August

And just like that, we’re moving away from the blistering heat of July into the mellowed oven of August. 

 

 

I found the first fallen acorn on a walk last week, and while it’s far from ripe, it’s a reminder that the lengthening dusk shadows are foreshadowing the longer, darker nights of autumn. 

 

August is a month of decadence pushed right to the brink; a gorgeous tipping point before the cold takes over. Days thick with moisture and sultry nights which will cascade gradually from warm to mellow and cool.

 

Everything seems almost too much: fruits bulge on branches, the garden explodes with vegetables that take over the kitchen like unwanted guests; doorways and hair swell with humidity, pushing on all the boundaries of social decorum.

Already the temperatures have shifted slightly with a bit more of an edge in the breeze, and though they won't last, it's the sign of shifting seasons.

Next Chapters

Today a new family closed on the old family home, a house that had been in my family for over 100 years. 

It was the house my grandmother was born in; the one I knew as a child when we had bustling Sunday dinners and raucous holidays. It anchored my childhood memories and identity after my parents moved us out to the suburbs.

This was the first home I knew as an adult when I moved out of my parents’ house: I lived in the second floor apartment and paid my grandmother, who lived on the first floor, just utilities.  She offered me the chance to begin my adult life, and with blissful naivete and ignorance at the time, I thought it was just what families did. The penny didn't drop until years later, when I moved out, that she also needed my help but didn't want to ask for it. My living with her while I was finishing up my graduate degree and teaching at three colleges, didn't just give me my independence, it sustained hers too. 

She was already 80 years old when I moved in, and in return for not charging me rent, I mowed the lawn and shoveled the driveway. In winter, when the roads were treacherous for even nimble drivers, and downright terrifying for the elderly, I would drive her to appointments or to the grocery store.  When the weather was good, and she could driver herself, I was often here when she returned to help her carry groceries in. There were several times in the years we shared that house when I called an ambulance for her. When I finally left the area for a full-time job, my grandmother had to move into an assisted-living facility. That was when I understood what we had given each other.

The house sat vacant for the year I was away. When I returned, I moved in so that my parents could figure out the next step, and eventually, I bought the house with their help. The house and I were never meant to live together forever, but it afforded me a secure and familiar place to launch my full adult life in; I knew, when the time came, it would also afford me leverage into a home a wanted to buy.

When Jason moved in, he took that house, and made it our home. He painted and fixed and decorated; we lost weekends in antique stores and flea markets. With his artists' training and a his bargain-hunter's soul, he took a random collection of items and whirled them around a room to make a statement. It became the home we dreamed about our future in, planned our wedding in; it was the safe space I sought refuge in after Jason died.

In many respects, Jason's absence made it much clearer to me that the house and I had to part ways. If I didn't leave soon, it would quickly become a shrine to that life, and I would be its Miss Havisham. When I put it on the market last September, I had no idea how long it would be before it could have a new life.

Cheers, house🥂 You and I are moving forward to a different future. It’s not the one either of us planned on, but we’ll figure it out.

Colors of the Summer 2020

I don't openly share this usually, because for those not in the fountain pen community, it seems a bit weird. But I write seasonally with inks, using muted greens, reds, and rusty oranges in Fall; cool, moody blues and purples along with icy blue and green with sparkles in Winter; intense pinks and purples in Spring. 

But Summer and I are not friends. It’s my least favorite season, and I’ve had trouble committing to inks that celebrate it. Until now☀️ two favorite summer inks arrived this weekend. 


Sailor Jentle Apricot is like bottled sunshine (and is being discontinued 🤯🤬😩) and Pelikan Star Ruby is a juicy fuchsia evoking red grapefruit. 

Bring on the sun!

Wedding Fund

Five years ago today, we were hot and sweaty working on the second floor shop, building custom windows as extra money to pay for our wedding. 

 

 

 

We both worked all week, then spent entire weekends at the shop or doing installs in the sweltering Buffalo summers. 

 

 

 

 

It was damn hard work, especially for me, the paper-pusher and book-reader, but we had such fun doing it. 

 

 

We were lucky to be able to take on extra work together, and we jammed to music, and I learned A LOT. Jason was a patient teacher and I know more about restoring windows than any layperson has a right to.

 

 

 

Poem: Ritual for Ash

Ritual for Ash
by Cindy Williams Gutierrez

We will smudge
our shoulder blades with wings of ash.

We will sow
your remaining ash in an untilled field.

We’ll toss
red carnations, red dahlias, red hibiscus.

We’ll release
white doves and flutter white handkerchiefs.

We’ll return
to the field to watch brave bulls roam.

We will wait
for the grass to catch fire.

Poem: The Difference

"The Difference"
by Thomas Hardy

I

Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon,
And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,
But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune,
For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.

II

Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now,
The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon;
But she will see never this gate, path, or bough,
Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune.

 https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/difference-0

Poem: Echolocation

"Echolocation"
by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

The whales can’t hear each other calling
in the noise-cluttered sea: they beach themselves.
I saw one once— heaved onto the sand with kelp
stuck to its blue-gray skin.
Heavy and immobile
it lay like a great sadness.
And it was hard to breathe with all the stink.
Its elliptical black eyes had stilled, were mostly dry,
and barnacles clustered on its back
like tiny brown volcanoes.
Imagining the other whales, their roving weight,
their blue-black webbing of the deep,
I stopped knowing how to measure my own grief.
And this one, large and dead on the sand
with its unimaginable five-hundred-pound heart.


https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/echolocation