looking like a new year’s eve party noisemaker waiting to unfurl in celebration, the fern steadily grows. in-between last year’s clipped stalks and in and among dried leaves and the last vestiges of winter’s effect on mulch, it peeks out, pushing up toward the sun. it chooses to thrive, even covered by sandy soil and bits of the past. one day soon i will walk out to the back – where the fern garden is – and this tiny fern will have stretched and straightened and fanned out into a lanky beautiful feather.
it makes me think about blowout noisemakers. all furled up they look relatively innocuous and not particularly capable of being noisy. a little gumption and air blown into them and they can be pretty doggone loud.
the little fern breathes deep and reaches down into where gumption is stored. against the odds, this seemingly fragile, willowy plant rises up, centimeter by centimeter. suddenly it is a powerhouse, standing tall in the rain and a part of the wind in storms.
though it may be all trembly inside as it makes its journey upward and outward, its gumption, air and the sun give it courage and strength. it is tough and resilient and – it is said – has an incredibly strong survival instinct.
how often we are all tiny ferns – over and over – through fallow and rejuvenation, covered in the patina of the past and growing it off. innocuous and silent.
i’m trying to decide just how vulnerable to be, how brutally honest, how much to share. it’s like sitting on the fulcrum in the middle of the seesaw…you can choose either way from the pivot point.
this lovely couple – who we considered extended family and saw every sunday – was next door at the garden club’s secret garden event. we saw them from our deck, waving to us over the neighbor’s fence. we gestured we’d meet them in the front yard. giant hugs later, we started a little catching up, having not seen each other in years now. they had family tales and travel tales and many tales of adventure.
they told us they missed us. we were grateful to hear they missed our “energy” and “the fun we brought”. they asked about us.
he asked if i had a position now. i don’t. being terminated during a global pandemic at the age of then-61 with an injury to my hand doesn’t naturally lead to a new position, particularly in the arts. i’m 64 now and we can both agree that age discrimination is alive and well in our country.
she asked if i was composing, if i was “doing my music”.
i sat in the middle of the seesaw.
i’m asked this fairly frequently – people expect someone who has 15 albums already and who has also spent decades as a minister of music – to be fully immersed in music now. after. usually, i somehow deflect, saying something like ” you know, the pandemic…” my voice trailing off. then i quickly ask what they are up to, how their family is, the new grandchild, the retirement, the vacation, the joint replacement…
this time, though, with these dear people standing in our driveway on a beautiful day – post-hugs – tears sprang to my eyes and i began by saying, “eh, this might be too much information.”
and then i told them that i am not composing, that i am not “doing my music” and that i haven’t been able to. that it’s too been too much, that it was too hurtful, that – as much as my studio is a part of me, my essence – being fired devastated me in more ways than anyone can really imagine. it is not as simple as walking back into the studio, sitting at my piano, grabbing pencil and paper, placing hands on the keys. it wasn’t just any old job they took away. it was part of my soul. and – to be honest – i am having trouble recovering. still.
the fulcrum teetered and the seesaw arm – the resistance arm or the effort arm, i wonder – fell to the ground, jostling me. i apologized for the over-abundance of emotion.
they stared at me. they looked surprised; they looked sad. we were quiet for a minute, while i regained my composure and climbed back onto the fulcrum pivot.
but the words were out there. and they were the truth of it all.
before they moved, the neighbors around the corner had windchimes that were about three feet long. we’d stand on the sidewalk and listen to them, particularly when the wind was off the lake. gorgeous, deep resonant voices, each of the chimes. shortly after the house sold, we noticed that the spot where they hung in the old tree out the back side yard was empty.
these tiny bells hang off the garden fence in the back, attached to a metal heart that is also rusting. when my children were growing up, this heart with its bells hung next to the door into the kitchen. as i would walk into the kitchen holding my children when they were very little, in particular, they would reach up and jingle the bells. now the birds light on them and, though they don’t jingle, they seem to know.
i’m not sure the handbells are played anymore. we had three octaves and a dedicated choir of players. it was the last rehearsal of the night – after choir, after ukulele band. by the time we got to handbells everyone was a little bit giddy. many of the bell players were also in ukulele band, so these amazing volunteers spent quite a bit of time in the choir room.
playing handbells requires a bit of hand-eye coordination. you are reading music while you have this bell as an extension of your gloved hand…counting, counting and then…you thrust your wrist forward, allowing the clapper to strike the bell, hoping it’s at exactly the right moment. there are many evenings when laughter was the music we produced. as the director, i was always grateful for the generous collaboration of this group. and every time we played – from old hymns to gospel songs to contemporary pieces – it was beautiful. the bells would ring out into the high-ceilinged sanctuary and, i suspect, each player would marvel at their own contribution to such beauty, to such a particular lift of melody, of harmony.
if the handbells are silent now, i am sad. handbells harken back to the late 17th century and early 18th century and are considered percussion instruments. their sound is particularly unique, meditative in isolation, exuberant in chorus.
were i to have a bell to ring today – and perhaps we’ll use the metal singing bowl – it would be for jonathan. one ring without damping. his light will go on forever and we are eternally grateful to have known him, to have made music with him, to have broken bread with him and sipped wine with him. he was – and i suspect, continues to be – full of wisdom and love, and the world was a better place with him in it.
just like the sound of the bells on the metal heart on the kitchen wall and the large windchimes in the tree of our neighbor’s yard, handbells, too, are now a thing of my past. each, however, resonates on and on in the album of my memory. in times of quietude, i can hear them.
the old radiator in my studio was its home for years. i picked it up at a wholesale show…an old fencepost with equestrian leather…i couldn’t resist. it was perfect next to my piano. shh. quiet. ponder. dream.
it’s outside on the back deck now, really for the same reasons. shh. quiet. ponder. dream. it reminds us to take those moments and just be.
in the middle of the night last night we talked for a few hours. it was a big discussion…about life, about existence. we agreed that life is merely about those rare and outstandingly idyllic moments – a collection you might store in a little special box or place in photographs-in-the-round for a viewmaster – ready, at any time, for you to look at, review, be reminded of, hold close. not usually the gigantic stuff, but the slides of tiny, even silent, markers, instants you recognize as mica.
we had another water episode a few days ago. it seems the theme this summer. once again, drains in the basement yielded water instead of no water. a really lovely young man from the sewer-drain company came; it was their second time in just over a month. the tree roots they had cleared likely had left behind another piece. it doesn’t matter. he cleared it out and we moved on. it wasn’t without a ton of unexpected work…clearing all of david’s paintings out of the space to protect them, moving any and every thing out of the way of the water and allowing room for the technician to work without feeling nervous about anything around him. after he left and we cleaned everything up it was back to quiet.
we exercised down there again yesterday. it’s a peaceful place, even though it is a basement. being surrounded by the muse of david’s time at his easel brings a certain life to it. i imagine he wishes this little sign was in his studio, but there is a hush nonetheless, even without the sign.
our studios – places where time fills in the gaps between noise.
in the middle of existential questions about my wrist and hand, a screeching halt to occupational therapy imposed by the insurance company (don’t get me started), questions and the after-effects of betrayal, a silencing of my professional work, i have not sat there much. i enter to allow in light and fresh air, gaze at my piano and walk out. another silent day.
each morning, for at least a week, as i have sat with pillows propped sipping coffee, the window beside me wide open, i have been visited by a chipmunk. it sits atop the fence post across the driveway right opposite the window and looks in, chirping. i named him ‘sunny’ as it is often that the sun is just reaching that fencepost as he sits and the first time he was bathed in rays of light as he held his spot and said whatever he was saying to me in chipmunk i could not understand.
today, in the quiet of the morning, sun not even yet beginning to stream in the window, sunny was out there, chirping to wake us. i called out the window to him a good morning greeting. we chirped back and forth a bit before he left, satisfied he had awakened me. i watch for him now each day as the sun starts to rise.
three times in a twenty-four hour period over the last weekend i heard or saw the words “everything will be ok”: once written, once spoken and the third time bob marley sang it in the woods as we hiked the river trail.
sunday as we sat at the table on the deck in waning light a not-oft-seen hummingbird came directly over and hovered right in front of me. a couple days later as i stood on the deck, david watching, a monarch butterfly flew over to me and circled less than a foot above my head. and sunny, a chipmunk on a fence post, greeting me each day.
i guess that sometimes the universe is quietly whispering, “it’ll be ok. everything will be ok. shh.”
the fermata lingers over my days, issuing a pause of length undetermined. the baton is held in the air. there is no downbeat, no pattern of time. just prolonged waiting.
in dr. seuss fashion we wait in the waiting place.
answers are just beyond our grasp, skimming the rim of the atmosphere, invisible to us, ephemeral and flimsy, ever-changing, like trying to capture the flicker of flame from the top of a candle lit in the darkness.
so i just keep waiting. we just keep waiting. our world just keeps waiting.
we sit quietly. we rail at the wind. we speak up. we skirt to the sidelines. we ask questions. we wonder. we are met with silence. we are dissolved. we seek fairness, equity. there is none of that. we step away from the noise. it follows us, snapping at our ankles. we do good work. we seek truth. we are managed, a place of hypocrisy. our country flails. we flail.
and we wait. knowing that, indeed, better will come. knowing that, in some measures, new will come. knowing that, after the fermata, light will come. grieving all we have lost in the process, in the journey, in the waiting place.
reverse threading 