the crows have been barking in our backyard lately. they sit high in the trees and take turns flying to prime spots, cawing and letting all other crows know that there is an invader, an intruder, something with ill intent in the area.
the hawk has been hanging out in our backyard lately. he sits high in the trees or on the neighbor’s swingset or on our chainlink fence and every so often swoops down to fetch something mysterious and unseen off the ground.
the crows do not like the hawk and make it known. oftentimes, they gather together, mobbing, protests in-beak, and chase the hawk off. although not in harmony, it is a symbiotic relationship, predation, this hawk-crow living arrangement. the crows recognize that the hawk is a predator. they do not nuance the behavior of the hawk nor do they make excuses. they have no illusions and their task is clear – to drive him out of their territory.
crows, dealing with predation of hawks and owls, do not get to just live peacefully flying about, building nests, laying eggs, raising their young, making trips to the local walmart.
instead, in examples of symbiotic parasitism, parasitic birds prey on crows and other birds, laying foreign eggs in their nests, removing the host’s eggs. these eggs often hatch sooner than those of the crows, taking over the nest. fantasies of elitism, selectionism and superiority surely brew in their agenda-driven actions.
about 100 different brood parasites show up as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” attempting to fool various host birds, lay eggs in others’ nests, avoid the work and, eventually, reap the benefits as the newly hatched offspring kill off the siblings in the nest. it is “survival of the fittest”. some hosts recognize the wolf in their nest and fling them out, but this is not a common defense mechanism. brood parasites have evolved for long term. and crows and other hosts need be savvy enough to still survive, nonetheless.
as the crows mob in the tall oak tree behind us and begin cawing i think that we, too, must be noisy.
for there is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, set on long term survival, ruthless and predatory, parasitic and dangerous. do not nuance the wolf’s behavior. do not make excuses. have no illusions. be clear. recognize that it has ill intent, fantasies of elitism, selectionism and superiority, and must be driven out.
it really is no longer about us. it is now about those who come behind us. it is about those who follow our footfalls and any who step in moments beyond ours. we owe them – in advance.
we owe them a country based on life, liberty for all and the pursuit of happiness.
we owe them a country truly practicing equality in every way, be it gender or race or sexual orientation or economic status or religious preference.
we owe them a country that is healthy and mindful of its environmental future, a country that has clean water, clean air, clean vegetation, clean food sources.
we owe them a country with an openly crossed aisle, where respectful conversation takes place and negotiation is paramount.
we owe them a country where leaders are cherished examples of goodness, stalwart and compassionate role models for their children and their children’s children.
we owe them a country where truth is valued, where fallacy and falsehoods are not propagated like the wind, where honor stands tall.
we owe them a country where voting makes a difference and every voice counts.
we owe them a country and policies that hold every citizen’s safety in high regard.
we owe them a country that chooses kindness.
we owe them a country where national treasures are relationships not tangibles.
we owe them a country that cares about their good health, that supports them if they are hungry, that encourages them to learn, that embraces their new ideas, that cares when wrinkles grace their faces.
we owe them a country, a world, that helps them dream.
we owe them sunrises, sunsets and moonrises that hold promise, light and hope.
it is our legacy to them. it’s not about us any more.
happy-lights. we surround ourselves with these. on the deck, on the headboard, strung on ficus trees, draping the shelf in the kitchen. there are still happy-lights at the littlehouse on island, touches that made it feel like home, tiny torches of happy.
it is astounding to us that through the dead of winter, their glimmer shining through the snows of the season, a rainy spring and a hot, hot summer these little minilights, plugged in and on 24/7, lasted over eight months on our front rail since we put them up in early december for the holiday season.
in true beaky-behavior, i am going to write this happy-light company a letter. because what person, what company, doesn’t need to hear something positive during a time of so much uncertainty.
$2.99 is marked on the box. because i know me, i know that we wouldn’t have purchased them until they were on 50% off sale. even at full price, i have to say, the twinkle of these lights outside as we pulled up in the dark, the twinkle of these lights in our dark sunroom or over the littlehouse sink, is a we-are-home reminder. it gently says to us that we are in a safe place, a place of love, a place we care about, a place of light.
perhaps this country needs to string up some happy lights. 2800 miles across the united states is 14,728,000 feet. our happy lights are 20′ of lighted joy, which means 736,400 strands of this very set. that would end up costing a tad bit over $2.2 million. but….on a 50% off sale we’re only talking $1.1 million. and wouldn’t that be an inexpensive (federal-government-spending-wise) message to all: you are home. you are safe. you are cared for. you are in a place of light. you are loved.
a quote attributed to several, it appears lauren morrill first tweeted this.
for months now i have been imploring people – publicly – to wear masks. i have hoped for the simple respect of the medical guidelines of social-distancing and hand-washing, along with mask-wearing, to aid in the cessation of the pandemic. for months now i have watched people deliberately ignore the urgings of the medical and scientific experts, wearing masks arrogantly around their chins or under their noses or not at all, gathering closely, shunning the advice. it feels like asking your toddler to be nice to his infant sibling or her playground buddy – over and over and over. but toddlers learn to listen. how is it so easy to be devoid of compassion? how is it so difficult to care about others?
this country, based on supposed independence, is 331 million people inter-dependent on each other. we would cease to function were we to unlink arms in food growth and distribution, product supply, education, medicine…. it is a fool who thinks we are individually able to sustain life in these united states without each other. no matter where.
so why is it so hard to convince people to care about people? why are there rabid attendees at political rallies during a pandemic without masks, without physically distancing? why is it so hard to understand the perils of bringing covid-19 back to families, to friends, to schools, to communities? why are there unmasked motorcycle rallies where people attend and become super-spreaders? why did 65 people attend an indoor celebration in maine, thereby spreading the pandemic to 175 non-attendees, seven of whom have now died? why are people singing in places of worship when we know aerosols are aggressively contagious? why are people gathering en masse in backyards and parks sans masks, sans distancing, sans any evidence of what is really happening? why are there children and teachers in school, crowded into classrooms where social distancing is impossible? why is there any expectation that there are children at college who will not gather and party without heed to being restrictive when there are children with parents who scoff at this pandemic – how would we expect anything different? why are there people at captain mike’s without masks in a county and state that is having a surge of coronavirus? why are people screaming about their “freedoms”? surely freedom is of little value without those you love around you. surely freedom is of little use without health and stability. and yes, surely freedom isn’t free.
so why is anger so cheered on? why is leadership, so unworthy of respect on so many levels, so cheered? why are untruths so cheered on? why is the subjugation of racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, economic differences so cheered? why is the vehement denial of anything or anyone different so cheered on? why is smug elitism so cheered? why is bigotry so cheered on? why is violence in speech and action so cheered? why are vigilantes so cheered on? why is open-carrying assault weapons in public places so cheered? why is the destruction of all the good intentions upon which this melting-pot-country was built so cheered on? why is the system of pushing down, even further, those-without so cheered?
why is it that caring about other people is not cheered on?
susan wrote that someone stole her “coexist” magnet off the back of her vehicle. sigh. why is coexisting so hard a concept?
two people in a facebook thread LAUGHED (with the convenient use of laughing emojis) at a post i wrote responding to someone’s perception that there wasn’t a lot of peace and love going on in my town and to a comment about kenosha and what “BLM and rioters have done to beautiful cities” and that “denying that it exists [wouldn’t] make it go away.” i was sincere and fervently hopeful, while recognizing realities:
“here, with a house full of smoke from the fires, within hearing distance of the militia shots in the street. we could hear the blasts of tear gas, the yelling and chanting. we had a visceral front seat. but we also see many, many, many people coming together to try to address a long-standing (forever) problem of this nation. denying systemic racism exists will not make it go away. it is incredibly sad that conversation has to be aggressive and pointed, rather than generative and mindfully intentional. cities can be rebuilt, but lives are lost forever. i don’t want to live in a city that looks beautiful and is ugly underneath.”
and they laughed. LAUGHED. i had to step away to catch my breath before i could respond. what is becoming of human decency these days?
yes. kenosha painted boarded-up windows and painted over graffiti of negative messaging. yes. because, connectivity and love are the beginning. and reminders of those can only help. each positive message – in a city boarded up and burned and looted – reminds us of the most basic of emotions: LOVE. each positive message reminds us – as we walk about in this raw wound – that we are incomplete, we are flawed and we have much work to do. we need listen to each other, without overtalking. we need speak, without animosity. we need respect, without exception. we need conversation. we need connection. each positive message reminds us that hope exists, even in the tiniest brush of paint on wooden board.
this is a time of division, to be sure. day after day i am confronted with this reality and with peoples’ brazen attempts to undermine relationship with rhetoric and falsehoods, misplaced loyalties and inaccurate assumptions, and, worse yet, words of aggressive animosity and actual hatred. i wonder what the fallout will be. will the silken gossamer threads of connection sustain? will empathy fall by the wayside? will love of humanity – in all its shapes and sizes, genders, races, ethnicities, socioeconomic positions, religious affiliations – all its anythings – prevail?
“we live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender.” (john o’donohue) the question is always, every single day, how will we live? how will we spend that time? who will we be?
realizing the vast array of wise words that would also be appropriate alongside photographs we’ve taken in kenosha, i chose to post these words of dr. martin luther king jr., “darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” and i added this in answer to derisive comments about protestors:
“one of the foremost protestors in this land was dr. martin luther king jr. the thousands of people who walked in peaceful protest here, even drove and marched right by our house, were walking in that spirit. there have been rioters and looters in each city of unrest. they are spurred on by the vitriol and angry words of the current president, who seems to revel in discord and chaos. the fact is, the vast majority of people who are protesting in this nation are protesting in peace. just like in kenosha. this nation needs equality – the only way to get there is to listen to those who speak, listen to those who protest. their words count.”
and then, in a fine example of what conversation has defaulted to, i was called a “cupcake”, a “snowflake” and “infantile”. wow. i beg your pardon.
we cleaned the garage this weekend. our garage is old-old-old. it has a little bow in the front and there is a bit of an issue with the walls no longer in alignment with the foundation. the decades-old automatic garage door opener no longer opens it. que sera, sera.
there was the usual assortment of garden tools and clay pots, chairs-in-bags and chairs-without-bags, the wrought iron table and umbrella we hadn’t put out yet, random bags of potting soil, milorganite, sand, a plethora of spiders and their webby homes. there are old doors in the rafters, the tricycle My Girl and My Boy rode, a red wagon, the hammock. there are jacks, a snowblower-that-doesn’t-work-but-we-should-have-repaired, a wheelbarrow that has seen many trips down third avenue. our bikes hang on hooks; we wonder if i will be able to ride this summer – the whole two-broken-wrists-thing has put a damper on things. there is a woodpile rack waiting for us to re-stock, have a few bonfires in the firepit or the chiminea. and there is my old vw bug. smack-dab in the middle of this tiny one-car garage is my well-loved 1971 super beetle.
it was father’s day yesterday when we moved it out of the garage, me behind the wheel, clutch in, gear in neutral, hand ready on the emergency brake as david pushed. it hasn’t been started in years and i could hear my sweet poppo groan with me from another plane of existence as i looked it over. dirty from a few years of garage-sitting, it sure-enough wouldn’t start and i ticked off a list of things that likely now need fixing. these are things i can’t do anything about right now, so i did what i could do something about.
i got a bucket of warm carwash-soapy-water and a good sponge and my dad and i washed our bug together.
i could hear him telling me about when he and my mom picked it up brand-new in germany for their roadtrip around europe, about how it was shipped back home to a port in new york. i reminded him about how he ‘sold’ it to me in the mid-70s and how i drove that little car everywhere – rain, sleet, snow or ice – and it always kept me safe. i reminded him about how my little miniature-collie-mixbreed-dog missi used to ride in the well (i could hear him laughing when i retold how she one day actually pooped in the well.) we talked about its color iterations – it was born baby blue (marina blue, they called it). somewhere along the way we had earl scheib’s paint it navy and later on down the road it was painted white, its current color. i drove it with my best friend sue back and forth to florida, a trip where she learned how to drive a stick shift. it lived in new york and then florida and then wisconsin. it’s been dragged behind tow trucks and up on flatbeds. it bowed out of the drive moving up to wisconsin, so we pulled it behind us with a tow bar. it’s had a couple engine overhauls and lots of tires. i know how to adjust the timing and the carburetor myself. i’ve played countless john denver and loggins and messina cassettes at full volume in this little car. the heat was either stuck on or stuck off. my poppo reminded me that it had 455 air conditioning – four windows open at 55mph. i drove it to get both my degrees in florida. i drove it through a drive-through to get a milkshake the day i went into labor with My Girl. it’s been around the block.
i gently washed the dirt off of my little-white-vw-bug yesterday and realized how time had flown by. i was struck by how – right now- in the middle of a pandemic and unrest – time seems to drag. both are true.
yet i know that one day, as i ponder this time – in all its dragging chaos and emotional upheaval – i will look back and realize time, precious time, was actually flying by.
i sat down on the rusty metal bumper and missed my dad.
the ferns make me think of sally; the day we pushed the wheelbarrow up and down third avenue back and forth to her house – over and over – loaded with hosta, ferns, daylilies. the sweet-smelling peonies make me think of linda, digging in the dirt of our gardens, planting, weeding, helping to shape the space. the grass makes me think of russ and marykay, again, a day of wheelbarrowing, again third avenue, but due north instead of south, over and over. we dug the pond with big help from ted and monica and a bevy of friends at our ‘big dig’ party. we sustain the pond with words of wisdom from jay and charlie. we build bonfires in a firepit from jen and brad and we watch lettuce grow in wooden planters from 20. we just added hosta from daena’s mother-in-law-to-be; dan and gay delivered them. it has taken a small village to plant our garden.
it is not without luck that these have grown well. dogdog has done his best to try and decimate the yard and My Girl worked long hot hours last summer pulling weeds any rainforest would be proud of; our stay on island and not in our backyard encouraged strong holding-on-not-letting-go weeds of great substance, but the girl prevailed over them.
we didn’t hire a garden center to ‘do’ our yard. it’s not too planned; it’s definitely not too fancy. it is a place of sanctuary, though. a place, created with so many people we love. a place where – in the middle of this pandemic, in the middle of the heart-wrenching chaos in this country, in the middle of economic worry for so many, in the middle of fear of more divisiveness and even less thoughtful leadership – we can sit in broken adirondack chairs on the patio or on the edge of the deck, arms wrapped around our knees, listening to the fountain, the birds, the wind in the trees.
the sun warms. and we wait to hear the croaking of the pond-frog who magically appeared just a few days ago.
the aarp article addressed ‘dyadic coping’, in brief, the way a couple together handles the stress reaction of the other spouse. the edition is dedicated to the pandemic so this bit of writing is not a surprise.
in my rant yesterday about every-little-thing david very calmly started to talk about a plan – ways that i can lower my level of anxiety, ways that i can process without taking it into my body. ugh. i just wanted to rant. for a little bit of time. his let’s-solve-for-this guy approach was lovely dyadic-ly, but made me want to roll my eyes. letting off steam, regardless of the lack of any linear thought, is helpful. five minutes later i felt better. nothing was solved, stress still existed, but i could breathe better and move on to the next thing until the next time.
these are somewhat sleepless nights. even if i drift off after our mountain-climbing adventure of late night fare, i awaken. and, like you, i suspect, i start to think. everything from wondering when i will see my children to finances to work to why the kitchen sink is draining slowly filters through my brain. although i would definitely label david more daytime singularly focused, my obsession is in the middle of the night with angst. serenity is elusive.
perhaps this painting is so very appealing to me because of the quietude. the surrender to rest, beloved pets conceding to the gravity pull of being together, of repose. an eyes-closed moment. triad-ic coping.
i woke in the middle of the night to discover i was spooning the cat. he jumps up on the bed and, pretty much like a sack of concrete, settles in for a long night’s nap, mostly because, well, clearly, the other 23 hours he slept in the day were not ample enough sleep. he snugs in and prevents movement of most sorts: there will be no blanket adjustments, no leg adjustments, little rolling over. my hot flashes necessitate much wrestling to find cooler air as he has permanently planted his sweet large body and is down for the count. and so, you must adjust. granted, his sleep-apnea-style-snoring would be cause for plucking-and-moving (to another room) but we love him and suffer his sleeping-sovereignty; the benefits outweigh the costs.
sally told me that there is a machine that duplicates the frequency of a cat’s purring vibration. i did not know that cat purring is healing and restorative – to broken or fractured bones, tendons, joints, muscles, infections. we would rent out babycat but i am trying to figure out how to make him lay on my broken-and-in-the-ridiculously-slow-process-of-healing wrists. once again, the benefits outweigh the costs.
i hadn’t ever had a cat before b-cat, but now it’s been almost eleven years. he is in some ways more of a dog than a cat, having tolerated a parent who knows dogs and was too busy at the time to read ‘kittens for idiots’ all the way through. so he sits when asked and speaks when asked and does dog-like things. however, he rides the fence and takes advantage of cat-like things at will, like claws. and he is fickle as fickle can be. jen explained that cats will patiently ‘allow’ you to stroke them and pet them and fondle them, all seemingly appreciated, until the doll flips and it suddenly reaches out with both front paws and pulls your hand up to its razor teeth. ahh, but those moments preceding the bite…the benefits outweigh the costs.
in this time of other-worldliness and alternate-reality these creatures of ours – dogdog and babycat – are companions unlike any other. they will not argue politics or policy. they don’t strategize or scheme. they are not semantics-nuts or particularly immersed in propaganda-hunts. they will not roll their eyes at our rants nor will they feed them or egg us on. instead, they comfort when they suspect we need it. they are quiet when there’s been too much noise. they are entertaining when we need funny. they are warm in the cold pandemic plane.
and they curl up with us in solidarity. benefits always outweighing the costs.
20 years ago. apparently the last time gas was 99 cents a gallon in wisconsin was 20 years ago. i don’t remember that in particular; my children were young and things were busy. how strange to now be able to purchase gas for 99 cents a gallon, filling up little-baby-scion for about $10, and not be able to go anywhere.
20 years before 20 years ago i remember gas being 79 cents a gallon or so. on long island, i would go to the citgo station on the corner of larkfield and clay pitts road in my vw bug, filling up for well under $10. they pumped your gas for you back then. i had one of my first credit cards, a citgo card, in those days. on one occasion, a couple days after i got gas, i received a phone call. it was from the guy who had pumped my gas. he had saved my information post-pumping and looked my last name up in the phone book. he called to ask me to go on a date. he was always nice to me every single time i got gas, so i thought it perfectly innocent to accept. i don’t remember where we went, but i do remember thinking that i would absolutely not repeat the date – the somewhat unusual way he got my number (i’m thinking that would be against credit card protection acts these days) was befitting of his um, unusual-ness. “she’s not home,” my mom would tell him time and again when he called. after a plethora of calls over a series of days, i told him i wasn’t interested. i started going to mobil.
citgo, dairy barn, king kullen, genovese drugs, the card store – these were all around the corner, up the hill and turn right. to get there you’d go right by tommy’s house on the hill. and just today i found out that tommy, one of the absolute cutest-boys-in-high-school, has died. a man taken by coronavirus, i read the posts on facebook remembering him. it seems, as we lose track of people in our orbit, that they freeze in time – i never knew tommy as an adult so he remains age 18 in my mind’s eye. we lose track of them and we don’t know their successes or their challenges, things they struggled with or how their lives were shaped as they ‘grew up’. we make assumptions and find out later that their lives were impacted in ways we never could have guessed, in ways we would have never wished for anyone. it saddens me deeply to think of tommy, the cool-boy-in-school, struggling in his life, trying to get a firm hold on steady. the things we don’t know, riding our bikes up that hill just to get a glimpse and maybe wave to him.
20 years go by. and another 20.
and we sit at the pump where it’s 99 cents a gallon. there is a global pandemic. we have a blank triptik. as we drove away from the pump, we looked at each other and pondered without answering, ‘where would we go if we could go?’
but right now, there is no where to go. were i to be on long island, i would go back to my growing-up house and sit on the curb for a bit. then i’d go around the corner and up the hill. and i’d wave as i’d pass tommy’s old house.
