When I first told my mother I was going to graduate school, she was delighted. She has for years been telling me how much she regrets not getting a higher degree (she was one year into a PhD in biology when my dad got a tenured job and they moved 1,000 miles away so he could take it; she never got back to that degree she'd wanted and has felt hindered by not having it throughout her career). But pretty quickly, she realized there was another cause for rejoicing. She is an avid reader of the New York Times wedding page, and just as she has observed in its listings that many people are now getting married in their late 20s and 30s (hope for me yet, she says, though really she doesn't want me to have a husband so much as give her grandbabies who live in this country), so too has she noted that most of them meet in school. At Stanford, she decided, I would find my husband.
As it turns out, I am in a master's program that is 6/7 female, in a department with about the same percentage, so I'm not finding too many opportunities to meet my future hubby. When I do meet men who seem attractive, smart, and available, they tend to have one major deficiency: a significant number fewer years of life than me. Now given the treatise I once wrote on why younger men shouldn't write off older women, you probably know I'm open to dating younger men. My brother, after all, is four years the junior of his wife, and they have a terrific relationship—just the kind I'd like to find. So I'm as open as open can be. But how much younger is too young?
The first two guys I met on campus who seemed to take an interest proved to be, each, about 22. In both cases, they looked it, so I had to finally step away from the conversation because, really, what is the point? Last week I met one who seemed plenty mature and plenty appealing—but he proved to be just 24. Is seven years too much younger for dating? I couldn't tell he was that much younger—he didn't look it, and he didn't seem it. Does that make it OK? The question is rhetorical, really, because I doubt he would want to date someone so much older—for the self-same reason I identified in the PSA mentioned above. But given that my pickings seem to be mainly in the realm of those younger than me, I'm trying to figure out where to draw the line—or if I have to. It feels wrong, somehow, to be attracted to someone seven or ten years younger than me, but if I am, I am, right? Perhaps I've reached an age at which age matters less. What do you vote for, my dear readers—shall I become the next Mrs. Robinson??
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
(when something stirs in the dark)
Being back on a college campus these days and having a few seniors in my classes, my brain keeps drifting back to my own senior year. When I think about this exact time ten years ago, I can't remember exactly which classes I was taking or what job I had then, but I know what I was doing with a lot of my free time: I was quite surely falling in love. The story is long and its ending sad, with my love becoming unrequited; but I didn't know at the start (or even in the middle) that that's what I was heading toward; I didn't know anything but that there was this guy I was getting to know and with each inch we moved closer to each other, such a bond was forming that it would take years for me to be able to let go.
The first time I ever saw him, I had my faced stuffed into a lilac bush; I was smiling and breathing in the magnificent odor of the petals and he was passing through the courtyard around which it turned out we both lived. When he saw me, he grinned with a look like appreciation, and I remembered that when, a month or two later, we crossed paths again. This time it was in the stairwell; he was heading out and I was going to watch a movie with a friend who turned out to be his roommate, though I didn't find that out until halfway through the film. At that point he snuck through the dark room to the shower after a workout at the gym. As he finished in the bathroom, he must've heard a scene he liked in the movie, because he came out to watch in his towel, and no one who was there will ever let me forget that my mouth truly did drop open at the sight of his obscenely cut and dripping wet torso. That night I finally thought to ask his name.
A few months later, I had my first conversation with him, sitting in his bedroom and talking for what later seemed like an appalling amount of time for a guy who could happily be silent for days on end. I can't tell you what we talked about, but I remember something that went loudly through my head as I walked back home. I could fall in love with this guy, I had said to myself, and very soon I did.
It's hard, sometimes, to remember how perfectly our friendship unfolded. How it started with him coming over to hang seven or eight strands of Christmas lights around my common room and staying late into the night; how it continued with little things like him asking me to read poetry to him as he lay in bed and tried to get to sleep. He knew I liked poetry, so he had me sit on the edge of his bed and read—one, maybe two poems at a time. Sometimes before leaving I would kiss him on the forehead, just like at times he would lean down and do to me when we were standing somewhere saying goodbye. But that was early on, and everything was still unspoken, so sometimes I just read to him and said good night. On those nights it probably took a long time to reach sleep myself. There was a poem I so wanted to read to him, but I couldn't; things were still unspoken, and I couldn't even let a Rilke poem say to him what I had on my mind:
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
to sit beside someone and be there.
I would like to rock you and sing softly
and go with you to and from sleep.
I would like to be the one in the house
who knew: The night was cold.
And I would like to listen in and listen out
into you, into the world, into the woods.
The clocks shout to one another striking,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And down below one last, strange man walks by
and rouses a strange dog.
And after that comes silence.
I have laid my eyes upon you wide;
and they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
One night he took me walking, aimlessly, I thought; but it got dark out, and we had gone quite a ways, so I finally asked where we were headed. We were by the river when he told me; there were tall grasses beside us, and I knew we were almost to the next town. On a walking tour of my childhood, he told me as we reached his favorite basketball court, and then he described how all the boys he grew up with first tasted alcohol sitting out on the court. He laughed as he thought back on that; he smiled as he sat me in the hammock behind his parents' house and swung me; he grew quiet as we lay down on the grass of the golf course beyond their home and stared at the sky. We lay there a long time before he told me that I was stretched out on his favorite patch of grass on this earth, that I was taking in his favorite view of the stars in the sky.
A long time after I let him go, I told myself it was OK to hold on to one or two of the best memories, it was OK to hold on at least to that memory—because it's not so often in life that someone fully lays himself open to you and asks you to walk on in. I don't think back on it often anymore; I kicked him out of my life five years ago, almost exactly five years after we started growing so close without putting the right words to things before it was too late. He wasn't available, emotionally, when I met him; and by the time he finally was, I had gotten over him. We had a bond like family by then, but he hadn't been able to go where I wanted us to go and so I'd gotten over him. But we held on to each other like family; we spent time together like family. Eventually it was just too much; we were too bonded for people who weren't in a relationship; my heart was still tied up in him and it hindered me from dating, and his eventual girlfriend seemed to think the same thing for him.
One weekend after five years of all this, we went to stay at his parents' ski condo and had a great time. I skied my intermediate slopes and he hit the big ones; afterward we sat in his favorite cafe and I drank hot cocoa and read poetry while he did his homework for an engineering class he was in. Sometime in the middle of that quiet afternoon by a snow-filled window, I told him my dream of owning a bookstore with a cafe in it—a cafe just like this one. The other memory I may never let go of is the way he looked at me in that moment; me, sitting in this place that he had loved since childhood; me, sharing a dream with him; me, there, with him after all those years; and he told me that he could build it for me, the bookstore with the cafe in it just like this one; once he (started and) finished architecture school, he could build it. In the meantime, a few weeks later, he gave me as a birthday present a book about the business of opening a cafe, and he told me he thought I really should do it; he really wanted me to do it.
In that moment between my dream and his affirmation of it, I knew that I was still in love with him. It took six more months for me to tell him so—for me to tell him so and ask him to step out of my life in the very same breath. But I knew it in that moment, that I loved him and he loved me but it was never going to be in the way that I hoped. He had a girlfriend then, when he looked at me and told me he could build my dream into reality, and perhaps that's what made it possible for me to finally see that whatever he and I were just was not right.
That all comes into my mind when I'm on campus and thinking back on college, but it's really at the forefront because of something that happened a month ago when I was back in Cambridge, where all this unfolded. I was there just two days, going to a wedding, and as I got on the red line to leave town, I thought I saw him. If it had been him, he'd be an architect now, fully licensed and practicing. If it had been him, he'd be a husband and a father; he might have had his baby in his arms. When the man's face rose I knew it wasn't who I'd thought it was, but in those few seconds afterward, I considered what I would have done if he had been there, just a few people down from me on the train. Five years had passed since I'd seen him; I would have smiled with all my heart. Five years had passed; I would have smiled and stepped off the train.
The first time I ever saw him, I had my faced stuffed into a lilac bush; I was smiling and breathing in the magnificent odor of the petals and he was passing through the courtyard around which it turned out we both lived. When he saw me, he grinned with a look like appreciation, and I remembered that when, a month or two later, we crossed paths again. This time it was in the stairwell; he was heading out and I was going to watch a movie with a friend who turned out to be his roommate, though I didn't find that out until halfway through the film. At that point he snuck through the dark room to the shower after a workout at the gym. As he finished in the bathroom, he must've heard a scene he liked in the movie, because he came out to watch in his towel, and no one who was there will ever let me forget that my mouth truly did drop open at the sight of his obscenely cut and dripping wet torso. That night I finally thought to ask his name.
A few months later, I had my first conversation with him, sitting in his bedroom and talking for what later seemed like an appalling amount of time for a guy who could happily be silent for days on end. I can't tell you what we talked about, but I remember something that went loudly through my head as I walked back home. I could fall in love with this guy, I had said to myself, and very soon I did.
It's hard, sometimes, to remember how perfectly our friendship unfolded. How it started with him coming over to hang seven or eight strands of Christmas lights around my common room and staying late into the night; how it continued with little things like him asking me to read poetry to him as he lay in bed and tried to get to sleep. He knew I liked poetry, so he had me sit on the edge of his bed and read—one, maybe two poems at a time. Sometimes before leaving I would kiss him on the forehead, just like at times he would lean down and do to me when we were standing somewhere saying goodbye. But that was early on, and everything was still unspoken, so sometimes I just read to him and said good night. On those nights it probably took a long time to reach sleep myself. There was a poem I so wanted to read to him, but I couldn't; things were still unspoken, and I couldn't even let a Rilke poem say to him what I had on my mind:
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
to sit beside someone and be there.
I would like to rock you and sing softly
and go with you to and from sleep.
I would like to be the one in the house
who knew: The night was cold.
And I would like to listen in and listen out
into you, into the world, into the woods.
The clocks shout to one another striking,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And down below one last, strange man walks by
and rouses a strange dog.
And after that comes silence.
I have laid my eyes upon you wide;
and they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
One night he took me walking, aimlessly, I thought; but it got dark out, and we had gone quite a ways, so I finally asked where we were headed. We were by the river when he told me; there were tall grasses beside us, and I knew we were almost to the next town. On a walking tour of my childhood, he told me as we reached his favorite basketball court, and then he described how all the boys he grew up with first tasted alcohol sitting out on the court. He laughed as he thought back on that; he smiled as he sat me in the hammock behind his parents' house and swung me; he grew quiet as we lay down on the grass of the golf course beyond their home and stared at the sky. We lay there a long time before he told me that I was stretched out on his favorite patch of grass on this earth, that I was taking in his favorite view of the stars in the sky.
A long time after I let him go, I told myself it was OK to hold on to one or two of the best memories, it was OK to hold on at least to that memory—because it's not so often in life that someone fully lays himself open to you and asks you to walk on in. I don't think back on it often anymore; I kicked him out of my life five years ago, almost exactly five years after we started growing so close without putting the right words to things before it was too late. He wasn't available, emotionally, when I met him; and by the time he finally was, I had gotten over him. We had a bond like family by then, but he hadn't been able to go where I wanted us to go and so I'd gotten over him. But we held on to each other like family; we spent time together like family. Eventually it was just too much; we were too bonded for people who weren't in a relationship; my heart was still tied up in him and it hindered me from dating, and his eventual girlfriend seemed to think the same thing for him.
One weekend after five years of all this, we went to stay at his parents' ski condo and had a great time. I skied my intermediate slopes and he hit the big ones; afterward we sat in his favorite cafe and I drank hot cocoa and read poetry while he did his homework for an engineering class he was in. Sometime in the middle of that quiet afternoon by a snow-filled window, I told him my dream of owning a bookstore with a cafe in it—a cafe just like this one. The other memory I may never let go of is the way he looked at me in that moment; me, sitting in this place that he had loved since childhood; me, sharing a dream with him; me, there, with him after all those years; and he told me that he could build it for me, the bookstore with the cafe in it just like this one; once he (started and) finished architecture school, he could build it. In the meantime, a few weeks later, he gave me as a birthday present a book about the business of opening a cafe, and he told me he thought I really should do it; he really wanted me to do it.
In that moment between my dream and his affirmation of it, I knew that I was still in love with him. It took six more months for me to tell him so—for me to tell him so and ask him to step out of my life in the very same breath. But I knew it in that moment, that I loved him and he loved me but it was never going to be in the way that I hoped. He had a girlfriend then, when he looked at me and told me he could build my dream into reality, and perhaps that's what made it possible for me to finally see that whatever he and I were just was not right.
That all comes into my mind when I'm on campus and thinking back on college, but it's really at the forefront because of something that happened a month ago when I was back in Cambridge, where all this unfolded. I was there just two days, going to a wedding, and as I got on the red line to leave town, I thought I saw him. If it had been him, he'd be an architect now, fully licensed and practicing. If it had been him, he'd be a husband and a father; he might have had his baby in his arms. When the man's face rose I knew it wasn't who I'd thought it was, but in those few seconds afterward, I considered what I would have done if he had been there, just a few people down from me on the train. Five years had passed since I'd seen him; I would have smiled with all my heart. Five years had passed; I would have smiled and stepped off the train.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
(for a beloved friend on this day of great loss)
from Theodore Roethke's "The Far Field"
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree:
The pure serene of memory in one man,—
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
metablognition
In class, I recently learned about metacognition—the monitoring of your own understanding and mastery of something. It put in my mind the concept of metablognition. Until yesterday, it had been so long since I'd written a blog post that I felt almost paralyzed when I'd try to think one up. I started this blog, after all, as writing exercise; but when you let your muscles go, when you fail to pick up your feet and move, your body reaches a point of inertia; and so it goes with the blogging part of my brain. I'm self-concious about it, feeling ill-equipped to say anything of interest, so I avoid being here. But I miss it, this place where my thoughts get to run around like little people climbing jungle gyms and feeling great satisfaction when they reach the top. I miss it, because I love it, so I've been telling myself to get my act together and get back here.
The post I wrote yesterday seemed very academic; even to me it seemed boring. But I made myself share it; I told myself (metablognitioning away) that I had to just put some words on the blank screen, not worrying whether they rang eloquent or not; just get the fingers typing; get some kind of thoughts flowing. The meaning and the artistry, I told myself, they'll come back.
It's like sex, I told myself; like when you haven't had sex in so long, and when you think you might again, you get nervous, wondering if you've lost your mojo. Metablognition has had me questioning my mojo; but I sat down and wrote something yesterday, and I posted it; and I'm sitting here writing now, and I'm gonna post it. So I know. Eventually, I know, I'll post something metablogmindblowing. In the meantime, god help us, I'll try not to bore you too much. :)
The post I wrote yesterday seemed very academic; even to me it seemed boring. But I made myself share it; I told myself (metablognitioning away) that I had to just put some words on the blank screen, not worrying whether they rang eloquent or not; just get the fingers typing; get some kind of thoughts flowing. The meaning and the artistry, I told myself, they'll come back.
It's like sex, I told myself; like when you haven't had sex in so long, and when you think you might again, you get nervous, wondering if you've lost your mojo. Metablognition has had me questioning my mojo; but I sat down and wrote something yesterday, and I posted it; and I'm sitting here writing now, and I'm gonna post it. So I know. Eventually, I know, I'll post something metablogmindblowing. In the meantime, god help us, I'll try not to bore you too much. :)
Saturday, October 11, 2008
brain yoga
In my intro to teaching class, the professor recently asked us to read Wikipedia's article on theory. He explained that he wanted us to see the different ways the word is construed in various disciplines and to understand that in the context of teaching, theories are more like methods—tangible practices determined by amassing a lot of evidence that suggests that these are the effective ways to do things—than abstract principles. In another class this week we encountered the latter. The course, which focuses on organizational behavior, pairs case studies with theory to equip us to become leaders who know how to effectively shape organizations. As I sat down with an article that posited theories about how people make decisions, I felt like I was back in a class on existentialism that I took in college. I remembered how hard I sometimes find it to process paragraphs and pages that revolve entirely around abstract ideas and logic; it just seems like that's not how my brain works. As I plod through such texts, I fail to visualize anything from what I read, and when I don't visualize, I often don't retain the information. So I have to sit down and read it again, taking notes along the way, building structure into the flow of thoughts since the author didn't seem to. After the note-taking, I can understand the text much better; I can at least visualize the notes on the screen, the four questions the author posed about how decisions get made and the subsequent categories I broke his explanations into it. I still don't visualize the content itself, but I put my mental processing of it onto paper, and somehow, that imprints visually on my brain.
That I learn best by interacting is not news to me. It's the crux of why archaeology impassioned me in college but history often didn't. Some historical accounts, like Zapata and the Mexican Revolution and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, read like novels to me and don't get put down until I reach the last page; but a lot of history isn't written like that, so back in college, anyway, I found it harder to get into. In anthropology classes, on the other hand, I got to sit down at a lab table and face off with the skulls of our hominid ancestors; I got to study their size and shape, the prominence of the brow ridge, got to hold them in my hand and feel their weight. When I studied the ancient Maya, I got to stand amidst the buildings and stellae they long ago constructed and learn to read the hieroglyphs inscribed upon them; in that incomparable outdoor classroom, I got to listen as the man responsible for deciphering most of the glyphs taught us to see a smoke scroll here and a monkey's face here; taught us to add up the syllables and say the words; taught us to differentiate dates from textual statements and to slowly understand how these artful building blocks relayed information about warfare and conquest, royal births and deaths. In classes, I got to study slides professors had taken at long-excavated or newly rediscovered archaeological sites. Even when learning theory—that often-times deadly, abstract stuff—I got to study maps covered in symbols and differently colored arrows to learn the locations of hominid skulls or coastal campsites, to learn the competing explanations of the migration of hominids out of Africa or the newer take on the route homo sapiens followed to populate the Americas. That all this content stimulated my interest is no surprise; it stimulated my brain waves, tapping into all kinds of functions in my head.
Being back in school after almost a decade away from it is not just an adjustment to my schedule; it's an adjustment for my brain. While both my undergraduate studies and my professional work as a social studies editor were heavily focused on content, my graduate classes are teaching me mostly about academic disciplines and professional fields. That the subject at the heart of them—all courses being connected by the thread of education—is something highly tangible to me, something I have experienced in many settings and from both sides of the equation, doesn't always mean that the way my brain has to work to access the information is comfortable for it. It has been a long time since I read theory; a long time since I read so much of anything in one sitting, or in daily nine-hour sittings. But I consider all the struggles toward adjustment to be brain yoga. In some classes, the teaching methods are entirely new to me; in others, the packaging of the content is; yet in all of them, as the different control centers in my brain stretch their legs, shake out their muscles, and get back on the mat, they exhale a collective sigh of relief. It is exhausting to be inside your head so many hours a day; but it is exciting, especially when you realize that you can learn anything, in any format, no matter the limitations you might think were placed on your brain at birth. The brain is elastic, I think; resilient. Some corners grow dim over time, but all it takes to re-light them is a little effort, a little will, and a solid dose of curiosity. And with that optimistic thought, I leave you, my readers, to get back to my homework!
That I learn best by interacting is not news to me. It's the crux of why archaeology impassioned me in college but history often didn't. Some historical accounts, like Zapata and the Mexican Revolution and Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, read like novels to me and don't get put down until I reach the last page; but a lot of history isn't written like that, so back in college, anyway, I found it harder to get into. In anthropology classes, on the other hand, I got to sit down at a lab table and face off with the skulls of our hominid ancestors; I got to study their size and shape, the prominence of the brow ridge, got to hold them in my hand and feel their weight. When I studied the ancient Maya, I got to stand amidst the buildings and stellae they long ago constructed and learn to read the hieroglyphs inscribed upon them; in that incomparable outdoor classroom, I got to listen as the man responsible for deciphering most of the glyphs taught us to see a smoke scroll here and a monkey's face here; taught us to add up the syllables and say the words; taught us to differentiate dates from textual statements and to slowly understand how these artful building blocks relayed information about warfare and conquest, royal births and deaths. In classes, I got to study slides professors had taken at long-excavated or newly rediscovered archaeological sites. Even when learning theory—that often-times deadly, abstract stuff—I got to study maps covered in symbols and differently colored arrows to learn the locations of hominid skulls or coastal campsites, to learn the competing explanations of the migration of hominids out of Africa or the newer take on the route homo sapiens followed to populate the Americas. That all this content stimulated my interest is no surprise; it stimulated my brain waves, tapping into all kinds of functions in my head.
Being back in school after almost a decade away from it is not just an adjustment to my schedule; it's an adjustment for my brain. While both my undergraduate studies and my professional work as a social studies editor were heavily focused on content, my graduate classes are teaching me mostly about academic disciplines and professional fields. That the subject at the heart of them—all courses being connected by the thread of education—is something highly tangible to me, something I have experienced in many settings and from both sides of the equation, doesn't always mean that the way my brain has to work to access the information is comfortable for it. It has been a long time since I read theory; a long time since I read so much of anything in one sitting, or in daily nine-hour sittings. But I consider all the struggles toward adjustment to be brain yoga. In some classes, the teaching methods are entirely new to me; in others, the packaging of the content is; yet in all of them, as the different control centers in my brain stretch their legs, shake out their muscles, and get back on the mat, they exhale a collective sigh of relief. It is exhausting to be inside your head so many hours a day; but it is exciting, especially when you realize that you can learn anything, in any format, no matter the limitations you might think were placed on your brain at birth. The brain is elastic, I think; resilient. Some corners grow dim over time, but all it takes to re-light them is a little effort, a little will, and a solid dose of curiosity. And with that optimistic thought, I leave you, my readers, to get back to my homework!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
It's not you, it's me.
Dearest blog readers,
I feel like a teenage boy who's seemingly been ignoring the girl he really likes and is finally getting around to telling her why. I have to say exactly what he would, in all earnestness: it's not you, it's me -- I swear. My life is in transition, filling with new events, people, and assignments (yes, assignments, even before classes technically begin!) and keeping me sternly on my toes (for years I worked at home, alone, remember -- so it's stimulating but exhausting for me to be out and about, surrounded by people, indulged with new information, every day, all day). My life is in transition, and the newness is exhilarating; the prospects of all that lies ahead put a smile on my face as I sit here and think about them. But I haven't forgotten you; even if I don't show it, I haven't forgotten my love of writing for you or my appreciation for your being there to read whatever I decide to say. So sheepishly, I am here to ask you to stay faithful to me, to keep checking for updates as you have been (Google Analytics tells me so!); to know that I'm thinking about you and thinking about what to write for you; to know that this is just part of the transition—the loss of the time to write, the loss of knowing just what to say. But it'll come back. I'll be back. I hope you will be too.
yours in loquaciousness forever,
Lara
I feel like a teenage boy who's seemingly been ignoring the girl he really likes and is finally getting around to telling her why. I have to say exactly what he would, in all earnestness: it's not you, it's me -- I swear. My life is in transition, filling with new events, people, and assignments (yes, assignments, even before classes technically begin!) and keeping me sternly on my toes (for years I worked at home, alone, remember -- so it's stimulating but exhausting for me to be out and about, surrounded by people, indulged with new information, every day, all day). My life is in transition, and the newness is exhilarating; the prospects of all that lies ahead put a smile on my face as I sit here and think about them. But I haven't forgotten you; even if I don't show it, I haven't forgotten my love of writing for you or my appreciation for your being there to read whatever I decide to say. So sheepishly, I am here to ask you to stay faithful to me, to keep checking for updates as you have been (Google Analytics tells me so!); to know that I'm thinking about you and thinking about what to write for you; to know that this is just part of the transition—the loss of the time to write, the loss of knowing just what to say. But it'll come back. I'll be back. I hope you will be too.
yours in loquaciousness forever,
Lara
Monday, September 15, 2008
from this chair on the patio (which I meant to post 2 weeks ago)
From this chair on the patio, I face a flat-as-glass ocean. Beyond it are discernible the yellow of sand and the dark gradations of greenery on distant islands; the air is clear today, if not the sky, and from the right spot I can see both halves of the old wreck of a tanker that rests off the shores of Horse Neck beach and Westport harbor. Trees block my view of Cuttyhunk Island and Martha’s Vineyard, but I know on a day like this I could see them clearly if I stood in the right spot; I could even see the red tint of the cliffs at Gay Head in the late-day sun.
From this chair on the patio, I am surrounded by the noises of summer—crickets chirp a rapid tune from the gardens beside me; various birds call to one another from the power lines that run behind the honey locusts that shade the yard. A plane flies overhead behind me, making that lolling rumble that they always do out here, where the horizon stretches all around us and planes don’t disappear from view nearly so quickly as they seem to elsewhere. Now Grandpa has turned on the radio, and from the house stream the godlike voices of a women’s choir, filling the air with audial light.
All around me there are flowers and trees, collected seashells, beach rocks, and pieces of driftwood, the dried arms of a lavender bush. There are fields cultivated toward beauty, every inch of them lovingly crafted by my grandparents.
They bought this land in the 1950s. Back then there was nothing on it—nothing but grass and a barn in a corner of the yard, which my grandfather promptly feigned having accidentally burned down. (He didn’t want it, and he loves to watch things burn.) Soon there was a little cottage, with just three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. When I study photographs from the early days here, I see surrounding the child-sized forms of my mother and her siblings only meadows, only bushes; the sculpted flower and rock gardens, the individual and groups of trees that fill four acres now were yet to be thought out or planted.
Over time, the little house grew. First came a master bedroom off a long hallway at one end, then a dining room laid with tile the same emerald green hue as the water beyond the windows and outstretched land; later the spiraling steps of a wooden staircase led the way to an upstairs bedroom, an upstairs porch, from which one can watch the moon rise over the ocean through the fishbone branches of the locust tree outside.
As the interior expanded, so did the details of the exterior. A shipment of large rocks pulled from the harsh New England soil were organized into a garden just next to the house, then topped with flowers and tiny trees (and perched on by my parents on the day of their wedding; in the photographs, there are yellow lilies spilling over the rock beneath them). Soon privets were planted beyond the rock garden, then rhododendrons, then hydrangeas; soon a flower garden blossomed beyond it, an alleyway of grass left between the two for bare feet to dance through as children played tag or practiced cartwheels or ran through the grass to remove sand from their bodies before entering the house.
Eventually, the colonial stone walls gained neighbors—first conifers and blackberry vines, later day lilies, roses, and hundreds of flowers whose names I don’t know. In the next yard was planted a vegetable garden among fruit trees, was built a shed.
At some point, trees began to take root. Grandpa organized them with logic—some to block strong winds, others to block views of newly built houses that he did not want to face. Nine of the trees mark the births of his grandchildren. Mine is a dawn redwood, the tallest of all on the lot and perhaps a harbinger of my move to California. My brother’s is a bush-like short-leafed pine, dark green, stubby, and missing a patch toward the top where a hurricane stripped it bare. The blue spruce down by the stone wall is one cousin’s; the deciduous tree whose name I never retain but which drips like a chandelier with white flowers in early summer belongs to the youngest cousin, the last one for whom roots were set into the earth. These trees stand in various conditions around the house, protecting it from winds and rains and also reminding the people inside that the incredible bond to place that they feel here has a wellspring; that though the place itself is magnificent, it is all the more so because of its caring cultivation. The people inside look at the flower gardens and bushes, the nine grandchildren trees, even the windows and doors of their home, and they know that this place is sewn into them in the same way the roots outside are laced into the soil. They are deeply grounded in this place, and that’s not only because they have always been here and always loved being here; it’s also because it was shaped for them, shaped of them before they had even come into existence.
From this chair on the patio, I am surrounded by the noises of summer—crickets chirp a rapid tune from the gardens beside me; various birds call to one another from the power lines that run behind the honey locusts that shade the yard. A plane flies overhead behind me, making that lolling rumble that they always do out here, where the horizon stretches all around us and planes don’t disappear from view nearly so quickly as they seem to elsewhere. Now Grandpa has turned on the radio, and from the house stream the godlike voices of a women’s choir, filling the air with audial light.
All around me there are flowers and trees, collected seashells, beach rocks, and pieces of driftwood, the dried arms of a lavender bush. There are fields cultivated toward beauty, every inch of them lovingly crafted by my grandparents.
They bought this land in the 1950s. Back then there was nothing on it—nothing but grass and a barn in a corner of the yard, which my grandfather promptly feigned having accidentally burned down. (He didn’t want it, and he loves to watch things burn.) Soon there was a little cottage, with just three bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. When I study photographs from the early days here, I see surrounding the child-sized forms of my mother and her siblings only meadows, only bushes; the sculpted flower and rock gardens, the individual and groups of trees that fill four acres now were yet to be thought out or planted.
Over time, the little house grew. First came a master bedroom off a long hallway at one end, then a dining room laid with tile the same emerald green hue as the water beyond the windows and outstretched land; later the spiraling steps of a wooden staircase led the way to an upstairs bedroom, an upstairs porch, from which one can watch the moon rise over the ocean through the fishbone branches of the locust tree outside.
As the interior expanded, so did the details of the exterior. A shipment of large rocks pulled from the harsh New England soil were organized into a garden just next to the house, then topped with flowers and tiny trees (and perched on by my parents on the day of their wedding; in the photographs, there are yellow lilies spilling over the rock beneath them). Soon privets were planted beyond the rock garden, then rhododendrons, then hydrangeas; soon a flower garden blossomed beyond it, an alleyway of grass left between the two for bare feet to dance through as children played tag or practiced cartwheels or ran through the grass to remove sand from their bodies before entering the house.
Eventually, the colonial stone walls gained neighbors—first conifers and blackberry vines, later day lilies, roses, and hundreds of flowers whose names I don’t know. In the next yard was planted a vegetable garden among fruit trees, was built a shed.
At some point, trees began to take root. Grandpa organized them with logic—some to block strong winds, others to block views of newly built houses that he did not want to face. Nine of the trees mark the births of his grandchildren. Mine is a dawn redwood, the tallest of all on the lot and perhaps a harbinger of my move to California. My brother’s is a bush-like short-leafed pine, dark green, stubby, and missing a patch toward the top where a hurricane stripped it bare. The blue spruce down by the stone wall is one cousin’s; the deciduous tree whose name I never retain but which drips like a chandelier with white flowers in early summer belongs to the youngest cousin, the last one for whom roots were set into the earth. These trees stand in various conditions around the house, protecting it from winds and rains and also reminding the people inside that the incredible bond to place that they feel here has a wellspring; that though the place itself is magnificent, it is all the more so because of its caring cultivation. The people inside look at the flower gardens and bushes, the nine grandchildren trees, even the windows and doors of their home, and they know that this place is sewn into them in the same way the roots outside are laced into the soil. They are deeply grounded in this place, and that’s not only because they have always been here and always loved being here; it’s also because it was shaped for them, shaped of them before they had even come into existence.
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