Snatched from Martin's Letter
A smart writer realizes when somebody's done her job already and pounces greedily on her good fortune. I watched Martin typing away on a letter this morning like a madman--I was washing a gazillion loads of sheets and towels (you'll find out why below). Because I admire and adore his writing, a plan hatched in my head. To steal. Therefore, below I give you my plunder--a bit of a letter written to a couple of his chums.
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Dear Sirs,
The rumors of my exploits have been greatly exaggerated.
Although I am cycling a lot, I did not, as you may have heard, bike across Puget Sound or get a job delivering soup by bike. Actually, the latter sounds like fun.
I have not been fishing but I have gutted three silver (Coho) salmon. I set up in the backyard. As soon as I slit the belly of the first fish, the neighbor's Weimaraner trotted over, looking for a handout. Then came the bees. By the time I finished, there must have been thirty of them all around me--especially by my hands. I did not, however, turn the fish eggs (which are beautiful) into sushi. I did discover that nasturtium flowers, which are still blooming in the children's garden of nearby Raab Park, taste almost passably like wasabi, so maybe I need to think more seriously about salmon in the raw.
What is there to say about tea? We have tea every day all day. The owl cozy presides.
Today Elspeth is sick and stayed home from school. This is the sort of day when, as a kid, I would like on the couch for hours watching The Price is Right and, later, The People's Court. By the time Judge Wapner ruled in the third consecutive episode, I'd feel almost as ill as when I got up--what a wasted day. But Elspeth (and Bea, who isn't sick but is benefiting from streaming video all the same) seems to be accepting her fate well.
Our life is governed by soccer. I coach on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Merry has practice Monday and Wednesdays, and Saturday is game day. We often eat at 4:00 pm so we don't have to do dinner at 6:30. I'm cooking more, which pleases me. We had a killer Thai Basil Chicken stir fry a couple nights ago and I've got plans.
We're in the glory days for the Northwest. Except for dense fog most mornings, it's cool and cloudless. The girls ride their bikes to and from school every day. On the way home, wheeling west, we get an expansive view of the Olympic Mountains, which rise at their highest nearly 8,000 feet above our sea level home. That's nothing compared to Mt. Rainer, though, which hovers over the Eastern horizon like a moon. It's beauty which is, as Rilke wrote, "the beginning of terror."
I love our neighborhood. It's much more suburban than I expected, but I've adapted. Our street is a little half-circle of smaller one- and two-story houses built in the early to mid-nineties, most with ragged cottage-style gardens out front.
Our house is brick red, and we have an attached garage with wisteria vining all across the front facia. If you go left out of our house, you walk toward a cluster of mailboxes and Austerbruin park, a little common area with a playground, an apple allee, and a dirt trail through a bunch of blackberry brambles. The apple path leads to the aforementioned Raab Park, a wonderful nearby greenspace that has a large community garden (with a sizeable section portioned off for children to pick whatever they like--I've never seen kids just eating kale off the stem, but that's what they do), dog park, playing fields, skate park, playground, and a connection to a trail that goes through the woods toward downtown Poulsbo.
If you go the OTHER way on our street, you can take a gravel cut-through to the school complex. That's how we ride to and from the elementary every day. The complex also has the junior high, high school, and community center (which has an indoor pool). The northwest in general is sort of renowned for its attention to spaces that make for better life--lots of parks, trails, bike paths, etc. After living here for a month, I'm finding this reputation totally justified.
Still, I'm having some trouble accepting that this is life for us now. Some days I can still hardly believe what has happened. It's transformative, and usually I'm accepting and even positive about it all. But there are times when I feel like Gregor Samsa or like a character in a Twilight Zone episode. The astonishment I've felt at the last six months has gradually ebbed, but occasionally it comes on sharply in these almost existential moments.
*
* * *
Dear Sirs,
The rumors of my exploits have been greatly exaggerated.
Although I am cycling a lot, I did not, as you may have heard, bike across Puget Sound or get a job delivering soup by bike. Actually, the latter sounds like fun.
I have not been fishing but I have gutted three silver (Coho) salmon. I set up in the backyard. As soon as I slit the belly of the first fish, the neighbor's Weimaraner trotted over, looking for a handout. Then came the bees. By the time I finished, there must have been thirty of them all around me--especially by my hands. I did not, however, turn the fish eggs (which are beautiful) into sushi. I did discover that nasturtium flowers, which are still blooming in the children's garden of nearby Raab Park, taste almost passably like wasabi, so maybe I need to think more seriously about salmon in the raw.
What is there to say about tea? We have tea every day all day. The owl cozy presides.
Today Elspeth is sick and stayed home from school. This is the sort of day when, as a kid, I would like on the couch for hours watching The Price is Right and, later, The People's Court. By the time Judge Wapner ruled in the third consecutive episode, I'd feel almost as ill as when I got up--what a wasted day. But Elspeth (and Bea, who isn't sick but is benefiting from streaming video all the same) seems to be accepting her fate well.
Our life is governed by soccer. I coach on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, Merry has practice Monday and Wednesdays, and Saturday is game day. We often eat at 4:00 pm so we don't have to do dinner at 6:30. I'm cooking more, which pleases me. We had a killer Thai Basil Chicken stir fry a couple nights ago and I've got plans.
We're in the glory days for the Northwest. Except for dense fog most mornings, it's cool and cloudless. The girls ride their bikes to and from school every day. On the way home, wheeling west, we get an expansive view of the Olympic Mountains, which rise at their highest nearly 8,000 feet above our sea level home. That's nothing compared to Mt. Rainer, though, which hovers over the Eastern horizon like a moon. It's beauty which is, as Rilke wrote, "the beginning of terror."
I love our neighborhood. It's much more suburban than I expected, but I've adapted. Our street is a little half-circle of smaller one- and two-story houses built in the early to mid-nineties, most with ragged cottage-style gardens out front.
Our house is brick red, and we have an attached garage with wisteria vining all across the front facia. If you go left out of our house, you walk toward a cluster of mailboxes and Austerbruin park, a little common area with a playground, an apple allee, and a dirt trail through a bunch of blackberry brambles. The apple path leads to the aforementioned Raab Park, a wonderful nearby greenspace that has a large community garden (with a sizeable section portioned off for children to pick whatever they like--I've never seen kids just eating kale off the stem, but that's what they do), dog park, playing fields, skate park, playground, and a connection to a trail that goes through the woods toward downtown Poulsbo.
If you go the OTHER way on our street, you can take a gravel cut-through to the school complex. That's how we ride to and from the elementary every day. The complex also has the junior high, high school, and community center (which has an indoor pool). The northwest in general is sort of renowned for its attention to spaces that make for better life--lots of parks, trails, bike paths, etc. After living here for a month, I'm finding this reputation totally justified.
Still, I'm having some trouble accepting that this is life for us now. Some days I can still hardly believe what has happened. It's transformative, and usually I'm accepting and even positive about it all. But there are times when I feel like Gregor Samsa or like a character in a Twilight Zone episode. The astonishment I've felt at the last six months has gradually ebbed, but occasionally it comes on sharply in these almost existential moments.
*
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