The Chatty Pile

I purchased a screech owl image for my Christmas card this year; it is perched on a pine tree branch, set against a backdrop of stars in a dusky blue sky. It seems to be cocking its head with something to say. I take one out of the box this morning, and doubt myself – have I become one of those people who send out an ugly Christmas card? Why did she consciously choose this card from all others on a display rack? That’s what others might think when they open it – one forlorn owl on a bent pine tree branch?

The Christmas card, I think, has gone the way of stationery, the abacus, the dial phone, and good handwriting. I’ve received a few cards so far this year; I might receive a few more – they are hurriedly signed, not annotated with news or good wishes; in one case the card was not signed but rather pre-printed with the names of all four family members.  I received one jaunty email “card” replete with dancing snowman in a Santa Clause suit.

I remember the rainy afternoon when I bought the screech owl card. I felt cheap that day and didn’t want to spend anything at all on a card that no one, I guessed, would bother to look at twice. That’s what I thought as I stood in front of the display of bird-themed cards in my favorite bird-supply store. One box had been mis-priced – or else it was a carryover from last year’s stock – for it was three dollars less than the boxes of cardinal-, woodpecker-, and geese-graced cards. That’s why I chose it – the owl cards cost three dollars less.

I always used to ponder long and hard about the handwritten message I would write on each greeting card, even if only to rephrase the pre-printed message inside. But lately I’ve begun to feel like “one hand a-clapping” – still trying to be personal and chatty in this age when so much more can be updated through email, facebook, twitter, text message, or whatever else. Yes, my owl of the silent night would like to say something new and personal – but she’s been rendered silent by all the up-to-the-minute clamor of the daylight hours.

I remember when my mother would set up the card table in the living room for a week in December in order to methodically work each evening on the Xmas card list – many pages of addresses, saved and refined over many years, written in double columns, front and back, a list folded and refolded to the tearing point – the names and addresses of all those many friends, old neighbors, distant relatives, church members, square dance partners, army buddies, high school friends, etc. Occasionally there would be a name crossed off – and that had meaning too. Also on that card table were several boxes of greeting cards . . . a red pen . . . sheets of postage stamps bearing the Madonna-and-Child image. These stamps were not self-adhesive, but had to be licked. That was my job, as a child, to lick and place the stamp just-so in the upper right hand corner of the envelope – and also to lick the envelope flaps closed.

At that time an envelope could travel for a penny less if its flap were tucked in rather than sealed to its body – and it could only be tucked in legally if no written words other than a signature had been invested inside. And so there were two piles of envelopes on the card table back then, those whose flaps were tucked in because they contained no personal message, and those whose flaps were to be licked shut because they contained a handwritten greeting – a chatty, personal, loving, long, and wishful annual message written in red ink on a separate sheet of tablet paper that was folded and placed inside the card – and that cost one extra penny to mail.

The two stacks towered higher each day on the card table as the annual job of keeping in touch progressed – the chatty pile, I remember, outpacing the other by twice or thrice until it fell over and had to be made into more piles.

Blackwing

The new Palomino Blackwing pencils which became available in October of this year are amazing – a rendition of the defunct original Blackwing 602 by Eberhardt-Faber which was made famous by John Steinbeck when he wrote East of Eden in the early 1950s. Whoever devised these pencils – copycat or new, they are the thing, and I know Steinbeck would approve.

Steinbeck spent two months in preparation and research for the writing of East of Eden – and a good bit of that research went into the pencil he would use. He declared the Blackwing 602 to be "the perfect pencil." He was said to sharpen 60 Blackwing pencils each morning so he didn’t have to stop writing in order to sharpen one over the ambitious six-hour workday. And he had an eccentric rule about how long they would last: “When the metal of the pencil eraser touches my hand, I retire that pencil.” He called the electric pencil sharpener a needless expense, but one he was willing to indulge because it saved his hands for writing.

The slogan on the original pencil is, “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed.”  I miss seeing that slogan on the new Palomino pencil, though it otherwise feels and acts the same as the original which went out of production in 1998. Steinbeck has much to say about the Blackwing in his book, Journal of a Novel, which is a sort of diary of his daily life and thoughts behind the writing of the Eden book. He talks freely about the daily interruptions from friendly callers, carpet cleaners, carpenters, an ex-wife, etc. And he has a lot to say about Blackwings – the speed, the glide, the precision, the hexagonal barrel, the extra length, the no-break points – all praiseworthy and practical reasons to use them. But as I sit to write with my few remaining Blackwing 602s – and now a full box of the new Palomino Blackwings from http://www.pencils.com/ – I wonder if Steinbeck ever brought the pencil to his upper lip, as I do, between paragraphs, to inhale the fragrant California cedar . . .

. . . transporting me to river banks where freshly caught salmon is smoked over embers of cedar and ash – bronzed skin toting planks for the smouldering pile – the rush of freshly fallen water, cascading white over rocks worn smooth by centuries of never ending sound – echoes of the source of all sound – a rhythm of dance, the beat of drums, the hum of cicadas at night . . . that is where my Blackwings take me . . . to that place where sound begins. Was Steinbeck ever there? Is he there now?

But I am brought back too quickly . . . the phone rings . . . the Bradford pear trees need trimming and here is the estimate and the prognosis . . . my phone caller sparks numbers at me, the time he will arrive, the cost . . . the heat pump clicks on, that noisome smell of burnt dust on electric coil . . . I should call to get those cleaned . . . I boil filtered water for tea, thinking about all these things . . . inhaling cedar once again, longing to take flight to that place where writing can begin . . .

Angel's Share

I always like to punctuate my annual trip to Gethsemani monastery with a tour of a bourbon distillery. There are seven major distillers of Kentucky bourbon, America’s only native spirit, all within a 30-mile radius of the monastery and the Kentucky River’s limestone water source – and I have now visited five of those houses of alchemy. I never tire of the story of fermentation and the 235-year-old struggle to perfect and lifeguard a purely local art that is now cherished around the world.

Real bourbon can be made only in Kentucky – the secrets being local limestone-rich water and charred white oak barrels. The whole story of bourbon came about by accident:  Daniel Boone-style moonshiners in the 1700’s who eventually got good enough at their trade to ship corn whiskey to New Orleans via the Kentucky River – but one batch went bad because of the barrels’ previous contents (probably fish or vinegar which had been shipped in the barrels before being filled with whiskey). In the interest of economy, distillers began to torch the inside of their shipping barrels before filling in order to kill whatever prior flavors (ergo, bacteria) had been left there. This torching, unbeknownst to them, brought out the oak’s natural sugars which would in turn impart a toasty/oaky flavor as well as a deep amber-red color to the whiskey. The immediate message from New Orleans was, “Send us more of that charred whiskey!” The charred whiskey was eventually called Bourbon because of the town’s name near the shipping dock on the Kentucky River where the barrels were loaded for transport. As every tour guide will say, “All bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon.”

A visit to a bourbon distillery is a revival of the senses. Before one even emerges from the car, the heady smell of fermented grain and torched oak infuses the nostrils and lungs. In past years, I have attended Maker’s Mark, Buffalo Trace, and Woodford Reserve; this year I attended two distilleries – Jim Beam and Heaven Hill, the two oldest and largest of the lot. I have two more to go, maybe next year – Turkey Hill and Four Roses.

Tours usually begin near the silos where mostly corn, but also rye, barley, and sometimes wheat are ground and made into a mash, then placed in room-sized fermentation vats made of copper or wood; they are infused with special yeasts and left to ferment and bubble for months at a time before distillation; torched barrels are filled and taken to a warehouse where they will stay in a climate controlled environment for four to 20 years – or more. "Tasters" are a special breed, born and bred in Kentucky as far as I’ve heard – and nothing is bottled before their discriminating approval.

Much like bread baking or any home fermentation process, the life of the bourbon is in the yeasts that convert plant starch into sugar and alcohol. Each distillery touts its own strain of living yeasts that flavor its product just so. There was tragedy just 14 years ago when the Heaven Hill Distillery burned to the ground. Our tour guide, a young man barely over drinking age, said he lived about 20 miles from the distillery at the time; walking home from school that afternoon, he could see billows of smoke and smell the burnt oak and yeasty bourbon. The distillery was producing bourbon only a few years later – and only because the precious yeasts had been saved.

He talked about Jim Beam, a fourth generation distiller (there are now seven, and an eighth is trying to decide what to do with his life) who saw the family distillery through the hell of Prohibition – that’s how they refer to it in Kentucky – and Mr. Beam was back mixing corn with limestone water at the cost of $1,190.48 only two or three days after Prohibition ended – because he had kept the vitality of the bourbon yeasts in a jar at home. Our tour guide said Mr. Beam was known for a lifetime of carrying his jar of living yeasts to work each morning – in case the house burned down – and carrying his jar of living yeasts home each night – in case the distillery burned down.

 A small screen with the pattern of many four-leaf clovers without the stems was placed at the opening of one oak barrel on our tour, allowing precious 10-year-old vapors to waft through the screen. “Now where have you seen a screen like this?” our tour guide asked. One small pious woman with a tall red-faced husband nearby piped up, “In a confessional!” Her husband seemed surprised to hear such a large voice emit from his tiny wife.

Each of us filed solemnly past the “confessional screen,” taking in celestial vapors to the deepest recesses our lungs would allow. Eyes began to roll, heads to swoon – and we many strangers from foreign lands began to speak in one tongue, each to each.

“Angel's share,” our tour guide explained, referring to the 30 percent volume which is lost to evaporation from each barrel. "We give 60 percent of our profits to the tax man . . . 30 percent in vapors to the angels . . . and what’s left, we drink . . . “

The tasting room is where the real fun begins. Strangers become friends seemingly for life, except that we forget to exchange addresses once the tour is complete. I have photos of people from Australia, London, Scotland, Mississippi, California . . . a section of Atlanta where I used to live, and even from around the corner in Louisville, Kentucky. You see, we are given generous portions of pricey stock – 10-year single barrel, 18-year single barrel, 9-year small batch, 12-year 'very special' batch, an unfiltered, uncut variety that is 125 proof . . . A process of the senses begins – comparing color though sunlit windows; sniffing with the lips slightly parted to give angel vapors an entranceway through the olfactory gates; finally, tasting and comparison before question and group discussion time. Very happy now, we are each given a chocolate bourbon ball and led into the glimmering gift shop . . .

I drove carefully back to the monastery in time for Vespers that evening – thinking about the Life that is 'caretaked' so lovingly in all manner of ways on this earth – and I do believe the monks’ voices were never more angelic.

Removing Shoes

Gethsemani – This Trappist monastery in tiny Bardstown, Kentucky was made world-known because of the writer/monk Thomas Merton who wrote many forward-thinking spiritual books while cloistered here in the 1950’s and 60’s. My first visit here three years ago came about from a writer’s curiosity to see the place where a favorite writer had worked and lived, and was now buried – not to mention the promise of silence and 2,000 acres of walking trails for the contemplation of my own fledgling writer. “Retreatants,” as we weeklong guests are called, take a vow of silence for the week – that’s all. About half the retreatants are Catholic, the rest are something else or nothing at all or undecided.

This place draws me. I’m drawn to it. Just when I was thinking this will be my last year here – after all, it’s too far to travel, there are other ways to find a week of silence, etc. – I realize I must come here every year just at this time, the third week in October. Trees-full of birds greeted me when I got out of the car. Come every year, they said. Others must think the same, for there are so many familiar faces from last year – about 10 of the 30 retreatants I recognize from last year, this same week. I see license plates from all over the country, people who have driven more than my mere 600 miles.

There’s a reason I was drawn to read all of Thomas Merton’s books as a teenager, using babysitting money for each new purchase. But why? I’ve been told (by monks) that was very unusual, but my life has become very usual, nothing spectacular, nothing extraordinary. I always wanted to write as a child – then went to college, worked, got married, stayed home with children, and now wonder what to do with the rest of my life. Writing, in the bit of time I steal from the daily routine, holds little promise of the extraordinary . . .

Father Damien is our talking Guestmaster here at the monastery. He just got back from a three-month visit to Indonesia, the place where Merton ultimately died from a tragic accident in 1968. Fr. Damien is 77 years old, and he says he is not the same person he was five years ago – or five years before that. He struggled throughout his middle age to find what he was “meant to do” – though he knew since fourth grade that he wanted to be a priest and was at the time a successful pastor. “The clock was ticking in me every day,” he said, and it was in his mind that the clock was ticking: “What was I meant to do?” Strangely, he said, the clock stopped ticking when he drove up the Gethsemani driveway for a week of reflection about 20 years ago.

“So this is it – to make cheese the rest of my life?” Everyone laughed when he said that because even the monks, most of all the monks, make light of the daily, ordinary tasks of making cheese and fruitcakes to feed the masses. (Actually, they also say it’s the most radical, alternative lifestyle imaginable.) But it was true, he said, that he felt he had “arrived” – and it wasn’t glamorous as he thought his life’s work would be. He chose the name Damien as a young priest because he wanted to do great works, be a great missionary, be famous and renowned as the leper Saint from whom he chose his name. He said this with no face or voice of that former self – just a fact, as though saying he used to eat peanut butter sandwiches as a youth. He finally has the sense of being who he really is, he said – still a priest, but now a monk, and in a place where he grows and learns so much every day that he is “not the same person” he was five years ago. His days, he said, are like a kaleidoscope that is moved ever so slightly each day, so that the entire image is changed and a new perspective is always emerging from such small shifts – and it’s not over yet, he said.

While in Indonesia, he said he went into the mosques five times a day to pray as the Muslims pray – which must have seemed like a vacation because the Trappist monks pray/chant seven times a day beginning at 3:00 a.m. He entered the mosques wearing his cleric collar, and was asked only to remove his shoes as is the tradition. That kind of broadmindedness and inclusiveness – from both sides – is most likely why I was drawn to read Merton as a young adult. He talked about the profound respect implied in the small act of removing one’s shoes, and related something from the Bible about when Moses was at the burning bush and God told him to remove his shoes – “You’re on Holy ground now.”

I think of my decades-long Buddhist practice, and of how the shoes are always removed and left at the door of a meeting place; I think of my habitual tendency to remove my shoes when coming into my own house; of gladly discarding shoes the minute I see a beach before me; and of my curious preference for writing without shoes. Even when my feet are cold on the kitchen floor, I always write without shoes. Maybe that means something.

It’s an ordinary life for Fr. Damien, but one that he was meant to live – and he knows that – and that’s the kind of thing I take my shoes off to.

Selling Candy

Many women turn to sales as a means of making money and gaining some independence once the children are grown. This takes many forms – real estate, makeup, nutritional products, retail sales, and policies of all varieties . . .

I ate my breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, and saw from a few tables over a woman in her mid-sixties who had taken on such a role – she spoke to a like-aged couple across the table over a hearty breakfast of ham, sausage, coffee, eggs, grits and sawmill gravy. Great stacks of papers and brochures were spread out before her as she approached this couple with her goods – “The cost will be right at 6,000 dollars for the two of you,” was the first thing I heard her say, and it was the way she said do-oll-ars, with more syllables that it really has, that caught my attention and made me think about the importance of selling once a woman gets older and it’s too late to go back to school. I thought she might be peddling a trip overseas, because of the brochures, and I listened up to hear what exciting place they were going for such a grand fee. But I could never hear more than an essential word or key phrase during our breakfast because of the commotion of coffee cups and busboys and children eating pancakes, demanding more syrup and such.

The saleswoman wore a zebra patterned topper/knit jacket sort of thing, striped yardage that generously covered her solid black pants and a black top beneath. There were many chains of gold around her thick neck and her hair was coiffed up big atop her large head, frosted blonde and streaked with other stripes of varying shades. She had large gold hoop earrings and a big powdery jowl that jiggled when she proposed her point or changed pages for the couple to see differing views. She wore those half moon kind of glasses that fell down low on her nose so she never had to actually look the couple directly in the eyes but rather dodged them repeatedly from either below or above her glasses. Her arms were spread out wide on the table because of all the girth between, and her fingers were fat and waxy looking, strangled by big star-shaped rings that flaunted colored jewels and maybe diamonds. The finger nails were thick like horses’ hooves, painted bright pink and trimmed to a squarish angle. I thought of the limestone imbued Kentucky water that is attributed for strong bones in both horses and people in the Kentucky region – limestone, the same reason, by the way, that grass is blue and real bourbon can be brewed only in Kentucky. Those thick jousting fingernails pointed to clauses in the papers, lines that were to be signed, and they made a scratchy noise on the paper . . .

“But if you buy in the summer . . . “ I heard her say when the couple flinched and tightened their lips on hearing the first figure of 6,000 dollars. I began to wonder, what destination might cost less in the summer months? But I could think of nothing reasonable.

I heard the word Medicare come up in between children yelling, and later the word deductible, so I began to doubt the couple’s travel plans and instead thought they were planning for some kind of nursing care – or an insurance policy – or maybe cemetery plots? But why were the summer months cheaper?

The saleswoman was patient and “on their side,” because at one point she said, “Oh no, you shouldn’t have to pay for that . . . my package includes . . . ” and she shook her jowl definitively. She had the art of being serious and trusty about certain points, but she could punctuate her seriousness with friendly laughter when appropriate. The wife leaned over to confide something to the saleswoman, and the saleswoman leaned closer too, and the husband backed his chair away to gain the attention of a waitress with a coffee pot. The two women were becoming friends it appeared.

“Well, tell me then, how much are you willing to pay? I can write this up any way you like,“ the saleswoman said in a voice that grew suddenly loud and businesslike.

Someone in the kitchen dropped a full tray of dirty coffee cups and our entire non-smoking section voiced, “Ohhh . . . “ -- and so I never heard the couple’s reply.

The man rocked back on his chair and entwined his fingers behind his head, letting his elbows branch out to either side of his head – like a man who has been arrested and told not to move. But in this case, he rocked back and forth in the chair, removing himself from the interaction but at the same time giving in to it.

After rocking a few minutes, he excused himself to go pay the check for the table of three. I had already lingered long enough to imbibe a third cup of coffee when really one is plenty for me, so I figured it was my time to go as well. I made a point of walking past the table of business, just to see what the woman was selling – but spread across the papers was an open checkbook which the wife had pulled out of her purse. I saw those fat waxy fingers, pink lacquered nails, and glittering rings – they thrust forth a pen. Perfume wafted over the smell of sausage and bacon. I wanted to chase after the husband, “No, go back, don’t let her do it!”

It wasn’t intentional, but I found myself standing behind the man as he paid the check. I wanted him to hurry so he could get back before his wife finished writing the check. But the woman behind the counter wouldn’t leave well enough alone. “Would you like some candy bars, sir, we’re having a two-for-two sale today,” she said. (If you buy two you get two for free? I think that’s what it means.) He shook his head demurely as he folded his wallet to hide it away from one last intrusion – and this is where someone might suspect, but not really know as I knew, that something was on the man’s mind – he said, “I don’t know how you women do it. I couldn’t sell a thing if my life depended on it.”

She said kindly, “Sir, I’m not selling candy, I’m just offering it to you.”

Going to Gethsemani

Hawk Eyes

I ask myself every so often – usually while in the throes of a headache or in a routine with little time for writing – whether I should give up on this project that creeps slower than I thought. That’s a serious question when so many more immediate or important needs loom over each day. Yesterday was that weighty kind of day when I sat at the morning table rather than writing at the morning table, not unusual of late . . .

I noticed a large hawk perched in the tree outside the window, at first just his tightly folded back side looming in my range – a foreboding figure cloaked in a dark spread of cape. Its head began to turn nearly 300 degrees from one side to the other, as I thought only owls could do; its head would turn to the right and continue over that right shoulder until its head faced over the left shoulder; and having done that, it would turn its head to the left and continue round until it was looking over the right shoulder – and after I had seen its beak and features from all these many angles, and it had sort of proven to me all that it could do with its limber neck, that is when it carefully turned its body around, as a tightrope walker might do, upon the branch to face me so that I could observe it front wise too – and there it remained for more than an hour. Its mode was not hunting but observation, sometimes directly at me in the window, sometimes at a squirrel obliviously eating nuts on the ground eight feet beneath the hawk’s talons, sometimes at a thing in the distance or nearby. I took many pictures, and His Majesty was not bothered in the least by my clicking and flashing and occasional bumps on the window pane – eyes like a hawk, as the saying goes – and so I knew this hawk was not oblivious to me, but somehow even wanted me to see it perched there on the branch like an answer to a prayer – for that’s what answers do, I thought, they just sit there, present themselves, don’t ask or deliberate or shift or fly away – they present themselves, as is, as are, as am. Take it or leave it. That’s how the hawk sat there.

I got up with trepidation and quiet to fetch my book, Animal Speak by Ted Andrews, which is about the meaning of various animal totems and sightings, the spiritual meaning for ourselves as we sight these creatures and interpret them in context of the circumstances or questions in our lives – and yes, the hawk waited for me; almost, I would say awaited my return, for I saw its eyes fix upon the window till I got there and sat down again – they are messengers, the book says, and they represent creative energy and a long range view of creative projects. They are also great protectors of that energy – certainly I saw its aspect of protection in that great dark cape it presented to me at the first sighting, as though showing me what massive wraps were at its disposal – that – and then of course the circular eye watch, like a beam of light from a lighthouse, to show me what kind of range it took to guard me. Then I thought about the stance it took – patience in observation – I kept thinking of that word, stance . . . was that it’s message?  And what about patience?

In this case, there really is a full circle (300 degrees, anyway) happy ending to the dark morning, as it began, because I started to write something I had been putting off for a long time, and finished more than I would have thought – through the clatter of other needs and voices at my side – a stance.  In the end, it was that hour long stance of patient observation that moved me . . .

Double Helix

Back from a three-day respite at the beach – a check-in with my favorite spot on earth, water flowing at my feet, footprints made and washed away almost before I had time to turn around to watch them last briefly. As usual, there is so much to write, but not much time for the written word . . . and like cherry picking when the tree is full, I begin by nibbling . . .

I awoke to the words of an Eric Clapton song, “If I could change the world . . . “ – But why? I no longer want to change the world. I always saw writing as my personal way to change the world. A noble goal, I once thought – but finally, off the hook, relieved that I don’t have to do that. Those footprints in the sand don’t have to last forever – after all.

This new insight may come from age and reality, but also prompted from a book which I avidly read on the beach as the waves tumbled to my feet – The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, a book about the happiest and least happy places on this planet. I especially enjoyed reading, and re-reading, the chapter on Iceland because I’ve always been fascinated by everything Icelandic – its history, landscape, personality, lore – especially the sagas from a thousand years ago. Iceland is – and this is no shock to me but is meant to surprise the readers of Weiner’s book – Iceland is the happiest nation of people on this planet. The author has traveled the globe and discounted out the most suspected reasons for happiness: good weather, personal success, financial security, political stability, religiosity, ritual, etc. – and the answer comes that Icelandic people are happiest because of an inherent creative spirit that is not reserved for a few so-called successful artists, but a way of life for everyone.  

Weiner writes: “In Iceland, being a writer is pretty much the best thing you can be. Successful, struggling, published in books or only in your mind, it matters not. Icelanders adore their writers. Partly, this represents a kind of narcissism, since just about everyone in Iceland is a writer or poet. Taxi drivers, college professors, hotel clerks, fishermen. Everyone. Icelanders joke that one day they will erect a statue in the center of Reykjavik to honor the one Icelander who never wrote a poem. They’re still waiting for that person to be born.”

Icelanders write, but they also love to read what others have written – whether in published format or by the guy next door. “Better to go barefoot than without a book,” is an Icelandic saying. Reading and writing and telling stories -- also, music compositon and visual art -- is the Icelandic way of occupying the winter hours, most of which are shrouded in complete darkness for months at a time. No one is expected to become famous from their art, or to change the world, or to make millions of krona, or even to be recognized. Art is fun, to be enjoyed – and to be shared around the hearth or in the mead halls.  I guess we Westerners would call that unambitious.

Another noteworthy quality of the Icelanders is their high level of tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of others – their ancient heroes are the likes of Ref the Sly, Gunnlaug Wormtongue, Sarcastic Halli, and Thorstein Staff-Struck. Women were no less independent, the most famous being Gudrid the Far Traveler who is said to have crossed the Atlantic eight times and dubiously lost two or three husbands. She gave birth to her first son, Snorri, in what was to become America 500 years later, that is once the European man named Christopher Columbus made his “discovery” official.  In old age, she summed up her life's accomplishments by saying that Karlsefni (one of her husbands) told the tale of these voyages better than anyone else.

Icelanders expect failure – even applaud it – because that means a person has challenged the impossible. Failure, they say, is living proof that the goal was a mammoth one, one that took on the brutality of existence. That’s what they admire – the attitude of challenge and all the endless creative ways to accomplish a goal – and then, best of all, the stories about what happened.  

There were times on the beach last week when I deliberately walked a weave-through pattern to the footprints of those who had walked earlier that morning:  a man with a very high arch – a child about two or three years old – a flat footed person of short, husky stature – a large dog – our prints became woven together like a grand helix – and, there, I had added my strand too – and all lasting no longer than the time it takes to turn around and watch them fade.

4 HA-HA

As a remembrance of my mother who passed away two years ago this week, I made a batch of her famous “club sauce” which she always made in late August or early September as a way to use up the season’s crippled or twisted tomatoes still hanging on the vines – and to be enjoyed on meatloaf through the winter months or given as gifts to those who praised the vinegary-sweet-peppery concoction. Club sauce – my mother couldn’t remember who first handed out the recipe, but the name came from a lifelong "club" of hers that formed amongst six or seven young WWII brides who lived together in housing projects financed by the army while their husbands served time overseas. She used to say that she never laughed so much or so hard as that year before the war ended when this group of women banded together as sisters to teach each other the fundamentals of cooking and house tending – and in some cases, childbirth and child care – skills that would become the work of their lives once the war ended and their husbands returned safely home.

I had been thinking about her for a week as I stalked farmers markets to find the farmer who might have the right kind of leftover tomatoes at the right price – as well as the “18 long skinny hot red peppers” that her scanty, handwritten recipe called for. When all ingredients had been procured and the day came to make the club sauce, I first fixed a large pot of tea – and instantly felt her presence in the kitchen as a sort of guiding force in the making of it . . . some small voice told me I was being too heavy on the sugar, not heavy enough on the onions – something told me – though if it was her, I think she might have warned me about the juiciness of the tomatoes (and what I could have done to thicken it up a bit), and also how to “hotten it up” since the peppers I bought were not as fiery as the ones she used to grow . . .

. . . nevertheless, what yielded were 22 pints of jarred and labeled club sauce, arranged neatly on the kitchen counter just as she would have done after a long day of canning – to admire and enjoy the artistry of practical work for several days before taking it all to the fruit cellar for the winter. On one of these several days I happened to be driving home after a morning of errands when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw a car with a woman inside who looked so much like my mother that a wave of unsolicited comfort rolled through me. Intrigued, I glanced in the rear view mirror every few seconds to catch another glimpse of her familiar face, noticing that her headlights were shining brightly on this horrifically bright sunny day. That seemed odd, and I laughed to think about it – the only person on the road with brightly shining headlights on a sunny day. In a brief second, I took in her short, silvery grey hair that was smoothly trimmed and close to her head – she was always proud of her silver hair and the bit of natural wave it carried. The sun sparkled off her hair as it beat into her car window. On another glance I took in the heavily wrinkled lines that ran along either side of her face from her nose down to her mouth, forming brackets to her upper lip – I believe cosmetologists call those the nasolabial lines – and there’s not much that can be done about them. She always said they made her look “crabby.” Another glance, I took in the reposed half-grin of her mouth that was familiar to me when she was content or in a detached thinking mode. She often looked that way – as though she were enjoying some private joke while the rest of the world hurried on. I took in her stooped, narrow shoulders – so familiar – and her hands which were clasped firmly on the steering wheel; she was a careful driver who would not take her eyes off the road or her hands off the wheel. In this case, she seemed to keep her vigil straight on a daughter who spent too much time looking in a rear view mirror. The only feature unlike my mother was the pair of dark sunglasses – since she never wore them – but even those were oddly shaped just like her reading glasses. Maybe she was trying to disguise herself!

I studied all these particulars as a whole when we both stopped at the red light and I had time to study her image in my rear view mirror for a minute or more. I’ve never been so grateful for a long red light as this time when I could keep my eyes fixed on the rear view mirror where her image was perfectly reflected. I heard my own voice say aloud – to myself, but also to the spirit of what I saw and felt – I said, “So you’re watching over me, aren’t you ma?” Just then, although she too was alone in her car, the woman grew a large grin across her face, stretching and taking in the length of those nasolabial lines on her face. I was grateful for all that extra saggy skin on her face because I saw that it accommodated a larger grin. In the mode of her full smile, she looked even more like my mother . . . even more so . . . and I smiled in my own car too. Feeling braver, I said aloud again, “I knew it, I knew it was you, and I know you’ve been with me all week . . . “

I had more to say, especially about the making of club sauce, but the red light turned green and we were both obliged to move forward. I glanced in my mirror once we had crossed the intersection, and I saw her right-turn signal blink, which meant she’d be leaving me soon. Just as she was about to turn right and I was to continue straight, I said, “So what was that all about if you can’t follow me home to see the 22 jars of club sauce on my kitchen counter?” The woman’s car turned right, and the car that had been behind her suddenly passed and pulled in front of me to stop at the next red light. The car’s license plate read, “4 HA-HA.” And then I understood – it was her answer to me – for the fun of it.

Club Sauce, the recipe
36 lg. tomatoes, peeled and cooked down slightly
6 lg. onions, chopped
18 long skinny hot red peppers, ground
6 cups white vinegar
6 cups sugar
6 Tbsp. salt

Add all ingredients except hot peppers, cook slowly for 2 or 3 hours, will thicken slightly. Add hot peppers and cook a little longer. Process pint jars in hot water bath for 20 minutes.

The Miracle of Three Arms

This scene from Costco yesterday: A mother with three young children – one is a baby girl, perhaps two months old; the other two are boys, maybe four years and two years old. The older boy is sitting in the cart with bulk food items all around him, and he is managing the inventory with contentment. The two-year-old is having a meltdown and running beside his mother, crying and yelling to a pitch that grates all nerves – the mother repeating calmly but firmly the single directive, Stop, Stop . . . though it does no good. He is in meltdown mode, the kind of which my father and his generation used to say only a “good whack” could snap him out of – my mother called it “shock therapy” – and though I never tried it on my own children, it seemed to work for my parents.

Back to the scene – the baby lay in her “dish” in the the front of the cart looking up at the bright lights of this world to which she has been brought; chaos is swirling round her, the cart going faster as the noise gets louder, the lights big and bright. Her small mouth makes only the oo-shape, but no sound comes forth; her eyes are bigger than her oo-shaped mouth. I passed this group once in the aisles, going in the opposite direction, and I felt only irritation at the grating din of the two-year-old – though I admired the modulated Stop, Stop that never veered off course.

I had come to Costco for one dinner item, so my trip was quick, and I had no cart to wrangle with. I was surprised when I found myself in the checkout line beside hers only a few minutes later. My view was superb, for I lagged behind by only a fraction. My sentiments changed as I viewed this poor woman with children growing out of her – the food items toppling o’er and propped even in the baby’s seat – the two-year old still screaming inconsolably. Once parked in the checkout line, she picked him up to hold him closely, his croc-clad feet kicking her bellywise all the while. She had the facial expression of those cows or dogs you see when they are nursing calves or many pups and they cannot move for fear of disturbance to the rankling young – and the hurt it might cause her own body – and the screams of protest and hunger it might arouse – and the tiredness . . . it is an ultimate submission to a younger set. I saw all of that in her face – the history and evolution and universality of it all. I began to understand that her well-modulated Stop, Stop may have come from this level of submission and tiredness and personal need – and not from a good parenting book she had read. She could muster no more.

Then it came time for her to load the bulk food items onto the counter for check-out. I could blame none of those food items for the demise of the two-year-old’s nervous system – yogurt, cheerios, fruit snacks, bananas, orange juice. She tried hard to provide easy but nutritious foods to her young.

Continue:  She is unloading food with one hand while the two-year-old still squirms and kicks and cries in her arms – and just then the four-year-old abruptly stands up inside the cart, his head or shoulder bumping the baby’s dish so that baby shows shock on her placid face – where did that come from? – he reaches round to pat baby’s head and face with a firm open palm while she is trying to dodge his pats with her blinking eyes.

And somehow the mother manages to steady the baby’s dish with one hand while lending a lift out of the cart to the four-year-old with another arm – continuing to hold the two-year-old – somehow unloading bulk food items – reaching into her purse for the Costco membership card that someone has requested . . . all of that. And instead of jumping out of line to help her as I realize now I should have done, I thought of that miniature Russian icon I bought long ago when I was a young mother – it is called The Icon of the Mother of God of Three Arms – and its significance has to do with the miracle of restoring a prayerful man’s arm that had been cut off, but for me it has always represented the far more mysterious phenomenon of the woman who tends to many things . . .

. . . and I saw her bend over with that screaming two-year-old still on her hip to retrieve items from the bottom shelf of the cart – cases of things – and I saw pendulous breasts nearly reach to the floor – and that look of pale submission on her face. Her feet and arms and legs were pale as milk too – and this is the end of summer when we all have our summer tans if only by osmosis. I think, as she bends over, that it must be a hormone that does that, that makes a woman agree to all this – for I know it is not just this trip through Costco that she will endure, but the trip through the parking lot, the buckling-in of squirmy children, the loading of food into the van, the unloading once she’s home, the hunger and cries of children, the tired two-year-old, a nursling who will speak up in turn . . . it is 3:00; she will think about dinner, there will be no naps, no tea, no five-minute bathroom break. No impulse of hers will evolve into a complete thought. All thought will be snipped, cut short, formed halfway in the brain. I used to think about brain synapses when I was a young mother, those junctions or connective things that form in the brain when babies and children (adults too) are learning and thinking. I always felt that my own brain synapses were being snipped in half by a great orange scissors (as I imagined it) because I could never complete a thought or sentence. I am still amazed that the brain knows how to heal once the children are grown – it knows how to perform the miracle of restoring its own synapses of thought and learning, to re-connect and complete its own sentences in the brain – and even to write them!

I thought of the woman with many arms all the way home from Costco and on my way to yoga class that evening . . . all last night while I was falling asleep, and this morning when I woke up – and finally, while writing this snippet, I forgave myself for not writing that book of mine when the children were young and I was a mother not working.

Hobo Bags

My self-education in the stock market comes at a time when there is no winning that can’t be snatched away like a red cape from the bull’s pathway. Each time the caboodle goes up, it comes down too – as though not one stock could think independently, but rather must follow the herd. Either all arrows are red, or all arrows are green. We all go up, we all go down. The vicissitudes of the market, as the saying goes.

I’m really tired of watching things go up and down – while never funding what I really want, which is a trip to somewhere I’ve never been. What use are those graphs in vivid movement if I never leave the house? I stay put, a graph in flat line.

The end of summer – and August, my least favorite of all the months. August is when tolerance is pushed past the limit, when nothing more can be done for summer and nothing much can be started for fall. It’s a seedy month – when all the flowering has been done, but the dead and drying leaves refuse to let go. It’s a time of suspension – in the air, in our actions, even in the way the insects drone without end. I walk outside at night or early in the morning, hear those herds of cicada that can’t be seen, and I think, they are flat lined too. Waiting.

I won’t be able to tolerate seeing that movie that promises to be all the rage – “Eat, Pray, Love.” I won’t even read the book. All I know is that it’s about a woman who takes off from the responsibilities of life for one year to travel the world and experience Life. She divides her year between three countries, Italy, India, and Indonesia. It’s a spiritual quest too. And of course she falls in love at the end. It is written in part or in whole from the real life experience of the author. She came home to write the book, and it was an instant success.

Yesterday, while waiting to get my hair trimmed, I flipped through a magazine and saw a page of “gear” that we must own now that the movie is coming out – it’s called “The Eat, Pray, Love image.” For example, there is a canvas striped hobo bag that you could buy for $190; a blue chambray shirt with a nehru neckline, $112; bright pink canvas espadrilles for walking the markets of New Delhi and tasting new delights from the hands of another – at $100 or so. It’s the gear, the look, the lifestyle – though few of us could replicate the Julia Roberts toothy grin and thick hair that piles atop her head in Bohemian fashion. We should all run out to adopt the look of the middle aged woman (who doesn’t look middle aged) who has fortuitously taken a year to travel the world and experience all that few of us can even imagine.

Women at middle age, realizing that they have maybe 20 years left before they are immobile or at least compromised – they wake from the instinct of giving life to others and they crave to experience life for themselves. They want to have Fun, as our contemporary Cyndi Lauper told us when we were young – that is, we want to travel, eat foods we have not cooked ourselves, see people and places for no good reason other than to experience Life. Women are the natural born keepers of life – which is why they give birth – and, after childbearing years are done, they still have the impulse to live life which is really just the continuum of giving life.  That’s why the marketeers think they can peddle this book and movie to us, that we'll latch onto it like life itself.  It’s odd, however, that in the course of my own “travels” – to the bank, grocery store, yoga class – I’ve heard women say, “No, I don’t want to see that movie, “ or, “I can’t bear to see that.” One woman said, “I got to New Delhi with her and I tossed the book in the trash.” I think most women know the difference between real Life and the improbable one that is sold on the screen or in a book. The first question everyone has is, how'd she get the money? This particular subject of wanting to experience our lives while still mobile is too treasured and touchy for most of us to face in facsimile form.

I looked for a long time at that striped hobo bag in the magazine, knowing I had one similar to that (for much less money) when my children were young and diapers were kept there. And the blue chambray shirt – to this day I call it my uniform -- I had several.  Julia Roberts is smiling . . . that familiar hobo bag slung o'er her blue shoulder . . . you too can have this life, she seems to say.

I think most women by the August of their lives know the difference between marketing, the stock market, and the markets of New Delhi.  Let the real one stand up.

A Taste for Books

“Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella and went through the wood to the baker’s. She bought a loaf of bread and five currant buns.”

This is a line from one of my favorite books, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” and I can’t help but quote it to myself, or to anyone who cares to listen, every time I bake a batch of sourdough rye currant buns.

During my very brief career as a high school English teacher, I was advised by a veteran teacher that any assigned project would gain students’ cooperation and maybe even excitement so long as food was involved.

That bit of advice comes back to me as I sort through the nearly-empty bedrooms of my grown children and an attic of clutter that includes boxes and bags of children’s books. The great number of food-themed books is suddenly before me – “The Gingerbread Boy,” “Stone Soup,” “Jamie O’Rourke and The Big Potato,” “Rain Makes Applesauce” – to name a few. The entire “Strega Nona” series by Tomie dePaola seems to be based on the love of pasta and bread – and the term “never ending pasta pot” and the baking of an Italian panettone at Christmastime have become both a friendly phrase and an annual tradition in our house because of his books. Some book purchases were made after my children were grown, such as the complete collection of Winnie the Pooh tales – whose enduring quest can be boiled down to two things: honey and friendship. That veteran teacher was right – children (of all ages) have a natural affinity for food.

As a parent, I particularly enjoyed quoting a guilt-instilling passage from my personal favorite, “The Little Red Hen.” This is about a hardworking hen who lives with others who enjoy the fruits of her efforts but none of the hard work. This is what she says, a quote I have memorized from repeated usage: “’All by myself I planted the wheat, I cut the wheat, I took the wheat to the mill to be ground into flour. All by myself I gathered the sticks, I built the fire, I mixed the cake. And all by myself I am going to eat it!’ And so she did, to the very last crumb.”

All children are prone to eating too much of a good thing – as is Peter Rabbit who got carried away in Mr. McGregor’s garden by all the tempting radishes, lettuce, French beans . . . “And feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.” At nighttime, he was put to bed by his mother and given a tablespoon of chamomile tea – “But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.”  I enjoyed quoting this when one child felt sick (or had tonsils out) and couldn't eat dinner.

“Children are the best readers of genuine literature,” says Isaac Bashevis Singer, one of my favorite writers of both children’s and adult literatures -- categories he frequently blurs or ignores according to his publisher. Singer continues, “The child is still the independent reader who relies on nothing but his own taste (my italics).  Names and authorities mean nothing to him. Long after literature for adults has gone to pieces, books for children will constitute the last vestige of storytelling, logic, faith in the family, in God, and in real humanism . . . "

My children are technically grown, and these tattered childhood books have one by one been moved from the attic and bedrooms to my own personal library – and some, to their rightful place in the kitchen. I have never stopped loving them. I find myself quoting those timeless classics much as a scholar might quote Blake or Keats – if only to myself as I bake the traditional panettone or the occasional batch of currant buns, always to be enjoyed alongside a cup of tea.

Some Mother's Bird

The baby bluebirds are eating on their own today, not perched on the feeder helplessly waiting for mother or father to place food in their mouths – though if a parent shows up they will suspiciously open needy beaks to let out infantile squeals of helplessness as though they’d been left to starve – it’s easier that way, they might think. Their mother must be watching them from high branches, observing as they feed themselves like grown-ups, before she comes down to share the feeder with them as equals – for she is hungry too. That’s when her babies remind her, we shall never be equals; you shall always be our mother.

I saw her, the mother, look at one of these splotchy blue fledglings at the birdfeeder the other day – the same old response came from the baby – that is, an open, begging beak – and she perched herself face to face against this fledgling as though sitting him down for a lesson. She braced her body – and how can I say I saw this, a bracing? She looked stiff, astute, statue-like, and she stared straight into the open beak of the bird. She leaned slightly forward as though readying herself to make an attack – and against her own baby! She held the most statue-like presence of an angry bird that I had ever seen. The baby, clueless and impervious – for this mother had always been kind – kept opening its beak and squealing – didn’t you hear me, mother? Won’t you feed me? Why are you acting that way? But mother remained resolute . . .

This is the same mother who, along with her mate, had worked tirelessly to hatch and feed babies all through June. Each morning mother and father seemed to anticipate my emergence from the front door to put out a few tablespoons of store-bought worms to supplement the diet of their growing family in the birdhouse out back. She must have been watching me from above, for before I could get back into the house to look out the kitchen window, she and her mate would be working in tandem to peck up as many wiggly things into their beaks as possible for delivery to their little house out back. They’d work one at the feeder, one at the birdhouse, back and forth, till all the harvesting was done – and I would run from kitchen window to back room window, trying to keep pace with each, but sometimes missing one or the other along the way. Humorously, I’d catch the male bird lingering at the feeder to sample a few tasty treats for himself before filling his beak for the family – why not? – while mother bird never showed anything but drive in her eyes – the drive to satisfy the hunger of noisy babies. I’ve seen that look before. I understand now why Disney chose merry bluebirds to ready Cinderella for the ball – to sew her dress, tie her bows, and carry her train – for they are active, hardworking, vigilant, and driven birds.

Once I saw a noisome squirrel – they’re all noisome – get too close to the hatchlings’ house, and out of nowhere came diving a sapphire male bluebird toward the squirrel’s head. As soon as the squirrel went running, this furious bluebird chased him across the backyard while flying not four inches from the ground.

Flying lessons began over Fourth of July weekend – watchful parents sat perched in high branches while their twin fledglings made awkward hops and leaps into the unknown, at one time landing like dropped eggs onto this back doorstep where they looked up to me for guidance as to what should be done next. I had already seen what happened to that noisome squirrel, so I kept my distance other than to click a few photos – they grow up so fast . . .

But that was June . . . then the Holiday . . . and now, mid-July, this mother holds firm at feeding time. Unmoved by the gaping mouth, I saw her make one straight pecking attack at her baby’s open beak. She did not touch the young bird, but I think had calculated the move only to make her point – I will not be feeding you again.

The baby bird did not pull back, was not afraid of the simulated attack, and did not flinch a feather. Then the mother flew away, having stated her purpose firmly. She didn’t feed her baby – but interestingly, she also didn’t partake of the worms I had put out to feed the whole family. She had shown her fledglings this easy hunting ground; she would find her own food elsewhere.

I saw her come back later after the babies had had their fill and flown away to some higher branches. She came up to the feeder alone, hopped around to look full circle for her fledglings – realizing, I think, that she was alone at last – then poked around half-heartedly into the leftover meal to see if any worms had been left for her. None!  I think that made her happy. She stayed perched there a few minutes longer – her stature relaxed now, the drive gone from her eyes, the readiness gone from her wings. She looked out over a world still waiting for her. In all of June, I had never seen her rest upon the feeder so contentedly.

Dreams of our mothers
Lived in younger hosts;
A safe passage, is all for now
She prays.

Canful of Pens

I have so many stray pens strewn through the house and in my purse from places I have been, businesses I have frequented – some I have not . . . there is one which recurrently comes into my hand from a place I have not been – “Studley Chiropractic Clinic.” That’s the inscription on just one of a can full of pens I poured into a box of miscellanea to bring home with me when my sister and I cleaned out my mother’s house after her death. The can of pens was on the hutch cabinet near the phone – a large soup can that she had covered with a yellow-and-orange floral design contact paper. She began to stand pens in the can, one at a time – I imagine – as she was given them over many years from such places as the chiropractor’s or dentist’s or doctor’s offices where she went; from the hardware store, bank, pharmacy, or hearing aid center – the trail left by a widow who had learned to take care of herself.


Some of the pens must have been mailed to my mother from Medicare, for they tout advertisements for drugs that I’m sure she never took – Lexipro, Namenda, Maxalt-MLT. She was noted for curing all ills with an aspirin and a good nap, though in later years I suspect she let a prescription-trigger-happy doctor make those choices for her – this will help, he most likely said too often. Maybe her pharmacist put one such pen in each bag of refilled prescription – another pen – and she placed the pen upright in the tin can by the phone.

It’s been more than a year since I spilled the can of pens into the box and brought them home with me and placed them in a small clay pot near my own phone. And in this past year many of those pens have been pitched, one by one, into the large trash can – that is, if they didn’t work when I needed them to. I’m always careful to read the pen just one last time to see what piece of the trail just ended.

That’s why most of my mother’s pens are gone now. Only a dozen or 15 remain, like this one that keeps coming into my hand from Studley Chiropractic Clinic. She must have gone there a lot – and he often gave her a pen – for I think I have 5 or 6 of these pens in various colors. I don’t remember ever tossing out a pen from Studley Chiropractic – and my mother quit going to him at least 10 years ago because she thought he had cracked a bone in her osteoporotic spine – and I think she was right – for she was in so much pain after a visit – and an x-ray showed there was a hairline fracture in the lumbar spine.  Looking back, I would say that was the beginning of her slow decline, for she stopped her decades-long daily walking routine after that – a hairline crack that would become the great divide between a healthy lifestyle without drugs and – the other side – though of course no one could see it at the time. I’ll bet that’s when the town’s prescription-zealous doctor began saying things like, this will help – and so a pain medication began, and then the refills cycled in – and maybe that’s how the pens advertising odd drugs got into her home.

Before the hairline crack in her spine, she would joke to us about her chiropractor and dentist sharing the same small office building on Main Street – only one dentist in town and one chiropractor in town – an unlikely partnership of two diverse professions, but one that made sense with so few professionals in town. The partnership was called “Studley and Dickie” – for the dentist’s name was Dr. Dickie.

She thought that was so funny – as did all the women, mostly widows, in her quilting group.

“I’ve got my appointments with Drs. Studley and Dickie today,” one woman might say.

“Two in one day?” another might be obliged to say before the whole quilting group cackled at the old joke. We – her children and grandchildren – never got tired of the joke, the way she said it anyway. It’s funny to me how Fate (another word for Humor, I suspect at times), has an easier time of creating such odd bedfellows in small towns than in the biggest of cities. I wonder if either of these dignified older men ever suspected how much fun the town’s elderly women were having with their names . . .

So my mother would schedule her dentist appointment . . . and since she was going into the building anyway, she would make a chiropractic appointment . . . and the quilting group would have met the day before or the day after – all as I imagine.

I suppose she picked up one pen from each appointment, for I have several of each that stand upright and alongside each other in the clay pot – and they have been the most humorous reminder of the trail she left.

Between the Lines

A short article buried in section/page B-5 of our local newspaper caught my attention to a greater degree than any newspaper editor might have imagined. This was news out of Philadelphia – stating that one of only seven executives to know all three parts of the secret to making Thomas’ English muffins is leaving his post to take a lesser-paying job with Hostess, maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies.

This is not bread – the English muffin – it is a product defined and given signature by its presence of nooks and crannies – those empty places within the structure of toasted gluten where butter and jam might be cradled and crunched.

I know about the English muffin – which is to say I have not succeeded in producing these hallmark repositories for butter and jam. The unobtrusive English muffin seems to me the pinnacle of bread baker’s art – not even sourdoughs have daunted me as much, for at least the sourdough is glad to be alive and will tell me what it needs. But the English muffin is stalwart and guarded of its clues. I have all the equipment and many recipes that promise to yield the authentic result – but this persistent baker/writer has met her match. The English muffin is the place where smooth texture and consistent crumb are not the advents of success. As they say in many forms of martial arts or Eastern practices, the true Master leaves behind all rules. During my very brief teaching career, when challenged by students who wanted to know why they had to follow the “five paragraph rule” of writing an essay, I would say, “So you can throw it out once you’ve mastered it.” So it is with the English muffin – one must know the rules of bread baking so well that one can break them and thus produce a superior product. Paradoxically, the rules do apply – only they are no longer written rules – they are unspoken, as those seven masters at Thomas’ know. The secret is transferred via one great mind to another.

The company that makes Thomas’ English muffins has successfully protected their secret for more than 75 years. According to the article, there are three parts to the winning formulae – and this is more than I’ve heretofore known about the English muffin. Every recipe I have admits there is a secret, and then proceeds to tell you the secret: use of carbonated water in the dough, a bit of baking soda to the yeast, a bit of baking powder to the yeast, baking soda to the carbonated water, a pinch of pure ascorbic acid to the water . . . definitely no milk . . . and none of those secrets is the real thing.

The owners of the Thomas’ English muffin brand are suing back-stabber Chris Botticella because they say they have “good reason” to believe he will expose the secrets to Hostess who doesn’t make an English muffin at this time. Botticella says that his confidentiality agreement is valid “only during his employment” – and does not bar him from working elsewhere. But there are only four biggies in the English muffin industry – and this possible fifth could have major impacts on profits, makers of Thomas’ brand say. Plus, there are other secrets – for new products – which he knows. That said, I think "Bays" brand makes a far superior English muffin to Thomas’ – those Bays’ repositories will accommodate a swallow of good tea along with butter and jam.

The nook and cranny is really just empty space. This reminds me of the pinnacle of writing in which the most important words are really those that exist between the lines – open space for the reader to say for himself. I think of all those great writers of literature who have devoted their lives to lining the bookshelves of libraries for generations to come so that silent parties might walk the aisles with their own thoughts – and that aisle is a cranny.

Author John Gardner has said that the best writing  leaves much un- said so that the reader has to come up with connections and conclusions that make him or her feel smarter than the writer. And when a reader feels smarter than the writer, it makes that reader want to sit down with the writer in order to share dialogue – sitting and talking together. The nook is an open space formed by two adjoining walls; a place larger, at least wider, than the cranny. It’s a place large enough for two people to sit and talk.

The hardest thing to put in writing is the thing you can’t put there at all. You have to create the structure – that is, glutenous strands – then provide temperature, time, and humidity – and a good dose of patience – till the reader sees between the lines.

Nooks and crannies must come of themselves, and in their own time – that’s what I’ve learned about writing – I mean, about English muffins . . .

The Long and Short of it

While reading an article recently about the 10 best book stores in the nation, I wasn’t surprised to see these supersized descriptions – “20,000 square feet and more than 500,000 books;” “One entire city block and 650,000 used books;” “1.5 million books in stock;” “1 million volumes in 3 convenient locations.”  My favorite description is the slogan from Strand Bookstore in NYC: “18 miles of books!”

My first memory of too many books to fathom comes from my student days at UNC-Chapel Hill where the Wilson Library famously housed 10 stories of books – five stories above ground and five underground. The collectible and rare books were housed underground, and I would often descend to the bottommost floor on a Sunday afternoon where I would stroll through the cramped, dark aisles, and smell the books. This was before the time of super security and hidden cameras – and so I truly felt alone with all those centuries of knowledge and my own private thoughts.

A more recent exper- ience came last year when my family and I went to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. for the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. They say that a copy of every book that has ever been copyrighted is housed there and at various undisclosed sites in Maryland. The architecture and feeling of the building is worth the trip, but you can’t actually see all those books – nor can you check them out.  But we must believe they are there.

At the other end of the spectrum, I can’t stop thinking about the tiny bookshop which opened about 18 months ago in the old auto repair shop on Main Street in my hometown in North Carolina – what might be considered one of the 10 smallest bookstores in the nation. I spent many-a-morning, a few weeks ago, perusing the “Local Literature” section which occupies about four feet of space on each of three shelves beside the checkout desk. I recognized many of the authors’ names – my high school English teacher, a guy who played football with my older brothers in high school, a woman who attended church with my mother, and a “stranger” who wrote a book about terrorist Eric Rudolph who was captured in a dumpster behind the local Sav-A-Lot store where my mother often shopped. There were other books about Cherokee Indian folklore and medicine, maps and guides for hiking the local trails, that sort of thing. But why two books about Abraham Lincoln?

“Those are because of Lincoln’s real father being buried here – you never heard that?”  That came from Linda who is the bookstore owner and former schoolmate of my older brothers.

After a few questions to reorient my mind to – and against – everything I had learned in elementary school about Abraham Lincoln, Linda proceeded to explain that no local person ever believed that Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky. I was 10 years old when my family moved south from Upstate New York, so I guess that’s why I hadn’t been made privy to what everyone knew . . . and so Linda proceeded to tell me the “real story” of Abraham Lincoln:

His real father was Abraham Enloe, a wealthy Western North Carolina plantation owner. Our future President was born, not in Kentucky as the history books tell us, but illegitimately in Rutherford County of Western North Carolina. He was moved to Kentucky in a wagon when he was about one month old by his mother, Nancy Hanks, and a man named Thomas Lincoln who had been hired by the real father to marry her . . .

I'll back up.  As legend goes, Mr. Abraham Enloe’s wife was visiting relatives in South Carolina when Nancy Hanks, a maidservant at the Enloe family estate, became pregnant. Upon her return, Mrs. Enloe promptly fired Nancy for being pregnant out of wedlock – she didn’t know who the father was – but then, once the baby was born, Nancy had the nerve to bring little Abraham Enloe Junior – yes, she named him that on the birth certificate – to the Enloe household to show him off. They say Mrs. Enloe took one look at the baby and went into a screaming fit because he looked just like all her other babies. Reportedly, Mr. Enloe gave a local kid, Thomas Lincoln, $500 in gold and a wagon to take Nancy and the baby to Kentucky and to marry her there. That’s how our future President came to be in Kentucky and came to be named Abraham Lincoln instead of Abraham Enloe. They say Mr. Enloe visited Kentucky – and Nancy – until Abe was six years old. That’s when Thomas Lincoln “found them together,” and decided to move his family to Indiana.

A man in Eastern North Carolina has written a persuasive and well documented book about the local legend that flies in the face of history: “Abraham Enloe of Western North Carolina.” Linda said the author, Don Norris, has come to her store for book signings on several occasions.

“I’ve got three signed copies at home. I’ll bring you one tomorrow,” she promised.

In the meantime, Linda gave me directions to the old gravesite where Lincoln’s supposed natural father is buried. But she warned me that the grave was marked “Abram” Enloe because people wrote things as they sounded back then – Abram.

This one Abraham Enloe had sired 16 children by his own wife – all tall and lanky like himself – and it is believed he has sired many others through the Carolinas and Georgia.

Linda told me that a man drove up from Atlanta last summer and went into the local Chamber of Commerce by the rail tracks and said he needed some help finding the gravesite of a possible relative of his. The woman in charge of the Chamber said to him, “And I know just where he’s buried” – and the man said, “How did you know?” And the woman replied, “Because you look like all the rest of the Enloes.” Linda said the man was tall, lanky, and dark featured.

Unlike today, no one during Abe’s lifetime would have written a book or tabloid article about such a “shameful” past. The locals of the time knew all about it, according to Linda – and that was shame enough. The Enloes were good people, and Enloe is still a good family name in the region; they were landowners and they employed a lot of people in Western North Carolina. No one would have been fool enough to bite the hand that feeds them.  But everyone knew . . . and Mildred verified this.

Mildred was the 93-year old woman who walked into the book shop the next morning while I was there to pick up my signed copy of “Abraham Enloe of Western North Carolina” and to report on the gravesite I had visited. Mildred said her grandparents owned much land in the area and they also kept indentured servants.  Oh, honey, everyone knew . . . and she shook my arm in earnest.

And I can’t stop thinking:  There’s no bookstore in this nation big enough to hold the kind of thing that everyone knows . . .

A Time for Prose

I read something noteworthy last night in the WWII-era travel memoir, Seven Years in Tibet – two starving,  frostbitten, coinless, and tired men take a look at the splendorous beauty of the Forbidden City of Lhasa, Tibet which has taken them 18 months of death defying ordeals and prison escapes to reach – a vision and height which no European before them had ever attained – and one says to the other, “After poetry, prose!”  That’s all he said.  And what he meant by that was, that’s beautiful – but so much for poetry, what can we eat and drink and where can we bathe and sleep – the prose of life.

When it comes down to it, the prose of life takes priority over “poetry “no matter how much, or for how long, we have waited to see the Forbidden City.  I can see an outline of the "Forbidden City" in my own writing these past months, and I know the trials it has taken to get this far – and how much further I have to go – but the prose of life is upon me as my college-age children arrive home for the summer.  Due to varying schedules, it will be a miracle to find a few quiet hours to myself.

Once finally admitted to the Forbidden City of Lhasa, the author and his comrade stayed for seven years – keeping journals, befriending the current Dalai Lama who was only a teenager at the time, and generally soaking up the atmosphere of Tibet. The author, Heinrich Harrer, returned to Austria as the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950, and so wrote this memoir from his journal recollections.  But first he had to live it.  He wrote many other books, but none had the impact or success of the one he actually lived through.

When my children return to their respective lives next August 24th (or so), and the house is clean and quiet once again, and my own belly is full, and the body is exercised and rested – the conditions necessary to appreciate the beauty of the "Forbidden City" – that is when my mind can return to writing my book. In the meantime, I’ll keep the journal, pen some notes, and perhaps finish an occasional blog . . .

“The once-longed-for sight could not shake us out of our apathy. The climb through the rarified air had left us breathless, and the prospect of an ascent to nearly 20,000 feet was paralyzing.”   (Seven Years in Tibet)

One Good Turn

I completed a four-day trip to my hometown in North Carolina, and back – and, as usual, there is so much material to write about that I mysteriously can write nothing at all. Just as when a tree bears more fruit than a busy, satiated person can consume – I feel glutted by the incidents and want to turn away from writing for a while. The most insignificant of them, however, is the thing that elbows me . . .

It’s the Waffle House experience. There was a retired sort of fellow who had been hired to be a “greeter” there; he was thin and dark around the gills, but full of energy and the seriousness of his job – he jumped to open the door for me in salutations of Good Morning! and Welcome to Waffle House! as I approached the door with my newspaper before the last 100-mile run of a 500-mile journey. He hurried to the only remaining table – a booth – where he cleared away plates and wiped the table clean, beckoned me to sit down while placing the plastic menu on the wet Formica top. I knew what I wanted as soon as the buxom woman with the raspy voice came over with the coffee pot and the honey moniker which she gave to everyone. She yelled out the well-rehearsed codes and equations that represented my order to the cook – and though he never acknowledged hearing her, she never doubted that he did.

I felt my kingdom undeservedly rally round me as I spread out the newspaper and she placed my drinks of coffee on one side and orange juice on the other – and I noticed the 6 people crammed into the 4-person booth in back of me and the 5 people crowded into the other booth in front of me. It was later, when my food was almost ready, that she apologetically leaned over and said, “Honey, now don’t feel ye need to do this, but would ye mind if we moved ye to a spot at the table o’er yonder so those four men might have a seat – but now honey, ye don’t need to 'cause it’s yer booth and ye was here b’for ‘em – don’t feel ye need to, honey.” And I saw four burly men standing outside the Waffle House talking to the friendly greeter because there wasn’t room for four such big men to stand inside the doorway while waiting for a seat . . .

So I said that I already felt guilty for having so much space to myself and that it would be fine to move – “Honey, ye don’t hafta . . . “ she repeated.  I want to, and I was already trying to manage the coffee and newspaper when the friendly greeter came inside to help me with my orange juice and to escort me to my new, made-for-one, cozy seat in the back – and he gave me his profuse thanks all the while we walked – my generosity and such . . . No, not at all, I’m happy to . . . that sort of thing, back and forth.

My kind waitress brought the food and continued to care for me, even though this wasn’t her station, and she gave me thanks each time so that my new neighbors began to understand the story. That’s when I took notice of the corner where I was sitting – which had at one time been the "smoker’s section" of Waffle House, I presume – that is, before the laws in NC were changed last year to prohibit all that smoking indoors.  But the smokers still remained – but without their "fix" – for they all had the eyes of withdrawal and trauma and reproof – eyes that had settled into sockets like sludge in a pond – suspended – eyes that reposed and fixed upon me – perhaps because of the animation I gave to eating and turning pages while they sat with fingers rendered motionless by the Law.

My waitress came back frequently to refill coffee and ask how I was doing. One of those times she swooped up the check and said, “Honey, ye don’t hafta pay this – they insist – now don’t ye say a word about’t ‘cause they insist” – and she was gone with my check and the coffee pot before I comprehended what she had meant by “they” and “insist” – that the four men had insisted on paying for my breakfast because I had given up my spacious booth for them . . . and what would I have said anyway?

I sat finishing my meal and drinking my coffee, all the while contemplating what I ought to do next – and all the while sensing that the smokers without their smokes were thinking the same thing – what’ll she do next? And then I came up with the plan to leave a nice tip for the friendly waitress since I felt the need to pass it on – this generosity of spirit. But I was not sitting in her station but rather in the smokers’ waitress’s station – and she had not yet acknowledged me. I think she had somehow taken on the demeanor or outlook of the smokers in her care – for she had large, dark pools around her eyes and a fishlike emptiness in her mouth, and she moved very slowly too. And so, after much thought, and as my perpetual onlookers waited in anticipation, I decided that when I left I would thank the table of four men and give them the tip large enough to cover the cost of my meal so they could “add it to the tip” for our waitress – and so I did, thanked them, and left the tip for our waitress with them – and of course they said they were more grateful than I was for having the booth to sit in, and that they would gratefully give her the tip – but then she passed by to refill their cups, and then she became grateful – and the booths full of people to either side noticed the exchange and, like ripples spreading in a pond, they too began to smile. I was feeling in the center of things too much, and so I began to back out of the door, but ran into the friendly greeter who in turn began the gratefulness cycle once again – and I said, No, you are the one who started this whole wheel turning with your friendliness at the door – and he just smiled as though already understanding the seriousness of his job – and it seemed the whole place became abuzz with gratefulness. When I looked over to the smoking section, I saw a different kind of trans-fixation in the eyes – they were still transfixed, but it was almost like someone had budged them loose from their orbit just a little bit and they had been able to move their eyes to a place outside their own realm for just that instant.

I emerged from the magical Waffle House and got into my car, feeling that I had just left some swirling tunnel of light – a kaleidoscope where various colors will mix and match, one upon another, to form patterns of hearts or clovers, stars, rings or golden links – the more you turn it . . .

It seems like such a small experience – and I really have more important ones to write about, ones that could add to the book I’m working on but can’t settle into this morning. I felt a curiosity as to whether the place really existed or was just a figment of my imagination – and so I got online to find it – and there it is – The Waffle House at 164 Tunnel Road – really – in Asheville, North Carolina.