Spring peepers out the window in the sloughs by the river as I sit in the dark at my father's place at the dining room table and write this.
Dad's gone to bed - hoping to be up early and not miss anything of our last day on this particular trip. Jayne's downstairs with T, having agreed to have her in for a sleepover; Q's asleep in what used to be Jayne's room. About half the packing is done.
We had a memorable evening - post-supper, we all drove downtown to the park by the swimming pool, where Q and I tried to play catch with Grandpa and the football. But Grandpa couldn't see it well enough to catch it, and his shoulder isn't what it used to be for throwing. So he wandered off, and then I had Q go and round him up so the three men could go to the basketball courts half a mile away and shoot around with the much larger and less velocity-prone ball, leaving the girls to swing and slide.
Q did 75% of the shooting, but Grandpa got in there too, hitting a couple of jumpers once he'd learned the limits of his age and his strength again. He suffers with that, though he smiles as he does - at the end of the evening, when he, Jayne and I sat on a bench and watched T and Q zoom round and round on a merry-go-round, he summed up the basketball experience this way: "Well, I discovered yet another way I'm not worth a shit anymore." But he also reveled in watching Q hit some long jumpers and dribble his way past me (not exactly a difficult thing to do), and stood beneath the basket to rebound for him very happily. It occurred to me while we stood there shooting that I was five times Q's age, and Dad, ten times. We let that sink in with smiles on our faces as another shot swished through.
Back home, T ran toward the house in the very-near-dark, rounding the end of the car just as Blue, Dad's heeler-collie mix, raced around the same corner in the opposite direction, wildly excited at our arrival, and they crashed, T sprawling out into the gravel. So we had tears and an emergency treatment by Auntie Jayne of some abrasions that were vanishingly mild. That fragility combined with the sudden knowledge that she hadn't seen Mami in a while, and when she got on the phone with her, T started a long jag of gentle, shuddering sobbing against my shoulder. Which I did not mind in the least.
Grandpa had taken the kids on a long 4-wheeler ride just prior to supper, each one with binoculars dangling from the neck, down to the river bottom and around a maze of fallen logs to a spot where you can see the giant bald eagles' nest across the river. Q claims to have seen one, but Grandpa wasn't so sure. At any rate, the best thing that place had to offer was the chance to throw sticks into the river, and Q very nearly put a big one across, or so I'm told. Their return saw both Auntie Jayne and me snapping photos and filming like mad. I've never seen three happier people.
All this post-3:30, because that was when we rolled in from our five-hour drive from Uncle Jim and Auntie Sarah's house, where we'd been since noon the previous day. Drove all the way to Two Rivers, which I think is a fantastically picturesque little burg, because Baby Liam, as we call him (and who is now two and a half), just received a baby sister named Finley. She is perfect and gorgeous, and Liam is in love with his cousins. We all went swimming at our hotel the night before in their indoor waterpark (not one but two slides, a lazy river, wading pool, basketball pool, lily-pad crossing, and a hot tub), and then out to supper at a restaurant in the Lambeau Field atrium, and then this morning they'd played together for another couple of hours, and when we left, Liam cried stood in the yard with Uncle Jim and wailed profoundly as he waved goodbye. I will remind him of that scene in joking fashion when Liam turns his meathooks and brawn against mighty foes at Lambeau Field himself as a highly touted rookie defensive end. That kid is all power.
Auntie Jayne and I, then, had 10 hours in the car over two days to talk and catch up, and did we ever. It's been great to get to know her better again these past few days. My fantasies of a life here are bubbling at a full boil now - every trip up on the hill on the 4-wheeler shows me a new are where I'd like to clear the trail better, pull up all the honeysuckle (I actually pulled some at various stops along the way - thanks, Mark and Ronadh!), cut some trees to improve the view, fix the fences, build a horse barn...And then reality comes back in and I know I'm not here anymore. And haven't been for a long, long time.
Poignancy!, thy name is Gays Mills.
Pictures and films to follow - be patient, they'll be worth it...
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Gays Mills Express
Howdy all, and I apologize for the extended absence - events conspired, all that. But there we are.
Where are we? Wisconsin, naturally. I've got this week off, as do the kiddles. (T has off when we say she has, but luckily for her, we say she has.) Janneke stayed behind to man the ramparts while we zipped across the country, courtesy of Amtrak.
That's been the biggest adventure so far: luxury accommodations in a sleeper car, waited on hand and foot by dedicated, chipper, energetic employees in white shirts and ties while gently rocking on the rails. Ainsley was the name of our general steward, a very personable man of 45 or so who came and got us at meal times and made our beds and otherwise made sure we were comfortable; Kwame was the other main character, who amazed the kids with his ability to pour soda from a can while being heaved about at a curve in the tracks without spilling a drop, let alone falling. They loved every second of it. So much more comfortable than flying - tickle fights on a giant couch in our cabin replaced endless hours of whining about your bum being too hot and the guy in the seat next to you oozing over into your space again. Lovely experience that we'll be repeating in just a few short days on the return trip.
Picked up the rental car in Chicago, at the depot, and literally turned twice when leaving Union Station before finding ourselves on 90 heading west and north. Easiest trip ever. Cooperative and thoughtful kids, well-thought-out itinerary...Can't complain.
Gays Mills is poignant as always. I have a hard time seeing the place with forty-year-old eyes. Part of its charm is that my eyes are suddenly 16 again when I'm here, and the particular scale and arc of the hills and the bends in the river ring together in a chord that puts me straight into the same emotional state I was in back in the day. Which, as those of you who know me from then will know, is a mixed bag at best. So I simultaneously feel youthful and anxious, groove-sliding and washboard-bumping all at the same time as the past and the present wrestle with each other. Very fraught.
I took a jog yesterday north on the road my Dad and sister live on, and went probably two miles before turning back. I jogged over culverts where I used to set traps for raccoons, past a giant old twisted oak where, when I was ten or eleven, I found a baby raccoon, which we failed to nurse back to health, dashing my dreams of reliving "Rascal" by Sterling North. I passed two houses, which my Dad had purchased downtown in Gays Mills and then moved on truckback out to their current resting place. We had helped him to pour the cement pads they stand on, and had done some of the hammering and nailing when they were lowered in place by a crane, all of which seemed very grand and entrepreneurial at the time. One of them sold, and has now been re-sided and re-roofed, and stands as a hunting cabin for some outlander I don't know and have never met, surrounded by ground that has been transformed into yard from the thistly pasture it was when we worked there; the other has fallen into rot, looking every bit the abandoned project it is, grown in with weeds, topped with a fallen-in, broken-backed roof. I passed the bend in the river where some years a go a blue bus came to rest and still stands in the long grass, roughly parallel to the swoop of the bank. Its back doors stand open, a heap of nameless refuse lying beneath, thrown out - by Tracy, the ghostly, bearded man who rides his bike slowly up and down the road, hauling a handmade trailer where he piles sticks and treasures, and who lives in the bus, somehow; stays alive over the winters somehow, despite the evident lack of a chimney, past the little corral where his donkey lifted its head and stared at me. Past a farm where there has always been evidence of habitation, but where I have never seen anyone, not since a bizarre birthday party I'd been driven past in the car as a kid, back before the old house that stood there was finally razed - the place had suddenly been alive with people, dozens of them, adorning the porch and charging back and forth across the front yard beneath a colorful banner, only to disappear again along with that original house, leaving only occasional signs of life, like the dog that growled at me as I ran past, or the laundry on the line, but never again any actual humans, not once in the hundreds of times I've been past there. I jogged by a pasture where a palomino horse grazed on the tiniest shoots of grass, and watched as he threw up his head at my passing and began to trot towards the road, as if to intercept me, and I thought certain he would crash against the fence - except there was no fence, and he trotted into my path and stood there a moment, vaguely threatening, before dashing past me, hooves clattering. Toward the end of the road where the Georges live, whose sons were basketball players ages ago, where my sister's dog Lily came barreling out of the woods, having traversed the same distance through the forest on the ridgeline and found me there, as if she'd planned the whole thing. And then we turned and ran back, past Tracy, who was now out, standing above the road, across from his bus, in front of a dilapidated sticks-and-straw wigwam he'd tacked together for his dog, which whined at me and Lily as we passed. All the way home.
And now I have two children awaiting me in a double bed - neither could bear to sleep alone tonight, so I put them in together with the promise that I'd crawl in among them when I got tired enough. A moment which is fast approaching.
Where are we? Wisconsin, naturally. I've got this week off, as do the kiddles. (T has off when we say she has, but luckily for her, we say she has.) Janneke stayed behind to man the ramparts while we zipped across the country, courtesy of Amtrak.
That's been the biggest adventure so far: luxury accommodations in a sleeper car, waited on hand and foot by dedicated, chipper, energetic employees in white shirts and ties while gently rocking on the rails. Ainsley was the name of our general steward, a very personable man of 45 or so who came and got us at meal times and made our beds and otherwise made sure we were comfortable; Kwame was the other main character, who amazed the kids with his ability to pour soda from a can while being heaved about at a curve in the tracks without spilling a drop, let alone falling. They loved every second of it. So much more comfortable than flying - tickle fights on a giant couch in our cabin replaced endless hours of whining about your bum being too hot and the guy in the seat next to you oozing over into your space again. Lovely experience that we'll be repeating in just a few short days on the return trip.
Picked up the rental car in Chicago, at the depot, and literally turned twice when leaving Union Station before finding ourselves on 90 heading west and north. Easiest trip ever. Cooperative and thoughtful kids, well-thought-out itinerary...Can't complain.
Gays Mills is poignant as always. I have a hard time seeing the place with forty-year-old eyes. Part of its charm is that my eyes are suddenly 16 again when I'm here, and the particular scale and arc of the hills and the bends in the river ring together in a chord that puts me straight into the same emotional state I was in back in the day. Which, as those of you who know me from then will know, is a mixed bag at best. So I simultaneously feel youthful and anxious, groove-sliding and washboard-bumping all at the same time as the past and the present wrestle with each other. Very fraught.
I took a jog yesterday north on the road my Dad and sister live on, and went probably two miles before turning back. I jogged over culverts where I used to set traps for raccoons, past a giant old twisted oak where, when I was ten or eleven, I found a baby raccoon, which we failed to nurse back to health, dashing my dreams of reliving "Rascal" by Sterling North. I passed two houses, which my Dad had purchased downtown in Gays Mills and then moved on truckback out to their current resting place. We had helped him to pour the cement pads they stand on, and had done some of the hammering and nailing when they were lowered in place by a crane, all of which seemed very grand and entrepreneurial at the time. One of them sold, and has now been re-sided and re-roofed, and stands as a hunting cabin for some outlander I don't know and have never met, surrounded by ground that has been transformed into yard from the thistly pasture it was when we worked there; the other has fallen into rot, looking every bit the abandoned project it is, grown in with weeds, topped with a fallen-in, broken-backed roof. I passed the bend in the river where some years a go a blue bus came to rest and still stands in the long grass, roughly parallel to the swoop of the bank. Its back doors stand open, a heap of nameless refuse lying beneath, thrown out - by Tracy, the ghostly, bearded man who rides his bike slowly up and down the road, hauling a handmade trailer where he piles sticks and treasures, and who lives in the bus, somehow; stays alive over the winters somehow, despite the evident lack of a chimney, past the little corral where his donkey lifted its head and stared at me. Past a farm where there has always been evidence of habitation, but where I have never seen anyone, not since a bizarre birthday party I'd been driven past in the car as a kid, back before the old house that stood there was finally razed - the place had suddenly been alive with people, dozens of them, adorning the porch and charging back and forth across the front yard beneath a colorful banner, only to disappear again along with that original house, leaving only occasional signs of life, like the dog that growled at me as I ran past, or the laundry on the line, but never again any actual humans, not once in the hundreds of times I've been past there. I jogged by a pasture where a palomino horse grazed on the tiniest shoots of grass, and watched as he threw up his head at my passing and began to trot towards the road, as if to intercept me, and I thought certain he would crash against the fence - except there was no fence, and he trotted into my path and stood there a moment, vaguely threatening, before dashing past me, hooves clattering. Toward the end of the road where the Georges live, whose sons were basketball players ages ago, where my sister's dog Lily came barreling out of the woods, having traversed the same distance through the forest on the ridgeline and found me there, as if she'd planned the whole thing. And then we turned and ran back, past Tracy, who was now out, standing above the road, across from his bus, in front of a dilapidated sticks-and-straw wigwam he'd tacked together for his dog, which whined at me and Lily as we passed. All the way home.
And now I have two children awaiting me in a double bed - neither could bear to sleep alone tonight, so I put them in together with the promise that I'd crawl in among them when I got tired enough. A moment which is fast approaching.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Eye of the Tiger
That's the song that both kids have been singing at full voice at every opportunity. (And the day, we've come to learn, is pretty much one long opportunity.) It also describes T's aesthetic sensibility, as revealed in the following series of photos, taken by T:
Skittles, unsuspecting, gets a flashbulb in the puss.
Victim number 2.
"...before turning the camera on herself."
I swear, the camera just loves some people...
...and dogs...
...while being distinctly ambivalent toward others.
T is very proud of this ship. Q built it, but she, all by herself, put the stormtroopers on it.
The top of the shoe box that her ballet slippers came in.
The frosting for the cupcakes that T helped Mami to make.
The fruit basket the family bought for us and brought to our summer visit. T took must really like it. That's probably why she took the picture.
Or perhaps because it was in front of her.
Yeah...That's seeming more likely.
Wonder what this guy's celebrating.
Um...Probably ought to do some cleaning up in there.
Q, this morning, did the rounds with me at the Williamstown Camp Fair Or Whatever It's Called, where everyone who locally does a week or more of camp sets up in the Elementary School gym to take advantage of the presence of hordes of people, who come through for the Elementary School Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser Hoozier-whatsis. This event keeps up the age-old tradition of volunteer parents flipping mealy pancakes and undercooked bacon to hand out to other parents who shell out $16 for the privelege of eating them. At a determined point, the flippers and the eaters change places, and the event continues. Q was interested in the usual stuff: Soccer camp (he loved it last year, and he'll go for 2 weeks again), lacrosse camp (a new one - he saw the flyer and immediately expressed interest, and, given his speed and abandonment of baseball, a likely sport for him in the future), and basketball camp. All local, all affordable, all no problem. No surprises. But then at one point he walked up and handed me a brochure and then charged away again, wordlessly. I looked down at the brochure:
"MCLA Robotics Camp"
I was very pleasantly surprised! This is a distinctly learning-based activity, and he's very excited about it. Not that he doesn't like to learn - he loves to. In fact, while we were playing ping pong the other day, he started regaling me with detail after detail, fact after fact, about the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver. I asked him where he'd heard all this. "MCAS", came the response. (Massachusetts' standardized test that determines if schools are making adequate progress. 3rd grade is one of the years they test them.) "That test was a lot of fun." But when it comes to camps, he really expects a lot of whiz-bang and gee-willikers, and learning doesn't really register in that way with him. Of course, the brochure does say something along the lines of "For kids who like robots and building things with legos". Pretty much a bull's-eye.
Rainy, half-snowy day, so post-pancakes, we came home (all but Q, who was happy to be invited to a playdate with a friend we saw there), where T helped Mami make cupcakes for tomorrow's skating birthday party. At which I will do a lot of filming, and then, some day, edit together a snappy version for all of you to enjoy. But not for a while, probably. Things have been kind of gummed up lately, what with all the guitar-playin' and such. Just not finding the time. Ain't that the way? Then one day you turn around and you're dead. Welcome to life.
Banzai!
Skittles, unsuspecting, gets a flashbulb in the puss.
Victim number 2.
"...before turning the camera on herself."
I swear, the camera just loves some people...
...and dogs...
...while being distinctly ambivalent toward others.
T is very proud of this ship. Q built it, but she, all by herself, put the stormtroopers on it.
The top of the shoe box that her ballet slippers came in.
The frosting for the cupcakes that T helped Mami to make.
The fruit basket the family bought for us and brought to our summer visit. T took must really like it. That's probably why she took the picture.
Or perhaps because it was in front of her.
Yeah...That's seeming more likely.
Wonder what this guy's celebrating.
Um...Probably ought to do some cleaning up in there.
Q, this morning, did the rounds with me at the Williamstown Camp Fair Or Whatever It's Called, where everyone who locally does a week or more of camp sets up in the Elementary School gym to take advantage of the presence of hordes of people, who come through for the Elementary School Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser Hoozier-whatsis. This event keeps up the age-old tradition of volunteer parents flipping mealy pancakes and undercooked bacon to hand out to other parents who shell out $16 for the privelege of eating them. At a determined point, the flippers and the eaters change places, and the event continues. Q was interested in the usual stuff: Soccer camp (he loved it last year, and he'll go for 2 weeks again), lacrosse camp (a new one - he saw the flyer and immediately expressed interest, and, given his speed and abandonment of baseball, a likely sport for him in the future), and basketball camp. All local, all affordable, all no problem. No surprises. But then at one point he walked up and handed me a brochure and then charged away again, wordlessly. I looked down at the brochure:
"MCLA Robotics Camp"
I was very pleasantly surprised! This is a distinctly learning-based activity, and he's very excited about it. Not that he doesn't like to learn - he loves to. In fact, while we were playing ping pong the other day, he started regaling me with detail after detail, fact after fact, about the life and accomplishments of George Washington Carver. I asked him where he'd heard all this. "MCAS", came the response. (Massachusetts' standardized test that determines if schools are making adequate progress. 3rd grade is one of the years they test them.) "That test was a lot of fun." But when it comes to camps, he really expects a lot of whiz-bang and gee-willikers, and learning doesn't really register in that way with him. Of course, the brochure does say something along the lines of "For kids who like robots and building things with legos". Pretty much a bull's-eye.
Rainy, half-snowy day, so post-pancakes, we came home (all but Q, who was happy to be invited to a playdate with a friend we saw there), where T helped Mami make cupcakes for tomorrow's skating birthday party. At which I will do a lot of filming, and then, some day, edit together a snappy version for all of you to enjoy. But not for a while, probably. Things have been kind of gummed up lately, what with all the guitar-playin' and such. Just not finding the time. Ain't that the way? Then one day you turn around and you're dead. Welcome to life.
Banzai!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Self-Indulgence
Here comes a big spoonful thereof.
So the talent show went fine. I was more nervous than I thought I would be - the place was jammed, 500 people or more. And they had us all sitting in the "green room" watching the feed on a TV before we would go on. It was surreal - all of us nervous, probably, and watching each person march out to the spotlights and then march back in. We'd cheer them when they came in, tell them they did well. Even if they hadn't.
That very afternoon, right as school got out, I had gone down to a nice park area and had a jog, then come back to the school and eaten. Then I just wandered around a bit, killing time. I went down to the theater, where they were doing sound checks, and where Peter and Beth, two teachers who are former musicians, were practicing. They're really, really good. Competent musiciansd, who'd come up with an original song about the school's mascot. And I have to say, sitting there listening to them, I got a sinking feeling. I thought I was pretty good, but these guys were amazing. To my ears, anyway.
I went back up and ran over my song in my head, and wondered about a particular little "zap" sound that Latin guitar players seem to get when they play. I'd never been able to figure out how to do it. So I went to my room and went to Youtube and did a search to see if there was anyone who gave a tutorial on such things. And I found this guy. If you watch, at about 3:09, he shows exactly how it's done:
Strange, but that's the first guy I'd ever see explain that little move. I went down to where my guitar was (the teacher's cafeteria) and tried it out. I had a bit of a hard time doing it in a natural way, but after a few minutes I more or less had it. And I had this strange feeling that I should incorporate it into the song I was going to play.
So the long and the short of it is that when I made that long, but extremely short, walk from the greenroom to backstage and out into the lights, I was about to play this song in a way which was more authentic, but which I'd never really run through completely. Which added to the nerves.
I heard a female student call out, as I settled in to my chair, which I'd had to carry out with me: "Mister Johnson, you rock my world!" Others around her laughed, and she did too, and so did I. It was very nice of her - it really helped to break the glass around the moment.
And y'know what? That little rasgueo I'd just learned kind of worked. Once it started not working (which was probably hard to notice, since if it doesn't work, all you hear is the chord being played), I stopped trying to work it in. And it seemed to be pretty well received by the Publikum. I got a nice round of applause, very warm and seemingly sincere. Much louder than I expected - that was a lot of people.
The nicest moment, though, was when I came back into the greenroom. All my assembled brothers in arms - a lot of students of mine, others I know but haven't ever taught, many I don't know, along with a few faculty - hit me with an absolute wall of sustained, vigorous applause. I grinned and nodded and said "thank you", but really couldn't adequately thank them for how nice that made me feel.
The students were amazing throughout. No matter how painful or long or boring the things on stage might have seemed, no one - No one, not once, never - made anyone feel bad. Everybody was cheered on, and some of the warbliest, stock-still, nervous performances of the night were met with the fiercest applause. Everybody seemed to know how much it had taken for those particular people to stand up there and pull their chests open and expose their beating hearts like they did, and their peers and friends rewarded them with blazing firehoses of affirmation. I stood in the back and smiled and cheered and watched any number of kids go through what was quite possibly the most transformative moment in their lives. It felt like a real privilege to witness it.
And Peter and Beth absolutely brought the house down at the end.
In other news, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
So the talent show went fine. I was more nervous than I thought I would be - the place was jammed, 500 people or more. And they had us all sitting in the "green room" watching the feed on a TV before we would go on. It was surreal - all of us nervous, probably, and watching each person march out to the spotlights and then march back in. We'd cheer them when they came in, tell them they did well. Even if they hadn't.
That very afternoon, right as school got out, I had gone down to a nice park area and had a jog, then come back to the school and eaten. Then I just wandered around a bit, killing time. I went down to the theater, where they were doing sound checks, and where Peter and Beth, two teachers who are former musicians, were practicing. They're really, really good. Competent musiciansd, who'd come up with an original song about the school's mascot. And I have to say, sitting there listening to them, I got a sinking feeling. I thought I was pretty good, but these guys were amazing. To my ears, anyway.
I went back up and ran over my song in my head, and wondered about a particular little "zap" sound that Latin guitar players seem to get when they play. I'd never been able to figure out how to do it. So I went to my room and went to Youtube and did a search to see if there was anyone who gave a tutorial on such things. And I found this guy. If you watch, at about 3:09, he shows exactly how it's done:
Strange, but that's the first guy I'd ever see explain that little move. I went down to where my guitar was (the teacher's cafeteria) and tried it out. I had a bit of a hard time doing it in a natural way, but after a few minutes I more or less had it. And I had this strange feeling that I should incorporate it into the song I was going to play.
So the long and the short of it is that when I made that long, but extremely short, walk from the greenroom to backstage and out into the lights, I was about to play this song in a way which was more authentic, but which I'd never really run through completely. Which added to the nerves.
I heard a female student call out, as I settled in to my chair, which I'd had to carry out with me: "Mister Johnson, you rock my world!" Others around her laughed, and she did too, and so did I. It was very nice of her - it really helped to break the glass around the moment.
And y'know what? That little rasgueo I'd just learned kind of worked. Once it started not working (which was probably hard to notice, since if it doesn't work, all you hear is the chord being played), I stopped trying to work it in. And it seemed to be pretty well received by the Publikum. I got a nice round of applause, very warm and seemingly sincere. Much louder than I expected - that was a lot of people.
The nicest moment, though, was when I came back into the greenroom. All my assembled brothers in arms - a lot of students of mine, others I know but haven't ever taught, many I don't know, along with a few faculty - hit me with an absolute wall of sustained, vigorous applause. I grinned and nodded and said "thank you", but really couldn't adequately thank them for how nice that made me feel.
The students were amazing throughout. No matter how painful or long or boring the things on stage might have seemed, no one - No one, not once, never - made anyone feel bad. Everybody was cheered on, and some of the warbliest, stock-still, nervous performances of the night were met with the fiercest applause. Everybody seemed to know how much it had taken for those particular people to stand up there and pull their chests open and expose their beating hearts like they did, and their peers and friends rewarded them with blazing firehoses of affirmation. I stood in the back and smiled and cheered and watched any number of kids go through what was quite possibly the most transformative moment in their lives. It felt like a real privilege to witness it.
And Peter and Beth absolutely brought the house down at the end.
In other news, I'm tired, and I'm going to bed.
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