A Feel-Good Book

I’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s “At Home: A Short History of Private Life,” which I discovered in the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. It’s a meaty volume of almost 450 pages, a bright red cover, and a topic that I should not have been able to resist: an author journeys about his house from room to room to write a history of the world without leaving home. But I did resist because I was on my way to Orlando with my IPad tucked into my computer bag, four books downloaded on my Kindle app and ready for travel. This was a first. I’m not a light packer when it comes to books. I always take one that I’ve just started in my carry-on, and then pack another in my checked luggage just in case I finish the first. Depending on the length of the trip, I might add a third. I get panicky if I don’t have something to read.

I was resolute in the airport bookstore, however, and determined to stick to the IPad Kindle plan so I set Mr. Bryson’s tome back in its place. Unfortunately, I mourned that decision for the remainder of my vacation. After arriving in Orlando, we were trapped in Disneyworld, where there are no bookstores or shops that carry anything other than Disney-licensed merchandise. Mr. Bryson’s book does not fall into that category. I was stuck with my e-books, which by the way cannot be accessed on an airplane during take-off or landing (my favorite time to read while flying). Our condo had a luxurious tub, but taking an IPad into a bubble bath is asking for trouble. And if the battery on the e-reader gets low, you must hook yourself near an outlet or computer to charge it up. These are not deal breakers for me. I still love my IPad and don’t regret for a moment that I gave in to its seduction, but there is this thing I have with books. Real books. Yes, it is a tactile. I like to hold it, breathe in the ink aroma, and occasionally run my fingers across the page opposite of the one I am reading. But it’s also the history I have with books. Since childhood, I’ve loved to collect them, go back and read passages in some, arrange their spines on my bookshelves, loan them out to friends, pass them down to my children.

They say that the bookstores are in financial trouble and publishing houses are also feeling the pinch of decreased book sales because many of us are allured by the idea of downloading volumes on our e-readers in seconds. It’s cheaper and more convenient, and isn’t that what we want? Yes, most of the time. But sometimes, nothing will do but a real book. So I bought Mr. Bryson’s latest the day after our plane touched down back in Tulsa. And I went to a bookstore, bypassing the Amazon option. I’m on page 23, which means I have lots of book left to enjoy on the next flight, in the bathtub, on the back patio. And it feels good.

State Fair: An Anthropological Study

Kyle is adamant that Fair fish won't live. Alison threw a ping pong ball into a too-tiny goldfish bowl eight feet away from her that was crowded between about 200 other bowls, which made her dunk even more amazing. So she won two goldfish that were dumped into a Ziploc with what I can only hope is treated water. It is the State Fair after all.

We mostly go to the fair to watch people. At the risk of sounding like someone who is too big for her britches, the people-watching is much more interesting than the livestock, cake decorating contest winners, or even the butterfly tent. I'm not better than anyone at the Fair, just more boring. I'm too self-conscious to eat a foot-long turkey leg, and too pragmatic to wear high heeled boots with short shorts and a camisole. I can't stomach a deep fried Twinkie, but I'll stand and watch a couple share one until the last bite has been plopped into her mouth. Some people carry their children on their shoulders, and others opt for the cute stuffed animal harness with the child leash attached. Some like a tall beer (or three), others a "fresh squeezed" lemonade. The people that amaze me the most, however, are those who succumbed to the automated barker who lured crowds into the snake lady exhibit. "How did this come be?" the voice shouted above the crowd. "This beautiful woman who has the body of a snake must be seen to be believed!" So the people pay their dollar, and walk in. Who are these people and why are they taken in by this? Isn't it obvious that this is nothing but freak show trickery?

I joined the interesting people for just a moment as I paid my dollar to see the poor woman, who the barker says has "no bones." Snakes, I am certain, have bones and this should have been my first clue. But what drew me in was not the promise of seeing this freakish woman, but the barker's assurance that we would finally know her sad story. We could ask her questions, he yelled. And, finally, we would learn the truth of her unbelievable life. I'm a sucker for a story, so in I went, and climbed up on the short step to peer into the round cage that was draped in something like a mosquito net.

And there she was, situated in the middle with her head poking out of an elevated mound of snake body. She had curly blond hair, and I envisioned her sitting cross-legged on the floor underneath the phony prop that surrounded her. The snake lady was wearing ear buds and looked bored. There was no asking questions of this woman who was probably drawing minimum wage for the hours she sat ringed by the snake body, jamming to her music and hiding behind her sunglasses. I was disappointed because this woman most certainly had a story. We all have a story, I know that, but some stories are just far more interesting than others. I was sure the snake lady would be able to spin a tale, but I didn't want to shout questions at her over an MP3 player and some things are probably best left to mystery. So I climbed down off the stairs and went to watch my daughter throw ping pong balls into a goldfish bowl. I hate to be boring, but watching my little girl walk away with a prize was a highlight of the day. Here's to Fair fish longevity and the world of people out there who are far more interesting than me. I'll look forward to seeing them again next year.

What Lies Beneath

The crew that is re-siding our house arrived early Monday morning and quickly began tearing off the old, yellow stuff. I've been more than eager for this. We bought the house five years ago, and have been nailing back pieces in various places around the house that have sprung. I'm sure the neighbors were pumping their fists at the sight of the Burnett Siding truck that pulled into our circle drive. The workers assured us this would be a two-week job, tops, assuming there were no complications. No complications. In my naive moments, of which there have been many over the past 45 years, I believed that complications were the exception instead of the rule. I was jolted out of my joyful existence every time life got disorderly.

I should not have been surprised when the doorbell rang and the crew leader said the words: "We've got a big problem." I stepped outside with him and looked at the front of our house. The siding was off, revealing wood that had rotted away to whatever construction material was underneath - something pink and aluminum with labels stamped across it. Buckets of water, as he put it, had poured forth from beneath the cheap siding, trapped for who knows how long. Something or other had not been sealed, and for years the rain that would beat the front of our house was becoming a part of it and eating away at the wood beneath. It was hideous, resembling something that would be featured on a home and garden network episode of nightmare remodels. All this time, I thought everything about our house was intact, except for a few pieces of stray siding here and there. I thought what could be seen represented everything that lay beneath. But like life, it was much more complicated than that. What was underneath was waiting to be revealed, seen, gaped at, puzzled over. We asked ourselves how our seemingly well-constructed house could be so complex under its surface.

The crew patched, and then put up the new, crisp, white siding that has transformed our house into something even better than before. I was proud of myself for taking this complication in stride. I didn't panic or stomp around or grumble about the unfairness of life. It was just rotten wood, after all.

Sounds Above Me

I'm really missing the creak in the floor upstairs. It has been silenced since Erin left for college three weeks ago, and I find myself listening for it late at night when she should be in bed. She was always scrambling around in the deep hours finishing things that she had put off. Sometimes I would wake to the creak at 1 a.m. on a school night, and know that it would do no good to climb the stairs and remind her that she was bound to be tired and useless the next day. Erin was old enough to know this. The late night and early morning creak reminded me that my parenting approach must shift a bit. Some lessons are best learned by natural consequence, not by tired reminders that fall on deaf ears. So if she spent enough nights creaking around at all hours, she would probably spend one landed face up on her bed, eyes covered and window blinds closed tight as she endured another migraine headache. There was no reason to say "I told you so." There was nothing to do except realize that the creak in the floor meant that sometimes it's best to learn our own lessons the hard way.

When I talk to her on the phone, I ask if she's sleeping well. "Pretty much," she will say. Or, "I'm going to get more sleep tonight." Like so many things about sending your kid off to college, this sleep issue is now truly out of my hands. I can't hear her if she's up padding around long past the hour when she should have been sleeping. I'm not there to remind her that sleep is essential to good health. She knows all this, so I've emptied my hands for a while of knowing whether knowledge is translating into action. It is true: you do the best you know how as a parent, then you send them off and hope something stuck.

Tonight it will be quiet in our bedroom - no sounds above our head in the empty second story. But somewhere around 1 a.m., if I wake up with that instinctual parental jolt, I'm certain that I'll long to hear the creak in the floor upstairs again.

Grace is Alive and Well

She bounded into the kitchen tonight – 15 pounds of lab puppy, tail swinging, ears flopping – and I felt like applauding. Almost two weeks ago she was fighting for her life in an oxygen tank. A bacterial infection had gone viral, and then into pneumonia, accompanied by coughing, runny nose, and loss of appetite. Serious stuff for a puppy that only a few days earlier had been lying in a cage at Animal Welfare. I passed by that cage several times and noted that her brown eyes followed me, but she never moved. She remained on her side until I stopped and sat down, then her head lifted a little. I poked two fingers through the metal cage and said, “Here, girl.” She slowly rolled on to her tummy, cocked her head at my wiggling fingers and scrambled up and over to lick. And that was that.

We paid Animal Welfare the requisite $75 to hand her over, complete with spay operation, shots, and a goodie bag containing food samples and coupons. For two days, we reveled in our good fortune to have adopted a full-bred black lab puppy with a good disposition and enough intelligence to do most of her business outside. She didn’t fuss when we put her in the crate, slept through the night, and allowed us to carry her around when we felt like it. What we didn’t know was that her intestines were harboring hookworm and she was incubating a deadly illness.

After four days in the oxygen tank at the Emergency Animal Clinic, we took her back to our vet, where she spent another night under observation. When we told our friends the sad story of Grace and her illness, most of them looked at us with a mixture of confusion and astonishment. It was clear that they weren’t sure whether to console us for the puppy’s illness or our climbing credit card bill.

“You’ve only had the puppy for a week?” One friend asked. “You must be some kind of soft-hearted dog lover.” Which pretty much describes four out of five people in our family. And the most soft-hearted dog lover of us all just might be the nine year old. Grace is her puppy, and has been from the beginning. When I sat down in front of her cage that day at Animal Welfare, I was scouting out dogs for Alison.

“That’s the one,” Alison said with finality after we took her out of the cage to get a closer look. I’ve tried to envision at what point we would have told our daughter that we had spent quite enough money to save her puppy. Would she have understood if we returned the dog to Animal Welfare, explaining that we could no longer afford to turn over our credit card to the doctors at Veterinary Associates? We chose Grace, and signed a piece of paper promising to take responsibility for the welfare of this puppy that had been residing in Cage #141. It didn’t seem possible that we could tell Alison that the puppy wasn’t what we had bargained for. In the scheme of things, it seemed more important for our daughter to know that from the moment we carried her out of the cage, Grace was ours.

When she ambled into the kitchen tonight, my dad, who was visiting, looked down at her with a grin and said, “Well look here, it’s the survivor.” Yes, that describes our Grace. And maybe, it describes us also.

It's Good to Be Back

Slow Blogging

It really wasn't my intention to only post once every couple of weeks. The idea of this blog is to snatch something from each day that is worth remembering and write about it. Unfortunately, my days seem to be too filled, and I am not allowing myself enough time to stop and pay attention to life's moments. Most days are are somewhat mundane, or don't include any moments that would be particularly interesting to post on a blog. I hustle kids off to school, then I run, then I work, then I begin the after-school necessities (spelling words, homework check, homework nag, laundry- always laundry, dinner prep). After dinner, I'm little more than comatose, and in no shape to try to remember something poignant or profound in its simplicity. I just can't think on that deeper level after 8 p.m. I carry a little leather-bound notebook in my bag (I assume that if I buy expensive journals I'll feel guilty if I don't use them), but then I forget that I have it, and its pages remain blank at the end of each day. And on most days, so do the pages of this blog. And the blog is free.

For a writer, a blog is either exhilarating or frightening. I know writers whose words pour out onto daily, lengthy posts. The sight of the blank screen is a challenge, and, amazingly, they come up with something worth reading every day. Other writers I know (like me) feel paralyzed by the blank screen. For us, it's a steep mountain - the thought process, the writing, the editing, the proofreading, then finally cutting it down to a size that seems manageable for a daily (or bi-weekly) read. Then wondering, after it is posted for the world to see, if I am nothing except narcissistic. I've spent some time thinking this through, trying to determine whether I am more OCD or lazy, or a deadly combination of the two. Or perhaps, I wonder, am I simply too frantic to pay attention to life? You know, the good stuff that happens in between all the necessary evils of the day. This possibility saddens me the most, because I have long been aware of the need to see beyond what passes for daily living. In fact, I have a framed quote from Frederick Buechner that hangs above my office desk. It goes like this: "Listen to your life. See if for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." Despite my desire to live life at the deep end of the pool, I keep allowing myself to paddle around in shallow waters, going through the motions but never looking for those key moments that force us to delve into the depths of attentive living. I read Buechner's quote and realize how easy it is to make swift and subtle trades. It's easier to talk than listen. Easier to mouth pat answers or trite platitudes instead of ponder the mysteries and the haunting questions. Easier to rush by than to stop in wonder. Easier to close off than to open up. I thought blogging might force me to stop making the trades. So far, it hasn't. My life is very good, but it could be better. I can't make myself promises that this blog will become what I intended for it to be, but I'm nothing if not tenacious, so I'll keep trying.