Little Shoes that Rhyme

Horse

 
 The house was just off Route 16, north of Boston, in horse country. Our friend did not have horses, but her husband was a polo player and they had horses in Argentina or Palm Springs, I can't remember which. Did she ride? No. Tennis, mostly. She is savvy and beautiful. I have often laughed and sometimes wept at her stories. I love her because when she says, after dinner, Let's have another splash, it generally becomes a bottle, and she's one of the few left in the world who smoke without apology and with glamour. 

The ball room, with the high ceilings and lack of use, felt chilly even on this August night. Excuse the boxes, she said, shushing them aside as one would a dog. I've been meaning to get those put away... We stepped around them and walked out to the patio. It had rained earlier in the day, but the rain had ended and a very weak sun was breaking in for dusk. The world was damp and dripping. The field behind the house was flat, wild and muddy. It smelled that perfect after-rain summer smell. Even now, five years and a lifetime later, I remember the soft peace of that field.  

The peace lasted, and we had cocktails on the patio, and then something disrupted the baby. The baby was a couple of months old, and my husband was in Congo for six months. Everything had been fine all summer, but I think the dogs came out, or maybe it was a ghost we later speculated, because this otherwise calm and unflappable baby suddenly would not stop crying. I walked her. I distracted her. And eventually I went upstairs to nurse her. 

It had been a horrible and gut-wrenching goodbye with my husband at the airport, knowing it would be six months. Everything would be fine, I knew that---we had support and resources, and everything would be fine. But it felt very World War II to see a father kiss his new-born baby goodbye. I secretly cried for two days then thought about all the spouses leaving behind their families for Iraq that very month, and I pulled myself together. The baby had been a sweet baby all summer, but I was tired from the burden of responsibility. I had dressed and gone out this evening for the first time in months. Oh, how I dreamed of that previous life I had lived, of wine and leisure! But it was not to be, not yet. 

Upstairs the ghosty feeling of family life past filled the halls. Photos on the discolored mansion walls. Smells of adolescent children rushing in, closing doors, rushing out. The carpet was old because they would probably be moving out soon---a year or so---the house was too big now with the children moved away. The husband was rarely home, and she spent her winters in Palm Springs anyway.

The baby and I retreated to the master bedroom and I walked her and nursed her and tried to soothe her. Nothing worked, she was totally flustered. She was spooked. I walked her again and wondered what my husband was doing right at this moment. My image of Kisangani was like a Graham Greene novel: lurking shadows, murky rivers, cigarettes and gin. We are a young family, I thought to myself. In my mid-30s, I was not a young person but we were a young family, just a few months old. It felt odd to be at once quite established in life, and yet so totally young.

Evening approached slowly. The baby still would not sleep. I walked and nursed and looked out the window at the summer field. The field was still peaceful, quiet, perfectly still. I resigned any hope of returning downstairs. They had started dinner and when someone came up to ask, I said It's ok go ahead. I was a mother and I loved this baby with every inch of my being---I wasn't angry at her---but I was tired, and I did want to cry. I wanted to sit down at a table and eat a civilized meal. I sat down for a moment and the baby began to fuss and I let her fuss a few minutes before I stood up to walk her again.

I stood up, and something amazing: out the window, in the field below, seven white horses had materialized. They were grazing like spirits in the mist. Steam rose off their flanks in the cool evening. Seven white horses suddenly and nothing else. They were caught in my breath; at once ethereal and solid. They were like messengers, I think, so reassuring. They had beauty and soul and each other and they were totally at peace with the field and the summer and the beauty of now.

Christmastime in NYC: Golden Things

 

Over the course of the Christmas week, New York City---its body, its sky, its shores and waters, its tunnels and shiny silver surfaces and settled, darkened windows---the creature that is New York City---had a separate agenda from the festivities of us humans. It was distracted by a force greater than itself. Yes, like a benign, monstrous shape in its own process of transformation, or purification, or metamorphosis. 

*

One morning, a taxi driver who hailed from West Africa took us down Park Avenue to Grand Central Station. All around us, taxis were spinning and whirling to get up the hill that we had hardly noticed as a hill. The sun was shining and the taxis were stuck, the taxi drivers were practically crying with frustration, and people were helping and having a good time slipping around and feeling the wilderness, as they tried to push the taxis up the hill. 

*

The snow is soon tended to, the taxis on the streets shush gently along. The winds are fierce, and the snow left along the edges of sidewalks is black or yellow, and too hard to jump in. The kids try anyway and are disappointed, but now we must rush across an avenue---Quickly! Quickly!! I said hold my hand! quickly! hurry, love, please!----and suddenly, burdened with two school bags, pictures that must not be crumpled, gloves that DO. NOT. WORK., whah, I'm tired. I'm hungry whah. I want to take a taxi but we don't have the money for taxis, whah. Everyone is whah. The subway is packed and no one likes my stroller hitting their calves. And Haakon tries to get up now... Please sit Haakon please... Is this 77th? Excuse us! get out quickly guys! Hurry! Yes I'm coming hurry! excuse us thank you excuse us thank you thank you thank you blah.... 

Steep narrow stairs lead up to 77th Street and so we begin to ascend. With the kids dragging themselves ahead of me, and me dragging the stroller behind me, I suddenly feel a weight lift. A woman has---without asking---picked up the stroller and lifted it so high that my burden is practically gone. "It's like an angel has come!" I say to her. "Yes," she says. Her accent is heavily Japanese. "I am angel!" she is matter-of-fact. She puts the stroller on the sidewalk and turns away flitting off in the opposite direction. It is, I promise you, as if she alighted, and then departed. 

*

And what would you like for Christmas? asked Santa. 

A metal detector, replied the five-year-old girl with the pink bow in her blond, curled hair; the delicate dress and matching sweater she had chosen so carefully that morning. 

Santa, startled for a moment, pulled back and had a real----real---jolly laugh. The elves went into hysterics. Liv started laughing too. The mother of the family waiting in line behind us burst out, which made her kids laugh, and their laughter send a spark back down the line like some sort of fire of joy. Everyone was delighted! I felt my face break into a real smile, it felt strange! And how I loved my girl for her truth and clarity! We had all been cruising through the Santaland experience with our pretend awe, and our pretend ooohs, and our pretend Isn't it Magical children? And the elves had been all jumpy! jumpy! hurry along! And suddenly everyone burst out in real laughter. Real joy. We were no longer being rushed. We were no longer pretending. We were just: hysterically laughing.

*

The days turned warmer, the snow and sky were gentle----a perfect moment, balanced. We made a snowman in the park about the size of a three-year-old boy. He had pennies for eyes, and he borrowed Haakon's Santa hat, and let me tell you this: many tourists came up and politely asked if they could take a picture, sometimes with the builders, sometimes just of the snowman, sometimes of themselves posing. The children were perplexed, like, Why would you want to take a photo of this dumb little snowman? But ok. 

We were on a small hill next to the 66th street by-pass. Across from the road is the children's petting zoo, capped with flowing, tent-like nets that kept all sorts of birds, both plain and exotic, from flying away, and now they had began to squawk. The outside crows were cawing too, and pigeons were lifting up when a gorgeous, white, bold hawk swooped down from the nearest tree, made his presence known, then sailed back up and rested on a branch. I've seen this hawk before, but never alone---usually there are a few admirers gawking around him.

He stayed with us for sometime. Are you bringing me a message, hawk? Are you a sign of something to come? It's hard not to love a force of such sheer beautiful powerful nature descending down in the middle of the smoky, roaring city. It's hard not to feel it is a blessing.

*

"Christmas is a time to hear again the message of the angels as they announce God's love born among us at Bethlehem," wrote the Rector of the church we attend. I learned something of God's love this year, and I am sure that it still---after all theses many yeas---resides among us. I'd say God's love is in the all Golden Things that glitter the world around us---the spinning taxis, the stranger's help, the child's words, the hawks descent. But it's also in the divorce that brings pain; the poor decisions that bring loneliness; the illness that brings death. God's love is the core of everything. It's the core of every effervescent, fleeting, painful, and beautiful thing----

*

On Christmas Day, it threatened rain all day. The city was silent, silent. It was gloomy and dark, but comforting inside with the tree and the presents and the nothing-to-do but play! (Liv did not get the metal detector, though Santa mentioned in his note that the elves were working on it for next year, and she was fine that that.) In the late afternoon, just as the rain began, Liv and went for a walk. We walked all the way to the MET and back. She stomped through many puddles. We were holding hands, singing different songs---songs we didn't know the words of. We made them up. We walked and walked all along Fifth Avenue in the dark and in the rain. It was beautiful, beautiful.

Image and art by Margaret, Words by Emilie

Four Pairs

 

California, before the war. Or just after. Imagine dusty roads, a grove of orange trees, and quiet. No air-conditioners, no super highways, no frenzy. When it was hot, one moved slowly, poured a glass water from a ceramic pitcher and sat down to drink it. The silence! The stillness. Could it have been that beautiful? Yes. I believe so. We've all read some passage or another about it, if we can bear it---bear to know what's been lost to speed and More of Everything. 

M.F.K. Fisher's impressions, for one. I read her letters a few years ago and the little house in St Helena left an impression on me---We're going up to Inverness with Norah and her boys---cold, near the waves---I miss the sea... she wrote. But when I returned to her letters last night, they didn't have the same poignancy as when I first read them. When I first read them, they saved my life. How did I come upon her letters in Uganda that year? I don't remember. But I read them, every word, lying in bed in the afternoon in the upstairs bedroom. That is a dream now. The doors opened to a little balcony---the heat and the bright light--- and beyond the balcony, jungle. It was Kampala, but this particular view looked like jungle. In the garden below---almost too sticky and snake-y to go into into, but delightful to have----the frangipani shed perfect yellow and white flowers, and there were teak trees the rosemary bushes and what were those pink frilly ones?  Next door there was a tremendous Ficus tree----30 or 40 feet high, a canopy of coolness. It was amazing to me---a New England girl---to see a Ficus so magnificent. Then, one night, we came home late and went to sleep, and when we woke there was a most peculiar light in our bedroom. Had I slept all day? No, the air was still sweet with morning dew. I went to the balcony and looked out and it was gone: it took several moments to register its loss. The tree was gone.

Last night, a door of the armoire was slightly ajar and the mirror on the door held a reflection of the room that I hadn't thought of before. A new perspective, no matter how minor, is always good. I thought: wow, that is the window of my room, and there are curtains and outside the window a whole city, and here is my son and we're sitting on the bed. And then the moment was over, never to return, and then we went to sleep.

Art ("children's shoes, my grandmother's maybe") by Margaret. Words, inspired by art, by Emilie.