Country.

Right now S is driving North on the grapevine, on the road for another work trip. He was given a free upgrade at the car rental place this morning, the sun is shining, and traffic is light so he has lots to whistle about. He’s headed to the Central Valley: land of Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, “cowboah” boots, sweat, migrant workers, our Poet Laureate, and the agricultural heart of the West.  After a full day of meetings my NPR- listening, left-leaning, tree-hugging, civil rights-fighting man wants to soak up some country. He’ll take off his suit jacket, loosen his tie, unbutton the button at his throat, and lean back with a cold brew at the Crystal Palace. And even though I’m a jealous, petty woman whose imagination bubbles and froths, I know he won’t find a skinny, pretty little sugar in a too-short skirt and heeled boots to clink glasses with. He’ll be nodding to the rhythm of twang and strum all by his lonesome.

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Today’s Poem is for the Valley, where “poetry sprouts like weeds”,  for iced tea and whatever it is that quenches your thirst.

A Red Palm by Gary Soto

You’re in this dream of cotton plants..

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*Want to know more about the Valley? I found this fabulous blog.

Rollin’.

She returned from camp happy, healthy, and brimming with stories and excitement. She came home with new friends, songs to sing, and dances to dance;  a scraped knee and adoration for her too-cool eighteen year old guardians who left indelible impressions on her. Chloe the counselor plays guitar and has a pet pig; she uses the f word a lot- she can’t help it. Jamie is more responsible but still tons of fun. Turns out you can be responsible and fun.

She kept a journal of her week there, including every meal and activity. Each day received a star rating and a level on the “fun-o-meter”.  Day 5, Beach Day, broke the meter. She told us that Day 4 (ropes course and s’mores at night) would have broken the meter as well but the idea of meter-busting fun hadn’t occurred to her until Day 5 happened.

She came home with lanyards (thank you, Billy Collins, for forever changing the way we see lanyards), copper bracelets hammered with love, the requisite tie-dye t shirt, sand in every crevice of the duffel bag, still-wet towels, and hugs. Lots and lots of hugs. Can you see me smiling? Because I am.

So what did mama do while baby was away? While making preparations for her grand summer adventure, I consoled myself with the thought of a writing retreat.  A “stay home and do nothing but write” retreat. No cooking or cleaning. No leaving the house for anything except coffee breaks. Writing, writing, and more writing. Of course, a little reading too. Sounds great, right? Write. Wrong. I decided that in between writing, I’d sneak a little time in to repaint the angel’s room. Lesson: one cannot “sneak” painting in.

This is probably the first time in my life that manual labor glittered with appeal. But perhaps I instinctively knew I’d need a physically demanding distraction from the mental chatter; a hard-core (for me, anyway) project to bury myself in while the angel was away. S took a few days off to help me and just like that, with a swipe of the paint roller, the idea of a writing retreat was erased. I wielded the paint roller like an M-16; I wielded the paint roller like a lullaby.

Painting The Room, Day 1:

This is fabulous!

Creedence is jamming: Big wheel keep on turning Proud mary keep on burnin Rollin rollin rollin on the river…

I have my man and my coffee to keep me company while I toil.

Sweat is a good thing.

Hallelujah! I finally understand my father’s love for working with his hands.

Paint rollers are fun. Roll up, roll down.

Now this is a good day’s work.

Painting The Room, Day 2:

My neck hurts.

My head hurts.

Sweat is not a good thing.

Paint fumes are not a good thing.

Dust is not a good thing.

Have you ever noticed the word pain inside of painting?

Toiling with your spouse may not be as romantic and sexy as previously imagined.

Why do you work so slowly?

Why are your paint lines so crooked?

Why did we even get married?

Painting The Room, Day 3:

Who takes three days to paint a single small room?

Painting The Room, Day 4:

We did it.

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The room, the house, and the marriage remain intact.

Baby is back and we’re all together now.

Big wheel keeps on turning, proud mama keeps on burning, and we’re rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.

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Today’s Poem is for days so fun they bust the meter, light splashed mornings, the wheel that turns, the rolling, the round.

The Round by Stanley Kunitz

Light splashed this morning

on the shell-pink anemones

swaying on their tall stems…

Listen.

The following may or may not be fiction…

At nine in the morning, the housewife opened the door to the piano tuner.  She was annoyed by his too-loud hello and his eager smile. He was a paunchy man in his forties with small, muddy eyes and hands that didn’t look like they belonged on a piano. He wore rumpled khakis and a faded collared shirt that looked one sneeze away from popping a button. Forgettable. She was no vision of beauty either and she knew it. She felt beige and ugly in worn jeans and messy hair. Who needs to look good for making beds and scrubbing toilets, she often wondered.

The piano tuner settled down to his work quickly. She felt uncomfortable with workmen or strangers in the house when she was alone, so she was happy to leave him to his work and get busy with her own chores to the occasional twang of a pulled chord as background noise. Less than half an hour later, he started to quiet down and plucked only a few more keys. Suddenly, he began to play. Really play.

He played one piece after another, articulating complicated and demanding notes.  The house filled with music; now gentle, now forceful. Each note felt charged with abandon and seemed to come from a deep, secret cave in the body. Afraid to drop the stack of hot dishes she was pulling from the still-steaming dishwasher, the housewife put the dishes down on the counter and stood listening at the center of the small kitchen. Everything else seemed to fall away like sheets hung to dry taken by the wind: the oil splattered on the backsplash, the stamp of heat on her fingertips, the embarrassing vinegar question that played in her head like a conveyor belt (this is it?), and time itself. How long did he play? He seemed to have fallen into the music and was now losing himself, going deeper and deeper with the flame of each note lighting his way. A religious woman would have fallen to her knees to thank God for this unexpected, unimaginable gift. Instead, she closed her eyes and wondered, Who does this happen to? Who?

When the piano tuner finished playing, the housewife lingered in the new silence for another moment and entered the living room. The piano tuner carefully closed the piano cover, took his payment, and gathered his tools quickly and politely. His eager smile was no longer annoying. The housewife closed the door behind him and continued with her chores, silently folding clothes, changing sheets, and scouring the tub. But the drab day felt sweeter, like finding a wild strawberry in the weeds; surprising and so bright.

Is it only pain that brings us to our knees? Have you ever been stunned silent by something beautiful and unexpected?

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Today’s Poem: (click on link to read entire poem)

Romantics by Lisel Mueller

Johannes Brahms and

               Clara Schumann

The modern biographers worry

“how far it went”, their tender friendship…