A couple of days ago, I read this poem:

The Persistent Accent

---------------Until the grave covers me, on foreign soil
------------------I shall remain Hungarian
---------------------------------Hungarian folk song

Because this fat old lady
has exactly the voice
of my dead grandma,
I find myself
trailing her through the supermarket
as she complains to her friend
about the Blacks, the kids, the prices,
age, disease, and certain death,
and I'm seduced
by that Hungarian accent
decades in this country can't diminish,
and I see the smoky fires
of the harvesters, a golden-braided girl
fetching their dinners of peppers and lamb,
and I follow her
through the aisles,
wanting to lay my face
between her hands,
to ask her for a song.

Now, my grandma wasn't fat---rail thin, in fact. She wasn't Hungarian but English. She didn't have an accent. But this poem has called her into my memory anyway. Nearly intact: bony hips under polyester pants; dark grey, curly hair; a scent of moisturizer and coffee and denture cream. She was the kindest person I think I've ever known, although I also know that idea---her unconditional love---comes from my child mind. I only knew her as a grandma, adored by my childhood self, and never as an adult or a woman or anything else. But still---I cling to that memory of her kindness because it makes kindness seem more possible.

I think the line that drew her so clearly to mind was this one: "Wanting to lay my face/between her hands." I remember my grandma's hands very clearly. The age spots, the soft, wrinkled skin that, when you pinched it, would tent into peaks that would stay up until she bent her fingers. The softness of the finger pads. Her hand riffling through her jewelry box to find a string of puka shells for me to play with. Holding her hand. I wouldn't ask her for a song, though. I'd ask her for a story. She used to tell me all about her mother, the Amy I was named for, and her dad, the Nathan mine was named for. They seemed to be magical and amazing, Amy and Nathan, Nathan and Amy. But I cannot remember any of the stories, only the feeling they evoked.

But maybe that's why I so get this poem. I wonder if everyone has those moments when you're in a crowded place and someone walks by who reminds you so strongly of a person you've lost, strongly enough that for a second it seems all you must do is tap them on the shoulder. They'll turn around and somehow the person you've lost is returned to you. And then you can ask them for the thing you need most from them. It is a seductive thought. It makes me wonder what my grandma would think of the life I've made for myself, or how I might relate to her as an adult. Could she still bring me that contented happiness she gave me as a child? Probably not. But the poem made me believe, just for a minute, that she could.

1994...the year we got a cat, cleared our yard of weeds and planted grass, got pregnant with Haley---and the year I first heard the band Counting Crows. Back in about 1990 or 1991, when alternative music started to become mainstream---and thus lost its appeal for me---I started to float around, musically. I'd listen to the tapes (yep---tapes! Remember those?) I loved as a teenager, but rather than adding something new to my life they stirred up old memories and emotions (they still do, although I've updated to CDs, lol). So the new bands I came across during those next five years have significance because they tied me to my married life. And Counting Crows was one of them. Maybe because I could relate so well to the lyrics---moody and angsty but real. Gritty, somehow, and sad. I got it. I've been the girl in the car in the parking lot, walls occasionally crumbling.

Fast forward to last night. Excited hardly describes my mood about going to this concert. Seeing the Crows---being in the same room with them! How cool is that? I'm not usually one to get star struck. And honestly...say I bumped into the lead singer, Adam Duritz, by some magical twist of fate. I'd not care about getting his autograph or asking dumb questions like "are your dreds real?" Instead, I'd want to talk to him about lyrics, about the translation from experience to art. About living comfortably in your skin and finding who you are. No---not blind adoration. More of a sort of...intellectual admiration, I guess.

So. We had great seats. This was a free concert that Novell sponsored in conjunction with BrainShare (the Novell equivalent of CHA). They had a comedian before the concert, and then the sound check, and then the band came on. "Recovering the Satellites" was the first song they performed. The played nearly everything I hoped they would. The acoustic version of "Rain King" was especially good. Of course, the two songs I most wanted them to play, "Color Blind" and "Anna Begins" (my two favorite Crows songs) they didn't play. "Anna Begins" live might have just been too much for me to deal with anyway! The air was full of that concert smell---cigarettes, booze, leather jackets, anticipation. It was so loud I could feel it in my nose. And it was one of the best and the weirdest experiences I've had. Good because I just downright love their music. Because Adam Duritz was just as sincerely cool as I'd imagined. Good to be untethered for a few hours, with my eardrums buzzing and my body remembering what rock rhythms feel like.

But weird. I wonder if they've ever performed for such a mixed crowd. There were older people there, with grey hair and glasses (although, honestly---none of them lasted very long!). There were a few representatives from the leather-wearing masses (I did wear my leather jacket!). I saw someone with a child there---two or three years old (I kept worrying about that poor toddler's eardrums). And there were lots of computer geeks. The kind that clapped their hands to the wrong beat. It was just---strange. I felt very old.

I swear---one day I'll write about my goth-girl alter ego. But she was very close last night, just under the surface. Wanting to do something wild, to cast off this matronly, nearly-34-years-old skin, to laugh at the persona I present now. Who knows what might happen were I to untie her completely? Mayhem. Luckily, the Crows tie me to adulthood. So, just for fun: A snippet of few of my favorite Crows lyrics:

• If you've never stared off into the distance then your life is a sham.
• If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts.
• What you fear in the night in the day comes to call anyway.
• The girl in the car in the parking lot says "Man, you should try to take a shot. Can't you see my walls are crumbling?"
• It seems night endlessly begins and ends and after all the dreaming I come home again.
• She's talking in her sleep, it's keeping me awake, and Anna begins to toss and turn. And every word is nonsense but I understand.
• She watches as her babies drift violently away 'til they see themselves in telescopes.
• She sees shooting stars and comets tails, she's got heaven in her eyes.
• I am covered in skin. No one gets to come in. Pull me out from inside. I am folded, and unfolded, and unfolding.
• You've been waiting a long time to fall down on your knees, cut your hands, cut yourself until you bleed.

And on that cheery note...I'm taking my stayed-up-way-too-late-last-night self off to bed!

I love this idea that my friend Heather has: make your resolutions on the first day of spring. She challenged her readers to post a resolution or goal that they had, with the idea that writing it down would make it stick better. I never got around to posting my resolution in her comments, so I'm doing it in my own!

OK. So, in theory, I label myself as a runner. From 2001 until August of 2004, I was simply, purely, completely addicted to running.  But since Kaleb was born, I just haven't been able to get myself back into the habit. (Why is it that it's so easy to get into a, say, diet Coke habit? or a sugar habit? but a healthy habit you must work at---WHY?) I've been really, really wanting to start training for a half marathon that's being run in SLC this June. Actually, I want to run THREE halves this year: the SLC in June, the Hobble Creek half in August, and the Moab half in October. But, to do any of them, I've got to just GET STARTED.

Yesterday something really great happened. I decided on a whim that I'd try to take Kaleb to the daycare at the gym. I could have been doing this for the past six months or so, but I've not because he's been SO attached to me. I couldn't imagine---quite literally, couldn't form the picture in my head---him hanging out somewhere without me. But I tried yesterday---and he did great! He played the entire time and didn't cry once. And suddenly I have this whole new vista opened up before me: the possibility of regular running time once again.

SO! The goal I am writing down: train for the June Half Marathon. And, just to keep myself on the ball, I'm going to start posting my mileage to my blog. Not in a boring way---just at the bottom of my entries. Hopefully Heather's idea will help me turn myself back into a Real Runner (not to mention shed this baby weight that insists on hanging around).

So. I've been feeling really bored lately with my dinner options. Like...just how many times can I make chicken and rice in one lifetime? But I've also felt frustrated with cookbooks lately, too, because it seems that whenever I try a new one, it is full of things I just never try. Apparently I am looking for an enigma: a new recipe that's not too new. Yesterday I found myself remembering, completely out of the blue, some book saying something about red potatoes and peas.  Hmmmm, I thought,  I think I have some frozen peas just waiting to be used! I decided to use my ingenuity and create something new for dinner. The result? YUMMY, if I do say so myself! Here it is:

Creamy Chicken and Potatoes

• 1 1/2 pounds chicken breast
• 2 cans chicken broth (separated)
• 2 cups half and half (separated)
• 1 package dry Italian dressing mix
• 2-3 T butter
• 1 1/2 tsp garlic (ish...more or less to taste)
• 5-6 small red potatoes
• 1 package sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup peas
• 1 1/2 cup corn
• 2 packages chicken gravy mix

Dice chicken into small cubes. Mix with garlic, then brown in about 2 T of butter. Pour ONE can of chicken broth and 3/4 cup of half and half over chicken. Stir in Italian dressing mix. Bring to a boil, then lower heat, cover, and let simmer at lowest possible heat. Dice potatoes (with skin). Cover with salted water and bring to a boil; cook till fork tender but not mushy, about 12 minutes. Meanwhile, saute mushrooms in remaining butter and defrost cor and peas. In a separate pan, combine the other can of chicken broth and the remaining half and half with the gravy mix; whisk and heat till smooth and hot. Drain potatoes. Add potatoes, corn, and peas to chicken (don't drain the chicken) and pour the gravy over all. Stir 'till combined. The sauce will not be very thick. Serve hot.

Kendell was at Brainshare today (Novell's annual Great Big, Very Important Conference), and he had dinner at Red Lobster. I was SO sad he wasn't home to taste this new recipe. But, he told me when he got home that Counting Crows is doing a concert for Brainshare attendees. Now we're trying to figure out who can watch Kaleb because HOLY COW, Counting Crows is one of my favorite bands. I'm totally excited at the prospect of seeing them perform!

Spring in Utah: It's snowed for the past two days and is supposed to snow tomorrow. I think we've received more snow so far in March than we did in all of January! On Friday I got outside and weeded my front flower beds (HOW can there be weeds already, when there haven't been very many warm days yet?) before the rain started. I like the thought of the coldness against the weeded dirt...as if the snow can reach and freeze the roots I missed. I am enjoying this snow, even though I am longing for spring, because I know it won't stick around. In a day or two it'll be vanished. Green IS coming, so I am enjoying this last bit of white.

I read this poem today, by M. S. Merwin, who is a poet I love. His poems use a very free sort of language, with enjambed sentences that can be read on their own or as a part of the next line. Plus, his work is full of nature, which I respond to. I thought I'd share, just because:

Trees

I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from the earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches

And now I'm thinking about how, no matter how amazing or glorious the next life will be, there have got to be things we will miss, if only for their comparative homeliness. Which is making me think---what things on this earth, in this live, do I love? Here's a list, just because:

1. flowers
2. new babies
3. the back of the boys' necks after they've had a haircut
4. the shape of Haley's eyes
5. chocolate
6. the way you feel after you've worked outside all day: a little shaky, thirst, hot, but very deserving of cold water, food, and a shower
7. Mount Timpanogos, which I have a lovely view of right outside my kitchen door, and living by mountains
8. The southern Utah desert; Bryce Canyon is my favorite
9. That state of consciousness when you are just about to drift off to sleep, and it seems that sleep is the sweetest food you'll ever have
10. Flannel sheets and down comforters, not to neglect brand new, fluffy pillows
11. poems
12. not to copy Merwin...but trees
13. schools---the buildings themselves, and that school smell...old lunches, old chalk dust, anxiety
14. Kendell scratching my back
15. libraries
16. the smell of the air at night after a snowfall
17. the smell of the air right when a rainstorm starts
18. rain
19. autumn leaves
20. Lake Powell
21. reading
22. books themselves---just scattered everywhere
23. taking pictures and scrapbooking
24. hanging out with a good friend over good food
25. going to the movies
26. finding a really great sale
27. being with my sisters
28. holding a sleeping baby---his head under your chin and the sweet, limp weight against your shoulder

So...apparently I like a lot of things about this life and this world! Thought I'd stop somewhere random before I got boring. Happy equinox!

My friend Sophia issued a challenge yesterday: Share ten things you recommend. I liked her list so much I'm going to take her up on the challenge!

1. Plant daffodils in your flowerbeds. They take almost ZERO effort once the bulbs are planted and they come up every spring more abundant than the year before. Those cheery, yellow, fluffy flowers make the world spring again.
2. Buy some chocolate-covered cinnamon bears. Or...maybe I should recommend that you DON'T buy them! They are absolutely delicious but right up there with crack cocaine for their addictive qualities. Seriously...I LOVE these!
3. Wear these Mizuno socks. I started wearing them when I developed a bad case of plantar fasciitis. They have this tight (yet stretchy) band that runs around the arch of your foot and oh MY are they comfy. I started just wearing them for running. Now I wear them everywhere!
4. Got diaper rash? Get bag balm. I know---it was originally designed for cows. It doesn't have very cute baby-style packaging. But it works SO WELL on diaper rash!
5. Spend some time on Amazon.com. Is that a strange recommendation? Seriously, Amazon is one of my favorite website. I can (and quite often DO) spend hours surfing, reading book reviews and following links to writers I would never have heard of otherwise. If you have a teenager who is a reluctant reader, send him/her to Amazon, too. Type in a book you love and you'll find a list of recommendations for similar books. I am so fully aware that this is a HUGE marketing control device...but if it helps me find more and better writers, I'm all for it!
6. Buy your kids' clothes at The Gap. I hope that doesn't sound snobby. It's just that after dressing three rough-and-tumble boys and being able to have plenty of hand-me-downs, I am sold on the quality!
7. Land's End flannel sheets. Speaking of quality. Yep, they're a bit more expensive. But they are SO comfy and amazingly soft!
8. Read something by Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, or Toni Morrison.  These are just a few of my favorite authors!
9. Watch an episode of Digging for the Truth on the History Channel. OK, maybe it's geeky. But I LOVE this show! It's all sorts of cool stuff about a bunch of different topics. My most favorite episode? The one about Stonehenge. Totally cool.
10. Make this when you need a kickin' appetizer. Or when you just want to indulge! I craved this SO badly during my pregnancy with Nathan that I swear the kid is about 35% artichoke dip and corn chips...

• 1 can artichoke hearts (the kind in water, NOT oil)
• 1 can diced green chilis
• 3/4 cup mayo
• 2 cups shredded montery jack cheese
• 1/2 cup fresh parmesan

Drain the artichokes. In a blender or food processor, puree the artichokes until they are mostly smooth (leave a few little chunks). Add the rest of the ingredients, stirring until blended. Pour into a PAM'ed pie plate. Sprinkle a little extra cheese on top (either or both). Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. Serve with corn chips, pretzels, or Fritos.

Maybe it's the weather---it's snowed four times in the last eight days, and although snow usually makes me feel peaceful, so much of it during the week my daffodils usually bloom has my psyche reeling. But it might just be a bit more than grey skies and cold winds that has me feeling depressed. For me, depression isn't about long crying jags; instead it is as if I am turning to stone, as if I can feel nothing. Even my skin feels numb, and my emotions? They are just nothing. Nothing.

Trying to cheer myself up, I binged on a glut of 80s teen flicks like Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club. This usually works a bit, because it serves to remind me that geeky teenagers quite often turn out to be successful adults. Not that I was a geeky adolescent---one day I will blog all about my rebellious teenage years. But I was shy and insecure, unskilled at the girl games and at managing to look perfect as it seemed everyone else did. But this go around of brat-pack therapy did little to cheer me, because it hit me hard---I might have been a weird outsider of an adolescent, but that successful adulthood? Hmmm, just where did that vanish?

It took a bit of serendipity to turn the tide of nothingness. We're getting new windows, and a few minutes before the guy stopped by to give us the bid, I realized that Haley hadn't cleaned her room before she left for school. So I rushed in to clean it (which is something I rarely do these days; I think she's old enough to clean her own room) and I stumbled across one of her Christmas gifts, a boxed set of Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time quartet. These four books were a staple of my 'tween reading. They tell a few family stories about the Murry family, a pair of brilliant scientists and their children. On the surface, these books are about science, time travel, mythic creatures, and religion in a strange sort of way---religion as one aspect of science, I think. They present a worldview that says hush. Yes, there is evil in the world. But the good is battling the evil and will never stop.

I needed that hush. So I've been rereading these four books. Reading them again as an adult has been my own little bit of time traveling. Many things I have thought about for a long time stem directly from them. Like---think about a place in nature you love. You're sitting there, right now; now, stop to think of how many other people in past ages have also loved that place. And how much time has passed to form it. You start to feel how time is a series of layers, and I think about this whenever I am outside. It is why I want to visit Europe, because it seems that no matter where you stepped there, you would be treading on a place so many other people have lived on. I thought this idea was only my own, but I think it got its seed from L'Engle's books.

But what I needed even more was one of the books' reoccurring themes: the individual matters. The choices YOU make matter and have everlasting consequences. Just one person, or just one tiny bit of cellular matter---matters. Can change things. In my loneliness and sadness, I needed that reminder.  Even though they're Haley's books, I underlined something in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, something that I wanted to remember and that I want her to never forget. One of the characters, Matthew, is speaking to the girl who will soon marry his twin brother, about a book he is writing:

What happens in one time can make a difference in what happens in another time, far more than we realize. . . Nothing, no one, is too small to matter. What you do is going to make a difference.

And that, right there, is why I adore books---not, in the end, because of story or use of language, pacing or theme or even for the escape. I adore books because it seems that knowledge is flung out into the world, and you find bits and pieces of it here and there when you're reading. And sometimes you get lucky and find the bits you need right at the right time, so that by finding knowledge you also find a bit of peace. And your feelings start to work again.

I've been wanting to read this book, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, for quite awhile. Alas, my library didn't have a copy of it, and as I have banned myself from shopping at Amazon, I had to keep waiting. But then I found myself in possession of a Border's gift certificate and I could finally get my hands on it. Deliciously thick, this book; 642 pages of little type.

You could say this book is about vampires, Dracula in particular. I never knew that the legend of Dracula was based on an actual man, Vlad the Impaler, who fought to keep his little country, Wallachia, out of the hands of the Ottomans. He was a horrible man, a cruelty artist as likely to torture his own people as he was the unlucky Ottomans who crossed him. It is also about scholars who are tracking down this ellusive historical character. It's a love story as well as a father/daughter story, not to mention the relationship between mentor and mentoree. The story itself is intriguing, interesting, informative and, despite the length, face paced.

But what intrigued me more than the story was the method the historians used to track down the legend. Letters, unknown books, secrets, folk songs, relics, maps, oral history, crazy old monks. Those ancient documents---one letter in Istanbul, for example, and its companion in Bulgaria---steeped in the scent of centuries, stained, torn, yet held at one time by a real, breathing person. It has made me think, ever since finishing, how difficult it is to piece together any history, and how histories are made up of many, many voices. I thought about one of my literary theory classes in college, when we discussed new historicism. The professor (my favorite one!) said something that I continue to think about: history is told by the conquerers. The conquered don't get to tell their stories because they are lost in ruin, or destroyed, or subjugated. All of the small little stories about Dracula had to be linked together, and that linking was made much more difficult by politics and dictators.

All of which has made me think about my own history. I mean, not that I am important enough for someone to need to uncover my history. But if someone wanted to, how would they do it? What, for example, will happen to my journals and notebooks when I die? What about my scrapbooks? In, say, 100 years, how might a person learn more about me? And what unwitting clues am I leaving? Someone could learn a lot about me just by reading the comments I've made in the books I read---unless all my books are given to charity once I die, like my grandma's were. And which ancestor left clues for me to follow, back to her story, and how could I find them?

I'm left, having finished this book, thinking about the very nature of time, of death and of archives and of the written word. I think The HIstorian's version of Dracula might like this thought I am left with. He thought that by gathering history together, he could control the future. Is that possible? What impact does history have on us, on my life right NOW? How much of the person I am is based on ME, how much on the people who sired me through all the preceeding generations? In the end, I think I like this book so much because it makes me ask myself those questions but it doesn't give an answer; they are inherently unaswerable, I think. Unless you can stumble across a Draculian archive of your own.