Alison McGhee

My plan is to build an igloo in my backyard. I will build it according to specifications downloaded from the internet, and I will do an excellent job, so that my igloo is airtight, solidly constructed, and worthy of occupation for the next few months. My igloo will be warm, because that’s what igloos are, aren’t they, according to the laws of physics, or chemistry, or biology, or Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? It’s hard to imagine just how an igloo could be warm, but I’ve been told by enough trustworthy people that they are exactly that. Since I am always cold, the warmth of my igloo will come as a relief.

In my igloo I will have a small fire, not for warmth – because igloos are naturally warm – but because fires are pretty, and I love them. There will be no smoke from my fire, but the faint smell of woodsmoke will permeate my clothes, just as it did during my childhood spent in a house heated with wood. You might think that in my igloo I will be wearing many layers of clothes, wool and Goretex and Neosporin, etc., but no. I’ll be wearing a t-shirt and a sweater, my favorite jeans, and my green cotton socks, and I’ll have an unzipped flannel-lined sleeping bag to lie on, because flannel-lined sleeping bags are extraordinarily cozy.

I’ll have music in my igloo. It will drift down from the rounded sides and ceiling of my igloo, and it will be beamed in telepathically, at will, from my own mind. Tom Waits,  Spoon, Yo La Tengo, Chopin, Outkast, the Burt Sugar Trio – anyone I want to hear,  at any given moment, will magically appear. “Appear” is not the right word for telepathically-beamed igloo music, but I can’t seem to think of a better one, and I’m sure you know what I mean.

Food? Of course. Strachiatella soup, baguettes from the long-gone New French Kitchen, Lindt milk chocolate truffles, a Shackburger from the Shake Shack, a small Mediterranean salad from the Chirping Chicken, and mounds of heavily-salted sauteed spinach with garlic. Salt in such large quantities is not good for you, you say? I’m sure you’re right, but this is my igloo, not yours.

I will have visitors in my igloo, and like the wishful music,  anyone I want to see will magically appear, from this world or other worlds unknown to me. Christine Hoffbeck, how lovely to see you again. Did you know that I think of you every morning, and I picture your smiling face and your tiny nose, especially the way it turned red that one time you drank that sip of champagne?

Caroly Bintz, wise and laughing friend of my youth, hello again, and welcome to my igloo, and let us conjure the giant glasses of chocolate milk we used to make every day at lunch when we snuck away from school and across the street to your green ranch house. And let us also conjure the half-inch-thick peanut butter sandwiches on Wonder Bread.

George Kirsch, I greet you with some reserve but also much interest, as, while I did not know you, I often picture you standing in an unknown living room and playing the violin. Please feel free to play the violin, if you wish. Or speak to me of whatever you want.

RJ and Doc and Greg,  I did not expect to see you here in my igloo, but what a happy surprise. And Ellen, and Meredith, and Susie: welcome. Betty Lee, you with your leopard-striped pants and lovely smile, hello, hello. Welcome, and isn’t it astonishing that such a small-appearing igloo can hold us all without feeling even a bit cramped, but there you have it.

Yes, I will build my igloo today. And I will live in it as long as I want. All around me the things that need to be done will be done by people who are not me, while I lie on my flannel-lined sleeping bag eating Original Flavor Bugles one by one and speaking – or not – with those dear to me.

The Perfect Patron. You make lists of books you want to read. You reserve them online. You patiently wait your turn for the new bestsellers and head promptly to the library when your time has come. You check out with a clean conscience using your own card, upon which no fines or warnings have been placed. You read said books within the allotted three-week period and return them before or by the due date. All the librarians like you. I myself don’t like you, but hey, that’s no reflection on you.

The Slightly Imperfect Patron. You occasionally go to the library and check out the books you wish to read. You also occasionally go to the library on behalf of your children in order to check out the books that said children need for the endless, mind-numbing five-paragraph essays that their schools require of them. This (the checking-out-for-your-children) along with the occasional overdue book is what makes you a slightly imperfect patron, because you should always return your books on time and you should also always teach your children that checking out the books for their five-paragraph essays is their responsibility. Librarians still like you, however, and so do I.

The Bad Patron. Even though there are many books that you wish to check out from the library and read, you avoid the library assiduously. And why is that? Because you cannot seem to return any book in a timely manner, meaning within a year or two after the date on which it is due.

This is a lifelong perversion, and despite the guilt and self-recrimination it has caused you lo these many years, you still can’t get it right. When you have to go to the library because no Half-Price Books in the entire metropolitan area has in stock the book you need – or, more accurately, the book your child needs for one of his or her endless, mind-numbing five-paragraph essays – you skulk to one of the many neighborhood libraries that dot your fair city.

With book in hand and eyes cast to the floor, you skulk to the check-out counter and hand over the book. You then try to determine which of the four library cards you carry within your wallet – one for you, one for each child – might be “clean,” as in, has the lowest overdue fine attached to it, and, trying for nonchalance, hand it over.

You are low! You are disgusting! You are the kind of patron who has carried a copy of Cherry Ames: Student Nurse with you for the past thirty years, fully intending to return it to the hometown library of your youth, aren’t you? Vile. Go home right now and hold your hand in a large bowl of ice cubes.

 

In glove compartment:

Miniature hard-plastic snap-open box of baby wipes bought in hopes of maintaining then-new car cleanliness. Small pack of kleenex received as part of complimentary “sniffles” pack given out by former health care provider (hated term #1: “health care provider,” along with hated term #2, “educator”). Insurance card, possibly up to date, possibly not (who can keep track? they come so often, and then must be punched out from their partially-laminated sheet of stiff paper). Son’s road test checklist and fee receipt. Easy-reference flip chart guide to car’s controls provided at time of then-new car sale. Winter emergency brown acrylic beret-like back-up hat to be used in case of sudden blizzard when one might have to hike nine miles to nearest town in white-out conditions with only telephone poles for guidance. Winter emergency black acrylic back-up scarf. Winter emergency pair of 2/$1 Walgreen’s acrylic one size fits all miniature gloves, each with tip of middle finger chewed off by covetous dog. Worn sheet of paper containing “How to Jump-Start Your Car” instructions kindly imparted by former student.

In driver’s side door pocket:  Pair of yellow rubber kitchen gloves placed there after reading that said gloves work wonders in removing dog hair from furniture (theory untested as of yet). Half-full plastic bottle of spring water which freezes each night and partially thaws when car has been driven more than 20 minutes. Crumpled Select-a-Size Viva paper towel kept in car in case of severe nose drip or beverage spill. Seven smooth gray rocks collected from beach on Lake Superior, which rattle each time car is braked or accelerated.

In secret lift-up storage compartment: Half-full can of mistakenly-bought “lightly salted” cashews kept in case of winter emergency hunger, used only as last resort because who wants “lightly” salted when one could have “extremely heavily salted”?

In front passenger side door : Not sure, to be honest. Perhaps crumpled cellophane wrappers. Perhaps wadded up pieces of paper containing ABC gum. Perhaps old railroad tie bolts found by side of railroad track in Bucyrus, North Dakota. Perhaps nothing, although that seems highly unlikely.

On back seat: Royal blue fleece blanket spread over entire seat and wedged between back cushions in mostly fruitless attempt to keep dog hair confined to fleece blanket and not back seat.

In back seat sleeve storage compartment: Empty plastic water bottle left by child passenger. Small winter emergency pad of paper and pen in case last note of love and reassurance needs to be left for loved ones who will be notified by the authorities of frozen body found huddled within small cinnamon-colored car. Tiny empty boxes of Jujy Fruits, Milk Duds and Nerds left over from Halloween and not disposed of by child passenger, who has many good qualities, cleanliness not being one of them.

In trunk:  One 50-pound bag of “grit” and three 50-pound bags of sand, bought from Bryant Hardware in (utterly vain) attempt to make car perform better – or, rather, perform at all – when faced with ice or snow in any amount, serving as impetus for winter emergency preparations. One 15-pound bag of Solid Gold Lamb and Rice dog food. One half-full box of Peanut Butter Madness! Dog Biscuits in shape of happy capering gingerbread boy-like creature. Royal-blue plastic dog double food+water combo travel bowl. One-third full bottle of blue windshield wiper juice. Three dog-mauled tennis balls. Three bungee cords in blue, green and orange. TwoThule tie-downs. Extra light green fleece dog blanket which could also be used in case of emergency, as when traversing North Dakota in a blizzard and forced to pull over by side of road with only dogs and fleece dog blankets for warmth and lightly-salted cashews for sustenance, followed by Peanut Butter Madness! Dog Biscuits in case lightly-salted cashews run out. Travel Scrabble in case of emergency need for entertainment. Miniature, barely-adequate scraper which will not be replaced because of the known existence – even if currently unfindable – of expensive, ergonomically correct, expandable scraper/brush combo in attractive shade of royal blue. Large plastic bag which once contained dozens and dozens of unopened,  now opened and emptied, tiny Halloween-size boxes of Jujy Fruits, Nerds, and Milk Duds, continually pilfered over months by candy-mad child despite constant stern warnings by mother to Stop. Stealing. That. Candy.

 

Pretend you have grown wings and are flying high in the night sky above the Homestead, in far upstate New York, about five hours driving distance north of New York City. (The fact that New York State geography is defined by its relation to New York City is annoying to you, but you accept it as part of the burden you must bear.) Feel the cool air on your tired body. Your wings rise and fall with a steady power. Your gaze is fixed on the distant horizon, where foothills begin their steady rise to the Adirondack Mountains. You look down at the only lights you can see, which are the headlights of a small truck, climbing slowly over hill and dale. The truck appears to be searching for something – not that you can tell, overtly, that the truck is searching, but it is something that you, with your extrasensory powers and ability to fly can sense.

Let us now descend for a closer look at this small truck. Fold your wings and dive downward. Swoop up as you draw near. What manner of vehicle is this?

Why, it is a Northwest Airlines baggage delivery truck. And where might you be heading, sir?

“I’ve got a bag to deliver to an address on Route 274.”

And is there a problem?

“I got no idea where the hell I am. I don’t even know if I’m on Route 274. There’s no signs.”

Are you worried?

“There’s no signs,” the truck driver says again. “It’s completely black out here. Does anyone actually live this far out in the woods?”

The truck driver pulls a small phone from his shirt pocket, flips on the cab light, and punches in some numbers.

“Hello? Are you the lady whose bag went missing at the Syracuse airport? Yeah. Well I’ve got it in the truck and I’m trying to find you.”

Pause.

“I don’t even know if I’m on the right road.”

Pause. The truck driver turns off the cab light and peers through the windshield, craning for a glimpse of something. Anything.

“Well,” he says. “There’s lots of trees.”

Pause.

“You’re standing on your front porch with a flashlight?” he says.

He flips shut the phone. “She says she’s standing on her front porch with a flashlight,” he mutters to himself. “She says she’ll guide me in. Jesus.”

Rise into the night sky again and peer through the darkness. The headlights of the small truck recede behind you as the driver makes his anxious and untrusting way further into the blackness. Will he find his way to the Homestead? For that is where he is headed, with the Matriarch’s lone lost rolling suitcase safely stowed behind him.
What is that we spy in the distance? Could it be? It is. Miles north, a woman stands on her front porch, holding a flashlight angled toward the North Star. It is the Matriarch, woman of light.

Behind you comes a cry of joy.

“I see the light!” the truck driver says to the dark silence of his cab. “It must be her!”

The Matriarch waits with the infinite patience of a woman used to guiding strangers to the Homestead. Her flashlight, freshly supplied with three “D” batteries, shines its light to the indifferent heavens. Now there is a crunch of gravel on the compacted dirt of the driveway. Now a man leaps from the cab, his arms spread wide. He envelops the Matriarch in a hug. He was lost, and now he is found.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

The Matriarch smiles the calm smile of one used to this scene. Those who can bear the darkness of a Homestead night, those who can take the blackness without believing themselves lost and forsaken, those who can turn off the lamp when they go to bed and see no light but the light of a million stars clustered in the heavens, are few. And the Matriarch knows it. She offers the man her flashlight.

“Would you like it?” she says.

He accepts it as he would accept holy water offered by the Pope and cradles it between his fingers.

“Here’s your bag,” he says, retrieving it from its place behind his seat. “Good luck to you.”

And off he goes, red taillights receding in the distance as he rounds the curve at the unmarked intersection of Fraser Road and Route 274, here in the starlit Homeland, where few dare to tread.

Zip codes in which you have lived: 02114 (past), 55408 (current), and 05346 (also current). Apartments: six. Houses: four. Bathroomless one-room cabins in Vermont: one. Children, two of whom are now as tall or taller than you: three. Neurotic cats: one. Hyper dogs who remain meth-head-like no matter how much you exercise them: one. Broken bones: one. Trips to Italy: two. Times fallen in love: five. Eyeballs lasered: two. Days spent rising before 5 a.m. to write until you wrote a book good enough to be published: 5,476 minus approximately 1500 spent despairing of talent, lacking in work ethic, or too damn tired = 3975. Shoe size: ten. Minutes per running mile: the same sad nine. Ability to alpine ski, despite having attended a college with its very own ski slope: zero. Novels read: approximately 750. Trips to China: three. Times spent slapping then-four-year-old son in middle of night when you were exhausted and he would not let you sleep: one. Times spent despising self for slapping then- four-year-old son in middle of night when you were exhausted and he would not let you sleep: countless. Trips to Taiwan: two. Novels written (published): seven. Novels written (that will never be published): 2.5. Trips to Paris: one. Vows to stop saying the f-word in front of children: many. Times vow to stop saying the f-word in front of children has been broken: many. How much you used to pay youngest book-hating child to read, per half-hour: $.50. Best friends named Ellen Harris Swiggett: one. Marriages: one. Divorces: one. Trips to Portugal: two. Regrets: a few. Poems read before dawn daily: three. Friends and family members seen through cancer treatment: three. Trips to Spain: one. Shortest length of hair: one inch. Longest length of hair: three feet. Shade required to maintain hair’s natural color: L’Oreal French Roast #45. Trips to London: one. Pre-dawn times at which you typically wake and rise: 2:47, 3:20, 4:54. Strong cups of coffee drunk before dawn: .7. Men who, upon noting length of fingers, have asked if you can palm a basketball: approximately 18. Times heart has been broken: four. Trips to Mexico: nine. Pairs of tomato-red suede pants: one. Times spent dreaming that you are driving up an increasingly vertical road until your car tips backward and you fall into a bottomless void: at least 46. Times spent dreaming that you are short one chemistry class and therefore cannot graduate: at least 37. Letters written to grandmother before she died: approximately 570. Lindt Milk Chocolate Truffles consumed: approximately 2100. Times spent practicing Chopin’s Prelude in F Minor without noticeable improvement: approximately 233. Trips to Bhutan, Morocco, Macchu Picchu: none. Yet. Times daily you think how lucky you are to be living this big fat life: at least three.

Here is a tiny story of American immigration, set down here exactly (or as close to exact as I can get it while going against my own nature and resisting completely the instinctive urge to embellish and embroider it, re-tell it in my own way – as told to me in my childhood by my maternal grandmother).

“Your great-grandfather, my father, Paul Ajas, was French Basque, raised in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. He was sixteen years old and living at a Catholic boarding school not far from his family’s home. His mother had been sick, and the day came when he overheard someone from his village in the headmaster’s office, asking for him.”

‘And he knew that his mother was dead,’ said my grandmother,  ‘and he walked out of the classroom, and he walked down the mountain, and he walked right past his family’s home without stopping, and he walked to the sea, and he stowed away on a ship bound for America.’

And a few days into the voyage, he was discovered. The captain put him to work below decks, and as the ship approached New York Harbor, he was locked up, so that they could return him to France upon their return.’

But he managed to get free from the hold, and in the middle of the night he made his way up to the deck, and there he saw New York City before him. And he dove off the side of the ship, and he swam to the shore, and there he hauled himself into the city.’

And when dawn came he approached a man in the streets and asked him where might he find work. And he spoke no English – he spoke only French – and the man answered him in French.'”

And that is the story of how my grandmother, Reine Eugenie Honoree Ajas Kirsch, came to be born in America, in New York City, which to her eyes, and all her life long, was the only real city in the world.

A few of the long-standing rituals without which I fear I might float away:

A daily to-do list, made each morning at dawn and returned to throughout the day, only three of which, in twenty-five years and to the best of my recollection, have ever been crossed out in their entirety.

Picturing each of my beloveds and blessing each in turn,  also at dawn.

Toffee-making with my daughters the entire month of December.

A Thursday late-night phone call with my best friend as she is driving home from her classes.

My mother telling me that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

An annual birthday email from a friend of 30 years’ standing.

The filling in, week by week, month by month, year by year, of three blank journals, one for each of my children.

A daily long walk with my dog or his cousin.

The Y every other day, and the people I always see there and never speak to, but nod to in respectful greeting: the tall bald man on the stairmaster, the blond woman on the bike, the elderly woman with the bright orange tennis shoes, the two loud men side by side on their inclined treadmills from 5:30-6:30 a.m., the always-pleasant man at the check-in counter, the multi-tattooed weightlifting woman.

One small mug of hot strong coffee at dawn, with heavy whipping cream stirred in.

While waiting for our food in restaurants, playing rummy (and losing, continually, to the best rummy player I know).

Music, of all kinds, at all volumes, at all times of the day and night.

Listening to my father mispronounce my name (yes, I am his  daughter, and yes, he has mispronounced my name all my life) as Al-Oh-Sun.

Waking my children at 6:45 a.m.

Making sure that as much as possible in my life happens in threes or multiples of three.

An annual trip to Minnetonka Orchards, where the cider doughnuts and cider brats are  eaten in abundance.