I’ve been viewing the orange glow of New Mexican skies, the rust-colored rocks and red earth of the West, feeling the dry air graze my skin and wiping the dust off my boots. Our recent four-day trip to Santa Fe was filled with food, drinks and people, but mostly with that landscape — so unlike our East Coast surroundings.
I’m not really a geographical vocabulary kind of person. I admit — guiltily — I often skim over the descriptions of scenery in a piece of writing, especially if I’m more interested in the plot or the facts being imparted. Oh, I can appreciate a beautiful turn of phrase and marvel at words that don’t come naturally to my lips or fingers — like “tundra” — but there is something about the West that evokes a different feeling in me — of vastness, of exoticism, of being away from familiar elements and plunged into new ones. It is the land of cracked clay, parched skin, scorching sun — passing clouds the only shade, if you’re lucky. Hiking high above the desert, I scan the solid blue expanse around me, thrilled to spy thin, white puffs hanging over the distant crags.
The arid landscape contrasts with the vibrant green of our East Coast trees, the cooling blue of our Atlantic ocean, the heavy air of our summer beach retreat. Santa Fe is dirt, dust, squinting. Hats and sunglasses are de rigueur in both places, but nothing short of essential in the West. They’re for survival. There’s a hardness and harshness to this beauty, the amber grasses, stubby shrubs and prickly cactuses. But there is hope, too. The infinite azure sky, the imposing, striated rocks exude a sense of possibility, of limitlessness, of spiritual wandering. Old souls, ancient earth.
After we return, I sit on our stamp of a brick patio, surveying the enclosed yard, inhaling the scent of newly seeded grass. I’m grateful for the Foster hollies that hold the birds and stand like sentries, shielding us from our neighbors on the other side of the fence.
Green, green everywhere. I am back in the city, but feel comfort in this color of nature that exudes breath and life, that has been waiting to welcome me home.
The house is quiet, not in the relaxing, lazy, summer kind of way, but in the empty, listening, waiting kind of way. Where are the thumps from above the kitchen, the sound of the phone that often drops from my daughter’s bedside table onto the floor when she reaches for it upon waking?
Where are the feet that emerge as the other one descends the steps into the kitchen, ready for the day, on her way to somewhere, usually with a plan? I turn expectantly, poised for that fresh, unlined face to appear above the feet. I never get tired of looking at their faces, judging what the mood is. Are they up for conversation? One usually yes, the other almost always no. Sometimes her eyes are puffy, her hair unbrushed. She beelines for the coffee machine, usually protesting having to answer some question. “I know, I know … I don’t know, ok? Please don’t talk to me right now. I’m sorry, I just need coffee.”
Coffee. The twins are 18, and this last year of high school — spent mostly at home because of Covid — has been all about coffee in the morning. “We are a coffee family,” one pronounced a few months ago, pouring herself a large mug. Sometimes the machine goes through three rounds in a morning. How can four people drink so much coffee? I wonder.
They have been in a summer resort town for the last month, working a few miles from the town center at a restaurant and living with friends. My husband and I recently came from spending a week there after driving them over. One morning in town, as I ducked out of a shop to take a phone call from one daughter, I looked up from my perch on a bench to see the other one running up the sidewalk, carrying a tray of iced lattes from the coffee shop down the block.
“Hi sweetie!” I wave. Into the phone I say, “Your sister is walking up the sidewalk!”
“Mom, we’re rushing to work! Sorry, I can’t stop,” says the drink-laden teen, zooming past me in her work uniform.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re parked up the street!” she calls back over her shoulder.
Still holding the phone to my ear, I proceed to follow her to the corner, where the car is idling and her sister is behind the wheel. As the coffee carrier scrambles into the car, I peak through the passenger window. “Hi!” I say brightly to the driver, and into my phone.
She barely glances at me and shifts the car into gear. “Why are you driving all the way into town to get coffee?” I ask incredulously as they try to make their getaway.
“We were out of coffee at the house!” comes the answer, fading behind the car now disappearing up the street.
My husband and I said goodbye to our son on a recent Saturday afternoon at the airport. He was off for two and a half months of travel on the other side of the world, embarking on a gap year before he starts college next fall.
I’m not an openly sentimental person, but my voice caught in my throat as I hugged him goodbye. I surprised myself. It was as if I had spent so much time being occupied — an all-encompassing word for busy, annoyed, frustrated, losing patience — preparing him for the trip that I hadn’t taken a moment to think about him actually being gone. My mind was mired in the details of plane reservations, packing lists, visas, and plans, plans, plans. I discovered that he had never obtained his official driver’s license after his provisional expired, and hounded him for days about it. He ended up at the DMV several times until they were satisfied with his paperwork. Then there were the multiple shopping trips, outings to CVS, the cajoling, questioning, and constant email patter: “Did you see the latest email on your trip? Have you emailed that person back yet?”
No, I hadn’t gotten beyond the getting him out. But the day before he left, I stopped by to survey the damage from the packing hurricane that had torn through his room and slowly looked around, realizing it would be empty for the next 10 weeks. There would be no parents weekend visit where we could see his dorm room, meet his friends. Yes, he would be back in December, but ostensibly off again after the holidays for his next endeavor.
I’ve been thinking about how I always tell people I’m from North Carolina, but lost much of my Southern accent because I haven’t lived there since I was 18. Yes, I went back for some summers and holidays, but after college I moved to DC. I had a summer at home between moves a few years later, but I don’t really count that. Having lived in Washington longer than anywhere else, I’m practically a DC native.
Is our son going to say the same years from now? Will he have moved from our home the day he got on that plane bound for Sydney?
Time to go
Maybe the gap year is different — there is still some uncertainty about his plans — but he is not expected to be at home this spring, and maybe not even this summer. A multitude of adventures await him, and I couldn’t be more excited for him. He is on the trip of a lifetime, making memories and friends he will never forget.
They say youth is wasted on the young, but in my mind traveling is made for the young. I take heart in knowing our firstborn is exactly where he should be right now, doing exactly what he should be doing. Take this time, I say, before getting on the conveyor belt of college, work, housing, daily commutes, bills, routines. Wring every drop from the towel of adventure, self-discovery, friendship, and yes, probably — hopefully — hardship. Travel provides the kind of self-test not offered in school. The unpredictability of it — unforeseen situations and how you react to them — those are lessons not found in any syllabus.
I’m reluctantly resigned to the fact that I won’t be there for those lessons, to witness how he reacts and grows. I will be here at home, waiting to greet the person who walks in the door afterward. Is it possible he won’t change much? I doubt it. He is seeking, ready to breath in, absorb. Taking a year off was his idea, not mine or my husband’s. It never occurred to me. In fact, I found my usually adventurous nature turning cautious — why would he want to be a year behind all his friends starting college? It’s not “normal” — is it even a little weird?
I see now that in this decision he’s already demonstrating his unique nature: a willingness to depart from what’s expected, from the norm. He never looked back, once he decided to defer his college acceptance. I only hope he continues this tendency, this ability to look inside himself, to listen to his own voice. It is something I didn’t really do, or know to do, until several years out of college, when I quit my job in DC and moved to New York with only the promise of a summer internship and a bed in a friend’s apartment until her roommate returned in the fall.
That New York adventure wound up lasting more than a year, and ultimately led to my moving to Seattle to be with my then-ill sister, and traveling around the world once we knew she would be OK. Those years of adventure are when I really became myself and came into myself. I lived with people I’d never met, discovered parts of the city on my own, discovered parts of the world I never knew, got lost, got found, got scared, and had a blast.
Our son is younger than I was then, but in some ways he is wiser.
He is scheduled to come home December 1st, but just two days into his travels, he texted us to ask if he can extend his trip to travel with “my friends.” We all discussed this idea before he made his flights and he emphatically said he did not want to stay beyond the program. This latest communique was typically frustrating — it could be costly to change flights — but my husband and I laughed about it too. He’s happy, and already has “my friends.”
I think about my own parents and how they must have felt when their four kids left home. If they were sad, I don’t remember, or didn’t pay attention. (It’s possible they rejoiced.) We attended colleges and grad schools, got jobs and got married, traveled and moved away. But we did return often to that same house we grew up in — for many, many years — until it was sold a few years ago.
I may tell people I left North Carolina when I was 18, but I don’t really mean it.
I’m feeling sluggish, untethered, in that “I know I need to do things but don’t feel like it” kind of way…
I want distraction, diversion.Some sort of conversion.
Conversation. Creation. A new situation.
I need a reprieve from the schedule. Yet I need a schedule.
I need motivation, but am in stagnation.
I need rest, but when lying down don’t receive it.
I find fatigue when sitting up, trying to pay attention, striving to do the things I should be doing.
Lying down I find the mind. Racing. Mulling. Wandering, wondering, investigating, contemplating.
The things I’m interested in don’t seem made for the day. I want to let my mind explore, seek out the interesting, dive deep. That’s a nighttime habit.
Yet the daily to-do’s need to get done.
How to get unstuck from the muck of those mundane tasks? The ones that stare at me from my perch at the kitchen island?
Change the under-the-sink water filter that expired months ago. The fresh one is sitting right there, staring at me like a sentry.
The bills too. Stacked neatly nearby, ready to be paid.
C’mon, what are you waiting for?
Waiting for a friend to say come play?
Really, waiting for another to say Come Work.
An antidote to the sentiments above: Van Morrison’s “Days Like This”
There are those times in your life when your energy sags, your mind feels mushy, and your general view about life is … meh. Usually for me, that means it’s February. In our younger days my friends and I used to call it “The Febs.” Even the word itself is low-energy. It’s not vibrant like “March,” also a verb, and one easily finished off with an exclamation point. It’s not chirpy and cute like “April.” Not musical-sounding like “June,” which brings to mind a major chord. Or bright and sunny like “May,” conjuring images of spring flowers. Not to mention, all are female names.
February isn’t assertive like January is. January seems to announce itself — maybe it’s the hard “J” sound. It also has a phonetic attractiveness. Pronouncing it invites you to really enunciate, but in a fun way, like you’re exercising your mouth: “JAN-YOU-AIRY.”
Unlike February, which starts with an “F” — hardly the superior letter. In fact, it rates an “F,” if you’re grading the letter grades. F is flabby … “phhh” … It just peters out. February also contains the awkward “br” sound — does anyone really say Feb-RU-ary? No! Everyone glides over it hurriedly — FeBUary. Alright, maybe there is the occasional “R” in there, but really, no one cares. In fact, February tries to quickly get itself over with by being the shortest month. It’s like it’s saying, OK, OK, we know… we’re trying to get out of here and get on to March, which at least has spring break and brings the possibility of early warm weather with it.
March is anticipatory — spring is coming! Indeed, the first day of spring is in March. February is simply the last slog of winter. When will it end? Seriously, it’s STILL February?? Thank god it’s the shortest month!
February also contains one of the most dubious holidays, Valentine’s Day. Is there anyone who actually likes Valentine’s Day? Besides snotty-nosed grade-schoolers who probably spread those winter colds with the store-bought Valentines cards they add a sticker and their name to and distribute to every child in the class because God forbid anyone gets left out?
So the day that is supposed to symbolize romantic love — a love that has you declaring to your one and only, “I heart-emoji you forever, here’s a card and chocolate, and let’s go out to a special dinner alongside dozens of other couples on the exact same night to celebrate our love” — is actually for kindergarteners, restaurants and CVS.
I suppose February does have a couple of redeeming qualities in President’s Day and Black History Month. The former brings a day off from school, which is nice, and it celebrates the birth ofWashington and Lincoln, which is also nice. And the latter invites us to focus on important stories and figures in black history, some well-known, some not. In fact, these two came together for our family this year in a spontaneous way. While a number of friends took advantage of the holiday to go away for the weekend, I decided that even though we would be in town, we could at least take a little field trip. I’d been wanting to see the National Gallery’s exhibit featuring the work of African American photographer Gordon Parks, and it was closing that weekend. Nothing like a deadline to create action.
So I announced to my husband and three teenagers (via a group text, naturally) that we would all be blocking out a few hours on Sunday afternoon to visit the National Gallery and go to dinner afterwards. No arguments, no laments. No choice.
And, even though it felt like dragging elephants, we arrived at the gallery before it closed. I was in a sweat by the time we had weaved our way through the labyrinth of rooms to reach the beginning of the exhibit. I rounded the corner at one point to find the kids, including their friend who came along, gathered in the middle of the room, ignoring the photos and chattering away. I shushed loudly and waved my hand to scatter them. Turning, I continued to methodically make my way through the exhibit, carefully reading every word accompanying every photo. Eventually, my phone flashed with a text from one of my daughters: “Can we leave soon? We’re all pretty hungry.” Just in case I was thinking of lingering, my husband chimed in, “Me too.”
I sighed and started walking back toward the entrance. Hopefully they had absorbed something. We headed to dinner at a nearby pizza restaurant, and as I settled into the booth, the kids engrossed in each other and Instagram, I looked at my husband. Do you think they enjoyed it?
“It was a home run,” he answered.
And there you have it. Maybe they didn’t read every word, or even glance at every photo, but I’d brought them all to the table, dammit. At dinner we had some fun, funny and insightful conversations. Turns out after scooting through the photo exhibit, the kids had gone upstairs to view the American landscapes. Not my idea, but maybe better that it was theirs. And I consider that little nugget a victory — especially against the one-two punch of teens and their ubiquitous screens.
Forced Family time in February. The three F’s. Turns out three F’s are much better than one.
It is winter in Washington — real winter. Not just mid-50s, open-jacket winter, but hat-and-gloves, zipped-parka winter. Temps-in-the-teens, see-your-breath winter. Our old house, with its myriad windows and doors, is leaking heat, and the arctic air is seeping in through cracks and crevices. I’m closing curtains in our chilly dining room, with its three doors to the outside and four windows.
I keep my coat on when I walk in the house. I beeline for the teapot. I stay inside, cooking, for once. Chicken tetrazzini, sweet potato and kale soup, homemade tomato sauce — all in one week. That’s pretty good for me.
I spent almost an entire day last week inside reading a page-turner. It felt as decadent as a spa day.
I bought a soft, luxurious throw at HomeGoods recently. Not a minute after walking through my door, I was on the couch and under the blanket, drifting off to the dulcet tones of Wolf Blitzer reporting the latest, worst news.
A self-declared warm-weather girl, I was surprised to feel disappointment at a temporary reprieve from the cold snap. One day last week the high reached the mid-60s, and people were out jogging and walking their dogs. I had just settled into the snuggle mode of the season and wasn’t ready for the spring-like shift. The change threw me, forced me from my cocoon too early.
I anxiously checked the weather and was relieved to see the mild temps plummeting in a few days. I wouldn’t have to emerge for long — I could retreat back into my puffy coat with the furry hood, wear my socks to bed, sip my chai tea latte.
The new year may be a time for rejuvenation, but for me, this one has felt like a time for contemplation. Instead of resolutions I am thinking about intentions, and focusing on one word instead of a list of “to-do’s.”
That word is return. Return to myself, my goals, and in general, the present. Life presents distraction — my own goals are buried under the daily tasks of home and family-keeping. The projects that I want to pursue are in sight yet not graspable, as if sitting at the bottom of a pool. They don’t float to the top the way carpool pickups and appointment making and grocery shopping do. They lie in wait for the water to drain.
But maybe the winter is what’s needed to reach those depths. The cold brings more silence, less doing. More staying, less going. That’s not my usual world. Right now, I am accepting instead of fighting the freeze and all that it brings. Except, of course, when the season suddenly turns on its head. But that upending also makes me realize how much I need this time to pause, and dive inward.
It’s back-to-school time once again. There’s an oddly appropriate redundancy in that phrase — we’re not just going back, we’re going back again. Been there, done that to death. Nothing new to say — hasn’t it all been said? Doesn’t it get said every year?
Time to stock up on school supplies! Time to schedule carpools and classes! Time to shop for shoes and clothes! Maybe you’re buying shorts that the kids will wear for a few weeks in September, where it’s suddenly hotter than it was all summer, because the ones you got in May now don’t fit.
Time to set that alarm again! Time to get back into rush-hour traffic! Time to utter “Ugh, re-entry!”
Time for some people to say, “I loved summer, but by the end was counting the days til school started,” or, “I’m SO ready for back to school,” or, “It was the longest summer ever!”
Time for others to say, “Summer could never last long enough,” or, “I’m NEVER ready for back to school,” or, “It was the shortest summer ever!”
Goodbye to all that summer…
For some parents with full-time jobs and little or no vacation, maybe their kids were in camp or other programs all summer, and this “back to school” isn’t really back at all. It’s where they’ve been all along.
For others, maybe the “lazy days of summer” were a bit too lazy, and the schedule that “back to school” brings is a greeted with relief. Alternatively, maybe summer was more exhausting than the school year. Maybe you crammed every family member and the dog in the car and road-tripped your way up, down, around, and through summer.
And yet for others, maybe starting the school year again is literally like a rocket re-entering the atmosphere, the family shedding parts of an idyllic summer as it crashes back down to earth.
Yes, we’re all getting back in the swing, back to the grind. Back in the car, the kitchen, the office. Back on the sidelines, the bleachers, the ball fields. Back to reality.
But … Are we really back?
Is any season ever the same as it was in years past? Is any day, hour, minute? We’re all facing something new, no matter how “back” in it we are. My three children are, for the moment, all in the same school — the parental equivalent of a triple sow-cow, double toe-loop. So my landing “back” should be pretty well-cushioned. Not too many re-inventions this year.
Yet I find myself looking forward to the coming school year mostly when I ponder what’s new about it, what’s changing, and what’s maybe even surprising — the unknowns in store.
This may be triggered by something as simple as a new sport or teacher, a new volunteer or work project. But it’s something that shakes up the routine, that energizes the field. Because otherwise, when I think about going “back” this time of year, I feel a bit complacent, a tad bored, a little stale.
No, I much prefer to think about going “onward” to school, moving “into” the fall, heading “toward”… good things to come.
We see the signs everywhere around our city, exhorting us to “Scoop Your Pet’s Poop” or “Please Clean Up After Your Pet”. Unlike the little violations many of us commit every day — crossing your neighborhood street in the middle of the block, buckling your seatbelt after rolling out of the driveway, throwing recyclables in the trash — not scooping your dog’s poop (is there any other kind of pet poop to scoop?) can bring an “eewww” kind of bad karma. Do YOU want to be the one to step in the poop? you wonder nervously as you dutifully pick up the little bombs from the sidewalk.
Oh, we’ve all had those moments when we hesitate halfway down the block, leash in hand and pooch happily trotting by our side, as we remember we forgot the plastic bag. Well, we think with relief, the creature just relieved herself in the back yard a while ago. I’ll risk it.
And, inevitably, just as you round the corner for home, your pup stops and assumes the position. Panicking, you look around to see who’s watching. At least I can move it into the bushes so no one steps on it, you think, keeping a little bit of bad karma at bay. So you grab a nearby stick and flick the jewels over and out of plain site.
But I’ll wager you’ve never had the kind of karma kickback I had the other day.
The husband and kids were walking to get ice cream, and I decided to take our terrible but cute terrier, Cookie, along for her daily constitutional. I grabbed the leash with a plastic bag already tied to it and called Cookie. As we made our way down the sidewalk, about halfway to our destination, she stopped and dropped while the others went on ahead. No problem. I reached to untie the bag from the leash, but accidentally let it go as Cookie raced toward the kids, me calling out to them to catch her. OK, I thought, turning back to study the product. This is to the side a bit and not in the middle of the walk, so I’ll just scoop it when we walk back by.
A little while later, ice cream in hand, we all headed back up the street. As we reached the drop spot, I glanced around. Ah, there it is, over to the side. This time I handed the leash to my daughter first and then untied the bag. Leaning over to do my duty (ha), I neatly knotted the bag and took back the leash. We had walked a few steps when suddenly I felt something under my shoe and stopped in my tracks.
“Ewww, I can’t believe this! Someone didn’t scoop their poop!”
Everyone looked down as I lifted my shoe in disbelief. Shit, I thought (appropriately). This happens to me now? Even after I scooped my own dog’s poop, like the model citizen that I am??
Staring further at the ground, I noticed another canine mine just inches away. It looked somehow… familiar. I glanced at my poop bag, suddenly lighter, and it took only a few seconds for me (and now everyone else in the family) to see that it was empty. There was a hole in it and the poop had quickly fallen out, somehow just enough in front of me that I had, yes, stepped in it.
Scraping my shoe while my three kids and husband chuckled over my mishap, I couldn’t help but analyze what had happened. What were the odds? How did I manage to fling the poop at the exact spot where I would step milliseconds later? Maybe I possess some sort of hidden talent? Is there a prize for that?
Clearly there were no neat and tidy answers to these knotty questions. I just hoped it was the end of my karmic payback… or should I say, poopback.
Today’s post is something a little different. I’m participating in a “blog hop,” an effort by some of us bloggers to introduce readers and each other to other interesting blogs. It includes answering four questions to give an idea of why we write and how our blogging process works.
One of my fellow blog hoppers is Denise Powers, an American in Paris who, when she moved there, created her blog “I Would Read That.” Denise and I were in a writing group a few years ago, and I’ve loved keeping up with her through her very funny, sharply written posts about life in France with her French poodle, Ferdinand. Here are a few bon mots:
“Apparently standard poodles are virtually unknown in France, except by reputation, much as one might know of a hippo or a giraffe, but never expect to meet one on the street.”
One of the things I love about Denise’s blog is living vicariously through her. Many of us dream of one day picking up and moving to another country, and she actually did it.
Also check out “Literary Mileage,” a blog from another wonderful writer, Judy Leaver. She splits her time between Washington, DC, and South Florida, balancing supporting herself through writing while living a fun and art-filled life. For instance, currently Judy is living in Mexico for a month, studying Spanish.
OK, so here are my brief answers to the four questions:
1. What am I working on (think about that metaphorically)?
The short answer is that I’m usually working on a) being a better person — because it’s often so hard; and b) finding the humor in being human.
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
I’m not sure it really does. I write about what I’m thinking about, what I’m observing. So it differs from other first-person writing in that it’s coming from me. It’s my voice, for better or worse.
3. Why do I write what I do?
I write for sanity, for clarity, for my own enjoyment and hopefully for others’ too. In writing something specific, hopefully I can touch upon something universal. Writing can be frustrating and confounding and the hardest pursuit imagineable when you’re trying to figure out what you want to say. But when you’ve written what is true and in the way you want to, it’s extremely satisfying.
4. How does your writing process work?
I’m a deadline-oriented person (I used to work in newspapers, the perfect job for procrastinators), so this blog is supposed to act as my external deadline, my place to publish. I have set up a system to try to meet my (internal) blogging goal of once every two weeks by having to “turn in” a piece to “an editor.”
This seems to be working pretty well for me, with the exception of these past two months. I look forward to summer and hopefully more writing since I was inspired to begin this blog last summer.
Bonus question: Is there a better word than “summer”?
Through the trees 