reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: healing


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the wake. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

i could see the maple tree up over the roof of the house. it had really grown a lot in the decades since our family lived there. i thought about all the time i had spent in that tree…an innocent poet trying to piece together the world, make sense of it. back then, i was proud to spend time with my family, my beloved dog missi, on the piano bench or the organ bench or tucked against the trunk of my tree, riding my bike (or, later, driving my little vw bug) to the beach or the harbor, studying, doing homework. i taught piano lessons and worked at various part-time jobs – all on or adjacent to larkfield road – the main artery through our town. going back to these places after long years away makes one realize how small it all was – this world around me – with everything nearby and a steadfast belief in rainbows and sunrises and seagulls.

i wasn’t street-wise back in those days – not at all. the guys i worked with loved to test my naïveté by telling jokes and laughing before the punchline. in an effort to mask that i never really got the joke (particularly if it was a “dirty joke”), i’d laugh when they laughed. they caught me every time. but i didn’t care. it was a happy life and i was ever-so-slowly learning about the real world.

i wondered how it would feel when we first drove down into northport from high above the harbor. this cherished town, this dock – a place of inspiration for me – had taken on different meaning from the time long ago, when i left so abruptly. the sadness i felt leaving a place so ingrained in me had never left. there was grief, deep grief. as my innocence was shattered, my home – these shining places that were part and parcel to who i was had been tarnished. nothing was the same and i wondered what that would feel like, if i would feel misfit.

at first – as i’ve written – there was a disconnect. i’m certain it was a protective measure, something that would maybe prevent me from feeling the grief, touching it, maybe releasing bits of it. but the spirit – of the little village, the harbor, the dock, the gazebo, the beach, the maple tree in the distance – all swirled around me. and, as d and i created new memories there, my guarded heart opened.

the sunsets over the harbor are stunning. the inky nights on the dock are magical. i took them with me as we left, this time slowly, not fleeing.

and as we sit at the little bistro table in our sunroom, with driftwood and rocks from that place, it’s a different kind of grief i feel now. it’s the grief of missing a place that is indelibly etched in me, that is part of what has made me who i am, that is woven into what will heal me.

“…the waters part to let them go.

the wake follows, alone.”

(night dock – january 1977)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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comfort in the kaiser rolls. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

i hadn’t had manhattan clam chowder in forever. but it was on the menu and the day in the village was sunny. with the scent of fresh bread baking wafting around us, we ordered a couple bowls and a couple kaiser rolls. we took it all outside to a tiny bistro table on the street next to the harbor. if we could, we would go back today.

when it was time to head out of town, we walked there early in the morning. a few blocks from the little apartment we were renting, we just wanted one more bakery visit. so in early sunlight, with a brisk breeze off the water, we walked over and placed our order for breakfast sandwiches – on the traditional kaiser roll. they wrapped them up for us to take.

there is comfort in the kaiser roll. it is most definitely a new york thing and, for me, even more specifically, a long island thing. growing up, my dad used to make breakfast sandwiches after church on sundays. he and my mom continued the tradition when they moved to florida, seeking out the best kaiser rolls they could find in bakeries run by people who had also retired from up north.

the bakery became our favorite place – in the several times we went there. witness to the ever-present crowd of patrons, you could feel there was a generous spirit there – of community and well-loved staff – diverse and embracing. because we aren’t really fancy-restaurant-types, in close second was the bar that had baked clams. the rest of the time we cooked.

somewhere down the highway on the way back, i realized we should have purchased a dozen or so kaisers to take with us. or one of the amazing loaves of bread stacked warm on metal pans or neatly in the display. because, then, we could have carried this community’s comfort with us.

back at home, i am feeling wistful for that small harbor town. not because it is beautiful. not because it is totally charming. not because it feels like a place straight out of a hallmark movie. but because – despite a feeling of sad, complicated, emotional disconnect when we arrived there – i left having been nurtured by that town. i left having reconnected with a place i have always cherished but had lost to trauma. i left feeling again the part of me that always loved it, that always felt it was a part of me, that always felt like it “fit”.

there was comfort in the kaiser rolls, comfort in my rocky beach, comfort in my old harbor town.

and, now, there is comfort in – truly – missing it.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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waltz in the gazebo. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

we had the gazebo all to ourselves. it is likely that the tropical-storm-nor’easter had something to do with this. no one seemed inclined to be strolling about, nonetheless lingering on the gazebo.

so we danced. on the rain-soaked boards of this beautiful age-old gazebo, we waltzed to the music on my phone – the cherish the ladies instrumental if ever you were mine – the very piece we irish-waltzed at our wedding, surrounded by a circle of family and friends.

and on this dark starless night, with rain drifting in under the domed wood of the gazebo, it was not only magical. it was a little bit healing. it was sacred.

for here we were – both literally drenched – all alone on the gazebo of my youth – lifting the cellophane of the old magic slate – starting a new history.

just a couple people passed by in the park, walking the edges of the harbor. they paid no attention to our slow dancing. much is the way of new yorkers: you do you they imply.

we weren’t looking for an audience, so that was good. we were just sinking into the night – in the middle of the storm – in the middle of the storm.

and i could begin to feel the old break away a bit and new replace it as our feet got jumbled together in the waltz we hadn’t waltzed in a while.

i clicked play a second time, lifted the cellophane a second time.

just to make sure.

*****

SLOW DANCE © 2002 kerri sherwood

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that place. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

i couldn’t begin to guess how many times i have sat on that beach. i couldn’t begin to describe all the life i have navigated there, all the pondering i have pondered, all the sun and the snow and the rain, the early dawns, the inky skies i have shared with that place. in the mystery that connects you to certain places, it was always my go-to.

and the mystery continues.

we shared time with that beach again. profound time. time wherein i stood by the water’s edge talking to the universe. once again, feet in that sand, touching that water, eyes to that sky.

some of the benches just off the boardwalk have been there forever. the curve of the metal arm, the weather-worn wooden seat – familiar touchstones that date back and back. the seagulls diving, riding the waves, rising in air currents and dropping crabshells to the ground – their caws lodged in memory.

this is not the island’s finest. there are many beaches with less rocks, fewer shells, more shoreline, softer sand, less seaweed, stronger surf. but this is the one.

i left a piece of me – a free-to-be–crazy-with-potential–wildflower-growing piece – behind on this island.

and so i thought that maybe – just maybe – i could go put my feet on this very sand, touch this very water, drink in this very salt air to both reclaim that piece and set it free.

there was no drumroll, no hoopla, no folderol. there were no fireworks or lightning bolts.

as the wind became gusty and it got colder, i merely turned reluctantly away from the water’s edge.

he was waiting for me about halfway up the beach and he held me as i stood in that very sand under that very sun, taking it all in, grateful.

we walked arm in arm to the benches and sat on the oldest one.

it was a long time before we left.

but not before i wrote my name in the sand.

and not before i held her hand – that wildflower.

“i got you,” i told her.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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timed well. [kerri’s blog on not-so-flawed wednesday]

because we really needed to, we went for a hike that day. we went to the trail where we have processed much life. because this was a day in which we needed just that – a place to process.

the first snake we encountered was motionless, but in the dirt of the path. we gently lifted it and placed it in the trailside vegetation, out of harm’s way. the second and third snakes were also in the middle of the trail and we moved them as well, for there were several bikers zooming their way around and we were worried these snakes wouldn’t be visible in time.

and then there was the praying mantis. there it was, just waiting for us as we rounded the bend. it allowed me to get up-close, taking several pictures of it – its forelegs folded as it watched for prey. it looked at over at me and i talked to it, a tiny bit envious of its ability to remain zen-like in such an uncertain moment.

repositioning the praying mantis would have been much more difficult than the snakes, so we didn’t move it and we hoped that it would nimbly move on – with its impossibly delicate, needle-thin legs – across the trail in its quest for food.

we looked for our mantis the second time around our looped trail but it had disappeared. it left us with its memory – a rare sight for us – and with affirmation, symbolic meanings that were, indeed, timed well.

for praying mantis encounters symbolize things like good luck and stillness, spiritual guidance and courage and strength. we read that it also can be indicative of divine protection, a messenger.

praying mantises are masters of disguise – blending in. they are still and patient; their camouflage in nature – looking like twigs or grass – helps them find prey. this graceful green creature – showing up to us on the anniversary of the day of d’s dad’s passing – seemed serendipitous.

to be mindful and still, patient and strong and courageous…in the middle of uncertainty…all the messages we needed on that very day.

“i go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” (john burroughs)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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the L box. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

mama dear repurposed gramps’ old wooden cigar boxes. she’d label them with a magic marker with a big Z or a big B on the front – which stood for zippers and buttons.

i have these old cigar boxes. The Z box now stores nespresso pods in our sunroom. the B box stores harmonicas, kazoos, egg shakers in my studio. the unlabeled corona cigar box is in the office and is loaded with business cards from days when my recording label was flourishing.

the zippers from the Z box are in with my sewing supplies.

and the buttons from the B box? there is a giant collection of buttons. tiny buttons, metal buttons, plastic buttons, wooden buttons, buttons with distinction, whimsical buttons, spare buttons in those tiny plastic bags along with a bit of matching colored thread – that used to come with every blazer, every shirt, every coat.

it is a direct connect to pass by these button-flowers – these fading daisies in the meadow – and think of mama dear, my grandmother, my sweet momma’s mom. she is the person who taught me how to sew and i simply cannot so much as thread a needle without thinking of her.

i found a letter from mama dear the other day. it was from early 1980. i was 20. in it she thanked me for a christmas gift i had given her and a card i had sent from a trip to visit my parents. no one knew at the time it would be her last holiday season. born in 1899, she was a feisty almost-81 with bright red hair and a penchant for gambling slot machines in vegas. in her letter she wrote, “i hope you are happy with your choice” referring to my staying in new york instead of going to florida with my parents as they retired.

at the time it wasn’t really a difficult choice. i was at the beginning stages of a composing/recording/performing career and retirement-central wasn’t the place to grow. so, yes, i was happy with my choice. until one day when that choice became dangerous and i fled all semblance of my budding career, leaving any feisty i had inherited from mama dear behind, devastatingly leaving all artistry buds behind for decades to come.

the button-flowers are charming. they punctuate the masses of goldenrod lighting up the meadows. and they make me think of my button collection.

i have no idea what i will do with all of those buttons. i suppose one day i will list them on marketplace and give them away to a seamstress or crafter who will make creative use of them. maybe i will tell them a little about mama dear, about how many of these buttons are vintage, about how they carry a spirit of feisty red-headed grandma in them.

or maybe i’ll just quietly gift them the collection and hold onto the feisty myself.

and every time i pass a button-daisy on the side of a trail i’ll check in – inside – and make sure it’s still there – the feisty – still growing, still challenging me, still repurposing into profound and important choices for the L box. Life.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

66 and 19. (david robinson)

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kinship. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

were this monarch to have the tiniest of notebooks and a tinier pencil, i would feel even more kinship with it.

i can imagine that it – perched on the vine-wall that has taken over the fence – is writing gentle poetry, haikus about flying and how sunshine feels on its wings. i can imagine that it – late in the summer, maybe a super-generation butterfly – is pondering the freedom of a bit-longer lifespan, the sky-trip it has booked to mexico as summer ends. it might write of adventures and exploring, of new discoveries, milkweed and other plants it now feeds on.

i wonder if it feels the same way i felt – so many decades ago – sitting in my maple tree, perched against the trunk, writing. it felt like there could be nothing at all wrong in the world, and that, like the monarch’s vibrant colors warning of toxins, my coca-cola it’s-the-real-thing pants and floppy hat would keep away any predators. i wonder if its words flit over sunrises and sunsets, grown-up seagull dreams, innocence and possibility.

we’re sitting in the old gravity chairs we unearthed from up in the rafters of the garage. our feet up, pillows behind our backs, we quietly watch the busy life of our backyard. there’s so much space to just think, to ponder.

the butterfly floats past us, over us, behind us. it lands on the burgeoning vine, the natural privacy screen growing helter-skelter on the fence. it is free to roam. it is free to be.

and then.

i overheard, “he got a monarch.” the butterfly’s vivid orange and black and broad stripes didn’t protect it from the cat prowling for prey next door.

i felt my heart sink. in like manner, my coca-cola pants and dr scholl’s, hard-held value set and a sunrise-sunset horizon full of possibility didn’t protect me either.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

66 and 19 © david robinson (mixed-media)

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carry it with. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

dear you.

we are trying to regroup, rethink and refocus our melange blogpost writing a bit. we – like you – know what is really happening in our world and do not need one more person – including ourselves – telling us the details of this saddest of descents destroying democracy and humanity. though we know our effort will not be 100% – for there is sooo much to bemoan in these everydays – we have decided to try and lean into another way – to instead write about WHAT ELSE IS REAL. this will not negate negativity, but we hope that it will help prescribe presence as antidote and balm for our collective weariness.

xoxo, kerri & david

***

in the tiniest liminal space while the river rivers, a frozen second of film captures a painting of swirling green. with no frame of reference – no smidge of bridge over the waterway, no shoreline of rock or underbrush, no logs or boulders or turtles or fish or heron, no sky, no horizon – this tiniest second – the moment it takes to snap the photograph – becomes etched in time and space and the mystery of the image is born.

what else is real…there is beauty in the pollen-filled river, beauty as it flows slowly – slogging its way downstream, a palette filled with the pollen of nearby trees, algae exploding from the heatwave. and as we stand above it – we gaze down at it – and i am astonished at the color, the swirls, the ever-changing etch-a-sketch, like a jackson pollack painting has come alive right before us.

and the liminal space – this very tiny liminal space that the river has identified and snap-immortalized in our camera – evokes for me – once again – how momentous this very moment – that we can see this. and it, gratefully, untriggers – if there is such a thing – even for the briefest of time – the amorphous and not-so-amorphous anxiety-about-these-very-days i have been feeling.

and so i pick up the chartreuse-and-black river and carry it with me.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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sage the morning glory. [kerri’s blog on flawed wednesday]

we hike along this trail often, so often we know it well, its curves and windy way through the trees, the meadows, the boggy areas, the marshland near the river. only when we go earlier in the day do we see the morning glory. only when the sun is not too high in the sky are these beauties wide open, begging for attention on this, their day.

morning glory blossoms only last one day. they bloom in the early morning and by late afternoon have closed their fragile petals. the star in the middle of the glorybloom is stunning, the vine winds willy-nilly through the underbrush.

i always feel fortunate to be witness to the morning glory, though i am haunted by a song about morning glories that i cannot remember and haven’t ever spoken about. it was written by a man who stole morning glory moments from young women – from me – in vile self-serving predatory hunger.

i can hear the strains of finger-picked guitar, the croon of his easy, practiced singing voice. i know the lyrics ‘morning glory’ are in the lyrics of the song – i can practically taste it every single time we pass morning glory. but i cannot come up with the song and, since it was probably not published, i likely won’t be able to find it so it remains amorphous but potent.

and now, passing the pink and white glory holding hands and stepping together, i think it is probably time to sage the morning glory. it is time to exhale, to ease my mind into different lyrics – like the lyrics john denver sang in the song today, the lyrics of gentleness, of soft reverence for the other, of sweet love, of gratitude and appreciation, of new dawn, of fleeting time, of presence.

“today while the blossom still clings to the vine/i’ll taste your strawberries, i’ll drink your sweet wine/a million tomorrows may all pass away/e’er i forget all the joy that is mine today.” (today – randy sparks)

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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fervent fern. [kerri’s blog on k.s. friday]

they unfurled from their tiny seahorse stage into real-live ferns in what seemed like moments. all of a sudden, there they were – a whole corner garden of ferns. so incredibly green. lush.

but – even in their zealous and prolific growth – they are fragile. their fronds fall victim to the wind or the dogga’s curiosity, and they are knocked over, with – seemingly – no chance of revival. it seems – perhaps – safer to be in the middle of the bunch of ferns in the garden, rather than on the outskirts.

and i find myself nodding my head, as any artist might nod her head. yes. indeed. safer to be in the middle than on the outskirts, than life as an outlier.

when i finally felt safe enough – when the imperative was too much to ignore any longer – for me to pursue my own artistry – to leave the middle – i knew it was a different route. it would not be the interstate to success. instead, it would be a challenge to stay upright – to keep reaching – when the perils of the outskirts were plentiful.

i knew i should have kept on the road earlier, but there were things that precluded me – that hushed me – and i largely put aside that desperate voice inside of me begging to come back out – the one i had quashed so many years – decades – prior.

but the tiny seahorse fern in me didn’t give up. it kept nagging me until it was finally ok to face the perils.

and i began to write – with the fervency of the ferns in our back garden. my piano was never silent. i kept unfurling, reaching to the sun – an artist coming out of fallow.

and there was music. and more music. the compositions, the songs, the albums populated the garden rapidly – there was much time for which to make up. stages and boom mics and product boxes were the accoutrements of my life. and i could only imagine – and still wonder – what might have happened had it all started earlier, had i fronded in earlier life.

it remains a mystery.

even now – in which the unsuspected and life have mown down some of the outer fronds – there is a core, a center of gravity that holds the fern-muse.

though fragile on the exterior, we are never really broken to the core. there is still time – there is healing, there is a new spring.

there is a fern garden ripe for more ferns.

*****

WATERSHED © 2004 kerri sherwood

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