PEREGRINATIONS - Circa 2001

I turn the key and step out onto the roof. Autumn blankets me as I settle onto the wooden bench.

I smile to myself as I put the key into my pocket. I borrowed the original years ago. Lied straight into the face of hardware store owner who questioned me about the ‘SECURITY KEY DO NOT COPY‘ markings on it. A little white lie, nothing sinister. Only self-preservation. Everyone needs a place of their own.

I lost the other one and I’m in big trouble, Mister. I could lose my job.

Tears welling up in my eyes. He nodded and turned to his workbench. When he finished cutting, he took the shiny new key and threw it on the floor. With the heel of his boot, he ground it into the cement. He flipped it over and worked the other side. Then he took some sandpaper and softened the edges and finished by rubbing some black stuff from a jar under the counter into the new scratches. It was aged well enough to match the original. Apparently, I wasn’t his first damsel in distress.

"There you go, hon. That’ll be $2.50."

Ten years ago, I could easily pull that off. My slow tumble into middle age makes the damsel much less convincing. No regrets, but as I am off into the unknown, it’d be a good skill to have.

Two weeks ago when the world was completely different, I’d lightheartedly hoped for adventure… a little controlled uncertainty. I’ve got a plan, a map and the number of Kurt’s cousin in Cahersiveen. I love the illusion of control! That was before planes began crashing into buildings and red-bereted soldiers with tanks and M16s patrolled my route to work. I’m not sure what I am looking for now.

I wrap my hands around my first cup of coffee of the day. I inhale its Costa Rican warmth and take a small sip.

Aaack! Too hot!

I knew it would be and went ahead anyway. Story of my life. I put the coffee down on the arm of the bench.

I look out over the misty Potomac River to where the mighty Three Sisters Islands hold their vigil over the City of Washington. The legend says that the islands sprung up at the place where three Manahoac sisters drowned while crossing the river to their lovers on the other side. A warning of the dangers of jumping in with both feet and both sisters? Or a monument to the importance of following your heart no matter what? Maybe both.

From his perch atop the neighboring USATODAY building, a peregrine falcon takes flight. He darts up and catches an air current high over Roosevelt Island. Wings straight, eyes forward he lets go and floats in ever-widening ovals. Willing to go wherever the wind takes him, he lets himself be carried and I, in turn, let him carry me. Around… around… around. Intrigued by his dance, the sun peers out, etching the horizon with the first scarlet cracks of dawn.

Alarm clocks wail. Newspapers land on front stoops. Lights go on. The city slowly awakens. I take another sip of coffee in my perfect solitude above it all.

My second day working here, Nelson Mandela walked up to my desk and shook my hand. I think I stayed out of fear of missing something. It took me a while to settle in, to fit in. Many wonderful things did happen to me here. I grew up, I grew stronger, I got on with it. And I stayed because I felt secure. Secure in the stress. Secure in the busy-ness of it. Secure in being needed. Now it is time for me to leave my nest on the 23rd floor.

The sun pushes through a crack in the horizon over Roosevelt Bridge. Drivers in their cars impatiently shield their eyes from the light as the red-gold dawn illuminates buildings on the horizon line one by one.

I open the paper bag and pull the crunchy caramelized top off of my perfect lemon poppy muffin. The Rastafarian baker calls it the Muffin of the Gods. Steam escapes from the center. Crumbs fall onto my scarf as I take a bite.
Life is good.

The falcon turns suddenly midair and descends toward Roosevelt Island and his unsuspecting breakfast.

My pager goes off. It’s time for my last day of work.

Transcendental Alimentation

As the warmth of Summer begins to fade and the garden gives up its last few treasures, I am trying to squeeze the most out of what is left. I had high hopes for the garden, but it all didn't go as planned. My inexperience and enthusiasm combined to create expectations that were tossed about by the poor weather and the blight that hit the tomatoes in our area.

When I started to plan the garden, I did so out of some necessity. Money being tighter than it was, planting a garden just makes good economic sense.

As I started checking out the seed catalogs (at what point did I turn into someone who looks at seed catalogues) and websites, I spied a tomato. That's how these thing always started I'd imagine. But it wasn't just any tomato. It was the tomato of my dreams. It was Pera d’Abruzzo, ripe, ridged and remarkably delicious. You can see a photo of it here.

I first met this tomato in a farmer's market in Venice. I bought it, tucked it into my backpack and headed off. Later, I was hungry and in need of a rest after walking for a few hours. I pulled the tomato from my bag, rinsed it off in the drinking fountain and sat down on a park bench on the island of Murano. I ate the tomato while sitting there looking out at the island of my dreams. As is. No frills, no fuss, no salt. It was perfect. The perfect tomato on the perfect day in the perfect place.

From there, I hatched my plan. Fortunes change and they change again and at the moment, I am not in a position to afford an Italian vacation. So I decided I would plant my memories of my Italian vacation. I splurged on $11 worth of seeds. My Pera d'Abruzzo, capers, Quadrato Rosso D' Asti peppers, basil Genovese and fiore di zucca (zucchini blossoms). I started them all in my sisters greenhouse. I coddled them and measured their growth and made great plans for our future together.

As time when on and the weather got warmer I planted them out in the garden. The bunnies made quick work of the capers. They didn't stand a chance, really. The basil and peppers flourished. The tomatoes had a promising start but to my great sadness were early casualties of the blight. I buried them in a black bag and moved on.

The peppers have appeared in all manner of dishes from sauces to bruschetta. They finished up last week. I ate the last one standing over the sink. The wonderfully abundant basil has been eaten on or with everything possible and have even made myself a year's supply of pesto for the freezer. It is getting sparse but looks like it has a few more weeks to go.

That brings us to the zuccas which quickly grew big green leaves and sat there. Big green leaves and nothing else. For weeks. Then the little buds started to emerge. And they just sat there. For days. Just when I was about to give up. They started to bloom. Six at once.

I scrambled for the perfect recipe. They all sounded so good. I settled on a filling of ricotta, garlic, basil, asiago and pine nuts. I washed and dried the blossoms and removed the fiddly bits inside. Using a baby spoon, I stuffed the blossoms with the mixture. I sealed them up and dipped them into a batter of egg, flour and sparkling water. Then, using skills I really didn't possess, I fried them quickly in olive oil.

When they were ready, I put them on a fancy plate, poured myself a glass of San Pellegrino Limonata and took it all outside.

It was magnificent. If I do say so myself. I took my first bite and I was transported from my back porch with its view of rust belt urban decay to the tiny cafe in the Canneregio where I tasted them for the first time. I felt the sunshine, smelled the sea air and heard Sarah Vaughan singing 'Someone to Watch Over Me" as I sat and ate them one by one.

As I took the last bite, the moment was broken by the whistle of an incoming train that deposited me onto my back porch.

Comfort

Dog hair is a fact of my life. Long white dog hair, courtesy of my trusty pup, Eloise. It is in my carpet and in my purse, in my closet and occasionally in my refrigerator. I am used to it. The people around me are used to it and graciously pick the strays off of me when they spot them. I do what I can to get rid of it, but she always makes more. Always.

I try to brush her every day and she gladly gives up mounds of the lovely white fluff. I have made paper from it and used it to stuff her bed. Several weeks ago, I put a big poof of her hair out on the porch. Within a few minutes, the robin who lives at my house grabbed a big bunch and flew off. Two other birds joined her and they all made several more trips until they had taken the whole lot. I didn't think that much about it after that and headed off to work.

In the last few days the air around my back porch has been punctuated by the sweet noise of baby birds calling for food. Lots and lots of baby birds.

This morning as I was putting my tender young tomato plants on the porch for the day, I saw our robin. She had a long white hair stuck to her tail. I heard the call of her babies and I knew that somewhere in the eaves of my house, a few naked baby robins sit cozy in a big tuft of white hair.

Life is good.

It's got MAILABILITY!

One Spring morning a long time ago when my mother was returning to the house after her daily walk to get the mail and the neighborhood gossip, the phone rang. It was the local Post Mistress. Her message was simple, barely audible over the shrieks of the other postal workers.

"Mrs. Mead, you must come here immediately. Your parcel has chewed its way out of the box and it's running around terrorizing our customers and staff." Then the line went dead. She tried calling back, but the phone rang busy.

A lesser woman would be intimidated by such a call, but not my mother. She'd have been the type to stand up during a bank robbery, cigarette in hand, and ask for a light.

She put on a nice dress and her red lipstick. She hopped into the Dodge Polaris and drove into town to see what all the fuss was about. When she got to the post office, there were a number of people standing out front trying to see through the plate glass window. She honked to move them out of the way and then backed into the parking space. She opened the trunk, just in case, then she lit a cigarette and headed in.

Pushing through the crowd, she took a peek through the glass before opening the door to find three postal employees and two customers standing on the counter. The phone was lying on the floor.

"It's over there." said the post mistress, gesturing to a spot behind the counter. There it was a 16 inch baby alligator. My mother walked over to it. It backed up a little and made a threatening noise. Then the she took a big drag of her Salem, leaned over and blew smoke into its face, disorienting it for a moment while she picked it up with both hands.

"Can you get the door?" she called to the folks just climbing down from the counter. "And bring the box, please."

She marched out and put the baby gator into the trunk of the car and closed it. The post mistress handed her the box. The return address was chewed away all except for the zip code 34747.

"Where is 34747?"she asked as she was getting into the car.

"Florida... Kissimmee, Florida." said the post mistress.

"Thank you." said my mother as she drove away.

She loved a good mystery and was determined to get to the bottom of this one. She used the smoke trick to get the baby gator back out of the trunk and into the bathtub. She spent the afternoon feeding him chunks of raw ground meat and planning her investigation.

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The U.S. Postal Requirements for Live Animal Mailability

http://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_007.htm

Specific Requirements by Animal:
Baby Alligators Baby Caimans Chameleons Frogs Lizards Newts Reptiles and Amphibians Salamanders Tadpoles and Toads	Animals must not exceed 20 inches in length. No additional requirements, except the applicable standards in DMM 601.9. Packaging must comply with DMM 601.9.3.11.

Sprung!

Spring is here. I have it on good authority. Not the conventional good authority like groundhogs, daffodils or seeing the first robin that some folks like to follow. Real authority.

This morning as I walked with Eloise, I was delighted to see that the plastic snowman at the tree house is now sporting a pair of glittery bunny ears and the tree is covered with pastel eggs lights and fuzzy chicks. As I turned the corner on 9th Street, I spied a red pickup truck filled with giant snow snowflakes. It was leaving town.

You can't really argue with that kind of evidence.

Happy Spring!

Hangin' with my PEEPS!

I love Marshmallow PEEPS! And I am not ashamed to say it. That's the thing about PEEPS! You either love them or you hate them. I love them. Really love them. The sugary goodness--the exclamation point in the name--the sheer whimsy. What's not to love?

However, I am a purest. I like the yellow ones and preferably the chick-shaped yellow ones. They taste the best.

I don't need heart-shaped PEEPS! I don't go in for all that flavored business. Peppermint? Oh good grief. And frankly after the blue PEEPS! fiasco of 1998, I am a little hesitant to branch out into new colors.

Oh, I had such high hopes, when one day on my lunch break, I saw them on the shelf in the CVS. They called to mind an Easter morning many years before when I found a tiny bright blue peep huddled next to the chocolate bunny in my basket. A real one. Alfie. I know what you are thinking, but that was before it was discovered that injecting dye into an incubating egg was incredibly inhumane. And to his credit, he did grow up into a chicken, until the cat got him.

When I saw the pack of blue PEEPS! on the shelf in the CVS, I had to have them. I brought them back to my desk and ripped open the package. I bit into one. Bleeech! Not only did the taste wrong, but my lips were all blue during the afternoon staff meeting. I tossed the rest of the package in the trash, brokenhearted.

While I was living outside of the US for a few years, one of the things I missed most at this time of year was my marshmallow PEEPS! My niece, Danielle, horrified with the lack of proper American Easter treats, always good for a package or two. Once she made the mistake of writing PEEPS! on the customs declaration. She told me they were on the way and I waited and waited. They never made it to me. Can you imagine? Stealing a person's PEEPS right out of the post. However, the Irish customs officials assure me that they are very close to making an arrest.

A Hint of Green

This time of year in the west of Ireland, there appears a shade of green that is present at no other time and, I'd like to think, at no other no other place in the world. It shows up at the moment when the winds are high and the sea grows wild and fierce, fighting with the land for the control of the season.

It appears, not so much as a colour but as the intention of a colour, overlaying all the trees and hedge rows. The hint of green. Pale green. Transparent, opalescent, tender, baby green. It is barely discernible in the last long gray of Winter but it is there if you look. It holds the promise of things to come.

This morning as I was walking the dog past the tree house, I saw that the Christmas tree was now decorated with shamrock bulbs as I had hoped. The plastic snowman's little red beret was gone and his white bulb was replaced with a green one. Bright green, Kelly green. A green that I'd like to think appears at no other place and time. It is there if you look, cutting through the daylight savings time darkness and offering the promise of things to come.

BRIGADOON-ish

I look up toward the onion domes of All Souls up on the hill, but they are missing. I peek down the street at the impressive wall of fog. It reveals, at most, 20 feet in front of us as the pup and I begin our walk. The town materializes slowly as we go. The dog doesn't seem to notice. I find it a little disconcerting.

This place is no Brigadoon, appearing out of the fog once every 100 years. It is stuck in the past, but more recent. It stopped marching forward when the mills started closing in the Mon Valley in the early 1980s.

The truth is that I haven't really bonded with this place. It's not the town's fault. I am sure it's doing its best. It is a way station, the place where I live while I am planning for the next part of my life.

We pass the senior citizen's apartment building, conveniently located across the street from one of four funeral homes in the town. Each window of the funeral home holds a single electric candle, They beckon like the old Motel 6 ads. We'll leave a light on for you!

Eloise picks up the scent of her arch-nemesis, Big White Cat. She pokes her head onto the porch of his house and he dives onto the railing and over the fence. She sniffs the vacant air for a moment before moving on to something else.

On the right is the tree house. I call it that because there is an artificial Christmas tree on the porch. It's been there since the week before Thanksgiving. I keep waiting for it to disappear into storage until next year, but instead it keeps evolving.

The original Christmas ornaments gave way some time around the third week of January to a flurry of black and gold football-themed ornaments honoring the Steelers Super Bowl bid. This morning it has erupted into a vision of romance with miniature paper cupids and a shiny heart garland. I am hoping shamrocks will be next. There is a certain consistency to it that I find comforting.

The columns in front of the public library appear through the mist. Originally the town's post office, this grand structure was erected by people who thought very highly of this place and its prospects for the future.

Further down, an elaborately carved stone porch curves around the corner. An aluminum siding covered addition sits on top at if it were dropped there by a big wind.

We continue down the street past several empty shop fronts. Some have Steeler posters and terrible towels in the windows. We may be down, but we still have the greatest football team on the planet, they announce.

We pass the men's coffee shop and the owner waves. I see him every morning, but we have never spoken. He waves. I wave. That's the whole transaction.

We round the corner past the art shop and head down Fifth Street street. As we pass under the eagle on the First National Bank building, bits of the fog break apart and turn to snow flakes and land on our faces.

The aroma of wedding soup from the old Italian restaurant swirls around us as we pass. Lovely. Nothing like wedding soup. I am famished.

We head for home and breakfast.

It's La Dolce Vita, Santonio!

As I pull up, there are dozens people in the street in front of my house. I high-fived a few fellow fans on the way to my front door. The crowd is cheering, cars are honking and there is an occasional firecracker off in the distance.

Here in the Mon Valley, we don't have a lot. The economy is bad, jobs are scarce and frankly, the water tastes funny.

But one thing we do have is the Steelers. We have the Steelers and giant inflatable lawn ornaments.

Life is Sweet!

BROKEN OPEN

My friend, Mary, is fond of saying 'sometimes your heart gets broken and sometimes it gets broken open.'

This morning, my dog and I were walking in the park along the Monongahela River. The snow was falling in big fluffy flakes that stick on your nose and linger a moment before melting. Ours were the first footprints in the snow. I always love that.

Normally, we play a little frisbee in the mornings, the pup and I. Frisbee is her favorite, but today she was not having it. There were other distractions.

There was no wind and the still, cool air held a web of invisible trails too good to pass up. She led, I followed. She picked up one that took us in a loop-de-loop through the Pony League field and off under the fence where we picked up another more interesting trail that took us over to the giant pile of bird seed barely visible under the snow. Leaving that, we moved in a zigzag up through the parking lot to the pavilion perched on the bank of the river. One of my favorite spots for breakfast.

I sat on the picnic table and pulled a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of my pocket.

A tug and eight barges filled with coal passed out of the lock and into a small lane cleared by traffic on the opposite side of the river. Our side was frozen. One solid sheet as far as I could see in either direction.

Twelve Canada geese marched back and forth on the ice honking taunts at the dog who was busy ignoring them. The canvasbacks sat quietly watching in parties of three or four. Two stark white domestic ducks wandered up furtively like out-of-towners looking for directions.

The coal-laden barges made small waves as they passed. I sat admiring the scene, a snapshot of my life. Frozen in place while the world passes by on the other side.

The small waves built momentum and slapped against the edge of the ice slab, sending a tiny spray up at the edge. The ice appeared to be holding its ground, or its water. Then a crack, like a gun shot, sped diagonally to the shore. The dog moved in under my feet. Another split a party of ducks in two. One quacked as he fell into the water, forgetting for a moment that he could swim. The little white ones flew off to the safety of the shore.

The ducks and geese flew in all directions while the waves hit the smaller slabs of ice into each other. They cracked and popped until the once solid sheet was in small pieces which slowly merged into the flow of the river and floated away.

So much for feeling sorry for myself. Time to get on with it.