full fathom five

Coming Home

I just got home after two weeks in Tuscon, Indianapolis, and Richmond, Ind. giving book-talks.  When my husband picked me up at the airport in Manchester, N.H. for the two-hour ride back to Maine, I kissed him and then got into the back seat where our dog Cody was standing with his nose pressed against the window and tail wagging.  He'd recognized me.  

When I got into the back seat and took him in my arms, he gave an open-mouthed whine that sounded like human crying.  He stepped across me on the seat and leaned against my chest, pressing me hard into the seat-back as if to say, I'm never letting you go.  While I could hardly breathe, he stood with his head down, nose in my hands, crying and crying.  He stayed like that for about fifty miles, through Exeter, N.H. and on past Portsmouth.   

Once we got on the Maine turnpike, as if feeling that he could relax being closer to home, he finally lay down across my lap, and I stroked him the rest of the way.  It was so good to sink my fingers into his husky-like coat, so thick and warm.  I pulled an occasional tick from around his ears; this is the latest and coldest I've ever seen ticks.  I cracked the window to put the ticks out.

When I began telling my husband about the trip, Cody drew back to lift his eyes to mine.  He seemed to be re-memorizing my face and voice.  I can't remember ever having a dog who looks straight into my eyes as I talk.  This was one of the things we learned to teach our dogs at the obedience classes we took Cody to when we first got him, but I can't believe it really took.  Yes it did, and it's a great way to feel closer to a dog.  When I use words that he recognizes, like "go," "play with the doggies," "food," "treats," "walk," "leash," his pupils widen with lazer-beam attention.  I know it sounds absurd or that my husband's falling down on the job, but it feels great to be so closely listened to.

When we got home, the first thing I noticed when I walked in the door was how warm the house was and how familiar it smelled.  A vague, faintly musty smell, but clearly signalling home.  It was so noticeable and welcoming, that I asked my husband if we could have some friends for dinner in a few nights.  I wanted to enhance the homey smell with a thyme-scented slow-cooked potroast and root vegetables in red wine sauce.

Even though my husband and I were both too tired to clean house, we told our guests to just take us as we were, and when they walked in and ooohed and ahhed over the aroma of pot-roast and apple crisp, shedding their coats in our messy bedroom and coming into our living-room to join us by the fire, I felt my bones go gluey as all the tension of travel and meeting deadlines finally fell away.  I felt profoundly thankful to be home.

And since I've come home, I want to pass on another blessing: Ian McEwan's On Chesill Beach.  This is the perfect novel to read on cold winter nights in front of the fire. 

A timely reminder from heroes

    I've been away book-touring, so I haven't posted here for a long time.  I'll be leaving again tomorrow as well, but it's been wonderful to be home this week of the election, and to reconnect with my ESL students.  They are mostly Chinese, with one Thai woman and a Columbian for an interesting variety of perspective.

   The Chinese students work about sixty hours a week among local Chinese restaurants, so they're always tired, always dragging a bit to class, yawning, and resigned to nothing more than their present routine throughout their lives.  They're working for their children,  and have no expectations for themselves.

    But yesterday, the morning after the election, the students walked quickly into class, their heads up, making eye-contact.  It made me smile, and I asked M., one of the three with citizenship so that he could vote, if he was happy.  "Yes," he said.  "Yesterday I make my dream come true."  

    Another, L., had stayed up late to see Obama's acceptance speech.  Despite the fact that she'd had only a few hours' sleep and was facing into another 12-hour work day, she looked fresher, more alert than I'd ever seen her.  She said her son, in his last year at N.Y.U. and eyeing a particularly tough job-market, had called in tears after the speech.  "Now we have hope," she said.  

    I know that M. and L. were thinking of their children when they said these things, but I find great comfort in Obama's shining the light for a few moments of these last few days on people like my students themselves.  He eulogized his grandmother, who died election eve, as an unsung hero.  

    As someone new to the definition of hero, having had to research and write my way to an understanding of my father's sacrifice in WWII in my late-fifties, I finally can appreciate people who uncomplainingly sacrifice sleep, comfort, status, dignity, vacations, health, any hope of retirement, and even their lives - for future generations.  In Dreams of My Father, Obama's grandmother has to forfeit her dreams for retirement after her husband's sales career stalls, and re-enter the work-force in middle-age, slowly working her way up at a local bank.  Obama makes her sacrifice come alive in showing her pretzling herself every morning into a suit and heels, coming home at night with aching feet to cook dinner.  

    Before I got home from my recent book-trip, I was bemoaning the fact that the economic debacle will make it impossible for my husband to retire next year as we'd planned.  It only took a day back with my students to realize how lucky I am that we can think of retirement at all, any time.