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When Crows Yell Freeze

Sometimes I will be sitting on my back porch and something will shift in the yard. The Tufted Titmice, for instance, will fly from the bird feeder in groups of ten at once, a sudden rush to leave. It is that specific feeling of emergency that makes me look up from my work. The wind chimes are ringing alone.

The sounds then coalesce into distinct patterns. I can clearly hear the crows, birds I never noticed prior to raising backyard hens. The feeder is completely empty and the crows yell out warnings for everyone to hear,

“Caw, Caw, Caw” over and over again, as the threat appeared as a shadow on the otherwise sunny grass. I look up at the circling Red Tailed Hawk.

I head out to my chickens who were standing silent and frozen under a canopy of wide brimmed squash leaves. When I pried open the butternut squash last winter, I had no way to know that the pulp and seeds I scraped out and threw into their yard would reappear as a safety roof in the summer to come; just like the dance teacher in 1975 had no way to know that her words, “you can be the helper,” would be tucked away as a warning call to stay still while other people danced. Memory saves some words but not others.

The chickens who have witnessed fox and hawk attacks are especially tuned in. They run faster for cover and are slower to emerge, hypervigilance, of course, means survival. My human brain is barely different. I have always listened closely, waiting for signs of safety. Not only are there shadows from the past-- talons are simply everywhere: the news, the fine print on waivers, the bacteria that might lurk in the dark lake I finally swam across this past summer. Would it invade the cut on my big toe?  

But the chickens cannot always see what they are hiding from and neither can I. When I used to teach knitting I always told my students to never pull too hard on a knot. Yarn has to be gently teased apart. Sometimes the innermost tangle is really rather small. It’s not worth giving up. Most skeins are completely salvageable.

A teacher recently discarded an excuse I had been using on why I could not finish a project. She did it cleverly and it wasn’t even directed at me. But I knew I had finally and truly lost my cover. I could no longer forgive myself for giving up, avoiding risk. I thought of my still chicken under the squash leaf. I tried to make out the details of the shadowy hawk that made me chicken, too. It finally came to me, days later but all at once, of why I was so scared. Of course, I wish I had turned on the light sooner.

It’s not so good to stay in the dark.

Tomato Ghosts

At the end of each summer our kitchen became a shepherd for tomatoes at different stages. Two baskets, just picked, sat on the counter next to the sink.  Pulp and seeds sat pooling on the cutting board. Quartered ones had been moved in handfuls to the tall pots on the stove. Ripe ones laid in wait-still tethered by ripped strips of old sheets- out back in the garden. That little garden was very prolific with tomatoes, a testament to my mother’s generosity with compost.  But in my mind those fruitful plants ruined every single August.

I would wake up in the morning, listening. I would wish my mom was vacuuming and playing The Carpenters, Close to You, like she did in spring. But in August she wasn’t humming along to the hi fi. Instead she stayed at the sink cutting up tomatoes; sometimes my dad would help by grinding them through the food mill. It smelled like the dirty earth when I came down in the morning, pieces of tomatoes in different stages, my eyes settling on the worm holes that had been cut out and left in the sink along with any hope for an interesting summer day. I couldn’t tell her there was nothing to do and that I was so bored because she was so busy with all the tomatoes before they went rotten. Canning all those tomatoes became a yearly emergency.

Something terrible happened with those tomatoes one summer. I must have been six or seven. I was old enough to know about danger. But too young to really understand how the details of danger fit together. Facts were like puzzle pieces in my brain but sometimes the pieces didn’t fit. I would keep working on it, privately, trying to make it work. There was no internet to find explanations, only the Merck Manual.  My mom sometimes read it at night or in the middle of the day. I always noticed when she looked something up. She studied the pages as if she were studying for an important exam. Flipping the pages back and forth, concentrating.

She was getting more Mason Jars from the basement that late afternoon because the tomatoes had finally relented, releasing their juice, metamorphosing into smooth red sauce. They were almost ready to be canned. I stood there, alone, just tall enough to see into the pot. And then I stuck my finger in, to try just a taste. The sharpness hit my tongue, unexpected sourness that made me take a step back as my mom pushed open the basement door with her elbow, jars in both hands.

I was thinking how the taste did not remind me at all of the sauce on the homemade pizza my mom made in winter. She must have changed it somehow. I did not ask her about that because she always told me to stay back when she was boiling the tomatoes. She was putting the jars in the oven along with a thermometer that she balanced on the rack.  Why are you doing that, I asked, forgetting about the bad taste of tomatoes lingering on my tongue. She explained to me that she needed to sterilize the jars because tomatoes can grow germs if they don’t have a proper seal and that’s why they had to be boiled and canned just so. She used another word to describe the germs, a word that came into the conversation like an unwanted thief. It stole my thoughts for years.

Botulism, she said.

And that is the moment when I hurriedly assembled the puzzle of tomatoes and botulism, canning and heat, germs and my finger together in a rush. It all fit together in the worst possible way. I couldn’t tell my mom, I decided, in the smallest of seconds. She had worked on that batch all day. And now it was contaminated. Which jar would the botulism be in? Would everyone die? I pondered the situation over and over again, in the middle of spaghetti and on (what used to be) happy pizza nights all winter long. I watched for signs of illness after meals.  Every time my mom sent me down to the cold cellar to get another canned jar of sauce, I held it in my hand with dread.

Was this the one?

These thoughts went on for two years, at least, until I could be sure the entire batch had been eaten. Until my secret no longer mattered because we were all still alive. I felt some relief after that. At least with canned tomatoes.

Coincidence?

(this piece was originally published on www.scarymommy.com, formally known as "themid" in August, 2015 under the title "Why I embrace a little magic in my life and hope my kids do too.")

   

 My kids were pissed, to put it mildly, that I went to the tarot card reader. A nerdy bunch, they are the ones that present me the statistics that coincidences are to be expected, that there are reasons for anomalies. I had tried to hide it from them, sneaking through my little town, but then when something fateful happened, I had to confess.

     
 Backing up in history a bit, one could see that I just couldn’t help it. From the time I could read, I took notice of the little broken house on the hill with the sign “Fortune’s Read.”  Positioned in the window, it always caught my eye on busy traffic days when my mom took the shortcut to avoid the main stoplight in town.

    
And when my parents brought me to the County Farmer’s Fair there would be a fortune-telling booth next to the one with pies, but I knew not to ask them, even though I was only a curtain away. I paused when we walked by, trying to get a glimpse of the woman in back who could tell me my fate, while my mom steered me over to the handmade quilts. “Aren’t they something?” she’d ask, but my mind was on bigger things.

     
I had concluded from these signs that there were definite places you could find answers to the uncertainty of life but I was precluded from receiving them; I was solidly entrenched in a sensible house with pragmatic folks who canned vegetables in their off hours. They were not drawn to mystical explanations for daily events; in contrast, there was work to get done. In this arena I was wholly on my own as I helped my mom take the wash “down the line”.

   
But finally, when I was a teenager, with some pocket change and independence, I asked some friends to join me and we ventured into a palm reader’s booth on the boardwalk. When I placed my hand in hers, I held my breath as my heart pounded. “Would my life be long?” She traced my lines with her finger. “Would I find love?” her brow furrowed as she carefully and slowly examined a curved line that I had never even noticed. It felt almost reckless to think I was about to learn my future, right then and there, while the rest of the world was buying hermit crabs and ice cream. Listening carefully to what she said, I wrote down what I could remember and tucked the information into my top drawer as some kind of protection against personal disasters. She said for sure I would live to a ripe old age. It held me over for a while.

     
But over the years, I find myself as fraught with the uncertainty of daily living as I ever was. The randomness of life unglues me. My original conception was flawed; I thought somehow that when the big gigantic questions had been answered, the ones about love, children and such, I would be at peace. But I am not.

    
So recently, while on a walk with a friend, who shares my hope that fateful coincidences are a possibility, she happens to mention that the local tarot card reader would be in town again. And just like that, I was smitten with the idea of seeing him to sort out a current conundrum about where I was headed.  I needed some immediate answers about my purpose in this very short life. If the Tarot Cards might be able to help me out, I thought I should give them the chance.

    
I made my appointment, marking it with just initials on the family calendar, a practiced self-defense strategy from mockery if they were to see it. When the afternoon arrived, I parked my car in the lot across the street, grabbed my purse, all while happening to notice a man in a suit walking out.  Slightly calmed by the sight of a man in a tie looking for answers like me (did this legitimize things?) I am simultaneously disgusted that I, a feminist, needed that.

      
But, now at the table, across from the boy-man with delicate features and long fingers, I shuffle the cards and spread them around. He tells me I can tape the session, another sign of validity. I will be sure to remember this if my kids ever find out.  And, just like the night at the shore, decades earlier, my pulse quickened as I listened to his almost factual portrayal of my life’s current influences. When he asked if I had any questions, I soldiered up the one I had been harboring forever, the one that at times feels self-indulgent. I wanted to simply know what my life purpose was meant to be, if in fact there was one at all. I wanted to get a move on things. Time was running out.

     
He said something about the moon, and the fact that it was a fortuitous time to ask the universe for answers. I listened closely. He said that I could request some help now, so my practical upbringing takes over in the next minute as I blurt out, “How do I ask, exactly? What do I do? What words do I write?” My need for preciseness in a somewhat vague situation seemed so amateur-ish.  But he was non-judgmental and very logically told me the wording I could use.  

     
With his instructions on tape, I left the session with new confidence about my future, as I had a plan. At home, I drafted up my requests, seven of them to be precise, the number he said I could make. The universe is generous, I guess, when the moon is right. As I scribbled away, it took me a few attempts to really describe things and then I decided that they should be typed, lest there be any misunderstandings.

    
And finally, there I stood, loose-leaf paper in hand, and paused. Where does one put universe requests?  And in this moment, my youngest pushes open the door to my room and finds my first draft.  As he starts to read it aloud, I reach for it and grab it out of his hands and he starts to giggle; I crumple it and tear it in bits. But the commotion has attracted the rest of the lot and the kids demand an explanation of this manifesto that I am holding, and of course, I get no family support.  I close my door.

    
Undeterred, I decide the best place to put my list is at the top of my dresser, nearest the window, the spot that I determine is closest to the universe.  And then--- I wait. I review my list daily, live more intentionally and a week later, when something happens that was actually foretold, I know in my heart it is not coincidental. I gloat to my kids.

    
I guess I want them to believe, too, that maybe there is a little magic in the world, or at least there is magic in the space of time when we make our intentions known, and offer them honestly and openly into the wild. Possibly, when the deepest reservoirs of our consciousness are aware of what we want to achieve, the doors open wider and we take the step.  Of course, the pragmatists could argue that my fortunes shifted because of my own self-determination.  And they could be right. Maybe it’s only because the energy of our belief carries us forward.  And maybe it’s not.  It’s nice to wonder.

Handprint

I learned to laugh at myself one summer day, circa 1983, on my front porch.  Suzy, my first friend and next door neighbor was over and she was teaching me a song from the Eurythmics. 

“Sweet dreams are made of this, who I am to disagree? I travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something….”.    She sang confidently out into the open, holding an imaginary microphone. She was nine months older and one school grade ahead of me.  In other words, she was old enough to give me advice.

So I tried, but without the microphone.

“Sweet dreams are made of this, (pause)

who I am to disagree? (pause)

I travel the world….”

Abruptly, she cuts me off.

“No, like this” she sings, louder: “Sweet dreams are made of THIS,” (emphasis)

“Sweet dreams are made of THIS,” I repeat.

And again:

 “Sweet dreams are made of THIS,

WHO am I to DISAGREE, I travel THE world…

It went on.  For some reason she was determined that hour to help me get the tempo right. I was shameless in front of her, no pretend pride, we’d met when we were four, after all.  She knew my deepest secrets, my weird fears, my private matters. She had been witness to all big occasions- first lost tooth, first bra, and the events in between.  So I kept trying, despite failing, until the entire song was reduced to one simple sentence of beats that she patiently counted out.  And then, we both laughed --at me.

Although we had endless amounts of days like this —strawberry milk at her house, grilled cheese at mine, Suzy and I eventually went our separate ways, until finally, I couldn’t see her window at night.  We caught up at our weddings but that was it.  Our overlapping childhood was replaced with the separations of time, maturity, and shifting allegiences; divergence to different paths age often brings. We lost touch during the busy-ness of our twenties and she died before we could reconnect in our later years to relive our early memories of our days up in her apple trees.  There is no one else who knows me in the way that she did.  And although we could only see what was different back then, I now see that the differences fueled our early connection.

Rachel entered my life during my college years, in the form of a teaching mentor and advisor. Just graduated with a Doctorate from Harvard, she held none of the loftiness one would expect. Instead she approached life with a gentle but direct intellect that informed her observations.  She’d notice the details, the child in the corner who was getting overlooked or the teacher who took shortcuts. Her honesty was heartfelt, and always meaningful, she did not shy away from constructive advice. Her goal was to create growth--in any place or person- she found. I looked up to her as my teacher and felt the separation that hierarchy demands but that perspective changed one day in a public school in Western Mass.  Rachel happened to be eight months pregnant, which in itself was tiring with her workload. But added to that she had a horrible case of poison ivy.  Covered, swollen and itchy in a pink dotted tent dress, she actually started to cry during her assessment of me.  And in that moment I was startled to realize that Rachel didn’t just see me as her student, she saw me as a friend.

When I finished school, she sustained her interest in me, writing me long letters in her careful cursive writing, month after month through the years. She always shared details of her life, her efforts at teaching reading to those who needed it most, shaking her head at misguided establishment bureaucracies that prevented kids from getting needs met, her yearly experiences with her Fresh Air Fund Child, the list continued. I remained in awe—both by her patience and her willingness to share her time with me during her very full life.  In fact, I was never as good at writing long letters, but would try to make up for things by long phone calls to catch up, though it felt like cheating. I never wanted to disappoint her. I still remember where I was standing when I got her letter that detailed her “latest challenge”, as she described it: stage four cancer.  Reading the words over and over again, I slowly digested the sadness that she carefully left out. At her funeral, about seven years later, the Shaker song she chose was so fitting it made me weep as it rang true in the big church —“tis a gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free, tis a gift to come down where we ought to be…

and when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘twill be in the valley of love and delight.”   

And finally, Charmaine appeared with the arrival of Will, my firstborn.  She lived right next door in our little row of townhouses. Despite being my age and childless (not by choice), she’d pop over without knocking and burst in like the ray of sunshine we needed but could not find-even though our shades were up. Long days alone with a newborn are disorienting, especially when there is no particular schedule. I had actually run out of things to say to Will by 9am.  But then, there she’d be, at our most desperate moment—chatting away about anything, nothing, about the strawberry that I was holding, waving it in front of Will excitedly. I’d be in my pajamas but she was from Texas, so she was in her high heels and makeup.  I’d ask her where she was going, and she’d answer “to the grocery store,” and I’d say something like “you don’t have to dress up to go to the store here in NJ, like that” and she’d just look at me quizzically.  (To this day, whenever I accidently end up at Kings in my slippers, I think of Charmaine). She rambled on with Will and he smiled back at her, clearly relieved by her lightness of being. She taught me how to make real barbecue and gave me a Junior Women’s League Texas edition cookbook that I have cherished over the years.  (Those Texan women must be pretty competitive because I have never owned a recipe book with so many good recipes. Usually you have to buy a whole series.) Charmaine ended up moving a year or two later, and we gradually lost touch. With the advent of Facebook about fifteen years later, I was able to thank her for her help during that first year of Will’s life before she abruptly died of pancreatic cancer last spring.

So this is the gift that death leaves behind to those still alive, a sudden and complete understanding of the essence of the person, which remains like a permanent handprint in our lives. The other details, the details of our differences fade away in the wake of premature endings.  Instead, we are left remembering the specific light of that one person that glowed in its very particular way.  I’d like to think that I made the most of the relationships I had with these three particular women—women that intersected my life at critical junctures.  But the truth of the matter is, is that I didn’t.  There were reasons of course.  Busy with different paths. Busy with life. Busy with kids. Or even busy inserting other people in the places that those people left empty when we changed towns. But now I look back and think about how each one of them changed me so specifically, that of course they have always been irreplaceable. Their absence is only softened by their permanent mark on my life. 

Not Routine

It’s been a month of breaking routine, culminating with a café latte at a new Italian place at 5pm one afternoon, a decidedly small test of my commitment.  Usually it’s a bad time to have caffeine on account of the risk involved of not being able to fall asleep later because of those intrusive thoughts that alarm you.  College kids on road trips demand that sleep stay on track.  The young woman at the counter, however, appeared a bit bored, just wiping off the new shiny frother, without real purpose, as things were already in good order.   Impulsively I ordered it as an act of generosity and because I had specifically decided not to worry about the future.  Walking back to my car with my bag of specialties, including another spontaneous purchase of very expensive pistachio butter, I put my latte in my cup holder and felt the stirrings of liberation, small that they were.

Soon after, one early evening, I found myself on a walk at a time usually reserved for making dinner. Facing the setting sun, a memory drifted into my thoughts—those occasional nights in college when I had chosen to stay home instead of going out.  Alone in my dorm room I’d sometimes decide to head over to the indoor track and run with Suzanne Vega playing on my headphones.  Running, lap after lap, 10 to a mile, in a mostly deserted place but bright with florescent light. Other scattered people would be there, although there was a randomness that felt comforting, as if I wasn’t really alone in my search for something else. I ran miles longer that I ever could in daylight.   Now, on the cold road in early spring, I could almost smell the red cushioned track of my past in the evening air, and it reminded me of possibility.

It all started, these miniscule escapes, when I ended up unexpectedly at my brother’s house for an unplanned week.   My husband made the lunches back home, as I texted instructions about preferences: iceberg lettuce rather than romaine; mayo on one, vinegar on the other; etc.   It was a first for me to leave everyone behind and that week found the kids surprised to find Oreos  (not flax seed tortilla chips) wrapped in tin foil (not un-dyed wax paper) at the bottom of their brown lunch bags.  Meanwhile, my brother and I drove through the tight snow banked streets of Boston looking for parking, while recalling our childhood and dissecting the variables that made us choose our paths.  We walked together to pick up his youngest from school and chatted with the crossing guard, remembering our own Mrs. Lake who waited for us each afternoon on Main Street.  The people of his town all knew his name as we sat in different bars at night while they served the two of us dinner.  At noon, we met at yoga and he showered before returning to work a few steps away.

It had been years since my brother and I drove together, in the car, unfettered by spouses and children.  It was during our very late teens the last time this happened for any significant time---that we’d drive to escape our encapsulated lives.  We’d end up in the city looking for stereo equipment or one time, Minnesota, on a road trip across the country that ended abruptly the moment we realized our sibling limitations.  Staring at the little tent in upstate Canada made us realize that camping might not be the thing that would bond us together. But this week, in the outskirts of Boston, was a touchstone of a certain sort.  It was an intimate glance at both of our lives, a midlife checkpoint of where we were at, and we found we had decidedly different insights to offer one another.  It was as if our childhood heartbreaks had brought us to this moment---where an honest analysis of our past informed our future.  But the bigger issue was that it was just the two of us together, and it was easier to see each other clearly.  It is hard to measure the impact of surrounding demands (work, travel, family, children) on the essential relationships we crave.

There are few people who know us so deeply well.  Few people, in fact, who are witness to the early light of who we are, before experiences and challenges shape us to our current selves, before life gives us the narrative. Many hours and days of obligations deny us easy access to our original intuitions --yet, if we are lucky enough to see ourselves reflected by a long time friend and/or sibling and are able to look honestly, the barriers fall away—and, possibly, we find the courage to return to our elemental selves.

And, finally, the last place I arrive this month is at a meditative retreat—the place where the spotlight shines on the soul.  And though huddled together in a crowd--with my knees touching the person in front of me, while feeling the breath of those next to me, I am actually alone.  Instructed to close our eyes, we are asked to concentrate on something that we want to change, something to let go of, an intention of sorts.  Even though it is a private mission, there feels some public pressure to think of something, anything/ to not be the one who doesn’t have something to find.   So I follow the plan and I close my eyes.

It’s oddly surprising how in a crowded, quiet room, monuments of the mind can actually start to shift.  That practiced ways of living in the world offer themselves up to change.   Suddenly, we are able to entertain the possibility of letting go of the constructs that do not serve us, the boundaries that stop us from feeling.  It’s scary to change the comfortable routines.  But these routines are the true barriers to our senses, our memories and our connection to truly feeling alive.