Blog : Beautiful-Things
Two Forms
| July 13, 2020 Henry Moore's bronze sculpture Large Two Forms sits like a pair of discarded vertebrae on the pavement outside the art gallery, where small children clamber and slide through its round openings on their bellies and backsides. Teenagers, too, are drawn to these primal shapes.
Stream
| July 6, 2020 I want to believe that the first song I heard came from my mother. She sang "Moon River" while putting me to bed. I'm crossing you in style someday. What was that river of the moon?
Airview
| June 29, 2020 My father decided he wanted an airview, a photograph of our summer home taken from a tiny plane on a clear, bright day. In these pictures, the skies are always blue and the houses have been carefully groomed like children for class pictures . . .
Fear of Poetry
| June 22, 2020 My beloved friend dying of cancer said she’d been afraid of poetry for too long. I suggested a poetry party. A university lecturer, Susan was inspirational whether she was talking Jane Austen or freshman composition.
Electric
| June 15, 2020 I try not to give too much power to what some call signs. Sure, when my mother was dying there was that thing with the poem I'd written about lightning, followed by the plane ride I took to her deathbed in the lightning storm . . .
Enigma
| June 8, 2020 My father's face could accommodate almost any emotion but disappointment. There were times it was called for, certainly, but it just couldn't get any purchase. It would pass like a stab of indigestion, visible for only an instant...
Peaches
| June 1, 2020 My granddaddy's knotted hands were forever peeling a tangerine, slicing a fig, cracking a native pecan, offering it to someone he loved. Most often, most tenderly, to my grandmother. I imagine him and this day without her . . .
The Perfumed Winds of May
| May 25, 2020 In the Japanese taxonomy of breezes, the perfumed winds blow just before the south-easterly winds of the rainy season, which arrive later in the month. Known as plum rains—so heavy, the downpours are said to knock the ripening plums right off their branches.
Jumping in Leaves
| May 18, 2020 Somewhere after the turn of the millennium I slid from leaf jumper to leaf raker, and so on this smoky November afternoon I hold down my job for the boy in front of me during what will be his only non-digital hour of the day.
The Entertainer
| May 11, 2020 When my mother sits in front of our antique upright piano, it is almost always Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer." Almost always only the refrain. She never stops moving around the house, except for those moments she slides onto the wooden bench.
Cord
| May 4, 2020 I think the apartment is horrible – the bathroom sink is in the bedroom, the blind in the shower falls down every other day, the sliding closet door skitters out of its track. Everything feels rickety and as though it is about to topple . . .
Pawpaws
| April 27, 2020 Pedro is quiet as we walk, and is still quiet when we stop to rest on a rock where above us pawpaws hang overripe like clean green hearts.
Marco Polo in Missoula
| April 20, 2020 My house is leaky. Wisps of cold air seep in – but my kids remind me this isn't possible, that scientifically the warm air is leaking out. Certainly, there is oxygen flow in this old creaky house but taking a full breath is a privilege I don't use . . .
These Italian Pastries
| April 13, 2020 These Italian pastries were decorated by an 87-year-old woman in a drawn-out process involving almond paste and mandarin oranges. I bought them at a cliffside stand in a cellophane bag tied with red curling ribbon on the Sicilian island of Lipari.
Beneath
| April 6, 2020 Think about the spirit of an animal that could occupy a house this big – the whale. There goes my first born, gliding past me at the pool with her dad in a man-made river, smiling and carrying the sun like she was born to do. . .
Beginning of Spring
| March 30, 2020 The Chinese calendar had it right. Insisting that spring begins in February is to begin a season at the beginning, when the season is only just awakening, a quiet stirring.
In the Car She Drives, the Air is Always Fresh(ened)
| March 23, 2020 A cardboard pine tree of Caribbean Colada swings from the rearview mirror, the mirror in which my daughter considers whether she needs eyelash extensions, teeth whitening. Whether she needs her eyebrows threaded. Onto the vents, she's clipped mini-clothespins...
How Do They Find Me?
| March 16, 2020 My mother's greatest pleasure since her stroke is to sit in the courtyard of the rehab center. It's not a beautiful space, just a square of concrete surrounded by high walls. If she could lean her head back, she could see the sky.
The Delicacy
| March 9, 2020 The "Eight Mountain Delicacies" are among the most sought after dishes from the Imperial Banquet of 1720, but they are nearly impossible to make. Some of the more exotic ingredients, such as leopard fetuses, are unobtainable . . .
Nesting
| March 2, 2020 After the very worst winter, spring pushes back the smell of antiseptic, the taste of iron, the pain of useless milk, and fills the air with the green aroma of life once more. It draws me out again, bare feet in cool grass blades . . .
Another Workday
| February 24, 2020 "Daddy, are you going to work?" my son asks when he sees me wearing a jacket and tie before I leave for campus and a day of teaching. Years ago my father's work boots and overalls prompted the same question from me. . .
My Sister Passes Me on a Bench at the Zoo
| February 17, 2020 On a bench in the zoo a girl walks past me wearing my sister’s face—my sister’s smooth, pre-teen face, before acne, before irony, before the long humped shuffle of illness.
Picking Up Lint
| February 10, 2020 My dad was an exacting man. When he ran a motor assembly plant in Belgium, he plastered the shop floor, break rooms, and bathrooms with signs that urge-warned in Flemish, WHAT YOU DO, DO IT RIGHT! At home he was equally demanding.
Eulogy for a Dog with Sad Eyes
| February 3, 2020 You were always underfoot, in fibers of the carpet, your big shape blocking doorways and chair-paths until you decided on your own where to go. You shook when there were fireworks, you barked when we got locked out, you smiled up at the camera...
Nails
| January 27, 2020 My mother’s fingernails were sculpted and strong—not like salon nails, more like the backs of beetles. Every Saturday night she’d paint them for Mass the next day—usually deep red, her favorite color.
Atlantis
| January 20, 2020 "Because, what if they don't turn out okay?" The question, posed by my 14-year old daughter, hung in the air as we drove past the park after school late one afternoon. I was talking about motherhood, and she matter-of-factly justified her plan...
Jasmine
| January 13, 2020 He's outside, singing. On the record player, Sinatra spins. Next, it will be Pavarotti. Maybe a big-band soundtrack. Whatever the treasure, he will make a big show of dusting off and placing a needle upon before heading back to his garden.
Home to Roost
| January 6, 2020 I liked the hens, with their kind eyes and soft, red feathers. I was seven, and I wanted to sleep with them, to nestle with them, because they felt like a dozen mothers, all watching out for me.
Here. Look.
| December 30, 2019 My husband hadn't meant to render us in silhouette. He was a novice, the camera new and heavy in his hands. As we gazed out the window he didn't realize that by aiming toward it, into the sun, he'd cast us in shadow, erasing specifics.
Floodscape
| December 23, 2019 On a winter's sunny day, I can see the Minnesota River shimmering a quarter mile away--past the trail at the base of our hill, over the pond, beyond the meadow, between the walnut trees. Come spring, there is imbalance--too much snow...
