What I Don't Do

Those who know me, know that I keep pretty busy. I work full time, am the mother of two, read and write, and carry on a full life of friendships and community activities. I frequently get asked, “How do you find time to write? I can’t believe all that you have written.” Every time I get asked that question, I feel like I have to defend myself. When do I write? Where do I find the time?

Of course, the short answer to the question is that I don’t write as much as people think I do. In fact, compared to people who actually publish their work, I write zilch. When was the last time you saw my novel on the shelf at Barnes and Noble? But I do read a bit and manage to squeeze out a blog post or two every week. I write letters and poems and participate actively in WWfaC.

With anything one chooses to do, one chooses to do that thing over other things. Even if we are not aware of it, we are constantly prioritizing. If I am reading or writing, I must not be doing dozens of other things. Here is a short list of what I don’t do:

• I don’t iron. Hate ironing. Once, when I deigned to iron, my 10 year old son stared at the funny device in my hand and asked what it was. He had never seen an iron before.
• I don’t clean. Between my husband and I we manage to load and unload the dishwasher, do laundry and take out the trash. Everything else I let go of or ask my housekeeper to do. She comes on Monday. If you come to my house on Sunday—you’ll understand.
• I don’t have an elaborate morning routine. I shower and moisturize and get dressed. Makeup, hairstyling and accessorizing are for a different woman.
• I don’t shop. Yes, I buy groceries and cook dinner, but I don’t go to the mall and I don’t shop for clothes. I don’t spend hours picking out greeting cards. I don’t go to hobby stores.
• I don’t craft, sew or keep scrapbooks. I appreciate my friends who do those things. I sometimes dabble, but for the most part, my craft supplies and sewing machine collect dust.
• I don’t watch TV. Well, I watch TV selectively, which means generally, first run shows that I am interested in. I usually follow two or three a season: the ones that rise to the top of the critics’ lists. I don’t let the TV run and watch all the time.
• I don’t rake, mulch, mow, plant, prune, or shovel. That’s one of those things I would do if I had a yard conducive to gardening, but I live among the trees, so I let my husband and son do the little mowing we have. Everything else goes wild.
• I order pizza a lot.
• I don’t sleep a lot. Six hours is about as high as I go. Sometimes I can go as long as seven, but that is rare. I never nap.

So writing and reading are my priorities. I enjoy those activities. You might prefer having a clean house or an ironed skirt. When my kids go to bed and I have a free hour, I rarely scrub my kitchen floor. I would love to know what activities readers prioritize. What don’t you do in order to get your writing done?

--Amy for the PGM

In defense of Eat, Pray, Love

I’m tired of all the complaining, jibing and whining I’ve been hearing and reading about Eat, Pray, Love. The recent release of the movie has intensified criticism of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, perhaps because Hollywood took her story into a level of abstraction that generates a public feeding frenzy that ranges from lampooning to EPL-inspired candles and dream journals on the Home Shopping Network.

But underneath all the Oprah and Hollywood hype, it’s a great story of personal transformation. Spiritual journeys have been around for a long time. Think pilgrimage. Think vision quest. The physical journey is a metaphor for the inner journey where the real work is taking place.

The wild popularity of the book told us that there is a market for reading material about a woman’s journey toward deeper wholeness and self-understanding, and Gilbert’s story is the real deal, in my opinion. The stage for her journey was set when she hit her knees in the bathroom and prayed for help. (Already I can hear the critics tittering in the background. Go pour yourself another rum and coke.) What happened next, the divorce, the rebound relationship, the idea for the trip, the support from her publisher, the people she met along the way, the lessons she learned, and yes, the ultimate discovery of a true soul-mate were not scripted by anyone other than the force she prayed to on the cold tile floor.

Some have accused Gilbert of a sense of entitlement that motivated her travels to exotic locales and seeking guidance from native people. Yet the book and movie reveal that she didn’t find healer Ketut in an Indonesian phone book. She met him a year earlier on a writing assignment, and HE told her she would be back to work with him again. She didn’t stumble into the ashram, either. She practiced these teachings in New York. And the Italy part, well, don’t we ALL feel a connection to Italy? All parts of her journey were threaded back to her “real” life, the one in which she, like all of us, wakes to an alarm, shows up for work, and puts one foot in front of the other. The most interesting thing to me was that she approached her journey with an open mind and heart.

All the criticism raises caution in me because I am a memoir writer, and I want to believe I won’t be condemned for sharing my story. While my breakthroughs were not quite as exotic–many have occurred while journaling on my back porch or pulling weeds out of my flower beds–my learnings, like Elizabeth’s, were borne out of my experience with loss and darkness.

I had the opportunity to meet Elizabeth Gilbert when she was in Bloomington a couple of years ago. I stood in line and asked her to sign my copy of her book. I told her I, too, was writing a memoir. She looked me in the eye, smiled, and said, “you’re the only one who can write your story.”

With that dose of encouragement, I press on…one foot in front of the other, with faith that each woman’s story, no matter the circumstances, is valuable if told with honesty.

-- Kim for the Poplar Grove Muse

Poetry Thieving

I came across a quirky bit of news in the Charlestown, West Virginia Gazette the other day. It seems that in Morgantown an unknown bandit has been leaving poems on people’s porches and doorsteps in the middle of the night. Residents of Morgantown are a bit freaked out by some stranger being on their porch at the midnight hour, so naturally local police are stepping up patrols to catch the bard.

I find myself imagining who this person might be and why on earth they might start leaving poems on porches. Are they wooing someone? Are they a little crazy? Are they bored

and lonely and trying to stir up some excitement? I find it more likely that they are a lot like me: awake at 3:00 in the morning with the excitement or worries of the next day heavy in their mind, restless because of the unrelenting heat and humidity of this Midwest summer, and eager to do something, anything that will make the endless wee morning hours seem worthwhile.

I rise up out of my bed husband sound asleep, as always, and throw on whatever pants I can find on the dark floor. I head first to my computer where I print up some favorite poems in large font on fancy paper, stuff my feet into some worn shoes and grab a flashlight before I head out the front door.

The flashlight of course is for reading poems before I slip onto a porch, one last bit of verse before I deliver my present. A bit of a love poem from ee cummings for the 50 something woman who wears her hair in a tight bun; my favorite Mary Oliver poem for a mother of 5 who always seems to be driving somewhere; a light hearted poem about a cocktail party for the older couple who read the New York Times. It is a fun adventure and I wonder about putting my own poems out this way. Is porch step a valid form of self-publishing?

I close my evening rendezvous with a couplet or two by Emily Dickenson for the high school math teacher. If anyone needs a bit of Emily Dickinson it would be him. Once I start though I realize how hard it will be. I forgot the poem by Robert Frost that I think that acne covered teenager would enjoy, and I know that those newlyweds might get a kick out of Billy Collins. He always turns love on its head. I am the Santa Claus of poetry, and I am so sorry I cannot hit everyone’s porch. That must be Santa’s one true sadness: that he inevitably must forget someone.

As I am back in my bed and nodding off before having to awake in just a few short hours, I wonder how each person will feel when picking up their daily paper and they encounter a bit of verse. I imagine their lives changing with each important word: Wondering who or what brought them the magic. They will put it up on the refrigerator with a magnet and glance at it when they get out the cream for their coffee. Every day they will wonder, who was this poetry fairy? And how did she know me so well?

In my reverie, I am back in Morgantown. Can you hear the judge?

“I am charging you with 7 counts of petty poetry leaving.”

“Guilty as charged your honor.”

The sentence? I’d like to hear what readers think…

For now, I leave you with this poem which I got in the mail today:

Rain
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon drugstore sign
and I'd read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain's own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

--Amy for the PGM

The Poetry Bandit

I came across a quirky bit of news in the Charlestown, West Virginia Gazette the other day. It seems that in Morgantown an unknown bandit has been leaving poems on people’s porches and doorsteps in the middle of the night. Residents of Morgantown are a bit freaked out by some stranger being on their porch at the midnight hour, so naturally local police are stepping up patrols to catch the bard.

I find myself imagining who this person might be and why on earth they might start leaving poems on porches. Are they wooing someone? Are they a little crazy? Are they bored and lonely and trying to stir up some excitement?

I find it more likely that they are a lot like me. Awake at 3:00 in the morning with the excitement or worri

es of the next day heavy in their mind, restless because of the unrelenting heat and humidity of a Midwest summer, and eager to do something, anything that will make the endless wee morning hours seem worthwhile.

I rise up out of my bed husband sound asleep, as always, and throw on whatever pants I can find on the dark floor. I head first to my computer where I print up some favorite poems in large font on fancy paper, stuff my feet into some worn shoes and grab a flashlight before I head out the front door.

I close my midnight rendezvous with a couplet or two by Emily Dickenson for the high school math teacher. If anyone needs a bit of Emily Dickinson it would be him. Once started, I realize how hard it will be. I forgot the poem by Robert Frost that I think that lovesick teenager would enjoy, and I know that those newlyweds might enjoy a bit of Billy Collins. He always turns love on its head. I am the Santa Claus of poetry, and I am so sorry I cannot hit everyone’s porch. That must be Santa’s one true sadness. That he inevitably must forget someone.The flashlight of course is for reading poems before I slip onto a porch, one last bit of verse before I deliver my present. A bit of a love poem from ee cummings for the 50 something woman who wears her hair in a tight bun; my favorite Mary Oliver poem for a mother of 5 who always seems to be driving somewhere; a light hearted poem about a cocktail party for the older couple who read the New York Times. It is a fun adventure and I wonder about putting my own poems out this way. Is porch step a valid form of self-publishing?

As I am back in my bed and nodding off before having to awake in just a few sh

ort hours, I wonder how each person will feel when picking up their daily paper and they encounter a bit of verse. I imagine their lives changing with each important word. Wondering who or what brought them the magic. They will put it up on the refrigerator with a magnet and glance at it when they get out the cream for their coffee. Every day they will wonder, who was this poetry fairy? And how did she k

now me so well?

In my reverie, I am back in Morgantown. Can you hear the judge? “I am charging you with 7 counts of petty poetry leaving.”

“Guilty as charged your honor.”

The sentence?

I’d like to hear what readers think…

For now, I leave you with this poem which I got in the mail today:

Rain
by Don Paterson

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from the play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon drugstore sign
and I'd read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood—
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain's own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

Amy for the PGM

Antidotes to Anti-Everything

Lauren wrote about Dennis Hopper and Lady Gaga a few weeks ago. I'm still Gaga-ing. Two articles I’ve read in the past month have me thinking: Gail Dine’s “The Stepford Sluts” (http://www.counterpunch.org/dines08022010.html) -thanks to Joni McGary for posting it on Facebook!- and Jon Caramanica’s “Girl Pop’s Lady Gaga Makeover” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/arts/music/25feminism.html ). As a once-not –terribly-well-known-but-earnest-and-appreciated-in-some-critical-circles 1990’s singer-songwriter, and as a mother of daughters whose first CD requests were for Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera, I pause to consider the culture they’ve been navigating, and still, at 17 and nearly 20, struggle to define themselves within. I breathe deep and keep my head down and wish for the passing of the current craze and hope the girls I love will hold strong to what is true for them and makes them strong in this world. I watch for things that help them find their power and I gently but firmly point them in those directions.

According the afore-mentioned articles, the move away from the interior, unadorned, lyric-driven nature of the original Lilith Fair performance roster to a “New Feminism” embodied in a line up of performers who wear their skin like costumes, bras with machine guns attached, and all but literally explode their sex aggressively over their audiences, suggests something sinister about what’s happening now, particularly for our young girls and women in search of identity. The “power” (for women and girls) implied from sex depicted in this way becomes a disturbing commonplace cultural image. It crowds out alternative ways of being female, as Gail Dines writes. The media eats it up and fuels the fire. This says something sinister for everyone--our young men as well. If we were to put together a group of parents of young women and young men to talk about the dynamics of the modern-day “grinding party”, we’d surely generate some deeply-held gender biases on both sides.

My house is littered with Cosmopolitan magazines, Elle, Vogue, and I’ve long-ago given up on policing my young women’s television viewing choices. I have an excellent sense of the images and articles they are bombarded and fascinated with. I’m equally fascinated by my daughters’ moderation and discernment when it comes to buying in to the whole hyper-sex scene. They appear to be pretty “earthy” in their choice of clothing and external adornment. Still, I don’t know what’s really going on inside of them as they navigate their sexual world(s). This, I say, is theirs to navigate. It’s private. But I worry about how they…and younger girls and boys whose brains are also still absorbing the prevailing cultural messages of these times are doing with it.

In her piece, Gail Dines writes: “Thanks to feminist historians, we now know that women in the 1950s conformed to the Stepford Wife image because they had few choices. Why, then, when we see girls and young women conform to the Stepford Slut image, do we celebrate this as free choice? For girls to have real choices, they need access to a broad range of images, especially those that subvert the dominant ideas of what it means to be feminine. Now that would be empowering!”

So. What are the alternatives? What are the antidotes? While Dan and I were never very good at or interested in “banning” the culture from our lives: disallowing TV, choosing homeschooling, etc., we have figured out ways of “broadening” perspectives in our household and for what it’s worth, here are a few options: if you can, add some other media to the mix in your house The Sun Magazine, Sierra Club, New Moon Magazine, Ode Magazine, Smithsonian, (there are so many more!). Leave instruments and notebooks and pens and paints strewn about in abundance, lots of pictures from mags that you’re going to recycle for collage, movie/video-making technology available if you’ve got the stuff to do this with. Go camping with them when they’re young…or do anything outside. Tolerate a certain amount of mess. Encourage them to get involved in a sport or arts activity or in community volunteerism or whatever unique interest they seem to gravitate to.

Send them to wild places when they’re ready to leave home for the first time. Some of these wild places are not outdoors, but are wildly artistic spaces where “wild mind” is celebrated and explored. Theater camps, writing camps, singing camps or make these things happen in your own home and with friends! Do these things in single sex and co-ed settings that support teamwork, mutual respect, higher principles of community consciousness and healthy relations.

Let’s give them a place and a voice to explore what the REAL and the pretend in their lives are so they know the difference and can eventually make choices about preferred realms of living. Truly clever art-making…the anti-real, which may well be what Lady Gaga is going for, springs, I contend from having explored the deeply real at some point. She was, after all, an earnest piano bar player for a while way back when.

BLR

Links to some of the best I know:
http://www.oooliticmusic.com/camp
http://decyclesindiana.org/
http://newplays.org/cmsms/education
http://www.womenwritingbloomington.com/girlscoresemesterclasses.htmlframe.htm

Two articles I’ve read in the past month have me thinking.
Gail Dine’s “The Stepford Sluts” (http://www.counterpunch.org/dines08022010.html)-thanks to Joni McGary for posting it on Facebook!-and Jon Caramanica’s “Girl Pop’s Lady Gaga Makeover” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/arts/music/25feminism.html). As a once-not –terribly-well-known-but-earnest- and-appreciated- in- some- critical -circles 1990’s singer-songwriter, and as a mother of daughters whose first CD requests were for Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera, I pause to consider the culture they’ve been navigating, and still, at 17 and nearly 20, struggle to define themselves within. I breathe deep and keep my head down and wish for the passing of the current craze and hope the girls I love will hold strong to what is true for them and makes them strong in this world. I watch for things that help them find their power and I gently but firmly point them in those directions.

According the afore-mentioned articles, the move away from the interior, unadorned, lyric-driven nature of the original Lilith Fair performance roster to a “New Feminism” embodied in a line up of performers who wear their skin like costumes, bras with machine guns attached, and all but literally explode their sex aggressively over their audiences, suggests something sinister about what’s happening now, particularly for our young girls and women in search of identity. The “power” (for women and girls) implied from sex depicted in this way becomes a disturbing commonplace cultural image. It crowds out alternative ways of being female, as Gail Dines writes. The media eats it up and fuels the fire. This says something sinister for everyone--our young men as well. If we were to put together a group of parents of young women and young men to talk about the dynamics of the modern-day “grinding party”, we’d surely generate some deeply-held gender biases on both sides.

My house is littered with Cosmopolitan magazines, Elle, Vogue, and I’ve long-ago given up on policing my young women’s television viewing choices. I have an excellent sense of the images and articles they are bombarded and fascinated with. I’m equally fascinated by my daughters’ moderation and discernment when it comes to buying in to the whole hyper-sex scene. They appear to be pretty “earthy” in their choice of clothing and external adornment. Still, I don’t know what’s really going on inside of them as they navigate their sexual world(s). This, I say, is theirs to navigate. It’s private. But I worry about how they…and younger girls and boys whose brains are also still absorbing the prevailing cultural messages of these times are doing with it.

In her piece, Gail Dines writes: “Thanks to feminist historians, we now know that women in the 1950s conformed to the Stepford Wife image because they had few choices. Why, then, when we see girls and young women conform to the Stepford Slut image, do we celebrate this as free choice? For girls to have real choices, they need access to a broad range of images, especially those that subvert the dominant ideas of what it means to be feminine. Now that would be empowering!”

So. What are the alternatives? What are the antidotes? While Dan and I were never very good at or interested in “banning” the culture from our lives: disallowing TV, choosing homeschooling, etc., we have figured out ways of “broadening” perspectives in our household and for what it’s worth, here are a few options: if you can, add some other media to the mix in your house The Sun Magazine, Sierra Club, New Moon Magazine, Ode Magazine, Smithsonian, (there are so many more!). Leave instruments and notebooks and pens and paints strewn about in abundance, lots of pictures from mags that you’re going to recycle for collage, movie/video-making technology available if you’ve got the stuff to do this with. Go camping with them when they’re young…or do anything outside. Tolerate a certain amount of mess. Encourage them to get involved in a sport or arts activity or in community volunteerism or whatever unique interest they seem to gravitate to.


Investigate wild places with them when they’re ready to leave home for the first time. Some of these wild places are not outdoors, but are wildly artistic spaces where “wild mind” is celebrated and explored. Theater camps, writing camps, singing camps or make these things happen in your own home and with friends! Do these things in single sex and co-ed settings that support teamwork, mutual respect, higher principles of community consciousness and healthy relations.

Let’s give our children a place and a voice to explore what the REAL and the pretend are in their lives so they'll know the difference and can eventually make choices about preferred realms, modes, philosophies of living. Truly clever art-making…the anti-real, which may well be what Lady Gaga is going for, springs, I contend from having explored the deeply real at some point. She was, after all, an earnest piano bar player for a while way back when.



Links to some of the best I know:
http://www.oooliticmusic.com/camp
http://decyclesindiana.org/
http://newplays.org/cmsms/education
http://www.womenwritingbloomington.com/girlscoresemesterclasses.htmlframe.htm

Antidotes

Two articles I’ve read in the past month have me thinking.

Gail Dine’s “The Stepford Sluts”(http://www.counterpunch.org/dines08022010.html) -thanks to Joni McGary for posting it on Facebook!- and Jon Caramanica’s “Girl Pop’s Lady Gaga Makeover” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/arts/music/25feminism.html). As a once-not–terribly-well-known-but-earnest-and-appreciated-in-some-critical-circles 1990’s singer-songwriter, and as a mother of daughters whose first CD requests were for Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera, I pause to consider the culture they’ve been navigating, and still, at 17 and nearly 20, struggle to define themselves within. I breathe deep and keep my head down and wish for the passing of the current craze and hope the girls I love will hold strong to what is true for them and makes them strong in this world. I watch for things that help them find their power and I gently but firmly point them in those directions.

According the afore-mentioned articles, the move away from the interior, unadorned, lyric-driven nature of the original Lilith Fair performance roster to a “New Feminism” embodied in a line up of performers who wear their skin like costumes, bras with machine guns attached, and all but literally explode their sex aggressively over their audiences, suggests something sinister about what’s happening now, particularly for our young girls and women in search of identity. The “power” (for women and girls) implied from sex depicted in this way becomes a disturbing commonplace cultural image. It crowds out alternative ways of being female, as Gail Dines writes. The media eats it up and fuels the fire. This says something sinister for everyone--our young men as well. If we were to put together a group of parents of young women and young men to talk about the dynamics of the modern-day “grinding party”, we’d surely generate some deeply-held gender biases on both sides.

My house is littered with Cosmopolitan magazines, Elle, Vogue, and I’ve long-ago given up on policing my young women’s television viewing choices. I have an excellent sense of the images and articles they are bombarded and fascinated with. I’m equally fascinated by my daughters’ moderation and discernment when it comes to buying in to the whole hyper-sex scene. They appear to be pretty “earthy” in their choice of clothing and external adornment. Still, I don’t know what’s really going on inside of them as they navigate their sexual world(s). This, I say, is theirs to navigate. It’s private. But I worry about how they…and younger girls and boys whose brains are also still absorbing the prevailing cultural messages of these times are doing with it.

In her piece, Gail Dines writes: “Thanks to feminist historians, we now know that women in the 1950s conformed to the Stepford Wife image because they had few choices. Why, then, when we see girls and young women conform to the Stepford Slut image, do we celebrate this as free choice? For girls to have real choices, they need access to a broad range of images, especially those that subvert the dominant ideas of what it means to be feminine. Now that would be empowering!”

So. What are the alternatives? What's the antidote? While Dan and I were never very good at or interested in “banning” the culture from our lives: we did not disallow TV, or choose homeschooling, etc., we managed to figure out ways of “broadening” perspectives in our household and for what it’s worth, here are a few options: if you can, add some other media to the mix in your house The Sun Magazine, Sierra Club, New Moon Magazine, Ode Magazine, Smithsonian, (there are so many more!). Leave instruments and notebooks and pens and paints strewn about in abundance, lots of pictures from mags that you’re going to recycle for collage, movie/video-making technology available if you’ve got the stuff to do this with. Go camping with them when they’re young…or do anything outside. Tolerate a certain amount of mess. Encourage them to get involved in a sport or arts activity or in community volunteerism or whatever unique interest they seem to gravitate to.

Investigate wild places with them when they’re ready to leave home for the first time. Some of these wild places are not outdoors, but are wildly artistic spaces where “wild mind” is celebrated and explored. Theater camps, writing camps, singing camps or make these things happen in your own home and with friends! Do these things in single sex and co-ed settings that support teamwork, mutual respect, higher principles of community consciousness and healthy relations.

Let’s give the children we love a place and a voice to explore what the REAL and the pretend are their lives so they know the difference and can eventually make choices about preferred realms, modes, styles of living. Truly clever art-making…the anti-real, which may well be what Lady Gaga is going for, springs, I contend from having explored the deeply real at some point. She was, after all, an earnest piano bar player for a while way back when.

Links to some of the best I know. I know there are more, but these are the ones I know best. You are free to add to this list in your comments:

BLR for the Poplar Grove Muse
http://www.oooliticmusic.com/camp
http://decyclesindiana.org/
http://newplays.org/cmsms/education
http://www.womenwritingbloomington.com/girlscoresemesterclasses.htmlframe.htm

Costa Rica

I was not one of those children, unlike my son, who was ever fascinated by creatures from theinsect world. While I’ve never been one of those who run screaming from a cockroach or spider,I have generally preferred to encounter them dead rather than alive. And I’ve absolutely never cared about their eating habits, mandibles, exoskeletons, number of legs or whether they eat their mate after sex (although I have wondered why that one is called a praying mantis?). Insects have just always been there, a category of minor annoyances and low interest in the background of life. This peripheral concern became one of life’s most pressing issues when I packed up my three children and ex-husband to live in Costa Rica for a year. Not only do the insects and spiders simply demand attention by their sheer number and variety, it’s just damn hard to ignore a dinner plate-sized, orange-knee tarantula strolling through your living room.

My ten year old son watched a scorpion walk across the floor the first night we arrived in Monteverde and later wet the bed for the first time in his life. But he quickly learned the need to shake out his shoes and clothes before getting dressed, how to pull back the bedcovers all the way to make sure he was the only one going to sleep there each night, how to redirect the shower head away from the specimens occasionally hanging out on the shower wall. While their menacing look never endeared themselves to his truly insect-loving heart, he did develop an appreciation for those huge momma scorpions that carry dozens of little babies on their backs.

My initial response to the surrounding infestations was to buy the largest can of bug spray I could find at the supermercado. For the first few weeks, I poisoned us all with my attempts to kill any insect big enough to make noise (mere appearance alone didn’t merit death by spray), which unfortunately meant that some undeserving katydids quite unfairly died before I learned who was what. It was so unnerving to look up while taking a bath, such a spot of vulnerability, and see all those legs and antennae marching my way.

After a few katydids and deserving scorpions perished, I gave up entirely on bug spray. We learned to co-exist, even if uneasily from our point of view. I, for one, always wore socks to bed. I made ceaseless attempts to create obstacles to the relentless columns of ants after returning home one night to find one line of ants walking across the courtyard, under the front door (homes are quite porous there), across the living room, into the kitchen and up the cabinets to the bag of bread into which they’d chewed a hole. A parallel line of ants were making the reverse trip with bits of white bread bobbing on their backs. We eventually trained these ants to enter by the back door and take their nourishment from the compost we left beside it. Amazingly we would find an empty bowl every morning that had been full of food scraps the night before. The number of ants required to complete this task remains truly incomprehensible.

The first time we saw the tarantula provided great entertainment to the young Tica babysitter we’d hired for our young daughters. As we screamed and jumped on the sofa, Maria just laughed and got a broom to gently sweep this spider out the door. The female tarantula and I became old friends when I discovered her nest next to our house. I took many pictures of her climbing around the walls to send to disbelieving friends and family back home. When one friend, a true entymologist, visited that fall, I commented as we were all eating breakfast that I sure hoped she could see this spider…who was already sitting on top of the Barbie coloring book in the corner next to the kitchen table. As friendly as we all were with one another by this time, that still felt a little presumptuous to me.

Alongside the army ants and scorpions, the insect world of Costa Rica also offered breathtaking beauty for our admiration and appreciation. Iridescent (maybe salad plate-sized) blue morpho butterflies would accompany our walks through the forest, alongside numerous other mariposas of all colors and sizes. At night pale green luna moths would flutter at our windows, drawn to our light.

The insects were only one aspect of this multi-layered, incredibly difficult and wonderful experience of living far from home and all that was familiar and known. There’s also a chapter on the rats in the ceiling, the posotes (these are not small mammals!) in the courtyard, the monkeys dancing on the roof and peering in our windows as if we were the ones in the zoo. And another chapter, perhaps a book, on the deepening realization that our daughter’s developmental delays weren’t attributable to her parents’ divorce or the logistics of being a twin. My son maintains that so far this was the best year of his life. I return every chance I get, having found surprising peace among the many unassuming members of the insect world.

--Catherine for the Popular Grove Muse

Costa Rica

I was not one of those children, unlike my son, who was ever fascinated by creatures from the insect world. While I’ve never been one of those who run screaming from a cockroach or spider, I have generally preferred to encounter them dead rather than alive. And I’ve absolutely never cared about their eating habits, mandibles, exoskeletons, number of legs or whether they eat their mate after sex (although I have wondered why that one is called a praying mantis?). Insects have just always been there, a category of minor annoyances and low interest in the background of life. This peripheral concern became one of life’s most pressing issues when I packed up my three children and ex-husband to live in Costa Rica for a year. Not only do the insects and spiders simply demand attention by their sheer number and variety, it’s just damn hard to ignore a dinner plate-sized, orange-knee tarantula strolling through your living room.

My ten year old son watched a scorpion walk across the floor the first night we arrived in Monteverde and later wet the bed for the first time in his life. But he quickly learned the need to shake out his shoes and clothes before getting dressed, how to pull back the bedcovers all the way to make sure he was the only one going to sleep there each night, how to redirect the shower head away from the specimens occasionally hanging out on the shower wall. While their menacing look never endeared themselves to his truly insect-loving heart, he did develop an appreciation for those huge momma scorpions that carry dozens of little babies on their backs.

My initial response to the surrounding infestations was to buy the largest can of bug spray I could find at the supermercado. For the first few weeks, I poisoned us all with my attempts to kill any insect big enough to make noise (mere appearance alone didn’t merit death by spray), which unfortunately meant that some undeserving katydids quite unfairly died before I learned who was what. It was so unnerving to look up while taking a bath, such a spot of vulnerability, and see all those legs and antennae marching my way.

After a few katydids and deserving scorpions perished, I gave up entirely on bug spray. We learned to co-exist, even if uneasily from our point of view. I, for one, always wore socks to bed. I made ceaseless attempts to create obstacles to the relentless columns of ants after returning home one night to find one line of ants walking across the courtyard, under the front door (homes are quite porous there), across the living room, into the kitchen and up the cabinets to the bag of bread into which they’d chewed a hole. A parallel line of ants were making the reverse trip with bits of white bread bobbing on their backs. We eventually trained these ants to enter by the back door and take their nourishment from the compost we left beside it. Amazingly we would find an empty bowl every morning that had been full of food scraps the night before. The number of ants required to complete this task remains truly incomprehensible.

The first time we saw the tarantula provided great entertainment to the young Tica babysitter we’d hired for our young daughters. As we screamed and jumped on the sofa, Maria just laughed and got a broom to gently sweep this spider out the door. The female tarantula and I became old friends when I discovered her nest next to our house. I took many pictures of her climbing around the walls to send to disbelieving friends and family back home. When one friend, a true entymologist, visited that fall, I commented as we were all eating breakfast that I sure hoped she could see this spider…who was already sitting on top of the Barbie coloring book in the corner next to the kitchen table. As friendly as we all were with one another by this time, that still felt a little presumptuous to me.

Alongside the army ants and scorpions, the insect world of Costa Rica also offered breathtaking beauty for our admiration and appreciation. Iridescent (maybe salad plate-sized) blue morpho butterflies would accompany our walks through the forest, alongside numerous other mariposas of all colors and sizes. At night pale green luna moths would flutter at our windows, drawn to our light.

The insects were only one aspect of this multi-layered, incredibly difficult and wonderful experience of living far from home and all that was familiar and known. There’s also a chapter on the rats in the ceiling, the posotes (these are not small mammals!) in the courtyard, the monkeys dancing on the roof and peering in our windows as if we were the ones in the zoo. And another chapter, perhaps a book, on the deepening realization that our daughter’s developmental delays weren’t attributable to her parents’ divorce or the logistics of being a twin. My son maintains that so far this was the best year of his life. I return every chance I get, having found surprising peace among the many unassuming members of the insect world.