Sweet Hearts

October 9 2008.

Some things:

1. Glass jars. They fill two rows of my fridge, filled with chilled water, juice, tea. Reminds me of glass bottles and our milkman who had a little white trolley full of clinking crates, and those peel-off lids, silver and blue that some birds knew to peck through while everything waited on the doorstep. If you put a special order in, you could get fresh orange juice too, newly pressed, and full of pulp. Mum would get yogurt, in lots of little cups, and sliced them full of strawberries. And when we went away, we had to remember to leave a note in a white envelope outside for him, otherwise when we returned, it was a mistake. I remember pulling up to the house in the midst of autumn, and leaves crackling underfoot, the doorstep and those leading down to the ground crammed with glass bottles of full milk and half-milk and half-newspapers now lost to the winds.

2. When we first moved to America, I used to go to sleep hoping I’d wake up in the morning, and it would all be a dream, I would wake up an all-American happy, well-adjusted child with an all-American accent and interests, and lots of friends who’d never make fun of the way I said things, and the things I liked, because I would be just like them. I would like peanut butter, I wouldn’t crave crumpets or sausages or blood pudding, I would eat sugary coloured cereals in the morning instead of prunes and Weetabix. I would be able to swim, I would have read all the nancy drew books already. I would unlearn script. When we went back to England in 8th grade, I bought dandelion cordial by the gallon in tall greenglass bottles and drank them fully, sitting in the shade of the kitchen window, watching the clothes line sway and the neighbor’s black cat prowl around the hedge. That was the same summer and the same trip back that I accidentally filled our swap-house with gasoline fumes and was playing with that lighter that would set that world ablaze.

3. I bought Button a book a couple years ago called Giraffes? Giraffes! I forget about it most of the time, but I wholly recommend it still. A good follow-up to a heartbreaking work, and it isn’t what you think.

4. I found that poem I referenced in my first blog entry, the one about how I would spend all the time in the world. The last stanza(ish), this important one, is this:

It's almost noon you say?
Wait for a while, then slip downstairs
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.

5. On the lake this summer, at the Waterfront, I created a scavenger hunt for the kids who didn’t want to canoe or fish, or needed a break from the terrible, terrifying line of children tumbling and stretching and whipping back their hooked lines and rods into the ground, tree branches behind them, and any hair or skin that moved in the way of their wrath. One of the bonus questions was: how many man-made things can you see? And one group counted 89. What has happened to nature?

6. I’ve been listening to Velvet Underground the last few nights I’ve been nocturnal, making lists and cleaning and class-reading and poster-making. This album reminds me of the summer. Lying sideways in sunshine, tip-of-the-nose sunburns, Irish tea with milk and sugar, even though Megan had to take it specially out of the high shelf in the kitchen cabinet every time. Basil plants on the patio. It feels like we did this two (three?) summers in a row, but that’s not true at all. It is so easy to forget that scorching uneasiness, sitting sweating at that snack counter, turning hotdogs and mixing greasy chicken salads. My shirts stuck to my back and my shorts got shorter with time. I played chef with the pretzel oven, making mini pizzas with stolen cheese and fresh rolls handmade and donated by the basement baker. That sounds cute, but all of it was terrible. There was a radio, and there was a fan, but they were both gone by July. There were whispers of mutiny, and when I left, I had to sign papers saying I would take no one with me.

7. I came home with Hannah, talking and laughing. We stopped for 89 cents-ers, and wore matching blindpeople sunglasses, black and enormous. Hugh has made me laugh for the last several hours- I had forgotten, as usual, how funny my family is…Mum looked kind of skeptically at me when I said I have no money, and asked about my blue skinny jeans, the new chucks, the black shirt I stole. Why is my hair purple in those places? What is that-red? Chestnuts behind my ears? And did those use to be holes? But she says I’m shining- says I look so healthy. My mother is not an American mother, she does not coddle or lie to make me feel good. She is a battleaxe mother and she is my hero.

8. First, I want some Nike low dunks. So badly.
Second, who do I know in Kansas? No one, I think. Don’t you have anything better to do?