October 2016 – Sycamore Stories

Posted on October 30, 2016October 30, 2016 by alittletea3

Tail of the Dog, in Which Warden Prepares to Play the Wrong Piano Concerto

This was not what I had on my calendar for this date.

In 1999 the Portuguese virtuosa Maria Joao Pires famously sat at the piano with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, conductor Riccardo Chailly at the podium, awaiting the first bar of the piano concerto she expected to play for this lunchtime concert. Imagine her surprise when the orchestra began playing a different piece of music—the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor—instead of what she had come prepared to play. That moment is captured on video, the sick feeling in her gut written all over her face, which she places in the palm of her hand as the reality of this horrible epiphany slowly unfolds before a crowd of expectant concertgoers. There are only a couple of minutes of music before the piano begins. As the concerto continues, Chailly surmises what has happened, there is an exchange between the two of them, she insists she had something else in her calendar, she is not sure she can do this without preparation. There are a few reassuring words from Chailly, as he continues to move his baton without missing a beat, a smile on his face: the proverbial band plays on.

I can only guess this must be akin to how Warden felt this week in his new digs: surprise! We are the wrong people in the wrong house, these new rules and routines are wrong, wrong, wrong: this bowl is unfamiliar, this collar, this leash—a leash!—nothing is right.

Meanwhile, we’ve smiled and continued to move the baton to the time signature of life in this family. And how has Warden responded to this? Like a boss, that’s how.

The last week has been one of discovery for Warden and for us (living with a dog is in my muscle memory but unpracticed; it is awakening now with lighting speed). Warden regarded us with suspicion in the beginning, most especially one adolescent human who is a part-timer here. This is not just about displacement, I think, but is a character trait of the breed: shepherds are discriminating. Now at the start of our second week together I think I can fairly say he has imprinted on me, regards the tall chef with equal parts affection and suspicion (although hand-fed pieces of succulent baked chicken and beautifully seared salmon must be considered in this assessment). We’ll see how things go with the adolescent later today.

Mother Nature has not been especially helpful in this trial-by-fire week: first time since I’ve lived in Vermont we’ve had snowfall in October, only here in the valley-ish area where we live it was more of an icy, bone-chilling mess with high winds thrown in for good measure. Did we shrink from this hellish weather? Heck no. Warden discovered the neighborhood park with me this week on a day that left us soaked through and muddy, ditto the back seat of the Subi; second time around it was not so awful outside.

And yesterday we had a bigger adventure at this place, which is a bit further afield from home, but happens to be very close to work, where I expect Warden will go with me most days eventually. (Baby steps.) So there was a lot of trust building and plenty of fun to be had yesterday, with one tired dog and a couple of worn-out humans at the end of it all. Warden is champing at the bit to play off-leash; for now he will remain tethered, and stay that way ’til we know beyond the shadow of a doubt the trust is firmly established.

brush_burning_mile_around_woods — Brush Burning Against Beautiful Vista at Mile-Around Woods

warden_head_tilt_mile_around_woods — You-Need-To-Catch-Up Head Tilt

There was adventure to be had at home this week, too. Fun fact about this tiny house: there are skylights.

Who knew? Also, it is possible to lock yourself in the bathroom without opposable thumbs; the best time to do this is right after ralphing up kibble eaten with too much gusto, and whilst HCB is phoning to announce he is stuck in an October snow storm behind several disabled vehicles on the mountain between the bakery and home. (I explained I had to go because the dog was locked in the bathroom and there was a pile of vomit on the floor, sorry you’re stuck on the mountain—good luck with that.) And also the basement is questionable; best to bark at it occasionally for good measure, which you can do conveniently whilst slurping and dribbling.

warden-basement-stairs — Basement, i vous considère.

I think it is fair to say we had a good first week together. It ended peacefully, and last night, as Warden snuggled on the sofa between the two humans, this happened:

As for Ms. Pires, she played that concerto bumper to bumper without missing a note, the consummate professional. I’ve had the great privilege of hearing the Concertgebouw Orchestra live in concert—I’m such a huge fan I frankly would not care about unrehearsed Mozart or muffed notes. I’m also a huge fan of Warden-the-Shepherd. Here’s a short clip of that Pires concert, with some narrative by Maestro Chailly; he is talking about the Mozart, and about Pires, but may as well be talking about us. Take a peek at 2:48—it is the perfect musical metaphor for Warden’s quiet start to life in his new family.

Posted on October 23, 2016January 29, 2017 by alittletea3 · 4 Comments

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.

warden-adoption-day-masthead — Foggy Day Shepherd

No, really. It was. Friday was a grey day, Friday afternoon brought wave after wave of gully washers to Southern Vermont and New Hampshire, and Friday night the heavens opened up and Zeus hurled mighty lightning bolts down upon us. Prediction: Handsome Chef Boyfriend will look over the top of his glasses when he reads this and ask, Why couldn’t you just say “it stormed?”

Because it’s funner to say it my way, that’s why, and you should stick to making compotes and port wine reductions, and let me sauté the words.

Friday was a truly awful day to be on the road, which is what we were; it was the kind of day where the sun seems never to rise completely, where it feels dark by four, even though the time hasn’t yet changed, and a shroud of fog hides everything beyond the immediate horizon. Friday night was worse still. I might add some language about the mighty rolling thunder, and also the broken reading glasses, the “good” pair, which snapped when I yanked them out of my bag to read my phone in the dark as text messages and Facebook messages and emails poured in. But that would be a different kind of descriptive language, of the sort that exploded from my mouth when my glasses broke. (Rest assured I was not driving while intexticated. I drove the daytime leg of our six roundtrip hours in the car with my devices safely tucked away, and HCB drove the after-dark part of them, because he knows I lack confidence in my nighttime vision, especially in unknown territory, and most especially on dark and stormy nights.) Suffice it to say, no dark and stormy night could impede our plans, not on this day for which we had waited so long.

warden-adoption-day-19-a — Warden vom Traumhof

On Friday we welcomed a new torrent of joy into our family, one Warden-the-Shepherd. Officially, he is “Warden vom Traumhof, by Goliath v Traumhof and out of Emerald v Traumhof,” says so on his adoption contract. I still can’t wrap my head around the pedigreed part of this pooch, although I have read and studied it some through my new reading glasses after the Dark and Stormy reading glasses incident, but I will say he is related to this amazing blogger’s Princess Blaze and Marshal Dillon Dingle: I believe Marshal Dillon and Warden are half-brothers, if I understand all these blood lines correctly. Which I think means we are all family now, so I am sure they’ll be fine if we drop in on their fabulous new digs up in Maine for a few days.

All our friends and family have been clamoring for pictures, which I have promised, but fell short of the mark on Friday. This was owing in part to the weather (I can’t replace my one “good” camera like I can my reading glasses), but also the general mayhem that met us when we arrived at Warden’s house, which I can only describe as a great crescendo of many, many enthusiastic German Shepherd Dogs who are busy announcing and greeting the newcomers but also reminding each other who gets to greet first and who should be put in his place while all this greeting is going on, to say nothing of the chorus of shepherd voices from the training center across the driveway and down the hill; imagine if you will. So I only grabbed a few fair-to-middlin’ iPhone photos, and some pretty dang blurry ones with the Nikon, blurry in part because of the low light and shutter speed (still learning, friends), but also because my subject would not hold still. But I love it when my “mistake” turns out interesting, like the head-shaking-teeth-showing image that seemed a perfect masthead photo for “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Here is the irony: Warden is one of the most agreeable, friendly German Shepherd Dogs I’ve encountered ever, one trait among many that drew us to him, and why his human believed he might be a perfect fit for us. In all the chaos that met us at the front door, Warden was there, too, but did not bark once—did not so much as growl—just tried to fight his way forward to inspect us, intercepted by a pretty girl named Prada and a grand dame named Charlotte. At least, I think it was Charlotte—there was a lot of tail wagging confusion and a few fierce reprimands, and Charlotte was clearly not one to suffer fools gladly. Plus, a couple of females are in season, which had Warden all excited for anybody in a skirt, including Charlotte, who is a mature gal whose time for all that is long past, and who mainly rolled her eyes in disgust at this whole spectacle.

Warden is a special dog and I knew leaving the nurturing fold of his family, both human and doggish, would be difficult for everyone. But once on the road after our longish visit he proved an easy travel companion; we stopped for strong coffee soon after we struck out for home, at the precise moment the storm unleashed its greatest fury on us (or, in the worst part of the storm, if you prefer); the car shook with every clap of thunder, but Warden seemed unimpressed. I took this as a good omen, dark and stormy nights be damned.

I know everybody’s champing at the bit for endearing dog stories and photos, closeups and action shots. They will come in good time, although I can assure you the notorious German Shepherd head tilt is alive and well in this dog. For now, we must give him room to settle in and learn to be part of our family, and to embrace a lifestyle completely unlike the only one he has known thus far.

The sun is shining brightly this morning and there is a contented dog in twitching, snoring REM sleep at my feet, a beautiful condition for which I’ve waited too long. Soon the images will come into much sharper focus.

(And Clarence—thanks, good boy.)

warden-adoption-day-13-a — Warden-the-Shepherd at home

Posted on October 16, 2016October 16, 2016 by alittletea3 · 2 Comments

On Patience: How Long is Forever?

Sometimes, just one second.—Lewis Carroll

The great, big exciting thing that was happening yesterday, the colossal event that was to be the subject of this post (and which many friends and readers have already surmised from various spoilers I’ve sprinkled in the cybersphere), is on hold ‘til this coming Friday. At least, we hope it happens Friday. Nature interfered with our plans, pliant schedules grew less forgiving, a couple of expectations required a tweak here and there, and that is that, dammit. It’s merely another reminder how unimportant is one’s own agenda, no matter how stridently one wishes to position it at the center of the universe.

Patience. It’s a virtue my parents urged me to improve in myself time and again as a child, so did my grandparents, so did my teachers. At some point in the development of my young noggin I suspected there might be a problem in this particular department, as the echoing of that one word indicated. One afternoon when mom was pregnant with my brother she farmed me out to an elderly couple down the street who said they’d be glad to keep me company for the day. Off I went with a Christmas ornament decorating kit tucked under my arm; I was seven and giddy about this change of scenery. I can’t recall a single thing about the day, not one minuscule detail, save this: the woman quipped, “She needs to be more patient,” when she handed me off to my mama later that afternoon.

Four years earlier three generations of self-assured women had observed the same flaw emerging me, only it caused notable damage on one occasion in particular. These three women—my mom, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother—had taken me to see The Sound of Music, a movie for which there had been a big buildup: I was excited down to my socks. We stood in line for tickets, waiting, waiting, w…a…i…t…i…n…g. The boy in line ahead of us was not moving quickly enough to my way of thinking, or at all, really. I decided he needed help if we were ever to get inside the theatre, and so I did the sensible thing: I kicked him. I meant him no malice, but decided a gentle reminder to GO was in order, really just a thoughtful poke in the calf. The way my mom tells the story now, the kick was more of a stomp that scraped the back of his leg, painfully; she had seen the wheels turning and so had my grandmother, each of them going for an armpit, not quick enough on the draw. Impatience, 1; toddler, zip.

I did not grow out of this habit, the impatience, that is—I have not kicked anybody in a while (have wanted to, plenty). In my early twenties I bought my first car, a ’76 Olds Cutlass Supreme; it was a thing of beauty in powder blue with a white vinyl top and coordinating blue crushed velour interior. It came from my parents’ next-door neighbors (also older folk), who had driven it gently mostly, but it sported a sizeable dent on one side and its transmission leaked. Still, it was a bullet-proof car, reliable transportation whose problems were nothing I could not handle on a college-kid budget; I kept a case of transmission fluid and a funnel in the trunk and topped it off every time I got gas. The car served me well except in ice and snow, when I occasionally put it in a ditch (not my fault: rear wheel drive, no snow tires). But one hot Southern day while it sat and baked in an asphalt driveway its interior rear view mirror fell off.

This was a car made in an era when GM routinely attached accessories and trim with cheap glue, a low point in the history of the American auto industry if you ask me. Anyway. I bought an epoxy repair kit, the kind where you mix the sticky substance from two tiny tubes, et voilà! Heavy-duty adhesive in a flash. I followed the instructions diligently and all was well until I got to the part where you were supposed to hold the thing being glued (rear view mirror) to the other thing (front windshield), and wait. Suffice it to say the epoxy’s performance fell short of my expectations and a person better schooled in patience had to step in and finish the job for me. Impatience, 25,385; college kid, zip.

When Handsome Chef Boyfriend and I first met we talked endlessly about cuisine; we still do—it’s a passion I share with him. I once opined to him it takes a real gift to create exceptional cuisine, high art on a plate—a gift I had observed in him time and again. Maybe, he said, but mainly it takes the P-word: patience.

Dammit, dammit, dammit. It has been lobbed around these parts often, the P-word. So HCB joins the pantheon of folk who have felt it incumbent on themselves to point out this character flaw in me, and often.

It’s okay, all you patient ones in the universe, I’ve got this, at least this time. I live in Vermont now, where it takes forever for the snow to finally melt in the spring, where it takes forever to drive anywhere (because the destination is always far, far away), where it takes forever for your car to warm up in the morning because it was Below Zero during the night. This impatient person has waited three years for this milestone event—what’s one more week? And anyway, I’ve been called worse things. Like the time in second grade when my mama was summoned to school for an urgent conference with my teacher who said I was an instigator. Really.

Let me tell you something about instigators, gentle reader: instigators know how to get the job done.

But that is a story for another day.

Posted on October 9, 2016January 29, 2017 by alittletea3 · 10 Comments

It’s good to covet things.

One of the best presents ever, those pecans. My dear friend Bett sent them to us last Christmas; she said she gathered them from the bumper crop on the ground under two pecan trees near where her mama lives on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. I saved the tags and stuck them to the walls in my work cubicle, a daily reminder of so many wonderful things. I think about Bett when I see her sweeping hand in red marker; I am sentimental that way. I also think about her when I swill my coffee from a fabulous little vessel imprinted with the familiar “M” stamp on the bottom, her signature bear-and-honey-bee motif marching around the outside of the mug. Bett is an American folk artist with distinctly modern sensibilities; her forebears would be proud to count her as one of their own. She is also a diligent student of the South, and I love that about her.

As for the pecans, they did not last long: you can’t get anything approaching the flavor or texture inside those exquisite little kernels up here in these parts. But the union of Southern pecans and Vermont maple syrup? That is salvation, right there. (Still working on teaching Handsome Chef Boyfriend the proper way to say it: p’cahhhn, with a nice, soft ahhh, accent on the second syllable, instead of PEEEE-can, much harder on the ear. There is work to do yet.)

I miss my Southern friends; I knew there’d be casualties when I packed my bags and left home for good. I’ve been a poor correspondent, but everybody’s busy and life has a way of insinuating itself despite one’s best intentions. (Somebody had the gall to say this aloud at a going-away party for friends many years ago and everybody in the room was shocked; I don’t know why—it is the truth.)

It’s not just that, though: seems once you reach a certain place in your life it’s a big imposition to ask for a new friendship, perhaps impossible to forge relationships of the kind that unfolded naturally earlier in life. I know there are exceptions, but it still feels more challenging now than it did way back when; nor does the scattered configuration of the population here help any. And because the tap root I yanked up in 2012 still has a ways to go before it’s reestablished in new soil, I’ve been gun-shy about seeking my “tribe,” if it even exists. I don’t have a church family as I did in Tennessee; my child is grown and lives a thousand miles from me and so I don’t have a place in any of the powerful communities parenting seems to foster; the ballet school I founded in 2006 is long gone; and I have not set foot inside a ballet classroom since October of 2014.

There was a loud rip in the universe in January of that year, my second year as a Vermonter, when I lost my Clarence-the-Canine to degenerative myelopathy, an insidious neurological disease which ‘til then had slept quietly inside him unbeknownst to anybody. This may seem trivial to anyone for whom the companionship of a dog means little or nothing.

The death of my steadfast companion was not all. At the time I was living in a beautiful part of Vermont on 180 spectacular acres where woods, water, meadow, and mountains intersect to create nothing less than a sublime landscape. My loft home was open and sunny and inspiring, truly delightful in most ways, a rare opportunity that came to me by way of a ballet school colleague. Had I any notion I might live in this place after my colossal 2012 reboot, my heart might have leapt, a little.

But had I occasion to reflect on living in complete isolation there without my dog, and with few Vermontish winter survival skills (I must underscore this: surviving a rough Vermont winter alone in the middle of nowhere, however intoxicating the surroundings, requires a certain savvy no novice from the South possesses), I might have reconsidered my course. And in spite of being in a comfortable spot in my still-new romance, I felt the most intense loneliness there I’ve felt in my life, ever. My colleague assured me her land had healed many folks, situated as it was there in Vermont’s beautiful Upper Valley. I never doubted her, but healing seemed to elude me. No amount of HCB’s cajoling in our epic nightly phone calls would convince me otherwise: I was in a terrible financial bind and completely alone, anxious as hell to get out. (And anyway, HCB was two hours away on the other side of the state: it may as well have been a million miles.)

It does not take much to set me off even now: a song that was popular at the time, a smell in the air—these things raise my hackles and set me on edge. The truth is I could not see the forest for the trees, and that is all. But the brief chapter (really just a couple of sentences) that still arouses dread when I have a half-second to reflect on it, continues to change shape as viewed from a greater distance—even a minuscule change in focal length can yield a very different image, a reality I observe each time I pick up my camera. I think I failed to recognize healing is often uncomfortable; it occurs to me now that healing is probably exactly what unfolded there, in the little house in the middle of nowhere.

In 2012 I walked away from unhappiness holding an empty bag, equivocating some, wringing my hands mostly. A dear friend held this question right in my face: Isn’t your freedom worth it? Yes, probably, though I could not have imagined the monumental challenges I was about to face. But does not the void left by something of towering importance imbue that thing with still deeper meaning, make it still more worthwhile to have? As HCB said to me shortly after we met, some things really are worth waiting for.

It’s undeniable—I’m in a better place now than I was a couple of years ago, and if you asked him, HCB would most likely agree the same holds true for him. I spend a fair amount of time yearning for things lost, things still beyond reach, and a few things perhaps unattainable (never quit trying); so does he, with less fervor than I—he is far better at rolling with the punches. It is possible we might even covet a few things. I don’t think that’s unhealthy.

Yesterday we pawed through some stuff in our storage locker, disappointed to find interlopers of the rodent variety had made a big mess and destroyed a few of my belongings; there is probably more destruction buried deep inside the locker, judging from the extent of damage on the surface. (It’s a continuing theme around transitions: move your things, store them, move them some more, and there will be damage and loss, guaranteed.) But there is also this: next weekend we’ll finally achieve this monumentally important thing we’ve missed for nearly three years. It’s most definitely worth waiting for, and it’s about time.

Posted on October 2, 2016January 29, 2017 by alittletea3

Photo Essay: Grey Day on the Battenkill

grey-battenkill-saturday-1 — Flag Flies on Birch over the Battenkill

Ain’t no sunshine in Vermont (cue the Bill Withers). And thus far today seems a carbon copy of yesterday—solid grey as far as the eye can see, the distinct chill in the air nudging you to put something warm on your back. Makes me whiney. Autumn in New England is spectacular at the height of leaf season, but we’re not there yet, not quite. The peepers will arrive in droves next Friday for the long Columbus Day weekend and they may be surprised (nay, disappointed) to find an abundance of green still clinging to our mountains in these parts, as our state’s nickname attests. Meanwhile the locals are excited about pumpkins and corn mazes and maple-glazed apple cider donuts, as they should be. I like all this fine, loved it more down South. Allow me my Eeyore-like sensibilities: I know what’s coming in a few weeks.

Yesterday I walked just under four miles along the Battenkill River, the same pathway I routinely run or ride on other days. I found beauty through my lens but had to work for it a little. There are places on this road where the tree canopy on each side of it meets overhead, hemming in the traveler; those spots evoke quaint memories of childhood tomes, a little unsettling to me. The river passes very near to the road along some stretches, disappears behind a distant tree line in others. The woods occasionally give way to broad meadows, and once in a while reveal a breathaking vista.

Rusty spots dot the yellowing leaves on the trees abutting the road; Handsome Chef Boyfriend explained salting in the winter does this to them. (I for one am grateful there’s a way to deal with winter travel so life can continue more or less uninterrupted in spite of nature’s impassive plans, rusty leaves notwithstanding.) This will be my fifth Vermont winter; I greet it the same way I have the last four, with fear and trepidation. I know it’s irrational, but keeps me honest on the daily commute when the atmosphere misbehaves as it so often does. Don’t quote me any Frost, or insist a landscape blanketed with snow is quiet and beautiful: that is for the person who has no cause to bargain with it. I just want to get through winter touched by it only gently.

Until then it’s fall: we anticipate genuine beauty in Vermont, and maybe a little excitement on the horizon for HCB and myself, about which more soon.

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