Sunday, July 04, 2004
As I write, the honey-colored sunlight is arching through my Tibetan prayer flags and dancing along the white living room wall. It’s the evening of the fourth of July, and I’m at home. Somehow, this year, I couldn’t participate in any of the big Americana activities. Usually, I peal with laughter, like a little kid, at the sight of fireworks exploding in the night sky. I stand on my tiptoes and clap with glee. But this year, I just can’t do crowds and noise. My time in small Sitka has ruined me.
I had a hard time returning this year. Every year, when the plane descends after two hours of flying away from Alaska, I peer down at Seattle below me and think, “Turn back! This is wrong.” Especially this year. Everything looked brown and overpopulated. Squat and impersonal. Too large. I don’t think I can live in a city much longer. So the first day back, I stayed in the house. (Except for a slow walk to Macrina Bakery, for an herb baguette, olive tapenade, half a roast chicken, goat cheese, fresh fruit, and a bing cherry tartlette. No more cafeteria food for me. I had a picnic on the floor by myself.) Connecting with friends on the phone. Unpacking slowly. Writing for hours. And it was the first time at home, since the car accident, without the constant nagging feeling of needing to do something productive. An entire day of silence, without responsibilities. A good way to be.
Yesterday, I spent the day with my nephew. He grew taller and more confident in my absence. He smiled wide when I entered the door. We spent the entire day playing. I read him a dozen books, then a dozen more. We bounced on the orange ball. We practiced walking. (He’s learned how to do pratfalls, just to make me laugh.) I watched him watching the world, sitting with him in silence, not needing to be anywhere else. And then we ate grapes and watched the breakfast sequence from PeeWee’s Big Adventure. My brother and I shared it all, and laughed.
In the evening, my friend Tita and I walked slowly through a secluded nature reserve on the island, a couple of miles of narrow path cut through green trees. It reminded me of Sitka, and I could feel my center of gravity drop. She had been in Wisconsin, for the funeral of a family friend. And the death had hit her hard. I listened to her talk, holding her by the arm in silence, then holding her when she cried. We sat in front of Fisher pond, in the white plastic chairs someone had left there for us, and listened to the emerging symphony of bullfrogs amidst the lily pads. White egrets nestled into each other in the distance. The sun set slowly, leaving us in golden light, and chilling air. I felt at peace with her. I felt at home.
And today, I started work on the novel. It’s surging through me, after Sitka. I have to finish it. No choice. And there are so many images swarming out of me, into the blue ink on white paper, that I’m dancing in my mind today. Three or four hours a day, every day, and I’ll be somwhere else at the end of summer than I am here at the beginning.
This evening, taking a break, I took a long, slow walk around the neighborhood. I’m walking faster than I was on those walks back to the library after lunch. But not much. Nine or ten hours of sweet sleep every night since I returned has relaxed my back even more. And I’m determined to heal. So I’m walking, among the leafy trees, the broad sweep of blue water and mountains to the right of the old boulevard, among the white tombstones in this beautiful cemetery above me.
And as I walked, I watched. I watched the sun glinting off the silver windchimes on all the porches along 6th Avenue. The wilted red roses flopping down toward the ground. The fat lilac blossoms bouncing in the small breeze. And when I put my nose to them, that indolent smell of summer. Small boys playing basketball on their cement driveway. A guy in a tank top, leaning over his car. The streets mostly empty of people, everyone off to a barbeque or picnic. And just outside the cemetery, the sweet evanescence of honeysuckle, filling me, singing with me.
When I returned home, my downstairs neighbors called to me from their rooftop garden. They invited me up for dinner, spontaneously. Barbequed chicken, roasted corn, fried oysters they had caught at Deception Pass the day before, and seaweed salad, from seaweed he had picked at Lincoln Park this morning. It was all so unutterably good. And lovely, to sit on the roof and talk with people I barely know, but who were being so kind.
At the end of the cemetery walk, I always smile. A large brown tombstone, with the family name: Livengood. It reminds me, every time. Living is good. As soon as I remember to let go of what I’ve had, life comes rushing in with every breath.
p.s. As soon as I finished writing this, I heard the boom of the fireworks outside. Two shows in Seattle, at Myrtle Edwards Park along the waterfront and above Lake Union. I listened to the hissing and thumps out my window, thinking that would be enough. But then I noticed a clump of people standing in the middle of the crosswalk beneath my window, shouting and looking east. I ran outside, in my shorts and flip-flops, into the cool night air. And there were the Lake Union fireworks, framed by the the trees along McGraw. Thousands of people had waited all day at Gasworks Park, and not one of them had as good a view as the ten of us in the street. A little community, oohing and aahhing at the weeping willow golds and enormous red thrusts. And of course, I ended up laughing and dancing on my toes, even in my flip-flops. See what I mean?
I had a hard time returning this year. Every year, when the plane descends after two hours of flying away from Alaska, I peer down at Seattle below me and think, “Turn back! This is wrong.” Especially this year. Everything looked brown and overpopulated. Squat and impersonal. Too large. I don’t think I can live in a city much longer. So the first day back, I stayed in the house. (Except for a slow walk to Macrina Bakery, for an herb baguette, olive tapenade, half a roast chicken, goat cheese, fresh fruit, and a bing cherry tartlette. No more cafeteria food for me. I had a picnic on the floor by myself.) Connecting with friends on the phone. Unpacking slowly. Writing for hours. And it was the first time at home, since the car accident, without the constant nagging feeling of needing to do something productive. An entire day of silence, without responsibilities. A good way to be.
Yesterday, I spent the day with my nephew. He grew taller and more confident in my absence. He smiled wide when I entered the door. We spent the entire day playing. I read him a dozen books, then a dozen more. We bounced on the orange ball. We practiced walking. (He’s learned how to do pratfalls, just to make me laugh.) I watched him watching the world, sitting with him in silence, not needing to be anywhere else. And then we ate grapes and watched the breakfast sequence from PeeWee’s Big Adventure. My brother and I shared it all, and laughed.
In the evening, my friend Tita and I walked slowly through a secluded nature reserve on the island, a couple of miles of narrow path cut through green trees. It reminded me of Sitka, and I could feel my center of gravity drop. She had been in Wisconsin, for the funeral of a family friend. And the death had hit her hard. I listened to her talk, holding her by the arm in silence, then holding her when she cried. We sat in front of Fisher pond, in the white plastic chairs someone had left there for us, and listened to the emerging symphony of bullfrogs amidst the lily pads. White egrets nestled into each other in the distance. The sun set slowly, leaving us in golden light, and chilling air. I felt at peace with her. I felt at home.
And today, I started work on the novel. It’s surging through me, after Sitka. I have to finish it. No choice. And there are so many images swarming out of me, into the blue ink on white paper, that I’m dancing in my mind today. Three or four hours a day, every day, and I’ll be somwhere else at the end of summer than I am here at the beginning.
This evening, taking a break, I took a long, slow walk around the neighborhood. I’m walking faster than I was on those walks back to the library after lunch. But not much. Nine or ten hours of sweet sleep every night since I returned has relaxed my back even more. And I’m determined to heal. So I’m walking, among the leafy trees, the broad sweep of blue water and mountains to the right of the old boulevard, among the white tombstones in this beautiful cemetery above me.
And as I walked, I watched. I watched the sun glinting off the silver windchimes on all the porches along 6th Avenue. The wilted red roses flopping down toward the ground. The fat lilac blossoms bouncing in the small breeze. And when I put my nose to them, that indolent smell of summer. Small boys playing basketball on their cement driveway. A guy in a tank top, leaning over his car. The streets mostly empty of people, everyone off to a barbeque or picnic. And just outside the cemetery, the sweet evanescence of honeysuckle, filling me, singing with me.
When I returned home, my downstairs neighbors called to me from their rooftop garden. They invited me up for dinner, spontaneously. Barbequed chicken, roasted corn, fried oysters they had caught at Deception Pass the day before, and seaweed salad, from seaweed he had picked at Lincoln Park this morning. It was all so unutterably good. And lovely, to sit on the roof and talk with people I barely know, but who were being so kind.
At the end of the cemetery walk, I always smile. A large brown tombstone, with the family name: Livengood. It reminds me, every time. Living is good. As soon as I remember to let go of what I’ve had, life comes rushing in with every breath.
p.s. As soon as I finished writing this, I heard the boom of the fireworks outside. Two shows in Seattle, at Myrtle Edwards Park along the waterfront and above Lake Union. I listened to the hissing and thumps out my window, thinking that would be enough. But then I noticed a clump of people standing in the middle of the crosswalk beneath my window, shouting and looking east. I ran outside, in my shorts and flip-flops, into the cool night air. And there were the Lake Union fireworks, framed by the the trees along McGraw. Thousands of people had waited all day at Gasworks Park, and not one of them had as good a view as the ten of us in the street. A little community, oohing and aahhing at the weeping willow golds and enormous red thrusts. And of course, I ended up laughing and dancing on my toes, even in my flip-flops. See what I mean?
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