Crescent Meadow

Isn't it strange how we are drawn to some places in our lives over and over? Does that happen to you?

Sometimes it is a block, or a part of a city. Sometimes it is a stretch of beach, or a trail. Sometimes it is a restaurant. Sometimes the time between visits is so long I no longer remember where it is or how to get there, and then I arrive there again, and the memories come flooding back. These places are like magnets, my energy poles on earth. I have them in Tokyo, in Los Angeles and in Connecticut and California.

This past weekend we went camping in Sequoia National Park. I had been before. I knew that. I had seen the big trees and dipped in the glacier lakes. I went there with Natalie, probably about ten years ago. My memory of our trip was vivid. We had stayed in a campground alone. Ranger vehicles had swung through the park at night, their lights shining through our tent wall. She had cooked me campfire gado gado, gourmet wilderness cuisine, learned on her outward bound summer.

The campground was so deserted we scared ourselves, convincing ourselves that Cary Stayner, the then notorious National Park killer, could come upon us and stab us in the tent. We were more scared of him than bears.

We hiked into the back country singing Sweet Honey and the Rock songs and talking about love and life, and camped on the front porch of a ranger cabin under the stars. It was before she had cancer. She said she wanted to be a one hit wonder. Like Milly Vanilly I asked? Yes, she said. I want one beautiful song that everybody sings, that changes people's lives. One song that no one ever ever forgets. I think about that now, because that is sort of what she was--the song you cannot get out of your head. She was one tune. But she was unforgettable.

The second day we hiked high high into the mountains, and skinny dipped in a glacier lake. Then we lay naked on the rocks to dry. I, of course, carried my journal, and wrote a letter of love to myself that changed my life--a pledge that I would take care of my soul. I still have it in a box in my closet. The only part of the house that is truly, 100 percent all mine--piles of old sweaters, pictures, art and pieces of my past life. It is the clutter of my soul.

Anyway, there we were in Sequoia last weekend. We were with the Markos, our very favorite camping adventure friends. We tried to do everything you could with four children under the age of 7. We hiked to see the General Sherman tree and looked for bears. We went to see the Crystal Cave and climbed inside the Sequoias to feel their ancient primal energy. We clambered up rocks and dipped our feet in streams that Theo declared "colder than snow."

We were trying not to overschedule, but I demanded that we go to Crescent Meadow. The camp map said it was the most beautiful meadow in the park, and a sign by the meadow had a quote from John Muir calling it the "gem of the Sierra." And it was. To me it looks like heaven.

But here was the strangest thing. As soon as we drove up I knew that was where I had been with Natalie. I saw where we camped, and where the High Sierra trail split off from the meadow. I remembered the hollow tree and the beauty of that place. I had forgotten its name or where it was, but here I was again. And once again it felt life-changing.

This time we saw a bear cub try to eat a red-checked table cloth, and then four more bears out in the meadow. We walked out on the immense trunk of a fallen Sequoia into the middle of the meadow and stood in that sea of green, looking at the purple wild flowers, the towering Sequoias and the lumbering bears. We picnicked with our children and savored the perfect, magical beauty of the place. If there is a heaven, I think it looks like the Crescent Meadow.

And there, once again, I felt Natalie. I remembered her words, and felt her pulling me up the less travelled dirt trail to the High Sierra path. I heard her laughing and congratulating me for getting my boys out into the wilderness. I felt her shooting pictures and singing with me.

And there I was again. I suppose it is one of my important spiritual pilgrimage spots. Who knows why. I will put it on my list. I got back and began methodically planning my summer (so hard for me!). I turned to July in my Sierra Club calendar and there was Crescent meadow--again! Theo had drawn himself in the middle of it. So strange.

Brotherly Love

Yesterday was Theo's final day of Photography class after school. (I am 42 years old and have never taken a photography class!!! So jealous!!!) But anyway, during this class, his favorite so far, the students got cameras. They shot outside and in, they shot action and still-lives. They shot things that were blue and things that were red.

Then they mounted their pictures and made tiny photo albums. They made a cover, and dedicated them to someone on the first page.

Theo dedicated his art book to Benji.

Benji thought that meant it was his, which it wasn't.

"No, Benji," Theo explained. "I dedicated this to you. That just means I love you."

Awwwwwww.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Hello dear readers,

I have missed you, and I have missed my blog. I have been so busy teaching other people to write, that I have had no time to write myself. But from within that teaching experience (which I have loved...more on that when I am really and truly finished) one huge realization has emerged. I LOVE writing. I need to write. Just a few more days. I am shedding responsibilities like a snake. Last night, good-bye Larchmont Charter Board responsibilities. Two more weeks, check off the teaching duties. Complete.

But briefly, o so briefly, here is my thought for the day.

I think Somewhere Over the Rainbow is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I have always loved it. Always. Even if the whole Judy Garland obsession has gone a bit over the top.

But we just watched The Wizard of Oz again with our boys. (Benji's pick, as a reward for good behavior). I myself had to wait until I was about 12 to watch the movie in our TV free house. But I did listen to the album over and over and over and over. I knew it by heart. Every last word. I could do the witch imitation, laugh like a munchkin, cry like the cowardly lion, and be earnest like Dorothy. And I would hold the giant album cover in my hand, peering at the main characters skipping down the Yellow Brick Road for hours and hours as I listened.

Benji loved it so much we got the CD for his birthday, which he listens to over and over in the morning, at top volume. When the wind starts blowing he shouts out: "Here comes the Nortado."

But for me, the shock is how beautiful that song is. Every time I hear it, I cry. When I sing it to myself in the car, or as I walk down the street, I cry. It was in Baz Luhrman's movie Australia (which I loved, because I love anything Baz Luhrman does. I think the man is a genius.) I sang it to Benji in the tent when we went camping. And Judy Garland's voice, simple, pure, soaring and unadorned really does melt your heart.

That song, to me, is one of the most beautiful things there is.

In fact, I think I will go listen to it just one more time before I begin grading my students' work. Listen to it, my friends. It will make you weep and dream. Is there anything better?

Sonia Sotomayor

My husband is a mutt, in the best American sense--a mixed race guy with the blood of a dozen nations and cultures running in his veins. He could embrace one of them as his identity, as so many Americans do, or he could reject them all, as he has. He is Jewish, but he runs from the Jews. He is Latino, but he shuns the Latino identity--or at least refused to name our children any cool latino name (Hilary, I am NOT naming our child Diego or Pablo or Francesco. They are white children. That would be a curse. It is so confusing. They will constantly have to defend themselves! To explain why their parents did this to them!)

He is just himself, and he walks through the world that way.

But every once in awhile he shocks me. And, I think, himself. Yesterday he came home overjoyed that Obama had nominated Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice. He toasted her at dinner, and he told the boys why it mattered. He was giddy.

"I don't know why it matters to me so much," he said. "I am surprised. But it makes me really really happy. This is great for our boys!"

There is a Latino deep inside there. It may come out only when he is watching me dance salsa on the dance floor, or when a Supreme Court Justice with a Hispanic last name emerges from the Bronx to serve on the highest court in the land. But it is there.

I felt great tenderness.

Peaches

I always think I have a healthy attitude towards food. I made it through high school and college without anorexia or bulimia. I remained academic, sporty and slightly nerdy. I was, in the end, relatively unscathed by the relentless propaganda about body image showered on American teenage girls. At least that is how I remember it.

But then peach season comes, and a parade of memories comes rushing back. I LOVE peaches. To me, a good peach is pretty close to heaven. I love the really juicy ones that are so soft that the nectar just goes dripping down your arms, your chin and all over your clothes. You really should eat them naked, then take a shower afterwards. Those are the best. In Campania, in Italy, they have the world's best peaches. I don't know why. Now that I am a militant food person, I think maybe it is because they are not covered with pesticides and shipped from far away. They are harvested from back yards and sold at the fruttivendolo.

Anyway, one year in college, I decided, when I went back to Naples for the summer vacation, I decided I would live on peaches. I was a lifeguard at Carney Park--a crater near Pozzuoli that had been turned into a tiny sliver of preserved America, with baseball diamonds, hot dogs and an All American pool. I was a lifeguard. I lived in my bathing suit, teaching children to swim, and keeping an eye on horny sailors who came in from sea on aircraft carriers, put on their goggles, and hung out underwater by the diving board, watching for young girls swim suits to dislodge in revealing ways when they jumped into the water. I had to call them on their bizaare behavior and send them to the shallow end, where the view was a little blurrier.

I lived in my bathing suit, and thrived on peaches. I ate peaches for breakfast and peaches for lunch. I ate peaches all afternoon. I would eat them so the nectar ran down my body on my break, and then I would leap into the water, wash them off, and climb back into my lifeguard chair. I would eat 6-8 peaches a day. I would eat something real for dinner, so my mother wouldn't worry, because she was always onto me. Then I would have peaches for dessert. I got very skinny. And then one week I ended up in the hospital--for dehydration. I had a fever and I couldn't eat. Not even peaches.

I got so skinny. I ended up in the hospital. You would think I would hate peaches. But I don't. I love them.

And to me, the peaches of Campana are still the best.

I dream of a newspaper cone of sweet, campana peaches, warm in the sun, dripping down my chin.

All Stirred Up

One legacy of my peripatetic upbringing is that I never stopped moving. And so my life really has been lived in distinct chapters. When one ends, I move on. There are few links, and little overlap. A hardy few have followed me on my journey. Natalia was one. Now she is gone. As a result, though, I often feel like earlier chapters are like a life that belonged to another person. They are in me, all those places, flavors, sights and scenes, but deep deep in my cells. Not being called upon every day.

Until facebook came along.

All of a sudden voices from all different parts of my past are exploding into the present. They are closed chapters, forgotten closets, sealed brain clusters. And these voices are bringing back all these different times, and my memories, and their memories.

There is Alex Okun, my very very best friend from second grade in Naples, who I loved so much I spent 15 years looking for her, eventually tracking her down when I was 25 after I saw her father's name in a front page Washington Post newspaper story because by then he was a diplomat in Israel. The state dept wouldn't give me her address so I mailed a letter to them, and eventually, after months and months her father called my parents and I found her. So I saw her once in Seattle. But I found her again. She told me what she remembered about my second grade self. Funny.

And then there is Brian Key from High School, a dear dear friend, a constant presence, a fellow Navy kid (only his dad was a POW in Vietnam, something we were not supposed to bring up). He was a neighbor, a playmate, a quiet force for good, always, in a way that most people in high school just are not. There is my very best friend from High School, Kelly Wilkinson, who sketched horses madly through her high school days, covering her bedroom with perfect sketches of horses, then joined the Navy, flew airplanes, joined the Navy reserve, seriously studied painting, and now, truly, paints like the best of the French Impressionists. She has her very own studio in Charlottesville, VA, and I swear, she paints like Mary Cassatt. I am awed by her work, and love her for finally doing the thing she always, always wanted to do. How many people really come back and do that? She really knew herself at 15. And she was true to herself.

Then there is Ian Hoorneman, a wacky and delightful friend from High School, (a Latin scholar and a powder puff cheerleader, both!) who knew me at Wakefield, but also watched the strident, man-hating feminism (it was a phase! I swear! I only hated men, all men, until I was about 25) of Wellesley take root in my soul--and after 20 some years, when I told him I was married to a "screenwriter" had to ask me if the screenwriter was a man or a woman...

And finally, on Thursday night I stopped by the home of Lani Asato, one of Natalia's dearest friends, whose life I have followed and watched over the years. She, like me, (and Natalia) spent years studying Japanese, living in Japan, working for the Japanese. She is, actually, third generation Japanese. But seeing her made all the memories of Japan, JET, Natalia and the flight to Tokyo right after graduation, working for NHK (she worked for TBS) come rushing back. We ate noodles flavored with uniquely Japanese flavored dressings, sat at a table like a kotatsu, and stared up at a gorgeous photo of bamboo, surrounded by other kanji art. I felt safe there. Like I had known her for a long, long time. She knew the places I knew, the people I knew, and this country, that left such a huge mark on me, that I never really talk about any more.

So now here I sit, on a Saturday morning in May 2009, and the doors to all my chapters have been flung open. My head is whirling with memories of homecoming in High School, of my weird days at Wellesley, of my first trip to Japan, of track and calculus and why my high school did leave such an impression on me, even though I don't love it in the way that prep school people love and admire their alma maters.

I have such a set narrative in my head of how it all went, and what it all meant, and where it has all led. So how strange it is to have people emerge and remind me of different things, events I had forgotten, important phases that I have chosen to ignore in the script of my life.

Very very strange.

I don't know what it all means yet.

Except to say that my chapters are very, very, very disjointed.

Red Fish

Hey all you mamas out there, check This out, straight from my sister-in-law, who always finds the coolest, smartest, most clever toys and games for children. It's an exquisite french game site designed to teach children what? mouse skills? how to write music? how to speak french? how to read chinese? how to drive a submarine?

I don't know. But delightful.

My boys can't get enough. And, I confess, neither can I.