Mama Jack Flash

I used to love sleeping late. By late, I mean until 7, when I'd make a lazy stab at getting coffee and the paper. But those days are forgotten now. I'm on a drug that forces the sufferer into menopause and now all hope of a good, heavy sleep is over. Two, three, as much as five times in a night, I'll wake up in a sweat, throwing the covers over and stripping my skin off. If a flash hits after five, that's it. I probably won't get back to sleep.

So, on this Sunday in a rainy June, at 5.10 a.m., I was too hot to even lay back down in the bed. So I decided to use the time wisely. I got up, went to the garage, moved this here and that there until I could get to my bike, still somewhat in pieces after being shipped in the tiny trunk of my Corolla. It took an hour of grief and aggro to get the bike lubed and roadworthy again -- I'm total pants at getting a rear wheel seated properly -- but it seemed I was riding before I'd even made a conscious decision to get dressed. I rode loops in Caumsett State Park: think very tall trees, a semi-maintained stately home and its outbuildings. The hike and bike trail -- yes, it's a measly 3 miles long -- loops in splendid shade but never comes close to the sea, despite the park's long shore line. This morning, my first back on the bike since we moved to New York, was blessed with a perfect breeze, enough to cool you but not enough to move you, if you know what I mean. It's just so flipping green around here.

The natives seem friendly, despite their appalling roadsmanship. I'm trying not to embarrass myself too much in front of them. Jesse and I were invited, thanks to the kindness of a neighbor, to a lunch for daughters and mothers on the last day of school. The mom hosting the lunch lived with her husband in a gaspingly large and beautiful estate, complete with heated pool, waterfall and all the rest of it. Thank god I'd rejected the idea of cut-offs in favor of a some white capris pants with a matelot-style shirt. Jesse, confused by the evident wealth, thought the family poor, because they had this little tiny house next to an admittedly impressive pool. "That's not a house, angel, that's the garage." The Big House was on a hill, or rather a hillside.

While chatting with the other mums, all of whom were very pleasant, I noticed a horrifying sight. The middle-schools around here -- well, all the schools, including the pre-K ones -- make a fuss about graduation, holding commencement dances and forcing the kids to walk around in academic robes. The girls were in white robes and scholars' caps. All the girls were pretty indeed and but those ghastly pale robes made them look like albino whales. There was no intelligent comment one could make. I felt the earth shake in anticipation of the truly stupid thing I would say. Wishing to make some compliment, I could only settle on, "They look adorable." Jesse, my dear daughter, gasped. One woman stared mutely at me, incapacitated by shock.

Oh, well, the sandwiches were nice. Jesse, who is still deeply in grief for the loss of her friends in Texas, refused to get in the pool. She hung around me and stared mutely at the other kids. On the way home, she cried mightily, protesting that she'll never ever meet any people as unique and funny and 'like me' as her friends in Texas. My heart broke for her. Again. All we can do is try to keep her busy and be as sweet as we possibly can to her. She was caught smiling a few days later. I have the picture here.

As you may have noted from the clever insinuation above, my car has finally arrived from Texas. I had hoped to leave it in Texas but Mike the Half Scot made me bring it up here. Yes, the humble Corolla is bringing down property values, right here in Cold Scream Harbor.

The curious thing is that I would not have predicted how much easier the Corolla makes my life. Not in the way you might think. Getting out to buy groceries is useful, yes, but the Corolla's real value is in the low expectations it inspires. Want a Yankee tailgater to Back Off? Just drive a car he pities. I guess they figure I'm driving as fast as I can, so they even wave me on sometimes. Who knew?

And the other good thing about having my Corolla back, is that it looks right at home in the parking lot of C Town, the Hispanic grocery my landscaper had told me about. (That was an awkard moment. How do you say, "Gee Whiz, you look kind of Mexican! Where do your homeboys shop?") C Town has everything, well, almost everything, your average Tex-Mex kitchen requires. And the fruits and vegetables are no worse quality than those sold in the tony markets around here at twice the price. In 48 hours, I'd already hit C Town twice and had plotted the quickest route to get there from my house. I couldn't wait to call friends Mark and Barb over to come and eat tortillas and poblanos. I was mixing the dough for the first batch almost before I got the groceries out of the car.

And while I rolled out the first dozen, Mama Jack Flash came twice. That bitch. At least the hotflashes are keeping my weight down, by burning up every calorie a tortilla can bestow. I munched the first one out on the porch, and watched as the latest storm withdrew, leaving a sky that looked like it, too, was boiling.

Cool Breeze

It had to happen, I guess, a moment of extreme confusion about the climate and it's management. I was sitting by the window in our breakfast nook, unpacked boxes towering all around me, when I felt a bit of a chill. Annoyed that my husband would even think of turning the A/C on when it wasn't even 75 degrees yet, I politely asked that he turn the damn thing off.

"Darling, it is off. You're sitting in a draft."

I passed a hand in front of the slightly cracked window and realized that he was right. It was June and the air felt like something an A/C unit would produce. It seemed as if I'd fallen asleep and then awakened on Mars.

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Okay, it's been really wet here. The Weather Channel says that the jet stream, which usually makes Canada wet at this time of year, has shifted a little bit and so is making the north eastern United States unusually damp. Day in and day out, torrent and trickle take turns. Long Island is about to have its wettest June on record. You'd think I could occasionally remember to take my umbrella with me.

I'm missing the sun, but there are bright sides to all this gloom. I'd rather hear the great meteorological purring that is an all-night rainfall than the din of an A/C unit. It's a matter of aesthetics. We are thankful that the rain masks all the street sounds that would normally filter up from the arterial road that is closer to us than I would like. Still, I love northern light and would like to see some of it this summer. In this grayish world, nothing has an edge.

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Clearly, some days do have edges, even here in Cold Scream. When I've had enough of unpacking and sorting and throwing crap away, when I've had enough of seeing Jesse cram her nose into Facebook, I haul her down to Cold Spring Harbor's Main Street, there to get lunch at a deli (a mysterious place where New Yorkers know what to order and where Texans just point at the menu and hope for the best--I had more success in French bakeries than I do in New York delis, despite not knowing a word of French). We take the sandwiches with unknown stuffings across the street to the harbor. There we sit on a rock. So far, it's always low tide at noon, but still pretty. I try to make the walk last longer and she always tries to end it quickly.

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I remember the rhododendrons in London's Kew Gardens, how they bloomed around May, so profusely that they seemed to blanket the entire park. The gardens of Kew are a very managed environment, however, and I don't recall ever seeing rhodies bloom in the wild in Britain. But maybe that's just a defect of memory. Anyway, I was astonished when driving Mike to work one morning, to see a forest of white and some purple rhodedendrons beside the road, stretching, as far as I could tell, over a dozen acres or so. I couldn't wait to go back there on a day with good light so I could take these pictures.

For the plant novices I know, rhodedendrons come originally from Asia and are a cousin of the azalea, a southern beauty that's a little more drought tolerant than a rhodie. I've read that rhodies are almost a weed in the Pacific northwest. I haven't yet heard how the locals feel about them.

I assume that these rhodies got their start with some ambitious newly arrived gardener, who brought a few specimens with him/her over on the boat from England. Over the decades, the rhodies have definitely won the field, at least in this little pocket of life off of the Woodbury Road. The white ones are so prolific, they're almost spooky in the heavy green light. The barricades they form around the largers estates are twenty feet high in places.

But that's enough plant admiration. One hundred boxes down, two hundred to go.

Cold Scream Harbor

The goodbyes were painful and protracted. At least my mother didn't cry, perhaps because she'd already cried several times. Or maybe the anti-depressants are working. For me, there were many happy moments in that last week in Central Texas, my niece's graduation chief among them. It was good to see this lovely young lady, who fought her way back from leukemia before she was even in kindergarten, graduate.

While walking to the arena in San Marcos where the commencement ceremony was to be held, I took this shot of tubers on the San Marcos river. It's clear that when it comes to photography, I should definitely not quit my day job. Anyway, you get the idea: hot day, cold water and colder beer. This is Texas Bliss.

The river reminded me of one thing more I'm going to miss. Nearly two years ago, I had the Perfect Ride. It was a hot day and we did the Crabapple Crippler in Blanco County, a steeply graded hill that follows a five-mile steady climb. The Crippler came after 50 hilly miles in Blanco County, famous for the kind of chip-seal roads that can make one bike feel like two. By the time we got to a bend in the road at the Blanco River, we were so ready for a swimming-hole. And the one we came upon was perfect, with patches of rushing water and pools of calm. We hopped off of our bikes, and had a blissful half-hour up to our necks in a return to sanity. I don't think any New York ride will ever match that.

And even if there is Perfect Route with a Perfect Water Hole at the end, it'll be a ride shared with Yankee drivers, which means every turn of the pedal will be haunted by the Angel of Death. Complaints about the drivers up here will have to wait until another time, when I feel I've gained some objectivity.

We arrived one week ago today and I have been savoring the island's many charms. And I'm so lucky because I'm one of the few NY residents who is loving on the weather right now. Last summer on Long Island was sunny and, for these regions, hot, with temps in the mid-eighties. This summer is seeing a complete re-write. The light is murky, the mists roll in from the harbor a half mile from our house, the downpours stop to permit moments of drizzle, then return again. When the sun does appear, it's in full-out baking glory, but only for ten minutes. I love it. It reminds me of England, except for the baking sun bit. Take a walk down Grove Street and you see the post-boxes leaning in the damp soil.

The morning after my and Jesse's arrival, the movers came and unloaded the Christie Three Hundred. We directed book boxes to the garage, garage stuff to the garage, and everything else into the house. We told Daddy's new Accord to say goodbye to covered parking for awhile. At about two PM, I found myself wondering if I should start self-medicating, because it seemed as if the house and garage was choked, full, replete, gorged, swollen, FULL. I certainly had no plan for what to do should 50 boxes be stranded on the driveway, waiting for the next New York downpour. As is typical of me at this phase in all our moves, I wanted to scour up a can of gasolene and get started. I wanted to take the six extra captain's chairs that Mike made us bring and bung 'em in a wood-chipper.

But, somehow, we got everything inside. I think we had a pizza. Or maybe we just went straight to bed.

Since then, I've gotten to know the house better. The jets in the tub are splendid. Mabel is a peach of a stove. The house has the best floorplan I've ever lived with. Every room is just the right size for its purpose. But the thing I like best about the house is the thing I never noticed during the house-hunting phase, and that's the view from the front porch, caught here in the gray light typical of this summer. It's a lovely spot to sit and read the paper. If you ever get the time.

The neighbors have been very friendly. The prices have been shocking. Our yard man pulled up in a Cadillac Escalade and we began to tremble, waiting to hear the quote for mowing our tiny yard. Good news! We can have our lawn, one-quarter the size of the one we had in Texas, mowed for the same price. The yard man, Geo, is Mexican so I got to quiz him about good places to shop for poblanos and the other essentials of fine dining. I haven't had a chance to visit the grocer he recommended, but we have checked out the Chinese take-away that is Geo's favorite. The take-away, whose name of course escapes me, is the usual hole in the wall, but the food is sublime. I had a beef and noodles dish with a rich sauce.. The noodles were fresh and hand-cut, as if made by a vendor on the streets of Canton. The smells in the take-away were sublime.

And then there's the Long Island Weirdness factor, which I'm still getting used to. I applied for a library card and for the first time in years -- twenty? thirty? -- I was filling out a form where there was no accommodation for married women who keep their original surnames. In this age of blended families, surely our arrangements are not all that surprising. The librarian had the sort of sour face that a butler wears when one of the below-stairs servants has strayed into the upper halls. I cheerfully crossed out all the form's options for a title and wrote in 'Ms'. Followed by Kiss My . . . no, no, I'm wandering off into fantasy here.

I'll let you know if we ever get that library card.

Thirty-Six Hours, Roughly

We were in our old house eleven years. That was plenty of time to add a few locks and have a few lock mechanisms go bust. The remodel we undertook some nine years ago added hot-water tanks that could be accessed from the outside. They, too, required locking door-knobs and keys. We never quite got around to keying all these doors to one master. You can just hear Mike the Half-Scot grumbling that what's the good of having a locksmith out for God knows how much money when you could just carry a half-dozen keys around. Consider it weight training.

So I carried a half-dozen keys around these many years. Two months ago, I shed most of them. Then I shed the key to the Wee Flat in Austin and the key to the Wee Cottage in Huntington and the key to Old Red, our rumbling Toyota pick-up. So now I'm down to this, the key to the Corolla that Mike won't let me get rid of (that man is always trying to improve my character) and the key to my hybrid bike's lock. Note that I've acquired a fast-tag for one of the local libraries to our new house and a fast-tag to Bottles and Cases, the only liquor store on Long Island with prices I can stand to pay. I hope the Corolla doesn't become too much like my Dad's old Lincoln, which he said had a mind of its own and would always turn towards Pinkie's, the closest liquor store beyond the Tom Green county line, whether he was thinking of booze or not.


Now I'm down to two keys and trying to dampen the melancholy of leaving friends, family, and a fair city, by remembering that the friends and family will have to come visit me often. Hey, I'll be on Long Island, where mafia heavies are two a penny and if my arm-twisting won't work, surely their's will. And I have to remember, too, that the Austin I'm actually leaving behind is one that left us all long ago. Our symbols of that local feel vanish rapidly these days. I'm leaving the Austin of chain stores, sprawl, and a Barton Springs once clear as glass and now murky as dishwater, thanks to the pen of one Governor George W. Bush, may he be plunged into poverty and may I live to see it.

We're only half-way into our goodbyes, but I'm already abstaining from them wherever possible. I picked up Jesse from the first of The Final Sleepovers, and watched her say goodbye to the girls who had been her close friends in the Kealing Band. Well, I tried to watch. I don't know what the parents of these girls thought when I bolted, sobbing, from the living room. I've already told other parents not to be offended that I have no plans to come to the door.

It's funny, but over the last few months, I've wondered if I was turning into a monster because I was more than a little resentful of having to stay in Austin while Jesse finished eighth-grade. For her, we undertook far more stress than was necessary, and did it while I was undergoing radiation. Other, less cowed, less yuppiefied parents, I thought, would have just told their kid to suck it up, we're moving. I resented the fact that we weren't free to be that kind of parent.
But seeing my Jesse say goodbye to her friends, I found myself wishing I could cut another body part rather than suffer this pain. I could no more hurt her than I could drown a puppy. I can resent my own nature, perhaps, but it's hardly her fault that I am what I am. I think she has already forgiven us.

So the dread and the excitement mounts. I wrote last time about the dreads. Mike and I have started calling it "Armistice Syndrome", the feeling that even though peace has been declared and we're about to ship out, we, we will be the poor chaps who get felled by a stray bullet or an exotic infection. I will leave my sister's early tonight, eager to miss the drunk drivers. I will drive like an old lady going to church. I will not believe that it's just a little bit of turbulence.

But the excitement is as real as the dread. Soon, soon, when I get a new haircut, I won't have to share it with Mike by sending him a picture from my I-phone. He can actually see me! And I can actually see him.