The things that go wrong—I didn’t mean tragedies. Tragedy is terrifying. It’s hell. The little things, I meant. Just the little things. Had somebody not left the cake out, how would’ve we gotten the song?
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A favorite memory from West Virginia— A family get-together at our house, extra people standing around, I clutched the glass pan with my hot pads and took the baked pie from the oven. But when I lifted it high to peer at the crust’s underside, to inspect for brownness, a chunk of the pie slid out and crashed down on a stove burner, into the drip pan. We could only scream with laughter and scoop up the steaming-hot clods and shoo-fly goo. Another favorite, though the trouble wasn’t pie— Jennifer’d collected waffle irons for the big breakfast. (The gang coming to West Virginia had swollen.) She had three plugged in. We were flocked around the table, blabbing away, when someone noticed smoke drifting from one of the outlets. Thinking the kitchen might be on fire, we leaped out of our chairs and ran out onto the porch. Then I remembered the baby. The baby! Get the baby! She was still in the house, in her high chair. The things that go wrong are what we recall years after, slapping ou...
Framed-art tour, exhibit 7 Some weeks ag o, our dining table clogged with paints and rags and a pitcher of grubby water, I took in with only half my brain the loud vermilion flowers Noemi ’d daubed on her square of paper. Then I saw she was lettering something. I stopped in my tracks to squint at the stubby, oversize orange-sherbet words. BETTER IS GOOD. What ? She and I had a little go-round about that. I can see the point. Be happy for what beauty you’ve managed. Relax. Don’t be such a pick. However, if your pickiness is the incorrigible kind, inbred, nothing ever quite takes the cake. “Better” means “best” is still just around the corner. Better is good—no. A person could go mad. Noemi’s hacked-off piece of watercolor paper, though, when I spied it, spattered with more of her flowers ? Immediately I coveted it. Those any fusspot could love.
When One Fix Led to Another The job dragged on and on. The worst boards were maybe 30 pounds. No ordinary weakling (guess who) could carry one over from the stockpile without the bigger person (guess who) helping. They’d weighed even more when they were green, separated by sticks to keep them from warping as they dried. Even so, it would’ve been easier to get them all hung in their wet state, fresh from the sawmill. Our builder out of the country for 10 months, we just couldn’t work that fast. When the boards were still fresh, the screws had sliced neatly through. Now, though, because the wood was too dense and resistant, if we didn’t bore preliminary holes the screws as they went screaming down through would snap in half—and they were goliaths, over three inches. We’d wrestle a board into place, then one of us would haul the drill up the ladder, the other standing beneath, a foot or knee pressed hard against the board so it wouldn’t thump down into the dirt, and then came a ...
Wendell Berry’s poem Roveen posted Wednesday on Facebook got me going. Our neighborhood creek, I told her, upstream, cows stand in the water. We didn’t think much about the cows, at first. We called a spot near our house the beach and had picnics. We sat on lawn chairs in the middle of the flow, the icy thrill coursing up our legs, while the children made dams. A New York City kid along once, terrified of every kind of bug, could barely brave the place. Then I told her I’d give her a dollar if she’d lie flat in the water till it reached her ears—and she astounded everybody by doing it. I had to pay the others then, too. We don’t hang out there, anymore. Paulson sprays the poison ivy creekside, like before, so he and a grandson can wade into the felicitous, gurgling water to scoop up mayflies and crayfish to study, but what if cow-manure E. coli were to seep through a skin crack on either’s foot and land him in the hospital with sepsis? Am I too phobic? Wendell says he goes and li...
After the fiasco at the Amish home in Indiana I wised up. Packing for a one-nighter at the home of some city relatives, I hid our coffee maker in with our things. This time there’d be electricity. This time I’d not have to bear with a concrete-clogged head until somebody made breakfast. In the city, we were shown up to a room with packed boxes lining the walls. Books? Off-season clothes? Christmas decorations? (Some people do this, stack things around the edges. I don’t get it.) I looked around for a spare outlet. Inadequate wiring—that’s an old house for you. Well, I would manage. Alone, stealthily I moved the lamp sitting high up on the dresser to the night table right next to the dresser. (Again, I don’t know what’s wrong with people. Don’t they read in bed? Don’t they need a lamp near?) I pulled the dresser away from the wall, yanked out the clock cord from the outlet the lamp was plugged into, and hooked up my machine. I put a filter in and the ground coffee I’d brought in a b...
The other day somebody fed me a Fresca. I protested, weakly. But I felt like I had to oblige. I popped the can and drank some. At home, in the evening, I got the idea to make a list. It would be things I wonder about—the strange behaviors people exhibit and their flagrant inconsistencies. #1, I wrote, Why don’t people just drink water? #2, I wrote— No. Too judgmental. I couldn’t just up and say it. Folks would be furious. I’d be stepping on too many toes. And then I remembered I drink coffee.
Paulson braced our rickety, ugly bench and put it under the tree the kids like to climb, before they came again. It would make a fine sitting spot, plus give them a leg up—he’d not have to set up a ladder. After they left, I said let’s keep it there. I appreciated the non ritzy effect. It didn’t look too arranged and park bench-y. It seemed okay for out in God’s nature. Paulson also got it into his head to apply his all-important Thompson’s WaterSeal. After this weekend’s horrid heat, in the unbelievable cool of yesterday morning, gazing out the window, I thought the bench had gotten shat on. Huh? Oh. The white was just splatters from somebody on a project sloppily slinging their paint around, long ago. Now the sealer, in turning the wood darker, more oily looking, had thrown the splatters into stark relief. Who’d ever want to sit on what looked like milk of magnesia poops dropped from some nest? We ought to screwdriver out those paint spots, I said to Paulson. No, he said, that w...