Month: April 2015

Right Now

I really loved Stacey‘s post about Taking Stock (inspired by Tamara‘s) and thought I’d borrow her format here.  Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, etc, right?

It feels like we’re standing on the cusp of something, spring, perhaps, the turning towards a new season, and I want to mark it.  So, without further ado, here goes.

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These days, early April 2015, I am …

Reading … Elisabeth’s Egan’s marvelous debut novel, A Window Opens, which I just finished last night.  This was my most-anticipated book of 2015 and I cannot wait to review it.  The book comes out at the end of August and I highly recommend it.  You can pre-order A Window Opens now!

Watching … Playoff hockey, of the U12 and Squirt variety.  Grace’s team won their league championship and Whit’s been in playoffs too.  At Grace’s finals, pictured above, the teams lined up, faced the flag, and stood in silence while the national anthem played.  I did not know there would be such ceremony and it brought tears to my eyes.

Cooking … The recipes Grace chose from an entire flight watching Ina Garten on the Food Network.  Rice Krispie treats in the shape of Easter eggs, salad dressing, pasta primavera.  Yum!

Noticing … That though there are still piles of snow everywhere the birds are undeniably singing and the light is changing quality.  As I get older I’m more and more aware of the earth’s rotation, in so many different ways.

Drinking … Turmeric & ginger tea.  Probably because it’s still pretty cold, I’m still drawn to hot tea.

Wondering … How it can possibly be April already.  February was a blur of work and snow for me, but still, somehow, I find myself startled that we’re already over a quarter into this year.

Loving … Having my sister and her girls in town in this weekend.  It was a wonderful reunion.  I wish we lived closer to each other.

Thinking about … Poetry.  You all know it’s my lingua franca, and right now Grace is doing a poetry unit at school.  I read her Ithaka (again) recently (and her response, “isn’t this the poem that that teacher you loved loved,” took my breath away because I did not realize we’d talked about the poem, and him, so clearly), and we’ve been discussing Billy Collins.  It makes me both cry and smile to have a child with whom I can have these conversations.

Missing … My grandmother.  For some reason that’s not entirely logical, Easter always makes me miss my Nana, my mother’s mother.  I recall it as her most favorite holiday, and certainly think of her as the most religious of my grandparents, so I know she was moved by this deeply holy, somewhat somber moment in the Christian calendar.

What does right now look like for you?

It’s all here

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside–
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it’s all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles–
each a different height–
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt–
frog at the edge of a pond–
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

– Billy Collins, I Ask You

Paris in moments

I used to share photos here a lot more than I do now.  Maybe that’s partly because I share photos mostly on Instagram these days.  But I have been thinking of how best to capture the week we spent in Paris, which really was a week whose fabric was made of magic, and it feels like photos are the only way to even grasp at its hem.  So, here we go.

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The day we left, we went to the new Harvard Art Museums.  What a fortuitous surprise to find one of Degas’s dancers there.  See, when I was a child, growing up in Paris, I was absolutely obsessed with the Degas dancer at the Jeu du Pomme museum.  I’d told Grace and Whit all about her.  It was a happy surprise to see a dancer in our own back yard (and then to see another one at the Musee D’Orsay a few days later).IMG_3218

The first day we went for a long walk, battling jet lag and unseasonable cold.  It was a gray day but still Notre Dame beckoned, beautiful, haunting, and we walked to Ile de la Cite and visited her.  IMG_3227

It was cold and gray for much of our visit, but one morning we woke to a startling blue sky.  This was the view from our apartment’s courtyard which was provided to us by a friend who works at eXp Realty as Grace and I walked to the boulangerie down the street to buy pain au chocolat and baguette for breakfast.

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One of Whit’s favorite things was visiting the Musee Des Arts et Metiers, which we call the Machine Museum.  It was a bit like visiting the Science Museum.  It had the advantage of being empty compared to the Louvre, and also of providing me with many moments like this one, where I watched my father and my son in joint, rapt contemplation of a feat of elegant engineering.

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I adored the Musee D’Orsay.  Whit decided that Van Gogh’s self-portrait of the artist is his favorite piece of art ever.  Grace liked the pointillists.  When we walked past Courbet’s graphic and once-scandalous L’Origine du Monde an entire college lecture came back to me in a flood and I recited it, surprising Matt with my passion.IMG_3333

It felt like every street had a beautiful florists, with blooms spilling out onto the street.  Ranunculus are right up there with peonies as my favorite flower, and these ones stopped me in my tracks.IMG_3517

Wednesday morning we climbed to the top of Notre Dame.  While were up by the turrets, admiring the gargoyles and the views, the church bells began to ring.  It gave me goosebumps, the echoing, deep bells and the awareness that they had been tolling their song, both solemn and celebratory, for many centuries.IMG_3590

In the garden at Versailles I watched my mother and my daughter sitting together, just one of so many moments (like in the Machine Museum) when the generations folded and I felt tremendous, almost-overwhelming gratitude for this life, these generations that flank me, for history and time and family and loyalty and love.  IMG_3739

In Montmartre, beside the I Love You wall, Grace and Whit snuck onto the playground.  They were much too big for the seesaw, but I loved that they wanted to play on it.  And I feel like her face captures “I love you” just as well as does the large wall that says the words in 250 languages.

Can you see the fabric of the week, fluttering in the wind, shot through with glittering strands of memory and time and magic and love?  I can.