Category Archives: Life on life’s terms

I love Minnesota early spring. Really.

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Everyday,

Soon after waking up,

I grab my iPhone to check the weather in St. Paul, Minn.

I have strong opinions about the numbers and symbols

That populate the app.

35 degrees this morning?

I like that,

But what’s with the smeary, translucent cloud?

That I don’t like.

Why can’t it be a

Marigold-colored sun

With a crest of white at the top of the little box to

Imply three dimensions?

I definitely don’t like tomorrow’s symbol:

Eight snowflakes in various shades of white and gray.

And 45 degrees.

(How so, snow and 45 degrees?)

And my least favorite symbol

For its ambiguity:

The weeping sun.

That’s today’s symbol.

Why do I care so much about the weather?

I work in an office

And I live in a house,

And any time I spend outdoors is deliberate:

“I’m going to spend some time outside,” I say,

Because it has to be intentional.

But I can get into a truly

Foul mood

Over an unseasonably cool forecast,

Especially in the Minnesota spring and summer,

When I feel entitled to

Warm weather

After the long winter.

I have this sense, though,

A hold-over from my childhood when I had

No opinion

On the weather,

I just wanted to go outside and

Play.

My sense is that,

If I get out in the weather,

No matter how crappy it is,

If I get outside and

Walk or run or lay out my mat and

Do some yoga,

I like all weather.

Yesterday, for example,

I tucked my yoga mat roll under my arm and

Walked to the park over my lunch hour.

It was sunny with a snappy spring breeze–

Too cold, I thought, irritated, as I walked to the park

And couldn’t find a perfect spot to lay down my mat.

But after moving through a yoga sequence

And lying in savasana

In the sun’s surprising warmth,

I thought,

This is perfect.

This air and this sun and this temperature:

It’s perfect just exactly as it is at this moment.

Airport good-byes

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About to leave for the airport

You would think that the

Airport

Would be a devastating place for us:

For me, and my small boy,

And his dad.

The good-byes we say just outside security,

His dad or I knowing we won’t

Squeeze the small body

For months.

But,

If you thought the airport was,

For us,

A scene of tears and

Drama,

You would be wrong.

We made an unspoken

Pact,

His father and I,

To have fun at the airport.

We send him off

With fart-kisses on his stomach

And tickles around his neck

And swooping hugs.

And laughter.

On Sunday, it was his dad’s turn to say,

“See you soon,”

And go through security

Alone.

In three months,

It will be my turn to say

“See you soon,

When school starts again,

Buddy,”

And watch them go through security

Together.

I know from experience

That for me,

The tears come at the moment they disappear from view

Behind security,

Looking not back at me,

But forward toward their

Gate.

It wasn’t my turn to

Say good-bye today.

But when it is,

On the ride home

I will turn off the radio

And let the tears run.

Marriage the Second: In which our heroine wonders what business she has trying this again

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Oh, and our marriage license came in the mail yesterday, too.

It was like a scene out of a sitcom:

Joe and I in a pre-marriage counseling session,

Reading through the vows we had written,

And then somehow getting into a huge fight

About who does the laundry

And how

And when

And who puts the clothes away

And how

And when.

I could feel the corners of my eyes drawing back,

Snake-like,

And I might have been hissing

As I accused

And reared back

And struck again.

The minister,

A young guy who looks like Joe would with a beard,

Watched and listened—

I forgot he was there.

I imagine

His alarmed eyes flicking back and forth between us

Before he finally interrupted:

“Okay, okay,

This is good.

This is obviously something you need to talk about.”

Walking out to the car

Two strides ahead of Joe,

I made a decision to

Glower

And silently contemplate what business we,

Who have both failed once at marriage

And can’t even cooperate on laundry,

Have trying to do this again.

But as soon as we closed (me: slammed) the car doors,

Joe suddenly and uncharacteristically started

Talking (purging)

About his history,

And the harsh refrains that play in his head.

I softened in the driver’s seat,

Listening and asking questions.

This was new information to me.

(Will there always be new information?)

We stopped at an Ethiopian place by our house

And ordered a veggie sampler

And held hands across the torn plastic tablecloth.

“Babe, I want to be the

Best husband

You’ve ever had,” Joe said,

And I started to laugh and cry at the same time.

We went home and went upstairs to our bedroom.

And Joe turned off all the lights

But one,

And I fell asleep to him

Putting the laundry away.

I did it to myself: 7 hours in the car with my ex-husband

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Didn’t expect to find myself at Union Station, Chicago on Sunday to take this picture.

It was all my fault.

I had booked a spring break trip for

My son and his dad:

The Amtrak train from St. Paul to Chicago

And a sleeper car from Chicago to Washington D.C.

My ex, who lives in another country,

Hadn’t seen his son since July

And I stoked my son up for weeks about the

“Field trip”

He and his dad

Would take on the

“Long distance train” to Washington D.C.

Sunday morning,

Departure day,

Arrives.

The Internet says the train is four hours late arriving to St. Paul,

So we sleep in and I call Amtrak at 10 a.m., two hours after the

Original departure time,

Thinking we’ll have plenty of time to get to the station.

“You wasn’t at the station?” the Amtrak rep says.

“Uh-oh. Amtrak sent a bus instead.

Left at 7:50 a.m.”

Phone pressed to my hot face,

I look down at my son,

Who is dancing a little jig and chanting,

“Long distance train!”

And my ex-husband,

Who is listening to my half of the conversation and,

Registering what happened,

Doing that thing he does when he’s disgusted:

A one-sided head-shake,

More of a twitch.

I look at the clock:

It’s 10:30 a.m. and the sleeper car leaves Chicago at 6:40 p.m.

“What you gonna do?” asks the Amtrak rep, rhetorically.

“Yeah, I gotta figure that out,” I say, and hang up.

“I’ll get you to Chicago,” I say to my ex. “Alright? Just, everyone relax.”

Internet search for one-way plane tix to Chicago leaving within two hours:

$400.

Gas in the Camry for the 800-mile round trip:

$100.

“We could drive. We have time,” I say to my ex.

“Really?” he says, softening. “It could be an adventure…”

“Long distance train!” yells our son.

The ex and I look at each other.

“Let’s do it.”

We load up in the car and are pulling into the alley within five minutes.

And as we pull out,

My son,

Who has no idea this isn’t part of the original plan,

Says,

“I’m excited to go on the long distance train!”

And his dad and I laugh.

Seven hours in the car with my ex.

I had thought we might have

A Talk

About our son:

Where he’ll be going to school,

Here with me in America,

Or there in Finland with him?

That’s our albatross.

But it feels right to just

Be quiet

And watch

Wisconsin roll by on a

Foggy, late-winter, early-spring Sunday.

And anyway,

Victor has so much to talk about,

So many questions,

From his little throne in the

Middle of the back seat,

Any conversation his dad and I start is

Immediately interrupted with queries about

How earthquakes work,

What trains are made of,

What happens when cars crash,

And so on.

We arrive in Chicago,

And I walk the two in:

The huge father and his small son

Clutching his rainbow blanket and his

Pillow-car.

“Is this where the long distance train is?”

“Yep.”

I squeeze the boy against my leg,

And father and son move off into the secure area

(Train stations have them, too, I guess)

And I stop them to take a picture.

“Have fun you guys,” I call,

And then go back out to my car for the

Drive

Home.

Epilogue:

I checked my voicemail on Monday night.

There were a bunch of messages from the weekend,

Numbers I didn’t recognize

So I didn’t listen to the messages.

A 1-800 number from Saturday.

“Hello.

This is an important message from Amtrak.

You have a scheduled departure from

St. Paul to Chicago on

Sunday, March 20.

That trip has been canceled due to

Inclement weather.

A chartered bus will leave the train station at

7:50 a.m.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Airport reunion: My small boy and his dad

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On Wednesday,

My small boy’s

Father

Flew into town for the

Boy’s spring break.

The dad and his boy,

They hadn’t seen each other since

July.

It’s our life,

Shared and separate:

One of us,

His father,

Who lives in Finland,

Or me,

Is always living through

Days and weeks and months of

Our son’s absence:

Walking past a

Quiet,

Shadowy

Bedroom,

Toys neatly in their boxes,

Bed smooth with laundered sheets;

Twisting open the blinds to

Let light in,

And then closing them again at the

End of one more day

Ticked off the calendar.

Incredibly,

A season will pass,

Or even two:

A melting or a shedding of leaves,

Moons.

And then:

The airport.

On Wednesday,

I had taken off work early and

Arranged to pick the boy up from school

When we learned the plane would be late.

So we scurried around town a bit,

Holding hands to run across streets and

Jump over puddles,

And arrived at the airport at

10 p.m.

Late for a small boy —

And for me.

Strung out on

Anticipation,

Time-killing errands and

Fluorescent lighting,

We waited,

Watching travelers descend an escalator behind the

Sliding glass doors of the airport’s

Secure zone.

Victor scampering around on feet and hands like a monkey,

His dad,

To be sure,

Striding down the wide, carpeted

Terminal corridors toward us.

Not allowing himself to jog —

After months of disciplined pacing,

You can’t lose your rhythm on the

Last leg of the journey.

And then,

There he was:

First time I’ve thought about Women’s History Month

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My churchmate: A historian living history

It’s Women’s History Month.

I’ve never given it much thought in years past,

Which is strange because I’m a

Woman

Who cares about

History.

In the media,

Provocative questions in order to promote a

High click-through rate:

“Is feminism necessary?”

“Are women losing ground?”

A few key statistics with

Supportive colloquialisms.

Lately, it’s my church where

I’ve been

Experiencing

Women.

It occurs to me that

Church

Is the one place in my life where I’m around

Women

Who are older than me.

My workplace is young,

My friends are

All around my age.

At church,

I like to sit a few pews behind a

Pair or

Small flock of older women.

I like to behold their

Hair.

Especially the women who

Let their hair grow long and

Prismatic:

Alabaster and ivory with

Ribbons of

Glinting silver,

And a few threads of ocher or coal.

I was at a

Women’s retreat recently with some of those women.

One of the workshops was a panel discussion with four women,

Each representing a

Decade of life from their

60s to their 90s.

The title of panel was something like

“Growing old gracefully in a

Culture that idolizes youth.”

The four women spoke in ascending order of age

In that elevated, cottony tone of an

Older woman’s voice.

The oldest woman —

98 years old, I believe —

Stood up to speak.

(The others remained seated.)

You know what they didn’t talk much about?

Husbands.

Children.

Grandchilden.

Careers.

You know what they did talk about?

Their own childhoods,

And their women friends,

Now.

It was as if they had

Finished with the

Vast expenditure of

Energy

In the middle part of their lives,

And they knew their jobs were largely done

There.

And what was left were the

Two bookends of their lives:

The treasured memories of the beginning,

And the treasured friends of the present.

From this

Woman

In the thick of

Kids/career/husband:

Point well taken.

Talking history in the present tense

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Servetus, from Wikipedia entry

I was at

Church

Recently,

Getting oriented.

Learning about the institution

(I used to scorn that word,

“Institution,”

But not anymore.)

We were sitting on a

Soft

Couch,

Joe’s arm around my shoulders.

He pushed his fingers into my hair

And swirled the hair follicles of my scalp

With the pads of his fingers as we listened to

The glossy tenor voice of the

Dreadlocked minister

Describe 500 years of

Unitarian history.

I had forgotten how academics talk history:

In the

Present

Tense.

“In the 16th century,

Michael Servetus

Studies the Bible …

Concludes …

Does not accept …

Is burned at the stake …”

And it was not just the theme of Servetus’

Nagging, then

Tormenting

Skepticism

That fascinated me.

It was the

Present

Tense

The minister used to describe him,

With its implication that

History is

Alive, is

Current.

And that in thinking and

Talking about these people and events

We keep open the possibility of repeating these experiences,

For good,

Or bad,

Or neither.

People who speak more than one language

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Two Saturday mornings per month,

My small boy goes to

Finnish class.

During the class,

We parents hang out in a room next door:

A brick-and-tile space with a

Circle of mismatched chair and couches and a

Scrap of coffee-colored carpet on the floor.

We sip hot morning beverages and chat or read magazines and books.

Last Saturday,

I was cutting out

Circles

For our wedding invitations,

And vaguely listening to three moms—

Finnish women living in Minnesota—

Chatting in low tones.

At first they spoke Finnish,

And for practice I tried to follow along.

One of their parents had a sailboat,

And spent the summer

Sailing around the archipelago islands

Scattered off the southwest corner of Finland.

One of them said a phrase in English,

Slowing down and emphasizing the words slightly like

Verbal italics,

And then the conversation

Spontaneously

Switched into English.

Two of the women had mild accents,

And the third spoke with no accent at all.

They carried on in English for awhile,

Talking about their next travel plans

To bring their children to Finland,

To their families’ summer cottages.

And then,

Again spontaneously,

One of the women switched back into Finnish,

And the conversation went on in that language.

I know,

From my bi-lingual friends,

That people who speak

Multiple

Languages

Fluently

Flow back and forth between languages

In the same conversation —

Sometimes in the same sentence —

Thoughtlessly.

Without even realizing they’re doing it.

If I had pointed out to these

Three women that they had switched back and forth

Between Finnish and English,

They might have been surprised to hear it.

I am always awed by the

Vast potential of the human mind

When I witness this.

And the coolest part:

My son can do it, too.

Touring the nursing home

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Photo: decorationideas.org

We went to see a

Nursing home for my mother.

Lyngblomsten.

Heather flower,

In Norwegian.

It had all the

Sad trappings

I would expect of a

Nursing home:

Metal hand rails attached to seemingly everything;

Laminate fake-wood signs warning against

Accidentally letting a resident out of the building;

And of course,

The residents themselves.

Men and women,

Shrunken,

Shaking,

With quaky, high voices,

And half a tennis ball stuck onto the bottom of each leg of their walkers.

But you know,

I can make a decision to

Shift my gaze.

I can look

Instead

At the aquarium,

With its bubbling, clean,

Cool-looking water,

Emerald seaweed swaying,

And impervious cyan- and canary-striped flounder

Turning calmly at the corners,

And eternally swimming

Back the

Other way.

There’s the aviary in the corner of the lounge

With warm, golden lights

Bathing the small,

Champagne sparrows with black speckles,

Their wings tiny, beating triangles, as they

Hop from perch to perch

And back

Again.

Or the bright eyes of

Some of

The residents as they

Turn their heads

And look at you

Sideways,

Sliding their walkers slowly down the sallow white tiled hallway.

Some of them will

Smile

In that way of

People

Who have learned that

Nothing’s truly more important than

A small smile

In a day.

On Valentine’s Day, a wedding ring arrives

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It came yesterday,

Valentine’s Day,

In the mail:

Joe’s wedding ring.

Made of meteorite:

Chunks of streaked, slate-colored iron

Dropped to earth from space,

And shiny, copper-colored

Rose gold,

From inside the earth.

A particular design

For a particular man.

I had to order it over the Internet —

Dizzying to send that much money over

Paypal for a piece of

Eternal jewelry.

It came via insured mail from

Flagstaff, Ariz.

(“Hippie town,” Joe says.

“Of course they make meteorite rings there.”)

And arrived on our doorstep on

Valentine’s Day afternoon.

I opened the package in the kitchen after

Shooing Joe upstairs.

My brother, a groomsman, was there,

And I made him squeeze the ring —

It didn’t give.

Money well-spent.

The small boy, of course,

Needed to see, too.

I gave it to him warily,

And hovered as he tried it on his small thumb

Lest he somehow drop it down the venting system.

He gave it back, apparently approving —

Good, ’cause he’ll be bearing it down the aisle on

May 7 —

And pulled his babysitting uncle to play.

Later, at the restaurant,

Gazing at each other over tea lights,

We ordered our first course off the prix fixe menu,

And Joe said,

“Get out that ring.”

I pulled the box out of my purse and opened it, and we both looked inside.

The ring is heavy and medieval-looking;

The meteorite inlay streaked as if with slate paint brush strokes.

The rose-gold lining shining from inside the ring like an underground lava flow.

Joe put it on his ring finger,

And I thought that it looked,

Against his skin,

Truly like iron.

It wasn’t until Joe went to the bathroom

And I studied the eternal randomness of the

Streaks and swipes,

And ran my finger along the smooth copper-glow lining,

And thought about how I’d

Earned the money

To buy this ring,

And was grateful to be able to do that

For Joe,

That the ring’s billion-year-old

Beauty

Was clarified.

When Joe came back from the bathroom,

I made him put it on his finger one last time.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, babe,” I said.