The practice of leaving

Move, 1994.

I ran away, once. Got as far as Greenwood Market before indecision slowed me and I pulled into the parking lot. Out of habit I brought up a mental image of the fridge and opened it: We were out of milk, so I should go inside. Then I cursed myself for the dutifulness of thinking to replenish my family's staples even as I ran away from it.

I put my head down on the steering wheel and listened to the soft rain shush against the windshield. Outside, the parking lot was dark but for the rain puddles that reflected neon, a stray shopping cart and now my car under a street lamp. Inside, shadows lapped at a water bottle while dingy yellow light lent unexplainable import to a crumpled paper airplane. The anger that drove me out the door and disrupted the night's routine had evaporated, leaving me tired, so tired. I climbed into the back seat and settled onto the bench.

I can't run away, not for good anyway, because I'm needed, valued, worth a life insurance policy, but I can run far if they'll let the line run slack. Will you come back? they ask. Yes, but you need to let me go so I can come back. They hug me. The youngest cries because he doesn't understand why he's not going, why they're all not going. My husband ignores the histrionics, so routine by now. I bent down for a final kiss, then pushed past them and opened the door. I hope you feel better, Mom.

I'm gone.

For the rest of the story, please visit my new blog.

Malapert or navigating foreign terrain

mal-uh-purt
adjective

Chaja and the Colorado River.

1. impudently bold in speech or manner.

My daughter and I traveled to Las Vegas to visit my college friend and her godmother. It was needed. The desert sun warmed us, and the time alone helped a relationship that grows tenuous as she nears 13. This child once nestled against me, but no longer fits there. She's lankier, stiffer, awkward in herself and rigid when I hug so I try to hold her long enough for her to remember these old, soft places and flow into them again.

But the trip was still only a trip. I remained her mother, and therefore continued to nag and embarrass, while she was the malapert child, slow when I needed her to hurry, preferred airline food over Wolfgang Puck's, contradicted, rolled her eyes, grumbled. Her saucy impertinence washed over me because my reservoir of patience, although not as great as Lake Mead, ran deeper without the distraction of her brothers.

The Springs Preserves, Las Vegas.

Oddly, it was water or more precisely the illusion of water that I brought home with me and not images of sunshine and saguaros. We saw the Cirque du Soleil show "Ka" and one scene kept replaying in my mind so I grabbed my notebook and wrote about it.

The audience watched as the boat rocked violently and began to sink, leaving an empty hole where once was a stage. Silence seeped into the theater, choking the screams. From the top of the stage a woman fell. Seconds passed. Bubbles trailed behind her. I was witnessing a drowning. Then a girl cut through the black air, dove into the dark water and swam down, down, down, following the sinking woman until all disappeared but for a slip of bubbles. I held my breath. The girl swam back into view, dragging the heavy body of the woman. Bubbles swirled about them as they rose to the surface. I breathed.

When I returned to my notebook later and read this, I noticed what I had failed to see before. Instead of action, this time I saw the characters, a mother and daughter. Perhaps it wasn't about water, after all.

Hoover Dam.

Morning with a young philosopher

The day begins with a debate over time's relativity.

It's time to get dressed.

No.

We're leaving.

I don't want to. I put clothes on on Thursday, that was last year.

Connecting dots where there are none

Preparing apples that will be sauteed with butter, brown sugar and rum.

1

At a round wooden cafe table sit eleven women and two men, all past 60, all with short hair, all wearing fleece, rain pants and sensible shoes. The women talk and drink coffee. Two brought their husbands, who both order something sweet at the counter and now sit, silent, waiting because there is nothing else to do, their plates clean and their interest in each other nonexistent. Eventually the cups are drained, the catching up is accomplished and everyone moves to leave. There's a slow deliberateness to the way they pull on jackets, adjust hats. Their nylon pants making soft sifting sounds as they shuffle out the door.

2

A brisk walk from the cafe is a gathering of abandoned couches. Three to be exact, plus a stuffed chair and a heavy, boxy television set tipped on its face. I make a point of taking that street so I can keep an eye on the insurrection. (Down with the dump! Free the furniture!)

3

Another cafe, another table of women, this time young mothers with babies tucked under their chins like bibs. They sit at a series of small tables lined up like dominoes. Their hair shines. Their faces shine. In front of each is a cupcake with a thick swirl of frosting. No one drinks coffee because they agree caffeine disrupts the babies' sleep schedules. I wonder how they manage to glow.

4

Perhaps because I and my small companion wander Seattle alone, I am keenly aware of people's tribalness, the things that link them, their dress and mannerism and vocabulary. When I first moved I kept seeing the same people throughout the city, though I knew it wasn't possible, that my eyes were seeing sameness in strangers and not the same strangers. Nine months later I still notice these small tribes as we sit in cafes, parks, the library, and as we walk down the street. Where I find similarities, my companion insists on differences because I am his mother and am bigger and have brown eyes, while he is a boy with blue eyes who likes to rest his tired feet on stray couches and tell strangers we encounter that he is two, although, in actuality, he is three.

Evanescence or shedding the weight of self-awareness

ev-un-nes-ens
noun

Courtesy of Luca Rossato.

1. A gradual disappearance.
2. The state of becoming imperceptible.

I was naked and this was not a dream.

The bath house was quietly busy as women shed clothes and stepped into the pools, their bodies melting into the hot water, or tensing as they pushed themselves down into the cold. I took off the robe I'd been issued and tucked it into the assigned cubby, walked awkwardly across the wet floor and sunk into the first pool I reached, seeking the water's warmth and evanescence.

I smelled chlorine, glanced at the women, then studied the room. There were four pools of differing temperatures. There was a trough filled with mugwort tea and bowls to scoop up the tea and pour it over my body. There were screens of maybe bamboo or reed that led to beds were women were scrubbed, massaged, wrapped. There were two doors.

I opened the first door and stepped into a hissing, hot cloud of steam. I paused for my eyes to dilate in the darkness and found space on the bench. Each hot breath burned the edges of my nostrils. I opened the second door and walked into an oven of dry, crackly heat that smelled of wood and herbs. The air vibrated with anticipation and I breathed cautiously, imagining air molecules igniting inside my lungs. I breathed out fire.

I returned to the pools, this time studying the women sharing the water, looking into their old and young eyes, eyes that were mirrors reflecting my weariness, my need, my anticipation. In a room filled with rumpled, bony, saggy, wrinkled, smooth, full, round, angled selves, I existed. Unobserved.

Bad words and a butt-load of bitchiness over bringing home the bacon

A fist of nerves in my neck is pounding my brain to bloody pulp because I'm polite. Too polite to tell someone to fuck off, that I don't live for her or feminism or whatever caused her tactlessness during the following conversation:

So, Rachael, when are you going back to work?

I'm not planning to get a job, just increase the amount of writing I'll be doing. 

Why don't you write a blog.

I do.

I mean, why don't you write a blog people will read?

How does one respond to a question that has no polite answer?

One woman who started blogging about things like baby poop, depression, love and the laundry has made millions, while a million other writers blogging about the very same things have made zip. Where does value come from? Why is it elusive? And most importantly, why do I allow someone else to determine the value of what I do?

All women work, and all (minus the aforementioned lucky one) are underpaid for the work we do.

In The Netherlands, the salary gap between men and women is as deep and wide as the ache that's cracked my head in two, yet that fissure isn't fuel for gender wars, but something they desire. In a Slate article about the book "Dutch Women Don't Get Depressed" by psychologist Ellen de Bruin, the Dutch woman's happiness isn't because her man comes bearing tulips while wearing wooden shoes, but because she has personal freedom and a good work-life balance, aka time and flexibility.

"The problem for American women isn't just the amount of time we spend working; it is the notion that we need to be perfect at everything we do," according to the Slate article. "TV shows, advertisements, and articles from women's magazines have formed this composite of a perfect woman who is successful at work, nurturing at home, always optimistic, and impeccably dressed. She dominates the boardroom and rushes in her pencil skirt to collect her well-groomed toddler. The ideal American woman doesn't just putter around in the kitchen or dabble in knitting [insert: or write a teeny-tiny blog]. She opens a cake shop and knits scarves for fashion shows [insert: and writes a blog that supports her family]." 

I've got a friend who can't find work despite squeezing and pushing and pounding and smashing herself to fit the job description. She doesn't have a Dutch husband, but she's got the financial flexibility to take this advice: Stop looking.

Create your job, instead. Determine what you love to do and then figure out a way to make money doing it. Turning passion into product is one of the accomplishments I admire most in my mom, who converted a love of education and the environment into a paycheck. And it's how Heather Armstrong, dubbed queen of mommy bloggers by the New York Times, makes an estimated $30,000 to $50,000 a month off her site, Dooce.

I'm rewinding that conversation I had and answering it this way:

So, Rachael, when are you going back to work?

I am working.

Oh, I thought you were staying home with your kids. What are you doing?

I write.

About what?

Fuck-heads like you.

Pausing

Spring snow.

Snowflakes fall as big as rose petals, tasting of cold. Can cold have a taste? I hold out my tongue to take a second sample of the giant, sloppy flakes that slake thirst and burn skin. I gaze up into gray sky swirling with snow and feel as if I'm falling or flying. How fitting it is to find myself standing in this storm, my balance and perspective temporarily shifted as snow falls in the middle of my children's mid-winter break. The Slow-Cooked Sentence will return next week.

I like reality that tastes like bread

"Bread is like dressed, hats and shoes -- in other words, essential!" -- Emily Post.

There are some foods that I prefer remain mysterious. Staying ignorant, though appreciative, of the complex ingredients and the skill required to roll sushi, open an oyster, stir a margarita, roast a leg of lamb, bake a croissant or melt chocolate into truffles makes the meal more delectable. Ignorance is tasty.

I feel rich as a queen eating what I would never make for myself, but bread is not one of these foods, bread is basic, necessary, and, in a house of six, a loaf is finished over lunch. Bread is a bite of bliss, fresh from the oven, slathered with butter and jam, but it isn't a mystery. It requires minimal ingredients, with the basic loaf just water, flour and yeast, and the beginning baker has the necessary skills: mix and wait. Confronted with a choice of either emptying my wallet every few days for a crunchy artisan loaf or suffering through supermarket loaves of cardboard, I decided to make my own.

"Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king." -- novelist Louis Bromfield.

I've found recipes that have a handful of ingredients, require minimum to zero amounts of kneading, can be ignored for hours and hours, and still turn out beautiful loaves with toasty crusts and soft interiors. My go-to bread is a recipe found on the back of a King Arthur bag of flour, perfect for the stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches packed into lunches.

As time passed, I broadened my bread-baking skills, teaching myself how to make an artisan loaf. Again, it was simpler than it looks, following the basic recipe from Jim Lahey's "My Bread." The dough is a sticky mass that goes through a long, cool rise before it's gently dropped into a hot dutch oven, lidded and baked. It has a high wow! factor, but it lacks depth. Okay, I admit that just sounds silly, like I'm describing wine, but it's true.

"If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens." -- English poet Robert Browning.

What I long to bake is the sourdough loaf. I love its crunch and tang, its hard, knobby ends moistened with a slap of butter, its chewy insides dunked in hot chocolate. My favorite sandwich is a chunk of sourdough baguette, a bite of salami and a nibble of cheddar, eaten in that order, preferably in a park.

My husband believes that sourdough is a West Coast craving, and perhaps he's right. Sourdough was the main bread in northern California during the Gold Rush, and prospectors were commonly called "sourdoughs." The dominant strain of bacteria in a sourdough culture is Lactobacillussanfranciscensis , which shares its name with the city that boasts the tangiest, tastiest sourdough.

Bakers and gold miners both guarded their starters. In Alaska, miners carried their starters in pouches around their necks or on their belts to keep them from freezing. My grandfather, a professional baker, carefully tended his starter over the decades he was in business.

But before I can bake, I need a mother dough. The recipe for starter is not a riddle but the foundation of all bread: yeast, water and flour. Yet within the bubbly, glutinous strands is the secret of its origin.
Every sourdough starter tastes different based on the flours used, the time that lapses, the humidity, air temperature, elevation and the wild, roaming yeast spores that land in the mix. It's the bread's terroir. And it's one mystery I want to solve.

* Title courtesy of French dramatist Jean Anouilh.

My brain

Courtesy of Max Boschini.

It's dark here, the room just a sketch, the corners fading in the layered gray light. Dust floats in the air and the floor's covered in pencil shavings. I pinch some and feel more than see the threads of wood fall. Graphite stains my hands, highlights the finger pads' relief of grooves, ridges, bumps, lines, an intricate, identifiable map leading to me. The room itself watches and waits, just as I watch and wait inside the room, eyes shut, fingers laced over my face, leaving small windows to peer out of. Or into.

Fourth-graders search for nice

Hearts on string.*

I don't know what to write on Tommy D.'s valentine.

How about: You have a distinct odor.

I can't write that.

No, you can't. So, what's he good at? Running?

No.

Playing on the monkey bars?

No.

Kicking a ball?

No.

Maybe you should skip him? Go back after you've had time to think about it.

Okay.

Two days later, he struts into the kitchen, crowing because he's managed to find something about which to compliment Tommy D.

I've got it!

Tell me.

Tommy D. is really good at being first in line.

Your complimenting him on his ability to cut in front of people?

Yeah.

Huh.

We ask his brother what he wrote on Tommy D.'s valentine.

Oh, that was hard. It took me a long time, like 5 minutes.

What did you write?

That he's fun to play tag with.

Why?

Because I can run faster and I don't smell him when I'm running away from him.

* Where credit's due: Hearts on string is a riff on GardenMama's valentine garland tutorial.

To be sustained

Tears.

In my head is a list of female writers who inspire and fortify me when life gets to be too much -- too harried, hectic, boring, busy. When I feel adrift, I cling to them like a life boat, mentally running through what I know about these women, and always taking note whether or not they're mothers.

I'm comforted by the knowledge that these aren't uncharted waters, but have been crossed before by authors I admire and love. Louise Erdrich has a similar list in her book "The Blue Jay's Dance," which chronicles her life as a writer and new mother. Jane Austen -- no children. Charlotte Bronte -- died of severe morning sickness. Harriet Beecher Stowe -- children. Louisa May Alcott -- adopted a child. Alice Walker, Alice Munro. Children. Joan Didion. Children. Madeline L'Engle and Anne Murrow Lindbergh. Children. Sandra Cisneros -- no children. Barbara Kingsolver -- child.

"By having children, I've both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer," Louise Erdrich said in an interview with The Paris Review. "I'd probably have become obsessively self-absorbed, or slacked off. Maybe I'd have become an alcoholic. Many of the writers I loved most were alcoholics. I've made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor."

I hadn't read Erdrich, but following the interview I picked up "The Blue Jay's Dance" and "Love Medicine," a novel that is a sad, cruel and beautiful portrait of Native American families. What I found interesting were the seeds of real life that Erdrich planted into the novel. This ability, to let fiction take root in fact and blossom, is a struggle for me.

Erdrich wrote in long-hand with a baby in her arms, not just once, but for years, through dozens of books and three babes. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote at the kitchen table. Madeline L'Engle at a typewriter with her family nearby. What it takes is the ability, the determination, to see what is possible.

As I saute onions, I think about writing. Between stirs, I jot down observations, ideas, bits of conversation. This isn't trance-like writing, the kind where I forget myself, the writing that is pure inspiration, a gift from my muse. Honestly, I'm embarrassed to share the stuff written in my notebooks because it's just one word awkwardly placed next to another, messily written and food-splattered as I keep the lentils from burning on the stove.

You will have an opportunity.

After dinner, we finish off the fortune cookies. Mine holds what I know, but need to be reminded of, that there is time, that somewhere in the swirling daily roil are moments to be discovered and claimed. I don't need a room of my own; I have a notebook and pen. Life doesn't need to stop, but can continue around me, like a rock in the middle of a river engorged with snow melt.

And then, in the middle of this paragraph, what happens? I'm interrupted by my children who want, demand, desire, need me, and my thought, my sentence are forgotten as I'm carried off in the swift current. I resent them. I resent Marcel. I think life is grinding me down like the rock eroding under rushing water.

Later still, the house is quiet. I've paged through Erdrich's books and found my life preserver, someone who loved their family and survived it. "Women writers ... must often hold their mates and families at arm's length or be devoured," Erdrich writes. "We learn how to conserve our energy, buy time, bargain for the hours we need."

Buoyed, I return to the computer and pick up where I left off.

Dinner.

Spiced Red Lentil Dal
Adapted from The New York Times, January 4, 2010
Serves 4

2 tablespoons peanut oil (I used olive)
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup dried red lentils, picked over and washed
2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
1 tablespoon garlic
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 cloves
1 teaspoon black pepper
Salt
2 tablespoons cold butter (optional)
Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish (I also added plain yogurt and caramelized onions)

Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat; when it's hot, add onion and cook until it begins to soften. Add ginger, garlic and cloves and saute for a few more minutes. Set aside.

Meanwhile, put the lentils in a soup pot, cover them with an inch of water and bring to a boil. Adjust heat so mixture bubbles gently and cook, stirring occasionally and adding water if needed, until lentils are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Add the onion, garlic and ginger, salt, pepper. Pour a little more oil in the skillet and cook the mustard seeds until they begin to pop. Add them to the dal, too and keep cooking until desired tenderness. Lentils should be saucy, not soupy.

Remove cloves. (I couldn't find them.) Stir in butter. Taste and adjust seasoning, then garnish with cilantro, yogurt and caramelized onions. Serve.

Where there is tea

Mid-morning.

It's empty, so the small sounds are magnified, the fridge's hum, the clock's tick, the creak of heating ducts constricting. The air is cool and carries the smell of the morning's toast. I lean against the wall for balance and pull of boots, jacket, hat, dumping everything at the door.

Without bodies the home is cavernous, quiet, and air settles like a mist of rain, dampening the couch, slicking the table. No one is here to jostle, blow, push or squeeze air into a molecular frenzy, no one but me and I breathe quietly and try not to disturb.

In the kitchen, the kettle is half full, so I reheat water, pour tea into a jam jar and wait, noting, but doing nothing about the morning's evidence, the newspaper splayed across the fruit bowl, the Cheerio sitting in a puddle of milk, the splattering of Legos and dirt on the rug, the grime on the arms of the rocker.

Tea leaves drift in hot water, staining and altering it. I cup the hot glass in my hands, feeling the difference growing between the temperature of my fingers and toes. My ribs open, spread, creating more room, more space inside of me.

Today I won't be rushed. I won't divide minutes, multiplying hash marks on the crowded clock face. I won't worry that I'm not spending time wisely, efficiently, correctly. Today I'll sip tea and describe empty places.

Sough or sounds in a foreign language

sou, suhf
noun

Courtesy of James Morton.

1. A soft, low sighing, murmuring or rustling sound.

The leader is small, thin, with eyes like black beads that flash as she cocks her head to one side and waits for a child to spread the wing of what appears to be a feathered basketball. Ten seconds pass. The basketball squawks, grows legs and tries to fly, but is stopped by the leader who has come to the child's aid.

I sit in a chilly barn, sharing the space with animals, children, other parents, who also wait. One parent reads. Another checks a smart phone. Two fathers talk. I'm the only one who knits, and I've just discovered a mistake three rows back.

The leader talks on, but I don't listen to the lesson, just the sough of her voice, rising and falling in hushed clucks -- blah, blah, blah, BLAH! blah, blah, BLAH! I unravel yarn, and wonder how, just as dogs and their owners come to resemble each other, this woman has come to talk like her chickens.

Melting manners with molten marshmallow

A Woman Asleep at Table by Vermeer, 1657

The time had come to proclaim our family officially and properly settled. There were still boxes to unpack and the whereabouts of a battery charger remained a mystery, but the house was decent enough for friends.

If we had any.

So I started looking in parks, down grocery store aisles, along the sidelines of soccer fields. They've been hard to find and I blame it on the Seattle Freeze, that tendency for people to be polite, yet distant, friendly to all, but friends with few.

"Seattle is like that popular girl in high school," Julia Summerfeld wrote in Pacific Northwest magazine. "The one who gets your vote for homecoming queen because she always smiles and says hello. But she doesn't know your name and doesn't care to. She doesn't want to be your friend. She's just being nice."

After much searching, the targeted family was identified, an invitation extended -- accepted (!) -- and I began to plan. I simmered beef, mushrooms, carrots and baby onions in red wine, poured in Cognac and ignited the stew. For dessert, I planned individual chocolate cakes with a crackly exterior and an interior that oozed molten marshmallow. It was a meal designed to melt manners.

These cakes need just seven ingredients (most likely already in your cupboard), can be whipped up hours in advance and popped into the oven as dinner ends. They are crowd-pleasers, show-stoppers -- and I over baked them.

They didn't burn, but the marshmallow disappeared, leaving a hollow and dry cupcake. I served them because I had no back up, and, as it turned out, the evening was still a success. Maybe because the family didn't need to be unfrozen after all. Turned out they're not natives, but expats from Europe.

+++

A week later, I made the cupcakes again, this time shortening the time and keeping a sharp eye on the oven. It made all the difference.

Joe's Molten Marshmallow-Chocolate Cakes
by 13-year-old Joe Kozal, published in Sunset, October 2004

Serves 6
1 1/3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
6 large marshmallows
Powdered sugar, optional

In a sauce pan over low heat, stir chocolate chips and butter until melted and smooth. Remove from head and whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla until well blended. Stir in flour.

Butter and flour six ramekins or a cupcake tin. Fill about halfway. Press a marshmallow into the center of the batter. Spoon remaining batter equally over marshmallows, completely covering.

Bake at 350-degrees until tops are puffed up and crackly, 10 to 15 minutes. Do not over bake. Let cool, then run a knife along the inside of the ramekins or pan and invert to release cakes. Place right side up on plates. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve warm.

My style and my mind alike to roaming*

"I am not the woman whose voice animates my essays. She's made up."
-- Nancy Mairs, "Carnal Acts"

The sun blushed. Her lover kissed ear, cheek, jawbone and eye, whispering goodbye to each part of her as flamingo feathers delicately settled on the blue belly of the morning sky.

+++

My youngest son attacks art. Fingers chase a scribble across paper, crying out for help before crashing into another line. When he paints, hands splat and fart globs of color. "Get 'em, get 'em! Aaah!" he yells as he forces red and blue into a violent shade of purple. But I don't worry that he peppers his day with destruction, that he prefers the punch to the hug, that he insists city buses be equipped with guns, because he is the same boy whose color choice is pink, be it nail polish, cupcake or crayon.

+++

In the photograph, a girl in a pink dress sits on the edge of a chair at the end of a driveway. Her feet are crossed and dangle in the air, her shoulders are up around her ears and she's smiling. If you squint, you can spot the shadow left from a lost tooth. Next to her is a jug, hanging from her side is a coin purse, and propped up with rocks at her feet is a painted sign that reads:

lemon

ade

25 $

It is a hot day. The shadows look dark, cool, but she sits in sun that bleaches the sign to near whiteness and melts the ice in the jug. There are similarities between my 12-year-old daughter and the small girl who inhabits that photograph, but they blur as I forget who she was and she searches for who she will become.

+++

Pink is the color of painted nails, girls, early morning, cold fingers, the excitable penis. Wrap your hands around this and you'll get warm, the lover suggested. Oh yeah? What do you take me for, a novice? she replied. Pink is love, a carnation, the cheeks of a corpulent, satisfied man. Later, she searched in her closet and found the sunrise hanging between a fleece jacket and a little black dress with dusty shoulders, so she wrapped it around her neck, climbed the bus and went out into the day.

* Title courtesy of Michel de Montaigne, father of the essay.

Potential

Courtesy of Magic Madzik.

It's a flat, gray sky, no dimension or variation to the clouds that have been pulled over the treetops like a giant blanket. Another day under cover and I sigh as pinto beans skip across the counter and I sort out the moldy ones. After the beans are simmering on the stove, I take one of the rejects and push it into the wet soil outside my kitchen door . Tomorrow, when I wake, I'll find a giant beanstalk growing there, its thick truck bending and pushing through the fence that divides my yard from Lorna's. I will step out onto the kitchen stoop and, setting my cup of coffee on the steps, will grab hold of a thick leaf stem and pull myself up. The stalk is firm and fleshy, the leaves wet from the night's rain, so I climb slowly so I won't slip, yet I make progress. Cool shreds of cloud swirl around my arms and neck and far below I see the patchwork of roofs with their mossy tiles. A crow eyes me from its perch on a tree. Great view, I tell the bird who doesn't respond, and since there's no one else to talk to, I climb on, wishing I'd worn something more sensible than a purple bathrobe. Tiny drops of water cling to the fabric, making it heavy and damp. Up I go, pausing now and again to cup my red hands and blow warm air on my fingers, but not wondering where I'm going nor what I've left behind, just climbing to the next leaf,  then the next, and the next, so I don't notice when the gray lightens and thins, until I've poked my head through the top of the cloud and am engulfed in light. It tumbles out of a blue sky, bouncing and giggling across the brilliant cloud-floor. I blink, squint and, finding the surface springy, yet firm, haul myself up and look around at nothing going on forever. No castle, no giant with nostrils sniffing for an Englishman's blood, no bag of gold or harp to steal, just endless sky and light, and now me there in the emptiness, too.

Unexpected

Just you and me.

At its best, the day was going to be spent grocery shopping, and at its worst it looked as if I would be locked in a laundromat, washing a night's worth of soiled blankets, but instead the day turned into a series of small, sweet surprises.

• I ordered my groceries online and scheduled them to be delivered in the afternoon.
• I inspected the laundry and discovered only one blanket needed laundering, and it fit in my washing machine.
• The sun shined. For hours.

Oh, happy, happy day.

Lessons

McDermitt, Nevada.

Please, for one minute, indulge the writerly side of me, the part that salivates over a carefully constructed sentence, that is awed by the clarity and thought given to a subject, that is excited over a newly discovered word, that, right now, is so thoroughly enjoying the rambling sentences and divisive topic of the short essay "Irreconcilable Dissonance" by Brian Doyle.

Pause, for two seconds, to appreciate the opening sentence:

 "I have been married once to the woman to whom I am still married, so far, and one thing I have noticed about being married is that it makes you a lot more attentive to divorce, which used to seem like something that happened to other people, but doesn't anymore, because of course every marriage is pregnant with divorce, and also now I know a lot of people who are divorced, or are about to be, or are somewhere in between those poles, for which shadowy status there should be world like 'mivorced' or 'darried' or 'sleeperated' or 'schleperated,' but there aren't so far."

Now I've thought similar thoughts as I've watched the marriages of friends and acquaintances teeter and sometimes collapse, but never have I articulated my observations into a sentence coming near the length of Doyle's 104-word behemoth. Here are a couple more:

"The saddest word I've heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is 'tired,' as in "We were both just tired,' because being tired seems so utterly normal to me, so much the rug always bunching in that one spot no matter what you do, the slightly worn dish rack, the belt with extra holes punched with an ice pick that you borrowed from your cousin for exactly this purpose, the flashlight in the pantry that has never had batteries and never will, that the thought of 'tired' being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies. The shagginess of things, the way they never quite work out as planned and break down every other Tuesday, necessitating wine and foul language and duct tape and the wrong-size screw quietly hammered into place with the bottom of the garden gnome, seems to me the very essence of marriage; so if what makes a marriage work (the constant shifting of expectations and eternal parade of small surprises) is also what causes marriages to dissolve, where is it safe to stand?"

I first read "Irreconcilable Dissonance" in "The Best American Essays, 2010" and it's the one piece I keep returning to, first re-reading it, then reading it aloud to Marcel, then re-reading parts of it for although there are things I can learn about rhythm and structure, there's even more wisdom to be found in the meaning within those sentences.

Twenty-one answers in an afternoon

 The Circus, 1870-1950 by TASCHEN, courtesy of KReEsTaL.

Afternoons are hectic affairs, but yesterday it felt as if I were tossing bricks. In an effort to keep moving, keep managing, I started scribbling down the requests received between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.

1. Can I get on the computer to research my science project? Yes.
2. What's for dinner? I don't know.
3. Is a hexagon a quadrilateral with perpendicular sides? Hmm ... what do you think?
4. I want an egg. Mom, can you peel my egg? Sure.
5. Can someone open the door? (Translated from cat scratch-ese.) Yes.
6. Doe a square have perpendicular lines that intersect at right angles? Hmm ... what do you think?
7. I want some milk. Mom, are you getting me milk? Yes.
8. Can you test me from one to 100 in French? Okay.
9. Can Max and Sam play? After homework is finished.
10. Which way is north? It doesn't matter in order for you to solve the math problem.
11. Is the distance between the park and the lake nine miles? What do you think?
12. Where's my milk? I'm waiting for you to bring me a cup.
13. Can I check my Gmail? No.
14. What's for dinner? Frozen pancakes and scrambled eggs.
15. My homework's done, can I call Luke to see if he can play? Yes.
16. Where's his number? Look it up.
17. Where's my milk? I'm still waiting for the cup.
18. Is this his number? Yes.
19. Did you buy kitty litter? No. 
20. Then how do I change the cat box? You don't.
21. Hi, I'm home. Kiss?

And after replying to that final question, I whispered, "Tag, you're it." Then I walked into the bedroom, closed the door and didn't answer to anyone for a whole half hour.

A resolution

Excerpt from "Letters to a Young Poet," by poet, novelist and art critic Rainer Maria Rilke:

You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You sent them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest laces of your heart; acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all -- ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into your answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you must meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.

Three habit-building tools:

• Writers' Rooms is a newspaper series that showcases where authors create. 
• Daily Routines, a blog about how writers, artists and other interesting people organize their day. Although the blog's inactive, there's plenty to read.
• Keep your goals to yourself. A TED Video.

Effulgence or writing with film

i-ful-juhn(t)s
noun

1. The state of being bright and radiant; splendor; brilliance.

There is a stretch of highway in an empty corner of Nevada where the sky takes over the world. The earth is flattened, the mountains squashed under blazing blue. Clouds, squeezed of snow and rain were breaking apart, their ribbony shreds floating like jelly fish above our heads. The sun sang a symphony.

I wanted to drink up the light.

Later, long after the sun had stopped reciting poetry to the storm clouds and we'd driven the length of the valley and climbed over some smallish mountains and descended into another lonesome basin, I wondered what would've happened if I had swallowed the effulgent light? Would I glow like Christ, a small sun radiating from behind my head and my stomach illuminated? Or would I look like my father, who, after three rounds of chemotherapy, was as solid and unchanged as the desert floor?

My dad is okay and that was something I needed to know, that cancer hasn't stopped him from doing what he's always done -- fix pipes, translate Spanish novels, hold babies. My mom is okay, maybe better than okay, for she's strong and happy not in spite of the cancer, not because of the cancer, but because she and my dad have a good life together, cancer or not.

This trip was about understanding, illumination. Although I brought my notebook I didn't open it because I couldn't find the words to define what I knew to be beautiful. Instead, I found myself with camera in hand, documenting, recording, not thinking, just absorbing the light.

I was the negative.

And so I began to know, to comprehend, to believe that the parts of me I left behind are not struggling, but thriving, that this is life, sometimes fighting, sometimes coasting, but always here, right now, with clogged pipes and grandsons wrestling like puppies in the living room and it's 5 p.m. and no one knows what's for dinner but somehow a meal is made.

And it nourishes.