PINS AND HAMMERS, A COMPARISON

Today I am the artist and the carpenter and the wrecking ball.

But not then, when I was a different thing altogether.  Then, I was still. And shrinking.

Some cells exist within bones just to carve away at other cells, superfluous bits or underused bits.  I remind myself that lack of movement, the good kind, the active-dancing-jumping-playing-learning kind, will take away from my core, just like osteoclasts rob the bones of the too-still.

Being too-still used to happen to me for years at a time.  My body moved and moved, my mind whirled, but my real life just spun in circles.  That version of stillness goes unseen by everyone but the person who’s become the human gyroscope: all energy, nowhere to go, hoping for another shove to keep going but unable to do the shoving.

When I chose to wear wheels instead of the unmoving pin at the bottom of the twirling top, I expected the people I loved to jump on for the ride, too.  Some did.  Some, I scooped up in my arms, not giving any option but to roll along.

Some refused.  They liked my pin.

What they did not understand was that the perfect circle in which I moved was allowing bits to fall away without my permission.  Reaching out of the whirl slowed the spin, but too far or too eager, and I might wobble to the ground.

Now, the ground has become familiar again.  It’s full of worms and bugs and life, like it was when I moved very close to it, curious fingers in the soil and hope in the seeds.  Sometimes, it scrapes my elbows bloody.

I feel my bones grow thicker as I swing my hammer and hang paintings on these walls: my paintings and hers, and someday all of ours, if we learn one another.  That thought makes my heart swell and sometimes my eyes spill over, too.  My tears become another testament to the artist-dreaming and wrecking and rebuilding.

Looking into the sun with tears in my eyelashes reminds me that there are colors for which I have no name.  My colors, welcome even when I admit that I’m blinded by them, fill my palette.

It’s heavy, hard work.  Some days, I don’t want to do it alone any more, but I’m not doing it just for myself.  That would be simple work.

There’s someone along for the ride, who also loves those worms and has a spectrum of her own to use as she wishes.  Her wheels need to roll, always, fast and sure and not afraid of landing and breaking.  Her hammer already strikes with enough force to shake my whole beautiful world.

 

 

 

ISHYNESS, A CELEBRATION OF FLAWS

My little tank went to see my lovely mechanic today.  Remember the big bad things that needed changing to make her safe again?  Well, not so big.  Not so bad.

Turns out that a single bolt missing from a catalytic converter cover can cause a whole lot of clanging.  Yes, that missing bolt also caused the cover to get ratty and holey and require replacement.  The price of two pieces of steel and four bolts stunned me a bit, but I had imagined huge panels of car underbelly flapping and sparking near gas lines.  No, just a little cover for an important part.  Now the clanging doesn’t send my worry into high gear.   Will we explode?  Nope.  We just sound funny for now.

And the brake squishiness?  Only the front wheels are thin.  No bad rotors.  No bad lines.  Two discs out of four ain’t bad.

The mirror can’t be found at a junkyard, though.  They all want me to take the whole door, and I’m not prepared to do that much disassembling and hauling, and then have most of a door left over.  Nobody has time for that mess around here.  A new mirror has to happen, but my lovely regular mechanic can do that, too.  Someone in Wisconsin is boxing one up tomorrow to send this way.

In short, none of it will take much time to fix, or much money.  The little scratch-dent scar on the door will get a good coat of wax, the bumper will get bumped back into place and held up with a new clamp, and the car will be as good as new.

Ish.

The wonderful thing about ishiness is the freedom it offers.  We can move forward without fear of another scar, because damage has already been done.  The fun can begin.

Roof rack?  Absolutely.

Hitch?  Yes, I’ll have one of those.  A hitch is cheaper than a roof rack!  Who knew?

Grill guard?  One must exist that will fit, somewhere.  If not, who do I know with a welding rig?

Let the fun begin…just as soon as my parts come in from Wisconsin.

 

 

 

LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH, AUTOMOTIVE EDITION

My car requires some changes.

I chose “changes” rather than “repairs” because right now, it starts, goes, and stops when I ask it to do those things.  However, when a sleeper-sofa lands on a car, that sofa makes some changes of its own.  It’s time to change some of the things back again.

The car of my dreams is not a two-door Honda Accord, but the thing runs like a tank.  Because this tank is paid for and cheap to insure, making it into the car of my dreams is simpler and less financially risky than selling it and starting fresh with an unknown machine.  The sensible car can be my Dream Machine.

(Just an aside: does anyone miss Baskin Robbins as much as I do?  Seriously, I just saw a commercial and memories of laboring over the BIG DECISION based on 31 flavors came rushing back.  I always went with very exotic French Vanilla, by the way.  Chocolate ice cream was a staple at home AND IS THE BEST FLAVOR ALWAYS, but even at eleven, I had francophile leanings.)

So, this sleeper-sofa ripped the driver side mirror off of my tiny tank and barely dented and scratched the door.  The body shops who inspected this damage want a lot of money to undo these changes.

I know how to navigate a junk yard. I know how to replace a side mirror.  I like using tools to take things apart and especially to put them together in different order.

The little dent seems comparable to a scar: it carries with it a story, not negative if no one was seriously injured.  I drove a Chevy Blazer for twelve years, and for ten of those years, my front bumper stayed smashed into a huge snarl because I hit a signpost in the parking lot of Great Clips.  Simple version: she chopped off my waist-length natural blonde hair in two great hacks, not clips,  and took “long wispy layers” to mean “Carol Brady”.  I cried when I got outside, and blinded by the setting sun, I did not see the sign for the shopping center on parking space in front of my truck.  Lesson?  Cry over your hair, and the universe will give you something to cry about.

So, I didn’t cry about the skyfalling sofa.  No one got hurt, and the trash company that sent the sofa sailing just cut me a check.  On the day of the drop, I walked out of the house hoping that it’d just be totaled.  Now, I’m relieved that so little damage happened, because I respect my car’s never-say-uncle constitution.  It goes.

One little problem is the stopping.  Now and then, things get sludgy and squishy and squeaky,  and the light comes on.  Time for brakes?  Yes.

Another little problem is the clanging.  When I drive over pot holes, I’m reminded of that one time I landed poorly off the ferry and heard a serious bang.  Ever since then, the little rattle has become a very subtle (but very loud to me) gonging.  Gong, clang, worry worry worry.  That’s me doing the worrying, not the Honda.  The Accord abides.

Here’s the plan: Autozone or junk yard for mirror.  A pair of chromey truck mirrors would be cool, actually, but I’ll probably get one to match the car if one can be found.  The idea of digging into an old car for parts gets my heart fluttering.

Brakes.  Essential.  I know that they’re protesting now, and they need to be given attention before they stage a strike and the pedal hits the floor.  That happened in the Blazer once, and that was the day I learned that my ability to set panic aside for a moment to deal with a urgent present mess was a skill that did carry over from my younger days.  It’s all in the downshifting, friends.

Metaphor there?

And the clanging could be anything, but it seems ominous and evil.  My lovely mechanic will tell me all about it.  He talks to me like I’m not a girl, even though he does compliment my toes when I have a fresh pedicure.  I think he’s slept with at least one of my boyfriends, but I don’t have hard evidence and of course no hard feelings.  We get along well like that.   Maybe he can make the bumper look straight, too, *pun pun pun*.

 

Now, here’s the best part of Plan Dream Machine…

 

If repair funds remain after brakes and clanging are cured, then…

If such a thing can be found to fit, a roof rack comes next, with a flat cargo basket clamped upon it.  Think Mad Max camping sedan, and you’re getting close.

I know a hitch will fit, but a pro can do that work.  Lowering an exhaust system on a car that already drags the street sounds hellish.

Lastly, I’m going to paint it myself.  Not all over, but in stages.

So, little Honda Accord Coupe with a little dent in the door and a crooked back bumper, you’re getting a very practical makeover with a  life-as-art paint job.  By me.  I used to be a Real Artist, too.

I’ve always held off adding things to my vehicles in the name of resale value (though I’ve always driven my cars until the wheels fall off), avoiding the embarrassment of my former spouse or current children (whom I managed to embarrass anyway with my idea of essential cargo), and expecting the “perfect” vehicle for my life to come along to be modified to suit me.  What’s obvious now is that there’s no such thing as perfect.  There’s now.

Now is as good as ever.  Maybe better.

 

HATEFOOD

I trust my kitchen.  The cutting boards stay sanitized, the water for dishes is hot hot hot.  Spans of time in restaurant kitchens taught me the mantra, “First in, first out,” and I do rotate.

Then, something went terribly wrong and I’ve gone into digestive upheaval.

I hate food.

I hate my kitchen.

I especially hate salad.

 

WAIT, PLEASE.

Cicadas sing us out of summer.

Sih-CAY-duh, say you.  Chi-CAH-dah, say we.

The small person runs the neighborhood, free for a little while longer tonight.  She will come home itchy and dirty and happy and then she will climb into the small tub here at the cottage to make a ring that I smile to scrub away, later.  A tub that needs scrubbing tells stories of bike rides and back yards and laughing until she falls down, disassembled by her joy.

I sit by the open screen door and listen to the joy and the cicadas.  In a minute, I’ll get up to wash dishes before she comes in.  The hot water should be ready again in time.

Summer ran short.  I’d planned camping and trips and time away from our familiar place, but then, this familiar place felt like enough.  We didn’t need to leave here, I just needed to let her go a little further into this small neighborhood without me.

And with that, she’s in the door.  The street lights came on.  She’s filling the bathtub because she feels cruddy, claiming starvation and singing songs I don’t know and offering a running monolog of the evening’s freedom.

The dishes can wait.

 

HEAD, HEART, SPINEFIRST

I just wrote a post about past relationships, and deleted it.

Each one  deserves its own private entry in a real journal. Each one taught me something important, even if it was something unpleasant about myself.

One love led to another and another.  Some introduced the next, but expressing my gratitude for helping me meet the next sparkly thing never really came off well.

The conclusion of that deleted post should have said something about winding paths, and lessons, and how lovely my sweetheart is.

Then, I realized that all of my past relationships have taught me to be too careful with love.

Some day, I will unlearn my caution and barrel headfirst and heartfirst into love, regardless of how it might blow up in my face, because this time, it won’t.

SIGNAL

And today, the whirr of the cicadas has sent me in search of the exact pattern of the veins on the wings.  They’re beautiful and spare.

My Papa taught me to say the name of this insect: “chi-CAH-dah”.  That crescendo-vibrato buzz, when I was smaller, signaled that summer had to end soon.  I dreaded the beginning of each new school year, with the same thirty kids I’d known since second grade.

I loved learning, but School was a nightmare.  My teachers loved me, but the students didn’t at all.  After fourth grade and being placed in a gifted class, my social experiences took a nosedive.  As the only one pulled out for the most amazing (to me) chance to learn logic, and higher math, and creative problem-solving, I had a target on my back.  The nice girls avoided me to avoid their own punishment for being seen with the freak, and the not-nice girls punished me for raising my hand in class after long, long pauses of frustrated teachers.  If I’d kept my hand down, the teacher would have re-done part of the lecture to help us understand, instead of making the class lose recess for daydreaming in class.

I was the lucky one who daydreamed my way through every minute of every day, with half an eye on the chalkboard and half an ear to the lesson, who had the answers for the pop quiz despite plotting ways to make a kiln in the back yard without getting in trouble for playing with mud AND fire.  Mud was okay, but the concentrated blast of heat for baking mud into little effigies took some slyness and an accomplice in the form of my Papa.   He had coal oil and bricks, and the tin match box in the shed stayed magically full.  He could claim the cloud of smoke as his own, while I wrapped my clay rabbits and mother figures in bundles of straw and threw them in with the fallen branches to make them last longer than even Papa.

The mud and the fire and the soot and smoke taught me more than the words half-heard while I stared out the window and waited for 3:08 p.m.

My grandma taught me that every day should be appreciated as one of the good old days.  Yes, even when things seem to be crappier than you thought possible, and summer is almost over, and you have to come in earlier because the street lights come on earlier and the cicadas sing Autumn is Coming and You Will Have To Wear Shoes Again Soon.  Some of those days were really very bad, but most of them were lovely, and she was mostly right.

In a week and a half, my small person will go back to school in a new place for her bump up to third grade.  New building, bigger, much much more to navigate.  She has rebelled against planned activity this summer.  She wanted to run wild with her friends in this little neighborhood, with her own back yard to dig up.  She wanted me home, to make lunch, and to tuck her in for an afternoon nap now and then.  I couldn’t do it this year, but she’s already plotting next summer’s arrangements.  She’s looking forward to school like I never did, but she is made of different stuff than I was.  Am.

We both want summer to last forever, school or no school.  We listen to the cicadas and yell over the roar when we sit in the back yard, and wonder what makes them go so suddenly silent each night.

Cicadas and August and the end of overabundant chances to wonder make us both a little blue.  Skirts feel better on the legs than jeans.  Flip-flops feel better than sneakers any day.  Warm air and a little too much sun win out over chill gray, and bike rides didn’t happen often enough.  Kids on buses are always kind of unpleasant, so we’ll ride bikes to school just a few blocks away.

My job, like the job of the big people who made me Me, is to bounce us past the blue and into a version of Good Old Days Now.

This fall, when the days get too short for my wellbeing, I’ll shock myself back into gratitude with a pair of temporarily painful permanent cicada wings on my shoulders, another symbol of freedom and perseverance and change.

That seems inevitable, but I could change my mind.  Life is long, and it’s only August.