In these long sad days,
I remember things...
important things.
How to breathe, how to sit,
how to move.
The shape of my skin
stretched across muscle and bone.
The hows and whens and whys
of being alone...
because that is how it will be
at the last breath.
Our elementary school was starting a band program. Everyone on the bus was all abuzz after the day’s assembly where the instruments were paraded out and played before our wondering eyes and ears.
“I’m going to play the flute,” says one girl, bouncing in her seat.
“Me too!” parrot several girls.
“Well, I’m going to play the clarinet,” declares Dotty (Snotty Dotty as I call her in my head).
She turns to me, “What are you going to play?”
Thoughts of a shiny silver flute held delicately against my lips flit across my inner vision. I feel Snotty Dotty’s eyes boring into me.
I shrug. “Probly the trombone,” I say casually.
Snotty Dotty bristles, “What? You can’t play that! The trombone is for booyysssss.”
I shrug again.
*****
And that, dear readers, is how I came to play the trombone for six years. The first year I had to use my foot to reach all the positions...yeah, I was that tiny.
There were acres and acres of land on Heather’s farm. We explored every inch of it that summer. We imagined ourselves as wild horses and ran with the real ones through the pastures and over the soft ground of the woods. Our long hair flew out behind us.
We ran with the lust of children while the sun pressed down on our heads. We ran for the pure joy of feeling our bodies working…bodies that were still new to us. There was nothing in the world but that moment …our awkward long limbs moving us with grace over the land.
In Shannock the best sledding hill is my backyard. On snow days all the kids from the neighborhood gather there, dragging their bladed sleds and blue saucers. The "hill" is an enormous bowl in the ground...a crater. So we have contests to see who can make a run down the hill and make it the furthest up the other side. Cheating is not tolerated and warrants snow bombs upon the perpetrator.
We are tireless, pushing the trails further and further up the other side of the hill. We sweat inside our snowsuits and our noses turn red and run. We soak our mittens and ignore frozen toes until it becomes unbearable. Then we go inside, our lungs full of winter air and our cheeks windslapped red.
Dear readers,
This is Post III in the "Things That are..." series. It is meant to be a call and response. I do hope that you will add your own items to the list in the comments.
"If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is not befitting the human mind." Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Things that are...Simple Pleasures...
* Socks...of the cashmere, fuzzy, colorful or knee high variety...
* Hot tea with honey...
* Laughing...
* A favorite pair of jeans...
* Strangers smiling at one another...
* Hearing the first movement of water in the Spring...
* Cinnamon toast...
* Bare feet in cool grass...
* The delightful owners of my local market...
* Fresh warm strawberries straight off the vine after working in the sun...
Just finished reading an essay by Margaret Atwood on pornography. Here is some of what she had to say:
"This leads us back to the key question: what's the harm? Nobody knows, but this society should find out fast, before the saturation point is reached. The Scandinavian studies that showed a connection between depictions of sexual violence and increased impulse toward it on the part of male viewers would be a starting point, but many more questions remain to be raised as well as answered. What, for instance, is the crucial difference between men who are users and men who are not? Is there a clear line between erotica and violent pornography, or are they on an escalating continuum? Is this a "men versus women" issue, with all the men secretly siding with the proporners and all women secretly siding against? (I think not; there are lots of men who don't think that running their true love through the Cuisinart is the best way they can think of to spend a Saturday night, and they're just as nauseated by films of someone else doing it as women are.) Is pornography merely an expression of the sexual confusion of this age or an active contributer to it?
Noboby wants to go back to the age of official repression...Neither do we want to end up in George Orwell's 1984, in which pornography is turned out by the State to keep the proles in a state of torpor, sex itself is considered dirty and the approved practise is only for reproduction. But Rome under the emperors isn't such a good model either."
It is important to note that she is discussing hardcore and violent pornography, NOT erotica.
Should there be regulations? Do you think it is harmful? How do we protect ourselves and maintain freedom?
My first bike crash is at the hands of our neighborhood bully. I am 4 or 5 years old, riding my red tricycle down the uneven sidewalk, back and forth between my front drive and the tree that marks the end of our property. She is there, behind the tree, waiting for me. She steps out as I approach, hands on hips and announces I can go no further. I pay her no mind as I try to move past. She knocks me off my tricycle and I run home, blood running on my knees and elbows. I get patched up and run back outside for another go. She knocks me off again and again and each time I go to my mother for bandaids. After three rounds my mother says, "no more", and I feel the bully has won.
*********************
It is the summer of my 7th year and I have my first two-wheel bike. The grass is vivid, soft and damp under my tires. My father runs alongside holding the back of the seat, and suddenly I am flying down the grassy hill of our backyard. I look back to grin proudly at my father and he grins back...one proud moment before the crash. My father is running but I am laughing...exhilerated.
*********************
I am flying down the road, trees whipping past, a pack of my friends behind me on their bikes. We are so fast and I am leading them. Old Mr. Peabody is standing on the side of the road and his dog that yips all day and night sits on the other side, a white ball of fur and teeth. Mr. Peabody calls him just as I streak past. My front tire hits fur and bone and my face meets the pavement. Thankfully the four bloody teeth I spit out are baby teeth.
*********************
Our driveway is a gravel paved U. I am still naive to the pitfalls of bike riding and do not realize that gravel gives way under fast, cornering tires. As I speed into the turn of our drive, the front tire jerks to the left and I cannot hold it. I crash in a great display of scraping and flying dust. When I pull up my shirt to inspect the damage there is gravel embedded in the angry red gashes across my ribs.
As I tuck her in, she says, "Mom, I love you so much. Please don't ever die." Her tone is matter of fact, no trace of worry, but she is quite serious.
Just starting to read Little Women. One of those classics I should have read and never did. When my daughter was younger, her favorite movie was Little Women with Katherine Hepburn. She loved Jo. Now she loves "13 Going on 30" with Jennifer Garner. How do these things happen?
Dear lovely readers,
Post II in the series, "Things that are...". Please add to the list in the comments area. Myself? I've just had a lovely day.
"The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it." -Richard Bach
Things That are Lovely...
* Watching your children laugh...
* Answering the knock at the door and opening it to an unexpected visit from a dear friend...
* Sisters...
* The tiny fingers of a small child grasping yours...
* The scents in a chocolate shop...
* Reconnecting...
Four years at Smith...as an adult woman, a single mother...bringing with me my provincial upbringing, my children, and my dreams. It's been a long haul and graduation will be a quiet agonizing triumph.
"Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Things that are Elegant...
* The hands of a lover...
* A string of pearls...
* Bare slender birch trees...
* The tall Dutch gardener carefully tending his plants...
* Fingertips...
* Fighting entropy...
* Water flowing down a gentle slope...
* Miss Ellie Rothman...
* Tea served in delicate china...
Please add your own list in the comments area...
This will be my third. I feel like I want to settle somewhere but each blogspot has its perks and quirks.
