The Flame Tree

Another week goes by

Last Saturday morning I went out for a walk in Central Park. It's rare with all the lessons and family trips and business trips and bad weather, and also with my tendency toward inertia, to go for a walk on Saturday morning, but this morning was too amazing. A force beyond myself pulled me out the door.

The park road is closed to traffic on weekends, and it was already swarming with bikers, walkers, roller bladers, and runners when I arrived. The sky was pale blue; the air clean and sweet as a summer early-morning beach after a night of storm. Sunlight speckled through the new leaves on the trees. It was a gentle, perfect morning light. Everyone was happy. It was Virginia Woolf's morning of the party; it was my grandparents, as children, swimming in the Hudson River off the Palisades. It was the west coast. The morning, so beautiful, was not of this world. Not of this world. I felt like I had been released from a long, sterile winter in a retirement home.

I like to walk. Most people in New York prefer speed---they run or swish by, they bike the entire island and over a bridge and across another borough; they leap tall buildings or swim up the East River and then meet friends for brunch. But for me, it's the beauty of walking. With Bowie, Elvis and Bon Iver on the ipod, sunglasses and a baseball hat---hiding from the world and yet navigating through it---I can walk for hours. There is rarely physical pain or agony in walking. People complain that it's boring, but the tedium is part of its reward: after a mile or so the mind unwinds and enters a rhythm of effortlessness, peace and monotony. Time suspends.

The pedestrian traffic in the park moves in one direction, like a river flowing north. I join the current. Men in their 70s jog past me, pregnant women do too. Very heavy people whose thighs can barely move pass me. The professional runners pass me like a train hurtling by, their wake of energy puls me ever-so-slightly ahead. A group of seven or eight runners pass by, beautiful runners, their steps light and effortless, swift, it is almost flying, like egrets lifting off the shore. 

As I watch the backs of the runners and bikers and bladers who constantly pass before me and then disappear ahead of me, I laugh at a line about Mick Jagger in Keith Richard's recent memoir, Life: "Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years..." I love how the romance of such a grand, fabulous career and life can, in one off-hand comment, boil down to the essence of what work and toil is all about.

*

A week has passed since I wrote the above. I haven't done much with my life.

I can remember the walk from East 86th and York Avenue all the way down to the west village in the 1990s. I did it often from work, passing along the park, through midtown, the quiet zone, until the trees beginning again the village. I remember the hot air off the savannah in Tanzania and the avocado trees at the end of the road in Rwanda. Those luscious cows in Normandy. The drought-stricken fields in Maryland. The weird suburban hills in Kampala. The baby nodding off in his stroller after lunch in Kenya. The bridge to Brooklyn with Star. Norway. A million walks around the resevoir. The waves breaking in San Francisco, and on Long Beach; and in Maine... I remember walking across all these lovely years. The walking, the walking, and all I can think is, where does the time go?

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.

Monday Morning Moment in New York

Another grey, rainy, cold day. People are beginning to look bleak. But New Yorkers of course persevere, and my son and I stood waiting at the bus stop for the public bus this morning. A school bus had picked up some children and was idling on the curb beside us, perhaps ahead of schedule. I hadn't paid it much mind (though I had wondered how our bus was going to pull in...), when it started to slowly pull away and a man walked up to it and tapped on its door. He barked, "driver!" to get the driver's attention and then gestured for the driver to stop.

He was not a very appealing man. He was sane and harmless, someone who makes it to work and pays taxes and makes the world what it is. He was fine. But he was not someone I would be naturally drawn to in a room of many. His black pants were pulled up efficiently. His white shirt tucked in, and brief case well worn---everything about him suggested nothing warm, colorful or witty. His hair was thin, neatly cut; his lips were thin and spiteful. He had a boil by his ear that was not disgusting but did confirm my assumptions about him. There was something furious in his neat appearance. There was no pleasure in his house. He did not dwell in generosity, and here, in middle-age, it was beginning to show. He probably lectured his wife on money. He was often annoyed with people.

He stepped away from the school bus door and walked along the bus to the fourth or fifth window. When he rapped on it---with one finger, hard----the four boys sitting in the bus pulled back as if hit by a sudden wind. He rapped again and mouthed something to one of the boys.

Had the boy forgotten his lunch? The man was determined to get a message across, he mouthed some words again. I wondered if he had come to finish an argument that had started earlier that morning. Perhaps the man had returned to the bus to have the final word with his son. He mouthed some words again, but his mouth moved too fast for anyone to understand. He was keeping the children waiting, I thought, and the traffic behind the bus, and all the parents and children down the avenue too. One selfish act has repercussions---did he get that?----slightly disrupting the morning schedule of many.

Abandoning his attempts to communicate, finally the man pointed to his eye. He mouthed, "I!". He pointed to his heart, "Love!". He pointed to the boy who was sitting in the dark bus, "You!" He lifted up his hand to signal his departure, picked up his brief case and turned to walk down Second Ave. to work.  

Painting by Heather Galler, Saltbox House Landscape (click for more)

 

20 minutes of writing before I pick up my daughter off the school bus

It is 2:25 on a Wednesday, we have just tipped and are on the downward slide to weekend. Weekends make no difference for a mother's working schedule, if anything they are more work, but psychologically something does shift. Somewhere, on Friday evening, someone is having cocktails on the deck overlooking the sea. Somewhere. 

It is pouring rain. In 35 minutes I will leave to pick my daughter off the school bus on First Ave. There are three other mothers who wait with me at the stop, and we chat. One is Italian, one is Irish, one is Japanese and I am American (and the loudest). We still all don't know each other's names or the names of each other's children. It's not much of a small town.

My daughter will get off the bus and hug me and say immediately, "Did you bring a snack?" When I insert a cracker into her mouth it's sort of like feeding the sheep and goats at the Central Park Zoo. They will eat a much as you insert into their mouth, this I'm quite sure. It's a long walk over to First Ave and every day I think: Wouldn't it be nice if I had a Real Job and then I could send someone over to pick up my daughter? But then, walking back together, my daughter talks and talks and talks and talks and though I sometimes don't hear a word she says, I know that I am there. 

I am a housewife on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This morning I bought a replacement sponge for our mop. I had a conversation with the man---who was well-dressed and articulate---about the best sponges and mops. he had opinions (I didn't). On my way home, I had a conversation with the doorman who has been here 48 years, about some of the characters he has known in the building. He has some stories, he says, because there are some real charactahs.... And I believe him. 

Later I had a conversation with the owner of the french cafe on 68th. She is French--looks like a young Meryl Streep. I hadn't seen her since her trip to France---she was glowing, renewed. She said it was 75 degrees every day, and sunny. Like summer! she said in her beautiful French accent. So it is depressing, we agreed, to return here (where I'm wearing the same boots that I wore in January).

Then I went here and there and my father called to say he had received a letter, addressed to me and written in 1982. This is weird because my boarding school recently wrote to me saying the same. What does it mean? What does it all mean?

On the way home I bought two hot dogs with my husband and we ate them by the Whitney Museum. Whoever wants the best hot dog form the nicest hot dog vendor in New York City go to Madison and 74th or whatever cross-street the Whitney is. These vendors----I know----can be real assholes, but this guy is sincerely kind and funny. Sometimes lines of children dressed in school uniforms pass by and say Hi Alex! Hi Alex! And older ladies too always lifting their delicate hands to wave. I often buy lunch from him on my way down Madison Avenue and every time I declare to myself there is no better lunch IN THE WORLD than a New York hotdog and a Diet Pepsi. 

As we ate, my husband told a joke about the IMF guy (you can imagine how the UN people are talking!). Then he said, "Imagine: the Whitney is going to be the MET soon," because the MET has announced its decision to use the building when the Whitney moves downtown in 5 years or so. But I won't be here when that happens, I thought to myself, so I don't have to care. "I'm not crazy about the Whitney anyway," I said. "Too cutting-edge for me." Which is a way to contain the pain of change and separation, I suppose. (I'm actually a member of the Whitney and I love it because, I just do.)

When I returned home it hadn't started to rain yet and George told me about his wife's cousin who got really old and they had to put her away, but O yah then the relatives (his voice hushing) starting coming around, you see. Because she had some coins, that one...

Well what can ya do? he said. What can you do.

Saturday Evening, Moment

Walking home from the library, just before dinner. O yay! Autumn is finally in the air! Six months of laying low waiting for the heat to break, now, here I am, back in my element. All of Madison is people in furry vests and expensive sunglasses. Mercedes, BMWs. What should I make for dinner? Is left-over pizza ok, I think so. I was thinking such things when I came upon a peculiar crowd on 75th and Madison. They were looking up, and I braced myself for the worst. There wasn't the horror or stand-back-please of a place of recent tragedy, but maybe someone balancing on the museum's ledge? What are we waiting for, I whispered to a crowdsman, for when there is a crowd----restrained, cordial, letting the traffic pass and in delightful conversation----I am one to join it. 

"A walker," the man said. "Someone is going to walk down the wall."

This is why I love New York. Because on the way home from the library, thinking about not much and expecting not much either, you come upon a crowd waiting for a man to walk down a wall.

We waited ten minutes and then it happened, and it was beautiful. It was stunning and tearful and beautiful. As he turned over the ledge (held by supporting ropes), he seemed to elongate. He grew longer and longer and then he began to walk. His arms swung slowly by his side. He took tentative steps. He is an artist; he is a dancer, this was a piece for the Whitney Museum. He wasn't a stunt guy or a tightrope walker. He walked like he was taking the first steps on the moon. He walked like he had been in a terrible accident and, after years of rehabilitation was walking again. He walked and he walked and the world turned sideways and the trees were going to poke his nose and the sidewalks went up to the sky and everything fell out of the windows of the sideways buildings and the rivers drained rushing into the bay and the ocean--- and then he reached the bottom of the wall. The crowd applauded and hooted and laughed "amazing!" together. Many people took his picture---he was handed sunflowers, and kissed by a woman----and the crowd began to disperse, and I continued down Madison, and now it's children crying for dinner again.

The Test

It was dark when I woke up the other morning. With the unusual, prolonged heat and humidity through September, I hadn't felt the autumn yet, and so the darkness was reassuring. I made coffee. I stood there in a daze and so it took my breath away to turn and see the sky suddenly white, like seeing a presence that has quietly entered the room. Broad jagged strokes of red cloud spread above the skyscrapers. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning... But I didn't feel nervous, or tired or achey, and I loved the density of peace in the house, with everyone  asleep and together. 

I worry about the fact that I am not working. Always. I am always worried either because I'm not working for money, or not working on writing, or not working at something that I should be working on like reading history, or learning how to fly a helicopter, or being a better person. Is this something I inherited from my Puritan ancestors with their wooden chairs and cruel punishments and fear of God? Well I don't know, but for one precious morning I wasn't worried about working. I was making breakfast, I was dressing reticent children, I was shooing them out the door, and then I was finding a way to get through the day.

Nothing was wrong. I knew that. I knew it in my heart. But I didn't have much to do until the doctor's at 2pm, so I went out to buy an appointment book. I walked down Park Avenue and wondered if there was a time when people did this, went out to buy an appointment book, those simple times when technology had much less of a hold on our lives, and when you went to the doctor for a cough, you either you got better or you died. A friend called while I was at the shop and we had a reassuring conversation about nothing. I remembered on the way home to get my phone fixed. I remembered, as I was walking, to breathe. You have to just breathe. You know nothing is wrong---they probably call back something like 60 percent of the women---some ridiculous number like that. But still, it's better to breathe, and not think about it.

I walked home up Fifth Avenue. The sun came through the trees and speckled the sidewalk. Doormen were washing the sidewalk in front of their buildings. The morning was sunny and fresh and the smell of damp cement reminded me of childhood swimming pools. A few weeks ago, the children and I would go to the park on those hot, hot days and they jumped through the sprinklers. That was so nice, I thought, and I knew it was nice at the time too. But now maybe such days are over. This is possible, I warned myself, and I actually felt a moment of peace with that.

I had two more hours. It was a sunny day and all the people in New York were going here and there. And I will tell you this: time was not moving. I wasn't exactly worried, but you see, I have children and they are still so young. And also if, just if, there is something---and all that---how foolish I will feel for wasting my previous life with all these silly, petty concerns that I am always harboring. "I know, I know," I would say to my friends. "I used to be upset about work, and now there's this..."

I took the bus but the traffic was horrible on Madison so I got out to walk and now, after waiting all day, I would be late. They kept me waiting in the waiting room. They kept me waiting in the dressing room. They kept me waiting before and after the scans (there was something about the technician's sigh that I did not like.) (Although, I reasoned, it was about 3 o'clock, the time of day for sighing.) (And a professional, certainly, would not sigh if she saw something wrong...) (Or maybe it was very bad, and she knew the doctor would dread this one...) With every moment that passed my hope withered, my vision narrowed, my stomach clenched, my mind reeled. You see I knew I was fine but... Well, what if the doctor had something difficult to tell me and he was putting it off, pretending to be busy in his office? 

Finally he called me into his office, and there I entered a NASA command center. I felt privileged, suddenly, to be here. I felt I was part of a highly-intelligent team. It was dark and warm and the room seemed to hum. In front of us, two large screens each projected an orb of beautiful, abstract, white, cloudy constellations and stars and planets and there, along the edge, something like the Milky Way. Four smaller screens to the left depicted blue distant murky swamps, and I remembered the unbelievable first wonder of seeing the sonograms of my babies. It was peaceful in the dark room with the reassuring doctor who pointed to the renditions of outer space, and explained why he had been concerned, and why, of course, it was all fine now. But I was hardly listening. I couldn't take my eyes off the infinite beauty. The infinite, glorious universe---all contained in the scan of a woman's breast. It was all there: God's wonder; Gods inter-connectedness of life; life.

 Above image: Charles Burchfield (1893-1967)  September Wind and Rain, 1949

April was a journey back

There was something about last month---oh you vicious little April---that reminded me of an overland trip I took years ago from Boston to a remote village in Guatemala. There were many diversions on that journey, it grew increasingly hot and humid, I didn't really know where I was going, or why I was going there. It had a lot of texture, that journey. I set off in a car with a boyfriend. After crossing several weeks, and much varied landscape and personal drama, I arrived, by bus without the boyfriend, at a little pension in the remote village in time for lunch.

There were mattresses in the bright, hot courtyard; many cats lounged on the mattresses. I was the only foreigner in town. The bus had ascended out of Quetzaltinango and was soon passing pine trees, which felt sadly familiar to me, alone on that bus. After lunch I started walking out of town. I followed a dirt road up a formidable hill. I reached the top and looked down at the valley. Across the valley, someone was playing a Simon and Garfunkel song on the marimbas. I came all this way to hear Simon and Garfunkel? I wondered. I stood at the top of the hill looking at the life and the beauty in the valley, thought about some things, then turned around; descended the hill to the pension with the cats; spent the night; and the next morning began my return trip back to Boston.

It's shame that flight has obliterated the slow, thoughtful arc of travel from one place to another. It was such a shock to deplane in tropical back-water Uganda, for example, having lifted off a Newark tarmac less than 24 hours previous. It took weeks to adjust to the brutal change in temperature and disposition. But the feeling of arrival in Central America, having never lifted off the earth----well, there was no feeling of arrival, really. More a continuous series of steps, without beginning or end. Yes, the gradual shifting of climate, and human disposition and style and even language---never feeling totally severed from the folks back home---feeling the connection of it all, is really something worth knowing.

And that was April, the journey from one land to another, without having ever left the ground. We embarked with the best intentions. The solemn beauty of Holy Week. We painted eggs! and watched the seals at the zoo. And received flowers and the most decorous party hats. Many cupcakes. Many circuses---elephants danced and humans did flips on wire. We crossed hill and dale. It was overcast. It was so windy it was painful to walk up the street. It became very dark. I couldn't see anything. Everyone was very sad until one day we arrived at the street where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. Gorgeous. It went from freezing rain to sweltering heat wave. A man in a booth told our fortunes for a quarter. We were very tired of traveling. Everyone was speaking a different language, that was disorienting. The horses seemed perhaps a bit abused. The tigers in the cages---don't they make you sad? Don't you long for a prehistoric time when tigers reigned free? And the children from China and West Africa doing contortions--they're smiling, but something feels off. And then it was raining again, and the umbrellas were gone where we had left them, and more disturbing the three year old boy was not in his bed. There he is, asleep on the bathroom floor! Will this month ever end? Will we ever arrive? With all the ladies lunches and blood donations and picnics in the park---with the mad woman tossing plates of lettuce---and it is still sweltering. A tank filled with sharks, beach sand on the apartment floor, sunburns. Perhaps it is July? Did I miss something? Did I actually not get out of bed, were the cherry blossoms all a dream?

And then, my word, May Day arrives. Make a wish. Make a list. Shhh listen,----is that a Simon and Garfunkel song playing in the park? Think some thoughts. We made it, destination-less. Turn around. Start the journey home.

To Survive in the Universe

Last Friday afternoon, with nothing to do and even less to lose, the babe (who is almost three) and I had a date at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was wearing his pirate outfit---little, blue silk, Chinese shirt-and-pant pajamas that were a gift from friends who lived there. He carried his pirate flag, a white napkin attached to a wooden spoon by an elastic band---an item with which he does not separate. And so in the spirit of his warrior ways, I took him to the Arms & Armor Collection. Can you imagine? Life-size men on life-size horses---covered top to bottom in intricately etched steel armor complete with jaunty bursts of feathers atop the helmets---march down the center of the hall. Glass cases bristle with swords of gold, sabers studded with diamonds and gems, daggers embedded with rubies, the hunting guns of kings, and even two Flintlock pistols of Empress Catherine the Great. We were impressed. We were, the babe and I agreed, also relieved that the ancient Japanese warriors, spooky and ogre-like, were safely contained behind glass walls---and would not, we reassured each other repeatedly, even come into our rooms at night.

Though many of the pieces displayed were intended for tournament, you can't help but imagine the armor-clad mannequins coming to life and making that crunching, horsey-clomping sound as they clump-clump across great sweeping fields to attack, by hand, the enemy---defending their women,  their honor, their country and their Queen.

My little Bubba, in his sweet embroidered Chinese pajamas, the napkin of his wooden spoon flag dragging behind him, was in awe, and I was thinking of him later that night as M. and I took a cab home from the Israeli film Dancing with Bashir. In the cab, coming home from the film, I was not in awe of battle anymore. I was slumped, heartbroken in a way I have started experience in glancing moments: for what if someday, (it is very possible) my son is taken off to war?

The film is animated---a collage of interviews with those who were young soldiers in the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Their stories and dreams come alive in animation as they talk. But these are not boasting accounts; their voices are detached, weary and defeated. The film is drenched in a sort of golden-yellow. It's sad. In the recollections, the young men hide in their tanks, swim all night to  escape the enemy, or dance with machine guns firing through the urban streets. Something about the film's animation, perhaps, makes the young soldiers seem so... accessible, so personal---just young guys (regardless of heritage or nationality) trying to process the horror of the atrocities happening around (and sometimes because of) them.

My heart was still a bit heavy on Saturday at the Museum of Natural History. The babe---no longer a babe really, but a little boy, isn't he?---was still carrying his wooden-spoon pirate flag, and was delighted by the Butterfly Conservatory. He was impressed by the magnificent blue whale hovering over the Hall of Ocean Life. But it was bordering on nap time when we went to the Cosmic Collisions film at the planetarium, and when the first meteor sailed across the dome above us, he declared he was ready to go. I took him out and pushed him in the stroller up and down the ramp that wraps around the planetarium so he could fall asleep.

We went up and we went down and we went up again along a pathway (I soon realized) that was guiding us along cosmic evolution since the beginning of time 13 billion years ago. I had to keep the rhythm of the stroller moving, so I could only read a sentence here and there, and the quasars caught my eye. "Newborn galaxies" I read, and passed by and read again, and passed by and read again.  "Newborn galaxies," I thought. How sweet.

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet," says Steven Hawking.* Oh theoretical physicists, how I share your concern! And just how many accidents can befall life on a single planet? The answer, if you are a mother, is: quite a few. A chill can become pneumonia; a dispute can become a war that can demand my son's life; a meteor (as if there wasn't enough to worry about) could land in Central Park tomorrow. The web page (not Hawking) continues:

The Universe is enormous, and people are incredibly insignificant in the infinite space, full of unknown dangers. From this point of view, all our mutual rivalries appear at least ridiculous.

Well (and now I must end this rambling, where-am-I-going-with-this? tune)... well, there's that. From another point of view---say from the perspective of a newborn galaxy, for example---these warriors and wars, these rivalries and fears... appear, at least, ridiculous.

* From "To Survive in the Universe", a rather unexpected catagory on the website www.sky-map.org.

The Endless Starting Over

It is sort of hard to comprehend---to really, fully believe---that last year on this day we were----due to The Violence and the looting and the burning and the strife and the anger and the frustration and the sadness over Kenya's rigged elections----restricted to our neighborhood and homes. The Kenyans were rioting, the slums were burning, rumors of  a coup, war and genocide were rife. Everyone had an opinion, but no one knew anything for sure. I was at home making coffee and wondering, just wondering, what it would feel like to skin our pet rabbit for soup, as the few remaining open stores were quickly running out of provisions and all in-roads to Nairobi were blocked. I was not fearing for my life, no. We felt assured that, should it come to the worst, the UN would evacuate us. (Though that in itself was a source of stress---the ever-predicament of expats working in an emergency: for what would become of our Kenyan friends and staff?)

It did not come to the worst. Within six weeks, the Violence and looting and burning and strife---perhaps less so the anger and frustration---had been quelled, and normal life resumed. We did not eat the rabbit. We did even go hungry, or have to defend ourselves against marauding gangs of youth. Many people did, however. Many Kenyans died, and many more were displaced from their homes and regions, and it was horrible and awful; the waves it created will continue to crash across the country now and for years to come, no doubt. But, on the surface at least, daily life resumed---those pyramids of tomatoes at the markets were built, those matatus driving recklessly careened past, those streets lined with Kenyans continually walking somewhere were filled.

Perhaps new growth has sprouted from the embers of so much violence, I don't know. When I was in Rwanda four years after its genocide, I was struck by the Rwandans ability to move on. But it was not necessarily a noble or courageous move: dwelling on past injustice is a luxury that people who live in survival mode simply can not afford. In Uganda, I sensed the same. Repress the past, bury the dead, the abuses, the thefts and lies. Bury them deep, rise up again, and move on. "The endless sweeping of debris. The endlesss starting over" I wrote at the time.

It is snowing this morning in New York City. We live here now. The year was a year of transition---the first six months packing up, giving away, letting go, retreating, pulling back, saying goodbye. There was a pause, a lull, it lasted a few days or a week. And then the second six months: a resurgance, a moving forward and accumulating, introducing, building, growing outward...

You know, I grew up on a peninsula surrounded by ocean. In the summers, the sound of ocean tides rushing up and retreating back entered the screened windows on every side of the house. Many years later, when I was giving birth to my son---an 11 pound bubba, if ever there was---my mind carried itself to the beach down the road from this childhood home, where it dwelled quite peacefully as the body raged and heaved. And so there my mind lingered---miles away from the gurney and beeps and monitors of birth---in the still cove where we used to gather sanddollars at low tide. (I confess, the image of a moon snail was hovering around as well.) The endless expanse of shallow water when the tide was low was a like a moon-scape of exploration for us children. The waves were tiny, protected by the cove; the sea was never threatening or intimidating here. And then the tide would begin to rise, to the knees, the thighs, the waist---soon up against the stone wall along the back of the beach as the whole end of the beach submerged under the tide and disappeared. We took the rowboat out, the water was deep. People water-skied past. And the baby was born, one creature became two. The nurses marveled at his Bubba-ness. A new life! A new life, a new tide----the endless sweeping of debris, the endless starting over.

Today, out the window of library where I'm writing, snow flurries fall and lift and fall again against the brick building across the street. It is beautiful and perfect. I miss my friends in Kenya with a longing and aching that is hard to explain; I miss my life there terribly. But my daughter has adjusted to her new school; my son has accepted the sensation of snow when it falls on his nose. We are moving on, a new life! The library is quiet today, two other women are working in this room. There is an unspoken respect among us: three souls in a library on New Year's Eve morning. If asked to define my perfect moment, it may as well be this one.

Happy New Year, dear readers. May 2009 be a fine year for you. Love, Emilie.

(The above image is by Blue Mcdonnell, an artist working in Europe. Additional prints and images can be seen on his website:  http://www.bluemcdonnell.com )

The Length of a Day

Waking every day, it is pretty much the same. Murky first-thoughts scan through a checklist: family ok... health ok... weather fine... president-elect promising----it is all fine and it comes with great relief. Gratitude and relief. The day begins. But then, the mind (waking now) like an inch worm seeking its next little stretch forward, prods, prods---and finally lands---ah yes, something is off. Something is not right. What was that tarnished thing.... That thing... Oh right, the argument.

Over nothing, naturally. But there nonetheless, taking up space, hovering from the previous evening. Lurking. A snag in an otherwise smooth mood, and a vague tension will fill the morning. It is very rare, maybe it happens three times a year. It is vague and rare, but excruciating. We both hate it. We tru to act natural for the sake of the children.

What was it about, now I can't even remember. And more demanding matters dominate the agenda by breakfast: the birthday party, the gift we must find by noon when we will meet the others at Grand Central to take the train out of town. A train! A real train! As if the excitement of a birthday party isn't enough, we stir up the children with this.

In the shower, I work on ways to make it not my fault. It doesn't work. There is no way around it, I was wrong. I am wrong. I am to blame. I dress, and take the girl out to find a present.

It is freezing, but we love passing the pine trees that lean against the Armory waiting for a home. The streets are quiet this freezing Saturday morning, the world feels exclusive and so does the drug store. The staff, usually indifferent and invisible, are actually giddy. We are the only customers until an elegant old man comes in too. A woman setting up a perfume sample table says to another staff who is hovering by the display, "Don't touch the goods, baby. Don't touch the goods." He laughs. Someone helps us with a ladder to reach the box of red Christmas balls. You can't believe how cheap everything is! The girl is old enough to explore alone and looks for birthday cards while I pile up decorations. Christmas lights $3! Ribbon galore $5!

Her little gloved hand in mine, walking home. I want to hold this little hand forever. She is leaping and skipping and talking non-stop. I want her to have a birthday party every weekend. Oh how I want her to be this happy, always. But that would not be natural, and so for now I share in her delight for this one party---while one sinister finger of the mind still pokes, Why did I say such a thing? Will he ever forgive me?

There were stretches of time in Kenya when we attended a birthday party every weekend. We would almost grow tired of them. I even had the audacity to decline a few. Not so here. We are still strangers in this new city; maybe even lonely, if we didn't have each other. But we do, we do have each other! We are not lonely. This is a miracle to me every day---my current New York life always informed by my past New York life when I lived here a decade ago, when I was invited to parties but always, always alone. This is our first birthday since we left Kenya six months ago. The girl spends an hour wrapping the gift, decorating it meticulously, writing a long letter in the card and then wondering what more she can do.

Lunch is not hectic. We have time---we shouldplan to leave by 11:30. The babe is asleep---the perfectly planned nap. The father is reading upstairs. I am the temperamental one in the family; I am the creator of moods and drama here. I don't' know what to do when someone else is annoyed. I don't know what to do. How does one apologize? Have you tried it lately? My God, it is so hard.

I try. It comes out scratchy and awkward, but it is sincere. And he---the most amazing husband---is forgiving. The day takes off now. It is a careening forward time---wake the babe, gather the gift, the coats hats gloves scarves, potties everyone! Potties! Yes! Yes! We're taking the train! Now put on your shoes. Let's go, we're late!

How is it possible that I spend the whole morning preparing, and we are still late getting out the door? We take a taxi instead of walking. "It's all the things that have to be done at the last minute," my daughter's friend's father reminds me. "The dressing, potty, all that stuff. It all has to be done last-minute, no matter how you prepare." It's the obvious that I miss, but anyway we've made it: we're all together on the train. The parents I have never met, five little children dressed for a party. The Japanese grandmother. We are all here, the gift, the snacks, the lunch for the babe. So why do I have only one ticket? How is it possible that I lost a ticket between the ticket booth and the train?

The father has no answer for that, as the train propels us off into another world. "Look at the buildings! Look at the trees!" The kids, who have not left Manhattan since we moved in September 6th, are watching it pass almost in awe. Had they forgotten this other world existed? This world beyond.

I still live with an oddness that I can't seem to shake. Sometimes it's like a dream-state. I am back home after seven years in Africa. Everyone speaks English, everyone. But I chose my words carefully with the Canadian wife, because she may not understand slang-y English. This is absurd, I know, but I can't seem to loosen my tongue and talk like I do with my husband or sister. The husband attended my high school's rival (how does this come up? O yes, talking about schools for the children). This strikes me as amazing. Shocking! No one has even heard of my school----but no, wait. We are home now, on a commuter train out of Grand Central. And many lawyers in New York will have heard of my high school, or are at least more likely to than an English or Danish acquaintance in Kenya. Greeted at the station, I see we are still in America. There is a paved parking lot and a beautiful late-autumn grey sky. It is a cold day. We are picked up by lawyers driving BMWs. The neighborhood is in America too. I explain to my driver that we have recently moved from seven years in Africa, and the fact that neighborhoods keep happening (not just one, isolated nieghborhood---within our gates) is startling to me. He smiles nicely, but doesn't really get it. Neighborhood after neighborhood; paved roads leading to more paved road; people speaking English to other people speaking English. Everyone like me.

The birthday house is one hundred years old. It smells like the house where I grew up; the stairs are steep and creak. Lots of little rooms connect. The women all sort of look like me and talk like me. But they are lawyers, not like me. This is how my life would be if I lived in America, I think to myself. But I do live in America, and this is my life.

And so the afternoon passes.

It is the perfect party. The children are entertained by an wildlife conservationist. She brings out turtles from Africa, lizards from South America, a duck from New Hampshire. The animals all have stories. The parents lean against the kitchen counters drinking the best wine. (But I wasn't going to drink after last night's little episode. It is wine that can be so vicious---the first glass smoothing the edges of so many little insecurities, the second bringing them back up to bear under a glaring, ruthless light). The corporate lawyers talk about lay-offs. The defense lawyers talk about politics. The... but I lose interest. It's not my language anyway.

It's dark when we go. They have to practically pry us lose. We love these people! These people are who my friends would be if I lived in the States! (And I sigh here, confessing---it's confusing). The hostess---it is her warmth and grace that has made the afternoon so harmonious. Her husband is a generous wine-pourer. Over 20 children and as many parents in this little house, and not one poked-out eye! The way the light fills the little house at this darkening hour reminds me of my childhood home. Outside there is a huge neighborhood pine tree all lit up for Christmas.

The children will fall asleep on the train, I am sure. But they don't. Instead, they play together quietly. I can't stop staring at the four teenagers---two couples---across the aisle. Blond robust suburban girls constantly fiddling with their cell phones; their slumped boyfriends, baseball hats is all I remember. I can't stop staring! This is a world I will someday have to negotiate, from the sidelines. The girl will someday want to take the train into the city for dinner with her friends. She will maybe have a purse like that girl's purse. Do you think those girls have sex with their boyfriends? Oh yes, I think so. The girl facing me senses that I'm staring and I figure out a way to watch her in the reflection of my window. She argues with her mono-syllabic boyfriend. "I pay for everything" she says to him. "And you never even say 'thank you'. But whatever." He just slumps. Who cares, I think to myself. He doesn't care. He's 18 years old and having sex with you. The guy doesn't care about anything else! Where in the world do they find a place to have sex? I wonder. Someday I will tell my daughter to not pay for everything. This train takes forever, but the conductor believed my story about the lost ticket and we didn't have to pay twice.

Then it is gorgeous Christmas-y Grand Central Terminal, laaaaa la la la la la LA la. Then home, then dinner. The children are still a delight! They rush in to tell Agnes about their adventures---trains and snakes and ice-cream cake and Lego's! Our apartment does not have a wine cellar, I now realize. We do not have an hour commute to the city on the train, and we don't have a BMW. I loved the three steps up to the front porch at that birthday house, but I will never be a lawyer. Our life here seems so simple, suddenly. So wonderfully simple.

Graze Quietly

 

During my 7 years living in East Africa, I became very loving of America. You can really discover love for America when you live somewhere else. So I grew to love America, which made the erosion of its beauty---the erosion of its landscape, its government, & the freedom of its people----even more painful to witness. There was also this: everyone I met in East Africa, or Norway or France or South Africa or India or anywhere I went, was disappointed and sickened with the American administration and it was (I realise now) sort of draining to walk around the planet feeling embarrassed and apologetic. It is a new feeling----this joy, this patriotism. I sense so many people trying to process it. Several have described it as a post-election hangover. We are almost paralyzed with relief.

*

Alice Walker writing to Obama, warned him to also make time to relax during his new job. She writes, "...One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone."

*

Success, an inside job. Graze quietly.

The painting "Graze Quietly" is by Cheryl Warrick. See her work here.

The unbearable beauty of change

Many years ago I was on a very long bus ride. On the second or third night, somewhere in Alabama or maybe Mississippi---somewhere around there---a woman boarded the bus with her daughter who was probably around two years old. The woman was rather awful. She was fat and ugly and mean looking, and she yelled at the daughter and shoved her around as they boarded and as she put her bags away and sat down. She was abusive. Her daughter was quiet and passive. No one on the bus said anything, but everyone was very tense. I could feel the tension and the dread and the hope that it would just end. It was late at night when they boarded, the woman eventually settled down and a sense of relief happened as everyone dozed off.

A few hours later, early the next morning, it was time  for them to get off. The woman began yelling at her daughter again, pushing her and telling her to hurry up and do this and that. I couldn't take it anymore and I uncharacteristically offered to carry the daughter, so the mean lady could carry the bags. But when I picked up the girl, a very strange thing happened. The girl reached for her mother. She continued to fret and keep her mother in view until we got to the platform. I had assumed, of course, that the girl would cherish the few moments of peace, or welcome a respite from the constant abuse. But naturally, she reached out for this horribly abusive woman instead. The woman was, after all, mother---the girl's protection, no matter how stressed. She was what the girl knew; a stranger carrying her off, no matter how gently, was the Great Unknown.

What I believe---and this is just what I believe---is that sometimes the unknown can be so scary that we choose instead to live in an imperfect known. I believe that we instinctively want to resist change in our lives (especially as we get older). We do not change our circumstances, our habits, our desires, no matter how destructive or painful that are, because they are familiar and predictable, and breaking out into new territory---well, it can be messy, and who knows what lurks in the unknown.

It was interesting when we moved back to the US this summer and everyone was talking about Change. We were in the midst of our own personal change, and I was dwelling on the subject. My life in Kenya was not abusive, by any means. Nor is my new life in New York the scary unknown. But making a change in my life created upheaval. It's been totally cool and exciting to start a new slate, set out in new directions, dream of new opportunities. But it's also been difficult, draining, alienating and lonely as hell. 

So this is what I am telling you now: following through on Change---going from the familiar into the unknown---is extremely hard. It is heady and thrilling, it is scary and unpredictable. It is uncomfortable. It forces you to examine yourself, your habits, your desires. To make a change, you can no longer hide in your routine. Sometimes you have to say goodbye to certain people. Sometimes you have to relinquish things that bring you pleasure. Making a change in your life will even remind of you of the ultimate change, which is death. And that's totally creepy.

Yesterday, we voted for Change. But if the government is the representative of the people, then that change has to begin with the people. With you, with me. That means my actions this morning, and what I choose to do this afternoon. That means, I believe, the coffee I order to take away instead of putting the $2 into savings. The taxi I hail instead of walking. The vacation I plan to take, instead of staying at home and looking out my own window at all the splendors of life that are actually right here before me.

I prefer these stormy rainy violent days to almost any other in New York---the traffic lights reflecting off the avenues, the steam on the windows, the respite in a bookstore or cafe. The rain and cold, everyone bent forward under umbrellas, obliterates the present day and, for now, it is another time---men in hats, cocktails at lunch, the sound of typewriters clicking in offices, and jazz in the evening. I tend to romanticize the past, but today is nice too. Everyone is speaking French and Italian in the cafe, and the old men are dressed elegantly and take an hour to drink an espresso. Umbrellas lean against the door. The wind blows in when the door opens. We are all here together waiting for something, no one can say what. No one seems rushed.

Coming home, I didn't have an umbrella and a man invited me under his while we waited for the bus. Oh you are a kind soul, I said as I ducked under. I never saw his face because we were huddled and the slanting icy rain kept us turned inward. Have you ever let a stranger in under your umbrella? That is an act of faith, a tiny bit of relinquishing, an offering---one of a million small, kind gestures that happen every day here.

still seeking solid ground

This morning at breakfast---that hectic bombardment of the day that pummels me each morning like tsunami--I wondered, Does Agnes know? "Agnes," I asked, "Are you aware that M. doesn't have work today and there's no school for the girl? It's some weird UN holiday that no one else has..."

"It's Eid," my crisp and intelligent (even at 7am) husband said. "That 'weird UN holiday'... is Eid.

"And by the way," he added, "the Sarah Palin people called. They need help with the campaign and were wondering if you were available."

No comment.

We had been planning, for this "weird UN holiday", to go to the Statue Made of Liberty (and I quote the girl here, though admit she gets her precision from her mother). But somehow it's 3pm and that hasn't materialized. Instead, M. and the girl are out at a Cost Co warehouse in Queens as I write, and M. just called asking how much bacon he should buy. I would love to go the Statue Made of Liberty and see what emotions come up, and stand facing the wind and dwell on this great country and how a man with (however distant) Kenyan origins can run for President, and how a woman who is sort of a housewife can negotiate our intricate and subtle Russian relations by looking out her Alaskan kitchen window.

*

And there goes another day. That was all yesterday, now it's today. No longer Eid, alas, and my blog post is out of date.

Seeking solid ground

It is Friday morning and pouring rain. Against the darker brick buildings I can see its slanting. It poured rain all night. I awoke anxious about it, the way I used to in Kenya and Uganda. In Kenya and Uganda I would lie awake worrying about all the unprotected souls out there, sleeping in damp huts on eroding hills, sleeping in slums. Here, I suppose I awoke out of habit, and wondered (the rain was very intense) if the entire island of Manhattan would sink into the ground. Every day we see guys from electric companies or construction companies opening trap doors in the sidewalks and streets and going down into the ground. I spend my days with a two year old boy, and none of this escapes us. He asks What's down there? Subway trains and commuter trains, I say, and elaborate electric systems and I guess water pipes and waste drainage and probably secret CIA rooms filled with technology and cans of tomatoes for post-apocalyptic situations and I'm wondering---or at least last night at 3AM as the rain saturated the city---if there's any original earthy foundation left under there. It seems there is an entire second city, subterranean, as deep into the ground as the city is high, and as intricate, mirroring the one we know.

New city, new life, new vision, New York

We made it. By air and by sea and by land, over hill and dale, through thick and thin, in sickness and in health. It took two months, about a billion dollars, and a bottomless well of support, love, patience and generosity from our friends and, especially, our families. Thank you everyone, and stay tuned for ruminations about the sometimes surreal transition from the highlands of East Africa to the Upper East Side of New York City.

hello goodbye

Years ago, my friend's mother was part of a local theater group. I think they were a group of friends or maybe they became friends through the troupe; maybe they met once a week to entertain themselves or maybe they put on shows for others, I don't know. One day, years ago, this friend called to tell me that her parents (her mother of the theater group) were getting divorced. This came as very shocking and sad and disorienting news, as any divorce is, but in this case particularly so because we all loved the couple and the family and had thought the family would go on together for ever and ever.

This theater group did something around that time that I think of often. I wasn't witness to it, my friend told me about it later. One evening during the time of the divorce, my friend's mother came to her theater group and they sat her down and said they were going to do a show just for her.

They silently came together and held hands in a circle and then they let go and together began to build a structure. They worked in silence, with care and attention to their gestures and movement. They piled chairs on top of a table, and maybe a shelf on top of the chairs, and perhaps a rug or a plant or some pots or keys on top of that. Actually, I'm not sure the objects that were used, but I remember my friend mentioning chairs certainly.

When it was finished they paused and appreciated what they had built. Maybe they stood there for a while, I don't know. And then slowly, they began to dismantle the structure. I'm going to assume that they dismantled it with sadness and a heavy heart, but working together meticulously and with care and attention. It's more dangerous, after all, dismantling a structure like that. It could all come crashing down and really hurt someone, and everyone is distracted by sadness and maybe not working together as well. it takes great concentration and certainly depletes one's emotions.

So yes, this small theater production that my friend described to me almost 20 years ago has remained with me and often explained life to me. Is life not always a process of building structures with the materials you have at hand, with the people around you? And then---like the moment an ocean's tide changes from full to retreating---it is time to shift, and begin to dismantle. It happens in a big way (building a new family together, and then, over tine, breaking apart); it's happening in little ways (a project at work starting, overwhelming, then coming to a close).

Last week, a great tide shifted in our life. Seven years of building a life here---first in Uganda, then in Nairobi---the constant moving forward, the constant moving in, the career building, the baby making, the wall painting and bill paying and the community we love---all the daily work and decisions we constantly make to contribute to all of this, suddenly peaked. The moment came when it was time to begin dismantling. In a few months, we're off to New York City to start a new contract, and to begin to build a new structure.

It's a pretty tricky time. I'll be writing about it I'm sure.

David Hockney, Garrowby Hill (1998)