At 2:00 a.m. this morning, 1 wrenched my
wretched frame out of the cot, threw on an old
Mackinaw coat and a pair of pants, and stumbled out
under the night sky. Folks touted this as a singular
night, a chance to witness something once in 300
years, a meteor shower.
At first I didn't see much. Oh, it was glisteny
all right, with a sweet east wind soughing the
branches of my spruce trees. Then it started.
Celestial contrails like zippy slug paths across the
night sky. God shooting tracer rounds across the
heavens from the mountains toward the sea horizon.
I started oohing and aahing like a giddy kid on the
Fourth of July, dancing around like a dervish
possessed.
This made the July Fourth Fireworks look like
a kindergarten picnic! This was a sky riot, a Captain
Billy's Whizz Bang. It out-Floyded Pink Floyd. 1 felt
awe. Fear and trembling overtook me.
On her radio program Saturday evening,
Susie McLerie spoke of an Indian tribe in the
Americas. These people believe that shooting stars
in the night sky are departed loved ones, whose souls
are traversing the heavens. 1 like that notion.
After 15 minutes of gawking, I started getting
practical. I've ogled the dark firmament for hours in
the past, clutching some secret wish to my bosom,
hoping for confirmation, that special star shooting
across the nether. Here was a veritable rain of stars,
flashing across the sky like a school of turbo-charged
anchovies. Hey, Lindsey, 1 bethought myself, get to
wishin'!
I started out kind of easy like, wishing for the
obvious, world peace and harmony. I threw in a
hope for dignity, decency, a fair shake for mankind.
Yes! A couple of meteor fragments coursed the air.
Hell, those things just kept blazing by, so I started
getting a bit personal, even a shade self-interested.
Ask for health and security, an inner voice told me.
Whoosh! A big old burst zinged by. Damn! I
thought, i'll throw in longevity for balance. Splash!
Another winged toward the sea. My heart of hearts
wished for that special girl. No sweat. It was star
assured instantly.
"Be Jaysus!" I says to myself. " I might as
well shoot the moon."
The long and short of it is this: I wished for
Infinite and Eternal Bliss for all of us. We're aces
starting last night at 2:20 a.m. I double and triple
proofed it. Everything's Beaulah Land for all of us
from now on. We are sky guaranteed. Jubilo and
Rapture will reign. Rest easy in your boots, dear
peoples!
Tracy Erfling N.D .
Naturopathic Physician
Treating Women
& Their Families
10 Duane • Astoria, Oregon 97103
■325-9194 • Email: erflingnd@hotmail.com
Christmas Tea
by Eliznlx-th Savage
The Heathman in full form: the impossibly high
ceilings brushed by the spiny green index finger of the delicate
outstretched arm of an impossibly tall, majestic, fragrant—the
platonic ideal of a Noble Fir. The tree looks something like a
young female member of the British aristocracy dressed up for
prom: the gold ribbons and balls, if not exactly gaudy, are
thoughtless and in poor taste, hardly a contribution to her
beauty, and, while nothing could detract from her natural,
dictionary-on-head grace, hardly comfortable.
There is a Are going, and there are extremely quiet
little girls in itchy velvet dresses (their deer-like stillness, no
doubt, in large part due to the bloodcurdling glances of their
mothers and the poisonous smiles of aunts and paternal
grandmothers) whose patent leather shoes do not quite touch
the lushly carpeted forest-green floor. There is nothing more
pleasing to the distinguished sensibilities than the enjoyment of
a late-aftemoon tea, particularly if supplemented by a string
quartet, and most particularly if it happens to be Christmas.
The string quartet in question is smugly deferential,
their post-hip lilting (like an interior decorator’s accent) pleases
my mother to no end. The tea is divine—the little holier-than-
thou finger sandwiches and frigid, jelly-filled cookies, the sure,
athletic, steaming, arching, water-lobbing silver service gleams.
My mother and I were having tea on Christmas.
That is all.
We were having tea on Christmas, and I was obliquely
aware of being Very Dressed Up. The revolving door heaved a
sigh and cold air rushed into my chest. We walked down the
street—she, a porcelain miniature of a woman, took my arm
in what the doorman (cape, hat, and brass-button livery: it
reminds me of the absurd cruelty of dressing a chimpanzee
and then forcing it to perform) might have mistaken as a
tender, loving, motherly gesture.
Which, god only knows, may have been exactly why
she was taking my arm in the first place. I thrust my balled
fists as deep as they would go into the royal-blue silk-lined
pockets of my tapered black wool coat, the one that falls just
below the knee, allowing the street-side admirer (either a blue-
collar, grease-stained Neanderthal or a timidly-balding-Wall-
Street- Joumal-reading-crumpled-shirt-front-and-drab-
outsized-trench-coat-business-man-type. Although the former
are generally more vocal, the latter tend to clear their throats,
rustle their papers, or push their glasses up their noses) a
delectable view of my tall suede boots and nude-stockinged
hors d ’oeuvres knees. I jabbed my balled up fists into those
silk-lined pockets just as far as they would go—certainly not far
enough—nowhere near as far as fists in pockets on a proper
platonic ideal of a jacket would go. Alas, the pockets of this
particular jacket (ideal, might I add, in nearly every other way
and certainly the most acceptable jacket I’ve owned to date)
were, like the woman then clutching my arm, unbearably
shallow. But a warm blast of steam rose from a grate, and the
roman numerals on the clock on a great-big-histonc-bank-
building said that it was early evening in the winter, which is
pleasantly late, and a strange tea-cozy equilibrium set in and
suspended time. The fact was that time would, with some
clicking and whirring and grinding of gears, resume. This
seemed imminent, but far away. Walking out of the Heathman
and down the block was like walking on a tight-rope that is
burning, each thread snapping and recoiling like an adder that
has just got bit. I knew that we would come crashing down,
eventually. It took exactly one block.
By the time one hears an approaching avalanche, it is
already too late to escape. When my mother let go my arm,
there was a muted rumbling, and I pricked up my big velvet
ears and flared my wet-tire rubber nostrils. I blinked, and it
was upon me.
Enter my father: his smooth vermouth forehead
creased, his voice raised. He was spitting, which I couldn’t
help but think was remarkably uncouth for a man who solved
80% of his cases through out-of-court mediation. Surely the
charges brought against the defendant were often more grave
than this. The embezzlement of millions of dollars, say, or
the deceptive marketing of a poisonous household product. Or
there was one particular case he told us about, (sacrificing all
lawyer-client confidentiality laws to the mean-spirited god of
our collective voyeurism) wherein the defendant in question
capitalized on his wife’s multiple-personality-disorder to his
perverted, albeit inventive, sexual advantage. If courthouse
square is a courtroom, then this wasn’t just a trial: it was the
Spanish Inquisition, and we had drawn an audience. The
horror. My God, I thought, have they no shame?
If I don’t come home with them right now, then I’m
cut off. Given the cost of a liberal-arts education, this is quite
the threat. The terror the parental units feel imagining me with
that man is only a fraction of the terror they face at the prospect
of everyone talking about it. Recognizing this, it stands to
reason that terminating my liberal arts vacation would catalyze
my ruin. Unprotected by education, white trash is a sexually
transmitted disease. I take the fifth. Their alternate appeals to
my decency and accusations of ungratefulness feel like nothing
so much as strong gusts of wind. Everyone was watching, and
who could blame them? It was a car crash. Steeling my jaw, I
decided to call their bluff. I did so in a very soft voice.
No, I am not going home with them. I am not going
home at all. I am going to Jake’s, and I am going to stay there
for the final three weeks of my vacation, as planned. Their
spirited closing arguments were lost on me—I was distracted by
the bell of the salvation army. Eventually they tired themselves
out and left me there, hands in my pockets. I was twenty
years old. In some families, this is considered grown-up.
Pioneer Square is made of a million bricks, each
inscribed with a name. Many of these names belong to the
same athletic club, many of the names go to the Heathman for
tea. My name is down there, somewhere—I have been
immortalized in brick. The square’s tree is magnificent—an
Old-Growth sacrificial lamb, impossibly large, impossibly
upright. Its pitiless lights sparkle and swim before me. I stand
with my hands in my pockets, my breath steaming. I may
never move from this spot.
“Hey. Are you okay?” A little hippie girl peers up at
m e. A heart-shaped face is nestled in a mass of blonde
dreadlocks. I suck the snot back into my nose, nodding. I’ll
be fine.
“You had a fight with the folks? That was so no* PLURtT.-t
Huh?
-
. -.n a a .-
“Peace, love, unity, respect, you know?” She’s cute
enough to get away with that sort of thing. I, on the other
hand, am tough.
I was disowned.
“Really? Why?" Tiny dragon-fly barrettes sparkle in
her filthy hair. I rub my eyes with my index and middle
fingers.
I don’t know, it’s a long story.
“What happened?”
They don’t like my boyfriend.
“That sucks. I’m Rose.”
Nice to meet you, Rose, I’m Elizabeth.
“Do you want to smoke some weed?”
I’d love to.
I followed the butterfly on the back of her neck a few
blocks, until we were down under a bridge by the river. We
smoked a joint with one of her friends (attendants, really,) and
she kept telling me that everything was going to be okay. She
never took her patch-covered back-pack off. Later I realized
that she had tom holes in the back so that she could hide her
wings.
Jake McKinney and I sat in his walk-in closet, where
he always slept, on an old Star-Wars sleeping bag and a tangle
of pilled flannel sheets. I told him what had happened,
leaning with my back cradled in his chest and greedily inhaling
his smell (Old Spice, Big Red, but mostly and overpoweringly
HIS smell).
He kneaded my breasts distractedly as the phone rang
and I droned on. When he nodded, his red beard scratched
my neck. “Well,” he said, “You’ll never guess what happened
to me today...” He was walking downtown and passed Dick
and Libby. (He enjoyed using their familiar names.) They
walked right by without seeing him. (This is a phenomenon
particular to my mother—one that was instrumental in allowing
our forbidden relationship to flourish. There are several
instances when Mr. McKinney was literally caught in the
headlights of her Volvo Station Wagon—but Libby is blind to
what she does not want to see.) Jake turned around to watch
them pass by. I venture to guess that his stance and
expression, during that turn, were nearly identical to the one
he uses on barely-dressed underage girls. I imagine he
practically whistled at them. At this point, my father did a
double take, and a cartoon exclamation point appeared above
his graying head. My mother wasted no time in launching
herself at him. I am positive that Jake was smirking as my
father pulled her off. I am fairly certain that Libby got a few
good shots in there, beforehand. According to him , Jake said
something about me being a grown-up woman and my own
person, but it was lost in my father’s righteous roar as he
chased the smug little deadbeat down the street.
Safe in the flannel-lined closet, my fingers burrowing
into the folds of his corduroy pants, I laughed.
“What?"
“Have you heard of PLUR?”
He hadn’t. The phone stopped ringing. Less than
ten minute’s drive up the hill, in a totally different
neighborhood, my mother had hung up. I imagined her
sitting in front of the fire of our darkened living room. The
tree would be lit, reflecting off her third glass of red wine, her
wedding band, the glossy grand piano. Up a curving spiral
staircase, the woman’s husband would be drinking Maker’s
Mark in their bedroom. The man’s bourbon, the ice-cubes in
the tumbler, and his Rolex would reflect the otherworldly blue
of CNN. He’d slouch on the divan, chin on his chest, his face
an empty box.
Outside, it was beginning to snow.
Tree lover’s dilemma
I, the tree lover, have two trees that present
problems.
There’s a robust maple southwest of the house. It
began life as a vandalized sapling, attacked by passing kids,
but now dominates a good part of our yard, including most
of our vegetable garden. In summer, its dense shade lets
not a ray of sun reach the ground beneath it. In fall, its
leaves turn fiery red and gold—at least when we have cold
nights before tne rains begin. The early damage by vandals
has healed, producing an interesting trunk that forks into
three diverging trunks, which of course branch again and
again creating a dense crown. Every couple years we prune
this tree, removing branches in what my reference guide
calls thinning or "windowing", but it is to no avail. The tree
responds with more exuberant growth every time. Its
destiny is to be a big tree, but it's in the wrong place.
Moving it is out of the question; better to move the
vegetable beds.
On the other hand, there is an old hawthorn
directly in front of the house. Unlike the maple, the
hawthorn has been there as long as I can remember. It’s at
least $o years old, but not a hundred. In a 1908 postcard
photograph, which has a Christmas greeting in Finnish from
my great great uncle to my grandfather, there was a maple in
roughly tne same location.
The hawthorn has been a delight. From the
windows in the house, we can look into its thorny branches
and see various birds at all times of year — chickadees,
humming birds, juncos, goldfinches, varieties o f sparrows,
or a rare-for-us black throated gray warbler. Once a sharp-
shinned hawk sat for half an hour, watching for
prey—smaller birds—before losing patience and flying off.
W hen the hawthorn blooms, it’s a mass of tiny,
crimson blossoms. Bird feeders of various types hang from
its branches. Curly gray lichen and grizzled moss cling to its
twigs, testimony to age and illness. That’s the problem: the
hawthorn has been failing for years. Every summer, it drops
its leaves in August well before fall, a victim of poor, fast
draining sandy soils and black spot, a fungus that preys
upon all members of the rose family, of which the
hawthorn is one.
A deep gash invades the hawthorn’s trunk, not the
result of vandalism or other injury, but due to a type of
decay which invaded the moisture collecting crotch where
three major branches whorl out from the trunk. Each year,
that gash has gotten larger, and the early leaf drop has
gotten worse. Last winter, a major branch broke in the
upper reaches of the tree, unbalancing the crown.
I’ve watched these symptoms and not wanted to
take action. Like watching my old dog begin to fail, go
deaf, and stumble on the path, I’m resisting the truth about
this old tree and my obvious dilemma: slow decline into
inevitable death vs. quick dispatch.
This exceptionally dry year has struck a
psychological death knell for the hawthorn. Something
should be done, but what? Intense pruning in hopes of
bringing the growing part in balance with what must be an
overtaxed root system? O r complete removal? The idea of
no perches for birds, no chickadees hopping from twig to
‘rriy'^irrdbwsill. nd screening from the street, all these
consequences grieve me.
Reviewing our options, discussing the prognosis
with others, has produced memorial suggestions. Our
neighbor Mike, lover of wood especially when embodied in
boats, suggested giving a portion of the hawthorn to Bill, a
fine woodworker, to make something we could use to keep
the hawthorn alive in another form.
I’m in a dilemma. Like so many situations in life,
there’s no obvious black and white, no assurance that
action is better than inaction. My tendency is to delay,
hoping for a bit of wisdom that will clarify my decision or
present another option. Yet I know the sooner I remove
this tree and plant a new one, the sooner the birds and I
will have a tree to enjoy.
So sometime in late winter you may pass our house
and see the tree in shambles, broken apart and strewn
across the yard. O r you may pass by when the operation is
all over, tidied up, and wonder "W nat happened?
Something’s different, but I can’t place i t / And ifyou
realize a big old tree is now missing from the tree lover’s
yard, at least you’ll know why.
Victoria Stoppiello writes from Ilwaco, at
the lower left corner of Washington State
STOPPIELLO
Architecture
& EcoDesign
310 Loke Street
PO Box 72
Ilwaco. WA 98624
astoparc@ pocifier com
ANTHONY STOPPIELLO. Architect
3606424256
uw&tcerreMe Decerc&eR zooi