Olive Kitteridge

Never Done: Finished Olive Kitteridge

Josh has been wanting me to read the Nobel Prize-winning novel Soul Mountain for about 6 years now, and I finally brought it with me on vacation, determined to read it. I had tried once before, and found it dense and difficult, with more description and inner narrative than I usually like, and so I eventually put it down. Apparently there is an image on the very last page that he hoped I would get to, because he adored it. I suggested I just read the last page, but he found that unbearable to think about, and I, out of respect, actually didn't go reds the back page, even though it would have been in my nature to do so. Finally, after a realization I had that if I want to read the last page first, for any reason, it's a completely valid approach, I told Josh that I wanted him to tell me what is on the last page. And he did, and it's an image of god. God as a frog, with one eye always open and one eye constantly blinking. A beautiful image, for sure, and probably the best image of God I have ever heard, which is a lot coming from an atheist like me. So, as I said, I packed the book on vacation, and I started it on the way to the airport. I read the Forward, which I had not read the first time, and I understood why it is so inward and metaphoric (it has to do with the author Gao Xingjian's experience coming out of the Cultural Revolution.) I was also extremely moved by his writing story -- he destroyed hundreds of stories, essays, plays, and poems, and still went on to amazing prolificity. I know that's not a word, but he was incredibly prolific.

So I had the book with me, but as soon as I got to the airport and saw a book store, I lost my resolve to read Nobel Prize-winning Chinese fiction, and was seduced by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American fiction. I bought myself a copy of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge, and became immediately engrossed in the tales from the fictional small coastal town of Crosby, Maine. It reminded me of when I was young and moved to Maine, and it reminded me of when I got older and visited Maine, and it reminded me of my friends who live there now, and it reminded me of what I think about when I think about living there again. It was foggy and slow, and old timers lived alongside newcomers, sometimes with grace and delight, and sometimes with a gulf of misunderstanding. When I lived there in the late 1980's, my mother used to say, "Jenny doesn't live in Maine; she lives in alternative Maine." She was partly right (I did live in a yurt on five acres of land that we rented for $50/month, and I did work at an art house movie theater, and belong to a food coop, and spend time on womyn's land) but the part she missed is the part where my neighbors and I shoveled each other out, and I worked at Family Planning and helped women of all types and ages with their reproductive health, and we all walked on the same trails, and swam in the same lakes, and ate at the same diners. So when I read in Olive Kitteridge that when Harmon first sees Nina, the anorexic girl whose boyfriend steals tubing from his hardware store to make a bong, and his reaction is that he loves young people, I smiled at how right Strout got it, and that in her dark, sad book in which people struggle with change, she offered this vision of hope.

I gave a cat Prozac

Never Done: Administered Prozac to a cat

Kronda and Jess have a perfect house. It's small and spacious, warm and airy. With a garage. And a heating blanket at the foot of the bed, and a space heater on the bathroom counter (brilliant!) They also have three cats -- one who's been around for a while (Willow) and two adolescent kittens (the boys.) They let me stay there when they went on a honeymoon trip to Bend, and so I got to take care of the cats for a day. A little food, a little litter scooping, right? Not so fast ... it turns out that Willow wasn't the happiest cat on the block when the boys moved in, and she became unhappy. And agitated. You know what's coming next. So yes, Kronda and Jess got her a prescription for Prozac, and Willow has really mellowed out.

And I got to dose Willow up. Which turns out to be a very relaxed process because it's a cream you rub into the skin of a cat's inner ear. When I did it, I just let her sit in her favorite little bed, and I cleaned out the cream from the previous night's dosage and rubbed a little into her other ear. She just sat there and purred, mellow thing that she is now. Kronda had impressed upon me the importance of wrapping my finger in Saran Wrap, so that I wouldn't administer myself some Prozac as well (although, lord knows, I could probably benefit.)

This process reminded me of rubbing painkilling creams into my mother's skin as she was dying, and how angry I was when I found out that creams existed and hadn't been offered to her earlier, after she had had terrible difficulties with swallowing morphine. (She thought she was being poisoned, and became terrified. More accurately, she thought I was poisoning her, and she became terrified of me, and of eating or swallowing anything I gave her. Those were not the best of times.) But once we had the creams, I just put on latex gloves, and rubbed doses onto her arms, which she found soothing, not terrifying. A world of difference. And I think Willow also found it soothing, because when I finished and sat down to read, she hopped off her perch and nestled herself into my lap, and we both chilled out.

Polar bear plunge

Never Done: Went to Inner City Hot Tubs at Common Ground, not inner city, and no longer at Common Ground

When I left Portland, I didn't really think I was leaving. I thought I was going to grad school, and then coming right back. Those of you who know me well know that I still feel like I'm coming right back, or that I should, or at least that I want to. But this isn't a post about that decision, which everyone has heard far too much about. I have been storing heavy items in good friends' basements and garages throughout Portland and Beaver Creek for 8 years (thank you Barbara & Peter, Carol, Diane, and Scott & Rupert for holding onto them for me for so long.) A good friend might be driving an empty truck cross country, so I decided it was time to get it all in the same place, in case the stars align for her to take it with her.

I looked up storage facilities in Portland, and found that in addition to the megaliths, that there are some local storage companies with great reviews. But it was New Year's weekend, and most of those places were home ringing in the new year. So I reserved a small (5x5) locker at Public Storage, for a hefty $72/month. When I mentioned this to Kathleen, she immediately offered that I could store all my stuff in her basement. "That's what basements are for!" she said. And it's true. When I had my basement, I had lots of people's stuff in it. So Josh and Kathleen and I spent the afternoon driving around Portland with borrowed cars (thanks Kathleen, Chris, and Scott) and collected my dad's wine press, the beautiful door that Eric and Stu made in the late 1980's, my compound miter saw and three-foot level, my antique Singer sewing machine, and a few other valuables, and we shlepped them down into Kathleen's basement, where they will now live, reunited, until I can get them. Kathleen gets extra credit for this, because not only did she give me this space, and not only did she loan me her car, but she walked away from the Red Zone, where she was watching 7 football games at once, to drive around and help me.

What do you do after you shlep cast iron equipment with no gloves in 28 degree weather? You go to the hot tubs. Jensi and Josh and I had planned to take a walk, but it was cold out, and I was underdressed, and I really wanted to get in a soak at my favorite old hippie hot tubs. So we called, got a time slot, and drove over. Only ... they weren't there. How can hot tubs move? Using our trusty iPhones, we uncovered the mystery of the missing moisture: they had moved to NE 33rd, near New Seasons, near the Kennedy School. So we crossed town and found them -- in what looks like an old medical building -- not as rustic or homey as the old place, and the Genesis Juice is pasteurized now and sold in plastic bottles instead of glass, but they still stock the showers with Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap, and it's still co-ed and clothing optional.

While we soaked, I mentioned that I had wanted to do a polar bear plunge this year, and that maybe this was the (second, after my ice water finger plunge) alternative -- hot water in outdoors in sub-freezing weather. Jensi had a different association with the polar bear club. She said it's the name of a group of people who search for their adoptive parents. Or maybe it's people who are searching for the children that they released for adoption. (I couldn't find it on a google search, so now I'm wondering if it's something different.) Either way, it made me think about the adoption process I'm going through now, and once again take some ethical comfort in the fact that when you adopt an older child, they have some agency in the process: they are usually not disconnected from their birth family or their culture of origin, and they can ultimately decide whether or not they want to be adopted by you. I also thought about how people say that you don't pick your kid, that your kid picks you. As I sat there in the hot water, looking up at the stars, as the year turned new, I thought about the plunge I am taking, and who is going to pick me, and when.

Sniffed noses with a llama

Never Done: Sniffed noses with a llama

Tshuve: Brooks and Jeannie's new year's clothing swap and quiche party

Tshuve: Gabrielle and Diane and Michael

I tried to go to bed before midnight on New Year's eve. As far as I can remember, I have never done that, as an adult. Also, I thought to myself, "What better way to start the year than to actually get enough rest?" But it was not to be.Two of the five of the party did go to bed early, and just as I was on my way, I got persuaded to play another game of Scrabble. 

And as often is the case when I push past my first wave of sleepiness, I had a hard time sleeping once I went. I tossed for a long time, fell asleep, and then woke up around 4 AM, and couldn't fall back asleep. I did all the right things -- which means that I basically did nothing. I didn't get up to read. I didn't get up to wander. I didn't get up to play online Scrabble. Instead, I tried to relax. But by 5:30 I was still awake, so I got up and decided to write a blogpost for the new year. But that was also not meant to be, for just as I turned on my computer, the screen went black. It's done that before, and after a minute or two, it comes back on. So patiently I waited, and I tried again, but nothing. By the time everyone else was up, I had fallen back asleep, and when I woke up again, I tried my computer, but it did not turn on. 

It was hours before I told anyone. It felt like the wrong thing to say on the first morning of the new year. So instead of dwelling on it, when there was nothing I could do about it, I went out to help with the chores -- feeding and watering the horse and llamas with Isa. Well, I didn't really help Isa -- I more talked with her and she scooped manure and spread wood chips and measured out hay and broke up the ice in their water buckets.

When we went to feed the llamas, one of them got very interested in me, and came close, close, close with its nose, and sniffed me. I know llamas can be nasty and spit, but I had a feeling she wasn't going to be a jerk, that she was just checking me out. She sniffed for a long time, up close, and as soon as she got the information she was looking for, she turned her head and lost interest. Oh how I wish I could be that clear and matter of fact! To not worry about what others are thinking, to just get the facts, ma'am, and move on. Not always, I know. But sometimes, to just feel free to take care of business without taking care of everyone. 

I had wanted to do a polar bear plunge for the new year, but couldn't find one in Portland (it turns out they do it on February 13th -- why?) So after we fed the llamas, I pulled the ice chunks out of the water bucket with my bare hands, and pretended it was a polar bear finger plunge. I even said the shehekhianu over my iced fingers. It felt good to shock myself like that -- and especially after a sleepless night, I felt very awake.  Which I imagine is the point of jumping into extremely cold water on the first of the year. I think I would still like to get that jolt, so I'm thinking about doing it on my birthday. Who wants to join me? 

The blue past to the yellow future

Never Done: Sorted through Barbara's parents' artwork

Barbara's parents were wonderful artists -- I think they met at the Art Students League of New York, but I might be wrong about that. I know her dad went there -- as it turns out, maybe around the same time that Josh's mom went there. Anyhow, after her parents died, Barbara and her siblings split up their artwork, and much of it hangs in Barbara and Peter's home.

Also, much of it has been boxed up in Barbara and Peter's home, and the day before the new year, she decided to go through it to see what she has. I've spent a lot of time going through boxed up, stored stuff in the past years, and I've also got a bunch of stored dad photographs on my list of things that I still need to go through. Barbara didn't really know what was inside the boxes, so she didn't know if she was going to be delighted or disappointed. I figured that one way or another, opening the boxes would be opening up past worlds, and I wanted to be there for and with her. 

She kept finding other things to do. We played Scrabble. We had to go to Oregon City to buy Dungeoness crab for new year's eve dinner. (Which, somehow, despite having lived in Oregon for 12 years, I never ate. I can't believe I missed out on that all those years!) Eventually we found our way to the living room, where Peter had brought all the boxes, and started to open them. One of the first pieces we took out was a stunning small painting that had clearly been done by her dad when he worked for the WPA. It was a circular image of two brown miners, each with their picks in the air, mining from what seems like the blue past to the yellow future. I think that image will stay with me for the rest of my life. (I will also ask Barbara's permission to post a photo of it here.) 

As we unpacked more and more artwork, and as I watched Barbara assess each piece both emotionally and artistically, I saw her Cincinnati roots like I never saw them before. Many of the paintings were of homes, intersections, or buildings that she recognized -- and even if she didn't remember the painting itself, she knew the place, and what the painting probably meant to whichever parent painted it. I also saw her artistry like I'd never seen it before, even though I've seen the beautiful things she's created. She's a wonderful fiber artist, and she has a deep sense of color (although the colors she uses aren't usually deep -- they are more often saturated pastels.) But looking through her parents' work, I saw how she had inherited their ways of seeing the world. 

Barbara looked through it all, and then we packed it all back up again. All but one: a desolate painting of a house and a tree. Stunning and moody, painted by her mother, and left out to hang somewhere in Barbara and Peter's decidedly NOT desolate home. 

I rode on a cargo bike

Never Done: Ate at a Portland food cart
Never Done: Got a ride on a cargo bike

Everyone kept talking about the food carts, and I was all, yeah, I know about the food carts -- there's nothing new about the food carts, and they were all, the food trucks are the Big New Thing, you have to go to the food carts, and I was all, the food carts have been there forever, and they were all, here's an article in the Willamette Week about the food carts, and eventually, because even if I am dense and slow sometimes I do actually pay attention, and I remembered the mide of Humility: Seek wisdom from everyone, so eventually I thought to myself, maybe they know something I don't know. So then I learned that the food carts I remembered are still there, downtown, but that now that are dozens more, all over town, in tons of different neighborhoods. If you are interested, here is a link to read about them.

So then I set out to go to a food cart, and it turned out to be a little harder than I thought it would be. Carol and Amy and Josh and I tried to go to one in Sellwood, but some were closed for the New Year's Holiday, and one was closed when we were there, at noon, but was open an hour later when we had already eaten elsewhere. Then I tried to go to the one on Hawthorne where there are apparently really good potatoes, but my timing was off, and I couldn't make it there. Eventually, Josh and I went to the pod on Mississippi, because it was on the way to my exciting date with Kronda and her cargo bike, even though I didn't want to go back to Mississippi (see my post from the day before yesterday.) And there we found a pod of carts, mostly closed, two open: a vegan place called The Ruby Dragon, and Garden State: Italian street food from the Willamette Valley. I went for the chickpea patty sandwich with delicata squash, carrot and radish slaw, and lemon aioli from Garden State. Damn it was good. And damn it was cold. The temperature had dropped to just about freezing by the time we got there, so it was just me, Josh, a big empty tent, and a superb sandwich. As soon as we finished, we hurried off to turn on the car heater and warm up our fingers.

And head to meet Kronda, who had promised me a ride on her cargo bike. Kronda has a lot of bikes. I forget how many now -- four I think. Maybe more. She commutes on her bike, and she jumps over logs on wet trails on her bike, she rides for days on her bike, and she goes camping with her bike. (Kronda has great muscles.) And when she heard about my Never Done project, she offered to take me for a ride on her cargo bike. Yay! It turns out to be really different to ride on the back of a friend's bicycle than a friend's motorcycle. I mean, she's doing all the work, and I'm sitting there, feeling vaguely guilty but actually having a wonderful time. When I told her this, Kronda said there was no vague guilt allowed -- so I put that aside, and just enjoyed being cargo. She rode me along Willamette Boulevard, which overlooks industrial Portland, and over the river to Forest Park (where I had just walked that morning, with the most wonderful Iowan, Bill Welch.) People smiled at us as we went by, and I waved, as we passed in slo-mo. I got to see the world at the pace of a bike, which is a pace I love, and one of the reasons I love to ride a bike, but I could look anywhere I wanted and take my hands off the handles. Maybe the closest I've ever come to this was being pulled in a little red wagon when I was a kid. Only different. Hard to explain, but it is complex to be transported by another driver on an outdoor, slow-moving, human-powered vehicle. I've never taken a pedi-cab, because it feels too uncomfortable to pay someone to pedal me around. But I found riding behind Kronda completely delightful -- I think because I have such a long, trusting, two-way, reciprocal relationship with Kronda. And also because Kronda is an enthusiast, about bikes for sure, but also about her life in general, and I knew she was taking as much pleasure in sharing a new experience with me as I was in sharing it with her. I just love people like that, and aspire to be more that way myself. Maybe that will be my resolution for this goyish New Year.

Now Is All You Have

Never Done: Springwater Corridor
Tshuve: Amy, Carol, Judi, Molly, Howard

In 1903, John Charles Olmsted, who designed Central Park, made a report to the Portland Park Board in which he wrote, "A connected system of parks and pathways is manifestly far more useful and complete than a series of isolated parks." In 1990, the same year I moved to Portland, the city acquired portions of out-of-use rail lines, and over the years acquired more rails and other small connecting bits, and in 1996 opened small segments of what is now called the 40-Mile Loop to the public. The Springwater Corridor is major Southeast part of this big loop, that crisscrosses Johnson Creek, and passes over industrial areas, and weaves through fields, and eventually connects to other trails that take you all the way to downtown Portland.

Not only had I never done this, I had never even heard of it, even though it is right up my alley. I love to walk, run, or ride my bike away from traffic. I love the idea of conserving and connecting land for public use. My father was involved for years with the Harvard Conservation Trust, which over the years has acquired and protected over 700 acres of land in my home town. When Josh and I visited Anna-Karin in Lund, Sweden this summer, we hopped on our bikes whenever we wanted to go somewhere, and rode on a spectacular, interconnected system of bike paths to get anywhere we wanted to go. But not bike paths like we have in most US cities, where you have to suck fumes and dodge cars and stop at lights, but bike paths like the Springwater Corridor -- 10 feet wide, paved, off the road, wending through trees and fields, crossing roads safely and well-marked.

We walked from Carol's house in Brentwood Darlington to Sellwood, about 4 miles, and saw the rushing, rushing Johnson Creek. We saw beaver dams and birds, and more than ever before, I felt like Portland was part of the rural Oregon -- its pre-development history poking through its present, and co-existing here where the creek rushes through people's back yards, and blackberry brambles line their unpaved roads. You get a little of that bramble and pothole in my old neighborhood in Northeast, but without the rushing creek, which I found quite thrilling in an urban residential setting.

As we passed over Milwaukie Boulevard, we looked down and saw an old boxcar that someone had painted with the words Now Is All You Have, with a web address (www.niayh.com) in the upper corner. I took it as a message to help me with my concerns about my limited time to spend time with everyone I would like to. Not so much in that way we do when we say to ourselves that we could get hit by a bus tomorrow, but more a reminder that every moment is Now (unless it's Then) and that the best thing we can do is to pay full attention to it. I tend to spend too much time worrying about what is coming next and not enough time fully enjoying the now. I think it comes from having to look over my shoulder to see if something bad was coming my way, which I had to do when I was little. Even though most of my young days were just as you would hope for a child, some of them were seriously not, and I never really learned to fully relax into the Now, without also worrying about the past and future Then. In my years of Buddhist meditation, my mind never fully calmed down to the now, because I found that sitting for all that time, with nothing very interesting going on in the Now, all my mind had was to go backwards or forwards. But coming across a boxcar reminder while walking on a quiet urban trail in the cold rain with an old friend was actually a helpful reminder which I carried with me through the rest of my day, except when I totally forgot, and didn't. But the great thing about Now is that it is extremely forgiving, and offers an infinite number of opportunities to rejoin it every day.