As long as you're wanting...

We all want. We all need. When want overpowers need, our perspective gets skewed. I say, want all you want - wanting motivates. However, need very little and you will almost always be satisfied.

Other People's Thoughts

My youngest daughter gave me a gift, a round paper box she embellished with dried flowers from my mother’s garden. It’s called BOX OF THOUGHTS and in it are dozens of scraps of paper printed with pithy observations. I keep it on my bureau and whenever I think to, I reach in and take one out to read. I wish I thought to do it more often. Today I read:

"A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner." Louis L’Amour

Ah, yes. My own head, house for my own thoughts, is decorated with cheery scraps of bright ideas amid the mundane, more serviceable notions I entertain. I reside inside my thoughts, creating with my hands a place for the rest of me to live. My mind is aswirl with thoughts that didn’t originate there but grew from seeds planted by others, notions heard or read that I’ve mulled over and mulched and pruned and grafted until they’ve become hybrids. They are my thoughts now, some as familiar as an old sofa, some as new as a housewarming gift. My thoughts, my things—looking at them this way is like coming suddenly upon my own reflection, realizing, “Oh! That’s me!” simultaneously with, “Is that what I look like?”

A Short List of Happy Things

Sunrises. I often wake before dawn. In those first quiet moments, as the dark fades slowly from the sky to reveal the familiar in a different light, I understand why we call it a new day. No two sunrises are the same, and everything looks slightly different than it did the day before. Watching the sun come up reminds me of the dual nature of life, its constancy and its change, and stirs in me a deep wonder.

Firsts. The first of anything is an occasion–first step, first tooth, first kiss, first time you drive the car alone, that first sip of coffee in the morning or of tea late in the afternoon, winter’s first snowflake, and likewise, the first shoots of green that brave our New England spring. When my days become mundane, I look for something I haven’t done yet, or some new way of doing a thing that’s become stale, so that there’s always a new first to look forward to.

Senses. I am often stopped in my tracks by the emotions certain sounds or scents evoke. Music pulls me out of myself, an unexpected bit of birdsong on a winter day can change my mood, the sound of laughter always lifts my spirits. I remember my delight as a child, coming home after church on a Sunday morning to the scent of roasting meat and fruit pie. Nothing makes me quite as happy as the smell of fresh earth when the snow melts in April or quite as melancholy as the scent of dying leaves in the fall.

Colors. Even when winter trees are leafless and all the ground is covered with snow, nature makes small places for my eyes to feast. The evergreens stand out greeny-black against the white, every shade of brown and gray shows off its luster where the snow has melted and the leaf matter is exposed, dawns and sunsets paint the sky in shades of crimson and purple. Cardinals and jays look like winged jewels in flight. And when that snow disappears? Oh, glorious green!

The unexpected. Sunshine when the weatherperson predicted rain, a card in the mail saying “thanks for being you,” a message on the answering machine that says, “Memere, I love you as much as the whole world!” all fill me up until I spill over.

No doubt there will be more major events in my life, but it’s the small things, the everyday, every-moment times that fill my life with awe and wonder.

Looking For A Reason

A fellow blogger sent this to me. What's your "bacon" ?

Mine changes. Sometimes it's necessity - it's a work day, nature calls in the midst of a dream, the cat wants to go out, etc. But mostly it's curiosity that pulls me out from under the covers. What will the day bring and how will I respond? Will I create or just float?

In All Seriousness

Reading about illness (mental and physical) at Jo's blog brought this long-ago published column to mind.

Pollyannas of the world, unite! There’s hope for optimists yet, even in a darkened world. Breaking news (albeit underground and via email), has it that what we currently suffer most from is over-seriousness, causing dis-ease. You can see it for yourself. We’re being terrorized, frightened out of our wits, threatened on all sides, subjected to prophecies of disaster and unless we do something about it, we're doomed!

Ah, but do what? Hit first? Knock some sense into our chosen enemy? Wage war? And if we don’t, what? We’re going to go under some dictator’s thumb? We had better be careful what we dread – arguing for our limitations brings them to our doorstep. With all due respect, you can’t wage war and peace at the same time. News of this new energy center has come at just the right time. It may sound silly and far too simple to be of any use, but go light a single match in a pitch-black room, then come back and read on.

What’s been discovered, according to scientists (who, until this catches on, wish to remain anonymous), is a new chakra. Chakras are energy centers located in the human body. This particular one is lodged between the heart chakra and the throat chakra and has a name directly associated with its function – the clown chakra. If your clown chakra is closed, you can expect major (and serious) problems.

It has been observed that when the clown chakra is open, every cell in the body wears a happy face; closed, every cell frowns. The condition of your own clown chakra is easily discernable on your face. Seriousness forces love out of your cells, making them say, in essence, “I lack love” (or ILL for short). The normal function of the clown chakra is to dispense joy in the form of tiny, red, heart-shaped balloons, invisible but potent.

It sounds like nonsense, and the email bearing this news was certainly light-hearted. However, there’s been enough medical research done to discover that our thoughts do indeed have a direct bearing on our physical selves and on the kinds of lives we choose to live. If I stand in reverence each morning, letting the light of the budding day wash over me, if I let awe creep into the ordinary, if I laugh out loud, my day is better for it.

Allowing myself to be happy doesn’t mean blinding myself to the world and what happens in it. But if, as our science is suggesting, every thought is a pulse of energy let loose in the world, I choose to send out tiny, red, heart-shaped balloons.

Comfort Food

I took eggs and milk out of the refrigerator, found the can of baking powder, measured out flour and powdered sugar. Mixing the ingredients in a bowl, adding enough milk and then water to make a thin batter, I could have been six instead of sixty, helping my mother make French pancakes in the old kitchen on Silver Street.

Mama was not a rise-and-shine person like my father. It took a cup of scalding coffee and a quiet half hour by herself in the kitchen before she was functional. It was the smell of that coffee, perking in the little metal coffeepot on the front burner that opened my eyes in the morning and drew me down the stairs. When she saw me standing in the kitchen doorway, my toes curling inside my slippers, my bathrobe buttoned wrong (I am not a morning person either), Mama would smile and set down her cup and give me a hug. Then she would ask me what I wanted for breakfast. If we hadn’t already had them three days in a row, I would tell her, “French pancakes, please.”

I learned to crack eggs making French pancakes. I was allowed to pour the milk from the bottle into the measuring cup, to make a well in the dry ingredients, to mix the batter with a big spoon. “Not too much,” Mama would caution. “The lumps will take care of themselves.”

Mama would light the burner on the gas stove and set the crepe pan, a round, shallow-sided, long-handled fry pan, on to heat. Then she would drop in a small dab of butter and when it melted into a yellowy puddle, she would tip the pan back and forth until the bottom was coated.

I climbed on a chair and helped her ladle a spoonful of batter into the browning butter. With deft movements, Mama made sure the batter ran right up to the sides of the pan. I stood and watched for tiny bubbles to cover the upper side of the pancake and when I called out that it was ready, Mama came with the spatula, worked its blade under a curling edge of the cake and flipped it over with a sizzling splat. The top side of the pancake was now a delightful golden brown and steam eddied in little curls from the edges of the pan. The first pancake was flipped onto a damp towel spread on a plate, covered over, and placed in the warm oven. As each successive pancake was cooked, it was stacked under the towel until the batter bowl was scraped clean.

The smell of them cooking, and my frequent yelps of, “Okay! It’s ready!” roused my brother and sisters out of their beds. They tumbled sleepy-eyed and hungry into the kitchen. French pancakes were their favorite, too, and we all ate happily, forking the thin, perfectly browned morsels of syrup-soaked cakes into our mouths. Some mornings we had bacon alongside, other times we spread the thin cakes with applesauce or jelly and rolled them up before eating them. Mama often filled hers with cottage cheese and fruit but I liked them best stacked, a little pat of butter melting into the top cake, and streams of amber syrup puddling on the plate.

I still do. This morning, by myself in the tiny kitchen of my cottage, I made a small hill of the dry ingredients, pressed a well in the top with the back of my spoon, poured in the water and milk and beaten eggs, stirred just enough to make a thin batter (“The lumps will take care of themselves,” said a voice in my head), and watched as a dollop of batter spread in the hot pan.

I don’t need to stand on a chair anymore, but I watched the cake as tiny bubbles began to cover its surface. Beside me, in a bathrobe buttoned wrong, stood the image of my child-self. “Okay! It’s ready!” I heard her cry and I took the spatula, and with a deftness that would have made Mama proud, flipped the pancake, letting its other side brown to perfection.

Taking Stock

Recently, Dick posted about the changes aging brings. He began with a quote by Doris Lessing who said one of the great secrets of the elderly is that though their bodies have changed, what is essentially "them" has not. That made me think about all that's changed about me since I was small, and all that hasn't. I'M STILL ...a hermit by nature, content with my own company, happily needing hours of alone time, still moved by music (except for the discordant or screechy stuff), poetry (especially if Collins or Oliver, Roethke or Sutphen, Frost or Rumi or Basho has written it), and works of art that capture some part of the natural world. I'm still in love with wind and rain, puddles and rainbows, dawn light and evening shadows, grassy meadows and deep forests. And I'm still happier out of doors than in, though my little cottage is delightfully cozy. I will always be carrying on a love affair with food, as well, though now I am careful that my diet includes less sugar and other refined foods. I'm still writing every day, though I no longer publish weekly in the newspaper. I self-published a book in 1999 and did contribute nearly half the articles for a coffee table book about libraries that was published in 2007. And I'm also still delighted by children (especially my own, even though all four of them are well into adulthood), animals, snowstorms, travel. My greatest happinesses still come from family, from old friends and new, from moments when I know I am an integral part of something much larger than myself. 

 I'M NO LONGER ...so nervous about trying new things, or at least I can talk myself around my anxiety with greater success. Having learned to drive in a one-horse town, I was afraid to drive in traffic and terrified of getting lost. But in the last forty years or so, I've driven any number of cars (both automatic and stick shift), a fifteen passenger van, a farm tractor, a pickup, a dump truck, and a golf cart, and understood that rather than being lost, I was simply taking the long way home. I've traveled overseas to a country whose language I did not understand, and applied for at least two jobs where I bluffed about my experience, then ended up teaching the the very skills I'd needed. I'm no longer thin and sleek and svelte. I'm more rounded in body as well as in expertise but I'm working at reversing the pudding-bag-tied-in-the-middle look. And I'm not as impatient. Being a mother, a teacher, and a writer has taught me patience and the rewards of taking my time, reworking problems, and slowing down in order to enjoy whatever process I'm going through. I'm no longer a moody teenager, a frustrated young adult, or an anxious single mother. I've learned to pay attention to what's around me, to my feelings, to my thoughts. I have become aware of being the creator of my own life, believing there is no greater privilege or freedom. I am not in doubt about my present abilities or so defensive about what I haven't mastered yet. Each day is both challenging and delightful, the two so often intertwined that I can't experience one without the other. It's a joy to wake up in the morning, and a blessing to sleep at night (and sometimes a genuine pain to be in the middle).

Writing Out

Tomorrow I will hike the Cobble with my naturalist friend. It is supposed to snow. And rain. And snow again. I will have to take mental notes and wait to write them until we are snug in the shelter, watching the birds that frequent the feeders and warming my toes on the heating vent. Perhaps a poem will emerge from the welter of words, or an essay. Perhaps the words will be like track lines in the snow, telling only part of the story. You never know, with words...

The Sound of Silence

I had thoughts of going out this afternoon - to the library, to the gym, to the store. Two hours ago the sun was shining as I hiked along a meadow's edge and explored a stream bank for signs of Spring. Two hours ago the chickadee and the cardinal were singing. Now snow is falling thickly, a silent, drifting veil of dense flakes. On second thought, I think I shall stay in and curl up with the cat, a mug of hot tea, and a good book. It is very, very quiet in my little cottage. I am missing my grandchildren with a gentle, steady ache that will subside slowly over the next few days.

I have been out in the yard, tilting my head up to stare into the white. As far as I can see there are tumbling flakes and a diffused light that only comes with falling snow. Now I am dry and snug and merely lonesome for small arms and soft lips and the high-pitched chatter of happy children.

All Good Things...

This is our last evening together until next month when I head to the grands' house for my grandson's 6th birthday. I've made popcorn and we're watching the old Haley Mills version of Parent trap. (Earlier we watched the Lindsay Lohan version - twice!)

Tomorrow we will have a last visit to the farm and a last cow pancake breakfast. Mumma and Daddy will come late in the morning and there will be lots of hugs and kisses and a few tears as they pull out of the drive. Right now I have to go hug two cherished children...

Being a Grandmother is Grand

It's been a grand week so far. We've had cow and sheep pancakes for breakfast,

visited the farm and conversed with the cows and sheep,

gone sliding down an icy hill, and spent hours drawing and cutting and gluing. We've made pot holders galore,

set up an art school and a bank and a store, had some company, and went visiting. Tomorrow we're supposed to have snow, a visit from a cousin, and tortellini for dinner. Right now it's ice cream and movie time!

In Absentia

The next week will be filled with crayons and markers, sleds and snow pants, creative cooking and bedtime stories. My two grandchildren (ages 8 and nearly 6) will be staying with me in my little cottage. We have all sorts of plans, all of which may change on a whim. It's too early to garden...



(they'll just have to come back in May!) but that won't keep us indoors. We have plans to visit the farm next door to check on the cows and the sheep and make forays into the henhouse for eggs. We'll trek up and slide down the hill I played on as a child, visit relatives, and invite the kids next door over to make some crafts. We'll get up early and stay up late, have macaroni and cheese for breakfast if we feel like it, and pancakes for supper. We'll call my son and his wife every evening to say how noisy we've been and they'll tell us how quiet it is there. If I don't show up here too often in the next few days, it just means I'm having too much fun being a kid again.

A Walk in New Snow

Snow is falling on New England and old England alike.



These were taken after our most recent snowfall.


























The footing is treacherous - under these few inches lies a layer of slick ice.

No Rest For the Weary

Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Sweep on Wednesday
Mend on Thursday
Clean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday


I came across this list the other day and it made me wonder if we’re really better off now than we were 100 years ago when that was written. When I was a child, the weeks still had a rhythm like the one above, though with minor changes. Because she had a washing machine, and we apparently had a lot more clothes than the composer of that list, Mama washed twice a week. She did a white wash on Monday and a dark wash on Wednesday. She ironed two days a week, too, putting the flat linens through the mangle on one day, and smoothing the blouses, shirts, trousers, and dresses with a flat iron the next. On those days, the kitchen smelled of pressed sunshine and starch.

Sweeping was an everyday occurrence. There were four of us kids plus a dog and a cat and we all left evidence behind us. A thorough house cleaning took two days, not one, omitting the mending day, which was fine with Mama. She hated sewing and the thought of spending a whole day with needle and thread would have sent her screaming into the wilderness. Twice a year - in the fall, and again just before the snow melted - the house would be turned upside down and inside out. We kids would be pressed into service, moving furniture, hauling rugs outside to be beaten with brooms, polishing the silver that otherwise stayed wrapped in a cloth waiting for company to come to dinner.

Saturday was just one more baking day in the week. There were always cookies or brownies or cupcakes waiting for us when we got home from school but Saturdays were reserved for bread-making. The dough would rise in the big yellow bowl on the open door of the gas oven and Saturday supper would be accompanied by thick slices of warm bread slathered with butter. Sunday mornings were a bustle to get the roast and the pie in the oven and all of us to church, but Sunday afternoons stretched themselves out like long naps.

Nowadays, my verse looks like this: Work on Monday. Work on Tuesday. Work on Wednesday. Work on Thursday. Work on Friday. Chores on Saturday. Bake on Sunday. The pile of laundry is taller than I am, the breadbox is empty, the floor needs a good scrubbing, the grocery list is as long as my arm, and I can’t even find my iron.

Save me from progress! I am nostalgic for the old days when a verse could give order to the week and end with the wonderful word “rest.”



photo credit: Mandy's Photos

Just a Few...

The other day I came across a filler piece in a magazine, a brief list of the author's favorite things. It was a telling list, and I thought, an interesting way to describe ones' self. What's on your list? Herewith is mine.

Sunrise. (I may as well begin at the beginning.) There's something magical about those first rays, the way the light reaches up, as though the day was stretching, flexing itself, opening its eyes. I like to watch the sky lighten while the earth still sleeps in darkness, see the horizon turn pale gray, then paler blue, then palest yellow at its eastern edge until the ball of the sun bounces up and over, spilling brightness everywhere.

Family, friends, folks I haven't met yet.

Hats. Hats with feathers. Hats with flowers. Hats with wide brims and trailing ribbons. Warm fleecy hats and sailor hats and baseball caps with the bill pulled down.

A mug of hot tea, sweetened with honey and liberally lightened with milk.

My snuggly blue sweater, the one with the shapeless sleeves and the raggedy cuffs. It's the first one I reach for if I'm feeling chilly or when I need a hug.

Flowers-lady slippers that peer shyly from the woodland floor, pepperminty phlox and purple violets, the sweet white bells of lily of the valley and the smiling faces of pansies, blue chickory that nods among the stately white blossoms of Queen Anne's Lace, elegant lilies, graceful iris, the bright yellow skirts of forsythia.

Sun dappled green is one of my favorite colors. So is robin's egg blue and sunset pink, purple the shade of a Scottish thistle, baby yarn yellow and every shade of gray.

A glimpse of wild things - fawns in the meadow at twilight, a startled coyote, turkeys fanning their courtship feathers, a red fox leaping for out-of-reach grapes, an owl drifting silently through the trees.

Warm fuzzy mittens.

Crisp apples.

Rainy days. I like being out in them. I like coming in from them. I like long, slow rains that fall from quilted skies and hard wild rain that falls in wind-driven slashes. I love to fall asleep to the patter of rain on the roof, like to press my nose to the window as it weeps raindrops.

Books.

Holidays. The warm scent of pumpkin pie and roasting turkey, presents and paper and ribbons and bows, decorated trees, eggs the colors of Easter, the bustle, the preparation, the excitement, the gathering of loved ones.

A blank sheet of paper. You never know what will appear there until the first word is written or the first line drawn.

Crayons. Felt-tipped markers. Long sticks of colored chalk. A newly sharpened pencil. Watercolors all misty and pale.

Toast with butter and cinnamon.

Brooks that tumble over rocks with a splash, wide green meadows, the very edge of a forest.

Trees. Sitting under them, hugging them, climbing them, talking to them, leaning back against them to dream.

Ripe blackberries, sun-warmed and succulent.

Solitude. Companionship. Sharing. The sound of laughter. The relief after tears.

Hugs.

Hot fudge sundaes. Rare steak. Cold lima beans.

Lighted windows at dusk.

Holding hands.

Words.

Vive la Difference!

Gary of Follow Your Bliss recently posted (among other observations) about the difference in boys' and girls' writing topics. It reminded me of this experience...

What I Learned at Camp (an excerpt from the original column)

I spent four weeks at summer camp this year. The subject was computer journalism. I was the teacher. Here's what I learned:

No matter how you word it, if the course description has the word computer in it, at least half the kids are going to think "Games!" and are going to be mightily disappointed to find they have just signed up for two weeks of writing.

"Writing? But it's summer!"

"What, you can't write in summer?" I ask.

"I don't want to write in summer!" Eyes roll back in the head, hands clutch at the stomach, a grimace contorts the mouth and the child falls to the floor, feigning death.

So we play writing games. I tell the children to type a sentence on their computer and then move back to the next seat. Each time they move, they must write a sentence that makes sense with the others so the end result is a coherent story. The girls write about flowers; the boys turn them into man eating blossoms that devour whole cities at a gulp. I look at my assistant Connie and we share an "uh, oh."

A child's imagination will reflect his world.

If you don't believe that, you should try playing story rounds with a group of kids. Take an ordinary object, a pine cone say, and give it to one child. Explain that s/he must make up a sentence about the cone and then pass it to the next child who makes up another sentence related to the first. The object is to end up with a story about a pine cone.

"Once there was a little girl who had a pine cone."

"Yeah, and the pine cone grew to be huge."

"Yeah, and it was a man-eating pine cone and it ate the whole town!"

"And then the pine cone took over the whole world."

"Wait," I plead. "Could a pine cone really do that?"

"If it was on drugs, it could."

Hmmmm...

The cone is passed one last time. "After the pine cone took over the whole world it became a nice pine cone and gave everyone an ice cream cone."

Guess which gender the last sentence was written by...

An Interview

Barbara asked me these five interview questions for a meme that's making the rounds:


1. If you had $1,000,000, what would you do with it?

Half a million things! Like establishing scholarships at the local high school and the four colleges my children attended; helping the fire station buy a new engine; giving gifts to the local library, the hospital, the police department. I’d help stock the food pantry every month and create funds for my children and grandchildren. I’d love to buy back my old homestead and start an organic farm where townsfolk could participate. Maybe I’ll need more than one million…

2. What have you learned from your children? What do you think they've learned from you?

My children have taught me patience, persistence, and the meaning of true love. From the oldest I’ve also learned a lot about respecting the earth and the importance of living green; from my second son I’ve learned how to see the possibilities in a predicament; from my elder daughter I’ve learned how to survive with a smile, and from the youngest I’ve learned how to believe in myself. And what have I taught them? I hope they’ve learned to see the possibilities in each morning, that everything changes and that’s okay, and that if they make sure they are the cake, everything else can be frosting.

3. What living famous person would you most like to have as a dinner guest, and why? What would you serve?

I’d love to talk other dimensions with author Richard Bach. If he couldn’t come perhaps cartoonist Bill Watterson would and we could talk Calvin and Hobbes. I make a wicked good chicken potpie using vegetables I put up from the garden. I’m not much good at formal dinners. Or maybe Annie Lamott would come and we could talk writing over a piece of homemade lemon meringue pie…

4. If you could re-do one thing in your life, what would it be?

If I redid one thing, everything would change. I am trying harder to make wiser decisions about men and money.

5. What are you most looking forward to when you are able to retire?

Not having to go to work! I don’t mind working and I like being busy but I hate that morning alarm and the ensuing rush. I have a long bucket list (travel here and abroad, write another book, publish some poetry, draw and paint, volunteer to hold babies in the nursery of a hospital, tell stories at library hour, spend more time with my grandchildren, etc.) so I doubt I’ll be bored.


Now, if you’d like to answer interview questions of my own devising:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick what they will be.)
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview
someone else.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask
them five questions.

I Don't Get It

A few days ago, a commenter on one of my posts said, "The beauty we see in nature is partly something we have "learned" to see, I believe."

I answered with a cautious maybe. Then someone sent me an email with the Washington Post story of renowned violinist Joshua Bell who, without advertisement of any sort, stood one rush hour morning in DC's L'Enfant Plaza metro station and played six of the most beautiful pieces of classical music ever written on one of the most valuable violins (a Stradivarius) ever made.

It was a social experiment conceived by Post staff writer Gene Weingarten to see if people would take time in their everyday harried, hurried lives to pay attention to beauty. Of the 1,097 passersby, one man stopped for three minutes to lean against a wall and listen and a three-year-old boy, hustled along by his mother kept looking back at Bell. Only one woman in the Plaza recognized Bell and she, too, stopped to listen. A few people tossed money in the open violin case at Bell's feet. The man who sometimes earns $1000 a minute for his talent, netted $32 and change that morning.

The entire article made me feel discouraged beyond measure. The description of the line of folks at the lottery ticket machine shuffling forward without even noticing the musician made me sad and the mention of the fellow listening to a song on his ipod about severe emotional disconnect and the failure to see the beauty of what's right in front of his eyes (Calvin Myint's "Just Like Heaven") made me feel worse. But this line made me feel nearly hopeless: "Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away."

I bought a copy of "Cricket in Times Square" for my grandson's Christmas. In the movie, the whole of the listening area (a subway in New York City) is affected by the music the cricket plays. In a moving scene that never fails to bring tears to my eyes (I bought a copy for myself too, just to hear that music), people of all walks of life paused and listened and were momentarily changed. It's what Weingarten and Bell expected to happen, I think - that recognition of something so beautiful it halts a person in mid-step. Weingarten goes into the reasons why it didn't happen and all of them are discouraging. (For the full story, Google Washington Post and look up Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten.)

I've often thought of humans as odd and incomprehensible beings. We are able to create works of astonishing beauty which we then ignore; we make great speeches about love and human rights and peace, then we plan and execute wars; we often save our appreciation of life itself for life's final few moments.

My cautious maybe of above is still cautious. I think, as much as we train ourselves to see beauty, we also train ourselves not to. Immanuel Kant says beauty is part measurable fact, part opinion, with both being colored by the observer's immediate state of mind. One must be paying attention to beauty, it seems, or at least to the possibility of beauty, in order to see it. Apparently, many of us would rather chain ourselves to something else. Call me Pollyanna if you will, but since I have my druthers, I choose on the side of beauty.

Idle Thoughts on a "Snow Day"

In 1953, the year I was seven, my mother gave me a scrapbook full of pictures she'd cut out of magazines and newspapers of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II of England. I clearly remember gazing in awe at the photos of the dazzling young woman clad in an enviably pouffy dress, an ermine trimmed robe and a jeweled crown atop her regal head. She looked enough like my mother to my young eyes that I went to Mama with scrapbook in hand and asked if I could try on that crown.


Ever after that, I thought of my mother in terms of queenliness. She had a dancer's grace, wore her clothes beautifully, looked marvelous in hats (which I sometimes borrowed, pretending they were crowns), and ruled with intelligence and wisdom (albeit with a touch of severity).











Recently I came across this photo of Elizabeth. I can still see a slight resemblance. My mother has long since passed - she would have been 92 this May. The Queen will be 83 in April. The scrapbook disappeared long ago but my delight in thinking, even for a few giddy, childish moments, that my mother was a real live queen has not much abated.




photos of the Queen from www.picmium.com, Annie Liebowitz

Recycling

The pond across the road from my cottage. It is one of nature's ever-changing paintings.

Theelementary posted a delightful piece of writing about looking at familiar things from a different perspective. It reminded me of a post I wrote two springs ago. (You'll notice a reference to greening grass and budded branches. We're a far cry from that at the moment as more snow is falling.) Anyhow, in the interest of recycling, here it is again.

Ancient wisdom suggests we look at each day not as if it was our last, but with new eyes, as if every day was our first. Finding that thought compelling, I step out into the sunrise and am struck by the beauty and the mystery of everything around me. What would it mean to see grass for the first time, green and growing, each blade individual and new, rising from the dried and tangled mat of last year’s growth, yet each shoot blending and waving with its counterparts until they spread out before the eye like a verdant sea? Imagine the wonder at touching a bare foot to the dew-drenched stuff, seeing an imprint dark and mysterious appear, then watching it fade as though you did not exist as the sun rises and drinks the condensation.

What of the lilac tree by the door, its trunk gnarled and twisted, the bark rough and scaly, the branches dusted with the bright green of spring-coiled leaves waiting to open? If you had no word for tree, no language to describe the budded arms that would soon be brimming with lushly scented flowers, wouldn’t the wonder of it all sweep you away?

I leave my yard to walk along the edge of the pond in the growing light and watch the sun coat the ripples with silver. Last year’s dried oak leaves dance toward me in a sudden gust of wind even as this year’s prepare to unfurl. I look up and my eye is caught by the movement of small birds high over the pond, swallows perhaps. They are too far up for me to tell, but their joy is clear as they swoop and rise and sail out over the water and back, diving and skimming and soaring again and again. The sun touches the undersides of their wings so that they seem to float on feathers of pure light.

The wind swoops through the tops of the pines, rushing from one to the next, whispering green secrets. The boughs rise and fall as though breathing and I am caught up in the sound and the rhythmic dance of needles against sky. Then the wind is at my feet, whirling the loose sand into miniature cyclones before blowing off across the open fields, losing itself in the woods at meadow’s edge. Later in the afternoon and into the evening as the light wanes and the day’s colors melt into darkness, I will walk once more beside the pond, watching the water, different water now, new water, make its way to the falls. I will understand again that nothing lasts, though nothing appears to change, and tomorrow and tomorrow I will see again with new eyes the same ordinary things.