I spent the afternoon looking up ISBN's to check publication dates as a means of sorting hardcovers to go in either the fancy-pants "New Releases" section or in with the paperbacks. This is the glamorous life of a bookseller. I spend a lot of time with my computer. But, the really great news is that we got our first book shipment a week ago today. (However, it's entirely too small. We're placing another order ASAP.) Last week was the first week I went to the store to work every day. It was wonderful and awful and stressful and fun. The good does outweigh the bad and everyone is so excited and supportive. Just the same, it was nice to take the weekend off.
Our July 4th weekend was a blast. We hung out in John's hometown of Cumberland City (which is actually not a city, but a quaint, little town of about 300-350 people in 5 square miles) for a parade in the morning of the 4th. A picture of John and his mom and I watching the parade was on the front page of the local paper on Tuesday. Neat, huh?
At around noon, we met Sara and Chris back at our house and took them with us to a family get together at my great aunt's house. Sara, for the first time ever, got to experience the joys and terrors of swimming in a creek. It's mostly wonderful--all nice and freezing, cold, clear water. But then, suddenly your foot will land on a slimy patch of leaves (hopefully) and the water will be stirred up and... Well, it's a little freaky touching something slimy you can't see. I grew up swimming in creeks more often than pools, but all our L.A. apartments had pools, so I've gotten spoiled lately.
Charlie and Colton are about one summer away from being better swimmers than me. I have the buoyancy of a rock.
We hung out at my sister's house for dinner and then headed back to Cumberland City for the fireworks show the town has become famous for since John and I moved away. There are activities there all day on the 4th and when we got there my great uncle (brother to the great aunt whose house is beside the creek) was performing.
I hadn't heard him sing since I was a little girl. For a very short time, I took buck dancing lessons from a man I knew only as Mr. Spicer in Dickson. By the time I started, he was old and the other girls were supposed to teach me. All I really wanted was one of their flouncy red and white gingham dancing dresses, but that never happened. What did happen was that my cousins and I would dance in our jellies (which were louder than you'd think, compared to regular tap shoes) to the music of my great aunt and uncles.
This weekend, Sara invited us to a Murfreesboro Bluegrass festival called Uncle Dave Macon Days. It was super cool. There were tons of booths with handmade items for sale. Little areas of musicians were scattered throughout the area. And! Two Lincolns! Count 'em! Two Lincolns!
Any event with Double Lincolns walking around is inevitably going to have a high kitsch factor, but there was a feeling of genuineness and sincerity throughout the day. It was actually really lovely, in a way that made me homesick for another time. It was especially ironic when I, in fact, ran into one of the buck-dancing-in-jellies cousins...and she was competing!
In a way, I'm sad I didn't have the dedication to stick with dancing. It would be nice to be a part of the local heritage and keep something like that going. Maybe I'll sell a book on it?
I also ran into an old co-worker from L.A. I was very excited to see Stacey again. We worked together in the first bookstore I worked in. We were the two girls from Tennessee. She moved back into the area last year, too, and I was really happy to bump into her.
Here are a couple more pictures...
My new favorite picture of John. Mmm, deep-fried twinkies!
Here's Mickey (John's mom) with the pillows I made for her for Mother's Day. She really liked the Route 66 pillow I made for my mom and asked that I make something for her. Their living room is a yummy sherbet green color and she and Gus love to fish, so I made these fishy, green pillows.
My sister has been telling me I should make a bunch more and sell them. Each one took about 2-3 hours, not including shopping for fabric, so I could make several in a day. Plus, if I didn't make each one unique, I could save time cutting all the fabric at once, since the measurements would be the same. I don't know if I'll do it, but I'm thinking about it.
A few weeks ago, shortly before the April Crafting Marathon of Doom started, I found this video for making animals out of gloves on the Martha Stewart website. The girl who runs a blog I check from time to time called Homemade by Jill made an adorable bunny using these directions. When I was at a grocery store with my mom yesterday, I saw a pair of gloves of $1 and instantly thought: "Glove dog!" Before April started and I became craft obsessed, I probably wouldn't have even remembered the idea of glove animals. But now...every free second I have, my brain is full of felt and glue.
Unfortunately, the gloves weren't the right kind. They had the thumb offset into the palm. You know the kind. Well, that made my project turn out a little wonky because I didn't have a straight side and had to overstitch to compensate. Plus, the head didn't turn out right. Partially for the same reason, but also because I had to cut off the cuff and then the whole thing was a little too small. But since I didn't cut the cuff off the one that made the body, when I went to sew the head on, it had a giraffe neck. To fix that, I folded down the cuff and stitched the head to the middle. The ears are pointing in odd angles, so it looks nothing like a dog, even when I fold them over, so I didn't bother pinning them down. So. It's a little alien creature. And I actually really like her.
I think the kicked-out leg makes her look saucy. I embraced her essential wonkiness and gave her mismatched, but super girly eyes.
I named her Georgia because I watched a few episodes of "Designing Women" (takes place in Atlanta, theme song is "Georgia On My Mind") and an episode of "Futurama" with the Harlem Globetrotters (constant whistling of "Sweet Georgia Brown") while I made her. I think she looks like she'd be into poetry and Elliot Smith.
Tonight John and I babysat our nephews with my mom. My "thing" for today feels a little like cheating: an afternoon of fingerpainting and bookmark making. I'm putting up pics in the gallery.
I made a couple of nature-themed crafts to close out the week. The first was my Thursday craft, a photo box:
It's just a plain, white photo box that I decorated. (What I mean to say is that I didn't build the box, I just made it pretty.) I used some gorgeous Amy Butler papers that I got back in November and have been saving for something good. Something with...longevity. Seriously, when I found this paper at Michael's, I nearly cried. I've briefly mentioned Amy Butler before, but I don't think I can really express how in love I am with her designs. I want to frame each piece of paper. Or wallpaper my bedroom with it. Or maybe just the inside of a box so that I can crawl into it when I'm sad and be hypnotized back into cheerfulness by its awesome colors and beautiful shapes. Yeah. I like this paper.
This is the box lid. Cutting out that tree was sort of a horrible idea. The outcome was totally worth it--I love how the green-yellow pops off the hot pink background. And I love that it's got the obvious "family tree" metaphor going for it. But it took forever. I mean it. I must have been cutting that tree for at least 3 hours. I'm sort of obsessed with photo organization and this is the first in a series of boxes meant to sort out my family's oldest photos while still allowing them to be thumbed through individually. I think there's something pleasantly tactile about looking at pictures and I want to preserve that.
These little candles were my craft for today. I had all the supplies for making a candle already, but I've never bought a mold before. (Anna and I used dog toys as molds in our Tuesday Craft Days of yore.) So, I called up my mom this afternoon and said, "Hey, got any sand?" And without asking me why, because she's my mom and she knows that I occasionally have very random needs, she said yes. And, because she's also a grandmother, she indeed had a whole box of sand! Yay! I made holes in the sand and poured my molten, honey-suckle-scented wax into the holes. Twenty minutes later, I shook off the sand to reveal these lumpy little guys. They were easy to make and I think setting up this little scene really jazzed 'em up. Perhaps fresh spring greens and wildflowers would make all my crappier projects look nice? Ah well, they're not bad. And anyway, they're not for indoor use 'cause the sand will constantly be falling off. Ideally, these sandy candles should be made with citronella wax. But whatever. They're sorta shoddy, but the more I downplay them, the more I like them.
I have no idea what I'm making tomorrow. I have a pretty bad cold right now and the NyQuil I had last night is taking its sweet time wearing off and not making me feel light-headed. I'm getting sick of crafting and have already killed my good glue stick. I've bought a cheap replacement that I'm sure I'm just going to love. But at this point, I don't care to glue anything. Ever again.
I just put up more pictures of Irish Day. These were taken my mother-in-law, Mickey. She's a great photographer in general, and her snapshots always seem to have more smiles in them than mine do.
So, it's the second week of Spring Break for the local kiddies (and our teacher friend Chris). There's been a LOT going on. First of all, regardless of it being a vacation-y atmosphere of late, the weather has been completely insane. The wind has been crazy today and right now I can actually hear it howling. (By the way, our house is basically in a hole. Or, as it is so loverly called 'round these parts, a holler.) Here's a couple of pictures:
Daffodils lining our driveway, 3/6/08
About 4 inches of snow, covering the daffodils, the very next day, 3/7/08
In total we got 8.5 inches. 3/8/08
In other news, but following the same theme of being busy, the big local Irish celebration was this weekend. John has put together a video of the highlights:
There are more pictures of snow and Irish Day up in my gallery. Enjoy!
Okay, Thanksgiving is over. I ate 4 different meals, one of which I cooked all by my lonesome (pictures may follow). I waited, respectfully, until yesterday before...Christmas music!
I do feel bad that all the other holidays get swallowed up by the Santa-candycane-tinsel maelstrom, but I have a shameless love of Christmas. I was shocked to hear my first carol of the season on the day after Halloween. I am a little disturbed by seeing twinkle lights while I still have leftover turkey. But. Burl Ives is like a sedative.
I was trying to explain to John the other day what Christmas was like for me as a kid. It reminded me of an episode of "The Golden Girls," where Rose is describing Christmas on the farm in St. Olaf and I think Dorothy asks something like, "Who was your father? Michael Landon?" Such were my idyllic childhood holidays.
I remember one year, I was probably 8 or 9, my mom's parents were visiting from LA. My dad's parents lived across the street from us, so all four grandparents were there. Because Grandpa Jack was just hanging out at our house, he always worked on little (and sometimes large) projects whenever they stayed with us. This particular visit, he made a large wooden star that he strung white lights on. We put colored lights along the porch railing and upstairs in my and Amy's windows. We opened our presents on Christmas day and it snowed. A beautiful snow. Deep and crisp. We all went outside that night to look at the lights in the snow. I wore my dad's size 14 shoes, so I practically skied down the hill. I think most of us made snow angels. I made snow angels with my grandparents, I remember that much. I can vividly remember, as we walked back to the house, my dad said it was the best Christmas he'd ever had.
I get teary-eyed every time I think about that. I also really miss my grandparents.
Yesterday I finished reading the Hemingway novel that everyone says is his worst: To Have and Have Not. I've owned this book since at least '99, but hadn't read it. I originally bought it as a junior in high school for the huge research paper I had to write. It was one of three books I focused on, but I never actually read it. I just picked through it and pulled out quotes. Not the way to enjoy a book or write a paper.
I finally started reading it last week on a vacation with my mother-in-law, her two sisters, her mother, and a friend. We took a cruise from Miami to Calica, Mexico, by way of Key West, where we toured the Hemingway house. While it was interesting to be there, the house didn't feel very authentic. It felt more like a money-making scheme than a museum and our guide was just a little too practiced. A little too smooth. I'm not saying they shouldn't have a uniform speech that all the guides say, but this one made me feel like he wouldn't be able to answer any questions not covered by his spiel. That's probably not true, either, but that's how it felt.
I started reading To Have and Have Not on the plane to Miami because I knew it took place in Key West. Maybe it is his worst, but I really liked it, actually. My problem with it has nothing to do with the content, but with the synopsis on the back of the book. It ends by saying that Harry Morgan's "adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair." Doesn't that sound like he'll fall in love? Or maybe, I don't know, at least meet a woman? Well, Harry only talks to two women in the whole book, one of which is his wife. I have the sneaky suspicion that whoever wrote the synopsis read about as much of the book as I did in high school. Either that or they just watched the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I did a little research on it yesterday and found out that it takes place about ten years later (present day for the year it was made) than the book and instead of smuggling Cubans in Key West, he's trying to get members of the French resistance away from the Nazis. Oh, and of course he isn't married yet. Lauren Bacall plays a character named Marie, which is the wife's name in the book.
Except for a stack of four, all my books are still in boxes, waiting for me to build shelves for them. As I sit here, anticipating what will feel like Christmas when I get to unpack my books and put them on new, custom shelving, Amazon.com, a.k.a. Enemy #1 for independent booksellers everywhere, is pushing its new ebook. For the record, I'm anti-ebook. I hate the idea completely. It was on the cover of Newsweek, with the subheading, "Amazon's Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book itself." This annoys me on so many, many levels.
another way to tell if you've got nothing going on.
My new favorite thing is my full-sized ironing board. I've been using a very annoying tabletop-sized one because I haven't had room for a real one since I graduated college and left Bowling Green. (Which does beg the question, what happened to the one I had in college? Why did I just buy a new one? Shouldn't the old one be waiting for me somewhere?) The first thing I did this morning was iron a tablecloth. I literally woke up and thought, "I can iron a tablecloth now!"
You must understand though, the tablecloth still looks pretty crappy. And my mom is going to tell me I should iron it. And when I tell her I already did, she'll tell me to wash it and take it out of the dryer when it's still damp and do it again. Should I do this? Yes, yes, I should. But not today. Today is a day my kitchen table will no longer be naked. Besides, John would never notice and he's the only person who'll really see it.
We also have a washer and dryer now. (They're the ones I had in college... They knew my old ironing board. Why are they still here waiting and the ironing board is gone?) No more searching my car's floorboards for quarters for the dank and scary laundryroom in our old building. No more having to go to the bank for rolls of quarters.
By the way, I'd forgotten about drive-through windows at banks. They're sort of genius. And there's no bullet-proof glass anywhere. I could actually reach out and slap the teller. Not that I'd want to, but I could.
The washer and dryer have been eclipsed by the ironing board. It's really too bad that I suck at ironing, because I'm super excited. The little tabletop one's legs would start to fold in while I was ironing. Not at all convenient. This is a new era.
it took several trips to the zoo before we saw this sumatran rhino...he had pink eye.
bathroom in the santa barbara mission. the sign says: "If you need to leave a message... PLEASE USE CHALKBOARD --PLEASE-- do not DEFACE WALLS." there was no chalk.
I'm stuck in the middle of a book I don't really want to finish. But I sort of have to. It was lent to me by someone who thought I'd really like it and I'll feel like a jerk if I don't finish it before giving it back. I only have about a hundred pages to go...but it feels like a lot more than that.
Meanwhile, I totally ignored the boring book and read Letters from Yellowstone over the weekend. And I loved it. It's in the genre of historical fiction, a genre I do not often find myself drawn to at all really. I bought it 2 years ago while in Yellowstone with my family, taking the long route to LA and a new life of sorts. I bought it because, at the time, I was so enamored with the place that I thought anything at all about it seemed destined to hold my undivided attention. Plus, this particular paperback was a signed copy, long lingering after a book signing in the park that probably happened years before. The thing I so enjoyed about the book was that I genuinely felt transported. I've seen the things the characters were seeing, except that they're scientists and see (at least they would, were they not fictional) the world in a way that is much different than I do. They really see it. They have given names to it. These are the things the book is about, actually, as botanists in 1898 write letters home to their friends and family and try to decipher the boundaries of Science. As I said, it's nothing like what I normally read, but it made me remember my time in Yellowstone and it had a truly lovely passage about the group formed in the park and how they had become a family that is right on target with a lot that has been going through my mind lately. I went to work yesterday and ordered a copy each for my mom and my sister along with a copy of Diane Smith's second novel, Pictures from an Expedition, for myself.
I talked to my dad for about five whole seconds yesterday. That seems to be about all I can take some days. I hear his voice and fall to pieces. Yesterday, especially, since it was September 11. He came to see me at college five years ago yesterday and ate in the cafeteria with me and watched TV's tell us what we already knew. My dad's voice is like a song that I forget I love hearing until it comes on the radio in my car and makes me want to pull off the freeway and park somewhere, anywhere, so I can just listen. Plus, it was my grandmother's birthday. His mother's birthday. And I really need her advice.
Today I baked my very first loaf of bread. I'm sending you a picture of it because I was so excited at the way it turned out. I opened the oven door and as the heat rushed out into my face, I saw how the top had cracked, you know, just like real bread. I actually said, outloud, "It's beautiful." Usually, the first time I bake something in this oven it turns out being one third fine, one third burned, and the rest all soggy and gross. I learn by trial and error. I'm so excited!
Wish you were here to eat some!
Love, Laura
Sometimes, when I do something new and intimidating, I wish I was still in Girl Scouts. There's something really satisfying about walking around with a big sash that says, Yes, I can... Only, I can't actually think of a single thing I did to earn a badge. I sort of remember my sister earning one because she could swim.
I wonder if they'd give me one for just not drowning. I mean, if you know how what challenge is there? Every minute I'm in a pool, it's a fight for life. Amy could fall in sideways, hit her head on the way in, and still come out without flailing her arms around and gasping for breath. All I have to do is walk down the steps and I've got water up my nose and hair in my mouth.
Anyway, I wish I could earn life badges or something. Move to a new state, earn a badge. Get a new job, earn a badge. Bake banana bread from scratch that tastes just like your mom's, earn the biggest badge ever and sew it to your favorite shirt and wear it to work and make everyone jealous! Instead, the closest you can get is to take some of the bread with you to work, which means you don't get to eat as much, and then say something like, "Oh, please, eat it, my husband and I just can't finish it!" Why do people say that? Why bake a cake (or anything else) you don't actually plan to eat? Baking is hard. If I'm going to go to all the trouble to bake something, I'm going to eat as much as possible without making myself sick or robbing John of his half. (Yes, he gets half. He's smart. He married a woman who bakes. He deserves brownies.)
Of course, the truth is that making banana bread, even though it is delicious, means admitting that you're not good at keeping up with the produce you buy. Banana bread calls for bananas that are "very ripe." Like, so ripe you probably wouldn't think to eat them unless you were going to mash them up and mix them with flour and sugar and then cook them. Basically, so ripe they could be yeast. How did I let those bananas get that way, anyway? I had such good intentions of healthy lunches and potassium levels. Instead they got banana bread ripe on top of my microwave and nearly fell off every time I opened the cabinet door and hit them, while getting something down that I really would eat. They sat there like little blackening pariahs, watching me eat granola bars, until I felt so guilty I had to go out and buy half a dozen eggs, four of which I'll probably never use.
Today and yesterday I worked until 8PM. Retail. Two of the three remaining days before Christmas. Tomorrow, the last day of the "shopping days left" countdown, aka Christmas Eve, I will work until 6PM.
Today I think I may very well have wrapped more presents for other people to give than I am actually giving. To my entire family. And close friends. I actually thought we might run out of tape.
There's something about it I don't really mind though. Even though there are a bunch of scary and, sometimes, disturbing changes going on at the store right now, I actually kind of enjoyed being there. I was busy. I was needed. I was wrapping books like a little lost North Pole elf.
We're leaving for our big trip home on Monday. There's no place like home for the holidays. So what if it's the day after Christmas? I'm really hoping that it snows, which is kind of a dangerous thing to wish for, I realize. This morning, half awake, I had a half-dream about making snow angels.
I have this memory (which may not really be true at all, but it's there, in my head) of making a snow man by myself. Only, by the time I got the bottom snowball (of the standard three-snowball snowman anatomy) completed, it was so heavy I couldn't pick it up. And I seriously did not want to build my snowman on the side of the hill, on the verge of collapse, at the precise location the tulips would bloom four months later.
The memory-narrative goes like this: Huge snowball. Too heavy. So I go, in my little snowclothes, out to my dad's shop, a place of business mind you, and try to find my father. Just the thought--the idea of remembering without actually having remembered yet--of being in that place, the loud sounds, the fiery cloud of a welder I had to look away from, me dripping little piles of snow in a trail along the cement floor...my mind is flooded and it brings tears to my eyes. My dad had to bend over really far to be able to hear me. He is 6'1". I was probably about 5 years old. It was really loud. From there, I remember his plaid jacket and work gloves. And that he picked up the snowball like he was picking up a beachball.
And that's all I remember. I have no idea if I even finished it. And where was my sister? When did I ever build a snowman alone? Will the world ever have the answers to these pressing questions?
my father's true calling. (that i heard. instead of him.)
Yesterday I was trying to tell Anna about this phrase my dad has used to describe John's artwork...and I couldn't remember it. It goes something like this, "half a *forgotten word* off." I think it might be "buggar." Only, my dad isn't British. It means, like, unique, interesting, weird in a good way; it's a compliment. Anyway, it made me feel bad. Because that little detail is the sort of thing that is going to drive me crazy when I'm 80 and trying to remember precious details of the father that I've lost. (Dad, if you're reading this, please do try and live to be 116--this is in no way an invitation to check out early and not strive to be the Oldest Man Alive in 2061.)
So then, this morning, still trying to remember the forgotten word, I realized how often Dad uses words that aren't real anyway. He's an engineer and could easily tell you the drive ratio (I have no clue if that's real) of a particular machine rounded to the nearest logarithm (or whatever), but sprinkled in with the description will be made-up names for parts that he's designed--in other words, parts that don't have a name. Names such as: whatzit, whozie, thingamajig, and (my favorite) doohickey.
I've decided that instead of retiring, my dad should become the guy who names Olympic mascots. Seriously, in 1996, when the games were in Atlanta, the mascot was an exclamation point with a face named Izzy. For 2006: Neve the Snowball and Gliz the Ice Cube. Come on. Dad, you could totally do this!
Last night I watched the Golden Girls Reunion on Lifetime. I knew already that my mom and my sister had watched it, in their own time zone, which is two hours ahead of mine, at an earlier scheduled time, which meant they watched it three hours before I did. I had an algebra class flashback trying to figure out the difference of time in between them eating cheesecake at my sister's house and me sitting in my PJs listening to my husband make flustered noises about Battlefield Vietnam, which he was playing online with headphones so I could hear the TV. (Apparently, when you play online, people can shoot you, even if you're on their side, so they can fly the helicopter. Barbarians.) I wanted some cheesecake, too. And, of course, Dorothy was the one to get married and move away. And it doesn't matter how much I tell myself that I'm sick of that show, I'm just not. I could watch it every day if our apartment was bigger. I laugh out loud every time I watch it.
This morning, on my way to work, I heard part of this story on KCRW. Really, I only heard the beginning. But there they were, this father and son, just talking. About war. About these horrible things. Like being on the phone with your son and having to hang up because he says there's shooting going on behind him and for you not to tell your wife, his mother. And you listen. And yet, it wasn't depressing. Frederick Busch and his son, Ben, had this lovely way of speaking of and to each other that just made me miss my own dad, who has been known to call me out of the blue to tell me about something he heard on public radio that I would have liked. He rarely remembers who anyone was, what show he was listening to, and sometimes he can't tell me what it was about. Just that he thought of me. I never want any more than that anyway. A couple of times he's remembered and given me books he's either heard reviewed or heard the author talk about. And they've been good. Because NPR has good taste and my father knows mine. So, I missed my dad a lot today. But this interview was great because of the way this elloquent marine described his own insights into his father, a novelist, listening to his son over the phone being, basically, shot at, and knowing what this novelist father would imagine was happening because (and this is the line that made me stop breathing) "fiction is the focus of his life." I love when phrases like that pop out of conversation or off a page and fly around in front of me, like something beautiful I wasn't expecting. Like butterflies. And I do stop breathing for a second.
But I've been breathing again for hours and hours now. I'm listening to the Garden State soundtrack and am about to start reading Shopgirl, which I'm about halfway through, while I wait for John to come home from his dismal temp job. Cross your fingers. We need something to happen.
Have you ordered your 2006 lauraslens.com calendar yet? There are always good things waiting on the pages of another year.
I just made reservations for our Christmas trip. We're flying to Nashville on December 26th and back to Burbank on January 3rd. We've officially purchased the tickets. We're going to do it. I'm not totally sure if doing it five months in advance was particularly necessary...but I'd rather have them now and not have to worry about it later.
John criss-crossed all over "the Southland," as the newspeople call it, today, stock-piling work for his two jobs. Both of which require, essentially, that he handcuff himself to our kitchen table and draw and shade until his calloused hands wear away to nothingness.
On the plus side, the lady he's worked for the longest lent him an electric pencil sharpener! Jackpot! All our sharpening needs have fallen by the wayside!
Anyway, I was home all day. And I cleaned. I've cooked lately. And now I've cleaned. I'm either becoming domesticated (sounds like a pet, doesn't it?) or my willpower is improving.
When I'm alone, especially for hours at a time, my mind sort of flows as a narrative. I think things in full sentences, which I don't usually do. I mean, usually I don't have to. But sometimes my mind spits things out in paragraphs, like I'm writing the story of my day. Or my whole life. For some reason, I find it to be somewhat disconcerting.
Technically, it's already tomorrow. That is, it's still Monday night for me, even though it's Tuesday. But, tomorrow, Tuesday, I'll be thinking about my sister a lot. Her oldest son's sixth birthday would have been tomorrow (today), Aug 2. Her youngest just turned two on Saturday and Colton starts Kindergarten this month. Colton will turn five in September. He can already read. I have no idea what Charlie can do... I'm missing all of that.
I like to think about Calvin, the nephew I never really had, sometimes. For years, I would think his name and just start crying. And sometimes, even now, when I think about having my own kids, I think of him and how scared I am of the same thing happening to my someday baby and to John and I. But mostly I just think of his sweet face and how I think he probably knows everyone in the family better than anyone else. He can curl up in his Grandma Penny's lap whenever she's upset about all the weird and uncomfortable things that are going on in her life...and just be with her. And maybe she won't know it, but I think that helps her. He can help Charlie keep his balance and help Colton know what to say. He can go to my mom's Sunday school class or sit with her on the nights she's home alone, wishing that silly daughter of hers would come home from California. He can ride along with my dad all over the country and in my brother-in-law's cop car, late at night on lonely country roads. He can watch my sister laugh with his brothers and take her beautiful smile with him always.
I don't necessarily believe in angels. And I don't have any clear or strong convictions about heaven. I know, to an extent, any discussion or speculation about what our loved ones are doing now that they're no longer living is going to be contrived and cliched.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how going to church is such an important thing for me. I've always gone. It's one of the only ways now where I can see a piece of home. And I see more and more that not many people I meet in LA go to church or are even spiritual at all, whatever the persuasion. It just seems like all the people I was close to back home, if they doubted organized religion or just didn't believe in God, they were still spiritual people aligned with the idea of Something Bigger (many times criticizing Christianity for trying to explain or limit that force). That doesn't strike me as being the case here. And maybe it's just that I grew up in the Bible Belt. Or maybe it's just the particular selection of people I know in LA. At any rate, I feel the need to cling to my faith. I'm not an evangelical. I don't go around preaching the gospel or even really mentioning it. I despise the viewpoints of the fundamentalist religious right in this country. And yet, I'm growing increasingly aware of being almost embarrased to say that, yes, I do believe in God and, yes, I do believe the part about Jesus and heaven and living forever. It never occured to me not to believe. I've only ever questioned myself and the church and my country and society. I'm still full of questions. But I don't want to be embarrassed. Especially on a day like today. Without spirituality in some form, I honestly don't think I'd be able to cope.
I don't have to understand it. I just know there are times when Calvin comes to see me, too. When I miss the rain or the humidity or the trees of home and want to cry and don't...someone is always holding my hand.
Well, my sister was here. And my two nephews. And my brother-in-law, with his aunt and niece. The six of them, my parents, and John and I stayed at a Best Western across the street from Disneyland and spent Tuesday and Wednesday in the parks. We went all over LA, criss-cross style, for the two days we weren't in Disneyland. They left on Friday.
On Friday, I was totally, as my dad would say, bummed. That night though, we went to the Hollywood Bowl and saw Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion. And that was really cool. One of the show's guests was Maude Maggart, who sang songs like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Moon River," which I really enjoyed. (I found out later that she's Fiona Apple's sister.) Also in the line-up were Old Crow Medicine Show (they were probably my favorite), Leo Kottke, and Karan Casey. And, of course, the rest of the skits and music that are usually on the show. It was a lot of fun.
I'd talk more about my sister...but I don't want to get all mopey again.
John and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Monday. (Pictures of the wedding can be found in the photos section.) To celebrate, we spent the day at Disneyland, including dinner at the Blue Bayou.
When we came home, we followed tradition and ate the top of our wedding cake. Which tasted like cardboard. So, we had about two bites each and threw the rest away.
What a weird tradition. And kind of gross, really.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of my grandfather's death. He died while I was in Florida on my honeymoon.
I remember sitting in the MGM Studios park, eating lunch in the section that looks like Hollywood in the 40's. There are fake ads around for Kodak film that are supposed to look "vintage". So they're paintings. Somehow Norman Rockwell type paintings were supposed to sell film. Anyway, by the time we were leaving Florida, the big story was that Kodak was laying off about 15,000 people. Because they were going to go digital.
And my grandfather was dead, I found out, just before the fireworks started on our night in the Magic Kingdom. Will they advertise digital photography with strange, nostalgic images of film cans and people with jobs?
When I sat there by palm trees and stucco, with the sounds of Glen Miller being piped out of rock-shaped speakers, I pictured my grandfather working in his in LA or standing in his WWII Coast Guard Uniform on the beach somewhere in Hawaii...somewhere where there are green plants with large, broad leaves. He's still, watching the water, but tapping his foot to some new big band song.
He was already dead when I was thinking that, but I didn't know until the following night.
Retail on Christmas Eve. And yet, still I like my job, which I've been told, has become permanent. This is good news. I like the idea of "free" insurance. Daily striving to make my life more Canadian.
I toot-tooted my French Horn (a.k.a. Freedom Horn, a.k.a. American Noisemaker: Another Way We Stick It To 'Em) at my uncle and aunt's Christmas Day dinner party. They served a delicious chicken fetticini. But it was no honey-baked ham. Or green bean casserole.
There were Santa hats, carols by the piano, everything but the snow. Which seems to have taken up residence in Tennessee.
On Christmas Eve, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights strung around palm trees. And I struggled with myself to imagine "the first Christmas" and how palm trees are actually much more Christmas-appropriate than store-bought, pre-shaped Douglas firs.
Every now and then I get a wanderin' urge to see Maybe California, maybe Tinsel Town's for me There's a parade there, we'd have it made there Bring home a tan for New Year's Eve
My sister-in-law got here tonight. John got a special "my sister's a minor" pass to go back to the gate to meet her. I had to wait out by baggage claim, which was okay, because I didn't have to go through security and take off my shoes. (Though, I must say, I do have on nice socks today.)
Standing there looking over the barrier by the luggage carrousels, watching people hug and lug around luggage, I started to wonder if the people waiting beside me were from Nashville, where Misty's plane came from. As people filtered in from the gates, I felt this weird affinity for them, having just come from "my home land." Probably the only time in my life I'll every feel an affinity for people from Providence, which is where the plane came from before it picked up Misty in Nashville.
So. Back to work today. Back to normal life, except that we have company and my birthday is Wednesday. The Christmas rush is over and the gift certificates have already started to resurface.
Disneyland or the beach tomorrow, depending on how cold it is.
I think there's something about being sick that sort of...heightens my brain. Everything swirls around like marble. I think in collage. A photo smashed against a memory of same event, pasted to the image of a face.
I've been reading Angelina, a blog, quite honestly, not everyone can appreciate. Some people will be tripped up by the numerous references to drugs and alcohol...and her frequent use of "the curse words." I, however, am not of that mind. I'm not sure why I felt the need for a disclaimer... Oh, wait, yes, I am. I'm little Miss P.G. And no, I do not mean the band. You can't but love them. I get the impression that her brain constantly works like mine does when I'm sick. Or maybe it's that she's high. Wink.
I talked to Sara for, like, two hours last night. Good. Stuff. [It's weird how being "the married one" of my friends (except for my sister, who doesn't count...because she's my sister and she's always done everything before I do it) makes me feel like I act somehow knowledgeable. And boy do I hate that. It's like, I hear myself saying things like, When You Meet The One... And a little bomb goes off in my head. It's saying: You sound like a know-it-all married lady. And you, dear Mrs. Hill, do not want to be That Lady. Logically, I know I don't feel more knowledgeable. Logically, I feel?] Sara Sara Sara. Whose new friends I have not met. Whose world has shifted. We shared that moment. That space. Pangea. And I feel... What do I feel? I would think I'd be jealous. But I'm not. As though, perhaps, I've outgrown that. Or am just that secure. Because, let's face it, the fact that she calls me up and we talk for two hours is a testament in and of itself, yes? There was a "two roads diverge in a wood" moment. I'm delighted, Mr. Frost, that we chose your route.
All that family I saw this weekend. I think I'm still processing it. I saw my cousin for the first time since she was what? Nine years old? And now she's in high school. And she's heard of bands and movies. And she knows things. And when she smiled I remembered her stick-straight blonde hair of old, her bigger-than-you'd-expect-from-a-four-year-old laugh, the way she called my cousin "Mother," curling up in a chair with her on my lap and telling her the story of Rapunzel... Not that she would remember any of this. I don't really remember being 4. As old as my oldest nephew is now. Only I am not there to tell him about Rapunzel.
And my other cousin that's pretty much the same age. I've seen her more often. And yet, I'm still constantly surprised each time that she's not still wearing bright pink leggings. Instead, she's this beautiful girl who wears clothes from stores that sell clothes I'd have to diet three years straight to wear. I wore clothes from the same stores when I was her age. Only I didn't really pull it off right.
Never having been what you might call fashionable.
When I see their faces, I don't see a time line. I see all time at once. Is this what it means to get older? Does my mother look at me talking about my husband and see me tying the kitchen chairs together with red string? And the reason I did that seems so far away now. Do childhood motives have to slip into the background? And then I'll smell a box of crayons. And everything will make sense again.
So. This week I met twocelebrities at work, nearly my etire family came to LA and left, and I caught a mind-numbingly bad cold.
My parents brought out (pretty much) the rest of our belongings, including my car, which apparently still has a problem (or perhaps a new one) with the transmission. The apartment is full now. Complete with Christmas trees. Trees. Plural. Five fake ones throughout the apartment that take up less space than one real one would. Hopefully I'll have pictures soon.
The metaphor is almost, no-- is too obvious. This man who sounds like my father, over the popping and crackle of a phone that's needed replacing for years, tells me he feels fine. The biopsy revealed he has silica in his lungs.
Silica, in little paper packages:
in the toes of patent leather church shoes with "little bitty buckles" his heavy hands could barely fasten (as I brushed my cheek on his stiff collar-- Old Spice is almost, no-- is too obvious now);
in molds, I think;
in countless nooks, crannies, and doll boxes;
to remove moisture?
The disease is shaped like honeycomb, as though, somehow, it thought we need
a reminder.
We already know these things.
Sylvia Plath was given a beekeeper. I close my eyes and see the man on stage, spinning plates on sticks depend on his encouragement.
Honeycomb lungs for the man who went to work on the morning of my wedding day. He occupies my words as wrenches and lathes:
Metaphor becomes useless with only the thing.
--October 30, 2004, sitting on the ground in Tomorrowland.
As I was shuffling around the entire section of tv/movie star biographies at work today, a man came up and started making polite conversation with me:
Wouldn't it be great if you could just internalize all the material in books just by touching them?
I nodded.
I'd just shelve books all day long.
Of course, I didn't have anything terribly interesting to say in response, so I just agreed and kept working. And then he asked how I got the job. Did I have a background in English? Was I from Kentucky originally? Why didn't I have an accent? What did I study? Rita Dove? Oh, yes, National Poet Laureate. Mhmm. Had I read much Wallace Stevens?
He had done graduate work at NYU. He was talking to me because he was in the store...selling his books. Because he has no job and needs money.
Selling your books because you need the money...
How does it go? Go to grad school and make yourself even more unemployable?
I want to keep the plates spinning, Dad. And I want to add more.
If I could only realize in "real life" the excitement I feel over being able to bring up in casual conversation that Ted Kooser is from Nebraska... Or even that I know who he is.
I don't know. Maybe I'm asking for too much.
I just keep going back to that image of the homeless man in Boyle Heights pushing a shopping cart full of books. Hold out. Hold out 'til the bitter end.
We've been looking through my grandmother's things. There are about seven huge boxes full of pictures waiting for me to sort. The dining room is covered in glass pieces that need to be packed in bubble wrap and sent out to other people. I have two boxes of...stuff...with my name on them.
Disneyland, July 19, 1969; My grandmother on left.
I don't know when Mom is going to come back. We went to Disneyland Saturday. Had. A. Blast. I felt like I was ten years old. John and I now have our annual passes. I can go back anytime.
In 1985, my family planned a huge surprise party for my grandfather. He was retiring. I was four years old. He had made his living at Lincoln Foundry, here in Southern California, making casts and molds and other such technical and mechanical things that are still over my head.
All I really remember was yelling "Surprise!" And seeing my grandmother nearly pass out. [Note: I do also remember my uncle telling Amy and I not to get up during the night because there were snakes under our bed.}
Today I noticed a book on the bottom shelf of the bookcase behind where his chair always sat. The spine said "Brancusi." Now, being married to an artist, I do happen to have a side story about this artist which includes this picture:
The story is that Kenneth (one of John's friends) hates that sculpture, called "Bird in Flight." And John was sort of being a jerk. In a really cute, artsy, no-one-really-gets-the-joke, kind of way.
Anyway, Lincoln Foundry made a cast of one of Brancusi's other works. I remember hearing this from Grandpa before, but I had no idea the guy was actually famous enough to make it into the standard art history lecture.
So I'm on the floor, looking at this book when I notice my grandfather's walkman resting on top of the books. I can see him, now, in my mind, swiveling the chair and sticking it down there after listening to the end of the Dodger game.
And I wonder, was he the last person to touch this? Is it still here because that's where he put it?
I put on the headphones and turn on the AM radio because I figure that's what he listened to the games on. But it isn't a game.
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood, I know I could always be good to one who'll watch over me.
"Someone to Watch Over Me" was added to the list of songs my mom and I play and sing together whenever we're in the mood to hurt our backs and sit at the piano shortly after we saw "Mr. Holland's Opus."
I remember my grandfather sleeping with a little, blue square radio under his pillow. I remember finding it when I would come into their room in the morning and climb from the foot of the bed up in between them. They smelled like honey and Vicks Vaporub. Grandma would hold my hand and smile at me, our cheeks soft against her pillow, face to face. Grandpa's radio would buzz and hiss. And I remember how much thinner he looked without a shirt on.
Won't you tell him please to put on some speed? Follow my lead, Oh how I need Someone to Watch Over Me.
I've started reading Useful Girl by Marcus Stevens. The main character's mother dies in the first chapter. In a subsequent scene, she prepares dinner for her father by cooking some stew that her mother made and froze months before, only weeks before she died. It was wonderfully written, partly because that kind of thing is what grief is all about. I remember finding Italian cream cake in my mom's freezer that my grandmother had made for my dad before she died. It's like going back in time. Only more depressing.
