Spring Cleaning

It’s not spring yet officially until two more weeks, but the warm, sunny days and the fragrant freesias blooming in my garden activate my spring urges. Our apricot tree wears soft white blossoms, and the perfumed air is intoxicating.

When I’m not outside talking to the seeds I planted, encouraging them to rise and shine, I’m tackling projects like cleaning out a closet in the spare bedroom. It’s a job I’ve dreaded – sorting through boxes and albums of slides taken by my parents on multiple trips and cruises to Jamaica, Norway, Scottish Highlands, the Pacific Northwest, Chile. Ten boxes, 70 slides per box. Through a mini-viewer I quickly check for people photos. Here’s a surprise. Shots of two survivors of the plane crash in the Andes involving an Uruguayan rugby team. They were staying at the same hotel as my parents while here in Chile for my wedding.

  I scan for good photos of my parents to save: my father gazing up at the Matterhorn, and stretched out for a siesta on a Jamaican beach; my mother, a Jackie Kennedy look alike, petting a burro, and posing before a bright flowering poinsettia bush. I study their facial expressions, the way my father stands slightly hunched, my mother’s wide smile. It seems unfeeling to throw out the slides, their memories, but they are not my memories. Now ten years after my mother’s death and twenty after my father’s I feel ready to let go. I’ve saved a few dozen – my first step towards photo closure.

    There is more in that dusty closet that I must face: my son’s paintings from childhood art classes, my own attempts at painting, binoculars inherited from my husband’s grandfather, a fishing tackle box, a game of Scrabble and…a slide projector. I tell my husband, “We can put the slides of our travels into the empty carousels – your stay in Germany training for the Mexican Olympics and my Peace Corps years.”  Maybe someday we’ll have a slide show and reminisce about the days when we were young.

Whoopee!

I’m on a serious binge. No, not chocolate. Chocolate is no longer at the top of my favorites list. I’m on a Netflix binge, hooked on “Grace and Frankie.” I am having so much fun! Laughter is far better for me than chocolate, anyway.

            I identify with seventy-ish Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. How I laugh as they bemoan the frustrations of their age, the chin hairs and flabby biceps. Even glamorous ex-Barbarella-Jane needs help getting up from a sitting position on the beach, and her hands are as wrinkled as mine. Laughing about these embarrassing signs of aging is very liberating; they become easier to accept.

Jane and Lily inspire me to be a little crazy and silly and throw off my cloak of ladylike demeanor. I want Frankie to send me some of her marihuana-enhanced, quirky, shamanic, Buddhist vibes. The humdrum of my daily life – planning what the heck to have for dinner, taking out the garbage, changing the sheets – offers few opportunities for risk-taking. I must be on the lookout – maybe strike up a conversation with the beggar woman on the street corner, read a science fiction book (not my usual fare), attend an art exhibit alone – and accept new challenges, even if they’re a little scary.

This past year I did just that: river rafting and hiking over a glacial moraine in Patagonia and riding as a passenger on a stranger’s motorcycle in rural Colombia. I foresee more adventures on an upcoming solo trip, touching down on the East coast, Midwest and West coast of the good ol’ USA. I look forward to acquainting myself with unfamiliar American landscapes.

 I’d welcome a “yes” night (Frankie says you’re not allowed to say “no” to anything suggested to you) but then I’d have to have a goofy friend to do it with. My oldest friend back home would be the perfect choice. She loves to laugh and talk to strangers. I’ll soon be spending time with her. I wonder what excitement we can stir up.

I haven’t given up chocolate. In fact, the ideal binge would be watching “Grace and Frankie” while savoring creamy, dark chocolate.

Bad idea. I just did it. Wolfed down the whole damned thing.

Short-lived Euphoria

Samba dancers in brightly colored costumes, big smiles on their faces as they swirl to the music; a large float bearing two red and yellow papagayo  figures and curvaceous dancers scantily clad in sequined attire; the entire center of the stadium  arena filled with people dancing in flashes of sweeping colored lights. Soon the Olympic athletes join the performers in one big happy, mad party. My husband is somewhere in that crowd. Later he tells me he made a new acquaintance there, Mustafa, a tall Sudanese man, dressed in traditional garments.

The gaiety and euphoria of the closing event of the Olympic Games in Rio are contagious. In front of my television I smile at the antics of the athletes and sway to the rhythm. Swelling euphoria fills me at the sight of thousands of people of many races and nationalities joined together in brotherhood. This is an example of what humanity is capable of.

            But then I recall the photo of the five-year-old Syrian boy, Omran, covered in blood and I know that men are also capable of terrible violence, hate and destruction. That young boy and the scenes of destruction in Aleppo and the massive crowded refugee camps trigger compassion. Then I feel anger – anger at the leaders (you know who you are) who allow this to happen, not only allow, but order the bombings and the killing, who believe only they are in the right, who are blinded by intolerance for those who are different.

            I want to put my arms around Omron, comfort him and clean his face of blood. But, of course, I can’t. But I can write, pointing out not only the violence and tragedy, which we see live and direct on television newscasts, but also the alternatives.

Hey, World, look at the Olympics. Look at what is possible with perseverance, will power and a vision.

 Feel the joy. The possibilities. The hope.

Then take the next step. Act.

Wanted: Twenty Thousand Words

“How many words does your manuscript have?” asks the editor.

“About forty thousand,” I answer.

“Well, you’re short twenty thousand words,” she says.

I slump in my chair. We’re talking about a manuscript I submitted for my second book. Twenty thousand more words? And not just any words. No fluff. No verbal garbage. No verbiage. But words that add something.

I spend a few days in a writer’s funk. Ideas do not come running towards me like a friendly dog with its tongue hanging out. I must not look for them. Pretend I’m not interested. Then when I’m taking out the garbage, an idea raises its hand.

Today I think: why start from zero? Go to my previous blogs. Maybe there are some that can be expanded or further developed. So I read through this year’s blogs and make a list. I feel better already. Having a list is a start. Isn’t it? If I develop some blog pieces, I figure they will give me another four thousand words. Only sixteen thousand to go.

Of course, the best source of inspiration is life itself. My life is not exactly action packed. I look over my day: cycling at the gym, doctor appointment and more Donald Trump on CNN…. I certainly don’t want to go there. I have an appointment with Andrés to get my hair trimmed. Can I write about haircuts? Hmmm. Maybe something will spark an idea while I’m on the metro. This is beginning to sound like fluff….

The trip on the metro and the visit to the hairdresser provide no inspiration but, as I walk along, I’m reminded that I mustn’t try so hard. The trouble is that it’s not just ideas that play hard to get. Words avoid me. My word retrieval problem grows with the passing years. Those elusive words on the tip of my tongue get lost in the labyrinths of my cerebral cortex. With my peers we laugh and joke about those lost words. But the experience is really quite frightening. What will I be like at eighty or ninety?

Rereading pieces I’ve written sometimes offers consolation. Did I really write that?! It’s not so bad. And look at the sparkling words I magically pulled out of my hat!

 Those sixty thousand words will come, one word at a time, or as writer Annie Lamott says “bird by bird.” 

European Flashbacks

Weeks after our return from Europe, images and newly-acquired information continue to surface in my memory: the breathtaking beauty of the St. Petersburg Church of the Spilled Blood, Adriaen Van De Velde’s detailed depictions of Dutch landscapes and medieval daily life, stories of tsarinas and kings, conspirators and war heroes, battles and treaties.

Musical moments also come back to me, although the sounds of music are more difficult to recall than visual imagery. What I do remember is how the music made me feel, the euphoria it produced. The magnificent organs in every church spoke of the importance of religious music in centuries past. We visited a cathedral just at the right moment to hear the powerful swells of music from the organ that filled an entire wall.

Outside El Prado Museum in Madrid, a man sat on a wall playing on his guitar the Concierto de Aranjuez, perfect for creating the mood to view the paintings of Velázquez, El Greco and Goya.

  Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, its dimmed chandeliers glittering like fairy candles, provided a magical venue for opera music from Wagner, Massenet, Bizet and Saint-Saens. There the sweet notes of a violin solo rang clear and perfect, glorious and true in that hall famous for its acoustics. When friends ask me what the best of our trip was, I tell them about that evening concert.

Sneak Preview

A warm sunny day in midwinter is delicious. Outside tiny wild canaries twitter in the branches above me. I tell them that I feel like singing, too. I walk with an energized pace along the sidewalk, but then stop and sniff the air. Is that scent what I think it is? Yes, there in a garden – the yellow buds of an acacia are opening, perfuming the air with the fragrance that triggers childhood memories of early signs of spring in California. Acacia and daphnia scents always remind my gardener’s nose of the promise of spring days.

            The memory of brightly colored flowers in the Baltic countries even in the smallest spaces – doorways and windowsills – prompts me to put in some winter blooming plants in pots to shed some light on grey winter days. Just back home, I buy primroses – red, yellow, purple – and primulas. Trowel in hand, I work them into the soil in three large pots. Like the nesting instinct of birds, my gardener impulses are activated by the sun. Maybe having recently come from northern summer climes has them bewildered.

            This spring preview can’t last. Rain is predicted in a few days. But I have the view of my bright flowers. To the patter of rain, I’ll bite into a chocolate bar and return to the biography of Catherine the Great, a story of courage, perseverance and intrigue. With ingenuity she fools her tutors, chaperones and the Tsarina Elizabeth who keep her a virtual prisoner in the palace. She dresses as a boy to escape at night to meet her lover. She pulls a curtain over an alcove in her apartment to hide the friends gathered there.

Now I read of her efforts as Tsarina to determine the shape of Russian society and government and reorganize the legal system. A daughter of the Enlightenment, she aims to abolish capital punishment and the use of torture and guarantee equal treatment for all citizens, even the serfs. She publishes her document, the Nakaz, in 1767.

                                                

How is it possible that these issues continue to be debated centuries later? Today’s leaders and governments would definitely benefit from a large dose of enlightenment.

My Russian Mosaic

A metronome ticks and stops. Music plays. The metronome ticks and stops. Music plays. The transmission of Leningrad Radio keeping alive the hopes of the city’s inhabitants. It is 1944. The German army siege continues to its strangle-hold over the city during the past 900 days. One million people are dead due to cold and starvation.

            I stand in the windowless museum commemorating the heroic defenders of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). That recreation of the radio’s transmission takes me back in time, more real than the battered army helmets, rifles and photos on display.

            Valentín, our 40-year-old guide, tells how the siege affected his family. His grandmother died of starvation. His grandfather’s brother disappeared. The rest of the family was eventually evacuated through the one route open to the interior. In impeccable Spanish he tells us, “No one is alive today who hasn’t lost someone in the siege.”

Back in Chile, I look over the past three weeks of travel in Europe trying to process all that my senses have taken in. Certain moments and places stand out, like the siege museum in St. Petersburg. Already my memories grow fuzzy. I write to Valentín. What is the music in the radio transmissions? He sends me a recording of the transmission and the popular Russian song on which the music is based. I listen. It strikes me that the ticking of a metronome and the strains of a song can affect me so strongly. Once again I am back to those tragic times. These are no longer just historical facts but real events within my generation’s lifetime.

Valentín takes us to a metro station constructed during the years of Communist rule. We descend into a work of art of marble columns, mosaics, gold carvings of Soviet designs and of workers of different trades, their faces reflecting pride and strength. Beautifully wrought chandeliers light up the spacious hall. We board a train that rattles and rumbles us to the next station. We stand awe-struck at the elegance.

These impressions are mosaic pieces that I must fit together in my mind, constructing a picture of the Russian people, their history, their culture. I have begun to read a biography of Catherine the Great. More pieces to fit into my mural.