Seeking Balance

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

~ Albert Einstein

I don't have words to express the sorrow and fear I feel about the BP oil catastrophe.  What are your thoughts?   I feel powerless to the point of despair.  Talk to me.  I'm not seeking comfort where there's none to be found, but real talk, your real thoughts, ideas, questions, and fears.

N is for . . .

New season, new header, and the new outlook I'm trying to cultivate after a long, rather hard winter.  I feel like my family, some wonderful old companions, sweet blog friends, my cats, books, and my writing projects have kept me going.  Another gift is that this dreadful winter came on the heels of one of the best autumns of my life.  I believe that the seasons of plenty can prepare us for the lean seasons, and the lean ones make us appreciate those bountiful ones all the more.

Thank you from the soles of my harness boots to the roots of my highlights for all that you give, all that you share.  So often you do it without a single expectation of anything in return.  I've said more than once this winter that I was having a tough time, but then I haven't gone on to share any details or clarify my remarks.  That seems a bit unfair of me, and yet you haven't complained.  Not once.  That is because you are patient; you understand.  Some encounters, some moments, some life events--even the big ones that shape us in new and completely unforeseen ways--can't be shared, and yet it is good to know that there are friends who stop by for visits or send parcels or write unexpected emails just to check in.  

And then I see someone who is suffering, someone who is hungry or lonely or scared, and my own cares and worries seem petty.  Look at that roof over my head: not a leak in it tonight as the rain clamors against the skylight, searching for a way in.  The seal holds tight.  We are safe and warm inside.  Tomorrow I'll make soup with kale and white beans, and maybe some homemade biscuits.  My husband will tell me a joke and forget the punch line (this is not a vague prediction; I can say this with far more certainty than a meteorologist can forecast the weather).  Someone in my family will call just as I'm picking up the phone to call them.  I possess more riches than I can measure.

Usually I'm a vintage girl, a celebrator of thrift and reuse, a magpie and picker, gleaning treasures from cast offs and long-forgotten troves.  Tonight, though, I sing of the new, of turning the proverbial new leaf, of seeing the world through new, perhaps rosier glasses.  Yet even as I wax rhapsodic about the new, I keep in my sights the glimmer of the past, for it's from the old, wizened stem that a green branch grows, and from this branch a new bud blooms.

G is for Games

Visiting my mother this week, I discovered all our favorite childhood games stacked on a shelf in the laundry room.  Most of the boxes are a bit ratty, but the boards are fairly intact and nearly all the playing pieces are miraculously still in their little cardboard slots.

These are the real deal--vintage seventies rainy-day specials.  Including the best game of all time: CLUE

My sister and I always fought to be Miss Scarlet.  She was older, so she usually won.  My second choice was Professor Plum; third was Colonel Mustard.  No one ever wanted to be Mrs. White.  

And then there was Twister.  This game was only fun when I was about twelve and when there were boys around.  My mum and I looked Twister up on the ever-reliable and always factual (ahem) Wikipedia, and we discovered that Twister was first released in 1966, but it didn't become a hit until Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.  What a hoot that must have been!  Apparently, Milton Bradley was accused by its competitors of selling "Sex in a Box."  Well, duh, as we  used to say when we were kids!

From the looks of it, our Twister spinner is one of the early ones.  Don't ask me who wrote the numbers on it or what they were for.  We were always inventing our own spinoff games using various bits and pieces from other less-loved games.

Last but not least is the Ouija Board, produced by Parker Brothers, who, forgive the pun, had quite a monopoly on the game industry in those days.  Ouija isn't strictly speaking a game, but we treated it like one, albeit a terrifying, pee-your-pants kind of game.  Sitting around the Ouija board in a dark room with candles lit and a half-dozen or so kids wired on orange soda and chips is one of my most vivid childhood memories.  So vivid that I ended up writing a poem about Ouija, which I've included below just in case you're in a poetry mood.  It's written as if it were the rules for how to "play" Ouija.  Definitely read it aloud.  It begins as a kind of funny poem, but don't let that fool you.  Read all the way through, beginning slowly and letting your pace pick up as you go.  I should mention, too, that it's not a poem about childhood.

Ouija-Board Rules

“Ouija board, ouija board, ouija board,

would you help me?

Because I still do feel 

so horribly lonely.”

--Morrissey

The board should be bought

during a waxing moon

at a two-family yard sale 

in Ohio or Vermont,

or found on a Wednesday

at the town dump, 

or passed down 

from a spinster aunt 

with gout and houseplants.

It must be kept 

in a box whose corners

are held with cellophane

tape the color of tea,

and after obsessive use 

for three consecutive nights

during which six

thirteen-year-old girls

receive this message

from the spirit world

three consecutive times:

warning staircase good bye,

it must be wedged

with trembling hands

on a shelf in the hall closet

beside the hat box 

with the brown fedora no one has worn, 

and between the Candy Land 

and Clue with missing candlestick

replaced by a penny marked 1973.

It must wait then for at least 

a decade in the dark to speak.

Only then, on a weekend 

when the house smells of pea soup

and a particularly pungent

strain of family tension and loss,

may it be taken down,

the planchette placed gently

as a beating heart 

in its center,

and the fingers of those present

may take their positions.

Expect nothing.

Let someone else ask the questions.

Do not let your pulse

quicken its pace.

Place a pure silver coin

over the moon.

Picture a piece of the one you lost--

the crescent scar behind her ear--

never picture her face.

Do not want this too much.

When the planchette trembles,

glides to the letters,

let someone else spell the answers.

The room will be dark, of course.

Spirits like dark, 

and rain’s good, too.

Windows will rattle

as windows do.

Ignore words

from the man who died

in the basement

or the sea captain 

who murdered his second wife.

You’ll be tempted to flip 

on all the switches, bake chocolate

chip bars, play Twister, 

which you found in the closet, too,

but do not let go.

Wait for the words that matter,

the ones for you,

the ones from her,

the ones she never said,

the ones about bacon 

sandwiches in the park 

on a Sunday; the word shoe,

which could only mean

the one you lost chasing

her drunk down Deering Street

on New Year’s Eve.

Wait for her words,

the ones you never heard;

do not let go.

If they don’t come,

if you must,

if all else fails,

ignore the others

around the board,

push the planchette;

push it past S, past F,

past YES, past the sun,

past the moon, past Parker Brothers,

and X;

push the needle in the heart,

push it all the way to HELLO--

do not let go.

(This poem was previously published in Mid-American Review, published by Bowling Green State University, and in my chapbook Learning to Tell Time, published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.)

I'd love to hear about your favorite childhood board games.  Do you still play any of them now?  I think I'm going to pester my nephews to play Clue with me sometime soon.  Maybe now I'll finally get to be Miss Scarlet.

F is for . . .

I have come here my whole life, returned to scramble over stones, climb dark stairs, explore the honeycomb cells and arches and hear the wind moan.

I was born near the mouth of a river, that in-between realm, neither salt nor fresh, shifting with tides and storms and the ocean's swell.  Yet still the fort stands, and we return for welcomes, farewells, the fights that no words can solve, the pains that time never seems to quell.   

We come back to the stronghold, defenseless ourselves, seeking solace in the salt and wind and seagrass whipping harsh against our legs.  Here we stand at the edge, not safe at all, but still we stay

as if the stones themselves support us, as if memories of the years we've spent sustain us, as if we've never had to say goodbye, as if as long as these arches stand we are safe, there is something sure, there is this, always this, if nothing else--some things endure.

Fort Popham, Phippsburg, Maine

The List

I mentioned a couple of posts back that my amazing friend Jackie had given me the Happy 101 Award, and I promised to make a list of 10 things that make me happy.  Recently I discovered that the lovely Luiza has given me this award, too.  Now, you all know that I've been feeling a bit blue, so as tickled as I was to receive the awards, honestly, I was struggling with even the thought of making a list.  At the same time, I really like the idea of such lists, as they can help shake one out of melancholia and other solipsistic tendencies. My own problems and worries, after all, are mine.  And they are tiny in the scheme of things.

Tonight I type at my desk.  Beneath my window, the city is uncharacteristically quiet.  No sirens wail, no car alarms squeal, no men roar with liquor and anger.  The world seems at peace, and yet I know that this is an illusion.  When I climb into bed, pictures of Haiti will stream through my mind.  What can we say or think in the face of such devastation?  My friend Lily wrote a beautiful post about Haiti and about painting and about breakfast and hope.  Her words left me thinking of beauty, and of making something good and true and real in the face of unbearable loss.  Sometimes it's the only way I know to defeat grief.  

and so we paint
and so we weave
and so we plant
and so we read
and so we teach
a child to care

and so we reach
beyond despair

Here's my list tonight of 10 things (in no particular order):

1. Craft Hope for Haiti
2. Doctors Without Borders
3. American Red Cross
4. Heifer International
5. Care
6. World Concern
7. International Medical Corps
8. Habitat for Humanity
9. World Food Program
10. Save the Children

Thinking of you tonight, grateful for what you give the world every single day.

In Search of Comfort

"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere,

and we are all apt to expect too much;

but then, if one scheme of happiness fails,

human nature turns to another;

if the first calculation is wrong,

we make a second better:

we find comfort somewhere."  ~Jane Austen

I took these photos at Great Meadow in Concord, Massachusetts, this week.  Those of you who have read my blog since last spring know that this is one of my favorite spots.  While it's teeming with life most of the year, I almost prefer a still January day when the only sounds are distant planes, the crunch of feet on snow, and the tapping of a woodpecker across the Concord River.  This is a place of great comfort to me, and I need all the comfort I can find right now.  That's why I've also baked a chocolate cake.  What about you, my friends, where do you go or what do you do to seek comfort?  What thing, person, or activity brings you a measure of solace during a tough time?

Plaid Love for My Dad

All that talk about favorite colors in my last post got me thinking about my father.  Growing up, whenever we kids asked him what he wanted for Christmas or his birthday, he always answered, "world peace"; whenever we asked him his favorite color, he answered, "plaid."  Needless to say, this meant that he ended up opening a lot of long, thin boxes containing plaid neckties every Christmas.

We all feigned annoyance with my father for not ever revealing one favorite color, but I think we actually loved it.  My dad wore plaid nearly every day, whether on a pair of Bermuda shorts, or a tweedy jacket, a narrow plaid band around a porkpie hat, or, of course, a plaid flannel work shirt.  He didn't discriminate, except for pastels.  I don't recall seeing him in any green & pink plaid during the preppie 80's.  That was definitely not his style.  All others were welcome, and in the 70's he was often known to sport a few different plaids in a single outfit.  He was a handsome guy, and he somehow always made it look charming.

I'm missing him tonight, so I went out hunting on the internet for some of the handsome and the pretty plaids on the web right now.  I celebrate my dad for never settling on just one favorite color.  Why bother when you can have 'em all?  

From Luisa Beccaria via Perfect Bound

Eames Ottoman and Lounge Chair found at Apartment Therapy

Mad for Plaid Bundle from A Plaid Wool Company

From Toast

From Anthropologie

Glen Plaid Lowball Glasses from Ralph Lauren

From Apartment Therapy

From LL Bean

This last one is a classic, of course--the LL Bean plaid shirt.  Being a Frenchman from Maine who chopped his own wood and taught us all how to become pretty good shots with a bow and arrow, he wore a lot of shirts very much like this one.  Today hipsters wear plaid ironically, in a geeky/cool way on their wellies or their glasses, but I'm still a sucker for un-ironic, straightforward, Stanley-thermos, wool-blanket plaid.  When I was growing up in Maine, there was a terrible joke that boys used to tell: "What's the difference between a moose and a girl from Maine?  Moose don't wear plaid shirts."  Jerks!  Boys can be so mean.  I don't care, I still love plaid, and I love this memory of my dad's "favorite color."

Bittersweet Perfection

This is our last weekend on the island,

and the amaryllis I planted a few weeks ago has opened

just in time for us to enjoy it here.

As I photographed it this afternoon there was quite a bit of curiosity.

Everyone came to see just what exactly this strange thing is.

How could I explain that I am just as mystified by it as they are?

One plops a bulb into a pot,

places it in the sun,

waters it twice a week . . .

. . . and is rewarded by perfection.

If only everything in life were so pure and simple.

Here's wishing you a happy weekend, my friends.

If you're snowbound, may your hot cocoa be plentiful

and your toes be warm.

November Days

November has always made me uneasy.  As someone who tends toward the melancholic, I am lured even deeper into my moods when November's salt marshes bleach to shades of bone and its sky to shades of grey.  Don't get me wrong, I rather enjoy this feeling of teetering on the edge of winter's ice and sleet.  Besides, November is the month of counting blessings, of gathering our strength and supplies for the coming months of dark and cold.  It is the month I remember my father the most, gone now for a quarter of a century, but still present in the ocean's spray and the shiver of fallen leaves.  Even as I type this, I am almost back there, riding beside him in his tomato-soup red GMC down the old beach roads on a drizzly day.  The heater steams my wool socks.  Between us on the seat rest a jumble of receipts, a Stanley tape measure, and, as always, a pack of Wrigley's.  He is singing Roger Miller, "Trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let--fifty cents . . ." and I settle farther down into the seat, lean my head against the fogged window, let my thoughts drift.  Outside, houses and trees rush past, but we are in no hurry, my father and me.

Bittersweet Heartache

I'm up late tonight working on a manuscript, listening off and on to early Bob Dylan.  If you ever need a good cry in the middle of the night, listen to "Girl from the North Country."  I'm writing a tough scene in my story, and, yes, getting pretty misty.  Not weepy, just misty.  Trust me, that's enough.  I need to see to type.  This moment grabs my heart and gives it a good squeeze every time:

I'm a wonderin' if she remembers me at all.

Many times I've often prayed,

In the darkness of my night, 

In the brightness of my day. 

I read a great blog post the other day--can't remember where at the moment--about favorite sad songs, songs of heartbreak, songs to nurse a broken heart or maybe even rub salt in the wound.  This one would have to be on my list.  What songs would you include?  I'd love to hear.