Puzzling It Out

I'm standing in a toy aisle at Fred Meyer, staring down a wall of colorful images, and realizing just how naive I'd been when I thought to myself, "Oh I'll just duck in and grab a puzzle real quick!"

You see, although I have known my husband for over two decades, and although we have been romantically intertwined for nearly nine years, I only just this past week discovered that he, too, loves to do puzzles.  (I like that there are still things to be discovered.)

However.

As you might imagine, the fact that we're nearing a decade of marriage, a marriage in which we spend considerably more time together than apart, and yet never realized that the other one loves puzzles, means that neither of us has done a puzzle in all that time.

Which is why I now find myself feeling perhaps a little more pressure than the situation strictly calls for.  Because I want to not just surprise, but delight my husband with a puzzle for our weekend-away, which means I need to pick just the right puzzle.

Except there are a lot more puzzles than I was expecting, and I'm now suffering a bit of Analysis Paralysis.  Obviously I don't want to get anything too easy- we have a whole weekend ahead of us!  But what if I get one that's too complex?  And obviously it has to be a cool image, or at least an appropriately ironically-lame one, to minimize the amount of teasing I will suffer.

In the end I opt for a family of wolves in a frozen landscape, because we will be a family hanging out at a cold beach.  It's practically the same thing, right?  Right.

I glance at my phone- I've spent close to half an hour agonizing over this non-decision.  Ah, the lengths we go to for love.

Nautilus Girls

Spent an hour writing an old friend, and found myself coming back around to a recurring theme in my life- that of the nautilus, crafting itself from itself, the new encompassing the old.  Here is a short excerpt from the letter:

"I am interested to hear what breakthroughs you make on contentedness vs. happiness.  I have always been more of the happiness/joy end of the spectrum, but I find myself in this new and interesting position at the moment because happiness/joy is so closely entwined with content/comfort.  I was actually thinking about it as I walked to my car this afternoon, how it was strange to step back and examine the fact that I was super happy to go home and hang out with my kid, when that is so different from anything that would ever have given me fierce joy even three years ago.  I am far more domestic.  And I was wondering if I should be upset by the change- it's like, I know I've been brainwashed by the hormones, but as long as I'm happy, does it matter how I achieved that happiness?  Or do I owe it to my old self to still chase after the old things?  That just seems silly.  But again- if I knew a friend had been chemically brainwashed, would I be like, 'Well hey, as long as the cult makes you happy...'?  Not that I am comparing parenthood to a cult (or am I??) but there's something to the fact that I'm not myself.  Not my old self.  I am a new evolution of self that encompasses my old self, but has also grown in new ways and shed old pieces that are no longer necessary.  And still other pieces are simply in hibernation during this season, and they will come back.

"I find myself often repeating, 'This is a season.' "

Ghost Story

We fell in love with the house as soon as we saw it- a cape-cod style built in 1910, remodeled (and expanded) in the early aughts, painted a cheerful yellow and just right for our tiny little family (two adults and two cats: we were hoping to up that by at least one baby in the near future).  The couple who had it before us had been there for more than forty years, but had decided they could no longer handle the stairs.

If I'm being honest, it was the garden that sold it more than the house itself.  The wife, Nancy, had been an avid gardener, and the backyard was a private oasis of serene, sweet-smelling beauty.  I sat on a low retaining wall while my husband Michael eyeballed the foundation, and I could quite clearly see our future children playing in the perfectly manicured grass.

About three days after we closed on the place, when the rooms were full of boxes but we were still sleeping in our old apartment, reality hit me: I am not a gardener, and I had no clue how to maintain my little oasis.  And so I did a little social media stalking and reached out to the former owners for some tips and tricks.  Nancy was delighted to give me pointers, but at the end of our conversation she seemed almost like she was trying to decide whether or not to tell me something.

"My husband didn't want me to tell you this," she said, "and of course the realtor thinks I'm just a crazy old lady.  But I feel so bad about... well, I just think you ought to know."

I felt a chill trickle down my spine.  Ought to know what?  Was there a pocket of hidden black mold behind the bricked-in fireplace?  Was the cellar prone to flooding?  Was there an annual snake infestation?  Nancy took a deep breath.

"There's a ghost who lives in the house.  Well, she doesn't live there- but she comes to visit fairly frequently."

There was no rational response to this, and so I said, as politely as possible, "How frequently is fairly?"

"Almost every afternoon, around 1:30.  Sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later.  She's very polite.  I tried to explain that we were leaving but... I don't know that she understood.  She gets confused about things, you know."

"Mmm," I said.

"You don't believe me," said Nancy.  "It's alright.  I didn't believe it myself, in the beginning.  But... well... she likes lemon cookies.  So.  Good luck with the peonies."

I told Michael when he got got back from the store- how could you not share a story like that?  Our very own ghost!  But the days passed, and our attention was taken up with turning our new house into a home, and I soon forgot all about the ghost who liked lemon cookies.

Until the afternoon I stepped out on our back porch and found a young woman- a girl, really- sitting primly in one of my bright white rocking chairs.

"Oh!" I said, because there really isn't much else to say when someone suddenly appears in your backyard that is surrounded by a six-foot privacy fence.  She jumped to her feet, looking vaguely embarrassed.

"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "I didn't mean to startle you.  I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  Her face flushed and she looked down at her hands, which were playing nervously with a button on the front of her gown.  She dropped the button and smoothed her skirt.  It was a lovely vintage-style thing, the dark green color extremely flattering with her smooth auburn curls.

"There's- um.  There's no Margaret here," I said, wondering why I sounded so apologetic.

"Oh!" she said, and for a moment she looked like she might cry.  "I... I guess I'll go then.  I'm so sorry to have intruded."

I glanced back over my shoulder at the kitchen, wondering just how she'd gotten through the house without me knowing.  "I think you'd better-" I began, turning back to her- but she was gone.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

"Hello?" I peered around the porch, as though she might somehow be hiding in a corner.  I stepped out into the garden and rustled the bushes.  "Miss?"

Nothing.  Vanished.  Just like a ghost.

I shivered.

"Well," I said out loud, if only to reassure myself that I was still there.  "That will certainly make for entertaining dinner conversation."  But I didn't mention it over dinner.  Or in bed.  Or at breakfast.  I'm not sure why- perhaps because I didn't want to worry Michael, who was more likely to take the "stranger snuck through the house" position than the "ghostly apparition" position, and insist on an expensive security system.

That afternoon I nervously poked my head out onto the back porch, but no one was there.  I gave a little laugh, feeling silly, and came out the rest of the way.  I needed to do a bit of weeding in the rose bed, so I grabbed my gloves and a little basket as I headed into the garden.

"Excuse me?"

The noise I made can best be described as a "yelp", and I dropped everything in my hands for good measure.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, because of course it was the young woman again.  "I didn't mean to startle you.  I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  She looked down at her hands again, exactly as she had yesterday.  I had a hand pressed to my chest, trying to slow my racing heart.

"She... um, there's no Margaret here," I managed to squeak out.  "Remember?"

For a moment she looked confused.  "No, I..." then her face shifted to the same misery she'd shown yesterday.  "I... I guess I'll go then.  I'm so sorry to have intruded."

"Wait-" I said.  "Did... did you maybe mean Nancy?  Nancy Ellis?"  The girl's face grew confused again.

"Nancy," she said.  "I think... I think I knew a Nancy..." her voice trailed off, her gray eyes distant.  But then she shook her head and refocused on me.  "No, no it's Margaret I was... hoping to find.  I should go."  She turned abruptly, her shin-length skirt fanning out ever-so-slightly.

The next moment she was gone.

I sank to my knees, shaking ever-so-slightly.  "Oh wow oh wow oh wow," I said.

I sat there for a while, coming to terms with the fact that I really, truly had been conversing with a ghost.

That evening I called Nancy, not sure if I was doing it to apologize or ask for advice.  As it turned out I didn't get a chance to do either: her voice mailbox wasn't set up.  No help there.

I spent the next morning baking, and by 1:15 pm I was sitting nervously in a white rocker with a plate of cookies in my lap.

The girl appeared standing at the edge of the porch.

"Hello," she said, shyly.  "I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  Fingers-clutching-fabric.

"Margaret isn't here right now," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.  "Would you like a cookie?"

"Well I-" she began, looking confused, but I interrupted.

"They're lemon"

Her lips parted every so slightly, and then she smiled.  "I do love lemon cookies," she admitted, and stepped closer to me.

"Well sit down and help me eat them, then," I said, gesturing to the other rocker.  She sat, and took a single cookie from the plate.  She could touch things.  Interesting.

"What's your name?"  I asked, taking a bite from my own cookie.

"Dorothy Easterling," she answered, holding out her hand polite as you please.  "But people usually call me Dot, or sometimes Dottie because of my last name."

I took her hand, and it was cool in mine.  Not cold, like a corpse, but cool- almost like shaking hands with solid mist.  "Nice to meet you, Dot.  My name is Melissa, although people usually call me Mel."

"Oh that's a lovely name!" she said, taking her hand back and breaking her cookie in two.  "I've never heard it before."

"Really?" I eyed her dress again, trying to figure out when it was from.  The silhouette seemed too slim for the fifties.  Forties, maybe?  Thirties?  "I've never thought of it as all that uncommon."

"Well I haven't exactly met a lot of people," she said with a blush.  "So maybe that's it."

"Why are you looking for Margaret?" I asked, and she gave a little start, dropping the cookie.

"Oh!  Um, it's not-" her eyes began to fill and she looked away.  "Not anything... important.  I should go."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I was, but she had already stood.

"Thank you for the cookies, Mel," she said, and dashed away into nothingness before I could respond.

"Alright," I said to the thin air left behind.  "Time to figure out who the hell Margaret Nichols was."

I'd like to say it was a long and dramatic search, but the truth is that it took all of ten minutes with a search engine to discover that Margaret Nichols was the second owner of my house, and had lived in it during the forties.  But there was nothing tying her to a Dorothy Easterling.

"Curiouser and curiouser," I muttered to myself, although it wasn't as appropriate as a crack about Kansas would have been.

Nancy was right on the nose when she said that the ghost- Dot- did indeed appear almost every afternoon.  She always started out asking for Margaret, but if I tried to get her to talk about the woman beyond that, she would get flustered and leave.  It didn't take long for me to stop trying- as it turned out, I quite enjoyed Dot's company, and didn't like upsetting her.  She seemed to enjoy my company, as well- in time she'd even remember a bit from one day's conversation to the next.

How does memory work, for a ghost?  I'm still not sure.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Traffic was particularly heavy this morning (thanks in no small part, I'm sure, to all of us normally-bike-commuters driving our SUVs so as not to be Washed Away by the promised Typhoon Thunder Storms) which meant that I spent a long span sitting still on Main Street, staring out my window as I waited for the lights to cycle through yet again.

The view that caught my eye was one of the (now many) construction projects going on in the Uptown area.  I watched with interest as a dull-orange excavator extended it's shovel and, with surprising delicacy, moved a layer of earth.  The massive machine repeated its movement, apparently at the behest of an individual holding a long pole (measuring depth, perhaps?) and I was taken by the way it both resembled and yet did not at all resemble the anatomy of human limbs.

That's who they should get to pilot mecha, I thought absently.  Construction workers.  Aircraft pilots are good with their fighting machines, of course, but there is nothing human about the way they move.  It wouldn't translate to piloting a giant humanoid.  And then I got very excited thinking about a bunch of blue-collar heroes who are tagged for the new Special Project because they already have the skills needed.  I'll need to talk to some people who have actually driven those things, I thought, and also my four-year-old nephew, who actually knows the names of all 'those things'.

And that's when it hit me- Blue Collar Mecha Pilots has already been done (more or less):  in fact it is my two-year-old nephew Elk's favorite show, and I watched several episodes with him while we were in Alabama.  It's called Rescuebots, and it's pretty good.  I mean sure, the mecha in question are actual sentient aliens, and don't require any piloting from their human partners, but still.  Close enough.

...or not.  I could always turn it into a short story.

The Oathbreaker, Pt I (The Third Draft)

Once upon a time, I was a little girl with two living parents.  My father was a miller, which gave us some standing in the village, and certainly contributed to our house being one of the finest in the area.   It was my mother, however, who kept us comfortable, making our house a home.

I was her only daughter, and so she taught me to be a woman in our world: to keep the house snug and clean; to grow and prepare food both nourishing and delicious; to spin and weave and darn.  In these ways our family was kept healthy, strong, and whole.  And, of course, happy.

But my mother was more than just a woman: she was a wisewoman, and it suited her that I should be, as well.  Thus she taught me the names of all things, for as she said, to know the name of a thing is to have some measure of control over it.  She taught me the names of the beasts of the field; the birds of the air; and the fish of the stream.  She taught me the names of the plants of the wood and the meadow, and all the many stars of the sky.  She taught me the names of all the forces that move a man’s heart and a woman’s mind.  But most importantly, she taught me the secret names of the good spirits who can be called upon to help in little ways when one is in need.

“Are all spirits good?” I asked her, after she introduced me to the water spirit who generously helped keep our water wheel from growing over-heavy with moss.

“No,” she said solemnly.  “Although all those I can teach you to call by name are.  And in fact I must warn you, my daughter, that you must never accept aid from a spirit whose name you do not know, for they will always have the advantage over you, and that is a very dangerous thing, indeed.”

One day my mother grew very ill, and because she was a wisewoman, she knew that she would die soon.  She called me to her not long after, and pressed something into my hand.  I looked and saw it was a long necklace of red yarn, from which hung a spindle in miniature, roughly carved from a bit of pale wood.

“I had thought to have more time to refine it,” she said apologetically, her smile pale and cracked.  “I’d intended it as your thirteenth birthday present, but now I know there is no more time, and I hope you will not mind that I give it to you unfinished.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, and slipped the yarn over my head.  “I will treasure it always.”

“Now come closer, my daughter,” she said, “that I may tell you my name.”

“I know your name, mother,” I said, thinking that at last her mind had begun to fail along with her body.  “It is Elaine Miller.”  My mother smiled again.

“That has been a very good name to me,” she said, “But it is not my true name.  If you pray on my grave and then speak my true name, I can come and give you counsel.  And a young woman needs her mother’s counsel, I think.”  Then she pulled my ear close to her lips, and told me her true name.

“Only use it in your hours of greatest need,” she said, “For I can only be summoned thus three times.  But I will love you past forever.”

And then she died.

After that, it was up to me to be the woman of the household, and I did it as best I could, but I did it with a heavy heart, for I missed my mother very much.  I would often go to her grave and spin wool, for that helped me to feel close to her.  But I never called her true name, for my mother had taught me to be wise, and it is not wise to squander boons.

The years passed, and I grew, and soon boys and men asked to pay me court.  But I was perfectly content keeping house for my father, and had no desire for a husband or baby of my own, and so I had my father politely turn all suitors away.  He always asked me, “Daughter are you sure?  I’ve no desire for you to become an old maid out of concern for me,” but when I pointed out that he could remarry as easily, his eyes would flit to my mother’s ring (worn now on my middle finger).  Then he’d hunch up his shoulders, heave a great sigh, and leave me be.

And so we were well-contented with our lives, and comfortable, and happy as two people can be when they’ve lost such a large part of their hearts.

Until the autumn that our millstone broke.

Being Merry

It was a day of tastiness.

Just how I like it.

bok choy, chanterelles, and scallions for our chicken soup

Mountian Rose

Nathan and I went together to pick Neeps up from daycare today (yeah there might be some lingering guilt, so sue me), and afterwards we all went to the grocery store, where there were lots and lots of lovely apples on display!  We got to sample a few, including the one I've always thought of as the, "The Starburst Apple" (it's actually called Mountain Rose)  We bought a few of those to bring home, and Neeps was as delighted by the taste as I was.  (Nathan finds them too tart)

A blushing exterior hides a scarlet secret...

Oh Mai!

Sweet and tart and oh-so-lovely.  No wonder I'm a fan.