Still Amazed

Rain Walk

 

Today was our first rain walk of the season. The hard steady rain of yesterday had abated and instead we had what weathermen would call “showers, heavy at times” with windows of sunlight between and concurrently. 

 My very first thought, of course, was that we must go outside and look for rainbows. Jeanne and Pi joined us and we strolled down the muddy road towards the beach. Sometimes the sea was a gash of shimmering silver, the sky shifting tones of gray-white light.  

But then the sun would appear, shining through the droplets of rain, and all the trees were strewn with diamonds and every blade of new grass sparkled, and big white clouds sat squat upon the hilltops.  

Now and then we encountered neighbors and friends for a sundry assortment of roadside conversations about whether the grass will sprout, when the rain would stop, and if the green will stay. We talked about new fences and fat dogs, needing a shale base and competing for Ruffino, painful changes and reassuring cycles. 

Monte and I hadn’t worn our rubber boots, so Jeanne had the important job of stomping out a channel to divert the water that was pooling in one place. Pi, meanwhile, was sniffing out some hidden critter in the grass. His concentration was impressive.

 We were walking towards the sun and towards the sea, but we were bound to see a rainbow; not a one of us doubted that we would. And when a sudden shower swept through with a swoosh and sound like tambourines, we turned to look through its crystal-beaded curtain. And there it was: a gauzy rainbow arched in bright bands that echoed the curve of the hill and seemed to end at our house. 

No pot of gold awaited us back home, but there was good music. And lunch.

Breathing

 

My friend and I met for coffee on Sunday morning in a crowded shop in the West Village. Soundtrack: Nick Drake, the clatter of dishes, the din of conversation. My friend had endured a great loss in this year, but she spoke about it calmly. “I was with her at the moment she died,” she told me. “I had placed my hand upon her mouth to see if she was breathing, and I literally felt her last breath. It was just a puff, right into my palm. Just a little puff of air.”

We stepped outside and were startled by the cold. It seemed that winter had suddenly arrived, and the only way to walk was to hurry along, and so my friend and I went our separate ways. I buttoned the top buttons of my coat, wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck, and  saw my own frosty breath in front of me as I headed back towards the apartment where Monte and I were staying. 

There were Christmas trees for sale on the corner. I closed my eyes and inhaled their evergreen fragrance, imagining snowy mountains, sleigh rides and carolers, midnights clear. I had been kvetching all week about the intrusion of pseudo-Christmas everywhere, the insincere strains of Yuletide muzak, the relentless push to spend money. But the smell of Christmas trees revived something pure and hopeful in me; it felt good to pause among them. I breathed deeply, and I sighed.

The day before, Monte and I had disembarked from a subway train and bypassed a crowded escalator, choosing to climb a mountain of stairs up to the street. There were stairs, then more stairs, and we strode up briskly, flight after flight, a bit of the old competitiveness kicking in, an exhausting acceleration to the top.  My heart was pounding by the time I reached the sidewalk, and I gulped the cold air, and felt pleased with myself for no reason.

We had come to New York to see our daughter, and that would be our Christmas. I had been worried about it, though: How are they affording this? What are her plans and her purpose? Where will she be staying? Only days before her scheduled departure, I’d seen tweets from her and her boyfriend, asking whether anyone had a place in New York where they could crash. I was appalled; I offered unwelcome advice; I lay awake in the night fretting. But someone did have a place for them –– a rather nice place, as it turns out, and the plans unfolded as they went along, and it all seemed satisfactory. I had forgotten an important fact: the young live in another world. They have their own language, their own code, their own methodologies. They breathe a different air. 

And that daughter? She looked beautiful and happy. Step back, let go, exhale, said the universe.

 

Glimpses of Magic

 

"To inhabit was the most natural joy when I was still living inside; all was garden and I had not lost the way in."  Helene Cixous

This afternoon I witnessed the precise moment of enchantment when the rain became snow. I had taken shelter in the doorway of a city shop, and I was watching the sky as droplets thickened and whitened and turned to feathered flakes, and it was magic.

Soon enough the advent of sleety snow and chilly temperatures meant nothing more than being wet and cold and miserable, but there was that window of wonder while it lasted, and a little bit is clinging to me still.

Yesterday I revisited scenes from my childhood. First we went to Prospect Park, a place where my siblings and I spent many happy hours. It’s funny how familiar little details were: the hexagonal pavers of the pathways, the sturdy stone fountains, the bridge beneath which we always paused to sing and shout and hear our voices echo. 

 There was the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch at Grand Army Plaza –– Brooklyn’s own Arc de Triomphe -- and what we used to call The Pancake Building at 47 Plaza Street West -- Brooklyn’s own Flatiron Building -- designed by Sicilian architect Rosario Candela. There was the marble gazebo with its beautiful tiled ceiling, and within the park, green pastures and winding tree-lined paths. It was nice to see my daughter there in the place that was once so dear to me.

In the southeast corner of the Plaza is the Brooklyn Public Library, a building shaped like an open book, with sculpted gold figures on either side and these beautiful words above the entrance: Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts and noble things that tower above the tide, the magic word that winged wonder starts, the garnered wisdom that never dies. 

A block or so further, we passed the Botanical Garden, one of my favorite places anywhere, and then, the Brooklyn Museum, where my sister and I used to love looking at the rooms from different historical periods in which we would imagine ourselves living. (On this day we went to an exhibition called Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic Exhibit, 1955 to the Present, worth a ponder.)

We walked back to the apartment in Park Slope where Miranda was staying, past elegant old buildings, lamplight shining from windows, a glimpse of a woman reading in a room, a sense of something quietly wondrous in the gathering dusk. I was remembering my brother and sister, aching for days that had happened long ago but here...when all was garden, and I had not lost the way in.  But I loved coming back with Monte and Miranda. 

And I still recognize magic: it comes in flickers and cannot be paused; it is a sweetness that leads into longing, and there you are left… but a sweetness.  

 

New York, Entry

 

We take a red-eye flight from LAX and suddenly we're in New York, and I can't quite get my brain around it. A surprisingly pleasant taxi driver deposits us in front of the 7^th Avenue apartment building where an old friend of mine has said we could leave our bags until our own rental is available for check-in. I knew this friend back in the Syracuse days –– thirty years ago –– and have seldom seen her since. She’s at work now, and it’s touching to me how readily she has left us her key and entrusted us to enter her private space in her absence. There’s something humbling about having someone else’s key in hand. 

Ten flights above the busy street, her place is very still, except for a little dog who yelps until we crouch down to her level and reassure her. My friend is recently widowed, but there are two toothbrushes in the glass at the bathroom sink, and two robes on a hook, and everywhere the sense that both of them still live here, and it seems sad, but that’s only because I know the back-story.  My friend gets up at 5 each morning to swim at the Y a few blocks away, and her wet swimsuit and cap are hanging in the shower, and somehow that feels poignant to me also. There is an intimacy about being here, and the impulse to walk carefully and speak in whispers. Our plan is to leave our bags and be on our way, but I have that punchy, disoriented red eye feeling and decide to lean back on the couch for a few minutes and before you know it I am soundly asleep with a pair of cats who have leapt up to join me, while Monte sits in a chair reading and planning with his iPhone.  

 It’s nearly ten when we set out to take the subway to Brooklyn to meet up with Miranda. We stop for coffee and tea, and there's a bowl of bananas on the counter, but in a classic case of ‘yes, we have no bananas’, the counter guy says we cannot buy one, no how, no way; they are all he has and simply not for sale. We order the oatmeal, which sounds very good, but alas, there is no more. A bagel suffices. It's New York, after all. 

We enter the subway, where a series of hand-lettered signs announce that we are about to come upon a poet: N.Y. PUBLISHED POET SHARES HIS POEMS. YOUR CHANCE TO HEAR PUBLISHED POET READ HIS WORK. The poet, as it turns, out is a thin black man sitting on the ground with sheets of paper all around him, not an audience in sight. We, too, hurry by; chance missed. (And this Published Essay-Writer wishes she had at least left a dollar and a nod of respect.)

We emerge into the sunlight of Park Slope on a winter morning, red brick buildings with decorative cornices, stately old brownstones, hints of holiday here and there.  Miranda and Xander have also had the humbling experience of being handed a key; they are staying in the new and nearly empty apartment of a generous friend.  Two mattresses are lined up parallel on the floor, with two large suitcases nearby, open and spilling over; there are tweets being tweeted and blogs being blogged and cell phones ringing and plans in the air, and despite the echoing vacancy of the apartment it is filled with bustle and energy and optimism.  

 The kids accompany us back to Manhattan and we walk to the West Village to meet the woman with the key to the studio apartment Monte and I have rented. For this particular key, we hand over a big wad of cash, then check in and deem the apartment satisfactory. There's a curious assortment of kitchen things, a bleak attempt at decor, a view from the window of men in hard hats doing brick work from scaffolding attached to a building across an alley. But it has all the conveniences, home base for four nights. 

We decide to go exploring afterwards. The wind has kicked up, but it's surprisingly mild and pleasant outside. We walk over to the elevated High Line Park in the old the meatpacking district, climb the steps, and wander. Native grasses are growing between the old freight train tracks and through artfully slotted concrete slabs and sidewalks. There are overlooks onto former warehouses and industrial structures and modern glassy buildings that glow in the light of the rapidly setting sun and the city beginning its nightly twinkle. We descend onto cobblestone streets and pass shops lit up for Christmas; we walk through the Chelsea marketplace and enter the Wired store, oh brave new world, abuzz with glitzy goods and edgy-techy-digital electronic things, ultimately baffling.

In the evening, we meet up with Ben, the third member of the 20-something trio, and his parents, who have just flown in from London, and we sit at a long table in a noisy downtown restaurant, and we feel included and happy to be with our kids, and Ben’s mother says, “Aren’t we lucky to have this connection with their generation?” and we know we are obsolete, but for the moment, we feel pleased, we feel sated, we feel grateful. 

Keep an Eye Out for Green-Winged Redheads

 

Sue and James had come to visit for our day-after Thanksgiving celebration of thanks. The focus was on good friends, and beautiful surroundings, and all of us still hanging in there. Saturday morning was bright and windy and we decided to drive down to the beach at Bullito for a walk.

There were white wisps of cloud in a very blue sky, and the surf was big and wild. Here and there guys sat on the hoods of parked vehicles looking out to sea with that hypnotized gaze that they get, almost drooling. The wind rushed through the trees and scattered bits of leaves through the air like confetti.

“Interesting red parrot,” said James from the back seat.

“What exactly did YOU have with coffee this morning?” we said, along with other expressions of skepticism, sarcasm, and silliness.  

“Well, maybe it was my imagination,” said James, “but I’m pretty sure I saw a bright red parrot up in the tree back there.”

We decided to turn the car around and check it out, and I am so glad we did.

Because there he was, comfortably perched on the pinnacle branches of a tall eucalyptus tree, and as you can see, I made sure I did not leave the scene without photographic evidence. 

 I googled him later, of course. This is a green-winged macaw, and he is WAY out of his native habitat...which is mostly South America, where he and his relatives live in tropical jungles, savannas, and mangroves. They can fly at speeds up to 35 miles an hour; who'd have imagined?

Intelligent and feisty, macaws like this are prized as pets and can cost about $1500 in the store. They are not for the "casual owner", says one website; they require attention and interaction. Perhaps someone is searching for this one right now.

He might make it out here – there are fruits, and nuts, and potential shelter. But I don’t know; it’s far from tropical, and there are some pretty aggressive predators. I read that the macaw’s average life span is 60 years, but they have been known to live well past 80, and I hope this one gets to do that.

It's hard to explain how much tenderness he engendered in the course of our fleeting encounter –– his comical incongruity, his flashy colors and outrageous beauty, the absurdity and wonder of him.

He was gone two hours later when we went by again.

I conclude with James’ sage advice, applicable for a lifetime: “Keep an eye out for green-winged red- heads, wherever you go.”

 

Wally? Wally Wrote Poems?

 I talked about Wallace Stevens in the blog before last, and I’m finally getting back to him now – can’t leave someone so important dangling like that! I was drawn to Stevens’ poems even when I first read them back in high school, and revisiting his work all these many years later has been a wonderful journey through a lush and opulent landscape, even if I don’t always “get” them at the level of sophistication of the guy who wrote that article in the New York Review of Books.

But I have received some advice from another fine poet, Dan Gerber, who wrote this to me in an email: “Don't worry about ‘understanding’ Stevens.  Just let yourself be grasped by his work. [As in the words of Rilke:] ‘And so we are grasped by what we cannot grasp.’”

Dan suggested that I start with Peter Quince at the Clavier, and so I did: Music is feeling then, not sound.

As in the music that is poetry, I suppose. Feeling, then, not literal meaning only –– although the words of the poems sure do make some mellifluous sound, and they do carry significance and specificity; do they not? In any case, who would not be grasped by the compelling lure of lines like these:

In the green water, clear and warm,

Susanna lay,

She searched

The touch of springs,

And found

Concealed imaginings.

She sighed,

For so much melody.

 

Upon the bank, she stood

In the cool

Of spent emotions,

She felt, among the leaves,

The dew

Of old devotions.

 

The dew of old devotions. Ah yes, I know it well.

And how about Sunday Morning, where:

Complacencies of the peignoir and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

 

I guess I don’t have to fully understand it to experience its deliciousness, but it is clearly about a woman spending Sunday not in church, but in the secular and physical world, a woman who finds comfort in the sun and “pungent fruit and bright, green wings”, and cherishes the balm and beauty of earth. And why not? Are these not things to be cherished like "the thought of heaven"? 

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul.

 

Such gorgeous lines, such sensory delight. And if the guy had written this one poem only (which in its entirety consists of eight sumptuous stanzas), it would have been enough, but he was prolific -- and yet quite busy in other realms too. A graduate of Harvard followed by New York Law School, he practiced general law for a few years and then began an illustrious career with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, becoming the firm’s vice-president in 1934, all the while creating poetry. I picture him retiring to his study late in the day to write poems in a notebook at a great mahogany desk, pausing now and then to contemplate a still life painting on the wall or the way the light of late afternoon spills into the room. From all accounts, his marriage was a lonely one, and although he enjoyed his sojourns to Key West, the Harvard-Yale football games, and a friendly rapport with his colleagues, he wasn’t exactly sharing poetry with his buddies at cocktail parties.

In fact, Dan Gerber told me a story told to him by a former professor and old friend of his named Clyde who had actually attended Wallace Stevens’ funeral. Apparently, when Clyde mentioned Stevens' poetry at the funeral, Stevens’ colleagues expressed surprise and bewilderment. “Wally?” one of them exclaimed. “Wally wrote poems?”

It’s an anecdote that is stunning in its implications about how little we can know about someone we see every day. Or in what it says of the vast complexity of the human spirit and its ability to compartmentalize.  Or maybe it’s just revealing of Wallace Stevens, for whom poetry, or any work of art, existed in itself and for itself, a moment stopped and rescued from all the chaos, a leap from the mundane and sordid into the realm of imagination or a savoring of that green corn gleaming. Perhaps in his view no further justification, discussion, or accolades were needed.

Even with provocative titles such as The Motive for Metaphor or The Idea of Order at Key West, which suggest all sorts of philosophical and intellectual explorations, or tangible visuals such as Two Figures in Dense Violet Light and Sea Surface Full of Clouds, the subject of the poem, according to Stevens, is..ta-da!...poetry. And I think I'd rather read the poems than read about them, but I like this wrap-up quote from Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) a poet from my own little hometown of Brooklyn, New York. He wrote: “Confronted by the need of conclusion or summary, one is impressed by how much more there is always to say about Stevens. No matter what aspect one begins, one has a sense of inexhaustible richness of significance and connection.”

As for me, to quote Wally once more:

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes.

 

The Lost Art of Finding Happiness

I wasn't done with Wallace Stevens, and I'll get back to him, but right now I am sitting in a coffee place in Orange County, and I'm using this blog to get myself centered. (The act of writing seems to help.) Those of you who know me, either in real life or through the blog, are aware that when I come down here it's primarily to look in on my elderly mother, so it's not what I would categorize as fun, but I step out of my element and deal with it because it's the right thing to do, whether I like it or not.

Sometimes it has its rewards. My mother may be wacky, and the past we share is a painful one, but I feel very welcome and appreciated when I show up at her room. She knows who I am, introduces me to everyone (again and again), and is incredibly grateful just to go for a drive and an ice cream. Lately she has even been wearing her hearing aid and claiming that her hearing has been miraculously restored, which I suppose is true. 

That was the good news. The bad news is that she lost her lower dentures. Again. 

(How do you lose your teeth? That's what I want to know.) 

Her roommate, Ann, said they have looked in all the socks. (The socks?)

"We looked everywhere," Ann explains. "She thought she stuck them in her pocket, but she was wearing her green pants, and they don't have a pocket. We looked in her socks, where she sometimes sticks things. We looked in the drawers. They were wrapped in tissue; they might have been thrown away. She was afraid to tell you."

Well, she didn't need to tell me. It isn't that hard to notice. But maybe she vaguely remembers that we just replaced them a few months ago and shouldn't have to go through this again. The part she doesn't realize is that it cost $800 to do so, and that was her emergency cushion money. 

I promptly called the dentist and asked if she could have them replicated at a discount price. No dice.

"It's okay," says my mother. "I have pretty hard gums."

"She can eat mashed potatoes," says Ann. "She's not gonna starve. The food's lousy here anyway." 

Meanwhile, my mother is fretting because she had a plastic box of pens and pencils that seems to have disappeared. She is convinced that someone stole them until I open the drawer of her nightstand and, lo and behold, there they are. She's delighted.

This in turn gives me hope that the dentures may yet turn up.

"Oh, yes," says my mother. "I lost them right here in this room. Not outside. They're in here somewhere."

So we'll give that little issue a bit more time. 

We're headed out for ice cream, no teeth necessary. On the way out, we notice that the door to Emma's room is open, and we pause to say hello. Doris, one of the other residents, is visiting, sitting on the bed. She is sick, and clearly depressed, as evidenced by a doleful, dyspeptic expression and the omission of her usual wig, and Emma, who looks about 70 but is 93 years old, is trying to make cheery conversation from an adjacent rocking chair. I've heard that Emma used to write poetry, and I ask her about this. She immediately recites from memory a poem about the hands of the clock and our numbered days. It's quite good. 

"You're like a genius," declares Doris, brightening a bit. "Such intelligence. Who was your father? You got that brainy DNA from someone."

Encouraged by our appreciative response, Emma grabs onto her cane, hoists herself up, and goes over to the dresser, where she pulls out a stack of typed pages and a small photo album. Her most famous poem was written in 1969, and it's about the astronauts landing on the moon. I read it out loud.

"I sent that poem to the President," Emma tells us proudly, "and he sent me a certificate. And I sent it to all three astronauts, too, and each one of them wrote back. That poem made the rounds." 

It's interesting how some people draw in others and become a kind of hearth. Emma is one of those. She lights up the place, even at 93. For a moment I almost feel like I'm back in college sitting with a couple of girlfriends in a dorm room. It turns out Emma was a dancer in her youth, and the album I am holding is filled with pictures of her in her various dancing costumes, from a leggy pose with top hat and cane, to a Carmen Miranda type of get-up complete with fruit on her head. My mother is fascinated. "You were in a chorus line?" she asks, impressed.

"Yes I was," says Emma. "I did all of that and strip dancing too."

 "You were a stripper?" says Doris, with a mixture of awe and disapproval, mostly awe.  

"I was," says Emma. "Oh, I loved to dance! And I loved to write poems. But I've had a couple of strokes and can't do either one now. I don't know why God has seen fit to keep me around this long. I don't know why I'm still here."

"Because you make us happy," Doris responds, and I have to agree that she does. 

Now it's time for ice cream.

Baboons and Periwinkles

At a high school assembly in 1968, I was given a prize from "The English Department and especially from Mr. Williams and Mrs. Stevens" -- it was the new and enlarged edition of Modern American Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer. I am looking at it now, its red cover faded, its spine completely cracked, its pages yellowing with age. I cannot tell you how many times I have pored through this book, opening it at random to be surprised, or intentionally turning to a well-loved favorite poem. It was through the portal of this book that I entered a world that has given me company and comfort ever since. Even when I didn't understand a poem, I could ride on its images to someplace new, but better yet, when there was that click of recognition, of something I intuitively knew or felt that was now rendered visible and shared, I was suddenly less alone. It was on these pages I first met the likes of Robinson Jeffers, E.E. Cummings, Wallace Stevens, and others whose names and words have since become familiar to my heart. 

But it is Wallace Stevens who steps up today. He's been on my mind a lot ever since I read an article about him by Dan Chiasson in the N.Y. Review of Books last week. The article includes discussion about the metaphysical nature of his poetry, its philosophical acrobatics and intellectual nuance, its "abstracted abstractions", its creation of realities through imagination, the making of a world. The author defends him against accusations of solipsism and escapism and describes him as the "great poet of the continuity of thought" and "a poet of aloneness, but not loneliness". It's a fascinating article, but my brain hurts. (I'm not that smart.)

I'd sensed Stevens' brilliance long ago without having had such a sophisticated understanding of what he was doing, but all of this spurred me to revisit and re-appreciate his work. I turned first to my old favorites, of course, like The Emperor of Ice Cream, with its celebratory affirmation of illusion and ephemerality, followed by the ugly, undeniable shock of the inevitable, in which be (or non-be, really) is the unequivocal finale of seem. Then there's Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock, in which -- darn it! -- no one is ever wearing a strange nightgown or dreaming of baboons or periwinkles. And Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, which I used with my students for years as a stunning example of viewing something through different perspectives, for there are so many ways to see. I remember, too, the Anecdote of the Jar, in which a jar placed on a hill in Tennessee "took dominion everywhere" and I began to get a glimmer of where this poet was coming from, a hint of some cerebral power that enabled him to observe until ordinary borders dissolved and understanding was altered.   

But here is the thing that still takes my breath away, and it's a section from Esthetique Du Mal that I first read in the introduction to Wallace Stevens in that treasured red book of poetry:

The greatest poverty is not to live

In a physical world, to feel that one's desire

Is too difficult to tell from despair. Perhaps,

After death, the non-physical people, in paradise,

Itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe

The green corn gleaming and experience 

The minor of what we feel.

*****

Is that not exquisite? It makes me want to savor the world, and in fact, I am about to go outside where our own version of green corn is gleaming. But I'll be back to continue or wrap this up. I'm prematurely posting here, but I'm excited about how that old friend, poetry, which was always there waiting, is revving me up again. 

And I am grateful to the two readers (friends I have never met) of this blog (lately blah-g) who wrote such encouraging comments on that last post, and to anyone else who reads these words, my erratic messages sent in digital bottles across cyber-sea. 

How Morning Filled the Living Room Today

Look how the sunlight lines up in long diagonals across the carpet and forms bright squares on the wall and washes over the faded upholstery of the armchair in the corner and illuminates a basket of magazines. The house is quiet, and the world seems poised and waiting. It’s my move, entirely up to me to shape this day into something, but I’ll sit here until the coffee kicks in, then tend to my list, or ignore it completely.

I hate when people write about how they don’t feel like writing, and I’m afraid I have been guilty of that lately. There’s more dignity in simply lapsing into silence, but if that goes on too long, it’s the death of a blog. On the other hand, being boring is its own kind of crime, and obligatory typing is not writing, so this post is just a pulse check, I suppose.

Last week I went to a memorial service for my ol' buddy Ted Martinez. It was a humble and informal event, just a gathering of family and friends in a school gymnasium, with music and food and little kids running around, and he would have loved it. Ted had been off in the desert so long I was getting used to him being gone, but his absence feels more real and poignant now. I sure was lucky to have a friend like Ted.

People keep talking to me about faith. I like what my old friend Josephine said in a recent email: "Though other noises have at times drowned out the singing, perhaps the angels have never ceased their song."

Meanwhile, the day says come outside. 

Random Detour

 

Notice there's been nothing going on at this blog lately? My mind has taken a break. I am in receive-input mode, with no signs of emerging anytime soon. I am reading, living, absorbing experience, but I don't seem to be processing it into anything meaningful or creative. No output. 

But this morning as part of my intake, I was reading the blog my daughter Miranda writes, and lo and behold, in a post called "Flashback" I saw a mention of me. Well, actually it referred to  "my mom", but I know I am the mom she means, and I've been tagged. I am supposed to choose the tenth photo in my "first" folder of photos, post it, and write about it, and I figured that's not a bad idea for getting jump-started when you're dormant, blank, and blah. 

Naturally I wasn't sure what my "first folder" of photos was, since my i-Photo files are all in a jumble, but the first coherent folder in the line-up happened to be something called "East Coast trip" and I decided that was as good as any; even if it was not literally the very first folder I ever put together, it is from about seven years ago, which seems like another era. What you see above is the tenth image the folder contained. It's not a particularly good one, but let that be proof that I played fair and selected what happened to be there. 

The picture was taken in Philadelphia during the time when Monte and I were traveling with Miranda to look at colleges. I don't think she ever seriously considered Philadelphia as one of her choices; mostly we went to visit the fellow with the red hair and little round eyeglasses in the far left of the picture: Scott Wagner. He had been Miranda's violin teacher in Santa Barbara, and not only was he a wonderful musician, he was also funny and exuberant and playful. I remember waiting sometimes for lessons to be over, and I'd hear not just strains of music, but giggles and talk of books or interesting places to visit. Scott knew that music required discipline and practice, but he saw no reason to take the joy out of it. Along with music, he served up enthusiasm and delight. Miranda loved him. 

So in addition to our Boston and New York itineraries, there was a train trip to Philadelphia that winter. Scott lived in an old brownstone house downtown; a narrow arched window looked out onto the church across the street, and there was a clay pot of miniature daffodils on the sill. A Curtis Institute graduate, Scott was part of Philadelphia's chamber orchestra and played viola for the opera company. One night we went with him to the opera and then on to a restaurant with a group of young singers who sang at the table, their voices astonishing, and the more wine they drank, the more they sang. Afterwards, we walked home across a park filled with moonlight and snow. 

And I mean snow! The East coast was getting plenty of it that winter. There we are the next day, still filled with child-like wonder and surprise, stomping around in our floppy winter clothes, crunching through that nice crusty top layer and leaving deep footprints. It's that bright, blue-sky, unequivocal kind of cold, and our cheeks almost sting, but we're being silly and having fun. Monte is wearing his familiar black cap, smiling broadly.

And that young girl with the long dark hair and the red and yellow scarf and oversized bag filled with books? She is on the cusp of leaving us. She is scouting out the possibilities, confirming her desire to try living life elsewhere, testing the waters, testing the snow. 

I could never have imagined how soon this would all seem long ago.