From The Highest Branches

On a walk this morning with the dog I noticed, at the triangle park two blocks from our house, apples smashed on the ground. These were full-size apples, not the crab apples I see beneath our neighbor's tree. Kids, I thought, shaking my head which has been filled with thoughts of rotten kids since yesterday. Why would they smash so many apples? Then I looked up.

The tree, which has been there longer than I've lived here, is a real apple tree filled with ripe apples. Maybe a hundred of them hang from the branches in singles and bunches. The tree is wild and overgrown unlike those I'm used to at the orchards. The apples are way up high, no way to reach them. I imagined having to wait until one decided to fall and then trying to catch it. The whole thing would be an exercise in luck or futility.

A squirrel could have one any time.

I stared at those apples in the high branches, the dog waiting patiently at the end of her leash. They were so beautiful. I have a thing for apples and apple trees. They speak to me of life and sweetness and possibly even love. I looked down sadly at the fallen apples, food now for worms and beasts. How have I failed to notice an apple tree so close to home? It's as if I haven't been looking.

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Our daughter has been diagnosed with an ear infection. My wife is taking her to the pharmacy for a prescription which should heal it. Harder to treat is all the difficulty of being a girl in high school with undependable friends who often ditch and then lie to her. She can't understand it and even though I can, I can't. It isn't that she is perfect, but she is devoted and she wants to be a real friend and have someone be a real friend with her.

I didn't much have this problem as a kid. I was blessed to meet someone when I was only a few months old and never again worried about having someone. My first wish for my girl would be to find that someone who will remain true and to whom she could remain true.

Teenage girls are often lying shits. I'm to the point of telling my girl to be brutally honest with her friends and maybe have them be the same with her. It might be a huge mistake. Honesty isn't necessarily always best. Still, this dance of "friendships" hasn't done her much good and I lean toward her stepping on a few toes. If they can't take it, she hasn't lost much.

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Carl Richards in The New York Times wrote of discussing this question with friends: "If we were having tea three years from now in this exact same place...what would need to happen for each of us to be happy with those three years?" My answer begins like this:

I would want my family happy. I would want to have moved onto a new job, be writing and publishing, and feel healthy.

Like those high-up apples, these things feel difficult to reach, but of course they aren't. I'll encourage my daughter to tell the truth, brutal or not, and help her work through these things. I will keep applying for other jobs. I'm writing and publishing the blog. That's progress. And I am running, walking, and trying to eat well.

I keep waiting for apples to fall, but they're likely to fall from the other side of the tree and smash into the ground. My daughter keeps waiting for the tree to be nicer and offer more than the just promise of sweet fruit. Instead of waiting, we can carry a ladder from the house, lean it against a branch full of ripe apples, and I can hold it steady as she climbs up into the crisp autumn morning.

I imagine her climbing slowly, unsure and afraid but moving one rung at a time. I tell her it's going to be alright, I've got you. She climbs higher. As I look up, she disappears into the light of the sun. She calls down that the apples are perfect. Here, she says, in a voice that carriers her smile and happiness. Catch!

The Right Direction

On Friday, a kid left our school. The kid was a handful, often challenging, usually draining, really loud or completely withdrawn, a bundle of nerves. At the end of the day, after the kid had said a final goodbye, a few of us stood in the hall talking. It was mostly rehashing old complaints and expressing relief to be free of the kid. I stood thinking that this was the kind of kid for which our school is designed. As they talked I felt a courseness developing within me.

Thoreau wrote:

As I go through the fields, endeavoring to recover my tone and sanity and to perceive things truly and simply again, after...dealing with the most commonplace and worldly-minded men, and emphatically trivial things, I feel as if I had committed suicide in a sense." (The Journal, pg. 80)

I left the group and went into my classroom and be alone. I'm not sure I recovered my tone or sanity, but it was a step in the right direction.

I noticed again how often the right direction is away from the crowd and trivial affairs.

Casting My Dream Ballot

I'll gladly cast my ballot for the candidate who does not use social media, a group that clearly must number in the zeroes.

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I got a nice comment from a friend saying, "I don't like you not being on Facebook, I miss the updates, though I added you to my blog roll." I understand and I'm torn over being on and off social media which I quit in August. It led me to this thought:

I would like to be connected with the people on Facebook (and maybe Twitter), but I'm against providing corporations with free content for their platforms so they can then advertise next to what I've written and profit. Aside from the poison thoughtlessly sold by them during the 2016 election, their whole model offends me. I'm not interested in being someone's serf or slave.

This wasn't the primary reason I quit social media, but it has become one of the most important reasons I stay away. The Facebook/Twitter platform-economy is even worse for us than the gig economy. I want no part of that.

Still, I miss connecting with my friend and need to find other ways of doing that.

Any ideas?

From A Pear Crate

I could have just bought one from Barnes & Noble.

Last week I saw a lap desk at Barnes & Noble. I want one of those. My laptop gets fiery hot and writing with a clipboard is just a pain. A lap desk would work in the backyard and in bed, two places I often want to write but where it's uncomfortable to do so. I examined a faux-wood lap desk and thought, there you go, but didn't buy it.

On my basement workbench is the nearly finished top of a lap-desk I began building last night. I've applied a second coat of polyurethane and will give it a third and maybe a fourth tomorrow. I want to be sure I can easily clean the coffee I'm bound to spill on it.

Buying a lap desk seemed foolish. Money is tight and I'm not sure I'll use the thing very often. I wish I could go back and not purchase most everything I've ever bought. The combined savings might allow me to retire now. Spending money on a lap desk would set me farther back and deprive me of the chance to make one.

I enjoy few things more than building something for myself. I work alone with wood and saws, nails and a hammer, tape measure and a carpenter's pencil. Saw dust gets all over me and up my nose. I fail to notice the passing of time. And then there is something new in the world because my mind imagined it and my hands brought it into being. Compared with that, buying a lap desk is more than a mistake. It's a wasted opportunity.

For some reason, I got it in my head to make the desk at absolutely no cost. I also wanted to build it out of an old pear crate. Thirty four years ago, as a kid, I worked in a produce store. Pears arrived in roughly sanded, hardwood crates, with a blue label on the side. Total old-school aesthetic. I took more than a dozen of them. They weren't big enough for records but made perfect bookshelves. Later, I divided them for compact discs. Then my daughters used them as toy shelves and doll houses. Over thirty four years I've kept every one of those crates.

Last night, I carefully disassembled one, pulling each nail, laying out the pieces on the workbench, and imagining them becoming a lap desk. The image came together almost as if it was a kit. I sanded and made some cuts. I measured and came up with a way to join things. At half past ten I quit for the night so the family could sleep.

This morning, I ripped down the ends of the crate to form a frame, clamped the long sides of the crate and screwed it all together with leftover screws. I keep the screws in a peanut butter jar whose cap is nailed to a ceiling rafter. I unscrewed the jar from the rafter and tipped the screws out, sorting through until I found some that would work. I wasn't going to spend money on this project. None. I built from what I have.

I sanded the top and rounded the edges. Every knot, dent, and gouge delighted me. I opened the polyurethane and applied a coat. The wood came to life under it. Thirty four years glowed in that wood. I love things that endure and the look of the marks time leaves on them.

I have scraps of foam padding to secure to the bottom and will cover those in old fabric from my daughter's bat mitzvah. This will be a beautiful lap desk. It will be free in every sense except that it will be laden with meaning and significance for me. I'll savor this because it has been purchased with the currency of my imagination, built by my two hands, and has been in the making for thirty-four years. I've yet to find all that in a big box store.