You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘flora’ category.
Snow.
It is enough to make the winter-weary among us a little crazy. April showers? Looking out at the street, the weather does seem to be playing a bad trick.
But this time, the snow is already beginning to melt, almost as it falls. The trees drip, drops crystallizing, hanging on just for a little while. Fragile like sugar, this will never last.
And just for now, this kind of day really is quite lovely.
It is a slow Friday, in a warm house–perhaps the last cozy day of the season.
Might as well enjoy it.
We climbed. It had been too long since we had done this: too many days, weeks, months of living in our minds, far from earth and air. I had nearly forgotten.
My son and I made our way west to the hills, the small towns and the pastures, remembering a time when life was sweeter, simpler perhaps. But then again, no. It just feels that way when you look back in time. You forget the complications that filled the days and remember every moment in just one glorious moment, a boy holding berries in a bowl on a clear Vermont summer day, and you think that this is what life always was back then. You forget the times the electricity going out for days at a time, and the fleas that bit your ankles, and the dirt and the manure spreaders and the people at the town hall who mocked you privately–not so privately–because you were not one of them. You forget the dishes and the laundry and the clutter on the dining room table and the emails, and life becomes nothing but a berry tart cooling on the back porch. It was all right then, all right to be a little different, all right to let the bread rise and to have this life this wonderful life of clear days and berries and little boys.
And little boys grow up. They do! Right before your eyes they grow up and become little men, or big boys, and some days the difference between the two seems enormous; some days it hardly matters. And when we are hiking in the woods up a mountain, it does not matter at all. We are hiking, and the bugs are fierce, so we do not make it to the summit. It is humid, if not hot, and the sweat is sticking to our backs as we make our way through the woods, higher in the green wildness, sweeter still by the faint smell of lilacs, or clover. Oh yes, this I had forgotten, this sensual journey in life, these days now of the best things we find on this earth.
We climbed Mount Greylock yesterday, not to the summit. But we climbed. Then we drove. We stuck our heads out the windows, and looked at the hills, green hills, hills with cows and limestone and ponds. We drove, crossed back up into Brattleboro, across to Keene, and then back down, down toward home, slowly, slowly finding our way through this state, this state where we truly can drive one direction for two hours to find mountains, another direction to find the ocean. We passed the deer crossing, the duck crossing, the bear crossing, and saw none of those animals, but crossed beavers, cormorants, pileated woodpeckers, wrens, and finally, close to home, our friendly heron. And then we found home, a porch and iced green tea. And in the evening I sank into my bath, hills still in my mind clearly then as sleep sank into me, moments to remember, later, when enough time has passed for my mind to play tricks on me, when I remember only the things that really mattered.
It was a heron there, lumbering above the water—always auspicious, or so I had deemed these sightings years earlier. This was a new road, to another person, a home visit, the dispensing of some help, or hope, as the job requires. Sometimes a call comes from a nearby street, sometimes on a road miles away.
Hard to offer hope when life dispenses bad news. Incurable diseases, life-altering accidents, or something gone wrong from birth: this is the world I see day after day, home after home. I offer not hope, though, but options, or so my job says. I offer options for people to stay in their homes, or anywhere out of a nursing home or whatever other institution may beckon the likes of them. I offer options for lives gone wrong, for lives to be right.
What I offer more is time, and ears to hear the stories of these lives, often long, memories entangled among old thorns that grow sharper as the years go. I wish to tell these stories, but to do so would be betrayal. I absorb the stories instead, and hang them to the roads I see, the birds, the trees and paths that lead me to them and away.
These miles are oddly satisfying. Wandering has never been my forté, despite youthful dreams of faraway places. The town, the people: yes! That sort of adventure… But in my adult life, I have sought roots, community, company, laughter, support. For all the wishes for exotic locales, I found adventure, then grew up. I craved what I might have left behind. The lonesome road never held much appeal for me, at least, not as a way of life.
Some hitch a ride with the wayward wind and head off to never-ending adventure. Such is the cult of the cowboy, the loner, the rebel. It is a romantic notion, this wandering, this quest. It may offer refuge, in its way. The road may offer a way out.
And you? Wander on, go, if you like. If you do, your door remains shut, your home ever empty. Perhaps I’ll never find you.
The road may offer a way in. I had forgotten that. I had forgotten the road long and winding that leads not to wandering, but to a door, the door. I had forgotten the odyssey. I had forgotten you.
Perhaps I’ll find you.
Why such a fascination with this month, of all months? March. March Hare. Ides of March. It is really not a pleasant month, after all. St. Patrick’s Day. Easter, perhaps. Passover, maybe. Spring.
March is all full of hope and symbols of renewal and whatnot, and still manages to disappoint, to frustrate, to dump inches, feet of wet snow, useless snow melting, radiating penetrating cold, with wind to add to it. What good does it bring us?
Spring promises so much. We embrace that fluke warm breeze, the shadow in the late afternoon. We want more. We want to shed our coats, walk, ride bikes, open the porch door. I want to. I want to be warm again. We have to wait. March makes us long for spring, as if it will never come.
And does it, really? Does spring really exist? Is the gradual warming in our imagination? Is spring anything more than occasional summer-like conditions thrown into the mix of winter itself, offering nothing more than a tease? A stick, a stone. Mud. Águas de Março.
Every time spring comes around, I think of Jobim’s famous song. “It’s the promise of spring. It’s the love in your heart.” And I had an image in these “Waters of March” of things budding in the woods, birds reappearing, snow melting. In that multitude of images (“It’s stick, it’s stone, it’s the end of the road. It’s ..), I always imagined winter ending. At least, I did, before I read the lyrics in Portuguese.
“São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração.“
No, March is not always the spring it seems. Turn the world upside from where I sit, and March is September.
“They’re the waters of March
closing the summer.
It’s the promise of life
In your heart.”
Here in the northern hemisphere, I find myself mostly in a bad mood throughout March. All that “in like a lion” stuff wears thin as I keep looking for the lamb in the deal. I grump by, just wanting to be done with the month. Now, this is Massachusetts, though. March can be challenging in Missouri, where I grew up, as well. In Vermont, syrup runs, but I never let myself consider spring that early. But fall? It hardly entered my mind.
I remember once getting a letter, in June. It was cool there, grey. Not cold, but on that South American coast, winters were melancholy, but not so bad. Winter, in June… I knew, but never really thought it through, all those holidays that we think of for winter, flipped into summer holidays. Winter, quiet, with relatively few of them… perhaps as winter was meant to be.
And March, a rainy time, ending summer, Carnaval at the end of summer–not winter. And in all that, something seems just right.
I have written ad nauseum about peonies–so much so that I myself am beginning to tire of the subject. Yes, they do remain my favorite flowers, but… so what? You see, I have come to the conclusion in the past year that… well… Oprah was right.
For anyone who has not read every word I ever wrote, I remarked on the eve of 2008 that Oprah had a little blurb in her magazine about taking care of your own needs, buying your own flowers. I mocked this idea, resolving that I would not give up on the idea of someone who would care for me. How wrong I was.
Now, I was never quite so helpless as to think I could not dream my own dreams; I just wanted to be pampered, quite notably, by someone else. There is a poem or quote about the whole notion of growing our own flowers. I cannot quite remember it off the top of my head, and I am too lazy just now to Google. The idea is that we women–I say women, though it really could be any of us out here–tend to wait around for whatever is tossed at us in life, pawing at whatever happiness gets thrown our way, when we really could take a little more responsibility in the outcome: how much much more fulfilling it might all be if we only speak up. Or if we plant our own gardens.
I was late and lazy this fall, so I did not set out peonies in my yard, but there may be hope for the spring. Yes, this is a new year on its way, and I resolve to cease this hoping and hinting for the heartfelt gift of cut flowers that I forever (sniff) wished that some wonderful someone would ever have the heart to give to me. All those wishes have seemed a recipe for disappointment, or worse: martyrdom.
Now, those of you who did read that peony piece for 2007′s December 31 will undoubtedly note that flowers were never really my main concern. Better than I could express, Kathleen Edwards sings, in “Asking For Flowers” the thought that I have considered in past years: “Asking for flowers/is like asking you to be nice.” Thoughtfulness is a gift we cannot ask for. We are never asking for niceness or flowers, not really; we are asking, in fact, for nothing material at all. We are not asking, we are wishing for someone who loves, respects and cherishes us as we all deserve… indeed, it may be worth wishing for.
In the past year, though, I have wondered how far we get in wishing for anything. A wish may plant a goal in our head, but wishes left in dreams accomplish little, I am sure. And goals themselves can even be a bit too specific, striving to have a certain job, or to win the affections of an certain person. I don’t imagine it does any more good in the long run to “wear your hair just for him” than it does to spend time “wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’.” Remember Vertigo? A lot of good a hairstyle did that time. But I digress.
In the end, all the trite advice about finding our own happiness seems to make sense to me now, not such a lonely resignation, after all. I wonder at the trials of the last year, what changed that made me reconsider my long-held conviction in refusing to “give up” my wishes for true love. It was not disappointment, quite; more, it has been the realization that finding a life that fits me is no match for making a life for myself.
Searching for happiness is a strange pursuit. Instead, I make this resolution for the year: I will slow down this year, and just stop sometimes. I will find whatever bliss comes along the way, collect it and care for it. I will live on, despite the sorrows that wash up, let them wash back out.. even as tears transform the appearance of what I thought I knew so well. I will write the words, the gifts, and create beyond my present dreams. And maybe, just maybe, this creation will prove itself to be the deepest sort of love I could honor.
P.S. In this last note for the year, I send my best wishes and farewells to friends who have moved on in their lives. To everyone, I wish you peace in 2009.
Yesterday was Bloomsday. I remember my first attempt at reading Ulysses, carrying the book like a schoolgirl, close, and trying to hold onto the wildly accumulating words long enough for my brain to grasp some meaning in them. It was a long process for me, one that took place over years, not months. So, I recognized the words with sadness as Garrison Keillor read that passage yesterday on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. He read, just before 9am, my coffee in the cup holder, while I was on my way to work.
No, no: these words are not for busy mornings. The inappropriateness is not so much that they are wonderful, gushing words, but they are the last of them in that novel. Their images, so full and inviting, made me long yesterday. For what? Damn. I had just fixed my face, just got ready. Damn bleary eyes. I hate these endings, knowing that words you read for the first time will never come back again in the same way, knowing that the next book will not be as satisfying, and with a long, difficult book, I hate leaving it after all that. Well…
It is also that time of year, when school ends with a flurry–no, a blizzard–of activity, with too much to do, far too much to do. And everyone else is rushing, too, just to make it to that end.
I always hate the end, hate the goodbyes, hate the disruption, the worries of how to manage time, manage children, how I can work and make things work. I hate not seeing the people who make life work for us, with us, during the rest of the year. I miss them. I miss the familiarity of the year, the schedule, the routine, and the surprises tucked beneath it all. It abruptly stops.
I wonder what this end will mean this year. It has been a year full of change already, and letting go of yet more feels so unwieldy. I wonder what will happen. I wonder…
And yet, this year, I want change.
It became all too apparent during the last week that life as I know it now is not the life I want to lead. I worked hard, which usually feels good. But this time, work seemed more of an escape than an accomplishment; too much to do felt like an excuse. Maybe days were too long, too little time spent with the things and the people that mean the most to me. I came out of it all feeling that the sacrifice was not a means to a better end for all of us. Money in the bank, eventually, perhaps, but at what cost?
The work is good, in theory–in practice, too, for the most part. I believe in it, and wish to do more in my role there, to make a difference. Maybe we all do. We all tend to wonder in frustrating moments where that fulfilling life is. It has long been my stoic family’s way to chastise dreamchasers… and yet, the absence of meaning has nearly destroyed me at times. So, when my coworker suggested that I may need to cut back hours this summer, or figure out ways to work from home more, I was surprised. There is always too much to do in the office. But then there is life, too.
Hearing those words from Ulysses, too, I realize that the sadness came from the overflowing sensuality that I long for, if only just a little. I long not for all of it, not for “the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar”, but I do crave the yes.
Oh, yes, this year has felt like such a year of no. I find myself clinging to endings, but now letting go, releasing the pain and frustrations, at least just a bit. Yes, I maybe do want pink and blue and yellow houses, and gardens, and yes, maybe I do want even more than I let myself wish for. Oh yes! I do crave the yes.
The peonies (the self-bought version, alas) were full, round buds when I went to bed last night. They smelled good, but you never know how supermarket flowers are going to fare. The birthday bunch was none too satisfying, but I am never one to give up hope too easily. I stuck the buds in a vase and traipsed off to dreamland, exhausted at the prospect of the busy work day ahead.
This morning, lit by clear sunshine spilling through my dining room windows, the flowers were open: beautiful and naked.
And I caught them! Happy Thursday, everyone.
Mr. Bunny is going to be disappointed… or more likely, my kids are going to be sad not to see Mr. Bunny hopping around our backyard jungle. Why?
The jungle is gone. Anticipating today’s heat wave and the mosquitoes that normally come with it, I woke up early to pull the lawn mower out of the garage for the first time this year.
I realize it’s a little late, but if you saw my yard, you would understand how I have gotten away with not cutting the grass all spring. There is practically no grass. The yard itself is small, but not tiny, and it should have grass. Instead, it is a mixture of sand, rocks, mulched leaves, pine needles, and weeds. Oh…. and legos. Lately, though, the weeds have gotten a little high, providing nourishment for the rabbits, but a big, buggy mess for me. The time to cut had come.
Over the past several years, I have developed a thing for power tools. They come in handy for projects, and there is something almost cathartic about cutting things down, or blowing them away, making holes in them, sanding them smooth. I am a year older and wiser now, and I have started buying my own peonies again, and have more or less given up on the idea of finding true love. So, in the spirit of do-it-yourselfness, I find myself enjoying these little moments of accomplishment more than I resent them, much to the disbelief of my mom and brother. It is true that they were the ones watching This Old House while I headed out the door on whatever night that show was on, but I did absorb a few things. Or at least, I have Google.
I didn’t need Google or This Old House just to mow the lawn. For one thing, I never recall a discussion of lawn mowing, or the importance of removing legos from the yard before mowing. Amazing how big a bruise those little plastic bricks can make! I finished, and swept up (could not justify getting out the leaf blower). I scraped more paint off the front porch (which is almost ready for the new coat). A shovel (or the leaf blower) may have been a more appropriate tool than a broom in my daughters’ room. Nonetheless, the past-due book (Roald Dahl’s The Twits, if you are curious) has been recovered, and no one will be hiding in the school bathroom during library this week.
It is after 10:00 on a warm Saturday night, and I find myself self-sufficient, happy to have a fresh-cut yard, a few loads of laundry folded, a shoveled-out room, groceries in the kitchen. I am happy, but also a little… Well, words escape me. I love my house, love my kids, love life.
But really, is this all there is? I do cherish the bunnies that hop into my yard, the delicious feeling of heat that overwhelms me, makes me feel lazy, and then invigorated when the cool shower water hits my face. I love the haze after rain lets loose unexpectedly, and the evening that becomes balmy.
Yes, I do love all these things, but somehow today I find myself noticing the absence of a smile returned, or a gesture offered. I miss kisses, words, laughter. I miss breaths, heartbeats, steps. I miss things I have never had, and maybe I miss things that do not exist. In all the busy days that run together with no time left for anything at all outside of the bare necessities of life, I find it hard to stop—there is always more to do—and I wonder again, is this really all there is?
I love this life, this beautiful, imperfect life.. if only to know it, to wallow in it… but yes, I need more than power tools and a never-ending list of things to do. Passion, trust, fun… I want these things, too. I need them. And resignation never got me more than … resigned. Well, I am not quite ready to give in to cynicism.
Tomorrow is a new week.
“Heavenly shades of night are falling,” indeed.
I am shivering, holding onto a cup of hot tea on my back step, spoiled after the summer like conditions that woke up the trees this week.
It is quiet here, a different house without movement or voices, but nice for one evening.
Just before I took this picture, the neighborhood was cast in dramatic shadows, as the sun peeked out from behind clouds that have now disappeared. The sun has gone now, too, and this light is all that remains of the day. The leaves of the Japanese maple opened just a little today, promising more.
More. More spring, more warmth, more quiet, more voices, more love, more “rendezvous beneath the blue,” more you, whoever you are, wherever you are, more.
