Superstitions, Wishes and Magical Thinking

My Catholic education fanned my tendency towards magical thinking. As a child, afraid of dying with sin on my young soul, I diligently recited my prayers every night and slept with my little white first communion prayer book under my pillow like a talisman to keep evil away. The nuns and priests along with the crime pages of The New York Post I surreptitiously read each week, convinced me there was plenty of that around.

I was a voracious reader even as a kid, and deeply affected by many books. One of was The Endless Steppe: A Memoir of Survival by Esther Hautzig – the story of Esther’s childhood in exile in Siberia during World War II. Esther fell in love with the harsh landscape of the Steppe and approached her life with a brightness and positivity I admired. And she had rituals to maintain that outlook including, stepping into her shoes always right foot first to ensure the day would be a good one. This superstition to ensure the best day became my habit too although I lived in New York, not Siberia.

From an early age I adopted some witchy routines. Lying in bed and looking out my bedroom window, I’d search the sky through the crosshatch of the screen for the first visible star of the night. Then I would make a wish, sending my desires out into the night sky. When I discovered that eyelashes were for wishes, I began pulling mine out. I tried saving them in a little plastic capsule that once contained a 5 cent toy from a gumball vending machine. I thought I was onto something with my wish-stash until my mother noticed and scolded me in horror. I was too embarrassed to continue the practice. 

What could I possibly have been wishing for? A toy? What ‘want’ did I have at such a young age? Did I already have longings? I do not remember what I was wishing for at the age of 5, 6, 7 but as I grew into adolescence, it was for boy love. I regularly had mad crushes on my older sibling’s friends. I remember one wild haired boy who I was obsessed with. He was a high school junior or senior and I was perhaps in 6th grade. I’d learned somewhere that if you put the name of your longed for love on a piece of paper in your shoe, your love would be requited. Of course I tried. And weirdly, on more than one occasion, when I’d randomly stick my head out the window of our 7th floor apartment and peer down at the Broadway sidewalk below, my crush was walking by! And I just happened to look out the window! As far as I knew, he lived nowhere near us, it must be magic, I thought. I was careful not to stick my head out too far – although the chances of him looking up and recognizing me were slim. I was happy to watch him with a thumping heart. He seemed so joyful as he moved like a dream down the dirty sidewalk in his floppy painter pants and flowing hair. And my heart beat thinking he was there because his name was in my shoe. I didn’t call out to him or run down the stairs to catch him. What would I say? He didn’t know I existed. 

While I grew out of these particular superstitions and compulsions, I managed to adopt new ones. Of course I avoid walking under ladders and sometimes I might wish on a star because, why not? Living in different countries, I picked up a few new ones. In Japan I learned never to choose just 4 of something – be it flowers or fruit – or anything. The character in Japanese for 4 is ‘shi’ – also the word for death. Besides, aesthetically, the asymmetry of odd numbers of things is more interesting. Italy has plenty of practices that many a grandma there would say is only common sense. No wet hair outside and things like that. In Croatia, if you have any interest in marriage, do not sit at the corner of a table.

And as for wishes, while I only learned in the last few years of 11:11 supposedly being a magical time and when I find myself glancing at the clock or my phone when these digits mark the time, I can’t help but make one. Now my wish is more like a prayer. I appreciate the pause. Time to focus for a moment. A sliver of peace – and also why not wish! With gratitude, hope, and always, love. We can never have too much love, can we?

Food Memories from a War Zone

The postcard sized menu is typed out on beautiful stock paper. It still looks good after 32 years. The Bosnian crest is top and center. The word MENU is all in caps. Cauliflower soup. War steak. Cooked vegetables. Pudding. Red wine. Dated: Sarajevo, February 12, 1993. This lunch meeting was fancier than we expected.

It felt surreal to step past the ubiquitous sandbags, enter the Presidency building and climb a red carpeted, grand staircase to a dining room with one table elegantly set. It was only my boss and I and the man we were meeting with who must have been high up in government. I didn’t make a note of who he was and don’t remember what the food tasted like. I remember hoping that War Steak meant fake meat or some kind of alternative as if that might assuage the guilt I already felt for all this fanciness in the middle of a city under siege. It was meat. I was pretty sure that Sarajevo’s citizens were not eating like this. The war had been going on for almost a year. It would last for three more. 

I looked in my journal to check for more details. I see that lunch at the Presidency was just one of the events I went to that cold winter day with my boss Victor. I was his assistant, accompanying him to meetings with humanitarian organizations, civilian and military leaders including, as he called them: bandits. I scribbled copious notes and wrote up reports. Earlier that morning we’d driven in our armored UN car just beyond the city, through checkpoints to meet with a Serb archbishop who I thought was pretty militant for a supposed spiritual leader. I remember that from where we were, we had a wide view of a large part of the city. I knew that many shells were being lobbed from here and felt sick.

My journal has no description of nor do I have any memory of how the war steak tasted. Nor questions about what animal it came from. I am sure I made a point of not leaving anything on my plate.

Under the Geneva Convention, a venerated document that is now regularly disregarded by our administration and other militaries supported with our tax dollars, food must never be used as a weapon in war. We can now watch on our telephones as communities are starved as well as slaughtered by weapons supplied by our government. This was being done then too. Food and water – both were in short supply for Sarajevo and other surrounded towns in Bosnia where roads and the airport were closed to all but United Nations and NGO traffic. Often, humanitarian assistance was blocked.

This is how I met my husband Neil. He was working at the time for the International Committee for the Red Cross, and drove his boss Philippe, to a meeting outside of Sarajevo at a defunct Coca Cola factory. Serb women had been blocking the road for days, not allowing humanitarian organizations to deliver food into Sarajevo. A few days earlier, when Victor and I spoke to the women in the street, they said their demand was the release of their men who had been taken prisoners by the other side – in this case, the Bosnians. Initially, I was excited by their protest, imagining a kind of Antigone movement where women might be the ones to stop the war. This notion was dispelled days later when a meeting was organized and I was the only woman in that cold and smoky room.   

The international community, were well fed at UN bases. Even when the food wasn’t great, we ate for free. Our UN ID was enough to get meals across the countries of former Yugoslavia where battalions were located. I ate with Czechs, Kenyans, Nepalese, Ukrainians, Russian and French peacekeeping troops – including the Legionnaires. The most delicious meal was not at a base but rather a dusty outpost of the French army set up near a local checkpoint. Sitting on camp chairs in a tent on a summer day by the roadside, I enjoyed multiple courses for lunch: Juicy steak with a pepper sauce, salad and even aged soft cheese. All with wine and followed by a perfect demitasse of coffee. Served to our host, a young French Major and us UN civilian guests by the dashing soldiers under his command. It’s one of the few meals I remember from my four years there.

A year and a half after Neil and I met at the Coca Cola factory, we traveled from Zagreb back to Sarajevo to get married. We celebrated in the evening at the oldest restaurant in the city. On that August night in 1994, we gathered in a cobbled courtyard set with a long table. We made toasts of champagne poured from pitchers lest the local authorities decided to pop in to enforce the no alcohol in restaurants rule of war-time. I don’t remember what we ate – or if I even did. After all, I was the bride.   

To Wonder Like a Child

In my writing group, we use prompts to inspire our weekly essays. Last week we were each to choose and open a book to a specific page and line to use as our first sentence. I had to go through a number of books before I found a sentence that resonated. Here’s what I landed on:

“As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.” (From The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin)

The spirit of this sentence reminded me of my early 20s when I studied in Kentucky with a sculptor and profound teacher, Mike Skop. Back then, Mike’s teaching awakened a lot of wonder. I am doing my best to remember and reclaim this way of being in the world.

For almost 30 years I was focused on day-to-day survival with my shoulder to the grindstone. My life was punctuated by traumas including living with my husband’s addiction and finally, suicide. No surprise: ‘wonder’ sometimes eluded me. I lived in a cloud of to-do lists around my job and raising my daughter. While I remained appreciative of the magnificence of life, a sense of ‘wonder’ was often obscured. That has changed this past year.

Recently, on flights to and from Los Angeles where I went to visit my daughter, I kept the window shade up so I could look out. I always thrill at the NYC skyline and as we lift up higher and higher, I love to watch the world through the clouds. Like a little kid, I crane my neck, nose pressed against the window, trying to see more. It’s a marvel, being above the world, watching the landscape of this country change with the hours and miles. The endless wooded stretches of Pennsylvania, and a checkerboard of farmland is Indiana. At some point over Kansas the light was hitting what might have been a string of ponds or small lakes that from my angle in the plane, looked like an abstract painting, splotches in grays and yellows. 

When I visited my daughter last year, I passed directly over the Grand Canyon. It was all I could do not to squeal with delight. This trip, while the flight map indicated that we were flying over Flagstaff, I saw only smaller cuts in the earth, not the very grand Grand Canyon. Still, the landscape was magnificent and exotic – buttes and red earth, snowcapped mountain ranges, houses in the middle of nowhere. I remember last year that the hills around Los Angeles were golden and dry. (I was there shortly before the disastrous fires.) This year, thanks to the late autumn rains, these same hills are green.

I kept comparing my view from the window to the video-map in front of me, trying to figure out what towns we were flying over. I imagined what we looked like from the ground. And I thought about the lives below me. Did any of them notice us? Sometimes, I look up from my yard or a parking lot and think about the people on the planes I see overhead. I look around the plane cabin and see that no one else has their shade open. Is nobody interested in looking at this remarkable landscape? Is anyone else marveling at the distance, the space, the phenomena of being so high up here? I understand. While remarkable, the idea of being in this massive piece of metal so far from the earth is also bloody terrifying. Sometimes I scare myself thinking about it and will choose sleep, reading or a movie. But not these last trips across this country. There is. so much darkness when I think about what’s happening – I like to be reminded of the sheer physical beauty of this place.

Safely on earth, on a cold winter morning, I see the waning moon fading in the dawn light. I think of the vast distance between us – the moon and earth – and yet, how close we are. For a few minutes, I think about our planet spinning through space, how incredible the universe is – in spite of us. I feel that wonder. Like a child. Who would have thought this gets easier with age? 

What to Save from a Fire (Nothing to Steal Here)

Last January fires devastated communities in the Los Angeles area. My daughter Molly lives five blocks from where the recommended evacuation area was. Besides the threat of flames, toxic smoke hung heavy in her neighborhood. Molly and her roommate fled to a friend’s apartment in a safer part of the city. In tears, she described how tormented she was having to choose a few possessions to save from potential loss. She took things that had been her late father’s: jackets from movies he’d worked on like the blue satiny Superman bomber with his name embroidered over the heart.

I barely remember feeling that sense of preciousness about things. I’m at the stage of life when caring about objects fades daily. And yet, I’ve never had so many possessions. Don’t get me wrong – I would hate to lose my house and what is in it but where I am ultimately headed, there’s nothing I can take. This is my time for downsizing and I’m not being great at that. It is mostly my laziness that prevents me from purging, whittling down my life to lessen the future clean out for my daughter. 

But it’s also my awareness that my daughter wants to hang onto things. I recently mentioned to her that I was exasperated with my younger self for shipping two large sculptures from Japan that I’d carved. They are too heavy for me to lift alone. Titled ‘Relic’ and ‘Seed’, they sit – giant dust collectors in the corner of my living room, barely visible behind the television and plants.

“They are my inheritance,” Molly says. 

Her future headache, I think. Even if I could move them, I would not bother to save my well traveled sculptures from the threat of flames. In fact, perhaps that’s what I should do with them. I’m sure this well seasoned camphor wood from Kyoto would burn nicely in my wood stove. 

Letting go of possessions can be difficult for some of us. When I was in my late twenties to early thirties, I rented a room in a house by the beach in Connecticut. I escaped from the city on weekends to my sweet space on the third floor. The house was owned by Tom who became a beloved friend. He was in his 80s by the time I moved into his rambling home overflowing with a lifetime of memories. Many of the rooms of the house were unusable because they were so full of things. There were boxes and boxes of Tom’s belongings, his deceased mother’s and other long-gone family. The 5 or so of us who lived there as ‘roomers’ had clear spaces. Almost in reaction to Tom, our rooms were sparsely furnished and neat. The kitchen too, was always clean and organized although Tom was known to eat expired sandwich meat. 

We all became friends and regularly gathered in the cluttered but manageable front room for cocktail hour with Tom as our generous host. He’d offer drinks to all, make himself a martini and always had plenty of Molson’s and wine on hand. We’d find space on the couch and other perches around the room, filling it with laughter. Sometimes Tom would crank up the player-piano from the adjoining living room – too full of boxes and treasures to sit in. Living there was casual and easy, the evenings of warmth and friendship sustained us as did Tom’s love. We became an oddball little family and barely noticed the clutter around us. His home was an oasis. I loved it there.

While not as much as Tom, I have my own lifetime of stuff – the value of which is primarily sentimental. A thief who looked in my window would pass on making the effort to break in. No fancy sound system, jewels or likely valuables in this house, they might easily assess. Only memories. Nothing to steal here. 

In Praise of Second Hand

Tis the season to buy things and this year I haven’t. Not much. My daughter Molly, my main recipient, is staying in California and I’ll be visiting her in the new year so no crazy holiday traveling for me. Nor gift buying. I’ve never really operated well under the seasonal pressure of giving presents. Working in a bookstore I used to give a lot of books. I’ll still happily give books, but unless you’re a little kid, who needs more books? I am now an avid library user. I’ve also been tackling my shelves — filled with unread titles. I bet yours are too, right?

I don’t hate shopping per se. I usually enjoy food shopping and I like wandering through hardware stores. (Lowes – never Home Depot) But I love thrift shopping. I have been a thrifter since high school and still find it an adventure.

Currently in my living room, these are the things I purchased new: television, vacuum cleaner, this computer, the carpet, woodstove and one small chair. That’s about it. Everything else has been thrifted, found at tag-sales, scavenged, and given to me by friends. The same is true for every other room in this old house. The things I own have stories – and only some of them are mine. Pre-owned, they came to me with their own history. 

I look around my living room. A Boston fern I transplanted a month ago to give it more room, sits on a plant stand I picked up off the street while walking in the neighborhood. Someone’s reject. The simple wood stand could use a fresh coat of paint; a task that may take me a while to get around to and sometimes, I just don’t. But right now, the plant and wooden stand look lovely in the light of the wood fire burning in my stove. I am burning wood from the oak tree I reluctantly took down this summer. I salute each log as I put into the fire, grateful for the years of shade and now the heat it brings me. I carry the wood in from the porch in a wire basket that Molly spotted at a tag sale a few years ago. 

A blond, Swedish-design coffee table sits in the center of the living room as it has for years. This and matching chairs were a gift from Mary, formerly a beloved neighbor who gave us some furniture when she moved out. Only the table still remains. The solid, deep and comfortable couch was my friend Nina’s. She told me it hosted countless naps and gatherings of her big family of mostly boys – now all grown. It’s a better piece of furniture than I would purchase new and each soft crevice feels like love. Now, it’s where I sometimes snooze.

In the corner is a metal stand that 30 years ago my friend Hendrik designed and welded for me to display one of my sculptures on. During the winter months, I move the sculpture and give this indoor stand to one of my Gardenias plants. It seems happy in its warm corner. 

I prefer used and older furniture, clothes, garden and kitchen tools – almost anything. New things rarely have the grace nor substance of older pieces. While I admire beautiful couches on display in upscale stores and funky themed showrooms, I am not interested in stretching my limited budget to pay for them. 

Years ago, when I was living in NYC, a guy I was dating said to me, “You live like a refugee.” In fairness, I think he was referring to the jerryrigged cinderblock bookcase. I knew my life in the city was transitional – that I wouldn’t stay living there forever, so why put down roots? And besides, I love other people’s old stuff and my books sat happily on those improvised shelves. I haven’t changed much.

Although I now have more stuff. And real bookcases. Yet I cannot resist visiting my favorite thrift shops. ‘It’s only $15’ I said about the tall metal chair that provided a tall perch on the porch all summer. Now it sits by the window inside. I tuck the heavy winter curtains behind the chair to let the light in. Sometimes I sit there for a different view of my space. Worth $15 for a change of perspective, no? 

My favorite are church thrift shops run by volunteers but sometimes I’ll stop into my local Goodwill, usually shopping for something specific. Most recently my mission was to find large enough dishes to put under all the plants I was moving inside for the winter. I found just what I needed plus a sweet plant stand with spindle legs that now sits at the bottom of the stairs, home to a Mandeville plant with its last red blossom from summer still hanging on.

This afternoon I am going to make a cake that requires a loaf pan. I searched in all the cabinets, looking behind pyrex and clay cookware. How do I not have any loaf pans? But I do not. Dare I venture out to shop on the last Saturday before Christmas? I think Goodwill should be fine! 

May your holidays be beautiful!

PS – Walked down to Goodwill and found these!

Cross-Country Memories

Over my lifetime I have taken more trips than I can remember. Still, there is one adventure that remains a favorite. Not my solo trip at 18 when I schlepped across Europe on a Eurail pass. No — I was lonely on those trains and European streets, miserably pining for the man I’d met on my first day of travel. I went on carrying that torch by myself all the way to Greece and back to Limerick 4 months later – and too late. 

No, my favorite trip was one I took with friends a few years after. While traveling alone is an adventure and a time to discover things about one’s self, I prefer to share travel, laughter and meals. I learned that from the cross-country journey I made with Paula and Jane.  

Paula and I had sublet an art studio in San Francisco for a month in the summer and would drive there from where we lived in Kentucky in a car we’d get through a drive-away service. Jane would come along for the ride and fly from there, home to England. We’d all been studying with a sculptor in Kentucky for the past few years and knew each other well and liked each other a lot. When a VW Rabbit Cabriolet to Los Angeles came through as an option, we were excited to have a convertible and took it. However, the cute little red car had a glove compartment sized trunk space already packed with the owner’s stuff. And it was stick shift which meant Paula did all the driving. Jane offered to be in the back seat and happily curled up with all our luggage, towering beside her. 

Jane, tumbleweed and me

Most details are now blurry from the decades gone but the delight I felt each day in seeing the magnificent landscape of this country, still feels vivid. I have only about a dozen 1980s quality prints, mostly taken at the Grand Canyon, of course. The three of us look so happy though windblown and burnt by the hours spent under the sun of all the states we passed through. 

My memory of our journey exists as short clips in my head. I needed to refer to a map to place the clips in my mind according to the route we took. First sight of the Rockies in the distance – sweating in the late morning sun across Colorado as we sped towards the snow topped mountains. We stayed the night in Boulder and my head ached with the altitude. Breakfast outside at a cafe in the woods was a gigantic bowl of yogurt and fruit surrounded by the most beautiful mountain scape I’d ever been in. More flashes of memory include the profound space and silence of the Grand Canyon, tumble weeds, the road blocked by real cowboys moving their cattle, desolate areas marked as reservation land. And the surprise of Utah – first lush mountain roads and pine forests and then the expanse of Painted Desert (where we cranked up Brian Eno music) all in one day.

Jane, Paula and the Grand Canyon

We drove to Santa Fe, New Mexico where Paula fell in love with something about the place – the air, the landscape. Even in Kentucky where Paula still lives along the river, before even visiting the Southwest, she painted in the colors of the desert. The pull was so strong for her that decades later, she’d return multiple times, before finally buying a house there.  

Me and Jane – Grand Canyon

Paula and I insisted that we stop in Las Vegas. In 1981, still a sleazy gambling spot – not the glamorous tourist destination it is today. English Jane did not understand the appeal and said she’d be happy to skip it. She was right. We made one stop in a casino, full of smoke and sad characters lit by the light of slot machines, used the bathrooms and carried on.

The relentless blazing heat of the desert – as we drove through Death Valley – aptly named because it felt like we might die there. I think it was on that last stretch we finally put the top up and ran the air conditioner. Seven days after our departure with incredible landscapes to digest, we arrived in Los Angeles. 

We were sad to give up the road and the cute little car. Drop off was to a Mrs. Goldbach who lived near UCLA. We drove to an unassuming house with some children playing in the driveway. As we pulled up, a woman – perhaps the age I am now – came out of the house and greeted us with a New York accent. She was from Queens. I identified myself as originally from the Bronx and introduced Jane and Paula. Noting Jane’s accent she gestured to the children and said, my grandchildren are visiting from England. She agreed the car looked in fine shape and invited me to follow her into the house so she could return my $100 security deposit. As she was writing her check I noticed a picture of Ringo Starr on the mantelpiece with his arms around a beautiful woman. Back out on the street, I shared this cherry on top of our road trip with my fellow travelers as we walked away from the house. Our cross country trek so packed with cliches was complete – even with a kind-of celebrity sighting.

Jane, me, Paula in San Francisco

I ponder why this trip remains a favorite – even more than my exotic honeymoon to the Seychelles or so many other exciting journeys I’ve taken. I remain dear friends with both gals. On that trip, we were wonderful travel companions – comfortable with long silences, easy with laughter and happy to sing to the radio. I was mesmerized by the road and curious about what was around each corner. Twenty-two year old me felt loved and free and ready for the world.

Still Time – A Beach Sunset

5:30 PM at the beach. There is a small sailboat hugging the distant shore. It’s going out while most boats head back in under a cloudy sky on this late Saturday afternoon. A patch of sea grass is all I can see of the sandbar where I kayak to. The tide is moving out and in a few hours, I know the sandy spit will emerge again.

I am sitting on a beach chair. I rarely do this – sit in a spot on this beach alone – at least not on a chair I’ve brought with the intention to sit. I usually come to kayak or walk, never just to sit. When I walk, I will pause and look out at the water, pick up a stone or shell I drop after a few steps. Today I am on a patch of sand where people regularly sit – often the same people in the same spots. They set up their chairs to read and roast in the sun away from lifeguards and families. It’s not a place to swim as sea grass blocks access to the water. 

A string of small waves is rolling in caused by the speeding motorboats heading home. Perhaps these boaters are hungry for dinner after a day spent on the water. This is what I imagine. Otherwise, the water is calm and I think about kayaking. It’s tempting. My kayak is on the nearby rack and my paddle and life jacket are in the car. I love being on the water although I’m a lazy paddler. I don’t go far. Mostly just to that sandbar not currently visible. It should emerge in another few hours, a small stretch of sand where the oystercatchers hang out. I like to sit and swim there.  

I took a walk before setting out my chair. I walk at this beach often.There are many serious walkers intent on achieving their steps. I am a little like that but I also come here to dream and stare at the horizon and take deep breaths. Before sitting, I walked past where my kayak sits on a rack, then out onto the pier where fishermen lean with their rods and beers. I usually stop for a few minutes at the end of the pier to look down at the water and out at the stretch of Long Island blocking the Atlantic. 

I pass the playground. I spent countless hours here watching my daughter climb the ropes, the slides and the wooden boat replica with bells to ring and a wheel to turn. She’s 30 now and lives across the country. I walk through the tree-lined path where we once celebrated her birthday with her middle school pals. Rob and I cooked on the crusty grill there.The kids wandered off down the beach away from us chaperones. Molly remembers it as one of her best birthday parties and we did nothing but cook hot dogs and hamburgers and let them be wild. 

I walked across the beach to be closer to the water lapping the shore. I come across multiple horseshoe crab carcasses upside down – legs up and still. I flip them over to make sure they’re dead. One afternoon I walked this shoreline and came upon over a dozen of these prehistoric looking creatures upside down with legs flailing. I flipped them over as I went along and watched as they moved their armored bodies back into the waves. Today, none of them moved.

The sun is breaking through a schmear of clouds. The sky below, a lemony yellow, readying for sunset. The days are shorter. While today had the warmth of a summer day, the sense of autumn prevails. I can see it in the light, the quality of the air. There’s always a poignancy to the season changes, isn’t there? I love summer and don’t like being cold but I am sure if I lived in a warmer climate I would miss these changes I have lived with all my life. I am happy to visit my daughter in California during winter to get my fix of humming birds and year-round flowers. But there’s something that balances me in these changes in light, leaves, temperature – the temporary freezing of the earth. I take none of it for granted anymore and feel challenged to meet the seasons. Even in winter I come here to this shoreline, bundled up against the winds to follow the tides and sunsets through the season.

Just beyond a small boat house is an event space and I can hear the sounds of a wedding and the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, being introduced. Now, as if on cue from my thoughts, a guitar/vocalist begins to sing a Carole King song: Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall – all you’ve got to do is call and I’ll be there. 

I look out at the water. There’s a kayaker next to the grass near my still submerged sandbar. They are not paddling, just floating. Like I do. Hypnotized by the movement of the grass, I relax as the boat lifts and lowers, rocking gently. I cannot see from here but I imagine the kayaker doing what I do: I let my hands fall alongside the boat and into the water, still warm from summer. Are they letting the tide bring them back to shore? I watch and see they are drifting, pushed away from the gently waving grasses of our sandbar. Not paddling. I recognize the sweetness of giving it over to nature, waiting until the last moments of the sun’s light before returning to shore.There is still time.

Baths in War & Peace

My house was built in 1938. The bathtub is original and there are rust stains around the drain fixture and it needs fresh calking. It’s vintage like the rest of my home. Twenty years ago, and in the early years of my marriage to Neil (who loved a bath) I soaked in a tub almost daily. 

Living in Europe during the early 90s, Neil and I experienced all sizes and shapes of baths in the many rentals and hotel rooms we stayed in. One memorable hotel in Italy had a tiny square tub that puzzled us. It looked like a little shower pit with no curtain. Neil, ever the comic, folded his 6 foot 4 frame into the cubby bath and held the shower head to his ear as if he was making a call. It was a fun photo op (I’m still searching for said photo!) but not an acceptable tub.

The bathtub was one of the first things Neil assessed when we landed someplace new.The best was in our apartment in Zagreb – long enough for him to almost stretch out. Because he was one of 6 children in a working class family, Neil learned to share bath water. He was chivalrous: regularly ran a steamy bath for me, set out a towel and sometimes, even when we had electricity, lit candles. When I was limp-as-a-rag-relaxed, rather than empty and refill the tub, he’d climb in and use the same water. It would still be clean(ish) as a bath was as much about relaxing as it was scrubbing and I took care and appreciated the frugality of his practice. Besides, this conservative bathing was necessary during our courtship days in a war zone.

Neil and I met and fell in love while we were both based in Bosnia in 1992. He lived at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo and I was in a small flat in Kiseljak – a village about an hour away through checkpoint filled roads. Access to water and electricity is often weaponized in war. Besides making life miserable for populations, there is a huge increased risk of disease. Many days we’d turn our taps on and nothing would come out – especially at my flat. Journalists and relief workers were housed at the Holiday Inn and Neil, who worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were always more likely to have water and thanks to generators the news outlets relied on, electricity. Both of us had learned the trick of filling the bathtub and any other available containers whenever water was available.There were many days I’d bathe in an inch of cold water. In the early days of our courtship, when I’d stay with Neil at the Holiday Inn, he put his electric kettle to good use, topping off the usually tepid water. Those baths were particularly sweet for the preciousness of both water and warmth in the winter of 1992.

I don’t remember when I shifted away from taking baths to showers. I suspect it happened gradually as our life became more hectic. And certainly, like most things, we’d stopped sharing bath water. Water is precious. Love is precious. I feel this but my thoughts here are a muddle when I try to write more – about water, about war, about love. How does that sense of these things change when the world falls apart around you? I can tell you that everything changes in war. If you don’t know this, my hope is that you may never need to find out. 

We take so much for granted. Those of us who have it, mostly presume our comfort. When I first moved to Zagreb – still near but not as affected daily by the war, I marveled at the abundance of water and electricity. But soon enough, I no longer thrilled with joy every time I flipped a switch and had light or turned a faucet to a flood of hot water. It became expected: of course I have these necessities. I can fill a bath, take a long hot shower, and watch television at night. I expect it. And I have it – a drinkable abundance of water, plenty to fill a bath. Because, by some chance of birth, I was not born a child in Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan – so many places in the world who live without basics. I try to remember that I was once lucky to have the inch of water to bathe in.

Nature. And Not Nature.

I was watering the garden on a recent morning, staring out into space with hose in hand. From the corner of my eye I registered my neighbor’s dog moving around their yard. I was looking through the picket fence that divides our property so I saw only bits of his golden coat between the slats. I wondered why he wasn’t barking at me like he usually does. He’s a good size dog. I went back to aiming the hose at the garden.

When I glanced up again, a small set of antlers was floating over the top of the fence. Just little horns. And then he lifted his head, looked over at me with minimal interest before jumping the fence into my yard. It was he who I’d seen — not a dog.

Young buck stepped across the wood chips under the peach trees, nibbling at the weeds before leisurely continuing on to the side of my house. I dashed inside, grabbed my phone and quietly went out the front door, hoping to capture a photo or video. I know deer are common in many neighborhoods around here but not in my fairly urban one so this encounter felt magical.

Creatures have been showing up in my yard a lot this summer. Another recent day, while washing my dishes and gazing out the window over the sink, I saw a good size coyote saunter through the side yard. A little alarming but all are welcome. Especially now that I don’t have a little dog to worry about.

The regulars are also still here including an abundance of chipmunks and squirrels and of course, birds. And the groundhog. I say ‘the’ because this year I have only seen one. And it is not the one I remember from last year. Likely, there isn’t just one but I pretend there’s one so I don’t feel overwhelmed. But truth is, there are holes galore around here and that makes me think there are groundhogs-galore too. 

There are rabbits. More of them than groundhogs, I’m sure. I’m fond of bunnies, especially when they are babies. This year the little ones seem particularly fearless, continuing to nibble the grass even as they see me approach. That’s what happened a few days ago when I went out to pick some zinnias. I greeted the little guy: “Hello, little bunny! You’re quite the brave one, aren’t you?” I unhooked the gate to the rickety fence of the garden where the zinnias are.

(A sibling?)

As I bent over to snip my flowers, a whoosh-whoosh caused me to turn. Flying away was a bird of prey – one with feather leggings and a very large wing span. It had swooped in just behind me, only a few feet away. Yes: brave bunny had been spotted and snatched. Little squeaks faded into the distance as the massive bird flew across the rooftops with its meal.

I stood in shock, zinnias in hand, I searched the lawn but I knew it was gone. I was heartbroken. Yet this is nature. I know that. And I love birds of prey – not just little bunnies. (I only wish it had taken a chipmunk or squirrel. Is that terrible?) Surely bunny’s mother would be looking for it? 

Can you imagine? Someone just swooping in and taking your loved one as they’re going about their business? This is what predators do. This is what’s happening now, every day to (mostly brown people) in our community. The hawks’ behavior makes sense. What these masked thugs are obediently doing does not make sense. Not to me.

I will never forget nor forgive the evil of what is being done to our neighbors, our brothers and sisters. I hope you feel the same. We must support and protect each other. Suggestions welcome.

Early Morning After a Summer Storm

The rain blew in at night with fierce winds, dramatic thunder and lightning. It moved through fast but enough rain fell meaning no need to water the garden. Last night, after a particularly violent gust, I heard a noise and peered out every window looking for downed branches or toppled furniture but saw nothing. This morning, while the kettle boils for my tea, I walk the yard to look for damage. I see that the garage door popped open. Maybe that was the noise I heard. I’ve been lazy, keeping it closed by laying the weight of a rock against the door rather than wrestle with the ancient lock from inside. There’s not much to steal in there but still, I’ll make more of an effort now.

Around the back of the house, a potted fern has toppled. I set it right. The air is cool. The oppressive heat and humidity of recent days has lifted. I see my neighbor Ken through the fence. He is sweeping up the water from around the kids’ play area. I’m fond of this young family. I call out a greeting and we chat. He tells me the electricity went out for about 10 minutes. Mine did not. Their house is a little higher up and must be on a different line, he says. I promise that later, I’ll retrieve and toss back the ball that landed in my weedy yard. He’s taken to sending me photos of my garden with circles drawn around where the most recent ball has landed. These make me laugh. They are welcome to walk through the gate and retrieve it but it’s better I do it since it entails ducking under low-lying peach and pear branches through ankle high plants. I’ll put on boots and spray for ticks. 

I go back inside and make my tea and rather than my usual ritual of going back upstairs to sit on my bed and read and write, I go back out on the porch. I straighten the cushions and hang the plants back up from where I put them on the ground last night to catch the rain. The sun is low enough that it’s still shady on the glider where I sit to watch the morning and drink my tea. A slight breeze is blowing and feels delicious on my bare arms and legs. A firefly moves across the porch, slowly floating mid-air like a lazy helicopter. Almost daily, I find one around my kitchen sink, seemingly lost. I scoop them up and move them outside. Maybe this is one of those kitchen-displaced bugs, lurking from days ago. I wonder — isn’t it time for them to sleep and recharge so they can glow later? 

I look up at the branches of the Norway maples. A group of four remain as my only shade in the front yard. I miss the oak tree cut down a few months ago because it was dying. The house feels naked now, fully exposed to the full morning light.The stump and logs rest in the corner of the yard waiting for my missing handy man to come with his splitter. I make a mental note to text him again. A few birds are flitting between branches overhead and I shield my eyes from the sun to try and get a better look at them. I think they are likely Robins, perhaps the ones born on my porch only weeks ago.

While I’m gazing up at the branches I notice that the leaves on these trees are sparser and smaller than usual this year. I worry, are these trees dying too? The leaves on the Mulberry tree growing next to the garage are also less dense this year although the berries are abundant. Are my trees also mourning the missing oak? Swallowing the last of my tea I think yes — they yearn for and miss their yard companion of decades. I know a little about this yearning but I trust they, like I, will carry on and bloom brilliantly again for years to come. Now they are mourning and I understand as I too still search for shade no longer there.

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