Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes

• Last week (the week before?), Mark and I went to the pharmacy to get the latest in booster shots from a youthful pharmacist. When she asked me to confirm what shot I was getting, I said, "The...Covid...super duper booster?"
• Later we met a dog from Topeka, a golden retriever named Jersey with a pretty white patch on her chest. Her person (name unknown) went to grad school at K.U.
• I think I want to be composted when I die. I just have to hold off until they offer that option in more places (LIFE GOAL).
• Here's a tip: don't look up scalding on Wikipedia.

And now onto an actual adventure we had, visiting Isaac and Edna in New York for a whirlwind weekend. Thanks to Janet, we had a luxurious Washington Heights apartment as a home base. We also had such great luck with everything: the subway, the weather, and (knock on wood) the Covid. Highlights:

• A brief glimpse of Jonah (including hugs)
• FOOD. Ramen at Minca. Breakfast sandwiches and donuts at Win Son Bakery. Coffee (and art) at Amant. More coffee at Buunni. A Chinese feast at Birds of a Feather. Breakfast and treats at Dutch Baby. *
• Finally getting to be in Isaac and Edna's totally charming and cozy apartment and meet their even more charming cats, Kiki and Ilya. 

TBH as we drove out of Maine I thought "WHY?" but it turned out I was really glad we made this trip.

I mean, obviously I was glad. Being with these two in their natural habitat made me deliriously happy.

Isaac is magic.

Edna and Kiki at home.

*bonus: these were all outdoor dining situations, except for Birds of a Feather, where we sat at an indoor table beside a huge door open to the back patio.

Pray tell me sir, whose dog are you?

How did I miss this brief, wonderful New Yorker piece on the Great Dane who lives in a tiny NYC apartment?

Photo by Amit Elkayam

Also, in my newsletter roundup, I missed a vitally important one, Top Dogs of the Year, an easy one to forget as it comes out just once a year, and is, as you might guess, a list of the very best good dogs of the previous year, with links, photos, videos, etc.

In other dog-related news, Gus is making it his personal mission to pee on every curbside Christmas tree in town before the trash collectors take them away. His tally this morning was eight trees peed upon.

Oregon Trail

Did I mention that this guy got his driver's license this summer? (Not Theo, the other guy.) He's a good driver, careful and smart, although he has the stylish habit of keeping only one hand on the steering wheel. One night this summer, he drove the car in the dark with his cousin Oona riding shotgun and Mark and me in the back seat. Many nights this fall, he went out late with his pal Christian, driving around. I think it's wise to wait until you're 20 to get your license, because your brain is more fully formed then (I may be biased, since that's about how old I was, too. I was so much stupider at 16).

One day I was riding in the car while Isaac drove, taking corners just a little bit abruptly, and every time, we could hear the dog water bowl we keep in the trunk clang loudly. Isaac said it sounded just like the Oregon Trail computer game he and Zoë used to play, the clang of the wagon train. It made him laugh.

These driving adventures happened during Isaac's visits home over the last several months. In New York, he is of course carless, although his license helped get him a temporary PA job on the set of a well-known TV show. He texted us from the driver's seat of a black SUV that was waiting outside a store near Rockefeller Center for the costume buyer to return. So he soon will have far more experience driving in Manhattan than I, for one, have.

Music of hair / Music of pain

This boy turned 20, and his sweet cousin Jonah turned 17, and the days turned sunny and warm enough for opening windows and grilling things and pulling weeds in the garden. Isaac is here for another few days before he heads back to live in New York for the summer (and possibly longer--he's taking the coming year off school). We all realized that the last five months marks the longest period he's ever spent away from home, the longest stretch of days that we haven't seen him in the flesh. It's so good to hug this boy and feed him food and have him drive us around town (he's determined to get his license this summer, and he's a good, confident driver).

I'm listening to this Hamilton podcast, an all-Hamilton, every-single-song podcast, and I don't like it very much so far. But I did just realize that it features different groups of people talking about the songs each time. These people...are very white. I don't know. I will report back. In the meantime, here are some people (of color) talking to Lin-Manuel Miranda on one of my favorite podcasts. And here are some people of different races talking about Hamilton on another of my favorite podcasts.

We finally invested in our own screenprinting equipment, and we have a whole shop set up in the basement, and Milo in Maine is printing its own damn shirts! It makes such a well-balanced work day when I can write all morning and print all afternoon: thinking and sitting work // standing and listening to podcasts and moving work. It feels good. And check out this bear.

My life is kind of bursting with other people's heartbreaks right now. Trying to be grateful for and conscious of my lucky lucky life.


WAIT

by Galway Kinnell


Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.
Haven’t they carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

While We're Young

My cohort, charmed by
Hipster youngsters--their bikes and
Typewriters and...youth.

A flowery band to bind us to the earth

I've been fighting this cranky feeling lurking in the background of my general happiness the past few days. Just irritation and this sense that time is speeding by, but instead of feeling melancholy about it I'm annoyed. At people, too. ANYWAY, there have been many celebrations this month and there are more to come, so aside from a cyclical dip in fund$ due to various celebration-related expenses and a bunch of late checks (ahhh, the freelance life), all is swell.

Zoë graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University!! We made several voyages southward, moving both kids out of their dorm rooms, attending graduation ceremonies, feasting on Indian food that I still can't stop dreaming about, meeting the girl's friends and teachers and bittersweetly enjoying the neighborhood and campus and community she's loved so very much for the past four years. We are going to miss the fact of her being there, knowing how close she is and how content.

Isaac had a mixed year--a school year he's got mixed feelings about, that is, although academically I could brag like crazy about what he's accomplished. I'm happy to have him around this summer. For a couple of weeks we've got both sweetpeas, and after Zoë leaves for another summer in India, we'll have Jonah here too. Speaking of Jonah, today's his sixteenth birthday, and we zipped down to Cambridge last night to celebrate with Mom and Dad, Adam and Jeannette and Oona.

So, pointing myself toward the summer, my goal is to savor it. Just that, not to let it slip past because I'm distracted by busyness or whatever. I hope to dig in the dirt, work efficiently when I'm working, finish this kitchen project, stay up late, eat outdoors, play games, walk everywhere, pick berries, clean the windows and then open them wide every day.

Love is Strange

New York makes some things
easier, and other things
much more difficult.

Extra Dogs, our Girl, and Indian Food

Isaac has been busy making sure he's got all his Ts crossed and Is dotted, so to speak (in other words, ensuring that when family members descend in a festive throng for the occasion of his high school graduation, that he is in fact a high school graduate). He even went to the prom, not at his school but at his special friend's. He's also been busy being a waiter at an Indian restaurant, where he works with a lovely family who cook him a special meal every night after his shift. Last weekend, Mark and I went to see the sublime movie The Lunchbox, and there was so much delicious looking Indian food in it that we ended up eating a second dinner at The Palace. After Isaac finished working, he sat with us to eat his own dinner, and one of his coworkers said, "This is so nice, you can chitchat with your mother and father!" He comes home smelling lovely, with leftovers for lunch at school the next day and little spots of turmeric on his button-down shirt. Last night he learned how to make Malai Kofta.

He's off to college in the fall, a bit of a surprise to us since he'd thought probably a gap year or two would figure into his plans. But Sarah Lawrence it is--he'll be a half hour away from Zoë. We are anticipating visits to see them both, while they're in the same part of the world, next year. And what the completely empty nest will be like, or mean for us...we just have no idea. But I'm so thrilled for my boy, he got accepted everywhere he applied but one, and got generous financial aid from Sarah Lawrence. He and I drove down there for an accepted students' day, and it was pretty exciting. I can see Isaac really loving it there.

We borrowed a dog for three weeks, after signing up to be a foster family with Big Fluffy Dog Rescue. Rhonda is a sweet, slow-as-molasses, soft-as-a-kitten Great Pyrenees, and we enjoyed her company while she was here. Gus, in particular, was thrilled to have a canine pal around. We'll do it again, though it was hard to say goodbye to her.

And the girl, the girl! She is in New York visiting some friends for a few days, but we pretty much get to have her for three whole weeks before her next departure. She'll be studying Urdu in Lucknow this summer and also visiting some friends in various parts of India, before coming back to finish school at Barnard in the fall. It's like magic to have her around, and extra special for her to be here when we're celebrating the end of Isaac's high school career and, soon, his eighteenth birthday.

Crystal Anniversary: I Got You a Unicorn Figurine, Portland

I keep starting to write a blog post and realize it's basically nothing but a list of wintry complaints, so then I delete it because that's just...so bad.

It's our fifteen year anniversary of moving to Portland! This is the longest I've lived anywhere--in one state, not to mention one house. When we moved here, the Bean was only six, and Isaac was going on three. So little. I really do love Portland, and Maine, and have friends I love here, but sometimes I feel like my attachment to this place, this house, is tenuous. Like, we could pick up and move easily. But then I think about all the crap in our basement, and how it probably represents much more heaviness and attachment then I'm letting myself acknowledge. And anyway, for now, we're not going anywhere. Also, while I wouldn't miss my neighborhood much, I would miss this ocean if we left it.

The winter is stealing my words. I need a news/information cleanse, probably, because I keep Googling things like "buy an island" and "remote farmhouse."

Today I was thinking "My get up and go has got up and went." Maybe what I need is a hunk of cheese.


Yep. Basically, my ten gallon hat's a-feeling five gallons flat. And yes, I can eat cheese on my Very Special Diet.

BUT, okay, here we go, almost halfway through February, and I got to spend a January weekend in New York with Ellen visiting Zoë, who's back at school in these United States, luxuriating in a fancy hotel room (thanks to David and Ellen!), drinking good coffee, eating good food, ducking out of the cold into cozy shops and museums and cafes. It was so lovely.

I've seen tons of movies and read many books already in 2014. See sidebar for details! Not listed there yet is my beloved pal Melissa's poetry chapbook, Girl, Giant, which I am savoring like a box of very expensive, beautiful handmade chocolates. It sits by my bed making me blissfully happy. Movie-wise, my goal is to see all the Best Picture nominees and then as many of the others as I can. Mom and I are hosting another intimate* Oscar party in a Boston hotel room with a TEE VEE and CABLE. Come and join us for a sleepover, unless you're afraid our snoring will keep you up all night.






*possibly just me, Mom, and snacks.

Slowing Down For Happiness

I love where I live, most of the time.

My ocean! My sky! Almost every day I get to visit this beach, which is a five minute drive or 30 minute walk from my front door, and see what the water and the clouds are doing. Just putting my Bean Boots on the sand does something so good for my entire self.

Last weekend, Isaac and Mark went to New York, where Isaac started his occasional internship at Issue Project Room. He is planning to spend a few days there every two or three weeks to help them with their video and audio archives--he spent most of Monday editing for them. When he's in New York, he'll be able to stay with Zoë and commute to Brooklyn!

I stayed home with these characters, above and below.

Today, I am loving

:: Gus and Theo's sweet faces and funny personalities
:: getting to spend more time with Isaac since he's "home" "schooled"
:: these buckwheat and almond meal waffles
:: black tea with milk
:: the pellet stove on 5
:: both the word "longjohns" and my actual longjohns
:: finding sprinkles/jimmies in strange places throughout my house (I'll tell you why soon)
:: daffodils in a vase made by Max
:: our newest addiction: House of Cards on Netflix


Today, I miss

:: my brothers, especially, and other loves
:: my red sandals
:: open windows





Coming Home by Mary Oliver

The Dark of December

Here's how my life goes these days: I wake up early. It takes me an hour to actually be awake, and I usually spend that hour drinking coffee, listening to the BBC, reading blogs and the book of faces, and holding this guy in my lap. He loves me most first thing in the morning.

This guy sleeps in til 6:30 or so. I wake all the boys up at once.

My days continue to be writing and sewing and procrastinating and making lists (lately, they involve Christmas-type things). There are dog walks in there, and laundry and terrifying animals with the vacuum. I left my menagerie last weekend to visit my sweet girl in New York, and we had so much fun despite the fact that she was in the throes of looming finals/papers.

Rockefeller Center photo op!

Sobaya with Zoë!

Early Christmas gift--a swingy a-line wool coat. Check out her shoes. Check out that color-coordinated fire extinguisher in the corner of her suite's kitchen.

On the subway. And then, home to these guys and the human guys too. It was a lovely visit, holiday lights and busy campus stuff and great food and coffee. I got to meet several of Zoë's friends, see her suite finally, and even went to her favorite yoga place with her in Harlem.

Much Unseen is Also Here*

Welp, our intrepid girl is off in the world again! Mark and I drove up to Max's cabin in the woods on Friday to pick her up and deliver her to the airport. We stayed overnight and were fed delicious grilled portobello mushroom sandwiches before we fell asleep listening to the quiet dark and the peepers on the lake. I've been missing nature lately, so that was nice. The next morning after coffee with goat milk and sweet goodbyes, we drove through the Catskills (beautiful) and then through downtown Newark (not so beautiful--and I'm still not sure about those directions).

Note her India brown hair!

Oh, Newark Airport. You are weird and old-feeling, and plus, it turns out Air India pilots are on strike and her flight was cancelled. The entire process would have made me crazy if I were on my own, but Mark and Zoë kept their cool.

At JFK, there were hours of standing in a line with several big Indian families, waiting for the one guy behind the Qatar Air counter who could help the passengers holding their "Flight Interruption Manifest" papers. Below, a stressed me pretending not to be stressed and an excited-and-a-little-nervous-but-relaxed Zoë, who said, "It's just like India!"

Oh, and I should have added that the change of flights, and change of airports, gave us time to drive into the city, eat falafel, walk the High Line, drink iced coffee, eat popsicles, and just be with our girl for a few extra bonus hours. I kept telling her that it would be less abrupt to go from New York to Mumbai than directly from Max's lake to Mumbai, and she kept emphasizing that New York in no way compares to Mumbai, and that there's no way to prepare for India. And she knows what she's talking about. Still, I think I'm right, at least a little bit.

So, she's off, and she's since arrived safely, my girl. She is so brave and has such an adventurous spirit. I've never met anyone quite like her.


*from "Song of the Open Road," by Walt Whitman

Readers May Find Portions of this Post Extremely Objectionable

If you're a sensitive soul, the following photographs may cause you to feel woozy and nauseated. At least this first one:

See what I'm saying? That is Isaac's burned hand on Day Two, grotesque enough for a horror movie. For the first few days, the blistering got worse and worse (we got to see what was going on each time I changed the dressings--most of the time it was completely covered with gauze).

A week later, the blisters had gone down (he managed not to let any of them pop, which the doctors were really happy about, since the blisters themselves are gross but noble agents of healing and guard against infection, as long as they are "intact"). What remained was not attractive, but an improvement:

And then, less than 48 hours later, this is what his hand looked like:

Amazing, right? The human body is a fairly wondrous thing, isn't it? Isaac was planning to visit Zoë the morning after his run-in with the pan of bacon grease, and obviously that didn't happen. So he and a friend are taking the bus to New York this weekend instead, staying until Tuesday so they can participate in some May Day Occupation (and document it, for the Learning Shack and Blunt).

there is winter to heed

well, she's off again. after a whirlwind winter break, the girl headed back to school by way of oneonta, where she'll enjoy a week with max in his new (to him) cabin at pine lake. for him, it's the start of a january term, and for her it will be a week of cooking, reading, banjo practice, walks in the countryside, and no doubt a visit or two to the sauna. zoë's classes start january 17th, so at some point before that she'll hop on a bus back to the city. it was wonderful having her here, and i miss her. i had to buy some stuff at target yesterday, and while i was there i missed her (why at target? i don't know! i just imagined us strolling through target, laughing together at absurdities and so on). this morning i sadly threw out the tiny bit of indian rice left in the fridge from our new year's feast, which was marked on the top with a label in hindi, and missed her. over the next few months we're going to move isaac into zoë's (bigger) bedroom, which is great and makes sense and all, but... oh, you know. i am surprised when i feel at all sad about her moving off into the world, since i am such an old hand at saying goodbye to her, and since i (consciously) feel purely joyful about her happiness, her enthusiasm, ideas for the future, plans, hopes, ambitions. it's so happy, and it's so hard.


a sunset of the city, gwendolyn brooks

right down santa claus lane

did you think i'd forget today's dog? never fear, here is santa's helper, patiently awaiting instructions as to how he can be of assistance begging for a piece of my pizza crust.

and we're also waiting for our girl, who arrives tonight, driven back from new york by mark* with her banjo and bags in tow!

we had a near miss, but christmas can proceed as planned, now that my brother david found the essential ingredient. seriously, it's just not christmas without the traditional almond-filled bread.



























*best dad award, 2011

do you see what i see?

happy sunday to you. last night i made a batch of chocolate-peppermint bars, to add to the almond toffee bars already in the freezer. yesterday i also attended a meeting of the very tiny book group,* listened to christmas music, hung around with isaac, and ate what may have been a pound of kale with tahini dressing for dinner (it was so good).

meanwhile, mark is in new york this weekend, where he is visiting zoë, doing some christmas shopping, and enjoying new york at the holidays, when it is so festive. for example, dozens (hundreds?) of santas walking down the sidewalk, suddenly. he thought it was a santa pub crawl, but it turns out to have been santacon. of course.

 

*the group is tiny, but the book is endless.

glories strung like beads

after a hurricane delay, which we spent happily lounging around holly's house in connecticut (sans electricity or running water, but with plenty of snacks and books), we drove into zoë's new neighborhood on monday morning.

we decided to ditch most of the scheduled events (i.e. panel discussions along the lines of "pointing your daughter in the right direction," as well as "don't be scared of new york city, it's actually quite safe now"), and instead subwayed downtown for falafel from taïm, which we ate on a bench atop the highline. zoë found a popsicle truck that made her so happy. see below: a sublime roasted yellow plum popsicle.

she was already pretty settled in her dorm room, though it was still half-naked, as her roommate's flight was delayed a couple of days.

(below, forbidden items. i just love that hookah so much.)

the view of broadway from zoë's room. she's on the top floor.

we drove off and left her there, our girl. our college girl, our city girl.