humorous video about PMS

spoof of post-War instructional/propaganda videos

A Place In Our Hearts

I have an essay printed in this book:

A place in our hearts: Roland Park Country School

Five years ago this was my daily view: the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, New York. We lived on the Brooklyn side. That's my fire escape in the upper left hand corner, and a great pale dilapidated opera house on the right.

Here is a poem I sketched out during those years.



Urban Soundscapes

1.
That first day in the city
Me fresh from forest living
A tired and lonely night
July, no air conditioning
The tuneful humming bridge and parties,
Traffic, commerce
Did marry into jazz.
And later to learn Ornette Coleman hung
His hat here, composed and played.
In my panic, culture shock I did hear that jazz
If only for a hyper monkey typewriter moment

2.
Flat on my back on the silver roof
Six stories up, level of bridge roadway
Higher still, beyond bridge elbows, Chrysler and Empire State
Clouds ride against the plastic bubble surface
Covering our spiky city sky
They make no sound, but like a calliope
They are ornate decoration, the carousel horses

3.
I notice that jackhammers
on the bridge do sound
like wailing cicadas
locusts in reflective orange and gold
hard hat highway persons
six stories up in traffic.

4.
A camp wedding memory: Loons on our lake before dawn
concert of humanlike voices, echoes
notes of dog and splashing bonfire.
In Brooklyn, Williamsburg, this is sirens
Back and forth across the bridge
European bing-bong siren
Up and down Broadway.

5.
The museum of dead police cars and taxicabs
Has no known translation into music.
The lumberyard forklift back up beep
Insane, monotonous, ignorable.
The garage specializes in fancy car alarms,
Puerto Rican and Dominican flags.
They test alarms and horns in permutation,
Flexing their muscles, roaring their engines
Day and night, territorial,
Like the lake joke, what is the plume
behind a fast-moving speedboat—
Testosterone.

my grandma when she was happy

Williams, Janet McCormack various undated, originally uploaded by adkpersephone.

Here are some scanned photos of my grandmother, Janet McCormack Williams, from the late 1920s and/or early 1930s. The pictures may have been taken in Great Britain, where she lived as a young adult until my American grandfather, Kenneth Richard Williams sept her off her feet and away from the Blitz to Alexandria, Virginia.

Boing Boing

Boing Boing: I am in thy library, executing a grammatical procedure of great destructive force against thy lexicon.

This cat-themed joke series makes me snort with laughter. It also affirms my deep belief that cats are representatives of an alien life force outside our galaxy.

MollyGood re Bush & Rumsfeld

MollyGood Viewer - 110806%20bush%20rumsfeld / MollyGood

Saddam Hussein Sentenced to Death by Hanging - New York Times

Hussein Is Sentenced to Death by Hanging - New York Times

I find this very saddening. Yet another death.

licious

Celebrity gossip juicy celebrity rumors Hollywood gossip blog from Perez Hilton

cubes toy

cubes.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)

Blogger Help : How do I post pictures?

Blogger Help : How do I post pictures?

I am trying to post a photograph or two here, but am too deeply conflicted between Gen X and Boomer instincts to understand the "help" page.

American Buffalo at Upper Jay Upholstery

Adirondack Theater

REVIEWS

Thrillingly good. I’m so proud and excited that local folks have produced a show so professional, raw and strong. The actors, (my neighbors), are transformed within their seedy, intriguing set. The audience becomes the walls and roof of the rickety junk shop setting as we respond to the emotional storms of the play. Leave kids at home, don’t be late, and bring a few extra bucks or a bottle to donate to Recovery Lounge, c/o any staff or the bartender who gives you a free drink.

Two Together: Gay Marriage

Article submission for Press Republican’s JILL Magazine
500 words
April 15, 2006


Today at breakfast at the local bakery I asked one couple, “Why did you get married?” Their grown children, who became a family when the couple fell in love, urged them to. I asked another couple, whose teenage son was with them, “Why did you get married?” They didn’t see why they shouldn’t: they loved each other, owned property together, were planning to start a family and be together for the rest of their lives, and there was family health insurance available to them only if they were married. Both couples have been together for many years and are happy as can be. They’re also different than you might be imagining: the couple whose grown children urged them to marry are lesbians, and the couple with the teenage son and family health insurance are gay men.

I think it is perfectly fine for people to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or any variation thereof. But there is more to this than “it’s ok to be gay.” Why would two people of the same gender want to get married? First, because they love each other and want to commit to each other for life. On another level, gay people might want to get married as a step toward civil rights and equality. Yet another reason is that there are financial and legal benefits to getting married, as my husband and I learned as soon as we signed that license and started building equity. Being married makes lots of things easier for loving—or not so loving—partners. As one friend put it, “Marriages have been arranged to prevent war, accumulate wealth, unite families, get a green card, etc.”

Some people contemplate gay marriage and get stuck on the first word, “gay”. Some of my queer friends were irked when I asked them to think about marriage in the context of their own lives. One person asked why they would want to subject themselves to the likelihood of a painful and expensive divorce, since so many marriages end that way. Another said that their church is fine with them being gay as long as they don’t act on it and don’t have a partner; if they showed up in church with a beloved of the same sex, they would not be welcome any more. Sometimes things change: it used to be illegal for people of different races to marry, but those laws were changed as society evolved. Other social differences remain an obstacle to people marrying, like religious faith or economic position.

Some people think that the idea of gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage. This seems rather like pointing the finger away from the guilty party. In most places only heterosexual people can get married, and the divorce rate is terribly high, so aren’t straight people already doing a good enough job of ruining marriage? What difference would another 10% of the population make to an already wobbly institution?

Being married, to me, means making a lifelong commitment of love, partnership, and sexual monogamy. I chose to make this commitment with a person of the opposite gender. But what if the person I grew to love and cherish was another woman, and we decided to make this traditional commitment to each other? Why would that be so wrong?

Thank You: By A Fire Department Auxiliary Member

Thank You: By A Fire Department Auxiliary Member
For Plattsburgh Press Republican JILL Magazine
March 2006

Within a year of our moving to the Adirondacks, our new next-door-neighbors convinced my spouse to join the volunteer fire department. After several fires and emergencies, I volunteered for the Auxiliary, which is mostly female family members and friends of fire fighters.

Our firefighters put their lives at risk for the people in the community. They leap out of bed as faithfully as dogs whether snow, sleet or dark of night. They help people when conditions are worst. Our town’s firefighters are heroes. The auxiliary helps run the services and social side of the fire department. When there’s a disaster, the auxiliary provides hot meals and a warm smile at the fire house. We show up at fires with cold drinks for workers and a kind helping hand where needed. We host a holiday party where every town child receives a gift and gets a photo with special guest Santa Claus. It’s a family and community institution, and I love being a part of it.

Sunday in February, just after dawn the pager went off: structure fire. My spouse kissed me and launched out of bed. I moved more slowly. On my bleary way to the fire I stopped at the firehouse to prepare drinks for the firefighters. At Stewart’s I requested and received an immediate donation of coffee supplies. (Thanks.) When I arrived at the firehouse I identified myself and showed my membership pin, offered drinks,. Then my next-door neighbor’s oldest son appeared and was delighted to get a cup of hot coffee and a pat on the back. This was one of his first fires.

At the top of the steep dirt mountain road was the cluster of flashing machinery and lights and hoses snaking along the frozen ground. Another neighbor approached to wave me off, and broke into a grin when he saw it was me. I wandered through the hectic, noisy scene. The closer I got to the actual fire, as I met gazes and shook hands, the faces changed from my neighbors’ friendly mugs to stern and serious strangers…who are by and large SO handsome! And I am married to the finest one.

I left the heavy thermoses of hot coffee and cold water on the broad metal step of an idling fire truck. The commander accepted my offering graciously and I felt I had done a good job. As soon as I could I left. Didn’t want to see the fire or know too much about it. Someone else’s pain.

Now I've draped my beloved husband’s filthy fire gear near the woodstove to dry. His heavy tan and fluorescent jacket was encrusted with snow crystals when he took it off. His pants, of equally heavy fabric with reflective stripes, are drier but slick with soot. The big rubber boots will air out. His ominous helmet I've got resting prone on the fireproof platform surrounding our stove. A facemask and netting to cover the hair are hanging over the top of the black iron fireplace tools. Ice crystals are heavy there, too. Sweat and water and maybe tears.

seven things meme

seven things meme


1. seven things to do before I die
- climb as many mountains as I can, starting in the Adirondacks of New York State
- visit my parents' tombstones
- tell my husband and loved ones that I love them
- publish more
- make more art
- forgive those who trespass against me
- be a good partner to John


2. seven things I can't do
- anything requiring that a real live penis be part of my body
- undo mistakes
- kiss my parents on the cheek
- be sure that I haven't commited mortal sins and am thus doomed to hell for eternity
- get pregnant
- be as thin and fit as I would like
- be perfect

3. seven things that attract me to blogging
- I'm a compulsive writer.
- I don't really blog that much,
- I like to look at junkfood websites like boingboing and perezhilton,
- and otherwise I work a lot.
...and as Janine wrote,
- people reading/liking my writing/ideas/voice
- reading interesting people
- exposure to myriad ideas/information

4. seven things I say most often
- thank you
- is this a good time?
- I love you
- [deep sigh]
- hello
- good bye
- yes

5. seven books that I love
- Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
- Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
- 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch
- Dorothy Parker collected essays
- anything by John McPhee, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Ogden Nash, John Irving (until that last one)
- Persistent Desire

6. seven movies I watched again and again
- All About Eve
- Animal House
- Fame
- An Officer and A Gentleman
- Phliadelphia Story
- Little Darlings
- Princess Bride


7. seven people I am tagging to do this meme
- Lisa Poo
- Liza
- Tom P
- Bev
- Marti
- John Beloved
- Harri Ann

Adirondack Writers Dec 05 essay context memoir

God, how I love hanging laundry outside in the Adirondacks, with the mountains framing the view of golden meadows, green trees, blue sky and rolling river. Tonight it may freeze and maple sap may run, but right now is balmy, sunny bliss. After hanging laundry the chuckling frogs out back seem to beckon me. I summon the dog and we set out along the thorny edge of the field toward the wetland at the back of our property.

Spring at our place means the AuSable River roaring out front, the low parts of the meadow flooded out back. The reeds and grasses are still dead and dry from winter and they shush against my denim legs as I stride eastward. When I reach the water’s edge I sit on a hummock and listen to the frogs croak and cluck, thriving in their rich ecosystem. I can’t see any froggies, just the placid swollen water and its world of grasses submerged in sapphire light. Just a few weeks ago this was all frozen, flat and white. We walked along, admiring the stillness and the hardy shrubs. Now it is a maze of tussocks, spiky plants and ripples as invisible things touch the surface of the water. I glance upstream, into the sun, as my dog huffs and chuffs in the grasses behind me. There is a small thing floating in the water, a shape like this: So small and yet it gives the glassy surface movement. It drifts ever so slowly toward me, and I realize that it is a frog. Then I see others in the distance, aligned toward me, it seems, but of course they are facing the precious sun.


I think of my family: my beloved, taking a nap in the house. My sister and her husband and children, enjoying their own southern, earlier springtime in the country. My brother and wife and their soon-to-be firstborn, cozy in a suburban townhouse even farther south. My mother, whose lifetime of springs is now ended. In heaven are there flooded creeks and chirruping frogs?

I yearn to see a frog up close in the water and so steel myself for an icy cold immersion. I am clumsy and squeamish in the way that city-bred folks can be, but I have a stout heart and a yen for adventure. In I wade, and find the water velvety cool. My skin is protected from mud and ticklish mysteries by thick socks, jeans and sneakers. I laugh for joy: spring! Some day soon my beloved’s and my children will wade in this very swamp, will know it far more intimately that I in this still, sweet afternoon.

The floating frogs vanish when I approached. I am aware of not only my body but also my cold shadow, the ripples my steps cause as I walk deeper, and the cluttered sounds of my playing dog. Across the meadow floats the sound of chickens calling to each other and my neighbors’ children playing tag.
My beloved and I hope to adopt a baby soon. Most everyone asks if we’re going overseas. No, we say, there are enough kids in this country needing families—and there are, but few newborns, and that’s what I want: an infant to start with. I want to wander my land with my own child and discover life again.
I grieve that I will never be able to share this and so many other joys with my Mom. She had been so brutally ill for years that I yearned for her passing even while I knew that it would cause a sadness unrivalled in me since my Dad died. That was when I was 20, Mom 45 and Dad 54. Dad was out for a mid-summer bike ride and a drunk driver ran him down. With Dad there was no time for last words. I think I progressed very far in granting Mom the forgiveness any child owes its parent. I hope she forgave me as much as she could.
When my Dad died I experienced the typical stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, with shock being the pungent soup in which everything swam. The flavor of my mother’s death is relief. During the last 17 years, she was suffering and dying. Last year when she gave up living independently I helped my sister and brother pack up her house, where we had grown up. I chose to pack up her bedroom. She was nearly bed-ridden and as the range of her physical body shrank she drew close to her all her most precious totems: journals she wrote after Dad died, Bibles of various translations embroidered with her hand-written annotations, animal bones, seed pods, art and needlework of a size and heft she could hold in her frail, curled hand. Now I, who lived farthest away, decided what intimate things she would keep with her in her new room at my sister’s house.
I wanted to retrieve a pink jade necklace that I had given Mom right after I graduated from college. She had long since ceased wearing jewelry. She had rarely if ever worn this necklace and instead had draped it upon a small Henry-Mooreish-ish sculpture on her bureau, like a lei on a Buddha. As time passed and I moved farther into my adulthood, Mom acquired other necklaces and layered them on top of the pink one, decorated the treasures with doodads and trinkets, until the thing was a mound of glistening snaky intrigue. Now I took that assemblage apart and reclaimed my old necklace, then examined the handsfuls of strung beads and gewgaws that my mother had gathered together. I took what I wanted and left the rest for others to discover.
In her top dresser drawer I found an envelope addressed in her hand to me. Business-sized, white, plain, with printed info and my Mom’s handwriting when it was vigorous. I looked inside and recoiled from it. I never chose to discuss that envelope with Mom in the year that remained to her. I guess the subject remained in the taboo area like so many things we couldn’t talk about: Race, specifically African American. Anyone of whom she had a bad opinion and no respect. She forgot things. She said one thing and did another.
I understand it is important to forgive and say all that needs saying, so nothing is left undone or unsaid when the person finally passes away. I tried very hard to forgive her and said the words out loud to her many times. She many times replied that she forgave me, too. There was a time years ago when I churlishly thought, “What has she to forgive me for?” But that was before I began to understand how strongly she felt about the abortion I chose to have when I was twenty.

Safe in the north woods I see a frog, one who has seemingly decided to let me approach. Maybe it is a sentry or sacrifice. Or maybe it is a female wanting fertilization, as our chickens will squat submissively before us thinking we’re her rooster. I stop and rest my hand on my damp thighs. Delicate little grey thing, with golden eyes above the waterline. The frog could easily sit in a teaspoon. I coo to it, praise its little beauty. I am awed by its sturdiness and delicacy there in the water, this creature of season. No matter the snow and ice of the last month or the parched whistle of summer to come—this frog floats in a perfect hour.
Out in the swollen wetland I lean closer ever-so-slowly until I can reach out a trembling pale finger and touch its tiny webbed foot. The frog lets me stroke it, and I gently tug the underwater grass it clutches so its body angles to me. With one outstretched fingertip I stroke the tiny frog’s silky green-mottled skin. The frog darts away, legs scissoring into complete concealment inside the submerged grass thicket.
Farther downstream more frogs are making a racket, clucking and splashing. I don’t hear the frogs we call spring peepers; perhaps they are for nighttime only. I wade easily through the slow stream toward dozens of frogs on the surface, bobbing and skimming. The dog canters alongside on the dry field edge. Ahead at a wide bend in the placid water one small clutch of frogs is thrashing and splashing. I near them cautiously, as bodies, shadow and ripples send little beasts into camouflage. The knot of struggling frogs stays flopping in the same spot on the pond surface. They must be mating and I must see! But the tangle of rubbery legs and jaws sinks and flits away before I can get close enough to decipher their activity.

Much of my mom’s last year was spent at various medical facilities. The rest of the time she lived at my sister and brother-in-law’s home in a rural mid-Atlantic town. My sister and her large young family were well intentioned but had no idea what a demand that caring for such an ill person would be on their time. The new situation was an appalling culture shock to my mother, who was used to being Queen Bee of her dim, brocaded urban bungalow and its dusty silences. They did the best they could, but it was not easy for anyone. Mom even spent a few days in a municipal nursing home. I tracked her down there by phone maybe six weeks ago. She was hard to reach—it takes persistence in those places, and politeness and a respect for the busy routine of nursing home staff. After three or so calls a staffer said, “Here she is,” and put the phone to Mom’s ear.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Martha,” I said in a cheery, warm voice as usual.
“Uh-huh!” she said faintly.
Mom was usually so articulate and keenly verbal.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Martha. Are you ok?”
“Uh-huh, unh-unh.”
“Are you ok, Mom?”
“Unh-unh.”
“Can you ask for help, Mom? Do you need my help?”
“Uh-uh, uh-uh!”
“Do you need me to help you get help?”
“Uh-huh! Uh-huh!”
I promised to stay on the phone with her and took my cell phone in hand, hoping for service in the remote Adirondack hamlet where I live. Glory be, yes.
“Mom, I’m going to call the nurse’s station now and I’ll stay on the phone with you until you get help. I love you.”
“Uh-huh.” I could sense relief from her, and relaxation as she rested from her exhausting effort to communicate. She had been out of it before but never this badly. At least she was in a wheelchair right at the station, rather than in her room, where her condition might have gone unobserved. On the cell phone I told the receptionist and then nursing station staff, “my mother is having a stroke or something right there in front of you and she can’t get your attention. I’m on the phone with her on the other line. Please help.” Finally someone spoke to me and her voice changed from my left to my right ear. The nurse hung up and I called back to confirm, and knew all was well. Later my sister asked if I thought our mother might have been faking it. In fact, I believed Mom but I wouldn’t have put it past her to induce feeling that badly so she could go back to the familiar and safe hospital and its 24-hour a day care and not so many people of a certain lesser class.
Complicated person, my mother. Her death has not brought any clarity to my spouse’s and my adoption process, the certification perhaps here-ever-after stalled pending a fire safety inspection of our 170-year-old farmhouse and its twenty-first century woodstove. Another procrastination, that envelope from Mom’s bureau with its official seal, my mother’s curly handwriting and a scribbled splotch of yellow highlighter.
Later in the days of packing Mom’s personal things I found a card in her Rolodex with the same odd yellow highlighter splotch, although this time the neon and ballpoint drawing of a smiling face were clearly the work of a small child. The address was to a memorial plot in the heartland where she bought a remembrance for my unborn child. Maybe if I could have children now she would have let this slide, or if we had adopted before she died.
It was my decision and I regret it only minimally. My life would have been so much different. I chose a life I could foresee happily, without a child at twenty. Now I am approaching 40, want a child so badly and cannot now have one of my own because my body won’t allow it. I cannot say what would have been had I chosen differently.

Thigh deep in meltwater I feel no sadness at the painful past and unknown future, only wonder and joy in the present. The chattering frogs have given me all the forgiveness I need at this moment. In the net of sunken reeds are cloudy blue blooms—frogs’ eggs in giant clusters like dotted thunderheads in the stream, hanging of the edges of submerged reeds like underwater hydrangeas. I gaze in delight at this final show, which I never would have seen if I hadn’t risked venturing out into the flooded channel. Each egg cluster is the size of a grapefruit, pale grey-blue, made up of thousands of black seeds embedded in flowerheads of clear shining protective globules, the black nuclei of which become visible when I gently lift their stalks to the surface. Here are the frogs’ progeny, unguarded and incubating in the sun-warmed water.
My own children are somewhere now, too, eggs and sperm in two people, and we live our lives until the moment we join and become a family. Living up here on our wee farm in the wilderness soothes a torn soul like mine. I have prayed and sworn to forgive my mother, but maybe I didn’t try hard enough to earn her forgiveness. I have hidden her envelope from myself, but I can see it—pale rectangular wing on the tablecloth near a basket of brown eggs.

plumbing

Last night after John washed Cruiser in the bathtub upstairs, our kitchen ceiling started dripping (under the bathtub, naturally.) We’ve had that tub worked on before, so we figured maybe the plumber would guarantee his work and it won’t cost so much this time. John drilled a few holes in the ceiling to let the water out and eventually it stopped. “Don’t use the tub,” he commanded. Duh. Then this morning—AFTER John went to work—I was using the upstairs sink and heard a growling noise, and then when I went down to the kitchen for coffee, lo and behold there is a full on shower happening in the kitchen. I called the plumber who was out of course, I called our excellent neighbors who came right over and spent an hour helping me arrange garbage cans and towels and figuring out where to shut off which water. Jeez Louise. Now the ceiling is sagging, the drywall is like pudding and who knows what John will find when he gets home from work. I left for work when the water finally slowed to a drip. #&@*%! At least Cruiser is clean. Merry Christmas! Last year you may remember that the day before Christmas Eve our septic system backed up. Strange sort of karmic gift this house gives us. I am starting to have a regular feeling that I wish we had a newly-built house. I don’t want to move because I love our neighbors and community, but the house, as gorgeous as it is...we don’t earn enough money to keep that house in the style to which it is accustomed!

Death Lessons

Two years ago my beloved and I and our cats moved to the North Country from a big city so we could live simply and learn how to raise some of our own food. We bought an ancient farm and have been slowly reviving it, with a lusty garden in our first year and “chigs and pickens” in this, our second year of country life. We plan to fence in our modest acreage and raise beef cattle next year.

I work at a farm-school and so receive lots of thoughtful guidance about what to do as we start our small farm. Plus we get helpful commentary from neighbors: the lady selling fire department raffle tickets at the hardware store, the man on a bicycle who stops at our flat section of Route 9N to fix a tire. The books our town librarian checks out for us give her plenty of knowledge about this couple of newcomers: “Raising Poultry for Food” and “Everything You Need To Know About Pigs” and “Build It Yourself”.

Today we slaughtered our first chickens. They were genetically selected for meat production, with enormous breasts and chunky wings and thighs, and soft white feathers easily plucked, supported on sturdy ungraceful yellow legs. They waddled like heavy toddlers. The birds spent their days outdoors in spring and summer weather, slept in a hand-made coop, enjoyed limitless corn and bug-snatching and playing in the grass during their brief lives. We wanted them to live well, be happy and have painless deaths before we ate them.

My husband laid each uncomplaining chicken’s slender white neck on the smooth cut surface of a log and beheaded it in one clean stroke of a sharp axe. Immediately pressing the neckstump against the grass to absorb the briefly pumping blood, he held the heavy jerking body as the last electrical impulses of life churned through it—no undignified running around with heads cut off. When each warm feathered body was motionless, my husband took the animal by its legs and dunked it in a vat of steaming water to loosen the feathers. The work of plucking, gutting, cleaning and packing the meat went quickly. I wrinkled my nose at the stink of hot wet feathers, murmured thanks to the birds who were next to die, snoozing inside cat carriers under a blanket in the back of our truck.

The heritage breed egg-laying birds who remain in our hen yard are maturing into soft, multicolored, clucking creatures. When they are “spent”, as my farming friend calls it, we will kill them, too, and take meat from their bodies. Soon we will butcher our pigs, playful buddies full of life who come running when I approach, who sink to their knees in grunting ecstasy when I scratch their flanks and who gleefully recycle all our food waste.

This afternoon my dear cat died and I miss her very much. She lived by the sword, a vigorous killer of birds, mice and moles, full of zest for climbing trees and love for her human companions. We knew that by letting her run free outside we were exposing her to risks like cars and coyotes, but we chose to accept those risks in order to give her the fierce pleasures of country life. She was happy until the instant she ceased to exist. My husband dug a deep hole in the center of our garden and, sobbing, I laid my cat to rest next to her favorite toy, a coyote foot discarded from the taxidermist. Why today was her day to die I cannot say. I think of the white chickens to whom I murmured thanks for their lives this morning, and the purring cat into whose warm black fur I murmured sweet nothings every day I knew her, and I feel grief and ambivalence and a sense of mystery.

Here in the North Country I am learning about death, life and love.

Mother's Day

Fifteen minutes ago, thigh deep in meltwater, I felt a kinship with frogs. I’d spent a couple hours at my friend Lauren’s house with her family celebrating Owen’s third birthday. Sunshine, mountain vistas, early spring earth unbound. As always the topic of my spouse and our adoption process came up, and I felt wonder at the sunlit children in Lauren’s kitchen, the small sugary hands and faces absorbing candy after the piñata broke in the field. When I talk about adoption with folks, most everyone asks if we’re going overseas. No, we say, there are enough kids in this country needing families—and there are, but few newborns, and that’s what I want: an infant. I can’t have a baby of my own and I want to have that experience. Then in the future maybe we could adopt a sibling group, older kid with their baggage; but for now, an infant. We’ve been going through the home study process for about nine months now, and hope to be certified by this summer. Then, we’ll see how it goes. I have faith that all will work out somehow.

I left Lauren’s before the birthday cupcakes were served because I wanted a little time in the warm sun on my small front porch. This is the first afternoon warm enough for sitting outside. Each time I sit and read or write I know my days doing this are numbered. As a new mom I won’t be able to relax and read a novel for hours, or obsess over a poem while consuming a cocktail. I know this all will change and so I appreciate it consciously. Lauren’s husband brought out the cupcakes so I could bring a couple home for my spouse and me. The children had selected five colors of icing for the chocolate cupcakes: red, orange, yellow, green, purple. The cupcakes were arranged on a tray with their colors forming diagonal stripes.

I came home and hung up some laundry outside, another first-time-this-year seasonal pleasure. Tonight it may freeze and the maple sap may run, but right now is balmy, sunny bliss. After hanging laundry I intended to come sit on the porch to write this essay about Mothers’ Day, but the chuckling frogs out back seemed to beckon me. I summoned the dog and we set out along the thorny edge of the field toward the wetland at the back of our property.

My beloved and I bought this large old farmstead two years ago knowing that I would never be able to get pregnant and knowing that we planned to fill the place with our children and family. My sister—who is also my best friend—has four kids and lives in a happy mayhem in rural PA with her husband and our mother, who is too sick to live alone any more. Our family will be different than theirs in some ways—we love books and don’t watch TV, while they hunt and have three TVs. If only Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks were connected by a short street. We would create our own town of love.

Spring at our place means the AuSable River roaring out front, the low parts of the meadow flooded out back. The grass is still dead and dry from winter and it shushed as I strode eastward toward the wet area. I sat on a hummock at the water’s edge and listened to the frogs croaking, clucking, thriving. I couldn’t see any. Just the placid water and its world of grasses submerged. Just a few weeks ago this was all frozen, flat and white. We walked along, admiring the stillness and the hardy shrubs. Now it is a maze of tussocks, spiky plants and ripples as invisible things touch the surface of the water. I glanced upstream, into the sun, as my dog huffed and chuffed in the grasses behind me. There was a small thing floating in the water, a shape like this: So small and yet it gave the glassy surface movement. It drifted ever so slowly toward me, and I realized that it was a frog. Then I could see others in the distance, aligned toward me, it seemed, but of course they were facing the precious sun.

I yearned to see a frog up close in the water and so steeled myself for icy cold. I am clumsy and squeamish in the way that city-bred folks can be, but I have a stout heart and a yen for adventure. In I waded, and found the water velvety cool. My skin was protected from mud and ticklish mysteries by thick socks, jeans and sneakers. I laughed for joy: spring! My new home in the country! Some day soon my children will wade in this very swamp, will know it far more intimately that I in this still, sweet afternoon.

The floating frogs vanished when I approached. I was aware of not only my body but also my cold shadow, the ripples my steps caused as I walked deeper, and the cluttered sounds of my playing dog. He is a yellow lab and one would think he’d leap into water, but he’s fussy and not brave. He is also devoted to me, and as the psychic apron string that binds us stretched further he finally plunged in after me.

Soon I saw a frog, one who had seemingly decided to let me approach. Maybe it was a sentry or sacrifice. I stopped and rested my hand on my damp thighs so I could see it better. Delicate little grey thing, with golden eyes above the waterline. The frog could easily have sat in a teaspoon. I cooed to it, praised its little beauty. I was awed by its sturdiness and delicacy there in the water, this creature of season. No matter the snow and ice of the last month or the parched whistle of summer to come—this frog floated in a perfect hour.

I leaned closer ever-so-slowly until I could reach out a trembling pale finger and touch its tiny webbed foot. The frog let me stroke it, and I gently tugged the underwater grass it clutched so its body angled toward me. It was relaxed and aware of me. I stroked its silky skin. But then the frog darted away, legs scissoring into the submerged grass blades. It was gone.

Farther downstream more frogs were making a racket, clucking and splashing. I didn’t hear the frogs we call peepers; perhaps they are for nighttime only. Dozens of frogs on the surface, bobbing and skimming, and one small clutch of them thrashing and splashing. I approached cautiously—body, shadow and ripples sending little frogs into hiding. The knot of struggling frogs remained. I thought they must be mating and wanted to see. Perhaps they were, but the tangle of legs and jaws sank and flitted away before I could get close enough to decipher their activity.

The dog paddled in a long snuffly arc from the grassy bank to my soaked legs, touched his nose to my hand, and swam back to shore. He clambered out and floofed face-first into the dry grass, pushing his snout through the reeds and propelling himself by his hind legs. Drying himself off or scratching, I guess. I made for the bank, knowing that soon I would be too cold to enjoy myself. Behind me the cagey frogs began to cackle.

Then in the net of sunken reeds I saw cloudy blue blooms—frogs’ eggs in giant clusters like dotted thunderheads in the stream. I gazed in delight at this final show, which I never would have seen if I hadn’t ventured out into the flooded channel. Each egg cluster was the size of an orange, pale grey-blue, made up of thousands of black seeds embedded in clear shining protective globules that became visible when I gently lifted them to the surface. I had seen perhaps a hundred celebrating frogs, and here were their progeny, unguarded and incubating in the sun-warmed water.

My own children are somewhere now, too, eggs and sperm in two people, and I play gleefully while they live their lives until the moment we join and become a family.

Iranian funk music

Google Search: "Iranian funk music"

Lately I have been finding new music to listen to by going to Google and typing in "countryname funk band." In this way I've found Ten Mile Tide, an Irish funk band, and Amp Fiddler, admired by a Japanese funk band. This morning I felt like listening to Iranian music, but Google gets no results from either that or "Iranian funk music," nor "Iranian funk."

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The above is Google's one result from the search term, "Iranian funk." There used to be a pretty hip, Westernizing youth culture there, around the time of the last Shah and shortly thereafter. I was friends with a brother and sister who emigrated from post-Ayatollah Khomeini Iran to the U.S. They lived with us for a short time. The girl and I exchanged small gifts, and I still have hers today, a tiny cherished heirloom. With her brother we played endless games of volleyball. This we all knew, and through it came American English for them and a little Persian sensibility for me.

We lost touch as young adults. I gravely offended them the day of my father's funeral. The Iranian family assumed they were going to stay with us and help and have a joint grieving session, but instead I told them coldly to leave. I always feel pained that our relationship ended on such a note. My mother didn't want to see them, wasn't even in the same room. I was twenty. In my family's grief we briefly considered that the CIA might have had something to do with my father's death, punishment for helping Iranians or maybe he knew too much.

Living in today's world is so changed in many ways toward the visions of 1984 and Brave New World. We are getting increasingly Bladerunner-ish. So I will go back to the computer and type into Goggle "Persian funk." Since I use Mozilla Firefox for most of my web-related stuff, it has these handy tabs so I can open in succession webpages with the search term. In this way I find an album called "Invisible Borders," which I call up on my Dell Musicmatch Jukebox and listen to while I search for and find nearly no Iraqi funk music. And then I try Arabic funk. Bonanza! Try it yourself by searching for "COUNTRYNAME music." See what you find.

Black Paper Silver Ink

Black Paper Silver Ink

Discovering that completing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days meant writing 1,666 words per day only added to the hair-tearing. It's not that I've never written 1,666 words in a day before, but it's a question of whether I can keep it up everyday for a whole month. However, since I'm in this already, I'll wing it. I believe I can write that much if I don't stop to consider how bad the dialogue sounds or how the story just plain doesn't make sense.

I am in writing mode.