The Plastic Bin Project

For the past year, I've been working on what I call "The Plastic Bin Project" - you've probably heard about it, I've told pretty much everyone I know all about it. It's meant to be a gift for Brother and his daughter, so don't tell them - he won't read about it here, his news consumption being of a slightly (ahem) different persuasion; and my niece is a new mom, so  unless something reaches over the baby’s head and bops her on the nose, not likely to notice. I trust you to keep my secret.

The Project started with a large plastic storage bin my father handed me 30 years ago, after my grandmother died, saying, "Here - now you're The Keeper." That sounded intriguing, so I eagerly took it home, hoping to discover I am actually the scion of an ancient mystical family and the secret lore was finally being entrusted to me, the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of - oh, wait, wrong side of the family.  It turns out that what was in The Bin was the contents of my grandmother's top bureau drawer, plus a ragged ancient photo album.

If you’re a youngstah, the Top Bureau Drawer requires an explanation. Used to be, every woman's top bureau drawer was where she kept the special things she was saving. Under the handkerchiefs, behind the lacy mantillas and every day and Sunday-special gloves, was a treasure-trove she'd collected: her dead parents' wedding rings, a child's bootie, old lockets with curls of hair inside, her lace-covered wedding missal, a handkerchief embroidered by a great-aunt, a love note from her husband. Nana's top bureau drawer also contained the contents of her grandmother's top bureau drawer.

I'd seen most of what was in The Bin as a child. I had the good fortune to grow up next door, and a favorite rainy-day activity back in the dark ages was to go through parents' and grandparents' top bureau drawers, sniffing the perfumed hankies, fingering the lace, imagining when we'd have our own mantillas and gloves (never, as it turns out), and hearing stories about where each item came from, who made it, who wore it. So, after a quick peek, I put the top back on the Bin and stuck it in a closet. It spent several decades moving with me from house to house, sometimes used as a table for potted plants, sometimes living in the home office, other times tucked out of sight. 

A month before Dad died, he asked to see The Bin again. When he returned it, it was heavier - he'd added the contents of his top bureau drawer. A couple of years passed  before I was willing to take another look, but as I grow closer to the age when I can no longer claim to be a youth, I decided it was time. 

I realized I'm the last living person who can identify most the stuff in The Bin. Brother, being a boy, wasn't interested in the Top Bureau Drawers, so didn't hear the stories when Nan and Gramp were still alive to tell them. I also realized that if I just handed The Plastic Bin on, it would quickly become a bin full of yard-sale or dumpster items. Time to archive the treasures!

It turns out I am the scion of an old family - many old families all threading into the modern skein - with a surprising number of mysteries. It also turns out that waiting 40-plus years to start recording what I'd heard from the old folks was a bit too long - I've forgotten half of what I'd been told. Going through it all again sent me deeply into family history and I realized some of the stories will make no sense to my niece’s children - they'll have never seen a wall phone, or a coal-burning cookstove, or an airplane with plenty of leg room and good meals (nor imagine dressing up to travel rather than undressing once you reach the airport), or a camera that required the subjects to sit perfectly still for the one picture that might ever be taken of them.

Making The Bin's contents relevant took work, and the Internet, bless it, made the effort much simpler. On-line one can discover when this medal or that button or this style of cameo was common, and consequently which one of the Old Folks it likely belonged to. Decades of US Census forms and many semi-ancient newspaper articles are on-line. I was able to identify what country some odd-looking coins came from, what era lovely old postage stamps were from, learn what a mourning cameo looks like; discover that great great great Grandpa David belonged to a regiment from Concord that fought in the Civil War, wonder how great great Grandma Abigail from Hardwick VT (for those of you without a map, it's way the heck up there) met great great Grandpa George from Weare, and discover that great great Grandma Minnie and Grandpa Albert had two kids together, divorced, then Albert married their son's wife's aunt, and Minnie married their daughter's husband's father, and oh, what I would give to attend one of those family reunions!

The contents of The Bin expanded as I told the stories - there are now several bins holding many albums and treasure boxes - and the oddities and mysteries expanded as well. A surprising number of relatives seem to have been unable to keep track of their actual birth dates, first names, parents, and nationalities (odd, for immigrants) and never sorted it out while Relatives Who Knew were still alive to explain. And then, there was the murder...

At the end of the year, I'll pass these bins and the mysteries on to Brother and my niece. It's entirely possible the family mysteries and stories will seem like a burden to her, and the contents of the bins will wind up in a compost bin some day. But it’s been fascinating. I recommend it to anyone with their own malingering Plastic Bin.

Get ready, Niece - soon, you'll become The Keeper. You might want to make a date with your Grandma to look at the contents of her Top Bureau Drawer --- I'm just sayin'.

Originally published in the Concord Monitor, December 25, 2016, as “The Keeper of the Bin.”

All photos 2016 by Debra Marshall

T'ai Chi Boxers and Ashes, Ashes

Phil, left, and Ed, at their finest. RIP, guys, you're missed!

 

One of the best things about teaching t’ai chi ch’uan for 20 years has been getting to hear my student’s stories. I’ve had an amazing number of students and most have lived really interesting lives. Amongst them have been a number of artists, a sharp-shooter, musicians, a priest, carpenters, potters, teachers, a flute-maker, lawyers, doctors, fencers, actors, several people in wheelchairs, a foster mother for babies born with drug dependencies, a professional belly-dancer, computer geeks, librarians, people from many different countries, visionaries, other martial artists  – many, many people, and every single one with their own compelling, and fascinating, stories. 

Phil was a typical Irishman. He had sparkling blue eyes, was as handsome as Irishmen come, full of mischief, and was himself a collector of people and their stories. He had been in WWII and still carried in his body the unremoveable detritus of his dangerous military job, and as he grew older, this became more problematic. But he wasn’t bitter - the military had sent him to many places, and consequently he knew people from around the world, and that was most important to him. When he again became a civilian he was, for a time, a manager for the Sears company, which became another route to the people he collected and travel that gave his collections an extra savor. Phil didn’t just meet people – he got to know them, he became their friends, and he somehow kept in touch over decades and far distances.  In the same class was Ed, another story-teller of excellence, who matched Phil in his ability to create mischief. One day, the two of them showed up in class tickled pink and giggling about their latest joke: over their sweats they were wearing boxer shorts adorned with yin/yang symbols.

Phil knew so many people and had been so many places that it became a class game to try to stump him. No matter who was mentioned, no matter what small town was brought up, Phil inevitably either knew the person or a close relative of theirs, and had either been to the town (state/province/country) or knew someone who was from there. Finally, a Native American, part-Apache student took up the challenge. “OK,” she said. “I know someone you can’t possibly know. Do you know Mrs. X?” she asked.

Phil thought for a moment and then turned on his crystal ball. “Oh, does she live in a pink house with a picket fence and a flower garden full of tall sunflowers on the XXX reservation in Arizona?” he asked. 

“How do you know that!!?” my warrior student exclaimed.

“I had tea with her one day about 30 years ago,” Phil answered, then went on to describe in perfect detail the tea set, the sitting room, the curio case in the sitting room and its contents, and the woman in question. “How do you know her?” he finally asked.

“She’s my Aunty!” was the exclamation.

The half-hour I needed to add to class time to allow time for story-telling was always filled with tales and laughter. One wintery day, Ed mentioned that he and his wife had moved to NH years ago from the flatlands down south, after having spent many summers up here and falling in love with the place. They decided to make the state their home, but a friend suggested they maybe rent a place through a whole winter first to make sure they could deal with New England snow and ice, something they’d only experienced in short bursts on holiday trips up until then. 

“It was a good idea so we rented a house in a neighborhood near where we spent summers,” he explained, “and we were outside shoveling snow after a big storm and sprinkling ashes from the woodstove on the slippery layer of ice underneath, when I noticed that the little old neighbor lady next door was outside doing the same thing. 

“‘You shouldn’t be shoveling by yourself,’ I called over to her. You should get your husband to help you with that.’

“She looked up from her ash-scattering and lifted the jar so I could see it. ‘He is helping,’ she said, nodding towards the jar. ‘Who do you think this is?’”

Uproar ensued; then all eyes turned to Phil. Could he possibly top that story? Not possible.

The T'ai Chi Tu at RavenStar in Andover, NH

“That reminds me of a year when I was managing the Sears store in town,” he started. “I had a new employee, a promising young man. In the middle of the Christmas holiday rush, he came to me, very apologetic, and asked for a day off. He had a personal matter, a family matter, that he needed to deal with, and he was very sorry about the timing, but could he have the next day off?

“I was impressed that he asked instead of just calling in sick, so I played with the schedules and told him I could manage to give him the next day free, but I really needed him back for the evening rush.  ‘I’ll  be able to be back here in plenty of time,’ the young man replied. ‘What I need to deal with shouldn’t take too long.’

“Next day, he was late – very late - so late, in fact, that he didn’t show up until next morning. When he finally arrived, near to noon time, I called him into my office to growl at him. ‘You’d better have a really good explanation,’ I said to him. I noticed he was a little pale, and seemed shaky. What was going on here?

“The young man sat down and said, ‘It’s a story. You’d better sit. It’s going to take a few minutes to tell it.

“Last spring, my best buddy died unexpectedly. Everyone was terribly shaken up, especially his young widow, who is also a close friend of mine. My buddy spent his summers growing up, and every spare moment he could manage throughout his life, on or near Lake Champlain. He loved that lake. After he died, his body was cremated, and his widow asked me to scatter his ashes over the lake. I’m a pilot, and my buddy also loved to fly, so we agreed this would be a fitting disposition of his remains.

“I was supposed to do it this summer, but stuff kept coming up, and I never got to it. Now the holidays are coming – I needed to get it done, partly because I don’t want to admit to his widow that my bud’s ashes are still at my house, and partly because the lake’s still ice-free - but if I don’t hurry it’s going to be next summer before I can do it. So I arranged to rent a small plane up in Burlington, and I figured I’d get up early, get the plane, fly over the lake and give my buddy the send-off he’d have wanted, and then have plenty of time to return the plane and get back down here by 5 pm.

“So there I was: floating over the lake in a beautiful sky. The friend who was going to come with me to actually release the ashes couldn’t make it at the last minute, but, heck, I figured it was better to get it done at this point than put it off again. I’m over the middle of the lake flying low, I open the window, I take the cover off the urn and hang it out the window, and – the wind shifts, and all the ashes, instead of floating down into the beautiful lake waters, blow back into the cockpit and totally coat everything: me, the seats, the floor, the instruments, the windshield…

“I’m freaking out. My buddy’s filled the plane, and human ashes are oily. I land the plane and try to brush him up back into the urn, and immediately see this isn’t going to work, I’m just spreading and smearing. I can’t take the plane back in this condition – I’m trying to think, what can I do, what can I do? So I go into the little airport up there, and there’s a woman vacuuming the terminal floors. Can I borrow the vacuum cleaner for a few minutes, please? I’ll buy you some coffee so you can take a break, I’ll bring the vacuum right back, I promise, just gotta neaten up the plane before I return it.

“She agrees, so I grab the vacuum and a long extension cord, and hurry out to the plane. I’m still freaking out, but, phew, it looks like this is going to work. I vacuum up my buddy, and a wet paper towel removes the few smears he’d made, and it’s fortunately a shop vac so I let it suck up the smeared paper towels, too. I’m just headed back into the airport to return the vacuum when I realize –

“Oh, NO! Now my buddy’s ashes are in the vacuum cleaner with the paper towels and whatever other crap the janitor had sucked up before I borrowed it! I can’t leave him there and lie to his widow about what happened, I just can’t. So I sneak back into the airport and haul the vacuum with me into the men’s room, because the wind that shifted and started this problem has now picked up and it’s really starting to blow, so I don’t dare try to get the ashes out of the vacuum outdoors, they’ll end up everywhere. I open up the vacuum in the men’s room, and it’s full of stuff: tissues, coffee cups, stirrers, cigarette butts, all sorts of junk, and a lot of dirt from the airport floors, besides; and the ashes have covered everything. Just totally covered all that trash. And it’s a bag-less vacuum, so the vacuum canister is coated, too.

“I’m really freaking out now. I’m standing there screaming into my brain, when I notice the trash cans. I yank the top off one and, wow, it had recently been emptied, and it has a bag in it. I dump what’s there into a second trash can, dump the contents of the vacuum into the empty plastic garbage bag, grab some more towels and wipe my buddy’s ashes off the insides of the vacuum and add the paper towels to the bag, close it up, and sneak the vacuum back out into the terminal, just as the janitor is coming back looking for her gear. I thank her and quickly head back to the plane before she asks me about the garbage bag.

“So now I’ve got a trash bag full of trash covered with my buddy’s ashes, and it’s getting too late to do anything except return the plane and figure out another plan. I return the plane and head through town down to the shore, to try to figure out what to do, what I’m going to tell the widow, where I can put the trash bag that isn’t too disrespectful of my buddy. 

“I’m standing there looking out at the lake that my friend loved so much, and, I’ll admit it, I started to tear up a little. I have totally screwed up this simple chore, and haven’t a clue how to fix it. The sun’s going down, it’s already too late to get back to Concord before the store closes, and in my hand I’ve got a trash bag full of junk and my buddy’s ashes, and it’s cold, and it’s getting dark, and I’m what feels like a long, long way from home.  Then I notice that the area where I am, which was full of joggers and dog-walkers and pedestrians, is almost deserted as the sun goes down. I walk out to the end of a pier, and stare down into the cold water. I look around. Church bells are tolling. It’s very quiet. I’m alone.

“So I untie the bag, turn it upside down, and let my buddy and all the trash he’s coated silently drift down into the waters of Lake Champlain. And I turn the bag inside out, sit on the edge of the pier, and after checking to make sure no one’s nearby, hang it down into the water and swish it around. Then I let it go, too.

“And then I drove home. And, I gotta admit it, once I got there I drank too much and slept through my alarm this morning.”

The class just stared silently at Phil. “So -  what did you say to the guy?” I asked.

“I congratulated him on his ability to think and adapt under pressure and get his task done,” Phil answered.  “And warned him never to miss work again, and docked his pay for the missed day. And a month later, I promoted him – he’d proved he was a dogged and creative worker.”

I never knew if I could always believe Phil – he was, after all, a master story-teller. But in all the time I knew him, he never lost a Do-You-Know or a story challenge – not even to Ed.

This story was written for the blog.

Deb doing t'ai chi in Montreal's Chinatown, May, 2000; class trip!

Wolves

Ice Heart; photo c Charley Freiberg

 We are animals.

Deep in the dark time of the year, our inner wolves prowl and howl, circle the village, and hunker down to get through the long cold ages. We develop gnawing appetites. We are drawn to bright, face-scalding fires – the bonfire, the woodstove, the fireplace hearth. Even on days brilliant with glittering snowlight, we hurry back to our homes as night falls, as dusk gathers, as the shadows in the corners of rooms grow deeper, and darker, and fill with movement from unseen memories.

We make cocoa. We pop corn. We hover over our bowls of soup and stew, pulling them close to our chests. We tear the fresh loaf apart with our hands. We lick the butter off our fingers. We sniff, deeply, filling the lungs and heart with talismans of succor – the smell of wet wool steaming by the fire, baking bread, roasting apples, toasted grains, yeasted hops; of rising smoke, of winters passed, of ancient memories stored in our bones. We remember those who have gone before us. We speak the names of our dead. We draw the light near; we seek comforting faces; we huddle closer.

Ashes pile up and are scattered; dust lingers in the corners, mingling with the darkness that doesn’t quite reach the borders of the rings of light, mingling with the summer dreams that flickered, and burned out, with the sun. We sing carols. We plan feasts. We light the Yule log. We drink the old year’s last dregs. We settle deeper into our blankets, our scarves, our flannel sheets. We wear fingerless gloves about the house and seek out legwarmers and heavy socks, shawls and scarves.

The wind howls as it pours ‘round the eaves, whistles into cracks and crannies we didn’t know were there. We hear the voices of our long-dead ancestors in its shriek. They call to us. They name us. They toss old stories our way. We dream strange dreams, dreams of childhood, dreams of the Old Ones, dreams that link us to our ancient roots, though we might not know what those are. We taste the tang of bitter and sweet on our lips, on our fingers.

The trees slumber outside. We hear them creak in the cold, in the wind, but they merely shift and settle deeper into their winter dreams. Somewhere, deep below, critters nestle in their roots, roots that reach out and whisper in the dark deep earth, connecting the circles of life. Evergreens rustle in snowfall, dozing through the long nights. Winter birds are silent except in the bright sun, flashing their brilliance, shocking our eyes. Squirrels fluff and scramble.  

Little moves. Rocks turn inward and become silent; rivers no longer spring and spark. The night sky glitters with frost, deepens and extends, until we can see beyond our world, beyond all that we ken. We grow tiny. We grow heavy. We become a pebble in the universe.

I sift my thoughts through my fingers, looking for jewels. Most are heavy and cold, as am I; but here there is a gentle glow, there a passing feeling of warmth.  I lower my head and breathe onto them, blowing gently, hoping to stir an ember.

 A spark jumps from my palm to my eyes; I shut them, quickly, before the fire can die out; I hold the spark carefully, until the breath of my soul teases it into a small flame, which travels into my mind, connects with my heart, and feeds the slumbering wolf in my belly. The wolf rises; the wolf paces, the wolf sets my mind and fingers in motion. I will be inspired until this small flame is spent. I will cherish it until the year turns, the sun rises, the sap moves again.

All about me are prowling wolves, near-hibernating creatures, frosted tips and tails. We curl up near each other; we sometimes snarl. We long for the return of warmth, of scent, of curiosity and desire. But we are animals, and winter has its paw on us. Our ancient minds mistrust the proffered treat; our bodies know, deep in their joints, deep in the blood, deep in the sinews and flesh, that our fortunes can slip through the tiniest of cracks, be blown astray in the smallest of drafts. Our ancestors wait in the shadows, and murmur in our sleeping ears. We grow still. We listen with our tensed beings. We strain to hear the ancient song. We wait. We wait.

We are animals. We live in our ancestor’s dreams. But we know the sun will grow strong again, and we will rise up, and soar.

Originally published December 14, 2016, in the Concord Monitor, as “Season of the Wolf.”