A Bookcase Secret, at Last!

I spent countless hours of my youth tapping on walls and pushing on fireplace bricks. Desperate to discover a false wall, hidden staircase, or other evidence of a stealthy mystery, I combed our house searching for any discrepancy that would lead me to a clandestine room or a secret cache. I itched for a puzzle to solve and a solution to unravel.

I thumped on walls – up, down, in, out – listening for sound discrepancies that would indicate a false front. I mentally reviewed the blueprint of our house where each room, closet, and partition adjoined in hopes of exposing a covert chamber, deliciously accessible from an undiscovered trap door under a hallway rug. I pressed and jiggled each brick in our fireplace more than once, hoping to activate a revolving facade or bookcase that would sweep me into a chamber housing a booty of loot of some sort.

Something?

Anything?

Nothing.

Who knew I would have to wait so long?

Well, a half a century later, it finally happened.

I finally solved a head-scratcher while uncovering a mother lode – all in one fell swoop – at the local library, no less!

Let me set the stage.

I am routinely confounded by two dilemmas whenever I go to the library, and last weekend’s visit was no different. They are: (1). How to stay alive long enough to read all of these books, and (2). How to find the best books in the shortest amount of time, without sifting through thousands. Although my discovery did not solve my longevity quandary, it did crack the book-shopping-time-crunch riddle by affording access to the best books in the library very quickly.

So yes, my found treasure trove is books, but not just any books. These are THE BEST books one would want to read in the whole library, all in one spot, hiding in plain sight. Not a revolving, hidden bookcase mind you, but an old stationary mantel in view of hundreds of passers-by a week.

The Book Discussion Kits!

Eureka!

The farthest-back bookcase in my public library was – and still is – filled with rows of burgundy duffle bags offering the best of the best. They are all there, shelves of them, unguarded and unattended.

Award winners, nominees, acclaimed prose, and pinnacle reads.

The Book Discussion Kits!

Who knew?

I’ll admit that I’ll probably never shake my mopes over the monotony of my childhood home; it was utterly lacking in intrigue and perplexity. However, solving my Mystery of the Overwhelming Books was somewhat redemptive for sure. Easily finding the best book among plenty comes in handy the older one gets. After all, I have a lot to read and who knows how much time I have left?

By the way, I have already finished my first pick off of that shelf in just three days.

So, take it from me – if you ever need a good read in a hurry, check the discreet burgundy satchel on the shelf at the back wall.

It’ll be waiting for you there.

The Case of the Missing Atlas

Hon, how far will we be from Dartmouth College when we’re at the Airbnb this summer?

I don’t know – why don’t you get the atlas?

Oh, yeah – good idea!

I sprang from the livingroom chair and stepped into the cool twilight, heading to the driveway to retrieve the map book. Opening the driver’s door, I reached to the gap between the passenger seat and center console where the atlas is tucked, but came up curiously empty-handed.

That’s weird, I thought.

I went around to the passenger side to get closer vantage, but still no atlas. No atlas in the backseat, or the trunk, either.

What the heck?

I headed back inside, shoulders drooped in confusion.

It’s not there, I told my husband as I re-entered the room.

Whaddya mean it’s not there?

It’s not there! The atlas isn’t there.

It has to be there – it’s always there!

Well, it’s not.

Did you look in the trunk?

Yes – I looked in the trunk. Wait – maybe it’s under the big basket in the trunk. I’ll go check.

I came back in – no luck.

It’s not under the basket, I slumped.

I was thoroughly mystified.

How could our atlas be gone?

Where could it be?

How?

Why?

And most worrisome of all, what would life be like without it?

We love maps – all of us. We grew up looking at maps, navigating by maps, and imagining future trips and far-away places with maps. We raised our kids on maps and gifted them with annual memberships to AAA (and all the free maps you could ever ask for) when they became drivers in their own right. We have shoeboxes filled with maps up in the attic – visual representations of epic road trips taken together. Each of us tends to default to a map over a device whenever possible, much preferring the hard copy for directions and proximity.

We chart where we are going, where we have been, and where our next adventure will take us. Should we go this way or that way? Naw, don’t take the interstate, we’d say. Take the secondary roads for better scenery and local flavor. In fact, there’s a great book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon that… well, that’s another story altogether, but it’s a good one.

A few years ago, our future daughter-in-law accompanied us on a ten hour drive to visit our older son, who was her boyfriend at the time. We had a grand time together, and found out only afterwards that our son had artfully cautioned her that the atlas-between-the-seats would figure prominently in the trip – just so you know.

Sure enough, not long into the journey…

Hey Hon, what was the name of that town in Virgina where we stayed at the hotel that was General Lee’s former headquarters?

Um… don’t remember. Why don’t you check the atlas?

BINGO!

He was right, she thought, giggling to herself in the back seat.

Atlas people – how strange!

Unaware of my predictability, I pulled the travel augur from the crease beside my seat and consulted.

Hmmmm……flip, flip, flip…. Let me see……. flip, flip, flip…

Here it is… running my finger across the page…..Yup, it was…Lexington!

It’s Lexington, Hon! Such a great place. Maybe we could stay there again, sometime?

Sure thing, Dear.

And so on, and so forth, with parallel scenes unfolding throughout the trip.

Well, back home on this particular evening, I made a final, desperate dash out to his car to see if perhap the dog-eared ledger had somehow found its way to the alternate vehicle. Again, I came up empty. Next, I searched the likely shelves and baskets in the house, also to no avail.

Did one of the kids borrow it? No, that couldn’t be. Two of them have moved out west, and our middle one scrapped his car for a smalller-carbon-footprint bicycle years ago.

Jeez….

The gravity of our situation slowly began to sink in.

For the first time ever,

we were atlas-less.

Mapless.

Adrift.

Disoriented.

Befuddled.

Hon – what are we going to do? I queried.

Don’t worry, he assured heartily. It’s not that big of a deal, and I’m sure we’ll find it eventually. These things have a way of re-orienting themselves.

Okay, I smiled, you’re right. We’ve got this. We’ll find our way through this!

I knew eventually it would turn up. It had to.

After all, we’d be lost without it

(heh heh).

Don’t Breathe the WIFI!

My husband had the the barest inkling of a cold the day we had a tech guy come to the house to do an upgrade of our cyber system. Included in the job was a WIFI boost, and suddenly Steve’s cold is much worse. It’s as if it came out of nowhere.

I think he breathed in too much WIFI.

My youngest sister always says, “I don’t know what WIFI is, or where to get it, but I do know that it’s good to have a lot of it.” I tend to agree with her. I don’t know what WIFI is, but apparently we have alot of it now. In fact, when I got home from school that day, my husband told me that our rooms were now literally filled with WIFI. It was positively everywhere.

I suppose by the time I arrived on the scene, the WIFI had already sufficiently mixed in with the regular air molecules, but since he was home during the initial BOOST, I think that my husband accidently breathed in pure WIFI before it had properly dissipated, and God only know what that can do.

I kinda think he’s lucky he got away with just a nasty cold.

Don’t you?

There’s a Thing for That?

Although cleverly camoflaged by venetian blinds, the dining room window that overlooks our front porch is a not-so-secret mess. The narrow space between the inside window and the outside screen is haphazardly jammed and stuffed with worn out dishcloths and discarded hand towels.

One might ask, ” Why?” – which would be a perfectly reasonable question. The answer has to do with the age of this house and the dismaying lack of electrical outlets in our nearly-one-hundred-year-old dwelling. We’re talking two, maybe three, outlets per room if you’re lucky, and none outside at all – don’t even go there.

As a result, our dining room window needs to remain slightly cracked open all year – regardless of the weather – so that our porch string lights can be on nightly, for ambiance. The lights are inconveninetly plugged into one of two sockets in the dining room, the one slightly near the window. An industrial grade extension cord snakes its way from the lights outside, down the drain-spout in the northwest corner of the porch, up the brick facade to the window ledge and in through the dining room window to the outlet, while the “discreet” wadding – brimming in the sill area – does its best to keep out the breeze.

It’s been that way for years with the lights, the orange extension cord, and the window. We basically had a choice between outdoor luminaries or a slightly chilly dining room, and we chose lights. Well, I chose lights, and the rest of the family just went along with it.

Recently however, we had electricians do some work on the house, and one of the priority jobs included putting an OUTDOOR socket on the porch for the lights. YAY! No more extension cord! No more dish towels! No more draft!

Wonderful, right?

Well, not so much. Like I said, the porch is brick, so as luck would have it, the new socket had to be located – not on the porch – but around on the north side of the house – the dark side of the house that is surrounded by dense cedar shrubs and visited by critters that like to explore our nearby compost bin. So now, instead of unplugging the lights in the well lit and warm (although drafty) dining room, we have to go outside to the unlit, wild kingdom side of the house to unplug the blooming lights in the dark every night. And it’s still cold out there this time of year!

I was beginning to not like the lights.

That is, until another electrician offered, “You don’t have to go out there at night. There’s a thing for that.”

“There’s a thing for that?”

“There’s a thing for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatcha need is to get yourself a wireless remote outlet out there, plug the lights into that, and badda bing! You turn the lights off from inside the house with the remote.”

Are you kidding me?

Who new?

There’s a thing for that!

“Wow. Time marches on,” I think with a grin as I hit a button – click off the lights, and go to bed.

It’s Not What You Think

During our focus on Presidents Day, my first graders supposed that the reason children are not eligible for the presidency has little to do with lack of requisite skills that one might hope for in a leader. For them, the reason was pragmatic and quite simple – it is because the furniture in the Oval Office is way too big.

Duh!

They were surprisingly confident about signing reams of papers that would undoubtedly be part of a normal work week as Commander in Chief, and although going to meetings would be boring, that would be grudgingly tolerated as an unavoidable part of the job. Naturally, riding on Air Force One would be a blast, only to be surpassed by unlimited access to the full-size bowling alley and movie theater in the White House.

But the office furniture? Hmmmm…

So big.

So looming.

So formidable.

Hoisting oneself onto that skittish rolling chair to then feasibly reach the adjacent towering, oversized desktop?

Not going to happen.

So close, yet so far…

Who knew?

The nature of this exchange and my proximity to unadorned perspectives of six-year-olds brought me back to my own premature conclusions about requisite job skills and possible employment hurdles.

By mid-first grade, I had unwaveringly decided that I was to be a teacher. I loved everything about school and most especially my teacher, who let me cry on her lap each September morning while I adjusted to our family’s late summer move to a new town, new home, and new school. Miss Meade was utterly kind and patient, and her compassion made a lasting impression; I was determined to be like her and do what she did – for a lifetime.

Once my career choice was cemented, I concluded that success was merely a matter of observing her and making sure that I could do everything that she did in the classroom each day. Within days, I felt I was qualified for the job.

Teach reading? I was currently one of the better readers in the class.

Handwriting instruction? I prided myself on neatness and accuracy.

Spelling? Not a problem – I was one of the go-to spellers in the grade.

Math? Um…well… that one was going to be a bit of a struggle, but I was sure I could brush up on my skills to make them passable.

Recess duty? Just stand there and dodge wayward kickballs every so often – that seemed easy enough.

Only one obstacle remained as a looming barrier between me and my dream job.

Tearing paper.

Yup, tearing paper. And this was not going to be an easy one to master, by a long shot.

Miss Meade could fold a stack of ten, yellow lined papers in half, and miraculously tear them in straight line down the middle every Friday for our spelling test – without fail, and probably with her eyes closed, (although I had not seen her do that). I was thoroughly mesmerized by this feat of dexterity and precision, and knew for certain that it was an obvious necessity for the job. After all, one cannot always rely on the convenience of scissors, can they?

At home, I practiced tearing paper in a straight line weekly, daily, hourly, to no avail, balling up one failure after another. Sure, maybe once in a while I might get a straight cleave part of the way down the fold, but to make it appear as though the test papers were cut by scissors when in fact they were expertly sheared by hand? Well, my samples didn’t look like that at all – they weren’t even close. My scraps were raggedy and haphazard and my futile fingers were not strong enough to gain proper purchase for expert shearing. And besides, I was running out of paper. At the job interview, would they let me get by with scissors instead? I doubted it, and I was too worried about the answer to ask.

I was doomed.

Months of uncertainty rolled by, and before long months softened into years and eventually time smoothed out the worry. I am not sure what came first, my ability to tear paper in a straight line, or my realization that this was probably not a job requirement after all.

What didn’t change was my dream to be a teacher. I followed that course to fruition, and here I am today, still tearing straight lines and loving most of the rest of it as well, just as I thought I would.

I suppose that – in years to come – our potential presidents will realize their vision by following their dreams as well. But they’ll have to grow into the furniture first.

Puttering

I think puttering is grossly underrated.

Puttering is

relaxing,

productive,

engaging,

mind-freeing.

Children spends years puttering. Exploring, tinkering, experimenting, finding out what works, what fits and what doesn’t, engrossed with no result in mind until the next thing comes along to tug their curiosity elsewhere, just bumping along through life…

Adults don’t seem to approach things that way. They usually have a goal in mind. They don’t putter much, but I think that perhaps they should putter more.

Puttering involves no commitment, just a smigen of interest. You can hover on the fringes and shuffle around out there for awhile before sidling into something with nothing but vagaries, foggy notions, and seeing where it leads you. And because you expect practically nothing, the results are rarely displeasing.

I think that there’s a quite a bit of puttering involved in teaching. You start with a little of this, a dose of that, a portion of this, and then see what sticks. It’s never exact and it’s never the same. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to come up with an iron-clad recipe for success. Certainly, intuition is a huge part of it; it’s not good to be strictly by the book when dealing with actual human beings, especially small ones. Somehow it seems to come out just right every time.

In retrospect, I think our whole house was decorated by puttering. There never was a goal, or vision. A thrift shop chair, and estate sale rug, an antique vase, a big mirror from a brownstone sale in the city. Just a little of this and a little of that thrown together over time.

It’s been that way with our garden, too. It started with a small parcel of grass and a donation of remnant bluestone from my sister’s place, and it just evolved from there, through the years. A rock wall over there, a trellis here, some hammock swings and few fruit trees to add something nice and attract more critters.

Puttering is deceiving in the most agreeable way possible. If there is something enormous to be done, puttering is the easiest way to think about it – if you want to think about it at all. There are those who don’t want to think about things of this magnitude, and that’s when this notion of easy proximity is perfect. It comes in handy because it is so non-threatening; it lets you come in sideways through the back door instead of head on.

When you putter, you just dabble on the fringes – that’s all. Just fish around and see what happens. Maybe you’ll start with one easy swipe, one stitch, one stroke, one shovelful, one bolt, one note, one push, and then suddenly there’s a chance and Whoosh! and –

to your great surprise – you may arrive at something that sounds like…

“Oh, my! I finished the room!”

“Holy Cow! I have a scarf!”

“Wow! I made a painting!”

“OMG. It’s a flower patch!”

“Well, whattaya know!? I got it started.”

“I played the whole song!”

“They passed!”

The next time you are daunted by a task – haunted by a task,

don’t don’t dive in head first,

and don’t think about what you wish to happen. Just loiter around the edges and poke one part, tinker one portion.

If the spirit moves, things might loosen and begin to flow and you might just slide your way through the whole darn thing despite you best efforts not to, and you will have done something really terrific.

But that was never the goal.

Nope,

it never was.

Puttering is its own reward.

These Arms

Yoga philosophy encourages the practitioner to regard oneself with love and compassion – in the present moment-as is. Not when ten pounds lighter or ten pounds stronger, but today. Now. Conversely, marketing crusaders aspire to have us mired in a morass of deficits: not tall enough, not light enough, not smooth enough, not strong enough, not young enough, not them enough.

Age and wisdom, and a philosophy that views life from a perspective of abundance rather than want, all persuade me to cultivate gratitude instead.

Consider arms, for instance. Mine are just average arms, but these are really good arms. They can move in almost every direction at will and have conveniently grown in proportion to the rest of my body for a lifetime. They can immobilize themselves when strained, and heal themselves when lacerated.

They have never broken or cracked under pressure, and have never needed a replacement part. They have lifted, pushed, and pulled thousands of pounds so far. They have climbed trees, opened doors, lifted boxes, rocked babies, swum laps, moved furniture, cooked meals, cleaned houses, stacked books, pulled weeds, hung curtains, and paddled canoes.

My arms have been getting the job done for sixty-two years now.

I can’t think of a machine that is as versatile or lasts this long without maintenance. Can you?

It’s pretty amazing when you consider it that way, right?

I think so, too.

If I sense a descent toward depreciation of self in mind or heart, I have only to look down at my somewhat seasoned, still-as-strong-as-ever arms and I shake it off. I smooth a bit of lotion on them for good measure, and stride out the door in gratitude.

Hey! Have I told you about my legs?

Wayward Walrus?

We rounded the far end of the field, and walked into the copse of trees at the westerly edge of the expanse, my husband ambling alongside, and the dog snuffling just ahead.

“Um, Hon… is that, um… a walrus, or just a dead tree? My husband queried, pointing ahead. I followed his gaze to a stand of trees in the distance. Nestled in it was a large mass of brown, rising from the ground and glinting with shimmery whiteness on its surface.

“Um…..I…uh…don’t think its a walrus……but I don’t know what it is,” I answered as we slowly advanced toward the hillock, dog in tow. Closing the distance, the identity of knoll became evident. It was a pile of fresh dark soil – presumably for the nearby ballfields – shrouded with a white tarp, remnants of last night’s rain pooling in the folds and glinting in the sun.

“So glad to know its not a wayward walrus in these here parts,” I teased my husband.

“You never know,” he smiled.

Rounding the last corner we headed for home, walking with Ollie

through the first green sparkle of spring.

Blend Schmend!

I have a student who insists on putting either an SC or a DR consonant blend in front of every word ending to make a rhyming word.

Why?

Because he likes the picture on his Consonant Blend chart for the DR blend (a DRAGON) and the picture for the SC blend (a SCORPION). As one might imagine, this tendency is thwarting his ability to generate real rhyming words and grasp how word families work.

For example, for the word ending -ING, his peers generated the rhyming words

BRING, THING, SWING, and STING.

His words were DRING and SCING.

For the word ending -OCK, his peers built the words FLOCK, CROCK, BLOCK, and SHOCK.

His words were DROCK and SCOCK.

This is fine if we ask for nonsense words, but when real words are called for (as they usually are) – nope and nope.

After unsuccessful tries at redirection, today we got creative in our attempt at remediation. After class, my assistant and I covertly altered his Consonant Blend chart. I drew new pictures representing DR and SC, and masterfully glued them on top of the dragon and the scorpion (heh heh). Next, we photocopied the modified paper so the changes were not evident. Finally, we replaced his old chart with the new revised version. Not only is this adaptation likely to curtail his exclusivity with DR and SC, it is sure to give us a chuckle when he discovers that his dragon has horribly morphed into a pink DRESS (ugh!) and his scorpion has transformed into a boring kitchen utensil – a SCOOP!

Of course we’ll be none the wiser.

And somehow, I have a sneaking suspicion that once he expands his repertoire a bit, the dragon and the scorpion will magically reappear.

Uncle Yeeti

Yesterday, our son’s girlfriend introduced us to Uncle Yeeti. He accompanied her to our house and stayed for the evening. We have known her for years as she is a part of the family, but we had never met Uncle Yeeti before. We liked him right away. He was rather quiet through dinner and didn’t interact much; she let us know that sometimes he gets a little tired and has to recharge a bit. She was right. Once he got a second wind, he was more energized and good to go until late in the evening.

I was captivated.

Our dog, was not as impressed, however. He took a bit longer to warm up to him, and eventually settled down in agreement once Uncle Yeeti offered him a treat. They even enjoyed a game of chase together later that night, after Ollie felt more at ease.

Sure, I had heard about him for ages, but had never really given those opinions much weight. However, once I saw him in action, I realized that everything I had heard about him was true; I should have paid more attention years ago. I glad we were finally introduced after all these years – just having him in the room made me feel lighter and happier. I began to see things more clearly, as if a hazy, dusty lens had been peeled away from my eyes.

We asked if he could stay longer, and she agreed! Who knows, if all goes well, he may stay on indefinitely. I think his happy humming and knack for pushing through detritus toward clarity will be of lasting benefit to our home. Even this morning, his residual sparkle still makes the place shine.

I’m so happy to have finally met you, Uncle Yeeti!

Where have you been all my life?