The old man and the sea

the beach walker -- Feb 2012

For my whole life, I have been coming to the same crook in the top of the curve of Seven Mile Beach on the largest of the Cayman Islands. For a brief, wondrous four years in the late nineties, I called this place home. It is the same stretch of beach where I met my husband in 1987, akward adolescents bearing serious resemblances to Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing and Daniel La Russo (Ralph Macchio) in the Karate Kid respectively. It is the beach where we bumped into each other again at twenty on New Years Eve and fell in love and started our lives together. 

This is the sloped ribbon of white sand and craggy tidepools where I used to walk with J's mother in the early mornings.  As long as I have been walking its length, so has the man captured in the photo above. Cherry and I passed him in the early years as we traveled the same route, the stretch from the ironshore just past the cemetery to the hotels closer to George Town. I nodded gravely to him as he passed the morning I surveyed the lingering storm surge and the damage after the island's near miss with Hurricane Mitch in '98. My first Newf Dakota (shaved to the skin and sunscreened) frisked past the walking man with a coconut clutched in his jaws on our daily trips to the West Bay Post Office to pick up correspondence from the States and loose breadfruits that fell from the tree in the cracked corner of the parking lot.

Later, I left the island, moving around the world to have adventures and babies, but he was here every morning whenever I visited. He stepped nimbly around me as I knelt in the sand to build drip castles with my little ones, nodding sometimes as my sons and daughter learned to swim in the turquoise shallows and collected hermit crabs in the tidepools. 

He hasn't aged much in these twenty years--has always looked like the 'most interesting man in the world' from the Dos Equis commercials. I have created a story about him: he must be rich and quietly famous. There are houses just up the beach on the coveted Boggy Sand Road that belong to celebrities--Larry Flynt lives there, and it is rumored that the inventor of the Barbie is tucked away there as well. I wondered aloud to my husband that this might be him, but we did the math as we paddled the kayak this morning and figured the inventor of the Barbie must be in his nineties by now. Perhaps he's a writer who uses his treks to clear his mind before sitting down to a day at the desk.The views and the sounds of the sea are the perfect backdrop for a writer's life. Dick Francis lived here for years; he once stopped by a fledgling writing group I had started at Dickens Café in 1996.

"Hedge fund manager," J said. "Works from home."

"Or eccentric trust funder," I mused. "Maybe there is a history of tragedy in his life."

The frustrated journalist in me can't stop puzzling over this man. Who is he? What is his story? What does he think about as he walks the long miles of this beach every morning? His face is not particularly friendly; he often seems deep in thought. Sometimes he'll nod hello, but I've rarely seen him smile.

"Just ask him!" my family laughs at my curiosity. "I'm sure he recognizes you after twenty years. Introduce yourself."

Stay tuned to see if I get up the nerve in the coming weeks. 

Dog Blog--Sampson, 10 months old

Age: 10 months

Weight: 145 lbs

Less than a year old, and in seven short months with us, Sampson has incresed to nearly ten times his body weight, and injected our lives with fur-flying chaos, a new, adolescent chuff and doe-eyed devotion. 

Next week is our last week of obedience training, which Sampson has struggled hard to wrap his head around, but proven weekly that he does want to please, it just might take a little longer for him to figure out what I'm asking, as opposed to the wily Husky or the pert and pointed Lab. The two best things to come out of the class: Hayden's increasing confidence in his ability to make Sampson listen to him, and Samps understanding leash manners well enough that we can walk around town without me keeping a constant eye out for posts or trees to grab onto should he see something he really wants to chase. I love our late afternoon/evening walks around town--reminiscent of my first Newf Dakota who literally traveled the world with me, from Ithaca to the Cayman Islands to Spain to Portland to Boulder/Breckenridge and back to our original stomping grounds. I realize that this is critical for my connection to a dog, and why, with our backyard dog Jonah who I rarely walked because he came along in our family's 'stroller years', Joey was more J's dog than mine. 

Suffice it to say, Sampson is mellowing nicely into the Hoffman Family Dog, lounging on the couch, sleeping in bed with the kids and leaving calling cards of fur and slobber in his wake. 

couch dwelling with J

The other day, Sampson was sprawled out on his giant bed in front of the fire while the kids set up a game of Crazy Bones just in front of him. Sampson raised an eyebrow as the plastic pieces skittered past his nose, but he didn't bound over and try to snag any, nor did he think is was worth his time to jump on the backs of the small children sitting cross-legged in front of him or place any parts of their bodies in his mouth.

There are still playdates who come over and spend the entire time on our kitchen counter, but it is out of their anxiety. In fact, as I point out to the kids, he spends most of his time sleeping, chasing the occasional cat, or asking to be let out. And then in. And then out again. And then in. And then out. 

 

 The photo at left is how I find Piper and Sampson often. I may be his mother, but she is his girl. 

Stay tuned for more from Sampson and the dog blog, email me for guest dog features, up and coming authors on the Writers on Wednesday series and BOOK NEWS. 

FAVORITES ON FRIDAY- Ice Hockey

Three years ago, as we played our final game of the fall field hockey season in freezing November rain, a few of the women on my team talked about getting ready for the next hockey season--ice hockey. They asked if I would play, and assured me that not knowing how to skate would not be a liability. 

"But... I can rollerblade," I offered hopefully, thinking of my mornings in grad school pushing the kids in a double jogger as I hack-hacked along the Santa Monica beach path in rental blades.

"You'll be fine!"

I mentioned it to J that night and he said that it might save our housebound sanity over the long Northeastern winters to take up hockey as a family. We live close enough to the town's outdoor rink that we can hear the horn between periods and the crash of players against boards on still winter nights.

So we did it. We suited up Hayden, then six, for a Mites team--so tiny as a goalie that when he played Mites on Ice between periods at a Flyers game, the announcer marveled that the goalie actually fit under the crossbar of the net. J, a natural athlete from Buffalo signed up to play Old Mens B-league hockey a few night's a week. I joined the embryonic, newly-formed womens team and we named ourselves the Blizzards (but only because 'Chix with Stix' was taken.)

My first night, J dressed me in borrowed, cobbled together equipment left over from a high school boy, cutting the heavy, old school wooden stick down to size on the basement saw. He used black electrical tape to wrap my gear and because I had no jersey, I put on an XL Cornell sweatshirt. I checked myself in the front hall mirror while butterflies fluttered in my stomach: I looked huge and armored, like a padded Transformer. Before putting on my gloves, I left my wedding ring on the windowsill with the instructions to pass it down to our infant daughter if I didn't come home. The truth: ice skating terrified me. The spring-fed pond next to our house growing up was the town's original rink and I still remember the day someone fell, and another accidentally skated across his eyes, and the four-year-old shock of opening our door to this startling Halloween-horror image as they carried him into the kitchen to call 911. I skated once or twice with my classmates growing up, clutching the edges of the rink and picturing the man bleeding from his eyes. 

The first night out with the Blizzards, I stepped through the rink door clutching my stick. Everything in my body tensed with the warning of "whoa, this is slippery! You could fall!" My toes inside the rusty borrowed skates curled and cramped my arches. I considered backing out--I was in my thirties! What was I thinking taking up a new sport?

"Okay," the coach called, tossing pucks out on to the ice, "grab a puck and skate around!" And one of the pucks skittered in front of me. Drawing on my rollerblade skills, I took a few shaky strides and tapped it with my stick. It sailed in front of me across the nightlit pearly ice. I chased it like a cat after a windblown leaf and batted at it again. Chased it. Tapped it. Tried a longer stride to get there more quickly and kept my stick on the ice like a third leg, leaning on it like a balancing tripod. Tap-chase. Winter wind breezed in through the cage in my helmet--it felt good to be outside in the dark, icy air. Tap-chase-wobble-whoa. I imagined at home there was the usual drama of bedtime going on, dinner dishes soaking in the sink, naked children dripping the suds from their bath down the hallway as J chased them with pajamas. Tap-chase-whack. I passed to myself off the boards. The other players who had come straight from field hockey wobbled by and we gave each other shaky smiles. 

We went straight to scrimmaging and I scrambled to keep up with the rules--there is no off-sides in field hockey, no play that happens behind the net, but offensive triangles were familiar and I could feel where I needed to be--it was just a matter of getting there. The play was so much faster than field hockey, with the added benefit of using the boards and your feet to your advantage. As my competitive juices surged, I found it easier to drop low and draw on skiing and rollerblading muscle memory to propel me to the puck or the position--I just couldn't stop. I used a skiier's snowplow, the wall and frequently, my teammates. An hour and fifteen breathless minutes passed in a moment, and I was startled to see the lights of the Zamboni, to skate on my exhausted, shaky, sewing-machine legs to the door, and crash into the wall to stop. 

In the locker room, the moms talked about whether or not their husbands would have the kids in bed, about how sore we were going to be in the morning, about how bad the locker rooms smelled, about how if women designed hockey equipment, we could surely come up with something more efficient and about how good it felt to get out of the house and sweat on a cold winter night. Already I could feel muscles that would hurt in the morning, not the least of which would be my abs from laughing at myself as I skidded around the ice like a baby giraffe. I was hooked. 

Three years later, I am so happy I decided to try something new. Ice hockey shapes our winter now. On any given week, with the five of us playing on various teams, we can have up to fifteen events. J coaches Hayden's Squirt team, Max is defining himself as the Mites goalie and even little Pip is dreaming of the day when she turns 5 and can play as an official Atom.

Piper on ice

On nights when there is no practice, we watch the Flyers with new interest--they are not just our hometown team, for our boys they are inspirations, they are models for positioning and play. 

Last year J built an ice rink in our backyard and we had early morning husband-wife skating sessions and neighborhood games where I brewed cauldrons of hot cocoa and the boys' teammates gathered for winter hockey as it is meant to be: outside, friendly, windy, ruddy-cheeked fun. 

I look forward to hockey season, to slipping into pants that make my ass look three times its normal size. I love getting out of the house on a starry winter night and exercising in the brisk air, getting better at skating, at stopping and passing and finding I am sometimes even where I am supposed to be, at the right place and the right time. 

Last night, my seven-year-old Mite goalie Max came out to play for the women's team Thursday night practice. On the short drive home he leaned against my shoulder and recapped the game--who were the good players, what I could be doing to put more heat on my wrist shot, how sweet was his one glove save. When we got home, it was late, almost 9:45. We lugged our sweaty gear bags to the porch and left the zippers open to air them out. The house was quiet and dark, the dishwasher chugging and the other two tucked in bed, J reading my latest manuscript. I heard Max slip, sweaty and tired, into bed next to his big brother. Hayden used to play for the women, but after a summer season of playing offense last year, he has mostly traded his goalie pads for the pursuit of a hat trick. I heard Max yawn and tell him, "It was a good game. And Mom only scored on me once!"

* *** *

Blizzards 2012

MONDAY MUSING -- Stop. Look. Listen.

As a writer, I often find straddling two worlds: the fantasy one I am creating while my kids are off at school, and the real one.

Transitioning between the two is sometimes fuzzy, and I end up befuddled at noon when the kids clamber in, starving and full of stories and smelling like the air outside and the paint of the art room, the rubber of their gym shoes. 

I sometimes forget to leave the world of my characters with the snap of my laptop case, and I linger in other countries, in the sweltering heat of summer in the Caribbean or the heartbreak of Northern Afghanistan while I'm stirring their macaroni and cheese. 

So I'm trying a little something new these days, based on a desire to be more mindful. Recently I wrote about wanting to break up with my iPhone because I felt like it encouraged a disconnect with the most important people in my life. I couldn't do it, but one of my resolutions was to be more present in my home life. 

I've employed a new tactic in this quest for mindfulness and it involves the wooden sign from the boys' Christmas train. I accidentally threw out the base to it in a post-holiday purge, but I've repurposed it. I'm having my kids move it around like our four season Elf on the Shelf, so that it will catch my eye in new places and remind me of the person, the mother, I want to be.

I want to look at the people I love, especially those of bellybutton height. I want to stop what I am doing--reading about war-ravaged lands or editing for a friend or finding just the right words to describe the magnetic sensation between new lovers--and look in their eyes when they are telling me about their class trip to the wood shop or showing me a recently-mastered cartwheel. 

I have asked everyone in the family to do this when we talk to each other: to stop, to give the speaker the courtesy of our eyes and ears. So far they are enjoying moving the sign each day. It's not perfect yet--last night I was in the middle of writing an email and not following my own rule, so Piper picked the sign up and stood in front of me with it like a pint-size picketer. I'll let you know how it goes. 

In the meantime, I'd love to know: what do you do to stay present? 

* *** *

Writers on Wednesday--Anna Badkhen

Something completely different has fallen into my path--the incredible writing of war correspondent Anna Badkhen and her latest book, Waiting for the Taliban. While my second novel is finding its way out into the world, I began researching and scribbling notes for a third which has several pieces, scenes and ties to Northern Afghanistan. This is a first for me, writing out of place, and I settled in for some armchair research, because let's face it: I don't have the stones to go to Afghanistan. Frankly, J stresses out every time I go to Manhattan to meet with publishers and there is of course, the passel of our kids and animals here. For someone who once led a nomadic life shaped by wanderlust and the quest for adventure, I am surprised by how deeply I have laid roots here in Pennsylvania.

On Monday, the whole house returned to school and work after our break, a strange and melancholy event that had everyone talking homeschooling and waxing nostalgic about last year while they tried to linger over breakfast. In the quiet that followed, my biggest worries were the eight loads of clean laundry I had mounded on the couch to be folded, an itching curiousity about whether my vegetable-averse kid would detect the butternut squash and navy beans I had secretly blended into his lunch of mac and cheese, and some niggling anxiety about whether or not I would be able to pull off the premise of this newest novel. 

Instead of matching forty pairs of permanently dingy sports socks, I settled down with Anna Badkhen's stunning read, Waiting for the Taliban. It was my first time reading electronically, and I kept flitting from the iPad to my chores and writing, (because most days reading feels too decadent) until finally I couldn't stand it. I abandoned my house and my kids and my manuscript and just let Badkhen's story sweep me away to a foreign place with a story that is at times tragic, lyrical, hard and heartbreaking. How had I never heard all of this before? How had I never thought about the farmers, the child laborers, the rug weavers, the civilians of this country?

There is some discomfort in this, in the notion that my Jan 1 resolutions included a sit-ups regime to bring my abdominal muscles back to pre-Piper proportions once and for all, when I am reading about two little Afghan boys sorting through a pile of fetid garbage for the least yellowed and rotten green onions to eat. There is also some guilt that I have used my years of motherhood and career-chasing and higher-education-pursuing to explain away my lack of curiosity, of knowledge in what is really happening in Afghanistan. 

Sept 11 coincided with Hayden's birth and medical struggles, which I document both in an essay and on my blog, where I mention that the tunnel vision that accompanies the anxiety of a mother whose baby is fighting for his life forever-colored my experience of September 11th. But when he got better, how had I not followed up on this? How had I not wondered more at what life was like there? I was once the young woman who had traveled alone to work in the post-Revolution orphanages of Romania. How had I not thought of the children of Afghanistan, so often the victims in conflict zones?

Within the day, I had finished the book and found her website and read most of her articles for Foreign Policy. By Tuesday we were emailing and she had given me a reading list to take me farther and deeper into this subject and the invitation to talk over dinner when I am ready. If my third novel has any verisimilitude, it will be because of finding Anna's writing and the works of the other authors I am inhaling. 

I asked Anna if she would be willing to answer a few of the many questions that came up as I was reading her work and digging around in the history of Afghanistan. The interview follows. Enjoy...

CKH: You are an incredibly talented writer--you could write circles around many in the field and spin stunning tales of lyrical, literary fiction. Why did you choose to use your notable skill for journalism and enlightenment?

AB: Chandra, I am a storyteller. I am honored to be able to tell stories of people who otherwise would not get heard. I care about the word deeply, perhaps that is what you are referring to in your kind compliments. I believe that language can, and must, be used with precision, and strive to do that.

CKH: One of the reasons I left my work in the orphanages in Romania was that the solution that many perceived to be the answer--filling a suitcase with children and spiriting them to the United States--was shown to be complicated by the fact that most of these 'orphans' had families, and many were visited regularly. How do you define what 'help' is when you are in countries in the capacity of journalism? Is it enough for you to shine a light on these lives? 

AB: Sometimes. Sometimes it is not. Most of the time, probably, not. But I do believe that my work is important--and hope that the people of means, if relative, read the stories, and follow up. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. 

CKH: How do you maintain boundaries in these intimate situations? You live with the people you write about, sleep with the hands of their children enfolded in yours, sit with grandmothers who cannot afford the medication that may save their sick child. I just read your article from Sept 2011 where an Afghan man you have lived with, who calls you his sister, says his life is at risk. How do you resist the urge to use resources to rescue those in crisis? 

AB: Why, Chandra, should I resist this urge? Storytelling is important, it's what I live for, but it's not the apex of a writer's existence, or shouldn't be, in my opinion. Being human is. When I can, I do what I believe is right as a human.

CKH: When I went to Romania, I took my toiletries in a Ziploc bag. The woman in the house where I lived asked if she could have it, and in all the months I was there, would carefully rinse it out and hang it up to dry after each use. Now I pack my kids' lunches in these and they get tossed daily. How do you reconcile our lives of wealth with the poverty you encounter? How does it shape the way you live in the US? 

AB: I grew up in the Soviet Union. We didn't have Ziploc bags. We had a handful of plastic bags that lasted us years--we would wash them out over the sink (we had no dishwasher, and I still don't) with soap made of animal bones (all natural! no preservatives or artificial colors!), and hang them out to dry. The bags that we used to buy fresh meat felt disgusting. But they, too, were reused for years.

I don't live in wealth. I live in one of the poorest neighborhoods of one of the poorest zip codes in the United States: a quarter of Philadelphians live at or below the established poverty level. I live on very little, mostly books and coffee. I have lived in poverty, though not, of course, of the kind of poverty I see in parts of Afghanistan, or Somalia, or India. I have hungered. I don't advocate it, but humans can live without food for a very, very long time. I try not to waste resources. I try to teach my son to do the same. I try to find a balance between needing little and being able to focus on work. It works, most of the time.

CKH: What you are doing, the reporting from these war-ravaged places, is important but undeniably dangerous work. How difficult is it for your family to let you go when you travel? 

AB: Please keep in mind that where I travel millions of people live, without any hope of leaving. Millions--Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, Palestinians, Chechens--who endure violence and privation on a daily basis. I, usually, have a return ticket, a way out. They don't. So that's something to think about when we talk about western journalists who travel to war zones. 

My family right now is my 14-year-old son. I have been doing this almost all of his life. I think he's proud of me, though he, of course, prefers it when I'm home (he eats better then). I know he worries about me. And I worry about him. So, there is an equilibrium, of sorts.

* *** * 

With thanks to Anna Badkhen and an urging for everyone to read both Waiting for the Taliban and Peace Meals. 

There is more to war than the macabre—the white-orange muzzle flashes during a midnight ambush; the men high on adrenaline scanning the desert through the scopes of their machine guns as their forefingers caress the triggers; the scythes of razor-sharp shrapnel whirling through the air like lawnmower blades spun loose; the tortured and the dead. There are also the myriad brazen, congenial, persistent ways in which life in the most forlorn and violent places on earth shamelessly reasserts itself.  

 Photo: KAEL ALFORD

BIO:Anna Badkhen writes about people in extremis. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Foreign Policy, the Boston Globe, and other publications.