I left Seattle at dawn last Friday to begin my turkey trot; Olive, travel crate and book (Mary Louise Parker’s Dear Mr. You) in hand.

I whispered a little goodbye as I locked the Nest door and joined the Friday-before-Thanksgiving travelers at Sea-Tac. Let’s just say everything that could happen, did happen: thanks to Delta’s new policy about dog travel it was forty minutes before I even got into the security line (we were funneled into the ‘special services’ line where she had to be weighed — and I had to pay $125 for that privilege — but thank God just her, how would THAT feel before Thanksgiving!), heightened security (three bins, no shoes, three times through the x-ray machine, dog then without leash and they pulled us out for a ‘security check’ on my computer. I laughed.), and a pet relief area in Minneapolis that consisted of two paper pads. I took a deep breath and left the building, granted Olive a gigantic pee on some respectable gravel, and then went back into the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport security line two hundred people deep to repeat the process for my connecting flight. Good times.

Now I have rolled up my mental sleeves. Because of my dedication to fresh ingredients (including fresh roasted pumpkin for the pie) the turkey has more fun than me most years. I have always done the lion’s share of the cooking on the actual day, and arrive at the table a frazzled, ungrateful heap.

But over the years I have come to realize that a LOT of that prep can be staged ahead of time. That it really isn’t all that much fun or realistic to  expect everyone to ‘all lend a hand’ on Thanksgiving morning, especially when three legal-aged children have been out all night for the traditional holiday meet + greet at the local bars. They really don’t want to get out of bed, much less peel piles of unrelenting teensy-tiny white boiling onions and slippery dirty potatoes for Grandad’s favorite dish when they need coffee and lots of it.

This year I am determined to enjoy the day, maybe take my apron off two hours before sitting at the table. To do this, I have to have a militant approach to the countdown.

So arrival night I prepared my state of mind and enjoyed a delightful Manhattan at a local restaurant. The travel experience may have had a little to do with this re-entry. Let the holiday begin.

Day #1, Sunday, with help in hand, I hit two supermarkets with a two-paged list. Empty wallet time.

Fun fact: I need five dozen eggs and five pounds of butter for this week. I did NOT say this was a diet holiday. Some of that is for scrambled eggs. Really.

Day#2, Monday, I made everything that would keep for the week: Cranberry Preserves with Ginger, Orange and Cognac, Lemon Curd, defrosted the pumpkin puree (roasted and froze in bags in October), baked a few tea breads for breakfasts. I would have done the pie crusts but I have been told two daughters are in charge of dessert. Delegating is another secret to success this year. Yahoo!

Oh yes. I bought my first crock pot and made my first pulled pork for Monday night football. Should have put more hot sauce in as the game was  a snooze.  A pic from Al’s Hot Butt BBQ House.

Day#3 dawns. Sea-Tac is a long-ago memory. I am focused: Tuesday will be about prep — cleaning brussels sprouts, peel and bag butternut squash, peel the teensy-tiny white onions, refresh liquor cabinet, then review the grocery list one last time (grocery shopping on the day before Thanksgiving simply cannot happen), get the bedding ready for overnight guests. I hear there is a Tapas dinner out with family friends. Yeah.

Cranberry Preserves with Orange, Fresh Ginger + Cognac 

 Place 4 cups fresh cranberries, 6 tablespoons sugar (I like tart, put in a few more if you like sweet), two tablespoons fine chopped + peeled fresh ginger, one seeded orange chopped well  — including rind — and finally 2 cups water in a large heavy bottomed saucepan. Bring to a boil.
When you hear the skins popping, turn heat down to a rolling simmer for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove pan from the stove and stir in 1/4 cup cognac or Grand Marnier (or more if you like the flavor to dominate!). Place into a clean container with airtight lid or canning jars. You can absolutely make this a week before Thanksgiving or the day-of. Just allow to cool and gel, then refrigerate until you are ready to serve.
Makes two jam jars plus a little left over to put in a jelly dish and sample later with cream cheese and Triscuits…

No comparison.
Gobble.

Paris, 2008

Tonight, my Phinney Ridge neighborhood was dark at 4:30. I snapped on Olive’s leash and walked through the rain to Cafe Vita, grabbed a coffee and criss-crossed the street to dog-friendly Phinney Books.

A few days ago the violence around the world short circuited my brain. Sadness, fear, worry and so many, many words consumed the weekend and continue to shed light on the atrocities in Paris, Belgium, Beirut and Syria. CNN news, the New York Times, NPR.  Words to describe me? Horrified. Nauseous. Shocked. Numb.

I pulled the heavy glass door to the bookstore open, coffee balanced in one hand, Olive scenting out snacks and the biscuit jar. I headed straight to the back of the store where the shelves are knee-high. The children’s book section is a secret weapon of mine: let your eyes wander over the titles and colors, the simple and complex illustrations, the small books, large books, soft books, hard books and the innocence and simplification is calming and infectious.

 A Tower of Giraffes by Anna Wright was perched over the toy basket. Three wide-lashed, curious giraffes serenely peered out at me from the cover. The title and each page is a playful take on collective nouns —  terms that describe a group of individuals such as animals or people.

How about A Romp of Otters? A Parcel of Penguins?

How about a collective noun to describe the people of Paris and Beirut tonight?

I do not proclaim to know what it is like to be caught in the crossfire of terrorism, guns, bloodshed, to be victim of such awful, senseless violence. But collectively — those Parisians that ran to help others bleeding under cafe tables, who pulled friends out of the music hall doorway, the kids that lay down and protected strangers, the volunteer first responders, the citizens that opened their doors to the stranded, the Lebanese that pulled off their shirts to staunch blood and save limbs, who threw themselves on the suicide bombers? You are,

A Force of Fortitude.

Bundles of Bravery.

and

Cities of Heart.

I pray for peace and understanding, for recovery and solace.

Sunrise + Olive ears

‘Fall back’ felt like ‘fall down’ the day after I changed the clocks out here in Seattle. Especially in the Pacific Northwest, where dark seems darker and light seems harder won in November.

When I woke up yesterday I was instantly confused — I could hear the distant churn of commuters on Aurora but no birds, 4:30?

I had to pee which should have been about 6:00.

Olive buried herself deeper under my arm so according to her clock, we aren’t near 8:00.

When I swung my legs over the side of the bed I buckled under the physical weight of the darkness: I struggled to straighten and almost hobbled to the kitchen. Snapped down the kettle, kneaded my hands, hung from the door frame and stretched out my shoulder. Who owned this body anyways?

Then I glanced at the illuminated clock on my desk: 2:30.

I forgave my fifty-seven years instantly, pitied those commuters just getting home, unplugged the kettle, folded myself back into the still warm envelope of comforter and dog. And slept.

I did not age one hundred years as I believed since complying with daylight savings. Darkness is a trick of the eye, a sleight of hand, a roll of the dial.

I just needed another week to adjust.

I slept the rest of absolution.

I fell hard with a cold ten days ago. A week before I usually get my flu shot. Nothing like the bad respiratory crud to make me realize I am not intrepid, infallible, and capable of all things, all the time.

Grounded, in flannel pajamas (I even walked to the grocery story in them, a new low), living on Advil Cold and Sinus, I had no choice but to take stock: Besides the fact I have way too many knitting projects waiting for my attention, mocking me from baskets and trays, there was no question I needed more structure to finish this second draft. Even more, I know myself — I thrive with the stimulation of other writers. I hammer out the tough issues with my writing tribe on Tuesday nights, but structurally, I am adrift. I missed a lot of the fall workshops arriving back here later than expected. I didn’t want to battle cross-town Seattle traffic one more night for any evening classes. I was going this solo and having trouble getting out of my own way.

In the midst of the every-pocket-full-of-kleenex stage and very aware I housed a stir-crazy Olive, I took a long dog walk with an amazing writing friend around the lake. And Voila. Thanks to her prod, I have jumped into perhaps the most stimulating, organized and challenging workshop yet.

Memoir As Quest at The Hugo House is taught by the stunning Nicole Hardy, author of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin. She knows how to drive the hour. The first workshop — sucking down cup after cup of hot water, lemon and honey from my thermos and trying not to blow my nose right or left — things fell into place. At ten in the morning, no less.

A writer can go in circles, or in my case, keep writing down the rabbit hole. So easy in memoir to lose the directionals that complete the story. She kicked my brain a little north and south and sent me home straight to the notecards and laptop. Just the way I like it.

The cold is gone, I am properly dressed and Olive and I are back in the groove of alternating walks and quiet time. This morning we came across this garden on the way to our Cafe Vita fix (double-cappuccino and a side of dog biscuit) and I am thinking forward.

How can I not with everything, including this gigantic turnip, thriving all around me?

Thanks, Jennifer.

Rose granite birdbath, quarried from Stony Creek, Connecticut. My family  headstones are made from this unusual and beautiful pink-hued stone.

Before I switched gears and headed back to Seattle, I cleaned out the gardens to ready them for winter. Olive and I spent an entire day piling old branches in bins, working compost into the roots of the old English roses, tying up rogue climbing shoots, pruning the blowzy fall blossoms and clusters of yellow and green cherry tomatoes hanging heavy off woody stems. Her nose and beard were caked in dirt and goodness knows what else. My boots were slick with wet leaves. While I worked, I nested my small October harvest into a rough-cut rose granite bird bath that sits at the edge of the garden wall, the stems mingling with a few drops of water, a small feather and a poached worm.

I love October gardening — the sweet smell of leaves, earth full of decay, the tingle of a cooling breeze, the sun low. Perhaps a light sweater. I make a mental list of what I need to remember to do in the spring, what needs a prune first, what needs  deep fertilizing, which plant will have to be staked better in 2016. I tuck the garden away as I tuck summer clothes, folded and pressed and boxed, ready for the next circle of seasons.

I can make order of this garden. Not so my writing.

As a writer, I constantly fight that slightly OCD blood that makes a perfect stack of the garden bins. There is no order to creativity, as much as I set deadlines and line up my paper work. Other inspirations — or in the case of this summer, priorities — slither between my brain and my hands, and I begin to feel perhaps I should set this aside, this journey of putting words and thoughts to paper that someone will want to read. The problems of friends, family and the world seemed so important compared to my personal and self-driven journey. This person whispers:  I missed a deadline. I missed a course I thought was imperative. I missed a month of my writing groups. I’ll never catch up.

A writing friend wrote me an email today and asked at the end, “did you get in any writing?” First I laughed. I don’t even know where five weeks went, between patient advocating, worry and carrying a tray. I know I read thousands of words in the off moments — Elena Ferrante’s deep and complicated four-book series about two women in Italy, Erica Jong’s The Fear of Dying, A window Opens by Elizabeth Egan, Stephen Kieran’s The Hummingbird, the immensely thought provoking Our Souls at Night, by Kent Haruf. I do know the reading kept me thinking; about words, ideas, description, writing.

I sit in the Nest in Seattle this morning and watch my first sunrise over the Cascade mountains since July, look over at my new laptop, hear the dog sigh deep in the softest chair, still recovering from the five-hour flight on Saturday. Through the jet lag I feel something that has been set aside for the last ten weeks: a spark of excitement. I open the shiny cover, type in my password. I take a breath and accept the lesson of perseverance, of dis-order, of flexibility.  And think about you reading this.

What do you want to do that will make you so happy? How will you do this? Can you let this happen?

I suggest you run, don’t walk. You don’t know when your hip will break, your shoulder will freeze, something will grow in your brain besides a good first line.

That spark ignites life. Light it.

The Suzanne Wedel XOXOUT Ovarian Cancer fund has been launched.

Bookshelves, Cuttyhunk Island cottage, 2015

My memoir writing journey in Seattle has not just been about writing down words but has been a wider education in publishing access and feasibility. In 2010, ‘survival’ was the buzzword at the Pacific Northwest Writing Conference. But over the last five years evidence suggests that tangible books are alive and well to a lot of people, that books are not ‘dead’ as predicted with the dawning of downloading and web access and Amazon. Quite the opposite has been happening in the literary garden that is Seattle; my Phinney Ridge neighborhood bookstore has a new owner, savvy to web use, book acquisitions, good scones and is humming with people. Elliot Bay Books posted their best year ever in 2014. Readings at The Seattle Central Library are full to capacity.

To be clear, I mean tangible, weighed books that smell of paper and ink, hold up bookshelves in messy piles, slant sideways against each other, smartly stack alphabetically or weigh just so much that the best way to read them is sitting, legs bent, and rest the spine on your knees. The hardcopy, satiny-paged, carefully chosen font-precise pieces of art that call to me from the other side of the room.

So imagine my excitement: There have been rumors circulating in Seattle literary circles that a new community of books is being assembled. Thank you Jack Bernard, who today posted the most recent update from Crosscut. I can now confirm this is truth: The Seattle Athenaeum, a private library concept inspired and revived by David Brewster, is really happening in January, 2016.

A place that will collect collections. That will host the avid and rabid readers of Seattle, build a membership base that will pay to have access to books they only dreamed about. And a community of people that will put their dollars towards preserving the fine art of words.

What do we know about book collections? When I walk into someone else’s home, probably rudely and definitely unconsciously, I immediately drift over to where books are evident. I tilt my head just so, to the side, and walk slowly sideways while I read familiar and unfamiliar titles and carry on my conversation. I know all about the people in the home in five minutes — not from the hue on the walls, the breed of dog, or the sustainable food on the table. I know them from the books on the shelf. Yes, a Kindle could be lurking by the bedside table. But those of us that line the walls with our favorites tell me everything I need to know. I know how they while away a Sunday afternoon, or an early morning cup of tea, or a sleepless night. These are my people: The ones that put themselves at ease by simply parting the pages and letting the world go. We have held magic in our hands and our minds and discovered the creative stimulating assemblage of letters and thoughts.

So how exciting is The Seattle Athenaeum? Another venue for building the community of books in Seattle is downright fantastic.

Something about getting past forty, sauntering past fifty and barreling headfirst into sixty, I know what I like and I like what I know. The Seattle Athenaeum is another step in the life-pulse of books. I will shake the piggybank and be a piece of the new-old dawning of books in 2016.

And these cottage bookshelves? I just pulled down a book on meditation, a Louise Erdrich and re-read the last Stieg Larsson with the crickets last night.

I know I love these people.

The other side of the room.

Olive, August afternoon 2015

I looked over at Olive this afternoon and all but lay down on the floor. The ‘dog days of August’ are here, the slow, humid torpor of air and heat and cicadas. Oh, to nap. But I am running out of time to finish the stack of books I challenged myself to read this August. The excuse to rise early, read late, haunt the library and demand titles from everyone I meet in June and July.

Yes, August is Reading Marathon Month.

I should be writing. There are two projects burning a hole through my work table. But I like to use August to jump-start my new year of work, to hit the ‘refresh’ button, to sing some new cadences into my head. My personal back-to-school shopping list is eclectic. In the New England stun of heat and moisture, I turn the limp pages and live elsewhere in the words. I fully believe this makes me a better writer. And person.

Wait for it. You want the list. Ok. But you have to promise me you will respond in the ‘comment’ area with some of your reading favorites this summer. Anything. Because while I thought I would publish this blog when the stack was gone, I am being a little sneaky: I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours. Predicted to hit high 80’s next week and I still have a few more days to add to the pile.

Alexandra Dane’s August Reads

The Nightingale – Kristen Hannah

The Backs of Small Children — Lidia Yuknovitch

A God in Ruins — Kate Atkinson

Tinkers — Paul Harding

Euphoria — Lily King

Dead Wake — Erik Larsen

Our Souls at Night — Kent Haruf

Blood on Snow — Jo Nesbo

Blender Girl Smoothies — Tess Masters

A Dream of Summer, Poems for the Sensuous Season

Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Storyteller — Jodi Picoult

The Boys in The Boat — Daniel James Brown (Still unread)

A little fiction, non-fiction, poetry, mystery, food, history and current events. The best. I am grateful for the freedom to plunge.

Where did the pages take you this summer?

Warning: This blog has breasts.

A month ago, while in Seattle, I discovered that a skin tag to the right of my breastbone and on the breast surface had developed into a palpable, skittish lump. I immediately called my gynecologist’s office, and spoke with the nurse on call.

“It looks and feels like a subcutaneous cyst,” I began, “I can lift it, and I see something when I squeeze it.” I have had two removed from my back in the last year, leaving jagged, deep scars. Hence the know-it-all language.

“Stop squeezing it,” she said calmly over the 3,000 miles,”I can get you into the Breast Center — no wait, they don’t have any appointments — how about a doctor — no wait everyone is on vacation — ok the physicians assistant can see you in two weeks.”

Hmmmm. No crisis management available here.

I hung up and went to Green Lake to walk it off.  I envisioned all the worst scenarios. You know what I was thinking, we are all no-degree of separation from this. I do not have genes in my favor. But a curious thing happened on my second lap: I realized I had no control of the organics of this lump. But I had control of my response, my well-being, and my sanity. I jogged a little. I sat on the grass. I took deep breaths.

Never good at following directions, having squeezed the bump fifty times every day, it was difficult to see the problem from the black, blue and yellow breast tissue that covered most of my left breast when I left for Boston two weeks later. Within twelve hours of landing I was on a scale. What? Someone tell me why appointments about breasts begin on a scale, like this isn’t hard enough. What good is that information? And wearing a fetching, faded, open-to-the-front gown, shivering in the frigid AC, perched on a crinkly paper-laid table. After telling the story of the Lump to the intake nurse, I waited alone in the icebox with only breast diagrams to read for twenty minutes. Anxiety nicely elevated, I heard the swish of my chart being pulled, and the physician’s assistant pushed through the door. I then had to repeat the story all over again.

Ok, I reasoned to myself, she wants to hear it from me. But why did I tell the first nurse all the same information? Didn’t anyone have anything else to do around here? I warned her about the bruised tissue — “The color? All my doing” —  before she examined me.  She raised her eyebrows. After the exam, she confirmed the Lump, and the cyst idea. She suggested a dermatologist.

‘But it’s in my breast tissue, shouldn’t I see a breast person?” I asked. Pardon me for vanity. I was going for breast expert AND plastic surgeon if I had to have a knife there.

“Sure,” she conferred, ‘we’ll fax the information over to the breast center, then they will call you in a few days and give you an appointment.”

Well, if there is one thing I have learned, be your own advocate. I left with the phone number and called three minutes later from the car.

After a long wrangle with ‘their new computer system,’ I believed I had an appointment. “I think I have released the time for you,'” the frazzled voice at the Breast Center said. Another week wait. Meanwhile I really tried to stop touching it and checking on the size. Really I did.

Four weeks from the first phone call, I arrived at The Breast Center in Danvers at 12:45 for my 1:00 appointment. Honestly, I sweated the entire way there, not for the obvious reasons — my mind would not stay on the mat — there had been no confirmation call, and there probably wasn’t an appointment, and I’d be waiting another three weeks. Then I gripped the wheel and said ‘Lordy, you have no control over THAT either. Just get to the stupid appointment without an accident.”

Every intake desk was empty but one (lunch break) and the famous new computer system could not find the code for my health care provider and there was no one to ask in the office. After much tapping and apologizing, the consent form finally spit out of the printer twenty-five minutes later and I signed my name.

At 1:30 I was escorted to a room by a suspiciously un-medical looking young lady, then had to recite all my medical history and family medical history while she searched for the right places to click on the large monitor above the keyboard. “New system?” I said conversationally. She never had eye contact, concentrating so hard on the keys.

She then took my blood pressure, snapping the cuff around my arm and dashing back to her computer while it wheezed.

“Did you have coffee this morning? Your blood pressure numbers are a little high.”

“Ummm, yes? a triple espresso?” But the bubble over my head read: “I betcha this number would be high anyways at this point.”

At 1:45, I wrestled my bad shoulder into a teal, open-to-the-front gown, obviously sewn for women with matchstick arms. And waited another thirty minutes. This time, prepared, I ignored the large wall of breast diagram posters labeled ‘benign’ and ‘malignant (take my blood pressure now and you might have to admit me) and read my New York Times.

At 2:30, the physician assistant arrived. I then had to repeat ALL the same information, while she figured out how to enter it into yet another series of files. “Having fun with your new computer system? I’m very familiar with it by now.” I am going to guess I was coming off rude.

I cannot even begin to tell you what I was thinking, even though she was a lovely woman. Is this process secretly testing for Alzheimer’s? Are they comparing answers from Round #1 (How often do you drink? Do you take drugs? Is your home safe?) to see if I remember to answer the same way? Who would tell the truth about drugs anyways? I silently chastised myself for not taking this entirely more seriously, but come on, they weren’t taking my sanity seriously. I had been in the building almost two hours.

Yes, this is a subcutaneous cyst. I learned a malignant lump would cling to the breast wall, not float under my fingers. The breast tissue would pull, or dimple, where the lump situated. And no, I am not supposed to rub, squeeze or push on this cyst (becomes larger, hurts more). Follow up in three months, with an ultrasound and removal if still there.

I don’t like these dress rehearsals. I have been by the side of too many friends that went through the real deal. But stepping a little outside myself, I watched a really dysfunctional, slow and expensive system sort-of deal with what could have been much more dire. I walked through the sliding doors to the parking lot grateful I was young enough, and aggressive enough and calm enough to have made it through.

I inhaled deeply when I got to the car.

Next time? I will hope there isn’t one. But I will probably be more pushy, and more demanding.

People, it’s the only way.

Last weekend I had the privilege of being invited to Grand Lake Stream, Maine, pop. 150, to a friend’s camp at the end of a ten-mile lake. There is not another camp in sight on any horizon. If that wasn’t wonderful enough, I opted out of water sports and had the camp to myself one afternoon. Olive was so tuckered out from scampering up and down the pine needle paths and wading for frogs that as soon as the boat pulled away and I sat down with my book, she fell completely asleep at my feet.

Funny thing. Silence.

Initially, I felt suspended, and maybe a slight bit of tension. My hands were idle. I had absolutely no cell service, my phone off and on my bunk. Nothing moved. There were a few birds busy in the tall pine trees, I sensed as much as heard the folding sound of the lake touching the shore. But mostly — nothing. For a split second I was a little worried. I sat back in my deep adirondack chair and watched the still water. I’m alone in the middle of nowhere, after all. But in a few heartbeats or two, my body let go. My hands rested on the smooth wood. Sun shadows broke over me.

I stopped reading.

I don’t actually remember when I last heard nothing. My writing retreat in Seattle has been under siege with a construction project next door going on a year (earplugs). My town life is full of cars, trucks, dog barking and neighbor improvement projects (fan/air conditioner). My garden fountain spews water 24-7. The refrigerator hums. The washing machine thumps. Car doors slam. My phone buzzes or dings all day long.

What I immediately recognized was how my brain began to expand in the quiet. All the problems that have cluttered up my thinking — wresting over title words, passages that have gotten stale, blog ideas — began leisurely rolling through my head, uninvited. I had nowhere to go, I could just sit there and think, inhaling the smell of bark and dusty pine. In and out. In and out.

Then a word became the answer. Then one had to go. Of course that chapter really doesn’t work.

I never moved, just thought about whatever popped into my head.

Recently I applied to a writing residency in Washington State, to a women’s writing center called Hedgebrook.  Seven women are chosen for seven cabins over a given period of time, to write and share ideas. All meals and housekeeping are provided. If accepted, you have to surrender to your project during the day in silence. Lunch is delivered to the door of your cabin. Dinner is communal.

I hadn’t actually understood how rich that could be until the afternoon began to deepen. Olive rolled over, and the sun lowered slowly through the tips of the trees. I had no sense of how much time had passed. I had written five pages in my notebook — good pages — and I was mentally refreshed in a way no workshop or hour at the computer has ever provided. I wanted to stay for a month in my chair and dream.

I reluctantly clued into the drone of the engine, the laughing shouts from the water skiing boaters. Olive jumped down to chase a small wood mouse to the water’s edge. While the peace and quiet had ended, I was relaxed. Ready for kitchen work and a last swim and good company. I tucked my notebook into my bag, hoping I was tucking some of that quiet in, too.

Moments like this are not lost on me these days: I am determined to find another quiet space, or be invited to Hedgebrook some day, or just remember to rest my hands and let my thinking go where it may. An important and lasting lesson amongst the pine. Solitude is good for me. Thank you friends.