Small, black, men's lace-up dress shoes...

...one large hoop earring that has wire strung across it like for a dream catcher, two bicycle seats, a sack with hermit crab food and a small book about hermit crabs, an enormous box full of packets of instant oatmeal, a gray men's t-shirt, a Paul Theroux book, a cassette tape deck for assembly with an amp and speakers but without these things.

When I was nearly 22, I'd returned to college to finish my undergraduate degree.  The only place I could afford was a furnished room on the second floor of a house owned by an elderly woman named Sadie Law.  She rented out three other bedrooms on the same floor to three other women, and the four of us shared a kitchen and bathroom.  My room cost $165 a month.  It had a dresser and a table and chair, and, oddly, beautiful Indian-print curtains in muted purples, maroons, and Delft blue.  (I say "oddly" because Mrs. Law herself favored as decoration little china figurines holding signs with cheery sayings on them like, "Jesus died for your sins" and heavy draperies gray with dust and age.)

My first order of business on moving day was the same as for every moving day of my adult life: to assemble my stereo.  In this case, my new-to-me Heathkit stereo, given to me by friends Martin and Vivien and supplemented with some small speakers from my dad.  I placed the turntable on top of the dresser, attached the speakers and put one on either side on the floor.  Then it was time for music.  That year, I had an enormous record collection because simultaneously, the afore-mentioned Martin and Vivien and my friend, GG Johnston, had left town for a year and put me in charge of their records.  While I unpacked my other worldly possessions, I acquainted myself with their music: the Roches, Keith Jarrett, Phoebe Snow, Joni Mitchell. 

A few short years later, in addition to assembling the stereo first, I added a beer to the moving day ritual. Then I would stay awake until I was entirely unpacked.  Those were the days when my possessions could be unpacked in one long night.  But the music was the main thing.  Listening to music - my music - as I placed my familiar knick-knacks around, and hung my posters, was the thing that pulled me in, that made this new place into my home.

A stack of business card-sized cards with blue sky and clouds on them...

...a comforter, top and bottom sheet, and four pillows, three with pillowcases.

Hmm.  This is the sort of thing that will likely end up in our trash. 

But it gives me a great segue.  K---, L----, my mom and I just did a dash of a trip to see my sister, K, in Astoria.  Most of what went into my folks' trunk for the drive over was bedding.  We arrived at K's one-bedroom cottage last night and covered many of the available surfaces with our sleeping bodies.  It was a lovely trip, too short, and I am home now and pretty tired.  Tomorrow starts the last full week of summer vacation before the school year starts again.  Time to do a couple more special things around town, have some down time with my kids, and figure out if any new clothes need to be purchased.  K said about summer in Astoria: "It was a great week-and-a-half of summer, but I'm sorry it's over."  Portland had two weeks of summer, but ditto about being sorry it's over. 

More coherent musings tomorrow.  Good night.

A wooden dining room chair, four pairs of large-ish men's jeans, a shopping cart

I'm impressed with the shopping cart.  How did someone get it so far from its origins?  The closest grocery store is at least seven blocks away. 

I remember once, years ago, G---- and I had parked the car fairly far from the grocery store so we wouldn't have to mess with all the cars in the parking lot.  It turned out it was so far away that the shopping cart's security locked the wheels.  It was maddening and embarrassing all at the same time.  The wheels squealed like the magic harp in "Jack and the Beanstalk" warning the giant of her abduction.  It was not one of our finer moments.  We would not be beaten by this inanimate object, this symbol of The Man.  We wrestled with the cart, pushed it, dragged it.  We weren't stealing it; we just wanted to get our groceries to the car. 

K--- was small and in the seat near the cart's push bar.  One heave tilted the cart up and threatened to tip it.  That was our tipping point, too.  We took our daughter out and hauled her and our groceries to the car.  The cart had won.

Nothing new on the bench

L---- was horrified I was giving my rug away and now it's in his room.

********

Tuesday, it was very hot here.  We have a three-foot deep pool in our back yard that we set up every summer.  G---- and I were soaking in it Tuesday evening when we heard a woman's voice across our backyard fence.  Our new neighbor said, "Hey, your bench is great.  I got a flat-screened monitor for my computer off of it last week.  It works and everything."  It is my hope that this type of thing is what most donaters to the Free Bench dream of.  Namely, that this item, which they no longer need or use, will be exactly what someone else needs or can use.  That it will save someone money, or make them happy.  At its best, the Free Bench is not a dumping ground but rather is a receptacle for acts of generosity. 

One of my writing friends, Sacha R., wrote a children's book about tzedakah, which is the Hebrew word for acts of charity.  In her book, her young protagonist learned about distinctions between types of charitable giving, from those where the receiver knows you as the donor, to those where something is given anonymously.  There is particular value to tzedakah when one is not known as the giver - perhaps because that kind of giving is absent of any ego desire to be identified with an act of charity.  It is done simply because there is a need that the giver wants to meet, whether others know they met it or not.  I don't mean to suggest that people who - under cover of darkness - bring their perfectly good flat-screened computer monitors to the Free Bench are practicing the highest form of tzedakah.  But our neighbor is a young woman to whom the price of a flat-screened computer monitor is significant.  Someone saved her that expense, and she'll never know who it was.

Nothing new except from me

I have, for a couple years, been curious about how to make rugs out of the material from old t-shirts.  I have an enormous, powder-blue plastic crochet hook that I bought for K--- years ago that has never been put to use, and old t-shirts are not hard to come by.  Not just from our household, but from the Free Bench.  So a couple weeks ago, with t-shirts from G----, from our neighbors, Carl and Arden, and from the Free Bench, I cut spiraling strips of teal, yellow, light blue, and white cloth.  Then I started crocheting.  I finished a couple days ago, washed and blocked the rug, and today I put it out on the Free Bench with a note - essentially saying the above and inviting anyone who might have a place for it to feel free to take it.  It looks something like an enormous sunny-side-up egg - if the yolk were teal.

This sort of round crocheted rug is good for the thresholds in houses.  It reminds me of ones from my early childhood.  My dad's maternal grandmother, my Great Grandma Daniels, crocheted rugs exactly like these from old Wonder Bread bags.  She had the neatest, most even stitches, and a number of the thresholds in the house that she shared with my grandparents sported one of these rugs.  And "sported" is the right word to use here, in all its energetic peppiness.  As you no doubt recall, Wonder Bread bags were (probably still are) clear and white with red, blue and yellow balloons on them.  They crocheted into terribly bright, nearly indestructible rugs. 

As a kid, my main complaint about the Wonder Bread rugs was that they didn't feel especially good on bare feet.  As an adult, I admire the impulse grown of necessity to use whatever came into one's house.

It will be a little awkward if no one takes my rug. 

A pink women's baseball cap, small model of a Star Wars ship, wooden block knife holder with no knives, beige pants, small wooden snail

The snail is lovely, a dark wood (cherry maybe), smooth, the size of a golf ball.  It reminds me of two carved horse heads I found once and still have.  They are the size of the snail, also carved from a darker wood.  I have the idea that I found them while living in Scotland at age 11, but this may be pure fabrication.  I don't remember finding them. But horse heads figured heavily that year.  (No Godfather jokes, please.)  One of my two faithful pen pals, Amy Pitsker, would include with most of her letters her latest drawings of horse heads.  My other faithful pen pal, Tina Hieken, often sent drawings she'd made of ideas she had for women's fashions, complete with details about color and fabric. 

I remember finding those fountain pens with ink cartridges halfway into that year and using them on my blue air mail paper.  Amy used the cartridge fountain pens as well, and she and I wrote to each other about the merits of the black vs. the blue ink - both preferring the blue because it was somehow a richer color.  Tina wrote about being cast as Lucy in the play Charlie Brown and having snippy exchanges with classmates who suggested this was type casting.

I still have most of these letters.  Opening one when it came was like opening a gift.  

Nothing new, and no one has touched Momentum, the lawn book, the boots, the cornflower blue shirt –

- though inexplicably the plastic cup with plastic utensils has been taken.  Huh?  I was expecting to put that out with the trash tomorrow.   

    

I was thinking about my brother, Reverend Hugh, and how clean a cob of corn looks when he's finished with it.  This fact was almost a point of pride when we were driving through the States the summer I turned 13 and stopped for a few days to visit extended family in South Dakota.  I remember sitting at a long picnic table outside, eating watermelon and corn from the garden of these particular relatives, who were pig farmers.  In the middle of dinner, two girl cousins of ours that I'd never met rode up on their enormously pregnant pony. 

Up until that moment, I'd been going along with things pretty well - I'd been to, even lived in, the country before; I'd eaten produce out of a garden - but when those two girls rode up, it was like the planet shifted on its axis.  It was like finding myself on an entirely different planet.  Everything about it.  Having, owning a horse.  Having it be pregnant, which meant at some point there'd be a foal.  Then, you're hanging out on your farm and you turn to your sister, saying, "Hey, those cousins of ours from the East Coast that we've never met are at Aunt So-and-So's farm.  Let's hop on our pregnant pony and mosey on over there and see what cousins from New York are like."  And so you do that.  You cut across your fields and their fields.  You know the way.  When you get there, those East Coast cousins are shy and worried about your pony.  Thank god the oldest gets every kernel off every cob of corn he eats.  We can talk about that for a minute, admiring, before we're back to being shy, not knowing what these creatures like to talk about, amazed and skeptical when the grown-ups say we're all related.

A magazine called Momentum: For Self-Propelled People...

...a pair of chunky-heeled boots, a sparkly turquoise flower to clip in your hair, a book on how to care for your lawn without using chemicals that will make your pets and children sick, and one yellow rubber glove (meant for the cleaning supplies bag, no doubt - a dime short and an hour late).     

I love chunky-heeled boots.  I especially love boots made for stomping, the kind where people hear you coming.  Kami has said she wants a nose ring so people who don't know her will think she's tough and not mess with her.  I understand this completely.  That's what boots did for me.  I'd put my cowboy boots on, and my walk was transformed.  Suddenly, it was more purposeful, it was a stride, the stride of a woman not to be messed with. 

Of course, it was really about being able to see myself that way.  What would it mean if I could see myself as someone who'd come to my own defense, rather than mostly bluster with marshmallow innards?  I'm not sure if even now I think of myself as someone who'd come to my own defense - or if that's always the best idea.  

This last makes me think of a story my brother reminded me of awhile back: when I was seven, waiting at the bus stop, a bully saying, "If you say one more word, I'll punch you," and me saying one more word and getting punched.  There's no such thing as a certain quality being the right thing to do in every situation.  Sometimes it will make us feel safer; other times, it will draw someone's fire.

A California license plate, a plastic cup filled with plastic utensils, an alien in primary colors

So, about the alien.  I think it is some sort of thing for small children.  It stands about two-and-a-half feet tall.  It has something at the top that is steering wheel-like.  Then there are these - spirals? - that work their way down the - trunk?  They put me in mind of a toy I've seen that is a cylinder with car tracks winding down along the outside of the cylinder.  At the base, there are four roundish flat spots with the sort of roughness to them that suggests foot grips: stand on two of these that are adjacent to each other, grab the wheel and you will be stable.  To what end?  I am completely mystified by this, and it hasn't been that long since I had children myself.  What I think to myself is, if I - someone who not that long ago was somewhat familiar with assorted child contraptions - haven't a clue what this thing is, how can we expect aliens (the real ones) to understand anything about us from encountering our stuff?

Three pairs of earrings, a pin that says Our Children, Our Spirit, Our Life

The latter seems appropriate on this, the eve of K---'s twelfth birthday.  Though she and her brother are not my life (no, G----, not you, either), they have enriched my life such that a life without them would have been a pale thing. 

Twelve years ago and eight hours from now, my daughter was born after 52 hours of wakefulness, labor and childbirth.  We fell asleep around 7:00 a.m.  An hour after that, I woke up because I was so excited she was here.  Every day, I am still excited - excited to see who she will be today, and grateful to be a part of her unfolding. 

Happy Birthday, K---.  Love, Mama

Grocery bag with a spray bottle, spatula, half-used bottle of Windex, half-used bottle of Spic-and-Span, small hand broom that fits into its dustpan

Isn't this the bag of stuff that you buy when you are moving into your first solo apartment and suddenly realize that your roommates at the last place have all the cleaning supplies?  So off you go to spend some time in the cleaning supplies aisle of the grocery store, trying to figure out what you'll need. 

How does something like this show up on the free bench?  Once you have cleaning supplies, don't you need them and use them until they're used up?  Which would mean you wouldn't have them to leave on the free bench.  If you do leave them on the free bench, where are you going?  Not to another apartment, because you'd need cleaning supplies there, too.  Are you going to a commune or a monastery where they have brand loyalty for some other brand?  Are you going somewhere that has specific ideas about cleaning supplies: "We only use lavender water and tea tree oil to clean with"?  And so rather than throwing them away, you leave them for someone who doesn't know that lavender water and tea tree oil are the only true cleaning supplies. 

Maybe someone will happen by who is walking the streets, stricken because they have just moved and have no Bon Amie.  This bag will be the mother lode.  And the spatula is a bonus, a house-warming present.  Clean up your space, and then make pancakes.

Two abstract oil paintings, a length of rainbow ribbon, 1 pair each women's sandals, nondescript black walking shoes, white pumps of the sort bridesmaids dye to match their dresses, and...

...a copy of A Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

I just now got home tonight.  It was dark when I arrived, and deliciously chilly.  I spent the evening with four other women and an 8th-grade girl, spinning wool into yarn.  As I pulled up to the house, I couldn't park right in front because a bike with an attached, laden trailer was where I normally would have parked the car.  Perched on our bench was the rider, his helmet still on.  He positioned himself on the arm closest to our front stairs so that he could catch some porch light to read by.  He was reading A Pilgrim's Progress.  I have not read it myself. 

Did you know that A Pilgrim's Progress was written while Bunyan was in prison (or, as the Brits called it, "gaol" - which until quite recently I pronounced in my head gay-ole)?  It makes me think of other famous imprisoned people: Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Wilde, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky.  Imprisoned women of my memory seem to fall into the Tower of London type category: Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, etc. 

What does it take to make progress in prison?  In addition to surviving the experience, of course.

I have tried on a number of occasions to go to jail for justice, but the timing was never convenient for me.

Why was John Wayne calling those he encountered in his Westerns "pilgrim?" 

Corrections:  I omitted one key ingredient in the making of cobb: straw.

Flat-screened computer monitor and various power cords

I'm not very interested in that stuff - though I bet it'll be gone shortly. 

I'd like to describe the bench in question since most of you have never seen it.  It is made of cobb.  In addition to being a neighborhood of tall bikes, we are a neighborhood of cobb things.  For 10-plus years now, several local organizations have gotten together every April-May and built structures out of cobb in neighborhoods that have gone on record saying they'd like something to make their neighborhood more of a community.  These local organizations then instruct said neighborhood on how to build a cobb kiosk (for hanging up fliers about neighborhood events: garage sales, potlucks), cobb book exchanges (a kiosk built specifically for the books that neighbors want to pass along), and cobb benches.  We live within throwing distance of cobb benches shaped like a mermaid, a dragon, and a sea serpent.  The building that houses the food co-op we belong to is made partly from cobb.

G---- and I felt a great allure from these projects.  G---- took K--- and L---- when they were two and four-and-a-half, respectively, to help mix the cobb for the co-op - a process that involves stomping to mix the ingredients.  We looked into what it would take to get the local groups to come help our neighborhood with a bench.  It involved much paperwork and signatures from 80% of our block expressing support.  That seemed an unlikely number to reach, given the apartments that occupy part of this block.  Then G---- and I realized that if we built our neighborhood bench right next to the sidewalk on our property rather than on city property, we could just build it - without anybody having to sign anything (isn't America great?).  It would be our summer project, a family project.  We'd spread the materials out on the sidewalk and stomp away.  People would be intrigued and ask to come stomp a little as well.  The very act of our stomping and building would attract our neighbors and it would become their bench, too.  Harmony would reign.

Nice dream.  The kids weren't interested, and they were young enough that both G---- and I couldn't have our feet covered in cobb at the same time if we wanted to supervise our kids appropriately.  It quickly became G----'s project.  (And, really, remember, I sometimes enjoy more the appearance of being a cobb bench person than actually being a cobb bench person.)

Cobb is dirt, sand and water with a binder - in the case of our bench, hair.  Hair from my hair stylist at the time.  One day's worth of clients' hair that ended up on her floor got worked into our cobb.  The bench itself is the color of - well, dirt.  The seat is deep, and the back and armrests thick but low.  It's not an especially good bench for leaning back on.  It is great for sitting perched on the edge or cross-legged.  G---- built a blue awning held up by thick branches cut from our hazelnut tree.  It looks like a wing attached to tree bones, ready to take flight.  The awning covers the bench when it rains and shades it in the sun.  We've planted a couple blueberry bushes on the east end of the bench.  Beyond the blueberries, a feathery bush with white flowers was planted in the berm long before we got here.  To the slight west is a hawthorn tree, which provides its own shade.  Behind and on all sides is low, green leafiness that at times sports fuzzy yellow flowers.  G---- believes this is St. John's Wort.  I am equally convinced it is not.

I noticed the flat-screened computer monitor at 8:00 this morning.  When I returned home after picking the kids up from sculpture camp, it was gone.  The bench is still here, as are the blueberry bushes (spindly though they are), the hawthorn tree, the St. John's Whatever, and the blue-winged flying machine.  All built to last.

A large stoneware pot for canning...

...the book Life According to Mister Rogers by Mr. Rogers, the VCR version of the game Candyland, a foot-high ceramic statue of a rodeo clown with a small dog beside him, men's athletic shoes, three baseball caps neatly stacked.

The rodeo clown looks as if it has a use but I can't quite fathom it.  One hand is lowered and has a cylindrical hole cut out.  It is the shape and size of a mostly-already-smoked stogie but somehow I doubt it is a stogie holder (is there such a thing?).  The other hand is raised and also has a hole in it, but it's more flattened than the other.  This latter puts me in mind of those statues I saw mostly when living on the east coast of the small black boy dressed like a jockey holding up a lantern in one hand and a ring to tie reins on in the other.  I've heard all sorts of stories about that statue, including that it was modeled after a real boy, a slave, who froze to death in that pose, so faithful was he, wanting to be ready to take the horse when his absent Master returned.  I am skeptical of this story, but it still raises my hackles.  The positioning of both hands on this rodeo clown also puts me in mind of various Eastern statues who are positioned with one hand raised palm up, the other down and palm down.  He is a rodeo clown Bodhisattva, offering blessing and gifts, and urging us to look within - yee-haw.

The baseball caps, the shoes and the ceramic statue seem of a piece to me.  They make me sad.  Some old guy - my story goes - carefully put these items together before moving from his apartment to a small assisted living suite.  Or to his adult daughter's closet-sized spare bedroom because she needs the extra income now that her boyfriend has moved out, and the old guy kept falling asleep, leaving still-lit stogies in his ceramic rodeo clown.  One day he might burn his apartment down and him with it.  He gathers and offers these items because they are precious to him but there's no room for them in his new life.  Perhaps someone will put them to good use, will be shod, head protected against the sun, and reminded to be mindful.

The other day, my neighbor, Katie, referred to these Musings as my blog.  Let me be perfectly clear: this is not a blog.  If this were a blog, you would come to it rather than it coming to you, and I'm afraid that wouldn't provide me with enough control.  Also, "Blog" implies something by someone who knows what they're doing with technology.  That is not me.

******************

Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning - 2:35, to be precise -  L---- woke up.  He was convinced that he had not yet fallen asleep and that G---- had forgotten to put his music on to help him fall asleep.  G---- staggered in and turned the music on (synthesizers with crickets chirping and the like).  At 4:30, I noticed the light was on under L----'s door.  I opened it up.  He didn't hear me for the fan on high on the table near his head, but there he was, in bed reading his coffee-table-sized book on flight: Otto Lillienthal, the Wright Brothers, Amelia Earhart, and Chuck Yeager.  At 6:00 precisely (he'd been watching the clock in his room), he came in and G---- got up with him.  We biked in the morning, he swam off and on all afternoon.  At 6:00 last night, he sat next to G---- on our deck, leafing through the same book, when we noticed he was listing.  We put him to bed a few minutes later. 

Something about this has me thinking we are having a successful summer.  A successful summer is one where someone can just wake up in the middle of the night to read, and where someone can fall asleep slumped against his dad in the balmy evening air.  One summer when I was L----'s age, we lived on Beach Street in Sharon, Massachusetts.  It was ungodly hot.  No one felt like going to bed because the bedrooms were even hotter.  We sat in a small room off the kitchen that had some screens on the windows.  Someone had the idea that we should eat cantaloupe.  My mom got it out of the 'fridge, cut it open and reached for a spoon.  "What are those?" I squawked, pointing.  "The seeds," my mom said.  "Seeds?!"  It blew my mind.  Who knew?  Seeds!  We were having a successful summer, all - even my dad - gathered around our formica-topped kitchen, eating cold cantaloupe with salt on it at 10:00 at night with bedtime nowhere in sight.

*******************

Were people who lived a hundred years ago better at putting things away after they used them?

Did people who lived a hundred years ago really wash all their dishes before going to bed at night?

Did people who lived a hundred years ago keep their houses as clean as some of us strive to these days?  (As with the blog, this is something I am not terribly guilty of.)

Nothing new on the bench

Nothing new because when G---- and L---- got up this morning at 6:00 and went outside to enjoy the coolness while it lasts, G---- decided to rid the free bench of things that were unlikely to leave of their own accord.  

Everything went except the can of garbanzo beans, which has since been taken.

A block from our house, a river of bicycles streams by.  Today is Portland Sunday Parkways, an annual event where several streets that run between three different parks are closed to motorized traffic and open to bikes, pedestrians, roller bladers, roller skaters, skate boarders and any other folks who want to propel themselves down the car-free streets.  Some folks set up chairs on the sidewalks as if this is a parade.  Many entrepreneurs are selling things: lemonade and garage sale type stuff.  We see people we haven't seen since school let out.  We see an assortment of interesting bicycles.  Portland is home to tall bikes, which are just what they sound like.  Folks stack and weld a couple bike frames one on top of the other.  They tower above our little Honda.  To get them started, they run and then literally climb the bike to get up to the seat.  When they are forced to stop (for traffic and such), they try to do so near something tall - a tree, a stop sign, a person - and hang on.  They are everywhere in our neighborhood.

A can of organic garbanzo beans...

...an opened jar of orange blossom honey with bits of honeycomb in it, an opened jar of coconut butter, an opened jar of cacao bliss, kamut ditalini (yeah, I didn't know what it was either; it is "short, tubular pasta made from 100 percent organically grown, whole grain Khorasan (kamut®). This versatile pasta means 'little thimbles' in Italian"), cucumber melon body lotion, a cookie tin with a jaunty snowman on it, a Hello Kitty clock, 2 Tupperware juice containers without lids, a white house-dress with pastel-colored flowers on it.

When I went backpacking as a kid, my parents understood that part of this time out from our regular life should include foods we didn't encounter at home.  Often, these foods were used as incentive: "Make it to the top of that rise and we'll stop for some Cracker Barrel cheese/Cadbury chocolate/smoked oysters and sardines."  What I loved about these foods was that they were for the pleasure of taste.  They were not meant as something to fill up on, but something to savor.

Kool-Aid also made an appearance.  We'd pack in our own sugar and two or three packets festooned with that cheery, rotund pitcher in purple or pinks tones.  At lunchtime, it was someone's job to mix the sugar and Kool-Aid with river water, finding just the right spot in the river to get moving water, deep enough to be good, but not so deep that you had to reach out so far that you risked irretrievably dropping the bottle.  One trip, when I was nine, it was my turn.  We were hiking in the Adirondacks.  It was a sunny day, not hot exactly, but the sort of sun you felt when you were hiking.  The terrain, especially near the water, included these massive stretches of flattish stone.  Where we stopped for lunch, these flat slabs led right up to the river and dropped down, forming a waterfall.  I had to scootch out to the water on my belly.  I'd already poured the Kool-Aid and sugar into the special narrow-necked camping bottle - not conveniently wide-mouthed like Tupperware would have been.  Now I used one arm to help me scootch and the other held the bottle.  I remember wondering if my parents were having a lapse in judgment, letting me get water from a river that it wasn't safe to approach on foot.  The sun beat on the rocks.  I was warm where I touched them, warm on my back where the sun found me.  As I reached the water, the stone fell away gradually.  It was hard to get the bottle in deep enough to submerge it without going out farther than I was strictly comfortable with.  The water was achingly cold.  I scootched some more, deeply aware of how much I didn't want to drop the bottle.  Finally, if I dipped the bottle on its side nearly horizontally, enough water sprang up from the river and into the bottle that, with some patience, it would fill. 

This is not a story of how I dropped the bottle and watched it and its purple contents fly over a lip of stone down a waterfall.

This is a story of how good strawberry Kool-Aid tastes when you've arrived at it after some effort, effort that involved doing something you weren't sure you could do.

This is also a love letter to my parents.

Cardboard box full of bits and pieces...

...a couple Pictionary cards, magazine inserts torn in half, bits of hard black plastic.  I think the technical term for this is trash.

Talking trash.

Looking trashy.

She really trashed him.

God doesn't make no trash.

When I was a kid in Massachusetts, sometimes we'd go to the dump.  It was great.  We didn't build an entire house from its riches the way the poet Mary Oliver did, but we found riches of our own.  I remember going once with Hugh and Gretchen and finding a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots game in perfectly good condition.  Borrowing from Calvin (of ...and Hobbes fame), there were myriad things I hadn't realized I needed until I saw them at the dump.

bright blue kids' smock with white lettering, "Daisy Girl Scouts"

I never made it to Girl Scouts, though I was a Brownie.  My mom was the troop leader so that I'd have a troop to call my own.  I loved going to school on Brownie days dressed in my brownie uniform: dark brown beanie with a little beret-like tassel on the top, lighter brown dress with a belt, dark brown socks and shoes.  I liked being known as a Brownie more than I liked actively being one.  I was quite contrary toward my mother, mostly because, frankly, I didn't like sharing her with my adoring (of her) fellow-Brownies.  Also, I have never enjoyed being with large numbers of children grouped together - even when I was a child myself. 

The one Brownie activity I remember with great fondness was when we acted out fairy tales.  I was delighted to be cast as the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood." I saw being the wolf as a delicious acting opportunity, on par with playing Rumplestiltskin, or Satan in Paradise Lost.  I looked forward to exploring the depths of my own sheer evilness through my portrayal of the character. 

Ultimately it wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd imagined it would be, though the furry-faced mask was plush and soft.  Still, it beat my theatrical experience earlier that same year, playing Sarah Standish at the 2nd grade Thanksgiving play.  I got to serve Thanksgiving dinner to a bunch of boys dressed as Pilgrims and Indians, and deliver the famous lines, "Thank you," and "Dinner is ready" (the only lines uttered in the entire play by a girl).  Much healthier to explore my wild beast, even a little.

Black dog collar, green leash

First, my mind went to a story about a dog that died, or whose owner was tired of it, and thus no longer needed these accouterments.  Then I thought of another story: some lucky dog ("You lucky dog, you") gets a new collar and leash, and happily passes the used items on. 

Here's where I stop, because I am already noticing some patterns that could emerge with this writing thing I'm doing: I could comment on the fact that my mind veered first to negative stories, I could wonder at the reasons for that - some bias that sad stories are better? a latent hostility toward dogs? an underlying pessimism in my nature? -, I could describe the items in more detail (synthetic material that was once shiny and now is duller with use, a slight doggy smell, a green that I'd call kelly green), or I could go with one of the stories and find a pithy ending. 

I just had another idea.  I could hint at other sinister uses the collar might have been put to.  But then I'd have to stop emailing this to my parents and my kids.  Still, there's an edginess I rarely explore in my writing.  Hmm. 

When is a dog collar just a dog collar?

A checkerboard

Returning home last night around 8:30, an achingly young couple sat on the bench playing checkers.  "Is this yours?" they asked me about the checkers, their tone apologetic.  I explained about the free bench, all the while examining them.  They were cut from the same cloth: pale, clear-skinned with dark hair - hers past her shoulders - slender, dressed in a way that I think of as outside of time - a white cotton shift for her, slacks and a light-colored button-down shirt for him.  She wore large glasses, and there was something ungainly about both of them.  How do we ever find each other?  That is what the sight of them made me wonder.  Two thoroughly uncool, gawky kids playing checkers.  The checkerboard was gone this morning.

Nothing new on the bench this morning

Last week, someone left bamboo on the free bench. Not delicate green-leaved lengths of it in lovely pots to take home, but recently cut large bamboo rods stripped of leafy life. My neighbor Nancy walked by and said, “Can you believe someone is leaving that?” thinking to discourage the leave-er. It didn't work, though I appreciate the effort. Where was she when someone left individually wrapped tampons, unrecognizable electronic parts, and an ancient television set?

A 54-piece mini puzzle of two walruses

It's made of the sort of cardboard that is more like paper, and even new right out of the box it curls up at the edges, making the puzzle difficult and frustrating to fit together.  I feel invited to sit down and assemble it right away, see if all the pieces are there.  Would someone put a puzzle out without all the pieces?  Sure.  They'd think, Well, it's still fun to put together.  Who cares if part of one walruses tusk is missing?  Actually, I am this sort of person (though I am not the previous owner of this puzzle).  G---- is not this sort of person.  We've rented vacation houses that always seem to feature 500-piece puzzles, and when it becomes clear that some of the pieces are missing, this is a very difficult thing for G----.  I'm not sure which way is better: to hold to the original promise of an item, or to be content that you assembled all 498 pieces and so what if the Statue of Liberty's face is missing?

Musings on the Free Bench

You have Polly P. to thank for this idea (only she did it for her photos), and a gathering of some dear friends on my birthday eve this year to thank for my deciding to go for it.  What you see before you is me, embarking on a year-long journey to write something - just a little something - every day and send it off to folks who might be interested.  In order to give some shape to these writings, I look to our free bench.

Several years ago, G---- undertook to cut a cobb bench into our front burm.  In this way, we'd provide a covered place for neighborhood people to sit.  And they do: folks from the apartments who want to be outside with their morning cup of coffee, elderly people who are tuckered out halfway home from Safeway, guitar players who want a larger audience than their cats, homeless people who are tired, tired of always being on the move.  It also provides something we didn't expect: a covered area to put out things you don't need or want anymore that you can imagine someone else might.  This means different things to different people, as you shall see.

 This year, you will learn a little about what shows up on our bench and more about where that takes me.  As they say, you may unsubscribe from this list at any point.  Please let me know if I have you on here twice.

 Meanwhile, I write this from the Bluebird Guesthouse where G---- and I spent the night in the Ken Kesey room to celebrate my 49th birthday. A few other guests awakened before we did, quietly made coffee, their breakfasts, were already bustling when we came trailing down.  We arrived as they discussed their list for groceries for ingredients to make potato salad. One woman said to the other, "When do you suppose the grocery store opens?" The other said, “There's no hurry; the potluck's not until 3:00,” and I thought about how it goes this way, that there is someone who wants to be on top of it, wants to take care of the known responsibilities – even on vacation – and there is also someone who says, “Relax, you can loosen your hold a little.”