Typewriter #2

Typewriter #2

My Smith Corona sits in a hard case in the barn covered with dust. Every few years David threatens to take it to the dump as he trips over it trying to find something else. I want it to be accessible, not buried too deeply behind the doll house, stacks of chairs and the airconditioner. It is something I will probably never use again but it feels essential to existence. If I left home, I’d grab my typewriter on the way out.

I loved the quiet hum it made when I turned it on. I loved threading thin erasable paper onto the rubber reel, turning the knob until the onion skin appeared in front ready to go, adjusting it just a little to be sure it was straight. I loved the mechanics of a letter at the end of each metal arm, the inked ribbon moving up to meet it and thunking down again. It felt important to sit down at the machine and get to work, putting my ideas in print. I wrote all my papers on it, bending forward with a grainy eraser late into the night, hoping the correction wouldn’t show. This machine was at my side all through college. We left home together and never moved back.

It spoke to me with a soft “ding” at the end of every line to notify me that it was time to reach up with my left hand and pull the carriage across to start a new line. It made sounds, it was noisy. Even though it was electric, state of the art in its time, I still had to attack the keys with force to get the results I wanted. Maybe in some way, I attacked the ideas I was writing with the same force. You had to be sure when you wrote on that machine. There was no turning back.

My computer is quiet. The only sound that can be heard when I use it is the thumping of my fingers on the keys and the thud of my thumb on the space bar. I watch the hands of those younger than I hover over a keyboard, typing without a sound. I can’t seem to refrain from the definitive strike on each letter. Old habits die hard.

sleepover

Can we go for a walk NOW? Pleeeze?

Dogs in my office.

Being really patient.

Calley had Lara over for a sleepover these past four nights. They ran through the woods and across fields, they ate and sat on command and waited at the door to go out. They shared the back seat of my car. They woke me at 6 am so excited to go out and chase squirrels.

Lara has gone home now, her owner back from NYC. Calley has collapsed on her bed, catching up on sleep and dreaming about swimming and having another dog around whose ear she can chew on any time she wants.

typewriter #1

I’m glad my mother insisted that I learn how to type, although the discussion- no, the exchange- was one of the few arguments we ever had. She had decided that I would take typing lessons at the local public high school the summer after my ninth grade year. The private school for girls that I attended definitely did not offer typing classes (or anything else fun and useful like home ec. or woodworking.) Typing sounded dreary and I finally told her I would not do it. I was used to getting my way. To my surprise at the dinner table with my father quietly watching, she leaned toward me and told me in a louder than usual voice that I would attend typing classes at Brookline High and that was the end of it.

I actually enjoyed the mindless work of learning to type; clacking away in a room full of tables each holding a heavy metal dark green manual typewriter. The basement room was cool on a hot July day. I liked being able to measure my progress, each day increasing my words per minute. Pretty soon the sentence that included every letter in the alphabet (or so we were told, I never actually checked) “the quick young fox jumped over the lazy dog” appeared effortlessly on the roll of paper in front of me as my fingers sped across the keys. Right pinky up to the letter P, left pinky up to the letter Q, thumb slamming the space bar. The ding at the end of the line came faster each day and I’d reach up and push the carriage handle with my left hand and start a new line. I felt powerful.

So, as I say, I am glad Mom insisted that I learn to type. I never asked her why she thought this was so important. She could never have imagined that what at the time was a training for being a secretary, now is a key to success at all levels. Maybe she just wanted to be sure I could type my own college essays.

March in Davis

Seems like only yesterday that we were just hangin' out at the Davis Farmer's Market on a Saturday morning with Sylvia, Brad, Eliza and the ever captivating ALDEN!

mystery

Every year at about this time, we wake up, look outside and realize, this is the day to burn the pile of branches that accumulates over a year from pruning, blow down and general clean up around the place. This morning there was still a little snow on the ground which reduces any risk of the fire spreading into the woods across dry oak leaves and there was very little wind. A perfect day for burning.

After calling the fire department for permission, we got the fire started with a great conflagration and then it simmered along all day as we collected more branches large and small from around the property and threw them on top. The crowning moment every year is when we throw on the Christmas tree. A truly pagan ritual to celebrate the end of winter and coming of spring! Burn away the old! Bring in the new!

A surprise this year was found in the huge old stump that sits at the edge of the pile and burns a little more each year. Today several large horseshoes appeared as the fire ate away at the stump. Horseshoes lodged in the center of a tree. Now how did that happen? Maybe it was once two trees, or a double leader and someone left the horseshoes in the notch for safe keeping, and never made it back to get them. The tree simply grew around them. Whatever the reason, they were embedded in this tree.

A glimpse into generations past. My imagination has a field day. Did Minutemen saddle up their horses from this very plot and speed off to Concord to join the Revolution? Did the owner of the horse also clear our land for farming, throwing rocks onto the walls that now snake through our woods? Did he drag a plow behind the horse who wore these shoes to plant crops? Did the multitude of small colored glass bottles that we used to find when we put a shovel in the earth also belong to him?

We meant to go out and cook hotdogs over the coals as we always did when Carrie and Eliza were little. Hotdogs and marshmallows ended a day of burning as the sun went down.

Tonight, going out to check the remains of the fire after supper, we stood under a dark sky sad to have to douse the orange and red embers still glowing in the darkness. It always seems a shame to put out the last remains of a fire. The hiss of water on live coal is a sorry sound. Like putting out a good idea.

Big Sur, California

I have fixed the camera to computer connection so I am now able to show some of our photos from California. The most important thing to remember is that there was snow on the ground and thirty degree temperatures in New England while we were on this trip. Meanwhile in California, the wild flowers were blooming and trees budding out. Except for a little rain, we had great weather. Most of all, it was great to see Eliza!

April 1

Big Sur, California March 2011

Common as Air

When Mrs. Weiss told us in earth science

that somewhere camouflaged within

our every lung-full of air marches air

Hitler breathed and Khruschev and

Richard Speck, I began breathing less –

shorter intakes, pauses after each exhale –

willing to endure panicky bursts of craving

in exchange for reducing the likelihood

of those radioactive atoms passing

from lung to blood to brain. If she included

mention of the Buddha or Madame Curie,

I do not remember it. Terror is airborne.

And though I have been slow to believe,

so are wisdom and beauty, the breath

of canticle and rainforest, and in such

measure as dwarfs the one or two

barbed furious parts per million of all

that is our phenomenal inheritance. How

I wish now a teacher had told us that this

is the reason, when we hyperventilate,

we get so dizzy – so much goodness

flooding our little brains it very nearly

bowls us over, tips us toward our knees.

-Brad Davis