May 16, 2008

A few rogue curls to tame back

My grandmother is telling me her stories. One of her favorites is how my grandpa was the only one of three men who could persuade her to get married, secretly, while she was still in nursing school at Deaconess in Boston in the 1940s. It wasn’t allowed, and nurse’s training back then was so important to her she watched more than one man walk out, refusing to wait for her until she finished. But when she met my grandfather — she whirling down a ferris wheel at the Penobscot County Fair and he standing down on the ground, leaning against a carnival stand, watching her until she noticed him — she broke it off with her latest boyfriend and knew my grandfather was the one she would break all the rules for.

They were married before he went off to war, less than a year before she finished her training, and they kept it a secret until after her graduation. Even after he came home from overseas they couldn’t truly be together, for years working opposing shifts, one coming home as the other was leaving, only seeing each other a few minutes a day.

But they held it together and they were starry-eyed until he died unexpectedly in 1999. She recalls very clearly, though, that in their early years together he could be on the bossy side and on one particularly bad day she scooped up her two boys, both toddlers then, and left him high and dry for five full weeks. Had he not eventually come to her mother’s house with his heart on his sleeve (and an apology, which didn’t hurt), I wouldn’t be here in that very same house right now, more than 50 years later, to tell that story.

She laughs as she tells it to me in the truck on our way home this afternoon, and says with a firm nod that it was the last time he ever bossed her, and that was that.

Tonight I went alone to his grave, on the road down the hill that heads north out of town. It was just getting dark and the frogs and crickets were out, the moon, too, and while the breeze was chilly when I parked the truck alongside the ruts of the dirt road and got out, it was calm and warm down on the ground on the grass by his tombstone and I stayed there a long time, more than an hour, before a pair of headlights shone over the rise and chased me back home. But I got to say what I wanted to say, which was good thinking, grandpa — giving her a few weeks to miss you, too.

Posted by tonya in de la vida
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

May 15, 2008

There are lots of good things about JUNO…

But the very best were the soundtrack, and Ellen Page’s ability to channel a 16-year-old Janeane Garofalo.

Posted by tonya in fun stuff
2 Comments | Permalink | Add this to …

May 14, 2008

Almost

Posted by tonya in photos
Leave a Comment | Permalink | Add this to …

May 14, 2008

I can’t help it, it’s the sun and the dust and the color and the wind

This week has been the first that we didn’t need to fire up the wood stove in the early mornings, instead cracking open the windows as the coffee brews (though the glass in our french press cracked yesterday so we’ve had to filter it manually… oh the injustice) and letting the fresh, cool, damp air in. We finally got around to setting the stake for the dogs’ tie-outs so they can lay around in the sun and chase bugs and romp with Sarah; they were looking pretty pathetic in here, noses pressed against the glass doors all day long until we could break to take them for walks. I’ve missed our old, fenced yard.

On the moving front, we made a decision yesterday but wanted to sit on it for a day or so to make sure we felt like it was the right one. This morning we still feel really good about it, so I’ll spill it: we picked both.

That we were so undecided (and that you all seemed to be, too, as the total vote ended up being split exactly down the middle) was a clue that both of those places were good fits for good reasons, and why did it need to be either/or? So we’re purchasing two lots, one now in New Mexico and one down the road in Montana. New Mexico will be home — no surprise to many of you, it really always has been even if I drifted from it for awhile. In Montana we’ll build a modest cabin on a couple of acres outside Missoula to get away to a few times a year, and for friends and family to get some use and enjoyment out of.

There’s more to that decision, including our plans for the two to three years between now and when the house is built; I’ll be back with more on that a little later after we tie up some details.

Posted by tonya in de la vida
3 Comments | Permalink | Add this to …

May 13, 2008

Yes of course, dear.

The green has come and devoured this landscape with an aggression akin to African locusts. One minute you’re walking along and hey, you’re just fine and everything’s great and then wow, what was that? Wait… what’s that noise? And then you look around and you’re surrounded and you wave your arms but you can’t get away from it.

Not that I don’t like green. But, like locusts, I don’t want to be so assaulted by it that I can’t see anything else. Really what it is is that I miss my dust devils.

Now that we’ve got a lawn Sarah has taken to wandering circles around the house, including the precariously narrow spot between the back porch and the drop-off to the creek, which makes me nervous, but I’m so happy she’s playing outside that I go with the flow and just occasionally look downstream to make sure there’s no glint of blonde bobbing in the rocks and water. So far so good.

Confession: I had great romantic notions about coming back to this place I spent summers in as a kid and being folded right back in to relive all of that good stuff all over again. But it’s been a disappointing experience. The town isn’t what it used to be, most of the people I knew and loved are long gone, and some of the ones that remain still regard us as outsiders. People just don’t move here, it doesn’t happen. They stay or they move out, but they do not voluntarily come to a shrinking, 150-year-old former logging town, with no jobs and one market that’s closed by 8 each night, where the average age is nearly 50 and 25% of the residents live below the federal poverty line and only a few of the locals have even dialup Internet.

So we’re a suspicious lot, with our barky dogs and our “studio” (“you do what?”) and our kids who don’t board the school bus with everybody else in the morning. Doesn’t matter that they once knew me and baked me cookies and paid me a quarter to water their lawn, doesn’t matter that I couldn’t wait to get here because all those things about this town are what I find most endearing and genuine about it. It’s different now, and it’s worth keeping an eye on, I guess, if a city-slicker granddaughter from great big ol’ Alamosa, Colorado would move from all the way up here to Nowhere, Maine, to take care of her 86-year-old grandmother. Because who knows what she’s up to. You know those young people.

Posted by tonya in de la vida
7 Comments | Permalink | Add this to …

May 11, 2008

Got a few minutes?

No backstory right now, I’ll just get to the pressing matter at hand:

1. Go here, take a look around.

2. Then go here and do the same.

3. Next, check this out.

4. Then, check that out.

5. Finally, see this.

6. Finally (really), see that.

All things above considered, as well as anything you may know about either place, which region would you choose? (if you can’t see the form below, leave your choice and reasons for it in comments)

Posted by tonya in wandering
22 Comments | Permalink | Add this to …

May 11, 2008

QOTD

“We made a spreadsheet to evaluate and compare the features of each property we’re looking at, including an automatic point-scoring system based on several factors and a percentage matrix programmed according to how complete the information on each lot is. We might be slightly geeky.”

- Shane, to his brother Kyle

Posted by tonya in quotes
4 Comments | Permalink | Add this to …

Next Page →