Pleasant Company

Our godson, Josh, has been spending three or more weeks with us each summer since he was six. At that time, his mom was a single parent working hard and long, and as much as she missed him, those weeks were fun for Josh and a break for her. Over the years we’ve traveled to Maine and California, done Niagara Falls a couple of times, and camped out on Lake Erie. When he was younger, we used to enroll him in a summer program, too. He played soccer, went to roller blade camp, learned to sail, and took art and photography courses. We always try to have a lot of fun whenever he’s around.

Things have changed for his family—his mom has married a great guy and Josh has a younger sister and brother now. At 14, the time he spends with us now is summer tradition, but it’s also a chance for him to be the only child he was for the first 10 years of his life. There are other boys in our family close to his age, but he spends a good amount of his visits in the company of two women n their 40s. We worry that he’ll be bored with us, but so far it’s always worked out.

Take yesterday, for example: we’ve arrived in Maine a couple of days ahead of the other half of our group, which includes the other boys, so the three of us were on our own on a rainy Sunday. The night before, we had established that despite the big flat-screen TV in our rented house, television reception was limited—although we did all enjoy the broadcast of the graduation ceremony for the 15 8th graders at the local grade school. (Yes, we really watched it on public access; it was just the thing after 12 hours in the car and a nice lobster dinner.)

When Josh got up, he surprised us by tuning the radio to a classical music station, which we ended up listening to all day. “The radio is a lot like the TV,” he said, “not many choices.” He had noticed a breadmaker in the kitchen and pulled out the recipe book tucked neatly beneath it and decided to make garlic herb bread to go with the corn chowder we planned for dinner. When there was a break in the weather, we all headed down to our rocky beach, and 84 pieces of sea glass later we declared Josh King of the Beachcombers. And at the end of the day, while the bread baked and the soup simmered, he and Heidi sat side by side knotting colorful embroidery floss into friendship bracelets.

If these don’t seem to be the typical activities of your average baseball playin’ cross-country runnin’ teenaged boy, you must admire a kid so comfortable in his own skin he'll do whatever seems fun at the moment with whomever might be around.

Relax

It's a truism to say that these days it's not enough to work hard, everyone has to play hard, too, especially when on vacation. Rain on the first day of your long-planned trip might be viewed as terrible luck, then. No hiking, no biking, no kayaking, it's even too soggy for shopping the charming streets of that nearby town.

What to do? Today I opt for a rocking chair on the sheltered back porch of our clapboard cape, looking out over Eastern Bay. Someone thoughtfully placed a foot rail about 18 inches above the wide planks of the floor, and the soft, steady rain has chased the mosquitoes away. The mist over the water keeps shifting-- now I see the cove across the way, now not. When visible, the landscape on the other side is all shrouded gray and jagged pine. A loon traces the shore line, diving and surfacing, and a few other birds brave the wet weather, chirping loudly as they dash from the shelter of one tree to the next, and behind it all the sound of falling rain.

The sun is supposed to shine tomorrow, but today is fine, too.

Fingers Crossed

I like to travel and to spend time in other places, but I hate to leave home. I understand the paradox, but it doesn't make it any easier-- our departure is always an ordeal. Today we leave for ten days away-- once the door is locked and we're on the road, all will be well... it's just getting over the threshold that will be a challenge.

Wish us luck.

This Writer Reads

 Last winter I read The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. It was an exquisite little book, all fine writing and character development. Last month, when I was re-shelving my classroom library after the renovation, I found Tiger Rising by her, a book I didn't even realize I owned. I read it the weekend after school got out, and again I was captivated by the jewel-like quality of her writing, the characters so finely wrought.

Because of Winn-Dixie has long been a favorite of my students, but I'd never read it; I finished it yesterday, and The Tale of Despereaux is next. This morning I visited Kate DiCamillo's website. There is a wonderful little essay about writing there, where she says this:

The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine. What stories are hiding behind the faces of the people who you walk past everyday? What love? What hopes? What despair?

(You should read the whole thing-- it's worth it.)

During the school year I teach my students to approach their independent reading with the eyes of a writer, and I do the assignments with them, but many times they are no more than exercises. That is not so as I read DiCamillo's work; she has earned the admiration of my inner reader and inspired the writer in me, too.

Perspective

We took our nephews to see Winter's Bone the other day. The film won a Sundance Festival award and has been hailed as a feminist masterpiece by certain critics, with a stark Greek-tragedy-like plot. Clearly it is dramatically different than most summer fare, and I wanted to see it. Two of our four boys will be 18 next week, the other two will both be 15 by the end of September. The main character of the movie is a 17-year-old girl living in the Ozarks, and although she faces a lot of adversity that our guys hopefully never will, I hoped that her age and strength might be enough of a connection to draw them in.

I thought the movie was excellent, but the boys' reactions fell on a continuum from oldest to youngest: Eric thought the movie was pretty good; Riley thought it was "really fucking bleak;" Treat commented on the visual monochromaticism and "never said I didn't like it," and Josh wondered what the point was-- "Not a lot happened in it," he said.

Yeah... I'm still glad we saw it together.

Does it Bite?

We watched Shutter Island last night. A fan of both Scorcese and DiCaprio, I was looking forward to seeing this film. There were warning signs that I might be disappointed-- not only did it receive lukewarm reviews and earn a lackluster box office, but the producers postponed its release from Oscar contention time to late February. Still, I was hopeful.

Sadly, I found the movie to be a foggy, gray mess. A main character is agitated by confusing experiences-- this main theme of the relationship between identity, reality, and perception has been more handily addressed in many movies, for example The Sixth Sense, Blade Runner, and The Matrix.

Tonight we had dinner with a close family member who has Alzheimer's Disease. His grasp on the present becomes more and more tenuous each time we meet. At 86, he is well cared for and generally happy, although he is confused and agitated sometimes. It's hard to know how to react: should we be bothered by how he jumbles the past and present, upset at how he asks the same things over and over again, disturbed that he forgets what has recently occurred? Or should we simply try to make him as comfortable with his perceptions as possible?

In those movies, it is the revelation and subsequent understanding of the discrepancy between reality and their own perception that is devastating to the people caught in that situation. In both Shutter Island and The Matrix, characters make the choice to remain delusional rather than to face the bleakness of their "real" lives.

Maybe reality is a little over-rated. Even the most functional of us spend time in our own little worlds, and as long as we can avoid cognitive dissonance, what's the harm in it? Who's to say that it is an illusion at all?

Summer Blue

When I was a little girl growing up in the garden state, there were certain summer mornings when my mom would call us from work to say that she was coming home so that we could go to the beach. Sometimes on our way home from the shore we would stop at a pick-your-own blueberry place where we could pick (and eat) as much as we wished. Then there would be blueberry pancakes, muffins, pies, and jam, not to mention plastic containers full of frozen blue marbles that would last in the freezer until a time when those hot and sandy days of summer were only a happy memory.