A Change of Screen

A change of scene is not always possible, so in its place, a change of screen. I choose a photo of a hike we took in the Czech Republic, high above the town of Czesky Krumlov. The Vltava River flows below, out of view in this photograph. And the hills that rise in blue infinity, those are the Sumava Mountains of Bohemia, in the heart of Europe.

When I stare at my computer's desktop screen now, I remember the breathlessness of that walk, the little shrines we stopped at along the way, the snails that clung to the dew-wet grass, the view that awaited us at the top. Limitless. 

Decoration Day

We have no flagpole holder, no siding on our house to hold one, and the front of our house is obscured by large trucks. Still, I walked to the mailbox a minute ago to stick a small flag in its arm.  It's Decoration Day, Memorial Day's first name, what it was called when it was established in 1868 for the purpose of decorating the graves of fallen soldiers.

No longer May 30, Memorial Day is the last Monday of the month — a day for cookouts, pool openings and ushering in the summer. But long ago (and in some places still) it was a day for a solemn parade and a trip to the cemetery.

Here is a Decoration Day parade from Brownsville, Texas, in 1916, photographed by Robert Runyon and downloaded from the Library of Congress' American Memory project.


(Photo: The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection, [image number, e.g., 00199], courtesy of The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.)

New House, Part 1

They are stripping our house, skinning it, peeling off panel after panel of dented aluminum siding. How inconsequential it all seems now, this pile of discarded metal.

But this shell is what has protected us from wind and rain and snow. It has been our barrier, our boundary with the outside world. It has held in the giggles and the screams and the slamming of doors. It has kept out the snow and the wind and the withering heat.

Seeing it now in piles upon the ground it hardly seems possible it has done all of these things. But I've been here. I know it has.

To be continued.

(Photo by neighbor John DeVoe of an earlier phase of reconstruction: the new roof we got Tuesday. Due to current camera glitches, I'm one day behind in photo retrieval.)

Sleight of Hand

A month from today Suzanne flies to Benin, West Africa, to begin her Peace Corps assignment. We've known about this for months, but now that we're down to the final weeks it's becoming more and more a reality. The map of Africa isn't the only thing swinging into high relief these days. So is the map of parenthood, the map of life even, if that isn't too melodramatic.

Children are supposed to leave their parents, start lives of their own. This is the natural order of things. I always believed this when I was the child, and I believed it as a parent, too — when my kids were young.  Now I'm having to put my money where my mouth is.

To stave off nervousness I'm concentrating not on how I'll feel when Suzanne takes off and am trying to imagine how she'll feel. It's a parental sleight-of-hand that many of us do unconsciously all the time. It's why we can smile through our tears.

I remember exactly the way I felt when I walked on the tarmac toward the plane that would fly me to Europe for two months backpacking with friends. I had just turned 20 and my whole life — and Europe! — were ahead of me. I felt like I was bouncing off the pavement. I was floating. That's the feeling I'll be trying to conjure up as Suzanne strides toward her future.

Happy Anniversary!

What started 60 years ago was not just a marriage; it was a family, a way of life. It was jumping in an old Chevy and driving across the country. Finally running away to California to start all over again — then realizing that Kentucky was where they wanted to be all along.

Mom and Dad married on May 24, 1952. Another of countless post-war weddings. A few years after the war, of course, but the soldier had to get his degree and start his career. And so the marriage began, and it has endured.

The family that flowed from that union has never felt like any other family. (Does any family, ever?) There were the businesses, the magazines, the museum, the houses with garages full of boxes that would become family rooms (but never did). There were the four children and the trips across the country in station wagons. Look at this country, they told us kids, see how big it is. There has always been a certain jauntiness, a sense that you didn't have to be what circumstances dictated. Dreaming was encouraged. Escape was required.

So today we celebrate this union, these people, still here, still dreaming and planning. How lucky I am to have them as parents.  Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

Question and Answer

"What do you want for your birthday?" my daughters ask me.

"Family harmony," I say, "world peace."

I don't say "what we have right now." What we have sitting around this table, eating dinner at 10 o'clock. (Sometimes it takes that long to get everyone together.)

Give me a month of these conversations, of talking about what color to paint the kitchen and how much our floors creak. Of how much we love San Francisco and what our neighbors will think of our new siding. Of gun control and abortion. Of where we want to live when we grow up ... or retire.

And, just to be really greedy, bottle these voices for me. These voices I could pick out of a billion, they are so clear to me, and so dear.

That's what I'd like for my birthday.

And you say I'm hard to shop for.

Honeysuckle Season

It isn't just the flowers and new leaves that make May my favorite month, the azealas and the iris. It's the perfumed air. Take a walk in our neighborhood now and you would have to be suffering from a severe head cold or sinus infection to miss the olfactory assault.

The air is literally perfumed. Stroll past the honeysuckle. Deconstruct that scent. For me, it is cool mornings along a Fayette County Lane, out early to pick strawberries. It is a roll-on perfume by Avon that I wore in high school, came in a little tube like Chap-Stick. I thought it marked me as a "natural girl." No Shalimar for me!

Honeysuckle drapes itself over hedges and fence rows. It is an elegant, lithesome plant, willing to grow just about anywhere.  Which is good news for us. Because that means we can smell it on walks through woods or along suburban lanes.

Last night I picked a sprig and bought it home. Now it sits beside the kitchen window. Bringing the outside in.


Photo: GardenLovetoKnow.com