Old Car

In my car's youth, I left the driving to her. I’d adjust the heat or air to my liking, select tunes to fit my mood, put my hands on the wheel, and trust her to get me to my destination. She always did.

Once she passed her ten-year birthday, however, things began to go. I get it; we’re on somewhat the same track in the aging department. I identify with her creaks, groans and slow days. I am sensitive to her sounds, and to other elements almost indefinable, tremors of communication between her accelerator and my foot. Almost before they occur, I can sense a catch, a rev of engine, a hint of hesitation. I ease off, and she rallies.

Starting has always been her forte. Believe me, I’ve had cars where I approached every departure with an anxious intake of breath. But this old girl, my Caravan, like a faithful dog who greets the negligent master with smiles and a wagging tail, starts right up, even if she’s been left idle for weeks.

Last week, she climbed the hills to Wildlife in Crisis, chugging and coughing, hitching and revving, to help me deliver a wounded woodchuck into caring hands and then brought me safely home. Once there, I had a story to write about injured animals and a refuge in the woods, so my valiant car’s deteriorating health slipped my mind.

Despite the frigid temperature, she started right up this morning, feigning cheer, determined to take me to Mercy Learning Center. As is our way, we took it slow, pulling over to let other drivers pass, gliding where we could, two old girls, out for a roller-coaster ride. But a string of traffic lights and the peaks and valleys of Park Avenue nearly broke her. She thumped painfully and shuddered as if to stall. I tapped the brake, then lightly pressed the accelerator. “Please Sweetie. You can do it,” I urged, holding my breath. As the road leveled out, she did as well.

In “Castaway,” when Tom Hanks befriended Wilson the soccer ball and sobbed when it floated away, I cried with him. I’ve been weepy more than once knowing the demise of my mobile womb is imminent.

She has been a refuge, a place for solitude, tears and reflection. When I had cancer, and during my father’s illness and death, she surrounded me with songs cheerful to soulful – “The Little Mermaid” to “Les Miserables,” music to feed my sorrow if that felt right, or something to banish the blues if it seemed a possibility. Not that we shared sad times only; when the weather was warm, I’d roll her windows down and we’d zip along our way, breezy, belting out “Life is a Highway” and “Shanty.”

When we nosed into the lot at Mercy Learning Center, she gave a chassis-shaking shudder. “Oh Sweetie. Rest a bit,” I said and left her, wondering what the return trip would bring.

Two hours later, I drew near her comforting, matronly form, a sight that has awaited and welcomed me in parking lots and unfamiliar places for eleven years. I was mentally preparing to make the call to Triple A, with the resulting chilly roadside wait, and a bevy of calls to figure out my next step. But, when I got into the car, gave her a pat, and said, “Can we do this?” she started right up, dear old friend. With tears in my eyes, I guided her gingerly out of the lot onto the road.

It was a painful trip home. The effort was huge on both our parts. Abdomen, (mine), clenched tight; breath held; posture, rigid, with a slight tilt forward as if to push, to will her onward. Our fellow travelers showed amazing restraint: no one honked as we plodded on, lurching and gasping, pulling over periodically. “You’re doing great, Sweetie, just great.”

As the gap closed between our trembling progress and home, I stroked her armrest, mindful that this might be our last ride. When we pulled into my spot in front of the house, I leaned against her steering wheel and cried.

Woodchuck Dilemma

Frozen mid-nibble, dark eyes vigilant, the woodchuck took heed of me, but stood his ground as I passed. In that singsong voice reserved for innocents, I said, “Well, look at you Bold One! Out for a snack and some sun!”

He seemed neither charmed nor frightened, but returned to chewing the spent January grass. Smiling at my encounter with nature, I entered the house.

Shortly after, I heard the door open and close as Dave returned from chopping wood, bounty delivered when Hurricane Sandy swept through. “Steer clear of that woodchuck,” he commented. “I think it’s sick.”

Dave has little patience for woodchucks. Each spring, a rotund mother bears her litter of three beneath our shed, and while I love glimpses of those fuzzy little bodies warming on a stone in the yard, he sees only future garden ravagers. I remind him that we have Stop and Shop to soothe our hunger, while flowers on the verge of full blossom sustain our animal friends. “They are not my friends,” Dave replies with a snarl. (He really is a dear man, but this is a sensitive subject.)

When my husband and I stepped out on the porch to take another look, the woodchuck ignored us briefly, then hobbled away, weaving, and hitching up his hind leg.

“Rats, he’s hurt. I just thought he was brassy,” I said. I don’t know what my problem is; I love animals, but wounded creatures unnerve me. Even wild babies, birds fallen from nests, a fawn seemingly abandoned, helpless, adorable, leave me immobilized and anxious. I’m not overly afraid of being bitten, although that is part of it; I think I’m more afraid of their fear and pain.

My friend Joan once released a mouse caught, but not killed, in a trap she’d set. Mind you, both of us hate traps. As long as the mice confine their skittering behind the walls, we’re happy enough to host them, but when pellets appear in the utensil drawer, they have crossed the line. Anyway, when Joan described freeing the mouse - “Here was this poor little guy, and I was all he had” - I was in awe of her compassion. I would have been in a distant room, eyes squeezed shut, fingers in my ears to block out desperate squeaks for help, praying Dave would soon be home.

So, on behalf of the gimpy woodchuck, I called Wildlife in Crisis (WIC), a local animal rehabilitation organization and left a message. When I went outside, the woodchuck had charitably solved the problem by disappearing. Peter from WIC called back later with information and suggestions, but I hoped it was a moot point.

After Dave left for work the next morning, I headed out to the compost heap. As I crossed the yard, my thoughts focused on coffee grounds and eggshells, the woodchuck and I jumped equally when suddenly we met. As well as he could with a bum leg, he scuttled under the shed while I stood musing, green plastic compost bucket in hand, my mood downcast. Could I ignore him? Did I have a responsibility here? If Nature was taking her course, happy or not, perhaps I had no role to play.

The woodchuck peeked out from under the shed. *Sigh*

Then I noticed my neighbors’ car in their driveway. The woodchuck and I were not alone! My neighbors, Ed and Laurie, and their children Rachel and Eddie, are animal lovers and willing rescuers when needed. I went inside, called them, and soon five of us stood in the yard, studying the gap between the shed door and the ground.

“Maybe we could use the crab net,” Ed remarked.

“Will it be strong enough?” I asked.

“I think so. You’ll need something to transport him though.”

I’d brought out a Have-a-Heart trap earlier, but it seemed small, so I ran to the attic to get a bin, emptied it of my high school scrapbooks, and zipped downstairs, planning to poke it with air holes while waiting for the woodchuck to agree to his capture. I glanced out the back door to see Ed holding a long pole. At the end of the pole squirmed the woodchuck in the net, giving no indication that he’d agreed to this plan.

By the time I connected with Peter at WIC for directions, Ed had transferred the woodchuck from the net to the Have-a-Heart and placed both in the back of my car. “Already smells like roadkill,” said Ed. This did not bode well.

My car’s status did not bode well either, as her transmission was failing. As I drove, I hushed and crooned to soothe the woodchuck, the car, and myself. It was a sensory barrage of revving and knocking from the Caravan and the clack and scrabble of claws on metal from the prisoner in the back. I fought the image of the woodchuck’s appearance beneath my feet and begged him to stay calm and stay put. Every so often, all would be silent, surely not a good sign. I’d glance warily to the floor, and then over my shoulder. “Don’t die! Don’t escape! We’ll be there soon.” If he was at all sensitive to my mental state, as they say animals can be, I was not helping his agitation.

Hugging curves, struggling up hills, and gliding into valleys, we made it – Alleluia – to the wooded haven of Wildlife in Crisis. When Peter met me at the car, he opened the hatch and lifted the cage and its sad occupant from my care, lifting a weight from me as well. I had done my part and delivered the sufferer into knowledgeable hands.

“If you could go sign in at the office, I’ll take him out back and take a look,” Peter said, leaving me to let myself in to the single-story wooden structure to the right of the parking area.

“DO NOT LET THE DUCK OUT,” stated a hand-lettered sign on the door.

Carefully, gauging space for one woman to enter and no ducks to exit, I opened the door and slipped inside. And there he was, a beautiful wood duck, with his distinctive crest, iridescent emerald head, and white accents, waddling freely about the floor, chattering amiably. He was not alone in his wanderings; a seagull, too, eyed me upon my arrival.

Lining the counter along one wall was a series of cages holding tiny hummingbirds, a bluebird and a blue jay. “The hummingbirds were brought to WIC by homeowners after they flew into windows," Peter said when he re-joined me. “We’ll be able to release two of them in the spring. Cats got the jay and bluebird; both are blind so they’ll be staying with us.”

Swoop! On wings, a small hawk buzzed overhead and alighted on a cupboard. As a rule, I am not at ease with flying beings in enclosed places, but this was obviously the norm at WIC so I tried to appear relaxed.

Peter told me the woodchuck would be quarantined for a time until it was certain he had nothing contagious. “We’ll observe him for a while and treat him for roundworms and head trauma. Usually, we’d give him a bath first, but we’ll hold on that until we know more.” A bath. Yet another plan unlikely to please the woodchuck.

At my request to look around, Peter accompanied me outside to stand before a vast netted aviary. Inside, hawks, imposing in size and dignified in demeanor, perched on substantial limbs placed at varying heights. I noted one with half a wing. “Most were hit by cars.” Peter explained, adding that about fifty hawks were currently in residence. “Most are red-tailed hawks. The population has really rebounded. They were almost wiped out, the hawks and eagles as well, but once DDT was banned, they came back. That’s all it took; to recognize the problem and take action.”

In another aviary, I spotted two great horned owls. When I exclaimed upon seeing them, Peter said, “Yes. Also, struck by cars.” I asked who brought in the creatures nurtured here. “Mostly caring people who have seen them in passing and stopped. Occasionally state troopers bring them in.” Peter smiled sadly and said, “It’s rarely those who hit them.”

My impulse was to silently condemn those callous people, but twice, I have seen wounded animals in the road and, guilt-wracked and sobbing, driven on, paralyzed by my ignorance and fear, hoping someone caring and knowledgeable would follow soon after. For those like me, and the animals we are unable to help, Wildlife in Crisis is that someone.


Wildlife in Crisis (WIC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to wildlife preservation and land conservation. WIC rescues injured and orphaned wildlife and seeks to protect threatened ecosystems. WIC's habitat protection, wildlife rehabilitation and environmental education programs share the parallel goal of protecting wildlife while improving the quality of life in our community.

For more information, see the WIC website at www.wildlifeincrisis.org

Paper Love - Snowflakes for Newtown

Glitter as sparkling and colorful as love spilled onto shirtfronts and laps from almost every envelope. Recycled cartons on the table filled quickly as volunteers sorted and distributed snowflakes, notes, and return addresses. Against the wall waited white plastic postal bins crammed with bulky manila envelopes. The veteran volunteers who greeted me when I arrived said, “This is nothing. Last week, those bins reached the ceiling.”

After the shootings in Newtown, the world was in mourning. While shopping for the holidays, preparing traditional meals, and watching loved ones unwrap presents, there was a pall, as everyone knew twenty-six families were suffering grief beyond bearing. “I just want to hug them,” my hairdresser said as she brushed dye over a foil-wrapped strand of my hair. It was surreal that life trundled on, even with the illusion shattered that little kids were safe in school.

A high school girl from New Jersey wrote, “I have cried and prayed and cried some more, trying to think of something I could do…and then I read about the snowflake project.” For in deciding to create a winter wonderland at the school that would welcome the students of Sandy Hook Elementary after December break, the Connecticut PTSA also provided an answer for those who yearned to give comfort.

Snowflakes.

Love came to Newtown by post, an avalanche of paper, felt, cotton balls, coffee filters, lace, ribbon, and glitter. Love arrived in silver and wood, elaborately carved. Love swirled in as paper ballerinas encircled with snowflake tutus, and remarkably, Love appeared in Force as a Star Wars surprise: Yoda, C3P0, R2D2 and the storm troopers, artfully snipped into lacy snowflakes.

As we stood side-by-side, opening envelopes, a woman told me, “My son’s in first grade. When he went back to school on the Monday after the shooting, his teacher had put a Hershey’s kiss on every desk. She told me it was hard not to cry; she wanted to hug them all.”

People of every age from everywhere wanted to hug the people of Newtown, and, since they could not, they sent snowflakes. Envelopes mailed from legal firms, businesses, insurance companies, and retirement homes held offerings of comfort from good souls at their desks or on break, from loving hands folding, smoothing and snipping.

Most mailings came from elementary schools. Many included pictures of little kids grinning, each holding a snowflake, the very snowflakes tucked into the envelopes. “You are not alone. It will get better. I promise,” one child wrote in irregular, loopy, little-kid print.

High school students, too, spent time snipping. Photos showed leggy girls and burly boys, beaming while holding snowflakes they’d made for the children of Sandy Hook. No time to be cool with little kids to cheer.

Mounted on the wall, maps of the world and the United States bristled with bead-headed pins. Every yellow, red, or blue-topped pointer represented people with full hearts, scissors, and paper from Connecticut, California, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Pennsylvania, Maine, New York, and… well, from every state, in fact. From Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, Australia, and every European country…from just about every land on the globe, people sent snowflakes of love.

After learning, so painfully, that there are no safe zones, the wound is jagged and deep. But in snowflakes of paper, cotton balls, and glitter, was the balm of love offered by people the world over.


From the CT PTSA website: The winter wonderland is complete. Thank you to everyone who has donated snowflakes on behalf of the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and the community of Newtown. We know that each snowflake represents the emotional outreach of the person making it. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity from around not just the country, but the world.

For other ways to help the Newtown community, check the CT PTSA website.

Home Is...

With a camera in hand, I am given the gift of sight. Nothing is different, but in scanning for potential pictures, I see wonder wherever my glance falls. A crumbling log terraced with mushrooms. A twist of vines looping from the forest floor to its canopy. Even machinery left to rust in an overgrown field brings the camera to my eye and I muse, did the farmer know, as he climbed from the seat, that it would be his last time in that perch?

With my camera, I’d been drawn outside by a glimpse from the bathroom window of sunlight hazy-gold on woods veiled in morning mist. When I returned to the house, camera-sight still upon me, I fell newly in love with the warmth of old floorboards and the sooty expanse of our vast fireplace. And it gave me an idea for a Christmas present for Dave.

What do you give a spouse after thirty-seven years of marriage? (Not a tankard with tiny letters…) and his drawers are full of too many shirts and sweaters from Christmases past. As I walked through the house, smiling at witches and Santas, an odd mish-mash in this in-between season of holiday cross-over, I thought…home. I thought, an album. Pictures that tell our story as well as what is here.

So, I started with spots and angles I love: the view from the fireplace room into the front hall, the wooden cradle Dave’s brother made for baby Casey, the quilt purchased at a flea market in the eighties, and the victorian icebox given to Dave for fifteen years at Eagle Hill. I strolled to the living room and snapped the cupboards our friend Steve Larrabee built, and the folded American flag displayed there that had draped Dave’s father’s coffin. I turned and squinted to click the deacon’s bench Dave made for my wedding present, and the fox weathervane that once spun on my grandfather’s barn.

In the dining room, I lined up a shot of the table and the encircling black Windsor chairs, Steve’s work as well. My project in progress - a Santa for my nephew Trev, his wife, Lisa, and their daughter, Ava - stood on the table. When our kids, Tucker and Casey, were little, Dave and I made almost every present we gave. Those days are gone, and I’ve loved the feel of clay on my fingers again, the total absorption in creation, my thoughts not of worries, but where to add another pinch of clay, or how best to use each silky curl of lambs’ wool; which should be eyebrows, which the mustache?

I photographed the narrow stairway, remembering all the Christmas mornings when the kids and I sat at the top, waiting for Dave to fulfill his Santa duties downstairs, turning on the tree lights and Christmas carols, putting a match to the fire. Then I trotted up the steps and took a picture looking down, at the cupboard below, the Indian blanket on the wall, these stairs we climb and descend every day.

In the kids’ rooms I paused. Much of their stuff remains even though they’ve moved out. They are busy, we have more space than they do, and I don’t want to bug them…besides, I want these rooms still to be theirs. So, Tucker’s looks like a teenager’s room, frozen in 1998, with his Tae Kwon Do trophy, a bi-plane of toothpicks, a framed stamp collection, and shelves crammed with Garfield comics, sci-fi, and textbooks.

Casey moved out recently, so her room looks lived –in. It’s a mess, actually, as she’s still sorting. An open suitcase on the floor holds boxes and notebooks; the coat rack is awash with handbags and scarves. Collages from college lean against the wall – Casey and her girls blowing kisses, kids at a party holding large plastic cups (“just water,” she’d claim). Scattered on the bureau and displayed on windowsills rest woodcarvings and shells from her recent journey in Southeast Asia. I miss coming home to find her curled on the bed, doing her nails or listening to music.

Our house loves the fall and winter. She is warm and welcoming, well, not warm in the sense of temperature perhaps… “This house is freezing,” is a common complaint. But with candles in the windows, the old floors freshly oiled, fires blazing in the fireplaces, the house seems alive. She is the hostess, glad to enfold us. As I dashed from room to room, adjusting the focus and clicking, I imagined the house preening with all the attention.

But what is home? I was just about to move aside a water jug at the foot of the steps – the unused toilet on the third floor smells if we don’t keep it filled – when I realized that our life, our story, is not picture perfect. So I replaced the jug and took the shot. I’d shoved aside the basket of laundry waiting in the hall when first I took that photo, but decided to put it back and shot it again.

With this new thought, to capture not just the beauty, but our life in this house, I went a little crazy. I shot the toilet with its tottering pile of magazines, and then off to our closets to capture the clutter of shoes, ties, jeans, and corduroy shirts in Dave’s.

My closet is orderly, but the top shelf is my toy box. Years ago, during a troubled time for me, the book Simple Abundance bid me, “Make yourself happy: assemble a toy box.” So, tacked on the closet walls are fliers for Obama/Biden ‘08 and my nephew Christopher’s Fairfield performance in 2003. Sitting above hangers of blazers, slacks and dresses are Barbies, Cabbage Patch dolls, and mementos from travels – a tiny Sicilian horse and buggy, a mini-Buddha wishing me fearlessness, protection and peace. Old friends droop, well-worn and well-loved on the shelf: my mother’s corduroy bear, Tucker’s pig Bacos, and Casey’s pink bunny. Treasures. My closet of toys and memories makes me smile and speaks to me of home. So, click. A few shots for Dave’s album.

Oh, honesty, honesty begs photos of bedsides and bureaus: debris of the day, mail, books, Kleenex, and pill bottles, glasses, Chapstick, pens and pads. Dave’s bureau is a teetering collection of guitar picks, lottery tickets, cameras with dead batteries, a rubber Red Sox bat, and Beanie Babies. Yes.

My bureau stands at the foot of the bed. It holds wooden angels from friends, received when I had cancer and at my dad’s death. It holds my grandmother’s silver dish in which I place my bangles when I’m not wearing them. And it holds photos of my grandmothers, my parents, sisters, children, and Dave…several pictures of Dave. For despite my photo tour of fireplaces, closets, bureaus, beams and floorboards, for me, home is where Dave is. So, that’s what the album will be about.

It's About the Words

In November, my husband Dave turned sixty. We have marveled over this impressive number, all of the many decades inherent in attaining it, and prided ourselves on not being distressed at the age it represents. We feel great, look pretty good too, so what’s the big deal? Still, I wanted to commemorate the event with a present that had meaning.

I had an idea. My father used to have a silver cigarette case inscribed with the signatures of the ushers in my parents’ wedding. I decided to brainstorm names, phrases, and places from Dave’s life and have them engraved on…something. Probably not a cigarette case. I’d used Inscribe-It in Monroe before, had been a little intimidated by the salesman, but figured it was convenient. I’d go there.

Pen in hand, I began my list of Dave’s schools, our wedding date, inside jokes, favorite songs, beloved destinations. The list was long – how much would fit on whatever it was I chose? Oh well, the guy would tell me what would work and what wouldn’t. I crossed items off, and added more on, added more on, and added more on.

Dave’s birthday was a month away, plenty of time, but I felt an urgency to order this special present, so to Inscribe-It I hurried. Behind the desk at the back of the store sat the man I remembered. He was thin and blond, his protruding eyes magnified by gold-rimmed glasses. His smile was a curve of the lips that went no further than that uplift. “May I help you?” he asked in a thick German accent. Great. Too many war movies; the accent always unnerves me.

In an end-over-end, more-than-enough way, I described my vision and he escorted me from glass case to glass case, pointing at bookends and boxes and vases. Not a cigarette case to be seen, and I settled on a sturdy pewter tankard. We have an over-abundance of mugs at our house, but this gift was about the words, and the tankard would fit in with our colonial home.

We returned to the desk, and Mr. Engraver prepared for dictation. “How much will fit?” I asked.

“As much as you want,” he said. “Of course, the words will be small.”

“Can you write them in several columns so the letters will be larger?”

“No,” he said definitively.

I shrugged and launched into my list: our college, our kids’ names, and a favorite song -“Trinity, Tucker and Lisa, Casey, Serenade.” I went on and on. Not concerned about price, not concerned about the tankard, so pleased to have thought of a meaningful gift.

When Mr. Engraver told me the final cost, I laughed. It was high, absurd for a tankard with two lists of words, but Dave was turning sixty. That gave it value.

We agreed on a pick-up date the following Friday. I paid him and took the receipt.

Hurricane Sandy blasted through that week and closed everything down. I stopped by once and the shop was closed. When finally I caught the store open and the proprietor in, I was eager to have the present in hand. Gingerly, Mr. Engraver opened a white box, parted the white tissue, and with white gloves, lifted the tankard from its shrine. “Careful! Don’t smudge it!” he said as I reached to inspect it.

The words were tiny. Tiny. I could just read them. “He’ll need a magnifying glass,” I said. “Yes. He might,” agreed the engraver. “If, at any time, you want to add more, I can run another column here, down the side.”

What? He’d told me he couldn’t do that. But I didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to make a fuss. After he oh-so-carefully placed it back in its wrappings, I took the tankard with its near illegible words and left the store.

Oddly, at the time, I thought the situation – the tiny letters, the crazy price - was funny, and as soon as I got home, I put a magnifying glass in the bag with the box so I wouldn’t forget it. I thought that was sort of funny too. A magnifying glass! Really!

Over Thanksgiving break, we had a family party for my husband because my son and his wife were home, but I saved Dave’s present for the actual day of his birthday. My daughter Casey and our friend Gerry joined us at an Italian restaurant for dinner. When Dave opened the white box, I handed him the magnifying glass. “And you’ll need your glasses too.”

“A tankard!” he said, turning it over and over, perhaps thinking, just what we need, another one… “Are there words on it?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes as he squinted through the magnifying glass and said, “The light reflection makes it tricky to read.” He angled the tankard to reduce the glare and with difficulty, and several mis-guesses, read the words. Mainly, he was frustrated. He appreciated the idea, but it was about the words….and he could barely read them.

When we got home, he put the tankard on a shelf. Later, I wrote the words out neatly on a piece of stationery, rolled it up, and tucked it in the tankard.

* * *

“Mom, you have to talk to that engraver,” said Casey after I told her about my disappointment over the way-too-tiny words and my conversations with the vendor.

“He won’t be able to do anything about it and …ugh. It will be unpleasant. I hate awkward exchanges. I just don’t feel up to it.”

“I do,” said my warrior princess. “I’ll talk to him….”

“No. No. If anything, I’ll do it.” But I doubted I would.

* * *

Last week, Casey called me at work. She didn’t feel well, but said she planned to go over to our house to do some laundry. In September she moved in with her boyfriend and between work and schedules, we don’t see her often. “Yay! So I’ll see you later,” I said.

A few hours passed and I checked in at the house. The phone rang, but no response. She must not be there. Letdown. I miss my girl and had looked forward to catching up while folding shirts and pairing socks.

When I left work, it was dark. As I drove the final lap on our road, a car was smack on my butt. Honestly. Before backing into the parking area in front of our house, I pulled over to let the driver pass. I watched his headlights disappear down the road as I angled into position and shifted into reverse to slide into my usual spot.

Wait. What was that sound?

A glance in my rearview mirror. Casey’s brand new, smiling, neon purple-blue Hyundai. Her most beloved possession. In my spot. And I’d hit it.

Omigod.

I parked my old dear of a Caravan and with heart pounding, knelt before Casey’s car. A dent. Not awful, but a dent. A dent upon the shiny perfection of the front right fender. I felt sick.

Dave and Casey brightened in welcome as I let myself into the house. They were chatting at the kitchen counter, enjoying a glass of red wine while Dave prepared some pasta.

“Oh Sweetie. You won’t be as happy to see me when I tell you I just hit your car.”

Her face fell. “What? Mom. How? You knew I’d be here. How could you hit it?” Her words tumbled as the three of us went outside.

“Well, I thought you weren’t here. I called earlier and you didn’t answer. And it was dark and I was watching the other car drive off and I wasn’t expecting anything in my spot. I just pulled in like I always do…” my words trailed off. It didn’t matter. I should have looked behind me. I did, didn’t I? Not carefully enough.

Dave stood silently, one hand curled thoughtfully at his chin.

My daughter and I cried, hugging each other, standing in the yard. Me, apologizing over and over. Casey, once she’d succeeded in stuffing down all the recriminations that must have been racing to be aired, beating against her lips, bubbling for expression, saying, “It’s okay. It was an accident. It’s just a thing.” So good. So controlled. So forgiving.


* * *

The next day, I decided to talk to the engraver. I’m not sure why, but in some way, denting Casey’s fender was the impetus. I’d disappointed my daughter and she felt I should speak up about the tiny words on the tankard. It’s not that I thought she’d be proud of me exactly, but something like that.

So to Inscribe-It I returned. Before denting Casey’s car, sleep had eluded me for several nights as I’d mentally confronted the man with blond hair and protruding eyes, but I was surprisingly calm when I entered his shop.

Mr. Engraver greeted me blandly with “How can I help you?” and I’m not sure he recognized me. He listened without expression as I pointed out his contradictory statements about the additional columns and told him the significance of the gift was lost due to the illegibility of the words. He reminded me that he’d said the letters would be small. Told me he’d been able to read the words and showed me a sizing chart with letters even more miniscule than those on the tankard. Stated there was nothing he could do.

But he acknowledged that it must have been sad when the present was not received as hoped. He agreed that greater clarity with other customers would be worthwhile. And that was it. But I left the store with a lighter step.

What had I hoped for? I knew the engraver wouldn’t take the tankard back or re-do it; there was a prominent sign in the store stating that policy. I like to think I wanted to improve service for others, and that was part of it. I wanted to remember everything I’d rehearsed - that would have been a coup right there - and initially, pleasing Casey was wrapped up in nudging me to action. But above all, I wanted to say my piece without anger or accusations or, heaven forbid, tears…and I did it.

What Do We Do?

It was mourning weather - dreary, drizzly, gray - as Dave and I drove home from New Palz. We had not wanted to drive through Newtown. We’d planned to get off I-84 at Bethel, but the cars slowed as we neared that exit. The traffic was backed up well onto the highway. “I think there’s another exit before Newtown, right?” I said. Dave agreed so we continued on.

The exit sign came into view, white letters on a green background. “Newtown.” Silence. Dave reached for my hand, signaled right and turned the wheel.

We had stolen a quick trip to the Mohonk Mountain House, just one night at the reduced pre-holiday mid-week rate. We’d not gone last year due to my father’s illness, but Dave and I view this trip to the Victorian hotel in the mountains as our Christmas tradition, our present to each other.

So, early Sunday, we left the house. We’d avoided watching the news, reading the papers, or listening to the radio. Shields up. As is our custom, we stopped for lunch at the Main Street Bistro in New Palz. The place bustled with kids in dreadlocks, woolen caps, and bulky knitted ponchos, and the menu featured homemade soups, five veggie burger options, frittatas, and several tofu selections. We both ordered veggie burgers – the Hendrix for me, the Peacemaker for Dave.

Seated at the counter, we chatted with a young bearded guy - originally from a farm in Nebraska, now at college in DC - who was in New Palz for some vacation hiking in the Shawangunk mountains. He was intrigued by Dave’s burger, so Dave offered him a bite. He accepted…and finished off my pureed pepper soup as well. It was easy and companionable and I liked thinking of him returning to his parents on the farm with warm impressions of this encounter with the couple from Connecticut, who lived in the town next to Newtown. Most people are good. They are.

After lunch, Dave and I visited a few of the quirky shops on Main Street and picked up some stocking gifts – Christmas rings, hacky sacks, funky finger-less mittens. And then I caught myself…feeling normal, cheery even. How could I?

So I shifted gears, sobered up, and thought about Tucker and Casey at six. About Christmas presents waiting in closets. About how, if it were me, I would delve into the laundry hamper to find and hold and rock the pajamas worn the night before Friday….Thursday night. Just a regular night.

And I tried to send out loving white light to those lost and their loved ones. (Does it reach them somehow? How could this happen? Why would someone kill little kids?)

We’d left Mohonk after breakfast and wound up in Newtown center around 11:00. Rain fell on black-clad mourners waiting outside the funeral home. A man walked with a small boy, one hand firmly on the child’s shoulder. Couples stood on the sidewalk embracing or hand-in-hand. Across the street, a battalion of photographers strained for a shot, jostling and adjusting prodigious lenses for a solid zoom. Network vans lined the road in front of the general store.

But we also passed shrines of bouquets, stuffed animals, and luminaries lovingly arranged. And signs. Many hand-painted signs. Perhaps from people, like me, like any of us, whose wounded hearts yearn to give comfort even when comfort is beyond giving. So what do we do? Send white light. Pray. Write on a sheet draped between two posts our wish to enfold these grieving souls, “Newtown – we are all one family.”

A Story of Power

“Tell me a story,” I said to Dave as we huddled as close to the fire as was safe; it was the seventh day after Hurricane Sandy, and still we had no power.

When our children were tiny, it was a bedtime ritual to pick three animals - sometimes as disparate as unicorns, rats and jellyfish - for Dave to weave into some crazy tale. This night, my choices were simple: a chipmunk, weasel and panda. As has often been Dave’s method, he was quiet, and I was not sure if he’d dozed off, refused the request, or was pondering a plot.

“’Mine is bigger,’ said the chipmunk,” said Dave.

Grinning at the prospect of a story, Dave’s compliance, and the double entendre, I climbed into my husband’s lap, although I was not an easy fit. Candles flickered in watery pools of light casting shadows of leftover Halloween witches lurking in corners and on shelves. The fire was glowing its warmth, and I felt snoozy and safe as a little kid as Dave’s voice rumbled soft and low against my cheek. “The weasel was exasperated because he did not care about the chipmunk’s pile of nuts. What he did care about were the black patches on the face of the panda he had seen at the zoo. Were the patches eyes? Huge eyes open wide with delight or, as the chipmunk believed, sunken wells of sadness?”

As the weasel and chipmunk devised a plan to visit the zoo and question the panda, outside our house teams of utility workers labored to restore power and clear roads along the coast, in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Matted pine boughs, snapped stalks of once towering trees, sinuous cable snakes, looped and snarled, some live, some not, spilled into streets, impeding repairs.

Earlier in the evening, we’d brought soup and coffee warmed on a propane burner to the crew working our road. While I did this self-consciously, hoping to make karmic points and maybe earn power sooner, Dave’s motives were pure: he just wanted to cheer those guys.

In the dark, we dished out Progresso lentil soup to burly men in work boots, vests, and helmets. They’d driven up from Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri before the storm – leaving families and safe, well-lighted, homes - to ride it out and be here, ready for the aftermath. One guy pulled out his phone and, compliments of Google Earth, showed us his house, a single story ranch far away in the woods of Alabama.

Having heard tales of frustrated, power-less customers egging workers, I asked how people had treated them. These men were southerners, mind you, gentlemen for all the scruffy beards and rough hands, and they assured me that everyone had been very nice, thank you.

I hope so.

Days ago, before Sandy’s arrival, I had placed my hands on the big o’er-hanging silver maple in our yard and praised her endurance, urging her to stand strong in the winds. Still, we had moved wall-hangings, photographs, and precious mementoes from the rooms within her reach, just in case. During the storm, as winds lashed and buffeted the trees, Dave and I hunkered down near the fireplace at the center of our house. I was exhilarated by the storm – too many thrilled viewings of The Wizard of Oz and not enough healthy fear perhaps – but I worried about the trees and woodland creatures: where would the deer and chickadees hide?

It was not until after the storm, in driving roads still dangerous with dangling limbs and lines, that I reflected on the courage of those who’d rushed out to help when the wind was roaring and snapping those trees, while we cowered inside.

Every morning when Dave heads out for his commute, I say, “Be careful, Hon.” I imagine Russ Neary’s wife said much the same thing when he ventured out into the winds and thrashing trees in response to a call. Russ, a twelve-year veteran of the Easton Volunteer Fire Department, was killed when one of those flailing trees fell and crushed his truck. Over a thousand of his fellow firefighters and hundreds of members of his community attended the funeral. Most did not know him, as he had not known them. Yet for them, he had braved the storm.

“Do you have power?” initiates most conversations. Power on, power off: the reminder of our powerless-ness when Nature’s indignation ramps to full steam. But actually, the storm has also unleashed loving kindness, the greatest power humans hold.

Outside Town Hall, youthful volunteers have distributed stacked cases of water. Robo-calls have alerted citizens to locations offering food, warmth, beds and showers. Churches, synagogues and bars –centers of fellowship all– have hosted free meals. Two weeks after the storm, when three women organized a beach-clean up in Fairfield, spreading the word through fliers, Facebook, and those churches and synagogues (maybe the bars too…), love answered a thousand-fold, with rakes, shovels, work gloves, and heart.

Last fall during Hurricane Irene, Dave and I never lost power when so many did. In our blithe life-as-usual world, we didn’t think to offer showers or meals to the power-less. I cringe to confess it, and oh, have I learned my lesson, for we have been warmed, fed, showered and illuminated by friends and family. We’ve had cozy evenings of conversation and laughter at my in-laws, and our tiny grand-niece, after three nights of singing many rounds of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and the “Eensy Weensy Spider” has lost her shyness with us. I’ve been grateful for a reprieve from screens and email and relished their replacements: time together, eye contact, songs, and stories.

Stories in memories… and stories of three creatures, for Dave’s tale unfolded as the hurricane wailed on. Once the weasel and chipmunk wormed their way past tourists and guards to reach the cage of the panda, they saw that the patches were not eyes, but black fur. Still, the weasel told the bear about his theory and asked about the message in those eyes. “Sometimes they are wells of sadness,” said the panda. “But often they are wide with love…for that is life.”