Love Letters

Ever since I found the kids’ Power Rangers sitting on the ice cube tray I’ve been staging McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys in the freezer.  Just to keep things interesting.  You might also find one of the diaspora of four-inch plastic beetles where you least expect it.  My piano students loved the plastic dung beetle crawling out of the cup on the bathroom sink.  Open one of the awkward cabinets built into this crazy house and cascades of ribbon will curl onto your head.  I’m not a collector, really.  I guess I’m letting these little surprises tell one side of my story.

I want to hang on to the things that delight me, but I know I can’t hang on too tightly–the old “if you love something, set it free” bit.  I don’t want a box full of Happy Meal toys on some shelf, or a row of plastic beetles either, but I don’t want to throw them away quite yet so I scatter them around and smile when I happen upon them.  The same is true for my love letters.

I suppose I’ve been lucky in the love letter department.  I’ve received quite a few, from the little notes left around the house to a large collection of fragile blue air mail letters from China.  I can’t bear to throw any of them away, though they may be indicting or embarrassing in the wrong hands.  I don’t want to tie them in bundles with black ribbons or stash them in fancy boxes.  The expressions of love I’ve received in these letters have been various, spontaneous, always fresh, intimate.  So I infuse my life with love letters hidden in books.

This is not a new idea.  I always thrill at the experience of finding an old love letter in a used book.  The sweet, breathless experience of coming upon somebody’s open heart is as humbling as it is exciting.  Clearly the letter had been forgotten–or there wasn’t enough time to rescue it before the next thing happened.  Or, as I, did the book’s owner simply leave the letter there because she couldn’t throw it away, or put it into some visible category?  I can’t imagine the poverty of the coming years when love letters won’t even exist.  How do you “happen upon” a tender email, or God forbid, a “love text?”  That’s a problem for another time.  My heirs and assigns will find plenty of material as they empty my house some day.

Edgar Allen Poe’s story, “The Purloined Letter,” left a great impression on me when I read it in my early teens.  The prize is hidden in plain sight.  My letters, too, are hidden in plain sight.  I haven’t kept track of their whereabouts; there’s no cataloging system.  I’ve probably lost a few in old book sales.  It’s comforting to know they’re surrounding me.  If I push into the little crevices of my life, the books I read a while ago, I might get a whiff of some past sunny day.  It’s enough to know it’s there.

Strawberry Season

I think today would be my grandmother’s 110th birthday.  Anyway, it’s that day of the year my thoughts turn to her because I’m about to hull my first pint of strawberries for the season.  My grandmother loved strawberries and often served them, syrupy and warm, over angel food cake for “lunch” (the meal you have at 2 p.m. when the men come in from the field before evening chores).  I’m serving this pint, cleaned and lightly sugared, over slices of cheesecake that has a loose graham-cracker crust to soak up the sweet pink juice.

The strawberries are pretty good this year:  we had a lot of rain and just enough sunshine lately to ripen and sweeten them.  The past few days have actually been warm.  Summer is upon us.  I’ve waited a long time for these effortless days–now that they’re here, I encounter something I forget from year to year:  Summer makes me sad.

Maybe I depend on the exertion of the woodpile, the snow shovel, the Advent and Lenten rehearsals, the drumbeat of the academic year, for equilibrium or distraction.  All of a sudden I’m in a broad expanse of Ordinary Time and I feel depressed.  Once again, I haven’t measured up.  My life reads like a series of embarrassing failures.  The bright enduring light of summer seems like too much to bear.  The pair of finches who built a nest in my hanging fuchsia didn’t show up for a few days and my worst fears were realized.  I carefully removed the four tiny dead fledglings and wrapped them in white tissue paper before I buried them.  My eyes were full, but I didn’t cry until I heard this song on the car radio.

My grandmother lived to be 99.  She and my grandfather farmed and raised 10 children through the Great Depression.  She made quilts, had a lovely garden every year, and shyly covered her mouth when she laughed.  I hope someday the story of my life can be told in three such interesting sentences.

We expect so much of ourselves when, actually, all we need to do is live the life than unrolls in front of us.  Summer is daunting in its sweetness and intensity.  But oh, the sadness of having only 100 summers.

 

 

 

 

One Degree of Michele Bachmann

from the Anoka, Minnesota, Yearbook 1972, courtesy of Jane Bartlett

Thirty-seven years ago this month I was sitting in the clammy Anoka High School gymnasium with Michele Amble (now Bachmann) and about seven hundred other sweaty graduates waiting to lumber onto the platform to receive our diplomas.  Since then we’ve gone out and done the things any group of seven hundred people might do:  Bob, the Valedictorian, became a cold-climate physiologist and spent time at the South Pole, Mike is a Dean of Engineering in Illinois,  Tim (my old boyfriend) shocked me by becoming a Financial Planner, Jean has had a long career as a Protestant minister, Dave joined the Navy, Mary Jo (the saint in the group, by my reckoning) has spent the intervening years teaching middle school math.  And Michelle Amble (now Bachmann) has become a Presidential contender.  That one I never saw coming, despite the prescience of the Yearbook editor.

Michele (seated, center, in the photo above) and I were friends in high school–by no means best friends, but people with similar interests and many mutual acquaintances.  I remember Michele’s beautiful long hair and bright blue eyes.  She was friendly (some might say “perky”), positive, energetic, and…average.  I don’t mean that as an insult, rather as a startled observation given what was to come.  If I had been asked to predict which of the students pictured in that Yearbook would run for President, Michele would have been at the bottom of the list.  (Sorry, Michele)  So many of my classmates were smarter, more ambitious, more politically-minded.  Or so I thought.

I moved away from Minnesota thirty-one years ago and didn’t follow Michele’s political career until she came onto the national scene.  By then we had reached opposite ends of the political spectrum, though I’m sure we were quite closely aligned as high school students somewhere to the right of center.  I’m now in Socialist-Senator-Bernie Sanders-Vermont and she’s pouring for the Tea Party.  Strangely, though, our political differences don’t interest me much at this point.  The most interesting element of my Michele Amble Bachmann story is the (rather corny) American Dream angle.

So my friend Michele–friendly, polite, peppy, average Michele–has managed to meet people, build coalitions, research positions, manage alliances, swallow unkind words, take chances, overcome adversity, charm, cajole, and bully when necessary, her way onto the national political stage.  I’m sure she’s had some good luck, good timing, good advice along the way, but I’m also sure she’s worked very, very hard.  It’s this lifetime of accomplishment I’m impressed by.  Somebody I know is actually going the political distance.  At my age (OUR age, Michele) I have some idea of what that entails.

I’m impressed.  Until recently, I would have imagined a future meeting with Michele (maybe at a high school reunion?) to include a few giggles, exchanging stories about our children and grandchildren, talking about the problems of menopause and our plans for retirement.  Now–she’s on her way to becoming a political icon, for better or worse, and I’m on my way to another day of practicing chamber music and watering the tomatoes.  The energy and beauty of the American Dream fascinates me.  This really is a place where anything can happen.

I probably won’t vote for you, Michele, but I’m kinda proud.

After the Wedding

Two weeks ago my house was filling up with people of all ages from all over the world.  They came to enjoy Vermont summertime,travel, food, and Sonja and Nuno’s wedding.  Though the days were hectic I tried very hard to immerse myself in the laughter and buzz of activity around me.  At one point my living room was full of engineers, linguists, computer nerds, financiers, artists, musicians, educators, lawyers, and assorted other “older people” playing board games.  I went to bed that night with the pleasant rhythm of laughter and conversation rumbling in the background.  The wedding day itself, June 4th, was a perfect day:  75F, sunny, breezy.  The ceremony and reception went beautifully and everything was over in about a minute.  Late that night I looked out from a second-story window onto the moonlit roof of the large white tent still standing in the yard.  “My beautiful tent,” I said to myself (although it isn’t really my tent at all and was gone the next day) and I felt a little sad.

Now the weather has turned cold and rainy and my house is empty.  Sonja’s lovely bouquet of Baccarat roses and white lisianthus is faded and droopy.  The leftovers are all gone.  We’ve made the last trip to the airport for a while and now it’s time to return to “normal life.”  As each hour carries me farther and farther away from the wedding, I try harder and harder to keep a bit of it alive in my memory.

You see, I’m starting to understand that these Big Events really ARE big and that there are so few true milestones in life.  I realize there are many people I saw on that day I will probably never see again.  I met people whose lives, the next time we meet, will have drastically changed.  I most likely will never have a beautiful white tent in my yard again.  Little details:  Nuno’s tie arriving at the last minute, Sonja’s old red shoes under her fancy gown, the way Paulo slept so peacefully through the whole ceremony, the flowers in the yard–seem precious already.

I’m caught up in a whirlwind of happiness, regret, exhaustion, pride, relief, and–suspense.  I hadn’t realized how much mental energy I’d devoted to this project until it ended.  Now there’s a wide open space in my brain, a big intimidating blue sky of possibility.  My first inclination when faced with such openness is to fill it as quickly as I can.  I hate this feeling of wistfulness, these shadows and ashes of emotions.  I’m trying, though, to let the aftermath take its course, to watch the tide ebb until it’s finally gone.  For, I realize, these quiet moments of reflection are big events as well.  I don’t need to rush.