Fruit Loops

Every day when there is nothing on the calendar is a full on experience.  There is no structure so it is wandering in Eden all the time.  Yesterday I was dressed for a swim, two days after making our baby quilt.  I was so sore from sewing all day on the quilt, with my lovely daughter across the table sewing as well, that I could barely walk.  I had never had so much muscle ache from sitting still.  I am a practiced sitter.  So I am trying to get back into my sixty sixth next month, bathing suit shape.

Here's the quilt.

Mike and I decided to go buy fruit from Marguerite since it would get us out of the house, see Marguerite whose quilt show I missed, and eat lunch out on the town.  We did. I changed out of my suit into city clothes.

 We bought cherries, strawberries, apricots masquerading as plums, and nectarines.  We ran into Carl and Lisa Ray there and though planning ahead makes me tired, running into people delights me.  We talked about our daughters, and they bought two PoemHolders which made my day.  That's what I mean about Fruit Loops.  I sent out a notice of Marguerite's fruit sale, and that brought us all together.  Lisa and Carl and Mike and Marguerite and me. After feasting in the quilt studio, Marguerite gave me fabric scraps from her quilts so I can enter recycle Santa Fe in November with my recycled projects.

Here's what they are looking like.

Rowing in Eden, Emily Dickinson said.  Or that Sabbath is a taste of Eden, say the Jews.  My Peeps.  That's it.  This odd time, my shut-in stay-at-home make no plans, is a Sabbatical.  I think giving a name to my post PL life gives some credibility to it, but maybe not having credibility is a part of it.  It is illegitimate time. Wasted, composting (ugh!), down time, seclusion, hermitage/ home.

I have no idea if I am the happiest I have ever been or teetering on the edge of depression. 

I am just myself, the same girl who loved getting Weekly Reader at school, ordering those cheap paperbacks at the book club, and going to the Carnegie Library and flaunting my library card. I know how the library smelled. It smelled like times past and words.  Today smells of Italian herbs I picked to dry. Words, herbs-- finally I am going to swim not laps but loops.

After a Perfect Day

I can't even begin to tell you what it is with Española, so I will begin.
Monique says I romanticize Española and she can't find anything to resonate with there.
Somehow, though friends I admire have called me a romantic, I don't like to hear that diagnosis
about my relationship with my nearest town.  Believe me, I know its foibles, have been robbed, visited the schools, swum in the outdoor pool when it was functioning (which is not this year), gone to its movie theaters, and longed for Italian food after its one good non-New Mexican restaurant closed.

And today, Española proved itself to me again.  We went to Farmer's Market to drop off books for Sabra. Sabra Moore, an amazing artist from the Women's Movement in New York, by way of a Texas childhood and Peace Corps in Africa, gives a free book to the children every single week.  I love this low key approach to literacy, plus she has grown this market over the years and we all take ownership and rejoice at season's end with a Biggest Vegetable and Best Poem Contest. Sabra has made our little market very successful, a secret that I try to spread --every Monday in summer, 10:00 to about 2:00.

The musicians were there again, five old guys playing their beautiful Spanish music just for fun and a tip jar.  I danced with Sabra Last week and tried unsuccessfully  to get Mike to dance this week, so I danced alone. It made the farmer's smile, me in my Keen sandals and black clothing, dancing with an invisible and handsome partner.  Michael Combs called out my name and he and his beard gave me a big kiss.

I saw my friend from Ghost Ranch, Patricia, who liked my jewelry and I told her it was from a wonderful jeweler named Sue who sells at the Ranch.  Mike and I bought lunch from a vendor called Edwin, a Guatemalan thirty years in this country.  I trusted that his ceviche would be fresh and good and it was indeed perfect withs its shrimp and fish and forty limes.  He said that this is Guatemala, the cultura. While I was sitting on the cooler and loving this guy's food and activist outlook, who should amble onto the scene but Sue, the very jeweler I was marveling about. Of course I hollered down Patricia to meet her.

 Then Esta, my old friend, showed up and I got to thank her for sending me to the one outdoor public pool in Santa Fe last week, a place I hadn't been in over a decade.  I took my grand daughter there and as we walked in, my grandson with red cheeks and a big smile happened to be there. I got to thank Esta for sending me into another beautiful sychronicity and my day in Espanola felt woven and whole.

Michael and I spent a perfect day, planted some salvia we'd purchased from a very cool market dude, moved a Buddelia or Butterfly bush, walked around congratulating ourselves on having a good day. We visited the Datura and the chickens, and our daughter Hope, and grand child came to play.  The three month old slept on my chest as I rocked the recliner She splashed in a blue plastic dishpan, and did her chubby best to be happy to be alive, even if teething. Hope is a beautiful mother who lives in, you guessed it, Española.  A house where a dear friend lived for 13 years, wwhre there are still marks on the wall to show she grew.  The same house where my son, Matt went to Montessori school, the little desks are still stored in the barn. So somehow, I am woven into this funky place.

Today Mike's truck broke down on his way out of town for a week, and my friend Elaine is ill, and it's not so perfect.  But I am trying my best to focus on the out of synch, beauty of the mismatched and the random.  The twelve colored spools of thread Monique gave me from Mexico, the mystery I am reading by Lesley Poling Kempes, the laundry I get to fold because I am still alive, and the day is long with  light and beauty.  Broken truck and all.

Brownies and Miracles

Lately I notice the words go by in my mind and I have lethargy, I watch the world, the hawk outside the west window and I mean just feet outside on a branch. The return of the lucky turtle we called Scar trucking across the grass.  My grand daughter in her white bassinet,  just her fingers and toes showing above the deep white wicker of it.   The miracles are there, but like Scar they are a rarity.

Last night I cam home wondering how I could possibly cook.  I was deeply tired from the joys, and true pleasure, of grandkid watching, both Galen and Kaylee.  They mostly got along well, one scuffle that I intervened with my superior grandmotherly politics, and the rest of the time I was their servant.  I am  Jewish women raised by a combination of wolves and hired help. I treat the kids like royalty. I don't know any other way.

So by last night, ten meals between then tucked in, I had not an ounce of dinner planning or even motion left.  I crashed onto the bedspread and wondered where the brownies were.  I would take an edible brownie or one who wears green pointed shoes. My daughter called, wondering if they could make elk burgers on our grill.  They would bring more greens to supplement my little garden's offerings.  So, two of the three offspring arrived, and we ate well, tried to comfort the newcomer Kaleia who was just too tired to do her job as Baby Medicine and cure what ails us.  She was the one who needed to be treated royally, and we did.

Meanwhile, the miracle of loaves and fishes and stone soup and an elk hunted by people I know and love.  By the next time I stretched out again

I wasn't even tired, just relaxed.  I am wildly lucky and anyone who doesn't think so didn't feel the night breeze last night and hear the world trying so hard to rustle up some rain.