Kitten Season

After a winter of losses, including the loss our beloved cat, Akio, we have moved through our mourning enough to open our home to new life -- and in this case, we're talking kittens. We brought home the two newbies -- an orange male named Hideki (Japanese for valient, strength and tree) and Miyako (another Japanese name, which means "beautiful night child").

We found these two in a small East Lawrence house where 14 kittens from three litters raced around and piled on each other. Hideki likes to sleep and purr, and Miyako prefers pouncing and throwing herself over Hideki when she's ready for another cat nap.

Meanwhile, Natalie -- who is the mama to these miniature beasts -- is losing some sleep to their nocturnal ways, is overjoyed. And the rest of us cannot help but to keep sneaking into her room to see how they're currently sprawled on top of each other, or what new forms of attack and counter-attack are at play.

Irises outside exploding in color and height, among the tangle of the overgrown grass, outside, and inside it's kitten season.

Iris Season

Each year it amazes me. Irises spring from their tight vertical buds into a blossom delicate as breath, and both intricately ruffled and simply spun open at once. Years ago, someone told me that irises smelled like the color they were, and since that time, I'm constantly testing this theory to find it true. Yes, the purple ones smell like grape, the peach ones like peach, the yellow ones like lemon, and the brown ones like chocolate. Or maybe all these smells are more similar than we realize, but who cares? Whatever it is, it smells like heaven.

The colors are both watercolor and oil paint at once. The hues are saturated with depth. The shine shimmers up close and from a distance.

Social flowers, irises tend to blown in groups, spending their winters rooting themselves horizontal to grow more friends for the spring. Partying against a broken faucet in an alleyway, or landscaped into a luxurious yacht club cocktail party near the marble stairs to the manor, irises defer class, looking completely at home whether admired by the monied or the local racoons.

They break out the champagne all at once, but linger a bit more than the peony, the ultimate party flower (all at once and then all spent). They turn quick to translucent paper and die on the stem while their sturdy flat leaves shoot happily on all summer. They're here in such vibrancy, a cabaret for the senses, and then they're gone. Against the wind, against the rain, they carry on -- dancing like there's no tomorrow and holding tight to that gorgeous bundle of blossom, alive and filling the air with that scent that can only be iris.

Each time they come around, I'm in love all over again.

Where the Weather Can Kill You: Tornado Warning and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night

When my friend Sara was about to move to the northwest, she said, "I just want to live somewhere where the weather can't kill you."

Yesterday the wind battered everything and everyone. Trees bent, people tried not to topple over, and minivans like mine clung to the road with extra fierceness. No wonder that the wind picked up its pace when cooler air moved in, and at 1 a.m., I woke to hear tree limbs banging each other, a light roar, and unidentifiable flying objects meeting in midair collisions. "It sounds like we're having a tornado warning," I thought, and then the second thought came about how such a warning meant leaping out of bed and getting the kids and terrified dog (bad thing to be a Kansas dog who fears thunder) to the basement in a hurry.

"Caryn, get up now! Kids, get to the basement. It's a tornado warning!" Ken yelled. He had been glued to the weather radio in the other room (as usual, given the circumstances and his impeccable -- knock on cottonwood -- ears for bad weather).

In a few seconds, we were huddled in the storage area of our basement, half awake, blankets half draped over us, and Ken and me running in and out to check the TV, the weather radio, and cajole the terrified dog out of a laundry basket upstairs. Cell phone in hand, I called some close friends, and Ken called his folks. "I'm already in my basement, holding tight," Kel said. "Courtney heard the winds and got us up," said Denise. Ken's folks got themselves downstairs on a small couch where, later after the warning expired, he went over and found them sitting quietly like "two peas in a pod," he reported.

But in the here and now, we were focused on how a tornado might have just happened in the northwest part of the county, and how the big, energetic storm heading toward our area was reported to have just the right kind of multi-directional wind meeting to form a tornado. Tornadoes by daylight are scary enough, but in the dark, we have to depend not just on radar and people calling into television stations, but on our ears.

I lived in Kansas for a long time before I saw a tornado, and then -- in the last few years -- small tornadoes starting popping my way. First there was the tiny, white tornado high up in the sky that Ken and I saw while stopping at our mailbox one spring day. It looked like an upside-down wedding gown. Then there was a similar tornado in New Mexico, high up but slightly bigger. It stayed in the same place for dozens of miles. A few years ago, we saw a tornado head toward Lawrence (we live south of town), where it proceeded to rip apart an apartment building and do other damage. It looked like a long finger of god, and the kids and I (who had been watching too much Austin Powers back then), put our pinky fingers to our lips to act out Dr. Evil.

A year ago, I was lying in bed one fine afternoon, home alone, when I heard a rumbling kind of roar. I went outside, looked south, and the photo you're seeing of the tornado is what I saw. It didn't do much damage, was safely far from me, and lingered for about five minutes. I was so mesmerized I didn't know what to do so I called Ken on the phone. "Get the camera and keep taking pictures. Don't stop until it's gone," he said. I could post a dozen more pictures like this one, but you get the idea.

The tornadoes I've seen aren't the killing types, luckily enough, but whenever conditions are right -- the western edge usually of a thunderstorm when the clouds are exhausted and somewhat disorganized but the wind unduly fast, and a thousand other pieces perfectly attuned -- I'm watching. So all the other Kansans I know, living in a state where the saying, "Why would anyone buy a house without a basement" isn't a question but an affirmation. The largest tornadoes of the world tend to be just south of here -- Wichita, Oklahoma City (city in the U.S. with the most torandoes per capita, and perhaps the fastest and largest ever tornado with winds about 260 mph back in the 90s), and the general large swatch of south Kansas (where Greenburg was hit by a two-mile wide tornado a year ago), most of Oklahoma, and part of Texas.

The variety of tornado is vast and daunting, from rope-like remnants of tornadoes (which I think of as a somewhat dispersed herd of confused animals), to wedge tornadoes (such as what hit O.K. City and Greenburg), to ones that can and have carried mail 200 miles away, sucked up an entire river, killed a mother while landing the baby safely in the field, and pierced a piece of hay through a hardwood tree. They come, move, and leave in mysterious ways, and yes, when you live in Kansas, the sky can kill you. But most of us, with enough warning, basement or cellar or strong room hold-out space, and the use of all our senses and our cell phones, can survive the sky.

And the sky is even more generous with its safer forms of beauty in these parts.

Burn, Prairie, Burn!

A few weeks ago, we burned the prairie near our home,
an annual rite of passage for us and for the grasslands, which
need to be freed from the distractions of invader trees and fed by the nutrients the fire imparts.

Burning a prairie is one part pitchfork dragging fire, one part carrying around water just in case, and one part hitting little flames that spill out the wrong direction with the back of a shovel (or just stomping on them, which works well if you dance fast). Of course the most thrilling part is dragging fire, and this year, we just so happened to have divided up, women on one side of a long rectangular prairie (about 10 acres) and men on the other. On the women's side, we took turns, each of us learning how to perfect our technique for wrapping a bunch of dried grasses around the pitchfork, a little like spaghetti, and then dragging with just enough bounce and enough connection to drip fire in a straight line along the edge of the prairie. Sometimes, in one ecstatic drag, I would walk 20 feet, leaving enough drops of fire that would quickly form a straight line of flame behind me.

As we dragged fire on one side, the men did the same on the other, all of us trying to keep pace with each other. We do it this way so that the flames will rush toward each other, flare up gorgeously and dramatically, and then consume themselves, leaving behind a nicely charred prairie. I should say first, though, that we started out burning a line along the short side of this rectangle of land, and then went forth from each edge of that line until we reached the far side. Then we dragged the flames across the opposite short end of prairie to meet, men and women, and ignite one last wall of fire, so loud and so hot that we all had to rush the opposite direction into the woods until the smoke and heat died down.

Within a few weeks, the land starts greening up. Within a few months, the grasses are two or three feet tall, and by late fall, they start to redden. The colors alone that run through this land cover a lot of territory, all reminding me how our lives are made of such seasonal shifts, some slow, and some sudden.

For a related story on prairie burning on our land, see Liz Black's wonderful column.
Thanks to Heather Frost for the bottom two photos of Daniel (on the right) and me.

Passing Through Passover

Passover is my favorite holiday; in fact, sometimes I think it's the only designated holiday that I even like at all. I love that it's a celebration of freedom, that it focuses on a story of one of the more effective political organizing campaigns of the bible (e.g. the exodus), that it happens just on the cusp of deep spring, and that many people I love come to my house for a road-trip like sedar with plenty of pit stops for humor and conversation.

I've been co-hosting the sedar with two dear friends, Reva and Judy, for what? 24 years, I think. Kids have been born and have grown up, couples have changed, some families have gone to California and others have come to Lawrence, and one of our elder, Ben, died (although we have the Cup for Ben as part of the sedar to make sure he knows he's still welcome). Usually, we have 25-30 people. This means Ken or I do the annual trek-to-the-rental-store for tables and chairs, and my whole family (and sometimes friends swept into helping) sweep, clean, unfold chairs, and push back furniture together. The preparations are usually rushed, and this year, Ken pointed out, mop in hand, that this kind of haste in cleaning was perfect, given how the Israelites had to make such a hasty jolt from Egypt that their bread didn't have time to rise (thus, matzvoh).

The singing is loud, the company shines, and the meal is impossibly good, and almost always the same each year (each person brings something): lots of wine and matzoh, boiled potatoes and eggs, gefilte fish, matzoh ball soup, salad, a vegetarian version of shepherd's pie, and dessert. This year, we had one dessert, and I worried it wouldn't be enough, but it turned out to the dessert equivalent of the Hanukkah oil (which miraculously lasted for eight days): Something called "The Next Best Thing to Angelina Jolie (or Robert Redford, depending on your orientation)" is a layered delight of chocolate pudding, whipped cream, some other kind of creamy part, and a ground-almond crust (thanks to Courtney for making it all from scratch).

The other part of what fed us was the land and sky. People poured out the front door to the porch or the back door to the deck at regular intervals to watch the sunset, look at the bowls of greening hills, and enjoy the sweetness of the breeze. As always, being with friends and family, alive and connected inside and outside, was its own celebration of liberation. When it was over, just like each time we do this, I felt that I was now firmly landed in the new land of spring.

NOTE: Thanks to Joni for the great photos (and fabulous Choroset)

On Swanky Hotels and the Habitat of Being in Motion

I write this from the 12^th floor of the Millennium Hotel in Minneapolis. Outside, I can see other swanky hotels, apartment buildings, and if I look closely, trees and ground. While I tend to both be somewhat enamored with the romance of a swanky hotel – just the idea of room service and those carts with doom-covered plates and miniature crystal salt shakers – I also feel a little like a prisoner in such hotels, confined to waiting for and riding elevators. It’s a vertical life, and I guess I’m just a horizontal kind of gal.

I’m here now for a marvelous conference, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, and I love running into old friends, perusing the intriguing workshop offerings, and preparing to do my own workshop. But in my quasi-queasy anti-swankiness, I’m constantly drawn down the slow-moving elevator, out the automatic revolving doors and onto the street. Having done conferences all over the country like this one, I’ve gotten very acclimated to a routine of leaving whenever possible to reconnect with the sky and earth, the sidewalks and stop lights, the occasional sculpture, like in this city, of giant blue herons and the rarer actual blue herons.

Back at the hotel at nightfall, I’m surrounded by the erect bodies of other tall hotels, damp or snow-covered lower roofs, and to my delight, a woman dressed completely in red washing windows on the small terrace of her apartment. This is a good swanky hotel in terms of the view. Two years ago, at another NAPT conference in Boston, I faced another building so close that my room was engulfed in constant shadow. My only consolation was my wonderful roommate, writer Normandi Ellis, who, because the Blue Man theatre was at the bottom of the building that blocked our view, would pull open the slit of air our window allowed, and every night at 11 p.m. She’d yell down, in her Kentucky accent, “I LOVE YOU, BLUE MEN!”

Over the years, I have found small charms in the isolating (at least, for me) vertical life of the swanky hotel: A beautiful lobby in Albuquerque, an especially plush bed in D.C., and the proximity of the Charleston hotel to the enchanting downtown. I’ve also had my share of fear and lothing in such hotels. The room my roommate and I shared in a Costa Mesa hotel, in the land of no place to walk except a large Japanese grocery store, made us both so deeply depressed whenever we were in that room that I labeled it the pit of despair. In Boston, the elevator life of the hotel clashed with my then very vulnerable state at the time, so much so that I fell into all kinds of physical ailments and a far-too-visceral sense of reality leaving my grasp.

I don’t blame the hotels directly; they’re just being what they were built to be. But as I get older, I find myself not craving the comforts of warm rooms, soft beds, and mini baskets of mini shampoo and hand lotion. Instead, I want to simply be on or close to the ground. I would rather be, dare I say, not in this swanky hotel but in an aging summer camp where I sleep in a simple bunk bed and have to trek through the cold grass to the bathroom. My body yearns for the body of the earth.

So I enjoy the swankiness like I would a stupid-funny movie, and I head out to walk for miles whenever I can, paying attention to the trees inhabiting small squares built into the sidewalks, and the quartet of white birds speeding overhead, just like me, heading toward its habitat, even if that habitat is largely defined as being in motion. And each night before I fall asleep, although there’s no theatre below, I pull over the window and call you, “I love you, Blue Men!”

Ear Candy for the Road: Recommended Books on Tapes

Over the last 10 days, our family jumped into a rented car and drove close to 2,700 miles to and fro New Jersey. The trip, decided upon on a whim, was catalyzed by my very dear step-father Henry's hospitalization, and the convergence of spring break, our schedule's being somewhat open, and the feeling that we should just go, right now. So we did, and it was very beautiful and essential to have been there with my mom and stepdad, and to have seen other family. Yet because we were there for the same amount of time we also spent driving, this was one of those trips where the destination really needed to be the journey too. Lucky for us, I loaded up on a heap of books on CD, and here are some mini-reviews for your driving pleasure.

Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy -- This lovely Irish tale told in several compelling voices unfolds a landscape and community, both in the vacinity of a small Irish town and the nearby woods, which contain a shrine to St. Ann, believed to invoke miracles and healing. When the woods and shrine are threatened by a new highway, the community finds itself divided and also thrust into thinking long and deep about what that shrine means to them as individuals and collectively. What follows are splendid, interlocking stories of love against the odds, loss and its aftermath, and how to live together as community, particularly as community members age, change, leave and return. It was a marvelous book for the road although I did walk into gas stations in rural Indiana thinking in an Irish accent as I hunted down more ice tea.

Fear of the Dark by Walter Mosley -- While I don't tend toward mysteries, I was amazed and thrilled at this one, set in 1950s L.A. and narrated by an enticingly honest and learned bookstore owned named Paris Minton, who is drawn unwittingly into situations way beyond his coping skills or courage. Luckily, his good friend, Fearless Jones, a cool-as-iced-coffee protector, fighter and investigator of all things dark, comes to his aid to help balance the trouble set into motion in a Rube Goldberg kind of arrangement by Paris's cousin, Ulysesses "Useless" S. Grant, IV. Mosley is brilliant at setting scenes and conveying characters with charm, wit, music and vivid hues of description, and the language throughout borders on profound and hysterically funny simultaneously. Just listening to this made me feel far more cool than I am.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See -- This fascinating, disturbing and often very melancholy long-life narrative tells the story of a friendship between two women who find their fortunes shifting over their lives in extremely sexist and cruel 19th century China. Lily, a poor girl who, by virtue of having feet shaped perfectly for binding and breaking so that can turn into spectacular "golden lilies," lands a prestigious marriage, community standing and riches while her dear friend, Snow Flower, her "old same" (laotung) -- a girl to whom she commits to for life -- finds her high-ranking family origins sucked dry into poverty, abuse, addiction and great loss. They communicate with each other mostly through nu shu, a secret language only for women. While the sections on the details of foot binding were so upsetting that my whole family made me skip those tracts, the story itself was compelling in what it showed about the deepest friendships and loves of our lives, and about the need to tell our stories and be heard. The writing itself is a bit simplistic and clumsy in sections, but mostly, this is a marvel to listen to as you roar down I-70.

Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson -- Few things I've ever read are infused with such meaning, depth, beauty, and loss as this novel by the author of Gilead about the coming of age of a misfit who, lucky or unlucky for her, is eventually raised by her misfit aunt. With an eye toward the nuances of the sky and nearby glacial lake, and an ear for the most poetic and flowing language this side of Toni Morrison and Ben Okri, Robinson unfurls the family story, shot through with great and uncontrollable losses against the backdrop of a remote and gorgeous landscape. The sense of longing and grief is balanced out by such imagination that hearing this has expanded how I listen to, look at, smell and taste the world around me. The characters are so pervasive that I would wander into truck stop restaurants thinking their thoughts.