mundane

These four walls are closing in. We move from couch to bathroom to bedroom to kitchen and back again. The repetitiveness of shadowing my kid—it feels the same with my writing. Returning to the same old themes and places. The word that comes to mind is mundane.

Because of the pandemic, the beloved fields near our home are, from sunrise to sunset, temporarily closed to the public. The trails around them are not off limits, but remain treacherous. Daily temperatures are still too low to melt rock-hard ice, especially in shady places. Instead, I wander along sanded asphalt, skate across frozen lakes formed in the low spots of salt-blanched sidewalks. After dawn and at dusk, when streets are empty, I stroll down their centers, which feels slightly freeing. Still, the dog and I are longing to roam wild in wide-open and unfrozen spaces.

Regrettably, the vaccine rollout in Maine is now mostly age-based, so my son won't get vaccinated until summer. The governor's decision to bypass people with high-risk medical conditions is troubling. It means we'll be keeping Calvin home from school longer than we ever thought possible. Nearly a year has passed of having him home alone with me. It's been a burden on my mind, body and spirit; the only person with whom I spend endless daytimes can't speak, and his needs are unceasing. I'm aching to connect, commune, relate with other people. It's in the very nature of my being. I know I'm not alone in that feeling.

Thankfully, I receive a rare visitor. One of Michael's former students drove up from Portland just to see me. We sit outside, twelve feet apart on the glacier that is our back yard. I place my plastic chair where I can see Calvin in the house, spinning in his jumper. Hector's thick, bleached, sun-gold hair is a welcome shock of color against Maine's white winter. To gaze upon a familiar, maskless face for more than a moment feels magnificent. In the cold, we speak of adventure and of heartache, of our vintage Mustangs and of new beginnings. We see each other smile. We laugh together. Upon his leaving, we give each other virtual hugs and I tell him that I love him. He'll be moving away in a few months. I'll miss his visits.

Back inside I get my son out of his jumper. He leads me to the green couch, his favorite spot to spend less than one minute in my lap before getting off and motoring in circles. That word comes to mind again—mundane. But then I look up it up in the thesaurus for more context and see its second definition—earthly, worldly, terrestrial, temporal, sensual—and I feel grounded, renewed, somehow unfettered.

One such day two years ago.

alone in autumn

There's a melancholy about days like this, this time of day in autumn. The sun is low. The wind is chill. Pine needles sprinkle down in clouds of copper. A jet stream chalk mark fades in a clear blue sky between trees. I'm missing my dad. Missing my mom. Missing my brothers and sister and friends. Missing San Francisco and The West.

Most of all, I'm missing what I never really had at all: a healthy boy.

I'm missing seeing the ocean, feeling the sand between my toes, meeting new folks in vibrant places abroad and at home. Missing looking forward to doing something new.

The days are getting shorter, the shadows stretching in ways unhopeful, with edges so sharp they hurt my eyes. Rocks and shrubs and trees that basked in the sun at times are now relegated to lingering shade. So many birds have flown south. No more nectar for the bees. The streets feel empty. The forests harbor lonely, naked trees and falling leaves.

Is this how it feels to be the only one alive in the world? Cars go by but where are the people? Sun beats down but holds no warmth. Where are the birds that chirp?

I see old photos. Me as a child in a striped sweater, smiling with eyes closed. Me as a giddy bride holding my groom. Me as a new wife with Calvin inside. They're all dusty and faded, looking grey against a shady green outside, a lawn that I've worn a path into doing countless laps with my son. A boy with whom I often feel alone.

open invitation

I'm bracing myself for a three-and-a-half-week stint taking care of Calvin mostly by myself. Today is his last day of summer school which, though it's a measly three-hour day, four-day week, one-month session, is something that helps sustain my relative sanity in that it gives me time to walk the dog, tend to the garden and write a little bit before my high-maintenance child comes home on the bus at 11:30 a.m.

Michael is working diligently on photo submissions and on his next publication (he is the most prolific artist I know), and is already busy with administrative duties as head of the art department at the college. Even so, he helps me in the early mornings and evenings, and cooks all of our dinners. But the days are long, monotonous, not altogether fulfilling, and perhaps even a little lonely. I'll do my best to take Calvin places he knows like the grocer, the health food store, the donut shop, the coffee shop and, now, the gelato store, which pretty much define the physical parameters of my entire world. I wish he enjoyed and tolerated new places more than he does and would walk further without balking and dropping down. I've got to continue pushing his boundaries . . . and mine; we've got to grow.

But in case we are housebound due to seizures and/or malaise, this is an open invitation for friends to drop in for a cup of strong coffee or an early-evening cocktail and/or to join me and Calvin (in his stroller) while I walk the dog. I make a mean cup o' joe, and the garden—though the lawn looks and feels like straw—is lovely this time of year, especially in the morning and early evening around five p.m.

Please come on by.

Photo by Michael Kolster

thanks y'all

Yesterday, he came through the mudroom door a month after I’d said a very tearful goodbye to him. He’s lost several pounds having survived a string of long, hard days photographing the Los Angeles River, the Rio Grande, The Hoover Dam and Lake Mead sustained in great part by a modest diet—not so much by design as by necessity—of avocado, cheese, sardines, bread and raman. He looks like he did when I first met him seventeen years ago, not an ounce of body fat on him. Complimenting him on his wiry physique, I joked that he resembles Jesus, at least the European version of the man. We laughed.

As part of his Guggenheim Fellowship, my husband Michael drove cross-country and back in a rental van packed with 220 sheets of spanking clean 8 x 10 glass, several jars of syrupy collodion and silver nitrate, gloves with which to handle the glass and chemicals, several gallon jugs of distilled water, trays and tanks and graduated cylinders, one dark box and its stand, one dark cloth, two large-format cameras, at least one tripod, a handcart and several homemade wooden cases in which to hold his glass plates after exposing, developing and fixing them.

During his trip he called me twice daily to tell me how many plates he’d shot, how long he’d sat in traffic, how tired he was, how great the World Series was, how nice his hosts were and how ready he was to come home.

Calvin, Nellie and I stayed home, but mostly not alone. A legion of friends and family came out to help me. Seti flew here from LA on a 24-hour trip from hell, and since I couldn't, Macauley picked her up at the jetport at eleven p.m. bearing a warm winter jacket and a burger for a gal he'd never met. A few days later he stepped in again to take my sick car to the mechanic, then took Seti back to the airport when she left. A week later my mother-in-law lovingly descended, but from Florida. Regrettably, both women witnessed Calvin have a bad seizure in the middle of the night. Both helped me manage it. Later, my sister drove up from Connecticut for a couple of wonderful days and nights. All of them gave me an abundance of love and support, helped make me smile and laugh.

Arnd, who traveled from Berlin, though not expressly to help me, stayed four nights and, in true form, tried fattening me up on loads of breads and pastries from Standard Bakery. Nick came by—twice—and thoroughly entertained me with his ever-quick wit; he knows me so well. Ann, Kevin, Russ and Susan brought dinner one night, helping me put a dent into my lonesomeness. Ann returned a few days later bearing gingercake and whipped cream for breakfast! Jen and Madeleine checked in, hung out and slept over. Maura, Matt and Lauren looked in on me several times and stayed at least short enough for hug and/or a drink and long enough for dinner. Mary walked Nellie when Calvin was recovering, Connie did some of my shopping and my new friend Sarah treated me to coffee. Our good-ole homies Luke, Sarah and Matt sent my sleep-deprived blues packing when they stopped by for a spell last Sunday night and turned my kitchen into an impromptu party. Lorry brought me some donuts, hugs, laughs and a smile. Barbara kept care of Calvin several evenings so I could saddle up to the bar and dine out with a few of my pals.

They cooked and cleaned and walked the dog. They brought me bourbon and pizza, homemade tamales and lentils and called on me often to ask if there was anything I needed. Without them, I’d have been hard-pressed to have made it a manless month without totally losing it to sleep deprivation, loneliness, monotony or Calvin's mania. Aviva, Kim, Lucretia, Teresa and Viv, I'll be sure to catch up with you soon.

Thanks y'all, from both me and Michael. Here's just one of hundreds he was able to take because you were here helping me cope:

click on photo to enlarge

Rio Grande, photo by Michal Kolster

friday faves - a lonely moment

From last November

“I think if Calvin was normal I wouldn’t worry about not having any bars,” I said to Michael as I glanced down at my cheap-ass 90’s Nokia TracFone. We were sitting atop Morse Mountain’s massive granite shelf looking down through the pines to the salt marsh below. Off in the distance open ocean met with sky in a parity of blues. I could feel gravity sinking me into the hunk of stone that cascaded down beneath my feet into a valley of trees, some felled, brittle and ashen, others like hundreds of outstretched arms.

Being far away from Calvin, not to mention being unreachable, sometimes unnerves me to the point of nearly feeling ill. I kind of get the jitters akin to drinking too much coffee, the caffeine (worry) gushing through my veins with such force I swear I can hear it in my head. And though it had been over seventy days since Calvin’s last obvious seizure (a record for him) the edge is always there, the cloud always casts its long, dark shadow on me, I still look over my shoulder and wait for what I can only believe—after seven years racked with seizures—is the inevitable.

I sat quietly on the bluff with my eyes closed while Michael snapped off several photos. I focused on the meaty click, click, click of his camera’s shutter amidst unbelievable calm. It was beautiful, sunny and as clear as the eye could see. Two hundred feet below us a river snaked through mud and reeds leading to a long, wide beach hugging a grey and white surf. I was with Michael, but I felt lonely. I missed Calvin and, though it’s probably never good to do, I imagined him there with us, scampering around on the dry, rough rock picking up pine cones, chasing chickadees and clowning for his dad’s camera. There was an aching pit in my heart—my gut—yearning for my boy to then come sit in my lap and together spy the osprey floating on thermals. But the scene was starkly incomplete: no pitter-patter or scuff of little sneakers, no sweet voice expressing surprise or glee, no child exploring independently then returning to us like a wave to sand. The moment felt as if someone dear had died, and I held the memory of Calvin close, missing him while at the same time knowing he can never fill that particular and hollow void in my life, even if he was right there beside me.

But luckily for me, Calvin’s pure spirit seeps like juices into many of the empty spaces that having a disabled child who cannot speak, cannot walk by himself, cannot communicate and suffers seizures leaves. His love finds the smallest crevasses filling them with the kind of color and light that no camera can quite capture, and no lonely moment can completely escape.