Mapmaker

I finished gluing maps to the ceiling of my library. Thanks to ebay and Nook and Cranny I purchased a mixed lot of used maps for under $25. All the places that mean something to me are now permanent gazing fodder from the window seat. I pasted a 1980s Europe outlining Yugoslavia, where my paternal grandfather's line is tied. The sprawling U.S.S.R. claims missionary Greg's Novosibirsk. Vietnam to honor my dad's service, Wyoming for our cabin and Mother Bear's birth, New Mexico for my parents. Missouri for my deciduous childhood. France for my favorite family trip. Israel for Jesus. Manhattan, Colorado, Utah. The topographic world with its long Andes spine and Sahara bald spot. A giant sailing ship, too. I find maps mesmerizing. The artistry involved, the color coding, the tiny fonts and hairline strokes. Correctly refolding an unfolded map is easy thanks to the notes I folded in junior high.

Gloria Scovil gave me two poems last year. One in an envelope sealed with a red foil heart sticker tucked in the front door on Valentine's Day, and one just before I moved. They are both by Alexander McCall Smith.

Our tiny planet, viewed from afar, is a place of swirling clouds

And dimmish blue, Scotland though lodged in all our hearts

Is invisible at that distance, not much perhaps,

But to us it is our all, our place, the opposite of nowhere;

Nowhere can be seen by looking up

And realizing with shot, that we really are very small;

You would say, yes we are, but never overcompensate,

Be content with small places, the local, the short story

Rather than the saga; take pleasure in private jokes,

In expressions that cannot be translated,

In references that can be understood by only two or three,

But which speak with such eloquence for small places

And the fellowship of those whom you know so well

And whose sayings and moods are as familiar

As the weather; these mean everything,

They mean the world, they mean the world.

This first poem is not about Scotland, it’s about American Fork and Pacific Drive 1st; they were my world. That small place was my all. I drove from American Fork to my new house countless times as we were building. Waiting for the Smith's light to turn green, with the mountain in front of me, I'd often feel a form of melancholy that I didn't know one person ahead of me but I knew almost everyone behind me. I realized how important knowing people is to knowing a place. I realized I hate being a foreigner.

Nine months have passed. Nine months of forging trails and dropping bread crumbs in the name of cartography. Nine months of sharpening my colored pencils and demarcating comfort zones. Now I stall at the red light and smile. Layered in the upland's strata of neighborhoods I spy the rooftops of friends. For all my Lewis and Clarking I've found nuggets in every hollow. This mountain is a gold mine—and I've only scouted the south side. 

Although they are useful sources

Of information we cannot do without,

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines

Reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear

On the location of Australia, and the Outer Hebrides;

Such maps abound; more precious, though

Are the unpublished maps we make ourselves,

Of our city, our place, our daily world, our life;

Those maps of our private world

We use every day; here I was happy, in that place

I left my coat behind after a party,

That is where I met my love; I cried there once,

I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner

Once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth,

Things of that sort, our personal memories,

That make the private tapestry of our lives.

Old maps had personified winds,

Gusty figures from whose bulging cheeks

Trade winds would blow; now we know

That wind is simply a matter of isobars;

Science has made such things mundane,

But love – that at least, remains a mystery,

Why it is, and how it comes about

That love’s transforming breath, that gentle wind,

Should blow its healing way across our lives.

This second poem is here, now, on the edge of a bluff where the wind blows in every direction. Despite knowing good people and even making a few dear friends it still feels very unpublished up here. Have you ever tried to weave a tapestry in the wind? It’s hard. Every day I want to quit exploring and go back to Scotland and every day I want to trailblaze and personalize this mountain. It's a windy tug of war that cuts like a knife and then softly soothes.

I don’t know why I still ache when I leave Costco and pass my old turn to come home. I wasn’t expecting to miss the aromatic punch of lilac and Russian olive that wafted through every screen of my old house. I miss the sound of basketballs bouncing on the street. These peripheral memories are time stamps marking a period of my life the same way sunroofs, thunderstorms, and drumsticks remind me of being a kid. My dad carved a whole fryer every other Sunday for chicken and rice; I always got the drumstick but Dad dubbed it the “drumbone.” I can still see him standing in front of the kitchen sink carving methodically while I ate my cereal at the breakfast table.

I’m not entirely sure who I can trust, who I can walk through spider webs with to the cemetery at night when I need to vent, but there is no shortage of candidates. I’m starting to honk and wave at recognized cars, bump into people at Smith’s, and chat at the community mailbox aka the water cooler. It feels like a major victory to have inside jokes and no filter with my 5:30 a.m. walking partner. I won the neighbor lottery; I sleep soundly knowing what goodness resides across our shared mulch bed. I have high hopes someone will walk into my house without knocking in the years ahead.

I am trying to have faith in what can be even though it’s so easy to love what was. Leigh Hunt said, "There are two worlds; the world that we measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination." I suspect I will always live in both worlds no matter where I live.