there is always time. nothing we do is more important than the time we spend together. all of us.
my sweet poppo always said, “you can’t take it with you!” and was referring to money. but it generalizes to pretty much everything. in the end, you can’t take your possessions, your achievements, your investments, even your failures, with you. they will stay behind and it’s love that will carry you on, love that you will carry with you.
so even in the middle of important checklists of chores, work tasks, more achievements and more failures, more, more, more anything – cars, clothes, houses, boats, snowblowers and appliances, shoes, hairdos, all the fancypants trappings of “made-it” – there is time. to walk and talk and be silent and swish your feet through crunchy fallen autumn leaves.
cause you can’t take the other stuff with you.
my dad’s last words to me were, “i love you, kook.” my last words to him were, “i love you, my poppo.”
he’s watching us swish our feet through the leaves now. and smiling.
pre-gluten-free-diet we would eat english muffins every morning for breakfast. every day – every single day – an english muffin. jif natural peanut butter and (back then) smuckers simply fruit jam would fill the nooks and crannies. heavenly! we were creatures of habit.
every morning now we have potatoes and one egg, a halo and half a banana. every morning – every single morning. and i know you know about the coffee. steeping mugs of bold black coffee. there is nothing more comforting than our breakfast for starting the day. we are justalittle thrown off the days we don’t have Our Breakfast. we are creatures of habit.
and so it comes as no surprise that we have another new habit. our new Thing is painting rocks. more and more and more rocks. i’ve blogged about this – sitting together with our paint pens and rocks we have gathered at the beach down by the historic beachhouse where we held our bonfire-foodtruck-hulahoop-cupcake-dancewithabandon wedding. it is as much a joy to hide these rocks as it is to paint them and we giggle like little kids as we place them in the crooks of trees, on stumps, on a curve in the trail. we just finished placing the last of the painted rocks – this fish included – so we know we’ll be at our tiny canvases again soon. it’s predictable. like english muffins or potatoes and eggs.
i suppose that we can think of other things to do. outside of work or chores there are infinite possibilities. but i am not unhappy that our choice – more often than not these days – is to sit and chat and paint rocks together…preparing folk-artsy positive messages to leave for other people to find.
i remember a day in the woods – some time ago – when i really, really needed a positive message. and then we passed this one particular tree in the woods – a place we love to hide our rocks now – and on the burl at the base of the tree was a rock that read “imagine!”.
it’s like a romper room book – from the back but not turned over. upside down.
or like i had stood on my head to click. which, of course, i didn’t.
a tree – full of leaves reaching, reaching. no shedding here. no drooping. no waning into the pull of autumn. instead, golden leaves – almost brilliant orange – standing on their stems, stretching, dancing.
perspective rearrange. it took me by surprise skimming through the photographs i had taken. a close-up of the leaves – just one other photo – was also flipped.
perhaps there were just a few minutes there – out in the forest – when the world turned upside down.
maybe we just don’t know. maybe that happens all the time…little smidges of time when all is flipped. maybe that’s good. especially when right side up is pokin’ at us a little. reminders to stand tall. reminders to stretch. reminders to dance.
i cannot get diana ross’ fabulous voice out of my head, “upside down, boy, you turn me inside out and ’round and ’round…”
it is most astounding to me. each and every time. it doesn’t matter the shining of the sun or the drizzle or the misty humid air or dusk falling around us. and though it is familiar – oh, so familiar – it is new when we visit, our footfalls on the path erased and lasting as we walk. i’m comforted by this trail. and it teases me – into truly wondering about thru-hikes and exquisitely ordinary days that explode into extraordinary just by entering them.
this is an easy trail. we have hiked many others. easy trails, moderate trails, difficult trails. elevation gains, a little scrambling here and there. but when – and it is often – we need an old quilt of a trail and time to be quiet, to think, to talk, to sort, to sink into astounding beauty, stillness and ever-percolating life, we hike here, close by.
my camera is ready. i try to capture it all to remember. the trail is full of linear lines now as the underbrush succumbs to the season. a bounty of astounding. even in transition.
i believe – as we enter the woods – that it greets us back.
and as we leave – filled up – it waves and whispers, “see ya.”
“have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives — tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?” (mary oliver)
though we tried to identify this arm, the watchband and the bracelet, we have no idea.
someone texted us this photograph – sans words – and left it at that.
granted, there are plenty of texts that arrive from political groups, fundraisers, smarmy this-is-amazon-we-are-shutting-down-your-account-give-us-all-your-information-to-save-yourself. even the occasional “hi” from a number we don’t recognize or, worse yet, inappropriately vulgar texts coming from who-knows-where. but never a bottle of wine.
apparently, this is an expensive bottle of wine. we looked it up. it ranges in price from several hundred dollahs to several thousand dollahs – neither of which we could or would spend on a single bottle at this moment.
when i had dinner shy of twenty years ago in nyc with a radio program director of the biggest adult contemporary station in the metro area he ordered a bottle of wine. he also ordered truffles flown in from france earlier that day. sharp cheeses for in-between courses. port to follow the meal. i hoped and prayed that we weren’t splitting the bill. my work was on radio, slowly gaining, but he had an expense account. the expense account that i had was from my label – which i owned. i kept every receipt and documented everything, but there is that small detail of having the money to cover the expense…
the wine he chose was $250. a merlot. i can’t remember which vineyard, what year, or what area of the world in which it was produced. i just remember the price and that it was truly a lovely glass of wine, with depth and complexity and a delightful finish. it could have been opus one.
the entire bill was nearing $800 and, though it was an experience i won’t forget, all i could think of was that we could have had big macs together and chatted the chat we chatted and he could have donated the rest to a food bank in the city. the fancy-fance was somewhat lost on me…the backpack-toting-jeans-boots-wearing scrappy yamahaartist recording in the city. when i arrived, i had walked into a chic place, a stainless bar going the length of the restaurant, exposed brick, program director on a stool in animated conversation with the bartender, and the hostess – or was she the maître d’? – asked, “would you like me to check your ….errr…. backpack?” i declined. at that moment, that errr-backpack had everything in it…my purse, my clothes, my composing notes, my plane ticket, fresh socks, my toothbrush and a travel blowdryer. i couldn’t check it.
so the other day when this photograph arrived in our textbox, we searched the area code to see if we could figure out who it might be from. no luck. and no follow-up. we wondered if it was an ad or – in a positive foreshadowing moment – a glimpse of a package to arrive. such teasing.
i suppose we won’t ever know. nothing has arrived via usps, fedex, ups. though yesterday i did get an email that said my dhl package was waiting to be delivered – if i would just supply them with all my payment information and signature.
payment information? uh-huh. if it’s for that bottle of wine – the 1999 signed opus one bordeaux red blend – i’m gonna need to pass. exquisite will have to wait. maybe until opus two.
*****
and an addendum – six months now after we got our opus one text message: greetings to you! it appears that this post is being read hundreds and hundreds of times – more than most any other post i have ever written. in the happy spirit of this continual opus one wine text circulation around the globe (for you are surely all over the world), please consider subscribing to this blog or reading some of the other posts i’ve written or purchasing some of my music on iTunes or stream it on pandora or listen on iHeart radio (it goes great with wine!) pass it on. i’d really appreciate it. truly. xo
and now – nine months later – this post has been visited a few thousand times. still a mystery.
my nephew called. i guess technically he isn’t my nephew now but neither one of us cares about the technicality of it. we talked a couple years ago but not since. no matter. he was ironing and he thought of me. he described how ironing makes you just kind of slow down and lets your mind wander. and so he followed his instinct and dialed. i told him i was glad he wasn’t thinking of me as he was washing the floor. he agreed and said that a washing-the-floor conversation wouldn’t be as whimsical.
whimsical.
i loved how he used that word. we slowed down our hiking, shuffling our feet through the leaves on the trail, david encouraging me to chat. my nephew and i laughed and told stories, asked questions, laughed some more. later, in some text-reminiscing, he asked me if i still had the beer cap earrings he had bought me when we were together up-north many years back. he said, “you’re one of my favorites.” i walked slowly into flashes of another time of life. it was a gift.
from the deck it looks like a chicken. suddenly a chicken leaf fell from the maple tree and landed squarely on our little curlicue-fence. i stopped at the top of the steps and drew d’s attention to it. “look at the chicken back there!” i insisted. we laughed at the chicken on our fence. ok, not exactly. but imagination is a funny thing. we make castles out of refrigerator boxes and gazelles out of cumulus puffs. we create out of thin air.
“have you noticed that autumn is like a yellow cow?” (pablo neruda) “have they counted the gold in the cornfields?”
we are not alone in our imaginings. pondering leaves, clouds, swirls in the lake’s surface, rocks on the trail, i wonder what it would be to not ponder these things. i feel like i might laugh a little less, like there would be a little less whimsy.
i’m not sure how autumn is like a yellow cow, though i am sure that is valid for pablo. it’s all good. it makes the world go round with a little more pizzazz. there is gold everywhere.
right now i’m just wondering where exactly my beer cap earrings are.
mathletes. i loved mathletes. a math quiz team, we gathered and did math problems and equations and then went out and about, competing. apparently, it stuck. i blame woody p. and then, mostly, mr. h, everyone’s adored high school math teacher. i still cannot help myself. it’s constant, this figuring-out-thing. and, though i would love to maybe forget some of the number details, i simply can’t. i love math.
and so poor david is stuck listening to me as i study stuff, run the numbers, figure percentages and cost per ounce, apply coupon discounts, choose items or discard them as choices. even though i know it’s way-too-much-information, it spills from my brain and out of my mouth before i can help it. again, mr. h’s fault, making me a total math geek, but i love him for it anyway.
the fuel and heating guy came to check our boiler. it’s about thirty years old now, but a workhorse and there is a coupon that comes in the mail every year to remind you to have it serviced. as he went back out to his truck to write an invoice he asked, “do you have the coupon?”
do i????
of COURSE i do!!
and the best part (other than the a-ok on the boiler)???
figuring out how much we saved because we had The Coupon.
we stood in the grocery store in brevard, right by the display. the food lion price for the charming smushy-flat white pumpkin was $8.99. it called to me, “you need me! bring me home!” but i got hung up on the price tag and we didn’t buy it.
we’ve had a pumpkin or two most years, often a pie pumpkin that we place on this funny wrought iron stand with arms, making it look like a pumpkinperson. we’ve gotten gourds – interesting shapes that tickle us. but not yet a white pumpkin, even though i really love how they look.
budgets are sometimes fun-oppressors. but any artist can tell you they are necessary. and any artist can tell you that there’s been at least one time that an $8.99 pumpkin – even one that might do the dishes and sorts socks – has not made the cut.
there is a sweet apple orchard out in the county. there is wine-tasting and a distillery at aeppeltreow, so there are spirits and spirited fun. there are a zillion apples and there are pumpkins and gourds and apple cider donuts. two years ago we picked out our tiny patch o’ pumpkins from their flatbeds and gardens of choices. coming home with a pear-shaped gourd and a couple smaller that were wart-laden we felt rich.
we bought pumpkins in aspen that same year and carved jack-o-lanterns at our airbnb with our daughter, leaving our artwork and extra candles behind for the next guests.
last year we featured our aging pear-shaped gourd in our sunroom, put out some orange happy lights and indulged in apple cider donuts at the orchard. despite the gluten they were worth it.
i think this year we will get a white pumpkin. and maybe two orange ones. three in all. just three.
it’s not like we will get a medal or a certificate or a trophy. we will not be featured in a newspaper article we can clip and put on our fridge with the pizza-place-magnet. we won’t be acknowledged on a who’s who list nor on a marquee.
but we waited anyway.
the fuel and heating company is coming on friday to do a check-up on our boiler. in the meanwhile, we have waited.
until now.
it is with a mix of pride and trepidation that i will approach the thermostat. under the flannel sheets and the comforter and the quilt all is well. but step out and whammo! the cold is biting. and that’s IN the house.
one glance at the grasses out front – oddly looking like a packer-backer display – and you know it’s fall. no doubtaboutit.
the weekend before this just-past weekend – that would be two weekends ago just to be clear – i pulled out a pair of boots with fake fur in them. the fur was visible at the ankle. i wore them out. and it felt completely wrong. it was too early. i put them on the steps to go back upstairs into the winter shoe bin.
but they never made it up there. because – suddenly – in the briefest of days passing – it was no longer too early. the autumn winds have found their way here and fur is in order.
so, today as i type – a few days before the day that this post publishes – my nose is cold and my hands are freezing. and i have to give in.
i need to turn on the heat.
there is something wistful about that. the end of summer. a time of fallow to come. it was christmas in the home improvement store the other day and it’s not yet halloween. for a few moments, i panicked, thinking about how i had not completed or even started any presents-shopping. i mean, whattheheck, i just started wearing furry-ankle-boots. i relaxed as we passed the trick-or-treat candy display and the plastic pumpkin pails and perspective returned.
so – though i am hoping the fuel and heating company might come a little sooner – maybe someone will cancel their check-up, deciding to tough it out ala life-below-zero folks, deciding that mr. we (as 20 calls the electric and gas company) won’t be racking it up – atleastnotyet – on them, deciding it’s not that bad and wearing one of those snuggies – the official blanket with sleeves – all day – i think that it just might be The Day.
at the very least, maybe we could have a drum roll.
we almost did it. almost. almost ordered thai food for pick-up.
but we didn’t.
we’d been hiking and were cold and tired. and we didn’t reeeeally want to make dinner.
but we did.
eventually.
we got around to it.
slowly.
we pulled our adirondack chairs into the last vestiges of sun in the yard, sipped wine, had a happy snack. when the sun disappeared, we brought our glasses inside and painted rocks – from the sand near the beachhouse – at the kitchen table, for we had hidden all the ones we previously painted. time stretched out in front of us, slow, a glorious saturday night.
instead of pad thai, we made tacos with homemade seasoning, had one of the last two avocados from my sister, watched a hallmark – yes, hallmark – movie under a big sherpa blanket, had two squares of chocolate.
hiking – tough elevation climbs – on this last trip to north carolina reminded me to go slow. it was the lesson i brought home from vacation. set a slower pace, don’t set too high a bar, mosey a bit, let living happen.
so i planted the painted rock on our sunroom table on top of sandstone from those smoky mountain trails. the other side of the rock reads, “no. slower.” you know…take a backroad, linger in the setting sun, sink under a blanket, climb a little slower.
my snapchat alerted me to a flashback. two years ago. on a balcony in aspen. the caption: “i don’t want to leave.” i remember slowly packing up, slowly loading the truck, slowly driving away. it was hard to go – as always – but slower made it a little easier.
i leave summer slowly and i step into autumn – my favorite – slowly. i wasn’t really ready for flannel. i pulled off the summer sheets for the last time in the season, thinking about how it feels on a hot night to place your face on a cool spot of the pillow. flannel isn’t like that.
but at the end of the night, after hiking and tacos and wine, chocolate and blanketed-movie-watching, in a house chilled by blustery northwest winds, the flannel was warm and i found myself snugged in soft stripes, slowly drifting off.
