Invisible

Deer at Bryce Canyon by Greg McGill

I recently drove on the New York State Thruway on a sun-drenched autumn afternoon and couldn’t help noticing an astounding number of dead deer lying in various uncomfortable looking positions along the highway. I was traveling at sixty-five miles per hour so I was catching a quick glimpse of contorted corpses, blood and body parts, scattered remains of these lovely creatures strewn across the shoulder of the highway. I kept thinking about how this horror contrasted with the beauty of the leaves changing, the rolling green hillsides and puffy white clouds in a sky the color of morning glories.

I also noticed one young deer against the guardrail in the median whose head was upright and resting gently against the metal, so peacefully, it looked like he was sleeping. Maybe he was dreaming of being reunited with his parents who I’d probably passed on the road before reaching him. 

When I drove home a few hours later, it was pitch dark and I didn’t see much of anything except headlights coming toward me, tail lights in front of me and the white lines guiding on either side of my vehicle. I think it was a moonless night, but when I passed a clearing off to my right, I saw three glowing deer standing on a hillside, just for a second. It was the strangest thing because I couldn’t figure out where the light was coming from. Certainly not my headlights, they were pointed in a different direction. But there they were, lit up like that old “Green Ghost” game I used to play when I was a kid.

The image stuck with me but I didn’t think too much of it until I was safely back home in bed, trying to fall asleep, unsuccessfully, as usual. I thought about the three glowing deer and the ones slaughtered on the highway and wondered if there was any connection. I knew I’d witnessed the secret world of the night deer standing in the field but I also started thinking that what I’d seen glowing might not be of this world at all. That perhaps the ghosts of the slaughtered deer were standing still watching us, trying to make sense of the rushing wheels, why we all needed to get somewhere so fast, while they stood caught in unearthly stillness between this world and another.

I believe in an afterlife, though I’m not a religious person. It’s because of the experiences I’ve had with people close to me dying. My friend, Angela, who died at age 39, was put on life support for a few days after a brain aneurism, and I swear I felt her presence everywhere, except in the hospital room where she lingered. I especially felt her when I was near the lake, but shortly after she was officially dead, her presence faded. I felt that after my mother died too, that she was around for awhile, a white butterfly fluttering through my backyard, but then moved on once she’d checked in on us enough to know we’d be okay.

I don’t know why the deer would stick around. Maybe they too were looking out for their loved ones. Yeah, deer. I think they have feelings. And they certainly have reason to be concerned. The highway is a dangerous place, especially if you’re a wild animal trying to get to the other side in this life or the next. But I also think that the deer, and other things too, are looking at us, noticing what we humans are up to, even if we’re not too keen on looking back. There’s a lot out there, though it sometimes goes by in a blur. There's so much more we could be getting in touch with, if we would just slow down enough to appreciate what's going on around us.

A Small Thing at the Playground

My beautiful young Mom

            I’m walking back home from the grocery store across the field near the playground and I notice this sign that says, “No smoking, young lungs at play.” It makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time because when I was growing up and all the horrors of secondhand smoke were known and ignored, people smoked everywhere. And God forbid anyone should object to people smoking outside! It’s outside for Christ’s sake! What could be the problem with that?

My mother was a smoker so I got to enjoy secondhand smoke in my very own home. Everyone smoked back then, (except my dad) especially on T.V. and in movies, so it seemed like the most glamorous thing for my beautiful young mom to be holding a cigarette in her hand or to her lips nearly all the time, except for when she was drinking or eating. The way she would hold it, just so, was nothing short of graceful; Ingrid Bergman Casablanca graceful. Smooth, romantic, utterly cool.

I think I was around five when I started picking up my mom’s cigarette and pretending to smoke it, holding it exactly right between my two stubby fingers then sweeping it to my lips, where I just, you know, placed it gently and kind of puffed. This was all fine and dandy until my dad saw me one day and decided to teach me a lesson or kill me, I’m not sure which. He told me to suck in on the cigarette like Mommy did and low and behold I nearly choked to death. I don't know if I turned blue, but I never did smoke or even touch a cigarette after that. Lesson learned. Stay away from Daddy.

Though my Mom was the lone smoker in our nuclear family we often went to my grandparents’ house where everyone (except my grandfather) smoked. My mother had three siblings and among them were more than ten marriages so it’s hard to keep track of how many of the spouses smoked, but I know that my sister and I and our revolving door of cousins often were stuck in a fourteen by eighteen foot room with as many as fifteen smokers. We repeatedly complained of headaches and were told to go outside or down cellar to my grandfather’s office but not without first being reprimanded for whining and complaining about something that had nothing to do with their smoking.

My grandmother believed in smoking like her mother believed in Jesus. She allowed her children to start as early as they wanted, my mother at eleven! She also encouraged my sister and me to try it and not be such “goody-goodies.” We would have nothing to do with it, but I did enjoy eating the gin-soaked olives she left in her martini glasses that (sans pimentos) fit very well on my tiny little fingers.

I know this sounds like child abuse by today’s standards but these are not unpleasant memories, except for the smoking. We also ate at these gatherings and my grandmother, “Gammy,” made this salad we called “Gammy Salad.” It consisted of soggy iceberg lettuce, mayonnaise-drenched tomatoes, onions, and (here’s the really good part) little slivers of Swiss cheese! The reason it was so soggy was because of the endless cocktail hours that preceded dinner. There were pitchers of martinis that kept getting emptied and refilled, I kept eating the olives as an appetizer, and before you knew it, the main course, “Gammy Chicken soaked in French Dressing” was so over-cooked that it was falling off the bones (yes, chicken had bones in those days) and it was delicious!

Gammy never quit smoking, even after several operations to reopen the collapsed veins all over her body. She never got lung cancer. She did have emphysema, but I don’t ever really remember her being very sick. Near the end of her life, she brought a handsome young man as her escort to my mother’s third wedding. This same guy was a pall bearer at her funeral. She did whatever the hell she wanted. She was not a nice person, but she was an accidentally amazing cook!

My mother was the only one amongst her siblings who died directly from a smoking-related illness; emphysema at the age of 64. She did quit smoking in her late 50’s but by then it was too late. Her husband died of lung cancer seven months before her death.

Smoking kills people. It really does! I’m glad that a few young lungs will be spared by the sign next to the playground. But I also wish that the people I loved who got killed by cigarettes were back with us to enjoy a few moments of smoke-free air around most everywhere now. I’d stand in the sunlight with them, watch the children play and just breathe in all that fresh air.

***

This week’s blog post came from reading (well, skimming) William Zinsser’s The Writer Who Stayed. At age 87 he offered to write a personal essay once a week for the web version of the Scholar and wound up doing so for 19 months! Like me, he also taught writing and loved helping other writers find their voices and get over whatever it is that’s holding them back from writing. For me, it’s finding a subject that I feel comfortable writing about each week and keeping to the deadline like the word dead means something.

I thought about small hands, young lungs, the little mouth that puffed the cigarette and slurped the salad. The joy of childhood, the weirdness, the photos and fragrances (acrid sometimes) that take me back there. And Gammy. She surprised me.

There’s always something worth writing about, if you think small and dig in.

The Playlist

James Taylor and me circa 1970

I’m listening to my Spotify “starred” playlist on shuffle through a bluetooth speaker propped on my kitchen counter. This is all thanks to my son, Zach, who got me an ad free premium membership and the speaker last year for my birthday and I’ve been hooked ever since. It was a little bit of a learning curve for this old girl who’s just figuring out her IPOD, but I’ve enjoyed being able to find all the old music I used to listen to as a kid as well as a good deal of new stuff that really is quite good. I know I’m betraying my generation by saying this, but there is some pretty brilliant music that was made after 1975 and I’m fortunate to be in touch with younger people, like Zach, who point me in the direction of stuff that appeals to me.

I don’t remember a time in my life when there wasn’t music. Starting with my crazy grandfather playing Beethoven symphonies loudly on his RCA console stereo when we visited, to my very young parents introducing us to vanilla early 60’s music, like Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checkers. Yes, I grew up on songs like “Swingin’ School” and “Wild One,” as well as “Twist Again” and “Ballin’ the Jack.” My parents also listened to Barbra Steisand and I learned to comically lipsinc to “People” and “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in an effort to lift the spirits of my often depressed Mom.

But the music we first took ownership of came from Broadway musicals which topped the charts in that era and while we loved “The Sound of Music,” “Oklahoma,” and “My Fair Lady,” our favorite musical was “Oliver!” and we listened to the Lionel Bart version repeatedly until we learned every line of every song. We even invited neighbors to an evening of “The Parkwood Summer Theatre” which featured my sister and I, the Franks, the Creans, or basically anyone on the street who thought they could sing and dance. For fifteen cents we treated or annoyed them with our special renditions of “I’d Do Anything,” “Where is Love,” “As Long as He Needs Me” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made for Walking” performed by my sister, Terri, who I don’t think sang as much as wore really cool boots. The money we made (I think $3.15, we also sold popcorn) was donated to charity which assured that our picture got in the local paper. I don’t think anyone has this picture, or any evidence of our remarkable productions, as this was not the age of selfies and cameras on everyone phone or phones on every person, thank heaven for small favors.

Then came “The Monkees.” While teenagers listened to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, us younger kids (let’s say 10 and under) listened to this thrown together boy band (with grown men) that wasn’t assembled for its talent as much as its appeal to young girls. Apparently, I fell victim to this marketing ploy, watching their T.V. show religiously each week(sometimes twice when we would go to a neighbor’s to see it on Canadian T.V.) and buying albums which featured songs they mostly didn’t write with instruments they couldn’t really play and singing well enough to fool ten year olds into thinking they could sing.  I am still proud to say that I traded my “Meet the Beatles” album for “Meet The Monkees,” which says a lot about my musical taste then and now.

My real musical awakening came in 1968 when I was eleven and was asked to babysit at the home of my neighbors, Doug and Barbara Hunter, who were totally into the folk rock scene exploding at that time. While their darling little boys, Gerry and Geoffy slept, I was REQUIRED to listen to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, Simon and Garfunkel and anything that was played on the F.M. radio station then called “WYSL.” Upon their return, I was asked to critique the music they’d left me and I can only imagine how intelligent my eleven year old response to “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” must have sounded.

But they started me on a path, so by the time I hit twelve, I was sitting in my room listening to EVERYTHING, mostly folk music but also blues and southern rock, all of which felt like it was written specifically for and about me. Hearing “hello darkness my old friend,” and “how terribly strange to be seventy” has an even more haunting effect on me now than it did when I was still a young girl.

I’m skipping a lot here about how music has influenced me in every way imaginable but it’s hard to summarize how having music that spoke to me on an emotional level added to and in some ways saved my life. I honestly don’t know where I would have been without it and even now, some days, all it takes to get me out of a funk is hearing a really good song.

 So whether I’m bopping along to Robin Thicke and Pharell Williams singing “Blurred Lines,” or screaming along with John Mayer's “The Real World” or swirling into the romantic orchestration and lyrics in Judy Collins’s “Albatross,” the playlist takes me forward and takes me back, lifts me up and centers me. It’s the greatest thing ever to be able to connect and reconnect and know that no matter how old and feeble I get, the music will always be there for me.

For the Birds

Photo by Brad Anner

I haven’t slept well for the past three nights which is making this week’s post difficult to write. But then there are things making it difficult for me to sleep which in turn makes it difficult to do almost anything.

            What is it about this time of year? It’s the first day of autumn. My auto-correct wrote autism. Is it the first day of autism? Imagine that. The weather’s changing, leaves are falling, and guess what else? Not a very jokey subject, but there is this feeling of not being able to communicate whatever the hell is going on out there, or for that matter, in here.

            Today’s a gorgeously warm, sunny day and my yard is full of small brown birds fluttering and darting about from the trees to the bushes, to the fence, to the feeder. After sorting and picking through the seeds Greg generously provides for them, they drop a huge mess on the ground of broken and discarded shells.

I hate these birds and I want to be one of them.

            These birds have no future and no past and as far as I can tell, none of them are aging. They probably got a good night’s sleep, their chins look taut and beauty is of no concern. You can barely tell one from the other. They have no jobs, no names, no expectations. They simply eat, sleep, fly around, sing a bit, begin again.

            Actually, there is this one that seems a bit worried. He’s teetering on the clothesline, bobbing back and forth, looking apprehensively over his shoulder at the other guys at the feeder. He sees Hal who got that promotion he wanted, and Joe who’s been checking out Maybeline behind his back and what the hell, why not just go over and show them what’s what? So Bonsoir makes his move and heads over to the feeder where Hal and Joe pretend not to notice him at first. Then there’s some fluttering, spitting, and before you know it...

            Bonsoir is back at the clothesline singing. Those guys aren’t worth it, Maybeline is a two-timing floosy and what was that that just flew by? A butterfly, small, white, delicate…Hold the phone there, perverts. Inter-species relationships are a bit too advanced for young Bon here. But he can appreciate beauty and grace when it practically flies in his face. Doesn’t everyone?

            He continues to sing, focusing now on shivering shadows of leaves on the ground, tall grass bending in the wind, a low swooshing sound like waves on an ocean, though there’s no water near.

            Turns out Bonsoir is the Josh Grobin of songbirds, if you’re into that kind of thing. And now he’s joined on the line by Babette, a real looker by dull brown bird standards. Feathers, beak, head that bobs around aimlessly, the whole nine. They look into each other’s small black dot on the side of the head eyes and it’s immediate, intense, and ultimately real.

            There’s no time for talk here. A couple chorus’s of “People will Say We’re In Love” and they’re back at Bon’s place, chewing on some worms and throwing down some eggs and heating things up with some hot brown bird love (that’s probably out of order, but I told you I was tired and these damn word processors! You know how they don’t change things. Once it’s written, it’s THERE! Remember white-out? Who remembers white-out? Can we install white-out on my computer, like, NOW)!

            Bonsoir and Babette Bellagauche are getting along swimmingly. Bon has become a Castrato in the Italian opera of Chicago and sends his checks back to Babette and the brood who visit my yard daily as Babette recounts the beautiful love story of meeting Daddy on the clothesline and well...there they are. More ugly brown birds filling my yard.

Maybe someday they’ll all move to Chicago but until then, I welcome them. Though their manners are not much improved, I am happy to be supporting a young gifted family struggling in the arts and for now, my autumn is filled with song.

           

Of Bumblebees and The Big Bang

Designs by Masha Dyans

My older son, Brad, and I were sitting outside on our backyard deck when a bumblebee darted dangerously close to our heads. We both ducked before it landed on a nearby geranium and Brad said, “Don’t worry, bumblebees don’t have stingers.”

To which I inquired, “They don’t? Then how do they pollinate the flowers?”

 He stared at me incredulously. “Not with their stingers!” He proceeded to play around with his phone for a few seconds and then declared, “Oh, they do have stingers, but they’re non-aggressive.”

            “I don’t know things about facts,” I stated clumsily and I think that’s when Brad went back inside, locking the door to our house behind him.

Aside from being awkward, the preceding statement was mostly untrue. I do know some things about facts. For instance, it is difficult for me to remember the ones that hold little importance for me like those concerning science or technology, most periods of history, and anything having to do with my keys.

            I studied Literature and Theatre in college, wonderful subjects that I do know quite a bit about. But I guess that makes me more of an ideas and feelings kind of person. I like figuring out what makes people tick, why they do what they do and think what they think. What motivates them. I’m also a big fan of living in the moment. Noticing things, like the wind in the trees, or the sun on my face. I don’t need to know why the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, just that we’re there together, blissfully sharing our ignorance.

            Granted, my research habits may be a little on the lazy side. In a scene for a play I was recently writing, I wanted to transform the “sharks” from the T.V. show “Shark Tank” into real sharks, my idea being that contestants would stand in front of an actual tank with the different sharks swimming around, insulting them and their innovations, and trying to entice them to come into the tank and be eaten. In order to write this, I needed a few more facts so I went to my local library and took out some non-fiction children’s books about sharks and other sea life. And then I walked to my grocery store, books in hand, and the check-out lady who I see almost daily who always says in the same sing-songy way, “Thank you for shopping at Dash’s. Come and see us again,” looked at me! And for the first time ever asked, “What are you reading?”

I was so taken aback by this personal contact and embarrassed by the actual reason I had checked out these books that I said, “Oh, they’re just some children’s books for my niece and nephew. They’re really into sharks right now!”

And then I walked home, marveling at how easily I had turned into such a proficient liar. Truthfully, I do have a niece and nephew in their late twenties who might enjoy me visiting them with these titles and inviting them to sit on my lap for storytime, and younger ones in Connecticut who will never lay eyes on these books. But the fact that I knew how stupid my endeavor was, enough to cover it up, did not stop me from using the simple facts in those books that any eight year old would understand to inform my scene, which by the way, turned out great!

So how much do we really need to know?

While visiting South Carolina with Brad in late July, we encountered a rainy day and stayed inside watching a documentary on Netflix of his choosing. It was about the Higgs Particle and after less than two months time, here is what I remember about the film. There were these physicists and they were really excited about some theory this guy Higgs came up with. Something to do with the Big Bang and something they didn’t know about it. So the physicists were writing long equations on blackboards in classrooms with numbers and letters and squiggly lines. And then they built these huge machines underground and they wanted to replicate the Big Bang so they made all these explosions occur in the machines that were built in these huge buildings that cost billions of dollars. And all the physicists all over the world were watching and the first time they tried it, it didn’t work and the second time it did. And everybody was happy. And now they know...something.

Did I get too technical for anyone? Lose anybody with my commanding mastery of the details? If I had taken notes during the film and had studied them while writing this, I might be a bit a more specific. But what I remember most about that afternoon is how surprised I was that Brad wanted to learn about this and while I was getting lost in all the scientific concepts presented, Brad was clearly interested.  I kept looking over at him whispering, “Are you getting this?” And he would nod and say, “Yeah,” trying not to miss the next step of the process being explained on the screen.

So maybe that’s what I need to know; that I have a son who is sometimes interested in different things than I am and is intellectually superior to me about certain subjects. And we’re both willing to spend time with one another working this all out.

And when the rain stopped and the sun came out, we both enjoyed swimming.   

Born to be Wildish

Photo by Greg McGill

I am not a camper but because I love visiting National Parks with my photographer partner, Greg, I sometimes find myself sleeping in what could only be called a tent. I have no idea how this happens. I honestly must be drunk and drugged when I possibly concede to do this or maybe tied and gagged and thrown into a trunk unconscious. But there I am, in or near a beautiful park with nothing but nylon or canvas to protect me from the wildlife and weather I pretend to love.

The sleeping part is not all that bad. With a queen size air mattress and flannel sheets from home and $5 pillows purchased at any Walmart found in even the most remote locations in the U.S., I must say I have positively delighted in staring up at a zillion stars while lying comfortably on a well-inflated bed. The difficulty comes when I have to get up to use the bathroom and it happens to be 50 yards away, down a dark circuitous path through other tentsites, which would also not be a problem, if it did not occur so often.

For the past couple decades my bladder has awakened me in the middle of the night announcing loudly and clearly that it needs to be emptied. No matter how little I drink or how early I stop drinking the night before, I have to go at least two or three times a night. I think this started with my first pregnancy 32 years ago and since then I have learned that it is less disruptive to pee in a cup than walk to the not so near facilities. I use the large plastic red ones often designated for beer and I can fill easily two or three a night, thinking all the while, where is this all coming from?

While preparing for a recent trip to Yosemite, I bought a tin bucket from an upscale grocery store in Los Angeles which had the Coca-cola logo on it as well as a polar bear splashing joyfully in a fountain of coke. It was the only bucket in the store and I thought it would give me a larger target to aim at along with saving me some beer cups and the confusion that comes from the cups serving two purposes. Which yellow liquid was in this one?   I had not counted on the loudness of the stream hitting the sides of the tin in the middle of the night or the proximity of the other tent cabins in Curry Village where for a mere $88 per day,we made our home for three nights in late May when temperatures were still dipping into the low 40’s. This was astoundingly cheap compared to say, The Awahee Hotel, also located in the park, for a measly $500 per night.

Aside from the issue of there being no toilet, the only electricity came from one light bulb that hung eerily from the ceiling. Did I mention that Greg is a photographer? He takes hundreds if not thousands of pictures everyday then downloads them from cameras onto his laptop, which all have batteries that need to be recharged. That meant we got to fight with other humans (the most unpleasant of species) in the Curry Lodge; the only space nearby-ish that had both heat and electrical outlets. With limited seating and outlets and tons of digitally dependent outdoorsmen, it was not a pretty sight.  

The other thing I loved were the bear lockers. Though we didn’t see any bears, Yosemite is apparently full of them and the bear lockers are meant to keep bears away from your food. They’re not scary bears like we have in the Northeast, but they do like to eat, though they are not too discerning about what constitutes a  meal. Shampoo or baby wipes are just as good as say, a steak sandwich, so campers are warned to keep anything that has a scent in a bear locker. As if the result of inviting a bear attack by failing to do so were not enough, the park also threatens a $5,000 fine for keeping anything in your tent that a bear might want to eat.

In all fairness we did do some fabulous things. We wandered in the meadow in front of Half Dome, hiked around Mirror Lake, took pictures at the famous Tunnel View, hugged giant Sequoias in The Mariposa Grove and even watched climbers hang perilously on El Capitan. But I don’t think I’ll be heading back to Yosemite anytime soon. Unless the Awahee Hotel is offering a free weekend, or I start wearing a bladder bag, I think my camping days are pretty much over. That is, of course, until next time.

My Home in Italy

 My Home in Italy

I love this picture of me in Italy and not just because my face is obscured and I fit into a pair of jeans better than I do now. It’s because I’m leaning out of an unscreened window overlooking the trees and vineyards at Villa Casalecchi in a small town in Tuscany called Castellini en Chianti, bottle of wine opened and half drunk beside me. Just to look at it takes me back to the small apartment in that building separate from the main villa, which my partner, Greg, and I scored because we went in early May before serious tourist season had begun. After touring Rome, Florence, and Sienna for a few days, we landed here and it felt like home.

That was in 2004 and we swore we’d be back there long before now, but so far, it hasn’t happened. I say this as if it is in someone else’s hands to get us there, knowing that I could jump on a plane this afternoon and in a few hours, after abandoning my teaching job and tapping into my meager retirement savings, I could be there. Landing in Rome and wandering down ancient streets for a few days before taking the train to Sienna, then renting a car, driving along the highway that leads to the winding hilltop roads to Tuscany, crazy Italian drivers impatiently beeping their horns as I cautiously make my way in front of them.

This year would’ve been a likely candidate for our next trip. It was the ten year anniversary, Greg turned fifty and all signs pointed to going. So why didn’t we? To begin with the flights were expensive and the last time we went my mother’s inheritance paid for most of my part of the trip. But we do have the money, sort of, just weren’t quite willing to spend it on that.

To be honest, I travel a lot. Since then I’ve been to many places all over this country, just not to other countries, unless you count Canada, and I certainly don’t. While some of my journeys include visiting relatives; my dad in South Carolina, my grown children in Texas or California, Greg’s parents in Florida, I’ve also gone on bona fide vacations, mostly to National Parks. Arizona, Colorado, Utah; I love all the wide open spaces and majestic landscapes, but I can’t see myself living in any of them.

But I can’t see myself living in Buffalo much longer either. It’s hard to stay in a place that prides itself on being the birthplace of chicken wings, or can’t make its mind up about a bridge design. Not that there aren’t many great things about Buffalo, like it’s proximity to Canada, and how easy it is to leave here. Did I mention that the airport is fabulous and there’s never any traffic? These are major pluses, especially when you need to get out fast.

I know now that I probably won’t leave Buffalo permanently until retirement because at fifty-seven I’m too old for anyone to hire me anywhere else. Maybe that’s why we’re waiting to go to Italy, so we don’t have to come back here to any jobs or other responsibilities. Though neither Greg nor I are Italian by blood, I believe we became so on our last trip; through osmosis, red wine, wandering hillsides, the sounds of our  feet shuffling over cobblestone, swishing of shopkeepers’ brooms over walkways, the kindness of strangers and that delicious language we heard everywhere.

Yes, in a few years, we will go back there, leaving behind what we know right now, leaning out over whatever lies before us and with nothing but dreams to sustain us, we will go back to live in our home in Italy.