Travels with Kate: Motherhood still on my mind

I got so many nice responses to the posting about that day in the field in South Dakota, just before Kate was born, that I couldn't resist posting this other image of a horse. I would have to say this isn't my best moment of mothering, but it has been a kind of family joke (though at the time it wasn't...). We were traveling in Ireland. Perhaps ten years ago. Kate had a mane of long, chestnut hair, and as we were driving I spotted a horse whose hair was almost the exact same color as Kate's. I told my husband to stop the car because I wanted to take a picture of Kate with this horse. Kate was, and still is, quite fond of horses. We stopped and I told Kate to stand near the horse. I took a picture. I told her to stand closer. Another picture. Then I suggested she kneel down by the horse. One more picture. And finally asked her to take her hair out of the ponytail so we could really see it beside the horse. She was reluctant and tired of my picture taking, but I told her to be a sport. So with a big sigh she took the scrunchie off her ponytail and the horse, perhaps thinking it was hay, proceeded to eat her hair...Somewhere the whole series of snapshots documents this event, but the only one I can still put my hands on is this one. A country road in Ireland, a perfect day, a horse eats my daughter's hair at my bidding. Somehow that sublime image of the black horse in the golden field felt right as I thought about Mother's Day and being a mother on the road. And this unfortunate moment, captured on film, is one of the more absurd moments of motherhood about which I still feel guilty. And I still can laugh. And my daughter has long since recovered, and, I believe, forgiven me...

South Dakota, 1986 - A Mother's Day Remembrance

I've posted this image before but it took on a special importance for me this week. On Saturday I went to the framers and picked it up. The guy at the store asked me how I'd photoshopped it. I told him that this was the way it came out. I told him that photoshop didn't exist when I took this picture. I think he had a hard time believing me.

Though I took the picture almost a quarter of a century ago, I never got it framed until recently. That is because this picture has always belonged to Kate. I was seven months pregnant when I took it. I was at my friend, Dan O'Brien's ranch. It was late October. A golden afternoon with a big threatening sky. This would be my last solo journey before my daughter was born. And I would be a single parent for almost two years.

So this was a moment of solitude and beauty. There was something about the way Blackie looked at me. The way he too was alone in that field. Alone in a very big way in the world. I felt that aloneness too. I took the picture, went back to New York, and had my daughter.

I gave her this print a long time ago, but for one reason or another didn't get around to framing it until last month. Now she lives in a small apartment in our house. On Mother's Day I gave this to her. I thought of all the places where I'd been. And where I'd come. Where we both were.

My life - the life of any mother - is completely different before we have a child. And completely different afterwards. It is definitely not for everyone. I recall a friend warning me not to have a child. "It will change everything," she said. "Your life will never be your own again."

This is true and I know it. And this picture - this big sky and golden sun, the black horse alone in the field - reminds me of what life was before and what it is now. Yesterday for example instead of spending the day on the prairie in South Dakota, I spent it at Ikea.

These are just two different places at two different times. And I wouldn't trade either for the world.

Mexico without Leaving Home

Last night was Cinco de Mayo. We've had some Spaniards living in our home, but they'd never seen this Mexican festival. I decided to take them to my favorite place - a little hole in the wall restaurant on President Street off Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn that serves some of the best Mexican food in the city (in my opinion). It's the real deal. But this little place is often empty and its owner, Joseph, who wears a sombrero and dresses like a caballero, often sits alone. He has been alone, it seems, for months. Every time we order from there he can't thank me enough. Every time I walk by I am saddened by his aloneness. And by the fact that people don't know how good his portobello fajitas or arroz con camarones is. But last night the place was slammed, as my daughter who waits table would say. Every table was taken. We were first in line for a table for three, but a long line of people soon formed behind us. After a little while a young woman came up to me and said, "Your table will be ready soon. Would you like to order?" I'd never seen her there before and asked how long she'd been working. "Actually I'm a customer. I'm just helping out." The woman who cleared out table was also a customer. The guy who poured our water. We watched as people finished their meals, bussed their own tables, helped customers get seated, packed take-out. When we finished, we asked if we could help too, but Joseph said, "You have helped by being here." In truth most people were done and the place was emptying out. As we left, the woman who seated us was carting the last tray of dishes to the sink.

Holy Istanbul

Last week for various reasons five people from Spain moved into my house and Larry and I moved downstairs into Kate's apartment and Kate moved somewhere - a friend's, boyfriend. I'm not sure. She's roving and we are displaced, though it isn't upsetting me as much as it normally would. But the other night, our first night in Kate's somewhat discombobulated apartment (for her standards are different than mine, though I think she has more fun), I couldn't sleep. Normally this wouldn't bother me so much. I often can't sleep. And when I do I roam the house, but now my movements contricted, my wings clipped. I had a pile of books I wanted to read, but I was too restless to focus on much of a story, when I saw Kate's copy of HOWL, lying on her desk. It's her favorite poem and one I hadn't read in a while so I figured what better late night reading, especially as I was also reading ON THE ROAD for my writer and wanderer class. I started reading and found myself once again caught up in Ginsberg's incantatory poem when, somewhere around dawn, I came to this line: Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul! Holy Istanbul. What was it that made Peoria and Istanbul both holy? What was it that made cities holy at all? And reading Ginsberg made me flip back to Kerouac to whom Ginsberg in fact dedicated HOWL. And I recalled how Kerouac referred to Dean as the Holy Goof as opposed, I am sure, to ghost. I was thinking about this also because Kate's best friend, Sonia, refers to herself and Kate and their third friend, Paul, as the holy goofs and they plan to walk across America) and I started to think about what these guys, that is the Beats, meant when they made a place, and in this case, or my case, Istanbul, holy. Was Holy sacred to them, the way the Bible and the cross are holy? I was pretty sure not. This was a different kind of holy. A palpable, you can touch it, feel it holy. It wasn't the kind of holy that comes from God and above, but from men and below, not from heaven, but from earth. From the here and now and the gritty and the dirty and the chaotic and all the things you can't quite put your finger on. And then I put Ginsberg down and flipped back to Kerouac and I think it's Dean talking here "reaching his Taoist decisions in the simplest direct way." "What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for an anybody anyhow." And then a few pages later where Sal Paradise says "I was back in the soft, dark Denver night with its holy alleys and crazy houses." And this brought me back to Ginsberg because he wasn't chanting about holy cities in the God sense, but in the sense of all the back alleys and whores and drug addicts and drunks, and bums and saps. What to another writer might be god-forsaken streets to Kerouac and Ginsberg were holy streets and holy cities because they were alive and full of life and neither writer was afraid to take them on or be hurt or messed up on those holy streets in the holy cities. I recalled one dark night in Istanbul as I wandered alone past social clubs where men, only men, played cards and smoked. Past barber shops where barbers, razors poised, glanced my way. The winding streets whose direction eluded me. Coming upon the Grand Bazaar, its doors locked, its darkness impenetrable. I recall a story I once heard of a young woman, on her honeymoon, who disappeared inside of there. But I think it was a lie, but still I walked with a feeling that I could be taken, that I could also disappear down these uneven, circular roads. And as dawn rose in my daughter's apartment where we were camped out for a while, I thought that this all made perfect sense and if five Spaniards weren't sleeping upstairs and if I wasn't having a sleepless night, I would never have understood any of this.

Holy Istanbul

A Chicken Told My Fortune

I'd been in Turkey for two weeks. In Istanbul on my own for four or five days and this day was to be my last. It was a gray, cold morning. Not at all what I'd hoped for. I was planning on spending my day, writing and painting around the area of Topkapi. I had several vistas I wanted to explore. Things I wanted to see. But it was too cold out. Instead I went to the archealogical museum and spent several hours there until lunch time and I was hungry and ready to head back to my hotel.

It was a gloomy day, but as I left the area of Topkapi and the museum I came upon a vast and beautiful garden. It was in fact the gardens of Topkapi and somehow Larry and I had missed it in our wanderings. It had narrow, long paths and I began to walk slowly, admiring the primrose that grew along the paths, the tall pine trees.

Men walked arm in arm. Children played along the pathways. It was a cool, quiet, peaceful day. In the sky I became aware of birds. Something large like vultures and huge nests that I think were magpies or crows. And parrots!!! A small flock of green parrots was nesting in the trees.

I paused to admire the birds. It wasn't the day I had been hoping for - a beautiful last hurrah of photos and pictures and words - but I was happy to wander in it. Still I was a little lonely. And there were things that were plaguing me.

Doubts. Worries. Some things that hadn't worked out. Some opportunties missed. The tape in my head was going around and around.

Then at the exit of the palace grounds I passed through a gate and on the other side stood an old man with a white beard. He had a funny stand that consists of perches and stands and on them were rabbits and a mouse and a very interesting chicken. A beautiful chicken in fact.

For ten lira the chicken would tell my future. Okay life hadn't been exactly what I'd wanted lately so I figured why not put down the equivalent of eight bucks on a chicken to tell me what to do. I handed the man my money.

He asked me my name and I told him. The man took out a small box that contained colors slips of paper and he told the chicken in Turkish to do whatever it was the chicken did for Mary. The chicken began to cluck and pretty soon it cocked his head.
The chicken picked out a piece of paper and the man handed it to me.

The paper told me to stop dwelling on the past. I had many opportunities but I kept missing the boat because I thought of what had not been.

This seemed like excellent advice. I knew the chicken was right.

I continued on, quite happily, found a nice restaurant that served meyhene - very good Turkish tapas - and I enjoyed my lunch.

More Cappadocia

The other day I was at Plum Farm, visiting my cousins, Mike and Donna. I was writing in my journal when Mike said, "I love your journal." I can't really explain why, but this statement meant a lot to me. Not that many people really notice the things that matter to others, but Mike noticed this.

I decided to share with them some of my favorite pages from my recent trip to Turkey and I came up with this page which I am posting above. I thought how it is one of my favorite pages in this journal, and perhaps in any journal I've done. There seems to be a direct correlation between my level of happiness and my ability to express myself visually. Words always come - ad nauseum.

But a painting or a really good photo, these seem to come from another place perhaps (again I'm thinking of Henry Miller as I often do in this blog) because I don't really know, or care that much, about what I'm doing. I have almost zilch ego investment in this. I do it because I love it. I love to sit and draw and paint and write in my journal. And, as I've said before, I can almost only do this when I am traveling because when I'm on the road I'm in the moment.

This particular moment, captured here, was our first night in Goereme. It was quite cold out actually, but we were sitting on the terrace, having a glass of very good Turkish wine, and watching the light fade behind the hills. I had my journal and one of those thick waterproof pens and I just began to draw the shapes in front of me. I decided to let it go across two pages, something I haven't done enough of, but I have seen other journals that do this and I like the space it allows. The drawing was very quick. But then all of my drawings are.

It got colder out. We went inside and ate our shish kebab or whatever we had that evening. In the night as is often the case with me I couldn't sleep. It is not that I am tired and can't fall asleep. It is that I actually don't get tired. When something is going on inside my head, I'm up until dawn.

Larry soon fell asleep, but I walked out onto the patio attached to our room. It was a cold, crystal clear night and I could see the ferry chimneys, the hills beyond, the lights of the town. Gulls soared and somewhere a rooster crowed. I was shivering and went back inside. I took out my paints and began to paint what I'd drawn that evening over cocktails. At some point I decided to use blue. It was quick and spontaneous and left me very satisfied.

Perhaps an hour or so later I did feel tired and soon fell asleep.