The Unexpected

We’re in the dog days of a dry, dry summer. In late July, just after my birthday, we spent a week in the Alps where it’s cooler than in Kaiserstuhl. Much cooler. We returned to a desiccated lawn littered with brown and curled leaves fallen from the hazelnut and linden trees. We keep the rhododendrons and azaleas, along with my beds of wild strawberries, the roses, peonies, summer squash, calendula and snapdragons that are flowering, the cherry tree and red currant bush, and especially our newly planted fig tree, sufficiently watered. The rest of what remains green in our yard—the lavender, rosemary, sage, hibiscus, and table grapes—seems to have deep roots; our house sits on the edge of an aquifer.

The lavender are thriving despite the heat and lack of water.

Our young fig tree must think it’s rooted in an oasis.

When Markus was a boy, the fields between our town and the next village would flood in winter from the rising water table. When it froze, he and his friends would play hockey on the ice. These days, all the fields are too well drained to flood, and our kids never owned a pair of skates.

Before leaving for the Alps, I made a quick round of the blackberries I forage. They appeared to be ripening early. And I worried that I might miss them altogether while gone. Last year, due to our travels to the States, I’d missed the blackberry season. No pies. No crisps. No Muesli stained berry purple.

No fun.

Earlier this year, for the first time since discovering where the wild strawberries best grew, I skipped gleaning them. The plants that I had transferred to my own flowerbeds provide sufficient fruit to produce a supply of jam and sauce for scones, vanilla ice cream, and cheesecake—and bonus, I don’t have to worry about ticks as I harvest in my own garden. The wild white strawberries I transferred haven’t spread well enough to supply me with jars of jam. Some things take time to transfer and establish themselves. And the heat this summer is tough on my transplants. Luckily, I did start a home patch of the white berries when I did. The town landscaper has since turned his weed-eater onto the original patch, chopping away at least fifty percent of the fruit-bearing plants.

When I returned from the mountains, the fruit of the blackberry vines I’d scouted out before leaving resembled raisins. I harvested a total of three kilos from the patches that usually produce three kilos each. Nettles usually frustrate my work. Where the plumpest berries hang, the nettles usually grow vigorous and tall. This year, the nettles surviving are doing so by keeping close to the ground.

The air dry; the sun hot; sweat dripping down my face and the back of my knees; I retraced my steps, walking in the shade of deciduous trees. The leaves rustling sound like pouring grain. There are vines I leave for last. They grow along the shaded and blind edge of a Renaissance-type garden that belongs to a large villa on the outskirts of our town. In the best of years, they haven’t produced the best of berries, and the ditch they arc over is steeply sloped. At some point, someone hacked them back, filling the ditch with tentacles of slashed vines, the thorns made sharper by drying out. I’m always weary of making a wrong step and tumbling into the cruel cache of thorns.

The garden with the villa and Kaiserstuhl’s tower in the distance.

The gravel path where the blackberries grow.

The ditch I don’t want to fall into.

Hardly worth the trouble picking them. My basket felt too light, but what could such vines produce in a dry year, anyway? How much weight would they add?

Yet I came upon the shaded and gently winding path of red gravel that lead to them. Too welcoming to pass by—especially as my walk home along the railroad tracks simmered under a glaring sun.

And what did I find? Vines thick with berries twice the size of what I’d already collected, their drupelets fat and glossy. Wholly unexpected. I quickly filled my basket. In this dry year, the renaissance garden is being well irrigated, and the vines have profited. And so, have I.

Fat boys from the vines with access to water.

This morning’s pick. Plenty for jam-making . . .

. . . or a “berry fine” smoothie for breakfast.

Too often, the places where we expect to find disappointment enchant us instead.

Monarch Story

A Gulf Fritillaries nectaring on a passionflower in Mom’s butterfly friendly garden in Central Texas.

In June, I flew home to visit my mom, brother, and sister-in-law, who all live in La Grande, Oregon. An unusually cool spring had produced an abundance of wildflowers. We went out to see the camas turning marshy fields periwinkle blue, the buttery-yellow lupines climbing up grassy slopes, and clusters of spotlight-yellow balsamroot, the “Oregon sunflower,” dotting pastures.

Balsamroot, the “Oregon sunflower,” yellow lupines, and the splendor of camas out at Ladd Marsh.

On the first warm, sunny day of my visit, Mom and I puttered about in her charming backyard, weeding and checking on her snow peas and raspberries. She had plans for landscaping her yard, to turn it into an oasis of native plants, especially those that attract butterflies, which got us talking about milkweeds and the monarchs.

Last year, Mom was still living in Central Texas where she’d had a butterfly garden. She’d grown up in Texas, moving about a bit, from Austin, where she was born, to College Station where her daddy did graduate work at Texas A&M, and then on to San Angelo and Fort Worth. “In San Angelo,” she said, “there was an empty lot close to our house that was covered with milkweed. When I walked through the lot, hundreds of monarchs would take flight.”

One day, when she was about seven, she noticed someone driving a tractor with a mower attachment onto the lot. “I ran home,” she said, “and shouted to my mother that the milkweeds and monarchs were in danger. Mother dropped everything and ran with me back to the lot, dragging along my little sister. We began collecting caterpillars and milkweed leaves as fast as we could.” The man on the tractor understood what they were doing. “He graciously cut his engine. And we collected all the caterpillars we could find, plenty of leaves to keep them fed, and dug up some milkweed, too, to replant in our garden.”

Mom in San Angelo.

Within days, the caterpillars they’d collected and taken home reached the stage where they went crawl-about to pupate. “Soon, chrysalises covered our kitchen ceiling,” Mom said with a chuckle, “which didn’t please the woman who helped Mom around the house. She said ‘I’m not working for anybody who breeds worms! I quit!’”

Nowadays, more than ever, we need as many people as possible willing to stop mowers and breed “worms.” People willing to plant butterfly gardens and promote native plants.

Mom’s homegrown monarch caterpillars. These photos were taken in her Central Texas garden – let’s hope she’ll be growing more in her Eastern Oregon home by next summer!

Literary License

The University of Oregon novel-writing class with our instructor Ken Kesey. Photo credit: ©Brian Lanker.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a grad student living in Eugene, Oregon, I participated in a novel-writing course with Ken Kesey, author of several novels, including Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He asked us to organize a reading in town for a visiting poet. The poet, an Australian, read his from work and Kesey read from Demon Box, his collection of essays and short stories.

One of Kesey’s pieces was set on his farm, where his son Jed was buried, the Merry Prankster bus Further sat in shocking decay in a marshy coppice, and where an unshorn sheep grazed—bringing the phrase “grass maggot” to mind. His story involved a butcher’s visit to the farm. I’d seen Kesey’s farm and cattle, and easily pictured their tansy-infested field. After the man had done his butchery, packed up, and left, the remaining cows gathered, so the story went, to encircle the bloodied tree where the ill-fated cow had been slaughtered.

Really? The story had me sitting straight up in my front-row seat.

Back when I’d still lived at home with my parents in rural Oregon, my bedroom window looked out over our horse pastures and those of our neighbor’s that adjoined them. He had cows that grazed alongside his horses. One day, a van drove to a cluster of trees close to the fence between our properties, our neighbor following on foot. The two men singled out a cow, roped it, and led it to a tree. The cow began to bellow. The others ignored it. The butcher hog-tied the bellowing animal, shot it, strung it up, and bled it out. The mobile butcher proceeded to gut and butcher the cow’s steaming carcass. He wrapped cuts of meat in white wax paper, and ground up pounds of trimmings and whatnot destined to be patted into burgers or cooked into spaghetti Bolonese.

The next day, some boys on the school bus bragged about getting ahold of the butchered cow’s head and leaving it in someone’s mailbox. Along our country roads, folks used barrels for receiving large packages. And surprises. The boys all had a good laugh imagining some poor soul fetching the mail and discovering a cow’s head staring blankly at them.

Those boys got ahold of that cow’s head repeatedly, depositing it in various barrels up and down our road over several weeks.

Imagine the state of that head over a length of time; I was sure glad we didn’t have a postal barrel.

What got me sitting rigid in my chair at Kesey’s reading was his description of his cows responding to the death of their herd mate. Having witnessed the butchering of our neighbor’s cow, it’d struck how unperturbed the other cows had been. Once their herd mate had been roped, they’d returned to grazing, looking as dumbly unconcerned by the cruel, cruel world as ever. And once the butcher had left the field? Did the herd gather in a circle around the bloody tree? Mourn the fallen?

No.

I went up to Kesey after his reading, and said, “About that butcher story and the cows gathering to grieve—”

Kesey’s deep chuckle didn’t let me finish. “Oh, that,” he said, his eyes curing up like an imp’s, “yeah. I’ve gotten a lot of grief over that piece.” He wrapped one of his beefy arms around me and pulled me closer to his barrel chest. I could smell peppermint schnapps on his breath. “Lots of folks call out the bullshit on that one.” More chuckles (the best sounding chuckles I’ve ever known). He fished his flask of schnapps out of his vest pocket and offered it to me. “Literary license, ya know?”

A photo I took of the People Magazine article about the novel-writing class that appeared in 1988.

Literary License

The University of Oregon novel-writing class with our instructor Ken Kesey. Photo credit: ©Brian Lanker.

Back in the 1980s, when I was a grad student living in Eugene, Oregon, I participated in a novel-writing course with Ken Kesey, author of several novels, including Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At a reading we’d organized as a class, he read from Demon Box, his collection of essays and short stories.

One of the pieces he read was set on his farm where his son Jed was buried, the Merry Prankster bus Further sat in shocking decay in a marshy coppice, where an unshorn sheep grazed—bringing the phrase “grass maggot” to mind—and where several cattle chewed their cud in a tansy-infested field. He told the story of a butcher’s visit to the farm and how, after the butcher had done his butchery, packed up, and left, the remaining cows gathered, encircling the bloodied tree where the ill-fated cow had been slaughtered.

Really? The story had me sitting straight up in my front-row seat.

Back when I’d still lived at home with my parents in rural Oregon, my bedroom window looked out over our horse pastures and the adjoining pastures that belonged to our neighbor. Several of his cows grazed his pastures along with his horses. One day, a van drove across his pasture to a cluster of trees close to the property line and our house . The driver and our neighbor singled out a cow, roped it, and led it to a tree where they hog-tied the bellowing animal, shot it, strung it up, and bled it out. The mobile butcher proceeded to gut and butcher the cow’s steaming carcass.

The next day, some boys on the school bus bragged about getting ahold of the butchered cow’s head and leaving it in someone’s mailbox. Along our country roads, folks used barrels for receiving large packages. And surprises. The boys all had a good laugh imagining some poor soul fetching the mail and discovering a cow’s head staring blankly at them.

Over the following weeks, those boys somehow got ahold of that cow’s head repeatedly, depositing in various barrels up and down our road over several weeks.

Imagine the state of that head over a length of time; I was sure glad we didn’t have a postal barrel.

As I listened to Kesey tell the tale of the mobile butcher’s visit to his farm, my experience came back to me. And what got me sitting rigid in my chair was his description of how his cows reacted to the death of their herd mate—because one of the things that had struck me as I’d witnessed the butchering of our neighbor’s cow, was precisely how unperturbed his other cows had been. Once their herd mate had been roped, they returned to grazing, looking as dumbly unconcerned by the cruel, cruel world as ever.

And once the butcher had left the field? Did the herd gather in a circle around the bloody tree? Mourn the fallen?

No.

Kesey finished his reading, and I said to him, “About that butcher story and the cows gathering to grieve—”

I didn’t finish my sentence, Kesey’s deep chuckle interrupting me. “Oh, that,” he said, his eyes curing up like an imp’s, “yeah. I’ve gotten a lot of grief over that piece.” He wrapped one of his beefy arms around me and pulled me closer to his barrel chest. I could smell peppermint schnapps on his breath. “Lots of folks call out the bullshit on that one.” More chuckles (the best sounding chuckles I’ve ever known). He fished his flask of schnapps out of his vest pocket and offered it to me. “Literary license, ya know?”

A photo I took of the People Magazine article about the novel-writing class that appeared in 1988.

Tra La!

May’s riot of azaleas always reminds me of living in North Carolina a long time ago.

Tra la, it’s here, the lusty month of May! That lovely month—when I never go astray. Annually, I post a song from the musical Camelot on social media, switching between the Julie Andrews and Vanessa Redgrave versions. I remember playing the album of the 1960 musical, seeing the 1967 movie, and being besotted by all the major stars and their voices.

We lived in North Carolina when the movie came out. My parents took us to see it as well as a traveling stage production performed on base. I fell in love with the stage Lancelot. Dear Lancelot. The purity of his heart deceived him when couldn’t stop himself from loving King Arthur’s queen in a manner inappropriate for a vassal.

As we exited the dark theater into daylight, I sighed and expressed my love for Lance. “Wasn’t he handsome?” I said.

“But he was bald,” my mom said.

But what did that matter? He was Lancelot! And, like my dad, a military man.

Celebrating my 8th birthday on our back deck in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

In North Carolina, we lived in a neighborhood close to Andrews AFB where Dad was stationed. Fort Bragg, the largest Army base in the country overshadowed it. One of our neighborhood streets dead-ended where the army training fields began, and we loved watching the soldiers, tanks, and heavy guns traveling between training fields and base, churning up clouds of the pink dust from the red Carolina soil.

Both bases swarmed with young men in uniform. We, as military brats, lived in a world disproportionately populated with men. Uniforms, youth, and vitality surrounded us. Meanwhile, news of Vietnam battlefields and war protests from around the country raged on TV and in the papers. And my best friend’s father came home from the war in a coffin. The last year we lived in North Carolina, we lived without my dad, who was serving a year tour of duty in Vietnam.

My dad in Saigon, 1968.

For most, Camelot will forever be associated with the Kennedy presidency. But for me, it will always be tied to red clay dust and the Vietnam War, when I learned to gaze at the human race aghast.

Secondhand Treasures

Several months after I finished graduate school, I cleared out my apartment, giving treasures away, boxing up what I wanted to keep, and selling the rest at a yard sale. Not that I’d owned much, but possessing less felt refreshing, and I recalled a former roommate who owned only what he could pack into his green 1969 Rambler. I also recalled his favorite possession, something I’d found for him at a yard sale, a coffee machine with a clock. He could set it to brew minutes before his alarm went off. He’d step out of his room, hot coffee waiting. Another roommate in that same house had worked as a seamstress for the San Francisco Opera Company. She’d bring home sacks of clothing she’d harvested from the overstuffed racks at Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul’s. Elbow deep in castoffs, she’d rip apart seams and reshape the old, removing bulky shoulder pads, shortening hems, or adding borders reminiscent of Seminole patchwork patterns. Sometimes, she’d tie-dye her cotton finds—or reverse-dye them.

Much of what I sold at my yard sale had been bought at yard sales. I prized a 1920’s floor lamp which a pleated silk shade. The owners had been given it as a wedding present, and they sold it to me with tears in their eyes. They were being moved into a retirement facility, downsizing. I’d transformed other pieces—a table, coffee table, and sideboard—with licks of paint and stencil work. We didn’t use the term “upcycling” then, but that was what I was doing. When I cleared out my apartment, I gave away my stenciled furniture to a friend who’d admired my work.

Sadly, the Swiss don’t hold yard sales. And they don’t really do bargains. Certainly not like North Americans do. The rare “flea markets” come closest to our yard sales, but the best places to find secondhand treasures in the German-speaking parts of Switzerland are the Brokis. The prices in these thrift shops would shock any bargain-hunting North American, but I’ve made peace with them. Had to.

When furnishing our first apartment, my husband and I trawled the Brokis. We found a pair of handmade beds made of Arve, Swiss pine. Most likely, they’d originated in the Alps. My father-in-law, an amateur furniture maker, claimed the set to be the handiwork of someone skilled but not professional. When we moved to France, we adopted most of the furniture that’d belonged to my husband’s grandmother. The family had planned to haul it all to their local Brocki until we stepped in. The grandmother’s father had been a furniture maker, and the household of furniture had been his wedding gift. Giggling like pirates, Markus and I made off with a booty: the dining and main bedroom sets. Solid oak.

The 1920’s family piece that I hope stays in the family.

Other treasures we’ve gleaned from Brokis include four paintings. Two were painted by artists renowned for their work as graphic designers, W. F. Burger, of a view to the Italian border on Lago di Lugano and a 1945 pastoral scene by Arthur Emil Bofinger. One is by K. Jordi, a skilled watercolorist I find no online information about, and another is a naïve work of a WWI German war scene. The naïve piece could hang in the Museum of Bad Art; nevertheless, I love it.

I’m certain former owners would be surprised to find their old treasures in my possession. Who knows where each will find themselves next? And our daughter in Los Angeles? She can’t wait to trawl LA’s secondhand shops with us.

An Imagination

If only you could focus. If you’d only concentrate.

A child sits shackled to a classroom desk. A heating pipe pings and plonks, becoming either water torture or a lure. The child examines the pipe. Discovering it’s a tunnel, she crawls inside. It takes her down, below the floor, through dark corridors, and under ground. She emerges in a leafy woods, where, through the trees, she sees a procession of people dressed in black, the men in sleek-black top hats and the women in long skirts, their heads adorned in feathers. They follow a black carriage, windowed and lit and encasing a coffin. Black horses with trembling plumes on their heads pull the carriage. The driver gentles their reins. The animals see the child. One calls her name. Panicked by being spotted, she runs back to the tunnel, slipping under ground and up dark corridors. Her name’s called again. She’s gasping for breath, and before she reaches her seat, there’s laughter. The teacher’s hand presses itself white-knuckled on the child’s desk. Her name is called again—as sharply as the whack of a ruler.

If only you could focus. If you’d only concentrate.

A window beckons. Outside, the wind is up. A hedge of bushes and trees, bright green with spring growth, sways. The new leaves twinkle as if they’re daytime stars, and the branches beckon. A corner of the window peels back to reveal a carpet, which she settles upon. Closing her eyes, she leans back. The air is fresh, uplifting. She smiles. Below, far, far below, there’s laughter. The carpet hovers. She hears a name, her name, a whack—

If only you could focus. If you’d only concentrate.

Beneath her desk, a crack in the floor catches the sole of her shoe. She presses against the crack, and it slides open, a draft of salty air enveloping her. Seagulls scream, and waves slap against a breakwater. A galleon’s docked. Against the wishes of her teacher, who insists she to pay closer attention in class, she climbs aboard. She may sail to parts unknown, and be wrecked upon an island like Robinson Crusoe. Unlike him, won’t seek company or a return to society. She’ll make a life for herself on the island. The only Friday she needs falls at the end of the week. Today might be Friday.

If only you could focus. If you’d only concentrate.

If only you could focus. If you’d only concentrate.

Friday. The child is given assignments for the weekend. Some are okay, maybe, but the math assignments clink like chains. Never mind. Chains remind her of bikes, which takes her out the family compound, up a narrow alley stinking of open benjos, past farmyards with crowing roosters, murmuring ducks, and bellowing water buffalo. She pedals past a wooden hay cart pulled by a Brahman cow and slips between glinting rice paddies. A solitary Buddhist temple, its roof of tiles glazed in a rainbow of colors and adorned with wings of dragons glimmers. And through a copse of pines, she pushes her bike along a boardwalk. The beach. The South China Sea. Waves sweep ashore. Kids swimming in the surf call her into the water where she just may swim around the world.

The American beach near Tainan in the 1970s (photo posted on a FB group page by Jack Flash)

A little dreamer with her dad and General & Mrs. Shan on an outing to Sun Moon Lake.

Who says this girl cannot focus, cannot concentrate? Look at how far she travels. Look at how far she’s come.

Why not feed curiosity? Free the wandering mind? Follow the urge to explore?

A girl with an imagination in Obergoms, Switzerland

A Departure

A message from the other side of the world.

This departure hit me; I cried.

Our three kids were born in Switzerland. When they were little, we’d remind them they were US citizens. Over the years, we took them on trips to the States, visits to family in Oregon and Texas, my old school friends in Colorado and Minnesota, and my niece in San Francisco. New York City. We often flew into one part of the country and out another, making our trips between arrival and departure points long, scenic, and filled with as many national parks as possible. We saw places I’d never seen growing up, like the Grand Canyon. I’d never visited it, although I’d lived in Arizona as a child. We even showed the kids Las Vegas. As we drove through desert landscapes, I’d insist on turning off the air conditioning. Down came the car windows. “This is how I experienced these desert drives as a child,” I told them. “With tangled hair. Dry heat is not so miserable if the air’s flowing.” Up to a point.

Our point being 111° Fahrenheit, 43° Celsius.

The kids experienced storms in the deserts and saw fresh evidence of flash flooding—how destructive it can be. On one trip, we went from the savage heat of Death Valley to a surprisingly chilly coast shrouded in fog, the two zones separated by the golden rolling hills of California.

As the kids finished their studies, I suggested they experience the States for themselves. “Try working there.” Temporarily, I meant. “You each have a US passport. Take advantage of it. Any Swiss employer will jump at the chance to send a Swiss-trained employee to work in the US free from bureaucratic aggravation.” Spare a company the hassle and expense of sponsorship, the visa lottery, or a green card? What a dream!

Unless they lived in the States for a minimum of five years, they couldn’t pass their US citizenship to their children. Not that their kids needed to be US citizens. Or the obligation to file US tax returns even if they aren’t living in the US, never have, and maybe never will.

Our eldest said, “To me, the States is just vacationland.” She talked to her US cousins and discovered that US working conditions compared unfavorably to European conditions. Issues with vacation, health care, and maternal leave abound. General conditions don’t compare well, either. And what about quality of life, purchasing power, and education? Plus, explosive issues like climate and violence and divisions—political, racial, religious, social, gender, and justice—complicate any draw to living in the States.

Too, let’s be aware: We should all be traveling less, making as few flights as possible, long- or short-haul.

 As I’ve aged, I’ve realized that I don’t want the kids to live in the US—for personal reasons. I don’t want to be obliged to return there. And the time when my husband and I cannot make the trip is approaching sooner than we’d like to think. Should our kids start families, we want to be easily accessible. Helpful.

But now it’s happened. Our eldest grabbed an unexpected opportunity to make a career move within her company and relocate to Los Angeles. The City of Angels called to her readiness for adventure.

When I told a friend, another US citizen living in Europe, of my daughter’s decision to relocate, she said, “Why? Moving to the States now is like running into a burning house.” Ah, yes, but my husband and I saw perfection in this chance and the location. Los Angeles will suit our eldest—maybe a bit too well, but that’s another issue.

As she prepared to move, limiting herself to taking what she could pack into two suitcases and two carry-ons, I found myself nearly as excited as she was. When family and friends expressed concern for me—“How are you doing/taking/seeing this?”—I’d smile, shake my head, and wave away the question. This wasn’t about me. It’s about her. Contract signed; flight, rental car, and accommodations booked; possessions given away, sold, or stored with us; final meetings and outings with work colleagues, friends, and family; time for inner balance, dance courses, runs along the Rhine, and yoga: I watched her wrap up her affairs with pride. No tears. Never a tear. No reason to cry. This is what parenting is about, giving a child the confidence to be a Self. Her move has the stamp of success all over it. Right?

The morning of her departure. I’d shed no tears. But, in all honestly, wasn’t shedding a tear or two the right way to react? Worry set in. Of course, I’d moved so often growing up that I felt cured in departures. Dried out before I’d reached my eldest daughter’s age—when I’d moved from the States to Europe. Did all this make me immune to my own daughter’s departure?

We drove her to the airport and stayed with her to baggage drop-off—a thankfully long, long line—her enthusiasm keeping us laughing. Her sister showed up, and together we walked to the area restricted to passengers with boarding passes. She grabbed me in a joyful, enthusiastic hug. Let the adventures begin, I thought.

Then and there, my eyes welled.

Helena falls in love with LA’s winter sun on Manhattan Beach.

Boundaries

A few weeks back, I spent a Sunday morning among a group of writers, most of them familiar to me, most of them members of the Writers and Illustrators of Zurich group. At one point, a woman joining us for the first time made a statement about how we all needed to learn how to say no more often. I sat up.

The argument for setting personal boundaries is not new to me, but it is an idea that passes me by. The woman spoke in general terms, of course, and I suppose most of us listening to her would have felt the urge to agree. In fact, several did, nodding their agreement. When someone makes a general statement that doesn’t relate to me or concern me, I usually say nothing. This time, however, I spoke up. I said, “Actually, I’m someone who struggles to say yes.”

Like getting out of the house that very morning to join the group for coffee and a chat—up until I purchased my ticket on the train app, I’d argued with myself about going or staying home.

The woman’s statement came across as something of a place setter—not quite phatic speech, but working in that direction, meant to be heard and agreed upon but not necessary chewed upon. I immediately felt awkward for having voiced disagreement. So, I did my usual thing, making light of my injection. I recounted the story of my daughter once saying to me, “Yes is also a word!” (I’ve never restricted a liberal application of no to myself.)

Several in the group kindly laughed.

The conversation moved on.

But I stayed in thought.

How often do we view the world and assume that those around us share our vision? How often do we ask ourselves what others might see from a vantage point we share? How often do we ask what others see? And why does it take guts to do so?

Ah, there I go: It takes guts for me to ask what others might see from the same vantage points. Perhaps the person next to me finds such a task easy. Or even pleasant.

A few years ago, when the kids were still little—well, more than a few years ago—I worked Mondays at a friend’s daycare center, which she ran out of her home, just down the street from where we lived. Even though I enjoyed working there, I struggled every Monday to get out the door and down the street. After all, getting out the door is always a form of saying yes.

One morning, an icy rain fell. Looking at the weather, I dreaded going outside. Going to work. No matter the weather, we took our toddlers and babies for long walks at least once a day, sometimes, if they were particularly rambunctious, twice a day. There was no way to keep the children or us dry and warm in such weather, but we never skipped our walks. On that rainy morning, I scurried to the daycare center, got out of my layers of clothes, and made my way into the living room. My friend’s daughter stood by a sliding glass door, her hips swinging. She heard me, turn, and grinned. She danced a little and said, “It’s raining! It’s raining! Don’t you just love the rain?

It’s raining! It’s raining!

At that moment, warmed by the radiance of a happy child, I felt the love for rain. I saw it from her eyes, and after that day, I never struggled to get to the daycare again.

This morning, a young woman asked writers on Twitter how they coped in winter. Her “writer’s brain” needed daylight, she said. I wrote a message back to her saying that I cope very well in winter. I get up early and love working before the sun rises. The comfort I find in darkness helps me focus.

The four-thirty sky. Nightfall soon.

Perhaps it’s safe to assume that most people prefer long days to short ones. Find setting boundaries more challenging than expanding them. And don’t dance for joy at the sight of a cold, rainy day. But perhaps it’s not safe to assume any of these things.

Fall

All through my childhood, fall meant the end of summer. The end of T-shirts and shorts, bare feet and flip-flops. The end of running through sprinklers and swimming in ponds or pools. The end of long days, short nights.

Fall meant the beginning of school, which put me among too many noisy people. Ask me to concentrate in the classroom battlefield environment? Forget it. Ask me to do schoolwork at home in my free time? Torture. Who didn’t prefer being outside with friends or inside, reading books, playing with Matchbook cars, or watching TV? I attended three different elementary schools, one in North Carolina, Ohio, and Taiwan. They were all the same. Well, Taiwan differed in one way: the absence of fall. I didn’t miss it.

In Ohio, preferring spring and summer, bikes and bare feet, to fall and winter, classrooms and snow boots.

In Denver, I attended one of the most experimental junior high schools in the country. Students were treated as agents in their studies. In most of the classes, the learning material came in plastic tubs. Laminated sheets filled each tub. Each sheet; a lesson in history, English, or algebra. Finish a lesson, and move on to the next. Complete as many as you could in fifty minutes. If you had questions, ran into trouble, or fell behind, the teacher or an assistant would help you. No teacher stood at the front of the room, barking at us. Students worked quietly. And in this peaceful environment, I could immerse myself in my lessons. Self-management came easier to me than taking orders. And if a heating pipe pinged or a fluorescent light crackled, I didn’t notice.

In other classes, we sat in circles, the teacher joining us like King Arthur at the Round Table. Discussions replaced listen-and-repeat teaching methods. Our thoughts, experiences, and curiosity about subjects were welcome. We felt invested in subject matters—we felt as if we mattered.

I thrived in the Denver school. Unfortunately, we moved at the end of one year. Oregon returned me to that familiar and untenable structure of hierarchy and bullying. My grades fell back to their pre-Denver, you’re-not-touching-me levels. My sister begged to be allowed to attend community college and sit the GED exams. A great idea—I wanted to be included. Dad shook his head. “And miss the best fun of your lives?” he said.

The best fun of my life followed high school graduation. My entry into college felt like a return to the Denver school where I could manage myself. At first, I failed. I’d forgotten how. But I figured it out.

It’s taken me decades to recover from the sinking, end-of-summer feeling that fall always gave me. First, I learned to smile at the joy it brought so many people. Then I allowed myself to appreciate some of its charms: the morning sun shining through golden tree crowns, the wind blowing a murmuration of leaves across a trail, and the glitter of an early frost at sunrise.

Small changes to my life have finally endeared fall to me. The installation of a tiled stove, a Kachelofen, in our main living space is one. When temperatures drop below 13°, I build morning fires. The heat is absorbed by the stove’s tiles, which in turn radiate it. Touch the Kachelofen hours after the coals have burned to ash, and it’s as warm as a cat. For the love of flickering flames and radiant heat, I now look forward to the colder seasons.

The fire’s lit. The coffee’s brewing.

Another change came with the pandemic forcing Markus and me to work from home. We began taking 15–minute walks. Being outside so often, we experienced the sun’s movements—not just the length of day changing through the seasons, but the tracking of the sunrises and sunsets along the horizon and back again. We experienced temperature fluctuations and weather changes: daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonally. As we made our walks, trees leafed out, flowers blossomed, fruits and crops ripened. Seed-carrying fluff drifted on breezes. On the neighboring farm, cows calved, and ducklings hatched. Swifts returned, paired, and raised their young. Now, starlings chatter in the treetops, preparing to migrate.

October has slipped into November. The forested hills around us broke out in reds, yellows, and browns. Deciduous trees shed their nuts and leaves. At the local farm store, pumpkins and bottles of apple cider appeared on the shelves. In all of this, I’m learning to appreciate that fall has its place. It makes sense.

A burrow under the hazelnut tree.

This morning, I lit a fire to warm the Kachelofen. The flames flickered. I worked at my desk, and the day broke. Outside my window, yellow and brown hazelnut leaves carpet the lawn. A very fat mouse slips in and out of its burrow beneath the tree’s ivy-covered bole—which looks more like a cluster of saplings rising from an ivy plinth. The mouse skips over rocks and leaf litter. It returns with its foraging finds. Frosts are on their way. Soon, while I work, cozied by my winter fire, the fat mouse will be hibernating. I’ll keep watch on the world, working at my desk and padding barefoot around our warm house until Markus and I lace up for our walk, off to see the world safely through to winter and then spring.