Uncategorized

The Quiet Season

/ Joshua B. Kay / 1 Comment

With a decisive “click,” the glass of the storm windows locks into place, and the quiet season begins. The sounds of the outside world recede, muffled for the rest of the fall and winter, and I experience my usual mix of feelings at the start of this hushed time: peace and comfort in the relative silence of a warm home, a sense of loss with the passing of summer and fall, anticipation and resignation about the cold, gray winter ahead.

After growing up in Los Angeles, with its stunted sense of seasons, I appreciate the yearly cycle in the Great Lakes region, even though it can be hard. Winter is long and demanding. We sometimes have a week-long thaw in February, and eager faces turn toward the southern sky like sunflowers. Then the thaw ends. Winter returns. We scurry back indoors. When spring finally comes in earnest, I marvel at the bravery of snowdrops and crocuses and await the early-season tulips.

But long before the first buds of spring start to swell, winter turns us inward. Even by Halloween, a few cold, damp, blustery days have sent snowflakes or ice pellets sideways. Wind and hard rains hammer the colored leaves out of the trees, scattering them across lawns and walks and streets. We see neighbors less often; their children don’t play outside as much, and the street is no longer filled with their piping, excited voices. There are fewer spontaneous meetings on front lawns and porches. House lights glow through closed windows.

When winter weather comes to stay, all becomes quiet. Snow covers trees and bushes and earth. Walking outside, my boots crunch in it. The sound travels only a short distance before the snow sucks it into silence.

Indoors, sealed against the weather, we watch the darkness come early. The fire crackles. Cars whisper past. The sound of the traffic on the big cross-street a couple of blocks away, heard easily through summer windows, cannot penetrate the storm glass. It is as if the traffic has been diverted, though the cross-street remains one of the busiest thoroughfares in town.

Our lives settle into an indoor rhythm. The dog, burly and bear-like in his winter coat, spends more time curled up and snoozing. The two cats spoon like quotation marks. Flannel sheets go on the bed. Even they are quieter, rustling less than the smooth, cool, snappy sheets of summer. Soup burbles on the stove. The furnace hums to life, roars out its hot breath for a while, then sleeps again.

When I take the dog for his bedtime stroll, he sticks his nose deep in the snow, and I look up at the stars, waiting for him to be satisfied. A neighbor comes out of his house to rummage in his car. After he finds whatever he’s looking for, he straightens and notices me. We have known each other for a decade. In warmer months, we chat about yards and bikes and his retirement travels. Now, he only nods and hurries inside. His front door clicks shut, and I return to the stars. Orion hunts in the cold winter sky.

Dry spells

/ Joshua B. Kay / 1 Comment

A dry spell in writing makes you feel oddly empty and full at the same time. Empty in the sense that you feel like there’s just nothing in you to write down. Full in the sense that you feel bloated and clogged, full of scraps of writing, little bits here and there, fits and starts, but nothing that will come to fruition. It all just backs up and remains unsatisfying. In the long dry spell that I’ve had since this past winter, I’ve started several blog posts. Some got to full length, nearly complete, yet with every single one, I’ve decided that it wasn’t good enough to post. Each failed to capture what I meant to say, and each went straight into the bin. Perhaps one or more will get resurrected at some point when I figure out how to change it in just the right way.

Winter, which was real and long this year unlike last, gave way to a rainy spring, and as is common here in Ann Arbor, spring has suddenly tripped into summer. The semester ended, I said goodbye to my students, welcomed summer interns to the clinic, and got them up and running on cases. My case load is smaller than it’s been in nearly five years, thanks to some well-timed case closures, and I have an opportunity to get some academic research and writing done. I’m glad about that, yet I’ve worried that my writing energies will be taken up by academic papers, leaving nothing for other writing efforts. Today, though, I realized that writing feeds more writing. It doesn’t have to be the case that in doing my academic work, I’ll somehow drain the reservoir. When I was working regularly on The Hopping Mind for a couple of months before the winter blahs set in – and in looking back, I think that’s exactly what happened – I found myself more productive at work as well. Writing at home and writing at work complemented each other and set the juices flowing. The Canadian author Robertson Davies was a full-time journalist for much of his life, all the while writing prolifically outside of work, and he noted how each energized the other.

While I don’t have much interest in “how to” books about writing, their authors generally maintain that if you want to write, just keep doing it regularly. It’s a process that feeds itself.

They make a good point.

A bialy and coffee and…

/ Joshua B. Kay / 2 Comments

It started with a bialy. Crust Bakery, a terrific bakery in Fenton, has bialys. When I first saw that in a Facebook post, suddenly in my mind I was with my grandmother in her Chicago apartment, munching contentedly on an onion bialy with cream cheese and sipping orange juice with the Tribune spread around the table. The lake is beautiful out the east-facing windows, and I’m with one of my favorite people in all the world. Her smile comes easily, and hers is a smile that is complete and genuine, her eyes curved into gleeful little half-moons.

From there, it’s just a short trip further into the past and my grandfather has joined us. In fact, I’m up extra early with him, grandma still sleeping. The sun is coming up over the lake, and I’m drinking coffee. I’m awfully young for that, but it’s about half milk, and it tastes creamy and bittersweet with a teaspoon of sugar in it. And always, there’s the Tribune on the table. I’m looking at comics and sports, my grandfather at the news and opinion and business sections. He gets the sports after awhile, too. I’m most interested in how the Dodgers are doing, me being an LA boy, and one of these visits to Chicago is made extra special when my grandfather takes me to a Cubs-Dodgers game. It’s a sunny day, warm but not too humid. We walk block after block west on Addison to Wrigley. It’s one of the great days of my childhood, me dangerously wearing my Dodgers cap in enemy territory, munching on peanuts and hot dogs, and spending hours one on one with my grandfather as the Dodgers beat the Cubs and we walk home again. That day, like all of the others when I stayed with him and my grandmother in Chicago, started with milky, bittersweet coffee.

The other day, I took my kids to school, and when my son and his friend ran into their classroom without saying goodbye, the friend’s mom said, “What am I? Chopped liver?” We chuckled about our independent little kiddos, getting so big and changing so fast, and while we laughed I was surprised when a thought flashed into my mind about my other grandmother, the one in LA, and the amazing chopped liver that she made. My grandfather and I would have chopped liver sandwiches, and say what you will, those sandwiches were amazing. The hazy LA sunshine came through the living room windows, and we munched away happily. And again, the moment was about the time and the place and the food and, most of all, the people. It’s always about the people. People that we love, people that we miss, people that we always want back yet always have with us.

Next time I’m in Fenton, I think I need to grab a bialy.