Spring Mourning

I left the Pacific Northwest as my life was teetering on the leading edge of summer. I was 24, and I was off for adventure. It was the end of May and spring was beginning to morph into summer in the PNW, too. The trees were greening, flowers were blooming, birds were nesting. With my new husband, I was heading out to tour the country in our homegrown camper-retrofitted VW bus: Orange Crate. It was 1976 and the country was celebrating its bicentennial. At the end of our Great Adventure we were moving to the other edge of the continent, where we would bounce between the mid-south and the deep south, though we didn’t know it yet. And I didn’t know it would be 37 years before I saw another Washington spring.

I am not a fan of southern seasons (especially summer), except for spring. Spring in the South is magnificent. It begins early, when children (and me) are still hoping for a renegade snowstorm. The daffodils bloom in January and every year people exclaim about how early they are. As the air warmed, weekends found me in the garden: looking for the hostas to poke up out of the nothingness of frozen earth; for the sedum and green shoots from the banana tree to emerge from the ground among last year’s frozen stalks; for buds on the brown hydrangea canes that I took for dead the first year; for the pansies I had planted in October to come out of hibernation and grow into the spaces. I watched to see if the Lenten rose would begin blooming at the beginning of Lent or hold off until Palm Sunday and stood eye-ball-to-eyeball with the cardinals in the greening Rose-of-Sharon tree out my second floor window.

The dogwood begins its step-dance toward glory. First the bud, then petals that take their sweet time opening like the roof of a planetarium to reveal the seeds like the stars, and then turn snow white and take on bragging rights. The shy redbuds edge in around the dogwood along the interstates, and the azaleas try their best to steal the show. I am not a fan of azaleas eleven months out of the year, but when the blazing scarlet and orange, the demure pink, the deep purple are flashing their stuff in yards across the awakening city, it is good to be alive.

All of this to say, in my three and a half decades away I never returned to the PNW in the spring. I came in the winter for Christmas. I came in the summer because I despise the southern heat and humidity－ and summer is glory time in this corner of the land. I came in the fall because it is still summer in the fall in the South as I waited impatiently to turn off the air conditioning. But spring in North Carolina is not to be missed. And so, in the autumn of my life now, this will be my first one here since my 24-year-old self moved from spring into summer several lifetimes ago.

I go looking for signs of spring on Friday. It is a spectacular cloudless day; Mt. St. Helens shouting out against the blue. I find clusters of tiny snowdrops－a fairy angel choir rehearsing Easter. A solitary yellow wild strawberry blossom. Half-a-dozen reticent blooms on the espaliered forsythia. Tiny crocuses peek up cautiously just above ground level. The buds on the flowering quince are a little bigger and one of the daffodils has a swollen top. There are tiny buds climbing the stems of the chrysanthemums that should have been cut down after the first frost.

As I write it is raining again, the misty almost-can’t-see-it rain. The weather forecaster called it wet fog the other day. It’s what makes the summer here a gloriousity－ when it finally comes sometime in July, when southerners are looking for escape. I look forward to rediscovering this forgotten season in my new old home, but I am mourning spring in the South. I anticipated this. I already have my ticket to North Carolina in April.

Another Breathing Lesson

On New Year’s Day, two tiny daffodil sprouts bravely poked through the soil in the pot on the deck. A month later there are a dozen, but still only two inches tall. The early flowers grow slowly in this climate this time of year. As the air warms they will grow faster, and be blooming before you know it; but life in the winter is not in a hurry.

I learned a new word this week－I heard it twice on the same day: Imbolc. It’s a Gaelic word that means “in the belly” and can refer to the birthing time of lambs. Imbolc was yesterday, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Life in the winter sits in wait in the belly－the belly of the earth, the belly of the creatures, my belly－until the time is right for birth and breath.

Yesterday was also Groundhog Day. That silly day when we look to a shy furry creature in Pennsylvania to tell us if there will be more of the same or if the time is right to erupt into spring. My friend Dori has embraced the day as her favorite holiday and made it personal. Is the time right to burst into whatever has been waiting quietly in the belly, or does it need more time to incubate in the dark? In honor of Phil not seeing his shadow, it is a spring-like day here. But though I look closely, I find very few signs that spring is ready to pick up the pace.

In the seven months of living with my mother, I have literally slowed my pace. She has taught me to match steps with her without impatience. Walking more slowly gives time to notice the temperature of the air, the smell of the evergreens, the clouds gliding across the pale sun, raindrops clinging to fir needles, the sound of the birds whispering in the bushes, the mountain glowing in the setting sun, the way the fog floats among the trees like visible breath.

It takes time to make the transition from unseeing speed to intentional awareness. I don’t get up and go to work these days－rushing from one thing on the list to the next, trying to get through the day’s tasks before quitting time when I can go home and try to breathe before a new day starts it all again, often continuing the list in my head even as I semi-sleep. I am more aware of my breath all the time now: the drawing in and the expansion of the breath in my belly...the movement of the air into my heart space...and the exhale into the world as I let go of that one, pause, then take another one in. I expect this is what happens to people when they retire: they have to relearn how to breath, and it doesn’t happen quickly. One of things rolling in my belly is how to return to work－which I must, eventually－and still remain in this conscious, unhurried way of living. Perhaps recognizing that desire is the first breath.

It’s been a busy week. One day a doctor’s appointment with my mom. Another day I need to accompany her on a couple of errands. Yet another day is my drawing class. Wow. Busy. My life has slowed down－I have a whole new definition of “busy.” But I don’t feel idle, just lucky to have the opportunity to concentrate on the breath.

Yogi Julie in Raleigh, in her 50s, after getting us into a pose that stretched my notion of what I could do, would tell us “two more breaths here.” I would think, “are you kidding me?” I breathed as slowly as I could, but her sense of time was slow. Trying to breathe fully, I still often took four breaths to her “two”; but by the time we came to her end, I was more comfortable with the discomfort. In my current class with the 20-something teacher, we are told “two more breaths,” and before I can finish one, she is on to the next thing. I contribute the difference to age, theirs not mine. Older people are more aware of time, and in less of a hurry to move from one breath to the next. I am glad to be here. I am glad to recognize the discomfort and take time to become comfortable with it. I am glad not to cram as much busyness as I can into each breath.

My friend Christina Baldwin, in her book The Seven Whispers, suggests three intentional breaths to begin each day: the first to let go, the second to be here, the third to ask now what? My living is somewhere between breath two and breath three. Moving from the letting go took time and it feels good to be here in the moment. I haven’t finished Christina’s book, but I am curious to see if she reveals what comes after the third breath. I suspect that moving into what’s next is not as easy as just asking the question and listening for the answer. But when we learn to breath slowly enough, we get comfortable with the discomfort. Maybe after the question is asked and the answer is revealed in its time, the next step will be as natural as one more deep stomach expanding breath. Meanwhile, being comfortable with uncertainty is today’s gift. There is time to think about what wants to be birthed and what needs to be buried, and what is still waiting for spring.


Note: I did birth a new blog this week about life with my mother. It’s called “Daughter on Duty: Walking with My Mother in the December of Her Life." I would love for you to join me there. http://daughteronduty.wordpress.com

Kaleidoscope Eyes

I love kaleidoscopes, from the cardboard cylinders with bits of plastic in the end that were birthday party favors and Christmas stocking leavings when I was small, to the multi-hundred dollar polished wood ones on stands with pieces of colored crystal that mix when the end is turned and fall into place when the twisting stops. My favorites, though, are those with clear prisms in the end that make patterns of whatever it is turned toward.  

This is a week of meandering, twisting experiences. Nothing seems to fit together. So much so that yesterday I don't think this post will have a theme. But that is what kaleidoscopes are: every movement changes the picture. Perhaps that is what Lent is about, waiting and watching for whatever comes. Life doesn’t always come together in a nicely wrapped tidy package; the days don't always fall into a theme.

Change is in the air and I feel unsettled, uncertain, unprepared. Fearful. Panicked. I read this on Saturday from Walking in This World, by Julia Cameron, and it helps: "If you are panicked, tell yourself, ‘Ah! Good sign: I am getting unstuck.'" You have to do some twisting before the glass settles into place; the panic transforming to excitement at the venture.

Here in the south this week, it is full blown spring (and much too warm for me). I observe the twists of the kaleidoscope. Each night it turns, and the next morning the scene is different.

The dogwood blossoms move from barely opening and invisible from the deck at the beginning of the week, to nearly fully busted out with the beginnings of leaves on the branches at the end. The lawn is full of buttercups  (well, yellow flowers) and violets and the tiny blue flower of the otherwise despicable carpet weed. Or maybe the carpet weed is the white flower and the blue another creeper. At any rate, the blue and the white are co-conspirators in the plot to take over the garden. (They have already won in the yard. I don't care.) I pull them by the handful, without gloves as usual and with the resulting splinters and dirt under my nails. I love the wild phlox, which pops up everywhere bringing bright spots to areas not yet in bloom.

The Japanese painted fern, the purple heart, and the Jacob's Ladder increase in girth daily. The bleeding heart has teeny half-inch hearts on the new plant; I don't remember seeing them on the immature plant in years past. These plants are clearly loving the warmth more than I am. The Japanese weeping maple and the more ordinary Japanese maples have transformed from bud to wispy emerging leaves to nearly fully open. The feathery loropetalum gets more and more thick with pink.

The banana leaves are climbing all in and over each other to unfurl. I am fascinated by these triplets born together, and struggling now to individuate.

The Rose of Sharon, the one here that I transplanted as a tiny seedling from the other side of the yard, contains the old side-by-side with the new. I ponder that, how even as we change and grow, we keep some parts of who we have been with us always, the new coming out of the old like this year's banana plant; and some pieces of ourselves, like the Rose of Sharon, we shed only as the new crowds it out. Other plants become completely empty, waiting barren through the winter for the new growth to emerge. We are all of these.

There will be many tall red papery poppies this year. Invasive, but so much fun and full of good cheer. This week, though, their beauty is in the holding of raindrops that sparkle like the glass at the end of the kaleidoscope.

I am in the cemetery on Saturday for both the sunrise after the early fog, and the sunset. I am honored to share this special place with my northern-transplant friend who has not been before. There are several rainy nights this week (and a fabulous thunderstorm and pouring rain last night), and I cherish the early morning damp air and the raindrops clinging to the plants.

I sit on the deck with wine and camera and wait for birds at the feeder. I do love cardinals. I Google them for facts and learn that they do not live in the Pacific Northwest (sad), and that they mate for life. Another website puts that last bit in perspective: "Cardinals mate for life; which sound like they spend decades of bliss together until they retire to some Cardinal condo in the [mountains]. Truth is a cardinal’s life expectancy isn't much longer than a year." However, you have to love this: Most female birds are silent, while the males expose themselves and announce their territory to the world. A truly unique thing about cardinals is that both sexes sing and both sound pretty much the same, and claim their joint territory.

Friday I take Smudge, my five-year-diabetic cat, and her three-pounds-lighter svelte body to the vet for a glucose curve, and she is declared in remission. No more insulin for now. I feel like such a good mom. I enjoy her pleasure in the sun and the new bug life in the garden.

There is a new employee at work, and I spend some time with her this week going over the financial details of her job (payroll specifically). She asks a question about sabbatical time that ministerial staff can take after three years. Administrative staff gets no such thing, and it gets me thinking about what I would do with an all expenses paid period of time to look at the world through different eyes. What would I point my kaleidoscope toward; what would I like my twist to settle into? What if I had a whole year?

Julia Cameron: "We cast our dreams and desires ahead of us, and as we move toward them, their content takes on solidity... A symphony moves both through and ahead of a composer. As he [she] moves toward it, it moves toward him [her]... As we commit to our dreams, something benevolent commits back." I am daring to dream.

The thing about kaleidoscopes is they don't work in the dark. If you hold yours up to the light and twist the end, where does the glass settle for you? Or maybe you have the kind without the colored glass; perhaps you need to look at what's already there and see how the pattern can change if you point in a new direction and look with different eyes. I am turning mine this Lent; pointing, dreaming, looking, watching, waiting.

Hope Springs a Turtle*

When my family lived on Plum Road in Starkville, Mississippi, a box turtle inhabited the petunia beds that bordered the raised patio. I loved that. I haven't seen any turtles in my gardens here, but there is plenty else sproinging up on this first day of spring. Spring is such a hopeful time. And spring in North Carolina is incomparable. For all my provincialism about the Pacific Northwest and all my whining about summer heat in the south; for all my longing to live higher above sea level, spring in North Carolina almost makes up for all that is geographically and atmospherically--and for almost every other way--lacking in my living (at least when it is spring). This morning I put my spring birdhouse on the front porch in celebration.

Warmth returns mid- week, continuing the typical schizophrenic pattern, and along with it the extra hour of daylight after work to explore hope among the dead leaves; to sit on the deck with a glass of wine and watch the leaves grow and the dogwood blossoms open. Five of the six rose bushes I planted have leaf sprouts; the bleeding heart has its first string of little heart bells with their translucent clappers; the understated euphorbia bloom tops the tall velvety soft stalks; the weeping Japanese maple leaves are unfurling from last week's red buds like winged creatures; the wild violets are purpling the lawn and rock crevices and everywhere else I let them grow--which is anywhere they want.

The banana tree has ten three-inch shoots and yesterday I find one of the Purple Hearts up beside the front step. I don't know how I missed one of the hostas that must have sprung fully formed overnight, while its sisters are just poking through the soil. The Japanese Painted fern fronds are several inches tall (and I hadn't even seen them come up) and the fiddlehead shape of other ferns are emerging everyday, looking rather like those things children blow through at parties, to make the paper cylinder shoot into people's faces. The azaleas are budding and my feet don flip flops for the first time in the 70-something degree warmth.

My patio project under the canopy of the dogwood is coming along. The hole is dug--and redug after I decide to move it twelve inches toward the Pacific Northwest in order to avoid dealing with one of the tree roots. Yesterday I pick up 130 more bricks--thank you to Susan and Boyd for the donation and for helping me load and unload them; and to Vickie for working side-by-side with me to exchange the donated bricks with holes for the solid ones in my yard border. I only need 250 more. I decide to go with the costlier, but more manageable, bags of pea gravel and sand from Lowes as opposed to the hassle and subsequent shoveling of delivery en masse, and get ten fifty pound bags of gravel onto the construction site. Only thirty more to go. Advil is my new best friend. I put down the weed barrier landscaping cloth before I call it a day. My hopefulness is growing that I will be able to accomplish this herculean project; and leave a more or less permanent mark on this little space in the vast universe.

At five o'clock I sit on the deck with a cold one and raise a glass to my dad's best friend who is at that moment being memorialized in my home town on the left coast. It is also my Daddy's 94th birthday--or would have been had he not left us way too soon sixteen years ago. I have always been aware, of course, that my own birthday is on the eve of summer; but only this week do I realize that my father's is on the eve of spring. Connection. I recall the year he "let" me build a brick walkway from the edge of the yard to the compost pile. I'm pretty sure my work was not up to his standard, but if he said so I don't remember. I weep in hopefulness that he might be proud of me for tackling this patio; in spite of the fact that he was monumentally disappointed in who I was at the time of his death. And, in spite of his displeasure in me--and consequently mine in him--being my last memory of him, I miss him so much. That's kind of how I am, I have discovered as my years march on: however disillusioned people are with me or me with them, I remain hopeful that someday, some year, they will come back around and re-engage in relationship. Hope springs a turtle.

There is a perigee moon this weekend--a once every twenty years Supermoon. A perigee moon, I learn, is when it comes closest to the earth. It is big, it is bright, it is spectacular. Because of the trees that block my view of the moon as it rises from the horizon, I drag my tired muscles into the car and go in search of a better view--because the moon is worth it. A thin cloud veil floats across the celestial orb; it looks like a pentimento--the original art hiding behind an overwash, as if the artist is thinking she could do better and intending to try. But when I go out on the lawn for one last look before bed, the veil is gone. Hard to improve upon perfection.

It is the same moon that my almost longest ever friend sees as she returns to her winter home in Indiana after an impulse visit to North Carolina this week. (We have known each other since our daughters were in pre-school; they are still friends, too. Cheers, Charly.) It is the same moon an across-the-ocean reader of my blog sees. She (?) left a comment last week, saying, "I don't know how I arrive to your blog, but I like it just by reading the first phrase!!!" That pleases me so much. I click on her link and read her blog. I think she might be from India. Hope springs a turtle that connections of ordinary life to ordinary life will someday bring peace to this messed up world. It is the same moon my family on the other coast sees (but I expect it was hidden by clouds last night). It is the same moon Emma's friends from her Peace Corps days in Tanzania see. It is the same moon my church friends in Cuba this week see, with our brothers and sisters in Matanzas. It is the same moon that floats over northern Japan and Afghanistan and all the other troubled parts of the world. Look up! Look up! In the sky, in the garden, in relationship--hope springs a turtle.

* In gratitude for the title of this post to Brennan, a young student in my friend's classroom. Through the eyes of babes, in whom our hope lies.