Domino Tree

Posted in An Ongoing Journal...3 Comments

My son’s tenth birthday is this coming Sunday, so tidying up the place has been at the top of my recent to-do list. As usual, we expect a fairly large group for his party and need to find places for everyone to park; too many branches had fallen over the winter for me to clean up alone so I began looking for help. While it wasn’t necessarily on the party list – I had also wanted to take down a couple of trees while I was at it (they were rather lanky white pines that had grown quite tall over the past ten years obscuring my view of the hills beyond). Last Saturday I received a visit from one of the guys I’d called. He gave me an enticingly good price and told me he could even start right now. He must have smelled my eagerness to get going. But I checked myself so as not to make a hasty decision, went inside and called my mom for her opinion before I gave him an answer, and, after a moment going over the pros and cons, I ended up hiring him to go ahead and git er done. It was a fine, breezy and sunny day. A good day for outdoor work. Or, maybe not.

We did a walk through of the woods on the hill first, and I showed him the trees I’d marked earlier with spray paint. I showed him the power line too. He began to cable up the tree in order to help guide its fall. I’d seen this procedure before, and when he cautioned Elihu and me – who were standing well above the tree on the hill – to move still further back, the intended direction of the tree’s fall was clear. It took a few cuts on either side to get the tree moving. At first it seemed fine, the tree began to lean… but a sudden gust of wind moved the tops of the forest – and with it this enormous white pine too – and in an instant the falling tree changed its course… and fell east instead of west. I’d been recording it, and could hardly believe what I was seeing. Instinctively I aimed the camera up the power line in time to catch the snapping of the transformer’s pole at the far end of the hill. I could hardly believe what was happening. It was exactly the one outcome that should never, ever happen. A supreme three stooges moment. But what made it worse was that the young man showed no remorse. No surprise, no emotion, no nothing. I searched his face for something. He gave me a half smile and told me in his good ol’ boy accent that nothin like that had ever happened to him before. “Well,” I answered him, “now it has“. All my experience as a sailor and no bells went off at the wind that day? Ich. My bad indeed. I guess I was just deferring to this man’s expertise. He cuts trees, not me. Should know what he’s doing. Kinda like being in the passenger seat; you pay much less attention to the directions because someone else is on it. Sigh.

Within minutes, neighbors from up the road had converged on the winding road at the bottom of the hill. Power was out. Cable was out. No phone, no nothing. And it was all because I wanted my view of Vermont. Sheesh. All my fault. I slunk up the hill and found my cell phone to call the electric company. Took almost half an hour to get my way through the stupid system to even make the report. It didn’t look good. No idea when a team could make it out. No idea at all. Might be all weekend even. If ever I felt bad, it was then. Until I realized I had out of town guests coming that very evening. Then I felt even worse.

I offered my guests the situation and they weren’t deterred. Instead, my guest offered to bring along some supper – and in the spirit of going with the moment and accepting what is rather than wishing for what can no longer be, I cancelled my already once-cancelled plans to go out for a drink with the girls, and instead I went to the corner store and bought a bottle of wine. ‘Screw it,’ I thought – a night without power is not a big deal. (Good thing it wasn’t too terribly cold out.) For a short while it’ll be an adventure.  Guilt nipped at my consciousness as I wondered how my neighbors down the road were faring, yet I set my intention to move into our weekend in a positive spirit of adventure. (I since learned many of my neighbors have generators – the only real inconvenience for them was not having cable or internet. With ubiquitous smart phones and such, not really a big deal.) When our guests arrived we got settled in and found ourselves enjoying a lovely night of Chinese take out, conversation, music and play. My guest’s ten year old daughter Evalin had brought us a gift of her homemade candle sticks – and we used them to light the living room as she and Elihu played with hex bugs on the floor and her father, Matthew and I sat playing the piano. Since he has more knowledge of Irish and trad music than me, I asked him to help identify the more important tunes to learn in my Irish fake book. It may not have been his intention, but that small act was a wonderful gift unto itself. When we retired, Elihu and I shared a bed for warmth and read our book by candlelight. It was a lovely night. And truthfully, if I’d gone out for a drink with the gals it might easily fallen into that vast, anonymous collective of ‘past nights out’. Instead, this night of candles and company created a memory that all four of us will keep for years. One that will make for a nice little story one day…

The next morning Matt asked if I’d seen the trucks last night. I hadn’t, and I was rather taken aback to learn that at midnight there had been a crew at the pole. And now another team was already back at work. I was overcome with gratitude for these strangers. Most folks might bitch and moan about the electric company, I know. Red tape, bureaucracy, inflated costs and such. Bottom line, that stuff didn’t matter right now. These folks were here to help me. I realize one could say they were just doing their job, but nonetheless it was a job of service. They were taking care of me, they were making things better. Would I appear an emotional softie to say that I was even touched by this? Ok, so I’ve since learned that there was rather a bit too much gear and manpower used for the fix – and that the system was sometimes abused when within the jurisdiction of overtime – but regardless, people had come to our assistance. People I didn’t even know had come to help. After our guests got on their way I went out to get donuts for the team. I hung around to watch the crew move the huge trucks into place, dig the hole and get the new pole set. (Elihu has never been much about trucks or gear, so he chose instead to run around in the sunshine with his chickens.)

As I watched the guys working I couldn’t help but wonder. Who among them had taken one overtime shift too many? Whose wife had finally had it today with all the absent weekends and had made up her mind to leave? Who was able to make the final truck payment on account of this windfall? (Windfall, indeed!) Who was missing his kid’s game – or birthday even? I chatted with the woman of the group whose teenage granddaughter was sleeping in at home while her horses had broken out of the field and were running wild. It seemed to me she might have preferred to be at home tending to her own little emergencies than here dealing with mine. So many potential consequences, all from one decision, one tree, one shift in the breeze…

I joined Elihu outside for the better part of the day as I raked and did the best I could to finish the cleanup. We ended up having the loveliest day we’d had in a long time. We walked across the field and visited our neighbors who just had their third daughter only a few days before. Happily for them, all three children and mommy were napping so we had a nice visit with daddy Zac. Among the many piles of building materials and auto parts on his property (Zac has great talent and actually uses what he has – these are not idle collections) he picked out two seemingly average-looking rocks and then cracked them open up to expose their glasslike interiors of quartz crystal. He told us that they glowed from within when rubbed against each other in the dark. I was surprised that I hadn’t learned this little trick at some point in my life (and even more surprised later that evening to try it and indeed find an orange glow coming to life inside the rock!) As we made our way back across the field at the end of the afternoon the trucks were just leaving. The semi honked a goodbye for Elihu and he was thrilled. Our day had been full of sunshine, friendly conversation and hours of free, unscheduled time.

While we found our power on again, neither the water pump nor the furnace would go on. I flipped breakers but there was no change. So across the field we went again to ask for help. Zac was back on dad duty, so we went to his dad’s just next door. Phil was out too, so we stopped in on Chad and Casey who live in the little house at the edge of the field. Chad was out, but she’d send him over when he got home. So Elihu and I returned home to wait. Before long Chad, Casey and their three young kids and Phil too were all arriving at once to help. The house was a blur of activity as the problems were assessed and kids played. Pump had just lost its prime. Good thing to know. Furnace just needed thermostats to be turned up first – duh. Mighta got that one. But that I didn’t – and that there were people who cared enough to help me understand what the problem was (and not make me feel like an idiot for missing it) once again moved my heart. People had come to help – for absolutely nothing in return. Sure, you could say it’s what neighbors do, but still… I was humbled.

I can’t remember feeling so well taken care of. If ever I should feel -as I have for so much of these past few years – that I am one person alone and must do it all on my own – the changing of a breeze and the felling of a tree have served to remind me that I’m not alone. That ultimately we’re all connected to each other; and that not a one of us can survive alone – nor are we supposed to. As the four wheelers motored off across the yard and Phil drove out of sight I had a dim memory of something John Muir had said once about the connectedness of everything. What was that quote again? I went to the computer (which was now working again, thanks to another team of cable folks that had been at it the past two hours) and I searched. Yes, here it is: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”. Alright, so he might have had a much larger, more Godly scheme in mind when he said this, but it still seems to fit. Our lives are intertwined in ways we don’t always see. One simple action may have so many consequences. Good and bad. I’m still not convinced that this accident was for the best – but many good things did come of it; glowing rocks, the company of friends on a candlelit evening and a sunny afternoon plus many more tiny adventures that have continued to pop up in the wake of this one fallen tree. But for me the most important consequence of this first domino down is that I have been reminded once again that people are sometimes very good at taking care of each other.

What’s A Girl To Do?

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Divorce Diary, Low Vision Life, Mommy MindLeave a comment

My mom stays with Elihu on Wednesday nights while I go in to the high school to teach a continuing ed class I call “Not Your Mother’s Piano Teacher”. It works out well; Elihu and grandma get to enjoy some time just to themselves, and I get out of the house. But after this final run of seven classes, I’m not so much in need of merely getting out of the house as I am in need of really going out. Just today I’d made impromptu plans to grab a drink with two of the only near-peer women I know in town, but then realized it was on the same night as my kid’s Spring assembly. Phooey. That was slightly disappointing. Not worried, we’ll reschedule. It’s not a big deal, but frustrating just the same. Don’t mean to sound whiney here – because I actually did go out last week, and it was an enjoyable diversion from my rather same-same life these days. But truthfully, there is nothing – that I know of yet – to take the place of the full complement of friends, music, food and places that were routine and treasured parts of my life back in Chicago. Nope. Still got nothing. Yeah, there are world-class acts coming through the equally world-class Zankel Music Hall at Skidmore College (less than 4 miles from our door!) – yeah, there’s stuff going on… There’s certainly an impressive roster of high-end restaurants to choose from up and down Broadway…(It’s all beyond my budget and past my kid’s bedtime anyway). But still. There’s no little taco joint with someone’s abuelita cooking in the kitchen, there’s no late night jazz joint with deep fried food and all the young cats lining up to sit in… there’s no Korean barbecue joint jammed to the rafters at 4 am filled with the mouth-watering scents of marinated meats grilling to blackened perfection… And there sure as hell aint no Green Mill. Mm-mm. And there aint nothin around these parts like the Diner Grill on Irving. Nope. Nothin.

I surely did live the life large, I did. Looked good, made good music, ate good food, treated my friends good, had good adventures, had good times and more good times. And I do not think that I am romanticizing those good times. I am not. I lived the shit out of my life all through my twenties and thirties. I’d planned to keep on living the shit out of my forties too. Remember being on a gig when my milk began to come in – just a few days after Elihu was born. Thought my boobs would break before the set was over. Even got kinda scared for a moment (first kid, no idea what was going on.) But it wasn’t my last gig as mommy, certainly not; soon after that came the big band dates where I’d press the poor babe’s head to my chest to try and soften the blow of the wall of horns just behind us… I learned how to hand off the babe when it was my turn on stage, I learned how to nurse while hosting a radio show, switching sides at the top of the hour…I learned how to bring the baby so that I could keep on doing my thing. My intention was to keep going in the same manner as I had for years. But no matter how one tries, nothing can truly be done in the same manner as the years ‘before baby’.

In an effort to stay active and involved in music – in some form – and not simply give in to the obvious, home-bound role of new mom, I also began to tag along on a handful of daddy’s shows too. In the beginning it was doable. But before long I was beginning to lie to myself; telling myself I enjoyed going along with my hubby on his thing, that I was ok with having fewer creative events of my own. Cuz things were changing. Pop gigs were phasing out for me; my world of musical friends and projects and shows just kind of dried up in that first year after my child’s birth. I was becoming more mommy than musician. For a time, jazz gigs still worked (those dates actually paid enough to hire babysitters and often involved my husband. Gigs were our dates). But the alt bands with all those basement hours writing and arranging… that was out now. Just not logistically possible with a baby, especially a newborn. And even if it were, how selfish! Writing, rehearsing, it was way too self-indulgent for a new mom. That sort of music, after all, did not pay the bills. No room for that in this new life.

So there I am, newly forty, newly a mom, with my husband on the road most of the time. So I do what I hadn’t thought I would: I give up and stay home because it’s ultimately less stressful. Ok, I think to myself, I may as well try to assimilate into the culture of Evanston moms who, like me, had chosen to live a bit of life first before having their kids on the closer side of forty. On paper it might have seemed we’d be a good fit; college-educated, middle class white gals who listened to NPR comparing notes on their toddler’s development and lamenting their rising property taxes… But try to assimilate as I did, I could not, and it was a very depressing time for me. I had no connections to these people – people whom I shared my life with only because we lived within walking distance of the same toddler park! And it was around this time I began to notice something that there was very different about Elihu’s vision. And with that awareness came an even greater sense of distance from everyone.

That’s when my isolation started, I guess. Not my story alone, for sure. You have a kid and you have to let go of other things. You lose some friends, some hobbies, you get fat, you get cranky. We all know that having a family changes everything. But I was completely ready for all of that. I was ready to trade it all for the adventure that promised to come next; a growing closeness of family, having another baby, the putting down of roots, the beginnings of traditions, the sharing of our love. What I wasn’t ready for was the growing distance from my husband, and the growing sense that we weren’t as closely united in our goals as I’d thought. I learned years later that he really had wanted me to simply give everything up – as in my bands, the big house (to which I say come on – we wanted that house for years!) and just go along with him, gig to gig, babe at breast. I just wasn’t comfortable living like that. And so there the divide began. He going more deeply into that hippie, jam band culture on the road, and me, waiting it out in our beautiful mid century home. Yeah, Elihu and I spent a lot of time together, waiting.

So here I am at the cusp of fifty, my son about to turn ten (we like to say we’re turning sixty!) and I wonder what the hell happened to my forties? I can account for all the decades before with great enthusiasm, vivid, landmark memories, but my forties? What the hell happened just now??? I am grasping for tidy ways in which to organize my retrospection; I can’t have wasted these past years on nothing but a wretched, heart-numbing divorce, can I have? I search for the light, the joy, the relief…. I search for that feeling… the feeling of happiness and contentment that seemed to float all around me in my younger years… Much of it came from the music I was making, much of it was my home life, my husband, my cats, my friends… And it’s this feeling – the feeling of ease, of joyful happiness I miss these days. Do we all feel thus at this age? Is it my age, or my aging process that brings me to these ruminations or is it the events of the past decade? I haven’t had the worst of it, but somehow, I feel like my forties were taken from me. They sure as hell didn’t pan out as I’d thought.

Now at the end of a ten year run, I find myself just wanting to go out and have some fun. But what form does that fun take at this time in my life? I might have to re-evaluate that simple question. I love my son, and truly my life with Elihu has been the supreme gift of this invisible decade, but still…. I’m just a bit tired of being mommy all the time. I want to go…. somewhere…do something… I struggle with this. No answers come. Ah screw it. In the end, I find myself returning to my favorite date, my most cherished partner in life. Next week I’ll have some fun – we’ll have some fun. Elihu and I will have our annual birthday dinner at the local iconic Wishing Well where he’ll thrill to a plate of frogs’ legs and I’ll thrill to a cold gin martini before supper while the piano man plays in the lounge…. Not so bad, really. While I might lament this seemingly unending role of mommyhood, I do realize that this chapter too will close one day, and I will wonder where it has gone. I am deeply aware that I have a kid I not only love, but whose company I also thoroughly enjoy. This is where my life is now, so I’ll try to dwell a little less on the life I left behind. Cuz the one I got goin right now is pretty good. It is. I may know the thrill of city life again one day, but I also realize that one can’t ever truly go back. There really is nowhere else to go – but forward. So I guess that’s all a girl can do.

Silly Poem

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room4 Comments

Silly Poem

a poem by Elihu, written today during a rainy recess period…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m going on a trip to the center of the universe

What do you think I should pack?

A sack and some shoes and a cow that moos, and a plate and some milk and a snack

A yak for good measure, a couch for the pleasure of sitting right down to a rest

A lunch box, a brick, some balls and a stick and some chocolate that tastes just the best.

And maybe if you’re lucky I’ll take you along…

What do you think you will pack?

Mid April Pics

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Birding, Farm Life, Mommy Mind, Pics4 Comments

Been busy. I try to keep us an underscheduled household, but even so we always seem to be doing something. Even our down time seems to include little surprises, like a dead robin to examine up close, a quick smooch of a goose, a nice moment with a glider on a windless day…

April 2013 827The birds enjoy the very last bit of snow on the property

April 2013 859He had to be coerced at first, but at last Max succumbed to a good long embrace

April 2013 845Best eight bucks we’ve spent in a while

April 2013 832Poor thing – traveled so many hundreds of miles only to be hit by a car

April 2013 839Here she is up close

April 2013 844Elihu admires her wingspan

April 2013 806You can see why they’re called brown-headed cowbirds

April 2013 875Hmm. This guy seems to be feeling the excitment of spring…!

April 2013 831Mama did her biannual cleanout of the junk drawer

April 2013 906Skidmore College’s Taiko drummers

April 2013 922Elihu takes a turn

April 2013 920That was fun!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I just want to thank Joe for all his kindness in helping me get setup on my new (refurbished) computer. I’m up and running again and it’s all thanks to him! If you live in the Saratoga Springs area, I encourage you to use J & D computer repair!

Spring Day

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room, Farm Life1 Comment

Another post by Master Elihu. It seems the apple has not fallen far from the tree…. see?

I wake up in the morning, and it’s early spring and the ground is carpeted with flowers. I walk outside and see grasshoppers, hopping from flower to flower. A robin flits in front of me and lands on the ground. Listens, then pulls out a fat worm and flies away to his nest. The call of a hawk above me makes me look up; a red-shouldered hawk is soaring above me. He circles and circles and climbs so high that he is just a dot in the sky, then he’s into the woods and comes right back up with a fat rabbit which he then carries to his nest. A chicken, startled by the hawk flying so low overhead struts up to me and clucks a few times, hopping up the stairs, she looks at me inquisitively, as if to say got food? I reach down to the inquisitive hen, stroking her head. ‘No I haven’t got any – but if you go over to the coop there’ll be some.’ She struts away and a whole flock more of chickens comes up to me and asks the same question to which I give the same answer. Grabbing a stick just in case the mean rooster decides to attack me, I walk out to the coop to enjoy my big flock of hens. Red, brown, white, and black they hop up to perches, flutter from nesting box to nesting box, some quarrel about who gets the majority of the food and some simply just sit and enjoy the warm sun. It’s a nice spring day indeed, I think to myself as I watch a small frog hop from leaf to leaf. And I am sure there’ll be many more to come.

With that, I think I shall sit down and enjoy this one as best I can.

To Be Ten

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Elihu's Room, Mommy Mind2 Comments

As tired as we both were, tonite, when we got into bed, our minds would not stop and we continued to chat as old friends who haven’t seen each other in a very long time will do…. Elihu had a poem inside of him, so I got out the computer to get his thoughts down as soon as I could…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

to be ten is something different. it’s not what you used to be,

everything is different, all the things you hear and see…

are not quite the same as they were when you were nine

cuz when you were only nine, everything seemed good, and fine

but now that you’ve turned ten you say to yourself again

I don’t think things are quite the same as they used to be…

Elihu

Peepers Piping

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Birding, Mommy Mind3 Comments

Small signs of spring are beginning to appear in Greenfield these days; robins on the lawn, small patches of green along the roadside, and the very breeze itself now smells different… fresh, warm and clean…. and full of that sort of hope that really only comes with the promise of Spring. And last night, another important resident returned to confirm for us that winter was over. We even saw them with our own eyes as we drove back from the airport; they were crossing the road in the blackness as a light rain fell, coaxing them to move once again. When we got home and got out of the car, there they were. Only twenty four hours before, the night air had been completely silent, but tonight the neighborhood peepers in the swamp at the bottom of our hill had begun their chorus. Just like that. Absent one day, present the next. It’s a constant, high-pitched trilling sound, almost like a flock of chirping birds or maybe like a swarm of crickets… (I can remember some warm Spring nights in past years even being a little annoyed by them for their relentless performance!) The return of the peepers is to us as exciting and life-affirming as the return of the woodcock in the field just beyond our house. Irrefutable evidence that nature does continue to exist, in spite of the evidence being so hard to witness in our black-topped, fast-paced, I-padded world.

Torpor. What a word, huh? What a process, too. That’s the term for the kind of hybernation the little frogs in the swamp go through each winter. (Hummingbirds go into torpor each night.) The frogs hunker down into the mud and their metabolism, heart rate and body temperature drop to amazingly low rates. This is incredibly hard to get – I myself find my mind blown each and every Spring with the return of all sorts of creatures. In the middle of winter, the ground covered in white, I scan the landscape trying to imagine the thousands upon thousands of tiny creatures in just such a state, only inches from the surface. Alive, but somehow dead as well. It’s hard to wrap one’s brain around. And so very astounding when you see it in action. No bugs, then lots of bugs. No frogs, then, well, thousands of em. And all at once. I can hardly fathom it.

O thank you little peepers for adding yet another dimension to the changing of seasons. Your songs echo throughout the hilly woods and give us some reassurance that things are as they should be.

T Minus 29

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind5 Comments

I know I’m making far too big a deal of this. My fiftieth birthday is one month from yesterday. Most of my friends have already been there, done that and most likely can’t get too worked up yet again about another person’s 50th. For those who’ve passed the mark, it’s simply their reality. It’s history, old news. Some like to tell you to ‘get over it’ or admonish ‘it’s just a number’… But it’s not so easy for me. I’m getting sentimental about it; I’m missing an era in my life that is quite definitely over.

To be more specific, there are two main reasons I’m ticking away the moments of my final forty-something year with a mild sense of ill ease: one is, of course the obvious; the irrefutable evidence that my body has passed its aesthetic prime. It’s a for-sure thing now. There’s no going back. Like Nora Ephron, I too have begun to hate my neck. I pinch the skin under my chin and rather than see it spring back to its resting form, it stays pinched. This is quite shocking to me. This is the crepe-y sort of skin that belongs to an ‘older woman’ –  my mother, or one of her peers… but certainly not me. This new discovery isn’t making me feel very good ‘in my skin’ as they say. It feels like someone else’s neck is on my body. It’s a new phenomenon, it’s disturbing, and I don’t see it getting any better with time. That’s sadly the truth.

The second reason for my ill ease: I’m not in Chicago at the time of this event. Rather, I’m here in Greenfield, where I simply haven’t got a whole lot of friends with whom to mark the day. I’d like to throw out a post on Facebook and have my Chicago peeps meet me at Dave’s Italian Kitchen and call it a day. The way I did when Fareed and I had our rehearsal dinner. The way we did when our son was born. The way we did for my fortieth. And so many other celebrations throughout our lives… Yeah. I wish I felt that I was home for this big one. But I suppose in a way, I am.

It is of course because of my parents that I’m even here to celebrate. And they’re just next door. So maybe I’ll just call the few friends I do have here and have em over to my parents. My dad never gets out, he might enjoy it. Mom’s a natural host with few opportunities to do so these days… It’s worth considering I suppose. I just feel like the date’s coming closer and closer and I have made no preparations – none mental, emotional nor logistic. (It’s my son’s 10th birthday on April 28th which takes priority!)

I just finished watching a movie called “Melancholia” in which a planet collides with Earth and ends everything. It was stunning how the film created that reality… one moment the planet looks like a benign second moon lighting the sky, the next day it’s a huge orb taking up half the horizon… And it sorta feels like my fiftieth birthday is that rogue planet, looming closer… nothing much one can do to prepare. But at least it might be worth having a really good party. Right?

Sleepy Saturday

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy MindLeave a comment

The house is clean, right angles have been restored and things are all put away. (We won’t mention the ‘to file’ boxes that sit on my office floor, taunting me…) I’ve reached that seldom-visited place where nothing urgent needs to be tended to, nothing needs to be washed, folded or put away, no one needs to be fed, nothing needs fixing. Elihu is in Chicago and the house is quiet. This is not a place I visit often, and although I spend much of my regular waking life wishing I could get to it, now that I’m actually here, I’m at a loss. What to do? Don’t get me wrong – there is always something to do – to declare otherwise would not be accurate – but the point I think I’m going for here is that without urgency driving me, I feel rather untethered. Aimless, sort of. And while I know I need not feel this way, I do: I feel guilty. I know it’s crazy, it’s a waste of energy. I know, but yet…

I can’t feel all that pointless, for I’ve just spend an hour proofreading a friend’s teaching method book, and inspired by that spent another hour tweaking my own. So it’s not as if I’m sitting entirely idle. I await a call from an old friend who may stop by later today with her granddaughter. It is a sunny, almost mild Saturday afternoon. All should seem well with the world. And all is well. It’s just that in all this space and freedom, I’m feeling like I’m not doing something I should be. Where on earth does this come from? Do you feel this way too when faced with a commitment-free day? Ah, but perhaps you never do have such a day! So. There it is. I have free time, something very few have. This might be why I feel guilty.

My family never once in all my life took a vacation. My ex husband and I never did for that matter. Perhaps this is at the root of my discomfort. Not sure. I’m feeling just so ambivalent about my free afternoon. And for some reason I have a mild headache too… I feel the need for a nap. But again, how can I justify a nap? I’ve waited months for this oasis of personal time in which to do nothing – shall I now sleep through it?

Yes. I think I shall. I’ll take one more walk through the tidy rooms of my house, turn the heat up just a teensy bit, and I’ll lie down. One more day of quiet before I’m needed again. I’ve contemplated enough. May as well sink into a sleepy Saturday…

El-Ih-Who?

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy MindLeave a comment

Yes, I realize that I have given my son a name that requires a little bit of splainin. And I admit, that even after I’d chosen it, I myself didn’t know how it was spelled, or where exactly it came from… Apart from the basic phonetics and the fact that it was a Yaley name that had lived in the lore of my family as long as I could remember (dad both graduated from and taught at the school – class of ’48) – apart from those two things, I really didn’t know the full implications of the name or its history until much later. To set the record straight – my son’s name is pronounced “EL ih hyoo”.  Try as we have to come up with clever rhymes to help remember his name, there aren’t any good ones. “Tell a few” is one. “Smell a pew” is another (yeeps!). And I realize this pronunciation isn’t very intuitive. I myself might guess it to be “el I hoo” if I didn’t know otherwise. And if you speak another language (as Elihu’s grandpa Riaz and grandma Nelly), then you’ll likely never say it the same way we native English speakers from North America do. The diphthong of the ‘hyoo’ sound isn’t easy for some. So much for a low-maintenance, internationally-friendly name.

I’ve never been too comfortable with name choices that called attention to themselves too strongly, but I think I’ve kinda blown it there. I had hoped to subtly distinguish myself from the fashionable, mildly radical choices that began to appear ten years ago… girls named Poppy, Scarlet or Ruby, or boys with names all ending in some sort of ‘un‘ sound, a phenomenon which makes a first name sound more like a sur name; Cason, Mason, Braden, Bryson… I was skittish around Skylars and Ravens, Tuckers and Morgans… Naming a child is a difficult business; you must figure out how to stay ahead of the curve, how to offer your child something that will serve him both as well on the playground as in the boardroom…  My personal goal was to set my child apart from the flock yet somehow stay within the wider scope of what would be culturally accepted. A tall order. I simply did not have the solution ’til over a week after my son was born.

“Isn’t that illegal?” people would ask in a surprised tone when I told them my newborn son had no name. At first I hesitated. I didn’t think so, but was it? I hadn’t ever heard of an unnamed baby before… But then I remembered once hearing about some native Americans that didn’t name a baby until weeks after the child was born – not until the baby’s emerging personality became evident. And some Indonesian people waited to name their newborns too (plus these folks didn’t allow the baby to even touch the floor for the first few months of its life)… There were clearly many ways to do this. And certainly this was no small matter. The name we gave our son would help to define him to the world. I was not going to allow myself to be rushed in such an important matter.

So why didn’t I have a name ready for him? Because, of course, I was positive that I was having a girl! Fareed and I opted for a surprise, and surprised we were. When Fareed announced it was a boy, I told him that that was impossible; after all, we didn’t have a boy’s name picked out! Elihu was to have been Eva, with the classic, European pronunciation of “Ava”. International, good for traveling and would require very little explanation. We had wanted a name that would work well in either of Fareed’s parent’s cultures. So when Elihu arrived, I was completely stumped. A boy?? So not my plan.

Surprisingly, I had not been worried about finding a name for our son. I just kept whispering to my infant child over and over “You’ll let us know when it’s the right one, I know you will”… and I just simply waited.  It was a warm May morning and I was in bed nursing him when it came to me. “Eli” popped into my head, but I knew that still wasn’t quite it. I remembered mom and dad referencing ‘old Eli’ – the nickname for Elihu Yale, the philanthropist whose gift made possible the first structure of the campus – and I remembered that Eli had been short for something… what was it again? I’d heard it many times but hadn’t paid much attention. But I remember it had sounded elegant, old-world like… I called my mother at once, learned the name from her, and in my heart, it was settled. I had no idea how the name was spelled, but I loved the sound. EL ih hyoo…

It sounded like a Lord, like a Knight, like a gallant young man… And he could be an Eli. Yes. That was an easy name! That might travel as easily as Eva. Yet he would have a fine, proper name to fall back on should he wish. I called Fareed immediately with my idea, but he thought Eli sounded like something from the Beverly Hillbillies. I had to agree with him. Our culture didn’t wholly support Elis yet. No Eli Mannings then. Instead, Eli was still an elderly Jewish widower who lived in the apartment building across the street. But I was willing. After all, our names would share the biblical root of “El”. My father would have a legacy to honor his beloved alma mater, and our son could dress the name up or down as he chose. What was not to like? When Fareed asked me what the full name was and I told him, he liked it instantly. Yes, he really liked it. This was exciting. Did our child really have a name? Only five minutes before he had been my dearest baby boy (this is what I called him that first week of his life), and now here he was. He was Elihu. (I remember whispering to him again that I knew he’d tell us; I hadn’t been worried).

While I made up nursery songs for my son using his proper name, I called him Eli most of the time, and certainly out in public. I was always terribly self-conscious about his name being so different, so strangely spelled, so unusual. People have always been timid about repeating it after I tell them, and frankly I don’t blame them. It is a weird name. I knew a woman whose grandfather was named Elihu and that brought me some relief. Finally, one person to whom I owed no explanation. If only we’d lived a couple hundred years ago it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. But using ‘Eli’ helped. Made it easier, for sure.

When Elihu was around four, shortly after we left Evanston, he told me that his name was not Eli, but Elihu. I was taken aback at how matter-of-factly he’d told me. He really and truly meant it. And honestly, it made me feel better to hear it from him. Somehow it gave me better resolve to use his proper name with less concern for the comfort of others. So he became a full-time Elihu at the age of four. (He’s still Eli to some family and friends, but that’s fine too.)

I don’t mean to belabor the story of my son’s name, but I find these related stories of great wonder…

First, there is the story of settler Elihu Conant. He was a gentleman farmer, originally from a town here in upstate New York, just ten miles up the road from the very house from which I now write. In the mid 1800s this other Elihu Conant moved to Dekalb, Illinois. Dekalb is where my own Elihu and I moved from to come here. Can you believe this? I mean, really? I have googled up and down and never found another Elihu Conant aside from this man. And this other Elihu Conant made the exact same cross-country move that we did, only in reverse, some 150 years later. Is this not amazing?

I located a first-hand account of Elihu Conant’s story and personal misfortune from the Lee County Historical Society files. In the laws of the time a property owner himself was guilty of crimes committed on his lands if no evidence existed to prove otherwise. High drama between tenants resulted in a shooting and death, and Elihu as landowner was subsequently jailed for six years. After researching all I could, locating the spot of his ancient farm and finally visiting it myself (my own Elihu napping unawares in the back seat) my heart was deeply saddened to find nothing left…. nothing at all. On the very spot where once stood his home, and presumably trees, a well, some barns and outbuildings… not a one of these things remained. All that was left was an enormous, undulating field of soy bean plants stretching off into the distance. Ah well. His witness lives on in me, and now in all of you. And anyway, that particular Elihu is certainly long past his misery here…

There is another Elihu of some significance to us who once lived in here in Greenfield, too.  Martha’s fine old country home was built in the early 1800s by settler Elihu Wing. Did you get that? Elihu Wing. It almost seems there was a cosmic mix up and my son got the wrong last name. That I’ve known Elihu Wing’s home all of my life – and that my son has too – it just gives the house an even greater significance in our lives.

Then there’s the Elihu of ancient times, the young man in the book of Job who sits and patiently listens to the old timers complain that while they’ve made all the requisite sacrifices God has asked of them, they’re beginning to doubt such a God exists as He’s not responded in kind. Finally, Elihu, the youngest member present, speaks. He cites miracles of nature, the perfect organization of the seasons, the relationships between all creatures and more… all this, must be, Elihu pours from his heart, irrefutable evidence of an all-knowing, all-loving God. Suffice to say, he’s the kid at the party, and yet he’s the one with the line to the truth. Right on. I like that story.

There have been a handful of distinguished men over the past several hundred years named Elihu. Each a successful, intelligent contributor to his work. One ran for Vice President, one designed Boston’s first municipal electrical grid, one served as peace activist who opposed the slavery of his time, and one was an Italian educated artist whose works hang in the Smithsonian. For a sleeper of a name that almost no one’s ever heard of, it’s got a lot of impressive history behind it which hopefully portends the bright and happy future of one nine year old boy who, like those great men before, also answers to the name of Elihu.