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Tag Archives: not-so-flawed wednesday


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in every walk of nature. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

one mention of jack-in-the-pulpit and i was back at blydenburgh park in smithtown. it didn’t take much to find myself in the woods, hiking along the nissequogue river, by the pond. camera in hand, early spring, looking for the earlybirds of the season. jack-in-the-pulpit didn’t disappoint, flowering shortly after my birthday, spotted on muddy hikes on brisk days.

i remember bike-hiking there, with susan. i just googled it and the county park was only 6.6 miles from my growing-up house. we would ride bikes everywhere. our destination of choice – most of the time – was crab meadow beach, but you know that. even in the winter, when handlebar-turned-down-10-speeds were impossible, my trusty little bug would get me there, to that beach. i would walk and walk and walk. the shoreline is a good place to think, to grow, sandy step by sandy step.

last friday – as it approached the end of the workday – we looked at each other. “fridaynightdatenight,” we tossed into the kitchen. as the hour wore on, we pondered what to do – on this datenight. an iffy-weather day, we didn’t bundle up late afternoon for a hike or even a walk. we were looking forward to making a big stockpot of soup, glass of wine in hand. we have three books we are mutually reading. we are binge-watching new amsterdam. dogga was at our feet in the kitchen. it was a cozy fridaynight.

the next day we hiked. because we really do love to be outside on a trail.

and the more i hike, the more i remember hiking.

but somewhere along the way, i stopped.

i didn’t hike. i didn’t take long walks.

and i am somewhat astounded to think about that now.

but not everyone likes to be on a trail or even a sidewalk, for that matter. not everyone likes to merely take-a-walk in the company of someone they love.

i didn’t realize how much i missed blydenburgh park and crab meadow beach and millneck manor and planting fields arboretum and smith’s point park and hoyt farm nature preserve – places so very familiar to me because i walked them – again and again – until i started memorizing the des plaines river trail and the van patten woods and bristol woods and allendale sidewalks along the lakefront.

that’s when i realized how much i had missed, how much each step on trails feeds me – nearby, or in the high mountains of colorado or the smoky mountains of north carolina, along the easternmost long island beaches or in the woods of upstate ny state parks or in the red rock of utah.

the trees were submerged in the river; there had been some mild flooding. i know these trees. we’ve watched them through seasons on saturdaydatehikes or latemondaytuesdaywednesdaythursdayafternoondatenights. we’ve attached to this trail and it feels as if it remembers us as we pass along it. soon, i think i’ll look for jack-in-the-pulpit, just in case. it would likely bloom later here than in blydenburgh park. spring is later here.

as i bent way down, camera in hand, to shoot through the mulch at the river, i was transported back to that suffolk county park, camera always in hand. and it made me think about all the years i had not stepped foot on a trail, had not walked-until-blisters, had not watched the water rise and fall on rivertrees or glimpsed jack-in-the-pulpit in the underbrush.

i wonder about what those decades of trails would have looked like, what mountains i may or may not have climbed, what roiling rivers i might have entered or not entered, what out-of-breath conversations would have taken place, what problems sorted, what challenges summited, what decisions made, what disasters averted, what center might have been out there, what wisdom trails may have gifted me, what might be different.

“in every walk of nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” (john muir)

i’m glad to have found my way back.

walks of nature.

blydenburgh park is 898 miles from here. crab meadow beach is 908. smith’s point park is 924. upstate new york around 1000. the smoky mountains are 739. the high mountains of colorado are 1237. moab et al is 1511. all on the list of places to return to. places to hike, to walk.

but bristol woods is 13 miles and the des plaines river trail is 12. and either of those is a worthy handinhand fridaynightdatenight.

*****

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


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the portholes. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

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.

*****

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


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my tiny bonsai. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

if the price tag had not read $9.99, i would have purchased this tiny stake sign. but, at that very moment, despite the it-made-me-pick-it-up marketing, $9.99 seemed a tad bit high for a five inch tall sign. still, ridiculously cute.

our sunroom is filled with plants – everything from an exploding ponytail palm to stalwart tiny cactus twins “the dots”, to charlie, the heart-shaped leaf philodendron to snakeinthegrass sansevieria to kc, my difficult bonsai gardenia. kc is my problem plant-child. i mist kc, i use distilled water, i have fed it and keep the bottom tray filled with moisture, i turn it to face the sun. despite my attempts to have conversation, to really share life – for i talk to it every single day – kc is stubborn. next i will seek specific bonsai gardenia plant food – there are several options online. i’ll probably do some research to really determine the proper way to nurse this treasured plant back to good health. i’m not sure where i went wrong and it means so much to me that kc will be healthy and will grow – unfettered and with wild abandon. my relationship with this tiny plant has become a challenge.

you would think, had i purchased the tiny sign, that i would have placed it in one of the burgeoning clay planters. there’s a posse of plants responding to being nurtured. you would think that the e.s.p. of choice might be one that is flourishing.

but it’s not so. i, for sure, would have placed the stake into kc’s pot. for this plant – despite its complexity – is dear to me and is most definitely my emotional support plant. kc is a tiny slice of real life, a little unrooted, a little nutritionally off. when i got it, there were two buds on it. they never opened and, instead, fell to the dirt. my nurturing is not quite right yet. something is not quite right. feeling a little defeated, i keep trying to figure it out.

one of these days, i hope, i will walk into the sunroom and a tiny bud will have formed. and then – the day it begins to slowly blossom – i will know that i have done something right, something that touched it, something that let this little plant know its cherished place in my heart. its bloom will open and i will know that kc is ready and present – with me.

in the meanwhile, i will just keep on keeping on, trying to be steady and, just off to the sidelines, giving it unconditional love. i’m trying to be patient and let it do its own thing, while i quietly do everything in my heart to support it. i am rooting for this bonsai every day and i know that the bloom that will someday come will be inordinately beautiful, exquisite in every way.

*****

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


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moonrise. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

“it’s full tonight. so we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. thus we sit, myself thinking how grateful i am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich it is to love the world.” (mary oliver – the sweetness of dogs)

we are on the west side of lake michigan. it’s the cold side, the side with many rocks, big boulders. the sun rises over our lake. the moon rises over our lake. and there are days – magical ones – when the moon is in full phase – a giant ball, moonlining to anyone on shore. wishes that landed on stars seem destined to come true. loving to-the-moon-and-back is potent and visual. it would seem – on those nights that the moon takes over the night sky and all else shrinks – that – in the purest sense -peace really could guide our planet and that love really could steer the stars, constellations with invisible reins tethered to reaching hands and hearts on the shoreline.

we drove home from the snowy trail and the moon was just starting to rise over the trees in the distance as we drove east. across a snow-filled farmfield, beyond the stand of woods, there it was, more intense each minute, dynamic through dusty rose and salmon and blush, finally flushed more golden. i kept driving east, directly to our lake.

we weren’t alone. there were other peace-and-love-rising seekers there and we all photographed our individual moon photos – the same beauty-shudder-rich sky as it turned to night over the great lake, its surface slightly rippled by calmer winds.

sometimes we forget how stunning this all is.

*****

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


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our snowdog. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

there is nothing, weather-wise, that dogdog likes better than snow. he is invigorated by it. he’s not particularly fond of rain and he is definitely not a heat-wave dog. but snow is a different story entirely. when asked, “what’s keeping you in wisconsin? why wouldn’t you want to move to florida?” i have to answer, “the dog doesn’t want to live in a hot clime.” period. i mean, really – every summer – he suffers (cue up maria portakalos in my big fat greek wedding – “she suffers” as i cannot write the word without hearing her voice.)

as i write this, dogga is at the end of the bed, curled up on the quilt, sleeping. he’ll be ten this year and that is astounding to us. he is slowing down a bit, sometimes acting like an older dog. but there is nothing that makes him seem younger than a good snowfall. running out, he eats the snow off the deck, licking it – like a sensational ice cream cone – as he goes. we look out the window to let him back in and there he is, curled up in the snow, covered in giant flakes, happy as a clam. snow is his gig. it floats his boat. it’s his cup of tea. it makes him happy, gives him the energy of a puppy, it’s his thing.

i wonder if we are as wise as this. our snowdog is not thinking about his reaction to snow. he’s not analyzing it or weighing its costs v benefits. dogga is not wondering if it will last or when the snow will melt, thereby rendering him snowless and less blissful. he is not asking when it might snow again, banking on the next time, forgoing some of the joy of this time. he is just out there, laying in it – full-out, napping, accumulating snowflakes like seconds of ecstasy. he’s fully immersed in something he loves, paying no mind to the rains of spring or the heat of the summer, unconcerned about the turn of the seasons. he is simply in snow and he is happy.

*****

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


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spotter. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

“my do!!!!” he insisted. there is nothing like a two-year old insisting – with all his might – that he will do it himself. he is extremely capable – strong, smart, wily. somehow you forget how much energy a tiny child has…it just goes on and on and on until it suddenly stops and sweet sleep takes over. amazing stuff. my little great-nephew’s curiosity is divine and his giggle contagious. his stubbornness makes me laugh, but mostly because i can stand back and watch his momma and daddy handle it. their turn. and i am thrilled for them.

even though he was figuring out how to climb the jungle gym in the playground, we were there to spot him. as he learned, our hands were firm, guiding him. as he figured it out, our hands were lighter, still there, but just poised and ready. much like all of parenthood, i’m figuring out. you hold on tightly, then just firmly, then lightly, then you let go, but you are poised and ready. and, just like j, they don’t turn around to see if you are there. they just keep climbing the jungle gym steps, anxious to get to the slide, anxious to explore the rest, anxious to play with the other kids. you are simply the spotter. somewhat invisible but always there.

at the end of the days there – with this marvelous two year old – we were really tired. his spurty focus of energy staccatoed our day as well and, now that my own children are grown-up adults, was something not as familiar to us. our days are more linear with less punctuation, if you will.

but i laid awake at night anyway. i rambled through thoughts of the days when my daughter and my son were little ones with “i do” on their lips. it brought me to places i remembered clearly and places that had slipped into corners of my memory. i missed them and wished that thirty years ago cellphones had had cameras and the ability to make videos. carrying around the 35mm camera and the vhs/8mm videocameras was cumbersome; today’s parents have so many ways to remember every single thing that happens.

my niece and i talked about how motherhood has changed everything. and i told her that will never change.

she will always – now – wake thinking about this little person. and she will always – now – go to sleep with him on the blink of her eyes. she will hold tightly and then firmly and then lightly and then – in achingly beautiful and hard moments – she will let go.

but she will always be his spotter, visible or invisible, noticed or not. he may not turn around to see her there, but she’ll be there.

*****

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


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flannel people. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

“…eat bread and understand comfort….” (mary oliver – to begin with, the sweet grass)

flannel is like that. flannel shirts, flannel sheets, flannel pjs. the touch of flannel on our skin and we become swaddled babies, small children held in the arms of a loved one, cozied, reassured, comforted.

though there are expensive flannel sheets ‘out there,’ our flannel sheets are from target. two sets of them now. both soothing, serene, bread-like.

we sat in paris – on park benches, cathedral steps, in the grass – with baguettes and cheese, bottles of wine, olives. when i think of paris now, i think of this…comfort – sinking in to the place, like sinking in to flannel sheets on a cold winter’s night, gordon lightfoot’s webs of snow drifting outside our window. i wonder how we could have had a better time – i know…the butter, the starred eateries, the crepes, the cuisine. but we are flannel people, i suppose, and we learned – for us – the way to really feel paris was to sit on its steps, in its parks, in the grass. it was to shop its markets, its boulangeries, its tiny groceries. it was to simplify and to feel the flannel.

because we ate bread and understood.

“…i have become older and, cherishing what i have learned, i have become younger….” (mary oliver)

*****

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


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millinery musings. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

littlebabyscion wore the lighted tree like a sparkling bejeweled crown. the tree was the guide back to our little xb in a very crowded parking lot. littlebabyscion wore it proudly.

i’m not much of a hat-wearer. i have those 180-earmuffs and wear those mostly. i think that my face looks like a smushed pear if i wear a hat and – the other day when i tried to describe to david what my hair does when i pull on a hat – i could only verbalize it with sounds – like mwuhhh! – the sound that might demonstrate the smushing down of long hair around my long face pulled over my long forehead. goodness! so.much.long. not enough round.

i gaze around at how very delightful other gals look in hats. i mean, some women wear hats like there’s no tomorrow. stunning, adorable, beguiling, you-name-it…they can really carry off a hat. me? i have a nordic face and my thank-you-poppo-dad’s forehead and the non-thick blonde hair of someone in my ancestry. not to mention these jowls that appeared a year or so ago. don’t worry…i won’t go on and on about those again. i am vowing to go on and on less. to me. to others. to the universe. my jowls are teaching me a lesson. “be less jowlish,” they say. i will leave it to you to decide what that means. for i do not want to go on and on.

so, suffice it to say, a crown would not be my best accessory. an adornment such as that sort of requires thick hair that doesn’t really tousle easily. i fail on both accounts. i do not wake like women waking in movies. (nor do they, i suspect.) instead, i wake and look like i have pretty much slept on my head or have sleep-wandered outside and found myself in a windstorm before moseying back under the covers. clearly i am a peaceful sleeper.

i do love the idea of a hat, though. and back in the day – during the forehead-bangs of the 1990s – i wore many a fine hat. a flat-brimmed black felt hat, a kelly green felt upturned-brim bucket hat, a paddy cap, a cowboy hat…once on, they were my companions for the whole entire day as hat-hair is a thing to which one does not want to expose others. it was my millinery period of time and i still have the hats in hatboxes in my studio closet. one never knows when hat-juju might strike.

and so, the two winter hats i have call my name every now and then.

we got out of littlebabyscion to go hike the trail. it was cold and really damp, a deep chill. i pulled the hat-with-the-biggest-pompom-you’ve-ever-seen over my head and reveled in the instant warmth. there is definitely something to be said about this whole-head-hat-thing as opposed to the 180s.

i pulled on my miracle mittens, looked at my reflection in the car window and began to walk away from the parking lot.

but not before i could hear littlebabyscion stifling a guffaw, trying hard not to laugh.

*****

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


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marvel. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

i wonder if the tree looked in the mirror and counted rings, pondering the impetus behind each one, the reasons for the wrinkles of years, ever-forming, ever-widening. it is doubtful that the tree gazed, searching the rearview mirror for clues, connective tissue, remembrances of angst or sublime moments. it seems more likely that the tree just accepted each concentric ring, the truth of time. it seems more likely that the tree recognized the steady strength it gained for each ring, the rootedness each ring-wrinkle brought to it.

it would seem that this could be a good lesson from nature for us. the natural, raw, untouched passing of time shown on our faces, each beautiful in aging. we could acknowledge the years and the easy and the hardships. we could bow to the accumulation of moments, time flying by as we gather minutes in our embrace. we could turn toward each other, accepting and without judgment, full of grace and care, measuring only our love for each other, unbiased by wrinkles or rings, color or patina. we could tenderly touch the faces of our beloveds and marvel.

*****

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


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both-and. [merely-a-thought monday]

ricko and nick could be friends. they are on the same page…that trite-but-true one of potentiality.

in “my big fat greek wedding” nick portokalos quotes dear abby, “don’t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.” out in the middle of the arctic tundra, ricko dewilde firmly states, “the best way to lose an opportunity is to believe it’s not there.”

john denver in “looking for space” lyrics writes,

“on the road of experience
join in the living day
if there’s an answer
it’s just that it’s just that way

when you’re looking for space
and to find out who you are
when you’re looking to try and reach the stars
it’s a sweet, sweet, sweet dream
sometimes i’m almost there
sometimes i fly like an eagle
and sometimes i’m deep in despair…”

we are all out there – looking for space. no matter the ladder rung, no matter the age, no matter the skill level, no matter the lifeline of work and education and privilege and lack thereof, no matter the past, no matter what we believe, no matter the matter we are looking for space. the place to stand and breathe and be exactly who we are.

this week i flew like an eagle. this week i was deep in despair. i would guess – were we all to be candid – there were many with me up in that eagle-sky and many with me scrambling in muddy-despair. it’s both-and. life is a correlative conjunction.

and – in that infinitely latent and screaming way of possibility – the space we inhabit on this good earth is full of it.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY