springtime | pull up a chair

March 29, 2013

bathed in birdsong & other stirrings of mama earth

dispatch from 02139 (in which, despite snow clouds that scuttle across the sky, the determined among us set out to scratch up vernal offerings….)

all week, at a mere 20 minutes past the hour of five, i’ve been catapulted from my slumbers.

once or twice by the fat cat launching into his basso morning rumble (always a sign of impending doom and certain need for rug-cleaning spritz-spritz-spritz). but more often, and more insistently, it’s the mad chorus of matin birdsong that up and lifts me from my lumpy pillow, and sets me sailing for the windows.

there, ear to glass, i drink in all the early-morning world of cambridge has to offer me. i marvel that amid the cobblestone streets, and the colonial lean-to’s, amid the screech of 21st-century brakes and the occasional ambulance roaring by, whole colonies of bird have fluttered in, hunkered down, and think nothing of opening wide their throats and letting loose with heaven’s warble.

there are those in this house who grumble thusly, who reach for my swift-abandoned pillow and make of it a helmet, a sound-shielding barrier, one that muffles pre-dawn birdsong.

ah, but that is not me.

no, i’m the girl who drinks it in like coca-cola through a straw.

i was, you see, born and raised on bird.

(that cinematic signature of suburban america circa 1960, the family movie, regularly took time out at our house from birthday party, graduation, backyard frolic to pan up to the trees where, for a good five-minute stretch, mr. scarlet tanager, or sir indigo bunting would hold the frame, while abandoned children must have wondered why their markings ever paled to celestial feather. as recently as yesterday, The Original Mama Nature, as we sometimes call my mama, sent out one of her “nature notes” informing all five of her brood — spread all across the continental US — that “The Ducks are back,” as urgent a missive as you’ll ever get from her.)

when you grow up knowing in a blink the orange breast of the robin, the red flash of cardinal, and the iridescent blue of said bunting, you tend to not only pay attention but feel the hard-wired zing of ornithological amazement, in whatever form it brushes, wafts or flutters by you.

and this week, the signal that it sent — loud and clear and unshakably — was that the winter world would soon be melting, and once again the globe would spin toward full-throttle rebirth.

the birds don’t always wait for mercury to make it comfy cozy. they’re impelled by slant of light, by intensity of wattage. and, according to their inner-clickers, it’s high time to get this springtime show on the road.

a girl who pays attention has little choice but to play along. so one of the amusements with which i amuse my wandering eye is one i call spot-the-crocus. as i dilly-dally off to reading room or lecture hall, i pay no mind to cracks and heaves in the sidewalk (always a dangerous distraction). rather, i scan the sidelines in search of anything but brown or gray or muddy-olive-drab.

and, more and more these days, i am hearing the bing-bing-bing of hitting the crocus jackpot. now that the last mounds of snow are melting into oblivion, the sweet nodding purple heads are rising up and offering resurrection. “you’ve made it through the long, hard winter, through howling winds and winter boots that weighted down your feets like so many pounds of ore,” they seem to whisper. “’twill soon be the day when you can bound down the stairs and out the door in little but a sweater. a pink sweater, even. rather than the charcoal gray and black you’ve worn since winter solstice.”

i am feeling hope. but this year, too, with warming winds, and vernal light, comes a hard-to-ignore wince deep down inside. we’ve been told that it’s a common ail of spring for all the nieman fellows. our year of sumptuous living is, undeniably, inching toward the final chapters. and at the speed with which the weeks whiz by, inching is hardly the proper verb. more like avalanche-ing. swallowing us whole. leaving us little time to gasp, to catch our breath, to realize just how soon we’ll be grabbing for the rolls of tape, packing boxes filled with books, and heading home to sift for months through these holy blessed hours, and try to figure out how in the world to live up to all we’ve learned and dreamed and promised.

but that’s the puzzle for another day.

today, this holy silent day of somber friday, i will go deep within. i will wrap myself in sunlight and birdsong, i will watch the sky, and feel the rumble of the earth beneath my knees. i will find my way to the monastery. i will unfurl prayer. and, as i always do, i will let the noisy flocks carry off my hopes and fervent whisper to that up-high station on its way toward heaven.

do you, too, scan high and low for peeps of spring? and how do you go still — if you do — as we enter into these holiest of days in the roman christian calendar?

8 Comments

March 5, 2010

of promise, once again

they beg no attention.

they are, simply, bent. bowed in humble salutation, yellow heads drooped, petals clasped in chilly huddle. there beside the soot-stained crust of snow.

they neither stamp their feet, nor clap their wee appendages, calling scant attention to the fact that they defy the icy crystals, heave big load upon their tender shoulders: they are the harbingers of heartbeat, of promise, once again.

“there will be stirrings just around the dreary bend, what is bleak will end,” they whisper, should you put your ear to where the words emerge.

oh, i never can remember what their name is, at least according to the botanists. instead, i call them “miracle,” balm for winter blahs.

as these last gasps come from all of us, come from earth, come from sagging spirit, as the wonder of the winter white turns to mucky brown of spring-that-will-not-come, i seem to forget every year to watch for them.

they leap out while i’ve not noticed, have done their work beneath the snows, labored in silence, unfurled without witness.

they are, like so many gracenotes along the way, that hushed brush of the divine–so often cloaked as mother earth–that present themselves at the very moment when otherwise we might succumb, throw up our arms and flop defeated to the couch.

there is, if you keep watch, a holy vein of resurrection all through life.

just when we think we’re broken, along comes someone, something, to haul us back from the empty brink.

so it is with the fellow on the el car who spies our weary face, our nearly-buckled knees, and leaps up to give his seat. he and his tattooed neck showing gallant empathy.

or the boychild who spies you wincing at the kitchen sink, and rushes over to rub your achy back, tells you in 8-year-old bravado, “go sit down, i can do the dishes.”

or, for those of us who count on bird and tree and sprig to offer counsel, dish out therapeutic session without the hefty fee-per-hour, there comes this time of year a subtle tapping on the shoulder, urging us on, giving reason to believe.

there is, for starters, the sun coming up each morn, the dawn arriving earlier and earlier as if the burning ball of gases realizes fully there is work to be done, a whole half planet needs its thaw; the list of chores, endless.

trees must bud, erupt in blossom. birds, any week now, will catch the wind, fly northerly, land in our branches, weave nests, lay eggs, pluck worms.

bulbs, already wakened, will push their way through dirt, make us swoon with all their cobalt blues and oyster pinks, golden trumpets, in a thousand shades of butter.

the light itself is purer now, lands on the countertop in ways that call us to attention, make us glance out the window, notice, return to task, emboldened.

and then, there in muddy crevices, knots of green poke through. unfurl. offer moment’s tingle, make you stop as you fumble for the keys.

once again, the promise comes. the earth has turned, the seasons haven’t frozen in their tracks. something’s stirring, gently, defiantly, persistently.

once again, winter thaws to spring, and so too we glean the vernal message: after months and weeks of slogging through the knee-high drifts, the mounds, the muck, when shoulders sag and heartbeats flag, alert your eyes, your ears, and soon your nose……

you’ll be wrapped, presently, in the envelope of resurrection. what has slept, will wake. what was still, will stir again.

the way hasn’t been lost, merely hushed before crescendo.

march gives way to promise, once again.

have you spied a sign here or there of reason to hope? is the long winter wearing you down? have you given in to the clump of $2 daffodils at the grocery store, hauled ‘em home as if essential vernal tonic?

8 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?

17 Comments

April 9, 2008

doesn’t take much

there is one skinny window in my kitchen that i look out a lot. it’s near the coffee gurgler, for starters. and i never start without coffee. not sure i could start without coffee. pretty much the gas to my lawn mower. oh, wait, i don’t have one of those; i have one of those old-fashioned pushing kinds, with the blades that whirl in sharp circles, and spit out the grass from the sides. makes me think of a shortstop with a mouth full of chew.

hmm, but that wasn’t my point in the first place.

so, back to the point.

all right, then.

back to the window.

just outside that ol’ window is my flowerbox, one of the ones i forget to water in summer, and spend the rest of the year–thanks to the disheveled row of dehydrated stubs–being reminded just how guilty i am.

beyond that, though, is a tangle of bushes that i pretend is the woods. oh, sure, if you look up and not down, you can see the brick of the big house next door. you might see the gutters as well. and that might signal your brain, something like this, “psst, this is not the woods. this is suburbia. and you are no more than the length of a stretched-out tall someone away from the people next door.”

but i make sure i look down. i don’t like the noise in my head that tries to shake loose all my cobwebs and gauzy-edged dreams.

far as i care, i am in the woods. and the tall skinny window is that of my fairy-tale cottage, and there in my woods, the seasons and birds muck around in that bramble, close enough that i can keep watch.

so it was, that the difference between monday and tuesday was rather quite something. on monday, i swear, i had nothing but sticks out the window, but tuesday, oh my.

as you can see up above, in that little picture i took just so you could see too, i had the stirrings of life.

now, i admit, it’s not much. and it’s hardly dramatic. why, you could be barreling by and not even notice. not unless that proud little branch with the nubs on the end, and the first sprouts of leaves, reached out and poked you in the eye. said something like, “hey, look, i’m not just a stick anymore.” then, as you cussed and patted your teary old eye, you might notice.

but i–maybe like you–have been on the prowl. i have been combing the earth, hiking the woods. i’ve been down on my knees, practically begging, dear mama earth, please please fork it up. puh-leez give us some sign that all is not lost, and we are not stuck in perpetual whatever this is. not quite winter. sure not spring. a cold mucky preamble that might never get to the story.

so there it was, maybe. the answer to at least one of my prayers. nothing big. just a little green. a little more nub than the day just before.

it was enough, though, for me to stop and to let down my jaw.

and that’s when i made the connection. life is like that, 99 days out of 100. the growth that we’re looking for isn’t dramatic. won’t bang us over the head with its sparkle and fizz. might even be drab, not fuchsia and cobalt and knock-you-down yellow.

sometimes, it’s just a few sweet leaves on the end of a twig on a very old bush. they unfurl. they inhale the light and the sweet notes of warmth that blow every once in a while.

they stir.

they put forth.

all over again, a life force is tapped. the cycle of birth, of bloom, and of fade, is set back in motion.

we are, all of us, a part of that flow. we grow in barely perceptible bits. we are not like our children, those swift sprouting beings whose legs, i swear, grow in inches, from the time we tuck them in bed till they rise the next morning.

and sometimes it doesn’t take much, just the barest small measure of growing, of quarter-inching toward life, to make all the difference in the whole world.

sometimes the chasm between hope and hopelessness is barely as wide as the breadth of a new blade of grass.

sometimes it comes in measures you might overlook: the deepening red of the cardinal; the early brown push-ups of sprouts through the crust of the earth, the flitting of sparrows with string and fuzz in their beaks, a nest in the making.

sometimes, we, too, start to unfold. forgiveness seeps in where heartache once held its tight grip. the ache in our heart lightens. the words we were groping for, the ones we needed to whisper, out loud, they come to us, at long last.

sometimes, it doesn’t take much.

but there it is, the barely perceptible sign that the thing that we prayed for, the thing that we needed, is coming to life.

now, we keep watch and we wait. and we try to believe. what is good, what is right, what is life, will return.

sometime.

doesn’t take much.

are you like me drumming your fingers, counting the hours for the full chorus of spring, and all that it stands for? it is indeed the season of hope. and after this here winter, these days of endless gray and chill and forecasts for snow, it comes achingly slow. but while the spring always comes, so too it reminds that all we await, might come as well. what do you yearn for this day? and are there signs out your window of hope?

1 Comment

March 12, 2008

drumming my fingers for spring: the sequel

not to whine (which are the three surest indicators a whine is in the offing, the immediate offing), but they promised.

oh, sure, they said. snow melted by wednesday. warm winds aswirling. heck, i had visions of little spring things poking their sweet nubile necks out from under the insistently dripping-away ice crust.

i had visions of sweaters, and only sweaters. i thought boots would be shoved to the back of the closet. i thought i might be able to skip again–or at least ditch the old-lady shuffle that keeps me from breaking my neck, and my hip, or merely my spongy old wrist.

dang, i had visions of calling this dispatch, giddy. as in, i thought i would be.

but noooooooooooooo.

here it is, wednesday, all right. and out my window i see this: snow snow snow. not white snow, or not much of it anyway. but rather whole gobs and piles and tundras of gray snow. black snow. snow that has, sorry, worn out its welcome. be white, be fluffy. but do not loiter long past the due date.

don’t know about you, but it’s all gotten me a little bit grouchy. like once when i was little and someone promised the circus was coming and i could go, too. but then the day came and went and not even a whiff of an elephant swishing its tail did i get.

i know i’m the one who said i liked my winters the real way. the pioneer way. hard and fierce, and pounding right on my windows.

but that was way back in february, before my inner hopscotcher-and-jumproper had fully awakened. this here is march. and they promised, is all.

it’s just all a big tease, is the problem. the light whispers spring. the big papa cardinal’s out there singin’ his lungs out. and the weather maps over the weekend showed bright shining arrows pushing the cold right up to some canadian lumberjack camp, where at least they’ve got the beards for these things.

geez, someone even thought it’d be funny–hysterically funny, i’ll bet–to flip all the clocks forward, trick us into pretending, what, it was the third week in april. ha. some joke.

here it is four whole days later and i am still thinking its lunch time when really it’s time for the dinner to bubble away there on the stove.

so what if my children are slurping their soup at quarter till eight, and then rolling to bed, because the clock says so. and only because.

far as i know, i’m not the only one grumpy. even the sparrows, the ones outside my window, they’ve given it up. ditched the whole plan for that egg-hatching nest. they seem to be huddled instead under a dried grassy blanket. chattering their little bird teeths.

my cat apparently catches their drift. i open the door, the way i usually do, he looks bothered, darts me a glance. “you must be joking,” he apparently thinks, as he tucks his tail right back under his haunches and refuses to budge.

it is all rather hopeless.

i mean, what is the point of all those deep stirrings inside? the ones that want to break out the pink and the soft seafoamy green. the ones that drool for a fiddlehead plucked from the woods. or a fat stalk of asparagus. or a strawberry that oozes its shirt-staining juice down your chin and onto your so-called bosom.

i, for one, am employing desperate measures: i saw in the store, two bucks for a handful of daffodils, deeply imported indeed. i grabbed ’em. paid no mind to the fact that their overseas flight might add an inch to the size of my old carbon footprint.

i cheated as well in the produce department. snared me a fistful of spears, asparagus spears. so far, i’m holding off on the berries. i’ve no need for ones flown halfway around the world. from a place where the sun truly shines, to here where it’s all a big hoax. (and besides, they are hard as rock those faux fruits, stripped of whatever it is that gives them a right to their juice-through-a-straw-sucking name.)

oh, goodness. i’m so sorry to take up your time with all this here whining. perhaps like the groundhog i should return to my lair. or whatever it is you’d call an underground hide-out where the sun never shines. and when it does, it’s still cold as cold gets.

hmm, sounds like i’m due for spring break. too bad that too could prove to be rather wrenching. i’m staying put, while the rest of the world i’m pretty sure has flights to places that don’t mess with your head. places where spring is what it is. and not simply a season that teases and taunt.

sign below if you too are bothered by all this recalcitrant weather. the winds that won’t warm. the snow that won’t go. the ice that refuses to melt. sing your sad song below. and maybe we’ll find solace in each other’s deep undying misery. and maybe some of you folks who live in sensible places–places where warm is warm, and not maybe–perhaps you can blow us some promising weather.

1 Comment

April 9, 2007

into the woods

leave it to the italians. they have a name for today. they call it “pasquetta,” or little easter.

why, they wonder, after all the deprivation and darkness of lent, the shadow that burst, finally, into light, into the unbridled exuberance of easter, why, they wonder, why pack it up like so many leftover baskets, and tuck it on the shelf ’til next year?

mais non, they would say if they were french. but, of course, they say it in italian. dag nab it, is what they mean, though, again, they don’t say it quite that way.

those smart italians, they do a very smart thing: they grab one of those baskets, they pack it with leftover yummy things from easter, and they take to the woods. specifically, they set out in search of a watery place.

water, on pasquetta, is key. there is, depending on your level of gusto for this little easter, some splashing involved.

in fact, all over europe today, there are folks splashing. they are not being mean to each other. as a matter of fact, they are partaking of the little easter blessing.

in hungary, apparently, boys knock on doors. girls answer. boys splash girls. girls invite them inside. they feast. they send boys home with wildly painted easter eggs.

on easter tuesday, the girls return the favor. they knock and splash.

it must be riotous, all this knocking and splashing and heading to the woods with your leftover pink and green eggs.

but, besides the fact that it’s quaint, there is, it seems, something rich about the european approach to little easter. to all of life, perhaps, but certainly to little easter.

it is about taking linear measure of time, peeling back the ordinary, extracting mystery and sacred, raising simple hours into the realm of the extraordinary. it is about pushing away the rock of workday expectation, exploring the cavern of the deep unknown, the unexpected. reveling on a monday.

because a friend i love has been telling me for months i need to, have to, must not sleep until i read, “to dance with God,” (paulist press, $14.95) a poetic, eye-opening 245 pages on family ritual and community celebration written by gertrud mueller nelson, i finally cracked the cover over the weekend.

she is very wise, this deeply jungian, deeply spiritual woman, who in 1986 wrote this book while living in california. she says this of what she calls “holy time out”:

“holes are created in time through the creation of holidays–or, indeed, holy days–where the ordinary and everyday stops and time is set apart and not used. every seventh day (sabbatical) since the story of creation is a day of being, a ‘day of rest.’ that is what a feast is. the feast has its origin and its justification in its dedication to celebrating and worship. it belongs to the gods.”

she goes on to tell us that plato, of all thinkers, put it this way: “the gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down a succession of recurring feasts to restore them from fatigue and gave them the muses and apollo, their leader, and dionysis, as companions in their feasts–so that, nourishing themselves in festive companionship with the gods, they should stand again upright and erect.”

the feast–or holy day–then, is, “the very act which makes the transition from crawling beasts to the upright and conscious human,” nelson writes, “a transformation which makes what is human equal to and a companion (comrade) of the gods.”

i don’t know about you but we don’t spend a whole lot of time around here even noticing feast days, let alone packing our baskets and heading to the woods.

apparently, gertrud does. she says that on easter monday she always let her children stay home from school. they went off to church early in the morning, but then they took off to the woods, often to a marshy place. through binoculars, they watched the water birds, the mating birds, doing their springlike thing. they inhaled the woods, the little tips of tender green budding on all the branches, turning the gray of winter woods into the lacy green of early spring.

getting wet, she says, was always part of the picnic. back to the baptismal waters, and the holy sprinklings, that are so very much a part of easter.

immediately, i found all of this a notion i could warm to: an excuse for picnic. tromping through the woods. stopping time for one more day. stealing children from the classroom, for the sake of exuberating spring (i know, i know, it’s not a word, but i just made it one, so now it is).

so last night, well past sleeping time, i tiptoed in the dark to the bedside of my almost-man-child, the one who loves the woods and who also had just flicked out the light when he heard me coming up the stairs. i told him my little easter idea. at first, he broke out in a grin (he turned the light back on, that’s how i know that), but then he thought about the school day, and thought, not even for a lunch hour picnic could he leave the load at hand.

oh, well, i sighed. fact is, we might have done our little easter backwards. we had taken to the woods already, on big easter. taken kosher-for-passover-for-easter picnic to the woods, in our glorious mixing of religions. it seemed the place to be, the woods that is. for all the reasons up above.

but still, i think, i might take the little one on a pasquetta picnic. or maybe in the twilight, i’ll take my boys by the hand, and take them off to where the gods urge us to recline. just one more day, a holy day.

a holy day for splashing in the woods. i think i like this little easter.

all right, all you wise people, do some of you already know and do this little easter? have you been splashing away for years without me? and what of the notion of not confining the holiday to one day, but extending exuberance? might we do well to weave more holiness and more exuberance into our ordinary time? are the italians, and all the europeans, not onto something? something much larger than little easter?

photo credit: my sweet will. taken on big easter. we both spotted the moss island amid the marsh; my camera said it was busy reclining and couldn’t be bothered, so will came to my rescue, once again.

p.s. it’s monday, the lazy susan spins afresh…

4 Comments

April 5, 2007

being e. bunn

when i signed up for this being-a-mama thing, there are many points i failed to adequately ponder.

(we’ll not dive, not today anyway, into some of those matters that i might wisely have run through the almighty thinker, that mass of cells between my ears, that might better have equipped me for this madre job. we’ll leave that for a less auspicious day. this, after all, is countdown week for judy garland belting song of easter bonnet and said parade.)

certainly, in days b.c. (before child, that would be), i never grasped the charm, the pure delight, of packing joy, delivering it, complete with jelly beans, in a straw-braided basket. the easter basket, of course.

the santa thing, i might have given thought. you know, some winter’s afternoon, as a pouty post-believing child, flung (with requisite drama) upon my bed, legs cocked at the knees and crossed, kicking foot up in the air. thinking: when i grow, i’m going to be one heck of a santa. i’ll not forget the china teaset, the one with tiny painted flowers.

but easter? who spent much time considering the occupational upside of mr. e. bunn, esq.?

the basket, while i do recall a spectacular sponge paint set when i was 5, was, in the house where i grew up, more pure sugar rush, ten grubby little hands racing to the pink-and-purple plastic baskets, inhaling beans, then dashing off to rest of resurrected morning.

i failed to grasp the paschal possibility.

i would say i rather stumbled into the rabbit hole, into the unexpected magic of tiptoeing through the night, leaving trail of cut-out bunny feets, and hiding the basket of just-hatched tenderness in a place that, come morning, little feets would have to find.

there is something, something far beyond charming, about slipping inside these make-believe, oversized, dispatchers of joy, be it the one with wiggly tail or the chap with jiggly belly.

there is something that almost takes your breath away when you realize, poof, you’re all grown up, and you now are the one who, with your brush of many hues, shades and colors the someday stories, the memories, of what it was to grow up in the house where you preside.

it’s up to you, you realize, you who tucks tenderness in a basket, to tenderize the hearts of those who traipse through the land where children romp. at least in your house.

but, indeed, i have discovered, and now, myself, i practically jiggle with the wonder that it brings, that nowadays i get to pack the baskets for those little sparkling eyes, the ones that, certainly, will be up and out from under covers, rubbing, shouting some early-morning merriment, as they stumble down the stairs and round the bend, ultra-sonic easter radar leading them without wrong turn straight to where the sugar, in several forms, awaits.

before we get too far on that sugar thought, let me toss this sad disclaimer, admit this thing that might make you sigh a sigh; say, phew, thank heaven i wasn’t born to that ol’ mama. here’s the sorry truth: i don’t do unending sugar at easter. it’s not about sugar in this house.

it’s about something far, far sweeter.

and that, i think, is why i love it so.

i have a someone, a sandra sweetpea, who taught me how to do easter. instructed me in easter basket 101. like many things she taught me, she hasn’t a clue, really, how deep the lessons she imparted. there was no hand-out. no quiz, or chapter review.

instead there was a little shop, a shop called sweetpea, a shop of natural toys and classic books, a shop where imagination unlocked the door and set the stories spinning. sandra was the shopkeeper. and if you studied the way she gathered things, the tender, earth-spun beauty she gathered in her shop, in baskets, on antique bookshelves, tucked in woodland scenes that you swore the fairies might have visited, then you learned a thing or ten about quietly offering a whole other sort of being a child.

being a child–or a mama or a papa or a someone with child heart–who listens to the rhythms of the season, who understands the gift in playing richly with simple child’s toys, who breathes in the magic of a beautifully spun storybook.

it was like a refuge and a respite from the worldly, that little shop on southport in chicago. i’d pull back the door, a bell would tinkle, and then, surely, sandra would appear from behind a curtain, all sparkling eye and wisdom. quietly, without words sometimes, she’d lead me by the hand to something full of beauty. she would laugh her marvelous grown-up-little-girl laugh, and i would see the magic. then she might spend a minute telling me about the marvelous soul who tromped the woods, carved the elfin house, spun the wool, dyed the cloth from flower petals or vegetable scrapings. i would stand there, spell-bound.

my children’s toy chests were never stuffed. but they were rich in things–an elf’s tree house, rows of books, simple blocks–that will last forever.

and so it was sandra who taught me easter baskets, too. to go to sweetpea for easter, my pilgrimage each holy week, was to come home with a finger-sized bunny so sweet i’d want to carry him to bed with me (or feed him itsy-bitsy carrots). a book or two, the pages splashed with springtime colors. some little pack of seeds, forget-me-not, or carrot. just enough to whisper, the earth is waking up from winter’s slumber. all life is new, rejoice.

and so it was the other day that i wandered back to where sandra now presides. the sweden shop, it’s called, but i like to think of it as the swede pea. for it seems she’s transplanted plenty of her magic there. (her sweetpea, sadly, closed.)

the little bunny smiling from above–sandra, who is quite something with thread and needle, made him. stuffed him first with lavender, real lavender, from someone’s garden. then she stitched him up. when you rub his belly, lightly, with just the press of your finger, the lavender wafts. i bought two. one has little button eyes and nose. of course, i bought a book. a book from green tiger press (collectors of breathtaking, knee-buckling illustrations from days past), a book called, “the truth about easter rabbits.” of course, i bought a pack of carrot seeds. and a big fat orange carrot stuffed with all orange jelly beans.

come saturday night, when all is clear (i can’t promise quiet, since my littlest rabbit has made quite a habit of hopping out of bed in recent weeks), i will make like e. bunny himself, and gather my new-life wares. i will tuck simple magic in a basket. i will smile all the while. it is hard not to melt when tucking easter in a basket.

i will make one basket for each boy in this house, and then i will tiptoe to a hiding place. when all is finally still, i will sprinkle pink construction-paper rabbit feet and baby carrots from edge of beds through the hall, down the stairs where the trail will then diverge, one branch south and one southwest. each boy is on his own to find what easter brings.

and i’ll stand off in a corner, softly soaking in the joy. no one told me how sweet it is to play the easter bunny. and that, perhaps, is the sweetest secret ever. one i’ll not stop, ever, believing wholly in.

oh, if only i could, i’d make a lovely basket for every one of you. the house would be so filled, there’d be lavender wafting everywhere. and plenty of old-fashioned carrot bunches, complete with carrot tops, those leafy greens that are, perhaps, the crowning glory of every bam-made easter basket.
do you, or you, or you, find joy in being a big invisible bunny? and do you have any secret things you always search for in a basket of your own making?

4 Comments

April 4, 2007

batten the hatches, blanket the garden

no, no, this is not about how to dry your laundry on the line, sans the line. this is not about casting your underthings and old rags upon the garden for the sake of saving turning on the dryer.

no, darn it, this is about fickle spring.

there you are merrily thinking the thaw is underway. all around the place, little things are pushing up, pushing through the crust. not so tentatively, but maybe a little shy, they peek their soft green tips. tenacious tips. they gaze around, they check to see if they’ve got goosebumps, or whether it’s safe to keep on coming.

they come. a tulip sprout here. virginia bluebells there. the poppies, even, send up their fountainhead of leaves that look as if they’ve been cut by giant pinking shears, all ziggy-zaggy around the edge.

and my april prize, my heirloom hyacinths. the antiques of my garden with roots dating back to 1870, the one they call, “the queen of the blues.” she is a soft, soft silvery blue, according to my friends at old house gardens, the ones who rescued her in the first place, and then, for a small price, bequeathed her to me. she’s been in my care and custody for years now. if heaven sold perfume, this might be the no. 2 seller (after the aphrodisiac, korean spice viburnum, which sends me to the moon, and which, if sold at neiman marcus would elbow ol’ dowdy chanel V right off the counter.)

but back to the laundry scattered in the beds.

it seems that just as all the pretty things were hours or maybe days from showing their true colors, someone somewhere decided to pull the switch, hit reverse, and suddenly out there it feels like winter.

the mercury on my truth-telling thermometer is silently sliding south, right now at 32, which, unless i’m losing marbles, i am certain i learned in first-grade science is the point at which fluid water turns to solid ice, a substance nowhere in the primer, “how to grow a flower.”

the weatherperson who lives in my computer tells me it’s getting colder still; and, as is, all living things outside feel as if it’s deep down in the early 20s.

that means, my growing things need coats.

sleeves for tulips can be a little difficult to construct. so i go for the loose look, the draped look. old sheets flung. terry towels as fabric domes to hold in what little heat there is.

did i mention that the winds were whipping through the night? great howling winds. winds that made you think you must have holes right through your floorboards and the winds were whistling west to east, taking shortcuts through the room where you were sleeping. or trying to sleep, at least.

yes, yes, it was a night, it remains a day, for ragtag april garden. i’ve had to do this right up through may: the annual tucking of the beds under bedclothes.

in the city, i lived next door to an equally towel-tossed gardener. our side-to-side gardens on these frosty mornings looked like christo, the fabric artist who has shrouded museums and mountains and even central park, had slipped through the ’hood and done his wrapper thing. on our tulip heads under towels.

these days i dwell in the land where one does not fling mismatched rags on the lawn. once again, i stand in danger of at least a phone call from the appearance review police.

excuse me, madame chair, they would begin, we do not support your nasty habit of littering the leafy shore with those babushkas in your beds. please remove them, or we will revoke your passport and send you shuffling back to the nitty-gritty city.

which is why i do my dirty work, my mission work, really, in the back, where, save for this blaring announcement, no one should notice that i am deep into doing what it takes to get my garden through the cold snap.

if it means secreting out the back door, in dark of night, bundle of slightly tattered sheets in arms, then i will risk my residence here on this north shore. i will, as i unfurl my cotton armaments on my shivering spring shoots, not be stopped.

do not, i tell you, get between a madwoman and the precious beds she must protect, come lawn police or subzero temps that would do in a lesser warrior.

anyone else lie awake fearing for their tender sprouts, as wicked winds whistle taunts all through the night? anyone else cast a quilt of tattered cloths upon the april beds, in hope that may the month will bring a riotous show of life triumphant over freezing cold? anyone else have any other warming tricks up their shivering gardener’s sleeves?

4 Comments

April 3, 2007

every year, a cast of characters

every year. count on it. there will be characters. they will be many. they will be deeply, richly, crazily creviced, shadowed, colored.

it is as much the order of the seder as the haggadah itself. the table will spill with character. ooze with it. rumble, tumble, jumble, full of characters.

wafting just above, that’s character no. 1. the tall one, that is.

that’s ted. rebbe ted. the one wrapped in japanese prayer robe, tied with obi. the one raising the first of four glasses of vintage manishewitz. the one we drive miles to be with every pesach.

ted, a rabbi and cantor without a congregation these days, is a therapist; spends his working hours trying to screw on people’s heads, or at least screw them on a little less wobbly than when they first wandered in.

but mostly, always, ted is a character. ted’s eyes, i think, must gleam even when he’s sleeping.

at ted’s seder, things are, um, unorthodox. ted reaches in a bag and pulls out yarmulkes from around the world. sometimes he wears his tibetan temple headdress. he always wears his japanese robe.

at ted’s, you do some chanting. you close your eyes and chant the vowels. you do not close your lips when chanting vowels, he tells you, and thus you assume a posture of openness that ted thinks the world truly deeply needs. you chant deeply, ahhhhhhhhh.

at ted’s, you eat sumptuous french hors d‘oeuvres. (and then you find out, oops, they are not kosher for passover; maybe that’s why they tasted so good.)

i tell you the story of ted because in bringing my children to ted each year i bring them to one of the most essential gifts a parent can give a child: the gift of the one who’d never paint by numbers, the iconoclast, the eccentric, the character. the deep and rich and soul-expanding knowledge that life is splashed with vibrant colors.

one of those colors is the color ted.

it brings unending joy to me to bring my children to tables where i know they will hear voices they do not hear at home. home is where the grounding happens. home is where you learn that the parachute has a safety cord, and you can pull it any time.

other people’s launch pads are where you learn to lift your foot off the ledge, set it in mid-air, and feel the fall, but then the updraft, carrying you, lifting you to places you’d never see from the safety of that concrete ledge.

last night we soared with ted. heard his salty brand of politics. took in his dash of new-age mysticism. felt the gestalt of letting go of that by which we’d been enslaved. watched him raise a yale sweatshirt, oy, to teach a lesson on hebrew light and perfection. (right there, spelled out on yale’s emblem, in hebrew letters, who knew? found out that centuries ago, at the founding of yale, patrician of patrician schools, hebrew was required study. ted, by the way, went to yale.)

tonight we congregate again. at another table of eccentrics. they will be the ones with whom we’ve worked for decades. the ones with whom i’ve “sedered” for 25 years, before husband, before children, and every variation since. a cast of newspaper kooks. my boys, all eyes and ears, will learn much that i won’t teach them.

besides the wine glasses filled with jelly beans (the kinder version of fruit of the vine), the flogging each other with scallions, yes, scallions, the pulling out of little plastic plagues, there is the annual putting of passover lyrics to broadway tunes.

we drive home each year, from nights one and two, with bellies aching. not from all the passover matzo kugel. no, no. from laughing ’til our sides feel split in two.

we are blessed. so very blessed.

all my life, far back as i can remember, i have loved the odd ball. the duck who waddled to his or her own drum beat. at my mid-century mark, i survey the landscape of my life and see i’ve assembled quite some cast of characters.

my almost-man-child told me recently that one of the most lasting lessons he learned from his uncle david was when david spoke of a brilliant friend of his, a friend with phD in sanskrit, a friend who studies global drumming and, for a long while, drove a cab in new york city. david, it seems, told my almost-man-child: “he really is a kook.” and my almost-man-child told me that the way he said it, he knew that uncle david meant that to be a kook is a very noble thing. “that’s how i learned i should never march to other people’s drummers,” said my boy who decidedly does not.

my prayer this pesach, my prayer that already has been heard on high, is that all the children, not just my boys, hear a world of many drummers. and come, as often as they can, to a table that spills with kooks and characters and bold eccentrics, a table, every first-night seder, led by rabbi ted.

who, by the way, i love with all my heart. even if he makes me close my eyes and chant the vowels.

do you collect characters? do you see the beauty in those who color outside the lines? do you, if you have children, or love children, or are a child at heart, seek out tables where you know they–and you–will hear voices unlike the ones they–and you–hear at home?

6 Comments

March 26, 2007

last one out, turn out the lights

so here we are, supremely home alone. whole town, it seems, is up and gone. destinations: distant.

not us. we’re here, hauling in the papers, the mail. feeding home-bound cats. keeping an eye out for wayward packages.

we are the stay-at-home brigade. and we’re rather practiced at it. except for once in four years, when we made an emergency crash landing at my then newly grieving, widowed brother’s, we’re the ones who hold down the block, every spring break.

mind you, it has its advantages. other night, i was the only one in the checkout line at jewel. matter of fact, i was the only one in the store. the checkers were holding a little dance contest when i rolled in, needing strawberries and milk and pretzels stuffed with apples (the finest bedtime snack, made, it turns out, by my pilates buddy kim; we twist like pretzels together, she makes them for a living).

if we wanted to take our pretzels to the street, plunk down in our jammies, with our glasses of milk and our puffy twists, we could do that. no one would honk a horn. we could sit there dunking pretzels for a quarter hour, in the part of the street where the cars zoom back and forth on an ordinary evening. but not this week, oh no. no one, not a single headlight, would come shining down the lane.

i’m telling you, we’re all alone here.

it was quite something, the wind-up to this solitary adventure. first the calls started coming in: could you bring in our mail? could you feed the cats? scoop the cat box? funny, no one even asked if we were leaving; they just assumed, as always, we’d be here.

then the afternoon that school got out for the last time in a week, all these funny trucks started pulling to the curb. trucks with “stay,” blazoned to the side. seems all the mutts on the block were getting escorted to spas for spring break.

wonder if i coulda jumped in? done a little panting? drooling, perhaps? made like i was just another mutt.

ah well. the stay mobiles departed, then black cars arrived. no one, it seems, drives to airports anymore. they let the black cars do the honking. they made no noise on my block, the black cars did not. they quietly opened up their doors, flipped their trunks, then carried off the folks who’d packed up all their sunblock.

i waved, from here on the curb. then i got to making my calculated chart. figured out the rounds, which cat when, which mail where.

but now we’re settled. now we’re having fun. we’ve got the whole movie store to ourself. we can have any flavor we want at the baskin-robbins. and just yesterday after a long family bike ride (yes, the one who once fell off, remounted and rode again, much to his mother’s pounding glee), i dashed inside, poured big mugs of pink lemonade, piled high a basket full of pretzels, carried it outside to where the boys were waiting.

tell me, i began, what bed & breakfast would serve pink lemonade and pretzels in the middle of a sunday afternoon?

with that, the easy rider curled up and took a three-hour nap. there was no noise to wake him. only the sound of his mama being home alone.

and if you’ll excuse me now, the bed & breakfast is serving the boys’ most favorite french toast, and someone around here has to get the griddle going…..

anyone else around this week? or are you tapping in tahiti?

also, i noticed over the weekend, a truly wonderful lacing of comments being added to days past. please, never feel like a subject is closed once the next meander rolls along. the conversation, like a good broth, gets richer for the simmer, the adding of ingredients. take a glance back. add more thoughts. this chair endeavor is best when the thoughts keep building. i am only here to get the broth on the burner. you are the ones who make it worth savoring……and for that, of course, i thank you deeply…

4 Comments

Category: springtime