parsley and rosemary. in what would seem their prime, it was time to harvest, for another frost might damage them and a freeze most certainly would. we covered them – along with the basil and the mint and the lavender – but it’s november and it’s wisconsin, so it was time to make some other choices. because it’s what we do, i researched. and then, with snippers, went out and snipped off stems, laying them gently on a cookie sheet so that i might freeze them and pull them out mid-winter to use: fresh herbs in the winter from our own potting stand will remind me that spring will, yes, arrive again.
and yes, i know it’s simple to run to the grocery store and pick up a fresh bundle of parsley and one of those little plastic containers of rosemary. but there is something to be said for these herbs that we grew, that gave us so much joy to watch as they flourished this summer. we simply bought them at lowe’s, planted them in good soil in good old clay pots, placed them in the sun, watered them as needed. and we celebrated them as they grew. mighty and strong.
it’s a little like children. you try your best to plant them in good soil, in solid but permeable pots, expose them to the sun and nutrients as they need them. and they flourish. and one day you are watching your daughter fly down the biggest mountain run in summit county – one of the highest inbound ski terrains in north america – on a snowboard, her skills generously coaching and instructing others. and another day you are watching your son’s hands fly across the mixer board, spinning electronic dance music, bringing elation – even rapture – to beautiful people expressing the freedom and joy of living. and then another day and another and another…mighty and strong.
it’s good dirt, a good pot, sun, nutrients. celebration.
and a whole lot of love.
maybe next year we’ll also plant sage and thyme – to complete the old folk song that goes through my mind every time i think of parsley and rosemary.
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.
in an effort to grab the moments and store them away so they will be retrievable, i take photographs. i want to remember the physical surroundings, the way it feels, the way it tastes, the way it smells. pictures help me recall the visceral. they are prompts in a memory script. the “remember …” cue.
i didn’t take a picture, but, because there is nothing like an unexpected call from your adult child, when the phone rang in the middle of costco and i glanced at it to see that it was our daughter calling, the moment is indelibly ingrained in my mind. walking toward the exit, standing and chatting near the tires-for-sale, shielding the phone’s microphone from the wind as we walked to littlebabyscion, sitting in the parking lot, dogga in the back wondering what errand adventure was next…these are all part of this wonderful rambling conversation, a joy that topped off my week – a perfect friday early evening – in a way that nothing else can.
the neighborhood eatery was not far from his apartment and as we drove over, our son was in the front, directing me, nagging me about going too slowly, instructing me how to properly drive over the humps in the residential streets of chicago and getting out to check the damage when we were rear-ended at a traffic light (luckily, no injuries and no apparent damage). we discovered the joy of lobster deviled eggs, had the skinniest delectable french fries, sipped mimosas and laughed over brunch. we went to his new place, took measurements, talked about decor. i took many, many photos, my iphone always at the ready. the best belated birthday gift – this time together. nothing else can top it.
i don’t take these moments for granted. our children are adults, with busy, consuming professional lives and significant people to share time with. there’s not a lot of spare time and i get that. they don’t live in town and i don’t get to see them as often as many of my friends see their grown children. “the moment they are born the separation begins followed by a life-long balancing act,” a dear and sage friend wrote about children and motherhood. the perils of parenting.
it is often the people with children in their own town who remind me that we raise children to be independent, wingèd and free. though well-intended, these are easier words, these wisdoms, and less painful when one does not have to tamp down the embers of longing that missing beloveds creates.
i try to “think of life…in all its small component parts.” (anna quindlen) it is, truly and after all, about balance.
so i save every one i can. every moment and conversation, all eye contact and every hug. i take lots of pictures – of them, of me with them, of us with them, of the surroundings, of what is right around me when i am with them. it is a storehouse of riches that i may go to in a self-absorbed minute of feeling scarcity, a reminder that, indeed, life is full, nevertheless. a springboard of deep appreciation.
“exhaust the little moment. soon it dies. and be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical disguise.” (gwendolyn brooks) glory in either, for we learn the lesson over and over: you can feel it. and they all count.
i “try to look at the view.” (anna quindlen)
the view – that must be why i have twenty-four-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-eight photos on my phone. twenty-four-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-eight views of twenty-four-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-eight moments.
and this one – the open-beamed ceiling of cherished brunch with my son.
the text came yesterday afternoon. it was a girl! born at 4:02pm with the sweetest little pink face. the up-north gang celebrated together virtually as new grandparents were born. and everything changed in the world as a tiny being – full of all the potential of the universe – entered this earth.
it’s happening all around us now – this grandparent thing. babies are being born, tiny boys and girls lighting up lives just as my own beloved children have always lit up mine. the focus changes, from one generation to the next, as it should be.
when you marry in the middle of middle age there are things you wonder. one of them is how you would have parented tiny beings together, had you had the chance to experience that. our girl and our boy were already adults when d showed up. and so, as empty-nesters, we ponder and wonder and guess and make up stories and scenarios and laugh aloud – a lot. we wonder what traits a little boy or girl would have of his, what characteristics of mine. these are questions that will never be answered, so it’s great fodder for us.
in the meanwhile, we adore the pictures of lilah, the videos we see of jaxon, tiny eliza on facebook, watching secondhand as landon and will and gigi and hayes grow and mini grown-up lily recites the pledge of allegiance.
and we wait, with great anticipation as new little people are expected, are pined for, are welcomed into this world. we know that with each new pot roast, each new bun-bun, each new diaper dinosaur the world gains so much more potential, so much more to love.
the family photo changes through the years. i read the other day that it was a friend’s 39th wedding anniversary and noted that it would have also been mine. but things change and times change and the family photo changes. i am grateful for the years before and i am grateful for the years now. both. either way, both family photos have similarities. one would show a middle-aged couple, empty-nesters, looking to get to know each other again. the other shows a middle-aged couple, empty-nesters, getting to know each other in the first place. a common thread – that getting-to-know-each-other – it is all fodder for much laughter, many foibles, much self-deprecation, many questions, few answers, and a lot of punting on the journey through aging smack-dab in the middle of life.
it became obvious to us that our roadtrip together, the-second-time-around-roadtrip, was a source of humor and a reason for lightheartedness. there is simply no other way to look at it. this is not the stuff of princess and prince, nor the stuff of harlequin romance novels, where the boy-who-inherited-the-kingdom finds the bereft-girl-quietly-sitting-in-the-shadows. it is not the stuff of ease nor the stuff of perfectly-smooth-trails. but it is the stuff of happily-every-after, just like so many other stories smack-dab in the middle of middle age as couples navigate through change and challenge, glee and sadness. we are just like everyone else. and our story is your story, with a few different details.
and so we thought it might be fun to celebrate being smack-dab in the middle, to raise up the questions of being there and the elation of being there, to poke fun at the confusion of revisiting the beginning of romance – so many years ago – or the actual beginning of romance – just a few years ago or, maybe, right now. to look at each other through fresh eyes, a fresh horizon. to notice, to hear, to see, to intuit each other. to dance in the too-empty and too-neat kitchen. to make noise in the too-quiet house. to make plans and dream dreams, even ones that are different than we imagined.
ours is a story of second chances. but so is the story of my friend and her husband of 39 years. and the story of the dear young man who used to be in my choir class in the 80s, now married to his husband for years. all of us have second chances each day. to sit across the table and gaze back at eyes we have known for ages, eyes we are in the middle of knowing, eyes we are just beginning to know. to laugh together and lift each other from wistful moments. to understand and hold each other with compassion our guide. to listen and discern what we each are saying, what we each need. to step into futures of unknown voyages. we live smack-dab in the middle of the middle, holding hands, loving each other in old and new ways. and cherishing every photograph along the way.
in the last few years i have become increasingly vocal, doggedly writing about the politics of this nation. i have watched an administration sweep in wearing hatred and division on its sleeve, attempts to undermine and destroy any forward movement this country has made or has desired to make on so many fronts. i have decried their rhetoric, narrative of severing, narrative of bigotry, narrative of self-serving agenda. i have pushed back against the frailty of humankind and against the furthering of prejudice and discrimination of any sort, be it under the heading of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, economic status, religion. i have, time and again, asked to uphold what would make the populace safer in a raging pandemic. i have asked for leadership to be responsible, to be truthful, to be one with integrity, to prize virtue. i have raised up climate change and this good earth time and again. i have cited examples of inequality. i have been open and honest about my feelings and opinions, vulnerable to assault by those who do not agree. i have learned that’s ok.
in the last few years i have become increasingly vocal, doggedly writing about the evanescence of time, the impermanence of this very life, the beauty that rises with the sun. i have pointed to moments of joy, moments of devastating grief, moments of sheer bliss, moments to memorize. i have spoken of and to the ocean and of and to the top of mountains. i have drawn pictures in the sand and let the cool waters of high elevation streams run through my hands. i have described treasured moments with you, my children, with family, with friends, with my husband. i have been aware of how fleeting time is as it races on. i have learned that life is simply that – learning.
in this time it is my hope that this country will gather its resources into its national quiver and will lead forward with arrows of love and compassion. it is my hope that this country, like committed and passionately dedicated parents holding newborn life, will embrace each and every one of its citizens, holding and blanketing them with reassurance, with protection, with a promise of doing better. it is my hope that this country will offer to you – its children and its children’s children and its children’s children’s children – new times of peace, new times of equity, new times of profound and wise knowledge, new times of opportunity, new times of kindness, and that this will surely sweep across the land from the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters, from sea to shining sea.
it is my hope that you both, my amazing and brilliant daughter and my amazing and brilliant son, deep in your adventurous souls, will feel the freedom promised you in the universe. it is my hope that you speak your truth, that you speak for, that you speak against, that you speak up, that you speak out. it is my hope that you feel affirmed in your lives, strong and powerful, fiercely dedicated to every breath, tenacious, and both gently kind and profoundly vehement in the demand for justice and liberty. it is my hope that you feel unconditionally loved and cherished: by me, by partners, by family and friends, by this nation, by this very good earth. it is my hope that in the moments you take a deep breath and exhale you know that your presence in this universe is light itself and is truly making a difference…forever.
reverse threading 