MaineCourse

Velcro

We’re home.

Except for Diane’s sickness almost unto death, and Brian’s early departure, it was a great visit. My mother is loving, resilient, generous, and truly an inspiring example that as one ages, one does not have to become, as Susan describes it, less crisp. And for that matter, given my father’s deft touch in the stock market at eighty-nine, he too is a shining role model.

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I’m ambivalent about posting this, not because Chris wouldn’t want me to, she laughed when she related it to me, but perhaps because my duck’s back has picked up some velcro. I might add that when I repeated it to Diane, she laughed and hard, but it all ended in another round of bronchial paroxysms.

Matthew, age seven, and his older brother, Michael, were watching TV, when Michael turned to Chris and said, “ Mom, the woman in that commercial reminds me of you.”

Chris replied that she was flattered that Michael was thinking about her and comparing her to someone on TV, to which Matthew interjected, “Mom, you don’t understand. She reminds Michael of you because she’s stupid.”

Our Matthew takes his driver's test today... .

A Rod

So, Mark and I were on our way out to a lovely Valentine’s dinner last night when he put sports talk on in the car.  This is how we found out the news.  On the way to a romantic dinner.  Talk about an appetite suppressant.  The Yankees got A Rod.  Incredulous, we listened to see if we heard correctly.  After all, sports talk shows are on AM radio, and in Sudbury AM doesn’t come in that clear.  ...”traded Soriano”.  This can’t be happening.  We get Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke, (we laugh in the face of George), we try for A Rod, piss off Garciaparra, then don’t get him.  And the Yankees get A Rod.  Oh how we laughed when we heard Aaron Boone, 12th inning scene stealer, broke some limb and would be out for the season.  Huh, we said, George Steinbrenner must be pissed.  But as always, George gets the last laugh.  George Steinbrenner is a true George Bushian american.  He with the most money wins.  Keeping in mind that Matsui and Bernie Williams are like the Yankee 8th and 9th in the line up, how do you compete with that?  Where is parity in baseball.  I suppose it could be worse, we could be Texas Ranger fans. And it’s not like we suck, because we don’t.  Maybe Alex will hurt himself in the off season.  Or maybe Jeter, who just may be a little jealous, will jinx him somehow.  So therein lies the answer.  We must hope for bad lady luck.

Chris

Lay Lady Lay

Yesterday, after breakfast at Denny's, after waiting exactly (according to the only person more impatient that I, my father) sixty-two minutes for our food to be served, we drove back home, a few minutes before Jeff and Karen knocked on the back door. Their arrival is not so notable, but the subsequent knock on the front door is. Standing in forty degree weather, no shirt, sandals, a deep Hawaiian tan, AND a SEG, was brother Peter. As surprised as we all were, it paled in comparison to poor, sick, delusional Diane's reaction.

We drove to the Marriott and Peter walked into our personal tuberculositarium, stood over sleeping Diane, and placed a purple and white orchid lei around her neck. She awoke, looked at the lei, had no idea what it was, other than possibly another juvenile prank by her husband, then looked into Peter's smiling eyes, imagined they were mine- for a moment- then said, "Is that you Peter, or am I dreaming?"

Besides Peter's surprise and a brief evening meal in her room, Diane spent another full day in bed, but today looks brave enough to venture out. There may not be great tourist attractions in Southern Indiana, but we always thoroughly enjoy our visits here, and this year's trip will now be too closely compared to our flu-cancelled Christmas.

Last night's dinner was another carry out ( that would be take out in New England), this one, pizza and Greek salads from The Deerhead. In spite of the raw numbers of people - Jeff, Karen and Dash too - we didn't finish two large. What's up with that?

Brian brought his miniature movie camera and recorded, among other things, Matt and Peter banging out thirty-five ( Peter wanted to do fifty) mano a mano pushups (looks like a training film for Navy Seals), and Matthew crushing his fit uncle in an arm wrestling contest. I warned Peter, but he couldn't gracefully back down. At least he avoided injury, which is more than I can say. The last time I arm wrestled Matt, I thought I'd been permanently crippled.

Lastly, Brian, given the tenuous nature of this business, flew back this morning on the 10 AM flight. We'll miss him and we'll miss Peter doling out instructions to him for a healthier life. No, Susan, Peter's are not like Joan's.

Under the Weather

“Acton Medical.”

“Good morning, I’m calling for my wife, Diane Canning, who is a patient of Dr. Way.”

Hack, hack, cough, sputter.

“Is that her in the backgound?”

“Yes it is.”

“Sounds like my husband.”

“She's been like that since Sunday. Had a low grade fever on Monday, which spiked to 102 last night. Congested, hurts to cough, even hurts too breathe. And, we're supposed to fly out of here this afternoon, so she .. .”

“Sounds like she might have pneuomia, I can get her in this morning...hold on a minute.”

Tick tock tick tock ... .

“Can she get here by 9 AM?”

“Sure can, we’re on our way, and thanks.”

No pneumonia, but what a way to begin our yearly Haj to Evansville. We normally go in April, when the flowers are blooming, but this year Adam and I have plans to fly Matt and company into a remote Maine lake. I hope the snow is gone by then.

Next post from the airport Marriott in Evansville. For a glimpse of the past

Lake House

Behind the green is the house that Jimmy and Susan built. Named Torroemore by Susan, this is Matt, and now his Dad's favorite vacation house. Photo taken August of '03

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Photo taken this morning. A clear view of the bunkhouse, with bass boat, Wex (the poodle), and the manse on the hill. The deck is a relaxing place to write new blog entries...in the summer.


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Bubbles

Emma and Kate Finlay

Emma's birthday celebration at Flo's apartment.

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Attitude not Altitude

The phone rang at seven Sunday morning, and it was sleepy voiced Hillary. “Do you mind if I don’t come? I don’t feel good and it’s going to be cold.” I was disappointed, but told her that it was fine for her to stay home.

The phone rang again, five minutes later.

“How cold will it be?”

“ I’d say forty to fifty with a warm sun.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Nope.”

“I talked to Matt and he is going to be soooo angry at me if I don’t show. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.” Hillary, with sore throat, cramps, and carrying a bottle of Ibuprophen for gymnastics related injuries, walked into the kitchen at 8 AM, right on schedule. What a trouper, I thought.

Robby wearing a ski mask on his forehead, and layers of clothing hidden under a hooded gray sweat shirt, arrived minutes after Hillary. Hanging from his waist, of course, his trusty eighteen inch machete, which he always brings to Gilsum to chop things. Why not to the mountain to clear the trail? Daryl, too sick to attend a party at Chris’s the night before, was the only missing climber. I finished packing and we all hopped into the truck and headed off.

After an obligatory stop at Mr. Mike’s Convenience Store in Winchendon - a tradition created during years of trips to Gilsum with Matt and the now gone, foster boys- we arrived at the trail head. Not Marlboro trail, my first choice, snowily inaccessible, but The Old Toll Road Trail, which began as a plowed road beyond a gate, and soon met the popular White Dot Trail.

Simply put. The climb was short, but hard. I lagged behind and thought of my friend rakkity who takes arduous, multiple day hikes into rugged (real) mountainous areas with heavily loaded packs. Here I was, carrying a steel thermos of hot chocolate, a few turkey and mayo sandwiches, and three water bottles, feeling as if my heart were going to explode. I thought, Get me back to the comfort zone of my infirm camping friends. It didn’t help that Matthew scampered ahead, as if he were in Hawaii, following his uncle Peter up the precipitous Pali Lookout.

It was also cold. I told Hillary we would sweat below the tree line and be thankful for our warm clothes above. I was wrong. The wind blew so hard I never unbuttoned my jacket and to keep the batteries warm, I tucked my camera inside my shirt, close to my pounding heart. Above the trees, completely exposed to the wind, my face was red and stiff, and I began to think about those frost bite charts the Globe prints every winter. The treeless part of the trail is less steep, but it was here that Hillary and Robby decided they had had enough. Matt lobbied for a return too, but I went on ahead, and looked back to see Matthew following.

When I crested the top, I should have, but couldn’t stay and wait for Matthew. The wind was so strong - I'm not a human wind gauge but it must have been, fifty, sixty, a thousand miles an hour? - I could hardly stand upright, and the flying ice crystals meant that I had to lead with the top of head. Why hadn’t I borrowed Robby’s goggles? Why didn’t I have crampons?

The top of Monadnock is about the size of the infield of a baseball diamond but all rock. I knew there was a single upright boulder, a place to hide from the wind, maybe fifty feet away, and that’s where I took shelter. I looked out now and then, but I couldn’t sit exposed where Matt might be able to see me. Which is about the time I began to worry. If you don’t follow the narrow snow trails, and stepped onto the icy rocks, you might sail right off. Plus, when Matt got to the top, he would have no idea where I was. That’s when I heard a loud, anguished scream, “DAAAAAAADDDDD!” The kind of sound a pillow chewing, nancy boy of a father might hear as his, desperate, abandoned son, plunged to his death. But I had misinterpreted the scream. Instead, it was Matt worrying about me. I bounded from behind the boulder and motioned him over. We rested, but briefly, and I removed my gloves for as long as I could to snap a single photo before we headed back down.

If Matt were editing this, he would want me to add that there were two trials off the summit on our side, and he, not I, chose the right one

The hike down is a fun series of rock dodging, butt slides. As I stopped to talk to other hikers, Matt and company got way ahead of me. I didn’t catch up with them until the trail met the snow covered road, and that’s when I pulled the thermos of hot chocolate from my pack on Matt’s back. Did I mention that I had much earlier swapped for his lighter pack?

We got off the mountain before 1 PM, and instead of eating frozen turkey sandwiches, sitting on the truck bed, we drove to Peterborough and had lunch in the green diner. It was there that I realized: The summit was totally unimportant to all three, the velvet Elvis blue sky framing the rocky white peak, a yawn (Hillary: “I’d rather be asleep”), and the sense of accomplishment, trivial (“I hate the cold, I’ll never come back in the winter,” Matthew). My plans to have them enjoy my world failed, which is okay, because it made me look at theirs.

Which is hard to describe, and I know I’ve struggled writing about it before, but those teenagers who’ve grown up together have seamless, supportive, and dare I say, loving relationships. It’s the way Hillary punches Matt in the shoulder, and naps on Robby’s lap. And Robby’s huddling with Hillary to escape the wind and then giving up the climb (to be with her?). It’s the lack of assault, verbal or otherwise, you might expect from angsty, hormonally driven adolescents. Or from any relationship. There are no sharp edges, they are just fun to be with. I know, once again, klugily written, but Matt’s a regular reader and I imagine I’m in trouble already.

After the mountain, the diner, and the art galleries, (take the photo tour) we piled into the truck, and with Matt at the wheel, pulled out of the parking lot for our trip home.

Matt drove narrow, winding, back roads home. Routes like 124, 123 and 123a, past perfect New England farm houses, frozen ponds, pristine white clapboard churches, and stoney graveyards encased in ice. With a following setting sun, and surrounded by my climbing buddies, I reclined my seat, turned the heat way up, and drifted off.

The Crystal Forest

Ed Schmahl

Yesterday I went out on my own personal quest for altitude and snow. XC skiis in the car and a topo map of Maryland stashed by my side, I drove west, watching the snow patches grow more continuous and thick as I passed Germantown, Sugarloaf Mtn (always a possiblity, but not today), and then Myersville and the Appalachian Trail. The AT is good for XC-skiing after a big storm--big enough to exclude the trampling, no-skiis-for-us hikers-- but today they were out in force, and what snow there was would be no good for skiing on after the herds had trampled it all down.

So I continued on to Sideling Hill, the 3rd ridge of the Appalachians west of the DC area, just past Hancock, MD. At that point, MD gets so skinny you're no more than 10 mi from PA and WV in either direction. There was lots of snow, so with great expectations I drove up "Scenic highway 40" (that's what the signs say) to just below the radio tower, pulled off, and had a look around. The rain of the past week had hit here, and the trees were glistening with ice crystals. Down the highway half a mile, and 400 feet lower in elevation, there had been no ice on the trees. Here we were just high enough to get below freezing, and the forest had been hit hard. Hardly any trees lacked a broken limb or two, and every branch and twig was enveloped by a shell of 1/2-inch thick ice.

A side road for jeeps ran up the hillside from where I had stopped my car. I stepped off the tarmac onto the snowpack and broke through the crust with one foot. My foot continued on down about three feet into bottomless powder. After a struggle to extract myself I put on my skiis, hoping to ski up the jeep road into the woods and have a look at the crystal forest up there. Skiis kept me from penetrating the crust, but there was no way to slide anywhere but down. It was like a frozen pond tilted at 10 degrees. Anyway, even if I could manage to work my way up the jeep road, it would be a death run back down, with a terminal collision at the chain across the entrance. So I just stood and looked up at the trees.

It was then that I heard the tinkling coming from all directions. Ice sheaths on branches were melting everywhere, and the shards of ice were clinking and clanking as they bounced down through the branches to the ground. The slope was so steep and icy, that every piece of released ice slid on down to the road I was standing on. I looked around my feet and saw the accumulation of the morning's thaw--a half-foot layer of broken ice sheaths on the low side of the road as far uphill as I could see.

Leaving my skiis behind, I started post-holing up the road. I'd step gently on the ice, but it always broke, and then I'd pack my foot into a deep hole of airy snow, and make the next step. Slowly, at about 1/4 mph, I climbed up the jeep road towards the peak, and into the forest.

Looking at the trees as I went, I could see twinkling ruby, topaz and emerald flashes in the branches where the ice was refracting tiny, evanesant rainbows from the bright sun. About half the branches of trees were duplicated--the original branch standing out in dark contrast to a crystal sheath newly peeled away by partial melting. These sheaths looked like ghost branches, each one about 3 times the diameter of the real branch. Most of the sheaths had claws, where the icicles curved sideways, or even upwards. Apparently as the ice accumulated or melted, the branches bowed down or unbent up, and changed the direction of gravity for the icicles, which curved accordingly.

The dead beechnuts and weeds in clearings between the trees were all encased in shells of ice, like the work of some mad glass smith. I reached out and bent the stem of an encrusted weed. The glassy sheath broke, and half of it fell off, leaving only a weakened, floppy stem. The heavy seed pods were triply heavy with their icy shells, and only the sheaths of the stems supported their weight. Ice supporting ice, clever winter engineering.

I didn't hike far up the road, only far enough to see the woods up close. Even without any skiing, I reflected, the hike into the rapidly disappearing crystal forest had been worth the long drive. On the way back down the jeep road, I was gratified in my decision not to take my skiis up. I thought about Mt. Monadnock, and was given pause by the promise that someone might risk his neck snow-boarding down in similar icy conditions. (But we will see. Maybe we'll hear about that.) I managed to take a few pictures andposted them:

There They Are Again

Jayne Dearth, Wolfman & Girlfriend

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Good Company

Matt and I were returning from Daryl’s on Thursday when our local classic rock station began playing Blinded by The Light by Bruce Springsteen. I’ve heard it a billion times and have never understood the line after the opening, “Blinded by the light...”

“Matt, listen," I shouted, trying to get his attention, and not talk over the words, "what is that lyric?”

Matt has good ears, and I was confident I’d finally get an answer. He missed it the first time but the line in question is in the chorus and gets replayed over and over.

“There it is again. It sounds like, ‘Wrapped up like a douching, another runner in the night.’”

“That’s what I hear,” Matt replied. I think that is also why he didn’t offer his opinion the first time.

“But it can’t be douching in the night.”

“Look it up on the internet when we get home.” Cold Matthew logic.

And I did, and what follows, especially if the same lyric has puzzled you, is side splitting.

It snowed yesterday, then it rained, then it all froze. If Monadnock had the same weather we are not getting to the top, but the photo ops for the snow board ride have gone way up.

New Snow

Mt. Monadnock update:
Our nearest local peak, 3100 or so feet high, is allegedly the second most climbed mountain in the world, next to Mt. Fuji. It’s an easy, if mostly vertical climb in the summer, a more challenging, exciting climb in the winter. Though these folks have crampons, I’ve never really needed them. Our plan is to leave Acton Sunday morning at about 8 AM , and return before sunset. The forecast is for clouds, wind, and temps in the teens. Climbers: Matt, Daryl, Robby and Hillary Burgin. Oh, one more thing.If you're worried that my photos will be as boring as those above, don't be. Robby is bringing his snow board and plans to ride it down.

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Diane sat at her computer playing Penguin Batting when I walked in. ( Her best swing produced a score of 573)
“Do you remember the story I wrote about the girl who was hit by a train?” The title was, Turn the Page, although you liked the alternative, what was it...?”
Diane thought for a moment, “Footloose?”
“No, Dust Jacket, that’s what it was. Remember, I used the real name of the emergency room nurse? That incident happened thirty-two years ago, and I thought I was completely safe, but guess what? Someone got to the blog by using Google to search for that name.”

I bring this up because I’m posting a rewritten version of a story I posted not long ago. Written by a gifted writer I met in my summer class, Rea was told by the teacher, Robert Atwam, that the story needed more tension. I’m not naming it or identifying the writer because, though she gave me permission to post the first edition, I’m not sure she knows how truly unprivate the blog is. Rea sent it to me for my comments, and I’ll be happy to pass on anyone else’s.

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When I am nine, we pray all the time because Sister Patricia Anne says somewhere on the other side of the earth “our boys are dying in the jungles.” I pray and pray, but the war doesn’t go away. I am starting to wonder if God hears me.
St. Pius X Church is my family’s new church after we move into our bigger house. It’s shaped like a cross and has an orange wall-to-wall rug that muffles our steps. I don’t like this church. It doesn’t have a railing or kneeling pads at the altar and there’s no Jesus hanging on the cross hanging high over the altar.

One Saturday night we all go to church. Snow falls under the streetlights, like white whispers.
Kneeling, I hear Sister Patricia Anne’s voice in my head.
“Draw the seasons,” says Sister Patricia Anne. I draw the spring in tulips, yellow and red. The summer in green. The fall in a waxy mat of layered reds, yellows and orange. And here is winter. I draw a gray sky with branches, black and thin. See my winter? I hold my paper up to Sister. See my grove of birch trees? See the snowflakes neatly trimming the top edge of my paper? See?
“All the snowflakes are different,” she says.
“Yes Sister,” I say.
“They’re beautiful,” says Sister.
“Thanks Sister.”

Someone drops a missal on the pew; someone else coughs. A mother hushes her children and a young child cries. Tittering, chatting, yipping and yapping. Our whole school is here. All the parents are here too. I genuflect and then scoot as far away from everyone as I can. I think that God can hear me better if I pray away from the other voices. We pray for peace in Vietnam. We are praying for peace in America. Our parish priest, Father Durgin, tells us that if we pray together, God will hear us.
Doesn’t he hear us all the time? Sister says he knows what we think. Sister says we don’t even need to speak our thoughts. God knows all our thoughts, she says.
I bow my head anyway. I pray with all the other voices in the church shaped like Jesus’s cross with the orange rug beneath us.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Sister says there is hope in the seasons. “Every season has its own color. Every season has its own shape and time. Every season returns to us.”

I pray as hard as I can because Jimmy Tucker is in Vietnam and even though none of the adults like him because he was always lighting off firecrackers in the mailboxes, I like him. He called me “Sprout.” “Hey Sprout,” he’d say and mess up my hair with his hand that smelled like the sulfur of a newly lit match. “Hey Sprout,” he’d say, like he knew me. Like I was his little sister or something.
I pray as hard as I can because Jimmy Tucker is wearing army boots instead of his sneakers, which dangle on the telephone wire in front of his house. I can see them when I pull up my bedroom shades in the morning. I think, “It’s night where Jimmy is.” I wonder if Vietnam has seasons. I try to picture snowflakes in Vietnam. I try to picture maple leaves. I cannot.

“Hi Sprout,” he says to me. I can hear his voice in the cross- shaped church.
Dear God, bring us peace. Bring Jimmy home. End war and poverty and suffering and sickness. Amen.

Sister says, waiting is a winter thing.
I wait for God to hear me, to hear all these voices.
I look for a sign.
The snow falls sideways. Is the earth spinning faster? Will the seasons happen sooner?

I lift my head and listen to the winter. And I wonder if God hears us in the muffled brightness of St. Pius Church, if Jimmy knows I prayed for him.
And I wonder if Jimmy is scared, all alone, taken from everything he knew and put someplace where he knows nothing at all.

Father Durgin tells us mass has ended. We say, “Thanks be to God.” I can’t tell if we are really thanking God or if we are thanking God for ending the mass, which was loud and sad. “Go in peace,” he says.

Outside, icy snow stings my face. My shoes are wet from stepping in a puddle that lay hidden beneath a new blanket of snow. Car doors slam as people hurry to escape the cold. Shivering, my mother puts her key in our old station wagon door and then lifts the lock on the back door for us kids. My brothers and sisters pile into the way back and the middle seat.
“Hop in the well,” my mother says to me. I like the solitude of this skinny space between the middle seats and the way back seats and so I slip into the well willingly.
“Pig!” my older brother snarls at my sister.
“Jerk,” my sister punches him.
My youngest brother sits in the way back, away from my sister, who is punching my older brother. He breathes on the window, pounds the outside edge of his curled up fist on the steam and dabs five little marks above the fist image. “Feet,” he says. “I’m makin’ lots of feet.”

I slide into the well and slip down so that my knees are bent upward and I am facing the ceiling of the car. I close my eyes and pretend I am not here. Not in this car. I am trying to talk to God. To see if now, finally, the war has ended. It feels quiet in the car well where sounds are muffled, except for the humming of the motor and the slishing of the wheels. I try to picture Jesus looking down at us. I try to picture him seeing through the car and into my face. I try to picture him in our car with us.
“God is in everyone,” Sister Patricia Anne says. I wonder. I think of the picture I saw on TV of a soldier. His teeth clenched, his shoulders lifted, his face pulled and crumpled in fear. Another man holds a gun to his head. I see this terrified face and then see the fingers of the man holding the gun. His blank face, cool eyes. I wonder if Sister is right.

Dear Jesus if the war is ended, please send a sign. As soon as I say this to myself, I know that deep down I am not worried about the war. I am worried that praying is not real. I am worried that Sister’s promises are not real. That seasons do not bring new hope. That Jesus isn’t really in all of us. I think of the empty cross hanging over the altar. Where have you gone?

My little brother hangs over the seat and bends his face towards mine. “Look,” he says. “ Come see my feet.”
“Not now,” I say.
“C’mon,” he says and he drops a soggy mitten on my face.”
“Cut it out,” I say and throw the mitten back at him. “I’m thinking.”
“’Bout what?”
“Nevermind.”
“Nevermind what?”
“Forget it. Lemme see.” I sit up and stare. Tiny feet prints fill the large windows surrounding the way back seats.
“Nice,” I say. “Wait’ll Mom sees ‘em. You’re gonna be cleaning windows all day.”
He hits me with his mitten and slouches in his seat.
“Just kiddin’,” I say. “They’re nice. For feet anyway.”

I sit up and watch as we pass the houses of friends and neighbors. Old Mr. Oakley’s light is on. He is probably reading in his armchair. Or maybe he is sleeping over his open book, his head drooping and tugging on his neck. Billy Doran’s kitchen light is on and I can see one of the kids running from the dining room to the kitchen. We pass the Mastrioni’s. Michael Mastrioni died of leukemia and then his father died one month later of a heart attack. “Ten kids,” Mr. Mastrioni used to say proudly when people would ask how many kids he had. And then, when they’d say, “TEN?!” he’d say, “Yep. They all count. There are no extra kids, no extra people.” And then he died. Just like that. Died and left nine kids and his wife behind. My mother said he died of a broken heart. “If you don’t believe a heart can break,” she’d say, “then you don’t know the Mastrionis.”

“Now look,” my little brother’s presses my arm with his round, dimpled fingers. “See?” The window is covered in tiny feet running pell-mell.
We pull into our driveway. “Out. Everyone out. First one in, let the dog out in the yard,” my mother directs.
“Pig,” my sister growls and slugs my older brother.
“Jerk,” my brother flails and shoves my sister so that she falls onto the driveway.
“That’s enough you two. Right out of church and look at you,” my mother sighs as she lifts my baby sister out of the car and heads into the house.
Dear God if you can hear me, send me a sign. My brothers and sister race ahead of me. I turn to look at the window of feet. I think of my little brother’s pudgy fingers tapping out the toes in the steam and I can hear his voice counting over and over again, “One, two, three, four, five. There. Now for the next one.”
“Feet for everyone,” he calls back to me as he catches me looking at his window.
Feet for everyone. God for everyone. God is in all of us, Sister Patricia Anne says. Dear God, Is this your sign? I can feel my feet, wet and cold in my soggy shoes. I can see the window feet, small baby feet, like my sister’s. Looking up, I can see Jimmy’s sneakers dangling on the telephone wire. Once upon a time his mother could hold his feet in the palm of her hand, wrap her hand around his feet, feel the soft new skin.
Dear God. Feet cannot be your sign. Please. Send me a real sign that the war will end, that you are here with us.
I stand too long. Someone rockets a snowball into my face and peals of laughter spill out from behind Mr. Oakley’s hedges.
“Hey! Cut it out!” I say and bend down to collect my own ammunition.
Another snowball splatters against our car. I wind up and launch one into the hedges. I can see two figures, maybe three. “Who is it?” I ask.
“Us.”
“Us who?”
“Us the Mastrionis, who do ya think?” I recognize Angela’s voice. “Wanna have a war? Us versus you guys?”
My brothers and sister and I suit up and we fight for a while and then stop. My little brother wants to build a snowman. My sister wants to build a fort. We split up and create a fortress guarded by a lopsided snowman wearing a Yankee baseball cap and holding a broken broom.
“See ya,” we say when our mother whistles to call us in.
“Yeah, See ya,” the Mastrionis say as they head back to their house without a father.
It is a great night. I forget all about Jesus and feet for everyone. I forget all about Jimmy Tucker in the jungle wearing army boots. I forget all about wondering about the seasons, about the man with the crumpled face and the man with the gun.
That night as I pull down my shades, I see Jimmy’s sneakers and the lopsided snowman near the fortress down below. I think of the Mastrionis without their father. I think of Jimmy in a world he doesn’t know. And I know then that I will never know. I know then that there are some things I will never understand. God. Wars. A family of ten children, then nine, and then no father.
I know then that waiting is more than a winter thing.
I pull the covers over my head. Feel my warm breath rise against the worn blanket and fall back against my face. And I sigh. I lift the blanket off my face and listen to my mother’s voice in the kitchen beneath my bedroom. The clatter of dishes being gathered and stored in the cupboards, silverware tucked in the drawers. My father laughs. My mother laughs. And then it is quiet.
Nodding off, I see the window feet. Feet for everyone. One, two, three, four, five. I see the snowman, the broken broom, the Yankees hat, Jimmy’s sneakers. I surrender to the exhaustion of trying to find meaning in these everyday things. In the bed next to mine, my sister turns and snores, high-pitched snores that sound like church bells.
I hear my own breathing and I know that I am stuck. Stuck never knowing if God can hear me. I pray anyway. Dear God, bring Jimmy home. Please. No longer waiting, this prayer is not for a sign, but for Jimmy. Braving the darkness, I close my eyes and fall asleep to the sound of sleet tapping on my window.

Darwinian Staying Power

by Adam S. Kibbe

Yes, this expands mightily on Mike’s ever-so-succinct, essentially contentless entry of 12-29-03, Hemiptera -- but redundancy is an inappropriate attribute to assign my effort, as neither rhyme nor reason was given at the time. Really, an absence of any information at all.

First, I’d like to thank Mike for doing the research -- presumably on my behalf -- and congratulate him on a successful (if superficial) identification. Second, I laud the image he found, better than these here. For instance:

Lastly, I’d like to give him additional grief for the lack of content or context in his post. But I can let that go....... I spent a clumsy hour on the Net myself to come up with my own mere smattering of data. From what I now understand, the appearance of these stolid little insects is a nationally unifying aspect of the past fall season -- with a provenance said to be the western U.S., they’ve now shown up in states coast-to-coast, and have even hopped some vector or other over to Europe.

I write, not just because they were for the first time in my awareness notably everywhere here in Massachusetts this fall, hiding in warm corners and dangling in disconcerting numbers from trees, but because even now, several months into an acutely cold winter, at least one still circulates in slow, six-legged deliberation around our house. Eating what, I daren’t imagine.

This critter (allow me the presumed thread of singular continuity) shows up -- usually just after you’ve decided it’s finally died -- just about everywhere (luckily not yet in our bed). It’ll just be sitting there on the edge of a molding, propped up on those stilt legs, looking like it’s thinking through its next move. Sometimes it flies. We’re startled (for the umpteenth time), it’s usually all but inert. One could infer despondency, but I tend to anthropomorphosize too much (I had to edit every “it” in this piece from “he”, for instance). Besides, there are many opportunities to off itself if it were of a mind -- walk into a web, roll in poisonous chemicals, fall in the toilet. No, I think it has an enduring perseverance which is at odds with despondency.

I figure our guest’s current pace has a lot to do with the air temperature. We keep our house at about 68 when we’re in and awake, 60 otherwise (unless we’re staving off potentially frozen pipes). But its kin didn’t move fast even in the comparatively balmy days of early October. Fast enough to get inside, somehow, though their chunky solidity would give the impression it would take open doors, not mere cracks. How this [one?] got in is probably not a mystery, though I can’t say for sure. And once inside, it’s fast enough to avoid spiders, too, one would surmise.

Some may be asking why it would have to perish of natural causes or suicide, when most homeowners would long ago have mixed its insides with its outsides -- squished it. Well, yours truly regularly evicts flies and bees by catching them against a wall or window with a glass or jar and sheet of paper. Not only am I a vegetarian who can barely contemplate the deaths of any creature (other than willfully, the more annoying members of my own species), but I figure it’s a great deal due to my own inattention that they’ve strayed into my artificially insectless environment anyway (that or plain osmotic pressure). I finally decided mosquitoes’ ill intent merited the death penalty, though, so I’m not completely bonkers.

But the idea of squishing this stalwart individual is too alien, too arbitrarily cruel. Not only can’t I, I can’t even think of why I should. Oh, I can construct arguments, though they wouldn’t involve dread or disease. How about ending its pointless existence, curtailing its arguably prolonged suffering? It’s not “natural” for it to be alive, indoors, in winter, after all. It should be burrowed deep in the soil, hibernating. But it IS here, and I’m not sure enough of its “shoulds” to go dig it a hole. Besides, it’d likely be a lethally abrupt transition.

And then there’s the “life” thing. I mean, look at it. Up close (if you can). Don’t worry, it won’t bite you -- when warm, it’ll actually react aversely to your proximity (though with zero alacrity -- no predator faster than a sleeping sloth could fail to catch one). So check out the details. Little sporty black back leg accessories. Jaunty antennae. Folded wing shields that give a bowtie quality to its back. Some even have nice color contrasts going on. And it’s alive. It moves. Apparently with intent. Incomprehensibly tiny leg muscles extending limbs in efficient concert to advance across surfaces boasting no apparent traction. Up walls and windows, across ceilings. Presumably it breathes, air coming and going through the tubes that serve bugs as lungs.

Yeah, there’s that word. Bug. For many, that’s all it takes, their bigotry an easily assumed mantle just before they drop its final curtain, without so much as a “say goodnight, Gracie”. And this isn’t just a bug. It’s in the family Hemiptera, one of the “true bugs”, faithful to all attributes that place it in the categorized scale we’ve designed from our desire to place things in a scale that helps us “understand” things. A true bug. There’s a phrase that gives one pause.

But not me. It’s still marvelous despite that. I’ll confess that even for me, the alienness of insects is pretty much unparalleled by any other species of the planet outside the Plant and Fungi kingdoms. And Republicans. But like the latter, their mere existence and bewildering variety is a constant source of wonder, and I’ll leave the cheap shots at that. This critter truly has my admiration. Maybe you’d feel similarly if you accorded it its full title:

Western Conifer Seed Bug
 
Hemiptera:

Coreidae (Heteroptera: Pentatomomorpha)

Leptoglossus occidentalis, var. Heidemann.

Well, I was impressed........ And so we sidle around each other, each quite sure we don’t belong together, but neither prepared to do anything about it. Will it make it to Spring? I can’t imagine how. But it won’t surprise me if I accidentally let it out a door some warmish day months from now, just as it might’ve gotten in months before. I won’t be sorry to see it go, but I’m not sorry it gave me food for thought this winter. However, if they’re back in redoubled numbers next year -- they say they have no natural predators here -- we may yet get more intimately acquainted.......

Content

I like photographs, and I enjoy these strolls down memory lane, but a long time ago Travis sat me down in my swivel chair at Channel1, and said, "Boy, the net is about content, not blink tags, animated gifs, pretty pics or even naked women. It's content."

By content he meant the typed word. And by golly, I now agree with him. Anybody got any?

This boy and his bear are about to be torn away from his furry friend and his beloved aunt-- and he knows it.

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Our Wedding

Patti Canning at our wedding.

Be careful what you ask for Chris:



Front row: Patti Canning and Diane Russell
Back row: Aunt Rosemary Hausdoerffer, Flo, Susan, Diane, cousin Drucilla Strain, Aunt Doris Mapes

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