Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Poetry (inspired by Italian holiday dinners)



The Fish

is chopped
a circle of fleshy pink shards
surrounded by metallic black olives,
artichoke hearts, and cherry tomatoes

the fish
breaks from black shells
dancing with the smell of parmesan and Dove soap in the kitchen
twirling around a pink speckled tabletop with a chrome edge
and chairs, their bases curved underneath,
mimic the chubby legs that wave back and forth waiting for

the fish
breaded and fried
oregano parsley and a lemon wedge
artfully arranged in crisp tentacled mounds
broken apart by tiny fingers that snatch at the golden rings

the fish
simmering in the recipe from the old country
clam shells clang against the side while
sauce bubbles and splatters in a dented dull silver pot
voices rise in the dining room next door, calling for

the fish
white and steaming, bloated with breading
tied together by white strings and a single toothpick
pungent and fat overflowing from their china
Tiny cheeks redden matching the sauce in the humid room
perspiration drips down the windows catching
the reflected streetlamps  white and silver against the black Passaic sky

the fish
submerged in gravy
lowered into china bowls
small pink squares stick to threads of spaghetti
slurbed up into hungry mouths
fare la scarpetta with bread that breaks apart
soggy and heavy with butter and red sauce and

the fish

* * *

Gardenia (For Grandma Bea)

She loved me first
the oldest and the youngest
joy through the antiseptic hallways
running
white sneakers colliding with pristine floors
shout from the rooftops
to the masses that the new
She is here

Stocking feet slide
ballet dancing over hardwood floors
curtseying to generations
(the hand carved couch, the Lladro Madonna)
Abracadabra and broccoli vanished from the bone china
reappearing years later
compost in the kitchen plants
Genesis of a Christmas tradition

Bubbling crimson sauces
witch's brew of oregano basil and bright red orbs
this is how you saute like Non-Non
this is how you mince like Aunt Glore
But for dessert
The secret no one else knows
guarded
high in the castle of her memory
moat and unicorns optional

Image of a shrinking giantess
fermenting in the waning sun
eyesight worn on
white dresses and pink scalloped edges
patchwork quilt for the wedding day
and everything with the same signature
Made With Love

Frost creeps in on hot
flashes
of fur coats, gold jewelry, and perfume
Petals curling as they succumb to the
winter moon's embrace
last of the great matriarchs
bows quietly with the grace

of a queen

I don't normally write poetry on here, but I recently was reworking a couple of pieces, and wanted to post them.  The first, The Fish, is about the "Seven Fish Dinner" that my Italian family creates each Christmas Eve ( over the years, there have been various incarnations of varying proteins at this dinner).  
The second, Gardenia, I wrote several years ago about my Grandma Bea (now affectionately known as "GG" by my daughters).   She has dementia, yet she still knows us most of the time (I've been called my mother, sister, and even daughter's names over the years), and most of the things I wrote about in here are instances she would recall with a smile.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Soundtrack

1983- Frank Oz's voice floats out of the Playschool record player, singing about the trouble with being green, as I collapse in a heap after spinning circles in the living room.   The oriental rug becomes a magic carpet as it bucks and sways with the Earth.  My little sister pokes her bald head out of the orange plastic tent and pounces with roar, a tiny living doll for me to wrestle with.

1987- We pound our lunchboxes to the tune of I Got My Mind Set On You while the wheels of the bus spin beneath our seats.  I poke my tongue through the holes left by my vacating baby teeth and smile watching my best friend's braids bounce up and down.

1990- My uncle drops his voice, rocking "I'm a soul man.. duh nuh nuh nuh" at the side of Jim Belushi's grave on Martha's Vineyard- a brief tribute, complete with dancing.  Giggling, we solemnly leave flowers, grass, and various rocks we've found on the headstone, while my dad tapes the whole scene.


1993-  "You have to hear the whole thing- we're taking the long way home," my dad shouts over the epic guitar riff from Freebird that pulsates through the car.  I stick my head out the window and close my eyes, the wind whooshing my hair out of my face as I feel music for the first time.


1995- Eric Clapton serenades as I drag the tall boy with the long black hair to the dance floor.  He tells me I don't have to stand on tiptoe, but when I shrink back to my normal height, he says maybe I should.  The man in the song sings about the wonder of it all while I put my arms around his neck, and feel safe, like I'm home


1997- I stand on a stage and electricity shoots out of my fingers. The calm before the storm, and I know-it's been coming for some time-what "real" is. The stage lights flood my vision, the people dissolve into a shadow, and I reach for his hand to guide me through.

1997- Stumbling up the metal stairs on the boat, tears blur my vision, and the movement of the post-graduation cruise and the realization that "it's over" make me feel a little sick.  In the darkness, an arm reaches out around my waist, guiding me to the throngs of dancing teens on the deck, and I turn into warmth and comfort as Hard To Say I'm Sorry blares out of the DJ's speakers.
  
1998- He doesn't want the world to see me, and I don't think that they'd understand, but with whisky on his breath, and his palm against the back sliding door, I sneak him into the dark house and over to the couch.  He puts his arms tentatively around my waist, ensnaring my fingers with his, and we curl up watching the lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls run through a dark tunnel on MTV, neither of us wanting to admit there's a shelf life to whispers and hiding out.  


1999- Pushing the door open, I see the broken shell of my sister crying into the fish-patterned quilt on her bed.  Jerry Garcia sings about taking his daughter home as I cradle her in my arms and our sobbing melds to a hushed crescendo, knowing Daddy's never going to be right there beside us again.


2000- We bounce around the car, while The Watermelon Crawl reminds us we aren't in the north country anymore.  Blue Ridge Mountains make way for statues of Elvis and a southern drawl while we laugh and draw signs, cruising in our topless car through the Deep South.


2004- Elphaba is defying gravity as I speed west toward the possibility of everything.  Her voice drains into Julie Roberts crooning about breaking down, and I have to stop myself from pulling a u-turn in middle America, reminding myself for the thousandth time that you regret the things you never try, not the ones you do.  


2007- The colored leaves softly swirl around my feet as my heels sink into the soft ground.  My mother's hand holds tight as she whispers "no crying", and the strains of "Storybook Love" cue our walk.  Looking up as we round the corner, I can see my future husband's smile, and my happy ending.

2010- My daughter rests her head on my shoulder, her boundless energy curbed for the moment by my voice singing about jet planes and how I'll never let her go.  I breathe, thankful for this moment, for our lives, and think how close I came to losing both.


2012- A baby cries, interrupting Ella Fitzgerald, her namesake, as she enters the world.  The nurse towels her off, and my husband places her on my chest, and I think how perfect she is, how she stops crying at my touch, and how lucky I am that with this one, there are no complications.


2014- Belting "I'm The Only One", we cruise in a black Subaru under the bright blue sky. Reveling in a road trip to another country, we pull off the road towards a sign for homemade mustard and blown glass, regaling each other with tales of our former lives, when we were younger, wilder, and totally free.

My Notes: I've updated this, fixing the language and adjusting pieces, while adding in new memories.  I felt it only fair to reshare, as I made my students write their own versions in class, and it inspired me to revisit my own.  The original intro, and then the newly revamped soundtrack, are below.

I started this on the 14 year anniversary of losing my dad.   It's such a euhpemistic term- lost.  As though somehow we will find our dead again some day.  I hope that somehow, we will.  I'd love to know Dad's take on my kids, life trajectory, and the Yankees' championships that have happened since his passing.  But the afterlife and religion, and spirituality and mythology, can wait for another day.

Thinking about the brevity of life inspired me to re-read a short piece,  Soundtrack by LisaGroen Braner, something I was introduced to during one of my Master's classes.   If you haven't read it, take a moment and treat yourself.  In homage to that work, and to the memories that I've been mulling for the last few months as I worked and reworked my own piece (giving myself until Father's Day to complete it).   I created the following.



Friday, September 26, 2014

Of Jeter and Pathology Reports and Miracles

I was lying in a bed in Newport, Rhode Island, flipping between a Yankees game and HGTV, while occasionally glancing out the window at the night sky, the moon, and the river running under the Newport Bridge.  It was close to midnight, and the family vacation to Jamestown and Newport was off to a brilliant start, with a condo on the water, views every morning while we ate waffles on the deck, and adventures galore.  The kids were content, there was a lot of laughter, and life was good.  I had my hand on my abdomen, and was rubbing about two inches below my belly button, where I had been sore for part of the day, when I felt the lump.

It was about an inch wide, and two inches long.

I have scar tissue from two c-sections, but those are around my scar, where my children were delivered.  This was higher, different- it felt rounder and disconnected.  In the dark, my husband sleeping soundly beside me, my children sharing a room down the hall, I had a moment of cold fear panic.

I've had those icicles before.  That stomach drops out, tingly lightheadedness.  I paused mid-breath.

I felt again.  It was there.

In the coming weeks, I would be diagnosed with a possible hernia, possible hematoma (bad bruise), and told to wait a month and come back for a check up.  My first question was are you sure?  Is there any chance it could be anything else- a tumor, something bad?   I didn't know this doctor, and he said "anything is possible, but it's unlikely.  It's like seeing a horse in the US.  You wouldn't assume it's a zebra, you would assume it's a horse because of where we are."  I immediately thought of Madagascar and zoos, but nodded my head, looked around (glimpsing at Sports Illustrated with Jeter's smiling face behind the doctor and the blinds on the windows), and agreed to come back in a few weeks.

The lump didn't go away, just got more sore, a little larger, and upon my return, I was then told potential endometriosis, and did I want to try a different form of birth control to see if it just went away on its own?  This came with the stipulation that if I did wait and see, that I would have a biopsy performed in office, "just to be safe".  With that or surgery as the only real options to definitively determine what was growing inside me, I went to my OB for a second opinion, and was told if it was an endometrioma (endometrial tissue growing outside the uterus), it was high for that, and it was possibly a fatty tumor instead.

At this point, the option of surgery seemed like the better option.  I have an aunt who survived endometrial cancer earlier this year, because she caught it early.  Her mother in law had ignored warning signs for close to a year, and passed a week after my aunt's hysterectomy.

I have two good friends who opted for mastectomies because of the gene for cancer and their personal family losses.  I know how important early intervention is if something is wrong, and how devastating it can be for misdiagnoses to float around for months (we still wonder if my aunt would be around had they immediately diagnosed lung cancer, instead of misdiagnosing various upper respiratory illnesses like bronchitis and pneumonia for six months).

I have two little girls. All I ever wanted was to be a mom, and be here for them as they grow up.  There's a lot that one wants in life, but I realized as I started to take everything into account against sobering reality that I need to simply be here, with them.  They are my life.  As I have spent the last several days recovering from surgery, they've alternated asking me "mommy, how's your belly?" and giving "gentle hugs".  The almost-four year old wants to be on my lap, so she climbs onto the bed first, then gingerly slides onto my legs, careful to avoid the pillow that is protecting my latest scar.  They are crazy little lunatics, with fits of giggles, emotions that run the gamut, and a particular affinity for drawing on the walls and floors with all things Crayola.  But they are mine, and I love them.  I want to see them get taller and discover sports. I want to see Riley dance in her first Irish Dancing competition, and Ella score a goal on the soccer field.  I want to read the first stories that they write, hold their hands through their first loves, take photos at their proms and graduations.  I want to be there when they have their own children.  I want to be there, period.

Waiting for pathology reports is terrifying.  The words "tumor" and "pathology" conjure up images that have become all too commonplace on television and in films.  I've lost people close to me to big words that I couldn't bring myself to say, but had running through my head for much of the last week.  Before I hit the recovery room, my doctor had told me "It was an endometrioma.  We'll go over the pathology results when I see you next week".

I was too nauseated from the anesthesia, too sore from the surgery, to do anything but moan in agreement.  But in my head, I was conscious enough to calculate that if I didn't hear from him before my office follow up, that was a bad thing.

The nurse, when I was being discharged, told me that the test results would be done in two or three days, by Thursday or Friday, and that the doctor was usually good about calling if that was the case.  Again, I calculated.

So I spent much of Thursday on pins and needles, my cell phone next to me as I lay in bed, unable to really hold a computer or focus on anything more than the chatter on the television.  I slept on and off, ate meekly, and tried to walk around to ease some of the soreness.  As night descended, I started tearing up whenever one of my daughters would come over to me, thinking "Please.  please.  I need to be here for them."   I stroked the little one's hair out of her face, held the big one's hand while we watched Despicable Me 2.

Derek Jeter was playing in his final home stand at Yankee Stadium.  The Giants were about to start a heated battle with the Washington Redskins to get out of the bottom of the NFC East.  I situated myself on the couch, under a blanket, while the kids ran around the downstairs in a big circular loop.  Peeking at my phone for the inevitable Facebook updates, I saw a mail alert that I had a message from my OB.

I let out a breath.  I looked around, at the clock on the mantle with the roman numerals, which dictated that it was quarter of eight; at the little face laughing as she lapped the fireplace and the sleeping dogs; at the crowd on the television chanting a baseball god's name.  I struggled to lift myself up off the leather, careful to use my arms and my legs, and avoid my core muscles.  Despite my efforts, I could still feel the tugging and soreness, especially where the incision was.  I hunched over as I shuffled across the floor, neanderthal in my motions, as I knew standing upright would increase the pain level.  Reaching the front hallway, I gingerly lowered myself to the steps, and dialed for the message, praying on a loop please let me be okay…please let me be okay.

 "Hello Kristen, it's Dr. _______.  We got the results of the pathology test, and it was endometriosis, so I'm glad you had it taken out.  If you have any questions…"

A wave of relief rushed my body.  If he was leaving a message, this was good.  In the morning, I would call the office, and officially speak to someone who confirmed that, yes, it was only endometriosis.  I choked up when I tried to say "thank you", and she kindly told me she understood, and was happy for me.  When you've lost people close to you, you don't discuss the possibilities until after you know you are okay, after you know the results are in your favor.  Only then can you let the tears flow, and the what-if's be spoken.  If you speak them too soon, you are afraid they may go from hypothetical to real.

Waddling back to the couch, I told my husband the news, while he squeezed my hand.  Giving my little ones kisses and hugs, I could breath again.  I remembered my angels in heaven, Dad, who had taken me to my first Yankee's game, who had sat next to me in Box 39, Row 8, when the Yankees outlasted the Braves in Game 6 of the 1996 world series.  I said a silent thank you to him and the higher powers above me for giving me this chance to continue.  On the television, Derek Jeter hit an RBI fielder's choice and we readied the kids for bed.  I gave each an extra squeeze, told them I loved them, while Jeff herded them up the stairs, while their stuffed lambs and feety pajamas skimmed the carpet.

I dialed my mom, told her the news.  Said I would call in the morning after officially talking to the doctor, but all looked good.  I also asked if she was watching the Yankees, and she said no, Grey's Anatomy.  I asked how we were related, and she chuckled.

Above my head, I could hear the little ones running around, pattering against the carpet instead of remaining tucked in their beds.  On the screen, I was riveted with every other baseball fan by Jeter's last stand.  In the midst of sport and the end of an era, I was gently remembering that I can continue.  When Robinson blew the save, and I realized Jeter would receive one final at bat, I turned to my husband and said "I hope this is karma for him being a good person.  That, or someone in the Yankees sold their soul for this one."

I leaned back, knowing what was coming.  This is the night of new beginnings, the night I'll remember for knowing I was going to be allowed to stay in the game, and the night Jeter did the only imaginable thing he could, and pulled one more miracle out of his #2 hat.  In the midst of the eruption of joy on the screen, the cheering in my living room with my husband, I was simply glad to be a part of it.  Walt Whitman once said "Happiness, not in another place, but this place, not for another hour, but this hour."      It's simply to live, to breath, to be that is the goal.  Happiness is recognizing it.

http://www.northjersey.com/sports/klapisch-derek-jeter-a-hero-to-the-end-1.1096807
CHRIS PEDOTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/klapisch-derek-jeter-a-hero-to-the-end-1.1096807

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Some things about that day- memories of 9/11

Some things about that day…
The carpet was worn.  It was the same one that had been on the floor since I was a student at Ramapo High School.  The desks were newer, a blend of metal and hard plastic, but the one at the front, that I was prepared to sit at, on and off, for the next several hours, was wooden and old.  There were scratch marks on it, pencil lines and designs, even initials carved here and there from who I presume was an ambitious substitute like myself, or a bored student.  The doors were the same.  My boyfriend used to break pencils in the doorknob lock of this one, forcing Mrs. Solomon, his AP Calc teacher, to call the janitor to come down and remove the doors from their frames so that class could begin (usually at least ten minutes late).  I plopped my bag, withdrawing the lesson of the day to hand out to the students.

A girl rushed in, her backpack smacking her back in rhythm with her steps.  She had long hair, as teenage girls do, and was a little out of breath.  "Can we turn on the tv?" she asked excitedly.

I looked at her and smiled, mildly amused.  "I know I'm a substitute, but I can't just let you guys watch tv," I responded patiently.

"No- it's the Twin Towers," she paused for effect.  "One of the towers just exploded!"

I didn't wait for anything more.  At the time, I thought one of my close friends was working on a lower floor (I didn't know until hours later that she had changed her shift from Tuesdays to Thursdays).  I rooted around in the desk, my fingers sifting through loose leaf paper and wayward staples.  Grabbing the plastic remote control, I pointed it at the heavy television in the corner of the room, while students shuffled past me, talking in frantic tones.  Their history teacher had been showing a clip on CNN when the first tower was hit, and word has spread through the building quickly.

There was a click of power, and the screen slowly burned from black to white to images as I hit the buttons to find CNN.  There was blue in the corners, that bright blue that only happens in New York in the fall, the kind that makes you want to traipse through Central Park, or hike around Washington Square Park and listen to guitar players and throw coins in the fountain.

But this blue was just a frame.  It wasn't inviting, but rather was in the process of being blocked out, because front and center were the Towers.  The one on the right had black smoke fuming out of it, as though some angry dragon had opened its mouth.  The talking in the room grew louder.  Across the bottom of the screen scrawled the closed caption note that a plane had struck one of the towers.  I hit the volume up button, and the hyper speech of a commentator rose above the din of teenage gossip.

Within seconds, we saw an explosion.  I looked at the clock above the door.  It read 9:03 AM.  The newscaster seemed flustered.  The kids started asking to run down the hall to the pay phone, wanting to call to check on their parents in the city.  I sat down on the desk, the clicker in my hand, and tried to speak.  Words were failing me, and I nodded my head.

We still thought it was just a fire.  We believed, as a generation that grew up after Vietnam, after WWI and WWII, that attacks were things that happened to other countries.  I went into autopilot, handed out the dittos left by the regular teacher, something about Algebra I've long since forgotten.  I walked to the doorway, conversing briefly with the teacher who, at one point, had to remove her door due to pencil graphite breaking the locks.  She didn't know who I was dating.

I walked back to the desk, and was leaning against it when the first tower collapsed in a plume of smoke, obscuring our view of the blue sky completely.  There was a collective gasp in the room, followed quickly by frantic gesturing and panicked speech.

I pulled out my rudimentary cell phone, calling my mother to make sure she knew what was happening.  A few minutes later, a call came in from my sister, checking that I was not in the city that day.  She was sitting in a dorm in North Hampton, Massachussetts.  She was safe.  I called my boyfriend's roommate (his didn't have a phone), and left a message that the towers were on fire, that one had collapsed, to have Jeff call me.  I still have that number memorized.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, another plane went down.  I can remember turning to the class, and saying, quite certain, "In a few hours, we're going to find out there were heroes on that plane that prevented a tragedy."  I could feel my voice getting hoarse as I said it, that throaty feeling when you are trying not to cry, when you have to get the words out.

The bell rang, the classes switched.  The tv stayed on as I left, knowing I had a period free to run home.  I took the hallway past the poles we once pretended led to the "Bat Cave" in a French video.   I thought of my friends, and prayed they were safe.  My high heels tapped the floor outside the child development room and the culinary arts room, and stopped outside the theatre, where the TV sat over the payphone.  The line to use it ran all the way down the hall, past the glassed in courtyard, to the nurse's office by the front entrance.  It would grow larger over the next hour.

One of the students I knew, in tears, asked if she could use my phone to try to call her dad.  I handed it over.  She got a busy signal.  Another one saw this transpire, and asked if she could try her parents.  I obliged.  We stood there, me handing my phone off to student after student, all of us watching the screen and the smoke and the teens ducking into the glassed in booth to stab at the silver buttons with trembling fingers.

The second tower fell.  Someone in the hallway screamed.  I grabbed my phone, apologizing as I ran towards the exit.  I pushed open the heavy metal doors, my pupils constricting as my eyes adjusted to the bright lights of outside.  There were goosebumps on my arms despite the warm autumn air.  I dialed numbers on my phone with my left hand as I hit the keyless entry with my right, trying in vain to reach my friends.  All cell service seemed to be busy.

At home, I can remember rushing up the stairs, sitting down at the computer that looked out at Cedar Hill Ave., and turning on AOL.  There were images that would become way too familiar over the next few days filling the screen.  I opened the AOL Instant Messenger, and for the next twenty minutes, proceeded to message every person whose screen name I knew.  I emailed others, and was grateful for a flurry of replies.  The phones may not work, but the internet is functioning as usual, I thought.

I grabbed a snack bar as I rushed out of the house back to Ramapo, breaking some speed records to ensure that I would arrive before my next class started.  By now, the Pentagon had been hit.  The principal came around, calling Mrs. Solomon and myself out into the hallway, explaining that the school's official stance was that all televisions should be turned off, but that if students needed to leave, they could go to the office and sign themselves out.  Otherwise, to try to teach, and try to maintain normalcy.  We both looked at him as though he had three heads.

As soon as he was out of earshot, I whispered, "Is he serious?!"

She shook her head. "I don't care what he says.  I've been here for 25 years, and I'm not turning off a historical event."  We agreed that the televisions stayed on, and she said I could blame her if anyone said anything.  They didn't.

I don't remember much about the rest of the day.  My boyfriend woke up to my IM message: "Twin towers hit by planes.  Pentagon hit.  NYC seems to be under attack.  Call me.  I love you."  I remember sitting in front of the television with my mom, on the old white couch with the different colored threads running through it, while we watched the newscasters try to make sense of the mess.  I remember parking at "S Hill" in Ridgewood, and sitting on the rock wall with the other suburbanites, quietly gazing east towards the city.   I remember days later, standing in a line on my front porch with high school friends as we participated in the nationwide candlelight vigil, my red hair a stark contrast to the blue sweatshirt I wore to keep out the cold night air.  I remember climbing up to the top of a mountain in North Haledon with Jeff, staring out at the mutilated skyline and the smoke that still rose from the ashes.

I remember crying every time I read the newspaper, heard another story, scanned the names of the missing in the church bulletin.  I found out one friend had lost her brother-in-law, who ran to the roof while on the phone with his mom, before the line went out, and she watched in horror as his building collapsed.  I discovered a high school friend, who I had just seen the week before, had escaped the second tower, fleeing from the bathroom with a coworker, despite orders to stay put, down 82 flights of stairs minutes before the building shattered.  I remember the destruction, and also the pride in the compassion of humanity in the face of tragedy.  And I remember the world around me trying to return to "normal"- Mike Piazza hitting a home run, and weeks later, the Yankees blowing a World Series.

I remember, now, years later, that I'm lucky.  I was 25 miles from the tragedy, close enough to see it, close enough to smell the burning sky, but far enough away to be "safe".  I remembered it then, and I remember now, how precious each moment is. 13 years, and that lesson still hits close to home.

I use this as a writing prompt for my students, and I've had this nagging feeling I was going to eventually be overwhelmed by the need to use it myself.  So here it is, in honor 9/11/01, my memories of that day.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Better Farm- Take 2

My higher voice blends with the rough one on the recording, as my left foot taps along to the melody.  I'm keeping my eyes on the road as it curves with the hills, and at the final bend, Millsite Lake is visible beyond the trees.  They bow down, more in awe of the expanse of blue than most of the drivers who race over the flattened frogs and through the splatter of bugs, cruising their way down Cottage Hill Road.
I have taken this ride as a passenger in our family’s brown Chevy Tahoe, sitting next to my sister Nicole, while my parents talked about the drug bust in the mid-seventies- piles of freshly grown marijuana plants burning, creating a skunk-like smell in the air, and staining the road in front of the house darker than the rest.  The cops were getting a contact high just standing around, and were the friendliest we ever saw them, Steve had said when we asked.  Don’t worry- your parents were in Maryland at the time, missed the whole damn thing.  I've done it as a girlfriend, and later as a wife, explaining the first time I went cliff jumping for the umpteenth time, and how some local kid jumped from the top of a tree- a 45 foot drop, easily.  And I've done it with my own children in the back seat, after Steve passed the property on to our generation, babbling away that we'll be at "Auntie Coley's farm" in a few minutes, as they happily chomp on goldfish crackers and sip apple juice out of metallic pouches.  
For the first time in my life, I am alone making this trek, gearing up for a weekend of music and art at Better Farm’s Summer Festival.  My husband is playing a gig an hour south in Syracuse, on his way to the farm to perform with his band, and our daughters are home now, in the care of their grandparents for the weekend. My photographs are wrapped in towels and linens for safety, part of an exhibit I'm putting up in the barn-turned-gallery.  This solo show is a return to a passion I’ve had on hold since college, in favor of the traditional job, wife, mother role I’ve embraced wholeheartedly.  
It’s been a rough year, though.  My husband had shoulder replacement surgery after five failed prior procedures, and is in constant pain.  Life revolves around making him ice packs, and tiptoeing around his injury and anger at his situation.  Our youngest broke her leg three days after his last surgery, after I slipped down the stairs carrying her (most likely the result of only four hours of sleep the night before), and was in a body cast for a month.  In addition to doing all the household chores and running both our companies, taking over Jeff’s job while trying to stay afloat in mine, I am working as a teacher, muddling through all the new Common Core standards and evaluation methods being thrown down from the bureaucratic higher ups in charge of public education.   I’ve been running myself ragged trying to take care of the world at large, and my family knew I needed a break.  Hence this weekend away.

Looking out over the tops of the pine trees at the water, I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding in.  It's the end of a long journey north, away from the go-go-go of schedules, the constant tugging, and the barrage of sensory onslaught by machines.  Sometimes, it’s important to step away from the normal, remember what you can be when given the chance, and Steve’s words- every day is an opportunity for better-better for you, better for the world around you- play through my head like a mantra I need to savor.

*          *          *
           
In another life, Steve had owned Better Farm.  It was the compensational result of a car accident that saw the loss of his girlfriend from this world, and his mobility from his chest down.  He only talked about it once in the almost thirty years I knew him, almost in passing.
            I woke up to find a young woman staring at me, pale and sweating, saying ‘Are you alright mister?’  I remember she smelled faintly of motor oil, like she'd been out on the road too long. I looked down and saw my legs were twisted under me in a manner that could only be described as arachnid- the way a Daddy long legs’ twist when wet.   Then I passed out.
                  We never asked him for details.  It didn’t seem unusual to have an uncle whose hands formed claws, who drank water through a plastic straw sticking out of an old glass coffee pot, and wore his wispy white hair in a ponytail, and a patchwork quilt over his legs.  I thought people naturally lived in large groups in houses in the middle of nowhere, that Wagner regularly flowed from other people’s record players, and that sloped floors were architecturally common.

I told them to build the ramp at the edge of the back door, but to be sure there was enough room so I didn’t go flying off into the swamp.  They were blasting Ride of the Valkyries, carrying around pic axes and shovels, throwing wet dirt that dried in grayish pile.  They dug that hole next to it for bathing, before the plumbing was done, and before realizing how mucky it was.  It was abandoned after something slithered around somebody’s foot.
The hole at the edge of the property stands to this day, a pungent portal to another world, filled with the discarded carcasses of animals- porcupines, birds, coyotes- skulls and thigh bones which occasionally float to the top and are brought back by my sister’s proud dogs, who wag their tails and dismiss the irony of their hunt.  There are reeds and giant grasses thrusting out of the brown water, waving in the wind, and creating a barrier to the wild lands beyond the mowed lawn.
My octogenarian grandmother would play Scrabble in the kitchen with Steve, the two of them going head to head in epic battles of wit.  Granny was in charge of the bag of squares, and would hold them out so Steve could reach his curved hand in, drawing out the letters one at a time. 
If you look carefully, each Scrabble square has a different wood grain, unique to the piece- kind of like a fingerprint.  After one game where Mother particularly trounced me, I decided I would memorize the backs of the pieces.  So I did.  When she figured it out, I turned white as a sheet as my confession.  Without a word, she got up, removed the board- and all the pieces on it- and tossed the whole thing in the trash.  From that day, she kept all the pieces in an opaque container when we choose ours. 
Nicole and I slept in the loft at the top of the stairs, on a mattress that had been up there for several decades, and held contaminates we chose not to think about.  It got stuffy, snoozing twelve inches from the wooden plank ceiling, no insulation and a hammer’s length away from the roof.  The stairs leading up to the bed were more of a slanted ladder, slats that were painted blue after the wall was torn away to create the sleeping space at the top. There was a small window, always cloudy and never clean, looking out over the field, which allowed reddish orange light to stream in from the setting sun.
It was worth the sleeping arrangements, though, as Steve was full of tales about our family.  He told us about how my parents had spent the summer they got married, at age 20, working on the multicolored farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. They spent the next thirty years completing the roughly six-hour drive from New Jersey to visit, offering stories of the suburbs, friends growing older and procreating, bringing Nicole and me, and our cousins and friends, along for the ride, while Steve existed in the timelessness that is rural Redwood.
            In 1995, we had a reunion of the people who built the farm, and set up a slide show in the library.  It had 14 foot high ceilings, walls lined alphabetically with books -we found no fewer than twelve mouse nests behind when we cleaned it- and a series of sheets, held aloft by my cousins Danny and Mike in a rare moment of sibling cooperation, that my Dad affixed to a wire over the sliding glass doors with clothespins. 
There were men with long hair and bandannas, smiling with joints protruding from their mouths, posing with firearms and a half built fireplace in Technicolor.  I marveled at the way time stood still in the photographs- women, hair down to their waists, tanned, sinewy limbs bent as they carried rocks and wood, beaming and squinting in the sunlight.  There was a lot of laughter as the machine whirred and sparked, the light bringing the images to life as I gazed around the room at the housewives with perms, the men with thinning hair and bald heads.  I snapped photos of my own, capturing the same smiles, slightly yellowed, and limbs, somewhat plumper, of the refugees of youth who had taken shelter in suburbs across the northeast after doing their time in the North Country. 
 It was the last major group gathering at the farm.  Dad died on a Tuesday night a few years later, at a basketball game for an over 50 league, two weeks shy of his own half century mark. I spent the next several days aging, making decisions about funeral music, readings, and delivering the eulogy to the packed church. The sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows, full of multicolored roses and crucifixions, highlighting the teenage soccer team in matching uniforms that he managed, their heads down, their hair hanging in their eyes.  The smell of too much perfume and incense made my eyes itch and my nose run.  Steve was transported south in a car for the first time in years, and sat atop a pickup truck in his wheelchair on the way to the cemetery, bundled in blankets, hat, and scarves, a strange float in the middle of a January funeral procession.
             I didn’t crack until weeks later, during a fifteen minute break from my photography class that turned into seven hours of lying on my bed, pouring over pictures, my hands shaking while my dorm mate rubbed my back and handed me bottles of water.  “You have to hydrate,” she’d said
*          *          *
             The memory stays with me as I slug water from a plastic container.  After we lost Dad, Nicole and I took to making the trip ourselves when it was too painful a reminder for Mom what she had lost, and a beacon for me and my sister of what we had to gain.   Steve allowed us a posthumous look at the man I wish I’d known as an adult.  I think back to the last conversation I had in person with Steve, in his kitchen with the linoleum peeling up in the corners, and the fly paper, with little insect carcasses, hanging precariously over the sink.
Nicole was in the other room, cataloguing the books, and removing duplicates for Steve to sell on eBay.   Jeff and I were angling for Steve to stay with us for the winters, as the long drive to Tucson for its dry, warm air was getting harder and harder the older he became.  The converted Ken Kesey bus for those cross country drives lay tangled in the weeds next to the old barn, immobile like him, waiting for a motor that cost more than he could justify spending.  I had completed my teaching degree, was looking for a steady job in the heart of suburbia where Steve had grown up.  It was a comfortable normal, the kind none of us necessarily saw as our future when we were younger, but had turned to for the sake of survival and prosperity.
We were going to expand the doorways in our Cape Cod house, to make them passable for his wheelchair, and install ramps out to the back yard.  I stood at the stove, sautéing garlic and onions for the night’s meal, puffs of buttery steam rising through my hair as I handled the ancient cast iron skillet with expert precision.  We spoke of turning the farm into an artists’ retreat, doing what he’d thought about for almost 40 years.  Nicole was old enough now, they could sit on the deck with their laptops.  It was a solid plan, one with potential.  He was excited at the notion, and we made a pact that this would be his last winter traveling south of Jersey for the bitter months.
Steve called from Arizona a few months later, his voice gravelly and low over the phone.  He had a bronchial infection, and was fighting it.  He laughed hoarsely, as he did, saying  Don’t forget- better.  Every day is the opportunity for better.  This is a hiccup.  “Don’t die on me, or I’ll kill you,” I’d said.  I’m too old to die, he’d said.  He had flat lined twice in his life, as a child learning the harsh reality of allergies, and as an adult experimenting with drugs, and lived- lived through the accident, lived through the deaths of his two brothers and sister, lived in rural backwoods America for forty years while the rest of the world kept on turning.   
*          *          *

The house looms on the right, large and weather beaten.  There are people milling about, and a cacophony of chickens clucking as I turn into the driveway.  Opening the door to stretch my tanned legs, I’m happy that even years removed from playing, and after two children, the shape is still there from the endless cycle of high school and college soccer.  At the same time, I'm quick to recognize that my body is angry at this sudden movement after hours of stagnating. 
"You're here!"
 My sister sashays out of the house, cutoff shorts betraying the massive number of insect bites on her legs.  Gangly arms embrace, laughter begins.  It is the start of a madcap of bonding exercises.  She regales me with tales of hatching chickens, and boats being towed by swimming interns, while we walk through throngs of poultry, before setting me free to wander the grounds.   Her tattoo in memory of our Dad, a purple Grateful Dead bear dancing across her lower back, peeks out from under her yellow tee shirt as she heads for the main house.  It reminds me that the only body alteration I have is a five inch scar from my two c-sections- the first an emergency, the second planned.
The camera strap hangs loosely around my neck, my birthday present to myself earlier in the year when I realized I had spent most of the last several years losing much of who I was in favor of who my family needed me to be.  The shutter clicks in my hands, capturing images of strutting roosters and hand painted signs in pixels and JPEGs.  I mentally check off how many matted frames are in my car, calculate how many old windows can be salvaged from the pile in the shed as found frames, and how many more photos can be printed for the art projects to be displayed in the gallery later.  
Lyrics run from my lips under my breath, my mind wandering to younger years, when I was on my own on a more regular basis.  I squint in the waning light, making my way across Cottage Hill Road to the recently renovated art barn, as flashes of childhood unfold.  Summers of sneaking across the divide with Nicole, peeking in on the pigs through the deteriorating planks of wood play in my head like a grainy movie.  They were gone the next year, we turned vegetarian, and took to chopping celery into salad, the firm stalks, sliced into half moons, distracting from the lack of crunchy bacon.  In the years since, I tried on a number of occasions to adopt this ingredient at home, but it never quite worked right - it always seemed somehow alien, out of place, and the celery would end up isolated on the plate, away from the drips of dressing and stray tomato seeds.
The former pigsty has been rebuilt for storage, the barn now houses a white walled gallery downstairs, music studio upstairs, and boasts a deck with a natural amphitheater around it, which was discovered during a massive hacking back of the overgrown brush the year Nicole took over. Salads are concocted in the kitchen from our own freshly picked produce, and are adorned with hard boiled eggs left by the grateful spent hens that were rescued from becoming pot pies and nuggets.  Humming a melody, I place my camera on a folding table, pick up a paintbrush, and dip it into creamy black tempera.  A drop of paint is pulled down the pane of glass, as I think about the little instances in our lives, those moments that seem so inconsequential, yet alter the course of our history, and that of the world around us.
She shouldn’t have been driving- she was too tired.  I fell asleep against the back door, lying down.  Seatbelts weren’t required in cars then.  It was 1967, I’d just graduated Columbia the month before.  I thought I was invincible.
I glance out the window, at the arms of the setting sun as they reach out to the trees and round bales of hay, lighting them on fire before turning them black in her wake.  Placing the paintbrush down, I reach for my iPod, tapping the icon to make the music louder.
*          *          *
Steve made the decision to take himself off the ventilator.  He scrawled the note on the wipe board, I’m too tired, love to you all, and Nicole, Danny, and Mike stood around his bed, holding hands for the first time since they had lost their parents.  Steve’s other witnesses shifted their weight and held their breaths, waiting for one final miracle from the man who shouldn’t have survived several times over.  I sat in a classroom in Ridgewood, watching the clock and my cell phone, too new in my job to be able to make the journey south, while my students read about Scout and Atticus, discussing the mystery of Boo Radley in hushed voices.   
Weeks later, I stood over Steve’s grave, reading my words and borrowing names from his beloved operas.  “There was a time once when he was the stuff of legend, surrounded by his Rhine-maidens, sitting atop his throne at his Delphi, a haven for the masses of uber-intelligent, anti-establishment miscreants, from the bowels of the suburbs, from the dusty roads leading to the rock eating dogs and the Acropolis on the hill.  He was Woton, raised with Erda, Donner, and Froh[1], those too great to continue on its terra, as the mortal realm was, simply, too small to hold them.
*          *          *
Steve’s journey, my sister’s to owning the farm, my own to this moment of isolation and freedom, all intertwine in the midst of the tangle of country.  I pick up a hammer, and pound the nails into the walls for my artwork, each stroke splitting the wood as I try to strike the thoughts running rampant through my head as my brain chants a line from a story I read once: remember... remember... reMEMber... and my voice belts with enough resonance to shake the beams over my head, jerking me between the present and the past, the real and the imaginary as the last of the sunlight disappears, and the moonlight streams in.







I wrote a short blog called January in August last year.  At the time, I just wanted to get the words down, try to remember the emotion, and was more focused on the song than the actual memories it was triggering.  For one of my Master's Degree courses, I reworked it to be more of a reflection on my Uncle Steve, my connection to Better Farm (which is now run by my little sister), and on where I was at that particular moment in my life.  The words in italics are my Uncle Steve's- I'm paraphrasing due to the fickleness of memory, but the gist is here.  The rest is all true.  Here it goes.






[1] Norse Gods and characters in Wagnerian Opera