Monthly Archives: June 2011

Everyday Magic Unplugged!

Posted on June 26, 2011 | 1 Comment

Until early July, I won’t be posting any or at least many new columns because I’m on vacation in a cabin on Lake Superior with no internet access. This means my family and I have to figure out what to do with our time without typing furiously on little keyboards while staring down little screens. Thankfully, the beauty of this place, the peace of the cool air and the vastness of the lake is quickly helping us convert to that time before always-plugged-in time. Looking forward to being back in touch in a week or so, and until then, may you have moments of sudden and lush vacation in the middle of whatever you’re living.

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The Day Before the Big Adventure: Everyday Magic, Day 357

Posted on June 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

We're not going here

The breeze is cool, the sky bright and the van back hatch open. Inside the house, there’s boxes of food and suitcases of clothes good for a 50-degree temperature differentiation. A day from now, the animals will be confused, our friends will be house-sitting, and Kansas will be well beyond our rear-view mirror as we head through Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota — picking up our daughter on the way — until we reach the water’s edge. We’re going to a cabin on Lake Superior, which I hear truly is superior.

Meanwhile, there’s today to bridge and work through, packing, loading, cleaning, arranging, and finishing a whole lot of work, and I’m giving a poetry reading this

We're not going here either

evening. I try to envision calm, telling myself the transition to get the hell out of Dodge can be matter-of-fact as opposed to our usual way of panicked frenzy.

For the trip itself, I’m hoping for long walks, lots of waterfall viewing, sitting on the deck of where we’re staying and watching the lake, some kayaking, and I pray on the souls of all great vacationing families before me that we don’t end up mistakenly eating at the wrong restaurant where we pay an outrageous amount

Here's where we'll be!

for bad food while arguing over it all. Having failed to have a relaxing family vacation well over 90% of the time we tried for two decades doesn’t seem to dissuade me, but then again, denial and the urge for going together make an intoxicating blend.

In the meantime, wish us well, and we will wish you well wherever you’re going or staying. May the breeze be cool, the coffee strong, the credit card balances low, and the Chinese food you try out in a place not known for Chinese food surprisingly satisfying.

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Welcome to Adulthood!: Everyday Magic, Day 356

Posted on June 21, 2011 | 1 Comment

“Welcome to adulthood!”I told my 19-year-old daughter yesterday as she waited in line in a bank with a migraine. She had just told me, “I can’t believe how stressful it is,” referring to what it takes to rent a great apartment in a hurry in concert with two other roommates and all the paperwork required (six applications — one for each roommate and their parents).

We had been frenetically racing through phone calls, banks, websites and the like to figure out how to get cash to her for an application fee for an apartment while coordinating with her friends, all their parents, the rental office of the apartment, and a 9 a.m. next day deadline. It took hours, many phone calls, dozens of texts, some scanning of documents, faxing, and money moving magic (after discovering there is truly no way for me to wire her money without driving 40 miles first).

I wish I could say something more hopeful, but the truth is that adulthood contains many such moments of overly-complex, rushed tedious tasks that will throw your plans and your life into a tizzy if not done now and right. One of my friends puzzles over why the top soil ordered didn’t arrive. Another struggles through the sudden loss of vehicle in a city hundreds of miles from home. Yet another has to spend an hour on the phone to get removed from a monthly charge for skin products she never intended to buy. Let’s face it: this part of adulthood sucks. There’s phone calls that require 20 minutes of pushing various buttons to get to a human who then says she’s sorry, but she can’t solve the problem you’re having. There’s important papers that don’t arrive on time. There’s disappearing bills that resurface with verve. And there’s a whole lot of long-winded wrangling to be done on tedium.

Today with all the apartment applications faxed, scanned and emailed or hand- delivered by six parties and all checks and money orders handed in, my daughter is relaxing and finding time to send me outrageously cute baby animals, 70 of them actually, presented to put anyone in a good mood. I particularly like this shot of the three kittens wrapped up in a container. Maybe it’s symbolic of my daughter and her friends in their new apartment-to-be, or maybe it’s just so friggin’ adorable that it grabbed my eyes. No matter. Just because I’m an adult doesn’t mean I can’t still be a kid in love with cute. That’s also part of adulthood.

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In Memory of Clarence Clemons: Everyday Magic, Day 355

Posted on June 20, 2011 | 2 Comments

As many of you heard, Clarence Clemons died Saturday evening, leaving many of us East Street Band devotees with the stark reality that it’ll never be Scooter and the Big Man on stage again, mugging as they lean into each other, Springsteen with his electric guitar and Clemons with his saxophone. Their collaboration was one for the ages, based on a kind of love rooted in respect and rock and roll. It also broken racial barriers at a time when bands were almost always segregated.

Both Clemons and Springsteen tell the story of how they met: Bruce was playing a club in Asbury Park when Clemons came to check out this band he’d been hearing so much about. There was a huge thunderstorm, and when Clemons opened the door to the club only to have the wind grab the door off its hinges and fling it down the street, bouncers from the club running out after it. Bruce looked out to see a 6’4″ Black man standing in the doorway with lightning all around. At that moment, according to each of them in many interviews, they fell in love.

I fell in love with the band after I left New Jersey, too determined not to fall into Bruuuuuuce-mania while living in the same county (same school district even) where Bruce and some of the band grew up. Liking Springsteen was like believing in a high power, and so, as a teen, I was determined to buck that system. But sometime in my first year in Missouri, a flood of feeling overtook me when I heard “Meeting Across the River,” and I realized that “Born to Run” as well as other albums were seared into my soul. I was Bruce-branded, and so I crossed over.

I remember meeting Clemons — like many people in NJ who can tell you stories about meeting some member of the band at some point — in a diner in Red Bank, NJ well after midnight. I was attending nearby Brookdale Community College, and the Big Man walked in and sat down to order some food. “There’s Clarence Clemons!” my friends nudged me. “Go say hello.” But we were too shy. Paying for our check on the way out, I looked toward him, he caught my eyes and nodded. I nodded back.

Mostly, though, I loved watching him and Bruce perform together, and lately in the “Live in London” DVD, I can watch them up close. This is where I discover what I always suspected: they were still in love 40 years after they began, leaning into each other, nodding knowingly at one another, and giving one another kisses at the ends of some songs. In one interview, Clemons said, “It’s two strong, very viral men finding that space in life where they could let go of their masculinity to feel the passion of love and respect…Friendships are based on that, and you seal it with a kiss.”

To commemorate Clemons, I had my own private memorial service, watching the dvd as well as many youtube clips, and seeing — from a 1978 performance to a more recent one — a love that could never grow old, and now, with the passing of Clemons, that will never die. Meanwhile to everyone who loves this band and this man, remember these lyrics from “The Ties That Bind”: “You’re walkin’ tough baby, but you’re walkin’ blind to the ties that bind” Long may these ties bind.

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Happy Father’s Day to Those Of Us Who Had Difficult Fathers: Everyday Magic, Day 354

Posted on June 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

My dad blessing the challah at our wedding while Arden Booth and my sister Jen look on

Lately, I see friends use their father’s pictures as their own on facebook, celebrating the goodness of their dads. While I’m happy for them — as well as for my own children who have a very good father — I do not live in such a place. I had a “difficult” father, a polite way to say a father prone to tantrums, abuse, manipulation, cutting off us and reeling us back in for a price. This is not to say I don’t love my father — I do, and actually much more since he died in 2003, on the cusp of us reconnecting deeply at his deathbed. But like many of you who are the children of “difficult” dads, father’s day is an awkward affair at best.

After many years of therapy, talking it out, walking away from it all and returning, trying new approaches and failing to change anything, I finally landed — in the last decade — in the place of forgiving my dad. I have a pretty good inkling of why he was so screwed up and why he persisted in passing on the pain to his four children, but I no longer need to spell that out for myself. Sometimes I miss him, and often I’m grateful for the gifts of endurance, innovation, intelligence and business sense he passed onto me.

Dad and his big brother in the 1940s

Father’s Day, when my dad was alive, meant sending a card, which never could convey what I felt or the kind of dad he was (Hallmark doesn’t seem to make cards that say, “You might have caused me all kinds of psychic injury, but hey, you’re still my dad!”). It also meant a short conversation when we each said what we were doing that day before he said, “Gotta go. Give my best to Ken. Take care.”

Father’s Day now means thinking of my dad, wishing him well wherever he is, maybe touching base with my siblings, and also considering the other father figures who showed me who brought kindness, expressions of love without conditions, and service to their children. I found this most in my father-in-law, Gene Lassman, gone for over two years, and my stepfather, Henry Newman, who passed on three years ago. Both men astonished me, continually, with how they could simply love their children and their spouses, grandchildren, and extended family; love without exacting a diminishment of anyone’s spirit.

Father’s Day is also a time that I have to remember and celebrate the girl inside I was and am who survived a dad who beat, insulted and silenced her. In that spirit, I celebrate all of you reading this who survived your difficult fathers and found, against all odds, a way back to your own loving spirit.

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Living With Men Who Love Storms: Everyday Magic, Day 353

Posted on June 18, 2011 | Comments Off

The men in my house love storms. Obsessively. Completely. It’s not that I don’t love storms too, but I also love sleep, watching movies and taking many baths. The men in my house, however, are single-minded when a storm is afoot, rushing downstairs with laptops to switch through TV news while turning up the weather radio, all in between running outside to look at the sky and turning out all the lights inside to get a better view.

It used to be the man in my house who loved stormed, but since Daniel moved back in, this storm mania went exponential, each of them calling out to the other, pointing to new websites on the screen or low-hanging clouds in the sky. It can go on for hours, and god help anyone who gets in their way.

Last night, after long discussions about atmospheric instability, why was the big cloud to our south continously roaring, and how unusual it is for such unpredictability to be at the front of a storm, I went to bed. Only to be pulled out of bed ten minutes later. “Caryn, it’s too unstable. Get down to the basement,” Ken said. “Hurry up, Mom,” Daniel called after him. The winds picked up, we heard reports on half-dollar-sized hail near us, and the sky strobe-light-flashed. Both men vanished, but I soon found them sitting on the front porch, bedazzled by the lightning.

Within half an hour, I was back in bed, but not the men in my my house. No matter that the worst part of the storm was on its way to Kansas City, safely east of us. They needed to track that too.

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The Horror & Humor of Family Vacations: Everyday Magic, Day 352

Posted on June 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

On top of a mountain with Forest and Natalie

When I mention to my friend Denise that we’re going on another family vacation, she immediately starts laughing and says, “Do tell.” All my friends have such a reaction because over many years, they’ve heard the kind of family vacation stories from me that you usually have to pay for by way of very loud, slapstick-style movie made by the National Lampoon guys. In fact, upon returning from such vacations, I always have a full dance of friends ready to be entertained by the horror and humor of it all.

Where do I begin to tell what has befallen us over the years when traveling with three children, on a very tight budget, in vehicles at least two or three presidential administration’s old and at high altitudes or long distances? Here’s a smattering:

  • The time we drove 14 hours to a high altitude yurt only to find it was full of flies who would not give up their ground.
  • The time all the poles for our family-size tent flew off the top of the van somewhere in the Eastern Colorado.
  • All the times all five of us screamed at each other simultaneously during some long stretch in Eastern Colorado only to arrive home hours later to find the dog tore up the house.
  • Even more times that all three kids chose to fight over the remote control in a dingy hotel room rather than climb a mountain, walk the ledge of the Grand Canyon or swim in the ocean.
  • Late night arguments over whether to watch Betty Boop cartoons (me), an end-of-the-world thriller (Natalie), Spongebob (Forest), a nature documentary (Daniel) or the weather channel (Ken).
  • The time we drove to Fort Collins, Colorado for one funeral only to get a call that we needed to get ourselves to NJ for another, which entailed driving back to Kansas, getting on a plane to Baltimore, and driving for 7 hours in Fourth-of-July weekend traffic only to arrive at my mother’s and lock our keys in the trunk.
  • Encounters with wild javelinas one time and a giant moose another.
  • Encounters with really bad food; most memorable for the kids was a St. Louis pizza place that served pizza by throwing cold tomato sauce and fake cheese on a cardboard-like crust (and didn’t bother to bake it).
  • Many episodes of getting lost while above 10,000 feet and at the end of hours of driving, punctuations by stopping at scenic views for someone to throw up.
  • The mother of all family vacation moments: Arriving at a small campground after seven hours of driving up and down the Rockies only to be awoken by the wretched sound of one of our children projectile-vomiting on another, who returned the favor just as thunder clapped, “Da da da DAAA!” We fled the tent in the storm and checked into a truly horrible motel room.

While I sure some of our vacation moments are added hours of therapy to my children’s future, I’m hoping the humor of what can happen when on vacation (which is like the unpredictability of normal life on steroids) will outweigh the horrors for our children (just as it has for my friends).

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Seeing in the Dark (poem): Everyday Magic, Days 350-351

Posted on June 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

Paired up with another of Stephen Locke’s spectacular photos, this is the poem I plan to read at the Kansas Citizens for the Arts meeting today.

Seeing In The Dark

 

Barn’s burnt down
now
I can see the moon

– Masahide, 1657-1723

 

After the fire, where next to turn?

Not the old words, aged with bitterness

or despair. Not habitual angers and griefs.

Not just a reflection of anyone’s new ideas.

But what’s right here: wind rising

through a tower of cottonwood.

Cicadas motoring their 17 year song.

Golden moon half revealed by

the silver of the passing cloud.

 

Good things, bad things happen.

News dissolves our vision of the world.

Not say what’s lost doesn’t make us ache

or strip our days of reds so vibrant

we forget what we were thinking.

 

But whatever is lost also brings us to this window

composed of the lush darkness, the rush

of wind or rain through the leaves,

the sudden chill dissolving the hot

anger or anguish, the pain of the questions that,

left unanswered, might divide us.

 

The music of the old house outlives the house.

We will make new murals out of the ruins,

mosaics from all that’s broken, stone soup

at the center of our next feast.

 

Nothing in this world vanishes.

Even ghosts, loved enough, turn into angels.

The dark shows us what calls

not at the edge of what we sense

but from the center of where we live.

 

Nothing can take away the power of the real.

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Moonstruck All Night: Everyday Magic, Days 348-349

Posted on June 15, 2011 | 3 Comments

The moon was spectacular at midnight, 1 a.m., 2:30 a.m., 3:22 a.m., and even 4:19 a.m. So spectacularly large, bright and glowing increasingly golden orange as it set in the west that it wouldn’t get me sleep until well after 4 a.m. Thanks to a whole lot of coffee, some chocolate and power nap, I’m awake now to write the tale, and to share this poem that I wrote on my back deck, in the wee hours, as I watched the moon dive under an great lake of clouds and, 30 minutes later, emerge even brighter. I’ve paired this with another of Stephen Locke’s astonishing photos.

Finding the Moon
Did you stop now that you found the moon

almost full, floating west across a small clearing

between the dampening clouds? The large and open-hearted wind

the heat lightning occasional and distance. Did you still yourself

in the lawn chair on the deck and stop waiting for one desire

to name itself or another to dissipate?

Where have you been, the beautiful world asks,

wind furrowing your hair as your night gown swims

around your happy skin. The moon rolls under

a cloud the size of a great lake, the light leaves

in increments, and now, no excuse.

Just one star to the south, one star to the west.

Shadow on shadow, light on light. Lightning bugs

thread their stories through the cedars, which hold all seasons

of what can be seen or not. Now nothing but the deep

charcoal of the windy night. Now everything, the flashlight

shining the way west for the moon, and then, the full light.

Why have you spent yourself ignoring this?

The best moment of your life, every moment.

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The Sublime Surprise of Cold: Everyday Magic, Day 347

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 2 Comments

After days of stepping out, even early, to mild or severe sauna conditions, the cold front has landed, and sitting on the porch, it’s actually cold. The refreshment feels too good to spend at once, and in the single hour I have free before heading to Kansas City to lead a writing workshop, I debate just sitting and shivering on the porch against taking a long walk, but I don’t even consider weeding the somewhat stunned and relieved gardens.

The flower gardens butted against most sides of this house have hit that point of no return early this summer: the moment when I look around and shrug rather than step into a banner year of chiggers and poison ivy. The sunflowers clamor to take over, starting innocently but if not pulled fast, turning into seven-foot aggressive giants within a few months. Some weed I’ve been pulling for years, always forgetting to wear gloves and always getting snagged by its thorns, is flexing its muscle. Then there’s the insidious Bermuda grass, transplanted in with an innocent lamb’s ear a decade ago, and always threading itself deep and wide in infinite patterns where it shouldn’t be.

No matter. I’m watching the lotus and osage orange trees tremble slightly, the falling twist up of a butterfly, the pale blue between the cedar, everything suspended in the cool air. It won’t last, but it’s here now.

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