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Three years ago, I would have written a very different post on this day. The symbolic gesture could not have been coincidental: why else would he have chosen that day to move out?

Independence had a somewhat different meaning for me then. Before then, I had felt free, only realized I was not when I started to stray beyond the expected, with results not unlike those offered by an electric fence.

At first it was about small things: being able to make my own choices, playing music I liked, walking through my own house and my own life without fear…

Writing.

The last three years have demonstrated that freedom is a concept that I had never fully appreciated before I lost it; otherwise I would have done more to protect it. At the same time, this end of tyranny was not an altogether independent action. I owe it to so many people who came into my life. I did not, do not feel that I ever could not need anyone. Far from it.

I cherish my freedom to be who I am, but I am no island. I cherish interdependence, as we depend on one another in this world. Today I celebrate life. I celebrate liberty. And yes, I celebrate that pursuit of happiness, that maslovian step up, that thing that pushes us toward greater things, and to holding fast to those principles that protect and define us.

enchilar “1. to season with chiles; 2. (Mexico) to annoy; 3. to sting, burn.

A simple meal in the final execution, the preparation of enchiladas in my house was a labor of love. On a busy evening, it could be quick: a jar of sauce, pre-grated cheese, onion, whatever else was left to throw in, roll them up, stick them in the oven, and they were done. Sometimes, though, I made the sauce myself, boiling and scraping out the chiles, shredding the chicken (roasted–perhaps not traditional, but certainly tasty), softening the onions, nearly caramelized (again, maybe not traditional), before adding them to the cheese and chicken mixture, the mild peppers.

It was a meal that I had loved for a long time, and perfected during the Colorado years, in a land of hedonism and endless meal choices. It was there, watching Mexicans, many nearly invisible in the kitchens of a town many could barely afford to live in, that I was inspired to find the secrets. It was there, in the only affordable living space, a cheap deal in the land of plenty: the trailer court, that I first made enchiladas.

The trailer court was not my first choice for a home, snob that I was (well… not snob, to be honest: I was actually afraid of the trailer court). The trailer option did allow us to stay in town, and after a bit of arm-twisting, my then-husband convinced me that it did not have to be the place of tornadoes and dysfunction that I had grown up experiencing it to be. No, this was the West, not the Midwest, and things were different.

And different they seemed in those early days. I frolicked in the kitsch, put a clichéd pink flamingo out front, and started cooking. I became pregnant, blurred my doctoral dreams, nodded gazedly to the sudden move across the country. Boston. I was in hub heaven. I could still finish my work there, and made arrangements. My advisor said a class at Harvard could help me through the classical language requirement. Harvard! Imagine that.

The enchilada ingredients were harder to find, at least then, at least within walking distance of our house.

Fast forward several months. The baby was pushing to come out. Someone was asking me to sign something. A purchase and sale agreement was Fed-Exed to northern Vermont. “Why there?” you ask. Hell if I knew. I cannot even remember when I stopped asking those questions. The town we landed in was one of so many places where we picked up real estate brochures: Charlotte, Cheyenne, Guthrie, Belfast–at least this one was not a ranch. We could have landed anywhere, back in those days that any vacation could become the next home sweet home. Vermont seemed nice enough, though a bit lonely as the summer faded. I loved being in Boston. My then-husband enjoyed those pre-child moments, too, took long walks, played drums with a friend, went to car races with his brother on Saturday nights, tried to forget the doctorate he quit. No teaching work in Boston, he said, said we could not afford to stay, said we had to move. No job in Vermont, either, not for a long time. The house was a dream, a true beauty, the village isolated, dotted with dairy farms and cross country ski trails. Hard not to love, but to stay there? Babies came, many babies. I loved them well, loved them as if they were all I had. And maybe then, they were.

I was making enchiladas, my gloved hands dipping the tortillas into the sauce, then filling them with the chicken, cheese. Gloved hands—I had learned my lesson years earlier not to mess with chiles without some defense.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I was making dinner. I was cooking his favorite dinner, our favorite dinner, kids waiting, watching, wanting me to finish quickly. The oven was preheated, the side dishes were cooking, a salad waited on the table already.

“Those are gloves for cleaning toilets!”

I had two pair. The yellow ones for cooking, the blue for cleaning. Both were beneath the sink, on separate sides. Two pair: these were the yellow gloves.

“You are an unfit mother.”

He grabbed the dish from me and dumped the enchiladas into the trash. My older son yelled “NO!” while the others cried. I watched in horror as my husband, ‘till death do us part, ripped open hot dogs, baked beans, told the kids not to move. No one did. I saw the look in his eyes. I thought how I had bought the hot dogs the day before, at a grocery store seventeen miles away, thought how he was lucky there was something else to eat. My son said he wanted enchiladas, and I feared for the kid. He saw the look, too, bit into a hot dog, tears streaming down his face. I sat in the stairwell and sobbed, curled up as tight as I could, looking for a safe place, and there was none.

“If no one is going to eat, it’s bedtime.”

It was 6:30 pm. The kids did not argue, the four of them in the bath together. I went into their room, trying to put our life back together, convinced like so many other times, that it never really happened.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

My husband pushed me into our bedroom. I wanted to say goodnight to the kids. I heard myself protesting as he shut the door on me. I know I was yelling please. The key turned and locked.

“You are not safe to be around children,” he told me.

I thought maybe he was right about everything he said until then. I had told people I needed more help, found help. Four kids under six, one noticeably disabled. A woman came from the school, said we were a family, and had to work together. I cried. He was busy, I told her, had to leave early in the morning, and was tired at night. I was trying. She said I was a great mom. How could I believe what she said, if what he said was true? I begged for help. He told me I was telling everyone our business. I found help, strong women who helped me, who glanced knowing looks first at one another–then at me. He hated the invasion of privacy. I thanked God for the help. He said I was lazy, an unfit mother. I had tried to be better, but trying was never enough, never would be. I stopped making enchiladas, and the love in my heart seemed gone forever.

We moved once more–my choice this time. He gave me one present that last year we spent together. It was a pig.

The pig was a baking dish, made in Chile. It was shown in the Williams-Sonoma catalogue with enchiladas in it, he said. He asked me why I never made them anymore. Until I started the process I once loved, I had forgotten why myself. I never did find those gloves.

Last week, though, I did find the pig on top of my kitchen shelves, never used. I went to the grocery store yesterday, and bought the tortillas, the cheese, chiles. I have it all, watched the kids devour something similar at a Mexican restaurant not so long ago. They are ready for this kind of meal, and at last, so am I. Tonight I am making enchiladas.

When M. failed to answer the door, her daughter did not find anything strange. It was often that the old woman was napping, or upstairs and not quick to descend. A key turned the door, and all in the house was quiet. Did M. have an appointment she forgot to mention? Had a neighbor called? The youngest daughter opened the garage door to see if the car was still there. It was. And behind it, she found the carefully laid out cot, the empty bottle of sleeping pills. The keys were still in the ignition, but the gas had probably long run out.

The death was a tragedy, we all knew. M. was not so old, after all, in splendid health, we thought. It took a long time for anyone beyond the one daughter and her husband to realize that it was a suicide, and as it was, few people were ever supposed to know. The death by one’s own hands seemed too messy, too questionable, too unsuitable for a reputable family. And yet, the daughter who found her mother cold and inexplicably dead that morning said that she would have done the same thing.

Up to the time I knew of the suicide, M. seemed an amazingly resilient woman. Letters and other documents found after M.’s death hinted at a less than auspicious diagnosis, perhaps from a cardiologist. One thing was certain, though: M. had said many times that she never wanted to be a burden to her children or anyone else. She had enjoyed a high level of independence her whole life. What did life mean to her if she needed assistance?

A suicide must always leave questions unanswered, but the questions it poses must always reach far beyond the life that is taken. I was surprised to learn that the daughter so fully supported her mother’s actions. Her own pronouncement of similar suicidal intentions if faced with similar potential dependency cited anthropological examples of the practice of “going off to die.”

I was judgmental of the dead woman, hurt. How could someone I loved and admired not let the people who loved her actually care for her when she needed them? What makes life worthwhile? Can we even answer those questions ourselves?

Life can be intolerably painful in so many ways. I cannot imagine what for certain caused M. to end her life, or what I would do in her place. After the suicide, though, the context of the family began to make more sense, and I was out of context. Never being a burden seemed more a selfish thing, never allowing another person to extend a kindness, to serve a meal, to make a bed: not good enough, perhaps? Not thoughtful, but selfish. Always giving, but never receiving: yes! there is a selfishness in that. The familial stoicism was overbearing; pain, heartbreak and illness were impossible to discuss aloud, but were whispered in tributes to the character of those who hid their weaknesses. Bad things simply did not exist in that make-believe world.

Oh, demons exist everywhere, but they become dangerous when they are hiding. Everyone knows about the bear hunt:

“We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh no! We have to go through it!”*

Go through! Go through! Go through this life. Why hide? I want to love, and I want to rejoice in the real connections we have, the efforts we make, the love we give to one another… and the love we courageously take.

*From Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, We’re Going On a Bear Hunt, 1989.

On Thanksgiving 2006, it poured rain. By two weeks before the holiday, I had no friends able to take me in or to come to my house for a nice dinner, and my kids were gone that year. Family was too far away, too expensive. I tried to volunteer to serve dinners, but I found at the three places I where I tried that it was impossible without their own CORI check (I had had three done that year for various schools and assignments), and that paperwork had to be completed before November 7. So, I planned a hike. Sprinkles would have been fine, but torrential downpours made it all impossible. I drove, and found myself at a Dunkin’ Donuts somewhere in the Berkshires, waiting for the rain to ease up so I could just go home, lonelier than before.

I resolved at that time to make more time for better friends, to meet new people, and yes… to start dating. And I did. I have made some friends, heard many stories, glimpsed into some wonderful and beautiful lives, been honored by the experiences. Here I find myself, wiser, a year and a half later.

I have also found heartbreak.

I did not realize until recently just how much it had hurt. Of course, my reactions at times must have revealed my true feelings to some people, but I myself thought I was doing just fine.

He was a do-gooder, handsome in an ebullient sort of way, charming, funny. We corresponded for a while, and I was stunned by the overlaps in our lives. We met, and I fell hard. He was also a busy—doing good, I thought, or attending to the need of two boys for whom he was the primary caregiver. His ex-wife was not involved in the parenting, he said. It was a familiar and understandable situation to me.

For the first time in a long time, I had met someone who was not only not disturbed by the size of my family and the extra demands of my two sons beyond the girls’, my own busy life, but who embraced that life and the gifts it brings. In fact, he even advocated for the rights of families like mine to live accessible lives, better lives. For all the hardships, the joys are even greater… and he seemed to understand this. I liked him.

He liked me.

Well, I thought he did. It was months after I pondered his abrupt disappearance just before Thanksgiving that I found out the truth. I was so caught up in another sort of heartbreak this past Thanksgiving, I barely noticed the warning signs.

Erratic calls, availability only at certain times, evenings cut short. Sure, it should have been obvious, but I did not want it to be. I believed him. My own denial may have caused someone else to be hurt, which haunts me.

I was surely not the first or the last in his series of conquests. Somewhere, another must still be hypnotized by that illusion of love and freedom, devotion and honesty, when in fact his real life betrays him. And oh! how his real life must cry.

Up to realizing my misguided infatuation, dating had been fun, promising. Since then, I have found myself less willing to take chances, discerning, and much more aware of what I want and what I do not want. All that is probably for the better.

But at least for now, I have not been finding what I need. Far from it. In fact, the efforts I made after licking my wounds may have hurt worse than the original wound itself. Short periods of dating have proved to me that I want a glimmer that I could be right for someone else, right for a complete life, and not just snippets of it. I miss sharing time, the rhythm of knowing another person, and I want for it all to be true. It would be glorious to grow a love from a smile that promises more. But there has to be a starting point.

I realize now that healing takes some time. And maybe love another day.

Last night, walking at night in flip flops, I realized that the breeze felt … not harsh. Delicious. Summer really is here.

I love summer, but for the shuffle. It would be a wonderful season, were it not for the stress of what to do with children who are no longer occupied throughout the school day. With even the once-affordable YMCA camp topping $400 for two weeks of 9-3 fun for just one child, the options for sending the kids off somewhere for the day dwindle quickly.

So, when a meeting at work Friday required my presence, and I found myself stuck without a babysitter, I told the girls to get dressed, made a couple of phone calls, and headed toward my place of employment.

We dragged in a gigantic box full of art supplies, friendship bracelets in the works, a few snacks. The only thing lacking, as far as I knew, was space. Fortunately, a person in the organization that cohabits our building was out for the day, and the girls quickly set up shop in her office.

My boss walked in to see the kids, and was surprisingly ecstatic. His mantra since I started has been, “We are a human service organization,” and true to form, he set them up on his computer while we had our staff meeting. “You think this bothers me?” he asked, as he went on to tell me about his past experiences with children in the workplace.

The girls were real troupers throughout the morning, stayed relatively quiet as they romped around next door to the executive director of the neighboring organization. But around noon, all art projects were officially boring. Next time we’ll bring more to do, maybe find them work to do as they have for me in the past, assembling packets and mailings.

Maybe this all really will work out. I am looking for babysitters, but in the meanwhile, the best I can do is to work partly from home and fit the kids into my whole life—not just the non-professional parts. Who knows? They may even learn something.

Last year, in the throes of childcare inadequacies, a long commute, and impossible transportation costs, I figured out that I was spending more than I was making. I quit. Driving home from the big city in tears at my frustration over the whole situation, I wondered—as I wonder now—why do we do this? Why can we as a nation not figure out a way for families to be a part of our lives instead of a major inconvenience to the work week? Why can schools not be more understanding and accommodating to the needs of parents who have bills to pay, just as teachers do (but on an entirely different schedule)? Why do we have to spend so much money for otherwise unneeded things, just to keep the businesses running? The entire system just seems doomed from the start.

I have agonized over the coming of summer for weeks now. I do not want to lose my job. Summer is here, and I realized last night that I am glad it is warm, glad my kids are home, glad for the beach, and glad for my job, too. And about that… after all that worried me about my impromptu “take the kids to work day”…

After all my fretting, the thing that surprised me the most was that no one really seemed to mind. I worked, accomplished things. I calmed down, at least a little. When I really believe that for once I will not be admonished for having children but not the money to get rid of them, I will calm down a lot.

I am glad the kids can see the work I do, and even more, I am glad that they can see that they are not excluded from it.

I would be the first to admit that the chaos of my life sometimes requires an intervention. I can see where this chaos does not always fit the workday. It upsets those who have chosen to avoid such disruptions in their life, and some might argue that attending to children’s needs is not appropriate while trying to do another job. Sometimes I argue this point quite emphatically to my own children, particularly when I am on the telephone, and it is important, or enjoyable, and I want for them to get their own snack. Sometimes I feel my children are inappropriate, too. Still, tomorrow is Monday, and now, at 1:15 pm on Sunday, I still have not found a babysitter. So, working from home, maybe going in for a half hour to pick up papers and check in while kids wait, I can manage just that right now. And despite the interruptions, I have always managed to do a lot.

Some are restricted simply by the capacity to get to an office, to stay for eight hours away from home. Some have so much to offer to the world, if not for being locked away because they do not fit into the rules of the workplace. Some of us in this situation can do a lot, contribute a lot. Our lives are chaotic; the world is chaotic, and an efficient life simply cannot ignore this fact forever. Instead, imagine that we embrace that chaos, let it in. Maybe it is not as unworkable as we think.

Waiting on the World to ChangeJohn Mayer

It was a day for pearls, the end of the school year.

Now it is time to change, time to dress for new beginnings.

Yesterday was Bloomsday. I remember my first attempt at reading Ulysses, carrying the book like a schoolgirl, close, and trying to hold onto the wildly accumulating words long enough for my brain to grasp some meaning in them. It was a long process for me, one that took place over years, not months. So, I recognized the words with sadness as Garrison Keillor read that passage yesterday on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. He read, just before 9am, my coffee in the cup holder, while I was on my way to work.

No, no: these words are not for busy mornings. The inappropriateness is not so much that they are wonderful, gushing words, but they are the last of them in that novel. Their images, so full and inviting, made me long yesterday. For what? Damn. I had just fixed my face, just got ready. Damn bleary eyes. I hate these endings, knowing that words you read for the first time will never come back again in the same way, knowing that the next book will not be as satisfying, and with a long, difficult book, I hate leaving it after all that. Well…

It is also that time of year, when school ends with a flurry–no, a blizzard–of activity, with too much to do, far too much to do. And everyone else is rushing, too, just to make it to that end.

I always hate the end, hate the goodbyes, hate the disruption, the worries of how to manage time, manage children, how I can work and make things work. I hate not seeing the people who make life work for us, with us, during the rest of the year. I miss them. I miss the familiarity of the year, the schedule, the routine, and the surprises tucked beneath it all. It abruptly stops.

I wonder what this end will mean this year. It has been a year full of change already, and letting go of yet more feels so unwieldy. I wonder what will happen. I wonder…

And yet, this year, I want change.

It became all too apparent during the last week that life as I know it now is not the life I want to lead. I worked hard, which usually feels good. But this time, work seemed more of an escape than an accomplishment; too much to do felt like an excuse. Maybe days were too long, too little time spent with the things and the people that mean the most to me. I came out of it all feeling that the sacrifice was not a means to a better end for all of us. Money in the bank, eventually, perhaps, but at what cost?

The work is good, in theory–in practice, too, for the most part. I believe in it, and wish to do more in my role there, to make a difference. Maybe we all do. We all tend to wonder in frustrating moments where that fulfilling life is. It has long been my stoic family’s way to chastise dreamchasers… and yet, the absence of meaning has nearly destroyed me at times. So, when my coworker suggested that I may need to cut back hours this summer, or figure out ways to work from home more, I was surprised. There is always too much to do in the office. But then there is life, too.

Hearing those words from Ulysses, too, I realize that the sadness came from the overflowing sensuality that I long for, if only just a little. I long not for all of it, not for “the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar”, but I do crave the yes.

Oh, yes, this year has felt like such a year of no. I find myself clinging to endings, but now letting go, releasing the pain and frustrations, at least just a bit. Yes, I maybe do want pink and blue and yellow houses, and gardens, and yes, maybe I do want even more than I let myself wish for. Oh yes! I do crave the yes.

My dad always knew right where the heating pad was. It was gloriously soft, like felt, as I remember from the odd time that I had to use it when I was younger.

My dad used to complain about his back, which in my non-empathetic youth, I was convinced was overplayed a tad bit, along with all discussions of various ailments around the kitchen table when members of his family visited.

Where did he hurt his back first? In the Army? working as a carpenter? somewhere… Now I have the unfortunate understanding of just how painful these sorts of things can be. My first injury a few years ago involved a two-door rental car, a move scheduled less than a month away, and a large, special needs child with a skin rash. I could barely walk after I overdid whatever I did, and was convinced that I was dying. I must have inherited that knack for dramatically painful medical conditions… or at least describing them in those terms.

Or maybe it was just bad luck. Every once in a while, the back flares up again, and luck had it that this happened yesterday, on a lovely day that I had planned to walk, to absorb the city and the excitement. Instead, I woke up after not enough sleep, took Advil and went back to bed.

The Advil helped a little. A few hours later, I awoke and looked around the quiet house, amazed to be only sore, and not in immediate pain. I flipped on an R&B radio show that always makes me happy, and drank some tea on my porch. It is not what I had planned for the day, but maybe it is what I needed.

Today I woke up, a little sad to feel left behind and forgotten, but with a new frame of mind. A friend came over to help me repair a broken window, and I was in heaven. Now I know how to do it myself! A feat accomplished with joy, conversation, a nice dinner, and time with a good friend… a fine day indeed.

Sometimes life throws us disappointments, upsets plans, but perhaps for reasons we understand only later. Maybe these are our clearest moments: quiet times pared down to the most simple things, a laugh, a kind word, and a thoughtful gesture. And we realize that these are the things that matter the most.

The job was this: I went to a beautiful house and turned pages, pronounced words, kept watch until he had finished, or maybe even fallen asleep.

It was my second semester of graduate school. In some haze of unemployment and reverse culture shock after a year in France, I had accepted an offer for a teaching assistantship and free classes, all intended to end in a master’s degree in French literature.

My first semester teaching was a stroll though an emotional minefield as undergraduate students trampled my best intentions. On the other hand, I wrote my own papers that were deemed brilliant, or at least pretty good. The editor of a literary journal invited me to be her assistant. The graduate advisor asked me to stay for my doctorate. The juxtaposition of experiences was dizzying, especially in the wake of the advances attempted by a former professor and employer (I babysat his children). That moment he smoked pot in his car and grabbed my hand was a sexual harassment moment that I scarcely recognized at the time, much less attempted to address. In fact, I was convinced that I had mistaken that strange event afterward, glad still that I had grabbed my hand back before he put it where he had apparently intended.

Instead of dwelling on what may have happened, I buried myself in books and music—live music that had become amazingly accessible to me when I started dating one of the pop music critics in the area. I buried myself also in that music critic, a tall, unshakable, wonderful guy with a way of making the world go away, a guy who remained childlike and may still have that capacity, as I imagine him still working in a record store, turning new music on his turntable and his head and his words. Most of all, I knew that he adored me—a mutual feeling—and we explored the city as if it were brand spanking new.

The next semester, after a summer of successful teaching and a multitude of private students who paid very well, I found myself in a pedagogy seminar—something that would have helped enormously in my first semester. My private students and the income they brought were gone, so when the pedagogy professor announced a tutoring gig, I ran up after class to learn the details.

The student was one of hers, an intermediate French grammar and conversation student who was housebound at times. I collected the assignments, and made the call.

K. was twenty years old, a friendly kid with his own passion for music and a weekly radio show. K. was not doing so well when I met him, though, and I talked to his sister while I waited for the pastor to finish his weekly visit.

K. had a protective family, to say the least. When he had been diagnosed with leukemia five years earlier, the family gathered, and decided that the cancer would never win. With love and laughter, they endured, keeping the world at bay. K. was indeed still alive, very much so, despite the recent chemotherapy treatments that had prompted me to his home that day.

We looked at the current chapter of French grammar, and at some point, inevitably, K. changed the subject. His real love really was music, and he could talk about that for hours longer than he could conjugate irregular verbs. I took my boyfriend once, which thrilled them both. We attempted some conversations in French, and I brought French pop music, which K. did enjoy. In fact, the reason that the university was providing a tutor in French, and not some other subject, was that K. dreamed of going to Paris. He loved the French language, and kept that thought of travel as a bright light at the end of an exhausting and sickening tunnel, a beacon of hope for recovery.

The treatments were grueling. Sometimes K.’s sister or mom called me to say he was not up to that day’s session, and I did not see him. He was hospitalized at times, and then, finally, he returned to his real class. My job ended.

Our intermediate French classes had the distinction, the true honor, of reading a literary masterpiece. Not only did our students read the masterpiece, but they put on skits about it with a distinguished audience: the author himself.

Alain Robbe-Grillet died recently, a fact that may well have been rejoiced by some intermediate French students from those years. Some surely remember the book that they struggled through, certain that it would prevent them from earning the A they had strived for all semester. They struggled for sure, wondering at first if it was the deficiency of their language skills or the excessive amounts of alcohol from the night before that made the book such a bitch to read. At a point, they realized that it was the book itself–a cruel joke–that was so impenetrable. Thought provoking, it was, and the thoughts it seemed to provoke in my own students seemed to be ones of anger, perhaps even violence. The language is relatively simple, in fact, but the story is an endless loop of beginnings, slight changes, and frustrations. The question and answer session for the author ended, as I recall, with the author shouting at undergraduates who meekly asked him what he intended in the book. “Have you never read your own authors?” he challenged them. “Have you never read Faulkner?”

And despite that, K. did perform the skit for the great author, and the author laughed. I could barely believe that this was the same kid who could not hold his head up for most of the afternoons that I spent with him.

I saw him again, on his twenty-first birthday, celebrating at a club with a band he loved, joking that he was going to have a drink—a real no-no, he told me. He energetically remarked also that he had planned that long awaited trip. His sister was going with him to Paris. He was in remission, and had been for a long time by then.

My career at the institution of higher learning unraveled in unpredictable ways… unpredictable to me at the time, but damned obvious now in retrospect. I had left, quite shaken, and never set foot in the halls that I had once loved, vowing never to see some people again in my life. And I have not.

Several months later, my brother tossed a newspaper on my plate. “Hey, isn’t that the kid you tutored?” he asked.

K. had gone home, the obituary said, for Christmas holidays after treatment following a minor relapse. His doctors had thought that the benefits of being with family during holidays outweighed the risk of leaving the hospital. He went home one last time, and caught pneumonia, and he died.

I found the funeral home, and wandered in, hoping selfishly that I would not see anyone from the university. I had to go, though, knew I had to. I saw the young body, laid out in a suit and tie like some wax figure representing K.—and not well. The life was gone, and life was what K. had always had.

The family was visibly shaken, there only in body—hollow ones, it seemed. For all the time that I knew them, they never allowed themselves to think that K. might die, and for so long, they were right. His father saw me. “Why?” he sobbed to me. And I didn’t know why.

I had no idea what to say, and I also knew that at those moments, it never matters, because words mean nothing when life is stripped bare. All that matters are the souls that remain, that remind, that wound, yet repair. All that matters is time, which will move forward, painfully, persistently farther and farther from the physical presence of the ones we loved, until they can come back to us—we realize they never left—through the love that remains in our hearts.

The men in suits were out again today. I see them often in my neighborhood, as I pass several funeral homes any way I turn to head out into the world from where I live. This morning was a sunny, cool morning, and the men today were attired in a professional black: older men who own proper suits for such occasions, men who are accustomed to facing the end of life.

A morbid curiosity leads me into the lives that will be remembered on mornings when the hearse is parked out front. I cannot help but wonder what happened, and why. The cars and the people who gather lead me to assumptions, some ordinary, some tragic. Some days I can barely make it through the streets as cars hunt for parking, fire engines or police cars line the streets, people walk sadly to that one place. Tragic. Sometimes, there are few cars, a few people out front, some laughing, some smoking, some simply quiet. Ordinary.

Morning suits are for funerals. The evening suits are of a different sort. Visitation brings the stragglers, the people who appear because they know they should, the ones who would have, should have made it to the hospital earlier, the young people dressed in the best they can muster, reluctantly inching closer to the door to pay respects that they barely know how to pay. But they do.

I remember one funeral, years ago, sitting in the front in a mint green dress with a boyfriend nearly as young as I was. I smiled as seemed necessary, waited, made the uncomfortable friends feel that they had done the thing I most needed them to do—and they had—which was just to be there, however they could manage. I thought on that day how short a life can be, how precious the few moments we have in this world are, and how fragile our abilities remain with us. It was nearly twenty-three years ago now, a death on Flag Day, a visitation on Father’s Day, a funeral on a quiet day when the world began again in a new way for me, with a strange sort of beauty that comes only when you know that someone you love has at last been given the peace that life never offered.

I want. I wish. Not “I need”—that’s justifiable.

Desire puts it all on the line, makes the moment, opens the door for another to walk in… or walk away.

I regret the words the moment they jump from my mouth, escape onto the page. I want them back in my head where they cannot jinx me, or hurt me, or subject me to the criticisms or objections that I do not want to face. Safe.

But no.. I would say them again.

The thoughts in our heads die without expression. Maybe some of them should do just that. But others… oh, others are life itself. And yes, I do want…

Sun shines, moments reflected in a pond and shimmering. More peaceful than silence, the birds and breeze sing in some forgotten paradise, far from the madness of the everyday, but still right around the corner.

Night comes, and the city enchants, throwing lights, lamplights, stars, glistening high into the air somewhere near a sliver of moon suspended between buildings.

I don’t often feel such confusion, wondering what nights like this are supposed to mean, if they are more than simply splendid nights. An opening door, warm air from a kitchen, bread, cheese, interrupts the cool air, and then to wander into something wonderful, something I am afraid I could come to depend on… We walk, then later, an accordion, voices, the froth on top. A kiss. Can wonderful be ordinary? I try to find a context for words, for hair brushed behind my ear, for feelings that seems so distinct from the life I lead on Monday. I stop myself before my reality becomes too distorted.

Tomorrow, at my desk, I will think of other things, like the correct answer to polite questions, and what time I need to leave for a meeting. “How was your weekend?” Does anyone expect the truth, if truth seems outside of the mundane, and yet not cause for official celebration? Can we believe that time away can be magic, or that life still holds its wonder even now, beyond a paycheck, a house to clean, appointments, errands? Maybe bliss should not be only time off. Maybe I should yield to that warmth. Maybe there is a new context I never even considered, one where joy is not held separate and only available on weekends. Can I weave that joy into the everyday and still make sense of it? Will it disappear, or fade, or will it infuse the days with softness?

Or is this all an illusion, just the dance of two lonely souls?

“That night we moved closer to the border, and clear across the prairie, at the very edge of the horizon. We could make out the gas fires of the refinery at Missoula, while to the south we could see the lights of Cheyenne, a city bigger and grander than I’d ever seen.

I felt all kind of things looking at the lights of Cheyenne, but most important, I made up my mind to never again tag around with a hell-bent type, no matter how in love with him I was” (Sissy Spacek as Holly, in the movie Badlands, 1973).

I recently had a moment of fond reminiscence of dangerous days, the thrill and passion of grasping tight while the wind and the world hit me head-on. Then I woke up.

There are all sorts of reasons that taking off in pursuit of adventure may seem like a fine thing to do, but in the end, most of them seem to involve running away from, rather than to something. The vague idea of adventure was a dream I inherited, a place I guarded in the back of my mind as an option whenever I was faced with too much unhappiness in too short a time.

Until I was in my late 20s, I never did much more than ponder that option. A few times, I felt myself drawn to the flame, flittering perilously close to entanglements that would break my heart, and did—but not irretrievably so. I jumped a few times, but felt that elastic pull back, bungeeing me back into a predictable existence to idle on the lookout for my own truth.

I wonder sometimes if it is a part of growing up, or if it is a part of growing up unhappy that leads a person find truth in sublimation. Sometimes I find that truth in words, my own words, a world on a page, or in a heartbeat, a smile, a carefully placed step and a song, a moment of pure grace. This is a sort of joy.

Try as I might, though, I never found joy on the back of a motorcycle, holding on tight while someone else drove through the unknown vistas and back roads. I did venture once, untethered at last, straddled the back seat of an adventure and never went home again. But where I ended up after that, I expected to stay.

I guess I should have known this was not a ride meant for settling, for bonding, or for discovering ourselves. The never-ending voyages tugged, threatening roots that grew ever deeper. “Why leave? Why not stay and see the flowers, the fruits, this life we created?” I wondered. Garden with me.

“Come alongside me,” he said, and I followed, while I still could. The urge to flee returned tirelessly, a malignant tumor, seeking still more—but what?—some indefinable thing that could ravage me in the process. One day, farther from joy that I ever imagined, I stayed behind; he left. But he could come home, to walk among it, to reclaim this life, this beautiful, imperfect life that had grown, with the weeds and thorns to disparage. He could come home, if only to pick the best fruits from among them, to look at love and believe it would always wait.

I wonder, what hidden parts of ourselves only find expression in actions that seem to defy what life passes to us, even what we choose? I wonder what makes us feel more alive when we speed through space, feeling the vibrations through our skin, into our minds, testing the very limits of our physical life, and abandoning in those sublime moments all that has meaning here on Earth.

And then… what makes us feel justified to return, perhaps unscathed, perhaps damaged irreparably, always hoping to be cared for and loved by the ones we left behind…. or at least, not forgotten?

I wonder what the seeker seeks, if he even knows, or is it the search that he lives for, the never-ending journey? What comfort does the road bring? Perhaps it is the moving skylines, the exchangeable faces, the well-polished security of the new and unblemished. Perhaps the road brings an illusion of perfection, and the safety of never truly being known.

It is with utter amazement that I announce my first purchase with an as-yet-unearned paycheck from the new job. Ladies and gentlemen, I have bought myself a leaf blower.

Now, this is no ordinary leaf blower. According to Consumer Reports, it is the top-rated blower/vac system for its size and price range, rated above the gas models (it is electric), and it is mine.

You may be asking yourself, why power tools? Why not something to wear, like a beautiful piece of jewelry? Why not a nice meal with friends? Why not a purchase that would bring great pleasure, like Brad Mehldau’s new CD?

Well, friends, the yard is a mess. We spent about ten hours last week getting to know one another, me and my leaf blower, but in the end, I can say that while things are looking neater, I am only more aware looking around of how much work I have to do to get things in shape around here, and I think I may need to look beyond the leaf blower for help.

If you page back to last August in these little musings, you will find some remarks I made about home repairs. I did indeed start chipping away at paint with a metal scraper, all with the best of intentions. If you read the following few entries, however, you will find that during the two weeks last year that my kids were gone, I rode my bike, took naps, listened to Lou Rawls and June Tabor, went out (don’t recall how much I actually wrote about that), and had a general all-around good time. I did not paint, repair drywall, or build shelves. I could argue that my lack of power tools was standing in the way of progress.

The only problem is that it is not true. I do own a few tools, a drill, a sander. I have not yet found the sander, but it somewhere, behind the stacks of still unpacked boxes that still inhabit my garage. The drill has been handy numerous times. Time to get these things out again, repair, rebuild.

The yard really is beginning to look a little better. Years of dog (the last owners’), sand (some just there, some thrown by the snow plows), and overhead trees make it a bit challenging, but it is a lovely yard, and a lovely house—with no problems that cannot be mended with a little care and love… and a little extra from time to time—hence the power tool purchase. I find myself seeking a restful balcony, an inviting entrance, and a porch to lounge on, room to wonder and a place where I can simply do, or maybe be… and a life that fills that house.

Oh, but I do, and I am, and I rest and invite, and yes, I do wonder. That life is already here. It already is, but sometimes I forget. Perhaps that life is just waiting for the right setting.

Has anyone seen my extension cord?