The Flame Tree

The Avenue Pig

Many years ago I had dinner with a friend in her apartment on the west side. It was early summer and after dinner she walked me out and we walked down the avenue a few blocks enjoying the summer warmth and talking. It was during this walk that we came upon a peculiar sight, even (or especially) for New York: a man smoking a cigar and walking a pot-bellied pig. (This was the early 90s, the rage in pot-bellied pigs was not yet in full swing.) The man was in his thirties, I'd say; stocky; khakis and loafers-no-socks; round tortoise-shell glasses. The jester friend from college who was the life of every party, but could never stay in a relationship, and was actually secretly depressed.

We talked to him for a while. The pig was little and cute and any passing woman on the avenue would say Oh look how sweet how adorable where did you get him can I pet him what does he eat he's so divine who takes care of him what's his name ooh really he's so cute! The man was sort of beaming. He was having a good time. It was a gift, he explained, that he bought for a friend. It was a huge hit at the birthday party! But then, as the guests left, the friend said, "Thanks buddy, but I can't take this pig." And so, the man had a new---temporary, he made clear----pet.

Two months passed. In late August, I had dinner with my friend again. I walked out of her apartment alone, into the smashing heat of August. The avenue was empty----abandoned for the shores and peninsulas and islands of summer----leaving only debris, the stench, the empty bodegas and one man, smoking a cigar and walking a pot-bellied pig.

He had gained weight. The pig had too. He was disheveled (the man), and almost staggering as he walked. There were stains on his clothes. His hair was greasy and stuck down. He emanated fury. Though we were the only lonely souls on the avenue, I did not approach him. I was too afraid of his pain. I was afraid of his deranged, disheveled, disturbed life. I did not want to come close to it. I did not want to become part of it. Look man, there's no room at the inn... I have done the same a million times since. I scurried off into my own convoluted life, and had nothing to do with the scene that was this man and his pig. 

I fled. I never saw either man or pig again, but I've wondered about them for almost twenty years. 

 

Above painting: Jamie Wyeth, Portrait of Pig, 1970, Brandywine River Museum. © Jamie Wyeth. (Courtesy of Brandywine River Museum)

Birches

"...I'd like to get away from earth a while
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better..."
                                Robert Frost, "Birches" (excerpt)

*

We went up to West Point last weekend. We got a free upgrade on the rental car and packed it up with bottles of root beer, oranges, water, sweaters, and crayons for the drive. The Palisades were orange-y red brown against blue, blue sky. It was a perfect fall day, with the smell of football and dried pine needles and America the Beautiful in the chilly October air. It reminded me childhood autumn drives to the cousins in NH or to an alumni game somewhere, crayons melting on the grey Chevy's back dashboard. I loved that grey Chevy----no car seats, no seat belts! I had two black front teeth by the time I was five years old from slamming into the front dashboard at unexpected stops. My brother once cracked the front windshield into the most impressive spider-webby star with his head. Losing control on the highway---that swinging, weightless, back-and-forth----was common enough that I thought it was an honest part of driving, like passing on the left or stopping at stop signs. 

It's a miracle we're alive, my mother says wistfully when the subject of driving in the '70s comes up. It's actually more than getting through the 70s that's a miracle. Life itself is a miracle. But do I remember this? Not so often. I'm usually too caught up in the dread of having to cook dinner. If I were to get away from earth for a while, and return to start over, that would be a gift, and I would seriously consider applying to West Point. In other words, I would come back focused, unapologetic, disciplined---quite the opposite of my current life which often feels like that swaying, slow-motion, conceptual driving of the 70s.

Anyway, we spent the day at West Point----the war museum, root beer under a maple tree, Can we go now can we go now?----and on the way home we stopped at a revolutionary war fort. We had to park on the other side of a very high bridge that passed over a small stream way down below. There was a house by the stream, with a porch, and windows into the living room, yard tools, a driveway. "We're right under the bridge," the family living there must tell visiting friends... "You can't miss it." The traffic on the bridge was highway fast, and there were many pedestrians crossing the bridge and looking down. What a curious life down there, and how curious to hover over it, gazing down at someones humble little life, indifferently. I pointed out to Liv the tops of the huge elm trees that were at eye level, and how rare to see the tops of a tree without being a bird or an angel. She was polite, but mostly she was fascinated with that house. Me too. Though the vertigo was significant.

I have a friend who is undergoing chemotherapy, she has four-year-old twins. Another friend is in chemo too, with four children under ten years old. Another friend is mourning the loss of her mother. Another fights for custody of his children; another is fighting for her marriage; and more are fighting for their home. The 40s, I am beginning to surmise, is an intense decade. Life really kicks in.

The pain can be great. So great in fact, that we do leave earth for a while. For a few moments or a few months, we detach and drift up there, safely protected in the ether acre and looking down at our suffering selves. We're up there at the top of the maples, watching in silence and wondering how it's going to end. 

Once, grace came to me in six lines of dialogue with my husband. It was not a wild revelation, a symphony orchestra, a parade down Fifth Avenue, or even angels from heaven descending to comfort me. It was just a very short exchange of honest words. And then I came back to earth and began over.

This painting is by Marguerite Robichaux----a miraculous, angelic presence on this earth. Click here for more about her and an upcoming show in Boston.

Elegy on the wall: a re-post

Here is a piece that I wrote September 11, 2006. We lived in a cottage in Nairobi. We were thinner then. The children were babies and didn't know words yet. There were more parties, and we had, perhaps, a slightly better grasp on what this world is all about.

There are few things as gut-wrenching as the sound of M’s car engine starting up in the driveway on a Monday night. Flights to Europe leave around 10pm, so the evening ritual starts out as usual―the dinner hour’s fluster and mayhem, complete with its little irritations and joys. The snapping, the singing, the boiling peas and closing doors, tea for the guards, turning on lights, food for the girl, food for the baby, bathing the baby, getting little arms and legs into little pajamas… But then, this: the packed bag by the door, the countless checking of passport, cell phone, air ticket and cash. Many, many goodbyes and kisses to the babies and checking the passport again and checking the… Finally, Just Go! I say, unable to stand the separation anxiety another moment. And he is gone.

As I enter the hallway to take the babe to bed, the car starts up in the driveway and my heart breaks and sort of spills over. Alone, with babies. There will be twice as much work, and half as much fun. The burden of responsibility for these little lives is suddenly heavy, coupled with the horrible thought… & what if, this time, he doesn’t come home? The world is a treacherous, unpredictable place suddenly, as his car pulls out of the driveway. Even quaint Geneva, where he’ll be this week, feels vulnerable to catastrophe.

This is on a day we now associate with loss, and so it’s not surprising that my separation anxiety is tinged with fear. By the time I’ve reached the bedroom, however, I’m recomposed. The clock has started the countdown for M’s return. I start to sketch a mental list of the week’s tasks. I try to put the worst fears out of my mind. And we march on.

Among the commotion before he left, M. had marked the girl’s height on the wall, writing the date (11 September 2006) next to the line he drew at the top of her head. We marveled that she has grown 1.5 inches since the last measurement four months ago. My God, I had thought, they grow so fast.

M. left. I put the baby to bed and when I returned the girl was feeling rather accomplished. She was still holding the pen in her hand, standing back from the wall to admire. The wall, just moments before a seamless pale orange, was covered with the graceful, effortless lines of, say, Helen Frankenthaler―or maybe the first gestures of a Navajo sand painting (whose aim, after all, is to restore balance and harmony). The lines tapered off to the right into lovely, undulating arcs and spirals―ribbons floating against a late summer sky; an unfettered script across desert sand; or maybe a poem, written by someone who doesn’t know words yet, explaining what this world is all about.

The above image is Helen Frankenthaler's "Gateway" 1988.

today

Drøbok, Norway. Today at 3:20pm. 

Past & Present Scenes in Norway

There is no way to cleanly process the tragedy and horror that happened on Friday here in Norway. So I will, as a friend suggests, just write it out. From the past, I do know that along with the horror, compassion and sadness we feel, a fear, suspicion and dread has entered the blood and soul, and and it will surge. Eventually, the feelings subside, but not entirely. We will be altered, closed down a small bit. Our hearts will be less open than they were before. 

I look out the kitchen window here, on a farm just south of Olso, and study the woods beyond the field, trying to remember what those woods looked like on Thursday, when they didn't seem so ominous. I remind myself what that summer, before Friday at 3pm----that happy, boring, endless-day summer life------was like. 

*

I drove to the airport just north of Oslo yesterday to pick up my husband, who was flying in from New York. As we were returning, my husband's Sister called to say she was setting off to the airport now, to pick up their father, who was flying in from North Africa. An hour later, on the main thoroughfare to Oslo, we got a text from Sister. It said, "So you travel in coat and tie now?"

You see, in Norway, on the nation's major highway, just outside of its capital city, the speed limit is 80kph (50mph), and it is respected. There are two lanes in each direction, and though we were in the slow lane, Sister not only caught sight of her brother passing by, but could see in the car well enough to determinate that he was wearing a coat and tie. 

It didn't strike my mother-in-law as odd when I told her. Ohh yes, she sang, and pretended to smile at my observation, and turned back to stirring the meatballs. 

This is a small country.

*

Who are you calling small? Sister said to the tv when the BBC anchorman referred to Norway as "a small country" on while reporting on the tragedy on Friday, and, probably by coincidence, the news has been on Norwegian channels ever since.

*

Every summer we park the car at the RR station and walk up the steep path to the hytta (cottage) where my father-in-law lived until he was ten. The cottage is in ruins now, but he can still point out the outhouse, and the small creek where they used to get water still passes by. There's even a bicycle rusting against a wall. We pick berries and eat them. It's chilly in the middle of August, so surrounded by pines. The ground is soft. My father-in-law used to walk to school from the cottage, two miles down the hill and into town, even when the snow was this high. This wasn't so long ago, and we are just outside of Oslo. It was after the war, and things were hard for everyone, for a long time.

One night, he was walking home through the woods in the dark. He could hardly see arm's reach in front of him, when he passed another human. he felt the man passing by, neither thought to stop. When he got home, he told his mother about it, and they speculated for some time who the other person might have been. There was no fear at all. He's told the story several times over the years.

*

Sunday evening. All the family is here now. M. has arrived safely from New York, the father from North Africa. Another Brother is here with his wife and children from Oslo, and Sister is here with her boyfriend. It's a zoo. We sit around the big table that was hand-made from a fallen tree at the last house. The house that we are in now was hand built too. The Norwegians are what I imagine the Americans were 150 years ago. BesteMama's meatballs, berries, potatoes, and beer. In an hour everyone will be upstairs again watching the news. But now, we are all coming and going from the table, sibling arguments are heating up, the children rush past----they are pirates with swords----and someone has changed the music to jazz.   

Sunrise, Norway (July 7 2011)

The boy who saved the beach ball

Yesterday, I went to the lake with the children. We drove down the road to town. We passed through town which is mostly just a school, a church at the top of a hill of wheat (where Vikings are buried in mounds by the horse pasture), and a little shop that sells ice cream and bread and we wonder how it survives. Then we pass through more fields under the blue sky---we are listening to 80s American tunes on the radio and I know all the words! Ha ha my kids are amazed--- and through a small the forest where we saw the moose last year, and then there is the lake.

This is thirty miles or so from Oslo, but sometimes, when viewed at a certain angle or caught in a certain light, this place offers the tranquility and stillness of the another era, another time. And then, the light changes or the angle shifts and it's back to iphones and malls and life in the modern world.

It was such a beautiful day yesterday! It was supposed to rain so it was even more preciously gorgeous. It was the first real summer day since we arrived three weeks ago. The sky was endless blue, the girl selling strawberries by the barn was sheltered by an umbrella and a sunhat, and, when we got to the lake, it was hot enough to actually want to swim. We had a picnic and the kids were swimming and time was passing when I heard a child cry. 

The beach is so small and quiet. I love Norway because of its quiet. The swimmers do not yell from the water up to the towel people. Children play well and are addressed immediately if they have a problem. There is no music playing.  Once I heard a mobile phone ring. It's not silent but it is quiet.

So this child's cry. He was three or four years old, standing on the edge of the water, and having quite a fit as his red blow-up beach ball floated away, out around the grass and cattails, out of his reach. Out of his mother's reach too. She took his hand and led him back to the beach towel, she didn't look at anyone, perhaps embarrassed, and got on with things. 

I assume everyone saw the drifting ball. But no one went after it. No one looked at the ball or talked to each other or pointed or anything. Even the swimmers deliberately ignored it. I almost asked my daughter, but thought better of it. They know something perhaps. And that ball was drifting pretty fast. 

After about five minutes, a boy walked decisively into the lake and started to swim after it. He was 14, we later decided. O yes! I thought. He's going after it! I wanted so much for the world to come together like this! I watched him swim. I watched the ball sail further. He kept swimming and the ball kept sailing. He was getting pretty far out. I had stopped watching my kids altogether. Is he going to be ok? Is he being watched by anyone else? No one else on the beach seemed at all aware of this deepening saga. His people weren't nervously looking after him. 

Until his father stepped in and started swimming. Another wave of relief and joy swept through me. He swam hard and the boy swam too----but less so than before, he was really tiring---and the ball was all the over in the reeds by the other shore. But that boy was not going to stop.

The father, the boy, the ball all came together somehow and eventually swam back. When they got out of the water, the boy sort of tossed the ball to the kid. No one said anything and he expected nothing. No one on the little beach acknowledged this heroic deed, though I----the weird American---did kind of smile at him and nodded a little as he passed. 

The boy sat down and breathed heavy for about 20 minutes. The father returned to his newspaper. The mothers continued chatting. I was practically weeping with the joy and beauty and wonder of it all. 

Today, we woke to the most torrential rain. I looked at some photos I took yesterday and couldn't believe it was the same planet. We watched movies and I vacuumed and stared out at the pouring rain wondering where the three weeks went (my husband joins us on Sunday!) and then, when we were all so restless it was too much, we drove to my husband's 92 year old grandfather's (who dresses in a tie and jacket each day for lunch at the elderly center, and still does the snow shoveling) house to pick cherries and raspberries. 

That was about the time that the bombs went off in Oslo. That was about the time that some of the young people on Utoya Island were fleeing across the water. And suddenly, yesterday in Norway feels like a different era----maybe not more peaceful, but more quiet. Suddenly, yesterday feels like a different world.

20 minutes after pruning

Day 12. The reckless (& futile) concerns of my mind have peaked, consumed me, tossed me about like a ship in a hurricane, and then, God bless, subsided. I am free now, at peace, liberated, but I still sometimes sense that there are white shapes moving between the trees... 

The kids come screaming down the hill. Screaming! I am sure that this is it---the leg caught in a tractor; the snake bite; the fall from the barn roof. I hear the screams every five minutes. I hear the screams in my sleep. I am a city mother---I take my child rearing neat, clean and ultra-supervised. Life-on-a-Norwegian-farm-where-diplomats-live? Well it's just so... rustic.

But the children are running, screaming and laughing. Phew, as I stand in the door watching them take the last steps down the hill. Mummy! Mummy! Come see the Smudge Wall by Liv & Haakon!! "Smudge" and "wall"? See? Totally rustic.

We're a cross between our parents and hippies in a tent, sings Greg Brown. I've had that line stuck in my head since my daughter was born seven years ago. And I feel the pull happen again within me as I stand before my children's Smudge Wall: how my mother would respond; how a hippie in a tent would respond. I pause and admire. The drawings are done with magic marker, then smudged with dirty hands. They have drawn frames on the wall around the drawings. I reach through the arbitrariness that is my parenting style---seven years and I'm still waiting for the memo, or the conference, or even the a conversation where it will all be revealed. Then I'll be up to speed. Then I won't feel under-employed. Then I will find such joy in coloring! Then I will bring dinner to the table effortlessly and lovingly. Then I will get in the cold water, and teach them how to swim. Until then, however, I'm a babysitter waiting for the parents to return, and I'm a little pissed off that there's no Diet Coke in the fridge.

"That's cool," I say to my two, proud, mural-smudge-painting children. "You should get the camera and take a picture."

I walk back outside, checking the laundry on the line as I pass. The sheets are dry so I take them down and fold them to make room for the next load. As I finish, I remember I was looking for the clippers to prune the bushes a while ago, before I started the laundry, and the writing, and the outdoor pillow fluffing, and the Sound of Music dance performance watching, which led me to get the boom box out of the barn and hook it up to the ipod and play early Bob Dylan tunes on the back porch. I find the clipper and return to this new art of mine. I think I might be a genius with this pruning thing, and I'm sort of surprised my Norwegian family hasn't commented on my work. I always take care to not cut any flowers or buds---would be like shooting a pregnant deer, I think as I snip away. Although when I'm done, I wonder if it would be generous to shoot the deer, and put it out of its misery.

But it is 12:37pm in Norway and the children have just alerted me that the U.S. President is coming for two hours and he would like some proper music, nothing New York, maybe a disco song. Play that Funky Music comes on. The President will love that song! Haakon says, and so that's decided. But so many more preparations still to complete, oh so much to do.

25 minutes of writing before the children return from the dump

It’s hard to go to sleep when it’s still light out. I stay up every night and sleep all day. It took me seven days to write that sentence. It's hard to write a sentence when you have two children who love you endlessly, unconditionally, joyously, and show it in a way that might seem needy at times. I think T.S. Elliot wrote that. I think e.e. cummings wrote that. I think Bob Dylan wrote that. 

You'll think you don't need to know this, but you must hear about the weather in Norway. It is April in England; it is October in New England; it is July in Norway. I am wearing wool slippers and a sundress as I write.

The most incredible dark thunder clouds will roll in across an innocent afternoon. I run around collecting water guns and discarded shoes, coffee cups, sweaters, newspapers, rakes, wheel barrows and a blow-up shark. Put them all away. The Family doesn't notice me, out of politeness. Everyone steps inside when the rain begins (should we retreat to the cellar? I wonder. Did they hear about the tornado in Mass?).

A few minutes later someone opens a window and lets the light in. A splattering of rain, nothing more. It's about 50 degrees cooler than an hour before. We have dinner----mackeral, boiled potatoes, coffee and strawberries with cream for desert----wonderful---- and the talk is of what? 

I don't know. I catch a word here or there. It is wonderfully bliss to understand nothing. Not many Americans would have the patience, but I find it soothing and lovely these interludes of innocence, and I have never---in years of spending summers here---become irritated or offended by my in-laws. Can you say that?

After dinner, we see BestePapa out the window, crossing the yard. He's carrying a newspaper and heading toward the path that leads to the outhouse. The outhouse is up the hill where a little cottage sits, once used by a great-uncle or someone during the war or something. My sister-in-law is appalled, Is he...? she asks. Oh yes, BesteMama replies.  If you keep the door open while you sit, you can see out all the way to the church steeple in town....

Norway: highs in the low 60s.

We wake up at 11am the children and I, or sometimes 10:30 or even noon, still groggy with jetlag and maybe simply wiped out from a year of New York City noise, buses, subways, rushing, dressing, smiling, worshiping, running, bill paying, forgetting, agonizing, snacking, homeworking, cat caring, doorman hello-ing and the rest. The oddest part of waking up after 12 hours of sleep here is that I feel no remorse. No frustration about how I should be up at 6am out picking berries or building troll huts in the woods. When you are with a five- and a seven-year-old all day every day, in a pure quiet uninterrupted setting, that sort of ambition seems to fall away. You simply become.

The only sound as I write is the birds outside and the scratch scratch scratch of the children's coloring markers.

We have three weeks before Papa and BestePapa join the women here (my sister-in-law and mother-in-law come and go). The forecast shows many days of little suns being cruelly shoved aside by dark, rainy clouds. The highs are in the low 60s. Wetsuits for the sprinkler and the lake are de rigueur.

20 minutes of writing before I walk in Central Park

Many years ago, I was out in a remote part of a remote country in Africa working with a well-known non-government organization. There were five refugee camps scattered south from our compound, and the NGO did health-related work in the camps. But I rarely left the compound because I was doing desk work. 

On Sundays several of us took a long walk out behind the compound for a couple of miles across the savannah. During the week I often went out for shorter walks into the small neighboring villages. One Sunday, no one was around and I went out for a walk into the savannah by myself. I realized as I left that I had forgotten my radio somewhere---which we were required to carry at all times-----but foolishly I brushed it off thinking I would just go a short distance.

I was walking in the baking sun and thinking about Vladimir Nabokov and his wife Vera, how she followed him so kindly everywhere as he chased butterflies. I wondered if they had ever come to Africa because as I walked many little butterflies were fluttering around me.

Then, a series of unfortunate events happened. Three men who I had passed earlier on the path showed up again. I was accosted, they were drunk I now realized. I also realized that I had walked quite far from the road. I knew I was in danger. Soon more men began to arrive.

To this day I am amazed: a self-defense course I had taken five year earlier came back to me, and I carried out the steps by instinct. I was able to intimidate the men----there were more than I care to remember by now----and establish the fact that nothing was going to happen here, and march them, and me, back to the road. A kind but timid teacher also showed up and helped too. Bless that man, he was an angel. When we got back to the road, the village joined into the melee (word spreads fast on a slow day in rural Africa). It was sickening in a different way, a mob-oriented way. But at least I was not isolated and I was getting closer to the compound. Then, miraculously, a truck from the NGO pulled up, and I climbed in, shaking but unharmed.

The other day I was reading some of Nabokov's early letters to Vera in The New Yorker and maybe that's why this incident returned to my thoughts this morning. I was taking a shower when I thought of it. I was in New York City, my husband and children were around, we were off to a ballet class soon. What if that day turned out differently? I wondered. Who or where would I be today? The same life, with darker secrets? Visibly wounded, physically or emotionally? Or maybe, not here at all. 

I am so often in agony over my failures. What is the use of that?