what i remembered when waking

this morning i awoke in the cozy dark room at my friend's house in washington, d.c. first thoughts included gratitude for the ways that this wild life keeps offering support for my random adventures.

and then i remembered that 72 years ago on this same morning, marie emerick, my great grandmother awoke into a weighty presence of sadness and the palpable feeling that her life had collapsed. by the end of the evening, it would. her life, which appeared in pieces, would end at her hand and a bullet through her heart.

it was 1938. she was a young mother with three children (my grandpa then 6 years old). she lived in a little house next to her father's place in pueblo, colorado. her husband, who made a living at the nearby steel factory, was leaving the marriage and may have already been involved with someone else. he was a hard worker, facing his own difficulties. but kindness sometimes did not show up in the way he handled the pressures of financial instability. a few years before, because of the great depression, they had lost the home she loved. somewhere in this time, marie purchased a piano---because she loved to play. when her husband came home to see the purchase, his anger tore up the keys and strings. and then of course, there is the reality that her mother had, for at least several years, been living at the state hospital a.k.a. insane asylum about 10 minutes up the road.

these details don't say everything. but i received them a year or so ago during a time that felt equal parts exciting and impossible. somehow wearing marie's story on my skin for this past year has given me the hardly speakable ounces of courage to explore the conversation of how any of us get through this life-falling-apart stuff. some of that conversation happened when i arrived at her grave last summer. it was a private exchange between a grandmother and granddaughter who would never meet, but who connected in their own ways through the experience of loss. i doused her grave with the bright oils of lemon, lime, clove, and orange. and after a while, we agreed that a citrus-smelling-sense of humor and playful salsa moves (with juicy hip action) were some of the best ways to get through anything.

i've always felt that you can take any moment and connect it back quite far. in this case, i connect this moment, with the soft light in my friend's washington, d.c., home back to marie emrick. her sadness and death led me to explore questions about my own life, which led me to historical research about mental health care, which led me to examining patient records in morganton, which led to meeting my mentor at school phoebe pollitt, which led to me learning about pellagra in the south, which led to me reading a book by a professor at american university and then making an appointment to meet him. and that is what i'm about to do, on this day 72 years after the day that marie awoke for the last time.

so, marie. last year i said goodbye with a little salsa lesson. just the basic moves. i hope you've been practicing. this morning (because i need to leave soon to walk to yoga) i send you off with some mary oliver. i bet you know this one already. you'll probably feel a few of the lines deep in the space of your throat and in the lightness of your heart. douse yourself with the smell of oranges and any tiny thing that will bring a smile to your face.

One or Two Things
by Mary Oliver

Don’t bother me.
I’ve just
been born.

The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

officially here

That's Robert, my manly mountain neighbor, putting on my new Tennessee license plate, which I just got about 20 minutes ago. (Which, was on its own an interesting experience. I never really thought of licensing a car as a cultural event, but it most certainly is. In Johnson County, TN you don't have to have emissions or safety. I didn't even have to show a photo ID. $65 bought me a new title, plate, and an invitation to come to the local church up the street. And while I waited for the friendly city employee to enter my information, I could have taken my pick of coupons that had been cut and gathered in a basket on the table. These details would not be part of a SLC car registration experience, I promise.)

I know it's no big deal--just a license plate, right? And that it is. It is also a nod to feeling like I've officially moved. 

When I came out here a year ago, I found it quite poetically appropriate that I lived in the border area of NC and TN. I observed that as you drive across a border, or walk across one--like I can do 1 mile up the road, that not much changes. There is this zone where the boundary, though legitimate, doesn't have any obvious impact. Those kinds of differences start showing up, sometimes, about 30ish or so miles outside of the border.  (As one little bit of evidence for this, I suggest you compare the conversations at the grocery check out line in Mountain City, TN to those you hear in Boone, NC.)

I could get cheezy here, but I try not to. 

Let's just say that, one year ago, nearly all aspects of my life matched up with the feeling of living in that border zone. My days certainly were different, but I wasn't far enough away from the pace or memory of the past to feel like I was entirely in a new place. There was nothing to do about this, and nothing wrong with it. It was just where I was at---still not quite 30 miles out from the life I had known.  

So, besides being legal again (I've been driving around an unregistered car since April. I know, I know. My bad), this little bit of governmental regalia feels like a physical acknowledgement that I've officially crossed the border. for a moment at least. :)

almost all of the words for one moment

After a good day of work (which entailed fishing through 100-year old letters and newspaper articles to gather up relevant details on the extraordinary and ordinary lives of the wealthy Cone family), I decided it was time for a date. So, I baked some brownies and climbed up to my little loft to watch Antonia's Line. The space is unreachable by Ruby, since the only way to get up there is via a steep ladder against the wall. This makes Mookie, the cat, quite happy. Not only does it give her a safe vantage point away from the dog, but it also allows her to nibble on food at her leisure instead of having it stollen by the newcomer. But the same situation taunts the dog, since she mostly just always wants to be in near vicinity of her person and the cat that she thinks should be a dog.

But all that is an aside to what I meant to write directly.

Which is, that.

After watching the movie, I climbed down that ladder and was greeted to two chewed up black boots and a shredded roll of toilet paper. All of this courtesy of Ruby, the destroyer (as Laura accurately, and affectionately calls her).

and I felt like a parent coming home from a date

and the kids had been rambunctious and the babysitter was too busy doing other things.

And all I could honestly do was grin—grateful in my own strange ways for this scene, and for the sweet escape I treated myself to as I watched this most beautiful Dutch film that beautifully says almost everything worth saying, and for the way that life just keeps on going after the movie ends.

After one year of living here, at least I've learned this . . .

. . . that some questions don't require thoughtful deliberation or ponderous consideration. Take for example the question I was asked again today. It was the same question that Jerry, the friendly 60-ish year-old-garbage man asked me last year this time. "Can I have your number?" Simple, right? Not so, I've learned. At least, not so simple for me.

It took me about 33 years to learn that that question actually means something else. But last year I thought it meant this old guy who works at the garbage place just wanted my phone number. And since I was new to these neck of the woods, and I wanted to be a friendly neighbor, I went ahead and gave him my number. I also gave him a couple of loaves of my homemade zucchini bread and several slices of blueberry lemon pound cake. I thought these gifts were necessary because he was doing me a favor by letting me dump my garbage in North Carolina, when I technically live in Tennessee and drive a car with Utah plates. (For those of you not from around here, you should know that there isn't such thing as garbage service. It is purely a geographical issue, I think--since there are so many spread out country roads and dwellings. But all the same, citizens in these parts have to take their trash to central dumping stations).

Now, I know you are thinking this could turn into a creepy stalking story. Gratefully, that is not what happened. In part, because I never answered his calls. And also in part because I stopped taking my garbage to that particular location--in fact, I kind of just stopped dealing with garbage all together (though that is another story). And I guess I should give Jerry some credit here too. As far as I know he didn't go driving around the little country roads searching for a car with the Ski Utah slogan on the back. Though, according to some, he may have legitimately felt I'd given the him the go ahead to seek me out. Jack, my hippie neighbor, let me know that around here, in the not-too-distant-past, if a man drove by a woman's house and she waved at him, it meant she wanted to be courted. So, I'm just sayin', I gave this old timer some zucchini bread and a big smile, and I think I even gave him a hug. What kind of message was I sending?

All the same, every time I've taken my garbage to this place I kind of get a pit in my stomach. But that ended today. He must have forgotten that he already has my number, heck he couldn't even remember my name exactly. So when he asked me for my number, I didn't give it a moment's thought and just said, "No way. That's silly." And then I changed the subject. Magic thing is that he still emptied my stinky garbage can, took the corrugated cardboard to the recycle bins, and said, "Boy you really know how to cheer up someone's day." And he wasn't being sarcastic.

So, here's the little important lesson for me. Kindness doesn't require saying yes to everyone.

And there it is. How's that for a first blog posting? Come to think of it I set this one up perfectly, because you can honestly respond, "Ah, that's garbage." He he he.