Stuff

Like most people I know (particularly of my age group) the bane of my existence is all the stuff we've accumulated over the years. In spite of several moves, numerous adventures with storage spaces (DON'T EVER STORE ANYTHING IN A STORAGE SPACE!!! It costs more than the stuff warrants. Trust me) and far too much time donating boxes of books to libraries, friends, and organizations (read: anyone who will take them) we still have far more material objects than anyone should ever have. We acquire things, then find it hard to give them up.

We have downsized substantially, and even have an auxiliary house in California to absorb some of the overflow (that's how we emptied our storage space some years back) but we still register pretty high on the stuff-o-meter. Sigh.

However, we had some folks in recently for a small party, and took them on a tour of the house. This may just be an Old Town thing, but some people like to see what houses here look like on the inside. I was once told that residents will sometimes leave lights on and windows undraped so that passers-by can get a glimpse of some of the more beautiful classic rooms...(I am not describing our house here, mind you.) In any case, when we do this, most people will proffer the standard comment on the order of "You have a lovely home.." and we smile and say 'thank you' and that's it.

This time, however, after that obligatory exchange, one person said something that I am still thinking about: that every room had something interesting in it, something quirky or different or unusual in some way. It might be an ark or a map or a wooden bowl or a picture or a stuffed animal--but there was something in every room that provoked a question or a thought or a response. Hmmm.

I started walking through and looking, and found that our house shows its (our) personality in more ways than I thought. There is something uniquely ours in every space here, and almost all of them have stories to tell. Moreover, I think most other people have the same 'clutter'-dynamic going on. Sure, we all have too much stuff, but it's all part of us, part of our own story: the books we read, the souvenirs we bring home, the pieces of our past that we choose to display. Our house is the sum of us, and I'm not altogether sure that we wouldn't be the poorer for cheerfully discarding books and bowls and toys and tchotchkes, cut glass and photos and prints and china in pursuit of simplification.

I'd rather have a house that speaks our name.

Mothers' Day

The flowers are nice,

the chocolates too—

the brunch was lovely,

but the cards, oh yes, the cards:

sweet and silly and  precious,

crayoned, penciled, signed

with words like “love”,

like “happy”, like “mom”.

Your name. Mine. These words.

Just give me all these words,

scrawled and scribbled  

illustrated love

tucked away treasures

in recipe boxes, drawers, and books.

I love them--and you--most of all.

Not Mothers' Day

It's not Mother's Day yet, and, if the truth were told, I was never much of a mother/daughter kid. Of course I loved my mom, and, of course, I respected her, but we weren't the classic "let's go shopping" or "come over for dinner" pair. She didn't teach me how to use makeup, or talk to me about boys, or even nag me about grades or worry with me about college applications. It didn't help that since I graduated from college, I've never lived closer than an hour or two away--and sometimes a lot farther.  I was always the afterthought daughter, simply because I wasn't there most of the time.

However, there are times now that I say quiet 'thank you's to my mom, moments when I stop and realize that she taught me more than I ever knew. I'm not Suzy Homemaker by any stretch of the imagination. I don't iron things like Mom did: shirts, blouses, tablecloths, napkins, sheets (What!??!! People IRON their sheets??? I don't think even she did that.) I don't cook dinner every night. My laundry sometimes sits in the washer for a day or so before I get around to putting it in the dryer. My housecleaning is on the order of my Roomba--I bump around randomly from location to location, cleaning up as I go along--and sooner or later, the law of probabilities says that I will have cleaned the whole house. Maybe. Not for me the days of top-to-bottom vacuuming and dusting and clutter removal. That was not in the DNA my mom imparted to me.

Instead I think of her when I'm baking or trying a new recipe. Not necessarily because she was the best cook I've ever met. She wasn't. But she was never hesitant about trying something different now and then. I remember her making what she called 'pizza' before anyone thought of making it at home. (It was terrible, but we didn't know any better till we tasted the real thing..) Outside the kitchen,  I remember her knocking down a wall in the house because she wanted to open up our dining room to the living room. I remember her rock garden, for which she hauled rocks in a wheelbarrow (from god-knows-where) because she wanted to tame the hill at the foot of our yard. I can still feel the warmth of that big brown flat rock I used to sit on --when I was conscripted to weed that garden--and can see in my mind the violets that peeked out from behind it.

I think of her in the garden because she could make anything grow--except peonies. Lilacs that dominated the side of the house. Shasta daisies and flowering cherries and forsythia and flowering quince (that grew little hard fruits that you could pelt the kids next door with)..Mom knew all the names of all the flowers and trees and shrubs--and I did too. That's not a skill I appreciated till I found out that not everyone knows that stuff. To this day, I pick plants according to the layout of that house on Radecke Avenue. This plant does well in shade, because it was planted on the LEFT side of the house, while THAT one needs sun because Mom always had it out front.

I learned any number of things without realizing it--and without acknowledging it. Baking and reading and planting and patience and tolerance (did I mention her telling off a neighbor who made some disparaging remark about a high school friend of ours who was black?) and whatever other  everyday virtues I might have acquired. Mom gave her time and herself to just about every person she met. She used to take buses cross-town (a long haul, believe me) to visit an old woman she'd cared for in a stint when she worked at a nursing home--because Mrs. Stein didn't have any family to visit her. Once a week, she took buses again to go and clean her mother-in-law's house because no hired 'girl' did it right. She taught me how to scrub a floor and clean a kitchen and make a bed with hospital corners (she had been a nurse.) I am not as basically good as my mom was, but she gave me one hell of an example: hard work, kindliness, creativity, perseverance, making do, paying attention, service...

I think the most telling story of our relationship was after I left home to go to grad school. I rented an apartment with two friends in Charlottesville, and after several months, we were sitting around talking about family. I happened to mention that my mom and I weren't that close. My roommate looked rather taken aback. "I never would have guessed that," she said. "You talk about her all the time."

It may not be in what I actually say. It may be in the way I live. Say things about my mom? I guess I do.

Little things mean a lot...

Our kitchen faucet had frozen in place and could not be moved from side to side to rinse the sink without Herculean effort; effort of a magnitude that might wrench the faucet from its moorings altogether and result in a full-scale shower in the kitchen. We finally bought a faucet last week. It has languished on the hearth in the family room for over a week, awaiting installation.

Today a friend (and independent contractor) installed it for us. I have been marveling ever since: it SWINGS from side to side! I don't have to haul on the handle to turn it from cold to hot! The sprayer pulls out! It WORKS!!! I've been making do with the old one for so long that I forgot how faucets are supposed to function. What an epiphany...it has brightened my entire day.

Now this is hardly worth commentary. We all have endured small inconveniences while waiting for the right time or place or bank balance to fix them. Drafty windows, leaky gutters, peeling paint, carpeting that we've grown to hate...Sometimes we have waited until the point at which we are about to sell a house before fixing all the nuisance issues we've lived with, and then, we go all out and wonder why we didn't do it sooner so that we could enjoy the new and improved version.

Consider this, then, to be the voice in the wilderness, shouting "Do it NOW!!!" in your ear. I love my new faucet. I will adore the patio gate that we have contracted for: the one that won't warp or sag, that won't rot, that will be lockable--as opposed to the warped, sagging, rotting one we now have that we fasten shut with bungee straps when we enter or leave. I love my fountain that was repaired last year. I love the patio light that is motion-sensitive and keeps me from fumbling with the lock in the dark. What were we waiting for? A miraculous cure from the appliance gods for all the ailments of our household? An angel with a tool belt? A Billy Sunday revival for inanimate objects? Let me tell you--if it were going to come, it would have happened by now.  I'm moving into the camp of "God helps those who help themselves.."

But for the time being, I'm going to walk into the kitchen and rinse my sink.

Ted Kooser, and today's effort

As is always the way with Poetry Month poems, here is one that is sort of a first draft, which I may or may not get back to. Looking for poems to read this evening, I ran across some Ted Kooser works. He apparently was diagnosed with cancer and just stopped writing. During his recuperation he was advised to walk each morning, and a friend and fellow-poet asked him to write him postcards each day after his walk. Kooser did, and those postcards eventually turned into a book of poems...Anyway, here goes...

Beneath the Carnival

I understand Ted Kooser

coming off a cancer diagnosis,

not writing.

Poetry demands

an inward /outward contortion:

difficult when your own body

is screaming insults in your ear. 

Bloated with the trivia of day,

wordless in this physical discord,

the required acrobatics fail.

Withdraw.

Stop. Beneath the carnival

tent of chaos, carefully swing  

in remembered arcs; cast off

the appurtenance of  the sick,

the body undependable;

swing gracefully above its demands,

suspended between clamorous earth

and indeterminate heaven;

swing again in your accustomed way,

catching inspiration by its heels,

and learn again to fly.

Final words: the list

You know you are finally decompressed from vacation when you can't quite remember the order in which you visited places--and even lose track of a few of the highlights. So, just to wrap things up, here's my abbreviated list (and comments thereon) of our UK experience, not necessarily in sequence:

• Trafalgar Square--where the buskers reign, along with those dressed-up figures that appeared to be floating. Best one of these was the guy who impersonated Magritte's painting of the headless man in suit and derby.
• National Portrait Gallery--Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Queen Elizabeth..
• Churchill's War Rooms--WWII experience
• St. James Park--lovely
• Pall Mall area--the ultimate shopping experience
• Courtald Gallery--best Impressionist experience, in a lovely, small (and unadvertised) museum.
• London Transportation Museum--guaranteed to amuse children indefinitely
• Covent Garden Market--ditto for adults; tea and music
• St. Paul's--history, religion and a beautiful church
• Westminster Abbey-- Poet's Corner. And as if that were not enough, Elizabeth and Mary Tudor, (and Mary, Queen of Scots nearby), together for eternity.
• Millennium Bridge--views up and down the Thames
• The Globe Theater--an icon; visual reinforcement of all you thought you knew about Shakespeare's theater
• Thames Cruise--best way to see the city and many of its landmarks: Tower Bridge, Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind, the Globe, the London Eye
• Fortnum & Mason's--not to buy or have tea, but just to look at the goods available at outrageous prices.
• The Banqueting Hall--Rubens on the ceiling, stirring story of Charles I
• The College of Arms--who knew there was an office (and a court!) for heraldry disputes and questions? Since 1555..and it's open to the public.
• the British Museum--innumerable fun things to do and see, and I didn't even get to the Egyptian artifacts or the Elgin Marbles!
• the British Library--from the cool iron graphic at the entrance, to the wonder-full (literally) room with the treasures of the library--a joy to visit. 

Scotland:

• Dundee--Discovery, Verdant Works, Broughty Ferry, pubs, bakeries, butcher shops, the McManus, the Unicorn, the University, the art...
• Stirling Castle--incomparable! even in the rain.
• St. Andrew's--the ruins, the views, the beach, the old course...
• the distillery: how they actually make Scotch
• sheep--everywhere
• haggis--much better than you might imagine

I am sure I've omitted any number of things, and if I remember a particular favorite, I may expound on it later, but...for now, I am closing the door and moving on. It was a great trip.

***Can't believe I forgot the Children's Museum in Dundee: a great little museum with lots of interesting (and educational) stuff for kids to do. And Battersea Park in London (tho that might be a more 'kid-friendly' item than it is for adults.) 

St. Andrew's

When anyone mentions St. Andrew's, the immediate response is "golf" (unless of course, you are a Roman Catholic, and immediately conjure up an X-shaped cross for that martyred apostle..) And that would be the right answer, though not the complete one. St. Andrew's is a university town, and also the site of a ruined cathedral and castle. Given the weather (though the avid golfers did not seem to be bothered by it one whit) our exploration was devoted to the latter aspects, rather than the most obvious. In addition, the beach at St. Andrew's is the site of the famous running scene in "Chariots of Fire", and I dare you to walk across that sand and NOT hear (at least in your head) "Da-da-da-da-DA-da! Da-da-da-da-DAH!"

Carrying on in the tradition established at Stirling, I quickly bought a woolen hat before we explored the grounds. We wandered among the tombstones and the remains of old stone walls, chasing Claire who was determined to climb to the top of every one. Better people than I am even climbed the tower for some great views..my iPad climbed with JC and brought back some nice pictures of the view. I did not get off scot-free (pun there) however. Audrey was determined to go through the mine/countermine passage. I didn't get to read the placard as I was dragged along in her wake into a tunnel that forced adults to bend double and to climb down a ladder through a hole in solid rock that you could feel at your back. But I kept going, waiting for the big reveal at the end of the tunnel. Which turned out to be a blank wall at the end of the tunnel. So we turned around and repeated the trip in reverse. I still haven't figured out exactly what its charm was, but perhaps that is something only 5-year-olds can understand.