Writing Down the Words

The Truth Will Out

2012-01-23T15:31:00.001-08:00

Working on the Senior Citizen History Project (here) has necessitated sorting through hundreds of old family photographs to find just the right ones to illustrate each page of text. This is not a job for the faint of heart (or the short of time). Every photo elicits memories within memories. For instance:

This was taken shortly after I was brought home from the hospital. That's my three year old brother FP in the foreground, the one with his arm across his forehead in, "Jeez, do we have to keep her?"mode.

Not only had my mother been away for two weeks, she came home carrying a squalling, wet, no-fun-at-all baby sister. Poor FP. Things did not get better as I got older. I was a selfish, prying, demanding little kid, wanting whatever FP was playing with at the moment. "Give it to Nin-nin," was my battle cry.

"I'll give it to Nin-nin," my mother would say through gritted teeth, her hands itching to deposit me in a room by myself until I shaped up. (Apparently my Memere had no qualms about administering swift justice. When she caught me biting her precious FP's ear in order to wrest a toy from him, she chased me around her house with a leather clothes whip!)

When he was four, FP was offered a deal too good to pass up. The chicken feed man who supplied my father's chicken farm with sacks of grain offered to buy me for a dollar.

CF man: "That's a cute little sister you have there."

FP: "Nah." (No way was I cute!)

CF man: "She'd just about fit into one of these empty sacks, don't you think?"

FP: "Yeah." His eyes must have lit up at the thought.

This conversation was overheard by my father who, though a bit taken aback, stayed quiet to see what would develop.

CF man: "I'll give you a dollar for her."

FP: "Okay."

The chicken man reached in the back of his pickup truck for an empty burlap sack. Then he reached into his wallet for a dollar bill. FP must have had a change of heart as he took the bill. Perhaps he realized that I was about to be hauled off in a sack and that might not necessarily be a good thing. He began to cry. My mother came out to see what he was howling about.

"FPC!" she exclaimed, using all three of his names as my father explained. "You give that man his money back right now! You can't sell your sister!" At which point my brother forfeited the dollar and was marched into the house for a half hour in the punishment chair (another memory offshoot for another time).

That was the official version that was handed down with other family lore. My brother now claims he remembers another ending. He says the chicken feed man offered him $10 and the only reason he started to cry was because he thought for that amount of money he might have to go along to help take care of me.

Happy Little Snow Song

2012-01-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

Snow is falling, falling down

beyond the windowpane.

The playful wind swirls flakes around

and drops them down again.

They cling, they drift, they fill the air,

like many feathered wings,

and when the earth is still like this

I hear the snowflakes sing.

Beginning at the Beginning

2012-01-19T01:45:00.000-08:00

At the beginning...

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream? Edgar Allen Poe

I have recently signed on at the local Senior Center to work with middle grade students on a history project - my history!

Sponsored by a health initiative and overseen by a youth program coordinator and a teacher from the local middle school, the project pairs a willing senior citizen with an inquisitive student. Together we will talk about the past, sort through hundreds of old photos and artifacts, ask and answer a myriad of questions and finally produce a written and pictorial scrapbook of the senior's life. All this in 9 weeks!

Last week we had an informational meeting and met the students through a lively interview process much like speed-dating. The students spent five or six minutes hopping from table to table, interviewing each participating senior. Finally they met in a huddle and then fanned out, grinning, each one choosing an adult they felt they'd enjoy working with. My young person is a very friendly, very lively 13 year old girl with long dark hair and a smile that flashes like sunshine on water.

We agreed that the best place to start was with the timeline that begins with my birth date and ends with the present day. I've done my part this week by sorting through the dozens of photo albums and endless photo storage boxes for pictures that represent the highlights of my life - babyhood, childhood playmates, first day of school, high school graduation, college days, marriage, children, etc. I will have to repeat the college days three times as I dutifully went off for a year immediately after high school, interrupted my studies to marry and raise a family, build a log cabin and homestead in northern Vermont, travel to Europe, and move house five times. I finally returned to school for a bachelor's degree in creative arts and then a masters degree in writing when in my fifties.

When I told my children about this project one of my daughter's queried, "Are you old enough to do that?"

That made me chuckle. The ad recruiting seniors specified 60+. That's me all right, though some days I feel more + than not. At any rate, I think it will be fun to look over my life in the company of a teenager. She is already aghast that I didn't have a TV in my house until I was older than she is now, that I spent most of my time alone and out of doors in the neighboring woods and fields ("With wild animals and bugs and everything?") and wouldn't care if I never went shopping again ("I've never met anyone who didn't like shopping!").

Tomorrow we will go through my first batch of photos. I will talk, she will take notes, and we'll walk the nostalgia path together, me with my head in the past and she with hers in the future. Where we meet in the present will become a special place for both of us. I'll fill you all in as we progress...

At 3 years old

2012-01-18T03:36:00.000-08:00

Waiting For the Magic to Hit

I know

If I wait long enough,

Sit quietly long enough,

Listen long enough,

Some small miracle

Will present itself.

Perhaps the sun will dance

In silver slippers on the water,

Or the wind will become visible,

Bullying the snow ahead of it.

I might see the silver flash

Of a hunting ermine,

Or hear the voice of an icicle

Weeping at its own demise.

I can breathe the world in

Through nose and eye and ear

Breathe it out again through the pen.

Silence and language meet

In the mind of a poet.

Counting Days, Counting Flowers

2012-01-14T06:04:00.000-08:00

The woods at Barholomew's Cobble where Floyd and I often walked...

I read a wonderful story at this site about a decades-ago friendship between two young girls and a 40 year old man that asked the question - could that kind of friendship even be possible in today's world? The answer, of course, and sadly, is no. But it put me in mind of my own childhood and a wonderful man, single, in his forties, caretaker at several city-people-owned houses in our rural community who took the time to befriend and teach a solitary little girl about the wonder of the natural world and the power of words.

Floyd was an old friend. Together we'd walked many a woodland trail and winding road. It was Floyd who taught me in my childhood the names of the trees and plants that bordered the roadside and populated the forests. He taught me how to shoot a rifle one morning and make a strawberry shortcake that afternoon. He awakened in me an interest in poetry, for often while we walked he would recite from memory long verses by some of his favorite authors. We kept in touch even as I graduated from high school, went off to college, married, and traveled to far places. He was one of the first people I looked up when I returned to live in my childhood hometown.

Years passed but we still found time to walk together. Then one spring, Floyd fell ill. I visited him as he lay in a hospital bed, unable to move his legs at all. There would be no more walks for us, I realized. Floyd looked at me, stalwart and not a bit sorry for himself. "I have no feeling in my legs," he said. "I imagine I'll go from here to the graveyard but maybe you'll keep me company here for a while."

Always before, Floyd had been the giver, I the receiver. Over the next few weeks that changed. Now it was my turn to give. Every day I found an hour or two to spend at his bedside. I brought him bits of news from around town, read letters from his friends and articles from the newspaper. I even published one about our friendship. That made him smile. "Maybe you'll write another about our time now?" he asked. And each week he grew a little quieter, his breathing a little more labored.

I began to count the time he stayed there by the flowers that were in bloom. When he first entered the hospital, violets were just poking their shy heads from beneath dark green foliage. He couldn't have flowers in his room because he was asthmatic, but I could tell him what was blossoming. We marked the weeks by color - paper white hyacinths, sunny yellow daffodils, buttercups and purple swamp iris and apple blossoms that blushed pink and white.

As the flowers multiplied and thrived, Floyd seemed to shrink. The light in his eyes dimmed and his strength left him until he was unable to do more than lift his hands. I remembered how strong he'd been, how those hands had wielded axe and hammer and saw. I remembered their gentleness when he doctored small animals and children with bumps and scrapes. When the June roses began to bud, Floyd's conditioned worsened. I left word with the floor nurses to call me whenever he was awake and wanted company. Then I would pull my chair close to his bed and hold his hand, letting the companionship we'd established years ago enfold us.

By the last week of June, when daisies dotted the green meadows like summer snowflakes, Floyd was hooked to an oxygen tube. When I touched his hand, his eyes would flutter open and focus and a look of recognition would light his face. Then his eyes would close again. The room was filled with his raspy breathing. One day I brought a book of his favorite verses with me. We could no longer converse but the nurse assured me he could still hear me so I read on through the afternoon, telling the sagas he'd so often recited to me as we walked the sunlit woods. On the last day of June, the day the first orange lilies lifted their shining faces to the sun, Floyd took his last walk with me, a walk of the mind and heart.

That was twenty years ago. Today I am going on a hike/write with a local naturalist as we've done for several years. Floyd will walk with us unseen but not unheard.

Awake In the Night

2012-01-07T05:41:00.000-08:00

The moon at midnight was a distant, radiant orb, dusting the landscape with silver sparkles. There is only a vague familiarity to the known world on such nights. I'd been asleep but the moonlight shining through my window woke me. The night sky was irresistible. I pulled on boots and a coat, tugged a hat over my head and stepped outside. The air was cold but not biting. The yard and woods spread out before me in the ghostly light. Not a sound broke the stillness, not a breath of wind moved a tree branch or the tall, dead grasses as meadow's edge. Everything was at once unrecognizable and eerily familiar. In one's imagination, almost anything could be creeping stealthily through the dark. In reality, most unidentifiable lumps are ordinary bushes.

As my eyes adjusted and I woke up a little more, the night became a magical place. Everything was painted with silver - the small drifts of leaves at the edge of the yard, the ropes of my swing, the roofline of the house next door. I walked on the moonpath, amazed that I could cast a shadow in the middle of the night. There were night noises in the woods, scurryings and chufflings and the distant bark of a dog. Only when the voices of a pack of hunting coyotes carried across the far meadow did I turn for home. I would have liked to see the moonlight trace runnels of liquid silver along their fur but I did not want them to see me.

Back in bed I snuggled under the down comforter, still seeing in my mind's eye the play of moonlight on the still pond waters and gaunt tree trunks. In the distance the coyotes yapped. I fell asleep, safe and warm in body while my dream self floated up to the stars and the sunlit moon.

Whining About the Weather

2012-01-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

No snow yet...

After two months of mild weather following a surprise October blizzard, we're seeing temperatures in the single digits with even colder wind chills. The poor plants! No blanket of snow protects their frozen toes. I've heaped hay around the bases of the rose bushes but the forsythia bush, confused by the mild weather into blossoming again, has had its little yellow blossoms turned to tattered flags of ice.

Even the sky looks cold. This morning the horizon is pale yellow above the mountain and icy blue beyond that. Trees are silhouetted against the burgeoning light, their shivering branches clattering out an SOS in the bitter wind. Small birds fight for places at the seed feeder and woodpeckers have reduced the suet in its wire cage to a small raggedy lump.

The cold is not expected to last beyond Friday when once again temperatures will bounce into the high 30s and lower 40s. Not a snowflake is in sight for at least the next ten days. I much prefer winter to be winter, with deep, plant-protecting snow. I don't mind the cold when I can go out and play in it.

Playmate from last year.

My Answer

2011-12-23T03:59:00.000-08:00

My friend J asked two questions about miracles at the end of today's post. Here's my answer

We all experience big moments that thrill us to the very marrow—births, weddings, reunions, reconciliations. It's the little moments however, the ordinary, ho-hum, didn’t-see-them-because-we-weren’t-looking miracles that make up our days. Here are a few of my favorites:

*Silence, broken by bird song or a child's laughter.

*Being kissed by a kitten. Or a child, a sweetheart, an old friend, a puppy (or a sunbeam).

*Finding money in my pocket unexpectedly.

*The first glimpse of a harvest moon hanging above the horizon like a glowing Japanese lantern, or walking along a silver moonpath on a snowbound night.

*Getting all green lights.

*Hearing a voice warm with love on the other end of the telephone line.

*Climbing between sheets that have been hung on a line to dry. It’s like falling asleep out of doors in the sun and wind. In fact, crawling into bed when I’m exhausted is such a marvelous moment that I try to stay awake long enough to relish its comfort.

*Opening a new book. Reading an old favorite. Making my own books. There’s an immense satisfaction that comes from making things from scratch.

*Feeling the weight of my grandchildren as they fall asleep against me. There is nothing more endearing than the faith of a child and nothing more rewarding than knowing you are trusted completely.

*Wearing my favorite sweater. The sleeves are stretched, the shoulders have been stitched and re-stitched and the color is faded from countless washings, but it is still the first thing I reach for when I’m chilly or in need of comfort.

*Facing a blank piece of paper. What better way to illustrate unlimited potential?

*Being the recipient AND the perpetrator of small kindnesses.

*Hugs.

*Dawn…not such a little moment, perhaps, seeing as it banishes night and gives us a new day every single time, but so often we miss it in our hurry to be doing instead of being. I want to be in that first blush of light when the morning is fresh and the world holds its breath. I want to be kissed awake by that first sunbeam.

What are yours?

2011-12-16T05:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was as grey as the bowl of an old soup spoon. Rain fell intermittently, making the earth look as drab and miserable as the sky above it. Last night a bullying wind herded the clouds eastward leaving a sky freckled with stars. Now the sun is shining, gilding the bare treetops and turning the clouds lemon yellow at the edges. The little snow that fell last week is gone and the green grass and warmer temperatures make it look and feel more like spring than winter.

I am compiling my poetry into books for family Christmas gifts. Here's one for you.

Solstice

Birds weave the morning light.

the day grows down

to dusk and night,

and I, the watcher,

won't be here

again until the breaking year.

My best wishes to you all for a happy holiday season!

2011-12-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

My cheerful little Christmas tree reminds me of the joy of the season.

There are days when you simply have to be thankful for what you have. Today was one of those.

I go out to the car to drive to work and find that a front tire is flat. While the mechanic is fixing it, he tells me I need four new all-weather tires before the snow flies. I remind myself I am lucky to have a car.

All 19 students in my classroom act as though they are in the throes of full moon madness, lying sideways on their desks, chattering to one another like magpies instead of working quietly, starting food fights in the cafeteria and attacking one another on the playground. I remind myself that I'm lucky to have a job.

My bank account is starving. I remind myself that I am not.

The landlord's furnace goes kaput and it will take three full days to replace it and all the antiquated attendant piping - three days without heat or hot water (my cottage is attached to the main house). I remind myself I'm lucky to have a place to live.

I cannot sleep straight through a night, no matter how tired I am. When I wake at 2 or 3 or 4, the monkey mind will not be stilled. I remind myself I'm lucky to still be cognizant of what's going on around me.

Two of my four children live too far away to see at holidays. I remind myself that though we are distant in miles we are close in heart.

Not everyone is as lucky as I am!

The Visit

2011-12-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

Exhausted bunny...

My daughter C and her one-year-old daughter, the Bean, visited this weekend. C and I ate lots of good food, talked about anything and everything, played Scrabble by candlelight so Bean could sleep in the dark, and got down on the floor with her (often!) to play with her toys. She doesn't call me Mam Mam anymore. When she woke this morning, she took several toddling steps toward me and yelled, "Memere!" plain as plain. C and I looked at each other in amazement and my eyes filled. It's so easy to cry happy tears when you're in love.

C and I watched the Bean's little face light up at her first glimpse of holiday lights, helped her feed corn to some very bouncy goats at a local nursery, and took turns keeping vigil while she napped in the car and we tromped off into the woods, one and then the other, to cut trees for Christmas.

Tiny tree for a tiny cottage...

It was a clear, blustery day. While C tied the tree to the roof of her car for the trip home, hundreds of quonking geese flew overhead to land on the nearby pond. Their concerted voices were like the distant roar of a great crowd. I waved the car down the road (part of my heart always goes with it) and then I walked to where I could see the water. It was covered with dark, bobbing bodies resting serenely on the surface. The great, full Frost moon hovered near the horizon, shedding its pale light on me and geese alike.

Winter Prayer

2011-12-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

Not THE snowy winter mentioned below but one of them from my childhood.

Born and bred in New England, I am used to long, hot summers punctuated with a few rainy days and pop-up thunderstorms. In my childhood, autumns, with their vivid foliage, were followed by cold, snowy winters. I remember a time when the first frost came in October and we had snow by Thanksgiving. One particularly snowy winter my brother had to grab a shovel and drop off the porch roof into a deep drift, shovel his way round to the garage doors (no electric overheads in those days), and shovel away the snow that had piled up three feet or more so my dad could get the car out. Today, the 4th of December, it is 50 degrees, the sun is warm, the breeze is barely cool and the confused forsythia bush in my yard is putting forth its second set of blossoms!

We who like to garden know a good snow cover is needed to insulate tender roots from the penetrating and damaging frost. Snow is often called the poor man's fertilizer, especially if it comes mid-spring once the ground has begun to thaw. Snow contains nitrogen and moisture, both essential to the health of emerging plants. If the predictions of a rainy winter in our area hold, even we poor folks won't be getting our fertilizer this winter.

So, please, please let it snow!

Old Dog, New Tricks

2011-12-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

internet_dog.jpg

scienceblogs.com

I have to learn Wordpress in order to build a website for a non-profit organization on whose board of directors I sit. Wondering if you would help me out by hopping on over to http://paulineclarke.wordpress.com/ to read and perhaps leave a comment so I can play with the features. I won't be replacing this blog. I just need navigation practice. Thanks!

Between Seasons

2011-12-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

This was taken last year after the first snowfall.

A tarnished pewter sky

peers through leafless branches

fog drifts and curls,

along the riverbanks and

hovers above the water,

where half a dozen geese float—

six dark shadows that

appear and disappear

as if they, too, were

only mist and imagination.

The last forlorn light

leaches from the afternoon.

Suspended between seasons

the days grow short.

The old year draws to a close

as though feeling its age.

Everything slows, quiets, fades,

until it seems the dreary days

will never end. Snow sweeps in,

making art of the drab browns,

the cheerless grays,

weighting the sad, dead grasses,

frosting every branch and twig

until the landscape looks luminous,

even on sunless days.

When it does shine, oh! the brilliance

of it, the dazzling radiance.

There is beauty in the passing

of one season to the next,

even in grim November.

Afterwards

2011-11-28T03:40:00.000-08:00

The turkey has been devoured, the china has been washed and dried and returned to the cupboard, the lace tablecloth is freshly ironed and replaced in its drawer. My little cottage is quiet. We had a marvelous time as we cooked together, said thanks together, ate well, and laughed much. The phone rang often as distant family members called to say Happy Thanksgiving.

Today I took a long walk in the late November sunshine. The trees are showing their bones; the landscape is painted in muted shades of buff and brown. Now at twilight, the sky is blanketed in a quilt of dove gray. The air is damp but still unseasonably mild. We are headed toward the longest night of the year after which the light will begin its slow but steady increase. Now is the time for hunkering down. For me, winter is not a season of death so much as one of rest, a time to withdraw and be quiet, to renew ones' self.

Repeat

2011-11-22T03:47:00.000-08:00

I've posted this before so it may be on its way to becoming my annual Thanksgiving piece (until one year old grandbaby Ada is old enough to bake). Fia was three when this was written. She's now eleven. Time has a way of slipping past us when we're not looking, doesn't it?

Beware What the Cook Won't Eat

It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I’m making a pie. “Can I help?” asks my granddaughter Fia. At three, she’s interested in being part of any cooking going on.

“Sure,” I say and we push up our sleeves, haul out flour and sugar and spices, find the rolling pin and two pie plates (one for each of us) and get to work.

She clambers onto a kitchen stool and leans her elbows on the table. “One, two, shtree,” she counts as we measure half-cups of flour and shortening into a bowl. I cut in the shortening, add the water, and mix the dough into a lump. I pull off a small piece and hand it to her. She presses it between her small hands. “We’re making pies, right Memere?” she beams. “I love pies.”

She nibbles a bit of the dough and makes a face, then watches as I sprinkle flour on the table. “Uh oh,” she says. “Memere, you’re supposed to put it in the bowl.”

I explain that I need it on the table so that when I roll out the crust it won’t stick. “Oh,” she says and helps me by spreading the flour all the way to the edges of the table and onto the floor.

I let her use the rolling pin first. Her small ball of dough rolls right around the pin. She picks it off, balls it up, and starts again. While she is busy, I measure pumpkin, milk, and spices into another bowl.

“Let me do it,” she begs when I take up an egg to crack. She whacks the egg on the edge of the bowl and drops the whole thing in. “Ick,” she says. I pick out the pieces of shell. When I hold the second egg out to her she shakes her head.

She scrapes her pie crust off the table and plops it in her dish, then kneels on the stool and puts her whole weight on her hands as she presses it flat. “How’s this?” She holds the plate up for inspection. The dough falls on the floor. She scrambles down, picks it up and blows on it. Flour dust puffs into the air. “It’s okay,” she assures me. “It was on the floor for not even one minute.”

I roll my own crust and fit it in the plate, crimping the edges carefully. Fia watches, then tries to crimp her own crust. When she is through, there is just room in the center for a dab of pumpkin mixture. I pour the remaining pumpkin filling into my pie shell and slide the pies into the oven. Fia helps me set the timer.

The kitchen looks like the aftermath of a fight in a flour mill. There is white dust on every surface, bits of sticky dough on the table, the floor, and Fia's chin, and spatters of pumpkin on the table and the stove. We fetch the broom and the dustpan. I sweep while Fia wipes off the table. I sweep again. When the last dish is dried and put away and the floor is clean enough to eat from, we turn on the oven light and check the pies.

“They look delicious,” I say to Fia. “We can eat yours tonight and save mine for Thanksgiving dinner, okay?”

Fia looks at her pie. She looks at me. “You can have mine, Memere,” she says. “I just only like making pies. I don’t like to eat any.”

Fia at 3 and her Memere (at a dance recital - hence the hair bow)

Thanks, Hilary!

Bits and Pieces

2011-11-20T16:48:00.000-08:00

New vegetable bed at far end of patio

Following a couple of chilly, rainy days the sunshine and warm temperatures lured me out of doors. I had morning tea on the patio and afternoon tea on my outdoor swing. Between those cups, I dug three new garden beds, hauled boards and stakes and mulching hay in my little Garden Way cart, and put away all the bits of decoration that make the patio such an appealing place all summer.

Little red counter top, soon to be green

French country curtains with red accents

The cottage is getting an overhaul, too. My tiny kitchen will get a gradual color makeover. The red linoleum counter top will soon be replaced with a one piece laminate in gray green. New gray green curtains will replace the French country print doing present duty. A lacquered red basket that sits atop the fridge and holds dry goods has been painted green. It's exciting to watch my little place take on a new persona. Funny - red is one of my least favorite colors yet I've lived companionably with my little red countertop for ten years. Any nearby red accent popped out - the dry goods basket, the red vinegar bottle on the windowsill, the curtain borders and the red cardinal sun catcher. When I set the new green countertop over it to test the color, every green accent caught my eye. And green is my favorite color.

Once red dry goods basket

When all the work was finished, I sat in the pale November sunshine to drink my late afternoon tea. There is great satisfaction in accomplishing tasks that make life more pleasant. Come spring, I will plant vegetables and herbs in my new garden beds. By that time, my cottage should be painted and I will be enjoying a new ambiance. Sounds like a great way to start my new retired lifestyle.

My summer outdoor room will be one of my retirement hangouts

Heaven Right Here

2011-11-16T12:57:00.000-08:00

A fine rain has been falling hour after hour. Everything is sodden; tree branches weep tears from their twig ends, fallen leaves lay in soggy heaps, the grasses have laid down in misery along the roadsides. Even the sky has failed to brighten and at 4 p.m. is the same colorless, pale grey that I woke to this morning. Most of the hardwoods are bare now save for the oaks that cling tenaciously to their leaves. We are mid-November and still the air is mild. Every day the weatherman reminds us that we've lost two more minutes of daylight.

One day last week the sun was shining, sifting through the yellow leaves that still clung to some of the larches. Being among the tree trunks in that light was like being in one of nature's cathedrals. There are soaring arches, a sense of peace, and a pouring down of leaf-stained light.

Watching Her Grow

2011-11-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

She even reads Mama's books and the mail!

Like Memere, like granddaughter. Baby Bean loves to read. She pulls all her brightly colored board books off the shelf, leans over them, and runs her fingers under the titles. She murmurs significant little sounds complete with inflection, then looks up to see if I've understood what she's just said. "Good job, Bean!" I exclaim and she grins and claps her hands. Then she takes another book, squirms her way into my lap and repeats the process.

She has begun to make important associations. Yesterday we were playing with her jack-in-the-box. She doesn't care about the music. She likes, instead, to press the button keeping the lid closed and pretend to be surprised when the clown pops up. "Ooops!" I crow every time. "The clown is out!" Then over and over I stuff it back down saying, "Get in there clown."

When she tired of that she grabbed some books and handed them to me. One of them was a Sandra Boynton book called Opposites. There was big, small, short, tall. Then, "in, out," I read, following the words with my own finger. She looked at me, a long solemn look, then she crawled off my lap and grabbed her jack-in-the-box. With her tiny forefinger she popped the button on the lid. Out popped the clown. It took a moment for the light to dawn but then, "Oh!" I exclaimed. "You smart girl!" She grinned her 8-toothed grin.

She's on her feet a lot more, taking tentative steps on her own but much preferring to hold my finger as she goes from the toy-littered living room to the kitchen to watch Mama cook or into the bedroom to empty the clothes from her dresser drawer or outside to watch Papa chop wood. She feeds herself tiny bits of food with a loud, running, "Mmmmmmmmmm" that doesn't stop until she is all done, which she indicates with sign language. She's also learning Spanish and will respond to words and instructions in both that language and English.

When it was time for me to leave, she reached out to me from her perch in Papa's arms. I said sadly, "Memere can't pick you up. I have to go bye-bye now." She leaned back against her father and looked at me sorrowfully. The she lifted her small hand and waved.

It's awfully hard to drive when I'm crying.

Taking up the challenge...

2011-11-06T05:25:00.000-08:00

Then husband and our 4 kids in 1974

Friko mentioned at her blog that she has undertaken memoir writing and apologizes that her blog postings may become more sporadic as she immerses herself in her new writing task. Her post encouraged me to shake off the complacency I'd adopted toward my own foray into memoir writing. Below is a piece that appeared in the paper when I was still writing a weekly column. It seemed a good time to trot it out again. Perhaps, like Friko, if I say here that this is what I intend, I will find it easier to continue than to admit defeat publicly.

My son and daughter-in-law gave me a book one Christmas called "The Story of a Lifetime." Its lined and empty pages are headed with questions about ancestors and heritage, childhood days, education, work, marriage, beliefs, values, regrets, mistakes, milestones, favorite things, and lessons learned. It ends with a couple of additional pages on which to note how things have changed over a single lifetime. When all the questions have been answered, the book becomes a gift again, returned to the givers as a treasured family record.

It may be years before they get it back. The very first question about emigrating ancestors sent me to the safety box to dig out the notes my mother had written about her French lineage (written in French, of course). Some of her relatives left France in the 1700s to settle in the town of St. Bruno, located in the Province of Quebec, Canada. In the early 1900s, several of the younger family members came south to the United States. Both of my mother’s parents settled in Massachusetts and were married a year after my own father was born. My father’s father came to New York from Montreal, though his roots were English. He married a woman whose direct ancestors included General James Longstreet of Civil War fame, and a full-blooded Chippewa great-great grandmother. I didn’t learn this last fact until I was well into my 40s, after years of pretending to be a Native American, of learning to walk toe first so as not to snap twigs underfoot, of making prayer circles, of feeling a powerful kinship with the earth.

The next set of questions deals with inherited traits. How am I like my grandparents, my aunts or uncles or cousins? What of my parents do I see in myself? I have inherited artistic genes from both sides of the family – my mother’s aunt was an artist, as was my father’s great uncle. I see in myself my Peperé’s insatiable curiosity, my mother’s wry wit, my Uncle Pete’s humor, my cousin’s innate sense of poetry. We are all such hodgepodges, our DNA twisting through centuries of traits.

There are pages and pages to fill out about my parents - what were they like, how did they meet, what did they do for work, what sort of parents were they? Each question is a story all its own. There’s a section to record events from my childhood. Where did I go to school? Who were my best friends? What is my happiest memory? Did any tragedies occur? What was I frightened of? There are pages for recording my memories of growth and change from childhood to adulthood, my work experience, my own marriage, my reflections on my children, my religious and spiritual experiences, and my basic life philosophy. I will be at this forever, at the very least.

One page toward the end asks: How do you hope to be remembered? It reminds me of the epitaph game we used to play as kids; here lies so-and-so, followed by some clever, often derogatory witticism. My kids, playing the game once while helping me cut grocery coupons from the newspaper, quipped, “Mom’s not here, she’s gone to heaven – she had a coupon.”

I would not mind being remembered for my frugality. It would please me more, however, to think I am creating a legacy of continuity. All that I am has come to me from others, and will pass through me to future generations. I want my own grandchildren to inherit more from me than genetic predispositions. With this book, I can offer them the heartbeats of a lifetime.

In the midst of worry...

2011-11-02T16:36:00.000-07:00

...six little things I'm happy about.

1. the sun rising into a porcelain blue sky, its rays reflecting off the feathers of a hundred winging geese

2. a mug of hot, sweet tea and a warm croissant drizzled with honey

3. a poem by Hafiz that speaks of life as a rowdy and joyful parade

4. being absolutely sure that I am loved

5. a vase of small, pink roses that survived the frost

6. waking this morning still able to see and hear and walk and smile

Thought for the day...

2011-11-02T03:54:00.000-07:00

My youngest daughter, who is already fighting an autoimmune disease, has just been bitten by a tick. I go to sleep thinking about her and wake with worry. She is a busy young wife and mother, is preparing her dissertation for a PhD in Higher Education, and is holding down two jobs. My admiration for her knows no bounds.

In any relationship, the one who teaches and the one who learns constantly change places. I am being taught now how to have faith; faith in my daughter's ability to survive and faith in myself as a deep well of strength. Being a mother has allowed me to experience both ends of the emotional spectrum—deep joy and profound fear. There were times when my children were small that I had to deliberately choose joy over fear or I never would have allowed them out of my sight. I am coming to realize that choosing joy is the same as choosing love and if there is a constant in my life with my children it is love, love without condition, without limit, and without end.

Not since 1925...

2011-10-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

It's not hard to shatter a snowfall record when the numbers are measured in single digits. In 1925, Baltimore, MD got 2.5 inches on October 30th. Closer to home, Hartford, CT got 1.7 inches on October 10th. But this past Saturday, the 29th of October saw snowfalls upwards of two feet, 17 of which fell here! The largest amount of snow - 31 inches! - dropped down on Jaffrey, NH with Chesterfield, MA (about an hour away) coming in a close second with 28. Trees toppled or lost multiple limbs under the weight of snow and the strong winds blew down what was left. We went from 80 degree weather three weeks ago to temperatures in the 20s last night.

I still have yard work to do, patio furniture to haul in, windows to wash. Hope we get some Indian Summer weather to offset the shock of so much snow before Halloween. The ghosties and goblins will be wearing boots and mittens with their costumes tonight.

In Explanation

2011-10-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

The old woman in the clouds

tosses evidence of her existence

out the window—

buckets of rain water,

and bed feathers

shaken out like flakes

in early December.

She lets the birds out of their cages

in April,

and sweeps with such vehemence

the trees on earth bend.

She leaves the light burning long

on a summer night;

in winter, when the days grow short

she turns in early,

leaving us all in the dark.

She Calls Me MamMam

2011-10-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

The sock doll I made for the Bean's first birthday, her sock monkey and the Uglydoll ready for their next adventure.

I spent the day yesterday with my little Bean, who at just past a year old is walking with a little assistance from the furniture and the helping hands of caretakers. She is also becoming very vocal. Many of the sounds she makes sound like words and her mimicry of inflection and tone of voice is impeccable. Her mother and father call themselves Mama and Papa though Bean has not yet begun to call them that. I am Memere to the older grands but as of yesterday, I was MamMam, an utterance that stopped me in my tracks.

The Bean loves her toys. The current favorite is a shoebox with three soft dolls in it - a sock doll, a sock monkey and an Uglydoll. They ride together across the living room rug, bumping into furniture and careening around corners to the accompaniment of the Bean's loud, sputtery version of Vroom! When she tires of that, we go into the bedroom where she indicates that I ought to open the bottom drawer of her dresser so she can sort through her clothes. She doesn't like to wear them; she does like to toss them about.

On the very top of my bucket list when I retire is to spend more time with my grandchildren. Yesterday only clinched the wisdom of that decision.

Choosing clothes - not to wear but to play with.

Frugal Finds

2011-10-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

A stone topped table to hold my tea cup and lunch.

The town dump where, when I was a teenager, was the place to go for target practice, is now called the Transfer Station. My friend J and I call it the mini-mall because it's a wonderful place to "shop." On shelves set up in a corner of the parking lot one can find, if one waits long enough, just about anything one has longed for but has never had the money to buy. Example: an older fellow approached the shelves one day with a large cardboard box. He set it down at my feet, reached in, pulled out a Cuisinart and handed it to me. "Here," he said. "My wife has passed away and I don't have any use for this darned thing." I sure did! I'd been coveting one for years. I murmured sympathetic words about his wife and absconded before someone else saw the treasure I was holding.

A week later I found a box of electronics chock full of computer keyboards, cameras and phones still in their original, unopened boxes. On bulky waste day last year I scored a gorgeous, unstained, heavy futon ("I can't move this thing around by myself anymore," explained the woman from whose car it emerged"). J and I nearly herniated ourselves lugging the thing from her pickup to the back yard but it made a perfect cushion for my outdoor metal swing. On this year's bulky waste day, I came home with a glider chair in perfect shape from the house of a neighbor who was moving away, a small, stone-topped table for outdoor dining, and a lamp shade that didn't sell at a tag sale. Oh! And a mini Gardenway cart, something else that has long been on my wish list.

My little Gardenway cart - I'm so excited. This has been on my list for years!

J and I added up the money it would have cost us to buy new what we'd hauled home from the Transfer Station over the past two years and, counting the aforementioned, plus the wooden shoe rack, the Williams-Sonoma popover pan, the numerous baskets, mugs, and dishes, most still wearing their former tag sale status price tags, and still usable vacuum cleaner parts, curtains, yarn, and paper goods, we've saved well over $2000.

My grandmother lived through the Great Depression. She'd be proud of me!

Black lampshade on far left, glider rocker on right.

Vollkommenheit

2011-10-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

*Vollkommenheit is a German word meaning perfection, completeness. This morning's dawn could also be part of the definition.

What of the large and small joys

that make up the days?

What of the morning mist

that rises on the pond

milky white,

then gold in the rising sun,

then gone?

What of music

of laughter, or birdsong?

What of love

in any of its guises?

While we weep,

the sun rises and sets,

commanded by something

larger.

The song of the spheres

plays unendingly,

even when we are not

listening.

Out of the mouths...

2011-10-13T03:28:00.000-07:00

We had a math specialist called Tom visit our classroom yesterday. He was a spry 62 year old with a graying ponytail and a deep, resonant voice. He drew a circle on our carpet with a piece of chalk, had the kids sit cross-legged with him around the outside and gave each of them a baggie filled with plastic math cubes. Then he tossed paper plates at them like low flying frisbees and told them how many cubes they would need - 12 blue and 12 green. He filled his own plate and commented, "Kinda looks like planet earth, doesn't it?" Immediately all the kids stirred their cubes with their fingers, mixing them up. "Well," said one. "Mine looks more like my mom's Jello."

For an hour and a half Tom had the kids snap the cubes together in various combinations - seven blue and three green, for example. Then he had them make their sticks match by moving colors so they had doubles, removed one from a stick and put it on the other to make doubles plus one, etc. The kids loved it. As always there was one child who pulled his cubes apart so violently they went flying, and another who just sat and looked on glumly without participating. Tom instructed them all to place their cubes in front of them and put their hands on their knees. "Now," he said, looking around at them in a measured way. "Here's the deal. If you can make your cubes behave as they should, just sticking and unsticking, they can play with you. If they can't behave, they have to go back in the bag." There were no more flying cubes. To the child who didn't participate, he said, "I'm having a bit of trouble here. Can you help me?" and with gentle questions he helped her to see what he was doing with his cubes.

An hour and a half is a long time to sit still. At the end of the session Tom had a bit of difficulty rising up from the floor. Several children rushed to help him. One little fellow was having trouble himself. "Man," he said, turning to me, one hand on his head, the other on the small of his back. "Learning hurts!"

Softly, softly...

2011-10-01T06:13:00.000-07:00

Rain is falling, falling, dripping from the tired green September leaves, sliding like tears down the window panes, denting the steely surface of the mill pond. The sky is leached of color, as gray as the gray geese that wing through the rain, calling, calling as they settle on the pond. Here and there I spot a scarlet leaf, or a yellow one, harbingers of the changing season. The air, though damp, is cool rather than muggy. The small lamp on my desk casts a cheery glow; the rest of the cottage is gloomy and chill.

Summer has been loathe to leave but at its heels the autumn winds are nipping, shaking dry leaves from the trees and herding chilly morning mists across the water. Soon it will be sweater weather. Apples and pumpkins are ripening, purple asters replace pink roses, and all along the roadsides the green grasses are turning a soft brown. Acorns are dropping and squirrels are in overdrive, storing and hoarding supplies for the coming cold.

The songbirds are gone for the most part. There are some finches left, and dozens of little sparrows, chickadees, and nuthatches that winter over. The cardinal remains, too, but does not sing in the mornings the way it did in summer. Mornings belong to the crows now, and the strident bluejay. The days grow short; darkness comes sooner and stays longer. The Harvest Moon, the last full moon of summer and an ancient time signal for the harvesting of corn, rode the sky early in September. The next full moon, the Hunter's Moon will appear on October 10th.

The signs of change are all around me. But in the seeds of the lilac, the bulbs of the daffodil, the buds that replace the fallen leaves, lies spring and a new year. Change, then, is ever present. It's just on a slower timetable than we humans have accustomed ourselves to. Today I will slow down, too. I will not count the hours so that instead of hurrying by they will slowly melt into one another and I will melt into the day.

Saying Goodbye

2011-09-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

BFF - on the occasion of Lora's 100th birthday three years ago April

Sad news came winging its way over the telephone wires today. My wonderful friend Lora, who turned 103 this past April, changed form today. There will be no more adventures for us. Though there were nearly 40 years between our ages, she still introduced me to everyone she knew as her best friend. I was honored to claim that title.

Among other things, Lora had been a school teacher, a farmer's wife, a cross country skier, a painter, and a avid fisherman. She loved trying new things and each time I visited I found her embroiled in some new activity. In her seventies she took up oil painting and then watercolors. In her 80s she got her first computer. In her 90s she studied handwriting and feng shui. After her husband died, she lived alone until she was 102, and only in the last few months did she go from having home health aides to a room in a nursing home.

I miss her sorely though she's only been gone a few hours. Tears come easily when I remember that I will never see her again. They dry on my cheeks though when I remember what a wonderful friend she was, what happy adventures we've shared and how lucky I was to have had her as a best friend.

I wrote this poem on her 100th birthday after talking with her about her long and busy life. Now I post it here again in her memory.

Lora Remembers

100 years of mornings,
of sunrises that spilled liquid gold
down Vermont’s rugged hillsides;
dew that sparkled on a million
summer spider webs; a cow’s warm
breath on her hands and the warmer
milk; fishing the wily creeks and still
ponds at her father’s side;
running up the hill to school;
McGuffy’s First Reader and lunch in a blue
lard bucket; boarding as the teacher;
rain that turned dirt roads to mud;
riding a hay rake, a baler, a plow;
70 years of marriage, of cooking and
washing and mending, of quilting
and knitting and sewing;
driving a Model-T;
flying solo in a small plane;
barn raisings and song fests and gramophones
and new-fangled radios; television and jet planes
and a cruise to Alaska 85 years after
that first morning 100 years ago.

She remembers 100 years of evenings,
of listening to the nightjar whistle,
of scarlet sunsets and sparking fireflies;
dashing to the half-moon door in the
darkness; carrying a lantern up the cold
back stairs; woodstoves and hand pumps
and knee-deep snows; sugaring-off in spring;
summer nights so hot you slept on a blanket
on the lawn; darkness so pure you could
count the stars; nights of terror when fire
struck; nights of music and dancing, of kitchen junkets;
of family suppers; lonely nights, nights of weeping
and missing her man; nights of wondering, pondering
the future, the meaning of it all; nights of remembering
family and old friends gone on before—

100 years of living behind her. Now she looks ahead.

So do I. Farewell, Lora.

Work As Fun

2011-09-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

scienceprojectlab.com

The second graders I work with are studying insects. Jars containing monarch butterfly chrysalises line one counter. A large glass case filled with flowers and a small dish of sugar water sits on a table, waiting for the butterflies to emerge. Three monarchs already flutter there. By tomorrow two more should make an appearance, much to the delight of the students. They've been charting the progress from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly for weeks now. Fred, Boo, Sun, Rocky, and Bob will be set free on Friday to make their way in the wilds of the school playground.

The class has also been studying grasshoppers and crickets. One of their assignments was to make a list of things that hop or jump. We'd just conducted a grasshopper jumping contest and set up a cricket colony. I expected those two bugs would be listed. What I didn't expect was the innovative spelling, though these tots are beginning second graders. In case you didn't know, the following not only exist, they can hop and jump with the best of them:

cirkits
chipmorks
flying squals
hoses
goots
some fishees

and, of course,

grashogers

easyvectors.com

Thanks Hilary!

Going, going...

2011-09-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

It is the same every year and every year it surprises me. The signs of change are all around - leaves look like once bright curtains left too long in the sun. They droop, tired and faded and still in the windless afternoons. A few young maples and older, diseased trees flare bright red and orange amongst the green. My flower gardens, rife with bright blossoms just a few weeks ago, now sport more empty stems than blooms. The pink lilies, the papery hollyhocks, the bee balm’s riotous red flowers are all gone. A few brave fairy roses hold small pink and red faces up to be admired but for the most part the flowers’ season has passed. Next month I will plant a few iris corms, bank the beds with grass clippings from the last lawn mowing and hedge them with raked leaves. All that beauty and brightness will sleep through the cold, waking when the world turns warm again.

Rerun

2011-09-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

Artist Frederic Church's rendition of a sunset in my home county, painted in 1847

Over the past few months the area I live in has experienced a tornado, a hurricane, two bouts of flooding, a triple murder, and now West Nile Virus. I know this earthly life's a battle, but great jeesum crow! We've also had some gorgeous summer days, saw neighbors helping neighbors during a crisis, and helped celebrate the 250th anniversary of the town next door. I wrote this poem a couple of years ago when opposing incidences seemed overwhelming. Seems like a good time to trot it back out.

HOW COME

the same day an airplane dashed itself

to bits on the side of a mountain, killing seven people

a gentle rain fell on the garden,

pattering on the broad leaves of the squash

and watering the thirsty beets;

and while an earthquake

shook a south sea island in its heavy fist

scattering lives like wooden blocks

the sun came out,

hanging rainbows in water droplets

that strung themselves along the fence

like Christmas lights?

Listening to the news

you couldn’t help but realize the world

was a frightening place to be

except right here where an ordinary lily

opened its vibrant yellow throat.

Pride goeth... etc.

2011-09-10T04:48:00.000-07:00

I was feeling pretty smug.

I'd gotten up early. Well, okay I had to get up early because Friday is a work day and no pre-alarm clock call had come saying no school. I was showered and dressed and peering into the almost empty fridge looking for something besides a container of yogurt to take for lunch when the phone did ring. In sonorous tones the superintendent of schools announced that school was closed due to flooded roadways. I did a little happy dance and put the yogurt back in the fridge. Then I changed my work slacks and collared blouse for jeans and a tee, grabbed my camera, and headed for the river to see what I could see.

An hour later I was back home, having scared myself silly wading through what looked like a harmless overflow but was in reality a tiny but potent portion of the leaping, swirling, steroid-muscled river. Still, I emerged unscathed. I played out the rest of the day in my head as I made breakfast. Grocery shopping was at the top of the list along with getting my car inspected. There were two overdue library books on the table and a new one awaiting me at the library. I set off, knowing I would encounter detours but as there are a number of ways to get to the supermarket, I was confident I'd get there sooner or later. The first roadblock appeared before I'd gone two miles. Along both sides of the alternate route, water edged the road and in some spots meadows had turned into lakes. It was only a few miles out of the way however, and I was in and out of the store within the hour.

I'd noticed several cars heading south on the main road and thought if they were going that way, surely the main road must be passable, at least to the point where I'd had to detour so instead of returning the way I'd come, I headed home using the most direct route. It was the second poor decision of the day. When I got to it, the road I'd thought I could turn on was completely submerged. I had to take a different road altogether, this time going many miles out of my way.

By now it was lunchtime so when I finally got home I munched an apple and some cheese and a handful of nuts, grabbed my overdue library books and headed for the inspection station at a local garage. The bay was empty, an attendant was available and I thought, well, things are looking up! And they were. The car passed inspection without a hitch, I had just enough money in the checkbook to pay for it, and there was an immediate break in the traffic as I was ready to pull out. There was even a parking place in the shade at the library. Before going in, I gathered together the inspection papers to put them in the glove box. The date at the top of the uppermost paper caught my eye. Good through 6/12 was written in the little gray expiration box. 6/12? But this was September. I looked hastily at the sticker in my windshield. Yes, there was a bright orange 9. So why did my inspection expire next June? Shouldn't the date read 9/12? Well, I'd just pop back to the garage and ask the nice fellow why he'd put the wrong date on my inspection papers.

He smiled in recognition when he saw me. "Forget something?" he asked.

I smiled too, and showed him the uppermost paper. I pointed to the little gray expiration box. "This says 6/12," I said. "Shouldn't it read 9/12?"

He looked at me for a moment. "Ma'am," he said. He cleared his throat. "Ma'am, this is your car registration." He lifted the first page and tapped the second. "This is your inspection data."

I felt my face get hot. I made a little moue with my mouth and shrugged. "You'll have to forgive me, " I said. "I used to be a blonde."

He looked nonplussed for a moment. Then he smiled, scratched his head and went back into the bay. I was so embarrassed I didn't notice the slight dip in the pavement. My foot caught and I did an exciting little shuffle before lurching into the side of my car. This time I had to sit for several minutes waiting for a break in traffic, my face burning as laughter burst from the depths of the garage bay. I am certain the words "women drivers!" were in that conversation somewhere.

September Flood Day

2011-09-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

Rolling, leaping, muddy water races through woods and across meadows.

Every school year our calendar has built in snow days, usually five, and usually we need more. This year the calendar has ten built in snow days, a good thing as two of them have already been used for floods. With record rainfall amounts from both hurricane Irene and tropical storm Lee, the Housatonic River, which runs through my small town, has climbed up over its banks and inundated roads, farm fields and yards for miles around. Damage here has been minimal compared to that wrought by floodwaters in neighboring NY, VT, and CT as well as states further south but that's not much consolation when it's your business standing in the new middle of a river as some local establishments are.

Water slapping at the bridge pilings.

I walked down to the covered bridge early this morning to see how high the water had risen. The dirt road was partially covered in running water but it didn't look too deep. I waded in cautiously and was nearly swept off my feet by the strength of the water as it surged into the flooded parking lot. I was surprised that a mere 8 inches or so of water could push that hard but then I remembered it had the full force of the raging river behind it. I jogged through it coming back but the water tugged harder still, forcing me from the middle of the road to the dangerous washed out verge. My rolled up jeans were wet to the knees and the knees inside them were shaking by the time I was back on dry land.

Looking deceptively shallow, the force of this swiftly running water nearly upended me.

A trip to the neighboring town for groceries took me miles out of the way as roadblocks, flood warnings, and waving policemen sent me detouring around the main route. There's a staggering amount of water out there, all of it muddy and rushing and threatening. I can only imagine the havoc it's wreaking to the north and south of us.

This water was just shy of covering the bridge that crosses it.

Seasonal Attire Disorder

2011-09-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

How is it that I am never prepared for the seasonal change? It isn’t that the weather hasn’t given due notice. For more than a week the evening air has had a slight chill to it. Mornings have been shrouded in fog if they’re not dripping with rain. The warmest part of the day is the middle, and even then, many evenings a sweater has not been amiss.

A few days after the traditional late August storm on whose heels trod the first breath of fall, I rounded up all my summer clothes and put them in a box. I hauled out all my winter clothes and put them in the closet. Two days later, the sun made a summer comeback and the humidity that I welcomed in July made me sweat in my turtleneck. I opened up the summer box, pulled shorts and tees back out, and stuffed them in amongst the woolies. The next day, the wind blew cold, the rains poured down, and I sat huddled in a tee shirt and two sweaters.

I’ve never perfected the art of layering, a dressing skill that would no doubt stand me in good stead in the changeable New England weather. The catalogs that come at this time of year (if they aren’t already shouting about what fun 20º below zero will be) mention pieces that “layer well,” but I get tired just thinking about all those clothes. If I put on an undershirt and a long sleeved tee shirt and a button down flannel shirt, (not to mention a sweater and a jacket), I’d look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. It’s not a fashion statement I want to make. It amazes me that after spending most of my life in New England (where the old adage, “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute,” is learned at your mother’s knee), I still can’t manage to dress appropriately for the season.

Tracking the Transition

2011-09-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Late summer days -

Poetry flies on the wings

Of small yellow birds.

The song birds are bunching, gathering in tree tops, their chatter filling the air like hundreds of small chimes clanging in the wind. All along the roadsides the tall grasses are turning brown. Goldenrod is blooming, and the last of the Queen Anne's lace. Bright yellow and orange jewelweed pods are plump with seeds that scatter with a pop when you brush against them, earning them the nickname "touch-me-not." It's fun to pop them with your fingers, something I delighted in doing as a small child and taught my grandchildren to do. Small J wanted to take the "popper path" rather than the Secret one to the farm whenever we went to feed the pigs or talk to the chickens and cows.

The mornings are cooler now and at dawn the grass is cold and wet with dew. Mild days full of sunshine follow only to fade into chilly darkness, thick with stars and stinging mosquitoes. Buzzy biting bugs will disappear with the first frost but until then they prosper, making both Parker the cat and me swat and slap and scratch. The cherry tomato plant on the patio is still bearing fruit though the large garden at the farm has been picked almost clean. Only the winter squash remain, their vines spreading out unchecked, the greening acorn globes and ripening butternut clubs peeking shyly from beneath the trailing leaves.

The great earth wheel turns, the seasons wax and wane, and despite the havoc raised by humans, things are as they should be.

Shucking Corn

2011-09-01T17:27:00.000-07:00

The phone rings. "Corn's in," says the farmer's wife

so I take my biggest boiling pots and cut over to the farm

where, on the terrace, wait four large bags stuffed

with cobs, their green bodies firm, their hair like silk.

The sun is tipping into the pond. Clouds catch fire

and glow like lanterns. In the pale, warm light we

husk the corn, pulling the long green leaves from

yellow kernels, each one as plump as a baby's cheek

and sweet, so sweet we can't help but nibble.

Shucking corn is like good conversation. You start

with generalities, husks, and tear them away

to get to the kernel of what you're thinking. In the end,

you have something different than what you started with;

no longer useful coverings, heaps of silken threads, and in your hand

an ear, in your mind a pearl. All of life is a metaphor for something

else. Corn can stand in for communion if you want it to.

Late Summer

2011-08-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

I sit outside in the evening

watching the sun slide down the

side of the sky like melting butter.

Overhead the leaves of the towering ash

are stenciled against the pale blue sky,

as unmoving as daubs of green paint.

A cluster of small clouds spreads out

like small children playing a last game

before dark. They gather together as

they float toward the horizon,

knitting themselves into a soft white blanket,

tucking themselves in for the night.

Two tired robins, their hatchlings gone,

wing across the open sky and bats

swoop like acrobats between trees.

A plane, so high it is silent,

shimmers pink in the sunset glow

blinking its lights like a beacon

showing the birds, the winging bats,

the cloud children, and me

how to navigate the dark.

Diary of a Stormy Day

2011-08-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

Gray, windy, and wet!

6: a.m. The sky is solid, wooly gray and the early morning light is so dim I need lamps on inside. Rain is falling; it splashes against the window panes and beats a syncopated rhythm on the outdoor cover for the stove exhaust. The tops of the trees outside my window look like giant green scrubbing cloths rubbing the sky as the winds dance around and through them. I inhale the spicy scent of phlox blossoms as I pass the vase on the table. Already the remaining plants in the patio garden have been beaten to the ground. Parker the cat is outside somewhere, probably in the barn with the sheep, nestled happily in a hay pile, his favorite place to sleep. I keep checking at the door to see if he's braved the rain. His breakfast is waiting.

The weathermen say to expect sustained winds of 35-50 mph with gusts of 65-70 mph but not until mid-day. We're currently under a flash flood warning and will be for the duration of the day. Ten inches of rain are possible - 2 inches have fallen since midnight. Even if the Housatonic River floods, I am safe from its waters but I hadn't thought about the pond across the road - I may be stranded for a while in my little cottage. New York is posting large areas of power outages.

7:12 a.m. 200,000 lost power on Long Island overnight; almost 25,000 customers are out of power in parts of upstate New York across the border from my area of Massachusetts. Bridges in the area are closing because of high wind gusts and people are being advised to stay home and stay inside. The light has not changed color at all. Parker came screaming to the door during a slight letup in the rain. He is fed and curled up under the bed - wonder if I should join him!

8:35 a.m. The lights are flickering. If we lose power, I will take notes on paper. Wind is picking up, the sky has suddenly darkened and the rain is pelting the windows.

10:00 a.m. The power is still on. The storm is leaving NYC and is headed north. We have had steady though not hard wind and rain but both are supposed to increase by noon. The leaves are spinning in circles as the wind blows through them. Parker insists on going outside. It is still summer to him and he doesn't plan to spend any day fully indoors until the first snow falls. There are a number of safe, dry places for him to hide when the rain starts to come down hard so I will not worry about him.

1:30 p.m. Unbelievably, the rain seems to be stopping and the wind is barely disturbing the leaves. To the east of us there are reports of high winds and torrents of rain. To the west of us the wind gusts reached 54 mph and there is lots of flooding. Our top winds were clocked at a mere 14 mph and we got no more than two inches of rain. How lucky we are!

3:00 p.m. The sun is shining from a high patch of light blue. Tattered clouds scud across the sky and tiny rainbows glance from grass blades. I have walked to the river to look at the water. Muddy brown and roiling, it surges over the first two steps of the boat launch and lashes at the long grasses that lean over the bank. It looks close to flooding and may well be as tomorrow dawns since the northern NY rivers that feed into it are flooding now. One creek that flows from the pond across the road from the cottage and empties into the Housatonic has topped its banks, already becoming its own mini version of a surging river.

4:00 p.m. The backside of Irene is wrapping its tail around the Berkshires, dousing the sun with more rain clouds and making the trees tops dance once again. I was on my way to the river again, this time with my camera, but had to turn back before the rain soaked me thoroughly. My umbrella was useless in the sudden wind. I will have to content myself with photos of the mill dam and stream and hope that the worst Irene can do to us does not still lie ahead!

River wannabe after the rains

Random Thoughts Before the Storm

2011-08-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

news.nationalgeographic.com

Hurricane Irene is downgrading herself as she makes her way north along the Atlantic coast. Still, her winds and rain threaten my small town in rural western Massachusetts. I have plenty of food and water but no flashlight, no battery-powered radio so if the power goes out I will be in the dark, literally. I do have candles and my brother (3 miles away) has a generator. By the time the storm gets here, the winds may still be in excess of 70 mph! I've been watching the news, listening to the warnings about storm surges, rainfall amounts, and wind gusts. The worst that can happen would be days of power outages. The weather is going to stay warm and the food in my freezer is meant to help me through the winter. My sister wrote to ask if I am afraid to face the storm alone. I am not but I've been catching myself musing about some things between newscasts.

*Do I have enough water to see me through a couple of days with no electricity? We had a high-wind storm in the spring that blew down so many trees that all 4 major roads leading into our town were closed for a day and a half. They brought down numerous power lines when they fell. I ran out of water just before the power came back on. Every time I think this, I fill up another container.

*Which way will the big tree on the southeastern edge of my yard fall if it succumbs to the storm?

*Today is the 35th anniversary of my father's death. If he'd lived, he'd have turned 100 years old this past April! He was a strong, steady man; I wish he was here to see me through the storm.

*How quiet the cottage is now that the grands have gone home!

*Things to do before the storm: bring in the potted plants that have spent the summer out of doors; take down the screen tent and store it away, put the lawn chairs and patio umbrella in the garage; fill pans with water for washing up if the power goes out; replace the screen in my front door with the glass panel so the rain isn't driven in under the door; pick the last of the summer blooms before the rains pound them into the ground.

*Should I risk going to the scheduled poetry read-aloud at the library late this afternoon? Fierce thunderstorms are expected to precede the arrival of Irene.

*Had I stayed married, I'd be celebrating my 45th wedding anniversary today! That realization made me consider that I've not done anything for 45 consecutive years except stay alive. The longest I've stayed at any one job is 10 years. Does that make me a Jill of all trades and master of none? It's true that I've spent a total of more than 45 years living in my hometown, but I've also spent 20 plus years in other places so those 45 have not been consecutive.

*Will my daughter, her husband and their daughter weather this storm safely? If communication systems are disrupted, will my heart know if anything happens to them?

*Monday is supposed to dawn sunny and warm - what will I see when the sun rises?

The Grands Are Coming! The Grands Are Coming!

2011-08-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

S, J and Memere, cooking

"What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change and they give me a million dollar's worth of pleasure!" Gene Perret

Tomorrow I will disappear amid a tangle of small arms and legs and grinning faces and won't reappear until Saturday the 27th. All three of my grandchildren will be here though the smallest, my little Bean, will go back home Monday. The older two, S who is 10 and J who is 8, will spend the rest of the week with me.

The days take on a new order when they are here. The moment all our eyes open we spring from bed, hustle into our clothes and take the Secret Path to the farm next door. We'll bring our table scraps and vegetable peelings to the pigs, stop at the chicken house door so J can practice his cocka-doodle-do, pull several handsful of succulent grasses for the cows, and pat the wooly sheep. When our tummies start to growl we'll head back to the cottage for cow pancakes and chocolate syrup. (One of the farm cows is a Belted Galloway, an Oreo cookie of a cow, black on either end with a white stripe around its middle. I have a cow pancake mold and the kids like making their own Belted Galloways with the chocolate.)

Once the breakfast dishes are washed and the beds are neatly made, we settle in for some serious play. If the day is hot, we'll don bathing suits and head for my brother's backyard pool. If the morning is cool, we might take our bicycles to the town park and zip around the trails there, taking time to swing on the swings and climb on the jungle gym. If it's a rainy day, the closet is crammed with paper and pencils, pens and crayons, paints and brushes, scissors and glue just waiting to make imaginative crafts. In a large basket are stuffed animals, toy cars, a Slinky or two, some small puzzles, and several balls. In another box, dolls sleep in their best dresses, their eyes closed until some small tot wakes them. The town library beckons, the pond across the street hosts bullfrogs and turtles and ducks and a couple of muskrat families. There's always something to discover there.When evening brings a weariness to our limbs and darkness to the skies, we will make some popcorn and curl up on the big bed, pillows stuffed behind us, and watch a movie.

There won't be time to read (or write) blog posts, so once the week has passed and the cottage empties out, once the noise and the flurry have subsided, when the silence and the missing grow too much for me, I will return to my regular life, and here.

And it's only 7:15 AM

2011-08-17T04:47:00.000-07:00

A day that starts out with a vivid wee-hours-of-the-morning nightmare, the cat throwing up on the sofa (and the floor and the doormat on his way out the door), and an invitation from Facebook to befriend someone I hope never to see again is a day to reckon with.

The nightmare was actually an eye opener (pardon the pun). I've had a number of frightening, anxiety-laden dreams over the past few weeks. I've been chased by shadowy figures, taken escape routes that were dead ends or blocked or more dangerous than where I was, climbed rickety ladders, faced angry people, drove cars with faulty brakes and planes that took nose-dives or tried to run through thick mist, thick mud, or deep water. I'm exhausted from going to sleep! Last night I survived a flood that swept my entire family from sight. The roiling waters deposited me on a foreign shore where no one spoke my language. I made my way to a building that became a school, and lost in the unfamiliar corridors, I missed what was to have been my first class. When I finally found what I knew to be the right door, I was greeted by an irate instructor who shouted at me and threw paper and pencil into the air like missiles.

However, once I understood the assignment (by surreptitiously looking at the work of other students) I produced a masterpiece that the instructor praised in broken English. I woke thinking, "OH! I just have to write it all down!"

Huh.

The cat, having deposited a half-digested mouse on my kitchen floor, is pacing outside the door hoping to come back in for a more suitable breakfast. Nope, nada, yuk. I am happy to put a dish of kibble on the doorstep and let him heave anything else gross and disgusting on the lawn where I can put a long shovel handle between me and it. I may not be able to eat until lunch time.

As for Facebook, a pox on social networking. There are some people who should remain firmly in one's past.

Acceptance

2011-08-12T04:41:00.000-07:00

beautiful predator

There are those who believe that nature is benignly beautiful. If one is merely looking at it from a window, it appears that way. But there are days when one simply cannot ignore the brutality that lies just under the surface. Yesterday was one of those days.

Before the sun even rose fully, I was awakened by a frantic piping. I recognized it as the "Danger! Watch out! Fly now!" cry of some frightened bird parent. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked out the kitchen window. Hopping along the crossbar of my clothesline was a beautiful brown thrush, its spotted breast glinting gold in the growing light. It flew suddenly to the patio fence, joining its mate who was making sorties over the head of the neighbor's cat lying in the grass. There in the cat's paws was a baby thrush. I grabbed the broom and made a beeline for the cat. Startled, it leapt up and I thrust the broom between it and the gasping baby bird.

Hearing the commotion, my neighbor B came out, scooped up his cat, deposited it on the porch, and in a matter of seconds had the baby bird in his cupped palms. The parents flew madly from one end of the yard to the other, screeching and scolding. B Carried the little bird to a tree at the edge of the woods and settled it on a branch. The parents flew into the same tree, keeping up their shrill warnings. As B and I stepped away, they grew silent.

We kept our respective cats indoors for most of the day despite their protests. No more sounds came from the tree, either encouraging or frightened, so B and I assumed the birds had made their way deeper into the woods and safety. That is not the way a cat's mind works. The moment B's cat was released it headed with unerring certainty to the woods and came back minutes later with the baby in its mouth. This time there would be no rescue. The small head lolled, the wings were still. The parents were silent.

Last night at dusk there was no evening song from the thrushes. The part of the woods from which they usually sang was silent, an empty space amid other bird voices calling good-bye to the day. I was made to understand once again that the hunt and the kill are as much a part of nature as the beauty and the song. If one keeps cats (and what farm doesn't?), one has to accept the cat-catches-bird relationship as readily as the cat-eats-mice relationship. The reminder did nothing to keep my heart from aching.

Photo from naturesound.com

2011-08-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Over the past two weeks, I've been designing wedding and celebratory cards, and hand addressing wedding invitations (100 of them!) for a friend. It's a nice little side business and something I can do in my spare time once I retire.

I've also been spending time with the Bean, my 10 month old granddaughter who is now crawling like a little monkey everywhere and standing up as long as there's something to hold onto. She recognizes me, grins hugely and holds her little arms out to me whenever she sees me, and does her best with sounds, gestures, and an intense stare to communicate with me.

She can pull herself into a standing position without help!

In a couple of weeks my other grandkids, S who is 10 and J who is 8, will come to spend a week with their Memere. We'll ride our bikes at the town park, make crafty things if rain should keep us indoors, and spend lots of time at the farm next door. We'll swim on hot days at my brother's pool and maybe even have a lemonade stand. Life is good!

This was taken at S & J's house when I last visited.

Planning Ahead

2011-08-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

I've been practicing for my retirement. This coming school year will be my last. This summer, I've only done what there's time for in a day and let the rest go. I rise early, greet the sun (or the rain or the mist or the heat), do a little yoga, a little house work. I take an afternoon nap, rummage in the garden for fresh vegetables for supper (always pulling a couple of weeds here and there to keep ahead), ride my bicycle for a few miles, and take a book to bed. Each day I try to add in one of the million other things I want to do (draw, paint, write, go to the library, watch old movies, visit the grandchildren, etc.). I’m sure if I had a plan book I would pen in such activities, but I like the freeform-ness of my days. I wouldn’t remember to look at the plan book anyhow.

Come fall and winter I will once again be at work, thereby severely limiting my private time. I will have to fill out the date book in my purse, stuff more things into the weekend hours, push against that heavy Monday-morning feeling that settles on my shoulders at bedtime Sunday night. But I am building memories for my retirement-in-the-offing, memories of hummingbirds deep in the hollyhock blossoms, of cardinals singing me awake and crickets singing me to sleep, of time just to sit and think. I will fetch a packet of green beans from the freezer in the dead of winter and remember the heat on my shoulders as I picked them from their leafy rows. I will open a jar of pasta sauce and recall this summer's tree-high tomato plants, or make a pie with the berries I’ve picked and put by. I will remember the quiet time, the rush-less days, the easy waking, and the restful nights. And I will look forward to the coming summer, knowing all these will be mine in full again.

From here, retirement looks mighty good. My friends wonder if I might get bored with such easy living. I tell them the only time I can remember being bored was when I was stuck in some building, working at some job that didn’t keep me busy enough. Once I no longer have to work, I imagine boredom will just disappear along with that plan book.

photo credit: www.artexpertswebsite.com/ pages/artists/

Living Rural

2011-08-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

One of the great advantages of living rural is the scenery just outside my door. I don't have to drive miles to see mountains (though to get to the seashore I have to fight hours of traffic), I am surrounded by meadows filled with flowers, and the pond across the road offers constantly changing views of flora and fauna. The air is always clean and refreshing in the morning even when the day before was stifling. Birds perform daily concerts, dining is often alfresco with ingredients fresh from my own garden, and every evening, except for the occasional rainy one, ends in a spectacular light show put on by the setting sun and whatever clouds happen to be in the vicinity. I get to see...

little mist ghosts heading for the sky...

dew drops on milkweed leaves...

masses of Queen Anne's Lace leaning toward the mid-day sun...

and trumpet flowers catching the last of the light...

before the day ends.

Trying out rhyme schemes...

2011-07-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

Chance Music

the wind is sighing, sighing through the trees

and sets to trembling leaves along the way

listen! a concert rises out of these

it isn’t just an errant little breeze

that makes the boughs and branches dip and sway

come watch the wind conduct with expertise!

basso profundo rolls from pines with ease

the hemlock’s baritone comes into play

listen! a concert rises out of these

can you not hear the maple’s tenor tease

or catch the alto of the elm at play?

come watch the wind conduct with expertise!

the volume dips and rises by degrees

depending on which way the breezes stray

listen! a concert rises out of these

if only nature granted a reprise

I’m sure I miss a concert every day

not giving any heed to trembling leaves

come watch! the wind conducts with expertise!

When Flowers Speak

2011-07-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

I was crying

and I blamed it on the sad story

I was reading

about a dog that died

but whose spirit filled the room

and maybe the whole house,

maybe the whole country!

and suddenly

I was crying not because of the story

but because it occurred to me that I was alone

and no one might love me quite like that dog

loved its human

and I swear the geranium on the windowsill,

all Valentine-heart red and mid-summer green

said, Oh for crying out loud

(which I was)

don’t be silly.

You’re hardly alone

or unloved.

And I realized that was true,

that I was surrounded on all sides by life

and that some of its forms

(family, friends, cat, the chicken next door -

even, possibly, the geranium)

loved me,

maybe more than I loved myself.

I felt better after that

and was able to get back to the rest of the book

and the rest of my life.

2011-07-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

the day was as long as it ever was

the sun slipping through the mist

the way it did, trailing wakes of silver laughter

Extraordinarily Ordinary

2011-07-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

Mid-summer came in on a heat wave before several days of the intense heat culminated in a fierce fury of wind and rain punctuated by brilliant and jagged flashes of lighting. Thunder boomed and rolled and crashed in its wake. When the wildness abated, a cool and welcomed stillness descended, and sometime in the far reaches of the night, a thick mist fell over the pond and the fields, melting the boundaries of wood and meadow and road. When the sun rose again, its own margins were obscured so all that was visible was a pulsing silver light. Here and there the fog swirled and eddied, rising like disturbed ghosts.

The familiar had become suddenly mysterious. When I walked out into the morning, it was as though I'd entered a magical place. The tops of the tallest trees were lost in the mist. Shafts of milky sunlight penetrated the undergrowth, highlighting a trunk here, a limb there. Hundreds of spider webs were strung from the meadow grasses. Dew-struck and glistening, they spread to the edges of the field like miniature satellite dishes – spiders tuning to the far reaches of the universe. There was not a breeze to disturb them.

A bright bit of orange caught my eye. An anxious maple leaf, I thought, but then it fluttered, and leaf became bird as a Baltimore Oriole hopped among the tree branches. In like manner a yellow leaf transformed itself into a finch. How quickly the extraordinary becomes ordinary. Suddenly the morning was filled with birdsong and as if on cue, the mist disappeared. Somewhere a dog barked and the air was filled with tiny blue and yellow butterflies flitting in the warmth of an everyday sun.

By noon, the heat was building again. The sun became a molten ball glaring fiercely from a pale blue sky. Nothing stirred save the cicadas, whose insistent buzzing only served to make the day seem hotter. Great thunderheads towered over the edges of the mountains and spread themselves out until the sky looked like an angry bruise. There was no magic now, only a distant, threatening rumble that presaged another storm. A gust of wind brought a hint of cooler air and suddenly the clouds burst, spewing rain. Lightning tore the curtain of darkness again and again and thunder made the windows rattle.

Finally, just before sunset, the storm trailed off to the south. The wind died, the rain ceased, and the sun crept out from behind a remnant of cloud to paint the sky in evening shades of crimson and orange and sky-blue pink. Columns of stealthy mist drifted up from the cooling earth, ghosts of darkness gathering the light until once again the landscape was shrouded in secrecy.

Thank you Hilary

End of July

2011-07-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

The geraniums thrived this summer.

Mid-summer days have been hot and humid. For several days last week, temperatures hovered near the 100 degree mark. Then came the rain. My flowers loved it but it's too late for the vegetable garden. Early cold and rain and then the excessive heat will make harvesting this fall a non-event. I will have tomatoes but nothing else. Last year I picked over 35 eggplant. This year I picked two. Last year I froze 10 quarts of green and yellow beans. This year, only one row out of five even grew. Last year I had enough beets to pickle. This year I roasted just a handful for one dinner. Last year I jarred 14 pints of pickles. This year I had no cucumbers. There are a few sad looking peppers on the three plants that survived and one celery plant is just big enough to harvest. We will plow the ground over in the fall and start again next spring.

A daily picking from last summer's bounty.

I'm off to the farmer's market for weekly fruit and vegetables. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to get some farm stand surplus to jar for winter consumption. Prices are higher this year as even the farmers with their acres of crops suffered weather-related losses. Perhaps I should host a dinner for those fellows in Washington and their purse-holding Big Business lobbyists. I could teach them a thing or two about frugality.

This year's daisies smiling at the sun.

How To Start the Day

2011-07-24T05:47:00.000-07:00

My mother's old blue egg bowl, some garden herbs, a bit of Jarlsburg...

Up early to do the farm chores. The sky is tinged pink along the horizon. The low lying clouds look like a row of raggedy, gray-clad immigrants crossing over the mountain tops. I fit the bucket under the water pipe near the henhouse and while it fills I listen to the hens murmur and the roosters crawk. They know that running water signifies breakfast. I unlatch the door and step in. It's instant bedlam. I am knee deep in feathers and frenzy as 50 fowl jockey for a place along the two long feeding troughs. One hen perches on the edge of the water bucket, three others fly at me as I bend to scoop the feed from the galvanized metal pail. I murmur to them, pour their feed, and while they're busy gobbling I check the nests for eggs. I must be careful - yesterday there was a rat eating the very egg my hand was reaching for. Startled, I squawked like a hen and it leaped for a hole below the nesting box. Some steel wool stuffed in that hole and a new board nailed over in place of the old one will keep the wily rat at bay for a while. I feel a bit like Mr. Zuckerman trying to keep Templeton out of the barn.

When the chickens are fed and watered I move to the outlying small houses where ducklings, for-meat-only chicks and a bunny are waiting for their breakfast. I scoop feed and pour water and talk to them in a high voice that makes me smile - humans have a tendency to raise the pitch of their voice when talking to babies of any kind. The pigs grunt at me as I fill their trough. Yesterday they dug under their fence and went a-wandering but a few bangs on their metal food bin bring them home again.

I walk home through the secret path, a walkway that threads through some large maples with overhanging branches between the farm and my cottage. My hands are dirty, my muck boots need a bath and I'm covered in a fine film of sweat. Our 100 degree days have been endng in 80 degree nights. The morning air is warm and damp and the sun is just beginning to peer over the cloud bank. My reward for doing the chores is a small basket of fresh eggs. I stop by the kitchen garden to snip some fresh herbs. Now to my own breakfast!

Fresh eggs with herbs and beat greens and a bowl of fresh fruit.

Talking Out Loud

2011-07-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, despite all the people that live close by, there's no one to talk to. No one to tell how the pigs were tearing around in the heat this evening, roughhousing with an old tarp left in their pen. How when I emptied my compost bucket into their trough two came running but the third continued to shake that tarp like a dog with a rag, twisting his head and snorting, sending waves of tarp over his head until he stopped short, unable to see. How with a grunt he shook the thing off at the same time that he tripped on it, sending pig and tarp careening into the trough, upending corn cobs and watermelon rind and pieces of squash which tumbled back down on pig backs like manna, like rain.

Or how the sun set in a welter of orange streaks just as a spoon bowl piece of the moon rose in the opposite direction, just as orange, and the birds hushed down in the heat; how the dark just sort of settled down like a muffling blanket over the silent grasses.

There was no one to listen with me to the breeze that blew high in the trees, setting the leaves rustling like mouse feet in old walls, while not a trace of moving air came anywhere near the ground. No one else heard the snuffling of the possum as it made its way over the little ridge behind my screen tent or tried to figure out whose name the owl was calling deep in the woods.

There was no one to watch the robin disappear into the winterberry bush or remark to about the heat dome hovering almost visibly overhead or the unusual silence of the songbirds. So, I'm telling you.

'Cause it's summertime you know...

2011-07-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

misty mornings

The weather has been suffocatingly hot and more heat is on the way. Any gardening has to be done at dawn or dusk for by mid-day the sun searches out every nook and cranny with its searing fingers. The birds still whistle up the sun through mysterious morning mists and sing it to sleep again in the evenings, but at high noon they are as silent and still as mice under the shadow of an owl's wing. The insects hold sway now, humming, buzzing, and chirring high in the trees and low in the grass. It's too hot to be out and about. If you need me, I'll be floating around in my brother's pool...

the best place to be in the afternoon heat

Close Encounter

2011-07-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Judith posted a piece this morning about bears in her backyard. I've had a few encounters with bears in my years of rural living. The most frightening occurred when my four children were small. We had moved from a suburb of Connecticut to a house in northern Vermont. We were surrounded by woods on all sides, a lovely place for the kids to play and for us to take family hikes looking for signs of the wildlife that lived there.

We were told by a neighbor that a small village had been built deep in the woods along a fast moving stream but the houses had all been removed further down the road to become the county seat when the railroad was established. The old stone foundations could still be found along the stream and there were several good swimming holes.

One hot summer day I took the kids, who at that time were 9, 8, 7, and 3, exploring. We followed a path through the deep woods, our two pups racing ahead and doubling back to make sure we were still coming. We'd gone almost a mile when the path split to skirt a huge patch of wild raspberries. We stopped to pick a few berries and decided it didn't matter which path we took; undoubtably both ways would converge into a single path again on the other side of the berry patch.

Just then the dogs came flying past us, their ears flat, their tails tucked. They raced back down the trail the way we'd come. At a noise I looked back and there, rising up from behind the berry patch was an enormous bear. I could feel the hair on my head actually stand up. I took the youngest girl into my arms, herded the other kids in front of me and said, "Sing! Sing loud! And walk but don't run. Don't run even if you're scared."

Off down the path toward home and safety we went, singing at the top of our lungs. It was the longest walk I'd ever taken. I kept turning around to see if that bear was following us but I didn't see it and I didn't hear it. I didn't dare run but I never wanted to be out of a place as badly as I wanted to be out of those woods.

I had nightmares for weeks about bears mauling my children. They, on the other hand, considered it high adventure and my oldest boy spent hours researching bears at the library. We learned that the bear we saw, a black bear, is shy and that it most likely took off in the opposite direction just as speedily. If it had been a mother with cubs we were in danger only if she felt her cubs were being threatened.

It was the only bear I saw in the 12 years we spent homesteading. There's a resident bear here where I now live; it's been sighted often. Just last night it prowled around the compost bin and left its calling card in a pile under my swing. I've only glimpsed it once as it lumbered into the woods after drinking at the pond. I have never taken a photo of it, as Judith did her bears. That's okay. I need only close my eyes to conjure that bear rising up behind the berry bushes. That's enough for me.

2011-07-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

When I was a little kid we didn't have a kiddy pool nor did we have an outdoor hose connection, hence no sprinkler to dash through. Instead, Mama would fill two dishpans with cold water (there were four of us siblings) and we would set them a distance apart and have races, splashing through the pans of water until they were nearly empty. We had squirt gun fights, too, and would sometimes have balloons left over from birthday parties that we'd fill and toss at one another. Mostly when it was this hot (yesterday and today have been the typical July hot/hazy/humid days with temperatures in the high 80s), we found someplace shady to spread a blanket where we'd read or play board games or even drift off to sleep.

Yesterday my daughter C blew up the little plastic whale-shaped pool she'd purchased for the Bean to cool off in. She filled it with lukewarm water and plunked the baby in it. Then C and I plunked our bare feet in, too. The Bean thought our toes were extra toys. Heaven can't be any better than cooling one's hot feet in cool water while playing with a baby!

3 Little Piggies

2011-07-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

Photo from 1.funny.com The real culprits aren't available to pose.

The sun was setting in a welter of pinks; the air was warm and muggy. I sat at the table on my patio sipping a cup of tea, admiring the way the clouds changed from crimson to rose to mauve within moments. Off to the north a looming cloud, not in the least pastel, rumbled intermittently and flashed with long, jagged spears of lightning. I collected my cup and book and the cat who'd been lounging in my lap and went inside. Just as I was closing the door behind me a bolt of lightning lit the cloud, thunder boomed, and an unearthly squeal reverberated in the woods. I paused, hand on the door handle, wondering what in the world?

My first thought was a fox in the neighboring hen house but I was raised on a chicken farm and decided that sound had not come from a chicken, even it its death throes. A cat maybe? Or a bunny caught in an owl's talons? It came again, a long squeal like a pig would make. There were no pigs at the farm next door that I knew of. What you don't know can surprise you.

Moments later I hear a shout. "This way, this way!" followed by a galloping form, shadowy in the darkening woods. An answering shout came from further away. "Over here, over here!"

There was a thud, a sharp squeal, a sudden splash and silence.

I stood on the patio listening. Nothing. Whatever it was, it was gone now. I closed the door and went to bed.

The next morning I went to the mulch bin at the edge of the yard with the kitchen compost. I had the lid in my hand when I heard a pattering of feet. I looked up to see a piglet heading straight for me. Just as its beady little eyes caught sight of me, it veered into the woods, squealing in surprise. Behind it raced the neighbor's white and yellow cat, its tail fluffed, its whole body bent on catching that pig. I lost sight of the two of them in the underbrush. Moments later the farmer's son, B, came panting down the path. "Did you see a... " he gasped, bending over to catch his breath.

"Your cat?" I asked. "Chasing a pig?"

He grinned at me. "I was using a little cat food as a bribe," he said. "The pig liked the idea but the cat didn't." He dashed off again in pursuit.

Later I learned he'd brought 3 little piglets home to raise for fall meat. One went straight from the travel box to the barn but the other two bolted. B and his mother spent what remained of the daylight chasing those two pigs. The splash I'd heard was one of the piglets jumping into the pond across the road. B grabbed its hind leg as it started to paddle away but lost his footing and fell. The retrieved pig hit the ground running and disappeared in the bushes.

As of this morning, one pig of three is still in the barn, the cat is sitting guard over his food dish on the farmhouse porch, and the other two piglets are out there somewhere in the neighborhood, hiding out. I'm hoping there's a reward of pork chops for anyone with information on their whereabouts.

Interval

2011-07-05T08:05:00.000-07:00

My summer transportation

Independence Day, our one July holiday, has come and gone in a surfeit of food and a flurry of fireworks. Now the long summer days stretch out before me, lazy and unbound. I can sleep in if I please (and the cat allows) or wake at dawn to watch the sun roll over the horizon. I have few plans, preferring to let the days unroll as they will. There's plenty of garden and yard work to keep me busy, books to read, poems to write, friends to visit, roads to pedal along on my bicycle. I will spend a couple of days each week with my daughter and the Bean, my youngest grandchild who is nine months old already and working on her standing alone skills. In August the other grandchildren, aged 10 and 8, will spend a week at the cottage with me.

Summer will go by almost as fast as the typing of this paragraph. I will be here on rainy days and late nights but mostly I will be out of doors listening to the birds, watching the flowers drift slowly from pastels to the deeper hues of autumn, speaking with the trees and stones and clouds that I encounter.

Happy Summer!

Happy 4th!

2011-07-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Photo curtesy of publicdomainclip-art.blogspot.com

4^TH OF JULY

Deep in the dark,

after the dogs and burgers,

the deviled eggs,

the watermelon seed-spitting contest,

after the badminton and high dives,

the dive back to the

still laden tables,

and the satiated somnolence

that crept over everyone

like a warm blanket -

after all that came the night,

with its anticipation of sky-fire

and canon boom,

sparklers held at arm's length,

the ooohing and ahhing,

the window-cracking BANG!

of Chinese firecrackers,

paper and flash powder exploding like stars

deep in the dark.

Mid-Summer

2011-07-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

The sun's as hot as melted cheese,

It oozes down between the leaves,

then spreads itself across the lawn

and slides along the trunks of trees.

By noon all trace of cool has gone,

the birds have ceased to sing their songs,

and every breathing thing is still,

until the daylight's almost gone.

Then thunderheads begin to build,

all black and blue behind the hill.

the sky takes on an eerie glow

and slowly rain begins to spill

The storm may calm the heat for now,

like asprin soothes a fevered brow,

but searing heat is summer's vow,

yes searing heat is summer's vow.

Early Morning

2011-06-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

mist rises into the quiet sky

drawn by a silent sun;

the earth sleeps on.

a bird drops notes like dew

on grass, gently, softly.

flowers sing muted songs

trees are green leafed statues.

I could be all alone in the world

save for the sounds

of early morning.

posted in One Shot Wednesday

A Slight Pause Before Naptime

2011-06-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

School ended today. I was dreading hug withdrawal but I'm off to see the grandchildren for a few days. Hugs will abound! Naps, however, are on hold until I return.

While I've Been Gone

2011-06-18T07:23:00.000-07:00

The fruit bat

Two weeks ago:
I arrive at my brother's house to dog sit while he and his wife travel. The dog is a Chihuahua pup, untrained, looks like a fruit bat. Sweet little thing but yappy and hyper beyond belief. She's like a two year old, constantly into things she shouldn't be. She needs a vigilant caretaker. Thank goodness for my two teenage grand-nieces who want to stay with me and help. They play with the fruit bat, remind me to take the garage door opener when we leave each morning, and check to make sure the two inner doors are left unlocked as there are no keys for them.

One week ago:
The fruit bat goes to bed at 9 and wakes at 4:30. She yaps incessantly. She needs a dental bone each morning, a treat each afternoon. She knows when to expect such things and if they are not forthcoming, she climbs whatever leg is available and screeches. While we are gone for the day, she chews shoes, loose paper, pillows, blankets, rug edges, curtains, pencils, the cat. The high pitch of her voice echoes in my fillings. I am beyond exhaustion. I am counting the days until her owners return.

Last night: 10:30 pm
The girls are taking a break to visit their dad. I am on my own for the weekend. I throw the bouncy ball for the fruit bat to fetch, make dinner, hold one end of the old necktie while the fruit bat tries wresting it from my grip, clean the kitchen, throw the rubber bone for the fruit bat to fetch, put out the cat, throw the squeaky toy for the fruit bat to fetch, tidy the house, throw the rag doll for the fruit bat to fetch, try to read. Finally it's time to put the fruit bat in her crate and go to bed. I brush my teeth, turn out the lights, lock the outer doors and fall into bed.

I lay thinking. Those two unlocked doors bother me. What if the outer doors are breached? What if the cat is still in the garage? What if... I get out of bed, check the garage for the cat and lock the inner door behind me. I go upstairs and turn the lock on the second inner door. A little voice in my ear says, "Oh boy! The last time you did this you locked yourself out of the house. You had to make an embarrassing phone call to Maine to ask where the spare key was hidden. You better leave these doors unlocked."

I scoff. "I'll just write myself a note that the doors are locked and unlock them before I go out in the morning," I tell the voice. UNLOCK INNER DOORS I scrawl and put the note in the middle of the kitchen counter where I'll see it first thing. I climb back in bed and sleep peacefully until the fruit bat wakes me at 4:15 a.m.

Saturday: 4:30 a.m.
I stumble into the kitchen and turn on the kettle. I scoop some cat food and step out into the garage to fill the dish. I close the door carefully behind me so the fruit bat won't escape. I turn to go back into the house. The door is locked.

Saturday: 4:35 a.m.
It's still fairly dim outside. There's a fog that drifted in last evening after the rain and the garage floor is damp and chilly on my bare feet. I can't believe I've done it again. I am good and truly locked out. The fruit bat is locked in. Along with my car keys, the spare key, the phone, my purse... I say every curse word I know.

Saturday, 4:47 a.m.
I look around the garage for something with which to pry open the lock when my eyes fall on my bicycle. My bike! I pause. I am a 65 year old woman wearing nothing but a thigh length nightshirt. It is only five o'clock in the morning. My hair is not combed. But my niece has a spare key and her house is only a mile and a half away. She will surely be asleep but I'm desperate. So is the fruit bat. I can hear her little claws ticking on the floor. I can hear her yipping. I pray that the rest of the neighborhood is still sleeping. I don't want anyone who knows me to see what I'm about to do.

Saturday 5:00 a.m.
I pass house after sleeping house. I hold the handlebar with one hand and tug my nightshirt down with the other as I pedal furiously along the road. I have no hands left to slap mosquitoes. I leave the side street and turn onto the main road. I bend my head, pedal as fast as I can and hope feverishly that no one who knows me will drive by.

Saturday: 5:06 a.m.
I stand shivering on the doorstep, my hair plastered against my head, looking, I'm sure, like something raised from the dead, and pound on my niece's door. No sound from within. I pound again. Please, please open the door! She does, looking at me with alarm. "What's wrong?" she asks as I duck past her.

"I did it again," I say. "I locked myself out of your parent's house just like last year. Can I borrow your key?"

She looks me up and down. "Did you walk here?"

"I rode my bike," I say.

"In that?" She points to my nightshirt.

"Yup," I admit, "And I have to hurry back before traffic starts up."

She begins to chuckle. Then she snorts. She guffaws. Finally she leans over double, ha-ha-ing and hee-hee-ing as I shift from one bare foot to the other.

I hold out my hand and she puts the key into it. Nothing has made me this happy in a long time. I clench it in my fist, dash out the door and grab my bike. I can still hear my niece as I pedal off down the drive.

I hear a car behind me and as I dare to look up, I see another headed in my direction. I duck my head again just in case. Whoever it is gives a cheery toot. I have no free hand to wave. I just pedal on, turning down the street toward my brother's house. A dog barks as I fly past. Around the corner, up the slight incline and into the drive. The fruit bat is at the window, barking furiously. I drop the bike, lunge up the front steps and unlock the door, slipping inside just as the newspaper man turns into the drive. I hear the paper thud against the garage from the safety of the house. He toots as he drives away. My heart is racing.

Saturday: 5:13 a.m.
The fruit bat is so excited to see me she pees on the floor. Then she poops. I stand there panting. She dashes off for the kitchen and leaps at the treat bucket.

"Not a chance in hell," I tell her.

I clean up the mess, unlock the inner doors, make a cup of steaming tea and sit shakily down. The fruit bat hops into my lap. I think inanely that biker Lance Armstrong has nothing on me this morning. Who needs performance enhancing drugs when all one needs to do is own a Chihuahua pup and lock oneself out of the house now and then?

Looking Forward

2011-06-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Parker, my nap tutor and companion.

There are two and half weeks of school left. After ten months of spending the better part of every day with someone else's energetic children, of sudden deaths and over-the-top weather, I am dazed and tired and ready for summer with its somnolent days and fan-brushed nights. I will let the birds wake me (far earlier than any alarm clock ever did but much more naturally), let the lazy days trick me into thinking I'm on a permanent vacation, and let others make plans while I nap in the long afternoons. I will come here to read up on all of you now and then. Happy summer!

One June Day

2011-06-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

Dawn always reminds me that nothing is as it seems. It would appear that the sun rises over a flat horizon when, in reality, I am held fast to the surface of a rotating ball that rolls around toward the light.

What better way to start the day than with a bowl of fresh berries?

June roses scent the air...

...and daisies nod from the roadside.

A muskrat swims lazily home toward sunset.

The day ends in dawn colors.

2011-06-01T04:04:00.000-07:00

Memere and her Bean

My littlest granddaughter is becoming quite vocal. She has been babbling for some time, saying da-da-da and buh-buh-buh but this weekend I was introduced to a new sound - the Mighty Squeal. It came suddenly while she was lying on her back on the changing table. Never fond of the immobility required while being changed or dressed, she has added back arching, leg kicking and a loud voice to her repertoire of avoidance tactics. I was so startled by the Squeal that I picked her up diaper-less, the unbuttoned ends of her onesie flapping about her bare legs. The noise stopped as quickly as it started and the little Bean grinned widely.

Not ten minutes later she was seated in her highchair with a few itty bitty pancake pieces scattered over the tray. She likes to chase little bits of food around before pinching them tightly between her tiny thumb and forefinger and eating them. Between bites her Mama spoons mushy food into her little mouth. Bean's two bottom teeth are visible but her uppers are still making their way through the gums. She clamps onto the spoon and bites hard before letting it go for the next mouthful. When her belly is full, she arches her back, puffs out her cheeks and emits a deafening eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee until someone jumps up and unbuckles her. Despite some quiet admonishment from Mama and Papa, she grins her satisfied grin.

Her second mastery is the wave. Held securely in her Mama's arms, her cheeks still feeling my exuberant goodbye kisses, the Bean lifts her small arm and waves it in my direction. "Bye-bye Memere," my daughter says. The little arm waves, the serious little face watches me as I get in the car and roll down the window. "Bye-bye." My last glimpse is of the little hand raised in farewell. "She'll come back," I hear my daughter promise.

Yes, I will!

Remembering

2011-05-28T05:14:00.000-07:00

My Mama would have celebrated her 94th birthday today. She didn't live past the age of 65 and I still miss her presence.

She was a city girl who moved to the country to teach in a rural high school. She was a small woman, not more than 5' 3" in heels and she loved stylish clothes. She wore her beautiful cornsilk hair in a roll around her head. She was every inch a lady though I became aware as I grew up that she hid a sharp wit and a clever tongue behind that facade. She could quell an unruly 8th grade boy with a look, a practice she brought to bear in motherhood as well. We children didn't get away with much.

Though she grew up on the outskirts of a thriving city with all the amenities a city has to offer, when she married my father and moved to a rural area an hour and a half away she learned in a hurry how to grow food for her growing family, cook the game my father loved to hunt, and keep an old house in good shape. I played dress-up in her beautiful, seldom-worn dresses and skirts while she turned to slacks and housedresses. Living on a chicken farm where she raised a large vegetable garden, chopped wood for the fire, tended flower beds and chased spiders with dust cloth and broom was dirty work.

It was her cheerfulness that I remember most, and her steadfastness. Gracious is a word I have always associated with Mama. She could be counted on to look for and find the best in everyone, to weasel the silver lining out of the darkest cloud, to embrace trouble head on and find a peaceful solution, to look at all of life with an attitude of awe and appreciation.

It helps to think of her now, to imagine what she would say in the face of the sudden deaths of two great friends in the space of three weeks. I can hear her soft steady voice in my head telling me to look for ways to comfort those friends left behind, and to find ways to let myself grieve. I take long walks, write poetry, find green places to sit while I weep with abandon. Healing will come, she whispers to me, only after you walk willingly through the shadows.

Suddenly You're Gone

2011-05-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

A friend and colleague has died suddenly in a car crash. It is still hard for the living to breathe...

In the time it takes
to blink
to slam your foot on the brake pedal
to register the sound of splintering glass
the grind of metal

in the time it takes
to breathe
one last breath - in, out -
to wish it hadn't happened
to wonder what comes next

in the time it takes to sigh
everything changes

In Praise of May

2011-05-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

Green spreads around me in rippling waves. The trees are fully leafed, singing emerald songs to the sky-blue sky. The morning air has warmed under the bountiful hand of the sun until by late afternoon it shimmers. I tie the sleeves of my sweater around my waist and set off across the fields. Violets are suddenly thick underfoot and I kneel to drink in their sweet scent. The fragrance reminds me of home and my mother’s garden where every spring the violets and lily of the valley bloomed among the burgeoning stems and stalks of day lily, peony, and phlox.

I strip off my shoes, and socks and wiggle my bare toes in the meadow grass. There is no one to see me and so I throw my arms wide and twirl until I am dizzy—earth and sky and earth and sky and earth and sky—before I must stop or fall.

I stretch out in the soft, still-new grass and think that green smells like fresh air and sunshine and newly growing things. I look up into the sky and let my eyes look beyond the blue, beyond the known, into the vast emptiness that is not really empty but inhabited by the unknown, and I fall in love with it all—the sky, the earth, the fields, the woods, the flowers—just the way I did when I first discovered the world as a small child.

Poem Dialogue

2011-05-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

AS LONG AS YOU’RE UP, DEAR

Are you making a sandwich?

No dear, I’m not.

Oh. Well, tomato with mayo would sure hit the spot.

Here you go, darling.

There’s no need to pout.

I’m done in the kitchen and I’m going out.

Are YOU rattling the tea things?

NO. (To be concise.)

A cuppa with sugar and milk would be nice.

Here YOU go darling,

Shall we dine in the den?

It’s good to be eating together again.

One Shot Wednesday

2011-05-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

The new oldest covered bridge in MA (rebuilt after a fire destroyed the original structure)

This poem was recently published in a slim volume of poetry created for the dedication of a small town park and river access ramp along the river south of the bridge. I often walk down by the river and spend a lot of time in and around this bridge. The original bridge was built in 1854, was added to National Register of Historic Places in 1978, was restored in 1981, burned to the ground in 1994 and was reconstructed in 1999.

Covered Bridge Thoughts

The way the sun paints my walls

in broad strokes

and diagonal slashes,

illuminating initials twined in hearts,

and the mud-plastered swallow’s nest

on the highest rafter—

The way the restless water murmurs

of muskrats and marsh grass

and the far places from which it has fled

as it rushes seaward—

The echo of feet on my rough planks,

and the cavernous, roofed darkness—

Either end brings the traveler into the light again

or out of the rain.

The strength of my trusses

like great arms lifting,

and the grace of my span—

river, wood, and a trust in design

meant to reconcile the gap between

here and there.

I am the bridge.

for One Shot Wednesday #46

Relativity Demonstrated

2011-05-15T14:59:00.000-07:00

Lamb cake for the party

This was a weekend of beginnings and endings. My smallest granddaughter was feted at a Welcome To the World party Saturday, hosted by her happy parents and attended by dozens of family members and friends. I baked a cake for the little Bean in my own Memere's old cast iron lamb mold. For once, the ears did not stay stuck in the pan, the frosting was as light and fluffy as cotton wool, and the lamb's head did not topple off when I lifted the cake plate to carry it to the table. The day was a whirl of cooking and eating, of laughter and music and joy in new life.

Sunday was, in sharp contrast, a farewell occasion for an old friend. In a standing room only church we listened to the singing of Danny Boy, the saddest, most poignant song I know. Tears wet every cheek and talk afterwards was of missing and loneliness and sorrow. Rain fell first in a fine mist and then in torrents as if the very skies wept at this man's passing.

I know that sorrow and joy are two sides of the same coin, that in this world of opposites we experience both, not always equally and not always with equanimity and we prefer one rather than the other, but there was some measure of comfort after the service as we recalled this gentle man's accomplishments, his delight in small things, his great love of family.

The little Bean will grow into her own life, will experience her own moments of great joy and deep sorrow. Her life will unfold and she will live it as best she can. My old friend's memory will live on in the minds of those who knew and loved him. His hand is everywhere I am, in the patches and repairs to my tiny cottage of which he was landlord, in the farm animals and buildings, and the meadows and woodlands that surround me and that he loved so well.

These two days - one of joy and one of sorrow - have had a hand in shaping my own life as all our days do, though we don't always notice it in our self-involvement. As a reminder that in the midst of both life and death there is something worth treasuring, the lilacs bloomed both days.

Magic

2011-05-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

catbird by mountaineeraudubon.org

A marvelous thing happened to me on Mother's Day. There's a backstory, of course. I remember as a child listening to my mother whistle to the birds that frequented our yard in the summer. She traded tunes with robins and bluejays, chickadees and starlings, wrens and titmice and warblers, but the bird she talked most often to was a catbird that nested every year in the venerable lilac bush near the front porch.

Most songbirds have different voices. There are soft spring love songs, strident alarm cries and usually one signature bit of sound that allows you to say, "Oh! That's a cardinal!" Or a red-winged blackbird or a goose. The catbird is no exception. Its name stems from its dead-on imitation of a cat wanting to be let in out of the rain.

First thing on a summer morning Mama could be heard conversing with the lilac catbird. "Meow," she'd say and, "Mrrrreow," the catbird would reply.

"I like catbirds," Mama told me. "They're not showy, they're not scavengers, and they're downright friendly."

As I grew up I could not hear a catbird without thinking of my mother. Once I was on my own, every house I lived in had its resident catbird family nesting within hearing distance and I'd smile as I tried conversing with them the way my mother did.

Mama's side of the conversation ended on a late October day, long after all the songbirds had departed for the season. I clearly remember hauling an old summer lawn chair from the porch of her empty house and sitting in the yard in the late afternoon sunshine, mourning her passing. Suddenly there was a rustle in the lilac bush and a sharp mrrrreow. I looked for the cat but what I saw instead was a bird, a sleek, gray, impossible catbird perched on a branch nearest the house. "Mrrrreow," it said, cocking its head. I couldn't help it. Through tears I replied, "Meow." Satisfied, the bird flew off. I lost sight of it in the blue of that October sky.

This past Sunday, Mother's Day, after my youngest daughter and her family had left for home, I sat on the swing that hangs at the entrance to my Secret Path to the farm next door. I swung my feet idly, leaning back to look at the bits of blue visible through the new green leaves. Into my line of vision came a blur of wings and a sudden landing. On a branch directly in front of me and so close I could have reached out and touched it, sat a catbird. I let the swing slow and stop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Parker the cat approaching. He leapt to the picnic table near the swing and sat like a statue, his eyes on that bird. As if it always sat within a foot of humans and cats to sing, the catbird cocked its head and began a series of soft spring love calls, little tootles and tweets with a bit of tune here and there. I let the tears fall where they would. I listened to the catbird sing and wished with my every cell and atom to understand.

Strange things happen in this world. I am a big believer in coincidence, but like Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle, there comes a time when you know it's "a sign." With a last little "Mrrrreow," the catbird flew off and I knew I'd just been treated to magic.

*To hear a catbird's songs and calls, go here, click on the sound button and scroll down.

Thank you, Hilary !

Field Notes

2011-05-09T03:43:00.000-07:00

Remember that day,

the river drifting slowly south,

the trees just beginning to leaf,

looking like paler versions of their autumn selves?

You know how you have to

climb the earthen steps,

first down to the silver river,

then up to the leafy overlook,

and how, this time of year,

every miniscule blossom challenges

you to name it,

how the nose twitches at the smell of

disturbed leaf mulch

and damp earth,

how what passes for silence

is filled with bird song?

It was just that kind of day today,

a day of discovery,

of feeling the cool hand

of the sky on my cheek,

of seeing hillsides white with trillium,

and rock gardens jumbled among the trees.

It was as if the trees were listening,

and the quiet leaves,

and the ears of the rocks were open,

and the twigs bent close to hear.

Then the wind spoke,

and the bluebird.

Into the silence came a breeze-borne song.

The boughs nodded,

the river chuckled to itself,

the rocks sighed and settled into

the earth's cupped hand.

Amazing Grace

2011-05-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of quietude at the end of a fairly frantic week. My neighbor and close friend J, who is co-host to my other blog, lost her husband G unexpectedly on Sunday and now she is feeling lost. Sudden grief is so debilitating. The cold, dreary weather has been no help and we've all been walking around feeling half here and half elsewhere as we try to come to grips with a world without G.

I've been finding small ways to help the family with daily tasks so they have more time to spend with each other. Today I loaded G's monstrous (to me - I drive a small car) pickup truck with accumulated trash from their house and mine and drove to the transfer station. The moment I had my hands on the steering wheel I felt the tears start. I've know this man since childhood, went to high school with him, and saw him if not daily, then nearly so, for the last seven years I've rented my cottage from him. My heart aches for J. Her sadness is palpable and will last for a long time. They'd been married 45 years and were the best of friends.

This evening the setting sun was like a benediction. I took a walk along the quiet road, stopping now and then to listen to the birds say goodnight. There are several pairs of Baltimore orioles nesting in the neighborhood. I heard them calling and then, as I stood at meadow's edge trying to spot them, two flew directly overhead, the sun flashing on their brilliant orange feathers. I hope J saw and heard them, too. Their song, and their beauty in the midst of sadness was a balm of sorts, and a promise that even in the shadow of grief there is grace waiting on the periphery.

Bugged!

2011-05-04T03:53:00.000-07:00

The rain stops, the sun comes out, the air warms and sweetens with the scent of flowers and damp earth and green, growing things. The out of doors beckons, luring you with bird song and open spaces, shady glades and winding roads. You lace up your walking shoes, step outside, breathe deeply, douse yourself with bug spray to keep away the pesky mosquitoes, and hum a happy little tune as you set off. Ah, what a world! What a day! What... is this?

It’s the devil disguised as a deer fly, is what it is. It’s torture dressed up in wings and teeth, a demented demon trained as a kamikaze pilot, impervious to insect repellent and bent on biting you. A single deer fly can turn a simple stroll into a battle for dominance. It’s you or the fly and there is only one victor.

Unlike mosquitoes that dance at a respectable distance from bug spray, deer flies don’t. They buzz and bomb, darting in devious circles first one way and then another. They swoop down out of nowhere, whirl in a mad dance around your head and land only long enough for you to feel their vicious bite. By the time you’ve swatted yourself hard enough to see stars, they’re up in the air again, a whirling dervish with a bit of your flesh clinging to their feverish jaws.

One day last June my daughter Cass and I took advantage of a break in the clouds to go for a quick hike. We set off down the road, arms swinging, legs pumping, glad for the watery sunshine and lifting mists. Abruptly, Cass broke her stride to do an odd little dance. She raised her arms and swung them wildly around her head. She jumped up and then back and then whirled around, bobbing and weaving and punching the air like a boxer. Around her head, darting and whirring like a berserk wind-up toy was a deer fly, its sturdy death-proof body and flashing wings throwing off golden glints.

“Stand still,” I instructed, “and I’ll whack it.”

I clapped my hands where the fly was and missed, clapped again to the left of it and then to the right. I jumped and clapped, sidestepped and clapped. Cass ducked, her arms wrapped around her head. Then “Ouch!” she yelled and slapped at a bit of her unprotected neck. The fly turned a somersault, tumbling down before righting itself and zooming straight for my face.

Hastily I grabbed a fallen twig with several leaves still attached. Cass grabbed another, swinging it around and around her head. We broke into a gentle trot, then a mad gallop for home, swinging our branches and yelling, “Get away! Get away!”

A car passed, the driver taking in our disheveled appearance and the leafy branches clutched in our fists. We saluted jauntily as though leafy bouquets were every bit as reasonable as flowers. His expression indicated he had no idea how lucky he was to be encased in metal and capable of going faster than a deer fly.

Uncovering Spring

2011-04-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

Spring always comes in a rush of sound and color. Robins call from the trees, “Mine, mine, mine, this tree is mine!” Red winged blackbirds bob up and down on the cattails near the swamp, chittering to one another. Geese and ducks return to the pond and gabble incessantly as they stake out nesting sites. A chipmunk scolds from high in the big pine as I rake pine needles and dead flower stalks from the garden beds. There under the leaf mold, wearing a crown of last year’s maple leaves is a daffodil’s bright green spears and vivid yellow trumpet. There is nothing so determined as a flower in spring.

Everywhere I look, this year’s birth is running into last year’s death. The new grass, emerald green, is smothering last year’s lawn killed by the winter cold. The goldenrod that bloomed in lemony profusion last September has been reduced to dry spindly stalks that lean together in bent and broken disarray. My rake uncovers the pale green leaves of daylilies and the rounded, darker green leaves of violets. Crocus, not waiting for me, are in full bloom, their Easter-colored petals making bright spots in the drab border.

There is an urgency to the season. Days of rain followed by warm sun encourage rapid growth. The seeds and bulbs won’t wait. My back aches from bending and lifting, my arms are covered with scratches where the recalcitrant rose brambles and the sharp ends of flower stalks have cut them, but my heart sings at the sight of the first blossoms. I have uncovered spring!

Thanks Hilary!

Where Poetry Happens

2011-04-25T17:10:00.000-07:00

A cat, a bench, the waning sun,

A woman, and a day’s work done,

Came all together on a hill,

To end the day where they’d begun.

Below them lay both pond and rill.

The breeze-blown water danced until

The evening held its breath, and then

The water, like the wind, grew still.

And as it had in morning when,

The woman and the cat had been

Ensconced upon the dreaming seat,

A muskrat waddled from his den.

He broke the glassy water sheet,

and set, with that innocuous feat,

the night in motion with his feet,

the night in motion with his feet.

Up With the Sun

2011-04-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

If I hadn't risen early this morning I might not have taken a walk, in which case I would have missed the sun rising into the orchid mist.

I would not have seen the dew-spangled spider's web clinging to the fence rails,

nor noticed how perfectly the pond mirrors the trees that border it's banks.

I would not have come upon the yellow gowned forsythia that holds court at the entrance to my neighbor's drive,

and I would have missed the hyacinth blooming at my own doorstep.

When Work is Play

2011-04-21T06:16:00.000-07:00

My life is never boring. This morning, between household chores, which this vacation week have included moving furniture to spring clean the floor underneath, exchanging winter wear for summer clothes (a task that entails unloading my one storage closet and doing umpteen loads of laundry), washing down walls and polishing windows, I had to feed the lamb that lives at the farm next door.

I've known the farmer all my life, and his wife and I met when we were expecting our firstborn sons eons ago. I now rent my lovely Hollyhock Cottage from them. They've given me garden space at the farm just a short walk through the secret path from my cottage. J and I exchange recipes and baked goods and soups, we're always dashing off somewhere together, and we even co-host a blog. We also care for each other's animals when one or the other of us has to be away. Today was my turn to feed the lamb.

Clip Clop was born a few short weeks ago. His mother, an older sheep, did not survive the birth and none of the other new mothers was willing to take on an extra babe. So, J got a baby bottle and some replacement formula, bundled the little critter up and took him into the house to keep him warm while she fed him every half hour or so. The sound of his little feet on the tile floor earned him his name.

Now Clip Clop is old enough and sturdy enough to live in the sheep pen but he still needs a bottle every few hours. Normally J takes him out for a cuddle along with his bottle but he's hard to pen back up. To make things easier for me she made a space in the wire door of the sheep pen just wide enough for Clip Clop to poke his head through. He heard me coming and ran to the door, bleating. It was no trick to get the nipple in his mouth but keeping it there was a matter of perseverance. Lambs are born knowing they need to butt with their hard little heads. He sucked for a moment then jerked his head, sending the milk flying into his face. I grabbed his chin, inserted the nipple in his eager little mouth and we'd start all over again, him butting and bleating and me hanging on. Eventually most of the milk was in his belly.

I've two more loads of washing to hang on the line and lots of garden work to do. Still, hanging out with a lamb on a windy spring morning beats pulling weeds any day.

5-7-5

2011-04-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

small poems of life,

blossoms of words open up

to reveal a truth.

for One Shot Wednesday

2011-04-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

Daughter C, baby A (6 months) and friend Lora (103!)

This weekend my daughter, her fiance, A, and their baby drove with me to Northern Vermont where we helped my friend Lora celebrate her 103rd birthday. This has been a tough year for Lora - she's been in and out of the hospital a couple of times, has lost much of her sight and hearing and has to have Elder Care in order to stay in her home. She spends much of her time sleeping. Still, when I called to ask if we could come for a short visit, she was enthusiastic. She stayed up long enough to make A's acquaintance, have a piece of birthday cake and give us all a hug.

While we were in the area, we visited some of the places C remembered from her childhood in the Northeast Kingdom. She was eager to show A the old homestead we all helped to build, the house we first stayed in when she was just 3, and the school she attended through grade 8. Mud season is in full swing up there and snow still covered the ground in many places.

I hope to go back in the summer to spend more time with Lora. We've been friends for thirty years - it will be hard to say goodbye.

the cabin in the building stages, 1970s

Cabin 2011

2011-04-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

the pond at sunset

Mornings have been silent since last November. Now I wake to bird song and all day long I can hear twitterings and chirping as the birds go about the business of staking out territory and making nests. In the late afternoon, close to the supper hour, the spring peepers begin their concert. If I should wake late in the night, I can stand on the doorstep in the moonlight and listen to the little frogs fill the dark with their mating calls.

Just before sunset a few geese make their way to the pond across the street. There are ducks nesting there, too, and gulls fly over. It's too early for insect noises but the great spring song has begun.

Unexpected Beauty

2011-04-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

I was walking after supper one day last summer and I saw the two swans that have nested near the pond across the road. By the time I got home this poem had pretty much formed itself.

the zoom on my little camera tried its best...

What To Say About The Other Evening

I could tell you of the mute

and mated swans whose milk-white

feathers gleam in the last rays of the sun

like massed stars,

or how the dragonfly shimmers over

the pond's edge, so quick and agile

that it is somewhere else

almost before you see it.

I might mention a horizon the

color of cream in a sapphire bowl,

or how the shadows lay themselves like

bottle green sheets across the side yard,

how the light leeches so slowly

from the day-blue sky that the fireflies

blink on before it is full dark,

lighting a path on which

the mute and mated swans

float home.

for One Shot Wednesday

From Bud to Bloom

2011-04-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

A soft rain is falling, the precursor to more violent storms headed our way. My peas and spinach will get watered, and the daffodils, spattered with paint chips as my house is scraped in anticipation of a new coat of white paint, will look clean and presentable again. Yesterday they looked like this:

daffodil buds

Today, after a full day of 70+ degrees, brilliant sunshine, and a beguiling breeze, they greeted me like this:

blooms among the paint chips

I will fall asleep in wind-scented sheets, listening to the rain as it patters against the windows.

One April Day

2011-04-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

The sun woke before I did. I've been taking medication for a sinus infection and it gives me weird, continuous dreams. I sleep and wake and sleep again, the strange, detailed dreams sliding seamlessly into one another as though my waking is merely turning a page in a dream novel.

At any rate, once I was up, the sunshine and warming air pulled me out of doors. After breakfast I washed and hung three loads of laundry. Then, rake and garden fork in hand, I turned over and raked the vegetable beds. The pea fence is up, and the stick teepee for the cucumbers to climb. I found three potatoes beneath the soil, still firm and good to eat!

There was time for a walk before lunch and another after supper. I watched the sun set from my swing. I had a book but the evening was so lovely I kept looking up. A drift of woodsmoke from a neighbor's burn pile made a blue haze across the yard. Every tree trunk was painted in gold as the sun slid closer to the horizon. Birds sang an evening benediction. Finally, the lack of light and the cooling air sent me indoors. My bath towel, my pajamas and my bedsheets all smell like wind and sun. Perhaps my dreams will be sweeter tonight!

April Showers Bring...

2011-04-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

Photo from Magpie Tales

Watching the Flood

The water is rising

and the wind, ruffling

the river’s surface. Hard down from

the north the water pours,

from Muddy Pond, from the Williams,

the Green, and the Konkapot,

from snowmelt and

lashing rain, until the banks

of the Housie disappear beneath

mad swirls of foam-specked brown.

Like a furious dragon the water

leaps, dashing itself against

the bridge, its tail lashing

the abutments, its sinuous body eddying

over banks and around trees,

tumbling rocks and bits of flotsam

down, down to where I stand,

my back to the bullying wind,

watching the watery beast

devour cornfields, the rock bridge,

the wetlands and swamps,

and now the road beneath my feet.

In the Company of Trees (repost)

2011-04-05T05:28:00.000-07:00

My sisters and me playing on the Big Maple, 1952

Steven has posted a lovely homage to trees that reminded me of this past post.

I have always found it very satisfying to be in the company of trees. Their solidity suggests strength, their rooted-ness implies stability, their forms define beauty. They are living breathing entities with whom I have shared a communion for as long as I can remember.

I first fell in love, as a small child, with the locusts and the huge maple that grew in our front yard. In May the two locust trees, one on either side of the porch, dropped their sweet, spring-scented catkins. The sticky yellow cases that bore them split and fell, littering the lawn. The maple was an enormous old tree that had a protuberance near its base that we children used as a seat. A sturdy limb reaching out across the lawn held our rope swing and under the board seat was a dusty circle where the grass would not grow, made by our pushing feet. In the spring, the tree would drip sweet, sticky sap. In the fall it was crowned with orangey-yellow leaves and in the winter its bare branches wove intricate patterns against a frozen sky.

In later years, I made friends with all the trees in my neighborhood, with the giant maples, the sighing pines, the eerie black locusts that lifted their twisted limbs to the sky. I came to know the elm that leaned over the board railing at the brook, and the sycamore that dipped its toes into the river where it curved around a broad meadow. I sheltered from the rain under the hemlock boughs in the back yard, planted flowers in the rock garden under the big pine outside the kitchen window, leaned against the birch tree at the edge of the lawn to watch the sun fade in the western sky.

Wherever I’ve gone, I’ve made friends with the trees around me. I can wrap my arms around them and feel their strength and immutable-ness when I am sorely in need of a hug, rest my tired back against a sturdy trunk, send wind messages to my distant children via the leaves and whispering boughs, and understand magnificence from their ability to endure.

This Morning...

2011-04-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

birds.cornell.edu

A murder of crows

slash the morning silence

with their rough voices

and scythe the air

with blackened wings.

skywindworld.org

Daybreak

2011-04-02T12:19:00.000-07:00

Sophia and her Memere a few years back...

My granddaughter and I opened our eyes at the same time. She smiled and rolled from her own bed into the trundle where I lay, looking for a cuddle. A splash of sun from a crack in the blinds spread itself on my shoulder. Sophia touched it with her finger, then stroked my cheek.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Painting you with sunshine," she replied.

Thanks, Hilary

In New England, if you don't like the weather...

2011-04-01T03:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, March 31

Today, April 1

Yesterday, March 31

Today, April 1

...just wait a minute!