Snow!

Seventeen days in Breckenridge. And it has snowed on nearly every one of those days. Snow. The kind that's big and wet and juicy. The kind that sticks in your hair and melts on your tongue. Snow. The kind that's pellets pinging on your coat and bouncing on the frozen ground. The kind that's fairy feather light, or winter whirling psychedelic into your windshield. The kind that fills the whole world white. Snow!

We wake up in the middle of the night and peek through the blinds, whispering to each other, "it's snowing,"as if it is something mysterious and secret and ours alone. We take out our phones and take pictures and get back in bed smiling. In the morning there is a fresh thick layer over everything, and when we step outside we are the first ones in the untouched universe, making footprints before anyone else is up.

Everything is muffled and magical and I feel like I'm ten years old,

tromping through the snow in the first boots I have owned in thirty years.

We take the dogs to Boreas Pass. We're running and playing and falling into drifts. I'm a kid, and every thought has left my brain. And if ever there is a time when I am in the moment it is now,
frolicking in the snow with the two big labs on this crisp cold Colorado day.
And it feels like Christmas and it feels like life and it feels like everything.

Boreas Pass, Breckenridge, Colorado

Broken Open

Berlioz didn't break me open, but Bach did.  The beauty of the Columbia River Gorge didn't break me open, but 'birds flying upward over the mountain' did.  Maybe I break too easily.  Or maybe the cracks appear to let the good things in.

There were a lot of good things in Portland.  One of them was music.  Gary and I went to the symphony while we were there.  We went to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall downtown, the one that is on the National Register of Historic Places, the one that is all done up in Italian Rococo style.  A place where you sit there feeling sort of grand and sort of cozy all at the same time.  We went to hear Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique'.  There were other things on the program too, but it was really all about the Berlioz.  It is a symphony that tells a story.  The last movement is supposed to depict a 'Witches' Sabbath' and the percussionists owned it.  Two sets of timpani battering away in the back, crescendoing until there was nowhere else to go and everyone was on their feet.  Gary was on his feet.  I was on my feet.  I wasn't broken open, but the drums had beaten their way into my body and at the end I was cheering with everyone else.

And there was more music.

Jeremy came over to 'our' house and brought his guitar.

He knew his mother was going to ask him to play.  And sing.  And I did.  And he did.  He played every song I asked for.  Even the ones he didn't really know.  We looked up lyrics, and I don't know how he did it, but somehow the right chords were always in the right places, and every song sounded like it was supposed to sound.  And I asked him to play that Iron and Wine song that I love, the one that has some words that go like this:

Mother don't worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed

Mother don't worry, I've got some money I saved for the weekend

Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me

Mother remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten

Sons are like birds flying upwards over the mountain

And as he was singing his voice broke and he stopped.  And he looked at me and laughed and said, 'this is a good song'.  And my eyes filled up.  And I was broken open.

There was music in Portland and there was walking.  Gary and Jeremy and I walked along Waterfront Park down by the Willamette River.  There were giant metal bridges everywhere and the cherry blossom trees were in full bloom, their pink petals falling all around us.

And I don't remember what we were talking about, but it somehow prompted Jeremy to say, 'Novelty is overrated.  What most people want is comfort and familiarity.'  And maybe he was right, because later Gary and I went driving around Portland looking at houses for sale, joking about giving up the adventure and settling down.  We both knew we weren't done wandering yet, but there we were driving around dreaming of homes.  And comfort.  And familiarity.  And thinking about where we might end up one day.

And then one day Jason appeared in Portland.  We went to pick up Jeremy at his apartment and Jason opened the door instead.  He had come to Portland to surprise us, so that the four of us could be together in the same place for the first time in three years.  So for three days Gary and Jeremy and Jason and I were together in Portland.  We went to the farmer's market at PSU, where there were flowers and nuts and apples and chocolate for sale, and I wanted to buy everything I saw because it all looked so good.  We walked downtown and ate at Cheryl's on 12th.  When we left the restaurant I was freezing, because I hadn't worn the right clothes, so we stopped at Ross and Jeremy bought me some socks.  And a sweater that made me look like a mushroom.  We walked down to the river and on our way to the famous  Saturday Market we stopped and smiled for the camera:

Jason, Jeremy, Lisa, Gary

And then Jeremy had to go to work.

And the rest of us wandered around some more taking pictures of famous buildings.

The Portland Building

And azaleas.

I think.

Then we took Jason back to the house where we were house-sitting and ordered pizza.  And it wasn't just a house.  It was our home.  Because when we sold our house on Kauai we told the kids that from now on, home would be wherever we were.  And there we were.  And it was home.

And then it was Jason's last day in Portland and the four of us went looking for a waterfall.  On the way we stopped at the famous lookout, the Vista House, and we looked out.

The Columbia River Gorge

We read about the visionary engineer and landscape architect that had designed the famous highway through the gorge.  And then we found our waterfall and took the little hike to the top.

Latourell Falls

And everything was beautiful, because the Columbia River Gorge is one of the most beautiful places there is.  But somehow that day it didn't get in, because I knew what was coming next.

The four of us ate one more meal together and then we dropped Jason off at the airport.  He walked away reluctantly, his shoulders drooping, and then he turned around and watched us.  And I think he stood there watching until he couldn't see us anymore.  And we didn't know when we would see him next.  And he didn't know when he would see us next.  And my eyes filled up.  And we drove away.

A few days later, Gary and Jeremy and I went to see Bach's 'St. John Passion' at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Portland.  And there was glorious German music echoing everywhere inside that vaulted space.  And when the alto soloist sang Es ist vollbracht - 'It is finished' - the world stood still, and the silence was everywhere inside me and there was nowhere else for it all to go but out my eyes and down my cheeks, leaking into the world.  And in the quiet of the cathedral I was looking for a kleenex.  Jeremy on my left silently turned a page of his book, and I knew that he had missed it.  But Gary on my right had not.  And I was broken open.  And something got in through the cracks.

And soon it was time to say goodbye to Jeremy too.

We fed our hungry child one more time.

India House, downtown Portland

Because it always feels good to feed your hungry children.  And then we dropped him off at his apartment and stood there hugging each other in the parking lot.  And Jeremy wouldn't let me go for a long time.  And we didn't know when we would see him next.  And he didn't know when he would see us next.  And my eyes filled up.  And we drove away.

And everything is messy and you never know if you are doing the right thing.  Or if there even is a right thing.  If leaving your family and wandering around is the right thing.  Or if it is just a thing.  And your grown up children can still break you open, the ones that came through your body, and the ones that did not.  The ones that were with you in Portland, and the ones that are far away across the ocean.  And Bach can break you open.  And books and beauty and this confusing world.  And you never want to stop being broken open, because so much can get in through the cracks.

We went to see the movie Birdman while we were in Portland.  A movie about people trying to love each other.  About the mess we all make of things.  About art and magic.  About people being broken and about people soaring.  And there is that scene at the end where the father is flying (or is he?) and his daughter is left behind, and she is smiling.  She is standing there watching her father soar, and she is smiling.

* * * * * * * * *

Spoiler Alert:  There are probably as many interpretations of the ending of 'Birdman' as there are people that see it.  In my opinion Riggan didn't kill himself, he killed Birdman, and in the process gained everything, including the love and respect of his daughter who can now watch him fly free of his past.

Same Song, Second Verse

You know you are in

when one of the biggest tourist attractions in town is a bookstore.

A bookstore that is home to more than one million books.
A bookstore where they don't just have a section for fiction, they have a whole room.
And where there are all these eloquent and pithy descriptions of books on little pieces of paper attached to the shelves. Descriptions which cause you to start making lists on your phone of all the books you are pretty sure you are probably really going to read someday. And in spite of a small feeling of despair in the pit of your stomach at the sight of all the books you are pretty sure you are probably really never going to read,
you still feel compelled to try.
And so you purchase more of these:

 Even though you really don't have any more room in this:




And later, as you are wandering through the neighborhoods, 
you stumble across several of these:

And you discover that these are a thing.
A tiny neighborhood lending library designed to "nurture literacy and camaraderie."
And you learn that these little boxes have been appearing in neighborhoods around the city
for nearly twenty years.

And you know you are in Portland
when the people you are house-sitting for created this in their backyard:

 An urban co-housing ecovillage,
complete with chickens and vegetable gardens and communal meals.

And when you take sweet Molly the rat terrier

for a walk,



in the Cully neighborhood you are calling home for three weeks, 
a neighborhood located in a city that is home to more than 600,000 people, 
you only have to walk two doors down to see this:



and a few steps later this:



and a little farther down the road this:



Every other house seems to have raised beds in their front yard, 
and piles of black compost in the driveway waiting to be worked into those beds.  
And everyone seems to be out in their yards planting their spring gardens, 
and cleaning up after winter.  
And everywhere you look there are chicken coops and plastic growing tunnels and bamboo trellises.

And even a goat.




And you have to remind yourself that you are only about 40 blocks away from this:



Your son who is walking with you says it feels like somewhere in West Virginia,
even though you are pretty sure he has never even been to West Virginia.

And even though Bea, your temporary cat, is heavily medicated:



You are not.

Although you probably could be.



But you already feel so calm.
Surrounded by all these gardens and books.
And the people that care about them.

You Know You Are In Portland

You know you are in

when you go to get a sweet treat after lunch,

and in response to the question,
Do you make your own ice cream?
the scooper person in the truck says,
Yes.
The milk starts with 600 Holstein cows roaming free on 3000 acres.
...pause... 
In Oregon.

And as you are walking back to your car,
through tidy neighborhoods of cute craftsman bungalows,
you come across this planted next to someone's driveway:

And a little later this:

And then you look down and notice this:

And your son that lives in the city says he thinks there is something going on here with toy horses.
And when you get home you look it up on your computer and find out he is right.
And that something is an artist who wanted to draw attention
to the old horse tethering rings on curbs throughout the city.
An artist who said, I loved the rings, and felt that people just weren't noticing them.
This was an attempt to shake people out of their routines and get them to notice their surroundings.

And somehow you just know you are in Portland.