the crisply-combed perfect-sand beach. just waiting for feet, for flip-flops, for a wrangly dog, for a gleeful child overladen with pails and shovels to burst onto its clean canvas and send sand flying.
but in the meanwhile, pristine, ordered.
walking along our lake we come upon the freshly-manicured beach. the orderliness makes us stop, stare, breathe.
just ahhh…
because there is nothing orderly in the world right now.
and so, the beach helps.
it reminds us that – yes, indeedy – things CAN be orderly, things can be measured, things can be cleaned up and returned to a center of discipline, tidy, with a sense of equilibrium.
in the case of the beach, there is a big tractor that restores it, a big rake pulled along behind, grooming it to almost perfection. the rake can sift out the garbage, bits and pieces of life that people have left behind, trinkets or detritus strewn about sans conscience. the sand is sifted, loosened, de-debris-ed, flattened and smoothed. when it is finished – this amazing transformation reveals the even look of a perfect beach, waiting for its next sunny days, its people, laughter in its waves, love-filled picnics under beach umbrellas, serene naps on beach blankets, life.
i wonder what could possibly serve as the beach cleaner of our times…what could possibly sift out the hubris, the corruption, the cruelty, the bigotry, what could possibly restore the sanity of this nation, what could possibly transform this country back to order, to the wethepeople it was meant to be, waiting for its next sunny days, its people, its laughter, its love, its serenity, its life.
it sits on the dashboard of littlebabyscion – the vestiges of a single daisy. it is now thirteen years old, this daisy. and it has been right there for all thirteen years, its seed coats still hanging on, though toughening by the day.
because we had never met when we met, i brought a daisy with me to o’hare – to distinguish myself from all the other people waiting at baggage claim, to be clear that it was me – there – waiting to meet him – arriving.
i told him that i’d be the one holding the daisy because i thought it better than a sign and because daisies are happy. i stopped at the florist earlier in the day to get my one daisy while in the middle of perseverating over what to wear.
in the end i wore jeans, boots and an oversized black chenille sweater and i felt like me. which is a good thing, particularly when you are meeting someone you have never met.
we had written for about six months. every single day. emails would arrive in the evening or in the wee hours and i’d lay awake devouring it all and writing back about my own life, candid and vulnerable – honestly typing it all to this new friend with whom i had only had one phone conversation.
we discovered that life – as artists, even in different mediums – had some parallels to which we could easily relate. we discovered that life held some of the same mysteries for us. we discovered that life’s challenges were, well, challenges for both of us. we discovered we could see that life’s joys were swinging on a star…or two….or a zillion.
i was sort of aware of people laughing when we skipped through the airport to get on the escalator. but it was more like a slow-motion movie happening outside of me, one of the people skipping. slightly dreamy.
but it wasn’t all dreamy.
and though we found our zealous friendship evolved into something much, much bigger, something where two hearts melded together, something where love was undeniable and where we found we made a good team, it had many moments that were less than dreamy.
because life is like that.
this year it was thirteen years on the thirteenth. thirteen years since that veryfirstday we set eyes on each other – two artists scanning baggage claim, both in jeans and boots and black – both nervous, both excited. the next day we got big star drive-in burgers and fries, had a little champagne. this year we got big star drive-in burgers and fries, had a little champagne. a celebration of a big day.
back then, thirteen years ago, on the way into the airport, a girl asked me why i was carrying a daisy. i told her why. we ended up going to the same baggage claim. she was meeting her fiance at baggage claim because he was flying in. it was their wedding weekend. we saw each other in the ladies’ room a couple of times, nervously fixing our hair, pacing.
she looked at me and said, “he’s going to be your soulmate, you know.”
i laughed and said i’d be happy if we even turned out to be friends.
she was right.
and so was i.
thirteen years since the first day i laid eyes on him now.
and we were both right.
and the daisy sits on the dashboard of littlebabyscion, the eye keeping an eye on us with still so many seeds for the future.
“we might think we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is really nurturing us.” (jenny uglow)
we have had a journey with breck. as a baby aspen, we brought it home in 2017 – a tiny sapling in a black plastic pot, bouncing along with us across the country in littlebabyscion.
there were more than a few times – in the first years – we thought we would lose breck – to the weather, the conditions, the displacement. we wrapped breck’s roots in its then-clay pot in blankets and black plastic. we planted breck and discovered it was the wrong place. we transplanted breck. and we always talked to breck, affirming its importance to us, its place in our lives, the meaning it had for us, cheering it on.
and now – breck is as tall as the garage roof and full of gorgeous quaking leaves. sparrows and cardinals regularly land on its branches and we can see it smile and sigh from our place on the deck, watching like proud parents, quietly grateful for its happiness – just like with our grown children.
to have breck in our backyard is to have a little piece of breckenridge in our backyard – a little piece of the high rocky mountainsfrom where it came. it feeds us to look out back and see our aspen, standing taller and taller. it makes us dream and ponder, reminisce and just gaze at it in wonder – that what was a tiny aspen in a plastic pot has turned into a real tree.
it is not unlike artistry and artists – also real trees in a real world. even during the periods of fallow, when creativity is merely a pilot light, there is what comes next. there is the tiny spark that makes ideas come alive – the first stitch on a new quilt, the first note in a melodic gesture, the first paint in the underpainting, triggers of nurture.
and the ideas begin to quake – with or without wind – as they take hold of us.
“to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” (audrey hepburn)
time goes on. and on.
and breck grows taller and fuller.
it is a constant source of both contentment and awe to watch.
soon now, we will plant our basil, parsley, mint, chives, jalapeños, tomatoes.
there are days. and on those days – even in spring’s wild-child inconsistency – we sit on the deck and look to the sky. because i have had the good fortune of thirty-seven years of that very view, it does what it needs to do…it soothes and centers and takes everything down a notch.
because what glenn kirschner said in early april is right: “if you’re not jaded, you’re not paying attention.” the barrage of … stuff … going on in this country is truly unbelievable…the corruption rampant and ignored, the racism, xenophobia, misogyny, the hatred, discrimination and blatant disregard of the rule of law, the gross manipulation of control by the narcissistic administration, the grift in plain sight, the absolute apathy toward the populace and real-life-living….the list seems neverending, the country barreling into some kind of hellish, dystopian landscape of gluttony-first. yuck.
so we sit on the deck and look to the sky. and these very familiar trees – this particular well-loved quartet – slowly shift from winter to spring and, eventually, soon, summer. and i can feel the color green absorbed into me – life – living – breathing.
and so, for a few minutes we don’t talk about it all. we just sit, quietly.
but fran lebowitz is also right: “…[ ] allows people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. it’s a shocking thing to realize people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives.”
and we know those people. they are in our families. they are in our friend groups. our workplaces. our communities. it is devastating, truly heart-breaking. and every single time i allow myself to think about the immense loss – the fact that this very administration – the same one that touts propagandized rhetoric of “family values” – has caused schisms of exponential size – rifts that will never be healed – in the families and communities of the very people they are supposed to be serving – it makes me feel ill. gut-punched kind of ill. sad beyond sad.
there will be many more days of sitting on the deck – at the end of days – particularly some days – when we will just look up – at these trees – at the sky.
and though there will be no answers coming from the sky, it will help.
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.)
it’s sunday morning as i write this. with our coffee and the sunrise, we started our morning watching an rei video called “the life we have”, an intensely moving documentary that follows rob shaver, the subtitle of which reads, “mortality, movement and the richness of being alive.” too big.
by the end we were both crying. tears streaming down our faces. sniffly noses. the tightness in your chest when you are trying hard not to just out and out sob.
and then we just sat – holding tightly onto each other under our quilt and comforters – cold morning air coming in the window, sun streaming in the other side. we were quiet.
we stirred from our stillness. x’ed out of that youtube. and stared at the screen that presented many, many options of other videos to watch, most of which had something to do with the current administration – which – in absolutely no way at all – could ever begin to demonstrate the respect for life that this video we had just viewed did. seeing the faces of those involved in this vileness made me sick to my stomach – again. the juxtaposition was well beyond striking. it was monumental.
we sat in wisconsin’s oldest operating theatre – the 1915 downer in milwaukee – the scent of popcorn wafting everywhere. it was our first time to this theatre, but i daresay not our last.
we were there to see the documentary GASLIT, a movie – directed by katie camosy -shining the light on how the pervertedly-swollen oil and gas industry “impacts the land, air, water and human lives.” it is practically too big to write about.
jane fonda – one of the producers as well as activist and narrator – says, “it’s about injustice, pollution, and the destruction of entire communities.” the destruction and profiteering by those hoarding big-money – the gluttonous – is unconscionable. we were so sickened – so outraged – when the movie was over we couldn’t move for minutes. out of body, feeling like we were living in surreal times, we struggled our way out of the theatre and walked down the street, catching our breath, trying – again – not to cry.
sacrifice zones are areas of this country – the united states of america – where big money has decided that the people, the town, their homes – all of it – are worthy of being sacrificed. big money – like this current administration cheerleading for more fossil fuels, eliminating clean energy projects, drilling, drilling, drilling and decimating natural lands – including parklands – has decided that they can decide where people – PEOPLE – are not worth it…are disposable…that they can be sacrificed in order to benefit the extraction and production of dirty carcinogenic fuels and petrochemicals. toxic communities, cancer alleys, not fit for habitation, everything that is alive affected. they are disgracefully and deliberately created. activists describe these places as “the wrong complexion for protection”. what in the absolute hell?! this is the united states of america and this is a priority of its current administration…one of many revolting atrocities in their sick cauldron of intention. it is sinister wickedness.
we backed away from the youtube panel of choices this morning. the faces of such self-consumed, twisted corruption were just too much for us.
i spun the outer band of the fidget spinner ring we got at peacetree. it brought me back to the words of rob shaver, the life of a man who is just trying to live: “it’s literally just a choice daily. to live deeply and thoroughly and with beautiful effort. not for results, not for money or fame or lifestyle, but for the richness of being alive.”
that there is what the current leadership of this country – this place that purports to care about the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of all its people – every last freaking person – will never ever get.
ever.
and yet, that leadership – lacking the wisdom that gratitude for sheer life bestows upon those who choose to be grateful – dares to decide who can be sacrificed.
we don’t have a tv antenna anymore. this is our westneighbors’. we have the good fortune of being able to see the birds who choose it as a place to land, a place to rest, a place to view all that which is below them. though i understand that the tv antenna is “coming back” (much like paisley bell bottoms – which i, clearly, should have kept through the years…though the idea of those still fitting makes me grimace and roll my eyes and woops…i am off-trail, bushwhacking my way through my brain back to topic…..)
so…my point…tv antennas are coming back – though it is not necessarily in this form but more in the form of a powerful window leaf or indoor device or lower-profile rooftop doohickey, no longer a towering metal structure, more horizontal now than vertical.
nevertheless, there are many tall tv antennas in our neighborhood – simply because they were already there.
when ours fell down we were fortunate it did no harm and we had a tree guy come and clean it all up. at the time we were subscribed to the smallest cable package and, since then, we have considered cutting that as well. it is, after all, a wifi world these days.
when we take walks in our ‘hood we pass a few houses with solar panels. not as many as might be in a neighborhood with newer houses, but i suspect, as people choose to install a new roof, they might also install solar. in these days of high energy cost, it only makes sense. solar power, wind power, hydropower, geothermal power…all amazing, clean, responsible options for a planet struggling to support so many more people,
which clearly brings me – in this dot-to-dot brain of mine – once again – to the abhorrent devastation this administration is making of renewable energy in this country. the unparalleled gluttony of those in power now is absolutely decimating what is good for our planet earth. but they totally don’t care. and neither do those who continue to support this pathetic and backward set of so-called policies. there is no culpability for the environment; there is only money to be made. it’s disgusting. more on that tomorrow.
and so, the mourning dove sits on our westneighbor’s tv antenna, looking around, resting. the dove has no idea of what flies through my brain as i appreciate its perch on the roof. it has no idea of how admiring i am of its ability to be zen-like and coo in all circumstances. it has no idea how much peace it brings me – to just simply watch it sit on an old tv antenna.
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 drive was going to be about 9-10 hours or so. we knew that the front end would be belabored by traffic – taking hours to get through the city, but, once on the interstate, figured we’d be cruising. ahh….not the best of figuring.
there was the hour we spent at the delaware water gap…not outside enjoying the views and a trail…but inside big red, crawling our way out of new jersey into pennsylvania.
then the hour plus we spent just lingering – barely moving – through this one section of i80 in the very wide state of PA – where the department of transportation had decided that – for miles – it would be necessary to have cones blocking a lane so that eventually – miles later – they could do roadwork. now, i am all for safety for the workers on these roads, but cones for miles with no indication of any work is a tad bit frustrating.
so, then, finally, we were moving along. we had a whole bunch more hours to go – about 4-5 when we stopped about 70 miles from the ohio border to get gas and have a little pit stop. we could see the sky getting darker to the west and thought we’d get ahead of the necessities.
and then we got our first tornado warning. warning, not watch.
d pumped gas while i checked the weather radar. it looked ugly to our west and the prediction was for extended storms, hail, extreme wind and, yes, perhaps a tornado or two.
we pulled next to the station and sat while the first of the storms came through, pummeling us with torrential rain and wind. we were grateful we weren’t driving in it.
pulling up the radar again, i looked at some points along our journey to that night’s airbnb. things did not look good for the rest of the evening. it was already close to 5, we had been driving for 9 hours by then and we still had hours to go – through the weather mess on our app. we didn’t quite know what to do.
i looked around as we sat there in that lot. to my left – high on a hill next to us – sat what looked like either a hotel or a condo building which, given the exit we had taken, didn’t seem likely. pulling up google maps, i found out it was, indeed, a hotel.
i pulled up their website.
just to check.
because we were already tired and the road ahead looked pretty scary and long.
about a half hour later we checked into the hotel, forfeiting our airbnb – erring on the side of safety. the couple behind us in line at the front desk – about our age – were doing the same thing, forgoing their reservations several hours down the road.
many times over that night and the next day we marveled at the serendipity of the hotel-on-the-hill location next to us and were grateful for it and for our ponderous decision.
the dawning morning fog the next day lifted before we started driving and there was no indication of storm until we were closer to home. we had tornado watches for the last couple hours while we were driving, which made us jittery – well, it definitely made me jittery.
the tornado sirens went off when we got home.
because, well, climate change is real. global warming is real. weather events are becoming extreme as a result of humans’ lack of care about greenhouse gases, fossil fuels and pollutants in the air, water cycles. ridiculously hot heatwaves, intense droughts, insane amounts of precipitation and flooding, supersized hail, coastal storm surges, damaging winds, severe widespread wildfires, and destructive tornadoes caused by warmer, more humid air. this could potentially all be catastrophic, yet the current administration is ignoring all the signs of peril to our earth, gluttonous greed intentionally perpetuating the damage.
a few days later, in our backyard and starting to prepare the gardens for spring, we looked up.
the clouds – mammous and with these rope-like threads – were suddenly overhead. the same kind of clouds as the night we arrived home. we both sighed, suddenly nervous about what front was coming.
there have been plenty of scary looking clouds. there have been plenty of emergencies across our land. there has been plenty of devastation. there have been plenty of catastrophes due to weather events.
“the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change’s sixth assessment report in 2021 (five years ago!!!) noted that the human-caused rise in greenhouse gases increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events worldwide.”
you gotta wonder when those “in charge” might care.
i read a quote while perusing around the issues of this extreme weather, climate change, this earth. it seems sadly apropos: “unfortunately for some of those people, it won’t hit home for them until it really hits home for them.”
“the white trout lily humbly bows on the forest floor. much like people, though on a different scale, their presence is ephemeral, fleeting. on sunny days, their petals will curl back, up, towards the sun; on shady days these small flowers may not even open. their simple beauty a mystery to the passerby, their faces shyly downward, they fill the underbrush on the side of the trail, dotting the landscape with fragile white blooms. i trust they are not concerned with the impact they make on the world nor do they wonder about their footprints once they are gone. they are simply there – love – dressed in white floral.” (from a post on august 26, 2021)
the tiny trout lily forest – as seen from the ground – stretching on and on, dotting through dry underbrush, the accumulation of fall and winter now giving it up to spring.
the day was stunning…warm, sunny, blue skies. a gift of a day, indeed. it was our first time back on our loop since we arrived home. it was time to process it all and that trail is one of our touchstones for processing. we wandered along the dirt path, talking, being silent, noting how this new season was transforming our woods.
when you travel to or through places where you are not known – where you are a stranger – there is a sense of humility. we immerse in little towns on back roads when we can, finding our way through someone else’s place, through a community of ‘others’ – those in the know about local customs, local gems, local folklore. we are just passersby – soon to be on our way somewhere else.
but we have discovered some of our favorite spots this way. we’ve found places to which we must return some day, places with which we have connected, places that seem magically aligned with us.
discovery is like that. our steps take us past the familiar, into the unknown, the mysterious.
as i got down on my knees to photograph the trout lily forest, i imagined being tiny and walking amongst the lilies. like walking in a city of towering buildings, anonymous to most.
this trail – so familiar – each twist and turn, the spots where we know there will be standing water, the spots where the sun bathes the path, the places where the scent of pine is strong. we are lucky to know this place.
it is not likely that hikers after us will wonder about our footprints. they will be intent on the awakening forest and the swollen river, on their own silence, on their own talk–talk.
but we were there.
and – again – i realize we are each just one of the trout lilies in the woods, just as fragile, just as ephemeral, bowing to time.
reverse threading 