Whisky Dreams

I am a lucky American. My mother owns a home in Ireland, although my Irish heritage comes from my father. Mom spends most of her time there with her partner Donal. Our 18th century home is on the main street facing a public beach and the town hall. We're also next to a funeral parlor. 

Things can get a little interesting when everybody and their cousin twice removed comes to pray the rosary next door. And let's face it, in Ireland, if you even nodded to a person on the street and they died, you're expected to attend the funeral. So, some days, it gets a little awkward leaving our house when there's a hearse next door, or a bunch of praying, smoking people leaning on our windows. 

But in exchange for a few moments of morbidity, I get to watch rainbows grow across the bay, children catch crabs on the beach, and feel the warmth of a blazing wood fire on my cheeks after a long walk to the lighthouse. 

There's whisky and Bulmer's cider  and gossip--the kind that only a small town in a nation of story tellers could come up with. Although I haven't been back for a year, I know everything that's going on thanks to Mom and her network of information. 

For example, there's something wrong with the neighbor's dog. She's a big black lab who used to be a bit high strung but friendly. She had 1500 Euro surgery on her back and since then she's been really nasty. And Connor farther down the street is becoming quite the boran player. He's also a charmer. I swear he's gotten more cookies out of my mom than I ever did as her own daughter!

And recently my mom's friend Joan was harassed on a bus by a drunk tramp. She described the man to her husband, Colin. Colin recently went to the pub with Donal and based on Joan's description of the tramp identified him at a local pub. Oxford-educated, former financier Colin, is sophisticated, incredibly soft-spoken, and has a wicked dry wit. But Donal said once Colin saw his wife's attacker, he went ballistic. Donal said he'd never seen him so mad. "Colin's built like a rugby player, if he'd have hit him, he'd have broken his jaw!"

And of course all of this has happened in the last week or so....Enough to make anyone need a stiff drink. 

Even with all this "intelligence," it can be easy to feel an outsider amongst people who have lived in the same place for generations, who can all tell you about Cuchulan or the "wee folk" as naturally as they can tell you about the Duke of Devonshire owning the riverbed and the new menu additions at Pak Fuk (no joke) Chinese restaurant. 

But whenever I come to visit, I'm always asked "how long are you home for?" I always assumed the question was simply part of the generous hospitality of the Irish, who never let me pay for a meal or a drink and tsk pitifully when I tell them how many vacation days I get in the States.

But the moment I step off the plane in Shannon, I feel something different. Maybe it's the smell of sweet grass that's so pungent even in the airport parking lot or the Sean Nos singing on the radio as we drive through miles and miles of small towns and sloping farmland. I'm home. 

Erin go Bragh, and Up Cork!

China

Of course I knew the house would be huge. It was on the same street as the Governor's mansion. I assumed, that given it would be a large party, I would be one of the first few guests, even arriving 15 minutes late.

The street is already lined with cars and I silently berate myself for not arriving earlier and missing prime real estate near the driveway. Of course, it's too dark to tell which house I'll be visiting, so I just take the first available spot near a likely cluster of houses.

Exiting the car is treacherous. I'm parked just under a telephone poll and next to a gutter, both of which are being slowly consumed by a jungle of kudzu. I keep thinking this is perfect fodder for a horror movie. As soon as I leave the car, I'll find there is no house, no party. It's all a hallucination induced by pheromones an alien species of plant-like creatures releases to lure their human prey into the forest. I pull my gigantic flashlight (for emergencies) out of my backseat, take a deep breath, and open the car door.

Its not easy walking in heels for a quarter of a mile. I hadn't realised how far I was. My feet begin to blister, my only solace being a couple I spy ahead of me walking toward a house. 

I try to catch up with them, nearly tripping over myself. Then I look up. I have to cross a bridge over a small creek and walk about another 1000 ft. There, in the misty distance, illuminated dramatically by spotlights is The House. White. Greco Roman Revival. Portico bigger than a space shuttle docking bay. Four Mercedes parked neatly in a row in the driveway. I suddenly wonder if I'll start laughing hysterically when a butler opens the door.

I've been to my fair share of fancy events. For some reason, my brain has never developed an immunity to them. Southern affectations I never had before emerge from my subconscious. I start slouching. I forget how to walk without bumping in to things or my Diet Coke keeps threatening to spill as I'm jostled back and forth between elbows and handbags.

There is china; hundreds and hundreds of orange, blue, and gold pieces all over the house. There are worn tapestries and paintings in the classical style whose signatures are curiously hidden. I am greeted by a woman in dashing gray silk and a gold torc around her neck. The hostess. She is very friendly, encourages me to eat, get another drink. 

I found acquintances, chatted around the usual topics. I tiptoed across the glorious Persian carpets (the family was Persian so of course they had exquisite pieces), afraid my heels would do irreperable damage, though nobody else seemed to care. I stood up while eating my three-course, buffet style meal. There weren't any seats anyway, other than the two Louis XIV gilded reproductions in the foyer. It seems to take a lot of energy out of me to be in places like these, that never have dust bunnies or dead batteries in the remote controls. I like a little dirt under my fingernails, a few moldy oranges in the back of the fridge (well, that's a little gross come to think of it).

Its an awful lot of pressure to live up to these impeccable surroundings. To be as delicate and pristine as the marble patterned floors. It seems wasteful to have such amazing possessions hoarded for the enjoyment of so few. I remember feeling this way when I visited an antiquities dealer on Lexington Avenue in New York a few years ago. He had ancient Greek helmets, Egyptian statuary, Byzantine mosaics for sale, for a price. I took home a brochure that could have mirrored for a coffee table book on ancient artifacts. I poured over it at my uncle's apartment, imagining what might exist for sale behind closed doors. What might I be missing of relics of the ancient world, of the marvelous that are kept in people's country homes and city apartments.

Back at the party, I hadn't had any of the Johnny Walker on offering, nor any of the other alcohol offered copiously by the catering staff, but I was drunk on wealth and like any good drunk, felt a morbid longing. I craved my pajamas, a good book, and a nice cup of tea. 

So, I excused myself to my hostess and my friends and pulled my flashlight out of my bag. The walk back to my car was uneventful aside from a few times my heels got stuck on the lawn. The kudzu remained innocuous as I fished my keys out of my purse. I revved the engine, pulled out of my spot and turned the Saturday night Techno show up full blast. I'd been dropped back into my own world where you had to listen to commercials on the radio, and stop for gas, and honk at bad drivers. I pulled into my driveway, expertly stepped over my tower of shoes near the door, and dropped my purse on the floor. My clumsiness was gone, my accent was gone, and I sighed the sigh of a weary traveler come home.  

Greedy

I have a tradition with YiQi that goes back about 12 years from our earnest days as high schoolers desperate to be different and just a little bit eccentric. Through thick and thin, rain and shine, we have gone together to bookstores to wander and read book descriptions to our hearts content.

I've mentioned before that I have a rather guilty pleasure when it comes to cheesy books. As a writer, I should hate them. Screw Danielle Steel and her third grade grammar and large fortune in bestsellers. So what if I haven't even written a book before? I've written loads and loads of other things, and I'm sure I could do better than her if only someone would give me a chance. I mean I think a lot of people would want to read a book about my quirky thoughts and feelings. Right? Of course. Thank you.

But back to Barnes & Noble where YiQi and I entertained ourselves earlier this evening. (You'd think that becuase they pipe in classical guitar music that we'd subconsciously choose to behave in a dignified manner and discuss intellectual subjects like avant-garde cinema or sushi-making. Obviously, we're too sly for that little ploy.)

I was practicing my "Scot-ish broooogue" on a Highlander romance novel and YiQi was finding highly excellent typos in sentences. Somebody actually hyphenated "seldom-seen."

I was morally compelled to buy a book that mentions "nostrils flaring" twice in one sentence (the first reference was direct; the second was sort of implied). I decided I needed something to balance my stupid brain cells with my smart ones, so we went over to the sci-fi/fantasy section.

I had in my mind the kind of book I wanted to read, but was overwhelmed by the selection and frustrated by the necessity of looking at each book's binding to see if the title/binding art was appealing enough to get me to pick it up and look at the back descriptions. This was all YiQi's fault anyway. She forgot to bring me Coraline, which I had planned to read this weekend. :)

I want to make it quite clear that I do have principles as regards fantasy/sci fi, just as I do for romance novels: I don't read Robert Jordan, and I don't read any book whose cover portrays scantily clad women riding dragons.

Maybe I shouldn't lump the two together. Robert Jordan (may he R.I.P.) wasn't so very bad. His adventures just exhausted me. First, they found this one thing or person, I can't even remember. Then they had to spend 200 pages finding some other thing or person. They go to some inn and eat good food and listen to stories. Another 600 pages later and they're still traveling somewhere for no reason. At least Bilbo Baggins was trying to destroy the One Ring the whole time.

Another rule I have for reading sci-fi/fanasy, although less important, is to be sure that I don't have to sound-out more than one word per sentence. Dune broke this rule on multiple occassions, but I already was too invested in the outcome by then to care. I also despise writers who just replace perfectly reasonable nouns with random, madeup ones to sound smart.

E.g.: "in the middle of Kuth fastness of Habrigure" (Seriously. "Fastness" was a noun used on the backcover of a book we read today. However, it could have been a typo for "vastness." It was the same book that hyphenated "seldom-seen.")

Since I'm not a prolific sci-fi/fantasy reader, I had little knowledge of authors or series. Too many of the books I picked up had that awful cop-out of getting an author's friends to provide quotes about how great the book is. I hate this. Who the hell is Joe Thomas, author of "The Valiserlaifhg of Kathugurh" anyway?

And why should I take his word for a book's value? After all, if the author can't even get a Publisher's Weekly review for the back, then it can't possibly be worth $8. Yet, this evaluation is complicated by the fact that "Girls With Swords and Magic Powers" book may be the first in a series of 15. Isn't this economic evidence of people liking it? Perhaps, it wouldn't be so bad?

I balk at buying books without knowing whether I'll like them. I also grow very attached to every book I own, whether I like it or not. (I've only thrown away Tender is the Night, and in my opinion, that was an unusually terrible book. For the record, I did not throw out The Old Man and the Sea, even though I could barely finish it for being bored off my bum. Other books I don't need I turn in for credit at a used book store or donate to charity or the library.)

Most of the time, I rely on the library to help me save my bookshelves from further crap infestation. Yet, you can't get good cheesy fiction in the library. Libraries' paperback sections are usually relegated to true crime paperbacks and stories about teenagers with cancer (and of course, my donations).

But, eventually, I found two cheesy books and one semi-smart book, so I suppose I'll be ok. I had to whittle these choices down from five books and I kept finding more along the way. I really am greedy in bookstores. I've decided that when I retire, all I'm going to do all day is hang out at the bookstore and read whatever I want. ::sigh:: It's a lovely dream.

Main St USA

Savannah bus station

my bus

My bags

I told my friends I had decided to take a bus from Atlanta to Savannah, hang out with my friend Olga for 36 hours and return home Martin Luther King, Jr. day before dinner. Larry was not enthusiastic about my plan--referring to Greyhound as having been "cleaned up a lot, but still bummy." P gave me a look of pity mingled with disgust when I mentioned it. I might as well have told her I had a boil that needed lancing.  

Yet, the writer in my heart looks forward to having a good story to tell when I returned--even if I had to suffer six hours listening to a phlegmatic cough or risk developing a lice infection from my seat's upholstery. I can't bear the boring travel stories people tell at cocktail parties about the thread count of the sheets in the hotel or the disappointing service at a "must do" restaurant. Give me strange people, weird food, harrowing transportation methods, or at the very least wasn't there something strange about that Days Inn in Union City where the receptionist had bright green fingernails three inches long?  

I felt a little self-righteous sitting in the Forsyth Street station in downtown Atlanta as dayworkers in bandanas bought Cokes and a young girl wearing fairy wings slept sprawled over three chairs. I wasn't some Birkenstock-wearing yuppite, who needed a neck pillow and bottle of Perrier on even the shortest flight. I was traveler, with a junk food-filled plastic bag, hungry for the wilds of Interstate 85 South! 

I noticed that the differences between the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and the Atlanta Greyhound station were stark, much like the economic prospects their respective clientele. The airport's palate of cream and black is complimented by a wide variety of abstract art, including a bronze dinosaur sculpture. You can have a drink at a fancy piano bar or buy an iPod from a vending machine. The Greyhound station is across the street from an abandoned building and the inside is painted in stain-hiding blues and greys. 

The Greyhound "restaurant" is a grill that has what looked like day old hot dogs under a hot lamp. Actually they had to be a day old, because it was 9:00 in the morning. Ironically, food costs about the same no matter how you're traveling: $4 for a blueberry muffin (taken from the freezer, so I was told it needed time to defrost), $2 for a 20 oz Coke, $1 for a 5oz bag of Cheetos. I wanted to cry out "highway robbery!" in the way only obnoxious American tourists can. But we all know Americans only behave badly when traveling outside of our borders, or when our flight has been delayed, or when our taxi driver wants to cheat us, or when our team looses a game-- oh, never mind.  

The bus smelled like baby powder and mildew when I climbed on. My muscles strained to hoist my backpack high enough above the seats as I walked down the narrow aisle. I chose a window seat five rows behind the driver. I didn't want to be too close to the front and the wheels, nor too near the back and the bathroom--knowing from my experiences in Europe such a position could become very undesirable assuming any "stoppage" occurred.  

We started our journey with only a handful of passengers. The bus driver pulled closed his bullet-proof glass protective door separating us from him and the bus rumbled forward around a tight corner, bringing us within a hairsbreadth of the abandoned building across the street. Instead of the lulling, polite tones of a flight stewardness asking us for our safety to do this or that, the driver--who sounded like Judge Joe Brown--chastised his handful of passengers. telling them to get off their cell phones and listen to the rules, namely: "no cussing, no smoking, and no loud music."  

Unlike on planes where everyone wants to know who you are and where you're going, on buses, nobody wants to talk to you. I tried to strike up a conversation with an elderly woman wearing fur a few rows across from me. She was on her way to Fort Stewart and got right back on her cell phone as soon as she finished answering my question. I didn't want to ask the pony-tailed man with dirty jeans anything. He reeked of cigarettes, like he hadn't changed his clothes for a few thousand smokes. There also was a middle-aged man with a vintage 90's leather jacket and crisp white hair who kept chatting up the pony-tail man. Only pony-tail man wasn't very amused with having a seat buddy. This may be because there were about 40 empty seats.  

There also was a man I thought might be a drug dealer on the bus because he kept talking about "making a delivery" in St. Thomas and how he wasn't allowed to finish the job because, "Ben was really stressed out and didn't want [him] to even get on the boat." I tried to listen in to his other conversations throughout the rest of the trip, but got no further juicy details. He later turned on his iPod so loud I could hear the Dave Matthews Band lyrics if I concentrated. He was breaking rule #3, but I'm not a tattle-tale.  

We drove and drove and I felt the steady buzz of the bus from my feet into my spine until my extremities were numb. The smell didn't bother me any more, but the empty package of Edy's Dibs at my feet kept rolling back toward me, no matter how many times I kicked it away. 

We passed Hapeville (the Delta international headquarters), Dublin (featuring four churches all within 100 yards of each other as well as Jo-Jo's Burgers and Fish where you can get a shrimp and fries basket with a drink for $4.99), and Macon (where there was a stark difference between the rows and rows of mobile homes and all the chain hotels and restaurants immediately off the interstate exit ramp).  

I smiled as I noticed the pine trees getting leaner and taller along the road. This part of the South brings back so many fond memories for me of driving with my father through Macon and Perry, Thomasville, and finally Tallahassee on my visits to see him. I used to look out at the old houses zooming by, large dots on the landscape amidst miles of cotton fields and pecan trees. 

I'd absorb all the names of the mom and pop businesses on the town main streets and look in their windows. Somebody would have a sign up at their pharmacy selling wigs and just down the road you could see a fishing equipment display next to a clothing consignment store.  

There were never any grocery chains like the Krogers and Harris Teeters I was used to. The bank always had the nicest building and the clock. 

I would wonder what these areas looked like before anyone lived here and cultivated large farms. I'd imagine who used to own the boarded up gas station or cafe. Soon a whole group of fake people would clutter up my mind. The First Baptist Church pastor's wife had a big bosom and imposing grey hair. The mechanic never married; he wasn't very good-looking and always kept to himself. Tabitha the shopkeeper only traveled out of town once to go to Gainesville for a funeral. She didn't like it very much and decided she was just as happy in Vidalia. The family living in that one room shack with the trees growing out of it were very musical, especially the oldest son who knew almost any song you asked him to play.  

At some point about 100 miles from Atlanta, you begin to notice that the roads have flattened out and the sky has ballooned above you, a brilliant blue with fluffy clouds, assuming good weather. (Why does the sky look so much more beautiful the closer you get to sea level?) My dad and I would listen to Mozart or Bob Marley or Jimmy Buffett, and I felt almost overwhelmed with how much I loved this part of the world and the stories it could tell. Even if they were just figments of my day-dreaming.  

As we entered Savannah city limits, I came back to real time and my heart dropped a little. Savannah is certainly beautiful and full of mystery, but like so many great American cities, she makes her bread and butter off of her "character." Her tour guides and home owners are itching to tell you in great detail about this or that murder, or military siege, or historical house's cost in 1888. They leave little room for stories about Joe the plaster worker who enjoyed a fairly uneventful life--but did get to work on the Mercer house--and used to drink his coffee every morning with his wife while watching the barges come in with the tide. 

This is why a bus ride will tell you more about American history than any trolly or museum. Tour guides will never show you the charity shop with the 1972 china that Mrs. Wilkinson donated after her husband died in 1987. They aren't interested in the Elk's club scandal last spring where Thom Gleanly refused to vote for Bill Robinson because Bill hadn't given him his lawnmower back yet.  

The same kinds of people riding the bus today, lived in these towns 50 or 60 years ago (although no doubt they were segregated). They were the ones upon whose lives the rest of us built our futures. Because if great-grandpa Harry hadn't gotten in that mine accident and lost his leg and decided to leave Harrisville and get a job in Factoryville, maybe I wouldn't be in Atlanta now. And his story, although not one for the history books, is my story too.

Savannah

9Volts of Despair

Have you ever noticed that things in your house or in your car go to decide to quit on you all at once? My attempts to fix them are something Paulo Coelho should write about--there's always a simpler answer that never occurs to me until many repressed tears later. Perhaps, the ancient Mayans knew that one day, many thousands of years later, a blue-eyed child would be born, far to the North. And this child would be unique, for she would find order, and bring unto it chaos. 

I believe this is why the Mayan calendar ends 24 hours before my 30th birthday (2012, for those of you who want to start brushing up on your post-apocalyptic survival skills).

Alternatively, I could just be an unlucky clutz and a dangerous DIY-er. 

But I digress.

A few days ago, I heard my smoke detector chirping. It was a high pitched squeal that recurred every minute. Of course this means the battery is low and the chirping was annoying enough to get me to go to the grocery store that afternoon to buy new Duracell 9Volts. 

Once home, I drag my striped ottoman (one of two that are a sort of velvet material that really isn't meant to be stood upon, but is all I have) to the spot directly under the smoke detector and the attic door. I pull down the cover of the smoke detector and see the two batteries. I pull one out, then the other. 

I think, "Hey, this isn't so bad." I imagine myself bragging to friends at a dinner party about how I am pretty handy around the house. It feels empowering, like I am a pioneer woman baking cornbread in a wooden stove or making soap from lye and ash.

I pop in the first battery. "Easy as pie!"I say. Oh how brash and overconfident I was then! I should have remembered the lesson of the pie. What I think is easy, usually ends up being a debacle. 

As soon as the second battery made contact with the smoke alarm, the alarm started going off. I felt a bit like a dog getting hit with a super high frequency whistle. I clutched my ears in pain and gritted my teeth to pull out the second battery. Had the alarm only needed one battery? Why then were there two slots? Was there a crossed wire somewhere? Was the alarm supposed to go off until you replaced the cover and hit "silence"?

I had no clue what the answer was so, like any dutiful scientist, I decided to try replacing the second battery again a few hours later to see if I got the same result. My ears regret that decision.

Meanwhile, I left one battery in the detector and, strangely, there was no chirping. Something, as they say in afterschool specials, was terribly wrong. 

Embarrassed though I was, I called my neighbor Mr. B and asked him to take a look. He works at Home Depot and is a close family friend. Mr. B wasn't available for a couple of days, so while I waited I assumed that one battery was probably fine. 

As I came to learn, however, from Mr. B's thorough examinations, I had shorted out the smoke detector upstairs and it was likely upon inspection that none of my other three smoke detectors were in working order. 

On the one hand, I was glad I discovered this now, given I've taken up oil painting and chair refinishing and have multiple, highly flammable substances in the house. On the other hand, my stomach is hollow and my brain can't stop rummaging through all the various "what if" horrors that could have happened. I experienced a similar reaction after Barak Obama won and I couldn't believe that I really didn't have to face a future with Sarah Palin as vice president.

It being 8pm when Mr. B goes back across the street, I decide to pick up new smoke detectors immediately after work tomorrow. I can make it through one night can't I?

Sort of. I have to stay up half the night reading so I don't think about the odds of having a fire the one night that I am aware that none of my smoke detectors are working. I have to not think about the gas stove and the clutter in the garage that is near some weird wiring. I have to meditate so that I don't contemplate a scenario in which some hot sauce in my fridge drips upon the moldy gingerbread below it causing an intense release of heat that results in spontaneous combustion and a resulting fire so ferocious I am burnt to a crisp before you can say, "Bob's your uncle." 

Of course, I'm paranoid--to a certain extent--for good reason. It's true that most fires occur at night and 2/3s of deaths from home fires could have been prevented if people had properly working smoke detectors. Sadly, its despicably natural to forget about regularly testing your smoke detector and changing the batteries when mourning the loss of an hour or celebrating the gain of one. And in my neighborhood, two houses have been completely destroyed by fires in the past 10 years. 

At some point, I fall into an uneasy sleep and wake up late and go to work with globs of concealor over the dark bags under my eyes. I invest in four Diet Cokes (twice my rationed allowance) to keep me awake and as soon as 5:00pm hits, I'm out the door to the Home Depot.

I assume the choices of smoke detectors will be limited, but there, again, I am wrong.  Perhaps its a symptom of our previously healthy economy that you can choose between 30 different types of smoke detectors. 

You have your most basic, battery operated beeping devices to those that can warn you in English or in Spanish that there is a fire, to those that can be set up around the house and can send each other messages to warn people in English or in Spanish that there is a fire. And of course, there are combination smoke/carbon monoxide detectors, carbon monoxide and combustible gas detectors, infared photosensitive detectors--it's a plethora of safety devices that ends up making you feel guilty by choosing anything less than the most sophisticated, and extremely expensive version you can find.  

So, I buy three smoke detectors for $47 each plus tax. I feel good about my purchase. I've done the right thing by buying the best, the most sophisticated detectors. They're so advanced they might as well brew me coffee while they lie in wait like sentinels on castle guard. I sigh with relief as I drive home and listen to Delilah counseling a love-sick trucker.

I cook myself a delicious spaghetti dinner, without a care on my mind as the gas stove pops and crackles to boil water. I run the 19 year old GE dryer which has served my family well, but has a small problem with the lint catcher that makes it a bit of a hazard, and I blissfully rock out to Dolly Parton's "Jolene." 

My belly full, and a couple of episodes of All Creatures Great and Small on "The Netflix" and I am ready to tackle my smoke detectors. 

I put them on my bed in a neat little row and open the first box. It's wrapped like a Christmas present  in a plastic bag and then a translucent red "shower cap." I open the owner's manual and start reading. My face falls. My dinner does backflips.

Apparently, I bought the wrong kind of smoke detector--correction: three of the wrong kind. This one requires some kind of electrical wiring to work. The "battery operated" bit displayed on the packaging is more like a footnote, a backup to the real deal.

They'll have to be returned, I whisper solemnly. I put everything neatly back in its wrapping, check to make sure I have my receipt, and go downstairs to check the gas stove and dryer one more time. 

Another sleepless night. 

By the end of the week, I've reached a reckless hysteria. I still wasn't sleeping well and I wasn't making time to return the smoke detectors either. I had given myself up to the benign indifference of the universe. I could be toast or I could be Taoist. But today, I found myself back at Home Depot, returning the smoke detectors and buying the second cheapest ones available--double-checking they needed no special wiring. I spent 10% of what I had the first time. 

Of course, what I hadn't reliased was that, because they were new and a different size from the old detectors, I would need to drill new screws into the wall. More problems bubbled up like dinosaur victims in a tar pit. 

I didn't have the right drill bits for the right size screw--and how are you supposed to know what size a drill bit is anyway if it's not written on the bit? The "minor" secondary concern of how to get the old bit out of the drill was also befuddling me.

Then of course, I was a bit unsettled by the idea of screwing things, unsupervised, into my freshly painted ceiling. To rub more misery into the mix, the first detector I put together wouldn't stop chirping after I tested it. So every few minutes I would hear a high pitched squeal that pierced my ear drums and set my nerves on edge. 

It seemed a comedy of errors. Shouldn't installing a smoke detector be the EASIEST thing for a homeowner to do? It certainly is one of the most important. And yet, at every turn, I was thwarted. I thought I had brought order to find only entropy. 

I resolved the chirping for the smoke detector by doing what any technologically challenged person would do. I pushed buttons, removed and replaced batteries, until some random combination of actions resolved the problem. I had to repeat this cycle for the other two detectors after testing them. 

I'm now half deaf.

While I seemed so close to the finish line, I am sorry to admit, I gave up. I gave in to temptation and surrendered myself to asking my neighbors and friends for the name of a good handy man/woman. 

For now, I have put the smoke detectors in places where they would be effective although not permanently installed and I have a couple  of easy reading books next to my bed. Like my great-grandmothers before me, who settled in wild and dangerous lands centuries ago, I'm prepared to wait it out. 

Apple Pie

Some things seem fool proof...like baking a pie. If baking a pie weren't easy, the expression, "easy as pie" wouldn't exist. Maybe it doesn't and I just made that up. But the point is, wholesome things, the things that make you feel all home and hearthy on the inside are simple. They aren't gazpacho with a hint of guava and mandarin orange or rawhide pajamas, but instead, cardboard containers of Betty Crocker brownie mix and blankets that smell like your couch. And while summer and spring are usually seasons of escape into the outdoors and adventure, the fall and winter bring us to our journey's end huddled up in bed with a glowing lamp and a good book while the wind blows and the sleet taps on the roof. 

Home speaks to the primal in us, because if we're lucky, within it, is a place that is ours, where we belong and where we are fully accepted. As a child this may be a favored stuffed animal and a mother or father's voice lulling you to sleep. As a teenager, home may be in the middle of your bedroom with the black lights on and death metal raging. And as an adult, home is your first apartment, the 100X100 square foot, roach infested kitchenette with cinder block shelving that is disgusting, but yours. 

My friend was mentioning to me the other day that I need a home away from home, simply because where I currently live has too many memories and isn't really my own space. I had been complaining about feeling simultaneously stressed out by my environment as well as irrevocably attached. I oddly never feel alone at home by myself, but often do feel vulnerable and sad at a table for one at a coffee shop or another place where people go to simply be around other people. So, yesterday, it being a beautiful "blue sky day" as they say in China, I grabbed Liontamer, my camera and went for a walk outdoors on a trail near a historic, riverside mill. 

I will have the photos posted tomorrow, but the trip got me to thinking about how different I am from a woman my age 100 years ago. Even walking on the nature trail with Larry we were careful to stay on the path, not get ourselves lost...and when I was thirsty after about 2 hours of wandering, we went right back to our car. A woman from the turn of the century might have just ambled down to the river, and taken a drink, then walked two or three miles home. A woman from the turn of the century probably had to get dinner started around 2 or 3 in the afternoon so it would be ready by evening....all I had to do was pop some Ramon in the microwave for a few minutes. 

All I knew about the women from the area was really what existed on their tombstones on the cemetary down the street. Maybe Ella Proctor from 1882 was meek and righteous, maybe she was petty and angry. Maybe she was completely unremarkable in every way. But I'd like to think that if you dropped her in the middle of New York City, she would have some transferable skills...even if the machines on the road were loud and frightening and if people dressed so immodestly. 

And if you dropped me in the middle of the Wild West in the 1880s...(which I think would be an appropriate comparison), would I have any idea how to survive? Maybe, although I'd be much more comfortable if my time travel experience supplied me with s six shooter. 

But are there things Ella and I could both do? We both know lullabies to sing to children. She and both could probably fix a hole in a sock, or sew on a button. We know how to start a fire with kindling and peel and boil potatoes. Perhaps things haven't changed as much as we'd like them to believe. After all, I'm just one natural disaster away from Ella's daily life, though we are eons apart in our sensibilities, opinions, and education. 

But I did decide to do something to prove to myself that I still have some genetic memory of my pioneer ancestry. I decided to bake an apple pie....with all the modern day conveniences of a brand new, gas stove with electric controls, ready made crust and store-bought Gala apples (likely imported from Brazil or someplace).

How difficult could pie be anyway? I'd taken out all the guess work for the crust and I didn't even have to pick the apples off the tree. I added spices from my cabinet and cleaned out some of my old college junk while I waited for the oven timer to tell me it was done. Perhaps it wasn't Ella's home or the way she would have made pie, but it was my home, complete with dishes in the sink, the computer on the kitchen table and the very same feeling of peace that comes to all who bake. 

Yet, as I was chucking out old papers on human rights and anthropology, the oven timer kept beeping and Liontamer kept telling me that the crust wasn't brown yet. Then, the liquid in the pie started to bubble up and out of the holes in the crust, making a mess on the cookie sheet we had underneath the pan. When we could finally wait no longer, we decided to let the pie cool, and I realised that I really should have gone out and gotten some flour for the filling....as it was now a watery mess...and the crust wasn't nearly as flaky as the picture on the packaging. 

And although the pie didn't taste terrible, I felt truly inadequate eating it with a spoon and pretending it was cobbler or apple soup surprise. Ella probably baked prize-winning pies, pies that won her beautiful ribbons and the envy of her quilting circle, and I have never quilted and my pie would have probably been fed to the dogs.

So I went upstairs with my book and my lamp and decided that simple pleasures aren't experiments...they're simple because they come naturally. And the same goes for being home...no matter how hard you try you only have one, and for me, it's not on a nature trail or in a Starbucks, but reading on the couch with Liontamer on the computer next to me. 

 

Gabriel

I am four or five years old. My father dropped me off at my best friend Austin's house. I remember playing with him for what must have been a whole afternoon. Something was wrong and I knew it deep inside of me, but was only a child. I could play with the toys and whisper conspiratorially to Austin and most of the time ignore the unsettling feeling in my tummy. Then, Gabriel* came. I had known him as long as I could remember, which maybe was two years, maybe one. He had a long curling mustache, a shiny bald head surrounded by a ring of short hair, and gentle eyes. 

He told Austin's mommy that my mommy couldn't pick me up so he would take me to her. Gabriel is my mother's dearest friend in the world. They worked on cruise ships together. I think he was a captain. He reminds me of my grandfather, Hy, who could catch butterflies in his hands and show them to me. 

Gabriel asks Austin's mommy if she has any water or juice for me, then asks for a book or two for me to read in the car. Traffic is terrible and the trip will take an hour or more. I wonder if he should ask for all those things. I think maybe Austin's mommy will get mad, but Gabriel speaks to her with his quiet voice and Iranian accent in such nice words that I wonder why she should be. 

He buckles me in to the backseat of his Mercedes with my books and my juice and my water. I feel like a princess. I feel safe and cherished with him. I still don't know why Gabriel had to come and get me. Perhaps my parents were fighting and that's why my dad didn't drop me off at my mother's house. Or maybe my dad dropped me off earlier than expected and my mom had to work. They had only been divorced for a year. It was messy. 

There would be other times, when Gabriel wasn't there. When my father would disappear for a week, leaving me with my new stepmother Mary. I wasn't allowed to talk to my mom on the phone. No one would tell me where daddy was (he was on business travel) and why I couldn't go home to mommy (an argument about child support). I wondered why I hadn't gone home yet, and in the middle of the living room, staring down at the dark wooden floors while Mary cooked dinner, I wondered if it was because my mother was dead and no one was telling me. Gabriel wasn't there when I was dropped off in the rear entrance of the parking lot because my mother had gotten a judge to issue a late night "habeus corpus." 

I remember the time when daddy and Mary fought in the parking lot of an airport and daddy and I left on a different flight home and I forgot my favorite pair of shoes in Mary's car....never to see them again. 

But when Gabriel was there, he always spoke in soft tones and brought me pretty presents, like a tiny, pink marble piano that played music. He would remind me--much to my chagrin--the story of when I was two and fell asleep under the glass coffee table with my butt sticking in the air. He would smoke pipes or a cigar, something that had a thick, bittersweet aroma that enveloped the room. 

He would tell me that his family had lived on the same parcel of land in Iran for centuries and that once, when digging up the garden with his father they found chain mail that belonged to a crusader. I imagined him in his family's garden at sunset, surrounded by jasmin and the mingling sounds of a bubbling fountain and the call to prayer.

All the tension and anger and sadness in our lives disappeared whenever Gabriel was there, he was water and all exotic things and peace. 

Then, he moved away, back home. Now he is sick. 

Every once in a while, I'll pick up the phone and my spine will tingle...like a voice from the past I'll hear his voice, so gentle and reassuring even now. The line will crackle and echo. He tells me he had a dream of us and wanted to make sure everything was OK. I have no idea how much the call probably costs, or whether it's safe for him to be calling us. 

And my heart will climb to my throat and I'll try to convey to him in the few minutes we have how much we love him. I tell him everything's fine...I leave out the truth, that I've been deeply torn about some life decisions lately and mom hasn't been feeling well and I'm worried about her. I just want him to know that we think of him often--that we pray he'll feel better soon. 

He says to keep talking until his calling card runs out and I am desperate to tell him good things...I mention I'm a writer now and very happy with my new job. He says "ooh!" with such pleasure and the line goes dead. I hope that he'll be smiling now and remembering the little girl drooling asleep on the carpet and wondering where time went. I hope he'll carry that news with him and be proud of it. 

I'll stay on a bit longer listening to silence just in case and hang up reluctantly. I feel hot tears on my face. The long-distance number I wrote frantically in black sharpie on the newspaper looks blurry. 

The distance between us seems larger than miles and political tensions...it seems infinite, inpregnable. I think to myself how maybe this is the last time. Maybe I'll never hear from him again. I feel like I've lost something precious that I carried with me unknowingly my whole life. I think how very lucky that little girl was to have an angel in her life like him. 

*Name has been changed.