city life

This afternoon, I caught a flight to New York.

Leaving Madison. Leaving small city life. I park just on the approach to the airport and walk the last quarter mile. Fifty minutes to departure. I have time.

But I’m stalled at security. My carry-on is flagged. It’s full alright. A sleeping bag takes up half the space. A change of clothing, and Ed’s favorite teeth cleaning gizmo fills the rest. (He’s in New York already, but the gizmo stayed behind – it didn’t fit in his own pack: that space was used up by an inflatable bed. And, I hope, a change of clothing.) It’s the gizmo that set off the security alarm. Suitcase unpacked, suitcase repacked.

Still, I have time. In a big city, 25 minutes before-take off with a flashing security system would make one nervous. But I’m in Madison. I’m okay. I even have a few seconds to pick up an espresso before I board.

I’m flying local this time. That is, the airline (Midwest) is local. Some of my out-of-state students had never heard of it. I tell them it’s the one with the leather seats and warm chocolate chip cookies for everyone. Progressive. Everyone’s special.

The pilot – Justin something or other, welcomes us and leads us in a round of applause for Candy, our attendant. She was just featured as Midwest’s best or brightest or something grand like that. We all shout – go Candy!

Hey, she tells us, it's also Captain Justin’s birthday. We sing happy birthday, dear Captain. Thanks! Just for that, I’ll try to give you guys a smooth landing.

I connect in Milwaukee to the LaGuardia flight. While boarding, I encounter a colleague. Not unusual. I’ve come across many over the years of flying in and out of Wisconsin.

I don’t want to suggest Madison is small and homey. Okay, maybe I do. Because it is.



And then there is that other town. The bigger one.

The arrival is spectacular. Oh, Manhattan! You’re so impressive!





But now comes her tough face. I take Ed’s advice and wait for the city bus. M60. Harlem bound, it connects well with the subway on 125th street. But the bus doesn’t come. People come, people wait, more people come. No bus.

In New York, everyone is in a hurry and yet it is the worst place to be in a hurry.

Finally. Many delayed moments later, it is here. I put in the quarters. All eight of them. One more – the driver tells me. Oops. I have no more. Get off. No, that’s not going to happen. Anyone have change? Surely in this shoulder to shoulder crowd... Someone comes through. We lurch forward.

At 125th and Lexington, I get on the express subway. Crowded. Vibrant. A woman talks rapidly to her friend. Another texts a lover. I glance at her phone: sorry. will do better, she writes. I wonder if she will do better. Or whether she wasn’t the one to mess up, but she’s willing to take the blame, just to get him on her side again.

I get off on 14th, switch to the local and finally I’m on Bleecker. In the heart of the Village. I walk past music venues, tattoo parlors, bars and undefined shops selling -- well, I'm not sure what. Maybe things that make you think of sex?

Up four flights of stairs, into an empty apartment where Ed and I will stay for the next three nights.

spinach walk

And the last class sentence was uttered, and I packed up to go home.

Except, I’d forgotten that this week was the first week of the winter delivery of CSA spinach (CSA: we pay the farmer in advance and every two weeks, all winter long, we pick up a pound of hoop-grown spinach).

I’m without bike, without car and it’s drizzling. So I walk. Don’t have an umbrella. Or, do I need an umbrella? Drizzle is like a slow demise – you don’t realize you’re succumbing to external forces until you've succumbed, totally and completely.

Autumn. It should be waning, but it is indeed a slow wane. From my walk, to the place of delivery, I saw what I can only describe as winter cherries...





...and roses (fading, but still, roses!) and in someone’s yard, these:





November dreams.

From the spinach pick up point to my home is another three miles, but I’m fine with that. I have only home tonight. Home, not work, not anything, no schedule, no deadline, not tonight, just home.

I keep walking.


Oh, but I almost forgot! I stop at David Bacco's chocolate shop to pick up a box of chocolates. For Ed’s aunt. How is it that I should be buying chocolates for Ed’s aunt, who lives in New York?




That’s a week-end story. For now – home. Just home.

hang

So many ways to use the word hang. And each time, the meaning changes: hang on. Hang up (the verb). Hang up (the noun). Hang in there. Hang on. Hang loose. Hang nail. (Or, is it hangnail?) Hang it! (Or, is that one dang it?)


Drizzle. Wet walk, nose turned down to the pavement, hand protecting good camera. Except during this one shot. For the rose that’s hanging in there... until what, Thanksgiving? Winter break?





For me, until the weekend. And a much much needed break from work. Any work. Hang in there, readers. On Saturday and Sunday, I will not write about work.


Evening drizzle. Step off the crowded bus, look up.





Trees, with nothing left hanging. Wet bark, dark skies, a very wet walk to the shop, and then finally -- home.

kick

Rules to live by:

If the IRS squawks at you for not supplying proper documentation with your tax return, give them some more papers. And if they squawk again, supply them with even more papers. Don’t get hung up on the unpleasantness of it all, just keep churning out the papers.

If you find a superb bargain on a replacement camera (for the little Sony that mysteriously lost its shutter release button – that same button that Ed so brilliantly tried to replace and affix, except that in the end, it wasn't quite the same), go ahead and buy it, but be prepared: the bargain may be a scam. Even if the merchant has good online reviews, , it still may be a scam. The good reviews may be a scam. Cancel the order. Don’t keep hoping. Let it go and buy the one at Amazon for $30 more. Don’t keep fretting about losing the good price, because that price wasn’t a good price at all, it was a scam.

If your day has no breaks in it, except for the 15 minutes that you cut out for an espresso down the hill, don’t gripe about how brief that break was. Enjoy the espresso and think of the longer breaks ahead of you.



(a food booth down the hill)


Gripers and whiners are not good souls.

Kick me when you think I am getting dangerously close to their league.

forever

It’s the last of the really tough weeks (for this year; in January, a fresh set of challenging schedules clicks in). I’m sure, we, down on campus, all need a break. Between workload increases, budget cuts, furloughs, swine flu threats – it’s been quite the semester.

Last night at the shop where I moonlight, a most cheerful type came in to pick up a few items for himself. I pegged him as having had a good year. He seemed positively buoyant. Only when I took his credit card information did I realize that he was a top level UW administrator – not likely to be without work anxieties. Some people handle stress well.

And I do too. The previous night, when I had locked the shop and was counting change, a young man with pants halfway down his buttocks tried hard to get me to open up. He looked like he was running from someone. I didn’t let him in, but it didn’t strike me then that he may have been dangerously ill-disposed toward me (and less ill-disposed toward the momentarily opened cash register).

It is true that, for the most part, I stay level at times of crisis.

Of course, these days, I am spending time with a person whose stress levels are at his usual low. Ed, my occasional traveling companion, is unfazed by the cold weather (Brisk! Wonderful!), by the darkness of the night and the darkness of the day (turn off the lights! I like the dark..), by the onset of age (if you make it to 60, you shouldn’t complain), by too much work (retired; what more can I say). Sometimes I think the big decision for Ed is whether to read lying down or sitting up. In any case, I am around a guy who is very very calm.

We pick up bagels for a late (post moonlighting) supper of egg sandwiches and home-made broccoli soup.





In years past, I used to buy bagels at this place quite often. I remember those years: life moved rapidly in shocking ways and nothing was certain. Maybe I learned to shrug off stress then. Over a cup of coffee and a toasted bagel.





Tonight I’ll shrug off ominous threats of stress over a bagel again.

Good thing bagels are forever.

home

I get curious about this city. Surprised, aren’t you? So often I look for ways to leave – vacations, week-ends: Ed, can we travel?

But there are days when I do just want to stay within the city limits of Madison. Ed and I pull up our old guide to the historic neighborhoods of this town. We've explored most of these in years past, but the Third Lake Ridge Historic District is still familiar only because you get to know pretty much every neighborhood if you've lived here as long as I have. We haven't examined its historic soul. Until today.

The (online) guide is more than twenty years old and sometimes it seems a trite overinclusive. It’ll mention a prominent home from a previous century and only toward the end of the commentary will you learn that actually, the house is no longer standing.

Or, the guide will describe the detailed features of a once beautiful home that has since been converted (in its disrepair) to student housing. So that it now looks like, well, student housing. You stare and contemplate its long depleted splendidness and you feel exceptionally sad that the home should now be so neglected (in the way that you would feel sad for any other historically insignificant house that may also be run down).

That’s the downside of the guide. The upside is that it offers a closer look at houses that were built at around the time of my grandparents' childhood years, now more than a hundred years ago. My adventurous Polish grandfather traveled through Wisconsin at the turn of the century. When I see homes from that era, it makes me perk up.

This morning, Ed and I set out for this Third Lake district spanning Madison's near east side (from just east of the Capitol, along Lake Monona, all the way to the Yahara River.)





We noted the significant homes here...















We appreciated the lakefront. We checked off homes of merchants, homes of plumbers, homes of real estate dudes. Greek revival, Queen Ann’s, Prairie, Italianate.





Ed and I aren’t necessarily well matched on these historic walking tours. He likes to read about the entrepreneurial spirit that led to the success of so many who lived in the more splendid homes. Somewhat predictably, I listen for information about the families, the daily habits, the infrastructure of the time. We're both curious, but, in looking at history, our curiosities don't necessarily overlap.

For me, the historic houses, in isolation, cannot relate a story of a neighborhood. I stare at a building, I listen to a description of its construction, of who paid what to have it placed here, and still I cannot bring it to life. I'm distracted by the ten mailboxes at the entrance and half a dozen bikes on the porch and I note that the paint is peeling and the walls are crumbling and the window frames are cheap metal. In my mind, I write a story of who is there now and how it came to be that the house is no longer as it once was.

A few more buildings of note and we are done. It’s cold today and I am glad to be heading back to the car. We are no longer in the forgiving days of mid autumn. The landscape may look mellow (consider these photos of the Yahara River, which flows at the eastern border of the neighborhood we walked through...)










... but there’s a bite in the air. You can’t photograph a bite, but believe me, it’s asserting itself.

One last look back -- not at the old structures, but at the more funky sweet nature to this neighborhood. Everyone will tell you that the near east side is where people of various means coexist well side by side. It's the Madison that we like to believe is alive and well all over town. But it's more palpable here. And maybe this is born out of the mix that always was here. Plumbers and politicians. Neighbors then, neighbors now.

that overused word

How I love a morning espresso with a wallop of hot milk! And this, too: muesli with chopped fresh fruit (mangoes are available) and kefir! (Note the exclamation marks.)


It’s the middle of November. In Wisconsin that’s about as interesting a time as oh, say the middle of March. Naked raw earth, bare limbs. Yawn.

I don’t think Ed minds, or even notices. Every day is your birthday...

Do you want to bike from McFarland to Lake Kegonsa? Oh... I am completely in love with the idea of biking somewhere that is not work!

It’s gray and the forecast says “showers later.” Later. I’m okay with that. Later. Not now.

We leave our bikes by the McFarland Town Hall, where farmers are selling (against all odds) roots and apples and hemp bracelets.





We buy apples. You can always use apples. Ed’ll eat five at a sitting and consider it a fine meal. Fresh and honest.



The twenty mile bike loop is easy (Ed’s evaluation). Just small hills. I love how small to him is strenuous to me. And how my cold is his toasty. And how he can push the pedal down so hard that one stroke will put him miles ahead of me.

The scenery is pretty in spite of November's best effort to make the world bleak. You can always count on cows to add life to a toneless landscape. Ed watches as I step down to take photos. Run from her! She’ll eat you tomorrow!





I briefly consider giving up meat forever.





Close, but no. Maybe next year.



The air is pungent with the smoke of burning leaves. This is autumn as you want it to be: smoky, woodsy and slightly threatening (with rain).

We come to the point where the Yahara River runs into Lake Kegonsa.





We were here four years ago. Kayaking. I remember iy well: we landed here.





The me of November 05. The Ed of November 05. In those days, I still showed off my perky and robust ways. Now I grumble about hills and steep inclines and cloudy gray skies.




A few tentative drops of rain hit the windshield as we eventually make our way home. Okay, not home. We part ways: Ed is off to get a beard trim, I’m off to work at the shop.

I think about how hard it is to love mid November. Except that today, it's sort of easy.

three weeks

The end of the semester is in three weeks. It is, therefore, within my imagination: I can envision three weeks. Three weeks. When I was pregnant, three weeks ‘til birth seemed very real. A short period of time within which to get ready. Not quite tomorrow, but still, within spittin' distance.

When you intensely want something, three weeks seems interminable. But I am not needy. I merely want time. I can wait. Time will come.


Though, I have to say, this fall has put time on a roller coaster. The days have been a blur.




Today was no exception.

vignettes

My good camera continues to dangle from my neck on both the morning ride in and the evening ride back. I hear it muttering there, as it bounces against my coat: come on, put me to good use! We can do better!

I ignore its voice. I hate cameras that whine.

Ed, my occasional traveling companion, and I have come to an interesting crossroad: how do you eek out companionship when one person works 1.5 jobs and the other person doesn’t work at all? (Ed is retired.) In addition to my 1.5 jobs, I have set myself the goal of figuring this one out. The motto of an immigrant is this: surely there must be a way.

I don’t use the bike today. Fighting the cold in the morning and evening hours seems just too hard. I take the bus.





But I’m home – for the first time in many many days (or, more accurately – nights) I do not have to work after work. I am a different person tonight. I am normal.






Ed is at the cusp of round two of trials in New York. I am working to preserve my trust in the judicial system.

Evening. Quiet. Time to let go. Isn’t it ridiculous when people say that? As if you can let go.

the line

It is near closing time. A woman comes into the shop where I moonlight. She is accompanied by a dog. A medium sized one. I notice that the dog is wearing a pooch sweater. Odd... It’s unseasonably warm outside.

I hesitate about letting the dog in, but then I think – in France a dog would be welcome. We sell French products. I’ll make the dog and owner feel welcome. Especially since we have been put on notice that sometime this week a secret shopper will be making the rounds. I don’t want the shop to lose points (secret shoppers rate the seller and shop on any number of performance variables) just because I wasn’t friendly to the dog.

Still, the pooch is off leash. As its owner chats, he darts in every corner, in the back room, too. I’m getting nervous. The shopper appears oblivious.

I try to assess her shopping needs. They appear to be zero. Killing time, she tells me as she leans on the counter. In the vernacular of my youth, I would say that the woman is clean cut. Her hair is styled, her complexion looks healthy.

I’m taking steps to close. I’m sweeping, I’m bringing papers from the back room. I try to direct her to a shea butter hand cream – everyone in Wisconsin needs a shea butter hand cream in the winter. She looks at it, tries a little, then returns to resting against the counter.

By now, I’m wondering if she is unstable. Or lonely. Or the deliberately difficult secret shopper. Her dog is bored. He’s sitting by the door, looking out at the dark, empty night.

So, what is it that you teach? I already told her what I teach. I repeat the list, offering no detail. She describes a problem that she has that may require legal intervention. I’m used to that. Tell someone you’re an attorney and they dig out every miserable mishap from their lives.

When she starts probing more about my law school classes, I decide she has crossed the line. It’s bright and visible, that line between shopper and seller. You can exchange stories: you can say where you’re from, what you do, you can talk about your children and grandchildren, you can flatter the other with praise for their choice of jewelry. But at some point, you have to know that it can go no further: the transaction will end, the customer must leave, you have to return to closing the store.

Shea cream. Consider getting some shea cream. With essential oils from the south of France. She shrugs her shoulders and lets herself out. The dog trots dutifully by her side.

stories

It’s no secret that I believe I have in me a book. I also have in me essays. Unlike the book, these have been coming out in a fairly steady stream over the past decade. Less so in recent years. But certainly something that I took seriously in the last years of my marriage.

I pulled out some of those essays this week. I could have thought: splendid! I must do something with these! But I didn’t. Instead, I thought – what a bunch of amateurish crap.

This is not unusual. Tearing apart my own work is a fairly common event for me. I go through so many drafts before I stop and think – why am I doing this? Why am I reworking stories that will never be audience ready?


I’ll leave you with this day – told in four pictures: morning (familiar, no??), noon-ish, evening, and nearly night.















Yes, and night... or nearly night...

ad for iphone

If the world imploded on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday, I would not know it, were it not for my iphone. The tiny NYTimes icon on it allows me to remain confident that we are all in one piece. So far.

It’s not that I am completely out of the loop on those days. I know, for example, weather patterns very very well. It was fairly mild this morning. Biking to work past the lake was deliciously warm...





...but by evening, a chill crept in and I could not pedal fast enough to overcome it.


I know, too, how long it takes to microwave a frozen Kashi or Amy’s dinner and that, too, isn't knowledge gained from the iphone. There, I would be pointed to the nearest eatery and if I chose that option, I’d lose all that I earned at the little shop that evening.


I installed an app on my iphone that identifies (just by listening to it!) the song that’s playing out there. On Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday evening (or Sunday or Saturday...) I can thrust the phone in the direction of the music playing at the little shop and it will identify the piece for me. In case I want to listen to it even more, beyond the hours when I hear it at the shop.

The iphone has a camera in it, but I never want to use any camera during these days. It’s too awful to search out interesting ways to photograph the same old lakeside path, especially when you are in a hurry. Some days, this is the best I can do:







There is email on the iphone, but most of the hours I spend in the classroom or at the shop – neither of which permit email. But I do click on it when I am in the bathroom or on the bike. Yes, I use the iphone while biking. I endanger noone (but myself) with it and it helps me keep up with details of work, so that they all don't hit me in one fell swoop when I get home late just before midnight.

Yay iphone. I could not manage without you.

Immigrant

Three women from a southeast Asian country (not positive which one... China maybe?) came into the shop this afternoon. After much consultation and mutual prodding, two bought lovely boxes of wonderful items. They were happy, I was happy. As we were finalizing the sale, one of them asked – where are you from?

I told her, but I looked puzzled. Their English was not perfect. Most non-native speakers cannot tell that I have a slight accent. Oftentimes, I cannot tell that I have a slight accent.

She noted my quizzical expression and said – you have a most melodic voice! Up and down! Most people here speak in a flat tone.

I didn’t tell her this, but she was, in reality, paying a compliment to herself. I have this trait (my daughters first alerted me to it): I pick up the speech patterns of my audience. If they are melodic, I, too, become melodic. If they have a Scottish clip, I will, within a sentence develop one in response. Right. A bit of one.

It cannot be helped. Most likely, I developed these strategies of coping when I first came here as an immigrant. I wanted to fit in. To become like you.


On this (beautiful and warm) morning, following the usual house cleaning, my occasional traveling companion and I set out for a quick hike through the Pheasant Branch Conservancy. We’d been there briefly yesterday. Today, we intended to walk the long loop. We had two hours. Enough to do it if we picked up a sprightly step.

Hiking with Ed is comfortable for a person like me – I don’t have to strain to sound like him. We both like quiet and we often hike without words. When he does tell a story, it is animated in ways that are so specific to his culture and background that I don't try to merge with his pattern.


We hike in this sprawling park that borders the creek and even though the prairie grasses are dry and the oak trees look like they may never sprout a a bud again , it is a very beautiful morning.




















We pass by the creek and we pause. Do you see those gurgles? These are artisan springs, pushing water from maybe underneath this hill, or maybe Michigan. Or Canada.





Immigrant waters! Welcome, waters. You’re among friends now. Most of the time!

five hours

How do you approach a November Saturday that is off the charts toasty? So toasty that you could bounce around outside in a tissue t-shirt and still think you were overdressed?





It’s the last day of the Westside Community (outdoor) Market. Typically, you feel sorry for the vendors on this day. They freeze to give you one more chance at stocking up on turnips and beets.

Not today.





Warm, it’s so warm! Even as the selections of produce is predictably limited. I stock up on garlic and onions.





Weather confusion is not easy. You want to love this gift of warm air and yet you feel that it’s prank, a scam. Someone is cheating.

There have been years when I regarded these unexpectedly brilliant days as a mandate to head out. To go north, or south, to tug at Ed and urge him to go with me. He is, after all, an occasional companion.

That, however, was yesterday’s freedom.

Still, one mustn’t get all hopeless and despondent about the absence of uncomplicated time. Surely anyone can willfully create a block of free hours. We do it. We climb on board Ed's old Honda and set out.


A whirlwind morning (and early afternoon). We zip between Poland, France and the deep Midwest.

The Polish Heritage Club of Madison is in charge of Poland. We’re at their annual craft fair and the lunch crowd is packing in platefuls of cooked cabbage and sausage. The smell of the sauerkraut stew is potent.

We watch a wreath-maker weave flowers into a wreath, paper cutters cut patterns sketched onto colorful papers, and musicmakers play something that sounds vaguely holidayish.









And we get hungry. But not for sauerkraut and sausage. We head for the wonderful and not too distant world of La Baguette. I practice saying “this day is magnificent!” in many combinations of French words.









And now there are only minutes left to my block of free time. A handful of minutes is more than no minutes. Ed and I are determined to not waste them.


At the Pheasant Branch Creek Conservancy (just at the northwestern edge of Madison), we watch demonstrations of forest management.









And pfft! The hours are gone. It may as well be midnight. I have to change into my retail black clothing and head to the shop. The fragrance there is sweet and comforting. I try not look outside, where the day is magnificently radiant. Sweetness over radiance. I'll accept that. I'll not compalin. Radiance is overrated. Yes, it is. Yep. Uh-huh.