Life in the Country

Now that the weather has turned warmer, the dawn hours draw me out of doors. I like to take my first cup of tea and wander around the yard while the sun rises, taking stock of what's growing, watching the shadows give way to the golden light that pours down like honey over the tree tops. It spreads itself across the grass, touches the lilacs, shimmers along the trunks of the maples and pines, and sparkles on the water of the nearby pond.

My neighbor calls these my appreciation walks. Come with me, won't you? There's so much in my little corner to appreciate. My garden is shaping up nicely. Pudgy the cat, who thinks so, too, often accompanies me on my meanderings. Here she is perched on the wall of the pea patch.

This is the first thing I see when I open the door. The lilacs are in full bloom. This branch hangs over my doorstep, begging to be sniffed. At the bush's feet grow dozens of lily of the valley. I can't go in or out without being enchanted by scent.

At the far end of my yard hangs an old fashioned board swing. I often sit there to encourage the child I know still lingers somewhere inside this grownup me.

My patio is another place where I can sit and savor the day, especially at mealtime. I've not yet tackled the paving stone project...

but I have filled the annual buckets to overflowing.

I've noticed numerous flowers on the blueberry bushes near the garden as well as on the blackcaps that grow wild at the edges of the yard. The strawberries have spilled out of their bed and are white with blossoms. I wish I had room for fruit trees!

My tea cup is empty. It's time to head back inside and prep another wall for painting. My four days here are always so full they fly by, but it's been fun appreciating all I have with you.

Befores and Afters

Over the past couple of years, my little cottage has been undergoing some needed transformations.

The roof leaked so a new one was put on.

The old wooden door was warped and drafty and the windows needed replacing. The paint was peeling so a new steel door was installed, and the entire cottage got new windows and a fresh coat of paint.

Even the patio I built a few years ago...

is being updated. Next on the outdoor project list is to lift all the stones, level the dirt, and replace the pavers so everything is again level.

Now that the outside is so spiffy, the inside needs attention. I'm not a red person so down came the cabbage rose valences (catch a glimpse in upper left of photo),

and up went new ones made of pale blue, cream, and cocoa stripes.

Out went the old red countertop...

in favor of a subtle greeny-blue one,

and the old red and blue cupboard curtains...

were replaced with a green-blue check.

Now, off with the red, on with the cocoa brown as the walls and some of the furniture get a facelift with paint.

It's a work still in progress, sandwiched between babysitting and traveling. But, by summer's end I hope to be finished with all the work so I can finally sit down and enjoy it all!

For Mama

I wrote the following for my newspaper column years ago. Mother's Day is fast approaching. Though my mother has been gone now for 33 years, I remember her with love.

An old photograph shows her just tall enough to nestle her head on my father’s shoulder. “I’m built for comfort, not for speed,” she joked once, but she could move quickly enough with hairbrush in hand if I was naughty. Mama had a dancer’s grace. I know she danced as a child. I became a ballerina in her cast-off pink satin toe slippers, and a tap dancing fool in her black patent leather tap shoes.

“Like this,” she would say, clicking her feet against the cement porch floor. “Brush, hop, tap, step, tap.” I repeated the words under my breath until my feet could do it without coaching. My mother would tap beside me, her sneakered feet slapping the beat beside my own. Sometimes we’d stack her old polka records on the tall silver spindle of the record player and hop madly across the living room floor dodging the chairs, the footstool, the sofa, whirling and laughing until we were out of breath. When the music stopped, she went humming off into the kitchen to resume ironing or start dinner.

Mama wore her hair in a sausage roll at the back of her head even when it was cut short and the color had faded from flaxen to grey. I loved to watch her as she stood in front of the mirror early in the morning, her elbows bent, her hands reaching for the tiny hairs that escaped the rolled net that held her hair in place. On summer mornings she wore a morning coat—a thin, flowered cotton dress with buttons all the way up the front. On winter mornings she bundled against the cold in a chenille robe, thick, and belted at the waist. Not until her housework was done did she dress for the day. She was in her fifties before she traded her skirts and blouses for shorts and slacks.

When I was a small child, where she was, I wanted to be also. I would plead illness just to stay home from school and be with her. Her daily routine seldom wavered. Up in the mornings before the rest of us, she had the kettle hot and breakfast ready when we stumbled, sleep-befuddled, into the kitchen. She drank two cups of morning coffee, one standing by the stove just after the coffeepot stopped percolating, and the other sitting at the table with my father as he drank his own. Every weekday she packed four lunches, one each for my brother, my two sisters, and me. I carried mine in my much-loved green metal lunch box. Even when I stayed home she would pack my lunch in it. Then at noon she’d fix a tray for herself, bring my lunch box to me in bed, and eat there in the sickroom with me.

She sang as she went about her daily tasks, “Singing makes it less like work,” she often said, which may explain why I whistle while dusting or washing the supper dishes. Often, too, she would stop what she was doing, seat herself at the piano, and play for half an hour or so. I would scramble up on the bench beside her, watching her fingers fly along the keys. We would play together, two-part practice pieces by Bach or a madcap version of chopsticks, each of us playing faster and faster until one of us made a mistake. Then she would laugh and give my shoulders a one-armed hug.

When things went wrong or Mama was angry, she went out the edge of the garden where an old apple tree stump served as a chopping block. She’d swing the ax, thump! against log after log until her anger translated itself into a pile of firewood. If winter snow obliterated the chopping block, she’d coax us children to go skating or sledding with her. Before long she’d be having so much fun that her bad humor would simply vanish into the cold air.

I remember all these things about her as I put the photo album back on the shelf. I do a little hop, brush, step as I head for the kitchen to make dinner.

Lili's Day

Because my daughter has no particular religious affiliation, she has chosen to give her daughters a Welcome to the World party rather than the traditional christening. Lily is seven months old this month and tomorrow is her special day. This is my poem to her...

For Liliana on the Occasion of

Her Welcome to the World Day

We get used to seeing

Through our own eyes, thinking

We know the world.

Then a small child is placed in our arms

And everything changes.

Our inward eyes turn outward,

And we see the world as it is – wild and wondrous!

The green of a new leaf,

The aching sweetness of the sparrow’s song.

We can giggle at the grass between our toes,

Jump in puddles,

Weep over small hurts,

And hug with abandon.

There is at once an innocence

And a deep wisdom

In a child’s eyes that allows us to see

Our own eternity.

Eventide

Sunrise

The day is slowly fading toward dusk. Birds fly in pairs across the pale sky, calling goodnight as they go. From the topmost branch of a slender maple, the cardinal sings his evening song. At the farm, the guinea hens yawp at the setting sun from the roof of their henhouse. The horizon is pure, melted gold.

The small breeze that ruffled my hair and flipped the pages of my book this afternoon has become a mere whisper among the grasses. But, late this afternoon it fanned a smoldering pile of logs behind one of the barns into a crackling fire that threatened to burn the remaining small wood that separates my cottage from several neighbors. I heard the snap of burning wood and smelled the acrid smoke. I ran to call the fire department which came, sirens screaming, a scant five minutes later. There was no great damage done, but for a few minutes my heart beat fast at the thought of what might have been.

Dawn and dusk are my favorite times of day. The air is most often still and at this time of year smells like moist earth and green, growing things. The same hush that begins the day falls again at eventide; body and spirit rest in the silence and soft light.

Sunset

Spring Prayer

Spring arrives at the cottage in shades of yellow.

I do not want spring to rush past me unnoticed so I stand on my doorstep at dawn, breathing in the still cold air, noting which trees are budding, which flowers are blooming. I watch the sun roll up over the horizon, painting the sky, the tree trunks, the rooftops, the lawn with a gold-tipped brush. The birds serenade the sunrise; even the rooster next door adds his voice.

Mid-morning finds me out of doors and on my knees. If prayer can be a living thing, then heaven must be besieged with gardeners' appreciation. Flowers are such beautiful things - ephemeral, delicate and yet so strong. I like knowing that my vegetables are grown from organic seeds and tended by my own hand. I don't mind weeding. It gives me a chance to be quiet and contemplative. And the reward is a tidy garden bed.

The days are never long enough to do all I have planned. Evening finds me watching as the sun sinks slowly behind the mountain, drawing its light with it until the sky darkens and the stars appear. In the swamp the spring peepers chorus and the larks call goodnight to one another. The blue heron that fishes at the edges of the pond groks as it flies homeward. Otherwise, it is very still, as if the air were holding its breath.

I like knowing that tomorrow (unless it rains) will be the same as today and for a few weeks yet spring will release its tiny miracles of unfolding leaves and petals.

Thank you, Mohini

I have been so busy setting up my new computer I haven't had much time to use it! Events have conspired to shorten my time at home lately and much of it has been spent trying to transfer photos, music, and documents from my old computer to this one. There's a marvelous little tool called a migration assistant tucked in my applications folder but apparently we didn't understand each other. I wanted all my music, all my documents and all my photos to migrate. The MA didn't get that so I've had to resort to various subterfuges (my favorite is Dropbox) to makes sure nothing got left behind. It's been a tedious, weekend-long project.

The newer version of Microsoft Office I purchased required a pin number to activate and of course, it didn't. It was a valid pin, said the first person I called at Microsoft. Perhaps, she suggested, I should call the retailer and get them to activate my card. Turns out they already had. My second, rather impatient call to Microsoft was answered by a woman in India, where it was three o'clock in the morning. She met my slightly frantic tone politely, assuring me that she could help. Then she did something that amazed me - she asked permission to tap into my computer so she could see what I was doing and wham! just like that this person, thirty years my junior and from the other side of the world, was moving the selection arrow around on my computer. I still don't understand how a radio works; this kind of technology is far beyond my comprehension. With a few clicks accompanied by a concise explanation of what she was doing, she activated my download and set about installing the latest updates.

While the little vertical barbershop pole wound its way along the bar, we chatted. We called each other by our first names, Mohini and Pauline. She asked about the weather here and told me how hot is was there. We talked about advances in technology and how she had to constantly train to keep up with it all so that she could be of help to callers. We discussed the difficulties of language barriers, and of always being patient with people while they sorted through their frustrations online. She was the personification of patience and helpfulness and before we knew it, the program was up and running.

Mohini's graciousness, her infectious laughter, her enthusiasm for her job, came across the phone line and changed the way I thought of people on the other end of helplines. We who have technical problems are impatient to have them solved. We've paid money for a product and we want it to work perfectly. But little in life is trouble free. Thank goodness for the Mohinis of the world who, with expertise and grace under pressure, teach us more than how to use our computers. They teach us that kindness and patience are far more valuable than the machines they are helping us to understand.

A Moment Here

The days go by so quickly, full of small, precious moments - hugs from little arms, pats from little hands, toothless smiles, big-girl words, first haircuts, first roll-overs and attempts at crawling. There are runny noses to wipe, worms to discover, bugs to inspect, shoes to tie, sand buckets to fill, clouds to watch, songs to sing. Daily household chores get fit in where they can. As for writing a poem a day, well! I thought about it but words and paper haven't met in a long time.

Here's one that managed to write itself in my head. I've taken a moment just now to jot it down here.

The prompt: Write about an intangible gift.

Unwrapping the Obvious

There might not be a deity,
long hair flowing,
robes folded neatly about his feet,
book of deeds open
on a gracious, forgiving lap,
who gives a fig leaf if I'm happy,

but there is a small child
whose arms circle my neck,
whose wild imagination
includes me in all her games,
who points out worms as small miracles,
who holds my hand when we cross the street,
who cries when I leave
and grins with shy delight when I return.

There may be no point in praying,
but there is a point to living,
to providing a teething baby
a friendly finger to chew on,
and two arms to rock her safely to sleep.

There may not be a deity
somewhere in the far reaches
who listens, who speaks,
but there is infinity
in the eyes of a child.

 Thanks for this, Hilary

April 4

Write 7 small (3-5 lines), disparate poems with a mysterious ending.

If I were a cat
with 9 lives
would I would live eight of them
recklessly?

The trees bend and bow
to each other.
The wind dances with them.
Who plays the violin?

The air hangs heavy as a magician's cape,
full of rabbits and scarves and half-sawn bodies.
Lightning is the severing wand.
What calls forth the magic?

Why does a cat
choose to drink a dirty puddle
when a bowl of clean water
sits just inside the open door?

I would like to wake up
some morning in another world.
Would I crave coffee then
or long to run?

People only see
what we let them see.
In turn we only see
what we allow ourselves
to acknowledge.

How is it
the wind always knows
which way to blow?

April 5

How a poem gets started... 

Start anywhere.
Start with a chair.
Wonder who sat in it
and chipped off, with a fingernail,
a piece of paint shaped like
Michigan.

Did someone sit opposite and drum
his fingers impatiently,
beating a nervous tattoo of sound
on the scarred table?

Why has one chair fallen over?


April 6

Music becomes the metaphor — the notes are boats, the violin forgives, the universe becomes a tambourine played against your thigh.  Go anywhere with this.

combined with

April 7

Write a poem having to do with listening, perhaps a deeper kind of listening, a listening below the words and in beyond the sounds.  Or your poem might simply tell of something heard in the world.

resulted in:

Listening hard, I heard
underneath the unremitting, pounding rain
the dawn-call of a rooster,
and under that the bark of a small dog.
Beneath that a mourning dove spoke,
and then a daffodil opened.
Too soft to hear,
a worm tunneled beneath a blade of grass,
and a cloud's shadow drifted across the yard.

The music of the spheres is a constant,
ever-changing symphony of movement,
of water on earth on rock on air,
like a cricket's wings
rubbing together in the stilly dark.

More...

April 2

In this second exercise move beyond pure image into I statements, You statements, metaphor, or perhaps anthropomorphizing.

The grass on the other side

may be greener

but it's still grass

At dusk

I watch the swallows play chicken

with the gnats

To be pithy

one must put large thoughts

in small spaces

April 3

 Write a poem that a child might write.   Fall into that voice of slightly goofy innocence and wonder.  Trust simplicity and the way children give human emotions to objects... 



My toes like sand between them,

and the foam the waves leave behind.

If toes could giggle, mine would.

They would laugh out loud like the gulls

that swoop and glide

because they know that tomorrow

they will still be at the beach.



April 1

April is National Poetry Month. I receive prompts every day from a writer friend. Here's April 1.

Write a few small poems that are purely image.  Do not interject yourself or your thoughts into your few lines of clear and exact image. Just describe.  Do not allow in abstractions.  Do not address the reader.  Notice particulars.  Make every word count.

Sunlight dances in silver slippers

where the whale disappeared.

The sun rises

on the wings of seagulls.

The sky itself is silent.

Seagulls are noisy children

of the sky.

Circus animal clouds

parade under the big-top sky.

Just Breathe

I have been gone from home for two weeks and tomorrow will head off on another jaunt to visit my older daughter. While I was away, the snow melted, the daffodils pushed green spears up through the ground, and the snowdrops all around the cottage have bloomed at once. When I get back next weekend, I imagine there will be chives and parsley and oregano almost ready to eat. I saw their little shoots poking through the mulch in the herb garden. It won't take much more than a week of alternating rain and sun to coax them to edible height.

I have been lax with my blog visits; I'm sorry. Limited access to a computer and even less time to write or read here has made me a stranger. April is national poetry month and I've signed up to receive prompts from a local poet. Some may show up here if I can find time to scribble my responses. Meanwhile, thank you for all your kind comments on my sporadic posts. Someday I may be back on schedule!

Spring Forward

First catkins.

The wind is singing in the trees, the sun is high in the sky, the birds are serenading from the treetops. The very air beckons come out, come out! So, I go. Underfoot the ground is soggy, spongy with seeping moisture and melting frost. I look around to make sure no one is watching and then skip and hop down the meadow path, flinging my arms out to the wind. I twirl and dance all by myself among the field grasses, feeling five years old and happily unfettered.

All around me are signs of impending spring—rushing water in the creek, the faintest brush of yellow across the willow tops, a balminess to the late afternoon that speaks of April. A red-winged blackbird chortles to itself among the rushes at the creek’s edge. Two cardinals carry on a conversation in song, back and forth, whistle for whistle until their voices overlap and run into each other. Five fat crows digging for things in the flattened grass make raucous comments as I pass and disgruntled, lift themselves off on glossy wings to dig farther afield.

I stop to admire the catkins on a pussy will bush. Soft and silvery gray, they look like furry little dewdrops. Every tree and bush bears fat buds ready to burst in the lengthening daylight and burgeoning warmth. I leave the meadow, duck into the woods. Sunlight slants through the trees, burnishing last year’s discarded leaves, pinpointing abandoned bird nests and polishing the soft, punky sides of fallen logs. Here the wind, filtered by a thick stand of trees, does not push so hard. There is solace here among the great weathered trunks and strong branches, comfort and strength and such beauty that my heart lifts and soars.

High in the southeastern sky the moon is a pale thumbprint pasted on blue paper. The sun sinks lower, taking the west wind with it until the whole meadow lies quiet, gilded, and I am the only thing stirring as far as I can see. I too, stand still, unwilling to disturb such peace. But, the sun path at the edge of the meadow is too tempting. I flee the chill of the shadowed ground, skip and hop into the waning sunshine.

More snow is predicted for the middle of the week. Winter is not done with us yet but oh, these days of golden promise will keep me happy until the promise is fulfilled.

There's No Going Back Now

Tucked in a sheltered corner, the first snowdrops of the season!

February is gone. The lion winds of March are sweeping what’s left of winter toward the melting warmth of April. There are signs—daylight lingers in the sky until six in the evening and glows again softly at six in the morning. The zealous sun melts the snow in daytime, no matter how many times the temperature plunges after dark. My path and driveway are slick with ice from the tug of war between winter and spring.

There is a change in the air as well. There are cold days, to be sure. Today's sleet forced me to bundle up when just a few days ago I had to shed hat and mittens and loosen the top button of my coat. It is such days tucked between the cold ones—the teasers—that are the first indicators of seasonal change. The great shift will occur when the teasers are the norm and the cold days come as a surprise.

There is a freshness to the air that belies the staleness of the snow. I can almost smell spring, the sweetness that comes of freshly plowed ground and of green and growing things. When the afternoon sun shines down on the south-facing snow banks, Robert Frost’s silver lizards wiggle down the slopes, countless little rivulets of melted snow making their way into oblivion. My nose, all my senses, know what’s coming. 

So do the birds. The chickadees that come to the feeder slip into their two-note spring song now and then, as if practicing for April. High in the treetops the little finches that winter over sing to each other in the late afternoons. A few winter hardy robins venture out of the roadside brush to flit over the meadow, their orange undersides flashing brightly against the snow. The geese have just this week returned to fill the skies with their raucous vees and the red-winged blackbirds have come back to stake claims in the swamps. In just a few weeks the silent mornings will again give way to the joyful sounds of birdsong and evenings will be serenaded by spring peepers.

It is the season of bursting catkins, of the yellowing of willows and the reddening of dogwood withes. I know my garden perennials are beginning to stir deep down at their roots and I've just spotted the first snowdrops pushing up through the leaf mold. The maple trees give no visible sign that soon their sweet sap is rising but some are already decorated with collecting buckets. Seed and flower catalogs outnumber any other in my mailbox and those that sell clothing are introducing their summer lines. 

The pastel season is approaching. The glaring white snow, the dull gray clouds, and the washed out blue of the sky will give way slowly to petal pink, to daffodil yellow, to that lovely, ineffable shade of new leaf green. The months of waiting for spring have turned to weeks and will turn to days soon now - soon.

What it was like on Sunday

Snow that crunched underfoot just last week makes a sighing sound under my boots. Icicles that clutched the roofline have cried themselves to death. Dawn came with a mere lightening of the sky, but birds sang as though they knew the sun was somewhere rising; the cardinal and its mate dropped liquid notes into the morning, the jay sang its squeaky wheel song.

Rain and then snow and then rain fall, a curtain of moisture linking earth and air, making the snow and sky one color against which the stark branches of elm and oak and maple are lightly penciled. The light is cottony and soft, holding the day in suspension between brittle cold and increasing warmth. Despite its lack of color and definition, it is a hopeful day, easing the way between the end of winter and the beginning of spring, teasing with its relaxation of winter’s cold grip on the land and our souls.

Unexpected in Winter

For my friend J who likes neither poetry in general nor an extended winter...

When skies turn the color

of an old metal bucket

and cold rains fall without mercy

on the sodden pines,

it serves us well to seek solace

in the hidden colors -

the scarlet of the wintergreen berry

tucked under emerald leaves,

the sudden flash of a blue wing

or a red feather,

the fading orange of the oak leaf,

the last flame of the sumac.

Purple smoke pipes a line

of indecipherable writing across the horizon

and the washing,

left on the line in hopes of sun,

waves pale hands in your direction.

Lately

Some of the "guys" playing croquet

My current schedule - three and half days with my granddaughters and three and a half days home - has put me somewhat out of the blogging loop. There is no time between peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bottles of formula, playtime on the floor and fiercely resisted nap time, laundry and dishes and general tidying up, to sit and read, to contemplate and compose. Weekends home seem to fill up of their own accord. There's always grocery shopping and house cleaning to do, laundry to wash and errands to run. I remember being told that I'd be busier in retirement than I ever was in my working life but I didn't see how. Now I do.

Days with my daughter and her family are full of noise and bustle. The Bean is a very active toddler who starts the day slowly (like her grandmother) but once she's fully awake it's run, run, run until bedtime. We color, play with clay, take care of her dollies, and play elaborate games with her "guys," a collection of small plastic action figures and wooden dollhouse family members. They all have names and personalities. There's Guy Guy who's always, always crying and needs lots of attention. (I suspect that's an outgrowth of Baby Lily's entrance into the Bean's life as an infant in constant need of Mama's attention). There's Mama Teddy who, as the matriarch of the clan, takes care of everyone. She spends a lot of time in the dollhouse kitchen. Tito, New Guy, Dude and Nana hang out together and have adventures. There's also Caco, Mama Teddy's sidekick, Eday (Bean's pronunciation of her own name), and even a Baby Lily wrapped in a bright red bunting. In addition, there's a school bus full of little, squatty people collectively called the Mee-mos and a group of alien looking plastic fellows known as the Odgie Codgies. It took me weeks to remember everyone's name!

A model baby and cooperative one year old, Bean has entered the terrible twos with gusto. Cross her and she folds her little arms across her chest and glowers from under lowered brows. Her words are very distinct. "Okay Nini," has been replaced with, "I don't want to do dat," stated firmly and without compromise.

Her sister, Baby Lily is a chunky, happy little girl who thrives on bottles supplemented with cereal, bananas, and applesauce. At four and a half months she can sit up with a minimum of added support, rolls over if left on a blanket on the floor, and grins toothlessly more than she cries. Sleep is her nemesis. She catnaps for twenty minutes at a time, making caring for her a constant process. By the end of three and a half days, I'm pretty worn out and ready for some cottage downtime.

By contrast, the cottage is elaborately quiet. Everything is in its place. I waken naturally without baby soundtracks. I putter, I sit down often, I doze in my rocking chair. I take walks after lunch and read whole book chapters at a gulp. My tea is always hot. The hours not taken up by household chores or trips to the store are open and I'm free to fill them as I wish.

Some of my favorite hours are spent reading your posts. I may not visit as often as before but you all give me something to think about on the days I hold a bottle or hum a lullaby or stand at the sink washing endless dishes. Thanks for that.

A quiet moment with Baby Lily