thought about everything I had and was at that age and everything she does not have and most likely will not have and instead of being sad I saw this brief moment where it didn't matter so much anyway because, well, there she was out there in the water with other kids, sometimes over her head and sometimes not and despite the life guards and all the parents, having to keep her own head above water anyway.

We stayed all afternoon until it was truly time to come home and then went to the garden to collect soil samples, eat blue berries and plant some more corn.

Now we are cleaned and dressed and waiting for Nomans to come home on the train and we will all go to dinner at the restaurant down the street with the maybe OK food and the terrible service but it's the place where they know us and we know them and I'm thinking that might be what this is really all about.

Happy Independence Day

Surrender?

OK. I bought and paid for 12 cubic yards of organic (what, exactly, do you suppose that means?) top soil in March, had it delivered and spread it out over, oh, um, what turned out to be approximately 1000 square feet and then I proceeded to plant things in it at will.

Sigh.

So what I have now are as follows:

• Potato plants nearly consumed by potato bugs. Broke down and sprinkled Seven all over the bastards. I am clearly going to hell but maybe I will have potatoes anyway.
• Radishes that didn't produce as much as they ought to because I failed to be as mercenary as I ought to in the thinning process leaving approximately 25% of the yield I ought to have had.
• Radishes left to bolt because I thought it was a good idea (and maybe it still is) that attempted to eat the entire bed.
• Carrots that may or may not produce six Bugs Bunny edibles.
• Peas that came up two inches, produced flowers and died.
• Onions that never onioned
• Chives that appear to be doing all right
• Spring garlic that looks different then I expected but hey, I'm pleasantly surprised.
• Tomatoes that failed to thrive. Oh how this kills me in ways I cannot even begin to describe. I hear Garrison Keillor's monologue where he goes on and on about having to go on tomato relief and I am just beside myself with grief. I broke down and miracle growed the pathetic excuse for nightshade on Sunday. Hey, I want to eat, OK? I'll work out the organic stuff a bit at a time.
• Beans that nearly took over the garden. Thank you God, now please, can we have some flowers?
• Corn that may or may not produce something given the prodigious and quite honestly frightening sugar pumpkin plant that ate New York. Or is going to at this rate. I should have killed her when I had the chance or maybe just surrender and eat what the earth wants to give me. Sugar pumpkins. Fine. I'll eat them all.

There's more but that's the mid summer highlight. Only it's not mid summer yet. There's still time.

I am braver than I used to be, and quite possibly the root of all evil

And older too.

Crowd behavior is funny. I wrote a piece awhile back on commuter traffic, the unspoken rules and regulations of any particular stretch of frequently traveled road and the punishment meted out for rule infringement.  Trains are the same way and it only took me this long to work it out.

The trains are getting crowded again ('again' you say? Yes, again. It was bad and then it got better because so many of us feel entitled to park our BMWs on I95 and crawl slowly into whatever city we happen to call a workplace). This is a good sign; means less cars on the road in theory.

We feel we are entitled to space and have developed a series of subtle and not so subtle maneuvers designed to insure that space. These maneuvers are hardly new but for awhile things were so bad that the bad manners went away out of desperation. And then we parked our cars on the freeway and the bad manners came back. There once was a guy (probably more than one guy) who devoted an entire blog to documenting passenger atrocities on the Metro North line. You can find him here if you're so inclined, although he hasn't posted since January 18, 2006, which saddens me because he wrote some great stuff.

On the other hand I do understand the natural inclination to have that lovely three feet of personal space but I'm not so willing to be rude to get it. I will, however, be rude as hell to get a seat (within reason, of course, always within reason. Um, my reason).

Here are the most obvious:

1. Sitting in a 2 seater on the outside leaving the inside seat empty.
2. Sitting in a 2 seater with your bag on the empty seat.
3. Sitting in both seats of a 2 seater (requires talent and balance but can be done, I've seen it).
4. Sitting on the outside of a 3 seater.
5. Sitting in a 4 seater with your feet on the seat across.
6. Sitting in a 4 seater on the inside seat with your feet across diagonally to the outside seat across.
7. Sitting in the middle of a 3 seater with bags on either side (the most heinous of all acts to date).
8. Sitting in the middle of a 3 seater passed out with your head between your legs (NOBODY is going to sit next to that)
9. Sitting anywhere and spewing vomit.
10. Dousing oneself in rancid perfume (just plain smelling bad would be preferable).

I could go on but 10 will suffice.

Little Alecto would not have approached any of those situations. Little Alecto would have chosen the outside of a 3 seater or just one of a 2 seater or just stood for however long it took to get to her destination (by the way, Little Alecto NEVER had any such qualms about the NYC subways, not sure what that's all about). Little Alecto would have been far more concerned with offending the offensive to even consider.

Little Alecto grew up. Or something.

I take great joy in selecting a seat. Isn't that awful? I work very hard to select a seat from the greediest SOB on the car I happen to step into. This morning was almost funny. Nomans and I took the train in together (at some point I'll probably get around to explaining that) and he, being the romantic that he is, wanted to sit together. Funny, I think, really, you can't do that on this train. The best you can hope for is two outer seat 2s one in front and one in back. I head for a pair of those and he points to a line backer in a suit sitting on the outside of a 3 seater with his 'stuff' on the middle seat. I walk up to him and say "I'll be needing those two seats." I should probably have said "We'll be needing those two seats" but I'm not sure he would have noticed or been willing to respond. He lifted his considerable and muscular bulk from the seat to let me in leaving his 'stuff' on the middle seat. "No" I said, "we'll be needing both of those.

He was nearly apoplectic. I stared him down. Probably Nomans was doing the same behind me; I didn't bother looking. He removed his 'stuff' and we sat down. He sulked through two more stops until he got off. I wished he'd been stuck with us for hours.

This evening I got on the Danbury line in Stamford heading for home and the train was more crowded than usual and there was a man guilty of performing sin #7 which I had yet to encounter, though I'd heard plenty about the audacity that leads weaselly little people to take the lion's share of the space while old ladies and pregnant people pass out between cars. OK, I exaggerate. But still.

I should mention that there were empty seats behind him.

I have no mercy.

I stood at the edge of the seat (he wouldn't look at me, that's how this works) and said without an excuse me or by your leave, "I need one of those seats". My tone clearly indicated that I was not moving.

He looked up, gathered his things and moved to the window seat leaving his 'stuff' securely filling the middle seat. I stuffed my backpack between my legs and pulled out my book (I'm re-reading _Still Life With Woodpecker_ at the moment) and proceeded to ignore him.

Once into South Norwalk the train empties greatly and there were many seats completely empty around us.

I did not move.

Small, unhappy grunts emanated from the window seat to my right but I would not meet his eye or turn my head or acknowledge that there was anyone on this train but me.

I read my book. I laughed out loud (who doesn't when reading TR?). I stayed there until thirty seconds from my stop and giggled all the way to the door.

I am 44. I ought to know better but I'd rather not. I'm having way too much fun. Next week I tackle the middle seats.

Left alone to our own devices

This photograph is completely gratuitous without the prelude. But I like it, so here it is anyway (there will be more later).

After watching the girls pull away on the Northbound train I called my dad to let him know they were on their way. It took me awhile to get a grip so this didn't happen right away. I don't like to sound anything less than perfectly perfect or I might have to explain myself or something. And it's a good thing I did pull myself together because I also had to ask why I'd received three consecutive phone calls from my aunt and the third sounded frantic because I hadn't called back yet. I'm evil like that (jeeze, it had only been a week). Turns out he finally got around to telling her about my February incarceration and she accused him of neglect (erm, I'm 44, right?) which is really about their relationship, not me and it goes on and on. In any event I had to convince both of them that I'm perfectly perfect (which is as true as it's ever going to be I suspect) and I could hardly be blubbering while I did that. Although who knows, maybe they would have worked out that blubbering when one has put one's baby girl on a train is a perfectly normal and some would say very healthy response. However, it wasn't worth the risk.

So, once pulled together and buttoned down or up or what have you, we headed to the PYO strawberry fields where I was inappropriately dressed but proceeded to get down on my hands and knees or butt or whatever worked in the moment and pick berries. Inappropriately dressed is wearing a knee length cotton skirt (it looks kind of bandanaish) which is perfectly OK for gardening in your back yard but not so good if you're going to be flashing every family in the vicinity when you get tired of kneeling or squatting and sit cross legged or worse, on your butt with your knees up and your legs kind of open (it works, try it. With pants (Not that my underwear is scary, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'll stop digging that particular hole now.)). On the other hand it was a good way to scare most of them off and into other parts of the field because I did not like listening to the whining (and it seemed as if everyone was whining for one reason or another and for crying out loud they picked a pint and were done with it!). 

I'll shut up now about all that.

So my husband has never been picking and this takes some time to show him that the berries are under the leaves and that small is often better and that we don't pick the ones that are so ripe they might burst unless we intend to eat every one of them on the way home. We fill up our large boxes in no time at all and I send him back for two more. By the time I stood up I realized I'd made a horrible mistake and should never have come into the field without water. As it turned out the farm had a pump and there was more than enough to rehydrate after we paid.

Here are 32 pounds of strawberries:

My original intention had been to can some, freeze others and eat a lot. We did eat a lot. I don't actually even want to consider how many we ate. It reminded me of that book Blueberries for Sal where Sal goes out picking blueberries and eats more than she picks and so her berries go plink plunk plink because they're always hitting the bottom of her bucket.

I did not can because it was too hot and I'd read that you can freeze now and can later. I'll just wait for one of those sporadic weekends when it's actually cold and rainy (we do still get those). Freezing strawberries should be done in a single layer. This is to make sure that by the time they go in the bags they don't stick together into one solid lump and you have some control over the quantity you pull out. We used large cookie sheets and the downstairs freezer. It took 7 sheets which is two rounds at approximately 4 hours per freeze.  They look so neat and orderly on the sheets. My OCDish accountant was beside himself with joy:

  Here is round one:

Now, some of you will remember that last year I lived without an oven or a stove top for a month. This happened because our electric range finally bit the dust due to the multiple breakable digital parts suffering horribly from the frequent brown and blackouts this far back in the woods. We spent a good amount of time researching ranges and finally decided on a Bluestar with propane. We ran the propane into the house, ordered the stove and waited. In the mean time I learned to do amazing things on the grill and also that when we are suddenly faced with not having something we really thought we could not do without our ability to come up with creative solutions or simply shift our expectations increases dramatically and with a swiftness that I found rather startling.

So. The Bluestar is broke. The oven door seized up last Thursday, the parts have been ordered and while we are not without the stove we definitely won't have the oven until sometime next week. I'm just thankful the girls got the rhubarb pie out before the door seized it's final seize. I can live without an oven except there's this thing called bread, of which I bake all we eat and this thing called shortcake which I really wanted to make my husband (it's required to concoct his favorite dessert) and both of those things, within the context that I normally exist, cannot be had without a traditional oven.

Ha!

Not so. Not at all. Just have to open the mind and shift the expectations. The shortcake was an easy shift. Last year I made raspberry cobbler according to CG's recipe and it did just fine on the grill as long as the coals burned down well enough not to scorch the bottom. Here is the shortcake on the grill, top about to go on for 20 minutes, grill temp at 380 to drop to 325 - 350.

The bread was something else all together. There's just no sense trying to make a loaf of bread as we might imagine that loaf on a grill. Not even with that nice Weber lid. Even if you could get the temperature right it would be next to impossible to keep it there for the requisite 30 or 45 minutes depending on the size of the loaf. You can't keep adding coals to an enclosed grill that does not run on gas.

I got two words for you. Flat. Bread. Here is Naan and the recipe to the wondrous stuff (really, really, seriously tasty stuff) Naan. Here is naan waiting for the grill to be just right (which, for me, is still a very gut like thing). That's a full size sheet pan with two pieces of foil slicked up with oil that I used to transport the bread from the kitchen. I used a pizza peal to move the foil to the grill but I could very well have used anything mobile with a flat steady surface.

Here is naan at the turning point; you cook these things like pancakes except the lid is closed in order to contain ambient heat.

It takes about 7 minutes on the first side and less than 3 on the second. The oven temp wants to be at 400 degrees so the grill should start out at about 425 - 450 as the temp is going to drop radically with the addition of the bread although not as much as the thermometer at the top of the grill reads because it is significantly hotter below the bread.

And while the naan was rising and the second round of strawberries were being hulled I whipped up a quick (quick is subjective, it really wants a couple of hours and I really did start it when the shortcake was baking) vegetarian (only because I had no suitable meat in the house) curry because thanks to Manisha, I now know how and what (don't even get me started on what I grew up believe was curry - it came in a spice bottle and turned chicken chunks yellow and sometimes you added a bit of apple or raisin if you really wanted to shake things up and served it over white rice and I just did go on anyway didn't I?).

And lastly I have one further confession. Really, I cannot believe I'm confessing this. I, um, erm, cough, hack, have, erm, been raising mosquitoes. Yep, breeding the little fckers. I have indeed. Last month I purchased three large buckets and tried to grow rice. For fun. For the hell of it. To see if I could. The Internet talked me into it. Truly, I am that silly on occasion. The rice never grew (yes, it was whole grain unprocessed just like the Internet told me). And I left it there as a kind of science experiment. On the deck, to see what would happen. Yes I really did. I live in a swamp, the breeders didn't have to travel far to this little hot tub like paradise I built just for them! Not far at all! Nomans was lovely and dumped the stinking stuff for me.

Finger tips

I got up nervous on Saturday morning, showered Little Girl, woke up Cletus and started packing food and making breakfast all at the same time. By the time I finished packing up the picnic there was a good 10 pounds of lunch and dinner for just the two of them all combined not counting the water and juice bottles and Cletus has got to carry this plus two duffel bags full of boots and clothing (they're wearing their flip flops and crocs) and her back pack which happens to have six books, four DVDs and a computer before I even thought of stuffing it with the juice bottles. Little Girl will carry her own back pack which is really a diaper pack with her name on it which is not the best idea in the world and it's full of ninety bazillion books and forty thousand crayons and a coloring book. My heart palpitations were going into over drive and we left the house precisely on time and I'm pretty sure I only snapped at Cletus twice and not at all at Nomans (he may correct me on that count) or Little Girl.

We arrived, as planned, good and early to the station I walk through twice a day. Today it was a different station full of non commuters and I've only been upstairs in the waiting room once in the last fifteen years and that was just last week to collect the Amtrak tickets. We sat in seats overlooking the tracks and I put Little Girl on my lap because she was starting to get antsy and worried. We went to the bathroom and she did OK right until we came back to the seats and her eyes welled up and she asked Nomans for some water so that she could 'calm myself down'. And she did. We talked about the trains and the number of cars and the engineers and the engines and which way is which and where is track 1 anyway? (it appears to be missing) And then she finally dropped the other shoe and said, 'Mommy, I'd be a lot happier if you came with me. At which point I asked if she'd done the math and considered I'd have to be on the train a total of sixteen hours each time just to do that. She knew. And still.

We sat upstairs until the train was announced on Track 4 and started for the stairs. I held her hand and on about step four she started to hyperventilate. She did this, making these heart breaking little gasping sounds, all the way the stairs and onto the platform and onto the train and oh crap! There don't appear to be any double seats left together and I'm going to be forced to make somebody move possibly by tormenting them with a wailing seven year old which is not fair to the girl, now is it? I spy a four seater with no leg room at all and one Au Pairish looking girl asleep with her feet on the seat across and I drop my girls and their bundles and apologize but she knows and picks up her feet.

Little girl is on the inside seat where there just happens to be no window and I am sorry about this. The Au Pairish looking thing has the window. Little Girl has tears rolling down her cheeks and I mustn't, mustn't mustn't cry under any circumstances because she deserves more of me than that just now. I stroke her hand and remind her that she's got Cletus (who I made pick her up and comfort her on the train platform just to give them both the right idea while I was still there) and that this is all perfectly all right. It is time to get the hell off this train before we're all stuck until New Haven and the last thing I feel as I turn to go are the tips of her little girl fingers. They tremble and let go.

We leave the train and I stand at the window, through which I can barely see, and wave with my brave face to my girls until the train pulls away from the platform and I bury my face in my husband's chest and howl until the howling has taken the breath right out of me.

(it was a really great weekend and lots of amazing things occurred, of which I have taken good pictures, but this deserves a post of it's own)

Sigh

I am about to spend an entire week with my husband. Alone.

That should be the end of the blog entry right there. I think it speaks volumes. It even blots out the fact that I'm still experiencing a wee bit of trepidation at the prospect of putting my two girls on the eight hour choo choo tomorrow.

We had a big list of things we were going to do while the girls were away, starting with finally building that chicken coop. But then my husband nixed that by purchasing one via the internet (thank you, Internet, for spoiling my fun). On the other hand, I think he was trying to tell me something.

Happy Friday, I think I'll go eat something that grows in weeds I call a back yard.

Here is to Cardinal Puff, Puff, Puff, for the Third and Final Time.

Sometimes you can go home. Sometimes you can go home if you are willing to recognize that what's past is past and what's now is now and that both are happening, have happened, will happen and that nothing exists in a finite moment. I think that sometimes we have moments when we can put one foot in two places; kind of like having one foot on each of two train platforms. I stood in two places on Saturday and I am just now able to write about it (actually, I've been trying since Monday morning and it's just now coming).

Here in this photograph is a perfect moment. It is perfect because it is representative of a romantic and therefore perfect past and indicative of the here and now. It is perfect because it signifies a beginning but also tells the tale of an infinite series of endings that come flooding into the forefront of my mind like the banks of the Mississippi on a voluptuous day. Also, I think this photograph could conceivably sum up my entire childhood. Conceivably. Depending on how you wanted to look at it. Maybe Mom ought to stop reading now because I am going to romanticize it. It's real for me, go figure.

Here sits a glass of beer. Regulation maybe yes, maybe no. Budweiser definitely. A glass of sacred beer. A sacred glass of beer. Regardless of how you slice it, sacred to someone, primarily me at this moment, but most assuredly to the four people sitting behind the table in front of those regulation or not glasses of beer. I'll get around to explaining eventually but for now I'll leave you with the money shot.

On Saturday I packed up my family and headed to the drop zone. The drop zone is the airport where skydivers congregate to jump out of planes (note: I did not write the words 'perfectly good'). This is the drop zone in Ellington, CT where I grew up where much has changed and everything is as it has always been.

There were three events scheduled to occur on Saturday. The first was the Dads and Lads jump (skydivers are SERIOUSLY hokey) with four fathers and five sons. I am thinking that most of these sons are pushing if not at 40 which makes the dads pushing if not at 65. Not that there's anything wrong with 65 (or 69 DAD!!!), mind you, just that maybe some of these older gentlemen might not have been current and maybe things ought to have been kept a bit on the simple side, but I digress. No one died. Here they are dirt diving prior to the load (and I notice I only see one old man in this shot. I wonder where they could have been hiding the other three.) Also, my dad is the guy with duct tape on his butt. I'm just sayin'.:

And here they are getting on the big airplane that came down special from The Blue Sky Ranch which has a name but I've forgotten already (now who has missing brain cells?). Also, you can see more old men and have a little more faith that I'm not just making this part up.:

Like I said, nobody died but I'm not sure it turned out exactly as they might have envisioned. In any event, I think it was a last kind of thing. I don't think these Dads and Lads will be doing this again, not this set anyway. But there was a moment when all nine of them climbed up in that plane with a few other passengers where time folded up upon itself and nineteen sixty-nine kissed nineteen seventy-five kissed nineteen eighty-two kissed nineteen ninety-six kissing today finally folded over upon itself and guess what? The universe did not implode even though I thought it might.

Having written all that, Dads and Lads was a bonus. That's not why we're all here. We're all here to say good-bye to the Lion as well as Dick Barber and we've got two separate jumps scheduled because the families don't seem all that inclined to mix their metaphores, as it were. Despite the fact that these two dead men might as well have grown up together they spent so much of their lives in the very same space.

The culmination of these events brought all manner of people and animals out of the woodwork, myself and family included. I don't honestly think I've been on this drop zone in twenty-five years short of a quick midweek stop to lurk about when no one was around. I have been on other drop zones, just not this one. I have seen some of these people, just not in this place. This one place with these people which is and who are more home than I can call any other place and which I left so many years ago, forever refusing to look back as if I might turn to salt. And perhaps I might have.

The world does move on. Most of the time we aren't aware that it's moving, we're just along for the ride until one day the world up and smacks us in the face like a ten foot breaker and we're forced to take stock. It is one thing to attend a funeral or two off premises and quite another to visit those very same places with the remaining old guard along for the ride. It was a freak show of juxtapositions and I'm glad as hell I gave myself permission to be there.

Connecticut Parachutists Incorporated in Ellington, CT was recognized by the State of Connecticut as a non-profit group in March of 1962, twenty-five months before I was born. According to one of the bios on Marge Bates, there were 32 Charter Members of which fewer than a dozen had ever made a parachute jump. Marge Bates was one of those members, by the way, and she had two static line jumps to her name. Vic Deveau and Dick Barber may very well have been, I just don't have the documentation to back it up. In any event, Marge's husband, Jim, certainly was and in the last year three of these old guard have died. I'm sure there were more than three, but three of mine, three of mine have died.

The world moves on.

So I took my girls and my husband (mostly my girls) to this drop zone where my brother and I ran through the tall grass shagging down chutes or tumbling mindlessly into the unknown or otherwise universe. They cut the grass these days I notice. We went to pay tribute, to be with, to steep at least myself in the memory of what was and perhaps to let go. I wasn't counting on time travel. I wasn't counting on being hit right in the face with the notion of 'is always'.

The first thing I did was look for my tree. Trees change. I couldn't find my tree but I was pretty sure, given the lack of gianormous stumps in the locale of the creek bank that my tree lives. I identified one or two with a crotch in just about the right shape that given the years might have been low enough for one scrappy little girl's reach. That done I moved onto the corn fields. The corn is still there despite the housing developments encroaching at an alarming rate. It's hard corn, not sweet. This much I remember. I also remember we stole a bit and cooked it up over grills made from cut up old oil barrels. Al Bailey did our grilling and I saw the man on Saturday for the first time since maybe 1972. I thought of nothing but cow corn and husk braiding. He taught me that.

After that the girls and I did just about nothing but sit and wait in the hot, hot sun. And we rolled in the dirt a bit until we were good and sweaty and covered in the stuff and suddenly I could smell the smell that was me at six or eight or twelve or sixteen with my face down in a packing mat and the smell of crab grass in the hot sun and the voices buzzing in and out of consciousness as I moved in and out of the dream space as if waking and the dream were one and the same.

The jump meant to dump Vic's ashes and then the one to dump Dick's never happened. At least not on Saturday. The weather came in just as the photo ops were being had and the whole thing got put on hold until somebody gave in and opened the first beer. The beer does not open until the last plane of the day takes off. That's the way it always was and perhaps the way it always will be. So the beer was opened and the festivities were ready to go but we had some things to do first.

My dad went to the pea gravel pit which no one ever uses anymore. He went there with someone. I want to say Billy but now I can't remember, it could have been Al Bailey, it could have been just about anyone over the age of fifty. He went there and dug a hole where no one lands anymore because now there is something called a tuffet and he buried a bit of The Lion at dead center where we used to anchor a margarine lid. I ran into the pea gravel and squatted down and must have created some kind of agreement because I took a double handful of The Lion and I ran into the corn and spun about with my face in the sky letting The Lion go into the corn. In these moments I was stunned at the viscosity of those ashes. They are not light and fluffy. They have weight, and grit and carry chunks and bits of this human being reduced to the sum of something that can be contained. At last. And I wondered, who from his own generation will carry my father's ashes to the sky and the pea gravel and to the corn?

So the jump did not go. Instead we had to do something with the Marines that came and the VA as well and so we had a small service in the rain which I missed because I was so entranced with photographing the old men from the VA and the Marine who played taps but it's OK because that was for the family and I can say my own words for The Lion anyway.

And still, I digress from my point. When the ceremony was done, and here, by the way is the photo op (all of those people, with the exception of the boys who are or are nearly forty, are adults from my childhood. My heart breaks and releases):

When the ceremony was done and the food was eaten and the sun was back out there was nothing left to do but drink and play games.

The game of Cardinal is an old game. Perhaps you have heard of a college version but unless you were in the military and played it there, you do not know Cardinal Puff.

I grew up with this.

Sir. How would you like to be addressed?

Sir, Supreme Cardinal X, may I have your permission to begin?

Here is to Cardinal Puff for the first time.

And the series of events begins and continues until the neophyte (defined as lower than whale shit) misses a beat and has to finish the glass of beer with the glass to his or her lip until it is empty.

It's a shell game of a sort. You see the Cardinal masters do the demos and they do it so well and so effortlessly that I think of Stephen King's Gunslingers, which in a way, they were. They say, 'it is just one glass of beer. If you fuck up you can quit once you've finished. If we fuck up we have to drink up and continue until we get it right.'

You know, none of us ever made Cardinal. None of us who grew up with it despite the fact that the lines and gestures were indelibly etched into the lizard brain ever even tried. None of us were willing to play the shell game. None of us. Not a one. Therefore, these lovely young people who were born THE YEAR I QUIT JUMPING (OK, I was only 18, but still) have no legacy before them. Meet Penelope and Doug. Doug is up first (hey, Mom, that's Lisa Hays (and Jean was there with Everet and Baby Gary and Baby Gary's Baby Gary but no Tony) in the background and Drew Lamb with Dennis Testoni and Mary Lou and Josh Wolf is just off to the left but you can't see him here):

Doug crashed and burned a number of times (exactly the way I would have) but Penelope got close, close, close in her intensity and intention. Here is Penelope with a man we call Jello who has been in that wheel chair from a sky diving incident since about 1972. Do you see the look of indulgence and love?

The first generation is watching the third generation, who have already invented themselves from nearly whole cloth, trying on the shoes of their fathers. Because they can.

Sometimes you can go home. If you are willing to accept...

The following are gratuitous shots of people I have not seen in more years than I want to count. There's more on Flickr if you can find me. Gary Hays and Al Bailey:

Butch Auden:

Marge Bates (who had a chihuahua in her lap the whole time she demo'd Cardinal):

Al Bailey (who no longer drinks) looking on while Gary Hays, John Jefferies (my Dad), Butch Auden and Marge Bates give one of the final demos to Cardinal Puff:

Here is to Cardinal Puff, for the first time.

Amen.

Friday Crop Update

We have been eating out of the garden again, greens and greens and greens. There is grass in my greens because a good bit of last years bolted lettuce bolted right over the fence and turned up half an acre away in the compost bin. OK, it's not half an acre, it's ten feet, and it's not in the compost bin, it's right next to it. But it sounded good. In any event, just because it's not confined to the garden walls does not mean I'm not going to eat it. I just won't tell the kids. The kids would use this as further ammunition to support their argument that ALL THINGS ARE WEEDS and none of them should be consumed ever under any circumstances. That's not entirely true either but it's Friday and it sounded good.

I mangled the radishes. If I'd been just a little more willing to kill the crowds I would have had more of a harvest before they bolted and the virtue went no more to the root bulb but up and out to the flower. Oh well. I'll be more mercenary in the fall. I can plant more of these in the fall, right?

The arugula never made it inside to a salad. I, um, ate all of it. In the evenings in my nice suits and pink crocs I kinda squatted out there and grazed and before I knew it I'd eaten my way mostly down that one row. And then I came back the next night and the night after that until I reminded myself of pregnant Rapunzel's mother who snuck into the witch's garden each night to eat the greens she craved so badly until one day the witch took her price. On the other hand, it's my garden, right? And who likes bitter greens more than me? No one, not in this household. Also, there are a few stragglers left and I will probably not share those either. The rest are bolting and I think they're absolutely lovely.

I found out that alpine strawberries are tiny. Also, they produce a little bit each day all season long. This is my excuse for eating every one of them as they turn red. I have just recently admitted to this transgression by informing my seven year old that if she wants to eat alpine strawberries from the garden she'd best beat me to it. Given the fact that she gets home hours before I do, I'm not expecting to see another this season. Serves me right for the arugula.

Two of the sugar pumpkin plants that I planted with the corn have grown so big that they cast shadows over that section of corn. I snarl at them and consider planticide because I love corn more than sugar pumpkins, unreasonable or not.

I seem to have lost my mind a bit with the beans. I no longer have any freaking idea what I planted and where. I only know that suddenly there are beans EVERYWHERE. Best I can recall I planted at least six different varieties at six different times which was usually when I was buying them from Whole Foods to eat and a handful always went into the garden instead of the pot. I am very hungry just thinking of it.

The surviving and replacement tomatoes are going to live. I don't expect much out of them in terms of rapid growth for another few weeks. I just check every day to make sure they're still breathing. It may take me a few years to get over this one.

My potatoes. Let me tell you about my potatoes. They are beginning to scare me. Kitt calls her raspberries the Audreys because no matter how much she cuts them back (and they cut her) they just come back stronger. And if any of you are missing the reference think...'Feeeeeed me Seymour!' In any event, that's kind of how I'm feeling about these potato plants at the moment. Not that they've done anything to me but remember that potato lust I had going on a few weeks ago? I'm feeling very, very dirty at the moment.

This is also growing in my garden and it makes me very happy every single day.

And this:

And this.You are correct if you assume I don't spray anything on these babies, I just don't. Every year they come back (the yellowish climber is new this year) and every year I am surprised and delighted.

And lastly, my cat, she is still a slut.

Putting my money where my mouth is

(note: I am going to use the F bomb in here. It is merited.)

When I was sixteen years old (no, that is not me, I always had my eyes closed and that's not a 180 or 182 but it was as good a shot as I could get that wasn't a tandem) I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane (not that there's really any such thing as a perfectly good airplane but don't get me started). Yes, I really did. This part, however, is not so amazing. What is amazing is that my parents allowed this. Hell, they encouraged and paid for it. First jump course was my sixteenth birthday present.

During my mis-spent youth I did a lot of things that most of my contemporaries dropped their jaws over. As a matter of fact, I so got off on freaking people out I about made a small career of it until I hit thirty and sort of kind of came to my senses. Sort of. While my adventures are hardly irrelevant they are not my point this evening.

My point is I turned into exactly the pansy-assed parent I swore I'd never be. Now, to some of you reading this may not ring even remotely true given the fact that I did indeed remove my then 20 year old son from my household lock, stock and barrel but I didn't do that until the shit hit the fan so bad it was either that or watch the kid self-destruct in front of my eyes (he had anyway, I just wanted him to avoid jail time if at all possible and he has to the best of my knowledge so I feel as if I've actually accomplished something as a parent. Or he has, as a human being, or something like that, which may have been the point in the first place).

We are very concerned about our children. We want the very best for them. We want them to win even if we don't know for sure what winning really means (I know, we THINK we do). Most of all, we do not want them to be hurt.

When I was twenty-two years old I stood in a supermarket parking lot holding my nine day old infant son against my breast listening to some god awful song by Bread resurrected from where it ought to have been left buried and I cried my fool head off because all I could think was how I'd do fucking ANYTHING to protect this boy. Any. Thing. At. All. And, based on current results, I might have fouled it up royally. Maybe.

In any event, I was too careful. I protected and sheltered and did for and paid for and forgave and in the end I pulled the entire rug out from under the boy so bad he still doesn't know what hit him. He may never forgive me but I can live with that so long as he lives. And I do mean LIVES. That's what I want for my children; to be alive and conscious, to choose from their centers and desires, not from their fears.

So, this brings me to the latest choice point. I need to get my kids up to Vermont the weekend of the 21st to spend a week with my dad. In the past we've driven them most of the way, made the hand off and then driven back. That's a lot of miles and a butt load of fossil fuel. This is no longer an issue of whether or not we can afford the fuel. It's an issue of whether or not we are willing to when there are, actually, alternatives that do not involve an airplane.

There is, for example, the train. Gulp. An 8 hour train ride with multiple stops that crosses three state lines and does not include the TSA on either end searching baggage or a friendly flight attendant held responsible for the fate of my children (like that was ever real anyway but it sounded good at the time).

I wouldn't think twice about putting sixteen and a half year old Cletus on that train. But Little Girl? Put my seven year old daughter in the care of my sixteen year old daughter for eight hours on a train with strangers and god knows what else? WHAT!? ARE YOU NUTS?!

After I got done wetting myself and called my dad, who laughed and reminded me that he'd put my sorry ass out of a perfectly good airplane (no such thing) at sixteen I booked the tickets.

They will be fine. The point is that I will have to adjust after all these years of believing that what I have been doing is protecting. I have not been protecting anything but my own sorry heart and parenting is not about me.

Cletus and Little Girl, by the way, are not afraid. No. Not at all. Go figure.

p.s. you know what's really bizarre? As soon as Cletus comes home on that train I'm going to turn right around and hand her over to a bunch of perfect strangers who are going to haul her coddled Yankee ass off to deepest darkest Maine where she will live out of her sleeping bag in the middle of the forest  eating lord knows what and deciding whether or not to drown herself in a canoe, die from black flies, or fall off a cliff. And that doesn't bother me one little bit. It's that illusion of safety that gets us every time.