Myself as Performance Art

I just got back from my yoga class and I'm sitting down to business. Real business. A quick blog post to get the juices flowing, and then it's onto the latest revision of the sequel to TWTSML, The War I Finally Won. (The only thing certain about the sequel--well, other than that Bovril and Butter don't die, I know my limits--is the title.)

The instructor for my yoga class today used to be full of woo but not very physical. Her classes involved the singing bowl, some good thoughts, a chant or two, and some nice relaxing stretchy poses. Then she went off to India for six weeks and came back a ninja yogi. Now her classes involve good thoughts, perhaps some chants or music, and instructions like, "Now hold a handstand, headstand, or shoulder stand for sixty seconds."

For the record: that's a long time. I put myself into my handstand, toes against the wall for balance, just to see how long I could hold it, and the answer today was, about twenty seconds. Which is pretty long. I came out of the pose when my shoulders couldn't do more, but then went immediately into a headstand for the rest of the time. It was only several minutes later, in shavasana, that I realized I'd never actually done a full headstand before today. I could get my head and hands right, and take my feet off the ground, but I'd never stretched my legs all the way vertical before. Today I didn't even think about it: I just did it.

Meanwhile my instructor says that for August her theme is Yoga as Art. She said a lot of stuff about artistic expression and yoga that all made good sense to me, but she said it while we were flowing in and out of one-legged planks and sweat got in my ears and apparently flooded my brain, because I can't bring her words back in coherent language right now. I only remember the sense of her words, which was that we have to be the best art we can.

Which is admittedly pretty woo. Sorry about that. But yesterday I had my long-awaited talk with my editor about my book, and I'm delighted to say that we are finally getting where we want to be. My story's not there yet, but it's getting there. So I'm going to keep my sweaty self here in my chair, sit down with the 9 pages of notes my editor emailed me (single-spaced, small font) and get to work. I'm making art. It's all good.

August Already

I have so many things I'd like to blog about but can't. Some are not my stories. Some are a little bit my stories but mostly belong to somebody else. Some are really good stories that I've agreed not to write about yet--I'll get to tell them eventually.

Then there's my novel. The War I Finally Won. I sent revisions in before I went to ALA, and in my imaginary perfect world I would have been working on the next draft for the last two weeks, while my children were both gone (a state I will soon be reconciled to, I'm sure), and I would have completed it in spectacular fashion, etc. Instead I have a loving email from my hard-working editor saying, tomorrow, maybe this afternoon, for her notes. I tore off a calendar page this morning. It is ALREADY AUGUST.

Also, I no longer have a student in high school. I knew this, of course--I did attend my daughter's graduation--but it's being brought home to me with force this morning, because on the Tennessee side of my hometown school begins again today. That's right. Summer's over. Now this is of course ridiculous. It should not be allowed. But here we are, and not for the first time--four years ago my daughter actually missed her first day of high school because we decided to go to London to watch the Olympics instead. Neither of us regret that decision--it was eight whole days of awesomeness--but then our flight was delayed coming home, and showing up for high school exhausted, jet-lagged, and one day behind everyone else, having come from a small parochial school and therefore knowing almost no one, was a bit tough for my daughter.

Still worth it.

I look at what a mess our country seems to be right now. I don't mean all this blather about Making Merica Great or what have you. I mean the politics and infighting and stupidity. I mean the short-sightedness, the fear of people who we can safely call Other.

No one is really Other. That's the secret we all need to learn.

When we were in Germany I had a sudden unexpected need for tampons. I went into a grocery store and could not find them, not anywhere, not by the shampoo or baby supplies or first aid or kleenex. I walked the small store in increasing perplexity. Finally I found a female shop clerk, my age, and asked for help. She spoke no English. I spoke no German. It is a little embarrassing to resort to gestures in a case like this, but I managed to explain myself, and the woman very helpfully let me to the dog food aisle, where the tampons were. I said, "Danke, danke," and she said, "Have a nice day!" and we both laughed.

Everyone in the United States, right now, should have to go ask for tampons somewhere no one speaks their language. They should have to go ask a Turkish Muslim for tampons. A Zulu woman. A tiny elderly person somewhere in China. They should have to go and feel foolish and look foolish (those gestures!) and be treated with compassion. The country would be a better place.

Meanwhile, what the hell happened to July? And how did my children age faster than me?

The Oldest Surviving Pony in Sullivan County,Tennessee

I mentioned Shakespeare few days back. Now I'm thinking I ought to get some blog posts out of the old boy while I still can. He is, after all--according to my vet, and after the recent demises of Patty Pony and Clyde, both well-loved and personally known to me--the oldest surviving pony in Sullivan County, Tennessee. This just may be because he is too cantankerous to die.

I love Shakespeare. He was awesome to my children most of the time, and even now is pleased to be charming to my small nephews. He's an excellent turnout partner for Syd, the large Thoroughbred who lives on our farm and seems to have always wanted a pony of his own. He doesn't cost much to maintain, though more than he used to now that he's down to only one tooth and I have to make him two buckets of mush every day. I love Shakespeare, but he doesn't love me. Mostly when he refers to me it's, "Yo, wench. Where's that mush?" (Sometimes he uses saltier language, but I'm trying to keep this a family-friendly blog.)

We got Shakespeare fourteen years ago, the summer after we moved to our farm. We had built house and barn on what had been open fields. We moved into the house in March, when it was still under construction, because our old house sold more quickly than we expected. Then we moved the horses over in April, when the barn was still very much under construction, because I promised the friend I was boarding them with that we'd be gone in February, and she had a waiting list for the stalls. We didn't have doors on the  new stalls yet (or a center aisle, or a tack room) but we made do with plywood and stall guards; we had one field fenced out of what would eventually be six. At the time we had three horses: my very old retired hunter, Trapper; my brand-new horse, Gully; and Hot Wheels, a sweet red pony belonging to my seven-year-old son. My daughter was four. She rode Hot Wheels, quite often, and groomed him and helped take care of him, and she was extremely salty that she did not yet have a pony of her own.

I'd just finished building a house and a barn and was going to have to put in a driveway and a whole lot more fence. I was not up for buying another pony. I told my daughter so, emphatically. She could have a pony eventually. She could join pony club when she was six, like her brother had.

There were six stalls in the new barn. As the crew was finishing construction I gave them a bunch of bucket hooks to hang in the stalls. After lunch that day, one of the workmen asked me when my daughter's pony was set to arrive. "We aren't getting a pony," I said.

The man burst out laughing. He took me into the first stall on the right side of the barn, one that we weren't using yet. There was a row of new bucket hooks--but they were hung about a foot lower than the hooks in the other stalls. My daughter had gone into the stall with the workman and explained where the hooks needed to be hung. "Because my pony is little," she said.

My daughter at this age quite often spoke to creatures--animal or human, I never knew--that only she could see. Her conversations were private; whenever I asked her about them, she glared at me. But one day I came upon her talking softly to herself in a corner of the kitchen. She leaned forward. "Hurry, pony," she said.

Okay. We still couldn't buy a pony, but I sent a call out to the universe that we were looking for one. (I've done this with every horse I've ever had--envisioned exactly what I wanted, then waited. Last time my requirements were so specific that a riding friend asked, "And would you like that in unicorn?" Actually, I would have liked it in bay gelding. I got it in grey mare. But I digress.)

Two weeks later my farrier (the man who shoes my horses) came into the barn. He said, "You want a pony?"

I said, "If it's small, elderly, broke to death, bombproof, rideable, and free."

He grinned at me and said, "Yep."

That was Shakespeare. That was the beginning.

Teaching Me How to Say Goodbye

Several years ago, when my son was still in high school, all four of us traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to watch Rolex. My husband had just returned from a trip to Australia and was jet-lagged into complete unconsciousness in the back seat of the van. I started to climb into the driver's seat, but my son, who was 17, stopped me. "I'll drive to start," he offered.

I don't love driving, so I happily let him. The first part of the drive is straightforward local highways. Then it turns into curvy hilly local highways, then eventually interstate. It's about a five hour drive. Frequently I offered to take over, but my son waved me off. "Knit and talk to me," he said instead.

When we pulled into our hotel's parking lot my son turned to me and said, "Did I do a good job, Mom?"

"Yes," I said. I felt very proud of him. "You did a great job. You drove very well the whole way."

"So," he said, "You'll have no problem letting me drive to Charleston."

I realized I'd been played. Well played, mind you. My son and husband sometimes went to Charleston and my son liked to take lessons from a golf pro there. He'd been murmuring about going there by himself, now that he was a high school senior, and I'd been shutting him down. You are not old enough to drive all that way by yourself. Except that he'd just proven me wrong.

I've been thinking about that this summer, as my daughter sets about showing me that she, too, is ready to be on her own. She leaves for college next month. For the first time in 21 years I won't have day-to-day care for children in my house. I'll still be their mother, and I know they'll still need me--just yesterday my son, now 21 and interning in finance this summer--called to ask my advice about a plumbing problem. I've always encouraged my children to be independent. I made them responsible for lots of parts of their own lives, early and often. I haven't packed a suitcase for either of them since they were seven years old. I haven't done their laundry since they were 14. But I've loved being with them. They've grown into snarky, smart-mouthed, brilliant adults with strong opinions of their own, and good, trustworthy hearts, and I enjoy them so much right now. I don't wish them to stay--I want them to grow up as they should--but I didn't think they'd be leaving quite so soon.

We got back from our trip to Switzerland, with our daughter, at 7:30 at night. At 5:30 the next morning she left to teach at a riding camp several hours away. She packed herself, drove herself, got the job because she's already proven herself a good instructor, calm and patient and knowledgeable. She was gone a whole week. It was like practice for college, sort of. She managed crises and frightened small children and recalcitrant ponies.

She came home Sunday and this morning she left again. She's off to the United States' Pony Club's Eastern Championships, for something like the sixth year in a row, but the first year without me. She's not riding this year; she's stable manager for one of our region's eventing teams. She doesn't need me. She went to Target last night and came back with a new toothbrush (for scrubbing stirrup pads), a lint roller, wet wipes, a black polo shirt, and a whole bunch of other things. This morning she printed out all the custom stall cards she's made for her team, and she packed her car, and while I've been at Bristol Faith in Action, working my usual shift, she's driven to Johnson City, picked up a friend, and headed off to North Carolina.

Meanwhile I'll be here, practicing, learning the lessons my children are teaching me: that they really are ready to fly.

Stealing from Sophie

I'm stealing from Sophie Blackall today. Sophie's the Caldecott-winning illustrator of Finding Winnie and my future friend. She might not know that yet, but it's true. I like Australians. (That's a family joke; it would take too long to explain.) This weekend she was featured in a little Q & A in the New York Times book section, and today, fresh out of ideas for this blog, I'm stealing the format. I'm afraid my answers might not be as interesting as Sophie's, but hey, we can't all be that interesting. Here goes.

READING: I've usually got about six books going at once. I'm still working on Naomi Novik's final Temeraire novel, which is a bit of a shock given how quickly I devoured the first ones. I read an ARC by Juliana Gray called A Most Extraordinary Pursuit, which I thought was extraordinary indeed, though frustrating as since it isn't even being published until October I'll have to wait extra-long for the promised sequel. I'm reading The Long Weekend, about life in English country houses between the wars--that's more-or-less research--and a book called Fluent that explains how to learn a foreign language really well. Every time I travel to another country I'm ashamed of my monoglot language skills. I'm going to do better.

LISTENING: I don't listen to anything while I'm writing. In my car right now I'm alternating between the soundtrack to Hamilton and a CD of Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Civil Rights movement, who has the most gorgeous full rich voice.

WATCHING: I am not really a tv or movie person. If I lived alone it's possible I would not have a tv. The last thing I sat down to watch on purpose was Season Six of Downton Abbey, which I saw last fall though an internet fake. My daughter watches Mythbusters and Doctor Who; my son sports and Dan Patrick talking about sports; my husband sports and cooking shows. We Tivo Survivor and Battlebots. It's not highbrow round here.

FOLLOWING: I love the Yarn Harlot. I'm a fan of Sarah Bessey. I love Lin-Manuel Miranda's tweets, and I pay attention to the Disability in Kid Lit blog, some of the School Library Journal blogs, and whatever my friends call my attention to on Facebook.

GOATS: Sophie Blackall, who lives in Brooklyn, confesses a longing for a goat. I live on a farm in east Tennessee, and I have had goats, and that will not happen again. My goats were 100-pound Angoras with huge curved pointy horns, and the idiot I got them from castrated them the same day he sheared them for the first time. This means that every time I had to shear them they were convinced I was trying to cut their balls off all over again. You've not lived until you've had a knockdown fight with an enormous raging stinky goat while wielding an electric machine capable of cutting your fingers off. Trust me, it's not as much fun as it sounds. I found my goats a good home elsewhere and do not regret it. Now it's possible that Sophie actually wants a goat like my neighbor's goats, which are tiny and cute and excellent jumpers. And hornless. And not shearable. That would be okay. But I'm done with goats, thank you.

PONIES: I've got 'em! Half a dozen, including the oldest surviving pony in Sullivan County! He's a cantankerous old coot, but better behaved than most goats. Sophie, come visit! I'll take you riding! And thanks for this blog.

In Search of the Matterhorn

So we were in Switzerland, and my husband especially very much wanted to see the Matterhorn. That's the big odd-shaped peak that looms over Zermatt. Unfortunately the weather forecast for our two days in the Alps was atrocious: high of 50, low of 30, rain, rain, rain, and then they actually said Zermatt would get a couple of inches of snow.

My husband moaned. He apologized for the weather. He was sorry he'd planned the trip so that our two days in the Alps would be the two days of the trip when no one could see any mountains. He talked about the weather until my daughter and I shut him up. We can't change the weather so we might as well have a nice vacation anyhow.

Lauterbrunnun was raining, and there weren't any BASE jumpers (Lauterbrunnun is famous for being a place where people jump off cliffs and see how long they can free-fall before triggering their parachute, and still survive) but there were waterfalls. Up at Murren we walked all around the town, but skipped the high peaks. The next day, as I've already recounted, we left early for Zermatt. We took that crazy tunnel-train and ended up in unexpected sunshine. It was cold, but clear.

You can't drive all the way into Zermatt, which is at the end of a box canyon. You can take a train, or you can drive to Tausch and take a taxi from there. We taxied into town on a one-lane road (one lane for both directions, with occasional passing spots; the taxi drivers are pros but I wouldn't try it) then met, at a lot on the outskirts of Zermatt, a little electric car that shuttled us to our hotel.

Now you can't see any of the mountain peaks, not even the Matterhorn, from the streets of Zermatt: it's too steeply in the valley, and the buildings block the view. Our hotel actually sat atop a cliff above the town--it was excellent, the little electric car drove at this rock wall which opened into a little cave, very James Bond, and then there was an escalator that went up to the hotel. But even then, no view: our room faced the back wall. It was a "rock view." For ten times as much money we could have booked the "Tower Suite" which promised a view of the Matterhorn, but trust me, the rock view was pricey enough.

The hoteliers in Switzerland all seem to be competing for Hotel of the Year. This one immediately offered us a complementary welcome beverage in the bar. We declined, because we'd checked the radar, and knew the sunshine wouldn't last. If we were going to see that pesky Matterhorn we had to get up the mountainside now.

It was about one o'clock. We took the escalator to the town, walked to the Rotshorn station, took this weird cogwheel train inside a mountain upwards, then a cable car, then a gondola, until we were at the top of the place said to give us the best view of the Matterhorn. And there it was.

Sort of. It was cloudy-ish. Clouds were scudding across the sky, and they seemed to get caught on the Matterhorn's steep sides and sort of linger there. We sat outside at the restaurant on the peak and ordered lunch and some wine, and sat with blankets across our laps (the restaurant provided the blankets) and eventually we'd seen most of the Matterhorn, in pieces, one bit revealed by the changing cloud cover at a time.

It was maybe 50 degrees up there, mostly sunny, not unpleasant. I was wearing a long-sleeved jacket with a sweatshirt over it. (True story: on the gondola ride down, a man looked at my sweatshirt and said, "Does that say Poly Prep?" "Yes." "The school in New York?" "Yes." "In Brooklyn?" "Yes. I spoke there and they gave me this sweatshirt." The man; "I live next door to it." Small world.) Anyway, I went inside to use the toilet and when I came out it had dropped 15 degrees and started to snow. Actual snow. (It never accumulated in town. I don't know if it did on the mountaintop.)

We reversed our journey--gondola to cable car to train to walking to escalator to hotel. It was a bit before dinner still, and my daughter and I lobbied for the hot tub. A few of the hotels we stayed in had very nice spa facilities and we never used them, because who has time? I've seen spas; I've never been to Switzerland before. But in this one case, a hot tub--an outdoor hot tub--sounded really good. So we put on our suits and padded outside, and there it was.

The Matterhorn. A picture-perfect view. For a moment there were no clouds at all. Then clouds came and went, as they had before, only smaller ones, and we were much closer. My daughter ran inside for her camera. My husband and I sat in the hot tub, sat for an hour, and looked at the Matterhorn, and laughed.

How We Ended Up Driving Onto a Train

-We woke up one morning in Murren, a lovely little hamlet perched on a cliff above Lauterbrunnun, and it was cloudy as all get-out, but not actually raining. We'd planned to take a cable car from Murren to the Alpine summit of Schilthorn, but, fortunately (because the cable car ride was expensive) we could check a tv channel in our hotel room and confirm that the summit was entirely encased in clouds. The view was zero. So we gathered our things and headed for Zermatt.

Zermatt is where the Matterhorn is. We really wanted to see some of these famous Alpine peaks, but unfortunately the weather was not on our side. It had been scorching hot and ferociously sunny in Zurich and Lucerne, then rainy and cloudy and cold in the Alps. The forecast for our day in Zermatt included snow (and it did snow--but that's another story). Anyhow, we left Murren, took a train to a cable car to our rental car, parked in a lot in Lauterbrunnun, then set our GPS for Zermatt and found, to our surprise, that the trip was expected to take 3 hours. We'd been told it took two. Also our GPS seemed to have us going in the opposite direction we expected.

We checked a map in one of our guidebooks, and then, confused, consulted the GPS on our phones. (Our phones couldn't make calls in Switzerland, but our rental car had Wi-Fi so we could connect to the internet.) My phone showed the trip taking 2 hours in the direction we expected. Well, good. We set out that way, ignoring the regular GPS's repeated attempts to get us to turn around.

The road went up, and up, and up. It twisted and turned. I imagine many Americans would have gotten a little freaked out by it, but we live a few miles from a section of Highway 421 called The Snake, and it's worse, so we were okay. Also the Swiss seem to like enormously thick, secure guardrails, which I appreciate.

The road went up. We kept going. We could see no reason at all for our car GPS to keep telling us to turn around. I messed with Google maps on my phone, and the route seemed impressively straightforward, even if there were a lot of hairpin turns. There was plenty of traffic, and no treacherous road signs.

Then, suddenly, we saw signs for a toll station. Oh. Perhaps our GPS was set to avoid tolls. We checked. Nope, it wasn't. Whatever. We stopped at the toll booth where we were told a complete torrent of things in German, the only part of which we understood was that we had to pay 27 Swiss francs, which is essentially 27 dollars. We paid, and were handed a leaflet wholly in German that seemed to carry a bunch of warnings about something we did not in any way understand.

Ahead of us the traffic had stopped. Cars were lined up head-to-tail sideways-on to what seemed to be another tunnel entrance. Everyone looked relaxed. We were grateful to be pretty far back in the line, because we had no idea at all what we were getting ourselves into.

The cars began to move forward. We moved with them. The cars went up a ramp, and turned, and so did we, and before we knew it we were driving onto a train. Onto the bed of freight cars, to be exact. A young man in an orange vest motioned us forward. Helpful signs in multiple languages told us to put the car in park and set the parking brake. We did.

The train started moving into the tunnel. It accelerated until we were flying along, in absolute darkness, faster than we'd ever safely drive. It went for miles. Fifteen? Twenty? My husband and I looked at each other and laughed.

Our GPS had been set to "no ferries." Apparently riding your car on a train through the world's longest mountain tunnel counts as being ferried. The things we never knew.

The train emerged on the other side of whatever mountain that was. The clouds had blown clear. We could see the sun--and Zermatt was only 20 minutes away.