Category Archives: VA

“Yeah, That’s a Toilet”: the bookstore’s front yard, explained

Posted on by
3

There are things in life I don’t understand. Folding underwear and landscaping are two of them. The return on time invested just seems …. small.IMG_4242

Jack and I decided last year that we’d had it with lawn care. We scavenged a bunch of old bricks from friends,  bought some ironwork statues, and when that didn’t cover the whole space, we paid a student who needed some grad school money to dig up the rest of the grass.

Voila: our place in the annals of Colorful Local Characters was secured.

Locals observing the bricks-and-statues procession described the work as “interesting” in a tone that implied this was not a compliment. When we ripped up the yard, “kooky” came into play–mostly whispered as doors closed behind us at social gatherings.IMG_4240

Bare earth offends? I’m not the world’s greatest conformist, but I bought three packages of “Perennials” –having first ascertained that, yes, these are the ones that come up every year and take care of themselves–and shook the packets out on the ground sometime late last summer.

Gosh darn if they didn’t come up this year and make the nicest collection of flowers and leaves and stuff. Amazing thing, this gardening trick.

I come from a long line of brown thumb women. I once managed to kill a spider plant. Still, lazy landscaping has its rewards. Last year when friends and I made book planters from some old tomes here, we had a few plants leftover I couldn’t figure out what to do with. I took them outside and set them down in a rainstorm (so I wouldn’t have to water them) and kinda forgot they were out there. Next time I looked, well, I thought they were dead, so just left them there for cruel winter to wipe out the remains.

IMG_4241Now they’re growing like the weeds they aren’t, studding the yard with gorgeous deep purple.

We let the clover and the other natural ground covers grow alongside the hostas we transplanted from the back on the advice of a friend (“Line your sidewalk with them and they look spiffy without care”) and the lilac and the azalea someone gave me for my birthday, all stuck out there in various nooks and crannies where we figured they’d cover our mowing sins. My idea of gardening is less cultivation that containment: mint, chives, sorrel, ivy. Let it grow. I’d rather hack than weed.

And as Jack and I sit on our front porch, sipping summer concoctions while listening to the drone of mower motors in the distance, we clink glasses and sip.

A Real Person

Posted on by
8

Last week Jack and I headed off to do a book club event. Carolyn got in touch via Facebook, and asked if we would visit two in combination near Wintergreen Resort (a high end retreat in Northern Virginia)

Since we were driving up on a beautiful Spring day and had “all the time in the world” Jack and I did what fools do: turned off our GPS and started back-roading. At 8 pm, twenty miles off target, we left the Blue Ridge Parkway via a dirt road I am pretty sure was an irrigation service track for someone’s cow pasture. (We rehooked the gate after we went through.)

Carolyn and her husband live in a community of DC refugees. The book club’s women were either retired from work in Fairfax or Richmond, or keeping gracious, spacious homes open for men still making the daily commute. Those of you who do author events will recognize the underlying intimidation factor: that gig where, as you stand to speak, you realize the people sitting in the front row could pool their changepurse contents and buy your car.

But they asked such insightful questions amid repeated offers of “Would you like a cup of coffee/tea/juice/wine” so often, we had a great time. One of the attending clubs was called “Needs and Deeds.” They support causes they feel need quiet yet swift attention, donating their own discretionary income but also holding fundraisers, often involving books or handmade items.

The night before the club meeting, we took to our hostess Carolyn right away; she’s the kind of woman who opens her arms and the world walks into them. She cooks and makes things better, maintains graciousness with an effortless grace. She has magnolia-blossom white hair and blue eyes that, when you look in, are just looking for ways to make your day better.

Here’s the kicker, though: as Carolyn was making us a breakfast of fresh ground coffee, cheddar scrambled eggs, homemade bread and jam, and fresh raspberries, we started talking about a book idea I’d been kicking around: “Invisible? the lives of American women after 5o.”

I didn’t bring it up, though; Carolyn did. She was trying to write her family history for the publishing market, and thinking of going back to school. Among other things, she said, she wanted her three daughters to be “proud of her,” to feel that she had “done something with her life.”

I looked at the spacious home full of grandchild spaces, the tended garden, the bread, the dogs – one of whom was a Hurricane Katrina rescue. “Done something?” I repeated.

“Well, I mean, yes, I used to work in a bookstore,” Carolyn said, bunching eggs with her spatula. “In your book, you talk about dreams, living a real life. And my life…”

“Your book club is called ‘Needs and Deeds,’ right?” I asked, blinking.

She smiled. “I know. But I want my daughters to know I was a real person.”

We talked a long time that morning about what a “real person” meant for women with white hair in America, swapping stories, and having some good laughs near tear territory.

And Carolyn, if ever there were a real person, hands and ears and eyes tuned to what’s going on around them, it is you. Whether the outside forces of American society see it or not, you are not invisible, but radiantly transparent. Different thing. God Bless You for it.