I am, I’ve been told, a good storyteller. I’ve been told this enough that I’ve come to accept it as true.One should be careful about what one accepts as true.
Last week I took off a couple of days to spend some time at the beach with friends. One night a number of us gathered at a local barbecue place for supper, sat outside at a long weathered picnic table, let the wood smoke settle into our clothes and hair, and forgot about the world on the other end of the causeway. The food and atmosphere were good, the conversation better.
When we’d finished off the barbecue and potato salad and fried Oreos, our bodies tired from a long day in the sun and our brains just about empty of things like deadlines and to-do lists, we adjourned from the barbecue joint and reconvened a few blocks away at my friends’ family beach house – a remodeled ranch with just enough bunk beds to hold all the grandchildren. The collection of four girls had ice cream cones and chased the dog around the backyard and then came inside just about the time the grown-ups sat down to continue the conversations that, somehow, you just never get around to having at home.
And that’s when the stories started. Something reminded somebody of something and we laughed and that reminded me of something else and I said, "Remember when?" and, the next thing I knew, Katie Anne, the youngest of the four assorted girls, was on the arm of my chair, her face locked on mine, mimicking my expressions, smiling and scowling at all the right moments, laughing on cue.
"Tell us another story," she said. And I gladly did.
Eventually it was time to break up the party, but I promised Katie Anne that I had more stories, one really good story, in fact, and that I would share it the next day at the pool where we’d all agreed we would see each other again.
I looked forward to telling Katie Anne the story. It’s a good story. Everybody I’ve ever told this story liked it. Katie Anne would like it, too. I was sure of it.
I shouldn’t have been.
The next day, as the other girls squealed and splashed in the pool, chased each other and the sole boy cousin who had come along, Katie Anne sat at the end of the lounge chair where I had spread out an appropriately garish beach towel and listened to the story. Except this time her face didn’t stay locked on mine, she didn’t mimic my expression, she scowled a good bit more than she smiled, and she – most obviously – did not laugh.
When I got to the end, she stood up and walked over to the ladder at the deep end of the pool. "So, Katie Anne, did you like the story?" I called.
"It was long," she offered and jumped into the water.
Her mother, who was sitting nearby, and I now did the laughing. So much for being a good storyteller.
She was right though. The story was long. And long is not what Katie Anne had wanted, expected, or needed when a pool full of children was right there within reach. Life can be like that. When what you get isn’t what you want, expect, or need it can seem nothing short of long.
Notice, though, that Katie Anne didn’t say the story was too long. She didn’t offer that it was longer than necessary, desirable, or right. It was simply long. And it is in that differentiation that I found the real point of her declaration.
Life – in its entirety or on any given day – isn’t too anything. It simply is. Long or short. Exhilarating or exhausting. Confusing or enlightening. The same goes for one’s work, relationships, dreams. None of them is more than or less than necessary, desirable, or right. Attaching adverbs like too and very and overly to people and experiences is disrespectful at best and dangerous at worst. We steal from ourselves when we choose to do so.
My story was long. Just long. I’m still a good storyteller and I will tell that story again. Just not to Katie Anne.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Sunday, July 01, 2012
4224 Second Street, East Beach
This week my friend Lea found herself packing up and leaving forever a place that she dearly loves. It has belonged to her family for over 40 years and has held, not just the funky, eclectic mixture of furniture that houses at the beach normally collect, but significant memories for four generations and more than a little piece of each of their hearts. Her last night there it was just Lea and a blow-up mattress and two lawn chairs. She wrote on her Facebook wall, "Feeling like Sam in the last episode of Cheers where he is the last person left, takes one last look around, then turns out the light, walks out and closes the door behind him."
The next day she sent her friends an e-mail listing all the items that had been crammed into her car in the hours before vacating the premises. It was a long and impression list and included, among things one would expect like clothes and work items, "five brooms ... two rolls of toilet paper ... 1 plastic box of paint brushes, 1 large plastic tub of craft paints, 3 large plastic shopping bags of craft supplies ... 1 big box of things I need in my car (sharpies, paper, tape, koosies, etc) ... 1 big metal tin of books and stuff I keep in my car always ... 1 iron to give away."
One of her friends replied, "That is going to be a mess on the road if you have an accident." All I could think was, "Lord, have mercy!"
It would be a mess if Lea’s car, like a defective pressure cooker, spontaneously erupted somewhere on Highway 17 spewing brooms and paintbrushes and small appliances all over the right-of-way. It would have been a bigger mess, however, had she not loaded that car, had she not taken one last look around, turned out the light, and closed the door behind her because this is what I have observed:
There is a point in every growing season at which the growing medium – field, garden, plot, pot – becomes messy. The rows lose their delineation, the individual plants lose their edges, and it becomes impossible to identify any point as the beginning or the end. It is in that moment that the farmer/gardener/tender of soil loses control of the structure, the aesthetics, and the end result.
Example: The cornfield outside my window is now beyond plowable, its edges crowded by a jumble of knee-high grasses and weeds and its canopy of wide green fronds woven together in uneven bands like the warp and weft of the potholders I used to make on a little red metal loom. Another example: The verbena at the corner of the house that started out as six little identical plants has morphed into wild and spindly vines spread all over the ground like fingerpaint – randomly, awkwardly, all over each other and the stone edgers meant to contain it.
I don’t like messy. I like neat and tidy. I like order and organization and anything alphabetized, and so it has taken some time for me to learn that messiness can not be avoided if one wants to grow. Plant a seed and dirt will make its way under your fingernails, despite the gardening gloves. Write a story and the first draft will end up in a wadded up paper ball on the floor. Open your heart and take the risk that, like Lea’s car, a bump in the road or a crash into someone else could send everything inside flying out into the open sky.
It has taken time to learn those things, but I have learned them. I have learned them by planting the seed, writing the story, opening my heart and, consequently, scrubbing my fingernails, picking up the endless mounds of paper balls, and standing on the side of the road watching the wind from speeding traffic carelessly toss about that which I hold most precious.
The result is that I have grown. And I am still growing. And the messiness of that is something to embrace.
Copyright 2012
The next day she sent her friends an e-mail listing all the items that had been crammed into her car in the hours before vacating the premises. It was a long and impression list and included, among things one would expect like clothes and work items, "five brooms ... two rolls of toilet paper ... 1 plastic box of paint brushes, 1 large plastic tub of craft paints, 3 large plastic shopping bags of craft supplies ... 1 big box of things I need in my car (sharpies, paper, tape, koosies, etc) ... 1 big metal tin of books and stuff I keep in my car always ... 1 iron to give away."
One of her friends replied, "That is going to be a mess on the road if you have an accident." All I could think was, "Lord, have mercy!"
It would be a mess if Lea’s car, like a defective pressure cooker, spontaneously erupted somewhere on Highway 17 spewing brooms and paintbrushes and small appliances all over the right-of-way. It would have been a bigger mess, however, had she not loaded that car, had she not taken one last look around, turned out the light, and closed the door behind her because this is what I have observed:
There is a point in every growing season at which the growing medium – field, garden, plot, pot – becomes messy. The rows lose their delineation, the individual plants lose their edges, and it becomes impossible to identify any point as the beginning or the end. It is in that moment that the farmer/gardener/tender of soil loses control of the structure, the aesthetics, and the end result.
Example: The cornfield outside my window is now beyond plowable, its edges crowded by a jumble of knee-high grasses and weeds and its canopy of wide green fronds woven together in uneven bands like the warp and weft of the potholders I used to make on a little red metal loom. Another example: The verbena at the corner of the house that started out as six little identical plants has morphed into wild and spindly vines spread all over the ground like fingerpaint – randomly, awkwardly, all over each other and the stone edgers meant to contain it.
I don’t like messy. I like neat and tidy. I like order and organization and anything alphabetized, and so it has taken some time for me to learn that messiness can not be avoided if one wants to grow. Plant a seed and dirt will make its way under your fingernails, despite the gardening gloves. Write a story and the first draft will end up in a wadded up paper ball on the floor. Open your heart and take the risk that, like Lea’s car, a bump in the road or a crash into someone else could send everything inside flying out into the open sky.
It has taken time to learn those things, but I have learned them. I have learned them by planting the seed, writing the story, opening my heart and, consequently, scrubbing my fingernails, picking up the endless mounds of paper balls, and standing on the side of the road watching the wind from speeding traffic carelessly toss about that which I hold most precious.
The result is that I have grown. And I am still growing. And the messiness of that is something to embrace.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Cornfields and Kool-Aid
With all the rain we’ve gotten lately, from Beryl and various other low pressure systems, the corn may well be as high as an elephant’s eye. My memories of the Grant Park Zoo, formed when I was considerably shorter than I am now, leave me a little vague as to how high that is exactly, but it is, I think, safe to assume, higher than my head and the corn is definitely that.
When we were children, Keith, Aunt June, and I used to run through the cornfield chasing each other and playing "Bonanza" while Mama, Daddy, and Grannie broke the ears that would be cut and scraped and bagged and put into the freezer so that on every Sunday table for the coming year there would be a bowl of sweet creamy summer. We ran through rows that still held the warmth of late afternoon sun, tattooing our bare feet with stone bruises and tagging our arms and legs with the graffiti of bright red blood, tiny cuts sliced by the razor-edge of corn fronds.
Stray hairs decoupaged with sweat against our foreheads, we did not stop until dark, until our parents’ arms, buckets, car trunks were full of heavy green ears and we could rush inside, past the swarm of bugs dive-bombing the porch light, and fall on the floor in front of the window-unit air-conditioner. We stayed there, cotton shirts stuck to our backs, the salt in our sweat making tiny white clouds appear on the fabric as it dried, until Mama appeared with glasses of Kool-Aid, red like the jagged lines on our legs, in glasses dripping with condensation all the way across the kitchen floor.
Some afternoons Daddy would walk outside to the edge of the field and break three of four ears on his way in from work. He would shuck them, strip away the ribbed husks and silky tassels, crack off the hard stems on the end with a quick snap, and toss them under the broiler for a few minutes to roast. The kernels turned brown and chewy like caramel and we would sit on the front steps to eat them, hands grasping either end of the cobs, elbows propped on knees to eliminate all unnecessary motion as we gnawed our way from one end to the other of this first, blessed offering of the season.
There were no questions then. No uncertainties. No mistrust of anything in my world, the one that was triangulated by home and school and church. The one populated by people whose stories I knew, whose names were among the first words I learned, whose faces still materialize when I smell honeysuckle or stoop to pick verbena or taste homemade lemonade.
Wistfulness moves through my body like a sudden chill. I am sitting on the deck, staring across the yard – not 25 feet – at the cornfield that rises like a green curtain, glowing with the sheen of a full-detail wax job. Straight as a plumb line the stalks stand in endless rows that stretch from here to there. From here to beyond there. From here to somewhere else. The tassels are pale gold and bobbing like a jester’s cap, a windsock of sorts. The ears are jutting out at just the right angle, three to a stalk, medals pinned to the chests of soldiers at attention.
It could be the same field through which I ran wildly 45 years ago, slapping my thigh as though it were the flanks of a stallion, chasing Indians across the flat acres of the Ponderosa. But it is not the same field. I am not the freckled ten-year-old. My fatigue cannot be assuaged by a glass of Kool-Aid.
I realize that I am halfway listening for the voice of James Earl Jones to come rolling out of the branch, the stalks to part and Shoeless Joe Jackson to walk into the yard. I am looking for salvation from a world beyond this one because – having left undone those things which I ought to have done and done those things which I ought not to have done far too often lately – I am too tired, too spent, too frustrated to save myself.
There is, of course, no voice, no appearance, but I keep staring into the shimmering emerald shadows and, as I do, I feel my breath slowing, slowing to take in the sweet green scent of corn, which tickles me somehow. I laugh. At the memories, at my "Field of Dreams" imaginings, at the preposterous idea that I could, tired or frustrated or at my very best, ever save myself.
And, suddenly, I recognize where I am. Not just at the edge of a cornfield, but at Point A of a brand new triangulation, a re-bar set, a monument laid, an altar where I can offer up a prayer of gratitude for all the stories I don’t yet know.
Copyright 2012
When we were children, Keith, Aunt June, and I used to run through the cornfield chasing each other and playing "Bonanza" while Mama, Daddy, and Grannie broke the ears that would be cut and scraped and bagged and put into the freezer so that on every Sunday table for the coming year there would be a bowl of sweet creamy summer. We ran through rows that still held the warmth of late afternoon sun, tattooing our bare feet with stone bruises and tagging our arms and legs with the graffiti of bright red blood, tiny cuts sliced by the razor-edge of corn fronds.
Stray hairs decoupaged with sweat against our foreheads, we did not stop until dark, until our parents’ arms, buckets, car trunks were full of heavy green ears and we could rush inside, past the swarm of bugs dive-bombing the porch light, and fall on the floor in front of the window-unit air-conditioner. We stayed there, cotton shirts stuck to our backs, the salt in our sweat making tiny white clouds appear on the fabric as it dried, until Mama appeared with glasses of Kool-Aid, red like the jagged lines on our legs, in glasses dripping with condensation all the way across the kitchen floor.
Some afternoons Daddy would walk outside to the edge of the field and break three of four ears on his way in from work. He would shuck them, strip away the ribbed husks and silky tassels, crack off the hard stems on the end with a quick snap, and toss them under the broiler for a few minutes to roast. The kernels turned brown and chewy like caramel and we would sit on the front steps to eat them, hands grasping either end of the cobs, elbows propped on knees to eliminate all unnecessary motion as we gnawed our way from one end to the other of this first, blessed offering of the season.
There were no questions then. No uncertainties. No mistrust of anything in my world, the one that was triangulated by home and school and church. The one populated by people whose stories I knew, whose names were among the first words I learned, whose faces still materialize when I smell honeysuckle or stoop to pick verbena or taste homemade lemonade.
Wistfulness moves through my body like a sudden chill. I am sitting on the deck, staring across the yard – not 25 feet – at the cornfield that rises like a green curtain, glowing with the sheen of a full-detail wax job. Straight as a plumb line the stalks stand in endless rows that stretch from here to there. From here to beyond there. From here to somewhere else. The tassels are pale gold and bobbing like a jester’s cap, a windsock of sorts. The ears are jutting out at just the right angle, three to a stalk, medals pinned to the chests of soldiers at attention.
It could be the same field through which I ran wildly 45 years ago, slapping my thigh as though it were the flanks of a stallion, chasing Indians across the flat acres of the Ponderosa. But it is not the same field. I am not the freckled ten-year-old. My fatigue cannot be assuaged by a glass of Kool-Aid.
I realize that I am halfway listening for the voice of James Earl Jones to come rolling out of the branch, the stalks to part and Shoeless Joe Jackson to walk into the yard. I am looking for salvation from a world beyond this one because – having left undone those things which I ought to have done and done those things which I ought not to have done far too often lately – I am too tired, too spent, too frustrated to save myself.
There is, of course, no voice, no appearance, but I keep staring into the shimmering emerald shadows and, as I do, I feel my breath slowing, slowing to take in the sweet green scent of corn, which tickles me somehow. I laugh. At the memories, at my "Field of Dreams" imaginings, at the preposterous idea that I could, tired or frustrated or at my very best, ever save myself.
And, suddenly, I recognize where I am. Not just at the edge of a cornfield, but at Point A of a brand new triangulation, a re-bar set, a monument laid, an altar where I can offer up a prayer of gratitude for all the stories I don’t yet know.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, June 03, 2012
Basil and Invisible Topography
Basil, it is said, wards off dragons. I learned this long after having started growing basil in the big clay pot on the deck. Long after having mastered the technique the witty and beautiful people of the Food Network call "chiffonade" (the process of rolling the deep green leaves into tiny cigars and slicing them into slender ribbons of fragrance). Long after having decided that, when the time comes, I’d like my casket filled with fresh-cut basil so that I can leave this world surrounded by the scent of spring.
I learned it, in fact, only recently and cannot attest to the truth of the statement, but it does occur to me that whatever beasts of the dragon variety may live in the far reaches of the branch behind Sandhill have been held at bay to date.
I am a farmer’s daughter. I know a little something about sowing and reaping. Seeds or plants go into the ground with the eye toward reproduction, multiplication, harvest of more than that with which you started. In a world of insecticides and fungicides and herbicides and outside the realm of organic farming, there’s not a lot of planting for defensive purposes.
So the whole idea of this tiny little plant arresting the advance of a monster arouses my curiosity and the thought that what we plant, what we grow, what we tend and nurture does more than produce, but also prevent now has me wondering about the other green things I’ve stuck into the ground like stockade poles. I’m not necessarily concerned with whether the chinaberry tree, that source of my father’s constant wonderment, has some part in forestalling the advance of ogres or whether the thyme and sage guard against trolls. I’m not even thinking about whether the azaleas, the hydrangeas, the hostas are anything more than decoration, sort of like the Queen’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace – standing there and looking nice, but not much of a defense against the wildness that would overtake the yard in a matter of weeks left untended.
I’m thinking of other lands, more exploitable and vulnerable lands. Miles and miles of what the old westerns called the frontier, that which lies beyond a boundary, beyond what is known. The ground that is most susceptible to dragons and other hellish creatures is not that which creeps beneath my fingernails or blackens the bottoms of my bare feet. It is not surveyable, conveyable, devisable acreage. It is the interior real estate. The land of the heart, the soul.
There is a reason we call it a stream of thought. A field of study. A flood of emotions. The landscape within has its own topography. Rivers and creeks of memory and curiosity, pastures and deserts of interest and intellect, tides and currents of anger and sadness and love.
Often sight-seen and visited, occasionally occupied or squatted upon, frequently over-logged or strip-mined, but only rarely, I think, is the heart, the soul cleared for construction of a home, a place to stay. Too seldom do we, do I unroll the plat and walk the lines, dig under the fallen leaves to find the rebar set at the corner so we know what is ours.
It is not impossible, however. Too seldom doesn’t mean never. The terrain of one’s heart can be learned like the farmer, the hunter, the hiker learns a piece of land – with intention and attention. With slowness of pace and undistracted vision. With time, lots and lots of time.
I went walking in the woods the other day, scooting carefully down the hill from the path over the pond dam into a circus tent of bright green leaves. It had been a long time since I’d given myself over to purposeless roaming and it felt good to be surrounded by nothing but tall trunks and slender branches. I did not pay attention to where I was going. I didn’t have to. I have spent hours walking these woods. I know them. I know what grows there.
I believe I know the countryside of my heart and mind just that well. I believe I know what grows there. And, just in case there are dragons, I’ve planted basil.
Copyright 2012
I learned it, in fact, only recently and cannot attest to the truth of the statement, but it does occur to me that whatever beasts of the dragon variety may live in the far reaches of the branch behind Sandhill have been held at bay to date.
I am a farmer’s daughter. I know a little something about sowing and reaping. Seeds or plants go into the ground with the eye toward reproduction, multiplication, harvest of more than that with which you started. In a world of insecticides and fungicides and herbicides and outside the realm of organic farming, there’s not a lot of planting for defensive purposes.
So the whole idea of this tiny little plant arresting the advance of a monster arouses my curiosity and the thought that what we plant, what we grow, what we tend and nurture does more than produce, but also prevent now has me wondering about the other green things I’ve stuck into the ground like stockade poles. I’m not necessarily concerned with whether the chinaberry tree, that source of my father’s constant wonderment, has some part in forestalling the advance of ogres or whether the thyme and sage guard against trolls. I’m not even thinking about whether the azaleas, the hydrangeas, the hostas are anything more than decoration, sort of like the Queen’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace – standing there and looking nice, but not much of a defense against the wildness that would overtake the yard in a matter of weeks left untended.
I’m thinking of other lands, more exploitable and vulnerable lands. Miles and miles of what the old westerns called the frontier, that which lies beyond a boundary, beyond what is known. The ground that is most susceptible to dragons and other hellish creatures is not that which creeps beneath my fingernails or blackens the bottoms of my bare feet. It is not surveyable, conveyable, devisable acreage. It is the interior real estate. The land of the heart, the soul.
There is a reason we call it a stream of thought. A field of study. A flood of emotions. The landscape within has its own topography. Rivers and creeks of memory and curiosity, pastures and deserts of interest and intellect, tides and currents of anger and sadness and love.
Often sight-seen and visited, occasionally occupied or squatted upon, frequently over-logged or strip-mined, but only rarely, I think, is the heart, the soul cleared for construction of a home, a place to stay. Too seldom do we, do I unroll the plat and walk the lines, dig under the fallen leaves to find the rebar set at the corner so we know what is ours.
It is not impossible, however. Too seldom doesn’t mean never. The terrain of one’s heart can be learned like the farmer, the hunter, the hiker learns a piece of land – with intention and attention. With slowness of pace and undistracted vision. With time, lots and lots of time.
I went walking in the woods the other day, scooting carefully down the hill from the path over the pond dam into a circus tent of bright green leaves. It had been a long time since I’d given myself over to purposeless roaming and it felt good to be surrounded by nothing but tall trunks and slender branches. I did not pay attention to where I was going. I didn’t have to. I have spent hours walking these woods. I know them. I know what grows there.
I believe I know the countryside of my heart and mind just that well. I believe I know what grows there. And, just in case there are dragons, I’ve planted basil.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
A Fairy Tale
I step out on to the deck and take a deep breath. The breeze, brisk but mild, brings no scent of flower or bough, but only the sound of the wind chimes dangling and dancing in the white light of morning. The wet towels I have shaken out into limp flags are draped over the railings of the deck and by noon they will be dry and sun-rough.
It has been a busy few weeks. A schedule full of good things, good times, people I love. But I am tired. I am, like Martha, careful and troubled about many things. I am glad for a Saturday on which no one is expecting me to be anywhere, to do anything.
The plan is to engage my body, not my mind – weed the perennials, dead-head the lilies, edge the ivy that threatens to overtake the corner of the carport. I smear a little sunscreen over my cheeks, stuff my hair up into the new pink baseball cap, and pull the stained gardening gloves over fingernails that I suddenly realize are in serious need of attention.
That’s when I notice it. The fairy path. Wending its way from under the low drooping branches of the sycamore tree across the back yard toward the cornfield, a clearly curving line of irregularly spaced and oddly shaped mushrooms. Several the size of large buttons, a couple as big as a demitasse cup. Three huddled together like matryoshka dolls.
According to the folklore of the Celtic peoples, fairy paths are routes taken by fairies between geographical sites of significance – fairy forts and mountains, streams, thorn bushes, ancient stone monuments – and must not be obstructed by human construction. If one’s home is built on a fairy path, the doors and windows must be kept open at night to allow the fairies to pass through and the consequences of not doing so are grave. Sometimes, it is said, a fairy path, which is usually invisible, can be identified by a strip of grass across a field that is a different color green from the rest. And sometimes, as in this case, the fairy path or a fairy ring (used for dancing) becomes visible by the appearance of mushrooms.
I am intrigued. No. That is not right. I am mesmerized. I stand so still and so quietly that I stop hearing the wind chimes, the rustle of leaves, the birds in the branch. But there are things to do. Perennials to be weeded. Lilies to be dead-headed. Ivy to be edged.
I shake my head to break the spell. Kneeling down, my back to the fairy path, I push my hands into the dense green screen that is periwinkle and coreopsis and Russian sage and begin pulling out errant sprigs of grass and clover. There are roots that hold tight to the earth and whose grips will have to be forced loose. I twist and wiggle, dig around the edges, twist and wiggle some more. In my haste I pull too soon and end up with a fist full of stem, the root still in the ground. I sigh with exasperation, rest back on my heels, straighten my tense shoulders.
Weeding, dead-heading, edging must wait.
I have to duck my head to stand under the lowest limbs of the sycamore tree, the spot where the fairy path begins. There is great danger, it is said, associated with traveling a fairy path when it might be in use by the fairies, but there is no danger here. I am quite sure that I have been invited, perhaps even summoned.
Feet together, arms at my side, I take a step and then another. Deliberate steps with pauses between. Careful steps so as not to touch the mushrooms. I follow the curve, realizing as I do that I am walking east toward the still rising sun, away from the shadow of the tree.
And then I am at the end. The point beyond which the path no longer shows me the way.
I stop. Breathe. Shift my stance from attention to parade rest. Realize that I am hearing the wind chimes again, their music joined this time by that of the temple bells hanging in the chinaberry tree. I close my eyes and lift my chin to feel the sun land on my face. Raise my arms, hold them there, suspended between heaven and earth, until my muscles burn and twitch.
When I open my eyes there has been no miraculous extension of the path. I’ve been given no revelation as to where I go from here. No magic decoder ring has been placed upon my finger. But I am different. I am no longer tired. I am no longer troubled about many things. And the entire cornfield, not just one strip, is greener.
Copyright 2012
It has been a busy few weeks. A schedule full of good things, good times, people I love. But I am tired. I am, like Martha, careful and troubled about many things. I am glad for a Saturday on which no one is expecting me to be anywhere, to do anything.
The plan is to engage my body, not my mind – weed the perennials, dead-head the lilies, edge the ivy that threatens to overtake the corner of the carport. I smear a little sunscreen over my cheeks, stuff my hair up into the new pink baseball cap, and pull the stained gardening gloves over fingernails that I suddenly realize are in serious need of attention.
That’s when I notice it. The fairy path. Wending its way from under the low drooping branches of the sycamore tree across the back yard toward the cornfield, a clearly curving line of irregularly spaced and oddly shaped mushrooms. Several the size of large buttons, a couple as big as a demitasse cup. Three huddled together like matryoshka dolls.
According to the folklore of the Celtic peoples, fairy paths are routes taken by fairies between geographical sites of significance – fairy forts and mountains, streams, thorn bushes, ancient stone monuments – and must not be obstructed by human construction. If one’s home is built on a fairy path, the doors and windows must be kept open at night to allow the fairies to pass through and the consequences of not doing so are grave. Sometimes, it is said, a fairy path, which is usually invisible, can be identified by a strip of grass across a field that is a different color green from the rest. And sometimes, as in this case, the fairy path or a fairy ring (used for dancing) becomes visible by the appearance of mushrooms.
I am intrigued. No. That is not right. I am mesmerized. I stand so still and so quietly that I stop hearing the wind chimes, the rustle of leaves, the birds in the branch. But there are things to do. Perennials to be weeded. Lilies to be dead-headed. Ivy to be edged.
I shake my head to break the spell. Kneeling down, my back to the fairy path, I push my hands into the dense green screen that is periwinkle and coreopsis and Russian sage and begin pulling out errant sprigs of grass and clover. There are roots that hold tight to the earth and whose grips will have to be forced loose. I twist and wiggle, dig around the edges, twist and wiggle some more. In my haste I pull too soon and end up with a fist full of stem, the root still in the ground. I sigh with exasperation, rest back on my heels, straighten my tense shoulders.
Weeding, dead-heading, edging must wait.
I have to duck my head to stand under the lowest limbs of the sycamore tree, the spot where the fairy path begins. There is great danger, it is said, associated with traveling a fairy path when it might be in use by the fairies, but there is no danger here. I am quite sure that I have been invited, perhaps even summoned.
Feet together, arms at my side, I take a step and then another. Deliberate steps with pauses between. Careful steps so as not to touch the mushrooms. I follow the curve, realizing as I do that I am walking east toward the still rising sun, away from the shadow of the tree.
And then I am at the end. The point beyond which the path no longer shows me the way.
I stop. Breathe. Shift my stance from attention to parade rest. Realize that I am hearing the wind chimes again, their music joined this time by that of the temple bells hanging in the chinaberry tree. I close my eyes and lift my chin to feel the sun land on my face. Raise my arms, hold them there, suspended between heaven and earth, until my muscles burn and twitch.
When I open my eyes there has been no miraculous extension of the path. I’ve been given no revelation as to where I go from here. No magic decoder ring has been placed upon my finger. But I am different. I am no longer tired. I am no longer troubled about many things. And the entire cornfield, not just one strip, is greener.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Bye, Bye Birdie
A couple of weeks ago I stopped for the mail and, before I could get my hand into the box, heard the distinct sounds of baby birds. I quickly drew my hand back, suspecting that I might be in the cross-hairs of the mama somewhere close by. A few seconds went by without the appearance of an angry female of the avian variety and I reached back in, this time seeing two baby birds sprawled across the stack of sale papers and catalogs.
They were scrawny and ugly. All thin skin and sharp angles, bulbous eyes and over-sized beaks. Still slick and gooey with the contents of their former eggs. They couldn’t have been out of their eggs more than an hour or so by my guess and their high-pitched squeaks and squawks conveyed a desperation that I interpreted as a call to action.
The nest filled the entire back wall of the mailbox, deep enough that an opening of only about four inches at the top allowed access. It would not be an easy chore to return the birds to the spot from which it was fairly obvious they had fallen, but I couldn’t just walk off with my most recent invitation to save money on car insurance, the Going Places magazine from AAA, and a slightly-soiled Penny Saver assuming that they would resolve the dilemma by themselves.
I rolled the magazine into a half-pipe and slid it along the bottom of the mailbox attempting to scoop up one of the babies. The angle from which I was working and the bird’s determined refusal to cooperate did not, at first, result in success. It took three or four tries before I managed to get enough of the tiny little thing hanging on to the slightly splayed edges of the magazine to lift it and shove it toward the nest.
The baby landed on the rim, promptly and wildly flinging his spastic wings forward so that he fell back on the spot from which I had so laboriously just lifted him. I sighed. I may have made a caustic remark or two.
I tried again. And again. Eventually, the baby bird and his/her brother/sister were both back in the nest and I was imagining a dinner table conversation in which the mama bird would offer up a tasty worm or two while the young’uns recounted their adventure trying to leave the nest – the perfect setting for motherly admonitions about behaving oneself and not trying to grow up too fast.
The next day was Saturday. I went to check the mail. It hadn’t been delivered yet and the two birds were, once again, outside the nest on the bottom of the mailbox. This time, though, there was no squeaking or squawking. They weren’t moving, but they seemed to be breathing. I stood and stared, hands fluttering like spastic baby bird wings, my thoughts running from past – "Should I have done something differently?" – to present – "Is there anything I can do now?" – and back again – "Did the mama abandon them because of something I did?"
Maybe they weren’t supposed to be put back in the nest. Maybe that had been their moment to leave, to fly. Maybe I had retarded their growth by a day. Maybe the mama was watching even now to see if they would struggle to their skinny little feet, flap their diaphanous little wings and take off.
I decided to wait. I would walk away. I would leave them to their birdness. I would not interfere.
It was hard.
Later, after the mailman’s car had slowed down in front of Sandhill and then taken off again, kicking up dust like newborn colt, I went back out. Mail, but no birds. Nary a sign.
I want to believe, I want really hard to believe, that they shook themselves out of their lethargy, girded their loins, and flew away from the mailbox into the perfect blue sky. I have no idea if that is what actually happened. There are other options, but I have chosen not to consider them.
I have also decided, I think, to clean out the mailbox. The nest that has been inside for at least seven years can’t possibly be the best place to lay eggs anymore. There must be mites and Lord knows what else in there. There’s really not enough room for an adult bird to comfortably get in and out, what with the accretion of twigs and leaves and thread by each year’s subsequent tenant. And, to be honest, despite my optimism, I’m not ready for the possibility of the need for another rescue attempt any time soon.
After a long time of living, I’m finally figuring out that, while I know I can’t save everything, I’m always going to want to try and sometimes it’s just better to remove the temptation.
Copyright 2012
They were scrawny and ugly. All thin skin and sharp angles, bulbous eyes and over-sized beaks. Still slick and gooey with the contents of their former eggs. They couldn’t have been out of their eggs more than an hour or so by my guess and their high-pitched squeaks and squawks conveyed a desperation that I interpreted as a call to action.
The nest filled the entire back wall of the mailbox, deep enough that an opening of only about four inches at the top allowed access. It would not be an easy chore to return the birds to the spot from which it was fairly obvious they had fallen, but I couldn’t just walk off with my most recent invitation to save money on car insurance, the Going Places magazine from AAA, and a slightly-soiled Penny Saver assuming that they would resolve the dilemma by themselves.
I rolled the magazine into a half-pipe and slid it along the bottom of the mailbox attempting to scoop up one of the babies. The angle from which I was working and the bird’s determined refusal to cooperate did not, at first, result in success. It took three or four tries before I managed to get enough of the tiny little thing hanging on to the slightly splayed edges of the magazine to lift it and shove it toward the nest.
The baby landed on the rim, promptly and wildly flinging his spastic wings forward so that he fell back on the spot from which I had so laboriously just lifted him. I sighed. I may have made a caustic remark or two.
I tried again. And again. Eventually, the baby bird and his/her brother/sister were both back in the nest and I was imagining a dinner table conversation in which the mama bird would offer up a tasty worm or two while the young’uns recounted their adventure trying to leave the nest – the perfect setting for motherly admonitions about behaving oneself and not trying to grow up too fast.
The next day was Saturday. I went to check the mail. It hadn’t been delivered yet and the two birds were, once again, outside the nest on the bottom of the mailbox. This time, though, there was no squeaking or squawking. They weren’t moving, but they seemed to be breathing. I stood and stared, hands fluttering like spastic baby bird wings, my thoughts running from past – "Should I have done something differently?" – to present – "Is there anything I can do now?" – and back again – "Did the mama abandon them because of something I did?"
Maybe they weren’t supposed to be put back in the nest. Maybe that had been their moment to leave, to fly. Maybe I had retarded their growth by a day. Maybe the mama was watching even now to see if they would struggle to their skinny little feet, flap their diaphanous little wings and take off.
I decided to wait. I would walk away. I would leave them to their birdness. I would not interfere.
It was hard.
Later, after the mailman’s car had slowed down in front of Sandhill and then taken off again, kicking up dust like newborn colt, I went back out. Mail, but no birds. Nary a sign.
I want to believe, I want really hard to believe, that they shook themselves out of their lethargy, girded their loins, and flew away from the mailbox into the perfect blue sky. I have no idea if that is what actually happened. There are other options, but I have chosen not to consider them.
I have also decided, I think, to clean out the mailbox. The nest that has been inside for at least seven years can’t possibly be the best place to lay eggs anymore. There must be mites and Lord knows what else in there. There’s really not enough room for an adult bird to comfortably get in and out, what with the accretion of twigs and leaves and thread by each year’s subsequent tenant. And, to be honest, despite my optimism, I’m not ready for the possibility of the need for another rescue attempt any time soon.
After a long time of living, I’m finally figuring out that, while I know I can’t save everything, I’m always going to want to try and sometimes it’s just better to remove the temptation.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
If I Had A Hammer
On Sunday afternoon, while the sun turned my arms a sweet shade of spring pink, I crawled around on the deck nailing nails. Not new ones. Old ones. The original nails that turned two-by-fours and four-by-fours and whatevers-by-whatevers into the structure on which I now grow herbs and watch hummingbirds and read books and, once every 28 days, walk outside to make sure the moon is compass-drawn round.
I was nailing the old nails because by some process that probably has a name given it by a mechanical engineer, but which just reminds me of that plastic plug in the Thanksgiving turkey that pops up when the temperature inside is just right, the nails over time start rising from their flush position in the wood to a perpendicular stance that, ignored, causes great pain in the bottom of a bare foot. I was nailing the old nails because things need to be maintained. I was nailing the old nails because nobody else was going to.
So there I was, as I said, crawling around hammering in what I hoped was a logical sequence so that I wouldn’t miss any of the recalcitrant nails, listening to the new wind chime hanging from the eaves outside the bedroom door, and thinking about the quote attributed to Mark Twain, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
The hammer with which I was clobbering the pop-up nails is not the only tool I have. I have screwdrivers – flathead and Phillips. I have pliers, a hand saw, a level, a retractable tape measure, and a cordless drill. I have duct tape, electrical tape, and blue painter’s tape. In the bottom of my tool box are any number of small plastic canisters containing screws and nuts and bolts of varying sizes. If the job had called for something else, then, I would most likely have been prepared.
But because the short and spiky pieces of metal protruding up through the floor of my deck were, in fact, nails and not just something that looked like nails, a hammer was what I needed. It’s just that after about ten minutes I realized that the hammer which is perfectly suited to tapping short, thin picture-hanging nails into Sheetrock might not be up to the task of pounding back into the deck what was by then beginning to look like railroad spikes.
And it might have been about that time that I remembered that not long before someone who shall remain nameless, but who has a Y chromosome, described mine as "not much of a hammer." At which point, said nameless Y-chromosome-carrying human produced a much larger version of a hammer and proceeded to prove his point by ripping apart, in less than a minute, an old wooden packing crate that I wanted to use to build something else.
Show-off.
I probably did need a bigger hammer. But I didn’t have a bigger hammer. And if I went to borrow a bigger hammer chances were that there would be an offer to do the nailing for me. And I wanted to do it myself.
I can be stubborn.
So I kept at it. One, two, three, sometimes four blows to send one nail back down through a channel that had already been cut. Four swings to level a nail that was offering little or no resistance. Four licks to accomplish what could have been done with one. I switched from my right hand to my left and back again. I got tired.
I can be foolish, too.
Not every challenge can be met with perfect efficiency. Sometimes you have to use a tailgate as a step-ladder, tack up a hem with masking tape, prop the door with a brick. Sometimes you have to make do. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, you don’t.
I hit the last lick, stood up, and looked around at the once again barefoot-safe deck. I was glad to be finished, glad to have done it all myself, and glad to know that before it needed to be done again I was going to have a bigger hammer.
Copyright 2012
I was nailing the old nails because by some process that probably has a name given it by a mechanical engineer, but which just reminds me of that plastic plug in the Thanksgiving turkey that pops up when the temperature inside is just right, the nails over time start rising from their flush position in the wood to a perpendicular stance that, ignored, causes great pain in the bottom of a bare foot. I was nailing the old nails because things need to be maintained. I was nailing the old nails because nobody else was going to.
So there I was, as I said, crawling around hammering in what I hoped was a logical sequence so that I wouldn’t miss any of the recalcitrant nails, listening to the new wind chime hanging from the eaves outside the bedroom door, and thinking about the quote attributed to Mark Twain, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
The hammer with which I was clobbering the pop-up nails is not the only tool I have. I have screwdrivers – flathead and Phillips. I have pliers, a hand saw, a level, a retractable tape measure, and a cordless drill. I have duct tape, electrical tape, and blue painter’s tape. In the bottom of my tool box are any number of small plastic canisters containing screws and nuts and bolts of varying sizes. If the job had called for something else, then, I would most likely have been prepared.
But because the short and spiky pieces of metal protruding up through the floor of my deck were, in fact, nails and not just something that looked like nails, a hammer was what I needed. It’s just that after about ten minutes I realized that the hammer which is perfectly suited to tapping short, thin picture-hanging nails into Sheetrock might not be up to the task of pounding back into the deck what was by then beginning to look like railroad spikes.
And it might have been about that time that I remembered that not long before someone who shall remain nameless, but who has a Y chromosome, described mine as "not much of a hammer." At which point, said nameless Y-chromosome-carrying human produced a much larger version of a hammer and proceeded to prove his point by ripping apart, in less than a minute, an old wooden packing crate that I wanted to use to build something else.
Show-off.
I probably did need a bigger hammer. But I didn’t have a bigger hammer. And if I went to borrow a bigger hammer chances were that there would be an offer to do the nailing for me. And I wanted to do it myself.
I can be stubborn.
So I kept at it. One, two, three, sometimes four blows to send one nail back down through a channel that had already been cut. Four swings to level a nail that was offering little or no resistance. Four licks to accomplish what could have been done with one. I switched from my right hand to my left and back again. I got tired.
I can be foolish, too.
Not every challenge can be met with perfect efficiency. Sometimes you have to use a tailgate as a step-ladder, tack up a hem with masking tape, prop the door with a brick. Sometimes you have to make do. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, you don’t.
I hit the last lick, stood up, and looked around at the once again barefoot-safe deck. I was glad to be finished, glad to have done it all myself, and glad to know that before it needed to be done again I was going to have a bigger hammer.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Dancing With The Scars
The saw-tooth oaks in the back yard, the ones that started out as knee-high, pinky-sized saplings, tower over me now. They move in the breeze like crinolined ballgowns, all hip-swaying, bodice-gripping green chiffon. Their widest branches reach out curving, almost touching, debutantes holding hands before their names are called. They look like Scarlett O’Hara at the barbeque, all insolent and saucy, dangerously aware of their beauty and its seductive power. And, because there are two, the Tarleton twins don’t have to fight. There is plenty to go around.
They are not inconspicuous. I notice them every day. In the morning as I leave, in the evening as I return. In sunrise light the dewdrops on their leaves are sequins. In the gloaming the dew is gone and the leaves’ thin veins are embroidery on smooth velvet. Bookends. A matched set.
Except, of course, they are not matched. If you look closely, take a peek up under the skirts of green leaves, you will see that one trunk is straight and true and its branches radiate out like bicycle spokes in orderly tiers. The other trunk is actually two conjoined trunks, one doing its best to grow straight and true and one growing away at a 45-degree angle as though afraid it might get cooties from unwanted contact.
The result is that the aberrant trunk and its branches monopolize one entire side of the tree. If I saw it off – an act I have contemplated more than once – the tree will be, if not ugly, at least not as beautiful as before. Misshapened and bald on one side. More Suellen or Carreen than Scarlett.
Perhaps, in time, new branches will grow from the remaining trunk. Perhaps, in time, the emptiness will be filled, the saw-scar healed, the severed trunk forgotten.
But there is also the possibility that the trunks cannot survive without each other. That the trunk with good posture, excellent dancing skills, and natural flirtation abilities needs the off-center trunk for something essential. Like balance.
Thus I have been living with, observing, and contemplating the saw-tooth oaks. To trim or not to trim, that is the question.
And now it is Easter. Or very nearly. I get out of the car, but stop on my way inside, still weighted down with purse and gym bag and the day’s detritus, to absorb the sensory bombardment. A line of bright red lilies stand straight as the Royal British Guards. The verbena at the corner of the deck is a broad swipe of brilliant purple, pouring over the edges of its bed like a waterfall. The basil and mint and thyme, the parsley and sage and cilantro are filling their pots and the air. The chinaberry tree’s pale lavender blooms mingle with the golden berries from autumn that, in the mild winter, have refused to fall.
I try to ignore the oak trees – the one so perfect in shape it could be a tree stencil and the other with its extra off-kilter trunk. I try not to look their way and be drawn back to my dilemma. I am unsuccessful. The breeze that has set the wind chime to singing has set the trees to dancing and from the corner of my eye I can see them – swaying and waving, bouncing and bobbing, nodding at each other.
And in that moment I know.
My friend Lynn loves to watch "Dancing With The Stars." She is mesmerized by the intricately choreographed movements of the quick-step and the foxtrot, the bold athleticism of the mambo, the gracefulness of the waltz. And she loves the shiny, sparkly, spangly costumes, especially the shoes.
But she knows that shine and sparkle and spangle are not required. And so she dances at every opportunity. In flip flops and bedroom shoes. In bare feet. In a bathrobe. With other people, with her cat, alone. She dances because dance is what we Easter-celebrants call "an outward manifestation of an inward grace."
I set down the purse, the gym bag, the burden. There is no perfect tree and imperfect tree. There is only tree. There is no part and whole. There is only holy.
Not to trim, that is the answer.
Copyright 2012
They are not inconspicuous. I notice them every day. In the morning as I leave, in the evening as I return. In sunrise light the dewdrops on their leaves are sequins. In the gloaming the dew is gone and the leaves’ thin veins are embroidery on smooth velvet. Bookends. A matched set.
Except, of course, they are not matched. If you look closely, take a peek up under the skirts of green leaves, you will see that one trunk is straight and true and its branches radiate out like bicycle spokes in orderly tiers. The other trunk is actually two conjoined trunks, one doing its best to grow straight and true and one growing away at a 45-degree angle as though afraid it might get cooties from unwanted contact.
The result is that the aberrant trunk and its branches monopolize one entire side of the tree. If I saw it off – an act I have contemplated more than once – the tree will be, if not ugly, at least not as beautiful as before. Misshapened and bald on one side. More Suellen or Carreen than Scarlett.
Perhaps, in time, new branches will grow from the remaining trunk. Perhaps, in time, the emptiness will be filled, the saw-scar healed, the severed trunk forgotten.
But there is also the possibility that the trunks cannot survive without each other. That the trunk with good posture, excellent dancing skills, and natural flirtation abilities needs the off-center trunk for something essential. Like balance.
Thus I have been living with, observing, and contemplating the saw-tooth oaks. To trim or not to trim, that is the question.
And now it is Easter. Or very nearly. I get out of the car, but stop on my way inside, still weighted down with purse and gym bag and the day’s detritus, to absorb the sensory bombardment. A line of bright red lilies stand straight as the Royal British Guards. The verbena at the corner of the deck is a broad swipe of brilliant purple, pouring over the edges of its bed like a waterfall. The basil and mint and thyme, the parsley and sage and cilantro are filling their pots and the air. The chinaberry tree’s pale lavender blooms mingle with the golden berries from autumn that, in the mild winter, have refused to fall.
I try to ignore the oak trees – the one so perfect in shape it could be a tree stencil and the other with its extra off-kilter trunk. I try not to look their way and be drawn back to my dilemma. I am unsuccessful. The breeze that has set the wind chime to singing has set the trees to dancing and from the corner of my eye I can see them – swaying and waving, bouncing and bobbing, nodding at each other.
And in that moment I know.
My friend Lynn loves to watch "Dancing With The Stars." She is mesmerized by the intricately choreographed movements of the quick-step and the foxtrot, the bold athleticism of the mambo, the gracefulness of the waltz. And she loves the shiny, sparkly, spangly costumes, especially the shoes.
But she knows that shine and sparkle and spangle are not required. And so she dances at every opportunity. In flip flops and bedroom shoes. In bare feet. In a bathrobe. With other people, with her cat, alone. She dances because dance is what we Easter-celebrants call "an outward manifestation of an inward grace."
I set down the purse, the gym bag, the burden. There is no perfect tree and imperfect tree. There is only tree. There is no part and whole. There is only holy.
Not to trim, that is the answer.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The Risk of Melted Wings
The sun did not rise today. It sprang. Did not slowly inch into the sky. Catapulted. Went from being a clean, sharp, compass-drawn arc behind the tree line to a barely-round blotch midway up the sky, its lower half covered by a cloud like a towel wrapped around its waist. A towel made of long-staple Egyptian cotton. Extra thick. Talcum powder soft.
I wanted to touch it. I wanted to reach through the windshield, through the early spring morning, through the light that left the sun 93 million light years ago, and touch that towel, run my fingers through the pile, feel it tickle the thin skin on the backs of my hands. I wanted to hold that towel up to my face and feel the just-out-of-the-dryer warmth on my cheeks, let my eyelashes catch on the loops like Velcro. I wanted to wrap my whole self up in that towel like caterpillar inside a leaf.
But I remember my Greek mythology. Icarus flying too close. Phaethon driving too close. The moral of those stories? The sun must not be touched. A respectful distance must be kept. And so I pulled back my hand, curled it into a firm grip on the steering wheel, and steered my chariot north, away from the heat.
We are, all of us, good at that. Equating a desire for beauty with danger and putting up barriers to prevent ourselves from getting too close. Asserting a need for personal space and justifying the behavior that allows the actual need for human connection to go unmet. Resisting the urge toward relationship out of fear that our reach will be met with empty air.
We are good, really good, at not touching.
Most of the time. But not all the time.
Just the other day I was visiting at a friend’s house, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, when another guest, someone I know but not well, reached into the hair on the crown of my head and began playing with it – fisting a handful and then letting go three or four times. I didn’t even turn around. Curly hair, I’ve learned, is like pregnancy. They both invite touch. Not just intimates, but near strangers, feel comfortable in reaching out to stroke the taut round belly of an expectant mother or the tight ringlets on someone else’s head.
Almost as though caught in an irresistible magnetic pull exerted on the digits, the hand rises and gently falls into a pat, a rub, a grasp and fluff. The guarding of one’s own personal space and the reciprocal acknowledgment of another’s is suspended for just long enough to make contact, to reassure the one reaching that, yes, the curiosity is real.
Though we generally tend to trust the sense of sight over the others, preferring eye witnesses to any other kind, honesty requires that we all admit to having been fooled by a mirage or two. There is a reason that we greet returning heroes, long-absent lovers, and newborn babies not just with adoring glances, but with hugs and kisses. Touch proves the reality, spans the chasm, eliminates the distance.
Somewhere only the road between Oliver and Egypt, on that stretch where the pine trees grow like the pickets in a very tall fence, I stopped thinking about touching the sun. At just about the same time, the morning light suddenly began pulsing through the trees like a strobe and falling on my arms – the sun touching me. Wrapping me up in a big, warm towel. Extra thick. Talcum powder soft.
Copyright 2012
I wanted to touch it. I wanted to reach through the windshield, through the early spring morning, through the light that left the sun 93 million light years ago, and touch that towel, run my fingers through the pile, feel it tickle the thin skin on the backs of my hands. I wanted to hold that towel up to my face and feel the just-out-of-the-dryer warmth on my cheeks, let my eyelashes catch on the loops like Velcro. I wanted to wrap my whole self up in that towel like caterpillar inside a leaf.
But I remember my Greek mythology. Icarus flying too close. Phaethon driving too close. The moral of those stories? The sun must not be touched. A respectful distance must be kept. And so I pulled back my hand, curled it into a firm grip on the steering wheel, and steered my chariot north, away from the heat.
We are, all of us, good at that. Equating a desire for beauty with danger and putting up barriers to prevent ourselves from getting too close. Asserting a need for personal space and justifying the behavior that allows the actual need for human connection to go unmet. Resisting the urge toward relationship out of fear that our reach will be met with empty air.
We are good, really good, at not touching.
Most of the time. But not all the time.
Just the other day I was visiting at a friend’s house, sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, when another guest, someone I know but not well, reached into the hair on the crown of my head and began playing with it – fisting a handful and then letting go three or four times. I didn’t even turn around. Curly hair, I’ve learned, is like pregnancy. They both invite touch. Not just intimates, but near strangers, feel comfortable in reaching out to stroke the taut round belly of an expectant mother or the tight ringlets on someone else’s head.
Almost as though caught in an irresistible magnetic pull exerted on the digits, the hand rises and gently falls into a pat, a rub, a grasp and fluff. The guarding of one’s own personal space and the reciprocal acknowledgment of another’s is suspended for just long enough to make contact, to reassure the one reaching that, yes, the curiosity is real.
Though we generally tend to trust the sense of sight over the others, preferring eye witnesses to any other kind, honesty requires that we all admit to having been fooled by a mirage or two. There is a reason that we greet returning heroes, long-absent lovers, and newborn babies not just with adoring glances, but with hugs and kisses. Touch proves the reality, spans the chasm, eliminates the distance.
Somewhere only the road between Oliver and Egypt, on that stretch where the pine trees grow like the pickets in a very tall fence, I stopped thinking about touching the sun. At just about the same time, the morning light suddenly began pulsing through the trees like a strobe and falling on my arms – the sun touching me. Wrapping me up in a big, warm towel. Extra thick. Talcum powder soft.
Copyright 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Grammar, Astronomy, and Being Tamed
Somebody said that if I went outside around nine o’clock and looked in the western sky I could see Jupiter and Venus. So I went outside and stood in the middle of the big empty yard and stared at the place where I’m usually watching the sun sink. There they were, two white lights too big to be stars and too still to be airplanes, so they must be planets. I didn’t see any rings around either one of them – not that I expected to at that distance, of course – but it occurred to me at that moment that I was putting a lot of faith in what somebody else said, someone who might not know any more about this than I did.
The planetary fascination wore off pretty quickly and I had turned to go back inside when my attention was seized by the light in the sky on the other side of the yard – the moon, about half a wink away from full. Smudged a little by thin cloud cover, its relative nearness made it appear much larger than the planets at my back. What I know about the moon is no more certain than what I know about Jupiter and Venus. Men have been there, have walked on it, planted flags on it, and offered benedictory words over it, but I haven’t. And, yet, when I look at the moon, I feel entitled to use a possessive pronoun while leaving the planets with a definite article. Why?
There was a party at Sandhill last weekend. A celebration of the attaining of a dream. It was supposed to be an outdoor party and I planned outdoor decorations. Much-needed rain detoured those plans and everything got moved indoors, everything except a sign that my friend Lea helped me make. It’s a mileage sign like the one that stood in the center of the 4077th M*A*S*H* and it lists places beyond Sandhill that bear some significance to my life, that were the location of important events, that hold special memories.
When I finally stopped staring at the moon, my moon, and started back inside, my eyes fell on that sign, stuck in ground at the corner of the porch right at the base of a holly tree. The porch light reflected off the white letters like the sun reflects off the moon and as I read the words I inserted the implied possessive pronoun before each one: my Saint Simons Island ... my Wesleyan ... my Ireland. And in doing so, I answered my question.
Why is it my moon, but not my Jupiter or my Venus? It is, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Fox explains to the Little Prince, about being tamed:
"[I]f you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world. ... [I]f you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat."
Through long association, though not necessarily the intent to do so, the moon and I have become connected and when I stare at it, I do so not with fascination, but with longing, sometimes even wistfulness.
But it is not just the moon that I have tamed with my attention and with my affection. I have tamed Saint Simons and Sandhill and all the other spots on the map where my heart finds rest. I have tamed all the people who drove through rain and maneuvered through mud to gather for the celebration of the dream. I have tamed the words that find their way to the page, then out into the world.
It is because I have tamed them and because they have tamed me that they are my moon, my people, my words. And what I, what none of us must ever forget, is that as the Fox reminds the Little Prince, "You become responsible forever for what you have tamed."
Copyright 2012
The planetary fascination wore off pretty quickly and I had turned to go back inside when my attention was seized by the light in the sky on the other side of the yard – the moon, about half a wink away from full. Smudged a little by thin cloud cover, its relative nearness made it appear much larger than the planets at my back. What I know about the moon is no more certain than what I know about Jupiter and Venus. Men have been there, have walked on it, planted flags on it, and offered benedictory words over it, but I haven’t. And, yet, when I look at the moon, I feel entitled to use a possessive pronoun while leaving the planets with a definite article. Why?
There was a party at Sandhill last weekend. A celebration of the attaining of a dream. It was supposed to be an outdoor party and I planned outdoor decorations. Much-needed rain detoured those plans and everything got moved indoors, everything except a sign that my friend Lea helped me make. It’s a mileage sign like the one that stood in the center of the 4077th M*A*S*H* and it lists places beyond Sandhill that bear some significance to my life, that were the location of important events, that hold special memories.
When I finally stopped staring at the moon, my moon, and started back inside, my eyes fell on that sign, stuck in ground at the corner of the porch right at the base of a holly tree. The porch light reflected off the white letters like the sun reflects off the moon and as I read the words I inserted the implied possessive pronoun before each one: my Saint Simons Island ... my Wesleyan ... my Ireland. And in doing so, I answered my question.
Why is it my moon, but not my Jupiter or my Venus? It is, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Fox explains to the Little Prince, about being tamed:
"[I]f you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world. ... [I]f you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat."
Through long association, though not necessarily the intent to do so, the moon and I have become connected and when I stare at it, I do so not with fascination, but with longing, sometimes even wistfulness.
But it is not just the moon that I have tamed with my attention and with my affection. I have tamed Saint Simons and Sandhill and all the other spots on the map where my heart finds rest. I have tamed all the people who drove through rain and maneuvered through mud to gather for the celebration of the dream. I have tamed the words that find their way to the page, then out into the world.
It is because I have tamed them and because they have tamed me that they are my moon, my people, my words. And what I, what none of us must ever forget, is that as the Fox reminds the Little Prince, "You become responsible forever for what you have tamed."
Copyright 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Wherever Here Is
It is Tuesday afternoon. I arrive home to find Mama and Daddy immersed in the project of burning off some undergrowth in the branch behind Sandhill. I am planning a party and they’ve decided – actually Mama has decided – that the place will look prettier without the dead vines and fallen-over trees blocking sight of the pond. Within minutes there are three or four piles of brittle branches and broken limbs stacked into pyres and throwing fat orange flames into the late afternoon air.
Over the next couple of hours the flames eat up the piles of dead wood and, finally sated, die down, leaving matte black scars at the far edge of my yard. Already I have a better view of the still, flat water of the pond, silver-plated with the light of the sun that is fading in time with the embers.
It is Wednesday morning. Ash Wednesday. I wake up in darkness. Shower, dress, make the bed, realize I’ve not decided what I will undertake as a Lenten discipline. For some reason the idea of "giving up" something – chocolate, caffeine, list-making – doesn’t feel right this year. For some reason and for the first time, the connotation that comes to mind has to do with "giving up" hope and that feels contrary to the whole idea of this spiritual journey to the cross.
I go into the bathroom to put in my contacts, brush my teeth. I don’t have to decide until I get to church tonight, I tell myself. There is still time. Something will come to me. I put up my hair, put on my makeup. Yes, I have all day. Something will come to me.
And then it does. Through the half-open blinds I see the topmost edge of the sun cracking the horizon across the way toward Miss Dottie’s and the Indian cemetery. It is as thin and curved as the liner I have just now so carefully drawn across my eyelids. It is the color of mercurachrome and it is pulsing like a hammer-hit finger.
I sit down and watch it. It is moving. Rising, we call it, though we know that’s not what is happening. Imperceptibly the arc grows larger and the color brighter and what had been silhouettes on the landscape grow another dimension. I time travel 40 days hence and see Easter, sense the expectation of things that break open and spill amazement into the world, hear the hymns of redemption that only daffodils can sing. I feel as small as I have ever felt.
My eyes grow large with the very simple realization that when we make Lent about self-denial and self-sacrifice it’s still about self. When the only examination in which we engage is self-examination the process creates isolation not engagement. When we focus what is wrong we can so easily fail to be grateful for what is right.
I catch my breath. I think that perhaps I cannot wait until tonight to have the ashes smudged across my forehead, that perhaps I will this very moment run out into the branch, fall to my knees, plunge my hands into the black soot staining the ground, raise them to my face, and smear them across not just my forehead, but my cheeks, my chin, my nose, my carefully lined eyelids. I think that I must do something to demonstrate to this wide and wild and wonderful world that I am just happy to be here.
That is what I will do. That will be my Lenten observation. I will be happy to be here. I will, every day, be happy to be here, wherever here might be – a courtroom, an office, a front porch, a dirt road. Alone or in company. Harried or composed. I will be happy. And I will let the world know it.
I release my breath. I rise from the chair. I gather my purse, my car keys, my sunglasses. I walk out into the morning where the gentlest of breezes stirs up the remains of yesterday’s fires and sends tiny wisps of ash floating out into the sky.
Copyright 2012
Over the next couple of hours the flames eat up the piles of dead wood and, finally sated, die down, leaving matte black scars at the far edge of my yard. Already I have a better view of the still, flat water of the pond, silver-plated with the light of the sun that is fading in time with the embers.
It is Wednesday morning. Ash Wednesday. I wake up in darkness. Shower, dress, make the bed, realize I’ve not decided what I will undertake as a Lenten discipline. For some reason the idea of "giving up" something – chocolate, caffeine, list-making – doesn’t feel right this year. For some reason and for the first time, the connotation that comes to mind has to do with "giving up" hope and that feels contrary to the whole idea of this spiritual journey to the cross.
I go into the bathroom to put in my contacts, brush my teeth. I don’t have to decide until I get to church tonight, I tell myself. There is still time. Something will come to me. I put up my hair, put on my makeup. Yes, I have all day. Something will come to me.
And then it does. Through the half-open blinds I see the topmost edge of the sun cracking the horizon across the way toward Miss Dottie’s and the Indian cemetery. It is as thin and curved as the liner I have just now so carefully drawn across my eyelids. It is the color of mercurachrome and it is pulsing like a hammer-hit finger.
I sit down and watch it. It is moving. Rising, we call it, though we know that’s not what is happening. Imperceptibly the arc grows larger and the color brighter and what had been silhouettes on the landscape grow another dimension. I time travel 40 days hence and see Easter, sense the expectation of things that break open and spill amazement into the world, hear the hymns of redemption that only daffodils can sing. I feel as small as I have ever felt.
My eyes grow large with the very simple realization that when we make Lent about self-denial and self-sacrifice it’s still about self. When the only examination in which we engage is self-examination the process creates isolation not engagement. When we focus what is wrong we can so easily fail to be grateful for what is right.
I catch my breath. I think that perhaps I cannot wait until tonight to have the ashes smudged across my forehead, that perhaps I will this very moment run out into the branch, fall to my knees, plunge my hands into the black soot staining the ground, raise them to my face, and smear them across not just my forehead, but my cheeks, my chin, my nose, my carefully lined eyelids. I think that I must do something to demonstrate to this wide and wild and wonderful world that I am just happy to be here.
That is what I will do. That will be my Lenten observation. I will be happy to be here. I will, every day, be happy to be here, wherever here might be – a courtroom, an office, a front porch, a dirt road. Alone or in company. Harried or composed. I will be happy. And I will let the world know it.
I release my breath. I rise from the chair. I gather my purse, my car keys, my sunglasses. I walk out into the morning where the gentlest of breezes stirs up the remains of yesterday’s fires and sends tiny wisps of ash floating out into the sky.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, February 12, 2012
No Words and Singing Frogs
The habit developed slowly, as all habits do, and morphed over the years into something more like a ritual: On the night of the full moon, just before bed, I walk out on the deck to tilt my head, stretch my neck, and gaze. Once every twenty-eight days or so, I reach out with my eyes for a touchstone, a reminder that some things remain true.
Last night I stepped out onto the damp wood planks barefoot, felt the pads of my feet immediately grow chilled, and, with a slight shudder, tightened the sash on the fuzzy pink bathrobe. I took a few steps to center myself on the platform and turned toward the southeast. There it was.
I have compared a full moon to many things over the years – a poker chip being a favorite – , all of them being round and clean-edged. This moon, viewed through uncorrected near-sightedness, was anything but. Its perimeter changed with every blink, curving back and forth, its volume waxing and waning like a lung. I decided it look like nothing so much as a poaching egg.
Satisfied with the souvenir of a perfect image, I allowed myself a sigh of contentment. But I wasn’t content. The ritual of the full moon involves not just locating it, affixing it squarely in the firmament over Sandhill. It involves words. It requires that I speak to the moon, that I acknowledge its faithfulness in appearing once again. And this time there were no words.
In the branch behind the house a sound rose up. It did not startle me; I am accustomed to the night sounds of farm and field. But it did surprise me. It was the sound of frogs. An amphibian basso profundo echoing out from the boggy edges of the pond. The sound that I can’t ever remember hearing in February, the sound that usually accompanies the mild breezes of April or maybe a warm March.
My head tilted toward what was a rising chorus – now with baritones and tenors joining in. The branch that had been completely silent when I walked outside was now pulsing with voices, sound waves surging like an advancing army past the leafless branches and into the navy blue sky.
My own voice still silent, I went back inside where thin strips of moonlight fell through the cracks in the blinds across a bed in which I would eventually sleep.
I woke up early. The moon had moved to the other side of the house, was pasted in one of the panes of the bay window in the kitchen and it reminded me that I’d left things unfinished. There are only so many full moons in a lifetime, I once wrote, and now I’d squandered one.
Regret is rarely useful. I know that. And, yet, sometimes I find myself determined to wrestle with it until my hip is out of joint and I can forever walk with a limp as punishment. And I might have done that this time but for the sudden realization that the words don’t always have to be my own.
Standing there on the deck, feeling nothing except my toes going numb, I had assumed that the only words worth offering were the ones that I could mint. And that if the vein had gone dry then I must be silent. But the compline offered up by the frogs enveloped every creature under the moon – the deer leaving valentine-shaped footprints in the soft sand of the driveway, the owl perched in the crook of the burned-out pine tree, and the barefoot woman with arms crossed tightly across her heart. The reverberative chant without translation was all the offering of gratitude, all the acknowledgment of grandeur, all the demonstration of grace that any life could hope.
Copyright 2012
Last night I stepped out onto the damp wood planks barefoot, felt the pads of my feet immediately grow chilled, and, with a slight shudder, tightened the sash on the fuzzy pink bathrobe. I took a few steps to center myself on the platform and turned toward the southeast. There it was.
I have compared a full moon to many things over the years – a poker chip being a favorite – , all of them being round and clean-edged. This moon, viewed through uncorrected near-sightedness, was anything but. Its perimeter changed with every blink, curving back and forth, its volume waxing and waning like a lung. I decided it look like nothing so much as a poaching egg.
Satisfied with the souvenir of a perfect image, I allowed myself a sigh of contentment. But I wasn’t content. The ritual of the full moon involves not just locating it, affixing it squarely in the firmament over Sandhill. It involves words. It requires that I speak to the moon, that I acknowledge its faithfulness in appearing once again. And this time there were no words.
In the branch behind the house a sound rose up. It did not startle me; I am accustomed to the night sounds of farm and field. But it did surprise me. It was the sound of frogs. An amphibian basso profundo echoing out from the boggy edges of the pond. The sound that I can’t ever remember hearing in February, the sound that usually accompanies the mild breezes of April or maybe a warm March.
My head tilted toward what was a rising chorus – now with baritones and tenors joining in. The branch that had been completely silent when I walked outside was now pulsing with voices, sound waves surging like an advancing army past the leafless branches and into the navy blue sky.
My own voice still silent, I went back inside where thin strips of moonlight fell through the cracks in the blinds across a bed in which I would eventually sleep.
I woke up early. The moon had moved to the other side of the house, was pasted in one of the panes of the bay window in the kitchen and it reminded me that I’d left things unfinished. There are only so many full moons in a lifetime, I once wrote, and now I’d squandered one.
Regret is rarely useful. I know that. And, yet, sometimes I find myself determined to wrestle with it until my hip is out of joint and I can forever walk with a limp as punishment. And I might have done that this time but for the sudden realization that the words don’t always have to be my own.
Standing there on the deck, feeling nothing except my toes going numb, I had assumed that the only words worth offering were the ones that I could mint. And that if the vein had gone dry then I must be silent. But the compline offered up by the frogs enveloped every creature under the moon – the deer leaving valentine-shaped footprints in the soft sand of the driveway, the owl perched in the crook of the burned-out pine tree, and the barefoot woman with arms crossed tightly across her heart. The reverberative chant without translation was all the offering of gratitude, all the acknowledgment of grandeur, all the demonstration of grace that any life could hope.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Ode on a Saw-Tooth Oak
The nest is delicately balanced between two branches of one of the saw-tooth oaks Adam planted at the edge of the yard eight years ago. At just-about eye-level, I have to ease up onto my tiptoes a bit for the right angle to see into its depths, to make sure that it is empty. It could not be more symmetrical if its avian architect had used computer-aided drafting – a cup-shaped scoop of twigs and thread-sized roots perfectly built for what? two eggs? three?
The ends of some of the twigs are clean-cut, sliced flat and even, and I wonder if they are the remains of logs trimmed with the chain saw and stacked up to be burned. Most of them, of course, are raw and ragged, broken by wind or rain or squabbling squirrels. I can identify some of the twigs by their bark – sycamore, scrub oak, no pine. Others have had their bark stripped away to reveal striations that look like veins pumping brown blood.
The ends of some of the twigs are clean-cut, sliced flat and even, and I wonder if they are the remains of logs trimmed with the chain saw and stacked up to be burned. Most of them, of course, are raw and ragged, broken by wind or rain or squabbling squirrels. I can identify some of the twigs by their bark – sycamore, scrub oak, no pine. Others have had their bark stripped away to reveal striations that look like veins pumping brown blood.
Caught in a fork in the outside edge is a leaf, bruised bronze and veined white. Dew drops, fat and tremulous, reflect the winter-morning light that is at my back. A tiny ruffle of pale green lichen trims one of the larger outside twigs, a surprisingly stark contrast to the browns and grays of the other building materials. Birds recognize colors, don’t they? Was the pastel accent intentional?
It is late. I should have already left for work and I’ve spent long enough staring. It is, after all, only a nest. And an abandoned one at that.
I walk back across the yard, prizing my 3½-inch heels out of the soft ground with some effort. The image of the nest – the colors and textures, the way it seems to hover – shimmers like the after-flash from an old Instamatic camera and as I get into the car, one leg in, the other still balanced on its thin heel, I grasp the thought that has just raced across my mind like a news bulletin: Abandoned. The nest is abandoned.
Like a rusted-out car, a falling-down house, a foundling on a doorstep, it has been left behind, carrying the weight of ending and loss and unrealized potential. Whatever eggs were laid there are long gone. It will not be used again to nurture fledglings. Eventually the elements will weaken the careful mechanical engineering employed by its builder and the building materials will scatter on the ground beneath the tree.
Yet, it has captured me. Captured me like nothing has in days. Beauty captures. And the nest, with its delicate roughness, its flawless imperfection, and, yes, even its emptiness that feels like nothing so much as anticipation, is beautiful.
I shake my head at the paradoxical thought, that something abandoned can be beautiful. That something forsaken, no longer wanted, damaged and/or worn could possess a particular loveliness. That something unobtrusive and easily missed, something without obvious value could be aesthetically pleasing.
Plato thought that all beautiful objects incorporated proportion, harmony, and unity. The universal elements of beauty, as perceived by Aristotle, were order, symmetry, and definiteness. I doubt, as I drive into the rising sun, that my nest (I have, in an unconscious act of benefaction, assumed guardianship.) qualifies as beautiful under the Greek ideal.
It doesn’t matter. I have learned that beauty is an idiosyncratic concept. The eye of the beholder and all that. What the eye beholds the heart answers and my heart has answered that this object, this fragile creation by an unidentified artisan, this nest – this abandoned nest – is beautiful.
This morning, this bright and clear January morning, that is all I know on earth and all I need to know.
Copyright 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Order and Rhythm and a Fistful of Seeds
Order. The arrangement or disposition of people or things in relation to each other according to a particular sequence, pattern, or method. A state of proper readiness or preparation or arrangement.
Rhythm. A strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. Movement or variation characterized by the regular recurrence or alternation of different quantities or conditions, as in the rhythm of the tides.
Order and rhythm, the compass and sextant of my days.
So now the holidays were over. The tree had been struggled back into the corner of the attic where it would lie peacefully in pieces until next December. The refrigerator and pantry, the cake plate and cookie jar had been cleared of the food that appears only once a year. The green-leaved and red-berried branches, dried into crumbling tinder, had been tossed into the edge of the field to further fade and decompose. Order had been restored.
Rhythm, however, was still eluding me. The days and nights of holiday activities that disrupt, however cordially, the tempo of life had ended, but I remained off-balance, out of kilter, emotionally and mentally disoriented to the new year.
I decided to go to the gym. On the treadmill, my feet would adopt a stride of hard and steady steps, my lungs would draw in air and force it back out, my elbows would move back and forth like side rods on a locomotive. I would actually feel my heart beating inside my chest. Exercise would be my metronome.
But I got detoured. Two big diesel trucks and an excavator had arrived at the farm to remove the burned-out shell of the cotton picker that, for the last week or so, had stood sentry at the exact spot at the edge of the field where it had flamed then smoldered. Every morning and afternoon I’d passed it, stopping a couple of times to take photographs, changing my mind about what it looked like – a prop from an apocalyptic movie set? a prop from a dinosaur movie set? – and feeling a bit forlorn that I hadn’t been there to see the conflagration.
With a somewhat childish delight I noticed Daddy standing just off the road in the bedraggled rows of picked-over cotton observing the reclamation. If he could watch, so could I. For a few minutes. And then I’d get to the treadmill.
The two of us, arms folded, gave a respectful distance to the two men whose job it was to clear all evidence of the fire that had triumphed over 70,000 pounds of metal. There was a lot of incremental raising and lowering, pushing and pulling, stretching out and pulling back in of the excavator arm, making the whole process look like nothing so much as a Pixar movie projected large across the January sky and underscored by a soundtrack of diesel engine and hydraulic pump. The power line strung directly over the picker added the dramatic tension.
At the two-and-a-half hour mark, with not much apparent progress having been made, my attention wandered. I reached down to break off an unpicked cotton boll, swaying in the unseasonably warm breeze at the end of its brown chopstick of a stem. I pulled the boll from its star-pod and began rolling it between my fingers, felt the hardness of seeds hidden in the whiteness. Dividing my attention between the men wrestling with the machine and the seeds bound tightly in the soft white fibers, I extricated one, two, three ... fourteen seeds.
"So can these be planted?" Daddy interrupted his careful supervision of the two men and glanced quickly over at my upturned palm, cupped to hold the fuzzy seeds.
"Oh, yeh." Ginned and cleaned, he explained, those very seeds could eventually make their way back into the ground to start the cycle all over again. A cycle with a rhythm that is old and enduring, sure and certain, regular and reliable. A rhythm that allows for drought or disease or a cotton picker that catches fire and lights up the sky like the county fair, all without missing a beat.
The gym could wait for another day. I closed my fist on the cotton seeds, took a deep breath of warm winter air, and felt the gentle pump pump pump of a heart in rhythm with its world.
Copyright 2012
Rhythm. A strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. Movement or variation characterized by the regular recurrence or alternation of different quantities or conditions, as in the rhythm of the tides.
Order and rhythm, the compass and sextant of my days.
So now the holidays were over. The tree had been struggled back into the corner of the attic where it would lie peacefully in pieces until next December. The refrigerator and pantry, the cake plate and cookie jar had been cleared of the food that appears only once a year. The green-leaved and red-berried branches, dried into crumbling tinder, had been tossed into the edge of the field to further fade and decompose. Order had been restored.
Rhythm, however, was still eluding me. The days and nights of holiday activities that disrupt, however cordially, the tempo of life had ended, but I remained off-balance, out of kilter, emotionally and mentally disoriented to the new year.
I decided to go to the gym. On the treadmill, my feet would adopt a stride of hard and steady steps, my lungs would draw in air and force it back out, my elbows would move back and forth like side rods on a locomotive. I would actually feel my heart beating inside my chest. Exercise would be my metronome.
But I got detoured. Two big diesel trucks and an excavator had arrived at the farm to remove the burned-out shell of the cotton picker that, for the last week or so, had stood sentry at the exact spot at the edge of the field where it had flamed then smoldered. Every morning and afternoon I’d passed it, stopping a couple of times to take photographs, changing my mind about what it looked like – a prop from an apocalyptic movie set? a prop from a dinosaur movie set? – and feeling a bit forlorn that I hadn’t been there to see the conflagration.
With a somewhat childish delight I noticed Daddy standing just off the road in the bedraggled rows of picked-over cotton observing the reclamation. If he could watch, so could I. For a few minutes. And then I’d get to the treadmill.
The two of us, arms folded, gave a respectful distance to the two men whose job it was to clear all evidence of the fire that had triumphed over 70,000 pounds of metal. There was a lot of incremental raising and lowering, pushing and pulling, stretching out and pulling back in of the excavator arm, making the whole process look like nothing so much as a Pixar movie projected large across the January sky and underscored by a soundtrack of diesel engine and hydraulic pump. The power line strung directly over the picker added the dramatic tension.
At the two-and-a-half hour mark, with not much apparent progress having been made, my attention wandered. I reached down to break off an unpicked cotton boll, swaying in the unseasonably warm breeze at the end of its brown chopstick of a stem. I pulled the boll from its star-pod and began rolling it between my fingers, felt the hardness of seeds hidden in the whiteness. Dividing my attention between the men wrestling with the machine and the seeds bound tightly in the soft white fibers, I extricated one, two, three ... fourteen seeds.
"So can these be planted?" Daddy interrupted his careful supervision of the two men and glanced quickly over at my upturned palm, cupped to hold the fuzzy seeds.
"Oh, yeh." Ginned and cleaned, he explained, those very seeds could eventually make their way back into the ground to start the cycle all over again. A cycle with a rhythm that is old and enduring, sure and certain, regular and reliable. A rhythm that allows for drought or disease or a cotton picker that catches fire and lights up the sky like the county fair, all without missing a beat.
The gym could wait for another day. I closed my fist on the cotton seeds, took a deep breath of warm winter air, and felt the gentle pump pump pump of a heart in rhythm with its world.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Not A Resolution
It was early. The sky was a solid gun-metal gray. The rain smelled like summer rain, light and a little musty. It fell softly and met the concrete lip of the carport like the skirt of a ball gown lowered over satin shoes. A womb outside a womb, the morning pulled me from the warmth and stillness of the house into the cool and stillness of the day.
It was early. Only one set of tire treads caught the headlights in the slick mud of road ahead of me. Only one set of tire treads, one set of eyes had come this way before me in the early dawn. I felt the pull of the siren ditches – subtle and slight – beneath my hands curved like C-clamps around the top of the steering wheel.
It was early. And wet. Too early and wet for deer to be moving, but vigilance is not easily loosed and so my eyes watched the edges, all the edges, alert to the slightest twitch of tightly muscled flank or the slightest glint of doe eye.
Ahead and to the left, through the lace of bare-limbed forest, I saw light, artificial light. Blue-white halogen. Cold and clear. Unnaturally bright. Too high to be headlights. Too low to be a plane. Shop lights, that’s what they were. Shop lights at the farm on the highway. Of course.
Except that if anyone had asked me, in the exact moment before the lights broke through the almost-day, to point in the direction of the shop, of the highway, I would have pointed straight ahead. If someone had asked for directions I would have said, "Stay on this road and go straight ahead."
But the road isn’t straight. It curves sharply to the left at a spot known as the beaver pond or, more usually, the bad curve. The curve where, in weather like this, cars and trucks driven by the most careful and experienced of drivers have slid into the ditch with the smoothness of butter melting on pancakes. The curve where years ago Daddy was one of the first to arrive at an accident that left three people dead and two more seriously injured. The curve where, no matter how many times you’ve navigated it from either direction, you always catch your breath and feel your heart clutch when you meet another car.
This time there was no other car. This time I maneuvered my traction-less vehicle across the skim of mud through the curve to the straightaway where the lights were, suddenly, directly ahead. Funny how that happens.
I don’t, as a general rule, think much of New Year’s resolutions. Declaring, in the high tide of a celebratory moment, that I will henceforth do something that no previous moment has motivated me to do or no longer do something that no previous moment has motivated me to discontinue has always seemed a little self-righteous. Pronouncing that I will become a better something-or-other invites judgment from pretty much anyone as to whether I was any good at the something-or-other to begin with and also whether my efforts at improvement amount to much. Proclaiming that I will engage in some action or behavior with more or less frequency begs me to elevate the manifestation over the impetus, the form over the substance.
And, yet, on this late December morning, another year fading in the rear-view mirror that reflects plumes of red-brown mud spraying up into the blue-gray morning, I find myself making promises, if not exactly resolutions. I promise that the road I follow will always be the road straight ahead, but with all the curves and detours and dead ends that aren’t yet visible. I promise that I will watch out for the places where the deer are daring and the ditches are deep. And I promise that, no matter how many times I find it necessary to travel any given stretch, I will never try to navigate by memory alone.
Copyright 2012
It was early. Only one set of tire treads caught the headlights in the slick mud of road ahead of me. Only one set of tire treads, one set of eyes had come this way before me in the early dawn. I felt the pull of the siren ditches – subtle and slight – beneath my hands curved like C-clamps around the top of the steering wheel.
It was early. And wet. Too early and wet for deer to be moving, but vigilance is not easily loosed and so my eyes watched the edges, all the edges, alert to the slightest twitch of tightly muscled flank or the slightest glint of doe eye.
Ahead and to the left, through the lace of bare-limbed forest, I saw light, artificial light. Blue-white halogen. Cold and clear. Unnaturally bright. Too high to be headlights. Too low to be a plane. Shop lights, that’s what they were. Shop lights at the farm on the highway. Of course.
Except that if anyone had asked me, in the exact moment before the lights broke through the almost-day, to point in the direction of the shop, of the highway, I would have pointed straight ahead. If someone had asked for directions I would have said, "Stay on this road and go straight ahead."
But the road isn’t straight. It curves sharply to the left at a spot known as the beaver pond or, more usually, the bad curve. The curve where, in weather like this, cars and trucks driven by the most careful and experienced of drivers have slid into the ditch with the smoothness of butter melting on pancakes. The curve where years ago Daddy was one of the first to arrive at an accident that left three people dead and two more seriously injured. The curve where, no matter how many times you’ve navigated it from either direction, you always catch your breath and feel your heart clutch when you meet another car.
This time there was no other car. This time I maneuvered my traction-less vehicle across the skim of mud through the curve to the straightaway where the lights were, suddenly, directly ahead. Funny how that happens.
I don’t, as a general rule, think much of New Year’s resolutions. Declaring, in the high tide of a celebratory moment, that I will henceforth do something that no previous moment has motivated me to do or no longer do something that no previous moment has motivated me to discontinue has always seemed a little self-righteous. Pronouncing that I will become a better something-or-other invites judgment from pretty much anyone as to whether I was any good at the something-or-other to begin with and also whether my efforts at improvement amount to much. Proclaiming that I will engage in some action or behavior with more or less frequency begs me to elevate the manifestation over the impetus, the form over the substance.
And, yet, on this late December morning, another year fading in the rear-view mirror that reflects plumes of red-brown mud spraying up into the blue-gray morning, I find myself making promises, if not exactly resolutions. I promise that the road I follow will always be the road straight ahead, but with all the curves and detours and dead ends that aren’t yet visible. I promise that I will watch out for the places where the deer are daring and the ditches are deep. And I promise that, no matter how many times I find it necessary to travel any given stretch, I will never try to navigate by memory alone.
Copyright 2012
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Cotton Plant Prophet
I first noticed it on Sunday – a sycamore leaf, the size of a spread hand and the color of cured tobacco, was stuck in the stems of a cotton plant at the edge of the driveway. Surprisingly, it was still there Wednesday morning, having withstood a couple of days of stiff wind and one day of sustained rain. Obviously, I was meant to take note. I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the field for a closer look.
A picked-over cotton field looks like a phalanx of badly-drawn stick figures. Nearly every stalk has at least one boll left that looks like a head with tufted white hair escaping from its hard brown helmet and the various angles at which the spindly stems pierce the air make it appear as though the infantry is advancing at full speed, spears and pikes flailing at the ends of skinny arms. This one, though, the one cradling the sycamore leaf in its arms like a placard, seemed to be less warrior, more prophet. And the question becomes, I thought to myself, what has it been sent to proclaim?
I got back into the car, squinted my eyes into the rising sun, and headed toward town. As I rounded what we call the bad curve, the bag of Christmas gifts I’d placed in the floorboard fell over and squished, I was sure, their carefully-tied red and white bows. Using one hand to maneuver behind the ditches while I leaned across the front seat trying to reach and right the bag, I muttered to myself, "Why do I always do this? I knew when I put it there it would probably tump over! I knew it and did it anyway! What made me think that the law of centripetal force was going to be suspended just for me?"
It was not the first time I’ve had that conversation with myself. Not even the first time that morning. I regularly try to do too much with too little and move too fast for too little and, as a result, have proven over and over again that Newton’s laws of motion, among other things, are called laws for a reason.
Both hands back on the steering wheel, I took a deep breath, reminded myself that squished ribbon would not make any difference to the children who would be opening those packages later in the day, and watched the still dew-wet landscape slide swiftly past the car windows.
But the cotton plant prophet would not leave me alone. He kept crying out in the wilderness at the edge of my mind as I greeted my co-workers, turned on the computer, read the newspaper. He kept hoisting that sycamore leaf above his head and shouting, "Behold!" He kept staring at me as if at any moment he was going to have to declare me, in all my stubborn ignorance, a viperous Pharisee.
I finally conceded my ground, took my second deep breath of the morning, and leaned back in my chair to stare out the window at the gingko tree, its golden leaves a thousand mirrors of clear winter sunlight. I did not have to close my eyes to reconjure the morning’s encounter: sycamore leaf, dry and brittle, turned on its side and captured in the defoliated stems of a dead and abandoned cotton plant.
Look again, the prophet said. Look more closely at the leaf dry and brittle. It is whole, not one lobe or rib broken. It was lifted by the wind from the ground to which it had fallen, carried gently to this spot, and left to drop again. In its first descent, from the tree where it grew, it was aging, but still supple. It was easy to fall and remain in one piece. The second fall should have broken the leaf, but it didn’t.
The laws of nature being what they are, the leaf should have torn along its veins like perforated paper. Its thin edges should have caught on the sharp bracts and broken into bronze-colored dust. Its smooth blade should have cracked like dried mud. But, miraculously, it did not.
I laughed out loud. Of course. It is Christmas. The season of miracles. The season when virgins have babies and stars become GSP devices, when angels speak English and astronomers outsmart kings, when things fall without breaking.
Finally! said the prophet, stopping just short of calling me rebellious and stiff-necked. But there is one more thing: Christmas is the season of miracles, but it is also the season of prophecy. You need not concern yourself with the nature of the leaf – whether it is prophecy foretold or fulfilled – only with the imperative that in order to see either you must watch.
Copyright 2011
A picked-over cotton field looks like a phalanx of badly-drawn stick figures. Nearly every stalk has at least one boll left that looks like a head with tufted white hair escaping from its hard brown helmet and the various angles at which the spindly stems pierce the air make it appear as though the infantry is advancing at full speed, spears and pikes flailing at the ends of skinny arms. This one, though, the one cradling the sycamore leaf in its arms like a placard, seemed to be less warrior, more prophet. And the question becomes, I thought to myself, what has it been sent to proclaim?
I got back into the car, squinted my eyes into the rising sun, and headed toward town. As I rounded what we call the bad curve, the bag of Christmas gifts I’d placed in the floorboard fell over and squished, I was sure, their carefully-tied red and white bows. Using one hand to maneuver behind the ditches while I leaned across the front seat trying to reach and right the bag, I muttered to myself, "Why do I always do this? I knew when I put it there it would probably tump over! I knew it and did it anyway! What made me think that the law of centripetal force was going to be suspended just for me?"
It was not the first time I’ve had that conversation with myself. Not even the first time that morning. I regularly try to do too much with too little and move too fast for too little and, as a result, have proven over and over again that Newton’s laws of motion, among other things, are called laws for a reason.
Both hands back on the steering wheel, I took a deep breath, reminded myself that squished ribbon would not make any difference to the children who would be opening those packages later in the day, and watched the still dew-wet landscape slide swiftly past the car windows.
But the cotton plant prophet would not leave me alone. He kept crying out in the wilderness at the edge of my mind as I greeted my co-workers, turned on the computer, read the newspaper. He kept hoisting that sycamore leaf above his head and shouting, "Behold!" He kept staring at me as if at any moment he was going to have to declare me, in all my stubborn ignorance, a viperous Pharisee.
I finally conceded my ground, took my second deep breath of the morning, and leaned back in my chair to stare out the window at the gingko tree, its golden leaves a thousand mirrors of clear winter sunlight. I did not have to close my eyes to reconjure the morning’s encounter: sycamore leaf, dry and brittle, turned on its side and captured in the defoliated stems of a dead and abandoned cotton plant.
Look again, the prophet said. Look more closely at the leaf dry and brittle. It is whole, not one lobe or rib broken. It was lifted by the wind from the ground to which it had fallen, carried gently to this spot, and left to drop again. In its first descent, from the tree where it grew, it was aging, but still supple. It was easy to fall and remain in one piece. The second fall should have broken the leaf, but it didn’t.
The laws of nature being what they are, the leaf should have torn along its veins like perforated paper. Its thin edges should have caught on the sharp bracts and broken into bronze-colored dust. Its smooth blade should have cracked like dried mud. But, miraculously, it did not.
I laughed out loud. Of course. It is Christmas. The season of miracles. The season when virgins have babies and stars become GSP devices, when angels speak English and astronomers outsmart kings, when things fall without breaking.
Finally! said the prophet, stopping just short of calling me rebellious and stiff-necked. But there is one more thing: Christmas is the season of miracles, but it is also the season of prophecy. You need not concern yourself with the nature of the leaf – whether it is prophecy foretold or fulfilled – only with the imperative that in order to see either you must watch.
Copyright 2011
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Holy Awe and Dispan Hands
I am standing at the kitchen window, staring into darkness where only a few minutes before the light had smeared lavender across the horizon like a little girl’s first attempts at makeup. It is the night before Thanksgiving, the dishwasher has died, and one by one each knife, spoon, spatula, pot, plate, bowl, cup, and colander involved in the preparation of my assigned dishes, together with all the dirty glasses and plates and silverware that filled the dishwasher at the time of its demise, must be washed and dried by hand.
The onions and celery and pepper, diced delicately into small green cubes and tossed with the shoe-peg corn and the bright red pimentos, await the marinade that is cooling on the back burner and tomorrow’s verdict of whether Jenn’s morning sickness will subside long enough for her to enjoy it. Aunt Doris’s lime congealed salad, without which no holiday meal is complete, is congealing in the refrigerator, filled with nuts that Mama and Daddy picked up from under the tree in the side yard and shelled while watching Fox News. The nuts have also made their way into half of the fudge, the other half left nut-less for Katherine. The cranberry salad will be finished once it thickens enough for the pineapple and yet more nuts to be stirred in.
The satisfaction of completion makes up for the frustration of the dishwasher’s untimely death and I am unexpectedly content as I lower my hands into the hot sudsy water. Dishcloth in right hand, bowl in left, I swoosh the water around and around, set a rhythm for the task and for my breathing. Cooler water pours out of the long neck of the faucet and washes away the suds, leaves the bowl clean. Its curved glass sides reflect the overhead light in a starburst that causes me to blink. I turn it upside down onto the striped cotton dishtowel that stretches down the counter. Lines of water run down its face like tiny rivers racing to the sea.
I reach carefully to the bottom of the sink, beneath the suds, feel around for the knives, pull one up by its handle, wipe its teeth free of the celery strings. I add more hot water to help melt the tiny shards of chocolate left in the bottom of the pot. Each utensil, each dish requires its own attention, its own particular touch of my hand to be made clean. I am struck at some point how like a baptism this all is – going down dirty, coming up clean.
It doesn’t take much for that train of thought to move right on down the track to see the rest of the Thanksgiving preparation as sacrament as well. Take and eat this bread. Take and eat this marinated vegetable salad, this fudge, this turkey and dressing and pecan pie. And do it in remembrance of me. Do it in remembrance of all that is good in your life, all that has been good in your life, all that will be good in your life.
In the drawer by the sink, there are more striped cotton dishtowels. I get out another one and begin drying the dishes, piled on the counter in a precarious pyramid of glass and plastic and stainless steel. The last traces of water on the bowls, the spoons get absorbed into the towel. The cabinets fill – glasses lined up, plates stacked, silverware sorted.
The darkness outside the window has grown thicker. I can make out no shapes and yet I continue to stare as I drain the sink, spray it with Fantastik, and wipe away the last vestiges of what will be my Thanksgiving offerings. I am not looking at, but toward. Maybe through.
I am wondering if it is all sacrament. Every day, not just holiday. Every meal, not just Thanksgiving. Every breath. Every blink. Every scent and sound. I am wondering if I have approached life, all of it, with the holy awe it deserves. I am wondering if I have any idea of how to be grateful.
Copyright 2011
The onions and celery and pepper, diced delicately into small green cubes and tossed with the shoe-peg corn and the bright red pimentos, await the marinade that is cooling on the back burner and tomorrow’s verdict of whether Jenn’s morning sickness will subside long enough for her to enjoy it. Aunt Doris’s lime congealed salad, without which no holiday meal is complete, is congealing in the refrigerator, filled with nuts that Mama and Daddy picked up from under the tree in the side yard and shelled while watching Fox News. The nuts have also made their way into half of the fudge, the other half left nut-less for Katherine. The cranberry salad will be finished once it thickens enough for the pineapple and yet more nuts to be stirred in.
The satisfaction of completion makes up for the frustration of the dishwasher’s untimely death and I am unexpectedly content as I lower my hands into the hot sudsy water. Dishcloth in right hand, bowl in left, I swoosh the water around and around, set a rhythm for the task and for my breathing. Cooler water pours out of the long neck of the faucet and washes away the suds, leaves the bowl clean. Its curved glass sides reflect the overhead light in a starburst that causes me to blink. I turn it upside down onto the striped cotton dishtowel that stretches down the counter. Lines of water run down its face like tiny rivers racing to the sea.
I reach carefully to the bottom of the sink, beneath the suds, feel around for the knives, pull one up by its handle, wipe its teeth free of the celery strings. I add more hot water to help melt the tiny shards of chocolate left in the bottom of the pot. Each utensil, each dish requires its own attention, its own particular touch of my hand to be made clean. I am struck at some point how like a baptism this all is – going down dirty, coming up clean.
It doesn’t take much for that train of thought to move right on down the track to see the rest of the Thanksgiving preparation as sacrament as well. Take and eat this bread. Take and eat this marinated vegetable salad, this fudge, this turkey and dressing and pecan pie. And do it in remembrance of me. Do it in remembrance of all that is good in your life, all that has been good in your life, all that will be good in your life.
In the drawer by the sink, there are more striped cotton dishtowels. I get out another one and begin drying the dishes, piled on the counter in a precarious pyramid of glass and plastic and stainless steel. The last traces of water on the bowls, the spoons get absorbed into the towel. The cabinets fill – glasses lined up, plates stacked, silverware sorted.
The darkness outside the window has grown thicker. I can make out no shapes and yet I continue to stare as I drain the sink, spray it with Fantastik, and wipe away the last vestiges of what will be my Thanksgiving offerings. I am not looking at, but toward. Maybe through.
I am wondering if it is all sacrament. Every day, not just holiday. Every meal, not just Thanksgiving. Every breath. Every blink. Every scent and sound. I am wondering if I have approached life, all of it, with the holy awe it deserves. I am wondering if I have any idea of how to be grateful.
Copyright 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Breath and Engineering
November Sunday. Two words that, together, do not ordinarily conjure up images of bare feet and air-kiss breezes. And, yet, on this November Sabbath, the sun which is growing more visibly distant each day seems to have slipped back into the parlor with a wink and a flirtatious smile for one final curtsey to summer.
I am driving Daddy over to the Waters Place to move a tractor – not an ox-in-the-ditch kind of thing. More a good-reason-to-be-out-in-the-sunshine kind of thing. Cotton fields rimmed by maple trees in the height of fall flame remind me of candy canes, the Canadian flag, Santa’s suit. There should be a better word than vivid.
I am tempted to roll down the windows, but, temperature notwithstanding, it is still fall, there is still pollen, and Singulair ain’t cheap.
When we get to the field, Daddy asks me to wait until he gets the tractor cranked. Apparently there is some reason to believe it might not start. He hops into the cab, grabs an unusually long screwdriver and hops back down. The engine cover on the tractor opens like a coffin. The inside is a dark and oily conglomeration of cylinders and coils.
He thrusts the screwdriver into the belly of the beast like a dagger. The target appears to have been a cylinder wrapped in a coil.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Bleeding out the air. There’s a teeny little leak somewhere in the line. Haven’t had the time to fix it, so just have to bleed it out to crank it."
The absence of a subjective pronoun doesn’t bother me so much as the idea of bleeding air. It doesn’t sound right. Bleeding involves blood, not air. And bleeding is, as a general rule, involuntary. And not something one does deliberately.
The diesel engine coughs, catches, settles into the syncopated rhythm that is as soothing to me as a lullaby. The engine cover falls with a tinny clank and Daddy lifts his hand to release me from my post. He is back in the cab with one springing step and, by the time I reach the field gate, he’s right behind me headed home.
I watch him in my rear-view mirror for a couple hundred yards then turn onto the paved road, headed toward the recycling center where I will empty the back of the Escape of bins of magazines and newspapers and plastic bottles and aluminum cans in my small attempt at some kind of penance for my consumption. Even when he is out of view I am still thinking about bleeding air.
In the context of mechanical engineering it is, obviously, a positive thing, a remedy for an ill, but I can’t shake the feeling that in the context of living it is anything but.
In the Genesis story of creation it is the breath of God that introduces Adam’s soul into the clay sculpture that is his body and most other cultures and religions also invoke the breath as that which carries life. We acknowledge the power of an experience or the beauty of an object by saying that it takes our breath away. It is with breath, with air that we speak, that we sing, that we kiss. It is how each of us demonstrates our unique humanity. Surely there is no legitimate reason for its being deliberately bled away.
Except, of course, I realize with a suddenness that causes my eyes to widen, when you’ve been holding your breath. When you’ve been living in limbo. When you’ve been sitting on a fence so long that you’ve worn the wood smooth and can’t feel the splinters anymore. Because when that is where you are, it just may take a screwdriver jabbed into the coils of your chest to force out the stale air so the fresh can get in.
And at that point, the best you can do is pray that the farmer with the screwdriver is someone you can trust.
Copyright 2011
I am driving Daddy over to the Waters Place to move a tractor – not an ox-in-the-ditch kind of thing. More a good-reason-to-be-out-in-the-sunshine kind of thing. Cotton fields rimmed by maple trees in the height of fall flame remind me of candy canes, the Canadian flag, Santa’s suit. There should be a better word than vivid.
I am tempted to roll down the windows, but, temperature notwithstanding, it is still fall, there is still pollen, and Singulair ain’t cheap.
When we get to the field, Daddy asks me to wait until he gets the tractor cranked. Apparently there is some reason to believe it might not start. He hops into the cab, grabs an unusually long screwdriver and hops back down. The engine cover on the tractor opens like a coffin. The inside is a dark and oily conglomeration of cylinders and coils.
He thrusts the screwdriver into the belly of the beast like a dagger. The target appears to have been a cylinder wrapped in a coil.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Bleeding out the air. There’s a teeny little leak somewhere in the line. Haven’t had the time to fix it, so just have to bleed it out to crank it."
The absence of a subjective pronoun doesn’t bother me so much as the idea of bleeding air. It doesn’t sound right. Bleeding involves blood, not air. And bleeding is, as a general rule, involuntary. And not something one does deliberately.
The diesel engine coughs, catches, settles into the syncopated rhythm that is as soothing to me as a lullaby. The engine cover falls with a tinny clank and Daddy lifts his hand to release me from my post. He is back in the cab with one springing step and, by the time I reach the field gate, he’s right behind me headed home.
I watch him in my rear-view mirror for a couple hundred yards then turn onto the paved road, headed toward the recycling center where I will empty the back of the Escape of bins of magazines and newspapers and plastic bottles and aluminum cans in my small attempt at some kind of penance for my consumption. Even when he is out of view I am still thinking about bleeding air.
In the context of mechanical engineering it is, obviously, a positive thing, a remedy for an ill, but I can’t shake the feeling that in the context of living it is anything but.
In the Genesis story of creation it is the breath of God that introduces Adam’s soul into the clay sculpture that is his body and most other cultures and religions also invoke the breath as that which carries life. We acknowledge the power of an experience or the beauty of an object by saying that it takes our breath away. It is with breath, with air that we speak, that we sing, that we kiss. It is how each of us demonstrates our unique humanity. Surely there is no legitimate reason for its being deliberately bled away.
Except, of course, I realize with a suddenness that causes my eyes to widen, when you’ve been holding your breath. When you’ve been living in limbo. When you’ve been sitting on a fence so long that you’ve worn the wood smooth and can’t feel the splinters anymore. Because when that is where you are, it just may take a screwdriver jabbed into the coils of your chest to force out the stale air so the fresh can get in.
And at that point, the best you can do is pray that the farmer with the screwdriver is someone you can trust.
Copyright 2011
Monday, November 07, 2011
Chains
Two more ligustrum are gone, the two that guarded either side of the front steps. They were well over six feet tall, too tall for me to trim from the ground, too dangerous to try to trim leaning off the porch, so they constantly sported asymetrical spikes of bright yellow and neon green that made them look like herbaceous rock stars.
I’d struggled with the decision for a long while. These two, unlike the one I’d dispatched back in February, had not come to me from a nursery in a tub of thin black plastic, but from Tattnall County in a fertilizer bucket of thick white plastic. Skinny, but tough little cuttings from Grandmama’s yard, she’d sent them home with Mama one day, ever convinced that anybody, even I, could make things grow.
Other than the two ligustrum, which I did manage to keep alive and see turn into sturdy fat sentries defending the entry to Sandhill, the only thing I have that belonged to Grandmama is the iron bed in the guest room. But Grandmama was a pragmatist and had she known the misery that ligustrum pollen inflicts upon my respiratory system, she would have looked at me, arms folded across her cotton print shirtwaist, and said, with just a bit of incredulity that the thought had not occurred to her educated granddaughter, "Pull ‘em up."
So we did.
Well, actually, Daddy did. But before the extraction, we – like country people do – stood and stared for a few minutes. Stood with our hands on our hips and stared at the bushes, at the steps they’d begun crowding, at the rocking chairs they hid from view. And when we had stared long enough, we bounced our chins in nods of satisfaction and confirmation that, yes, pulling up these bushes was, in fact, a good thing.
"I’ll go get the tractor and the chain," Daddy said and in a few minutes he was back with a tractor three times as big as he needed because it was the only one without a plow or something else hitched to it at the moment and with the chain.
I couldn’t tell you where that chain came from or how long Daddy’s had it. There’s never been but the one, as we say, and, unlike so many things around the farm that tend to get misplaced or broken or used up, it just always is. Ferrol Sams wrote, "In the beginning was the land. Shortly thereafter was the father." And, in my mind, sometime no later than the second or third day was the chain, already rusted to a dark river red.
The chain has pulled fallen pine trees from across the road, vehicles of various sorts from whatever spot they had broken down, and, at least once, a corn combine from a grown-over ditch where Daddy inadvertently drove it while trying to turn for the next pass. Years ago when our horse Sonny suddenly died one day from a congenital heart defect, the chain pulled him to his grave.
On this day, Daddy looped the chain around the trunk of the ligustrum, clicked the hook into one of the links, and jumped back onto the tractor where a quick thrust of diesel power ripped the roots from their place in the soil. Quick. Easy. Satisfying.
The tractor moved away leaving a wide curving wake across the front yard where the branches of the bush scraped across the already browning grass and I saw the landscape open up, the view from the porch that had been obstructed like some of the seats in old Shea Stadium suddenly clear and wide and bright in the autumn sunshine.
I could see sitting down in the rocking chair and see the mailman pull up to my mailbox. I could see all the way across the field to the spot where the deer come out in the late evening to eat. I could see farther than I’d seen in years.
We don’t often think of chains as beneficial. They fasten. They hold down. They rattle loudly while the Jacob Marleys of our pasts haunt our days with endless replays of scenes that didn’t work and scripts that need rewriting. They bind us with the strength of alloy steel to people and places and jobs that restrict movement and leave us atrophied and pale.
But sometimes chains are just what we need. A chain can clear your path or pull you home when you're broken. A chain can turn you around and bury what needs burying. And, when you’re ready to let go, a chain can open up a whole new way of seeing.
Copyright 2011
I’d struggled with the decision for a long while. These two, unlike the one I’d dispatched back in February, had not come to me from a nursery in a tub of thin black plastic, but from Tattnall County in a fertilizer bucket of thick white plastic. Skinny, but tough little cuttings from Grandmama’s yard, she’d sent them home with Mama one day, ever convinced that anybody, even I, could make things grow.
Other than the two ligustrum, which I did manage to keep alive and see turn into sturdy fat sentries defending the entry to Sandhill, the only thing I have that belonged to Grandmama is the iron bed in the guest room. But Grandmama was a pragmatist and had she known the misery that ligustrum pollen inflicts upon my respiratory system, she would have looked at me, arms folded across her cotton print shirtwaist, and said, with just a bit of incredulity that the thought had not occurred to her educated granddaughter, "Pull ‘em up."
So we did.
Well, actually, Daddy did. But before the extraction, we – like country people do – stood and stared for a few minutes. Stood with our hands on our hips and stared at the bushes, at the steps they’d begun crowding, at the rocking chairs they hid from view. And when we had stared long enough, we bounced our chins in nods of satisfaction and confirmation that, yes, pulling up these bushes was, in fact, a good thing.
"I’ll go get the tractor and the chain," Daddy said and in a few minutes he was back with a tractor three times as big as he needed because it was the only one without a plow or something else hitched to it at the moment and with the chain.
I couldn’t tell you where that chain came from or how long Daddy’s had it. There’s never been but the one, as we say, and, unlike so many things around the farm that tend to get misplaced or broken or used up, it just always is. Ferrol Sams wrote, "In the beginning was the land. Shortly thereafter was the father." And, in my mind, sometime no later than the second or third day was the chain, already rusted to a dark river red.
The chain has pulled fallen pine trees from across the road, vehicles of various sorts from whatever spot they had broken down, and, at least once, a corn combine from a grown-over ditch where Daddy inadvertently drove it while trying to turn for the next pass. Years ago when our horse Sonny suddenly died one day from a congenital heart defect, the chain pulled him to his grave.
On this day, Daddy looped the chain around the trunk of the ligustrum, clicked the hook into one of the links, and jumped back onto the tractor where a quick thrust of diesel power ripped the roots from their place in the soil. Quick. Easy. Satisfying.
The tractor moved away leaving a wide curving wake across the front yard where the branches of the bush scraped across the already browning grass and I saw the landscape open up, the view from the porch that had been obstructed like some of the seats in old Shea Stadium suddenly clear and wide and bright in the autumn sunshine.
I could see sitting down in the rocking chair and see the mailman pull up to my mailbox. I could see all the way across the field to the spot where the deer come out in the late evening to eat. I could see farther than I’d seen in years.
We don’t often think of chains as beneficial. They fasten. They hold down. They rattle loudly while the Jacob Marleys of our pasts haunt our days with endless replays of scenes that didn’t work and scripts that need rewriting. They bind us with the strength of alloy steel to people and places and jobs that restrict movement and leave us atrophied and pale.
But sometimes chains are just what we need. A chain can clear your path or pull you home when you're broken. A chain can turn you around and bury what needs burying. And, when you’re ready to let go, a chain can open up a whole new way of seeing.
Copyright 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Caribou and Coyotes
The fog thins just enough for me to see the sun, a flat white communion wafer floating in a halo of wavy opalescence. The trees and fences and barns beneath it stand unusually straight, as though three dimensions are not enough to spotlight their long lines and sharp angles. My hand on the steering wheel moves left and right, in the easy rhythm of a weaver’s shuttle, following the curves of the road toward that flat white sun onto which it is easy to believe that, if I just keep going, I could slide like a baserunner stealing home.
It is a morning for contemplation. No radio news or iPod music. No telephone calls to return or mental lists to make. Just breathing. And looking around. And wondering.
I was reading the other day about caribou. Most of the world (and North Americans during the month of December) call them reindeer. They have specialized noses that warm cold air before it reaches their lungs and hooves that adapt to the season. They are believed to be the only mammals that can see ultraviolet light.
The caribou are migratory animals and some populations travel up to 3,100 miles a year covering 390,000 square miles, the furthest of any terrestrial mammal. The ones who live near the Arctic Circle follow the same migration path every year, an innate sense of some kind drawing them into the footsteps of their forebears. Also drawn to this same path year after year are the coyotes who feed on the caribou, who patiently and lazily lie in wait for the inevitable buffet.
One would think – if one were, say, driving into town on a foggy autumn morning and being more successful than usual at keeping at bay one’s own mental coyotes – that the caribou would eventually, maybe not this year or next year, but over a few caribou generations, figure out the need to change that path, to shake things up a bit in order to preserve the population. One could imagine, without much effort, the old bulls, slower but wiser, lowering their five-foot wide antlers and nudging the calves toward a detour. One might think that, if they didn’t, being able to preheat their oxygen or see in the dark wouldn’t amount to much more than parlor tricks for some future reindeer diaspora.
There is a legend that says the caribou are what keep the earth turning. That over the millennia their hooves have worn a deep crown into the top of the world. That they run, pounding into the ground at 50 miles per hour, regardless of what stands in their way, including the coyotes, because if they stop so will the planet. There is, says the recounter of the legend, "an inner necessity that outweighs all consequence."
I have had a number of difficult conversations lately with someone who is dear to me, someone who has loved me for a long time. There are things about which we disagree. Not inconsequential things, but important things, heart things. My dear one does not understand some of the choices that I have made, does not understand that, in fact, they were not choices at all, but simply the outward manifestation of that inner necessity.
I have tried to explain. I have not succeeded. All that the dear one sees are the consequences, the coyotes crouched in the shadows by the side of the path I’ve chosen and the scars left by the ones that came along before.
I notice that the fog has cleared a bit. The sun has warmed to margarine yellow and grown larger as it topped the pine trees that trimmed the cotton fields. It is easier to see the other cars and trucks in the herd headed toward town. Fog, it should be noted, disperses more easily than hard feelings.
We are all migratory animals. The food and shelter we seek may not be literal and the seasons we follow may be emotional rather than calendar ones, but every ear has heard a call that will not be silenced. Every heart has sensed a purpose that will not be ignored. I know this because, despite the coyotes, the earth keeps turning.
And I know that, eventually, fog always disappears.
Copyright 2011
It is a morning for contemplation. No radio news or iPod music. No telephone calls to return or mental lists to make. Just breathing. And looking around. And wondering.
I was reading the other day about caribou. Most of the world (and North Americans during the month of December) call them reindeer. They have specialized noses that warm cold air before it reaches their lungs and hooves that adapt to the season. They are believed to be the only mammals that can see ultraviolet light.
The caribou are migratory animals and some populations travel up to 3,100 miles a year covering 390,000 square miles, the furthest of any terrestrial mammal. The ones who live near the Arctic Circle follow the same migration path every year, an innate sense of some kind drawing them into the footsteps of their forebears. Also drawn to this same path year after year are the coyotes who feed on the caribou, who patiently and lazily lie in wait for the inevitable buffet.
One would think – if one were, say, driving into town on a foggy autumn morning and being more successful than usual at keeping at bay one’s own mental coyotes – that the caribou would eventually, maybe not this year or next year, but over a few caribou generations, figure out the need to change that path, to shake things up a bit in order to preserve the population. One could imagine, without much effort, the old bulls, slower but wiser, lowering their five-foot wide antlers and nudging the calves toward a detour. One might think that, if they didn’t, being able to preheat their oxygen or see in the dark wouldn’t amount to much more than parlor tricks for some future reindeer diaspora.
There is a legend that says the caribou are what keep the earth turning. That over the millennia their hooves have worn a deep crown into the top of the world. That they run, pounding into the ground at 50 miles per hour, regardless of what stands in their way, including the coyotes, because if they stop so will the planet. There is, says the recounter of the legend, "an inner necessity that outweighs all consequence."
I have had a number of difficult conversations lately with someone who is dear to me, someone who has loved me for a long time. There are things about which we disagree. Not inconsequential things, but important things, heart things. My dear one does not understand some of the choices that I have made, does not understand that, in fact, they were not choices at all, but simply the outward manifestation of that inner necessity.
I have tried to explain. I have not succeeded. All that the dear one sees are the consequences, the coyotes crouched in the shadows by the side of the path I’ve chosen and the scars left by the ones that came along before.
I notice that the fog has cleared a bit. The sun has warmed to margarine yellow and grown larger as it topped the pine trees that trimmed the cotton fields. It is easier to see the other cars and trucks in the herd headed toward town. Fog, it should be noted, disperses more easily than hard feelings.
We are all migratory animals. The food and shelter we seek may not be literal and the seasons we follow may be emotional rather than calendar ones, but every ear has heard a call that will not be silenced. Every heart has sensed a purpose that will not be ignored. I know this because, despite the coyotes, the earth keeps turning.
And I know that, eventually, fog always disappears.
Copyright 2011
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