Life as a Garden

I can feel the moisture from the damp grass seeping into the fabric of my jeans as I kneel, pulling up the sunflower seedlings that have sprouted beneath the bird feeder. I push my hair back and accidentally smear a bit of mud across my cheek. A row of house finches sits on the telephone line above my head, calling to one another as they watch me work, waiting for a chance to swoop in and scatter more seeds as they feast.  Sure enough, the moment I stand up and move away they fly in.
 
 It is so early that most of the neighbors are still asleep and as I work it feels as though I have the street to myself. Deadheading the roses, snipping lavender buds to dry, staking up a drooping delphinium, I am alone with my thoughts and I relish the quiet.  

 If you were to ask me if I am a gardener, I would say no. I never quite feel as though I am entitled to own the title. I don’t know enough. The evidence of my mistakes surrounds me each time I step out my back door. That phlox was planted too close to the front of the border. This rose is too shaded. That Hosta is wilting in a spot with too much sun. I am constantly planting and transplanting, adjusting to the demands of my tiny space. I do and then undo and do again. And that, I have decided, is precisely the appeal. 

The harshest lesson life teaches us is that there are few do-overs. We get one chance and then have to live with our mistakes. We make our beds and learn to lie in them. But a flower bed is another story. We make it, unmake it and then make it again. As often as we please. This, I think as I stand and survey what I have done, I can control. There is not much else in my life that I can say that about.
    
Another appeal of a garden is that it gives back. It returns the love we plant into the soil. A garden allows us to chart our progress. This is a rare thing in an ordinary life. Most of us work at marriages, at parenting and careers without the space and leisure to step back and take measure of what we’re doing. It’s only later, sometimes too much later, that we can see our mistakes, but by then its too late. But my garden guides me as I go. Too little water, too much sun, not enough fertilizer and I know. All I have to do is take the time to really look. And then I can make it right.
    
There is a spot on the patio where I can stand and trace the growth of a young tree I planted this spring , measuring its height against the back of the garage on the lot behind mine. Each day its uppermost branches stretch a but more and soon it will be as tall as the structure behind  the fence. The tree will be here long after I’m gone and it pleases me to watch it grow.
   
 I can’t wish away the the physical effects of the years behind me. I cannot undo the mistakes I have made in my life. But what I can do is step out the back door each morning, coffee in hand, and take a good long look at what’s in front of me. And if something isn’t right I can dig right in and start all over again.


Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s writes for The Spokesman-Review. This essay appeared in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Doing nothing? Nothing doing.

       

         The plan was to do nothing. To spend a week enjoying my garden, relaxing in a quiet house and taking advantage of the solitude.

​As usual, I didn’t follow the plan.

For one whole week I was going to have the place to myself and I was going to enjoy my tidy little house and not lift a finger if I didn’t want to. ​

​The problem is, I just can’t sit still that long and almost immediately I was surrounded by a chaos and clutter. 

         For some reason, I can’t remember what I was looking for, I went to the basement storeroom and dug around in a couple of boxes. In the process I unearthed, among other things, a package of slides that had been missing for several years and I completely lost track of time while I held paper-framed squares of film up to the light. Of course I brought the box upstairs with me and soon they were scattered across the top of the dining room table. I didn’t want to put them away again until I got them marked and sorted so they're still there.

​The next day I realized that this would be a good time to wash summer’s dust and dirt out of the slipcovers that cover the sofa and chairs in the living room. Now the room is tumbled with cushions and furniture wearing only its white muslin “underwear.”

​The rug store called to say the old rug I’d bought online and had cleaned was ready, so I picked it up and dropped the long, heavy, rolled carpet in a corner. I’ll put it down after I wrestle the furniture back into the slipcovers. 

​I ran a few errands one day and couldn’t resist stopping by one of my favorite antiques stores. Wouldn’t you know, just as I was leaving with empty hands, one of the dealers walked in with the little bedside table I’d been searching for. I brought it home and put it in place, but now the old table has no place so it’s pushed into a corner until I can take it down to the store room. And I’m afraid of what will happen if I go back down there.

​I woke up one cool morning and pulled out a sweater. I decided, while I was at it, to put away all the linen and lightweight pieces and bring out the rest of my sweaters and winter clothing. It was easier to sort everything while it was all out and soon there was a big pile of giveaway items in the dining room, beside the table still littered with photographs.  

​I watched a movie one night and instead of making a nest on the sofa I organized the linen closet while it played. More sorting and a stack of old towels and sheets added to the giveaway pile.

​I have no one but myself to blame for this mess, but the tidy little house I was going to enjoy is now a wreck. And the book I was dying to read?  Still unopened on the (new) little table by the bed.

​Why is it some of us just can’t sit still? Can’t leave well enough alone? I think of myself as semi-retired. I’ve stopped working full time and have even cut back on my part-time writing assignments. I wanted more free time to take care of myself and the flexibility to enjoy time with my family. But for the life of me, I just can’t get the knack of it. If there isn’t a project, I invent one.

​My solo staycation ends tomorrow. I have a dinner party coming up. And my house is a disaster.

​ I have a lot of work to do, but this time I mean it. I’m going to get everything straightened up, put away and organized and I’m going to leave it that way. 

​Right after I paint the bathroom. I hadn’t noticed how drab it looks.

This essay first appeared in Spokane's "Prime" magazine and in The Spokesman-Review's "Pinch" edition. Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard each week on Spokane Public Radio. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Dream Season in the City of Lilacs

   In the dream I stepped up on the porch of an old house, walked across weathered and warped floorboards and, cupping my hands around my face to block the outside light, peered into one of the clouded glass panes of one of the front windows. Through the dust I could see a few pieces of furniture—a table and chair in the corner, an old bed frame—but it was obvious the house was empty and had been so for a long time.

    I wasn’t sure how I got to the house but I could tell it had once been someone’s home. As I looked around I noticed a tall lilac tree growing at the end of the porch. It was as tall as the house and its leafy branches, heavy with deep purple blooms, spilled over the rail, forming a canopy around the porch swing. The air was filled with their fragrance.
   
    At that point something woke me and as the dream slipped away, fading like a wisp of smoke, I opened my eyes to the sound of robins, the early birds who wake up long before the sun rises, calling “Cheer up, Cheer up” to one another.

    Through the window I watched the sky grow slowly lighter. When a light breeze blew and ruffled the curtains at the window, the fragrance of lilacs trailed through the room and I realized the perfume must have stolen into my dreams and become part of what I was imagining as I slept, the way a newborn’s cries or morning voices on the bedside radio might do. I’d caught the scent and my mind had simply written a story to go with it. Isn’t it wonderful what the human brain can do?

    I lay there as long as I could, unwilling to leave the warmth of my bed, the music of the birds and the faint perfume of the lilacs, before I slipped out of bed and into my day.

    The first lilacs in Spokane were planted almost 110 years ago, when J.J. Browne, one of the city’s founders, planted a pair at his home. Others followed and Spokane quickly adopted the fragrant flower and they were planted at homes in every neighborhood. By the 1930s we were the “Lilac City” and a section of Manito Park was planted as a lilac garden. This time of year it is filled with people who stop what they are doing and come to the park to smell the spring flowers.

    That afternoon, after my walk through the park, I went to the corner of my backyard where lilacs grow. I sat down on my grandmother’s wrought iron bench, under an umbrella of branches laden with cascading blooms, and let the day end as it had begun.

Wild Spokane

   

    I had a bad case of cabin fever. For days Spokane had been cloaked in a dense and heavy winter fog and I’d been buried in the details of a frustrating project that at times seemed as though it would never be wrapped up. I’d been stuck in the house for too long, with only short walks to break the monotony and I needed some kind of distraction. 

    Finally, fed up, I closed my computer, put on my raincoat and boots and clipped the leash to my puppy’s soft harness. We walked out of the front door and by habit turned at the corner in the direction of the park. Mantito Park, this 100-year-old place of gardens and meadows and meandering paths, is where I go when I need respite.  
      
    The fog had deepened with the twilight, turning into a soft rain that fell on my umbrella and settled onto the puppy’s thick curly coat like a jeweled net of glittering raindrops.    

    The windows of the houses we passed on our way glowed and I could see people moving in rooms as they settled in for the evening. They looked like characters in a silent play.

    The dense shrubbery around the pathway of the entrance to the formal garden was blurred by the mist, giving the place a mysterious feel. At that moment I happened to glance up into the low branches of one of the tall trees that line the property and looked right into the wide unblinking eyes of a barred owl as he sat watching me. I stopped in my tracks and for a moment we stared at one another. Then, as if to dismiss me and my silly dog, he turned away and gazed off into the distance.

    He was there watching for a meal and I was just ambling with no particular purpose. His mind was on mouse or rabbit for dinner, prey I’d probably sent scurrying away as I approached. Mine was on work deadlines and family matters and a million other things. And yet, for a moment, our worlds had intersected. 

    Manito Park, for all its groomed and carefully tended elegance, is still— at heart—a wild place. I often see owls and hawks and eagles sweeping over and around the park, their raptor eyes trained on the grassy meadows, scanning for prey. Sometimes I stumble onto a pile of torn feathers and stained snow giving evidence of a meal. I see the tracks of raccoons and the lingering scent of foraging skunks and a large flock of wild turkeys roams the place, parading across neighborhood streets and drawing onlookers as they stroll. 

    In the past there have been wilder visitors, like bears or mountain lions, and as if to prove the point, as I followed the path I noticed what I assumed was an off-leash dog—a particular pet peeve—standing beside one of the shadowy trees at the edge of the meadow. The man and woman on the path ahead of me walked right past the large leggy creature without seeing it but I pulled up, not wanting to encounter a strange animal, especially with a young puppy just learning to navigate the world on a leash. 

    I turned to take another route home and was almost there before it dawned on me that what I’d seen wasn’t a dog at all. Something that big, with legs like that, had to have been a moose. They still wander the park from time to time and sightings are not all that unusual.

    Still thinking about the owl and the moose, noticing the gauzy moon just rising in the east, I walked back to my own house--its windows bright and warm in the chilly gloom--and the puppy and I stepped in out of the cold and damp. We’d had our walk, our exercise, and our brief taste of the wild, and it was enough. The puppy went back to his basket and I went back to my work. And the moon continued its slow climb behind the curtain of the thick wet sky.
       

The Mysterious World of Old Maps

    An old map of Paris hangs on the wall near my bed and it’s often the first thing I see in the morning. I can lie in bed in Washington State and navigate the narrow winding streets of the left bank or the Seine as it curves around the City of Light.
   
    In the hallway upstairs, a large 1981 map of a section of Lower Manhattan takes up most of the wall between doors and I often stop to study it as I pass, tracing my finger along avenues and cross streets, picking out familiar buildings and landmarks. I look at it and remember my first visit to the Big Apple that very same year.

    A vintage map of Italy hangs just inside my back door and on it is the port out of which my daughter sails on her marine geology assignments. Every time I go out I think of her and through the map I connect with my child who is so far away.

     I have many other old maps around the house. They are pinned to my bulletin board, tucked into drawers or slipped between the pages of my favorite books. I love to stumble onto one and stop to study it for a moment.

    In this age of GPS and voice-activated navigation, when my phone or my car can get me wherever I want to go, one clearly enunciated command at a time, I am still drawn to these printed relics and I keep bringing them home.
   
    Some I pick up because they are beautiful, illustrated with elaborate care and tinted by age.  Others because they remind me of places I’ve seen or they inspire me to go where I’ve never been.
   
    But some of the maps in my possession were chosen as much for their mystery as their beauty. Like the WWI era map of Paris and its environs with the name of a British officer of The Queen’s Regiment and the dates 1914-1920 handwritten in ink on the front.

    I found it and bought it online and when it arrived I unwrapped the package and carefully unfolded the 100-year-old paper-on-linen map. Intrigued about the man who’d owned it, I managed to find what appear to be a partial military record for the Captain Francis. The single index card states his medals—the war medals mailed to every veteran— were returned, the package marked with the words “Gone away.”

        Holding the fragile linen and paper remainder of a life I can only imagine, I’m left to wonder what became of the man who must have studied it often as he drove on roads around the city, in a country torn by such a brutal war. Where did he go after the fragile peace was restored?   

    Gone away. Such power in two words. I wonder about Captain Francis’s life after the war. Why did he label his map 1914-1920 when the war ended in 1918? Did he remain in France instead of returning to his life in England? Was he one of those who lost themselves somewhere in the shattered landscape?

    So many questions and so few answers.

    I’ll probably never the mystery of N.B. Francis. I keep looking but so many records of the First World War were destroyed by the second and there is precious little to go on. 
    A man who was a stranger to me lived and died decades ago, but I can still follow his shadow back through time and into a period of history that changed the world. He left a map.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s writes the Home Planet column for The Spokesman-Review. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Spokane in Soft Focus

The fog comes in
on little cat feet

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

    That short poem, Carl Sandburg’s classic American haiku, is the first poetry I remember learning. I must have been in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in the 1960s when rote learning was still part of the general curriculum. Our teacher wrote it across the flat black surface of the blackboard in her perfect looping script. From our desks, we read it out of the books we held in our hands and repeated it in unison, a chorus of high lilting, singsong, voices. 

    The imagery of Sandburg’s “Fog” is elemental and perfectly captures the silent, deliberate movement of fog as it takes over the landscape. That short poem has come to mind numerous times this winter, what has seemed to be an especially foggy winter in Spokane. 

    Each morning I get out of bed before light and make my way downstairs. I take my first cup of coffee and my laptop to my favorite chair next to the fireplace in the living room. The chair faces the big front window and as I write I am able to watch as the day comes to life. 

    Most mornings this winter the light has come on soft and white, shrouded in the heavy mist that sinks from the sky to meet the mist that rises from the river at the bottom of the “hill.” 

    The fog steals through the tall Ponderosa pine trees, wrapping my view in gauze, freezing as it falls onto bare branches, forming a slick sheen on the city’s and streets leaving Spokane in soft focus. Ordinary, familiar, streets and buildings become mysterious as they disappear into or loom out of the fog. Even the birds in the Hawthorn tree in front of my window are filtered, like performers on stage behind a scrim. 

    This time of year we expect snow. We expect to look out the window in January and see fat flakes drifting down and collecting. We expect to shovel the walks and driveway and curse the berms left behind by the city’s plows. But so far, with only a few exceptions, the real snow has stayed away leaving us only the tough grey crust of old snowfall. And winter has replaced it with heavy fog that doesn’t burn off until late in the day, if it burns off at all. Some days the day ends as it began, draped in moisture.

    Winter will come, I’m sure. It always does. The sky will clear and if we’re lucky it will freeze and deliver the snow that piles up on the mountains and then melts into rushing rivers and refills the aquifer that quenches the thirst of a a dry land.

    And then, like a cat that comes and goes as it pleases, the fog will lift on graceful silent haunches and move silently on.   

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com
   

Bird Watching for Beginners

      My husband handed me a large lightweight box to open on Christmas morning and for once he had me stumped. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular and I couldn’t imagine what he’d put under the tree.

When I peeled away the wrapping paper I saw it was an oversized finch feeding station, three long tubes dissected by perches for 24 birds. The big station made the individual feeders I already had hanging--each with no more than 6 perches--look ridiculously small. He helped me fill the tubes with the Nijer seed and with my son's help hung it from a branch in the tree outside the big front window of our Cape Cod cottage. They teased me about the possibility of ever seeing it full of birds. 

But the next morning, as light began to filter through the darkness, I was up and I looked out the front window. There were already a few visitors to the feeder—the proverbial early birds—and by the time the sun was completely up, what sun there was on such a cold grey winter day, there was a busy goldfinch or pine siskin on every perch with at least another dozen flitting around the tree waiting for a turn or trying to bully someone into abandoning their spot.
    
Snow began to fall, drifting into soft piles on the limbs, and the tree was alive with tiny, hungry, beautiful birds.
   
One by one as my son and daughters, home for the holiday, woke up and made their way downstairs, they walked by the window and stopped to comment on what was going on in the branches. Their delight mirrored my own.

On New Year’s Eve we discovered the small frozen body of a bird beneath the feeder. I don’t know if it succumbed to the bitter cold or was the victim of a predator, maybe it died of old age, but after a holiday season that was marked by our family’s own loss, the tableau at the feeder just outside the window was a reminder that life can be unfair, and that even when there’s enough for all, not everyone is strong enough to survive.
    
Now, weeks into the new year, with everyone back to work or away at school I have the house to myself and the birds, the finches, iskins and chickadees are still busy in the tree. They are good company.
   
Writing is a solitary occupation. Most of my work is done alone in a quiet house. The quick, determined movement of the birds as they feed is a welcome distraction when I look up from my computer. Off and on throughout the day I find myself standing in front of the wide north-facing window in my living room, a hot cup of tea in my cold hands, daydreaming as I watch the birds fly in and out of the tree.
    
It is not lost on me that what I am enjoying is actually their struggle to survive. The need to fuel the constant movement that keeps them warm. their constant vulnerability to cats and other predators that stalk and hunt them, mocks my search for the right word or anxiety about meeting some kind of trivial deadline.
     
Every day I watch the birds and they keep a wary eye on me as I stand at the window. And the fluttering on either side of the glass is really nothing more than the work of getting up and going on.
   
Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and public radio stations across the country. She is the author of ‘Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons’ and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Do You Hear What I Hear?

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my daughters and I went to breakfast at the grand Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane. Then, after eggs and bacon and pastries in the elegant ballroom, we walked a few short blocks to the mall. 

We do this every year. It’s how we officially kick off the holiday season. We spend a day in the city to do a little shopping, wave at Santa sitting in his big chair beneath the giant tree, and enjoy the crowd. 

By the time we made it to the toy store, I was tired. My favorite boots were pinching my feet, so I motioned toward the bench in the mall just outside the store and told my youngest daughter that’s where I would be. Her sister was in another store.

“Take your time,” I said, glad for the chance to sit for a minute. “Take as long as you want.” 

While she looked at the art supplies and the model horses, I looked at the people around me. There were busy men and women carrying shopping bags and hurrying from one stop to the next. And there were strollers who were only window-shopping, moving leisurely through the crowd. 

A group of carolers, dressed in Victorian costumes, appeared and began to sing. The songs were old and very familiar to me. I didn’t need a book to sing along, I had heard them since the day I was born. Songs I had sung and songs that had been sung to me for as long as I could remember. 

As I sat on the bench listening, I noticed a man sitting at a table nearby. He didn’t look like the other shoppers thronging the mall. His clothes were dirty and ill-fitting. His hair was too long and shaggy. His shoelaces were tied around his ankles to keep his hand-me-down shoes from slipping off his feet. 

The man was someone who had come into the mall, away from the street, to get in out of the cold. He wasn’t a shopper, he was just passing through. 

When the carolers started singing, the man looked up and then slowly rose and left the table. He moved, a bit unsteadily, in their direction. And it was the way he walked, like a sleepwalker or a toy being pulled by a string, that held my attention. I watched him as he found a place to stand and watch the performers.

The carolers sang one song after another. And the man never moved. He stood there, focused on the four young singers and the music. 

As I studied him, struck by his reaction, I wondered where the music was taking him. I wondered if the old familiar carols filled some empty place inside him. 

I suppose it’s possible he was remembering some really dreadful holidays, when hands were raised, voices were harsh and comfort was in short supply. But I don’t think he was.

When something triggers a memory like that we move away, not toward, the reminder. We duck our heads and hurry past, anxious to get out of the line of fire. But the man in the mall did everything but levitate in the direction of the singers. His face was rapt and open. He was pulled into the music, not pushed away.

My daughter called me to come into the store with her so I got up off the bench and did as she asked. When we came back out into the mall and met up with her sister, the man was gone.

I looked down at my little girl’s face and I linked arms with her sister. I thought about the man. Somewhere, some time, he’d been someone’s little boy. 

I don’t know where he went at the end of the day. I went home. But deep inside us both, we sang the same song.

This column first appeared in The Spokesman-Review in December 2006. 

.

Grounded by Love

My granddaughter walked through the door and ran up to me. 

“You’re not on a plane anymore!” she said as she wrapped her arms around me. I hugged her tightly.

“No. I’m here with you.”

She's growing and she's hungry these days. The first thing she wanted was a snack: Carrots. 

“More carrots, Nana!”

While she ate she chattered, swinging her legs, wrapping her feet around the cared legs of her old oak “youth” chair. I stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots and cutting them into toddler-friendly slices.

After she’d eaten her fill of vegetables and hummus, she asked to take a walk. The day had been cloudy and cool and already the light was beginning to fade. We put on our jackets and she asked to take her balloon along. The shiny orange Jack-O-Lantern was a gift from one of her aunts and she wears it like jewelry.

I tied the end of the ribbon that trails from the mylar balloon around her right wrist, to keep it from floating away as we walked. She also wanted her “flower,” a plastic tie-hanger that surfaced after a closet clean-out. 

The object, white plastic ‘“spokes” that hold and separate a man’s ties, is curved at the end to fit over a closet rod. When held upside down, it looks exactly like a daisy. But you’d never know this, of course, without seeing it through a toddler’s eyes. 

So, ornamented with the pumpkin balloon, holding the plastic “flower,” we stepped out into the chilly late-afternoon air. 

She automatically turned toward the park, heading for the playground we visit most afternoons, but I knew our light jackets wouldn’t be enough as the temperature dropped. So I steered us in the opposite direction, down the street and deeper into the neighborhood.

She slipped her hand into mine and I tucked my sleeve over us like a glove. As we walked she chattered the way small children do. She stopped to look at the maple leaves collaged across the sidewalk, exclaiming at the yellows and reds. A dog barked and she stopped to look around, trying to pinpoint the “Boof.”

At the corner, intimidated by the ribbon of headlights threading up and down the hill, she stopped and pressed closer to me.

“Too many cars!” she said and tightened her grip on my hand.

We waited for a break in the home-from-work traffic and crossed the street. The next block is canopied by tall sycamore trees, a tunnel of gold this time of year, and the lawns and sidewalks are littered with fallen leaves. Some homeowners had cleared their sidewalks but others hadn’t yet caught up and in places the leaves were ankle-deep. I waded in and kicked my way through. This startled her. She stopped, again, and looked down at her feet. Then she did the same thing, pushing the leaves ahead with each step.

“We are kicking leaves!” she shouted. “We kick the leaves!”

We walked another block and then crossed to the other side of the street and turned back toward my house. Again and again we plowed through leaves when we found them and she laughed out loud each time.

We crossed the busy street again, not so threatening now that the rush was over, and, what with one interesting thing after another, it took another quarter of an hour to walk the last block home. 

 I was, I realized, in that shining second, as happy as I have ever been. I’d been given the gift of uncomplicated time with a small child, something I’ve missed since my own have grown up and away. 

 I have always been a little afraid of the secret part of me that is not unlike the balloon tied to my granddaughter's wrist. I could have floated away, drifting from one adventure to another, but my children were my ballast. In becoming a mother I chose to tie myself to them and that grounded me. And now, when I am free again, able to fly if I want to, I find myself making the same choice again.

We walked up the front steps, past the pumpkin on the stoop, and through the front door. Still holding hands we stepped into the warmth of the house. That must have triggered something in her memory because she turned to me again.

“You’re not on a plane anymore,” she said with a smile.

“No. I’m here with you,” I replied, smiling down at her. 

And of all the wonderful places I have ever been, of all the places I would like to go, none is, or could ever be, as fine as where I was at that moment.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

The Weight of Words

        

        Lately, I have been editing my collection of books, thinning the shelves, lightening the load of reading material I’ve accumulated over the last decade or so.

Each day I take an empty shopping bag, the sturdy fabric kind with strong handles, down to the storeroom in my basement and I bring it back up full of books. I take the heavy bag to the “used book” counter at the bookstore downtown. They take what they want, give me store credit and I donate the rest to a favorite charity. This has been going on for a couple of weeks now. Over and over again I descend to the storeroom and return with as much as I can carry away. 

I have never been one to resist a good book. It’s not in my DNA. I pick them up at garage sales, at bookstores--new and used-- at airports and library sales. I’m swayed by an illustration, a subject, a cover, an author. I hold the book in my hands and in my mind’s eye I can actually see myself reading it, swathed in afghans, sipping tea, reclining on the chaise lounge in my room. Each book holds the promise of a few moments to myself, the chance that it will improve me, educate me, enthrall me. So I am sold. Then, the book comes home to sit beside my chair, gather dust beside my bed until it is read and, finally, rest on the shelves in my basement. Sometimes I buy a book because someone I know might like it but I either forget to give it to them or realize it wasn’t the right gift after all, and on the shelf it goes.

Every once in a while, when the weight of books becomes too much for the shelves ------and my conscience--to support, I hold myself accountable for the clutter and decide what I will keep for a bit longer and what I will let go.

Some of the books on those shelves are old friends. They are my family. Those books will stay there until I’m the one carried out of the house. Others were impossible to resist at the time, but they’ve lost their appeal.  Some were fun to read but not something I want to keep forever. Others--the travel guides and how-to books, for instance--are obsolete and others are no longer up-to-date. Into the bag they all go. Carrying one bag at a time up the stairs, I feel like I’m secretly tunneling my way out a fortress of words.

Of course, there is that store credit. And I have already brought home one or two new books from my book-selling trips. But that’s something to worry about in a few years. When the shelves fill up again.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap’s weekly column is published by Spokesman.com. Her audio essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the U.S. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” (available at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane) and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

Darling I love you, but give me 5th Avenue

Any day of the week Alaska Airlines flights are busy ferrying people from Spokane to Seattle. It's where we go to play, to get away and, for many of us, to get a little work done.

I decided to go over the day before the meeting and do a little shopping before the lunch on Tuesday. (I had a pocket full of Nordstrom Notes I'd been saving all year I and wanted to hit the Rack while I was in town.)

Two things drew me to the Red Lion 5th Avenue: it was right in the heart of downtown, close to Pike Place Market and the stores I wanted. And, it was a way to stay "local" even when I'm out of town.

Red Lion Hotels is headquartered in Spokane. I figure booking a room at a Red Lion Hotel helps my local economy, even if it's in a small way.

It was my first time at the 5th Avenue and I couldn't have been happier. My room looked out over Elliott Bay and the iconic market sign and the bed was comfy.  I was able to check in early, shop, have dinner and then sleep in before heading out to my noon meeting. It was like a mini-vacation with a little work tossed in for good measure.

In the past I've booked a last-minute room wherever I could find the best deal, and I usually had to walk or take the rail around town. From now on, to quote Zsa Zsa Gabor, just give me 5th Avenue.

Beautiful Bern: Switzerland in Spring

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

This time last year I was in Switzerland. One of the places I visited was the beautiful city of Bern. It was as if a fairytale city I'd imagined as a child had come to life. The narrow winding streets led from one lovely view to another. The Aare River curled through the city and green hills surround the beautiful valley.

As it happened, I was there on the day of the Grand Prix, the annual footrace that brings thousands of men, women and children to dash through the city.

Here in Spokane, we have something similar. Bloomsday fills the streets with people of all ages running and walking the 7 kilometer race. Just as so often happens in Spokane, the Bern Grand Prix was held on a day that turned rainy and cool. But the overcast skies simply highlighted the green lushness of the landscape.

In this month's Spokane Cd'A Woman magazine, I wrote about Bern and the similarity--at least the athletic similarity-- to Spokane. You can find that story here.

Snow and Solitude

(Photo by Cheryl-Anne Millsap)

After teasing us for weeks, winter finally swept in and across Washington State, carpeting Seattle before crossing the Cascades to settle on Spokane.

As I shoveled the driveway and sidewalks, clearing away the day's accumulation, I was reminded of the gifts of silence and solitude that sometimes fall with snow.

You can read my Spokesman-Review column here: The Solitude of Snow

Chocolate souvenirs

In a box in the basement, there are four baskets. Easter baskets. Each of my children has had their own basket since their first Easter. Always filled on Easter Morning with the usual fare: chocolate bunnies, Peeps, stuffed animals, trinkets and treasures.

The children are grown now. Well, almost. The only one left at home is the "baby" and she is 15.
I don't stay up late stuffing plastic eggs to be hunted the next day. I don't buy stuffed animals. No one wakes up at dawn ready to go outside to hunt for the basket left by the Easter Bunny. No one relishes the idea of chocolate before breakfast because for all I know they eat chocolate for breakfast - or cold pizza and leftover beer - every day. They are on their own, after all.

Last year I filled a big basket with all kinds of chocolate and candies and then let my children pick what they wanted to take away with them when they returned to their own homes or went back to school. I decided to do it again this year.

I woke up this morning to find my son asleep on the sofa. He'd slipped in in the wee hours without saying a word. While he slept around the corner of the doorway, I pressed a pot of coffee and filled the basket with chocolate eggs, gummies, licorice, toffee and milk chocolate bars from Iceland. It was all hand-carried on the plane and tenderly transported home.

To me, there is great significance in the basket on the table today. It marks the changes in the way we live. They make their way home to me and I welcome them with souvenirs of places I wandered off to while they were gone.

Missoula, Montana

Looking for a little fun, we drove over to Missoula, Montana for the day.





We left Spokane early enough that we were able to make it to Missoula around lunch time. The drive, as always, was beautiful.