in a really rare moment, we had the amazing chance to have our children and their partners gather around the dining room table with us. to say i was thrilled would be an absolute understatement. it had been six years since we had actually been together – my two children and us. it was a giant gift and i am grateful for it.
plates, pasta, wine, bread – all were merely props as i gazed around me, watching these beloved faces, listening to laughter and conversation. i tried hard to memorize all of it. these brilliant, creative seeds of tomorrow, bright lights of real humans, of good people.
the next day we hiked, just d and me, after everyone had left. we talked about our blink-of-an-eye time with our adult children, about the fun chaos in the kitchen the night before, about the teasing and the ribbing. and i found myself holding onto the filmy threads of each moment before they flew away.
the photographs will help, of course. they will be posted in our kitchen and i will pass by them, often looking at them and smiling. but inside, i will hold onto the way it all felt, the heart-stopping hunger i had felt longing for a moment together, the breath i could exhale as i sat at the same table with my children and their partners or as we all clustered together in photographs.
but i know i won’t be able to hold onto all of it. time tugs at memory like that.
and the clustered fluffs of seeds will be tugged out of the pod by gentle breezes and fierce winds. they will swirl about and land somewhere, planting. another milkweed.
and i hope there will be another table-sitting somewhere soon – all together – as these brilliant humans go about their all-grown-up lives, swirling about with gentle breezes and fierce winds at their backs.
this is the best place to think. it’s the best place to ponder, to wonder, to sort, or to just – simply – take one step after another. it’s the best place to be quiet and the best place to have conversation. we link arms. we walk. and walk. and walk. we can see why pct hikers keep on going. it is cleansing and powerful. and your body feels the world, your tactile connection with the universe, your feet on dirt.
in a moment i won’t easily forget, i recently had a chance to be forehead to forehead with a horse. we stood that way together for several minutes and i could feel his breath on my face. with both of us – boots and hooves on dirt – connected by touch, i could feel the rest of the universe gently holding space, woven in tapestry with us, close by. powerful moments.
particularly in these times, for more reasons than you will imagine, i am finding the reminder of this connection to the universe to be of comfort. particularly in these times, when there is little to comfort us here in this country, i am finding the reminder of this connection to the universe to be bigger than any story of our land – it overarches the evil intention of stories personal and of the populace. particularly in these times, with so little promise of goodness, so little accountability, so little compassion, so little attention to truth-telling, i am finding the reminder of this connection to the universe to be steadying.
i will keep my feet on the dusty dirt of the trail. i will take any chance to share forehead space with another living creature. i will remember how connected – interconnected – i am with this universe. i will draw hope from that.
the sweet potato plant is answering the call to fall. it keeps on growing, sending new shoots, vining out. it also is starting to change color. its rainbow hues draw our attention. our sweetly-screaming woke sweet potato.
and i don’t know if your sweet potato is as colorful. is it still all a rich green? are its leaves curling at all? is it spreading or is it slowing down? they are the same, you know, despite their differences. growing across the boundaries of towns and states and countries, they are not separate. sweet potato is – after all – sweet potato.
we saw images of our friends’ grandchildren. growing fast, unfurling, getting more colorful by the day. glorious and diverse – beautiful children with possibility in all the air around them.
i look at those pictures and celebrate my own children. grown, but still growing, still unfurling, still getting more colorful by the day, they are also glorious and diverse and beautiful. the tiny-child – the young adult – after all – tiny children and young adults. the same, despite the differences.
my son is your son, my daughter is your daughter. i want – i insist on – nothing less for them than you want for your own son, your own daughter: freedom to be, to love, to fly, to dance, to create, to express, to work, to be healthy, to explore, to embrace goodness. nothing less.
but, i fear, your tightly-held infatuation with this new administration has warped your perception and – now – you no longer see my son as your son, my daughter as your daughter. you have changed and not in any colorful photosynthetic way. your light has changed; it has become dark. your arms that used to fling around the whole world – excited and believing in certain potential-for-all – those arms have crossed in an attitude of cavalier superiority, a righteous and defensive us-not-them, unrecognizable extremism. and suddenly, i no longer know you.
and i realize that sweet potatoes – around the world – in the end – possibly understand connection more than the rest of us.
“life is strange. you arrive with nothing, spend your whole life chasing everything, and still leave with nothing. make sure your soul gains more than your hands.” (no attribution)
it’s happening.
we can feel it.
i stood in his shop’s driveway talking to our beloved mechanic. “a simple life,” we agreed. we just want to live a simple life. not a life lived for or gauged on the stuff we have.
because that stuff – the stuff of life – inundates us. everywhere we look people are chasing it – a materialism that just never culminates in any moment where it is “enough”.
and in these unbelievably fraught times, stuff seems even less important than it ever did.
one of my best friends from high school sent me a bunch of texts early this past week. we were out on a trail, trying to soak up sun and hold at bay the yucky cold symptoms we were experiencing. suddenly, there were multiple notifications. he had become a first-time grandpa.
i stopped short on the trail and looked at the photographs of the baby girl just born into this world. i was overwhelmed by the sheer miracle of that and the miracle that this man and i had been friends for over fifty years (despite seeing each other only once in all that time since high school) and – back then – it would have been hard to imagine the moment i was experiencing: standing on a trail in a completely different state five decades later while he shared the moment of his entry into grandparenthood. truly a remarkable gift.
there were other moments this week, moments when i felt more connected to the world: talking with the woman with the jeep in the parking lot at the market when we went to pick up more advil, the frog that suddenly showed up in our pond, the jalapeños we grew that were ready for picking, a note from a dear friend to “stay strong”. we virtual-tracked our daughter running an incredible half-marathon in the mountains and we listened to our son’s music online. friends checked in to ask if we needed anything. the other side of the spectrum from feeling appalled by the world.
soon it will be time to resume the cleaning out. i told our mechanic about the sentimental person’s guide to decluttering book i had purchased (hoping for osmosis to make it stick) and another title i had seen: “nobody wants your sh*t“, which we both found infinitely funny. and true. because it is. true, that is.
i remember when my sweet momma – in acts of generosity and kindness – began to give away possessions. she knew. she knew how little all that stuff really mattered. and, in these quieter moments of getting a bit older, i – we – can see that, even more than before. especially in these times.
it would seem that dropping the shopping bags and the trappings of the ladder are thresholds into the gains of one’s soul, into the real stuff of life – because, as my poppo used to say about the other stuff, “you can’t take it with you.“
and it would seem that – instead of the receipts of chasing and chasing – the buddhist prayer is that which to hold close:
“may you be happy. may you be at peace. may you be free of danger. may you be loved.”
with a real feel of about 105 degrees, we gathered with thousands of others to watch our son perform at PRIDE FEST in chicago. the energy was electric and the set flew by, even in the midst of an insanely hot summer day.
northalsted is a landmark LGBTQ+ neighborhood, an ultra supportive community that offers undying love and non-profit medical and mental health resource assistance to its residents. we always feel welcome there; our son’s friends and complete strangers embrace us – just as we embrace them.
this year we took the train down and uber-ed over to the event. last year we had driven down and – between PRIDE and the cubs game at wrigley field- the traffic was unbelievable and took a couple hours longer than anticipated (not to mention the tornado on the way home when we tucked littlebabyscion right next to a brick building – a closed restaurant – after we had been literally lifted up off the ground by the winds.)
the show was fantastic. there is nothing like seeing your child in their bliss. and here was our son – an EDM artist – in his skin, in his element, in his community, in his neighborhood – doing what it is he is supposed to be doing and loving every second. there is no way i would miss that. there is no way i would miss any event for either of our children – our son or our daughter – that is an expression of themselves – given simply that we know what it is, when it is and where it is. it is the nature of parenthood. it is the privilege of being a parent. it is a choice and i will choose it every time.
i know that there are many parents – hell, many people in our country – who would not – even for a second – support any such effort as attending PRIDE or supporting – in any way – a child (young or grown) in the LGBTQ community. there are those who have – horrifyingly – excommunicated gay family members, who have turned their backs on their own. there are those whose actions have undermined this community, who wish to eliminate the rights of those in this community, who endanger this community with vitriolic uninformed rhetoric and undisguised hatred. it’s a sad statement of conditionality and it absolutely breaks my heart.
if we could show up for every one of the members of this community – at every one of their personal bliss-events or in their own life-affirming moments – we would.
because if we each stand in the middle of the grace of this universe, then we each should likewise stand in the middle of loving grace for each other. it’s not that hard. it’s not really hard at all.
and the choice to be actively-accepting, unconditionally-loving can’t be more important than it is right now.
amaryllis makes me think of my sweet momma. the color pink makes me think of my daughter.
on the windowsill of the bathroom there are two small bottles. one is estee lauder’s ‘pleasures’ and the other is a tiny daisy-capped bottle of marc jacob’s daisy perfume. two scents that remind me of those same two beloved people.
because i am thready (some may say overlyyy thready) i surround myself – intentionally and unintentionally – with tokens of remembrance – some actual, some merely floating in my heart – filaments that connect me to people – and make me think of people – whether they are nearby or far away or on another plane of existence entirely. threads. woven in.
this bulb – a gift – requires no attention whatsoever. you just place it anywhere and it will take care of itself. no water needed. it contains all the water and nutrients it needs to flower. it has stored carbohydrates so it is self-sustaining and can bloom without any care.
i am thinking that between the plethora of mcdonalds fries i ate in my teenage years on bike hikes, the wavy lays and cape cod chips in later years (and even recent later years!!), ever-reassuring mashed potatoes and the daily morning breakfast david makes each day that includes yummy potatoes, i have plenty – plenty!!! – of stored carbohydrates. one would then extrapolate that i would be self-sustaining and would bloom without care. but, the flora world has it all over us on this one. i do not have the advantage of the waxed amaryllis bulb. water, nutrients and care are necessary.
the pink-waxed amaryllis is just starting to get closer to blooming, a flower stalk straight and tall from the center of the bulb, the bud tightly wound. i visit with it each day, marveling at it.
and i think of dearest jen every time i look at it.
there was something about how these speckled leaves were nestled that got my attention.
and, in the way that everything makes me think of something else, it also brought to mind the nursery song five little speckled frogs:
“five green and speckled frogs sitting on a speckled log eating the most delicious bugs, yum, yum
one jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool now there are just four speckled frogs, glub, glub…”
but i digress.
maybe it was the symmetry of the trees. maybe it was the orange and green (which were the exact shades of my growing-up shag rug and the wall-to-wall carpet in our sunroom when we moved in.) maybe it was simply the happenstance of that particular branch of leaves, caught in the little crook made by two trees growing closely together, perhaps inosculated.
whatever the reason, i found it to be a thing of beauty. and those things are out there, everywhere, calling to us – to notice.
i didn’t disturb the leaves. just like i didn’t disturb the blue jay feather i passed on the trail. i left them there – like so many other times – so that others could see them as well.
on the contrary, there have been many snakes on the trail in these last hikes. garter snakes and brown snakes of all sizes – even the tiniest snake i’ve ever seen – sunning on these gorgeous autumn days. but the problem in that is that there are bikers who are populating this trail as well and there have been numerous times we have come across a snake that is deceased or struggling, having been run over by a biker who did not see it.
so, each and every time we see a snake – in the middle of the trail – we stop. we either prompt it to move, escorting it to the side of the trail to which it was headed or, in the case of the struggling or fatally wounded, we pick them up and place them gently in the grass, issuing a tiny blessing and saying, “you are not alone.” we know some of them are in their last moments and, in the way that this universe is all connected, we hope that our holding them for a moment helps them in crossing over.
we immerse in what the trail offers – everything – from helping the tiniest fuzzy caterpillar to taking in a sunset of grandeur. we are grateful for the deep breath it consistently brings to us. we get centered in the step-by-step repetition.
i suppose these are the reasons we find ourselves pondering – imagining – a giant thru-hike in the someday. the opportunity to hold such beauty and be held by such beauty – all around us – is enticing and, surely, delicious.
i haven’t stopped. since march 2020 when my son – at the beginning of the pandemic – in an effort to help me feel connected to him and my daughter – suggested we have a shared text with photos taken in our day. a picture-of-the-day. and every day, not-failing, i have sent one since. i am in absolute delight when they now share a photograph on this thread; i know busy-ness and work and life have picked back up some time ago and picture-of-the-day is no longer on their radar. but, because i am a mom – and i know moms everywhere can relate – it’s still on mine. i look for something that somehow represents my day, every single day.
i have to say – this has been a good thing, this intention to seek and snap the picture-of-the-day. i take lots of photos, so some days this is easy. but there are others when my photo is of mashed potatoes or chicken soup or the accuweather tornado watch or glasses of wine at the end of the day. some days are just life. normal, regular, not supersized, life.
the trillium placed itself in front of the fallen log, clearly, on purpose. ready for its photo shoot, its bud profile at this stage resembling a mighty tulip, the toadshade waited for someone to come along and take its picture. and there i was.
that very day i ended up using a graceful fern in our backyard as my picture-of-the-day. the composition was just a little better, the curve of the fern beautiful. but the trillium knew it would end up featured. i had whispered thank you to it after my baker’s dozen shoot. it stood proudly as we hiked away, knowing.
paying attention – to the littlest details of a day – requires intention. i know i could get lost in the other details of our life, the more pressing, the more complex, the minutiae and nuances of moment-to-moment adulting.
but one text from my son changed that and offered me a continuing reminder to find something – any thing – big or little, positive or disconcerting, dreamy or a little bit scary – that was a real piece of my day. it also offered me a chance to physically let them know i was – at that very moment of sending – thinking of them.
i know there are days – i don’t want to think about how many – that my grown children look at their phones and – in unison from 1400 miles apart – roll their eyes as my picture-of-the-day drops in.
there was this knot-hole in this tree on this trail. i used to stop there each time we hiked – to gaze through it…stand and take in what i could see through the tiny porthole in the woods. always, it was a reminder of the fluidity of time, of ever-present change, of nothing standing still.
the porthole i found in the milwaukee art museum – through one of barbara hepworth’s sculptural pieces – had the same impact on me. bending down, i focused only on what i could see through that porthole. on a different day, at a different time of day, in a different month or season, never static. even minutes from my peeking-through, the wind picked up and the lake’s surface roiled a bit and all from before was erased.
late-late on sunday nights – into the wee hours – we stay awake to listen and watch our son livestream mixes from a club in chicago. he was away for a couple weeks and we missed these late dj nights. they are our porthole – our tree-knot-hole – into what he is creating, producing, learning, feeling. every midnight-hour-sunday we see the changes in the new seasons of his work, his growth, his zeal, his poise at tech controls that evoke curves of mood, layers of sound, textures of music we may not have accessed otherwise. we see his joy.
it’s the same reason i took my first snowboard lesson. at that time, it was a porthole view into our daughter’s life – a peeking window that allowed us to feel the smallest smidge of her professional work. watching her fly down mountains, picking up speed and agility and ever-more skill through our tree-knot-hole on the sidelines and touching her joy-magic with our own feet on a snowboard on a hill.
we can assume things about others. humans do it all the time. broad sweeping generalizations about people and peoples – different because of race or color or gender identity or ethnicity or country of origin or age or disability or socioeconomic status or politics or religion or whatever the prejudice-de-jour might be. we glance over at “them” and form opinions; we claim to be “open and affirming” yet we slam closed the porthole that might give us a true look into their life. we scrub away the transparency of truth and apply the balm of our agenda – totally missing perspective, the possibility of commonality, the gift of community, the connectedness of us all as a species attempting to just keep on keeping on.
were we – perhaps – to notice, to step forward and take a closer look, to shield ourselves from inevitable human failings of assumption and instead to breathe deeply and gaze – we might have a view into the sameness of us all, the things that unite us, the things we need honor and hold in high regard….that we are all one under the sun. that while we cannot walk in another’s shoes, we might learn by looking through any and every tree-knot-hole we can find. that new eyes, new focus may also mean new learnings and new appreciation and new grace. that we should stop and peer through portholes whenever we can. there’s no time to waste.
each time we stood in line at the little grocery in paris, we had a kinder bueno bar in our hands. we also had a baguette and camembert and a container of caprese salad and a bottle of wine. sometimes we had a fruit tart. just one.
i didn’t know it then, but the bueno bar is related to ferrero rocher which is related to tic-tacs. and so, in a roundabout way, we were honoring my sweet momma’s passion for tic-tacs. the ferrero group, clearly brilliant sweet-tooth satisfiers.
momma always had tic-tacs in her purse, in the car, in the cabinet in her kitchen. she never bought just one container, like when you are standing in line at target and see them and suddenly think of purchasing a tiny plastic box with the hinged flip-top. she bought multiples, all shrink-wrapped together, and shared them with everyone.
in recent days i decided to go through and reorganize the pantry in our kitchen. our kitchen, like our house, is old, so the pantry is not a walk-in, plastic-wrapped-wire-shelved cavern of space. there is a limit to this miniature cave of goodness, so one must plan and shop accordingly. we set up some metal shelves in the laundry room downstairs to hold rarely-used appliances, which gave us the illusion of more space in the kitchen. anyway….i was pulling everything out of the cabinet to restructure things.
diving into the recesses of the pantry, there it was, kind of hidden. a tiny plastic box of unopened tic-tacs. my momma was instantly there with me.
it is likely that this box came to wisconsin in a care package, for i cannot remember ever buying tic-tacs myself. we all had a never-ending supplier in my sweet momma, who eagerly gave them out “for your purse”, “for your pocket”, “for your backpack”, “for in the car”. and along with kraft macaroni and cheese, ramen noodles, andes candies, poptarts, bags of peanut m&m’s, twizzlers, interesting news articles she cut out, coupons she painstakingly clipped just-for-you, she would tuck tic-tacs, her favorite freshmints. when the boxes would arrive, you knew what was in them. some things are just steady and predictable. some things you just know.
it was a good time for my momma to be standing with me in the kitchen. it’s been a helluva couple years for us, for so many of us. last night, in the middle of the night, sharing a banana, we talked again about these last two years. in some strange way things feel both foggily distant and freshly raw. but they are no less astonishing, no less confusing, no less painful. it is a grand mix – a caldron of emotions.
i spoke aloud to my mom in the kitchen. i told her in bits and spurts – though i’m certain she already knew – about all that had happened in the last years. i told her about how i had just alphabetized the spice cabinet, which made her slightly gleeful. i told her thank-you for all the care packages, all the letters, all the ramen and the mac-and-cheese and the clippings and coupons and m&ms and twizzlers and the unwavering belief, the unconditional love. i told her i was sorry for the times, like everyone, i got too busy. i asked her to hug my dad. i told her i missed her.
and i saved the tiny box of tic-tacs. not to eat them. they are on the shelf in the pantry. steady and predictable.
reverse threading 