Q is for Quaker

I attended a liberal arts college affiliated with the Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends.

Often when I tell people I attended a Quaker school, they say, “Quaker? You mean like the oatmeal?”Or they say, “Is that like the Amish?”

Um, no, not like the oatmeal, though the logo on the Quaker Oats carton does feature a man  in “Quaker dress” possibly circa the time of William Penn. And no, not like the Amish, who shun modern technology and thus use horse and buggy as their means of transport and do not have electricity in their homes, etc.

If you’re not familiar with Quakerism, you might have heard of a “Friends” school near you. (President Obama’s daughters attend a Quaker-affiliated school in Washington, for example, Sidwell Friends. There’s a Friends school here in San Francisco, and, as you might expect, quite a few in the Philadelphia area.) Or you might know that Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon were both Quaker. Without getting into too many details of the religion itself, Quakers, in general, believe that God exists in all of us, or at the very least can speak through all of us. Quaker services are called meetings, and traditionally, no priest or minister leads the group. Each member of the congregation sits in silence until moved to speak or sing, by God. Quakers value peace, simplicity, equality, and education. They tend to be involved in community service or social justice projects.

I was not raised Quaker, nor do I attend Quaker meeting now. But I came away from my college experience having internalized Quaker values. Everyone in my college referred to everyone else by his or her first name, whether that person was a student, professor, or the president of the college. I found some hierarchies I encountered after college foreign and hard to navigate, because I had spent four years in an institution essentially devoid of hierarchy. Problems there were solved by consensus, meaning that everyone involved in the decision making had a say, and that as a group we would reach an understanding. I found bosses, afterward, strangely dictatorial, and could not understand why my opinion was not always welcome – I had been taught that everyone’s opinion mattered, always.

Quakers have been known for being conscientious objectors in wartime. Several of my college classmates’ fathers had been jailed during the Vietnam War for their refusal to fight. Some universities offer degrees in military history, or memberships in ROTC. The school I graduated from offered a major in Peace, and courses such as “Nonviolent Responses to Conflict.” It’s hard to be surrounded by that kind of thinking for four years and come away unaffected. I was reminded, recently, of my school’s commitment to these values when I read this speech, written by my former English professor, in response to 9/11. I was flooded with relief when I read it on the 10^th anniversary of the attacks. I did not realize how much I had been looking for a response that made sense to me, after all of the bellicose rhetoric and actions by our country over the past decade. That, “if someone else has decided we are at war, we nonetheless have a choice of the weapons we will use.”

I did not fully comprehend at the time how much Quakerism impacted every aspect of my college life: My studies, my friendships, my extracurricular activities.

I played field hockey during college.  Our team would gather in a close circle before games and cheer, raising our sticks into the air, as if ready to attack. I did not see a disconnect between Quakerism and sports and I suppose there is not, if sports are merely games or exercise and not metaphors for conflict and aggression. We embraced the irony of the cheer we chanted before our games; we screamed it until our voices cracked, almost with a kind of Quakerly pride.

Fight! Fight!
Inner light!
Kill, Quakers kill!

One coach made us cheer a more peaceful version, but it did not fill us with the same glee.

It came to my attention recently that my college has acquired a mascot, which does, indeed, look like the guy on the oatmeal, which I suppose I find endearing. It’s perhaps more endearing to me that the college has not had a mascot until now, some 150+ years after its founding. There’s a contest to name the mascot — the choices are Big Earl, Barnabus, Quincy, and, wait for it …  Oatis.

My experience was not that of the typical American undergraduate, obviously.

Our campus did not support fraternities or sororities, since membership in exclusive clubs creates inequality. Ours was a dry campus — Quakers were, historically, against the use of alcohol. Of course, like college students everywhere, we drank, we smoked and we debated. We grew up. But we called our professors Bob, Jun, and Chuck, because those were their names. We joined the college’s president at his home for dinner. We studied world religions, not just Quakerism. We learned how to serve others, and a great many of us went on to become teachers, aid workers, and counselors. A disproportionate number of us studied abroad, because the world is small and only through communication and understanding can there be peace. We lived and studied together in a small, respectful community that I miss. My nostalgia reaches beyond the place, however, and beyond the people who inhabited that place those four years I spent there; it infuses my thinking and my actions in ways I am still, nearly two decades later, noticing.

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I’m joining Christine at 80,000 words and other bloggers in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. It’s called Alphabet: A History. (I’m doing the letters out of order.)

Some previous posts:

N is for neighborhood

T is for Taro, and tsunami

J is for Jeremiah Townley Chase

F is for Fort Wayne

 

N is for neighborhood.

I.
We lived, in the mid-1970s, in a suburban development where the moms did not work and they hosted Tupperware parties and sleepovers instead. The houses, a repeating pattern of five different Colonial styles coated in aluminum siding and fake brick panels, were each allocated a fraction of an acre. Tiny lots and tiny yards, each family’s grassy lawn right up against the next. But I could walk a few houses down the street to visit my friends; we could ride our bikes over the uneven panels of the sidewalk; our neighbors knew us and we knew them. I remember our neighbors on one side well: an older couple whose kids were in college or about to be. They had a grandparental air; perhaps they found my grade-school girl antics a relief in their mostly empty nest. I remember marching up to their front door, alone, visiting whenever I felt the need. I was fed cookies and milk. The couple’s son sometimes walked me home from the bus stop, though it was only about a block from my house — there was an old-fashioned neighborliness about the place we lived. Our house had dark blue aluminum siding, wall-to-wall shag carpet and a brick fireplace. The kitchen was olive green and coated in linoleum. It was strangely comforting to know my way around friends’ homes, even if I hadn’t visited before, because they were in layout and décor very similar to mine.

II.
In between my fourth and fifth grade school years, we moved. My parents had built a house with some inheritance they’d received, a modest Cape Cod on about two acres, some 20 minutes south of our previous home. It was a greater distance that it seemed. That short drive took us from suburban to rural, to “peace and quiet,” to open space. There were no sidewalks. Our new house was in a development with only two intersecting streets and few homes. Empty lots bordered ours on all sides. The land had once been a farm, probably tobacco, and had been carved into lots for people like my parents to invest in and build upon. There were few trees, and fewer children. I rode my bike up and down the middle of our street, back and forth, back and forth, and some days I didn’t see another soul. We grew berries and corn and peas on our new land, and I learned to dig potatoes and coax squash from Maryland clay. The fledgling community was surrounded by hilly pastures and fields of corn, soybeans, and tobacco, and occasionally a stray dog would appear. In the country, people dropped off what they no longer wanted. I came home from school one day and found an old racehorse grazing in our yard. I watched a bull trot down the street one morning while I ate breakfast. We were all displaced. Birds flew into our chimney, snakes slithered in the front door. My cat caught field mice and crickets in our basement. Our dog had a run-in with a skunk. We could hear gunfire in the spring and fall, and got to know when goose hunting season began. The Canada geese flew overhead year-round, and I found their constant barking companionable and soothing in the country silence. Rabbits nibbled on our lawn nightly.

III.
We live on a 17 percent grade in San Francisco at the place where the fog turns to sun. The houses have been built at odd angles to accommodate the slope, and we are crammed onto this hill: wall meets wall, roof meets roof. I have met a few of our neighbors, but our relationships are guarded and suspicious. One blond woman three houses down looks me in the eye every time I say hello, but keeps her lips pursed. An older woman who lives two houses up the hill waves when she sees us and gave us a pot full of prickly succulents when our son was born, but she is not interested in conversation. The middle-aged couple who rent an apartment next door smoke so much pot we can sit on our front steps and get high on their second-hand smoke. Another neighbor meditates every morning while sitting on the wall between our houses, and I have to explain to my son why she won’t say hi. Here the land is too steep for a yard. We have a deck, and I grow flowers in pots and built-in beds. I find myself looking for my former neighbors, sometimes brought low with nostalgia for them. I watch city birds from our bay window, ravens and sparrows mostly, and wait for my once-a-year sighting of the fat raccoon who roves the neighborhood. When I notice mice darting into the bushes near the street, I stop to watch. I take the time to point out to my son the spiders in our flower beds, the hummingbirds whizzing by, a ladybug. We visit friends on weekends, city-dwelling friends who moved to the suburbs and now have grassy yards and pools, and deer that eat their landscaping; friends who know the neighbors from whom their kids beg for candy at Halloween. Our visits feel like vacation.

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Joining Christine at 80,000 words and other bloggers in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. It’s called Alphabet: A History. (I’m doing the letters out of order.)

Some previous posts:

E is for everything, everything, everything

H is for Hokkaido

S is for snake

F is for Fort Wayne

I is for introvert

As a child, I got in trouble for not speaking up. For not speaking at all. Other kids probably got grounded for getting home late, or going somewhere they weren’t allowed to, or maybe, setting things on fire. I occasionally got in trouble for those things too — even, once, for sparking a fire. In general though, I was an obedient kid, if a shy one. My mom often had to encourage me to say “thank you,” after I received a gift or a compliment. It wasn’t that I was trying to be rude, for I knew that one was supposed to express gratitude in certain situations, just like it was appropriate to say “please” when asking for something, or “excuse me” when getting up from the dinner table. But my silence was something that had to be overcome. I was scared to speak to strangers and was timid even with people I knew.  On one occasion – I couldn’t have been much older than five or six – I remember my mom prodding me to say thank you to our church’s pastor, and I simply could not. I knew that I was supposed to say thank you, and I knew I’d hear about it if I didn’t. But I couldn’t will myself to speak. I stood next to my mom, looking at the ground, silent and ashamed.

When I did manage to speak, adults rarely were able to hear me, and that tended to compound the problem. I didn’t like to repeat myself, and raising my voice was hard. It felt like having to lift something heavier than my own weight. With children and adults I was always the one to hang back, to observe, to need time to get comfortable with others. Other kids, particularly those with siblings, seemed to bound into group settings, while I struggled. I made friends slowly and one by one.

I’ve grown less timid with age, but I’m still quiet. My mother complains she can’t hear me. I still tend to be an observer. I prefer to test the waters before diving into social situations. Making a phone call to someone I don’t know requires extra fortitude. I’m most comfortable one on one, and my friendships reflect that. It’s not that I don’t like being around people — I do. But I hoard private time: to write, to think, to observe, to read. I need that space. For a long time I relied on alcohol to make me more extraverted, but that solution turned out not to be a solution at all. Post-drinking, I became shyer: I was always embarrassed about the uncharacteristically outgoing behavior the alcohol induced.

Sometime between childhood and adulthood I learned that there was a label for me. Introversion is not the same as shyness, and understanding that gave me some confidence. Being “shy” always seemed to me a negative trait; the kind teachers commented on in report cards, or the kind I was scolded for at home. But introvert! It was a label I could embrace without considering the judgments of others. In high school we took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, which proved that some people are extroverted and some are not. It was matter of fact. I knew without taking the test which category was mine.

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Joining Charlotte’s Web, Jade Park and The Contact Zone in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. It’s called Alphabet: A History.

Some previous posts:

H is for Hokkaido

G is for geology

F is for Fort Wayne

E is for everything, everything, everything

As a side note, “I” could have easily been for insomnia. But I’ve written about that here already.

On commitment

I’m notoriously commitment-phobic. (Though I prefer to call it “indecisive,” or say that I like to “weigh my options.”) I don’t just mean in terms of relationships, though it did take me six years of dating to come around to the idea of marrying my now-husband, despite the fact that I had known him for at least a decade before that. I’m the kind of person who can’t walk out of a bookstore with just one book, because what if it’s not good, or when I sit down to read it, it turns out I’m not in the mood for that kind of book? I like to have backup plans. I like to have options.

When it comes to my writing, I’m the same way. I’ve always got a handful of new project ideas swirling in my head. I start one, then abandon it to work on another. It’s not that I don’t want to finish the first, but… Well, they’re good ideas, and I don’t want to let any of them go.

But the truth is, you can’t play the field and expect to be in a monogamous serious relationship at the same time. You can’t juggle a novel, a memoir, some essays, short stories and a blog and expect to make a lot of progress on any one of those projects. Yes, sometimes it’s nice to take a break form one project and work on another – but not if you end up losing sight of your progress on the first.

This morning, in an attempt to commit to one project, I made a list of all of the writing project ideas/beginnings I had. I came up with seven. Seven! Even I wasn’t aware of how many projects I had swirling about in my head (and on my hard drive). Two novels, two memoirs, a book of essays and a book of short stories. Oh. My. God.

So I wrote brief synopses of each project, and it soon became clear which were just ideas, and which I really wanted to move forward with. Writing a description of each helped me see how viable (or not) each project was, as well as how well thought-out each one was. Some of the ideas clearly needed more time to simmer.

I absolutely recommend this exercise if you’re waffling, between projects, feeling an overflow of ideas, or just not sure what to do next. I quickly saw two projects rising above the others. One is a novel, one is a book of essays.  And I committed to working on – gasp! – one of them. I revised an essay this morning, and it felt really good to be attaching myself to a project, to focus, and to move forward.

Another Sunday hodgepodge

It’s another Sunday, and so I thought, “how about another Sunday hodgepodge?

And then, because I have been up since 5 am taking care of a sick little boy, and am sick myself (again!) and my brain is not fully functioning, I thought, is hodgepodge really a word? Does anyone use it anymore? I had to reassure myself with a visit to Merriam-Webster’s website. I think more caffeine is in order.

But I digress. Here it is. The hodgepodge, I mean:

1. I’ve started keeping a journal. With a pen! And paper! I know, so 1999 1985, right? I’ve never been a consistent diarist, though I’ve always wanted to be. And yet, in my office I have an entire book shelf of notebooks full of my blathering and deep thoughts. Some years of my life are represented, some are not. Some of the notebooks are half-empty, or half-filled with to-do lists alongside pages of writing. Or drawings, alongside pages of to-do lists.  It’s been several years since I wrote in a notebook on a regular basis, and I decided to try it. My life these days is not measured in big events or dates so much as more insubstantial, quotidian sorts of things, and thus I’ve recently found myself unable to differentiate one week from the next, or even, sometimes, one day from the next. Journaling helps keep things in perspective. And, theoretically, it should help with my other writing. (Pathetic Sidenote: I apparently use a writing implement so infrequently in my daily life that writing a page with a pen is actually physically uncomfortable. And my handwriting has become a strange illegible scrawl in which vowels get squished and letters seem to get lost.)

2. I finally read Nami Mun’s excellent debut novel Miles From Nowhere. The spare prose and memoir-like quality of it blew me away.

3. I’ve been dealing with some writer’s block this week. I admit it, though I’m reluctant to. Writer’s block is an on-again, 0ff-again problem for me. Block is perhaps the wrong word for it; paralysis might be a better one. I have lots of things I want to say, and lots of ideas for novels, essays, memoirs and so on, but I keep sitting down in front of the computer and just, well, freezing. I read or heard somewhere that Joyce Carol Oates said that writer’s block is what happens when you’re not being honest with yourself in your writing. I’m paraphrasing, and probably poorly. (Does anyone know the source/actual quote? I can’t find it.) I sometimes think about that when I can’t write, though it doesn’t help much and just creates more anxiety about the writing process. I suspect that my writer’s block tends to come as a result of suddenly having time to write (hello, childcare!) after days of not. It’s a lot of pressure, kind of an “OK, go! You’ve got X hours to write and that’s it!” situation.

3. It’s been storming in the Bay Area for a week. We’ve had wind, lightning, thunder, hail, downpours, rainbows, flooding and even funnel clouds. This weekend was supposed to be a reprieve, but another Pacific storm is rolling in this afternoon. There’s a part of me that loves a bout of dreary weather; it’s a nice time to get cozy on the couch with a book or to write for hours in a coffee shop with foggy windows. But there’s another part of me, the one who has to take our white dog to the muddy park in a cold rain with a 25-pound 14-month-old strapped to my chest who wants to “hold” the umbrella, yeeeah. That part of me, not so much.

4. This month marks 10 years that I’ve been living in San Francisco. A decade! That’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere, ever. Probably there’s an entire post in me about that topic. Stay tuned.

taste of a childhood Christmas

I dragged myself to the walk-in clinic over the weekend and the doctor there asked me to take a deep breath while he listened to my lungs. I fell into a coughing fit that left me unable to speak. I walked out bearing the anticipated diagnosis of bronchitis, and a prescription. A Pacific storm was churning offshore, and the downpour and the cold made my feverish view of the city seem a little narrower. Fog clouded the windshield. I worried what the cold, damp air would do to my already-struggling lungs, and I vowed to get inside and stay there.

A metallic taste in my mouth, along with a slight feeling of light-headedness and a relentless, hacking cough have brought back memories. Bronchitis was the illness of my childhood. The taste in my mouth I had often as a kid; I missed weeks of school at a time when a cold would drop into my chest, my fever would rise and the coughing would start. Bronchitis and pneumonia, we go way back.

The taste in my mouth and the time of year have stirred up memories of a childhood Christmas when bronchitis (or was it pneumonia?) also kept me inside. It snowed that year, unusual for mild-mannered Maryland in December, and I’m sure I was disappointed that I couldn’t go out in it. Sick on Christmas, snow in the yard, and my cat had been gone for an unusually long time. Fudge — named for the character in the kids’ books by Judy Blume  — was a huntress. She was a petite cat, but a tough one. She tolerated me dressing her up in pearls and doll dresses, but then slunk outside and killed cardinals, baby bunnies and field mice. She rarely brought her quarry home to us, as some cats do. She dined on what she killed, leaving red feathers strewn about the garden, or bits of fur in the grass. She often stayed out all night, stalking her prey, hunting when small creatures stirred, and so it did not seem odd when she didn’t show up for breakfast one morning. Or even that afternoon. But when she did not return the second night we began to worry.

If I had been well, I would have bundled up, trudged outside in heavy winter boots, and marched around the neighborhood, calling for her. Since I couldn’t go out, I opened the back door and yelled “Fudgie” over and over until my mom scolded me for letting cold air in, or until a fit of coughing forced me to stop. I expected to hear Fudgie’s meow in response to my calls — she was a vocal cat and when close to the house would often cry to let us know she was there before she trotted inside. Instead I heard the silence of snow, saw ice forming on branches. Meanwhile Christmas approached, my fever and cough worsened. At some point we probably visited the doctor and I began swallowing spoonfuls of cough syrup and antibiotics. Days passed. I called for Fudgie again and again. Dread combined with my fever made me cry. Because I could not, my mom went out and called for Fudgie, but still no mewing reply.

We made gingerbread men that Christmas. My mom baked cookies every year, but gingerbread men were not one of our staples. I’m not sure why she decided to make them that year, whether it was a plan to distract us both from the fate of our missing cat and my illness, or whether it was just something she wanted to do. I was in charge of decorating them, adding red hots for buttons, silver balls for eyes, a dusting of red or green sprinkles for clothes. We made buttercream frosting that I dyed a garish blue to spread on some of the cookies. I remember my excitement over the cookies battling against the sinking feeling in my stomach, the resulting guilt, and a knot of worry over Fudgie’s absence. I wanted to enjoy those cookies. I expected them to make up for my illness, my missing pet, the snow I could only stare at from our bay window in the kitchen.

My mom imagined the worst, and she suggested that perhaps Fudgie was not well and had gone away to die in peace. She mused that an animal — a dog? a raccoon?– had attacked our little cat. She tried, I suppose, to prepare me, in case Fudgie did not come back. But I didn’t want to believe any of that and I remember my lip quivered with the effort of trying to remain stoic in the face of these possibilities.

Fudgie was not the kind of cat to crawl off to die. I knew this, I think, but did not trust my intuition. A day or two after Christmas, we opened the door to find her there, very thin and yowling for food. She seemed happy to see us. It had been exactly a week since she’d disappeared, and we speculated that she’d gotten locked in a neighbor’s garage while they were away for the holidays. She survived a week with out food, and later other trials, and went on to live a long, full, multitude of cat lives.

Being sick affected my taste buds, and those gingerbread cookies tasted wrong to me. The frosting — something about that awful blue color — was too sweet. I could taste only my illness, my fear of loss, my worry over the possibility of death. I still don’t like frosted cookies.

E is for everything, everything, everything

We spend a lot of time in cars. We drive to the mall, we drive to school. We drive each other home from school, from field hockey practice, from parties, from 7-11. We make out with boys in cars parked in houseless cul-de-sacs. Always there is music. In the summer we open the windows, let humid air move our moussed and sprayed hair, the bangs that curl just so over our pimpled foreheads. We turn it up and yell the words to every song. We know all of the lyrics. No sleep til Brooklyn. Pour some sugar on me. I’m not internationally known/ but I’m known to rock the microphone.

Each of our cars has its own soundtrack. Michelle drives fast and it’s always the Beastie Boys. Loud. She squeals and screams about boys and Mike D. She plays New Kids on the Block, too, but the rest of us make her turn it off. We get in her car reluctantly sometimes – she can’t be trusted not to drink at parties and she’s always pushing curfews. Still, once we’ve clambered into the back seat, we scream together. Had a little horsy named Paul Revere/Just me and my horsy and a quart of beer. The suburban nights are dark and star-smattered. We cannot imagine anything else.

Kathy is a safer ride. There’s Poison or Guns N Roses in the background. Bon Jovi. We croon power ballads, swaying against each other. Never say goodbye. Never tear us apart. Every rose has its thorn. Sometimes tears come to my eyes as I scream don’t ask me what you know is true… I love your precious heart. It embarrasses me and I pretend I’m acting. We hold our breaths in the pauses, sing the strum of the guitar dun dun dun dun dun, laugh that we all did it at once.

Leah drives a sea-green car from the 60s her dad fixed up, and at night the old windshield glass takes in headlights and scatters them. Leah is always leaning forward, peering through the steering wheel, trying to see. Leah is Depeche Mode and U2. I’m taking a ride with my best friend. Leah is not usually driving a crowd; it’s just the two of us, talking about school, about Michelle’s latest crush, about a guy we both think is cute. We’re riding high watching the world pass us by. Leah is responsible, and I like to think I am not.

Me, I am all of them, a chameleon. I know all the words to Pour Some Sugar on Me, but I lean toward the Cure, the Smiths, 10,000 Maniacs. I think I have to change my music to please whoever is in the car with me. Maybe that’s why I like driving alone. I drive fast, even at night, delight in my power steering. In the winter I roll down the windows and turn up the heat. I like the rush of cold-hot. I like feeling anything. I sing out loud, badly; to whining Cure songs, to New Order, to whatever is British. Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before. I’m moody and my stalker boyfriend is moodier. We think the Cure is singing about us. Swimming in the same deep water as you is hard. We are a cliché and we don’t know it. Some nights I leave my part-time bookstore job and the whole way home I watch his headlights in my rearview. Watch him watching me. I translate my anger into music. You can all just kiss off into the air/Behind my back I can see them stare/They’ll hurt me bad but I wont mind/They’ll hurt me bad they do it all the time.

In my car we sing the Violent Femmes. In all of my friends’ cars we sing the Violent Femmes. In my friends’ friends’ cars we sing the Violent Femmes. It is music meant to be screamed with teenage angst and abandon with the windows down. Everyone knows the lyrics. There is anger and a raw, coming-unhinged quality to the vocals. You can all just kiss off into the air. We let it mix with the cool night air and unhinge us. Lemme go wild/like a blister in the sun. We love screaming out the forbidden, the scandalous, the truth: Why can’t I get just one f**k?! We love reciting the countdown to a downfall, as if it is our own: I take one one one cause you left me and/ two two two for my family and/ three three three for my heartache …

Our cars are little bubbles in which nothing happens; or maybe in which everything happens. We do not yet know that nothing has happened to us, or that it’s possible to really come unhinged. We count down, biding our time. Waiting.  Seven seven for no tomorrow and/eight eight I forget what eight was for and/nine nine nine for a lost God and/ ten ten ten ten for everything/everything everything everything

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Joining Charlotte’s Web, Jade Park and The Contact Zone in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. It’s called Alphabet: A History.

Previous posts:

A is for Aaron

B is for Biddeford Pool

C is for crème brûlée

D is for dog bite

D is for dog bite

It was the day before Christmas, and my mom and I were driving down the rural road away from our house to run some last-minute Christmas errand. I was 10, or maybe 11. We passed the tilled remains of that year’s corn crop and paddocks full of horses whose coats had grown thick and furry for winter. Back then there were tobacco fields still, though the crop would have been harvested and hanging in barns or sold by this time of year. We noticed a pony loose along the road and my mom pulled the car over.

Maryland is horse country. Most of the farms near the development in which we lived (indeed, that our development was carved out of) kept horses. My mom and I both rode, and we owned a horse we kept at a barn nearby. There was no question that we’d stop, round up the pony, and return her to whoever she belonged to. There were always animals getting loose nearby — horses, dogs, once even a huge bull trotted down our street — and getting them home safely was just what you did.

We noticed a few boards down on a nearby pasture that belonged to a woman my dad worked with. Her daughter went to my school and we knew them a little from various school events. There were no cars in the driveway and we figured if no one was home, we’d just lock the pony safely in the barn and be on our way.  I don’t remember how we caught the pony — we may have had a lead rope in the car, or carrots (we often did) — but my mom began to lead her up the gravel driveway that led to the family’s house. I followed, just a few paces behind.

Just then the family’s German Shepherd came barreling out from behind the house, barking ferociously. I was around all manner of dogs daily at the barn and we had a sweet cockapoo at home. I had never been afraid of dogs, and I remember not understanding what was happening. Dogs were, quite literally, my friends. Why would a dog charge at me like this? I heard my mom yelling at the dog, who paid her no attention at all. He came straight for me. He seemed as tall as I was and I saw a flash of sharp teeth. I felt him snap at me and didn’t quite comprehend when I felt pain on my backside, and then my calf. I sunk to the ground and screamed. I heard him snarling above me. I heard my mom yelling at me to get up; to stand up and yell at the dog. But I couldn’t. I was in pain and I was confused. I couldn’t understand why a dog would act this way? (Later I would identify my feelings as betrayal. For the next several days I asked over and over: “But why did he bite me?”  In retrospect I think that dog’s bite was my first understanding that even a friend can betray you. )

In the end my mom had to let go of the pony and chase off the dog. I suppose she put me back in the car, and then managed to tie up the dog and catch the pony again while I waited. I think she left a note on the door. I vaguely remember her talking on the phone to the dog’s owner later, her protective anger seeping into the conversation despite her attempt to remain polite.

Instead of, or at least in addition to, whatever Christmas errand we’d been planning to do, we drove  to the doctor’s office. The German Shepherd had broken the skin, and I was, apparently, due for a tetanus shot.

It hurt to sit down and that — the whole incident, really — seemed all the more unfair because it was Christmas. I remember repeating to everyone I saw on Christmas Day the injustice of it all. Being bitten by a dog! The day before Christmas! And then having to get a shot!

It wasn’t a bad bite, really, and for the most part the lingering effect of the whole thing was that I was (and still am, a little) afraid of German Shepherds. There’s one in my neighborhood here in San Francisco that our dog Howie doesn’t like. He reacts violently every time we see the dog, snarling and barking and pulling against his leash with his tail raised aggressively in the air. I wonder if I’ve conveyed my childhood fear  to Howie, if his leash conducts wordless caution and distrust like a lightning rod.

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Joining Charlotte’s Web, Jade Park and The Contact Zone in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. It’s called Alphabet: A History.

Previous posts:

A is for Aaron

B is for Biddeford Pool

C is for crème brûlée

dreaming of Japanese

One of my favorite things about living in Japan was that I began to dream in Japanese.

I had studied Japanese for about six months before I left to live in Japan for part of my sophomore year in college. Once there, I threw myself into an intensive language program: With five other American students, I sat in Japanese classes for four hours a day. We had hours of homework and memorization to do every night. The families we lived with were instructed to speak to us in Japanese only.

Of course our little group of American college students cheated, and we spoke English when we were away from our teachers and our families. But Japanese surrounded us. Every night I went to bed mentally exhausted, worn out from listening hard, from learning new words, from memorizing more kanji. After a month or so I began to dream in Japanese, which our sensei seemed to believe was a sign of crossing a certain line in the learning of a language. It was progress; if you could dream in Japanese, your consciousness was accepting the language, you were thinking in Japanese, rather than thinking about Japanese. Thinking in Japanese was a mantra of sorts, a shining, elusive goal repeated by every teacher of the language I ever had. “If you can think in Japanese,” they said, “soon you will be fluent.” Fluent was a magic word among us. We longed for fluency, but none of us knew how to get there. How can you force yourself to think in Japanese?

I loved dreaming in Japanese, in part for the satisfaction that I might be making the progress my sensei described, but also because when I spoke Japanese in my dreams, my command of the language was much, much better than it was in my waking life. I did not hesitate, I did not fumble for words, or ask for prompts from those I spoke to. I didn’t act out words I didn’t know, and I didn’t flip hurriedly through one of the many dictionaries I carried with me to Japan. In my dreams Japanese soared out of me. I spoke fluently, understood by all. Thought and speech merged, and my sentences contained words I hadn’t studied the meaning or usage of, words that I’d heard on TV or in someone else’s speech. My brain, my dreams revealed, was studying all the time. I was unconsciously storing vocabulary, grammatical structures, speech patterns — fluency — and my dreams let me know that it was all there.

When I woke up I returned to myself — a student struggling to learn a difficult language. Sometimes I said the wrong words, and I needed dictionaries and prompts. It was some time after I’d arrived in Japan that I understood that you can’t force yourself to think in a language you did not grow up speaking. But through some secret combination of study, time, immersion, and desire, it happens. There was no one point at which I noticed it. Gradually it just got easier, I learned more, or perhaps my sleeping brain shared a little of its knowledge with my waking brain. I began to need my reference books less, and I found myself having conversations with people in which I didn’t scramble for words or grammar, and I could make myself understood. My speech became smoother, the Japanese language became more … available. Like in my dreams.

Last night, for the first time in a long time, probably years, I dreamed in Japanese again. Only this time my dream language skills mirrored the state of my waking Japanese. I was rusty, and fumbling for words that I’ve long since let slip away. I switched back and forth between Japanese (when I knew how to express what I wanted to say) and English (when the conversation moved beyond my current grasp of Japanese). The couple I was speaking to in my dream were people I knew in Japan, people who, just like my language skills, I’ve lost to time. I’m no longer in contact with them in my waking life, but their presence in the dream was unremarkable, unsurprising compared to our use of Japanese. I kept repeating, “I’ve forgotten how to speak Japanese, I’m sorry.” After I’d said it for the third or fourth time it occurred to me that I was speaking Japanese even as I said it, that I could say that much without hesitation, and that I understood their polite denials of this fact when they responded.

I woke up feeling as though I had seen an old friend. Despite our awkwardness together, I was pleased that my friend had returned, but I missed the way things used to be.

Favorite short story collections

Last year, there was a flurry of lists of favorite short stories. The other day Kate of Kate’s Book Blog listed her favorite short story collections, and I have been thinking of what mine might be ever since. Here’s what I came up with:

• The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri

• St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell

• The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

• The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr

• Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx

• How to Breathe Underwater, Julie Orringer

• The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami

• The Train to Lo Wu, Jess Row

• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, ZZ Packer

• The Hermit’s Story, Rick Bass

• Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto

… I could go on. There are so many, and so many I have yet to read. What are your favorites?

some reflections on what I did (and didn’t) read in 2007

Everyone, it seems, is offering their year-end book lists, and here I am doing the same.

This year I read more fiction than nonfiction, which is usual for me. I read a lot of short story collections this year, more than usual, and I have to say that those collections were among the best things I read (see list, below) all year, and some would land on my favorite collections of all time list. I read fewer classics and nonfiction books than I generally aspire to. I reread some books. I tried some things I might not normally read, and I’m glad I did.

I was thinking I read less than in years past, but the 2007 list is about the same length as 2006‘s. By comparison, 2005 was a banner year for reading for me, but I was in grad school and grad school pushed me to read nearly twice what I have been reading annually since I graduated.

Several friends have recently commented to me (after seeing my progress on goodreads) on how much I read. One was even bitter about it. But the truth is, I wish I read more. In the past it was not uncommon for me to read a book a week. I’m on a roll now if I get through two a month. I suspect I’m not alone in my reading decline. (See also, my friend’s bitterness.) I know why I read less: the Internet, TV, a shorter/nonexistent train commute ….did I mention the Internet?

So here’s to 2008 being a better year for reading for everyone. I, for one, hope to finally read Anna Karenina. I bought it this year, back in January or February, and it’s still sitting on my nightstand.

So here’s what I read in 2007… I’ve split the list into fiction and nonfiction. My favorites are in bold.

Fiction:

Avery, Ellis – The Teahouse Fire
Coomer, Joe – Pocketful of Names
Desai, Kiran – The Inheritance of Loss
Doerr, Anthony – The Shell Collector: Stories
Doerr, Anthony – About Grace
Egan, Jennifer – The Invisible Circus
Ende, Michael – The Neverending Story
Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Great Gatsby
Haddon, Mark – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Haslett, Adam – You Are Not a Stranger Here: Stories
Hemingway, Ernest – The Sun Also Rises
July, Miranda – No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
Livesey, Margot – Eva Moves the Furniture: A Novel
Jack, Ian (editor) – Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2
Maugham, W. Somerset – The Painted Veil
McCarthy, Cormac – The Road
Moran, Thomas – Water, Carry Me
Murakami, Haruki – Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Stories
Russell, Karen – St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories
Russo, Richard – Straight Man
Shteyngart, Gary – Russian Debutante’s Handbook
Toole, John Kennedy – A Confederacy of Dunces

Nonfiction:

Baty, Chris – No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
Buford, Bill – Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Delisle, Guy – Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
Delisle, Guy – Shenzhen: A Travelogue From China
Didion, Joan – The Year of Magical Thinking
Gilbert, Elizabeth – Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Gladwell, Malcolm – The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
MacMillan, Margaret – Women of the Raj
McPhee, John – Uncommon Carriers
Pollan, Michael – The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Stewart, Rory – The Places In Between
Wallace, David Foster – Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

7 weird/random things

My MFA classmate Laurie, the blogger behind A Chronic Dose, tagged me to reveal seven random/weird things about myself. My wrist is better, and I’m up for the challenge. And so:

1. My hobby/sport growing up was riding horses. I was a member of a group called Pony Club — which then as now seems an extremely unimaginative and possibly even made-up name; I was always having to convince people of its existence. One of the competitions I participated in as part of Pony Club activities was an event held every winter called “Know Down.” Think of it as a Jeopardy competition for kids but centered on horse-related topics. My Pony Club buddies and I spent hours memorizing facts about horse anatomy, basic veterinary concepts, and the names of various pieces of horse-related equipment. Though I am now living a horse-free life (and have been for about 15 years) I still have flashback moments and am reminded that I know what a gaskin is, and a fetlock, and what to do when a horse gets a puncture wound. None of which is helpful in my daily life, except, perhaps, if I decided to write a novel about the horsey set.

2. I’m a relentless watcher of nature documentaries. I almost never know what’s on prime time TV, but I can tell you about the behavior of sea otters, capybara and grass-eating baboons. David Attenborough is my narrator of choice. Mammals are my favorites to watch, followed by sea creatures of all kinds, and birds.

3. When I asked Billy about my idiosyncrasies, he said that he’d have to think, since he’s gotten used to the things he used to find weird. Then he said, “But you do sleep with your arms behind your head.” That’s true: I frequently wake up in the morning lying on my back, my arms bent at the elbow, my hands under my head, as if I’ve been thinking about something. I also have a habit of sleeping on my stomach, on my arms. I often wake up in the middle of the night because my fingers/hands/arms have fallen asleep, what with me laying on them. I guess that’s kind of weird.

4. I love cheese. Cheddar, brie, gouda, colby, goat … yum. I used to bring crackers and cheese slices for lunch in high school. My friends called me The Mouse. OK, not really. But once, someone said I was “like a mouse,” because I brought cheese so often. Billy claims that I would not survive a week without cheese in my diet, and though I’m sure I’d pull through, it would be challenging. I eat cheese at most meals. My favorites: goat, feta, and sharp white Vermont cheddar. There are, so far, anyway, only two cheeses I’m not that fond of: provolone (too sweet) and swiss (tastes sour, like it’s moldy).

5. I’ve never seen “The Godfather” movies (or most other spectacularly famous films for that matter). Whenever I tell people I’ve never seen “The Godfather,” without fail they say, “YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THE GODFATHER??!” so I guess I must be in the minority. While I’m at it, I’ve never read The Lord of the Rings and I only made it through one of the movies, and then, only grudgingly.

6. When I eat ice cream at home, I have a habit of either eating it straight out of the carton using a fork (preferred) or eating it out of a coffee mug with a spoon. I have no idea why I prefer a coffee mug to a bowl and I have no idea why I started using a fork for direct-carton-to-mouth ice cream enjoyment, but for some reason I find it satisfying to see the marks in the ice cream left by the tines. Other people I live with (or have lived with) don’t find this entirely endearing.

7. I managed to get through college without taking a single math class. And believe me, it wasn’t because I tested out. We had the option, at my lovely, flexible liberal arts school, to take science instead of math, and I took astronomy and various geology classes instead. There was a dangerous amount of math in the astronomy class, but somehow I squeaked by. The only things I can still point out in the sky are the Big Dipper, the Pleiades, and Orion’s belt.

I’m supposed to tag seven more people to reveal their seven random tidbits but I’m under a crazy-short deadline for some stories, and so, a shortcut: if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged.

Here are the rules:
1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.