Tag: vacation

Leg Two Begins

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It’s the night before our trip. Got Elihu to bed just after nine – and that is amazing. Especially in that he hasn’t been asleep any time before 1 am these past two weeks…

The sounds I hear comfort me. They are the sounds of being home, a place I love to be. The faint ticking of a clock, the purr of a small fan, the laundry gently tumbling around inside the drum, punctuated by the muffled thudding sounds of tennis balls I added to keep towels and blankets light and fluffy. But the anticipation I’m feeling gives the peaceful evening a certain sort of edge. Tomorrow we’re going away again.

Got the chicken sitter booked. The suitcase is laid out in my room on the floor, just about packed with our stuff. Preparations are much smoother this time around. Got it together much easier tonite than this time a couple weeks ago. I’d been a bit out of practice before, but I got it back. Yeah, I remember how to do this. Plus I’m working on keeping it simple. I remember the days when I had to pack for months overseas – and that I had to be able to carry it too. So I learned how to bring less. (For the most part I don’t end up wearing every outfit I’ve brought with me. Do you?) On long trips I hand wash favorites. On short trips I just wear em a bunch of times with simple air-outs in between (making sure to keep my body oft-refreshed to prevent a funk from developing.) I like traveling light, and this will be such a trip. It’s short, our belongings few. Not lots to wear. Not much reason to fret.

What does, however, end up making packing so challenging this time are the ‘extra curriculars’. In this case: phone, phone charger, camera, extra chargeable batteries, battery charger, laptop, charger for laptop, DS game, Diji too, rc helicopters and their various charging cables too. Djemebe and tip jar, just in case. Plastic bucket for pond or sea life. Oh, and books – the ones we’ll read at night and the ones that’ll be read to us as we drive. This isn’t over-the-top crazy, but it requires a skosh of organizational ability. At the very least the project requires a captian, a GC, a head chef; someone to bring all departments together in a shared game plan. And we know who that is, don’t we? I will do the best I can, facing the possible slight dissatisfaction of the lucky young man whose items I am packing. I’ll do it well, but he’ll usually show me how he thinks I could have done it better, sometimes working himself up into quite a lather about it. In a few minutes he’ll get over it, but halfway thru the trip he’ll panic that something’s been left behind. He go through all his things to discover it hasn’t. Good thing that, ultimately, I have a very appreciative young son. In the end – after a mini hissy fit here or there – he always thanks me for remembering his stuff and packing so thoughtfully. Whew.

So it’s now morning of, and I see the coop door has not opened as it’s supposed to. Strike one. I take my strong coffee with me to investigate. Never did fix the nesting boxes – I toss a couple milk crates, sideways onto the floor. That’ll work for now. I spend some time with the timer til it appears to be back on track. Then I spend a half hour going over everything, loading bins, filling water barrels. I take my coffee cup back to the kitchen for a refill, and no sooner have I come back out the door than there is a red hen, just feet away, looking up at me expectantly. “What?!” I holler. I’m packed, I’m showered, I’m ready. All to do is get the kid up and dressed and we’re outta here. Now this??

I stay calm, I don’t let myself get dramatic about it – cuz I so very easily could – after all, what fun is being human if you can’t let yourself get swept up in the melodrama of it all once in a while? Not this morning. Gotta fix it. So I sit down with my cup of coffee in a nearby lawn chair and wait. And watch. Soon I see that one of the young Auracanas is out too. And he’s poking around trying to get back in. Now here comes old floppy comb – she’s one of the first to jump ship. I see her eyein’ a spot of fence. Mm-hmm. Think we got our breach. Yup. Some wire’s been pushed out enough for a bird to squeeze out of – but not back in. The lone hen on the outside walks past me and I lean over and snatch her up. Can’t deny that I give her a quick kiss on her head and thank her for all the wonderful eggs she gives us before I heave her over the top of the fence where she flutters back down and joins her flock. I corner the young Auracana and fling him back too. I find a lawnchair and a piece of lumber and nestle them alongside the breach. Done.

Finish my coffee inside, looking out the window to see if my fix is holding. Yup. Looking good. Get the kid up, dressed, and while I pack the car, he says his goodbyes to the frogs in our two small ponds. He does so without incident, and finally, we’re off…

Highway construction, heavy rain and alternate routes made our drive a bit longer than it might have been otherwise, but another book on tape plus my colorful monologue on the whole experience – we might call it ‘sailor in a CRV’ – these helped get us to our destination without too much undo stress.

Where are we? Well, at 2 am I am typing at my trusty and ancient G4 in a generous-sized guest room of our hosts, a family we met last summer in Saratoga who now live in West Orange, New Jersey. There is a boy one year older than Elihu, and a girl one year younger than he. The three of them have a really nice thing and play together as children should. Not all kids have such a natural groove as these three. You might even say we’ve driven 200 miles for a play date. Because after our time at the pool today, we’ll visit the wide open ocean tomorrow – zoo and aviary the next day. This time it won’t just be mom and son as usual – this time Elihu can be a full-on kid. Makes my heart happy. His too.

There’s more family to this trip than we’d even originally intended: My father grew up in nearby Passaic. My maternal grandmother was born one town over, in East Orange. My grandmother, mom and uncle Paul summered in Ocean Grove, the very town we will visit tomorrow. Not much has changed in the ocean side town; we’ll be looking upon much the same downtown streets as they did some sixty years ago. And I’ve been told to try the Breyer’s Strawberry Ice Cream. Will do.

I’ve enjoyed our recent opportunities to travel. It’s fun waking up someplace new, pulling back the shades each morning to reveal a new scene… I’m off to a peaceful sleep now, the imagined sound of the ocean luring me to my dreams…

Overwhelm

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I don’t know when ‘overwhelm’ became a noun, but it’s probably a useful thing. I could just as easily say “I feel overwhelmed”, but I will defer to the cultural climate of the day and say instead “I feel overwhelm”. I’m not besieged with some clinical sort of ADD, but I may as well be today. I am faced with the post-vacation, post-big dump project of sorting all the detritus of our trip and putting it away.

The first day back it was nearly 90 degrees in our little house, the humidity was just as high, but I was too. High on our success, high on the fact that we’d pulled it off and returned home safely. Like a robot I waded through laundry – that from before our trip and that from after – sheets towels, clothes, the gamut. And I’d sorted paper from stuff, toiletries from mementos, books from books on tape. All table space has been occupied the past two days with endless piles. Now… to put it all away.

My birds needed food this morning. Six a.m. I lay in bed, still tired, but my mind swimming with things to be done. The chickens were hungry and depended on me. As if sleepwalking, I rose from my bed and went to the car. Gone are the days when I can carry a 40 pound bag of feed to the bins – now I must drive them. I discover both the feed bin and lid have been covered in fresh, goopy chicken poop. Really? I douse them as best I can in the water left from Max’s pond. I do my best to get things squared away. The shell collection from the Cape gets unceremoniously dumped on the floor of the car and I use that bin for the bird’s calcium. Mental note to transfer it later to the correct bin. Mental note to fill water bins, replace nesting box perch. Ich. It’s this little shit that zaps me of my forward movement. I am ready for bed and I haven’t been up ten minutes.

I can’t complain – I mean, how can I? You, my friends, have just made this amazing trip possible. There’s no way I could have gone without your help. I am a lucky, cared-for woman. And yet, in moments like this, I’m tending toward a smidgen of self pity. I mean how can one person deal with all this? My son needs something to do – and it’s just me. Not only am I pooped at the thought of all yet before me, but then I have to tend to him on top of it all. I wish he had a friend. In the end it really is just the two of us, and there’s so much grownup work to be done. Guess it’s another day for the great babysitter of YouTube.

See, I have other things besides just the crap to put away. (Btw – the laundry’s done, yes, and most of it folded – but put away? Hardly…) I was the unlucky recipient of some little surprises while I was away which I need to deal with as well: I’d bought us some ice cream cones the day before we left – before the donation money had cleared and was safely in my account – and that little charge of $4.50 caused an overdraft that cost me $25. Guess I should be glad it wasn’t $35 as it usually is with my credit union. Then a few more hit too after that – my chiropractor deposited the check I’d asked them to hold for a week – and boom. Another fee. Ok. Guess that’s ok. Keep your chin up, I tell myself. It’s just money.

Then there’s the ticket thing. So there I am, literally seven blocks from the Holland tunnel, following the car ahead of me through a green light when it stops in front of me. I try to inch forward as much as possible, for the cars on either side of me slid through with no problem. My lane’s not moving. Oh well. I inch forward as best I can and watch as the commuters snake through between our bumpers. Ugh. I notice the truck I’d asked for directions that was next to me seconds before is now halfway up the next block. That’s ok. We’ll be out of here in minutes. Then there’s a tapping on my window. It’s a young cop. I roll down the window. “Can’t block the box”, he says. ?? The only other use for the word ‘box’ I know of is an off-color reference to a certain part of a woman’s body, and instantly my mind races back to the 80s on the west side of Chicago. (Anyone remember the south side’s ‘Copherbox’ II Lounge??) I look at him quizzically. He repeats. “You can’t block the box.” I finally get his meaning. “I’m not trying to block the intersection” I offer. “I’m trying to get through. The lanes on either side of me did, I naturally thought I would too. This is not intentional.” I’m not sassy. I’m not even pleading. A passerby, carrying a large light fixture under his arm, stops to assist me. The cop asks if the man is ‘trying to tell him how to do his job’ and tells him to move on. I try to convey my thanks to the man as he leaves. The young cop has already written my ticket and points some beepie thing at the sticker on my windshield. My heart sinks. “How much?” I ask. “You can read the ticket,” he tells me, then adds how lucky I am that he didn’t put any points on my record. (This business of points in New York is still new to me.) Thanks for the big favor, I think. He leaves me with this floppy scrap of paper that will cost me $115. My heart sinks again. But I will not let it get to me; we’re almost out of the city.

Or not. It literally took us three and one quarter hours to get to and through the tunnel. Seriously. Now – now – I’ve seen everything. And I’m proud of us – we didn’t fight, we didn’t get cranky, and thankfully neither one of us had to pee. Rather than let it ruin us, we stayed merry, listening a second time to a book on tape, playing the alphabet game (Inside the car, that is. Elihu can’t see the signs outside. Clever, huh.) and doing our best to keep things light. Our family mantra is that everything happens as it is supposed to. Hours later a heron flew over our car. “See Mommy, this is why we had to get stuck in traffic! To see this heron!” Lemons into a sweet, summery beverage indeed. Good boy.

Ok. So we’re home. Then I check the mail. I’d forgotten about the speeding ticket I’d gotten last month on the way to pick Fareed up at the airport. (Don’t those just bother you? Everyone is going ten over – but you get pulled over. Sheesh.) There’s another $150 shot. Man, I’m working hard just to stay afloat, then this. Will there be a second leg to our trip? Will we get to Philadelphia at all? Doesn’t look it from here. I try to set it aside emotionally, and I wonder deep down what the hell it is that I’m supposed to learn from this. Seriously, I must have some deep-seated, karmically installed money issues. Keep goin, I think to myself. Although I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes in years, the Aerosoles catalogue has a particular sting this time. Can’t even rationalize fantasizing about getting a pair. I don’t even bother to find the recycling bin. Into the trash it goes.

So I guess that brings me to this moment, as I sit in my chair, wondering if I might be able to lie down again for a few minutes before the kid wakes up. The piles are everywhere. I can’t help but wonder how everyone else does it. Families with more than one kid – how is it possible? I can understand how my childless friends deal with physical crap – I managed my own for years. Daunting before and after a gig (women have not only gear and charts to deal with – but makeup and clothes and jewelry – that adds a whole nother layer to the potential chaos) but I could still stay on top of it. But right now I think I’ve lost it. Unless I can find Elihu a playdate I don’t know where I’ll get the resolve.

Wait. I remembered something. When we stopped at the convenient store our first day back I got one of those little energy shot thingees. Yes. Yes? Was that what fueled my insane initial cleanup? I think so… Seems like it. Wow, and I’d never had one before. Can’t make it a crutch, but sounds good right now. I begin to see some possibility here. Ok. Kid’s still out. I think I know what I need to do… I need to overwhelm my overwhelm. Back in five minutes. I’ll let you know…

Homecoming

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind1 Comment

I awoke Saturday morning, in my own bed, to the internal soundtrack of a searing Steve Lukather guitar solo, floating atop a lush bed of strings and majestic french horns, the music rising, rising, rising, lifting my soul far above the clouds into the expanse of sky… My own personal and deeply subconscious interpretation – albeit embarrassingly corny – of the bliss I felt at being home, at the triumphant conclusion of an epic journey.

I laughed when I realized the music I’d chosen. I laughed because my bed felt so good. I laughed because it felt so good to be home. I laughed because I felt I had more than come home; I had made it. Whatever that meant. And all that it meant. I’d put eight hundred miles on the car, introduced my son to the ocean, met long-lost relatives, visited the first house I’d ever lived in, rediscovered New York City. And made it back home. Not one hen lost in our absence. All was truly well. We’d been successful – and in ways we’d never even dreamed of. I lay in bed, thinking about home. What it was, how it felt, how I now identified it, how important it was to me.

On our trip folks would naturally ask me where I was from – and I was never quick with an answer. Initially my inclination was to say ‘Chicago’, but as that wasn’t quite true, and that answering so would require a little back story, I would hesitatingly offer that I was from “upstate New York”, and feel a little disappointed in my more truthful answer. Being from Chicago seemed to define who I was – what the better part of my life experiences had been to this point – but as things stood right now, I was in fact not from Chicago anymore. I thought of Army brats and how they usually chose to answer that question. “Oh, I grew up all over”. That would be that. But I didn’t grow up all over, and furthermore I was now a country gal and should probably represent myself as such. Throughout my trip I was given many opportunities to get used to the idea that yes, I was indeed from “about three hours north, in the country, just outside of Saratoga Springs.” If my questioner would look at me for more information I might add: “It’s equidistant to Montreal and New York.” And if another beat followed, I might add “I have chickens.” Ok. I could feel a small amount of pride in that I suppose, but as I didn’t feel it completed the picture accurately, mostly I’d close the conversation by saying that “in my last life I was a musician in Chicago”. That seemed to bring it all up to date with the most amount of truth.

When I first opened the door to our house upon returning, I was hit with the scent of our home. This is something I think all travelers notice first after a long journey. The smell that is unique to their home. I can almost recall the particular ways in which my other homes smelled, the emotional memories that those scents retrieved for me, but had no idea what a fresh return would tell me about this particular house. What hit my nostrils first was a slight smell of, well, ‘funk’. The air told me that this was a summer camp in need of a good airing out. It smelled like a house used only seasonally; a slight hint of must, a shadow of damp linoleum… When I told this to my mom, she agreed that she too had noticed that my house had a particular smell. Not even bad really, just kind of different. She’d wondered if after all my improvements (removal of linoleum and shag carpet, new floors and paint) it might not change the scent. But it didn’t. It smells like a 70s house. Must be in the bones. Cuz I clean it, I maintain it, I open the windows and use fans to keep the inside air fresh. “So this is what my house smells like” I thought to myself upon returning. Crazy. Sometimes visitors have told me it reminds them of a cabin… guess this is at the root of it. Ah well, 70s, slightly funky cabin though it may be, it’s home. My own personal epicenter. Didn’t feel it a week ago, but I felt it for sure now.

We hit the ground running on our first day back as we had a wedding to attend – an early one too, the ceremony was at noon. Elihu kept saying that he was excited as it was his “very first wedding”. (Maybe not entirely true – I was sure he’d been to others, but as a very young one he had likely been playing with his Thomas trains while things had been going on.) But for this wedding – of two people who live just down the road from us and whom we’ve grown to love very much these past few years – he would truly be present. When I told him that it this wedding was significant in another way – that they, as women, were only allowed very recently by law to even marry each other at all – he responded that that sounded ‘hard to believe’ and then added that nobody should be allowed to tell you who you can’t marry. Amazing how things have changed. And how deeply pleased I was that in my son’s eyes it wasn’t even an issue in the first place. As the father of one of the women said that day, “We live in interesting times”. Inspiring times, too.

I mention this wedding because it too was a symbol for me of home. As I met guests from different parts of the country, even from different countries, I began to feel a growing certainty of my being from this place, this small country town. The wedding was at the couple’s home which they had decorated with brilliantly colored gerber daisies and hundreds of brightly colored oragami cranes. The place looked simply stunning. The joy, the love, the sense of family was deeply felt by everyone there. I couldn’t think of a better occasion on which to return home. For me the event helped me feel more deeply my own sense of center. My own family lives here, I now have friends here, I now have a new life here – and for my son it’s really the only home he’s ever known.  In some way, both trip and wedding helped confirm for me that this place really is the center of our physical world; this is where we come from.

For the past four years I’ve had a flower on the antenna of my car. It is a subdued green, now weathered and frayed from thousands of miles on the move. I put it there before I left Chicago as a symbol of hope for the future and cheer for my aching, uncertain heart. (It also makes my run-of-the-mill gold Honda CRV much easier to locate in large parking lots.) I’ve many times thought of replacing it with something that might symbolize the future I’m moving into. I’d bought a bright, deep orange artificial gerber daisy months with the intention of affixing it to my antenna, but it never felt the right time. I realize my putting this much thought into such a thing – simply doing such a thing – may seem a bit immature (admitting it here in print makes me doubly self-conscious of that), but strangely, having that flower go before me in the world as I drive about has helped me to feel lighter. As if while all this heavy shit was going on I was still able to convey a certain lightheartedness in the world.

After leaving the party last night well past dark and then getting up this morning to go back over and help with the cleanup, it hit me. I spotted an orange oragami crane on my dashboard, a memento of the wedding. I remembered the colorful gerber daisies, the cheer they gave to the party. Then, in a flash of inspiration, I remembered the flower I’d bought months ago. I ran inside, found it, and with hardly more than one swipe with a knife brought the ratty, old flower down. In minutes the new one was up. I felt somehow refreshed. My whole spirit had been renewed; in the trip, in the wedding of friends, in the discovery of home.

The daisy goes before me in the world letting folks know (at least I hope) that I’m moving through my world with a certain good humor and lightness of heart. And at the very least, the daisy ensures that my home away from home is distinct from all others; I’m never unsure as to which car is mine. And at the end of my travels, the daisy leads me back down the long driveway to the little red chicken coop and the plain white house. I may not have believed it before, but I do now. That little white house in Greenfield Center is where we come from. Just look for the daisy…

OMGNYC

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Elihu tells me he’s never coming here again. I’d worried he wouldn’t get the full vibe of the place, but he got it alright. It’s a bit intense, that’s for sure, and you can’t really understand it til you’re here on the street. I’m at least satisfied that he has a new perspective on what city living really entails. This visit has indeed made an impact on him.

I cannot possibly catch up on all the nuances of our short visit, but I will use a handy list form to mention highlights of our brief 18 hours thus far in New York City.

1) rooftop dinner with old friends

2) breakfast in Little Italy

3) subway to midtown: FAO Schwartz, pigeons in Central Park, Carnegie Deli, where one of the long-standing waitresses there promises to pass my greetings on to Jackie Mason, who I hear, btw, is doing well these days. (He told me drinking lots of water and stretching daily helped him keep his busy schedule. A sage plan for longevity it seems.)

4) I called my father from the Carnegie Deli, and I heard the happiness in his voice to know that we were here. He remembered his old apartment on West 57th and I promised to have a look. (Just maybe not this time. Too much to do as always…)

5) Elihu nearly collapses in the heat and hustle of the city as we wait and wait for a train that never comes. In the end it is a young blind girl who tells us we’re on the wrong platform for the N train. We have a nice chat with her, and she tells Elihu that a cane really comes in handy and that he might want to use one some day. He would never hear that from me, so I was glad to hear her make the recommendation.

6) I pour a bath in a tub as deep as a swimming pool. I’m minutes away from a long, cool soak. Elihu is flying his helicopter and all is well.

I love New York, but it takes a certain oomph to be here. For now I’m all oomphed out.

Plymouth Ho!

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And here we are! On the north end of Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts. Wareham, to be exact. Our drive went smoothly – we drove the three and a half hours straight without stopping. (A very compelling book on tape by author Gary Paulsen had us riveted and helped to pass the time.) We stopped first at the Mayflower II in Plymouth. The smell of salt sea air hit us right away as did the sound of seagulls. Before us was a vast expanse of water – it was an inspiring sight. Somehow, my child who sees little of any detail beyond twenty feet, he too felt the shift in our space – he too felt the wide-open of it all. We were someplace very different. Sadly, the tourists (of which we were embarrassed to be a part) were everywhere, and it was all but impossible to imagine the scene some four hundred years ago – let alone fifty. We had romantic images in our head which were quickly dashed when reality set in. I had some idea it might be thus, but Elihu was quite disappointed in the commercial nature of the whole affair.

Aboard the Mayflower we met guides in costume who were deeply in character (lots more prep for this gig than Tony N Tina’s Wedding – that’s for sure!) and really helped to bring us into the feeling of the historic ship. Later, we visited an historic town circa 1627 as well as a Wampanoag Indian village that also employed costumed, in-character guides. We both loved the visit. Really fascinating.

And food? Well, what does one eat when on the Cape? Why lobster and clams – the whole silly body of the clam, thank you very much. No strips here. Serendipity guided us with absolute skill as we were prompted to find a restaurant in which we not only sat directly over the water, but we had open windows at our elbows, salt sea air gently wafting in and birds upon birds above and below, skimming, scooping, diving, swooping. We saw our very first cormorant in the flesh as we did a Caspian tern and the black-headed laughing gulls. But almost more amazing was that we sat next to a young boy who, like Elihu, had loved birds since he was small and knew them all just as well. Truly, this kid was a bird boy; so said his grandma and he himself nodded in agreement. Thomas, if you should in fact read this, it makes us happy to know that there is another boy in the world who loves birds as Elihu does. We were very happy to make your acquaintance and hope one day to meet you again.

Perhaps the most important part our trip was made just an hour ago when we visited with my Uncle Paul and Aunt Sandy. I hadn’t seen them in almost twenty years – yet they looked instantly familiar. And for the first time, here before me was a person outside my immediate family with whom I shared a bloodline; his face, build and mannerisms all right here for me to see up close. This was new. In the tiny room I could study my uncle. He was a good looking man – something I found interesting that I’d never noticed before. I could see the resemblance to my mom at once. I sat there, feeling almost as if I were in a dream. The Conants and the Jacksons (my mom’s side) just don’t ‘do’ family. It had occurred to me earlier as I wove around the curving roads and struggled to get my bearings in the dark, that none of them would have made this sort of effort to see us. But in the end it didn’t matter. My uncle’d had a stroke a few years ago and I had to come and see him in person before it was too late. I felt very lucky as we bid them goodnight and made our way down the steps to our car.

We’ll see them again tomorrow. Thankfully we have no agenda here but to lay on the beach, find some sea critters and hang with the family. Right now we’re going to get into bed and continue reading a book about a young boy on a whaling ship that once moored in nearby New Bedford. And just a minute ago, as Elihu flew his rc helicopter (single blade, fixed pitch he’d want you to know) he said “life is too good to be true right now!” Yup. That’s pretty much how we’re feeling.

Happy Post Script: We heard from the young birder and his cousin tonite! (Finally someone taking me up on the “Say Hello” page entreat…) Come back and visit again, Thomas and Lucas – and please share some of your bird stories with us sometime…

Eve Of

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What thanks can I offer to all of you who’ve made this trip possible? I see the donations come in, I breathe a little easier, and yet I don’t. I’ve been given so much help from my friends over the past three – nay, almost four – years, and I begin to feel a little as if I need soon to be doing something for others. But for now I will receive all this kindness because I know you felt inspired to help. I’ll honor that by using your help to create a journey for Elihu and me that we will remember for the rest of our lives.

The eve of the journey is a tense time for me. How do I sleep? I printed out our directions, I have my maps, my car is ready, our bags are packed. Elihu was even asleep hours ago, allowing me the time to collect my thoughts and my things in the quiet of a nighttime house. Seeing all those driving directions had me a bit intimidated. Me? Afraid of getting places? Ha!

I can remember finding my way to a boat docked in a small harbor in Portugal with little more than the name of a nearby town – no language, little money (and carrying ten pounds of white flour – staples requested by the captain. Can you imagine making it through international airports carrying ten pounds of a white powdery substance? Whew. A more innocent time it was.) Once in Indonesia, not quite sure exactly where my hotel was, I navigated lanes upon lanes of traffic in Jakarta during a monsoon rain and finally arrived there by way of a trade: my western cigarettes for a one final wild ride in a Bajai that got me there safe. I’ve done hundreds of singing telegrams and in so doing was made to find every manner of crazy out-of-the-way joint you can imagine. All long before GPS. (We did, however, had GPS on the boat, that’s where I first learned of it.) And I love maps. If I lack some good bedside reading material, a map will do. Then again, it may do too well. I might be up all night reading it, cuz I just love to think about going places.

I really shouldn’t fret about the actual ‘getting there’ part. But still, that’s the part which has me up late and unable to sleep. Man, how did we do it thirty years ago? Was it so hard? Didn’t we just take the highways, take most likely looking exit and just ask local folks where to go from there? That must have been how we did it. People have been making car trips for decades without benefit of GPS… I gotta relax. Gotta remember it’s still in me. I can do this car trip thing.

Oh, but I’ve gone off on a tangent, when what I’d wanted to do in this final homemade post was to thank all of you so much. We two are so excited, so happy. Truly we are embarking on a modern day adventure. We know where we’re going, and yet we know not. It’s the little serendipitous surprises that make it so magical. So I guess it’s the anticipation of the things I know not that has me so keyed up at this late hour.

Thanks, dear friends. And now, finally, I’m off to bed. I think I’m ready to sleep now.

Get Crackin’

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Farm Life, Mommy Mind2 Comments

So much yet to do. The biggest item is off the list: make sure the automatic coop door opener really works. Although I bought it last year (paid for a pricey rush delivery in fact) it sat uninstalled all year long in my garage, as I just couldn’t manage to do it myself as I’d planned. Even bought a sawsall to make the cut in the wall – really, how hard could it be? As I set out I discovered, hard enough. Maybe if I’d had more practice with the saw – which was much harder to control than I’d expected – I’d have been able to cut myself a hole into which I could then install the door. But I simply couldn’t manage it. The whole project, for as simple and straight forward as it looked was too much for me to muster on my own, and in the end I hired my brother to watch over my flock as we left town for a couple of days on divorce business. (And I gave the sawsall to a kid who mowed my 5 acre lawn in trade.)

This year, having a much larger flock and hoping to go away for a much longer time, I simply had to get it installed. When I unpacked it, we discovered chimpmunks had not only filled the entire thing with corn (the industrious little fella was dead at the bottom of his own cache) but had cut both the cord that pulled the door up as well as the wiring that told it to do so. God bless this handyman that I found at random from the local Pennysaver. He fixed it. And installed it. Then, as it began to appear a task completed, the timer got knocked to the ground by the birds on the first night, and came apart in pieces. Day two of coop preparations, four days to departure. I was beginning to panic. Lower back pain had me all but immobile, and now this. Swearing like a sailor, I wrestled the pieces back together in the obscene heat of the garage. It worked, but not quite as it should have. It took two more days until we had both a successful raising of the coop door on its own as well as a successful lowering of the door. Hooray! Right? Nope.

First night it was the new guys. The chicks – who are now just about full grown chicken size, but who eat like teenagers and don’t know the routine of the mature flock quite yet – they haven’t figured out where to go at night. At dark, when all the others are high on their roosting bars, safe for the night, the younguns are in a crowded clump on the ground, huddling for safety. How else do young ones learn but to be taught? I’d thought they’d imitate the elders, but no, apparently it’s up to Elihu and me. So, one by one, Elihu puts the little guys through the tiny open door, where I then take them and place them on a roosting bar. We are teaching them. We hope. Day one it’s forced. Day two, the timer still isn’t working right, so we miss an opportunity. Day three – complete success! Out on their own in the morning, up and safe on their roosts by nightfall! And the tidy little door shut all by itself! Houston, we have liftoff!

Except for Maximus, who walks around the empty pen, waiting for us to come and talk to him. He fits through the small door just fine, but for some reason he has chosen not to follow his flock. He’d rather wait for me to come out and make my nightly check; he likes to talk to me. He gurgles and grunts low to me, follows me on my feeding and watering chores, stays ever close. “Oh Max” I cry to him in frustration. “You’re supposed to use the door too!” Maybe he needs some teaching like the little ones did. I can’t open the door or I’ll throw off its timing, so instead I open the large door with the diamond patterned window panes (Elihu called it the ‘Shirley Nelson door’ the moment he saw it cuz he said it looked ‘just like the kind of door a woman named Shirley Nelson would have in her house’.!) I pick up my soft, white goose and I carry him across the threshold, depositing him gently inside. “You must go inside with everybody else, Max” I scold. I’m happy to see the little ones have all now found their own spots on the new roosting bars. All seems well. If only the goose would go in on his own. I’m prompted to do some googling on the subject of geese and raccoons – could a raccoon, of which we have plenty, really take down my gander, attitude and all? I learn that yes, he could. So I have a goose problem still. Earlier I’d had too much testosterone in the pen, so I’d placed Bald Mountain on his own in the brooder pen for the week. Sorry, you’ll be ok big guy. It’s still a lot better than being stuck in a tiny cage for the 4H poultry show at the county fair for a week…But what to do with the goose? I’m trying to make it so that ALL my birds go in, roost and the door closes. Period. So the gal who’ll watch them has only to fill the food and water. That itself if enough of a chore. One more dilemma to solve before we go. Geez. Will we go at all? I wonder.

While I try to get every last piece of laundry folded and put away, and while I refresh my bed with a seldom-washed sheet still hot from the dryer, Elihu takes up a corner to help me make my bed as we begin to discuss the Max situation. It is clear that we cannot simply leave him outside in the pen. He will likely be gotten. The only option is our garage. Full of crap, some garbage, much of it not – in fact there are many nice things still left from my mid century life that I need to find good homes for.  But I do not want to come home in a week to find the furniture chewed on, green sloppy goose shit all over the cement floor… but what choice do we have? “Look”, Elihu begins, “it’s not a tiny garage, he’s got enough room. You just have to cover up the nice stuff and make Max his own little area. Wood shavings in that corner by the brooder pen. That’s all he needs. He’ll be fine”. Good lil man. Yes, if we doctor up that one last open bit of garage and make it his, he’ll be comfortable. Leave a fan on. He’ll be ok. And I can put up the baby gate by the door so that when our chicken sitter comes to set out food she won’t get goosed by our goose. (Sweet creature to me, to everyone else he is his master’s protector. )

All the while, my back continues to morph and shift, to become something foreign and new. I’ve had lower back episodes – one or two a year – for the past decade. I always bounced back within a week, nothing was ever any different afterward, and in fact it was all but forgotten by a month out. But this time I blew it, I guess. I went to a chiropractor. Initially , my experience was insightful and educational to a certain degree, but holy shit! That man actually did something to me! I was glad to leave my first appointment standing straight – when I’d walked in hunched over and to one side. But today it is a vastly different situation. I think I’d gladly take back my initial posture if I could get rid of this: I am now asymmetrical, my spine is twisted – as in no longer a straight line up and down – and my back sounds like jiffy pop being made on a stove… almost any movement at all and there’s a crackling sound. No pain, but the sound is new and disconcerting. And that I feel I’m a walking S is weird too. I can do stretches, breathe in deep, visualize my stretch and so forth… but nope. Nothing doin. I cannot straighten myself out. I seem to now have a new problem on top of the original one I’d come in for. !!!! I was so ready to receive this as the wholistic means of treatment and health from here forward…A practice that took into consideration the whole body, stress level,  diet, movement…but in reality it seems much more focused on simply vertabrae related ‘subluxations.’, one of which I believe the good doctor may himself have created. I know I sound a little paranoid here, but I’ve gone from a situation which though uncomfortable, was at the least, familiar, and at best, something I knew how to manage. But this popcorn popping, s – curving back is altogether new to me. What do I do with this? It’s annoying as hell! I can’t carry my bag on my left shoulder because I’m so newly outta whack. Huh? No one told men that new problems would likely pop up…. did they? Did I miss the handout?

Bed made. Kid asleep. Post slogged through, perhaps less intelligible than most, but well, it’s done. Soon I’ll update you on our itinerary. Our plans have changed so many times that to have posted updates as they occured would only confuse. This we know: I will drive us, with my new little popcorn-popping back, to the historic Mayflower II. (We’re smack in the middle of a historic kid’s book about a young boy on a whaling ship – and he speaks of my own mother’s home town, New Bedford, as if it were modern day New York City. It will be fun to see the town so described in the novel.) Yup, we’ll see the ship, then promptly ship out to visit my Uncle Paul and Aunt Sandy. Cousin Rusty seems a lot like my brother Andrew; he’s 50 and still lives at home. He slinks in and out, says very little and what he does remains mostly mystery to his family. Then there’s Janice, his younger sister and my other cousin. While younger than me, she is a grandmother. Yeeks. My paternal grandma had my dad at 45. Janice musta had hers in her late teens. Crazy. But for us, the craziest thing will be hearing ‘that accent’. We don’t often hear people who sound much different from ourselves, so it’ll be fun to be in the area and hear this local accent. Elihu will get a big kick out of it.

We have two decadent nights in Wareham, and nothing but beach and family to fill our time. Oh, and maybe a visit to the Plimouth Town Living Museum where the actors in costume speak as they did some 400 years ago, and where they don’t break character, where they serve food of the time sans utensils. That, we just might go see. Whale watching will have to wait. Money and time don’t allow it this run.

Next, our question is to return home? Or to continue west, via New Haven to New York City. My back pain will likely play a large role in this decision. We have yet to contact our NYC friends with the latest timetable, so friends, if you’re reading, please know things have been tricky. I hope that I may leave it at that and not cause hurt feelings or piss people off.  I’m also aware some may have altered plans on our account. Hope not too much. We’ll ask if you might receive us Tuesday, maybe also Wednesday night?? And Jersey friends, maybe the following two nights with you?

Little time. Lot and lots to do. I think I may even have forgotten how to pack. Hoooo – I’m woozy tired now. I’m gonna go and rest my crackin’ back so tomorrow I can start crackin’ the whip….

Travel Campaign

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Elihu and I have not yet been on a trip in our own part of the country, and have hoped to do so for the past three summers now. I have relatives I haven’t seen in years, and I’m becoming keenly aware that time continues to pass…

I’m hoping to raise some money in order to make this trip, because as things are now, I’m not sure we’ll be able to manage it. I realize everyone has financial burdens – and truly your emotional support through this past year has been worth far more than money itself – but if anyone is able to donate just a few dollars towards our trip, I think it might be much easier for us to manifest.

To that end, I’ve set up an account at GoFundMe.com if friends would like to make a donation for our Big Trip East. Just visit our page at  http://www.gofundme.com/q1ke4 and hopefully it will be easy to contribute to our account if you choose.

All told, we will be traveling about 1000 miles. We need money for gas, tolls, additional insurance, motel, food, admission tickets and parking – as well as money to pay someone to watch over our flock in our absence.

Here then is our proposed Big Trip East, to be made in two separate tours:

Leg One:  Saratoga Springs, New York to Wareham, Massachusetts via Amherst

My mom’s brother is now 84 and I haven’t seen him, my Aunt nor my cousins in over twenty years. They live in Wareham, Massachusetts, and so our hope is to meet them, swim in the Atlantic and perhaps – if we can swing it – go on a whale watching boat while we’re in the neighborhood. I know they’re pricey, but Elihu really wants to go. (I caution him that he might not be able to see them for himself, but he is determined.) I also have an old and dear friend from Chicago (whom I’ve known since she herself was Elihu’s age – and now she’s a real grown up!) who lives in Amherst, and she and her boyfriend would like to go with us to a local raptor center there. Finally, an important part of this leg is visiting Plymouth. Our very own ancient ancestor, Roger Conant, (we guestimate him to be Elihu’s great grandfather x 16) arrived there on the Mayflower in 1620. There’s a historic village complete with a reconstructed replica of the ship that we can tour too. Given my personal love of sailing, I’m very excited to show this to Elihu. And my mom is from Fall River, so we’d also like to go and see the house where she grew up as we wind our way westward along the coast.

Leg Two: Fall River, Massachusetts to New Haven, Connecticut

On to New Haven, Connecticut, where I was born, and it’s there we’ll take a peek at Silliman College of Yale University, my father’s Alma mater, and hopefully we’ll be granted entry at the secretive Elihu Society. A quick jaunt north to the suburb of Hamden to see the house I remember living in as a young girl, then back to the main route west, on to New York City.

Leg Three: New Haven, Connecticut to New York City

New York City, baby! I can remember a time when hardly six months of my life went by without my visiting this grand place. I haven’t been there since Elihu was born. About time. Too much to do here for sure. Friends we really want to see, Achromat folks to meet, perhaps a visit to the Bronx Zoo Aviary. Plus we gotta see a landmark. Not sure which, statue of Liberty or Empire State Building. Chinatown is a must, gotta see those big barrels of live bullfrogs and those crazy ducks, hanging in the store windows. Might want to head to mid town – West 57th – to see the historic building in which my father lived at the beginning of his career as a harpsichordist in NYC. Lunch at Katz’s Delicatessen? Some Chinese-Cuban fare perhaps? We also have friends I know from my old life as a musician – they were regular hosts to us when we played in the city, and we must drop in and say hello. Too much to do! At the very least we need (make that I need) to break the paralysis I feel in visiting this city. We only live three hours north and in future can ride the Megabus if we like. There is truly a ‘next time’ to be had. That should take the urgency and stress out of the mix.

The First Half concludes…

We return to Saratoga for a wedding mid July – and the welcome company of house guests all the way from Paris… Then, after we get our breath and clean out the car, we hope to embark on the second half of our summer’s journeys:

The Second Half commences…

Leg Four: New York City to Bel Mar, New Jersey with West Orange in between

We have some friends, formerly of Saratoga, who now live in Jersey. Mom Marion has recently written a book on the accordion (Squeeze This!) and her kids and Elihu have a ball together. I’ll be sure to bring my melodica along for a little music making. And, as Elihu reminds me, there is an aviary not far from their home, too. Then it’s down the coast to Bel Mar. Fareed and I always used to joke that ‘one day’ we would have a home both in Bel Mar, New Jersey, and Del Mar, California. !

Leg Five: Central Coastal New Jersey to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philly. I have nice memories of that town. Few, but nice. And for some reason, maybe it’s all the historical novels we read last year, Elihu is resonating with the idea of a trip to that town. Seeing the Liberty bell excites him, seeing the olden day streets and buildings… But the biggest plus of this town is meeting my own cousin face-to-face as an adult. I don’t believe I’ve seen him since I was Elihu’s age – or younger. How can this be? I don’t get it myself. When we were little we saw them on holidays, but I guess as you age life gets more complicated and family spreads out all over… I do know that my father loved his big brother so very dearly, and Uncle Dave’s death was very hard on him. I mean to right the situation. It’s about time I met my cousin again. Kinda like meeting family you didn’t know you had. This will be fun…

Leg Six: Going home

Should we meander? Find our way to Deposit, New York (just outside Binghamton) to see friend Martha Carver’s childhood home? Should we stop in the Catskills? Are there points in between we might not want to miss? Or will we high-tail it back? As I have been saying to my son since he was tiny: “You never know until you go”…

Not sure if it’ll go as planned, but I gotta try. I’ve been hoping to do this since we moved here and feel I must take action. I set up our gofundme account a few weeks ago but haven’t had the guts or conviction to make my appeal til now. Not sure what I’ve been waiting for. But I gotta ask. Just a couple of bucks each from a couple hundred friends and we can get on the road. I hope you’ll consider it. My deepest thanks ahead of time should you choose to help us out.

One Night in June

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These photos are from an evening last week. We were just beginning to enjoy our free-form days and nights…

Elihu changes the blades in his biggest RC helicopter

They’re on, now let’s see if they work…

They do!

Now we’re downstairs to the music room for a bit. Elihu starts off on my Wurlitzer.

My old Moog – how I loved playing that thing back in the day…

Elihu goes back to his drums and the two of us play for a bit.

We had a nice little jam session that evening. Kid’s got a natural feel. There were a couple moments when I forgot I was playing with my nine year old son. Before we quit I suggested we do a jazz ballad. “Oh – that’s my favorite kind of music” he says. ?? He pulled out his brushes and jumped in without a second thought. Fun day. Love that kid.

A Summer Free

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It’s here. Summer vacation. In years past I’d approached summer with a certain apprehension, as I assume many parents do – those who have jobs which continue after school comes to an end must dread this change in schedule – but this year it is a refreshingly different situation for me. While folks with unrelenting day jobs may be faced with some daunting child-care related logistic challenges in the summertime, that had never been my particular problem. In the past my difficulty was that by this time of the year I was knee-deep in producing a summer music festival – and doing it all myself – with a young kid at my feet whining to me that he was bored. In ‘my’ day my mother had no room for my boredom. I was given a bicycle and complete freedom. That was my summer. At the time I really hated it, but looking back now it seems rather idyllic. Classic, timeless summer. (But I suppose I might have been a year or two older than Elihu is now at that point.) What we did or how we passed our summers as tiny children, while my own parents were themselves tending to the same Baroque Festival that I have been running since I moved back, of that I have little recollection. The past three years have been great feats for me; keep the show going while keeping the small kid happy. A juggling act I didn’t have to repeat this year, because last year we wrapped up dad’s 52 year run of the Festival of Baroque Music. Lots less stress this year for sure.

It just hit me the other day as I stood in the Studio, conjuring the memory of harpsichord and viola da gamba ringing out so vibrantly in the hall, that we wouldn’t hear such music in this room again this summer. The Festival, as we all know it, has concluded. The thought hits me in my gut, and I am more than sad. I feel decades of memories become fainter and fall farther away into the shared oblivion of past performances everywhere. Many who were here to witness those performances are themselves no longer with us. Fainter and dimmer the memories become. I remind myself that the spirit in which all of that was created will continue on. It will take different forms too. But I promise myself something important: I will find a way to make Baroque music a regular part of the Studio’s offerings one day. But just not this year. Taking a year off isn’t so bad I tell myself, but still, it makes me sad, nostalgic. This is the first year here without music. I think of how far my dad has slipped since just last year. He might not even be able to attend a concert by next year. I know it, but I just can’t fully embrace it yet. I take in a breath of air, and I let a concept linger until it doesn’t hurt quite so much: I realize that we have come, quite definitively, to the end of my father’s era. It sits heavy in my gut. Yet I know that also means it’s now the beginning of mine. I’m still feeling the sorrow in my stomach, but I can’t deny that I’m also beginning to get excited here… Once again, I’m beginning to see the Studio’s new future and I can just feel possibility growing…

For now I am not personally hosting any classes or performances, but Ceres, my partner is. I chose not to take part in this season because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I had lots on my plate what with the new well and other infrastructure details – plus there’s been so much going on with us personally the past few months – a change of schools, family issues and such; I just couldn’t summon the extra oomph to do it all.

I’m letting my role in the Studio rest for a bit as I turn my attention instead to simply spending the summer with a nine year old boy. And I gotta say – it feels great to get up in the morning with the day wide open before us. While there are things we’d really like to do this year (like visit far-away family), we hope to keep things as under-scheduled and free-form as possible. Today we had a destination in mind, but knew little of what to expect once we got there. With the agreement that we might be disappointed – but that we’d go anyway – today we were happily surprised as we discovered some impressive waterfalls, visited an old-fashioned mill, got our feet wet in a lake and tried some homemade, spicy sauerkraut. Elihu ran after moths on a vast, shady lawn while I sat in an Adirondack chair under some tall maple trees and looked out at the Hudson making its way past huge outcroppings of rock. As we meandered through the small town Elihu found himself a couple of matchbox-sized airplanes. Then we came home and learned a bit more about the place we’d just been. Perfect.

Finally it’s summer. And finally… we’re free.