"I give you the end of a golden string,
Only wind it into a ball
It will lead you in at Heaven's Gate
Built in Jerusalem's wall." William Blake
I think I am through with my summer of being available to people. I need my work life, like the golden thread Blake wrote about that we follow into Jerusalem. I need a grip on my time, a schedule, a ladder, an alarm clock. It has been a month and two days since my last entry and I have been available all 33 days of them. There have been deaths and I have written cards, traveled on an air plane with family including a five month old, gotten home at 4:00 AM, forded the arroyo, been pleasant, written more condolence notes, and had dinner various places.
All I want to do now is write, teach, and sew. I heard from my Wisconsin sister-in-law that women lose their desire to cook and nurture when the estrogen drops. My estrogen has been an archeology project for 16 years. I like making gazpacho, but that involves no cooking, more of a smoothie with an Italian name. We have always called the Santa Fe Street, Don Gaspar, "Don Gazpacho." Let that be my signature meal which once received applause.
Yesterday I admit, I made my famous zucchini bread but only because it has chocolate chips that I can slip in around the healthy. I also made chicken enchilada and Saturday soup, I have to say, but only in the interest of a clean frig and not living on snacks.
Right now I would like to acknowledge the widows. So many of my friends in the past 14 months, my love goes out to Monique, Iren, Flo, Dia, and my sister-in-law, creator of Saturday soup, Sharon. These women not only have lost a beloved, they share my age demographics and perhaps my feeling about cooking. I think of them every day and how it is good to be living and how I have always hoped to die at the exact time as my parents, but that ship has sailed. I didn't want to be alone in my Pittsburgh childhood after the atomic bomb. Now I don't want to outlive my spouse or kids in the Apocalypse in whatever form it seems to be taking.
This week we had five solid days of my prayed for gentle rain. Relentless rain. Run-off rain. Drought-buster rain. Feminine rain. It put the earth to sleep for winter. Then we had one night of gully washer, masculine rains. Luckily the man of the house made it home from the mountains an hour before it hit. The arroyo ran with a deep cut. The garden doesn't know what to think. The datura are six inches wide. He brings me one every morning to behold. That should be enough. He calls me beautiful.
Yet I am pissed off. I am too available. I want a sanctuary inside the house.
I am like that girl I was, the "I vant to be alone" one my mother teased me about after some movie star.
Lana Turner, Greta Garbo, someone who even with high estrogen count did not cook. I don't know what has come over me, but it's back to school, back to work, and no, I am not available for dinner- at least after this weekend when I am still cleaning up my availability.
Some day, death with her Harley, will vroom up on me. Right now I can say, "Back off. I am not available. I have a class at UNM to teach, my new sixth graders at the girls' school, and I haven't frozen my green chile. I am following the golden thread of the seasons and my commitments. See you in a few decades. I have not thrown in the towel and I am not available to do so."
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Being and Believing.
Well, I found a note I jotted, since I am a great believer and practitioner of jotting. My Polish neighbor did not say, "This is my lucky moment" as I reported in my last entry. What he said as I emerged from the greenhouse shower, scantily clad (I'm almost 66) in a towel was, "I am a lucky moment!" Much better. So, I bring you two moments since we last met.
I went to Pittsburgh to see family and after much fussing about how best to be in Albuquerque at 5:30 AM I decided to wake up at 3:15 and head down. I did a great job of driving, had my boarding pass ready for an early seating on Southwest, and was in plenty of time for breakfast. I waited for the 6:00 doors to open, made a hasty order, and waited, and waited, and almost left, but instead was served food which I inhaled, or just shoveled unattractively in. When I got to my gate there was no one there, but he waved me through clucking that they board a half hour ahead of time. At the back of the plane, with an aisle seat for my long legs, was a seat and a young woman with a pleasant face. It gets better, don't stop now. This woman, Pauletta, was going to Pittsburgh to study wetlands. How sweet is that and besides, she was native, she just was.
We made it to Houston where the plane stopped and let on a lively crew. There were some lovely young women and when I rose to let one into our middle seat, she said don't get up and climbed over me.
With my conversational skills within one minute I found out that this 16 year old was Jewish, coming from being a camp counselor, lived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh (also called the ghetto), and was a member of Chabad. Chabad is an orthodox and very traditional group out of Crown Point, NY who I think of as wanting to convert all of us not so good Jews. There were all were on and 3 hour and 20 minute flight, a marginal Jew married to a very non-Jew, a Chabad teen, and as it turns out, a Diné.
Our teen is named Chana Ester but everyone calls her Chester and the camp kids called her "Chest."
I ask her many questions. It turns out I know some members of her community, as my mom's golf friends, the Rudolf twins or Edsel and Diesel as we called them, have eleven grandkids in Pittsburgh's Chabad. Chabad is everywhere, in Taos, Santa Fe, they get around. Chester is the youngest of nine.
I ask about arranged marriage, school, modern influences. She goes to Yeshiva Girls, will have a matchmaker Though you do not have to accept the match they research background, do blood work, etc. She has never talked to a boy as a friend. They don't talk to boys or touch. Touch is for marriage.
I asked her how many drop out and we talked about the Amish and their tradition. Meanwhile, Pauletta is leaning in and I am explaining as we go. I ask about wigs, and being around bad influences like me.
The two of them then dive into a Marie Claire magazine and giggle at all the skinny models.
I decide that this is one of the great moments of being. A Diné woman trying to recall her Navajo language to a Hebrew speaking Chabad girl. I felt between worlds, living out here for 40 years and a Pittsburgher all along. I said to them, "This is a great thing. Both of you come from beautiful cultures that are trying to keep them alive."
Chester loaned me her earbuds so I could hear my music, and they were passing the magazine back to the other girls in her pod, and I asked her anything I could think of. I told her I was exploring coincidence in my blog. I jotted but can't find what she said. Something along the lines of it being a holy moment, that Hashem (the Holy One) had it planned all along. This moment, here, she said, was planned. I said, "You mean it was Beshert?" She gives me a little nod, that I know this yiddish word for it is meant to be, it is planned. I told her to tell her mother that she is a great spokeswoman for Chabad, lively and open, and reverent. I am madly in love with my two seat mates, hugs goodbye.
I am a lucky moment. Dear Letta and Chester. That was the fastest three hours ever.
++++++++
And this is the lucky moment I wasn't.
I called home every night and asked Michael if the Night Blooming Cereus was going to bloom.
Every night he said no, and that he had invited various neighbors and friends to see when it did. Each blossom from this very homely plant is about five inches across, smells lovely, and has a little universe inside. I always think it is my version of going to the opera, or that it is the opera of plants. There is a yellow stage and hundreds in the audience, all lined up in white and yellow rows.
He kept saying, "No, not tonight." He decided to stay an extra night to see me and maybe catch the plant blooming. This year there was a record eight blossoms, all ready to go on the same night, just a few precious hours of viewing. The night I got home, I asked, "Are they going to bloom" and again he said no.
I was so fatigued from travel without my two blessed seat mates, a trip where I barely talked to anyone, that I headed right to bed around 8 PM. I did not even think to check the greenhouse, not even when I was woken with a leg cramp at 1:30. Hello, Joanie, my calf was saying.
Only the next morning did I check and see that we had missed the opera. I felt slightly sick at heart, but did not want to go into blaming myself, or Mike. Instead I wondered if a night blooming cereus blooms in the night with no one to watch it, is there still beauty? I decided the eight blossoms were having a party all by themselves, as it was beshert, meant to me.
The photos from the internet show what we missed, and this larger one is the morning after, all hung over. I e-mailed the invitees so they wouldn't be losing sleep in anticipation. Mike took off for Telluride and the Mushroom Festival. I ate Bolitas mushrooms with my eggs, courtesy of my own kids. Those ones who are thinking of moving to Pittsburgh for a Phd program. I would love to know what Hashem has in mind. What has been planned. What is already woven, and what will blossom.
I went to Pittsburgh to see family and after much fussing about how best to be in Albuquerque at 5:30 AM I decided to wake up at 3:15 and head down. I did a great job of driving, had my boarding pass ready for an early seating on Southwest, and was in plenty of time for breakfast. I waited for the 6:00 doors to open, made a hasty order, and waited, and waited, and almost left, but instead was served food which I inhaled, or just shoveled unattractively in. When I got to my gate there was no one there, but he waved me through clucking that they board a half hour ahead of time. At the back of the plane, with an aisle seat for my long legs, was a seat and a young woman with a pleasant face. It gets better, don't stop now. This woman, Pauletta, was going to Pittsburgh to study wetlands. How sweet is that and besides, she was native, she just was.
We made it to Houston where the plane stopped and let on a lively crew. There were some lovely young women and when I rose to let one into our middle seat, she said don't get up and climbed over me.
With my conversational skills within one minute I found out that this 16 year old was Jewish, coming from being a camp counselor, lived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh (also called the ghetto), and was a member of Chabad. Chabad is an orthodox and very traditional group out of Crown Point, NY who I think of as wanting to convert all of us not so good Jews. There were all were on and 3 hour and 20 minute flight, a marginal Jew married to a very non-Jew, a Chabad teen, and as it turns out, a Diné.
Our teen is named Chana Ester but everyone calls her Chester and the camp kids called her "Chest."
I ask her many questions. It turns out I know some members of her community, as my mom's golf friends, the Rudolf twins or Edsel and Diesel as we called them, have eleven grandkids in Pittsburgh's Chabad. Chabad is everywhere, in Taos, Santa Fe, they get around. Chester is the youngest of nine.
I ask about arranged marriage, school, modern influences. She goes to Yeshiva Girls, will have a matchmaker Though you do not have to accept the match they research background, do blood work, etc. She has never talked to a boy as a friend. They don't talk to boys or touch. Touch is for marriage.
I asked her how many drop out and we talked about the Amish and their tradition. Meanwhile, Pauletta is leaning in and I am explaining as we go. I ask about wigs, and being around bad influences like me.
The two of them then dive into a Marie Claire magazine and giggle at all the skinny models.
I decide that this is one of the great moments of being. A Diné woman trying to recall her Navajo language to a Hebrew speaking Chabad girl. I felt between worlds, living out here for 40 years and a Pittsburgher all along. I said to them, "This is a great thing. Both of you come from beautiful cultures that are trying to keep them alive."
Chester loaned me her earbuds so I could hear my music, and they were passing the magazine back to the other girls in her pod, and I asked her anything I could think of. I told her I was exploring coincidence in my blog. I jotted but can't find what she said. Something along the lines of it being a holy moment, that Hashem (the Holy One) had it planned all along. This moment, here, she said, was planned. I said, "You mean it was Beshert?" She gives me a little nod, that I know this yiddish word for it is meant to be, it is planned. I told her to tell her mother that she is a great spokeswoman for Chabad, lively and open, and reverent. I am madly in love with my two seat mates, hugs goodbye.
I am a lucky moment. Dear Letta and Chester. That was the fastest three hours ever.
++++++++
And this is the lucky moment I wasn't.
I called home every night and asked Michael if the Night Blooming Cereus was going to bloom.
Every night he said no, and that he had invited various neighbors and friends to see when it did. Each blossom from this very homely plant is about five inches across, smells lovely, and has a little universe inside. I always think it is my version of going to the opera, or that it is the opera of plants. There is a yellow stage and hundreds in the audience, all lined up in white and yellow rows.
He kept saying, "No, not tonight." He decided to stay an extra night to see me and maybe catch the plant blooming. This year there was a record eight blossoms, all ready to go on the same night, just a few precious hours of viewing. The night I got home, I asked, "Are they going to bloom" and again he said no.I was so fatigued from travel without my two blessed seat mates, a trip where I barely talked to anyone, that I headed right to bed around 8 PM. I did not even think to check the greenhouse, not even when I was woken with a leg cramp at 1:30. Hello, Joanie, my calf was saying.
Only the next morning did I check and see that we had missed the opera. I felt slightly sick at heart, but did not want to go into blaming myself, or Mike. Instead I wondered if a night blooming cereus blooms in the night with no one to watch it, is there still beauty? I decided the eight blossoms were having a party all by themselves, as it was beshert, meant to me.The photos from the internet show what we missed, and this larger one is the morning after, all hung over. I e-mailed the invitees so they wouldn't be losing sleep in anticipation. Mike took off for Telluride and the Mushroom Festival. I ate Bolitas mushrooms with my eggs, courtesy of my own kids. Those ones who are thinking of moving to Pittsburgh for a Phd program. I would love to know what Hashem has in mind. What has been planned. What is already woven, and what will blossom.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
My Lucky Moment
Yesterday I was emerging from our greenhouse shower and I hear my name being called, "Joanie, Joanie" and with a strong Polish accent. I grab a towel and it is our neighbor, Andres. I tell him I am not dressed and he smiles at me, "It is my lucky moment." It's not a creepy moment, just me in a towel and this man my age with a large dog on a leash outside the house. We are both laughing. Nobody has ever caught me in dishabille and it doesn't embarrass either of us. I get Michael who also thinks it is funny.
I am just back from a week at Ghost Ranch with my grandson. I have three days and then I am off to Pittsburgh so see my dwindling family, my brother and wife, my niece and great niece. Ghost Ranch in summer, and lots of walking from our room down at Corral Block which I have always called Cell Block. I liked it. The Milky Way was showing off. The other folks sharing the communal bath were all very sweet. Galen tooled back and forth on his bike and practiced hanging out with kids all day. I was the writing part of Hiking, Writing, and Yoga for Women. The women were amazing, strong, uncomplaining, game.
One woman, seeing someone in line thought she looked a lot like a girl she used to go to school with at Miss Hutchinson's School for Girls, in Mississippi. When Ashley saw the name tag, it was Cassie. Now these women had not seen each other in 26 years and were in our group. That was amazing, but Dona, our fearless, leader, just attributed it to Ghost Ranch. The next day I felt a poem in my pocket. Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." I was trying to memorize it.
Randomly, of all the poems I brought with me and my limited time with them, I read it to the group of women. I didn't know it at the time, but Cassie and Ashley were doing inward somersaults. That was their class graduation poem.
We discussed coincidence, which may be after all just random chance and statistically usual. I asked painter and poet, Cynthia West, what she thinks. Her take is that at a place like Ghost Ranch, which really has wild beauty and power, the veils between world is thinner. These things are always happening, but we notice them here.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost
Ashley and I were walking down the hill. She works at United Way as a publicist and likes it, but also shared that she really likes small grass roots foundations that grow, lets say, out of a mother for her son. A few hours later I speak with C. S. Merrill, who has lost a son. She goes into the library and shows me the press release. She has started a peace foundation in his honor. I give some suggestions, and relay to Ashley who spends an hour on publicity for fund raising. Issa Merrill Sakaki Peace Foundation. Now, excuse me. But this is an odd amount of random for a few days if you ask me.
Here we are, Susan Weber, Yoga teacher extraordinaire and Ghost Ranch Wellness coordinator, Dona Bolding, the fourth in the country spring board diver for her age group, and me in the middle, happy to be there in my lucky moment. I realized I have spent so much time at Ghost Ranch it is like my body.
I am just back from a week at Ghost Ranch with my grandson. I have three days and then I am off to Pittsburgh so see my dwindling family, my brother and wife, my niece and great niece. Ghost Ranch in summer, and lots of walking from our room down at Corral Block which I have always called Cell Block. I liked it. The Milky Way was showing off. The other folks sharing the communal bath were all very sweet. Galen tooled back and forth on his bike and practiced hanging out with kids all day. I was the writing part of Hiking, Writing, and Yoga for Women. The women were amazing, strong, uncomplaining, game.
One woman, seeing someone in line thought she looked a lot like a girl she used to go to school with at Miss Hutchinson's School for Girls, in Mississippi. When Ashley saw the name tag, it was Cassie. Now these women had not seen each other in 26 years and were in our group. That was amazing, but Dona, our fearless, leader, just attributed it to Ghost Ranch. The next day I felt a poem in my pocket. Robert Frost's "Nothing Gold Can Stay." I was trying to memorize it.
Randomly, of all the poems I brought with me and my limited time with them, I read it to the group of women. I didn't know it at the time, but Cassie and Ashley were doing inward somersaults. That was their class graduation poem.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
Ashley and I were walking down the hill. She works at United Way as a publicist and likes it, but also shared that she really likes small grass roots foundations that grow, lets say, out of a mother for her son. A few hours later I speak with C. S. Merrill, who has lost a son. She goes into the library and shows me the press release. She has started a peace foundation in his honor. I give some suggestions, and relay to Ashley who spends an hour on publicity for fund raising. Issa Merrill Sakaki Peace Foundation. Now, excuse me. But this is an odd amount of random for a few days if you ask me.
I am intimate with this place, going there since the 1980's and offering workshops over 23 years. I was there 28 years ago when I learned I was pregnant with Hope. I had crushes there, marital crises while teaching there, and got to be with my own teachers, Robert Bly and Gioia Timpanelli. People I loved a lot have now passed on. I felt my own mortality mixed in with the permanence of cliff face.
If I didn't realize the deep connection before, I do now. Nothing gold can stay, and the last light on Kitchen Mesa seems to have memorized that poem and is giving its interpretive rendering.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
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.
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
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Sitting Still for Love
People have been asking me what I am up to. Nothing, nothing at all this summer. SInce April we have had this new baby, Kaleia. Then I went to Minneapolis where I taught poetry to elementary students, me and The Giant Pencil. Tobie and I hit about five Happy Hours, and these are Minneapolis happy hours, not the chai happy hour at Annapurna in Santa Fe. Then Tammy, my daughter-in-law graduated from UNM in dental hygiene, and then her mom took a turn, fighting cancer, and died. We had Kaylee at the house the week of this sad sad transition. Kaylee began reading psalms, an amazing response to loss. Overlay this with our houseguest, six-foot-tall-girl, who was spiffing up the condo she bought and then she and I got stomach flu. I got it twice. Then we attended the most beautiful funeral at St. Ann's church, mariachi, community, and the life of a woman of this valley. Sweet Bernadette.
So, I am doing nothing and this is what nothing looks like at my house. I recall my friend Grolnick, the late and great jazz musician, who said that if he sat still the entire world would come to him. He sat outside the music department where he had a practice room and where I eventually met him. He also said, famously in our house, "Money's no expense" and "Don't make me uptight in my own house." He died very young but is oft quoted in my mind. So, I have decided to sit still and let the world come.
On the back porch every night someone shows up. And it's not as if we live downtown. We are out here. The forest explodes like a bomb, you can see it to the east. The honeysuckle blooms like mad and halfway through a porch visit, the sitter says, "What is that smell?' Frances came here with stories, and Shebana with flowers and flamenco wisdom. Julie and Scott ventured over last night and we sat pouring fingers of Bourbon and eating grapes while speaking of family and R. Crumb. Sam and Deb stopped by on their second anniversary. Monique, who feel closer to in her year of widowhood, comes over regularly and we sit missing Gary Eckard and talking about her next steps as she prepares to sell and not be my neighbor after thirty years. I am happy for the magnetism that we seem to have.
So, this summer, I am doing nothing. I better go move the hose to the next plant. I have a pomegranate to try and grow. I have a takeover of cilantro to tend to. I am trying to move sunflowers. Like me, the sunflowers want to stay put. They do not want to move.
This summer I play with the baby Kaleia, swim laps, water my garden. The forests explode like bombs, they are that fuel packed. I am resting up, catching up on sleep. I said to Anne Valley-Fox that I am doomed. I love so many people and when each one, should they die before I do, dies, I feel guilty that I wasn't a good enough friend. Anne suggested I treat each time and person as a last time. We said goodbye, as if for the last time after our New Mexico Literary Arts meeting. I thanked her for being such a good person and always making me feel better about my life. She said, we're good, we're both good with one another. I guess I am still the PL of last times. And as Linda Gregg said, "I am filled with all things seen for the last time." This time, not by traveling to Greece as she did or in my dreams of Mumbai as last night, but the even more challenging, sitting still.
So, I am doing nothing and this is what nothing looks like at my house. I recall my friend Grolnick, the late and great jazz musician, who said that if he sat still the entire world would come to him. He sat outside the music department where he had a practice room and where I eventually met him. He also said, famously in our house, "Money's no expense" and "Don't make me uptight in my own house." He died very young but is oft quoted in my mind. So, I have decided to sit still and let the world come.
On the back porch every night someone shows up. And it's not as if we live downtown. We are out here. The forest explodes like a bomb, you can see it to the east. The honeysuckle blooms like mad and halfway through a porch visit, the sitter says, "What is that smell?' Frances came here with stories, and Shebana with flowers and flamenco wisdom. Julie and Scott ventured over last night and we sat pouring fingers of Bourbon and eating grapes while speaking of family and R. Crumb. Sam and Deb stopped by on their second anniversary. Monique, who feel closer to in her year of widowhood, comes over regularly and we sit missing Gary Eckard and talking about her next steps as she prepares to sell and not be my neighbor after thirty years. I am happy for the magnetism that we seem to have.
So, this summer, I am doing nothing. I better go move the hose to the next plant. I have a pomegranate to try and grow. I have a takeover of cilantro to tend to. I am trying to move sunflowers. Like me, the sunflowers want to stay put. They do not want to move.
This summer I play with the baby Kaleia, swim laps, water my garden. The forests explode like bombs, they are that fuel packed. I am resting up, catching up on sleep. I said to Anne Valley-Fox that I am doomed. I love so many people and when each one, should they die before I do, dies, I feel guilty that I wasn't a good enough friend. Anne suggested I treat each time and person as a last time. We said goodbye, as if for the last time after our New Mexico Literary Arts meeting. I thanked her for being such a good person and always making me feel better about my life. She said, we're good, we're both good with one another. I guess I am still the PL of last times. And as Linda Gregg said, "I am filled with all things seen for the last time." This time, not by traveling to Greece as she did or in my dreams of Mumbai as last night, but the even more challenging, sitting still.
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