I wrote this piece for the Berkshire Record on January 31 in 2003.

My eldest son sent me a photograph for Christmas. It is early morning in the picture and the sun is just rising. Light gilds the waters of the lake in the background, brushes the tops of the trees, and spreads a delicate gold wash on the grassy bank where my son stands, his head back, his arms thrown wide in jubilation, his feet in the steps of a twirling dance. It is the most wonderful image of welcome I have ever seen.

Imagine greeting each day this way! Why do we not? In a conversation with my daughter, we discussed the reasons we thought people cling to sorrow in the face of joy, hatred in the midst of love, greed in the midst of plenty, and anger in the presence of peace. “Fear,” she said, summing up the source of most of our woes in a single word.

When you think of what fear fosters, she is right. Turn on the news in the morning and you start your day with terror on all sides. War and a teetering economy, toxins on the loose, kidnapping and murder and hijacking, suicides, genocides – the list is endless. We surround ourselves with things to be afraid of and in doing so, miss much of the joy and happiness we say we are so earnestly seeking.

Who has not had their share of sorrow, but what of the large and small joys that make up the very same days? What of the morning mist that rises on the pond, now milky white, now gold with the rising sun, now gone? What of the sound of music that can lift your soul above every sort of care, or the kinds of laughter that makes you smile in spite of yourself? What of birdsong? What of the people you meet every day who do things of seeming inconsequence, smile when they see you, hold a door open, let you go ahead of them in the supermarket line, make a meal, bring a cup of tea, write a letter, call on the phone, hold your hand when you are sad, lend their car when yours won’t start, rejoice with you over good news? What of the neighbor who plows your driveway after he’s plowed his own and drives off without waiting for thanks or payment? What of the heroes who risk their own lives to save your child’s, or the strangers who come to your aid after a house fire? What of love in any of its guises? Can we not put these first, making them as important as the things that scare us?

We may be beset by woe on every side, but while we weep the sun continues to rise and set commanded by somethings larger than itself. The music of the universe plays unendingly even when we are not listening. Flowers bloom and fade and bloom again. The very wind sweeps the seeds of change before it. Is it foolish to think we can choose joy, or foolish not to?

I have placed my son’s picture where I can see it upon wakening. Now before I listen to the dire warnings of the day, I stand at the door and look out, seeing the world as a wondrous place. I throw my head back, spread my arms wide in jubilation and welcome the day.

List of things I don’t want to miss this year in nature

 

Tree limbs etching the pale sky, 

arms reaching to embrace birds, clouds, the moon at night.

 

The first blush of pink and gold at dawn.

 

The dance of sunlight on pond water, 

dark shadows emerging as geese in the newborn light.

 

Sunsets – Every. Single. One.

 

The first glimpse of a violet, the burst of a lilac bud, 

new green spears of daffodils emerging.

 

The delicate tendrils of pea vines climbing a bit of string.

 

The first blush of new leaves, every tree offering 

a paler version of its future glorious autumn self.

 

The silvery whisper of leaves before a storm, 

the darkening of the sky, thunderously purple, 

black, roiling clouds split with shards of white light.

 

Strings of water droplets along tree branches after a rain, 

a chorus line of bubble-trapped rainbows.

 

Lying in deep meadow grass, eyes closed, ears open.

 

Sitting quietly among the cornstalks, 

listening to the leaves whisper.

 

Looking up at night to the stars that stretch forever 

into the dark.

 

 

I moved house three times in the past 14 months. I am hoping the next move at the end of February will be the last for a long time. It’s an exciting prospect. The place I am in now (pictured above) is a fully furnished 150-year-old farmhouse tucked off the town’s main road, a safe haven for both my eldest daughter and myself to recover from a series of misadventures. It has served its purpose, but I am anxious to be in the newer, newly renovated and unfurnished rental so that I can surround myself with my personal belongings that have been stored this past year. 

Here there are benedictions everywhere. Our large, treed yard is a haven for birds, chipmunks, and squirrels, all of which are currently entertaining us at the two hanging feeders. In the summer, the yard was full of flowers and birdsong. Now, at the very end of December, birds of every color - gray and white juncoes, flashy blue jays, brilliant red cardinals, brown and white striped sparrows, rosy breasted finches and gray-brown doves peck at the scattered seed spilled on the ground by the perching birds and the feisty squirrels who rock the feeders with their acrobatics. The neighborhood cat appears now and then to disperse them all. He sits, puzzled, under the feeder, wondering where all his prey has gone.

Snow and ice are thick on the ground and the cold outside creeps inside through ill-fitting windows and doors. We keep snuggly throw blankets in every room, wear insulated slippers and several layers of clothing. Christmas has come and gone. We will dismantle the tree after New Year’s Day has passed, packing the tinsel, the baubles, and decorations away in their boxes ready for the move. Slowly, over the next two months, I will gather the items we’ve brought here to make it more homelike and replace them with the things that were here for our use - silverware, pots and pans, dishes. It’s amazing what one accumulates, even in a furnished let!

The wind is picking up as I write. Though it chills me, it feels somehow appropriate that the wind should blow just now. I need something at my back to push me forward through all the machinations of moving - sorting, packing, arranging for the movers, the flurry of small deliberate acts like alerting the Post Office, the DMV, and the numerous organizations that must be informed of our new address. I count up all the times I’ve moved in my nearly 80 years, totaling 15 moves over the past 60 years starting with a husband, a new baby, and not a stick of furniture! It is time to settle down again, to make a home in a new place, to find peace and safety in the company of family members and friends yet to be made. 

 

 Reality

I cup the morning in my hands -

the sun rising on the back of the rooster’s blare,

the grass growing straight out to the barn

where a black cat explores the known world.

 

I hold the whispery sound of wings overhead

and the silly dither of earthbound hens.

Crow feathers slip through my fingers.

Red leaves, and orange,

green leaves and yellow crowd my fingertips.

Wisps of soft air float free.

 

My hands hold the smells of wood smoke

and damp earth, of dried grasses

and fallen leaves. I bury my nose

and inhale the universe as it turns,

 

loosening summer, setting autumn free,

welcoming winter. All this is here

in my cupped hands, holding one morning,

holding them all.

Pure Pleasure

 

I sit and watch the finches at the feeder thinking first that I am glad I thought to replenish the seed, then notice the sheer beauty of the birds themselves, the soft blush of red on their breasts, the way their feathers make black and brown patterns on their backs, the small perfectness of them, and as I watch, the noticing falls away and I am left with something so much larger than a wee feathered finch, a recognition of what Eckhart Tolle calls “naturally arising moments of pure pleasure.”

 

The sun backlights the yellow leaves on a maple. You can get lost in that light, let it shower down over your shoulders, fill your eyes, wash you with color until you are the yellow leaf and the sunbeam and the very air you breathe.

 

You can nestle your hands deep in the fur of a dog, gaze into its eyes until you fall in, lose all your senses except how your fingers feel, and your palms, until you are the dog and the hands and the otherness and sameness at once. 

 

If you lie on your back in a meadow and stare at the sky you can fly, rising up from yourself and floating down to yourself simultaneously. You become sky and earth until the sheer weighted weightlessness feels like home. 

 

Naturally arising moments of pure pleasure can be sought but I like them best when they descend without warning, when my hands are deep in the hot sudsy dishwater and my mind has wandered away from itself and into a place where soap bubbles are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, or when I’m holding a sleeping child and the weight makes my arms tremble but my mind stills itself like the sleeping babe and we breathe in tandem, sharing waking and sleeping dreams.

 

HOPE

Expecting to be settled as I aged and relaxed into retirement, I have been, instead, shuttling from one place to another, boxing up my belongings, depositing them in a storage unit, and moving three times in the past two years. I am temporarily occupying a 150-year-old farmhouse, that, in an odd twist, was once inhabited by a distant ancestor of whom I knew nothing until moving here and delving into the house’s history. The house is furnished so my personal bits remain in storage until I can find a more permanent home. It is a place where I can rest and recoup. I have fallen in love with the solitude, though I am not altogether alone.  

A mourning dove, sleek and slender with a long, narrow tail and feathers that appear painted on has built a rather tall, messy nest just under the roof line of the side porch. Untidy bits of twig, twine, and feathers droop over the edge of the capital that tops a supporting pillar. The bird squashes herself into the nest, her tail protruding from one side while her head ducks at an uncomfortable angle opposite. She watches me with one dark liquid eye as I climb the steps, broom in hand, to sweep the porch floor. Occasionally she flies to the rooftop of the small shed at the edge of the property or sits on a branch of the apple tree in the front yard. Most often I see her perched on the telephone wire that runs past the front of the house where she converses with friends who also cling to the wires and speak in low, plaintive tones. 

 There are other birds in the yard—robins, catbirds, cardinals, wrens, and a variety of finches—some of which will soon fly south as the days shorten and cool down. Blue jays and crows make most of the noise in the mornings now, the dove adding her mournful coo to the sunrise salute. They scatter when I open the door to the front porch to see and feel what the day is like. Mornings are cooler than they were a month ago, though on sunny days the daytime hours between ten a.m. and three in the afternoon are pleasantly warm. Crickets still chirp in the grass and the rabbits, so shy in the bright sunshine, hop out from the underbrush as I take my evening walk. 

There are numerous shade trees about the house, but I need walk just down the road to find open meadows that roll their green carpets to the edge of the woods. Deer feed there, and I know there are raccoons and most likely foxes about. There are bears, too, though I haven’t seen one, just a large pile of scat under an apple tree in a nearby orchard. I have no garden space of my own, so I’ve purchased a share in a local farm. Every week I choose from bins piled high with beets and carrots, spinach and chard and kale, sweet corn and tomatoes, filling a basket with produce and a canning jar with flowers I cut myself from their vast gardens. I am content to live in this quiet poem of a life for a while, teaching myself anew about patience, perseverance, and hope.

Ponderings

 

I came into this world naked and helpless, bearing the genetic structure composed of elements that stretch back to the origin of our species. I'm a chaotically organized crapshoot of characteristics from my ancestors that got molded and modified by nature and nurture. Depending on the capacity of my brain and my physical structure (which, by the way, I did not choose any more than I chose the geographical location of my birth), I learned how to identify and navigate my surroundings. I am no more nor less important than any living thing around me. I am naturally different as well as simultaneously the same. And my purpose is simply to perpetuate life itself. I make up the rest as I go along. Life on this planet may be just one way in an unending number of ways to exist. Thinking these things helps to keep me sane in a seemingly insane world.