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30 May 2014

These Windows: First days in Alaska


                                                            ...I am
paying attention to small beauties,
whatever I have--as if it were our duty
to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.   
                                     -Sharon Olds, "Little Things"                                      

     
        There are windows where I am that have cast some kind of enchantment on me. You, dear reader, might call it a neuroses, an addiction, or just a good old-fashioned obsession the way they draw me in, hold my gaze and make it difficult for me to look away. Sometimes I think I came all this way just to watch the Kachemak Bay from these windows. Something about this scene, untouched and alive, in constant motion, silenced by the transparent barrier, like a moving picture that never ceases to surprise me.                       
           






         The windows allow me the power of observation, from a sort of perch that gives me the perspective of seeing just a portion of the bay through a magnifying glass.  The rhythm of her very waters is a dance like a debutant rippling her soft skirts, spreading them across the rock and sand with her generous invitation to all living creatures. She beckons the birds of her neighborhood to come and be fed, be filled, and be bathed in her spring rush. Graciously, the gulls take up the invitation to dine on the bounty she has to offer. The eagles, regal and stately as any Lord or Lady of the bluest blood, spread an impressive wingspan and soar past my windows, snubbing my stare, seeking some daily refreshment in the bay. I am amazed at the agility and precision with which they dive and retrieve an unsuspecting fish who seems to be equally fighting for his last breath and wishing for it. In the evenings, I watch her like a mother bouncing and coddling the sea otters like toddlers on her lap when they come to play and bob along her shores. All this, as the stoic mountains and glaciers look on from the distance, like the saints and apostles adorning Notre Dame. 
             The problem is that the more I watch through these windows, the more difficult I find that it is to tear myself away. I do get out and feel and smell and hear this magnificent place, but the view from the windows is like a drug. Through them I see miraculous pictures of the majestic, but unassuming pulse of wildlife moving, breathing before my eyes. I am a slave to the window’s charms, afraid to look away, afraid that I’ll miss something spectacular. I’ve heard rumors that a pod of orcas occasionally moves through this bay. I desperately want to see them and so I return to the windows, again and again, to maintain my vantage point and take in all it has to offer.  I haven’t seen any whales yet, but my view never disappoints. 

     Today I found myself watching my children through the glass. They are just far enough away to be out of earshot and just close enough for me to observe the details in their delicate, clumsy play. I watch them in a way that I’ve never seen them before. Like I’m watching them for the first time in their natural habitat. They too are unable to resist the hospitality of the bay with all her mystical incantations. Just like the wildlife I observe taking care of its daily business, I watch my children manage the business of childhood, dancing under an intrepid sky, running (either fully clothed or nearly naked) in and out of the ice cold-water unaware of its stifling chill, giving in to preternatural impulses, singing or fighting or bathing in dirt. Among the rocks and the bones they find their playthings and with the birds and the fish, their playmates.  I enjoy my perch from which I observe because there I watch my children less as a mother and more as one of a species. Were I standing next to them, I would at the very least discourage much of their unruly behavior and most likely bring it to a halt entirely. But instead I watch it play out. All of it, the bare-footed dancing, the fighting, their inherent fearlessness like indomitable Peter Pan and his entire crew of Lost Boys.  I see them in a way, the way we should all be seen, as creatures grown out of the dirt earth reaching out to her for an experience, for the breath of living. 

Later, the children and I took a long walk along the spit. We visited some of the little shops along the roadside, exploring the local human wildlife and then walked back along the beaches. I told my kids about the spell that the windows have put me under.
“I’m afraid if I look away,” I said,  “I’ll miss something amazing*.
 To which my daughter, with all the reckless certainty of a 12 year old and without a moment’s hesitation responded, “That puts you in a very tricky situation. If you look away you might miss something amazing, but if you don’t look away you might miss something amazing.”
The rest of the walk back the kids took turns pointing out the things that they thought were amazing. For one it was a crab shell in one piece and another it was a cartwheel she just learned to do. For one daughter it was the way the tide swelled and receded and for my son it was the feel of the sand and shells between his toes.
I'm still drawn to these windows, and I still watch through them intent on witnessing every little miracle they have to offer me, but I'm realizing maybe its not really these windows. And maybe its not even this place. Maybe it’s a removal from something in my head or forgetting something I thought was important. And maybe it has something to do with what I’m looking for; what I’m expecting to find. Its something the children are teaching me: its in the details, the little things, the easily overlooked.  Its about looking for windows.


*Merriam-Webster’s full definition for amazing: causing amazement, great wonder, or surprise.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amazing

27 May 2014

Spray-Paint


There are moments when words fail me and language becomes what it’s always been, this ghost of my experience. On one particular Saturday afternoon just such a moment left me speechless and not just because I was suffering from a cold and had no voice to speak of, but like a phantom, the words vanished into thin air and I was left with nothing but the backside of a locked bathroom door and a roll of toilet paper (two-ply) to console me.
            It was the way Tatum came running into my bedroom, where I was taking the afternoon to convalesce, being husbandless for 3 weeks by this time, having only recently finished writing my finals and being in the usual post-semester bodily melt-down (which usually consists of a cold and laryngitis). She said with hurried worry, “Mom, you need to come see this”. Looking back I think it was the just the way she said, Mom,  like a felled tree dropping and disturbing a quiet forest floor or the axe that turns it to winter wood-piles. That one syllable fell from her lips with a weight causing my sinus-infected, well-furrowed brow to do what it does best. And then she stood there. And I took a moment. And there we were hovering beneath the words she had uttered, each awaiting something more from the other.
            Now it should be noted that I am generally fond of surprises. I love a surprise bouquet of just about anything or finding love notes scrawled with precious immature dexterity; I love that day I happen to wander into a store and that one dress I’ve been eyeing for a month is on clearance and my size; I’m fond of unexpected rain-showers and the day the tulips bloom.  But this day, in this moment, I knew this was not a surprise I would either like or want. And the fact that Tatum wasn’t disclosing any more information was not boding well either.
“Just tell me something, anything,” I struggled to squeak out with my broken and
breathy voice. “Prepare me for it.”
But she said nothing.  And I followed.
There was an immediate scurry about me. It’s a bit of a fog now, but I’m quite
sure that the four of my children multiplied into several hundred and they were moving about me quickly, equally curious and terrified of my reaction, deciding finally to dash out of sight; this only exacerbating my uneasy anticipation. And so I blew my nose and pressed on, certain that neighbor children were stopping and bracing themselves for the mysterious unveiling.
As I followed Tatum into the front yard I saw it. Spray paint. Blue spray-paint, a hue somewhere between Superman’s tights and a blue-raspberry Slurpee. Blue spray paint blobs and blotches here and there throughout the driveway. The red van tagged with a swirl on one side, a swish on the other and a swag on the hood. The truck, a small blue stripe; the mailbox swizzled blue; the shed, both blue and white in a streak cutting its brown façade horizontally into two; the black metal fences still dripping blue and even a tree did not escape the spray-paint make-over.
            By now Tatum was saying something. I don’t know what, I can only make out the name “Eli”. I wheeled around nearly falling to the ground with my heavy-aching head and looked for him. I tried calling his name but whatever voice there was left was so loaded with emotion, nothing came out. I walked into the house and there he stood. His guilty fingers baring blue evidence and his fearful eyes looking to beg for a pardon. And that is the moment the words failed me.
            Again, children scattered, parting like the red sea for Moses, perhaps knowing their mother was at the end of her rope. I moved past them and into my bathroom where I began to cry. Not because anything precious had been ruined and certainly not mourning the marks to an already over grown and neglected front yard. It was just a moment that reminded me that I am imperfect, as a mother, as a woman, as a human being. I can’t do it all. I cried because despite my daily effort to somehow master my many imperfections, I am flawed. And as the tears flowed a furious amount of texting to my sisters commenced because surely, they could help me laugh, and I needed desperately to find a way to laugh about the whole ordeal. For the next ten minutes little love notes were passed under the bathroom door, children asked what they could do to help and even offered to make dinner. And all this 20 minutes before we needed to be at a piano recital. Necessity required me to pull it together.
            Four days later a nice man came to install our new internet connection and asked me to come see where the box was being put on the back of the house. As I walked through my back patio I discovered the last little piece of evidence left behind by my 8 year old vandal. When I say little, I mean big. There scrawled across the 70’s yellow brick and concrete of the house next to the sliding door was the word MOM with a little heart sprayed just beneath it. There was that word again staring at me with all its urgency and need and warmth and breadth and undone wholeness.  I could hear the din of the installer-guy grumbling something about kids these days but I listened to none of it. I only heard my children’s voices and the weight of that word coming down once again upon me. And I laughed.
            We’re making efforts to clean and paint over the blue whirlwind that splotched our home but I’ve decided that the MOM is going to stay. Sure it makes the back of my house look cheap but it’s these little (and sometimes big) imperfections that give my life depth. It’s a reminder of the weight of that word and what it means to me. It’s a souvenir from this moment in my journey and imperfect as it may be, it is my life. And I can laugh about it.