Zucchini memories

Autumn Horse by JaneDoe87

Once when I was 10 my Mom and I went to visit Aunt Diane and Uncle Ken at their home in New Jersey. A ranch house in the woodsy suburbs, with tall trees and good gardens. After a polite amount of visiting time and settling bags in, I stepped out to let the adults catch up, and crawled up a boulder on the lawn for an hour or so of reading until dinner. My silence was much more at place outside than in.
Something about the familiarity of extended family made me uncomfortable. My own nuclear unit I understood, but relatives I saw once, maybe twice a year, were often strangers to me. Not that I didn't bask in the attention, but I always wondered if there wasn't some elaborate unspoken dance going on, some conversation between the lines I wasn't hearing or speaking, that would have let me into this bright world where the whole extended families were friends together. As far as I was concerned, I had a whole lot of family, but besides my parents, sister, and brother, no friends among them.

Then the unexpected happened. After about half an hour Aunt Diane emerged from the house, with a plate of zucchini sticks. I tried not to look up, lest I appear unappealingly eager for company. But she joined me at the rock like this was a place we frequented. After some small talk, and polite bites of my first zucchini, I expected her to return to the house of grown-up conversations. But she stayed. I can't remember what we talked about, I know we were silent for periods of time most people are uncomfortable with. Eventually it turned dusky, she let me know that dinner would be ready soon, and returned to the lit house. The feeling she left me with was like the shock of a root suddenly touching a cool running stream.

So much of my anxiety over family was that I didn't know how to talk to them. But Aunt Dd was silent with me. She spoke my language. Her kindness, patience, and skill with nuance taught me some important lessons that day. Not the least of which that there were friends in the family.

Also, zucchini is now one of my favorite vegetables-filled with potassium and vitamins A and C, great to saute. I'm honored to have such an awesome Aunt, who opened my eyes to something so unassuming yet fulfilling.

Warm air makes things rise.

Photo by Fallis

I felt funny at work today. Standing at the register as someone rummaged through their purse for change the sun reflected off the reflective beam of a window frame above me, blinding me briefly. When I opened my eyes to the shafts of sunlight I spotted a thin hair of a feather, a tiny downy voyager in the wind. It drifted past me, and rose slowly in the warm air of the light. I made change for the girl in front of me and wished her a good day. When I looked back the little thread had disappeared.
Then my legs felt heavy, and swayed, like tree trunks in a current.

Hands

image by bongoshock

I've seen some hands in my day. I expect to see a few more before it's over too. Those dexterous, silent and articulate pieces of body. I think there's a reason we make talking mouths of our hands. Hands will tell. Mouths may stay closed, but hands will talk.

Yesterday at work I sold a woman a Mochaccino. She had a quiet nice voice, and a housewife's body. But her mind was quick, and though she was a soft talker, her voice never trailed off into unheard decibels. She was having a treat while visiting a patient "Small... no, make it a large. This'll be today's treat."
But her hands, oh her fingers. They touched the fleshy thumb part of my palm as she put her dollars and coins in my hand. As coarse as coral. Like moving rock. Pleasant though, like her.

These last few weeks on our forays around the state for family holidays I watched my mother cook. Dad is the house chef, so Mom's dishes are specialties. Pop-overs, apple crisp. Mom and Dad respect each others respective expertise's. I've never had Dad-made pop-overs, or my mothers marinara sauce. They don't exist. They don't need to.
Mom made apple crisp for christmas dinner. She combined the 'crisp' topping in a bowl, measuring ingredients first in old yellow measuring spoons. Then she dropped the powders into her bare cupped hand to be dusted into the bowl, as though she were brushing soil off her hands after working the garden. I believe this made the crisp mixture lighter.
Her hands had a sheen to them as a cloud of baking powder erupted and sank into the bowl. She has young, smooth hands. She's not afraid to get them dirty, though she measures first. She makes an unparalleled apple crisp.

Denoument

Rest by Koda12

I'm not sure when it started building, but it all culminated these last two months in a roiling boil, that high note climax that sends you soaring at the apogee. Move apartments. Find submitters. Find new job. The interview clothes. 11th hour packing. Unloading the moving van after dark. Tanuki's squint eye needs looking at. Start new job. Apply to school. Apply to school. Apply to school hard.

I put the last of my application in the mail this afternoon. Registered mail means it's carried in a locked bag. I imagine by a man dressed in a suit, with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. That's how my application will arrive. I told the woman at the post office how reassured I felt with all the stamps going onto my package. She told me that's what I was paying for.

Then I went for my first visit to my new doctor, paid for by the insurance offered at the hospital I work at. Her waiting room contained one of her own paintings, and I knew I was in good hands.

Then I stopped on the way home to look for winter gloves for Dave, something fair trade, or environmentally or socially responsibly made, because I have some money to afford that now with our extra cheap rent. There was nothing I could find that wasn't either made only of knit (not good for 'driving or making snowballs'), or made in china. So I came home.

We had a roasted sweet potato and green bean casserole, and I laid down for a quick nap before going to our friends' apartment for art night. Quick nap became three hours. But there'll be art night next week. There will be more days and weeks to come, and more fights to be fought, challenges to be met. But for now there's peace. Now I can rest, and glow in the warmth of all the goodness I've found during these latest blessed struggles.

Damning evidence.

I haven't been here since college. Sitting at a computer, finding a variety of creative escapes from doing what needs to be done. My Essay. I've done all the little houseworks I can think of tonight for my grad application. Shot off some base-touching emails to my remaining references, nudge them back to the paperwork they need to do. Switched my Facebook and long forgotten Myspace accounts to private. God forbid the admissions committee comes across a photo of me dressed as a pizza slice, in the hungry embrace of a suited grizzly bear.
In any case, I believe in my heart that I am capable of this program. The tricky part is convincing the admissions people of this. Which is why I'm so cautious about my essay. My transcripts and recommendation letters will speak for themselves, this is the one time I speak for myself. I don't want to wharblegarble all over the place.

It is possible that whatever godly force is out there has let me feel their guiding hand, and restirred my faith now for some kind of Jobian test. I mull on this likelihood everyday. But what do I know about the whims of gods. All I can do now is pull every trick I know, and though I may be facing a crushing defeat, hold the faith, like water in cupped hands.

Returning to the path.

I discovered the root of my general malaise as of late. As of the last year.

In a piece of synchronicity I discovered the word for it during my GRE studies: Anomie. Instability caused by lack of purpose. And it's not the first time. Anomie motivated me to leave art school, and drifted with me through my first year of Johnson. It abated, quite suddenly, when I discovered the Alternative Medicine program, which I promptly jumped on. The relief, the rush, of following this path was visceral.

Somewhere along the line I took this all for granted. The program seemed like the yellow brick road, and I never considered what would happen when I finished college.

...

A swirling anomie. Like a storm that slowly but stolidly settles in, occasionally lighting me up and leaving me tearful, wondering what I'm doing. It's been a year and a half.

At some point I discovered UVM's Masters Entry Program in Nursing. I could enter with my non-nursing degree, and finish with a Nurse Practitioner degree. It would be a year until I could apply, and that year is coming to a close. I've just taken my GRE's, I'm working up the nerve to ask people to speak for me, and formulating a new essay every day to speak on my desire to return to this path. Every other day I squelch the fear that I'll be left in a coffee kiosk, pining and aching a moment longer than necessary--because I feel that a nurse practitioner should be made of tougher stuff than that.

Bridgid of Kildare

A wordy album.

Some snapshots from my last week.

The furrows in my mother's brow in the rearview mirror, after we passed a fallen deer. It remained furrowed for 6 miles.

My hulking brother, who punched numerous holes in the walls of our old house, tenderly attending to his girlfriend at the dinner table.

My sister, 8 months pregnant, her house filled with chattering women and a baby shower, as cool and collected and unfathomable as I've ever seen her.

My Dad, lying dripping marinated steaks onto the grill, asking me if I'm becoming a vegetarian.
He grilled veggie burgers for Dave.

Driving home to hang out with Dave on my lunch break, finding myself running to the house unable to not grin.

Afraid of the stilted phone conversations after someone moves away, yet prattling on with Emily when she calls one afternoon.