Lamentation for Zahra

She was ten years old when the light in Zahra's soulful eyes was extinguished. This little miss of serene expression and freckled face was denied the three score and ten years that the Bible describes as "...the days of our years..."

The days of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away. King James Bible-Psalm 90:10

I believe her spirit, vibrant and pure, released in a nano-second from her newly broken body, flew straight up through the North Carolina night to the all encompassing safety and love she was denied in her Hickory, North Carolina abode. Down here on the blue planet in Caldwell County, North Carolina, USA, before flames and lies blazed forth as if ignited with a fire pot from hell, the little body that carried her through the rigors of cancer and the challenges of hearing loss was somehow cruelly torn asunder and scattered through the rural landscape.

Before the first law enforcement officer came to a stop at her at her house ( this was no home ); before the forged ransom notes and blase, insipid 911 call were spinning round the news cycle; and before Zahra's poignantly hopeful, uptilted face was featured on Nancy Grace et al; she was robbed, and make no mistake, we were robbed, a decade in, of a worthy warrior's life.

Someone, somewhere, sometime, showed this girl child kindness. There is an earnestness, a hopefulness, and a watchfulness in some of her photographs, especially the ones where someone, perhaps health care workers, seem to show concern and interest. There are resilient children in this world who cling to their vision of the future with a tenacity and certainty that defies the weight of their deprivations. Their dreams, like little burdock riders on a garment of wool, resist the hand that pulls and tears; but burdock, as dreams and even life, can be crumbled and broken down.

Zahra's eyes may have been blackened, as some have belatedly intimated, by the very hands that were meant to care for her every need; she may have been confined and even locked in her room for cruel stretches, as some have now impotently alleged, by the very hands that were meant to enliven and celebrate her presence in this world, but she had not given up. She knew she was worthy of rescue and she was waiting.

She waited as so many children do, and as so many children will, for her world to right itself, and she was grateful, as illumined by her beneficent smile, for every tender word, every welcoming gesture, and every genial touch. The furniture store manager who placed her hand on Zahra's shoulder and called her sweetheart as she eased by Zahra while the child watched cartoons on a display television may not have been just one of the last people to see her alive; she may have been Zahra's last brush with decency. She remembers, as will we all, Zahra's ineffable smile.

The threads of an adequate lifeline to save Zahra were braided tightly and in place. The thing about a lifeline is you must keep throwing it out until the victim has a secure grip. When Zahra attended the elementary school in Hudson, North Carolina, a neighbor(s), a teacher(s) or some combination of both called DSS and reported her potential abuse. According to a neighbor of the Hickory, North Carolina house where Zahra spent her last months after moving from Hudson, North Carolina, a case worker visited Mrs. Baker, Zahra's step-parent. Did DSS check to ensure that Zahra was enrolled in school, or if she was the recipient of an adequate home school curriculum? All home-schools must be registered with the North Carolina Department of Non-Public Education. Did they ask the neighbor if she had witnessed any suspicious activity? If not why not? This neighbor, as did some of Zahra's family members, had plenty to say to the press. One report has a neighbor describing Mrs. Baker's hand as injured from the force with which she allegedly hit Zahra's prosthetic leg.

Many days into the search for Zahra we learn of her Australian mother who entrusted her baby to the father and his parents while she recovered from post-partum depression. She claims to have endeavored throughout the years to recover Zahra, but was foiled by the frequent moves of her ex-husband, Mr. Baker. His parents were by many accounts loving to the girl; Zahra was allegedly devastated by the move to the United States. One cannot help but contemplate why the paternal grandparents did not simply relay Zahra's address. If the details presented in the news are factual, Zahra's mother's quest to ascertain her daughter's whereabouts was secured just three days before Mr. Baker's disturbing 911 call. Was little Zahra's fate sealed because a mom's listening ears were imminent?

The horrible fates of myriads of children around the globe are nauseatingly familiar in the daily revelations and harrowing regularity of their suffering. The injustices are not unique, but the children are. Thousands of years ago a king sent his soldiers to a dusty hamlet with orders to put all the male children two and under to the sword. As these babies and toddlers were torn from breast or crib, sleep or play, their brother in spirit was carried safely into Egypt by the young couple whose sure escape was just ahead of the wailing and crying, the lamentations and keenings of the parents in Bethlehem.

Zahra is lost to us unless we honor her memory. May her brief life and lonely end foster a hindrance to evil and a path to escape for other children for whom danger lurks, just as the babes of Bethlehem secured haven for the tiny sojourner to Egypt. In America we believe our children deserve an education. Let's begin with the abyss into which Zahra plunged once she left the watchful eyes of her Hudson teachers for what must have been lonely, debilitating days of callously imposed isolation. Zahra likely wasn't taught a tittle or an iota of the elementary subjects her peers were proffered.

I home-schooled our daughter from third through eighth grades. Each summer I outlined her curriculum for the fall, purchased the materials, and then filed the proper paperwork with the State of Maine and the local Superintendent's Office. As allowed by state statute she attended her school's music classes and programs. Every paper, every test, every essay, every quiz, every article of minutiae is filed by grade in a large sturdy box and kept in our attic. She is a Junior in college in Boston and thriving. It is my hope that when someone in any state pulls their child from school, especially after an accusation of abuse, a priority investigation be mandated for both the child's physical welfare and proof of their educational status.

We must report our concerns for children, when we have solid grounds, with the same diligence Zahra's searchers expended as they searched the rural ground scape for her remains. Perhaps Zahra will be laid to rest in Australia where she enjoyed, it seems, sunshine, play, hugs and friends. I believe there are thousands of us who have rested heads to pillows at night in these last weeks who have wished Zahra was our own little girl.

When I was Zahra's age and awoke on Sunday mornings, I heard our Dad downstairs strumming on his guitar. He was a woodsman, a tall, rugged man with big hands that were often stained with pitch or chainsaw grease. A gentle, rosy-cheeked man, he would sit there with an incongruously small pick in his mitt of a hand and play and sing country songs from the era of Hank Snow. Lately I've remembered a chorus from a Snow song penned by Cy Coban and Mel Foree.

I'm nobody's child

Nobody's child

I'm like a flower left growing wild

No mommy's kisses and no daddy's smile

Nobody wants me I'm nobody's child

We want you Zahra. We want you back with the dull ache of innocence squandered, goodness crushed, and opportunity lost.

An Autumn Musing

Zeus, a god of Greek Mythology, was father to nine daughters. The sisters were each an inspirational creative power, or Muse, for one of the fine arts. I don't know what Terpsichore, the Muse of dance, thinks about hip hop or modern dance, but if joy matters, her beatific, animating influence is apparent and on delight infused display as our daughter and her friends perform at Pine Manor College's Ellsworth Hall.



As I recently researched the names of the other sisters and the arts which they champion, I was crestfallen to not find a muse for painting or sculpture. There is a theory that the ancient Greeks deemed these pursuits common, inferior, and perhaps coarse. I'll try to remember that alleged tidbit of arcane Greek hubris the next time my husband and I take advantage of Maine's Portland Museum of Art's free Friday evenings. The Greeks of legend never breathed the bracing air of an autumn in Maine, so I excuse this lapse in Olympian judgment.



As the fervent sun hugs the horizon in the late afternoon of early October, as if the coming winter solstice would deny further close embrace, I savour the lightsome scarlets, lustrous bronzes, and burnished oranges of the mottled, but still partially clothed trees of my backyard and street. Oh, Museless painter, eyes and hands kissed of God, perhaps you are most blessed of artists; to wield the chroma of a single, veiny, light resplendent leaf from saturated brush to absorbing canvas, is creation rendered anew.



Radiant, back lit trees expose lithesome limbs, their elegant, stretching strength as pleadingly delicate as the extended arms of a prima ballerina's dying swan. The bones of the tree, as the carriage of a dancer, are framed and magnified by the rustling of their translucent, tinted garb.





The black form of a lone crow zips across a Mother Mary blue sky. The deep, solid hues of bird and firmament are surreal, almost to beautiful for eyes to abide or heart to brook. A waning, post autumnal equinox afternoon cuts a capricious swath of light and shadow across our home, the lawn, and a copse of variegated greens that ripple and sway, rise and fall, wave and flutter in an iridescent, deciduous Hallelujah.



Here in our quarter acre a languorous sun contrasts the peridot sparkle of leafy copse with the sapphire glimmered sky, alit with the waxy sheen of a child's newly opened paint box. The conifers, somber sentries, stand shadowed; these, the enduring, unchanging backstage hands to fall's sumptuous ballet, offer wafting, drifting needles in reverent and hushed humility.



In this brief season of brittle, dropping leaf, stark November seems to peer greedily from behind sun drenched cloud, as if impatient for a turn at play. Pulse and purpose are embodied in the glimmering, carnelian orange of the sugar maple. Hope is emergent, rekindled, ember-like in the flaming, gem of October orange.




Indeed the garnets and ruby reds of silver and red maple or red and scarlet oaks; the topaz and citrine of birch, elm, beech and poplar, most resemble the jewel like panes of the stained glass windows of a house of worship. The canvas of autumn's artist needs no muse. His brushstrokes are the rarefied air of renewal, rebirth and resurrection. No Muse can fully capture them, no winter's icy breath can hinder their envigorating, energizing, transcendent promise. The twinkling glory of an autumn day is that spring will surely come. Come spring.

Nursery Rhyme Redux: Sometimes a girl prefers the snakes and snails and puppy dog tails!

My mom was of the generation that kept those big brown albums with black construction paper- like pages, wherein one secured snapshots within four triangular wedges, that held a family's fleeting black and white moments in memoriam, ordered and fastened in cedar chest scented honor. My younger sister V. and I sometimes nestled down in the alcove to the left of the stairs that led to our bedroom and sorted through the copious treasures our mom had carefully cached in tissue wrap, brittle boxes, and elastic banded bundles.

Her cedar chest was of a simple design, unetched, unscrolled, uncarved, and modern, I suppose, in its honeyed tint, the color of sweetened condensed milk. As we unfolded her wedding gown to admire and stroke the fabric, I was dreamily suspended in simultaneous revery of the woman who had worn the silken confection and the unformed image of the woman I knew time must surely make me.

We liked to reread the annual Christmas lists our mother recorded in her neat, elongated script for her two daughters and tow-headed son, her middle child. Perhaps she kept these inventories, written on whatever stationery was at hand, to help with thank you notes, or perhaps it was an impulse of her grateful nature. The greeting cards and postcards were of a particular fascination to me. Sometimes in an antique store I'll see a stack of their like and be struck by the charming, unsophisticated insouciance of the art and the genuine sentiment of the verse.


The photo album and its contents excited our deepest curiosities. There was our mom, long and lean, in her rolled up jeans and crisply tucked in shirt, with our broad shouldered, apple cheeked dad. They were as elegant and handsome a couple, with their broad grins and abundant hair as that era's Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. My brother S. always seemed to have some boy prop of that decade in hand and an expression that promised more menace than Dennis. I was often photographed in a dress with a peter pan collar; my hair was braided, my bangs slightly askew, thanks to Dad the amateur barber, and I often held a doll.

My favorite photograph is of my little sister V. Her brunette hair is pixie style, but in all probability uncombed. This is the sort of bitty girl who flies down the stairs before the sleepy seeds are rubbed away, tips the cereal box over her bowl, tilts the milk in the bowl's general vicinity, ladles the sugary grains to mouth, and hurries, preferably unwashed, for the door and outside adventure. She's in a rumpled sweatshirt and jeans in this picture which perfectly encapsulates her childhood. Her feet are firmly planted on the knoll in the back of our home from whence my Mom could view us through the window over her kitchen sink. Behind her are acres of woods, then unpopulated by neighbors. Before her is a new day: there are swings to be swung, lawns to be traipsed, dirt to be dug. Look out snakes and snails and puppy dog tails - this is a girl with a plan.

That elfin child has her Masters of Library Science and with her husband D, an engineer, left the Pine Tree State for the piny woods of North Carolina some twenty years ago. She is a chic, immaculate woman, well travelled and well dressed. She gets her nails dirty in the garden, but has learned to appreciate soap and water. She loves mysteries, Walt Disney World Resort, golf, their dogs, shrimp and grits, pimento cheese, a bevy of off spring of family and friends, Charleston, S.C., and an occasional Isamax whoopie pie, traditional chocolate if you please.

I thought of my sister V. and her tomboy childhood recently when reading an interview with Angelina Jolie by Rich Cohen in the August 2010 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Although she is ostensibly promoting her new movie Salt, Jolie graciously responds to the reporter's queries regarding the recent outfits and newly and closely cropped hair of her four year old daughter, Shiloh Jolie-Pitt. The ebullient miss, whose dad is actor Brad Pitt, likes, according to her mom, " ... to dress like a boy..." "She thinks she's one of the brothers. " states Jolie with what I hope and suspect is a loving, calm, sensible forbearance.

I'm not worried about Shiloh at all. My sister, when about four, claimed she would marry our brother and live in a little camp on the crossroad near our home. My daughter in late toddler hood wouldn't keep her clothes on. I have pictures of her at my Mom's bounty laden Thanksgiving table in her panties, her nice outfit discarded somewhere between arrival and the appetizers. One of my favorite cousins used to rise early as a little pre-schooler, swathe herself in an array of finery to rival a technicolor gypsy, and saunter across the lawn for a morning chat with her elderly and very tickled neighbors.

A little girl needs to express herself. Shiloh's hats, blazers, sweaters, jackets and locks have been discussed, analyzed, and magnified by journalists, panelists, bloggers, columnists, etc. with a scrutiny that implies concern for her gender identity, but is really more speculation and latent criticism about and of her celebrity parents.

Clothes can reflect individualism, but they do not dictate, enhance, or limit self expression. Joan of Arc was probably wearing the simple garb of a French jeune fille of the country side when she suffered the vision that would guide and empower her to lead a liberating army. When she cut her hair and donned armor it was for safety reasons, yet no clothing choice could spare her from betrayal and fire. Joan's finery was unrelated to fabric; hardened soldiers and privileged nobility responded to her pure spirit, acute intellect, and obedient heart.

I don't know what little Shiloh is working out by her current preference for boy togs, but the less that is made and said about it to her... the better for her. The choices girls make in wardrobe selection as children, and that's if they have choices, do not always reflect their future sartorial splendor or lack thereof. Childhood clothing is certainly not a precursor to future education, profession, exploits or adventure, but rather a consequence of culture, faith, income, climate, and even natural resources.

Margaret Talbot in the February 2003 edition of National Geographic magazine details the expedient rescue of instruments and papers vital to the success and posterity of the Lewis and Clark expedition. As the surveyors, 300 feet distant, watched helplessly from ashore, one of their boats began to capsize. The frightened helmsman would not heed their pleas for the rescue of their supplies and written records. Their Lemhi Shosone guide, called in various texts, Sacajawea (boat pusher) or Sacagawea (bird woman), acted quickly and somehow retrieved the soggy items. Lewis extolled her " fortitude and resolution" in his journals.

If the young wife and mother held to her tribe's traditional dress, she was in a deerskin shift with wide sleeves and her feet were in tanned leather moccasins. Captured as a girl by a war party of Hidatsa, Sacajawea/Sacagawea may have adopted some of their clothing customs. She may also have supplemented her wardrobe with pieces from a trading post; she was wedded as a teenager to a trapper who was also the reluctant helmsman. Whatever she donned that fortuitous day, it was her inner core, not her outer coverings that preserved the raw materials of the Lewis and Clark journey. She could not have responded any more valorously in a wetsuit.


As parents and guardians we have an inherent right and duty to impose a code of respect and regimen of cleanliness and modesty that reflects to a degree our family values and social mores. We mine for mental fool's gold if we trust the thin armor of fabric to ensure their automatic safety and acceptance. Let your little girl wear her tutu for three days straight to nursery school, or her brother's hand me down hoodie with the hole in the pocket; braid her hair if she asks, or cut it if she pleads. Use the ribbons...toss the ribbons, use your head; toss your mental image of Mother Goose's sugar and spice and everything nice prototype. Your baby girl may not be what you expected, but she's just what you wanted...and needed. The world and it's inevitable demands and limitations will close in soon enough.


In 1960 a six year old girl named Ruby Bridges taught the citizens of New Orleans what girl power really looks like as she strode to a formerly segregated school. As interpreted by Norman Rockwell's 1964 cover illustration for Look magazine, Ruby, her hair in neat pig tails strides with preternatural grit past a wall stained with vile graffiti and the smeared remains of a spitefully flung tomato missile. Ruby, flanked by four federal marshalls in gray, brown, or beige suits, each with a yellow arm band, is spotlessly attired in white: dress, hair ribbons, socks, and sneakers. We do not see the marshalls heads; they seem purposeful and yet somehow vulnerable in their matching marches. Ruby's courage is apparent in the assailable space between her and the two men who front her and the two men who have her back. I've seen news photographs of Ruby that day in a plaid dress, but Rockwell's point is made. Ruby is what the scripture calls "good and pure and lovely".


We can not be certain what Cleopatra wore as she played in the courts of Egypt as a child. We have no clear idea of what articles of clothing were available to a small Sojourner Truth. Historians and common sense provide clues, but we remember them and other strong women of history for their backbone, vision, influence and courage, however different their destinies. Queen Cleopatra, for a while, bested Rome. Abolitionist and former slave Soujourner Truth ( her efforts are literally embodied by the young man who occupies our oval office ) bested, for a while, cruel bigotry.

Male and female, rich and poor, young and old, we can be hostages to history. Or we can raise a defiant fist on high, raise our standard, blow a bugle call, and take history, at least our personal history, hostage. Shiloh and all of our girls need our support, patience, and understanding as they wage the epic struggle for individuality. Kermit the frog bemoaned in song that it was "...not easy being green...". In the American classroom, on the American street it is not easy being female.

It is ever so much worse in a Bangkok brothel, a Darfurian refugee camp, the African Congo, or inside the walls of seemingly respectable homes and institutions in any country on planet earth. Eve and her sisters, the famous, the anonymous; the renowned, the notorious; the beloved and despised; trod the woman's walk in their era and their time. I wish for Shiloh Jolie-Pitt what I wish for my daughter, my nieces, our Russian exchange student angel, and all the girls around the globe: love, learning, faith and hope; shelter, food, clean water, and friends; compassion, grace, mercy, an education, and the safety to dream their dreams.

I've looked at clouds...

When our daughter was a baby I liked to get outside for a walk with her. It took some serious weather to keep us in the house. She was a sturdy little Mainah, but did I expose her to a driving spring rain, a sapping August humidity, a raw November wind, or a sleet slicked sidewalk? Hail no! We had plenty of books, music, toys, and by the time she was three, plenty of dog, in the benign, glossy furred Tyler, a black lab puppy she found and liberated from a yard sale in Vasselboro, Maine.

If I wanted to go downtown or down street as we often say here in the Pine Tree state, I had four street choices, all downhill. The journey back from market, post office, library, bakery, or stores with my girl child in a snuggly, baby carrier, or stroller, was better for post pregnancy toning than a gym membership. My posture and my outlook, and this may be a dysfunction or refiltering of memory, were drawn skyward in those first years of the 1990s.

Several decades earlier, Judy Collins received critical and popular esteem for her 1967 album "Wildflower". Here is a stanza from her single "Both Sides Now" written by a precocious Joni Mitchell.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's clouds illusions I recall

I really don't now clouds at all

Joni's achingly ambivalent lyrics about clouds, love and life compress keenly observed human markers such as friendship, love, and heartbreak into a compact paean to the tender gifts that are, should we be so blessed, stark humility and its companion, battered maturity. My thoughts and reflections as I gaze upward at 53 are more attuned to life's intrinsic fluidity and fluctuation than at 33 when the fresh air, sun, and a neighborly hello were a simple tonic and welcome prelude to lunch and the baby's nap.

In late October when our daughter was about six months old, I dressed her for the bracing weather, secured her in our sturdy L.L. Bean baby carrier, and executed the necessary contortions to strap her on my back. We then walked down the steep hill that would take us to the local Renys, an eclectic Maine department store. I was searching for and found eight goblets for a 35th wedding anniversary dinner we were hosting that night for my parents. The day was a fall glory: crisp breeze, a Winslow Homer light, the cotton ball cumulus clouds of a child's crayoned drawing.

The invigorating fall air was an auspicious appetizer to an evening where reality exceeded expectation. We were seven around the dining room table including our dear practice baby, our four year old niece M.. She was the porcelain complected epitome of an English rose, but exhibited the sturdy sensibilities of a "skidduh drivuh", which is how she reveled in describing her father. The eighth diner was buzzing the floorway in a newly acquired walker. My sister, the youngest of three , called from North Carolina to join and complete our celebration.

Just as a figure in a museum's bas-relief sculpture projects slightly outward and focuses your gaze, I remember the sky that day and many other days, as a benevolent witness and cogent factor to my sense of well-being. There was no prosaic notion that fair weather boded good days or that inclement weather determined bad days. The sky's conditions, calm or storm, were a soothing counterpoint and companion to my days, just as I am comforted both by the steady tick tock and the shrill cuckoo of the beautiful German time piece on our dining room wall.

I kept journals in those days ostensibly for her to read for details of her infancy and childhood. Although she can one day peruse the gamut from animals, apple picking, and aunties to zodiacs, zoos and zwiebacks, what she may truly glean is an unstinting, uncensored, unabashed glimpse into the hopeful heart of a young mother who thinks if she tries hard enough she can make the world, her corner of it, safer for a beloved daughter.

I still revel in the beauty and changeability of a Maine day, but as I sip my morning coffee my thoughts will turn to Boston, Massachusetts. Did she take an umbrella? Will the D line get her to Chestnut Hill on time? It's so hot..it's so cold. And then there are the larger issues. She's working late...she has evening dance rehearsal; let the bus, let the shuttle be on time, Lord. I can't see her portion of the sky, but her neighborhood's weather report is programmed like a talisman, into my computer.

We were ten years married and in our early thirties when we became parents. Certainly we had known loss: the deaths of a father and three out of five grandparents; a jolting move, a faded friendship or faltering finances were personal to us, but certainly familiar human burdens. Hope, which we carried causally then, as one would an old sweater, unremarkable until you misplace it, must have texture and layers, rather like the soil in my shade garden. The dirt seems so rich as it's overturned, but becomes clay like, and then gives ways to an intricate web of roots. Over the years of trial and error the sturdy survivors are monkshood, bachelor buttons, peonies, bleeding hearts, thistle, day lilies, and hosta.

We have known times when our plans and dreams took root with the determined turning of the topsoil of our efforts. The stubborn, gray clay days taught us patience, perseverance and perspective. When we couldn't snip, cut, or hack through the twisted roots, we broke and crumbled the sod of our need and pressed down through and around. Hope has muscle.

To paraphrase scripture, the substance of what we hope for and the evidence of what is unseen is faith. Simply stated, clouds then as now give me hope...and build my faith...which always fosters love. I know that planes fly into buildings on perfect September mornings when the sky is an ironed blue sheet; but I know that heroes rise in an intake of breath. I know an angel can drop from the sky in the form of an endearing Russian exchange student. She can arrive on a dreary April day when the pieces of your heart are as scattered as a tossed puzzle, and fly away home on a clear June morning with your heart fitted tightly back together; even as she takes a portion, across an ocean and distant borders, forever with her.

How is that possible? It's good to make peace early with a formidable truth young Joni grasped and captured in verse.

"But something's lost but

something's gained in living

everyday

The thin sweater is lost to the moths of time: experiences both hurtful or fruitful or one in the same. I wear my hope now...clasped and fastened, the dented armor of a life's soldier who has survived, and learned that struggle winnows, and what we glean feeds us. Joni's refrain as she reflects in vivid word pictures on clouds, love, and life is that she doesn't really know them-clouds, love and life-at all.

I give full honor and respect to her artistic genius. My truth is different. The deeply rooted survivors in my garden of the last twenty years are the hardy species that were planted, watered and weeded from my earliest days: family, loyalty, friendship, grit, circumspection, work, empathy, faith, and always...always this...protect the children. Weeding is dirty work. A frost or winter kill will sometimes mock your efforts. My life garden is smaller, but truer in the clarity of its variegated hues. I can rest awhile in quiet and hear the birdsong...under the cleansing, expansive, forgiving sky.

Fiddleheadin'

On or around the spring weekend nearest my Mother's April 27th birthday we drive the sixty plus miles to the home of my youth in rural Somerset County Maine for the express purpose of picking the vitamin packed, river fed, curly topped fiddlehead. There are, of course, other earlier harbingers of a Maine spring: the first tissue delicate crocus; the infamous creeping sludge of our fifth and unheralded season...mud season; and the gorged, greedy, Maine Street swallowing rivers.

For me, more important than switching jeans for capris, Bean boots for sandals, and my wool coat ( the seeming weight of a small bear cub) for a light trench, is providing my parents with their first plate of butter dabbed, vinegar doused fiddleheads. Fiddleheads thrive along the banks of rivers, streams and brooks. There must be some super fortified growth inducing agent in the waters of the Carrabassett, a tributary of the mighty Kennebec, because this humble ostrich fern grows in clusters of profuse abandon on the patch of river bank near my Mom's and Dad's home.

In years past Mom and Dad accompanied us as we carefully crossed the busy North New Portland Road ( a thoroughfare to Maine's renowned Sugarloaf area ) that separates their property from that of the good neighbors who let us traverse their access path to the river. We never know when the dynamics of a treasured tradition will be altered. Our daughter and her friends, along with two pent up black lab mixes, were once fellow foragers. A "green" girl from the womb, she pointed out vernal ponds, exclaimed over mushrooms, hoped for a glimpse of toads, snakes, or turtles, and teetered way to close to the beaver bog.

We would take plastic grocery bags to hold our dietary treasures; we picked enough for that evening's meal, some to blanch and freeze, and some to take home and share with friends. I associate fiddleheads with sunshine, although we must have weathered cold and showers at times. There was always the pause by the twin trout ponds, a stick or two thrown for the dogs to swim and retrieve. Sneakers would be tossed and toes aired and watered in the river when the current was slow and the water low. We smelled of sunscreen and Avon's Skin-So-Soft, a passable bug repellent. My Dad quizzed his grand-daughter's knowledge of tree varieties; my Mom taught her the names of wildflowers.

We live entwined with the seasons in Maine. Our activities, our gastronomical sustenance are influenced by the earth's rotation. I will reach for that perfect apple in autumn, but the baby once riding on my left hip is now in college. We will savour the carrots, squash, potatoes, and pumpkin pie, bounty of Mom's and Dad's own garden, but the huge plot of my childhood is replaced by the tiny patch that suits their diminished strength, but undimmed enthusiasm. We will make a summer shortcake of scarlet berries once plucked from a Dresden, Maine farm, but the little berry plucker with the Josephina doll is working in Boston this summer, a trip to a fruit stand or farmer's market will suffice.

For me the humble fiddlehead represents majesty; the grandeur of Maine, the character of my family as a unit and as individuals, the blessedness of life and the desires to live it well, and to adjust to life's seasons as well as New England's seasons. My Dad uses a walker now. My Mom cannot safely navigate the terrain to the river. We were accompanied by a neighbor boy, T.P., who could not be closer to them than if he were a grandson. It was a joy to hear about his class trip to Washington D.C. and to discover he likes to write. I don't know who will make the trek to the clean waters of the Carrabassett with us next year, if God willing we are able bodied, but as long as we have my parents and they have a yen for fiddleheads... the river calls.

My Cup Runneth Over

I was perusing the March 2010 issue of my AARP Bulletin (I'm a self-described young 53; I can remember when I'd scan this periodical at my parents' home), when I was intrigued by the caption 50 Movie Zingers, a grouping author Betsy Towner describes as "...great quotes from the silver screen...". Her source is the American Film Institute.

My first impulse was to check for the familiar. Number 4 was "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." The visual impact of the shift from gray Kansas farm scape to technicolor Oz village was unknown to me circa 1963-64 because in my early elementary school years we owned a black and white set. Dorothy's guileless wonderment as conveyed by the inestimable Judy Garland were the only spurs my imagination needed. Those fifteen syllables take me back to the smells of buttery popcorn tossed in a paper bag and the chocolate/peanut butter/oatmeal confections called no-bake cookies that my mother offered up on many a Sunday night as we lay on our tummies, chin in hands, on the floor of our sparse but tidily kept living room.

As I studied the list closely most of the quotes were from movies I've seen, or, as in the case of Network, a 1976 offering listed at number 19, feel I should see. This compact, necessarily subjective, hardly comprehensive list of lines from cinema images evoked kaleidoscopic memories and musings. "Love means never having to say you're sorry." transports me back to my early teens and the company of my best friend Bonnie. It was 1971 or later because we viewed Love Story on her Aunt's television during one of our regular sleepovers. The film, number 13 on the survey came out in 1970.

We wore our hair long, straight, and parted down the middle much like Ali MacGraw the iconic, chic actress who played stoic Jenny. I remember that even as we cried for Jenny and Oliver, a part of my brain, or perhaps more accurately, the heart of me, rejected her sentiment as somehow contrary to the best of what was taught me by pure example. This August my husband and I will mark thirty years of marriage;love means we've both offered scads of sorrys.

Although the titles listed are facile memory prompters, one of my favorite movies, and the line whispered by winsome,willowy Peggy Ann Garner is not included. Miss Garner was about thirteen years old, an actress since the age of six. As Francie, a poor child growing up with her brother Neely in a Brooklyn tenement dwelling and its neighborhood's streets, she shared the screen in 1945 with some of Hollywood's finest character actors. The movie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, based on Betty Smith's sweeping novel of the early 1900s, was the directorial debut of the gifted, prolific, and controversial Elia Kazan.

"My cup runneth over." Francie utters this near prayer to her father, Johnny Nolan, a courtly, loquacious Irishman whose support of his family as a singing waiter is rendered inefficacious by a tendency to tipple. Francie forgives him this trait. He is a fond, keenly intuitive father, an intent recipient of his children's queries, comments, and often pithy observations. Mr. Nolan, as played by the convincingly misty-eyed James Dunn, is a man both achingly alive and yet fading away. His hopes for his wife's encompassing love fade over several scenes as her care-worn face fights for patience to trump cynicism as he weaves his" someday our ship will come in" fantasies.

Austere Katie, as rendered by Dorothy McGuire is protective of him; respectful toward him; and even intimate with him; but her trust in him is as faded as his one suit that she so carefully cleans, brushes and steams before the rare paid engagement. Gregarious Johnny is deeply kind. Children trust him. Women bloom at the tip of his hat. Men want to share a pint and a laugh. Johnny is never so tall as when he cheers a sickly neighbor girl as he climbs the stairs to their spartan but somehow homey walk-up.

In several scenes his industrious wife is kneeling on these stairs, young back bent, hands in soapy, gritty, cold water, scrubbing her way to the top landing. The implication: she helps secure the rent of their abode, or the reduction thereof, with the likely pittance she earns with her extra labor. Katie doesn't resent hard work, but she wants in Johnny a partner, not a daydreamer. She struggles to enjoy her earnest children,but she is tired and even a little afraid, as evidenced by her careful hoarding of the money for their funeral insurances. When Katie instructs the children on how to stretch the family's coins as they pursue the Saturday errands to the butcher and baker her tone is strict but sweetly plaintive. McGuire conveys Katie's deep maternal love with a wan smile, a proud glance, a hesitant gesture; yet the children, especially Francie... miss her silent evidences of the same parental love Johnny bestows effortlessly with his effusive brogue.

Johnny feeds Francie's growing soul; Katie feeds her growing body. Therein lies the tension just behind Francie's wary expressions, quiet movements, and stiff posture. Francie is preternaturally officious as a stalwart mother's helper. She is a tender nurse, faithful steward, and eager cohort when her father returns tired or worse, drunk, from a singing engagement.

Francie tries to smooth the surfaces, sweep the corners, and fill the silences of her parents' strained relationship. From where is this strength powered? From whence does it flow? Her elixir is in the form of a library card. Her potion is poured from pen to paper. The dutiful daughter of a man whose dreams are will'- o- the- wisps, and a woman whose dreams are as stale as the family's discounted bread, is a curious student and nascent writer. Her dream, newly born on a Sunday walk to a pleasant neighborhood where trees line the street, flowers adorn the yards, and birdsong twitters peaceably, is to attend the grand school upon which her longing eyes rest.

Francie's rich imagination is sharply condemned by her classroom teacher. She is to answer the question at hand without detail or wonderment. When Francie admits sadly, upon her mother's admonition to study, that she is tired of school, Katie doesn't react; she is absorbed in a chore. Johnny perceives the peril to Francie's spirit, her core; his reaction is the invitation to the stroll that leads them to a cross road in Francie's young life.

As Johnny notes the hope that refreshes Francie's face in the admission of her dream, he schemes a worthy act of civil disobedience that shows his true quality as a man and his worthiness of Francie's lavish trust. The pair turn their excited attentions to the charming,closely set homes that border the sidewalk just across from the school. Francie revels in the time honored game of choosing a favorite. As they indulge in the merry language of fantasy, Johnny forms the plan that will insure a quality education for his serious little girl.

He will appropriate the address from the house Francie admires most, invent a fictional aunt and uncle, concoct a plausible scenario for Francie's transfer, and submit the proper paperwork to both schools. He assures Francie the contrivance will succeed. She asks him to bend down. He does. "My cup runneth over," she solemnly avers in the softest, most genuine, murmur of gratitude I've ever witnessed on film. Yes, his act is a small deceit; yes, he broke municipal rules, not to mention one of the ten commandments, but his decision to help his daughter is one of the great acts of parental love displayed on the silver screen.

Children want what we all want: to be heard. Francie's future holds an irreplaceable loss. She can not ken in the shared moment of supreme grace with the father in whom she has placed unflinching faith, the schism that wrenching void will rend in her tenuous communications with her grave, distracted mother. Her pure, spontaneous, tenderly breathed words of gratitude are rare in film or perhaps in life. She is a girl. Then in a celluloid second she is a young woman.

Johnny Nolan dotes on his son and daughter, but he adores Katie, the wife of his youth, as if she were still an enchanted newlywed and not a worried tenement trapped wife. Johnny talks effervescently, but he listens effectively. In securing Francie's future with the gift of a fine school and a devoted teacher, he unwittingly secured a new and empathic bond between mother and daughter. Where there is thankfulness, judgement diminishes.

It is Francie who attends to her widowed mother's child bed. In the barely lit apartment, as rain pours in streams down the unadorned windows, shadows flicker and fade, as Francie meets her mother's every request ...patiently, kindly...and with forgiveness as Katie gives vocal birth to her repressed affections even as she gives physical birth to little Annie Laurie.

The new baby, named for a plaintive Irish tune, one which Johnny sang to his children, is a blanket wrapped harbinger of a new start for the family. A staid beat cop, an observant gentleman who has admired the tenacious Nolans, offers the two older children his friendship, the baby his name, and widowed Katie the security that eluded her with Johnny. She accepts widower Officer McShane's proposal not only because he is as she states "...a good man...", but because Francie's demeanor of gratitude has helped her to recall what she once knew and championed; her Johnny, her bonny Irish lad, was a good man too.

Francie and Neeley grasp that they will soon enjoy a better home, better food, and better clothes, but they are decidedly unimpressed. The pensive siblings recall the good times they've enjoyed, especially in their dutifully earned Saturday freedoms. Neeley doubts poor, privileged Annie Laurie will experience such freedom. Francie is serene, content to look behind, content to look ahead. The power generated when a father gave unreservedly what he could offer, when he was unreservedly asked to give, has produced a cache of strength and promise from which Francie can go forth, unfettered by grief or misunderstanding, to pursue with her mother's grit her father's love of story.

From Ballet Tulles to Hip Hop Rules...and Why I Owe Eminem a Big Thank You

Here's a simple and yet challenging thought: if something is of interest to your child, it should be of interest to you. Take salamanders, for instance. I lived thirty-nine years on this big blue ball without touching a one of these squirmy, moisty, stream-lined, amphibians. One day when our daughter was around five she paused near a rivulet that ran parallel to a walking trail near a local college campus. She stooped to gently overturn several rocks,stood erect with outstretched arm, and proffered the muddy little squirmer. There was no question how to respond. We complimented her on her keen eyesight, her awareness of habitat, her careful treatment of the critter; then we told her to put it and the rocks back in place. When she asked us to pet it, we complied. When she asked to bring it home, we denied. Simple. Leave the creature to his habitat.



About seven years later our daughter was still charmed by the outdoors and wild-life. We celebrated one of her birthdays at the Maine Wild Life Preserve in Gray, Maine. Although she was a good student with interests in drawing, piano and writing; it was apparent a fascination with a different form of wild life was on the horizon. His name, or one of them, was Eminem.



We love kids; we have a particular empathy for girls. When she asked to go to Wal-Mart-because there, she assured us, we could find an edited CD, we were concerned. What was edited? What was his attitude toward women? She'd described him as a rapper, a protege of a Dr. Dre, whose stamp of approval was to her mind a positive. I thought we had limited the MTV and VH1; television and computer time were restricted and monitored, somewhat for content, but mostly because kids need fresh air and activity.



We faced a challenge. How we spoke to one another and to our daughter was important to us. We were not innocent of a swear word here or there. Certainly they were in our cerebrums;albeit restrained by social mores and moral choice. My parents and my husband's mother were careful in their speech as we were reared. My Mom, if Dad, a woodcutter, was errant, would warn him sternly to keep his "language" in the woodlot "...where it belonged!"



We decided to trust her. We began to ask questions. Eminem, we were assured, was a loving father of a little girl. She deemed him a talented writer. I began to focus in when she and her friends turned up the radio in the car, when his video played, or she was playing her CD in her bedroom. I was impressed by the first song of his I heard, "Lose Yourself". The character in the song admits to severe nerves as he readies for a rap contest. He desires to make a better life for his daughter. He feels trapped in what he describes as a Salem's Lot. Eminem rendered rhyme the way he made heavy/spaghetti;reality/gravity;cypher/piper poetry by placement in the lyrics or simply the beat and rhythm of his rendition. I saw imaginative cultural references. He was something I much admire, a good writer.



She pinned his posters up in her room. There he was with pictures of horses, clippings of Angelina Jolie and a portrait of our Lord Jesus. I rather liked that. Her behavior was good; her schoolwork was exceptional. We had misgivings, but decided to allay them. Then came the newspaper ad that led our daughter dance step to dance step; teacher to teacher; performance to performance; from the cobble-stoned streets of our river city to the cobble-stoned streets of her beloved Boston.



Hip Hop Classes were to be offered in an old opera house, Johnson Hall, a cultural center in our downtown. The two teachers of R & B Dance were graduates of our fine University of Maine system. We signed her and a neighborhood friend up. We look back on that decision as pivotal, a blessing out poured and outpouring. "R" and "B" were gregarious, creative, joyous young women, both the epitome of elan. Our daughter progressed from that basic introduction to hip hop to technique, tap, ballet, modern and a spot in the company. Her years with "R" and "B" were a healthy counterpoint to academics. We were impressed that her civic minded teachers found numerous service and cultural avenues to integrate their young charges into the life of our community.



"R" and "B" got her up on her toes...en pointe and in tulle for a performance to Johnny Cash's version of John Lennon's "In My Life ". As she danced a solo, the backdrop was a photo montage of us, grandparents, cousins, best friend and boy friend. She graduated High School that evening. She turned eighteen the next day. As I watched my daughter interpret the haunting choreography "R" and "B" created as a surprise for us, and as a salute to their first Senior, my gratitude to her teachers, immense as it was, could not yet cover the scope the gift of their training would soon encompass.



We cherished a fleeting summer with her before the early, warm September day we toted her belongings to the woodsy, gracious grounds of Pine Manor College, a women's school, situated in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. She desired a close proximity to Boston. Check. She wanted diversity. Check. She wanted a communications program. Check. And she wanted to minor in dance. Big Check. Her body, mind, spirit and soul were imbued with the muse of dance. Although she found the discipline late, comparatively, for a dancer; it was as ingrained as her love of Bailey Island, Friendly's chicken salad with mustard dressing, or her cat Scout. Dance was a definer in her young life.



In February we filled our van with family and friends for an evening ride to her campus for a
Pine Manor College Dance Ensemble presentation of "Dare To Be " With the guidance of their dance director, a tiny, physically taut terpsichorean, the young women presented both modern and hip hop styles featuring members of two groups within the ensemble: Satin and Silk and Ribbon and Lace. Most of the dances featured student choreography.



It was as lovely to watch our daughter in a milieu of supportive friends( dancers and audience were enthusiastically engaged), as it was to observe her progress since last year. Somehow, I feel hopeful and invigorated when I leave that college. There is plentiful beauty in the radiance of confident young women in creative bloom.



There's something ethereal in ballet tulles, but I can see that for my little girl...hip hop rules. The time spent in the dance studio sharpens and complements the time she spends in her various writing disciplines. I can only thank you Eminem, man with a Daddy's heart.

Blogging 101 i.e. Niece tutors Aunt

My niece Julie,25, is here for a visit today. This is precious time because she works full-time at a bank, is married, and keeps an active schedule. She is one of the most joyful creatures I've ever known. I don't mean that she is a Pollyanna (though I loved the film), or that she views the world through rose-colored (albeit stylish glasses), but that she is ever hopeful.

She is on vacation,but saved a day to help her aunt create a blog. She has been v-e-r-y patient. We have had company. Our border collie mix,Sprite, and a slightly cross-eyed kitty named Luca have been hovering about as we try to work comfortably from the carpet.

We had a great lunch at the A1 Diner. This establishment has been well-reviewed over the years. There is so much history and even a book about this local treasure. We both had the macaroni and cheese. So simple,so classic,so good. Julie is a vegetarian and I am trying. She is diligent. I miss bacon and hot dogs. The Quorn brand of meat substitute helps me not miss chicken. The Boca burgers help me not miss red meat.

Today is glorious weather. I'm glad mostly for my daughter Alex who has endured some nasty wind, rain, and snow squalls in Boston of late. As a student she often rides the T; just as often she walks. One day she came home to little black freckles all over her pretty face. Her mascara couldn't hold up to the assault of a squall as she hurried from campus to a Tstop. Julie has to go. She's helped me make a beginning. I'm so eager to share my lovely state of Maine with you and my state of mind. My husband, who is a teacher(read-hero) is painting today. Many teachers have a second job. So, I'll walk my moody little Katrina survivor dog and figure out a supper plan that doesn't involve another trip to my second home, the local grocery.

Goodbye for today from my river town.

PS... Julie's link is celina-mycrazylife.blogspot.com

Friends on a Plane

My pastor recently returned from a trip to Israel; my friend Mary flies to Haiti in a couple of days. I can safely tell you that neither one supposed at new year's dawning that a journey was in the offing.

In early February Pastor Ted was delighted to accept an abrupt vacancy on a scheduled tour of the Holy Land. The congregation was pleased. My husband and I, and probably many others, were anticipating how he would thread the impressions of his pilgrimage through his sermons. I asked him to take special note of the Sea of Galilee,because were I to be magically transported to Israel, and told to choose one site; there I would stand, walk and ponder, wade and reflect, on the Jesus of the gospels.

About two days into Pastor Ted's itinerary he felt unwell. As the others visited Cana where Jesus turned water into wine, Pastor Ted opted to rest on the bus. As he worsened he asked for and received immediate medical attention. He was taken to an excellent hospital where the doctors diagnosed and treated heart attack. He was swaddled safely in the cocoon of what turns out to be an extraordinary health care system. He may have been safer than if he were alone in his study or walking the local rail trail. His friend and tour guide called pastor Ted's refurbished heart another miracle at Cana.

Last summer Mary enjoyed her first camping experience. This is another blog worthy entry for sure, but she coped beautifully. The memories of that week-end at Baxter State Park are why I'm confident she can endure the potential discomforts of her week in Haiti. She is the second nurse I'm aware of in this city of 6000 plus who has volunteered to help alleviate the physical sufferings of the earthquake survivors. Mary is responsible for her own airline ticket, her meals, her passport, her inoculations, etc. Our church members, her friends, and family have donated money, cash, checks, and medical supplies. People seem so relieved to have a direct way to help.

Her feet will be on Dominican Republic soil by Sunday night. Her hands will be soothing ailing Haitians by Monday afternoon. She would demure, but I am humbled by her courage. I would want to go with my husband, my daughter, a friend or all three. I know there are thousands of sojourners like Mary; they will deliver the prayers, gifts, and money of thousands of families and friends; countless thousands of kindnesses have and will be extended. If Haiti were a lame man, and simple human empathy and immediate response were a cure...Haiti would get up, no leap up...and walk. God bless you, Haiti.

I've been thinking that somehow Pastor Ted and Mary are like prisms. As white light enters and exits a prism it disperses into the colors of the rainbow which bend or refract depending upon the speed at which they travel through glass. Red bends the least. Violet bends the most. My friends regarded, reviewed, and respected the white lights in their lives: spouses, children, parents, siblings, mentors and colleagues. I know they prayed. They each chose a violet path, bent by touching anticipation and tender trust, away and afar from the comfort of established routines.

The moment Mary's daughter made her farewells this morning was so pure I had to look away. Sometimes true courage is in staying home. The color blue is nestled up against violet, not as bent, but close. The blue path is the path of those who wait for a loved one's safe return. That is a well-worn path for the dear, devastated Haitians and a historic truth in the often tumultuous middle east. Thank you, Pastor Ted and Mary...friends on a plane.

Mary traveled to Haiti under the auspices of the

Good Samaritan Mission Council at their base in La Romana, Domincan Republic.