workshop

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.

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.

Radio

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Mexican radio. Wish I was in Tijuana; eating barbequed iguana. I grew up in the 80s, one of the best times for music. People may scoff, but it is the most imitated, most reunioned, most innovative music. Synth pop, new age, punk, alternative. The second British invasion. We were home to one of the best alternative stations, now defunct, WLIR 92.7. We used to stalk the DJs when stalking had a good natured connotation. We’d call and believe it or not, they remembered us.

Willobee, Larry the Duck, Malibu Sue, Donna Donna, Bob Waugh – just a few of the countless DJs who were themselves near iconic.

On the weekend, they used to have special themes like WLIR goes to the park or goes to college. This was before the prevalence of the internet and you could only listen if you were in the broadcast area. I was told when the weekend of ‘goes to college’ was when I was at college in Oneonta and I called them.

Collect.

And they accepted the charges.

Now, I listen to WEQX out of Manchester, Vermont. Some of you may have recognized the name I mentioned earlier: Willobee. The one and the same. He has since moved on to Scranton (with wife and baby), but I was able to call on his last day and thank him for a lifetime of good music and influence.

People might not believe me, but I like to say, and it is true that the music I listen to is either twenty years old or twenty minutes old.

I may have to change that to thirty and thirteen in another couple of years.

Inhouses

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I have had so much trouble with outhouses.

Not using them mind you, but writing about them until someone suggested I just write about unusual bathrooms or something like that, and that’s what I will try to do.

First, when we were kids, my parents used to say we should write a book about all the bathrooms we used on a car trip. It didn’t matter when the last time we used the toilet was, but if we saw a sign for a bathroom or stopped for gas, we absolutely, positively needed to use the bathroom.

My parents said we were taking inventory or reviewing all of them or something.

When I got older and had my first son, he, of course, used public bathrooms even though we also had a portable camping toilet in the car in case he needed to use it on a long trip without a rest area.

I remembered what my parents said about writing a book and so we took pictures of my son and the places where he used the bathroom – McDonald’s, thruway rest area, gas station, library, you name it. If he used the bathroom, we took a picture of it (the place, not the actual bathroom or the toileting) and we made a little picture book for my Dad.

He loved it!

The second thing that came to mind was my first trip to the UK in 1987. I knew enough not to call the bathrooms bathrooms, but other than that every time I used one, I was not only surprised, it was an exercise in how the fuck do I flush this thing?

Here’s a normal toilet with an American style lever. Okay, no problem. That was in the airport. They like to give you a false sense of security in the airport.

Next toilet. Pretty normal for me, but the tank had a large push button on the top of the tank.

There was a large push button on the wall above the tank.

There was a small push button on the top of the tank, on the side of the tank and on the wall above the tank (these were three separate toilets).

And then I used the men’s room in a pub. It was New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square, and there was much drinking and carousing and the toilets were needed. It’s New Year’s Eve as I mentioned, so the line for the ladies’ was ridiculously long, and my friend and I did not want to wait, so we went into the men’s room. Unfortunately for the men who came in not knowing that a woman was in the stall, the looks on their faces when we left were pretty priceless.

However, this toilet almost kept me. This was probably the most unusual and certainly the most unusual I had seen by far. The toilet itself was a regular public bathroom toilet, no tank, no lever.

I looked around for a floor button (yes, we’d seen those.)

Nope.

I checked the wall for a push button.

Nope.

I don’t know why I looked up, but I did. There’s the tank, way up practically attached to the ceiling, but not with a long chain hanging down. I pulled the chain, everything worked as it should and I left, calling out a warning before I left the stall and waving at four surprised (more than likely extraordinarily drunk) Londoners.

In Scotland, you had to pay 2p to pee, an irony (and a pun) that apparently took 26 years for me to get. You could also get a public shower in Scotland, but I think that was a pound, perhaps more.

Bathroom.

Toilet

Loo.

WC.

Johns.

Porta-pottys.

Los banos.

Ty bach.

The most important thing you need to be able to ask for in a foreign country, whether they are inside or outside.

Faery Snow

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I love snowflakes. Pictures of snowflakes. Books. Those paper cutouts of snowflakes. Sponge painted snowflakes on blue construction paper. My kingdom in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) is Concordia of the Snows with a snowflake badge.

However, I hate snow.

The anxiety that comes with the first snow is about the same as getting on an airplane and to get me on one of those takes half a Xanax and a talisman. The cold; the ice; the wet; the slip sliding around the streets. I think I stopped driving after the first snow since around 2004.

I used to walk to school in the snow. Really. I student taught in in a little town in upstate New York, and lived too close to drive. It would have really been absurd to drive, so I walked the rural roads, crossed the bridge over the kill and for a few weeks I was Abraham Lincoln.

I drove back to college from student teaching in blinding and drifting and blowing snow to see a boyfriend. Love, and an old car, makes one stupid.

Fire drills at 2am in the snow. Who pulls a fire alarm at 2am in the snow? Freshman, obviously. Freshmen with a death wish.

The only snow I remember with fondness was the faery snow in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was the worst snow in more than a decade. Started out locked in the hostel at York, hours upon hours of train delays, flights cancelled, but Edinburgh snow in January………brilliant.

Light.

Fluffy.

Shiny.

Sparkly.

Faery snow.

I spent the evening with Peter. He had never seen snow being from Australia and it was the best thing. People who’ve never experienced the bad of an upstate winter like ice storms and Red Cross Shelters – they all love the snow.

Especially if they’ve never seen it.

He had the bright eyes of a four year old, almost twinkling as much as the falling flakes under the lampposts below the castle. Everything is better with a four year old. Or a twenty year old who’s never seen snow.

This snow feels different.

It tastes different.

It grabs the soles of your feet and slides you down the street. You don’t really slip – faery snow’s not there to hurt you, only to enthrall, entangle, entwine you with the web of the faerie’s call.

Unrequited Love

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The only unfulfilled love I’m willing to talk about openly is writing. And the realization that the love affair will never be reciprocated hurts just as much as that first time someone came out and said, “I like you. I just don’t like-like you.”

Writing will never like-like me. I’m too old, and it’s not that I’m too old as much as born at the wrong time – the non-generation. I’m not a baby boomer. I’m not a Me. I’m too old to be a Gen-Xer. Or Y and Z for that matter. I missed the computer age – I didn’t even have a computer until I got married and I was forty-one before I actually owned my own – a laptop, which took me a year to finally use with any kind of regularity. My kids know the VCR as the machine next to the TV that has never worked.

I read Julie Andrews autobiography recently. She grew up in the fifties, and I was sad to discover that her voice is my voice. That’s how I write. Very formally, describing how the leaves rest on the rooftop, narrative on top of narrative with very little emotion unless it’s purple prose. I write like someone who grew up in the fifties, only I have no story to tell. My parents weren’t alcoholics, I did not overcome drug abuse, I wasn’t abused or molested. My parents sent me to college. I lived at home until I got married.

This non-generation of girls was expected to grow up, be prim and proper, but still know everything, go to school, college and be anything you wanted, anything boys could be even President of the United States. At least until you got married and had kids and in that order. And when the kids were in high school you could go back to work because women were independent now.

You can’t be a writer. A writer is impractical. And they drink. They don’t have two nickels to rub together either.

Get a degree and then you can write.

Get married. You can write later.

You’re still young. You can’t wait to have kids. Writing will always be there.

Well, guess what?

Writing didn’t wait for me. Writing found someone else. Writing computerized. Modernized. Writing grew up, and changed with the times where it needed to. More do it yourself. More travel. More health care and fitness. New writers came along. Younger and prettier and having seen people like me get left behind knew just what to do to keep up.

Writing won’t ever come back for me, and I just can’t catch up. My writing is tired and old; timid. Like me.

My best friend, like any good friend, pushes me towards the love that got away, prods, challenges, shames, but he can only push so far. I keep my hand on the ledge. I don’t know what’s down there. I lean over, but I can’t see very far, and what I can see is dizzying.

What if I fall?

What if I catch up to writing and I’m just not good enough? Staying back and wondering is better than being rejected again, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Fire

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Fire is all powerful, building up and destroying at the same time. Fire rises, sweeps through. Unlike water which washes everything away in an instant, fire stays awhile. It spreads, sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, but out and up, higher and higher and even when it has no place to go it still reaches out and grows, larger, looming, consuming.

Staring at fire is much like clouds in a blue sky.

There’s a bunny. And a soccer ball. But fire is not fluffy. You can’t help but to jump at each spark, wondering why there are no bunnies in the charred remains.

Fire is powerful and… weak is the wrong word. Fire can be subdued. Water, salt, even certain chemicals. I think it’s why we feel so much for fire fighters. They are like magicians in the night, taking the fire away, bringing back the calm.