Root, Trunk, Branch, Leaf: Poems about Trees

Trees amaze me. Their shapes, size, leaves, colors for starters. Then there's all they do that supports life on earth, like make oxygen we need to live. Their underground communication networks, the beneficial phyto-somethings they emit. Truly a source of awe and wonder. 

I have fond memories of the trees of my childhood. I grew up outside Lewiston, Idaho, in a home surrounded by 8 acres or so of pasture, garden, and lawn dotted with lilacs, a big snowball bush, my mom's roses, and trees. The hawthorn protected a gate into the big pasture, the giant willow held a tire swing, the crabapple supported a hammock my middle brother brought back from one of his Latin American journeys, the honey locust the "Freehouse Treehouse" my brothers built for my younger sister and me. We'd haul a bag of books and snacks up the boards nailed to the tree to form a ladder and read for hours surrounded by the buzzing of bees drawn to the sweetness of the cream and yellow blossoms.

Later we lived in the Spokane Valley on a lot with sparse Ponderosa pines. Sparse was good, it turned out, when Firestorm '91 swept across the valley and got stopped just across the street from my parents' home. The fire was stopped there in part by the green space created by their lawn with trees far enough apart that the flames didn't jump the road and keep going, and by my dad getting on the roof with a hose and wetting it down repeatedly.

Since then I've lived with more Ponderosa pine than any other tree, I think. I'm now in a neighborhood with trees all around but can happily report I have no pine needles to rake. When we bought the house it had a couple of cherry plum trees, no doubt chosen by the developer 25 years ago for their dark red leaves, and a maple in a back corner. We've added a nectaplum (a newer hybrid of nectarine and plum), hazelnut, almond, and paper-white birch to add food, shade, and beauty to the landscape. The food hasn't appeared yet but it will someday. Trees teach patience.

I really appreciate trees when I'm on a long walk or bike ride on a hot day, and hot days are increasingly common in the Anthropocene epoch, with climate changes caused and accelerated by human actions. Our actions can include planting a tree, though, to add to the lungs of the planet. Tree cover makes a difference for shade, for habitat, for personal and community health and happiness. You can find out what kind of tree cover your hometown has in this Washington Post article. The Olympia-Lacey area has an estimated 36.8% tree cover, over 4% higher than the average in comparable cities, so yay for that!

I'm fortunate to live close to Squaxin Park in Olympia. I can take a lunchtime walk in a forest that isn't old-growth (over 160 years old as defined in western Washington, like the rain forest around Lake Quinault where I walked in February), but it's legacy forest. 

A legacy forest was lightly logged about a century ago; left undisturbed since then, it's had time to regenerate complex ecosystems. You might think of legacy forests as the old-growth forests of the future, or at least they will be if we don't log them again. (More on legacy forests)

A while back I went to a talk on trees given through Olympia Parks and Recreation. Julia Ratner, a member of Friends of Trees (a local group working to conserve forest lands), shared recordings she made of the electrical impulses of trees translated into musical tones with an Italian-made device called Plants Play. You can listen to a Sitka spruce left isolated by a clearcut and a cedar in an undisturbed forest at the Friends of Trees link. 

As I walk I hear squirrels scolding me, an insect buzzing past, leaves rustling, wind in the trees high above sometimes sounding almost like the ocean, my feet making a gentle pad-pad-pad sound on the trail, water trickling if it has rained recently (and this is in western Washington, so that's likely). I don't hear the communication of the trees but I know it's there.

I've told my family that when I've died I'd like my compost or ashes or what-have-you to be buried under a Susie Tree in a park or reforestation project somewhere. This will give them a place to visit, if they like, that does more for the world than a slab of stone that requires mining and transportation. It's also a nice callback to the first full-time executive director of what was then the Bicycle Alliance of Washington. Susie Stephens also came from Spokane and loved trees. After I became the executive director at what we later renamed Washington Bikes I learned a bit of her history from her mother, Nancy MacKerrow. "Tree Cemetery" by Wu Sheng captures this idea perfectly.

As with all my collections of poetry I've selected a few lines, not necessarily the opening ones. To read the complete poem follow the link.

"When I Am Among the Trees"
Mary Oliver

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

"Elegy for a Walnut Tree"
W.S. Merwin

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened


"Tree"
Jane Hirshfeld

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

"Trees" 
Howard Nemerov

To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one's own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;

"Planting a Dogwood" 
Roy Scheele

For when we plant a tree, two trees take root:
the one that lifts its leaves into the air,
and the inverted one that cleaves the soil
to find the runnel’s sweet, dull silver trace
and spreads not up but down, each drop a leaf
in the eternal blackness of that sky.

"Crab Apple Trees"
Larry Schug

I’m tempted to say these trees belong to me,
take credit for blossoms that gather sunrise
like stained glass windows,
because eighteen springs ago
I dug holes for a couple of scrawny seedlings,

"The Bare Arms of Trees"
John Tagliabue

The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of leaves,
     without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
      between tree and tree,
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk.

"Sequoia Sempervirens"
Tamara Madison

Some of these trees have survived
lightning strikes and forest fires
Some of these trees house creatures
of the forest floor in burned-out caves
at the base of their ruddy trunks

"Honey Locust"
Mary Oliver

Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed--
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.

"April Prayer"
Stuart Kestenbaum

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple’s branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world

"Tree Cemetery"
Wu Sheng

Plant a tree in place of a grave
Plant a patch of trees in place of a cemetery
Put a flowerbed around each tree
Lay the ashes of the deceased to rest by the stump

"What's Really at Stake"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I like pulling the tree-sweet air
into my lungs, like thinking of how
even now I, too, am becoming
more tree, as if my shadow side, too,
might soon grow moss. As if I, too,
might begin to grow roots right here

"Honey Locust"
Mary Oliver

Each white blossom
on a dangle of white flowers holds one green seed-
a new life. Also each blossom on a dangle of flower
holds a flask
of fragrance called heave, which is never sealed.
The bees circle the tree and dive into it. They are crazy
with gratitude. They are working like farmers. 

The Rocker

Easy answer: Grandma's rocking chair.

The question: "...as I arranged for a few beloved furniture items to be put into (climate controlled!) storage this week, it made me want to know about pieces of furniture that you’ve loved through the years. They don’t have to be fancy, or “beautiful,” or even, necessarily, useful. They just have to be beloved. Tell us about them, and why you cherished it or it looms large in your memory, with as much detail as you’re able to recall or reproduce."

This prompt in the subscribers-only space of Anne Helen Petersen's Culture Study publication led me straight to the rocking chair that sits in our living room, covered with a deep crimson velour blanket to hide the worst of the peeling dark brown paint.

When I was born at St. Joseph Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, my Grandma Humphrey rocked me in this chair. She worked there many years as a licensed practical nurse and when she retired they gave her the rocker. Then it went to my parents' house, and at some point it became mine because of that story.

Grandma becoming a nurse is a big piece of what makes the rocker special. She married at 18 to a man 20 years her senior (which was so scandalous they each fudged their birth years a bit on the marriage certificate to shrink the gap). She was the youngest of 13 children and knew nothing about how to live in the world; he had to teach her to cook, clean, run the household. She had three children, my mom being the oldest and only girl. 

When Grandpa H. dropped dead of a heart attack in his 70s she was in her mid 50s. Grandma had never driven a car, held a job, or signed a check—he handled all of that for the household. She was all set to move straight into "old age" and rely on my mom for everything. Mom had four kids at the time (I'm one of the last two "late in life" babies she hadn't had yet) and really didn't have time to drive Grandma everywhere or have Grandma relying on her for all emotional support. 

So Mom gave her a fierce pep talk along the lines of "you can be an old woman now, or you can have a life and be an old woman many years from now. Which is it going to be?" 

Grandma went to school, became a licensed practical nurse, learned to drive, made friends, joined two bridge clubs and a bowling group. She became the woman who taught me to knit and tat and bowl, and always had the store-bought waffle cookies in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry that we called "Grandma cookies".

Mom telling me this story was part of her raising me to be a feminist; she told me to be sure I could take care of myself and never to rely on a man for everything.

Fast forward to 2021. I was planning to sand the rocker down, paint it, and put it out on my deck so I posted a pic on Facebook to ask for advice. In the serendipitous world of social media I got all kinds of strongly worded good advice about how bad that would be for the rocker. It turned out a long-ago acquaintance has another friend who is a rocking chair FANATIC (has a collection of he's-not-sure-how-many). He told me it's an army knuckle arm Windsor rocking chair with saddle joints where the legs meet the rockers, and I had to look all that up to have any design context. He also offered to buy it from me. It is not for sale.

I now need to find a professional to do a really good job of the refinishing, hence the blanket hiding its shabbiness. (This is not shabby chic; it's just shabby.) 

It represents both my beloved grandma and how my also beloved stay-at-home mom raised me not to repeat the dependent parts of Grandma's life trajectory but to make my own way. Sitting in a refurbished rocker will represent my gratitude to both of them for the lessons. Rock on, ladies.

How to End One Year and Begin Another

If our calendars made sense the new year would start the day after the December solstice. We make it through the shortest day and longest night (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). We begin to turn toward the light, toward warmth, toward growth.

Or maybe instead of immediately writing a new date we would have a set of "un-days". Days that appear on no one's calendar (except those that bring you wages or benefits). Days with no work, no expectations. Time dedicated to wrapping things up, taking stock, making everything clean and organized or catching up on sleep. Whatever it takes to feel refreshed and recharged, ready to begin again.

We don't have that. Instead we have a hurly-burly of various traditions that mark the turn toward the light but in so doing create expectations and pressure.

Buy this, cook that. Wrap this, decorate that. Don't clean to create a fresh, calming space -- clean so that people can be impressed by your housekeeping and then mess it all up so you have it to do all over again.

That's what I grew up with. My mom created a beautiful Christmas every year with delicious food, she selected and wrapped gifts with care, she made dozens of cookies of various types to create those magazine-ready plates, she decorated the whole house and everything smelled good. She also didn't work full-time outside the home.

We're done with that model and it feels pretty damn good.

It helps not to have small children who are subjected to social pressure that creates expectations that fall on parents. We have grown kids who profess delight with the cash and gift cards and whatever we feel like cooking.

This year it isn't exactly a "help" that I ended up really sick with a respiratory flu the week before a planned two-week vacation. The days that had few meetings, that I would have spent writing and analyzing and dealing with the email backlog in peace and quiet, turned into days lying on the sofa with generic cough/flu syrup, a water bottle, my Kindle, and some pillows to soften my fall into the sleep that kept dragging me downward to the horizontal.

Oh well. It is what it is.

That's the key to my winter holiday plan: It is what it is.

Examples of what this looks like as I do the things I enjoy, maintain continuity with my memories in ways that work for who I am today, and keep it manageable:

No Christmas tree. 

Instead, Second Daughter and I spent a very pleasant day (on a weekend before the flu hit) going through the ornaments. I had accumulated a bunch I didn't really care about, and had some I got to give each of the kids a start on their own collection. We sorted these out and made a box for Youngest who wants to build up her collection.

I used the ones I like to decorate windowsills and hung them from lamps. We have a cheerfully decorated living space that will be easy to clean up and I emptied one of the storage boxes from the garage as part of my ongoing downsizing.

No giant spread of forty-'leven kinds of cookies. 

I experimented a week or so ago with a vegan shortcake. Pro tip: don't substitute ground almonds for part of the flour or you'll have a gooey something that tastes good but isn't shortcake. Next time I may try this cardamom snickerdoodle recipe instead.

While Second Daughter was there for the weekend I made a batch of cinnamon stars from the 1963 Betty Crocker Cookbook I grew up with because they sounded interesting and were pretty easy. I also made (with her help) the one cookie I'll make every year due to popular demand, the candy cane cookies topped with crushed peppermints/sugar from that same cookbook. Talking about this cookbook on Twitter led to a fun exchange.

My grown kids always request candy cane cookies, from this 1963 Betty Crocker cookbook. Fair amount of hand work for relatively few cookies but they're delicious. Making them this coming weekend. pic.twitter.com/8OeOFKSSsk

— Barb Chamberlain (@BarbChamberlain) December 8, 2019

It was my mom's and I baked out of it as a kid. I will own it until I die and will it to my children.

— Barb Chamberlain (@BarbChamberlain) December 8, 2019

In years past I've made spritz with my mom's old cookie press; frosted cookies that took forever and honestly were more interesting to look at than to eat and thus not worth the effort; snickerdoodles with green and red sprinkles because snickerdoodles are The Cookie for me as long as they're bendy in the middle; and various other treats.

Cooking what I feel like eating, spread over a few days instead of in one massive blowout that encourages overeating.

The flu is passing and cooking is one of my favorite things to do when I have a whole day and no time pressure. Yesterday I made a batch of Sarah Gailey's lasagna (did you know "lasagna" is the singular and "lasagne" is the plural?).

Today we made a grocery run to get ingredients for things I feel like cooking and eating over the next few days while Second Daughter hangs out for some cuddle time and Mom cooking. These recipes let me make maximum use of oven heat and will yield some leftovers I can freeze for future lunches. The list is likely to include:

• Portabello mushrooms stuffed with something along the lines of quinoa, sweet bell peppers, and pine nuts, topped with vegan romesco or muhamarra (it's a toss-up -- love them both)
• Roasted butternut squash with really good 25-year-old balsamic vinegar (the kind that pours like rich syrup, from The Oilerie in Burien where we did some tasting on one of our coffeeneuring dates as part of my birthday celebrating that stretched over a few weeks) and some chili garlic oil my younger sister gave me on one of our sisters' weekends, with the option of regular feta or a vegan feta I found in a nicely expanded vegan section at Fred Meyer
• Roasted broccoli because I love it
• Champagne mashed potatoes, another Sarah Gailey recipe she shared in a series of tweets starting with this one
• Waldorf salad with a vegan cashew cream dressing (the one from the recipe below) or the yogurt-based dressing from this vegan Waldorf salad recipe
• Vegan broccoli/red grape salad with dressing options: Thai peanut or a balsamic vinaigrette because I have those on hand. To this recipe I always add shredded red cabbage, grated carrots, and some diced sweet bell peppers in various colors. It's beautiful and tasty.
• Southern lemon pie with a saltine cracker crust that I'm going to try converting to vegan. I link to the NPR story with the recipe because that's what got me started making this. I found a recipe for vegan sweetened condensed (coconut) milk and picked up some vegan spread to use in the crust in place of butter.
• Vegan cream of mushroom soup. Super simple and so delicious. Last time I made this I had some cauliflower I needed to use up. I boiled that and a few potatoes, pureed them in the food processor with some homemade veggie broth, and made that part of the creamy base for the soup. It was fantastic. I add celery to this recipe.
• Decidedly unvegan cornbread from an old New York Times Magazine recipe that involves pouring whipping cream into the middle to create a custardy center, baked in a heated cast iron pan for a crispy crust.
• Vegan nog, which takes all of about 5 minutes because I have nut milk and coconut milk on hand and make cashew cream ahead and keep it in the freezer

This sounds like a lot. But my mom would have done something like this list plus a turkey, gravy, three more kinds of pie, glazed carrots, peas and mushrooms in a wine sauce, and rolls, all for one day in which she also trotted out at least half a dozen homemade hors d'oeuvres platters and the forty-leven cookie varieties.

I'm doing my cooking spread out over at least two days, maybe three. And this list is only one in my head, not something to which I've committed that a dozen or more people will show up to eat at a specific date and time.

No gift shopping on a timeline. Don't get me wrong; I love giving gifts. I like giving them at times people aren't expecting them as a "just because".

I don't ignore the gift-giving element at this time of year; I'm enough of a product of my upbringing that it would feel pretty cold not to give a gift now. But it's sure easier when I don't have to fight people at the mall.

I gave Eldest Daughter and her beau a movie gift card early so they could use it for the Star Wars opening and they now have half a dozen or so movie dates to look forward to. (She also got dental work paid for, which is a little challenging to wrap....) Second Daughter is going to get a shopping expedition to prepare her for some international travel with things she needs (or things I think she needs, like mosquito netting and a rechargeable flashlight -- shhh, don't tell her). Engineering Student Son gets a gift certificate for the online gaming platform he frequents. Youngest Daughter -- yep, another gift certificate.

Seriously, I remember the year my mom finally gave up trying to guess at my personal style and instead just sent me downtown with her credit cards as one of the best Christmases ever so this is not a copout, this is responsive parenting.

As for Sweet Hubs, the other thing I did to make the end of the old year and the beginning of the new year pretty perfect was to book a getaway to the hotel where we spent our honeymoon. We'll celebrate our date-a-versary there: the 14th anniversary of our first date, which happens to fall on my parents' wedding anniversary. We'll have a fireplace, a spa tub, a view of the ocean, and no expectations other than being together.

That's how to end the old year and start the new year. Relaxed, happy, content, in love. It is what it is.

'Twas Brillig, and the Slithy Toves

Can you recite a poem from memory? Which one(s)? Why or how did you end up memorizing it?

A friend asked on Facebook about what poems people might have committed to memory. That has sparked a great list of entries.

For me the answer is "Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll. For some reason--lost now in the mists of time--when I was in junior high or high school I thought it would be a great birthday present for Older Brother #3 if I memorized this and delivered it with dramatic flair. Turned out I'd guessed right; he seemed delighted, if somewhat puzzled.

I can still deliver chunks of it, although it's not seamless from beginning to end; I may need to brush up on it now, along with the fencing thrusts that go with "One-two! One-two! And through and through! His vorpal blade went snicker-snack. He left him dead, and with his head, he went galumphing back."

Then there are the arms thrown wide and the loving embrace that goes with, "'O hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Caloo! Callay!' He chortled in his joy."

Thinking about this reminded me of Mom and the many poems she had committed to memory as a child, when teachers required kids to memorize and deliver poems before the entire class.

When she recited poetry she did so with dramatic flair--could be where I got that. Exaggerated expressions, eyebrows raised high, voice intonation dropping to a whisper where the words called for that.

She sometimes did "Little Orphan Annie". All I can remember of that one is the opening line: "Little Orphan Annie's come to our house to stay."

One of my favorites was "Hiding," which I had thought was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem included in the book A Child's Garden of Verses, since I remember reading that so many times as a child. Turns out it's by Dorothy Keeley Aldis. "I'm hiding, I'm hiding, and no one knows where, for all they can see is my toes and my hair. And I just heard my father say to my mother, 'But darling, he must be somewhere or other!'"

Another favorite was indeed by Robert Louis Stevenson--"The Swing": "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do."

We had a swingset in the back yard next to the grape arbor that Younger Sister and I played on for hours. I don't remember feeling as if I was going up into blue air, exactly, but I do remember the soaring freedom and pumping my legs as hard as I could to try to get the swing up higher and higher until I shrieked half in fear, half in excitement.

My very earliest memory as a child actually involves my mother and poetry, in this case by yours truly. I'm not sure it would be in my memories now if it weren't for the number of times Mom told this story, which makes me think yet again that memories are created primarily through repetition.

The memory consists of fragments: Outside in the back yard. Billowing whiteness around me and the whooshing sound that went with it. Blue sky, sunshine, green grass underneath.

My mother's version: I was 2-1/2 or 3. (She actually wrote this all down on a piece of paper and dated it, so if I can find that I'll have documentary evidence of the exact date.)

She was outside hanging sheets on the clothesline while the breeze whipped them around, and I was playing under the clothesline.

I paused in my play, looked up, and said, "Oh Mother, oh Mother, what a beautiful day!"

Just then the wind died down. I paused, then went on, "The flowers are blooming and the wind's gone away!"

Mind you, the idea that a toddler addressed her mom as "Mother" sounds a trifle over the top to me. That's something that happens in books about well-bred English children, not a kid in the back yard of a house outside of Lewiston, Idaho, surrounded by wheat fields.

On the other hand, I've always loved language and playing with words. If I had recently been told that "Mother" was another label for my mom I could well have been playing with that word, testing it out as something I could call her instead of Mommy. She both read and recited to us a great deal so the possibility of me being able to put together a rhyming phrase doesn't surprise me.

Mom speaks only Jabberwocky now, and constant repetition was one of the early signs of her dementia as it developed. But when I was a child and she recited poems to me I marveled at the power of her memory.

Related Reading

• Holding Mom
• 3 Things My Mother Taught Me
• Don't Buy That Case of Stuff on Sale. I'm Serious.
• Mom Frmrnyis

Who Are We Trying to Kid?

I have to write this because this Solstice morning on my first day off for the winter vacation I’m taking—in part because I want to, in part because the university where I work is shutting down between Christmas and New Year’s in conservation mode (AKA state budget cuts of over 52% in the last four years with more to come)—I read two articles in swift succession that both provide a reality check on this whole “Christmas” gig.

First I read the poignant and so-true-it-hurts piece by Cheryl Ann Millsap: Life Isn’t Wrapped in a Neat Little Bow. Go read it, then come back.

Or let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: The Christmas you think you remember is not the one you really got. You have mythologized, added glitter and rainbows, and wrapped it in pretty paper.

Then I read the laugh-out-loud OMG version by Jen from Kansas, the People I Want to Punch in the Throat blogger I just discovered: Holiday Gifts.

This is what really happened behind the scenes all those years you thought Santa would bring you just what you wanted: Santa dropped the F bomb while she tried to remember where she hid that thing you absolutely had to have and then stopped playing with two days after Christmas.

As a mother, some years I tried to create the Christmas of my childhood, which in my memory always involved beautiful, soft, fluffy white snow in which I could play for hours and that I never had to shovel because that’s the daddy’s job (if I even thought about it). That Christmas glows softly, warmly, with the tree’s lights reflected in the window. The house smells like cinnamon. The mommy wears lipstick and eye shadow and is actually dressed in clothes, not sweats or her robe and long johns.

Other years we dealt with the reality of the Christmas o’ Divorce, which means you celebrate on December 26 and you tell your kids that Santa made two stops to leave a stocking and presents and you just hope silly ol’ Santa didn’t turn forgetful and bring the same present to two locations because after all he’s dealing with a gift list in the millions. Those years smelled less like cinnamon and more like coffee with Irish cream, which is a requirement if I’m going to wake up early in the morning and smile for the camera.

The one truly brilliant thing I instituted many years ago is a tradition I invented: Kids don’t get out of bed (unless they truly, totally need to pee, after which they scurry right back to bed) until I come to their rooms bearing hot chocolate. This way I get to dictate what hour it is when I hit that first cup of coffee.

As a parent I’ve tried to instill the idea that it isn’t about the “stuff”. But in the absence of a religious tradition, oh, yes, it is. We have a secular Christmas, so no midnight Mass, no special reason for the season—it’s really all about the stuff.

It should be about family, right? Well, sure, yeah, right. Then your parents get older and you stop going to their house and seeing all the siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and what-not. Your kids get older and Santa starts leaving practical things like Rite-Aid gift cards in their stockings (girls=make-up). They get even older and one of them now has in-laws and goes off to that house, and your husband’s kids won’t be here until you go pick them up December 26 for the Christmas o’ His Divorce.

It becomes mostly about being off work, sleeping in, eating hash browns (not that I’m complaining!), watching movies, and figuring that you’ll lose in the comparison of who gave more/bigger/better gifts because those four years of budget cuts at the university mean you haven’t had any raises and you’re paying more for insurance so basically you’re taking a pay cut every year but at least you have a job.

But then your 17-year-old daughter says, “The one thing I really care about is Christmas morning.” You realize that it actually is worth some effort to make a special moment or two, because who doesn’t love surprises? (The good kind—not the jump-out-from-behind-a-tree-and-make-me-scream-which-I-hate kind.)

You realize that the Christmas they’ll look back on—the one they’ll wrap in glitter and rainbows and pretty paper—is whatever Christmas you gave them. They don’t have your memories so they aren’t making the comparison you make. They only have their own memories. They love you. And they love Christmas.

Oh, those crazy memories of childhood: Throwing up

One of the saddest jobs as a mom is dealing with your vomiting child. You can’t do much more than pull the long hair back if need be, offer a wet washcloth afterward, and deal with the toilet clean-up. Your beloved baby has to do the really hard, gut-wrenching work.

We just came through a night like this over the winter break with 15-year-old Second Daughter, who threw up “8-1/2 times” (the “1/2” being “a strange noise like a baby dragon” and part of a cup of tea that she felt didn’t really count as a full throw-up).

We’ve all been there. Carsick, miserable, not wanting to tell your folks you need them to pull over but you just know you’re going to hurl any second. For me the smell of stale cigarette smoke triggers this feeling in an instant; Dad was a chain smoker so car trips always involved nausea.

Or lying there with the flu, dreading the moment when you make that rush to the bathroom just in time to throw yourself over the toilet bowl and start contracting those abs in agonizing fashion.

When we got sick as little kids Mom parked us on the sofa in the living room, I guess to keep us closer to where she worked in the kitchen. All the bedrooms were upstairs and it would have been a long sprint if she had to run all the way up every time she heard that sad, sad sound.

She always set us up with a great big metal mixing bowl—our back-up receptacle in case we couldn’t get off the sofa in time—some flat 7-Up (always 7-Up), and Saltines. If we ran a fever she had a wet washcloth to fold onto our sweaty little foreheads, which also came in handy for wiping vomit-y little mouths..

Mom checked on us periodically while she did whatever it was that moms did all day that kept them so busy (maybe it had something to do with a big house that had the laundry in the basement and the bedrooms on the second floor, six kids to cook for if we were all home, hanging laundry out to dry on the line in summer, the big garden and the food she preserved…..).

In my family, we really, REALLY know we’re going to hurl. Every last one of us salivates heavily with a particular kind of mouth-watering urgency that tells us we’re about to vomit—usually with enough time to make it to the bathroom.

I thought this was a universal signal until learning from my mom that one of her adult friends had thrown up all over a restaurant table unexpectedly. Hard way to learn you’ve developed an allergy to crab cakes. Fortunately for my Mom Vomit Clean-Up Assignments, my daughters inherited the same signal.

I’m reminded of this whole Vomit Train thanks to a vertigo-inducing YouTube video of the old Lewiston grade. For anyone who grew up in Lewiston, Idaho—or on the hill above it in Moscow—this could be a stomach-churning trip down Memory Lane (Memory Grade?), so view at your own risk.


Even viewing at this 4x high speed, I remember the twists and turns, some of the little valleys with a few trees and bushes, the scary sensation of looking out over the l-o-n-g drop to the valley on those U-turns and sharp outside corners, and the blessed stop sign at the bottom of the hill.

This video explains quite nicely why I threw up all over the side of the Oldsmobile after a trip to visit Middle Older Brother—the second of my three older brothers--at the University of Idaho.

Youngest Elder Brother (YEB), who is 11 years old than I, drove the dark red family Oldsmobile. Blind as a bat since about five years old, I lost my glasses at the university somewhere, so the ride home was a scary blur. As one of the Little Hoppers (YEB’s nickname for us), of course I sat in the back seat.

I got sick—and sicker—as the car hurtled down this roller coaster of a road. The moment of truth came somewhere about halfway along the line. I think I mostly got the window down in time, although I can’t be certain.

What I do remember: sitting in the car when we got back, crying bitterly because YEB had said I had to clean the vomit off the side of the car. I don’t know quite when I’ve been so miserable (although I had other bouts of nausea-induced misery as a young adult that had more to do with choice and quantity of beverage than backseat passenger status).

That sense of helplessness, the dread I felt at having to get out of the car and deal with that stinking mess!

A crashing sound reverberated against the side of the car. YEB, garden hose in hand, must have been kidding.

Now if only he were around when my kids threw up....

The Zen of Fingernails: Giving Up Attachment

I’m obsessively attached to my fingernails. Well, we’re all attached to our fingernails, except for George Clooney in that one scene in Syriana that I totally couldn’t watch.

What I mean is, I really want to have nice fingernails. Long, strong, no peeling layers, worth polishing. Fingernails that lead you to make extra hand gestures when you talk and cradle your coffee cup gracefully, tenderly, with both hands, just so people can notice how pretty they are.

Alas, I am doomed. Although taking calcium did help with the peeling problem that dogged me for years, I just cannot grow out a complete set of 10 good-looking fingernails of the same approximate length and maintain them for more than 24 hours.

Every single time I reach that day, that moment of nirvana where I realize that they’re long and well worth polishing with a pretty color in place of my usual clear protective coat, something happens.

I grate one while making hashbrowns.

I hit our granite countertop straight on and break one.

I’m crocheting and a microsnag gets caught in the yarn and tears just far enough that I can’t file it smooth and save the nail.

Or—in one horrendous accident right before my wedding in July 2007—I actually cut straight across the nail and into the thumb with a knife that slipped, and I wore a bandage through weeks and weeks of growing it out. Nothing says long, strong sexy fingernails like a cartoon character bandage on your thumb. At your wedding.

In a domino effect that never varies, once one goes, the rest start dropping like flies. Nails that were beautifully smooth and strong develop tiny tears down low, close to the cuticle line where it will really hurt like a son of a gun if it catches and tears, so I have to cut the nail back to protect myself. I hit countertops, encounter graters and knives, and lose the length one way or another, usually on at least half of them before the carnage stops.

I cut them all back because I hate that look of mostly long nails and a few short freaks, and start all over again.

My special bonus handicap in this quest for perfection: When I was a kid, maybe 8 or so, I smashed a finger in a solid wood door that was at least two inches thick.

I remember going to yell to my brother Don that Mom said to take out the garbage. In turning away and slamming the heavy door shut, I have no idea how I could catch the middle finger of my left hand in the door so badly that the fingernail was torn off, but I did. (For one thing, I’m right-handed; for another, just one finger, in the middle of the hand? What the--?)

I marched into the kitchen where my mother was washing her hair in the sink (this was before they added a showerhead in the upstairs bathroom in our very old house in the country, outside Lewiston, Idaho). I stuck my bleeding, ravaged finger under her face and said, “Look what I did!” Must have still been in shock, since I wasn’t yet crying from the pain.

The sudden appearance of a bloody stump under her sudsy head gave her such a shock that she couldn’t drive, so the garbage-toting Don had to take us to the hospital. They gave me a shot, sewed the fingernail back on, and told me that if I was lucky I wouldn't lose it completely. There was enough attachment in the nail bed that it did grow back, fortunately.

But I have three little notches around the nail, one on each side and one off-center at the base, where the stitches went in. So that nail is nothing like the rest of my fingernails, and I often develop one of those little microtears at the site of one of the side stitches.

Through the luck of the genetic draw I have tapered fingers and nice oval fingernails—except for Mr. Blight on my left hand. That door-slamming accident cost me a lucrative career as a hand model, I’m quite sure of it.

In a weird Lamarckian coincidence, my mother also had a childhood accident that smashed the middle finger on her left hand and ruined the nail. In her case she was behind a rocking chair when her visiting grandmother rocked back and mooshed her finger.

Mom’s quest for beautiful fingernails led her to various failed attempts in the early days of acrylic nails, leading to a nasty nail fungus and terribly weak, soft fingernails that she had to leave unpolished for a long time. She’s now back to fake nails, I notice when I visit her in the dementia facility; someone comes in and does the nails for the ladies who still have enough cognition for vanity.

I never went the fake route. It’s my own nails that I want to have as a thing of beauty and a joy forever. For over thirty years I have sought fingernail perfection, and my nails have fallen short.

The origin of suffering is attachment: one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. In life all is transient; nothing lasts forever. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, loss is inevitable. Thus I suffer because my long fingernails are inevitably temporary adornments.

When the day comes that I let go of my attachment to fingernail perfection, and the accompanying suffering over the snags and chips of daily life, it will be a sign that I have grown spiritually.

Or that I have finally gotten acrylic nails.