Mustard Seeds and the Newport Folk Festival

Nerissa & Katryna and the Falling Down Barn in 2007

I have sudden and severe laryngitis. I can no longer yell at my kids. In fact, I feel myself to be so at their mercy that I am being extra nice to them, smiling a lot, giving them heretofore forbidden juice boxes, letting Elle play "Two Grenadiers" over and over during her violin practice and not making her play her review pieces at all. Things are going so well with me not talking that I am contemplating feigning voicelessness indefinitely. Who, really, would miss my pontificating? (Don't answer that.) To top it off, I made Elle read to me last night. She can sort of read, but she'd much prefer someone read to her, especially since we're halfway through Harry Potter. But she gamely attempted Owl At Home last night, and because she had no choice, she made it through an entire chapter. I was reduced to clapping and vigorously nodding my head, poking at the page with one finger when she didn't get the word right. It made me wonder if I would write more if I spoke less.

In my Underground Seminary, I have been instructed to ponder Mark 4:26-35, otherwise known as the Parable of the Mustard Seed. More on the Underground Seminary in a future post. The piece of this passage I particularly love is the brilliant observation that God's Kingdom can come to us from the most minute of "seeds"; a stranger's look of kindness. A song on the radio in the grocery store. Someone's Facebook post. And the sower is oblivious to the "fruits" of her labor. Once she's sown her seeds, she leaves the rest to the soil, the sun, the rain.

26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

The other big event in our lives is that we are finally attempting to fix our falling-down barn. I had huge fantasies of renovating it and turning it into a writer's den/underground church/Tom's office/yoga studio/guest house. That will have to wait until the sales of The Full Catastrophe exceed $5 million/our kids get through college/Universal Health Care passes. In the meantime, if we don't salvage what is there, we will have to tear it down (which would not be free--it would cost us $10,000 and then we'd have no place to dump our stuff, I mean keep our bikes and kayak and canoe.)

It's not the money I mind. It's that we are spending our early mornings cleaning the thing out. We discovered a squirrel's nest the length of almost 4-year-old Jay, way in the back. And among the squirrel's treasures was a box that contained all my old arrangements for Tangled Up in Blue and subsequent singing groups I ran pre-Nields (Tintinnabulations, A Capelicans, the Jimmies; groups we ran while teaching high school). GOLD! Hooray! Plus a bunch of press shots of the trio Nields that freaked us all out. And, the coup de grace, the program from the Newport Folk Festival 1994, the year we got to play it.

That was almost twenty years ago, and it was surely the turning point in our career. We got the gig because we had become friends with the associate producer's daughter (Nalini Jones, now a writer and mom) at the Loomis Chaffee School where we were teachers and dorm adults at the time. When I close my eyes, I can feel myself back up on that stage, the sea air over Fort Adams blowing my hair into my eyes, my mouth aching from grinning so much. We played first in the line up, and people were still streaming into the park at the beginning of our set. We sold over 200 copies of our then-new CD Bob On the Ceiling, and from that moment, everything about our career sped up dramatically, shaking the tree we lived in until we all came tumbling down, but not without a lot of shouting for joy into the wind.

The Nields at Newport 1994

Nalini had asked me to write for the program, an essay called "Know Your Song Well," about being a folk musician in the early 90s when folk was making a comeback. I will post this essay separately, but for now I will say that reading it made me realize that my band came along at the most fortuitous time, and that if we were in our mid 20s now instead of then we probably wouldn't have had a shot. I don't write this to take away an iota of our hard work and possible talent; but I do say it to make the case for fate, for history, for the Perfect Storm of events in any person's life or career. Or for the winds that blow that little mustard seed here and yon. Who knew what we sowed then? Who knew where those 200 copies of Bob on the Ceiling went?

Katryna and I have been talking a lot lately about fame. I have written this before on this blog, but when we were in the van driving around and around, Patty used to ask, "Would you rather be rich or famous?" "Rich," said a couple of members. "Famous," said a few others. And I said, "Neither. I want to be influential."

Of course, if you believe the Law of Attraction, this was a big mistake on my part. Everyone is influential. I should have manifested money and acclaim instead. Then I'd have my barn cum church/writing den/office/guest house. But on the other hand, it is really lovely to have exactly the amount of fame and money that I do have. It's perfect. If I had any more money, I might not teach as much as I do, and teaching is so good for me, so pleasurable, so connecting. And if I had any more fame, I would feel scared. As it is, I have the kind of fame where people I don't know are nice to me for no reason at all. Occasionally friendly people come up to me at the airport and tell me they saw my band fifteen years ago in Ann Arbor, or Austin TX, or Portland OR, or South Carolina (we were always playing in South Carolina.)

Last Thursday we had the great privilege to play a house concert in Rhode Island, in a house overlooking Narragansett Bay. The folks who opened their home to us had first seen us in 1994 at Newport and had bought a copy of Bob that day. 18 years later, their home was filled with friends who listened as attentively and laughed as hard as any audience we've ever had. There were 40 people there that night. That might seem small compared to the 2000 we played for at Newport in 1994, but to me, that night felt just as magical. What is the Kingdom of God? In a word, Unity. That feeling that you are a part of something so much bigger than yourself, so much more than you can ever hope to understand. As a performer, nothing makes me feel as whole, as unified, as part of some bigger mystery than singing my songs with my sister to an audience who gets it. What is the Kingdom of God to you?

Nerissa & Katryna overlooking Narragansett Bay last Thursday

30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.”

Back at the Fruit Tree

Phillip Price of the Winterpills (and formally of the Maggies) once said to me that every time he got an idea for a song he wrote five different versions of it. That blew me away. I am way more parsimonious than he, or maybe just lazy. I try to cram every single idea I am having at the present moment into one song, "I Am the Walrus"-style. John Lennon famously wrote his songs as one would make a patchwork quilt: scraps of ideas and riffs and even takes in totally different keys (see "Strawberry Fields Forever). That was good enough for me. Although if I think I didn't nail the idea, then I might try try again. For example, in 1995 I fell in love with the Steely Dan song "Hey Nineteen" (which had been on the charts the week Lennon was killed, but I hated SD at the time and only resented them taking airplay away from John and the Beatles at the time). Later, in my mid twenties, I listened to that song, drinking red wine and letting both swirl around in my mouth. (Even now as I write this I am swooning: "The Cuervo Gold/The fine Columbian/Make tonight a wonderful thing." Though without the influence of the red wine, a bit...ick.) And I thought, "I'd like to write this song from the point of view of the 19 year old."

So I wrote "Fountain of Youth." It was OK, but it didn't grab me in the backs of the knees the way "Hey Nienteen" did. And so one sunny March morning, I sat down on the rug in the living room with a huge cup of coffee, several notebooks and my guitar. I scribbled furiously until I'd written down every single Idea I had about the song I wanted to write. And then I played a riff I'd made up during soundcheck at the gig the weekend before, and out came "Best Black Dress."

Fast forward fourteen years. I'd written "The Full Catastrophe" at Katryna's request, and then had the summer to ignore it. It was October and we had a show coming up at the Iron Horse. I wanted to debut a new song, and it should probably have been The Full Cat, but something was bugging me about the song. It was too sincere and straightforward. It did not speak to the enormity of the existential pain I was feeling at the moment. The pain felt like this: I was overwhelmed. I just looked up where "overwhelm" comes from, specifically what "whelm" means: to cover. That's exactly how I felt. Covered over. Parenthood is literally overwhelming. We cover over ourselves sometimes (many times) on purpose in order to get the job done. We cover over our basic needs (to sleep, eat in a calm manner, have sex with our partners) to attend to our little ones. And we cover over our more esoteric needs (to go for a bike ride in early spring; to write a song on the living room floor, to spend an afternoon wandering from coffeeshop to bookstore to our neighbor's kitchen table) because there just isn't that kind of time.

And we are overwhelmed--egos covered over, self-interest covered over, ambition covered over--with love for our darlings. That very first look into my babies' faces did me in. I was willing to do anything, go to any lengths to provide and protect for those squirmy, red, pooping cutie pies.

But 'overwhelmed' does not mean 'annihilated'. We're still there, as is the carpet, under that cover of legos, bad kids' books, contents of a drawer of clothes and stuffed animals. We're still conscious and waiting, a part of us full of compassion for our spouse or partner who is equally overwhelmed while the other part is keeping meticulous track of exactly how unequal the duties are being handled, and exactly how many hours "off" s/he has had in the last 4 years.

For me, so much of my journey was in learning to metabolize my own disappointment in myself, in my shockingly low capacity for creative play with my kids, for my quick temper, for my pathetically small reserves of patience. I was so not the mother I'd hoped I'd be, and yet, when I killed that angel in the house, I was left with someone who was really not so bad. And most importantly, I was left with someone who even with a mouth full of the ashes of disappointment was willing to get up every day and meet her beloved(s) back at the fruit tree.

And so I wrote two more songs about the Full Catastrophe idea. One was More Than Enough. The other was this one:

Back at the Fruit Tree

Still the camera on the moment I met you
All the world inside a garden built for two
All the fruit you could eat in a day
All the news turned into boats
That float on down the river

Ah, ahhhh…..

But someone has to cut the brambles back
Someone has to stave the weeds’ attack
Someone has to bring the harvest in
Someone has to gather seeds to hold us through the winter….

I don’t need the good life
I just need life
The full catastrophe
If you’ll see me that way
With my feet covered in clay
I’ll meet you back at the fruit tree.

The mind beats like the tides in a lake that thinks it’s the sea
But only storms create conditions for epiphany
October gardens rusty, ragged, overgrown
The child won’t be consoled and you
Don’t want to be alone.
You find a seat at the edge of the bed
Put a hand on a hot and sticky head
You say, “So, tell me all about your day
No matter what it is, I’ll stay. I won’t go away.

I don’t need the good life
I just need life
The full catastrophe
If you’ll see me that way
With my feet covered in clay
I’ll meet you back at the fruit tree.

Nerissa Nields
Oct. 22, 2009

I Choose This Era

Here is me playing the acoustic part.


This song is actually the oldest song on the CD. I wrote it a couple of weeks before my daughter was born, and like "Don't Wait Too Long" (which appears on our double CD Rock All Day/Rock All Night and which I wrote when I first found out I was pregnant) I still didn't know the being I was writing to. It was also right before Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, and news about the various ways in which we were trashing the planet were being regularly broadcast. That evening on the news I'd heard (again, in a new way) the ways in which the rays of the sun are so much more dangerous now than they were fifty years ago. Who knows what we are going to witness in this lifetime? But do we have a choice?

I Choose This Era

We go round the sun
The Moon goes round the earth
When the day is done
Sometimes something hurts
There’s danger in the papers
Danger on the radio
But I’ll put my arms around you and I
Will not let you go.

There’s a place called Kansas
Dorothy called it home
To me it’s just a grassland
Where I’d be frightened to be left alone
I’d much prefer a city
Even if it’s Emerald green
Home is where ever I find you
But it’s also wherever I’ve been.

And it’s not the same sun my father knew
It can burn in ways that don’t heal
But I’d take these rays with this place and your face
If that is going to be the deal

I’ll take you to the ocean
To every edge that invites me close
And there I'll make my vow to you
Before everything I love the most
There’s danger in the ocean
Danger from the sun above
But I’ll put my arms around you
And surround you with my love.
I'll put my arms around you
And I will not let you go.

Nerissa Nields
April 20, 2006

We recorded the acoustic very early in the process--I think in December 2009. We didn't put the final vocals on until December 2011, maybe even January 2012. I love the way the song came out. Katryna and I did some three-part harmony, and I am trying to get Abigail (our other sister) to learn it so she can jump up on stage with us and sing it sometime. A girl can dream.

Dreaming of the Dead

(My grandmother)

Last night I had a dream about my grandfather, a man who died in 1981 at the age of 66 from esophageal cancer. When he died, I was thirteen, and I had just discovered him. For most of the overlap of our lives, he was grouchy and clearly regarded his three granddaughters as a noisy nuisance at best and competition for his wife's attention at worst. He regularly yelled at her, and occasionally at us, so we hid from him, spying on him from behind open doors. He was mostly deaf and completely so when he didn't wear his hearing aid. He had a bad back, and I'd watch him stretch it when he thought he was alone. It made me feel strange to see him looking so vulnerable, back against the wall, lifting his arms like the Romper Room lady, wearing funny long white underwear.

He was a fire-breathing monster before his first drink. He yelled at my grandmother in public if dinner wasn't on the table by 6:30. We never ate before seven. Also, my grandmother didn't actually cook the dinner. So I am not sure what that was all about, but at any rate, I was afraid of him, and so were many people.

For Christmas 1977, after years of letting my grandmother handle the gifts to the grandkids, he gave me a stereo--a real stereo, with high quality hi-fi speakers, a synthesizer and a turn table. It was the best present I ever got, and that system followed me to college and to my first apartment, or pieces of it did anyway. He loved listening to music more than anything in the world; he worshiped at the church of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, filling the house with music played so loudly the house shook--remember, he was deaf. The next year, he gave me a Swiss Army Knife with every attachment imaginable. I felt seen. The last summer he was alive, I came to stay with him and my grandmother for a week in the summer. In the still-sunny evenings, he'd drink his soup--the only thing he could eat anymore since his tracheotomy--and ask me what I was reading. When I told him I loved Agatha Christie novels he smiled conspiratorially. "But just the Hercule Poirot ones, right?" And I fell in love with him.

His children deny his alcoholism. But my sister said to one of them, long after he had died, "But they had to pour whiskey into the feeding hole in his stomach every day. I think that means the doctors understood that he was an alcoholic."

Today I joined the Y. I should say "rejoined" since we are foul-weather members, always quitting in late May. Tom and I thought long and hard about joining. We don't know how much we'll really use it since we both prefer to run, walk, bike and do outdoor activities over indoor ones. I have a fabulous yoga studio, so I don't intend to bring my danurasanas there, either. But the kids love it. They need a place to swim and to learn to swim. Everyone I know is a member. And I want a Y two blocks from my house, so I see our membership as neighborly support in part.

I also saw that they have a class at 4:15 called Family Yoga. I have been fantasizing about bringing my kids to a family yoga class since before Elle was born. It's never worked out timing-wise. But today, I saw it would--I am officially looking for something to do with the kids during what is in our family lo-o-o-ong witching hours of after-school to dinnertime.

We started out eagerly enough, each of us choosing a different colored yoga mat from the closet. We set our mats up in a row, with mama in the middle. Elle was terrific, able to do every pose. Jay was predictably hilarious, sitting in half lotus, jumping around on a one-footed tree, inventing something that looked like table pose with one leg up in the air, perpendicular to the floor. Eventually all that devolved to the kids running around the room. I was told that this is usual for this class. The whole thing was a half hour. I was in heaven.

And then we stepped out of the class to put on socks, shoes, winter coats, scarves, hats--all in triplicate. And it was as if I had scalded them with hot water. "That was too short," Elle whined.
"Oh, I am so glad you liked it!" I said. "I wish it were longer too."
"Not longer, Mama! I hated it! We didn't get to run around enough. I wanted to go swimming." And she threw herself down in the middle of the hallway sobbing. Meanwhile, Jay screamed at me when I tried to put his socks on him. "Why do you DO dat, Mama? You are SO MEAN TO ME!!!" And he ran away down the hall.

As I write it now, it's pretty funny. But in the moment, all I could think about was my disappointment that my fantasy about family yoga was going up in smoke; and also that the class that had just started in the yoga room was listening, eyes closed, wishing for a peaceful pre-OM silence, to the sounds of kids berating the World's Worst Mother. So I acted like one. "I'm leaving," I announced. "See you in the parking lot." And I marched off, their coats and hats and shoes in my hand. The kids followed me screaming, "Why are you so mean, Mama! You are being SO MEAN!"


In my dream, someone said, "Granddad has come back." And I saw him first in a wheelchair, many years older, bald and round, lost-looking. But then he stood up and was transformed. He rose to a towering height, and shone like an angel. Perhaps he was one. He was the most handsome version of himself. His hair was silver and gold, and his skin shone gold, too. His eyes were clear and peaceful and kind. I came to him and put my ear to his chest. He held me for a long time. I pulled away and looked up at him. I didn't know what to say. I needed to say something--because I thought he was dead. So I finally looked him in the eye and said, "Should I be worried about you?"

He took a breath. "Well, I am abstinent," he said. "So no. But I haven't beaten cancer yet."

"You will," I told him.

I woke with the sweetest feeling about him. Even now, writing about it, I have tears in my eyes. My friend Judy, an author who writes in my Wednesday group, recently said, "When we dream of dead people, these are not really dreams." Of course, I see myself in this dream, in a very dream-like way, so I don't know. But I also feel as though I had the most wonderful visit/visitation imaginable.

I told the kids on the car ride home that I was sad we had joined the Y because of how terribly they had behaved.
"We didn't behave terribly, Mama. YOU behaved terribly."
I thought about this. They were right.
"That's true," I said. "But it doesn't solve the problem. I think we all need to just take a big break from each other between pick up from school and dinner time. We're all too cranky."
"I'm not cranky!" screamed Elle. "You're cranky! I want Dada!" And she collapsed again on the floor sobbing.

I gave up. I started to make dinner, pulling food out of the fridge with one hand, texting Tom with my other. "Please do not go to the store. Just come home now."
He texted back: "Need to not come home. Need time to myself. Need to come home after you feed the kids dinner." It was a conspiracy. He was going to leave me with them, me whom they hated. Possibly they would have killed me by the time they got home. No, that wasn't realistic. They wouldn't have killed me, but they would probably steal away in the middle of the night to marry men from the motor trade like the girl in "She's Leaving Home."

I started to pray. Help, help, help, like that.

At that moment the phone rang. It was my father. I took the phone into the bathroom, burst into tears and told him briefly about the bad afternoon and then about the dream about my grandfather, his father. As I sobbed, Jay came in and threw his arms around my legs, patting the backs of them consolingly.

"That's wonderful," said my father. "You're lucky to have had that dream."

"Daddy's home!"shrieked Elle, and sure enough, in came Tom to the scene of chaos, me with a tear stained face and the kids attached to my legs, my father under my ear. And I knew we'd all be ok for the foreseeable future.

My grandfather believed in God. I didn't see this myself, and when I learned as a teenager that he was the believer and my saintly grandmother was the atheist, it threw my straight Protestant concepts for a loop. But now I get it. Saintly people don't need God, they don't need church. It's those of us who wrestle with our rage, who look for Spirit in a bottle, who fall down again and again in our relationships, and who are saved by saying we are sorry--we're the ones who need church, just as the sick are the ones who need a hospital. And on good days, we are the ones who see angels.

Why An Artist Needs to Write Fiction, Even When There Are No Marshmallows

Do you remember the marshmallow experiment of the 60s? Briefly, some researchers nabbed a bunch of 4-year-olds and put them in a room together. Each child was given a marshmallow and told, "This is yours to eat. But if you wait to eat it until I come back, you will not only get to eat this marshmallow, but you will also get a second one! All for just waiting a few minutes!"


The results (filmed) were hilarious. Kids sidled around their marshmallows, eye-ing them, fingering them, mouthing them. Some kids just grabbed theirs as soon as the adult left the premises. Others waited a few minutes. Some resisted temptation and got their second fluffer as a reward--and purportedly scored better on SATs, got into better colleges, contributed more to the GNP, etc. These kids were followed all their lives. They are in their late forties now, maybe hitting fifty. And the experiment has been widely touted as proof that the ability to delay gratification is linked to higher performance elsewhere.


As you know, if you have been reading this blog, I participated in 30 Poems in November (I wrote a mere 5.) In January, I am about to start a blog writing class in the hopes of delving into my two blogs more fully, making them richer, more satisfying avenues of expression. Katryna, Dave and I are almost finished recording our new CD The Full Catastrophe, and Katryna has listed five new ideas for future CD projects (a Rock n Roll “Peter and the Wolf”; a tweener CD, a Christmas/Holiday CD; a project called Songs for Churches without Walls; a collection of folk artists covering Gilbert & Sullivan--and that's not even counting our CD aimed at school age children about Greek mythology, which we can't do now since Dar is releasing a record on the same topic. By the way, speaking of freak folk synchronicity, guess what Ani diFranco's new CD is named?)


All this is to say, I am at the stage of my life and career when I have more work than I can handle. I have writing that has to get done. Recently, for instance, I had to edit the edits of our web copy for our new HooteNanny website. Over the winter holiday, I have to re-read How To Be an Adult so I can facilitate a workshop on it for Smith College at the end of March. I have songs to write. I was supposed to write a solstice song. I have a verse and a chorus. Life is full and rich right now: I am producing a Solstice show at my son’s preschool; I came in to sing holiday songs to my daughter’s kindergarten; and Friday we are Caroling to the Animals at Smith Vocational/Agricultural School at 3:30pm (be there if you like Christmas Carols!) Isn't this real life more interesting than anything I could dream up?


But once upon a time, I did dream stuff up. I used to write novels: two novels and half of a third. Novels are the hardest of all literary forms in that one has to constantly re-read one's work in order to be effective, and that means it can take weeks just for a re-read. When I was writing, I would go for a few months with rough draft material, then read everything from beginning to end, then re-write, slashing the print-outs with a red pen. Then I'd edit, write new scenes, print out again, and try to re-read the whole thing as fast as I could--to keep all the story lines straight, to make sure that the characters were consistent. I wanted to write a book that the reader couldn't put down, so I had to make sure that my writing was strong enough for that kind of voracious reader.


My first novel Plastic Angel was published, but my agent couldn't sell my second novel, The Big Idea. I have a print out of it from 2008 in a gigantic three ring binder. I know why it didn't sell--I had plenty of encouraging and friendly rejection letters telling me why. In the end, one of the main characters didn't quite come through the way he needed to. Another character has an ending that doesn't make sense to me today. And finally, most importantly, the big idea wasn't big enough.


I know what I need to do. I need to pick up that big red three ring binder and re-read, with my red pen. But man, that binder weighs a million pounds. And I have SO MANY OTHER THINGS TO DO! Things that might actually earn me money. The marshmallows are all lined up for those other projects (granted, not that many marshmallows for a new CD these days, but still.)


I took the bag of marshmallows up to Jay's room this afternoon, where he and Elle were playing. Jay was stark naked, as is his 3-year-old wont, and Elle was on top of his bureau, about to leap to his bed. I said, "Hey, do you want to play a game?" and shook the bag of marshmallows in front of their eyes. I explained the rules and lay a tiny marshmallow in front of each of them on the bed. Then I left the room and closed the door. From the other side, I heard, "Jay, don't eat that. Don't. Eat. That. You will get another one if you don't eat that!"


I heard the bed springs bounce up and down as I checked the second hand on my watch. "I know," said Jay. I smiled. Perhaps trampoline-as-bed trumps marshmallow. When I came back in, both marshmallows were still sitting on the bed.


"That's great!" I said. "Now we don't have to worry about paying the Princeton Review." The kids shrugged and grinned and downed their treats.


There really is no good reason to try to re-write The Big Idea. In this market, it probably won't sell. Novelists other than the regular crowd from the New York Times Book Review don't make much from their advances anymore, and with the dawn of the e-reader, royalties are getting slimmer and slimmer. My family needs my attention on them. I have precious little time to read anything at all; should I really spend the next few years only reading myself?


But. The red 3 ring binder was up in the attic two weeks ago. Last week I brought it to my office on the second floor. Sometime over the weekend when I was too sick to do anything else, I dragged it to my bed. And opened it. And picked up my red pen. And marked up the first few pages. And scrawled myself a bunch of notes in the margins. And as I went for my run yesterday, I figured out a solution to one of the nagging plot points.


Why write?

Why tell a story?

Isn't this why we are here? Isn't this what we are for?

I don’t know if 2012 will be the year I tackle The Novel again. I do hope 2012 will be the year that I start to read again. I hope to read and re-read and let the stories of others filter and play through my mind. I hope to read to my kids—maybe even Harry Potter!—and to Tom. I hope to play the marshmallow game and win-- resisting the temptation to gobble up that which is in front of me, in favor of putting a little time in to unpaid, unplanned, unpaved ways that will lead me (I hope) closer and closer to my missions.

October Snowstorm

It's one of the many paradoxes of life that by the time we really become convinced that we want to--need to--change, it's too late. Not to be a downer; but I couldn't help but think this way during the aftermath of Halloween weekend. A freak snow storm caused massive power outages and caused me to wish my species hadn't wrecked the planet, and also that I had solar panels, a generator and a CO2 friendly wood stove.

Like so many in New England, we awoke the morning of Oct. 30 to a cold house on a brilliantly beautiful day. We'd watched the kids catching snowflakes with their tongues the afternoon before, and at the time, the snow seemed benign, albeit unseasonal.

Fun! A snowstorm in October! And our new gas stove worked, at least the burners did, so tea (caffeine) was had by the grown ups in the house, which meant all was well. We'd signed up to run in a Halloween 5K, so we bundled up and drove downtown after enjoying a warm microwave-less breakfast. So far so good.



But Northampton was dark, even at 10am. The traffic lights were out and the big clock downtown was black. The roads were flooded with dirty snow, and the parking lot where the race was supposed to start was empty. Our cell phones only kind of worked. Not to be deterred completely, we parked and got out the double jogging stroller and pushed it through the slush, thinking we'd get some warm beverages at a coffee shop. But nothing was open. Tom turned back with the kids, and I jogged toward home, trying to get some intel on the ground, passing by my friend Margaret's house to see if her party was still happening that night. I found her and her husband shoveling out their driveway. She is a major activist for climate change; yesterday she joined a group of protesters who circled the White House to protest the TransCanada pipeline--she's serious. It seemed so ironic that her party would be cancelled by a freakish climate-change-induced snowstorm. She was the very person I wanted to be with that day, so I was glad at least that I got to give her a hug and wish her good luck.


I came across my friends Liz and Kris digging out Liz's driveway and learned from them how serious the damage was, that we might be in the cold and dark for days, even weeks. I invited them over for lunch, since I had burners, after all--one does want to share when one finds oneself in a situation like this. As I walked home, my mind kept leaping to fearful conclusions. Weeks! Dark! Cold! WEEKS! Kids not in school! COLD! But I kept reminding it that right now, I was just jogging in the snow. Right now, I had hot water and gas burners. Right now, I had a cell phone that sometimes worked. And soon I had a text from my sister in Conway saying she had heat and power, and to come on up for the night.

So we did; we packed as if we were going to be gone for a week. We took all the food in our fridge and freezer and all our computers and iPads and cell phones and favorite stuffed animals and decamped. Katryna made pizza, Kris cuddled my kids, the kids thought they'd died and gone to heaven, and later Dave Hower's family joined us. We were warm and snug, having a mini Nields reunion. The next morning, with Patty joining us from cold/dark Easthampton, the adults had five computers going around the dining room table, each of us checking FaceBook obsessively, and occasionally communicating with each other via FaceBook instead of across the table, and also barking at the kids to turn off their screens.


Our power, we soon learned from FaceBook friends/neighbors, came on about 10am and we left Conway in the early afternoon to go home and dress up for the Halloween that was officially canceled. Elle was a Ghost/Pirate/Unicorn/Vampire, and Jay was a Kirby Car driver (AKA Herbie the Love Bug--see photos below). I was Janis Joplin and Tom was a Garden Variety Victim (Tom's costume every year is some variation on a particular American flag bandana and fake blood). We set out bravely but as soon as we rounded the corner, we saw why the town had canceled Halloween. Downed trees and power lines made sidewalk travel impossible and impassible, and so we put Kirby in the back of Tom's truck and visited exactly two houses.




The aftermath has been harder than the actual storm. There is a reason it's not supposed to snow on Halloween. Our trees still have most of their leaves, so when the snow fell (18 inches, 27 inches, three feet in some parts), the canopy couldn't hold it, but couldn't drop it either. So the branches bent, and the branches broke. The sight of all these broken trees is more and more disturbing to me with the passing days; the limbs will never grow back. Great beauties all over town are torn beyond recognition. I have this fear that with each bizarre storm we will lose more parts of the trees until eventually we'll just have shards and stumps. I keep hearing stories about trees crashing into houses, into bedroom windows where moms were reading to their kids, into metal roofs like huge accusing fingers. Walking home on the bike trail a few days ago, I saw downed trees with their branches fingering the earth, reminding me of the yoga pose vasistasana. No one holds a yoga pose for long. We are putting too much stress on our trees, asking too much of them. They didn't sign up for this climate.



Even as I fret about our trees, I am contemplating getting a wood stove. At least then I could put all the broken limbs to some use (to me.) But with Jay's asthma, it might not be a good thing. Not to mention the carbon we'd be putting in the air--which is why we have this freak October snow storm to begin with.

How do we consume less? How do we change our ways? Even if it is too late, I want to change, partly out of penance, and partly out of respect. So I pulled my neglected bike out of the barn and have been riding it. Today I took Jay to school, with him crowded into the baby seat in the back. He loved it. "Oh, wook at dose twees, Mama," I heard him say from his perch behind me. "Dey fell down." I dropped him off at school only to find that it was once again Halloween (we've had many make-up Halloweens), and so I handed the teacher his bike helmet and told her to cover it with aluminum foil so he could reprise his role as Kirby Car driver, this time sans vehicle. And then I biked off, meandering around our neighborhood to see how folks were doing. We all seem a lot closer now, more necessarily connected. And I have a feeling it's going to become more that way in the future.

Readers: What were your experiences in the storm? What can we do to put fewer fossil fuels into the air, use less? Should we invest in solar panels? Generators? Wood stoves? Where do you see glimmers of hope in the climate battle?

The Coat

As I have written previously, I made a vow last December to make peace with money. I decided to let the ways in which I interact with the currency of currency be my spiritual teacher and to let it show me the ways in which I am still contracted and fearful and doubtful--and maybe even a little self-depriving. I wanted to do this because I was spending $1400 a month on groceries on the one hand, and on the other, unable to sleep at night because I was so worried about how my kids would go to college. Also I don't know how to balance a checkbook. And even though I am richly blessed with resources, I can't seem to control the mechanism that begins in my brain ("I need a yogurt maker") and ends with non-appropriate purchases (e.g. spending the money on pretty journals instead, which I add to the huge collection of pretty journals sitting on a stack in my office.) I have never been able to do numbers. I can remember your birthday if you tell it to me, and I will probably remember it even if I haven't seen you for 20 years, or at least I'll pin the tail a few days around your birthday. I remember the names of kids I teach and kids I taught twenty-five years ago. But if you tell me a series of numbers--the amount I have in my bank account, for instance--I will forget it ten seconds afterwards.


I started by just keeping track of every penny I spent and every penny I earned. In order to do this, I had to be present a lot, which was hard. I much prefer to zone out and kind of float about in my daily routines. I had to remember to pull out a little notebook every time I went through the grocery line, which wasn't that hard except that I forgot to do this every other trip. Even harder was tracking the quarters and dimes that go to feed the meter when I parked the car. I wrote down what we spent, and I noticed quickly that we consistently spent a little more than we earned. Not an egregious amount, but enough so that it would affect us if we wanted to save money for our kids to go to college. And I was not happy about this. It gave me the feeling of being porous; not like a sea sponge where water flows in and out with equilibrium, but like a coat with holes in the pockets whose owner is blithely dropping coins into its slippery interior. Clink, clink, clink.

As a veteran dieter, I knew that the solution would have to be more than making a budget. I knew that if I tried to adhere to something like that, I would just feel deprived and act out. I knew that I had to change the way I interacted with money. So I started by saying thank you each time I touched the stuff, even if the "touch" was digital. Thank you. I get it. You are taking care of me. Thank you. I asked for help from some friends who understand this kind of powerlessness and got some great advice. It's the same advice your grandmother probably gave you: Save up for what you want. It will taste sweeter if you do.

By the way, do you know what the interests rates on savings accounts are? Like, NOTHING. I was banking at Bank of America and when I asked to open a savings account, and inqired about compound interest (see, I knew to ask about compound interest) they said, "Point oh five." "Like, five cents on the dollar?" I asked. "Nooooooo," my rep said, shaking his head and looking at me as if I were a child. "Zero point zero five." "So," I said. "No one really wants us to save our money anymore, right? They'd prefer if we contributed to the GDP. That's cool. But I need to save my money so my kids can go to college."

So after some more good advice, I moved my money from that bad bank to Florence Savings Bank where they give you 1.25% if you cross your Ts and dot your i's on a number of items. As the months passed, I created a spending plan rather than a budget. I saved for college, and I saved for things I wanted, like a white Irish Fisherman sweater (I know, I posted about this three years ago, and I still am searching for the perfect one.) And I saved my money until one day, Saturday, I had enough to go shopping. I was sweater-bound--a dark purple cardigan might suffice if I couldn't find the fisherman sweater, and we were scheduled to have a break right down the street from Anthropologie, my favorite store. As I was leaving for my gig at Passim, the kids said, "Mama, pleeeeeease bring us back a present." Guess what? I had even saved enough for that kind of spontaneous treat for my kids.

Our gigs at Passim were so much fun. At the family show in the afternoon, we did "Aikendrum" and as we sang, Katryna drew an Aikendrum and clothed him in the foods the kids suggested. We sang "Wise Mama Witch," our new Halloween chant, and we got our publisher Jonathan Greene to play banjo with us on "Old Joan Clark."

Afterwards, in between shows, Katryna and I went off to spend my savings. Now I should say that part of my goal is to learn to be a good shopper. To buy, for instance, the yogurt maker rather than the journals if that is indeed my need. (Some days I really do need journals, and on those days, it would be better if I got one, rather than a yogurt maker. But, see, I do need to be conscious about these things.) Anyway, I'd left the house at noon when it was in the low sixties and I'd forgotten a coat. Now it was in the high forties and I was feeling it. We ducked into my favorite store and poked around. I tried on a bunch of ugly sweaters. Katryna found adorable mugs with my kids' initials on them. Each mug had a hip piece of thin twine wrapped around the handle attached to a green crayon. Perfect! And as I was sighing, giving up on my sweater search, I looked up and saw a magnificent parka complete with a leonine faux fur stole around the hood and fleecy lining. The coat said, "Nerissa, take me. I am your heart's desire. I fit and I will keep you warm."

"But I have a coat!" I protested. "In fact, I have several. I need a sweater."

"No," pronounced the coat. "You have a dorky dirty yellow parka that embarrasses your husband. You have your grandmother's boring green coat that looks like an old lady coat. I am hip and beautiful. And face it, all anyone ever sees of you in the wintertime is your coat. You never take it off because you're always freezing, even indoors. Buy me, and I will be your complete fashion statement. When you think of it that way, I am a bargain."

Indeed I had to think of it that way in order to apply the word 'bargain' to that coat, but this line of argument worked. Plus I was cold. As I left the store hurrying back to my second show of the night, I felt so warm, so taken care of, as if God were putting Her arm around my shoulder.

Presently, though I began to feel guilty. "What was I thinking?" I thought. "I don't need a coat! And this coat is expensive! And I am supposed to be living within my means! That is a coat for someone who has money to throw around! I just blew my sweater money! Now I will have to wait a whole other year for a fisherman sweater! I am supposed to be buying only what I really need! I am supposed to be patiently waiting for the perfect items that make my heart sing! I am supposed to visualize what I want and trust that it will manifest, and not to impulsively buy furry parkas!"

I wondered if I could return it. I doubted if it would even be warm enough for January winds.

The next morning, I set the bag with the wrapped mugs outside the kids' room. When Elle came shuffling down the stairs wrapped in her blanket, I scooped her up and bounded with her in my arms up the stairs, with Jay following close behind. "Come open your presents!" I shouted, grabbing the bag and running down the stairs again. The kids squealed and exclaimed and bounced after me, grabbing at the bag with the wrapped items. They each unwrapped a mug. Elle pulled at the crayon and said, "I don't like green," and started to cry. Jay said, "I don't wike gween eiddur," and started to fake cry. I frowned, swept up the mugs with great dignity and muttered something about gratitude. I felt completely deflated and even worse about my spending spree. I wondered if I could wrap up everything and ship it back to Cambridge and get my money back.


And so as I was muttering on Sunday morning about gratitude, while my kids wailed in frustrated disappointment, it hit me. We don't get to choose our gifts. That's the point of a gift. They get given to us. What if that coat really was a gift from God? What if I am never ever going to learn how to be an effective shopper who holds out and waits years for the item of my dreams? What if I never find the perfect Fisherman sweater? Maybe I really do need more pretty journals, and the yogurt maker can wait. Isn't it the truth that every single best thing/person/job/experience I've ever had has been way better and more interesting than my dream for it? Hasn't it all been a co-creation with the Divine rather than me bossing It around to match up to my vision? Don't I, too, cry with disappointment when first confronted with the "wrong" item?

I turned around from the sink. Elle said, "I really like the mug, Mama. I just don't like the crayon. Hey! What if we attach a blue crayon to the handle?" A moment later, we'd replaced the green crayons with a blue one for Elle and a purply-pink one for Jay. They spooned some marbles into their new mugs and pretended they were eating them as soup. Shyly, I showed Tom my new coat.

"Wow!" he said, nodding. "It's about time you got yourself a really nice coat. You deserve it."

Nields Fun Countdown T Minus 1

Kerrville Folk Festival, 1996

(Jay is going to be fine! All is well!)

Below are drawings of the Nields through the ages, by members of the band other than Katryna. Guess who drew which?
And here are the lyrics to the new song we will be singing at the Iron Horse on Saturday night.

You Come Around Again

When exactly was the day that you forgot to play

Wasn’t there a point of no return?

One day you were running up the hill to beat the sun

Running with your friends until your lungs burned

Now your hill is made of paper, dishes and the laundry

And getting folks to know that they are good

Your kids say, Mom, would you throw the ball?

Catch me if you can, you know you could

You know you could.

You come around again

You come around again

You come around again.

If there’s anything at all I’ve learned in these twenty years

You’d do well to learn the minuet with fate

No one mourns that clever thing you didn’t say in time

No one ever died because you slept late

“Oh, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

“The two of us are on our way back home.”

We had a dream, we took the crayon

Drew it up and walked on purple crayon land

Till you came too.

You come around again

You come around again

You come around again

Yesterday I watched our children pick up our guitars

They grabbed them by the tail, and man, they swung

They pulled the music from the air and made it all their own

Soon they will recruit that baby drummer

So who’s to say that this is it, or this is something new

I think you know I never left the ball

I left the mark, I left the shoe, and then I hid behind the curtain watching you.

You looked so sad

But what could I have done?

The story made me run

But I came around again.

Nerissa Nields
May 16,2011
©2011 Peter Quince Publishing

Countdown to Jam for the Fans #1

I am supposed to be writing a song for the Nields 20th anniversary/reunion finale at the Iron Horse. No pressure. It's just supposed to sum up the last 20 years, be upbeat, have a great chorus that the fans can sing along to, and top everything else that we play. I started to write it Monday. Or rather, I started to write something; but what I wrote, while good, is not an end-of-the-show kind of song. It's the kind of song that, in the days of the band when we all lived together and breathed in unison, we would have placed about fourth or fifth in the set. It grooves. It would have gotten everyone on their feet. But it never would have ended a show.

Men came today in a big red dump truck and hacked away at our back porch until it was gone. I thought this would be terribly depressing; after all, I loved that back porch. I wrote chunks of my books sitting on an Adirondack chair on that porch, and I (and others) sat on the floor, guitar in lap, and wrote songs. In fact, the song I mention above was started there. I kept spacing out as I was writing it, gazing at the beautiful flowery backyard, moping about the fact that I would never sit here again, never gaze at that view again. Then I remembered the whole point of the renovation is to create a ROOM in that very spot so that I can sit and gaze and write songs--from my new kitchen.

Two great surprises came from the porch demolition. The best one was that the men located Jay's small Hess motorcycle guy (actually William's--Jay stole it.) Motorcycle guy has been AWOL for over a year. He had been buried under the porch. Jay is apoplectic.

The other is the light. The light! Our kitchen is light! The porch had been blocking the light! Now I have a tangible, experienced vision to meditate upon when I lose heart for this project, as I will sometime in June when I wish for more than a trickle of water to wash my greens, or when one of my kids reminds me why it's a really good thing to have a bathroom on the first floor (the bathroom is being gutted, too.)


Katryna said I could re-write an existing song for the finale. I actually had just done that.

For five generations now, our family has spent parts of our summers at a place in the high peaks region of the Adirondacks called Putnam Camp. This rustic place, nestled at the foot of Giant Mountain, hosted Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung along with William James while the two psychoanalysts made their first and only trip together to the United States. Cabins have names if not running water, and after each family style meal, guests climb the base of the mountain to have tea and dessert in a wall-less cabin affectionately known as The Stoop. This is also where folks pull out guitars, banjos, the occasional hand-made upright bass, and sing songs passed down from family to family for generations.

Putnam Camp has some traditions which require music, too; notoriously a song guests sing to latecomers to dinner called "Little Popsie Wopsie." (Our mother lived in fear of being "Popsie wopsied," and thus we girls were never once late.) But our favorite song is the one guests sing to the departing visitors. At the end of a stay (typically a week), remaining guests line up and hold hands and do a kind of modified can-can while singing this song to the car loaded with the departing guests as it drives down the mountain out to Route 73.

We’ll dance like a fairy
and sing like a bird
Sing like a bird, sing like a bird
We’ll dance like a fairy
and sing like a bird
And wile the hours away

In our family, we have taken this tradition and applied it at every possible opportunity to bid farewell to any guest at all. My kids would sing it to the postwoman if they could. My parents often sing it to us as we drive away from their house, the two of them holding hands and kicking their feet gamely back and forth, waving with their outside arms as our car follows the bend in the driveway.

Last Sunday, our friend Kris departed after spending a lovely day with us. "Dance wike a faiwy!" Jay shouted as she closed her car door, and so Elle and Jay and I sang and danced and waved as Kris made her way back home. As we turned to go back in the house, it occurred to me that the song needed some new verses. Probably this occurred to me because my son wouldn't let me stop singing the one existing verse, and I was getting bored. Boredom is the doorway to creativity, says our friend Holly Near.

We’ll dance like a fairy and sing like a bird
Sing like a bird, sing like a bird
We’ll dance like a fairy and sing like a bird
And wile the hours away

We hope that your travels bring you safely home
You safely home, you safely home
We hope that your travels bring you safely home
And show you some fun on the way

We’ll hold these good times we had close to our hearts
Close to our hearts, close to our hearts
We’ll hold these good times we had close to our hearts
Until we’re together to stay.

We’ll wile all our hours away while you’re gone
Away wile you’re gone, away while you’re gone
We’ll while all our hours away while you’re gone
And then we will go out and play.

Don't you think this would make an excellent finale to Jam for the Fans?

Day 3 in the Recording Studio

We record at Sackamusic in Conway, MA. This studio belongs to my brother-in-law, Katryna's husband Dave Chalfant. He is amazing, and unlike Katryna and me, not at all ADD. He has the ability to sit still and concentrate for hours at a time. His attention is exquisite. When I am meditating, or just generally trying to calm down, it is he I evoke.

Conway is beautiful, as you can see from the pictures of the snowfall I took in the last post. It is quiet, and at night, one can see a billion stars if it isn't cloudy. This evening, I drove away when Venus or maybe Jupiter was out, and the last quarter of the moon. I have missed the moon since becoming a parent; I find myself indoors when it is visible.

Today we just had two hours to work. We recorded my guitar for "More than Enough" and a scratch vocal. Then we explored "Can I Love You Too Much" in terms of an arrangement. And we listened to Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." This is my current favorite song, suggested to me on Facebook by my cousin's wife Courtney Nields. I am blown away. Also, apparently this band existed for the exact amount of time as the five piece incarnation of the Nields: roughly the decade of the 90s. NMH broke up in 1998. What do you know about them? l visited their website and it was like visiting a ghost town. Anyway, Dave and Katryna liked the song as much as I did, and I hope it will inform our entire recording. (Though we will abstain from the use of the theramin.) Tomorrow, maybe there will be drums.

Day 2 in the Studio

First snowfall of the year, en route to Conway.


Day two in the studio. In between sessions, Massachusetts had its first snow of the season. Katryna and her kids went to the circus in NYC, the Nields-Duffys had the distinction of coming in dead last in Northampton's Hot Chocolate Run, and also bought a Christmas tree.

We also went to church. "There is only one story," said Steve Philbrick. "The story of the year. It begins as a tender young thing; then becomes fruitful. It dies, is buried, goes underground. But Life does not die. It comes back to life in the spring again."

I can't decide whom to vote for in the election tomorrow. I initially loved Alan Khazei; then Mike Capuano because of his view on the health care bill. But it's awfully tempting to go with Coakley and have another woman in the Senate. We in MA are so lucky to have such great candidates. I will vote tomorrow. That much I know. And it won't be for the Boston Celtics owner.

I love the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss CD Raising Sand so much it hurts. Also, I have decided I like Journey. I know readers of How to Be an Adult will be shocked to hear this. I just realized life is too short to hold grudges. And "Don't Stop Believing" is just plain fun.

Elle and Jay have broken many of our Christmas tree ornaments already, and we haven't even started decorating the tree. Oh, dear.

Thank you for your music recommendations! One more question: Should I get Pandora or Rhapsody?

Here is a video of my attempt to record the guitar to the song "I Choose This Era." Though we ended up using a subsequent take, this officially documents the beginning of the recording of our new CD which we are tentatively calling "The Full Catastrophe," at the risk of getting some smug and mean reviews a la "Shark Sandwich/ Sh*t Sandwich."

The Bear, Part Two

The Saturday after election day, Tom made a cake: an electoral college sheet cake. Tom is even less of a graphic artist than I am, yet he managed to draw the United States with only a few weirdnesses around the Appalachian region. The cake had white butter-cream frosting with the state abbreviations written in the color in which citizens voted; blue Minnesota, Red Kentucky, etc. Guests helped themselves to their favorite state, so by the end of the evening, the cake was a riddled mess. (Lila ate Alaska, but don’t be too alarmed—it was not drawn to scale.) Cleaning up, I cut a wedge out for Tom to eat later and threw the rest of the cake in the trash on our back porch.

The next day, our friends Melany and Sam came over for a playdate. We saw them drive into our driveway, and were then puzzled when the phone rang and the caller ID identified Melany.

“Um, you’d better look in your backyard,” Mel said. I peered out the kitchen window to see a big black bear lumbering around our picnic table. Lila, who’d recently been told that bears can’t come into houses because they have no hands and therefore can’t open doorknobs, came scampering up behind me.

“Oh, look!” I said, trying my best to sound jolly. “A bear! How fun! Let’s take pictures.” And I hung up on Mel and called 911. “Hi,” I said, again feigning casualness, my daughter on my hip and my son asleep in the neglecto-matic. “There’s a bear on my porch. Please come very soon.”

The bear, meanwhile had shuffled up the stairs to the porch, which is on the other side of the window we were looking out, and proceeded straight to the garbage can. He must have had an appetite for all those red states no one ate. A few minutes later, after we’d taken as many pictures as we could and I was beginning to worry that he’d make a liar out of me in front of my daughter (about the part where bears don’t come in houses), he turned from the garbage can, looked our way, waved his head around and made off down the stairs back into the backyard. I called Melany and told her to back her car up onto the street.

A policeman came and jingled his keys. The bear ambled farther back into our yard and proceeded to climb one of our trees, and we all decided it was a good time to go to the playground, via the front door.

That was the last we saw of the bear. But every night we tell stories about him, and when I get out of my car, I look around carefully before pulling my two kids out.

Johnny got his first cold right after Thanksgiving: that makes one dysfunctional family bingo prediction come true. He also rolled over for the first time, is grabbing at things, including our hair, and has developed the manliest hearty laugh. He still sleeps in our bed, and when I discovered by reading my old journal that Lila was out of our bed by now, I called my friendly neighborhood child psychiatrist to see if I was in the process of ruining my son’s life, or at the least encouraging his future Oedipal complex.

“No,” said the psychiatrist. “Boys’ nervous systems are more fragile than girls’––they only have the one X chromosome, you know, and the Y doesn’t have much of anything on it. Besides, as a second child he probably gets held much less frequently than Lila did. Keep him in bed till kindergarten.”

“Really?” I said, shocked.

“No, not really. But don’t rush it. He’s fine. You’re fine.”

“But I’m terrible at playing with my daughter,” I said, switching gears. How often does one get to talk to a child psychiatrist?

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean she asks me to play dolls with her, and as soon as I sit down on the floor in front of her doll house, I think of a million other things I should do instead. Like clean the bathtub or wash dirty diapers. And what’s really weird is I was the kind of kid who loved to play with dolls. I could play for hours and hours, making up stories, getting totally lost in the fantasy. In fact, I had to force myself to stop playing with dolls when I was 12 or 13, and even then, I’d sneak into my little sisters’ rooms and play with them, like a junkie getting one last hit. But now, it’s the last thing I want to do. I’d rather organize her books than play with her dolls.”

The psychiatrist was silent, and I began to lose hope that he would say what Tom had said: that I was an artist and I’d brought my make-believe into my writing life. Instead he said, “That sounds like a block. Work on it. Make it your meditation. Set a timer for 15 minutes and play with her for that long."

So I have been. And the funny thing is, as soon as I think of it as meditation, I don’t mind doing it at all, probably because the alternative is sitting still and doing nothing, which is harder than aviation engineering if you ask me. And wouldn’t you know it? I do remember how to play again. I find myself thinking of new shenanigans for Lila’s dolls to get into while I’m taking a shower or going for a jog. (Her dolls’ names are Nimi, Chimi, Tofu and William. William is a girl with long brown hair.) But even better, I remember that it’s not all up to me—I get to just wait and respond to what Lila makes the dolls do. Ah, yes—that’s probably what I liked most about imaginative play to being with –the way it connected me to the other kids I was playing with.

But I started by talking about Johnny. Yesterday my sister Katryna called to tell me she and her whole family had been exposed to Whooping Cough. In case you don’t know, WC is a horrible disease that kills babies under the age of 6 months. Johnny’s had one immunization, but he won’t have the other for another few weeks. Katryna, who takes illness very seriously and her own responsibility for the happiness and well-being of others even more seriously, called in tears to tell me, and said, “I won’t be able to live with myself if I’ve given this to Johnny.”

“Don’t worry, “ I said, once again affecting jollility. “He’s fine.”

Of course, he wasn’t fine; he had a cold. I took him to bed and asked Tom to look up Whooping Cough symptoms online.

“You won’t like it,” Tom said after a minute of staring at the screen. “’Often starts as a cold with only occasional coughing.’”

As if on cue, Johnny started to cough. Then he vomited.

“And it says they vomit,” Tom went on.

I curled my body around my baby and put my hand on his head. He was trying to nurse, but his congestion was so bad he had to keep pausing just to catch his breath. All night long, I kept waking to his labored breathing, which alternated between baby gasps and sighs, and old-man-like snoring. Late in the night, he settled down and we both slept. But not before I’d prayed with everything I had for his good health.

I don’t believe in the kind of praying that results in infants being saved from grave illnesses, but I do believe that for some of us, that kind of praying is all we may be capable of when we are deep in a state of fear as I was last night. I also believe that the kind of prayer that does work—almost perfectly in my experience—is the prayer that we love more, love better, feel more gratitude, forgive and change our stuck ways of thinking. So I prayed for all that too.

In the morning, I called the doctor who told me to watch his temperature (which was not elevated) and breastfeed him a lot. Later in the day, Katryna called to say the person she thought she was exposed to turned out not to have pertussis. And Johnny seemed to have just a bad cold. Once again, the bear passed us by. I am beyond grateful. All this happened around the fifth anniversary of the day Tom and I met for the first time at the Starbucks in Northampton. I asked him that day if he wanted to have kids. He said he wasn’t sure. Did I?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really like my life. It would be a big change.”

Now that I’m here, looking back, this response strikes me as slightly off. People who are trying to decide whether or not to have kids don’t get it. They think it’s a lifestyle choice between, say, living in the city versus living in the country, whereas it’s really a choice between living in an imperfect, volatile and uncontrollable world versus having a bear take up residence in your backyard. This is what they mean about the highs getting higher and the lows getting lower. I want to scream from the rafters about the importance of immunization and throwing one’s trash away indoors and out the reach of deadly wildlife. But instead, I’m going to get on the floor and play with Lila’s dolls. Nimi and Chimi and Tofu are planning a trip to California, and I want to lead them via Yellowstone Park.