Tuesday, November 28, 2017

A Knee on Ice

I'm laid up on my couch with a glass of wine and an ice pack. On Friday, one hand in Scott's and the other hand hanging on to my stepson-to-be, grinning while trying to pull both along the just zamboni-ed ice, I fell and landed, full-force, on my left knee. At first I laughed, but as I shakily skated over to the side of the rink and caught my breath, shock hit my gut. I almost puked from pain. I tried to skate around the rink a couple times with little relief; I had to go sit in the bathroom and wait for the adrenaline-y nausea to pass.

The skating was part of a day off from cooking four of the five days of my break. For the first part of break, I worked at a tick-tock rhythm to make sure a Thanksgiving feast for the five of us was on the table Thursday; then, on Saturday and Sunday it was waves of tasks to fill the chest freezer with leftovers: a rich carcass stock, a couple turkey lasagnes of fresh spinach pasta sheets, freezer bags of meat packed in its own drippings, turkey pot pie. And then, back to work.

I mourned leaving my house to limp back to work on Monday. I sincerely love my job. But, I also love my home and feel like I get to spend so few days enjoying what it provides me. It felt good to stretch my cooking muscles this weekend, to put together a whole spread with all the parts that hopefully complement each other. But I don't have a single winter vegetable in the ground, and I still haven't built the gopher-wire lined beds that I will need for any of the good things my hands itch to grow. I haven't placed an order for the couple bareroot trees on my list. My kitchen gets some of my attention at least; my garden gets too little of it.

This weekend, before my fall on the ice, Scott and I had a half an hour or so to fix a leak in the roof. We climbed up a borrowed ladder, helping each other make that last stretch between the top step of the ladder and the edge of the flat roof. When we finished tarring the seam, I didn't want to crawl down. The city sprawled out like a jewel box in front of us, from Twin Peaks on the left edge of the view, a tiny corner of The Golden Gate peaking over hills, Bernal up close, The Mission tucked behind it, then The Castro and The Haight, the Park. In the distance straight ahead, the Marin Headlands. And scanning to the right, all of downtown, the Bay Bridge and Treasure Island. Oakland. Seeing it all nearly gives me goosebumps each time, and it's the view I get from not just the roof, but the backyard, too. It's my gardening view.

Tonight, as I sit here with ice on my still very sore knee, a book and a computer, I'm skipping out on something I really enjoy—my weekly Tuesday night date with a pottery wheel—but I need the book and the computer more tonight. I need to not leave my house. I need to be close to my own kitchen, to have my dog at my side, to look out my window to the distinct view that my house offers of the city. I need to sink into my home and place that order for fruit trees. I can't dig a garden bed because my body still hurts too much. But I can plan. I can dream. I can be inspired by the words of others who are writing up feelings I understand so well.

This is what happens to a cook when she spends so many hours gaping at the contents of the pan before her, waiting for doneness. It's not unlike the way a gardener watches her tomatoes ripen. Both end points mark the moment at which a vegetable contains as much liquid sweetness as it ever will. When perfectly cooked, a wedge of white turnip will drip juices as if its light purple veins run with fat, and its tissue will soften and taste like butter. On the raw side of things, an utterly ripe tomato at the end of August swings low on its vine, opalescent and suntanned gold at the shoulders, its voluptuous flesh nearly falling out of its skin. 
To me, becoming a cook meant being able to spot that point and know the time came to stop—to pull it, slice it, and put it on a plate. Raw or cooked, that is the vegetable finale. And to me . . . it looks pretty much like happiness itself.
Amy Thielen, Give a Girl a Knife 

Friday, October 13, 2017

Me and Eustace

I’ve struggled with my faith for decades. There have been times in which I have had a hard time believing there was a God.

Here’s a little background. For fifteen years, I was a member of a church in southern California. I loved a lot of the messaging, but the longer I was a member, and the harder I worked as I became more and more involved with the leadership of the church, the more frustrated I became. This lovely old building housed a community that had become consumed with only the well-being of the lovely old building. All of the church’s efforts were either to preserve the building or bring more people to the building. When I left that church, I left believing that a church was not a place for me to find God.

A couple years after leaving the church, my life changed dramatically. My husband received a job offer that he couldn’t turn down, and we decided together to move north. We sold the place I had bought when I was 25 and the house we had bought together when I was 33. I left the school where I had worked for over 17 years and entered into an uncertain job market. We left our strong group of friends, a collection of supportive neighbors, and all sense of stability.

We left what was comfortable and we stepped into the new. In this new life, my husband soon decided he wanted to become someone different, someone who didn’t have room in his life for me. He left. In this new life, I lived in a rental that never felt like home and didn’t have a garden—to those of you who know me, this is like missing a limb. In this new life, I didn’t find myself in the classroom, but in a library, and in an interim and therefore, to me, very tenuous position. Everything was new. Everything was hard. Nothing was comfortable.

But, surprisingly, I did have peace. In the whirl of changes that flew around me, it became easy for me to see where I needed to go. Here are three things I knew:

1) I liked myself. I liked my creativity, my sense of humor, my need to have my hands in food, dirt, or clay, my hunger to write, and my curiosity. My ex-husband hadn’t liked those things about me. I knew I needed to surround myself with people who loved those things about me.

2) Kindness was my siren. I surrounded myself with kind people—family and friends that I had known for years, yes, but I opened my heart to people I met everywhere, in classes, at work, at parties, at the pottery studio, everywhere. If I could smell kindness on you, I’d make you my friend.

3) I needed to dig in and make a home here. After my ex-husband left, my Southern California friends asked me to return. “Come back,” they said. “You’ll get a job in no time. Return to what’s comfortable.” But, I couldn’t go backwards. Right away I knew deep in my bones that San Francisco is where I needed to be and where I needed to buy a home. So, in the divorce, I asked for a percentage of what I would receive through years of spousal support in exchange for receiving it in one lump sum. I took my savings, that chunk from the divorce, and a gift from my parents, and I put a down payment on house on a sunny hill with a real back yard in which to garden and views of downtown and the Bay Bridge. I worked to make connections with my neighbors right away and have fallen in love with my corner of San Francisco.

Each of those three elements was incredibly clear to me. I liked myself. I needed kindness. I would make a home. I had no doubt.

Why was I so clear? Why did I not run back to Southern California? Why did I not crawl into the misery of self-hate and despair?

Grace.

Is that feeling of being okay when you have little on which to lean grace? Is grace not pride but confidence? Is grace God?

In the two years since my ex-husband left, I’ve come to know God in a different way than I did beforehand. I’ve received that grace, and I feel like I’ve become even more of who I am. I’m more me.

I was thinking about how to describe what my move and divorce has done for me, and I was reminded of a scene from one of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. In this book, The Voyage of The Dawn Treader, the character Eustace has crawled into a dragon’s cave, found a gold bracelet, put it on, and woken up having become a dragon. Among other problems—the largest of which is the difficulty and loneliness of being a dragon—the gold bracelet is cutting into Eustace’s dragon-sized arm. One night, he goes to the lake and starts scratching at the skin around the bracelet, trying to shed some of it for relief. Aslan, a lion and the novel’s Christ figure, arrives and terrifies Eustace. Aslan tells Eustace to let him help.

Here’s how Eustace tells the story from there:

“I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away  . . .

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off . . . . And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.” (109)

That’s such a great description. I feel what Eustace is saying. I’m swimming in the delicious nowadays.

Life isn’t easy for me now, but it is good and it is rich with peace.

This December, I’ll be marrying a man who loves the same parts of me that I love, who is the kindest man I’ve ever met, and who is making my home even more of a home with the addition of two incredible beings who will be my stepchildren.

I haven’t yet found God in a church. God is not a building, even though I find God in my home. God is not other people, though I find God in others. I am not God, though I find God in me.

God is grace. God is peace. God didn’t tear my life up—my ex-husband and I did that to ourselves. But, God tore me open so I could re-find myself.

Friday, September 01, 2017

When It Gets Hot in San Francisco

My neighborhood today reached 103.1 degrees Fahrenheit. My house, despite the fact that it's on the sunny side of the city, is like almost every other building in the city and has no air conditioning, because, come on, it's San Francisco.

But, when it does get hot around here, certainties arise:

When you try to go to sleep at night, moths and other unidentifiables gather around the pool of light that shines upon your book or reader because every window and door that doesn't lead to the street is wide open to let in whatever air that is moving. You fall asleep slapping away insects.

You have to ask your trusted friends for deodorant at work because you've got BO by 9am.

Your pets, as accustomed to the temperate weather as you, flatten into fur covered puddles on the floor.

Grandparents and children sit in camping chairs on sidewalks of very busy streets to read the newspaper and do homework because it's too hot inside their apartments.

You can go a whole day without seeing a hooded sweatshirt.

You, one who never orders fruity drinks at a bar, choose drinks that are based on juice because they sound so damned refreshing, and they are, but then you remember that you don't order them because they go down so fast and whoops, you are a little drunk on heat and fruity beverages.

The chile pods on your pepper plants ripen all at once.

You think that waiting in an hour-long line at one of the famous ice cream shops is a great idea.

In other words, when it gets hot in San Francisco, it's pretty great.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

A Freezer and a House

Years ago, I bought a chest freezer for $100 from a coworker's mother who was downsizing. That chest freezer has saved me much money and given me even more pleasure. When I lived in southern California, I bought whole butchered lambs and pigs from my district's FFA program. I made apricot nectar from my overloaded trees and froze quarts of it. Last year, my friend and I split a goat from his family friend's farm and we stored both his portion and mine in the chest freezer. When I began looking for houses in San Francisco, the chest freezer's placement was something I considered at each open house and viewing. When I saw this house late last spring, I knew exactly where it would go: a garage corner where the freezer wouldn't get in the way of a car or foot traffic. This chest freezer is part of what makes my house my home.

My good friend X recently quit her job at the school where we both have worked and moved away from San Francisco with the goal of strengthening her writing and finding a city in which she felt at home and where she could afford to purchase a house. My house was a landing spot for a few days after her lease ended but before her year of travel began. Her presence added energy to the already happy home. Her poodle chased Indy. X joined me and Scott for dinners and breakfasts at the round oak table, loud with good conversation and laughter. She's traveling now, having already hit the country of Georgia for a month, then returned (landing here again for a day), and set out for a road trip with her dog across the country. I miss her something awful, but I know that when she's back around, this place will be a welcoming port for her.

In October, another friend will visit me. My brother and his girlfriend are also coming to stay for a while. Others will be here, too. This fall, this house is filling up. Housing others is part of what makes my house my home.

My parents didn't frequently have house guests in the houses in which my brother and I grew up; instead, they had house residents. In various times in various places, we had the following people stay with us for extended periods of time: a Nepalese missionary, a Hungarian couple who was temporarily in the US for work, a Mexican foreign exchange student, an Iraqi torture survivor and refugee, and a down-on-her-luck woman who my mother met at the supermarket. My parents modeled to me that wealth in space meant the responsibility and opportunity to share that space.

**********

When I first moved up to the Bay Area, I added FishLine to my phone in order to see what the local fishermen were bringing in so I could shop for fresh, local, sustainably-caught fish. I intended to make a regular habit of this. Instead, my habit became checking the app, drooling over what had just come in, but not having the time to drive to Pillar Point Harbor—just above Half Moon Bay—to purchase off the docks.

Last week, I changed that. I had a free Friday, the app told me one boat had just come in with King Salmon, so I filled a cooler with ice packs and drove down to buy a fish. When I found the boat in the harbor, no one was on it. The harbor was almost silent except for the foghorn and birds. The water planed like glass.



I hung around the boat waiting for someone to show up, and someone eventually did.

"You want to buy?" he asked.

"Yes."

He used a long pole with a hook to pull out a fish from the boat's huge ice bin.

"This is the smallest one I've got. It's about six and a half pounds."

"Small is what I want." It was—I had never broken down a whole salmon before and I didn't want to learn on a huge one. I paid cash for the fish, half of what I would have paid for the same weight of filleted fish in the grocery store, took a picture of its shiny eye looking back at me, then placed it in the cooler and drove home.

I watched about fifteen how-to videos on YouTube, then dove into filleting the fish. I ended up with six lovely fillet portions, two salmon burgers from scraps, two quarts of rich salmon stock made from bones and head, and a whole lot of sashimi-nibbling while I worked. I vacuum sealed everything we wouldn't eat that night and placed the sealed portions in my chest freezer.



That night, Scott and I split a hefty fillet portion. It was rich and buttery, tender and absolutely delicious.

Since Friday, I've been checking my app daily. The sablefish are calling me. I haven't had the time to make it back, but I'll return. My chest freezer has plenty of room. It can handle much more.

My home has plenty of room, too.

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Blackberry Season

I returned Thursday from what was, for me, a mammoth road trip across the northwest, from here to Montana to the San Juan Islands. In central Montana and eastern Washington, grain fields reflect the sun. Light bounces around, ringing through the softly rolling hills of Washington and the mountainous architecture of Montana. In both places, grain elevators mark settlements like church steeples. At one stop to stretch my troublesome legs, I picked a ripe just-dried wheat head off a plant. I tore the long tail off the seeds and ate the grains. They tasted like nuts and good bread and sun. It's no wonder that my souvenirs from the trip are bags of different flours and grains.


But, there aren't grain fields over the Lolo pass from Montana to Idaho where the Nez Pierce made a famous escape, nor are there many grain fields on Orcas Island where plums and pears grace square orchards and feral apples mark the cedar forests. There are, however, lots of blackberries, just like here in San Francisco and the rest of the Bay. If there's water, there are Himalayan blackberries.

This trip was an important, beautiful, and mostly fun trip, but it wasn't an easy one. It was a trip for me and my boyfriend to learn each other's families better. As such, there were the brambly tangles of comforts, joys, and tensions that come with family. There were thorns too. My winding veins took another jab at me and clotted for a second time in my left leg. A show my boyfriend planned to play in Bozeman didn't happen because of the venue's disorganization and poor communication. We had some really sleep-deprived days. On the other hand, there were family feasts, leisurely bike rides, long hikes, swimming with happy kids in bodies of water, all the campfire foods, beautiful sites, and lots of laughs.

Once home, I discovered a series of challenges, ones that shouldn't necessarily weigh on me, but collectively have been really hard. I'm still tired, and I guess that has made everything stickier. It took a lot of effort today for me to even take Indy for a walk.

We did walk, though. After a stop by a neighborhood block party where Indy let little kids pet his soft ears and only barked once at one of the other dogs, we wound our way back up the hill and into the park. The blackberries are really ripe on a particularly sunny hill, and there are lots of them. I took out a poop bag—unused, of course—and began to fill it with berries. Indy expertly picked out the low ones.


While we picked, a family came by and began harvesting fruit off of a nearby strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. They talked quietly among themselves as they picked. To me, strawberry tree fruit pales in comparison to blackberries. The fruits are mushy and a little tangy, but mostly bland, no wildness to them at all. Indy, a fruit hound, won't touch them. Yet, the family seemed happy with their mild bounty and Indiana and I were happy with ours. I picked a pound of berries that were so ripe they were practically juice by the time I got home, where I promptly turned them into syrup* to pour over pancakes or vanilla ice cream, or to mix with booze, sparkly water, or both.

My fingers are still stained after a couple washings. I have some jabs in my arms. They'll heal quickly though. They won't even scar. The stains and blood are worth it to have the jars of goodness for myself, and more importantly, for those I love.


*I use Hank Shaw's easy and delicious blackberry syrup recipe which I modify slightly by adding lime juice to heighten the wild flavor.

Thursday, July 27, 2017

First Week of Vacation

I kept the windows down and the sunroof open all day on Tuesday and I took every farm road I could, singing loudly to songs I wanted to listen to. I gulped cow manure air, alfalfa air, horse sweat air, vineyard air, golden oak-studded hill air. I wandered through Luther Burbank's garden because our imaginations are kin. I picked blackberries to stain my fingers and eat memory.

It was a good day.

Thursday, May 04, 2017

North Westy

On the day before spring break, someone asked me what I was doing with my time.

"I'm going on tour with my boyfriend," I said.

Her jaw dropped. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. He's a musician, among other things."

"You know you're living every teenage girl's dream, don't you?" She grinned. "I want to hear about it after spring break."

I remember the teenage ache for a boy with a guitar in his hands, but that ache disappeared as I grew up. Musicianship wasn't something I sought out. Creativity was essential to me, but how that creativity manifested itself wasn't as important. Now, however, I have the man with a guitar in his hands, and last month, we headed out in his VW Westy and hit the Pacific Northwest.

Each night was a different town and a different show as we rolled across new-to-me landscapes and into the arms of his family at the far end of the journey.

Living (mostly) in a van with someone for nearly a week is a really good way to get to know someone better. We spent the week on the road swapping stories, figuring out pee breaks, deconstructing his performances, listening to music and podcasts then talking about both, smelling each other's farts, and enjoying being around the other. We hiked waterfalls and shopped for snappy Western shirts in a farm supply store. In all of this, the most important thing we learned about the other in such close quarters was how the other deals with discomfort or uncertainty. I forgot my toothbrush and he forgot his ukulele. We shared a toothbrush, and he swapped out the ukulele bits in his show for his guitar. When the power steering belt sounded funny, we looked for a place to fix it, neither of us fearing the worst, but both expecting success (which we found, friendly and for $20). When a place we imagined staying for the night didn't work out, we kept going, knowing that there was at least a KOA ahead, and that we'd be fine wherever we landed. For us, traveling together is imperfect and therefore easy. It is comfortable and fun and free of tension.

And lucky me, every night I got to see him perform. I could see how opening with a quiet song silenced the room and caused the audience to listen deeply for the rest of the show. I could see how well it worked when his songs held together through storylines he wove. I witnessed a woman who saw him play almost 20 years ago in St. Louis be overjoyed to find him in a small town in the center of Oregon, friends of his from band days insist on getting on stage to play with him, and new, besotted fans offer to treat us to last call after a show. On his side, he got to relish my bread and homemade jam, revel in my stories and easy humor, sit with my calm, and delight in my ability to identify—with often both common and Latin names—each plant he pointed to on our hikes.

Yes, I'm a fan, but the fandom flows both ways. And, we've smelled each other's farts.

Monday, April 10, 2017

On Salads

Falling in love at 41 has been the same as falling in love every other time. In the first few weeks, there was the inability to sleep, the twitterpation, the feelings of mania as I realized I was spending time with someone amazing. And with time, that mania stretched out like a cat in the sun into feelings of comfort.

Falling in love at 41 has been completely different than falling in love every other time. The last time I fell in love was over a decade ago, and this time, I’ve found someone very different than that time or any previous experience. This time, because we recognize traits in each other that we both have wanted out of a lover forever, we fell quickly. We both have weathered life and have come through still liking ourselves, and our ability to like ourselves has made loving each other happen as naturally as breathing.

We both agree on what home means, and we’ve found part of it in each other. His ability to really listen makes me a better listener. His kindness is profound; I hope to match it with my own. We leave nothing off the conversational table: money, religion, sex, family, disappointment, pride, we talk about it all. We deeply appreciate the best in each other, and in doing so, hope to become even better.

Both of us are wise enough to know a relationship isn’t just two people, but two people and all the ways their lives connect with the cast that populates their individual theaters. Introducing each other to our friends and families is to bring to our people another person to love them, to bring further stability and goodness into our communities.

All this is mushy talk. True, yes, but terribly mushy.

So, here is something else this incredible man has gifted me. With him, I’ve gained the ability to make the best damned salads.

Oranges and diced celery with shallots, cilantro, and smoked almonds, tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Butter lettuce with sugar snap peas, strawberries, mint, cilantro, and roasted peanuts, tossed in a citrusy, gingery, garlicky dressing. Slaws of all kinds. Greens and vegetables and fruit and nuts and herbs with abandon. I go into the kitchen not knowing exactly what will end up in the bowl, but what does end up in the bowl we greedily consume. They’ve been delicious.

He says to me, “You should write a book about salads.” I say, “No one will read a book about salads.”

Besides, I know what goes into these salads, and you can’t find it in any garden or farmers market, not even the best. You can’t find it in a specialty grocery store. It’s his smile and my laugh, him sitting on the corner of the counter while I cook, and his doing dishes after dinner. It’s listening to the stories of each other’s day. It’s us.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Portola Love

A few nights ago, I woke around 2am for no particular reason. I didn't turn to a book to read myself back to sleep. Rather, I lay in my bed with Reggie the cat tucked into my armpit and enjoyed the quiet of my neighborhood. I live in a dense city, 7 miles by 7 miles horseshoed by saltwater. Lots of people live in this thumbnail of land. But, as I lay the other night in my big bed in my sweet house in my quiet neighborhood, I heard a familiar open space sound. The coyotes began to yip and squeal. I've found the wild here.

This district of the city is far to the southeastern edge, and therefore, experiences some of the best weather. In the summertime, when I drive from my house to work on the western edge of the city, I leave a blue and bright sky in the morning, roll over a few hills, then dive into the persistent gray. In the afternoons, I return to the sun.

Because of the good weather, this district used to be where nursery families raised plants and especially flowers for the downtown florists. Old dilapidated greenhouses lean against each other down the hill from me. The glass walls have mostly caved in, though a few roses still reach up through their frames. Blackberry vines climb over and around the old steam furnace and storerooms. Four peach trees mark the edges of the fenced off property, and this summer, they were loaded with fruit that no one could access except the birds and raccoons. This 2 1/2 acre parcel is the last remaining agriculturally zoned property in the city, and its future is up in the air. One group trying to purchase it aims to maximize on its zoning and turn it into an instructional urban farm.

My neighbors are among the best I've ever had. A neighborhood cop lives on the north side of me in the house in which he grew up and raised his own children. He's crawled up on my roof to check for leaks and his son has helped carry furniture upstairs. We've walked our dogs together in our nearby park. On the south side of me, an older woman, also a gardener, frequently sits on her back deck in the afternoon sun, enjoying a beer. When I can, I sit on my back deck too, and we talk about gardens and life over our shared fence while we both look out over our yards. Last week, just after I arrived home one day, a neighbor from across the street whom I had not yet met rang my doorbell. She came over to tell me that I had left the garage door open the other day, and she had watched to make sure no one snooped in my garage until she got so anxious she came over and figured out how to close it from the inside, running out without tripping its sensor.

My house is at the top of one of the hills in the district. From the top of my backyard, I can look straight out to an unencumbered view of downtown and the Bay Bridge. A few blocks away sprawls McLaren Park, a rangy, shaggy-haired park criss-crossed with trails. On weekends, families hold barbecues in the picnic areas, and corners of the otherwise peaceful park bump with music and spicy meats on the grill, so many flavors of sound and scent. In the park, the poppies are beginning to bloom already, and more wildflower waves are on their way. Dribbling now from a spigot, but until a couple decades ago—according to my neighbor—trickling right out from the side of the hill, a natural spring feeds what becomes Yosemite Creek.

Last year, the city officially designated my neighborhood San Francisco's Garden District. This neighborhood of agricultural history, neighbors that talk to each other and watch out for each other, coyotes, and real back yards is unique in this city. The Garden District isn't just the identity of Portola's past. Portola, like every good gardener, plants with anticipation of the seasons ahead. The Portola District blossoms and will fruit, again and again.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Horse Heart

Yesterday, I read the prayers of the faithful in a funeral. Mostly, I looked at the prayer as I read, but occasionally I looked up at the pews. The church was full of people who loved my friend: fellow faculty members who had appreciated her charm and humor, neighbors who couldn't help but be sucked into her warmth, students who she had protected, loved, and teased.

Of course, the room was also full of her family. One daughter gave a eulogy so wonderful and rich with my friend's essence, I marveled at her composure. Her daughter told us that her mother knew all the life stories of the employees and regular customers at the McDonalds where my friend stopped for her ridiculously large daily Diet Coke. She reminded us of my friend's deep and abiding fandom for the Cleveland Browns. She wasn't from Cleveland or even Ohio, but she was always on the side of the underdog. The Browns's one win this year was the day she was discharged from the hospital.

She was tiny and mighty with love. Life, as we know, is no competition, but if it were, she'd win in the hugeness of heart award. I already miss her.

Another friend, X, who similarly embraces the world with an octopus love, gave me a copy of this poem in the autumn because she knew it was a poem written for me. I have it on my bulletin board in my office at work.

A big horse heart, we can't set a better goal for ourselves.


"How to Triumph Like A Girl"
Ada Limon
Bright, Dead Things

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Cutting Down

I cut down a large shrub, almost a tree this weekend. I still have a few more to go.

This one, the first tree to go in my yard, was slow. I cut off all the branches I could to reduce the weight. Using bungee cords, I put some pressure on the tree in the direction I wanted it to fall. I cut a notch out of the falling side. With a band saw, I cut and cut, then came the sharp crack and swoosh of the remaining leaves as the tree fell.

Cutting down trees, even to give me more sun and space, makes me a little melancholy. It's a life and a home and a silhouette that will never be again. To counter this twinge, I use as much as I can from the trees I cut. In previous yards, the small branches served as pea sticks for bush beans and flowers that needed support, and the trunks served as firewood. The felled trees supported and warmed. In this yard, I'm saving the long, elegantly shaped trunks with a few branches on them. I'll use them to build trellises for runner beans and sweet peas. This weekend, I spent a lot of time looking at the first trunk I cut, examining how layers of papery bark fit against each other, how the tree's grain twisted gently through its years of growth. All of this carbon coming together in this particular shape, all this energy, it really is a miracle. This trunk will be in my yard for years to come, just in a different function, supporting a different beauty.

In my world, a tree is never simply a tree.

My friend is dying. In the fall of 2015, when what I had previously understood of stability slipped from my feet, in that very same week, she received her diagnosis. We worked together every day through the school year last year, laughing, crying a little in the beginning, but laughing a hell of a lot more, all the way into the summer. She taught me the practical bits of librarianship, the cataloging, the book sources. We decided together the experience we wanted our students to have when they entered the space, and we made big changes to what had previously existed. The library is a happy place we crafted for ourselves and our students. With the joy in work she shared with me and that we kindled together, I know I can continue to make big, positive changes in the library and the school.

This summer, her sickness worsened, and by November this year, she could no longer continue working and had to leave our daily laughter.

She's a physically small person, and each time I see her, she's smaller. Her spirit and humor are as big as ever though, and when I visit her we talk and laugh until she runs out of breath for words. "What's the scoop? What's the news? What's the juice?" she asks when I arrive. So I tell her what's happening with me and we gossip about work, but we also inevitably end up talking about her death, too.

She is looking at her life now, examining how it has turned and branched, her role as mother, wife, sister and daughter, businesswoman, and eventual high school librarian. She's reflective. She's reading a lot. A few weeks ago, when I visited her, she gave me the latest book she had loved reading, Neil Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Lane, a book about the wonder of childhood, nostalgia, mystery, and celebration of the unknown. I loved reading it, too.

She is teaching me to die gracefully and appreciatively.

She says she hasn't lit the world on fire. I don't agree. I tell her that her daughters are building mighty flames, and dammit, I am, in my own way, too. She held the match for me.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Statistics

I've been doing some research lately, of the online dating sort here in San Francisco. I've collected the following findings*:

  • 88.3% of straight men in their 40s who list themselves as eligible on dating apps include the phrase "I'm looking for my partner in crime" in their profiles. 11% of this group abbreviate the phrase to PiC.
  • 76.7% of men ages 37 to 55 include a picture of themselves doing one of the following activities: jumping out of a plane, skiing difficult moguls in expensive gear, climbing a sheer cliff, charging a giant barrel on a surfboard, or flying over a ridge on a mountain bike. 48.9% of this group include pictures of themselves doing more than one of the activities listed above.** 
  • 93.2% of men from ages 37 to 74 are looking for a woman "preferably in her mid-20s."
  • 37.8% of men over the age of 60 list themselves as being in their low 40s, but in their profile reveal their actual age, along with the following (or similar) statement: "I've listed myself as 42 because that's how I feel, and my friends say I look and act young."
  • The word "adventure" appears at least three times in 73.2% of listed profiles.
  • The older a man is, the higher the chance he will include a picture of himself sitting on a parked motorcycle. 
  • In the profiles of men in their 40s who say they like to read, 85.3% mention the Oxford comma. Only 23.0% of this group use a comma anywhere in their profile.
  • 65.1% state they prefer "meeting in person" to "endless messaging." 52.8% of this group flake out on the dates they arrange with potential connections.
  • When meeting or talking on the phone with a potential connection for the first time, 38.9% will spend the entire time talking, never asking the potential connection a single question.

*These numbers, though exaggerated, aren't as far off as you may think.

**I apparently live in a city full of adrenaline junkies. That's fine. I appreciate adrenaline. I also, however, enjoy reading, cooking, and conversation, among many other non-adrenaline producing activities. The junkies I've been out with appear to struggle unless they are getting their fix.

This sounds miserable, I know. But it isn't. I've actually been (mostly) having fun. People are fascinating, and since I have no deadlines, a date that doesn't go anywhere is not a failure. Instead, I've discovered great bars and restaurants, and I've grown confident in my straightforward exit strategy: "Thank you. I've had a nice time, but I know we're not a connection."

Saturday, January 07, 2017

Meadow Rx

At the home on the edge of the Southern California canyon where I lived for a while, I had a meadow. It was small, it took a while to grow in, but it was a great pleasure to watch fill in and change, catching light and breeze. Here, at my new home on the slope by the bay with skyscrapers and the Bay Bridge rising to the north, I need another meadow. I need a place that adds to the peaceful beauty of my yard, a place where Indy can sit in the sun, that needs little water, that moves with the frequent singing wind, and in which I can tuck bulbs that will poke their petals up like surprise satin gifts throughout the year. Lawn? No way—this is so much better, and I don't need to mow it.

Over my winter break, I've been working on making this happen whenever it isn't raining, but it's been raining a lot so my progress was slower than I liked. I pulled out two banks of rosemary because no one needs that much rosemary. The previous owner, probably in an effort to make the yard look tidy quickly, laid solid white plastic sheeting—not landscape cloth—under a deep layer of mulch. While no weeds can grow up through the plastic sheeting, no water can run through it either, and I want my soil to absorb as much water as possible into the underground aquifer, rather than lose the rain as it runs off into the bay. So, I've pulled lots of plastic sheeting out in preparation for planting. In the corner of my yard, under the robust manzanita tree, probably the selection Dr. Hurd (tall for a manzanita and covered right now with plentiful white flowers), I have worked to install the small meadow.

Unlike the very drought tolerant Carex praegracilis I planted as the backbone of the meadow in the dry Southern California yard, I've planted Carex pansa and lots of it; it is more appropriate for my current damper climate. Right now it looks like bad hair plugs, but it will grow in.

I bought the Carex pansa plugs at Bay Natives nursery, a nursery on the far eastern edge of the city, tucked up against the lapping waters of the San Francisco Bay. There, loose chickens and roosters strut and play soccer with snails, landscape-clearing goats talk happily to each other in the pen near the fruit and vegetable plants, James Taylor blasts over the speakers, and feathers are everywhere, settling over the large propagation area and flitting between the gravel stones in the parking lot. (As a side note, I really, really don't like James Taylor. I had a roommate who would play him every time she was depressed which was often during that period of her life, so in my brain, his music means deep sorrow. I try to avoid it whenever possible. But I won't hold James Taylor against Bay Natives. The nursery offers so much that brings me joy that it easily wipes out the residual gray attached to him.)

Tucked among the Carex plugs, I planted narcissus, ipheon, alliums—all necessarily gopher resistant—some California native bulbs and perennials, as well as lots of poppies. This meadow of mine will probably be too colorful its first spring. But, after having been hungry for my own soil again for so long, I want all the flowers. I may have to edit over time, but this will at least let me know what works well here.

Some people need live music fixes, frequent hits of adrenaline, or a tri-weekly doses of SoulCycle to feel human. Those are pleasant experiences for me, but not necessities. As for me, I'm a dirt junkie.