Bittersweet Orange

I sold my beautiful blue Schwinn scooter late yesterday afternoon as the sun was setting. I bought it five years ago, a year after a relationship ended. Some might say it was my mid-life crisis--and I couldn't afford a sports car. I prefer to name it mid-life reassessment, transition, movin' on. Whatever you call it, the scooter and the mid-life escape from the box made me happy. I suppose it was a gathering up of the past, too; my first bicycle was a hand-me-down blue Schwinn. Other things make me happy now: my garden, my friends; and I haven't been riding the Blue. It was time for it to go. I put it on Craigslist and sell it to a young couple who love it on first sight; the ride up the street seals the deal. I can see it in his eyes, and in her voice. They are so excited. And so sweet, they promise to take good care of it. Its empty spot in my driveway this morning makes my heart hurt just a little bit.

My Sunday blog post has swirled in my head all week. One of the things I most love about this weekly discipline is that sometimes I get to Friday, and often even Saturday, with no clue what I am going to write about. And then, suddenly, there it is. I learn to trust. More rarely I know what I will write about early in the week, and experiences through the week fall into that early knowing. I see patterns. That is what happens this week.

It started last weekend, when I get a dozen orange paint chips for the back door. I am sure one should not choose paint color based on the name, but Bittersweet Orange keeps calling to me all week, as I go around and around among the options. When I moved from the pink ballerina bedroom I shared with my little sister into my own room in junior high (my first memorable age band transition), I chose lime green (not unlike my side garden door) for one wall. My dad painted it my choice for me, but then and forever after called it Sick Cat Green. I have never seen that description on a paint chip; paint namers know it's all in a name. The guy mixing my paint Thursday says he truly believes they take the same color and name it six different things so as to appeal to the most people. That makes me smile. I suppose choosing by name makes as much sense as anything. I accessorized that long ago lime green bedroom wall with orange. It kind of astounds me, and makes sense, that I find myself back to Eccentric Lime and Bittersweet Orange.

So much of life is bittersweet. Major and minor moves and job changes, whether voluntary or
not-so-much; children leaving home to spread their wings as we raised them to do--even if not always in ways we dreamed for them; relationships’ endings, voluntary or not; seasonal transitions in the garden. Not much is black and white, good or bad.

Troops, President Obama announces this week, will be completely out of Iraq by the end of the year. A war perhaps we should never have been in at all. And Mu'ammer Gaddafi is gunned down. Some think he got what he deserved; others wanted him taken alive to trial, perhaps thinking he would suffer more. I think those he persecuted over the decades would have suffered more than he would have, in a trial dragging on for years. He died as he lived; seems appropriate, in this case, to me. There will be no autopsy, which has raised a cry. People want to know how he died. He died of an evil heart and a sick mind. What more do we need to know? I am more interested in how he lived. I would want to study the emotional wounds of his heart and look for abnormalities in his brain, not at gunshot angles and bullets. How did his little baby life develop into a career as an evil dictator? I heard it reported that his last words were, "Don't kill me! Don't kill my sons!" I find that fascinating. Was there sudden understanding in that moment? Did he see a flash of connection between his imminent violent death and his own brutality and atrocities? Did his third eye see the fathers and sons, the mothers and daughters whose lives he cut short? Probably not, but I wonder. We will never know. Revenge is sweet, but it never really erases bitterness. Forgiveness does, but that is so hard for us mere mortals.

I am super-sensitive lately to the passage of time. For years time seems to have flown by when I look into the rear view mirror: when did my children become adults? When did I get to almost 60? How has it been five years since my sweet grandson was born? (Why do I never get to see him? I am struggling this week not to be bitter.) Makes you want to break into song, doesn't it? "Sunrise sunset, sunrise, sunset; 
swiftly fly the years. One season following another, 
laiden with happiness and tears." Gag. But it’s only been lately that I have been quite this aware of the swift flight in the present. Mondays gallop into Fridays; Saturdays morph back to Mondays. And where are the seasons going? It's like time lapse photography. Last week I was pulling up pansies and planting vinca and impatiens, and putting zinnia seeds into the earth. And this month I am planting pansies again and waiting for first freeze to kill the zinnias, when I will bury more bulbs in anticipation of spring. The emerging peony I got so excited about last spring--wasn't it yesterday?--is descending. I don't know what is happening to the Lenten rose. It was the first plant I put in the garden I created around the deck. I planted it three and a half years ago, during the second Lent in my home--having bought the house during Lent, it felt just right. It has remained evergreen, even putting out new growth in the fall. And this autumn it seems to be rotting away. Maybe they have a short life expectancy; maybe it is just time for this one to move on. I don't know. But it makes me sad. Every season, though, has its own surprises. The perennial sunflowers in a garden on my route to work burst out this week. Just when you think the blooming season is done and gone, there they are.

This  week I get two peppers--one red, one yellow--off the plants that didn't produce when it was supposed to, when the temperatures were hot. The yellow plant has a half dozen babies on it. It seems impossible that the babies will mature this late. Although there are two 79 degree days in the forecast for this week, there was a chance of frost last night. It didn't happen, but it is just around the corner. I make chili and a chicken pot pie for my freezer this week. No more pasta primavera with garden fresh grape tomatoes and basil, and avocados. Though I squeeze in a few minutes this week, evenings on the deck after work with wine and book will  be over for good soon. Two weeks until the time change; and even if it is occasionally warm enough, I will be leaving work in the dark. Along with pumpkins and gourds, I buy a rack of firewood at the Farmers' Market yesterday; soon it will be time for fireplace, candles, and knitting. Before I know it, I will be anticipating the possibility of snow, in place of hoping for a summer day that isn’t sweltering and sticky (and one is about as rare as the other here). Bittersweet transitions.

Yesterday, while paint dries, I pull ground ivy. I love to pull ground ivy. It is so easy to remove, and it clears my head as it declutters the garden. I hadn't noticed that the English ivy is creeping back. The first step in creating my garden was to remove bag after bag after bag of English ivy. It was cathartic back then. It was the beginning of clearing my heart to make space there for what might come next. The Ivy Chronicles was first thing I wrote as I began seeing the garden as a metaphor for life, and discovering writing. So I pull the English, too. Making space really isn't that hard. You just have to be willing to let go. As I look back, I am a little wistful about that time of beginning again; I have a restless soul. I loved the empty garden canvas spread out before me, waiting for me to pick up brush and palette. And I am so happy to be in such a different place than I was when the garden reclamation began with pulling ivy. I love observing the maturing garden. There is much to be said for feeling settled.

Finally, the State Fair. A dear friend asks me to go with her. I have convinced myself over the decades that I hate the fair; I haven't been in years and years. Harboring Fair Hate makes me feel old, though, and bitter. So I say yes. What the hey. Maybe I just needed an invitation and a nudge to step outside myself. I have fond memories of the Southwest Washington Fair. It was small and sweet. The kitchen knife demonstrations, with eager housewives gathering around to watch the magic; the ferris wheel; the garden vegetable art displays; the Presbyterian Snack Shack, where I took a turn working each year when I got old enough. I won a ribbon once or more with my dish garden entries. Maybe it's like Christmas: it loses its magic with age. But I go. We eat NC State ice-cream and my friend gets a bag of her favorite fair food--maple syrup cotton candy. We do not eat deep-fried butter or Kool-aid or anything else. We watch the pig races and ride the carousel. My mind's eye sees the photograph I have of me in my father's lap on a carousel horse at the Washington state fair in Puyallup. And another toddler in his lap on a Pullen Park carousel horse , his now 32-year-old grandson. The fair is not so bad. I don't need to go again.

As I walk through the cemetery at dawn one morning this week, I come upon a tree shedding its brilliant red dress. The leaves litter the ground. I lift my camera for a picture. As I move to snap it from another angle, a maintenance cart drives into my peripheral vision and a worker jumps out with a rake. I move on before I have to watch him remove the "ground clutter." Our past, clutter and all, is part of who we are. The leaves on the ground are a visual memory of the season past and a symbol of the ever-forward motion of time. Children, friends we grow old with, maturing gardens are our visual memory of what has gone before. There is no need to throw out the recollections, even when it hurts a bit to remember what is gone. The passage of time is bittersweet, but without the memories there would be no sweet.