Laundry Line Divine

A rock?
Really?
From a Jester?
Indeed, this birthday gift is what I found, squarely placed, beribboned on my back porch last night as JNB and I returned in the misty moonlit evening after my birthday dinner.

A rock.

Before the rock though, the Jester.

My Roger, about whom I have written one poem, my Roger, who is married to my dear friend Sarah and together they are the parents of some of the best kids I know, my Roger, who can do almost, nearly, surely anything with rope or knife, juggling ball or bumbershoot, my Roger also works for a tree company.
It is, as we say in the theatre world, his day job right now as his jestering, though steady, does not fill the coffers of his bank in just the way he desires. If you need a Jester for any event, you must call Roger. He will make you weep and laugh so hard your shoes will fill up with pee and your neighbors will wonder what the heck is happening over there, peep through the hedge and they too will have shoes full of pee. It is a hazard, but worth the risk. Laughing is good for your health, though dicey for your shoes. It is worse for your reputation with teenagers for once they discover you are really a snorter when you laugh hard, let alone that you pee when you laugh harder, they will never want to stand near you again with Roger around.

Roger.

He came to our welcome party for the Kerns. No one took photos of the event because we were all enchanted beyond photography by him balancing balls on his fingertips and running a ring around the top of a paper umbrella.

Roger composes music on his accordion and a smaller squeeze-y instrument. He is adept at carrying an evocative tune on his turkey baster. And he can simulate the best garbage truck in reverse on his recorder or charm you with an olden tune at just the right moment. He did compose a theme and variations based on “I Know A Weenie Man” on his accordion, which was my Mom’s favorite song. He came to play it for me soon after we sang it at her memorial gathering here in the backyard. Tissues were necessary. Roger also plays the baritone and ukulele. Serenades are a specialty. Don’t get me started with the turkey baster. My response is Pavlovian by now. I just see that thing and I start to weep.

Roger.

So, at his day job, where, between tying knots in ropes for various purposes and driving heavy machinery, he plants trees. One particular load of these trees arrived from Michigan this summer, from the Upper Peninsula, I like to think. In the root ball of one of these trees from Michigan was that rock.

And so, because Roger is who he is, which is a man full of rare deep resonance, he knew that rock would be a gift for me. When he posted on my Face book wall for my birthday “You rock” I did not quite get the meaning. Sometimes with Roger, you have to wait a bit to get the joke. So I waited.

Then I arrived home on the night of my birthday to find this.
Roger, as a guy, is kind of normal. He has guy friends, they do guy things, building things, planning things, and implementing those plans. He used to be a sailor, which is, I believe, what he was doing when he learned to juggle. Roger and his son Marley form a formidable pair of jugglers. Now Marley is learning to be a sailor, a real live all hands on deck kind of sailor. No Topsiders and Polo’s for him. Marley is entering the knot tying, long houred life on a large sailing vessel on the Eastern seaboard. Maybe someday he will cross the Atlantic like his father before him. At Sarah’s 50th birthday party, Roger, Marley, Kai and Sean, Roger’s soon-to-be son-in-law, also a sea captain, in unison chopped the bottle necks off magnums of champagne with knives, the kind you might mistake as pirate’s weapons, but are really handy tools for sailors. The bubbly frothed out of the open bottles in a quite a festive, scary nautical way. We drank it up.

Roger and I nearly share birthdays and converge on 2 passions. Scrabble and other word games. He trounces me routinely, but I persevere. Second, is dumpster diving for quality junk. Roger is more habitual in his collecting. He and Sarah call their home a ‘youseum’ (you-see-um). His jestering could require any number of odd items, so he is always scouting tag sales for fancy-tickling stuff. One day this summer, Sarah called with a hot tip about a dumpster she knew of that was filling up with choice old magazines and books. Roger and I headed over, but not before a day of rain soaked the top layer of the dumpster. Undaunted, we cat walked the edge of the metal container, skimming off the sodden National Geographic’s to find some Bazaar and Town & Country mags in perfect condition.

Here is some of the art the Darling Hill International Artist’s Club made with just one of those fine periodicals from the fifties.

I pilfered a box of stuff for my FeMail partner Karen and this is what she made this week.

There are more Roger stories. I look forward to time turning our 14-year-old friendship in to 25 and 40.
Until that day, I will sit on my back porch by this sun-warmed rock, upon which my dear exchange student daughter just laid her chilled hands, and I will wait, hoping Roger stops by soon.
Here is the poem I wrote for him after he returned from Haiti last year. He is my hero.

My Roger friend is a Jester.

He has a pocket full of rubble from Haiti
 where he caused little children and grown men to jump up and down with laughter.
He poured some of the rubble in to my left hand. 

It is exactly like the big pieces left among the dusty remains of my friend Joan
 when I ran my hands through what was left of her.
I poured the rubble back in to the vial he carries it in.
 Dust on palm, the impression of someone else’s life left upon mine.
Rumi talks about fire and water. 
One transforms us, one heals us. 

Which will you choose? 
 Which cleansing will take you out of your horror and fear
to
 reveal the naked beauty of you?
Will you, while considering your dust, your fire, your water,
step beneath the flowering crabapple to let the laden boughs
 rest pink on your forehead,
to bury yourself in spring?

Suzi Banks Baum
 April 29, 2010

By the way, Roger will be a bit ticked at me for writing all of this about him.
If you want to read his own words or see photos, go to http://roger-jesterings.blogspot.com/

Have a lovely evening.
Thank you for stopping by the Line.
XO S

Peep over at Mary Oliver’s poem “Praying” before you read this please.

“…a few small stones: just pay attention, then patch a few words together…”

This is the patching.
Thank you Mary.

I love stones. I worked long ago on the shores of Lake Superior and by the end of those summers; I would have more poundage of stones than dirty laundry or mosquito bites. My Mom would chide me for driving stones around the country as I moved from Escanaba, to Houston, to Marquette, to Louisville, to Chicago, to Louisville again, then New York City. Now in the stony Berkshires I have plenty to keep me company, though I must admit to collecting stones from wherever I travel. The first time I stood next to my husband in a Jewish cemetery, I saw all the headstones decorated with handfuls of small rocks. I realized then what I have been doing carrying stones around with me from home to home. I am remembering where I have come from and that I too, carry the love of that former place to this new place. On and on, I move small piles of memories held in stones.

When you stand on the shores of Superior, or the Atlantic or probably any large body of water, there are times when the surf moves sheets of stones in the waves and the sound is like no other. The texture of the minerals rubbing against each other, becoming sand eventually, grinding away with the action of wind and water, it is quite a sound. Is it the sound of the sands of time perhaps?

My Moon Circle is about to hold our Summer Solstice Sweat Lodge. Yeah, we can be witchy with ritual. We bring rocks to the fire that are imbued with our intentions, honor and desires. We construct a framework of logs to hold the rocks in the 4 directions. Then, when the rocks have withstood an enormous fire, my fire tending Lydi and I rake them in to the sweat lodge to gather their heat in to our bodies and their wisdom in to our souls. Some of the rocks split open and shower orange crystal sparkles. Some reveal their insides that have long forgotten the yellow glare of the sun or the wet of rain; they reveal their insides to us in those moments. Time exposure.

The rocks I found yesterday are what I see nearly every day. I walked to the river with Lydi early to swim and see what we could see. Then at 12:30 I headed out to the yard. I realized the stones that surround my house are ones that I have chosen during my travels and brought home. Costa Rican green stones, Mediterranean white, the pinks and grays of the Cape and of course, my beloved Lake Superior stones.

When we go home in the summer to visit my parents, I allow myself to buy 3 or 4 knobs made with Superior stones. A man who sails on the ore boats makes them. Our kitchen cupboards are slowly becoming like the stony beach at Big Bay. I strew stones on my altar among the chickens and art.

Please don’t tell Danny about this collection of flat stones. When our boys were little, oh, about 12 years ago, our families were on the Cape together. Danny and I stood on the shore of Wellfleet Bay and skipped rocks at low tide on to the silvery gray ocean surface until our shoulders were sore. We talked the whole time. I don’t think we have had that much time to just talk since that afternoon. He will have his 50th birthday some year soon and I intend to give him a box of rocks that we can haul to some shore and catch up on our talking. These rocks are from all over the world. Don’t they look like they will fit into his big hands perfectly?

I know this is one honking big blog post. The blog police will be out to get me. But I am armed with stones, not ones with which to fill my pockets and drown nor to slay Goliath, just the ones to remind me of all the places I have loved all over this fine planet.

You can see a slide show of these stones on my Flickr page. Just click over one of the photos above. I cannot get this page to link to Kathy’s but if you would be so kind as to go over to my blog roll and link to ‘Kathy in the north woods’ you will see her gorgeous post titled “Simply Stones”.

Love, S
.