Being a kid can sometimes feel like those times when we mis-hear song lyrics.  Like going along thinking Jimi Hendrix was singing, “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” and being impressed at how ahead-of-its-time those lyrics were – and then somehow you figure out what everyone else seems to have known already, that he’s singing “while I kiss the sky.”

The other day, I took a couple safety pins out of a pair of pants and caught myself treating these pins with great care.  Somehow, viewing safety pins and rubber bands and paperclips as a scarce commodity has endured from my childhood.  In that earlier world of mine, certain things showed up randomly and unreliably and therefore needed to be saved and watched over.  Safety pins and rubber bands were useful, and paperclips I simply adored.  With all of them, I wasn’t sure how they appeared in my house, and so paid particular attention to them when they did.

In A Walton Christmas, a package comes in the mail and Grandma Walton carefully unties the string  and wraps it around the household ball of string, which was made of other string that had come their way.  String was scarce and you didn’t pass up the chance to save it.  In fact, that Christmas special confirmed what I already believed to be true, that there were certain things you couldn’t just go to the store and get.  You had to wait for them to appear and then treat them with the greatest of care.  (I did not grasp that the Waltons could have gone to the store and gotten string; they simply didn’t because it was the Depression and during the Depression you didn’t squander anything that came your way because that meant you didn’t have to go out and buy it.)

My grandparents lived through the Depression and my parents, siblings and I benefited from the frugal habits that helped them get through.  It meant that, growing up, towels and sheets and pillowcases were considered usable as long as they weren’t yet falling apart.  It meant that, if the elastic on your underpants was shot, you just made sure to wear them with pants and not a skirt.  When I left home for college and other far-flung parts, I took with me some of the sheets and towels from my childhood because it meant no one would have to buy new ones.  And that was good because, somehow, I didn’t realize you even really could buy these things.

Imagine my surprise and delight at the age of 33 when I complained about a particularly threadbare towel I swore I remembered from age 9, and Garth said, “So buy another one.”

‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy.

When I first reconnected with Garth in late 1993, he lived on the top floor of a duplex that was built into the side of a hill like a sod house.  The first thing that struck me when I entered his space were all the books.  You who know Garth know that he tends toward excess in some areas.  This tendency was in no area more evident than in his collection of books – though collection may be too highfalutin a word for what I encountered.  Collection implies lovingly-cherished, sometimes-autographed hard backs.  Garth’s collection consisted mostly of paperbacks.  He’d constructed several bookshelves for them, carefully measured to accommodate mass paperback-sized books without wasting space.  He’d made the bookshelves in a flurry of activity and did not put backs or brackets on any of them.  The result was vaguely Seuss-like, bookshelves crammed with books, tilting dramatically to the left or right.

About a week ago, I started thinking about qualities particular to Garth, qualities that might feel mundane or even occasionally annoying in our daily lives, but that I would miss were he not around. It started one morning as I made tea.  Garth was in the shower off our kitchen, singing “Zombie” by the Cranberries at the top of his lungs, singing with gusto for the sheer delight of being alive; of having a voice he could raise; of having a hot shower he could stand in; of having a house, and a job he could be on vacation from.  Of having a family that waited on the other side of the bathroom door to plan the day with him and tease him about his singing.

My 14-year-old was home sick on my writing day this week.  At first, I hacked away at a particularly challenging piece I’m writing, meaning to carry on with my day’s plans.  Then I really took a look at her, my ill daughter, sitting on the couch, knitting a scarf to give away next week at one of the homeless shelters in town.  I thought, Well, I could do that, too.

I have possessed for years an entire grocery sack full of navy blue yarn, given to me by my mom, who was given it by her long-time friend, Charlotte.  I had not, before now, had a project for it.  Now I do.  It is a deep pleasure to use something that holds in its twists strands of that loving friendship, which included a shared love of yarns and textiles.

My daughter and I sat side-by-side and knitted scarves.  We talked.  We watched a movie about Darfur so that I could be better educated about the situation there.  She shared with me some of what she knows that wasn’t part of the movie.  We talked about this one precious world we have; we talked about wanting to make it better.  We knitted into the afternoon.

There are things that stump me.  Like socks.  Specifically, socks I have worn once.  To me, they are fraught with ambiguity.  I know what to do with underpants I have worn once: they go in the dirty clothes.  For other articles of clothing – pants, skirts, shirts, sweaters – the issue is not how many times they’ve been worn, it’s more a matter or whether they still look and smell clean to me.  This is how I determine whether their destination is the dresser drawer or the dirty clothes hamper.

And then there are socks.  I am so uncertain of them after I’ve worn them once that, in my puzzlement, I do not return them to my sock drawer on the off chance that they are now too dirty and will thus defile the other freshly cleaned socks.  Nor do I throw them in the dirty clothes.  I am loath to create more laundry for myself than absolutely necessary and what if they aren’t yet dirty enough to warrant being washed?.

So, currently, my socks reside on the floor of our bedroom.  Where, in awhile, when they have swirled around sufficiently with the dust bunnies, I will deem them too dirty to wear and throw them in the laundry.

I am unhappy with this solution to my sock dilemma.

Not that I mind sappy reflections on gratitude.  I like them, in fact (see previous entry).  I am just not in the mood to add my own to the queue. 

Instead, I want to say that I am impressed by the power of the brain. 

If one acquires an unexpected and rare four-hour block of time, let’s say, and yet one has been thinking that today will only have enough room in it to get work done and maybe not even that much, then by god the brain is likely to bring about that particular reality.  A person could get to 4:00, for example, and suddenly realize that if she’d carpe‘d the diem, she could have worked like a dog to get the work taken care of and thus managed to create a couple of those hours for writing. 

I’m not wallowing in self-pity.  Really.  But I do wonder what I might accomplish if I could only bring the power of my brain to heel.  Sigh.

A little known fact about Mark’s and my three-year live-in relationship is that it began because I was trying to say good-bye to him.

We’d known each other, up until that point, for more than seven years, and we’d dated off and on, mostly off.  Mark disappeared for chunks of time, then would show up unexpectedly and take me to a movie or a play.  Once, we hiked to the top of Iron Mountain.

It was during one such communication dry spell that I – earnestly following some New Age blueprint for forging a new life path for myself – wrote a flurry of so-called Completion Letters.  In these letters, I thanked the recipient for being in my life, and wished them well on their continued journey, which would not include me from this point forward.

Mark took the completion letter I wrote him as a come-on.  He wrote back that he’d always loved me and now that he knew I was fond of him, too, well, what were we going to do?  He was in graduate school in Austin whereas I was in retail sales in Portland.

There was something captivating about being told I was loved, that I had been loved for years.  In short order, I moved to Austin.

I had imagined Mark showing me around town, sharing his favorite places with me, introducing me to his friends and fellow grad students.  It became clear right away that this was not how it would go.  Mark spent most of his waking hours at the University chipping away at a PhD in theoretical chemistry and returned home between 2 and 3 in the morning.  His cupboards were filled with Kraft macaroni and cheese, and cans of tuna, corn, and peas.  His refrigerator held only Shiner Bock beer.

But, hey, this was fine with me.  I’d do the exploring, I’d meet the people, and then they’d be Mark’s friends, too.

Armed with The Austin Chronicle to guide me, I soon shopped for our groceries at Wheatsville Food Co-op, worked at Book People, and regularly suggested we spend our Friday night splurge at Ruby’s Barbeque.  For good measure I also discovered the most petite library I’d ever seen, and learned, first, how to push-start my car, and, second, how to shop for a new car battery.  Who would have thought I could be so resourceful and independent!

Our fatal flaw of ours as a couple was that Mark felt he must say what was true for him, and I felt I must ignore what he said.  Before moving to Austin, I’d told him how much I looked forward to meeting his friends and he’d answered that he couldn’t help me much in that department.  Perhaps I thought he was being modest or simply underplaying the truth.  The idea of living where one had no friends was unthinkable to me.

At night, I’d wake up at three in the morning to find Mark sitting up in bed in the dark drinking a Shiner Bock before going to sleep.  Early on, I’d wake myself up enough to ask how his day had gone, and he’d laugh affectionately before explaining that it had been fine and nothing much had happened.  After months of this, when his return from work awoke me, I’d just go back to sleep.

My close perusal of The Austin Chronicle gained me another significant discovery: a women’s support group.  After attending for a few short weeks, I could no longer pretend I was happy with Mark’s and my arrangement.  I tried to become happier with it by suggesting that we eat dinner together regularly, go on day trips to out-lying areas, get a larger apartment – anything that might shift our slide into a deepening rut.

Perhaps that was my intention one Friday when we sat at Ruby’s in the soft evening air drinking Shiners and waiting for our barbeque to come.

“Mark,” I said.

“Hmm?”

“I’d like to have a baby.”

He drank a large swig of beer and took his time swallowing it.  Then he stared at me, expressionless.

“I want a baby,” I said again.  “I love hearing Christine talk about Willa and –  I think I’d like to be a mom.”

Mark set his beer on the table.  He looked at his hands.  He coughed, and picked the beer up again.  “If you’re set on it,” he said, “I guess we could do that.  But you’d need to understand: it would be your project, it’d be your deal.”  He took another swig.

I tried to imagine the life of this child.  What would it be like to grow up with such a ghostly father as Mark described?  I was aware of the absent father phenomenon, but Mark’s idea took it to a whole new level entirely.

This was one thing Mark said that I couldn’t ignore.

It took awhile to end that relationship but I did and eventually found my exuberant husband who thought the kid idea was a good one – one he wanted to be an active participant in.  Recently,  I Googled Mark.  Hundreds of miles and twenty years from Austin, we’ve ended up in the same town.  I live in a ramshackle house with a wacky husband, our kids, and a sprawling array of family and friends.  Mark runs a million-dollar company.  Three guesses who I think is the richer person.

I remember the first time I got that deja vu feeling.  I was twelve years old and had just come upstairs to our bathroom to take a bath.  I’d brought a Granny Smith apple with me to munch while I bathed.  In the tub, I took a couple bites out of the apple and set it on the edge.  Looking over the tops of my knees at the beautiful green Granny Smith against the white porcelain of the tub, I experienced a certainty that I’d been in this exact place before, that I’d somehow seen this tableau before.

I am not here to argue what deja vu is or is not – brain blip or momentary detection of alternate realities.  What I want to reflect on is how almost every single time I’ve experienced that feeling, it has been in a moment as mundane as the one described above.  I find that delightful.  Whatever deja vu is, it is certainly an opportunity to notice the moment we are in, and it pleases me enormously that we should experience the preciousness of each moment – even the seemingly innocuous ones.

It’s a miracle!  This summer, the very hip residents of the house apartments next door decided to have a garage sale.  They had some pretty cool stuff for sale, and at the end of the day, anything they didn’t think they could sell elsewhere they brought to the Free Bench.  One of the things they brought was a large, fanciful papier mache bird, three-plus feet long painted in bright blues and purples.  We were delighted thinking we had encountered at last the Free Bench mascot.  It took us several days to figure out how we wanted to attach it to the Bench, and during this time of deliberation, the bird lay close enough to the Bench that, before we had a chance to hang it, someone else saw the amazingness of it and took it home.

Several times since, we have commented on our disappointment that we were so careless with the bird.  Then two days ago – you guessed it – et voila, the bird was back!  A piece of white tape is wrapped around its beak, but otherwise it is intact.

As usual, I am intrigued.  What happened?  Did the bird not satisfy over time?  How did its beak get broken?  Did the new owner and the bird get into an altercation that resulted in a bent beak and the bird being booted?

And don’t you love all that alliteration?

 We children could be compelled along very long and sometimes steep mountain trails if careful attention was given to our taste buds.  The first important taste sensation involved cheese.  We were  not used to delectable flavors like those found in a Stilton or a limburger.  We prefered something soft and sweet, like a pre-sliced American cheese.  Since a backpacking trip demands a certain frugality when it comes to weight, however, it proved impractical to bring both the mozzarella and the camembert.  Cheese compromises had to be reached.

The compromise reached during the backpacking trips of my childhood was extra sharp Cracker Barrel cheddar.  It turned greasy and crumbly after a few hours in a backpack and often fell apart beneath the dull cheese knife as we tried to slice it for a Triscuit or a Stone-Ground wheat cracker.  The first bite of cheese was so sharp my salivary glands ached.  The crackers themselves were as dry as foot powder so the additional saliva came in handy.  Extra sharp Cracker Barrel cheddar was the enticement for early in the day when the bright, brisk morning air no longer sustained our progress.

The second inducement required both flavor and extra protein.  Fatigue was beginning to set in and something further was needed.  You see that ridge?  Just make it to that ridge and we’ll break out the smoked oysters.  They were the color of dried tobacco, made shiny from the oil.  Each was the size of the end of my thumb and was served on Wasa Crisp Bread this time, which was, if possible, even drier than a Triscuit.  Its bumps and mounds trapped small pools of fishy oil.  The oysters were chewy and had a strong, pungent flavor.

The critical time for bringing out the big guns was an hour or two before making camp.  We were beyond tired and were weary of inclines and tree roots.  At this moment, the only thing tempting enough to get us to that next ridge was Cadbury milk chocolate with almonds and currants.  Our bodies craved the creamy coconut oil and earthy milk chocolate.  Each currant provided a sweet and tart burst; each almond brought with it a satisfying crunch.

.  To my brother, sisters and I, each backpacking trip was an opportunity to eat things we didn’t get in our daily lives.  Our fondest memories of the White Mountains and the Catskills include how the gorgeous vistas and refreshing air were punctuated by dreamy tastes of Cadbury chocolate, smoked oysters and Cracker Barrel cheese.

A former client of mine passed away suddenly this month.  I went to her memorial service yesterday.  There was a moment toward the end of the service when we all sat in silence with our thoughts and memories about her.  She had had some unthinkable tragedies in her life, but she had also had a life with joy and purpose.

In that silence, I wondered how hard it was for her to die?  I wondered if she worried about those she left behind who themselves were struggling and often relied upon her as a lifeline?

I quickly saw these thoughts were little more than a torment.  Whatever her death had been like for her, whatever she had or had not thought about it, it had already happened and those moments were now past.

Then I simply sat with what I knew and had learned about her life.  The chapel was full of people to whom it made a very big difference that she had lived.  And so, in the silence we all shared, I found myself thinking, simply, Thank you, thank you, thank you.