Wake-Up

In the sleep stolen between the sound of my alarm and Tetley’s barking, I dreamt I was traveling somewhere in Europe.  The place is less important than the feeling conjured by the dream.

The weather was cool. I was moving on from a little pensione where I knew no-one, to another place and had little heart for it. What I wanted was to be home, to actually have such a place. Living without schedule or purpose beyond being somewhere and then only to go to yet another place – only an observer of other people’s lives – in both my dream and memory, I recall how exhausting and lonely this exercise often was.

On the road, it was home I longed for – a home I did not have.  Instead, I kept moving on, traveling to another exotic place hoping to find my place. That somewhere, I would discover a reason to stay.

From the recesses of my unconscious, I am reminded of these times and thus, to savor my present. These days are so busy with external demands,  I long for unscheduled, contemplative hours until the dream reminds me that what I desired so many years and miles ago is here: I am home.

October

Gusting winds whipped through the garden, with the same rhythmic power of the sea. Leaves swept inside-out and then back again, still clinging to branches, the violence of the movement sounding like waves crashing onto shore.  Laying still in the dark of early morning, I am reluctant to move, wishing I could remain in retreat and follow the wild-weather from the comfort of my bed. But up I get to join the fray.

The wind brought the rain — falling in lashing grey sheets throughout the day. Rivers of water filled the roads and traversing even the shortest distance from car-to-building was enough to get drenched. Still, it felt tropical – more summer than autumn. But that was yesterday. This morning, my street is filled with storm-flotsam: twigs, leaves, branches pooled by flood waters into a topographical map over the cracked tarmac.  The sky is vivid blue and the leaves seem to have changed into their autumn colors overnight.  A flock of birds settle noisily into the trees. I cannot make them out between the foliage, nor do I recognize their song – more like chatter – as if they are discussing what route to take. They are on their way somewhere – at least 30 of them. It feels cold and pulling my jacket close, I yawn and my breath forms a cloud.

The seasons were wrestling these past few days – but this morning we have a winner: autumn is here.

Living with Books

When I ride the train, the subway, walk on a beach – and see someone reading, I always want to know – what?  When people are photographed or interviewed on television in front of a bookcase, I try to make out what titles are on their shelves. Because I work in a bookstore? Maybe, but also because I am nosy – it is as if I’m sneaking a peek at who this person really is by checking out their books.

My own bookshelves are packed to capacity – including too many books I have yet to read. Will I ever? There are titles that I feel like I should read — a great example being a huge tome: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl E. Meyer and Shari Blair Brysac.  Autographed by these local authors and scholars – I do want to read it for a better understanding of this volatile region we have been so mired in – and so it stays and I think: one day. The same ‘should’ keeps From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman on my shelf for years.  I cannot let go of these books nor my good intention to read them but other books always jump the reading queue.

Then there are the books I may want for reference – that get yanked from the shelf about once a year or so – Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide by Goldberg and The Art Book – a book published by Phaidon door-stop sized book I picked up once at a tag sale. It’s a fast-food kind of look at the history of art.  I have more cherished art and photography books I also found on sale and could not resist – the most recent find being Andy Goldsworthy’s Passage – this remarkable sculptor’s poetic works are created out of nature – powerful works of time and space – some of stone but many others of ice, leaves, the tides and now, only a photograph remains.  It sits on a table in my living room and I have looked at it maybe once but I am so glad it is there.

I have the powerful photography books by my friend Ron Haviv – his important documentation of wars including Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal – the war I knew. My Balkan titles can take up their own shelf and I have read them all, hungering to understand the madness that was my life for four years.  My collection began back in 1992 with Rebecca West’s classic Black Lamb, Grey Falcon and Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia. Later on, I added David Rieff’s Slaughterhouse, Peter Maass’s Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War. And perhaps the one most poignant for me, My War Gone By, I Miss it So by Anthony Lloyd – a powerful memoir of addiction to war and to drugs.  

The addiction self-help books have mostly been purged – in the hopes that the problem is also gone out of my life, I have passed them on to others who might find them useful.  But I have kept the memoirs – Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, Mary Karr’s Lit.

Over the years I have amassed a collection of signed titles that are impossible to part with – I see them as a legacy for my daughter. J. K. Rowling – the second Harry Potter title signed at an event at the store early on in her success.  Still, it was like hosting a rock star but she was lovely, signing well over a thousand books and looking every child in the eye and sharing a chat while signing with her arm in a brace.  My inscribed copies of Angela’s Ashes and Teacher Man will always have a revered place on my shelf with warm memories of my encounters with Frank McCourt.

There are books I can and should cull: novels I have read and never will again. Outdated travel guides – to Bali, Martha’s Vineyard (I have not been since high school), the Florida Keys (I have never been) parenting guides, cookbooks I never open – but as my eye scans the dusty spines, I think of a reason why I want each one to stay – a memory, the possibility I might one day need to check on the correct Serbo-Croatian word or refer to that book The Brain. I won’t though — the internet is too easy.  At least, I will dust them.

Next Year May Be Better (The Garden)

A rare Saturday with nothing planned. Much to do, but nothing required. The ‘to-do’ is catch-up cleaning, inside and out.  The garden looks abandoned – petunias dried up in the window boxes, basil plants going to seed, morning glories strangling scraggly rose bushes and in the vegetable garden, pokeberry and crabgrass reign. A few perfect, little heirloom tomatoes are rallying on an almost-leaf-less plant, and I hurry to rescue them before the birds and squirrels attack. And jalapenos – I can’t make salsa fast enough and they wrinkle on the kitchen counter. But the garden is at the end for the year.

As the days finally cool down, I plan on how to prepare it for winter.  Rather than yank up all the crabgrass, I’ll probably cover it with newspapers, then layer leaves, compost, dirt in ‘lasagna’ garden fashion. By spring, it should be rich earth, ready for planting. Although it was a bad year, I am planning for next. An optimist – next year may be better and, in any case, I will try.

Fleeting Summer

These days the seasons seem to change back-and-forth between autumn and summer – almost daily.  This morning, the sky thick with clouds, I dug a sweatshirt out of the closet to ward against the chill, while yesterday was hot enough to kayak.  We rode wide heaving waves out just beyond the first island and then, with our paddles out of the water, lolled luxuriously in the heat of the sun while the current and tides carried us back to shore. Climbing out of the boat, as relaxed and mellow as if I’d just had a massage, I wondered if this would be our last day a-float for the season.  There may be the sweet Indian Summer day or two, but with less daylight, it’s tricky to find the time to get out on the water.

So yesterday, I studied the horizon, the school of tiny fish leaping out of the water in a flash of silver, and each salty, deep breath I took in, came out as a sigh, the melancholy that comes with the end of something wonderful.  A sense of this being the end of things makes everything more vivid – our mind’s way, perhaps, of preserving memories.  At least, this is what I do: psychically save scenes of beauty and peace to conjure up when I need them – in the dentist’s chair, for example.  When the metal scraping in my mouth seems unbearable, I transport myself back to the heat of seashells as I lay on the beach of an island on the Sound with only the plaintive sound of seagulls and rhythmic waves around me.

A Book to Read

I finished reading Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell two days ago and like a good book will, thoughts of it linger in my consciousness. Yesterday, as I walked by a stack of them in the bookstore, a woman about my age browsed nearby.

“This is wonderful.” I held the book up.

“Hmm. I thought it sounded depressing,” she answered.

I paused, surprised. Depressing. Yes, of course a book about the loss of your best-friend might sound like a downer.  Why was I surprised at her reaction?

“Oh, no,” I said. “Poignant, yes – but very beautiful – not depressing.” I wonder if she picked it up after I left.

Earlier in the day, a woman looking for a new parenting book called Little Girls Can Be Mean and I agreed how puzzling it is that girls are indeed, so often mean to each other -much more so than little boys.  Yet later in life, women’s friendships are so rich and loving – more than what most men get to experience. Boyfriends may come and go but our girlfriends remain anchors and our loyalty, fierce. Years have sometimes passed without contact with some friends but when we reconnected, it was as if no time or space ever separated us. My friends are now tightly woven into my life. During bitter times, they held me together, letting me cry, reminding me to laugh.

One dear one is as far away as Tasmania and another is  across the street.  Most precious of all is the friendship with my sister, Anne. We have the bonus connection of genetic understanding as additional cement. We get each other immediately and on every level. This is what Caldwell and Knapp had.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a loving glimpse into Gail Caldwell’s enviable relationship with fellow writer and dog-lover, Caroline Knapp (Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two)  who died while still in her forties, of cancer.  This gem of a book was borne out of Caldwell’s loss. Affecting, (I made the mistake of reading the last chapter during a lunch break at work) but not depressing.

I am fascinated by grief – or maybe not really grief itself, but rather, how us humans process profound sadness, the inevitable and dread part of the emotional spectrum of life. Gail Caldwell opens a door to this dark room and amidst the shadows of sadness you feel grateful for the experience – all of it: the pain, the love, life.

Remembering Life in a War

Washing potatoes for tonight’s meal, I left the tap open, luxuriating in the flow of water until flashing-back to my life during the war in Bosnia and Croatia. Faucets were always dry and water was eked out for cooking, drinking and personal hygiene.  As a UN staff member, my hardship was only temporary since I was able to cross checkpoints and borders for a hot bath and cappuccino. Unlike the thousands trapped by the insane war, I could leave.

On this late-summer evening, I imagine a woman somewhere in Sarajevo, also standing by her sink and wonder how often she thinks of those days of dry taps, dark nights and fear? For me, these moments are only occasional, after all, it wasn’t my embattled land. Yet for a few years, it was a war I lived in and was almost addicted to. I wonder what it’s like there, more than a decade later? I want to sit in my imagined woman’s kitchen, and hear her tale of recovery.  Will it be like my own? I know something of processing pain and losses on a personal level – perhaps that is the only way one does.  But war on one’s own street, neighborhood, country certainly widens the net of tragedy.

One day, I would like to return to Knin, Vukovar, to Sarajevo, and share a coffee, a glass of wine with my sisters, to listen to their stories.  Meanwhile, I will try better to remember the preciousness of washing and cooking my food, taking a shower, cleaning clothes and having a light to read by.

Summer Eating

Some days, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what to make for dinner. I may start first thing in the morning or while I am making a salad or sandwich to take to work. I assess what’s in the refrigerator and imagine turning my on-hand ingredients into a meal everyone will love. By 3 pm, I’m planning in earnest, deciding if I need to stop on the way home to pick something up. From Trader Joe’s it might be cheese (a great selection and reasonably priced) or from Whole Foods – a whole-wheat lavash or, around the corner from us, Stew Leonard’s for a good piece of meat or chicken.

From June through October, the menu is determined by what what I pick up on Wednesday in my CSA share.  If there’s corn in the box, I’ll boil water so we can eat it right away since the sooner corn is eaten after picking, the more delicious it is. A bounty of torpedo onions over the past couple of weeks became French Onion soup on one of last week’s rainy, cool days by caramelizing thinly sliced onions for close to an hour with a dash of some dry booze and some beef stock. I threw a chunk of baguette into each bowl (SoNo Bakery – gorgeous small-batch bread) grated and melted jarlsberg on top. Yum.

Last week, our meals were particularly tomato and egg-centric.  Our CSA box has been heavy with luscious tomatoes and we took care of our neighbors’ 7 chickens.  Every afternoon, we walked down to their yard and pulled open the coop door to release the clucking mass of feathers so they could peck the grass while we raked their pen, gave them more food and were rewarded with an average of 5 exquisite little eggs a day. (much more fun than taking care of a cat!)

An omelette filled with sauteed shallots and swiss chard one night, scrambled eggs with black beans, jalapeno and corn folded into a lavash, both got smothered with fresh salsa. With my handy little chopping gadget, it takes only moments to turn a tomato, a jalapeno from my own garden, cilantro, half an onion and a squeeze of lime juice, into a tangy sauce.

Today:  green beans, very bitter arugala, handful of potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, basil and those beautiful little eggs… fritata? My favorite food sites are always full of inspiration: http://www.101cookbooks.com/, http://markbittman.com/, http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednesday_chef/ and http://www.breakawaycook.com/blog/

Beyond Noise

From where I sit at the table by the window, lit by a slant of morning sun, the hum of the highway sounds louder than usual. Most of the time, the traffic is white noise, a whooshing punctuated by the louder roars of trucks, motorcycles. There are few places in Norwalk to escape the sound of automobiles. On the other side of town, the Meritt Parkway is another artery of noise. And in-between these two major roadways is the Post Road – a constant shifting gears as cars and buses crawl along between stop lights.

The best chance to escape is on the Long Island Sound, early in the morning or in the evening, and better on a weekday.  But even out on the water, there is rarely silence. Motor boats speed by, sending heaving waves into our boat. But worst is the hysterical motor-grinding of jet-skis around and around.  And of course, there are always airplanes, although the drone is so distant and quickly gone, they are easy to ignore.

Usually, I try not focus on man-made noises, instead tuning-in to sounds like summer insects. The volume of the Cicadas seems to change as the temperature does and at night, there is a different chorus of blaring bugs.  I notice the birds: the soft-drumming of a Downy Woodpecker on the stump of elm, the chirps of the Cardinal family, the weird, squawking Parrots (yes, Parrots!) swooping through to eye our trees. I let the dog out to bark at them, hoping to discourage nest-building intentions. Out by the butterfly bush, bees vibrate by and dragon-flys so close, I hear the extraordinary flutter of their wings.

Of course, I prefer these sounds of nature to the cacophony of man so try to cultivate a selective awareness.  There’s the key: of course my state-of- being affects my perceptions, and this week, I have been tightly wired and not particularly ‘conscious’. Triggered perhaps, by anticipating my daughter’s return from England and the always stressful trip to the airport to retrieve her.  She is home now, safe and sleeping upstairs, but the discombobulated feeling remains. Even the usually unobtrusive soundtrack of my daily life unsettles me.  After days of being irritated by everything around me, I admit to being the source of my own discomfort. I suspect it is because I have not been writing nor doing yoga – my anchors to peace.

Less than an hour ago, my focus was on what seemed the maddening noise of the highway. As my attention shifted, it was the birds I heard, the neighbor calling to her children, my fingers tapping on this keyboard, and finally, as I reel myself in closer to my elusive center, I find silence.

Tetley

Last night, we lost our dog.  It was almost dark when Tetley slipped out the door past me as we returned from a sunset-kayak.  I imagined him running out to greet Rob who was in the driveway pulling the boat off the car. A few minutes later, I was in the kitchen making dinner and hearing Rob come in the front door, called to him to please get Tetley back inside.  Usually, it only takes the sound of cutlery to bring Tetley dashing into the kitchen eager for a handout, so I was surprised he had yet to make an appearance.

Rob whistled and called into the shadowy yard and across to the neighbors’ house. His Maltese girlfriend lives there and her owners often grill dinner outside, the smokey meat smells irresistible to him.  No neighbors and no Tetley.  Wild animals venture out at this hour – particularly skunks. It’s been awhile since he’s tangled with one but I wanted it to be longer still.  I abandoned our dinner of tomatoes and arugala and joined Rob outside in calling and whistling, walking along the densely wooded section.  Earlier in the afternoon, Tetley dashed over through the neighbor’s yard towards those woods before I halted him with a stern command to come back.  He’s a good dog and he did – but perhaps, he’d remembered his earlier aborted adventure and snuck away to continue it.

I walked slowly along the overgrown stretch, calling and whistling, aiming my flashlight into the leaves. Another neighbor, out on his porch for a smoke, warned me about the family of raccoons that venture out from the wood every night. He joined me in calling “Tetley!” at the top of our lungs.  I heard his bark, just twice – it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in there. At least he was alive.

In over a decade of living here, I never ventured into this stretch of overgrown wood backing onto about 6 houses on the neighboring street but I was going in tonight. I hurried home and changed into jeans, sweatshirt, rubber boots and garden gloves (poison ivy) and climbed up over the rocks into those woods I have peered into or ignored so many thousands of times over the years. Rob lit the way for me as I ducked under branches, shuffled through the crackling leaves and branches, all the while, calling to Tetley and begging him to bark again.  We imagined him stuck in a hole. ‘Ratter’ that he is, he often pursues creatures between rocks and into their dens. Was he stuck?  I heard a bark again.  Strong at least but I couldn’t figure out from where.  Why wasn’t he coming to us?

Rob drove around the block, whistling and calling.  I returned home and stood by the end of our property staring into the dark, willing him to bark again, staring hard into the shadows as if he might appear, tail wagging, ears alert.  How we love this dog!  And to make matters worse, M’s away in England until Tuesday.  What if we never find him? Enough with dear ones disappearing out of her life. I cannot imagine having to deliver such news to her again.

I was angry when my late husband came home with this tiny Cairn Terrier hidden in his big coat.  It was an evening close to Christmas and I sat reading in bed and my daughter lay sprawled at the foot of it, watching television.  He came into the room grinning as he flashed open his big woolen coat to reveal to me, a scruffy puppy.  Furious, I motioned to him to follow me downstairs, whispering to him as we left the room, “I said I didn’t want a dog!”  We had fostered a huge Golden Lab who terrorized our cat and although love-able, at one point, dragged M across the yard as she held onto the leash. We’d also attempted to adopt a Golden Retriever who had too many health problems for my patience or pocket book.  We were already struggling financially and emotionally with N’s addiction and I knew that a dog would just be one more thing for me to care of.

“All right. I’ll take him back,” he said, pressing the little guy to his chest. I thought: M will find out how I rejected the puppy and I’ll forever be the witch.  He was cute. And at least he was small.  In spite of myself, I touched him and that was it – I knew he was ours.  I followed N back upstairs as he announced to M he had a surprise for her and delivered little Tetley into her arms and she burst into tears of happiness.

Tetley is almost eight years old now and I cannot imagine my life with out him. None of us can.  He is Rob’s mascot, taking him with him whenever he can, even to work, tucked under his arm and ready to greet everyone with a lick and a wag.

Almost ten o’clock and my stomach in knots. Rob made a run to the store to buy bacon, sure the smell would entice Tetley to give up his pursuit of rodents or climb out of any hole, no matter how deep.  Out on our back deck, I wept, calling, whistling, straining to hear through the cacophony of insects for another bark. Rob opened the windows and turned on the fan in hopes of driving the smell of cooking meat outside.  I took his leash – another thing that inspires joy in him – and decided to walk around the block clicking it and calling.   He’d been gone for hours.

Tetley is not a wanderer, never venturing much beyond the border of the hedge that surrounds the yard.  I peered into the darkness of the woody yard of every house. Could he have gotten into and trapped in someone’s house or shed?  Why wouldn’t he bark? Rounding the corner onto the busy street, my heart in my throat, I searched the road. Another neighbor walking his black mutt came towards me and when I asked him if he’d seen Tetley he said, “Dante will find him.” and he turned to walk with me in the direction that I’d heard Tetley’s barks, now, too many hours ago.

We walked past our hedge and our neighbor’s manicured lawn towards the woods and heard Tetley’s bark strong and constant now.  Ecstatic, I ran up the steps into my neighbors’ yard towards the corner bordering the woods where their compost bin sits, I peered in and on top of a bed of corn husks, was Tetley!

This morning, our life feels sweet, the already beautiful day, even more so.  Last night’s reminder of how quickly and completely our lives can change when love gets lost, makes us grateful for our perfect present.

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