Exploring the Urban Jungle

A Little Bit of Rita's All You Need

I missed my paternal grandfather's funeral.  My sister and my fiance (now husband) and I had just rented a house with some friends in Arizona when my Grampy underwent open heart surgery, following his second heart attack.  We didn't even have a phone yet, so we found out he died when we called home from a pay phone outside an Albertsons grocery store.  None of us could afford to travel back east for the funeral, nor could my parents afford to bring us home, and so we missed it.

My parents had just sold the house where I grew up, which happened to be the house where my dad grew up as well, and they were waiting to close on their new house, where they live now.  In the interim, they were staying with my maternal grandparents, which wasn't easy.

My grandmother, Rita, has been dead for over two years now, but remains one of my favorite people on the planet (or other planets, or heaven, or maybe hell; I'm not entirely sure where she is now, people; the point is, she's still my fave; death does nothing to combat her status in this regard).  I called her just days before she died to tell her I'd been invited to Oktoberfest, at Fall Festival in Ellicottville.  I wish I were going with you, she replied, We could have a few beers together down there!  And so did I wish it, badly.  I had to pull my car over to the side of the road, sobbing at the thought that we wouldn't be going together, as we had in a couple of years past, my husband officially joining the family when he poured my Gran a beer from the keg.  She was loved beyond measure.  But none of this means she was easy to live with.

The story, as it was told to me, or perhaps I should say: as I remember it being told to me, goes like this:

My parents (and younger sisters) had been living with my mom's parents for a few weeks, waiting to close on their new home.  It wasn't easy, staying there.  She snapped at my sisters, wanted more quiet than a family full of girls was accustomed to, didn't want friends to visit, enforced archaic rules about snack times, and generally bossed everyone around.

One evening, my parents got a call.  The new house was finally theirs!  My parents had been slow in buying their dream home.  Slow in their willingness to assume debt.  In fact, their advice to us was: be bolder than us, take on more debt and be more capable to pay it off, assume you will be successful, then be successful, don't necessarily wait, simply assume middle class status.  And so, after their own long wait, and slow economic scramble upward, they got the call; the house was theirs.  They drove over, went inside, and danced across the hardwood floors, smiling at the new setting of their lives.

On their way out, my dad's cell phone rang.  His father had died during open heart surgery.  Right around the same time he finally received the keys to his new home, and--leaving behind the house where he grew up, and then, in turn, raised his own children--walked into the house where he would eventually become a grandfather. 

A few days later, on the drive to my grandfather's funeral, the radio began to play Lou Bega's Mambo #5.  Suddenly my youngest sister popped up from behind the backseat of the baby blue station wagon with the brown replacement door: hazel eyes sparkling, blond hair bobbing, chubby face smirking as she sang along loudly with just one line of the lyrics: A LITTLE BIT OF RITA'S ALL I NEED!

My whole family burst into laughter as they drove to the funeral.

My dad's dad was the first of my grandparents to go, and the only funeral I missed.  By the time my mom's parents died (within a few short months of each other), I was living back in NY, and able to attend both funerals.  My paternal grandmother is still alive; the only one of my four grandparents still breathing.

But I was always closest to Rita; we all were.  Despite her snappiness, archaic snack time rules and general bossiness, she was Gran.  And she was always there for us, always had our backs, always loved us no matter what.  She never met my son, and I'm still saddened when I think about that sometimes, although I have no doubt that she's watching over him from above (or *ahem* wherever she might be now).

And what I wouldn't give for a little bit of Rita, again, some day.  I'd be more than willing to forgo cheese and crackers for the requisite number of hours before dinner, and accept a sharp smack on the backside when I leaned in for a hug, if it meant just a little bit more of Rita, again one day.

I miss you and I love you, Gran.  Happy Saint Patty's Day weekend, wherever you are!  And please gather both of my grandfathers together for a pint and a bout of family nostalgia, will ya?  If anyone could make a party happen in the afterlife, I've no doubt it would be you!

Pondering Yoga and God

In yoga, as in life, the breath is fundamental.

Always the breath, and always stretching in two opposing directions at the same time: up through the crown of the head, and down through the base of the spine, and the soles of the feet.

I'm drawn to the idea that truth is simple. I'm drawn to it, but I'm not entirely sure I buy it. Truth can, in fact, be incredibly complex.

I've long held a theory that if I had the time, inclination and ability to study all the world's religions and spiritual practices, I would discover common elements, and of these commonalities, create my own sacred narrative.

In fact, I'm far too ordinary to undertake such a task. It would be the work of a lifetime, and will likely not be the work of mine. The best I can do is that truth is both simple and complex at the same time. That either/or is never as rich as both/and.

In the meantime, the simple things (for me): breathe, walk, detach, and love the ones I have before me to love. And the complex things (for me): be present, attentive to my senses, and discern with whatever semblance of wisdom I can muster what detachment means in the patterns of the evenings and the shadows of each morning sun.

I can be grateful for what comes easy, and I can try, again and again, to do better where I struggle. See? Simple. And at the same time, so complex. Always stretching in two opposing directions at the same time.

But if all of that becomes too much to remember, just remember to breathe. That's the most important thing.

R.I.P. Road Tripp Luv

Road Tripp, honey, I'm sorry, but it's over.  We had a few good years, heck, we made it more than a decade, but I'm in love with someone else now.  It's my house, and I pretty much never want to leave it, so ... yeah, it's probably not going to work out between us anymore.  At least, not for now.  Call me a few years down the road and we'll see if I'm feeling a seven year itch or anything.  You never know.  But for the time being ... yeah, sorry ... um ... we're done.  It's not you, it's me.

Of course, baby, of course I remember when we first fell deeply in love.  It all started in March of '97.  I walked out of my morning lifeguarding shift, hopped into my high school boyfriend's Honda Civic, and hit the road.  We spent the next three months livin' it up, Road Tripp, just you and I, my sweet.  Well, and the high school boyfriend, but he was short-lived after that; we parted at the end of that very trip, whereas you and I came back together again and again as the years passed by in a blur like the view from the passenger side window.  I pored over road maps and atlases like a student with a textbook and a test the next day (oh, the heady romance of the days before mapquest!  Remember that time we traveled to the southernmost tip of New Jersey, driving all day through smokestacks and graffiti, only to find that the "bridge" to Delaware was built by my baby sister, and made entirely of magic marker on the map?  I knew that would be funny someday, and look!  Now it is!).

I ate road food until I gained 30 pounds and couldn't fit into any of the shorts I brought with me after March turned to April, May and then June.  It's okay, Road Tripp, I forgive you.  It was just another excuse to shop at thrift stores for bigger clothing, cuddlebug, and I needed to shop at thrift stores anyway, after spending all my money with you.  Well, on you.  You were never a cheap date, dear.

But then there was that time in Virginia, lost in the woods, when I happened upon a lake, and looking out over the glistening water, vowed to live the rest of my life in three month increments, never repeating what I had done the three months before.  It seemed like a good idea at the time, sweetpea, but such is the folly of youth, and the madness of amore.  I can't keep up with you any longer, love.  I'm getting older, and I guess it's true what they say: we settle.

Settle in, and settle down, and for some reason the backseat of the station wagon just wasn't as comfortable this last time, pulled off on the side of the road, somewhere in a rural Louisiana truckstop, infant nursing or sleeping on my exposed chest, feet resting on the carseat and husband passed out in the driver's seat, leeaanned back, with his mind on his money and his money on his mind.  Except I'm pretty sure a part of that money on his mind -- a subcategory, if you will -- was pondering both the price of gas and the state of the current economy; let's not underestimate the man's intelligence, he may well have entertained a fleeting analysis of peak oil; we'll never know.  The point is, Road Tripp, I could tell, even then, that things were beginning to go south between us.  And I'm so sorry, sweetheart, but I don't mean that literally.

Those last miserable hours driving home, between Buffalo and Syracuse, where I balanced my body weight on bags of luggage and attempted to twist my breasts into some brand new shape that allowed for backseat breastfeeding while keeping the child enclosed in the infant carseat?  Sugar, those were simply nails in the coffin of our long-dying relationship, at that point.  And then when the house began to demand those same dollars for basic maintenance that you would require for your own existence, well, there's only so much I can do with a dollar, and keeping my roof from leaking every day into the dining room simply must take precedence over our sweet celebration of the beauty of our nation.

Baby, it's me, not you.  But it's over.  I've got four walls, a good job, a toddler, and a comfortable bed.  Revel in your youth, Road Tripp.  Go on without me.  Perhaps we'll meet again someday, in a Winnebago somewhere, where knee braces are an everyday occurrence, and those day-of-the-week pill containers are a spot of poetry in an otherwise chaotic world.  I'll never forget you, try though I might sometimes, but my feet are planted firmly now, and we can't meet anymore in the middle of the night; truck stop coffee just ain't what it used to be.  Or maybe it's just me.  I'm old; I'm tired.  I'm happy where I am.  R.I.P. Road Tripp Luv.  You may be gone, darlin', but you'll never be forgotten.

A Long Time Comin'

Shortly after I met my husband, I said to my sister on the phone: he makes me a better person, he makes me the best me I can be.

But then we were together ten years and we mostly just chilled for that decade, lacking any demands that we become better, let alone the best we could be. We traveled and we partied and we dibbled here and dabbled there and we were always broke, but lucky in love, and life was pretty easy, overall.  We spent years flitting from place to place, living in three states, six towns, and nine domiciles in our first decade together, no real responsibilities on our shoulders for most of that time. 

When we got engaged, almost twelve years ago, another couple we knew at the time also got engaged, and bought a house.  I can't believe you're buying a house! I told her.  That's such a commitment.  You're getting married! she replied.  I know, I said.  But husbands are portable.

As it turns out, I was correct there, at least in regards to our easy, breezy, goin' where the wind blows, lifestyle.  We took our sweet time growing into anything but each other, and when love's the only commitment you have to make for the first decade or so, it's not so difficult to do.  We get along well day-to-day.  I thrive on daydreams, abstractions, and intuition while he loves delving into details, organizing and running daily operations with ruthless efficiency, eyes sparkling with adventure.

Because it took us so long to settle down, both career-wise and geographically, we had a long time to ponder what we wanted out of life.  He decided to teach art; I wanted to split my work between early childhood ed and yoga, teaching each part-time, with the choice to stay home with my babies when they eventually came.  So we needed a house affordable on one income, and hoped to find it in a city, rather than in the 'burbs or the boonies.  We also knew we wanted a property that allowed (or needed) us to redesign, rework, remodel, with a yard big enough to landscape and garden, to grow some of what we eat rather than buying all of it.  All of these were considerations that we entered into very consciously, albeit without fully understanding how they would play out day-to-day, and the level of commitment required to achieve them.

There are times when I feel like all we did for that decade is wait and wish for what we wanted, and then it manifested into reality via some sort of voodoo magic.  I'm susceptible to New Age magical thinking at times, although I'm probably a pragmatist at heart.  Other times I acknowledge that we worked hard to get here, although we did it so slowly that in retrospect it sometimes looks like hardly working.

But here we are, at long last!  He's teaching art; I'm working part-time with infants, toddlers and their parents, and teaching a couple yoga classes a week.  I have afternoons at home with my baby, and we're working on having another one (although this second, stubborn baby seems to be taking its own sweet time being conceived.  Perhaps already taking after its lagging, last-minute parents!).  We own a house in the city with a nice big yard that's just begging to be redesigned, reworked, remodeled, and don't even mention the landscaping/gardening that's somewhere on the bottom of an endless to-do list.  When it all finally came together, it happened quickly.  Very quickly, and the demands of our thoughtful choices suddenly seem to be outpacing the supply of time, energy and money we have to offer.

So, approaching a decade of marriage, my early words to my sister are finally put to the test.  When push comes to shove, will I, will we, be better together?  Will we be the best that we can?  And will it be enough?  Quite simply, it will have to be.  What else do we have?  Only faith.  Faith that after a decade spent seeing a whole country full of choices, that the ones we've made are the ones we mean, and that taking the long road is our forte, and that while it seems like we've finally just arrived, this is really the beginning of a whole new trip, and one thing we do well together is travel.  So, yes.  Yes, together we will we better.  Together, we will be the best we can be.

Colors of Love

I always envisioned myself with a husband who was primarily hunter green, and various shades of brown.  His aura, you know?  Or his essence, or whatever.  Those are the colors you would think of when you looked at him.  Earthy colors, deep shades.  Mostly dark greens and browns.

Instead he turned out to be a Jackson Pollock, splashed lively with bright primary colors criss-crossing and blending into secondary pigments, and splatters of black.  He's brighter, blazing, more vibrant than I thought he would be.  He's also darker, more demanding, louder than I anticipated.  His roots run deep as an old tree, and he's stable as an evergreen, but he's by turns flowering with tropical blooms, coated in ice and snow like a pine bough, dry and industrious like prairie grass, or crashing and smashing like a broken branch against a glass window in a windstorm.

I think of myself in shades of blue, and pale browns.  Soft, watercolor, background shades.  Defining the space, but accommodating. On the one hand, I'm the sky and the water and the earth; I'm everything.  On the other, I'm seldom foreground; I ask for little and offer open space to grow up or out or anywhere at all; I'm nothing.  It all depends on the day.

Our son is yellow, orange, burning red, or cooling green.  He's generally a happy soul, these days seeking language that burns bright red to look for and soothes cool green to find, or explodes in bright yellow bursts.  His essence is pure, sunny, light.  He leans wide-eyed into circles of strangers and smiles, like the sun.  He burns orange out of the quiet purple hush of our home, looking for knowledge like kindling to burn, seeking kindred spirits, racing into life like a million green buds in spring bursting into leaves in the hot, muggy summer.  We watch him in awe.

We'll teach him to burn long over time, like a big, fat log smoldering into charcoal that will calcify into crystal, but never die.  Even after we're gone, we'll be floating around somewhere, like chimney smoke curling up and dancing into cold winter air.  We may pass some time in a pale gray purgatory, but never gone for good: matter is neither created, nor destroyed, just rearranged.  Just biding time til the soul's next spring, raring to burst into technicolor again out of the dingy white waiting of winter.



UPDATE:  My husband has informed me that he is not, in fact, a Jackson Pollock, but more of a Hans Hoffman.  I checked it out, and he is, indeed, more of a Hoffman.  I stand corrected!  He agreed that I'm a watercolor, and specified that he thinks I'm a J.W. Turner.  Don't try to use art metaphors when you're married to an artist unless you don't mind a little second guessing!  He's thinking about the boy for me.  He was so quick and on target for both of us that I can't wait to see what he comes up with!

Straddling The Tracks

In the city where I live, if you head uphill, chances are you're entering a nicer neighborhood.  If you go downhill, you're likely watching the 'hood get worse.  Our house is on a steep hill.  We're the first house at the bottom of the street, as it heads up.  I always have one foot in each world.  I come from poverty, or working class, or blue collar roots, whatever you want to call it.  Now I have a masters degree, a professional position, and a student loan back in forbearance for another year because I still can't afford to make the monthly payments on all that fancy schooling I bought myself.

I leave my house to go for a walk.  I walk uphill, because I like the cardio.  Except that's not always true.  I also walk uphill if I'm pushing the jogging stroller.  You can't rock a golden yellow double jogging stroller walking in the ghetto.  That shit just ain't right.

So if I walk uphill with the jogger, I see other moms, mid-thirties, early forties, also rocking jogging strollers and toddlers.  We smile at each other as we pass.   I don't know any other middle class moms around here.  Our circle of friends fell apart right before I got pregnant when everyone else got divorced or procreated and high-tailed it to the 'burbs, and we never got around to making any more.

I wonder when I see these mothers walking with their jogging strollers and yoga pants, while I'm walking with my jogging stroller and yoga pants: are we the same?  I don't think we're the same because I don't want to smile as we pass.  I want to look down at the ground, avoid eye contact, walk fast, hide in the hood of my XXL black hoodie.  But maybe they don't want to make eye contact either.  Maybe they do it for the same reason I do it: that's how shit's done in this neighborhood.  And it has nothing to do with them that I'd rather avoid eye contact.  I've been known to pretend I don't see my own friends at the grocery store.  I'm just like that sometimes. 

If I don't take the jogger I might go uphill and I might go downhill.  Usually I start off going up for the cardio, but eventually I take a turn that leads me back downhill and I cross that notorious street--every town has one, cities have a bunch of 'em--that street where the neighborhood officially becomes no good anymore.  The windows in the houses are boarded up; there's garbage in the streets and the sweet smell of blunt wrappers and weed wafting through the air.  If I pass someone walking here, we both do the same thing: look down at the ground, avoid eye contact, walk fast, hide in the hoods of our XXL black hoodies.  Aaaaahhhhh.....

There's always a certain sense of relief for me when I cross that invisible class line, over to the the wrong side of the tracks, a sense of freedom, like I'm going back home, like I'm safe in anonymity and no one will bother or question me.  Unless I have the jogging stroller.  Then I just feel like a tool who probably stumbled into the wrong part of town accidentally.

I wonder if I'll always breathe a little easier on the wrong side of the tracks.  I don't know.  I have to walk back uphill to get home.  And that golden yellow double jogger is mine; I chose it myself after searching long and hard on Craigslist.  But so is the oversized black hoodie.  I think I'll always be standing right at the intersection of that street that separates us.  No matter where I walk: uphill, downhill, or for how long, I'll always have one foot on either side of the tracks.  Maybe that is where I belong.