Thursday, January 21, 2010

Untitled Rough Draft #1

It is 6:15, and I can already hear it. Grandpa’s bird song is a hard-to-miss melody of airy whistles, something that barely resembles a chirping noise, and the word ‘hey’, all compounded by the fact that he calls both of his parakeet’s JJ and consistently feels the need to personalize his morning tribute. It is summer. We are at my grandparent’s. There is no need for an alarm clock.

Enough sunlight filtering in through the yellowed curtains that I can see my way around the double bed where my mother still sleeps, past my brother’s cot and out onto the landing. In the winter, this is the only heated room on the second floor of a drafty farmhouse, but for now the breeze through the dormer window suffices for temperature control.

I pull the door shut quietly and tiptoe down the stairs as the song ends. Grandpa doesn’t see me as he shuffles out to the kitchen to finish his breakfast of Wheaties and prunes before strapping his feet into work boots and heading out to the shop and the long day ahead. I don’t notice it yet, but the signs of age are already tattooing themselves in his bones. The dark spots on his arms. The grunt as he lifts his leg to tie his boot. The imperceptible quiver of his hand as he raises the spoon.

But I am young now and think of him only as big and strong, a figure more than a person. One who rises early, leaves for the fields, comes back only to eat and maybe watch a little professional wrestling on TV before going to bed.

Grandma is much more real. A softer and quieter being. A practiced listener. She turns from the sink as I enter the kitchen and says ‘mornin’ while wiping her hands on the soft blue cotton of her housecoat. She offers to make me eggs, a rare morning treat given the terse quickness of suburban adolescence. I ask for two, but not ‘soaky’, as she calls them. At this point I’m still a food compartmentalist, someone who believes in the strict separation of toast and yolk. She pulls the fry pan out from the drawer beneath the stove and crosses the worn brown carpet to the refrigerator without another word.

The kitchen is bright with sunlight now. It is warm. Grandpa leaves the back door when he goes. I cross back past the birdcages into the living room and dial the antenna to pick up cartoons on the console television. I am happy now. Content. I don’t know that in another tens years he will slowly lose his body and mind to palsy. That in fifteen she will barely be able to walk across the rented trailer we move them into. That the January before I turn thirty, I will drive to visit them lying under a blanket of snow and break the ice off their headstone with bare hands as my own daughter sleeps in the car, never having met either of them before they died.

Instead, I think only of the smell of bacon frying and the sounds of the birds preening themselves, of the static on the television screen and the day ahead. Later that afternoon, my cousin will come over and we will kick stones along for a quarter-mile up the road to the main farm, only turning around to taunt my brother as he stands at the edge of the yard, telling him he can't come with, we are walking all the way to California.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Is Anybody Out There?

In the spirit of the new year (yes it takes me until Jan. 19th to get around to 'new year' spirit), I've been thinking about ways to improve my life. Call them goals or resolutions or what-have-you, but I've been thinking of them nonetheless. And, all this thinking inevitably led me back to the goals I set at the start of 2009. I'd thought I'd reflect a bit on them before launching into another series of high aims and low ambition.

1. Lose weight. I did this. I lost 30 pounds last year, then gained 10 of it back. Hopefully this year I can net a bit more.

2. Read. It took me a bit, but I mostly accomplished this as well. Last year saw me read 20 Something Essays By 20 Something Writers, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (by Salman Rushdie), Lamb (by Christopher Moore), Everything is Illuminated (by Jonathon Safran Foer), and a host of other poems and such.

3. Make a financial plan. Ok, no real plan here. But we did make a budget we sometimes keep, and we got all our insurance/retirement ducks in a row.

4. Figure out just what we would need (and could afford) in a second home. Well, our house is on the market. We aren't looking yet - mostly because no one is really looking at us - but we do have a wish-list and a price range. And, we've been watching a bunch of House Hunters

5. Collect all my thoughts about conceiving Parker, having Parker, and now raising Parker into one coherent piece of writing instead of just keeping them in bits and pieces here and there and in my head. Yeah..no. I'm moving this one from 'year goal' to 'life goal' and we'll see how it goes. If it works, lesbian parenting is a pretty niche market so maybe I can get book deal.

6. Attend at least four arts events in the city. 75% Done. I heard Elizabeth Alexander read at Butler. We saw A Christmas Carol at IRT. And I tried to take a group of students to hear Charles Simic read, but it was cancelled so I ended up making them write their own poems and then had them read their pieces on the steps of the Carillon at Butler.

7. Find a church. I'm calling this one 75% done too. We found one we like and are in the process of talking to them about joining.

8. Write more things down. I have done this. Has it led to anything? No. I have mostly just found that I am now too busy to remember things without writing them down. But, I am giving a talk on recreational writing for the general public in February. If anyone wants to come, let me know.

9. Blog more. Three = number of blogs in 2009. I'm going with a no.

10. Take Suellen on a trip for our anniversary. Did it. We went to Chicago for 4 days. It was perfect.

11. Take a vacation with Parker. Did this too. A whole week in Leland, MI. It was more family perfection time.

12. Start playing the trumpet again. Does UHS Pep band count?

13. Go back to New Hampshire for a bit. No luck here. But there's always this summer...

Now, to start on 2010.