Margotlog: Cats in Winter
Our three don't go out so we don't worry about frostbitten paws or frozen fur. It's been snowing so much lately, they would be wet if they braved the elements--little Julia the black and white, with a cute moustache and black goatee, next Maggie the square-faced, a calico like the oldest Tilly with motley shifts from orange to white to dark flecked with tan. Only Tilly suffers stiffness and lethargy when it's 20 below as it's been way too often this January. Five school closings in one month, surely a record, and most on Mondays.
Yet all three know winter from summer. No open doors and windows to sniff the breeze. No delighting in cool linoleum. Instead Maggie hunkers down by the dining room radiator, and Julia leaps atop a few radiators upstairs with blankets or towels draped over them. Tilly has discovered a new warm spot recently--the laundry basket beside the radiator in a bedroom. One night in the dark I reached down for a bathrobe and grabbed instead a snarling cat.
Especially Maggie's fur stands on end with static electricity, except just after someone's showered when the bathroom air is moist. They Julia begs to be cuddled--a piercing squeak, then once in arms, a half grunt, half purr and willingness to remain passive while her hair is patted backwards. I do the same to Tilly in early morning when I drink my coffee in bed and she comes to be stroked. Her hair is the longest and finest of all three felines, but her willingness to groom herself has waned. Mats form along her belly, under her arms and under her chin. My theory used to be that she slept too long on one side--thus the mats. But under her chin doesn't make any sense unless she rolls onto her neck to rest. Guess I don't know all there is to know about each cat.
We are so much part of a family it's eerie. This has been true ever since Fran and I acquired more than two cats, which come to think of it was when we got married. We blended cats and kids. His Fluffy and Bart, my nameless calico--well she had a name but lived only a short time. I no longer remember, though her ghost is hovering just beyond memory.
Winter is a quieter time. I listen to Frances Mayes' Every Day in Tuscany not only in the evening but also at noon when doing my stretches. When Julia sees me pull the floor towel off the rack, she squeaks with excitement. I swing it at her like a torreadore's cape, but she skitters away--this is NOT how things should go. Giving in, I lay it flat and she immediately take her position at one end. Frances Mayes amuses me as she pronounces Italian with a Georgia. twang, Not until listening to this book on disc have I realized how southern she is. Yet this light-hearted account of TWO houses in Cortona, a slew of friends who seem to do nothing but cook for each other and walk in the town's piazza, is a fine antidote to this beastly winter.
I tried quite a while ago to take partial possession of a small apartment in an Umbrian hill town, but after three months, understood I would never stay long enough to make the upkeep and mortgage worthwhile. I need my one and only yard, outside the upstairs bathroom picture window, the eight trees I've planted over the years on the property, the slant of Midwestern roofs now covered with snow, and the certainty that all that I cherish is in one place. We could never take three cats to Italy like artist and writer friends take their big dog. Our cats define home, along with books, art works, the slant of light, the friends we've known for years, and of course my husband. Mine is not an expansive personality, at last not as expansive as Frances Mayes'. Yet it's fun to hear about heat and swimming pools, and baby cingali or wild boars, tearing up a hilltop garden. I gave up growing vegetables long ago and plant only flowers and tend trees and cats.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Margotlog: Super-Beetle at Twenty Below
Margotlog: Super Beetle at Twenty Below
Supposed to be the worst winter here in flyover land since 1982-3. And what do I immediately recall from thirty years ago? Not where I lived, nor who I lived with, but the car. It was a VW Super Beetle, meaning it had heat. Now I'm laughing because there'd been an earlier Beetle in my life without heat. It drove my first hubbie and me from New York, via Atlanta, then Alabama, etc until we turned north. At one spot in rural Mississippi, we forded a stream. I kid you not, the road did not have a bridge. We drove through the stream. Cows and some people lifted their heads to watch. Should we wave and call "Hi"? Nope. Too dangerous with our New York license plates. This was the deep south in the late 1960s. (Yes, Emily, that is before you were born! and civil rights did not mean civility.)
By 1982, I'd left the first husband behind, yet hadn't found the second. I was in "living-with-limbo." Now I remember him, another poet-type like myself, but he imbibed more. I tried to keep up, but simply got sick or fell asleep. It was not a match made in heaven. Nor was the weather, that first year we shacked up together. The Super Beetle had heat which was a good thing since I was driving to outstate schools, maybe as far as Moorhead--next to Fargo, for those who only saw the movie.
The cold was intense, the snow depth gigantic, but the little Super Beetle chugged along. Which is not what I could say about myself. That was the period when I learnedly exquisitely about frostbite. I'd stagger in and sit on the radiator by the inside front door. (Yes, Emily, there were two front doors separated by a small anteroom to keep out the riffraff.)
My hands were so cold I could not feel the doorknob to turn it. Once inside and warming my hands on the radiator, they began to tingle, then throb, and finally to ache. It took me several decades before I learned two crucial things: to buy men's padded gloves and to wear under them thin plastic or rubber gloves. Men's gloves have strong thick padding which helps deter the cold, as does the looser fit. Women's winter gloves are worthless. Ditto women's winter boots. For years my toes also got frostbitten because even so-called "padded" women's boots had are lined with only a namby-pamby stretch of thin felt or foam. Men's boots are far thicker and sturdier, and they give me enough leeway to wear double pairs of socks. Now those socks are wool. But for the hands the extra layer of plastic or rubber allows for finer touch without nude fingers getting frozen to freezing metal.
Last weekend at the St. Paul Chamber Concert, a nicely dressed woman slid into her seat on the other side of us. Looking down at my men's boots with their hooks and eyes, their stiff rounded toes, and waffle-stomper treads, she said, "That's what I'm buying next time." I felt moderately vindicated. It's taken me decades, but I finally know how to dress for twenty below. The Super Beetle has gone the way of most flesh. It had heat, but its defroster was abysmal. My Prius does much better with defroster and heat, but there's no car on earth that can make the first twenty minutes of driving at twenty below a thing of beauty and joy forever. We're just luck if they start.
Supposed to be the worst winter here in flyover land since 1982-3. And what do I immediately recall from thirty years ago? Not where I lived, nor who I lived with, but the car. It was a VW Super Beetle, meaning it had heat. Now I'm laughing because there'd been an earlier Beetle in my life without heat. It drove my first hubbie and me from New York, via Atlanta, then Alabama, etc until we turned north. At one spot in rural Mississippi, we forded a stream. I kid you not, the road did not have a bridge. We drove through the stream. Cows and some people lifted their heads to watch. Should we wave and call "Hi"? Nope. Too dangerous with our New York license plates. This was the deep south in the late 1960s. (Yes, Emily, that is before you were born! and civil rights did not mean civility.)
By 1982, I'd left the first husband behind, yet hadn't found the second. I was in "living-with-limbo." Now I remember him, another poet-type like myself, but he imbibed more. I tried to keep up, but simply got sick or fell asleep. It was not a match made in heaven. Nor was the weather, that first year we shacked up together. The Super Beetle had heat which was a good thing since I was driving to outstate schools, maybe as far as Moorhead--next to Fargo, for those who only saw the movie.
The cold was intense, the snow depth gigantic, but the little Super Beetle chugged along. Which is not what I could say about myself. That was the period when I learnedly exquisitely about frostbite. I'd stagger in and sit on the radiator by the inside front door. (Yes, Emily, there were two front doors separated by a small anteroom to keep out the riffraff.)
My hands were so cold I could not feel the doorknob to turn it. Once inside and warming my hands on the radiator, they began to tingle, then throb, and finally to ache. It took me several decades before I learned two crucial things: to buy men's padded gloves and to wear under them thin plastic or rubber gloves. Men's gloves have strong thick padding which helps deter the cold, as does the looser fit. Women's winter gloves are worthless. Ditto women's winter boots. For years my toes also got frostbitten because even so-called "padded" women's boots had are lined with only a namby-pamby stretch of thin felt or foam. Men's boots are far thicker and sturdier, and they give me enough leeway to wear double pairs of socks. Now those socks are wool. But for the hands the extra layer of plastic or rubber allows for finer touch without nude fingers getting frozen to freezing metal.
Last weekend at the St. Paul Chamber Concert, a nicely dressed woman slid into her seat on the other side of us. Looking down at my men's boots with their hooks and eyes, their stiff rounded toes, and waffle-stomper treads, she said, "That's what I'm buying next time." I felt moderately vindicated. It's taken me decades, but I finally know how to dress for twenty below. The Super Beetle has gone the way of most flesh. It had heat, but its defroster was abysmal. My Prius does much better with defroster and heat, but there's no car on earth that can make the first twenty minutes of driving at twenty below a thing of beauty and joy forever. We're just luck if they start.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Margotlog: Jim Harrison's "English Major"
Margotlog: Jim Harrison's "English Major"
Too many years ago to count, I won the Loft's Mentor Series as a poet. Over the course of nine months, we were guided by perhaps six mentors, among them the poet and novelist Jim Harrison. I was recently divorced and gun-shy of men with aplomb and swagger. Not that Harrison was intimidating--far from it. He was friendly, with a gruff, pleasant voice, and seemed to enjoy our company. I remember walking down the street beside him, very aware of his physical presence. That was as close as we came. His subject matter--lakes and streams, critters, American men out of doors--was almost completely different than my focus on the visual arts and motherhood. He had nothing to teach me. Or so I thought.
One of our Christmas cards this year came from a fan of Harrison's, a fiction-writing poet like Harrison. Her card was a reproduction of a Harrison poem about a bear. Glued beside it appeared to be a bit of bear skin, with the fur/hair attached. Then, folded around the card was a letter explaining how she'd looked for bear, found an aged skin which fell apart when she tried to cut into it, and eventually settled for buffalo. Her appreciation for Harrison was palpable, and her story of settling for the critter she could make work, amused me so much that I called to tell her how one of our cats had appropriated the card and was batting it around the downstairs. We had a good chuckle.
This was the open door I evidently needed because the next group of audio books I borrowed from the library included Harrison's "The English Major." The reader had a gravelly male voice with a Western twang. It was the voice of the main character, Cliff, who had just been divorced by his Coke-swilling and powdered-donut eating wife, had his farm sold out from under him and lost his beloved dog. So untethered was he, that he set out on a quest to visit each of the contiguous U.S. states, with a jigsaw puzzle of the states to keep him company.
He took to the road in Michigan, crossed Wisconsin (rather familiar territory), then took a serious emotional detour in Minnesota when he hooked up with a former student who'd written him over the years as "my best instructor ever." Marybel was Lolita untethered. And Cliff? I had a lot to learn about how a bruised male ego digs in as if there is no tomorrow. I was, to put it mildly, out of my depth. Did male writers really indulge in such raunchy sex talk? How much of the story was going to go on like this?
Turns out there was a lot more to Cliff than a starving appetite. He was a bird watcher and fly fisherman and especially in Montana, his fly fishing attained the grace of a bull fight. Rocky and watery, enigmatic and satisfying, and the telling outperformed sex with Marybel by megawatts. By this time, I began to get a whiff of what my friend found to admire in Jim Harrison's fiction.
It's entertaining, I discovered, to view American women my age through the eyes of a sensitive but macho American guy. It was curious to hear him decide to rename the states from their early Native American inhabitants. It was a relief to find him eventually returned to a kind of farm, a sort of dog, , and a wife who didn't wound his psyche with every word. The story has a sort of happy ending. It also accumulates power and interest as it goes, which is almost all we writers can hope for--keeping them reading all the way to the end.
Too many years ago to count, I won the Loft's Mentor Series as a poet. Over the course of nine months, we were guided by perhaps six mentors, among them the poet and novelist Jim Harrison. I was recently divorced and gun-shy of men with aplomb and swagger. Not that Harrison was intimidating--far from it. He was friendly, with a gruff, pleasant voice, and seemed to enjoy our company. I remember walking down the street beside him, very aware of his physical presence. That was as close as we came. His subject matter--lakes and streams, critters, American men out of doors--was almost completely different than my focus on the visual arts and motherhood. He had nothing to teach me. Or so I thought.
One of our Christmas cards this year came from a fan of Harrison's, a fiction-writing poet like Harrison. Her card was a reproduction of a Harrison poem about a bear. Glued beside it appeared to be a bit of bear skin, with the fur/hair attached. Then, folded around the card was a letter explaining how she'd looked for bear, found an aged skin which fell apart when she tried to cut into it, and eventually settled for buffalo. Her appreciation for Harrison was palpable, and her story of settling for the critter she could make work, amused me so much that I called to tell her how one of our cats had appropriated the card and was batting it around the downstairs. We had a good chuckle.
This was the open door I evidently needed because the next group of audio books I borrowed from the library included Harrison's "The English Major." The reader had a gravelly male voice with a Western twang. It was the voice of the main character, Cliff, who had just been divorced by his Coke-swilling and powdered-donut eating wife, had his farm sold out from under him and lost his beloved dog. So untethered was he, that he set out on a quest to visit each of the contiguous U.S. states, with a jigsaw puzzle of the states to keep him company.
He took to the road in Michigan, crossed Wisconsin (rather familiar territory), then took a serious emotional detour in Minnesota when he hooked up with a former student who'd written him over the years as "my best instructor ever." Marybel was Lolita untethered. And Cliff? I had a lot to learn about how a bruised male ego digs in as if there is no tomorrow. I was, to put it mildly, out of my depth. Did male writers really indulge in such raunchy sex talk? How much of the story was going to go on like this?
Turns out there was a lot more to Cliff than a starving appetite. He was a bird watcher and fly fisherman and especially in Montana, his fly fishing attained the grace of a bull fight. Rocky and watery, enigmatic and satisfying, and the telling outperformed sex with Marybel by megawatts. By this time, I began to get a whiff of what my friend found to admire in Jim Harrison's fiction.
It's entertaining, I discovered, to view American women my age through the eyes of a sensitive but macho American guy. It was curious to hear him decide to rename the states from their early Native American inhabitants. It was a relief to find him eventually returned to a kind of farm, a sort of dog, , and a wife who didn't wound his psyche with every word. The story has a sort of happy ending. It also accumulates power and interest as it goes, which is almost all we writers can hope for--keeping them reading all the way to the end.
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