Southbound Train

Where I Live

It is green where I live. Soft, rolling, gentle green. The trees push up to rub against the sky, bend down to caress the earth.

It is lush. Things grow here – flowers, plants, animals, people. The land and the air are nurturing. Life seems to flourish without too much strife.

It isn’t fancy, but it looks nice. It isn’t likely to show up in a magazine or win any awards, but that might be because no one thought to look here for award winning things.

It is well known, but not really – more like a catchphrase than somewhere people really know anything about. I think people would be surprised at what they saw if they bothered to look around.

Where I live is not populated entirely by toothless people who talk about “the dia-bee-tez” or are always “fixin’” to go to the demolition derby in cars painted with the Stars & Bars. Where the media tracks those people down every time they mention my state, I do not know. It is about as representative as showing only movie stars when referring to California. Or only white people, for that matter. Tennesseans have teeth.

They also have concern for their friends, their neighbors and complete strangers who might be in a bad place. I have never seen people take care of each other the way my neighbors do.

Where I live, people talk to me in the grocery store. They wait for an answer to “How are you” before rushing on to talk about themselves. They are polite. They are considerate. They signal.

Where I live, people wave when they pass another car, a walker, a biker – not because they know everyone, but because it is the nice thing to do. (I wave, now, too.)

We are an easy target, I guess. Easy to dismiss, easy to make fun of – a middle state in the South, not so forward thinking, still willing to farm and make money other hard ways, still willing to wear our overalls and sit on our porches. We don’t look so shiny and slick to the movers and shakers, but we live what all the glossy magazines say is so “in.” Simple, local, fresh, community.  Buzzwords, elsewhere. Here - life.

We are not so into the pretension. Social graces, yes. Presenting a good face, yes. Pretention – not so much as you might think for a place that has a steeplechase in the spring and sometimes wears hats and gloves.

Where I live has its problems, too, just like everywhere else. We don’t do everything right here. We need to recycle more and drive less. We need to remember that some people worship a different god but are still good people. We need to open our minds as easily as we open our hearts.

But, damn it, this is where I live, and I love it. And I am proud of it, and fiercely protective, and I don’t care how backwoods you might think we are here, or how “unessential” we might be to the national economy, or how easy it is to dismiss us as just another slice of backwards flyover country – WHEN THE STATE FLOODS, WE ARE NEWS.

Thanks for the apology, Anderson Cooper, but maybe someone could have noticed us drowning out here without a country music star calling it to media attention.

Yes, the rain stopped. And the ground has dried (but not as much as you might think). Life is back to normal, mostly, but we all cringe when we hear thunder, and  the clean up continues and will for a long time. There are still plenty of people out of jobs, out of homes, out of luck. But because we take care of our own, where I live, Nashville will be ok.

Where I live. Y’all may think it is hokey, but I’m pretty proud of it.

Two Years

There is a robin sitting on my bird feeder right now, looking in and chirping with a beak full of dried grass. I’m not sure what she wants from me, but she’s obviously in the throes of nesting. Its that time of year.

I’m nesting too, though with less dried grass. We didn’t travel in March and for the first time in memory I wasn’t chomping at the bit to get to the airport, get on an airplane, head somewhere else. In fact, as we did just that, headed westward last Friday to spend the weekend in California, I squawked and complained about it. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to fly, I just wanted to feather my nest and watch spring explode. I’m amazed at my willingness to just be here, to enjoy the simplest of pleasures  - the birds, the flowers, the way the sunlight falls across my bedroom in the morning.

The honeymoon is officially over, today, but I’m clearly still besotted with Tennessee. Like a bride who still sees Prince Charming in the man snoring on the other pillow in the morning, I might even breathlessly tell you that I like it even more here than I did two years ago. I might even be telling the truth. Two years! It amazes me that we have been here that long; it seems in some ways like just a few months ago that we left LA. A year – I could believe a year. But two seems impossible. I think the first months were a blur - I can hardly count them, and who could blame me? Boxes and meals out don’t really make for a sense of permanence. Last year was our first “full” year, but I spent a great deal of it working and being stressed about working and the other significant chunk travelling, the upshot of which being that I wasn’t present here in Tennessee for as much of it as I could have been. And now this, the unceremonious ending of the honeymoon phase, two years gone, just like that.

This spring is familiar, mild and bloomy, roadsides awash with color and the air scented sweetly in the long evenings. We had a thunderstorm two April 8^ths ago, and I think we could hear thunder tonight (we certainly did last night – the cat was afraid and woke us for reassurance). The neighborhood is dotted with cherry trees in full bloom, and thanks to my initial neighbor envy I now have one of my own. The dogwoods are even blooming, spreading their lacy arms out to the redbuds tricked out in shocking purple – the debutante and the bad girl of the tree set. Springtime is Tennessee at her most seductive.

I enjoyed my time in California; no denying that. Being with the people I love was worth leaving my nest, worth the pangs of self-pity that I no longer live in a cosmopolitan place, worth the realization that I am a bad 80’s song and that I do love LA. We were there at the same time last year, and coming back then felt like a 2000 mile wide game of Twister. With a foot in each place and a heart in California, my hands were frantically looking for a place to find balance; I was afraid they might land in Kansas, and then what? I came back to Tennessee last April 8^th and had to ask myself – well, how did I get here? I liked it but it wasn’t mine and I put off the milestone until summer, hoping the dislocation would pass.

Somewhere between last April and this one, mixed in with a soggy summer and a beautiful fall, too much work and house guests galore and making friends and crying over missed ones it did, and Tennessee became home. Not just where I live, a pretty place, a nice house, friendly people – but home. I knew yesterday, as we ran errands and admired spring, that I was where I was meant to be. I’m comfortable. I like it. I miss it when I am gone and still gasp at the beauty of it when I drive to the store for a mundane errand. 

I marvel at my good fortune of landing here, in this neighborhood, this town, this area, this state, even, when there are so many other places I could have ended up.  Leaving LA was painful, harder than I knew at the time and still, sometimes, harder than I want it to be. The nice part of the reflection I am allowing myself today is that I know now that it was worth it, that it was the right choice. We both feel giddy to be home, happy and lighthearted and so pleased with where we are – the dislocation of last year and the anxious knot of two years ago have both gone, melted out of existence with the emergence of the daffodils this spring. Someone else can have those ruby slippers I wished for last year – I’m already where they would take me.

Bird Brained

I think maybe moving here has made my brain soft – I’ve developed a thing for birds. Not that kind of thing. Geez. But still – a thing.  Actually, the bird thing started in Africa, and it was completely unexpected. A safari is about the big five. Giraffes. Hippos. Exotic cats and baboons and baobab trees – not birds. A couple on our safari (who had been to Botswana) started the whole thing. Birds, they told me. Don’t neglect the birds.  My face must have given me away because they insisted. They weren’t “into” birds either, but in Africa…. I mentally filed that advice away as nothing short of bird brained as we bounced down the rutted track into the Ngorongoro Crater and strained my eyes to see if maybe those far off shapes were zebras. We stopped and I leaned over the edge of the truck to point my zoom at those – yes! they were! zebras! when Marvel stopped me. We’ll be so much closer later, she said. Look over there, in the thorn tree. We stopped for the bee eaters.

Bee Eaters? I looked where she pointed and there was a pair of tidily plump birds, backs as green as envy and chests like yellow crayons. A thin black mask extended front and back of the eye and turned into a long curved beak when it reached the end of feathers.  They were sitting closely together and when I pointed my camera at them I saw a smudge of turquoise eye shadow in the black band. Clickclick went the shutter, and again, clickclick and somehow in those fractions of seconds I was won over to the avian side, though it would take a few more days before I realized how totally I’d been converted.

Of course the ostriches were a great spot, striding along the crater floor with easy speed, giant flouncing dust mops of birds, pink neck and legs making them look like half naked girls in French Maid costumes. The flamingos, too, were a sight, just a smear of dingy pink along the edge of the shoreline, feathers in the offseason color of cream. The Secretary Birds were hard to miss, tall homely girls in black stockings with wide butts and confused looks on their faces. And then there were the guinea hens, roving bands of polka dots that swerved confusedly beneath bushes and bobbed their little blue heads in unison.  But when I got excited about a close up portrait of an all brown Hammerkopf I knew that I had gone over the edge. For the rest of the safari, I was as jazzed about good bird sightings as I was about anything else. The tiny and jeweled malachite Kingfisher, the swooping elegant fishing of the Spoonbill, the Egyptian ducks (heavily into eyeliner), the entire tree full of lemon-lime Lorikeets, even the vultures, one variety in particular looking like an aged and ominous undertaker in a shabby suit. All these I thrilled to (and more!) but nothing quite had the cachet of the famed Lilac Breasted Roller, LBR for short. Our safari friends had seen them in Botswana and were on the lookout – when we finally spotted one, I understood why. The body of the bird is a bit scrawny, but the colors! Miami Vice turquoise on the back of the head and underside of the lower body. A spot of metallic blue on the wing, a rumpled gray head and then the eponymous lilac breast, all in perpetual motion through the sky.

So, yeah. Birds. But that was Africa, vacation, a place with more variety than we can even imagine or take in. Who knew that the avian flu would lodge in my brain and move here to Tennessee? I knew I was in trouble last year when I spotted a pair of bluebirds outside the kitchen window, but the winter proliferation of cardinals has been my undoing. I love them, all cheeky chirps and saucy crest. The black mask and thick beak give them character far beyond their actual intelligence and I’ve set up a feeder right outside my office window so that I can lure them close enough to watch. I’ve made a friend, a vocal boy who sits on the top of the shepherd’s hook and complains about the type of seed I’m providing. He likes to chase off the other comers, too, but he can’t keep them all away, and over the past week I’ve seen house finches, bluebirds, sparrows, mockingbirds and a few others that my trusty pocket guide has failed to identify.

The robins have been flocking all of a sudden, great fat chests glowing warm in the sun that is venturing out from winter. I think there are blackbirds by the creek, but they don’t come close enough for me to be sure. I know I’ve seen a few jays and a few woodpeckers and there are hawks a plenty every time we leave the house, intently hunting from the telephone lines. I think it is only a matter of weeks before my wild turkey shows herself again, and as long as she doesn’t appear feasting on my tulip bulbs, we’ll continue to be friends. I’ve got a house to put up for the purple martins, in hopes of attracting a colony, and I think I heard the finch pecking at my back window last night.

I don’t want to jinx it, but the bird behavior and the sun and the feel of the air are telling me it might (just might) be the beginning of spring. I’ve liked winter, been pleased that it held on tightly to the cold and the snow and the sparkling frost, but I think I’m ready. Ready to work in the earth, sit in the sun, watch the birds and hear them sing. I want to see the bulbs bloom above the dark cold dirt, see the leaves appear on the trees, drink in the sweet smell of growth. As much as I love the cardinal for his flashy winter color in a sea of gray, I’m ready for the sweet spring of a pair of bluebirds.

The Lady’s Tennessee Almanac

I’m obsessively listy. Seeing all my “to dos” and “to buys” neatly arranged like dominos is satisfying; seeing those dominos tumble is even better. A list that has been lined through and completed really warms my ocd soul. A good list is a neat list – I’ve been known to compose one with scribbles and arrows and then rewrite it before it goes into actual circulation – but the crossing off can be more freeform. Neat lines, crossing out, tearing – even some violent scribbling is acceptable, depending on the tedious nature of the item completed.  I have a bad habit, too, of adding an item I’ve already finished to the list then instantly crossing it out.  This might be because I’m a show-off, or because I’m a perfectionist with a love of categorical accomplishment, but it is also (and less embarrassingly) because I’m a historian by both education and temper if not by employment, and I like knowing all of what’s been done before. Which is why I’m starting a diary.

I’ve written diaries before, but they never seem to last. I get distracted or busy or, truthfully, embarrassed at the drivel I seem to put in them. Even as a girl I remember thinking that I sounded like an overworked soap opera in my private writings. I remember reading about girls who “poured their hearts out” in diaries and felt that I had a heart to pour out too, but my own seemed to produce less literary flame than that of the fictional girls I knew through books. I wasn’t boy crazy, I didn’t have parental or sibling heartache, and I felt that my simple observations weren’t worth the paper. Somewhere around fourth grade I tried committing more of myself to paper, only to realize that a friend was picking the lock and reading my feeble attempts. My mom suggested I write a note asking her to not read past a certain point – and I knew that was futile even as I wrote it on a blank page and circled it with the little stylized hearts that were our friendship symbol. Needless to say, not much more was written in that diary, banal or otherwise. Later blank books were started with fervor, reread with the same embarrassment (and greater self criticism) and abandoned in disgust. This time, though, it is going to be different, because I think I’ve learned my lesson; I’m not going to write about me.

Living here has done something odd to our brains – awakened some farmer gene long suppressed. We watch the weather. Discuss it. Speculate about it. Wait for it. I feel like it is some game that follows rules I don’t understand, and I think I’m going to require more than just conversation and memory to really get it. Instead of writing about my hopes and dreams, I’m setting out to be my own farmer’s almanac this year. Weather, birds, plants, oddities and anomalies are all worth journaling, so that next year, I’ll have something to reference, a list that I can fall back on when I see something and wonder why. In our first year here we had a ladybug infestation, a week of crazy caterpillars and a few turkey and deer sightings. This past year (I am shocked to call it “year two”) we also had the ladybugs – and a terrible bug summer, caterpillars that ate most of my cherry tree, a possum invasion and a week where it seemed there were dead skunks all over the place. We called it the skunk suicide season – and I can’t remember when it was but I am fairly convinced it is happening again.

Living here has made me more aware that there is a pattern to things that I can’t quite see. I thought that I would care less the longer I was here but I find, perversely, that I care more – I’m over the perfect newness of a lot of things, but I’m more interested, now, in how they work and why. I’m also facing down my second gardening season and I want to be prepared. I don’t just want to know what’s coming – if my garden is going to flourish, I need to know.  I have a feeling those gigantic green moths appear at about the same time every year. Ditto the cardinals and the bluebirds. Does the finch peck on the window starting in April, or May? When will I see the whistle pigs pop up again, glowering at the world and munching greens?

With so much to observe I think I can manage a diary that will last – no room in nature sketches for naval gazing - and anyway, I’ve taken that public with this blog.  I am feeling a bit old – no longer am I driven to immortalize the dark secrets of my heart. No, not me. I’m getting excited about recording the first date this year that I see a tulip peeking from the ground, or the first week that I see the bluebirds nesting. Pot boiler to Victorian sensibility, and I’m still technically in my early 30s. Something seems – wrong. I don’t know that I should be admitting this, and certainly not publically. An intervention could appear any day at the door, or I might be forced to give up my heels and my mascara. Is that a granny apron I see in my immediate future? Still, I might be turning into a Victorian (I have this image of writing outside in the springtime, sketching the flowers – could I be any more shudderingly precious?) but it might turn out to be better reading than teenage angst. And if not, well, at least I’ll know when to open the counseling hotline for the skunks.

Five o'clock and Flannel

I can hear rain pinging the gutters and I want to go back to bed. I know there are new soft flannel duvet covers there, warm and fuzzy and far more inviting than my office chair and day packed full of meetings. I feel so smugly seasonal here; even my bed has different clothes for the weather. Summer was a sheet, with a thin blanket folded at the foot of the bed for the odd cool night. Early fall was a switch to individual lightweight duvets and t-shirt sheets. I’ve upgraded to flannel now, and in a month or so we’ll move to the full heavy weight duvet I bought in a fit of shivering last winter, when the one marked “palm tree” in the Company Store catalog clearly wasn’t cutting it anymore. When spring rolls around we’ll step back to individual, lighter weight duvets and then (before I know it, the way our time here is going) we’ll be back to that single sheet. I’m in no rush, though. As much as I want sunlight, I love autumn. I’m a certified broken record on the glories of fall, actually, and I think if I point out one more brilliantly orange tree on the way to the market Mike is going to invest in a muzzle.

I know I’m tedious about it, but I can’t get over how beautiful this season is. I love the golden stubble of cut corn and the burnished gold of a spent field of soybeans. The hillsides (following a brief frosty weekend) have turned all kinds of oranges and yellows, and even if plenty of green remains I couldn’t say that I notice. There are a few stunning trees that seem to emit their own light and I’m obsessed with having a collection on our property; counterpoint to the red buds and dogwoods of spring. I’ve taken to carrying the camera with me, making Mike pull over in awkward spots so I can document the glowing yellows and oranges, and the occasional but so appreciated burst of red.

It was beautiful this weekend, cool air that warmed in the sunny patches, cerulean sky a perfect counterpoint to the fluttering leaves. Sunday was the neighborhood fall festival and chili cook-off, and as a bookend to the spring egg hunt, I dressed as a fortune teller and entertained the kids with promises of good Christmas presents; their parents were more amused, I think, by my three inches of sweeping tinsel eyelash. Mike coordinated an apple biting contest and a costume parade and the chili was tasted and voted upon and the whole event was, I think, a success. We’ve come a long way from last year’s festival, which we mostly skipped, walking up later only to attend the homeowners meeting. This year we knew more people than we didn’t, and I actually felt like part of things rather than a mouse on the edges.  The summer has been full of getting to know the neighbors in more than a wave and it is so nice to have a group of people to talk to who actually talk back. There have been drinks and evenings and casual get-togethers and, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been a part of a group so social. I really enjoy it, and Mike now has a potato gun thanks to a July cocktail hour so I think he’s pretty pleased as well.

The downside to the social might be the peer pressure, though, which is taking me away from precious time with the flannel elephant sheets. Throughout the summer a group of us did boot camp workouts here in the neighborhood. Twice a week in the long hot evenings we met at the pool and paid someone to make us tired and sore. I think we enjoyed the complaining as much as the workouts, but I know that I, at least, enjoyed the company, and we all wondered how we could keep it up once the classes were over. I went away for a week and came back to a smaller group who had decided that 5:30 am was the best time for boot camp. Clearly they've gotten to know me well enough to know that was a decision I would have protested... best to make it while I was not present to yelp in horror. I don’t do mornings, especially not mornings that begin before the sun. And yet, here I am, Tuesdays and Thursdays, getting up to an alarm at 5:15 and out the door well before sunrise, meeting my fellow sadists in the dark and working out.

We trade off planning workouts and we all manage to keep getting up, even though I suspect I’m not the only one who finds it hard to leave a warm cocoon of flannel these days.  It makes for a long work day, because even with a shower I’m still in front of the computer by 7 and by the time it gets dark I’m muddling around the kitchen trying to stay awake long enough to cook.  I appreciate the camaraderie, though, the sense of shared suffering as we’re doing planks in the dark – but on a day like today where the rain grows more insistent and the sky isn’t getting any lighter the siren song of the bed is hard to resist.  The flannel is so warm. And soft. And just down the hall….

Eighteen Months

Other people write monthly letters to their children – I, it seems, am going to have to write them to my state because I know that the Piggers can’t read, and the cat just won’t. Tennessee, has it been 18 months already? A year and a half that we’ve known each other in the, hmm, almost biblical sense?

You’re a coy mistress, m’dear, putting out your beautiful finery in those first twelve honeymoon months, filling my days with mild sun and postcard worthy seasons. And then, what happened, my sweet? Did I speak harshly of you? Threaten to leave? Pine for California? No, no, I did not. And yet, you’ve seen fit to punish me with weather that leaves my poor little Los Angeles girl self pruned and a bit moldy.

First there were the spring rains – and these I understood. Spring was a new season for me, arriving late into it last year and then so buried in boxes I missed it entirely. So a rainy spring? Fair enough, I can live with that – and I will say that the storms were a cracking good time to watch. April showers, May flowers – we’re good. But then… what happened? Did spring have to be quite so wet? My garden, you know, was delayed weeks because you saw fit to turn the freshly plowed earth into a swimming pool. The work to get it ready to plant after that was… not worth rehashing. Was it really necessary to rain enough that a spring popped up in that garden? I was being so responsible, planting in the lowest part of the field so as to conserve water, but I didn’t need quite that much gurgling just below the surface. Still spring, showers, rain for the future. I could forgive you this practicality, Tennessee, because I knew the glorious summer was just around the corner.

But what happened? Honestly, dear, summer is meant to be warm, sunny, dry… I’ll even grant you a pass for a modicum of humidity because I know it keeps my views the beautiful green I have come to love. But rain? Real rain, with gray skies and sticky dampness and wet feet splashing across the parking lot? This, Tennessee, was disappointing. I came from a state that regularly greeted my late June birthday with cold fog, and I was counting on you for better. Sure, the day itself was nice, and I don’t mean to be ungrateful, I thank you for that. Not that you had anything to do, really, with my fried chicken lunch at Dotsons or my special menu at Flyte or my wonderful dining companions, here for a summer visit of epic proportions, but I can appreciate the beautiful day I had to do those things in. Still, that weekend held a serious thunderstorm and you know, we can’t go in the swimming pool when there is lightening.

Still, we’re newly in love, you and I, and like any woman in love, I held out hope for you. July, I felt certain, would be glorious. I remembered our blissful summer afternoons together last year, full of flowers and leafy trees ruffled by soft breezes. And then… you tested my love. With the wettest July on record since – when, Tennessee, since the 1870s? And one of the coldest Julys on record, ever. Who angered you then, fickle state? And why are you fixing the same cool and damp eye upon me this year? Do you realize that we had to stop lighting fireworks on the 4^th of July because it was raining too hard to be outside? (yes, I might be raising my voice a little, can you blame me?) We took one set of visitors to the Cumberland Caverns because it looked too gloomy to count on a day of outside activity, and the next day, while canoeing (oh, I do still love you, Harpeth River!) it was beautiful, but too cool to start any water fights. What 7 & 9 year old boys don’t start water fights while canoeing in July, Tennessee? Oh, right – cold ones. I forgot. Then I went to Los Angeles, for a birthday and work, and wow, did you get me back for that little indiscretion – I came home to a monster storm, so big we were drenched just getting into the house, so big that half my corn crop was flattened and my tomatoes were drowned. Yes, drowned. Oh, you didn’t mean to be so harsh, Tennessee? Well, you were… my glorious crop of 20 different heirloom tomato plants, so lush and hearty? They were reduced to sad drooping bits of black stalk, green tomatoes rotting in plenty on every vine. My melons, too, fell victim to your vindictive storm, and the vines rotted, leaving me with a motley collection of half grown, barely ripened melons. The raccoons found the ones with a hint of sweetness that I was leaving out in hopes of some ripening August sun and I got… none of them. The frogs colonized my garden, dear. FROGS. And crawfish. I know I moved to the south, but no one has ever mistaken you for Louisiana, oh new state of mine.

Dare I even speak of the bugs? I suppose now that I’m this far into a love letter gone wrong, nothing is off limits… but the bugs. Oh, really, my dear, did you have to allow so much rain, because the bugs, they flourished. Everyone here pointed to the damp weather and intermittent heat as the culprit, but my skin became a feasting ground. I had so many mosquito bites after an evening of weeding the vegetables that I was sick. The internet told me I had “skeeter syndrome” and you, fickle love, didn’t even send me a get well card. Instead, you sent more bugs, bugs who cared nothing for the Off I used at boot camp in the evenings and bit me anyway. My legs looked like I had measles, so numerous were the red welts, and I Couldn’t.Stop.Scratching. so they looked even worse. I have to grudgingly concede the August was at least warm, but it teetered towards steam room rather than sauna, and call me picky but after the rains in July I would have preferred a bit of dry heat. We even drove to the Smokeys, and it rained there, too. And back to that sad garden of mine? I tried to get fall crops in once it became obvious that the summer ones were, ahem, drowned, but I was foiled again and again – by rain. I know, surprising, isn’t it, that it was too wet to plant in late August and early September! Well, I never.

I really wish I knew what I had done to deserve all of this, Tennessee. I came here in good faith and loved you quickly and truly. I’ve been faithful, even evangelical in my devotion, but you have not repaid me in kind. People keep telling me that this wetness, this plague of rain is so uncommon… but I’m worried. I admit, I did leave you for most of September, but Italy was calling. Of course, you called her first and it rained most of my time there, too. But I missed you terribly when I was in LA for work last month, and I pined for you… still, I returned home to this gloomy rain. Now it is October and lo, it is still raining. We had to exercise inside  this morning, m’dear, because it was thundering and lightening outside, and the rain was falling fast and furious.

I haven’t even mailed this yet, but you must be reading over my shoulder because I see blue sky breaking through out my window, and sucker that I am I can feel my spirits rise, my love for you renewed. Surely the cool, clear incandescent days of fall are just around the corner? October is the dry season here. I know you won’t let me down, Tennessee – this was just a rough patch. You’re so beautiful, and so generally kind, I suppose I can forgive you this bad mood, even if it has lasted going on six months.  I do love you, rain and all. You still love me too, right?

Right?

Being Neighborly

Everything blooms in spring … including neighbors, it seems. People we’ve lived near all winter have suddenly started appearing everywhere – walking dogs and kids, swimming at the newly opened pool, chatting in the intersections. The sun came out and so did all the people, emerging from the cold ground and warm houses like so many happy tulips. We don’t have North East serious winters here, but we have enough cold and inhospitable days that the arrival of warm breezes really feels like a new beginning. I never understood how the change of seasons could make that much difference in how people lived and interacted, but now, suddenly, I do – realization, again, that California really is a one-season state. The sense of blooming here now that it is warm is amazing.

I found myself playing Easter Bunny this year, organizing the neighborhood egg hunt for close to 30 small people armed with baskets and ferocious competition for plastic eggs. This bunny takes donations from parents, so the Friday before the hunt our driveway was a clearing house for people dropping off bags of eggs. The cooler was so full I had to empty it twice and it was fun to see people as they came and went. Having never lived in a neighborhood like this I was enchanted with the whole idea of neighborhood events; needless to say I enjoyed being a part of it. The hunt itself went well, though Mike and I struggled to hide 300+ eggs in time. We had cute prizes for the golden eggs and I wore my very fluffy bunny ears and tried with minimal success to direct the hordes. I didn’t realize how many kids there actually were in the ‘hood, but it was fun to meet them and their parents and marvel at how amazingly polite and well behaved the huge majority were. I’m planning for a Halloween party next, complete with fortune tellers and dry ice punch. I think I may have missed my calling as a Girl Scout mom.

One of our neighbors is expecting twins and has been on bed rest – out came an email asking for help, and a group of us signed up to keep her and her family fed while she stayed off her feet. Coming from a place where I didn’t know my neighbors, and probably couldn’t have even identified by sight 75% of the people who lived within a square block of me, the fact that so many people took on the care and feeding of a neighbor was both shocking and touching. I gladly carried my enchiladas down the street and thought how nice it was to live in a place where people actually look out for each other.

We kicked off summer socializing two weeks ago with a cocktail party on Friday night. Mike made mint juleps and we ended up with a huge group of people who stuck around until well after 10, enjoying the company and the warm evening and the pleasure of being outside with nothing else to do. We’ve been talking about hosting cocktail hour “once it got warm” so it was a pleasure to put it into practice and spend some totally unstructured time enjoying our neighbors. Someone else picked up the torch this week and we were happy to walk down the road and hang out again. I’ve been told that this neighborhood is unique in its desire to socialize but I prefer to think of it as a Tennessee thing. Regardless of whether we “got lucky” with the neighborhood or with the state in general, we’re excited by the social life that is beginning to develop. Often when we drive the back way home or go for a wander in the car, I look at the great houses on many acres of rolling horse pastures and think that we should have bought something like that. In a similar fashion, I daydream about all the great old houses in the long established Nashville neighborhoods whenever we drive into town… but now that we’re getting to know people, having Friday night drinks and casual Tuesday dinners and ‘oh, stop by and chat’ afternoons, I’m so pleased that we chose a neighborhood instead – this neighborhood, in particular. Like the small nose and big family I’ve talked about wanting, I’ve also always wanted a sitcom-style block party neighborhood, and I just might have lucked into one. I’m thrilled!

Time Flies when you’re having Family

That’s the saying, right? It has been a busy sort of spring and now summer is here based on the heat and the thunderstorms and the masses of fireflies hovering above the grass as dusk.  Spring was different this second go ‘round, later and colder and much much wetter than last year. My neighbors assure me that it was “an odd spring” and I’ll take that, because the warmer weather was well overdue in my book when it started showing up in late May. April and May just ran together this year, and we were either away or hosting people more nights than not, the big event being the titular Family Fun that swept into town in honor of my Grandma’s 91^st birthday in late April.

I’ve always yearned for curly hair, a retrousse nose, fine bone structure and a huge family – I imagined I’d marry a man with many siblings and cousins and I would end up with nieces and nephews and a house full of crazy at the holidays. Toss in a perm and a plastic surgeon and I’d be three out of four. Clearly we’ve had epic fail on all counts there, particularly with the nose, but Mike’s small family didn’t really help my case either. When life hands you a paucity of lemons, can you still make lemonade? Our little reunion in April proved that yes, yes you can. It has been a long time since we’ve all been together for more than a few hours, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more than a few hours nervous about the whole situation. Would we have anything to talk about? Would we argue? Would we be bored? Would they be horrible guests and I a horrid host? Could the house handle sleeping 8? The list of possible pitfalls was tremendous but in the actuality, the worst kerfluffle came simply when Diane tried to hang Grandma’s purse on the back of her chair. That. Simply. Wasn’t. Acceptable.  I’ll challenge any of you to try that little maneuver and keep your hand. A-hem.

Mostly we laughed. A lot. We talked about family history both ancient and recent, set some records straight, recalled Christmases past and considered Christmases future. We drank … well, like fishes. We ate lots of BBQ and lots of Meat & Three and lots of food in general. PK and I reproduced (mostly) the famous Czech Grandmom “buchte” but will live to perfect the recipe. Martha White and her Yeasty Buns featured prominently, as did that most Nashville of events – the Grand Ole Opry.  There was discussion of all living near each other here in this most green of places any of us have ever lived; I think it was our collective European heritage telling us that real people live on fertile farmland, not in the desert.

Maybe the nicest part of the whole weeklong endeavor was that PK and I became friends in a way that was never possible as kids growing up six years and 500 miles apart. We discovered that we share oddities in common that we’ve chalked up entirely to shared genetics, not the least of which being a love of cooking and a sick need to take the scrawniest plant in the nursery home so that it won’t die lonely on the shelf. I’m angling for him to move here and meet some nice Southerner and settle down so that we can look forward to not just a few holidays a year but instead a nice lifetime of Sunday BBQs and bourbon drinking and riotous living, indeed.

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Speaking of riotous living… we celebrated Mother’s Day just a few weeks after the birthday bash by having both our moms here for a road trip to Memphis & Mississippi. We were on the Elvis trail, and we did it up right – a night at the Peabody and front row seats at the Duck Parade, blues on Beale, Lemon Icebox Pie (from Charlie Cavallos Cupboard, natch) and Tupelo to see where the whole Elvis thing began.

In keeping with the wet spring we had plenty of rain that weekend, soaking us thoroughly in Oxford and keeping the car wet all the way to Tupelo. There isn’t much along the side of the road to look at in northern Mississippi but green vines and trees and now at least we know why they are so green. We did stop and look at some great old antebellum homes and learn about the poor Chickasaws who clearly got the short end of the stick. We had a surprisingly good dinner in an extraordinarily funky restaurant, played Hearts, visited a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Alabama and drove home along the Natchez Trace, mile after mile of swooping green parkway and little history and nature stops.  At one point we took the “Old Trace” loop for 3 miles, barely rolling along a barely paved road that took us into a stand of trees so dense that the filtered light was, scouts honor, green. We stopped the car and got out and the silence was amazing, filled with little bits of sound that I’d never notice in a populated place. Rustling leaves and settling gravel, but also tiny breaths of breeze, flowers unfolding, bees pollinating, dust motes settling down on lichen covered rocks and my own inner voice, whispering softly that I was home, home, home.

Somewhere in the last month of visitors and travel and chaos, something about here has become home. I don’t know if it was showing off how pretty it is (Stupidly, like I have something to do with the rolling hills or the cardinals or the dogwoods… geez. All I can take any marginal credit for were the masses of tulips in the front yard) or telling people about it or driving to Memphis twice in the space of one week and feeling how different it is from here. Maybe it was the house guests or the plane rides or the sweet relief of getting off an airplane and being done. Maybe it was surviving, and sleeping, my first two nights alone in the house, but whatever it was, something’s gone to the green side and this feels more like home and less like trying. I’ve got house guests galore in the coming months, so we’ll see how entrenched I feel by then. Maybe some of them will stay. Maybe I’ll manage to recruit the family entirely. One can hope. Home is expansive.

Beginnings, Again

We’re in our last month of firsts, the homestretch before we reach the year marker, 12 months, 52 weeks and 365 days of not being in California anymore, Toto. The time has flown; it is hard for me to believe it has been that long since we were consumed with boxes and uncertainty. I’ll miss the firsts, once they pass into seconds and then march onwards to thirds and fourths and who knows how manys – experiencing something for the first time, be it red leaves or snow or the return of the robins is an electric thrill. I’m sure that thrill is part of why I travel:  the pleasure of the unknown and the unexpected make the flights and the tiredness forgettable. Living in a new place has been a sort of travel for me, the sedentary kind for sure, with the pleasures unfolding slowly rather than exploding, but I’ve enjoyed it no less for its pace. The anticipation of the new has made the longing for the old bearable; I’ve been able to concentrate on where I am in a new way.

Waiting for the seasons to change here has been one long lead up to Christmas, the anticipation of the first signs of a new stage of time, signaled by some natural thing that I’ve generally only read about. Maybe those seasons are why it feels this year of firsts has gone so quickly. Just when I was wondering when I could wear jeans again, I woke up one morning to honking geese and a change in the air. About when I thought the riot of color across the hills couldn’t sustain itself much longer, it was gone, faded into gray and brown and frost on the lawn. Then came the anticipation of snow, and it arrived right on time, heralding the beginning of the Christmas season with a flourish. Now, as I tire of apples and root vegetables and cold hands, I see clumps of daffodils along the side of the road. My own bulbs are starting to make an appearance and the trees look a bit lumpy with buds. We’ve had a flock of robins lately, hundreds of them wheeling in the yard and filling the bare branches with spots of rusty red. I’ve seen a few bluebirds, too, and heard the chirping beginnings of spring from every quarter.

I’m having a hard time conceptualizing the changes that I know must be coming in the next month, though – we had a snow over the weekend, and I can still see patches of white stuff from my office window. It is melting, but slowly. The buds on the trees are just that – buds. The nights are still dipping below freezing, and it wasn’t exactly warm yesterday evening when we walked along the tracks. Spring may be scheduled, but it has a lot of work to do before it arrives. What amazes me is that when we arrived last year, spring had clearly beaten us – the redbud trees were riots of purple along the roads, the grass was tall and wild and the cherry trees were in full bloom, prompting my first ‘keep up with the neighbors’ moment. Now I have my own blooming, weeping Japanese cherry in the front yard, clearly visible from my office window, and I have my eye on her – but she’s still keeping secrets. The grass hasn’t grown, the red buds aren’t budding and the Whistle Pigs are only beginning to poke their noses out. But it is March 4^th! We drove into our driveway for the first time on April 8^th last year – Mother Nature has one month and four days to produce a miracle.

I think this was the season change I was most excited about and now that it is almost here, I can’t wait. I’m ready for spring food, spring weather, spring green. I want to enjoy the season this year, sitting outside rather than unpacking boxes, walking in the evening rather than fretting about the closets – this won’t be my first spring, but it will be the first one I am free to experience and take in. We have family coming in mid- April, and I’m really rooting for the dogwoods to be showing themselves. Having lived through a winter (however mild) I’m feeling particularly justified in wanting spring, another fresh start. Last year was still, in many ways, limbo. I don’t think the last box was emptied until fall, and the house didn’t feel settled until Christmas. This coming year, though not our first technically, feels like it will be our first in the realities of living here, of being settled, of being. I know that the year changes over in the darkness of winter, but I always think of it happening now, with the emergence of the bulbs and the return of the leaves and the warmth, all new growth and explosion of possibility. It was a happy coincidence to have moved at this time of year, because it allows me to mark my time here in the same way – out of the darkness of winter, new life and opportunity arrives, singing.

Snowbirds, Seasons, Shadows and Snot

All kinds of lovely “s” words today, the most classy and fascinating of course being the snot. But hey, at least I’m no longer talking about that other “s” word of late, septic … and the other obvious “s” word that goes with it. So really, it is a step up around here. Except for the snot, which has claimed my sinuses  for England and isn’t going to give them up without a fight.  I don’t get very many colds and so when I do I am miserable, and I suspect everyone around me is also miserable because I complain and moan and whine and wonder when I will be passing into the hereafter, because this COLD, it is KILLING me.

It is a particularly bad time to be battling the snot because I am scheduled to join the other, more northerly snowbirds on Sunday for a flight to Orlando. I’ll be attending a conference all week, meaning I’ll be sitting in an arctic conference room all week wondering how warm and sunny it is outside and hoping that my nose will stop running. For myself and those that are going to have to be around me, I really hope the snot is under control by then.  Mike is coming for the weekend and we’re going to revel in the warmth of Florida in February where the forecasted lows for the coming ten days are higher  than the forecasted highs for Nashville. While we frolic at the House of Mouse next Saturday it could be snowing at home. I am really starting to understand why birds and old people go south for the winter.

Actually, I’ve enjoyed winter here thus far. Like many of the things I was worried about before we moved, the cold winter has been a non-issue. When it is really cold and hovers below freezing for a few days I make soup, wear scarves and park close to the entrance to the restaurants. It isn’t bad, and I like the bright sunny days that are skin slapping cold. The unexpectedness of the cold air and the pleasure of a warm building afterwards are fun. I know that we don’t have “real” winter here … the snow, though it has fallen quite a few times, has only stuck once. The sky is generally blue and the clouds and wind come through and leave quite quickly. Unlike those unlucky in Kentucky folks, we’ve had power and heat all winter, and with the exception of the time the dirt rollers colonized our furnace, we’ve been toasty warm in the house. (What are dirt rollers? I haven’t a clue, but the man who fixed the furnace said we had a whole mess of them keeping warm over the burners in the furnace and preventing it from lighting.)

The trees are bare; instead of one hundred shades of green, I’m seeing multiple variations of gray and brown, bracing lines against a clear blue sky. Without the shelter of leaves, the birds are on full display, more muted than in the spring and summer but easier to spot. The large tree-ish bush cluster in our back yard is home to a pair of cardinals that flit around. I can see them from my bedroom window, little bright spots even on the bleakest day. The views are different too – I now know that there are houses on some of the surrounding hills that I’d never been able to see, and visually I can see how roads connect now that every corner and rise isn’t frosted with thick green. This is how it looked when we bought the house so it seems a little more familiar than the flamboyant flush of summer. This we’ve seen before and I don’t mind its spare simplicity, or the contract it provides to the beauty that I know is coming.

Still, I do understand the snowbirds. We went to Honolulu for a long weekend in January and the warm air and smell of flowers was intoxicating. Finally I understand the allure of the tropics, especially in the winter. We flew from here to Chicago to LA to Honolulu on a freezing Saturday that started out snowy and made a westward progression to somewhere more compatible with the kind of clothes we were wearing. The white, wan faces of Midwesterners arriving to the warm caress of Hawaii felt strangely familiar this year – we couldn’t get over the sun! the warm! the smell! the Hawaii! I am hooked. Clearly, every January is going to require a trip to St. Somewhere. Jimmy Buffett has it right. I had no idea how much the warmth could appeal … how could I? I’ve had it year round my entire life. I may no longer have warm January afternoons, but at least now I appreciate their glory.

It has been unseasonably warm here for the past few days. Anna visited and brought California weather with her and failed to take it home. I was hoping she’d get the pleasure of a few bracingly cold days, and frankly, I’m not ready for warm weather yet. My bulbs need a few more weeks of really cold nights, and we’d like our trees to get some more rain before things warm up. The great and honorable Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators saw his shadow, and so six more weeks of winter we shall have. Mike thinks the ground hog is crazy, but I think that winter isn’t done with us yet. Besides, I’m going to Florida next week and Phoenix in three and I want to enjoy that delirious rush of snowbird freedom at least two more times.  Meantime, here’s to winter, that much maligned and misunderstood season (also known merely as February in California).  I’m not moving further north anytime soon, but I like Tennessee winter just fine. Good thing, then, that I believe in the groundhog!

Seasonality – or how I learned to love my coat

It is clearly fall here now, slip sliding into winter, and if I had any doubt that I’d left California behind, it has now been solidly proven that Toto, we’re not in LA anymore. I’ve always listed “fall” as my favorite season, but that’s been for the idea of fall: new school year, new books, Halloween and the promise of more holidays. The few cool and crispy days southern California sees somewhere in the warm lead up to Christmas have always been, for me, the most delicious. Visions of baked apples and squash and soups dance in my head the minute October rolls around, roasts and casseroles and cozy food for a cold night. Never mind that my “cold nights” have been, on average, warmer than my sunny days here for the past week – I thought I needed good warming fall cuisine.

Cold night? It was 30° on my screened porch last night at 10pm. T.H.I.R.T.Y. Our little weather station was flashing its ice warning when I stepped outside to see just how thirty felt. Mike’s bare feet said it wasn’t worth more than about ten seconds, but I was slightly more prepared and a lingered longer, feeling the cold slap against my cheeks, resisting my presence and finding all the weak spots in my clothes. Air here has more personality than I’ve ever experienced. It caresses in the spring, bear hugs in the summer and now here it is slapping me like I’ve done something wrong. I have done something wrong, honestly – I’ve been failing to wear my coat.

It isn’t like I don’t want to be warm. I like my coat(s) – buying them, and resurrecting the few second layers that I do own has been fun. My coat closet in LA was mostly decorative, occasionally called into use when I wanted to wear a really light shirt in February, or knew I’d be by the beach after dark, or when my mom was visiting. This coat closet is twice the size, and thank goodness, because I’m in there every day – or trying to be.  Good grief, if isn’t like I don’t have things to keep me warm. The current tally stands:

• 2x soccer hoodies from Europe (the bright orange Netherlands one winning me approving nods from locals who think the orange is for the Vols)
• 2x ankle length overcoats
• 1x triple lined with hood heavy REI-type raincoat (with decorative Japanese kitsch hanging from every zipper)
• 1x sweater coat
• 1x knee length overcoat (so much easier to walk and get in and out of cars in than the long ones)
• 1x lightly lined trench coat
• 1x lightweight fleece
• 2x denim jackets (haaaaaaaaaaa)
• 1x knit poncho (double haaaaaaaaa)
• 1x Patagonia barn coat from high school
• 1x standard San Francisco during the dot com boom black leather jacket
• 1x rain shell
• 1x mid weight fuzzy jacket for wearing under rain shell
• 4x scarves

… and that doesn’t include anything belonging to Mike. If you’re planning a visit in winter, never fear, I’ve got your outdoor needs covered. The thing is, I consistently leave the house without any of these cleverly designed warmth devices – or with the inappropriate ones. Last month we were driving around enjoying the comfortable early fall with the top down when we spotted a sign for a “Haunted Woods” near Leiper’s Fork. Haunted Woods are not around every bend in LA and I was intrigued so we went that evening. I thought I was so clever, wearing heavy weight cargo pants, a thin sweater and a light fleece. I had a scarf, but no socks. The line to get into the woods was over an hour long – and it was 43°. It had been such a pleasant and mild afternoon (much like California) that it never occurred to me that it might get, oh, COLD once the sun went down. By the time we actually got into the haunted woods (which were quite haunted and a good scare) I could barely feel the ends of my fingers.

We’ve been driving around looking at the fall colored trees – what I thought was fall color a month ago was just a warm up for the real color we’ve had in the last two weeks – and the sun generally shines, tricking me into thinking that I don’t need a coat. I look out the window of the house, see sun, assume sixties and hop into the car. Then we get where we’re going and I open the door to a burst of bracing air and shiver. Inevitably, the days I take a coat I barely need one, and the days I forget I pay the price with shivering and cold that ends with me swearing at the seat heaters to hurry up and get warm faster, damnit.

Our CSA held an end of season party at the farm two Sundays ago, and we were the picture of California incompetence. It had been a chilly day, in the high 40’s and low 50’s and it was cloudy. We drove to the farm wondering if we’d be cold, wearing only two layers. I had a trench coat and a scarf – Mike had what amounted to a flannel hoodie. He pretty quickly took my scarf and when we walked up to the bonfire, roaring away at 5pm and doing only a marginal job at spreading warmth and light in the gathering gloom of a cloudy evening we knew we had been outclassed by the weather yet again. The other party-goers were in heavy coats. Hats. Ear muffs. Gloves. We made it an hour before our feeble excuse for outerwear gave up, suffocated by the smoke and completely defeated by the sub 40° evening. We slunk home with the heater on full blast and lamented that yet again, we had completely underestimated the cold.

The stupid thing is that when we travel in cold places, we’re prepared. Christmas markets in Germany? We’re good. St. Louis in January? We did ok. October in Berlin saw us overdressed for what turned out to be a mild weekend… but our own home? We’re woefully stupid about what we need to stay warm when we leave the house.  Having never lived anywhere with real cold, we both assume that long sleeves are enough, and that the distance between the car and the store can’t  be long enough (or cold enough) to warrant an outer layer. Very funny, these assumptions, and we all know what happens when we assume.  We’re going to have to improve, because I’m pretty sure the temperature is going to continue to drop. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to head out to the garden – I have about 200 bulbs left to plant and the sun is shining – the temp has climbed past 40° and I’d better take advantage of it. My coat? Nah, I don’t need it today, I’m sure…

Six Months Ago

 Six months ago today, we hadn’t even been here a week. Our stuff was still in boxes, and I’m pretty sure that we were still using the travel toiletries we’d crossed the country with. I was working from a tiny space I’d carved out of the boxes in the kitchen – the kitchen itself was more of a storage area than a place where food was prepared . The yard was wild with spring growth and we had nary a blade to cut it, the John Deere being merely a twinkle in Mike’s eye. In a practical sense, I felt that we’d be living out of boxes forever. Emotionally, I wasn’t sure what was happening.

Six months ago today, we were dealing with the loss of Sidney, who predated our marriage by more almost two years. He’d enjoyed the cross country drive, but small dog old age got the better of him before we’d even begun to settle in. In considering the shock of losing him, I had to also consider that he was eleven, and how could we possibly have been living together that long? Weren’t we just out of college, still?

Six months ago today, the reality of just how far we were from friends and family hadn’t really sunk in. As constant travelers, being away wasn’t anything new to us. It certainly didn’t feel permanent, here, and anyway, people were coming. It wouldn’t be until after I’d put a number of people on airplanes and driven home in silent tears that I would realize just how far we were.

Six months ago today, we were explaining to the crazy frozen meat shipper that no, we didn’t have a forklift, and no, we didn’t know anyone we could borrow one from, and in fact, we really didn’t know anyone at all. The immensity of that not knowing was strange. Really, there was no one we could call, save our realtor, who was likely sick of our calls anyway. Having lived in California all of our lives, we just weren’t used to the idea that there was no one in a ‘hop in the car’ distance that we knew, or that knew us. We were invisible, undefined and unknown.

I realize that all this sounds bad in the retelling. Really (with the exception of little Bids) it wasn’t. There was a lot of liberation in being somewhere completely new, of being completely anonymous. We had the space to focus on us, to enjoy each other’s company and explore this new place together. It has been fun to develop the yard, to plant trees and drag the hoses around to keep them watered, to eat pesto from our own garden and enjoy the surprise luxury of hastily planted melons. The box part of the unpacking wasn’t fun, but seeing the house come together has been.  Even better has been getting live in the house, really sitting at the kitchen counter drinking with friends rather than talking about it, having a glass of wine on the screened porch and counting fireflies. We’re nesting, and we’re doing it together in a way that we haven’t in the past.

We know our way around now, but there is still so much to learn. Watching the seasons change is fascinating for Californians – it seems that every week there is some new thing – this week we’ve been seeing huge furry caterpillars inching their way along the drive. We’ve slowed down enough that we notice the caterpillars. Six months ago, I don’t know that we would have. I started this adventure willing myself to pay attention to the small things, and with six months of practice it’s become a habit.
We’re meeting people, too. If we walk in the neighborhood, we run into people to stop and talk to who know our names. Last night we stood on our neighbor’s porch and chatted for a long time, and two nights before that we had people over for dinner, people we knew really not at all but who turned out to be great dinner companions.

Six months ago today, I wouldn’t have had any idea what today would look like. I didn’t know how much I would appreciate the way fallen leaves swirl behind a car on a country road, or how much I enjoy seeing the local whistle pig fattening up for hibernation. I didn’t know that I’d be spending Halloween with my neighbors, who I like very much, and I didn’t know that  I would have met enough people to have a small cocktail party. I didn’t know how much I liked the afternoon light in the living room, or the quiet stillness of the house in the morning. I didn’t know that as much as I miss people in California, I wouldn’t be missing California itself, that six months of time would be enough to feel (most of the time, at least) like I lived here.  A year ago today, all of this was beyond my imagining, so different of a place was I in then. And two years ago today we were camping out in Castellina, plotting how we could move there. Move we’ve done … not there (not yet) but closer, closer, in so many ways. And now we’re here, today, now, making cheese and baking bread and looking forward to sweater weather, learning to live somewhere different, and liking it.

We’ve come a long way.

(photos of the house, then and now, are in the Ponteuf's Burrow album, over on the left side of the blog)

Life is but a Dream

Ca.noe [kuh-noo]: a narrow, often human powered boat; a town in Kentucky; to float down a river on a sunny Saturday in August; great fun

We had our first visitors under legal drinking age this summer, and they required a bit more planning than we’re used to. Both of them happen to be part of the under 10 set, meaning that while Uncle Maver’s goofy sense of humor came in handy, they couldn’t be adequately entertained by a couple of cocktails and idle conversation. Clearly, we had to come up with something more fun than shopping and plantation houses, and something cool enough to withstand August. Enter the canoe.

There are a couple of companies that rent canoes on the Harpeth not far west of Nashville, canoes and paddles and life vests and really nothing else in the way of instruction, but we figured we were kayak and tubing veterans, and we could handle it. I am not sure that les petites thought we could handle it, as their morning-of-game-faces were less than thrilled when I suggested they change from cute outfits to something more of a bathing suit nature. They eyed my denim cutoffs and pigtails with distrust when I told them their brand new Nashville cowboy hats probably didn’t want to get wet, and they climbed into the car rather silently. We were not off to the most raucous of starts, so I found some singing along music and made them listen to Boy George. Mike rolled his eyes but the back seat was into it by the time we turned onto the glorious green of the Natchez Trace and headed north for our date with the river.

After the arrival flurry of payment, life vest and paddle picking and ice chest lugging we packed into a slightly damp van that drove us up (down? along?) the river to the designated drop off point where were clambered over the edge of a walkway and dropped down onto a rocky beach lined with brightly colored canoes. The girls were interested in picking colors, which was good, because I was most interested in the fact that we were pointed to the canoes and left with no instruction other than “see you at the other end.”  Blue for Jessica and Aqua for Natalie, and we were off, Mike taking the work seat in the red boat and Anna and I signing up for the comedy of errors paddling the blue. After a few false starts we got ourselves straightened out and headed downriver facing forwards, Jessica sitting on a pile of life vests between us.

It was beautiful. The river stretched in front of us, silvery blue and still, a mirror for the towering trees on either side. I don’t know if the trees are really as tall as they seemed, or if they sit higher on cliffs above the river or if it was some trick of the eye, but I felt Jessica’s size as I looked up at them, so impossibly high were the rounded tops. It was silent save for our splashes and the far off laughter of other canoes, and I felt perfectly languidly warm. We glided down the river and it was easy to get lost in the picturesqueness of it all. Someone spotted a turtle and we all paddled over to the log to get a better look. Birds called and swooped above us, small fish flitted past our boat and we sang, in fits and starts, the ten words or so that we all knew of ‘row row row your boat.’

I’m not naming names, but someone shattered our peaceful existence by initiating a water fight that would continue for the rest of the day and leave all of us as wet as though we’d gone swimming. Mike’s paddle was tops for scooping water and he was ruthless, even dousing his own canoe partner. Jessica mostly shrunk down to try and avoid the waves, but Natalie was as viscous as Mike, squealing and slapping her paddle with abandon. We stopped twice for picnicking and drying out, kids more interested in looking for shells and adults realizing how good simple food tastes after hot sun, cool water and extensive water fights. The watermelon slices I had iced down were better than the soda and the chocolate chip cookies the petites and I had made the night before were even better and I think we all secretly thought that damn the torpedoes and fancy restaurants, food had never tasted so good.

We switched up the paddling groups a few times and I got to hear all about Natalie’s “college of paddling” classes from Uncle Maver, and Jessica’s thoughts on the rapids that we almost tipped in, and how fast we (read I) should paddle to beat the other boat to the end. We found a deep spot and held the canoes together and let the girls swim, pulling them out by the back of their life vests when they were done, dripping and spluttering a little but not cold until the very end, when tiredness and the damp van beat back excitement. The air was so warm and still that even soaking wet denim wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was never so hot that I felt oppressed – it was just right heat. Still, it was wonderful to change into the clean dry clothes we’d had the (are we this grown up?) forethought to pack, warm from their hours in the trunk.

The air is cool here now, and I’m pretty sure the good folks at Foggy Bottom have locked the canoes up for the season. I don’t think the green would reach all the way to the water the way it did two months ago, and I’m sure that no one is languidly hot along the rock banks today. In my pictures, though, it is still summer on that stretch of the Harpeth, and when I look at them I see proof that we were having as much fun as I remember. Mike is dreaming up a new attack, Natalie right there with him. Anna and Jessica are admiring the view, Jessica more relaxed now that she’s on the river rather than just thinking about it. I can feel that warm air and the welcome shock of cool water dripping down my neck, and I know just how pleased I was to be there, thinking this, this is why we live here. I can’t wait for next summer.

Photos of all the canoeing fun (and more)

Lining Up

We arrived home last week to evidence that Tennessee is an odd little island here in the almost middle of America. I’m used to living in an odd place – California is certainly different than the rest of the country, and living there makes one’s brain addled to the point that we all secretly believe that we are normal and the rest of the country is not. When I first started to travel, I’d look around at the everyday bits of life in other places and secretly wonder at how people could get by in such weirdness. Traffic lights on wires? No sidewalks or curbs? Only two ways to get from point A to point B? A red light on a windy day not long ago prompted Mike to comment that he never thought he would live in a place where the stoplights swing so precariously. I didn’t either, but that’s because I never thought I’d live outside of California. I realized many weekends and rental cars ago that we Californians were the weird ones, and that the majority of the country got along just fine with so many things that I saw as different. When I read OpEd pieces about “America” I always secretly added an asterisk attached to a footnote reading “except California.”

To be fair, part of why we picked Tennessee over Kentucky or North Carolina or Texas or any other Southern-ish state was that we felt it was different from the places around it. Not California-different, for sure, but subtly different in ways that we liked (how else do we make decisions but to find the little things that set one choice apart from the other?). The weather is relatively mild, the people relatively open, the food relatively varied. Still, for me, leaving California and moving here was a huge step towards being part of that America in quotation marks that I’ve never really lived in. My overall opinion about that hasn’t changed, but Tennessee took a few steps up the odd ladder when we returned home to learn that while Ike skirted around the edges of Tennessee like she was off limits, people were lining up for gas. Lining Up For Gas. (well, I never!)

Some attention paid to the local news revealed that Tennessee relies quite heavily on oil from the Gulf Coast, and much of it arrives here in pipelines that carry it along at the slovenly pace of 3-5mph. Ike disrupted the flow, and at some 800 miles between here and Houston, catching back up is taking time. Supplies are low to non-existent all over the Nashville area, and it seems that most gas stations we drive past have bags over their pumps and no prices on the signs. The station at our exit off I65 had gas this weekend, and people were lined up all the way down the off ramp hoping to fill up. At every station with gas, the scene was the same, cars jammed together in a full color reenactment of the 70’s, but with fewer sideburns and bell bottoms. In stores and restaurants, casual eavesdropping gets me stories of pushing in line, rude behavior and finger wagging. I’ve been told more than once that the threat of snow here leads to a run on bread and milk – clearly the threat of low gas supply is leading to hoarding and unnecessary fill ups – Nashville area gas stations report demand doubling once shortages were announced. According to CNN, panic may have been its own reward as the run on gas caused a shortage that wasn’t warranted.

So here I sit, in my castle on my island, pleased that we have two full tanks of gas and no need to commute long distances. I have no idea what news makes it off this island to the rest of the country (I fear California news feeds may favor only stories of the “toothless redneck robber calls the police on himself” variety) so I don’t know if anyone else knows that we’re reenacting the 70’s here, but I do think it is a localized phenomenon. If this is the common mentality, I’m thinking that with winter coming on, we’d best get to buying a cow…

Fair Summer Afternoon

When I was in grade school, the fair was held in the fall. October, maybe? I remember wearing sweaters, and jeans. Hot steaming bowls of fat white noodles, always from the plainest food stand in the fair (just to the left as you turned into the midway of grease) were the best treat. Valdemar and the other kids with 4-H animals got to take a week off of school to go to the fair. Crisp afternoons lit with slanting light giving way to cold evenings, fog rolling in and smelling of sea.

By the time I raised 4-H pigs, that week off of school to hang around the livestock barns, shoveling shavings and making fun of the girls with lambs was long gone. Most of the fairs I remember, and certainly the ones I participated, in happened in August; shorts and icy lemonades supplanted jeans and fry bread. The Japanese noodles never tasted as good when it was hot, but the dipped ice cream bars were better, and the smells of the fair – grease and dust and hot electrical wires and sugar (glorious sugar) were intensified. It could be cold, even in August, by the Ventura beach, but in my memory days at the fair are always hot, intense, a little sticky.

I’ve never been to a fair I like as much as Ventura’s. Somehow it has managed to stay exactly as I remember it, and I like it all: the Fine Art area where I can always spot watercolors from my art teacher, the tacky commercial barns packed with hucksters and their products. The filtered water guy with the seven foot continuously running faucet and the knife salesman and the jewelry cleaning solutions and over against the wall the mini donut machine, little circles of dough bobbing along in golden grease – I don’t think these things ever change. In the Floriculture building, I see the Kelly family dynasty of displays, always desert themed. I probably know a couple of people selling things. The gem and mineral building by the gate has cool stuff under black lights, and fish, and a photography section. The giant kids hall where my stuff was displayed: art and baking and table settings, thank you very much – kids are still entering the same things I did, except the kids belong to the people I competed against.  I’d blame this wistful recitation on age, but I’ve been nostalgic since I was little, so I suspect it will just get worse with time. I love the fair.

Ventura these days is a bit further than it used to be, though, so we went to the Williamson County fair last Saturday. It had been a scorcher of a week but had cooled down nicely in time for us to wander over to the Ag Center Saturday mid-day, hungry for grease and sugar. This fair has only been going for the past few years – it isn’t big. The commercial exhibits are mostly around the indoor arena – chiropractors and local businesses, and a meet and greet with the police department. The 4-H clubs have project exhibits scattered around, and the midway is small. The livestock is done in stages, but we caught part of a sheep show and some poultry judging, and took in the petting zoo, complete with porcupines and camels. There were rabbits and a draft horse and a longhorn steer, a giant pig with piglets and a few alpacas and that unique, sweet odor of a livestock barn, fur and hair and dust and hay and grain and dirt and spilled sodas, wet animal and old French fries, and wow, I’m selling it, but nothing smells quite so sweet as memory.

The Ventura ladies haven’t got a thing on the Tennessee women in the Home Arts rooms; the quilts and hand work and canning here were nicer than I’ve ever seen. There was a 4-H cake auction happening later in the afternoon and we ate curly fries and frozen treats and a corn dog while we listened to a brass band play Beatles songs. Kids rode the same rides that I rode when I fit into a 3 foot glittered race car and a big military transport plane did a fly by, and I was filled with nostalgia, for this fair, for the fair of my childhood. Fairs are transitory – by now the grounds, here and in Ventura, are vacant again. The wind is pushing an empty cotton candy bag across well trampled grass, a forgotten toy lingers against a post, the PA broadcasts nothing but silence. The fair has packed up and moved down the road, but it will be back next year, the same buzz and smell and sound and cheap glitter in the dust, the same good feelings and nostalgia, the same dreamlike quality. And I’ll be there, three with a painted face, seven in a sweater, eleven with Pippi, sixteen with a pig, thirty-four with a smile.

more fair photos

Leftovers

The worst part of houseguests is that they leave. I know the saying, sure, that fish and houseguests, after three days, stink. And, I suppose, that can be true (for some guests) (and for some hosts) but not for me. I like having people here to make breakfast for, or leave the coffee on the counter for, to entertain and feed and iron pillowcases in advance of. I feel so domestically accomplished having their favorite treats in the cupboard, sharing new iced tea flavors, baking a welcoming cake. I like taking them out to eat and stopping to read historical markers and pretending I’m on vacation in my own town. Nothing has, as yet, made me appreciate where we’ve moved to as much as showing it to the people I care about. I notice how green the fields are, how lush the trees, how charming the main street. I get to do the visitor things and marvel at how much there is to do and how we don’t have time to do it all. I want them to stay, and stay – prolonging the companionship and the hiatus from life’s petty annoyances. Return tickets are at risk in my house. Ooops – was that your boarding pass? The guinea pigs were hungry, you see.

We’ve done pretty well on the visitor front since we moved here – my mom has even been twice – but it is always hard to drop off the people I love at the airport. My eyes leak and I sigh a lot and Mike wonders what he is going to do to amuse me while I feel terribly sorry for myself. If I could, I suppose I would move everyone I care about here (and really, you’d like it, I promise) but the next best thing would be to know when they were coming back. Like a purchased plane ticket, an impending visit is a way to mark time, to count the passing of the days when I work in my messy office and don’t talk to anyone but Mike and wonder why I’m feeling prickly or tired. I don’t, honestly, expect anyone to come all the time, or give up other things to come here just to keep me from drinking alone, but I wouldn’t feel badly if everyone decided to come back sooner rather than later, either. (In case y’all missed it, by the way, that was an open invitation.)

Liking guests fits into my larger desire to take care of people, I suppose. I’m afflicted with a deep need to “fix” things for people in my life; to make things better, solve a problem, right a wrong. I want to supply the magic answer that just makes the trouble go away. Clearly if reincarnation is the way of things, I was a man in my last life. Having people here, in my home, I feel I’m responsible for their happiness – and that I can shield them from the rest of the world. In my bubble, I’m in charge, and everyone will be happy … and if not deeply happy, at least content, well fed and well watered (I do know my limitations.) Breakfast out – with pie. A four person game of rock band. Drinks on the screened porch. Oysters, freshly shucked, at the kitchen counter. An illicit dip in the pool. A road trip, maybe, or dancing barefoot with the fireflies. I can do these things, and while they might not be solving the problems of the world, I like to think that for a fleeting moment, at least, we’re all happy in the doing of them.

For our most recent guests, I made angel food cake. When they left, the remainder of it sat forlornly on the cake stand for a few days. I didn’t really have the heart to throw it out, I didn’t want to eat it alone, and together, the cake and I grew a little stale and rough around the edges. Having looked forward to the D&D visit ever since we moved, I was wallowing in a real post-Christmas-nothing-left-to-look-forward-to funk; the cake (lacking the emotion needed for a self pitying crisis) was drying out. After a couple of days I came to terms with the fact that we are here and they are there and there isn’t anything I can do about that but get on with things. Letting the house get messy and myself grumpy wasn’t bringing anyone back to visit, and the cake needed to be dealt with. Rather than tossing it, though, I cut up some peaches and bought some milk and turned the whole sad mess into bread pudding, a dessert quite improved, I think, by the use of angel food cake and liberal dollops of brown sugar bourbon hard sauce.

I don’t miss you all any less, but I’m learning (slowly) to lessen the ache.

Save Franklin

I don’t know if I’ve been here long enough for local activism, but I’m going to start plastering my cars with “save Franklin” stickers, and if they don’t exist, well, I’m going to start making them.

Reading the local paper last week, I found an article about some debacle called Berry Farm that is supposedly approved and being built soon … at my exit off the interstate. I like my exit fine the way it is, thank you very much, and the thought of it becoming a planned community filled with houses, condos, shopping and offices is enough to have induced a fit of angry tears. Now, when we get off the interstate, we see the Ag Center across the road, host to rodeos and garden expos and this coming week the county fair. On our side there’s a gas station, a decrepit motel and a quick stop. After that – nothing. Fields. Corn. Trees. Not much traffic, not much building, not much modernity. And I like it that way.

One of my big reasons for choosing Franklin over Nashville in the final analysis was the small town country feel. I like driving home through empty fields. I like seeing the farms, and the amazing fast growing corn, the cows sleeping in the shade and the guy out on his tractor. We chose this house for the extra space around it and around the neighborhood, south of town where there was less going on. Cool Springs has everything we need ten minutes north, and we didn’t want to be on the modern, more built up end of town. We moved out here for a reason, and as far as I can tell, so did many of the people I’ve met. Now it appears that the very sprawl I left California to get away from is coming to me.

Practically, I don’t understand how this development can be a good idea. Cool Springs is only six miles away. The planned community going in on the west side of town isn’t full, and has more houses for sale than I can count. The economy isn’t in full boom-town mode, and there is plenty of empty office space surrounded by empty commercial in all the other new developments around Franklin – why we need another is truly beyond me. Why it was approved is beyond me. I understand tax basis as well as the next citizen, but I don’t believe we live in a “build it and they will come economy.” If we build it (and ruin the rural feel that IS why many people come here) have we really improved anything?

Speaking of improving … why not improve what already exists? The main exit for Franklin takes you into town through a particularly wretched alley of huge parking lot eighties style strip malls. The same blight exists north of town. Both these areas could use to be bulldozed and rebuilt, or at the very least renovated and updated. Half the storefronts stand empty. The parking lots are vast fields of empty paved paradise. Why build new areas so that in twenty years they, too, can look cast off and run down when we can fix up what already exists, and beautify the main route into our charming, tourist attraction town?

Franklin itself is charming – and it is thriving. That’s part of why we picked it. As we’ve explored more, we’ve seen plenty of small town centers that quite honestly would put Franklin to shame if they were vital: town squares with a courthouse smack in the center, lined with brick buildings and an old theatre, big trees and pocket parks. They look like sets for 50’s movies, less the people in poodle skirts. Less any people, honestly, because no one is there. I fear they are all at the new, “convenient” places on the edges of town, big boxes of chain store low prices and generic food. The stores that are hanging on in these small towns never seem to me to be the right ones – with the right hours. Why can’t a small grocery, a hardware, a “general” department store and a few restaurants survive? Why can’t the ice cream store stay open late and combine, like it used to, with a pharmacy? If all the components were there, wouldn’t people use it? I like to think they would, that people would appreciate that they could go about their business with a bit of style, in a charming place, rather than under the fluorescence of modernity.

If, however, developers continue to suck the life from towns (and the charm from their surroundings) by building this conglomerate crap out by the interstate, what will happen? I chose to move away from this kind of development – I’m really upset about it following me. And I am SO going looking for those bumper stickers.