Decisions, Decisions . . .

It was supposed to be a brief stop at the wine store to see if anything good and affordable was on sale (nope), but on my way out I was stopped by an elderly woman who asked if I knew anything about wine.

“Just a little,” I answered. “Do you need some help?”

“I wonder if you could help me pick out a chardonnay,” she said.

I know more about reds than I do whites, but she looked worried so I figured I’d give it a shot.

“I’ll try,” I said.

“One of the best lower-end chardonnays I ever had was a Santa Carolina Reserve from South America,” I said, leading her to the imports. “Let’s see if they have that.”

They didn’t.

I scanned the bottles. None looked promising, or even familiar. “Oh, there’s a 2001.”

“Is the year important?” the lady asked.

“It can be, but it’s hard to generalize,” I said. “Two thousand one was a good year for zinfandel, for instance, but I don’t know about chardonnay. Sometimes the older wines taste better than the more recent vintages, but . . .” I could see that I’d lost her.

“Is the year important?” she asked again.

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.”

“This is so hard,” she said. “So hard.”

“Really, it isn’t that bad.” I tried to reassure her. “It’s a bit of a roll of the dice, maybe, but you could end up with a nice surprise at your dinner table. Are you serving chicken? Fish?”

“No, I’m serving beef,” she said.

"Beef?"

“If you spill red wine, that’s it.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

I spotted some special prices at the end of the row. “Let’s look down here,” I said.

I picked up a bottle. “This is a possibility.”

“What’s possible about it?” she asked, clutching her shopping cart with white knuckles.

“Well, it’s on sale.”

“I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do.” She shook her head.

I decided she needed firm advice. “Buy this one,” I stated flatly.

“Why should I?” she demanded flatly.

Okey-dokey, a new approach was needed. I read from the label. “Monkey Bay (see the monkey?) . . . It’s from New Zealand, and New Zealand has produced some good wines. I predict that for $8.99 on sale, you can’t go wrong with this wine.”

“Oooh, this is terrible,” she said. “It’s so hard. I can’t choose. I can’t do this today. I’m going to have to come back tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Or another day. I can’t make a decision in one day. It’s just too hard.” Although her hands still gripped the handle of her shopping cart, I could practically see them being wrung into a pulp.

I put the bottle back and rested one of my hands on her shoulder. “If I were you,” I said, looking into her eyes, “I would buy the Monkey Bay because it has a really cute label.”

She smiled.

I left the store, and I don’t know if she bought the wine.

But she smiled.

Gardening, Domino Style

For some reason, Amazon chose to give me a free subscription to Domino magazine. I'd never heard of it. (Maybe that was their reason.) I love magazines, but this one isn't for me. Their taste in home decor rarely matches mine, and even when it does (sort of), I couldn't possibly afford any of the stuff they feature.

In the September issue, the hand-carved divan is beautiful, but definitely does not belong in my house. That's good, actually, because it costs $7,000. Ditto the bright coral "cheeky" Louis XV desk for $5,160 and the "couch as confection" ($12,500).

I felt even more removed from the gardening section. I've been gardening for decades. Surely I can connect to their gardening pages. Not really.

I own some necessary gardening equipment, but not a lot of it. What's the point? You need to be able to dig and you need to be able to move stuff around. Some people spray. Other than that, gardening is basically you and the seeds, followed by you and the plants. Ah, but not according to Domino.

The September issue features a number of tools, beginning with an iron harvesting basket ($87). Iron?? Gardening doesn't require enough exertion without lugging around an iron basket? Once you've recovered from dragging your heads of broccoli to the porch in their iron container, you can pickup a bunch of lightweight wood cloches from France and cover your salad greens so they won't mature too quickly. (Can you do the same with your teenagers?) But don't pick up too many — each one costs $80.

The dollar store has some foam kneeling pads for a buck or two, but you'll feel ever so much more elegant on your leather kneeler ($85). For $310 you can be the proud owner of a rhubarb forcer. I'm not sure I'd want to force rhubarb, though. Did you know the leaves are poisonous? They are. That makes them dangerous. Trying to force rhubarb might be somewhat like trying to force the Sopranos to do something. Would you try to strong-arm the Sopranos? I didn't think so.

And finally, you might want a terra cotta jar in your garden. That is, if you don't mind spending $1,100 for something that's going to get muddy, knocked over by deer, peed on by the dog, and broken if you forget and leave it out during a freeze. Then again, you might not want it. I know I don't.

Recycling How-To

Recently somebody asked me for my recycling method. Here it is:

1. We pitch everything into a big, ugly blue crate outside the back door. Whatever we throw in usually bounces right back out. Depending on the weather, the time of day, and how my back is feeling, I may or may not pick it up off the grass and deposit it back into the crate.

2. When the crate is full I nag my son to empty it.

3. At some point it shows up empty.

4. My son naggingly reminds me that recycling collection is in two days. He tells me the recycling is bagged up in the shed and ready to go.

5. I drive my car over to the shed and discover that 50% of the recycling is inside bags that are way too dusty for me to put in my car. The other 50% hasn't made it into bags yet.

6. Depending on the weather, my mood, and what else I'd rather do, I may or may not go back to the house to get clean bags. If I do, I rebag, etc., until a) my car is full, or b) I get tired of doing it, whichever comes first.

I don't think my friend is planning to adopt my system.

Personal Enrichment, More or Less

One of the school districts in our county has significantly more money than the others, and tends to be pretty impressed with itself. Maybe it's justified; maybe it's not. But they're the only district to offer community ed classes, and over the years the list has been pretty impressive. At least I've been impressed.

So when I opened up the Sunday paper this morning and found an insert from the school district titled "Adult and Community Education" and featuring an aerial photograph of the high school—golf course, football field, lake and all—I decided this would be my year to take a class.

The first section was Personal Enrichment. Sounds good. There's always room to be personally enriched, no? I scanned the course offerings . . . Driver Safety, Acrylic Painting, Art for Children, Watercolor Painting, How to Rubber Stamp (Uh...pick up stamp. Press on ink pad. Line up on paper. Push.), eBay for Beginners, Handmade Christmas Cards . . . and stopped at Adventures in Dreaming. Just as I thought: It was about lucid dreaming and other forms of dream work. Interesting. But I lost interest when I read the name of the instructor. Why would anyone call himself Thor the Barbarian? The other instructors had normal names like Demitrakapoulos and Piotkowski. I didn't think I wanted to take a class from someone named Thor. To me, Thor is the lovely longhaired German Shepherd who was part of our family in the 1970s. He was not a barbarian in any sense of the word.

I looked at the dates. The class would be given on Mondays beginning November 7 and ending November 19. Huh? One of those obviously is not a Monday. Maybe neither of them are Mondays. I moved on.

Latin Cooking, Herbs, Dog Obedience . . . hmmm . . . Thor the Barbarian is also teaching Bodybuilding. Christmas Quilting sounded nice, and I was relieved to see it was taught by someone named Smith. The course description said the student would learn how to make a beautiful Christmas quilted table runner for the holidays. I made one of those quite a few years ago, but still...then I read on: Students are required to bring a working sewing machine (those non-working models are a pain) and $100. That's one hell of an expensive table runner, especially when you have to make it yourself.

But Christmas Quilting was cheap compared to Beginning Pottery ($175), Inspection Mechanics Licensing ($175), and Planning Your Retirement (free, but you'll have to put up with telemarketers for the next 20 years).

The next course on the list was The Many Faces of Dracula. I'm sure that one will fill up quickly. Ditto a $50 course called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Your E-mail.

Further down the list, I learned that Thor the Barbarian is also teaching A Guided Tour of the Underworld (he should know), Meet Your Power Animal, The Viking Runes, Spirit Communication, and three different courses on UFOs.

All this from the impressive school district.

I'm impressed . . . not.

My Mother

It's not Mother's Day, but surely we think about our mothers more than once a year. I started thinking about mine this morning, and I haven't stopped.

My mom's name was Dorothy, but everybody called her Dotty. She was raised in what was then rural New Jersey, and always wanted to live in the country again. She and my dad were living in Greenwich Village when I was conceived, and then in an apartment in Queens near a tennis court. They were both excellent tennis players, but she was brilliant on the court.

She was brilliant off the court, too. People always spoke of her beauty, intelligence, artistic talent, and sense of fun. Oh, and her athleticism. She was only 5'3" and didn't look like an athlete, but she had perfect hand-eye coordination. My dad loved to wander into a softball game where they weren't known. The guys would be dismayed to find this young woman in their midst, my dad insisting they both wanted to join the game. The guys would stick her somewhere on the edges of the outfield—where she'd wow them by snagging every ball and throwing it home.

She had wanted to study art, but her parents asked her to make the sacrifice and go to work in an office in order to put her younger sister through nursing school. Later, as a self-taught artist, she worked briefly for Walt Disney, drawing panels for animation.

She made most of my clothes and also made me laugh. She was wonderfully funny, although I remember a time when the school administration didn't think so. The Mother's Club was putting on a variety show, and my mom had done all the posters and set design. She put together a "musical" act with several of her friends, all dressed as men in black baggy suits. They would "play" various fake instruments, a very serious bunch playing very serious music — until my mother's fly opened and a giant spider fell out. The school officials were not amused, and wouldn't let her do it.

She had a way of making everyone her friend. The old Chinese couple who lived down the block in an ancient, peeling house with a tangle of strange vegetation in back called her "Madame 3E" after our apartment number. They loved her. Today, I can easily imagine how enchanted she must have been with their exotic garden.

She took me on walks and pointed out the tiniest wildflowers growing in the grime under a railroad trestle. She showed me how to suck nectar out of honeysuckle. She moistened lentils held with cotton against the inside of a jar in the dark of my bedroom closet to show me how seeds sprout.

She loved being a mother, and wanted another baby. But she had a miscarriage when I was two, and another about six years later. A month after turning 38, she cleaned a rug one Saturday evening. She used a rug cleaner containing chlorinated hydrocarbons; they don't sell that stuff anymore. It was November, and the windows were closed. The next morning she woke early, became sick in the bathroom, collapsed, and died.

She was friends with just about everyone in our apartment building. No one could believe the news. I heard over and over, "Not Dotty!"

I was so young, but I wish I'd known to look for signs from her. I have no doubt she gave me many.

Marine and Sandra

Yesterday afternoon I sat relaxing in a speedboat watching someone try waterskiing for the first time. Her name was Sandra, and waterskiing wasn't her only adventure: She had flown here from Paris last week, chaperoning ten French teenage exchange students on a three-week jaunt.

Marine, one of the students, is staying with my daughter and granddaughter. Sandra speaks perfect, almost unaccented English, but Marine is still learning. My daughter, granddaughter, and I are no help whatsoever. In typical American fashion, we speak only English—and not always perfectly.

I could never have been an exchange student. I would have loved to have gone to Europe, but only with my parents and at least two of my best friends. And maybe my French-speaking grandmother. Even recently, my idea of a big adventure was my weekend at Yale: three days in another state with 250 people I didn't know, all of whom spoke English.

I look at Marine and Sandra and wonder who is braver—the 16-year-old or the 20-something responsible for ten 16-year-olds?

Sandra's first attempt to get up on water skis ended within seconds. I learned to waterski in my twenties, too. It took me all afternoon. Poor Joe—over and over again he'd hit the throttle, and over and over again I'd bomb out. He suggested we go home and try another time. But I refused to leave the lake until I succeeded. It was embarrassing . . . the sun low in the sky, strangers on the shore (with thick New York accents) yelled, "You can do it, kid!!" Kid eventually did it.

Now Sandra is about to try for the second time. Chuck reminds her that the most important thing is not to bend your elbows, and Liz and I echo him: "Don't bend your elbows!" I wish I'd had this Greek chorus—indeed, this good teacher—30-odd years ago, when I was learning.

Liz and Marine are constantly firing digital cameras on either side of me. I feel as though I somehow got stuck in the middle of the paparazzi. "Okay!" Sandra calls from the water, her voice only somewhat tentative. Chuck hits the throttle, the boat surges forward—and Sandra is UP! I give her the most American of cheers: You go, girl!!

Having fun with my new closeup lens

Poem

Metabolic Metaphysics

Wolfy in an easy trot at heel,
I maintained my pace up the hill
and realized how often I’d been slowing
to a stroll recently. Our turning point,
the big, low rock embedded
in the dirt road, felt reassuringly firm
and smooth under my foot, but
at that moment a vascular twinge
under my left upper arm unsettled me.

“Okay,” I said aloud to Wolfy and the weeds
lining the road, “I have to get serious now.
More exercise, more consistent exercise,
and I need to lower my triglycerides again,
so that means a crackdown on the carbs.”
I thought about the implications of that,
and my step slowed, weighed down
with diet dread. Wolfy squatted, and I stopped,
assessing the massive tree in front of me.
The trunk didn’t have an ounce of fat on it.

A good, responsible tree isn’t burdened by gluttony
or guilt. Its leaves make sufficient food—no more,
no less. It takes what it needs—not what it craves—
from the soil. Sap flows at the appointed time,
unimpeded by lipids, plaque, or clots. A maple will
never need a sapwood bypass operation.

“So no more dipping into the cherries for me,”
I said to the tree, sighing. “And I suppose
I’ll have to eliminate apricots. Or maybe I should
give up dried fruit entirely, what do you think?”
I waited for some sort of response—a shadow
passing across the bark, perhaps, or a leaf
drifting slowly to the ground—but it was clear
the tree came from a different place.

Who's taking *your* picture?

I think it's wonderful that digital cameras have turned so many people into photographers. Point-and-shoot 35mm cameras were around for decades, but it seemed as though most people weren't too picky about the quality of the shots. I hope all the sharing that goes on with digital pictures has made folks more aware of stuff like focus.

When I was a child, we lived in an apartment building in NYC. My dad, whose hobby was photography, was everyone's family photographer. Today, my childhood friends are grateful to have beautiful b&w images of their parents and themselves that never would have happened without my father and his Leica and Speed Graphic and his darkroom.

I'm grateful that I have them, too. And I'm equally grateful that I took so many pictures of my own children. What if my collection of pictures of Gillian consisted of some posed portraits from K-Mart and a few blurry snapshots taken at the beach?

Anyway, my point of all this is that someday your family will be grateful to have pictures of you. If you are the family photographer, they may have a hard time finding them. I've been making a long-term project of putting photos in albums, and after album #5 or so I realized that judging from the photographs one might suspect my children were raised by dogs and cats, with occasional visits from their father. I wish I'd taken more pictures of him, and I wish somebody had taken pictures of me.

So this is to encourage you to a) learn how to use the timer on your camera (this results in a much more flattering picture than holding your camera out at arm's length and hoping for the best), and b) not to be shy about asking people to take your picture. They won't mind. Don't stand stiffly with your kids, shoulder to shoulder. Grab them in a group hug. Or pull them down on a sofa with you. Don't worry about being photogenic. Let them be silly. You want natural grins. Someday, they'll want to remember you just the way you are.

Poem

Reunion

This was your school, but today it’s mine
My massive stone structures, my towers, my brick
My gothic archways, my winding slate paths
Mine, the people—the students, the grads

Eighty names they read, eighty souls have passed
Through these doorways, and then through life
Yours was among them, just as you
Were among them then, fifty years ago

So I stood for you, and came in your place
Slipped my name—and yours—around my neck
Shook the hands, returned the smiles
Heard about you from before my time

My feet followed yours down Temple and Elm
Slower and shorter than your purposeful stride
With no less of a mission, but the gift of peace;
I knew what I had to do would be done

I sang in historic Woolsey Hall
With a hundred others, and thousands of pipes
Released the purest organ tones
You might have sat in every chair

I sang the football medley and more
Wished poor Harvard endless ills
My F and G were effortless
In songs of praise for Eli Yale

Who infused me with this spirit?
Spirit for school, for community
Was it channeled—an energy
Left here 50 years ago?

Spirit waited; I waited, too
Always hoping someday I’d find
What I discovered in these few days:
This was your school, but today it’s mine

Flowers this morning

A small piece of my garden.

Sweet Rocket, the Flower

Communing with a swallowtail this morning.

My Gardening Pantoum

What We Have Sown

All those invasive plants
we didn’t think of as terrible,
just beautiful and strong,
seeded in the flower beds.

We didn’t think of it as terribly
pesky, the sweet rocket I started,
seeded in the flower beds
25 years ago. It’s everywhere now.

Pesky, the sweet rocket I started,
and the comfrey—such a benign name—
25 years ago. It’s everywhere now,
still reproducing, even the clumps I dig up.

Yes, the comfrey—such a benign name—
exceeding its bounds in the garden,
still reproduces, even the clumps I dig up
and toss across the road, to take root.

Exceeding its bounds in the garden,
forget-me-not dots the yard with blue,
tossing seeds across the road, to take root,
growing rings around the sweet rocket.

Forget-me-not dots the yard with blue:
my daughter’s gentle admonition
growing rings around the sweet rocket,
whispering, Don’t forget.

My daughter’s gentle admonition
not to forget my love of gardening
whispers, Don’t forget
But how will I be remembered?

I won’t forget my love of gardening,
so beautiful and strong,
but will I be remembered for
all those invasive plants?

Poem

Onlies
for Joe

I sat in my car this afternoon, eating
popcorn with gasoline-scented fingers
(I had just topped off the lawnmower)
and reading Marie Howe when I put down
the book and thought about you.
Because you used to say things like,
We must be the only people in the county
listening to Mahler’s 8th tonight, or
I’ll bet we’re the only people in the county
who ate scrambled tofu for breakfast, or
…who made their own tempeh this week.
And as I sat there, tinted glass shading
my eyes from the late sun, tiny flies trying
furiously to find a way around the window,
I was sure I was the only person in the county,
maybe even all of Pennsylvania and beyond,
sitting in a car at that moment, eating
popcorn with gasoline-scented fingers,
reading Marie Howe, and wondering
if you knew.

Lizzie & Me

Hard to believe she's a natural blonde, isn't it?

Poem for my granddaughter

Pantoum for Lizzie

I’ll remember (will you?)
our “ladies lunches,”
neither of us ladylike,
you 16, me….not.

Our “ladies lunches:”
your vegetarian choices,
you 16, me….not
but we notice the same things.

Your vegetarian choices—
I appreciate them, like the way
we notice the same things,
little ones and big ones.

I appreciate the way
you care about serious issues,
little ones and big ones.
Prom dresses and the Holocaust.

You care about serious issues
alternating with the hilarious.
Prom dresses and the Holocaust
give way to mutual glee.

Alternating with the hilarious,
those spiritual discussions
give way to mutual glee
with the one whose laughter I love.

Those spiritual discussions,
neither of us ladylike,
with the one whose laughter I love
I’ll remember (will you?)

12-Year-Old Applesauce

The label, a scrap of freezer tape, is written in happy blue ink:
Applesauce 1994. It’s now 2006. Who would eat
12-year-old applesauce? In a can, it would bulge
with bacteria. Under a plastic lid, it has grown a hard layer
of frost and the beige skin known as freezer burn. I chip off
the ice, cut away the burn, and wait impatiently
for the fruit of my long-ago labor to thaw.

In 1994 my husband was alive. A year away from his downward
slide, he understood every growing thing on this property.
Carrying old trusted tools, he planted and pruned
our fruit trees. The cage of his hand-held picker reached
the uppermost Macs, bright in the sun, while I gathered
bruised drops in the grass. He never failed to praise
my pies, cakes, and cobblers. And applesauce, every vintage.

In 1994 my daughter Jill was alive. She was 19, a horsewoman
and clarinetist. An artist in the kitchen. Together we
rolled these red apples around in green buckets of water,
drained them, cut them into crisp pieces, set them to melt
and bubble in a vast pot on the stove, inhaled their goodness,
exhaled our mutual feelings of pleasure and security
in this ritual, touching shoulders, hands, chakras.

In 1994 my mother was only a phone call away. Holly, the gentle
black lab mix, had another two years left. The cats, acquired as a group,
were at mid-life. The horses were here then—Jill’s horses, her father’s
horses, gone now, leaving behind walls of blue ribbons.

With only a few ice crystals remaining, the applesauce receives
my spoon. I hold its pink sweetness in my mouth, trying
to swallow slowly, to keep this bliss on my raw throat
as long as possible before it slips away.

The Scent of Celery

This afternoon I read in a 1935 diet book that celery makes an excellent substitute for bread. It made me laugh. It also made me think about celery.

When Joe and I were first married we lived in a little apartment way up high in midtown Manhattan. After three years we bought a little weekend house in Pennsylvania. It was mostly his idea; I wasn't sure how often I wanted to come to the country (all those trees!). But it wasn't long before I became caught up in the spell of living close to nature, and I don't think we ever missed a weekend unless he was traveling in Europe.

We would leave after work on Friday. Joe would drive, and if it was still light outside I would read a cookbook, planning the weekend's meals. When we reached Sparta, NJ, we stopped to buy food. The supermarket looked so different from the little grocery stores in Manhattan. It smelled different, too. Today's supermarkets smell like baked goods. I don't know if it's because of their bakeries or because they spray "eau de cinnamon bun" into the vestibules. But all those years ago the Sparta supermarket smelled like celery. At least that's how it seemed to me.

I think of those days sometimes when I pause in the produce department, looking for the freshest, heaviest, cleanest head of celery. Or when I happen upon one of those cookbooks, long unused.

Poem

March Song

Twenty-something degrees—
I still need gloves to walk the dog.
But the birds know what’s coming.
Their first tentative mating murmurs
edge the property: two notes
from a chickadee, then another,
nameless but familiar.

The angle of the sun sends its own
signal of the changing season,
as does—for reasons I can’t explain—
the long white puff of an old contrail
dividing the suddenly brilliant sky.

My tired winter shoes
are no match for the snow’s icy surface.
Thawed yesterday, it froze overnight
to a glistening slick. The dog pulls me
down the slight grade back to the house.

The ice will melt again,
The hard, cold dirt road
will turn again to mud.

Who knows where the time goes?
My friends and I tuned our first guitars,
debating the key, settling on G.
Across the morning sky
all the birds are leaving,
we sang, thinking more about
the placement of our fingers
than the onslaught of time.

Today a double V of geese glides
overhead, so high they seem silent.
I remember the hollow sound
of the guitars, the chord changes,
our long hair falling over the frets
like the ribbons of years
that stretched before us.