how do we ever get used to this?

Last weekend in Seattle, I couldn't stop looking at the water.  It's what always happens when I get near the ocean, perhaps because of my landlocked Midwestern sensibilities.  Even though I grew up on the Mississippi {or, more correctly, on the river bluff above it:  I was not Huckleberry Finn, floating down the Muddy Mississippi and hoping for a better life around the bend} and therefore saw water every day, it simply is not the same as seeing so much blue stretch in front of you.

From my parents' house, I could see Illinois and more farmfields...with a ribbon of a brown river in the foreground.  And though I knew that that river fed the farmfields and had inspired stories and songs, it was also just the thing I saw every morning when I ate breakfast.  

But the ocean... 

I drove to my bed & breakfast in the dark and so it wasn't until the next morning on my run that I saw the water.  The town I was staying in, Port Gamble, was tiny and had about four main streets, one of which was called NE Walker St.  Of course I interpreted that as a sign that I was in the right place.

I had to make about seven loops around the town, running up and down every street over and over, in order to get in my 31 minutes.  {Several years ago, I decided that the minimum time I could run would be my age.  This plan will, at some point, backfire, but for right now, it's working well.}

On my fourth lap past the espresso stand {this is the Seattle-area, after all}, the woman working waved at me and laughed.

I stopped by afterwards and said, in that way that lone travelers have, too much too quickly, as if I was concerned that this espresso woman would be the only person I'd talk to all day:  "I live in Illinois, so I'm really excited to be able to run outside and not have to worry about slipping on the snow and ice.  Look at me!  I'm in shorts! I also can't stop looking at the water and smell that!  It smells so fresh and clean here, like industry and inspiration are just waiting for you.  But the water:  Do you ever get used to seeing it?"

More than anything--more than the babbling and the talking of my shorts--that last line betrayed me as a foreigner.  I suppose it would be like someone asking me, "But the Mississippi: Do you ever get used to seeing it?"

And of course I did.  It was just there with barges going up and down it every day.  

Sometimes it smelled like rotting fish.  

The Mississippi mud can hide clams that slice your toe before you even know you've stepped on anything.

When we read Huck Finn our sophomore year of high school, no one once stopped a discussion to say, "But did you ever think that this river that seems so mythical and magical is literally two miles from this classroom with no windows?" 

The Mississippi was just there, just like for that espresso woman in Port Gamble, the Hood Canal is just there.  It's amazing what we can get used to.

But I'm still convinced that I would never get used to seeing so much water every day.  I would never get used to breathing in deeply and feeling like I was taking in life itself, which I suppose I do every day anyway, but it's hard to remember that when you're in the suburbs of Chicago.

Whoever you are and wherever you live, I think we all need a Port Gamble-like place to escape to when our normal lives and normal view start to feel like drudge and sludge.

We need to see something else for a few days, and then, most importantly, come back to where we started and say:  Here is good, too.  

What is it about being away that makes you see the beauty of here?  I don't know, but I'm willing to spend years figuring that out.  It means, after all, more trips to more Port Gambles.

things i think about while swimming

I've recently taken up swimming for a couple of reasons:

1. I may enjoy running, but running around and around a track through the winter is...exactly what it sounds like. It's like running in circles, a phrase generally applied to "I'm not getting anywhere" situations.
   
   Sometimes, no matter how many episodes of This American Life or Selected Shorts you listen to while going around the track, you're still acutely aware that you're wearing an oval-shaped hole into the earth. It starts to occur to you that when Dante talked about circles, they related to Hell.
2. I'm not very good at swimming. I mean, as a girl raised on the banks of the Mississippi, I can swim. It just wouldn't be safe to take your children boating on the Muddy Mississippi if you didn't think they could swim back to the sandbar for safety. Although when it comes to the Mississippi, there are other dangers to consider beyond actually swimming:
   
   • Clams that can slice your foot open when you step on them, cursing that you didn't see it—but how could you have? Clams burrow into that Mississippi mud and wait for small children's feet to find them.
   • Speaking of mud, the mud from the Mississippi has been associated with wonderful things, ever since it got a pie named after it. But in reality, it smells like dead fish.
   • Many kids, after reading Huckleberry Finn, have dreams of building a raft and floating down the Mississippi. When you live in plain sight of the river, it's that much more tempting, and with driftwood forever floating up on the banks, it's that much more possible.
   So I can do the basics of swimming, but it's not something I've ever excelled at. I prefer the bobbing around a pool and then laying out and reading version of swimming. Doing handstands in the water is also a good way to swim.
   
   I decided that this winter, I would get better at swimming. I would get through the part where I'm flailing in the pool, coughing, and generally not looking very athletic—self-confidence-crushing though that stage may be. Sometimes, I think, it's good to do things that you're not very good at; it brings healthy humility into your day.
   

It's only been a couple weeks, and trust me, I'm not out of the flailing stage. But lap by lap, I know I'm getting stronger. Less of a flailure, if you will.

My brain helps me get through the half-mile I can currently swim by keeping me entertained. Thank goodness.

Things I Think about while Swimming

• How long have I had this swimsuit? High school, when we all had to take yearly swimming lessons so that the school district could feel justified in choosing to build a pool instead of an auditorium?
  
  It's as if the school board thought, 'Well, even if the band kids have to play all their concerts on the middle school stage—thereby making them feel that they've never actually left that purgatory of middle school—at least they'll all be able to swim. Perhaps even with their French horns if they become strong enough swimmers...'
• I CAN'T BREATHE.
• How can I run for close to 2 hours—quite the extended effort—but I can't swim a lap without needing to stop?
• I kinda hate that old woman in the lane next to me. She will not stop. No pausing. No hanging on the side of the pool to catch her breath. She could probably swim her way off Alcatraz, should the need ever arise.
• Slow and steady wins the race.
• But I want to win the race right now. I'm not used to this lagging behind thing. Oh, I see—this swimming thing is supposed to teach me something about life. Way to go, water and old swimsuit.
• I CAN'T BREATHE. But I have developed a funny, hacking cough.
• I don't really hate that old woman anymore so much as I want to be her.

you can go home again

and when you get home, you can take pictures of it.

and then later, 

when you aren't so tired, 

you can write more about home.

what is it about being home 

that makes my entire body 

collapse in on itself

and beg for more time

sleeping in
the bedroom that still has 
the pink carpet 
i picked when i was 6?

the morning walk along the Mississippi.  

{Yes, that's a pug in the stroller.  He's old and can't walk well, ok?}

recovery from the morning walk

downtown burlington and the snake alley criterium

{snake alley is the crookedest street in the world.}

{and every year, there's a bike race on 
the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend:  

the Snake Alley Criterium.}

oh, there's nothing halfway about the iowa way to treat you...

I'm headed home to Iowa for Memorial Day weekend, and there are two things you should know about me:

1. I adore Iowa, as you'll read about below.
2. I'm quoting a musical about Iowa in the subject line.  In fact, I often quote musicals.  Name the musical I'm quoting, and you'll get a prize.  A really cool one.  No, I don't know what it is.  Yes, it might be imaginary. 

To celebrate my return to Iowa {I haven't been back since New Year's}, I thought I'd take a minute to explain my intense love for this little fly-over state...

Bt-dubs.  Don't ever call it a fly-over state to my face.

iowa
I come from a place that is important to the outside world only every four years, or every 500 years, depending on what you’re measuring by.

Every four years, my state—Iowa, the great Hawkeye State—is the first in the nation to vote in the presidential primaries.  Technically, we don’t vote in the traditional cast-your-ballot style; we caucus because we not only must be first, but we must be different.

Actually, that’s not the real reason we caucus, and that’s not the way Iowa is normally described—first and different.

I think the real reason we caucus is because we like the idea of being together with neighbors on an icy January night in an elementary school classroom, discussing and debating Big Topics with people we normally just talk about the weather with.

We also like to caucus because often, people bring baked goods, and that adds a cozy touch to our snippet of democracy.

No, Iowans aren’t usually called different, and that’s fine by us.  We’re more likely to go by “salt of the earth,” a phrase I’ve never understood because wouldn’t a lot of salt be bad for the land and the crops?

Iowans, by the way, are usually concerned with and maybe even semi-informed about The Crops.

This is because:

1. someone in the family is a farmer {my uncle Tom farms—corn, beans, and pigs}
2. someone in the family used to be a farmer {my grandpa and generations before him farmed}
3. crops are a safe topic, along with the humidity {summer} and how it never really gets as cold as it used to {winter, and especially appropriate at a caucus when people are just mingling around before the real caucusing starts}.

If you happen to live along a river, the water level is also an acceptable and worthwhile discussion point, which brings me to the other time that Iowa is important:  during 500-year floods.

Now, these monumental floods happen every 15 years or so {I can explain later why this is, if you'd like}.

The last big flood was the summer of 2008—also a caucus year, making 2008 a bumper crop year for Iowa and the news.

This is an actual conversation I had while watching NBC with some friends:

“Oh my gosh, that’s my parents’ house!  There, up on the river bluff above Brian Williams’ head!  With the blue roof and the decks and wall of windows looking out over the ridiculously flooded Mississippi—see?”

“Why did you people build your town on a flood plain?” someone asked, their whole face scrunched up in disbelief as they watched the water trickle closer to the Dairy Queen on Main.

“Because that’s where the good farmland is.”

That was a very sensible answer, spoken like a truly practical Iowan, but I’m not just a practical Iowan:  I’m an Iowan who feels an intense desire to defend her state against people who just don’t get it.

Why did we build along the river?

Have you ever been on the Mississippi at 7:30 on a June evening, just as dusk is starting to turn?

I have—many times, in a wooden boat my grandpa built in 1954.

There’s a spot just upriver from Burlington, my hometown, where the water always looks like satin, orange satin as the sun slides down the sky.

Another boat passes by, headed back to the marina, and my dad squints to try to see them better:  “Who is that?  Is it Steve?  Looks like Steve’s boat.”

He raises his hand in the silent Mississippi wave, and from the other boat—whether it’s Steve or not—a hand shoots up in return, as if to say, “I see you.  We’re here together on this quiet, unimportant evening.”

And that is why we built along the river, in this place that’s important to the outside world only every now and again.