Going back to clean out the house – the return trip

I was in Midway airport. Why do I constantly seem to be in Midway airport?

“Shiiiiine-'em-up! Shiiiiiiiiiine-'em-up!” says the man. He calls out again through the din of summer travelers, apparently undeterred that most all of them traipsing by are in flip flops and tennis shoes. “Shiiiine-'em-up!” He is sitting under as sign that reads “Shoe Hospital.”

Before I left I retrieved a piece of mail from my mom's box – a reminder asking her to please complete the survey they'd sent already from the first hospital she went to about her feelings on the care she received there. Mama said there'd be days like this. What she said was, “Life goes on.” Nothing if not original, my mother. Life in the form of surveys. Life in the form of computers generating junk mail. Perhaps there is Yelp on the other side and mom can critique the stupid hospital. Not sure what she'd say exactly, because the only contact I had in that place myself was parading through its halls with my sisters to try to retrieve my mother's clothes that no one there had bothered to send along with her or back to us: a pair of jeans and a tee shirt that read “Lima Bean Lovers Live Longer.”

The facts are so dumbly ironic, there is no commentary to highlight them, really.

At least in this direction no one tried to get me to read a copy of the eulogy they had with them for the funeral they were going to. No one shared with me with stories of their breast cancer, while I wept, unacknowledged, trapped in my seat by another delay and a jam packed terminal gate.

Back in Philly, they told me there was an earlier connection into San Jose I might make, but when I got here I saw that that flight was actually to San Diego. A difference of 460 miles. If it were only so easy – just exchange one saint for another. Swap out your requests. San Rafael, patron saint of health. San Francisco, watching over the animals. What's the difference, really? Just merge them all in an imaginary sacred overpass between the 5 and the 101. Crazy, west coast weirdos are we. The east coasters lost in our concrete maze of prayers.

August is over. It's a full month. The anniversary of when I met my husband comes in the month of August. The anniversary of when we arrived in Monterey 13 years ago. The anniversary of the first earthquake we experienced after arriving in Monterey. Our wedding anniversary and my birthday both come in August.

I have had zero time to type up or think out the oodles of journal pages and even more thoughts and dreams that never made it that far. I'm about to go off the grid, so to speak, for a few days, for a much-needed, long-ago-planned long weekend with the fam at a farm where I can sit by the river or under the apple trees and stir only at the dinner bell. So my lack of posting will continue for a few more days, but afterwards, I hope to be back more regularly.

whales and such (Yoo Hooo! Monterey Bay Aquar-i-um...)

 Isaac this past July on a whale watching trip in the Monterey Bay

My friend Kate (geez, I have the coolest friends) has an article in the new Monterey County Weekly about whale watching in our bay this summer, which has been fantastically stellar (modify superlatives? why yes, I think I will, thank you.).

In one paragraph, Kate states, "Connecting with nature is the best way to inspire children to grow up committed to conservation, according to educator David Sobel, author of Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. It’s crucial to give children a chance to build a lasting, nourishing love of the wild before they are burdened with worries about overwhelming environmental problems. Observing nature can also help lengthen attention spans and combat digital addiction." (emphasis mine)

Back in April of this year I wrote a couple pieces about my feelings on the new exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and how I thought they missed the mark for kids, making much the same point Kate does. Jenny Sayre Ramberg of the Aquarium picked up the blog piece right away, and we proceeded to have an interesting discussion within the comments. I also wrote a follow-up blog on the subject. That is as far as I got at the time. Until now.

Besides Kate's article which gave me renewed interest and vigor in the subject, I am rather concerned about what might be happening as the MBA takes down the beloved Outer Bay tank for the next 10 months to revamp it into the "Open Sea" exhibit coming in July 2011. First, let me say that the Outer Bay is/was a classic. In place since 1996, it is an enormous wall of glass where you can watch from ground level or sit upstairs in the dark and take in hammerheads, tuna, rays, and an amazing array of amazing creatures go on by. The balcony seats are the best in the house, in my opinion. I've been taking Isaac there since he was 3 months old. The beauty is unmatched, but more, the serenity is untouchable.

With the new and "improved" exhibit, they promise to address climate change and plastics pollution, as "as always" point to positive solutions. So my question again is HOW will that happen? In what FORM and in what ORDER at EYE LEVEL will these things come at us? I am also not comforted by the dangling carrot of more "multi-media experiences." Again, in my past discussion of this topic, I stated that I thought the screens were being a little too heavily relied on and upstaging the animals themselves. I don't want to play a game about a sea turtle, I want to watch one swim by. I don't want to be sucked in (and have my child sucked in) to a video of the sunfish, when -- if the tourists would quick flashing their bloody cameras for a second -- one might swim by in the flesh.

My aquarium renewal notice just arrived in the mail...I'm no Julie Packard when it comes to my ability to financially support this resource, but still. I need to know how my money will be spent.

Jenny, I think I will have to belatedly take up your offer to give you a ring at the aquarium. Hope to talk to you soon.

Save the Words!

You must go to the coolest site I have seen in a long time.

I am the proud new mama to the word "starrify." "I hereby promise to use this word in conversation and correspondence as frequently as possible, to the very best of my ability."

For the sake of our youth, the future leaders of our planet, you must make it a habit to gravitate toward any education professionals willing to use their little gold stickers to starrify rather than reward. (consider it an entry under "school search part 5.")

With many thanks to my pal Eve for this one.

going back to clean out the house, part 2

I stop at the bank to give my brother one less thing to do. “I need to leave some information about my mother's estate...” I tell the woman. “And when I say 'estate,'” I mumble to myself minutes later as I head back out the door, “I mean the 650 square-foot rental full of dust and expired toothpaste coupons.”

Most of the sorting, of course, is paper. The things I found in my mother's house. I really can't decide what is more precious:

The envelope addressed to the White House, stamped and ready for battle, or maybe the DVD titled “Life or Debt: Simple Steps for a Lifetime of Financial Freedom”...still unopened.

The business card of a “Middle Eastern dance artist,” or mom's current membership card to the NAACP.

Mom's passport, renewed and up-to-date, without a single stamp in it other than the invisible seal of optimism, or –and this could be the topper— the lyrics to “Born to be Wild” handwritten on looseleaf.

Magazines about living with Diabetes, wrist braces, neck braces, canes, walkers, prosthetic breasts, I toss each in turn into the donation pile, with the same mantra: “Well, mom, you don't need these, or these, or these. You're free now.” It should make me feel better, but it doesn't.

The phone rings and I see from the caller ID it's the consolidation company that paid out on her bills. They aren't collectors, no harm in talking to them, and so, I do. When I inform the woman that my mother is unfortunately deceased, she stops short and sounds genuinely sorry. I leave her with my brother's phone number. When we're ready to hang up, she expresses her sympathy once again, but then just can't help herself, “Have a great day!” she effuses.

I find an old Polaroid of mom from some Halloween past, dressed as a devil and hamming it up for the camera. I tape it at eye level to the door jam so devil-mom can watch over us as we sort through her books. In my delirium, I find this somehow hilarious, though my siblings don't get the joke. “What is that? Why is that there?” one or the other of my sisters keeps asking. “Is that Rita?” Better it were a photo of her with the same impish grin holding a whiskey sour instead of a pitch fork and toasting us while we sweat in the hell of her tiny house, the ceiling fans all dangerous blades, the monopoly game up for grabs.

going back to clean out the house

Mike and Isaac drive me downtown to pick up the shuttle. And, as my ride departs, it first takes me through the same territory I just traveled to get to my starting point. I see this somehow as significant. But I am weary of metaphor, worn out by searching for signs within signs, really just glad at the moment not to be listening to anyone's cell phone conversation.

Here we are. Flying to get to the people we love and left. Or to where they used to be. The man across the aisle gets on his phone and my reprieve is broken. “Ron's plane is delayed,” he says into his cell. “I'm on my way. I'm on the bus.” And then, “How'd the night go?” I sense something right away. He continues: “How's the breathing? (pause) Vitals?” Ridiculous and apropo. Really, can't we just take a break from signs and synchronicity for a while? What to make of it all?

Here we all are, at the final moments, at the big transitions, relying on the same technology and futuristic inventions that allowed us to get this far apart to begin with to rush us back to see the people it separated us from. It either makes perfect sense or none at all.

Take a look at Sharon Old's poem called “The Race.”

In Marina, a girl gets one the shuttle – 20? 22? Her mother is there seeing her off, three big curls of hair just out of their forms sit on her head for bangs. Her daughter wears a pink baseball hat. She climbs aboard the bus and takes the free front seat, greeting her seatmate in the quick, jovial way of her age – heavy with optimism and expectation, vulnerable, not yet touched by too much grief. The girl promptly buckles her seatbelt and turns her head to catch the gaze of the mother, who is staring back. The two keep eye contact with each other for 30 seconds or more while I watch. Finally, a tiny, audible gasp trains my eyes away from the mom and back to the girl. She wipes her eyes and straightens her pink cap. She is late to take in the reality of the leaving, and I envy her. For my part, I have been long awash in tears.

crazy stuff at the library

I have just arrived at my library – or, one of them in the general vicinity of my residence – to new hours posted on the door. More hours they are closed. And I groan and slump and continue through the automatic door. Where will the crazy people go, I wonder? And believe me when I tell you I count myself among them.

As I type this there is a homeless man, one I see often in the area, at the table to my left cutting up periodicals and what appears, at least, to be book covers. One would think this might be a problem at the library, but the reference desk guy just came over and hauled off the 20-year-old with the laptop next to him instead. It sounded serious. Porno printouts? Too many downloads of American Idol finals ripping through the system? Makes one wonder. In the process, Homeless Man called a loud, boisterous greeting to Reference Guy and Reference Guy answered him politely and solemnly.

Homeless Man is a familiar face around here, we exchange greetings frequently, and sometimes change or apples, plus starved as we are for community, between him and the two former Brooklynites who've just reunited like loud, long-lost lovers to my right, talking about the days when baseball was “a gentleman's sport,” I'm feeling pretty much cozy in a “gang's-all-here” kind of way. It's like when you see a woman on the shuttle bus to the airport who also shows up in front of you at security. If you weren't fast buds by then, then when she sits down in the same gate area as you, you are considering inviting her to your family reunion. We are a social set. Like it or not.

It is really disconcerting – that tearing sound – Homeless Man again. Though he doesn't bother me nearly as much as he could. The last time I was in the library there was a woman crying hysterically while she perused the shelves, alternately reciting the rosary and commenting on magazine covers. It went something like,”Boo-hoo-hoo. Snort!! Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is...Oh, look! Oprah and Ellen!...with thee-hee-hee-hee...SOB!” The time before that, it was the sleeping man next to me awakened by his drunk friend to much commotion; and we can't forget the man in the Russian accent pacing on the grass just outside the window when I tried to escape to a private corner, shrieking tirades and curses into a cell phone that would have given Mel Gibson a run for his money. The Russians have whole dictionaries of vulgarities, though he was choosing to use ours.

Libraries are tricky places. Not as innocent as they seem. I've written about them before this way.

I need to confess that I have also been the crazy person in the library. In our last family visit with my mom in April of this year, we set her up with Skype. She had been suspicious of the service from the start, although ultimately we managed two very successful video calls before she passed.

I had been taken back by how much I had felt like I'd “visited” afterward, as opposed to calls or emails, which admittedly, I hadn't kept up nearly well enough. I had been looking forward to establishing the Skype dates as a regular thing, but we'd only be granted the two.

So I was in the library one day, working on an audio piece I have yet to finish, when a Skype call came in from my mom. I hit answer and tried to keep my voice low. “I can't hear you!” my mother kept shouting from my computer screen. I scooped up my things hurriedly and headed for the door.

“I'm in the library, ma.”

“WHAT??”

“The library!” I shuffle quickly past the homework helpers, a crowd at the online catalogue, cord dangling, bag and limbs akimbo.

“I still can't hear you, dear.”

“That's because I'm trying to be quiet. I'm at the LIBRARY!”

“WHAT?” says the little lady in my arms again, as I zoom by the check out counter, finally the foyer, and out onto the front steps.

“MOM. I. AM. AT. THE. LIBARY.”

“Oh,” she says, finally satisfied and wholly unconcerned. “That's nice.”

I attempt to hold a relatively normal and brief conversation with my mom while on the library steps, sun shining onto screen, battery dwindling, public passing by, as she regales me with the details on the height of her cosmos, the fate of her day lilies. At last, I ask her to please call me on Skype only when we've arranged it beforehand or when she knows I'm at home.

“Call YOU? I didn't call you,” she tells me.

“Of course you did.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Well, I didn't call YOU.”

“You didn't?”

“No.”

She insisted that Skype did it on its own. Can I count a third Skype call, then? Another connection before she left? Can I count us among the crazy people?

War, Letters, Love

Pictured: Heath Proskin, Bill Minor, Richard Mayer.
Photo Credit: David Hall., Monterey Herald.

There is a project I've been a part of for a while called "Love Letters of Lynchburg" that is truly unique and interesting on many levels. Yesterday, we did a performance - a CD release party - that was a reading of love letters between two people from during the Civil War, backed by a live trio on an original score. All of it orchestrated by the charming and extraordinary Bill Minor, who happens to be distantly related to the two wartime lovers. Here is a link to an article about the performance that gives a little more background. I'm tempted just to copy and paste the article, since I'm not sure how long the link will be good for, but anyhoo...

It was one of those times when you realize late on the significance of what you're doing. Bill asked me to read the letters of Susan Leigh Blackford, essentially to be Susan, and I wouldn't think of saying no to Bill. Along the journey, I learned how fascinating she was, the time was, the relationship she had was, and yesterday, how much our merry little band could touch people with the story. As one person noted in thanking us, the exchange was plain and simple an anti-war statement, nevermind from a war none of us can remember or even imagine.

I want to refer back to two poems, of mine and of Ruth Fainlight - from which mine takes its architecture - that I posted on this blog two years ago. Fainlight's poem in fact speaks specifically of wartime letters again.

How much do you use pen and paper anymore? Do you? What can it change to see personal communication become electronic? What does each do to shape the time we're in? How do we participate in that shaping?

Another Shadow Shot Sunday

Another Shadow Shot Sunday? Hmm. I'm not much for routine, but here I seem to be again. Two for two so far.

Recently, a group of grad school friends were in Monterey for a 10-year mini-reunion. I played tourist in my own town for the first time in a long time. We went whale watching one day and on the way to the dock, got to hang out around one of the smelliest animals on the planet: the sea lions. I'm a sucker, though, and individually, from a distance, they are pretty sweet. This one seemed to be gazing into his reflection, uh, shadow.

Behold the stinky sea lion:

And then we saw a bit of this:

I missed the shot of the giant mouths open and pink dining on krill and other gourmet humpback snacks.

After a crazy, packed weekend, we all felt a bit like this:

Enjoy more international Shadow Shots at host Tracy's site Hey Harriet.

stasis and movement in the summer of 2010

The following might be an odd pairing of topics. Welcome to my world. These days I am jolted between everyday stuff and tragic memories, between the joy of a five-year-old who just won't stop learning and the enveloping worry that tugs at me when I think he might not remember his grandmom. So let's just get started.

How do you define peace?

There are people in my life that think of peace as a state of stillness – not necessarily equilibrium, just mostly quiet. A place where no one is rocking the boat. I see peace differently, as something that must be worked toward, as something in motion and sometimes thorny. I see authenticity as essential to it, and I believe that when authenticity or fairness is violated, one must speak out, and, contrary to what some would believe, I never do this lightly.

Peace is not a static place. Peace is a collaboration, an exploration.

In March of 2003, when the world showed up to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq by the United States, Mike and I went to San Francisco to join in. We did not stand, flatly in one place, we walked, all of us, washing down the streets of the city.

Now, if what you are interested in is a static place, you are in luck, there is such a place. A place where nothing changes, ever. I'm talking, of course, about the boardwalk. Any boardwalk, take your pick, as long as it has funnel cake and men trying to swish a basketball through a hoop to win a giant stuffed smiling banana for some chick in short shorts and MC Hammer blaring from the speakers and people screaming as they dive however many stories in a rickety car down a track and people displaying tattoos on all kinds of body parts and skeeball, there must be skeeball.

And the truth is that I'd give a lot if more of life were like the boardwalk - unchangeable. Peace? Sure! Peace need only show up and it would take its place next to Love and Friendship and all the other immutables in line for the Tilt-a-Whirl. It's just that that kind of Peace sometimes makes you throw up.

 

last note on poetry shows for a while

I've added an "Upcoming Events" piece to the sidebar over there, in lieu of the poetry website I haven't started finished putting together yet.

Here's what Isaac thinks about all this poetry fuss.

Taken after he crashed on one of the cafe sofas while we were trying to get the current show you saw in the entries below hung. Handy that we had his blankets with us - originally protecting the artwork in the car.

poetry exhibit continued

Here is the audio link to the interview Rick Kleffel did with me about my poetry exhibit that aired July 18, 2010. It will soon show up on Rick's podcast site too and I can provide a more direct link.

Here's a little more lowdown on the show:

“Stumbling into Ourselves” is a dozen+ poems framed, printed on stretch canvas, coupled with photographs, or otherwise graphically displayed and hung for viewing. Two poems will be represented in three dimensions, while another will be accessible in audio as well as text. 

The connecting theme of the show is the idea of identity – creating or recreating it – and the transitions that get one there. The people living their lives in these poem stories are all at a moment of transition. Some have discovered that the people they thought they were they are no more. Some have found that they are being moved toward change, willingly or not. Some find humor and hope in their quests; others simply survive.

poetry on the walls

I was just interviewed on KUSP radio 88.9 FM, Santa Cruz about my new visual poetry show that's up at a cafe in Monterey. What fun! Link to the audio coming soon. The show is called "Stumbling Into Ourselves." An article about it is currently at this link. And here is an idea of what things look like on the walls.

Two of my (orange-y) poems at the cafe entrance and "Abandoned Car," handmade paper over canvas with blockprints (so fun!) and under it, "Birthday Present" (poem under lid of box, detail below)

"The Slide," photo poster on canvas and "The Truth About Princesses" detail. Notice the pink duct tape.

 

"Lightning." Floating frame with velum paper bolt and cafe reflections.

One of three panels of "The Simplicity of Travel" that hangs from a "lamp post" Mike made for me.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Never say never.

My mom, Bobbie, who always followed this meme, constantly told me I should do one of these, but I always just sent her pictures now and again to put up herself. Well, in her honor, here I am. My first Shadow Shot Sunday. Hosted by Tracy at Hey Harriet with Sunday a wee fluid as some of us are in different time zones/hemispheres. Check out all the new shadow shots there. Thanks, Tracy!

Over 4^th of July weekend, my family and I escaped the insanity/inanity of fireworks and the like and went camping in Big Sur, California – about an hour south of where we live. It was super windy when we first arrived and so I was uncharacteristically in the tent before Mike got the tarp on. Planted as we were under two huge sycamores, this is what I saw:

t

that would be Mike in there in this third one

and hey!...

how'd he get in there??

The next shot is from the Headlands Trail at Andrew Molera State Park, a short and beautiful loop that overlooks the beach where the Big Sur River empties into the Pacific.

the imposing shadow of the cliff I was standing on

Shadows on the hills of the Ventana Wilderness – view from the campground, late afternoon.

texting makes the world go round

Mike and I are happily behind when it comes to the new all-the-rage gadgets. We do not own a TV, much less an ipod or an iphone. The phones we do have are lame models with limited plans. The fact that Mike's can take pictures is purely accidental. Mine is so basic I'm lucky it has keys. With no cover there is always a danger something will ring up by accident. Just the other day I heard a little voice I thought I recognized coming from my purse. “Hello? Hello?” I dug around for the phone to discover that it had called my friend Angela all on its own. Apparently when it crank calls, it starts with the beginning of the alphabet.

“I've been thinking about you,” she says when I get on the line. “What do you need right now?” This is a far cry from most of what I hear – questions into my well-being that are really about the speaker, prying questions I don't want to answer, or promises to “be there for me any time” -- right after they get back from some extended vacation. It is from a woman versed in crisis herself. Late this spring, Angela's house burned down. With her dog in it. It's been a hell of a year for both of us.

Anyway, Mike and I just don't use our phones that much or for very much. So when Mike's phone rings two and three times in a night, we know something is up. Usually it's Lakota man. Mike started getting the texts from the Lakota medicine man from L.A. a few months ago. A wrong number he kindly wrote back to and informed of same. But Lakota man has yet to figure out the details of the similarity in the numbers and the messages keep coming. Mike ends up with all kinds of interesting information.


We saw awesome UFO @ drum practice Fri. We were practicing Yuwipi songs and saw these 2 amazing see-thru silent UFOs. Nice!

Mike writes back and tells him, he's got the wrong person again.


Youch! LOL! I apologize.

But a couple days later he gets another.


Come to this peyote ceremony with me tonight.

Mike writes back: I'd like to, but you've dialed the wrong # again.

And gets: Maybe it's no mistake. LOL. Call me and let's see if it's fate. Maybe Creator is trying to tell us something.

I hear Creator has the new iphone 4.

on waiting and camping

My mother waited for me. She waited while I wrapped up loose ends of a poetry show, rode an early morning shuttle, a plane. She waited through a storm delay, another plane, a rental car. She waited in the hospital bed she never wanted to die in, so I could say hello, then goodbye. Some afternoons hold too much.

In my hello I showed pictures, and poems, told her everything I could think to tell her, told it quickly, words falling over each other in a cresting wave, while she calmly took from my hands what I offered, nodded. We are always those children. Eager. Hungry. Caught in what love is and was and is supposed to be.

The boy is packing up to trek to the beach with his dad where they'll have to cross the river at high tide. It is not all that unusual. The mother left behind. Even before this mother lost her mother, even before this uneven grieving, there was the need, time to read, space to write. The boy is used to it and so his routine is not so upturned. Yet he clings just a touch more now. Each time she believes him gone, begins on a new paragraph, he bounds back through the vinyl flap. He is all a flutter, has pirate stories to tell, plans to fend off the squirrels; he has last kisses, special rocks to show, cloud shapes she must come out and see, one more game of pretend, questions about tree roots. She takes from him what is offered, nods. She reassures him that she will be along soon. And he makes her promise to wait for him when she gets there before crossing the river to the other side.

saving him from himself

We interrupt this grieving process to bring you our regularly scheduled program, already in progress. A geek and a poet sit at home gearing up to finally enjoy a quiet hour or two together, their son asleep, no obligations pressing.

Mike: (excitedly) “I think I'm going to be immortalized on Route 1! The Google Maps car passed me.”

Kitty: (displaying limited interest) “Really?”

Mike: “Yeah, I'm almost sure my car got in one of the shots.” (reaches for the laptop)

Kitty: “I am not sitting here while you search for a little blue Honda on Google Earth.” (makes to get up)

Mike: (shutting lap top) “Right. Thanks.”

Kitty: “Any time.”

(I'm a dork when it comes to embedding. So strip credits = www.dilbert.com. Thank you, Scott Adams.)

newspaper article about my mom

The Press of Atlantic City did a little piece on my mom. Kind of cool. Not everyone gets a column about them to add to their legacy! I am grateful for this little surprise gift.

I talked to the reporter for at least half an hour, which newspaper - I'm all too familiar with this medium - converted to a sentence. But that's okay. That's why I have this space.

I bet she'd be completely shocked that someone wrote about her. Life is full of surprises, mom, even when it's over.

real estate agent: the (ig)noble vocation

“You must be electric right now,” a friend said to me, “So open.” He was referring to my ability to sense signs from the Universe in the shadow of my mother's passing. I had been telling him about some of the things that went on for me in the days right after. More on that in a later post... For now, suffice it to say, I believe strongly that we all need to move more by instinct. Sometimes, literally – move.

We sort of have a real estate agent working for us. I say sort of because we are trying to buy a house, sometimes, when we have enough time and energy to think about it, from across the country.

We have lived in our current rental house for almost three and a half years now. That's a pretty darn long time considering our record the couple years preceding that. The horror stories were many and gruesome. At the last house, the landlady sold it out from under us nine months in. A lawyer who'd until then kept her claws hidden under soft, white gloves, she did a Jekyll/Hyde transformation on us once there was big money at stake. It sucked and I chronicled a bit of it in this blog (like here and here and here and here).

But the worst part of the whole thing was the real estate agent. No matter how much I begged the Universe to send a rogue crocodile or two her way, inevitably she'd arrive unannounced for another illegal showing, pulling up in her canary yellow Porsche.

After the sale was looking solid, the buyers' real estate agent gave me an ivy plant for a gift. How sweet. An invasive plant just for me? You shouldn't have. Really.

It was the first thing to sell at the garage sale.

I tried once to create a visualization in which I towered over the whole situation looking at all the players in miniature. I reached down and picked up the Porsche lady by the scruff of her be-otchy little neck and dropped her unceremoniously into the ocean. She got out though, and came back all dripping wet still just as evil. I think her little rat dog bit my ankle.

The first time we looked at houses for our big proposed cross-country move, we met two agents. The first showed us a crumbling mess of a house filled with leaky pipes and lots of sarongs for curtains. “Ever seen the movie 'The Money Pit'?” he asked us as we huddled hunchbacked in the damp basement. Then he laughed - a dorky guffaw that went on too long.

The next agent showed us a crazy sprawling house with amazing potential and an interesting history. (Mike is still in love with this house.) But the house had nothing to do with why ultimately we'd accept this man into our passive employ after receiving his out of date CV. The first time we met him he arrived in an old Buick with a rusty roof. He got out, a stout fellow in a knit hat. I know in my heart I hired him because of that Buick. This one was a keeper.

On a return trip to the area, I spoke to a neighbor at one of the houses we were investigating. We spoke about the neighborhood, the area in general, and about renting and buying. Without knowing who we were associated with, she volunteered about the man who is our agent: “He has a reputation for getting things done.” I'm not even sure I really believed it, but it only made me like him more.

He sends me emails in which he always inquires about my “fine family.” He's stuck with us though we can't be the most lucrative prospect around, partly because normally we aren't around. We're three time zones away. Unless of course we're there, for a rare in person exploration, standing in the doorway of another place mouthing “You've got to be kidding!” to each other, while our real estate agent nervously calls our son away from the curb.

Instincts. Maybe it's just a power thing that the relationship feels right. I've never been on the buying end before. But maybe we've reeled in a good one. I'd like to believe my instincts on this are good ones.

PS - Happy birthday wishes today to my sister, Rita.

words and pictures

I can remember a day when Isaac was about three. He was leaning over the back of the love seat in the garage (uninsulated family room anyone?). I asked him what was back there. “Oh, random items,” my toddler replied.

His articulation lags somewhat, e.g., he still announces things like, “A-tend it's 'nowing, and we're may-ting 'now angels...,” but his communication skills have been well advanced from day one.

He was still a tiny thing once when we were at my mom's and he was amusing her by arranging cereal into an empty egg carton. The next day he wanted to eat that kind of cereal and when I brought him the wrong kind, he ran for the egg carton, pointed, then pointed to his mouth. I got it.

We taught him basic sign language early on that he picked up instantly. Sometimes it was even hard knowing what my baby was thinking. Like when a nasty diaper rash came up and at each changing he'd press together the tips of his index fingers – the sign for “pain.”

When he began to speak, he was aware of the gap between how words were meant to sound and how they came out of his mouth: “This stick a trane, mama! Not train choo-choo, trane like has arm and picks things up.”

As he grows, it's his vocabulary and command of the language that blows me away. It does a writer-mama's heart good. “Let's consider our options,” Isaac might say to me. Or, “Wow, mommy the hood of the car is glistening in the sun! Isn't it stunning?” While I might not choose to describe a car as “stunning,” my five-year-old clearly would, and damn if anything out of my mouth ever “glistened” until I was maybe a decade beyond him.

Books, of course, are held in high esteem in our house, the default source from which I imagine him gleaning in depth knowledge and words. However, in my current state of insanity and sadness, I have relied more heavily than ever on videos. We have no TV and there was a day when the only thing Isaac knew of video was learning sign language through it. My son, the one who I used to try to make sit in front of the hotel TV until I got out of the shower but would cover his ears and run away in anticipation of the oncoming conflict in the Clifford episode, now runs to my laptop after school yelling, “PBS kids dot org! PBS kids dot org!” I can't say I don't feel kind of guilty about this.

My personal favorite is “Sid the Science Kid.” Though Isaac's been OD-ing on “Dinosaur Train.” I am ashamed to admit that there have been a couple afternoons recently when I simply loaded up the cartoons, left him on the couch and crawled into bed. The one consolation is that I realize he is learning things from these shows. Including vocabulary. Hears it once and he owns it.

After one day of too much screen, I turned it off and convinced him to come outside - likely more for my sake than his - and we were in the garden when I pointed out a large spider walking up his shirt. “That's okay,” my son said lightly brushing it off, “it's prolly not venomous.”

details

Honest to god, I was not looking for a fight.

Details. It's all in the DETAILS.

Some EIGHT days ago, I called the funeral home about getting my mom's obituary in. The person we'd worked with wasn't in, but they gave me the email address and assured me he'd get it. I emailed it, along with a question or two. I heard nothing back. Today, I call the funeral home again and get their answering service. Mr Director is out to lunch. She assures me a call back. I then find out from my very helpfully communicative brother that it ran already. Friday. Oh. Okay. Was anyone going to let me knooooowwww? And what about those questions I had?

So I go online to find it. I find it. I think, SHIT, I forgot to include a picture. Had asshole funeral guy ever actually spoken to me, I might have figured out that I had left out this piece. HE DOES THIS ALL THE TIME. Could he not know that perhaps someone who has just experienced the death of someone close to them night need some more assistance? Since it's his, uh, JOB. The kind of assistance he swore to offering while we stood in front of him and signed the estimated bill?? Or possibly, I dunno, a response saying he bloody GOT the stupid email???? Okay. No picture.

Then I read the copy. THE BASTARD CHANGED TWO OF MY SENTENCES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One of them, so that it reads as if Mike and I have the same last name, which – I fucking hate to break it to you again, America, WE DON'T.

There are battles to pick from, and let me tell you, a long time ago I picked this one. MY NAME. My name is my name is my name. Learn to spell it. Learn to say it. Learn to love it. I am kind of invested in it. I have reasons, very personal, important ones for caring about my name. My first name is Kathryn. That's K-A-T-H-R-Y-N. Not a C or an E to be found. REALLY. Not even if you want one there. And my last name is NOT my husband's last name. I could give a RAT'S ASS how you feel about that. If there's something that would imply caring LESS than a RAT'S ASS, then, THAT is what I want to say here. It is for me to choose and everyone else to RESPECT..

Dear Mr. Funeral Director:

I am 1) a grieving family member and 2) a writer. Therefore, it would be in your best interest NOT TO FUCK WITH MY WRITING.

What kind of ballsy bastard just takes it on himself to randomly edit someone else's obituary ??????

So when you finally do send a message back to me instead of extending me the professional courtesy of calling, and include (ironically) the proof of the obituary from the newspaper as an attachment, why not misspell my mother's name on the attachment, too? Just for good measure.

I can remember approaching my grandparents' grave for the first time with a healthy dose of trepidation. I was afraid their name would be spelled wrong on the gravestone. Experience is a strong teacher. Luckily, that one was correct.

In my family, I get the angry label. I'm the angry one. So now I get to play into their expectations once again. Whatever I do will fulfill them. Fine. Then for the sake of not rocking the boat any fucking more, I'd love to play the part. They can think what they want to and bite me. Something tells me if I wasn't their sister, and one of their friends was pissed as hell about someone fucking up their mother's obituary, they'd be sympathetic, empathetic even. Tell me just this: What do I do with this feeling? Where do I put this?

camping and speculating on communication with the dead

What if talking to the other side is like this?

At Andrew Molera State Park in Big Sur, California there are 24 campsites that sit in a field on the ocean side of Highway 1. Quarter mile hike in, no reservations, first-come, first-served. On a busy holiday weekend, you and your husband are there texting back and forth – he racing around the field, vying with others doing the same, asking people if they are leaving to determine which site you can grab, you poised in the parking lot at the ranger station waiting to fill in the site number on the registration card. Cell service is unreliable, messages sometimes lost or inexplicably delayed. So four days after you arrive, stove, tent, camping chairs spread about site 15, your phone rings. “They took 17,” it says unhelpfully.

****

There is a boy of about ten running toward the climbing trees – two sprawling sycamores. His mother calls out to him from across the field: “Braaaaad- leyyyyy!” The boy hears her, pauses for the briefest moment, and runs further on, until he is completely out of her view before replying, “Yeah??”

*****

At night, an animal skitters around outside the tent. Sometimes its form pushes against the nylon wall. You never see exactly what it is, and in the morning you aren't sure if you dreamed it.

****

After the third day without a mirror, you catch sight of a distorted reflection in the sunglasses of the guy at site 9 who lends you his can opener. You're startled by this image, like you don't remember it quite that way; it's unfamiliar, foreign, fleeting.

****

After all the fires are out and the beer is warm, people finally crawl into their tents and the quiet you'd hoped for arrives, though it takes a good while for you to relax into it because, conditioned as you are to a world of traffic and car alarms, you at first mistake the sound of the ocean waves for the white noise of the highway.

****

Your son explodes before you with excitement, his filthy fingers at his gums, the gap his first missing tooth has left glowing like the empty socket it is above his bottom lip. “I think my big tooth is coming in! I think I feel something!!” You look and look and can see no evidence of anything there, though you want to and he wants you to, so you lie and agree that, yes, you see it, you can see something.

****

Your husband feels a lump in his shoe and when he shakes out his hiking boot a live beetle emerges and walks away across the thick glaze of dirt. You see more of this kind of beetle over the course of your stay – shiny and large, their six sturdy legs steering them through tall grass, brown leaves, your tent. You don't know what their purpose might be in the grander scheme of things, but you are pretty sure they have one. You are unnerved by their confidence. You think about your college professor, the one who taught you about ancient Egypt - the stories of long-dead kings and queens popping to life in your mind as he spoke, as real as a daytime talk show but with more drama. You think about how the Egyptians revered the scarab beetle believing it capable of regeneration all by itself, how they carved it into amulets, wore it around their royal necks, laid it against the hearts of their dead, this unlikely messenger of the immortal.

poems for my mom

I'm posting two poems I wrote several years ago. Neither award-winning, but my personal homages, I guess. The first is something that came out of me asking my mom what she wanted for Mother's Day. Her response was “Write me a poem.” Not a simple task.

The second was another attempt a year or so later. Marigolds are always something I've associated with her. I knew that in Mexico they are connected to the Day of the Dead, so I poked around and found some interesting information about them and their symbolism in various cultures here.

It was the first poem, though, that she framed and kept on her bedroom wall. The Budapest reference was our own – she came to visit me there when I worked in Hungary for a year.

How to Write a Poem for Your Mother

First, create many unsuccessful drafts,

follow ideas into oblivion,

metaphors into cliché hums and mumbles.

Next, check your email.

Read your new messages, but don't answer any.

Sing rainy day songs she taught you.

Wish in passing that you could whistle.

Wonder if it's her fault you can't.

Plant marigold seeds in the rain like she would.

Bring the open seed packet close to your face and sniff.

Know it smells like her.

Open and close your journal several times.

Write the date on a page, then, decide to change pens.

Look at a calendar to find out exactly when Mother's Day is this year.

Re-read all the starts to poems you've begun for her in the past –

they talk about fireflies and butterflies, Tagore and Milne.

Find potential in wings and words and light and flight.

Decide having potential is like being told you are "nice."

Convince yourself you're washed up as a poet.

Spend time wallowing in this thought.

Pull the covers over your head and sleep.

Dream you are with her, walking arm in arm

through beautiful, grey Budapest.

Marigolds

for my mom

I trail her

stepping high

through dewy grass,

the bulbs surprising us

here and there

with their plump greenness

from under piles

of last season's leaves.

The pyracantha looks like it'll

do well this year, she says,

moving through her universe,

red berry clusters

in her mind's eye.

Along the walkway, the azaleas

accost us in reds and pinks

and then, like an apology, white.

She names everything we pass,

a casual inventory, a prayer

of things to come.

I take the syllables in

through my pores:

hydrangea, lilac, columbine,

marigold.

At this last we pause.

Among the first orange blooms

a few dry heads already bow to her

in fervent homage.

Pinching them from their stems,

she scatters the seeds

like chicken feed,

pushes her subjects into the dirt

with the toe of her sneaker -

a haphazard optimism

in the propensity of life –

that it will sprout again

easily.

The scattering continues,

tiny quills dipped in black ink

spin to the ground

like soft propellers,

crowding each other into the dirt,

all clamoring to serve her best.

Toof!!

Woo-hoo! One down, 19 to go! Boy is very excited. Hear that whirring? Wings, baby, headed for the pillow.

In an unorthodox turn of events, Iz would like to KEEP his teeth. Not sure what his plan is, but the tooth fairy has been notified. She's agreed to still bring him quarters.

So what, if anything, does this mean for the saber tooth tiger costume this Halloween?