Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 10 Comments

Sketching it Out

In 25 days we move, and for a while there, we didn’t know where to. I’d said I’d keep you posted in this endeavor, but frankly, rental choices have been so few that when one possibility surfaced, I was too afraid to discuss it for fear of hexing the process.

Our family was clear on our home vision. We wanted something simple, in the country (preferably on our very same road), a place to garden, (an outdoor shower would be nice) and affordable. Jeb wished for a treehouse. And we all wondered about this new place offering the future possibility of a canine companion.

Our approach was dream big but be grateful for what came our way. The local Craigslist’s rental page had become a forum for frustrated renters seeking homes and landlords defending their reasons for the trend of doubling rental rates. Even if we were willing to settle for the few condominiums featured – not in our town but the closest to our area of the island – we couldn’t rationalize spending nearly $3000 a month in a boxed-in community where gardens and clothes lines were against the rules.

Magic isn’t rational either, but under the circumstances we figured we’d try it. One Sunday we went to the bay at the end of our street. My mind was heavy with homebound thoughts. I couldn’t sit, I felt like walking. So I left the Bohemian and Jeb at the beach and walked the three miles along our country road, back home. I passed many houses nestled in the trees. Walked by stretches of open fields and segments of river lined with ginger flowers. With every home I passed, I wondered about our own future abode. With every step and every breath, I quietly wished to the distant hills that we, too, could still call this area our home.

I was back at our place around sunset, in time to meet up with the Bohemian and Jeb returning from the beach. They’d done lots of things, but one of them was a quick sketch in a small notebook. An inspired illustration of the house that we were envisioning.

2013-06-01_Home Sketch

Note the ocean view (and swimming sea life), a treehouse, a simple home, fruiting trees, and of course, Fido.

It had to have been a few weeks after my country road walk and that sketchbook exercise that I got a whisper to contact a neighbor to let him know we were looking for a place. Since I didn’t have his phone number, I emailed another friend (who happens to live next door – we’ll call him the Musician) to see if he could give me his contact information. The Musician was well-aware that we were looking and had wished us all the best in our search. On this day, as I sent the email to him, asking for his neighbor’s phone number, I felt compelled to mention that we were still searching for our home, and though it may not be ideal, we’d be willing to temporarily sub-let a place if the opportunity arose.

As the story goes, my email request was sitting in the Musician’s Inbox, not yet read. He was out looking at the solar eclipse with a mutual friend. They were talking about the Musician’s impending travels and his uncertainty about who would stay at his house and look after his dog. Our family was mentioned. A light went ding within the mind of the Musician as the sun was circled in a ‘ring of fire.’ He decided to call me right away and went to his computer to get my phone number, at which point, he saw my email mentioning the sub-let.

The Musician needs someone to stay at his home for four months, beginning July 1st. We need a place to live beginning that day. We’ve worked out the details and the rest has been finalized as of this week.

Did I mention that he lives on our little country road, just a few driveways up? There is a treehouse. A garden. Fruiting trees. An outdoor shower. And a little, easy-going dog we’ve known for years, who will now be in our care.

Maybe it all starts by sketching it out.

We’ll see how the details fill in. For now, we are just so very grateful.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

The Offing

Friends bring home pictures from Sicily. Photos of verdant rock gardens with canopied courtyards – wisteria dangling in vines of lavender lusciousness. I want to sift in the scent of those roses and orange blossoms. Sit and stare at clouds.

But Jeb has long division and we’re tense in homework land at our kitchen table. The sun is setting outside our hot house. I don’t know what to cook for dinner. Empty boxes are stacked in the corner, because we’re moving soon. Tomorrow, the garage sale.

We volunteered to sell our neighbor’s things, too, and the Bohemian is sorting through their mix. In the piles, an old, plastic rice cooker and a porcelain harlequin mask, all covered in a film of time and dust and cat dander.

2013-05-17harlequin mask

By dark, Jeb and I have just barely made it through word problems. I’ll admit it. Afterwards, I poured myself a cocktail. Scrounged up ingredients from a house of non-drinkers. Found the hand-me down bottle of Tanqueray. Squeezed a lime, got some ice, and mixed in a squirt of organic agave syrup.

We join the Bohemian in the garage, where he mills about in dust bunnies and piles of knick-knacks, grasping a roll of masking tape and pricing everything so low, we might as well give it away. Which is what we want to do anyway.

“Just move it out, right? We don’t want to have to haul this…Three dollars, right Jess?”

He’s tagging a pretty nice bamboo chair. It’s not ours. Our neighbors don’t want it, and it has to get trucked to the second-hand store if it doesn’t sell.

“Yeah, okay. I guess that’s fine. Someone will be thrilled.”

How the value of things can change. That chair was once someone’s brand new purchase, brought home lovingly and placed in some special nook. Now it’s covered in animal hair beneath a dusty socket set and a book titled “Why Cats Paint.”

2013-05-17book sale

Even Jeb gets exhausted in the stuff. He’s sorted his books and board games until he’s tapped. “Mom, it’s a school night…”

This morning, I wake to my writing hour – 4am – for the first time in a week. It feels welcome but vacant.

I let myself pause on words and play with colored pencils instead, trying to conjure some semblance of creativity. An abstract design of black squares push down on flowing lines of soft greens and blues. This is my dichotomous world.

2013-05-17doodle

I guess it all exists. Right angles and curves. Darks and lights. Purchases and give-aways.

We breathe somewhere at the center of these intersections, and I’m constantly trying to reconcile a balance.

As of late, the practical dark lines have been weighing heavier.

Oh, but I long for Italy.

courtesy of Putneypics
courtesy of Putneypics
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Stealing a Slice of the Moon

I wake at 4:30am with a thought that I’ve plagiarized my father.

It was that cheddar cheese moon line in my last post “Don’t Forget the Dolphins.” The words that were whispered to me, ever-so quietly, by the right-side lobe of my brain that was backseat driving.

It was offering artful angles on my daily practicalities. Reminding me of the beauty back-dropping my to-do lists.

“Come on, tell them about that rising full moon at dusk. The color of cheddar cheese and bigger than the sun. How it seemed to rise out of the two-lane road as you and the Bohemian drove, side by side, salt-coated from your sunset swim. Go on, tell them.”

Oh, that frontal lobe and its backseat cues. Did it lead me to steal?

Cheddar cheese, cheddar cheese. I wake with this thought that, perhaps, I’d just recently read a poem of my dad’s pairing the moon with a yellow-orange block of dairy.

He’s the poet of the family (and I’m proud to say he was recently given his second Wrangler Award for Outstanding Poetry Book by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum – congratulations, Dad!).

Me, I’m only putting words on the page and justifying margins. And now, I’m wondering if I’m an inadvertent plagiarizer, as well.

I scan the posts from my father’s blog, Dry Crik Journal, trying to find a cheese reference. As I search, I recall growing up with chunks of cheddar as a staple in the family ‘ice box.’ The sharp, pungent scent that would rise from the block as it warmed on the cutting board. My father, passing through the kitchen, to slice a thick slab and snack.

I keep searching his words but my poem perusing turns up empty. I find no reference to cheddar cheese and the moon from my father. Was it some other poet?

brain_colour_cropped

Nerve fibers connect and fire some electrical storm of All-things in my head. Intuition and dreams are housed beside logic and systems. To-do lists get mapped to poetry. My brain is one big mix of what’s been soaked in and what wants to seep out. I don’t know where the cheddar cheese and moon came from.

Dad, if I snagged it from you, I apologize, and I’ll offer up credit where it’s rightly due. If I sourced from some other writer in the world, thank you for gifting me the shade of which to describe that rising moon. Cheddar cheese color it was, and you named the palette.

To anyone that loves the moon, or who can appreciate a good chunk of cheddar, let’s all gather round the cutting board in the kitchen. Have a snack and share a slice.

 

courtesy of quinn.anya
courtesy of quinn.anya