1. How to paddle a canoe

She has fled and arrives home in a mess. Barely getting through the school year, she’s flunked two courses, one due to her failure to get to a class where attendance is apparently a large part of the grade, just showing up with a seating chart, etc., and Serena is not there to be ticked off on a grid.

It is the summer again. One year of college is behind her and her parents are living in a new house in Minneapolis amid the Pillsbury mansions.  Princeton, NJ to Minneapolis, it made some sort of sense at the time.

Mom is digging out a new vegetable garden in the fenced in backyard.  She’s very diligent with her spade, her watering, her tending.

And Caroline, the girlfriend Serena has been with all year at school and she have agreed to end their relationship with the school year.  It makes some sort of sense.

They are going to be 1,371 miles apart for the summer; this will give them ample time to think, to re-evaluate. She admires the word ample and finds it funny to think of her life this way only now and then it sort of hurts.

She believes it not to have been her idea but she has come around to it.

But very soon she begins to receive lengthy lovesick, heartbroken letters, which sometimes arrive daily, sometimes more than one in a day.  She dreads the trudging step of the approaching mailman at the door.  Then the phone calls.  Mom hands her the phone with a look.  She takes it weakly, dumbly.  Numb.

The weather is good so far, the backyard crops are well watered.  The sun has been blazing by day and the air has been cool by night.  This will serve the tomatoes well her mother says, this is weather they could not depend on getting back in New Jersey.  She also says she is making the adjustment very well now to Minneapolis living and has found some happiness in this little community of mansions and more modest homes like theirs tucked in between the enormous neighboring homes.

Things are definitely looking up all around.  Serena is in appearances dating again, a guy her parents have steered her in the direction of in the neighborhood; he lives around the corner from their little house, in his mansion on Lake Harriet.  Coming home after midnight stoned facing her dad seems another dead end for her summer though her mother has registered some relief in it: She feels fraudulent, unsure.

And the letters and cards keep coming.

She has been working on trying to figure some things out about herself this year but hasn’t made been making much headway.

She is deciding something, but enough, she’s had it with mom’s glare, dad’s cluelessness, but it’s summer what’s the hurry.  It’s a moment in time she thinks and this is so much better than high school, well isn’t it?  That was some other kind of nightmare that just wends on and on and yet seems so clean and classy on the surface.  This is a different thing she has had some hand in and has made no sense of.

This is making her uncomfortable though.  She can’t just be at home now and be pelted by these outside forces.  She makes plans to go elsewhere.  She knows that dad knows someone who knows someone at a summer camp.  That might be the way to go.  He says, honey you’ll be with seven year olds, there’s an opening, and they need a canoe instructor, can you do that?  He looks so dubious.

She applies for the camp counselor job in northern Wisconsin and waits to hear.

She says she can teach canoeing.

At the interview she says she’s been doing a lot of boating during the school year on the lakes and streams there though she’s never even sat in a canoe that she can recall.  She’s boning up, on the J stroke, on the T stroke, as much as is possible from books.  Oh it is possible..

She makes sure to remind Caroline before departing that they aren’t supposed to be in contact let alone in love and leaves no word of her new address and plans and certainly no phone number.  There will be no more worrying about the mailman; if there is mail for her, she is not going to be there to receive it.

And she waits for a letter or a phone call from the camp.  And whiles away the time with her headphones on and the music that only she seems to like.  Well, Adam doesn’t have an hear for it.  Shakes his head and takes another deep toke, coughs and sputters.  He has been supportive.  Nothing worries him.  And she knows he won’t be writing her.

There was the night he wanted her to do something more and she is so unsure.

She packs her Boy Scout duffle bag all khaki and a camp relic from her own days of such activity and loads up the family’s second car, which is hers during the school year and she’ll need to borrow it now from Mom.  The car is a risk on the road but she believes it will make the trip just east of Duluth, into Wisconsin.  She seeks out her favorite camp clothes as well but is not able to find her favorite camp shirt which would surely be too small at this point but she remembers it well, the feel of it in her fingers, a collared, white terry cloth shirt, open at the neck.  It just said camping.  She kisses everyone goodbye.  She is really going.  She has got to go now.  She has to go because she can’t take the fact that everything is so out in the open or will be soon enough.   .

Serena pulls into a new setting and finds the camp to be pristine, beautiful, remote.  In addition to her canoeing duties she is be co-counselor to what turn out to be ten homesick seven year old boys.  The rain is assailing the tin roof noisily.  It’s all new .  She listens as she meets her co-counselor and puts away her clothes in makeshift birch bark drawers.

Later they all tearily write letters home to their parents.  She has tears too, she is surprised.  Homesickness is nothing she remembers from her camp days.  Missing her home and family, not in this lifetime.

Her co-counselor is Sharon.  Sharon is a Midwesterner and she is very soft and kind and is also very large.  Her kindness is very large.  The boys do love her.  The boys tell her about the one day they conspire and steal her overalls while she’s out swimming.  Two of them can fit in one of her pant legs, which they demonstrate with lots of laughing.  She comes in and scolds them and can’t help laughing a little herself.  A little laugh escapes into the air.  Yes, she knows that isn’t right either as she enters their cabin and she knows that so well.  This visual stays with her for a very long time.  Who could know how long such a memory can last and how long the boys’ memories will hold it.

It’s all a great downshifting, she has to find a way here and she is drawn to things she shouldn’t be perhaps.  This great naïveté she finds in her co-counselor she finds so charming and sweet.  She does find it so.

She begins to get a glimmer about her.

And there is so much rain at a camp.  And the mud stacks up like an awful dream.  And it sucks you in and seems to have a pull all its own if it could be so.

She dives well in, into the activities, her canoeing lessons, and the other things she find she has to do, and soon has the experience she needs that she says she always had.  She tests the older kids down at the waterfront for their badges.  Somehow she is finds she is doing this Red Cross testing and she wonders about it.  She is testing them for things she cannot do easily herself.  She is learning.

She and her co-counselor start begin to get to know one another better and many remark that they seem to make a great team, a memorable pair; the senior counselors are happy and the camp owner has made a good choice, he seems relieved and that will be good for dad to hear.  All is noted with some pleasure and she fears it, she has to wonder about it.

And they take the kids out in wooden canoes and take bring them into places she has not been before.  She watches the weather but she doesn’t really know and she has to keep making it up for the most part but she guesses that is okay, it is going to have to be okay.

Everyday is so bright.  Even in all the rain there is that brightness.
It’s all right to find it here.  She has made a brilliant escape she thinks.

But one night when they are off duty on the same night the two of them drive into town with Serena at the wheel to the local watering hole and start to talk like they haven’t been able to before, talk about things they have only hinted at before.

Sharon loves her car.  It’s a small, two door that burns too much oil but it’s right there, they can get into town so easily, sit back and be free.  They can really talk now.  She leans back against the dark seats.

She tells her a story about her life back home and a girl back home.  She remembers the taxidermied animal heads on the walls bearing some sort of awful witness as they step outside to smoke a joint.

With one toke, one deep inhale, Serena realizes so much.  Her breathing for one.  Her stomach is tight.  She hasn’t been noticing much about her body.  Her shoulders are stiff and are up almost to her ears, down down they go.  She pushes them.   Down and excuses herself.

Truth serum.  Sometimes this stuff does that to you.

In the ladies room, she throws water in her face.  Drinking beer isn’t clearing her view any either.  She stares at this blurry person this blur of a person in the mirror.  This seriously tan face from endless days canoeing looks back at her.  Who? me?

And slides back into their booth back at their table.  She begins pushing Sharon every which way, to try to open up about her best friend back home, this girlfriend who seems much more than a friend.

Could it be they are going through some of the same things?  Could that be the truth of it?

She speaks haltingly.  These words should skid to a halt.

But she pushes on.  Uncharted territory and isn’t this fun getting to know everyone so much better.

She talks about the letters she has left behind.  And about that Thanksgiving in her sophomore year she and her girlfriend stayed on campus and she got her hair cut very short in Ithaca.  And yes, it is so obvious.  And

And Caroline accused her of using her for experience.  Because she didn’t love her.  She loved someone else.  It’s all so awkward and is love always such a mess of a thing.

Her co-counselor knows even less than she knows.  She is just learning or never knew, or never wanted to, or something.  Serena prods her still.

And of course this isn’t quite fair.  It might be a mistake to proceed.

She tells her a few more things about herself.  Choice cuts.  Carefully chosen perhaps, edited, cleaned up.

It all makes no sense. But is good for a laugh in retrospect.

It’s just one night and the rain has stopped when they return that night and relieve the counselor who took her turn watching over them and she has done her job well, the boys are peacefully sleeping in the cabin who is watching them they are off on an overnight with another cabin I don’t forget, I don’t forget.

She guesses she crosses some kind of line that night.  There is no way back. She knows it.  And something changes, a charge to the air that is not formerly there.

She may have to leave before the next camp session starts; she figures the kids won’t miss her. But what she really knows is that they will.

Their little lives will not be the same and there will be a scar.  Still she begins to think about packing.  She hasn’t been here long.  But it has left a mark.

Back in Minneapolis, Mom’s garden is running riot.  She takes to walking out there with her every day.  They have to keep up with all the zucchinis and summer squash and peppers and all the tomatoes.  The sun is bearing down.  Soon there will be school.  She’ll be slightly tan still.  That will be different.

Everybody Knows

It was the summer my parents were living in a new house in Minneapolis. Mom had dug out a vegetable garden in a sunny part of the yard that she was diligent in tending.

I had fled school and arrived home in a mess. Barely getting through the school year, I’d flunked two courses, one due to my failure to get to a class where attendance was apparently a large part of the grade, just showing up with a seating chart, etc. and I wasn’t there to be ticked off on that grid.

My girlfriend Caroline and I had agreed to end our relationship with the school year. We were going to be 1,371 miles apart for the summer; this would give us time to think, to reflect. I believe it was her idea but I’d come around to it. Soon I began to receive lengthy lovesick, heartbroken missives, sometimes daily. I grew to dread the trudging step of the approaching mailman. Then came the phone calls. Mom would hand me the phone without speaking.

I’d started seeing this guy my parents had steered me in the direction of in the neighborhood; we had seen something of each other in December when I was there for the holidays. He lived around the corner from our modest house, in his huge house on Lake Harriet where he lived in his family’s former bomb shelter. His primary activity was getting high and getting me high. Coming home after midnight stoned facing my dad seemed another dead end for my summer though Mom had registered some relief in it: I felt like a complete fraud.

I decided I had to leave and applied for a camp counselor job in northern Wisconsin, 2 1/2 hours away. I heard myself saying I could teach canoeing though I’d never even sat in one that I could recall. I boned up on the J-stroke as much as is possible from books. I made sure to remind Caroline before departing that we weren’t supposed to be in contact and left no word of my new address and plans and certainly no phone number. There would be no more worrying about the mailman; if there was mail for me, I wasn’t going to be there to receive it.

I found the camp to be pristine, beautiful, thickly wooded, remote. In addition to my canoeing duties I was co-counselor to 5 homesick six year old boys. The rain pelted the tin roof in our cabin as we tearily wiled away the time writing letters to our parents. My tears were as real as theirs.

I felt they were far too young to be there at sleepaway camp and wondered how their parents had been able to drop them off and drive away from them.

It was always storming there with a slick and muddy aftermath. Once we were out on a hike and heard a terrific crack of thunder very near. Of the group I knew I was the most afraid and urgently led them to hide under some sort of cavern, away from all those trees. I felt like I was putting them in danger every minute.

We portaged with our canoes and slunk into deepest mud. I was thigh deep in it and pulled my leg out only to find it covered in tiny frogs. We laughed so much. There were such moments.

I swam every day and did the Red Cross testing. My co-counselor Sharon and I got along great, at first. I dove right into the activities, my canoeing lessons, and soon had the experience I needed. And we were a great team. But one night when we were off duty we went into town to the local bar and started to really talk. I remember the taxidermied animal heads on the walls bearing witness as we stepped outside to smoke a joint. With one toke I realized so much, like how truly miserable I was. My stomach was tight. My shoulders stiff. In the ladies room, I threw water in my face and stared at this person in the mirror. This seriously tan face from endless days canoeing looked back at me. Back at our table I pushed Caroline to open up about her best friend back home, this girlfriend who seemed much more than a friend. She spoke awkwardly, knew even less about such things than I did. I told her a few things about me. I guess I crossed some kind of line that night. There was no way back. I knew I had to leave before the next camp session started; I figured the kids wouldn’t miss me. But what I really knew was that they would.

Back in Minneapolis, Mom’s garden was running riot. I walked out there with her every day. We had to keep up with all the zucchinis and summer squash and peppers and man, all the tomatoes. The sun was bearing down. Soon I’d be heading back to school. I’d be slightly tan still. That would be different.

Ice storm

Cracking limbs

and splintered boughs

in the night.

She hears the shimmering

crystals fall but

never thinks to catch them

in her palms.

They make a narrow

escape and lock up  

the house as the transformer

flares, a lightning

strike. 

Later she  views the silvery

photographs.  Beauty.

If you only look –

she never had.

Hindsight cuts a clean swath

and so bright.

Just another New England winter

and your coat

won’t do.

She shovels a narrow path

to feel her way through,

as the snow flies:

she winces, covers up,

never quite seeing it

for what it is.  The time will

pass and cover over

and over,

sealed in like so much glaze.  She never did

see things for what they were

when the snow began to stick.

 

Hand-drawn map of Pawling, New York

After the accident, Mom reconstructed it on a hand-drawn map

on her living room floor, on her oriental rug,

meticulous in her use of 4 x 6 index cards and color photographs.

She was going to have her day in court, she said,

to prove them all wrong.

Anyway, she said, she knew the truth, they were all against her.

 

Mom used toy cars and a truck and set them out on a track drawn by her.

She took pictures of every house along the road, glued them to her hand-drawn map.

She’d made several fact-finding trips downtown to prove them wrong,

studying her views as laid out on the rug.

“I used some of this stuff when I was substitute teaching. For the kids,” she said.

“Now with no car, I’m out of business.  There are lies and then there are photographs.

 

And all I can say is you’ll find the truth is in the photographs.”

She pointed to one house, knew the man residing there, he told her

she was in the wrong and would lose it all and another had said

none of this would hold up but she knew she had her truth laid out on her map,

the evidence she’d reveal to them laid out as if on her own rug.

“They lied of course.  Everybody lies.  I’ll prove them all wrong.”

 

“I’m so distraught.  This letter came from the other side’s insurance company. All kinds of wrong.

They have their witnesses and blame me. I have photographs.

When it happened I looked everywhere. There were no witnesses.  Now they pull the rug

out from under. How terrible it is to lie.”  She had been at the light waiting her

turn to turn right, pulled up even with that truck but he never thought to look away from his map

to see her below him as he started two-handing a clockwise turn.  “I’m fighting the wrong he did,” she said.

 

“At Justice Court I’ll show them what the truth is, all I’ve said.”

Her demonstration of events, her car more beloved than any child, all kinds of wrong.

The sun sends its beaming light that brightens up her hand-drawn map      

and fades the color of her photographs.

That sight doesn’t begin to show her  

brilliant last views, the time you don’t get back, when the pull of the rug     

 

and who is left standing when you feel that rug’s tug,     

and the dread of the lies and the fear of the truth when all is said     

and unfairly done to her.

Must we watch all kinds of wrong      

when the after-the-fact gathering of photographs  

can’t begin to tell the tale on the hand-drawn map.         

 

So sweep it under the rug and wash away the rights or wrongs,

The car gets towed and it’s all been shown in the fading color photographs

as it gets done to her again in court on the hand-drawn map.

Mom in the earthquake

Mom in the earthquake

if you only knew

 

what I do

but listen here’s a

 

scrap of paper that might remind you.

I could never run far enough

 

fast enough,

falling on the escalator grate,

 

and she’s almost

always there too late

 

but there to grab me

and catch those bloodied knees

 

I couldn’t avoid.  She lived in Beverly Hills,

working as an extra.

 

With her several agents

looking for work in the movies and game shows

 

at age 70 when the earthquake struck

the church across the street

 

its steeple toppling

she never mentioned it

 

on the phone she later told me she

would have surely fallen out of bed

 

had she owned a bed,

she, sleeping on the floor

 

with nowhere to go,

this the winding down

 

but who knew

her last days in California

 

a place she’d been happy or

free at least

 

dreaming of the long ago

when she was in her model years

 

and about to expatriate herself

to Arabia.

Camel ring, 2000

This ring is something to see, she likes it.

 She is admiring it on her right hand, glinting gold in the unfailing sun and why not? it’s a string of camels.  She is in Khobar.  She talked the seller down from his special American price in riyals and she has dollars.  They barter everything here even toothpaste and hair gel in the drug stores.

 Right now she is heading deep into the gold souks, the shopping district.  The hotel van leaves her in the middle of everything, but she’s unprepared for this view, the remains of the towers. 

 She can’t really look but there it is, concrete constructed, bombed out but still standing, ripped open, exposed with fire escape stairways on every floor that lead nowhere safe.

 She counts the floors.  That’s steadying.  Eight, a good number, but it’s a scrim, the front wall peeled back and gone, shucked.  

 She recalls it, conjures her whole life as it once was, as if she never left.  But she is very much a tourist today, an alien.

 Later, on King’s Road, she sees what was once her house.

 Few cars on the roads today and they slow for her to pass.  Kindly.  It is very hot to be walking anywhere, too hot to move. 

 She says it is the one, it was her house and she runs now, funny to see that, up to the door and rings the bell and waits to see who comes.

Cleaning up the remnants–Santa Monica, 1998

Her life in California,

the garage sales, the

 

emptying out

the last tag sale.

 

Mom at the table,

willing to sell lower,

 

cheaper.

Outside baking under

 

the California sun

everything she owns

 

on

this table:

 

the samovar, the genie lamp,

Dad’s commemorative plates and cups

 

lined up and

priced to move.

 

She sells things

she hasn’t any right to

 

sell.  Holding out

her plate, holding out

 

my scrapbook of stories

for 25 cents.

Like a book I know, 1977

The last time the family moved

the movers packed us and loaded

 

everything on the truck.

We didn’t have to do a thing

 

as they emptied our Lambertville home

with just beds left to sleep on and a TV.

 

Mom was in a state.  I barricaded myself in

the study, downstairs, watching a show.  My sister

 

at a friend’s house that night.

Dad, gone already to his new job.

 

I had no notebook so I wrote on scraps, afraid to lose a word.

As she railed against Dad and me, I took notes.

 

With nothing left in that house, she’d found something, some evidence

though when quiet in her room for a while

 

I stepped out of the study into the kitchen

sure to set her off but I had to

 

take the chance. 

Heading back up the stairs I sensed her.

 

From the upstairs landing she aimed a small, silver revolver down at me.

 

And held me there,

as I backed toward the front door behind me.

 

A cold steadiness

overtook me.

 

I’m going out, I’m going across the street to see your

friend, I’ll tell him.

 

I’ll call the

cops from there and he’ll help me do it.

 

If you don’t put that away

he’ll know

 

the truth about you.  And she couldn’t have that,

none of it.  I bet everything on it.

London, 1976

When I see Mom that morning

I know

what all the noise

 

has been about:

her black eye,

a shadow I can’t really look at.

 

And now we’ll come up

with a story:

this is our family vacation after all and we’re here

 

at Russell Court hanging our heads.

I’ll be free of these people,

but then I know I never will be

 

as I see my own hand about to

strike, an action I can’t stop.

I note it.  As another wrong.  I’ll never right.

Dammam, early evening

 

The bus takes us

grumbling spewing

smoking to a woman-only shopping mall

in Dammam, a typical Arab city.

Though we know its dangers,

more religious than Khobar, and

we want no trouble so no cameras.  We browse

and stare

at everyone.  We want to meet them,

come home with them. 

Women so gorgeous, abaya-less, without head coverings.

Designer threads, plunging

necks, breasts we can see

their fresh faces, their lipstick

choices, too much,

the most delicate shades.

Their soft skin, we cannot look away.  We gather,

with no choice but to get back

to the norm, the drab.  We step out

onto the sidewalk

awaiting our ride, to simpler

Khobar souks and streets.

 

Six unescorted women pacing, fussing

with not enough sense

to go back into the mall.  An

innocuous white car pulls up to our smiling faces,

an affont to the

religious police who we might have figured are

outraged, belligerent.

We can’t be on the street, we’ll be arrested or

worse.  Is there worse.  Are we whores?

People pass, calling names, in English, yes, because

(except for mom) who is in black from head to toe

we aren’t in abayas.  I blame myself for rejecting some good advice.  

I’d also like to blame her because

I am actually scared.  

Most of us are in our favorite shorts and short sleeves.

My dark colors and

long sleeves can’t save me from the wrath of the Muttaween.

Bury me in them then.  Like mom says at the time,

it’s not going to bring the tourists in.

Our bus pulls into the parking lot and we grab hold.