in stop-motion moments, we stood by the fountains and shot photos. the dancing waters mesmerized us, light waning in the sky under the canopy of big trees. it was peaceful, serene. there was no place we needed to be in those minutes, except right there.
the water danced too quickly for us to discern contours of form. the camera made it possible to see those gorgeous images of momentary pause, water suspended. looking at the photographs – enchanting.
“…as water takes whatever shape it is in, so free may you be about who you become…”
(john o’donohue)
we, in this ever-flowing river, babbling gently like the backyard pond, the mountain stream, or raging like the yellowstone river hurtling through the national park at this time, a part of the continuous-motion movie. our bliss, our concerns, our grievances, the things that distress us, the things over which we ruminate…though they feel to be screeching-to-a-halt, a visual-stop-place where the horizon ends – they continue on and on and life dances around us and through us. life invites us to waltz with it, to two-step, to sing along.
perspective, looking back, it’s all a tiny bit clearer in retrospect. my sweet momma’s words “this, too, shall pass” visit and revisit me. the dance steps we missed along the way are no longer worthy of our dedicated brooding, no longer stop-motion.
dancing water has brought grace of movement – forward. we keep on keeping on in the hazy-lazy-bubbling-frothy-waltzing river.
“…i’ll be there in singing skies and dancing waters laughing children, growing old and in the heart and in the spirit and in the truth when it is told…”
if i were to get a tattoo (not to mention the “sisu” tattoo i would love to share with my daughter) i think it might be a simple tattoo depicting the japanese practice of kintsugi: the golden repair and honoring of flaws, beauty in human brokenness. there’s no telling if i will do that. there’s also no telling if i won’t. i’m not averse to ink. i know that ink is an expression of where you are in your life, of what you believe in, of what you seek.
“age and stage,” 20 often says when we talk about the stuff of life. tight bud to full bloom to blossoms falling, petal by petal, to the dirt. all the iterations in the middle.
everything is like that, i suppose.
the first time my boots hit the wood as i crossed from backstage to the apron was memorable. i won’t forget it. each time i’ve walked to the piano, adjusted the boom mic, took a breath and started…memorable. i won’t forget. i remember being in the middle of one of my concerts, in the middle of one of the pieces…i forgot where the piece went…i was lost. i made it up. it was a solo piece; no one else had to share in my lapse of memory. i followed the theme and noodled my way through to an end no one would ever hear again. my producer hugged me and laughed later, “nice coverup.”
the pace of my walk is slower now than it used to be…steadier. now i know that no matter what, no matter the mistakes, no matter the braindrops, no matter the missed lyrics, the thinking notes…the story will get told, the bud will open and, like any artist, i will give of myself, despite of whatever i get or don’t get in return. age teaches you that it is not the return that matters. age teaches you it is in the giving.
we talked in the kitchen this morning about the work we have done in our lives. david’s paintings, hung and not hung, my music, recorded and not recorded. we talked about our youthful desire to have everything seen, everything heard…and not in a little way. we talked about how age has brought us to this place – a place where seen and heard doesn’t really matter. painted and played matters. drawn and written matters. expressed matters. received en masse doesn’t.
it really is “age and stage”. it’s not just the moments of our children, tiny beings not sleeping through the night, toddlers in terrible-two-tantrums – people reassuring us “age and stage”. it’s not just the trials of parents letting go of those adored humans who are now adults in the world, a little less access, a lot less time – people encouraging us “age and stage”. it’s not just our aging moms and dads, significant changes in ability, in perspective, in health – people comforting us “age and stage”.
it’s us. it’s our age and our stage, we are reminded. we try to fix what is broken, try to start something new, try to perfect the blossom. and we realize that it was a bloom all along. it was beautiful. it counted.
were we to be able to see – from the beginning – all the stages – the tight bud, the slightly opened petals – the bloom – the blossom falling to the ground – we might take it all more lightly, we might not cling to ideals of success and how we receive it. we might know there would be mistakes and dropped notes, lyrics mixed up and words not spoken. we might know there would be vulnerabilities and painful angsting, gorgeous improvised melodies, pictures without everything we desired, without everything coming to fruition, vamped decisions, regrets and, yes, bows. we might know that we would join with the rest of the human race on broken roads.
and we might know that the stages of our ages were all wrapped in gold.
and maybe ink.
“and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (anais nin)
it was the rip in the petal that attracted me. this stunning white bloom in the woods, surrounded by underbrush, green leaves and many seemingly-perfect flowers, this was the one that stood out.
kintsugi is a japanese art. it is the practice of putting broken pottery pieces back together again with gold. it is metaphoric self-care. it is the celebration of that which is difficult making you stronger. it is the holding most gently and most admiringly that which is not perfect. it is creating something more beautiful, more unique and more resilient from something broken.
this bloom in the woods needs no gold. its purity and absolute allure are natural. it does not suffer illusions of self-conscious expectations nor does it pine over flaws nor does it wallow in the not-good-enoughs. it simply and silently leans toward the sun in all its glory.
and it wins my vote as the most-beautiful, dazzling the forest floor, reminding me, once again, to have gratitude for all the imperfections that make me me.
“the quilts seem silent, a ‘silence like thunder.'” (sue bender – plain and simple)
they are not quilts. they are hand-crocheted, hand-knitted blankets, every one of them with a story. for hours on end, people who loved me sat and crocheted, put time aside and knitted. they chose patterns and stitches and yarn colors. they held the thought of a new baby in their hearts as they generously prepared their gifts. and with great anticipation, they wrapped these beautiful soft blankets in baby shower wrap, probably not truly anticipating that thirty-two years later i’d be holding them in my hands, all teary-like, struggling to decide what to do. do i keep them all? do i place them gently back into a plastic bin in the basement, carefully stored? or do i find a way – ala my sweet momma – for someone else who may need a soft blanket to have one of these?
cleaning out is like that. over and over and over again. the choices – like these blankets – are silent and thunderous. potent.
in the moments of holding these blankets close, i was holding my daughter, just born, wrapped in pastel-variegated-yarn. in the moments of holding these blankets close, i was tucking in my son, a soft white and blue blanket to keep him warm in a cold winter night of his birth. in the moments of holding these blankets close, i was decades removed from my life at the moment. i was holding tender memories, swirling in babyhood times, feeling the rocking chair seasons, wistful.
and i was unclear. unclear about what to do.
so i freshened each one. on the delicate cycle i washed each blanket, carefully checking for any marks or stains. they came out of the dryer perfect, even softer, if that is possible.
and i decided. i decided that they didn’t belong in a bin or in a closet, waiting.
we took them to the hospice facility in our town. a most delightful young woman greeted us there and thanked us. on the phone she had told me that these would be perfect lap blankets or shawls and that they always needed such donations. she asked me to fill out a form so that they could write me a thank-you.
funny, on the contrary, i wanted to thank them. for in the moment i placed the large bag on the chair and i was no longer holding the blankets i knew that i was passing on their nurture.
and i know that every time i might stop and think about knitted and crocheted blankets i will have pieces of times with my newborn babies wrap around me.
“each time i looked at the quilts, my busyness stopped. the fragments of my life became still.” (sue bender)
we didn’t order our dogga with stripes, but, had we ordered our dogga, we would have ordered exactly him. he is an aussie full of aussie-quirks and amber eye-contact, a furball of vacuum-stalling potential, a lifesaver in every way our pets save us from ourselves and the world around us.
he is – most definitely – not perfect.
though he knows he must sit-on-the-rug before going out – and wait for one of us to utter “ok” – he first must jump up and down, seemingly effortlessly, like an nba star looking for a basket. then, with a sheepish i-couldn’t-help-it look on his face, he sits.
though he knows he is not supposed to run along the back fence barking at the neighbordog, he must first run along the back fence and bark. then, with a wink at the neighbordog, he returns diligently to the patio or the deck, fully expecting a treat for his “restrained” behavior.
though he knows he is not supposed to pull on the leash during walks, the first few minutes are like taking a giant bungee cord for a walk – out and back, out and back – although recent days and the new use of the “wonder walker” have yielded a magical change, sans bungee-dog.
though he does not sing, he has several songs – the dogga-dogga song, the dad song, the mom song. no other songs count on his chart, except the babycat song, which we sing for him when he is – or we are – missing his babycat.
though we cannot guess what he is thinking, his beautiful eyes give us eye contact that tell us everything we need to know.
our dear friends have a puppy. he is full of puppy-smell and puppy-teeth and sweet wriggly antics and is the variety of dog that doesn’t shed. they are being very intentional about his training, which makes us think about the books we read, the videos we watched and the way dogdog turned out. we weren’t as intentional in that phase of our lives nine years ago. at least not about puppy-training. maybe there’s still hope. sigh.
we visited together and caught up outside around the firepit the evening we met him, puppy in a fenced playpen off to the side, learning how to calm-himself-down-when-new-people-arrive. we clearly need to start that part over with dogga.
we drove home talking about that darling puppy. our friends would love us to get a puppy now too. that makes us laugh. we are – oh so clearly – not ready for a puppy.
we pulled into the driveway and, judging by his quick walk, david was as anxious to hug our dog as i was. though dogdog was skeptical about the attention, especially since he could smell “puppy” all over us, he gave in to the lavish display.
because, though we didn’t order our dogga with stripes, though he sheds like dandelion fluff in the spring wind, though he sometimes tries our patience and is a bit doggedly stubborn about barking, though he has us wrapped around his little wagawag tail, he is exactly the dogga we need.
i do not remember my sweet momma ever peeling and mincing a garlic. i suppose it’s possible that she did – and i missed it – but i would venture a guess that she didn’t. garlic powder and garlic salt were in our spice cabinet growing up and i think they were the substitutes for the real thing.
they were depression babies, so my parents were not lavish spenders, fine-dining diners, exquisite kitchen-keepers. we had aluminum pots (it was a very big deal when they one day, at long last, purchased revere ware) and the infamous formerly-featured corningware. the cookware mattered not. family and friends gathered around the table together regardless. which, of course, is the point.
my dad was pretty proud the day he purchased my mom a portable dishwasher. they kept it in the laundry room right off the kitchen behind the accordion door that looked like it was made of woven straw. on special days they would roll it out and attach the hose to the kitchen sink spout, load it up and turn it on. when they moved to florida after they retired, a dishwasher-that-was-already-installed-in-the-kitchen was on my momma’s list. my poppo was in charge of loading and unloading, practically entirely washing the plates beforehand. my mom never tired of this amazing appliance.
i purchased a used dishwasher – not full-size, for our kitchen layout would not accommodate that – about a decade back and had it installed in the spot where the formerly-known-as-a-dishwasher dishwasher sat. sadly, it did not work for long. i should have purchased a new one, but that was not in the budget. the dishwasher-that-took-the-place-of-the-dishwasher is now also formerly-known-as-a-dishwasher. sigh. one of these days…
but friends and family have gathered around the table together – regardless of our dishwasher or cookware status – and we have happily prepared food to take to other gathering tables. which, of course, is the point.
when we lived on island, we had the same size dishwasher and i have to admit to being in love with it. it IS amazing – yes, momma! – you load it up and turn it on and voila! i know you know the rest. any time we are in airbnb’s and vrbo’s we embrace the dishwasher – well, not like hugging it…more like using it. it’s so twenty-first century! but i digress.
yesterday, when i was making rice, we got to talking about rice. (we are exciting people, folks.)
neither of us remember growing up with anything other than minute rice (and, of course, the exotic rice-a-roni array of rices.) with absolutely no judgement, we dove into the finer details of the cooking of minute rice vs raw rice that you boil and steep. it goes along with not peeling and mincing garlic, a collection of ragu and prego in the cabinet, canned and frozen vegetables. people’s habits and budgetary concerns are deeply ingrained and are hard to break.
from time to time we get pictures of what our grown kids are eating. they have prepared some fabulous meal or are dining out at a restaurant with incredible food and exquisite platings and presentation. often they are eating something we have never heard of; often my response is “wow!! that looks fantastic!” they have upped the notch on food from where we are and we glom onto what they send, asking for or looking up recipes, jaunting over to the restaurant website to ponder a meal there.
it’s funny how this happens. though i suppose it is not unexpected.
we have moved from garlic powder to real garlic in a generation. from the portable dishwasher to the installed dishwasher-formerly-known-as-a-dishwasher.
the next generation is taking it to the next level. dinners in instant pots, dinners with smashburger presses, dinners sous vide, dinners in air fryers, dinners with ethnic spices, sauces, harder-to-find ingredients, et al.
we are beginning to see more of this: the basement floor. more clear space.
as you know, it is a slow process, tedious, actually. and it is not something he can do with me. this is mine to do. for most of what is down there – in the recesses and the corners, tucked into old built-in cupboards and in, yes, bins and boxes and even bags, precedes him. he is happy to help, but it is somewhat a moot point, as the decisions are mine and he respects that.
it’s not just a little bit of pressure, not just a little bit of work. black and white decisions that aren’t really black and white.
you are weary of reading about this, i suspect. skip today, i would suggest. the basement clean-out is not a short story – it’s an epic tale, really – and, if you find any form of redundancy abhorrent, you will be tallymarking-in-your-mind the number of times i am talking about this. this will be a tallymark mess, cross-hash upon cross-hash, the slashes accumulate.
a few days ago i turned the inner cardboard tube of a roll of wrapping paper upside down. more birdseed than i am comfortable with fell out. i suppose you are wondering how much birdseed-saved-in-the-wrapping-paper-roll i find acceptable. well…really…none…as we are not the ones saving birdseed in that manner and it brings to mind the question of a city of dwellers below us about whom we know nothing. they live in the barn-red-grey zone in silence and anonymity, leaving tiny clues behind in their stash. i wonder what they think of the rest of the stash down there, most of which they are not likely to be able to get to – the bins of barbies and matchbox cars, the mementos and art projects my children created in elementary school, every story they ever wrote or note they penned me or the overalls that were ever-so-adorable on my son, the pink dress so sweet on my daughter. maybe they are intrigued with the antiques, the tools, the not-oft-used kitchen appliances. they are hoping to be invited to the next cornhole bags game, the next bocci ball tournament, the next badminton skirmish, the next time the pingpong table is set up and ready-to-go. they are gazing at the collection of pingpong balls, golf balls, tennis balls, baseballs, soccer balls, thinking the upstairs-dwellers have a pension for round things. surely they are impressed with the stacks of boxes of shrink-wrapped cds, though they are more likely mp3 critters and, being 2022-born, roll their beady little eyes at the mere mention of cds and cassettes. i’m guessing our tiny visitors actually have no opinions about all this and clearly no interest whatsoever in the 8-track player or the record albums. they are not thready nor are they sentimental. they were simply seeking places to stash their seed-findings.
yes, i will need a new broom…one of those angle ones that gets into the corners. there is much to be swept.
in time, there will be more floor. barn-red and grey. i have to get past the black-and-white of it all first.
every week we would drive to st. james so that i could take norwegian lessons. my sweet momma and poppo took them too. i had no idea why i was taking these lessons, but far be it from me to question the stubborn pull of the sons of norway lodge for my parents, who loved their membership there, a little inland from the north shore of long island. i belonged to the sons of norway youth group as well. one of my really close high school friends belonged to the greek youth group, so my membership at the loyal lodge didn’t seem quite so weird, but the greek youth group was way more lively than the norwegian’s, with many festivals and dances. i mean, just think of the food alone: norwegian fish pudding vs. greek moussaka, lapskaus vs. souvlaki, krumkake vs. baklava, akvavit vs. ouzo…there is a different level of excitement and celebration. anyway, i felt less like an anomaly going to norwegian lessons because angela went to greek school.
not much of the norwegian tradition has carried on. there have been times when we have made krumkake, filling the plain waffle cookies off the iron with fruit or whipped cream. there have – never – been times that we have sought out norwegian fish pudding nor lutefisk. never ever. i have never – ever – used my norwegian lessons. sadly, even if i went to norway, which is most definitely on a bucket list, i would not understand any of the language now’days.
but “uff da” has endured.
my dad used the expression often. it was a substitution for “oof!” or “oh geez!” to express surprise or dismay or just to buy a moment of thinking-time. “uff da!” is synonymous with him in our family. so it is likely if any of us sees a bumper sticker or what-have-you that says “uff da!” we will send it on and around. it’s like we have had a tiny visit from my dad; erling has spoken.
we have a couple “uff da” magnets on our fridge that came from their fridge. and my nephew named his children beautiful and unique heritage-rich norwegian names, carrying on legacy my dad passed down. i get to carry my dad’s name with me (as well as his jowls). and you can sometimes – though not too often – hear me say “uff da” out loud.
my sons of norway days are no longer, but i remember fondly the cute boy “j-r” in my class, the norwegian dancing instruction, the man from the lodge who built our stone fireplace rock-by-rock, the miss norway pageant in the city and the marzipan.
i’d be looking for a double-word-score square. or even better, a triple-word-score square, though that would be less likely. but heck, 8 points could be 16 or 24!
i love scrabble. i love words. and spelling. and, yes, even punctuation, though i know i am not impeccable in that arena. that is all sort of nerdy, but my sweet momma passed it down to me so i come by it honestly.
i was, admittedly, kind of nerdy in school. i never cut a class, never skipped a day jaunting around. i did my homework and i didn’t sit in the back. i passed notes all folded up into tiny squares, like everyone in the days before cellphones, but tried really, really hard not to get caught. i did my share of daydreaming but never in math class, which i also loved.
my sweet poppo, in later days, would sit in his chair by the sliding glass doors and gaze out over the lake out back of their house. he’d watch the cormorants and ducks, study the water for the slightest hint of an alligator, soak in the colors of the sun as it passed over the water. and i suppose he would daydream. all their travels and experiences – a rich melting pot of daydreams from which to fish. his quiet sitting was peaceful, almost meditative, interrupted only by coffeetime or a small project at his workbench in the garage.
the internet makes it easy to daydream. google anything and there is fodder for your wishes. yesterday i spent well over an hour immersed in all the details of a mountain home i literally fell in love with. dreaming, dreaming.
we bought a big bag of scrabble letters at an antique store a while back. we were going to use them to spell out words for our website and for marketing “the roadtrip”, a play we wrote that mimics a.r. gurney’s “love letters”. we used a few of them on our old stove, labeling the front/rear burners and oven with magnets glued onto scrabble pieces.
visiting a new antique store a bit west, we stumbled across another use of these tiles. thoughtful personalized gifts. with all the letters at your disposal, anything is possible.
it made me think that it might be fun to have a giant bowl of wooden letters – especially the blank ones which could make things interesting – and a scrabble tile holder out somewhere – on the table or the kitchen windowsill. whenever you wanted to, you could pick out the letters for how you were feeling or what you were thinking.
spring has peeked in, shook its head, and retreated.
it snowed saturday. all day. it was a really wet snow, and, though it did stick a bit on yards and roofs, it was not shovel-worthy. but it did bring out the restless.
we took a walk in it. in the olden days (not too long ago) we always took a walk while it was snowing. here it was – april 2nd – and it was snowing. so surely, we should not be freezing and i would not need my miracle mittens to enjoy the soft flakes landing on our faces.
not.
the snow pelted us as we walked along the lakefront. literally pelted us. it stung our faces; we had to keep looking down to the sidewalk. and, not wearing my miracle mittens was really dumb. this is wisconsin, after all. what was i thinking?!?
i tried to take photographs of the snow as it fell. i think i was really trying to take a picture of our restlessness, of the yearning for sun and warmth, of willing spring to stop taking its sweet time, to actually arrive and not linger in the green room off the stage of winter.
in a desperately intentional cup-half-full approach, we noticed grass that had greened, with snow on top. we noticed buds on trees, with snow on top. we noticed tiny sprouts of plants, with snow on top. we noticed that the streets were not really holding the snow, that the sidewalks were not snowy, that water was running next to the gutters to the drains. these were good signs.
the year my daughter was born – 1990 – it snowed the day before the first whisperings of her grand entrance into the world. it was may 13, mother’s day that year, and in one day i would go into labor and in two days i would be a mom.
but – may. snow. yikes.
after everything, simply every thing, i’m not sure hardy wisconsin souls would be able to take that this year. i think that, perhaps, mother nature might cut us some slack. perhaps a little more green and a little less white. perhaps a little more 50s and a little less 30s. perhaps a little more sun and a little less cloudy.
perhaps i need to get a grip and just ride the roller coaster that is spring in a great lakes state.
i’m guessing the tickets are free for residents.
i remind myself that patience is a virtue and other blah-blah positive, lofty adages. sigh.
i’m going to go hide in the green room with spring and discuss that.
reverse threading 