A Spring Landscape

There’s no rain now, but the fog is thin everywhere. It mutes the foliage just starting to show. The green is more startling at ground level, where a lawnmower could stand to chug if the rusting heap weren’t still parked next to the shed, enmeshed in a pile of detritus from last year’s fall.

On the tree where pears will grow, there are white blooms in leaf jackets. The evergreens nearby haven’t changed. The bee baum looks coarse in all this wetness; when the sun shines again I will clip the stalks low to make room for new growth that will become a base for humming birds and for the fuzzy flying buzz that lends the plant its name.

Up high, it could still be winter. If there are buds there, then they are no brighter than the gray. Bony knuckles clench in a wave; if it’s “hi” or “bye,” I don’t know. I can’t hear above the wind, but I can see them clearly, the vapor accentuating their witchy plainness: fat for stalks but thin for trees, bending high but unmoving where bark meets root.

It’s steel in the sky, a woody mold just below, and then, at my feet, so much lushness where the slush used to be.

Green rises like heat. Soon it will eat the trees. It will mix with the sun to turn the sky blue.

In the Wilds of Fairfield County

The helicopters were swarming overhead as we drank champagne and ate cake in celebration of my mother-in-law's 69th birthday last week.

"That's not normal," I said, peering out the bay window to see the lights of the helicopters flickering between the knuckled limbs of so many North Stamford trees. "We should turn on the news to find out what's going on."

My mother-in-law pressed the Bose system into action. 1010 WINS came on, a strange mix of high quality stereo mixed with antiquated terrestrial radio signals. Somewhere between the weather report and the commercials, we lost interest and began to drift in separate directions to other rooms of the house.

"The Merritt's closed in Norwalk because of an accident," my mother-in-law called out. We all nodded. The Partner went to check the details on the Internet so that we could plan an alternate route home. I wandered back into the kitchen, puzzling over the fact that five choppers were circling backyard because of an accident 15 miles down the highway.

I stood at the window. I watched the lights. I heard the hover. Then, out of the corner of my ear, the radio announcer barked out the story that came to me only in keywords. "Stabbed. Chimpanzee. Rock Rimmon Road."

"That's it!" I shouted. "A chimp was stabbed on Rock Rimmon Road!" My mother-in-law didn't even look up from the recipe for cabbage and apples she was writing down for me. In that moment, based on two keywords and the name of a street one block over, it was hard to understand why all those helicopters were hell bent on bringing the story of a bloody chimpanzee to the nation.

I know now, and every time I hear the latest information leaking out from the press, I feel a tightness in my chest that makes it just a bit harder to breathe. One of the goriest scenes ever to breach the wooded canopy of Fairfield County privilege played out as I clinked glasses with my husband's family on a lazy President's Day.

Stories that hit close to home hit harder. It's not that they're worse or sadder or more deserving of reflection than other catastrophes; it's that they're easier to relate to. It's the path of proximity: there but for the grace of God go I. A widow whose daughter was killed in a car accident raises her chimpanzee like a son. She sleeps in the same bed with him; he surfs the Internet; he once took a downtown joyride. The details are a stretch, but the results of the chimp's final rampage bring out a common, primal fear. A friend of the widow is torn apart by the chimp. Face, hands. The terror in the backyard is a reminder of unknown perils at home.

I saw the helicopter lights shine down on truths that had been so well hidden beneath the landscaped forests in which my husband was raised. No matter where you go, how much you make, or with whom you surround yourself, the facts are the same: people can be crazy, animals are wild, and tragedy so often begets the same.

Short Month Complex

The Boss is prey for February's smarmy charms. Each time the temperature rises above 40 degrees, my naive little girl proclaims the arrival of spring. Little does she know that everything February gives gets grabbed right back again.

We all must carry some of The Boss's optimism. There'd be a mass exodus to Florida right around the time the groundhog emerged if we didn't delude ourselves just a little about the coming of spring. Still, I am predominantly pessimistic.

I know it behooves me to enjoy the warmth instead of bemoaning the tease, but I can't help hating February. She's just such a bitch. She's hot and cold and long and short. She's dead presidents. She's $50 for a pile of frozen roses. February is deep and dark.

If I am to embrace any of The Boss's budding positivity, it's going to be at the end of the month, when February cuts herself short. That very stuntedness may contribute to something of a Napoleon Complex, exacerbating the cruelness of her reign the whole month through, but it doesn't matter by the time the 28th comes along. At that point, it's over. She's done. And not a day too soon.

Only February can make March look good.

One Billy Goat

I usually drive by the ramshackle farm house to find the billy goat coatless on the porch, but today he was in the middle of the road, forcing me to stop. He was woolen for the winter.

I didn't quite know what to do. He was messing with my habit of agricultural rubbernecking. I drive by every so often on meandering jaunts through scenic byroads, seeing if he's still there in his enormous gruffness and checking on the status of the freakish red stripes--like the kind my daughter would draw with a marker--that cover his skin. It's those stripes that keep me coming back. I look for clues as to the identity of the artist who paints goats red.

At first I stopped. The beast was unmoving. I wanted to let the owners know he was on the loose, but I didn't want to frighten him with my GMC's deep beep. I slowly pulled around and then beyond, waiting till he was a car-length behind me. I honked once and watched the property, which sprouted garbage in fruitful yields, for signs of life. There was nothing. I honked again, and then again. On the house, clapboards hung haphazard and scraps of wood covered several of the street facing windows. Nothing.

I could have gotten out of the car and corralled the enormous billy goat back to his perch on the porch. I could have, but I am either too fearful or too smart. I could've pulled to the side of the road with my hazards on and waited till someone with claim to the goat took responsibility. I could've called animal control. I could've done a lot of things.

Instead, I beeped once more for good measure and again set my wheels to turning. An oil truck came up the road in front of me. I gestured for the driver to go slow as I pointed behind me. I turned left and was afforded a view of the backside of the house, beyond which I could see that the truck had come to a stop.

I wondered what he would choose to do as I drove away.

Her First Day of School

The September sun falls through trees onto old red farmhouses rendered dazzling by the light. I drive through glare that is no longer a summer shock, but a gold as intoxicating as currency. The first month of fall in New England is paler than both the preceding season and the autumn depths to come; it has less of an edge. I open my driver's seat window for a smudge-free view that allows the air to rush in as I am engulfed in senses that assure me I am sitting on the better side of just-right.

The Boss goes to pre-school every day now. She was eased into it by mild rays of sun warming her back as she prepared to step through the door for the first time. Her teacher was inside, The Boss was on the verge, and I was behind it all. I expected the teacher to use welcoming words or, at the very least, some hand gestures to indicate the way, but the blond-grey stranger just stood there with a smile that told me nothing. I looked at The Boss, whose lock on me was a blue mirror. I raised my shoulders and we both turned again to the teacher. I don't remember what method--a sweep of the arm, a nod, or a complete lack of direction--that Miss Kathy used to force my hand, but I finally realized what I had to do. My shrug became a gentle nudge against The Boss's kangaroo backpack and I'm sure that I held my breath as she lurched into Room 1. I backed into the September shine.

In the car now it is just me and Number Two, like it used to be me and The Boss. The roll of the tires over farm-hugging curves and marshy side roads comforts me; it lulls my son. The Boss's constant hum of energy is criss-cross-applesauced into morning circle back at school. In her absence is calm lethargy. Number Two looks out the back of the car from his infant carseat. My front facing vantage point is different. Still, we can both see early leaves detach from their support systems and float to the ground all around us.

We will start to get to know each other like this--as scenes of what will become his childhood speed by. It is September, and the greens and golds are faded to start with.


___

A Cold June in New England

I am very much a product of my New England upbringing. That is to say, I'm cold--like a November pilgrim alone in her one-room shanty mushing corn into meal. I don't tend to enthuse much with strangers. I'm slightly more animated with acquaintances. It's only with good friends (and preferably a few glasses of wine) that I begin to act like I give a good goddamn about those around me--at which point it becomes clear I'm no puritan.

When I was gestating my children, no stranger ever touched my stomach. I've heard many stories about such liberties being taken with pregnant women, but I never had to worry about it. Nobody whose name or face was unrecognizable to me would dare mention my condition, let alone feel around for it. It's like I wear a big sign flickering "UNAPPROACHABLE" in neon letters.

I belong to a mom's group where many of the members are transplants. Some are from the midwest, some from the west, others from further north. They are all very nice and quick to make friends so that, before long, it seems like they've always been here. That's well and good for them, but when they end up with all kinds of fun plans with all kinds of different people and I'm sitting at home with the family members who have no choice but to put up with me, it leaves me lamenting my roots and my subconscious determination not to weed them.

It's very hard for me to foster new friendships. I don't dig into people's pasts or predilections because I don't want to pry. I don't like asking for favors and thus it doesn't occur to me to offer them. I generally won't censor myself. I hate talking on the phone. All this comes together in an uneasy hospitality. I host play dates and visits from acquaintances, but it's usually only the friends I've had a long time who end up staying.

I don't know if I could change if I tried. I don't know where to start trying. How I've accumulated any friends at all is a mystery to me.

Some of the newest members to my mom's group are from England. They're supposed to be pretty reserved, right? Like, across the pond is where this region's particular brand of stuffiness was born. Maybe their True Englander status will be a good match to my New Englander status.

Although, if they really are like me, we'll never get to know each other well enough to find out.

___

Can You See Me Now?

Earlier in the winter, I kept telling The Partner that I need new windshield wiper blades. "These things suck," I said, time and time again. My ever-patient husband would remind me on each occasion that it was not the wipers that sucked--it was the New England winters. There are certain times and places where windshields just aren't meant to be seen out of. November through March in Connecticut is one such example.

Then I received a delivery of Prestone Washer Fluid Booster (de-icer additive) to review for the Parent Bloggers Network. The packaging promised that the product would "quickly remove light ice and frost and help to repel build-up of dirt and salt from road spray as you drive. Also helps prevent dangerous re-freeze from forming on your windshield." I smiled and nodded. That's what I do when I'm not paying much attention, or when I don't believe a thing someone is saying.

While working on one of my car's myriad problems, The Partner poured the bottle into the washer fluid reservoir and left it to its own devices. Life went on, and it wasn't until months later that I noticed I hadn't cursed out my windshield wipers in quite some time. Ice no longer clung to glass and blade with its evil skeleton claws. In fact, hardly anything stuck to the windshield. Even the salt-rain just beaded up for easy wipe-away. Since I knew for a fact that it wasn't the winter conditions that had changed, I had to give credit to Prestone for this new visibility.

My smile-and-nod at this revelation was no longer vacant. I was pleasantly surprised.

Goin' Camping

The Partner, The Boss, the dog, and I rode over to Rhode Island last night to take a gander at a 1989 27' Gulf Stream Conquest motor home we discovered on Craig's List. After The Boss jumped all over the queen sized bed in the back, after I inspected each and every crack and crevice of closet or cabinet space, and after The Partner took the behemoth for a spin, hands were shaken. Words like "title," "insurance," and "license plates" floated easily through the crisp dusk air. We pledged to return the next day to bring the big baby home.

New England is now our oyster. We already have plans for one or two weekend trips in October and all kinds of dreams for a lakeside site next summer. When I really want to get grandiose, I imagine a cross country trip that a young family will never forget.

Our Gulf Stream's got a pinky-mauve velour interior. There are two seats in the cockpit and a captain's chair behind. At loft level, foam pallets come together to form a queen sized sleeping area. A table and bench convert to a bed next to the refrigerator and across from the sink and stove. There's a shower on one side and a toilet on the other. Behind it all is a traditional queen bed surrounded by narrow but serviceable closets. I can lay back in the 80s grandeur of it all and imagine that Bon Jovi just might have traveled this way. . .

Read more here. . .

Julie Amero To Be Sentenced Thursday

I've written before about a local court case with international implications. Coast to coast, sea to shining sea, hopping continents and bouncing off satellites in space. Read about it, because it could happen where you are, too. You might think it can't, but it can happen to you.

Here's the meat of the nutshell as I cracked it earlier: "Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor for exposing middle school students to pornography on a school computer. The conviction came after she testified that the sexually explicit material on her computer popped up as a result of adware, not from any prurient searches of her own. She faces up to forty years in prison."

She will be sentenced this Thursday.

There's someone else around these parts who will not face a day of jail time, however. It's a man who sexually assaulted a three year old girl. Under a plea deal, he will get five years' probation. According to the same newspaper that has seen its Web site hits skyrocket due to international interest in the Amero case, the story behind this second travesty of justice is this: "Rockville Superior Court Judge Patricia Swords accepted the plea bargain so the girl would be spared having to face her abuser and recounting the sexual assault...Jones must register as a sex offender for 10 years, but his registration will remain secret to people who visit the state sex offender registry. Information on the list about Jones will be available only to law enforcement officials."

And so, a woman with poor timing and bad reflexes, who allowed middle school students to glimpse sexual images on a screen, will be sentenced, while a man who molested a three year old girl is able to strike a plea deal that guarantees him re-entry into a world where nobody knows about his sick predilections. A world where he can use sex to assault again with nobody, at first, the wiser.

Said the judge in the Jones case to the perp as she let him off the hook: "There is no doubt your behavior … was reprehensible -- perhaps the most reprehensible to come before this court."

But I guess the nature and intent of the crime does not matter. That's all I can deduce from these two cases, similar in nothing but the court system's inability to protect us from harm.

Justice Calls the Help Desk

Straight from the same region of the state that helped tear apart the fabric of the US Constitution with the seam ripper of eminent domain, Eastern Connecticut can now boast another court case that is shocking in its implications for the average American. Julie Amero, a substitute teacher, was convicted on four counts of risk of injury to a minor for exposing middle school students to pornography on a school computer. The conviction came after she testified that the sexually explicit material on her computer popped up as a result of adware, not from any prurient searches of her own. She faces up to forty years in prison.

The Internet is still a largely lawless frontier. The downside of its freedom is the prevalance of vigilante justice in the guise of the American court system. Lynch mobs are everywhere, kicking the bucket out from under noose-necked citizens and leaving them to strangle in the wind.

Few people in a position to determine the fate of any given defendant truly understand the technology--from detectives at the local police station, to jury members, to United States senators who believe the 'Net is a "series of tubes." Combine that with the fact that the defendants themselves may not be well equipped to navigate the cyberscape (or, as in Amero's case, to shut down the computer), and suddenly this lynch mob turned trial-by-jury becomes a three-ring circus, with each act more ignorant than the last.

I wish I could trust that Julie Amero's case was decided on facts borne out by experts in the field of Internet technology. Instead, I wonder if the case was decided by semantics. The Connecticut statute under which she was convicted states that, on each of four counts, she "wilfully or unlawfully caused or permitted the victim to be placed in a situation that endangered the child's life or limb, or was likely to injure his health or impair his morals."

Wilful. Unlawful. Each word is so thick with meaning that it can stand on its own in court proceedings. But the Internet is amorphous. Many of its definitions are unwritten or untested. My only hope is that everyone involved in the case worked in the most exhaustive way possible to responsibly reconcile these concepts so that the punishment truly fits the crime.

Sunshine Almost Always Makes Me High

It was 71 degrees in January. I was on the same stretch of highway I've traveled many times before. Sunshine was on my shoulders and the song was on my radio. It was one of those moments when the fact that something is in the air becomes clear.

I've had those moments before, and the feelings have a strange concreteness. With each job interview I've gone on, I know from the car ride there if I will end up taking that position. I've never been wrong. I see a certain landmark, gas station or metal sign and I understand with certainty that it is something I will pass again many times. Beneath a highway overpass in the town where we bought our first home, I saw the words Providence and Worcester Railroad Company on rusty red metal as we traversed northeastern Connecticut in a lazy house hunt. I got the feeling. It was several months and several failed contracts later that we ended up purchasing our small antique cape in that very town. Now I see the sign daily.

This time I have the feeling but I have no idea what it means. I'm not looking for a job. We're not buying a house. Nothing planned is on the horizon. But something is looming there anyway. Driving home from Hartford on a hot winter Saturday, I sat a little straighter as I followed the well-worn path. I looked for new landmarks. And I thought that there is as much excitement as there is fear in the not knowing.



In unrelated news, I am the Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Member of the Week. With 900 mamas on their blogroll, I feel very honored to have earned this distinction. If you voted for me of your own volition, I thank you. If you, like The Partner, voted for me because I told you to, I thank you. I've gotten to know myself better through blogging, and now I've gotten to know so many of you. It has been a completely unexpected delight.

A Winter Warning

The news on the cover of today's local paper was bleak. Below the fold but still very much on my radar, I learned that we can expect a "colder-than-average winter this year, with an increased chance of snow." Being that cold and snow are the very things I hate most about this tiny section of the USA, I sense that I am on the cusp of four long, dark months in New England.

Not the least of my problems with the extreme season is the idea that any barrier between myself and hypothermia cannot be taken for granted. It is not a baseless fear, this image I have in my mind of getting stranded in my temperamental car in -10 degree Fahrenheit weather on the side of a rural road with no cell reception for miles. Winter is a certain kind of helplessness. I've only experienced it a few times, but there is pain that would have you believe cold can crush bone into fragments.

It is no coincidence that my husband's grandmother, though she took 97 years to die, did it during the record breaking cold snap of 2004. It shouldn't have mattered, being that she was untouched by the elements in the toasty in-law apartment of her son's home, but she hated winter, too. On the other side of an ice webbed window, winter sucked the marrow from her bones.

Out Of Office Reply

The moon was low and elusive on my winding drive from central Connecticut to the northeast corner. Its half-buddha belly was the fattest I'd ever seen. I turned a bend near the gold dome of the capital building and the shadowed orb disappeared, only to emerge again next to the sillhouette of another insurance building.

I sat by myself in the car, except for a strange loneliness that was so thick it seemed to take on its own form. There were only indents in the place where The Boss's carseat had been secured a half hour earlier. Now her seat was latched into my parent's mini-van and she was tucked away sleepily in the room I'd called mine as a child.

When I left her for this overnight visit with my parents so I could finish painting our living room, which had been sitting in a semi-finished state for three weeks, The Boss conveyed for the first time a genuine attachment to her mama. I know because she said it--"mama!"--as the tears formed along her lids and her mouth made the slow, hysterical square that always came before the swell. She was wailing.

I stood in the doorway. For a long time I watched her watching me. In fifteen months, she had never noticed me leave.

"You just need to go," my father said from his seat in front of the big screen television, where his scratchy words floated over her screams. "You're making it harder on her."

So I pushed open the door and walked through. I got in the car and was almost five miles down the road before I noticed the gaping yellow moon.