pull up a chair

the arithmetic of november is a fine tally indeed. it’s the month where we begin to add up all the wonders of our year, the graces large and small.

the ones that make our hearts go whoosh, as if niagara falls (see delicious cupcake above), and the itty-bitty whispers of holy hallelujah (as when we catch our little one, say, giving us a backrub, just because he sees the worry on our brow).

when you pause for just a minute, maybe long enough to grab a pen and paper, for this accounting-in-the-works, you can, if you give it half a chance, get swooshed right over, for all the goodness that’s come round.

oh, lord, i know, there is heartache plenty. there were days and nights, perhaps, when you thought you couldn’t breathe, what with all the drama in the wings. and there’ve been bedtime pillows, too, soaked with tears. and hours spent on knees, praying for holy miracles to dash away (fill in your blank).

but, here, on the brink of this national time-out for cranberries and thanks, i find myself, in slow moments, in the breaths between the thoughts, beginning to accumulate a swath of holy blessings…..

i begin with the very girl i’d spent a lifetime dreaming of, the one whose arrival woke me in the star-lit cloak of an april’s night, a night when tears and dreams-come-true came rushing, when over a phone line and millions of miles away, i heard her rustling, peeping, squeaking, in my brother’s arms, and felt my heart take flight.

oh, it aches to be so far away, but as i trace her every leap and bound, as i stockpile frequent flyer miles, i know we’ve years together down the road. we’ve tea rooms, and walks in the woods. we’ve story books, and some day, long long talks. if i’m as blessed as i hope i’ll be.

speaking of endless hours deep in conversation, there is the blessing of watching my 16-year-old turn to his beloved uncle david, the one who once took him from dawn till way past dusk on the el (that’s chicago’s elevated train), with no destination other than adventure, and who over the years has opened windows for him all around, from thelonious monk to qi gong, from homer to sartre to music made from water dripping in a pot.

oh, lord.

be still, my most humbled heart.

i count, too, the blessing of my cottage garden, the stubby little tree, with arms outstretched, who grows just beyond my window.

i count the bluestone path, the one that meanders, slows me in the way of ancient zen walks where each stone is placed to accentuate the pause. and so it is with my wiggly, sort-of-wobbly bluestones. more accident than art, but still, the effect is the same, you move slowly through my meandering garden, the one where blueberries and roses ramble side-by-side.

and what of the fact that i live in a creaky old house, a house that over the years we’ve nipped and tucked, stitched with windowseats and bookshelves in nearly every single room (save the bathroom, but hmm, there’s a thought)…

and what of my holy blessed friends who pull up here to the table, nearly every week, or only once a season? oh, thank God for them, for they’re among the closest to my heart, here in a world where we build bridges through words and shared story, where the village we carve is less one of geography and more one of common heartbeat.

and i’d be missing a whole chunk of my life if i didn’t say i’m thankful, so thankful, for the job i do most days (paid or not so very much). the one where i ask a zillion questions, poke around in places others rarely get to see, then sit before a keyboard and let the story spin. just this year, i’ve spent the night with a saint in a hospital kitchen, i’ve watched another genuflect on a city sidewalk to save an injured bird. i’ve worked with editors and writers who’ve leapt to my rescue and stood firm behind me, and i’ve cried hard and long as i watched some of the very best exit the newsroom, told to leave for good, after packing lifetimes into cardboard boxes.

before i move onto little graces–the wren who sang his heart out, the over-watered tree that didn’t die (yet), the cloudy days that brought me comfort–let me sweep my arms round the boys who put meaning to my days.

the tall one who lets me in his heart, through long and winding hours of seamless conversation, and nothin’-else-like-’em belly-bustin’ laughs, sitting side-by-side (often, these days, that would be as i ride shotgun and he’s the one behind the wheel, steering down the lane, er, oops, that was a stop sign, honey…).

and the little one, the one who takes my breath away each and every time i glimpse his tender side, the one stoked by his papa, yes indeed, and whenever i catch him, nearly always, leading with his heart.

there’s my mama to thank, too, for making every tuesday and thursday work like clockwork, even when i’m far away. and, on both those harried nights, for getting dinner to the table, and not just any dinner either, grammy dinner–stews and meatloafs, potatoes mashed, and peas frozen in a pouch, comfort foods, foods like mama used to make. oh, that’s right, she is my mama and she is, after all these years, still making weeknight dinners. all that’s left for me to do, those achy tired nights, is scrub the pots and pans, and sometimes she does even that.

oh, there’s more and more, the ones i love around the continent, from jersey shore to sunny california, from maine to arizona, with stops along the way.

there’s the bones that hold me up, at least for now. a word i learn that takes my breath away. an idea that’s new and even better.

i thank God for pillowcases crisp, and socks that don’t have holes. for books on tape that hold me rapt. and ones with pages, too. the ones i race to bed to read, but then, dag nab, i cannot stay awake.

i thank God for pomegranates and popcorn. for old jeans all full of holes, and the leggings worn beneath them, the ones that keep me from being charged with indecent exposure.

i thank God for gloomy moods that lift, and i’m sorrys from the heart. i thank God for friends who make me laugh so hard i fear i’ll, well, you catch that drift.

i thank God for the sky at dawn, and the quiet of the house at night, when all there is is my breathing and the tick-tock-tick of the old fine clock.

i could go on and on in this holy sacred litany of thanks. there is much, especially for those of us who take the time to add it up, as if a census of the heart.

my forms are filled, and i’ve only just begun.

for all of this and so much more, dear holy God, i thank you and i thank you.

all right, you blessed souls in all the chairs, pull in close and let it pour, the thanks with which you fill your heart….

sometimes, holiness is the absence of flutter.

so it was the other morning when, as i always do, i bounded out the back door, coffee can in hand; called out, “mornin’, babies,” to all my flocks.

crossed the chilly bricks, tiptoed into grass, the not-so-vast terrain that stands between me and my seed troughs.

right then was when my bare toes curled; i looked down, saw right away, the blades of grass were crusty white. the morning’s frost had robed them, made them downright furry.

but i had work to do, was on my morning rounds. i had birds to feed, and a crust of fragile frozen mist was not about to stop me.

after all this time, you see, after all the awe as i stand and watch the winged ones dart and peck, as i catch a scarlet ribbon flash before my eye amid a drab brown world that screams for color, after waking up to bird song, and watching babies dare to leave the nest, well, i’ve come to think of all those birds as mine. we belong to each other, the birds and i.

or, at least, so i fool myself.

my coffee can, of course, was filled with breakfast for those birds. not the oatmeal i’d be bubbling back inside. this day, a blend of fruits and nuts was on the menu.

and while i stood there, sizing up the frost, determining to add a little zip to this trip to the feeder, i noticed something else that stopped me in mid-pace: papa cardinal hadn’t flown away, was mere feet away, gobbling down the seed from yesterday.

now, every single other time that i’ve stepped outside that door, to haul a hose, to haul the garbage, to go inspect a rose, i’ve been met with the popping sound of wings in sudden flight, the darting of each and every bird, lurching off to camouflage and haven in all the boughs and branches.

but not this time.

the scarlet wings stayed still.

and in that absence of haste, the morning’s calm unbroken, i felt a cloak of heaven falling down on me, cascading over my shoulders, warming my bare arms.

it is a holy thing, for certain, to be nearly eyeball to eyeball with a wild thing. especially when the wild thing has wings, could fly away at the wisp of a breeze.

he carried on with his chowing down, that red bird did. and i, now frozen, just stood and stared.

i put down the foot i’d been holding in mid-air.

the cardinal didn’t flinch.

i picked up my other foot.

no flinch.

put it down.

no flinch.

and then i stood and marveled: this bird seems not to mind me, i realized, not consider me a wild-haired bother.

why, he’s gobbling as if at a diner counter, and i’m just another hungry soul sliding onto nearby stool. plunk down my elbows, take a menu. order up a coffee, tall and black. ask him how his day looks, here in this small town.

geez.

i tell you, he might not have been too ruffled by my being there, the very picture of cardinal nonchalance, but i, well, i was wholly tingling.

it’s not every day you discover you’ve crossed the line, and what a line it is. the birds no longer see you as a stranger, threat, or alien.

the birds don’t even bother.

for all they care, you’ve sprouted wings.

well. yes. indeed. i’d say so.

i felt as if heaven’s gate had swung wide open, whirled me right inside.

there i was out there where i shoulda been shivering, but instead i was hot inside. barely breathing. heart pounding, too.

so THIS is what it feels like to be at one with holiness. this is how you know you’ve come to be so synchronous with that you love that your being there makes no wave, does not disturb the peace.

makes me think, suddenly, of old married couples who whirl around each other in the kitchen. she, splashing at the sink the way she always does. he, burping, pouring coffee, smoothing down the pages of the news with the same exact precision as he’s done for 50 years.

to co-exist. to be breath-to-breath. to not feel one bit afraid in each other’s holy presence.

that’s what papa cardinal seemed to tell me: i was someone safe now, a title earned through months and years of grace. (and good stock in bird seed, maybe.)

it’s a trophy only i would ever know, not one to perch on any shelf. which makes it the best sort, really.

that drawing in of sacred breath, discovering a truth of who we are or who we’ve become that no one else needs know.

but as we carry on, we carry forward this: the gentle quiet honor bestowed on us one chilly autumn’s morn, when the red bird didn’t flutter. considered us at one with the whole of winged creation.

and now i’m dreaming this: some day that bird will rest upon my shoulder.

or in the open cup of my outstretched hands.

be still my stirring heart…

i know there are those among you who’ve been at one in the woods, with the wild things. maybe your peaceful co-existence came with another human soul. or maybe you too carry unspoken, unheralded trophies in your heart. my point here was not to share mine, but to nod to the truth that we all have rich unexposed artworks deep inside. mine was bestowed by a red bird, gobbling day-old seed. do you care to whisper yours?

and while at it this lovely friday in november, keep in your hearts the lovely pjv, mother of the bride in just one day….tis a blessed, heart-stretching moment–i can only imagine–to watch your little bird fly the nest, robed in bridal white. peace and love and joy to you, dear pjv, and the lovely, lovely em.

they’ve tiptoed back, those november skies, the ones that wrap me and cloak me in their charcoal-gray-with-tint-of-violet wonder.

i am safe inside the nubby folds of such a sky, when simmering smoky gray heavens sink low down to the earth, the place where i walk and trudge and hope and dream and too often feel the heartache.

i like it when the limbs go bare, when we see the bones again, when sky presses in on us. when we feel–or at least i do–less far away from what’s above.

it’s not that i’m so melancholy. not really, i’m not. it’s just that sky the color of eeyore, that somber donkey with the pinned-on tail, the one who walks the woods with pooh and dear, dear christopher robin, all through the enchanted pages of a.a. milne, it’s just that such a deep rich palette calls to me, whispers to the curled-up places in my heart, gives them kinship and room to unfurl.

i never know if it’s about to snow, on days when the deep dark gray comes in. i hold my breath and hope, though.
first snow is sacred. and the clouds, so full with something that their white is turned to sooty gray, they whisper promise. something’s coming.

or else it’s just plain a gray day. a day that beckons for a blanket and a cup of tea. it nudges. tap-taps at my shoulder: sit down. be still. soak in the oversotted sky.

it’s turning-in time.

all around the world is doing the same. the bulbs, i’ve tucked deep down into their sleeping places for the winter. the birds, mostly now, have skittered off, the ones for whom these chill winds are far too chilly. but all the stalwarts stayed behind, the squawking jay, the scarlet flash of cardinal, the sparrows and the hatches, they’re all here, loading up on seed, the seed i pour each morning at the feeder, in my unending bow to st. francis of the woodlands.

even the squirrels, i see, have packed thick wads of leaves way up high in nooks of branches. they’ve made chambers l.l. bean himself might envy, what with their storm-tested knack for blocking out the cold. and not a bad perch for chomping acorns either, blithely tossing out the not-so-chewy caps that rain on passersby.

my little one and i were walking to the bus just now, talking all about the sky (and dodging acorn caps that rained at quite a clip).

i asked him if he, too, liked a sky that wasn’t full of sun, that gave you reason and permission to wrap deep inside your thoughts.

well, first he looked up in that way that children do, to check to see if their mama’s sprung a leak, gone cuckoo. but then he let on that he too didn’t mind a dark-sky day, when the traffic jam of clouds hint that something might be in the works in the bring-on-the-weather department.

as we shuffled through the leaves, the curled-up golden maples that bring crunch and light aplenty to a gray november morn, i asked him what color he would pick to draw the sky today.

he looked up and answered, simply: “squirrel.”

i looked up too. and sure enough, i saw. the curds of cloud are gray and grayer, not unlike the furry famished rascals who aim to raid my feeders, who dig up my bulbs soon as i turn my back, who might walk right in and take a plate of dinner, were i to forget to slam the door.

and so it is, a squirrel-sky day.

a day when all of us might see fit to gather up a wad of golden leaves and curl down deep inside. and while we’re at it, toss out acorn caps to pelt the passersby.

if only i could climb a tree.

oh, goodness. dashing here today. a long day’s newspaper writing lies ahead. by now the sun’s peeked through and my gray day is all but blown over the lake. sunny days do have their golden-drenched virtue, but given a choice, i fear i’d take a gray november day any day. anyone else all for curling up and staring out the gray gray window?

let us all kneel down at the altar of george renninger, that long-ago willie wonka who back in philly in the 1880s dreamed up the tri-color corn that, back in milwaukee in the 1970s, fueled many a night’s study in my tucked-away nook in the college library, dotted the trail from my little one’s bed to his pumpkin this morn, and generally suffices for vegetable this time of year.

in fact, in that parade of national days of this-or-that that never seems to cease, today, we are told, is national candy corn day.

so be it.

have a handful.

while you’re letting the orange and the yellow melt in your mouth, whirl over your tongue, get stuck in the tight spots there in your teeth. chew on this:

ol’ george, who was working for the wunderlee candy company at the time, musta been pluckin’ ears off the stalks when suddenly it struck him, oh, jeepers, this might work in high-fructose form.

so he strolled, yes he did, to his candy laboratory and had at it. poured in some straight-up sugar, added corn syrup, and honey to boot.

poured it into itty-bitty teepee-shaped molds, first the globs of yellow, then orange, and finally the tidbit of white (which, for anatomical correctness, i’ll note is actually the bottom not the top of the confectioner’s glob. ahem. apparently i can now add this to the long list of kernels of knowledge i’ve managed to turn on their heads).

the corns, we are told, were a hit. especially with the new england farmers. who likely found it tastier than the stuff straight from the cobs.

over the years, we’ve gone gaga.

i know for a fact (cuz i’ve watched with my very own eyes) i’m not the only one on the planet who cannot stop once i get started. (perhaps it’s genetic since it’s my firstborn who cannot keep from scarfing in fistfuls.)

does it help you to know that there are a mere 3.57 calories per kernel?

or that a cup of candy corn has fewer calories than a cup of good-for-you raisins?

does it matter to you that some 9 BILLION pieces are gobbled up every year, enough to circle the earth 4.25 times, candy corn triangle tucked up to triangle?

perhaps, you’d like to whip up a batch all on your own, brach’s be darned.

well, then, here’s how:

d-i-y candy corns

• 1 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup white corn syrup
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• several drops food coloring (optional)
• 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup powdered milk
directions:
Combine sugar, white corn syrup and butter in pan, bring to boil stirring CONSTANTLY. Turn heat low and boil 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and add vanilla and several drops food coloring (optional) Meanwhile, combine powdered sugar, salt and powdered milk Add all at once to mixture in pan. Stir until cool enough to handle. Knead until stiff enough to hold its shape. Shape into triangles, or any shape desired.

i’m dashing right now to a halloween parade, followed by bowling for 8-year-olds, followed by bowl after bowl of that renninger special, the corn that fueled my college diploma.

be back with more substance. for now it’s all fluff.

anyone else as mad for the stuff as i am? if not, what’s your sugary downfall?

i was stumbling out the door, as is often my woopsy-daisy style, when there in front of me i noticed the coil of gray-with-red-stripe. i followed that serpentine thing, traced it along, to see where it snaked, that long-throated gullet of gray.

and that’s when i noticed it limp by the tree.

dripping by the tree.

days and days by the tree.

the little tree. the new-enough tree. the tree just aiming to steady itself, sink in its bearings, there in the earth that was mine to tend, to watch over, to keep from harm’s way.

uh oh.

quick as i could, i flipped back through the hour-by-hour day-keeper that is my life, tried like the dickens to recall just when i’d last put a foot in these parts, all the while lurching like nobody’s business toward that slow-dripping maw, that hose that had been, um, watering my tree since lord only knows when.

oh, dear.

call the flood insurers. call the priest. might it be time for last rites for this poor little crabapple sprout, drowned at the hand of a scatter-brained gardener?

far as i could count, it had been no less than 72 hours of gulping down drink.

poor little tree. somewhere late monday’s eve it must have been starting to slosh, gurgling there in the so-sodden garden, crying out in diluted distress: “yo, wouldya mind corkin’ the tap? gettin’ kinda squishy out here.”

alas, i wasn’t listening. had long forgotten the hose, the tree, the slow-dripping attempt to quench a deep-autumn’s thirst.

had gotten lost in the trials of a high schooler who studies, routinely, till 3 in the morn, and the woes of the third-grader kicked in the groin. and the mate barreling toward a book deadline, all but vanished from our midst. and don’t forget laundry and dinner and life. and taking the train, to and fro work.

by then it was wednesday.

then thursday.

bring on the lifeboats.

yes, indeedy, while i carried on with my days and my ways, that ol’ tree got more and more and more of what maybe, once, long ago, it had lifted a limb and politely asked for, would you, uh, mind sharing a short juiceglass of water, please.

not two bathtubs full.

not enough h-2-o to turn dirt into bubbling brew.

egad.

don’t know about you, but i never take kindly, nor gently, to discovering–nay, rediscovering–the soft underbelly of my swiss-cheese cerebrum. my brain with random and occasional holes so roomy a maze-loving mouse could have quite a heyday.

slapped myself upside that noggin. reached for the phone, the confessional of choice in a telecom age. nope, did not call my priest; called my mama, an even better confessor.

when i blurted out that i’d um, left the hose running for days, then asked if maybe i might have killed the poor tree, she wasted no time beating around this wet bush. why, she turned the hose right back at me, and asked, “why would you do that, what with all the rain in the forecast?”

well, thing is, said i in hopes of defending my sorry old self, i, um, obviously haven’t a clue–not a one–as to why in the world i would force-drink my tree, my innocent tree that’s done nothing at all, not a thing, to deserve such an over-drenched fate.

still in search of consolation, i dialed yet another number.

i put in a call to one of my fairy gardenmothers, one who could not have been kinder, nor gentler, nor more forgiving.

“look out the window,” said she, “you might notice that mother nature is doing the same, letting loose gallons and gallons of water, in preparation for a long dry winter. fear not, you merely gave the ol’ girl a head start. all will be well with your tree.”

and so we pray here at the home of the spigot that won’t be quelled.

while musing this waterlogged state of soggy affairs, it got me paying attention to the notion that maybe my tree stands (well now it might be leaning) as testament to the fact that i oughtn’t be galloping quite so breathlessly through my days, panting from weekend to weekend, just praying not to fall flat on my face.

it’s the occupational hazard, i fear, of working so hard to get through the days.

it’s all one big heart-thumping gasp. the trying to not miss a deadline, not starve the children, not overlook a third-grade reading assignment.

to say nothing of remembering the kisses on the forehead at bedtime. the cups of tea delivered to the study carrel at 2 a.m. the lunches packed with love notes.

with all it takes to stay afloat, it’s a darn miracle more trees aren’t drowning just beyond my door.

come to think of it, maybe i oughta look into ark rentals. just in case we stumble on an unbroken wet spell.

for now, i’ll assume my tree will make it through the long dry winter, and come back next spring to teach me more in the slow-it-down department.

if not, i’ll pray for resurrection. a prayer that never dies.

what signs have you stumbled on lately, signaling you might be dashing at break-neck speed? too fast for your own good, or that of those you love?

so much for that grand notion.

the one that had me climbing, all alone, into bed on a chilly, drizzly autumn’s night. the one that had me hauling along a stack of books, turning pages till well past the midnight hour.

alone.

with my night thoughts unbroken.

the big boys, you see, are far away. were rumbling–as i climbed the stairs, climbed into bed–cross the countryside, on the rails, headed off to university, the first of many college visits for my boy who’ll soon be shipping off.

well, summer after next anyway, and in a mother’s heart that is soon all right. sooner than i’d ever thought it would come.

i’d known for weeks that this one rare weeknight would be mine. alone. (or did i already say that?)

had played that most seductive game of duck-duck-will-it-be-a-movie, a weepy girl flick? or will it be a pile of books and magazines?

the latter won, in large part because i’d been feeling achy all day long, hadn’t made it to the little shop where all the films are stored like cracker boxes on a grocery shelf. you walk the aisles, eye the labels, decide which brand makes your tummy growl the loudest. then dash home to swallow whole, fast as you can tear open the wrapper. movie or cracker, it’s often much the same.

and so, in anticipation of this rare bedtime treat, the adventure of keeping the bed lamp burning till i darn well wanted to click it off, not just till i get elbowed in the flank by a grumpy, sleepy fellow with pillow pulled atop his head, i did all that needed to be done:

i scurried the little one up and under the sheets. kissed him twice, once to seal the deal, next to paste him into place, there where he belonged, drifting off to dreamland all on his own.

then i tiptoed back down the stairs, gathered up my night’s diversions, clicked off the lights. bid the quiet house good night.

heard the cat meowing at the door. let him in from all the nasty drizzle.

headed back toward the stairs. brushed my teeth. alone. savored sharing neither sink nor toothpaste.

slid beneath the puffy covers. piled the pillows, all just so.

hauled my books onto my stretched-out, pajama-covered, oh-so-tired legs.

heard the sound of footsteps, padding cross the hall.

saw a little face, smiling, peeking round the corner.

felt my heart go limp, in that way it does when plain old love washes over you.

when the face you see is one you often can’t say no to. certainly can’t turn away, when the words that come from that perfect little mouth are ones that softly plea: “can we have cuddles?”

and so, i made some room. told him he could stay, long as he didn’t mind the sound of me turning pages.

wasn’t long, not a paragraph later, that we then both heard–the midnight cuddler and i–the pit-a-pat of cat paws, coming closer and closer, up the stairs and round the bend, somehow knowing where the cuddling was, in a house with just one light on.

and then the pounce, which made the bedsheets shake.

and suddenly, it seemed, the night alone was lost.

reminded me of some children’s tale, where all the sleepy folk, and barnyard critters too, piled in one bed. until the bed collapsed, and down did crash the whole darn napping house.

if we’d had a cow, i suppose she too would have been mooing right on top of us.

oh, goodness me, i gasped, here in my very own four-poster bed, we had quite a slumber party going on, complete with giggles and meows. and all i’d hoped for was no more ruckus than comes with a mad dash of words inhaled one atop the other.

so much for mama time.

so much for all those minutes spent weighing one morsel or the other.

so much for the unbroken count that now continues, the long, long stretch of nights since i’ve had time alone. (staying up till three, for the mere sake of being the only one awake in a crowded house, certainly doesn’t count, for that is a torturous way to arrive at solitude.)

but i suppose that’s the shift i’ve signed up for here. that unfettered reality of motherhood that time to yourself comes not on your terms, but on rare colliding circumstance that might, maybe, if you’re really really lucky, find you home alone in the middle, perhaps, of a tuesday afternoon. when there’s little chance that you’ll get to make the most of it, because well the dryer is squawking, and the school bus will rumble by any minute, so why plop on the couch because you’ll have to pop back up any nanosecond. why sink into a long and winding sentence because it will end, abruptly, when sneakered feets bound in the door, with plenty to tell you all about the school day.

if there’s any truth here, in the land of motherhood, it’s that selfishness gets shoved aside, nine times outa 10.

because little faces look up at you. arms reach out to you. words come, plain and pure: “can we have cuddles?”

and so, you fling back the covers, you make do with cat hair on your pillow case. (thank God there is no cow.) you drop your pile of books onto the floor, with a declarative thud.

you click out the light.

you wrap your arm round the warm soft little someone curled up beside you.

and you dream the sweetest dreams.

but, before you too slip off to dreamland, perhaps, you console yourself with this scant hope: hmm, there’s one more chance tonight.

that ol’ train won’t rumble back till tomorrow, so perhaps, by the slimmest of possibilities, you might pencil in a date with that ol’ pile of uncracked books. and those thoughts that won’t be broken.

but, of course, you’re smart enough to know: don’t count on it.

how do you steal time for you, and you alone? do you, like me, daydream about the day when what you do from dawn till bedtime will be dictated by nothing other than your very own whims? hmmmm….

when the sun slips down tonight, and it promises to do just that at precisely half past the hour of six, we too will slip away, slip outside.

we’ll kindle lights, bless the passage of sunbeams giving way to moonbeams, anoint the cusp of sukkot, the jewish festival of joy.

we’ll take to the domed cathedral, the one whose holy sanctum arcs beyond our reach, the one papered every night in stars. itty-bitty, far, far away points of shining light.

it is God’s command, on the 15th day of the seventh month of the hebrew calendar, to take to the world beyond our sturdy shelters, the ones of doors and windows, floor joists and heating vents and taps that spill water with no more than a twist of the wrist.

it is the season of holiness in this house that draws from all the holy wells.

and so, we do as it is written in leviticus, chapter 23.

we take to our dwelling in the harvest field. we take to our rickety, not-so-sturdy shelter, the one meant to remind us that wherever we dwell, God is our shelter.

at our house it means that, for eight nights beginning tonight, we will take our evening meal out in the screened-in porch, tacked onto the garage, tucked beneath the pines.

it’s not quite living up to the levitican prescriptions. not quite roofed with twigs and branches, hung with plants that can’t be eaten.

but then i’m all for extracting the essence, not getting tangled in particulars.

and the essence here is breath-taking, once again.

we are being commanded to step beyond the comfortable, the heated, the not-so-drafty. we are commanded to immerse ourselves in the world of night, and all its bright and shining wonder.

stripped of all that we take for granted the other 357 nights of the year, we carry platters and pitchers out to where the chill autumn air runs shivers down our spine, where we twist our legs one over the other as if braided beeswax and do a little warm-up bounce, where we thank heaven for the invention of knitted socks and levi strauss’ blue jeans.

we watch the flicker of the candle-flame dodge and dart upon our flaky-painted, old-door table. and, come the full moon in just two nights, we’ll indulge in no shortage of moonbeams to light our way.

it is this tight-stitched seam between our own bare selves and the whole of creation that draws me deep and deeper into the hebrew calendar, the calendar of so many of our roots.

i hear its echoes through and through my soul.

i am a child of the earth and heavens. i find myself at once skipping like a schoolgirl full of wonder, and hushed in awe, something like the monks whose vespers follow the unfolding of the holy hours, and the turning of the globe, away and toward the sun.

i am humbled by this call to take in the autumnal majesty. to sit beneath the wind-blown boughs, to listen to the acorns plonking on the roof above my head.

and as the stars come on, as one by one, as if the dimmer switch is turned, or the caretakers of wonder travel through the heavens, sparking all the star-wicks with their long-necked matches, i am rapt.

it is no less than a commandment of sukkot that through the roof–called a skhakh in hebrew–we should be able to see the stars.

the point, i do believe: do not dismiss the divine sparks of light scattered all around, in this case the ones painted on the black cloth of night.

and that’s a point that fills me with wonder.

it’s too easy in a world of megawatts and street lights so bright they wash the city sky in amber glow, to forget to look up. to ignore the constellations, the sky-markers that over the centuries kept sailing ships on course, and that to this day whisper to the flocks of fall’s migration just which way to flap their wings and fly.

yes, i stumbled on that latter bit of holiness just the other day, and it’s one that hinges wholly on the stars that shine above.

i learned, talking to an esteemed author of many books on birds, that scientists have proven the uncanniest of celestial wonders, one that, like october’s winds, gives me the shivers.

it seems that in the springtime and early summer, when the baby birds are still tucked safely in their nests, they awake at night, not unlike the squawking species known as baby humans.

only, bless those feathered things, the baby birds are transfixed by night shadows and the stars above.

they are hard at work, those nestlings, stamping in their mind’s eyes the patterns of the nightsky.

indeed, they memorize the constellations, fix their inner compass to the one lone star that never shifts.

somehow, within their every fiber, they align their position with the northstar, and evermore are guided in their migrations, fall and spring, away or toward that shining beacon.

that’s how a wee bird, just hatched the spring before, can find its way–untried, untested–from the boreal forests of the north, clear down to where the sun shines warm.

all in cloak of night.

all because of one star, fixed at the center of it all. one star guiding the whole rushing river that is the winged migration, flowing north to south and south to north again.

and to think that most nights we don’t even bother glancing much beyond the treetops–if at all.

and so it is that we are commanded, drawn beneath the night sky, instructed to mind the shining stars.

as if a whisper stirring us, reminding: the divine is here and there and everywhere.

sukkot beckons: were we to step into the holiness of bough and birdsong and rushing wind, we stand to be washed over with a saving grace.

and so it will be.

at nightfall, i will leave behind my sturdy house and go to where the winds blow and the starlight flickers on.

i will take a seat at the table in the breezy, chilly place where God, sure and steady, is my shelter, and my peace.

have you stopped to count the stars lately? have you, like the baby birds, memorized the nightsky? could you find your way home, knowing only where the polestar burns?

not so long ago, i was poking around the back shelves of a dear friend’s flower shop, back where vases teeter tipsy-topsy, and vast pots are stacked so high they scrape the pressed-tin ceiling, when suddenly i tripped upon her.

oh, no, not my friend.

the new little darling i shove onto every counter, every corner of the kitchen table, every nook and cranny that will have her.

heck, i’d plop her by the bathroom sink, if i could, perch the toothpaste on her flat-planed saucer, her offering plate, her dish that coos, “come try me. i waft above.”

let me attempt here to convey her loveliness: she is old, very, very old. and she’s cracked right through the middle, a crack i didn’t notice till i got her home. but i loved her by then, so she’s here to stay.

she’s all cut glass, with–ta-da!–a DOME, a see-through bell-shaped lid, with little knob, that makes ceremony of the mere act of lifting. and down beneath, the part that puts her in a class above any old cake plate, is the oyster-pink perch upon which she pirouettes.

oh, she’s a looker, all right.

she makes me swoon.

and i am hoisting everything i can think of onto her raised-up parts: cookies from a plain old bag, the kind cranked out in some ho-hum factory, not even the ones you stir and slide into your very own oven, the only kind you’d think were worthy of such elevation; muffins, ones i make, or ones i don’t; even apples sliced, laid out in fan decks, one crescent wedge of granny smith nestled up against a sweet pink lady. under glass, always under glass.

i must confess: i think i might have crossed another one of those invisible lines here, the ones that whisper in our ear when we’ve gone a little loopy. a bit beyond the beyond.

i am mad, it seems, for foodstuffs with altitude. even when it’s only measured off in inches. i am, perhaps, a tad too keen on the launching pads that raise up what we nibble on, the kitchenware that might as well be a drum-roll: the cake stand, thank you very much.

i could–if no one kept close watch on my wallet–acquire them in droves. i’d slide them here and there throughout my house. like imelda marcos, i fear, only without the stiletto. and not in pairs. my obsession stands on just one leg.

but here’s how i’d defend myself in the court of odd fixations: there is, your honor, something inherently proud–downright generous, i’d posit–about a serving piece that doesn’t cower in the corner, one that steps right up and preens. stork-like, on singular appendage.

it makes for yet another one of those wee small moments in a day when the ordinary stands to be transformed. when an inch, sometimes, goes the mile.

we are, every one of us, here but for a spell. and with the gift of each and every day, we have this choice: we slog through, or we pick up those feets and skip along.

we toss food on paper plate; we call it fuel. get by.

or we stitch, one thread and needle at a time, regard for the holiness into everything we do.

okay, so maybe everything is stretching it a bit. maybe three times outa ten we pay attention.

maybe when the ones we love, or even our little own selves, come panting ‘round the bend, we meet them there with what amounts to gracenotes: cookies on a cake stand. under glass.

parsley tucked beside the scrambled eggs (because it’s growing just beyond the door, darn it, and why not snip it off, take it up a silly notch, make for the beautiful instead of plain old pedestrian).

maybe my altitudinal tendencies, at heart, are all about the knowing, through and through, that what we do here in the places we call home, that the itty-bitty barely-noticed tweaks and joys, are all but a part of the sacred vow we put to task each day: to live out our earthliness with an eye, at every turn, on high.

and to shine that holiness on those we love.

even when it’s just a store-bought cupcake. one that finds itself up off the counter, and under glass.

not so shabby, a life’s work for a cracked old cake stand.

not so shabby, not at all.

what are the itty bitty ways you lift up your humdrum days? make ceremony of the simply act of living, and loving? i wait to see who wanders by this week. p.s. let me know if you too have a thing for any odd kitchen ware…..i’m wondering.

it is holy time again.

well, it always is. especially on these honey-dripping days, when the september sun warms us with its deepest amber drops. and the nights turn where’s-my-sweater chilly, and the morning’s dew is enough to make you curl your toes.

it is holy time in any autumn hour.

but never holier than on these the days of awe, now mine as much as my beloved’s.

i do believe, long, long ago my irish peoples were not the ones who’d once been druids, worshipped rocks and stones.

i’ve an inkling that maybe my people, once upon a time, understood the rhythms and the seasons of the hebrew moons and stars.

i believe my people might have been among the wanderers, wandered right up and settled down on that island to the north, far north. the one where craggy rocks erupt from mossy meadows. where sheep graze and clog the country roads, stop the motor cars from motoring. might as well turn off the petrol, for there is no shooshing along a sheep. not one with munching on its mind.

oh, i am catholic through and through.

(though lately i’ve been longing for a drop or two of anglican, what with all those women making noise up on the altars, and a world view that’s maybe looser with the rules, a bit more inclusive in at least a few departments. why, i muttered not too long ago, i could even be ordained. but the one i married will not have it; one thing, he laughs, to have married a catholic, whole ‘nother thing to be married to a priest.)

and, yes, too, i am defined now by the rise and fall of sun, the turning of the moon, the seasons of the planting and the harvest. i kindle lights at sundown on shabbat. i inhale the spices at its close, cling all week long to the sharp, sweet notes of clove and star of anise, allow my nose’s memory to whisper through the weekdays that holy time will come again.
the pause of shabbat is God’s command to put down toil, lift up holiness. marvel at the simple gifts of consecrated quiet. it is God’s promise, too, to fill the holy chalice that is us, leave us thirsting for not a single blessed drop.

oh, there is much poetry that pulses through my heart these days. passion, too. and much of it is stoked by the prayers i read while i sit in synagogue, turning pages, lost in my own reverie.

it is, to me, all a spiral. the geometry of climbing. the ladder of a soul that reaches toward the heavens.

it is time to turn and return. so says the prayer of each shabbat. and, the ones for rosh hashanah, too.

even the bread, the challah of these holy days, is freed from its ordinary flat-planed braid, and lifted into ever-rising spiral.

we are told, in prayer and golden-crusted foodstuff, to come back to where it all begins–to turn and return–but take it up a notch. don’t be satisfied with status quo. don’t let dull the sharp-edged hope.

the days of awe begin tonight, when the sun slips down beyond the curve of earth, and the stars turn on, lighting up the nightsky.

it is time here in this house that is ours to turn again to page 82, the lamb-spattered page, the page where cinnamon has fallen, and kosher salt has settled in the gulley of the binding. it is lamb-stew time, the one single recipe upon which this union was begun. upon which it will, God willing, always rise.

just home from honeymoon, 18 years ago, encamped in an upstairs apartment in a tiny blue-framed house, the man i’d just married opened up the book i’d given him years before, before i ever dreamed i’d be his wife, and settled on the stew that would become our touching-stone. that will be stirred upon our stove, as long as there are arms to hold the long, wooden spoon. to sprinkle leaves of thyme. to cut up apple into chunks. to dump in raisins by the cupful.

it is, as we grow year upon year, a sense of coming home. we stir and we remember. we set the plates and pomegranates on the table, and we bow our heads in prayer.

we turn and we return.

it is all about the spiral. the holy coil that lifts us on our journey. that brings us back, again and again, but never to the place we’ve been before.

there is, we realize with every passing year, unparalleled beauty in coming round again to that moment in the days, the weeks, the months–the season–when all the world echoes: we’ve been here before.

and here’s your chance to savor it again, to learn again. or maybe for the first time.

it is holy and sacred, this spiral-marking, and it comes at the moment when my heart is ripe to bursting. when every pore of me wants to slurp up the molasses light that’s pooling all around.

i am inclined in these days of awe to walk wherever i must go. i want to feel my soles slap against the earth, feel the bumpy acorns, catch the light as it pours through golden-turning leaves.

it’s almost as if i can’t get enough of the gift: the gift of the spiral, the coming back to the essence–the joy and the beauty, the pure holiness–again.

it is time, now, to close my eyes in prayer. to inhale the holy vapors from my stove, my plate, the spice box.

it is hard not to want to leap into the holy rushing waters of this sacred river passing by. it’s an upflow, i am certain. and an updraft too.

i am soaring here, on a spiral fueled with cinnamon and cloves. these are the holy blessed days, the days of awe.
and i do as i’m commanded: i stand in awe, turning and returning….

may these most holy days enwrap you as they do me. may your every pulsebeat skip to the Divine that’s draped around us–from the branches of the trees, to the ever-dwindling slant of the sun, from the mounds of apples, to the holy prayers. may awe come to you, as you turn and gift it to the world in which you dwell.
your prayer for the blessed new year?

we’d been talking for a long time about carving out a day, he and i and his pruners and loppers.

that’s garden talk for some very sharp edges.

my friend david knows what to do with a very sharp edge.

so he drove up today in his truck, dumped all his blades at the curb. gave me a hug.

can’t say i didn’t peek over his shoulder, made sure early on the blades weren’t part of the hug. that’s when i noticed the sharp edges dumped. squeezed a bit tighter there in that hug, once i knew the blades weren’t entwined with us, too.

david is one of my teachers. i tend to acquire teachers in the subjects i most love.

i’ve had teachers who taught me–still do–how to be a mother. and teachers who’ve taught me a thing or two about words, especially the art of cobbling them, one banged up against the next, making sharp edges with those strung-together alphabet letters, crisp corners. a snatch of poetry, too, here and there, every once in a while. or, well, trying at least.

i’ve a whole faculty when it comes to my garden, that holy sacred place that’s as close as i come to religion these days. like being in church, or a pew, or a temple on any shabbat.

dappled light in my chamber of prayer comes in, not through stained glass, but through deep-veined leaves, and the cracks in the fence.

preacher comes in the wren who warbles so clear and so true she makes my heart shiver. and my knees, too.

of all the heavens i know, the one place i most want to be on these golden-drenched days of september is out where the sun warms the earth that runs through my fingers.

it’s the one place where i hear the words of my soul rising in whole-body grace.

and, since tackling the woods and the weeds of my overgrown chapel is enough to knock me down flat, well, i reckon i could use whatever learning i’m offered.

and david, the son of a dairy farmer. david, a painter. a classical music freak. a chicago cop, for cryin’ out loud. david is a teacher i’ll take any day he’s free from the beat.

he’s one of those rare souls who, in between milking the cows and belting out arias, soaked up the latin and common names of just about every growing thing that ever there was–at least on the rolling prairies that stretch from just north of the illinois-wisconsin state line, clear down to the south side of chicago.

he knows where to plop a bush and make it look like it’s always wanted to be there. knows which way to turn a weeping, gnarled-spine hemlock, so you swoon when you come round the corner and your eyes rest upon its S-shaped parabola. knows which ferns like it dry, and which will tolerate a wee bit of wet under their toes.

so david came by today. spent the whole day, he and his loppers and pruners. i worked right beside. soaked in every bit of the lessons. and plenty of wisdom besides.

why, he started the day talking philosophy, launched right into how the underpinning of all gardens is the urge to control nature.

talked about how he particularly admires the english romantics, who understood from the start that it was all about the control thing. had no pretense whatsoever that a garden was in any way a natural endeavor.

“the post-modernists,” he continued, deadheading a daisy, “they like to think we’re returning to something, returning to nature. we’re not.”

he spewed stories everywhere we stepped in the garden. when he started in on the arbor vitae–that flat-branched evergreen that, in a semi-circle of five tall trees, like ladies lined up in big-skirted ballgowns that all these years have shielded our backyard from the brick house next door–he asked if i’d ever heard his no. 1 favorite garden tale?

i shook my head no, scrambling behind him, cutting up into sticks the long branches he was starting to pile high on the bricks.

he crunched up a fistful of the greens. told me to sniff, asked what i smelled. i started to guess, “pineapple,” not really sure why. but before i could sputter out the wrong answer, he told me the right one: “lemon,” he said.

only then, tipped off by the teacher, did i pick up on the citrus-y notes of a branch full of lemon.

he told me how back when the french explorers–jesuit priests, he made certain to note–back when they were trekking through the forests near the great lakes, and the winters were hard, and all sorts of illness was thinning their ranks, the native americans came along and taught those priests how to make a very fine tea of the evergreen branches. and how, because it turns out it’s higher in vitamin C than just about anything that grows in the woods, all the ailing explorers got better, and the jesuits, being big on latin, named the evergreen, arbor vitae, “tree of life,” because the trees and the teas had kept them alive.

it was that sort of day in the garden, where all day long i learned at the hand of david.

only the biggest lesson i learned, the hardest one too, the one that made my heart pound, and made me take a deep breath two or three times, was what he did with those very sharp edges, and the stand of arbor vitae, the ballgowns, that until today had spilled thick and deep onto the brick terrace out back.

he cut away at the branches down low. cut back the limbs only barely alive. the trees i’d thought were fat and full of crannies for all of my birds, he snipped away the skirts at the bottom. showed some leg.

the shaggy-bark trunks, strong-limbed architecture, really. he bared it. gave back a good two yards of terrace.

only i gasped at first when i saw what he’d done. nearly blinked back a tear when i noticed the pile. branches, bare, nearly bare. branches with plenty enough green to make it hard there to swallow.

but as the minutes wore on, i warmed to what i saw. discovered the beauty behind what turned out to have been false fronts; in all the nearly seven years i’ve lived here, i’d never seen that possibility before.

by day’s end, i realized just what david had done: he taught me, boldly, the essential lesson of life and pruning, cut back to bare essence. expose what’s at the heart of the matter.

only then do you discover the canvas for true beauty to bloom, to be planted.

as i drift off to sleep tonight, i’ll be deep in my woodland cathedral. imagining the dappled light. and the tender shade-loving creatures that i’ll tuck and tend there, where i never knew the space existed before.

it’s what happens when you wholly trust your teacher. when you don’t argue, don’t balk. but go with the lesson as it’s unfolding.

you discover the beautiful right before your eyes. where you never imagined it before.

the day has been long, the cutting deep. i have scratches all over, and plenty of scrapes.
i almost thought of not writing today, on this 11th day of the 9th month, the day none of us will ever forget. i walked out into the deep quiet of this morning. heard a plane overhead. couldn’t help but shudder. the man i married, when i told him i was thinking it might not be right to write today, maybe i should keep the silence, he said, ‘no, you have to keep living.’
so i cut and i learned. and now i wrote. day is done.

who are your teachers? and what are the subjects you love most? what lessons have you learned at the hand of a master?
p.s. dear david, profoundly: thank you.