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. 

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Ebenezer's Ghosts Still Carry the Spirit of Christmas

This column first ran in The Spokesman-Review in 2007 under the headline Revisiting Scrooge.
This week, losing the fight with a miserable cold, I decided to surrender and rest. I turned off my phone and crawled back under the covers with my copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. When I finished the book I may not have lost the cold but I was warm and comfortable and filled with the spirit of Christmas.

 I pulled the book off the shelf, plumped up the pillows on my bed and settled in for a good read. The book is old, almost 100 years old, and the pages are dog-eared and as brown and fragile as dried leaves. I’ve had it since I was a girl.

Alone in the room, a blanket over my feet, I opened it and read the first line: “Marley was dead; to begin with.”

Six little words and I am deep in a familiar landscape.

Over the years I’ve picked up my old copy of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol many times. I don’t read it every year – I should – but I do try to read it often enough to retain the feel of the piece. There’s simply nothing else like it.

This year, like every other time, I was struck by the power of the bleak and frigid scene described. By the vivid images painted by words.

You know the story … It is Christmas Eve, but that doesn’t matter to Ebenezer Scrooge. He doesn’t keep the holiday. Scrooge is a cold man, frozen by the coldness within him. He is a bitter and lonely and miserly man who has forsaken every human comfort. He eats only what he needs to live. He has no use for celebration or financial – or emotional – extravagance. He is, Dickens tells us, as self contained and solitary as an oyster.

By the time I’d finished the first chapter I was so deeply absorbed that when I looked up I realized I had burrowed down under the comforter until it covered me completely. It was even draped over my head.

When I peeked out, still under the spell of the book, thinking of the “piercing, biting, searching cold” of London streets, I half expected to see my breath hang in the air like little clouds. But the lamps were on and the room was warm and cozy.

I covered my head and went back to my book. I was swept up in the visits by the spirits. By the quiet dignity of Bob Cratchit. By the gradual softening of Scrooge’s heart.

I was interrupted and had to put the book down and I didn’t pick it up again for a few days. When I did, I fell quickly back into the story and read it to the end.

It’s a shame about Scrooge. Oh, I don’t mean what happened to him the night the spirits came to show him the error of his ways. I mean what has happened to him in the more than 160 years since he was created by Charles Dickens.

To most people, Ebenezer Scrooge is a cantankerous character from a movie or a cartoon. He is an actor dressed in stylized Victorian garb, a caricature of greed and heartlessness. He scowls and spits Bah Humbug to anyone who approaches. He is a symbol of penny pinching and stinginess. The lack of Christmas spirit.

But the real Scrooge only comes alive when you read the book. That’s when you see the deepest message in the tale. It wasn’t just his greed and lack of charity that nearly destroyed the man. It was the isolation. The lack of human closeness and comfort. His world drew in tightly around him and he learned “To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.” He forgot how to be tender. He grew hard and flinty. He became “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.”

That is what the spirits revealed to him. When he saw the damage done to himself and others, Scrooge begged to be allowed to make amends. And his gift – his Christmas miracle – was that the night was rewound and he was allowed a fresh start.

For the rest of his life, “Scrooge was better than his word,” Dickens tells us. “He did it all and infinitely more.”

Tonight is Christmas Eve. The night when each of us, in our own way, is visited by the ghost of Christmas present and that yet to come. And when, like poor old Ebenezer Scrooge as he clung to the ghost of Christmas past, we will be “conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys and cares long, long, forgotten.”

God bless us every one.

Holiday reality isn't wrapped with ribbon and pretty paper

 

 This column appeared in The Spokesman-Review on December 5 2005, and is one of my most popular public radio audio essays. I think that's because it addresses something most of us learn sooner or later: Life, even when we wrap it in pretty paper and decorate it with bows and ribbon, isn't always pretty. CAM

My daughter came to me fighting back tears. She hovered at my side for a moment before drooping dramatically and bonelessly, the way girls do so well, onto the sofa beside me.

“What’s wrong,” I asked, warily because I never know what’s coming.

“I don’t know,” she said with a long sigh. “Christmas just isn’t the same anymore.”

It was my turn to heave a deep sigh. There were still Thanksgiving leftovers in the refrigerator, for goodness sake. It wasn’t even December.

I offered hugs and sympathy, and gave a little pep talk about how we see things differently as we age and it’s really up to us as individuals to make any day, not just the holidays, wonderful, but what I wanted to say was, “Oh yes it is. Christmas is exactly the same.”

The truth is the picture-perfect Christmas my child was pining for never really existed. It was the magic castle at the top of a fairytale beanstalk that I planted for her.

She was blissfully unaware of the times the checkbook wouldn’t balance or I was reduced to tears over a must-have toy that couldn’t be found anywhere in town.

She didn’t worry about the tree that died weeks before Christmas and stood in the living room like ornamented kindling.

It all looked perfect to her.

In some ways the holiday season is a beautiful but empty package. We’re driven by the belief that we can create this one perfect day, or season, and the warmth generated by it will carry us through the rest of the year. We spend, bake and shop. We decorate around worry, unhappiness and dissatisfaction pretending they aren’t there.

As my daughter rested her head on my shoulder, I recalled a conversation with a friend. We met for coffee, and she told me she was getting a divorce. “The thing is, the marriage has been over a long time” she told me, slowly stirring the lukewarm coffee in her cup. “But every year I’d make this gut-wrenching decision to leave and then I’d think about the holidays, and I just couldn’t do it.”

It was bad enough to know she was ruining her children’s lives, but the holidays, too? That was too much.

Facing the truth that the divorce would tarnish every Christmas, and every other special occasion the family would celebrate in the future, she surrendered. It was that important to her.

Year after year she put on another perfect Christmas for a family that was broken but just didn’t know it.

Finally, no amount of scotch tape and silk ribbon could keep it all together. The marriage fell apart, she left – in the summer – and the family learned how to do things, how to do everything, differently.

It wasn’t pretty or perfect, and it wasn’t easy, but it eventually worked. She told me later, after she had remarried and reconciled with the child who had struggled the most with the situation, that if she hadn’t been so focused on making perfect memories for her children she might have made better decisions about a lot of things.

As I petted and consoled my daughter I tried to tell her what we so often gloss over this time of year: the truth.

Nothing shines quite as bright in real life as it does in our memory.

Growing up is hard because it means our eyes are opened to what a gift box won’t cover. We make peace with what was and what is and, eventually, move on to caring more about making the ones we love happy.

What I wanted to tell my child, but I’m not sure I got across, is that the real gift of any season is learning to find a way to see the magic in the holidays – in every day – even when you know better.

Falling into Winter

I was standing on the walkway in front of my house, watering the climbing roses that grow along the big front window, when I began to pay attention to a particular sound. I couldn't quite place what I was hearing. It was like raindrops but the sky was big and blue, without a cloud. It was like a wave of applause, but I was alone on the street. 

Still listening,  I stopped and looked around and realized it was the sound of leaves falling. Not just a few autumn leaves, drifting lazily down to the ground. It was a shower of big, curling, gold leaves from the towering horse chestnut trees on the corner. 

There was no wind to shake them free, but one after another the leaves on the uppermost branches simply let go, dropping straight down with purpose, sometimes knocking down leaves on lower branches as they went.

I stood where I was for a moment, struck by the show. The cascade of broad papery leaves increased as more and more leaves fell to the ground.

It was as if the big trees had simply shrugged them off, like weary mothers tired of clinging leafy children. 

The spiked husks holding the smooth brown chestnuts had already fallen and for weeks the squirrels had been busy, running across wires overhead, holding the prize in their mouths as they hurried back to the cache with more provisions for winter. I'd watched them bury chestnuts in my flower beds and in the potted plants around the patio. We’d gathered a big bowl to put out as squirrel treats in the deepest part of winter, to make amends for the nuts I’d taken out of the pots on the patio.

All that remained of the trees' industry of spring and summer and early fall--the unfurling of soft green, the messy blooms, the abundance of chestnuts--were the golden leaves. And now, one after another they fell from the branches and collected around my feet. 

I pulled my phone from my pocket and recorded a short video, a private movie of a splendid moment. 

How often had I looked up and commented that the trees seemed to have shed their leaves overnight. One day the canopy of color was there and the next it was gone. 

I felt fortunate, as is so often the case with nature, to have been in the right place at the right time to see something beautiful. In just minutes, the branches were bare with only the most tenacious leaves left behind. All was quiet again. 

I could imagine each tree heaving a great sigh. Her work was done for the year. Now she could rest. Now she could sleep.  

The calendar might disagree but I could not argue with what the trees were telling me. Fall is over and winter is coming. 

I walked back to my own yard, back to the roses, kicking at the leaves on the ground just to see them to scatter, and I thought about the things we see and the things we miss as we go about our day.

Before long the city's sweepers will scour the street and take away the litter of leaves. One morning, any day now, the gold will be gone and we will wake to the season's first snow, to a dusting of winter white on bare black branches. 

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

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

My Life as a Superhero

    The square of purple cotton, a dinner napkin, is always out because the minute she arrives at my house--Nana’s house--she demands it. What might look like a simple piece of cloth, meant to keep the crumbs off my lap, is to her as good as a set of wings. It is the source of her power.

    When she asks, I fasten it to her collar or the back of her dress with one of those clips you use to close the potato chip bag, and she immediately starts running in a circle, looking over her shoulder to see if the fabric is billowing behind her. Satisfied her cape is functioning as it should, she turns, puts her hands on her hips and her face up to the sky and bellows  “SUPER HERO, on the way!”

    She runs and runs--“flying” and shouting--until she’s distracted by something: a butterfly, an airplane, a dog barking on the other side of the fence. 

    Really, everyone should spend time in the company of a 2-year-old. There is no creature more fierce, more determined or more charming. Most 2-year-olds walk an invisible line between reality and imagination and they’re always honest. Don’t ask a 2-year-old how your hair looks unless you really want to know.

    A 2-year-old is fast. Last week she watched me pick a spent bloom on the rose that climbs the corner of the house last week and before I could stop her she’d stripped the rest of the buds off the branch.

    A 2-year-old is unpredictable. We were tossing her big blue ball to one another when, like some kind of miniature NBA star, she whirled, rocketed the ball across the patio and bounced it off the fat belly of one of the cats who’d been sprawled on his back, sleeping away the hot afternoon.  The cat, while uninjured, was sorely aggrieved. 

    Want to see pleasure at its most basic? Watch a two-and-a-half year old eat crackers and honey.

    A 2-year-old is strong. Her hands are small but she can still manage to squeeze the nozzle of the hose with enough force to soak me the minute I turn my back.

    My 2-year-old granddaughter rations hugs and kisses and when she says no, she means it. Conversely, when she’s feeling affectionate she shows it with a spontaneous full-body hug, wrapping her arms and legs around you, patting your back.

    A 2-year-old is an inspiration. The other day I finally finished a complicated project, an assignment that had been a source of stress for weeks. I sent it on its way, closed my computer and walked out to the garden, happy to be done with something so difficult. 

Sitting in my favorite spot, watching a hummingbird dip into the petunias in a corner of the garden, I could see the baby’s “cape” where she’d left it a few hours before. 

    It made me smile. Somewhere deep within me, the little girl who lives there still did just what my 2-year-old granddaughter would do. I didn’t wear her cape, I didn’t get out of my chair and run in circles, but I did turn my face up to the sun. I stretched my arms and legs and celebrated my superpower to get the job done.

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 Sweetest Gift of Summer

When I was a girl, after dinner and after chasing lightning bugs to fill the mayonaise jar I would put beside my bed so I could watch them flicker and blink until I fell asleep, I would sometimes lie on my back in the field next to my house and watch the stars come out. 

Never mind that the grass stuck to my sweaty legs and mosquitoes hummed in my ears, it was a fine show. Later, as a mother with young children, we piled onto a daybed on the patio and counted satellites and shooting stars, calling out each time we spotted one.

Now, with no lightning bugs to catch and no small children to keep me company, it is my habit to end the day on a lounge chair on the patio behind my house. I stretch out and stare at the sky until one by one the stars start to appear. The other night, as I lay there, I looked up between two pine trees in my neighbor’s yard and noticed a star just at the inner edge of one of the trees. Something distracted me and I looked away but when I looked back at the space between the trees, I noticed the star had moved, or, to be more precise, the planet on which I was lazing, had moved. The star was not as close to the tree as it had been. Time, and the star, had moved on while I was lost in thought.

This was no surprise. All throughout the day I look at my watch or the clock on my computer and I’m surprised to see how many minutes have flown while I was working or daydreaming. But alone in the dark, the ability to mark the passage of time by the stars was somehow satisfying. An ancient pleasure.

The neighborhood grew quiet as everyone left their backyards to move indoors. The parade of people walking dogs to the park on the sidewalk in front of my house ended. The cats gave up chasing insects in the grass and were curled up beside my chair. My little dog was snoring at my feet. 

I could, if I listened closely, hear the sounds of traffic in the distance; a siren wailed somewhere downtown, a plane flew overhead.  Slowly, steadily, the moved star to the other tree. And then it was gone.

Making my way indoors, putting away the cushion so the cats wouldn’t take the chair as soon as I left it, picking up the book I’d been reading that afternoon, I closed the door behind me. But n a way I could never have been when I was a girl, and was often too busy to comprehend when I was a young mother, I was aware of the sweetest gift: time.

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

100th Anniversary of The Great War

Photo: Members of the A.E.F 316th Engineers march into Ypres, Belgium. Taken by a soldier from Havre, Montana.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. On August 4, 1914, England declared war on Germany.

The war was sure to be over by Christmas so men rushed to join up, to get in on the fun before it was over.

But that was before the battle of Marne. Before the first of the three major battles at Ypres. Before the first trenches were dug in September.

Christmas 1914 came and went. There was the 9-month horror of Gallipoli. The Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine. The battle of Verdun took 700,00 lives and at the end of Battle of the Somme more than one million men were dead. 

The “little” war didn’t end for another four years. Men lived in filth and unimaginable conditions in deep trenches, dug in between fields of barbed wire and death and they died in horrifying numbers while gaining little ground. The United States entered in 1917 and in the remaining 18 months of the war we lost more than 100,000 men, almost half due to the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. 

By the time peace was restored by the 1918 Armstice, parts of France and Belgium were a wasteland and more than 37 million men, women and children were dead due to injury, disease and starvation. Countless more were broken, "shellshocked" by the experience.

I’ve been reading The Guns of August, Barbara W. Tuchman’s Pulitzer prize-winning book on the events--the posturing, baiting, catastrophic bungling and arrogance of leaders--that brought about the beginning of the end of the world as it had been. A war that was so terrible, so brutal and, with the toxic combination of modern weaponry and archaic tactics, so inhumane, that by the time it ended an entire generation was lost. 

The book is fascinating. It’s well-researched and incredibly well written--Tuchman’s style is fluid and eloquent and her narrative brings the events leading up to the declarations of war on August 4, 1914 to life. 

But it is impossible to read it and not draw some chilling parallels to the modern political machinations in the headlines. Tyrants, bullies and zealots didn’t disappear when the trenches were filled. Before the ink was dry in 1918, the seeds of the next great war had been planted. And the wars that followed.

And here we are today, a century later, not much wiser. 

History is fascinating but what it ultimately reveals about human nature is discouraging.  To some, power alone is never enough. They want a war.  They need a war. The lesson that never seems to stick is that no one ever really wins a war, not even the victor. 

Here it is, another August, 100 years after the First World War. Just a few weeks ago we marked the 70th anniversary of D-Day, another series of epic battles in another part of France during the Second World War. And yet dangerous lines are still being drawn in the sand, secret alliances are being formed and deals are still being struck behind closed doors. 

I’ve had to put the book down for a few days. I needed a breath of fresh air because every word reminds me that even as we make history, we never seem to let it teach us anything.

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

Royal Canadian Air Force to the Rescue

On my July cruise from Seattle to Alaska aboard the Carnival Miracle, (read more about that here) there were two medical emergencies that required assistance from both the U.S. Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Air Force. In both cases passengers were transported from the ship to hospitals on shore. 

The first was pretty straightforward. A U. S. Coast Guard boat pulled alongside the Miracle near the entrance to Tracy Arm Fjord and the passenger walked down the gangplank and onto the boat. 

The other was not so simple. In dense fog and battling 25 knot winds, the 422 Transport and Rescue Squadron’s CH-149 Cormorant helicopter crew, using night vision goggles, had to hover just above the bow, lower a cable and a diver to the deck, secure the cable, hoist one of the ship's medical staff to the copter followed by the sick passenger and then the diver. I watched from a deck just below the helicopter and it was intense. 

The airlift procedure took almost an hour and the pilot's skill was impressive. 

With thousands of people on a floating hotel, it's not uncommon to have medical emergencies arise. I've been on ships that had to detour to meet an ambulance or medical transport, but standing in the wind and fog on the deck of the Miracle as the helicopter hovered overhead was a new experience. I hope I’m never in need of that kind of rescue, but, if it happens, it's nice to know the experts are at the ready.

Just born this way

   I found this 2nd Grade letter in some papers my grandparents had saved.  I'm guessing we were told to write a letter to our parrunts and I was living with them at the time.

   I have no memory of writing the letter so I don't know what was on my mind at the time, but after formally inquiring about my sister and brother (who lived there with me, as a matter of fact) I got right to the point. It would would seem there was waerk to be done and I was willing to do it. I would do the work like Daniel Boone. 

   This morning I sat down to make a to-do list.  And even as I wrote it, I was aware that more than half the list was made up of projects I've assigned myself, things no one is making me do. 

  Are worker bees born or made? I guess it's in my DNA. I can't change who I am. But I did change one thing. A year or so after I wrote this note, when someone checked my birth certificate, I learned I'd been spelling my name wrong.  My mother had forgotten that my Anne had an 'e' on the end.

  Ok, enough about the letter. I need to get back to work.

A room of my own and all the time in the world

   I want a tree house. I want a play house. I want a fort with a cardboard sign on the door that says Keep Out. I want what Virginia said. I want a room of my own.

   On the surface, it’s a ridiculous wish. After all, now that the children are gone, and the youngest is either away at school or away at her job as a camp counselor, I have the whole house to myself every day without anyone here to distract me. I can work in any room--or all of them if I want to--but it isn’t a longing for space that creeps up on me. It’s a longing for my own space.

Anyone who works from home knows how it is. The rooms around me are full of distraction. Too many years of being the cook and bottle washer, of fitting my work into the time leftover after the family’s needs were met, have left me struggling to separate myself from that previous life. 

  I sit down to write and suddenly remember the laundry that needs to go into the dryer or on the line. I need to edit but it’s 3pm and I have no idea what we’ll have for dinner. I want to sit quietly and think but the sofa is covered in dog hair, again, and I know if I don’t get it now it will only get worse. The grandbaby wants to come to Nana’s and Nana drops everything.

I do a lot of traveling these days. I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms or staterooms aboard ship. If I’m not exhausted, I can get a lot done there and it finally dawned on me that I’m more productive because I don’t feel pulled to keep house or take care of anyone else.

I put my towels back on the rack and my belongings in the suitcase or closet. Beyond that, my time is my own. 

Like anyone who transitions from one life to another, I’m slowly retraining. I’m working on breaking the habit of writing at night, a necessity when I had a house full of children. Now, I keep banker’s hours. Well, I try.

I remind myself the world won’t end if my husband comes home and has to make a sandwich or salad for dinner. It doesn’t matter to him, I’m the one who feels guilty if we end up with scrambled eggs and toast.

Now that it’s summer I keep thinking about the big Hackberry tree in my backyard when I was a girl. It was ancient and its limbs sprawled away from the massive trunk, casting shade across my grandparent’s house. The remains of my mother’s treehouse were still in the crook of the two biggest limbs, a platform of splintery boards that curled at the ends. Once my weekend or summer chores were done, usually dusting, watering plants or sweeping the front porch, I would shimmy up the slats nailed to the tree, often with a book tucked under my arm, and hide away. My younger brother and sister couldn’t follow me and my grandmother, probably relieved I wasn’t hanging on her heels, left me alone.

From that perch I could watch the world go by. Or daydream. Or lose myself in my book.

I think that's why I want my treehouse back. I want my own playhouse. I want a room of my own where I can hide away with nothing but my laptop and an idea and all the time in the world. 

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

Navigating the Northwest on the S.S. Legacy

I've driven along the great Columbia River and I've looked out on the gorge from the observation car of an Antrak train. I've flown over the river in a plane and by helicopter. All of these modes give a great view of the river but until a few weeks ago I'd never actually been on the river. 

That changed when I boarded Un-Cruise Adventures S.S.Legacy in Portland for a 7-day cruise up the Columbia and Snake Rivers. 

The small-ship Heritage excursion was much more than a week on the water. It was an immersion into the history and culture of the Northwest. 

I've traveled with Un-Cruise Adventures before, on a similar small-ship excursion in Alaska. I wasn't sure what to expect on the river cruise but I quickly realized I was going to have the same kind of immersive, authentic, experience. 

Unless you've experienced the dramatic changes in the landscape as you move from the Pacific Northwest to the interior of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, it's hard to comprehend. 

As we passed through the series of locks and dams that have tamed the wild, fierce, river I heard people talking about the view. 

With a maximum of 92 passengers, the S.S.Legacy is intimate and informal. The food is outstanding and each day as the chef announced the meals for the day, it just seemed to get better and better. (This is another Un-Cruise hallmark.)

Wine and spirits are included in the cost of the cruise and each evening's cocktail hour was a great way to get to know the other passengers. 

Captain Dano Quinn's open bridge policy added another dimension to the trip. My husband loften walked up there after dinner to sit and talk with the crew as they navigated. 

We took advantage of the ship's library and I noticed quite a few others refreshing their Lewis and Clark history while we followed in the footsteps of the Corps of Discovery. 

Each day brought a new encounter. 

From the Native Americans who lived there for centuries before the first fur traders ventured into the area. From Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery, to the men women and children who traveled the Oregon Trail, we explored museums and historic sites. Costumed interpreters on board brought to life the lives of historical figures and everyday people whose life stories were entwined in the development of modern life in the region.

By the time we returned, I knew much more than I'd known when we departed and I had a deeper, richer, understanding of my own back yard. 

 

Un-Cruising the Columbia River

There is something to be said for being a tourist in your own back yard. Especially when you live in a place like the Northwest, a region rich with a diversity of stunning landscapes. 

That's what drew me to the Un-Cruise Adventures Columbia River and Snake River cruise aboard the S.S.Legacy. 

I've travelled the route between Portland and Spokane many times. I've gone by train, automobile and by air. The missing mode of transportation was water. I'd never navigated the river by boat. 

This week I'm cruising the Columbia and a portion of the Snake River on a beautiful 1890s replica coastal steamer.  

So far, the trip has been wonderful. We're following in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark and I'm in the company of smart, adventurous, enthusiastic travelers from across the United States. They ask good questions and have interesting stories to share. 

This is the third day and we've passed through four locks and watched the landscape change from the verdant green of the Pacific Northwest to the arid high desert of the east side of the Cascades Range. 

We spent time off the boat yesterday, exploring Multnomah Falls and the power house and fish ladders of the Bonneville Dam. 

Today, we're heading to the junction of the Snake River. It's been a great trip so far. 

(Not) Far From the Crowd: Cruise Zen

I'm doing a story on themed cruises and that has me in Miami onboard the Carnival Ecstasy for the Martina McBride performance as part of the Carnival Live concert series. 

The ship departs this afternoon for a four-day cruise with stops at Key West and Cozumel. 

After checking in and boarding at noon, I have a little time to kill until my room's ready at 1:30. I could have gone to the lunch buffet on the Lido Deck but I'm still full from breakfast. So, I looked around for a quiet spot and I found one: the Blue Saphire Lounge. This is where Martina will be performing on Thursday night. It will look a lot different then. 

One of the most common reasons people give for not cruising is the idea of being in such close quarters with the 2,000-3,000 people on board. That's valid. I don't care for crowds either. Just ask my family. I have a Do-Not-Disturb bubble around me the size of Manhattan.

 

But I love to cruise because I've discovered it's always possible to find a quiet corner somewhere. The crowds are on the Lido Deck or around the pool. When I need a break, I go to another part of the ship. 

Like now. 

While the rest of the passengers board the ship, I'll enjoy the peace and quite and get a little work done. 

Like this. 

What Comes and Goes: Organizing Your Travel Essentials

   There is a set of five drawers built into the wall of the guest room of my 1940‘s Cape Cod house. That’s where I stash all my travel things.

   Whenever I pack for a trip, I know I can find what I need in one of those drawers and what I pick up along the way comes home with me and is stashed there. That means, after a busy year of travel, the drawers are stuffed, crammed with luggage tags, eye masks, adapters, hotel amenities, little cosmetic bags from airlines, tubes of lip balm and toothpaste, refillable 3 oz bottles and all the other travel-related odds and ends one collects.

   It’s interesting what we rely on to make travel more comfortable and what we bring back with us. I have a stash of airline socks from overnight international flights and tiny sewing kits from hotels; one makes long flights more comfortable and the other keeps me supplied with spare buttons. I always keep one or two hotel shower caps in my cosmetic bag and I’ve used them for much more than keeping my hair dry. They can wrap a sandwich, protect my camera from the rain or hold shells and sea glass from the beach. I always take a spare when I check out.

   One drawer holds the compression bags that help me fit more in a suitcase, crumpled boarding passes, a luggage scale, a travel-sized hair dryer and flat iron and--amid a jumble of camera chargers-- little notebooks and discarded makeup.  Opening another I find city maps and sunglasses and little souvenirs I’d forgotten I bought.

   January and February are good months to reorganize and get rid of the clutter. I put on a movie or catch up on an entire season of Downton Abbey and go through each drawer, organizing the things I need and tossing what is no longer useful. I sort through the various quart-size resealable plastic bags left over from trips, each with one or two half-empty bottles of mouthwash or hand lotion. I pull out the all the extra tiny shampoo and conditioner bottles and miniature bars of soap from favorite hotels to give to my daughters or donate to programs like AAA’s Soap for Hope.

   By the time I’m done there is room in each drawer. I’m up to day with the Dowager Countess and Lord and Lady Grantham’s headstrong girls. Things are tidy and easy to find and I’m organized for another year of adventures.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a travel writer whose 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