i have a date tomorrow. a date! sort of. i really don’t think i have ever been on a proper date in my entire life so i’m wiggity-wigging out a little. seriously. i am 31 years old. i feel like i need to take a xanax.

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Lying in his bed tonight, Reed asked me to tell him about when I was a kid. I told him about spending days with my Grandfather. I used to ride on the back of his old tractor as he plowed furrows in his field. His ‘garden’ was a bit bigger than a simple garden, but not quite a farm; an acre of food ready each year. I’d ride on the tractor with him as he plowed. Then we’d set seeds in the field. I remember squatting down over the fresh dirt and poking little seeds into the soil with a finger. He told me I had just the right size fingers for that. 

The field was irrigated with a pump that drew water from the creek which ran across one corner of the land. On summer days, we’d sit on the bank of that creek and fish. Which in hindsight was more a matter of sitting and playing with worms than ever actually catching anything. I remember once the splashing as a great catfish got reeled in, but otherwise it was simply little perch and the like that got tossed back. 

I recall when the plants had grown, seeing the cabbage and the okra, the corn and the beets. I know he grew snaps, too, but can only remember them–not in the field–on the porch at the house as my Grandmother showed me how to snap the ends off just so before she canned them. It was a simple little screen porch, just off the kitchen of their house, with a door that always slammed unless you were extra careful and slowly put it back just so, but I remember it seemed that a lot of work went on within it. I remember canning up lots and lots of food in mason jars that would again be emptied back out over the course of the winter. There was, I think, a basin of water, but I’m not sure what it was for. I wish I knew the process Grandmother used to can the food. It seems like the sort of very useful knowledge that nobody seems to have anymore. Instead we just drive to some store and get food there, never really thinking about what it takes to grow food, raise it, cultivate it and preserve it. 

Thirty years later, my Grandmother still makes the effort to can up little jars of preserves for us at Christmastime. It’s the sort of gift you can look at and simply say “Thank you” or you can stop a moment, consider what it took to actually make something for someone, and the love that goes into that gesture. It’s the sort of thing that makes me wistfully pine for a time in the seventies, before the internet and cell phones, when battery-operated toys were still a rarity (Batteries are for flashlights!). I used to climb trees; my kids climb playgrounds. I used to play with ants and honeysuckle and marbles, not bubble guns or video game systems.

And my Grandmother’s phone? It had a really, really long cord.

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Congratulations. Way to suck, California.

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from indexed: Thank you for being a friend.

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Saturday I was standing in the lawn and garden section at Sears, waiting for tires to be put on my car. As I waited, I contemplated which yard tool would serve me best in the unlikely event of a zombie apocalypse. The axe is simply too poorly weighted. I mean, it has great initial power, but would be hard to pull back quickly for a second strike. Though the garden weasel held promise (!), the hatchet is light and emerged as my eventual winner, in spite of it’s short handle. There were no machetes, sadly. I briefly pondered whether it was too early out on the west coast to call Tripp on the matter before considering that there may in fact be something severely wrong with me.

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Last night I got coffee with a friend down at Dana Street in Mountain View. And as we walked around, there were a couple of books lying out on the sidewalk. And one of them? “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

And inside? An inscription reading: “9th Birthday Present, January 1992, Amber [last name] If found call [telephone number]”

Now, there is no area code on the number. It was 17 years ago, which would make Amber 26 now. And looking on Facebook, there are 5 potential Ambers, none of them are in California, one isn’t even in the country.

So I don’t think there is much I can do — I suppose I could send FB messages to these people, asking if I have their copy of “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” It seems a little weird.

At the same time, this is such a…critical book to childhood, I can’t imagine why someone’s copy was lying on the sidewalk at 10pm on a Tuesday night.

Thoughts? What should I do?

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Wow.

This month is my fifth anniversary here at madeofglass. Since being here, I’ve transferred colleges, graduated, fallen in love with an unexpected line of work, found a home in a new politics, lost my grandfather, broken up (a lot), and hit my stride.

When I started posting, I was cautious, to say the least, and certainly guarded. Since then, I’ve sunken into this site like an overstuffed armchair. It’s always accommodating, always comforting, always a kind refuge. Thanks to everyone here, I can–and do–write about anything and everything, and I always feel at home.

So, for the last five years: thank you, Tripp. It’s been an extraordinary experience thus far, and I look forward to a whole lot more.

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