Walking Forward

Two silver disks for feet--

Two short steel poles for legs--

On this bitter winter day
he wore tan shorts.  

Steel legs can’t feel the cold.

A t-shirt--

no coat or sweater.

Nothing to take off,

remove

or place

 in the black plastic tray.

Totally open available for airport security.

His only hand held

his boarding pass.

While his other half arm swung steadily,

precisely counter-balancing

his tilting rocking hips

moving forward

step…..by small step…..by small step.

A soldier back from Iraq?

A baby born that way?

His off-kilter face

Didn’t really say.

I do not, will not, can not offer more—

than what he offered me--

the chance to stop

to pause

to notice

one person’s walking forward 
towards 
his life.

I closed the door so neatly

it clicked as it went shut.

I turned my back and walked away.

ticking ticking in my gut.

I bought a table, chairs, some wine

for newfound friends to drink.

Yet six years on the glasses sit

waiting waiting for their clink. 

I dropped these expectations,

buttoned up, went out alone

and met in wind and yellow leaves

joy-- joy-- joy now known.  

              *********

I longed to seize the Statue

to make its beauty mine--

but had nowhere to store it

outside this slice of time.

I left behind its beauty

walked empty down the street--

yet trailed a chain of yearning

tied securely to my feet.

            ***********

I never knew my grandfather.

He was just

a wavering shimmer in my mind—

--a little boy wearing

a striped dress in an old photo

--a dad reading the paper,

rocking the baby,

smoking his cigarette
all at the same time

--a dad giving a quarter

to his daughter

when asked for a nickel

--a banker coming home one day

in 1933

to climb the stairs

lie on the bed

and cry

--a husband slumped 

over his steering wheel

dead

his wife reaching over

to take the wheel.

I learned

--too late--

his siblings

were alive and well

while I grew up grandpa-less.

--too late--

to hug his three brothers,

kiss his sister,

smell his family’s smell,

listen to their jokes and stories about

their brother who died young.

I could have seen

my grandfather’s smile

on a brother’s face.

--too late--

I am left

with just the shimmering

once again.

The Crack

                                                          

I made a little crack in the space between me and all those people I carry around in my head.  I didn’t know the crack was coming.  I just heard “Crack!” and suddenly I breathed fresh air and felt free.  This happened last Friday.

My 22-year-old niece Kara was visiting me during her midterm break from college.  Friday night we were sipping wine in a packed downtown London pub.  As usual, however, even with all the loud talking surrounding us, I could still hear my ever-present “how-are-we-doing-here?” internal monitor which all week had pretty much hovered around the “we’re-doing-OK” level.  After six years of hosting friends and family in France and the UK, I am still a bit anxious that my monitor will suddenly plummet to the “we-are-so-BORED-with-you” level.

This is not without reason, however, for I was born with the mark of the middle child.  In our family that meant the quiet boring one, unlike older and younger siblings who were energetic, fun, social.  But what haunted me most about this middle mark was that as the middle child I was destined to be either asexual or gay which is fine if that is what one wants to be, but I wanted to end up married with kids and the outlook, given my birth order, didn’t bode well.

 My Aunt Allie was the first middle.  She was so shy that her 14-year-old sister dropped out of school a year and waited for Allie to catch up so that they could go through high school together.  Nevertheless, while Honey went to dances on Friday night, Allie stayed home and did her nails.  Allie never even had the courage to answer the phone until she was twenty and, of course, she never dated or got married.  She was, the family determined, asexual.

Bill, my older cousin and the second middle, was gay.  He, at least, had a wicked sense of humor which I thought greatly improved my middle heritage, but eventually he found a lover in the Middle East and moved there permanently.  I didn’t want to live forever in the Middle East.  I wanted to live in the USA.  So once, plucking up courage, I asked my mom if she thought I’d ever get married.  “Oh, I don’t know,” she replied. “You just have to wait and see.”  What I saw plainly was single Aunt Allie.

Not that Allie didn’t have many excellent qualities.  She was courageous.  As a young woman she answered the call to help with the WWII war effort by signing up with the State Department and heading off to Europe.  Thus began her highly successful career working in American embassies around the world.  She was smart, competent and rich.  But, above all else, she was generous giving family members wonderful opportunities to see the world.   She also had flawless skin and absolutely no face wrinkles--ever.  But we knew that was because she never had sex or had to deal with a man or a bunch of kids.  But no matter how adventurous her exotic foreign life seemed or how smooth her skin was, I didn’t want to end up like her.  So I was very relieved when I grew up, got married, had four kids, didn’t become rich and got wrinkles.  Against the odds, I had broken the mark of the middle child.

But now here I was in London hosting Kara for a week.  By day two while I was trying so hard not to be quiet and boring, it dawned on me that I had nevertheless indeed become Allie.  True, I hadn’t turned out asexual, but here I was the old aunt living in London where Allie once lived.  Here I was showing the city to young Kara just like Allie had shown it to me some forty years ago.  Here I was pulling out my little wallet stuffed with crisp bills to buy cookies for us in the market just like Allie had done for me.  And I, too, organized our route, wore a grey raincoat and carried many maps.  I might be a smaller, coca-lite version of Allie, but I was Allie.

Then last Friday night Kara and I were in that pub drinking white wine and waiting for a new Indian girl, a friend of Kara’s college roommate, to find her way from south London to Trafalgar Square to meet up with Kara to go clubbing.  The room was packed with loud people dressed in blue jeans and baggy sweaters and the tables were sloshing with spilled beer.  For the last three hours Kara and Usha had been texting back and forth about how and when to meet up while Kara and I went from pub to pub.  It was now 11:30 p.m. and Usha still hadn’t arrived.  Sipping our wine Kara and I continued to wait.  That’s when I heard the crack.  Loudly.

Yes, I am living in London showing my niece around like Allie did.  I do look like her and share her name, but Allie would never ever be in her third pub of the night with her niece drinking white wine at 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night.  Never.  Ever. Not a chance.  Long before this hour she would have taken her bath, done her nails and gone to bed.

CRACK! In an instant Aunt Allie peeled away from me and slipped into the darkness.  I was just me. Living in London.  Drinking wine with my niece.  Period.

In celebration and as a souvenir of our evening together I quietly slipped our wine glasses into my bag.  Something else Allie would never ever have done.

Two Lives

Diving deep into the river

body slicing

raging water

consuming fully

head and torso

muscles nerves

taunt with purpose

surging forward

through the water.

Sitting silent on the shore

                         watching tide

                              slowly ebbing

remembering

                              remembering

                             remembering

wetness

              salt

                    and holding

                                         of the water’s depth

pondering

                  puzzling

                                 pondering                          

                                                   going through the water

until finally

                    calmly

                              somehow

                 passage settles……..into the one I swam.

Only the smallest snag remains--

Oh, to dive

                       again

        into that raging river….

 The Heron

The small grey heron,

tail feathers almost touching

the red brick wall,

stands knee-deep in water

as the tide creeps up the stone ramp.

It seems an odd place

for the solitary sentry

to take a stand

on her thin legs

and stare out into space.

Cars line both sides

of the ramp

and around her legs

ducks chase and bob at

bits of newly tossed-in bread.

Above her

Sunday strollers crowd the walkway

on this hot May afternoon.

Across the river at the café 

I sip a cold coke

glancing every now and then

at the motionless heron on the other side—

nary a feather moves

nor a muscle twitches.

Framed by stillness--

silence--

she looks straight out

into her world

with a sureness of stance

and purpose that I can only envy.

For all she notices

the jostling world around her

could be a hundred miles away.

Meanwhile on the other side

I eavesdrop

on the Persian family next to me

whose little boys rough-house in their chairs

and breath in the

cigarette smoke drifting over from

the Polish guy

while two teenagers walk by

their laughter bouncing off

the uneven cobblestones.

Alone, I lean forward in my chair

stretching towards the river

trying, maybe a bit too hard,

to see,

touch,

feel

what—if anything

holds,

embraces
reveals

all this beauty that surrounds us here

on this

hot

Sunday

afternoon.

But then I keep turning back to watch

the people sipping tea,

chatting,

reading,

basking in the sun,

enjoying these few hours

freed from work.

Are they standing on a

truer reality

than the one I yearn to see?

Do they know something I don’t know?

Are they content to just be?

But then I glance again

at the heron

looking silently

steadily out across the water.

What does she see?

Memorial Day 2010

On Memorial Day Aldo and I drove nine miles west of our house to see Runnymede, the Thames valley where in 1215 King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta marking the foundations of civil liberty and constitutional law.  Nearby the Runnymede Memorial we actually stood on American ground as Queen Elizabeth gave the USA an acre of soil here for a memorial to JFK after his death in 1963.  These words from Kennedy's first inaugural address in January 1961 are engraved on the memorial:

"Let every National know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty."

ack to top

Walking across the Runnymede valley was an awesome way of celebrating Memorial Day in the UK.

Sharon

Sharon had never looked better: tall, slim, stylishly dressed, vibrantly alive and smiling.  In the photo of the seven women Sharon’s presence immediately stood out.  Even though I had spent very little actual time with her I felt like she was a close friend.  Several years ago Sharon and her husband John had twice generously let my family and my sister Mary’s family stay in their beautiful new home over two different Christmas vacations. We had come to Seattle for the holidays at the same time Sharon’s family had vacationed in Europe.  She had stocked the refrigerator and the pantry with all the food we could possibly need plus made sure there were extra candles for all the holiday holders decorating the house as she didn’t want us to run out of anything especially at Christmas.  She also made sure the outdoor jacuzzi was working.    

I had heard others tell similar stories about Sharon.  How she’d send hubby John off in his jeep to rescue someone caught stranded by a flood.  How someone who called her up to see how she was doing would end up talking for hours about themselves because Sharon really wanted to know how they were doing.  How a teen-ager having a hard day would go over to Sharon’s house to hang out.  How she didn’t just send a treat to her own daughter during test week--she sent one to every student in the school.  Sharon had a knack for making all of us feel special.

When I saw the photo of Sharon, I smiled albeit a little bitter-sweetly.  Sharon had finally succeeded in losing weight, but it was only in order to meet the requirements for a bilateral lung transplant which she needed after twelve years of battling the debilitating, often fatal, effects of taking the diet drug Phen-Fen.

The previous Saturday Sharon and her husband John had sent out 150 invitations to both newly-made and long-term friends to join them on May 22^nd to celebrate their 25^th wedding anniversary.  They were renewing their wedding vows or re-upping as Sharon’s family called it.  It seems they wanted everybody who had ever been a part of their twenty-five years of marriage to be there.  The big day was already being prepared for: the caterer had the menu well in hand, the house was being repainted and a blue sapphire ring for Sharon had been designed and made.

I was in Seattle on a spur-of-the-moment trip back home to look at a house that was up for sale.  Since it was so close to Easter, I decided to stay on and come back to London on Easter Monday.  That meant I would also be there to celebrate my niece Caitlin’s 20^th birthday on March 29^th.   All my family plus Sharon’s daughter, Kimmy, would be there.  That afternoon Kimmy called to say she couldn’t make it because her mom wasn’t feeling well and she wanted to stay home with her.  The previous day Sharon had been to the clinic for a lung x-ray.  Although it looked like she might have pneumonia, she still felt well enough after the visit to go with John to put an offer down on a house on Lake Sammamish.  Since she could no longer be more than fifteen to thirty minutes away from the hospital in case lungs became available, this house on the lake would be their summer place until she could travel again.  So we had Caitlin’s birthday dinner that night with just the family and no Kimmy.

When I opened my email the next morning, I was shocked to find a short email from my sister Lynne saying Sharon had died the previous evening right around the time we were having dinner in the dining room.  Even though we knew she was on the transplant list, couldn’t travel and didn’t always feel well, we didn’t see her as near death.  She was intensely alive, planning her re-upping, buying a house, discussing details with her older daughter Jen about moving back to Seattle after she finished graduate school in May.  In our minds being on the transplant list meant she was on the cusp of a whole new healthy life.  We were prepared for this new life not for her death.

The funeral was Easter Monday or the day of my planned departure from Seattle but, of course, now I postponed it.  That morning I walked into Lynne’s kitchen and much to my surprise heard that she had been asked by Sharon’s sister Carol to read the eulogy that she had written but didn’t think she could stand up and give without breaking down.  Apparently Carol doesn’t know that my sister is the biggest crier of all time bar none.  She is the last person in the world to ask to read a eulogy at a funeral.  However, of course, Lynne said yes. She practiced several times and we all gave her tips on how not to cry, how to maintain her composure.  We all lied saying we knew she could do it.  And happily, for Sharon and her family, Lynne did do it, too--beautifully, calmly, clearly.

 

After Lynne Sharon’s two daughters each gave a eulogy.  Standing together at the pedestal, dressed in black with red ribbons in their hair which matched the thousands of red roses decorating the church, they held hands as first one, then the other spoke.
 

Jennifer, 23-years-old, tall, confident, her mother’s wedding ring hanging from a long chain around her neck, spoke first.  “I always asked my mom for advice on everything, absolutely everything,” she said, “small things and big things.  Now that she is gone I’m  trying to remember what advice she gave me all those times so I can hold on to it and use it in the years ahead.”  Jen soon realized the advice was always pretty much the same no matter what the situation was—just do whatever was the most loving thing to do.  “It was always about love, compassion, doing the kindest thing,” Jen said. “So from now on that is what I’m going to do just like my mother advised.”  

I sat there in the pew wondering what my kids would say about me if I had died and they were giving my eulogy.  Had I given them any words of wisdom to hold on to as Sharon had given her daughters?

The funeral was followed by a small beautiful graveside service.   Afterwards we headed back to the family’s home where John had invited all those who had been invited to the wedding renewal to come by.  The house painting was done, the caterer had put up a tent and laid a spread, and Kimmy wore the blue sapphire ring around her neck.  The thousands of red roses now decorated the house and lawn.

John is a tall, lean, good-looking man.  He is also a quiet man—the counterbalance for ebullient Sharon.  At one point he invited anyone in the group who wished to share stories about her to come forward, but first he wanted to say something himself.  “Twelve years ago,” he said, “when the doctor sat down with the two of us and told us Sharon had a year–and-a-half to live, her first response was, ‘Well, that doesn’t work for me.  I have two daughters who need me when they hit puberty.  John won’t be able to handle that.’”  This set the pattern, John said, for how they lived after her diagnosis: set a goal, reach it, set another goal.  For twelve years they just kept setting and reaching more goals.  They also decided that since their time together might at any time be interrupted by “God taking a hand” they needed to make the most of it.  They decided right then and there to become better parents to Jen and Kimmy, to intentionally open up more to each other, and to love each other and others more.  “These last twelve years were the best years of our marriage,” he said.   For a man of few words he had said a lot.


I am back in London now.  Just yesterday on the phone Lynne told me that all those red roses are still beautifully decorating the house and lawn.

I don’t go to church much anymore.  In fact, this might be the first year I didn’t even go on Easter which sort of makes me sad.  But I didn’t exactly miss out on Easter either.  On Easter Monday as I sat there in the church listening to Sharon’s eulogies, I knew for sure I was within touching distance of the Resurrection: Sharon’s love and spirit were everywhere.

It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry
Collected Poems

Cinque Terre

                                              

The path is about a foot wide and makes just the slightest dent into the side of the steep hill.  Its surface is extremely uneven and full of holes.  Stones, pebbles, pine needles and leaves stick up through the reddish-brown dirt.  I don’t dare take my eyes off the ground as I firmly plant my trekking poles before taking each descending step.  I’m sure this path is meant for goats not humans.  I’m also sure if my backpack was one inch wider it would be enough to bounce me off this hill and into the sea five-hundred meters below.  I wonder if any of my kids climbed up or down here when they were visiting Cinque Terre.  If they did, I’m sure glad I didn’t know about it at the time. 

This is Day Three of our three-day or rather three-season hiking trip in Italy.  A travel brochure could have truthfully stated:

“Day One: winter.  Hike in pelting snow with a wind chill factor cold enough to make ice chips in your water bottles and freeze solid your Swiss knife.

Day Two: late fall.  Be dazzled by large snowflakes falling gently on olive, lemon and orange trees.  Enjoy the absence of strong head winds.

Day Three: spring.  Break out your sun block and sunglasses.  Indulge in gelato al limone. 

But the gelato is still to come.  In my head I can see the gelatoria by the harbor with its sixteen flavors of ice cream.  I debate between ordering my usual limone et fragole and trying something new like caramello o caffè.  I wonder what flavors the others will get.  But the continuous descent is too precarious to engage anyone in a discussion about anything let alone ice cream flavors.   I look down below at the women ahead of me to see if they all have trekking poles.  They do.  But I know some of us don’t.  They must be behind me higher up on the hill.  I wonder if they regret not bringing some.  Do they need poles?  My poles?  Should I, can I, offer them mine or at least one of them?  But I know immediately I can’t give my poles away.  Not even one.  I realize right then and there I will never die a martyr—at least not on this hill.  I don’t have what it takes.  My martyr illusion falls silently into the reddish-brown dirt.  No guilt, no regret. That’s just the way it is. 

We continue to criss cross down the hill cutting through terrace after terrace of empty  vineyards.  Every now and then I remember the reason we’re hiking here: to see the breath-taking views.  So I stop, breath, steady my feet, raise my head and look around:  the world is one immense vista of turquoise sea and sky.  For five minutes I stop thinking about gelato.

I like Day Three of hiking.  By now I’m so worn down and tired out that I let go of all the chatter in my head: the worries about first impressions, last impressions; the anxieties about what clothes to wear or what to talk about; the burden of impossible expectations or imagined failures.  I have no energy left for these things.  I have just enough energy to get myself down the hill.  By Day Three the trekking outside my head finally takes precedence over the trekking inside my head.  It’s all so much easier now.

It wasn’t that way on Day One when I fell into step as the group headed out to walk the Sentiero #1.  There are two kinds of hikers in the world: those who thrive and those who die on hills.  Guess which one I am?  Yup, no matter my good intentions, level of fitness or pure stubbornness, I find myself slowly falling back closer and closer to the end of the line as one by one my fellow hikers pass me.  Finally, it is just Mark, our sweeper and the only man in our group of twelve, and me at the end of the line.  Quite often I stop, suck in air (sometimes snow) until my heart settles and the heart attack is delayed once more.  Luckily I didn’t realize when we started out in the morning that the plan was to immediately hike straight up from sea level to thirteen-hundred meters, then cross the summit—well, not really cross, more like go up and down at least twenty hills all  three-hundred meters or higher all the way to the other end of Cinque Terre.  Late in the afternoon, long after the ice chips have formed and the knife has frozen solid,  at the site of yet another “here we go up again” I think, really and truly, “This is my Waterloo, bury me here.”  But it wasn’t and they didn’t.  All I can say is that crossing the Pyrenees in a white-out was easier, hands down, than hiking Cinque Terre’s Sentiero #1 on Day One.

It’s now 6:30 a.m. on Day Four.   I’m leaving Hotel Punta Mesco heading for the train station.  For the first time this week I am walking alone.  A part of me relishes being alone yet another part keeps looking behind to see if any of my friends are coming down the street.  On my right huge white waves surge onto the beach while on my left the terraced hills rise steeply behind the line of shorefront stores.  Grey rain clouds fill the eastern sky but bits of blue peek out between the white clouds in the west.  Oddly then the emerging dawn breaks through these bits of blue giving the impression that the sun is rising in the west.  I look down the beach to scan the coastline for the four other Cinque Terre villages.  Nestled in the folds of the hills their lights still twinkle in the predawn light.  I count them making sure I see all four. 

Standing there listening to the waves I trace the path we hiked this week: an arc runs from Monterosso, the westernmost village, up to the summit, across and down to Riomaggiore, the easternmost one.  I then trace our steep winding path connecting each village to its own sanctuary high up on the hillside and then down again into the next village.  Finally, the coastal walk between Riomaggiore and Manorola underlines and completes our three-day trek.  Not bad for a group of twelve city dwellers from the flatlands of Paris, London and New York City.  And unlike last year’s hike in Corsica, no one had to be air-lifted off the mountain with three broken bones in their foot.  But that’s last year’s story.

Looking up I couldn’t tell anyone the altitude, mileage or names of all the sanctuaries we hiked up to or a hundred other details that it seems my fellow hikers register and remember with ease.  (In fact, any such details in this piece are surely suspect.)  Instead my world is quite hazy made up of impressions, feelings and just being there.  But now looking at the steep terraced hills spotted with lemon and orange trees and cream, pink and green-colored stucco houses although I don’t know all the names or facts of this place, I do know the place itself through the soles of my feet.  I came to know it well through that narrow, not quite one foot wide, uneven path we walked for three days through winter, fall and finally spring.

I think over again my small adventures, my fears, those small ones that seemed so big, all those vital things I had to get and to reach, and yet there is only one great thing: to live and see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world.

Old Innuit Song

How Large Is My Burka?

The other day while surfing the net I ran across the website of a spiritual director/marriage counselor who proclaimed that marriages go through four stages: romance, disillusion, misery, awakening.  I'd love to put a voter-box on my blog (if I knew how to do that!) asking, "Do you agree or disagree that marriage starts with romance, gets all mixed up with lost dreams and pain, and then somehow awakens again to love?" What would group wisdom say about that?  But instead I'll just think about people I barely know (I'd never think of the marriages of people I do know) and, "Yep, that's actually a pretty accurate picture."  True, some marriages hiccup through those stages while others hit speedbumps going full blast, but the belief that a good marriage goes straight from "falling in love" to "till death do us part" with only positive feelings is apparently more myth than reality.

And there's the rub.  Our daughter is getting married in September to the love-of-her-life.  Of course, there is always the exception to the rule.

Last Saturday I almost literally bumped into a woman who might have been married or not. Hard to tell.  I was heading from Twickenham to London on the District line underground train.  Running late and needing to change trains at Hammersmith to catch the Piccadilly line, I started quickly running down the stairs to the Piccadilly line as I heard the train approach.  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I could see the train's door was still open.  Even though I wasn't sure what direction it was going--east or west, I threw myself into the crowded car as the doors slammed shut behind me.  Struggling to get my balance, I looked up to find I was staring into a pair of eyes peeking out from a burka.  Aside from her eyes the woman was completely covered head to toe in black.

"Does this train go to Hyde Park?"  I asked her trying to keep my eyes from sliding down her front to get a really good look.  Barely six inches separated my red coat from her black gown.  Her eyes had no wrinkles around them.  I immediately looked at the man standing to the right of her.  "A pair of eyes can't answer a question," I thought.  "You need a mouth to talk." 

"Yes, it does," the young man answered me.  Was she his wife?  She turned and said something to him, not me.  Although I could hear "Hyde Park", the rest was a mumble.  

"So it does go to Hyde Park?" I asked him again noticing the lack of a wedding band on his hand which was holding onto the pole.  Maybe she was his cousin or friend.  

"Yes, it does," he said again.  It felt strange to be looking and talking with him instead of her as though she wasn't present.

"Thanks!" I said.  Then with as much grace as possible in the overcrowded train I tried to slowly and nonchantantly turn myself around to face the door.

"Well, that wasn't exactly an in-depth interview with a woman hiding in the hills of Afghanistan which would be what someone living a large life would do," I think.  "But it was a few words between me and a woman in a burka.  And I never thought that would happen.  Maybe I'm not living such a small life after all." 

Since reading Carol Shields' book Stone Diaries, I have been in a funk over the question "Am I living a small life or a large one?" This is the question Stone Diaries raises about the main character Daisy. Motherless from birth, Daisy grows up living apart from her dad, marries twice, raises three children, works for nine years, and finally, nearly ninety, dies in a Florida nursing home.  I hadn't thought it was such a small conventional life.  True, she hadn't invented a cure for cancer or set any world records, but her life contained relationships, struggles, love and seemed as full as anyone's life usually is.  Apparently, however, most of the book reviewers did not.  They came to the conclusion that Daisy lived a life, like most women born in the first half of the twentieth century, that never reached or what is worse, never even tried  to reach, its potential or possibilities.  This was a bit disconcerting to me as in many ways I related to Daisy.  Am I, too, living a small conventional life not stretching out to all the possibilities and potential that are within me? Am I living in the shadow of other people, not claiming my own life? And what would the reviewers say about the woman in the burka?

It's a haunting question to face while surfing the net or riding the train.  How does one decide what makes a life large or small?  Who decides?  Are there certain things one has to have or do to qualify for large?  Or can lives be both small and large, maybe even on the same day?  

For a burst of beauty each day check out Botany Photo of the Day:


http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/2010/02/gentianella_hirculus.php

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved."  
                                                                      Charles Morgan

A Good Day

    A Good Day
 “If all I did in a day was watch the sunset, I’d call it a good day,” Derek says. I smile.  Although I feel exactly the same way he does, I would never ever openly admit.  Yet he did and I like him a little bit more.  We’re sitting outside on the villa’s southern terrace with our feet on the railing, glasses of wine in our hands.  The sun’s last rays are painting gorgeous pink and orange streaks across the vast expanse of sky in front of us.  This is my second Thanksgiving here in this villa.  Last year Jon and I came with three other couples and their kids.  This year we’re here with three of our four kids and their significant others.  Only Rose is not here.
Derek had jumped at our invite to spend Thanksgiving in Italy.  “Positano!  That’s on the top of my list of places to see,” he immediately told Lindsay, our 31-year-old daughter. “We’re in!” He and Lindsay have been living together for three years.  Last Christmas she gave him the ultimatum: propose by New Year’s Eve 2009, their five year anniversary, or she would propose to him.  He had made it clear, however, that he didn’t want her to propose; he wanted to be the one to pop the question. 
As each major, minor, or non-existent holiday passes with no news on the engagement front, we have given up speculating on when--or even if, it is going to happen.  Certainly we are no longer holding our breaths.  We only know it’s definitely not going to happen here in Positano where the whole family can gawk at them.  If there is one thing Derek hates, it’s being the center of attention.
Ever since September, however, our younger daughter Rose keeps reminding her dad to notice Derek if he should come anywhere within a fifty-foot radius of him.  “Dad, maybe Derek wants to ask your permission to marry Lindsay.”  Rose knows that letting go of his girls isn’t easy for him to do.  Sometimes it can take two years before he remembers the name of a boyfriend. 
Thanksgiving was gorgeous—so warm the kids swam in the sea.  The whole time we’ve been here the weather has been more like summer than early winter.  But today, our last day, we awake to heavy rains and winds.  Tomorrow morning we head to Naples to drop off Mark and Cindy at the airport.  From there they fly back to NYC.  The rest of us will continue on to Rome where Derek and Lindsay will spend a couple of days before heading back to San Francisco. John, Andy and I fly on to London.  However, that’s tomorrow.  Right now with heavy rain falling outside, we make ourselves comfortable in the living room reading, writing, talking.  I hang the boys’ jackets which reek of smoke over some chairs.  They must have had a good time last night drinking and smoking in the garden. 
By noon everyone is up but Derek.  “He’s not feeling well,” Lindsay tells us.  “He just wants to stay in bed and rest.”
“Cuban Night too much for him?” laughs 23-year-old Andy.
“How late did you guys stay up anyway?” asks Jon.
“Not much past 3 a.m.,” Our older son Mark grins.  “Was it the whiskey or the Cuban cigars that did him in?  Or both?”
Finally around 3 p.m. Derek, not looking good at all, makes his appearance.  Turning down all offers of something to eat or drink, he sits down quietly by Lindsay.
“Are you ready for Rome tomorrow, Derek?” Lindsay asks him. 
“Should be by tomorrow,” he responds weakly.  “Yah, Cuban Night was great!”
“You guys just want to skip Rome and come to London with us instead,” asks Jon, looking up from his computer.  “If there are seats available, we could try to change your tickets.”
Lindsay and Derek look at each other and immediately answer, “Sounds good!  Better than strapping on backpacks and trapping around Rome.  Yah, London it is.” 
”Ok,” says Jon.  Within ten minutes he looks over at the kids, “Done.  You two are now on our flight  tomorrow to London.”
“Great, Dad!  Thanks!” says Lindsay.  Derek, too, seems pleased. 
“”Do you want to go for a walk, Lindsay, say just a short one?  Maybe a bit of fresh air will do me good.”
“Sure, if you think you’re up to it.”  Getting their coats and umbrellas, they head out. 
Jon and I decide to do some grocery shopping.  The pasta here is so inexpensive compared to London that we’ve brought a spare suitcase to fill up with Italian cheese, pasta and biscuits.  We hop in the van and head towards Positano. 
It’s dark by the time we’re done.  Driving back along the curvy road which clings to the side of the steep hill, we keep looking for Derek and Lindsay.  It should be easy to spot them as the road is so narrow. But we don’t see anyone out walking.
The other kids are still sprawled about the living room when we get home.   I empty the groceries into the suitcase and then pick up my book to read.  John goes to the computer.  “Has anyone checked in yet for tomorrow’s flights?” he asks.  No one has.
About ten minutes later in walk two very damp kids.
“We kept looking for you.  Where were you? ” I ask.
“Yah, we were looking for you guys, too.  When did you get back?” asks Lindsay.
“Just about ten minutes ago.  We should have seen you walking along.”  After a week of being together non-stop, this missing-them-along-the-road topic is fodder for a good fifteen minute conversation.
 “Andy, I’m checking you in.  Do you want aisle or window?” asks Jon.
“Aisle.  Thanks, Dad.”
“Did you see us pass you by?”
“No, I didn’t.  I didn’t see any car that looked like you.”
“Strange.”   
“OK, Andy.  You’re checked in.  Mark, what about you?  Aisle or window?”
“Window.  Thanks.”
For some reason I look up.  Lindsay is sitting at the dining room table across from Jon.  She’s turned towards me with her left hand lying palm down on her chest.  She looks bashful yet she’s beaming.  I do a double-take and see the ring.  Oh my gosh, it happened.
I jump up and run over to hug her.  Halfway through the hug I think I should be hugging Derek, not Lindsay—he’s the one who finally made the move.  I hug him--hard.  Everyone (almost) realizes what is going on and rushes over, too, hugging Lindsay, hugging Derek.  Everyone hugging everyone.
“Momma, do you want aisle, too?” Jon still sitted at the table asks me.  What?  I can’t believe this.  John is asking if I want aisle or window?  He’s got to be kidding.  But I look at him.  He’s serious.  Ok.  Yah.
“Yah, aisle,” I say.  He types it in. 
“Oh my gosh, we have no champagne,” I moan.  I always have a bottle champagne in the refrigerator—always.  Now our daughter just got engaged and my refrigerator is a gazillion miles away. 
“How about you, Lindsay?  Aisle or window?”
We all look at one another.  Could this be happening?  Is Jon, the man who can speak to anyone about anything at any time, that out of it?
“Aisle or window?”
“Window,” she says looking around at all of us a bit bewildered.  I’m thinking someone needs to do something here.  Mark realizes it, too.  He rushes into the kitchen, grabs the whiskey, pours out a shot and hands it to Derek.  “Here, Derek! Congratulations!”
Derek dutifully drinks.
“No, we all need something,” yells Andy.  “Limoncello!”
“Right!”  Mark heads for kitchen again to grab the limoncello while Andy brings out seven small liquor glasses.
“Cindy, and you?  Aisle next to MarK?”
She looks at Mark, beseeching him.  “Yah, aisle would be fine.”  
“OK, guys, gather round.  Come on, Jon.  Let’s take a picture.” Jon leaves his computer and comes over to stand with the rest of us.  We hold out our little glasses of limoncello.  The happy couple beams.  “To Lindsay and Derek!” we shout while Cindy takes our photo.
Jon has only himself now to check in.  He hasn’t said a word to either Derek or Lindsay.  Yet for me to say something to him in front of everyone will only make it worse.  I’ll just have to keep ignoring it.
We drink the limoncello.  I’ve never seen Lindsay or Derek so happy.
“We have to call Rose—she’ll die that she isn’t here!”
“But it’s 6 a.m. in Hawaii,” counters Jon.
“Doesn’t matter.  We have to call.” We wake Rose up to tell her the news.
We’ve now hugged, screamed, beamed and qawked for about as long as we can.  What do we do now?  Of course, we play Banagrams.  But first Jon heads to our bedroom.  I follow.
“I can’t believe you kept checking us in!!  Do you know what just happened there?” I explode.
“You shouldn’t be calling Rose, telling everybody,” he answers back.  “We don’t want to put pressure on him.”
“Pressure?  We’re done with pressure!  We’ve moved on!  We’re celebrating!!  They’re engaged!!  Say something to him, to them.  If you don’t, Lindsay will think you’re mad and Derek will think he blew it by not asking you for permission beforehand!”  I storm back into the living room.  My charming, socially suave husband doesn’t even realize he’s blown it.
So we play banagrams.  In between the peels and the splits we hear the story.  He asked her on Positano’s main beach.  He asked her first standing up eye-to-eye, then again on bended knee.  Why now today with all of us around?  Because suddenly their stay in Rome got cancelled and he wanted to propose in Italy.  All at once, Cuban Night or not, he only had now.  The ring in his sock in his suitcase had to come out.







That evening we hop into the van and drive in the rain to find a place to eat.  Being off-season we pass many closed restaurants and only a few open ones.  Eventually Jon pulls over and asks some men walking by if they know of any good restaurants that would be open tonight.  They tell us there is a one near the top of the hill so we keep on driving uphill.  Finally we see its lights, park and go in.  Sitting down at a large table, Jon immediately asks for Blanc de Blanc, my favorite champagne, the one that’s in the refrigerator back home, but, of course, they don’t have it.  Prosecco will have to do.  The waiter pours each of us a glass.  Jon then raises his, looks at Derek and Lindsay and, finally, offers them a gracious toast. 
Jon has done a lot today: bought a suitcase full of pasta, checked everyone in for our flights tomorrow, and toasted our daughter’s engagement.  I wonder if he thinks that is enough to call it a good day.