Life is a Banquet

Grown Up Child

Clanna left to return home today. I'm missing her so desperately right now, that I wonder why anyone chooses to live so far from all family, or more specifically, what possessed me to do so.  I don't miss the Midwest at all, but I miss my family with an intensity that surprises me, that continues to blow harsh winds of depression through major holidays and personal crisis.  I thought being here would be enough to counterbalance them being there.  In the three years that I've been here, I've nurtured a silly little fantasy that my mother would come, and fall madly in love with Oregon, running Julie Andrew's style down the mountain. She was not impressed. She was however, impressed with my house, our life, and it felt like for the first time, we were true equals--her being a guest in my house tipped the balance of power in a new way that allowed us to establish healthier ways of interacting as adults. It was over far too quickly, as most visits are.  As she left today, I was struck with crushing waves of sadness as the slim likelihood of her moving here, me moving there (no chance), and us seeing each other more than twice in three years converged to leave me a weepy mess.  I wish it were easier, this being a grown-up child business. 

Others who live far from family, tell me your tricks.  Does it get any easier?

Love/Hate St. Louis

Lilybleu has inspired me, yet again.  Here's what I love AND hate about St. Louis, my former home: 

Things I love (and miss) about St. Louis:

1. City Museum (Can't say enough how much it rocks)
2. Laumire Sculpture Park (and I know I butchered the spelling)
3. Soulard Farmer's Market
4. BRICK buildings---oh how I miss you, homes of brick
5. Ted Drewes . . . . mmmm . . . .
6.  Garage Sales with Garage Sale Prices (Garage Sales priced like stores SUCK). 
7. Forest Park
8. Free Museums & Zoo
9.  My Family
10.  Pho Grand, Hacienda, The King and I,  MoKaBees & Kaldi's
11. The Loop
12.  Left Bank Books 
13.  The blues festival (even if it had been headed downhill in recent years)
14.  Cheap Lofts, cheap(er) older homes for renovating, and cheap(er) cost of living
15.   Incredible diversity of people
16.  Pumping my own gas
17.  The new St. Louis Mills Mall . . . I hardly knew Ye. 
18.   Metrolink . . . so much wrong with it, and yet, also so much right too. 
19.   Wash U
20.   Tower Grove Park

Things I'm glad to have left behind:
1.  Traffic
2.  Miles and Miles of concrete and strip malls separated by highways
3.  Racial Balkanization . . .so much diversity, so little appreciation for it
4.  Limited organic, natural, healthy options
5.  The coffee  . . . The Pacific Northwest just does it better
6.  The humidity
7.  Ice Storms
8.  Flatness
9.  Being so far from mountains & oceans
10.  The over-abundance of narrow-minded people (although it must be emphasized that NOT everyone in St. Louis falls into this category . . . just enough qualify to be annoying in their majority). 
11.  Pollution
12.  The pockets of poverty & crime, draining the city's core, and the white-flight to the ever-growing suburbs ignoring the problem
13.  Local politics
14.  The "Where did you go to high school?" game
15.   Religious zealots (St. Louis has way more than its fair share)
16.   With a few notable exceptions,  the restaurants
17.  St. Louis style pizza
18.  The cardinals, the Rams, and the Blues 
19.  My family (Hey, there are days . . . .)
20.   The public transit system  as a whole, including the lack of a decent train station, the airport fiasco, and the poor-excuse for a bus-system. 

Anna Roland Rocks the Socks Off My New Camera

I wonder how as Americans we can be so connected--too connected almost and yet, be so removed from each other.   I'm sitting at a coffee house in town, texting Freak while the Gas Fast Tour gets going, surrounded by Zen and Scientist, trying not to think about why there's only twenty of us here.  Even as I slide my cell phone out of sight, I'm still apart, one with my camera--metering and balancing, drawn in, instant by instant. 

Anna Roland and Thistle are touring the Northwest by bike (hence the Gas Fast Tour), a political and personal statement about our dependence on oil, a war with no end in sight, and some really amazing folk music.  Anna and Thistle are angrier, nervier Ani's, Alanis long before she sold out, the heiresses-apparent to Joni Mitchell.   Zen knows Anna from St. Louis.  I vaguely know her in the way all of left-leaning St. Louis is never more than six-degrees of separation from each other. Wireboy is beside himself that I get to see Anna.  If he knew I was seeing Anna through the lens of my new camera, he just might wet himself. 

I used to be a biker chic too--tearing up the Kady Trail, yelling with Critical Mass, biking my way to killer hamstrings and glutes.  Long before diabetes, before all the fatigue, before divorce, before bitterness, before Oregon, and Freak, I was a radical righteous babe.  Now, I am never more than a cell phone, an email, a text message away from anyone, never further than my Jeep or Hotwire can take me.   

Yet, I know the real distance.  The radical activist in me hasn't succumbed so much to the suburban buzz that I'm not aware of how far apart we really are these days.  I 've never seen 99% of my food growing, my bargain-clothes come from countries I'm not sure I could locate on a globe, and I know the names of the neighbors on my block and no other.  I can walk in my downtown neighborhood and see no other pedestrians.  The nearest "corner produce market" is four big box grocery stores, 3 miles, and two huge roads away. 

I am so far removed from my life in Vancouver (was that ever really my life?), from Zen's life in China, from the life of my grandparents.   Why is it that this is the first time in two years that I have walked at night to the coffee house?  I live with four other people, and yet, this is our first group outing.   Board games and chess sets sit idle while Ipods and cell phones hum.  Yahoo! shows all four of us online, separately together, alone in our little Internet bubble.  I live in one of the most bike friendly states in the nation, and yet, I still can't trust the cars. 

I want to tell you how amazing Anna Roland's music is, how you must go see in Corvallis (Interzone, Tomorrow, August 19th) or in Eugene (Mystic Pizza, August 26th), how she'll silk screen her logo right on the shirt you wear to the concert, how her CD's are a mere $5 (which didn't stop mine from getting lifted from the ladies room), and how Thistle is starting a community in Iowa.  But, all I can think about is how I'm not doing enough, how I'm sitting in a circle of plastic chairs, the intoxicating odor of tobacco and apple pie sedating us, and I'm talking the radical talk, and I keep thinking, "This is not my life, I'm not really here." 

But, I am here, and this IS my life.  I'm doing so much, and yet, still not enough.  My garden died a horrible death sometime in July, recycling and composting are sporadic events in our house, and I give too many of my dollars to silliness, and I have to work too hard to do the common sense things that should be second nature.  All these "Big Ideas" rolling around in our heads, and to 90% of the world, it's so simple, it's laughable.   We need each other.

Readying The Nursery

That's right . . .in addition to parenting a teenager (see last post), I've also become the proud parent of  . . . several dozen . . . ACTION FIGURES.   They are all boys (at least I think, from their gender neutral plastic bits it's kind of hard to tell) and are all quite healthy, encased in their little plastic shrouds. 

Apparently, I unwittingly adopted all of these creatures when I married Freak.  As luck would have it, our courtship was between Star Wars movies and all of his little action figure children were back in St. Louis, safely out of sight in large blue plastic tubs.  So, I did not have to face the reality of sharing my home with so many little men.   

Now however, fate has converged to make me the custodian of all these little pieces of uselessness.  While in St. Louis, Freak sold the house he owned there,  and boxed up the rest of his crap  belongings,  and after a long truck ride (Thanks U-Pack!),  my garage is now overflowing with boxes o'stuff. 

Stuff including two very large, VERY HEAVY, video games,  papers from every phase of Freak's life, question items of decor (A Star Wars throw?  The star ship enterprise as art? Assorted items of ex-girlfriend memorabilia? Merge has absolutely nothing on us).

The most pressing item on Freak's agenda is not organizing his stuff--nope it's acquiring more plastic Star Wars figures.  Apparently, all the little plastic men have been VERY lonely in St. Louis.  The companionship of their dozens of brothers is not sufficient.  Besides the DETAIL of the new figures! The new outfits! The limited editions!  I mean how could you NOT want to adopt this and give it a good home? 

Eight more little men have come to live with us--just since the weekend.  I'm not sure I'm prepared to deal with multiples like this.  How exactly does one care and feed for so many little men, all in need of love and attention?
So my question to you, dear Internet, is really quite simple. 

What sort of nursery would be appropriate for all my new children?  Their current blue plastic "room" is quite crowded.  I was thinking of some sort of bunk-bed shelving system that would allow their proud papa to admire them daily, but they are sensitive little buggers and must be protected from excessive heat and light.  They also need to be isolated from their animal siblings, who love a good plastic chew.  I want to be a GOOD mother to all my little plastic sons. Would a dark corner of the basement be inappropriate? There's a nice closet under the stairs - - -perhaps they could play Harry Potter . . . .

Gateway to Home

St. Louis can best be described as a highway, continuous concrete swathes that happen to have a city stuck in their cracks.  An don't get me wrong, at times in the last two years, I have greatly missed the city of my college years, the state of my birth.  I have missed pumping my own gas, free admission to museums, thrift stores and garage sales with true bargains, affordable land.  And, of course, knowing where everything is. 

Because, that's a huge part of home-familiarity.  You know you are home when you can give directions to strangers, find food at midnight, recommend a hairdresser or a doctor.  In the black hole between old home and new, I spent a fair amount of time thinking about moving back.  And not surprisingly, I spent my first few days back in St. Louis, consumed with longing to move closer, intoxicated by the familiar, surrounded by people who GET me.  But slowly, like jet lag, the fairy tale wears off.  I start thinking about WHERE we would live, HOW we would live, WHO I would be, and the fantasy falls flat. 

Stitch in Time

My life feels much less complicated these days.  Usually, my mind is always racing, but now it seems to be driving the speed limit.  And, no, before you ask, I haven't discovered a new miracle antidepressant.  Rather I've rediscovered an outlet for all that nervous energy.  A ball of yarn, a crochet needle, and zen is at hand.  I do not have to dominate conversations, my fingers do not shred napkins, twirl pens, or fiddle with dry skin because I have something both purposeful and mindless to distract me. 

Freak jokes that I look like I'm making baby booties.  I retaliate by crocheting in a pastel yellow yarn while patting my belly, until finally I break down and buy hipper yarn.  Coolness has infiltrated the yarn bins, pushing aside 70's thick acrylics in garish colors in favor of natural fibers, nubby textures, and vivid colors. 

But despite the revival of  knitting, and to a lesser extent crochet, I'm not about following a trend, the latest yarns, or even about the finished product.  It's the repetitive action, the tangible progress, the calm that has me hooked. Pun intended. 

Picking up or revisiting a new craft is hardly new for me, but it's been years since I carried a project around with me.  Like my ever-present notebook and pen, crochet is fast becoming another important weapon in my arsenal of tactics to keep me present and grounded.  More here.  And this is indeed a good thing. 

Expect potholders for Christmas this year!

Pieces of Me

I'm visiting pieces of myself, reacquainting myself with long-lost quirks and idiosyncrasies, integrating into the whole of whom I am now, who I once was, and who I wanted to be. 

My nervous fingers twitch, always fiddling with something, more so now in unfamiliar familiar territory.  My mother sticks a crochet hook and skein of yarn in my hand.  It has been over ten years since I last sat on a couch, chaining double stitches, but it flows like the Suave Shampoo from the time-warp bathroom that makes me forget how far removed I am from this place.  My hair sizzles from an ancient caboodle's curling iron, years removed from such abuse.  My mother sorts mail, and I wait in anticipation, illogically expecting mail at an address I have never resided at. 

The best parts of me are here.  Late night conversations that jump and meander without agenda, unhurried by blinking cursors or cell phone minutes.  The best parts of my spirit have always lived here, patiently waiting for my return.  Surrounded by banana spilt dishes and soft poached eggs and board games, my life becomes more unhurried here.  My dress becomes more flamboyant, colors marrying patterns with a bouquet of jewelry.  The memory of who I once aspired to be becomes tempered by who I am now, revealing a me that is more real than anything before. 

The worst parts of me are here too, as my too-tight pants reveal my dietary indiscretions of the last few days.  I slide towards what was once normal, feeling virtuous even as I skid, because I am still so far from that time.   Parts of me  find themselves wrapped up in a negativity blanket, drowning in voice-of-doom warnings and second guesses.  These are the parts of me that I'm happy to leave behind when the plane takes off.

The me I am now battles with the insecurities of the past, reluctant to assert myself, waiting for the stress of agreement to rupture my facade, frustration bursting forth in angry staccato bursts.  The me I once was battles with with my sharp edges, wanting to sink into the downy welcome of home with no over analyzation. 

While unconditional love can breach distances ordinarily only traveled by a jet love, it is only here that I feel its overwhelming poignancy, one moment at a time.  Each day away from my Oregon life seems like a lifetime and yet, the week rushes by too quickly, until I am once again leaving pieces of me behind.