LITMIR.BIZ

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held their heads down when the rain intensified and wiped sheets of water from their faces with their palms. I heard a man in khaki shorts ask, “Why don’t you take a break and let me cut with the chainsaw for a while?” He reached for the saw.

      Another man held out his palm to stop him and cautioned, “He’s been driving around with that chainsaw in his trunk since last Christmas waiting for a night like this. He sure as hell is not going to turn it over to you.” Chainsaw envy, I thought.

      When we finally returned to our cabin, it was after two in the morning, and we were famished. We still didn’t have electricity, but our flashlight led us to candles. Since it was our final night in the cabin, we only had a few leftovers. Paul dried off and got DJ into pajamas while I threw on my robe and began to mince onion, garlic, and a few slices of ham. I fried it up on the gas stove, adding eggs and a huge portion of leftover spaghetti noodles from the night Paul had cooked. He always makes too many noodles, but we were happy to have them this time. I grated the last of the fresh Parmesan over the top. We raised one can of beer, one stem of wine, and one box of grape juice to toast our owl-light dinner.

      “How’d you come up with this recipe?” Paul asked. “It’s great.”

      DJ looked at the fried spaghetti with ham and eggs hesitantly, took a bite, and shook his head in an enthusiastic nod of approval.

      I explained that fried spaghetti with ham and eggs was an Italian recipe I’d ordered in Florence at a restaurant where no one spoke English. I’d just pointed to the menu at something I could afford.

      Paul complimented me with his mouth full. “I’m impressed.”

      I was impressed with him too. In fact, I was kind of turned on by the competence and camaraderie of all those men working and heaving those fallen trees. If I’d been in a line of cars with only women, I wanted to believe we could have handled the chainsaws and moved the logs, but we might not have been driving around with anticipatory longing and heavy equipment in the backs of our trucks. We might have had to cut the trees into shorter lengths before we could move them off the road. We would have congratulated ourselves and might have enjoyed the power of the chainsaws in our hands. But the noise of the saws and ATVs may have given me a headache, and my thighs chafe when I walk in wet slacks. I didn’t think a group of my girlfriends could have made the best of a bad situation quite as well as those men did. They almost made it look fun. In truth, I didn’t see one woman out in that storm. There is something in most men, though, that makes them feel good about protecting their families and using their brawn. That night, I liked it. Not because I was helpless without their intervention, but because it seemed an arduously purchased gift of love and protection.

      I don’t want to be told I can’t use the chainsaw or that I’m always responsible for dinner, but that night, I appreciated being excused from the heavy work and then making an impressive meal. When I looked back at this stereotyped setting—him clearing the road, DJ watching, me cooking—my pleasure in the reminiscence did bother me. I had to remind myself that choosing to cook dinner for my hardworking husband did not make me a traitor to the feminist cause. The National Organization for Women will not revoke my membership if I’m spotted in an apron (let’s not send them announcements, okay?). If men need to temper their aggressive proclivities, then women need to step out of their penchant to subvert themselves and instead bring all their talents and influences into play. DJ saw his dad and other assiduous men working in the rain without a complaint. It rained; the logs were heavy. Families were hungry and tired, as were the men. They joked and stayed focused on the job. They did everything but sing “Hi, ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.” DJ learned a lot that night about being a man. And that night, I enjoyed the adventure in cooking for my family.

      In a culture where strong women may not have an equal share of power but are not likely to be tortured or killed for their assertive reach for shared governance of all societies’ structures, I thought it an abdication of duty for women to remain submissive. Men can be harsher than women—even more dangerous. The asperity in their nature can lead to desecration, brutality, and war. But not that night. Their brutish force cleared the way for dozens of families to go home. My Paul seemed especially strong and tender as we both pushed through our exhaustion and found the energy to make love in a dark cabin in the north woods, just before a calm sunrise.

      DJ finished his granola bars, but they didn’t do the trick. He was ready for town and more substantial food. By the time I swung my legs around the trunk of the tree, he was way ahead. Where prairie met woodland, I could hear the liquid gurgling of red-winged blackbirds mixing with the soprano whistle of a cardinal and the chatter of the wren. I stopped, listened, and thought of Shelley’s “To a Skylark”:

      Teach me half the gladness

      That thy brain must know,

      Such harmonious madness

      From my lips would flow,

      The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

      I knew my freshly sunny attitude had come by way of a temporal injection of spring. If the benevolent change in the season had directed my thoughts and memories away from enemizing the opposite sex, it seemed best to go with that renewal. My discontent (okay, hostility) would reappear, and I hoped that it would cycle back a bit more specifically directed to unjust acts rather than toward men in general. Since my son was growing toward manhood, I was compelled toward a reasoning compassion. DJ was about to complete grade school and enter the years of pulling away that I’d known with my daughter and still remembered from my own adolescence. I didn’t want this change to happen behind the closed door of his bedroom.

      DJ waited for me by pretending he’d fallen asleep leaning across the hood of the car. We bought sandwiches in the town of Mayfield and stopped at a small red barn just off Highway 22 to buy cheese curds. “Just made them this morning,” the ruddy-faced man promised. He was in earnest, because they were still warm and squeaked against our teeth when we chewed them—a treat all our Arizona and Florida relatives had to do without.

      DJ took a swig of root beer, letting it wash over a mouthful of cheese, and said, “We should do stuff like this more often.”

      I jumped on his suggestion. “Okay. Let’s try for a trip once a month.” I wanted to spend time with him in primary settings without civilized distractions—places where I believed life felt more original then virtual. When he was grown, I hoped we would both understand what it meant to become a man.

      On the way home, when I suggested fried spaghetti for dinner, DJ asked if I would teach him to make it. While I told him I would, I noticed the chartreuse swells on the weeping whips of the willow and the lawns that had begun to green up in just one April day. DJ went back to wiggling his tooth. I knew we would eat fried spaghetti that night and share reminiscences of the big Wisconsin up-north storm, just as we do every time we repeat the menu. We would talk about the marsh and how difficult it had been for people to learn to live in partnership with all the complexities and dualities at the intersection of land and water. Contradictory elements converged: wet and dry, cold and warm, clouds and sunshine, masculine and feminine. Spring didn’t just arrive in the reconditioned marsh; it seemed to originate within the alchemy of opposites. It came with the force of high waters behind a breaking ice dam and replaced the season of gray with a flourish of life.

      Near our neighborhood, we saw a line of fifteen, DJ counted them, bicyclers in sleek yellow and black. Bare-kneed children played in front yards, on sidewalks, and at the park. At a lengthy red light, we stopped in front of a small blue house with a big picture window framed in white trim. The sidewalk and steps to the front porch were littered with chalk drawings, balls, a small yellow two-wheeler lying on its side, and a pile of plastic action figures. Inside, a little boy in white briefs flew into the air in front of the picture window with his arms and legs in spread-eagle position. He was jumping on a couch, probably breaking a household rule. Again and again he flew into the framed view of the picture window, waving his outstretched arms as he jumped. We felt his joy and wanted to stay and watch, but when the light turned green, it was time to move on. We left him in midair.

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