The morning’s first quiet
this time to myself
is precious and needed,
reflection and energy
both brew with my coffee.
Music a backdrop,
dogs fed and peaceful,
warming my feet.
This moment’s soft hug
the day’s work ahead.
______________________________
an early morning shortling.
Being a southern girl at heart, my grandmother always set great store by her cousins. I’m with her on that, a good thing since I have a ton of them!
Yesterday, Cousin Stan came for lunch. My late husband’s first cousin, he lives in San Francisco and was making a swing through New England reconnecting with family and friends.
It was a really nice time — first a walk through the woods with the dogs, up the hill to see what animals had been visiting, and what colors were left in the woods. Over lunch there was lots of talking, catching up with news from our families, ourselves.
Turns out Stan is one of those special family glue people. He likes to keep in touch, connect branches of the family with each other. My uncle was like that, and family, sometimes quite distant cousins no one had ever heard of, often came to visit or for lunch.
I told him about discovering my cousin Cassie and her family, then through her Elizabeth, the three of us meeting this summer, third cousins all descended from one great great grandfather.
Seeing Stan brought back so many memories. He resembles his father and my late mother-in-law, and has some of their mannerisms, small things that tugged at my heart. They were with me in those moments. Guess I’m feeling a little wistful today, actually more than that, to be honest. It’s all good.
My youngest brother and sister and I are meeting up on the left coast next month. We’ll hang out, see lots of my son and his family, and also see Stan. It’ll be a good time.
__________________________________
copyright © 2013 KH Rantilla
The urge to write comes in fits and starts, but lately haiku has drawn me in and I respond to its economies of length, of expression. Wonder if it is about not pressuring myself to do more. Probably.
I’ve also been working on a blog piece about cleaning my family’s place out, which was a mammoth undertaking. The importance of that piece to me lies in the loss of place and identity, the clearing out of things that don’t matter and the taking in of things that do, like relationships.
A writer I greatly respect posted recently that writing is hard work. Yes, I agree with that, having been through that process with my drawings over the years. Simply having the creative urge is all well and good ~we’d be nowhere without it~ but taking that urge and channeling it through one’s own prism is quite a process, and not done lightly.
Photography is an area where I’ve discovered that emotion cannot carry me all the way. Many times I’ll want to shoot something because I have a visceral reaction to its beauty, a color, a circumstance. It took quite a while for me to stop and think about composition, for instance. The surprise has been that the emotion remains after I stop to consider how to capture what I’m seeing.
Right now it is High Fall up here in New Hampshire. The colors are intense and still haven’t peaked, an amazing year for color. I’ve been making the rounds of favorite places to shoot, many on a daily basis. The dogs don’t quite know what to make of these last few days. We get out at Rockwood Pond, they swim, I shoot, back in the car and off to the wetland. Repeat. The other day they were ready to go home before I was!
That’s pretty much where I am too, sated, filled up with all of the color and glow and glory around me. Not that I won’t take some pictures, or feel the colors in my gut. Just going to walk, look, and enjoy. The dogs will be happy.
Thanks to my father, a good part of my family has the funny bone chromosome. Full spectrum mutations ranging from slapstick to suave joke telling. As far as I can tell, it started when he went to college at 16 and discovered the sweet spot in the City College Assembly Hall for delivering hilarious whispered naughtiness that only the speaker at the lectern could hear.
Now, when my son and youngest brother get together, there’s always a point where I’ll have to leave the room. They’re not nasty, they don’t fart, spit or scratch unattractively. They are punsters, inveterate, I’ll-one-up-you, let’s see how long we can keep this one going funny guys. Leaving the room is easy. Try walking down a city street with them when they’re on a roll.
When our family gathers the jokes come out. Riffs on the early greats we listened to with Pop (Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer or Shelley Berman, and yes, Lenny Bruce) topped only by Mel Brooks or better yet Mel teamed up with Carl Reiner. To this day my take on longevity and grand feats of daring has a lot to do with the nectarine.
Yes, the nectarine. An off the cuff bit from The 2000 Year Old Man. Interviewed by Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks’ alter ego gives credit to the nectarine, “half a peach, half a plum” for his longevity, or at least 164 years of it.
Pop also had a thing for watches. The backstory is that he had an institutional supply business in upstate New York and much of New England, all of it with Catholic parishes and schools. You name the town, he knew the local parish priest or Mother Superior. This meant that Pop could get just about anything wholesale, including watches, which he loved and gave to us at the drop of a hat.
In 2005 at age 89, Pop died, very suddenly. It was July, and very hot. We all converged on my sister Annie’s house and hugged and cried and told Pop stories, fanned ourselves and took care of the obit, cleaned out his apartment, planned a memorial to be held in the fall.
Someone mentioned the watches. At which point my nephew Jason told us Pop had “sent him” a watch on his trip east from Chicago. He flew out very late, and O’Hare was almost deserted. When he got through Security, there, in a plastic bin ahead of the one with his stuff in it, was a watch. Sitting there all by itself.
The TSA guys had no idea where it came from, said it had to be his, no one had been through for over an hour. Jason got the weirdest feeling about that watch. I
He was certain it was from Grandpa. So, right or wrong the watch came along, as I guess it was meant to. More laughter and tears, as we looked at the Last Watch.
Who the heck is Archibald you ask? He, or more accurately, it, is an honorary member of our family. For the uninitiated, Archibald Essselbrook is a tour de force joke, a supremely racy tongue twister that Pop mastered many years ago. He always told it perfectly, at breakneck speed. It never failed to leave his listeners helpless with laughter.
So, old Archie was listed in Pop’s obituary: “He also leaves his beloved friend, Archibald Esselbrook of Hudson, NY”. It made perfect sense to all of us, our private in-joke for Pop.
Its delivery seems to be a guy thing, and that’s cool with me. My brothers all know it, and I guess my son will too eventually. That’s one I’ll stick around for.
This weekend almost didn’t happen for me because my Newfie was barfing. Fearful of leaving her with some malady that might not turn out well, I stuck around, even unpacked a bit, convinced that she was in a bad way. My very practical husband called once back in cell phone range (up here that’s an iffy thing) and basically booted me out the door. “Go”, he said. “I’m coming home and will keep an eye on Aggie”, he said. “No news is good news”, he said. I threw everything together again and bolted, muttering thankful prayers for common sense.
The drive to the other side of the Green Mountains from here is always beautiful, even with end of summer tourists milling about in the rain. Coming down into Manchester, Mount Equinox loomed in the mist. I love the immediacy of those mountains. Boom, there they are, looming up right away in your face. I live at the foot of a mountain, a big rocky much climbed hulk, but the outward slope of its arms give it visual distance.
Once through Dorset, with its Inn and history and everything painted white, the road comes out in a valley that I love because it’s “not”. It’s not fancy, it feels like Columbia County, NY. There are working farms, ramshackle barns, unpruned trees, beautiful old houses.
Of course I’m looking at all this wonderful stuff whizzing by as I’m trying not to go 80 miles an hour, to get to meet friends and kindred spirits I’ve mostly never met. The word lemming comes to mind and I dismiss it. This will be a gathering of a clan. A clan of creatives, a gifted group of wannabe pirates with a wacky sense of humor who have come together because of the opportunity given us by a man with a vision.
Jon Katz is an author with a large following, both in print and in the cyber world. He had the idea to form a creative group using the framework of Facebook three months ago.
The result (after some necessary growing pains and identity consolidation) has been a miracle. That’s how I think of it, a worm hole into a safe place to create and express and fall flat on your face, and get wonderful feedback from the rest of the tribe.
So I got to the weekend’s “opener”, at the home of one of the Group, a beautiful place on a hill with sloping fields and horses, a couple of hours late but not too late. Getting out of the car I felt like jumping up and down with excitement and at the same time quite bashful. I skipped my 50th high school reunion this summer because, hell, I hadn’t managed to lose the 50 pounds of f*-you weight I was convinced was necessary to show up. But not this time. This was about who we are, everything that makes us the talented, caring members of something unique. I had brought Me there. That’s what mattered,
The rest of the time on the other side of the mountains was all I hoped it would be, from the cookout on Saturday night, to staying with a group member and her wonderful family, to the Open House at Jon and Maria’s farm yesterday. We all gradually met each other (are you an Open Grouper?) and passed each new acquaintance along to the rest. Names turned into people who were as interesting and open in person they were in the ether. Conversation flowed, more stories told, hugs exchanged, delight in one another’s company was evident. As we shared the day’s experiences, I was aware of a strong spiritual current flowing. The Farm is a special place, created by the love and energy of two remarkable people.
By the time we gathered in front of the barn for group shots, the connection was pretty palpable. Standing there I had the strongest feeling of linkage. While I joked about this feeling like the group shot at the end of A League of Their Own, and “there’s no crying in baseball” was bandied about, I felt replete, peaceful, my soul satisfied. What Jon had started was the real deal.
On the way home I felt tired and jubilant and exhilarated. Taking a more southerly route back over the mountains, following some powerful rain storms as I went, it did not surprise me to see multiple rainbows over the valley mists and green of the mountain tops. Only fitting I thought, to mark the day. Sitting here this morning letting the words flow, I felt no great sense of parting, of regretful goodbyes yesterday. I’m pretty certain that’s because I know everyone is right here, in the group, flowing on. And Aggie is just fine.
Does anyone remember letters the way I do? Seeing the envelope come through the slot, or waiting in one’s cubby or the mailbox, and knowing something wonderful might be inside? Opening it up and sitting down with a sigh of pleasure to read the latest news?
My Uncle Bruce was the best letter writer I’ve ever known. He was an archaeologist, a gifted artist, collector, linguist, traveler and observer of life. He never married, but doted on his seven nieces and nephews and their clans. When not off to teach, on a dig, or visiting friends in far flung places, he lived in the middle of 23 acres near the ocean. The natural world was a major force in his life, and he wrote about it often.
Several years ago the family began to clean up and clear out our house in Rhode Island. Decades of Bruce’s letters to and from family, friends and colleagues emerged. What a capacity for friendship he had. He was warm, thoughtful, gentle, courteous in conversation and generous in his relationships. But he gave so much of himself in a letter. Once past the hurdle of deciphering his handwriting, the contents were yours to savor: detailed, insightful, humor-filled news from wherever he was, reports of family doings and foibles, the natural world outside his door, wonderful sketches, his take on politics, human behavior, books he had read, movies seen, music listened to, and clippings he had saved just for you.
Away at school at 13 I loved his letters because they were long, interesting, often snarky, and best of all, frequent.
It wasn’t until much later that I recognized how loving they were, how much family glue he slipped into them, along with gentle admonishments and guidance, and the fruits of his considerable intellect. While he hated confrontation, he did not shrink from the truth as he saw it, and he never hesitated to express his opinions in a letter, as he did when he wrote:
“In my 9th decade of life on this orb I have grown to appreciate and respect and crave long letters more and more and more as I come to realize that such mirrors of life and doings and… human gregarious activity… are all too rare and getting rarer… e-mail, faxes and the despicable, lazy, vaporous telephone life are… very poor substitutes for a family’s lore and tellings… the stuff of one’s decency and character and outlook on the world, what helps get us through the rat-race! Honestly, I savor and need such letters to make up for not being on the jittery-dithering-frantic mainstream of family telephoning and so-called ‘news’.”
To hold a piece of his chrome yellow paper is to bring him back, if only for an instant. In my mind’s eye these letters and the memory of his presence glow warmly in the hearts of all of us, bright evidence of a remarkable man’s great capacity for friendship, connection and love.
The dogs are stretched out at my feet as I sit with a view out the kitchen door. Evening rush hour is in full swing at the feeders, and the sounds the birds make are familiar and comforting. Even though I don’t count on the natural world to be consistent, my connection to it is.
Being outdoors refills my soul. It took me a long time to understand and accept this. Standing in the sun under our apple tree, I am aware of a mantle of joy that lands like a whisper on my shoulders. Out in the wetlands with the dogs, my bones hum from the rich life cycles being played out all around us. Even in winter the connection is still there, while the water world lies dormant, waiting for the days to lengthen. At times of profound spiritual need I have stood, arms and heart open to the skies and have never been disappointed.
Today I simply felt empty and depleted after a family gathering this weekend that asked much of us all. The urge to be outside and walk through the woods with the dogs was overpowering. So I drove to the start of a long-unused road, and took it over an arm of Gap Mountain, toward Fitzwilliam. This road is still traveled by hunters, bears, deer and the occasional wood poacher who comes by truck.
The dogs and I have walked this road many times, occasionally all the way over and back and always in solitude. It has its landmarks: the cross-over for the Gap Mountain trail, lots of old stone walls, a dark and cool Hemlock grove growing in the moisture of converging mountain run-offs. There is also a house. It is an old brown shingled cape, sitting below the arm’s crest at the top of a rough-mowed field. There is a rusted pump out front. It has electricity, which comes in along a summer road that ends there. It has a nice small barn, with glassless window’s eyes looking out through the woods at anyone approaching from the back, the direction we come from.
This place never looks lived in, but it is not falling apart either. It feels quite benign, not lonely, as if it knows what its place is in the scheme of things out there. I stopped in sight of the barn to give us all a drink before turning around and then Aggie went on alert with a woof. There were people there! How thrilling to know the house is indeed alive. I peeped around the trees and saw the storms propped open for fresh air. There was a gleam of blue metal, a car. The dogs and I simply turned around and padded back up the hill, into the quiet woods and the way home. Goodbye house, until next time.
On my way home the penny dropped. It was one of those early fall days with a vivid blue sky, the kind that surrounds me with color and sensation, my brain revving up from the joy of it all.
Passing Fitzwilliam Road, glancing at the road sign, I thought no kidding, really? Let’s see now. Driving home, our road is Mountain Road and I’m headed toward Mt. Monadnock. Coming up from Troy, Monadnock Street ends at Mountain Road with a perfect view of the mountain behind our house.
Hmmm, folks from Marlborough call our road Jaffrey Road, because of course, that’s how you get to Jaffrey from there.
And that was it. I was in. I had hacked the country road code. Road signs mean what they say around here, for the most part, anyway.
There is, I’ll admit, a Road Number Four which meanders from Route 12 past a beautiful marsh, woods with streams, some interesting old houses and a farm stand before ending at Templeton Turnpike. So, not all the time.
Chalk that one up to a misguided flatlander. Which I’m not anymore. At least not a flatlander, and I’m fairly certain about the other.
Living up here has been a heart’s wish for a long time. It is obvious to me now that I followed the right signs, one at a time, to end up at the foot of this mountain.
Back in 2005, the one thing I was certain of was the need to leave the city, the house we were in, the life we led, to a simpler place, to be near family. My husband Mike was not well, was not going to get better, so we migrated north.
It was wonderful for both of us to be closer to nature, in a town where offseason rush hours emptied the streets by 6. Better, but I never felt truly at home. It just wasn’t simple enough, wild enough, but I’d accomplished what I set out to do with the move. It was okay.
Fourteen months later life took a drastic turn, when Mike died very suddenly and unexpectedly. He had been sick a long time, and the man I knew had been gone a long time as well, taken by the effects of Parkinson’s and dementia. The long goodbye on a road with no signs.
By the second month anniversary of his death I saw quite clearly that I could either fall apart on the 19th of each month, or use it as a celebration of what was positive in my life, a mile marker of achievement, something to applaud.
So I did just that, each month celebrating the milestones, letting Mike know, as I touched the sign on the memorial bench outside our community center. Hey, Mike, guess what?
And so it went, mile marker by mile marker, to dating for the first time in almost 40 years, online no less. Meeting the man I would marry four years later, moving to New Hampshire in 2009.
Living first in a charming old school house in Peterborough, nice enough but it was temporary. Aggie, our Newfie puppy, came along.
The next spring we found and bought a wonderful old house, built in 1796, next to an iconic pond with the mountain right behind it. The woods full of owls, deer, coyotes, birds, smaller creatures.
A year ago, after much searching, the road led to Horace, my dream lab pup. He is my joy and Aggie’s boon companion.
So here we all are. At the intersection of two roads leading to the mountain. And that’s how I got here, by reading the signs.
Life With Horace 