Margotlog: The Smallest One Was Madeline
In the vault of The Old Citadel, my mother sits on a saggy sofa in the huge bedroom she shares with my father. She's reading to us before bedtime. It's maybe the only time of the day when she sits down. But snuggling against her isn't the only reason my sister and I relish these moments. It's her voice and the story she reads: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmens.
We all have our expressive side, and hers was surely the reading-aloud voice, with decorating second. My father is said to have complained soon after they married that he slept on flowers, sat on flowers, ate on flowers. My mother never changed the decor.
She was the runt of her family, second born to her twin brother, and plagued with childhood ricketts, a queasy stomach, and terror of storms. She also professed to being shy as a girl though we never saw evidence of this. She plunged forward into new landscapes, leaving North Dakota for Pittsburgh after graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1929, leaving Pittsburgh for Charleston after the war years--my father got a job teaching veterans at The Citadel, but she was the one who packed us up and got us there. Pioneer-grit and determination to break free (I see it now) from my father's Pittsburgh Italian tribe where she, who had no knack for languages other than English, often sat silent in the corner.
Early in their marriage, B.B. "before babies," he took her to Europe. It was 1939, and the guns of the Spanish Civil War popped red against the sky as the ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. She was seasick much of the time, except when "doing her nails" before sitting down at the captain's table. It was an Italian ship, and my father, speaking beautiful Italian, had endeared himself to the captain.
She insisted she was the "mousy" one of her two older sisters and vigorous brother, and perhaps that was the case. But by the time my sister and I came along, she commanded workmen, train porters, shop-keepers with determined efficiency. Sometimes I cringed at the harsh edge to her voice--especially in contrast to the gentle drawl of Southerners. But maybe she didn't hear how she sounded, or more likely didn't care. Getting things done was her top priority. That and making sure that we "girls," were "exposed" to the best things in life.
These included taking us to concerts of the Charleston Symphony when we were around six and eight stopping at art museums and historical sites on our summer trips north, and always and forever, visiting the Charleston Library. It was housed in a remarkable three-story town house, like many Charleston houses, with its narrow end to the street. Wide porches looked into a murky garden dominated by huge magnolia trees.
We had to take the bus: a lesson in race relations. Possibly we had to take two buses to arrive at Rutledge Avenue from The Old Citadel, but I am certain that we walked up huge grey steps to an imposing front door. Even now my eyes adjust to the cool shadowy interior of the library. Miss Janie Smith was in charge of the children's room--a small birdlike woman with wispy grey hair flying out of a knot, and a soft round body feathered in black. It seems to be, on the beak of her nose, perched round spectacles. Other than that, she is lost to me, for after pleasantly greeting Miss Janie, my mother took charge.
We brought home armloads of books, for it wasn't common to own lots of children's books, plus we were rather poor. Other than The Book House in twelve volumes which was ensconced in the upper shelf of a bookcase in the living room (the Encyclopedia Britannica on the lower shelf), our books came from the library. But since we went to the library at least once a week, it was never a hardship to borrow rather than own.
My mother herself was a librarian, but she worked at home, washing our clothes by hand, ironing my father's heavy uniforms, cleaning and cooking. Then in early afternoons, she "went down for her nap," a sacred period we dared not interrupt unless there was a real emergency. She also helped my father correct papers, but that was late into the night when we were fast asleep.
Dreaming, no doubt, of "twelve little girls in two straight lines...the smallest one was Madeline."
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Margotlog: The Death of an Old Friend
Margotlog: The Death of an Old Friend
Meaning we go back a ways. Meaning with her jaunty, gravelly voice, Janet was apparently above death. In an illness that would have put most people in a wheelchair, she gamely refused. Throughout the years, we played all sorts of games; we meant to outlive each other.
She might have been my first friend in Minnesota--next door neighbor in the first house in the first marriage with our first and only children. To my clenched-jaw solitude, she brought a red-head's charm. We sat in her kitchen booth and added cream to our coffee. At home I kept only skim milk. She said outloud the most delicious gossip about people who made headlines. That's what happens when you marry into a Minneapolis political family.
But Janet herself came of East Side, Saint Paul stock, though she actually grew up in Highland. It took me years and a move to the capitol city before I had a clue to what that meant--outsider Southerner as I was, from a place she had no trouble finding on a map, but would never visit.
She and Richard and Andrew owned a friendly dog--Elmer, named I think for a Minnesota governor. Elmer Anderson. Our family started and ended with cats with catlike names: Clarence, Wilhemina. We spread the cat-contagion next door, and later acquired a kitten from Janet and Richard and Andrew. But of course it was an offspring of a pure-bred. Even in her last days, Janet was cat proud: she'd put Louie, her huge Siamese mix, on a diet and he looked dandy, strolling across her bed. I was properly awed at their accomplishment, I who can never withhold food from anything with whiskers.
Janet and I traded books--she never wanted hers back, she was that generous, plus neat to the point of obsession. Always clearing out and putting away--other things I have trouble doing. It was nice to visit a friend with an artful touch, blending old and new, for a lived-in look. Yet her bathroom sink ornaments were as fine as the Ritz. And her scarf and sock drawers, geometric marvels.
We were artists together, in the days when "women artists" had a kind of coming out--Janet, the painter; I, the writer. She staunchly supported me, and I her. Yet I doubt that we grasped what the other was after. Perhaps because we were so new at this that we didn't know our own bent.
When I moved to Saint Paul, we saw less of each other, but lately, within the last five years, we reconnected. First she hosted yoga sessions in her Loring Park apartment--I still can't tell if the stretching and chanting were simply an excuse for the lasagna afterwards. As in our younger days, I giggled at her gossip--she was so loving and so nasty. Would I want to know what she said of me? Not until now, have I asked that question. She had the talent of making each encounter seem just the thing to make her happy.
Our last Sunday afternoon together, I knelt beside her bed, petted Louie, and asked her about people in our old Minneapolis neighborhood. For that brief time, we lived our golden age again. I brought us plates of lasagna and we ate beside each other on her bed. She knew she was going elsewhere, yet her worries were more about how her family would cope and how she could manage dying without upsetting the beautiful order of her life. I think she succeeded. Now it is up to us not to muss her arrangements too much, or hug too hard what was, in the end, both strong and fragile. I will miss her more than I can say.
Meaning we go back a ways. Meaning with her jaunty, gravelly voice, Janet was apparently above death. In an illness that would have put most people in a wheelchair, she gamely refused. Throughout the years, we played all sorts of games; we meant to outlive each other.
She might have been my first friend in Minnesota--next door neighbor in the first house in the first marriage with our first and only children. To my clenched-jaw solitude, she brought a red-head's charm. We sat in her kitchen booth and added cream to our coffee. At home I kept only skim milk. She said outloud the most delicious gossip about people who made headlines. That's what happens when you marry into a Minneapolis political family.
But Janet herself came of East Side, Saint Paul stock, though she actually grew up in Highland. It took me years and a move to the capitol city before I had a clue to what that meant--outsider Southerner as I was, from a place she had no trouble finding on a map, but would never visit.
She and Richard and Andrew owned a friendly dog--Elmer, named I think for a Minnesota governor. Elmer Anderson. Our family started and ended with cats with catlike names: Clarence, Wilhemina. We spread the cat-contagion next door, and later acquired a kitten from Janet and Richard and Andrew. But of course it was an offspring of a pure-bred. Even in her last days, Janet was cat proud: she'd put Louie, her huge Siamese mix, on a diet and he looked dandy, strolling across her bed. I was properly awed at their accomplishment, I who can never withhold food from anything with whiskers.
Janet and I traded books--she never wanted hers back, she was that generous, plus neat to the point of obsession. Always clearing out and putting away--other things I have trouble doing. It was nice to visit a friend with an artful touch, blending old and new, for a lived-in look. Yet her bathroom sink ornaments were as fine as the Ritz. And her scarf and sock drawers, geometric marvels.
We were artists together, in the days when "women artists" had a kind of coming out--Janet, the painter; I, the writer. She staunchly supported me, and I her. Yet I doubt that we grasped what the other was after. Perhaps because we were so new at this that we didn't know our own bent.
When I moved to Saint Paul, we saw less of each other, but lately, within the last five years, we reconnected. First she hosted yoga sessions in her Loring Park apartment--I still can't tell if the stretching and chanting were simply an excuse for the lasagna afterwards. As in our younger days, I giggled at her gossip--she was so loving and so nasty. Would I want to know what she said of me? Not until now, have I asked that question. She had the talent of making each encounter seem just the thing to make her happy.
Our last Sunday afternoon together, I knelt beside her bed, petted Louie, and asked her about people in our old Minneapolis neighborhood. For that brief time, we lived our golden age again. I brought us plates of lasagna and we ate beside each other on her bed. She knew she was going elsewhere, yet her worries were more about how her family would cope and how she could manage dying without upsetting the beautiful order of her life. I think she succeeded. Now it is up to us not to muss her arrangements too much, or hug too hard what was, in the end, both strong and fragile. I will miss her more than I can say.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Margotlog: Put Your Mind Where Your Mouth Is, And Other Short Directives from the Holiday Buzz
Margotlog: Put Your Mind Where Your Mouth Is, and Other Short Directives from the Holiday Buzz
He sat at the edge of holiday chat, bent forward as if he wanted to catch the drift, but talking more with his face than his voice. When the subject turned to health, he revealed that he was a nurse. We asked, "What have you noticed from your years of nursing?"
"Want to know the two hardest things?" he answered. We did. "Weight's the first. Every medical condition, every medical emergency is complicated by excessive weight. Everywhere I look, on the street, in hospitals, in fast-food parlors, there's obesity." We nodded in agreement and concern.
"The second," he went on, "is the teaching of nursing. When I was training, first as a nurse, then a nurse anesthetist, 80% of our training was clinical. Nurses learned on the floor to give sponge baths, to administer medication taking care not to over or under dose. We looked at patients' skin, pulled down their eyelids, inspected the inside of their mouths, even casually tested their reflexes as we made them comfortable." We nodded approvingly, remembering how frequently it was the nurses who soothed a fever, popped hemorrhoids back inside the rectum, kept up the regular supply of fluids--either intravenously or by mouth. Doctors would speed in and out, barely noticing the body in the bed, but the nurses felt around.
"Now, too much of nurses' training is by the book. Ph.D's have taken over the training. Too much is in the classroom, as memorization. Even at best, this is insufficiently applied in clinical situations, and once a nurse is actually working, the stuff that was crammed in the head gets confused or fuzzy."
Listening, we quietly determined never to be sick, though lately it seems we're surrounded by seriously ill friends or relatives. Breast cancer here, internal bleeding there, bone deterioration. So far, no mental breakdowns, but wait, yes there are. We tell ourselves it's normal aging, except that normal has such disturbingly individual shapes. Each sufferer tugs at our heart strings and makes our stomachs tighten with anxiety.
After some cogitation, these bits of holiday buzz coalesced toward several simple conclusions: FIRST: smaller and shorter are better. Smaller portions. My mother changed the size of her dinner plates when she and my father began to put on weight. "If you see a full plate, you think you're getting enough," she commented. She out-foxed the belly with the brain.
Add to smaller, shorter. Shorter stays with extended family (especially kids made wild by excitement--it's wearing!) Shorter WALKING distances between home and grocery store, library, work place. Smaller care facilities--as long as certain minimum standards of cleanliness, nutrition and medication monitoring are in place, the essence of good care is regular, hands-on loving kindness. That's easier to deliver in a small facility.
Of course, there are wide exceptions--friends going to the Mayo Clinic for tests, etc., report being amazed at the clinic's intelligent, careful assessment and treatment. I'd add that hospitals in the Twin Cities can also perform daily miracles of teamwork and yes, astonishingly competent nursing. Emergency Room nurses being at the top of the list.
SECOND holiday message: Training that's hands-on and personal. First-hand experience of illness for nurses and doctors. Bring back the clinical model. BUT ALSO FOR TEACHERS, since health care and education belong in one over-lapping category. If White teachers in training are truly going to understand what it means to be African-American in Minnesota, they need to work with classrooms of African-Americans. And they need to be guided by teachers who themselves have learned to walk in the shoes of this least understood community of color. Least understood in this land of the "white" meal, White Christmas and White opportunity. I tried it recently: imagined myself an aging Black woman walking down Grand Avenue, with a limited income, and grandkids to feed. All the treats had a Nordic or Gaelic flavor. Every face I passed was white. I was miles away from family in Mississippi or South Carolina. After years of living in cold country, I still pined for warm Christmases where tinsel was draped over live oaks and palmettos. Where some Santas have brown faces, and chittlins and collard greens are served at, yes, white folks' restaurants. I decided that, next year, even if I had to take the bus, I'll get myself home, really home for Christmas.
He sat at the edge of holiday chat, bent forward as if he wanted to catch the drift, but talking more with his face than his voice. When the subject turned to health, he revealed that he was a nurse. We asked, "What have you noticed from your years of nursing?"
"Want to know the two hardest things?" he answered. We did. "Weight's the first. Every medical condition, every medical emergency is complicated by excessive weight. Everywhere I look, on the street, in hospitals, in fast-food parlors, there's obesity." We nodded in agreement and concern.
"The second," he went on, "is the teaching of nursing. When I was training, first as a nurse, then a nurse anesthetist, 80% of our training was clinical. Nurses learned on the floor to give sponge baths, to administer medication taking care not to over or under dose. We looked at patients' skin, pulled down their eyelids, inspected the inside of their mouths, even casually tested their reflexes as we made them comfortable." We nodded approvingly, remembering how frequently it was the nurses who soothed a fever, popped hemorrhoids back inside the rectum, kept up the regular supply of fluids--either intravenously or by mouth. Doctors would speed in and out, barely noticing the body in the bed, but the nurses felt around.
"Now, too much of nurses' training is by the book. Ph.D's have taken over the training. Too much is in the classroom, as memorization. Even at best, this is insufficiently applied in clinical situations, and once a nurse is actually working, the stuff that was crammed in the head gets confused or fuzzy."
Listening, we quietly determined never to be sick, though lately it seems we're surrounded by seriously ill friends or relatives. Breast cancer here, internal bleeding there, bone deterioration. So far, no mental breakdowns, but wait, yes there are. We tell ourselves it's normal aging, except that normal has such disturbingly individual shapes. Each sufferer tugs at our heart strings and makes our stomachs tighten with anxiety.
After some cogitation, these bits of holiday buzz coalesced toward several simple conclusions: FIRST: smaller and shorter are better. Smaller portions. My mother changed the size of her dinner plates when she and my father began to put on weight. "If you see a full plate, you think you're getting enough," she commented. She out-foxed the belly with the brain.
Add to smaller, shorter. Shorter stays with extended family (especially kids made wild by excitement--it's wearing!) Shorter WALKING distances between home and grocery store, library, work place. Smaller care facilities--as long as certain minimum standards of cleanliness, nutrition and medication monitoring are in place, the essence of good care is regular, hands-on loving kindness. That's easier to deliver in a small facility.
Of course, there are wide exceptions--friends going to the Mayo Clinic for tests, etc., report being amazed at the clinic's intelligent, careful assessment and treatment. I'd add that hospitals in the Twin Cities can also perform daily miracles of teamwork and yes, astonishingly competent nursing. Emergency Room nurses being at the top of the list.
SECOND holiday message: Training that's hands-on and personal. First-hand experience of illness for nurses and doctors. Bring back the clinical model. BUT ALSO FOR TEACHERS, since health care and education belong in one over-lapping category. If White teachers in training are truly going to understand what it means to be African-American in Minnesota, they need to work with classrooms of African-Americans. And they need to be guided by teachers who themselves have learned to walk in the shoes of this least understood community of color. Least understood in this land of the "white" meal, White Christmas and White opportunity. I tried it recently: imagined myself an aging Black woman walking down Grand Avenue, with a limited income, and grandkids to feed. All the treats had a Nordic or Gaelic flavor. Every face I passed was white. I was miles away from family in Mississippi or South Carolina. After years of living in cold country, I still pined for warm Christmases where tinsel was draped over live oaks and palmettos. Where some Santas have brown faces, and chittlins and collard greens are served at, yes, white folks' restaurants. I decided that, next year, even if I had to take the bus, I'll get myself home, really home for Christmas.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Margotlog: The Man by the Freeway
Margotlog: The Man by the Freeway
He was carrying a sign, standing beside the inside turn before you entered the freeway. I didn't have to read the sign; I knew what he wanted. Money for food.
A few months ago someone who looked like a woman with very short hair but might have been a small man approached me while I walked in our neighborhood. Each time this person asked me if I knew somewhere she could get free food. This put me in a mild panic, I mumbled something and walked quickly away.
I never carry money with me when I walk. I don't want to give a potential drug addict money that might go to buy drugs.
As I thought over these brief encounters, in the midst of unemployment even among our friends, and news briefs about families needing food, I decided to buy three gift cards from a fast food chain not far from us. I gave one card to my husband and asked him to keep it in his car in case he passed someone asking for food.
This morning on our way to a family Christmas gift exchange and brunch across the river, we passed the man with the sign.
This season every year I feel a little sick: we have so much. As we stopped for the light before crossing the intersection and entering the freeway, I felt a strong need to give this gift card to the man standing beside the freeway.
My husband loves Christmas. He grew up poor, the son of a missionary/preacher first in China, then in small Congregational Churches in the U.S. South and Midwest. His parents were almost always more liberal in their politics than the parishioners. His father was asked to leave several churches.
My husband has spent his adulthood attempting to make up for the lack of abundance in his childhood. I don't know any other adult who is so enthralled by Christmas. He wakes up in the dark and stares at the presents under the tree, not quite believing they are there. Now that he has grandsons (they are the youngest generation in the family), he is lit by an inner fire. He was in a rush this morning, to bring Christmas to these boys. Never a placid, easy driver, he was truly ablaze to cross that river and begin the dazzle,
When I pointed out the man and said, "Let's find the food gift card," we were in the lane leading straight to the freeway. Not the turn lane where the man stood. The light was about to change, we had the gift card in hand, but at the last minute, my husband said, "No, it's too dangerous," meaning he didn't want to move left into the turn lane, take the time to pause and hand the card out the window, and then turn left. This would have taken us several blocks out of our way.
We sped through the green light onto the freeway. Immediately, I was deeply troubled. Angry at him for his haste, angry at myself for not insisting that help the man, and torn with grief at how much we have.
Christmas carols were playing on the radio: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Mary, meek and mild, brought to earth a little child," "Come, let us adore Him."
We had just been talking about his parents, not so much their missionary work, their lives of Christian goodness, but simply themselves, as they were when I met them, well past middle age, gentle but sometimes goofy spirits. The kind of people who wear clothes until then are threadbare because they would rather give money to those who have less. Such generosity can sometimes look like poverty and can embarrass grown-up children who may themselves have been ridiculed because they looked poor when they were younger.
During the twenty minutes it took for us to cross the river and reach my son-in-law's house, I wept. When I didn't speak, my husband asked me what was wrong. I couldn't believe he didn't know. "We have so much," I said. "It would have taken only a few extra minute to go out of our way and help a stranger who was hungry."
It seems to me, as I rather bleakly look back over this missed chance, that we are quite typical. We write checks to good causes, we sympathize with friends and even strangers in trouble, but we rarely approach this kind of trouble face to face. It would require a freedom and the moral courage we don't seem to have. We'd have to put aside our comforts and certainties. Risk rebuff or ostracism. I know only a few who venture into such actions alone, and they have an awkward, even childlike caste to their characters. I have rarely allowed myself to be so naked.
Yet what I kept repeating to myself this morning still echoes: "We have so much." I want the next time to have resolve and confidence. To go out of my way for what I know, instinctively, is the right thing to do. I want to give away my comfort and let myself come face to face with need. Maybe this childlikeness I've noticed in those who do so is joy, the best kind because it's given away.
He was carrying a sign, standing beside the inside turn before you entered the freeway. I didn't have to read the sign; I knew what he wanted. Money for food.
A few months ago someone who looked like a woman with very short hair but might have been a small man approached me while I walked in our neighborhood. Each time this person asked me if I knew somewhere she could get free food. This put me in a mild panic, I mumbled something and walked quickly away.
I never carry money with me when I walk. I don't want to give a potential drug addict money that might go to buy drugs.
As I thought over these brief encounters, in the midst of unemployment even among our friends, and news briefs about families needing food, I decided to buy three gift cards from a fast food chain not far from us. I gave one card to my husband and asked him to keep it in his car in case he passed someone asking for food.
This morning on our way to a family Christmas gift exchange and brunch across the river, we passed the man with the sign.
This season every year I feel a little sick: we have so much. As we stopped for the light before crossing the intersection and entering the freeway, I felt a strong need to give this gift card to the man standing beside the freeway.
My husband loves Christmas. He grew up poor, the son of a missionary/preacher first in China, then in small Congregational Churches in the U.S. South and Midwest. His parents were almost always more liberal in their politics than the parishioners. His father was asked to leave several churches.
My husband has spent his adulthood attempting to make up for the lack of abundance in his childhood. I don't know any other adult who is so enthralled by Christmas. He wakes up in the dark and stares at the presents under the tree, not quite believing they are there. Now that he has grandsons (they are the youngest generation in the family), he is lit by an inner fire. He was in a rush this morning, to bring Christmas to these boys. Never a placid, easy driver, he was truly ablaze to cross that river and begin the dazzle,
When I pointed out the man and said, "Let's find the food gift card," we were in the lane leading straight to the freeway. Not the turn lane where the man stood. The light was about to change, we had the gift card in hand, but at the last minute, my husband said, "No, it's too dangerous," meaning he didn't want to move left into the turn lane, take the time to pause and hand the card out the window, and then turn left. This would have taken us several blocks out of our way.
We sped through the green light onto the freeway. Immediately, I was deeply troubled. Angry at him for his haste, angry at myself for not insisting that help the man, and torn with grief at how much we have.
Christmas carols were playing on the radio: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Mary, meek and mild, brought to earth a little child," "Come, let us adore Him."
We had just been talking about his parents, not so much their missionary work, their lives of Christian goodness, but simply themselves, as they were when I met them, well past middle age, gentle but sometimes goofy spirits. The kind of people who wear clothes until then are threadbare because they would rather give money to those who have less. Such generosity can sometimes look like poverty and can embarrass grown-up children who may themselves have been ridiculed because they looked poor when they were younger.
During the twenty minutes it took for us to cross the river and reach my son-in-law's house, I wept. When I didn't speak, my husband asked me what was wrong. I couldn't believe he didn't know. "We have so much," I said. "It would have taken only a few extra minute to go out of our way and help a stranger who was hungry."
It seems to me, as I rather bleakly look back over this missed chance, that we are quite typical. We write checks to good causes, we sympathize with friends and even strangers in trouble, but we rarely approach this kind of trouble face to face. It would require a freedom and the moral courage we don't seem to have. We'd have to put aside our comforts and certainties. Risk rebuff or ostracism. I know only a few who venture into such actions alone, and they have an awkward, even childlike caste to their characters. I have rarely allowed myself to be so naked.
Yet what I kept repeating to myself this morning still echoes: "We have so much." I want the next time to have resolve and confidence. To go out of my way for what I know, instinctively, is the right thing to do. I want to give away my comfort and let myself come face to face with need. Maybe this childlikeness I've noticed in those who do so is joy, the best kind because it's given away.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Margotlog: A Reluctant Environmentalist
Margotlog: A Reluctant Environmentalist
Well, not entirely reluctant. I "submit" my pre-formed letters protesting delisting this, fracking that. I contribute almost all the funds I allocate to "charity" to help hungry downtrodden people and protect global lands and seas from pollution, degradation, and ruin. Once in a while I even phone up the president of the United States, my senators and congresswoman. But I'm not usually an in-your-face environmentalist.
Except for helping trees. Somewhere in my genetic background a forest-dweller named trees as our people. Whether the huge spreading live oaks of South Carolina or Minnesota's pointed spruce and feathery white pines, pin oaks that whisper in their winter leaves and maples that turn their dresses silver in the wind--all are my family. I'm not wild about the ash the city of Saint Paul planted along our boulevard, but I tend it like a cousin, water and fertilize it, and now that its tribe are troubled with ash borers, I have it treated.
When we first moved into this typical city house, built in 1912 on a lot longer than it is wide, I almost immediately began planting trees because it was hot in the summer as we faced south and bare of green in winter. I remembered the cooling effect of Carolina live oaks shading front porches. No live oaks in Minnesota so we dug holes for a Russian olive and a honey locust. This brought up to three the number of trees in our front yard until the Arbor Day Foundation donated a spruce seedling, making four.
Filling the larger back yard was fun. My in-laws sent home with us from Tennessee three maple seedlings dug up from their rambling domain. These all went into the back yard along with more spruce seedlings, a white pine, and a flowering crab. Sometimes standing across the street and looking at our house and lot, I have to laugh: we sport a mini forest between two savannahs on either side. The Minnesota natives who bracket us want little to do with trees. Their lawns are bare of anything but summer flowers. Probably they have in their souls the "prairie effect," just as I do the forest.
On behalf of our neighborhood trees, I can become rather pushy. "Water your trees in the drought," say the handouts I stuff in neighbors' mailboxes. "Put the hose a bit away from the trunk and let a slow flow go for an hour or so." Since we moved into this neighborhood, there have been an inordinate number of dry years. This past season, we're not only had a dry summer, but a long long dry fall. Already I'm plotting my strategy, infused with Paul Douglas's support. He's the StarTribune's weatherman, and has already urged "Water your trees," in many September and October weather forecasts. "Especially evergreens."
One thing I discovered as a tree lover and preserver (this also goes for perennial plants and bushes): mulching in all seasons helps preserve moisture and prevent the worst that winter can do to roots. This "worst" isn't just deep cold, it's the freezing and thawing that happens on either side of deep. Mulching moderates soil temperature, and over the years, the leaf mulch I apply (having a passion for raking and mounding leaves), has helped keep the soil from becoming flinty. We have naturally beautiful heavy loam in our neighborhood as part of an ancient oak forest. (Think acorns decaying into richness decade after decade.) But I want to add my bit.
Consider yourself told: the reluctant environmentalist has shed her skin and turned instructor. Mind your trees, my people. Trees are the protectors of our world.
Well, not entirely reluctant. I "submit" my pre-formed letters protesting delisting this, fracking that. I contribute almost all the funds I allocate to "charity" to help hungry downtrodden people and protect global lands and seas from pollution, degradation, and ruin. Once in a while I even phone up the president of the United States, my senators and congresswoman. But I'm not usually an in-your-face environmentalist.
Except for helping trees. Somewhere in my genetic background a forest-dweller named trees as our people. Whether the huge spreading live oaks of South Carolina or Minnesota's pointed spruce and feathery white pines, pin oaks that whisper in their winter leaves and maples that turn their dresses silver in the wind--all are my family. I'm not wild about the ash the city of Saint Paul planted along our boulevard, but I tend it like a cousin, water and fertilize it, and now that its tribe are troubled with ash borers, I have it treated.
When we first moved into this typical city house, built in 1912 on a lot longer than it is wide, I almost immediately began planting trees because it was hot in the summer as we faced south and bare of green in winter. I remembered the cooling effect of Carolina live oaks shading front porches. No live oaks in Minnesota so we dug holes for a Russian olive and a honey locust. This brought up to three the number of trees in our front yard until the Arbor Day Foundation donated a spruce seedling, making four.
Filling the larger back yard was fun. My in-laws sent home with us from Tennessee three maple seedlings dug up from their rambling domain. These all went into the back yard along with more spruce seedlings, a white pine, and a flowering crab. Sometimes standing across the street and looking at our house and lot, I have to laugh: we sport a mini forest between two savannahs on either side. The Minnesota natives who bracket us want little to do with trees. Their lawns are bare of anything but summer flowers. Probably they have in their souls the "prairie effect," just as I do the forest.
On behalf of our neighborhood trees, I can become rather pushy. "Water your trees in the drought," say the handouts I stuff in neighbors' mailboxes. "Put the hose a bit away from the trunk and let a slow flow go for an hour or so." Since we moved into this neighborhood, there have been an inordinate number of dry years. This past season, we're not only had a dry summer, but a long long dry fall. Already I'm plotting my strategy, infused with Paul Douglas's support. He's the StarTribune's weatherman, and has already urged "Water your trees," in many September and October weather forecasts. "Especially evergreens."
One thing I discovered as a tree lover and preserver (this also goes for perennial plants and bushes): mulching in all seasons helps preserve moisture and prevent the worst that winter can do to roots. This "worst" isn't just deep cold, it's the freezing and thawing that happens on either side of deep. Mulching moderates soil temperature, and over the years, the leaf mulch I apply (having a passion for raking and mounding leaves), has helped keep the soil from becoming flinty. We have naturally beautiful heavy loam in our neighborhood as part of an ancient oak forest. (Think acorns decaying into richness decade after decade.) But I want to add my bit.
Consider yourself told: the reluctant environmentalist has shed her skin and turned instructor. Mind your trees, my people. Trees are the protectors of our world.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Margotlog: Mother Christmas
Margotlog: Mother Christmas
To some, such a notion might seem like heresy, but lately, I'm repositioning myself vis-a-vis the canonical figures of Christmas. I want to add a Mother Christmas. No, not in Father's sleigh. He can soar with his huge pack of toys and goodies down whatever chimney will allow. Tight spaces make me nervous. I want to give her a clam shell conveyance, drawn by sky-dolphins all harnessed with stars. If live dolphins can lift drowning mariners from the sea, their souls in heaven can easily transport Mother Christmas on her clam shell (hints of ropey-haired Venus).
She doesn't carry a pack, but a dainty purse, for her gifts are celestial, little touches of fairy dust. (I know, she's beginning to resemble Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.) She walks on transparent fur-lined slippers (Cinderella grown up) across snowy or sandy fields, into huts and mansions, to sit beside the trashy, nasty, pained and sorrowing. Listen, Christmas isn't only for good little girls and boys, but the bad and sad ones along with their grown-up selves. Think of her as the kindest, most lovely white-haired teacher you ever met, and you'll be close to her charm.
Her skin has an array of hues which change in reflections of those before her. She is brown, black, tan, pale. And her cloak is a motley of feathers and fur, leaves and grass, quartz and coal. No point in frightening those who meet her for the first time. She envelopes her visits with favorite scents--baking cinnamon and cloves, fresh sea air, a spicy barbeque, coconut milk, the fishiest of fish.
As for gifts, silence is the first. The silence necessary to hear the quiet rumblings of deepest grief and aching desire. This Christmas she hears the despair of a gypsy family in Romania whose home, lawfully built on a parcel of land, is threatened by the return of wealthy former owners ousted by an outmoded communism. She listens to the whispers of children who've walked with drought-starved families in Africa toward the mirage of plenty that retreats each time they approach it. She cradles Black children in the wealthiest White country in the world whose well-meaning teachers can't erase their own ignorance of racism.
Silence goes a long way if it's sprinkled with the fairy dust of compassion, but it only fills the toe of a stocking. So Mother Christmas must cook up a whole passle of notions and remedies which extend far across the years into hearts and minds pulled tight with refusal. She must open them to think wisely beyond their borders, to resist beliefs based on privilege, to embrace what is less but ultimately more. To reuse and remake. If you think Father Christmas has millions of lists to check for who is naughty and nice, consider Mother's undertaking. She's got the whole world in her hands, not to mention the winds and rains, the seas and lands, the critters and trees. This Christmas Eve, I'm going to set out a plate and cup for her, and under the cookies and milk, I'm going to slip the extra I might have spent on baubles. Along with that, my thanks for all she has accomplished this year, and a promise to heft part of the job myself. To write and speak and act. Given her gi-normous work, it's the least I can do.
To some, such a notion might seem like heresy, but lately, I'm repositioning myself vis-a-vis the canonical figures of Christmas. I want to add a Mother Christmas. No, not in Father's sleigh. He can soar with his huge pack of toys and goodies down whatever chimney will allow. Tight spaces make me nervous. I want to give her a clam shell conveyance, drawn by sky-dolphins all harnessed with stars. If live dolphins can lift drowning mariners from the sea, their souls in heaven can easily transport Mother Christmas on her clam shell (hints of ropey-haired Venus).
She doesn't carry a pack, but a dainty purse, for her gifts are celestial, little touches of fairy dust. (I know, she's beginning to resemble Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.) She walks on transparent fur-lined slippers (Cinderella grown up) across snowy or sandy fields, into huts and mansions, to sit beside the trashy, nasty, pained and sorrowing. Listen, Christmas isn't only for good little girls and boys, but the bad and sad ones along with their grown-up selves. Think of her as the kindest, most lovely white-haired teacher you ever met, and you'll be close to her charm.
Her skin has an array of hues which change in reflections of those before her. She is brown, black, tan, pale. And her cloak is a motley of feathers and fur, leaves and grass, quartz and coal. No point in frightening those who meet her for the first time. She envelopes her visits with favorite scents--baking cinnamon and cloves, fresh sea air, a spicy barbeque, coconut milk, the fishiest of fish.
As for gifts, silence is the first. The silence necessary to hear the quiet rumblings of deepest grief and aching desire. This Christmas she hears the despair of a gypsy family in Romania whose home, lawfully built on a parcel of land, is threatened by the return of wealthy former owners ousted by an outmoded communism. She listens to the whispers of children who've walked with drought-starved families in Africa toward the mirage of plenty that retreats each time they approach it. She cradles Black children in the wealthiest White country in the world whose well-meaning teachers can't erase their own ignorance of racism.
Silence goes a long way if it's sprinkled with the fairy dust of compassion, but it only fills the toe of a stocking. So Mother Christmas must cook up a whole passle of notions and remedies which extend far across the years into hearts and minds pulled tight with refusal. She must open them to think wisely beyond their borders, to resist beliefs based on privilege, to embrace what is less but ultimately more. To reuse and remake. If you think Father Christmas has millions of lists to check for who is naughty and nice, consider Mother's undertaking. She's got the whole world in her hands, not to mention the winds and rains, the seas and lands, the critters and trees. This Christmas Eve, I'm going to set out a plate and cup for her, and under the cookies and milk, I'm going to slip the extra I might have spent on baubles. Along with that, my thanks for all she has accomplished this year, and a promise to heft part of the job myself. To write and speak and act. Given her gi-normous work, it's the least I can do.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Margotlog: The Star at the Top of the Tree
Margotlog: The Star at the Top of the Tree
It's very northern of us, this tree-in-the-house at Christmas. I know, there are Celtic precedents, something about mistletoe, holly and the Druids, but the Christmas tree itself came from Nordic folk around the Baltic Sea, worshipping what remained green throughout the long, dark, cold winter. Germans, my mother's family included, set their trees up on Christmas Eve, which in the Roman Catholic tradition, remains Adam and Eve's feast day. Some of the early German trees were hung with one tantalizing apple.
Ours for years was some kind of fir, usually bought from an outdoor lot beside a hardware store or even from the Boy Scouts. We hoisted it atop the car and drove home with it, our version of the hunter's prize. Early in this second marriage, we took our young kids out to a tree farm and hacked one down. It was hard work, all done by already worn-out parents. But those self-harvested trees brought into our lives empty birds' nests, which we took as wonderful symbols of fecundity and joy. They became our first communal ornaments, passed down and still displayed in our now fake tree.
It's interesting, even challenging, making a union of two quite different traditions--mine and my second husband's. His two kids, my one, and all the ornaments and associations that we'd already acquired. Now with the kids all grown, and only us aging adults to tend the tradition, I stand rather bemused before our fake tree lighted with bright blue and white LED lights. There hang floppy white plastic catfish with long whiskers and bright beads--holdovers from his parents' years as missionaries in China. From my parents' early Depression trees have come balls with much of the color worn off--now faded blue, silver, green. I couldn't bear to throw them away after my mother died. I also kept funny pipecleaner men in stripped pants and bowler hats--who knows their origin or what they signified.
There among the thick plastic branches hang small red cherries. Last evening driving down Summit Avenue, I asked my daughter if she remembered buying a living Norfolk Island pine covered with these little balls, the first year I moved out of the first marriage house. She has no recollection of those years, she says. But even now I can see the small tree bravely fronting an increasingly desperate living room, its little bright cherries twirling in the furnace heat.
Dotted up and around our current tree are expensive ornaments given by affectionate, well-heeled relatives and friends--a tum-tum-tum drum with guilded ribbon up and down its sides; a fiercely snouted hedgehog dressed in mob-cap and old lace; a tiny mouse in top hat sitting in its own white rocking chair. Oddly enough, I can't remember their givers, only the yearly sensation that they must reappear as promises of continued beneficence.
Finally up and down perch dozens of birds. Our first birds' nests fit my fascination with birds so perfectly it seemed preordained. Especially in winter, feeding and providing fresh, warmed water for outdoor birds keeps me from desperation. After all, my earliest remembered Christmases were in Charleston, South Carolina, where winters are dark, but only dampishly cold, not ever frozen, never. And my parents' last backyard drew wonderful flocks of migrants--waxwings, robins, and resident cardinals, mocking birds and jays, chickadees and nuthatches, plus an occasional hawk, not to mention in the swamp just out of sight a heron or two. For our tree the Audubon Society has kindly provided (for a yearly membership) wonderfully bright, stained-glass bird ornaments, and we have purchased tiny feathered creatures who sit so pertly at the end of twigs, I expect them to cock their heads and sing.
It is all about hope and sustenance in dark times. We've never had much of a star atop our tree, though there is one, surrounded by a bevy of wasted angels, retrieved from the dump of my parents' ornaments. With paper wings and sequined skirts, they have sustained another kind of fluttering hope for over sixty years. I can't imagine ever "doing over" the tree in decorator colors. What lives on are its associations, and the revival of winter hope from year to year.
It's very northern of us, this tree-in-the-house at Christmas. I know, there are Celtic precedents, something about mistletoe, holly and the Druids, but the Christmas tree itself came from Nordic folk around the Baltic Sea, worshipping what remained green throughout the long, dark, cold winter. Germans, my mother's family included, set their trees up on Christmas Eve, which in the Roman Catholic tradition, remains Adam and Eve's feast day. Some of the early German trees were hung with one tantalizing apple.
Ours for years was some kind of fir, usually bought from an outdoor lot beside a hardware store or even from the Boy Scouts. We hoisted it atop the car and drove home with it, our version of the hunter's prize. Early in this second marriage, we took our young kids out to a tree farm and hacked one down. It was hard work, all done by already worn-out parents. But those self-harvested trees brought into our lives empty birds' nests, which we took as wonderful symbols of fecundity and joy. They became our first communal ornaments, passed down and still displayed in our now fake tree.
It's interesting, even challenging, making a union of two quite different traditions--mine and my second husband's. His two kids, my one, and all the ornaments and associations that we'd already acquired. Now with the kids all grown, and only us aging adults to tend the tradition, I stand rather bemused before our fake tree lighted with bright blue and white LED lights. There hang floppy white plastic catfish with long whiskers and bright beads--holdovers from his parents' years as missionaries in China. From my parents' early Depression trees have come balls with much of the color worn off--now faded blue, silver, green. I couldn't bear to throw them away after my mother died. I also kept funny pipecleaner men in stripped pants and bowler hats--who knows their origin or what they signified.
There among the thick plastic branches hang small red cherries. Last evening driving down Summit Avenue, I asked my daughter if she remembered buying a living Norfolk Island pine covered with these little balls, the first year I moved out of the first marriage house. She has no recollection of those years, she says. But even now I can see the small tree bravely fronting an increasingly desperate living room, its little bright cherries twirling in the furnace heat.
Dotted up and around our current tree are expensive ornaments given by affectionate, well-heeled relatives and friends--a tum-tum-tum drum with guilded ribbon up and down its sides; a fiercely snouted hedgehog dressed in mob-cap and old lace; a tiny mouse in top hat sitting in its own white rocking chair. Oddly enough, I can't remember their givers, only the yearly sensation that they must reappear as promises of continued beneficence.
Finally up and down perch dozens of birds. Our first birds' nests fit my fascination with birds so perfectly it seemed preordained. Especially in winter, feeding and providing fresh, warmed water for outdoor birds keeps me from desperation. After all, my earliest remembered Christmases were in Charleston, South Carolina, where winters are dark, but only dampishly cold, not ever frozen, never. And my parents' last backyard drew wonderful flocks of migrants--waxwings, robins, and resident cardinals, mocking birds and jays, chickadees and nuthatches, plus an occasional hawk, not to mention in the swamp just out of sight a heron or two. For our tree the Audubon Society has kindly provided (for a yearly membership) wonderfully bright, stained-glass bird ornaments, and we have purchased tiny feathered creatures who sit so pertly at the end of twigs, I expect them to cock their heads and sing.
It is all about hope and sustenance in dark times. We've never had much of a star atop our tree, though there is one, surrounded by a bevy of wasted angels, retrieved from the dump of my parents' ornaments. With paper wings and sequined skirts, they have sustained another kind of fluttering hope for over sixty years. I can't imagine ever "doing over" the tree in decorator colors. What lives on are its associations, and the revival of winter hope from year to year.
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