July, a Storm {a poem}

Temperatures in the lower eighties, a threat of thunderstorms. Gray
clouds fill the sky to the east, pressed against the stratosphere like
dirty sheep’s wool. But to the west—where our weather comes from, much
like the Wicked Witch—inked black thunderheads gather,
swirling, threatening, with exaggerated drama, daring,
eager to release their nervous energy. It—your garden party—may not happen
after all. Or it—the storm—may not happen after all. Yes, there’s this nagging thought: you don’t really
control anything, even if you did match the linen napkins to the cake’s buttercream, and that
come next week—come tomorrow—you will see yet another reminder
of this truth.

---------------------

Inspired by July by Louis Jenkins.
And by the storm that rolled in just as I headed into the city for a Cubs game.

The storm clouds were nowhere near this dramatic, but isn't it a fun picture?

Look Out the Window

Billy Collins wrote: "...the poets are at their windows." And so I looked out the window and wrote what I saw.



The couple crossing the street is hot. Everyone is hot, to tell the truth, but they look especially hot. He is balding and just starting to cross that line into overweight. These facts are emphasized by two things: The top of his head is glaring red (he ignores that he is balding, an admission of becoming his father, by never wearing a hat or putting on sunscreen), and his blue buttondown strains at the seams. Even more unseemly, there are sweat spots under his arms, down his back, where his shirt is tucked into his black pants.

But as he turns to catch his wife's hand, they smile and the world cools around them. They are here together, forgetting for just the few moments it takes to cross the street that niggling sense that life hasn't turned out how they planned.

Late Fall

Right Lane Closed
Until Late Fall

This is the large sign that is currently flashing away at the train crossing closest to my house. It brings up many questions for me, including: If just the right lane is closed, why is the entire crossing blocked off? Wouldn't it be so much simpler to say on the sign: "Road Closed Until Late Fall"?

I tried, I have to admit, walking over that crossing yesterday morning. In my defense, it is where I cross to get to the train station on my way to work every morning, and I am nothing if not a creature of habit. At 6:04 every morning for the last two years, I have been crossing the tracks right there, and yesterday my body turned before the rest of me—or at least the important thinking part of me—took in the fact that the road around the tracks was ripped up.

While I realize that I could simply step over each of the rails, I am forever haunted by that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes when Chris O'Donnell gets his foot caught by the railroad ties and thank the good Lord you don't actually see him get hit by the train. I know I don't wear lace-up boots like he does, but still: I am a large proponent of railroad safety.

So it looks like from now until late fall I will be walking down the Prairie Path to cross at Main, and it's actually that idea of "late fall" that stopped me short when I saw the flashing sign.

Late fall.

Every year in August, I stop being able to imagine other seasons.

The grass this year is turning brown and prickly; aside from a few bursts of storms, it hasn't rained in weeks.

The sun blisters and burns daily, sending us all inside to hide in the air conditioning.

Even the idea of sitting on the porch with a sweating glass of lemonade sound impossible: There is too much sweat involved in that image.

The daylilies are nothing but opportunities to dead-head, and I snap off the shriveled petals every chance I get. There is a certain satisfaction to that akin to sweeping off your porch or vacuuming under the bed; you are, in all cases, doing a clean sweep.

Late fall.

I try to bring up images of rainy Saturdays, and I try to remember biting winds promising a season of eating soup and baking bread. I think of sweaters and hoodies and scarves.

But in August all I can see is the summer days stretching before me, as if they are all I've ever known and ever will know. It's summer, and won't it always be summer?

No.

One day it will be late fall again, and I will be able to cross the tracks where I always do.

so pretty today

Sometimes, it's the smallest moments that keep us smiling throughout the day.

Take Friday, for example. It was barely past 6am, and I was on my way to the train, heading to work for one more day. I was prepared for the small talk I knew awaited me at work: discussions of weekend plans, the beautiful weather, and how thankful we all were that it was Friday.

And it was a beautiful day out. This time of year—as we creep ever closer to the longest day of the year—the sun is starting to come up at 4:30 when I get up. By 6 when I leave, the world is glittering and fresh. Leaving home on a day like that, you remember what it was like to be a kid revelling in the beginning of a long summer. So much is possible.

Just outside the door, I ran into my upstairs neighbor, who was coming back from her morning walk. {We are a building of early risers, it seems.}

Jackie smiled at me and said, "So pretty today!"

I quickly said the requisite thank you and smiled back. I did feel pretty and had in fact put together a new outfit just that morning. A blazer was involved, but so was a stripey shirt I got in France 10 years ago and always makes me feel like I should be sailing.

Jackie paused, just ever so slightly before she said, "I meant the weather, but you also look nice today."

I laughed, oh, how I laughed at that, as I continued on my walk to the train. That is the small moment that kept me smiling throughout the rest of the day. Blazer and pretty new outfit aside, that comment alone kept me from taking myself too seriously that day.

please come linger

This is my summer of creating a welcoming, lush, please-stay-awhile space on my balcony. You can read about that here, where I talk about slowing down and not putting so many high demands on myself, even in what kinds of plants I have too take care of. There's a bonus rant about the state of language now, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

With that goal in mind, I spent last Sunday afternoon potting Creeping Jenny vine. Spending even just an hour with your hands in dirt is good for your soul, especially if you come from somewhere like Iowa.

I put the vines in little terra cotta pots, and then I made hangers for them out of twine—a stroke of genius worthy of Pinterest, if you ask me {even though I don't have Pinterest}. This was genius brought on by cheapness, by the way: Why pay $6 for a ready-made hanging pot when you can pay $.78 and tie some twine around it? As a bonus, it looks very homey and natural, which is just the look I'm going for.

I hung the little pots off an old baker's rack I've been storing in my garage for six years, just sure that at some point in the future, I'd find a use for it again. That may be how hoarding begins, I know, but I really couldn't bear to part with such a practical piece of furniture, and look! The hoarding paid off.

And think of this: It can also be used as a sideboard during meals on the balcony. Practicality and frugality are two traits that blend so beautifully, aren't they?

{Also, please keep me from becoming a real hoarder and do an intervention if necessary.}

My balcony now is just the kind of place you'd like to linger in. You'll want to drink lemonade and eat Caprese salad here. Even when the mosquitoes come out in full force later this summer, you'll still want to be here; that's how inviting it is.

So please come linger. I promise to have lemonade and to not talk about hoarding, unless you want to.

Main Street in May: a summer drink

The drink tastes like summer in America, when the days are long and the twilight conversations longer.

The waiter had described it as pink lemonade for grown-ups, which is an odd distinction to make because I've always thought of pink lemonade itself as the grown-up version of regular lemonade. It's certainly a more mature drink than a lemon shake-up, that glass full of sugar and just a hint of tart.

I know, of course, that the waiter meant that the drink tastes a lot like pink lemonade and just so happens to have alcohol in it: St-Germain Elderflower and some kind of gin.

I don't know what kind of gin because I stopped paying attention to the waiter's spiel after he said St-Germain Elderflower. I have discovered that I love any drink with that in it, and I know that part of the reason I love it is because it's French. St-Germain—even if we pronounce it "Saint Germane" here in America, I believe it's germane to point out that I can never see that word without thinking of St-Germain-des-Pres in Paris and how there's a perfume shop there, Fragonard, that I visit on every trip. I know it's time to start planning a trip back to France when I run low on my Bleu Riviera perfume, and may I just point out that I have been out of that for months now?

St-Germain Elderflower, some gin, grapefruit juice, and a little grapefruit rind. Mix it all together {in who knows what proportions; I'm no help there}, and you get this drink that tastes like summer in America.

It tastes like cool early mornings that become distant memories by the time noon hits and the heat is on high.

It tastes like cook-outs and impromptu meals cobbled together with friends. You have meat and I have a salad and she has fresh fruit with fresh-whipped cream and together, we have an easy night when we stay up way too late, considering it's a school night.

That drink tastes like hot cement under your feet, the Fourth of July, and that tired muscle ache you get after you work in the yard on Saturday afternoon.

It's called Main Street in May, this summer drink, and as I took that first sip, cool and tart, while looking out the window at Main Street of my little town, I thought: Ahhh.

There was no better word for it.

dear plants on my balcony: on slowing down

Dear Plants on My Balcony,

I know you probably don't care about this {How could you? You're plants.}, but 2014 is my year of paring down. By limiting how much I do and schedule, I'm trying to slow down my life, a thing I very much need in this busy world.

You may not know this {again, because you're plants and the world you interact with is a constant one of soil, sun, and water}, but our world has become increasingly frantic, disjointed, and harried.

This is proven by our 24-hour news cycle that jolts us from story to story in 30-second chunks: Are we unable to focus now?

Our disjointed world is proven by a new syntax that is developing because Internet. That was it, by the way—the new way of speaking that chops out words and snappily contains these sardonic concepts. Even Hemingway himself—he the great papa of shortened, punchy prose—would look verbose and flowery in this world of fragments and odd punctuation. All. The. Time. {Why so many periods? Why such a need for emphasis and full stops? Is our new punctuation trying to tell us that we need to take more pauses?}

Our frantic world is proven by our hyperbole that pairs so well with that new way of talking and writing. Every experience, interaction, meal, vacation, weekend, video, song, Facebook post is so. Over. The. Top.

Because clicks.

Because likes.

Because feeling popular.

We toss around phrases like "the most amazing ever," and why is that? Is it because we are ever looking for that emotional high, that smooth, easy, enviable life promised us by movies and Hallmark commercials? Are we tricked into describing everything as better than best because we're frightened of appearing boring, let alone being bored?

And think about this: If that pizza you just ate is "amazingly awesome," what phrase will you use when you see the red rocks of Utah on a perfectly blue sky day? Or when you feel the ocean rush in around your calves as you look out at the sunrise and think about how deep and wide that ocean is? What will you say when your baby smiles at you the first time?

What words do we have left when our language is so bulked up with superlatives?

Beyond diminishing those big experiences, this hyperbole can also make our small moments seem just that: Small. Unworthy. Not enough. If we're always looking for the next best, will we overlook that moment sitting on the balcony in the summer twilight as the fireflies are blinking—little stars here on earth—as the cicadas are singing?

And we're back to the balcony, dear plants, which is where you come in—or more correctly, where you are.

You're probably confused as to why I just went off on a rant about syntax and the Internet {when you were expecting a nice welcome letter, maybe}, but it all does relate to you.

Every summer since I moved in to my condo six years ago, I have tried to grow bright, cheerful flowers on my balcony. Some years have been moderately successful, but most years have involved brown leaves, flowers that don't thrive, and much disappointment.

I go into the season dreaming contentedly of being surrounded by color and life as I do the Saturday morning crossword and drink French press coffee. It may just be a balcony, but I believe every year that I can make it feel like an English garden: Structured but inviting, tended but with just a touch of wild.

Then July comes, and I'm sorry to tell you, my plants, but I kill you. I have killed your cousins or best friends or whoever, despite my best intentions and hard work and desire to be a good gardener.

This might seem really meta, but here's a letter I wrote to my flowers a few years ago {a letter within a letter!}. You can hear my disappointment and bewilderment, as well as my realization that even if you oh-so-fervently desire something, it might not come to pass. I might not be a good gardener, and I need to accept this.

So here we are in the year of paring down, and I'm applying it even to my balcony foliage. Look around you: There are no flowering plants among you, you ferns and succulents. When I went plant shopping this year—Monday night after work, a night when it looked like it was just about to rain and then it never did—I looked only for tags that said "Easy Care!" or "Low Maintenance!"

I'm writing you now, green plants, to say that—no pressure—but you're part of my slowing down plan. In our frantic, disjointed, harried world, I'm trying to create space that is low-pressure, calming, and doesn't demand much. When I sit out on my balcony, I don't want to see something I should be trying harder to manage and take care of; instead, I want to admire verdant life as I sit with a glass of wine.

In summary, PLEASE don't die on me, my dear plants. I will give you water, and I've put you where you can see the sun. I'll tend you as best I can, which is all any of us can ask.

Now let's all relax, slow down, and have a non-dead plant summer, one where I sit surrounded by your green life. If you'd like, I'd even read to you from books that resound with the beauty of our language, ones that echo with true things, so that we can remember that our world wasn't always too busy to take the time to express a good idea slowly.

Ever yours,
Kamiah

the drought

The cornfields of western Iowa are bone dry. Burnt is the word I want to use as I fly past them at 75mph on I-80, but they aren't burnt: they're thirsty.

This summer's drought has turned the field brown in early August, as if ready for the harvest.

Everywhere you go in the Midwest, the word "drought" is spit from everyone's lips; perhaps the spit will green up the fields.

Around kitchen tables and over thick-handled, coffee-stained mugs at the diner smelling of hashbrowns, grease, and routine—and even in the cities with their climate-controlled malls and chain restaurants—we are all talking about the drought.

"I can't remember when it rained last."

"We had that big storm around the Fourth, but that was more wind and thunder than a good rain."

"Have you ever known it to be so hot?"

Our throats are parched, our grass is prickly, and in our dreams, gray skies pour forth—waves of raine—as if it were autumn in England and we all lived in stone cottages with fat sheep in the back pasture.

We live in a burnt and thirsty land here in the Midwest this summer, but looking out over the cornfields, it is like it's late September already. The harvest is ready, though the overall scene is wrong: the trees are still a brilliant, life-filled green. {Their roots have stretched down through the years, down through the soil and the rocks to where they can almost always find water deep in the earth.}

If it were the harvest, the trees would be oranges and golds. They would be red against the blue autumn sky—a blue so shining, you would forget the washed-out blue skies of July when the heat sucked the color from the world.

They're green now; it is too early for the harvest. With the car window down, I can hear the cicadas singing, and they, too, are a harbinger of autumn.

The world is ready early this year, even if we are all still stuck in thirst for something more from summer.

dinner alone with annie dillard {part 1}

In my summer writing class, I get to write a book report. This is, in fact, the third time I've taken this class, so for the past three summers, I've been able to delve back into that particularly primary school-sounding "book report."

Two years ago, I wrote about the book Nothing Remains the Same.

And last year, it was Why Is My Mother Getting a Tattoo? And Other Questions I Wish I Never Had to Ask.

Don't get the wrong idea here: these are not five paragraph essays about character, setting, and dialogue. We're supposed to choose books in genres that we write in, so I choose personal essay books, and then use the book report to work out my aggression toward the author.

About how they're funnier than me.

Or sharper than me.

Or had a book published by the time they were 30.

Or say things that I have most definitely thought before—but they have said it better.

My book reports are really more about catharsis and working through my issues, so when it came time to do this year's report, I thought—why change that approach? It's working so well!

My target this year: Annie Dillard. Darn her and her Pulitzer Prize.

I've written about Annie before—I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek while vacationing out West with my parents a few years ago, and it's hard to be surrounded by so much expansive nature, be reading Annie Dillard, and not write these reflective, searching for meaning essays.

Hiking in Zion National Park and reading Annie is basically the perfect set-up for a nature essay about seeing beauty everywhere {you can see me attempting this here}.

Earlier this summer, I picked up another Annie Dillard book at a Friends of the Library sale: a quarter for Annie? Oh, yes.

And look what I got from my quarter: a book report and a chance to work out my envy of Annie Dillard. Money well spent, I tell you, money well spent.

What I Read This Summer: Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

I was in an Argentinean restaurant near the Galleria in Houston, but that’s not where my mind and heart were.  I had come in from the heat, the oppressive, pushing heat, into this cool, dark place with red accents to catch the eye.  Come in to the hostess asking, “Just you tonight?

A table for one, please, and I held my held my head high and my Annie Dillard book tightly as the hostess—a tall girl made taller by her black heels; she should be dancing a tango in the streets of Buenos Aires—took me to a tucked away table in the back.

I chose to sit not facing the wall as the hostess had offered, the chair pulled out for me so I could easily sit down and then avoid eye contact with anyone who might look with pity on the girl eating alone.

Instead, I told her I’d rather sit facing out, facing everyone, facing the eyes.  I am not bothered to be eating alone, I wanted to convey.  This is what happens when you go on business trips alone, but I’m not lonely.

The waiter made a show of removing the other setting at the table, and I made a show out of opening Holy the Firm after asking the waiter to recommend a good glass of Malbec.

And then.

With that first crack of Holy the Firm, my mind and heart were elsewhere.  I was no longer worrying about projecting the careless, independent air of the nonchalant solo diner—I was on Puget Sound with Annie Dillard, rejoicing in how the act of stringing together words can bring meaning, beauty, reflection, and the ability, for just a short space of time, to be elsewhere.

Annie Dillard’s writing is transcendent; that’s the best way I can describe it.  When I read her, time slows, my breathing deepens, and that thin veil between us and the eternal is pulled up just enough to make me aware that this side of the veil is the temporary one, a mere blip in time, a shadow of the other side.

How does Annie Dillard do it?  I’ve been wondering this since I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek while in Zion National Park and wanted to award her, if I could, a million more Pulitzer Prizes for it.  Holy the Firm is shorter—but not less dense yet ethereal in true Annie Dillard style—so it gave me a chance to study her craft (over a glass of a good Malbec in Houston).

I’ve come up with three lessons on writing from Annie Dillard that I hope to apply to my more reflective pieces.  When I write about nature and really taking notice of it, I’m invariably thinking of Annie Dillard.

Notice Small Things
This lesson reminds me of that gift/self-help/encouragement book you often find in the checkout line at Barnes & Noble:  Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all small stuff.

This is:  Notice Small Things…and it’s all small things that make up big things.  By paying attention to the little things in her day, Annie Dillard is really saying something about the bigger things, about that thin veil, about how every tiny created creature is just that:  a creation.

For example, she writes about a moth.  An ugly, drawn-to-the-flames moth.  More specifically, she writes about the death of a moth she once witnessed while camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held.  I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all.  A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine. At once the light contracted again and the moth’s wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke.  At the same time her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. […]

And then this moth-essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick.  She kept burning. […]

She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning—only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled […]. (pp 16-17)

Reading this, I am watching the moth’s death with Annie Dillard.  I am drawn in like (forgive me) a moth to the flame, and in two short pages, she conveys the fragility of life and the beauty and dignity possible in death without saying:  Now, here, I will talk about death.

She’s just writing about a moth.  She’s just opening her eyes to the small things that make up the big things, and she’s writing.

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There are two more lessons from Annie Dillard that I learned by reading this very thin book.

If you're eager to learn from Annie, too, you can jump ahead to the lessons here.

summer at the city pool {a poem}

Under a cloudless July sky
a flat, faded blue that holds no possibility for dreams
a sterile slate that pushes us down,
pinning us to one place on this dry earth

under an overdone sun
a little boy stands at the edge of the high dive at the City Pool.

From up there—

high on the diving board,
his bright orange swimtrunks dripping
the hundreds of feet (it must be that far!)
down to the aqua, manmade oasis

from up there, he can see the possibility for fun.

Over there,
the World War I tank by the playground,
guarding the monkey bars.

And past the Little League fields,
the path that slides down the river bluff—
a route made when the Indians still called this place Shoquoquon.

Beyond that,
the fountain that lights up blue, green, and yellow,
dancing along with the Municipal Band
playing “Stars and Stripes Forever,”
strains of high-note patriotism floating out over the Mississippi.

From up there, high on the diving board,
all the little boy has to do is spread his arms to touch
all the possibilities under the sun

and then jump
flying above all he’s ever known
wishing for the first time
that he could stop time
and stay in this eternal summer of the sun.

the summer light

Trying to come up with a new way to talk about summer feels like trying to be Shakespeare: a fruitless endeavor that reminds you that someone, somewhere, has already said what you meant to say.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No, that's been done.

I had a midsummer night's dream about you, brought on by the heat and perhaps too much wine. No, that concept has been done.

But to be in a world with so much light! Every day is a challenge to find the words, just the right words of thankfulness and light.

I wake up to a song about kissing the break of day, but that moment is gone. The day has already broken: the gentlest light of the day comes after the break, seeping through the cracks in the sky created by humidity.

In this light, even the brown grass is inviting, just the spot for a picnic.

A family quilt made in the early 1900s by four unmarried women—small, even stitches as they talked about everything but their desire to be married—this could be spread on the brown grass and there could be a picnic of strawberries and cream.

Hours later, at bedtime, darkness has just barely come as I turn on my bedside lamp to read for a few minutes before going to sleep. I think of how childlike it feels to go to bed with the sun just set, but it feels late to me and there is no one here to read me a bedtime story.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live: hasn't that one been said before, too?

In the summer, there is so much light, and there are so many stories waiting to be told. This is what I can say about summer right now that doesn't feel worn out.

summer storm {a poem, not by me}

I had already planned on posting this poem today—and then a summer storm just rolled in. All afternoon, even the air in this office felt charged, expectant, wanting.

We all wanted rain: the brown grass, the dying trees, people I ran past this morning at 6:00 {all of us sweating more than could be healthy}.

And here it is, just when I wanted it most and just when I had the right poem to post: "Summer Storm" by Dana Gioia.

One line in this poem is almost always with me—the last one. It hits on, in so few words, the what ifs we can torture ourselves with.

Or the what ifs that can come when we don't ask them to, and we convince ourselves that if only there had been a different decision back at that decision point—why life would have a whole different feel.

And it would be different, but different doesn't equal better. Or worse, for that matter. It just equals different, and what is it about a summer storm that reminds me of this idea?

It's the changeability of it all: what began as a sunny, sweaty day is now turning into a night when I want to do nothing more than curl up on the couch. How quickly things can change; how can we expect to keep up with all the possibilities?

And that's what this poem is saying to me today.

Summer Storm

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm—
A gesture you didn't explain—
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn't speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening's memory
Return with this night's storm—
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

a burned brown

Everything is the wrong color, a bland brown, a sickish yellow, a lack of verdant.

Verdant—what a word with the lush verd- in there.

Verte en francais, bien sur.

Even saying it—verdant—feels lush with the rush of air, the teeth pushing forward, then ending with that arch, that high, that distinctive, that definitive T.

But the world around me isn't verdant. Everything is the wrong color as the grass reaches deep into the ground, deeper and deeper still, looking for water.

The grass has reached the center of the earth, and that scorching molten center has charred it. Has made it a fire hazard. Has made us all forget that a verdant world can exist.

It does, in fact, exist, somewhere underneath this burned brown.

One morning, we'll wake up, and the world will be the right color again, right?

superior ratatouille

Is there any felicity in the world superior to this?*

To coming home from a work trip—overtired, overtalked, overpeopled, just over—and realizing you have everything necessary to make ratatouille, that French vegetable dish that tastes like Mediterranean sunshine, tiled roofs, and that joie de vivre Americans always envy in the French {even if they can't define joie de vivre}?

And that, in the several days you were away, nothing has gone bad?**

It was a lottery prize of joy and comfort food—the Mega Millions, I tell you, and when I started to pull out everything I needed—eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, onion—I thought: It will feel so good to chop and dice and sautee and eat.

Days of living in a hotel tend to make you excited about using a knife.

No, that came out wrong: days of living in an airport hotel {the runway just outside your window, reminding you every five minutes that someone is always leaving on an adventure} make you excited about being in your own space again.

And days of eating other people's food {and I had some of the best meals of my life on this trip: a wild sage martini and Berkshire pork chops and an asparagus bisque and Brussels sprouts ravioli and oh, the cheeseboard with a triple cream cheese from Normandy...!} will make you excited about eating your own food. Prepared by you in your kitchen with your knives and afterwards you can go to bed under your own sheets.

Tell me, truly: Is there any felicity in the world superior to this?



* I'm sure Jane Austen would think there was a felicity superior to ratatouille, especially since she had one of her characters—Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility—say this. But I've never wanted to be much like Marianne {and who would when there's Elinor around?}, so I'm stealing her line and applying it to vegetables. I don't think she'd mind.

** You can chastise me now for my poor produce planning, but first an explanation: it wasn't much produce that I left in the fridge while I flew off to Philadelphia. It just so happened to be the perfect amount of ratatouille ingredients, and I'd like us to pretend now that I planned it that way. Thank you for indulging me.

so much in common with dick clark

At a diner in Montclair, New Jersey—well, not exactly a diner, exactly.

There was a counter, yes, and some booths, but the whole thing was more upscale than "diner" generally implies.

This was not a silver Airstream-looking establishment along the side of a highway.

The mugs were not thick-handled, and the coffee was not burnt.

No neon signs flashing remnants of Americana: Eat at Joe's.

It was a fancy diner; let's say that. They make their own gigantic marshmallows, for Pete's sake, which encapsulates this place pretty well: it's comfort food but in a way that makes you step back in surprise. And then dig in with a hunger you didn't know you had.

So at this diner, above the counter, there was a sign with a quote from Dick Clark:
My greatest asset in life was I never lost touch with hot dogs, hamburgers, going to the fair, and hanging out at the mall.

I realized, looking up at that quote, that I have a lot in common with Dick Clark, and that came as a surprise to me. He's a piece of Americana, crucial to a certain generation's childhood and then revered for years afterwards as the representative of that gentler, before-the-world-got-so-gosh-darn-fast-paced time.

And I'm just a girl who doesn't like New Year's Eve, and Dick Clark was famous for loving it. {Although he did make it cool to stay in on New Year's Eve, so maybe I owe him one.}

In that quote, though, Dick Clark hit on several of my loves.

Hot dogs: One of the tags on my blog is "hot dogs," which means that I've written about them more than once; they get their own category! I stop at a certain gas station on the way home to Iowa every time—just to get a hot dog. I'm going home next Friday, by the way, and I will be at that gas station.

The fair: My town's fair is this weekend, and no matter how old I get, I can't resist wandering by to see the lights. I love it so much I wrote a poem about it last year.

And I hope I never lose touch with those things. Conveniently enough, they often come together: you can get a hot dog or a hamburger at the fair. Or at the mall, for that matter, although that is one place I'd be fine losing touch with. Who needs to be inside when there are hot dogs and a carnival outside?

i will never be warm again: lessons from the cold

When the weather turns cold again, there is a moment every year when you think, 'I will never be warm again. The earth will never come out of the winter it's heading into.'

Then you realize that it's actually 37 degrees and that it will, unfortunately but inevitably in the Midwest, get much colder.

Please tell me that you have this moment, too, so that I don't feel like such a wuss, someone so unworthy to be a descendent of my farming ancestors {and in one case, a peddling ancestor—no, for real, one of my ancestors, someone not that far back in the family tree, was a peddler}.

My moment came last night. I was walking Miss Daisy, and I had on a hat, my mittens from Norway, and a wool scarf wrapped tightly and tucked into my coat. I was shivering from the cold and yet I couldn't even really see my breath in the still night air.

It will get so much colder, and my body will acclimate.

This is the great wonder and lesson of living somewhere with four season.

The Wonder

Every few months, the scenery drastically changes, and we get to take in spring buds, humidity, falling leaves, and snow. This keeps us from much monotony because even a drive to the grocery store will eventually look different—colors, lack of colors, leaves, lack of leaves, everything in white because it's an icy-snow mess and you better hope you don't slide and you really should've put together that winter preparedness kit, etc.

Speaking of the grocery store and food, we have come so far from when food selection was limited by the seasons or canning. I feel qualified to say something like this because of the aforementioned farming ancestors.

Now, as we're all aware, you can pretty much get anything at any time of the year. Yes, there are times when certain produce is better—when it's at its peak, I do believe it's called, when what is really meant it: it's the traditional harvest time.

If you get apples in February, they won't be as peak-full as in the fall when you're supposed to be making apple pies and applesauce and whatever else you can think of to make with the five bushels of apples you somehow ended up with after apple picking.

But you can still get apples in February.

You can get strawberries in November, if you have a whim to make strawberry shortcake for Thanksgiving.

We no longer have to wait for the harvest; we no longer get the anticipation of waiting for the season's first plum and then biting into it—delicious, so sweet, and so cold. This is just to say: we have lost something when we got pulled so far off the land, and I'm glad we have the wonder of seasons to remind us that we used to be more tied to the land.

The Lesson

The seasons teach that it is possible to adapt to change. You may forget every year how cold it gets, but it won't take long for you to pull out the long underwear, find the warm gloves, and remember how cozy your home feels when you first step inside from a -20 degree day.

We're all much more adaptable than we think. We do get used to change, and the seasons remind us of our great adaptability.

This is important to remember when something so large and shifting happens in your life—that you're sure you'll never be able to adjust.

Think of things like your best friend getting married or people having babies or even you yourself getting into a relationship. I should stress that these are all good things {babies mean, for example, that you get to buy adorable clothes—little sweater vests! tiny dresses with ruffles!—and look forward to videos of the baby giggling}.

But just as we're an adaptable people, we're also a freak-out-about-change people. It's natural to see how everything will be different, and it's also natural to skip over the fact that different isn't actually synonymous with bad.

Different can be nice, once you get used to it.

Just like the humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter.

do you actually understand baseball?

Tonight, I'm headed to a Cubs game, my once-yearly sojourn to Wrigley Field for a hot dog and the ability to throw my peanut shells on the ground.

I suppose I could do that at home, but then I would have to clean it up and that, as much as I like cleaning, limits the fun factor.

Peanut shells also make me think of pre-school: we had peanuts for a snack one day at Small World Pre-school {our fight song, if pre-schools can be said to have fight songs, was that song from the Disney ride}, and I ate the shells.

I liked the salt and the crunchiness. I even liked the little stringy pieces of shell getting stuck between my baby teeth.

Also, I didn't know you weren't supposed to eat the shells; my parents and I hadn't covered that lesson yet.

The teacher came over slightly alarmed that I did not have a growing little pile of shells, just like the other children. When I heard the tsk-tsk in her voice, I realized that one of these kids was doing her own thing and that one kid was me.

Ever the quick thinker, even as a 3-year-old, I told her that I'd already thrown them away.

The only way this would've been possible is if I were magical—had invisible powers or speed of light powers. That is the only way I could've made it past her watchful eye to the trash can, but I think she preferred the idea that I'd magically made it to the trash can {all in the name of cleanliness}—to the alternative truth that I'd just crammed in a bunch of salt and fiber.

You can see, then, why I get so excited about throwing peanut shells. It's as if I'm announcing to the world, "I learned in pre-school what to do with these things! NOT EAT THEM! Or maybe just eat one, just because you love salt that much, but make sure nobody sees you!"

At the Cubs game tonight, I admit, I'll probably be more excited about the food than the pitching. But just because I rarely talk about baseball—or watch it on TV or listen to it on the radio—my boss misinterpreted my "sportiness."

Today he asked, with a bit of hesitation, "So, will you even understand what's happening at the game tonight?"

The whole office laughed in shock.

I laughed so hard, I cried, which I think made the boss feel worse. He made me cry!

To give him the benefit of the doubt, he is English. Baseball is foreign to them, just as cricket is foreign/crazy/confusing/what's a sticky wicket to us.

But as I reminded him, I was born in America, and we're born with this basic knowledge of what to do when faced with a ball, a bat, and a diamond-shaped field.

You start taunting the pitcher, clearly.

Or you order a hot dog by yelling at the man carrying around a hot dog container made for such a time as this—big and hanging around his neck.

Or you get some more peanuts to throw on the ground.

And then you clap when your team gets a man on base. You stand up when he gets home. You stretch in the seventh inning.

Everyone knows this.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a team to cheer for.

the plum trees

I have been feeling a dearth of poetry in my life recently.

Please take that literally, not symbolically, as in: There is no beauty in my life, no lyrical moments, no hints of something deeper in an occasion as normal as a morning walk.

It's just that I haven't been reading poetry as much right now—summer hiatus? But what for?—and I didn't realize that I was feeling its absence until my friend Jessie handed me a book of poems last night.

"Thank you so much for letting me borrow this. Good introduction to Mary Oliver."

I stared at the book as if it weren't mine, this copy of American Primitive. I couldn't remember any of the poems in it, nor could I remember loaning it to Jessie, but here it was, in my hands and she said it was mine.

We were at the Chicago History Museum to watch Sixteen Candles, which doesn't sound like a very History Museum-appropriate thing to do until you remember that it was filmed in Chicagoland, and it was made in 1984, making it part of our near history now.

Besides, it was the kind of August evening that makes you thankful for seasons and in particular the one you're experiencing right then.

It was twilight, and the high rises next to Lincoln Park were lit with glowing lives, people going about making dinner or cleaning up from dinner or putting children to bed.

In front of us, the Museum had set up an outdoor movie screen, and just in front of us at our feet was a bottle of white wine, nectarines, chocolate, and cheese. And a Rice Krispy treat from Starbucks because we can't all be swank all the time.

It was, in fact, the kind of night to write poetry, but instead I watched a movie and then got on my train back to the suburbs.

I read poetry on the train before I fell asleep {taking a 10:40 train certainly interferes with my bedtime, which is 10:00}, and American Primitive fell open to this particular poem, "The Plum Trees."

I read it and remembered what it feels like to have poetry in your life. This poem was, in fact, like a small wild plum, which is a comment that will make sense after you read it, and so I will leave you to that now.


The Plum Trees
Mary Oliver

Such richness flowing
through the branches of summer and into

the body, carried inward on the five
rivers! Disorder and astonishment

rattle your thoughts and your heart
cries for rest but don't

succumb, there's nothing
so sensible as sensual inundation. Joy

is a taste before
it's anything else, and the body

can lounge for hours devouring
the important moments. Listen,

the only way
to tempt happiness into your mind is by taking it

into the body first, like small
wild plums.

in which i freak out a middle schooler

My pug is named Daisy. And today, Daisy got me in a situation that almost made me shout, "But I don't like 12-year-old boys, not in that way!" which is something I never thought I'd have to say.

Her full name, by the way, is Miss Daisy Marie Walker.

{I considered the name Miss Daisy Elizabeth Walker, but then I thought: my friend Elizabeth might not appreciate that. Naming a child after a good friend is one thing; naming a little fur ball with buggy eyes and a squished nose is another thing, especially when your friend isn't a big dog fan to begin with—although she is developing an appreciation for Miss Daisy.}

But I often call her baby pug.

Or just baby.

She responds to basically anything that ends in -y, a trait I'm sure my brother-in-law will exploit. My sister talked him into getting a pug, which he refers to as a Smelly Wad of Evil, or something like that. When he finds out that baby pug will look at you with love if you call her...you know what? I'm not going to give him ideas. I'm sure he's already brainstorming how to insult her/me.

So I call my pug baby, and now, who else is thinking, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner"? {If it wouldn't make me look so bizarre, I'd consider using that as a retort when my brother-in-law comes up with new names for her.}

This morning on our walk, baby pug took a right when I needed her to go left.

"Hey, baby, no! That's the wrong way! You come over here by me, okay, baby? I want you to be by me."

I called this out to her, a coaxing edge to my voice but with a sweet undertone, here on this sweet, slightly chilled August morning.

And that's when I saw him.

A kid who must've been 12 or 13, cutting across the lawn not too far from me.

Certainly within earshot of my "Hey, baby! Come over here by me!"

Now, middle schoolers are prone to looking freaked out all the time. They live in continual fear that they will either a) stand out too much or b) not be noticed enough.

Plus, they have limbs that are out of proportion with their bodies, and most of the time, they're focusing on looking like they're aware of where their limbs are, spatially.

So they look freaked out anyway.

But this boy looked at me like I was out trawling the manicured lawns of suburbia at 8am, just looking for someone with arms that hang down to his knees to be my baby.

He looked at me with eyes that said: "I see what you're doing. You're using that cute pug as a ploy. You pretend to love the dog, but what you really want is for someone like me to come talk to you."

I've never been looked at with such fear before, googly 12-year-old boy eyes taking in my Ann Taylor skirt, brown heels, pearl earrings, and pug with a pink harness on.

I've never felt the need to defend myself as someone who is not, oh so definitely not interested in 12-year-old boys. Usually, that's pretty clear.

"Oh, I was talking to my little pug! I'm so sorry to have scared you!" I tried to sound very grown-up and maybe a little matronly when I said this; I channeled Marian from The Music Man and Sarah Brown from Guys and Dolls. I wanted him to stop looking at me like a 29-year-old cougar, if he even knows what that is.

"S'okay. Your dog's nice." He smiled at Miss Daisy Marie Walker, and then he smiled at me, avoiding, as most 12-year-old boys do, eye contact. My matronly tone must've worked.

"I like to think so, thank you. Have a good day!"

"You, too!" And he shuffled off.

I very carefully and quietly said, "All right, Miss Daisy, let's go this way."

august is just like february, except hot

August is just like February.

The obvious weather differences aside, these two months can be lumped together for me because they are when the charm of the season has worn off.

By February, you—if you live in the Midwest, at least—are thinking: For the love of snow boots, can I have a day where I don't have to wear 16 layers of clothes? A day where the sky isn't gray? A day when I don't have to worry about black ice?

These are surprising thoughts, considering that the first time it snowed, just a few months before, you thought: SNOW BOOTS!

And by August, I am done with the heat of summer. You may have been able to tell this from my writing recently because I mention the heat ALL THE TIME. For something I'm done with, it sure does occupy a lot of my thoughts.

Maybe the August doldrums hit me because I no longer have school to go back to. Back in the day, August was a season of anticipation.

Buying school supplies and new clothes.

Planning my first day of school outfit—and later, when I got to high school, planning my outfit for the locker decorating party. They must not be the same outfit, and they are equally important in establishing your entry into the year; everyone knows this.

And of course I got nerdily excited by all I was going to learn that year in physics or chemistry or English or American History. {I can really only remember stuff from those last two. Please don't quiz me about any physics formulas, unless it's about force. That one, for some reason, I remember.}

I, as an office dweller, no longer get back-to-school excitement. I get back-to-school envy, and those are not the same thing.

So what to do when you become a grown-up who isn't a teacher or a professional student? When August doesn't mean NEW but instead means HOT AND THE SAME?

You create a little excitement of your own, that's what you do.

My little excitement for this week was re-designing my blog.

This is the online equivalent of re-arranging your living room. By just moving around a couch, you feel like you've stepped into a new life. The light looks different in the room somehow and you never noticed how pretty that side table would be with a vase of flowers on it.

A new background and a new font on the blog and look at that: excitement during August.