memoir

Sylvia

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Prompt – someone important in your life with whom you’ve lost touch with

 

Lost touch with seems to be an accidental or choice of losing touch, so I’ll stick to live people, although that doesn’t much narrow the list down. Faces assail my mind until one remains: Sylvia.

Oh, how I love Sylvia. Short and plump, coffee colored skin with a head of loose dark curls that she kept short-ish. She had a round face and a flat nose and the voice of angels. She had a way of moving as if she were floating on air or about to dance. Not just a skip in her step, but a hop and a pirouette too. Her voice soft and lilting, but more that brilliant combination of mother, sister, spiritual healer from New Orleans, Louisiana, a place that for me holds the mystical and mysteries and a longing place to try it just once.

Her husband was an NCO, a Staff Sargent, I think in the Marines. She had three kids who were about my age at the time or barely younger.

She used her softness to get her point across. We taught together for the US Navy’s child development program until she became the assistant director, one step down from where she truly belonged. She brought multi-cultural education to a place that should have had it all along considering the clientele. She taught me how to make the perfect sweet potato pie even though my own mother did not understand the concept of Dessert rather than side dish. As an aside, when I was recently in Virginia, McDonald’s had sweet potato pie instead of pumpkin. I’d consider moving south just for that.

Sylvia was encouraging and smart and strong and delicate. She was comfortable in her own skin with a bright smile. She wore loose, bright, colorful clothes and sandals with the most beautiful huge to my eye necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Her rings were simple to fit her small hands.

She inspired and awed me and the thought of her makes me smile.

In Hand

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Write about something that feels comfortable in your hand

 

I have many of these things that I hold, touch, rub, play with, not as bad as a smoker fiddling with a cigarette, but relatively close. You’ve already met Bob and despite what looks like a bulky outside, he really does fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I’ve held him on car rides through ice; I clutched him flying over the Atlantic, rubbed across the chips in his casing during an MRI and slept with him in my hand in a hotel room. I can always find him if I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s hopped away.

Until Bob, I hadn’t really thought about all of the other talismans that I’ve had over the years. In high school and college, I played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and would roll the dice around in my palm under the table while my other hand held a pen. Although roll around is a bit of an inaccuracy since most of the dice were an assortment of odd shapes.

During those games, I also held what was known at the time as a worry stone. It was a small oval polished rock like thing with an indentation for your thumb to rub over it, made to rest in your hand. The rubbing was supposed to be comforting during times of stress and I suppose it was. It was procured at Kmart on the other side of town, and is long since lost, but I have other stones with words of encouragement or comfort on them: Breathe, Balance, xoxo (although that one was more because of the color) and I thought I had one that said Thrive.

Also at college, when I had to do any kind of public speaking, I held my friend’s matchbox from RIT. That was the school he longed to go to, and as his good luck charm, it transferred to me. I still have one of those matchsticks somewhere in my boxes of memorabilia.

When I’m at my therapist, I almost always wear a scarf so I can play with the ends or the fringe.

I have a Welsh spoon key chain that I rub with my thumb when I’m driving sometimes and a smooth stone from a medieval Welsh castle that I hold occasionally.

Last Easter, at the church, they gave out a small metal cross for Lent. This year, it was a small ceramic heart. I often hold them in my hand and in the case of the cross, I found it very comforting during some very stressful times as my medication was being adjusted. Rosaries are still a bit foreign in my hand, but they are also more utilitarian, for prayer rather than comfortable for just being held.

I am definitely one for symbolism and assigning importance to objects. I believe that some of that is due to the material world we live in. I also know how much some people care for me, but I get anxious and worrisome and a bit paranoid, but re-reading a birthday card or a book inscription or even just holding something that they gave me for a moment or two reminds me of the love they have for me and I for them.

I do like to hold things and think of what they remind me of. Most of them are calming just by their presence, and some of them need a closed palm to keep the good feels inside and close. At church, after the Lord’s Prayer, if someone has held my hand, I keep my hand closed to keep the warmth of that touch with me a little longer, and in this last week, for that brief moment between receiving the Eucharist and placing it gently on my tongue, I close my palm around it.

My charm bracelet gives me this kind of feeling. The charms symbolize different feelings, wants and peoples and I move around the chain pressing my thumb and forefinger together as I stop at each charm like a mini-hug.

Those are a few of my favorite things that burst from my heart but still manage to fit in my hand.

Cardigans

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“Take this and wrap yourself in the love of strangers and friends whenever you need warmth.”

This was part of the message I received on a recent gift given to me and I was reminded of it when it came time to write about cardigans. When I was a kid I never liked them. I don’t know why. At some point, that changed, but it took forever to find one that worked for me. I didn’t want zippers or hoods. Those were too much like the sweatshirts I wore all the time as a teenager. They were a reminder of something not quite right.

The cardigans I was looking for had to have buttons down the front, no pockets, no hoods, no ski designs. I worked in a sporting goods store. I hated ski designs. It took forever, but I finally found the perfect one. It was a green, but not the green that I liked. It took so long to find; I bought it anyway. Ironically, the color was a sage green, a color that I now love most of all. It had wide and thin knitted stripes and some kind of design every other strip. It was a crew neck collar, and it buttoned all the way to the top, although the top button was hard to do on the thick double-knit collar. I loved it. There was something writerly about it; the imaginations of going places. I can’t quite explain it. I wore it long after I wore it out. I think I still have it, but I couldn’t find it for today.

Oh, and cardigans don’t mess up your hair.

Now, however, I do wear hoods and zippers, and pockets are a handy addition, but I’m still averse to jersey/sweatshirt fabric. I like wool or wool-like, small knits rather than cable knit.

The one I’m wearing right now was a gift for Christmas, and it is the perfect color to go with anything and everything and the perfect weight for every season. Light enough for a summer sweater, just enough warmth for under a winter coat or heavier sweater and shawl.

If it is somehow too warm, I have taken to wrapping the sleeves around my waist and wearing it that way, so it is always handy and ready for the chill of an air conditioner turned up too high. I am never without a sweater. Well, almost never. And cardigans are always my preference.

My favorite part of the cardigan is pulling it closed. Not buttoning it, but pulling it tight like a hug, like that message I wrote at the top of the page. There is something extra in being wrapped in a cardigan. It brings me memories of Welsh mountain fireplaces and stories under a lamplight, even though in most of those memories I have no cardigan, only its feel.

Some of the warmth I know comes from one of my favorite people known for his cardigans and his tennis sneakers: Mr. Fred Rogers. There is no one warmer than Mr. Rogers. His daily welcome into his home, his soothing voice, his wise and kind words, and of course the feeling that you are the only one he is talking to and that you matter just because you’re you. You felt his love and wanted to visit forever. I don’t know if he made cardigans both uncool and cool again for me, but he is the warmest wearer of them all.

My oldest son, who will be seventeen at the end of this week, was not a huge fan of cardigans, but he loved Mr. Rogers. Unfortunately, iconic Mr. Rogers passed away before my two little ones were born and sadly, they don’t know him as well. Zachary watched Arthur (the cartoon aardvark) and Mr. Rogers every day on PBS. It was a glorious day when Mr. Rogers appeared animated on the Arthur series.

We once wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers, asking for his television schedule and thanking him for his daily friendship. We were both surprised and not when he actually answered. He sent us a packet with the television schedule of topics he would be sharing with his viewers and two separate letters; one for my son and one for me. He signed my son’s “Mr. Rogers” and mine “Fred”. It was wonderful and I still take it out and re-read it now and then.

Cardigans have a feeling all their own and like fresh-baked cookies are better when shared.

Three Things

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The coordinator stated the day’s free write prompt: Three things that you look forward to during the blizzard in your own backyard.

Me: And if there’s nothing?

Coordinator: Try fiction?

 

Seriously, though, the snow is pretty. Last week, looking out of the windows, I thought I was on the inside of a snow globe. It wasn’t terribly windy, but the flakes were swirling and spinning and while the snow was piling higher on the grass and the driveway, I didn’t actually see any of it fall. On those days when the kids are already snuggled at school, and the car is parked for the day, I like to sit in my corner office with a hot cup of tea. The recent favorite is Twining’s Honeybush, Mandarin and Orange with just a little bit of sugar – barely two teaspoons. The scent is decidedly citrus, but it’s not overpowering. It slides down my throat with the illusion of honey – smooth and silky and warm.

I only drink my tea out of one or two cups. The first is our Corningware set. It’s white with little yellow vines and flowers, the Kobe pattern. It’s Corelle, which most of us remember from childhood, but these mugs are still breakable. The other is a large mug from Silvergraphics, one of the school’s fundraisers and really the only one worth doing. I hate to pick favorites, but my son’s vase of flowers is my favorite. The other mugs are too small or not the right shape – wide mouths or tiny handles, too light or too heavy. I also cannot drink from a cup with someone else’s name on it; or horoscope. There is something very wrong there. I may not know who I am, but I am certainly not you.

Three things? Really? Lets’ see: the pretty white blanket that covers the ground and gives the pines that Christmas card look. Hot tea in a quiet office of my own. And enough snow to make my excuses to not go out seem plausible, but not so much that the kids are home more than two days in a row. Or have a snow day before a vacation. Too much stir crazy going on then.

One.

Two.

Three.

There!

I managed it and it’s not even fiction.

Tea

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Tea has been a part of my life since I was a child. My family used to go to a Chinese restaurant on Horace Harding Blvd. in Queens, NY. They always gave everyone a glass of water and in the middle of the table was a bowl of crunchy noodles, a metal tea pot, duck sauce and hot mustard. My parents mixed the hot mustard with the duck sauce, which we kids didn’t like. We always drank the tea in those little tea cups that had no handles. I poured in way more sugar than it probably needed. I don’t think I liked tea as much then as I do now, but tea was part of the Chinese restaurant ritual. The owner knew us by name; I think we must have gone there weekly.

That tea was always too hot, steam rising as it was poured out into the small white cups. It sat for a bit, steam rising, too hot to pick up, but when it was lukewarm it was perfect, at least to my elementary school self it was. Chinese tea had a very distinctive taste, and it wasn’t until last year that I discovered that taste again.

I know I’ve talked about the teas that I tried and wrote about in memory of a friend, a victim of domestic violence, and after those were completed, my friend had sent me a variety of loose teas that he enjoyed and wanted to share with me. My favorites were Lady Londonderry and Moroccan Mint. His Moroccan Mint was a black leaf variety; I had only been able to find a green tea, which I did not like as well.

I discovered a local tea shop and started trying new teas and sharing them with friends. The one that my friend really enjoyed is Mexican Chocolate. This is lovely with milk and a tiny bit of sugar if any, and I found it especially wonderful to drink during Christmas time.

It was during these experimentations and tastings that I found Pai Mu Tan. This was the one that when I tried and tasted it I was transported back to the end of the Chinese dinners of my childhood.

British comedies sent me on a path of no return of putting milk in my tea. It was usually Lipton’s or Tetley or very occasionally Red Rose. My regular go-to tea now is none of those; it is a black leaf tea with ginger. It was a chance visit to a Job Lots where I discovered Stash’s Ginger Black Breakfast Tea; the first ginger tea that I had found that was a black tea and not a tisane. This became my daily drink with milk and sugar. When that one box ran out, I ordered a case. Even sharing it still took quite awhile to run out.

While I visiting friends in Denver a few years ago, I was treated to proper British tea. PG Tips with milk and sugar made by an authentic Brit. There was nothing quite like waking up to a beautiful, hot, blissful cup of tea. It was perfect. Every time.

I also went through a Star Trek phase and only drank Earl Grey, hot.

I’m not a fan of green tea, but last Lent when I gave up Diet Coke, it was recommended that I drink green tea with jasmine. This tea tasted good and it would counter the negative effects of always drinking soda. This was my daily drink during Lent with sugar, no milk. It made me feel good. I don’t know if that was the tea itself or if it was its relation to the spirituality of my Lenten habit.

My current favorite is from Twining’s: Honeybush, Mandarin and Orange. I add a bit of sugar, although I think honey would work as well. There is the warm soothing taste and the citrusy kick as it slides across my tongue. Since I’ve been so sick, I also pretend that it has enough vitamin C to keep me healthy.

When I go to therapy, I am asked if I want coffee, tea or water. I don’t drink coffee, so I always say water, although most days I’d rather have the tea. Unfortunately, my personality won’t ask for tea because it’s too much bother and for an hour long session, it would be too hot to drink immediately and then once I started talking, it would be too cold to enjoy. My anxieties are a complicated lot.

Tea, however, is not complicated at all. Tea is comfort. It is that cozy friend who sits in your lap and holds your hand. It’s medicinal. Tea makes all things better. It listens to the beat of your soul. Tea understands even when you don’t.

Space Challenges and Challenger

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Earlier this week, I began reading Moon Shot. It is the story of the space program leading up to the Moon landings, written by Astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton with NBC Journalist Jay Barbree. It is an insightful memoir that blends their personal feelings and how it all looked from their perspective. They also include prominent moments from the Soviet’s side of the space race. One of the things I love about these kinds of history books is the feeling of right now. I know what happened in most of these missions – the fire that killed three astronauts aboard the Apollo 1 launch pad, the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, the Apollo 13 almost disaster that showed the mettle of NASA and its team, but I still feel that edge of my seat, suspense, will they or won’t they and that is probably the finest thing  history book can do. And it’s my own history; my timeline as it were.

I was born in 1966, right in the heart of America’s space exploration. There is a family story, in fact that describes my watching the first Moon landing of July 20, 1969. I was 2 1/2 and a very confused toddler. My father’s brothers are Uncle Neil and Uncle Buzzy and I wondered how they had gotten to the Moon when I heard that Neil and Buzz were the astronauts’ names. We just saw them!

I have long been a fan of space. From Star Trek and Lost in Space to Babylon 5 and Doctor Who. AS a child we visited Cape Canaveral, although I think y then it was the Kennedy Space Center. I remember wandering in the sunshine and pressing many simulator buttons. Somewhere in my house today is a moldy Astronaut shaped pillow that I refuse to part with. Any hints on getting rid of mold from fabric, feel free to message me.

As a teacher, we would walk our toddlers over to the Cradle of Aviation – a tiny museum that was housed in a hangar that had lunar capsules and cockpits.at the neighboring community college. Mitchel Field and Roosevelt Field used to be real fields and that is where Charles Lindbergh took off from in his Spirit of St. Louis. There is still a museum there, relatively new, bright with an IMAX theatre but there is also a shopping mall, showing the duality of history and “progress.”

I can always find Orion in the night sky and I’ve braved frigid temperatures to witness Lunar Eclipses and Perseid meteor showers.

Today is the twenty-eighth anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, which exploded 73 seconds into their flight, killing all seven crew members on board including the first teacher in space.

I was in college. 8am class, which I hated. Earth Science, I think it was. I recall people talking but I couldn’t quite piece the news together, only that there was news. This was before a cell phone in every pocket and a laptop in every lecture hall. I rushed back to my dorm where I had a black and white television set. We only got one station – ABC and there on the screen was tried and true Peter Jennings showing video from earlier and describing what happened in the opening seconds of the Challenger mission while I was falling asleep in class. It was quite a jolt. I had been following their mission, which included Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire teacher.

The liftoff was being shown live in countless schools across America, if not the world, for that very reason. I was studying to be a teacher as was my roommate. It was like we had a colleague on board.

We’ve slowed down a bit on our manned flights. A mistake in my opinion. We’ve landed rovers on Mars and seen farther than we’ve ever been able to before. It’s amazing to think about what’s still out there.

 

My First Church Friend

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Last Wednesday was a beautiful day. There was a bright blue sky with just enough fluffy white clouds, the sun shining like spring and very warm for January. I walked into the church and for that one second, it was a typical Wednesday Mass at Nine AM.

Except it wasn’t.

The usher said, ‘good morning,’ and handed me the program: Celebration of Christian Burial. I’d been to many of these in the last year or so from attending the regular morning masses, but this one was different. On this one, I saw my friend’s name and with a long breath I took one step from the hum of the gathering space into the solemnity of the church itself and stopped short.

There, in Shirley’s seat was her red scarf and red wool hat. I’d seen her wear it at least a dozen times in the time I’ve known her and it took a moment to realize that it wasn’t her sitting in her usual seat. Someone had set up the display on a table and with the scarf and hat they included a rose and a rosary and adjacent to it was a floor candle just in front of ‘her’ pew.

I was quickly admonished for not doing so immediately, but I was expected to sit in my usual seat, which happened to be directly behind hers. The last thing I wanted was the first thing I felt at the start of my church visits: people watching me. I wasn’t family, but at the daily 9am Mass, Shirley and I always sat together and walked out together with two other women and I uncomfortably felt as though we were being watched.

‘My’ seat had been there since Easter 2012 when I began to attend the daily Mass. I either sat immediately behind Shirley or two seats behind her, depending on who got there first. Eventually, the other two ladies who alternated with me for that seat joined me in the one pew.

It was kind of funny. No one in the Mass really knew me, but they all knew that I was part of this foursome, an odd group if ever there was one.

I picked my seat originally because of Shirley.

The first time I entered the church, I did it almost the same way I did last Wednesday: haltingly, unsure, would anyone look at me? Gee, I hoped not. But after so many steps, there is that point of no going back, even for the anxious.

I walked in on that first spring morning, and tried to look around without looking around, and immediately took notice of Shirley’s jacket. It was a black jacket and so the muted multi-colored embroidery of leaves and flowers and stems stood out against the dark wooden pew. She was wearing a pale straw cap, not quite a pill box but not quite a cabby’s cap either. I would find that she always wore a hat, and when she didn’t, she felt that she should have been. If not a hat, then a scarf for over her head. The blue paisley one went with her pale blue raincoat. She was always put together and I envied her scarves and necklaces, gifts from her daughter.

But more than that, she was lovely. Warm and welcoming and really joyful with so much faith that it seemed easy to share and as much faith that I gained on my own, I accepted the faith offered to me by my friends,  Lorraine, Arlene and especially Shirley, my first church friend.

I sat behind her that first time, and said nothing.

When she stood, I stood.

When she bowed her head, I bowed my head.

When the priest said, “Peace be with you,” and she reached her hand out to me, I clasped her hand and repeated the words rotely. Her hands were warm and it was that touch, the memory of that light handshake in the morning that got me through the rest of the day.

Every morning she would already be there. I began to recognize her car, parked in the same space in front of the church. I’d walk in, expecting to see her, and was never disappointed. I’d walk slowly down the center aisle, hoping no one would notice me, and slide in behind her, slowly moving more and more to the left so that when she turned her head she might see me.

I watched her lips move quietly, near silent as her fingers worked one bead and then the next as she said the rosary. When she finished, she dropped them gently into a little change purse-shaped pouch, snapped it closed and slipped it into her handbag, almost immediately taking out her glasses to read the Missalette, which would come later in the Mass.

After a time, when she turned to put the rosary away, she would look at me and smile, and say ‘good morning’ to me. I would respond in kind. I never said good morning before that, but church brought out the good morning in me, and each Mass was a good morning. It kept me going when I needed to keep going.

I began to ask Shirley questions about things around the church. Why were some lights in the large cross certain colors while others were not? Why is that cloth red today when it was green yesterday? I don’t remember most of the questions; there were several, and Shirley always answered them. We chatted every day. We walked out together, often all the way to her car and I’d wait until her door was closed and the engine started.

She talked about her family often – her daughter in California, her son in Florida. My family is from Long Island, and she mentioned that her brother also lived there, not far from where I had grown up. I found out that her other daughter was murdered – a victim of domestic violence. When she told me about her, I told her about my friend Brittany who had just been murdered in 2011. The first anniversary was coming up, and was actually part of the reasons I had begun visiting the church in the first place.

She was always happy to see me, and when I missed a day, she hugged me and told me that she missed seeing me. She made a point of turning around, smiling and saying hello. More often than anything else, we talked about the weather and Father Jerry’s humor in the morning, the four of us often laughing quietly and quite possibly rolling our eyes at times.

I’ve always sat behind her. How will I know where to sit now?

Jiffy Pop

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I have this wonderful childhood memory of Jiffy Pop. I know that it wasn’t my kitchen, but I can’t remember which friend it belonged to. I think the stove was aqua and it was next to the back door which was left open. It was a comfortable day. The sun was shining but it was not too hot. I think it was in fact, cool.

The kitchen was a very small square room. Not that my kitchen at home was any bigger, but mine was long like a galley, narrow enough that I could put one hand on the counter and one on the stove and swing like a gymnast. I think that cost me a ride to the emergency room and five stitches in my head.

But back to the popcorn.

I still picture the metal foil rising into a balloon and the loud crackling and popping until the popcorn couldn’t fit anymore. It was wondrous. There was no such thing as microwaves at least not in our homes and so certainly no microwave popcorn. This was easy. It was fast. Jiffy, in fact. It was buttery delicious and perfect. At least, that’s how I remembered it.

Two weeks ago, my favorite show (Supernatural) had a reunion of sorts and in the promo pictures next to the rescued man watching a reel-to-reel film was a Jiffy Pop package that he was eating popcorn out of. He took them and ate them one at a time. I noticed because who takes them one at a time?

Before the show I ran to the supermarket and bought myself some Jiffy Pop. I would eat it with the characters because fandom is weird like that. I couldn’t wait to get into my kitchen and make a memory come alive.

I read the directions carefully.

Hmm, I don’t remember shaking the pan when I was a kid. I don’t remember moving it in circles against the element. No flames on this electric stove, but the directions said it was fine. I didn’t remember the smoke I think was caused from the friction of rubbing the bottom of the Jiffy Pop package on the range top. Constant smoke rising; I had to turn the fan on. It smelled awful and it was taking forever. I hadn’t even heard popping yet. How long had I been standing over this stove? An hour? Two? More likely less than five minutes, maybe six.

It was taking forever!

Finally, the popping began. Still I shook the pan and made the circles and listened to the pop pop popping. The foil made a balloon and eventually, maybe five minutes more I gave up.

I cleared the smoke.

I tore open the foil with a fork and ate a piece.

Hmm, not very good. Not at all like I remembered.

I’ll wait for the show to start and try it again.

It didn’t get much better. I ate about half and then was grateful when my teenager asked for a handful.

“Take the rest,” I said sadly.

Some things should be left as memories.

A Perfect Cup of Tea

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I arrived at my friend’s house bright and early Tuesday morning. We had about four or so hours to begin preparations for his party the next day and he had to work an afternoon shift at his new job. I hadn’t had breakfast and I don’t think he had either, but we were very excited to see each other and after showing me his mother’s horses and meeting the dogs, he showed me the gardens: his containers of vegetables and herbs clustered around the front. I met his mother and I think she asked if he was going to feed me; I think he promised he would. I noticed the fences he’d complained about putting up and repairing last month and the rose bushes that had been planted or replanted, I can’t remember which.

When we got up to his apartment, he showed me around and we dropped my stuff off in the dining room. He told me his plans for the morning and offered me his boxes and boxes of teas to choose one. I looked through them all and after finally deciding on a loose mango tea, he told me I had to pick something in a bag because he didn’t have a tea strainer.

I may have rolled my eyes out of his line of sight.

He showed me how to use the electric kettle – a pretty neat contraption and I set out once again to find an appropriate tea. Something different, something I didn’t have at home, but after looking through three boxes twice I decided on what was right in front of me: PG Tips.

The little tea bag that looks kind of like a hackeysack. I dropped it in the mug and poured the boiled water over the tea bag. Immediately the water turned a very dark brown. I watched it steep for a few more seconds, still darkening, and then asked about milk and sugar.

Oh, that was all downstairs in the main kitchen; his parents’ kitchen. We’d be cooking in there anyway, so down we went. He suggested that I ditch the tea bag; it was looking very strong, and while I usually don’t really care for very strong tea for some reason I wanted this one to be nearly black.

I poured the milk in. I think it was an almond milk, something I’d never had before, and it did its swirly thing like a whirlpool in a bathtub. In the tea to be honest I didn’t taste anything odd or different using the almond milk. I added my usual two teaspoons of sugar, realizing too late that I hadn’t taken a teaspoon from the drawer but a grapefruit spoon.

A spoon’s a spoon, and it stirred just fine.

I took a sip and tasted it.

The tea was perfect.

Dark and strong, very tea-like with the tiny bit of airiness that the milk gave it in little spirals turning the liquid into a tanned-golden color. I sipped and I felt the warmth slide down my neck and stop briefly in my chest before it continued the journey.

And then I did it again.

Tiny sips, savoring every swallow until it was the wonderful tepid temperature that lets you drink it a little bit faster and think about a second cup.

It was then that I realized how much I’d missed black tea. I hadn’t noticed not drinking it until this cup was nearly gone.

For Lent, way back in February, I gave up Diet Coke and I read somewhere that to counter the effects of the aspartame, I should drink green tea. So every morning for Lent, I drank a cup of green tea with jasmine. I enjoyed it very much and after Lent continued with my new morning drink.

It was only in this moment, with this second to last sip that I realized that this was the first cup of black tea I’d had since Lent began. It was the middle of May; how could I have gone so long without my beloved black tea?

It was like an old friend come to call, and as I watched my friend slice the apples as I peeled the others, it was a perfect cup of tea in the perfect place.

That doesn’t happen very often. In fact, it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.

Trees of My Life

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I was so excited to get this prompt, but like with all of the prompts I’ve waited to the last minute and I can’t think of anything to say.

As it happens, I love trees. There are two trees at my church that I love for very different reasons. The first is the large green tree behind the main sign. Last year, I would sit there and cry after my friend died. I didn’t have a place of worship and since I had Mass said for her here, I got very attached to this tree. It was very comforting.

The second tree can be seen perfectly from where I sit in the pew, but only if the window is open. The first time I noticed it, it was raining and the angle of the window and the view I had, it emotionally came upon me as Wales, so that is my Wales tree and it brings a smile to my face whenever I catch a glimpse of it during my visits to the church.

There are other trees that I remember throughout my life. The tree in Eisenhower Park near the Amphitheatre where we would air band front for Duran Duran and I was their air photographer. If only I’d brought my very real camera, I could have been the very real photographer for the air band. I used to sit with my back against this tree and write stories. It didn’t have a name then, but now it has its own fandom, Band Fiction I think or something so obvious it’s painful.

There’s the quasi-Christmas tree that was always outside my mother’s bedroom window that finally had to be taken down when it was hit once too many times by lightning.

The trees along the road in the Cotswolds while we walked off the rain and the cider until the warden would let us back into the hostel at Stow-on-the-Wold. And he did, early in fact because he felt badly for us in their tiny town, in the rain, on a Sunday in January with no bus service. Did I mention it was Sunday?

There were the trees that we bobbed and weaved around hoping not to break anything or die trying as we slid down on a poncho along the snow covered Craigower hill in Scotland during a snowstorm. When we got to the bottom, the sun was shining.

Of all the trees in my life, I especially love the trees usually used to depict the Trees of Life. The full leafy tops and the strong sturdy bottoms with the roots finding their ways away from the trunk into the nooks and crannies of the ground, creating paths much as we create the paths in our lives.

In fact, I love the Trees of Life so much that I’ve asked my friend to sketch me one to hang in my office, but he keeps forgetting (and that’s not a guilt trip; it’s really not). It’s almost as though he forgets that sketch and I forget this essay and we both exclaim, ‘oh crap!’ at about the same time when we’re reminded with that sheepish yet confused look on our faces.

I just got back from visiting him in Williamsburg, Virginia. I will probably be writing about this a lot. There are so many prompts that I’ve been jotting down the little things for when that random prompt inspires a random free write.

To get to Virginia from New York, I took the train round trip on Amtrak. I suppose Amtrak is really the only option if you’re taking the train. The one thing I noticed, in addition to the fact that I think I prefer train travel to any other kind of transportation, is that the entire East Coast from Upstate (Central) New York to Southern Virginia is all Trees and Water with the occasional Trees in Water or Water surrounding Trees, but that despite any other scenery whether it was a big city (Baltimore or DC) or a small town (Hudson or Ashland) once you’ve slipped out of ‘civilization’ you were back in the trees broken up only by some kind of body of water.

Traveling south you could see how much of spring had sprung. The greens deepening, the branches disappearing under the close knit covering of the leaves, the ground a blanket of shaggy grass and clover and weeds and bushes all vying for the attention of the limited sun. The further south you traveled the more that spring was apparent.

The sun was also warmer down South. I had been told not to bring a jacket and I actually listened for once. Nights were cool, but not cool enough that I was cold without a jacket.

Having once arrived at my friend’s house, the trees were everywhere, clearing just enough to let the car in and reveal the house and outbuildings. It was like hiking through a forest and in the clearing there was a house, the garage, the studio, the paddock and the horses. There was the garden, both vegetables and herbs and an enclosed area for the dogs where the roses grew. It is a very country kind of place, almost unexpected for my friend whose heart belongs to the city places.

For me, that is the one thing I enjoy about suburbia-bordering-on-rural. It is close enough to do anything. It is not in the middle of nowhere although it does feel that way sometimes, but in the mornings with a cup of tea in hand, there are animals and dogs barking and branches brushing against windows in the country breeze. There is the flicker of sunlight through the thick leaves and a sturdy trunk to lean your back against, your head tilted until you can look straight up into the woven roof held together by branches and birds’ nests and squirrel fur. The sun is there and it glimmers and blinks, peeking through tiny spaces, but there is enough of a covering that your eyes are not bothered by the sun and the heat is filtered and spaced in the shade.

I always have pen and paper, but I also always forget while sitting under the tree, staring at the life we forget about in the hustle and bustle of errands and kids and work and arguments and whatever that is not in the mini-forest of home.

Despite it not being my home, the nature here – the large and the small trees, the pines and the maples, the oaks and the others – they are everywhere and if they are everywhere they are also home and so it is a home of sorts for me as well.

I don’t want to leave this home. The responsibilities are different, the bed is different, the deep dark foresty-like covering is different and I am a little different. I can be someone else here, I can be me here, and I don’t want to leave.

I think this as we drive past the cluster of trees that form the driveway and I look back once more at the house and the garden and squint to see the horse and pick a tree to be mine for when I come back, but as much as I miss the friend I was visiting, I really miss the me I was under those Virginia trees and I want to go back.