This Hour of Calm

How sweet and soothing is this hour of calm! I thank thee night! - Lord Byron


The slow, dark hours that mark the end of each day and the beginning of the next without fanfare or distinct characteristics seem to exist for my singular partiality. The deepest realms of the day seduce me with sheltering shadowy grays and blacks dotted with ribbons of blue-white moonlight strewn randomly across floors, walls and pieces of furniture.


The purposeful hush that encircles my thoughts with a most undeserved reverence also heightens my awareness of self and place. Shed of duties and responsibilities, the core of me rises from the minutiae that every day life sometimes brings. I relax most comfortably in the embrace of the insular hours that share my prediliction for solitary reflection. Typically overpowered by the drama and beauty of sunrises and bright blue skies bathed in light, the darkest hours give up the collective cheers of theatrical spectacle and replace it with the intimacy of poetry. A venue most suitable for my taste.

The remnants of the day's activities linger in the house and I often drift in and out of rooms to savor the sweet enchantment of sleeping children. With the recent addition to our home, Craig fashioned a frame for this favored stretch of time encased in glass at the foot of our bed. I can now enjoy the scene from the warmth of comforters and coziness of pillows or, within steps, open the door and immerse myself into the picture. The night lies exposed but enclosed by the studio and wooden fence.

Not surpisingly, my favorite snowscape is a night one. The impenetrable sky, still pregnant with precipitation reflects the white of the snow back onto itself over and over like mirrors in a dressing room. The snow creates an even heavier silence in the night air absorbing all residual sounds so that the ear strains to catch the audible quality of falling snow. I'm drawn to the open air church of my own flocked backyard and the purity of snow momentarily undisturbed by footprints or snow angels. Alone, I can be totally engulfed without having to attempt to search for the words that would describe or explain the emotion of the moment.

I will surrender long before the stars and the sun will reclaim the sky long before I open my eyes. Giddy children will impatiently dress and scamper out into the undulating white landscape early in the morning. The picturesque scene, the funny lopsided snowman, the laughter resonating from the red-cheeked imps will call me to join their ranks and the present will press the night's solace into the deeper recesses of memory to allow the space for the chaotic bliss of family.

And the Winner Is

Lise, Craig and I sit on the floor of the living room finishing a game of Blockus. These January days that rush into darkness along with the gradual return of sports and extracurricular activities provide an unusual leisure hour or two at the end of the day before the children take to their bedrooms with books. And so the stacks of board games that fill the girls' closet have been making winter evening rounds at the dining room table and on the living room floor. Tam watches quietly from where her head rests on Craig's lap, the rest of her sprawled on the rug beside him while he obligingly rubs her head between turns. Rem, not so quietly, hovers over us as I play my last blue piece and end the game. He bursts into tears.

"I wanted to win," he cries, large crocodile tears streaming down his face. Though it appears he has inherited the appropriate competitive gene for survival in our family the cart is really before the horse here.

"I know you wanted to win," I sympathize. "But you have to actually play the game to have a chance to win."

Lise, satisfied with a second place finish packs up the game and leaves to put it away allowing Miren to safely reappear without having to play. She prefers word-centered games like Scrabble and Boggle and would rather not risk losing at the more spatially minded games. Lise excels at games like Blockus and Mastermind but will, unlike her sister, good-naturedly continue to hone her skills at the other games even though she typically loses.

Mostly, they both like the long, involved games of pure chance. I groan at the sight of Monopoly but even more painful is the current favorite game of Life. Time passes idly as money gets sorted, cars get drivers and stacks of cards that will determine our fate get arranged. Questions arise as I watch the girls busily ready the game, questions like: do we really need to be reminded of the chances and luck that often govern our real lives? Or the surpise of the unexpected bills that send us struggling to get to the next step? Is it only the status of millionaire that will save us from a retirement home at the end of our lives?

Roped into playing with them anyway leads to further disturbances. Lise, for instance, NEVER goes to college. She ALWAYS chooses the vocational route and happily collects a hair stylist's salary or a mechanic's pay. Is this some foreboding of her future plans? If so, then equally disturbing is Miren's penchant for gambling. All game long she risks large sums of money on something called Spin to Win and typically amasses millions. The game of life, like my own often leaves me befuddled. Once I was congratulated on the birth of my grandchild despite the fact that I had gone through life childless.

Games filled the nooks and crannies of my childhood. My grandfather taught me to play checkers at a very young age and in doing so laid the groundwork for my family's cutthroat approach to various tabletop diversions. We sat across from each other over the glossy wooden coffee table in the back room of his home. CBS soap operas blared on the TV beside us as his thick, hairy fingers swiftly glided red checkers across the board. Occasionally he'd get caught up in a love scene or in a particular character's episode of amnesia and I would have to wait until a commercial before his next move.

"Eldon," my grandmother called from the kitchen where she tapped around in her black pumps preparing dinner. She sometimes needed him to reach inside cabinets to retrieve pots or pantry items.

Grandpappy ignored her. He didn't trust me alone with the board. Grandmama had to wait until the game ended. Luckily for her, this didn't take very long. I received little instruction beyond the basic rules of the game and sometimes a little criticism.

"That was a stupid move," Grandpappy responded to my careful, hesitant push of the black checker toward his red ones.

"King me!" He shouted on his next turn, scooping up the checkers he'd jumped and started attacking my pieces from the other side.

Mom, clearly raised in this environment, continued the same kind of sink or swim immersion into games we played at home. Her competitive nature coupled with that of her children's created a sort of street atmosphere around the game. Sometimes it was ugly. Often there were tears. Always, there was a winner and a real loser (we played for second place, third place, etc. until one person remained to absorb most of the humiliation). We took our first steps into the ruthless environment with no one holding our hand. The others hovered like vultures, waiting happily for a new fall guy to take the brunt of the losses. Forget that we were related. All that meant was that the same cold blood coursed through all of our veins.

Memories abound of Mom deftly adding Scrabble scores on a sheet of loose leaf paper near the board and smiling encouragingly, the way I might look at Miren or Lise in a similar situation, as I struggled to compose words out of i's and r's. More difficulty ensued as I tried to find a place for my meager solutions among words that had provided her with at least one hundred more points than I had.

Some of us, on our quest to win, cheated. A game of Battleship with Kris nearly dictated a chase involving ghostly battleships that miraculously avoided hits until Kris literally pinned his ships into a stack in the corner of his board. Usually, his board tipped accidentally and all pegs were lost with no possibility of a winner (or a loser). What did we expect? He had to jump into a pit of experienced snakes filled with venom. He survived any way he could.

Trivial Pursiut sat as a permanent part of our repertoire of games in the late eighties. The original version, it turned out, appealed more to the older generation than the teenagers in our house. Mom loved the game and convinced us to play over and over. She tried to sweeten the pot by suggesting we play on teams. She'd grab a token teammate (we were all equally lacking in the general knowledge required for success at this game) and the rest of us saps plied our brains for answers that she'd giddily spout out when we answered incorrectly. She collected pieces of pie like my brothers at a Gramercy Christmas party.

Dad, however, equally frustrated us from a different angle. Usually, he did not play games but when he did he spent more time arguing about the printed answers on cards than actually playing. Angry and full of disgust for the game, he rambled off long dissertations about the REAL facts until we asked him to quit. He happily obliged and retreated to bed.

Now, our extended family plays on equal footing. We retain the competitive spirit of old and want to win with the same ferocity as our childhood selves. Together we gather in my parent's family room, on a late summer evening or at the end of a long celebration with pencils ready for a cutthroat game of Balderdash or Scattegories. Siblings and spouses show indomitable spirit as we body up against each other arguing at will over vacation places that start with P (is Pakistan really a vacation spot?) and items found in a lunchbox that start with W (who needs a wrench at lunchtime?). We pause, ready to unleash unrelenting wrath at whoever stands in our way of having the most points (this includes our mother). Our late nights of "fun" now welcome the next generation into our sadistic tradition. Koby and Miren pass out pencils while Lauren sets up the board or assimilates game pieces. Dad will even team up with a young person if it isn't too late and we try to exhibit patience as Dad explains his team's famous duo, an old cowboy and his horse from a serial Western that no one has ever heard of or some characters from the radio show Let's Pretend of his childhood while his nine year old partner helps him argue his case.

Rem, however, has much to learn. He wipes his eyes and retrieves his pirate game from his room. The idea is to place little plastic swords in slots along the brown plastic barrel that houses the pirate without getting the pirate. A plastic pirate with a painted patch over his eye that sometimes doubles as Rem's baby sits with his head poking out of the barrel while Craig and Rem take turns plugging the slots with the colorful weaponry. Rem sends the pirate into the air with a yellow sword and screams, "I've won! I've won!" Really, he has lost but with the road ahead we smile knowingly and give him a high five. Craig resets the game for another round.

Kindermusik: A Tale of Two Miss Beth's (and Anne)

Kindermusik classes fill our home almost every day of the week under the careful tutelage of a young toddler who refers to himself as Miss Beth during the classes. We are called from our own activities in various parts of the house to a transformed living room. Surprisingly intact fiddlesticks and plastic harmonicas lie scattered on the rug near Rem’s blue and red drum. Plastic cups with Mardi Gras beads inside sit close to the kid-sized blue lawn chair that keeps finding its way into our house.

Our young Miss Beth greets us by different names and encourages us to sit down in a circle where he leads us through a host of songs and rhymes. He compliments our efforts and applauds our distinct loud and quiet claps and taps. Sometimes we listen to his CDs and other times we put on our listening ears and pretend to hear whatever Rem tells us we are listening to. He does not like disruptions to the order of things as he moves methodically through activities. His baby quilt waits just behind his chair ready to be opened for a story and then quickly folded again before more dancing and good-byes. Imaginary figures get stamped onto our arms accompanied with more praise about our participation before we are sent away and then quickly called back (with some of the students groaning) for another session of musical bliss (at least for our Miss Beth).

The real Miss Beth provides musical inspiration on Thursday mornings in Rem’s weekly Our Time Kindermusik class. Rem feels love for this musical magician who turns sticks and shakers into wonderful instruments, scarves into dancing colors and words into melodies. I feel lucky. The Kindermusik curriculum can supply an individual with exposure to music but it takes a talented educator to instill in a young child love and desire for all things musical while also imparting to the parents the multifarious ways that music assists in their child’s development. Beth Magill is such a teacher and a shared parental admiration encircles this Pied Piper and her captivated little rats every Thursday morning.

Kindermusik played an integral role in all of my children’s early growth due to the two dedicated teachers who resonated with a love of music and a respect for young children. Anne Rogers introduced me to the Kindermusik program and I enrolled Miren in the Village class that she taught in an old church classroom downtown. Groups of babies and toddlers, noisy and wild in the minutes before class, suddenly sat spellbound as Anne energetically guided them through themed musical journeys.

I appreciated Anne’s breadth of musical knowledge. She’d directed choruses and was a seasoned member of the Asheville Choral Society. Her piano studio witnessed changes in location and the graduation of many students but Anne had stood at the helm for decades. Anne's love of music resonated in her personal life and in the veritable encyclopedia of classsical music stored in her memory. Not only could Anne off-handedly suggest a piece of classical music that my children might enjoy, but she could also tell me about the piece’s various recordings and the one most suitable for our listening pleasure.

“Wait,” she’d said, a little condescendingly when I wondered out loud if the girls might enjoy Peter and the Wolf. “They’re a little young. Let them listen and play to Saint Saen’s A Carnival of Animals. They’ll enjoy the distinct instrumental changes.” Maybe a year later she handed me a CD of Peter and the Wolf. “They’re ready now.” And she was right. More time passed and then she introduced Miren and Lise to a video recording of The Magic Flute.


Most advantageous to the children was our friendship with Anne’s family. On warm summer evenings while we lingered on the deck of her home as the sun set behind the mountains and the city lights filled the valley below Anne taught Miren and Lise how to sing rhymes up and down the scale and taught me simple things that I could do on the piano to accompany their explorations of the black and white keys. Anne would leave dinner on the stove and a house full of guests to find some instruments to amuse the girls while the adults chatted. She’d end up on the floor with them, singing and “Toe Tapping Her Blues Away” while dinner waited.

Unfortunately, we caught Anne at the end of her Kindermusik days and scrambled to find teachers to fill the void as we continued through the musical stages with enthusiastic but lesser- talented teachers until the girls again became students of Anne’s as a part of her piano studio and her musical influence once again flourished (and flourishes) in our daily lives. The playful, enjoyable exposure to music enabled Miren and Lise to ease into piano lessons as an extension to what they were already doing musically.

Beth Magill’s reputation preceded our acquaintance as I was aware of a wonderful teacher in Black Mountain when my daughters were of Kindermusik age. The musical Magill family is also well-known in the area. Her enigmatic spirit and abundant talents do not disappoint and I am grateful for her guidance and the joy she brings to her students. I was delighted to enroll Rem in her classes. But really, the delight is all Rem’s.

Fruits of the Sea: Feast or Famine

Craig and I stood with my brother around the island in my mother’s kitchen during the holidays eating fresh raw oysters out of a plastic gallon bucket from the local seafood market. A few glass bowls sat scattered across the speckled laminate full of cocktail sauce. No one needed to stretch beyond a casual arm’s length to dip the soft, slippery bivalves into the Tabasco-spiced concoction. Mom, parked in front of the stove a few feet away from us, poured the liquor from another gallon bucket of oysters into her gumbo pot as she labored over her oyster soup. The rich aroma of butter and green onions softened as the oyster water filled the pot and steam rose like a scented halo from its depths.

“This is so wrong,” Craig admonished with a smile after eating four or five oysters in quick succession. “I’ve watched them shuck oysters at Dragos (a favorite New Orleans oyster bar) and it is no easy feat.”

Kyle agreed, spearing another oyster from the bucket and sucking it into his mouth. The oysters, plump with flavor and as fresh as I’ve ever tasted defeated us after some time and we left more than we thought we would floating in the bottom of the container. Satisfied, we still looked forward to the evening when we would taste oysters anew, more firm and meaty from their bath in the creamy soup. I left the kitchen with a glass of water to check on Rem and returned to find more family members huddled around the island. Dad and Andrew joined Kyle and Craig with Lauren and Miren darting in and out. The soup, simmering on its own, enabled Mom to swiftly whip up other house favorites. A bowl of crab dip and a tray of crackers soon replaced the oyster paraphernalia that vanished from the island.

“I know you’ll want to eat some seafood while you’re in town,” Mom remarked later, brushing off the various seafood-filled dishes she’d already served us. “Dad and I will take you to our new neighborhood place tomorrow.” Louisianians know that there is a difference between the seafood that one eats in homes and the seafood consumed at restaurants, even if the dishes look and taste remarkably similar. At the Speckled T, Craig ate his fill of fried catfish and shrimp that should not be confused with the poor boys we grabbed at Bogey’s on a subsequent busy day because, in Louisiana, fried seafood on a plate is different from fried seafood on French bread dressed with lettuce and mayonnaise. When in Rome…

A lovely, cool day spent under a clear blue sky at the zoo with my brother Kraig’s family and Mom and Dad progressed into a New Year’s Eve dinner at a long standing Asian restaurant on the North Shore. Trey Yuen, self described as a beautiful oriental palace, boasts high end stock catalog Chinese decor. The seafood, however, is all local and compliments the Asian preparation and sauces in a most delectable way. Large, Louisiana shrimp enhanced the rich broth of the wonton soup I shared with Rem. Craig and I ordered the Tung Cho plate: a stack of crawfish, shrimp and fish doused in a dark brown, spicy, sweet sauce.

We miss the availability of fresh fish and seafood in our mountain town and try to condense our consumption within the span of our visits back home. Occasionally, a friend of ours brings fresh shrimp from the North Carolina coast after long week-end trips. These offerings are savored and rationed. I make a rich shrimp stock to freeze and then we divide up the tails into potential etouffees, strudels and gumbos that we freeze with hope that they will last until our friend’s next visit.

Our other option for fresh fish or seafood lies in the quick, mountain trout that swim our streams and rivers. Unfortunately, two things work against us in this option. Although Craig enjoys fly fishing, the current pace of our life leaves Craig no time for his hobby. Secondly, when he does fish, Craig prefers the streams that require him to release the fish back into the water. We settle for heavily seasoned farmed salmon and wild tuna from foreign seas and hope, between bites, that Mom and Dad will bring the ice chest of boiled crawfish that usually accompanies them on spring visits or the pounds of Louisiana crabmeat and crawfish tails that Mom will stack in our freezer to satiate our palates until our next seafood binge in Louisiana.

A Walk in the Marsh

On our recent holiday trip to Louisiana my parents took Craig and me and the children to a wildlife refuge near their home. Mom, Miren and Lise tried to hike the same trail last summer but gave up after braving a relentless sun, humidity that, with sweat, left them drenched and a multitude of bugs. They had, in their short stroll, encountered an abundance of marsh life and we began our December afternoon walk with hopefulness. Miren and Lise did not recognize the marsh as the same one they had visited. The grasses that once sought to overtake the boardwalk turned with a winter’s crispness tiredly away from the raised wooden trail. The marsh itself seemed to stretch in the brisk dry air and everything rested motionless except for the wind that chilled us as we stood exposed with the few tall pines that daringly crept into the wet grasses.

The water shone slick like glass without a single ripple to signal life beyond the surface. We spotted a gathering of waterfowl among broken branches of moss laden trees near deeper water. Dad, a seasoned bird watcher, pulled his binoculars from his jacket pocket and helped the girls get a closer look. The birds seemed to enjoy the day’s tranquility as they quietly joined us in surveying the wide expanse of marshes along the edges of Lake Ponchartrain. We spied a Great Blue Heron in the distance and then another one close up. Both stood tall, confident and sleek with the pomposity of an easy, well-rewarded existence in the abundant wildlife refuge.
Filled with comparisons to his own back yard, Dad’s observances enlightened us to the multitude of wildlife that enjoy the seeds he puts out as well as the fruit from the trees in the modest acreage of his own refuge. Mom suggested that he conduct tours there and Lise and Miren agreed with serious discussion of including their own sightings of turtles and rabbits along with snakes and birds into Dad’s backyard tour.

Rem, although only days from spending hours playing in deep Asheville snow, did not like the Louisiana cold and hurried us along the trail toward warmer, protected places. The promise of fresh seafood for dinner prompted the rest of us to quicken our pace and head back to the car.