p.o. box

our post office box is on the upper row, a small one just big enough for letters, the weekly shopper and a few seed catalogs. once in a while there's a yellow card inside that sends me to the front counter for a package. now, there's no telling what might arrive. peeps. taco doritos. bits of electrical things the sweetie will make into a guitar pedal. but a week or so back a steam engine came in the mail.

let me explain. the sweetie has family he doesn't get to see often enough. folks in texas, some way down near the border and others over around san antonio. a few times we've gone on whirlwind tours of both versions of texas and we stay a night with one family member, then another. two of these are an uncle and aunt of the sweetie. on my first visit i could tell these were folks i wanted to get to know.

it turns out this uncle has quite a few things in common with my own dad, which means he has quite a few things in common with me. he showed us a tiny steam engine and then a few other little contraptions. it took me a bit of time to really get that he'd made them. beautiful things with pipes and wheels and magical bits of motion. and you know me. i drooled. now, the sweetie drooled, too, but i'm a little more dramatic about things. i can fall right smack in love with something like a tiny working steam engine in a second. not everyone sees things the way i do, but the sweetie's uncle, as i've said, has a few things in common with me.

then a while back this same uncle mentions he'd like to send this engine on up to us. can you imagine anyone ever saying no to something like that? those are the folks who say no to extra hot fudge on a sundae. not me. i say send that thing right on up, thank you. and he does. and now i am at the counter, knowing full well the box the postal woman is incredibly slow in handing over is full of steam engine. i take the box out to the car and rip open the tape as the sweetie turns us around and toward breakfast. i pull it out of the box as we pull into the parking lot. it is beautiful. it is perfect. there is a little pipe taped down to the base with a valve handle in the middle. the smallest wrench i've ever seen is attached with a twist tie to the wheel.

i am so captivated by this wrench i forget a minute about the engine. it has to be handmade. i know the sweetie's uncle well enough by now to figure he might have made it himself just for this engine (turns out he did) and i am thinking about what size jump ring i'll need to fit through the tiny hole at the end so i can string it on a cord and wear it as a necklace. because nobody else in the world will have a necklace that is a tiny wrench that also really works on a steam engine. and that's how i like things. but the sweetie wants to see the engine. i untape the pipe with the valve and fit it onto the machine. the sweetie starts talking about what to do to get it running. he talks about a steam compressor. we will get ourselves a steam compressor. i have no idea what a steam compressor looks like but i am glad we will have one. i think about what i can run off this little machine. a train. a music box. the dog.

we go in for breakfast and the engine stays in the car. i think about how it looks like a john deere tractor had a baby. i think about the tiny faucet knob on the pipe that controls the steam. i think about the yellow wheel spinning and about all those steam engines at the mill we visit. i wonder what it will sound like with the steam pouring through it.

i am a camera

click these to see them up close and personal. not because i'm a good photographer. just because there's pretty stuff out there.

well, it turns out that phone with the stereo in it also has a few cameras lying around inside that case. now, i have plenty of cameras for myself, all the way from pinhole to brownie to polaroid to digital. i don't mean to brag but i have an argus c-3. that's right. the brick. but the phone does, too. it has a soviet spy camera and so do i. i do not know what to think about this, about carrying around something in my pocket right now, in this year, 2011, that can take the same sort of photos my dad was taking back in 1974 or that my grandpa took when my mom was a little girl. i am uncomfortable. uneasy. so i walk around determined to show this phone full of cameras that it's no match for me.

the phone full of cameras laughs. at first i think maybe i just have the headphones on and tom waits is in there singing quietly, but no. it's the phone laughing. it scoots all 493 cameras over to the side effortlessly and laughs a little more. it slides something new right out front. right where anyone with any sense can't possibly ignore it. the phone holds out an 8mm film camera. there is a dial with an arrow just like on the leather covered metal of the one on my bookshelf. i can smell how old the thing is. i can feel the weight of it. the phone laughs. the camera whispers. black and white it says. or color. the color of your childhood, liquid, soft. i am a little bit afraid.

i am a strong person but when you can put loretta lynn, a polaroid camera and an 8mm black and white film camera all in one place and that place can be used to call for enchilada delivery, i don't know what to do. i can hear the clicking of the gears in the 8mm camera, like playing cards in the spokes of a bike. i can smell the developer from the old polaroids and i can see where the light bleed washes out a tree in a photo i've taken. i know better than to eat the cupcake just because it says to. i know better than to drink the kool-aid. i know not to sell my soul. but the phone knows me already. when i touch the camera image there is the back of the camera all leatherette on cardboard. there are the dials, the shutter. there is the sound of it. click. click. i have the brain fever.

this is the same as what happens when you attempt snorkeling the very first time. you are underwater and you have to breathe in. everything in your body says not to. everything. you will die, you tell yourself. you will fill your lungs with water like an idiot and your body will sink to the sand and the rocks and the starfish all below you. but you open your lungs and the air rushes in from that ridiculous plastic tube and you are breathing, there underwater with fish above your head and the sky in a flat plane your eyes can't reach.

i breathe in, surprised to find air. i shove the soft phones in my ears and tell dave brubeck to play something for prancing on cobblestones. i ratchet the lever over once to advance the film. the shutter clicks. again and again. the air smells like rain. it is fifty years ago. it is tomorrow.

silence

for information on how you can help stop bullying of gay youth (or anyone else you love), go to: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/antibullying/index.html

today is the national day of silence. because i am the sponsor, more or less, of the gay and non-homophobic children at our school, i decide to try to be silent. remember, i am a teacher. now, i share each class with a second adult but today one of those adults is home and we share two sets of children. i will be teaching two classes entirely alone without saying a word. a first period eleventh grade class of 31 and a fourth period tenth grade class of 32. did i mention today is friday? did i mention it's the friday before a nine day spring break? no get out your book. no sit down. no stop throwing that.

i write on the board why i'm silent, how i'm standing in solidarity with a community often silenced in schools, how i'm remembering with my actions the people who have gone before and who have been forced to be silent, forced to deny who they are because it makes someone else feel uneasy. i put the name of a support group at the bottom of the message. i draw a line. under it i write my suggestion for how to stop bullying against gay folks. "tell kobe bryant if he didn't mean it that way, he shouldn't have said it that way". i sign my name to that one. a boy near the front of the class passes me a sheet of folded paper. it says i feel like i'm in a charlie chaplin movie.

i put instructions on the board. we are to read the first part of class and then reflect in journals on how the characters in our novels have suffered and why. i put their homework on the board and directions for how to approach it. when reading time is over, i rap on the desk and gesture to the board. while they're writing, i gesture and point and communicate in plenty of ways that don't involve words. the kids are amused and uncomfortable. some take my behavior as a challenge and try to get me to talk. i am steadfast. i can't shut up for my own self but i know plenty of folks who have been isolated and shunned for being different. they don't get to choose to walk in and out of their isolation. i write on the board, bang my fist against words to get the attention of these bewildered kids. a few of them are choosing silence, too, but a handful begin to try to translate my gestures and pointing for the rest of the class. they prompt each other to share ideas or read aloud or stop talking. they become my voice. they seem to think i am winning something by being silent and they want to help. we work like this until the bell rings.

i eat my lunch in a room full of adults talking all around me. i spill pesto on my skirt and stare down at the oil seeping in. i am so quiet nobody sees me. i do not exist. for five hours i do not speak in a place where my most effective tool has always been my voice. i have nothing except the voice the children give me but i am never silent. there are symbols always, communication endlessly. i send out and they gather up. we share back and forth. i am a pale shadow of what i'm imitating, children for whom the silence is so large it is able to shove them out of windows and off bridges, so deep it swallows them in murky water, so oppressive they will try to claw it out of themselves with shards of glass or knives they don't know how to use.

i am not sure this is working. i do not feel like anything i've done today has made gay teens any safer or happier. but we have a little pizza party afterward. when i walk in there are plenty of kids clumped in little groups chatting easily around slices of pizza and gulps of pop. a mix of boys and girls, middle school through seniors, representative of several languages and cultures in our school. many of them are not gay and that's maybe part of the gift. straight folks and gay folks together in a room eating pizza and drinking pop and talking about nothing, nobody feeling ashamed or ugly inside. just laughing after all that silence and feeling how good it feels to be able to step out of it, all of us together like that.

A hillbilly in the big city

the sunday farm market spends winters in the old anerican can factory but now is back outside on fifth avenue over by the old stone house, a three hundred year old dutch farmhouse that figured prominently in brooklyn's contributions to the revolution. that revolution, yes. i have learned my lesson trying to wrangle a stubborn dog while navigating a farm market and so i go out into sunday morning free and dogless. the weather is cool but it is spring and i am determined to act like it. i stroll out with sandals and a big straw basket even though the rest of the world is swaddled in thick scarves and wooly hats and puffy coats. i am looking for a cotton half slip and because you can't find such a thing in this day and age i stop by a thrift store i like. there are no slips but there's a sassy red cotton bag that looks like a teacher ought to sport it. it is only a matter of time before this straw basket i'm carrying comes apart from the books and produce i pile in it. the bag, with bright flowers embroidered on the two front pockets, goes into the straw basket and out the door with me.

some days there is music at the market and today is one of those good days. there is a lovely old upright bass. this is always a good sign. pair it with a piano and you've got a decent chance at some thick, smoky jazz. put it with an old jug and a banjo and you've got the music of my homeland. my eyes scan the trio and fall on the banjo just as the player begins to pick. it is not like strumming a guitar or a bass. it is more like tickling a small child. and i know right away what it is, their song. buck owens. my very own buck owens. there are men and women and children standing all around the musicians and each one is stock still, watching maybe and listening, but not letting the song wash over them, get into their skeletons and move them around. that isn't even possible. i stand back far enough the band won't hear me and i open up my mouth and sing every word they know, head back like a howling dog, tapping my toes and rocking like a madwoman. i am a hillbilly in the big city.

we finish the song and i wander on down to the produce, still shaking my head at all those folks unmoved by that music. idiots. but the pickle man is just in front of me and my heart picks right back up from its worry over those fools. one of the pickle guys turns up his radio and says, "this is my jam!" people should not say this. ever. it sounds stupid. but he says it again and grins like a cheshire cat as the guy with him shrugs. i smile because i want pickles and he tells me i must know the song. i hear nothing but a fat thump like a heartbeat and shake my head.

i don't know your stupid jam i am thinking, but he laughs and says i'll know it in a minute. i ask for a quart of quarter sour pickles as much because i love the vivid green of them as because i love their just-this-side of cucumber sassiness. he crams five million fat pickles into the quart tub as new york, new york, is everything they say and noplace that i'd rather be howls out of the box behind the counter. and he is right. i do know his jam. and he is so into this song that nobody else will admit to knowing that i can't help but laugh and tell him he's right. i loved huey lewis in tenth grade. he nods, smiles, sings along. he knew he was right. he hands over the five million pickles with a flourish. there is nothing you can't get in brooklyn.

peach tree switch

the saturday farm market is at grand army plaza. it is large and overwhelming and full of stroller-pushing maniacs with an undue sense of entitlement. they will run you down with a thousand dollar stroller designed to roll smoothly over the body of any victim the parent flattens with it. my desire to get green things overwhelms my stroller hatred so i take the dog. he carries his eel and the world collapses into wide eyes and cooing noises around him. he is my weapon, keeping these otherwise snooty folks weak and malleable with his terrible cuteness, allowing me to meander among tables full of bedding plants and cheese and cider.

i buy bacon from a stand where pigs with wings fly overhead. from childhood i've known that buying food animals from small farms generally means tastier food. my bacon is made out of old breed pigs. rare and quirky like heirloom tomatoes. if i want to go stay at the farm sometime, there's a little apartment in an old barn right there. if i want to drop by some time just to see a pig or two, the farmers encourage that as well. the pigs, they say, love company. i like an animal that is tasty and gregarious.

there is cheese from flop-eared nubian goats. a log with lavender flowers and honey rolled up in the soft cheese. a tub with orange, honey and walnuts stirred around. the dog stands rigid with his eel while i give the woman money and take the cheese. other dogs try to visit with him but he doesn't even see them. there is only the eel. we have our focus, each of us.

i head over to a table full of lavender. pillows and sachets and little dried bundles. a long line of plants of all sizes is over to the side. i ask for a plant and the man wants to know if i need indoor or outdoor. i have never heard of such a thing and i ask. this seems fair to me but he takes offense somehow and in a condescending tone explains that plants grown outside will die if they are kept inside and vice versa. i know this is not true because i've owned lavender plants in the past that have wintered indoors and then spent the glorious summer days basking on the porch or fire escape. i ask another question about a plant in a south facing window (even though i don't have one) and the man's voice gets so tense i decide to ignore his stupidity. i get an indoor plant and an outdoor plant. all bases covered.

we are leaving when i notice peach tree switches. now, the sign says "peach blossom" but what they are is four foot long switches with buds. now, if you are of a certain age and from a certain part of the country, your biggest childhood fear was a peach tree switch. my own parents preferred the psychological warfare: go to your room! you better not even try reading a book while you're in there! so although i have absolutely no recollection of this sort of punishment on my own tender backside i can tell you grown folks made it clear that the horribleness of it was not always so much in the switching, but more in the fact that you had to go out and cut your own switch from the tree. this would give you time to think about your sorry state and it would be clear to you that no matter how clever you thought you might be in your selection of switches, the red welts on the backs of your legs were there because you had brought the miserable branch into the house yourself. peach tree switches were, during my childhood, the punishment of choice of grannies, especially. it takes very little arm strength to deal a stinging blow and you can continue to yell at the child while switching.

they are eight dollars for a bundle of twelve switches and there's really no reason not to get them. i hand over my eight dollars and try to balance the dog, his eel, the bacon, two cheeses, the indoor lavender plant, the outdoor lavender plant and the bundle of switches. there are several attempts at rearranging on the way home and finally i carry the branches over my shoulder, hobo style. we get home and the bacon and cheeses go right in the fridge. the plants go on the windowsill and the fire escape. i have no idea what to do with these switches, though. they are too big for any vase i have ever owned. they are too big for any container we have in this tiny apartment. there is a very distinct possibility that they are too big for this apartment.

they lie in the sink all afternoon, bottom ends submerged in water, bundled tight with two bands of twine. i search the kitchen store, the flea market, the garden store and a few thrift stores. i walk all the way down to the big home improvement store by the canal. i walk six or seven miles just trying to find a container for four foot tall switches. i have given up and flopped myself on the couch when i see the ice cream maker sitting quietly by the bookcase. actually it is the wooden outer bucket of the ice cream maker we used when i was a child. dad would drape a towel over the top and would have one of us sit on it to weigh it down when cranking the handle got to be so difficult the whole bucket would roll around.

it is a little over a foot tall and not quite a foot across and it is made out of vertical staves banded by rusted metal rings, barrelish. the bottom ring is gone but there's a bit of the silvery paper label smack in the middle of the thing. i put a dish of water in the bottom and drop the bundle into the bucket. the whole thing leans to one side and nearly flips over. i hold the bundle up in the center and snip the top band of twine. it is like a flower opening up. the branches ease apart from one another scattering pink buds on the floor. i snip the second band of twine and the whole mass breathes out, relaxes. a cotton candy tree stands in the apartment, worth all eight of those dollars and then some.

egg

thanks to the middle sister for the eagles: http://www.raptorresource.org/falcon_cams/index.html

the egg looks like one of those grayish white river stones, smoothed by the water but not at all soft. it looks heavy, looks like it would hurt if you tossed it at someone. it is difficult to see this last egg because the two small eagles crowded up with it are that same dirty-snow color and they are not still even for a minute. everything about them is focused on food. they are open beaks and squirming fuzz. the nest is massive and is littered with carcasses- a rabbit, mice, indecipherable small furry things and just this afternoon, a slick speckled fish.

it is the egg, though, that draws the eye. there are two absolutely shocking adult eagles hovering around and the two howling babies but this tiny egg has everyone in the nest riled up. the egg splits like an earthquake. the halves tear and there is movement in the space behind the jagged edges. there is something absolutely living in there. but crawling out of an egg takes a great deal of work and a big eagle settles down on the two bits of fluff and the egg and glares out at the world, daring anything but food to come near.

there is the sound of the road behind the nest and the songs of small birds. there is a horse somewhere. but then the nest is riled up again and when the grown bird stands up, the halves of the egg are pulled apart. there is something that looks like a wad of gum inside. there is a black thorn sticking out of the wad. the whole thing pulses, thumps from inside. it is almost too ugly to see. the image is blurred by a wing and then there are five eagles there in that nest. five. that is the most eagles you can put in a nest at once. the big wing moves and there are the two white heads nodding.

one flies off and the other begins to root around, rearranging, fluffing, settling things in at the soft middle of the nest. the rest of the nest keeps the food. there is room to put a deer up there if the birds could carry it. the fish lies on its back, tail snuggled up against a rabbit or woodchuck maybe. most of the black bird is gone except a few long tailfeathers. more fish stacked like logs and something tawny are piled at the edge. there are mice on the other side of the nest, too small to see.

the newest bird, a small disaster of a thing, faces the back of the nest while the other birds open beaks under their mother, waiting for food. it squirms around, flops across the nest, manages, somehow, to land under the oldest baby, nothing but beak sticking out. it looks so tired. the older baby's belly rests on its neck and it squeezes itself like toothpaste out from under. it is not as likely to survive as the others. it is not so loud and not so forceful and there is a chance the firstborn may murder it. but it does not stop moving. when the grown bird leans down and carefully holds a bit of the inside of a fish over the tiny bird's beak the small bird misses the food twice. there is no way to help. the grown bird offers another bit of fish and the tiny beak below it opens. the fish falls in.

halloween with the klan

you need to call your mother insists the voice on the answering machine. it is the middle sister, the one earliest identified as being "vocal" about things. the one whose first nickname had an actual expletive in it. you need to tell her you remember that they made us trick or treat... and i know before i hear the rest of the message what she is talking about. forced trick or treating. while it was not the trail of tears and not the bataan death march, to a small child it had a similar flavor.

we did not want to go to a particular house to trick or treat. it wasn't an old ramshackle house we figured might be haunted nor did the folks inside seem like the type to fill candy with poisons or razor blades. we never envisioned the homeowner flying off nights on a broom. but the man who lived behind those walls and windows just like ours was horrifying to us. he was worse than all the scary monsters because he was real. he was everything our parents had raised us to steer clear of, a man so full of hate he needed to join up with an organization dedicated solely to the practice of focusing that hate. he was a proud and powerful member of the klan. yes, that klan.

but our parents, who in their own calm way had raised us to be unafraid of the gifts and opportunities available in a world filled with so much that was not us, stood firm in their insistence that we go trick or treating at the house of a man who some evenings dressed up in his own awful costume to terrorize others. maybe they hoped that we would connect with this man so lost to the world. maybe they knew, even then, that the ugliness in him would ruin him soon enough. i suspect they just felt sorry for him, knew he was so sick from his hate that there was not much they could do to help but send over children dressed as wildness begging for candy.

and so we went. i could not tell you what the man looked like. this is not because of failing memory but because i don't believe i ever looked him full in the face in all the time i knew him. he isn't important. he was never important. what i remember from that halloween is that they wanted us to go, the parents. it didn't matter who he was or what he had done. it mattered who we were and what we would do. this is how we figure out who we are. so we took our dressed up selves and our plastic jack-o-lanterns and we rang his bell and waited.