Month: December 2007

– Power tool

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A few weeks ago, Eli came across instructions online for making his own messenger bag out of fused plastic bags. He e-mailed it to me and asked if we could make one. In the past few days, we did.

An absolute novice, he approached the sewing machine tentatively yet was open to advice and coaching. After his first few wandering seams, he got the hang of it. And eventually he got into it. From start to finish, we prepped, cut, sewed, and finished that bag together. I believe that Eli experienced the awe and sweetness of having one’s hands close to substantial mechanical power and guiding that force with purpose.

Eli guides fabric in the machine

If you know Eli and me, and you’d like to see highlights from our project, then click here for a slide show (and choose “Gallery View” for most pleasing size). If you’re a sewer, or if you enjoy reading accounts of do-it-yourself projects, then read beyond this paragraph for my description of how we adapted Bre Pettis’s directions to make Eli’s bag. At the very end, you’ll find a photo of the bag we made. Continue reading →

– Why do it?

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Lydia has been knitting like a fiend, aiming to finish some pieces before Christmas. Her knitting goes to school with her; she works on it during free time in the afterschool program. She reports that her friends, non-knitters, have asked her, “Is it fun?” Lydia says, “No, it’s not fun.”

So, as I sit on her bed one night and speedily cast on 45 stitches for her next item, I ask her why, then, does she knit?

She answers, “Because it’s calming, and…” (she hesitates, searching for the word) “productive.”

And, you know? That is what knitting is.

– Consider the sink

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You spend a lot of time in front of it, so you think sometimes that the television or pc is the most important object in the house. And you wish it wasn’t.

Take comfort: You spend a lot of time, too, at the kitchen sink. It is more essential than the screen, and perhaps you even enjoy, like I do, your time in front of it.

Beyond its usefulness as a trough in which to wash potatoes and dishes, the sink is a player in parts of your life that have nothing to do with food. If, for example, you are an indoor gardener like Jimmy, you give your bonsai their weekly soak in a sink.

Bonsai in sink on snowy day

Paintbrushes get clean there. Women bend themselves over the sink and wash their hair under the kitchen faucet; it’s something we start doing as teenagers and then keep returning to. During the morning rush, teeth get brushed and the last going-out-the-door glass of water gets drunk there.

Because you’re standing there so often, sometimes you kiss at the sink.

Babies have their first baths in stainless steel or white enamel tubs set into the waist-high countertop. Perhaps puppies do, too. When children are toddlers, and after they play in the backyard dirt with the hose, they get carried shoeless into the kitchen, plunked down at the sink, and have their feet and calves and shins washed of mud with the sprayer and by their mother’s soapy, slippery hands.

When children are older still and bring home head lice, they lay their long, sturdy bodies down on the counter and hang their head into the sink for what I call “the treatment.” Here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote about the experience of nit-picking:

A prehistoric creature with a tough carapace and immense evolutionary stamina, the lice resist the drugstore poison that I massage through my son’s hair, and the next day through my daughters’ hair. Working in the kitchen, I bend their necks over the edge of the sink and rinse the white cream that smells like deodorant – both fresh and chemical – from their hair and their heads, holding the sprayer in one hand and supporting their skulls in the other. Trying to see, I lean over them and into them. My arm or breast through my t-shirt frequently brushes a shoulder, cheek, or, in the case of my son who is standing and not lying on the counter like the girls, a back. The gentle pressure makes us close and I wonder if they are aware of my body and the part that is touching them, as I am aware all the time when I am with them of their bodies and what their parts feel and smell like, how they have grown and lengthened. Their hair straightens and darkens in the stream from the faucet. The children are hypnotized. I wish the running water alone could rid them of parasites.

The window over the sink has, in many houses, the best view. If you’re tall enough to look out, you stand there often, for long periods of time, and stare at the steady trees and grass. You spot the neighbor’s gray cat, which is the exact color of a shadow but for its white feet and snout, and sometimes you see a rabbit shading itself under hosta leaves. And the squirrels, always the damn squirrels. In the winter, you watch a snowman’s creation, a snowball fight, the snow angel parade. There is no “world” out the kitchen window, and so the trance you find yourself in, standing in front of the sink, is local. At night, you try to look out and see only yourself reflected.

Tomatoes on window sillOn the sill, you keep the shampoo at hand. Someone emptied her pocket of a few rocks and pebbles, and now they belong. In late summer, the green tomatoes soak up the slant of sun. A wedding ring or watch visits occasionally. When the power goes out, you light a candle and place it on the ledge in front of the window and above the sink, for safety and a bit of illumination.

—-

Bonsai picture by me. Tomatoes on sill by Eli.

– Prompted by snow

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The view of snow out of a second floor window into our backyard reminds me of other times, in other winters, I’ve stood at the same window and looked out on the same view. These linked memories seem to collapse time and heighten the present moment.

Snow out window, December 14

Yesterday I was the first adult home, and I dug out the driveway. This morning, I dug out a 600-word essay I wrote in mid-winter 2003 and tried to publish, in a local newspaper, in winter 2004. It seems fitting to publish it here today. Yes, it’s about snow, and something more.

—–

Snow Hunger

February 2003

This morning, snow again. The branches of the bare and mature Japanese maple outside the girls’ window is furred with snow, as if the snow had grown there. The lower-growing junipers in the back, planted like fence posts in a line by the neighbors on the border of their yard and ours, are top-heavy with snow, their heads bowed in awe of the maple.

I say out loud to Grace, “Oh, look at the beautiful snow!” Almost three and unstoppable, Grace jumps off the low bed she is dancing on, steps onto the blue stool at the window, and blurts, “Oh, I hungry for it.” Her instant desire, I know, may have more to do with getting the snow into her mouth than appreciating its beauty, but I am instantly touched by her word choice, so more deeply true than “I want to eat it.”

I love the snow and the cold. Especially the snow. Last winter there was none that accumulated, and in this house we wished daily for it, watching the sky out our kitchen window as if we could discern the signs of weather. We wished for freezing temperatures, too, a long string of sub-freezing days and nights.

In December last I bought a backyard skating rink kit, and Eli, Lydia, and I assembled it in the backyard on an afternoon cold enough for coats and gloves but not too cold that it would have been unwise to run the hose for several hours. The water started running into the 17 x 21 foot form in mid-afternoon, and even at 9 p.m. Jimmy and I were still checking the progress of the fill. Moon glow and a backyard light shimmered on the water, yet we could not see well and so had to put a finger in to check how far to the top edge of the frame the water had reached. By our bedtime it was full. We turned off the hose, disconnected and drained it, and coiled it away in the garage for the winter, its last watering task done.

A day here and a day there, temperatures dropped below freezing. Through January, February, and March 2002, however, there was no trio of days cold enough to freeze such a large quantity of water. Nevertheless I loved looking out at that still, shallow pool every morning as I filled the pot to make coffee. I noticed the stray leaf or two that had fluttered down and settled to the bottom, a dark rotting brown against the slippery vinyl white. Some mornings there was a crust of ice; leaves and broken twigs rested lightly on it. Those days gave us hope for even colder weather, for a giant puddle to blossom into a skating surface, for a frosted patch to fill with bright, whirling parkas and a flash of skate blade and the shrieks of the neighborhood children convening in our yard.

The hope for cold and ice — for extreme weather — was the only hope last winter. I also remember sitting on the wooden steps leading from our porch into the backyard a few months earlier, on September 11, 2001. It was a stunning and clear afternoon, and I remember peering at the blue sky, the Japanese maple leaves not yet ready to turn from dark green into their autumn flame, and these words bursting into my thoughts: “I will never be happy again.”

One season later my daily wish for a certain kind of atmospheric condition, and the ice it could bring, lifted me. Better it was, I think now, that a sustained freeze never arrived. There was so much potential in that silent, inexpertly made pool of water.
—–

Picture above, of the view from the window at 8 a.m. today, is by me. Picture below, of the tangle of tree branches seen through the same window, is by Lydia.

Snow on branches, December 14

– Transition time

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Years ago I learned the phrase “transition time” from one of the kids’ preschool teachers. A bridge from one kind of activity to another, it’s something that all children need and something that some have trouble with. For example, if a child is engrossed in building with Legos, he might be unable or unwilling to follow directions to put away the toy and put on his coat if he has not first been given a warning as well as some time to transition from his play into the practical.

Transitions help us cope with change by easing us forward. Routines help, too.

Two days before Thanksgiving, on November 20th, it snowed lightly. There were still plenty of leaves on the ground, and the Japanese maple in our backyard, which bursts every fall from green to crimson and then drops its leaves within a few days, still wore half its foliage. I stood in the backyard, trying to gauge when the leaf guys would come to finish their work for the year and, after that, when I would have an hour or two to break open the bales of hay and mulch around new shrubs and divided plants.

I stood in my neighbor Gail’s yard and looked into my own. There was a soccer ball left behind from some game that did not involve me; there were the patient hay bales against Bob & Mary’s fence, the carpet of crimson leaves, and a toddler picnic table under the maple.

Backyard November 20

I have no toddlers in my house, and won’t again. The sight of that leaf-covered picnic table, too small for any of our children, reminds me of its redundancy. At best, it’s an artifact. I stood there for a long time and looked at it.

What happens to knowledge when it is not applied to daily use? I have this expertise in caring for the newborn and very young: feeding, washing, handling, soothing, delighting, lugging. I no longer need to mash up anyone’s food, wash a boy’s hair while protecting his eyes, or grab a girl up and out of a sandbox. Now that there are better music makers in this house than me, I haven’t sung anyone an invented lullaby in ages. (One of my lulling hits: “You’re A Baby.”)

Does such knowledge disappear? Is it transformed and applied to other uses? Does it go underground, and hibernate?

Hay balesThe leaf guys came on a clear day and vacuumed up the red leaves. Soon after, it got cold – bitterly – and we got busy here. It has since snowed again; the stray leaves that fell after the final cleanup are clumps under snow. The brilliance of the fall is a memory. I wonder if I missed my chance to lay down the hay. Like a child sometimes, I don’t like to be rushed, and I waited too long. It’s December 9th and gardening is over for the year.

I’m not a person to spend the winter months dreaming of what I’ll plant in the spring. I put those thoughts aside until signs of thaw, and then I feel, too, as if I’m thawing out. My interest in the yard reawakens. In the meantime, I keep my hands busy in other ways. Knitting is one of them.

Yarn on hay December 7

– Future man of letters?

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Scene: outside kindergarten wing today, 2 p.m.  Woman walking with a child who is not her own.

George: Jane, are you going to my brother’s Bar Mitzvah tomorrow? 

Jane: Yes.

George: Would you take notes for me?

Jane: Mmm, okay.  (pause)  Why?

George:  Because I want to tell my teacher all about it on Monday, and my mother is going to be too busy to remember everything.(pause)  So write down everything. And then give it to me. 

Oh, these articulate five-year-olds!  And, at the same time, how wonderful it is to be given an assignment. 

– Longer

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Scene: Writing Center. Student and tutor looking together at a paper.

Student: Why did you circle this… and this?

Jane: In a few places you use long phrases, and I’ll bet you could find a way to say it more directly.

Student: Oh, I know. But I sometimes add more words on purpose, so it will make it longer. You know, so it seems like a paper.

Jane: Academic?

Student: Yeah. Teachers seem to like that.

Jane: Hmm.

– Garden for our times

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Do you remember the walled, overgrown garden brought back to life by a boy and a girl in F. H. Burnett’s Secret Garden (1911)? The book was a favorite of my childhood, and perhaps the long, restorative story about gardening has something to do with my own attraction to shabby, abandoned patches, as if glory and possibility, like this, await in each one:

The seeds Dickon and Mary had planted grew as if fairies had tended them. Satiny poppies of all tints danced in the breeze by the score, gaily defying flowers which had lived in the garden for years and which it might be confessed seemed rather to wonder how such new people had got there. And the roses–the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades–they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds–and buds–tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. (247)

Lovely, isn’t it? Fresh, new, full of playful life — not unlike an uncomplicated view of the child.

And here’s the garden for our times. It is tended by the 21-year-old Edmond who has been traumatized by witnessing the slaughter of a contemporary war started in England by “The Enemy,” and it appears at the end of Meg Rosoff’s How I live now (2004):

On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches cut into sharp crucifixes and forced to lie flat against the stone. Below, the huge frilled lips of giant tulips in shades of white and cream nodded in their beds. They were almost finished now, spread open too far, splayed, exposing obscene black centers…

The air was suffocating, charged, the hungry plants sucking at the earth with their ferocious appetites. You could almost watch them grow, pressing fat green tongues up through the black earth. (181)

The passage is narrated by Daisy, Edmond’s American first cousin and former lover, also 21, who returns to him after a six-year absence because of the war, which spread beyond the British island to six continents. Like the Secret Garden, this novel, which Meg Rosoff reportedly began writing in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is aimed at a young audience. Rosoff doesn’t shy away from blood, terror, or torture: a man has his face blown off, some civilians are slaughtered and most are displaced from their homes, and children roam the woods and abandoned farms, hiding and fending for themselves. Parent figures are either absent or die off quickly.

How I live now, coverThere’s nothing pastoral about the England in How I live now. Yet this dystopic novel is not without hope. In the end, Daisy joins Edmond in tending his rage-filled garden, and the reader senses that somehow subverting anger into hungry, persistent life offers a way back to what has been in short supply: peace.