Contemplating Monday

Given my druthers and some decent lottery winnings, I’d probably not work a job. I know I’ve said that before, but there, I’ve said it again. I think about this kind of thing as this gorgeous autumn Sunday afternoon turns into twilight and next light will bring us to Monday. Back to work. There seems to be an atmospheric shift in the neighborhood. Kids in a little earlier, the handyman down the street cleaning out his truck, kitchen lights on and I can see the tops of peoples heads. Sunday dinners? Tomorrow’s lunches?

Well, what if I didn’t have to go? What if I had so much bloody dough I could pay for my own insurance and pay my bills forever without worry? Would I spend all my days like I did today? Procrastinating? Not really motivated to do a damn thing?

For a start, I slept a little later than usual. Most weekend mornings, if I don’t have to work, I’ll get up around 7:30 or so and sit myself here and write for a few hours. Not this morning: I hit snooze and kept doing just that. After walking the dog, I sat in front of this screen and sorted through emails I’d been ignoring. I looked at Facebook for longer than I should have. When I finally made it over to Word Press to write a post, I instead trolled other people’s blogs. Later, I did house stuff – laundry and dishes taking a break to read the newspaper in the spectacular autumn sunlight. Lovely. I walked Tetley again, a nice long stroll. Slowly. Not even fast enough to get any cardio benefit. 

Would I while away my days like this if every day? Would I start to watch daytime television? (naa)

Anyway, I don’t  dread the thought of returning to work. I have no pit-of-my stomach ache about Monday. After all, I work with books and people who also love books and write books and buy books. The news that I didn’t win last night’s Powerball did not break my heart. I like my life fine. Certainly, days off are gifts – and it’s okay to sometimes fritter them away like I did today (I think it’s called relaxing). But the sweetness of that time is due to the fact that they are outnumbered by days of work. If every day were my own without expectations, demands – structure, I’d probably get a little fat and a little lonely. 

As the light of this Sunday fades, my structureless bliss passes and my little inner efficiency engine starts to kick on. I start to plan tomorrow and the rest of the week. I have to work late on Wednesday and there’s an event on Saturday, and ugh, we’ve already put out Christmas cards. But all of it’s okay. Besides, I bought 2 lottery tickets yesterday. The drawing for that second one is on Tuesday, so there’s still a chance… 

The Times and Time (to Read)

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I only read the Saturday and Sunday edition of the New York Times – it’s all I can manage. Delivered early in the mornings to my driveway, folded neatly in a long blue bag, this is one of my favorite treats of the week. Getting it over two days gives me a head-start on what can seem a mountain of newsprint. I start by pulling out all the adverts along with the Sports and Auto sections since I almost never read anything in either. I take at least a brief look at every article in the day’s news, not reading every single article, but at least getting the gist. It’s important to me to have at least a good sense of what’s going on in the world.

The Book Review gets a once-over to see what’s being reviewed before I set it aside for a thorough read later. I like to know what customers will be looking for in the store this week and if any of the books I’m reading made it. I keep eyeing the Donna Tartt Advanced Reader Copy that’s in our freebie stack in the break room. I always pick her stuff up with curiosity but have yet to feel compelled to read any – always a bit too weird for my taste. Although today’s Review  makes her latest more intriguing, I see that Stephen King reviews it, affirming for me that it’s probably not my thing. I mean, there’s only so much time…

Back to the newspaper: of course I read all the fun stuff, Arts and Leisure – all the wonderful goings-on in the city I don’t go to. Same with the Travel Section, because with a kid in college ($) I have to be (and kind of am) content to get my travel thrills vicariously. I  am particularly fond of pieces where the writing about the food in a place is also terrific – a double pleasure. Unless there’s an article I find compelling, I’ll save the magazine section for later in the week or to read in bed along with the Book Review. I try and get through the Week in Review, reading my favorite columnists’ pieces. Now that they’ve ‘themed’ this section – it’s easier for me to skip through quickly if I’m not compelled by the week’s topic.2013-10-13 11.33.35

Reading the New York Times requires a lot of time. And meanwhile, my books (never mind my own writing, the laundry, the garden and my man) call to me. I have 3 going now. My Life in France by Julia Child is the book of choice in the One Town, One Book where the bookstore is located and I hope to come up with some charming way for us to participate. The book is delightful – just like Julia. What a joyful woman she was.

Clean by David Sheff tends to fall to the bottom of my current reads – where years ago, I would have felt an urgency for this important and helpful book, now I read it with more detachment. While still moved, since I am no longer dealing with an emergency of my own, it can wait. I still want to know and understand the insanity that destroyed my husband so I suspect that although I’ve borrowed this from work, I will probably end up buying it. Sheff writes beautifully about living and coping with your loved one’s addiction.

Night Film by Marish Pessl, author is a fat one – dubbed a literary thriller. Not usually my kind of thing as I’ve already noted – so I contradict myself here – especially as it’s compared to a Stephen King thriller. I picked this up because I am interested when publishers really get behind a book like they did this. So far, it hasn’t really taken off as I think they hoped – but who knows with these things. When it comes to choosing from my current 3 in-progress reads, this is the one I go for first. It’s entertaining, I want to know what happens next. There’s a racing pulse to the story that keeps it moving. My gripe about the book is that every page has an average of 8-10 italicized words. Every page. Throughout the book. I’m reading the ARC so I thought, surely this nonsense will be edited out. It feels so amateurish and irritating. Nope. This strange tic is still there. (you get the idea) Am I missing something? What’s the point? But otherwise, I’m enjoying the story narrated by a feckless journalist who, with two sidekicks he picks up along the way, becomes obsessed with finding answers about the death of the daughter of a mysterious director of dark, horror films. It includes ‘documentation’ – photos and news clippings that are kind of nice side-note. We’re talking New York Post here, not New York Times, okay?

Meanwhile, intriguing new books arrive in the store daily, enticing me even as the older ones I keep meaning to read, beckon. How will I ever get to them? I marvel at my friend Nina Sankovitch‘s discipline in reading a book a day and writing about it (same day!) for a year as she recounted in her beautiful memoir, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. Some tips: don’t turn on the television, and read everywhere.

Autumn Leaves

Fading Chlorophyl leaf

On my recent walks down the street with Tetley, these leaching-chlorophyl leaves have been catching my eye. There’s something poignant about the luminous, x-ray quality to them, certainly an image of fading life. The ribs of the leaf are evocative of skeletons and veins, don’t you think?

Battered leaf And then there’s this one, ravaged by chomping insects, weather, time.  I find them beautiful – for me, they capture the way Summer’s has slipped away this year, slowly blurring like a watercolor into Fall. Recent weeks of high temperatures, crystalline skies, exquisitely drawing out the sweetness of last days.

Summer remains my preferred season and I am sad to see it go. I like the heat, the extra hours of light, the generally slower pace. Of course Autumn brings wonderful gifts. It’s time to start transitioning into warmer garb, closing windows, stiff from being in the open position for months. The crazy chorus of night insects has diminished to only a few, forlornly calling from the dark hedges. Darker earlier these days – and that’s even before our biannual messing around with clocks.

While I’m loathe to put on socks again, or find gloves that match, I’ll welcome fires in the fireplace, the deliciousness of being inside after the exhilaration of a walk in the bracing cold. I’ll appreciate the new views of the sky as the leaves hit the ground, easier to spot my favorite falcons that hunt in the neighborhood.

Red Leaf

On the street where I walk Tetley, at least for now, colors seem to just be leaking, fading away. But in my yard there is a Maple going out in expected glory. In the Camellia plant still perched outside, I find Maple leaves snagged in the branches, flashes of red. There are different exits to the end.

Roads Not Taken – Yet

2013-09-28 14.28.53Every college campus should have a spot like this. A path to ponder, a place to dream. To walk towards the horizon with nothing but sky ahead. No limits. Anything is possible. The world is yours. All that.

As a college student, I often came to this very hill, a short distance from my dormitory. Decades and a lifetime of adventures later, I visit my freshman daughter here. And this road in the clouds still evokes the questions: Where to? What next?

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We came to look at the cows. R loves cows.

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Tetley remained ambivalent. Not even a bark.

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I know, I just wrote here about my new-found attraction to the city as a place to grow old – but hey, it’s not time for that yet. Back home I searched the real estate sites to look at houses and land in that part of the state. There’s  still relatively inexpensive places to be had. With space for cows.

Plans for Urban Aging

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Just when I figured out I’d prefer to be old in NYC than in the suburbs, I read this article: Broadway actress Elaine Stritch moved to a suburb of Detroit. A pretty shocking decision for such a NYC icon – to leave her longtime life full of Broadway and nightclubs, pretty clearly, to die.  I get it — her family is there. But yikes.

The way I see it, there are worse fates than to be an oldster shuffling across the avenue long after the light has changed. (what’s with that timing, NY?) In the no-longer very distant future, I can envision returning to live in noisy, nasty New York. Of course, as my dear sister reminds me, there is plenty of peace to be had there. I can see myself  in Riverside Park, sitting on a bench overlooking the Hudson River – a mere stone’s throw from the heaving hordes on Broadway. Maybe I’ll even feed the very squirrels I now have no affection for. I might become one of those old ladies I used to worry about.

Perhaps, on a good day, I’d make the hike or take a bus or hop (okay: creep) onto the subway to catch a concert at Lincoln Center or an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum.  Certainly any of this sounds better than withering away on a couch hidden behind  doors in suburbia. Much better to be around teeming life – the lovely and less so buzz of humanity always on – than in front of a screen all day.

This change in thinking is notable because, although I was born and spent most of my childhood as a city kid, I  always wanted to get away from it. I didn’t like the crowds, the noise, the dirt. I longed for country life with space, woods, a garden.  And I do love all that – it’s my alternate fantasy in fact. But I wonder about my future ability to maintain said garden, house, car, etc.. It all takes money and so much work — work that gets harder to do as the bones grow brittle.

And most importantly, you need to drive. Where I live now there is no neighborhood coffee shop to hobble over to meet friends to discuss politics, art and okay – the grandkids. I have to drive to get anywhere here – and this in a relatively urban suburb. It seems to me, unless your lucky or overlooked, eventually your right to drive will be taken away.  And with that, you lose your power, your independence. Reliant on others to get out into the world, it’s harder to stay interested in it. What’s the point? And from there, it’s all downhill. That’s what I’ve seen.

In America, the elderly get farmed out to ‘places’  with other geezers, maybe to Florida where they have compounds of fellow geezers. In other countries I have lived in like Japan, Italy, former Yugoslav countries, old folks are included in life.  Generations live together in one house or nearby. Evenings on any square in Europe, all ages gather to drink coffee and wine, little kids run around, grandparents watch. On the market streets in Japan you’ll see all ages doing the daily shopping, together. Everyone’s part of the whole. Families, communities. You can still see that in some neighborhoods in NYC.

My daughter sweetly envisions R and I living in the little place she’ll have next to her own big house full of kids. Well, okay.  But meanwhile, there’s this lovely brewing plan that as the years catch up to us, we will move to Manhattan where we can be artsy old folk. And lucky me, unlike Elaine Stritch, that’s exactly where my family is. (It’ll be fun, A!)

Lost and Found in the Long Island Sound

DSC_1138Yesterday, strong winds curbed our kayaking ambition. Rather than venture all the way out to one of the islands, we floated out only as far as the sandbar. A 10 minute paddle away and marked by sea grass that disappears completely at high tide, this spot is where we go for short trips when we want to get on the water, content to be jostled about. At low tide a nice little beach is exposed and we can park the boat up on the sand. We wade through the water, watch the birds, the clouds, the waves, the shimmer of light and shadow on the water, dig our toes beneath the sand. We don’t talk much, absorbing the bliss.

Yesterday, overwhelmed by the beauty I said, “There’s something magical about this little spot, isn’t there?” It feels a bit like that patch is ours.

2012-06-06 07.02.38The tide was heading out it was still too high – no parking the kayak yet – but R hopped out into the water to stretch his legs and let the current swirl around his knees as I paddled over to the grasses, the plastic boat heaving but held steady by the Moses-reeds. Peaceful. Finally, I floated back to R and we agreed to head back. With the kayak and my gaze pointed towards shore, I felt R climb in and pushed my paddle into the water.

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“Wait. We have to go back,” R said. “I had the car key in my pocket and it must have fallen out. We have to look for it.”

Silently, I guffawed. The Long Island Sound still around our calves even at the most shallow spot around us.  We’re supposed to look for a key in the water? Certainly a case for lost causes, I thought. Were I a believer I’d be praying to Saint Jude. In any case, I hopped out of the boat and began scanning the rippling water, grateful that these days, it’s clean enough to easily see the bottom.

“It’s my only key. I only have this one left,” R said philosophically with a smile, not ready to get despondent yet.

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At least the tide was going out and not in — the sandbar would soon be exposed — instead of disappearing even more underwater with an incoming tide. Still, this was no gentle retreat. The water billowed around us, the sandbank churning broken clam shells, stones, mussel shells with each new wave. Creating, I thought, new layers for us to dig through. I flashed on the rest of our afternoon sifting through our beloved sandbar, surrounded by piles of wet sand. Or maybe we could enlist some guy with a metal detector to lend us a hand. We’d have to kayak him out with that crazy apparatus to save the day. Maybe.

Zeroing in on a dark object, I plunged my hand into the water hoping this might be the rubber end of the car key. Mussel shells look a lot like car keys in a foot of water. I took off my sunglasses hoping to see a little better. A few minutes later, a flash of what might be metal was the inside of a piece of oyster shell.

Impossible. No way we could find R’s single key in all of this churning water and shifting sand. I thought again of lost causes, of Saints, of prayer – something I don’t do much, vague as I am in belief. Yet I have a sense of not really ever being alone, of being watched over. Mostly, by those that have loved me. I do believe in love and think it impossible that love can just disappear, poof! – be gone.  Sometimes, I’ll have a silent chat. And yesterday, while poking around for a key in a sandbar, I did just that. Maybe that’s a prayer. And maybe it’s just a coincidence, or perhaps just luck — but in all that water swirling around on our magic sandbar, I found the key.

Really.

 

A Seamus Heaney Memory

Seamus Heaney NYTs photoI once bought Seamus Heaney a drink.

It was near the end of my shift and I was waiting for drinks I’d ordered, my cocktail tray at the ready. The odd name of the restaurant, “One Potato Two Potato” was annoyingly embroidered across the chest of the butcher apron I wore over black shirt and pants. It was not the worst waitressing get-up I’d ever worn and the pockets were perfect for order pads, pens and tips. Tips at this pub-style restaurant on Harvard Square helped pay for the apartment I shared with my sister a few blocks away. I was in-between things in my life, having just landed in Boston after a 4 month solo jaunt through Europe. I was still pining after Gerry Clancy who I’d met early in my travels, on my first day in Limerick. Thus, my brogue-alert was triggered by the man with a tweedy jacket and shock of messy, slightly greying hair at the bar, when he placed his order in a fine Irish accent.

“John, I want to buy that man’s drink,” I quietly said to the owner. I recognized the poet Seamus Heaney.

With Harvard right across the street, quite a few writers frequented this pub-style restaurant. One Potato Two Potato had unexceptional food but a long, wooden bar and unpretentious atmosphere. John Updike was a regular, usually sitting at a deuce, his back to the window. Once, he hurried back in after leaving, having forgotten his cap. He smiled and thanked me when I handed it to him but he seemed a shy guy, preferring not to be recognized or engaged.

On the other hand, Seamus Heaney seemed delighted by my offer and asked me to join him so he could buy me a drink in return. After my shift, I hung up my apron and climbed onto the bar stool next to him. What did young me talk about with Seamus Heaney? I can’t remember. I suspect my memory falters because he was a charming gentleman who asked questions. And so I talked. Perhaps I told him about my dysfunctional Irish family and the strange sad tale of my father’s journey back and forth as a baby and child.  Did I tell him about my obsession with Gerry Clancy and the days spent mostly drunk at a thatched cottage in Clare? I cringe now to think. My recollection is vague but sweet of Seamus Heaney attentively listening to my searching, blathering, waitress-self, as if I were fascinating. Slainte, Seamus Heaney.

Widening the Circle of Love

neighborhood“I don’t really know what I feel…” my daughter said the night before leaving for freshman year at college. I understood. Everything was shifting. We were both worried that our center would not hold. It will.

We anticipated dissolving into sobs when the moment came to say goodbye. We didn’t. Our eyes got puffy but barely a tear was shed. I reckon that’s because we each had a friend with us to sweetly cushion the blow of our separation.  (we also let go of each other just in time – both of us sensing that if we hugged a moment longer we’d be in trouble.) Beside Molly was with Halle, her pal since elementary school and now also a freshman at this school. With me, Chris, sweet Chris who woke at the crack of dawn, packed her car with Molly’s stuff and drove me to deliver my kid to college with me.

Chris and I share important history. I ran with Molly to her house to spare my daughter seeing her father in death. Molly calls Chris her ‘second mother’.  She is such a key part of our lives, it felt right she be with us for this momentous event – and she insisted on driving. My loving, good-natured, cheerful friend, lightened the mood throughout the day. By myself I suspect I would have bawled on those country roads home. 

I think of Molly in her room, in her new life. Between the excitement and newness, she is probably missing her routines and the comforts of old friends – the posse of girls from high school. She is lucky to have Halle and others there with her and soon her circle of friends will widen even more. The number of people who ‘get’ her, who love her, who will laugh and cry, share old and new secrets with, friends who will see her through whatever ups and downs come her way – love, heartbreak, love again – will grow. Some, maybe many, of these friends will last and enrich her for a lifetime. Maybe even, one day, they will drive her to drop off her kid at college.

And meanwhile, I’m here with R and Tetley. Her ‘second mother’ Chris and family will be just across the street and all our other pals and loving neighbors too. We’re here. We’re Home.

City Kid Memories

Our apartment was the top left.
Our apartment Building

Growing up in the Bronx, when I wanted to go outside to play I yelled “I’m goin’ down!” not “out”. Exiting apartment 7D, I’d walk down the windowless hallway to the elevator, or more likely, yank open the heavy door to the stairwell and leap down (step on first two steps, jump the rest) 7 flights of stairs. Sometimes I stopped at the 2nd floor to ring Barbara’s doorbell – if she wasn’t already waiting out on the stoop. We’d sit on those cement steps for hours, taking turns at hopscotch – or maybe we’d roller skate up and down the bumpy stretch of Broadway sidewalk that constituted our block. If Barbara’s mother, Mrs. Bullard, wasn’t at her usual perch, her elbows propped on a pillow as she looked out at the street, we might dash across the 4 lanes of traffic to go play in VanCortlandt park. This instead of walking down to the light at the cross walk – that would have taken 2 more minutes.

VanCortlandt park is now a gorgeous stretch of woods and fields, streams and even a horse barn. Back in the late 1960s, the stretch across from our apartment building was mostly shabby, sad grass ruined by dog shit and we still rarely ventured beyond that one field. Especially after the stocky guy with the red goatee crashed through the branches to lift Marjorie out of the tree she was climbing in. Puzzled, I stood watching him until I realized he was trying to get her pants off. Feeling a weird detachment, I ran out beyond the tree line yelling for help although there was no one but a distant dog walker. Seconds passed before Marjorie ran out after me having successfully squirmed out of his arms. We didn’t speak as she zipped up her pants. I held my breath so I wouldn’t laugh, feeling crazy – why did I want to laugh? I didn’t tell my parents and I bet she didn’t tell her’s either. Unaccounted for shame of good Catholic girls. We stayed out of the woods from then on, unless there was a gang of us. Marjorie and I were probably 10 at the time.

I didn’t intend to write about this creepy childhood, urban episode. Funny how memory works.

I know - just a lone sparrow - the others were camera-shy.
I know – just a lone sparrow – the others were camera-shy – and I need to wash the screen.

No, this morning, as I listen to mad-chirping at my window and watch the birds surrounding the feeder that hangs inches from where I sit, I remember myself as an almost-teen, raiding the nature shelves of the Riverdale Library. Almost weekly, I’d come away with another stack of books on identifying birds, tracking animals, living out in the wild. I loved books by naturalists – or simply observers of nature. May Sarton was a favorite – a poet in New Hampshire who wrote about the seasons and solitude and kept journals like I always did, full of observation and reflection.  And I thought, that this was precisely the life I wanted: to be in a place where I could write and watch the birds, maybe the deer and other creatures who wandered out of the surrounding wood, to drink from the stream I also imagined as mine.  A city kid, I wanted to live in the country, maybe even live off the land.

Dandelion fascination even at this age...
Dandelion fascination even at this age…

Some summers, my parents who were teachers and had summer off too, would rent a house in Vermont where I got to live out my fantasy for a few weeks. Eventually they bought a getaway in the Hudson Valley that we’d go up to on weekends. Behind that house were woods with an old trail I used to wander up feeling safe even by myself, mesmerized by the silence that wasn’t really silence, enchanted. Listening, watching, hoping the Chickadee’s might land on me if I stayed still long enough. In those woods, I discovered a way to a peaceful place -physically and spiritually.

I imagined then, disappearing into the wild and staying there. My copy of Euell Gibbons Stalking the Wild Asparagus, the original bible of foraging and eating from the wild, was dog-eared. Once I treated my Fifth Grade classmates at PS 95 to a meal of Dandelions — roots and little flower buds drenched in butter. That seemed to be the key to the memorable meals from that book: butter. And sugar too. Another favorite were blossoms of the Black Locust tree – dipped in batter, drenched in OJ and rolled in sugar. Fritters of dough and sugar with a green stem in the middle. But the perfume of the blossom was intoxicating and somehow, that translated to taste as well.

Decades later in a Connecticut city on my .24 acre of nature, with no stream or wood, I narrow my focus to my green patch (also a little shabby, I admit) and find the same joy. Although the hum of traffic is always audible and houses surround me just beyond the hedge, my garden, the bird feeder and observed moments just outside this window nurture me and I remember the kid I was. I knew then, the way to serenity. And now, I get to just go ‘out’.

I Love a Meadow and a Wood

Birds and bugs weave across the sky, skirting the patchwork of green and golden field grass. Yellow butterflies – Monarchs? – float by, a Hummingbird buzzes past my ear. A Crow caws from somewhere in the forest and a pair of Wrens creep upside down along the branches of the willow tree beside me. A frantic Robin flies back and forth, filling the gaping beaks of her babies parked right outside the door we go in and out – as annoying as that may be for Robin-mama, she must feel safe from predators. With every breeze, the leaves of a stand of Aspens across the field shimmers like confetti.

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It rained for much of yesterday and today, but this afternoon the sun finally shines – the clouds are benign – puffs and strokes across the vivid blue sky. The air is sweet with summer smells. In the field where I dare not venture for fear of ticks, is Queen Anne’s lace, Milkweed, Black Eyed Susan all lend splashes of color to the range of greens.

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Just now, a shadow crossed the table where I sit. A Great Blue Heron swept by so close – it’s legs and neck weirdly postured as it positioned to land at the pond tucked into the wood below. So magnificent and commanding! I watch the shadows watching for more movement, wanting to see it lift off, to witness that wide flap of wings again.

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It’s later and my friends have all gone out to a play. I opted to stay home for some rare solitude. After cleaning up the remnants of another delicious dinner, I’ve come back to face the field. The sound of a plane fades and then there is silence – but it is only momentary – an illusion really – there is plenty of noise. I hear the cracking of sticks, the evening complaint of a Robin, another bird song, I cannot identify, perhaps a Red Wing Blackbird. A rustle of leaves, the flutter of bird wings, the vibration of insects. The sounds are subtle but certainly there. From the pond just down the hill where I still look hopefully for the Great Blue Heron, I hear the odd belch of a bullfrog.

Out by a towering Pine tree about the distance of a block away (a city reference still works best for me), a deer is feeding, gently moving through the field. I know these creatures are common – even a nuisance – but to me, they still are marvelous. She passes gracefully back and forth across the mowed pathway, mostly she keeps her head down in the brush, busy munching, only occasionally popping up to twitch her ears, a beard of foliage hanging from her cud like a beard. Her nose looks like a chunk of sweet licorice.

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Later still, I faced the field – now singing with nighttime insects – and watch the night draw in. I stared ahead at the now blurring shapes of trees, bushes, grasses, stones tumbling into the wood where darkness had already settled in. As the sky turned a blue to purple, the stars emerged, even as I watched, my neck cricked back, my face to the stars.

I miss this – nature at night – not so easily available in my busy neighborhood – not on this scale. I cannot even begin to capture my excitement – as if I have discovered a secret: what really goes on when we are closed into our homes, driven in by the mosquitoes, the draw of the light, and alas, our televisions. Standing at the edge of the meadow having been with it for hours now, I recalled this feeling, watching – no: being in nature, alone, until I feel one with the pulse of a wood or a meadow.

I remember, long ago as a young girl, a nature lover stuck in the city, memorizing animal tracks, matching the leaves of the trees to those in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, gathering dandelion roots and buds. Summers our family would go to a country spot and I remember exploring dirt roads on my bicycle. Often, I would stop where no one was in sight and stand leaning over my handlebars, mesmerized by a meadow a wood, the light, the dark. I still am.

My adopted writing spot overlooking the meadow.
My adopted writing spot overlooking the meadow.
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