Rose & Thorn Journal - Fall 2011
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Laura Grace Weldon lives with her family on Bit of Earth Farm where she is a barely useful farm wench. She’s written a poem and a post for Rose & Thorn Journal. Her work has recently appeared in Christian Science Monitor, J Journal, Trillium Journal, Geez, L'Initianion, Chrysalis Reader, Farming, The Shine Journal and Natural Life. She is the author of Free Range Learning (Hohm Press, 2010). Visit her at lauragraceweldon.
Laura Grace Weldon
I don’t want to just see Chicago. I want this place to sink in my bones, to hold it there for the days ahead when my son will leave home to live here.
Knotted traffic slows our drive into the city. We pass miles of densely packed buildings on roads thick with signs. I try to imagine Kirby attending college here. He was raised in the country. He’s spent more time around farm animals than crowds. At home he walks the fields practicing his bagpipes and wanders through woods taking photos.
We pass an elegant brick structure graced with ornate tracery, stone quoins and Greek lettering inscribed over a wide wooden door. Its dirty windows are crowded with cardboard advertisements and plastic banners. Above the door a sign blinks “porno.”
Road construction ahead halts us next to a stately church. An addition sags at its side like a tumor of rotting timber and broken steps. Stained glass windows face the street as if willfully ignoring the decay. Such compromises made to remain standing.
At last, our destination. Columbia College open house booklets in hand, the three of us walk from one introductory session to another.
“What do you think?” I ask Kirby as we tour the recording arts studio.
“Pretty awesome,” he says.
“You don’t want to get into sound system installation,” my husband Mark says. “It’s a cutthroat business.”
“Uh huh,” Kirby answers.
“I’ve seen sound engineers outbid for a contract by a guy who just designs the whole thing on a CAD program,” he says. “Four or five proposals, all for nothing.”
“Kirby has been talking about the creative side,” I say. “Can you imagine pairing his talents in music and writing with his interest in acoustics?”
Kirby is silent.
There’s a reverb room built inside a former bank vault. Kirby tells us about the way the sound bounces, but I don’t understand. I’m thinking about the energy of money once stored here, the way it resonated through people’s lives.
We move on to a sound deadening room. The walls are covered with ridged foam. Our voices fall to the floor. No one stays there long.
Then the welcoming presentation. It’s alive with music and dance. The college president says all the right things. Already I’m building bridges from our home to this place, sensing the vibrancy it will add to Kirby’s life.
“If you think you’re going here, you’ll have to stop fooling around,” Mark says as we walk back out into the wind. “You’ll need better test scores for one thing.”
My eyes find my husband’s. This is a bearing wall, my expression tells him. Don’t undermine. He looks away.
A family is a building. The ground under it shifts, settles, shifts again. Sometimes there are blocked off rooms, steps leading nowhere, basements flooded with ruined memories. Its size and strength can’t be seen from the exterior. Inside, it can be reinforced with the simplest tools—a warm meal, a lingering touch, shared laughter.
We walk farther, matching street signs to the tiny maps in our booklets. It’s hard to orient ourselves.
“If this is the place you want to go,” my husband says, “we’ll do everything we can to help you.”
I feel a doorway open.
Earlier Kirby mentioned wanting a Columbia shirt. We find the college bookstore. The first rack has clearance t-shirts. I pull one out but now he seems disinterested. I see his dad exchange a look with him. That there-she-goes look.
“These are clearance because kids don’t want them,” Mark says.
“Sheesh, find one you’d like,” I say to Kirby, gesturing around the store.
He wanders, looking at books. A guy is reading the lyrics of a songbook aloud. A woman in a wheelchair smells of urine. I pull out a few other shirts to show him.
“It’s all right, Mom,” he says, and hugs me.
My husband makes fun of me gently. I turn down the next aisle, looking at him over a stack of reference guides. My husband and I laugh off despair and sleep, pressed close together. We talk to each other more than any couple we know. So what if communication sometimes gurgles like a backed-up septic system?
There are no more presentations. We wander out of the wind into a student photography exhibit. A sign says the artist is inspired by horror movies. Strangulation, blood and drowning are prominent themes. My husband waits patiently by the door after taking a short look around. Kirby and I bound up the stairs looking at every piece. We may live in the country, but I take the kids to urban concerts, plays, gallery showings, museums and festivals. My husband never goes. Tells me such offerings are “your kind of thing.” He doesn’t take the kids to the park, ball games or camping either. A cheerful man, a loving man; not a hands-on dad.
Wind whips the dreads of a woman walking by into a Medusa-like swirl above her head. It percusses banners hanging along the sides of buildings and animates litter on the sidewalk. We stand by the car looking at Google maps our son has printed of places he wants to see. Driving up we had talked about where else we would like to go in Chicago.
“They’re all too far to walk,” my husband says. “We’d have to drive. Parking is awful in this town.”
The joists shift under us.
“We’re in Chicago,” I say. “We didn’t come all this way to leave at two in the afternoon.”
“We’ll be back again,” he counters. “Lots of times.”
The wind picks up grit from the parking lot and throws it in our mouths.
“We can walk to the Art Institute,” I say. “We’ve been sitting most of the day.”
“Your choice,” my husband says to us both.
We rarely fight. But our son is sensitive to the nuances of this balancing act. He’d rather wait it out than be drawn to either side. He wanted to see the Art Institute yesterday. But he’s caught between floors with the elevator cable straining. He only shrugs. I don’t want to put him in the middle, so I don’t turn to him.
“We’re already here,” I say. “Let’s do something interesting.”
The L goes by, making us call out more loudly.
“It was a long drive. We’ve never been stuck in traffic that long,” my husband yells over the noise.
“That was rush hour,” I shout, a helicopter passing low enough to skim the rooftops.
“Your choice,” my husband repeats. Too loudly. There isn’t as much background noise. Just tall buildings looming over us in this place I want to make familiar.
Kirby is looking at me. Does he want me to insist or let it go? I wish our feelings were signage—crisscrossed yellow tape warning of hazards, or a building permit displaying the intent to expand.
I decide there’s no joy going to a museum with someone feigning patience, barely glancing at the art. We’ll retrace our journey back to Ohio. There my husband will read the paper, I’ll finish up some work on the computer, Kirby will play guitar—the same walls and floors between us.
I look at my husband’s graying temples. He’s beginning to look distinguished, a few steps from old. This fills me with unexpected tenderness. He wants to take us away from the city, back where he needs no maps, where he likes the art on the walls, where our son still lives with us.
We get into the car, a surprisingly welcome shelter from the approaching storm. The wind flips a wiper blade out like a finger slurring the skyscrapers. We laugh, and I feel something strong as a support beam connect us. Right now, holding together means everything.
Family Architecture
I don’t want to just see Chicago. I want this place to sink in my bones, to hold it there for the days ahead when my son will leave home to live here.
Knotted traffic slows our drive into the city. We pass miles of densely packed buildings on roads thick with signs. I try to imagine Kirby attending college here. He was raised in the country. He’s spent more time around farm animals than crowds. At home he walks the fields practicing his bagpipes and wanders through woods taking photos.
We pass an elegant brick structure graced with ornate tracery, stone quoins and Greek lettering inscribed over a wide wooden door. Its dirty windows are crowded with cardboard advertisements and plastic banners. Above the door a sign blinks “porno.”
Road construction ahead halts us next to a stately church. An addition sags at its side like a tumor of rotting timber and broken steps. Stained glass windows face the street as if willfully ignoring the decay. Such compromises made to remain standing.
At last, our destination. Columbia College open house booklets in hand, the three of us walk from one introductory session to another.
“What do you think?” I ask Kirby as we tour the recording arts studio.
“Pretty awesome,” he says.
“You don’t want to get into sound system installation,” my husband Mark says. “It’s a cutthroat business.”
“Uh huh,” Kirby answers.
“I’ve seen sound engineers outbid for a contract by a guy who just designs the whole thing on a CAD program,” he says. “Four or five proposals, all for nothing.”
“Kirby has been talking about the creative side,” I say. “Can you imagine pairing his talents in music and writing with his interest in acoustics?”
Kirby is silent.
There’s a reverb room built inside a former bank vault. Kirby tells us about the way the sound bounces, but I don’t understand. I’m thinking about the energy of money once stored here, the way it resonated through people’s lives.
We move on to a sound deadening room. The walls are covered with ridged foam. Our voices fall to the floor. No one stays there long.
Then the welcoming presentation. It’s alive with music and dance. The college president says all the right things. Already I’m building bridges from our home to this place, sensing the vibrancy it will add to Kirby’s life.
“If you think you’re going here, you’ll have to stop fooling around,” Mark says as we walk back out into the wind. “You’ll need better test scores for one thing.”
My eyes find my husband’s. This is a bearing wall, my expression tells him. Don’t undermine. He looks away.
A family is a building. The ground under it shifts, settles, shifts again. Sometimes there are blocked off rooms, steps leading nowhere, basements flooded with ruined memories. Its size and strength can’t be seen from the exterior. Inside, it can be reinforced with the simplest tools—a warm meal, a lingering touch, shared laughter.
We walk farther, matching street signs to the tiny maps in our booklets. It’s hard to orient ourselves.
“If this is the place you want to go,” my husband says, “we’ll do everything we can to help you.”
I feel a doorway open.
Earlier Kirby mentioned wanting a Columbia shirt. We find the college bookstore. The first rack has clearance t-shirts. I pull one out but now he seems disinterested. I see his dad exchange a look with him. That there-she-goes look.
“These are clearance because kids don’t want them,” Mark says.
“Sheesh, find one you’d like,” I say to Kirby, gesturing around the store.
He wanders, looking at books. A guy is reading the lyrics of a songbook aloud. A woman in a wheelchair smells of urine. I pull out a few other shirts to show him.
“It’s all right, Mom,” he says, and hugs me.
My husband makes fun of me gently. I turn down the next aisle, looking at him over a stack of reference guides. My husband and I laugh off despair and sleep, pressed close together. We talk to each other more than any couple we know. So what if communication sometimes gurgles like a backed-up septic system?
There are no more presentations. We wander out of the wind into a student photography exhibit. A sign says the artist is inspired by horror movies. Strangulation, blood and drowning are prominent themes. My husband waits patiently by the door after taking a short look around. Kirby and I bound up the stairs looking at every piece. We may live in the country, but I take the kids to urban concerts, plays, gallery showings, museums and festivals. My husband never goes. Tells me such offerings are “your kind of thing.” He doesn’t take the kids to the park, ball games or camping either. A cheerful man, a loving man; not a hands-on dad.
Wind whips the dreads of a woman walking by into a Medusa-like swirl above her head. It percusses banners hanging along the sides of buildings and animates litter on the sidewalk. We stand by the car looking at Google maps our son has printed of places he wants to see. Driving up we had talked about where else we would like to go in Chicago.
“They’re all too far to walk,” my husband says. “We’d have to drive. Parking is awful in this town.”
The joists shift under us.
“We’re in Chicago,” I say. “We didn’t come all this way to leave at two in the afternoon.”
“We’ll be back again,” he counters. “Lots of times.”
The wind picks up grit from the parking lot and throws it in our mouths.
“We can walk to the Art Institute,” I say. “We’ve been sitting most of the day.”
“Your choice,” my husband says to us both.
We rarely fight. But our son is sensitive to the nuances of this balancing act. He’d rather wait it out than be drawn to either side. He wanted to see the Art Institute yesterday. But he’s caught between floors with the elevator cable straining. He only shrugs. I don’t want to put him in the middle, so I don’t turn to him.
“We’re already here,” I say. “Let’s do something interesting.”
The L goes by, making us call out more loudly.
“It was a long drive. We’ve never been stuck in traffic that long,” my husband yells over the noise.
“That was rush hour,” I shout, a helicopter passing low enough to skim the rooftops.
“Your choice,” my husband repeats. Too loudly. There isn’t as much background noise. Just tall buildings looming over us in this place I want to make familiar.
Kirby is looking at me. Does he want me to insist or let it go? I wish our feelings were signage—crisscrossed yellow tape warning of hazards, or a building permit displaying the intent to expand.
I decide there’s no joy going to a museum with someone feigning patience, barely glancing at the art. We’ll retrace our journey back to Ohio. There my husband will read the paper, I’ll finish up some work on the computer, Kirby will play guitar—the same walls and floors between us.
I look at my husband’s graying temples. He’s beginning to look distinguished, a few steps from old. This fills me with unexpected tenderness. He wants to take us away from the city, back where he needs no maps, where he likes the art on the walls, where our son still lives with us.
We get into the car, a surprisingly welcome shelter from the approaching storm. The wind flips a wiper blade out like a finger slurring the skyscrapers. We laugh, and I feel something strong as a support beam connect us. Right now, holding together means everything.
