Monday, November 25, 2013

Witching Time

“Jesus, again?!”  Despite having just flicked on the lightswitch, she stood in the dark, the faint pop of the last regular filament bulb in the house echoing faintly in her ears.  It was a quaint sound, but it was the fifth light bulb this month. Neither type, halogen, fluorescent, traditional, nor location seem to matter.  She had also caused the demise of one cell phone, at least one neighboring car alarm, two clocks, a handful of children’s toys, and countless other small scale catastrophes that left people scratching their heads when their computers refused to boot or their radios wouldn’t pick up signals after she left the room. But she knew.  She left a trail of inert devices in her wake, a faint electrical burning smell tainting the air around her.  And there was still a week and a half left in the month.

October is an in-between time, a time of extremes and change.  Hot golden days, birds drunk on fermented berries, animals fat and languid from seeds and fruit, to bone chilled nights, damp and raw, leaving heavy frost on corn stalks and pumpkins.  She was startled awake at night by a flood light full moon, the tang of snow in the air, only to be drowsed to a stupor at midday by steady drizzle and slate grey skies.  The warmth and ocular orgasm of peak foliage had been stripped bare by whipping winds and pummeling rains, leaving the silver birch, green-black evergreens, and hearty orange oak leaves clinging tenaciously to round out the Halloween pallet. Old stories said all of this dichotomy in nature allowed for a weakening of the walls between worlds, allowing for an in-between space in this in-between time, when other “energies” could move between the flimsy scrim of this reality.

October was a particularly active time in her cycle of inadvertent destruction.  She knew why, but she didn’t like to admit it: it was the witching time, and she came from a long line. History had dismissed the Salem trials as the hysterical rantings of young girls, but the family quietly acknowledged that they had the real article.  She couldn’t verify that Great Grannie many times removed had actually turned someone into a blue boar, but she wouldn’t have put it past her, either.  Most people in 1690 weren’t living to see 40, say nothing about 80, without a little help.
All you had to do was look at the complexions of the women in her family to see how they mimicked the month when they were at their peak: pale skin overlaid by cheeks that went from pink to scarlet in a flushed blink; unruly hair the colors of a penny jar- bright coppers streaked with earthy browns; eyes that wouldn’t stay fixed but shifted from whiskey amber to moss green to pitch black, depending on mood.  The farther away from the source, the more dilute the pallets, but despite the infiltration of stronger genes from more typical stock, the traits remained.  Witch blood ran thick and deep.  

She was a weather witch.  That didn’t mean that she could control the actual weather, per se, but that weather had an extreme effect on her.  It also helped explain her “electrical thing.” Most disconcerting was the feeling that she was going to catch something on fire if she got too close.  She could feel it pulse in her fingertips and try to burst through her chest.  She vibrated.  On days when her mood was light and bright, she couldn’t help but skip instead of walk.  Her blood bubbled as though carbonated and her feet didn’t actually touch the ground. But then there were the other days, when her head felt like it was going to explode.  Those were the days when her hair wouldn’t stay put, power lines fried, wireless systems went down.  Her hands tingled, itched, burned. Even atomic clocks went on the fritz, cycling endlessly or grinding to a halt.  She prayed no one with a pacemaker got too close.  

Like thunder and lightening storms, this power was unpredictable. Sometimes it was a little crackle pop, slow rumbles like heat lightning, and others it was the whole explosive show, complete with torrents and great crashes of destruction.  She didn’t mean to have this effect on the people and things around her, but it apparently couldn’t be helped, at least not in a way she had found. Some days her moods settled over others like the warm glow of August sun and on others like November sleet.  She put women on edge and left men wondering why they were drawn to her. Even when she locked herself in her office on her darkest days, speaking only cursory snippets, trying to shelter people from her storm, the pall seemed to seep out through the cracks, under doors and down hallways, until a melancholy settled like thick fog, leaving people shaking their heads and wondering just what was wrong with them.

A natural toucher, hugger, petter, kisser, she knew the unintended consequences and did her best to mitigate them. While not affecting discontent at the Helen of Troy level, she had still brought on an undue number of jealous arguments and marital disputes, fits of brilliant mania and catatonic depression, crying jags and giggle fits. There were a select few who seemed caught in an especially powerful vortex around her; they simply couldn’t escape.  Sometimes she sought them selfishly. Maybe she could share some of her euphoria with a brush or a glance. A masterpiece might get finished, a mile time improved, world peace achieved. Maybe, just maybe, on the tough days, if she got close but didn’t touch, she could discharge some of that pent up energy without causing too much chaos to feel human rather than elemental again.

At least this time the casualty was insignificant and easily remedied.  The light needed cleaning anyway.  It would have been nice to have someone there, not only to bring her a lightbulb, but to pull close, skin to skin, and pass some of that electricity to. Someone who could withstand the jolt and come out energized, not anesthetized.  The right combination was euphoria hitherto unexperienced- creative genius, physical fulfillment, mental peace, and the best damn sleep you were ever going to get.  The wrong was catastrophically ugly. She had seen the results and it was rarely worth the risk.  And so she stood in the dark, fingertips burning, counting the days until November.  Maybe then it would be safe to turn on the lights again.  

Thursday, July 4, 2013

Happy New Year

Crammed up against Christmas and unfortunately mired in the coldest, darkest time of the year, I've never been able to reconcile January 1st as a holiday, much less the start of a New Year.  It’s cold, bleak, and unwelcoming, not a stellar time to be thinking about a new exercise regime, changes to bad habits, or really anything other than hibernating.  That’s why I’ve always taken heart in the natural way my year seems to transition at the end of June into the beginning of July.


The start of my New Year celebration begins with the Summer Solstice.  The pagan in me finds this day enchanted.  The longest day of the year, lush and green, smelling of fresh cut hay and ripe strawberries, such a contrast to the stark landscape of January.  It’s the perfect day to be outside from dawn until dusk doing something that is good for your soul. This year the Strawberry Moon was coming full and I watched it rise over the Oahe Dam in the middle of the South Dakota grasslands as the sky radiated magenta beneath the thunderheads.  You can see to forever there, which is a beautiful thing when you are considering all of the possibilities life has to offer.  


The next leg of my new year happens on my birthday, almost a week later, on June 27. I consider birthdays each person’s personal New Year.  This year my transitioning held the additional boon of my son’s first birthday on June 25.  Starting with the Irish blessing of a buttered nose for luck (don’t ask, I don’t know where it came from), you get to take stock of everything the year before has been for you and use your special birthday wish (yes, these do come true, you know) to give a bit of magic and weight to your heart’s desires for the next one.  


My 35th year was far and away the most challenging of my life.  I got my birthday wish from my 34th year- a baby!  Sterling was ardently longed for, and perhaps it was that birthday candle dream that made him a reality. I spent all of 34 trying to get pregnant and then being pregnant.  That year passed in a quiet hum, flushed and pink with anticipation, dreams, and extra baby blood.  On my 35th birthday, I brought my son home from the hospital, sore and exhausted but proud and in awe of this new life.  I have no idea what my birthday wish was as I sat at the table with him beside me, snuggled in and sleeping away his newness. I had everything, so perhaps I wished for nothing at all.


The next day I had to bring Sterling back to the hospital. He was jaundice and tongue tied, not able to nurse.  I was battered and bruised and my milk wouldn’t come in, but I was so swollen that I winced at a touch.  I got a phone call while I was at the hospital that only I had the data needed for some report for school, needed ASAP, so I sat on my hospital bed and cried as I tried to pump and type.  And so the challenges of being a new, working mother began.   How would I balance trying to be exceptional at both my job and being a mother, because I was willing to accept nothing less of myself. I was back to work by August, taking really less than five true, full weeks of leave.  I did my best to give 100% of myself to my work and to Sterling (I know the math on that doesn’t work out) while not forgetting my husband, my family, and the other people and responsibilities around me.  I had to remember to pay the bills and feed the cats and horses and smile appropriately when people asked if they could talk to me about their problems.  I had to be level headed and fair even when I had had no sleep or was an hour overdue to pump.


And then I noticed things around me starting to change.  My husband was never home, and when he was home in body, he wasn’t present.  He refused to touch me and rarely talked to me.  He blamed me, saying that I was off-putting, that I was too stressed to be enjoyable.  Did he not see that I was stressed because I was trying to work to make sure we could survive and pay our bills?  That I was working so he could live his dream of running a music shop when really all I wanted was to be able to stay home and be a mom?  Did he not see that I was stressed because I was doing the lion’s share of taking care of our child because he was never there?  In reality, he was using this rationale as an excuse to be having an affair with his 24 year old shop girl.  It was easy to villainize me when his own conscience was so tainted.


I spent the entire fall in denial, praying that he wouldn’t do something like that with a brand new baby at home.  It felt like winter came very early.  In the darkest hours of the coldest days, right after the REAL new year, we confronted reality.  How appropriate a setting for my life to fall apart.  I spent the early months of 2013 watching as the dreams I had for my life and my family sluiced away like sheets of freezing rain.  Friends I needed turned a deaf ear. I fretted away every calorie I was able to take in, causing people to wonder if I was sick or had an eating disorder as I dipped below 110 pounds.  I doubted everything about myself. I had made no New Year’s resolutions, but this was decidedly NOT what I had predicted for 2013.  


As winter slowly began to melt away, I resigned myself to the fact that my marriage was truly, irrevocably over.  But spring is a time of new beginnings, much more so than January.  Once I was able to share what was happening in my world, the people in my inner circle showed me an enormous amount of care and support.  They reached out and tried to take care of me, even though I am terrible at letting that happen.   An old friend became a new source of happiness, reminding me that I have worth, that I am desirable, that I am lovable.  And that was terrifying.  I was encouraged to apply for a job that I considered well beyond my reach, but to my surprise, I was a finalist.  I was content with not getting the position, until my world tilted again and I waited, my breath and future uncertain, to see what would come of my mentor and friend vacating the top spot at Profile. Spring became a time of flux and wondering.  While great things were afoot, I was unmoored and uncertain about everything.  


In the final days of the school year, in the final days of spring, the final days of my 35th year, I began to think that life as I had hoped wasn’t over, and even more to the point, that it could be better than I had ever wished, birthday candle or no.  Hope springs eternal.  I was appointed to Profile’s corner office, which meant the loss of a dear friend from the roll, but an amazing opportunity for me.  My task is ahead of me, and I know what to do. I spent the Solstice in South Dakota, the place where my soul feels most at peace, in the comfort and belonging of a very special person.  My questions about myself and our potential relationship were answered.  Which brings me to now, past the change of seasons, past my birthday, into July.  


When you are in education, July 1 marks the New Year.  The books have been closed on the previous quarter and year, honor rolls are posted, and the time comes to start thinking about September (or late August for us).  For me, this year that means a new job with new responsibilities.  It means proving myself.  But is also means opportunity abounds.  July 1 also marked the start of a new challenge for myself, running (well, sort of), which is so far out of my comfort zone as to be laughable.  But you know, it feels great, especially in the company of an amazing cheerleader and coach.  It is my effort to open up, take risks, and not shy away from things that I can’t automatically do well.  It also means letting someone new(ish) in to my life in a non-work related way, which, believe it or not, hasn’t happened in years.  I have to let go believe that I can be valued as a friend, not just as a leader or problem solver.  

So here I sit on July 4th, Independence Day, the final stretch of my New Year celebration.  My beautiful, amazing son is sleeping through the raucous bangs and crashes of the fireworks all around us.  My legs remind me of the effort I have put in and itch for more. As dusk settles over the grasslands of South Dakota, two hours after ours, I will get a good night phone call from my cowboy, wishing me sweet dreams for the night and my future.  I look forward to Monday when I return to school refreshed after the long weekend, ready to get down to the task of making Profile even more amazing than it already is. And I realize how beautiful it is to be excited about life, love, friendships, work.  I am independent, strong, and capable of not only doing hard work, but of being valued and loved.  What a great way to start the New Year.  Cheers and blessings to all.  
Fireworks over Pierre/Fort Pierre, South Dakota

Country Confession

I have to come clean.  I’ve been keeping this a secret for a long time now, and in order to be true to myself, you know, all that “walk the walk, talk the talk” stuff I’ve been preaching forever, I have a confession: I think I like country music.  Maybe more than a little.  It kinda gives me this warm feeling inside that I haven’t felt before.  OK, I am active country music listener.  


I know some of you have been wondering for a while.  I mean, there have been some hints and clues, right?  Maybe it was my predilection for boots and jeans, or that I ride horses and can drive a tractor, or perhaps the not so subtle big-ass Dodge 1500 Big Horn truck? Or have you been digging a little deeper and recognized the South Dakota grasslands in my Facebook cover photo, or read the longing in my poetry, or saw my blush when they kid behind the register called me ma’am with just a hint of a drawl?  Or did I out myself when I forget to change the radio from WPKQ back to NHPR?  Whatever...now it’s out there and I can’t take it back.  


I first got the inkling that I might be a country music listener three years ago.  I came to it late in life, you see.  When most people are first starting to experiment with music,  I was completely shut off from it.  Even though I was surrounded by country music growing up,  I can hear my mother saying, “Not in this family you don’t.”   You see, it’s not that country music isn’t accepted where I’m from; it’s just that my people don’t accept it.  The country station, which happens to be the one that always comes in, was completely bypassed with a quick scan through.   Instead I was given a healthy diet of Vietnam protest songs and Motown with a smattering of Blues and Soul, coupled with my own generation’s moody cynicism packaged haphazardly in Seattle Grunge and European techno.  It was all about the irony, the disaffected malaise and angst of many young people with purple hair and extensive black wardrobes.  Country was just so, well, country.  


But how could I hide that I was a country girl!  My dad was educated but blue collar and my mom stayed home. My best days were spent playing in the barn, and my best friend was my horse.  Any weekend from Memorial Day to Columbus Day could find us at a horse show, where the experience really wasn’t complete until one of us got dumped into the manure pile.   We had dogs and trucks and we all knew how to muck stalls, throw hay, and use power tools.  But man, don’t let any of my friends at school know all that.  All of those kids who rode on the circuit or I sat with in the bleachers at the Fair- a nod in the hall will do, thanks.  They understood: vo-ag kids don’t talk to the weirdo theatre chicks.  And they certainly don’t share music.  


So there I stayed in the closet until a fateful day in June of 2010 when I drove from Denver to Rapid City and the only stations to come in in my rental car were country.  And for some reason, as I crossed state and county lines, the Muses felt I needed to hear “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” about ten times. After nearly choking on my expensive iced coffee the first time, then really listening and laughing every time thereafter, I started to hum along.  Just a dip of the musical toe, you see.  


But then I arrived at my destination, just west of Pierre, SD. Country music heartland.  And these people didn't just listen to country, you see, they lived it.  Land stretched forever under skies ripe for fireflies and thunderstorms, casting a golden glow over round bales and countless head of cattle.  Pickups abounded, farm trucks and dualies, big jacked up toys. I swear, there is not one foreign car in the whole damned state.  It’s like they are illegal.  You have never heard a country song about a Prius, but at least twenty-five percent feature as a central character a pickup, tractor, or combine.  And the people...”Yes, ma’am” is not sass talk.  It’s real.  They are truly being polite.  Even the little boys in their boots and cowboy hats. Women may be expected to help castrate bull calves and feed twenty sweaty ranchers, but they are still treated like ladies.  And hats get tipped, or at least a finger to the brim and a nod.  They have high school rodeo teams with national champions and everyone stands for The Pledge and sings along to the National Anthem.   They go to church on Sundays and real men believe in the power of Jesus and their mamas.  Just like in the songs.  It would be like going to Seattle and realizing everyone does wear flannel all the time and they really are pissed off and disaffected, and totally like, whatever, dude about everything.  This was a much kinder, gentler reality.  

So I started out experimenting.  You know, a little here, a little there.  Maybe only in NPR wasn't coming in.  But then I found myself actively seeking out the stations, yearning for twangy guitars and songs about country kids on the farm, girls who like boys in trucks, boys who like tractors.  This liberal agnostic found herself singing along to songs about trusting God and letting Jesus take the wheel. And once that sweet boy from South Dakota, the one with the truck and the dog and the ranch and the tractor, started sending me song lyrics, I knew I was done for good. I found songs that fit my life and my longings and melodies that stuck like honey. Eastern grunge techno cynic be damned.  Yes, ladies do like country boys, just like the song says.


"The Blowup," by Tim Cox.
A reminder to save a horse, ride a cowboy.
It was hard to break my newfound love to my family.  I did so gently, easing them in with crossover music, and reminding them that they had voted for Carrie Underwood on Idol.  I was met with raised eyebrows and smirky smiles.  Really?  Country? Are you sure?! Don’t get me wrong, they are getting better, but it’s still going to take time. My dad will now sit in the same vehicle where it is playing, and my younger brother is kind of bi-musical (Bluegrass being the happy medium); my mother, however, it still a bit of music bigot. “It’s ok if country music stars are on reality television, but please don’t let me have to listen to them sing.”  Although she does like Luke Bryan’s butt (who doesn’t?).

Monday, May 20, 2013

Red Season 2013

Hardwoods, lithe and long,
Push upward from frozen ground,
Their finest extremities shooting forth
Pulsing for the warmth
And the pale April sun.  

Red season spreads in a blush
Across the mountains,
Perhaps slow to start,
Shy in its wanting, but similarly
Impossible to hide or contain.

What is this if not Nature’s show of lust
Borne of a long season of dormancy?  
Spirits running heady and strong, reaching,
Filling each branch with potential for a
Spontaneous combustion of life and green.

Promise vibrates through every stem and tendril,
Sending out a frequency to everything that breathes:
NOW
Is the time to rush forth, connect, entwine,
Yielding singularity to become one.

As Spring’s flushed cheeks conjure that which fills us with life,
We would be wise to remember our part in Nature’s grand plan
And breathe deeply, revelling in the riotous energy of
A New Beginning.  


April 21, 2013










Catharthis


This was written on September 23, 2011, when it really hit home that Alan Campbell was not going to rally through his fight with cancer.  He is still acutely missed.




I have always found writing cathartic, a way to let pent up angst or elation vent through a well turned phrase.  I work in written pictures, mental snapshots, Polaroid lines.  And yet, for as much as I love writing, I don’t consider myself much of a storyteller in the written or oral tradition.  I have always been in awe of those people who can place you in a scene and carry you through an event in its entirety, whether it’s something that spanned minutes or years, and leave you with an indelible impression or emotional imprint.  

Using that most human of talents, the power of speech, the Storyteller can set a scene: a courtroom with disgruntled judge and cast of thousands, the backwoods of Vermont during black fly season, a concert from long ago resplendent with long-haired hippies, or one more recent with the same hippies (only older), the hallways of Old Profile with kids (and some teachers) who ran amok. Then they establish the mood: you’re bereft at the squalor of a shack with no running water and a filthy mattress over the bathroom door; enraged at the social injustice of a failed political or economic system;  giddy at the impending foibles of a Bad News Bears group of young ne’er do-wells working a trail.  Then they swing you through the tale, over stunned deer (thought dead) smashing the interior of a brand new car to bits, around the mountain highways of music-filled roadtrips, up a side road to the generations-long history of some infamous cohort, then back around to the room you’re sitting in right now.  The best at the craft make you feel as if it’s the first time this story has ever been told, and you are the luckiest person alive to hear it: they hunker in and lean back, drawing you in, gesticulating grandly, their intonation ringing through your laughter.  The consummate Storyteller then ties it all together, lifting you out your reverie to remember that you needed to learn something from that story, and because of that, you are now part of it.

Alan Campbell is my Mark Twain and Howard Frank Mosher packaged somewhat messily into one ornery but big hearted ponytailed Scotsman.  With wit and compassion, his stories have told me why I am at Profile, and have helped make it why I love it here.  He is the living history of this place, and with every story, he shares a piece of it with us.  Just as a good Storyteller should.  

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Smithsonian of the Mind

Written for my dad's 60th birthday, based on a recurring dream he's had for years.  




They told him that he snored, and had apnea, and didn’t get quality sleep.  That his REM time was fractured, and no, cat naps while waiting out Wheel of Fortune for Jeopardy to come on did not count as real sleep.  He knew these things.  Make your room a peaceful, calm place, the sleep doctors said.  As opposed to what, a disco? he thought.  Peaceful was being surrounded by science fiction and bathroom readers, photographs and prints, design books and sketch pads, the checks and lines of plaids and tattersall.   And yet, often he woke in the morning as tired as he had gone to bed the night before, despite getting a full eight hours of “bed-time.”  He did not dread sleep like so many whose rest was less than restful, but was rather apathetic to it.  Except for the nights when he had “The Dream.”

Since he was a little boy he had always been a collector of “stuff,” of words and notions and scraps of knowledge, of bits and pieces of material detritus and refuse.  His wife was a tosser, but he closely guarded his stash like Smaug’s  treasure, embedding it.  Was he this way because of The Dream, which he had had since time immemorial, or had The Dream manifested because of this tendency?  Either way, they were inextricably linked. At some point he had come to know it for what it was, this nonreality day trip through his subconscious (it was always a pleasantly warm early afternoon during these twilight meanderings). But he couldn’t quite control it.  There was no beginning or end, no storyline or plot.  Just a bunch of poking about and exploring.  

He had been having The Dream in one permutation or another for as long as he could remember, but now, as he approached his 60th birthday, he was beginning to notice in it some changes that he found a bit discomfiting.  One of the things that gave him pause was the thought that maybe it had been changing all along and he had never taken the time to notice.  What shifts and turns had The Dream taken and foretold that he had been oblivious to before? And why was he cognizant of them now?  Was this the age old push toward retrospection in preparation for the time when the future all of a sudden seemed finite?  Was it finally that new memories and experiences were less exciting and meaningful than old ones?  Regardless, he was aware.  He was listening and watching, and he had been waiting.  

The essential frame and setting of The Dream had always been consistent, if not wholly static in the way that places in dreams had a tendency to shift and move without your consent:  He was a carpenter, as were his father before him and his grandfather before that, so it made sense that a large, rambling Victorian, interesting and comfortable and complete with attached sheds and barns, was built out of the collective subconsciousness of three generations.  He knew that this was not a construction of his own, but one whose dormers and elles had been cobbled and tacked on over not one, but many, lifetimes.  From its steep roof lines and modest gingerbread, he placed its cornerstone somewhere around the turn of the 20th century.  The house had shifted and twisted and turned until all of the beams were comfortable.  He recognized that notion as Vonnegut’s, and he wondered if Kurt had visited this same house in his own recollections.
  
In truth, he knew very little about the house as whole, and he often wondered who else might inhabit its other rooms, if they had adventures of their own in say, the pantry or basement, or if they knew he was there.  He knew the interior walls were painted a cheerful yellow with glossy white trim and that it smelled like molasses in the kitchen.  It was through the back kitchen stairs, by climbing a winding three stories, that he was able to get to The Door, which would lead him into The Attic, which spanned the entire top of the house and above the barn.  

Like anything that was off limits to a child, as a boy he had struggled to gain access to The Attic.  He would stand at the foot of the stairs and the door would be stuck or locked, or the treads on the stairs would be twisted and broken.  At one point, around the time he was wondering if he should be afraid of heights, the stairs changed to a stout ladder which led to a round Hobbit door.  Back then, once he made it to the top door, he was able to enter easily.  But now, as an adult, he found that he went longer between the times when he even saw the entrance, that when The Dream came, the bottom door stood open, but the stairway kept getting steeper and more narrow, and the door at the top was getting smaller.  Unlike Alice, there was nothing outside that said, “Drink Me” to ease his passage.  And the last time he had smelled smoke, had known there was a fire behind the door which he could smell and feel but not see. The door had stuck and he couldn’t get in. It was action, conflict, destruction, in a place where none had been before, and he needed to know  what damage it had done, what it meant, if the Smithsonian of his mind was still intact.  Because that is how he had come to think of The Dream: it was the non-tangible repository for the material artifacts, hidden wishes, and the memories both real and imagined of his waking and sleeping world.  But what would he find the next time?

Patiently he waited for his next opportunity.  He couldn’t force or conjure it, but simply had to wait for old Morpheus to bring him to the door again.  He had never been anxious about it before, but then again, he had always essentially known what he would see when he opened the door presented to him.  The door would creak open and the smell of molasses would give away to that of sunlight brushing over wood and metal and dust.  Midday sun pierced through narrow windows on the gable ends, hiding and yielding different objects in the shadows each time.  The space was cluttered but surprisingly dry and clean, with objects ranging from ticket stubs to a full sized International pickup, starting along the short knee wall and pushing out toward the center of the room.  It would have to taken many lifetimes to sift through every article, and he wondered if that was the point.  Some things were landmarks for him, always present after their first appearance, like the long green Old Town canoe that had been there from his first visit as a little boy, propped up on saw horses at the far gable end and filled with life vests and fishing poles. He had recognized it as his grandfather’s and it grounded him when the whole scene had been overwhelming to his child mind.  Then he had been able to move around the room and explore, picking through tools, sitting on the floor sorting through old magazines or record albums, trying on clothing that smelled of mothballs and hung from nails in the rafters.  

Occasionally he could link a decision he made in his waking life to something he had seen in The Dream.  He opted to play drums in the school band after finding a battered birch snare covered by a half-finished patchwork quilt resting against the wheel from a Conestoga wagon.  He tried on religion for a while after coming across a worn ebony rosary.  Sometimes he got to visit the things he hadn’t done, like when a soldier from the Terracotta Army appeared dressed in tap shoes and jungle fatigues.  Old college textbooks propped up uneven table legs, on which sat  cereal boxes filled with sheet music from songs he wished he’d learned.  There were Danish cookie tins and coffee cans filled with coins from distant lands jumbled in with marbles and cufflinks and protest buttons.  As he passed through adulthood, he recognized some artifacts from his children’s childhoods mingled in the mix: banana seats from first bicycles, egg cartons filled with sorted Lite Brite pegs, a full tree house, shoe boxes full of horse show ribbons. Forever after the night he saw the news of the art heist at the Isabella Gardner, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee” had sat propped against the legs of a cigar store Indian.  He always made time to visit it and thank Rembrandt for his efforts.  

On the morning of his 60th birthday, he woke disappointed, knowing he hadn’t dreamt the night before, or certainly not The Dream.  His head was full of the news of Boston’s attack and the latest sci-fi movie, but not of his Attic.  He passed the day pleasantly enough, getting clambered over and drooled on by his grandson, dozing to golf on TV, eating far too many enchiladas at dinner. His children and wife bought him thoughtful if uninteresting presents, and that night he went to bed a slightly older, content man.  So it surprised him when he found himself walking up the drive of the old Victorian, climbing the stairs of the porch and knocking on the side door.  He had never done that before.  Always, he had simply been in the kitchen, and he’d known where to go and what to do.  He had assumed it was his house, and that he was welcome there.  

A man of early middle age opened the door.

“Good afternoon, Rick,” he said warmly, one hand resting on the doorframe, the other holding a stoneware mug half full of coffee.  “Come on in.”

He stood there for a moment, blinking, trying to place the stranger’s face.  Instead, a name resonated in the interior of his mind: Guy Montag, protagonist, deviant villain, hero of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“Ah, so you recognize me?”  Montag said, smiling bemusedly at him. “So you must know what that means, right?”

“The Fire.” A small groan escaped his throat.  He had hoped what he had sensed had been an aberration, a one-time scenario in the grander scheme.

“It was a pleasure to burn.”  Montag chuckled, knowing he would immediately get the reference. 

He closed his eyes and shook his head.  His heart had sunk to the pit of his stomach and lay there thumping uncomfortably like a bird that had smacked against a window.  
          
“Please, do come in.” Montag stood back from the door and graciously held it open for him.  “I’m expecting you would like to see what’s left.”

His throat constricted and he could only nod. Really, the last thing he wanted was to walk up those stairs and force open the warped little door to see the charred remains of his life smoldering under the open sky.  He pictured gaping rafters, pieces of metal bent and scorched, boxes wet and weeping with soot and water, because, surely, someone must have tried to put out the flames.  

Montag put his cup in the sink and beckoned him to the door leading to the back stairs.  He turned the porcelain knob and pushed it open to reveal a wide staircase with a polished oak railing, a worn Persian runner up the middle.  The flick of a light switch revealed a warm yellow glow from sconces along the wall.  

“Looks a little different now, doesn’t it?”

“But these aren’t my stairs.”

“Sure they’re your stairs.  They’ve just had some work done to them since you were last here.  You know, a little remodel.  Got the idea from HGTV.  Amazing what you can see on The Walls these days.  Here, you go first.  I’ll get the door behind us.”

He climbed the flights, aware that his footfalls were muffled by the nap of the carpets.  At the last landing, he saw not a tiny, mishung door or a Hobbit hole, but a set of glass front French doors. It was dark on the other side.  His heart-bird began to flutter and flip against his ribs.  He thought he might throw up.  His eyes were blurring and closing in the way they did when he had a migraine.  

“Well, are you going to open the door?”

“What’s the point?  If there’s nothing left, why would I need to see what’s in there?”

“How do you know there’s nothing left?”

“You said there was a fire.  The way things were jumbled together, a single spark would make the whole thing go up almost instantly.  Everything would be destroyed.  It was a Fire Marshall’s nightmare in there.”

“I said it was a pleasure to burn.  That doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?  I mean, something that is pleasurable can’t be all bad, right?”

“But everything I remember is gone, obliterated.”

“So you see fire as destructive, evil?”

“In this case, yes.  That was my world in there.”

“And yet, what purpose does fire serve in nature?  Is it about wanton destruction?”

He shook his head, numb, wishing the ache that was forming behind his eyes would go away. The fluttering had stopped, replaced by a dull, radiating pain in his midsection.  

“That’s right.  You know as well as I do that fire is a cleanser, nature’s way of pruning things up a bit when the undergrowth gets too thick.  And it was getting pretty dense in there, wouldn’t you say? All those memories and ideas stacked precariously? Something needed to give or someone was going to get lost, maybe hurt. It had to be done.  Just part of the natural process.  Now, this is my last offer.  I’ve got someone coming to rummage through the shed in a little bit, so you either need to go in now or turn around and leave.  What is it going to be?”

“If I don’t go in, at least I get to remember it the way it was. I can still remember the big things, and the things that have been there the longest.  I remember the last time I was able to look around, I found a little carving my grandfather had made. And my first pair of skis. All of that is gone now, isn’t it?  Why would I want to see nothing?  My memories are gone.”

“And if you don’t go...?”

He paused.  Somewhere, beneath the deep sense of loss and confusion, curiosity was trying to gnaw its way through the ropes of his despair.

“Look,” Montag said, turning to head back down the stairs, “you’ve got some daylight left.  Once it’s gone, the choice is no longer yours. If you don’t go in now, it’s lost to you forever.  If you do, you can decide if you ever want to come back. Same deal as always.  You can’t force your way in, but the opportunity will present itself.  It’s up to you.  Just remember to close the doors when you leave.”

He didn’t hear Montag reach the door back into the kitchen, but the lights on the staircase went out just before the door clicked closed, leaving him in the dark, inches away from the double doors.  He felt around for a second switch, but not finding one, he cursed whoever had wired this particular part of his brain for scrimping by leaving out the three way.   It would be easy to find his way back down. Still, he felt for the door handles and rested his forehead against the wood.  From within, he could smell the remains of the fire.  

While he couldn’t bear the idea that the room was empty, even more unsettling to him was the idea that, if he didn’t open the doors, soon, he would never be back in this place.  The house of his memories, the museum of his soul, would be gone, sold, forever off limits to him from here to the end of his days.  Could he live with that? Where would his mind wander or return to if not here?  Where would his new memories and experiences go?  They couldn’t possibly just exist without a place to hold them.  He knew he had to go it.

Bracing himself, he closed his eyes and turned the door handles, pushing himself into the darkened space.  He expected that he might fall through a hole in the floor, down the rabbit hole, into the unknown rooms below.  But he didn’t. 

Crossing the threshold, he opened his eyes.  The vast space was intact, with no smell of smoke, swept clean, and very nearly empty save for a table and chairs set under the window on the back wall. Slowly he walked toward them, familiarity dawning.  The pedestal was slightly off kilter, allowing the worn oak oval to list a bit under the weight of a large book set in the middle of it. 

Beside the book was a pen.  He opened the cover to reveal thick linen pages. Blank. But there was an inscription on the first page.

“All of your memories are here. Make them real again. Write.”



Friday, February 15, 2013

The Holiday I Love to Hate

Thirty years ago today, when I was nearly six, I got a brother for Valentine's Day.  Now mind you, I was not the little girl pining away for a sibling, someone to dress up in little clothes and coddle and nurture.  I already had adoring parents, a dog, a kitten, a pony...who needs a little sister or brother to encroach on all that great turf?  But nevertheless, a little brother I got.  And that is when my confliction with Valentine's Day began.  

How can someone you're not all that thrilled about get their own holiday, complete with school parties, candy, cards, a color theme?  I tried not to be hostile about this growing up, but I didn't really see the fairness of him, a boy even, getting such a boon when my own birthday never even happened while we were in school.  One the last day of school, all of us summer birthday kids would get all lumped together with a generic, "Have a great summer! Oh, and happy birthday, too."  Boring.  Completely anticlimactic.  And what kind of cruel injustice makes it a holiday focused on sugar and love, when really, you might like to take this dirty little boy outside and leave him for the wolves?


I muddled along with a sense of benign indifference to this silly midwinter day.  And then came middle school.  Ugh.  Could there be anything more horrid and conflicted than Valentine's Day being celebrated by bunch of clumsy, bumbling blobs of hormones?  This is past the days when you were required to give Valentines to everyone.  Now you got to single out the people you liked, or at least not acknowledge the weird kid who hides under the table.  Valentine's Day became a day for a vast spectrum of awkwardness, hurt feelings, a little cruelty, and sometimes a lucky strike.  My first boyfriend, who I guess I didn't even know was my boyfriend at the time, gave me an enormous stuffed bear for Valentine's Day. It was on my desk after recess (How did he do that?!).  Given that I wasn't really sure he was my boyfriend, I obviously hadn't purchased anything for him.  That would have just been awkward. But the bear cleared that up in a hurry. But that sweet, kind gesture was clouded by the panic of (non) reciprocity.  Crap!  Now I have to buy a gift for a 12 year old boy.  What?!  What on earth do they like?!  And I live in Whitefield!  Crap again!!  Upon seeing me drag this enormous bear off the bus, embarrassed and elated, my fabulous, somewhat befuddled and amused mom beelined me to LaVerdier's in Littleton to find something appropriate, which I think ended up being a model car.  Which I then delivered to First Boyfriend* at his house, quickly and tersely with some lame excuse as to why I didn't have it at school and why we couldn't stay, because we had to get home for my brother's birthday.  


I still have that bear.  He's missing an eye and lives on a bench at my parents' house, standing sentinel over the other childhood toys.  That day marked my first "real" Valentine's Day, and now looking back in retrospect, the last time (until today) I was unsure about whether or not I actually had a Valentine.  Since I was 11 years old, I have never been without a Valentine, some boy to claim me as his on this silly Hallmark holiday.  In high school and through college I out and out boycotted the day, which I suppose is easier to do when you are sure there is someone willing to (not) celebrate it with you.  I lambasted it as capitalist, materialist, fake.  If you could not be nice to someone the other 364 days of the year, why choose this one to make up for it?  And yet I still received countless chocolates and flowers, books, and later, lingerie, dinner, sex (and more flowers and chocolate).*


I am not a hater of sweet gestures or shmarmy shows of affection.  I like the colors pink and red.  It's not that I'm not a romantic.  I love soft, touchy things, fireplaces and feather mattresses, walks or drives that end on the edge of moonlit water, a beautiful meal, someone to rub my back and stroke my hair, dancing close, love notes, little just right objects and inside jokes, and yes, sex and flowers and chocolates.  But for the love of all that is good, please, not on Valentine's Day.  

*Highlights reel:  


First Boyfriend (whose middle name-no kidding- happens to be Valentine) later became First Kiss (First Slow Dance went to the hot 8th grade boy who got up the courage to ask before First Boyfriend got around to it).  I broke up with him because he like the TV show MacGuiver better than he liked me.  Or so it seemed at the time.  I went to his wedding this past summer.   


Best Valentine's present: A bouquet of daisies from my best friend, who happened to be a guy. We were both dating someone else, but we loved each other dearly. Completely unexpected and hence perfect.


Whopper gifts I've given: My virginity.  Yup, trite and true.  Probably should have stuck with chocolates or cologne.  


Most Awkward: A bouquet of roses from a friend who I had no intention of dating. Ever.  He became a Special Ops Marine killing machine.  I hope that was not my fault, but perhaps the world is a safer place because of me.  


Second Most Awkward: A purple silk nightie and thong from Victoria's Secret.  Nice try, but a swing and a miss.  Wrong color, bad style for my body type.  Just not really me.  


Most recently most awkward: Flowers from my estranged husband, delivered while he was traveling out of town with his mistress.  But I guess they are pretty and the vase is heavy enough to use as a bludgeoning object.