A Mine of Our Own

As if things haven’t been interesting enough around here lately, a friend of mine was at the beach at around 4pm the other day when his friend saw something in the ocean just a few feet past the break.  He thought it might be a big lump of tar.  My friend said he would wade in to check it out.  The waves were only a foot deep at the break and he could easily see down through the water.

“I thought perhaps it was a round dark metal umbrella stand,” he said.

 This wouldn’t be so unusual now that we’re living in post-Sandy times-- all manner of household items are washing up on shore towns’ beachfronts-- but something struck my friend as odd. 

“When I got closer I knew immediately it was a contact mine.  It looked just like a classic German mine, from WWII-- like when you play Mine Sweep on a computer.  One of the horns was missing and was just showing the receiver.  I’d never seen a real one up close before.”

I was incredulous.  Why on earth did my friend look at a round umbrella stand and think German mine from WWII?  I knew that some guys tend to have all sorts of military flotsam in their heads—weapons and planes maybe-- but really, this all seemed highly unlikely.

“How was it that you knew it was a mine?”  I asked.

He said, “Oh, I worked in Anti-Submarine Warfare at GE for 4 years after college.”

No way.  What are the chances?

It took some time for my friend to convince the 19-year-old lifeguard to try to convince the head of the beach association to convince local law enforcement to wade into 2 feet of water and check it out.  Who was really going to believe that there was a WWII mine up at the beach?  The police in turn sought out the services of a local scuba diver who waded into about 5 feet of water—by now it was high tide—to take underwater photos to, presumably, email them to some WWII mine expert who eventually said, “Yup, sure is.” 

By 7pm my mother and son and I ventured up to the beach to watch 3 cops and the diver stand near the water’s edge.  They had closed the beach to visitors, so we sat in a neighbor’s yard for a while then went home.  The next morning we learned that they would be detonating the mine at 11am, which would be high tide—better to buffer possible shrapnel.  By now there were 10 cops, 4 police cars, 2 army issue SUVs, a fire truck and 2 helicopters hovering above.  Oh, and a Chanel 12 news van circling for parking.  Law enforcement closed the street to cars and pedestrians for 5 blocks north and south of the beach and blocked traffic off the main highway.  Then they evacuated all the houses on the beach and across the street, reminding homeowners to open their windows before they left so they wouldn’t shatter from the blast.

The mine was apparently wrapped in an explosive called C4 and then bagged in some fashion for containment.  My friend explained that it’s called Detcord and it burns at 4000 feet per second.  “Why do you know that?” I said.  He just giggled and said, “Because I just do.”  My mother, two friends and I rode our bikes to just past the blockade and stood with evacuated restore-the-shore construction workers.  No one knew what to expect.  I texted my friend, who was at work.  He texted that they usually sound a horn before a blast.  Someone behind me counted down the minutes and just before the top of the hour, we heard a faint ringing in the distance like a school bell.  I pointed my camera in the general direction and pressed record. 

A loud explosion sent a line of water a hundred feet into the air.  “Woah,” we all said in unison then chuckled because one friend missed the shot because she was looking down at her camera and another was texting.  Oh, well.  Carry on.  We shared one more laugh with friendly strangers on a warm sunny day then disbursed to go back to what we were doing.

“The mine didn’t blow up,” my friend said, “I knew it was probably waterlogged.  Plus, the detonators were corroded off.  It would have been a huge explosion if it had blown up.  500 or 600 pounds of TNT.  Trust me, you would have known.”  Then he giggled again.

The AP reported that a deepsea diver found the mine.  We got a big laugh out of that in town, picturing a deepsea diver in 2 feet of water up at the beach, standing in full regalia at the water’s edge among all the boogie boards and bathing suits, pointing down towards his flippered feet. 

A few days later I asked my friend what he thought of being so close to a piece of history.  “I didn’t think it was that big a deal,” he said.  “But didn’t you think it was wild that we could be going along one minute in 2013 and then, blammo, face-to-face with 1942 the next?”  “Na,” he said, “It’s just another day in the life.”  70 years eclipsed in a moment’s glance at the ocean and to my friend it’s all business as usual.  My mom agreed with him.

Well, I thought it was cool and it gave me pause to consider the good grace of the men in subs who didn’t bump into it all those years ago.  My dad would have been blown away, so to speak.  He was fascinated with WWII.  This Fourth of July, when the fireworks explode and I hear the line, “bombs bursting in air”, I’ll think of the mine that didn’t go off up at the beach.  And the deepsea diver who didn’t find it.

Restoring the Shore

I took my son and some friends and their kids to Jenkinson’s Amusement Park in Point Pleasant, NJ, a few weeks ago.  I cautioned everyone that we may only find the arcades open but, to my delight, I was wrong.  The whole boardwalk was up and running at full steam.  The roller coaster, bumper cars and endlessly looping Himalayan were all ready to rock.  The swings took my son and his friend high into the air as they sat in those little seats, gripping the chains that held them up.  They giggled as they flew in circles over a ring of flip-flops waiting patiently on the ground below them.  Toddlers and tykes were mesmerized by the docile boat and fire engine rides while excited tweens squealed over the upside down rides I still harbor leftover anxiety from, so many years later.

My son was most concerned about the water pistol games but they were up and running, too.  For 3 bucks he and his friend and I-- because you need at least 3 people to play-- aimed into our clowns’ mouths, pulled the trigger with steely determination and watched streams of water blow up our balloons.  The boys had made a pact going in that they would pick out a ball on the lowest prize shelf so that they could share it for the rest of the weekend, and when one of them won, they did. 

So, life was good on the boardwalk that day.  The wooden planks we had walked on for generations were replaced with some sort of recycled resin-type material that would reduce splinter angst for generations to come.  The arcades were humming, the hot oil was frying and my girlfriend and I celebrated the gorgeous weather and our Jersey shore weekend with a freshly made Belgian waffle topped with two scoops of ice cream.  Just for us moms.

Yesterday I had a different sort of day at the Jersey Shore when I drove down to check on my aunt’s house in Mantoloking,.  That’s the small town situated on 3 blocks of Barrier Island between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat Bay.  Most folks would like to think of Mantoloking as solely a bastion for wealthy folks’ spacious vacation homes, but that’s not the whole picture.  My aunt’s home is small by anyone’s terms.  A tiny bungalow, the only reason she has a living room is because my grandfather enclosed the one-car garage 40 years ago.  It’s cozy, lovely and it’s her primary residence—and it took on 4 feet of water after Sandy.             

A friend of my aunt’s owned a grand behemoth of a turn-of-the-century shore house.  The surge wave that breached the dunes took the first floor out from under the 2^nd and 3^rd and left them on the ground like a magician’s tablecloth trick.  Other neighbors came back to check on their houses only to fine that they were gone—wiped off the map.  Of the 521 homes in town, over 200 were destroyed or disappeared.  All of them were damaged.  Some were inherited, yes, and some were fancy, but everyone had worked hard to maintain them—some for generations.  To say that a wealthy person’s loss is negligible would be like telling a parent who lost a child, “At least you still have other kids.”  Loss is loss—unique and valid to everyone who suffers.  Mantoloking still has a way to go.

Some of the aged retired folks in town have had no other recourse than to walk away, their houses still split in half, roofs and walls torn off by the wind.  Piles of rubble still dot the landscape like war photos and eerie plots of sand provide new and unexpected views to landscapes no one ever expected to see-- monuments to the storm.  Most homeowners have been rendered catatonic by the decisions they face— keep or sell, tear it down or fix it up, raise it 6, 8, now 11 feet above sea level or take the risk and leave it be.   What to do?  My aunt still doesn’t know.

But it’s come along way, believe it or not.  One of the streets I turned down became an inlet the night of the storm, connecting ocean to bay and taking several homes with it.  Friends had had to row a boat across to check on their houses after the storm, but it was filled in now, good as new.  I drove past an older woman standing in her yard, her damaged house sagging behind her, wearing work gloves.  She was stone-still, staring ahead just feet from the road.  When she caught my eye, I said, “Hang in there.”  I didn’t know what else to say.

The town is coming back, slowly but surely, like other towns up and down the New York and New Jersey coast.  Townspeople, working together with FEMA, have done an amazing job re-securing basic utilities, moving the sand back to the sea, and keeping morale high and information flowing.   The beaches are open and still beautiful, the fries are still greasy, and the boardwalks’ betting wheels are spinning just for you.  Boutiques, surf shops and cafes are open.  Mini-golf is waiting.  The shore is being restored.  Get down there. 

The Reluctant Gardener

            If you had asked me when I was twelve-- or twenty-seven-- that I would end up aching to garden I would have said you were nuts.  Whenever I saw my mom bent over in the yard pulling weeds I thought it looked like the most abysmal waste of time.  It seemed monotonous and boring and I couldn’t imagine anything worse on a temperate spring day than being outside in the fresh air, listening to the birds and mucking about in the dirt.  Lame-o. 

            Now I’m like a cranky addict if I don’t get to my garden.  With each passing day that my weeds—yes, they’re mine, though not affectionately called so-- get shelved in favor of more pressing duties, the low grade nagging turns into a deep yearning.  I actually want to get out there.  I want to put on my sloppy painting clothes, knot my hair under a straw hat and head out to where no one knows I’m coming and but every body knows my name.  In my garden, no one talks, especially the flowers.  They have no personalities or names, no wants or needs except for moisture and sun.  They’re like beautiful models in clothing catalogues, there to momentarily raise the aesthetic level of my world but make no demands on my psyche. 

            Sometimes I, however, talk to them.  It’s a very one-sided relationship that I allow because I saw a PBS special once in the late eighties that said that plants do better if they’re talked to and who am I to refute science?  They were wearing white lab coats, so it must be true.  Now I praise the climbers for continuing along as I trained them and I admonish the sedge for coming back even though I’ve made it absolutely transparent that I want nothing more to do with it.  Like a tenacious romantic-comedy Hollywood boyfriend that I’ve broken up with repeatedly, Sedge keeps coming back, like it or not, uninvited to laze about and make no worthwhile contribution of any import to my life.  More trouble that he’s worth, yes, but at least he doesn’t speak.   He can’t criticize me for the clover all over, the strawberry plant that’s gone wild, or the honeysuckle that’s out for world domination.

            I head out to the backyard with quiet resignation in my heart and a bounce in my step.  I spend hours pulling up the weeds and yanking out my demons.  Gardening as a meditation on patience, growth and acceptance.  It feels good to get dirty, to envision my yard’s future in its lush richness and nestle annuals into their new homes.  No wonder my mom was always gardening.  It got her away from the children where she could retreat into her mind and thoughts of calmer weekends and people who actually appreciated what she cooked for dinner and told her so to her face. 

            Recently, I pointed to a flower along the side of the road and asked my mom for its name.  “Heck if I know,” was her answer.  I said, “I thought you knew the names of all the flowers.”  “Goodness, no,” she said, “I know the names of like six things and that’s about it.  Could never remember the rest.”  “But I thought you were such a big gardener.”  “No, not really,” she said, “Your father did most of the gardening.  I mostly weeded.  But I found it pretty boring to be honest.”  This was news to me.  “You did?  I thought you couldn’t wait to get out there, get your hands dirty, enjoy the meditative calmness of repetitive, you know, weed-pulling.”  Mom took another drag on her cigarette and said, “I would have rather been reading.”  I smirked.  “One of your trashy murder-mysteries?”  I said.  She nodded.  I thought about this for a moment.  All this time I thought she was such a gardener, but in actuality, she was a reluctant gardener.  “Oh,” was all I said.  Then, “If you weren’t so crazy about it, how come you didn’t make us help you?  It would have gone so much faster and we would have kept you company.”  “Because when we were kids, your father and I had so many chores on the weekends that we decided we wanted you to have more fun than we did, so we let you run around the neighborhood and play with your friends.”  “Oh,” I said.  Then, I added, “Thanks.”  She put out her cigarette and said, “You’re welcome.”

            Today, my son gets home from school in an hour.  I would love to have him help me in the garden.  It’d be a great education for him and such a nice mother/son bonding experience for us.  He can yank and dig and get as dirty as he pleases and I can teach him the names of all the plants and flowers I’ve learned—boasting many more than six and still counting.  We can talk about color and composition and he can help me decide where to put the annuals.  Not to mention, I’d love to have the company.  My son would much rather be reading. 

           

           

The New Old Math

            Math and I are formidable foes and I have written about our rocky relationship before.  But there’s a new twist to the story of late-- one I think you’ll enjoy.  For those of you who’ve been following along, I’m in graduate school to get a masters degree in teaching elementary education.  I mention it because the class I took this semester was in how to teach young children math with Cognitively Guided Instruction or intuitively—in other words: letting the child solve the problem the way he or she instinctively wants to.  “Intuitively?!” you exclaim.  Yes, you heard right.  The entire gist of the class and the bedrock of the two textbooks we worked from was this: allow kids to arrive at the answer the way in which their brains naturally get them there.  “What!?!” I hear you blathering, “but that’s the opposite of how I learned math as a child!  I spent hours learning logarithms that made no sense and buckled under the weight of wrote memorization drills.  I remember fear, anxiety and being told I was doing it wrong as if it were only yesterday.”  I know, pal.  You and me both.  Calm, down, you’re sweating a little.  Are you okay?

            The idea is that children show up the first day of kindergarten with a robust brain full of informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics—just ask any four year old what to do with one cookie when his sister is sitting next to him in the back seat of the car.  Break it in half.  That’s intuitive problem solving.  That’s math.  Over the years, addition, subtraction and multiplication become organic extensions of what little kids already know, and they know a lot.  Then, with any luck, your young child will get a teacher who has been taught that creating a positive attitude about math is not only important but germane to her bright future.  No more fear—a lot less shame.

            Imagine a teacher who is actually paying attention to how your child is thinking not just what he’s thinking.  Imagine a classroom where as much time is spent discussing wrong answers to fraction problems as correct answers.  Imagine a pedagogic ethos wherein children are not only taught to learn from their mistakes but actually come to understand mathematical concepts by exploring mistakes, locating the exact spot where her brain jogged left when it should have jogged right, then letting the child enjoy the excitement of an ‘aha!’ moment, where she notices what she did wrong herself.  That’s right, folks, in this math utopia, the teacher doesn’t publically tell her her answer is wrong, the student locates the problem-- perhaps in concert with a peer partner or group-- then fixes it.  Together.  I know.  It sounds crazy to me, too.  But it’s amazing.  And it works. 

            If children learn early math concepts they way that makes most sense to them—by counting on fingers, drawing pictures, talking out loud, or moving legos, pretzels or ‘manipulatives’ around in groups on a desk or rug, they’re more likely to get it.  And if they can help each other and arrive at the answer by reasonable group discourse, (the way adults do in many, many career fields) then maybe the harsh competitiveness of math will be removed long enough for your child to actually feel free to fail and therefore learn.  And don’t worry-- if you think they’ll be counting on their fingers forever, they won’t be.  It’ll take too much time and they’ll become impatient and eventually a classmate will show them how to skip-count by tens or multiply instead of add and they’ll happily jump on that bandwagon.  Who wouldn’t?  It’s our nature to embrace the shortcut-- to evolve and improve. 

            Once the basics are embedded, children are encouraged to see oncoming new math strategies as compatible layers to an involved and fascinating game-- the way they learn the rules for Pokemon trading card duels or professional baseball line-up strategies.  They’re much more likely to remember the algorithms—those slippery rules and strategies-- because they’ll make sense.  If children can approach an algebra problem the way they approach a video game, with curiosity, gumption and the resolve to keep going until they find the gold coins or the trap door or the answer for what x stands for—just imagine!  Imagine not feeling shame when you get the answer wrong, or not comparing yourself to the kid who always seems to know what’s going on when you don’t.  I know, easier said than done.  If only. 

            But it’s going to get better because more and more teachers are going to allow your child’s mind to follow its own path to the answers.  Math will become more like building a snow fort with your friends.  I’ll do it my way and you do it your way and we’ll all meet in the middle.  And if there’s a weak spot, we’ll find it together, and work through to improve it, with persistence and resolve-- as a team of learners.  As a mighty force for mathematics good. 

(Author’s note: Download: “The Kindergarten Files” on iTunes for shining examples of this exciting revolution in learning or read Thomas P. Carpenter et al.’s “Children’s Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction, 1999)

Winter's Last Quiet

It’s odd to be writing an essay about spring when it’s 33 degrees outside.  I feel like I do when I have a miserable hacking cough and I can’t recall ever not coughing.  I honestly get to the point in week five where I cannot remember a point in time when I didn’t cough my way through the day and wake myself up coughing at night.  I acclimate to my new reality as Lifetime Cougher and accept my fate.  I even embrace the shreds of tissues bulging my pockets and the skateboard ramp’s worth of pillows on my bed as part of my life forever.  And then, miraculously, my cough goes away.  I say ‘my cough’ because by this time it has become a part of me, and though I try not to let it define me, it does.  Then eventually, I reach a moment in time when I can’t remember coughing.

At this point in the year, I can’t remember not being cold.  And cranky, and sure, okay, maybe just a teensy bit depressed.  And yet, I am hopeful-- but cautiously hopeful.  Like when I’m waiting for the dream job offer to come through.  It’s almost as if I don’t really believe it could happen to me.  I mean, spring is for the lucky ones, isn’t it?  Like slender ankles and personal chefs-- it’s for people more fortunate than I.  Or maybe I don’t want to believe spring will come so that I won’t be disappointed if it doesn’t arrive this year.  I suppose it could happen.  We could be bypassed.  Winter practically bypassed us last year; maybe it’s spring’s turn.

All of this makes me slightly miffed at the flowers poking through their crusty earthen shell when I should be over the moon.  “Look at you, Snowdrops,” I sneer at them as I walk through the icy slush up my driveway.  “You ninnies,” I say.  I can still see my breath.  “And you, crocuses, don’t be so daft.  You are way too soon, my friends.”  It’s as if they’ve arrived too early for a party that was cancelled.  I feel bad for them but am also wondering why they didn’t double check the evite before heading out the door.  And yet, they know a thing or two about a thing or two.  The flowers and forsythia have intel we can only dream about.  They know, without an iota of doubt, that spring is coming.  They are hopelessly optimistic and so I have no choice but to respect them.  Deeply.  I take back my slanderous jibes.  I beg their petals’ forgiveness.  Then, I relax a little.  Spring is coming, like the mail and grey hair.  I can bank on it, so I do, and this frees me up to enjoy the last vestiges of winter for it’s most glorious attribute: quiet. 

Spring, with all its allusions to rebirth, will bring with it the screaming wails of leaf blowers.  The dulcet tones of distant planes and falling snow will be replaced with the near-constant whinny of bands of roving landscapers, hired by homeowners who are—for the most part—not home to receive this daily aural barrage to the senses.  Napping children, stay-at-home moms and work-from-home-ers will be assaulted by this relentless grating, wondering how they inadvertently landed in houses purchased on the center median of a thousand lap Nascar race.  Then, when you can’t remember a time when there weren’t leaf blowers boring into your soul daily, they will stop.  And be replaced by lawn mowers and air conditioners. 

The near-constant throbbing grind of air conditioning units will blanket the bird’s song and the wind’s caress like a local oil refinery might, and follow us like inescapable tinnitus throughout our October days, when even the cool 65 degree night breezes won’t give them pause.  This seemingly final crescendo of leaf blowers and air conditioners will follow us right up until the end of November, when quiet will re-emerge once again.  Late autumn yards with gorgeous Japanese maples and oaks will preside over the naked, leaf-less lawns of Texas, bereft of the vestiges of why some of us chose the North East and not the desert in the first place.  It’s then that I’ll finally take out the earplugs that I’ve been wearing for seven months during the day and through out the night.  I’ll open my windows for a week or two before doing so would be like throwing heating oil money out the window.  By then, of course, the cicadas will have headed to Miami along with the blue jays, and the leaves will no longer be around for rustling. 

I get why people use landscapers’ leaf-blowers instead of raking, I suppose, and I turn on my own air conditioner at times.  I’m being a cranky hypocrite because winter has lasted so darn long this year and I’m just so ready for it to be over.  But, I will force myself to cherish its last few days.  I will strive to live in the present and enjoy the budding roses, the slow shedding of down coats and the calming effects of tranquility.  Because soon, before I know it, I will have forgotten what it sounds like.  I will have forgotten the exquisite peace of quiet.

The Savings Time

I love the arbitrariness of Daylight Savings Time.  Like national events that don’t really fall on certain presidents’ or civil rights activists’ actual birthdays, Daylight Savings Time has an almost legendary air.  It’s a fluid concept historically, one that ebbs and flows depending on the whims of those in power at any given moment—not unlike Turkmenistan’s first President for Life, who renamed all the months just because he could.  He renamed April after his sainted mother, Gurbansoltan.  He also re-named the days of the week.  My personal fave is Hosgun or Favorable Day, which used to be Wednesday.  Good luck booking a flight to Turkmenistan. 

I’m thinking of writing a thank-you note to 2005’s US Congress who passed the Energy Policy Act, which moved DST three weeks earlier beginning in 2007, from Gurbansoltan to Nowruz—formerly March-- and one week later to Sanjar—formerly November.  The theory was that we as a nation would use less energy to light and heat our homes if it were not so dark so early in the evening.  But, like the nation of rogues that we are, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Arizona, don’t pay it no mind. “Feh, to Daylight Savings Time,” I can hear them collectively saying.  Although how one gets the top elected officials of Arizona and Samoa in a room together I’ll never know but I’d like to be a fly on the wall at that brunch.

I, for one, believe that Daylight Savings Time is misnamed.  Do we really feel like we’re ‘saving’ anything—really?  It’s like some parent has dressed up broccoli by calling them ‘tiny trees from Little Land’ in order to get us to eat our vegetables.  I don’t know about you but I’m asleep at 2am most nights.  But I am a saver by nature.  Why, just the other Favorable Day, I offered my girlfriend these super fancy Italian cookies to have with our tea when she stopped by.  Actually, I didn’t offer them, she discovered the large tin of Lazzaroni Amaretti Di Saronno cookies in the back of my uppermost shelf of my dry food cupboard.

She said, “What are these?  Oh, my goodness, I love these.  Can we eat these?”  She’s taller than me and doesn’t stand on ceremony.

“Sure, get them down,”  I said and opened the tin.  It was still half full.

“Are you saving these for some occasion?”

“No,” I said.

“Are you saving them for someone more worthy than me?”

“Clearly.  But since you were able to reach them, you are now worthy.”

My girlfriend reached in and chose one of the beautifully wrapped duets of cookies in the delicate pastel inscribed paper that sounds like rustling taffeta.  She unwrapped one and smelled it. 

“These are bad.”

“What?!” I said.  I loved these cookies.  They practically melted in my mouth—so subtle, so perfectly sweet with that touch of almond.  I was heartsick.

“We have to throw them out.”  She was right.  She added, “What were you waiting for?  You save too much.  Your life is passing you buy and meanwhile fancy Italian cookies are going bad right under your nose.  This is a crime.  You could literally be jailed for this in Italy.”

I was speechless.  All I could do was stare at all those tumbling little bundles as she shook them into the garbage.  Probably fifteen or so of them gone.  My girlfriend continued to lecture me like only a good friend can, “You’ve got to burn the fancy candles, eat the good cookies and spend the gift certificates.  This is your life.  Stop waiting for the right occasion or the right person to drop by.  You’re the right person and right now is the right occasion.”

“Okay, okay,” I said.  “I’ve got some champagne I’ve had chilling for about a year in the basement fridge, you want to pop it open?”

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“Right.  Good point,” I said, “I promise to eat the good cookies from now on.  And stop saving so much.” 

She was right, of course.  Maybe we should rename Daylight Savings Time.  Maybe we should call it Sleeptime Wasting Night.  Or Extra Christine Time, after my mother, the famous martyr.  Either way, it’s time that should be well spent-- like having an impromptu cup of tea with an old friend.

I sipped the warming tea then remembered something else I was saving.  I leaned down toward the floor and reached deep into the pots and pans cabinet and pulled out a bag of special treats.  Turning the clear zip-lock over for display, I said, “Please choose whatever you like.  There is no one more worthy than you, my dear friend.”  She rolled her eyes and shook her head then reached into the bag for a piece of my son’s Halloween candy.

Carniverse

I saw the most extraordinary thing in the parking lot at Whole Foods.  When I came out it was right next to my car.  It was an ordinary car on the outside, an older model two door Honda Civic of some kind, maybe dark green.  The extraordinary part was its interior.  “Wow,” I said out loud.  I couldn’t help myself.

The car’s owner had decorated the entire dashboard, console, steering wheel, door panel and ceiling with miniature trinkets.  There were myriad little figurines with smiling faces-- most of them plastic-- all standing up right and packed in tight like a crowd scene in a big-budget action movie.  There was a delicate wire tree with a watch face hanging at the end of each of its branches.  There were beads and goddesses, planets and birds, crystals, stars and flowers—all of them co-mingling, as if at a sunny, crowded day at the fair.  The ceiling alone was impressive on it’s own merit.  Hanging from every available inch of real estate were earrings and key chains, more planets and pearls-- a dangling canopy of its own constellation.  All the stars hung within reach, just above the driver’s head, just grazing his or her thoughts.  I imagined the enchanting sound they made every time the car lurched to go or came to a stop.

A love of tchotchkes and an exacting way with a glue gun had figured prominently into this fanciful auto escapade but so had something else—permission.  The owner of this car had given him or herself permission to turn his car into a canvas.  She had given herself license to buck social convention in order to create a fantasy universe of whack-a-doo whimsy right inside her car.  This was one brave artist whose passion had a total disregard for social criticism or external judgment.  How freeing that must be.

I stood outside the car, peering in.  I longed to sit in the driver’s seat of this mobile museum, to sweep my fingers gently overhead, a tinkling of tin and plastic in my fingers’ wake.  A few folks passed by with their groceries in hand.  I invited them to stare with me.  “Check this out,” I said, “Have you ever seen anything so wild?”  Apparently they had because they didn’t take the time to look.  Fools! I thought.  If this car were in an art gallery you’d look.  If some big museum anointed this car with the label of American Folk Art, you’d pay admission to look.  Don’t wait to be told!  I thought, see art everywhere!  Find it for yourself!  This is your chance.  But they didn’t take it.

I stood for a while longer then went back inside to eat my soup at the window counter.  Surely the owner would be easy to spot.  A woman, maybe, in her sixties, with a multi-colored boiled-wool cape and big red glasses frames with chunky jewelry.  I expected lime green leather shoes and dread locks.  Maybe a turban, if I was lucky.

I watched people approach their cars and drive away—none of them fit my profile.  Then a woman walked by my window.  She looked to be in her late thirties with mousy brown hair pulled into a low ponytail.  Her glasses frames were no-nonsense, as were her clothes: dark winter solids with clean, simple  lines.  I would have ruled her out immediately, but something told me to hold my gaze.  Incredibly, she weaved closer and closer to my car and then—voila—her key went into the ignition of That Car!

Was this the mad, passionate artist?  The glue-gun maestro?  I wanted to talk to her, but I was too slow.  I wanted to ask her how it began and have her point to the piece that started the whole thing.  I was curious about the progression, how long did all of this take?  I wanted to ask her what else in her life she’d rendered dazzled and what was her house like.  But mostly I wanted to find out what else she’d given herself permission to do.  Had she ever been a stowaway?  Had she taught herself how to snake charm or mastered the hula dance?  In what other segments of her life did she throw caution to the wind—convention be damned?  Because once you’ve created the entire universe inside your car, the sky’s the limit.