Falling

“Mom?”  Squints shouted down the stairs, even though he knows we have a rule in this house against shouting.

“What?”  I shouted back up the stairs.  I was busy crocheting; crocheting a hat to go with the scarf I made him last week.  After that I’d have to make hats to match the scarves I’d made my daughters two weeks ago.  I took up my crocheting again and began counting stitches to see where I’d left off. 

“You know how my glasses are always slipping off my nose ever since Zoe crashed into me?”

“Yeah?”

“They just slipped off.” 

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Hooked

From the vantage of the back seat, my sisters and I could immediately tell when we were in danger.  In the rearview mirror, Mom’s eyes would get a wild look in them; she’d hum a little under her breath; drum her fingers innocently on the steering wheel.  But we knew.  Oh, we always knew.

It was the turn signal that confirmed it.

“Mooooomm!” 

“Oh, just for a couple of minutes.”

The three of us would stagger out of the back seat of the station wagon; toe the asphalt with the white rubber tips of our tennis shoes; drag our feet, sighing exaggeratedly all the way to the entrance.

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Twenty Minutes More

“How many more minutes to the bottom?”  A woman gripped her daughter’s hand.  The girl’s knee was mildly bloodied, the result, I was certain of a fall against rock.

I looked at my husband.  “Twenty minutes?”

He nodded.  “Yeah, about that.”

By all rights, we, too, should’ve been heading down the mountain at that hour.  At three o’clock in the afternoon, we were pointed in the wrong direction.

People climb Cadillac Mountain for a variety of reasons: Some attack the mountain, seemingly wanting to prove something to themselves or the other climbers, running up as fast as they can, stabbing feet and cleats and ski poles into the face of the mountain.  Others leisure their way up; stopping here and there to snap pictures of Bar Harbor posing prettily amid colorful boats in Frenchman’s Bay.  Some people, clearly ill, stagger and huff and crawl up the mountain, refusing the hand of a sister or a son waiting patiently a few steps ahead, and it’s these people who I hope make it to the top. 

But this day, we hurried up the mountain.

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Eyes in the Clams

Six years ago, on our first trip to Maine, we went to a restaurant that came recommended by the locals.  We like these sorts of places: You know the food and the service will be good.  Plus, we like to act as if we belong; as if we’re in the know; as if we’re, above all, not tourists. 

This restaurant was really more of a shack than a restaurant and it specialized in fried clams.  It was a dive, but sometimes the worst-looking places turn out to be the best, so we remained stalwartly hopeful. 

We went into the dining room and discovered that all eight of the tables were full of the memories of previous diners: stacked plates, empty corncobs, piles of clamshells, a forlorn-looking exoskeleton of a lobster that an hour before had been swimming in a tank labeled: Caution.  Keep hands out. 

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Fragile

“Do you want some chicken feet for the dog?”  The owner of the farm where we’d rented our cabin nodded at Destructo.  “We’re slaughtering Thursday.” 

“Do you do the butchering yourself?”

He gave a satisfied nod.  “We used to pluck by hand until we were able to make a plucker.” 

Although the farm was hundreds of miles from home, we found we shared a connection: The owner sold wool to a highbrow place near our home; a sterile place whose shoppers, I was sure, wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to the farm and the people and the animals that had produced that wool.  Thus connected, we were invited to gather the eggs from the chickens just outside our cabin; to visit the turkeys and the pigs and the sheep.  We could pet the goats and the horses used to plow the fields.  We were free to milk the cow, provided we got up early enough.  And, of course, the hundred acres were ours to explore.

And we explored with abandon: We passed a hundred-year-old farmhouse and went on to the pigpen where baby durocs no bigger than our—admittedly fat—cat ran round the pen en masse while their mother looked on wearily.  A pasture down, there was another pig, sequestered from a lamb and a couple of horses by a wire fence.  Drying on a wooden fencepost was the horned scalp of a goat.  Here and there, where the rocks would allow, were patches of garden: Scallions and tomatoes and lettuces to the right; Further down the path a bed of peas and green beans, still in season in August.

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The Permanence of Elephants--The End

The bathroom was at the top of the stairs and, of course, each week, I would have to use it—if only to break up the monotony of waiting for my piano lesson.  I would climb the wooden staircase, stepping lightly, hoping to have a peek into the room to the right.

This room belonged to the piano teacher’s mother, Mrs. T and, invariably, the door would be open.  The room was dominated by a massive bed—a bed so high, a stepping stool stood sentry at its side.  The bedspread was white as snow.  The bed itself was of a dark ancient wood. It looked so inviting in its size and softness, it was all I could do to keep myself from entering the room; from climbing that stool and sitting upon the bed.

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The Permanence of Elephants--III

Our first piano was a basement piano: an ugly old upright painted thick with orange.  Many of its teeth were chipped; some were missing their enamel altogether, and on these keys, someone had penciled in their names: C..D…E

Once a day, I’d go down the basement steps, gray with black stick-on treads and cross the orange tiled floor and seat myself at that old piano, fully intending to practice.  But instead, I’d find myself pretending I was the piano player at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Bonanza—banging the keys on that upright mercilessly without regard for sound or rhythm.  I’d end my performance in a magnificent glissando covering the entire span of white keys before spinning around on my bench to face my invisible audience—the ping pong table, too—for the thunderous applause that only I could hear. 

And then my mother’s voice would float down the stairs.  “Is that your lesson?”

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The Permanence of Elephants--II

Winters, we took refuge on the red velvet loveseat that was pressed against the windows of the front room of the piano teacher’s house.   I would run my thumbnail against the grain of the fabric, drawing pictures in velvet, listening to the warm-up scales of my sister.  On the table to the right there was a wooden box, which I felt entitled to open.  Inside there were dried rose petals—yellow—that must have held some great significance for the piano teacher.  But I considered them only for their entertainment value as I opened the box, inhaled the memory of scent and thoughtlessly poked a tiny index finger into fragile recollections.

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The Permanence of Elephants

Like everything else of importance, the piano teacher’s home was on Main Street.  The house was small and painted a light gray and full of mystery and contradiction.  A huge magnolia tree shaded the path from the sidewalk to the three concrete steps leading to the porch.  Formed into the risers of the first step and the third were identical images of a fat elephant in profile.  I never knew how those elephants got there and never thought to ask.  My six year old self imagined that the elephants had been chiseled out by some former teenaged occupant of the house.  But my older self—my adult self—eventually realized that was unlikely: The images were too perfect; too uniform; too deep.  Perhaps a form was pressed into the concrete before it dried.  Perhaps the images were carved into wet cement the way my children would—years later—use a nail to carve their initials into the new concrete floor in my father’s equipment barn.  I will never know the story of how they got there, but those elephants were as much a part of the piano teacher’s house as the piano teacher’s house was a part of Main Street.

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Fifteen Dollar Mistakes

“What do you want me to get, Mom?”  Squints grabbed a cart and wheeled it to the produce section.

“A couple of pounds of cheese for sandwiches.”  My kids live on grilled cheese during the summer.  For each sandwich she makes, V puts on four slices of cheese.  And she’ll eat two sandwiches for lunch.

“Snacks?” He waggled his eyebrows at me and grinned.   

They also live on snacks.  Unhealthy, expensive snacks that disappear minutes after they enter the house.  “A bag or two.  We’re on a budget.”

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Hard Labor

So on Tuesday, my husband and I lassoed Squints and V into helping us with our yearly service at our community garden.  For the second year in a row, Filibuster escaped the event, as she had to go to work. 

We pulled in and parked.  In the distance, we heard the tractor in one of the fields.  D, one-half of the farm partnership, met us at the barn, wearing sandals and a floppy hat.  She was deeply tanned and, I could tell, deeply happy with her circumstance, despite the long hours and the backbreaking work her job required.

We heard a car on the gravel drive.  D nodded.  “There’s the rest of the work party.”  A man walked up eagerly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.  “They’re coming.”  His wife and daughters approached at a more leisurely pace, as if not so sure about the whole thing.  The daughters had long, thin, tanned legs and were carefully made up for the occasion.

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Please, God, Let Her Choose Archery

Well, V will be belatedly celebrating her Sweet Sixteen at a local fast food restaurant.  And her father and I won’t be spending a dime.  No, this shindig is courtesy of her employer, who likes that sort of thing.

We laughed, looking at the invitation.  This has got to be the oddest Sweet Sixteen birthday party in history.

Sure, V is sweet.  Sure, she’s sixteen.  But spending exorbitant amounts of money on a fancy-pants party with semi-formal dress; a hall; updos and I-pods for door prizes is a real quick way to turn that sweet into surly.  V’s birthday celebration, in fact, was downright subdued this year: Quick bite for lunch and a homemade cheesecake for dessert.

“Should I go?” She gestured to the invitation.

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The Lesson of The Apricots

Parents wait in the high school parking lot.  Their faces are joyful, expectant, relieved.  A couple of women stand outside their cars, shading their eyes and talking.  A man reads his newspaper.  A father and his son toss a baseball back and forth while a toddler runs between them, giggling.  Squints jogs across the soccer field. 

My cell phone rings.  “Hello?”

Filibuster.  Her voice is weary.  The roar of the bus radio covers her words.

 “I can’t hear you,” I shout.  From the bus radio, I get the score of the baseball game and the weather report.  She says something about traffic before she breaks the connection.

And so, we settle in to wait. 

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Affected

This essay was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club:

“This week we would like you to write about how the show of affection has played a part in your memory.

Choose a time when either the abundance or lack of affection (either by you or someone else) stands out, and show us.  Bring us to that time.  Help us feel what you felt.”

Of course, being a word nerd, I turned to my beat-up college dictionary (Webster’s New World) before starting:

1.    A mental or emotional state or tendency; disposition or feeling

2.    Fond or tender feelings, warm liking

3.    A disease; ailment

4.    An attribute or property of a thing

5.    An affecting or being affected

 I think I’ve got definition two covered.  Possibly number five.  Maybe a tinge of three if you look up the word on line.

Anyway, I was really going for a kid’s POV here, as something else I’m writing is written from the perspective of a youngster.

Affected

I was in the third grade.  I wore new baby blue corduroy pants with an elastic waistband and a matching jacket sewn by my mother at the dining room table.  One by one, the teacher called the students to her desk to retrieve their math tests.  Perhaps the tests were in order by grade.  Or alphabetically.  Or maybe they were arranged by row because he passed me on his way to get his paper.

He looked at his test.

His face crumbled in upon itself like a half-eaten apple left to dry in the sun.  He was close to tears.  But in a split second, anger replaced despair.  He snatched the paper from the teacher’s hand and stormed back down the row.  His paper was in his right hand, his pencil in his left.

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Raspberry Season

We got a call from Filibuster on the answering machine this morning: She can’t retrieve voice mails from her cell phone.  Worse, the ATM refuses to dispense any money to her.  Apparently her PIN is too long.  Filibuster is a great believer in strong passwords.

I call the bank and they ask me how long PINs are supposed to be in Europe and I tell them I really don’t know: the last time I was in Europe there were no debit cards.  They place me on hold.  They transfer me twice.  They tell me to go to a branch after the weekend is over.  They tell me there’s no way they can change her PIN for me.  They give me a number for Filibuster to call, but I cannot reach her and if I leave her a voice mail with the number she won’t be able to get to it. 

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The Fair

Schools were dismissed at noon today, due to an excessive heat warning.  At the corner, the bus discharges a group of sweaty students, too hot to celebrate their unexpected good fortune.   They trudge down the sidewalk, beat-up backpacks dangling from listless shoulders, and head home to the shade.

The dogs lie on their sides, panting.  The cat sprawls on the cool wooden floor beneath the ceiling fan and refuses to budge.   The curtains at the front of the house are pulled closed to keep out the sun’s warmth; a warmth only three months ago we so desperately wished for.   My glass of ice water weeps condensation.  The couch is too hot to sit on, so we gather at the kitchen table and start a card game.  I toss the dog an ice cube and promise the kids that I’ll flip on the AC if it reaches 100 degrees.

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Yoga Lessons

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: in which we were supposed to write about happy endings.

My mother was in constant motion.  In the evenings, she would make our clothes at the dining room table, the sewing machine whirring until late into the night.  The following morning, all evidence of my mother’s nighttime sewing would have disappeared except for the new pair of pajamas waiting on the table.  Every day, Mom would do laundry; wash dishes; wipe countertops; vacuum.  At least once a month, she would run a cloth doused in Liquid Gold over the faux wood of the kitchen cabinets—brown with a decorative inset of black where food would invariably get stuck.  She would go grocery shopping.  Take us to doctors' appointments.  Make us lunch.  And then, in the afternoons, before she made dinner, she’d get her book.  My sisters and I would sit on the couch.  Mom would lie down, stretching her legs across our laps, and the contest would be on: The three of us would begin rubbing my mother’s leg, each trying to win the coveted best leg-rubber award.  Mom would read a few pages before her book fell against her chest.

 “Who’s best, Mommy?”

“Hmmmmm?” 

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What Shall I Be?

This post was written in response to a prompt on the red dress club:

Growing up, my sisters and I loved to play What shall I be?  First appearing in 1966 and categorized as educational, it was proclaimed The Exciting Game of Career Girls.  Based upon the roll of the dice and the acquisition of cards, players would race be the first to line up a job.

The box’s cover featured a dorky-looking girl, herculean pink bow in her hair, index finger on her cheek, looking as if as if couldn’t decide between all those career exciting opportunities.  To her left were six women, one of whom would be this girl’s future self.

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