Preserves

This morning, the earth has inhaled. The heat of summer is abating. A few more exhaling days of heat will come before the autumn begins in earnest, but still. There is a breeze that keeps making attempts to release and scatter everything paper tacked to the wall behind my desk, and I know what that breeze means. It's time to preserve the taste of the summer.

My daughter's been doing it for weeks and weeks. She found a farm stand local to where she lives, and she's got freezer jams (and ice cream toppings, aka, the jams that didn't gel) made of all kinds of berries. We've had samples - and man, oh man, is that good jam! Summer in a little jar. (And the lady of the house getting quite irritated with bad recipes and is learning her own methods and preferences so quickly it's like she's been doing this for decades, not days. I'll have to have her show me how. No reason for both of us to blaze this trail. Although, when "we" progress all the way to the pressure cooker stage, it'll be a race to retreat. Pressure cookers are scary.)

Meanwhile, I want to preserve a few things here. In writing. My life now feels reminiscent of the night I sat on our couch, third and last baby in my arms, and thought to myself, "Breathe this in. Remember it," trying and trying to tamp down the memory, embedding it in my brain and bones, knowing the effort was futile and that the only thing I would be able to remember would be the desire to remember.

So, knowing that the feeling will be elusive, but dates and years and diaries are still helpful, here's what I want to preserve from this summer.

1. This was the year the boots and BDUs came home. (A picture being worth a thousand words, the feeling attached to this picture still fresh, and tears have started to roll as I type, glancing at the bizarre feeling of relief and tension of that moment - because she was there - somewhere - (as The Great Husband murmured) "in the sea of sameness.")

She came home, all her body intact, her soul bruised and a bit in shock, but already healing quickly, even now, in this same summer. And for my part, the realization that our country and its military has not traveled more than a couple of psychic inches from the days of Vietnam and war crimes and soldiers stressed beyond imagination and leadership that could have acted and did not ... well, my soul has some healing to do too. But she's home. This was the summer our daughter came home.

2. Graduation at Evergreen State is graduation in a Fellini movie, and few celebrations I've ever seen or will see can touch it. Pure exuberance, complete with balloons, jugglers dressed as circus ladies receiving their degrees, and yes, the distinct smell of something sweet in the air, there, under the stair tower where I went to get pictures. My son in a hat of his own - spurning (with many, many of his classmates) the fee being charged for green rayon, and refusing to have a proper cap and gown. The band playing Dixieland music - in particular, a really tipsy sounding version of The Stripper. Me wondering where the (a-hem!) girl of interest might be in the crowd ... wondering if that boy will EVER introduce her to us.

3. The kid turned twenty-two and introduced us to his girl of interest. That's her - right there - in the red skirt and the stunning smile. We think the kid has great taste. That's what we think.

We also think that the ability of our three now adult children to have a party and dance and drink and laugh and have a lot of fun is ... well ... I mean, look at them! It's impossible to feel anything but unadulterated joy when I look at this picture. Bottles and bottles of unadulterated joy to be preserved this summer, and lined up, sparkling on the shelf, winking red and yellow and orange and purple in the shaft of afternoon sun that hits them right before it's time to serve dinner.

In the next couple of weeks, I'll add "insulated south wall of the house," "access to the attic," and "finished master bedroom" to my list of this summer's preserves. That's how it is at the end of summer. The heat starts to take an occasional break, and everything comes ripe at once. I don't want a morsel of it wasted this year. I want to feast on it this season, and I want to bottle every drop.

Almost there

At the bottom of my driveway is the road. At the bottom of the road is the edge of town. Past the edge is the river. The Columbia River, that flows out to the ocean. And here, in the Columbia River Gorge, the mountains rise up on either side of the mighty flow, and our little Pacific Northwestern fjord makes me feel all day - all the time - as if the ocean is close by. All I would have to do, I think to myself, is sit on something that floats, and I would come to the ocean after awhile. This river flows into the ocean, I repeat in my head. Sometimes I say it out loud.

The drive to the ocean, though, goes over another mountain range (one that looks a lot like this one), and the last bits of the road before the ocean first comes into view are winding, and turning, and I always think, at each turn of the road - even now, after I've gone to that ocean on that road for fifty years - is this the one? Are we almost there now?

The air changes subtly along the way. More mistiness. The smell of salt. Sometimes, even this far inland where Lewis and Clark began to record it, there is evidence of the effects of tides. Sometimes, even here at my house, the air makes my land feel like beach land. The air feels like beach air.

See these happy people?

White hat is our oldest child. Bushy beard is her first little brother. Blue shirt over the black T is her second little brother, and on this day he was turning twenty-two years old, and they were having a lot of fun at the party he set up at a pub. And see the stunner in the red skirt?

Are we there yet?

The air has changed and the road is turning another corner, and I know - I just know - the whole wide ocean is just around the bend. I can smell it. Things feel different. About two and a half decades ago, we piled our three kids - our one "gor baby" and our two "boy babies" - into the back seat of our car, and we started to drive. We've been following the river and the winding road and we've climbed the mountains and we've come down the other side of the range. This is "where the mountains meet the sea." We're almost there. Watch for it ... watch for it ...

I love the beach.

Happy Birthday, class of '78

Another friend turns fifty today. This is the year. We feel stunned by the passage of time, and equally stunned by the sense, when we talk to each other, that no time at all has passed. The more those two sensations grow, the more I understand the meaning of the word "eternity." All times are this time. There is only now, and now is always. That's what it feels like.

In our youth-adoring, productivity-chasing, nervous culture, it can be hard to know what being fifty is for. We're not quite ready (even if we could just walk away from jobs and kids) to pack up the motor home, don red hats, and set out for the nearest park with senior discounts at the gate. I'd like to think that "my" graduating class won't ever want to do that, but who knows? Maybe in another 25 years, it'll look more reasonable to some of us.

But we're not kids either. Our bodies remind us - daily - usually first thing in the morning - that we're not kids. Not young. Not anymore.

So who are we? What are we for right now?

I have been thinking about it, and I think we're for happiness. It's becoming easier (even for me) to assert this, in the face of the long and growing list of books on the topic. Gretchen Rubin has made a veritable industry of the studies and the practical aspects of the idea of happiness. University professors are studying it, and the sciences of the neurobiology, sociology, and psychology of happiness are joining hands with the tried and true and the folkloric to make a ring around the rosy view of life -- in the front yard of reality this time. Now that the generation of people blissed out on psychedelic drugs has reached retirement age, a whole crop of people has started to study the very notion of being happy.

This makes sense to me. After all, it is the baby and the small child who so quickly draw the conclusion that the missing parent is gone forever and the new state of the world is one of isolation and separation. And it is the teen who really believes, in every quivering, shaking, outraged fiber of her shouting being that, "my mother is ruining my whole life!" At the age when many people have young children of their own, the lasting effects of breast feeding or not breast feeding, co-sleeping or Ferberizing the poor child (who's too young to tell you how heartless you are), using cloth or disposable diapers ... it all seems so very, very, very lasting in importance. And then we get to the question of education - and (egad! already?) - for some of us by this time - dating and relationships and college and pairing off -- and how on earth did all of this happen so quickly? Can I really be this old already?

That's what it is to be fifty. Too young to be really old ... but old enough to know, from experience alone, that "this too shall pass." And, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" (Abraham Lincoln), and we know now that we should "never complain, never explain," and we can even believe that "pretty is as pretty does." We've reached the age of the wisdom of proverbs and sayings, and if we have paid attention, fifty is old enough for happiness. And happiness is now.

To know how to grow old
is the master-work of wisdom,
and one of the most difficult chapters
in the great art of living.
Henri Frederic Amiel
(Swiss philosopher, poet, critic)

I was Mrs. Mitnik

In my senior year of high school, I was Mrs. Mitnik - Rose Mitnik's mother - and Rose was the love interest of Hyman, in The Education of Hyman Kaplan. Since Mrs. Mitnik was not in a lot of the scenes, I also watched this play, from backstage, through a peephole in the set. The year before, I'd watched all of the several performances of the The Diary of Anne Frank that way - through a peephole in the set.

I thought about these peepholes today because I stumbled into yet another person's narrative of those high school days. In recent months, I've had the chance to gather up a lot of these sorts of tales, as a bunch of us have gotten together after more than three decades of our own lives, far, far from high school.

If you watch your play through a peephole (and we all do), then you only have a view of certain things. You can see a lot of the set. You can watch the play. If you're Mrs. Mitnik, made to look older by way of makeup, but already sounding older by way of personality quirks and natural bent, and much much more believable as the mother of the prettiest girl in the class than you would ever have been as the desirable Rose Mitnik, then you also go out onto the stage for brief periods, and you see the play from the sewing table. You have your lines. You say (and you roll your r's), "Rosala, Rosala, you live mit a man a thousand years, you think you know him?" And then you burst into an impassioned song about the meaning of love (because you're 17, and passion is all you've got to put into the role), and you leave the stage again, to watch through your peephole.

And that pretty much sums up high school.

Limited viewpoints. Moments in the spotlight. Separated from all the other viewpoints by means of sets and makeup and lights and even by an audience that can't take their eyes off the drama in the center of the stage. I think we all felt a bit like we were the only ones at our peepholes - and that, too, is the nature of high school and youth.

But then the lights come up. The audience claps and stands and stuffs the playbills into their pockets and exits into the parking lot and drives away, and so does the cast and crew. We grew up. We all went and did stuff, and knew people, and couldn't believe life could be like this. I suppose a part of me will always be Mrs. Mitnik. Rose is still the prettiest girl in the class. And now I don't need a makeup pencil to make me look older (although ... how old was I supposed to be in that play, anyway? If I remember right, I looked about 70!)

This is the year my high school class turns fifty. And one of us got the bright idea that we could start talking to each other again. Thanks to modern technology, that's just what we're doing. After work, around kids and obligations ... but also around projects and creativity and adventure - and service, as well. I went to high school with some really nice people, who, despite some bad stuff that was happening behind the stage sets, turned into loving, caring, educated, useful, and happy grownups with good lives.

The play was good back then. We did our best. We loved each other, too. It's good to know, after all these years, that that part wasn't just drama. The people I loved loved me too. (Thanks, Fearless Leader. It's a real gift you've given us. And happy birthday!)