How much do you love?

When my granddaughter was just a little tot (pictured here) she used to call me on the phone. We'd talk about her day and what she had done and what she was thinking. Before we hung up, she would repeat a ritual she'd started at the end of the very first phone call.

"Memere, I love you as much as... " Here she paused and I pictured her casting about for something with which to compare her love for me. "I love you as much as all the sofa pillows on all the sofas in the whole world," she ended triumphantly.

I was charmed. Imagine! Not to be outdone, I told her, "Well, I love you as much as all the leaves on all the trees in the whole universe."

There was a little silence. Then, "I love you as much as all the clouds in the whole universe."

"And I love you as much as all the grains of sand on every beach in the whole world."

She sighed. "Memere, I love YOU infinity times infinity," and with that, she hung up.

Infinity was a pretty big concept for a four year old. Now that she's almost eight, her conversations run the gamut of school activities to friendships to what makes her cry, and better, what makes her laugh. She especially enjoys teaching her Memere things and searches for ways to surprise me. But her goodbyes are still presaged with "I love you as much as..."

Tonight it was, "I love you as much as all the raindrops that ever fell and ever will fall." Imagine loving and being loved like that. We should all try it.

Greeting the day...

To be out of doors when the sun rises is to both give and receive a blessing. The light spills over the horizon, illuminating and warming. The heart swells with appreciation and gratitude.

This morning the air was cold; frost covered the bent grasses and a shifting ghostly mist obscured the pond. My footsteps startled a pair of ducks resting in the reeds and they lifted, quacking furiously, from the water. The silence resettled in their wake.

Behind me the sun was lifting above the horizon, lighting the treetops first. Ahead, a yellow maple blazed in the first light. Slowly the grey, swirling mist turned gold. My own breath, visible in the cold, lifted past my face and drifted out to join the breath of the morning.

Leaves for Eddie

Dawn followed close on the heels of the clackity boxcars, as if the train’s whistle had wakened the sun as well as my self. I stood on the doorstep in the cool, misty half-light watching a flock of noisy geese make its way to the pond. They are Canada geese winging down from the north. They will rest on our pond and eat their fill before pushing south to Maryland just ahead of the cold November winds. September weather has remained warm and muggy after a summer of heat and humidity. Even now, toward the month’s end, the sun still blazes and the temperature climbs into the 80s. Evenings cool a little but the dampness remains. The trees still wear their summer green, though here and there a few anxious maple leaves have gone scarlet. It is these leaves that lure me out on my bicycle to scour the roadsides for enough to send to Eddie.

Eddie used to live here in my town. We grew up together half wild, playing along the creek banks, the edges of the woods, and the broad meadows between his house and mine. Eddie had a pony and sometimes he rode that to my house. Other times we rode our bikes together down the road we shared. He lived at the southern end and I half way to the north end. Often after a day of play, I would walk Eddie nearly to his end of the street. He’d walk back with me as far as the brook near my house. I’d walk him to the railroad tracks, and he’d walk me back to the halfway mark – a chicken farm owned by an old maid and her widowed sister. Then we’d turn and wave as we made our way to our respective houses. It made our time together last longer.

Once we were in junior high school, Eddie and I went our separate ways, me to the local regional school and he to a private one. We saw each other infrequently until just a few years ago when he made a trip home from Kentucky where he’d finally settled. At first I didn’t recognize him. It had been so many years, after all. But then he laughed and the years fell away, and we began to talk as though it had been only yesterday that we’d walked each other home.

Now we keep in touch by mail, with me keeping Eddie abreast of changes large and small to the town he grew up in. He writes back, nostalgic notes filled with questions about people and places he once knew well. He promises to come home in the spring, and then in the summer, and finally, when the leaves turn color and fall in heaps and the wind from the north develops a bite, he promises that he will come the following spring. I’ve ceased looking for him. I can’t help but think of him though, as I pedal slowly down the road where his grandfather once had a farm. Lettuce for fancy local restaurants grows in the fields now and the old farmhouse stands empty, shipping crates piled on its sagging porch.

The maples that line the street drop orange and scarlet leaves at my feet. I scoop them up, iron them between sheets of waxed paper, and mail them off to Eddie. Perhaps they will lure him home. Perhaps in the spring.

Come September

The pond across the road from my house, dressed in its autumn best.







How did it get to be September already? Wasn’t it just June? Nobody asks that question in February. Nobody says, "Wasn’t it just January?" What is it about summer that speeds up time?

Perhaps it’s because in summer, things grow. They emerge, develop, and expand until the next thing you know, the tree leaves that were the size of squirrels’ ears in late spring have flattened and broadened enough so you can stand comfortably in their collective shade. Corn seeds planted in May produce elephant-eye-high plants by August. In just two July weeks, my zucchini grew from finger-length babies to whale-sized behemoths. Cut grass seems to spring up right behind the lawn mower, and flower stems pole vault their blossoms toward the sun.

In June, time begins to make itself visible, each day stretching out full-length, its fingers reaching toward an ever-earlier dawn while its toes extend toward an ever later dusk. We even say the day stretches out before us, as though we sense the languorous pose July assumes when the temperature and the humidity rise. Let things cool off a bit, let the day curl up on itself and retreat beneath a blanket of gray, and still dawn does not lag nor twilight hurry.

July is mid-summer, all buzz and bloom and business. Mornings are often misty, and as the sun comes up, I like to watch the wraith-like vapor rise from the trees and the riverbed like lazy ghosts who’ve slept on the floor and just realized they must be off and away. Noontimes are just plain hot. The shimmering heat builds over the afternoon into thunderheads that break with a loud crack, spilling rain into the evening hours.

Then, just as in snow-smothered January there comes a day that hints of spring, there comes a storm that breaks summer’s spell sometime in mid-August, when the heat has built to an unbearable sizzle and people and dogs alike pant. After that, the days begin to sit up a little straighter. They belt robes around their waists against the dawn chill and in the evening pull sweaters over their shoulders. So do I. Time becomes restless, hoarding the light to spill on other continents, leaving us, with each flip of the calendar page, in the dark a little longer.

Watching the seasons cycle, I realize that all that has been and all that will be is held in the moment at hand. Like a good book, nature gives us hints of what is to come in the beginning and middle of each seasonal chapter. And though I’ve heard it before, September is a story I want to read over and over.

Soapbox Rally

If we are not involved in our government, in it's elections, its decisions, and its policies, then we are not a free nation. If we are not an informed citizenry we cannot blame the press alone; if the press and our government use us, confuse us, trick us, lie to us, and keep information from us, we are as much to blame as they.

Here's one way we can do something about it. Go here (http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=o25T0BspJ7c) to hear Dan rather speak to the issue of a corporate-controlled press and here (www.freepress.net) to supplement your daily controlled news intake. As Mr. Rather points out, we need a press that "provides the raw material of democracy and the information to let us be full participants in a government of, by, and for the people."

For more information about media control read Deck Deckert's essay (http://www.swans.com/library/art8/rdeck022.html) or read some of the entries at http://mediamatters.org/

As of 2004, 5 huge corporations - Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) control most of the media industry in the U.S. How are they informing us and what are they not telling us? Are they the only news media you subscribe to, listen to, agree with?

Unless we ask, unless we protest, unless we claim the right to be well-informed and then make sure we are by reading every viewpoint, not just the ones we already agree with, how can we make truly informed decisions? We should ALWAYS question, ALWAYS search for our own reasons for believing what we're told, ALWAYS insist that we be involved in our government's decisions. It's what being free entails - responsibility. Our own.



photo credit: img179.imageshack.us/.../ 2383/freedomcopyzk6.jpg

How To Spend a Late Summer Saturday

It all started here:


And that turned into this, multiplied by 6 (and those tomato plants are not done producing yet)!


I spent 4 hours peeling and chopping...


...eventually filling four pots.


The canning pot doing its job.


Net? 44 pints of stewed tomatoes. Not bad for a day's work.

Home Again

My grandson saying farewell to summer...

Coming back from vacation is never as much fun as heading off on one but there is a certain satisfaction in returning home. My cottage welcomed me back with a last blossoming of fairy roses, the cat with purrs and leg weavings, and the garden with an over abundance of vegetables just waiting to be picked, pickled, packed in jars or simply eaten out of hand where I stood.

I've missed reading at my favorite sites but I haven't missed being indoors. Every day in Maine was spent on the beach or near the water or just out of doors lounging in a lawn chair. Lots of salt air, marvelous seafood, and the company of family made my time away worth every moment.

Ah, but it's good to be back in my own bed, in my own home, on my own time. School starts next week and with it comes the resurgence of the alarm clock and the hurry-up schedule and less outdoor time. I will spend the last few days jarring tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, and freezing eggplant. Between bouts with the canning pot, I will take long walks and longer bicycle rides, reveling in the freedom of the open road and the waning light.

Going Away

I'm off for a week to the coast of Maine. It will be a family affair. I'm leaving the tomatoes to ripen on their own and the squash to grow to the size of ocean liners. The cukes will be transformed into pickles before I leave but the peppers are already stuffed and awaiting their appearance as a winter meal.



Both the beets and carrots will be ready for pulling when I return and the little nubbins on the corn stalks will be full fledged ears. The end of August will go by in a rush of preserving and canning.


I'll bring pictures home with me, and wonderful memories of sunsets over the water, and laughter. See you anon.

photo credit: www.cliffhousemaine.com

A Wedding in the Family

August 2, 2008

Dear Jen and Tony,

Today is the day you have chosen to show that the two of you as individuals have also become one couple. You have decided to walk through the rest of your lives together. Living is both beautiful and difficult. It helps to have a hand to hold when you rejoice and when you need comfort. The poet Kahlil Gibran had these words to say about marriage.

"You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. "

Being together does not mean every moment. Don’t forget to take time to nourish the individual that you are so that when you are called upon to give more than you think you can, you will discover a seemingly miraculous reserve of love and compassion.

"Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."

In one sense, love is already a bond. It is the thread that runs through all our lives, connecting us one to the other. Love is such an inclusive concept—among its attributes are patience and understanding, kindness and courage, affection and truth. But a false idea of love can blind us; we can mistake possession and need and jealousy for love. Remember to recognize your strengths and share them readily but don’t sublimate them.

"Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

Remember to join hands and face the future together, both of you looking not at each other but outward along the same path. Help each other over the rocky places and at the end of each day, celebrate the joy you find in each other’s lives and in your own.

Love,
Mom

As if one wasn't enough...

In a comment to a piece I'd posted, I was asked if I had another blog and upon reading that, I thought, "Bite your tongue! I have enough trouble posting to one."

And that's still true but now I DO have another blog, one written in collaboration with my neighbor and good friend J who is, bless her heart, aging at the same rate I am. We have exclaimed and then laughed over what's happening to us so often she said, "You ought to write a book!"

It's much easier to write a blog. So, for those of you who are interested, you can read of our head-shaking, mostly irreverent thoughts on the changes we're facing here.

Clouded Words

A word cloud? How cool is this!





You're looking at a wordle, a "cloud" of words from a piece I wrote about seeing and believing... one must obviously look in the "clouds"

Bug Alert

Summer brings warm nights and even warmer days, azure skies with cotton ball clouds, green growing things crowding the earth with flowers and fruit. And bugs. They are everywhere. Swarms of tiny, white-winged gnatty things besiege me the minute I step outside. They dance at head height and make a beeline for my eyes and mouth. I bat my way through them only to find a swarm of their black cousins around the corner.





Bees are out and about, buzzing emphatically. Yesterday one hovered just above my doorstep. My arms were full of groceries so I used a sneakered foot to wave it away but it rose only a half an inch, wings flapping furiously. I nudged it again but it refused to move. I set the bags down on the step beside it, opened the door and the bee swept in ahead of me, made a quick circuit of the kitchen and flew back out only to take up guard again in front of the door. It hummed angrily as I scooped up my groceries and hurried inside. It was still there an hour later when I went back out.

Spiders, which definitely belong somewhere else, have taken up residence in my little cottage. They are everywhere—in the kitchen among the canned goods, in the bathroom behind the sink, in the living room staring out at me from under the chairs, in the bedroom weaving webs across the top of the lampshade. I cannot bear to squish them and I cannot make myself get close enough to pick them up and toss them outside so they face death by suction. I have a creepy feeling that when I die, every spider I ever sucked up with the vacuum will appear, waving vindictive spidery arms and staring at me with buggy, spidery eyes.

As if the spiders and the gnats and the ticks and the bees and a myriad of other flying insects were not enough, each summer day that passes advances the impending July invasion of the deer fly. Insect repellent holds no sway against those vicious little winged teeth and anyone in doubt of the season will only have to look at my neck, where angry red lesions will appear like a penance necklace, to know that summer is really here.

I can’t help but exult in the green of growing things, take delight in the multitude of bright flowers and the golden warmth of the sunshine. I welcome the soft air and the clear blue skies, skip happily barefoot, and fling open the doors and windows the moment the sun appears over the horizon. Yet I will also go armed into the fray, covered in insect repellent, fly swatter and vacuum at the ready, on perpetual seasonal bug alert.






Several red reasons the bees are in season...

Where I'd rather be...

HHB asked her readers to look up at noon and post a picture of what they saw...

This is the ceiling of my office. At noon, it's what I saw when I raised my eyes from the computer screen I'd been staring at most of the morning. I write press releases for a non-profit in the summer and though the office is air conditioned and my workmates congenial, I went outside for another snapshot of...

what I'd really like to be looking at on a weekday noon hour.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I'm growing my own vegetables, riding my bike to work, and buying local - all those years as a back-to-the-lander in the 1970s and 80s is paying off now. I wish I still had my wood cookstove!

beans, beans, the musical fruit...













thinning the beets results in plates full of rich, dark greens. The carrots are nicely feathered and I've been eating peas for a week!





these are the salad days!











purple potatoes all in a row.










what tomatoes don't get eaten out of hand the moment they're picked will be made into stewed tomatoes or pasta sauce.





Barring bug infestations, hail, or drought, I should have enough vegetables harvested and jarred or frozen to see me through the winter!

Paths

I’ve been thinking about paths lately. The one just outside my door was built by and for friendship. Made of slate donated by a friend who moved away, it meanders down the slight rise from my step, sidles along the dog fence, and rounds the corner before ending at my landlady, Eileen’s, back door. It alleviates the muddy track we’d worn in the yard between our two dwellings and gives my little cottage a fairy-tale appearance.

Like any number of paths, this one evolved over the past several months. I came home one day last year in early June to find my friend making a trail of small white stones in the grass. Piled around him were two-dozen slate slabs. Together we sorted them and laid them this way and that, working our way to the corner of the fence. We ran out of filler stone and slabs at the same time.

For a while, the path languished. I hopped and skipped to my door on the ones that were there until another day in mid-summer brought my friend with more stones and a few more slabs. By then, the hollyhocks that surround my cottage were reaching for the sky, their blossoms every imaginable shade of pink.

The finished path has become a magical thing, a connection of earth and stone and good intentions leading from my door to Eileen’s. More than just a walkway, it’s a declaration of affection, a composite of artistry and shared work that connects the three of us in a more subtle way than the obvious stones linking both doors. I can’t walk it without thinking of friendship.

Paths always lead somewhere. Beyond my slate walkway, at the far end of my yard, is what my granddaughter, Sophia, calls the Secret Path, a narrow trail through a small stand of woods that leads from my yard to my neighbor’s. You have to duck under the lower hanging branches and skip over the fallen ones, all the while dodging summer spider web strands or winter snow showers. Once on the path, you disappear from sight, as though some magic there made you part of the small forest. At the neighbor’s end is sunlight and a square sand pile bristling with Tonka trucks.

A path of convenience, this small connector has also become a place of enchantment. There might be a majestic spider web fraught with dew glimmering between two trees. Some small animal might dart in front of you. Some flower you hadn’t noticed before might be blooming in secret under the leaf mold. Standing in the green gloom of the trees, the glittering promise of sunlight at either end can make you catch your breath.

Paths are like that. You think you know where you’re starting from and where you’ll end up but the space in between can change you. A path that looks as though it simply leads from one place to another can be, in secret, a pathway to the heart.

Interesting...

July 4th, 1776 is not the United States' real Independence Day. That would be September 3, 1783 when King George, defeated in The American Revolution, renounced all claims to the new country. The Declaration of Independence is really a "letter" to King George stating why America should be free from England, and it was dated July 4, 1776.


photo credit: www.history.com

Live

If I have a purpose, it is to live fully—

to listen,

















to notice


















to honor

















to appreciate


















to enjoy

















to comfort

















to embrace

















to wonder

















to savor














to sing.

Dress Wrestling

I thought the dress quite pretty. The price was attractive, too. No need to try it on—the day was hot and muggy, I was sweaty, the tag said L. I brought the lovely thing home.

Later that evening, after a rain cooled the out of doors and a lukewarm shower cooled me, I pulled the new dress over my head. It was a tiny bit of a struggle to maneuver both arms into the snugger-than-they-looked sleeves. There was no zipper to give the dress ease, nor slashes to loosen the sleeves but I persisted. The rest of the dress fell smoothly over what a kind woman once called my “sturdy” frame.

“A little long for this heat,” I murmured, looking at myself in the mirror but that was no problem, really. I could cut off a few inches at the bottom and put in a new hem. Sweat beaded my newly washed upper lip. I turned this way and that. The dress was a lovely shade of green shot through with earth tones. Cream-colored flowers bloomed across the bodice, a waterfall of subtle stripes cascaded to my ankles.

“Perfect,” I said to my reflection. I was to go to Florida at the end of the month for my daughter’s beach wedding and the moment I got off the plane, I was due to go to dinner with her soon-to-be in-laws.

Though the dress was made of sheer cotton, I was growing warm. Perhaps this wouldn’t be the perfect dress to wear on the airplane, after all. While I was trying on things, perhaps I should scour my closet for something a little less—well—snug.

I crossed my arms and grasped the material just below my arm pits in order to lift the dress over my head. Without a zipper I certainly couldn’t wiggle it down. The dress didn’t budge. I let go and tried pulling the sleeves down a little to loosen their grip on my upper arms, then grasped wads of the skirt again and tugged. There was a slight movement. I tugged a little harder. The bodice of the dress moved up to cover my face, and the skirt flipped over my head, but the arms held fast. I hurriedly uncrossed my arms and pulled the clinging fabric away from my nose and mouth, scraping the skin from my nose with a fingernail. But the moment I drew in a gasping breath, the dress strained in an alarming way. I was being clutched to death by those cream-colored flowers and lovely earthen stripes.

The dress and I struggled against each other for a few more minutes before I finally dislodged its death grip on my shoulders and arms. I hauled it over my head and flung it to the floor, gulping for air and wiping the sweat from my purple face and a smear of blood from my smarting nose. Then I went for the scissors.



My newly renovated new dress hangs serenely in my closet, waiting for its first airplane ride. The sleeves have neatly turned and hemmed slits in the under arm seams, there’s a zipper down the middle of the back, and the skirt falls charmingly to mid-calf. All that shows of our tussle is the bright red scratch on my nose.

Signs

I believe in signs. It can be the worst of days, a day when everything goes wrong, when a favorite thing breaks, a relationship goes awry, something ends that I was hoping would go on forever. The rain keeps falling. And then right in front of the window where I’m sitting, waiting for the sky to stop weeping, a catbird skims in for a landing and perches. It looks at me, flicks its tail, opens its beak and sings its catbird song, and suddenly I feel better. It’s a sign. My mother used to whistle that same song to the catbird that nested in the lilac by the door. “Sing,” the catbird reminds me, “even in the rain.”

Thanks, Mama.



photo credit: www.birdnature.com

Blooming Without Me

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry." --E. B. White

So, I am gardening in between two jobs (and falling asleep the moment I sit down) and writing for a local publication when I am awake, and reading blogs though not writing much for this one. School is winding down. Soon I will have a little more leisure time. Meanwhile, here's what my flower garden is doing while I rush about.