What August Means Now

By Carrie Allen Tipton For those invested in academic pursuits, August marks time like no other month. It speaks of newness and transition in a way that other folks more readily associate with January and its resolutions, or October and its changing leaves, or March and its budding limbs. August’s gift (or curse) of hyper-awareness of the passage of time blesses (or afflicts) tiny kindergartners no less than aged professors. Whether you are on the making or receiving end of a syllabus or book list in the upcoming educational year, the month delineates for all school-oriented persons the End of Something and the Beginning of Something Else.

As a student, this weird blurry month, neither fully summerish nor yet fully schoolish, meant shopping for clothes, finding color-coded folders, looking for the precise metric specifications of binders stated on the supply list, searching for a new and cooler (is there such a thing?) lunchbox. In the university years there were the added tasks of purchasing football tickets and meal plans. After many years of dutifully carrying out these sorts of instructions, I became a professor and began giving them to others. The road to this position was long and many times I have questioned whether it was, in that extremely charged yet vague term which indexes a host of existential presuppositions, “worth it.” Suffice it to say that it required many years of very long hours of single-minded focus and a willingness to live below the poverty line for the better part of a decade. Fine. It was over now, and I was professoring. In this new capacity, my old friend August meant screening books for readings lists, determining test schedules, building online class modules, anxiously checking electronic enrollment in the hopes that a course wouldn’t be canceled, dodging onerous committee work, applying for travel funding, and plotting out research goals.

For twenty-eight years, then, some version or other of me was essentially still Going To School every fall, and August meant what it always had: a physical and cognitive return to the educational premises. And then all of a sudden this year August stopped meaning anything like it once did. In late spring, I became pregnant with our first child. Let me, as I used to say to my students during lectures when an idea required further explanation, hit the pause button here. If this were an academic article, you would now be treated to a lengthy footnote about how I’d always hoped that if I ever had a child, I could stay home with it until it was school-aged. This was a simple and uncomplicated desire that could afford to remain simple and uncomplicated as long as it was theoretical. While there was no viable life-partner in the picture, such a decision was lodged (like so many of my academic ruminations) in the realm of abstract thought, and so it stayed for all of my adult life until I met my future husband two years ago, a mere year into my professorial career. And based on my longstanding desire, prior to our marriage, we agreed that I would stay home with the wee ones if wee ones ever materialized, at least in their early years. I would try freelance writing, editing, and perhaps some online teaching.

It would make a lot of sense, we figured, since I was quite unhappy as a professor and earned proportionately little money for my trouble. Pace Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose insightful article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic, but the thought of trying to have it all has always seemed to me quite exhausting. I just wanted some of it, and the part of it that I wanted changed as I walked through different seasons of life. So the decision was in place long before the baby ever was. It was still abstract and simple and uncomplicated, until the day in early April when two drugstore tests set the pre-arranged plan into motion. As I began the process of disentangling myself from a tenure-track job at my university, I felt liberated from unfulfilling employment, eager to spend the fall months prior to the baby’s arrival immersed in my beloved writing, and proud for being willing to run screaming from the ivory tower after three years of soul-searching that showed it to be an ill fit for me. I still do feel those things, and harbor no golden nostalgia for the frustrations of the career path I left. But what I do harbor is a giant question mark about who I am now, especially while my daughter is still an “inside baby,” and who I will be in the remaining months of her gestation, and who I will become as she emerges, and how we will become something together. Abstraction, simplicity, and lack of complication are rapidly eroding as I find myself in the midst of a new kind of August, and I have had to learn all over again what it means this year.

So far it has meant knowing, for the first time in my life, the months spanned by peach season, and that early August represented the final window of opportunity for capitalizing on the soft round spheres. I made a peach ricotta tart and did not make a syllabus. It has meant starting yoga classes, in the middle of the day, to help with my achy joints and to communicate with my girlie, my changing positions a sort of Morse code telegraphing her to be strong and peaceful and that I will try to be strong and peaceful for her. I sat in a roomful of people with legs crossed on rubber mats and did not sit in a roomful of people in pre-semester meetings. I measured for and ordered drapes and marched through Ikea looking for mounting hardware. I put up sheer taupe curtains in our living room and did not put books on an office bookshelf. I wrote and wrote and wrote and did not aim to produce a single article intended for a peer-reviewed journal. I am not sad, but August is feeling weird.

An entire book has been written about the difficulties and joys of either combining motherhood and academia or leaving the latter for the former, so I should have known that August wouldn’t sit right this time around. Reading Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life assured me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling dazed disorientation as I walked out of the halls of academia into the blazing sunlight of other paths. Of course it made sense that I was losing my emotional footing in the bright light of August, which every other year meant that I should be walking into the university instead of away from it. I still can’t see quite where I am headed and am only accepting, day by day, what this August means. To borrow the phrase of an incomparably greater wordsmith, T.S. Eliot, “in my end is my beginning.” August has always at its heart represented new beginnings for me, and although something large and weighty has come to an end, many other things have now begun. And when I think of this, I think that perhaps, after all, this August is not so very unlike the ones that have come before.

window boxes

[gallery link="file"] When it comes to bringing a bit of the country into your city life, there's not much that does it better than a window box. Perched somewhere between public space and private space, a window box offers something pretty for folks streetside as well as a welcome view for those inside looking out. I'm especially fond of the range of window boxes that you can find on a walk around the block. Sometimes they're lush and full, sometimes they're utterly abandoned, and still other times they're completely accidental, just vines and leaves and no box at all. Here, a few shots from our neighborhood.

Mimi

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear my grandma’s voice. I can see her standing at the stove, frying eggplant, and explaining to me how it was done. She never divulged much more than a little bit of this, a little bit of that, always followed by Capisce? It was one of the only Italian words she remembered, and I loved repeating after her. Ok, Grandma---I understand.  My grandma---Frances Camelio Panzer, known lovingly as Fritz---was born in Italy, sometime around 1915. Her birthday, or more precisely, her birth year, was always a source of confusion. She lied about her age until the end, and fittingly, my mom realized after-the-fact that we might have misstated her birth year on her tombstone. Her own mother died when she was a child, and soon after, her father set off for the US---for Rochester, specifically---where his sister lived. The rest, as they say, is history.

Even though her command of the Italian language was limited and her memory of her birthplace hazy, my grandma made me so proud of my heritage. Growing up, I thought everyone’s grandparents grew all their own fruit and vegetables in their backyard. Strawberries, peaches, tomatoes and zucchini mingled with rose bushes and bird feeders in their postage-stamp-sized yard. My grandma and her sisters canned the peaches and tomatoes, and the rest of us enjoyed the fruits of their labor all year-round. I can still taste the perfect sweetness of those peaches.

Family came first, something my sisters and I learned from a young age. Thursdays and Sundays were reserved for family dinners, and my grandparents came over each week, red sauce, dessert, and other treats from their yard or the public market in hand. Without fail, my grandma made a beeline for our basement, to get started on our laundry immediately. What she didn't finish left with her and returned soon after, stiff as a board, but smelling like sunshine and fresh air---like home. My mom used to yell at her, "Mom! Can't you sit down and relax with us?"---a phrase that my sisters and I found ourselves repeating to our mom years later, eyes rolling, as she endlessly straightened and dusted and swiffered while at each of our houses. My sisters and I were forced to take piano lessons for years, and our lessons just happened to coincide with Thursday dinners. While we painstackingly worked through our lessons, our parents and grandparents sat at the kitchen table, drinking their coffee and enjoying their own mini-recital. Luckily for them, two out of the three of us---myself never included---remembered to practice each week.

For more years than I can remember, we took a family trip to Disney World. My grandparents must have been in their 70's at the time, yet they didn't miss a moment of the action. From Disney to Epcot to Breakfast with Mickey to luaus at night, they kept pace with the rest of us. When my parents went away on a much needed kids-free vacation each year, my grandparents came to stay with us. We woke up to our grandma in the kitchen, fresh pancakes and Caro syrup on the table. Slim her entire life, her theory was "everything in moderation," paving the way for bacon, alongside those pancakes, more often than not. We spent the week enveloped in her hugs and kisses, and $20 bills appeared at our dinner plates each night, courtesy of our grandpa.

We have pictures from Christmases through the years, my sisters and I tightly clutching our new Cabbage Patch dolls. Each year, my grandparents stood in line for those prized and always understocked commodities, showering us with these spoils and more. I remember my mom telling us one year---a statement that has since been burned into the front of my brain---that Christmas didn't start for our grandparents until we got to their house. We were, quite simply, the center of their lives.

My grandma was lucky enough to hold this role for more than 25 years. Though they traveled extensively in their golden years, my grandparents never missed a soccer or field hockey game, a school play, a graduation, a holiday.  My own mom unofficially became a grandma---a Mimi to be precise---5 years ago, when Rachael was born. Though not tied by blood, this didn't seem to matter to either of them. She was Mimi, plain and simple, and it was clear from the start that she was made for the role.  Rachael and Mimi had their routines---their "things"---when they were together. In more recent years, my mom was known to pull up a dining room chair, letting Rachael climb on to "help" with the measuring and the mixing in the kitchen. My sisters and I laughed, as we recalled being banned from the kitchen growing up, our mom telling us it was easier for her to just do it herself. Rachael liked to join my mom upstairs, jumping on the beds while my mom tried to straighten around her. Before they came back downstairs, Rachael would ask for some of Mimi's special---and expensive---lotion, and my mom always obliged. Rubbing her little hands together, Rachael declared it was mmmmmmm...deeeelicious!---just like Mimi taught her.

My nephew joined our family two years ago. My sister and brother-in-law gave my parents a card the Christmas before he was born, to announce their news. It stated, simply, "Merry Christmas to my Grandparents." I'll never forget my mom's reaction upon opening that card---the initial gasp, the tears, the hugs. She was going to be a Mimi again. Even at 70, and even with a full-time job, she found the time to stop by my sister's house most nights after work. She checked in on her sweet baby---her Chunka---and without fail, tidied up while there. She told me that she'd do the same for me some day, just as soon as we moved back to Rochester. No pressure, of course. For a year and a half, she was my sister's first phone call when Hudson was sick, when they needed a babysitter, for parenting advice. Now pregnant with her second baby, I think my sister must feel the sting of my mom's absence in ways the rest of us can't quite imagine.

I never doubted that my mom would be my first phone call when I had children of my own, that we would take family trips to Disney World, that she would know how to soothe my babies when I wasn't able to. I always trusted that my children would know the sound of my mom's laugh---that laugh that filled up the room and then some. That I would get the chance to see the pure joy and love in my children's eyes someday, wrapped up safe in my mom's arms. Everyone says that our kids will know their Mimi because she lives on in us, because we'll tell them her stories. They'll learn to not sweat the small stuff, to look for the first cardinal of the season, to make a wish on the Thanksgiving turkey's wishbone. On some days, this makes me smile. But then, on other days, I want to kick and scream at the loss, both my mom's and her grandchildren's.

There's a saying about best laid plans, but boy, did we have plans for my mom.

For our Mimi.

Finding Home

My husband and I are nomads. A fun game on a quiet Friday evening involves, “If you could live anywhere, where would you live?” Answers have included large cities, various countries. The answers have surprised us, terrified us, and comforted us. Then for a bonus round, we choose which furniture we would take. I suppose this has shown that we really hate the majority of our furniture. Especially the couch we bought for $50 from a woman off Craig’s List in Seattle. Although I liked her; she had two rowdy boys, and lived in a run down little cape cod in what turned out to be a fairly expensive area of town. Being a nomad is harder when you are a parent, and own a dog. Rentals don’t want you. Everywhere seems too expensive, and then there is a whole other emotional element. The biggest differences we have had in parenting is our perception of it. Becoming a mother brings out your hidden desires and biases. Who knew I could never live in a split level (gag)? Or that he likes cities and apartments, but couldn’t live in them with two kids and a dog? Or that the random homeless guy on our street would scare me so much more once I was pushing a stroller? Giving birth opens up so many hidden vulnerabilities in you.

We are looking for home. I constantly wonder, does everyone else go through this? This constant search for the place where the best parts of their childhood and adult selves converge? Are we just over-thinking it? Ever since we moved back to Florida, we both knew that it wouldn’t be permanent. Being pregnant with a second child now, makes me remember aspects about my own childhood. We talk about our favorite things. So many of mine revolve around the seasons. There was apple picking in the fall, and pies to be made. Pumpkins, and chilly October evenings perfect for a light jacket and a fire. Snow, and sledding, ice skating, trips to Chicago. He remembers big family gatherings, being close to his cousins, and the smell of the country: “Kind of gross, but nostalgic too.” We both ache for home. And then these things need to combine with our adult biases. We like good organic food, strong coffee, interesting people to hang out with. We are looking for all the best parts of a city, without the city prices. Does such a place even exist?

We’ve started to look at houses in his home town, a small middle of nowhere town in Pennsylvania. It’s quiet, and people live there forever, including most of his family. Driving around at night, the streets are silent, the streetlights hazy. It’s the kind of place where people rarely lock their doors. I didn’t know places like it still existed. And the houses, oh my, the houses themselves are enough to overcome the small town-ness of it. Great big 1800’s houses with period details, hulking doorways, towering ceilings. Houses with a history. Houses I could write my novel in (creative people work better in places with higher ceilings).

We have discovered that we are emotional real estate buyers. To love a house is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the feeling at the front door, finding all the best hiding spots for hide and go seek. It’s all those little quirky features that make it yours. I grew up on Lake Michigan in a cold windy town in Northern Indiana, in a drafty house built in the 1930’s. It had a laundry chute that ran down to the basement, and a drop down ironing board in the kitchen, inside a narrow little cabinet. My parents sold that home years ago, but the second they found a house in Florida with an ironing board just like it, they fell in love. Sometimes it’s all the little things that you remember. It doesn’t matter that I have never seen my mother iron on it, although I did many times as a child in Indiana, it’s the memory of it all.

But tell me, what is home to you? A smell? A memory? Have you found it, or are you eternally searching?

The greatest story

My grandmother turns 90 this month.  No question she’s lived a full and interesting life.  About a year ago she started mentioning that she might like to record ‘Her Story’, as she called it.  I immediately volunteered.  I believe with every fiber of my being in learning from those that come before. I’m fascinated by history, and travel, and stories of a different time, all of which this biography promised to contain.  We’re not done yet, but already there have been fabulous stories, some I knew already, some even my father hadn’t heard.  My grandmother grew up on a farm in rural Missouri during the depression, she married a soldier during World War II, she’s visited all fifty states (plus living in Alaska when it was a mere territory), she’s canned hundreds of jars of family-famous pickles, and she remembers it all.  This is my (current) favorite story.  It’s about my grandparent’s wedding.

My grandmother and grandfather are both from a small town in rural Missouri.  My grandmother actually grew up in a farm outside of town, but once she was old enough, she and one of her sisters moved to town.  Which is where she met my grandfather.  As things go, they talked, and dated, and at some point, decided to get married.  I’ve seen the gazebo where he proposed, but my grandmother has always remained tight-lipped about what he said.  I think my grandfather would have told, but she always got there first, saying that was between the two of them.  So they were engaged.  And then my grandfather had to return to base.  This was World War II, and like most men his age, my grandfather was serving his country.  I imagine they planned a wedding just as they must have kept in touch, via letters. I do know they planned on a June wedding.  This was 1944.

At the time, my grandfather was stationed in North Carolina, he was part of a medical unit that was training for deployment.  One day, my grandfather mentioned he was engaged and the wedding date.  Later that afternoon, his commanding officer called him in to the office.  There was no one else around. The C.O. opened the safe and pulled out a folder boldly marked SECRET.  He placed a page on his desk and covered all but one line with blotters.  The line said ‘. . . will depart this station on or about the 12^th of June . . .’  The officer put the folder back in the safe, and never mentioned it again.The first time I was told this story, I was quite young, and I didn’t understand the significance.  In a time of war and fear, my grandfather’s commanding officer broke what I can only guess to be several rules, and told my grandfather a date.  The date.  The date the company would be shipping out.  A date that happened to be before my grandparent’s planned wedding date.  The officer was letting my grandfather know, they needed to move up the wedding.

And so on Easter Sunday 1944, my grandparents were married.  My grandfather wore his military uniform, my grandmother a ‘store bought blue suit with pillbox hat and new shoes’.  My grandmother had ridden the train from St. Louis to South Carolina just days before.  The girls in my grandfather’s office had planned a wedding with all the trimmings, going so far as to surreptitiously visit each mess hall on base and empty the sugar bowls into their purses so that my grandparents might have a wedding cake. Two months later, my grandfather shipped off, just as his C.O. had known he would.  My grandmother would take a train back to St. Louis, and they wouldn’t see each other for fifteen months.

And to think, that was just the start of their story.

Telling a new story

"Roxanne Krystalli is a gender-related development specialist in conflict and post-conflict areas."

What do you do when the first line in your biography no longer fits?

I am between stories at the moment, a process that involves consistently living off the top two layers of my still-packed suitcases, debating the merits of paint swatches, and confronting the reverse culture shock inherent in returning to what used to be a home with the task of sorting out the disorienting dance between the unfamiliar and the too familiar.

And the first line no longer fits. Having worked in conflict and post-conflict areas, I know not to confound conflict and war. Conflict, human pain and strife exist in Boston and Colombia and Guatemala and Jerusalem and I have called all these places home at some point along the journey. Yet, you would hardly call Boston a "conflict or post-conflict area."

You would hardly call me a specialist. I have grown wary of specialists and experts. The longer I have worked with women affected by conflict worldwide, the more I have uncovered the boundaries of my knowledge. The universe of concepts I do not understand and of life I cannot make sense of keeps expanding. It would be out of step for the titles and labels to keep narrowing. "Specialist" and "expert" do not fit. Do not even get me started on "guru."

As I fill out the paperwork for orientation at the graduate program that is anchoring my return to Boston, I notice everyone is grabbing for story. The prompts might as well read "Tell us who you are . . . in 250 words or less. In a paragraph. In 140 characters. In a text message without emoticons. With bells and whistles, without embellishment, with enough intrigue for us to want to be your friends, roommates, or mentors."

Life stories evolve, and so do their 140-character biographies. I am slowly realizing that a bio is not the story of "is", not exclusively the story of here and now. It is a journey between points, a question about the axis on which you are traveling. The story of "has lived and has worked", not of "lives and works." And, perhaps most thankfully, it is the story of beyond "lives and works." On Twitter, in her own blog, in the Admitted Students Handbook, Roxanne Krystalli is - still - a gender-related development specialist who works in conflict and post-conflict areas.

In life, Roxanne Krystalli is in transition, perpetual transition. Her heart is in gender advocacy and conflict management, in the Middle East and Latin America. This is the work that feeds her faith in humanity, a phrase she overuses, right up there with "the universe is winking." Her mind likes to wrap itself around the concepts of remembrance and forgetting, nostalgia and grief, of storytelling as a vehicle of empathy and, shyly, maybe even as a vehicle of peacebuilding. She sees the world, really sees, through the viewfinder of a camera. She loves panda bears, everything that smells like vanilla, and the art of loving in itself---as an art.

This is not the stuff of LinkedIn, of student handbooks, or maybe even not of Twitter. But it is the story of now, the biography of a journey from elsewhere and a past "then" to a future that has yet to be painted.

My Story: Purpose

For most people, mid-life crises strike in middle age, when paunches are appearing and more hairs are grey than not. For me, the period of searching I began to jokingly refer to as my “quarter-life crisis” came calling a few years ago in early spring, a few months before I turned 21. Eight months after I got married, it was becoming clear that a bachelor’s degree was not going to be in my immediate future. My class schedule had been pared down until hardly anything remained; I spent my days going to class and doing homework for a degree that was realistically impossible at that particular moment in my life.

I felt adrift, confused, unsure of what my purpose in life was or what my next step should be. If not a college graduate, then what? My health wasn’t stable enough for even a part-time job. I desperately wanted children, but my husband and I had agreed to wait until my health was a little more manageable. Coupled with the fact that I knew that my cystic fibrosis was nearly a guarantee of a future infertility struggle, it seemed clear that motherhood was not something that would come to me easily or soon.

As the trees began to unfurl their first delicate green buds, I wrestled over and over with the feeling of being lost, purposeless, meaningless. Could there be value in a life so small, I wondered? Could there be a value in a life that was, more often than not, lived from the couch? Could there be value in a life that lacked all of the markers our society uses to define success—a degree, a job, children?

A few weeks after my soul-searching began, I reflected in a rather macabre moment that really, my “quarter-life crisis” might be considered a true “mid-life crisis,” if you consider a mid-life crisis to be the anxiety that strikes when you’ve lived half the years you can be expected to live. Currently, the average life expectancy for a cystic fibrosis patient is in the late thirties. Years later, I learned that plenty of CF patients in their early twenties experience a similar mid-life crisis.

Weeks passed. The snow in my mountain-locked home melted, leaving the earth saturated with mud and the constant sound of dripping in my ears. And still I felt empty, longing for a purpose. I had always been driven; I’d gone after the things I’d wanted with energy and zeal, and I usually got them. I had always had a purpose. I had been a daughter, a writer, a big sister and surrogate mother, a violinist, a student. I had had all number of big dreams, from publishing a book to living in Hawaii to teaching at a dance studio.

I felt, now, as though everything was being peeled away from me. I was left with only the barest of essentials, the simplest of responsibilities. The scope of my life was narrowing. I thought about these things constantly, talking them over with my husband, writing about them in my journal and on my blog, praying desperately for a purpose for my life.

And slowly, over a period of weeks, I began to find what I was looking for.

As days passed and I continued my relentless questioning, a word came into my mind again and again. Homemaker. It was not a term I had spent much time thinking about before; in the brief moments that I had, I had considered it a rather outdated phrase, one that pigeonholed a woman into a narrow frame of reference and failed to recognize her vibrant, dynamic nature.

But the word stayed. Homemaker. And as I pondered it, I had a revelation.

All my life, I had thought of "homemaker" as synonymous with "mother." After all, "homemaker" is the official term for a stay-at-home mother. When applying to college, I’d spent a lot of time checking boxes to indicate that my mom was a "homemaker." "Homemaker" was, in my opinion, the label that the corporate world had come up with to make a life of diaper changes and laundry baskets something you can put on an official document.

But as I thought about it, I realized something sensational: "homemaker" was not, in fact, the same thing as "mother." Although many mothers are homemakers, a homemaker does not have to be a mother.

I thought about the phrase: a simple compound word, really. Home-maker. One who creates a home. A woman who devotes herself to making her home a haven, a place of safety, comfort, and peace—for herself, her husband, and anyone who enters.

In that seemingly innocuous word, I found the sense of purpose I had been so desperately seeking. There were many things that I couldn’t—and still can’t—do. A year after that mid-life crisis, I officially withdrew from college. Three years since that spring of searching, I still don’t have a degree, or a job, or a child.

But I have been a homemaker. In every place that we have lived, I have worked hard to create a place of joy and love for my husband and myself. I have welcomed friends into our home for comfort, and companionship, and lots of late nights of games and laughter. I’ve discovered a passion for creating good, healthy food for my family.

I have made a home.

That moment of realization—the light-bulb instant where I realized just how much purpose could be found in such a neglected phrase—did not solve all my problems. I still had moments of guilt, and despair, and long nights where I felt worthless and obsolete. I still do.

But what that chilly spring so many years ago did do was answer one question that had haunted me for a long time before. Can there be value in a life so small?

Because what I have learned is that the answer is yes. There is always value. Even in the days where I feel most helpless—even in the days where I can hardly get off the couch—there is value. I am the maker of our home, an integral part in this family of two that my husband and I have created.

I have purpose.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here. 

Growing Up

When you live in New York City, there are moments when you find yourself at odds with her. When my husband, James, and I moved here a year ago, I was fresh out of graduate school and just starting a new job. James was on the job-hunt and together we moved into a tiny apartment on a six-month lease just to see if we could hack it. I'll admit that this first year has sometimes seemed like a test of wills. The wills in question being our own, and the apparent will of the city herself. I don't mean to exaggerate our struggles. We've been triumphant, almost entirely. We've survived moments of legitimate worry like car accidents and thefts and desperately low bank accounts. Those moments serve best as a way to put into perspective our complaints about laundromats and malfunctioning subway cards. Despite all odds, this month, we even managed to get married.

There's little about this past year that's been truly unique. The particulars, of course, but not the thrust of the story. Since moving together last June, we've been regaled with stories of a once-upon-a-time nature from other once-young couples who shared bathrooms with neighbors and subsisted on ramen and ketchup packets and fiddling in the subway. The stories usually finish with a sigh and a "You're only young once." But while on one hand these stories offer a sense of community and the relief that someone else has also survived a difficult moment, there is a risk, I think, in believing that this kind of struggle exists only for young people.

I spent Sunday with my 90 year-old cousin, Mildred, who has lived in the same New York City apartment for 60 years. She is the picture of grace and good humor, and like us, she battles a willful city. I've decided that it's still more hopeful to realize that struggle exists at all stages of our lives and that young or not we have the capacity to overcome it. In difficult moments, I've found, a few stems of fresh flowers make a world of difference. And it doesn't matter one bit if you're 28 or 90. Mildred agrees.

From North Dakota...

Dearest Clara,

You will raise a lot of eyebrows when you tell people where you’re from.  Nineteen months old and you’re already from  everywhere it seems---but I promise you the eyebrows will really pop off when you tell people that your mother grew up in North Dakota . . . Fargo to be precise.  Most people have never met anyone from North Dakota (although with all the news of oil, a lot more people seem to know about it now).  And you’ll hear a lot of jokes about being in the prairie and the wilderness.  But for all that we’ve traveled and seen, I have to say that some of the people and landscapes nearest and dearest to my heart have been from this state.

Here what I learned in my years growing up there:

• Wide open spaces are beautiful: And usually, they are beautiful because they are wide and open.  There is a reason people write songs about them.  The ability to see horizon to horizon is rare as we continue to pack ourselves into this world.  Sometimes, it can feel a bit lonely as you realize how small you are in comparison to the size of what is out there.  But most of the time I find them freeing and inspiring.  You might find yourself small, but you realize how big you can still be.
• Water is unpredictable: You would think that I would learn this lesson at the ocean, but the first time I realized the power of water, and then realized it again and again, was living next to the Red River that ebbs and flows according to what the season brings.  Water brings many gifts, but its power can come quickly and take them all away just as fast.  Don’t feel like you can outsmart water, ever.  You can be prepared though.
• Sweet and salty go together: Long before the salted caramel trend, a little shop in Fargo called Widman’s Candy, where so many close girlfriends worked in my high school years, caught on to the unique flavor that combining sweet and salty brings.  They hand-dipped their potato chips, made from North Dakota potatoes of course, in chocolate just so.  I always stop for a box when I’m home.  I always buy them with the intention of giving them as gifts, but somehow, they find their way onto my dessert plate instead.  Buy extra.
• Be part of a community: Many don’t realize it but North Dakota was once called out in a political science study for its civic engagement, which I learned about in university.  Once I thought about it, I realized it was true.  People belong to things here: bowling teams, churches, book clubs, the PTA, you name it.  And that means that they belong in general.  Be part of things, build things, and participate in your community.  After all, it will be what you make it.
• It's nice to be polite: Sometimes people in Fargo can really kill you with kindness.  They call you by name, they wish you a nice day, they go out of their way to help you at the DMV, they track down that extra set of tickets to the show you wanted to see.  It might seem overwhelming at first, almost as if it’s not genuine.  But it is---that need to be polite comes from the right place. When you are tempted to take the quicker road, take a minute to do the more polite thing.  You’ll make someone’s day, and you’ll feel better yourself.  Double-win.

We just returned from our first trip to North Dakota with you, full of sunshine and wheat fields, but this December we’ll be back for the holidays.  Winter here brings a whole new set of lessons---the first one being to bundle up! I suppose we should already start looking for a coat for you!

All my love,

Mom

The Beauty of Nowhere

I live kind of in the middle of nowhere. Which is a surprising fact if you’ve met me in real life. Friends have dropped their jaws and commented on my surprising nearness to agriculture. You see, I’m a city girl, tried and true: I like fancy coffee and large libraries, and the occasional shopping jaunt. But upon moving back from Bangladesh, it just so happened that my husband was offered a great job that just happened to be in the middle of nowhere. He drives on several gravel roads everyday just to get to work, which means I’ve given up on ever having a clean car. Technically I suppose we don’t live in the absolute middle of nowhere, but we are on the outskirts of a very small town. As someone who has always lived in the city (or at least in the suburbs) this is about as foreign as living in Bangladesh. It’s different in a new way. I like to say we’re ‘enjoying the experience,’ because an experience it is; there’s literally a cornfield in my backyard. A cornfield!

Most of the time, I don’t mind living in the middle of nowhere: I get to work from home, I rarely have to drive anywhere, gas and groceries are cheaper here.  But sometimes, sometimes I miss fancy coffee so much it makes my teeth ache.  Sometimes I think I might like to be the kind of woman who sits at an outdoor café with a book and a cup of coffee, just watching the world go by.  Sometimes I wish for a post office with one of those automated machines and a library whose collection wouldn’t fit in my parents' basement. I miss the air inside an art museum, how you can just about breathe in the beauty.  I crave a Sephora and an impulse nail polish purchase.

And then I jump in the car (to console myself with a cup of gas station iced coffee) or look out the window.  And I am just struck.  Struck still by the view.  The whiny voice in my head stops cold, my breathe catches, and I just stand there, staring. The views out here, the beauty of nature, the colors of the sunset, the vastness of the sky; it takes the air right out of my lungs.  I stop thinking about overpriced coffee and salespeople on commission.  And I breathe in the air as if I’m standing among priceless works of art; I have the same humbling sensation, the same whisper that creeps through my bones, the same tingle in my soul. I’m seeing, I’m surrounded, by color and brilliance and something so beautiful and strong that it passes the mundane and edges closer and closer towards sacred.

The sky reminds me of a Georgia O’Keefe painting hanging in The Art Institute in Chicago.  I don’t remember what it is called, but it’s a huge field of blue and white or white and blue depending on your perspective.  There is no horizon, it’s just sky, and it is magnificent.  Out here, the sky is so much more than just atmosphere. It dominates the landscape, it IS the landscape.  The clouds hang heavy, as if I could reach them if I only had a ladder.  In the city, clouds seem far away and less sturdy, more of a haze.  The clouds in my sky have depth and dimension.  I imagine if I had my ladder and reached up and poked one it would bounce back like a freshly baked cake.

In my backyard, just below the clouds, is a field of corn.  It’s less green than I imagine the farmer would like (we’ve been a little short on rain here), but the golden tops of the stalks remind me of wheat in Kansas.  During the day, as the light changes the same view twists into a hundred different varieties.  Sometimes the stalks are crisp and clear in the sunlight and heat. Sometimes they’re a little hazy in the wind. In the evening, they’re bathed in the pink of a country sunset.  Again, I’m reminded of a painting, or in this case a series, Claude Monet’s Haystacks.  Monet was fascinated by light, and how it changed everything, and so he painted the same subject, a haystack, in myriad lights and seasons (he did the same with water lilies).

The corn will be gone before long, and my view as I look out my back window will be completely different.  I can’t imagine it will be anymore breathtaking than the field of gold I’m currently enjoying and obsessively photographing.  But that’s the great thing about art, it’s always surprising you.

The Streets of Lisbon, The Views of Belem

I haven't been overseas since the beginning of 2012, which feels like the longest lapse between adventures in a decade. But my life in San Francisco is in flux and requires me to stay put. I suppose with various changes in my life, each day at home feels unfamiliar in its own way, so it's *almost* like I'm wandering in a new place, or at least experiencing similar sensations I feel when I roam the streets of a different country. But I feel the itch to explore again. To see colors I'm not used to seeing, like the oranges on the rooftops of the buildings in Lisbon. To smell whiffs of pasteis de nata, a flaky, golden Portuguese pastry I can almost taste right now. To turn a corner, to explore an alleyway, to find a picturesque hilltop miradouro from which to gaze—and dream.

Portugal, I'm thinking of you.

xo, Cheri

[gallery link="file"]

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

There is a house---a camp, really---on a lake in New Hampshire that is owned by my husband's extended family. It houses many generations of strong women; a matriarchal household in every sense of the word. Bought in 1948 by my husband's great uncle and his wife, many of the women who now run the house during the summer and collectively supervise their kids running through the woods and swimming in the lake grew up traipsing through the same woods and swimming in the same waters. It's a family with deep roots and a well-documented tree, but one that is also made of people who have been brought in and enmeshed through skinny dips and grilled hot dogs. Stand in the kitchen long enough, and you'll hear one of the women say "did you hear about the time when..." before the rest of them break out in peals of laughter that carry down to the lake and across the water. The more time you spend here, the more clearly the ghosts materialize and give a sense of tradition to the rhythm of the day that has survived with the minimal necessary evolutions for over 60 years. Claude and Phyllis (the couple who bought camp) skinny dipping early in the morning and serving hot dogs and milkshakes for lunch; the bouncing Jack Russell terrier begging to be let in by appearing in two second intervals in the open top half of the Dutch door on the porch (after chasing a squirrel into its hole and getting his face stuck in its burrow); my mother-in-law first learning to waterski by sitting on the shoulders of her cousin as the boat pulled them both up. In these stories, the men are key players to be sure, but their narratives remain peripheral. The driving characters of the stories of camp are the women. I am weaving myself into the fabric of this family, first as a girlfriend, then a wife---a friend, a mother, an aunt. The Christmas before I married Jordy, the ladies of camp bought me a beach towel with my name embroidered on it. It was to be left here for the winters, awaiting my return each July. I took the gift as a statement: just as there was a place in the hall linen closet for my new towel, there was a place in this family for me. I've come here this week for a family vacation. My in-laws are here, and my husband has a rare break from work. This is more than a vacation, though. By coming here, I get to reconnect with women (and their kids) who I see maybe twice per year, but to whom I feel viscerally connected. They've held me in hard times, called me sister in happy times, and loved me unconditionally through both. For 64 years, the women of camp have gathered by the water, surrounded by bronzed children of various ages to discuss our lives, to discuss current events, to discuss what to make for dinner, to discuss what we're reading. We call ourselves "the ladies of the beach."

It's funny to have such a strong connection to the history of a family that is not biologically mine (in the abbreviation-language of camp, I am an NBR---a Non-Blood Relative). In many ways, I think that spending time with Jordy's family on land that they have shared for so long binds me to his family in a more raw and fundamental way than any other could. I learned to water ski the same way and in the same water that my husband and his entire family learned; my daughter jumps off the same rocks that my mother-in-law jumped off as a little girl, and we all make a daily pilgrimage to the ice cream shop where 2 generations have worked during the summer. The oldest of the third generation will be old enough to continue the tradition next year, and we are all eagerly awaiting her employment (though our waistlines may disagree). Connecting with Jordy's family this way encourages me to love him (and them) even more deeply, and in a sense for more time. Though my time moving forward is limited, I feel like with each summer here, I get time both in the present, and also in the past. It's a richer, augmented experience when you're layering summer on top of summer on top of summer. I recently picked up The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home by George Howe Colt. It's a story of a summer house, like this one, and the family that inhabits it. I just started the book, but I love the way that the house and the land are intertwined with the family and its history. The author's memories of his grandparents are similar to the memories that Jordy has, and likely similar to the memories that Emi will have as she grows up. It was handed to me as soon as I arrived, looking for something to read. I just finished 1Q84, and needed something to thumb through at the beach in-between discussions of the latest article in People or Frank Rich's column that morning. Reading is an integral weft in the social fabric of the ladies at camp. We love books, we love to read, and we love to talk about what we're reading. Here's a sample of what's made an appearance at the beach this week. If some of the reviews seem short, it's because I made people tell me what they were reading as they were running through the house on their way to the beach, the grocery store, or to watch the Olympics (the only time, save for the U.S. Open, that the television is allowed on).

Lulu, 65 The matriarch of this house, Lulu, has made it her business to extend her family. She is the wife of Claude and Phyllis' younger son, John, and is at the center (though some days she would like to be removed from it) of camp life. A fellow only child, Lulu's philosophy is that there are always enough beds, and we can always make dinner stretch to accommodate a few more. Lulu is an honorary grandmother to most of the kids here, and is an honorary mother to all of us. She is the grandmother who waterskis and swears like a sailor and finishes the crossword in the Sunday Times, and she makes it her business to keep alive the history of camp (and with it, her husband's family). When you come to camp, you inevitably hear the stories of this place, and Lulu is often the one telling them. Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichel "I love it. It's a memoir of her childhood with a very crazy mother and how food became so important in her life. She comes from a really crazy family, and she just by happenstance gets connected to a family that loves food, and she discovers that when the world isn't working well, you can make a good meal and all is suddenly right with the world."

Nancy, 70 Nancy's husband, Ricky, was raised with John, Lulu's husband. Both of their fathers were off fighting in WWII, and their mothers, Dot and Phyllis, moved in together. Both nurses, they were best friends, and each had two boys. They got double coupons and worked opposite shifts so that while one worked, the other watched all of the children. They shared jobs---Dot hated darning, so Phyllis did that, but Dot did all of the maintenance. The husbands were in the same medical corps in Italy. Ricky's family used to rent the camp next door when Claude and Phyllis bought this camp, and Nancy first came up to the lake when she and Ricky became engaged.

Nancy, through sheer luck, stayed up here the summer that I brought newly-born Emi to camp. She would rock Emi as Emi screamed and screamed, and she would sit with me through the seemingly never-ending nursing sessions telling me stories of her own family, in and out of which members of our family would dance. Asked about her favorite things about camp, she says, "The thing that always struck me was the intergenerational thing, the cocktail hour with the great grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and kids, sharing stories and sharing time. All of the ages and stages and kids, and everyone just kind of took care of their own kids and other kids---kind of like how it is now. Oh, and coming down to the beach with all of these very professional, intelligent, highly educated women sharing stories from smutty magazines."

War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy "It's a book that I never in a million years thought I would read (even though I'm an English teacher), but my book club decided they would do it. I am fully immersed in it. The first 100 or so pages were difficult just because of the many characters and getting the names straight (and feeling intimidated by the fact that it's War and Peace). But once you get over that, Tolstoy is so fluid and so all-encompassing and he understands human nature and the big picture so well, but he includes detail to make it seem here and now. The writing is a narrative, so you read it for a story, but you also get a sense of the history and the philosophical and ethical issues that people thought about at that time in Russia (and even now): the nobility and the peasants; why people go to war. You're also brought back by the everydayness of the characters that he creates, and they become real. It's a great read. We were supposed to read 200 pages and meet and read another 200 pages, but I've almost finished it because I've become so involved with it."

Emily, 37 Emily and I became fast friends when she started dating Jordy's cousin, Evan (Lulu's son). She is one of the funniest people I know. She was married here at the lake, and I was one of her bridesmaids. She returned the favor for me when I married Jordy. Her daughters, 4 1/2 and 2 years old, sandwich Emi in age, and the three of them are quite a sight to behold when they are galavanting together on the beach. Emily now does the Sunday crossword with Lulu, and she's the only person I know who can beat Jordy at Scrabble.

"I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. I loved it up until the very end, but I couldn't put it down---I was sneaking reads during work. It was a page turner, and you didn't know what was happening. It was a good mystery, and how you felt about the characters changed throughout the book at different points. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain at the beginning of the summer. It's written from the point of view of a dog---[she looks at me raising my eyebrows and goes, "I know, but it's really good."] the dog is this smart being, but because of how he was created (with a floppy tongue, no thumbs)---he's stuck with his thoughts and knowledge of things but no way to express himself. I just started reading Sharp Objects."

Alice and Claudia, 10 I've known Alice and Claudia (sisters, daughters of Jordy's cousin) since they were toddlers, speaking in one-word sentences and eager to investigate my shoes every time I came to their house. Watching them grow has been astonishing; if ever there were two more interesting 10 year olds, I don't know them. Alice is wonderfully imaginative and creative. This week, she made a magic wand for her brother out of a twig that she had stripped the bark off of in a striped pattern, and a vine woven around and anchored with pine sap. Claudia is thoughtful and funny and up for anything. She's also incredibly creative, and her wrists are buried in brightly colored friendship bracelets that she's made. The two sisters, along with their brother and cousins, are delighted to invite Emi to play with them, and are old enough to be able to tell her stories when she's older about her first years here.

Alice The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman, Meg Wolitzer "It's about this dude who plays Scrabble, and he has a power in his fingers to read things with his fingertips. They're in a tournament in Florida. I got it for my birthday from Grandma and Grandpa. It was on the Chautauqua reading list."

Claudia The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan "It's the second in a series the Heros of Olympus, which is the sequel series to the Percy Jackson series. It's about a boy, Percy Jackson, who's memory is taken by Hera/Juno, and he loses 8 months of his life with the wolf Lupa and her pack, learning to fight. Then he leaves the wolves and journeys to the Roman demigod camp and he's originally from the Greek demigod camp. I read the first one in the series and it was about a boy, Jason, who gets the same thing but goes from the Roman camp to the Greek camp, and he has to unite the camps before the prophesy can come true. It's so good, I've read it seven times."

After a bit of questioning, Claudia admits she's read it seven times because she's already read (or can't find) the other books in the top of the boathouse, where the girls sleep. I promise to take her to town tomorrow to get a new book to read at the local bookstore. She'll read it and give it to her sister and cousins---I imagine that it will end up in one of the bookshelves in the house, waiting for Emi to grow into it. As for our trip into town, I can't promise anything, but it will likely include an ice cream cone. I know all too well that in a blink, Claudia will be old enough to drive herself, and in another one old enough for me to take her kids for her while she catches a moment to read on the beach.

Creating Sabbath

When I was growing up, Sundays were church days for my family. We'd get up in the morning—later than on school days, but somehow, it still felt early—and elbow one another out of the way of the bathroom mirror for primping and toothbrushing. Then, we'd pack into the car and head to Sunday school and worship services. Afterwards, we'd grumble about the sermon running long and pile into the car again with hungry bellies. We usually had lunch out at some sort of "family restaurant" (bonus points if they served raspberry iced tea and had a free salad bar) and then went home for naps and homework. At the time, I didn't give much thought to what a Sabbath could be or should be. For us, it included a lot of eating, a little resting and praying, and a good dose of getting in each others' way. Sometimes I wondered what other kids did on Sunday mornings, but mostly I didn't question the shape of my week.

Fast forward through college and graduate school, and my Sabbath doesn't happen on Sundays anymore. After converting to Judaism, I began observing the Jewish Sabbath ("Shabbat"), which takes place from Sundown on Friday to Sundown on Saturday. My Sabbath not only takes place on a different day of the week, but the characteristics of the day itself are a little different too. While there are many different ways to observe Shabbat, mine centers around a festive evening meal on Friday and includes a lot of reading and resting on Saturday.

Perhaps one of the most curious differences between my childhood Sabbath and my current practice is that I no longer use phones, computers, or transportation during the "Sabbath" portion of my weekend. This probably sounds odd. And to be honest, I've never really come up with a satisfying explanation or justification of this practice. There are as many reasons for rituals as there are people who practice them, and perhaps more.

But soon after Shabbat took hold of my Friday nights and Saturdays—at first out of curiosity and then, perhaps, out of inertia—it became a nonnegotiable. It's a strange thing, to commit to doing almost nothing for a whole night and day each week. It's just a bit too long, actually, so that by Saturday evening I'm often a little restless, bored, or uncomfortable, more than ready to return to my regularly scheduled programming.

But at the busiest and most stressful moments during the week, I find that I try to conjure up something of the essence of the most recent Shabbat. It has something to do with quiet and stillness and do-nothing time. Ironically, my do-nothing time is often my most creative thinking time. While I'm not-writing, I can't help but conjure up a million different ideas to write about. Given this extra breathing room, my mind starts to play. Sure enough, I forget most of my "brilliant" ideas by Sunday morning, or as soon as I'm poised at the desk and ready to type my little heart out. But at least I know they're there, somewhere beneath the surface of daily life.

These days, I don't have to wonder what other kids do on Sunday mornings, but I do wonder a lot about how others practice "Sabbath." When and how do you like to rest? What's the shape of your weekend? Whether you've taken a sabbatical year or found ways to incorporate stillness into each day, I'd love to know, what does "Sabbath" mean to you?

A Half Moon Land Between Sky and Sea…

Liguria, Italy.

My Memories.

When I was little, my grandparents bought a house in Sestri Levante, a small village located along the Ligurian Riviera, in Italy. Since then, I like to take refuge there every time I can, losing myself in thoughts and simply relaxing. It’s easy for me to reach this half moon of land between sky and sea, as it’s only a two-hour car ride from Milan. Yet, this place seems so far away too, perhaps lost somewhere in my memories. I still remember when I was four or five, and my grandma used to push me around Sestri on my stroller because I was too lazy to walk. Well, she never suspected that I only played lazy, but I actually loved knowing I was the center of her world.

 

Nowadays I like travelling throughout the region with my husband, in search for hidden corners in a salt and sun smelling blooming nature. Liguria is a dream land to me, rich in intimate and unique details which suddenly appear to your side and fascinate you for their beauty---ancient defense towers stretching out towards the sky, small churches, chestnut woods, miles of walks with gorgeous panoramic views on sea and inland. It is the land where I spent my summers as a child and nourished my first innocent hopes and dreams.

Celebrating The Land - A Famous Italian Poet and His Words.

Prose writer, editor and translator who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1975, Eugenio Montale was born in Genoa. He spent his summers at the family villa in a small village nearby the Ligurian Riviera called Monterosso, and later images from its harsh landscape found their way into his poetry.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A white dove has landed me among headstones, under spires where the sky nests. Dawns and lights in air; I've loved the sun, colors of honey, now I crave the dark, I want the smoldering fire, this tomb that doesn't soar, your stare that dares it to. 

Collected Poems, 1920-1954, translation by Jonathan Galassi.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To slump at noon thought-sick and pale under the scorching garden wall, to hear a snake scrape past, the blackbirds creak in the dry thorn thicket, the brushwood brake.

Between tufts of vetch, in the cracks of the ground to spy out the ants’ long lines of march; now they reach the top of a crumb-sized mound, the lines break, they stumble into a ditch.

To observe between the leaves the pulse beneath the sea’s scaly skin, while from the dry cliffs the cicada calls like a knife on the grinder’s stone.

And going into the sun’s blaze once more, to feel, with sad surprise how all life and its battles is in this walk alongside a wall topped with sharp bits of glass from broken bottles.

“Meriggiare pallido e assorto”, by Eugenio Montale, translation by Millicent Bell.

Liguria Through My Eyes.

 

 

When Memories Collide

You could have fit five people in the front of this car. In Alexandria, maybe even eight.

In the early days of knowing one another, before love, we crammed into a 6-person van to see the other side of the Mediterranean. Having grown up in Thessaloniki, Greece, the Mediterranean always faced south of me. Watching the waves crash with an awareness that more sea lay north was a sight I needed to behold. Accomplishing that involved cramming 11 foreigners in a car that was designed for 6. My first glimpse of Alexandria took place while I was sitting on a woman's lap with my head bumping up against a sticker of Hannah Montana. Next to me, there were two men in the driver's seat. One of them was holding the door open. Or closed. Whichever way you look at it.

Those early days of Hannah Montana and two drivers and a stranger on your lap set the precedent for our driving excursions in the years to come. There was that one car we rented with an engine so loud that we would have to shout directions to one another to be heard. There was that other car-like vehicle with seats so small that our fingertips touched as he steered and I unfolded the map.

***

And now we are sitting in a car named Valor. A car with front seats so wide that you could fit our whole Egyptian clan between him, the driver, and me, the recently-arrived passenger.

"It feels strange to have you so far away," I tell him, aware of the irony that he feels far one seat away from me when we have just spent two months of summer a continent and a half away from one another.

"I know," he responds. "It's not a rental car if we are not practically sitting in each other's laps."

This is the kind of car that lets you plug in your iDevice of choice to fill the space with music. I fumble with the cables and remember driving through Kentucky with a car that only accepted cassette tapes, through Israel with the car that would not read CDs, through a desert with a car that would only broadcast Galgaalatz FM.

"Beit Habubot!" I scroll through his iPhone and find the music that provided the soundtrack to our last road trip, to what we had then nicknamed The Farewell Tour. Music pours out of Valor's sound system and all I hear is the sound of waterfalls in May, all I see is a green scarf tied around my hair and droplets forming on his forehead as we hike. Higher. Onward.

***

Beit Habubot continues to play in the background and I struggle to catch my breath as he drives through Harvard Square. I am not used to experiencing this space from behind a windshield. There are no one-way streets on foot for foreign freshmen walking to get their first burrito, or for sophomores slipping on ice, or juniors getting their heels caught in the cobblestone. By senior year, I had driven a U-Haul through here. I had already put a layer between myself and the site of memories, reinforced by the rage Boston driving inspires and the need to shelter oneself from cold and farewells.

In a minute, Harvard Square is behind us. We are past it. It is neither our final destination nor our shared one. This was Home for me before I had ever heard of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Before "home is wherever I'm with you." Before him, and us, and love. Redrawing this memory to carve out space for him, and us, and a car named Valor feels like worlds colliding.

***

We park in front of a falafel shop in Davis Square. If Beit Habubot was the soundtrack of our shared explorations in the Middle East, then falafel was certainly the culinary backdrop. I had a favorite "falafel guy", he had a favorite "kebab man", and both of them made us promise that we would come back to Jerusalem in the future. My return to a former home well-loved is accountable to mashed chickpeas.

This falafel shop is hip. The walls are bright red. There are certificates of cleanliness on the wall, and of Not Being a Fire Hazard, and of being Allergen-Aware, and so many certificates that my head hurts with propriety. More typed signs, more instructions on how to make a falafel sandwich. Instructions on how to eat. Instructions on avoiding the garlic sauce. In the back, a woman is sculpting the mashed chickpeas into the perfect falafel ball. I can feel my falafel man cringing a continent away.

***

We take our falafel to go and Valor soon smells of the Middle East. Right by the checkout counter, we picked up a flyer about falafel. More instructions. More information. I read outloud to him in an homage to all the times I read out from a Lonely Planet or an incomplete map. "Falafel was a mid-1962 discovery for coca farmers in remote Colombia."

He does not let me finish the sentence. That is too much for both of us. We can deal with the transposition of Beit Habubot from Zefat to Harvard Square. We can wrap our minds around the slow shift from the overpacked van with Hannah Montana stickers on its ceiling to the Kias and tiny Fiats to the Valor. But Colombian falafel is where we draw the line.

"You know I love Colombia. You know just how much I love it," I offer. "Wouldn't it be convenient if falafel were from there?"

He does not need to respond. We have both born witness to Egyptians and Jordanians and Lebanese and Israelis lay claim to falafel as their national food. We have participated in the taste tests. We were even willing to carve out some room for it in our new home, to let it be part of a new story. Secretly, we may have even been hoping we could draw out a falafel man with his cart on these cobble stone streets. Colombian falafel, however, is too much of a stretch, too much of a collision of memories.

We drive back through Harvard Square in silence. Tamacun by Rodrigo y Gabriela is playing in the background. I picture him making pancakes in our Beer Sheva home and me getting in the way of the ladle with my kitchen dancing. We have each arrived in Boston with two-ish suitcases, but the hidden load is that of the memories of all the Elsewheres we have loved. We do not quite know how to be here. We were not quite ready for this collision of falafel and Colombia and Beit Habubot and Valor, of my Harvard Square and his driving, of his guitar in the corner and my baggage. Neither of us has unpacked. In a sense, we do not need to. There are memories spilling out of everything, slowly filling the empty space.

Conversations with Myself as an Old Woman

By Eliza DeaconKilimanjaro, Tanzania

Gnarled hands that are surprisingly pale, folded in her lap. Capable hands, although she never liked them despite their ability to reach one note over an octave on the piano. She’s always stayed out of the sun, not for vanity, but because she doesn’t like the sun or the heat---funny for someone who has spent the last 60 years of her life in Africa. You can look like leathery old strips of biltong otherwise, the intense heat of mid-day etched deep into crinkles and creases. Nice faces though, lived-in, they look like they belong here.

Here she became the person she never thought she was before---hidden away, in a too-tall lanky body, by insecurities and doubt, never entirely comfortable in the skin she was born with. It wasn’t so simple, but then this continent never is; it tests and challenges, weeds the strong of heart from those who shy from its extremes. It can drive you mad and it’s easy to stumble, the dusty earth is often rock-strewn and rarely flat.

She often used to wonder if this was a place to grow old; she never wanted to feel fear and it’s here sometimes---visits at night with the winds, with shiftas and waizi . . . thieves who come in when the moon is low, skulking around the perimeters in whispers. The dogs bark and the old Maasai askaris keep them at bay, but they’re still out there. And fear is an unwelcome guest, especially when you know your limitations.

She and the man she loves know of nowhere else to go. This place they call home is just that and has claimed them wholly. They have both been spat off the continent before, thrown out of the land they were bound to. For him, because the colour of his skin was deemed wrong, despite having the right passport. For her, because she was told she had just been there too long. But where else to go? Where else do you find the life that offers you the most extraordinary freedom, whilst always with cruel accuracy reminding you that this freedom comes at a price?

At times she wonders at how she can still find the thrill in that particularly African golden light that comes just before dark, that one-hour grace period when everything else is forgotten and the Gods smile down on all. And the moment when walking on the farm, she startles a wild animal and it’s frozen, staring with wide eyes, preserved in that drawn-out moment until neither can bear it any longer and the spell is broken.

She remembers things: bare feet on wet grass, stepping carefully in the darkness, the smell of sweet wild jasmine and night sounds in her soul, feeling giddy with wildness in the shadow of the mountain. And she remembers a dress covered in a thousand sparkling sequins. As they drove down the long farm road towards a moonlit gathering, it filled the inside of the car with colour, like stars that no-one could see but them.She files away all these memories, carries them carefully in a treasure box, revisits them at sunset when, sitting on the veranda with a glass in hand, the world slows down and sinking back into the past is easy and without regret. Old now, but there is so much that is good here. As much as you can ‘belong’, they know that they have been marked, carry the scars as well as the laughter. There is permanence and stability in its indelible stain and it ties them to that dusty African soil, a compass that always points them home.

The End of the Summer

TS Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock’s life was “measured out in coffee spoons.” My life has been measured out in back-to-schools. Every year of my life has featured a significant back-to-school transition. Even before I started kindergarten, my family’s routine shifted when my mother, a professor, went back to school. During the three years of my adult life when I was neither in school nor teaching, my wife was working in college student affairs, where the back-to-school season is strenuous, and feels like a marathon. Some of my most distinct memories are back-to-school related. I remember walking with my mother to my first day of kindergarten, and the very cool bag in which I carried my supplies (it featured an applique pencil).  I remember going to my high school before school started to pick up my schedule and walk through it several times so I could master the cavernous layout of the sixties-era monolith.  I will never forget (and I realize that phrase is overused, but in this case, it’s actually true) watching my parents drive away from my college dorm and feeling the strangest combination of feelings---excitement and fear and an intense sadness.  My first day of student teaching created a confusion of feelings.  Being neither teacher nor student left me in a sort of transitory space, and made the day more difficult to process.

Now, as an adult, one who is entering her eighth year of full-time teaching, I no longer find the back-to-school experience particularly momentous. There’s the change in routine, and a new pack of red pens, and new faces in the classroom, but it feels familiar, almost comforting. What is significant now is the end of the summer. It begins right about now as my teaching friends in southern states go back to work and it continues until I begin again right after Labor Day.

Last summer was a blur of parenting a newborn. I remember little beyond being exhausted and sometimes stopping for ice cream when we put the baby in the car to coax him to sleep through the rhythm of the driving. In a way, it was refreshing to know I could do no more than simply tend to him and my wife. That often meant that a day’s big accomplishment was picking up groceries or cleaning the bathroom.

This summer, however, I had plans. Yet, much like every summer, the season is winding down and I feel as though I have accomplished little of those plans. I’ve read books, but not as many as I’d like. My son and I have gone on many wonderful outings, but there have also been days when weather or timing have prevented us from doing anything memorable. Work, which should have felt far away, has encroached on my leisure through e-mails, the occasional meeting, and the fact that a teacher’s job is never done---there are always lessons to be tweaked or new texts to be considered.

It’s easy to let August turn into a Month of Regret. I ask myself what I could have done differently to feel more accomplished.   I try to carve out moments to satisfy my leisure goals while beginning to prepare things for my classes. I watch women’s Olympic soccer for the sake of both enjoyment and procrastination. Soon, it’s mid-August, and then it’s the end, and the whole month I feel a creeping sense of frustration. In June, the summer feels wide open. It’s freedom!  I know many teachers think of it as a “freedom from.” It’s a break from the early mornings, the capriciousness of young people, the grading, the planning. I try to remember that a teacher’s summer really is a “freedom to.” I want to grab the freedom to do more things than are reasonably possible, and it is that optimism in June that causes regret in August. In a way, it’s no different than how I felt as a child. The summer wanes, and real life presents itself again. It is bittersweet, but it comes with the season, and feels as familiar to me as the changing of the leaves.

On baking bread (and losing track of time)

Baking bread is a deceptively simple task. Not easy, necessarily, but simple. I used to be very intimidated by the entire category of “yeast bread.” It had something to do with the mystery of the process, I think, but I also attributed a sort of aura to that rare category of people who bake bread.

To me, it seemed nothing short of miraculous that flour, water, and yeast could be transformed from an unwieldy, sticky mass into a round, golden foundation for a meal.

Everything changed for me during graduate school, when I lived with a roommate who baked bread on a regular basis in our very own humble kitchen. After over a year of lurking while she baked and feasting on the results, I decided to give it a try.

I was surprised to discover that, in addition to the three basic ingredients, a good loaf of bread is created with two guiding principles: patience and restraint.

Although a recipe may call for an hour and a half of rising time, this estimate is arbitrary. A lump of dough has a mind of its own. It will be ready when it’s ready. My advice is not to set a timer, but rather, after you have whipped up a batch of dough that is not too dry and not too sticky, cover it with a damp tea towel and forget about it.

This is the point at which it is very important to lose track of time. I would urge you to take a very long walk or a very long nap. Or perhaps both. Your dough will be better for it, and your body will thank you.

If, upon returning, that little batch of dough looks quite the same as when you started, resist the urge to poke and prod it and generally do something to it. While your dough is rising, it does not need you. Best to leave it alone and start up a new project. Something terribly all-consuming, like organizing your sock drawer or folding paper cranes, will do just fine. Or perhaps another nap is in order.

Hopefully, you’ll have started your dough sometime in the morning or early afternoon. And if your stomach is beginning to growl for dinner, you can be pretty sure your dough is finally ready for you to get involved again. It is much bigger now, and looser and wobblier, than when you started.

At this point, you may cover your hands in flour, punch down your dough, and turn it out onto a floured surface. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the iconic doing moment in the life of a loaf of bread: kneading. But remember your restraint. Kneading is a transient process, a few moments of turning the dough and folding it back onto itself. Try not to knead the life out of it.

Now that you’ve spent a little time with your dough, I’m sure you’d like to pop it right into the oven. Don’t. Cover it back up with that tea towel and forget about it again. Set to work on the other aspects of dinner, which will hopefully involve sautéed onions and will definitely take a while. Get the oven going at a high temperature, somewhere near 400 degrees, perhaps. When things are beginning to come together and starting to look like the components of a meal, you can finally transfer your dough from counter to oven (minus the towel).

I know, you’re getting really hungry now. Me too. Don’t worry. It’ll only bake for a little while—perhaps twenty minutes or so, depending on the bread and the oven—before it’s golden brown and ready to toss into a basket and onto the table.

Your bread is hot still, so I suppose you’d better start with a glass of wine or a passionate conversation. Or both. Some of the simplest, most wonderful things cannot be rushed. They’ll take all day. It’s worth the wait.

From Berchtesgaden, Germany...

Dearest Clara, When we lived in Vienna, one of our favorite getaways was in the mountains, just across the border in Germany.  We spent so many weekends there---we took you for the first time when you were barely two months old, and we absolutely had to go back during our return trip this summer.  There is something about these mountains that keeps drawing us in, and I suspect we’ll be going back for years to come, even though this wouldn’t be the type of place to top most people’s “places to go list.”  All the better I say, it just leaves more of this gorgeous landscape undisturbed for those of us in the know to enjoy!

Berchtesgaden can be a tricky place.  It’s so beautiful that you want to think it was laying here so peacefully forever, but the truth is that it had its role in a darker side of history.  And visiting there presents somewhat of a quandary about how to reconcile those two things.  For me, what I’ve learned over the years is that will always be your responsibility to know the history of the places you visit.  But be sure to separate the past from the future that any place is trying to build---by being aware of both, you’ll be able to feel out what your assessment is of the present.

In addition, I’ve learned the following from this charming mountain town:

• The view from the top is always worth it: There are no shortage of hills and mountains in this area, some that you have to walk, some you can cheat a little and ride a gondola  to the top.  I think so often we breeze through places like these and just take the time to see the town and move on, but the real treat is what you see from the top of the mountain, not the bottom, so make sure you always plan for a few of these jaunts when you come across elevation.
• Tradition should always have a home: When places are small and not on the beaten path, we are quick to write them off as closed and narrow. But some people work very hard to preserve their traditions.  This time around we stumbled onto a parade of local villages, all with families in their local variations of national costumes . . . all handmade. there are very few places where such craft by hand can survive.  Know when to let people keep their traditions.
• Beef should be expensive: This sounds funny right? But in the hotel that we always stay at, they often have “filet of local heifer” on the menu and the translation has always made us giggle a bit.  And it happens to be the most expensive item on the menu by far.  This is common in many alpine areas, even though the meat is local to the region.  But it takes a lot of time and resource to raise animals that are out on fresh pasture, with space and cleanliness and natural foods.  Of course there are faster and cheaper ways of raising animals, but ultimately, animals are living things and should be respected as such.  I guarantee you it doesn’t taste the same when you take a shortcut.  You won't be able to take the long way as often though.
• Change can come quickly: Much like near the sea, the weather in the mountains can change in what seems like an instant.  Many times we’ve started out in sunshine and watched black clouds roll in, erupting the mountains into flashes of lightning.  A little extra preparation and know-how will protect you in places where change is the constant.
• Protect what’s still clean: Near where we stay there is a beautiful lake which is one of the largest and deepest in the country, but is also the cleanest.  In fact, you can drink water right out of this huge body of water in any place on the lake.  That is a rare gift that this water has been taken care of so well over so many years.  When you find these pockets of clean air . . . water . . . land . . . it is your responsibility to help keep them that way---when you find pockets that have strayed, you still have to do your part.

All my love,

Mom

Defining Simplicity: An Introduction

I fell in love with women’s magazines by about age twelve. My mom had a friend who was a librarian, and she would bring us back issues that would then pile up around the house, their glossy covers beckoning. Each issue offered its own promises of quick weight loss, clutter-free closets, and five-minute meals. I guess you could say I grew up in a sort of magazine heaven. Our house was a place where serials came to live on, far past their prime, dog-eared and well-loved. They made the journey from couch to recycle bin only on rare occasions and more often remained nestled under beds, in over-full baskets, or between cushions. Ironically, these volumes of promise eventually became a part of the clutter and weight of our material lives.

Of all the magazines I lived among, one title stood out above all others: Real Simple. I devoured the how-tos on packing healthy lunches for your kids, simplifying your beauty routine, and entertaining effortlessly. I remember a summer weather tip that suggested cooling off by running cold water over your wrists. How simple. I couldn’t get enough of it.

If I visualized my grown-up life, it was a collage of images and checklists swiped from between the covers of countless issues of Real Simple. From an adolescent perspective, age 35 looked something like a hazy mishmash of perfect white button-downs, a couple of charming children, a golden retriever, and something called a “work/life balance.” Above all, I was filling notebooks and mental file cabinets with instructions for keeping it all “simple.”

These days, my dreams have evolved (although, the ever-elusive perfect white button-down is still on my radar), but “simple” has stuck. It’s become a recurring question and a promise I encounter on a daily basis. Simple time management strategies. Simple DIY. Simple meals. Simple cell phone plans. Simple apps. Simple weddings. Simple investing. Simple skincare. Simple living.

I can’t help but wonder, what does “simple” really mean? And what is “simplicity”? A state of mind? A practice? A place? An illusion? Even a dictionary defines “simple” mostly by what it is not. It is not complicated, ornate, artificial, elaborate, or affected. More subtly, I would argue that “simplicity” is not necessarily cheap or convenient or easy, though the terms are often used interchangeably.

What is “simple,” then? And why does “simplicity” continually elude us and tempt us as consumers and as human beings? These are just a few of the questions I hope to explore in this column, through stories and memories and wonderings.

For now, though, I’d love to know what simplicity means to you. Where and when and how have you encountered it or achieved it in your own life? Or, alternately, how has simplicity eluded you?