Seattle

This morning my husband and son went to play golf near Tacoma. My daughter and I carefully researched a number of historical and cultural activities. Then we got pedicures and took a taxi to a bookstore.

The bookstore was Elliot Bay Book Company, and it's the biggest independent bookstore I've seen for a long, long time. I was extremely judicious in my selection because I don't want my luggage to weigh too much on the trip home.

Yesterday we went to the Space Needle, because tourists. Then we went next door to the Chihuly Garden and Galley, which was astonishing, really amazing. This afternoon, post bookstore, my daughter and I took a glassblowing class, and it made us appreciate Chihuly all the more. Glassblowing is not easy. Also, it's really warm. We didn't burn ourselves or anyone else but our creations will have to be shipped to us. It'll take two days for them to properly cool (slowly, In an annealing kiln) and tomorrow we're off to Vancouver.

Taking Business With Me

I don't usually work on vacation, except for the usual, which is that it's a writer's job to always pay attention. Once in awhile we schedule trips to coincide with research I need to do, but that's about it.

Here in Seattle my work has inexplicably followed me. When we landed early yesterday afternoon, I turned my phone on while still on board the plane, and got two messages. (Well, actually, I got about 20, but most were from Amazon.com or the Gap.)

The first was an email reminding me that I had a book review due Sunday. The good news is that I have the book with me. The bad news is that I would have missed my deadline entirely without the email, because I never checked the due date written inside the book. It's a replacement-last week I returned a book I'd been sent due to a conflict of interest, and, well, I'd just assumed this one would be due later. No biggie. I'll get it done.

The second message was a voicemail from the President of Dial Books, my primary publisher. I've known Lauri for years-she edited my first published book, Ruthie's Gift-but she's moved up in the world and I mostly deal now with very good editors who work for her. So that was intriguing. I've got a novel ready to launch next March, and another I'm working on.

What Lauri had to tell me-ask me-I can't announce yet. God will be in the details, and the details will be written down into contracts, and until the contracts are signed this thing officially does not exist. But it's both intriguing and a great opportunity, so I'm thrilled. It also potentially involves some pretty sketchy travel so the rest of my family is worried.

I'm not. That's all in the details, and the details are adjustable. But now I'm going to put this out of my mind for the rest of my vacation, and I advise you all to do the same.

P.S. if you want to know how sexy my husband can be: yesterday afternoon we wre walking through Pike Street Market, and he said, "Wait a minute, I think we just accidentally bypassed a yarn store," and went back. Damn. That's hot.

Seattle's Got A Plan For Me

A few years ago I reduced my teenagers to hysterics by singing along to the radio. "Don't you worry, don't you worry, child. Seattle's got a plan for you."

Apparently the correct lyrics are, "See, heaven's got a plan for you." My children wanted to know why I thought Seattle would have a plan for anyone. I told them that there are far stupider lyrics on the radio every single day, but they didn't seem to agree. It became a family joke--hey, Mom, don't forget. Seattle's got a plan for you.

Well, I hope so. I'm going to Seattle tomorrow morning, and I haven't got a plan of my own.

I like to plan. My husband, also, likes to plan. As a result we often plan our vacations so stringently that we carry written itineraries with us. We don't really do vacations at the beach. I can lay on a beach chair with a stack of books and an umbrella drink brought to my by Juan the pool boy quite happily. So can my husband. For half an hour. Per year, tops. We explore on our vacations. We see stuff and do things.

One year we forced ourselves to take an "unplanned" vacation. We got into our car and drove, and other than 2 nights with reservations in Manhattan and tickets to a Broadway play (Mary Poppins) and a Yankees game (last season in the old stadium) we winged it. It turned out pretty cool. We ended up spending two days in Cooperstown, New York, just because we liked it so much; they had a farming museum and I got to milk a cow. So that was good, but really, it's not how we roll.

Usually I do fairly extensive preplanning. I like to know the history of the place I'm going, and something about the main attractions. If there are tickets to be had I want them ahead of time. (If you think this is crazy, you try showing up in Rome and standing in the line for the Sistine Chapel.) I like to have a few restaurant reservations and a pretty good idea of how I'm going to spend each day. When the children were smaller I prepped them, too. I read them books about the history of Boston, and the most important people involved in the American Revolution. I played Spanish, French, and Italian language tapes in the car while I drove them to school. I gave them internet challenges--questions about our destination that they'd have to look up the answer to. I really think this helped them appreciate our trips. But now--well, I can take them to Egypt, but I can't make them study it beforehand. And since we travel with smartphones, if we don't understand something we look it up on the spot.

And so, Seattle. I have no itinerary. No reservations--well, other than tickets to a Mariners game. I did look it up on a map, which is good since it wasn't quite where I thought it was. I'm feeling zen about this particular trip. I've always known Seattle had a plan for me.  

Scribe at E

The first thing I did today was fall backwards out of the judge's booth.

I had just sat down on a plastic folding chair. I scooted it back six inches but only had five inches of floor left behind me, and I went down in a graceful arc, smooshing my last remaining decent white polo into the newly irrigated all-weather footing. I wasn't hurt, just grateful I hadn't done it during someone's dressage test. You don't get do-overs in dressage, not even if your judge's scribe is an asshole.

Scribing is my favorite of all possible eventing volunteer jobs. Basically, the judge watches the test, and dictates both the score for each movement and her comments, and the scribe writes them down. You learn a lot from watching 40 tests paired with expert commentary, and heaven knows I need all the dressage education I can get.

I've learned that every test seems to have a movement that 90 percent of the riders will screw up. In the FEI one-star test today, it was the trot lengthening in which the rider is supposed to visibly loop the rein while crossing x. A lot of the one-star juniors rode like they were waterskiing, and hardly anyone gave with their reins at all. In the two-star test, it was the 10 meter half-circles, which nearly everyone turned into 13-meter oblongs.

My girl Lauren Kieffer, riding Landmark's Monte Carlo (I think that's the name; our judge's sheet cut it off at Landmark's Mo) rode the 10 meter circles right. "Finally!" The judge said. I was supposed to write down everything she said, but I left that comment off.

Penny. Penny. Penny. Penny.

I'm heading up to the Virginia Horse Trials tomorrow to put a little Eventing Karma in my tank.

Religious karma may or may not be a real thing. Eventing Karma is not only real, it's something you ignore it at your very certain peril. Go ahead. Be the rider that complains that a jump on your cross country course is "too easy." That'll be the one your horse throws you over. At the Olympics. Be the person who won't loan your stuff in the stabling. At your next event you'll find 3" nails sticking out at eye level inside your horse's stall, while you wail ineffectually, "Doesn't anybody have a hammer?" Be the jerk who sniggers when a BNR takes a splash. Your horse will buck you off in warmup so that you land at the BNR's feet.

Oh, yeah. I've had my horse escape his stall and gallop loose and free over the cross-country course, causing a 20-minute hold, only to be caught by a World Champion. That was fun. (I fired my imaginary groom.) But I've had many more moments of grace, and over time no one has given me as many karmic gifts as Penny Ross.

Penny and her husband Brian run the Virginia Horse Trials, spring and fall, as well as the starter trials that are also my region's pony club rally. Penny and I exchange emails like this:

Me: Penny, you didn't list my ride times!
Penny: Kim, you didn't enter!
Me: Oh. (It was the stress of all those pony club forms. Surely I'd filled out my own, too?)
Penny: I'll work you in.
Me: thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Or this:

Me: Penny, my daughter forgot her USEA medical card but has her USPC medical card. Does that count?

Me: Penny, my horse is funky. Can I switch divisions?

Me: Penny, my mare tried to buck me off in dressage. Is this bit legal for cross-country?

Penny. Penny. Penny. Penny.

A few years ago I gave her a nice bottle of white wine, but this year I came up with an even better way to pay Penny back for all she's done for me, and my pony clubbers, and my eventing tribe. My mare's ankle has healed but she's not fit yet, and my daughter has only had a few weeks back riding after the whirlwind of high school tennis. So we're heading up to the Virginia Horse Trials in my ancient minivan, without our horses, our breeches, our boots.

We're bringing sunscreen and working shoes. We're giving Penny 3 full days of our volunteer labor to tip the karma a little bit back onto the other side. It's the only think I could think of to save me from getting dumped into the water jump the next time I leave the box.

The Hard and Simple Truth

A man came to Faith in Action last week. He was a white man about fifty or sixty years old, with grey hair down to his shoulders. He came to the window so upset he was nearly crying, and his hands shook while he talked.

"I need help, I need some kind of help," he said to the receptionist. He held out the paper he was holding. "My brother moved out, he moved out of our trailer, and I got this, and I give it to my neighbor to read for me and he says it's a bill and they're going to cut my power off."

It was an electric bill. Our receptionist said he'd need to make an appointment for help and gave him a form to fill out. The man said he couldn't--he couldn't read or write.

The receptionist took back the form. She asked the man his name. He told her, then carefully spelled it for her. "Miss Leela taught me that," he said. "Took me a month to learn."

Eventually I sat beside the man and made him an appointment for the next day. I got his address off the electric bill and, after reading the bill, assured the man that his power wouldn't be cut off before we could help him. After I said that his hands quit shaking a little. He asked if we had food. I gave him cereal, peanut butter, crackers, soup. He was pleased with the soup, beef vegetable, as he could take out the pieces of beef and feed them to his cat.

So often when I talk about the work we do at Faith in Action, people respond by telling me that our clients should just "get a job." That sounds super--everyone would work, everyone would pull their weight. But the realities of social justice are murkier than that. What job can we give an 80-year-old widow on home oxygen, so that she can afford the adult diapers she needs, which cost $90 a month, or 10% of her social security income? What job will you give the high school dropout with a six-month-old, whose baby daddy is in prison? Something above minimum wage, so she can afford day care? Yeah, it'd be great if she finished high school and didn't have a child--but in the real world what will she do? What job do we give the addicts, the incurably mentally ill, the people with missing teeth and bad body odor?

What job do we give this gentle man with the shaking hands, who can't read, who will never be able to read because he simply isn't smart enough, but who feeds half his soup to his cat?

Some people need to be taken care of. And when they have no one else, they need us.

The Bride Wore Khaki Shorts

Bert and Ernie got married.

I'm calling them Bert and Ernie, these friends of mine, only because that's what I called them when I wrote about them before. Their names are neither Bert nor Ernie, and last time they blew away my attempt at giving them anonymity by reposting my blog to all their friends, with the caption ,"Look what Kim wrote about us!"

They'd still like to know who I'm calling Bert and who I'm calling Ernie. And I'm not telling.

Though it should be obvious.

Anyhow, Bert and Ernie got married, on Friday, at a courthouse in California. They stood in a plain white-walled room beneath a silly artifical archway trimmed with silk flowers, looking completely themselves in polo shirts and shorts. They each carried a handful of zinnias. They were united in matrimony by an obese Hispanic woman wearing an astonishing number of shades of pink, who read the short service with warmth and solemnity.

I wasn't there. One of their relatives videoed the ceremony and put it on Facebook. I watched it. It was the usual--do you, Bert, take you, Ernie--punctuated by laughter, the sort of laughter that is uncontained joy. I'd call it giggling if I thought Bert were capable of giggling. "I do" (laughter) "I do" (more laughter). It was splendid, gorgeous, as the best weddings always are, and by the end of it I realized two things. One:

Marriage equality really is a civil-rights issue, not a religious one.

I happen to know, because I know them, that Bert and Ernie are both Christians who regularly attend church. But you wouldn't know it by watching their wedding. This was a civil ceremony. Their beliefs made no difference to the outcome. Since the United States was founded on religious freedom and tolerance, not any one particular brand of Christianity, we ought to be moving on. And two:

We are. That ship has sailed.

The fight for marriage equality may not be over, but the battle has been won. We are not going to be able to turn back the clock. We are not going to be able to stop this. Nor should we want to. Bert and Ernie's happy wedding isn't the future. It's the present. The messy, glorious, uncontained present, where commitment and family are open to all. Alleluia.