the bird and I

Every once in a while someone will ask me – what ever happened to the writer’s shed? (Ed and I worked hard on creating a space for a shed on his property two summers ago, and then, with the help of a shed builder, we put up a structure where I could spend all idle hours writing.)

The shed remains unfinished. For a while, Ed wondered if he would have to relocate, given the threat of a development nearby. Then, too, we got stuck on how to finish the interior. With water? With heat? Without either?

Slowly, the project is being resurrected. I’ve come to accept simplicity. Worry not about heat or plumbing – is my motto of 2010.






Wonderful. But the other question you should have been asking is – but what about the farmhouse?

Some of you may remember that Ed claims as his residence the sheepshed on his farmette. On the same parcel of land, we now have an unfinished writer’s shed. And there is a crumbling barn.

But in addition, Ed’s property also includes a farmhouse. Well you might ask – why not simply take my work and plunk it down there?

...Because the farmhouse, in my opinion, has some very fatal flaws. Fixing them would cost more than building a separate writer’s shed. Nor is it clear that the farmhouse should be “fixed,” given the ever present danger of a huge development project moving forth on the adjacent land. (If and when that happens, Ed is out of there.)

Still, as I spend a good portion of the season in Madison, I am drawn daily to Ed’s farmette. It’s as close as I’ll ever get to memories of my grandparents’ place in the Polish village...

...Except that my grandmother was obsessively clean. Ed is perhaps the opposite.

Eh, one strives for compromise. Today, Ed and I cleaned up a corner of the farmhouse, so that on the days I am at the farmette, I can spread out, without cats jumping onto my laptop and without, well, the mess of the sheepshed.

Knowing that I’m beyond fussy, Ed spent the morning wiping down windows. I vacuumed up about a quarter million dead bugs. He put up some of my photos for decoration, adding his mother’s bronze statue (his mother was quite the artist) just for visual distraction.





But really, my distraction was not on the inside. My eyes were on the bird. She was outside, in the rafters of the porch...









She’d been there for a while. Clearly I was sharing space with a more permanent resident. And every time I moved, she moved. And so we continued watching each other all day long. It was a far, far better way to spend a day of work occasionally glancing up at her, than casting a constant eye at the Internet.

Ed and I

Saturday. Late, very late into the day, Ed and I go to get his haircut. He likes a place where a clip costs $14 and a beard trim goes for $6. Since he cuts his hair maybe four times a year, it becomes a chore to work through the dense tangle of curls (to be fair, thinning on the top now). I come along, because he gives the cutter no direction. One day he came out with a mullet. The last time I had to use kitchen scissors to take away the Harpo Marx look his cutter seemed to favor.

At the end of yesterday’s session, Ed was a man of style. We wrote down the cutter’s name (although the turnover at Great Clips is terrific) and went home.


Sunday. A repeat performance weather-wise, only warmer and without the gale-strength winds that cavorted up and down the Yahara the day before.

We take stock. I have two errands, Ed has one. After that we can mingle work hours with outdoor time. I’m pleased with the plan.

Frames. We start with a look at the frames I’d picked for my second pair of glasses. The frame shop is not crowded. I show Ed my selection.

He frowns.
I like the ones you have.

Yes, but I need a second pair. If mine break, I can’t work.

The ones you’ve chosen here (he says "here" with a slight emphasis, as if “here” is a dumb place to shop, given the bargains elsewhere) are harsh. Square, against your round face.

I’ll let that last comment go. I reach for a pair that everyone in the store had loved on me the other day.

Is this better?

I like the ones you have.

Okay, but is this better than what I had on a minute ago?

Yes, nicer, sure.

They’re also $100 more.

They’re awful then. Stick with the ones you have.

But I need something to jazz things up a bit, especially if I am about to lose my youthful hair color!

(Ed has convinced me to let go of an attachment to color that recreates what I believe may have been the hair of my childhood.)

Still, I pay for the cheaper frames (no glasses yet – that’s next month’s budget item) and we leave.

Next stop: Whole Foods. We need fruits and milk. As usual, at the checkout, we remember that the reusable bags are in the car. Ed, the guy with the sleek, nice (but cheap) haircut, Ed with the boyish, lovely shorts, Ed with the grin of a kid who has a summer of play before him, runs off to get the bags as I finish the transaction.

The teller begins to bag our items, but I stop him. No no, we have reusable bags, remember?
Yes, sure that’s right. Your son went to the car to get them.

I freeze.

And then I take stock. Me: jeans, a flowered Mexican shirt, long multi-toned hair pulled back with a red band. Jesus, what am I thinking? No, worse – what is the world seeing??

Ed’s back with the bags. I slowly face the checker. You didn’t say son, did you? I want him to look at both of us now, as we are before him. I dare him to repeat it.

He’s flustered and a little confused. I probably wasn’t really looking...

Sure as hell you were. And now, finally, I can be angry and frustrated with both of them, without guilt, without holding back. You said it looked fine! No, Ed, untinted hair looks grandma old!

Ed shrugs. What’s wrong with looking 57? 

Fifty-seven? I have never minded parading my age. I’m 57, I’m 57, I say it up and down! But my oh my, how early must have been that pregnancy, and how nutritious my prenatal diet to have produced this robust boy, my son, my son, so proud of my big boy now, look world, there he is, grabbing free samples at the food store as mom shops for supper. Hey, daughters! Your brother is here by my side only I have to go to work now so maybe you could come over and babysit??


We are on our third errand now, his errand, the pick-up-the-old-and-small-and-best-of-all-cheap sailboat and tow it to his farmette. There, I take out my computer to work while he putters, fixing his motorcycle.










Later, we take a quiet walk. A retired person’s pace, I suppose.

Leaning against the big rock, I allow myself a grin.





We stay a while, listening to the birds shout out their folk song. Not too old, not too old!

May day

It was almost too perfect – too crisp, too brilliant, to fragrant. Flats of alyssum and bushes of lilac. What a day! And here’s another thing: I deem this to be a day of no work.

It had been a while since Ed and I had been out on the water. July maybe? I miss the river, the fear of dunking the camera, the delight in rounding a bend and hearing a crane. And I miss the feeling of agelessness that a day of paddling brings.

I also miss buying early spring produce at the market. (I skipped the market last week.) A Madison May 1st market this year can fill your basket. At the Westside Community Farmers Market, Ed and I  picked asparagus, flats of annuals, a baguette, cheese, and tulips. (I could have filled the basket even further, but Ed, seeing the hunger in my eyes, suggested a cap. I agreed.)

























The month of May. I can take my granola breakfast out on the balcony now. Not too cold at all.






Is this the state with the terrible winters and unabashedly brief every other season?

At Ed's farmette, we load the pick-up (and here, you must pause and admire the crab apple, nearly blocking Ed’s sheepshed in the photo... why? well, becaue the tree is just so mighty and so loaded with blooms, and because Ed is tickled pink, or white, each year that it blooms).






We leave the bikes in Stoughton by the bridge and drive back north toward the put out point at Lake Kegonsa.

A fisherman asks where we’re heading.

Just a short paddle down to Stoughton. Feeling a little lazy today...

He grins. You’ll work alright. The wind is something else.


Spring paddle trips are superb. One just cannot get enough of the fresh young leaves, of the loud birdsong, of mommies shepherding young ones...














Enthralled, I hardly notice when the wind picks up.

... until I do notice.

The river widens and the wind is blowing straight at us. If I paddle lightly, I get nowhere at all.

Ed, of course, doesn’t mind. The man has the grip of an alligator. He inches forward, as I fight an invisible force just to stay in place.






I hug the shore. It's safer there. Calmer. And I can admire again the young families that are out for an afternoon at the river’s edge...





As we struggle forward, we note that the fish – the ever (undesirable?) carp – are just at the surface, spawning perhaps, flapping their tails madly.


It's all rather remarkable -- the fish, the muskrats resting on islands of twigs and reeds, a solitary sandhill crane, unwilling to give up her perch even as she sees me paddling near her.





It takes us nearly three hours to navigate this segment  of the Yahara. But in the end, I have no complaints. It is a magnificent way to initiate the outdoor season.


In Stoughton, we pick up our bikes and head back to the truck.

On the way Ed says what he always says on these paddling trips: want to pick up an ice cream bar at the gas station?

And as always, I am happy to dig into a heath bar. Or, in the alternative, a Klondike crunch.

the burden of ownership

I’m thinking of buying a (very old, very cheap, very small) sailboat. Would you sail with me around here, on local lakes? – Ed asks.

That depends. If the wind is just right, if the water isn’t too rough, if the air is warm, if...

So, maybe?

For Ed, ownership is emotionally taxing. He misses sailing, but to leap again into owning a boat is so oppressive that he’ll use any excuse to postpone buying.



It’s April still. The shower month. Today, we had grumpy, rumbling dark skies and bursts of clammy rain.





The kind you’ll run into any store to avoid.

I darted into the mall on my way to the last evening of moonlighting at the shop. I had been writing exam questions all day and for once I was happy that I could do nothing more on this day except sell, for one last time, creams and soaps from the south of France.

Passing an eyeglass frame store at the mall, I considered buying new frames. I thought how I truly would love new frames. I would feel no burden of ownership. Like Ed, I am not an acquirer, but unlike Ed, I like new designs in the same way that I love new destinations.

But filling my free days with new destinations (and maybe replacing old frames with new ones) is what forced me to take on extra work. Work I am finally letting go of.

I tell the eyeglass frame store person that I’ll come back tomorrow.

In the shop on the corner I try hard to forget how un-oppressive owning new glasses would feel.

clean up time

It cannot be said that I have let things slide at home. That I haven’t cooked or cleaned in the last work-filled months. We’ve eaten well, I’ve kept up with the bills, I’ve gone after the dust balls every Sunday morning.

Yet on this first day of no class time, I look around and I see chaos. How do stacks of books and papers grow so fast? When did I get used to leaving frames for photographs in the middle of the bedroom floor? So that I no longer even notice them? And how is it that I have allowed myself, for the most part, to not respond to comments on Ocean?

Time to clean up.

From now on, at the same time that I put up a new post, I’ll put up an inclusive response to any comments left on the previous one. Even if it’s merely to say thank you. (Reminder: I still do not and will not post comments without a name. Or ones that demean or insult.)

And I’ll get rid of paper stacks. And I’ll be nicer to Ed’s cats.

But today, I’m still a little dazed. Waking up at 6 and realizing that I did not have to get up was almost too much for me to contemplate.

I spent a good afternoon hour merely strolling around the neighborhood. (It takes less than ten minutes to reach this spot...)





A crazy warm wind lashed out, tangling my hair, drowning out the sound of birds. The tulips held on to their petals, but just barely.





I snipped a branch of wild lilac and came home. Last two nights working at the shop. Last two night of a heady April.

the final class

One quick look at the 71 faces in Property and it's over. My semester has ended, so has theirs. They'll not be 1Ls anymore (what we call first year law students). They are that much closer to destination points. Soon there'll be only vague memories of what it was like to go through law school.

Because this year was so tough for me (I took on a huge teaching load), I feel drawn to it too -- sort of like the climber who gets especially fond of her Everest. Precious faces, precious minds, sharp thoughts, quiet glances. I already miss them.

One last run down Bascom Hill for an espresso.





A look past the food carts, toward the Capitol...





...up the hill again. And then out. Close the door. Exhale.

I'll be teaching this summer again, but not until July. Until then, my work will be portable and I intend to take it places. Maybe far, or, maybe no further than Ed's farmette, or just my balcony. So long, Bascom Hill. See you in the heat of the summer.

babcia's chickens and cakes

In the years when she made the greatest impression on me – her final years of life in a small Polish village (she later moved to California and died in a retirement home in Berkeley), my grandmother spent, in my mind, the bulk of her waking hours on food preparation and house cleaning.

These were formidable tasks. For the longest time the house was without running water and I have vivid memories of my grandmother carrying a metal tub of laundry outdoors. And food? Getting Sunday lunch on the table meant catching the chicken and hacking her neck off on a stump. Plucking feathers off took time and I rarely volunteered any help there.

My grandmother was not a cook who’d pay heed to nuanced flavor. She brought to the kitchen local foods and she cared about freshness. Her spice range was from salty to very salty to mildly peppery. But her stuff was good! Her poppyseed cake was lovely and her cabbage-mushroom pierogi where deliciously not doughy. Tell that to the pierogi places in Warsaw! None of them come close to hers.

The love of cooking (if my grandmother’s was even a love rather than merely a duty) skipped a generation in my family and by the time my sister and I dabbled in foods (we did dabble, a lot, in part because of that skipped generation), we turned away from pierogi and boiled chicken, in favor of, well, just about anything else.


When I came home tonight, I felt a tad cold – we are in the cooler side of April at the moment – and so I did what I always do to warm up on chilly evenings – I hit the stationary bike for a few minutes and indulged in a quick read of one of the much neglected this semester New Yorkers.

The article was written by a woman whose Turkish aunt (grandmother?) once cooked foods that no one else cooked anymore.

And it struck me that no one cooks like my grandmother did either. And maybe that’s a good thing, because she did use a heck of a lot of butter and cream, but still, those flavors are gone. Her white borscht? It’s no more. And how about that moldy cheese she put on farm bread and then toasted on the iron plate of her coal stove – I remember it well! I think.

Foods are fiercely evocative. No one cares, of course, that my grandmother made sugar cookies in the shape of ducks and that they were rather bland, even with the sprinkle of walnut bits on top.

But I care. I wish that someone cooked like she did. So that I could go back in time and imagine that I was in her kitchen, watching her push logs into the fire (and sweep up immediately after – she was a fanatic cleaner), and put on the table all the things that only she could conjure up.

walk

It’s fitting to do a Bittman soup for supper. Anything that is minimal, simple. (He reminded me in the NYTimes this Sunday about the virtues of escarole. I did throw in rotisserie chicken and sprinkled it with parmesan, in addition to the toasted garlic chips.)





Eaten on the lap, with books open.

But the morning is so beautiful, so sweetly scented, that I cannot get myself to merely ride the bus to work. I walk most of the way to campus, hopping on the bus for just the last stops. It could not be helped. Who would not want to walk under a canopy of blossoms...













On a day when even the weeds look beautiful...





Provence may have its lavander, but we’ve got the lilacs.





After class, I walk again...





Until sanity nudges me a little. Woman, you’ve got work to do!

And so I cheat for a short bus ride during the more boring stretch of the road home.

Sitting now, I glance across at the three women and a girl. Lovely, dreamy faces of young life.







Outside, walking the last stretch, I think how only nature can pull of color combinations such as these.





I shouldn't pause, I know I have to hurry, but the fact is, only on a busy day am I likely to walk especially slowly. Who wouldn't. Really, who wouldn't.

toward tomorrow

In reality, I'm panting. Until Thursday. My eyes are set on that day. I will regain minutes beyond when I brush my teeth. Real pockets of unconstrained free time.

For now, I work. Today, tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday – I work. From waking time, til I can’t keep my eyes open anymore time.

But here, take a look at what keeps me going:





Nasturtiums. Wet, because it was a rainy day, but still, nasturtiums:

Have you ever watched this plant spill its loveliness across a path? If you have, you know that these leaves someday will bring such incredible Monet-like beauty...

fog

One look out my window this morning is enough. No trip to the farmers market for me. It’s cold and wet and I’m feeling suddenly very very frugal.

I settle in for a day of work. With one escape: with Ed, to Woodman’s – the mega store I love to hate.


By late afternoon the fog is dense.





I walk down to the corner shop. I owe them another evening of work this week. But tonight I'm apprehensive: yesterday I submitted my letter of resignation. By May 1st, my ten month stint of moonlighting comes to an end.

It’s funny that I should quit now, when my teaching demands are about to grind to a slowdown.

But this is what I want: work hard, then pause. And my gut tells me that now is the time to pause.


My boss at the shop greets me with a smile and I breathe a sigh of relief. This transition is going to be easy after all.

You could say that a weight has been removed, and the fog has lifted, etc etc, but you and I know that nothing's that simple: it remains foggy outside, and fresh concerns (lost income!) supplant old weights.

But on the up side...

...oh, I could list a lot here. Because truly, there is nearly always an upside.

decisions

I read somewhere that the weeks leading up to a birthday are often healthier than those immediately after. It’s as if you will away the possibility of ill health until a milestone passes.

Well, I’m a third day past a birthday and I haven’t yet capitulated to the ravages of disease.

But I have taken on the task of rewriting my future.

If in the first years of blogging I stumbled through a jungle of apprehensions and unknowns, right now, everything is very very stable.

And so I can set goals and make plans. Picture me sitting under a silvery green olive tree writing down insights in bullet points.

Nice image.

(The reality? My plans are hatched on the couch in my condo. Good enough. At least it’s olive colored.)

I walk home from a moonlighting stint tired. But I think – I have a plan! It’s spring, and I have a plan!

a nod toward yesterday... and today

That day, that birthday day was as precious and delicate as an iris bloom. Or two. With ruffled petals.





April 21st, late afternoon. Classes end, my older girl steps off the Chicago bus and life turns idle and idyllic and really quite rosy pink and beautiful.

We stop for a champagne pomegranate cocktail at the Fresca bar and it strikes us as absurd that we should not eat something, even as we are in anticipation of dinner. Birthdays, after all,  are about opening up the palate, about using food to nourish and replenish and make us whole after a long season of too few evenings around a table with people we love.





On, then, to Porta Alba, the only authentic Neapolitan pizza place for scores of miles... And isn't it just so typical to go to a known pizza place and  not have pizza at all. We have such odd, albeit predictable habits...





I can tell you about the various pasta + seafood combinations I have eaten in my lifetime – and that lifetime is now remarkably long, particularly when I recall that in my teens I worried about not making it past the end of my forties.

The dish at Porta Alba is on the simple side,  and that suits me so well on this beautiful night. No fuss. Simplicity.

Ed joins us, wet from his evening bike ride (it rained south of Madison, but I know nothing about rain – it has been brilliantly sunny all week long in my home town).

There is a pause in the birthday-centered evening, as I do have to close the shop where I sometimes put in late evening hours, but it is an okay interlude. Work does not always disrupt the quiet joys of a celebration.

And finally, at home, my girl brings out a wonderful almond cake from Natalina’s in Chicago.





And we all stay awake until the last forkful. Remarkable.


Today? Well, you might conclude that time messes with prior use. That the season toddles forth and the winds move wisps of clouds in, then out again, and it is still April after all, and thus not so hot outside.

But why make that argument? After all, the outside world right now is a beautiful one indeed, a slight nip in the air notwithstanding. The early evening walk to reclaim the last of the winter CSA spinach is absolutely magnificent.

I'll end, as always these days, with a few photos of flowers from that walk home. And what flowers they are! Nothing can compete with the exuberance of this year's spring blossoms. Absolutely nothing.