winter!

I wake up to a zesty day – well below freezing. But oh, the sunshine!

Saturday. Work? No. Not today. I may pay for this later, I may scream then at the intensity of work pressures, but when I see a glorious blue against a glittering winter landscape, I put away thoughts of a bookish day and head out.

My occasional traveling companion is on board. Today, we are travelers alright, even as we don’t really go anywhere. We are fully in vacation mode.

Which, to me, means that we give ourselves no easy breaks, no indulgences. Sure, as I watch the races and runs of the Winter Olympics, I have to think that my own push is the equivalent to another’s naptime. But hey, my typical winter hours have books and computer screens in them. Though not today. Today, we do what the northerner must do to stay happy: embrace winter.

I have a plan.

Let’s walk down to campus and see what the Hoofers are up to.

If you take the pretty route, that’s a five mile hike. But the Hoofers (UW’s lakeside sports club) are holding a series of winter events on Lake Mendota and driving down seems so terribly wrong. You want to hang with sporty types, you better work your own leg muscles. Cold temperatures notwithstanding.

At the lake, we abandon the path and take to the frozen waters.

It’s safe, right?
I know the answer, but I have to ask. What do I know about soft spots and cracking ice. (Later, an ice fisherman tells me: you need two inches to walk on it and eight inches to drive across it. Where are we at now? - I ask. Sixteen inches.)

The walk is slow. The lake has a lovely if a bit soft layer of snow.

Ed, my traveling buddy, hasn’t the footwear for this, but he never acknowledges the cold and so we stumble forward.





We come up to a pair of fisher guys.

A good fishing day? I ask
Yes, very good.
What fish?
Oh, northern pike, of course.
Of course. So you’re taking a lot home?
No, none. We can only take back fish that are more than 40 inches. Still, it’s been a good day. We took in and threw back some six or seven.
So nothing for the dinner table?
Oh, if you do catch a 40 incher, you don’t eat it! It’s entirely for the mantel!

There you have it, a definition of a good day: sitting on the ice until sunset, waiting for a fish.

He shows us how he sets the lines in drilled holes. And miraculously, at that moment he gets a bite.
They’re nasty fish. Big teeth. I’ve been bitten raw in the last couple of days.









This one’s no different. The live fish bait is still half way into the mouth of the trapped catch. They struggle to get it out. It seems a little like pulling out a piece of steak from an alligator’s mouth.





We leave the happy fishermen. Only to encounter the truly happy kite guy, Jason.

His brother tells me that since he started with the kite hobby, Jason cannot let it go.
Want to try? Jason asks.

Of course I do. But it’s not easy.
It’s like dancing with a partner. It feels great, doesn’t it?
Sure, yes, of course. But it’s delicate work and I don’t want to crash this man’s kite into the ice. How much does the kite cost – I ask, just in case.
This one, Nirvana, is French. $450.
My God. I hand back the reigns and watch Jason do an expert run at the dance.





Just off the Union Terrace (remember: we are on the lake) we come across the "submerged" Liberty.





It’s all a tad surreal: the statue, bikers taking a spin on the lake, aerial skydivers, zeroing in toward us.









I’m enthralled.

We find a Hoofer with a traction kite and he gives us a lesson on how to work the powerful wind sail.
Don’t ever let anyone come between you and the kite. It can wrap itself around the neck of an interloper very quickly.













We know to pull down the kites when the jumpers come at us.









A skydiver asks if I want to sign up for a lesson in the air.

No. Absolutely positively no.


Back on the shore, we watch a sculptor chisel away at Bucky.





The terrace is the place of the orange, yellow and green summer tables and chairs. Today, kids are pushing a puck around on a miniature ice rink.





The sun is low now and I’m feeling the cold. The walk home is a long four mile trek. We take a five minute break at the Rathskellar...









...and pick up the lake path toward home.





We heap sweet potatoes with leftover slices of smoked salmon and creme fraiche and settle in to watch the Winter Games. Or I do. My occasional traveling companion burrows deeply under a quilt. He claims he doesn't really dream, but watching him, I think his mind is running over the vectors of the kite's path.

winter wedding

People marry. More often than not, actually. And remarry. And think about marrying. (Though I know a number who would not include themselves in this group.) And then eventually, they go ahead and do it. Tie the knot. Lives linked. Voila! This is my husband. Not boyfriend anymore. This is my wife. We are privileged, legally privileged to care for each other. You are!

When I see a wedding, I think that this is so precious – this celebrated vision of toddling along in life next to your loved one.

Where there are weddings, there are, of course, rituals and traditions.

But sometimes, not so many.

Take the wedding I attended this morning. I learned of it recently. Very recently.
Hey, we’re getting married!
At last! When?!
Two weeks maybe... If we can get a date.

They got a date. For today.

When a wedding is terrifically modest and simple, it is no less enchanting. A knot is a knot. And the small things – a hand movement, a touch on the shoulder – are noticed. Appreciated.


And then onto the important eating. My Polish blood boils enough in my veins that I think of weddings as great eating opportunities.


















And then it is over. But not really. We stay and we talk grandiose talk of dreams and goals and projects and it seems to me that there's worth in these kinds of statements, because if you say something out loud, it sounds more serious and therefore likely to really take sprout. Someday.

She smiles, he smiles, and then we are not part of their smiles anymore because at a wedding, at some point you have to allow the just marrieds to take off. To their married life. As it should be.

in the heat of the night

First of all, when Madison skies are this blue in February, you know it's a cold day.





When the only booth on Library Mall is one where a vendor sells fleece wraps, and those fleece wraps are flying as if they were kites gone wild -- it's really really cold.





When Bascom Hill looks enchanting and a little remote, Canadian almost -- I'm reminded that we're still in deep winter.





And when the bus stop is deserted, but for a brave lass with a very furry hood and her ever loyal, no matter what the weather, boy, perhaps friend, it has to be a a sign. Of something. Maybe a sign that I should get home already.





Home. Such a pleasant idea at the end of the week. And it's unusually pleasant in a challenging sort of way as I have a lunch to prepare for tomorrow. For twelve people. At my house. At noon. And I cannot be home just before the first guests arrive. So that the entire meal has to be cooked in advance. I am, at the moment grilling things. At midnight.

I think it's still cold outside, but I wouldn't know. The stove has been working overtime.

les Demoiselles at the bus stop

There are, during winter, these fabulously decadent moments when you close your eyes and put your face to the sun and it feels sooooooo luxurious, because the warmth on your skin is so rare now, and because this is something that you imagine happens more in the Alpine regions, among ski bunnies. Not on a Wednesday afternoon in downtown Madison. Just off of Park Street.

But, on days that I can, I have been snatching a few seconds of just this: sunshine, hitting a small corner of the sidewalk, at the Park Street bus stop.

Today, I am not the only one.





Their eyes are not closed, but they have that radiant winter look that comes to those who love, love, love the cold outdoors (or those who wear make-up that gives such an impression). Especially today, on this sumptuous day in the Alps... well, actually at the bus stop.

wheels

In the morning, I see the snow. It isn’t beautiful – not in the downward fall. It’s rather skimpy, even as I learn that it will be a significant accumulation. But it’s my big storm of the season (I was out of town the previous two) and fact is, you can’t count on there being a repeat performance. Not this year anyway.

Which leads me to say this:

We are fifty days away from the darkest point of the year. That means 100 of the dark days of the year are behind us.

Interesting, no?

And here’s another point – we are wheeling into the good season. And some of us begin wheeling even before the tire grips the road.





And that hope, that optimism is really inspiring. Or at the very least amusing.

I can’t say that I am there, counting the days ‘til March 20th (just four weeks away! That’s 28 days!) – the calendar Spring day that belongs to... well, mostly calendars (because my mother tells me that in California, it is now spring, and I can retort, were I into making retorts, that here, in Wisconsin, we may still be months away from daffodils). But I can say this much: things are looking good!

snapshots

Love. I know, it’s too early to be posting about love. That’s Sunday talk. Valentine’s Day "nonsense."

Still, as I stop at a café to pick up a morning espresso and I see it – the love of the person who has seen it all, and still he likes best what he sees next to him – her. Leaning now so completely on his shoulder.





My instant thought is that I’ve been hanging around State Street too long. (For non-Wisconsin people, State Street is our campus-to-Capitol street, and at my end of it, there are more students per lamppost than anywhere else in town.) The cafés there are laptop places where people drink coffee to buy themselves a spot where they can work.

My second thought is more generous: because really, why does anyone choose to open a laptop at Barrique’s or Espresso Royale or Ancora? Surely for the love of being among people.

Warm flesh, or just someone to look up at every once in a while. To love at a distance. Secretly.





The flush of warmth that comes from being with bundled, busy, preoccupied, wonderful people. Such a reward after a walk alone.

a band of blue

It has been such a long time since I’ve been drunk or giddy or irresponsible. Or on a bike, making my way to Ed’s farmette, or on a train, or on skates, or on skis.

Work, like the gluttonous vulture that it is, has torn my days to shreds and left not a whole lot behind. Bones, with a few pieces of skin.

Typically, on Super Bowl Sunday, I think of ways to amuse myself in the emptiness of a world turned inward (toward the flat screened TV). Not this year. One day looks no different than the next. Every day is Super Bowl Sunday!

I look out. It’s winter. So they say. I haven’t really felt overwhelmed by the cold, I haven’t felt overwhelmed by much of anything in fact. Except for words scrawled on pages of dense books.

One day, and another, and the next. February days of steely gray. For a brief second invaded by a brave ribbon of blue.





But not for long. Such a narrow ribbon! A limp, trivial nothing, soon pushed aside. The good did not prevail. Hope, stabbed and sent flying.

You can't help but think tragic thoughts on days like today. Though even tragedy is a luxury. And I cannot afford luxury at this second.

Work. Devilishly aggressive and domineering. Like the worst kind of life's partner. Sigh...

forest

We hiked the ridge (Blackhawk Ridge, west of Madison), up, then into the forest...




...where views, hidden at full foliage time, trickled in between the trunks of young trees.





The path was empty, and then it was not, as a team of dogs (they seemed teamed in spirit) and two owners scampered past. And then it was empty again.

The sun was finicky. Most often hidden, sometimes throwing delicate sparks on the clean snow.





We lost the trail. Maybe it ended. Who can tell. We climbed hills following animal tracks. We found no animals, but we found the quiet that they must enjoy on the afternoons when no strangers come this way, breaking dry twigs along the forest floor.

carvers and scrapers

Six years ago I had my neck poked and dissected in a search for some pernicious disease. I remember it because I blogged about it. No one found anything and I went home, sore but victorious.

Yesterday, I had a rerun of this. I’ll hand it to them – they do try very hard to find a problem, but so far, this has eluded them. I escape.

And so I was let off the hook (what an awful image, considering) yet again. Darn, we found nothing that warrants a carving job. Not this time anyway. Yawn... You may as well go home.

In the afternoon today, I present a lecture to my class of 71 (though 4 are absent, so that makes it 66) and it feels quite raw back there in the neck area. And I think – well, that’s okay, good in fact: I beat the carvers and scrapers and here I am standing in front of all the students – why, this is just fine!

But as I walk, late in the evening to the shop, the mood changes. I feel defeated.

It’s the weather: I cannot like it. Too bitter, too gray, too prickly, too dreary.

February, you have done worse things to the psyche than the butcher team down at the clinic. Change your tone already.

finding squirrels

My friend in St Paul wrote a post that reminded me of squirrels.

More accurately, it reminded me that I need to slow down.

Ed (always good about hearing the latest in terms of Ocean author ideas), we need to bowl again.
Bowl? You want to go bowling?
We used to bowl.
Now? You want to bowl now?
No, of course not. I can't.

(later)
We used to meet up for coffee between classes, at the Lake Street café.
You want to meet up for coffee at the Lake Street café?
The point is I no longer make time for it.
So you don’t want to meet up for coffee at the Lake Street café?
But I do!





At the café, I take out my laptop, and Ed takes out his. I work, but occasionally I do look out at the squirrels. The café is a great spot for squirrel watching.

no exit

I read in the NYTimes earlier this week that a person’s irrational fear of driving on highways (irrational because it turns out that highways cause fewer deaths than, say, taking your car for spin to the store down the block) may be triggered by the driver's lack of control over when to exit that endless ribbon. The sign telling you the next exit is in twelve miles? Informative to you and me, a trigger for a panic attack in a phobic driver.

Lack of control. Hmmm.

This morning, up early: long class in the morning, shorter class in the afternoon. Both still need touches. Clock moves dangerously close to 9. Run to catch the 9:03.





Out. Up hill, in doors, in office, briefly, oh so briefly, seconds only. Lipstick on, hair brushed, seating chart under one arm notes and book under other.

This is the day when there is no time for an espresso run.

Late. Bus home. Walk to condo.





For a second. Change garb, put on lipstick, walk down the hill to the shop.





Doesn’t it seem to you that this is a highway with too few exits? Sure, I know, the destination is wonderful, the scenery is mind boggling, fantastic.

But where are the damn exits already?

February notes

My copy of Bon Appetit showed up in the mailbox today. (Lonely without its Gourmet companion.) I read the editor’s page on the elevator trip up. Reaction? The column was too upbeat. All about how great February is – a month of celebrations, a party month, according to her.

I’m not surprised. She comes from a family where the mom made cherry pies to celebrate the honesty of George (who, it appears, did not deserve this particular commemoration).


Perhaps the problem is not with February, but with me. I regard Super Bowl as a nonevent. Valentine’s Day? Every day is Valentine’s Day, I’m told. No, not cherry pies either. There are twenty-eight days of bad weather in the middle of a busy semester. That’s February for you.

Still, I do love the prettiness of a fresh snow. Winter, as viewed from my office window can be lovely.






...and even lovelier from the safe, bookish warmth of the Law School library.





But February, once you engage in it, once you step out for whatever reason...





...chances are great you’ll wind up on your rear end.

definitions

A routine has been established. Not a great one, not during this cold month anyway, but it’s there: after class on Mondays, I take the bus to Whole Foods, buy groceries for dinners into the midweek, and walk home.

If fingers of a cold hand would freeze curved around the handles of a grocery bag, then I could make the trip without pause. But I have noticed that cold fingers that lose their sensitivity also lose their curved, hook-like shape. And so every now and then, I have to stop, put the bags down and do some wiggle activity to keep a grip on the bags.

In my final approach, I pause and prepare to wiggle. A young man, getting into his car sees me and asks – may I please help you?

Now, the good interpretation is that this young man is genuinely compassionate toward all, regardless. Seeing a person with heavy bags brings out that desire to assist, even though an assist here would be somewhat illogical. Would he walk with me? Drive me home?

But I think he was responding to something else: age.

Maybe his glasses clouded because of the cold. Maybe my jacket and scarf hid a kinder portrait. Or maybe I just am looking old this winter.

In Poland, there are two uncomfortable points when an age determination has to be made: first, at late adolescence, when you switch from the informal to the formal address. Gone is the first name for all but the privileged few. You are now a Ms and Mr and you will remain thus until your last breath.

The second point of transition is more subtle. It plagues those who use public transportation: at what point do you stand up and offer your seat? In Poland, young people will stand up for you if you’re, well, older. I expect that if I were riding a bus or tram in Warsaw, young people would scurry to give me their seat.

But when do the not so young get up? I mean, quite recently, I would rise for someone a tad (or several tads) older. What if, these days, someone would use the same calculus on me?

return

It’s a good thing that my occasional traveling companion is such a sketchy reader of Ocean (like a kid reading a boring book, he concentrates on the pictures) or else I’d have to write this story with greater caution.

As it is, I can say bluntly that the ride from Minneapolis to Madison today sucked.





But I wont apportion blame. It depends on your perspective: do you hate backseat drivers who tell you to slow it down just as you’re revving up to overtake the FedEx truck yet again? Or do you like going the speed limit or less and prefer to avoid the thrill of always driving at the cusp of tragedy?


We left Minnesota early. Ed drove, I worked. Until I could not be the quiet passenger anymore (less than an hour into the trip) and then I drove and Ed slept, read magazines and twiddled his thumbs.





It was that kind of a return.

But, I was on time for my shop duty and I had a handful of good customer conversations and I even enjoyed returning to the condo late at night and finding... nothing wrong at any front.

I miss thinking that life is funny.

from Minnesota

It is inevitable that when you get together with a friend who has tracked your life for nearly 30 years, you’ll find yourself reminiscing.

It’s funny that one of the first recollections that came to mind during this spin through the past was of a time not so long ago, when she and I were in Normandy and we sat down to a late lunch at a café. I coaxed her into joining me in a little pitcher of rosé wine. For some reason, one that I will never understand, the wine hit us solid. Even a strong espresso could not (immediately) undo the buzz.

We went for a walk on the beach and we took pictures, and in that walk was the comfortable pleasure of being with a friend who would listen to anything you told her.

And here’s another flash: some five years earlier, she and I found ourselves in Brittany. Always happy to join me on a romp to this place or another, she took the leap and flew down to be with me to this God forsaken village, where even the closest bread bakery was miles away.

After an evening of the usual wonderful food, we drive back to the village. I park the rental car and we sit there under green willows in the silence of a country evening in France and I tell her all the ways I had messed up my life. Ever the good person, she listens as if I were recounting the days of the week, nothing more than that and then she says – well, I can see why that would have been a problem.

The world should be full of people like her.

I thought about all this in the morning as Ed and I made our way from the Residence Inn in Edina Minnesaota to the next door and adjacent Edinburgh Park. In the Twin Cities, most everything is reached by glassed passageways. To me, it all seems slightly bizarre and unreal. But I understand the premise: it's bitter cold outside.




The park is an indoor park, and there are tots playing inside and grownups swimming laps at the lap pool and I choose to run laps, just to see if I still can. (I haven’t jogged since September 11, 2001 as a result of a combination of knee issues and other distractions from that day onwards.)

I do 51 laps and that’s equal to three miles, the sign tells me, and then I have to stop so that I can meet up with my friend, but in the 51 laps I spend a lot of time thinking and remembering.



In the early afternoon I take my texts and notes to a Starbucks and I try so very hard to make progress on work, but a little Minnesota girl distracts me no end and I imagine again what it is like to have a child that tumbles and scrambles all over.





My friend’s daughter was once a tumbler and scrambler. I remember an afternoon two dozen years ago, in England, when my own girl watched in amazement as my friend’s little girl scampered into places with ten years' worth of grime and soot. She came out grinning and I had to think that maybe grime and soot had their beneficial uses.



And now here we are – my friend, her daughter and I, moving through grown up spaces in Minneapolis, as if it had always been thus. As if life never catapulted us forward, as if we lived just around the corner and dropped in for a quick walk through, as if...









We spend a good 36 minutes at the museum (The Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota) and I know this because we had no more quarters for the meter beyond that. It is a wonderful 36 minutes.













After, I note again that in Minnesota, life stays green in unusual ways. I order a lunch of eggs and greens and I driznk a Pellegrino, thinking that this is not the time and place for a risky lunchtime rosé.





Finally it is evening. Her girl stirs up a wickedly good dinner and Ed opens up the rosé wine that I had purchased for my friend back in France.






And then the night moves us forward and it's time for us to head out. Tomorrow morning Ed and I will drive back to Madison.