Page 44 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. Iv #8

PaTTy soMlo
Starlight
I’m thinking about the late writer May Sarton this morning, as I step out of the house. First, you should know. The house is old. Sarton would
have loved it. Queen Anne is the style. If you can’t picture it, I’ll explain. It’s a cottage, more than a house, the kind I thought you’d find in a children’s book, the first time I saw it when my husband
vines hanging like a screen above the railing are beginning to ripen. The skin of the concords is too thick, making them not very good for eating, even if they might boil up into a pleasant jam. Instead, the ripe grapes fall to the porch, causing a slick mess I’ll soon have to clean up.
and I were walking around the neighborhood trying not to get lost. It’s pudgy, painted teal blue, with pale yellow swirls over the windows and fish-scale shingles dripping down from the top. I suspect the little place makes people smile when they walk by.
But the sunlight has peaked out from behind the clouds and lit the leaves from behind. That simple gesture causes my heart to pop, at a spot where it’s been clutched tight inside. I’m flooded with a gratefulness that in this frequently gray city there’s still enough light to tango with the leaves, the air smells grapey, and I can’t hear the guys inside laughing and listening to loud music I don’t like. Instead, I hear a jay squawk and some other bird sing back.
If you know anything about old houses, you’re aware of two things. Old houses have personali- ties, or what realtors and historic house aficiona- dos like to call character. And realtors prefer not to mention how much work an old house takes.
It’s only then that I know the last weeks – or has it been months? – have weighed on me. I want to walk a while now and sort this out.
So, I’m walking out the back door of my Queen Anne house on a day that can’t decide whether or not to be gray. The screen door is so old, we can’t find a replacement in its style or size. The door’s bottom screen has been gouged, leaving a ragged hole. I suspect a member of the neighborhood squadron of wandering cats for this mischief, probably the same one that rolls around in my garden, flattening the leaves of the purple day lily.
And this is when I begin to think of Sarton, as I stand out here, on the porch of my Queen Anne cottage, with the brick patio that runs along the eastern side bordering a small garden. After months of winter rain the old bricks can grow spongy and wear a layer of chartreuse moss. I had the brick arranged in a wave, from dark to light. A metaphor for my life.
I’m headed out for a walk and to breathe, because the air inside has been saturated with the acrid aroma of paint for days. Before the color could be applied, cracks in the ceiling and walls had to be patched and covered with drywall mud. As always with this old Queen Anne, the subtle scraping encouraged a portion of the ceiling plaster to col- lapse where sheetrock then had to be replaced. This is something else you need to understand about old houses: They are frequently more trouble than you’d expect, since a hundred inex- perienced hands have messed with them over the last century.
Sarton would sometimes berate herself for her moods. The loss of control seemed to bother
her most. After a tantrum, when her stored-up anger would explode, often aimed at her lover, Sarton would return home and sit by herself with the latest stray cat she’d finally coaxed inside, and try to sort the whole nasty business out. But she might make an arrangement of purple lilies and pale yellow roses in a cut-glass vase, and set it on the mahogany table in front of a south-facing window, stepping back to notice the light coming in through lace curtains, ignit- ing the edges of the rose petals in a tender line.
I’m out the door and on the back porch now. The concord grapes on the complicated cluster of
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Rain has rusted the lock and warped the wood, so to open the gate I need to lift the latch with