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A Salty Peace

This summer, one of our goals is to be floating on the Long Island Sound by every Friday afternoon or evening. Within minutes of pushing off-shore, just a few paddles into the waves and my blood pressure drops and muscles, release. Yesterday, we left at high tide under an impossibly blue sky.  We paddled against a slight wind but the waves were minimal and unlike a Saturday or Sunday, there was not much motorboat traffic. The water appeared inky-black, a reminder of the approaching evening.  We are acutely aware of weather and tides these days, checking the chart stuck with a magnet to our refrigerator or doing the math in our head from when we were last out, we calculate a difference of 45 minutes later each day so we know what to expect.

At first, our goal is just to get away from shore, and we slide our paddles in and out in a swift, coordinated rhythm. Sometimes we stop to bounce along in the waves, close our eyes and breathe deep, damp, salty breaths. Yesterday, scanning the horizon – the lighthouse: too far.  The osprey nest: maybe. We opted to go between two islands that at low tide, becomes one.  Once out between the small patches of forest, floating close to the slightly submerged rocks and swaying green grasses, we paused to listen to a chorus of birds in evening song.

There is a watery spot out there that has become a favorite place in the world for me.  A few years ago, I did not know it existed – a paradise, so close.  We round a rocky bend a few islands out and find ourselves with mostly water beyond – only one more island between us that keeps the waters still calm.  There is no sign of the busy shore here, only a brambly-green of beach roses and scrub, trees, rock, sand. A bird preserve.  Here the water is warmer and always more still than the waves just a bit beyond and but for passing motorboats, all we hear are the odd throaty grumble of white egrets swooping by or the plaintive scream of seagulls fighting over a just-caught clam.  A little further along we reach a sandbar where the force of the tides pushes hard into this cove.  Sometimes, it’s a struggle to paddle against this current but when the tide is low, we must get out of the boat and lift it across the slippery rocks.  By the time we have reached this spot, pushed out of our peaceful little bay into the wavy expanse of the Sound, I am completely at peace.

On the Way Somewhere…

Missing from this lovely spot of ours is silence. The drone of traffic from I-95 just blocks away, is constant. The decibel level rises or falls according to the time of day, the time of year and the shifting winds. This is the sound of thousands of people moving through life on an American highway.

Yesterday, a steamy but sunny Saturday morning, the steady hum of cars, trucks and motorcycles exploded into the horrific sound of an accident. No fender bender – the explosion woke us and the wail of sirens continued for hours. Running an errand at 2:00 – at least 6 hours after the accident, I saw the strangely-bent trailer of a truck being hauled away. Injuries must have been dreadful and perhaps, someone died.  This thought lingered with us all day as we worked around the house and then blissfully went floating on the Long Island Sound in our kayak.  Who were the people whose lives took an unexpected, terrible detour this morning?  It could have been anybody.  Alert to life’s fragility, we move through the day into night, grieving for these strangers passing so close to our home but glad to still be here with limbs intact. Relieved it was not us.

PS: According to the local paper, the accident was triggered by a naked man yelling he was Jesus. (No one died.)

More Books

One of the greatest perks about working in a bookstore are the books.  Free books (Advanced Reader’s Copies –  ARCs – from the publisher), borrowed books (hard cover with a dust jacket), and discounted books (a generous employee discount). I get lots of books.  Currently I am finishing up a borrowed book: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman – a memoir of the author’s stint in Danbury prison.  Any glimpse behind the frightening walls of a woman’s prison piques my interest but this author’s experience is particularly fascinating because she is like me.  An educated, (we’re talking Smith college) white, proverbial good girl who did some stupid things in her early twenties. She’s smart, funny, insightful.  We all think we’d never be behind bars but it could happen to anyone. (Martha?)  I’m fascinated with our capacity to adjust and create a new normal, to survive what we imagine to be impossible, to make lemonade out of lemons. You get the drift. While the author writes an honest portrait of her own challenges she also gives us a glimpse at the lives of many of her fellow inmates. These are prisoners from the shameful ‘war on drugs’, prisoners of domestic violence, prisoners of addiction. While ‘what they did’ may be the voyeuristic question that lingers, it’s the getting through the days, the weeks, the months, the years that drives these women and this story. There has to be a better way than the insanity of our prison system. Beautifully done.

So what next?  The piles of books around the house are getting crazy. My arc pile has Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes, The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall, Solar by Ian McEwan, The Swimming Pool by Holly Lecraw.  I picked these up because I either love the author (McEwan) the subject fascinates me (war experience, polygamy???) or because something in a review piqued my interest.  That’s why I bought Happy Now by Katherine Shonk – a novel about a woman whose husband committed suicide (research) but haven’t gotten beyond the first few pages.

Another recent purchase is  I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You!: A New Understanding of Mother-Daughter Conflict – Surviving and Thriving During Your Daughter’s Teenage Years by Roni Cohen-Sandler – a local, smart shrink who specializes in the subject.  She was in the store for a talk when M was still a toddler and I remember that I liked what she said so many years ago so picked this up when I felt overwhelmed by a rare difficult spell with M. Things are peachy again so I’ve yet to open it.  I’m sure I’ll be reading it one of these days.

I also purchased Patricia Lanza’s Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding! which reads like a television infomercial. But it does work and is a great way to recycle newspapers and all that compost-able kitchen waste. This book I keep around like a cookbook – to dive into when I need it for adjustments and advice on individual crops.

So with only a few pages to go on the book I’m reading now, what next?  I might have to borrow the last Stieg Larson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – although I try to borrow less popular books so that if I love them, I can plug them. In any case, I’m spoiled for choice.  Now to find the time…

Food

Cilantro, mint, sage, spring onions, strawberries. The harvest begins!  Yesterday made a carrot, apple, ginger, mint salad with a yogurt, honey, lemon juice dressing. Roasted red pepper dip by blending cream cheese, cilantro and a touch of cayenne to give it even more of an edge. Strawberries are big and bountiful – the challenge is to get to them before the slugs and birds. Spring onions – fatter and more substantial than a scallion – are already forming scapes. I wonder if they can be eaten like garlic scapes?  Yesterday’s harvest was sliced thin and cooked in a skillet until they were crunchy bits – perfect to toss on top of the chicken cooked in a soy-ginger marinade with a preserved lemon thrown in for good measure.  A few leaves of sage as garnish for this crazy flavor combo.  After weeks of no inspiration, I am excited by cooking again.

In another few weeks we will be picking up our first CSA box of organic vegetables of the season. Always an adventure to open the box.  In the first weeks there will be plenty of greens – beautiful young lettuce, basil, garlic scapes, (pesto!) arugula and much tastier strawberries than ours. Then strange things like fennel and other vegetables I have to look up recipes for.  I have a weakness for cookbooks but in the end, use only three or so regularly.  Deborah Madison’s vegetarian cookbooks are fantastic – full of inspiring recipes using wacky veg.  A new favorite is Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Express. Rather than being in recipe format, the book is broken down by season with simple paragraphs giving suggested meals. Most of the ingredients are already in your cupboard and fridge but with Bittman’s guidance everything becomes more interesting. With just a few sentences of inspiration you can throw together simple meals, a catalyst for the kitchen.  That can of beans? Turn it into a burger that even your fussy kid will eat.  For something different try Japanese egg crepes or Peanut Soup. Yum.

Embracing the chaos

I am not an organized person and while I envy this quality in others, it will never be mine.  That’s not to say I am not efficient and responsible: my desk may be a mess at work and at home – but I never miss a deadline and my bills get paid on time.  This is just my style.  And it translates to everything – including the garden.

This morning, dressed in sweatpants and tee-shirt retrieved from the floor, hair flattened on one side and eyes still bleary with sleep, I took the dog out for his quick, morning walk.  I live on a quiet street and rarely meet anyone at this hour. Bordering our not-quite quarter acre,  Hosta, Iris, Day Lilies are growing in abundance.  Looking at this mass of green through my sleepy haze, I recall my autumn vow to separate these plants in the spring: divide the Day Lilies and Hosta plants, give away the Bearded Irises (strange, almost vulgar looking, I think) before they reached full bloom and I could still see space between them.  Too late: they swallow each other up in a green mass and they in turn, are overwhelmed by the hedge that stands now like a wall between our house and the street.  I used to be able to trim this hedge standing in the street – now it is at least 8 feet high and dense.

In another corner of the garden are the once scrawny twigs sent to me by the Arbor Society for a $10 donation.  I did this at least two years in a row – dutifully planting painted twigs only inches long into a corner of the garden where they would not get trampled.  Now we have about 7 trees in the works. They are growing within feet or even inches each other.  I meant to move a few of them this spring while it was still early – before their leaves began to sprout.  We moved two last year – digging around the roots and then wider, deeper yet to get some kind of root ball.  Finally, cursing and bothered, we chopped at the dangling roots and yanked them out – moving them, (not very hopefully) to a spot where they have more room to grow.  Amazingly, they survived the trauma and are still alive and  have grown quite a few feet.  We vowed to get to the others before they got bigger. Too late again.  None of those little trees I stuck in the flower garden for safe keeping and then, forgot about, will leave without a fight. For another year at least, there they will stay.

To add to the garden chaos, I planted two cherry trees in the hope of one day eating fruit from them.  Slightly bigger sticks that probably won’t bear fruit for a decade because I’m too frugal to spring for the $60 it costs to buy a large one from the garden center.  All of these saplings live beneath the massive oak that’s not far from the mulberry tree, so tall the branches lean over the garage. Another oak stands at the end of the drive and a quartet of trunks make up the maple tree shading most of the front lawn.

At this point, we feel overwhelmed by the growth, the weeds reclaiming a patch we cleared two weeks ago, the neighbors annoying forsythia that hangs like a curtain about to come down over our blueberry bushes.  But it’s nature doing its thing and it’s gorgeous and lush and the birds love us.

April Showers

Today’s rain is welcome.  Yesterday I spent hours potting herbs (parsley, oregano, lemon verbena, basil and more basil) and filling window boxes. As I make my morning tea, a movement outside my kitchen window makes me jump – newly planted red geraniums out of the corner of my eye appear as if someone is looking in at me. It will take some time to get accustomed to their presence.

Although recent sunny days have been lovely, I am glad  to stay inside, read papers and do indoor spring cleaning tasks. Every room in the house is filled with the scent of lilacs – the result of trimming almost 3 feet off the top of an overgrown bush. This was one of those jobs I have meant to do each year and never gotten to – until now.  The blossoms were out of reach of my nose so it was time. According to a Google of ‘Pruning lilacs’ one should wait until the flowers have finished blooming. But wanting their evocative fragrance in these rooms, we took the lobbers to the branches and now the shrub looks sad – all chopped up. Fingers crossed it hasn’t been traumatized too much and next year’s blooms will be glorious.

We’ve done a lot of that around here this year – hacking away at old growth, chopping butterfly bushes practically to the ground. What were awful looking stubs only a few weeks ago are sprouting green. It works. Of course, all summer we will have to look at the bald limbs of the lilac and trust we have done the right thing for the future. There are so many ways this applies to my life: in a mundane way, cleaning out closets, throwing out, giving away, making SPACE!  But in psychic ways too. I will try and examine thoughts and habits so long ingrained in my life they might just be stunting growth and try and be brave enough to make uncomfortable changes for a healthier future. A good exercise for the seasons.

How to Start

“Whatever the story is about, it is something that is of interest to human beings because it amplifies some aspect of what it means to be living.” I lifted this sentence off of a website for writers (were I more adept at this, I’d provide the link here – one day!) and simple as it is, I find it a helpful beacon as I swim around trying to re-start my book.

Beginnings: how can I hook you, reader? What is my story? Why did I write it? What do I want the reader to take away from it?  Why am I so stumped on these questions when they are so fundamental and I have hundreds of pages of ‘book’?Are the answers in what I have written already? Or are they still to be answered? My brilliant sister gently guides me with these questions. For weeks I have been juggling different parts of already written chapters — to start here? or here? cutting and pasting in the hope that the new combination will make my story sing.  But it doesn’t yet. Not yet.

What began as an exorcism of anger and grief became a hopeful testimony of love and determination that my daughter’s life be better than mine, and that my life, be better than before.  And it is.  I could leave it at that, but after working in the book business for more than a decade, I might as well shoot for those dusty shelves myself.  And perhaps one day my tale will serve as someone else’s beacon of light.

Slow Down Spring!

Forsythia is fading fast and daffodils are already shriveling. Last week’s days of summer temperatures seems to have fast forwarded us. I wanted to get into the weather car speeding us towards summer and put on the brakes.  Too fast!  The heat itself doesn’t bother me although I haven’t yet managed to do the seasonal clothes change thing (and I prefer this direction!) and so, spend such days, a little overheated. Much happier to be hot than cold, I never complain.  I feel like it slows me down to a more leisurely pace.

Still feeling behind in terms of the garden although I managed to plant some rainbow chard, kale, lettuce and peas last week.  The next morning, looked out the window to see a squirrel digging up the chard seeds – munching away as he looked around.  No wonder entire plantings from last year never even surfaced from the soil to be eaten by the groundhog.  Crazily, year after year, I plant again although I know this lumbering creature will climb the wall or dig a tunnel right into our little plot and devour what I plant.  Eyeing some seedlings at a garden store last week of red leaf lettuce and other beautiful leaves, I thought – a ready meal for the groundhog, and left them there.  I try and plant things he doesn’t want. Or just a lot of what he does so we get some too. We have onions and leeks and a big bag of lettuce seeds this year.  We will do battle again. And he’ll probably get the soybeans (love edamame!) before me, but I remain an optimist.

Day of Light

I  do not have the clarity that religion offers, but in my own way, discover spiritual moments, although – never in a church. Easter Sunday, we work out in the garden. R is tying up branches both fallen in recent storms and trimmed by us. Wearing gloves against the thorns, I prune the rambling rose bush and pull the dead wood out of the hydrangea plants. There is a woody vine that since last summer has laid claim to a stone wall.  I push my sheers beneath the dirt, snip out the roots, yank and cut. I know I did not go deep enough and suspect it will be back again within a few months when I get lazy and turn my attention to other parts of the garden.  But for now, it is enough.  Cleaning out the dead or undesirable branches and plants, clearing the way for new life.  Filling my lungs with scented spring air I am grateful for the day. That feels like a prayer to me.

The Importance of Lunch

The tiled walls of the PS 95 lunchroom magnified the roar of children’s voices. When the allotted eating time was up, we were herded out into the fenced-in tarmac.  The schoolyard. Venturing beyond the chain link fence was forbidden. The yard held no swings, slides, benches – only three basketball hoops without nets and in the opposite corner, fading lines for stickball games. A ‘thonk, thonk’ of Spaldings against the school’s brick walls punctuated the chorus of yelling children. Swarms of kids chased each other across the yard while others in small groups or alone, sat along the perimeter of the fence, using their metal lunch boxes for seats.  My friends and I hated recess and by 5th grade, our little group, too far away to go home for lunch, had schemed a daily escape.

Initially we ate in the laundry room of a nearby apartment building. Entering by the service door, we followed the sound of rushing water, down the labyrinthine hall to a steamy room with six washing machines and three dryers. We tossed our wooly coats on top of a humming dryer and climbed onto a machine or sat perched between laundry baskets on the lone bench.  Girls were not allowed to wear pants to school, so we’d carefully tuck our hems around our knees while devouring our peanut butter or bologna sandwiches.  There were three or four of us: usually Phyllis, Zeena, Denise and me. When weather permitted, we vied with the Yiddish-speaking seniors for benches in the stretch of green beside the reservoir. In fifth or sixth grade, Elise, a diminutive, strawberry blond with freckles like me, invited us to eat our brown bag lunches at her house.

She lived in one of the towering apartment buildings a block from school. On days when the wind blew fierce across the reservoir, the walk felt interminable as we chattered and laughed, clutching our coats tight.  We followed our friend into the warmth of her lobby and took the elevator up to her apartment.  No one was home at Elise’s house. Unlocking the door, she welcomed us into her quiet, sunny apartment, into the kitchen where we each had a chair at the table, like honored guests – no: like family.  To all of us, it felt like home.

The school bus ride from my apartment building at the far end of Van Cortlandt park to this neighborhood by the reservoir was the full length of a city bus line – starting a block from my building and ending near PS 95 – too great a distance to travel to hang out regularly with my school friends. Weekends, after-school and summers were spent with my friends-by- circumstance, kids from my block and apartment building. My school friends and I were friends by choice.  We were all  smart kids who liked to make each other laugh. I recall no memory of meanness between us.

Observing my daughter’s friendships through recent years, I am reminded of the cruelty that girls (including myself – memories of shame) are capable of and realize how sweet our little lunchtime group was.  And how generous Elise and her family were to let us descend upon their house each day.

I lost touch with these girls when I went off to a different junior high school and then moved out of state. Lacking the means of connectedness that our children have, my friends faded into memories that only now, over 40 years later, are coming back into focus. Although I am not usually one to knock on doors of the past, I did not hesitate to send Elise, our kind host, a message when I came across her profile on a PS 95 alumni page. There was a third name added to the name I knew, but I was sure it was my old friend.  Her Facebook page indicates she is a fan of my favorite off-beat public radio station, of Van Cortlandt park and that her political bent is left. Chances are, if I met her today, I would still want her for my friend.  I sent her a message and she answered within the day – excited to hear from me.  A few exchanged messages – short summaries of where we live, ages of kids, and we agreed to get together – to try and bridge those 40 + years since sharing lunch together, in person.  We’ll meet somewhere in between our suburban homes now far from the Bronx, to catch up on life.  I will insist on buying lunch.

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