savoring moments | pull up a chair

July 2, 2010

summer dinner, and the waiting is easy

like so many of the very sweetest moments, we bumbled straight into it. didn’t set out to clear the deck, haul in the props. just simply decided: big boys are rolling in the door round nine o’clock, we’re not sitting down to eat till they get here.

no matter that that starlit hour is more like bedtime on a schoolnight. this is summer. clocks be dashed. we’re keeping our time, summer time, not greenwich time or CST time or CSDT time, or all those alphabetical configurations that amount, truly, to playing games with clockhands.

come to think of it, it was the little one himself who put his foot down. who declared: i’m not eating till everyone’s here. i want family dinner.

and so it’s been for a string of nights now. we set the table out back, the door table, the wobbly table, the one with paint that flakes (a little chip o’ ancient white with your salad, oh well, another source of…mineral??).

we stoke the citronella candle buckets, the ones that bar the biters, or at least keep their bites outside, on the far side of the screen.

we zip around the yard with felco no. 2s in hand, clipping here and there, a rose, a stem of yarrow, delicate feverfew–the wee little daisy that bobs its head and does away with headaches should you steep it in a cup. we stuff stems in an old glass jar, light candles. put out plates and forks and knives.

uncork the prosecco, this summer’s delight, the sparkly wine that not only fizzles, it foams, a thick white froth of effervescence, summer uncorked. (it started as a curiosity, “research” for a story, now it is downright essential, the liquid testament to the season’s looser side.)

the two-hour dawdle before dinner is just what summer orders: time found, time to sit and savor. time to putz around the kitchen, the garden, the summer porch. what’s not to savor there?

it is, in its own sweet way, an act of defiance. it’s saying: we won’t let the odd-timed activities of our lives steal away the one deep-rooted truth of our existence, family dinner. that holy sacred hour when we sit before a table set with care, look down at plates piled high, join hands and say out loud our thanks for all that brought us to this circle.

as the drape of summer’s eve descends beyond the screens, as darkness falls, and candlepower keeps us awash in flickered light, we tell the day’s stories. we inquire. we listen. we laugh. we gasp at whatever was the drama of the day, the afternoon, the evening.

it is all part of this summer’s deep understanding that while we might not live in times–or be of single-digit years–when rolling out of bed and building adventure was the first and only order of business (after lapping up bowls of cereal ‘n’ milk and the few scant berries you’re allotted when you grow up amid a flock of seven berry-grabbers), we can–and will–claim for ourselves whatever wisps of summer come our way.

it is planting a stake firmly in the day, proclaiming it unlike the schoolyear, unlike the days and weeks when bedtime matters, when we conform to grid of hours and litanies of assignments, big and small.

it’s as if we can’t be bound by indoors, and kitchen tables. we are as hungry for the summer porch as we are for the corn, the cantaloupe, the herbed everything that stirs our appetites and fills our plates.

to get to our particular summer porch, there is a walk involved. it’s not attached to the house, but rather on the far end of the garden. and we’ve noticed, time and time again, that the simple act of moving through space, tiptoeing along the brick walk, even in the darkness that follows every dinner, is to whisper to the knowing place, the one that’s deep inside our soul: we are leaving behind the cares and worries of the house. we are dispatching to the screened-in place where there is only breeze and candlelight, where chairs are old, are weathered, are storied. where crumbs don’t matter, and wet spots from where the wine bottle perspires or the glass tips over, they’re not worries either.

there’ve been nights when i am cleaning the kitchen at half past ten.

and i don’t mind.

because what’s preceded that, a long summer’s eve waiting for the rumble of the car down the alley, into the garage, the slam of a car door, the grown-up bass-voice of a manchild who’s been rowing on a river, and his father who waits for him at the river’s edge at dusk in a murky corner of the city, the joy of knowing we are one now, all together and on the cusp of sitting down to share an hour of our day, it is the holiest slice of time i know right now.

it’s summer dinner, and the waiting is so easy.

how are you mixing up your year-round life, to mark this chapter we call summer? what stakes have you pounded in the turf, claiming this as time you’ll savor summerstyle, slow and sloppy, sweet and oh-so-succulent?

8 Comments

June 25, 2010

the weightlessness of summer

it comes without notice, like butterfly wings that waft before your face, your cheeks, the bump that ends your nose.

you catch the barest shift of breeze, a fluttering of light, you look up, you realize: something sacred just passed by. it came from who-knows-where, but along the way, it surely graced me.

and so it is with summer, with those wisps and darts of weightless wing. with the moments when the heaviness of all-year-long is suspended, when breeze blows through the screen, garden leaves flutter, light practically sparkles, and you feel your shoulders drop their heavy load.

it comes when dinner isn’t rushed, and isn’t quite at dinner time. but rather wends its way to the table at, oh, minutes shy of nine. and when the table is not the inside one, but rather the old slab of door with wobbly legs, the one that stands and beckons from the summer porch, the room with screens, the room lit part by candlelight and moon, and part by fireflies, blinking by.

it isn’t always here, that weightlessness that marks the essence of summerness. there are days and hours when the rush is still the same, when the thick soup of humidity slows you to a crawl, but still you’re dashing here and there, with no hope of long tall drinks of lemonade, or feet propped up on summer-splattered canvas outside pillows.

but that, i think, is what makes for the deliciousness of summer when it comes, when you catch it, when you’re standing at the sink and you don’t mind that it’s late, because the stars are out, and you intend to amble back outside, to sit and stare into the heavens, to not worry about bedtime, or the ticking of the clock at all.

amid a week of hustle and bustle, and birthdays and gosh-darn tornadoes, summer found me, caught me unawares, wrapped me in its gentle fold, beckoned me, like a crooked finger curling inward, “come, come, savor what my season offers…”

and so, i did as told.

i sliced a fat tomato, pinched a stem of basil from my kitchen windowbox. i sunk my teeth into a peach, let the juice drip down and splatter in the sink.

i opened windows, welcomed in the cool night air. i pulled my summer nightgown from the drawer, didn’t mind that it had holes, was torn just beneath the part where lace meets buttons. i love that old lacy thing, have held it back together with broad white satin ribbons, stitched and re-stitched it, but will not throw it out. nothing says summer’s eve quite like that old white cotton gown, now more ventilated than ever in its 20-some years.

i’ve a sweaty pitcher of pure clear water in the fridge. it’s rich with lemons by the slice and sprigs of mint, both leaving the barest essence of orchard and garden in my glass, and in my every gulp.

all over the house i’ve tucked old milk pitchers and creamers and itty-bitty glass bottles with pickings from the garden. it’s my friday act of benediction, renewing the vows of beauty from the climbing rose, the catmint, and just this week, the yarrow and hydrangea now in bloom.

but that’s just stage-set.

where summer settles best is in the soul. in the part of you that remembers not to worry for the moment. to soothe the long ragged edges. to breathe.

to savor all that summer allows: loose bedtimes, lack of homework, a world erupting full of scent and color. windows open. breakfast, lunch and dinner out of doors. farm bounty that begs no heat, no flame, just a shake of kosher salt and a hungry mouth is all.

did i mention the juicy drippy peach?

welcome summer, blessed summer, the season when, at best, we shed our worries and our cares. and we wrap ourselves in the weightless folds of these sacred slo-mo hours.

this week was big: my beloved “little sister” laura had a baby. on father’s day, bravo! my firstborn turned 17. bravo! my beloved mother-in-law came home from the hospital. bravo! and for so-called work i had to tromp through old historic gardens, lovely gardens, gardens in the rain. and gardens in the pure june sunlight. tis the week of summer solstice, mister sunshine at his utter highest. my hope for all of you is that somehow this week, and the one ahead, you find a moment to pull up a chair to the very best that summer offers, and you let it drip straight down your chin….

7 Comments

June 4, 2010

long walks and talks that never end

the end of the long hard story that was junior year of almost college is that, well, it ends.

ends any hour now, actually.

already is gliding toward close, is pressure cloud lifting, is window for words.

words, for my sweet boy and i, are the long-tested glue that hold us, cement us, keep our hearts in connection.

that boy and i have spent long long hours, over the years, deep in the forest of words.

we’ve climbed down to the side of a brook, watched the light dapple through leaves. savored the joy, pure delight, the swapping of stories. we’ve hiked into the deep, plenty of times, marveled at the heft of the tree trunks, the length of the shadows, the sound of the silence except for our words. once or twice, we’ve found ourselves lost, at the end of a trail. or so it seemed, as we pushed back the brush, searched for the sliver of clearing that would show us the way.

i don’t remember when, really, the long talking started. i do remember a young boy, maybe four at the time, walking in circles, unspooling his thoughts as i stood there and listened. we lived in a house with a square kitchen island, and that was the mooring, it seemed, around which he strode and he thought.

i remember the stairs, the ones that rose as if floating on air, no backs and no sides, just up. or down, with precipitous drop. i remember sitting there, for hours on end, watching the slant of the sun as it fell on his face. i remember the tears. i remember the stories. i remember the questions.

i remember the nook in his room, the slant of the roof right over our heads. i remember the leaves of the trees, brushing up against glass. how his room was a perch. a loft for high thoughts. i remember playing with blocks and towering stories.

as far back as i can remember, the boy and i have lived with our hearts inside out. little to hide. no words not allowed.

i suppose i set out to be the sort of mother who always had the “open for business” sign on the door. and in our house, the telling of story, the landscape of heart, is most serious business.

junior year, though, got in the way.

oh, the stories we started to tell. but then, oops, we cut ourselves off. knew we couldn’t go round that bend. not with math books and junior themes, faulkner and fdr twiddling their thumbs, up on his desk.

so for the last couple of months, too often, we clamped it. tightened the lid of the jar, lest stories begin. lest we get lost on a miles-long hike back to the woods that we love, the woods of the words.

the one short jaunt we’ve allowed, on all of these nights of late-night study, is our walk in the dark. around the “big block,” we call it. a study break. a bedtime preamble, literally. for me that is. for him, there’ve been too many nights with no bed in sight, but that’s over now, almost.

he can sleep all he wants.

and we can talk all we want.

just last night we went for our walk. and when we got to the very last corner, the one that turns us toward home, he pointed left, away from our house, deeper toward story.

i indulged. we kept turning corners, away from our house, for a good extra half hour.

oh, there were stories to fill every step. right up to the end, right up to the stoop in front of the door.

and oh, it felt fine to be back in the business of endlessly tilling our hearts.

my sweet boy and all of his stories are back. the long year is over, is ended.

all i need now, for the summer ahead, is a thick pair of soles for miles and miles of story.

it is a blessing, i know, to march by the side of a boy of 16–nearly 17–who still finds reason to walk with his mama, talk to his mama. sometimes, in the dark, i take his elbow, to keep from tripping over cracks in the sidewalk. the top of my head comes just to his shoulders. we’re quite a walking pair, little mama and her towering lad. oh, what a gift to take on the darkness with a boy of long stride, and long story.
what’s your preferred mode for soaking up stories with the someones you love?

6 Comments

June 13, 2008

shaky all around

the news seeping into my little world isn’t so swell these days. nothin’ at all to do with today being that unlucky friday. phooey, i say to that. that’s ol’ superstition. and superstitious i’m not. not so much, anyway.

i’m talking about the front page of the paper. and, lately, the business page, too. they’re the ones spelling out the downs and the more downs; whole columns of type, sprinkled with words like recession, inflation, and war that won’t end.

oh, and bosses at work being shown to the door. and other ones, new ones, saying they don’t like what we do. and we don’t do enough. and, oh, by the way, they’re cutting the pages, and the numbers of people paid to fill the ones left.

all sorts of talk, all day in the newsroom, about what’s going to happen, and who’s going to leave. anyone left, we all wonder, still reading the news? anyone left who loves turning a page, not knowing just where your fancy might land, soaking up something wholly brand new you might never have known? getting grabbed by a photo, or maybe a headline. seeing a byline, sinking into the words of a friend you’ve not ever met but feel that you’ve known for ever and ever.

it’s all very shaky. and it’s not only newspapers.

here in the village where i now mostly walk, or pedal my bike, to save the gas in my tank, i see houses for sale. hear stories of folks needing to move.

i know my dear friend the breadman isn’t baking so much. because no one is buying quite so much anymore. and cash registers, all over town, seem to be rigged with an odd little button that makes all of the totals twice what they were.

even at home, there are reasons to worry. the tall one is stiff, with a pain in his back. and all of us grownups, on pins and on needles.

so what do i do when it’s shaky all over, when the world at my door gets blurry and buzzes and is all out of sorts?

i crank up the dial on the parts of my life that matter the most.

i pay attention to what i’m cooking for dinner. i set the table with just a little more care. i cut more and more peonies from out in the garden. i tuck them there by the bedside, even in rooms strewn with little boy’s clothes.

i walk to the library. i sit with my sweet little starting-out reader. we pluck books, chapter books now, from shelf after shelf, whole piles too heavy for one of us only. we take turns with each chapter. we take turns with the book bag. sometimes, each one of us takes one of the handles. we lug it together.

i buy pie for no reason. i promise to learn to make my own crust. i snip herbs from the garden, snip with abandon. it’s summertime now and i needn’t be stingy.

i work in the garden. i pull weeds and more weeds. i stand back and admire the one-inch-by-one-inch that‘s finally weedless.

i sit on the stoop. i let ice melt on my tongue. we stuff chocolate-chip cones with mint-chocolate ice cream. then, for no reason, really, except for the joy of redundance, we sprinkle jimmies on top, those bit-lets of bite-able sugar. then we try not to bite, but only to lick. not once have we made it, not once without biting. these are the games that we play when we play for no reason, ’cept for the pure joy of playing at play.

as the world around me feels all very shaky, i sink deeper and deeper into what i love most, on a scale that gets smaller and closer to home, closer to heart.

it’s almost, you might want to think, like whistling in the dark. only that’s not what it is if you look from the soul side. it’s whistling, all right, but with very deep roots.

it’s the whistling of grownups old enough and wise enough, and humble enough, to know that the whole of the world we most likely can’t change.

but we can keep the ones that we love from feeling the bumps and the worries, from noticing that all around the edge of this boat, the waters are sloshing, are getting quite queazy.

we can make this place we call home a fine and true respite. the place we come back to, because it soothes us and calms us. because in a thousand small ways, we can dust off the dirt, and polish the places that just might maybe shine.

we might not steal headlines. we might not cinch deals. we might not be brokers of peace ’round the globe.

but what we do with our days, and our hours and minutes, just might make the difference in just a few blessed lives.

and those lives, some of them, were handed to us, for just a short time, really and truly.

someone wiser and truer than i’ll ever be, someone infinite, someone you maybe call God whispered once upon a time, spoke to each of our hearts. said, this is my beloved, and this is yours, too. i’ve breathed in a life, i’ve sculpted with love. it’s your job, should you so choose, to cradle, to take by the hand, to teach the words and the poems and the stories. to tuck into bed with a prayer, to draw tight the sheets. to kiss sweet blessed heads, and send dreams off to dreamland.

give the gift of your calm. give the gift of your grace. give laughter. give whimsy. give ice cream with sprinkles.
make each hour count.

make it be simple. make it be rich.

and then that Someone reached out and gave us our loves.

a wise friend of mine tallied the world as some of our children have lived it: 9/11, afghanistan, iraq, columbine. then there’s tsunami, new orleans under water, virginia tech, and gas at 4-plus-bucks-a-gallon. and, sure as heck, i’m leaving out a thing or two that’s kept you awake.

now, in grade school and high school, even in pre-school, they practice drills year after year, in case of intruders. our cold-war atomic-bomb scares replaced with very real fears that a classmate, or passing-by kook, could burst through the door, carrying guns.

some nights, as i lie in my bed, whispering prayers, and begging for mercy, i ask for a cloak of untattered peace to fall on my house.

and then i wake up, and give it the whole of my heart: i crank up the oven, i tuck in a pan of cinnamon rolls. i wait for the sound of the feet that i know. the big ones and little ones. even the cat’s.

and i do what i think i do best: with all of my might, i aim to sew even though i can’t thread a needle (not anymore anyway, not without my old-lady glasses). i stitch this old house with gracenotes of beauty, and fumble for even a loose knot of calm. i pay attention to nooks and to crannies no one might notice. i iron out wrinkles. i wring out the worries.

it’s called housework. and mine is of and for the soul.

i owe it, i do. to the ones whose everyday stories are being inscribed at my old kitchen table.

and besides, long long ago, i promised: dear God, bless me with life, and i’ll make it most noble.

how do you make your world a little bit calmer, a little bit richer, when all around it feels like the walls are starting to crumble?

8 Comments

June 11, 2008

welcome to summer

the half-wheel of moon drooled down on us, peeking through the pines, half-lighting the peonies, bent from the rains. the summer bugs hadn’t yet started their chorus. but it was june. it was a monday. and it was half past nine, and no one was hurrying.

we were just slamming the car doors, trying not to spill cotton-candy blizzard and blue-raspberry arctic-something-or-other anywhere near the insides of the still-smelling-new new car, which was when i glanced at the clock on the dash, saw it was nearly an hour past school bedtime, and sighed.

“i love summer,” i said, tripping over a rock in the pretty-much dark.

to which the little one retorted, “how many times do i have to tell you? it’s spring. this is spring break. it’s not summer until june 21.”

well, doesn’t he know his numbers?

and yes, technically speaking, were i inclined to pluck words based on the alignment of sun and sweet spinning earth, i would be more precise.

i am, however, not.

i am more stirred by the poetics of these unstructured days than i am by the facts of the matter.

in fact, the minute i start swooning about this state of mind that has me wanting to plop up my crocs and do nothing more rigorous than turning the pages of two delicious books i am reading in tandem (“signaling for rescue,” short stories by marianne herrmann; and “mr. gatling’s terrible marvel,” by my genius of a friend julia keller), i am reminded that summer–like a storm that blows in off the lake, with no warning–suddenly can turn into a mad-dash morning where the manchild has only one way to get to his very cool summer gig slinging a camera: me and the old car i am very much driving to some faraway outpost that requires a map and a mantra–”i will not get mad that no one figured this out the night before.”

and, yes, one of these meanders we can devote to the cold hard truth of summer versus the make-believe version, but let’s–just for the whimsy of it–stick here and now to what summer can be.

think: lemonade stands and peach pie oozing with juice. think summer porch and peanut-butter-and-jelly on a blanket, generously dusted with sand.

and think, maybe, about making a pledge.

oh, no, you needn’t start moaning, thinking i mean to get out the girl scout sash, and work toward one of those neat little circles you tried so clumsily to sew on after checking off each one of the itty-bitty boxes in the ol’ girl scout guide.

let us, though, start out this seasonal dash by holding up the rest of june, all of july and a good chunk of august to their fullest possibility, and then maybe proposing to approach this all with a little more vim and vigor this year.

my thinking along these lines got a bit of a jumpstart when i was out strolling by moonlight on the very first night after the schools around here let out their very last whistle, and shooshed all the kiddies away till the end of dear august, which i’ve now come to understand is sooner than you’d care to think.

wandering down one of the leafy, cobbled streets around here, i looked up at a house with a rather broad porch, a porch like a mama wrapping her arms. there, taped on the front door, was a sign: “welcome to summer.”

two strands of crepe paper, by then sagging, squirmed in the wisp of a wind.

i nearly cried, brightened by the fact that i’m not the only kook who approaches these things with the ceremony they deserve.

but also, mostly, by the notion that summer is more than a stack of hot days, one piled on top of another, like wet swimming trunks dumped in a heap in the basement, just daring the mildew to come.

it got me to thinking about how summer offers the chance to break loose of not only the school year’s constraints, but all those unspoken rules that can make one season bleed into the next.

what if, i wondered, what if summer offered a wholesale new way of being?

what if we reveled in this short sweet reprieve, not by packing up and leaving, but turning inside out each and every day, slathering ourselves in summerness the way other mothers (read: better mothers) remember to grease their bare-backed kiddies with great gobs of sunscreen for a day at the pool?

in my head (where i do all my best work), i started a list.

so far, it goes something like this: wake up late/wake up early. head out to the screened-in porch. sip coffee. listen to the birds wake up. watch the sunlight catch on the lipstick-pink petals of the climbing roses.

make blueberry pancakes. enlist the wicker-basketed bike for all errands. rediscover calf muscles. make daily rounds of the growing things in the so-called garden. carry clippers. cut a new bouquet every day. tuck them in odd places, like next to the children’s beds, just to see if anyone notices.

tiptoe back to the summer porch soon as the afternoon sun starts its descent. keep two books within reach, no matter where i go.

make lazy summer dinners. grill. strip tarragon leaves with reckless abandon, stuff inside chicken breasts, lace through mounds and mounds of pasta.

walk to the train, with all available children. pick up daddy, and watch his face light up.

go to the library. often. sign up for summer reading club. invite neighborhood kiddies to read in the summer porch. bake cupcakes, or simply serve pretzels and lemonade, to accompany whatever we’re reading.

visit your neighborhood ice-cream shop. try hard not to spill in the car. make sure that doesn’t happen by walking.

open the windows. turn on the ballgame. let the little one watch till the end of the game, paying no mind to the time on the clock.

steal away while he counts runs and innings. read some more.

go to bed with all windows wide open. wear summer pjs. fall asleep to nightsounds.

wake up, start all over again. only scramble it up. do something brand-new each day. something you always wanted to do, but couldn’t find the time for back in the days when lost mittens had to be located, and snowboots mucked up the hall.

it’s summertime. welcome to all it can be.

what’s your idea of summer? how will you spend your days? remember this here is make-believe, what you wish it could be.
the challenge: to see how close you can come to making it happen. the pledge: to try really loosely to savor the notion of summer.

i’m thinking of a few ideas here: maybe a summer book swap, read something yummy and mail it along. we might all be delighted by what lands in the mailbox. surely, we’ll take turns in the kitchen. if anyone comes up with something soooooooooo easy and so good, we’ll post it. if a wholly serendipitous summer moment lands in your lap, do tell; it might inspire the rest of us.
till then, kick off your shoes, open the windows, crank up the fans. and go freeze some juice in the old ice-cube tray. remember biting into a sort-of crunchy, sort-of slushy kool-aid cube?
p.s. i think this might be rather meandery. but it’s summer, straight lines and clear thinking are not always the surest way to go. thanks for winding along…..

10 Comments

May 20, 2008

fading…

her teeny-tiny trumpets now have fallen to the ground, a carpet down below of brown-skinned souvenirs of what was.

her perfume, too, is lost. dissipated. lost to world beyond. the world of car exhaust and dryer fumes, lawn mower smoke and bacon burning on the griddle. the world of spring parading on.

lily-of-the-valley’s up next, the beauty queen whose reign is on the rise, demanding our attention as she sticks up and out her tender neck, heavy with those nodding bells that lure you to your knees so you can get a whiff.

she, my sweet viburnum, is just barely hanging on. my fragrant friend, on her final exhalations, and then she’s gone.

i thought it worth returning one more time. to pay heed to the notion that sometimes, oftentimes, we lose what left us dizzy. besotted. utterly and simply with head up in the clouds.

it–the thing that had us swooning, considering a cartwheel–is but an interlude. precious. sacred. it’s here and then it’s merely memory.

and it is the evanescence, the here-then-gone, that yanks our hearts, and stirs us, whispers in our ear: bless this moment, it is fleeting, always. like the tide, it washes in, trickles up the sand, and spills again, returning to the sea, the lake, the deep beyond.

but you knew that already. and so did i.

somehow, though, pausing, bowing as she passes, seems the thing to do. she is beauty fading, waning, drifting to the earth below in perfume-petaled snowflakes.

left behind, up where once she preened, she is little more than one last trumpet and a clutch of stubby little necks, each with head cut off, not unlike a clump of grapes denuded of its succulence. naked, as my mother calls the plucked-off concord stems, can’t abide them, cleans the mess with scissors, reprimands those who dare to leave behind a skeleton of what had been the clump of grapes.

so it is with viburnum on the distal end.

it is time then to genuflect, to drop our heads and thank the hardy bush, the one that asks for no attention, makes no demands all year. except for that single week or two when she is joy ascending, bursting, beckoning all who wander by within an acre of her puff-puff-puffing tailpipes, spewing ’round-the-clock, top-secret nose-bewitching formula.

she reminds, as she fades from foreground to unnoticed backdrop, that we all, all of us, have our shining moments, and then for 50 other weeks of every year we simply breathe and reach for sunshine, and swallow rain, because without it we’d be parched.

and she signals, too, this passing thought: even when we appear as ordinary as a bush with plain old leaves, we have, somewhere deep inside, what it takes to be a momentary, holy, neck-craning, oh-my-goodness-did-you-see-that-smell-that-sense-that source of radiance.

most of the time, day in and day out, we are not so much something to write home about. we are ordinary. waking. chewing. making beds. chasing after dreams. hauling out the trash.

but in any given moment–depending on what’s asked of us, how deeply we dig down into the luminescence that dwells inside–we, like sweet viburnum early in the month of may, can become holy transcendence.

we can exude a sweetness, and all that’s truly wholly fine. step out from our ordinariness and remind the world: even a plain old bush, when given half a chance, can assume a stance of unabating beauty.

and when she fades, she is radiant still. it’s only that she cloaks it beneath her humble plumage.

come her turn again, she’ll show the world of what she’s made.

and that, it seems, is why she’s more than earned her post just beyond my kitchen window. she never fails to wow me, even in her faded, lasting wisdom.

once again, the gospel of the garden.

fading. coming and going. rise and fall. these are the universal themes of life, and surely of the seasons. ecclesiastes, i believe, spells it out. and year after year, the lesson is repeated and repeated. what lessons does the springtime bring to you? who are your teachers in the world abloom around you?

2 Comments

April 16, 2008

blue patches worth the wait

i am drawn to them the way i stumble to the bathroom sink in deep of night. when my throat is parched, and i am not awake so much, except to feel like i am choking on the dryness. and then the waters come, cool ones, wet ones. and the choking goes away. and back i stumble, into sleep. my throat no longer aching to be soothed.

it’s what it feels like, especially at the close of this long winter, when the patches start to sprout. first, like measles made of blue, the spots come here and there. scattered. hardly connected. a little bit of cobalt. another little bit.

but then, suddenly, it’s spreading. whole pools and puddles, patches. old yards, right now, show their age. in the best way i can imagine. they spread out in blue. as if whole blankets from the attic have been taken down the winding stairs, shaken out of all their accumulated winter’s dust and left to air, where thirsty ones like me can drink them in.

it is the single thing of spring, the scilla, or Siberian squill, that sends me soonest to the moon, has me down and on my belly, taking in the endless waves of nodding heads of blue.

they come, the scilla does, where earth is undisturbed. it is, like gray locks on a wise old lady’s head, a crown of age.

oh, you might tuck a bulb or two into the ground. and, should the squirrels not binge, you might find just one or two breaking through the crust, come spring.

but if it’s a swath of blue you’re after–a river, really, blue on blue on blue, paying no mind to where one yard ends and another starts, barely yielding to the street, popping up again just beyond the curb–then you will have to wait. ten, twenty, fifty years, when, squill by squill, they multiply, take up every inch of old and tired real estate.

i’ve nearly crashed the car in this accidental season. can’t keep my eyes on this here road. i’m always scanning for the scilla pools.

and when i come upon them, it’s not enough to merely notice, and keep along my way. why, no, i’ve been known to pull a U-ey, screech the brakes, drop to hands and knees. it’s why, i think, God gave me a belly, the perfect launching pad for taking in the earth at eyeball level.

you might have seen me, sprawled. you might have thought, oh, that lady’s had a stroke. or perhaps she’s lost a ring, and is making like a snake, turning over leaves in hopes of finding gold.

gold, shmold. i am seeking blue. inhaling it. licking it. basically, consuming it through every pore. getting my annual allotment, and then some. i fill my belly now, or else, i wait.

through may and june, when there are, praise be, distractions to occupy my eyes and nose. through july and august, when all i do is sweat. through the whole of fall, when i make do with swirling leaves and pumpkins, too. to december when the tree lights twinkle, and somehow seem to mesmerize me. back to january. february. on to march, the slow road to mental decline if there ever was one. by early april, without a bit of blue, i am nearly sunk. so blue inside i might as well give up. call 9-1-1, come get me.

but then, as if my inner blue is on the loose, the spots appear before my eyes. at first, i think i’m seeing things. could this be a blue mirage? is someone playing cobalt tricks?

and that, my friends, is why you find me, at the height of april, flattened. on the ground, stretched out. rolling in the scilla. seeing if, perhaps, i can stain my skin the blue i thirst for. so the wait won’t be so anguished.

it is a silly thing, how sometimes these meanders go where i’d not one bit intended. i had set out in one direction, but my fingers on the keys took me elsewhere. oh, well, that’s how it is in spring, this season that we wait and wait for. i’ll be back, i guess, to lolligag my way along some other route some coming day. because it seems the squill took over here. do you have something in the spring that makes you go a little gaga? do you have squill where you live? or what is it that lures you over the fine edge?

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March 19, 2008

not too big

any day now, it’ll evaporate.

i’ll look out the window and not see the little boy bundled in snow suit and puffy snow pants, the one too little to know it’s quite little-boyish to pull up that hood, pull it so tight, so only his little boy cheeks, all rosy and round, poke out from the layers of puff upon puff. i won’t see, anymore, how he kicks that one chunk of snow all the way home, from bus stop to house, a 10-minute meander that has him winding and spinning and kicking and scooping and, yes, ykkh, licking that snow.

any day now, i won’t walk in his room to kiss him awake, only to find at the foot of his bed, an old cardboard box he’s made into a house for his little two rabbits, who he’s tucked into bed, maybe read them by flashlight a story, whispered their prayers, then kissed them goodnight.

any day now, he won’t fit on my hip, that perch of old bone that was built, i’m convinced, to hold up a child in tears, or in heartache, or, every once in a while, in deep cuddling mode.

any day now, his legs will get longer, his words will get less of a little-boy lisp. and the occasional lapse into pure make-believe will go poof, will vanish away, overnight.

there won’t be a bear with a name. we won’t set a place at the table for that wild-haired lion named leo. (a cat who insists, by the way, on rice chex topped with bananas, more milk, please; a diet eerily close to the one thing his trainer could eat–and does–morning, noon and most every night.)

any day now, he’ll be all gone, my sweet little boy.

he’ll be replaced by a model less likely, i’m supposing, to give me a rub on my back for no reason besides that he still loves the feel of my skin. he won’t want to climb in my bed and play 20 questions on saturday mornings. and i doubt he’ll hand me the phone and ask me to dial because all the numbers just mix him all up.

so, right now, and right here, i have every intention of cupping it all in the palm of my hand. like sweet and cool waters, there at the edge of the stream on a day that’s unbearably dry.

i’ll suck it all up, suck every last drop, before it slithers away, slips through my fingers and back to the stream, where it rushes away.

i won’t get it again. this water comes once, comes in a rush that at first feels too much, and too hard to swallow, even in gulps. but then as it goes, as it trickles away, down your wrists, down your arms, back to the stream, you feel, already, the parch in your throat.

of late, the pangs come often, come hard. i miss him already. i long for these days, and they’re not even gone yet.

it’s a trick of the brain, a trick of the heart. and it’s not just a trick for the mamas among us. all of us, each, every one, we know what it is to miss someone we love before they’re not here anymore.

i really don’t think i’ve some special equipment here in my brain, the gymnastic button that lets me leap forward in time, and somersault back. it’s all of us, i’m pretty sure, with that human capacity to long and to miss, before it’s the time.

it’s the thing, is it not, that churns deep in our soul, propels us to love and love deeper. to cherish. to know, in our blood, with the swirls of our fingertips even, that what’s in our midst is sacred, is holy, is never forever.

and so, i go through my day with one extra eye. it’s trained on the child growing before me. i reach out and grab when the moments are sweet, and then all the sweeter.

the boy with the bear. the boy who climbs, still, on my lap. takes my hand in a crowd, squeezes it tight. the boy who calls out my name in the night, and awakes curled in a ball in the morning, all flannel and cowboy pajamas, and rosy and toasty, and playing like a ’possum.

it is a hard thing in this world to know just how to ready a child for all that awaits, a planet of wars and digital overload. a world where too many children are bounding toward grown-up, skipping right over the parts that teach them tender is golden, is good, is–in my book–truly essential.

so i stick with the basics, with what i know best, and what i believe with all of my whole. and i let it all play in the slowest of slo-mo.

i relish the old cardboard box, and the chance to tuck in a bunny to bed. i aim for the winding way home. and a sweet little boy in no hurry to harden.

i’ll savor each drop of each day. and know, soon enough, i’ll be ever so thirsty. and my sweet little boy will be big. too big for my hip. but never, my heart. which grows right along with him.

if this old chair has brought me anything, it’s brought me a place to pour out my love affair with my little one. forgive me the days i get sappy. i can’t really help it. see, if nothing else, some day that child will have all these pages to pore over, to read once again how his mother, she loved him. not a bad thing to bequeath, so i’m penning it now, while it’s bright in my eyes. the other thing is that writing about him has made me savor him in ways that might escape me if i was only tangled up in his moments. to write is to step back, make sense, untangle, see clearly. feel the pang right there in the heart. and so it is, and so i write. and you, if you choose, if you care to, you read along.

do you have that gymnastics button in your brain, the one that makes you leap back and forth in time? the one that propels you to a deeper grasp of the fact that what’s before you really is precious, really does deserve your fullest attention? how does it work for you?

and oh, by the way, that ol’ lazy susan is spinning afresh. not quite spring. but fresh, none the less. give it a click.

5 Comments

February 29, 2008

supersize-me day

golly gumdrops, is the word that just came to me. this is a day, by jove, for all-out indulgence.

it’s a day tacked on, for no reason i need worry about–sun, moon, aligning, something like that. a day that kneels down and bows to the great american–nay, western (we seem to have exported our greed)–hunger for more, more and, please, pretty please with sugar on top, more.

what’s this, you ask yourself, a day akin to all the shouting and exclaiming on all the rows and rows of cereal boxes, the paper cups at the gas station soda machine, heck even the tacos at taco bell. oh, and don’t forget the next-day installation rugs hawked night and day on cable TV. 33% more!!! buy 1-get 1 free!!!!! all this (arrow pointing from the midline to the tippy-top) extra! don’t forget the bonus pack!!

so it is with the 29th day of the lowly second month, the month so short you’d think napoleon was its patron saint. the month pre-shrunk to get it over in a hurry.

only, folks, i hate to break it to you, so i’ll do it softly (whisper here): this here hoopla day is all about a mere 3.5 percent bonus. i did the math.

yup, it’s true. barely a cost-of-living increase, this 29th of feb-ru-ary.

you take your ordinary february, you got 672 measly hours. you tack on 24 more every four years. wanna know the margin of indulgence? well, just divide the latter by the former, you got .0357142. (i don’t know what it is about numbers, but i just LOVE to roll around in ‘em. there is, isn’t there, something so exact about it all. stokes my number-crunchin’ heart, which for the most part dwells in the shadow of my wordy other half.)

so here we are. rollin’ like little bitty pigs in muddy puddle all for that string of unimpressive digits to the east of that there decimal point.

let us not, then, dilly dally. let’s get on with the fine art of making the most of every blessed bonus minute (there are 1,440 of those, my friends). let us wring each sweet drop from this fine day of leaping forward.

i for one leapt out of bed. i stoked the oven. fueled the birds. i know, i know, nothing extra-ordinary there. i let the boys sleep extra late. we’ll make up the difference come march, which has now been delayed not unlike the planes that can’t get to o’hare, what with all the snow that falls again.

i think soon i’ll peruse the aisles of my grocery store. buy every single thing that comes with more-more-more. if it’s bigger, it’s going in my cart. if it comes with two-for-one, i’ll take it. but only for today. tomorrow, it’s back to getting only what you pay for.

so go crazy, people. embrace the rare indulgence of a day.

it is not every year we get to do this, after all.

and then, just think: if really truly you were being given a whole fresh day to do the things you always longed to, what might unfold this holy blessed day?

funny thing is, i can’t think of much i don’t already do. i’d do it though with all my heart.

i would love my boys. be tender. i would, if not a snowy day, pick fresh berries from my garden. i might milk a cow. i’d paint a billboard, perhaps, tell the world something i think it needs to know. i’d find a little child who doesn’t know that he or she is loved, and bring that child home, surround him or her with what to us is not so revolutionary–a blanket, a cup of something warm, a lap to sit on, pages in a book to turn.

i might, if i got going, call everyone i know who’s sad or lonely. i would tell them why and how i love them. try to stoke the flame again, the one inside that someone’s aching heart.

but now a boy i love, a little one in cowboy pajamas, is at my side, just waking up. i’ve got buns, hot from the oven, all cinnamon and glaze.

and we are going to indulge on this blessed day of golly gumdrops.

what will you do this bonus day?

4 Comments

February 27, 2008

talking till the wee, wee hours

i’m thinking slumber parties for grownups are the next big swell idea. or, at least they should be, if we give a dang for the continued tick-tock-tick of that ol’ vessel keepin’ time, just beneath our jammies and our frayed and flannel robes.

oh, i don’t mean yakkin’ the night away with whoever it is you’re shacked up with. that’s all well and good (although there are the toothpaste blobs in the sink to contend with, and company seems to know to refrain from that. or at least wipe ’em down with a wad of toilet paper). in fact, some nights when i find me and the tall-guy-with-glasses laughing ourselves silly at 2 in the morning, i really do think marriage–on a good day–is like your mom telling you your best friend can have a sleepover all summer long. and then, poof, the summer never ends.

what i’m talkin’ here–sorry, boys, you can go play all-night poker, or whatever it is that would float your so-called boat–i’m talkin’ havin’ your best girl friends, one at a time is how i like it best, come knockin’ at your door, with jammies, mouthguard, heck, even pimple cream tucked in some little over-the-shoulder satchel.

i’m talkin’ curling up on the couch, armed with bowls of popcorn to punctuate the most important points–you can bite it hard and loud, if you need to, or let it linger on your lips, for effect; it really is the perfect conversational accessory, salted, greased or plain old plain.

i’m talkin’ whispers when the rest of the house is filled with zzzzzzs. i’m talkin’ getting past the ancillary business and boring straight inside the heart.

i’m talkin’ saying things you can’t say out loud to barely any other soul on earth. but you can when you’re with a best friend, because she knows it all already. and she can fill in blanks no one else would every guess.

what makes me think all this is i had a slumber party just the other night.

one of my oldest, dearest, wisest friends was in town from california. she stretched her trip just to spend two nights, one day, with me and my boys. once again, i was humming as i readied her room, blew up the air mattress, put out a little vase of white tea roses in winter, laid yummy soaps and lotions on her tall stack of fluffy towels. i even plunked a toblerone chocolate on her pillow. there is nothin’ like spoiling your best friends.

the first night, after fish soup and black cherry pie, we stayed up for hours, accompanied by the boy i call the manchild. he adores her too. she is pretty much his auntie to the world. she knows more about everything than most anyone i know. she’s hip. she’s cool. she wears her hair in dreadlocks (not a lot of which you see around this leafy shore). and she’s the one who taught him how to take whatever’s in the fridge, add rice, one egg, and call it “ghetto fried rice.” a dish he could eat five times a day, swooning every time.

oh, and besides, she went to the school he’s set his sights on, so he had hours’ worth of questions. right down to subway stops, and profs.

that night, as you might figure, it was all PG, content approved for family audience. (with just a few racy winks and nods, perhaps, since after all, he’s a manchild now, and she was easing him into the club.)

the next night, though, once home from a rousing dinner with old newsroom pals, we paid no mind to the clock telling us–in no uncertain terms–that anyone with sense would be in bed, tucked beneath the puffy covers.

nope. we were two old, old friends who’d had to keep the lid on all the really pressing stuff the night before. so this night, we were all but yankin’ that old clock right off the wall. it ticked, we talked. ignored its insistent gongs, every quarter hour, like a toddler tugging on our sleeve.

we got down to business. we got down to girl talk–and i’ll not spell that out. you’re either of the double-Xs (i’m talkin’ DNA, not ratings, here), and you know of which i speak. or else you’re not, and forgive our exclusionary ways this one time, but there’s no translator in the house.

here, though, are some hints: dreams, drama, heartache; repeat, repeat. how’s that for what it was us girls were digging into, besides the mound of exploded kernels that stoked our late-night talking binge?

oh, yes, there was something to the sleepiness that crept in, as that ol’ clock kept burping up its teeny-tiny numbers. not unlike wine, it made the room all gauzy, almost blurred. i was bleary-eyed, all right, but that only oiled, loosed, the conversation.

like a stream that rushes, sends its waters down and in, rinsing ’round the rocks, bathing every crevice, that late-night hour propelled the words, the thoughts, down deep to all the nooks and crannies of our souls.

we went to places the daylight does not allow. only the long blank slate of night, with dawn the only end in sight, still miles out beyond the eastern sky.

in fact, at one brief synapse, when some wayward thought was trying to take the leap from nerve to nerve, i did think, oh heck, let’s just go all night. let’s watch that rosy-fingered dawn reach out and try to tap us on the noggin.

but at last, when every chamber of our hearts had been unlocked, laid bare, when eyelids were truly slipping, and yawns distorting words, we succumbed.

we did what grownups do: we got off the couch, and sensibly climbed the stairs (if 2:30, maybe 3, has any sense at all, what with a whole sunday just ahead).

we kissed goodnight, for that’s what best friends do.

and then we dreamed. of the next night when we’d unspool our hearts and souls, join hands and sail to places that can only be discovered when it’s dark and quiet and you pay no mind to midnight chimes on busy-body clocks.

have you had a slumber party lately? with your oldest bestest friend? or with, perhaps, the ones who shared your dorm, or house, in college? or, maybe, you lucky duck, you have a sister who brings her jammies for the night…
to mix it up here, do you ever think of being married as the longest lasting slumber party in the world? oh, one other thing, i hated slumber parties as a kid. hated the way it made me feel the morning after. hated being the only one who wanted sleep, and didn’t like to get in trouble, despised the scary movies. did you like ‘em? or were you, like me, more inclined toward the one-on-one, more tame, sleepover?

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Category: savoring moments