Take Cover

White shows through worn green veins

at the edges of the quilt on my bed.

It is a fragile relic meant for a museum

but the nothing weight is perfect for my skin,

thin petals of foxglove and hollyhock,

a breeze-bent gauze of pollen and light.

 

No one knows for sure

which great aunt or grandmother

held the needle between fingers

then nimble enough

to drive the needle straight

through miles of scrap

over the rough terrain of a century

all the way to me.

I curl beneath her offering.

A storm blows just outside the panes,

tossing limbs against the sky

as I tuck my own around my heart

and pull the quilt in tight

despite its brittle threads.

The Sioux cannot be blamed

for believing hand-stitched leather

could protect them in battle.

We cannot know the true nature of the threat

until the first time

and sometimes, not even then.

The ones who come before weave enchantments

into everything they leave

for progeny they may never meet

whose trials they can hardly imagine.

It is insufficient magic,

yet none more powerful exists.

We cannot be blamed

for wrapping ourselves in beautiful folly

on occasions

when the wind is fierce

and the night is long.

Same Salsa, Different Day

My one-year anniversary at my job coincided with an earthquake. After the building flung us out onto the sun-baked streets, a dozen of us gathered at a local watering hole to catch our collective breath and wait out the traffic. There I was, one of a dozen university administrators bobbing and gossiping around the table, knocking back margaritas. It seemed the most normal and enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. Even though the building had decided to stand firm and we would all be going back in the morning, smiles flitted with ease around the room.

It is a wonder to me that still, a year in, I look forward to going to work every day. What began as the first job I could land after five years as a mountain mama has turned into a job I love.

What is the secret recipe? What ingredients make work work? I know I am not alone in my sense of dumb luck. This graduate school happens to have a great knack for keeping low-paid employees around without dulling their sparkle. A quick sniff around this week has offered up some possibilities:

·         Service: Believing your work, however mundane, contributes to a larger (and worthwhile) objective.

·         Celebration: Pausing to cheer on colleagues for achievements and life events, even if (or perhaps especially if) the celebration puts the brakes on work for a moment. People who feel valuable tend to produce valuable work.

·         Tapping expertise: Leadership calls upon the insights of people from various levels of the organization, and allows that expertise to inform significant decisions.

·         High standards: Leaders pay attention to anything produced. No one gets to be sloppy.

·         Learning: The organization provides opportunities on the company dime and on company time for employees to enrich themselves professionally and personally.

·         Variety: Expansion and contraction of pace, scope, and nature of work. We all need a few surprises to stay nimble. No one should be so pigeonholed that the dance becomes a grind.

·         Adaptation: Tradition tussles with progress in a well-refereed, ongoing game to identify the best processes.

·         Flow: Helping folks zero in on that sweet spot right between where the work is easy enough to be dull and just tough enough to be frustrating. Allowing room to shape a position around this moving target.

Mix the component parts, cook it all in an atmosphere of respect and challenge for the people who do the work, and voila!

It isn't magic, of course. Perhaps the real mystery is not how to master the recipe, by why organizations keep cooking up pablum and poison. Why are so many of my contemporaries slogging away at unsatisfying jobs in dysfunctional outfits? How much responsibility rests with the workers, how much with the leaders, or and how much with the institutional context? I may not have more than a dim sense of things, but it does seem important to identify the unique texture and flavor of a company's strengths. The people in an organization need to commit to a certain kind of culture, then follow through on engendering it through hiring decisions and the day-to-day operations.

As for me, one year in? I plan on sticking around, keeping that smile on my face and the bounce in  my step. An organization is its people, after all. When I embody the resilient spirit, I make my small contribution to creating the kind of workplace to which people want to return, even if they know the menu by heart.

He's Got Game

I remember the sound of ducks greeting me in the pre-dawn hours as the boat bobbed on the water. A decade ago, my folks and I navigated along the Canal du Midi in southern France for a week. We moored at the edge of 1000-year-old villages and wandered, stocking up on crusty bread and fresh vegetables from the markets. At night by candlelight, we read about the Visigoths and the Cathars as we armed ourselves on wine made from the grapes growing along the rolling countryside.  One of our stops was the medieval city of Carcassonne. The fortified walls still stand, now protecting tchotchke shops plying their wares to curious tourists.

After this trip, a friend introduced me to the game of Carcassonne. One of a family of German, multi-player, multi-strategy games by Hans im Gluck, Carcassonne instantly appealed to me. I went out and bought it for my folks. When Tee and I began seeing each other, we played with my mother on the rare occasion when she could be enticed. The game became more intricate and our tactics more considered as the months went by. This is not a game that can be mastered, per se, because every play and every player changes the terrain. But it can become more fun.

Tee and I went a little nuts for Carcassonne. We bought and learned how to use every expansion set, and the game grew. Adjustments were necessary.  Tee’s dad came to help us design and build a coffee table the right shape to play Carcassonne. Our tiles spilled out of the knit cap from which we drew; for Christmas, a friend sewed us a cute, fleece pouch for storing them. The small score-keeping board with its 50 point limit could not track our obsession, so I used a drill, a block of wood, and several colored matchsticks to advance the ranks of the various players.

This is no D&D sort of craze. Carcassonne and its ilk (Settlers of Cattan and Dominion, for example) appeal widely because they are as simple or as complex as the people around the table. Players build, trade, earn points. They can create alliances, or secretly amass land, or just enjoy the fun of small victories. The landscape is forever in flux. For a person who wants to put a gun to her head about halfway into a game of Scrabble, Carcassone is a refreshing change.

In every one of our camp homes, we introduced the game to our co-workers. Several bought it for themselves, and summer evenings rode upon the rise and fall of fragile empires. We hooked Tee’s younger siblings on the madness. Emotional, smack-talking Carcassonne tournaments became much-anticipated episodes in every family vacation.

The camp game nights we hosted every month or two continued strong right through Bug’s infancy. As the baby became a toddler, however, it became harder to play anything involving pieces or a time commitment. We had to truncate the tournaments to tend to the bath and bedtime. Carcassone gathered dust as we brought out the dominoes and the cards.

We have always kept piles of games around, but Bug has never shown much interest in playing by the rules. I watch with envy as friends can make it through entire games of Go Fish or Checkers with their preschoolers. Not Bug. We pull out anything from the stack, and he says, “I want to play my way!” The chips and buzzers become building materials. Play money goes into the purse. The kid refuses to engage with the component parts (or me) to achieve a larger objective.

Now, I’m not complaining – all kids are different. My not-yet-five-year-old is building intricate Lego structures intended for kids twice his age, and we are already on chapter fourteen of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He also loves nothing more than cranking the Latin hip hop and bouncing around the living room with me. I just wish from time to time, Bug and I could play a board game together on a quiet evening.

This is why I was giddy with delight when Bug slid the aged box from the bookcase and brought it over to me Friday night. “Let’s play Carcassonne,” he said. (Yes, he even remembered the name). We took out the fleece pouch, the wooden dudes, the scoreboards. It has been a couple years since I have laid eyes on a Carcassonne tile, so I had forgotten the pleasure I take in the play. How exciting to begin assembling that sprawling, ancient geography with my kid!

In a rare moment of focus, Bug listened as I explained how to place his pieces. We took turns drawing tiles and matching the roads, cities, and farms to one another. I made sure I gave him hints to win him quick, small bursts of points, and he moved his blue guy around the scoreboard with uncharacteristic honesty. We probably played – really played – Carcassonne for half an hour. Bug made it all the way around to 50 points, declared himself the winner, and moved on to using the dragon to attack my cities.

After we cleaned up the scattered pieces, we went upstairs to brush teeth and read a chapter of Harry Potter.

Sometimes my heart wrenches when look at this lanky, jabbering kid, and realize that little baby is gone forever. On nights like these, however, I realize what adventures are in store for us. Bug’s sense of fun is maturing as he does.  Heck, in a few more years, he can be my skipper on the Canal du Midi. It will be a kick to climb with him up to the top of the tower of that medieval city. We can look out over a foreign yet familiar place, glimpsing together a landscape’s single moment before it becomes something else again.

Dream Job

Yesterday, a camp job appeared in my inbox. I know. I should have unsubscribed from the list a year ago. Most of the postings only confirm that camp life is not sustainable. The pay is low, the sites are remote, and the opportunities for spouses are limited. I've learned the hard way that having housing attached to a position is a tainted apple. It’s good until it isn’t, and then you’re not only unemployed, you’re a nomad again.

But this job. . . oh my. The salary, for once, isn’t horrible. The previous camp wife was the office administrator, so a role is all but guaranteed for her successor. Its Pennsylvania location lands it smack between Bug’s New England cousins and his DC area grandparents.

Not that I’m thinking about it or anything.

I understand now why the Commonwealth of Virginia requires a one-year separation before even considering a divorce. The initial blaze dies down and cool heads take over. Weary from 52 weeks of custody discussions and a malnourished wallet, some folks might decide the marriage is the lesser of the evils.

Some folks might.

The camp opportunity really socked it to me. Part of me wants it back with the desperation of a refugee. The fierce, maternal pull in me longs to return my family to the woods to heal. I can picture Bug riding the school bus home to the end of that dirt road every day, running through trees and along the edge of the lake to find his mommy and daddy both there. The camp life nourishes us all back to life.

Or so I have believed.

I sink my teeth into the sweet flesh of this perception, and crack hard against the stone. Tee could not sustain it. The entire picture fit perfectly around the fiction of my husband’s success as a camp director. It is possible, of course, that magic could reveal some unknown well of potency within him. Hell, the next woman may whisper just the right spell to rouse the dormant hero.

Something between us did not work to this end. We left two camps in a whirlwind of noisy silence. Endless explanations obscured unexamined truth. The third camp ripped away the pretense. Under all the chatter, the emperor was, in fact, buck naked.

The job posting has kicked off an avalanche of fantasies about offering Tee the possibility of reconciliation. This would be conditional on his taking charge of his career and landing a position – in the camping industry or, really, anywhere – that could support his family. That reconciliation is mine to offer and the conditions upon it mine to determine are insane notions. What kind of marital farce have we been conducting all these years?  The major decisions affecting the well-being of my family are, yet again, left to me. For the better part of a decade, this has been the dynamic. Somehow, I contributed to such dizzying imbalance. It is stunning to realize that the strength of my personality could steer me so wrong. Yet, all along, I received such patchy assistance (or resistance) from Tee that it became easy to justify.

Pursuing the divorce, Tee has determined, is my choice. He wants no part of making the split happen but also claims he has no power to set things right. Splice or cleave. Whether my son gets one home or two is up to me. Whether he grows up in the woods, the city, or a small town in the Midwest is up to me.

Astounding, really, isn’t it? Such a silly, directionless girl, holding all the cards. Forgive me, please, if I falter.

The leadership of a family must be shared. The power to make decisions is a burden, it is true. But now I understand that no one spouse can free the other from that difficult work. We all may like to believe we can avoid the toughest calls by not making them. No choice is a choice, after all.  It was inaction that exposed the weaknesses in the foundation of our camp family and left us without a home and without an income 15 months ago. I could decide to take charge again. I could, perhaps, encourage and cajole Tee back into that life. I could throw all my chips behind rebuilding our home in the woods. Tee at the helm of a camp may reveal to both of us a man who can prosper.

In doing so, I could build a beautiful facade destined for an even more devastating collapse.

Or, I could release my grip and let Bug’s parents each chart their own course.

Which would be the lesser evil?

Transportation

Room to expand. This is all we want. A seat by the window, a stretch of wall, three cool inches for a grip on the metal bar. Below, massive concrete rings squat in an oily trench below the Beltway-I66 interchange. Something is always being built here. This city is forever becoming.

As a child, I rode the orange line from New Carrollton into the city with my family on holiday weekends. Always, we were headed to the museums. The Burghers of Calais huddled in the Hirshhorn sculpture garden in hushed anticipation of our curious stares. Eager rivers poured from the pyramids into the National Gallery’s underground fountain.  Calder’s airborne iron waited around every corner. We rode the clacking train over miles of tired tracks. My father played word games with us. My mother brought books.

The train is the same as it was then. I am back after so long away, gazing at the same directional obelisks. I do not even need to read them now; the flat capillaries of the system map are etched into the navigational center of my brain. My feet cruise over the same hexagonal tiles. Perched atop stained, orange vinyl, I rock to the same rhythm that carried me into my young adulthood here.

Except that it is not the same train. Someone sold those cars for scrap, gutted them for replacement parts. Workers who were not even born when I was first riding have ripped up every foot of track and laid down new steel. Acts of Congress have added stations and endless streams of syllables to the names. Everything – from the ping of the door announcement to the color of the signal lights to the pass I use to move through the turnstile – is new. Not a single thing remains, yet I am still riding the an unchanging, brown-and-orange metro.

I am the same little girl, but you would never know it. Shed and replaced several times over, even the cells of my skeletal scaffolding have been made anew. What remains but the idea of the thing? The pieces bow and rust. We rivet flashing and deepen foundations. We age by necessity. We improve by intention. Each of us, like the city itself, is forever reborn. Somehow, we are meeting here all over again, beating traffic, riding home.

Bibliophile

At night, we stretch out on the bed for one of the few enduring rituals. Three books, three songs. For nearly five years, we have followed this same map to creep our way into night’s inner sanctum. Daddy’s house may have its own traditions now; I do not ask. For us, no matter the time zone in which we lay our heads, this is what Bug and Mommy do before bed.

Last night, we had finished up the first two picture books and Bug was reaching for the third. “Which one will it be?” He grinned sideways at me. He already clasped a Dr. Seuss against his chest.

“Maybe Wizard of Oz?” I said. “Or. . . Alice in Wonderland?”

Bug tilted the book down for a glance. “You’re teasing. We don’t have Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yes, we do. Right there, on the shelf. We have lots of big kid books.”

Dropping the Dr. Seuss and scooting off the bed, Bug made his way to the same bookcases that have stared him down for more than a year. He itched a mosquito bite on his tanned arm as he stood contemplating the rainbow splashed across his wall.

My son’s bookcases house an eclectic mix of titles. We live in the two spare rooms, after all, so the meager remains of my personal library have spilled over onto my kid’s shelves. Yet, the diversity is as much by design by necessity. Over the years, I have peppered his Little Critter and Beatrix Potter collection with young adult novels, non-fiction titles, and a random assortment of what Bug refers to as “grown up books.” 

“Is this Harry Potter?”

I grinned. All seven books have lived at eye-level since the kid could first stand up. It has taken him this long to notice. “Sure is,” I sighed. “I don’t know, though. They are big kid books. No pictures. Do you think you can handle it?”

He grabbed the spine marked with a number one and puffed out his chest. “I have read big kid books before. I can handle it!”

He crawled back onto the bed and we took in the cover’s busy dazzle. “You know, kiddo, your daddy and I read this book at bedtime together, just like this.”

“You did?”

“Yep. Long before you were born.  We would read out loud in bed to each other, one chapter a night. We took turns. We read almost the whole series, just like that.” I opened the book and began.

Bug twisted and wiggled next to me, interrupting at irregular intervals for clarification. “When is Harry Potter going to come?” Kick, fidget. “What is all this talking?”

Back to the page, back to the tale, I guided my son’s wandering attention. I offered to stop but he insisted we continue. The story’s music soon pulled us in. Immersed, my voice found each character’s unique lyric. Bug’s body echoed the pace of the story’s deepening breath.  The ensemble settled into its rhythm there on the bottom bunk.

At last, the final line of chapter one sang out. “To Harry Potter – The boy who lived!” I smiled and snapped the book closed. Bug let out a shriek and burst into tears.

“I want more! More Harry Potter! Please, Mommy, just one more chapter! Please!”

“Tomorrow is the weekend, Baby. We can read two chapters if you want.”

“Can we read three chapters?” He rubbed his fist into his teary eyes. “Or four?”

I laughed and hugged him close. “We can read all weekend if you want.” I began to sing. In my arms, Bug whimpered his way to sleep.

What a haunting chord, this pride at witnessing my child’s righteous despair. My son cries out his disappointment at losing his nourishment. What sustains him now is not me; it exists behind garden doors to which I can only offer a key.  These tears are evidence of his becoming a literate boy. He is not just learning to read. He is learning to love to read.  At last, he hungers for the things he needs to thrive beyond the reach of this embrace.