self-portrait tuesday -- time

the days blew by and, having missed a few pics of the kitchen and her terrible dishes that ever need doing, i've not a full month of self-portraiture to document here, which is probably for the best. sundays were hard to remember as we were at church at ten a.m. saturdays were hard, too, because at the promised time, i was whirling a scarf around and jingling bells with kindermusik students. other days were just busy and though we certainly ate, the sight of the kitchen was more than the camera could handle. therefore, i've got a week's worth of dishes to represent the month entire. most of them are dirty, because, well, in all honesty, most of the time the sink is full and waiting for someone to come and clean it.



the dishes and the doing of them are a very real part of me. they may not define me as a person, but the hours spent in thought, a kind of post-dinner rumination, have birthed ideas and plans rising up through steam and bubble that may not have come when i was applying myself to more studied, more valuable work at my desk, in a chair, nose in book, fingers clicking the latest spinning of story.

if the kitchen is not clean then the rest of the house seems to me to be a hovel, the clutter pillaring around us, necessity pooling at our feet as we frantically search for waders. as freakish as it may seem, though, if the kitchen is clean, the dishes washed, the sink shining, the floors crunch-free (no thanks to jude . . . ), if everything is put away and ready for the next round of buzzing, then the rest of the house is liveable, though perhaps lived-in, and living in it without constantly thinking of cleaning it is possible.

one would think, given this admission, that the kithen would be cleaner more often, no?

"if like a crab you could go backward."

kai was my friend, too. we ate breakfast nearly every morning for a year or two. the group grew and shrunk, but kai was always there, bowtie carefully tied and twisted under his chin, a wooly sweater tied around his neck like a ralph lauren advertisement.

noel and i used to study in the same section of the library so that we could walk by and drop notes on his textbooks. he was too much to resist, accent and all, his ferocity about studying, his confusion as to whether we were serious or not.



today, when i read this admonition from joy regarding taking care to speak (or type) carefully, to consider your audience and the possibility that your words will not be taken as you intended them to be taken, i thought of two things: kai and the way that he always walked too fast, looking at the sidewalk, thinking in hebrew, relishing the next few hours in the library; and the power of words, their ability to tattoo themselves to the most tender skin of our memories (right on the ribcage, under the arm).

thank you, joy, for the gentle reminder to take care with what we say (and, perhaps, to stop skimming!).

trois raisons . . .

. . . to love weekends . . .

maverick

"what's an adventure, mama?" he asks, sloshing bubbles across the tile. he's wearing a bubble beard and his brother is pouring water on his head.

"an adventure is something that you do that's exciting, maybe dangerous, something that you've never done before," i say to him, wondering what he's thinking about as he swims in circles in the tub. "when you take on an adventure you have to be determined and brave."

"i'm brave, i want an adventure," and his true blue-green eyes twinkling assure me that he's sincere.

he's an adventure, something exciting, dangerous, unknown. everything he does is plucky, brave, buzzing. he's a crusader, a gambler, a marvel, a marvelous.



some might say that the only thing to do with his kind of spunk and spirit is to beat it down, break it, crush it until it's a fine golden powder that blows the way it is breathed upon. it seems to be the simplest way to master his energy: turn it into something easy to manage, to manipulate, to dominate. and it certainly seems to be much easier than constructing with slivers and needles a smooth and shining silver conduit for the ocean of his volition (that swirls in waves and whirls in pools) to travel safely until adulthood.

if his will is broken and he is easy to manage, then how will he say, "no!" to folly? if he is taught that children do not have a voice and that authority is little more than domination, if he does not know what it means to one-another, to disciple, how will he then be empowered to lead his own?

"i want an adventure!" is what i say beneath the water, above, and over the water. and i want an adventurer, a maverick, a boy whose will is strong, who leads and does not follow, who not only knows that which is right, but is brave, determined, and defiant enough to do it.

history of weather

bromidic, with nothing to say. sigh.



a cardinal has flown into the same window in my study two times in an effort to breeze through to the front of the house. perhaps it is the same cardinal who flew into the kitchen last spring, on a rainy day when i opened the windows for some rainy inspiration. he crashed around in the dining room trying for the glass. joe blocked the gap and i went out in the mud to take down the storm window. gliding out of the window he zipped up to a tree and watched as i changed the screens on the north side of the house.

it's almost screen changing time again this year. i tried to use my wiles on ernie last weekend in hopes we'd have some fresh air coming through the curling iron of the front door screen. "maybe we should change out just the screen doors," i suggest wistfully. "hmmmph," he retorts. "we've still got cold weather coming our way."

he was right and come tuesday morning there was more snow, six inches in all, on trees, house, lily of the valley shoots. i suppose the screens will have to wait but i refuse to pull out the flannel sheeting again.

to resist it is useless, it is useless to resist

the weekend was breezy and sunny and called for short sleeves and open windows. i wanted to get into the yard and rake at the leaves blown against the house, but i didn't.

sunday night there were tornadoes around, even blowing through our town, though we didn't hear the sirens and slept high in the house through the night. the lightening flashed silver and the hail pelted against the metal, the slate, the brick. as i fell asleep i picked out percussive patterns, counting them in pings and marbles. in the morning there was water splashed in the kindermusik room but no real damage was done. the grass is greener today, yesterday, highlights, frosted, green spears in the mud. tornadoes are a sign of spring around these parts.



we spent the weekend as we should: working, playing, worshipping, resting. we ended the thing with a terrific surprise: the dream has opened early for the year! most likely in anticipation of profit losses that are inevitable as soon as the brand new dairy queen opens. the girls in their white pants rushed around making cheese balls, dipped cones. everyone in town had ice cream on saturday. i will be sad if the dream has to close due to the shiny-ness, year 'round openness of the DQ.

we went to lakeland park for awhile until some little kids were vulgar and their parents didn't care about it enough to stop it. we drove with the windows down, of course, a recent discovery that keeps our children engaged in the car for longer than usual, their fingers stretching out the edges of the windows, the wind blowing their hair high, their cheeks rosy.


the moon roof, cloud roof, is my favorite part about the new car. soon we'll whiff at the springtime as the wind whips and swirls through the roof during our long drives over countryside and cityscape.

self-portrait tuesday -- time

sometime this week marks the eighth year anniversary of "the accident." the accident involved a late dinner, a silly race over carpet, between tables, a plate glass door that didn't open with the trigger of the handle, smashing, crashing, screaming, puking, blood, ambulance, morphine, surgery, prescription drugs, rubber bands, blue plastic, dr. millon (ooh, la, la), shellye, therapy, tears, organist cookies, a new cellist, left-handed scrawling, excessive amounts of free time, and the surprise of fingers that still worked, strong hands, strong mind, strong heart.



everything i remember about the accident comes in patches, flashes, the colors swirling in saturated colors. the sounds are echoes, underwater, slow, the swish and gurgle of something unintelligible. time didn't stop, it flickered its no vacancy light as my world crashed down with the shards of glass.

quincy was there. shortly after i looked down and stretched my fingers long and open and saw the bone of my arm squinting in the light, shortly after i screamed like a girl and melanie threw up on the sidewalk, quincy sat on the "do not sit on the umbrella stands" stands that were better as benches. he sat there in his white shirt, his black hands holding my head so that i'd stop looking at my arm. i bled all over him and told him that i loved him. jamie came around with her big lips and i screamed at her and told her to get away from me. she was embarrassed and shirked back into the bushes. "don't cut my velvet jacket," i squawked. surreal, the things that seem important when you're not quite thinking straight. my brother dashed over and we rode away in the ambulance where he pretended that it was all cool, calm and collected as always, making the necessary phone calls, telling me i'd be okay.

it wasn't really okay. the tiny ER doc said i just needed stitches and then he looked and accidentally exclaimed, "things are falling out of here!" i was loopy, the room bright and strange. i didn't know my social security number, they had to call my dad. i could hear the man on the other side of the curtain trying to use someone else's number as his own.

i certainly don't remember surgery, only the sad expression of the doctor who said we'd talk about the piano, about music later, not to think about it too much right now. i remember having my hair washed by the nurse, having a friend slip into the hospital to hold my other hand and cry with me, rebekah calling from chicago, exclaiming how deeply this hurt her and how she didn't know how to feel or what to say as she screamed in my ear.

my dorm supervisor came and told me not to worry, that i wouldn't be getting demerits for any of this. "now we know not to run," she said smugly, her collar buttoned tight around her aging neck, her raincoat hanging smoothly over her arm. i was too tired to engage so i looked the other way until she left. surreal, the things that are more important than compassion to some people.

later, shellye took off the plaster and my arm was limp and like a shining white fish under the fluorescent light. the scar was long, stretching out, curling around, from my wrist nearly to my elbow. it was red and the skins were apologetically smooshed up against each other. my fingers wouldn't move, the tendons, nerves had been severed. "it was a clean cut -- it wasn't hard to see what went where," the doctor said cheerfully, mapping out the atlas of the insides of my hand, my wrist, feeling the thrill of his job, the rush of a job well done.

time passed. soon the nerves would zap at each other, electric life telling me where to feel, sometimes mistaken, the cuts not as clean as promised, the rewiring a bit off, turning on the kitchen light when i was flipping the hall switch. the fingers were weak and weary. it didn't look like the other hand as much as it used to. i spent the summer at the piano teaching the hand to play, to think like it used to think, teaching it to remember.

the scar was bright for a long time after that. shiny, purple in places. "did you try to kill yourself or something?" will asked bluntly, his sad eyes, pouting lips and weak chin looking the arm over.

this morning the scar is nearly nothing, a faint white line with new freckles in places . "i knew a woman would want her arm to be pretty -- i did what i could," the doc boasted of his stitching skills, a tailor working invisible stitchery with living, growing things. even to take a photograph the thing is barely there, the light of the sky, the flash, the ceiling bleaching it white as before.

eight years is nothing, just as the whip of the moment as my hand punched through the glass is nothing, the hollow crack as the door spat me onto the sidewalk, the punctuated seconds of realization before the screaming began, is really nothing at all. the blank stare of the scar tells me that the magnitude of the moment disappears with time, it becomes silver and forgetful with a wink and a sleep.

keepers of the gloom

irregular pings on the roof of the air conditioner that we didn't store for winter, gray light sneering his way through the curtains into slushy puddles on the floor, the birdless quiet booming through the house: sunday mornings should always start that way. i thought it was raining, an early springy rain that would bring some green back to this squirrel-brown world of winter.

"it's raining outside henry -- move the curtains, have a look." he jumps up to move the curtain. jude says, "oh, wow!" henry bursts, "it's not raining, it's snowing, mama."



as human as it sounds, i must grumble a bit about it. snow should say goodbye with the last leap of the month of mud, cabbage, love. when march rolls around there should only be rain, sunshine, crocuses. there shouldn't be furry jackets, fuzzy socks, insulated glovage. especially when the snow of march is not sled-worthy and is mostly ice and slush-ball.

the days are dark and ordinary, stirring all of us crazy. i buy a small fern and blacken my fingers with soil from a bag. the dirt is cold because it's been sitting in the garage, but the process is cathartic and spins a kind of hope that magazines, reruns of the victory garden, and the anxious stirring of dead leaves in search of green just don't proliferate.

march up a hill and stop awhile

the weekend comes with a blue sky and sunshine. at last this week is over. monday gave us the flu and the excitement that spews from that. tuesday brought new teething woes for jude (!). wednesday was better, but the kids were napless, crabby, depressing. thursday was the Worst Day of my mama life Ever. everyone cried, all three of us, for hours on end. my students probably went home and cried after the endless parade of my sarcastic comments, my ferocious conveyance of disgust regarding their terrible lack of musicality and slovenly practice habits. jude's teeth, henry's three-ness, and my inability to be patient, kind, and motherly sent us over the edge.



a hot-dog octopus (that brought a smile to henry's tear streaked face) made by my mother, a hearty dosage of tylenol and teething tablets, and early bedtimes made everyone happier. except, perhaps, the students, who are most likely still confused and who did not get to sit on the couch eating peanut m & m's during survivor.

today is brighter on all horizons. the whirr of the dryer and his last load of laundry spins up through the radiator, the floor. i've had moments to sit and read, to the amazement of all. the boys are snoring, snoozing, dreaming of today's walk to the park, apples for lunch, a weekend of days with poppy, who is ever patient and understanding and altogether much more fun than this mama, particularly this week.

like a tea tray in the sky

master stacker of clean dishes that i am, i'd still like a dishwasher. our cool old kitchen has the not-so-cool impractical cabinetry and counterspace that will not house a dishwasher unless the kitchen gets a complete overhaul.



my mother tries to convince me to get a portable dishwasher to stick in the corner. the only people i know who have (had?) one of those scooted the thing around the kitchen to gather the dishes. they also piled the thing high with stuff (recently delivered mail, baseball gear, papal pamphlets) that would teeter on the edge and fall off onto the dirty floor while they were scooting the dishwasher around the kitchen to gather the dishes.

my mother insists that "yours doesn't have to be that way (first of all, we're not catholic) -- they (meaning ernie and my dad) can make it stay in one place." she promises that my life will be easier, that i will kick up my heels and dance each time i enter the kitchen, that i will be inspired to prepare more than ice cream sandwiches or pizza for dinner.

when i was in grad school i'd pack my dirty dishes in a cardboard box and take them to dixie's house and run them through her dishwasher (not portable) while i took care of (feeding, medicating) her dogs, bosco (deaf) and spencer (the favorite). it was worth the box, the stacking, the careful transport of everything, to simply not have to stick my hands in a sink of water.

i guess that i'm as portable as they come, though i don't provide more counterspace, more time, more energy, and, as far as the price of the thing goes, although i certainly cost less than five hundred dollars, i may spend close to that much annually in lotion purchases to keep my hands from shriveling prematurely.

all that to say, in unofficial participation with the self-portrait tuesday blog, i'm taking pics (and documenting them here) of my kitchen sink and my sorry dirty dishes every day for the month of march, at 10 a.m. fair warning.