Category: Uncategorized

Gardenias At Last!

 

I wish I could share the scent of these waxy, fine blossoms — heavenly! This little Gardenia plant has lived with me for about five years and this is the first time it has blossomed.  My chair pulled up beside the pot, I lean down every few minutes to inhale the perfume from now, multiple blossoms. See —

My favorite flowers are fragrant. I force Hyacinth and Paper Whites when the snow still covers the ground — breathing their heady scent as I come in from the cold reassures me that spring is not so far away. Lilacs evoke something old-fashioned and dreamy from childhood weekends spent in the country. Gardenias — they transport me to the south of Italy. There was a bush heavy with blooms in a planter on the veranda where I read and napped, waiting for Molly’s imminent birth. Exotic and rich, to me these exquisite blooms smell like love.

Vicarious Travel – Croatia

A friend’s daughter is traveling in Europe – now in Italy, next stop – Croatia. I thought about that beautiful place where I lived from 1992-1996 as a UN staff member and with pleasure, imagined myself a 20-something with a back-pack. Here’s what I would do:

Travel via often overlooked city of Trieste  for a last taste of Italy  (James Joyce is just one of the many writers and artists who spent time here.) Or maybe, stop in Slovenia — I hear the main city, Ljubljana is now full of hip, young people hanging at the outdoor cafes. Cross over into Croatia and explore Istria – this sweet bit of coast with Pula at the tip of it, has an abundance of rocky beaches and tourist-ready spots – very Italian influenced as once-upon a time, it was part of Italy. Then, high-tail it to the Dalmatian Coast – in my opinion, one of the most beautiful stretches in the world. Maybe ferry-hop (from Rijeka?) through the islands all the way down to stunning Dubrovnik – an incredible stone city in a fortress – right on the sea.  Perhaps a stop in Split, worth checking out for Diocletian’s Palace and Mestrovic museum. Or pause at any of the charming fishing villages to eat great seafood (Risotta – black with squid ink) swim – dive off rocks for a swim in the clearest water you’ve ever seen.

The Adriatic Sea is the most amazing mix of blues, emerald greens lapping up against the largely-undeveloped, dramatic landscape of Croatia.  The food may not knock your socks off and last I remember, the people were not the jolliest, but the country is gorgeous.

If it’s possible to leave the beautiful coast, travel inland to Plitvice National Park. Pass through bucolic, gorgeous countryside, full of rocks, fields and flashes from another time – scenes of ancient women in black herding goats, horse drawn wagons overflowing with hay. Plitivice is a great place to hike — trails lead through lush forest and open up at regular intervals onto lakes and waterfalls that seem to be a moving weave of rainbows. This park – in fact – much of the country was closed to tourists when I was there so we went (wary of landmines) we would only see the odd soldier or other UN folk. Still, I imagine that even now there are not too many tourists.

From Plitvice, go to Zagreb – a charming and cosmopolitan city with trams, lots of art museums, great Austo-Hungarian architecture and plenty of busy squares with cafes to sit and people watch. Start with a cup of two of the dark, silty coffee then switch over to the good local beer and breathe deeply and savor it all.

That’s what I would do.

Birth Days

A bright Sunday morning, still early enough to be quiet – no lawnmowers or blowers, no cheering from the baseball field. There is even an occasional lull of quiet between the usually relentless highway  whoosh of cars and louder, barreling truck noises. But looking out at the evidence of M’s 16th birthday celebration I can still hear the laughter, singing and whooping of more than a dozen teenagers who gathered on our lawn last night. A few napkins and cups litter the the grass and on the table there are empty ice-tea jugs, wooden sticks used to melt marshmallows. Good kids, (no beer bottles, no cigarettes) they brought in the (junk) food and blankets last night – the remaining mess will take only minutes to clean up. Maybe I’ll need to whip up breakfast for the three that slept over but more likely, they’ll slip out early to go home to celebrate Father’s Day – a holiday we are exempt from in this house.

I was dreading ‘the gathering of teens’ at our house — too many horror stories of crashed parties and trashed houses. So the little bit of mess outside is benign.  Sixteen years ago, although M was already a week old – she remained in an open incubator in a Brindisi hospital. Born almost 2 months early in the wrong country, she spent her first three weeks being swaddled and sung to by loving Italian nurses. That stint in an Italian neonatology ward was a frightening, crash-course in motherhood: the worry never really goes away.  But at least for now, my beautiful, Italian baby is just fine.

Facing the Enemy

 

It’s 9:30 on Sunday morning — already too late to beat the grocery store mobs. Instead, I step out into the garden to see what’s ready to harvest. There is already enough lettuce in the garden for my salads.

Gorgeous snow pea pods seem to have emerged overnight and I better get the rest of the leeks before they blossom. There is a rustle behind, I turn and see, my garden nemesis:

the groundhog.

We are merely feet away from each other. I am sure it is the same old guy who has been helping himself to what I plant, for years. I take a step towards him and he bares his big old teeth. I retreat out of the garden, closing the gate behind me. But fatso can’t get out. Tetley is inside and I think about running to the house to release him — but they are the same size and I would worry about woodchuck geezer hurting my little Cairn. And I imagine their battle would destroy the garden anyway.

Chuck tries a few lame leaps up the wall but can’t make it. Next he burrows into the opposite corner to try and exit through the fence into the peonies. I step back into the garden, my heart pounding, to try and get a better photo and he steps in my direction as if to charge. I retreat. I think about running into the house to get Rob but know he will escape while I am gone — besides, I am not sure of what I want to do with this guy. I have wanted him gone for years — now is my chance.  He is too smart for have-a-heart trap.  The sledgehammer we used to pound in tomato stakes is behind me. I could never do it — but maybe Rob could. But no – I don’t want the carnage. The picture of violence would always be here in this little corner. Instead, I watch him – we eye each other – my look saying, ‘I know it’s you, buddy, so don’t come around here anymore’. (Ha. see below)

He makes another leap for the wall and this time, manages to drag himself through the tangle of raspberries canes.  I open the gate and step inside to assess the damage — cilantro plant knocked over and a few beheaded sunflowers. How many years I have cursed this guy for decimating flowers, just-planted or just-ripe vegetables? And yet face-to-furry-face and I didn’t feel like bashing him. It’s just plants, after all — if he was eating my kid, (or my dog) I’d kill him. I know I could and would. In my mind, this is the same creature that has scampered away just in time for years. And today, older, slower, fatter, and trapped, how could I not feel sorry for him?

P.S. A few hours later, I return to do some weeding and he races past me again — and now the lettuce so nicely captured in the photos above, is gone, as is the marigold and more sunflowers have been stripped to stalks and I feel a fool — but mostly for not shutting the garden gate.

Smelling Spring

I have been inhaling my way through spring, almost drunk on the fragrant shrubs in my garden. Last year’s extreme pruning left me with fewer Lilacs this year but I am reassured by wiser gardeners than me that next year will be better. Tiny Carol Mackie Daphne, on the other hand, is exploding in exotically scented little blooms. The Daphne’s fragrance is more delicate than the larger, almost vulgar smelling Virburnum shrub with it’s heavy white heads of flowers.  I made the mistake of planting these beauties all in the same corner at back of the house where we like to sit in the summer, imagining a scented garden. But it’s still too cool back there at this time of year and we rarely sit, as I’d imagined, inhaling the perfumes while soaking in the sun.  Instead, I regularly venture out to this spot to get my scent-fix and lob off branches of blooms to fill the house. But  after only a day or so, both blossoms and perfume fade. It’s not the same.

What is it about scent that is so evocative? I think it’s the ephemeral, passing quality – like time. We cannot keep it – not for long. There, the poignancy of spring.

 

Seasonal Reminders

The spectacularly short lives of spring flowers makes me melancholy. Hyacinths, as if overwhelmed by their own perfume, topple over into the dirt. The frill of petals around the face of the Daffodil crinkle like old skin.  The Tulips are next on the scene but it’s a race with the squirrels to score some for a vase or two. The Lilac bush I whittled away at last season has come back with the promise of many blooms in each tightly packed cob, but a tree at the end of the driveway that was a blizzard of delicate blossoms last spring, this year sprouts only leaves.

Maybe it is this fleeting-ness of the season causing my anxiety. I blamed work, but after a week off I still wake with a clenched jaw and thundering heart. I force myself to take deep breaths, stretch out into a yoga move or two, but psychically, I am still wound up. I flail around for another reason, any at all – but I know why I cannot shake this feeling. The scents, light and essence of this season are visceral reminders of the anniversary of N’s suicide. Even though these days are endlessly rainy and that week was incongruously sunny, memories of terrible days are still conjured up by spring.  I can’t shake, ignore or forget — 7 years later at this time of year, a state of strung-out, high-alert is still my lot – as is an eternal unanswerable question of whether there was anything else I could have done.

Sister Love

Writing about books is not really my forte and writing about books by people I know is particularly daunting — but here goes.  Two memoirs I finished in as many weeks, still linger with me like the feeling after time spent with dear friends.  No – like time spent with my sister – the richness of connection born of time, love – birth. That’s what remains with me after reading these brilliantly written titles by two women I admire and really like. Coincidentally, both were sadly, inspired by the death of their sisters. Just writing that, a sob sticks in my throat.

You’ll have to wait to read Nina Sankovitch’s Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading because the pub date is early June, but it’s a book that will fly and you heard it here first. Nina lives nearby and has a fantastic reading blog. Meeting Nina for the first time two weeks ago, we gabbed about books and life and books again, and then finally, set up her launch event at the store in June. She gave lucky-me, an advance copy and I spent the following weekend reading this stunning journey through grief.  (I first wrote ‘through and beyond’ but one never gets beyond profound loss, do they? Through, with time but a void remains – there is no going ‘beyond’ that empty space.) After the devastating death of her sister, Nina spends time frantically determined to live her own life twice as hard – but she hits a wall. Grief is to be sat with – and this she did, setting herself a goal and discipline of reading and then writing about, a book a day. She reads classics, mysteries, biographies, novels – new and old. Through her insightful readings and moving recollections we journey through the books she reads, into a rich exploration of sadness, loss, love – life. Hers is a beautiful, universal book.  And she’s just so damn like-able, you’ll want to be her friend, too.

The tricky thing after reading such a superb book, is what to pick up next. Waiting in my ‘to-read’ wings, was Jill Bialosky’s History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life.  Jill a poet, novelist and editor, read at the store more than once and each time, we chatted warmly, comparing our children’s ages (about the same) and interests, but I did not know we shared unfortunate membership of being in the suicide survivor club. Her sister ended her life so young – in her early twenties just as Jill is beginning her an unbelievably heartbreaking, but ultimately, joyful quest towards motherhood, all the while writing and publishing beautiful books.  I marvel at how she did it – the amount of time she spent curled up in a ball seems slight for the cruel losses she endured.  The original title for my still evolving, memoir on addiction and suicide was Light Between Shadows. The shadow of being a suicide survivor threads through Jill’s book, but ultimately she leads us with the stunning poetry of her writing and insight, into the light.

I felt such recognition while reading Jill’s book – and while I am an amateur compared to her, feel inspired to delve deeper in writing my story of life with addiction and suicide in The Things We Cannot Change. Both Nina and Jill’s books are so courageous – and this is my challenge. Years of ‘Making Nice‘ and spent in Al-Anon learning detachment skills, do not make for good memoir writing. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair and History of a Suicide show me how raw truth can and should be told, with power and grace. Back to work for me.

And an overdue visit with my sister.

Making Nice

My natural talent for being a wise-cracking asshole was tempered by my years working for the United Nations. After serious training, I learned how to avoid offending people from around the world – it was a job requirement.  On any given day, I spoke to 100 + people who came for a tour of the UN.  Leading my flock through halls and meeting rooms, I spouted the latest Security Council resolutions condemning either Israel or South Africa (this was the 80s) and hedging my way through questions posed by irate visitors about why the UN would not intervene in Tibet or Northern Ireland. Uncomfortably, I lectured Japanese tourists in my abysmal Japanese, about the importance of nuclear disarmament while surrounded by melted artifacts from Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I learned to deliver the information – passionately, but without personal opinion.  This meant no smirks, frowns, glee or embarrassment – unless officially sanctioned by the international community.

It wasn’t easy. I’m pretty opinionated and used to delight in verbal sparring. Sometimes, still do. But to this day, I value the skills I picked up in those international rooms. One key to maintaining a mask of control and fending off potential conflict is to have a script — a few non-commital words expressing whatever the neutral party line is. This still comes in handy. Just the other day, someone cornered me at work wanting to know what I thought about the competition shutting down in the next town. “It’s always sad when a bookstore closes.” I said. And while this is true in theory, in reality, I think: better them than us — I sure hope that we get a bump in business comparable to the hit we took when they opened.

Often, being diplomatic can just mean keeping your mouth shut, and that really doesn’t come easily to me. I have only gotten fired once in my life – from a waitressing job when I was in college. Too many years have passed for me to recall the exact exchange, but a customer was rude to me and I dished it right back. In retrospect, I admire that gal but today, I need my day job.

Keeping my mouth shut was a skill I really got to practice in the war zones of former Yugoslavia. You don’t want to piss anyone off when Kalashnikovs are around.  A neutral smile, courtesy and a United Nations blue passport were all useful in getting through checkpoints manned by sometimes drunken Serbs, Croats or Bosnians. This discipline of not inflaming dicey situations still helps me today: I avoid road-rage incidents on Route 1 and can defuse the instinct to punch the lights out of unpleasant customers in the bookstore. I think a certain amount of public neutrality is common sense – who wants their window smashed by a right-winger offended by a ‘Planned Parenthood’ or ‘Support Our Soldiers: Bring them Home’ sticker?  The only bumper-sticker I have on my car says “READ”.  I think that’s safe.

 

Japan

I cannot stop looking at the apocalyptic earthquake-tsunami images out of Japan. Cars on houses, buildings being swept away, boats hammering against bridges. Muddy survivors clutching buckets of belongings or worse, nothing at all – losses palpable. The luckier ones, hold tight to children, friends, neighbors. Heartbreaking. I cannot turn away. And now, the horrible specter of nuclear disaster. Terrifying.

I know these people – while I have never been to this corner of Japan – I recognize faces and those houses smashed under salty debris are familiar to me. None of my friends are there – and while relieved to be spared the pain of personal loss, I mourn for this place, once my home.

Creativity Manifest

For years I considered myself a visual artist. I have a basement full of work as evidence. Paintings at least, are easier to store than sculptures. I have two very large wood pieces I carved in Japan, propped up in our tiny living room. They are superb dust collectors. I remember chiseling away at them for hours outside my little house in Kyoto. The wood is eucalyptus and carving released potent oils into the air.  My sinuses were always clear.

Believe me, I am even less delusional about my talent as an artist than as a writer, but I do have some pieces I like living with — like those big, old chunks of wood. But I don’t miss the stuff necessary to paint or sculpt or the ‘stuff’ (now art?) you are left with when you are done. What to do with it all? When my artist friends and I go to the Catskills for our week of retreat, it takes them many trips to unload the boxes of supplies and un-wieldly pads of paper and canvas.  I get to prance upstairs with my laptop. Okay… and bags of books I think I’ll read and don’t. The process of writing is so streamlined compared to the visual arts. And in the end, finding and settling into the place where creating comes from, and staying there for as long as possible, (ah, those summer retreats!) feels the same bliss to me.

Well, almost. Sometimes, I miss the smells, the excitement and immediacy of making something. The physicality of ripping up paper for collages, the trance-like state of carving a piece of wood. The really gut feeling when something works – the incredible, physical burst of energy when I can’t stop working on the thing. It comes from a different place — a place I haven’t been to in a long time.

I made a stab at getting back to work when M was about 5 or so. The painting in this photo is one of those. I have no memory of the title of the piece or where it is now.  I suspect it is buried with whatever paints I still have left. I really don’t like it, so if it is in the basement, it’s staying there. I see on that canvas and in my eyes, a miserable heart being smothered. I remember standing in that bank where I hung my paintings in the hope I’d sell something — a finger in the dyke of financial, spiritual and emotional chaos of living with an addict.

Maybe this summer, I’ll pack a small box of supplies and re-visit this visual-art territory again just to see what comes out. I wonder – will my happier state translate into a better painting?

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