Lumberjack Days 2009 (aka I Want A Dog That Will Do This)

Sappy, Yes

Two years ago this week I took the bar exam. I stayed in a very seedy hotel in St.Paul the evenings before the exam with the intention of having somewhere quiet to study, decompress, possibly swim. The hotel was a complete dive and a drunk guy woke me up the night before the first day of the exam by pounding on my door and yelling that he loved me.

The morning of the first day of the exam I woke up too early, as always, got ready too early, and headed to the exam too early. On my drive to downtown St.Paul I realized I did not have a watch. No way to keep track of my time in the exam. No way to gauge how anxious I needed to be at any given moment. I stopped at the CVS on Snelling, pictured above, and bought a huge and hideous men's watch as it had the clearest watch face and every hour was numbered (I knew that if I relied on fancy slashes or dots circling the watch face I would end up losing valuable milliseconds figuring out the time). The store clerk argued with me for several seconds that I surely did not want to buy a man's watch and he tried to point me in the direction of a tiny, hours-told-by-little-sparkly-things watch. I may have cussed.

I drove by that CVS tonight, coming home from a baseball game. It hadn't struck me until then that it has been two years since that awful, lonely, anxious summer. In those months, and many of the months that followed, I could not imagine what possessed me to move here. To be so far from friends and my carefully constructed life was insurmountably depressing, despite the enjoyment of living near my family again. I thought the people at my church were cold and unfriendly, I hated my job, the friends I made here seemed to be shadows of "real" relationships I'd had elsewhere. These Norwegian/Swedish/German folk are not easy people to get to know.

And now I'm home after a warm, brief trip to the ball park, peanut shell caught in my hair. My summer is full. Full of running and races, dinners, visits, coffees, games, concerts, dates, new restaurants, and lakes. And friends. Good ones.

I was anxious and terrified for so long, even after passing the bar, that Life would now be Ordinary. That the exciting decisions had already been made and now, only Mundane, Necessary, Unbeautiful decisions were left. Not long after passing the bar I started thinking of where I should take it next, where I should move, and not because I was violently unhappy, but because I could not figure out how to live in one place without the expectation of another on the horizon. I do not think I have ever in my life enjoyed or accepted where I am. I fret and fidget in a place, love it, leave it, and then ache for what is left behind.

It's just nice to have no preparation for departure. To plan for next summer. For the winter. To plan for races and new pizza joints. To grow cozy and comfortable. To pass places with memories attached to them, good and bad. To remember who I was, buying that watch two years ago, and how unhappy and unsatisfied I felt with my seemingly happenstance arrival in Minnesota. And to drive by that corner now, which probably still sells hideous watches, with peanut stuck in my teeth, sun setting over the skyline as I make my way home, and feel content.

Music-less

I usually run with my iPod shuffle firmly snapped to the collar of my shirt. The mix alternates between happy, poppy, perhaps country tunes and angry, I-will-set-myself-on-fire-before-I-give-up type stuff. Sometimes I forget that I have music, my mind wanders, I realize I've run a couple miles dreaming up recipes or organizing all the minor compartments of my life and have paid no mind to whatever song is supposed to be inspiring my pace.

Yesterday I forgot my iPod. I changed at work, per the usual routine, then found that my bag lacked the signature blue tangle of ear phone chords. I momentarily thought of driving home before heading to the lake, but decided that one afternoon alone with my thoughts wouldn't kill me. People trained for marathons before Walkmans, right? And it's only recently that earphones have been allowed on most courses. Proof, I assured myself, that humans can run without the aid of a step-synchronized, peppy beat.

I didn't have a long run planned. I'm tapering before my long run tomorrow. So yesterday the plan was a speedy (or, speedy for me) 3 miles, followed by another 3 miles at a brisk walk/jog. The first half mile sans musique was painful and slow. But after 5 minutes or so my dependence on a slightly spastic song choice faded and I grew comfortable with the sound of my own foot falls, the wind, the chatter of people I passed, the breathing of those passing me. Some of the merit of music on a run is that it helps me forget I'm running, helps me drift a bit when my thighs get tense or my neck aches. But there is a great deal of worth in the pseudo-silence of music-less running, too. I felt my body more acutely, was more conscious of the steps that landed hard, more aware of how stiff I let my shoulders become.

When I got my first car (a dear, beaten family treasure of a car, Spike, the gas-guzzling Pathfinder) and was driving it to college, my dad told me that every once in awhile I should turn the radio off, roll the windows down, and listen to the car as I drove. Listen for weird sounds, be aware of things that rattle or squeak or just sound off. I remembered that direction from Dad when I was running yesterday, listening to my footsteps, and the wind. Listening for a bad rattle, a loose wheel. I think I sounded like I was in good working order, ready for more.

My Time

My grandmother, my dad's mom (who has always been "Grandmother," not "Grandma" or "Granny" or "Mamaw"...always "Grandmother"), came to town this week. As work and running tend to take up much of the day for me, my visits with her have been mostly in the evening. Games are played, stories swapped, mild arguments on various offenses are traded, and all is settled and comfortable, the way a family should be. We sit around my parents' kitchen table, my Grandmother's coffee cup freshened, and play Chickenfoot or Take One or Scrabble or Mexican Dominoes or any game not involving cards. And as we circle the table, each player's turn approaching, my Grandmother will ask, almost rythmically, "my time?" It was never, "my turn?" or any other such phrase. My time? I've caught myself saying it, as well. Not so bizarre, really, but a slightly quirky turn of phrase I attach to my Grandmother, to our games, to her warmed coffee mug.

After church and after lunch, Grandmother and I sat in the atrium on the wicker couch (which I think is incredibly uncomfortable) and chatted. I showed her the enchilada recipe I was going to try this evening (beef and jalapenos are currently simmering on my stove top) in a valiant attempt to impress my Mexican food-loving boyfriend. I asked her if I should cover the dish with foil the whole time or remove it midway? Should I mix the cheese inside or sprinkle most on top? Do beef and spinach go together?

I will never remember her answers to these questions. This recipe could be a dud (I'm not a huge fan of Mexican anyway) and this attempt will fall away in my memory as any one of the long list of near misses and shallow victories I place on my table. But sitting on that couch, sunlight shining through to tease the clock's reflection in the mirror, my Grandmother's singsong Tennessee voice instructing me in various methods of tortilla-heating...that I will always remember.

She gave me a dish this afternoon, a milk glass serving dish etched with grapes, that belonged to my Great-Grandmother. I have few things of my grandmother's parents, two quilts made by my great-grandmother and one lone sock and some coal receipts from my great-grandfather's sock shop next door to their house in Elizabethton. While I remember them vividly, I have little in the way of trinkets to remind me of that squeaky porch swing, that terrifying coal-burning heater in the cellar, that tiny bed we all slept on as children with the orange, itchy cover, that air vent that allowed for perfect child ears to eavesdrop on parents in the kitchen. To have one more small thing (perfect, according to Grandmother, for serving a roasted cauliflower with a cheese sauce) to prove the lineage of women in my mental kitchen means a great deal to me.

It is easy to forget how lucky I am sometimes. Easy to forget that not everyone grows up with Grandmothers and Grandfathers and Mamaws and Papaws and Great Aunts and Great Uncles and Great-Grandparents and Cousins-who-knows-how-many-times-removed. And it seems silly to me that certain conversations, purposeless ones about enchiladas, and tiny trinkets are the catalysts for such reflection. But sometimes it takes small, lively moments and old, time-worn things to remind me that I am only the most recent generation in a long line of men and women who have loved God well and tried to do as well by each other.

And now it is my time.