Waiting.

Waiting.

I hate it.

We are interviewing for new jobs next year. A job for Dr. Science that will take us far, far away from the life we know. Not as far as Nome, or the South Pacific, but far enough.

cows. 'nuff said.

The main drag.

farm stand. leave your money in the tin can.

the river that runs through it.

This, is Houlton.

Only two states away. Right on the border. So close to New Brunswick, in fact, that if one cares to look at the satellite image on google maps, one sees that half the town is a blur, but the side closest to the border, you can zoom down until you can look in the windows of the buildings. You could see people, if there had been anyone out on the street in the middle of the day. Border patrol has to keep vigilant with these guys. Guess that's whats up with the super focused satellites. So they can keep up with all those damn Canadians trying to sneak into our country over the Houlton border to...what?

Really, there is almost no one on the streets during the day. I noticed this, walking around the main drag with the Impling. She had her meltdown in the middle of the sidewalk and there was no one to cast mean looks in my direction. She freaked in peace. Where WAS everyone? Guess they are all at work, on the fields, in the hospital, or at home, drinking a cold frosty one over the classified. Or just drinking a cold frosty one.

Hell. Now I want a cold frosty one. May as well. It's not like I have a JOB or anything, right? Right. I want my $300,000 in SAHM back pay RIGHT now. 2 years. And 8 months.

Things are going to change. We will have a house. The Impling will have a new bed, as she has already outgrown her little toddler IKEA confection of a bed. I will have my own car. (Yes...I am actually getting my license). Shudder. New...everything.

IF we get a good offer. This is what we are waiting for. This is what has been absorbing my attention, distracting me from writing, and reading, and being, well, present. Wondering...where the HELL will we end up? Will...

Damn. I was all ready to go off on a major rant about the suckitudiness of waiting for shit, and we get

THE CALL.

THE OFFER.

Dudes. We are going to be TRIPLING our income. With benefits. And relocation help. And something else I can't remember because I am JUST SO GOBSMACKED.

I get wet just thinking about it.

I just taught the Impling how to scream into pillows. She thinks it's hysterical.

So...we know. Next year, this old MA resident will be posting from Houlton ME. The border lands. I have something solid to work towards now. A house. Preschool for the impling. A community. A neighborhood.

I could cry.

If I wasn't slightly drunk on cheap wine, I probably would be. The yoke is beginning to break away. By next June or July, it will be gone. A new life. A new home.

Possibly, a new yoke.

I welcome it.

A Little Wedding Music

First, let me say, I am not Catholic. I was brought up in a Unitarian Church, and am a heartily humanistic agnostic woman. I have, of course, been to all kinds of weddings, Jewish, Quaker, Catholic, Protestant, and all have been beautiful. I always kind of sit through the bits that seem to be more about promoting religion than celebrating the couple with (mostly) gracious patience. But I do not say prayers, I do not bow my head, and I don't join in on call and response. Since I don't subscribe to any religion, I'm not going to lie through my actions. I am there for my friends and family. As I am. No more, no less.

Well, actually, this time, it was more. The Impling came along. We sat together in the pews across the aisle from the organist, and she watched his feet and fingers fly over the consoles and stared over the back of the pew at the towering pipes in the balcony. She whispered to me:

“The music is coming fwom the pipes!”

She stared as the bride walked down the aisle, and twisted in my father's arms to watch as she passed by. A few moments passed, a woman soprano who was channeling Enya sang a solo, and the bible readings began. The Impling looked around with rapidly evaporating interest, knelt on the pew beside me, and whispered in my ear “wanna go outside!”

My cute little heathen.

Luckily, I'd prepared for this by sitting in a spot with a quick escape route. And truth be told, I wanted to go outside too. So we made our quiet escape and the Impling ran around the parking lot in the late afternoon sun. We went back in for a bit, then back outside again, in and out, and in the meantime gazed at the stained glass windows, the bell tower, the statues, dipped fingers in the baptismal fonts, used the yellow parking lines as a balance beam. All in all, I'd say we did all right. We made it through the wedding without mishap.

The really great moments came later, at the reception. The Impling, I discovered, does NOT like loud noises. This includes clapping, cheering, and above all, the microphone. So when the priest's voice bellowed over the sound system:

“and now, we will bless the meal!” in the dead silence that followed, an ear splitting:

“NOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

the Impling's distressed cry echoed through the ballroom.

The prayer began, despite my daughter's single handed attempt at a humanistic version of exorcism, and I buried my shaking laughter in the Impling's neck as she glommed on to me and cried out:

“NO! No more clapping!” The eyes of the surrounding tables on me. I felt a fierce, primal protectiveness. Suffer. A little rejection is good for the ego. Brings you down to earth.

How much do I love my daughter? I thought there was no way I could love her more than I did that moment. Over the next moments, the Impling learned how to hold her hands over her ears if she needed to.

Interestingly enough, once we made it through dinner and my aunt's unstoppable criticism of the food (she sent back her steak saying it was inedible, then poked at her chicken, which was to dry, and polished off her flaming cherries jubilee, which was too sweet), and the music started, suddenly, the noise didn't matter so much.

The Impling rocked out. Her inner Goddess, as it turns out, has no problem with “Mustang Sally”.

Tree Peeping (of a sort)

My family is an old one..we are descendants of some of the first families of New England. My parents claim they can trace back our ancestry to William Bradford on one side, and William Brewster on the other. There is a sea captain (by marriage) on my Dad's side, and some speculation that there were some interracial marriages early on into the Wampanoag tribe. On my Mom's side, we can only trace her father's family back to a certain point. As the Penobscot (and many other peoples) sometimes did to survive in the 1800's, they pretended they were white. Tribal records only go back so far, and when forces of society made it seem necessary for members to change their names to sound more English, the family trees were broken, and we were left with a mysterious past.

There are missing roots of our tree that probably lead deep into the lives of a people who were here thousands of years before my ancestors Bill and Bill decided to kiss the Netherlands goodbye and grace the New World with their particular brand of intolerance. And they were here long before the silversmith who was my great great grandfather on my Dad's side decided to move shop to New England sometime in the 19^th century.

As a result of all this hidden family, sometimes we come upon unexpected moments when we see a resemblance too close to be just chance. While traveling up in Maine during our honeymoon years ago, Dr. Science and I visited Indian Island, in Old Town, Maine. A reservation on a tiny island in the middle of the Penobscot River with a population of a little over 400 people, I was depressed at the thought that this people who had once roamed so freely through the wilds of New England and Canada were now just as confined as the rest of us to land, house and money (or lack of it). Once caretakers of the earth, now caretakers of their history, and their children who continue to learn the songs, the dances, the language, and the skills of their ancestors.

The Penobscot Nation Museum is a small building that reminded me of camp lodges I had visited as a child. Dr. Science and I wandered in to a dim interior, kept darker to preserve the old photographs, and the beautiful works of art we found within. At some point in time growing up, I'd heard somewhere that there is no “Native American” word for art. That beauty and utility were almost synonymous, and that there should never be one without the other. All art could be utilized, and all utensils were art. I've no idea if this is true, but I love the concept.

I've also heard that taking a photo of a person is akin to taking their soul. To look at some of the old pictures, I could easily believe it. There were so many faces, elders with elaborate tribal vests covered with double curve designs, young children in traditional dress leaning against Penobscot bows, school children stiff and silent in itchy looking clothes, and then...one face suddenly arrested my attention. I stood staring through the glass at a small black and white head-shot. It was an image from the 1920's, a young girl, in three quarter view, gazing at the camera with a quiet, inscrutable smile. I couldn't speak for a moment. Because it was my mother I saw, staring up at me.

Of course, it couldn't have been her, and it wasn't. Joe Neptune, the wonderful curator who spent literally hours talking with us about the museum, life on the island and in Old Town, and the history of the surname “Neptune”, said the picture was of Mary Alice Nelson, aka Molly Spotted Elk, an entertainer from the 1920's and 30's.

She had 13 siblings, so perhaps a connection to the family isn't a far-fetched as one might believe, but it isn't necessarily something I need to pursue. It was the moment that was the gift...the surprise of seeing my mother, and myself in that glass case, hiding somewhere behind the eyes of a woman we never knew, who lived a life we can only dream of. Her extraordinary life.

But it is as if that blood still flows in our veins, because behind my mother's deceptively quiet countenance lies another extraordinary life, who has shown me how to see the extraordinary in the ordinary as well...the art in the utensil, the beauty in the banal. And for that one can't be buried in the past...just intensely, immediately present.