just another day

A week-end of brilliant skies and soft May colors.

In the afternoon, my daughter and I drive south to Governor Dodge State Park. She asks for a hike in a park with a lake. Sure, of course. It’s easy here. We have lakes to please.





We follow a trail around the water. Hurried stories now, because there is little time. We have to fit it in.










It’s beautiful here. It is possible to understand that life can be at once simple and very magnificent.






I cook a favorite dinner and we eat it out on the balcony. It is past seven, but for the first time this year, we can do this. The evening is like a summer evening – calm, inviting, sentimental.





Before dawn, she catches her flight back to Washington and Ed and I set out east as well, but in a more rambling and rumbling way. She will be at her work desk by noon. Ed and I will be bumping along, hoping the 1992 Ford pickup will stay in one piece. We have a thousand miles before us today and another three hundred the next day. We’re equipped with sleeping bags and water in case we have a breakdown. If the roads are kind, I’ll post from North Carolina tomorrow.

returning to Wisconsin

She’s been living on the east coast for ten years now. All of her young adult years. But when she is home, in Madison, it’s as if she never left. Nearly all of her school friends have moved away, but I need not worry that she comes home to a social void. She is as happy on a solo walk, in the company of mom, or going for a motorcycle ride with Ed.

Always, a daughter's visit home includes a visit to the downtown farmers market. It is a beautiful morning and we stroll without purpose (I am leaving on Monday and so have nothing to buy) and without hurry.





Even as the sidewalk space for the market has grown, much of the content remains the same over the years and making the circle for the first time this season confirms that many familiar vendors are still here, starting their spring run of spinach, mushrooms, bedding plants, and, for the first time this season – asparagus. Predictably, flowers steal the spotlight. I prefer these to the vibrant reds of August. Perhaps because we have moved so quickly now from months of no color, to a market of yellows and pinks.





We usually begin the Downtown Market orbit at Café Soleil, my former place of moonlighting work, but one unexpected change this year is their decision to cut back on baked goods by 10:30 and switch to a lunch “menu” – a huge loss for all of us who don’t stop by until the late hours of the morning. If you’re as disappointed as we were – tell Tory and Traci you want the spice girls and chevre croissants back on the shelves for all of market time! Only in early-to-rise Midwest would week-end brunch munching have to come to an end before the sun reaches a decent warm spot in the vast skies above us.





No matter. We had always wanted to try Madison’s favorite market bread – Stella’s spicy cheese loaf – and we happily pull at warm twists of cheesy bread the rest of the market morning.





Only once do I remember that a week ago, I was in a Warsaw park. the flash comes when I see that a vendor has a small tray of these familiar little forget-me-nots.







In the afternoon, my daughter and I set out on a long hike. She loves the south Wisconsin hills and forests and so I take her on a segment of the Ice Age Trail that weaves its way to Devil’s Lake – to get a little bit of everything into the mix – the woods, the hills and lake.





We reach Devil's Lake late in the day, but I am nonetheless surprised at how empty it still feels. The lake side boats are laid out for the first time this week-end, but no one is using them now.





In another few weeks, this beach will be full of "city people" -- from as close as Baraboo, and Madison, to as far as Chicago. Though even then, it's always possible to find a quiet, contemplative spot with nothing to rattle the peace that extends over the clear water and the the forested bluffs.






We do not finish the hike until 7. The sun is low, but still warm. A honey warm of golden green tones.





If the trees aren’t fully green, they are at least delicately green. And on the forest floor, fern fronds show the baby fuzz of their delicate green bodies. Nothing is as it was two months ago, two weeks ago. And that’s a good thing.

week-end interlude

When a daughter visits, time takes on different dimensions. You move from now, to how it was once, to how it will be two years from now and then you start all over again. And so the day fills.

I have a daughter here for the weekend and predictably, I have little to add to Ocean tonight. I’ll leave you with a picture of blooms from the morning market and a promise to come back to something of substance tomorrow.

and now it’s May

A last long spell in my office today. I’m packing up books and materials to take with me, I'm saying good bye to my office neighbors, I'm heading home. It’s time for me to open up my summer office. Which, at least in spring, follows me and mixes freely with many days of no work at all. Or, no class-based work. Instead -- a hope for progress on my Great Writing Project.

Good-bye Bascom Hill – site of so many photos when nothing else in the course of my work day captured my eye.



boy, girl, dog


Hello open slate.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts for the first of May:

One comes from a graduating student who stopped by my office this afternoon. He said that, due to the economy, his employer deferred the starting date of his new job until January. Suddenly he has free time. I feel the pressure of spending it well! – he tells me.

Me too. I feel the pressure of spending these coming months well.

My second thought comes from my wise and wonderful office neighbor. I have often started my day by sharing slight worries with her. She’s just so good at diffusing anxiety that it’s become rather a habit. Her best piece of advice came today and I think it’ll hold me for at least the one or two months that I’m away. I leave you with it:

My very old aunt said to me – you shouldn’t waste time worrying. Things we fret about do not happen. The bad stuff comes from stuff we never worried about.


In the meantime, the sun sets on forests that are almost green, fields that are almost planted.

lemon without the lemons

Suddenly, there’s very little time. Exams to hand in, student letters to write, seedlings to plant, house to prepare, hikes to plan – this is just the beginning of a list that I set for myself for the next few days.

I could, of course, do none of it now. I could take things in stride, in a Mediterranean fashion. Spring could be, for me, a time to sit back, to exhale, in a leisurely manner.

I could, in other words, fold my paws and hang back (for the mouse to spring out of the wood pile), like Larry here:




But that’s not me.

I figure – Larry, he can wait. His mice come randomly, year round. Mine do not.

Tomorrow, we leap into May. Madness for me. A wonderful, busy, risky, adventurous, lemon budding madness.

differences

The difference between being 56 and 26 is that at 56, I finish a good book and I think – hmm, let me send it to someone who may enjoy it. At 26 I would have thought – a nice addition to my collection. I’ll savor it sometime in the future. (The adding of books to your collection was very very cool.)

At 56, there isn’t much that I want to collect. Living in a very small condo leads me to buy only things that someone can swallow and digest, hopefully within the next week. Sometimes, I imagine that I could purge even more of the nonessentials that I have and that my closets would become almost bare and I would live out of the equivalent of a suitcase. Okay, two suitcases. Winter clothes use up space.


I like small, empty spaces. With sunlight streaming in.

Which, of course, brings me to the matter of the writer's shed. For newcomers to Ocean – Ed has been building a shed for me on his property, where I could spend long stretches of time writing. Last summer we cleared space, and with the help of Amos, the shed went up. Here it is – a simple, airy building.





The shed project was stalled because Ed began to understand (finally) that this particular writer is attached to the concept of running water within the premises she inhabits. It could be that the first years of life, spent in my grandparents’ house in a village in Poland (where there was no electricity, no running water, and certainly no WiFi) really took its toll. And so now Ed is lost in the slow process of imagining how water might be introduced without great cost or effort. Everything is on hold until the creative juices push him forward. I understand that. My own creative impulse is equally unpredictable.

Meanwhile, I noted that the truck farmers working the land next to Ed's are also in the process of putting up a shed. Daughter passes nails to father, father hammers away.





The difference between the farmers’ shed and the writer's shed? Well, of course, there’s the intent behind it: ours is for daydreaming and, when the impulse strikes, writing. Theirs is for storing tools and creating shelter in case of a cloudbreak (I’m guessing here). Still, to me, the overriding difference is this -- theirs will be done much, much faster than ours. Which is a good thing, considering.

bluebells

Ever since my grandfather gave me a book of Polish songs in 1960 and said to me – sing from it when you’re away, I’ve been inclined to fall back on the advice when I’m not quite ready to pop back into my life in the new country.

But, the truth is, I can’t mope much on a Tuesday. Especially the last teaching day of the semester. Time is tight. Can’t indulge emotions and ephemeral desires.


I bike to work (against a piercing wind and unexpected road closures) and give a fleeting thought to how pretty a lake looks when it’s choppy.





Less pretty are the trees, which still seem to me more bare than not bare. I miss the blooming chestnuts in Lazienki Park. And there’s no point in looking for forget-me-nots. They don’t grow wild here like they do in Poland. They don’t even grow unwild. People here mustn’t like them as much as I do.

One has to make do with Virginia bluebells.





I teach two classes of dedicated Family Law students, go home and collapse.

on the subject of Sundays in Warsaw, continued

Sunday in the city. I will be seeing my friends in the afternoon, but the morning is my own.

I had meant to walk past my early childhood apartment building. It’s actually quite dilapidated – even worse looking now than fifty years ago and it was pretty sad then. (Caveat: for a post-war building in Poland, it was fine. “Sad” is a relative term.) I had walked past it occasionally before – it is so centrally placed! It virtually sits of a tram stop that is definitely at the navel of the city. But it seemed like a fine idea to start from its entryway now, so that I can retrace my childhood Sunday strolls.

But I didn’t do it. I got side tracked by a café/bakery. I think it has the best pastries and coffee cakes (such an American term!) in town and so you could say that food trumped sentimentality.















From the café, I make my way to the parks.

We used to say, my sister and I, that Poles used Sundays for dress up. Americans dressed down on the week-ends, Poles dressed up. “In their Sunday best,” we’d chortle. But the fact is, when we were little, we were no different: out came the dresses, the white anklets, the ribbons for braids and pony tails. We fit in.

Oh, things have changed, of course. I watch Warsaw pick up habits from elsewhere and I understand. We are a global society. Still, on this spring day in the park, there’s not a grunge in sight. People look well. And happy (even as I don’t know if they realize that they are, indeed, exuding happiness).

Example: older women, animated, on a bench in front of the Chopin monument, discussing who would share in a piece of cake.





And young families -- so many young families! It’s what parents did fifty years ago and they’re still doing it now – taking their kid to Lazienki Park. In the more please-the-child America, you think of what activity to do on a weekend that your kid might enjoy. You strive to amuse your child. Not in Poland. Lazienki doesn’t have a playground, It’s a place to stroll and kids learn early that life includes a good deal of strolling.

And here’s another thing I learn about my heritage on this day – I know why I am so sensitive to cold. I was raised like these kids still are – to avoid The Chill. It is seventy degrees outside (an unusual April warm spell). I’m down to short sleeves. And in this way, I do not fit in. Everyone is still in wraps and most every kid is in sweaters, jackets and always, always, with a head covering.





I remember this! If the wind buffed your head around too much, you were more likely to get a head cold. That was the theory then and even though communism fell, the head cold theory held.





In the States, kids would surely protest and start climbing out of their clothes. That’s America for you. In Poland, kids are adored to death, but they are compliant. They know that they are small pegs on the planet. They know that parents rule. Moms whisper sweet, tender pet names, dads issue directives and little ones toddle along, waiting for that kind word, the kiss, the pat of praise.





The adored children catch my eye, of course. But so do the old people. And the young. I think, from the perspective of the social world, it’s lovely to be a teen or young adult in Warsaw.

Young people have the freedom to develop their own love for the city. (And I had that freedom too.) They move independently, they walk the parks in groups or pairs and they discover the world through conversations and escapades with others.










That youthful freedom is enchanting. From strong parental attachment the child morphs into an independence that comes much much earlier to a Polish kid than to an American. (I’m thinking of independence of movement; financially, it is exactly the opposite: American kids break away earlier.)





And for the old person? Oh, there are so many in the park! Groups, pairs of pairs, they’re all here, animated, engaged in life. (I know one older adult who is not so engaged. How sad that these generalizations don’t apply to everyone.)





I watch the people, sure, I love that – listening to their conversations, starved that I am for the publicly held conversations (our cafes in Madison are so damn quiet that if you go there to talk, you worry that someone will say – shhhh!). But I also can’t take my eyes off of the beauty of the vast green spaces, with summer palaces, peacocks, red squirrels, blooming flowers. It is a heady, sensual Sunday morning!




















I was equally happy as a kid here. Feeding squirrels and ducks, holding my father’s hand, skipping rope ahead of him. It was, for me, one of the most valued of my many memories of a man who flitted in and out of my life in much the same way as he flitted in and out of the country, the engaged diplomat that he was. (But on this Sunday, when I stopped at his place, our former home, he did not want to take a walk outside. I’m not sure when he was last outdoors.)

And here I am, in 1958, happily feeding a red squirrel. I'm with sturdy shoes and ribbons in my hair.






I leave the park satisfied. I felt it. I remembered.







In the lesser park (next door), I pick up the pace. My friend is to meet me at the hotel soon. I can’t be late. These friends of mine look after me in Warsaw, however I show up at their doorstep – with Ed, with my sister, with both, alone – they’ll take me in any fashion. That I showed up now, on the week-end of their daughter’s wedding doesn’t phase them – it is a cause for celebration, not an interruption at all. That is their way: whatever tumult I bring with me, they are there to provide the peace. (Here they are -- the photo is from the last minutes of our time together)





But in the lesser park, I cannot help it. I pause for a while at the scale. It’s an old one – from 1912 – and it has stood in this spot all through my childhood. This time, too, I allow myself to be weighed.





The woman beams. A hair below sixty! Good! -- she says. Ah. Weight with commentary. But, these are kilos. I have no perspective. I know it’s more than when I weighed myself here last, at the age of seven. I smile at the little sign attesting that the scale has the stamp of approval of the Ministry of Health. I ask her to take a photo and she does. Let me take it from far – to show the whole set up. A sweet, character of a woman. With ideas!


And now it is the wonderfully long Sunday lunch period and I am sitting at the table with my pack from many decades ago: pals, past crushes who later became friends, a spouse or two – all here, friends with whom I studied, kayaked, skied, camped, hiked and of course, strolled.

Of course, in Poland, keeping old friends is old hat. Poland is one of the least internally mobile societies I know. True, my youthful pals don’t see each other that often. When I come, they remark on how rare it is that they get together. But they all know that they can. And if it’s important, like a wedding of a daughter, they do.

And so do I. You do a lot for those you love, if you can. Good friends and family matter.

And in Poland, good men friends are endearingly chivalrous. So that when the sun hides behind a building, and the air feels again more like the early spring that it is, they wrap you in their jackets. Protecting against, of course, The Chill.





We’re not ready to call it quits yet. Someone proposes a stroll and so we head out – to the new Economics headquarters at UW (I was an economist back then), to the new-ish Supreme Court building… (Most people know the front of it:





..Few know that the most beautiful part is behind.)





And eventually, we disperse. We are at various levels of affluence, but no one is hurting for work. One goes off on a fold-up bicycle, one drives off in a Jaguar, two walk back to their apartment, others drive off in vehicles of lesser distinction.





Me, I walk back, lost in thought, trying to ease the churn, so that I can start the process of adjusting to the trip ahead, and to work the next day, and to being an American again.

I’ll leave you with photos from that solo walk. Along the bricks of the fortified wall, Where lovers and friends find peace and quiet.