Month: October 2015 (Page 4 of 7)

Today, we are traveling to Wyoming for a fall visit to the cabin.

We left before dawn so we could get to the cabin by mid-afternoon. We’re just there for a short visit, the kind that is all about relaxation. We can forget about big improvement or maintenance projects, and concentrate on enjoying the gold leaves on the aspen trees, the elk bugling and getting the hot tub up to temperature by eventing time. We will be busy–there will be steaks to grill, beers to open, hikes and naps to take and books to be opened, if not read.

There will not be any mice on this visit. Our man G has been trekking up to the cabin once a month, checking and keeping the cabin’s rodent and insect defenses on high alert.

It will be crisp and cool there, and we’ll need the extra blankets and the wood stove to keep us warm. Such a nice change from the endless summer that seems to be hanging on in California. Water–the glorious, clean, somehow rich-tasting water from our well–is not scarce there, so we will fill the hot tub, set up the outdoor shower, and rinse off the dust of drought for the weekend. I’m sorry California, I don’t mean to be critical, but the new dry thing gets wearisome.

My one regret is that the one in our family who arguably loves it in the most basic, earthy and holistic way cannot come with us. Tie is spending the weekend in the kennel, and though it will be something of a spa weekend for him, complete with bath and nail clipping, I know he’d be so sad if he knew we left him behind to go to the cabin. I tried to keep it quiet before we left, not even getting out my suitcase before we left for the kennel, but he will know by the smell when we get home where we have been. I’m glad I paid extra for the special play time. I couldn’t stand the guilt otherwise.

Hold on leaves! Don’t fall before we get there! Resist the wind! Keep on rutting, elk! We want to hear your eerie cries echo through the forest!

We’re almost there.

I started drinking in high school. It’s a habit that has stayed with me to this day. Coffee.

Every day, after I’ve hit the snooze button as long as possible, I shuffle to the kitchen, where my early-rising, coffee-angel husband has made coffee. I pour a cup and head for the shower. If the pot is cold–he’s traveling, or we’re out of coffee–the day does not start right.

It started around the kitchen table when I was growing up. It was part of our family ritual–a cup of coffee and talking. My parents were doing it, at breakfast and after dinner, and I wanted into the conversation, so I took a cup.

I don’t remember, but I’m sure it took some getting used to. It was a light roast in a can from the grocery store. No cream or sugar to make it go down easier–my dad told me I should learn to drink it black. A little cream is fine once in a while, especially if the brew is strong, but no sugar. He wanted me to be a versatile coffee drinker–cream and sugar aren’t always available, and if I could drink it black, I could partake almost anywhere.

His advice has served me well. I am not a picky drinker. Not only can I drink coffee black, I can drink almost any coffee–McDonald’s, or gas-station brew, even. Any temperature is ok–hot, cold, room temperature. I’ll drink anything but flavored coffee or the burned, sitting-in-the-pot-too-long kind.

College days found me in a foggy, chilly place where the warming, invigorating benefits of coffee and the art of roasting the perfect bean were elevated to almost a religion. Many days started and ended with a one-dollar latte in a pint glass or a to-go styrofoam cup from Espresso Roma. This corner cafe was always on the way; it’s large outdoor patio on the corner near campus. My friends and I would sit there for hours, working on solving the problems of the world.

My husband has always been an enthusiastic drinking partner–we share our love of all things coffee. I knew he was meant for me when he turned down the cream and sugar. Weekend mornings with him meant breakfast and Peet’s coffee, strong and thick in the heavy white mugs at Fat Apples or Mary’s Place, whipping cream on the side. The old joke, still pantomimed once in a while, was putting a spoon in to stir and pretending that the bowl of the spoon was dissolved by the intense coffee.

When we left Berkeley, we moved to places where coffee was just a thin, hot beverage, and we lost our way. I was drinking Folger’s for years until I discovered Peet’s delivery, and started a standing 4-pound a month order. I like the taste, the smell, the wake-up qualities. I will go out of my way to get a good cuppa, I admit, and am willing to pay for it.

My kids learned to drink lattes at the earliest age–I didn’t stop drinking java when I was nursing, but I did switch to decaf. I was charmed by the story, told by an Italian gentleman who ran an espresso stand outside our grocery store in Fort Collins, of his mother giving him a little coffee in his bottle of milk as a child. I waited to introduce my kids to my beverage of choice, though, until fears of keeping them awake at night or stunting their growth were past.

I have humble coffee beginnings, but I have become a coffee snob. It’s almost impossible not to in the Bay Area. My kids have surpassed me though, and sometimes refuse to drink coffee at my house unless they bring their own.

It’s not just the coffee itself. I don’t think it ever really was. It’s a taste and smell that create a certain experience for me; it’s companionship, conversation, comfort. It’s a liquid symbol that soothes and calms. The aroma, especially, creates an atmosphere. I have a pavlovian response to it: I smell coffee, and I want to sit down and share.

So when I say, “Let’s have coffee,” it more about spending time together than about what we drink. But it is also about the coffee.

In a place I’m not familiar with, I stay around the edges, observing before stepping in, not wanting to seem like I don’t know what I’m doing. Alone, I am timid.

In a new situation, I watch first. It takes me time to jump in. I didn’t grow up in a city, so living in a more urban place has presented many puzzles for me to figure out, even the basics like parking, shopping, finding a bathroom or taking a bus were daunting. There is an unspoken way of doing everything, and people are quick to shove past and give a withering look when it’s done wrong.

There’s a cheese shop in town, The Cheese Board, that has hundreds of cheeses, as well as pastries and breads. I cruised into the shop to get pecan rolls or apricot muffins, but was intimidated by the cheese counter. Instead of numbers, they have playing cards hanging on a little stand, and when your card is called, it’s your turn. Then what?

It was probably three years of bread and muffins before I decided that I would take a chance, look dumb and get some cheese.  I took a card, and when my seven of clubs was called, I told the person behind the counter that it was my first visit, and I didn’t know what I wanted. She was kind and patient, giving me samples and helping me decide what to get.

You may be saying, “Of course! Don’t be so silly!” You must be a naturally bold person. You don’t realize there are people who are afraid to look dumb, afraid to make a wrong move and mess up, afraid of being laughed at. It’s not an idle fear. We are afraid of these things because they have happened.

Part of my problem is that I blush easily. The bold may be able to make a mistake or say something ridiculous and then adjust course and blend into the crowd. Not me. I turn a glowing shade of red, alerting everyone around me that something has gone wrong, something that deserves their attention, something that always leads someone to ask, “Why are you so red?”

It may be that they are concerned that I’m suffering from an urgent medical condition, but generally I think it should be obvious: I’m red because my very own blood vessels are betraying me and letting everyone know, beyond a doubt, that I feel stupid.

To dodge that terrible feeling, I have to avoid being singled out or caught off guard. So I do research before I try anything new, hoping to avoid the awkward and uncomfortable effects of being surprised or confused. Even so, my mantra in a new situation is, “I’ll only look stupid once,” or “Dumber people than me have done this.”

The root of my fear is that people will discover that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m not competent and strong and invincible, and judge me. They will find me lacking in intelligence and experience.  I know that feeling this way is, actually, dumb. It’s a complicated sense of insecurity. It’s layers and layers of insecurity.

I’ve gotten bolder about being intimidated–a small step at least. I decided to swim laps at the YMCA. First, I watched. What do people wear? Swim cap or not? Which lanes are slowest? I finally got my suit on and headed out to the pool–but I couldn’t find the door from the locker room to the pool. I persevered and asked another woman–the one blow-drying her hair naked, no less–how to get out there.

Once on the deck, it wasn’t obvious how to jump into the lanes with swimmers already in them. So, deep breath, I walked to the lifeguard stand and asked how the lane-sharing worked. “I’m glad you asked,” she said. “Most people just get in and mess everybody up.” A small sense relief–I had done the right thing by asking, and now I knew what to do.

If I’m in a new situation with someone I know, someone I can trust to help me and not laugh at me, my insecurity fades. We can laugh together. We can figure out together how to tackle the unknown.

It’s another experience altogether, though, when I’m with my children. We have tried many new things together, and when they were little, I was the one who had to know where we were going and get us all there and back safely. Not going, or hanging back until I figured it out, wasn’t an option with six little people trotting trustingly behind me, so I stepped up. I had to Be The Mom.

Being a mother made me brave.

Two things helped me leave my timid self behind. One is the protective, Mama Bear instinct that kicks in when I am with my kids. They need me to lead the way.

The other is the fact that taking kids anywhere will, at some point, result in total embarrassment. They will create a mess, say something–or scream it–that should not have been said, and generally undo any illusion of  having it all together.  For some reason, because it’s for them, I can endure it. I can laugh at it and shrug it off. In both cases, I lose my self-consciousness because I am focused on keeping my babies safe and happy.

A few years ago, I visited Paris with my husband, who was there for business. One day, I was on my own while he was in meetings. I wanted to venture out, take the Metro, and do some exploring. My timid self resisted. Maybe I would just stay in the beautiful hotel and enjoy some time to read and people watch, I told myself. As I was settling in with a book, I thought, “If my kids were here, I would go out exploring for them.” If I could do it with my kids, why not without them?

This trick of reasoning worked, and I headed out for a day of walking, taking the Metro, and visiting museums. I had a few embarrassing moments involving the ticket machine in the the Metro station, a tripping incident and a misunderstanding at lunch, but I managed. I laughed at myself, and I was proud of myself.

Now that my kids are adults, they are some of my favorite people to try new things with. Some of them are the naturally bold type, others are the more nervous type.  I don’t have to Be The Mom with them anymore. They have known me as their brave mom, but now they also know me as their sometimes-timid companion.

Shitty first drafts. Butt in chair. Just do it. You own everything that happened to you. You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart–your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it’s why you were born
–Anne Lamott

These words are posted on my desktop to remind me of why I write. When I sit down to write, I often ask myself, “What wants to be written?” Those thoughts and stories and ideas that I can’t get off  my mind, the ones that nag me and want to be told, are the ones that need to be told.

Today, I didn’t finish the post I started for the best of reasons. Life got in the way. My daughter and her husband decided to come up for the afternoon. They both had the day off, it was too hot in their apartment, and they wanted to try out a new brewery in town. So instead of writing, I was talking and laughing and sharing beer and cheese and pickled vegetables at a long, sticky table in the cooling Berkeley evening.

Now that  dinner–our favorite Zachary’s Chicago style pizza– is over,  conversations have quieted down and everyone is moving toward bed, I have a few minutes to keep my writing streak going.

So I end this day with Anne Lamott’s words of wisdom.

I own everything that has happened to me, and it’s my work to tell it in my voice, from my perspective. That, after all, is all I have to offer.

I hope that, when I write it down, it won’t be merely a record of what has happened to me, but an honest expression of the joys, the mysteries, and the fears that are common to us as moms, as women, and as people. I want to write the story that resonates and encourages us as we journey together through life.

I’m probably not going to astonish you with great revelations–sometimes all I manage to write is a little anecdote–but I will try to be truthful about what I see and what I know.

So, here’s to those first drafts and those stories that tug at our hearts. I’ll have my butt back in the chair tomorrow.

Dobby: “Dobby knows the perfect place, sir! Dobby heard tell of it from the other house-elves when he came to Hogwarts, sir. It is known by us as the Come and Go Room, sir, or else as the Room of Requirement!”
Harry Potter: “Why?”
Dobby: “Because it is a room that a person can only enter when they have real need of it. Sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not, but when it appears, it is always equipped for the seeker’s needs.”
— Dobby telling Harry Potter about the Room of Requirement

We have a little room in our house, between the kitchen and the back door, that is almost more of a large hallway. It has a door to the back hall near the bathroom and the stairs, a door into the kitchen, and a door out to the patio. There are no windows, but the patio door has a glass pane in it.

It is our Come and Go Room, and it has been equipped for many “seekers’ needs” over the years.

When we first moved in, it was a bedroom. Our oldest had just started university when we moved to a smaller house, and she got the little half-room since she wouldn’t be living there full time. We closed off the door to the back hall, put up a curtain rod to make a little closet, and arranged her queen-size bed, dresser and bookshelf  so there was just room to scoot around the bed.

When she wasn’t home, her room was the guest room. All the other rooms were full, with the boys in the largest upstairs room, and the other girls in the three bedrooms downstairs.

Soon, a nephew needed a place to stay, so the Come and Go Room became his home. He stayed with us for a few months until he got settled, found a job and some friends to room with, and moved out. I remember him sitting on the bed, strumming his guitar, and chatting with me as I made dinner.

After he left, my sister came to visit and ended up staying and living with us to escape an abusive home situation. She brought my two nieces and two nephews and her golden retriever for a nine-month stay. We bunked the nephews in with the the boys, and put my sister and two nieces in the Come and Go Room, this time blocking the door to the kitchen with a double-on-the-bottom, twin-on-the-top bunk bed, putting an armoire on the opposite wall and a chair in the corner.

We have one bathroom upstairs, so shower times were tightly scheduled in the morning to accommodate nine people sharing it. My sister and I took turns cooking for the twelve people crowded around the dining room table for dinner each night. The frustrations of living so tightly packed wore on us all–whether because of my nephew’s legos all over the living room, or the nervous dog peeing on the floor–but I have fond memories of the time spent with my sister, co-mothering our broods.

My sister and her family got their feet on the ground and moved out, and I was overdue for some peace and quiet. All three doors were opened, out came the bed and armoire, and in it’s place, we put in a small daybed and added built-in bookshelves. Now, it was the library and occasional guest room for one.

I had a quiet room, but not much quiet time, so it ended up becoming a locker room for our athlete son. Football gear and millions of little black pellets from the artificial-turf field covered the floor. At least it was close to the washer and dryer so I could keep up with the stinky uniforms and socks.

My husband decided to start a consulting business and needed a home office. With kids still in the bedrooms, the natural place was the Come and Go Room. The daybed was exchanged for a large desk and office chair, and he set up shop. The doors were not blocked, but they were closed during the work day. I would sneak in occasionally with a question or to let the dog out into the back yard.

The business grew, and my husband left his home office for an office-building office. The room changed again, back to a guest room, but this time we put in a couch that made into a bed and added a little desk. The big desk moved downstairs to the Hobbit Room (a tale for another day), so I could spread out my scrapbooking materials down there.

Another nephew, in the Bay Area for a summer internship, made his home in the Come and Go Room then. He endured the traffic of people coming and going through his room for summertime activities in the backyard. He left in the fall for school, and our dinnertime discussions immediately took a less scholarly tone.

With some open space again, sports began to take over, and the room held rugby gear, bikes, and eventually,  books, backpacks and anything else my son didn’t carry to his room, now located downstairs.  (More on all this moving around here.)

Recently, one of my daughters came home and wanted to make the room downstairs more of a comfortable, inviting gathering spot. This required getting the big desk out. So, we swapped the desk for the upstairs couch, and the Come and Go Room is back to being an office. It was good timing, because my husband started working at home every Friday.

This is a good set-up. It’s a pleasant room, close the kitchen and the coffee pot. I have started using it to work on my writing, except on Friday. Maybe it will stay this way for awhile–until someone needs it for something else.