The Paper House

It is a paper house. Paper walls with paper paint, paper fixtures, a paper pellet stove, paper stairs, paper porch, paper floor, paper toilet, and paper cabinets. Paper planting pots I fill with paper soil, paper water and paper seeds. Paper windows. Paper shingles on a paper roof. Paper doors. A paper house surrounded by paper trees, paper dirt paths, and reached by paper feet or paper tires down a narrow paper road.

I have already stood in a store, building my paper home out of paper paint swatches, mostly warm blues and earthy olive greens. I have a book of paper pages on hold at the library about growing a vegetable and herb garden in a small space (my paper porch with paper pots, soil and seeds). And I have already drawn pencil pictures on paper of the bookshelves I want to build.

It isn’t our home. It isn’t even our bank’s house. It is still the seller’s brick, wood, iron, glass and plaster. We are just potential paper buyers, paying invisible paper money to keep the other potential paper buyers away. Dibs is all we really have.

Monday morning, the inspector’s screwdriver goes through the ceiling of the laundry room and sticks there. Below it, a bucket sits on the floor, empty but no less suspicious. It is an old bathroom leak, we are told. It was resolved last year, or rather, thought to have been resolved last year. Now the plaster is soft and the wood might be rot. A plumber and a carpenter are called. We shall see what they say.

I imagine standing in the shower as it cracks away from the walls and breaks through the floor like a detached elevator, landing in the laundry room with a hard, wet thud. This could mean a new bathroom with a claw foot porcelain tub! Though, this could also mean that we tear up this paper house and the paper dreams we have drawn with it and we keep searching these paper towns for a place to call home.

The Typewriter Shop

I slide a quarter into the parking meter where I inherit 7 minutes, leaving me with 37 to walk a block, go in a shop, take a peek, and turn around ---should be plenty of time. I take baby into my arms and strap the carrier around us, grab my wallet and shove my keys into a pants pocket.

I push open the door to the typewriter shop. It sticks a little.

Lining long, shallow shelves and gathered in groups on the floor are typewriters: green, black, yellow, baby blue, gray, brown typewriters. Some are manual metal antiques with circle keys held up by slender silver pipes, sitting on tweed, leather or canvass cases. Others are electric typewriters with modern modest keyboards that hide their parts behind plastic panels. There are also land line telephones and a couple used computers.

An old, black man with nails for fixing ribbons, letter keys, rollers, levers and knobs, leans to the side of his chair when we enter and asks how I'm doing.

I'm well, and how is he?

...Could be better. Nobody’s out. No customers around.

Must be afraid of the rain. I say.

It’s just him and me in the quiet shop so I tell him what I’m looking for: an inexpensive typewriter, one under $100, if such a thing exists.

He shrugs. I'm not the first person to ask this question. Many pass through his shop, he tells me, then go and buy a cheap, often broken typewriter off the internet. Then they bring it to him in pieces, after trying to fix it themselves.  

I remember the time I took apart a bicycle and couldn’t put it back together again, but I don’t mention it.

He tells me: with typewriters, the older it is, the more expensive it is.

Because they’re antique, I chip in, to prove I'm not entirely ignorant.

I tell him that I’m a writer. That I have my work on the internet, but that I’d really like more freedom with the placement of my words and I’d like to stamp it onto soft paper then hold it in my hands. I want the inky texture a typewriter provides. We talk about the difference between paper and screens, computer printers and typewriters, and buying from him rather than some stranger through the mail.

Amelia watches him and looks at the shapes and colors of his merchandise. She fusses a little, belches, spits up a little. The phone rings and he excuses himself. I walk around, telling myself how I should stop wasting his time, that I should leave since I can’t afford one anyway. Oh hi doctor... he has a customer at the moment… the call ends and I tell him I went to college in town about ten years ago, passed the shop many times, but never went in. Was he the owner back then?

Oh yeah, he’s been here since the 70s.

The best he can do is this Olympia. It's a fine machine. The ribbon lasts a long time, very  high quality. Today, he could offer it to me for $175 without the case. Offer for today only. He can’t do much lower or his wife will give him a hard time. He’s got bills. He tells me. But he also needs to make a sale. Because he’s got bills. I want to buy it. For me. For him. This is my trouble with small shops. I want to support them even if it means I won’t be able to support myself. Four days ago we had an offer accepted on our first house. Money is tight as an elastic band wrapped around a hairy wrist. I should not be paying $175 for a tool I don’t need, a toy. Suddenly, though, with a fidgeting baby on my hip and sweat and steam causing a sort of storm inside my denim jacket, I say, ok let's get it. I start to feel a little dizzy then. Still I don’t back down or bow out, instead I ask if he takes checks. He’ll take a check, yeah. Cash or check. He puts the Olympia on the counter and begins showing me all its features. The margins, the roller lever, the ….I don’t know. By this point I’m just trying to sound like I’m listening and remembering and understanding all that he’s teaching me, but really I’m freaking out, wondering how horrible and strange it would be if I just turned and ran out of there with my wallet, baby and the balled up paper towel he’s given me to wipe the spit up from my shoulder. What stops me is knowing that if I turn and sprint through the shop’s sticky door, I’ll never return and I’d like to. I want to buy one of these fine typewriters. I want come back without baby, pick one out, pay in cash and take notes as his fingers press and flip and turn all the levers and rollers and knobs. I want to buy one. I just shouldn’t right now.

He goes around to the other side of the counter and pulls out his carbon copy pad of sales slips.

“I think I'm having a panic attack.” I tell him, breathing fast and reaching for the counter to steady myself. I tell him about the house. That I'm not working. That I don’t want a fight with my husband who might not appreciate the timing of this large purchase.

He understands. He had his first panic attack when he was in his 60s, or was it, the 1960s…(I’m too disoriented to remember later). He was on an airplane and after it landed, everyone stood up, but his seat was in the back so he couldn’t leave right away. He understands, he tells me again. He looks at baby and baby smiles and he smiles and makes mention of her two little teeth.

I will buy one and when I do, it will be from him. I say. I ask him his name. He’s Bob. I tell him my name is Rachel. He asks me the baby’s name and when he says, “Amelia”. She looks at him and smiles another smile. I really like him, I tell him (to prove, I guess, my allegiance) and his shop and I’ve really enjoyed talking to him. I will buy a typewriter from him, maybe in a month or two. I promise. He's still smiling. He understands.

When we get back to the car, 1 minute remains on the meter. Baby and I look up. Drops of rain wet our flushed faces. I pull breath up like a bucket from a deep well. My heart pounds from relief and disappointment. There’s no reason to rush this. I tell myself. I will stamp my words onto soft paper soon enough.

Want to live at summer camp?

We visit the A-Frame house at the edge of the conservation forest this morning. It is located in a village, a summer camp of cottages long since converted into year-round homes. There is a playground, an outdoor sanctuary, a performance space and a screened dining hall for the occasional potluck. There is a community garden, outdoor checkers, black bear scares, pine trees, babies, dogs and retirees. There are hundreds of acres of hiking trails for trampling and exploring and it’s just 3 miles from the center of our city. We were once quite skeptical of this place of close quartered cottages. From the road, it looks, well, dilapidated. But this house seems different. Along the narrow stone road, there are houses with chipping paint and cracked wood and stained siding with windows wrapped in plastic for winter warmth, but there are also big, luxurious houses on the hill and ones that have that hip, economically tiny house look. The A-Frame is at the far edge of the village where the road turns into a walking path, it’s the one with the doors painted yellow.

We had written a list of features we hoped to find in a home and now I am wondering how the A-Frame holds up to our penciled fantasy.

• At least ½ acre of land: No/YES… (no individual land because it’s considered shared, but there is a lot to share in the park and the park’s 9-acres of conservation land as well as another much larger conservation area behind it, which includes hundreds of acres and a 40-acre lake.)
• 1000-1600 square feet: More! –but not too much more. (1771 square feet)
• Bathtub: NO! Just a shower…but it’s a large square shower, one big enough for our plastic baby bathtub and eventually, showering a toddler.
• 3 bedrooms: YES! Not technically, but yes.
• 1 mile from town: No, but close....
• Pellet or Woodstove: YES! A pellet stove!
• Move–in ready: Yes! Though it needs a mop, a sponge and some buckets of paint. 
• Less than $190,000: YES! The asking price currently is $179,000.
• Easthampton or Northampton: Yes!
• Newer roof: Yes! 6 years old.
• Open Floor Plan: Yes!
• Nice neighborhood: Yes!
• Conservation land/trails: THE BIGGEST YES!

We like the house.

“Want to live at summer camp?” Scott asks me.

I think I do...!

This house has a monthly condo fee, which pays for snow removal, grass
cutting, tree maintenance and the upkeep of community areas and buildings.
We drive to the bank in the rain. I sit in the car with a sleeping baby and my thoughts, while Scott puts a quarter in the meter and runs in to ask our loan officer if we can afford it. A few minutes pass and he returns to tell me that they can’t lend us as much because of the monthly fee. It’s not entirely hopeless, however, he tells me. We might be able to make it work.

We schedule another showing for Saturday so that our parents can come and tell us in person if they think moving to summer camp is a horrible idea.

Saturday morning, baby wakes me at 6a.m. I lift her out of bed, remove her wet diaper, snap on a dry one and carry her to the kitchen. She sits on the blue and white rug surrounded by pillows, playing, while I fold laundry and sip black tea with honey. She eats a little breakfast in her high chair: rice cereal and pureed sweet potatoes. She chomps and gulps at the water from her jelly jar, her two and a half teeth clinking against the glass. Scott gets out of bed, checks his phone for messages, kisses us good morning, dresses and takes the dog out. I try to nurse and get baby to nap, but she hardly sleeps so when he gets back, Scott makes the pot of coffee, oatmeal and boils some eggs and I put baby in the bouncy seat so that I can wash my face and find my jeans.

My parents arrive and soon after giving them hugs and kisses and mugs of coffee with cream, I am delivering a firm warning.

“The house is not in a normal neighborhood. It’s kind of weird. Picture a trailer park but with houses instead of trailers.” I tell them.

We cram into the car. Dad’s knees touching the dash; Mom and I squeezing beside the babyseat in the backseat; Scott driving. When we get there and pass the other cottages, my parents aren’t alarmed. At the house, Scott’s mother and father are there. Our realtor is there too.

When we enter the house, no one really says anything and I can almost hear the saliva squeezed from their tongues as they bite to silence their first impressions.

Then,

“A little paint and a good clean!”

“You could hire someone to refinish the floors.”

“Maybe you could put a bathroom upstairs between the bedrooms.”

They’re optimistic. They see the charm and potential, but mostly, I think they see how much we like it.

The floors are dusty and faded. The paint is chipping in places and there are cobwebs in most corners. Renters reside here currently with two pretty cats. I can imagine this as our home. Amelia learning how to climb those stairs. Sitting for dinner beside the glowing pellet stove. Gardening in pots on the porch. ---I couldn’t really picture us in the first house where we made an offer. I could imagine us in the yard building a vegetable garden and walking to town for coffee and cake, but inside the house, it was too sprawling, too boring to inspire me. It was a logical house for us. Not really an emotional one. --- But this A-Frame at the end of the lane conjures feelings of nostalgia ---as if I were an old lady already, with a crinkling photo album on my lap. It’s us. The exposed pine, the proximity of the forest, all the shelves and cabinets and the big windows. How it’s close to town and close to the woods. It’s the one. I’m sure of it.

I write a letter to the owners of the house. It will go with our offer. It is mostly like my first letter for the first house, but the specifics are re-written.

I want to tell you why we’d love to live in that adorable A–frame cottage of yours, the one with the three floors of rustic rooms, colossal closets and that feeling that you’re in the middle of the deep woods, even though the house is within a unique village.

We send the letter and our first offer of $165,000 to our realtor who passes it on to the seller’s agent.

Late afternoon Sunday, we get word. They very much like our letter, but feel $165,000 is just too low. They send along a list of other homes in the village that have recently sold and for how much. They counter at $175,500.

I draw numbers to add and subtract and circle and discuss. Hypothetical scenarios and the reality join us at the table in our little apartment. Scott makes a decadent pot of beef stew and we devour two bowls each with skinny glasses of frothy stout, while the baby sleeps. They probably expect us to meet them in the middle, counter with $170,000, but it’s been on the market for over 200 days; it is in this little campground condo village; it has renters and it needs paint, floor refinishing and the bathroom and kitchen could use some work.

The next morning, Amelia wakes us by pulling at our face skin and squealing. I change her and put the kettle on. Baby and I sit on the floor playing until Scott gets up. Then we dress and strap the baby into the carrier and the dog into the harness and head to the river for a long walk.

We talk about how we’re most comfortable offering $169,000. There’s some tipping point between $169,000 and $170,000 for us. For whatever reason, that $1,000 makes a big difference in our monthly payments. Our loan officer wrote it all out for Scott the other morning. If they’re willing to sell the house at $170,000 (we are guessing and hoping), then maybe they’d agree to sell it for $169,000. We weigh every possible outcome. What if we lose it? Is that ok? It is. We have time and patience. What if we get it? Is that what we want? It is! So we decide to do it. To go with our gut.

Scott writes the email with our final offer of $169, 000.

"Should I send it?"

"Send it!"

A couple hours later, while Scott is in the shower, our realtor calls his phone. I’m across the room with sleeping Amelia on my lap and I listen while it bleeps with a new voicemail. Scott stops the water. I tell him who has just called.

“I’m lathering up! I’ll be out in a minute!”

“You’re killing me!” I tell him.

His soapy hands squeak and shush as he laughs and lathers. The water is turned back on for the rinse. When he gets out and towels off, he goes to play the message, but before he can, I say,

"We got it!"

Our realtor has just emailed me.

“We can have it for $169,000!”

Scott and I shake hands and squeal as silently as we can, but the baby wakes and looks around with her big sleepy blue eyes and smiles back at us so we tell her the big news, that we’re going to be moving to a house, a whole house just for us! My heart feels like a balloon filling with helium. We did it! We gambled and won! We’re going to be homeowners!

House

Scott’s parents meet us at a house we think we love and would like to buy. It’s 1920’s old, it has a wood stove, a fenced yard, built-in cabinets, a teeny flower papered half-bath off the kitchen, three bedrooms, wood floors, a bathtub and big windows. This is the first time I am seeing it in person. Scott and our realtor visited the place already, a couple weeks back at night. After seeing a few other houses since then ---ones that are far away or really old and falling down and full of, we think, ghosts--- we decide to see this house again and with my mother and father-in-law. We stay for an hour, but after careful exploring, Scott’s parents stop asking questions. I don’t notice, however because I have already decided that this is The One.

What’s the next step? How much should we offer? When can we move in?  I ask as I stand in our future living room, swaying with my baby.

A little later, I am told in private that we will not be purchasing this house and that the reasons will be explained to me at lunch. We meet at the mall. The old house, I’m told, is a secret wreck. Lurking behind it’s pretty paint, throw rugs and long cotton curtains is asbestos; something called knob and tube wiring (which would require removal), lots of flaking lead paint in the closets, alarming holes in the siding and a heating system that dates back a century.

After we eat, Scott holds out his phone to his father. “See? This is the kind of house we don’t want.” He says, while flipping through the picture gallery. "We don’t want just another ranch. We want something more interesting.” He explains, but then pauses. “Wait. Why haven’t we seen this one?” He asks me.

“I don’t know, maybe, um… oh look, the price was just reduced.” I say. “It’s still more than we have to offer, but not much more.”

Scott’s father takes his phone and looks at the pictures, pausing at the ones we always skip (pictures of boilers and electricity switch boards and water heaters.) He’s impressed. “Scott, you should see if we can see this today before we go home.”

Scott calls our realtor, who says he can meet us there in twenty minutes.

The house has been recently remodeled. It has a strange layout because the garage has been made into another room, but it has a nice yard and a mountain across the street.

Four days later, we make an offer, which is the day after another couple has also made one. Our realtor, suggests we write a letter to introduce ourselves and so, I do.

***

February 16, 2016

To The Owners of the House,

I want to tell you why we’d love to live in that adorable ranch of yours, the one with the red door, the half-acre corner lot, the recent renovations and the spectacular view of the mountain. It feels a little silly writing to you, as if a sappy story about a young couple with a pudgy, rosy-cheeked, gummy-grinned 6-month-old baby would really outweigh a higher bid, but I doubt it hurts to try.

My name is Rachel. My husband’s name is Scott. And we just had our first child, Amelia, (the pudgy one I mentioned in my awkward, opening paragraph) this past summer. Currently, we’re in a 700-square-foot apartment and while we love it and the surrounding farmland and nearby river, we’d like a little more space. We thought we’d have enough room for two full sized people, one little person and an energetic dog, but the baby has learned how to lay on the floor and propel herself, head first, toward sharp corners and rough brick surfaces. Flopping and wiggling like a happy fat fish out of water, she’s making us realize, quite suddenly, how small our apartment really is. Soon, she’ll be rolling with more regularity and bumping her head and extremities! She’ll be crawling, hopefully, in a couple months, then walking, then running and falling. And I want to give her grass to run and roll in and a vegetable garden to stomp her bare feet in. I want to give her a bedroom so she that doesn’t wake her father whenever she needs a change in the middle of the night or wants to chatter and holler in the early morning. I want to bake her bread in a kitchen as beautiful as the one you’ve designed and built. I want to take walks to the park, to trails and to town. I want to walk to the bakery, the coffee shop, the bagel café, the ice cream parlor, the pond or take our bicycles to the bike path (because I really shouldn’t just eat bagels, scones and ice cream all day). When the baby gets bigger, I want to return to the trails I so love on the mountain. And I want that beautiful bathtub! (It isn’t easy bathing a baby in a standing shower with a plastic tub balancing on the edge). I want that bright sunlight in our lives and those rose bushes and maple and pine trees. I want to have friends over for dinner in a real dining room or for barbecues and picnics in the backyard. And we don’t even care that there isn’t a basement! Many might see it as less storage, but we just see it as less space for SPIDERS, which we’re more than OK with.

For the first time in my adult life, I am not working. For several reasons, we’ve decided that I would take some time away from teaching preschool to stay home with baby Amelia. I don’t regret our decision. I love being home with her. However, having just one modest income does severely restrict our budget for buying our first home. Most houses in our range are either falling down or far away. We couldn’t believe our luck when we saw your ranch with the red door. It doesn’t need any work and there are no scary potential disasters lurking in an ancient boiler or pipes wrapped in asbestos or walls covered in tasty, flaking lead paint. Of course, we may have discovered it too late. And if that’s the case, we’ll keep looking. This isn’t to make you feel bad. We won’t be homeless if our offer isn’t accepted. This is all just meant to express to you how loved and appreciated your house would be if it were to become our home.

Thank you for all your time,
Rachel Braidman

***

They do not accept either offer — no spoken or written rejection, just silence as our 24-hour deadline approaches and expires. A few days later, they accept an offer, or so we assume by the real estate jargon we read on the Internet.

I was a little sad at first, but now I’m not. I don’t know what I want. Do I want to be close to town? ---to commuting cars and school buses, delivery trucks and kids with souped-up mufflers and motorcycle gangs? Do I want to live near other people? Nosy, noisy neighbors? Barking dogs? Nosy, noisy neighbors who get barked at by MY dog? I don’t know. A big part of me wants to buy a house in the woods and hike on pine needles and rocks and leaves every day. Breathe air cleaned by those pines and leaves. Stare up into the moon and stars every night. Watch hawks and eagles glide and hunt mice and voles and trout. Spot foxes, bears, and dear as they go about their daily animal lives. Listen to flocks of birds as they settle in tree tops to rest their wings and sing. Plant a garden and water it with rain barrels. Gather kindling and berries from wild blackberry bushes…. However, I don’t want to become a hermit. And I don’t want my children to be afraid of strangers and storefront streets and crowded playgrounds. I don’t want Scott to have to drive an hour to work through decrepit mill towns and windy mountain roads.

We don’t have a lot of money to offer. So, as I wrote in my letter, most houses in our price range are either far away (some in the woods, but most in boring, empty towns) or the house is a fixer upper (places that are said to require rolled up sleeves, hammers and saws). Well, while we do like to roll our sleeves and flash our forearms on occasion, we only own one hammer and we have no saw. We are not carpenters. I can paint walls, but I wouldn’t know how to tear up linoleum, let alone re-build rooms or replace moldy ceiling tiles. I wish I knew wood working. One day, I’d like to learn how to build bookshelves and refinish floors and replace kitchen cabinetry, but currently I struggle to find studs in the wall to hang clocks and picture frames, so I seriously doubt I’m ready for table saws, blue prints and trips to a lumber yard.

I believe the right place is floating toward us and will settle it’s stone foundation onto the path of our lives when the time is right. There’s a mailbox and a few maples and a bathtub, a spot in the sun for my first vegetable garden and a wooded trail and stream for summertime splashing and exploring. Maybe there’s even a library we can walk to and a few shops for baked goods, ice cream and coffee.

Here’s to faith in time; here’s to patience.

Dear Grandma,

January 20, 2016

Before you send me a box with one of your bibles in it, you write and ask for my permission.

"I would be honored... This makes me feel very sad though, the idea of you not needing one of your bibles. It still seems possible to me that you and Grampa will live forever. And you will, in other ways…" I write back.

My body built a person with a soul inside her and a heart with blood-filled veins and valves and breath that blows in and out of her little lungs like the breeze through summer trees, and since then I have felt a desire for the Divine, for prayer again. I’d also like for my children to have a foundation of faith, a precious place where they can explore peace and prayer. And I told you all this in my letters. -You raised nine children: eight your body made from scratch and one you had flown to you in a white steel stork of propellers, peanuts and smiling, skirted stewardesses.

Thirty-two years ago, your eldest died at sea, widowing his wife, Mary and leaving behind my cousins, young Sarah, Daniel and Tommy. I was in my mother’s womb then, due to be born five months later in early November. In high school, I wrote a paper about your mother. I interviewed you, you probably don’t remember. The title of my essay was "Sunny wasn't always..." I wrote mostly about the poverty of her upbringing and her depression, which we discussed in your sunlit living room, but I think I also wrote about her flower paintings and Cape Cod landscapes, the eggs she'd hollow out and paint as ornaments with teeny Christmas scenes inside their fragile eggshell walls and the crèches she'd mold out of clay. I probably confessed to you then how whenever we’d visit Sunny’s home after church on Sundays when we were kids ---after playing with Monkeys in a Barrel and staring at Grand’s bed, trying to see if we could see his ghost hovering above it, I’d fill my corduroy jumper pockets with those thick chalky mints, popping them into my mouth one after another during the short drive home, giving me the breathe of a secret cigarette smoker or a teenager on a date at the movies. I can't recall how it came up, but you spoke of Steve. You told me how after he died you began attending mass every morning. Today, between the soft thin pages of the bible you mail me, there is a prayer card and on it in blue ink you've written, Steve’s Prayer.

I am home in Heaven, dear ones;
Oh, so happy and so bright!
There is perfect joy and beauty
In this everlasting light.
On the front of the card is a picture of Jesus. He is in a long white robe with shadowed creases and his hair is long and dark. He stands amidst clouds, looking toward a magnificent light above him.

There is work still waiting for you,
So you must not idly stand;
Do it now, while life remaineth-
You shall rest in Jesus' land. 

Grandma, you are a worker, and you are a maker, a terrific baker, a skilled knitter, an incredible cook, a trained nurse and you’re a wise ol’ woman with incredible wit and New England charm. You've made me mittens and cookie crisps, a wool hat, and a turquoise table runner, you’ve boiled me creamy clam chowder, built me a wreath out of beach shells, you’ve baked me baskets of dinner rolls, grilled me fish, served me salad from your vegetable gardens and simmered left over Thanksgiving supper in your famous "Garbage Soup." You made my daughter a quilt out of colored cotton elephants and flowers and giraffes, a yellow blanket of yarn and a royal blue knit sweater with a row of white hearts. And in 1954, you made me my mother and in 1983, my mother made me. In 2015, I made my own little girl, and so, in a way, it’s like you made us all three.

Remember when you had the farm in Vermont with all those sheep and hens and the pond where we'd ice skate and the long slope where we'd sled? Of course you remember. We never do let you forget, do we? I remember my big slip-on rubber boots with velcro that I’d fold over puffy snow pants and a long red/pink/purple/lime-green/yellow polyester coat. I remember shoving my feet beneath the curled wood of the toboggan with a frozen rope between my mitten hands. I remember sitting on hay barrels watching that guy with orange hair sheer all your sheep. I remember your loom at the top of the iron spiral staircase with thread poised like colored harp strings. I remember spools and spools of fuzzy thread. I remember the enormous kitchen table and the woodstove where we’d hang our icy mittens, hats, scarves and socks. I remember standing beside you in that kitchen one afternoon, sneezing, then immediately vomiting all over the counter. I remember carrying unfertilized eggs from the henhouse to the refrigerator and standing alone in the cold light, while I considered keeping one of them. I could warm it and wait for it to hatch, I plotted. …But how would I keep a chick secret on the four-hour drive home? Impossible. So I placed them all in the cold box to complete a half dozen bird abortions...or so I thought. I remember driving your red lawn mower around the yard and dropping from the rope swing into the cold river. I remember camping out in the sheep fields for a weekend family reunion some summer. Everyone else brought tents, while my parents towed a rented pop-up camper behind our blue mini-van and everyone laughed at us, especially when we showed them our nose and mouth masks for trips to the stinky porter potties. We fished in the packed pond with stick poles and during the brisk north New England mornings the great-uncles would build up the bonfire and cook breakfast. There was a torrential rainstorm that weekend and Nettie ran through it with her girls, their blond wet hair sticking to their smiles and foreheads. During your quietest evenings you'd make wool into yarn and yarn into sweaters and blankets and mittens and scarves and hats. I remember your golden retriever, your woodpile, your albums of old photographs in pages of plastic pockets. I remember you treading water in your navy blue bathing suit off the back of the boat in a bay off a beach, while we cannon balled and dove in beside you, splashing your sunglasses.

A couple months ago at Christina and Andrew's wedding I hid in the bathroom because my baby wouldn’t stop crying. You came in and sat with me, offering your calm presence. Later in a letter, I wrote that the reason she was crying was because I had forgotten to change her all day. I had worried so much about her sleep and milk that I forgot entirely about the third most constant baby need -diapering! My generation is so proud of our progress. Our red WARNING labels and the hospital nurse DO and DO NOT lists: "back is best but remember tummy time and don't sleep with your baby! and remember Skin-to-Skin and, whatever you do... DO NOT LET YOUR NIPPLE BECOME A PACIFIER!”, ---we have followed these as best we can, but I like to ask you. For your wisdom could fill textbooks and diaper bags and bottles and booties, but instead they live inside your memories and spoken stories, kept in something like an antique thread cabinet with glass doors and brass knobs, every thought twined around spools, placed in rows and organized by hue.

Years ago you started telling your children that if there was something of yours that they'd like one day, they should put a sticky note under it with their name on it. This made some laugh and some so anxious and sad that they scolded you for being so morbid. But, you have lots of lovely things and so the inheritance-claiming-via-sticky-notes commenced! But I say we put a sticky note on the sole of your soul!, -ask you to stitch it on there with twine and super glue and a few Hail Mary’s. I want you to visit me with your golden-white crocheted wings and gown of dark blue that shimmers like the Atlantic, pink cheeks, bright eyes, Keds with folded white socks and a string of the prettiest little pearls. Grampa too, he with his wings of varnished maple wood, his olive green captain cap, gold wristwatch and a robe made of beach sand that reaches his boat shoes and sprinkles sea salt wherever he walks. Of course, I understand you both will be quite busy in your blessed bliss. But whenever the moment arrives when the hem of your heartbeats frays and tears into an unmendable wound and your sweet soul slips out and soars for the heavens, know that those you leave living will all be clutching the wool you have so carefully stitched around our skin and spirits, feeling forever the work and warmth of your tightly woven love.

When that work is all completed,
He will gently call you Home;
Oh, the rapture of that meeting,
Oh, the joy to see you come!
Love to you and Grampa,

Rachel











*Safely Home by: Priests of the Sacred Heart, Sacred Heart Monastery, www.poshusa.org *

Mother

She might wake me at 2a.m., then 5a.m., then again at 8a.m. If she wants to talk and I'm too tired, I push aside my pillow and plop her between her sleeping daddy and me, a burp cloth beneath her head. "Baby in the bed." I warn. We push down the blanket and sheet and nose her cheeks until we three again meet sleep. When we wake later, he has disappeared, gone off to work, but the dog's ears appear, her tail all a' waggin', as soon as we start our morning babblin'. If I wake first, I read. If she wakes first, she tells the plant above our heads that she's very happy to be alive and if sweet sunlight gushes in, then she kicks her feet in jubilation. When we discover that the other is awake, we smile a lot: she with her one stub of a first tooth, me with my mouth full of flat pearls. We coo and cuddle and chew the baby fat. I kiss her pink cheeks and beneath her ears because I am also happy to be alive and because I have the urge to taste her as soon as I smell her perfect pungent skin. If I could inhale harder, I would. I pull down my top, unfurling my fullness and she lunges, latches, and suckles a morning meal of milk. Once she's done and it's late enough, I grab my glasses, roll out of bed and head for the bathroom. I pee, turn on the tap, then water and lotion my face. I go to the kitchen, drink water, eat a little breakfast or carry one back to bed where she's thrilled to see me, showing me her tooth once again. I lift her from beneath the arms, kiss her three or four more times, then carry her to the changing table where I strip, clean and dress her, all the while singing something like, "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let her shine..." I lay her back down on the bed and dress myself in soft stretchy pants, a clean tank top and a sweater. I retrieve the baby carrier, my boots and wool hat. I wrap her for winter: layer upon absurd layer of fleece, wool and cotton polyester. She fusses and so I put a pacifier in because she can't get her hands into her mouth once I have put mittens on her fragile fingers, and if she can't get at least four fingers into her mouth and she wants to, she becomes very upset. Soon, the combination of warm clothes and suckling causes her eyes to swivel sleepily left and right as if she were reading books on the wall. I put on my socks and boots. I strap her into the carrier. I clasp the harness and leash onto the excited dog (who can hardly sit still). And finally, we are out on the river road, bike path, sidewalks, fields, farms and in the woods. We wander, saunter and stride. I sing songs, say prayers, talk to the baby, scold/praise the dog, or I might just mute myself so that I can hear the breath of the earth beneath my boots and the music above my hat. Baby usually sleeps, though sometimes she stares up at me and the trees.

Later at home, I make coffee, while she lies on the rug beside the kitchen, practicing her growls, screams, trills and vowels. Or she'll find a sleeve or toy to gum with her dripping mouth of drool.

I've wanted to be a mother for so long and now that I am I can't help but feel a strange sort of guilt for being home, for not working. It feels as if the eyes of feminism are frowning upon me, but I'm happy and so I think the whole fear of a feminist trying to fight me is silly. Besides I've never felt more empowered by my womanhood than after birthing my baby, and that's what I'd tell her. That and: my beautiful body made another beautiful body! Yes, I wear aprons and burp cloths, seeped spots of breast milk, strings of bubbled drool and splashes of spit up. I write grocery lists, letters, cards and stories. I draw baths and little penciled pictures. I fold laundry and damp risen dough. I wash dishes and the ledges of windows. I read paper pages and digital recipes. But this is my choice. I want to be home. I like it here. I get all the fresh air I want. And time, so much time. Time to lay on the floor reading cardboard books, shaking rattles, playing Raffi's Baby Beluga on my guitar, dancing. Time to listen to birds in the bushes, the Winter wind and the near silence of my infant's sleep. Time to stop in a sunbeam while light pricks the centers of my pores, sprouting gratitude. We don't have an excess of money, but we don't really mind. We are not hungry or cold, but happy and generously clothed. We possess a beautiful wealth: one fuller than any billionaire's bank vault. It can't buy lavish gifts in boutique boxes or clothing from foreign factories folded into large paper bags, but I have the present as if it were wrapped around me like an invisible flower bow tied around my middle. I'll catch my career later. There's time enough for that too. I've wanted to be a mother for so long and now that I am, it's important that I ignore the supposed/invented thoughts of others. This is what I've decided anyways.

I am no longer a traveler, a reveler or social mixer. Right now, I am mostly just Mother and I don't mind that title at all.

Gavadallies!

Flour, ricotta, eggs and water. Whisk the wet. Add the dry. Squish and squeeze. Knead, knead, knead. Cover with a damp dish towel and leave. Give it time to rise like a soft beige sun...  

While I work, I think of her, the recipe writer. 

Flour the board. Flour the pin. Press. Roll. Roll. Press. Roll. Roll. Slice it into one inch squares. Pinch it into tiny pockets, doll house baguettes, purses and scrolls. Lay them in lines on crinkly parchment paper. Then place the sheet of pasta into the ol' freezer.

Concetta, Connie, Ma, Nana, -she made her cookies with Crisco, red raisins and molasses, her chicken soup with lard and her "gavadallies" with 

• 5 pounds of all purpose flour 
• 6 eggs
• 1 ¼ pounds of ricotta cheese
• 1 ½ cups of warm water
• a pinch of salt

Fill your biggest pasta pot with tap water, a pinch a' salt and all the love of a wistful granddaughter. Wait for a rolling boil, then place the frozen gavadillies in. Careful! You don't want to splash your skin! Now, wait until they float like little row boats on the storming sea. Then, with a long wooden spoon, retrieve, retrieve, retrieve!  

I didn't boil the first two batches long enough. They are stiff and my tomato sauce tastes tangy. I sauté garlic, rosemary and olive oil and add it in. This helps a little. I fill my belly with taste test bites before giving up and falling into bed.

The next day, Mom helps me put the pasta into the oven. Low heat. Let them simmer and soften. “The sauce tastes fine.” She says and I decide to believe her. Hours later, I take a bite. It's not bad. They aren't perfect and would be better with Nana's marinara sauce and meatballs. They would be better in her basement with the red and white plastic poinsettia table cloths, her Christmas tree with the silver tinsel and her at the head of the table. They would be right if they were made by her, my beautiful Italian grandmother -with her puff of white curled hair, her big brown eyes, a bottle of Bud at her side and that voice, which was like Parmesan cheese (tough, coarse, rich) sprinkled over a Boston accent, which stretched her sentences like the dough in her mixing bowls. 

Making Nana's gavadallies is like prayer, like the deepest and happiest of meditations, like singing psalms and Christmas songs. 

Flour, ricotta, eggs and water. 
Whisk the wet. Add the dry. 
Squish and squeeze. 
Knead, knead, knead! 


It can't bring her back to the table, but it certainly helps bring me back to hers.