pull up a chair

the house had just been emptied of its last inhabitant, save for the sleepy cat. and me.

the last lunch bag, scooped off the banister where most mornings they line up, all three, like brown-bellied soldiers in a row. the last triple knot had been loosed from the shoelace that refuses to become a floppy bow. the shoe shoved on, clop-clop-clopped to the bus stop.

i breathed in, deep and full, for what felt like the first time in days.

a glint of morning sun caught my eye. i soaked in the silence, then heard my name whispered from beyond the smudged-glass panes.

i felt my farmer self slide over me, like an old dirt-streaked pair of dungarees. before i gave it conscious thought, my feet were sliding into rubber boots, the ones that give me license for sloshing.

i stepped out to slosh, all right, to survey the so-called fields (more like a paltry plot that i pretend is vast terrain, a patchwork quilt of winding path and pine cove, woodland and a would-be meadow, punctuated here and there with dips and rises that here in the flatlands pass for hill and valley).

caretaker of this square now brown and gray, i walked in search of winter damage, poked around beneath the withered autumn’s leaves to look for stirrings, sprouts of life that i knew–from the slant of sun, the way the light these days is pure, is warming–were apt to be crowning through the crust of nearly vernal earth.

it is, more than any other mindfulness, this act of paying attention to the rumblings of the season–bird flight and song, unfurling of tenderest of shoots and sprouts–that moors me, fills my lungs with hope and my head with wisps of possibility.

as i comb the beds, push back sodden clumps of oak leaves, shove off fallen twigs and pine cones, it is as if my fingerpads absorb the bumps of braille, and once again i’m given sight. i am reading the scripture of the springtime garden.

i can’t help but bend my lips in smile at the parsley bits of green shoving forth from underground. clearly, the sun warms some spots more than others, for there are patches still in slumber while, not far off, clumps where alarm clocks must be clanging loudly.

and then, amid the reverie of all this life, i come upon a mournful mound–of feathers, glowing white in the shafts of sunlight, just beneath the weeping willow.

how apt that the branches weep, for this is all that’s left of one of winter’s juncoes, the white-bellied, white-tailed little bird that brings me joy in december’s depth.

i’ve a hawk, a hungry one, who spends long hours in my pine trees, keeping watch for lunch. too often, he is sated.
and here amid my friday rounds, my catching up with all the news in my backyard, i find sad evidence that once again he’s struck.

and i am left to gather up a feather or two, to tuck in the holy ground where i remember all the fallen from my so-called fields.

it is sacred work, the search for newborn life as well as the lifting up of the dismemberings.
my knees wet, my fingers muddy, i register no surprise to find my soul is stirring by the morning’s end.
back to life, after a long dark winter.

have you been out to feel the pulse of coming spring beneath the crust of earth, now thawing? what is it that brings you mooring, a sense of holy place amid the madness?

i grew up with one.

pretty much it’s the balm on the far end of harried days. it’s what happens when you start to lose the dinner hour. when trains run late, or deadlines detonate the time clock that was your chopped-seared-and-plated two-course hope. when coaches call a practice smack dab at chow time. when sweaty gyms take the place of civilized dining chambers.

it’s the plate that waits, gosh darn it, that stands up to any threat to steal away that modicum of grace, of communion, at the end of a long day.

it’s the ceramic plane, piled with foodstuffs, that tells you, worry not, we bend here to what you need. we won’t leave you to fend alone in the cold dark kitchen. we’ll extend the dinner hour, late as you need it to be.

in this house, you will be fed, and fed as if you were right here among us at the noisy dinner table. we did not forget you, as we piled high the plates, put out the napkins, clasped hands in simple ad-hoc prayer.

it’s the late-plate, all right, a dish i long ago came to know, came to count on.

for weeks on end, way back in high school, i remember coming in the house, soggy wet from hours in the pool, and knowing where to look, under the stove light, the one that burned late into the night, shining spotlight on a plate of sensible sustenance, my mother’s forte, my mother’s gift to me.

i learned, as so many do, at the hand of my mama. learned what it feels like to be fed, to sit down hours after all the others, sink your fork into a baked potato, slice a chop, impale a pea, because whoever did the dishing up that night didn’t fail to think of you. to want to feed you. to leave a warmed-up calling card.

and so now, it’s my turn. i’m the mama of a boy who just this week has set his oars in the water, took up crew, a lovely sport, a sport that sets you sailing down smooth channels, a sport that makes you hear a soundtrack in your head, some english sort of rowing melody, chariots of fire, perhaps, phillip glass (i know the latter because i hear the dissonance pounding through the speakers as the fledgling rower mimics all the pulling through the waves, only on dry land, down in the basement, where so far at least, it’s a space without a current).

seems the crew team strokes daily till 8 bells, night bells, and so the sweating mass of muscle and newfound sport, bounds through the door near half past that hour, and finds i’ve left for him a circle of sustenance, just like my mama did for me.

the age-old rite continues: i’ll leave you a plate; dinner will be waiting; it’ll be under foil, in the oven, on the stovetop, in the fridge.

somewhere, you who i love, who i tend body and soul, there will be fuel for the end of your day. food to fill you.

and, as it’s always been in these kitchen matters, there will be a good measure of love stirred in, for there is rarely a recipe worth its cups and measures that does not behold an equal mix of passion.

we cook to love, many of us. even if we don’t always love to cook.

it is, more than most domestic arts, a telegraph of pure affection. one that stands a chance of registering as such. can’t say my heart is swooning as i dust the silt off the bedside table in my messy boy’s room, or as i wipe down the toilet seat of boys who, well, must not pay close attention to the target.

but in leaving a simple plate of sauteed apple slices, sprinkled with cinnamon, dried cranberries, bathed in just a dab of butter, a sausage grilled, sweet potato bursting earthy sunset-orange, i am whispering in that tall boy’s ear. saying, you deserve more than cold deli turkey, more than spoon of peanut butter, more than power bar.

shining there, under the 40-watt bulb that illuminates the stovetop, that plate says clearly: welcome home. sweet heart, day’s not done till you are here among us. till you’re fed, sated, full again.

day’s not done till we’ve met you with the truth that here, on our watch, you will always be tended to. we won’t send you off to bed, wanting.

not for anything.

what messages do you signal from your stovetop? or do you tap out lovenotes in other keys?

i heard the house exhale the other morning, a deep resounding sigh.

i listened close. heard an echo. realized it was my soul, doing the same.

there was no other sound anywhere in this old house. i was, bound by snow and drifts, home for one sweet day. home, alone.

home with pipes that gurgle now and then. home with wind, humming through the window cracks. home with flocks of cardinals, grace wrapped in scarlet feathers.

i realized, feeling the deep warm wrap, feeling holiness seep into my pounding chest, i realized what i’ve known for years now: tiptoeing through this house, dreaming out its windows, catching light and wing and flight, is the marrow in my bones, the illumination in my soul.

all at once, as the teakettle turned up its whiny song, as i listened to the clock tick-tock, watched the snowflakes tumble down and down, i diagnosed what’s been wrong all these last few months, what’s made me cranky, feel like pent-up steam about to burst: i’ve been home sick. away-from-home sick.

oh, i race in each night, just round dinner time. sort the mail, dump the junk. eyeball someone’s homework. check the fridge, see the milk is gone, race out to the store, alone with all the other mamas who wrap up errands when the clock strikes ten–just in time to miss the nightly news.

i’m up at half past five, racing once again, packing lunch, stirring oats, sometimes treading on my mill (as if i need a power cord to do that never-ending exercise).

oh, yes, i hang my coat here. sleep in a bed here. cook and clean. but what’s been missing all these months is something so essential: i breathe from the bottom of my soul here, when i’m alone, when i’m in rhythm with the light and wind and birdsong. when i’m here to dash to the rescue of a broken stem, a worm that’s drowning in a puddle.

don’t laugh. it’s deeply true.

i am at once two souls: one who dearly loves the women of my workworld (and a few of the men as well), but one who lives and breathes for the solitary world, the grace-filled homescape that speaks to me as prayer.

i felt the slowing-down seep deep the other snowy day. i felt the pilot light of faith spark a higher flame. why, i even had the apple sliced, laid out in pinwheels, when the little one bound in the door.

isn’t that a higher grace than water-cooler chatter?

some days maybe not. some days there are wounds to heal beyond these walls.

but all in all, it’s here at home where i am filled with deep, still grace.

staring out my kitchen window, watching snowflakes pile high, i caught that papa cardinal pecking at the few last berries on a bush. i heard the breath whoosh out of me, so startled by his scarlet red, so close.

as the quiet wrapped around me, and i soaked in his coat of bishop red, i felt certain i had tripped upon the cure to all that’s ailed me.

i felt home, again.

i know, i know. last week i wrote of the joys of being surrounded by a circle of wise women at work. such is the yin and yang of life. all i know is i breathe best when i am home, and with all my heart i wish i could stay here……

why do you love to be in your house? or, conversely, what do you absorb from the busy world beyond your walls?

she might not happen by here today, but doesn’t matter. i am sending birthday love to one of the finest hearts and minds and souls i know. my beloved crd, a brilliant light in my life and so many others’. and not just when the halo comes from a ring of birthday candles……xoxox

as much as i kicked and screamed and cried when told i would be leaving my little old french pine table, and the turn-of-the-century lithographs of little bo peep and her sheep that grace the walls here in this once-garage.

as much as i still ache for the hours of being alone here in this old house, of starting a slow-cooked stew, or tossing in a load of darks when the laundry basket groans under the immensity of all the piled-up sweat and stain that comes from three boy bodies.

as much as i miss looking out the window, catching shifting shadows, watching birds pop worms into each other’s mouths, marking seasons come and go.

as much as all that, i have discovered for the first time in a long time that rare gift of slipping into a circle in which the inhabitants all hold each other up; not only understand each other’s lives, but in varying shades and combinations live that very life.

at the place where i type three days a week, we have, all of us, found ourselves plonked into pre-assigned seats, complete with chair, drawers and computer.

oddly, curiously, the cluster of four part-time working mamas are assigned to desks across the great divide from nearly all the others. right off, we felt sequestered, whispered to ourselves that we’d been banished to some siberia.

we call our cove of desks “the cul-de-sac,” and while we hear the chatter from beyond the great divide, hear the peals of laughter from the jokes they seem to share, watch them come and go to lunch, pass bonbons as well as bon mots, we’ve come to not mind, really.

you see, in between the typing and the phone calls, we’ve begun to weave together the interstitia of our lives.

we know who was up at 3 rocking her baby, and never did get back to sleep (while the baby’s father, mind you, snoozed the night away). we see how the tired one now sits listing in her chair, wearing washed-out pallor with her sharp black boots and sweater, in the phosphorescent glow of the grey-green office light. and, each one of us having been there once upon a time, we all but race to her side, prop her up with dark chocolate and deep sighs.

we all gasp, collectively, when the call comes in from the school nurse, and one of our little ones has succumbed to a head bump, complete with spurting blood. and stitches, suddenly, are the order of the day. and we put our heads together, counsel on the virtues of pediatric plastic surgeon versus run-of-the-mill ER doc, when it comes to sewing thick black thread through the gash in that once-flawless. still perfect, kindergarten face, the one we all know from the pictures that ring his mommy’s desk.

we laugh, or else we’ll cry we decided, when lamenting the heartache that will come when the one whose husband lost his job has to take on full-time work, leaving home a baby not yet six months old, because the home economics hold no room for only working three days, no room for two extra days a week cradling that baby whose smiles she can’t bear to miss. for even one hour, let alone the extra 16.5 she’ll have to lose. (we have done the math, down to the minute, racking our brains to shave a half an hour here or there.)

and sometimes, in between the triumph of a masterfully crafted sentence and the groans of a deadline we can’t meet, the snippets of conversation, the truths exchanged, are so truthful, and so stirring, i find myself tossing them round and round my head for days after they are uttered.

just this week for instance, or maybe it was last week (the days all blur, i tell you), i’d been recounting some homefront frustration, the barely-capped angst with which i met the morning’s revelation that a winter coat was, um, left across town the night before, in a gymnasium, now surely locked, where i would have to knock in vain (and wintry cold) in distant hope of retrieving said essential garment.

somehow, i can’t remember quite the line of questioning, i looked up and asked the sleepless one, who has a girl of four besides the baby, if she had ever raised her voice at that blessed child, the four-year-old. ever?

she paused, thought for a good while, sheepishly smiled, then answered, “no, i don’t think i ever have.”

quickly, she blamed it on her particular four-year-old. “she’s sooo good,” said the mama, brushing off any credit for this stunning revelation.

i sat stunned, all right. still do, pretty much.

ever since, i’ve been walking through my waking hours, especially here at home, reaching for her placid heights. i am channeling, with all my might, her very gentleness, her calm.

“if she can do it–not raise her voice in four whole years–i can try to get through just one morning’s rush out the door and off to school without the knee-jerk rise in decibels, the clipped syllables, the huff and puff that comes from hurry and the dread of missing that old school bus.”

i repeat it like a mantra, hour after hour.

and as the days and weeks go by, i’m coming to realize how very much i carry home the company of splendid women who fill my downtown days.

i find that not only do they bring me solace in the typing place, but here at home, i’m inspired too. trying to live up to the good grace of the one who does not yell, the smarts, the dead-pan funny of each and every one.

i’ve found, once again in my most blessed life, that being surrounded by a phalanx of smart strong women is, of all the prescriptions i know, among the surest for getting through the bumps, the curves and full-out tailspins that come at any turn.

tell me about the company of women (or men) who are your saving grace….

it’s rare in this house for both boys to be on the same page.

one is paying attention to grade points and the calculus of getting into college, the other struggles every day to turn that loopy shoelace into some sort of tangle to hold him all day long.

one reads nabokov and sartre, philosophers and existentialists. the other asks each morning if i can help him fold the sports page, where he’ll inhale the itty-bitty numbers, the rise and fall of grown-up men who bang around a ball.

and so, the other evening as i looked up from washing dishes, i saw two boys at work, two boys with snacks and pages open wide, two boys whose worlds had momentarily aligned.

mind you, when you accidentally give birth eight years apart, when you did not set out to span a half a decade with your offspring, it is a fundamental truth of your wobbly existence that you find you live not in instant replay, with one child sliding out of diapers as the other storms the scene, but rather you dwell in time delay.

whole chapters start and end between boys 1 and 2. one has journeyed off to summer camp, barely sent a single postcard home, while the other holds your hand and toddles up to bed. one has started shaving while the other learns to squeeze the toothpaste on the brush without it splurting in the sink.

one sits at dinner talking emerson and frost, the other squirms and tries to feed the meatball to the cat.

only now, eight years into this experiment in dual children, are we discovering the joy of occasionally, rarely, unpredictably, dancing cheek-to-cheek.

or at least hearing strains of the same music.

it’s new enough around here that still it takes our breath away, when the little one for instance pipes in with his opinion on which college his brother might consider. or, adds a cogent thought to a discussion about iraq.

and vice versa, it is stunning for the bookish older one to weigh in on some football matchup, or to lament a limping quarterback.

who knew they ever tuned in to each other’s world? apparently, they’re listening.

and just as they randomly begin to bump into each other’s orbit, we look toward the summer after next, and realize once again we’ll be a dinner table of only three.

which makes these days ones to milk for all they’re worth.

we’ve finally got a pair of bookends who line up on a single shelf. one’s reaching beyond the elementary, the other’s wise enough to find a common ground. (and occasionally haul the little one on his lap for a boa-constrictor squeeze.)

in the days and weeks and months ahead, i’ll not tire of the moments when i catch the pas de deux of brothers deep at work discovering the joy of sharing the same page.

in fact, i’m standing ready with the apples and the pretzels to fuel their kitchen study hall.

where, with any blessed luck, they’ll look up from homework page to see a fellow traveler they’ll choose to spend their whole lives long coming home to.

or at least dialing long-distance.

i almost ditched this in midstream, but then decided to keep on writing. no universal theme here, except perhaps the joy of discovering a sibling is not merely someone who sits across the kitchen table a couple times a day, but rather a someone whose particular gene pool makes for soulful kinship. when did you discover the many gifts of a someone who shared your own last name?

it wasn’t long ago, was it, that i was the mama, leaning in, looking into the sleeping place of my little one?

it wasn’t long ago, i swear, that i was the mama whose chest heaved a heart-filled sigh, that whirl of thanks for peace at last, peace short-lived, that rush of knock-me-over, make-me-wobbly love, that is the motherlove of a mama looking down on her restful, dreaming child.

bliss be ours, the ones with babies napping.

the baby isn’t mine this time. she’s my ella girl. my faraway love, the one i watch grow up through pictures, frames that sometimes nearly burst through my computer screen they are so filled with the lifeforce that is ella.

ella’s mama sent me this just the other day, and at once i was there, leaning over the rails of the crib my boys never once took to.

and yet, in the same swirl and whirl of heart and breath, it made me realize my days of leaning in, of breathing, catching breath while the baby sleeps, those days are gone for me……

and it made my chest pound hard, and heaviness drop down around my shoulders.

how swift the timeline sweeps. how soon we’ve made it past the days we thought would never end, the chasing and the diapers and the naps that won’t be taken, and the endless and sometimes sisyphean upside-down and inside-out repetition of the tasks.

but then, suddenly–and much beyond nearly all my peers, the ones who now show me pictures of their grandbabies, while i tend to spelling lists and the tying of shoelaces–i find i’ve passed the days i dreamed of. the days so sweet. so long and short at once.

i am now one rung out on the circle of new life. i stand behind the mamas young and fumbling. the ones trying to sort it out, make sense. the ones who stumble, cry, and wring their hands.

i am the silver-haired auntie, even if that hair is rumpled, wild, and most often unruly.

i’m caught short, my breath is too, by the finding out that life has passed in frames i can’t re-spool in real time.

from now on, the bottoms in the air, and the up and down of dozing babies’ chests, will be not ones that are mine to chase, to scrub, to know of every bump and rash.

i am slipping from that rare illuminated spot on the centerstage of life, the one where we move so fast we sometimes miss the poetry.

here i stand now, looking in on the ones who look in on their sleeping babes.

and from here, though, i feel the full force of the literature of life, as the chapters of my past come swirling at me, and in the distance that’s now mine, i discover stanzas and truths that once escaped me as i strained to merely catch my breath.

this time, looking in on the ones who look in, i am bathed in the tender wholeness of it all. and for that, despite the twinge and ache of grasping back through time, i know that i am blessed for having been there.

God bless the mamas, full of heart and wonder, as they strain to catch their breath.

a wee muse on moving on. as all around me this week i was filled with news of babies born, and babies reaching milestones, or simply snapshots of babes doing what they do so finely. and all of it made me miss those days, so long and not so long ago……

do you ache sometimes for the days, the hours, the moments, that have slipped away?

a bit of housekeeping: i’ve been washed over with a sense lately that i might need to pause my typing here sometime soon. i feel i’ve said plenty, and it might be time for quiet. i’m torn, of course. but this table has always honored seasons, and i am wondering if the season of quiet is upon me……

finally, a most blessed happy birthday to the mother of the bride out arizona way…..pjv, here’s to you, darlin. xoxoxo

p.s. i have come back to the table to take extra care of my most blessed little one. i have shrunken the snapshot above and blurred the edges, so you still might feel a touch of the innocence, the pure pang of heart i felt as i peeked in on her napping, but she is wrapped, i hope, in a blanket of safety. i want nothing less for my sweet one and those in whose arms she is cradled.