Giving thanks

To tap in once again to the sentimental side...

There are times of warmth in life, when nearly everyone in the country is sitting down to a meal together, perhaps for the first time in years, perhaps after long-standing tradition, like clockwork, 3 o'clock, 5 o'clock, after the game. There is, for most, a wonderful turkey to enjoy, brown and juicy. (Grandpa always takes the dark meat: it has more taste.) There are Grandma's lumpy potatoes, just the way we like them. Two pans of stuffing: one for the vegetarians. The old family friend and her daughter have brought round a cranberry dish you've never tried; the Korean grad student you have invited has brought a pecan pie. Calls have been made to make sure no one else is lonesome today, last minute invitations go out. There's always room for one more. Tiny New York kitchens are filled with pots and pans, Mom, unused to such a small space, still happily stirs the gravy over the gas burners as you squeeze in beside her to tell her thanks for coming. The eaters get restless, Dad gets his hands ready to carve. And then we gather round the table, regardless of creed, color, or political bent, to give thanks. This holiday is my favorite of all holidays, because it has been stripped of commercialism, of candy, of paper hearts, and is about the true heart: family, friends, togetherness.

This year I am thankful for opportunity, the opportunity to travel, to explore sidestreets, to read, to sit for a moment and type out a few thoughts. I am thankful for collective wisdom, for my own still-forming wisdom, and the chance for others to share their wisdom with me. I am thankful for the friends who had the kindness to squeeze in two more chairs today to let us give thanks with them (and about 50 of their close, personal friends at an Irish pub) since we couldn't make it back to Ohio. I am thankful for health, and I am even a little bit thankful for the sicknesses that force us to realize that we need to appreciate each other more while we are here on earth. Most of all, I am thankful for words and what they have the power to do. And that is why I am writing this to you.

May you and yours all have a wonderful and happy thanksgiving.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Pleasant Valley

As the car came down out of the hills and turned off the Pinhook Road the whole of the valley, covered in snow, lay spread out before us with the ice-blue creek wandering through it between the two high sandstone ridges where the trees, black and bare, rose against the winter sky. And suddenly I knew where I was. I had come home!
Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley

Louis Bromfield was a Columbia-educated Pulitzer Prize winning author and screenwriter, who, just before the onset of World War II, decided to pluck his family from the approaching march of danger and move them to the valley where he grew up in Ohio. He bought acres of land in Pleasant Valley, at the heart of the lush rolling landscape between Columbus and Cleveland. He was primarily interested in soil conservation, a hot topic after aggressive farming practices had destroyed the topsoil, desiccating lands all across the country, and ultimately causing the economic and environmental tragedy of the Dust Bowl. And more than anything, he wanted to get his hands back in the soil, a lifestyle he had learned while growing up on his grandfather's farm.

On a recent trip back to Ohio, we took a tour of Malabar Farm. We walked through Bromfield's office, where he lived the dual life of farm owner and author. We saw the hall where Lauren Bacall married Humphrey Bogart, and the bedroom of Bromfield's literary manager, modeled after his favorite hotel room in New York. We admired the furniture imported by Mrs. Bromfield from their pre-war Parisian home. Malabar Farm was a realization of my dream: at the crossroads of Hollywood, Europe, New York, and rural Ohio. But it was beyond the walls of the farmhouse, in the land described in Pleasant Valley, where the romance really came to life for me.

My dad grew up in the area around Pleasant Valley, and the story of Bromfield is wrapped up in my mind with the story of my dad. As I read the Bromfield book, I would mention locations to him, and he'd tell me stories. About the motorcycle boys in the sixties who used to ride along Pinhook Road, about the motorcycle my dad bought to join them. About the hush that crept through the town when Bromfield died. I even discovered the story of my grandparents' first encounter while reading Bromfield: it was the wife of Bromfield's farm manager, Max Drake, who invited my grandmother to the 4H dance where she first laid eyes on my grandfather.

Bromfield's story is also somewhat my own. My childhood was filled with tastes of the lifestyle of the Ohio farmer. We did chores: helped the farmhand Lum change the hay in the stalls, feed the horses. It was on the farm that I first tasted real mint, plucked from the ground by my grandmother as we looked for weeds along the fences. My grandparents took us to ag conferences across the country; they took me to North Carolina, and while my grandfather attended lectures on farm management, I made a lamp out of a mason jar. The things that a farm kid might do, or so it seemed to me.

It was the visual beauty of the farm that made it so romantic to me, both then and now. The bales of hay rising to the top of the barn. The brand new kittens in a dark corner, eyes still close after birth. The thunder that never ended, rolling over hill after hill as it crossed the countryside. The first Christmas I brought my husband (when he was still just a boyfriend) to the farm to meet my grandmother, we went to see my cousin's high school basketball game up the road. When we left the game to head back to the farm, the massive sky was pink, on the verge of a snow storm. As we pulled into my grandmother's house, a flash of white bolted across the drive. The horses had escaped from the barn. My dad directed me and my husband into triangular positions, surroundings the horses, and slowly we guided them back into the corral and latched the fence. It was my equivalent to Bromfield's hands in the dirt, and I thought of nothing else on the drive back to New York.

It is something I still think about, but I have a dose of realism keeping me grounded in my own urban landscape. That side of my family is full of farmers and ag workers. At a recent family reunion, I told my dad's cousin how I envied his life, and he looked at me like I was crazy. "It's not an easy life." And I told him I was under no illusions: I wouldn't last a week as a farmer. I love the idea, based on smidgens of memory: The dirt under the fingernails, the early morning silhouette of the barn. The farmstead in winter, with jars of preserves in the pantry. My grandfather in the distance, high on his tractor, mowing the lower field across the road. But I find it hard to imagine the lazy bones in this body doing the work it takes to have that life. And I wonder if, once in it, I would appreciate it in the same way, or if the romance would disappear like the morning mist over the hills.

I think my own Pleasant Valley is little more than a sentimental daydream.

(Watch a video about Bromfield and Malabar Farm at OurOhio.org.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Square eyes

I spent a good chunk of my childhood without a television. My parents simply didn't own one. They rented a set for the 1980 Winter Olympics, but until I was five years old, when we inherited my grandparents' black-and-white portable, I had no television at home. You would think, then that I would have a healthy relationship with the box. The problem is, sometimes when you are denied something, you only crave it more.

When I was about four years old, I was visiting a friend's house, and she was watching Mr. Rogers, or Sesame Street. (Remember the days when the only children's programming on weekdays was on PBS?) As the story goes, the expression on my face suddenly froze, and I sat, unmoved, staring wide-eyed, absorbing. The mother of my friend was so frightened by my reaction to the television that she called my mother: "Is she allowed to watch television? Because she's absolutely glued to it right now, and I can't get her away..."

I have had an unhealthy relationship with television ever since. In the past few years, I have managed to refine my relationship. The DVR has curbed the urge to flick, and bit by bit I find myself settling into a habit of watching a few exclusive shows, abandoning those that don't live up to my standards for crisp, literary dialogue, challenging aesthetic, and artistic editing. (To come clean, there are some glaring exceptions, a few shows I watch somewhat religiously that fit into none of these categories, "The Girls Next Door" - the show that gives multiple meanings to the word "boob tube" - being the most obvious and deliciously tacky example.) But it took me years to move beyond that initial reaction to the television, that inescapable attraction, that mesmerism.

One of my earliest television memories is my babysitter's obsession with Luke & Laura's wedding on "General Hospital." The television was in the playroom (in my memory, it was always sunny: two intersecting walls of windows, yellow wallpaper, and orange carpet). The babysitter, probably a student of my mom's, or possibly one of the younger girls from up the road, was giddy with anticipation. She probably sat still, much the same way I had, unable to be torn away from the set with a child's pleas to play a game or to let me hide and force her to seek me out. So I must have watched the wedding with her.

Today I glimpsed an ad on the side of a phone booth announcing the return of Laura (from a coma, I believe), 25 years after the two characters were originally married. The photograph was of their wedding day: Luke in his glorious afro, and Laura in her early eighties golden sheen. I used to think these people were real, and that their wedding was a national event. It caused me to smile, that ad. Twenty-five years. Sometimes it takes my breath away to have memories so old. Even if they do come from the boob tube.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

The desire for everyday things

I had started to write a post on the colors of the autumn trees and appetite stimulants (which began sentimental and bright, yet limp, like a half-cooked Robert Frost poem: "So the trees are in their last burst of yellow"), and was about halfway through when I realized that I was boring myself just writing about it. The only remotely interesting line I was able to come up with was: "I don't, by the way, eat Big Macs in autumn. Only in the spring, on road trips. Every four years."

If that gives you any idea.

Instead.

For now.

I will relate yet another anecdote from my life that may deserve no more than the thin smirk normally afforded to a New Yorker cartoon caption...

Last night, in a mood which can only be described as "pepperoni-induced," I tried to convince the husband that we should buy one of these. My rationalization? "That's only 50 cents per wake-up for a whole year!"

Somewhere, probably deep inside my solar plexus, Common Sense (with his straight tie and pomaded hair) and his proud mistress Good Intention wag their fingers at me.

My attraction to this particular stereo is (as with everything) purely nostalgic. The large dial and wood casing remind me of the stereo in my grandparents' living room, where we would listen to Little Orley records and Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." And, as with everything else that I remember fondly from my grandparents' house (the Dial antibacterial soap for handwashing, the flourescent undercabinet kitchen light that lit my grandma as she brought me slices of bread to quell my raging midnight heartburn), I must have it. It's not just their house. It's the kitchen stools from the apartment where I lived as an exchange student in Riga. The starburst frosted glass window that separated the two bathrooms in my childhood home. The old hulk of a Frigidaire in my grandmother's country kitchen. Even the brown speckled coffee mug my Dad used at work in the 1980s. These are the things I desire. I'm condemned to forever attempt to fill my world with replicas of the everyday items owned by people I love, like calling ghosts at a seance with a lock of hair.

If only these things all came as cheap as the Dial soap.

Today's soundtrack: Billy Bragg - "Greetings to the New Brunette" (YouTube)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.

Where I was from

A post on Pittsburgh by Dutch over at Sweet Juniper got me thinking about where I come from, and about city pride. I've lived in New York City for nearly seven years now, and I still don't think of myself as a New Yorker. I don't think I ever will. I could give you pretty good directions to Frederick Douglass Boulevard from Grant's Tomb, or tell you which train would be best to take to get to Coney Island, and even tell you where to go to get an expensive, but delicious mojito (the Maritime Hotel). But I've never felt connected to this city in the same way I've felt connected to other places I've lived. And I've never been able to subscribe to the idea that New York is the greatest place on earth. Woody Allen would not like to meet me.

During our recent trip to Croatia, we struck up a conversation with the woman who worked at the poolside bar in our hotel. We told her where we were from (whenever asked, my husband and I always state first where we were born, and then only secondly where we live), and upon hearing "New York" she said "Oh! The most beautiful city on earth." And I very nearly choked on my (delicious local Croatian) wine. Here we were, not a stone's throw from the old town of Rovinj, which I had just discovered was quite possibly the most beautiful town on earth, and here she was, praising the skyscrapers and the glitz we had been fleeing from. We agreed that it was an exciting place, but her use of the word "beauty" struck me as so funny.

I've always associated beauty with old, and old with either nature or cobblestones. I'd much rather sit on the edge of lush forest, smelling the dirt on my hands, overturning rocks to find pill bugs, than to be sat on a park bench listening to the hum of humanity just beyond the thin line of trees. I'd rather wobble as I walked, and feel dizzy at the loss of direction than feel like I was getting nowhere across the smooth pavement, counting down the monotonous streets: 17th, 16th, 15th... But to some, and sometimes to me, the sun as it hits the Chrysler Building is a wonderful thing. I'll choke up on hearing Gershwin in the opening credits of "Manhattan," and even the lone saxophonist on the corner of Broadway and 84th st can bring a tear to my eye. And there are many reasons I love this city: the convenience of 24-hour delis, taxi cabs, near perfect public transportation, my favorite West Village bookshop, the excitement of never knowing what's around the next corner. But beautiful? This city of sidewalk stains and gutter stench? Solitude and greed? Perhaps I'm not looking hard enough myself.

In this sense beauty is relative. Where I come from, however, is not.

The day I had to give up my thick plastic Ohio's driver's license for the wobbly New York equivalent was one of the saddest days of my life. I watched as the woman behind the desk at the DMV stapled my old license to my name change application, shoved it into an envelope, and I belatedly, chokingly said goodbye to the Heart Of It All.

Southwestern Ohio. I wouldn't have chosen another place on earth in which to grow up. My formative years were spent in the most idyllic place: nature was my backyard, my inspiration, the university town in my front yard was my lesson, my opportunity. When I think about starting a family, I often find myself on the verge of tears knowing that my child might not have the Keaton-esque family upbringing that I had. The backyard, the large kitchen, the ability to play outside in the street until dusk.

It's at those times that I think of returning. Of setting down roots in some small Ohio town, finding the perfect 1920s farmhouse for a (lengthy and stressful) conversion into a family home. A neighborhood where I can buy sweet corn from local farmers, walk home from work, sign my kid up for soccer teams, and still attend a lecture by Mikhail Gorbachev (for this, small university towns exist).

But then I have to remind myself that it wasn't just Ohio that was idyllic, it was Ohio in the early, idealistic 1980s. Every time I go back, I notice the roads get wider, the bicycles fewer. The central town square which was once dominated by a bright sea-green lead-painted watertower under which we used to run and skip over rough bricks is now a blandly-manicured park. The strip malls and subdivisions stretch longer along roads that were once lined with rows of corn and soybeans, where we used to dig for arrowheads with dad. The Ohio I grew up in no longer exists.

Is it too late to find that place back in time? That beautiful place, both old and full of nature? I think it's impossible to go back in time, but not impossible to replicate it. I haven't explored this country enough to know where to look. And perhaps it's the forgotten places, the ones teased by movie stars, somebody else's punchline if you will, that may provide the most promise.

Or, perhaps, maybe I'll just have to remember that a place is made by the people in it, and we'll just have to fill our home with the joy I remember growing up surrounded by, and the location, place names, city or country, will all fade into insignificance.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.