a day

Last night we returned to a favorite place for dinner -- Fish. Ed likes it because we can eat at the bar. There’s a Yankee game on, though no one really pays attention. In fact, the sound is muted. Ed will keep an eye if he needs the distraction, in much the same way that he prefers to have something to read at his side in case his mind needs some external prompt to stay active.

We both like the oysters there and it is a terrific deal: a half dozen plump blue points plus a glass of wine (or beer), for $8.





Notice the peanuts. They’ll give you all you want and Ed will surely get half his caloric input from the nuts alone.

I have a bowl of fish soup, he has the mussels and we’re happy. We’ll return there. We always do.

We’re staying just a few blocks down from Fish, on Bleecker – a street that surely defines the West Village. You could not ask for a better location (if you like the Village, and we do). You could ask for better quarters, I suppose, but I knew what I was in for. We’re in a brownstone – in a top floor apartment that hasn’t been rented. I could spell about a dozen reasons for why it hasn’t been rented – dirt being the least important. After all, you could clean the place (and to give Ed credit, he did go out and buy a sponge to at least wipe it down).

What can I say, It’s a place that maybe has seen better days, though Ed assures me that the building has a long history of neglect and that I am seeing it in a finer moment. Still, the windows don’t really close and floors that have holes underneath the radiators. There is running water, so that’s good. The view? Perhaps somewhere between West Side Story and Sesame Street, except without the color. The noise is definitely pigeon song. I have a city person's dislike of pigeons.





Ed brought an inflatable mattress, which is an upgrade over rolling out sleeping bags on the floor. The mattress leaks, but it carries us through at least half the night and after that – well, who cares.

In my carry on, I have managed to squeeze in clothes for six days of hearings and two week-end days of hanging out, plus the sleeping bag, a small pillow, and a towel. I think I am an accomplished packer.

Off to court now. If you think it’s kind of a late start, then you must not know that trials in New York proceed in this way: we start at 11:30 (or 10:00, or noon, depending on the proclivities and inclinations of someone or other), break for lunch at 1, resume at 2:15, always at 2:15 and finish sometime around 4:30.

So I’m on schedule. Though I’m in a hurry. There are a million places to pick up an espresso on the walk over. Choosing one will take time.

looking at New York

When I hear mention of the “rule against perpetuities,” I think -- Law School Property class. Today, though, it came up in court.

I’m in New York, sitting in on a complicated case that has all the requisite elements of a trial drama, even as the issues are tediously convoluted and not at all dramatic.

Sometimes, I merely watch the faces of the participants – multiple lawyers on both sides, the judge, her clerk – they all want an outcome and of course, none of the desired outcomes overlap, or there wouldn’t be a trial.

In a case of this nature, it is said that, like in divorce, there is no good resolution. Except that I think that a good solution would be for there to not be a case of this nature at all.

Okay, that’s all I’ll say about the trial for now.

On the upside, I am learning a lot about courtroom dynamics.

And I am in a city that is an eyeful, from whatever position you look at it.





The flight attendant asked me if I knew the city well (it was her first trip here and unfortunately she would have only an hour, all of it at La Guardia). I hesitated. I have lived in New York for a total of maybe ten years, but I want to say now that I am not anymore part of its fabric. It’s no longer my city. Cool to look at, every now and then, but not mine. You could say in some significant way I've turned my back on it. And that's okay.

Mother's Day

Wszystko dla mamy, My mame kochamy!

It’s a little jingle that I remember from Polish TV in the late sixties. Mother’s Day was a big deal then and probably remains a big deal today, since it encourages a kind of commercialism that Poland seems to embrace in its race to better economic times.

I like how holidays shift boundaries of inclusiveness and pick up different subsets of the population, giving various people “favorite status” on one day or another. All people born on this day – feel special! You, who gave birth, or adopted a child – stand up, it’s your day! Americans, eat those grilled burgers and watch the fireworks – it’s Fourth of July! And so on.

(Best are the days that are most inclusive: everyone who wants to have a tree up with colorful lights and painted glass balls – go for it! Not a Christian? That’s okay, you can still buy a tree and listen to Jingle Bells.)

Mother’s Day is significantly inclusive. If 80 % of American women have children by age 44 (US census data) (and another small number adopt), and 100% of everyone at one point had a mother, you can admit that motherhood is big. So think mommy thoughts today. Or just give a nod and smile to the moms all around you.

Then go about your day and enjoy the sunshine. There is so much of it today, in southern Wisconsin. My daughter and I took full advantage of it in Governor Dodge State Park.

































...Followed by a quick run to the place where we always, in younger days, celebrated the mommy holiday. As others did today.









Dinner at home. With chocolates to make it completely wonderful.

May caps

All small talk around town would have to be about the weather today. And you’d think that I’d join in – because really, it seemed unfair that today’s highs would be somewhere between 39 and 41. With gusts of wind, and rain that occasionally awfully resembled snow.

But my day started early and without any mind to what the thermometer said. Ed had a morning flight to New York and I was the designated driver. In the middle of the night, he was notified that the flight was canceled (no reason was offered) and so we spent the hours between 3 and 5 finding alternate ways to get him to the city by noon. He was successful, but I have to say, if there is a word that best describes my state right now it would be – sleepy.

Ed’s second lawsuit goes to trial beginning Monday (even as the first one, the one from last October, still hasn’t a judge’s ruling) and I’ll join him there for that – indeed, for the entire week.

But this week-end, in true Mother’s Day fashion, belongs to my daughters. Well, one daughter really. The one who is temporarily in Chicago and therefore quite happy to take the bus up here for a quick visit. (The younger girl is still out east, though blissfully done with school, possibly forever.)

We spent the Saturday morning as we always do when she is in Madison during spring, summer or fall – at the market on the Square. (You can tell it’s cold when not only the children are in caps.)













It is a joyous ramble. The colors are good, the food is fresh and very honest (why would a child point to the chocolate cookie, when there are chevre croissants to be had?)...





... the vendors, some whom I have known for decades (Anne at Fantome, Bill at Snug Haven, David at the Flower Factory, Richard at Harmony Valley – they were all there when my daughters were so little that the trudge around the Square seemed very very long) – surely they’re used to this kind of May day. They’ve been around. And my God, this is my 31st spring in Wisconsin – I, too, know when to haul in the tomato pots for the night. And for the day. This day.

A perfect day for a midday snooze, no?

lilacs and mushrooms

If this spring has had a theme or a running thread, I have to think that it will have been the matter of lilacs.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed?

It’s because they have had a robust season. They not only are blooming, they are tripping over themselves with clumps of flower. Even on a wet and cold day like today.





In past years I’ve been away in May and so, in fairness, my comparison is with years so long ago that it’s not hard to think that I may be recalling things imperfectly. And, too, I have been sitting this week at Ed’s farmhouse, working away with a front view onto his lilac bush. It makes an impression. (If the weather was good, I could have an even more perfect, scented view from the porch. With a robin's nest perched over me...)





Still, the year is clearly different. Arguably in a good way. Mother’s Day among lilacs, May with robins.


And with mushroom spawn (mycelium). Ed is dabbling in a new business. In an abrupt sidestep from tools and machines, he is “designing” mushroom beds for winecaps and shaggy mane and who knows what else. Larry the cat isn’t convinced that the project will net much of anything, but Ed’s cats are a suspicious bunch.






Me, I have confidence that something will sprout. Ed is a guy who thinks things through. On this wet and cold day, the fungus growing business takes hold, underneath the cherry tree and at the side of the shed. No, not the writer’s shed, nor the sheepshed. The shed shed. Where the clutter of a mechanically inclined guy is put aside for future use.

Oh, let me come back to the lilacs for a bit. Did I tell you how beautifully their wet faces were on this day?

ribbons of work

Last night, I chopped the stalks of rhubarb from Ed’s yard, mixed them with strawberries and vanilla sugar and baked them with an oat-almond crumble on top. Is there a dessert that more properly links spring to summer than a crumble? Fresh with fruit, warm for the chilly evening, dripping with vanilla ice cream.

Sandwiched in between yesterday’s baking and this evening's plantings of flowers outside the writer's shed were hours of work, and at least one hour given over to refinancing the condo. As the title company rep whispered to me – this is the most boring job ever;  you may as well look for ways to make it fun. Indeed, because it surely has been a nightmare to get to the closing gates. More accurately though, it is now not fun at all, it is a sigh of relief: I survived the housing market tumult! I did not have to walk away from this mortgage!

But, far more enchanting was the other piece of bread in the slapped together sandwich of my day – the work in a garden, freshly emerging by the writer’s shed. I didn't photograph this, but let me at least offer pictures of others working on plantings right close to us on this day.














I stomp the earth around the slender peonies under the shed's windows. Be there, I tell the young stalks. Don't not come back next spring. Be there!


After, I pedal home with lilac branches strapped to the bike.

time

A young man is playing Duke Ellington on a bass downstairs right now. The room is crowded. My condo neighbors are there, but so are others: his friends, his mom, dad, sister.

I can’t help but stare at the family. Last time I saw this talented musician, he was running around a living room in pajamas with his sister. It was early afternoon. His mom shrugged: he likes his pajamas best, what can I say...

That was more than a dozen years ago. My girls were taking voice lessons from his mom. She was juggling parenting and music. We were all on paths then, but now life has pushed us forward. And their son is playing bass and he’s not in pajamas anymore.



Earlier, as the winds howled (of course), I pushed a lawnmower around tree trunks at Ed’s farmette. I felt I owed it to him. We are both rushing with our respective projects today, yet he took time out this morning to accompany me while I shopped for a good deal in eye glasses. [It was a discouraging expedition – we started with the cheapest (Sam’s Club) and worked our way to LensCrafters and I cannot tell you how many calls we made in between, only to find that the very expensive LensCrafters actually did offer a wonderful lens. The question became this: how much are you willing to spend for perfect vision? Academics tend to spend whatever it takes.]


As I pushed the mower, I thought back to when I last filled my lungs with the fumes of mower gas, mixed with the fresh smell of cut grass. I have to say, I was quite nostalgic working that mower, and it almost didn’t matter that I hit many rocks and created numerous blisters on my hands.


The day was brilliant. At the farmhouse, I finished work on the exams and I thought – life is good, especially if you can see through your glasses and the sun stays warm on your back as you bike home.

wind

I want to know this: why does the wind always work against you when you’re biking? And why has it been so windy these past days (weeks?) anyway?

Appointments and office chores kept me in town today. That's not a complaint. Madison is a good place to be on a warm May day.





Still, I like the sound of that – "kept me in town," as if I had a country residence to consider in the alternative.

But in some small way, I do: in the late afternoon, I take the bike out to Ed’s farmette (some fifteen miles away if you mainly use the bike trail). The wind is brutal, but I tell myself it’s good practice for navigating a sandstorm or typhoon (minus the rain), should the need ever arise for me to navigate a sandstorm or typhoon. With a river running through it.






Ed has taken on the challenge of making my workspace at the farmhouse maximally comfortable.





Being mechanically talented, he has even dug out an antique b&w TV and made it work. Of course, I should ignore it in favor of work, but still, on the off chance that I run out of papers to read...

Remarkably, Ed hasn't noticed that my hair is no longer the golden shimmer of a childhood recollection. I prod him -- what do you think? Kind of squirrel colored, isn’t it?  Ed looks at it now, seemingly with due consideration. The wind is tossing it around madly. I'm thinking it must be like the tangled mane of a donkey. Looks great! -- he tells me, and I truly think he means it, in the same way that you may think that the color of anything out there on the planet is great, merely by virtue of it being  a color at all.


By evening, we pack up and head back into town. With a few clipped branches of lilac, and stems of lily-of-the-valley -- their fragrance so strong, that you would almost think them to be artificial. Except that they're not.

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.