it’s been 38 years since i’ve moved here. thirty-eight. it even takes me by surprise. when we moved here, the deal was “three to five and then we move on”. uh-huh.
but it’s where we bought this old house, where the children were born, where life was lived – good and bad, happy and sad – and time seemed to fly by. truly. and now it’s 38 years later.
in the time i’ve been here – this place where i was transplanted – i cannot remember weather that has been as ornery as this spring and summer.
yesterday, while trying to keep up with yet another tornado warning coming from the west, i was on jake’s weather page on facebook – a local and much-appreciated meteorologist. he was reporting on the progress of the storms heading in our direction, with his predictions about them.
i read the comments on his latest post and totally agreed with a few, particularly:
“good grief! not again!” and “i can’t believe these storms this year.”
exactly.
because climate change is real and our extreme weather is directly related to it.
because global warming is real and our extreme weather is directly related to it.
because ecology and green sustainability are real and dealing with our extreme weather is directly related to both.
because caring about our resources, our natural environment, our atmosphere, our forests and seas and aquifer and pollution control and this good earth is real and we should care about all of it, protect all of it, invest in all of it. our extreme weather – and the extreme weather around our state, our region, our country, the global world depends on us and what we choose to do.
the survival of this place we call home – whether it’s wisconsin or any other place on this planet – is dependent on us to make good choices.
there is no way around it, despite any twisted misinformation that the current administration wishes one to believe.
make good choices. time flies by.
our world becomes our childrens’ and then their childrens’. our home becomes theirs.
“preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” (carl sagan)
a full box of crayolas at my side, i, too, in my itty-bitty chair at the itty-bitty table, would outline the image on the coloring book pageand then color it all in. like there was some artistic reason for outlining – making a definitive and clear break between the image and the background. for a non-artistic-in-the-sense-of-drawing type, it seemed to make my coloring page look better, cleaner, more striking. i’m not really sure. but it was a popular thing to do – this outlining thing – and, though i don’t know who initially suggested it, nearly everyone colored their pages that way. you could see it on the ever-important bulletin board wall.
if i were to pick up a coloring book and crayons now i might even just fall back into old patterns, grasping the crayola stub in my hand tightly, pursing my lips and concentrating on not drawing off the line. then i would color it all in – in the lines – and my page would be neat and tidy and whatever other adjective might apply, synonymous with success.
when i color in “adult-colored-pencil-coloring-books” i have found that i don’t do this – i just color with my pointy pencils – no outlines, no outlining. is it the difference between the paraffin wax/powdered color pigmentcombo of crayons and the pigments/binding agents/fillers/casing used in pencils? is it some leftover art lesson from elementary school – where the emphasis was on some sort of impossible sought-after perfection for our coloring sheets? and why – knowing me – did i not color out of the lines? well, i can answer that one. back then i was an in-the-lines colorer, going with the crowd, hoping to get my picture on the bulletin board wall.
i move up close to the peonies in our garden out back. they stand their ground as i move around, right in their little peony faces, alternately snapping photos and taking big whiffs of their intoxicating scent.
there are no outlines here. everything up this close blurs as my depth of field changes, my point of focus changes, my intent changes.
were i to make this photograph a coloring sheet – an accurate coloring sheet – it would require fuzzy lines – no clear outline – instead, a fade of one color into the next, maybe difficult to capture with a stub of crayon looking to make something definitive.
but life is more like that. less definitive, more fuzzy. it is less distinct and more out-of-focus. it is less green and white, and more grey. there are no outlines and, if you really get it, there’s no ever-important bulletin-board-wall upon which to hang up your life.
it just is.
and the moments we get to sniff peonies or color out of the lines, to allow the unfocused to swirl around us, to not get all caught up in the bulletin-board-wall – those are the moments to grasp, to hold onto, to store away as balm for those other moments – the ones that test us, that hand us crayons with impossible confidence-taxing expectations, that, somehow, in all the chaos, make us forget that peonies exist. craziness.
and so, no outlines. just color.
“…you write about my flower as if i think and see what YOU think and see of the flower – and i don’t.” (georgia o’keeffe)
the question “when does it cease being a peony?” never occurs to me. because it never ceases being a peony. it is intrinsic, even as its extrinsic identity falls – petal by petal – to the ground.
the storms came. and wind and heavy rain. and the peonies bowed to them. the blooms were large – triumphant pink – but couldn’t withstand and, though some blossoms remained intact, many began to lose their velvet petals as the deluge let up and the sun came out.
there was not a peony on that entire plant, though, that was not still a beautiful peony. even with pistil exposed, with stamen missing, with wrinkled or missing petals. through the storm – and after – it remained – drumroll – a peony.
the storm has been brewing. apparently, there is more to the storm than i understood – as i now realize that there has been much in the history of our country i did not learn – so much was about teaching to the test we missed the dualistic humanity of the narrative. the story is not so innocent; the intentions are not so magnanimous. there is much malevolence in the story of this country and current events are mimicking the evil of earlier times.
but the democracy has been in place now for two hundred and fifty years.
yet, devastatingly, we celebrate america’s birthday just as we are watching the takedown of america’s freedoms, laws, its very constitution.
when does it cease being a democracy?
that question had never before occurred to me with such a sense of urgency. until now.
now i am worried.
the peony is a peony any and all times because it has the heart of a peony. it is nothing else. it hasn’t been anything else. it won’t be anything else.
“in contrast to our frenetic, saturated lives, the earth offers a calming stillness. movement and growth in nature takes time. … there is something in our clay nature that needs to continually experience this ancient, outer ease of the world. it helps us remember who we are and why we are here.” (john o’donohue)
this must be what’s missing. as we get besieged with new news – all pretty horrible, the stuff of gluttony, haughty entitlement and bigotry truly beyond belief – i have wondered what it is in these people that is missing, what it is in these people that doesn’t grok the evanescence of life, what it is in these people that drives them to push for – or cheer for – a world without natural beauty, a world that seems twisted, that convolutes nature – botoxing faces and bodies, annihilating parks and resources, canyons and forests, waterways, wildlife, wildflowers that will never bloom.
if you never stand in nature – still – never even for a moment in the tiny – or vast – space just outside wherever it is you hang your hat, you miss the air that swirls around you, the recognition of another-day, the exquisite velvet softness of a peony petal in the growth stage of a bloom when it has just begun to open.
how can you carry that – the grace, the scent, the unbelievable creation of peony pink – and be anything but awed? how can you watch the play of light on tight buds opening before your very eyes and consider your self-serving dystopian game more important? how can you ignore the explosions of color, the frequencies of sound, the vibrations under your feet and all around your body even when you are still? how can your gaze glance over beauty and not have any pondering about who you are and how you – a humble minute being of clay and stardust – fit in with all the rest? how can you breathe air – feeling the world in your lungs – and be unconcerned about the air and the world future generations will breathe? what is missing in these people?
“when you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you. moments of beauty begin to braid your days.” (john o’donohue)
as close as we are, as much of a presence it is for us, we sometimes forget that this giant lake is right there.
we walk along it, we drive past, we linger – staring at it. but we still forget the magnitude of lake michigan, its oft-seemingly-own weather pattern, the big-water force it has on us.
i’ve never not lived near water, big water. my growing-up town on long island is between the atlantic ocean and the long island sound. i lived in florida a hop, skip and a jump to the gulf of mexico. on island we were right on water’s edge on the lake michigan side. and here – a block or so off the lake. i don’t know what it is like to live in an area that doesn’t have big water, that’s land-locked. i suspect i could find it difficult. so, near or on a lake will have to be the future minimum standard. somehow, big water all makes me feel closer to the far horizon, closer to the universe, closer to a two-way with god.
valerie bertinelli in her book enough already wrote, “i [] had long since lapsed in terms of structured religion. but i [] had develop[ed] a recipe for my own spiritual soup. it still included a belief in god, a higher power who accepted collect calls in emergencies.”
i, too, have lapsed in terms of structured religion and i, too, have my own spiritual soup. after thirty-five years of working for churches plus all the rest of being at churches, i have had enough of it all. i realize now that my last church job did me a favor when they fired me. they broke the continuity, making it possible to NOT do that which seems obvious TO do. i am grateful. it was a long time and i endured much at churches that you would likely rather not know. it was time to stop.
but my faith has not stopped. and as i stood at the edge of the sound a couple times in last months, as i stand at the edge of our lake michigan, i can feel the tidal strength of the universe. i can feel the days sink into nights into days into nights. i can start to understand the stars and the vast-ness. i can feel the connection to that which is so much bigger than me.
maybe that is what big water does for me: a place that brings the divine closer, just across the waves, just beyond the shore, just brushing the sand and leaving shells and rocks in its wake, just right here for me. a place to gaze and stare, a place to ponder and pray.
d just painted over a huge canvas that prominently featured a star. i asked him why he painted over it, for i like stars, the universal message of stars, just the whole thing of stars. he said he thought that the painting looked like a hotel print, so ixnay on that aintingpay.
he has since continued painting this canvas – with earth-toned hues. day is done is clearly – to me – a portrait of the end of day beyond a dramatic hill landscape, the sky glowing a pre-dusk orange, the sun setting.
“day is done/gone the sun/from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky/all is well, safely rest/god is nigh.
fading light dims the sight/and a star gems the sky, gleaming bright/from afar, drawing nigh/falls the night.
thanks and praise/for our days/’neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky/as we go/this we know/god is nigh.” (“taps”)
star-flowered lily of the valley are important pollinators and – later in the season – develop berries which are a perfect food for birds. they truly hold an important place in the ecosystem in the woods…’neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky.
the star-flowered lily of the valley is native, its white star-shaped flowers delicate. they are little constellations of beauty, nestled in the green of their frond-y leaves. they are joyful little flowers; they simply make me happy as we hike.
because stars are like that.
and we can all use a reminder of comfort and protection of the universe. particularly now.
the wood anemone is a “spring ephemeral“. the plant “dies back to the ground by mid-summer“. there is not a lot of time to be as delicately beautiful as anemone is.
so the anemone put on a fine show in their months of prime, the only months their performance is open. they waste no time fussing around, angsting over the circumstance of their sprouting – their place of origin, no time arranging every single thing to their benefit so as to live a grand life in the months of their lives.
instead, they shine. they grow – in community with every other plant and fungi, in and amongst the trees, fallen logs and dried leaves. they unfurl their five or six petals, their leaf whorl fragile, trembling in the breezes – this “wind flower” is standing vigil for spring.
they make the best of it.
and when their turn is done – when it is time for their last bow, their last quake in the wind, their petals slowly dropping one by one, their stamen no longer sheltering seed, their stalks withering with the sun – they quietly take leave and return to the ground to wait – for next spring.
anemone don’t wonder about their ascendancy, their import, their legacy. they do what it is they are here to do – providing early season nectar for pollinators, preventing erosion by retaining soil moisture.
their herald of spring, their succumb to summer’s hot sun – part of the greater plan. their job fits right in symbiotically with the rest. they do not abdicate to other wildflowers what is theirs to do; neither do they overreach, trouncing all the other wildflowers in their midst.
they are what adults should be. adult humans, that is.
we have a relationship with mason jars. ball, kerr, various other brands, it doesn’t matter. we even have a relationship with faux mason jars – the smuckers jelly jars that we used to use for wine, the bonne maman jam jars we currently use as water glasses.
at our wedding we had dozens of mason jars, daisies tucked into all of them. some were ours and we borrowed some (does that work as something borrowed, something blue…?) because way back when – when i first moved to wisconsin – i got hooked on these jars.
my dear friend linda and i would attend the late 80s/early 90s craft fairs, peruse antique shoppes. her home was a celebration of all-things-vintage and i fell in love with it. there were textures and stories – a distinct warmth – everywhere and buying-vintage became a viable – and smart – option for me. we have several metal flour sifters as a result of that and a collection of old wooden textile mill spools and bobbins (from the 19th and earlier 20th centuries). when other people were buying cutesy painted tchotchkes, i was lusting over old wooden boxes, lidded crates and blue mason jars.
we stopped at a couple antique shoppes recently, looking for a small wooden garden table for a plant or two on our deck. we had purchased one last spring but then d loved it so much outside he brought it inside in the fall to serve as his bedside table. now he is a devotee to this little peeling-paint garden table and we are on the hunt for another.
i don’t suppose many people would have brought this table inside – or the old glider – or the chunks of concrete – or the birdhouse – or the chiminea. but in an effort-that-is-no-effort to have a home that doesn’t look like it’s staged-and-ready-for-sale or is a furniture-outlet showroom or magazine piece, we dive into our intuitive to use the things that really speak to us, that are organic, that have stories. i maintain that everyone should be required to purchase mostly used things – there is just too much stuff in the world and i can’t imagine why we need even more manufactured stuff. but i digress.
in that same vein, though, we have started regularly using the things that we have found in our going-through the basement, the attic, the closets. we are eliminating plastic here and there and choosing the cut-glass vessels for our carrot sticks and salty snacks. we are soon going to reconfigure the stuff in the cabinets under the counter in the kitchen – to make access easier to the old pyrex, the fenton hobnail, the cut-glass.
we have found we have no real need to purchase many things. i’m not sure if that comes with age or if that comes with a bit of wisdom – or if those are one and the same. our inclination is to use what we have, to not save things for “good” (which is particularly difficult for me), to minimize as much as we can.
every now and then we find something that just pokes at us, prodding us to bring it home. there is a raw rough-hewn clay pot from northport, a couple linen napkins from the same boutique. there is a new peace sign button hanging in littlebabyscion. but way more has gone out than come in – donated, sold on marketplace or poshmark. less is most definitely more. especially in these times.
the blue ball jars all lined up at this shoppe made me smile. the proprietor clearly loves organization; everything there was in categories, lined up or gathered for ease of perusing through. we had no impulse to buy anything, but loved our walk through.
because each time we walk an antique shoppe, we have stories to tell – about the stuff of growing-up, about things we have previously owned, about stuff we never had or never wanted, about – well – life.
if you have never taken a walk through any vintage shop, you might consider it.
it’s generative in a way you might not expect, with sudden glimpses into the decades that have past, with moments when your heart surges – focused on a memory, with a wistfulness that reminds you of how fleeting it all is and how very much we need to “wring out every ounce of life, breath by breath, [all] that this world has to offer.” (words from a text from dear friend lisa.)
the ferns are curly-cuing their way up – out of the ground – taller and taller every day. they are spectacular, these fiddleheads, coiled fronds answering the beckoning of the sun.
this particular photo of our ferns in our fern garden strikes me as very maternal…as if the momma fern is looking out for the young ferns following suit – the one with tilted head, the one not yet fully unearthed. i am reminded of one of d’s paintings…mother-daughter…the never-ending inclination to protect, to hold close, to comfort.
but unfurling-life doesn’t provide us with the never-ending opportunity to physically hold our children, to physically protect them, to physically comfort them. instead, they scatter – like wildflower seeds – as they must – as they should – and we parents are left to watch over them from afar, to celebrate their successes and hold fast their hearts when they are mourning. we have not given up our connection, but it is stretched out far and we find we must also rely on the grace of the universe to protect, to hold, to comfort them.
as our own beautiful children – now in their thirties – move about the world being who they are, i miss them, the preciousness of their presence.
i sometimes miss the days when they were reliant on me (and their dad) for most things. those days were intense, busy, skewed mostly in the direction of making sure their needs were met, that we provided for them the best we could, that we offered up opportunity as well as critical boundaries, that we cheered their journeys.
i sometimes miss the days when they had new freedom…those days they were in college and littlebabyscion was the moving van again and again, taking them to and fro, witnessing year by year their growing independence.
i sometimes miss the days when they were newly out of college, when they weren’t quite as established as now, when home still kind of meant wisconsin.
in going-through the basement, the attic, the closets, all the rooms of the house, i try hard to remember that the things of those times will not help me hold onto those times. i try hard to remember that their baby clothes, their early toys, the old trinkets from their rooms, their junior high notebooks will not keep those times at hand. i try to release all that as i go, my heart trying to just gently hold the memories i can remember, my heart trying to tenderly – empathetically – hold my heart. i try to be a good fern in a big world of fern gardens.
and now, as the frond that burst out of the soil first, the frond that unfurled first, the frond that aged first, i glance at the verdant fiddleheads following. i could not be more proud. i could not love them more. and i will never not miss physically holding, protecting or comforting them as they answer the beckoning sun.
the texture was different this time. being there was different.
this time i didn’t feel the same sense of deep sadness everywhere i went. this time i didn’t feel as disconnected, as unwilling to recognize the significance of these places in my life’s timeline. this time i didn’t try to stave off any feeling of affinity, any bond or relationship to these roads, the sand, the harbor, the dock, the salty air. i didn’t slink back from it all, didn’t hide instead in now, in after.
i still felt the loss. i still felt the trauma. i still felt pain.
but i also felt immense love for this place. i felt pride. i felt connection.
this time was different.
and as we walked around – arm in arm, as we do – i felt comforted being there. this visit put dots on the i’s, crossed the t’s. it gave me back my growing-up years. “i’m from here,” i kept saying.
what has happened in our lives will forever be a texture of our lives. i can look back and see how it all impacted me – really, forever.
but this time i was able to distinguish the place from the trauma. i was able to separate them out and not blame that which shouldn’t be blamed. i was able to love on my hometown while recognizing those who had tarnished it in my heart. and i was able to reclaim the place as my own.
the painted brick wall is over by the bakery. it’s gorgeous, an exterior wall of a big old long island lighting (LILCO) building built in 1924. beautifully peeling white paint, it is striking each time we walk past. the textures of this place are visceral for me.
we sat at the bar in skipper’s, sipping from wine glasses that state “since 1978”. the synchronicity is not lost on me. 1978 was the year. back then i owned this town, that place. all the world was open, people were mostly to be trusted, i was a sunrise/rainbows/poet-in-a-tree girl – a budding peony waiting to bloom, to burst into the rest of the world.
and then.
there is a reality to my trauma, like there is for anyone who has experienced the same. it has played a role in my health, my emotions, my relationships, my ability to trust others, every decision, every bit of the arc of my personal and professional life.
we brought home the wine glasses, holding onto my town and all the moments before – and after – everything changed.
the question “when does it cease being a peony?” never occurs to me. because it never ceases being a peony. it is intrinsic, even as its extrinsic identity falls – petal by petal – to the ground.
reverse threading 