low dog in the big snow

we didn't get the blizzard. we waited. we watched. i stood by the window glaring out at the mountain. sometimes weather gets stuck on that thing, snagged up a while, wearing itself out, finally dragging itself over the tops of the pines and spruce weak and disappointingly light in snow. glaring at the mountain does nothing to undo this problem but it makes me feel better, smug and warm by the fire in my wool sweater and soft socks with a pile of logs on one side and a pile of knitting on the other. it is quite a thing to feel superior to a weather system, especially one the magnitude of blizzard.

eventually, though, no matter the depth of the snow a body must get out of the house. even a low body whose belly might make a trail through even the littlest bit of snow. so the sweetie and i put on big boots and wool hats and mittens and sweaters. the low dog put on nothing but a fierce determination to leap after and catch anything flying across his field of vision. and so he did. this dog who will pee on his own feet rather than go outside in the rain will throw himself face first into a snowdrift he can't see over. like those bundled up children you see standing in the snow, so excited they don't know what to do but shiver, he will stay out in snow as deep as he is until he's carried inside. he will protest the entire trip into the house. then, with a body steaming hot from all his wildness, he will sit in front of the fire and shiver piteously until the snow between his toes melts. then he will curl himself up with the flames flickering over his fur. he will tuck his nose under his back foot and will wrap his tail across his eyes. from time to time his back leg will twitch over his nose, rabbity quick. the snow, the ball, the frigid air- they are no match for him. only his little body has come indoors. the rest of him is still out there running.

museum

i am explaining the finer points of the monkfish to the original supernatural nephew, how it lurks along the bottom of the ocean using a small bit of itself, maybe the end of a dorsal fin, as a fishing rod to lure in tasty prey. he is pleased with this, i can tell, even from half a country away. some of them grow to be five feet long, i tell him. and though the monkfish is a hideous beast capable, i am sure, of producing a shudder even in its own kind, the sweetie and i have been aware of the child's lack of monkfish for quite some time and have finally decided to remedy that situation.

the child agrees that this is good. ugliness isn't a thing to him. his whole world is a science project, and exploration. we will hear later from family how with each gift from us he unpeeled the wrapping and exclaimed, “they sure do have my number!” now, i will certainly have a talk with him at some point down the road, outlining the dangers of spending free afternoons at the senior center playing cards and smoking cigars with near fossils, learning to say things like 23 skidoo. i am only slightly worried that his words, when he says them, tend to spin more toward what i heard my own grandpas say than toward what you’d expect from a ten year old boy. i suppose being able to converse with centenarians may come in handy some day. those were some of our best explorers, some of our wildest scientists, after all.

it is true, though, that he needs a monkfish. not a fishtank monkfish swimming around the bottom of a glass bowl, trying to get flake fish food to snap at its lure. that's the sort of gift you give a child when you want to piss off his parents, the sort of gift you give a child when you're trying to teach him about the circle of life with the flush of a toilet. it's an awful idea and it is not what has happened here. but here’s how what happened with the non-living monkfish came about. the sweetie and i stroll on over to a holiday market in our neighborhood. we are looking at old microscope slides. you know, antenna of moth, bark of tree, petal of violet, each with a loop at the end to make it a pendant necklace. we have just chosen a slide with a bit of fern on it for the child’s aunt (a microscope hound from back in the day) and i am chatting with the woman who made it when the sweetie’s eyes fall on the monkfish, lying quietly on a green velvet cushion inside a small glass box every bit as elegant as the one sleeping beauty spent her hundred years in. all that beauty encased in glass, waiting for just the right moment. you know how it is. the stuff of fairytales. we know right then exactly where it belongs. few choices in life are so clearly marked for us and we are grateful for this one.

so the child is pleased and tells me his plan. last week he found two crystals and now that he has a monkfish as well, a grandpa who knows him suggests he start a museum. something about the way he says it and something in how it crawls down the phone line brings the word into my head written in quill pen, flourishes all around the m at either end of the word. there is dust caked on the word and calliope music playing all around it. there is a bit of a singe mark near where the vowels cluster together. it is as old as a word can get, full of all the things the child intends to put in it. i cannot wait to see his museum and i tell him so, tell him i promise to keep my eyes peeled for specimens. i can hear him nod through the phone. i’ll do it, he says with conviction. i really am going to start a museum.

present

the sweetie is sitting cross-legged on the floor of our apartment. the overhead light is blaring as is the sunlamp we dragged home from a flea market several years ago. he rewired the thing, pulled miles of cord from inside the heavy pedestal, and now i sit under it to knit. he hunches over the coffee table which was, when i first saw it, a monstrous slab of wood floor plank sprawled out on a curb on seventh avenue.

but these are small things. parlor tricks. building a table. rewiring a lamp. these are things he does with almost no effort, the way most folks change a light bulb. the more impressive conjuring is what he sits down to now. he can make something out of nothing. there are pages on the table, schematics and maps with legends beyond indecipherable. there are bits of ceramic wrapped wire everywhere. there is a small metal box. there is a soldering iron, its fiery tip resting in a springy coil of metal. there is a stamp pad.

the sweetie is colorblind. he is sitting at this other coffee table, here in the mountains on this second day of secret construction with the wires and the solder and the papers. it is the weekend and the snow is trying outside to be picturesque while the fire in the woodstove is enticing the dog toward some norman rockwellish hearth snoozing. i sit across from the sweetie with a pile of ceramic wrapped wires, striped in five colored bands, a secret code unraveled on the sheet of paper he holds. the sweetie calls out a string of colors and i push my glasses up on top of my head, pick through the pile, holding the striped bits inches from my eyes. i hand them over in sets of twos and threes and the sweetie leans over a small metal plate with the soldering iron and the wires, putting each where it belongs, making some sort of order out of all this tiny chaos.

the brightness of the lights, the smell of solder, the small dachshund milling around drags from my brain images of my dad at the dining room table under the brightest light in our old house, the soldering iron at his elbow, peering into the guts of someone else's television or radio. he knows what to do, just from looking at all those wires and shiny tubes. that man can fix anything folks can break. the solder smells like incense, spicy and powdery, like rosin for a violin bow.

the sweetie knows exactly what he is doing, what he is making. it is a gift, a christmas gift. he is taking these wires and this metal box and is putting them together and it is not at all like the knitting i do. i take yarn that is soft and turn it into a hat or a sweater, clearly still yarn, the same softness, the same color. but he is an alchemist, changing lead into gold. he will change the sounds of the world. he will turn a guitar into a thunderstorm.

when i was a child and rolled my eyes at nearly everything my dad did, my mother would laugh and insist i'd end up with someone just like him. plenty of mothers have done this but i saw it as a particularly deliberate and cruel wish on her part, an attempt to doom me to her own suffering, to life with a weirdo. but i get it now. all superheros, all magicians have this other life to balance things out, to offset the constant intensity of the life they lead trying to make the world new every day. so today i sit in this overlit room weaving a basket and smelling the melting metal and listening to car talk on a podcast. what an incredible gift, my mother's wish for me. how lucky i am to have never had a minute of my life without all this magic.

grown

the boy on the bus is struggling with something. "no, no," he would say if asked, "i'm not a boy at all. i'm clearly a man!" he would jut out his chin so the faint hint of beard there might catch your eye. he is dressed for church, for an interview. he is dressed the way boys dress for graduation, in clothes that look awkward, even though they fit. his black wing tip shoes anchor him to the floor of the bus while his black pinstripe pants work together with his diagonally pinstriped shirt to give the effect of an optical illusion collapsing in on itself. he is attempting to tie a tie. this, after all, is something men do.

the tie, too, is black. the pale pinstripes on it move diagonally the opposite direction of those on the shirt. he must be making himself dizzy swimming in all those stripes. now, i know how to tie a tie. i was raised a churchgirl and i sang in a choir that traveled from time to time to other nearby churches. those of you who know me a little know i'm tone deaf and have the vocal stylings of a drunk camel but king david wrote down "make a joyful noise unto the lord" and so nobody could do much but let me, all of them quietly hating king david just a little for not having been more clear about what might be joyful or how the rest of folks might have to listen along, sometimes, with the lord.

churchgirls know how to tie ties because churchboys do not. or maybe churchboys pretend they cannot. so a churchgirl can take an untied tie gently from around a churchboy's neck and can drape it around her own, tie it quickly with a four-in-hand knot, then loosen it just enough to slip it over her head and onto the boy. a churchgirl can do this the way everyone in the world can tie shoes. easily, without any thought and completely unable to explain the steps. so i know how to tie a tie but cannot really help this boy.

he continues to struggle. a sound like sportscasters buzzes behind me, my grandpa's transistor calling a royals game. the boy has his phone balanced precariously on his lap and is watching a video on how to tie a tie. it is seven am. his hands shake a bit. he watches the video again then he stands up, leaving the phone muttering to itself on the seat. he walks to the back of the bus and faces the huge round rearview mirror buses have by their back doors. he stares intently into the fisheye image of himself and tries again. the churchgirl in me considers crying. he is hopeless. he collapses back into his seat and returns to the video. it is only a few steps. around once. around twice. up. over. down through the loop. he does not give up. he tries five, six, seven times. at his stop he stands up, tie hanging in two flat ribbons from his neck.

visit

he has been talking about visiting for a while, telling anyone who will listen that he will be traveling to brooklyn. he has been whispering it into phones, giggling about it with other children, telling strangers when the opportunity arises. i am foolish enough to think he wants to see me, to see the giant uncle. he tells us on the phone he can't wait and i believe him.

but when i open the door and he steps inside he does not see me standing right there in front of him. he does not see the uncle who is, to him, as tall as any tree. he sees only the low brown dog and the dog sees him. they run down the long hall toward each other and swirl into a cloud of barking and childshriek and scrunched up rugs. the newer supernatural nephew says the dog's name about seven hundred times and the dog, absolutely beside himself with so much attention at such a completely reachable level, leaps and barks and is beyond overjoyed.

now, i know the child has been trying out sidekicks. this has been going on a while. i know he is looking for the sort of things all supernatural folk look for- bravery, loyalty, cuddliness. and surely it is not difficult to find two of those characteristics in the same person. good folks tend to be good all around. but it is near to impossible to find all three anywhere at all unless you're looking at a dog.

over the course of the week the dog follows the child around and the child follows the dog. they are close enough in size and similar enough in squirminess and energy that they do not seem to tire of each other. they like the same soft, fluffy toys, the same throwable things. their tiny bodies make the same unimaginably heavy clomping sounds on the wide wood stairs up to the bedrooms. they stand at the railing on the second floor and stare down onto the tops of the people who usually loom over them. they like the second floor heat register, flat and heavy iron, lifting their hair and tickling their bellies with warm air from time to time. and if the child could curl up with his tail over his nose at bedtime, he would.

i am not sure the supernatural nephew has chosen a new sidekick. there is the great distance between where he is and where the small dog is. there is the planning and the meetings and potential costumes and all that. but after his second full day back at home the supernatural child calls and asks to speak to the dog. his older cousin used to call and talk to both dogs when there were two and he was younger. whispers and barks and giggles and growls. i have never been able to understand the conversations, two wobbly languages, the same with each child. but i hear the same tone, the quiet closeness between small child and small animal, all that distance between their real selves gone.

brown dog conversation

the brown dog is snuffling around on the corner. he's a small lab, old enough he's beginning to thicken in the middle and walk a little stiffly. he sees us, sees guthrie at least, as we walk toward him. he eyes the lizard in guthrie's teeth and his eyes brighten. his ears slide up and back.

guthrie prances past without a glance but the brown dog watches intently. we cross the street and guthrie is nosing through a pile of leaves when we hear what sounds like a herd of children running up behind us. we turn and see the brown dog coming up at a fairly impressive gallop, ears and tongue flopping, tail wagging. he gets up next to us and guthrie turns his lizarded head away, lowers his body some. the dog leaps around, puppyish, trying to play. guthrie gets smaller and smaller until he is a speckled brown ball of hostility with a big red lizard sticking out either side. the dog's owner gives up and walks on ahead but the brown dog looks back over his shoulder at guthrie and his lizard a few times, waits, then walks on down the street at the urging of the woman on the other end of the leash.

but the dog is undaunted. he stares into piles of leaves, sniffs an iron railing, considers nearby steps. pretty soon we are walking right up next to him. he turns his nose toward guthrie and they both keep walking. the brown dog is taller than guthrie but he is walking with his head low, so his nose is inches away from the tail of the giant red lizard sticking out of guthrie's mouth. he leans toward guthrie just a bit, touches his nose to the very tip of the lizard tail. his mouth opens so slowly guthrie doesn't even see it. they keep walking. the brown dog scoots himself just an inch closer to guthrie, mouth open, so he's walking with his teeth hovering all above and below that red lizard tail.

the brown dog's jaws close just enough that guthrie knows he's there and then guthrie does what is completely unexpected to most folks, to those who don't know him, don't know that his ancestral job involved catching something and bringing it back to someone. he does something that so entirely baffles the brown dog that the poor dog doesn't know what to do. as the brown dog's teeth sink gently into the tip of the lizard's tail guthrie's jaws relax and the lizard slides out of his mouth. the brown dog is waiting for guthrie to pull, for them to play, to struggle over the magnificent red lizard. the dog's owner apologizes for her dog but i know he is trying to play. guthrie stands there, looking away from the dog and his lizard, then back again, confused as to why the dog is not tossing the lizard in the air. the dog makes an attempt to get guthrie's attention, leaps around a little, dragging the lizard across the sidewalk. guthrie waits.

the brown dog drops the lizard, still bewildered, and i pick it up. when i toss is up in the air a bit guthrie leaps like a shark and his jaws snap down on the soft middle of the lizard. the brown dog trots on home with a laughing woman on the other end of his leash.

bird

in the thunderstormy part of spring the baby birds fall out of nests like soft hailstones. they are just out of their eggs, all skin and closed eyes and pointy ends and there is so much nothing to them it's hard to imagine the wind moving them at all. tiny bags of pinkish gray huddled down into nests in threes and fours. but the wind does catch them. and i don't know how it figures out how to toss only one from the nest, leaving a handful of quietly sleeping others behind. i have seen three or four during a single walk and wish i could move them off the sidewalks and stoops, put them on the newly breathing ground and let them go back to what little of nature we have here in brooklyn.

then midway through summer i am weeding in the mint and lemon balm and am not surprised to find one of those thunderstormy birds splayed out next to the basement door. i pull back a mint plant and see webby wings. a needle beak sticks into the dirt. and here i do not feel that urge to move the poor thing off the sidewalk. he is resting there in good dirt, dirt full of fragrant mint that shades the small body. i finish my weeding and leave the beak and the wings and the small, small claw feet.

today the air is fall woodsmoke cool and the sky is thunderstormy again and i stand over the basement door pulling up mint and lemon balm. the roots are not so deep but they are all connected, plants clutching at each other underground, refusing to go. i pull so hard on one clump i nearly land in the already cold-flattened irises and i see a white pebble fly through the air. it lands in loose dirt where i've already pulled mint. i reach for it and see beak, eye sockets pressed like thumbprints into the smooth curve of the forehead. the top of the skull is so thin i can see clumps of dirt inside.

i think about the deer skull i didn’t take home this summer because it wasn’t ready yet. this skull sits in the palm of my gardening gloves and rocks back and forth when i breathe. it is so much smaller than i remember the bird being, so delicate i can’t think clearly about what to do but i know i will take it in the house. i know i will keep it. the invisible things in the ground have cleaned it so there is nothing but boniness. and maybe the most beautiful thing i have seen in a very long time is the nostril on the beak of this skull, a watermelon seed of nothing in all that white of beak. or even the tiny strand of bone along the bottom of the eye socket. a strand of my own hair is thicker. the eye sockets are so large you can almost see those fat, babybird eyes bulging out of them. it is perfect. i put it in a cup of warm water and soap. it rests upside down on the surface a while, lighter than the soap bubbles.

rush hour

this morning is one of those good, cool mornings full of jackets and sweaters and small girls in new wool tights. we are walking, the low dog and i, in the morning rush to work and school. people step out of little cafes with steaming coffees and their shoes clatter on the iron treads of the steps down into the subway. some of them still have real live folded paper copies of the times wedged under their arms.

the low dog strolls through the brightness with his lizard, charming the distracted and the sleepy and the grumpy, all. people shake off their subway personalities to coo and squeal and giggle. small children wave at him. adults wave at him. even at this hour people want to say how much they think he is too much. he ignores them, does not care.

we stop at an intersection a few blocks from home and stand next to a man and his little girl. the light is long and the girl is singing in her littlegirl voice. bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens. now, if you know me you know i've considered scraping together all the couch change i can find to buy the rights to that song and then lock the thing away somewhere so i'll never have to hear its smarmy, pollyannaish carousel of treacle again. but her voice is so soft and so clear the song sheds most of its ugliness there for a second. she stares straight ahead, into the wide intersection. she is very serious about this song. she does not even see the low dog inches away from her left hand, staring, just like her, straight ahead.

i look up at her dad and am surprised to see him running his thumb across the face of his phone, checking a message, reading the news, ignoring his child. it seems to me if i can manage to find this moment charming then that man, her very own father, ought to be able to put his stupid phone away for now and focus his stupid self on his softly singing child. she falters with a word or two and he stares hard at the phone, then sings quietly cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel. he asks if this is right and when she nods they sing it together. because i have been sick i hear three-color ponies. he trails off and she continues with bells and schnitzel and then pauses. he is squinting against the glare on his phone to read the next line of the song and then he sings, low but loud enough for her to hear, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. and now i feel bad for considering punching him earlier. his voice is like hers, quiet but clear and the few words drag all the geese i have ever seen up into the sky.

the light changes and we cross. the man, the little girl, the low dog and me. two boys climbing on a coin operated dinosaur call to the girl. guthrie turns his lizard-stuffed face to a man who begins to laugh and nudges a friend. maybe there are some geese flying overhead.

ten

this is something i suppose we've been expecting for a while. i mean, really, this is something we've seen coming on down the road since he was born. but it's one of those things like waiting for your child to hit puberty. some part of you secretly hopes the whole thing will never happen, but you know it will so the rest of you wishes you could just squeeze shut your eyes and hope that when you open them the child will be 23 or so. but transformation does not wait for us to be ready and so now we are seeing it firsthand.

the original supernatural nephew is ten. and ten is a milestone for everyone. however, it is far more important, far more dangerous and significant, if you are supernatural. this is the year any previously unknown powers settle in, make themselves known. for you the ability to see through walls might be pretty entertaining but for a ten year old boy it can be a little uncomfortable. and who wouldn't like having the ability to heal with just a touch? but you slap something like that on a ten year old and you've got an accidental infestation of reanimated mice or earthworms or mosquitoes. tell him to take out the trash and a chicken breast leaps from the bag, flapping the wing still attached to it. upsetting. potentially very messy.

for many children in the original supernatural's shoes, this is the year they become entirely human, give up the supernatural lifestyle. school gets harder. relationships get more complex. parents, who have never been particularly understandable before, become completely incomprehensible. and you would think that the ability to fly might be helpful somehow in managing these things but it is not. you would think being able to communicate with animals would help. but no. dogs know some math, certainly, but they're notoriously awful at long division and anything after that requiring such skills is beyond them. besides this, they do not seem to care. and while birds understand the scientific method just fine, their ability to explain it is extremely limited. i mean, it's a set of six steps easily represented in a flow chart but they just get so caught up in if-then statements they are worthless. squawking and flapping and screaming, "analyze the results. is the hypothesis true or false?" over and over. there is no help for a supernatural ten year old.

and all this sounds awful. why would any supernatural folks ever make it to adulthood with this misery? but ten is a magnificent year for those who can stand all the shifting. ten is the year of identity. we weren't thinking about it, really. we are so far away here in brooklyn. his parents have been busy with the beginning of school. the local aunt and uncle are still settling into a new home with their own supernatural child. and the grandparents didn't say a word. not a word. but they knew. i will try to explain.

the patriarch of the family, grandfather to both supernaturals, is a garage sale/flea market fiend. the original supernatural nephew, unable to escape this trait any more than he can escape the ability to fly, goes with his grandpa when he can and surveys piles of musty, rusted, broken things, looking for what is beautiful. there is no one in his family who doesn't love a flea market. this, too, is a special power. these two stand together, nearly sixty years apart, but with the same sharp eyes and chatty charm. you can't get something for nothing but these two come close more often than the rest of us.

and while the grandpa is looking at something, a watch, a pipe, some sort of sword, the child's eyes fall on something that catches his heart. i know what his face looks like, eyes wide and soft, mouth open a bit until he realizes it and snaps it shut. his head whips around to his grandpa. maybe he holds the briefcase up for his grandpa to see. maybe he just points at it, still so smitten he cant' pick it up. and the grandpa knows right away. he pretends he doesn't, tells the child no ten year old needs such a thing. then he waits. the supernatural nephew makes it very clear that he might die without this briefcase, that he has his own money. he will take the thing to school instead of his backpack. the grandpa waits. unlike the rest of us he has not forgotten the child will be ten soon. he has not forgotten this is the year of identity. the way the child expresses need for the old briefcase is what he's looking for. the child holds the briefcase to his chest, looks up at his grandpa, smiles. the woman selling things wasn't expecting this particular item to go home with a large eyed, serious ten year old boy and she smiles, too. the child's grandpa sighs and nods. the supernatural child slides coins over to the woman and takes what is now his.

i call him a few days later to ask him about the briefcase but we get distracted in our conversation (the rock postcard i sent him arrived with pieces broken off and he is furious with the irresponsibility of postal employees. we make plans for a possible thanksgiving in the catskills.) and i forget to ask. he does not mention it. i think it is because he knows. we have never spoken about it but he is, even as a ten year old, supernatural. he has to know. we have been sending him things over the years, strange musical instruments, ancient helmets and shields, survival backpacks, things he might need for his future life. there is no way to predict how he will rescue, how he will protect, what he will do. there is only knowing that's what's out there for him.

what is best about this is we don't know where that briefcase belongs. will it be part of his mild mannered alter ego or will it be part of his heroic self? all we can tell right now is what he told his local aunt while running a hand over the worn leather outside of the case with a flourish. "you can't," he said, opening the case to reveal a luxurious blue silken pocketed interior, "judge a book by its cover."

drug dealers

they are boys i have known a long time. three years which is, to them, an eternity. i think of them, these children, as mine. this is how we all see wild and ephemeral things. the bird outside our window every morning. the rabbits hopping across the front lawn at evening. deer in the woods off the road one over. we have to maintain a special balance to be able to see them without driving them away. i constantly misjudge this line. that's fine. if you have ever touched a real wild animal, had a bird perch, even for a moment, on your hand, you know it's worth however still you had to be for whatever measureless stretch of time.

1. i see the first child walking away from me down the hall just after the first bell. he strolls past the front desk security guard proudly displaying beads, colors, hat. these things say drug dealer. they say gang member. these are the things he is but he is also only a few minutes late for class. he is a student. i say his name and he turns and smiles. his eyes are a mess. his whole face is bloodshot. i motion to the hat and he takes it off. he turns back down the hall but when i say "the flag, too" he tucks the bandanna into his left pocket, out of sight. i am taller and am not practicing to be nonchalant so i catch up to him as he turns the corner. "why'd you come to school high?" i ask, although i already know. this is not our first visit about this subject. he looks up at me and his smile slides around all over his face. this is conversation, not confrontation. "i'm o.g., miss." the words ooze out of the smile. they are not true. there is nothing original about him. he is a walking stereotype of a drug dealer. as for the gangsta aspect, i know he has committed a string of felonies, has used weapons against others, but here in this place i know if i hauled off and smacked him hard across the side of his head he would not hit me back. he would apologize for whatever he thinks i might know that is worth slapping him over. this is not because i'm particularly fierce. this is because i am one of a number of women in the building who share the work of being his mother. so i don't slap him. my tired look says the same thing a slap would. i walk him to the stairwell and tell him to get to class. his face, his smile are less addled. "i'll be here every day," he says, swinging open the door to the stairs. "business is business."

2. the next child arrives to class late and we have the hat/phone/late conversation as he scoots into his seat. he is more impish than most sixteen year old boys and when i walk over to him, tired, glaring, and toss our current story on his desk, he pushes it back toward me gently and looks up with the face of an angel. "i read it already." he pulls out a folded copy of the story. i do not believe he read the assigned seven pages and i am right. he started and could not stop reading. he read the entire story all at once. he waits while i digest this information. he knows me well enough to look right at me, watch my eyes for a sign he's managed to make me cry. the other teacher in the room is asking questions and he raises his hand several times. and then after he does this, he answers those questions the teacher is asking. and he answers them brilliantly. i am leaning against the wall near his desk and watch him reach into a pocket for his phone. he glances at it, then quickly texts back. ordinarily this is when he would ask to go to the bathroom. he would be gone about five minutes and would hand someone in the bathroom something small in a plastic bag in exchange for some cash. instead he looks back toward the front of the room, turns his face to the discussion. i motion to him more than once about the phone. he smiles, nods toward the discussion, raises his hand. the child manages to text these little junkies back while raising his hand and answering questions.

i imagine his texts. why yes, i would like very much to sell you some drugs. however, i am currently very deep in the middle of an exhilarating discussion about a short story by the brilliant author mr. james baldwin and am not in a position to leave my literary companions. we are discussing the limited choices these two young men face and the ways they've attempted to escape the past and forge a new future. we are talking about harlem and heroin and jazz. i am sure you will understand if we postpone our scheduled meeting until after lunch. perhaps you'd like me to bring you a copy of the story. i think you'll agree it's far more brutal and lovely than heroin.

steam

warning: there's a pile of photos at the bottom.

when someone says jamboree you ought to always at least consider whether you can go. when you hear that there will be steam engines, you decide you can probably go and all that's left is to figure out what time. but when you find out the engines will be older than your grandparents used to be, you kiss the dog goodbye, put on your shoes and get in the car.

this is how we end up at hanford mills on a saturday morning, cool and sunny, with a few of the leaves already deciding on a new season, no matter what the calendar says. and there is little left to say about hanford mills during the antique steam engine jamboree except that if you didn't go it may stab at your heart a little to look at these pictures and see what you missed. there will be another september next year and during it another jamboree, but for this year, feast your eyes on the prettiest oil reservoirs you've ever seen and know these cogs and belts and gears, every spinning and whirring hunk of metal, has been hissing and humming and breathing longer than you.

and maybe the best thing about the mill is the herd of old guys, tinkerers, guys my grandma would have called real corkers. some of them have built their own machines and hover over them on the grass all around the mill. some of them are responsible for the care of, or at least information about, the larger, more intimidating dragons inside. it doesn't matter. these guys have the sorts of relationships with these machines that let them give you a lesson on history, physics and math all while making you think they're just visiting with you a little bit.

now, maybe the reason i like these guys is because all of them are, down deep, just different versions of a man i've heard stories from all my life. my own uncle jay can tell a story about anything and can make you believe you're right there breathing the same air as whoever he's telling you about. that man can tell you anything and make you want to hear it again. the way he laughs at something he knows he's going to tell you before he's got the words out will have you hanging on each word, waiting to get at the ones you know are making him laugh. maybe it is the way they sound like him, like everything they say is them confiding a secret, but i do know that when they talk about the pounds per square inch of steam pressure in an engine making things happen my eyes are wide and i am listening to how these machines live.

and maybe it's because so much of what we manufacture today is made to be disposable, made to ease into its own obsolescence without us even noticing, that i don't see as much prettiness in the shape of my laptop, in the way it is held together or in its rubbery feet. maybe a hundred years from now someone will weep over the beauty of the thing, how the keys are so elegant or how clever the clasp is and because i use it every day i just can't see all that loveliness. but i can see it in everything in the mill and i like to get up close to these machines when i can, see who made them and where, even if i can't quite figure out what each one of them does. i can see the perfect roundness of the wheels and gears, see the wood worn to something that is almost beyond wood in its softness.

as a child i would have wanted to live at this mill, steeped in the scents of sawdust and metal and oil, listening to water rush over the mill wheel and all those versions of my uncle jay, soft-voiced and laughing, explaining the whole world.

how to take a dog's temperature

a graphic and educational depiction of what can happen if the odds are against you.

first you decide whether you are person of faith or not. if you are, you do whatever supplicating is necessary to get the attention and favor of your god. you pray or fast or burn a lamb. then you ask for guidance and help on your mission. if you are not a person of faith, take stock of your life so far and consider that without some sort of miraculous intervention you will likely die and will surely be remembered for having been lost during a dog temperature taking accident. determine whether you are up to the task. it is absolutely okay to realize you are not ready to die.

go to the drugstore to get a thermometer. you do not recall the last time you purchased such a thing and you have no idea what kind to get. the clerk glares at you. tell her it's for your dog. tell her rectal, please, because that is what the vet said would give you the most accurate temperature. her glare intensifies and you know she thinks you are going to torture the poor animal. you are slightly bothered by the fact that she doesn't try to rescue the hapless thing since he is right there in the store with you. get some form of lubricant. vaseline. k-y. do not, no matter what your kinfolks may have said, use butter or lard. you do not want to risk losing butter as a thing you love because of this association and your dog already spends plenty of time licking his own butt without you adding seasoning to it. if you can find something with a flip-top, get that. walk home with your unsuspecting dog.

change into clothing you do not ever intend to wear again. this does not mean gym clothes or painting clothes. this means something you are willing to tear off your body and toss directly into a garbage can, if necessary. get a bath towel. this is to comfort the dog and create a work space, not to protect clothing you have already doomed.

sit on a couch with a table in reach. put the thermometer (out of its packaging and carrying case), lubricant (with flip top flipped) and latex gloves on the table. pick up the dog and put him on your lap. recall than when the vet does this, there's a muzzle for the dog, an (generally large and male) assistant holding the dog in a headlock, the vet and you all working to make this happen. realize this is not how things look now and call your husband to see if he knows where the muzzle is. when he does not know, sigh and put on gloves.

place the thermometer on your towel, which is spread over your lap, and pour more lubricant than necessary over it. pick up the thermometer in your left hand. wrap your right arm around your dog's neck, pulling his head gently toward you. lift the aggressively curled down tail up with any free fingers on your slippery, thermometer wielding left hand. realize you cannot see anything under the tail you have just lifted because the tail is in the way. peer around to the side. realize it is difficult to tell what is where from the side. lean as far to your left as you can, hoping to look under the tail. wonder why it sounds like there's a swarm of bees just above your right elbow. realize your dog is beginning his attempt to kill you. admire the recent dental work he had done as this is the first time you can see every single tooth he's got in that larger than you expected mouth. smile and breathe a little when you realize that although he has bitten down on you four or five times at this point, he does not have it in him to actually hurt you and he hasn't even left marks on your skin.

locate what you think, from where you sit, looks like the gateway to your dog's rectum. insert thermometer into this small, clenched space about an inch. be sort of impressed that it shoots out almost immediately and travels a fair distance across the couch. listen to that swarm of bees. it's getting louder and deeper, like a lion or a tiger or a helicopter about to crash. keeping your dog in your right arm grip, still holding the tail aloft, reach over with your gloved and, by now, very slippery left hand to grab the thermometer. reorient it to make sure you have the business end directed toward your dog's business end. try three more times to insert the thermometer and be proud of yourself that you're catching it sooner and sooner as it sails out of the backside of your dog. realize that putting a thumb on the outer end of the thermometer might keep the thing in place. insert thermometer for the fifth time. keep thumb steady. make a mental note to look into why your hands shake so much and wonder whether that will affect your dog's temperature.

notice that as soon as the thermometer is in place your dog stops struggling although he has achieved a facial expression of such incredible detached contempt you almost do not recognize him. look at the clock. watch the clock for three minutes. remove the thermometer, but do not yet release your dog. you will have to read the temperature to be sure you do not have to retake it. 102.5. although this is at the high end of normal, be aware that you and your dog just walked two miles and then wrestled a great deal. release your dog. destroy or clean and then put away all supplies. return to the couch. your dog will curl up beside you and go to sleep, having forgiven or forgotten all that transpired only minutes ago.

a streetcar named 3321

when i visited all those cranes and then strolled on down the cobbled street to the fairway, i didn't have a clue what was waiting. i had forgotten how close the place was to the statue of liberty, how anyone could just look out and see manhattan sitting there all shiny and tall. my brain was all abuzz with so much pretty sprawled out there like it was nothing, like it didn't demand notice. i was giddy with cranes and some sort of public transportation graveyard i'd walked past on the uneven stone street, was thinking about the shiny black harlem line bus that looked more like a '56 cadillac than like a bus, chrome streaming off its sides like you wouldn't believe. i had just walked past the statue of liberty, watched people walking by with little kids and none of them looking at any of this and then i turned onto the back patio of the fairway.

it is sitting right there, right in front of me. it looks like it has been waiting, like it is expecting me to stop by. and when i see it i yell out, "oh!" just a little, sort of quiet, but people sitting on the patio eating sandwiches turn to see if i am okay. i can't quite figure out what it is doing there on a stretch of pavement between the back patio of the fairway where people are eating lunch and the ferry dock to manhattan. nobody told me about any of this. but when the people see that i am not hurt, they go back to visiting and to their meals and this is the thing i cannot understand. there is a streetcar sitting there not more than a few feet away from any of them, pale green with wings on the front of it like mercury. and sure the front window is gone and the metal is pitted with rust but it is something i would not hesitate to hop on if it went sailing by me and stopped. i would run to catch it. and i do not run for anything. i cannot pull my eyes back into my head.

the streetcar is tall and i can see some sort of tropical plant leaning in a back window, peering over the very last wide bench. i walk on around the side, toward the ocean. the breeze swoops in salty and warm. the sea birds are yelling. there are three streetcars all end to end, in a soft curve on the pavement. i do not see what i will later learn are the trolley tracks below them that got them where they are now. but i see them standing there, ringed with nothing more than those metal parade barricades and a couple of signs saying danger. i am the only person leaning in the doors and peering through windows. staring danger straight in the face.

i consider hopping over a barricade and wandering around inside. there is nothing inside i can't see from where i am, but i'd like to see it up close. it is noon. i'm pretty obvious. but nobody seems to see me like nobody seems to see these old trolley cars resting here. if i went inside, i might become entirely invisible. or maybe then they would finally see me. what is that crazy woman doing in that trolley car? doesn't she see the signs? i figure having folks yell at me through mouthfuls of food might somehow cramp the adventure i have fallen into so i just keep walking and taking photos.

along the back of the cars, on the fairway side, i see where the plants are coming from. they are the border between the patio and the cars. a protective layer between people having a nice time and some huge relics nobody has the cash to move. bright and thick-leaved things, the plants have grown up next to the cars but unlike the people eating lunch, they seem interested. sidling up against the metal and glass. they are like me. they want to get in there and wander around a little.

cranes

big up these photos so you can see the birds and all.

back of the big blue ikea in red hook, brooklyn you can find cranes. not the birds, although they are likely nearby, but the machines, standing on towering legs like giraffes in windbent high grass. they are scattered all over, on piers, in parking lots, up among the ships. they are the remnants of the demolished todd shipyards, unrescuable but still very much present in the park ikea finally agreed to in order to appease the city they wanted to build in. and there is plenty to say about a store like that but if you walk right past it instead you are staring at the cranes and this is where brooklyn was glorious. the shipyards. huge steaming monsters carting off all the things brooklyn was making back when that's what brooklyn did. if you are proud of the history of a place it is hard to watch the physical evidence of that history disappear bit by bit. but the cranes, having been surrounded by this park of sorts, are here even after what was around them has succumbed, cogs and belts and chains stilled, just for looking at. but looking at them is something else, to be sure.

i am not from red hook and i do not remember the shipyard in its heyday or the graving dock where the big ships came for repairs or the sugar factory. and i am not such a fool that i think our history is a history of prettiness and light or that this place was beautiful when people worked in those cranes. i am sure it was dangerous and terrifying and miserably sweltering in summer, then bitterly icy in winter. i am sure those machines i stand under maimed folks, maybe killed some. i would not have wanted to stand on these docks, climb the bare ladders to the cabs of the cranes, try to duck the heavy metal hooks swinging across that narrow space. i can imagine cables snapping and slicing through hands or legs or faces. our early industrial history was as bloody as war. but there is something about the technology of our ancestors, the work they had to do to get us all here, that seems to amaze more than a few of us. and so no matter how this small space got itself roped off from the rest of time and progress in a city hurting for space, it is here. seeing these cranes still standing up where they have always lived helps us understand who we were that long ago. maybe it helps us understand where we are now a little. or maybe they're just pretty to look at.

but there are shipping terminals still. huge ships move in and out of the docks and fat tugs scoot up alongside barges. i don't know where they go or what they carry but they go. there are ships you can't be sure about. maybe they leave this still water and go out to sea and maybe they
don't. probably they don't. they are dark like old houses in scooby-do. there is paint but it's mostly gone, revealing bloated wood or rusting metal. it's not clear why they sit there but there they sit anyway. seeing them is like seeing wild animals on your street. you know there are ships and you know they go from port to port but you never think about them cutting through the water right there where you can see them. when you consider how fast everything else moves through the world it seems so unlikely something floating on water would still be so important. you try to imagine them roaming over tall waves where there is nothing in sight but the place where the water and sky touch.

what happens when you walk back behind the blue ikea in red hook, though, is that you see them. you see one and then another and you keep seeing them when you turn, when you walk past a tree or around a corner. you would not think things so large would keep popping up from behind things. but they do. you will look at the cogs and gears and the rail lines that made these seem like living things.

you will hear what you have always heard. how this place was something magnificent back in the day and how it is nothing now, destroyed, a sad shell. you will hear how this place has been an eyesore for too long, how it needs cleaning up. whatever the argument, you will hear how ugly it is now. right now. but you know that is not true. you are looking out at it and you see what is there, the cranes and everything else.

la liberté éclairant le monde

back before this country's centennial some folks, including a man named bartholdi, started thinking about and then working on a statue that would be the embodiment of a beautiful democracy, the embodiment of a nation that had survived internal strife and had struck valiant blows against oppression. because building a giant woman (france's part in the celebration) and building a pedestal for her to stand on (the united states' offering) are both pretty expensive endeavors, the statue wasn't finished until 1884 and the pedestal took another two years. when the country was trying to make money to build the pedestal they held all sorts of auctions and contests and a woman named emma put her poem in one. someone read it aloud and i am sure that everyone clapped, but after that folks forgot until well after emma died. a friend badgered those she could about the poem and finally in 1903 emma's words were pressed into a bronze plaque and hung up inside the pedestal. emma's words became the woman's voice.

The New Colossus
Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

i round the corner of the fairway store and snap a few photos before i realize the statue of liberty is in them. she sneaks up on me with all that coppery quietness. now, i am not what most folks think of when they think patriot because i am not always yelling about my country like it is a football team, like it will kick your ass, but that woman standing there so patiently for so long is hard to look at unless you think about why she's there. the statue, meant for a different purpose when it was shipped over from france, became for us the woman in emma's poem, became the very symbol of why we are all here and how. she is the promise of safe haven, of a new life. she is the voice insisting that the least of us is welcome here. always. i cannot see her without hearing the poem in my head, thinking about her turning her back on all that is rich and elegant, turning her back on fanciness. "give me..." she says and who are you to deny a woman who carries lightning in her hand? a woman with broken chains strewn around her feet? "send these...to me." she means this. and i would not want to be the person to get in her way.

she asks for the poor. she asks for the homeless. she asks for people others see as garbage. as garbage. she demands them, says she's waiting right here with the light on, here in my town outside the grocery store.

this is the gift she offers the world. it is the gift we offer the world not because we are better or more powerful but because it is how we began and how we will be able to continue as a democracy, as a nation. this is what a gift is, an unexpected opportunity. liberty enlightening the world.

dog teeth

when i pick him up from the dog dentist, guthrie doesn't know who i am. this may or may not be because of an intravenous cephalic catheter dripping valium into him all day. it's possible this catheter kept him anesthetized and the valium got into him some other how, but i can tell you he looked like a lot of moms did back in 1975 or so only without that blue eye shadow. i can tell you he likes the valium.

he looks so tiny in the arms of the woman who brings him out, a brown furry puddle with stubby legs dangling off at the corners. his eyes do not focus. the brown one looks straight ahead and the blue one looks up and out. the tech hands him over and then hands me a bag with antibiotics, pain pills and five small, ugly teeth, one with a root so black it looks painted, fake. i have no idea what the tooth fairy will say about this. five is more teeth that she usually deals with. five is a bar fight.

the woman who hands guthrie over tells me how adorable he is. just this morning when i dropped him off, people outside the vet's office were snapping photos of him hanging off my shoulder. a few days before, we walked out the door to two neighborhood women who said they'd just been talking about us. by us they meant guthrie. they asked to get a few photos of him to put up in the window of the corner pharmacy. i feel like the mother of a teenage beauty queen. but i smile when the woman at the vet's office tells me about guthrie because she was snuggling on him when she brought him out and i know she means he's sweet.

i let him try walking and our five block trip is quite an adventure. we round a corner and come face to face with a red dachshund. it prances up to guthrie and steps back a little, probably offended by surgery smells and the luridness of valium. but guthrie suddenly remembers who he is, at least for a moment. his brain lunges forward and his body attempts to follow. he opens his deadly jaws wide to clamp them down on the sweet nose of this dog and the valium washes over him again. he forgets. his brain giggles. he sits a second or two in the middle of that smooshy attack, mouth open, some of his teeth bared, frozen a few inches away from the surprised dog. and then his whole tired, confused head slides back down on top of his lower jaw, shutting his mouth. the red dachshund walks on past, probably making a mental note to just say no to drugs. when we meet his archnemesis, the small black pug, on up the block, the valium is the only one at the wheel and guthrie strolls past on his wobbly legs. the pug's owner and the confused little pug both stare, wide eyed. i motion to the white surgical tape on guthrie's front paw and say "valium". they both nod and smile.

i carry his floppy self up the two flights of stairs and he does not once try to leap out of my arms and knock me back down the stairs. he sees little floating things that make him cock his head from time to time but i can't see any of them. because he's hopped up on valium and missing five teeth, the vet said he's not likely to eat much the next few days and if he eats, it should be soft food. i am prepared. i have food but will not worry if he doesn't eat.

but guthrie staggers down the long hall, through the living room and directly into the kitchen. he turns to the fridge (the dog food lives above it) and runs smack into the corner of the thing with his loose face. he nearly falls over. he tries again. his eyes are puffy and do not appear to be connected to his brain. his mouth is swollen and his lips are flapping loose around his face. not a single one of his sensory organs is fully committed to him at this point. he sits in front of the fridge, looks up at the bag of dog food on top. he starts to cry. it is low and wobbly and i think he is in pain but his head, if not his eyes, focuses on that bag. he has not eaten in almost 24 hours. i get a can of the soft food and put a small spoonful onto a plate. it is gone before the plate is on the floor. i do not want him to get sick so i offer a spoon at a time until the entire can is gone. we will start with the toothbrush and the dog toothpaste in two weeks.

farmer's year book 1963

there is a 1959 denoyer and geppert pull-down classroom map of the state of new york, physical and political, on the wall of our bedroom. in the top left corner is an inset map of the state's rainfall from april 1 to september 30. (best growing months) whispers the inset. the bottom left corner is a population density map with a dot for every 500 people. bottom right is my own long island, which could not be crammed onto the regular part of the map and had to be set aside, hawaii-like. the big map is done all in greens and yellows and oranges for elevations and features railroads, canals and the new york state thruway. if i follow the green of the hudson valley up, north, i can see the orange of the catskills and on up of the adirondacks. over there in the catskills i can trace the ghost of what is not yet my reservoir, yellow of the delaware river valley snaking through those orange and even brighter orange peaks.

there are more of them, of course. a map of the reservoir with depths and power lines hangs over a desk in a bedroom with bunkbeds and altimeters. the reservoir is so long it is split into two bits at the downsville bridge. a copy of a map of my own hometown on thin paper lies curled in a tube. it shows the mine my great grandpa worked and all the others that made a little stretch of hilly land in southwest missouri into a lead town, now laced with occasionally collapsing tunnels and questionable soil. there is another pull-down map, this one of the united states when alaska and hawaii were still territories. we own books of lists, encyclopedias of anything and everything, books of old city boundaries. i am lucky to have found someone who tolerates, even supports, this desire to get and pore over old information. whatever it is that makes me want those things has got him, too. there is a reason we got married at a dragline shovel in the middle of strip mines.

this means that from time to time we stop at flea markets and antique stores to leaf through their books. the sweetie is a fool for science books- space, weather, geology. who isn't, really? i will snatch up anything with a map or chart or graph. anything with a visual representation of something large. anything with step by step instructions. this weekend we grabbed a few little books, including the farmer's year book, a gift of the national bank and trust company of norwich, new york, with offices in chenango and delaware counties. 1963.

i like books like this because they are full of information. not necessarily information i can use, but things i like being able to know, just in case. the first page of the book promises me i can use it for reference, for records, for information. and i am in love. in smaller type it goes on to say "there are several pages which contain special information of value and ofttimes of immediate need". and i know that if i do not take this book home with me and make its valuable information my own i will surely die. immediate need indeed.

there is information on land measure, times to cut hay and how to measure a haystack. there is a common nails reference table. and not just a common one but also one for finishing nails and casing nails. separate tables. i do not know what casing nails are but i know a 10d is three inches long, 10 1/2 gauge and that i can get 95 of them in a pound. there is a chart on description and use of files, including a cross section of each file drawn to help the user determine what is what. if i felt so inclined, i could record my acres, yield and value of corn, wheat, oats, barley, rye, clover, timothy and a handful of other crops. timothy? it's a grass used for hay. if i wanted to call up my pals in maryland every morning, i could record the layings of their four hens in a beautifully graphed egg record. that's right. beautifully graphed. the book tells me how to mix paint to get such colors as copper (red, yellow, black) and freestone (red, black, yellow ochre, white).

i now know the most common paint failures by name and my favorite is alligatoring. i can tell you that you can get 400 square feet per gallon covered if you paint hard brick with a single coat of gloss finish oil paint. 350 square feet if you paint soft brick. there are weights and measures and information on crop pests, when they show up and what to do. i know now for a fact that my lemon tree, which is currently in fruit, had better watch out for 31 degree temperatures because they are injurious to a tree in that state. when in bud the tree can withstand a whole degree more and when there's no reproduction going on at all, my tree is brave to 28 degrees. i know that strong tea was used as an antidote to most poisons at the time except those treated with milk or raw eggs. i am glad it is not 1963.

but here is what just ripped my heart right out of me. "quantity of silage required and most economical diameter of silo for dairy herd". if that is not a beautiful heading for a table i do not know what could be. this is an elegant arrangement of headings and subheadings and even a footnote. for herds from 13 to 70. with options for 180 and 240 day ensilings. the index will help me with anything i can't find by instinct and there's a two page section called "belting pointers" that clears up just about any possible questions a
body could have about belts and pulleys, including, but not limited to, finding the horsepower that any given belt will economically transmit.

nobody needs this. nobody has to figure out any of this stuff without help anymore. paint comes in every shade imaginable and the person behind the paint counter will tell you exactly how much coverage you can get if the paint can itself won't. you can wade through 4 million interweb sites on the standards for grading of corn, but you can't get those standards opposite 18 rules for safe tractor operation and a page away from images of eight useful knots just the way they are right here.

there's a nice ruler on the back with the numbers 1 through 6 in thick red lettering and the edge of the book ruled off in sixteenths of an inch in a dreamy blue. a two year calendar. so maybe this is the interweb in 1963, the resources of the world, a farmer's world at least, all complete and immediate. day or night. right in your pocket.