Going Up

Tea and cookies at the Mohonk Mountain House is a civilized snack served at 4:00 PM, and savored while sitting in velvet Victorian chairs before a cozy fire.  Today, however, the management graciously invited the citizenry of New Palz (all of them) to a day of skating, hiking the trails, and afternoon tea.  A generous offering, but when Dave and I entered the lounge, the dash of hordes desperate for a cup and the surge of celebrants eager for a sugar cookie convinced us that a walk suited us just as well.

A stay at this resort is a luxury for the most part beyond us, but for several years we have taken advantage of a mid-week, pre-holiday deal that puts an overnight almost within the realm of reasonable.  With its dormers and turrets, balconies and stone arches, porches and picturesque overlooks, the Mountain House is a castle nestled in the Shawungunk Mountains, like Brigadoon, an oasis from a different time, a time where we want to be. 

Despite the dimming light, Dave and I skirted the lake, leaving the castle behind us, taking an easy stroll along a wide graveled trail arched over with evergreens.  To our left, massive blocks of stones scoured from the earth and carried by the glacier jutted from the steep slope that rose to the ridge.  Ahead and above us, obscured by great profiles of rock with soaring foreheads and protruding chins, we heard youthful voices laughing and chattering, three teenagers, we later learned.

“What do you think?” said Dave.  “Shall we add ‘rock-climbing’ to our activities when we tell friends about Mohonk?”

Totally.

Having not done much rock-climbing, or any, we both wore sneakers. I regretted this, telling Dave I wished he’d worn hiking boots so we could legitimately call this outing a hike, but rock-climbing?  Even better.  Besides, we planned only to clamber up a little ways. Just enough to claim the activity.

But we got into it.  Kept climbing.  And when Dave called, “Here’s one of the red arrows that marks the trail.  Wanna keep going?”  I did, so we continued onward, pleased to have the guidance of those who’d planned the best approach.

Cheerfully, we reached for finger- and toe-holds, and where there were none, paused to study our options and plan how to progress.  At times Dave gave me a boost; other times, I stretched out a hand to steady him.  In places, we had to scooch through gaps, or heft our butts up onto a grainy surface, and swing our legs around and up. 

All else receded as we scanned the rocks before us, the chinks and inclines, the heights and spans, to decide the best and safest way forward and up.  It was difficult, but I was grinning, pleased I could still do this, grateful and awed that I was scaling these bones of the earth, rocks shunted and lifted and tumbled into place millions and millions of years ago. Oh, how I need to recall that perspective as I ruminate and worry about every detail of life. 

The light was fading and I yelled ahead to the teenagers, asking if they knew how much further we had to go.  

“Not sure.  Close, I think.  I hope,” a young man’s voice called back. 

“Plenty of time before dark,” Dave said.  He knows where my head goes.

For this is not the first time we’ve headed out for a walk that turned into something else, an adventure if one is charitable, sheer stupidity if one is honest.  Years ago, when I was still on our town’s conservation commission and our malamute Kodiak was alive and fit, we set out with the dog on a November afternoon, around 4:00… a time we should beware of, it seems.  Though the trail was local, it was new to us, well marked with blue splotches painted eye-level on intermittent tree-trunks.  We marched along with Kody straining to run, her ears pricked and swiveling. 

I always felt guilty with this big girl on a leash.  She was majestic, maned, and wolfish, black and white with a masked face.   Bred to pull sleds, but born, it seemed to me, to howl and run wild. I felt honored to be her human, and wished more for her than life in a house and at the end of a leash, but suburbia, hunters, and cars limited her freedom. 

For some reason, I’d thought the trail was only a mile or so.  I was mistaken, but when the sun set in front of us we’d been hoofing for a while and it didn’t make sense to turn back.    Periodically I’d ask Dave, “Are you nervous?” and he said no every time, which calmed me.  But my mind was picturing headlines, “Conservation Commissioner Lost in the Woods,” the “What a Jerk” part unprinted but implied.  Plus I knew this preserve backed up on the 750 acres of Trout Brook Valley, which was adjacent to the even larger Devil’s Den state park. One could wander lost in those woods for days.  Mentally, I whipped up a full-scale search with dogs and helicopters as I plodded on, craning for a glimpse of a trail marker, but no longer able to see them in the dark.

It was a glorious night, the sky velvet and star-sparkled, the constellation Orion overhead, club in hand.  We knew the hunter’s orientation in relation to our house, right above the mailbox, at this time of year.  We’d also taken note of where the sun went down. In the absence of a compass or Boy Scout to guide us, we took stock with those elements, and turned to head in the direction Orion indicated.  Having grown up watching “Lassie,” we also enlisted the dog, saying, “Where’s home, Kody?”  When we loosened up on her leash, she pulled as if she knew the answer, and eventually we spotted the reassuring flash of headlights along Black Rock Turnpike.

Back on the rock face above Mohonk, we’d long ago lost sight of the lights of the hotel, but the red arrows were still visible to mark the way. 

Up ahead, we heard a female voice, shrill with alarm, say, “You’ve got to be kidding.  I can’t do it.”

We heard the exaggerated teasing sighs of her friends, but I’d registered her remark with concern.  “What is it?” I called. 

“The arrow on this rock points straight up.”

Excellent.

Still, I felt some satisfaction that we were closing in on the kids.  I realized it might be because challenging spots slowed them down, but Dave and I had them by four decades at least, and I couldn’t help a whisper of pride. 

Beyond the exertion, this was a physical puzzle.  At times the red arrows were friendly partners, providing good guidance, easing our way.  At others, they mocked us, a joke surely, pointing up the flat face of a boulder without any visible cracks to cling to, and I pictured the painter smirking as he slapped that red sneer on the rock.   Yet, always we figured out a way up. 

Dave was faster, taller, and stronger, but he remained the rear-guard to protect and sometimes shoulder-boost his flower of a wife.

We could heard Kyle, Greer, and Todd just ahead, and had ascertained their names through their taunts and encouragements.  Every now and then we’d glimpsed Greer’s curly head of hair, Kyle’s bearded face and broad torso in plaid flannel, and Todd, enveloped in his navy blue hoodie.  “How much further, do you think?” I said again, but still, they had no idea.

“Sundown in twenty minutes,” Kyle called, and I inspected the overhangs around me, finding no comfort in the specter of a night spent, back to rock, in their shelter, as opposed to our cozy room with its wicker headboard, snuggly quilt, and convenient bathroom. I refused even to think about the meals now roasting in ovens and simmering in pans in Mohonk’s kitchens. 

“Shit.  I am not climbing that thing.” Greer again.

“Yes, you are,” said Todd. 

“What is it?” I said.  The kids were close now, just around the lip of a ledge.

“A ladder.  A series of ladders.  Straight up.  Kyle, I don’t think you’ll even fit in there.  Too narrow,” said Greer.

Too narrow? 

By now, we were in this together.  I was grateful the kids were with us on the mountain, grateful for their company, both in the adventure and in case.  And as we rounded the ledge, we saw two feet disappearing into a crevice above us. 

Later we learned this was the “Lemon Squeezer,” a long, tight crevice with sturdy wooden ladders bolted to one side. As we stood at their base, I reflected that I would kill my kids if they ever tried anything like this, much less attempting it in the dark.

“It’s going to be a good story soon,” I said. 

Dave, my brave one, my stalwart man, stood beside me as we eyed that groove in the rock with dismay.  Still, the ladders guaranteed footholds and handholds at regular intervals, a good thing as it was pitch dark once we climbed inside the crevice. 

Muffled grunts, complaints, and nervous laughter accompanied the kids’ struggle up the rungs. Glimmers of light broke the blackness, filtering past the bodies crammed into the opening above us, as one of them turned on a phone flashlight.

It was work, climbing those ladders.  Well-smoothed by many hands, the wood of the rungs was solid and reliable.  Reach, grab a rung, heave, step up: it was crazy, to be doing this, but I felt strong, capable, and daring.  I didn’t want to be stranded on the mountain that night, but climbing those ladders felt good.

“Thank God!  I see the opening at the top!”  It was Greer.  “Agh.  The ladder stops short.  How do we get out?”

“You’ll be fine.  Press your feet against one side and inch up,” said Kyle, his voice kind.

More grunts and the sounds of fabric rubbing rock, of shifting, and shoving… and then hoots of triumphant relief.  The kids had shimmied their way out… and Dave and I were alone, clinging to ladder rungs inside a crevice, on the side of a mountain, in the dark.  But we knew we were close. 

Reach.  Grab a rung.  Heave.  Step up.  “Can you believe we’re doing this?”  I could hear the grin of satisfaction, along with the effort, in Dave’s question.    

Then, a bright light, and a head and shoulders silhouetted against the opening I could now see. “Here, I’ll hand you my phone.” 

And I could picture this young man, a stranger, Kyle it was, lying flat on the rock slab above us in order to stretch an arm far enough into the crevice so I could reach the phone pinched in his fingertips.  

“Oh my god, thank you.  I’m so grateful you’re here, that you came back with the light for us! Are we near the top?”

“Yep.  Almost there.”

With my right hand, I clung to the ladder, while twisting to the left to angle the phone down to illuminate the rungs below me for Dave.  Once he caught up, I threaded my arm between my body and the rock face in order to hand the light back up to Kyle.  He didn’t leave to rejoin his friends, but waited at the opening, shining the light into the fissure while Dave and I inched, backs and feet pressed to opposing rock faces, out onto the rock ledge, into open air, above the wide spread of the Hudson Valley. 

P.S.  We returned the next day to take pictures in the daylight!

  

           

You Forget

My new grandson, Paul, is asleep on his back.  Every now and then, he startles, his arms flying up, fingers splayed, legs jerking in close to his body.  His tiny brow furrows and his lips purse.  When our dog, Kody, twitched in her sleep, we’d say, “She’s chasing rabbits.”  Absent bunnies or the ability to chase, what images flash through a baby’s mind? 

No wandering stuffed animals lie within Paul’s reach; no blankets threaten to suffocate him.  Statistics on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) have banned such comforts, but he snoozes on the floor, serene on his jungle mat, under curling felt palm fronds and the gaze of a smiling giraffe.  Lisa, Paul’s mom, is taking a much-needed nap, and I’m stretched out on the brown velvet couch, keeping watch along with the giraffe.

As a young mother, was I as anxious as I am now about this baby’s safety when he is in my care?  I don’t remember worrying about catching a heel and pitching forward while holding the baby, or thinking I might injure his hand while struggling to inch his arm through a tight sleeve.  When he squalls, I’m saddened by his anguish, yet when he’s asleep, I stare fixedly at his chest for its reassuring rise and fall. 

I guess you forget.  You forget the jolt in the stomach in the middle of the night at hearing a squawk soon after transferring the sleeping – so-asleep, definitely asleep – baby into the cradle.  This, after an hour’s feeding and a half hour of pacing and cooing, having gently eased the baby down, swaying and rocking as you lower him, tricking him really, into thinking he’s still being held, even as you’re settling him into a crib no longer filled with friendly stuffed animals, buffered by cozy bumpers, and festooned with intriguing mobiles due to those SIDS statistics.  Who wouldn’t wake up and wail?

You forget the awkward flurry of trying to get a fresh diaper maneuvered into place before the baby poops on the changing table, soiling another pad.  You forget the dodge and weave when you neglect to cover the baby’s penis and a jet of urine barely misses you, soaking the brandy new outfit you’d laid out for the child, and landing a droplet on the baby’s cheek.  You forget the knot in your back and your tired arms.  How can eight pounds be so heavy?

More easily, you remember the child once cereal’s been added to the menu, and that squawk is no longer a nightly occurrence.  You remember a baby that has discovered his or her hands, extraordinary appendages that swivel, wave, and whack toys, with fingers that soothe better than a pacifier, thank God. And you remember a baby who knows you, and rewards your goofiness with a smile.

 

Having a grandson blows memory’s veils aside some, and while climbing lichened rocks splotched with emerald green mosses during a recent hike, Dave, our friend Joanie, and I chuckled in recalling mishaps decades ago with our newborns:

Joanie gingerly tiptoeing across the hall, her arms curved in rock-a-bye mode, to re-place the baby into her crib after nursing, only to discover her arms empty and Tracy already there.

Me, awakening, panicked because Tucker was not in my arms.  Desperately patting the bed around me, whipping back the sheets, searching for the baby.  Finally shaking Dave awake to ask, “Where’s Tucker?!  He’s not here!”  And his doting father’s answer, “Who’s Tucker?” 

FYI: the baby was not under the pillows or on the floor, but, like Tracy, asleep in his cradle.

Last week, I commented to Tucker, now 35, something about the delightful ease of breastfeeding.  There was a silence on the phone.  A noticeable silence.  An audible deep breath was drawn before he said, “Are you sure you’re remembering right Mom?  These two weeks have been hard.”

Maybe I have forgotten.  Certainly I remember the first abysmal night home from the hospital.  Dave had cooked up a welcoming feast of steak, potatoes, and asparagus.  After eagerly consuming dinner, I nursed the baby, and Dave settled in for an all-nighter with his graduate school studies. I’d not yet made the connection between my diet and the baby’s, and apparently asparagus was too acidic. Tucker cried through the night, his mother along with him.  Dave tried to comfort us, and I have a misty image of the three of us sobbing, but maybe, over the years, that’s been added for spice. It’s a funny story, but at the time, it was miserable.  In that way memory is kind, blurring over rough spots and throwing a halo around holy ones.   

For I remember the scent of my freshly bathed babies, their hair fluffy and soft as dandelion fuzz.  I remember downy cheeks and serene little faces, lips working, and lifting into fleeting smiles.  And when I remember the miracle of my little ones, they are surrounded by an aura of light and love that I had never known before.  I look at Paul, peacefully sleeping, and I remember… and feel it anew.

 Posed! Taken later! Adorable stegosaurus in the jungle!

Christmas Old ...and News!

My father, Paul, was tough on Santa Claus.  Mom, my sisters, and I would sit on the stairs in our nighties and robes in the morning on December 25 while Dad lumbered down to the living room to “make sure the fat man was gone.”  While surreptitiously turning on Christmas tree lights and lighting the fire in the fireplace, Dad would bellow, “Hey!  What are you still doing here?  Off!  Off you go now!”  Even as young believers, somehow we knew this was funny and not a rudeness that would send Santa off in a huff having snatched back our gifts.

Dad’s performance in berating Santa and chasing him away became ever more outrageous as we three girls grew older.  And Dad was still shooing the fat man when those gathered on the stairs included my own children and tiny nephews.  Is it totally pathetic to grow misty over such a memory?  Perhaps, but for all the lights, tinsel, jingle bells, and parties, Christmas is poignant, ripe with promise and heavy with expectation.  Like a snowball gathering size and weight as it rolls, the holiday carries with it the shadows and brilliance of years past.

Early this December, I drove to Pennsylvania to join my sisters in a green room vigil as my mother had surgery. The procedure went smoothly and, undaunted, Mom went to dinner and the theater with friends two days later.  So I headed home, free of worry, serenaded by a Christmas CD Dave had compiled. 

My current favorite is a Don Henley song and when it played through the first time, I chimed in at the end of the chorus, then tapped the replay button on the dashboard for another round.  And then, a third.  I listened a mite and repeated the lyrics, striving to learn the words.  At some point, I keyed in to the message beyond simply singing along:

“Bells will be ringing the sad, sad news.

Oh what a Christmas, to have the blues.

My baby’s gone.  I have no friends

To wish me happy, happy Christmas, once again…”

No friends?  Ouch.  Not exactly jolly.  Time to move on; no more replays.  Johnny Mathis began to croon, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and I cruised vocally on auto-pilot, joining in on every word.  But you can’t miss the melancholy in that World War II lament as a lonely soldier longs to head home. 

Next up, “White Christmas.”  In my mind’s eye, Bing tapped his pipe, tamped in some tobacco, and gazed with languid eyes into his pool of memories.  From some musical archive in my soul, the lyrics spooled forth as Bing and I sang together of tree tops glistening, sleigh bells in the snow, and Christmas cards.  Clearly Bing was wistful.  His Christmas held not those things; he was yearning for them, “just like the ones I used to know…”

When Dave toasts fresh breadcrumbs, chops black olives, and mixes them with browned garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice, he senses his Aunty Cam, deceased for seven years, watching over his shoulder and nodding her satisfaction.  As he reaches to the top of our tree to place an angel, crafted in 1986 from a barely disguised toilet paper roll, we picture little Tucker, the artist, leaping about in anticipation with his sister, Casey.   On Christmas Eve, as is our tradition, Dave and I lie in bed, reciting “The Night Before Christmas,” and I remember my father with my kids in his lap, reading them the same story.  So many snippets from the Christmases we used to know.  

When I was a kid growing up in the fifties, tree lights were universally multi-colored, but ours glows now, magical as a snowy Christmas, with tiny white lights.  Its prickly green fingers display shimmering glass icicles and decades-old ornaments.  Many hands have crafted the satin peppers, rustic calico creations, clothespin dolls, and salt-dough figures tucked among shiny red and silver balls.  The eighties reaped a host of pieces personalized with Tucker and Casey’s names:  crocheted snowmen, wooden teddy bears, tiny sleds, and sweaters. Our grandniece, Ava, has provided our most recent acquisitions: a clay Santa face made from her handprint, and a glittery pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers.  That is the way of family trees, whether balsam or genealogical, their branches fill with new additions.

And so it is this December, because this has been a richly blessed Christmas: Casey and her boyfriend, PJ, announced their engagement, and Tucker and his wife Lisa brought a new Paul into the family!  With a full head of hair and soft kissable cheeks, this little bug looks much like Tucker did when he was my baby.  And I miss my father on this fourth Christmas without him, but I know he is beaming from his spot on the heavenly couch.

 Tucker, 1980

Paul, 2015

2015, PJ and Casey, engaged! 

Estate Sale

Estate Sale.  Magic words conjuring antiques at bargain prices.  Dave and I were headed to Putnam Park, “Connecticut’s Valley Forge” for a lovely fall walk, but the homemade, red-lettered sign on the side of the road was lure enough for a twist of the wheel for a detour.

Tucked in the woods just beyond the park entrance, the house was probably built around the time the park opened in the late 1800’s.  Strong bones and gracious details were evident beneath the peeling paint, sagging sleeping porch, and broken windows.  A tumble of cast-off furniture littered the yard, and two decrepit sheds at the end of the driveway seemed at one with their woodland surroundings as their loosened planks leaned among fallen limbs and leaves. 

  

Many were drawn to the house by that sign.  Men examined rusty tools in the shed off the kitchen.  Wives and girlfriends checked china figurines for cracks.  In a glass-fronted cabinet, I spotted a stack of plates, blue on white, the kind sold in grocery stores, but I liked the rustic design of a thatched English cottage.  I scrutinized them for chips, counted out eight intact plates, and started a “hold” pile behind the makeshift cashier’s table.  I’d lost track of Dave the moment we came through the door.

 “What’s in there?”  A man called from the kitchen as I entered a walk-in closet. 

“Mm, mostly products: Lysol, Windex.  Old mops, a broom, some bottles – not vintage, just old.”  The stuff all of us have in our cupboards and closets, only here, doors and drawers were swung wide and pulled out; the mess we squirrel away exposed for inspection. 

When I returned to the kitchen, a bearded man leaned against the wall, his arms folded against his chest, while a woman, his wife I supposed, picked through a box of dish towels and tablecloths.   She glanced at me and we shared small smiles.  

“So much of a life here,” I said.

“I know,” she replied.  “I imagine my kids, after I’m gone, saying, ‘We’re going to have one hell of a yard sale!’”  The three of us laughed, then she added, “But you do get a sense, at a sale like this…I don’t know...You think of the person.”

“Once I was up in the attic at a tag sale,” I said.  “It was filled with boxes of Christmas decorations.  And I pictured the family, a time, when the garlands were up and the ornaments hung on a tree… and I got teary.  Later someone told me, ‘No need for sadness.  They moved to Florida.’”

Again we laughed.  As I inched among the boxes and chairs and counters to go to the next room, the bearded guy unfolded his arms and moved to let me pass.  “That could be it.  Maybe these people are on a beach somewhere thinking, ‘Those poor people in Connecticut!’”

In the den, I admired a black ladder-back rocking chair with a caned seat.  Nice, but we already have one that’s similar.  A tall, narrow bookshelf near a doorway was crammed with books.  I angled my head sideways to read the titles, among them The Da Vinci Code, Painting for Beginners, The Power of Intention, and Birding in North America.  Books I have read; interests I have.  Books give a sense of those who bought them, and I felt that whoever had lived here was someone I would like. 

Into the next room, the living room maybe?  All the rooms were small, and with the jumble of boxes, chairs, and odds and ends, it was hard to discern which room had been used for what.  The floor here, too, was crowded with boxes of books.  “Wow.  They read a lot,” I mumbled. 

“Yeah,” said another browser beside me.  “Have you been upstairs yet?  Rooms full of books.” 

I climbed the broad staircase with its dark wooden banisters and, on the landing, was confronted by a machine the color of lichens and the size of a dishwasher.  A small plaque on the device below a neck-sized hole read, “Vita Master.”  A black-treaded exerciser, frozen mid-step, but ready to march on, waited on a side table down the hall.

Dave found me there and handed me a small plaque.  “Look.  The Desiderata,” one of my favorite pieces.  At one sad, lost time in my life, I burst into tears at its reassurance: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
 you have a right to be here.
 And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

As I stood, head bent to read the plaque, a petite older woman approached.  She had short, gray hair and a kind, lined face, and her eyes met mine as I looked up to let her pass.  Her expression was wistful as she said, “You get such a sense of a life here.” 

I nodded slowly.  “I know.  I just spoke to some people downstairs who said the same thing.”

Clothes hung in every closet: floral silk blouses, cotton dresses, a sixties-style peasant skirt, jackets, flannel slacks.  So personal, these clothes: a woman once bought and wore them close to her skin. 

Down the hall and into another room.  Boxes and boxes of books.  I picked up a photo-journal of the Kennedy family, published after the president’s assassination and dedicated to John Junior.  Now he’s gone too.  In the pictures, JFK and Jackie cuddle and cavort with their little ones, Caroline at four or so, and John John, a toddler.  The pictures of Jackie reminded me of my Mom in her youth, so I held on to it. 

“Jansen!” I exclaimed upon spotting the familiar mottled gray cover.   “I still have my copy from my high school history of art class! I was just talking to a friend about this book a few days ago.”  The stout redhead poking through another box of books nodded, polite and uninterested, and continued her perusal.  I gather she’d not taken history of art. 

So many books!  There were plenty that had been bestsellers in their day, and multitudes on the power of prayer, on the brain, on inspirational healing, and health.  Someone had been sick in this house; that was clear.

In the master bedroom, I walked in on a conversation between the petite older woman I’d met in the hall and one of the sale’s organizers.  With her auburn hair caught up in a loose knot, the organizer was youthful, energetic, tattooed, and friendly.  “No,” she said in answer to a question I’d missed.  “No one was sick here.  Well, at least, not the owner.  She was a nurse and her kids tell me she was the kind of person who would drop everything to help someone else.  She ran a resting house for invalids for a while.  So, yeah.  Others were sick here, but she was fine. ”

The three of us smiled together, and I felt relieved.  The woman who bought and read these books had children who respected her.  From the sound of it, she’d not wasted away at her death. 

The young woman folded crocheted Afghans and white pillowcases as she chatted on.  “Of course, her kids can’t come here during the sale.  But I’ll tell them about conversations like this.  They picture a rummage sale, a bunch of blank-faced people pawing through their mom’s stuff.  But I’ll tell them, ‘No.  People cared.  They asked about your mother,’ and that will make a difference.” 

It made a difference to me.  To walk, by chance, from a brilliant fall day into this woman’s life.  To see her books, her clothes, and her collections.  To worry about her and the nature of her passing.  It helped to learn she’d had a full life, and that she was beloved.