Goodbye, Gray Mountain

Mar 292021
 

By any objective measurements, this past winter was a rough one. While COVID hospitalizations and deaths rose and variants threatened, while insurrectionists desecrated the Capitol, while a number of regions experienced punishing weather events, while the gap between the prudent and the reckless grew and it became apparent that a sizeable portion of the population subscribed to views that seemed rooted in the 15th century or maybe outer space–while all that was happening, I watched the gargantuan pile of snow next to my house for signs of spring.

Space is at a premium in my development, and that includes space to pile the snowfall that is cleared from the driveways and courtyards. The small area between my semi-detached townhouse yearly plays host to an abominably large mound I’ve dubbed Gray Mountain. As that side of the house is shaded, the melt is slow.

Gray Mountain represents everything I hate about winter. It’s rock hard, dirty, immovable, and it seems to last forever. Every year I promise myself I’ll trust its demise to time and the elements, and every year I take out my twenty-year-old ice chopper and hack away at it.

This winter, scarcely a year after my sister’s unexpected death and after a quarantine that left me feeling disconnected from the world, I began to attack it with particular ferocity the minute the temperature went above freezing. I would go for a walk so I could compare my heap of frozen ice to others in the neighborhood. Then I’d head back home and, risking injury to shoulders, neck, and lower back, I would chip away at it until my body called it quits.

This morning I finished off the last chunk of ice and walked around the exposed sides of my home. Heavy snows always cause some destruction and this year is no exception. A branch of the Japanese maple I planted ten years ago has been nearly severed, although I might be able to salvage it. Other plants and bushes are mangled and broken as well. Some will come back, some won’t.

The winter did a number on me as well. I’m still assessing the psychic and physical damage and looking for ways to make some repairs. Three weeks out from my second vaccine, I am taking the first tentative steps out in public. We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, Gray Mountain is no more, and spring is here.

Missing My Muse

Feb 232021
 

Here’s what I’ve noticed after a year of relative lock-down: Few people seem happy about it. Sure, I know people who prefer texts to calls, online classes to sweaty studios, food delivery to crowded stores. Most people, though, are going stir crazy. They are feeling crowded, limited, and maybe even homicidal after living cheek by jowl with spouses, parents and restless children.

Quarantine life should be tailor-made for me. I live alone and have for more of my life than I care to admit. It may not be the life I wanted, but it’s one I own. I’ve gotten good at living it. I understand the difference between lonely and alone and can adjust to either. Believe me, I appreciate the absence of pressure, the luxury of solitude, the privilege of quiet time to think and room to breathe.

Besides, I have my dog. And my muse. Although she’s been absent lately.

I’m an author, which is to say, my identity and sense of purpose are wrapped up in my ability and my need to get my thoughts into a readable form and out into the world. The present circumstances would seem an ideal time to create content.

Yet I’m stuck. Unwilling, uninspired, digging for feeling, reaching for words.

This is more than writers’ block. It feels more existential. What’s it all about? Who cares? Why should I voluntarily put myself in front of this cold gray machine and try to enter random thoughts into it?

My muse has left the building.

Maybe I’ve misjudged the effect of so much isolating, avoiding, hiding away, stepping warily into public, limiting in-person contact, eschewing any physical contact. Maybe it’s drained me in ways I wasn’t expecting. Zoom, it seems, isn’t always ideal for observing, much less interacting.

Instead of experiencing the flow that comes from being productive, I’m obsessed with how slowly time is moving. I used to write several hours a day. Now I’m lucky if I can work half that long. I look at the clock and marvel that it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning. I wonder when I can take lunch, or whether a nap is in order, notwithstanding I was in bed for nine hours (albeit restlessly) the night before. I count the hours until I can crawl back under the warm covers.

I thought I’d accepted that quarantine would last this long (has it really been a year?). Perhaps I failed to understand how that would feel. Was I more social in my previous life than I realized? Did I depend on neighborhood gatherings, coffee with friends, a random evening out? Do I need human contact more than I want to admit?

Well, yes, as it turns out. People in all their imperfections, are the featured players in my writing. Technology has been invaluable in bringing me news of the world, as it is. It doesn’t let me read faces or hear tone.

There are tricks to summoning an absent muse. I’m trying them all as I struggle with my third mystery in a series about an intrepid female investigator (is there any other kind?) I still don’t know how the story will unfold. Instead, I try to get a sense of where I’m going by writing scenes of dialogue. You know, the kind people have when they’re face to face across a table or even at a crime scene. When they’re talking in real life.

Sometimes I can almost feel my muse. She’s hovering, more an observer than an interactive part of my process. It’s okay. I understand her hesitation. No one feels like working right now. But we muddle through.

For now, I keep my seat in the chair and my eyes on the screen for as long as I can. I don’t want my my muse to lose faith in me. After all, spring is around the corner. Vaccines are available to the lucky and the persistent. Herd immunity is the new mantra. I’ve got babies to kiss, friends to hug, and words to write. Onward.

The Woman in the Turquoise Dress

Jan 182021
 

Memory is a brain activity by which we encode and store data. As we all know, the process often produces untrustworthy results. When I couldn’t find my glove this morning, I “knew” absolutely that I’d dropped it last night when I walked the dog. I went back to the exact spot and searched. It wasn’t there. When I came back to the house, I discovered the missing glove in the pocket of a coat I don’t remember wearing on the night walk.

Such things don’t yet worry me. I can still retrieve the numbers, codes and digits I require. My basic data storage and retrieval is still operational.

I’m more caught up by what we mean when we talk about memories, our recollections of the past. I have specific visions I can see: my uncle’s farm, my family around the dining room table, my fifth-grade classroom. Some of these images are sharp, others are hazy and filtered.

One oddly specific detail I do recall is riding an old-fashioned streetcar–the kind that ran on tracks and connected to overhead cables. The last trolley in Milwaukee, where I grew up, stopped running before I turned nine. If I was riding at that age, I must have been with my mother. It’s hard to imagine her sending me alone. I was not an adventurous sort and even a familiar ride might have generated some concern on my part. We didn’t have cell phones from which to send anxious text messages and receive reassuring replies.

So perhaps she was with me and I can’t picture it. Nor can I swear to the time of year, although I feel it might have been early autumn.

What I do remember is looking out the window and noticing a woman in a turquoise dress. What used to be called a housecoat, with buttons (maybe gray) up the front. An everyday dress. She was substantially built, I think, not likely to be bothered by the stiff breeze off Lake Michigan. Permed hair, I think, maybe brown or blond. She was carrying something, a purse and maybe another bag. Just then, a stray gust kicked up her dress and revealed a black slip beneath.

Why do I remember this event after so many years? I’m not sure. I know that after a while, I made a point of pulling up the image of the woman in the turquoise dress with the black slip just to see if I could. It was like a game, a challenge I gave my brain to hold onto the picture. Not because what I noticed was so unusual or amazing, but because it was so ordinary.

That memory seems to be divorced from any emotional context. I’m amused at its persistent presence, but that’s about it. It doesn’t trigger in me a sense of pleasure or pain. The smell of baking bread, on the other hand, reminds me of my childhood. Not because my mother baked, mind you, but because downtown Milwaukee was home to a large Wonder Bread factory. Other sounds summon up snapshots of a ballgame, an afternoon sledding, a spring day. Those memories make me smile.

Remembering people is harder for me, especially those whose permanent absence is a constant ache. We’ve all received instruction in the throes of grief to “remember the happy times” or to “make new memories.” I haven’t been able to effectively manage either of those brain exercises, to tell the truth. The death of my sister is too recent, too raw, and too seared on my brain to spend much time fondly recalling our madcap road trips together. Touching that part of my life hurts as much as touching a hot stove.

I’m told this will pass.

As for making new memories, that’s also been a challenge. The pandemic has stalled my attempts to find comfort, let alone accumulate new experiences.

This too shall pass. At least I want to believe it will, and that someday I can welcome back old memories and welcome new ones.

In the meantime, I’ll place myself on that old streetcar and become, once again, an eight year old girl watching a woman in a turquoise dress walk down the street, her black slip peeking out from underneath her hem.

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