A summer siesta

Courtesy of Casa de Queso.

I'm needing time to

think
write
read
discover
prepare
settle.

The Slow-Cooked Sentence will be on hiatus while I build a new life for myself and my family in Seattle.

A lesson with fire or how words ignite

Courtesy of Daniel Y. Go.

I've kissed one Indian in my life, a bartender named Ray who served me shots of tequila and pitchers of cheap beer when I was a younger, single and (often foolishly drunk) woman living in Idaho.

One night Ray ended up at my apartment, which was a stumble up the hill from a favorite bar. Did we walk there together? Did he show up at my door? All I remember is us in my living room, me sitting on top of the furnace, him standing between my thighs, and his brown face and black hair smelling of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

I wanted his kiss to crackle like a forest fire: pine trees bursting into hot, bright torches, while the forest floor's carpet of dry needles smoked. Instead of burning ember, my lips touched powdery ash and I pushed him away, tired, annoyed that he was there, that he was keeping me awake when my boyfriend would be calling soon. My boyfriend, a penniless intern, and I had an agreement: He'd call collect, I'd refuse the charge, and then call the payphone back so we could talk for an hour or more on my dime. What we never talked about were the flames I stoked.

It was my dance, first with fidelity, then freedom, that sprang to mind when I read a poem from Sherman Alexie's newest book. "War Dances" is an excellent collection of short stories and poems that refract on the stories' themes of race, religion, sexuality and family, and it won the PEN/Faulkner Award this spring. But with this poem my memory shifted like a kaleidoscope and the pieces rearranged themselves and seared me. Here's an excerpt:

... I was working the night

Shift at a pizza joint and you were away at college. You dated a series of inconsequential boys. Well, each boy meant little on his

Own, but their cumulative effect devastated my brain and balls. I wanted you to stop kissing relative strangers, so I called you at midnight as often as I could afford. If I talked to you that late, I knew

(Or hoped) you couldn't rush into anybody's bed. But, O, I still recall the misery of hearing the ring, ring, ring, ring

Of your unanswered phone. These days, I'd text you to find you, but where's the delicious pain

In that? ...

Diving into traffic

Seattle street sign, 1956. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

I aimed the nose of my minivan in the general direction of Green Lake, which promised respite from the record heat, but my optimism at navigating Seattle's rush hour traffic and finding this shimmering lake evaporated when I swung onto Aurora Avenue. Instead of seeing cool water and shaded paths, I was squeezed between bumpers and inching closer to the Space Needle.

This was the wrong view.

So I did the next thing that came to mind, I made a sharp right into a row of apartments, opened a map and turned on the GPS unit. Seattle should be a simple city to learn; most streets are governed by the compass, running either north-south or east-west. It's an hourglass, its middle cinched by a ship canal connecting Elliott Bay to Lake Washington. It's a city of rolling hills, speckled by lakes and ringed by tall mountains. But as I scanned the map for a street close to Green Lake, a conversation outside my window caught my attention.

"When she threatened to stab you, was she holding a knife?"

"Yes, but not today."

I looked up.

There was a cop. There was a man

And then there was me and my four kids in a minivan, just a knife's throw away.

I punched in the first street I could find, hit "GO!" on the GPS screen and sped off.

The kids flung questions as I followed the directions on the mini computer screen.

"I didn't really understand what was going on Mom."

Turn right.

"Someone wanted to stab that man."

Then slip under Aurora Avenue. Turn left.

"But why?"

Turn right.

"I don't know."

Turn right, again.

Then right, again.

"Something's wrong with the GPS, Mom. We're driving in a circle."

We laughed. Apparently, the street I typed in was a small stretch of road linking longer streets. We looked around, saw signs pointing the way to Green Lake and our nerve-jangling trip came to a safe end.

Divers at Green Lake, 1936. Courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives.

The water cooled us, the shade soothed us, and (bonus!) there was a diving board. But no one tried a jack knife.

Sun-soaked strawberries in Seattle

"Jamberry" is a favorite book about a boy and a bear
and their adventures in a land of berries.

In the middle of all the unpacking and rearranging, but after we had discovered that the couch couldn't fit through the door, the TV cabinet couldn't stand upright in the basement and the mattress box springs couldn't fit upstairs, we stopped.

Let's go pick berries, we thought.

So away we drove, leaving the couch in the basement, the box springs in the yard and the TV cabinet in pieces. We returned with 40 pounds of strawberries, 4 pounds of raspberries and 25 pounds of sugar, and, ignoring all the that begged to be unpacked and rearranged, we made jam.

Because, really, what is the more important creature comfort -- a couch or a jar of homemade jam, saved until winter when sunshine is but a memory?

Words from the road

Courtesy of Jasmic.

We honked, neighbors waved goodbye, and the caravan of mini-van, tent-trailer and U-Haul swung around the corner and our home was out of sight. A block down the street, the walkie-talkie crackled and the voice of one son filled the cab.

"Hi, Mom. I wanted to make sure your radio was working."

Crackle. Hiss. "It's working. How's it going? Over."

"Good."

"Where's your dad going? Over."

Crackle. Hiss. "I don't know."

"I thought we were going to Seattle."

"So did I."

Silence, followed by crackle and hiss.

"Yeah, Dad says we're going to Seattle, too."

After four weeks of solo parenting, I was looking forward to the kid-less time in the U-Haul. I'd gladly take one yowling cat and one mother (hitching a ride to visit my sister and her new baby), in exchange for my husband taking the kids, their complaints and the newborn bunnies. I'd thought the bunnies, nestled in fur next to their mother's cage, would be the biggest hassle on this trip, but 10 miles into the 700-mile trip I learned otherwise.

The air of the U-Haul filled with a stench that forced me to roll down the window, hold my nose and swerve off the road. The cat had crapped.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband.

A half-hour spent at the gas station and we were back on the road, the cat wet, the air a tad fragrant but breathable again.

At first, I tried to decipher the cat's meows by rating its frequency and pitch. Once they reached what I believed was an urgent level, I'd swing off the road, pull the cat out of the carrier, snap on a leash and wait. The cat would cower at my feet, then gingerly cross the foreign landscape and hide under a bush, where the whites of its eyes glowed in the shadows. Apparently, it was too scared to move let alone relieve its bowels, because twenty minutes down the road ... sniff, sniff. Ugh.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband, again.

Urine splashed over the snacks and drinks, shit smeared across a shirt and the next half-hour was spent swearing, swabbing and spraying bleach. I gave up second-guessing the cat and just responded to the scent in the cab.

Crackle. Hiss. "I'm pulling over to clean up the cat," I radioed my husband, yet again.

After the third clean-up, I happily exchanged my seat in the U-Haul for one behind the wheel of our minivan, infused with kid sweat and bunny fur, but, sniff, sniff, mercifully free of cat.

My heart, plucked

Courtesy of adwriter.

Three men arrived at my house Monday and packed 17,000 pounds of stuff. The zip of packing tape and the sounds of Duran Duran filled the air, while I ate brownies and drank lemonade in the shade.

Oh, the sweet life of a company man and his family.

Eight hours later, the men left, my desk was wrapped in plastic, the piano crated and 122 boxes all numbered and labeled. It's funny, seeing my things reduced and defined to boxes. Written on one box are the words "Wicker Basket Water Marker," and on another reads "Pillows, Light Reducer." Light reducer? Light reducer? That stumped my family for a little while, and then we figured it meant a lamp shade.

As I countdown the days until we leave for Seattle, I'm realizing that the last time I did something -- walk by the river, hike in the mountains, see a friend -- was the final time and I didn't know it or mark it as significant. To counter this, we went to the park one final time with friends. Toddlers hung out on the slides, bigger kids headed down to the pond to catch polliwogs while the adults visited around the barbecue. As the sun went down we all met in the sandlot for a game of kickball and then went back to the table for cake, thermoses of coffee and goodbye.

I hugged the husband of a best friend and the tears fell.

"Wait!" I complained. "I'm not supposed to be crying over you!"

I hold my friends for a little longer and really hug them, smell them, feel their soft bodies, aged from children yet strong enough to rebound for the backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that we planned for the summer and now won't take. There's no time to formally say goodbye to my mountains with their carpet of dry pine needles and the vanilla smell of Jeffrey pines.

As we drive home I try to burn onto my mind's eye the sherbet sunset, melting pinks and oranges into the corners of my brain. Do they have sunsets in Seattle or does the sky just turn from downy gray to black?

The curve and color of the hills that bored me suddenly are so dear. After years, I've memorized their peaks and valleys, stared dully at them through the dry, brown winters and brightened when spring crayons them a pale sage green. I know where the scorpion waits, the hare hides, and can sing the song of the coyote, that trickster who came one night and nipped a bit of my soul and carried it away to its den.

Since I was 10, I've driven these streets, so familiar I forget who I am, how old I am, what I am. I am a child in the backseat, tired of a day of errands with my mother who has hauled me from grocery store, to fabric store, to laundromat. I am a mother, tired of a day of errands with my children whom I've dragged to grocery store, to library, to yarn shop.

Home is empty but for the echoes. My youngest son runs in big circles, bounces off bare walls and giggles. The air smells of secrets, of lovemaking and a baby born, of children growing, growing, growing. There are more secrets buried in the garden, nourishing the roots of the lilac and the crab apple. Love decays, providing food for the blossoms that tempt my children who bury their noses in the petals and whose fingers find the strawberries, barely red but still, they insist, so sweet.

Made for TV drama

Me, spinning.

Whack goes
the bat. Off spins
the pinata, spilling
the sweet contents of my life on
the floor.

Tradition.

Life is moving fast.

Too fast.

If I can concentrate 24 hours into a single sentence it would go something like this:

One of my sister's arrived with her 2-day-old baby to witness another sister marry, and in the middle of the ceremony our dad collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, but recovered quickly enough to return to the reception in time for the father-daughter dance.

Participants, observing.

Whew.

"This is like a movie," my sister-in-law said.

And everyone cried. And everyone cheered. And everyone laughed.

The numbers tell the story

Courtesy of nataliej.

Many years ago, I sat in an obstetrician's office and feared I was miscarrying. My husband stood near me as we waited for the ultrasound's results.

"Everything looks good," the doctor said.

I cried.

"In fact, I probably should be congratulating you. There are two embryos; you're having twins."

I cried harder.

"That's good news, isn't it?" the doctor asked.

I laughed and cried at the same time.

"I don't know," I admitted.

Months later, I walked into the hospital 38 weeks pregnant, dilated to 10. My husband was again at my side as we waited for an ultrasound to tell us whether our breached babies had shifted. But before I could get the news, my water broke, a tiny foot was felt and an emergency cesarean performed.

Seconds before I slipped under the anesthesia, I asked that pictures be taken. While unconscious, my first son, Samuel, was born. One minute later, my second son, Max, arrived. An hour or so passed and I woke.

"Bring me my babies," I demanded.

As I held them in my arms, I smiled through my tears.

This past week, we celebrated their ninth birthdays.

1
exhausted mother

2
birthday cakes baked
3
legged races
4
burlap bags used for sack races


Max leaps.

5
pounds of chicken wings
6
Lego sets
7
minutes of ABBA danced around musical chairs


Sam shares a chair.

8
whacks at the pinata
9
years on this earth
10
p.m. and the kitchen was clean again
11
year-old girls are great helpers
12
deviled eggs
13
bottles of bubbles
14
children celebrate with us.


Doubles.

Tangled time

I'm unwinding from a whirlwind, house-hunting trip to Seattle, where the rental market is so hot houses are snapped up as I deliberate on the door step. It made me want to cry. It made me want to laugh hysterically. Instead, I pulled out my knitting needles and jabbed it into yarn, fiercely adding inches as we drove off in search of the next address.

Courtesy of NapaneeGal.

Overheard between a mother and daughter at a playground in Seattle:

Mom: What side of the teeter-totter do you want?

Girl: I want the sunny side.

Courtesy of Claudio.Ar (not too much online).

I'm like a cat that wants to sit in puddles of warm light and sleep, so each time I entered a rental I had to get my bearings in order to measure the sunshine levels. My dream house faces south and has a kitchen with morning light, but I fear it doesn't exist in Seattle. At least not on my budget.

Definitions of home

Courtesy of weakestlink.

There's a hole in my home, empty and dark as the mine shaft I climbed down into as a kid. I remember the cool, dry breeze touching my face as I lay on my belly and peeked over the edge. I held out my arm and dropped a rock, listening as it banged and clattered against the wooden scaffolding, falling down, down, down.

Finally, silence.

I inched over the side until my feet touched the wooden ladder and followed my dad and brother into the abandoned shaft. Above me I could hear my mom's worried voice, and I clung tighter to the wooden rungs and breathed softly, trying to make myself lighter.

Courtesy of Chazz Layne.

HOME (n): 1) A place where you live. 2) A plant or animal's native habitat. 3) A starting position. (adj.) A place of origin. (adv.) The center or heart of something.

The new hole was blown out when my husband left for Seattle to begin a new job and scout out a new house for our family. The kids wander to its edge, listening to his silence, breathing in the temporary loss of their father. They telephone him, recounting the minutiae of the weekend as they wander from room to room.

When does a house stop being a home?

When a rabbit hole appears and someone falls through it.

Like the White Rabbit, but not like the White Rabbit, I'm talking to myself. Leap and the net will appear. The Zen phrase was mailed to me by a friend who knew life, or at least the next 30 days of it, would turn surreal as school ends, birthdays are celebrated, a marriage begins, a baby is born and movers descend.

I hum Tom Petty lyrics as I paint.

Yeah I'm free, free fallin'

A poem by my daughter, Chaja, and given to me on Mother's Day.

I Am From ...

I am from books scattered around the house. I am from the rocks, flowers and shells piled on the mantle.

I am from flowers in their brick planters. I am from rabbits in their hutches, and the swing hanging from the tree in our backyard.

I am from making plum jelly in the fall. I am from riding my bike around the block and from walking to school.

I am from the little box that is filled with thoughts, sandstone and sagebrush. I am from the photo albums in the hall.

I am from Mom and Dad, Nana and Opa, and Grandma and Grandpa.

I am from soccer games where I watch you cheer me on. I am from camping on Mount Rose and swimming in Lake Tahoe.

I am from you.

Just living

It was the kind of week where nothing much happened, bookended by the comforting and mundane, with laundry and computer games, the first corn and the last bit of sanding to make the table leaves fit nice and snug.

Sometimes the boring is so damn beautiful.

Max and Sam.

Chaja shows Ivan how to shuck corn.

Finishing work.

A week in re(d)rospect

Courtesy of spettacolopuro.

Selling a house is tough on the nerves. I go though the day jittery, unable to relax in my home, feeling as if royalty will arrive any second.

The day the For Sale sign went up, a Realtor knocked on the door. I'd asked for an hour's notice, but in this market any prospective buyer is welcome, even unannounced, so I let them in and left. An hour later, I returned and toured my home, trying to see it through the eyes of a stranger. I climbed the stairs, peeked into the bedrooms, smiled at my red kitchen, and squinted when I looked into the bathroom.

What was that on the floor near the toilet?

A raisin?

I bent over. Picked it up.

It was a tiny turd.

On average, it takes 123 days for a home to sell in the Reno area. I don't know if I'm going to last.

Courtesy of davebluedevil.

In one day, Max and Sam yanked more than 100 dandelions out of the front yard, earning 25 cents for each plant pulled out of the soil with its root attached. They emptied their banks, bought cheap MP3 players and spent the rest of the day wandering around the house, plugged in, tunelessly humming along to Owl City's "Hello Seattle."

I had to yank out their ear buds in order to talk to them.

The poop pellet wasn't the worst of the week, though.

Gray, wet weather reminiscent of Seattle drove a stray cat into our garage, where it sprayed.

Where?

Sniff. Sniff.

Here.

Sniff. Sniff.

No, here.

Sniff. Sniff.

I'm hyperventilating from all the sniffing, because the garage is stuffed to the gills and now must be emptied and sanitized, because my husband thinks it can be solved with a trip to the store to buy air freshener. We haul stuff out of the garage and into the rain.

By 10 p.m., my nerves are frayed and the lining of my nose is burned by bleach fumes.

I couldn't smell the flowers he brought home the next day, but they were beautiful.

I couldn't figure out how to load music onto my new, shiny red iPod nano, but he helped me.

I couldn't imagine living without him, even for a month, so I'm not counting the days until May 8th.

The gritty details

Image courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

In a daily state of exhaustion I've developed new respect for the plumber, the carpenter and the painter. It's been nonstop, physical work since the decision was made to move my family from Sparks, Nevada to Seattle. I work until I fall into bed, paint in my hair, grime under my fingernails, with teeth too tired to brush.

On Sunday, for example, I wiped out twenty-five kitchen cupboards and drawers, scrubbed behind the washer and dryer, cleaned blinds, washed windows, packed the linens, cleaned my closet and my husbands, and, at 9:30 at night waxed the kitchen floor. Today, I was up at 6 and facing another full day of physical work.

I'm not just digging holes, here. There's a whole lot of thinking in physical work. How does one rehang a closet door? Or make a ceiling fan stop wobbling? Why is the hot water slowed to a trickle? And what the hell is for dinner tonight?

My admiration for the laborer grows with each passing hour this house doesn't sell.

Image courtesy of digital_monkey.

We've been living off a fast-food diet of pizza, tacos, Chinese and burgers, though I've managed to make a pot of spaghetti or stew on the rare day I think about food before the kids wander past with stomachs clutched, moaning that they're starving to death.

The strangest meal I've served this week: pancakes and beans.

Everyone ate it, without a peep of protest.

Max, not happy.

I expected two weeks of frantic house improvements to show on the kids (mainly in the form of callouses developed from daily weeding), but I hadn't anticipated how the moving preparations would give them a new arsenal of words and weapons against each other.

First overheard was an argument between Max and Chaja over the vacuum cleaner.

MAX
Chaja had the vacuum last and she's not putting it away.

CHAJA
You're not done with it.

MAX
Don't tell me how to clean my room!

CHAJA
(running to her room and slamming the door)
Well, don't blame me if a Realtor can't sell our house because your carpet's dirty.

MAX
(running after her while clutching a roll of toilet paper above his head in a threatening manner)
You're going down! You're going down!

And secondly, was 2-year-old Ivan's newly learned phrase.

"Give me a break!" he yelled from the top of the stairs when I asked him to help in the kitchen.

A break. That's what we all need right now. That's what we need from this stinking housing market.

Today, the For Sale sign is hammered in to the lawn. Wish us luck.

Making gaps, letting go

Marcel hugs Sam goodbye before the Amazon interview.

The world shifted slightly once the decision was made that we were leaving. What we believed to be so permanent loosened a little, like a tooth, and life is wobbling. In one week, the freezer and the compost bin were given away, books have been packed, and five gallons of paint applied to walls that showed the grimy hand-print growth of my children. I covered the wobbly signature of a 5-year-old Sam discovered above his bed.

Sigh.

It's hard to dismantle a life.

Max's snowball fight.

Things I've found as the house is torn apart:

Two placentas (one from Ivan and one from a nephew) that were supposed to be planted under trees honoring the boys' births, but were shoved to the back of the deep freezer and forgotten.

One dirty, frozen slushball, which reminded me of Bill Cosby's hilarious story "Revenge" and prompted me to stop cleaning out the freezer and go listen to it again.

Three humongous Costco boxes of plastic forks. (What was I thinking, that life was going to be one endless picnic?!)

And behind beds and bookcases, I found the mummified remains of carrots gnawed on by my children and resembling shriveled umbilical cords.

*

I walk with my kids to school and we calculate how many more times we will travel these seven blocks: seventy-eight. We pass our neighbor Sharon and her dog, out for their morning walk, and tell her the news. Later I go to the grocery store for boxes and tell Chrishan, the Indian immigrant who left a career as a lawyer to move to Reno and bag groceries, that we are moving to Seattle.

These small goodbyes are like shedding skin. Eleven years must be peeled off so I can loosen my grip on this life and reach out and grasp the new one that awaits. When I told my closest friends of the move, my heart clenched into a fist and we cried, so I'm grateful for Sharon and Chrishan, who respond with happiness and only a teaspoon of sadness.

"I will miss you, my friend," Chrishan said.

"I know."

And I smiled at him with eyes that are dry.

At the airport, headed for Seattle.

Marcel will leave for Seattle in May and the kids and I will join him after school ends in June, which means he'll be house hunting alone. Around the dinner table, he asked us what we wanted in our new, rented home.

Max: "A black house with a flame thrower and security cameras."

His father laughed.

Sam: "My own bedroom, my own desk and my own computer."

"More realistic, but equally unobtainable," Marcel said.

Chaja: "A tree big enough to climb and strong enough to hold a swing, plus my own room that's larger than a closet. And no black house."

Me: "A fenced yard safe for children, large windows that will let in lots of gray light, and ..."

"Can I ask for a force field?" Max interrupted.

"You can ask for whatever you want. Doesn't mean you'll get it," Marcel said.

"Okay. Then I want a force field."

Me: "Yes, a force field that will block the pollens and animal hair that trigger your allergies and asthma, Max."

Drop by every Monday for I'll be writing weekly as my family packs, moves 700 miles and resettles itself in Seattle.

A big leap

Photo by Chaja Levy.

My husband's accepted a job at Amazon and we're moving to Seattle. So, I'm taking the next week off and will return April 12th. In the meantime, have a happy Easter!

-Rachael

Who needs a reason

Ivan found the box of birthday candles and pushed the last of them into his bowl of beans. We sang the Happy Birthday song together.

White chocolate mint cream

Ivan and Grandma make a wish.

March has been a mad month for parties, what with four family birthdays and then back-to-back showers. My daughter's enjoyed her move into the sphere of womanly delights (chocolates at brunch!) and traditions (how to make a proper bridal shower bouquet).

Chaja with Aunt Kyna, who's seven months pregnant.

Nana teaches Chaja how to thread ribbons through a paper plate
and make the bouquet for Aunt Molly to carry at her rehearsal. More pictures from both showers here.

I've enjoyed the unlimited excuses for whipping up batch after batch of white chocolate mint cream. This heavenly topping turned forgettable cupcakes into winners, and (aided by raspberries) it elevated a dense and crumbly chocolate pound cake to new heights. I've doubled and then tripled the recipe in hopes of setting a little aside to dress up my next cup of cocoa, but haven't succeeded in saving a dollop.

Sigh.

White Chocolate Mint Cream
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

2 ounces white chocolate
3 ounces heavy whipping cream
1/8 teaspoon peppermint extract

Heat the cream in a small pot until it's simmering. Take it off the flame. Add the white chocolate to the hot cream and let it sit for a minute or two to melt the chocolate. Whisk well. Add the peppermint. Lay a piece of plastic wrap on the surface of the cream to keep it from forming a layer of skim and chill until cold. Then beat cream with electric beaters until soft peaks form.

Some egg-cellent links

The Eggling: crack, water and watch it grow.

My oven's working overtime today in preparation for a wedding and a baby shower for (different!) sisters. So while the bread rises, the frittata cooks and the pound cake bakes, I'm taking a second to share a few things I've been loving.

Have a happy weekend!

-Rachael

• "Mein" No More -- An artist expresses herself in the pages of Hitler's book, and has the last word.

• A Colorado writer's ode to dirt.

• An excellent Pen on Writing interview with Andre DuBus III, author of "The Garden of Last Days: A Novel."

• Electric Literature is a short story anthology available in eBook, audiobook, Kindle, iPhone and paperback. It promotes its short stories with single-sentence videos like the one below by artist Vance Reeser, who animated "Little Things" by Matt Sumell. Being the Luddite that I am, I've yet to purchase an issue, but I'm enjoying how the artist interprets the author's words.
  

In which the day begins like any other, with argument and laughter

Courtesy of niznoz.

Chaja and Sam were bickering and blowing raspberries at each other from the backseat of the car this morning.

"I'm tired of sitting next to Sam. I don't want to sit next to him anymore."

"Well, buy your own car and you won't have to," her father said.

"When I turn 16, I'll buy my own car and Sam won't be allowed to sit in it."

"When I grow up I'll buy a big limo," Sam said.

"I'll buy a BMW. Or a Mercedes. Or a Lamborghini."

Then, from the middle seat, came a single, quiet sentence from Max.

"I'm going to buy a monster truck."

"Yeeaah!" Sam said. "Then Max will drive his monster truck over Chaja's Lamborghini."

Courtesy of San Diego Shooter.

Laughter filled the car. The day was off to a good beginning.

When mistakes are intentional

Quilt by Irene Williams, (American, born 1920), Blocks and Strips, 2003.
Image courtesy of libbyrosof.

The Gee's Bend quilts -- with their eye-popping beauty and sloppy technique -- have been on display at the Nevada Museum of Art. The stitches are uneven, points are mismatched, nothing is squared, but each quilt is bold in terms of color, design and choice of fabric.

Many of the quilters from Gee's Bend, Alabama are descendants of slaves who stayed on as tenant farmers after the Civil War and formed a small, isolated, all-black community. Their distinctive quilting style has been passed down for more than six generations, according to a collective history of the quilters.

When I learned that these quilts were coming to town, I called my mother-the-quilter and asked if she'd like to go. The museum was crowded and my small son impatient, so I raced through the exhibit, stopping to study the one or two quilts to which my eyes were drawn. The designs were minimalist because the women had little time to spend on them.

A story inside a story: Ivan goes to the museum.

Rippled and uneven, the quilts shared a theme picked up and reworked again and again, in corduroy swatches and cornmeal sacks, in leisure suits and blue jeans. These quilters were risk-takers because they rejected the rules that govern quilting and embraced the mistake, the meandering line, the dead end.

"American quilts elsewhere generally esteem perfection. Chance and improvisation seem to be operating principles here, the beauty deriving from inconsistencies played off against hierarchical forms," according to an earlier New York Times review.

He finds the quilts boring, but rides the museum elevator three times
and says the blackberry cream soda is "Delish."

Yet these quilts were more than just jazzy geometry, they were stories, according to the New York Times and a National Public Radio interview. Denim in one quilt was cut form old work pants, the only memento from a dead husband. The corduroy used in another came from scraps saved from years spent mass-producing pillow shams for Sears, while its design might have been inspired by the newspaper and magazine scraps used to insulate the quilter's home.

As I stood before one stunning and imperfect quilt, I thought about writing and how important it was for me to begin taking more risks, to make more mistakes, to meander in order that my own stories are told, no matter how beautiful or flawed they are.

Finally, it's time to leave.