in a really rare moment, we had the amazing chance to have our children and their partners gather around the dining room table with us. to say i was thrilled would be an absolute understatement. it had been six years since we had actually been together – my two children and us. it was a giant gift and i am grateful for it.
plates, pasta, wine, bread – all were merely props as i gazed around me, watching these beloved faces, listening to laughter and conversation. i tried hard to memorize all of it. these brilliant, creative seeds of tomorrow, bright lights of real humans, of good people.
the next day we hiked, just d and me, after everyone had left. we talked about our blink-of-an-eye time with our adult children, about the fun chaos in the kitchen the night before, about the teasing and the ribbing. and i found myself holding onto the filmy threads of each moment before they flew away.
the photographs will help, of course. they will be posted in our kitchen and i will pass by them, often looking at them and smiling. but inside, i will hold onto the way it all felt, the heart-stopping hunger i had felt longing for a moment together, the breath i could exhale as i sat at the same table with my children and their partners or as we all clustered together in photographs.
but i know i won’t be able to hold onto all of it. time tugs at memory like that.
and the clustered fluffs of seeds will be tugged out of the pod by gentle breezes and fierce winds. they will swirl about and land somewhere, planting. another milkweed.
and i hope there will be another table-sitting somewhere soon – all together – as these brilliant humans go about their all-grown-up lives, swirling about with gentle breezes and fierce winds at their backs.
with what seemed a millisecond between seasons, it is – clearly – fall now.
i had a list of places to go, places to show d. but the tropical storm/nor’easter put a crimp in all that. planting fields, millneck manor, blydenburgh park, hecksher park, every beach on both shores, out east – it was all on the list.
but the reality was that both time and good weather were limited. so in tiny bits of time, we went to the most important places. the other places will have to wait.
grateful to be home, we went to our favorite loop trail and immersed in the turn of the season, appreciating all the little and big ways it had changed in the week we had been away – a week that felt infinitely longer.
i readjusted the smart lights and the old-fashioned timers. d pushed the garden lights earlier. we refreshed happy lights and, and just a few days ago, i turned on the heat for the first time this season. i love autumn, but the waning light is a bit challenging.
any store we enter now is decked out in full holiday schmalz. that – i have to say – is too much for me. though i am completely aware this works for some people, it just seems too soon and it seems a bit tone-deaf to me, considering all that is actually happening.
as i think about the holiday season – knowing our adult children will not be celebrating here with us this year – i wonder about our own celebration. i have some seriously mixed feelings about it all. though being surrounded by lights and cheerful reminders of merriment and joy would be helpful, i also know that there is a tipping point – at least for me. too much of that might be like closing my eyes to the painful changes taking place right here, right now. it will be important to balance the hope of a season of light with reality. some of the merriment, the decorations, the glitter and ribbons and wrap might have to wait. just like millneck manor and planting fields, the beaches and parks of the island. sometimes just a bit is also enough for the moment.
in the meanwhile, we touch this season. we take cuttings of our plants to propagate for next year. we miss long, lazy light as it slowly disappears. we start to wear boots.
the time of fallow is coming.
fallow.
and then?
i truly hope that soon we here in this country are able to – driven to – resume the cultivation of kindness and humanitarian goodness, to regenerate respect and care for each person here, to break the toxic infestation of these days, to recover a nation of integrity, equality, generosity and democracy for all.
the universe has a way of knowing what you need – even when you don’t.
twelve years ago – in the middle of a budget truck move from seattle to this town tucked into lake michigan’s shoreline – we passed a sign that would change our lives.
the sign was hand-lettered. and it read, “aussie pups for sale”.
in odd moments of being the passenger in a vehicle, i read it aloud as we passed. and then i asked him, “what’s an aussie pup?” he told me about australian shepherds and how they are quite beautiful, intelligent, loving dogs – usually merle in color…patches of white, cocoa, black, caramel.
we had talked about wanting a dog – someday – that should be in capital letters – some day. we were just at the very, very beginning of our time living together – literally the first moments – his rocking chair and paintings and clothes and various other scaled-down paraphernalia were in the truck. i had a cat waiting at home and a dog just wasn’t in the mix envisioned for the moment – at least not that very moment. plus, it was simple: we wanted a black dog. so these aussies wouldn’t present any existential problem.
and i know you’ve heard the tale: we decided it could do no harm to look at puppies on our verylongdrive and we turned the truck around on the windy mississippi great river road, drove into the farm driveway and up the hill, parked at the top and got out. farmer don met us in the dirt driveway and we asked him about the puppies.
farmer don told us he only had one puppy left – we’d have to follow him over hill and dale to go see it at a kennel, for he was waiting for a beeper to alert him for an emergency surgery he needed to undergo.
we lumbered along, following him in our budget truck, curving around bends and up and down hills. we arrived at the kennel where we were greeted by a few energetic and gorgeous dogs. he went to get the puppy and carried him over to us. “he’s on sale. i just need to home him. he needs to be adopted. no one wants him because he’s black.”
cue the existential crisis.
we were instantly in love with him – this bundle of black fur and enthusiasm and kisses. instant decision limbo. the timing. the added responsibility. a puppy!
after an eternity of loving on this amazing little dog, we gave farmer don a small down payment and said that we needed to drive on home and decide. we told him we would call him in three days and that, either way, he could keep the deposit.
we went back and forth about a million times. dog/no-dog/dog/no-dog/dog/no-dog.
we drove back, still not knowing the answer but figuring we could decide on the way or at the moment we got there and saw the puppy again.
silly us.
of course he saw us when we arrived and ran as fast as his four short little legs could carry him. he stopped just in front of us where he sat down, ready for his new life adventure. we hugged farmer don and put this obvious blessing from the universe in littlebabyscion for the almost six hour drive back home.
dogga is 12 today, this adorable puppy who refused to answer to the names we had picked out for him and would first only answer to “tripper”. he is 12 today, this beautiful creature we were somehow gifted, whose best friend in the world became babycat, whose every move is based upon our moves, whose well-being is central to all that we do – even more particularly now that he is older and a homebody. he is 12 today and we go slower for him, make allowances for him, keep his needs in mind. he is 12 today and we have spent our entire time living together – in the early days and in our marriage – with the exception of three days – with him in our lives.
and i cannot – for the life of me – imagine it any other way.
happy birthday our precious dogdog. we love you forever. ❤️
and nature hung chandeliers all over the woods. shooting star chandeliers in celebration of warm spring days – tucked next to majestic oaks, stars flying across the meadow. but not for long. as summer heats up these will fade. everything has its time.
aging is a funny thing. but it is not in the way of the enchanting shooting star – for those will come back the next spring, ever-resilient, perennial.
instead, aging is a bit more like an annual. periods of growth followed by fallow. uncertainty. we struggle with what is ours to do – we struggle with how that changes – we recognize endings and, thankfully, beginnings. but our time as chandeliers is not limitless. and, as we process that, we are less devoted to the zealous striding of our younger selves and more to the mission of the expression of ourselves.
i have thousands of cds in the basement. all cds with my name on them, ready to be shipped. smack-dab in the heyday of my career-with-a-much-delayed-start, writeable cds became a thing and streaming became rampant. it changed everything. dramatically. suddenly, the tens and tens of thousands of cds i was selling – which merited the thousands in waiting stock – dropped in numbers. streaming and download reports showed hundreds of thousands of hits but merely tiny slices of a penny for each one. it is stunningly gut-wrenching to look back at the shooting stars as they burned out.
people ask me if i am still “doing music” when they see me. because it is who i am i always say yes. and then i think about the boxes of cd stock in the basement and any latent desire to record more. it is hard to justify. very.
but the call of a piano and a boom mic on a stage or in a studio is ever-present. they are part of my chandeliering. and – like wishes on a shooting star – i wonder if one day pale purple flowers might bloom out of the fallow and i might give myself to the astonishing and to the illusion of the standstill of time.
every single bit of the dandelion that is you is unprepared for the flight of the fluffy feathery pappus of the puffball off and beyond.
though the flight of these filaments is your ultimate goal – to give lift to these children who have merely been loaned to you for a time – their jet-stream-like flight takes you by surprise, leaves you a little breathless and a little astounded as you watch them fly, dispersed by the wind. your hearts – the extra ones that were birthed in you at the time of their arrival – clench a little in the moment of their departure, wonder at the very, very big change in how you are then defined in the world.
and you realize, perhaps, that you suddenly understand how your own sweet momma (and dad) felt. the moment they retired and moved. the moment you moved away, likely to not return to live in their locale again. the moment you no longer stop by at any old time. the moment it required more planning, more travel, more arrangements to see each other.
and you try to adjust – your little dandelion heart works hard to put it all into perspective, to recognize the natural order of things, to grok that this is the way of the universe – birth, growth, independence. it is the way of the dandelion. as beautiful as it was, the yellow flower was not the pinnacle; the puffball is essential for these amazing children to go, to become, to make their mark on the world, to change things for all time.
but that same little dandelion heart sometimes just aches a little – for the days they were satisfied with lap-sitting and book-reading together, or the days you endlessly shopped together, or the days you sat on the sidelines of their game or their match or their race or their concert or their recital, or the days you simply were together – sharing space and time – sharing time in the same space.
i knew my own momma was my biggest fan – despite any disagreement we might have had along the way. she was the cheerleader of my life in the same way that i carry pompoms for my own children, in all their sharing of steep summits and challenges and bliss and angst. they will always be the first thing i think of in the morning and the last thing at night as i tuck them in with whispered prayers i poof to them like blown kisses or – maybe – like dandelion pappus in the breeze.
time will keep moving and i can feel it now.
“it’s friday again,” i look at d.
“and it’s june,” he replies.
wow.
and my grown children keep growing – in their own physical, concentric worlds. and i keep going – in mine. and when those two worlds meet – when they bump up against each other and sit still for a spell – my dandelion heart is ecstatic.
because we started late – not in our 20s or 30s or even 40s – much stuff was already in place – things like couches, tables, cozy chairs, cabinets, dressers, lamps, appliances – and we didn’t have to start from scratch.
but – as our time together has moved on – in our adding and deleting – we have chosen certain pieces to bring into our life together and we have celebrated those pieces in the space we share.
this past summer we added this handmade metal piece, placing it in the garden with the grasses, loving the way it played with light and shadow. much like the chunk of concrete in our living room or the vintage suitcases scattered in our home, it was a small purchase but it was something we knew would spend some time with us, tracking through seasons.
it’s foggy this morning. dense fog, i imagine it has invisibilized the lake. it’s pulling us.
today is a day to walk…outside. the quiet will envelop us as we hike in the woods and process these days – days for which we all make so many preparations, days that go by so quickly, seasons that carry those we love through and through into next and next, ever so swiftly. time does not stand still, does not wait for our witness, and the moments slip through our fingers much like we will slip through the fog.
we sit, under a blanket and not yet ready to go out, marveling at the perfection and the evanescence, the yearning and the satisfaction of time. we hold onto this moment of this minute of this hour of this day of this season – where we are warmed by a quilt, where can see each other typing, where we can hear the deep sleeping breaths of dogga right here. i try to memorize it.
and as we look out the window, to our barney aging – one moment, the next moment – we can see he is still grinning from the eve bonfire gathering, as only an aging piano in the backyard can grin. we are happy to see the ring of adirondack chairs and the vestiges of luminaria. and we admire the fleeting beauty of just a bit of snow left on top the coneflower.
i cannot help it. memories swoosh around me constantly. and these days are no different. in fact, they deliver memories much like santa scooooching down the chimney – sans fanfare or warning. the memories arrive, sometimes with a kerplunk.
i suppose that it is simply a part of me to be wistful. and…the days are darker, the sun is shorter, it is colder and the holidays began to arrive in rapid succession.
i prepare myself for this – i know that time has flown on and that everything is different. yet…there is this piece of me that yearns to go back…to be overwhelmed with all that was going on when my children were little – the time of year that was fraught with choir and band rehearsals prepping, the time of year when it was hard to find alone-time to shop for surprises, the time of year when the children were counting down to school vacation, the time of year when end-of-year business records were lurking on lists-of-things-to-do, when you wrapped presents – that had been hidden in closets and the attic – around the the table in the wee hours, the time of year when you just really wanted to make cookies and fudge and sip hot cocoa around the fire with your children, reading christmas books, watching holiday movies. dreamy.
and then, there’s the further-back…the days in my growing-up neighborhood – along with our neighbors and friends outside caroling. luminaria, my dad making spiked eggnog and my mom fussing with cooking, the grandparents lingering on our old slipcovered couch, nieces and my nephew tiny and enchanted with it all.
it all seemed so innocent back then. and easy.
it’s not as easy now – as i watch families sort through all the gala preparations and the calendar of when who-visits-whom. there is much to do and, seemingly, not as much time to do it all. it makes me wish for a really big close-proximity-family with whom to share it all, all together, everyone from every side.
we prepare for our own christmas. i’ve been thinking and brainstorming and researching and googling and making lists for weeks now. we’ve been out browsing and shopping, we’ve had a moment or two indulging in a treat while out. we’ve encountered wonderful, joyous shopowners and salesclerks and a few not-so-wonderful nor joyous folks. we’ve tried hard to bring light to each person.
very happily, the boys will be coming and we are excited. but we will miss our girl and her husband. so many of us will have a facetime christmas and, though i am grateful for that technological ability, my heart – as always – yearns for in-person. so much bittersweet-ness. but…i am reminded by my own words earlier this week…“even if…enough”. it’s a good time for me to practice the enoughs.
i wonder – if it were possible – what it would be like to live back then and now simultaneously…kind of like walking from one room – the right now – into the next room – where my children were tiny ecstatic toddlers – into the next room – where i was a teenager surrounded by my island family – into the next room – where i was little and watched for rudolph’s red nose out my window.
i guess the gift of not being able to do that is the same as the hard part of not being able to do that – it is the wistfulness of it all. i guess wistful IS the gift. that thing that reminds you – just like in the movie about time to really, really live the day. “I just try to live every day as if I’ve deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it, as if it was the full final day of my extraordinary, ordinary life.”
*****
…and, by the way…just in case you misunderstood – in this climate rife with words like great and back – misused and twisted…as you are reading the words “go back in time”…i want to be perfectly clear…even in a post about these holidays…it’ s not THAT kind of going back. this is a post about love and respect for each other. it’s a post about time spent together and mutual generosity of spirit. it’s a post about decency. goodness. it’s a post about unity. together. it’s not that OTHER kind of going back. because we aren’t. going back.
the big chalkboard wall was in the basement for decades. and for decades it was signed and scribbled on by my children and their friends-through-the-years. there have been moments – in more recent years – the empty nest years – when i would hit the cement floor at the bottom of the steps, flip on the spotlights and stare at the colored-chalk names scrawled on the wall. lots of history there.
before i took the eraser to this wall, before i washed it off, before i realized the colored chalk didn’t really erase or wash off nomatterwhat, before i prepped it for paint, i took many photographs. once again, my thready heart is challenged – but photographs help.
my girl chalked this design in one of the corners – during the skateboard/dickies/vans era. the memory flood is fast and furious and i stood – touching the chalkboard and its names and illustrations – for some time before wiping it and readying it for a fresh coat. in the end, we put together new shelving for that spot adjacent to david’s studio and now it houses inspiring books of artists and musings…easy access for him, for both of us.
as i’ve written, there are many more of these woven threads in our home to unravel, to gently place aside, to memorize. but – inasmuch as it is a challenge, it is also a gift. because so many things are things we no longer notice, things to which we pay little attention. and right now…right now, we are paying rapt attention to each detail.
we are each telling stories of thethingsinthebox or ontheshelf or tuckedaway or rightthereinfrontofus. some of it makes me a little bit sad – no, i guess it’s more wistful than sad. some of it makes me try to think backbackback to the days backbackback. some of it makes me wish i could revisit those days, live them again, relish them in real time, or maybe live them a little slower or a little differently. and some of it just gives me a little standstill, like a tiny caesura – all part of the diapause, i suppose – one caesura after another.
we keep going. my curiosity is piqued as we open closets and bins, page through children’s books finding scraps of crayoned notes or pictures. i store it all inside, knowing that – even though i will likely forget some of it – it is all there – layers of memories and moments.
and the chalked diamonds will forever remain on the wall of the basement. because they were there, they are there. and they are part of it.
dogga adores watermelon. he also adores blueberries and carrots. he’s a big fan of any kind of chip, cracker or cheese. really, any dog-safe morsel of people food – except bananas – are in his taste-treat wheelhouse. he finds us easy to convince – those eyes of his – complete amber eye-to-eye contact.
back in the day, when i lived in florida, you could find watermelon at many rural corners, much like boiled peanut stands – a pick-up truck with a bed filled with watermelons fresh off the vine for buyers to choose from. i remember breaking open melons, sticky sweet, a tiny bit cooler than the air temperature. these last few days here in wisconsin remind me of those hot summer days down south, with nights that don’t cool down and humidity lingering so much in the air you can see it. chilled watermelon helps.
in the olden days (as my poppo used to refer back) watermelons had seeds. lots of them. you’d stand out back on the patio or on the deck spitting pits over the railing – contests of whose would gain the most ground. now, we are lucky – seedless watermelons have changed life, like seedless mandarins. no more contests over the deck rail, but so much easier to eat. ahh, the end of the folksy tradition of the watermelon-seed-spit. probably not a big loss.
dogga will accept any treat he is offered. he clearly trusts that we will keep his well-being and his people-food tastes in mind, so when i cut up the watermelon the other day into bite-sized pieces, he was right there, by my side, waiting. it’s his summer too.
but time doesn’t stand still. we simply cannot believe that it is labor day weekend already. the summer flew by. and soon, a bit later on, we will be barreling through fall. it’ll be time for apple-picking and pumpkins, jeans and boots and vests. part of me yearns for that – autumn – my favorite time of year.
but watermelon is plentiful right now, and, so, our moments will include dabbing our napkins on our watermelon-slice-sticky faces in the middle of these hot summer days, these days of intense heat.
dogga doesn’t seem to have yearnings for later-on. somehow he knows that any time at all is too precious to waste. his wisdom is in his absolute presence. whether it is watermelon time or apple time or cranberry time or blueberry time…it doesn’t matter. he is just there – appreciating all the wanna-bites of the season.
so in the middle of winter – when it’s frigid outside and we humans are wishing for a little warmth while dogga is relishing the piles of snow – we may summon up these days in the sun. hopefully, even in our baselayers, wool socks and down coats, we might taste the summer we – hopefully – memorized. we might close our eyes and remember the sweetness of cold watermelon.
or, because this world is what it is and we are fortunate beyond belief to be able to purchase produce from nations and places far and wide, we may buy a watermelon – in the cold of winter – from the grocery store. we’ll take out the big carving knife and the cutting board and slice it into triangles, with great anticipation. and we’ll take a bite of the top of the triangle, easily the best bite of all melon bites.
and we’ll be back – standing in the hot sun, with sticky hands. because watermelon has that power. even without seeds.
reverse threading 