Irene

Hurricane Irene blew through here, swelled the Deerfield River beyond recognition, and opened my eyes a bit. Water is a reckoning.

Here the waters sweep across the athletic fields on campus, lapping at the door of the pressbox at the top of the football stadium:

Evening falls on the face of the waters at the end of the first day -- and it did feel biblical as the rains came and the waters rose.

This was main street in Old Deerfield, high water still a couple hours away. We were lucky. 30 miles to the north and beyond, Vermonters lost plenty.

Next morning, out come the paddlers.

Paul captured a couple new paths to the waterfall (thank you, Raymond Carver).

a snatch of conversation, remembered

A cut-and-paste of Hazel's side of the conversation the other day as she worked away at her painting table, listening all the while (unbeknownst to me) to the music I had going in the kitchen while I worked on dinner; the latest Gillian Welch album was playing and she called out these thoughts (my own answers, inconsequential, omitted here):

"Is that sad music? ... Is someone alone? ... There might be someone who needs help... Maybe the girl has nobody to fix her up... That may be it... There are some people who need help and they don't have a help person."

I think she heard, could feel, the sounds of Welch's music.

extra thoughts, while bathing a four year old

How many times have you done the things you do every day? And so when do you fall through your own self and your thoughts and then arrive at a place of revelation, fresh understanding? Do those moments surprise you when they happen? Or do you plan for them, hide in the weeds in ambush as they come on down the road? And what does revelation wear when it passes you by?

So here we are in deepest Ohio -- my mind's eye turning back to the rug shop in Marrakech -- that place and space and time, suspended, beautifully patterned -- embroidered, now embellished.

Ohio

It's now August -- mellowed version of summer is settling in: cooler evenings, gold light filtered through green at the end of shorter, burnished days, a few whispering yellow leaves drift down from somewhere above -- subtle changes that are felt more than seen, really. These last eight weeks we've been in northeast Ohio -- hometown summer now drawing to a close. Hazel's birthday has come and gone, my own work waits patiently around the corner of the next thought, Paul pushes steadily on toward the end of his first summer of masters work in mathematics.

We've met new friends along familiar hometown streets -- on the way to and from the Saturday morning farmers' market downtown; Hazel swims -- in her fashion -- better now than at the beginning of the summer; the garden I planted around the old pine stump in the folks' front yard has filled in a bit (hydrangea, iris, lavender, lilies, prairie sun rudbeckia, lupines, delphinium); Hazel writes her name with ease and paints and paints and paints.

A few photos that float to the surface of the waning summer:

Hazel in her new blue wings at the end of her birthday:
Silver mercury votives flickering beneath the kitchen window on a July evening:
Hazel's birthday cake -- she'd requested a blue velvet cake with a layer of yellow then orange then pink frosting -- and so behold, the odd cake, a kind of weird, dark-and-dirty aqua green:
Hazel at the Cleveland Museum of Art. I have always, always loved this great expanse of satisfying, stone-striped wall.
Cleveland Orchestra plays at Blossom, all Russian composers:
Early July storm, looking north:

I'm pretending I'm not working

A friend from high school (because she's going to Morocco with her family) wrote to say she liked the blog -- so sweet. In my day-to-day of school and school and school I give feedback and comments and grades, scribble this-s and thats in margins all the live-long day, but so rarely hear anything back -- I, of course, want someone to scribble compliments in my margins. It was nice. (Thank you, Melissa!) Also, it reminded me I have done pretty much zilch when it comes to my own shit. You know? How do we keep going if we don't feed ourselves?

You know what's new? Paul ruptured his Achilles. January 20. Good grief. And, I suppose, in a way it has been good -- in the sense of the glorious and sparkly silver lining: Grammy for Hazel, workman's comp for our bank account, endless help from my mom in the daily grind of the household. Then Grampy arrived! I wasn't there for the reunion, but apparently Hazel gave him a hug that brought the roof down. Grateful.

Here are a couple shots from when Paul was still upright and crutchless, before he heard that crazy booming-loud (internal) snap and simultaneously felt the gunshot, fell to the ground, wondering who it was on his frosh-soph prep school basketball team that brought a gun to practice. For real.

One of the first big snows that blew in from the south -- they've all been from down yonder, not up north.
Beautiful craze of ice-crusted sparkle.

And watch out, Shirley Temple! Our girl likes to do her dances sans undies!

And a footnote: here Hazel sees her first fireworks, Boston Common, New Year's Eve 2010:

This is the picture

A gallop through some of what we see around here. Back in mid-September we went apple-picking in Harvard -- near that experimental community begun by Louisa May Alcott's father Branson and a bunch of his transcendentalist cohorts.


They also had a couple peach trees.
Lots just waiting to succumb to the rains and the bees.
Honey in the making.
Three iterations of the barn Paul's been keeping track of:


And later, mid-October, we took a chilly Sunday morning walk down Main Street to see the piles of color heaped up in the sideyard of the closest farm to campus.


Hazel clambering in the Japanese maple just on the other side of our dorm.
Looking up.
Damn! I need to start doing my work. Much more fun to skate along through our recent weeks.

In front of the fire

Here we are! I'm about to come up for air, but not before writing a gazillion comments for end-of-term. Grades due soon-ish. The folks are with us -- the fire is going and we have a new stereo. Fruits of the paycheck. Cozy fireside this and that. Won't, as I say, fully enjoy until the work is done. But I miss posting and picturing!

Let's start with Halloween. Hazel from the get-go (not so very far back, just September) had wanted to be a Red Cat. So there you go. Thanks to Grammy for the essentials: perky vermillion ears and wonky, wavy, fury red tail. Which shed a ton.

And the finishing touches. For the record, I am wearing Grandaddy Gurney's World War I (that's One) Navy middie, circa 1918.
Wide grins and happy whiskers.
And the action clip, tail doin' its thang.

Everyone says this house on Old Deerfield's Main Street always has the most enormous gourds.
And one grin from very close.
And from across the street, the full effect of the house-wide jack-o-lantern grin.
And then much rambling from house to house, shouting for just three more SweetTarts to keep the train rolling along, succumbing to the super-chill of winter approaching, and ultimately face-planting at the last house -- right smack from the lamentably divitty side-lawn onto the cold stone front walk. Tears! Lamentations! And home to bed.

Now for the riotous color from someone else's garden -- we've been the happy recipients of some delicious peppers. Not since Hatch Valley bounty sent direct from friend Martha in New Mexico have I smelled the incomparable aroma of home-roasted peppers, an intoxicating mouth-wateringly yum of a smell.

Girlfriend's lovin the chill and the sun and the fall and her dada!
Here Hazel wears a gift from Cuzin Caz: a pair of Ukranian slippers, with a side of silly.
The sky's on fire. Paul and Hazel came down to one of our last Thirds Field Hockey practices. Paul brings his camera and here is the sun's reach, even after the set.
This barn (inexplicably, number 28) is somewhere around here, and Paul keeps taking beautiful photographs of it.
"There she goes!!!" Said in that cool voice of David Byrne's.
Whass that?

More to come. Time for bed. So nice to be unhooked from the round-and-round of school, to be listening to Alison Krauss and indulging in the so-lovely of processing my own thoughts and life instead of others'. Give thanks!

Just 'cause

I love this set of I'm-taking-of-you and you're-taking-of-me. On my birthday, October 28 (which inconveniently fell on a Thursday), Paul took us off to a little out-of-the-way coffee shop and music store, restaurant and book shop -- what had been an old mill is now a hopping little corner of cool. (The music shop's motto is "Stuff you don't need in a place you can't find"). So there was a lot of picture-taking and what not. I like the ones Hazel took of her mama!

Paul was ordering and asking what I wanted!
Now it's my turn.
Whose birthday did you say it was?
Giving us all the run-around. (Though the photos don't say much about it, we are in full throttle thrumming tantrumming threes. Super fun.)

Tanglewood

Continuing with my out-of-sequence-late-night posting, here are a couple shots from Hazel's first concert -- Crosby, Stills and Nash at Tanglewood. We popped sparking wine; Hazel capered about in the evening cool; we waited in vain for them to play Marrakech Express. CS&N is still political, still pushing back against the forces of complacency and excess. But it was an odd message given the crowd (middle-aged money) and the setting (gorgeous manicured green). Hazel dug the music. (See below!)

Weirdly, a dude pops out of our bottle. Huh?
The clinking part is a favorite of Hazel's. She drinks lemonade.
They start to play...
-- she starts to dance.
And then she slept.

The dancing, caught for all time. Paul calls her technique "German Interpretive."