Alison McGhee

By the Numbers

Posted on January 18, 2009 by alisonmcghee

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.

Another tiny story of immigration

Posted on November 23, 2008 by alisonmcghee

This is not a photo of my grandmother McGhee, obviously, but it IS a photo of her dog Jody butting heads with me, and I loved Jody, and so did my grandmother, so there you have it.

I would write this one down in the words of my grandmother McGhee as exactly as I can remember her telling it to me, but to be honest, I could hardly bear the stilted feeling of the last little immigration story, rigidly adhering to my grandmother Kirsch’s words instead of flying free with my own. Either I’m a control freak or a free spirit, take your pick. (Could it be that they are one and the same? Something to ponder.) In either case, I only heard this particular story a few times, as opposed to perhaps a hundred of the Boy Who Dove Overboard, so it’s not at all ingrained, word for word, in my (faulty) memory to begin with.

What sticks with me about this tiny story, more than anything, is the fact that my grandmother used the term “slavery” with regard to her grandfather (or maybe it was her great-grandfather, I do not know for sure). As a child, I thought slavery was confined to the U.S., the great and irredeemable shame of white people owning black people. But according to my grandmother, there were slaves in Denmark, white slaves, and my great-grandfather (great-great-grandfather?) was one of them.

As a child, that word “slave” haunted me. Now I know that he must have been not a slave, exactly, but a serf, a villein, who was legally bound to the land and the landowner.

My ancestor supposedly did not have a last name, as he was a serf. But when he was a young man, his landowner’s son fell into a river and nearly drowned. My ancestor (note how I’m avoiding having to decide whether he was my great- or great-great-grandfather by calling him my “ancestor”) saved the child’s life. As a reward, his Danish owner freed him from his indentured servitude and also gave him his own surname, “Hoff,” followed by “beck,” which means river in Danish. (Or so I was told; I don’t speak Danish.)

And my ancestor, now a freeman, and bearing the last name of Hoffbeck, made his way to America to seek a new life. Which tends to be the story, with the single and huge exception of those who lived here before the white conquerors came and claimed it for their own, of pretty much every other American family.

A Boy Jumps Overboard

Posted on November 16, 2008 by alisonmcghee

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.

Rituals

Posted on October 30, 2008 by alisonmcghee

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.

Stranger in a stranger city

Posted on October 25, 2008 by alisonmcghee

Pigs at the trough, a photo which has nothing to do with this entry but which I chose nonetheless

Despite having lived in Minneapolis for over twenty years, I still can’t get used to the skyways. For those of you who’ve never been here, the skyway system is a many-miles-long pedestrian walkway which weaves throughout virtually all the downtown buildings.

On the second floor.

Windowed bridge-tunnels crisscross above your head on every downtown street, all of them filled with briskly walking pedestrians, businesspeople for the most part, on their way to and from business meetings, business lunches, business transactions, everything business-related.

Yes, as you have guessed, the business world is one which, in its unfamiliarity to my daily routine of hunching over a laptop in an ergonomically incorrect manner, I find intimidating. And if you just waded through that sentence and understood it, I bow before thee.

So anyway, I found myself downtown yesterday. Downtown Minneapolis, as opposed to Uptown Minneapolis, which is where I live. Both Minneapolis, but vastly different parts thereof. I went downtown with the sole purpose of purchasing a new sim card at the AT&T store at 7th and Marquette. I parked at a meter one block away and set out to find my store. It was brisk and windy and the streets were virtually deserted. This, in the middle of the day, in a major metropolitan city.

Why are the streets always so . . . empty?

That was the question I actually asked myself, forgetting, as I have forgotten for over twenty years, the reason why in downtown Minneapolis, there is no street life.

Anyway. I found the Investors Building, in which my AT&T store was supposed to be located, and in I went. Empty as well. Deserted, just me, there in the lobby of a large, downtown, marble-floored building. Why, oh why, so few people?

“Are you lost?”

This from a genial-looking suit-clad businessman who appeared from behind a column. Ah! Humanity!

“Indeed I am. I’m looking for the AT&T store.”

“Right up there,” said the genial-looking suit-clad businessman, who was at least four inches shorter than me, but one of those marvelous men who don’t have a short-man complex. He pointed up the staircase.

Of course.

There it was, the life that I had been looking for ever since I parked at that meter. The life that I have been looking for in downtown Minneapolis ever since I moved here.

Why can I not remember that in downtown Minneapolis, all life happens on the second floor? Honestly, what the hell is wrong with me?

There above me, on the second floor, as always, were the throngs of business-clothes-wearing businesspeople, chatting with each other, chatting on their cell phones, heels (that would be clicking on polished marble floors were there any, but there aren’t, because the skyway system is nearly all carpet), briskly making their way to and from, here and there, onward and upward. Lights, stores, restaurants, commerce, the hum of human discourse, all taking place indoors, everyone breathing indoor air. Sort of like living inside a television.

“Thank you so much, sir!” I said to the genial-looking businessman.

Into the AT&T store I went. Sim card in hand, I headed straight back to Uptown, where the restaurants and movie theaters and bookstores are all on the ground level, and all the sidewalks are filled with grownups and children and dogs and all manner of life, lived out loud and outdoors.

October garden

Posted on October 4, 2008 by alisonmcghee

Oh, my garden, must I say goodbye to you? This is the time of year when I begin my countdown to December 21, when we will have made it through the darkest days of the year, and the sun will begin adding minutes to the day. I’m one of those who knows to the second how much more light we get from one day to the next. A lifelong northerner who hates cold and loathes the darkness of winter, the days from January through March are days of endurance, days of gritted teeth, days of so many layers of clothes that no one, including me, knows what I really look like. (Could I survive in Alaska, at least in the winter? Obviously not.)

So a garden is a thing of beauty to me. Flowers. Vegetables. I moved into this house a year and a half ago and have been digging ever since. Minneapolis is a horizontal city, which means, for better and for worse, that it’s primarily a city of single-family homes, each with a front and back yard. Small (in my case very) and urban, but still, room to dig.

My friend Oreo helped me build a raised vegetable bed in the backyard. 6×12. Measure it out in your mind or in your living room, and you’ll see that a 6×12 bed is not big. You’d be surprised how much you can grow in that little space though. Here’s what grew in mine this summer: a myriad tomatoes (from heirloom to cherry to Big Boys), eggplant, green beans; red lettuce, green lettuce, spinach, arugula, green peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, catmint, chives, carrots, beets, something that I thought was zucchini (which I love and can’t ever get enough of – take that, anti-zucchini people) but that turned out to be some sort of pumpkin-like squash, and four kinds of basil. (Good Lord, typing out this list, I sit here wondering if it’s even possible to cram that many vegetables into a 6×12′ bed, but honest to God I swear it is.)

And then there were, and still are, the flowers. I dug up my boulevard last year, after we moved in, and planted a whole ton of perennials, and though a few neighbors predicted that the salt from the road de-icer would kill them all, survive and thrive they did. This summer my neighbor Kathie dug hers up too, and now we gaze happily upon our flowering boulevards.

I planted a strawberry patch by the side of the house, which I didn’t water much. And I travel a lot, so I doubly didn’t water it much. And every day I was home I made a mental note to water the strawberries, but I didn’t. This is because I am a loser, but still, the strawberries are still alive, if berry-free, and ditto for the raspberry canes and the Seedless Concord Grapes.

I dug up a big portion of the backyard and planted it with tiny half-dead perennials that I bought for $.15 each at a church rummage sale. The tiny half-dead perennials were not labeled, so I didn’t know what the hell I was planting, other than that they were perennials. Within hours after planting, they sprang to life and grew wildly despite dogs peeing on them, dogs pooping on them, dogs playing tag throughout them, and the aforementioned at-most-haphazard (although more frequently than the berries, thank God) watering.

What did the tiny half-dead perennials turn out to be? They turned out to be echinacea, rudbeckia, daisies, and a couple of other things that because of my ignorance shall remain nameless. But pretty. Nameless but pretty.

In my mania I dug up another long patch by the nearly sun-free back of the house and strewed the newly-dug soil with zinnia seeds (the giant kind, which are by far my favorites) and, behind the zinnia seeds, Shasta Daisy seeds. These seeds were from eight-year-old packets, and it was my personal experiment to see if they would sprout at all, since they had been through rain, abandonment in winter garages, and multiple moves. But sprout they did, and here is a picture of those giant zinnias, here at the end of their season of gorgeousness. Behind them also sprouted the Shasta Daisies, but because of the near-total lack of sun, they are very small. But there are very many of them, and it’s my secret plan to transplant them all next year to various other places on the boulevard and around the house.

Yes, that is my secret plan. And now I begin the forward look to December 21, when the sun will once again begin to outlast the darkness.

Where are you now, Skinny Arnold?

Posted on July 2, 2008 by alisonmcghee

Last week I bought a jar of old buttons at a flea market held outside a mom and pop motel on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Gilt, leather, worn-down polished metal, square, round, oblong, this button jar has it all.

I also bought a 1935 yearbook, the Ahdawagam, from Lincoln High School in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. The yearbook belonged to George “Skinny” Arnold, who, from the looks of his senior photo, was a handsome young man with a largish nose and lips pressed together to keep from laughing. And yes, he does look skinny, even judging just from the shoulders up.

The seniors in this book look much older than 18 year olds look today. You were an adult when you graduated from high school, back in 1935. The boys wear their hair brushed back off their foreheads, strictly parted, shining. The girls, too, have straight parts and marcelled curls.

Skinny was a trumpet player and known as a wag. From some of the handwritten notes in the book, he seems to have made the life of a teacher named Cal somewhat miserable. If Skinny’s alive today, I figure he must be 89 or 90. Then again, this was 1935. How many of these boys went overseas in World War II, never to return? Was Skinny one of them? Here is what his classmates have to say, seventy-three years ago, there on the verge of their adults lives.

Dear Skinny, we sure raised the devil in Cal’s class but I sure enjoyed being in the same class with you. So long and Good Luck. “Smitty”

Dear Skinny, Even tho you were a big pest to Mary Jane + me, I’ll write just the same. And I wish you luck + success as an orchestra leader. Best wishes, Donna D.

Well Skinny, I only had you in woodwork class and your wisecracks supplied most of the fun. Good luck at playing the trumpet. Ed

Let’s go to town, George! A good man there son. Hit it! Dave

Observed this morning from the desk at which I sit

Posted on June 16, 2008 by alisonmcghee

Two narrow photos of eyes, brown and hazel, belonging to two girls who live in this house.

A photo of two street signs, taken by my best friend, at the intersection of Joy St. and Mt. Vernon St. (points to those who can name the city)

A 2/3 eaten box of Oreos, hidden under a plastic grocery bag so no one else will find it.

A black stapler.

A poorly functioning Nokia cell phone.

A mostly-used tube of Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm.

A black curly-haired dog curled on the floor.

An ivory mesh bag bought at Value Village in Richfield.

A washed and ready-to-return empty Cedar Summit Farms heavy cream bottle, for which I will receive $2.50 if and when I actually return it to the store from whence it came.

A 2008 summer medical form for Camp Icaghowan.

A letter written on Batman and Robin stationery.

A “Swank Loves Retro” business card.

A nametag reading Lenny Faedo.

A Polaroid photo of a beach ball covered with stars.

A Polaroid photo of a doll’s head propped between the toes of a man’s foot.

A tiny plastic stake that reads “Cerastium, Snow in Summer.”

A large plastic bottle of Target brand Baby Lotion, the pump of which no longer works, a fact which necessitates complicated maneuvers in order to extract the lotion.

A check for $65 from Laptop Repair.

A black Precise Rolling Ball V5 Extra Fine pen.

Seen this morning at the Annunciation School's $2/Bag Rummage Sale

Posted on June 14, 2008 by alisonmcghee

1.”Is everything really $2/bag?”

“Yes. It’s Bag Day. Except for the clothes from the Finer Boutique.”

“How much are the clothes from the Finer Boutique?”

“$5/bag.”

2. An elderly man pulling one carefully folded men’s T-shirt after another from the bottom of a stack, shaking it out, staring at it, and tossing it to the side.

3. A large man stroking his chin as he gazed at box after box of brown plastic teacups, plates, and bowls – restaurant surplus – and a large woman wearing a Rummage Volunteer apron standing patiently next to him.

“How does $10 sound?” she said. “For the whole lot.”

The large man stood and stroked his whiskery chin.

“I’ll give you five,” he said.

4. A tan cowboy hat with a feather and a ribbon, hanging on top of a bank of spotlights.

5. A VHS copy of Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, shelved next to Favorite Bible Stories for Modern Children.

6. An enormous automatic bread baker, perhaps the first one ever made, marked $12, being muscled into a Kowalski’s grocery paper bag by a middle-aged woman.

Rip.

“The bag tore,” the woman said to a Rummage Volunteer-apron wearing man. “Can I still get it for the $2/bag price?”

7. A table full of little potted perennials, marked down from $2/apiece to $1/apiece to $.50/apiece to 3/$.50.

8. A small girl dancing around a used Mickey Mouse high chair while her mother examined it.

“But a baby might have thrown up on it!” she said.

“A baby certainly threw up on it,” her mother said. “That’s what babies do. They throw up, they poop, they pee, they eat, they screech. If they weren’t so cute we’d kill them.”

Looking for a Home

Posted on June 13, 2008 by alisonmcghee

I came out of my house yesterday with two dogs and a big “For Rent” sign. The dogs, knowing they were on their way to the dog park, streaked to the car and jumped and panted at the backseat door. I opened the door and they leaped in, wild to get going. (Is there anything an urban dog loves more than a dog park?) Then a large blue sedan, the kind that my grandmother would have driven, slanted up behind my car, its hind end jutting into the street, provoking a few quick beeps from other passing cars.

“Excuse me?” the driver called. “Excuse me?”

I was trying to muscle the For Rent sign, which is big, into the not-big trunk of my not-big car, so I turned to the driver and smiled politely and held up one finger.

“Excuse me?”

The sign made it into the trunk and I walked up to the driver’s window, which was rolled down. A blue handicapped sign dangled from her rearview mirror. She was an older woman with a nimbus of gray hair, peering up at me. One hand clutched the wheel and the other held the Classifieds section of the newspaper, carefully folded to the “Apartments for Rent” section, several of which were circled with pencil.

“Are you renting an apartment here?” the woman said, nodding toward my house.

“Not here exactly, but three blocks away. Are you looking for an apartment?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. Yes I am.”

“I’m not sure what sort of place you’re looking for,” I said, “but the one I’m renting is huge and pricey.”

“How much is it?”

I told her. She nodded again.

“Thank you,” she said.

I knew that thank you. I knew that nod. I’ve given that thank you and that nod myself, many a time. It’s the nod of someone who has immediately crossed something off her mental list because no matter how much she might want it – the apartment, a trip, the daily special at a fancy restaurant, a year’s tuition at a private college, the dress with the daisies on it – it’s too expensive. Far too expensive.

I looked at the woman. Her eyes betrayed her anxiety. The circled classifieds were smearing under her grip. She didn’t look like someone who would know about Craigslist or the online ads. In her clean sedate sedan she looked like a woman who should be living in a house with a long-paid-off mortgage, filled with belongings gathered over a lifetime. Family photos on the walls. Why was she roaming the streets of Uptown Minneapolis, looking for an apartment? I pictured the long flight of stairs to that big apartment three blocks away. I pictured the bed and couch and dining table and chairs being hauled up those stairs by movers much younger than she. The handicapped sign dangling from her mirror.

“Well, the good thing is that you’re looking at a good time of the year,” I said. “There are so many For Rent signs up all around the neighborhood.”

She nodded.

“I know you’ll find a place that’s just right for you,” I said.

She nodded. I nodded. The dogs behind me leaped and scrabbled at the partially-open window of the backseat of my car, which is trashed, filled with dog hair and food wrappers and cd covers and dust and the detritus of children and dogs and a thousand errands. The older woman put her car in gear and put her blinker on and peered behind her to see if it was safe to pull out. On down the street she went, the ads still clutched in one hand.