Doin' It Seven Ways

Dave and I are in Florida, although we’ve brought New England’s weather with us.  It has ranged from sunny with wind and cool temperatures, to overcast and drizzly, to foggy.  Ah well.  

For beach reading, on the days we have braved the beach, I’ve selected Carl Hiassen’s Tourist Season.  The man cracks me up with his vicious wit, quirky characters, and circuitous plots.  As a Florida native and journalist for the Miami Herald, Hiassen writes about rapacious politicians and developers who bulldoze cypress swamps to create condos and golf courses, habitat alluring to cash-bearing tourists.  In his books, the bad guys invariably meet a gruesome, but satisfying end. 

While ensconced in a rented chair, faded baseball cap low on my brow, skin shiny with successive layers of sunscreen, legs swathed in the Holiday Inn’s threadbare yellow beach towel, I have chuckled in reading the efforts of Hiassen’s villain to scare off the tourists over-running his beloved state.   A conservation zealot, the desperado kidnaps Shriners, tosses cranky retirees to a crocodile named Pavlov, and plots against the Orange Bowl queen. My chuckles are sheepish, however, as I am well aware that I am potential croc fodder given my vacation Visa.

I’ve tried to think of reasons to exclude myself from the pool of unwanted visitors upon whom Hiassen’s band of revolutionaries open season, but alas, I fit their Most Wanted to perfection.  Pale of skin.  Seeking sunshine.  Temporary resident at the Holiday Inn.  Toenails red with Revlon Cherry Crush.  Coppertone scented.  Yes, I have purchased a pukka shell necklace.  Yes, I have snapped an excess of pictures of pelicans.  Yes, I have partaken of numerous rum drinks at palm-roofed Tiki bars.  Thankfully, Dave and I have not golfed at any of the countless courses that have scoured the coast of anything vaguely natural to that landscape.  Hiassen is, in my view, rightfully prickly about that. 

In 2001, when Dave and I chose Florida as our spring vacation destination, I was in full conservation mode in my town.  As a member of the Conservation Commission and Citizens for Easton, I was on the alert for white perc pipes or stakes with pink ribbons, and heartsick at hearing of plots to clear trees and level ledges for high density housing.  I was not impervious to those stakes and pipes in Florida, but permitted myself blinders, thinking, “I am on vacation.  This is not my fight.”  Hiassen would have been disgusted.

Anyway, this March, on the afternoon of our arrival, while savoring crepes at C’est La Vie, and sipping sauvignon blanc, the glasses perfectly chilled and translucent with condensation, we learned of Saturday’s farmers’ market and craft show.  Tourist heaven. 

I love craft shows, although Dave is not as enthusiastic.  Still, when Saturday dawned overcast, browsing booths along Sarasota’s Main Street seemed a happy diversion.  Dave discovered a music-loving soulmate in Kerry, a former drummer for the Hoo Doos and husband of a vendor selling silver beaded jewelry.  The men compared favorite bands and beloved guitars while I tried on countless bracelets, finally narrowing them down to purchase ten.  Yes, ten.

Dave is always drawn in by photography displays, and while I enjoy a quick look, my husband likes to settle in and chat with the artists, so often we separate.  “Check out the seven-ways dress,” he called as we passed each other at one point.  I was scrutinizing some shell-encrusted pottery and he’d glimpsed a booth of vibrant, splashy paintings.

Before I left for Florida, I’d been re-reading my daughter’s blog about her four months in South-East Asia. Her triumphant bickering at the night markets was fresh in my mind, so the sight of flowing silk-screened dresses  - seven-way dresses, as it turned out - lured me in.  

They were no bargain, but the vendor was friendly, cool, and comfortable, swathed in billowy turquoise.  Her skin was bronze, hair black, teeth white in a broad welcoming smile.  I slipped a black dress with coffee brown spirals over my head.  Despite the lovely material, I looked…lumpish.  “Ohhhhhhh,” she said.  “Allow me!”  So I wasn’t just being hard on myself; clearly she thought I looked lumpish too.  A lumpish tourist.  I could almost feel the steely eyes of Pavlov the crocodile, appraising me for succulence.

The vendor knotted folds here, asked me to slip my arms there. Curled a section over each of my arms.  Had me turn…more knots. I tried to angle the tiny hand-held mirror so I could see more than a square foot of myself at a time, but it was a brilliant marketing strategy, that tiny mirror, for I had no idea of the overall effect. Dave had shown up by then and grinned appreciatively.  “I like it!”  he said.  “Let me buy it for you.”

Maybe it was the vendor he liked, for my sense, as I looked past the perky knot tied above my boobs, was still… lumpish.  Dave and the vendor discussed the 5% donation she made to the Harry Chapin Foundation with the purchase of every dress.  “Money to the food bank of my choice.  A wonderful cause,” stated the saleswoman as she folded the dress and tucked it into a bag. 

Indeed, a wonderful cause, but my self-help books have been clear about buying only clothes I love.  Why harbor a closet full of rejects that don’t make me feel my very best?  Damn that tiny mirror!

Now, it is late afternoon.  The sun emerged around mid-day, and as it sets, we are basking on our balcony.  Dave has made me a tasty, lethal combination of mango and cranberry juices, Captain Morgan’s spiced rum, lime, and a sprig of mint.  Gorgeous.  The drink is.  I am not…for I look like a Russian refugee in my seven-ways dress, knotted and tied and lumpish.  Carl Hiassen would be laughing…or feeding me to a crocodile.  

Enjoy the Endeavor

Soft air, fresh, but not yet perfumed by blossoms still tight and pale on just-green stems, breathes through open windows. Forsythia and daffodils shine yellow against gradually greening grass.  Magnolias have burst into clouds of purple-tinged white, the petals already wilting and tumbling like a snowfall. 

Sure, I’ve taken moments to sit on the stoop, to steep in the glory of the season’s makeover, to mark even the jerky dance of myriad gnats, flecks of living dust dancing at the first hint of warmth.  But, for twenty years, I have coordinated Eagle Hill-Southport’s spring benefit, and the event is a week away.  If I do not direct myself consciously to look, listen, and feel spring’s scents and songs, it would pass, a backdrop, barely perceived, to my mental whirl of details, to-do’s and “don’t-forgets.” 

Order an extra tablecloth for the photo booth prop table.  Remind the caterer to tell the bartenders not to open too many bottles in advance.  Pick up flowers for the program chairs!  Should we order 20 more forks?  Re-print the winners’ letters with changes noted.  Get 5 X 7 frames for the prize lists.

At 3:13, or 3:27, or 3:56 AM, my eyes fly wide in the dark.  Talk to the caterer about adjusting the number of servers.  Confirm the psychic and DJ.  Who will man the wine raffle table?  

None of this is new; I know my frailties.  Worry, guilt, and anxiety can rock me, so, I have routines, prayers, readings and writings (and a very dear husband – goes without saying) to bolster me.  My current book-friend is The Art of Growing Up by Veronique Vienne.  Some might snort at my wish to read a book with that title, and I wouldn’t blame them.  At sixty years old, should I need guidance in this art?  Apparently so. 

A few days ago, butterflies had taken up their accustomed residence in my stomach, a feeling I’m used to, but dislike.   During my morning reading, Veronique offered, “Enjoy the endeavor and good fortune will follow.”  

I’m one of those people who read pen in hand.  I underline, dog-ear, star and comment-in-margins when a passage strikes me.  I’ve read many of my favorite books several times, and my life’s phases are reflected in the different words that have moved me.  I will come to a page clean of Lea-ink, seemingly without interest given the absence of notation, but then a sentence breezed over before will capture my heart and bring tears to my eyes.  It will comfort and inspire, warranting a flurry of stars, underlining, and comment. 

“Enjoy the endeavor and good fortune will follow.”  Unnoticed before, this time, the line prompted consideration.  I thought about all the meetings, all the emails and discussions.  I thought about the women who have given countless volunteer hours on behalf of the school and our students.  I thought about the friendships that have evolved through the process, for I’ve not been alone in my lists, worries and three AM musings. In meetings with the parent benefit chairs, each has reported her own list of mid-night mind-storms. And other staff too, the directors of development and maintenance, have chipped away at their lengthy checklists.

Responsibility for this event weighs on me heavily - as does everything in which I play a role, or feel I should play a role - but Veronique helped me remember how much of that is shared, how willing others are to help; how much I’ve enjoyed the brainstorms, laughter, and even shared frustrations.  She led me to recognize how much I’ve enjoyed this endeavor. 

After reading Veronique’s wise words, it seemed a switch had been thrown, the butterflies flew, and I felt almost giddy.  I went to school buoyant, with a full heart, because I realized good fortune is not just a hoped-for end product; good fortune can be the joy of the endeavor itself. 

   

Kindness - The Unremarkable Norm

Like leaves adrift in an autumn breeze, dust motes circled in a shaft of sunlight.  The yarn of the gray shag rug was soft beneath bare legs.  My sister and I were sitting on the floor in our parents’ bedroom, watching TV on the black and white set. As if life could not possibly be any better, our mother gave us each a stick of Wrigley’s gum.  Bliss.  Sunshine, spearmint, and TV.

And then – it must have been during a commercial break – the screen filled with a series of photographs:  the FBI’s Most Wanted.  Some of the faces were female.  Wait.  What?  Women could be murderers?  Women?   Women were mothers, babysitters, teachers, and nurses.  They took care of people; they did not hurt them.  My childish sense of the world as a safe place received its first fractures that day.

How old are most kids when they learn about the Holocaust?  Maybe seventh grade?  So, about twelve?  That was the next jolt, being twelve years old with hellish knowledge to process and store. Didn’t the guards at those camps have mothers who taught them to do unto others as you would have others do unto you?  Didn’t they have children?  Had they never been children themselves?  Thankfully, that brutality happened in the distant past – a decade prior – on far-away shores.  Everyone had learned the lessons of that evil and it would never happen again. 

I clung to that belief as long as I could.  I believe, ultimately, in an orderly universe, but I can find no place in my wishful credo for the Holocaust, so it floats out there, evil inexplicable.  And last week, two young men dropped lethal backpacks at the feet of children, and walked away.

So battered have we Americans been in recent years by armed men and Nature tempestuous, that the fragility of routine has been laid bare.  I perceive the humdrum with flickering antennae:  shoppers filling carts with Wheaties and milk, restaurant-goers sipping wine and perusing menus, teenagers tapping cell phones while strolling a sidewalk, families cheering loved ones at the finish line of a race.  So normal.  So easily blasted apart.

Deep breath.  Deep breath.  Quell the prickle in my nose, the mourning in my soul.  This is new to us in New England, but it is not new.  And it is in contrast to the goodness that unfolds minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour, so commonplace as to rarely rate media coverage.  Courtesies, small kindnesses, sweeping acts.  A driver risks the annoyance of those behind him to wave in a merging car.  Quilters meet to sew blankets for the sick, injured and orphaned.  Schools run drives for mittens and scarves.  Organizations – so many of them – raise money for human rights, cures for disease, conservation, housing, and food.  Strangers rip fabric from their shirts to tie tourniquets for those wounded nearby.  First responders, brave, brave souls, rush toward smoke, screams, and blood, to help.

The world does not feel safe right now, but remarkably, kindness is the unremarkable norm. 

         

Time Goes By

In 1878, to revive a flagging economy, the business leaders of St. Louis dreamed up a grand idea: the Veiled Prophet (VP) Ball.  Seventy-two years later, my mother was crowned Veiled Prophet Queen, and for me as a little girl, this nugget from my mother’s past was a fairy-tale come true. For my sisters, Rita and Francie, and me, there was no distinction between a full-blooded monarch and our mother. 

As kids, we three girls used to pore over scrapbooks bulging with newspaper clippings about Mom’s VP year.  We loved the pictures of young women in glamorous gowns and dazzling tiaras, their bouquets tumbling with flowers as they waved from their float in the parade.  And Mom, our mom, beaming and beautiful, in a white dress of satin and tulle, beaded and sequined, seated on her throne beside the mysterious Veiled Prophet.

In February, Mom, Rita, Francie and I went to St. Louis, the first time Mom would return to her native city in three decades.  In the weeks leading up to our trip, I reflected on my mother’s youth and asked her about the jolting changes of her 20^th year. 

Just days after her VP reign ended, Mom married my father and moved with him to Camp Atterbury in Indiana where my father was stationed with the army.  Mom recalled, “Our house, a square concrete place, was at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by mud.  Your dad would take the car to the base, so I was stranded and alone. I didn’t know how to cook; I didn’t know anybody...” Even that was better than her first night in Germany a few months later when my father was again at an army base and she lay in bed, covers clutched over her face, frantic, as rats chewed the crackers on the bureau.

I couldn’t shake the image of that young girl leaving her parents, my beloved Byeo and Poppy, following a year of VP excitement to live in the mud and cower from rodents.   “Did you miss home, Mom?  Did you …well, not regret marrying Dad, but….well, sort of regret it?” I asked her.

“Never.  He was the man I wanted…but that night with the rats?  That was a low point.”

                                    *                                    *                                    *

Upon our arrival in St. Louis, we were greeted by my mother’s first cousin, Teddy, and Jane, his Very-Significant-Other.  After lunch, Teddy and Jane took us for a drive around the city, a combination of fun sights – the soaring arch, Union Station, the brick buildings of the former Simmons Hardware Company founded by my great-great grandfather – and radical changes jarring to Mom.  Her head pivoted as we drove, searching for familiar landmarks among the skyscrapers, offices, and chain stores.

Our ultimate destination was a synagogue-turned library, also home to the Missouri Historical Society. When he organized this visit, Teddy, a long time announcer for the VP Ball and son of a queen himself, had alerted the curators that a former queen and descendants of the founder of Simmons Hardware Company would be paying a visit.

Beneath a vibrant, star-studded blue dome, we gathered around a wooden table to flip through a box of black and white photographs nestled between sheets of tissue: archival portraits of past VP queens. Along with the two curators, we gazed at girls of sixty to eighty years ago, nineteen-year-old-perfect, statuesque in swirling rivers of voluminous satin trains, frozen in flowing gowns and feathers.   Each picture was labeled with a name and a year, and we’d stop with whispered shrieks, if such a sound is possible, at 1921 – my grandmother, Byeo; 1929 – Teddy’s mother; and finally 1950 – Mom, in her beaded white dress of satin and tulle.

“Hmmm,” mused Shannon, the youthful blond curator, as she eyed Mom’s picture.  She turned on her heel and disappeared down a hallway, leaving us to admire our trio of VP mothers.

As our whispers became less whispered, the librarians from the front desk came to check on the commotion.  They did not hush us, but grinned and shared in our excitement as we held out the picture and pointed to Mom.  “It was many years ago, “Mom said, laughing (sort of quietly).

Two tables over, a woman with short brown hair and a doughy complexion sat reading.  She was extraordinarily gracious, as she did not look our way once, at least not obviously, and neither glared nor hissed at our ruckus.  Had I been in her place, I’m pretty sure I would have done one of the three.

My sister, Rita, took the photos to the desk to see about getting copies while the rest of us turned to the other curator. A pale man with thinning hair, his eyes were bright as he revealed the contents of a manila folder: individual pages from a catalogue of the 1904 World’s Fair with pictures of the Simmons Hardware exhibit.

On a bookshelf at home, we have one of the company’s massive leather-bound catalogues, four inches thick, with gold lettering on the spine. An illustration inside the book shows horse-drawn wagons going about their business in the streets around the Simmons factory, buildings still in existence – we’d seen them earlier - although the company is not. 

125 years ago, one could order, at modest prices, corn huskers, hatchets, augurs, and hoes, washboards, carpet beaters, laundry wringers, and sleigh bells.  For $48, one could purchase a dozen mounted family grindstones, although the 790 lb weight seems daunting.  Also pictured, in royal blue and red, the sporty “Run Easy” buggy, ranging from $65 to $85 depending on upholstery and canopy materials.  In the eighteen hundreds, even sewing machines, door knobs and ice boxes were handsome, in black enamel with gold filigree, brass and solid oak.   

The pleasant curator drew our attention to the design of the 1904 exhibit, at first glance, a relatively simple structure, an arch within rectangular supports, black with an abundance of decoration.  “Look closely,” said the curator, and then we saw – saws!  And axe blades and forks!  Knives and spoons!  Thousands of pieces of cutlery and hardware fanned out and lined up and placed end to end to form flowers and intricate designs.  Of all the magnificent structures and exhibits created for the fair in 1904, only two remain.  This was not one of them. 

With sparkling eyes, the curator, a man who clearly loved his work, said, “Want to see something else we have?”  He pulled out an age-stained document sheathed in a plastic envelope: a certificate to drive buggies and phaetons in the city of St. Louis.  “Check out the signature…” He was practically dancing.  I had to squint to read the spidery hand.  “Thomas Jefferson….Thomas Jefferson?!  No way!”

“Yes!”  The man was bouncing on the balls of his feet and I felt like bouncing myself.  “Basically, it’s Thomas Jefferson’s driver’s license!” he crowed in as much of a whisper as he could manage.

History.  All around us.

Shannon reappeared; we’d all but forgotten her.  She pushed a wheeled cart laden with two cream-colored boxes.  “I was thinking the names sounded familiar…and the pictures too,” she said.  She opened the top box.  It held a twenties-style pink flapper’s dress adorned with cotton flowers.  Shannon turned over the tag.  It had been my grandmother’s, the dress she wore on her last night as queen.

Byeo wore this when she was twenty years old.  Mom’s eyes were wide as she said,  “I didn’t know it existed.”  The tag indicated a donation made in 1960, the date my grandparents moved from Mom’s childhood home.  So, they must have cleared out the attic, gotten rid of some stuff, and the dress landed here.  I tried, I tried, to conjure my Byeo, not a black and white photo, but a girl, alive, filling the contours of this pink flowered dress. 

And the other box on the cart? 

Fingers clad in latex-blue lifted the lid to reveal layers and layers of tissue.  Shannon parted the papers and slid her hand under the bodice of a dress, a beaded white dress of satin and tulle: the dress Mom wore when she was nineteen years old, as VP queen of 1950.

                                    *                                    *                                    *

           

In front of the expansive bathroom mirror, Mom and I stand side-by-side, every spot and sag amplified by lights interrogation-bright.  Although she has always counseled my sisters and me to favor a touch of blush in defense against appearing defeated, she rarely wears make-up herself.  Tonight, however, she dabs on some foundation and brushes a hint of pink across her cheeks.  She comments that some of her friends pencil their eyebrows.  As I blend Clinique bronzer into my forehead, I respond that, in my experience, it’s hard to wield brow pencil effectively, although god knows I was glad for it when I lost my eyebrows to chemo.

Each morning of our stay, while wielding blush and eye-liner, the available tools for repair, Mom and I have stood before the mirror and our aging reflections, each bemoaning her own flaws, while shoring the other against self-attack.  She is eighty-one, I am almost sixty.  (Why bother with fifty-nine? It’s a springboard only.)  Her eyelids bother her, and she gives the loose skin a finger lift, while I use the same digital technique to smooth the bags creeping into my cheeks.  I embrace my crow’s feet, but this cheek-wrinkle thing is distressing.

With her silver-white hair and high cheekbones, my mother is beautiful, but I think, for her, the changes have seemed magnified in the constant presence of her nineteen year-old-self here in St. Louis.  “We’ve both been lucky to look young for so long,” I say, but for me, that is changing, and it will be hard to look in the mirror when the face gazing back is not the one I think of as my own.

When Shannon brought out Mom’s VP dress, it was magical.  Our eyes swiveled from the photo, to the dress, to Mom.  For some reason, I have a hard time believing in the past, even my own.  That once I crouched on a weathered gray dock, watching as Poppy struggled to remove the hook from the first fish I ever caught is a sun-warmed fantasy more than a memory.  That once I smeared Coppertone on little Tucker’s nose as Casey splashed nearby, feeding herself shovels of sand, is more about the scent of suntan lotion, glare, and heat, than the solid flesh we were. So much more mystical then, my mother’s youth, as conveyed through scrapbooks, queenly dresses, and stories of life-before-Lea.

I remember when Mom’s hands were young and smooth, when her hair was brown, when she looked like the girl in the picture, yet I see that person so completely in the woman she is now that the two co-exist.  The dress, however, was a tangible remnant, proof of a bygone fairy-tale of excitement, the perfume of flowers, and the scratch of tulle against bare shoulders.   

                                   

Search for a New Friend

It has seemed a betrayal to pilot my aging elephant of a Caravan from one car dealership to another in search of her replacement.  My husband, Dave, has called her the Horton of cars - faithful 100% - because, for eleven years, she has never failed me.  Bob and Marek, our mechanics and dear friends, have nursed her through the years, and they know how attached I’ve become.  But, “It’s time, Lea,” Bob finally said.  “The transmission is going, and at this age, it will be one thing after another.”  I’m almost there myself, so I feel like a traitor giving up on her, but I know he’s right.

So, I was dangerously close to tears as I told Matt, the Toyota dealer, about my fondness for my current car.  He was kind enough not to mock me, and was excited to demonstrate the keyless locking system, the push-button ignition, and the array of dials, gauges, and screens on the Prius dashboard.  Pathetic as I am, I felt like wailing, “I don’t want a space-pod!  I want my Caravan!”

Still, I enjoyed our ride together.  As I navigated the Prius over slushy roads, jerking each time I tapped the unfamiliar brakes, we chatted about Matt’s young son, his wife’s conservation work, my conservation work, and the state of the world in general.  You learn a lot about a person during a fifteen-minute test drive; everyone has a story.

I liked Matt a lot and wanted to like the Prius, for his sake and mine. I’ve justified holding on to my oversized Dodge with a promise to the universe that the next car would be a hybrid.  I am so technologically challenged, however, that every gadget Matt gleefully described made my stomach clench.  He explained how I could Sync-this and Sync-that, Sync my phone and the iPod-I-don’t-have, and quietly I yearned for my push-button radio and WEBE.   All the great features that would draw customers to the Prius made me feel, well, the same way iPhones do, outdated and clueless.  

At the Nissan dealership, Marty was equally engaging as we drove the test route he’d mapped out: highways, back roads, straight-aways, stops and starts.  The Rogue drove easily, and I liked its compact, yet familiar, sort-of-like-my-Caravan, feel.  The mileage slowed me down, though, at 22 in-city, 28 highway.  I would not be upholding my covenant with the Universe in bonding with this car.  Marty was a selling point in-and-of himself, bright-eyed, earnest, and funny.  When I complimented him on his pitch, he said, “I know people lump car salesmen with lawyers, so I’ve got to do the best I can to prove otherwise.”  Because of Marty, I wanted to love the Rogue, but it didn’t have the mileage.

It was late afternoon by the time I reached the Honda dealership.  The roads were bad, as the rain had turned to sleet.  “Perfect for a test drive,” said Harris, a graying man, closer to my age than my new friends Matt and Marty.  “Give you a chance to see how the car handles in tricky weather.”  Great.

He opened the door to a CR-V; I had spotted a luscious burgundy model on the showroom floor.  Oh yes.  I could see myself in that beauty.  I slipped into the seat and felt instantly at home.  It was solid, comfy, high.  I loved it.  We turned onto the road and the car responded like a dream.  “What kind of mileage can I expect?” I asked.

“22-28,” Harris said.

*Sigh*  I had a promise to keep and 22-28 did not cut it.

Discouraged, I headed home for a glass of wine with Dave, and to give him a rundown on my car hunt.

The thing is, this was a day of bold adventure for me.  At fifty-nine, I had never had my own brand-new car, much less gone test-driving.  As a youthful driver, I drove my deceased grandfather’s Ford Falcon, and when my grandmother died, inherited her Impala.  I married into Dave’s little Fiat – a total lemon - and then began a succession of family cars – a Datsun followed by a fantastic Toyota SR-5 Dave totaled on an icy drive to grad school in the eighties.  In 1984, we had two children and a wolfish Alaskan malamute.  We needed plenty of room, and when Dodge began advertising its new mini-van, we opened those sliding side doors for nearly thirty years of mostly-blissful Caravan ownership. 

As my car rested outside, ready to start up on cue as she always has, Dave said, “Let’s take a look at Ford.  It would be a bonus if we could buy American.”  He did a Google search and we scrolled through Ford’s offerings.  “What about this?  A C-Max.  Nice lines.  It’s a hybrid, Lea…” he said, much as he might if waving a bar of dark chocolate beneath my nose.  “A hybrid, with a projected 47 miles to the gallon.”

So, the next morning, I parked my old friend among the Fiestas and Fusions at Park City Ford.  Was it me, or did she look particularly plucky there among all those upstarts?  I felt a prickle in my nose as I turned away and pushed open the heavy glass doors to the showroom.

And there it was.  The C-Max.  Shiny and black.  Sort of an appealing, mini-Caravan shape.  I felt a lift in my heart…this might be The One.

Patrick strode across the floor to meet me, hand outstretched, smile welcoming.  With his angular features and slender build, he reminded me of a mix of my dear friend Vin as well as my son Tucker; surely this was a good sign. 

As Patrick and I drove Route 25 and circled back on side roads, I learned he’d done some acting in New York, just as my daughter had.  I told him about the school for children with learning disabilities where my husband and I have worked since the seventies. He told me about a near-fatal car accident he’d had in his youth.  He listened patiently to my automotive requirements, and yes, to my sad rant about my love for my old car.  “Lea.  You will have new memories and new adventures in this car.  It will be all right.”

With this car, I’d still have to Sync my phone and adjust my driving to earn “efficiency leaves,” but with this car, I could keep my promise to the Universe.  Patrick was an added blessing, and for his sake and mine, I wanted to love this car. 

And I do.    

           

  

The Next Big Thing - Blog Hop

I love writing and the sheer fun of maneuvering words.  When I return to old essays and journal entries, I am glad to have more than my failing memory to chart past reflections and events.  But how do I justify hours spent scribbling away simply for my own amusement?  For now, this blog has provided an answer, a circle of kind cheerleaders in you.  I love reading your feedback and free associations when you relate to something I’ve written. 

Depending on my mood and phase of life, reading has been a source of comfort, escape, amusement, or companionship.  During hard times, I have been blessed to find authors who have seemed to say, “I know just how you feel….been there myself.”  It is always my hope that my writing might be, for others, that stand-in for a friend and a cup of tea.

My friend Tricia Tierney has invited me to participate in “The Next Big Thing,” a blog –tour of writings. I think you’ll enjoy checking out her blog as well as those of Casey Sylvestro, Eliza Twichell, Laurie Stone, Lynne Openshaw, and Elise Broach.  More on them in a moment, but first, I am supposed to answer a series of questions:


What is the working title of your book?  Currently Time Given or possibly Lift-Off.   Many titles have come and gone, each reflecting a changed tone or emphasis in the book.   

Where did the idea come from for the book?  It was always one of my goals to write a book when we planned our sabbatical in Italy.

What genre does your book fall under?  Travel memoir, with a taste of self-help.


Which actors would you choose to play you in a movie rendition?
  Sandra Bullock.  Love her… plus my daughter, Casey, and I like to think Sandra’s a blend of the two of us.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?  A couple and their daughter, each carrying a burden of pain, seek spontaneity, healing, and re-connection in the people, history, and countryside of Italy.  

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
  It would be a wonder to find an agency, but I want this book to happen and am open to self-publication.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  Six months, but many drafts have followed.
 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?  All three of us had a difficult year prior to leaving.   Dave and I were over-committed and spending a fair amount of time in a nursing home visiting Dave’s father.  Dave’s brother had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  Casey had broken up with the boy she thought she’d marry.  The trip was such an adventure, such a release, such a return to ourselves that it is a story I believe will uplift others.    

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?  There is wry humor in my sleep-deprived, menopausal point of view and struggles with identity and life issues faced by virtually every person over forty.  The reminders, lessons, and joys in the book are equally universal. 

That's it! Now let me introduce to you...

Tricia Tierney grew up in New York but spent many years as an expatriate, including over 3 years in Kyoto, Japan where she painted and sculpted and rode her bicycle everywhere. She also lived in Croatia and Bosnia, working for the United Nations' Peacekeeping Department during the Balkan wars, where she met a number of budding war criminals as well as the dashing but troubled English international relief-worker she would marry. After a thrilling war-zone romance, Tricia wed her now-late husband in Sarajevo and a year later, after one-too-many bumpy helicopter rides while pregnant, prematurely gave birth to her daughter in Southern Italy. As she prepares to send her (long thriving) daughter off to college in the fall, Tricia is beginning to think about her own next adventures, while continuing to work on her memoir of life during war and peace, loss and sorrow.  She writes mostly at the crack of dawn before going off to her full-time job at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. 

After a life of performance, both as her natural state and through high school and college, Casey Sylvestro spent three years in New York pursuing theater and teaching pilates at Equinox.  In August of 2011, she decided to “throw her life up in the air and see where the pieces fell." With her best friend Karis LeBlanc, she set off to South East Asia for four months of travel.  Her blog, “Running To Not Running From” follows the two women by cable car, careening vans, motorbike, tuktuk, and elephant into the Forbidden City in Hong Kong, the mountain country of Sapa, the rice paddies of Cambodia, the rivers of Laos, the jungles of Thailand, the beaches of Indonesia, and market after market after market…Casey now teaches pilates at Black Rock Pilates in Black Rock and is Assistant Store Manager for Lululemon Athletica in Westport.

Laurie Stone is a writer with a mixed bag of interests – fiction, essays, blogging, and travel writing.  She started as a local reporter but the siren call of novels and short stories became too strong.  Several years ago she won an award for her short story, “Just One More Thing.”  Her essays have appeared in the Connecticut Post, Connecticut Muse Magazine, Westport News, and County Kids Magazine.  She’s also in the process of writing and editing two novels.  Recently Laurie began blogging and loves sending her newest entries to family, friends, and colleagues.  Travel writing is a recent passion and her seven-part blog, “A Peek at Provence” ran weekly on the website, “In the Know Traveler.”  Laurie lives in Easton, CT with her husband and two sons.

Eliza Twichell is an artist, writer, and Therapeutic Touch practitioner and teacher.  She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico but sneaks off to the Adirondack mountains for three months in the summer to get her fix of water and family.  Fascinated with where the subtle becomes physical, Eliza is always exploring that frontier in terms of well being and being well.  She is increasingly comfortable with how much she doesn’t know.

Lynne Openshaw wrote her first book, Circle Dance, with her sister Valerie. Circle Dance was a legacy of love fueled by the desire to pass on to their children the traditions and experiences unique to them as second generation Greek Americans.   Lynne was raised in a close-knit family surrounded by extended family and “adopted” family through the Greek community.  Both she and her sister wanted to leave a legacy for their children and future generations of a bygone era.  A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Lynne relocated to the New York area with her husband and children. In addition to her writing, she is active in her church and local community.   She serves on the board of her town’s Women’s League – a philanthropic organization dedicated to helping women and children.   She is passionate about education, reading, health, and wellness.   She enjoys traveling, spending time on the beach and taking walks with her family and their adorable golden retriever. She has written for magazines and journals but her true passion is fiction and currently, she is working on her next book, a thriller.

Elise Broach lives in the woods of rural Connecticut, walking distance from three farms, a library, a post office, and two country stores.  Until she was 12, she lived in Brighton, England where she first read Shakespeare’s plays and fell in love with the sound of the language.  When her family moved to the US, she went to high school in Northern California, then college at Yale University.  She left grad school to raise her three children and began writing children’s books when the youngest was a year old.  Eventually, she wanted to try a novel.  Shakespeare’s Secret was her first, bringing together her fascination of history, her love of Shakespeare, and her real-life immersion in small-town politics were written during that time.  The issues of popularity, reputation, and personal integrity seem as relevant now as they were in the world of sixteenth-century England. For Elise, discovering those connections and bringing them to life in a book is one of the best things about being a writer. Her children’s titles include:  Snowflake Baby, Seashore Baby, Gumption, When Dinosaurs Came with Everything, Cousin John is Coming, Hiding Hoover, Wet Dog!, and What the No-Good Baby is Good For.  Novels:  Missing on Superstition Mountain, Masterpiece, Shakespeare’s Secret, Desert Crossing

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.