Selecting a Reader

This is a photo of me with an imaginary friend (e.g. known only through the internet) who is an Avid Reader. (I'm the tall one.) I was on her home turf for a chess tournament with Walker, and she invited me to come meet her at a coffee shop (you can see their menu in the background of the photo). We had such a good time talking about books and blogging that an hour and a half passed before we came up for air, asked a stranger to take this photo of us, and went our separate ways.

It's amazing to meet a person in real life when you already enjoy exchanging ideas--it makes the conversation a fascinating mix of personal discovery and continued conversation. If I could have imagined a reader of this blog when I first started it, I'd have imagined someone like her. And she is beautiful, as you can see, so she made me think of this poem by Ted Kooser:

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

“For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

This has always struck me as an emblematic poem for a blogger. It doesn't matter if I get money or recognition for what I write here; what matters is that for just a moment someone is reading it.

Thanks for giving me a face to put with your name, avid reader!

A Birthday Poem

Today I'm 29 again! I'll be spending the day outside.

Usually I like to take my kids to the pool or the lake, but today they have summer gym and then Walker has a scheduled chess demonstration from one of his teachers--the one who lives in Serbia--so we'll have to stick close to home. I might fill up a wading pool and read beside it in my back yard (despite the fact that our black cat Chester always ends up puncturing any inflatable parts when he presses down on one side so he can get a drink). The green and flowered wilderness of our yard is a lovely place to spend an afternoon with a book.

A Birthday Poem, by Ted Kooser

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

Yes, I think I'll be outside until the cows come home--they live diagonally across the street and over the hill. You can see them lying in the shade under the tree in the bottom photo.

Tiptoeing

I am not, by nature, a tiptoer. Even though my friend Brian, the physical therapist, says that the bouncy gait I remember but can no longer reproduce (I've re-learned how to walk by hitting with my heel first) came from leading with the toes, I mean that I don't usually approach things with a lot of subtlety or secrecy. (In fact, come to think of it, Brian is the one who told me in college "Jeanne, you have no guile." I think I've acquired some since then.)

My daughter is also a physical, if not metaphorical, tiptoer. Ever since she learned to walk (at nine months), she has tiptoed around the house. Now, at 14, she doesn't like wearing shoes or socks, but sometimes likes high heels because they support the way her foot likes to arch itself naturally. When I read this Ted Kooser poem, I thought of her:

Walking on Tiptoe

Long ago we quit lifting our heels
like the others--horse, dog, and tiger--
though we thrill to their speed
as they flee. Even the mouse
bearing the great weight of a nugget
of dog food is enviably graceful.
There is little spring to our walk,
we are so burdened with reponsibility,
all of the disciplinary actions
that have fallen to us, the punishments,
the killings, and all with our feet
bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.
But sometimes, in the early hours,
we can feel what it must have been like
to be one of them, up on our toes,
stealing past doors where others are sleeping,
and suddenly able to see in the dark.