Resurrection

This is undoubtedly the first Easter in my life that I will not spend in a church of walls. I thought it would feel uncomfortable, empty, unfamiliar. But I feel set free. Free to meet the One Who is More in ways more creative and meaningful to me. As my dear friend so eloquently says, "Resurrection isn't only about dead Jesus." Even though sermons may try to make us see the connection between dead Jesus and our own resurrections, I think I need to let go of the attachment to The Resurrection to see it. Of course since I work at a church, and created three bulletins for Holy Week and read about Jesus in the Garden at the Maundy Thursday service, it's been a little hard to get away from dead Jesus. But today I am letting it go and looking for a different relationship with resurrection.

My childhood Easters were what all childhood Easters are: bunnies, colored eggs, and a new outfit for church. In my youngest years the new outfit may have included a straw hat and patent leather Mary Janes. Later there were corsages from my daddy to his "four fabulous females." One memorable outfit in my middle childhood years was a two-piece sailor-type affair made of bonded knit. (Whoever thought that fabric was a good idea?) And there was the pink mohair sweater. I was a goddess. I bought a new ensemble a couple weeks ago. I'm calling it my resurrection outfit; since Easter implies church. And, did I mention, I'm not going.

Today is daughter Emma's birthday. Her birth was due on Easter Sunday, but she was four days late. According to a Google search, 2011 is the first of only two times between 1875 and 2124 that her birthday will fall on Easter. (The next time she will be 101.) That was a happy Easter, anticipating her birth. Happy Birthday, Emma. Another was the Easter Sunday my family moved from Starkville, Mississippi. After church. Now that was resurrection.

Unlike birth, re-birth implies a prior death. We all experience mini-deaths on a regular basis. Hopefully we don't stay dead, but sometimes resurrection takes longer than other times. Relationship death may be the hardest to come back from. Just when we think we are there, we have to die again. But each time we work through it, we come back a little bit more alive; a little bit more ourselves. In the garden yesterday I finally cut out the garbage shrub that has been the huge gardenia's dance partner for, no doubt, decades. They were co-existing, and had even grown to look a bit alike; but the trash shrub grew faster and I had to keep trimming it back to size. The gardenia bloomed, but wasn't reaching her full potential because she gave some of her power to her partner. It was time for it to go. Its absence leaves a hole in the gardenia, but eventually she will fill it with more of herself. And I didn't get all the shrub, so as not to leave too big a hole all at once. (I am not even going to fill out that metaphor; I'm sure, anyone who has ever experienced death of a relationship knows exactly what it is.) Pruning is necessary in the garden, and in life. Emotions, expectations, disappointment, attachments to what was and what we thought would be, become overgrown to the point of blocking the way for space to grow something new.

Yesterday my too-young-to-be-a-great-grandmother neighbor complimented me on my patio. She says she thinks I can do just about anything. Then she amends it to she thinks women can do just about anything they set their sights on. I say I agree, and that too often we give our power away when there is a man about. (I don't say it, but there are women we give our power to as well.) She says "And they are happy to take it." The secret is not to avoid relationship, but to hang on to our power.

I have been attached to my garden coming into the fullness of its potential. Some sort of wildlife is attached to breakfast in my garden. I have declared war on bunnies at Easter. Now a friend suggests a deer. I am not convinced a deer is negotiating the street, but my friend is right...it's a lot of munching for rabbits, and when the peony provided the meal the other night, I admit to having to look at taller possibilities than the Easter Bunny. I am relating to my mother's ongoing war with deer. Over the years her garden has been more a shrine to deer repellent techniques than to anything else. I may have to learn to go of that attachment to what I want. But not just yet.

Just like the biblical women didn't expect an empty tomb and a re-born Jesus, there are things (besides four-legged diners) in my garden that I didn't expect. The peony I rescued from English ivy a couple years ago has many buds on it for the first time. (Though not as many as it had two days ago--see above.) I planted two alum bulbs last fall and forgot about them. When something came up with what looked more like an after-blossom seed pod than a bud, I couldn't figure out what it was and how I missed the bloom. Until it started to crack open, and then I knew. By the end of this day of resurrection I expect it will be fully open. I thought the sixth rose I planted was a dud; but it is just a bit slower than the others. All in its own time. Things that look like they won’t be coming back, have a way of showing up when you least expect it.

After months of dreading my office change, I have been occupying new space for the past week. Space with a window. Light. Returns to my basement office feel like revisiting my personal Auschwitz. How did I bear for all these years? Not very well, actually; but there was the knowledge that it was mine, and it was familiar if not beloved. New and unknown places are hard to anticipate. But change is often the opening resurrection needs. And when we jump into the crack, we open ourselves to possibilities.

"And time remembered is grief forgotten/And frosts are slain and flowers begotten/
And in green underwood and cover/
Blossom by blossom the spring begins." --Swinburne





If you're looking for me, I'm in the garden.







 

Garden Invaders

On my Thursday morning walking-with-coffee garden exploration I discover that something--or someone--has cleanly bitten--or snipped--the blooms off nine of my eleven red and pink tulips. I am both mystified and angry. In an early morning dream, two small boys were in my yard threatening plant terror; so my mind turns first toward two-legged invasion of the curbside blooms. But when I discover the ends of the stalks shooting up from a coral bell in the side yard has met the same fate, it seems less likely. A Google search of "what is eating my tulips?" reveals it to be a wide-spread mystery. "Everything eats tulips" proclaims one forum "expert.' My terrorist is most likely a rabbit. I imagine it raised up to its full haunches height, leaning forward, and neatly snipping off and munching the delicacy. Apparently they are discriminating, with a preference for red, mature blooms; explaining why the two newer blooms were left to see another day. I have no explanation for the coral bell tips. Invasion. Even the new fern fronds, which I love, look like stands of aliens. 

I thought that was the worst the week would hold, but on Friday I go to the orthopedist with the return of pain in my knee, injured in a fall New Year's weekend in a DIY project. I most likely have a torn meniscus. There is an MRI in my near future. The reduced mobility and restricted activity feels like an invasion to my usual good health. I am not accustomed to it, and I am resentful. Both events follow angry, hurtful, unfair words early in the week from a former friend that invade my soul garden and lay me low. "Perfect" should-have-saids invade my head in the middle of the night for the rest of the week, and I berate myself mercilessly for not doing a better job of countering her ridiculous words and accusations. Why can I not think of them in the moment? I need more that one conversation in these kind of encounters, and I won't get it this time. I know it's about her pain that has nothing to do with me; and perfect words of defense wouldn't have helped. She was intent on throwing her ashes onto me. I want to give them back, but I know she won't accept them as hers. I want to leave them on the ground, then. But they won't let go of me. Like the ash from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens three decades ago that left ash that is still buried in the bark of trees at my childhood home, I suppose this pain will always be with me. But as bark covers the mountain ash, in time I will grow scar tissue over this invasion.

And then, the tornado trumps the other events of the week.

Yesterday afternoon the sky grew black. As I track the storm with the news crew on TV, I am texting with a friend who is with her dog in the bathroom. I report the storm track to her as I hear it, "it's heading your way." She reports the power going out. "Stay put," I tell her; "it's closeby, it will soon be over." The TV station, between her house and mine, reports that their non-essential personnel have been told to head for low-level, interior rooms. I decide it's time for me to do likewise. The cat and I hang out in the bathroom as the lights flicker, go out, come back on, and repeat. It sounds like it's hailing and the wind howls. I  huddled through Hurricane Fran; and through the Columbus Day storm in my Washington state childhood. This is quicker. The invasion passes. The clouds clear, the sun comes out; and I go out, too.

A bird nest, hopefully it was not in use, is in my front yard. The street is covered with pine tree debris. There is no other sign of what just happened. But a neighbor calls and tells me trees are down and power is out in the next neighborhood. I grab my camera and go for a walk. There is some damage on a couple blocks of one street. A tree branch here, a dangling power line there. Not too bad. I return via the cemetery. I enter through the pedestrian gate and stare into the roots of a huge upended tree. In the confederate corner tree tops are broken, bark is peeled back like a banana, more upended trees. Looking up the hill, I see the clear swath of destruction. I walk up along the path of invasion. Another gargantuan tree down that at first I think is the one I have taken photos up in each season--the one that graces the graves of the Moore family, with its patriarch, Bartholomew, "lawyer and statesman." I realized last week that I didn't have a spring photo, so I think since I am here I will go get a picture for my collection.

It is only a moment before I realize it, too, is down. I approach in tears; I stand and sob. Bartholomew is still standing, but his tree is gone and has taken a dogwood and several stones out with it. The storm continued its twisting fury on a path that took it within three blocks of my house.

Perhaps I should have saved the "Sitting Shiva" title for this post. A discriminating rabbit, an undiscriminating tornado. A dead friendship. Things I care about are gone.

I believe that who we are is the result of all our experiences and all our relation-ships. There is no perfect life or perfect garden or perfect relationship. What would it even look like? I don't know. We are learning as we go. For as long as there is life, if we pay attention, we will keep moving forward. Our gardens, our neighborhoods, things and people we love, relationships, our souls will always be subject to invasion. Things go wrong. And things go right. Winston Churchill said, "The maxim 'nothing but perfection' may be spelled 'paralysis.'" I am going to go with that.

This post was going to be about weeds. Perhaps another time. Other invaders got in the path this week.

A Root Runs Through It

I get to the Cafe this morning and realize I have forgotten my cell phone. The phone is my umbilical cord to the world. Text messages from friends (a feature I unashamedly admit I am addicted to) remind me I am on someone's mind. (The fact that it rarely actually rings also reminds me that I am not regularly on anyone's mind...) We have become so rooted to the knowledge that someone we need to be in touch with is right there, that we worry when they don't respond immediately to our outreach. I'm not sure that's always a good thing; and I hope anyone who might try to reach me this morning won't worry. Well, it might be nice if they are a little concerned. What I most love about my cell phone--and texting--though, is that if something strikes me as lovely or touching or comical in any given moment and I want to share it with someone, I shoot off a text message--perhaps even a picture--to a friend I know will enjoy the light touch. And they do the same with me. And in those moments, I feel rooted and connected to a world larger than the one immediately around me. And that is a good thing.

There is a pervasive root in my yard that is the orange-yellow color of bailing twine. In some places it is spidery thin and in others it is as big around as my wrist. I don’t know for sure which plant lays claim to it, but I suspect the trailing rose that must have been beautiful on the fence in its day, but now gets no sun. When I pull the root up where I want to convert yard to garden, it often ejects to the point of the spidery network at the end, which, as it comes out of the ground, loosens the soil and provides a good planting place. When I was building the flagstone path at the side of my house--my first garden--it pulled up the sod and made preparing the ground a much easier task. Sometimes, however, I can’t remove it and I have to dig my hole in a different spot and plant around it.

I named the root Audrey, because its omnipresence has been a horror. Later in my garden projects though, I found myself feeling differently about it. The One who is More is a root that runs through my life, providing nourishment and stability, always there whether I want the relationship or not. Sometimes More blocks my way--like when a dysfunctional relationship or activity is feeling too comfortable in its familiarity and I am unable to turn away from it on my own--and makes me change course, turning in a healthier direction. Even when I don’t want to. And More sometimes clears the way for loosening my heart and opening me up to plant something new. Now, when my spade or my trowel comes upon the Audrey root, rather than swearing at it, I thank More for the reminder of the constant presence of love and care. I am never forgotten.

I finished my patio this week; and that is really what has gotten me thinking about roots. There is a root running through it that, unlike Audrey, I was concerned about cutting. I don't want to weaken the big tree that I think it is supporting. Probably it's not of a lot of importance to the tree, being one of many roots, and a relatively small one at that. But who am I to decide what is essential to someone else's survival? And so I determine that it, and a couple of other roots at the edge of the circle, will be part of the design of my patio. Like I have learned to do in my life, I don't even try to plan what it might look like. I will figure it out when I get there.

I ponder, as I lay the 400 donated, recycled, multi-colored bricks, the roots that run through my life. The one with the most girth is change. It is also the one I would have least expected. The first root that comes from a plant is called the radicle. It was my assumption that my radicle would be a life partner and that that relationship would provide the nutrients and the grounding anchor running through the entirety of my life--at least until death did us part. That root was cut off many years ago. But plants have many kinds of roots; and in a diffuse root system, the primary root is not even dominant. (Thank you Wikipedia, for that. Who knew?) I am going out on a limb here and muse that making one person (or one career or one fill-in-the-blank) dominant will weaken the relationship rather than strengthen it. My favorite kind of root (that I just this moment learned of) is the adventitious root. I love the name, sounds like adventure--which is certainly an unexpectedly dominant root in my life. Adventitious roots arise out-of-sequence from the more usual root formation of branches of a primary root, and instead originate from the stem, branches, leaves, or old woody roots. Because I lack the usual primary root, I have grown roots from all parts of my life. Like the nurse logs in the rain forest (fallen, rotting trees from which new trees spring up), the new structures my life are dependent on the foundation provided by fallen structures. I do not discount the importance of that which has gone before.

My children, my mother, my sisters, my relationship with God-the-One-who-is-More, my heart-string connection to mountains. These are the longest roots running through my life; the ones that are as long as I am--nearly 60 years long--or at least as long as they are. I wish friends were included in that list. My living is not rooted in life-long friendships; and that is a sadness. Worship/Church--the kind contained within walls--is another anchoring root running through my life. The girth of it has kept me working around it for the past couple of years--protecting it, but not always engaging it, as I find Church in other places provides me with more nutrients. It has recently, and rather suddenly, become clear to me that it is time to stop working around it and cut it off. Writing this blog and the garden that inspires it has become the adventitious root, supporting me, feeding me, anchoring my relationship with More. Though the building will continue to be my workplace, and the people there will continue to be my friends--the church part has become a haustorial root, one that sucks the life out of me rather than providing sustenance.

And so, my patio is complete. The root runs through it. Time will tell if roots that I damaged in its creation will cause stress to the trees and plants that were counting on them for good health. Like the dogwood, whose roots I damaged planting the windows under it in a past year, bounced back after a year of compromised health; like my emotional health in the months after damaged or cut off relationships, I trust that they will survive in the long-term if not the short. They will grow new roots, or depend on other parts of their vast network to provide them with nutrients. Life will go on. We have many roots running through our lives. And a great capacity to grow more.

(Click here for a slideshow of the creation of my patio,  Patio Creation.)

Sitting Shiva

Sitting Shiva. Honoring the dead. The crows sit Shiva in the cemetery, not just the requisite seven days, but on and on and on. They sit in the trees and on the gravestones. They are the keepers of those who have gone before.

This weekend is the fourth anniversary of the weekend I moved into my not-so-big-house, not knowing that I would begin the project of my life--restoring the garden and, through it, myself. It was Palm Sunday weekend. Lent, a time of sitting Shiva, in a sense. Sitting in the stillness, waiting. Looking toward the death of Christ. Did he know he would be "reborn"? Or only that he would die? I had sat Shiva for two years following the death of a second relationship I thought would be forever. The purchase of this home was the beginning of new life. Perhaps all things have to die--or at least stop moving--before they can be born into new life.

Since February I have been watching a webcam trained on an eagle aerie, 80 feet up, in the top of a tree, in Decorah, Iowa. (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/decorah-eagles.) The eagle couple take turns sitting on the three eggs. They sit and they sit and they sit. They sit with the patience of sitting Shiva; but they are waiting for birth. (I take the liberty of re-appropriating sitting Shiva to mean patient and still.) Every so often the protector of the eggs stands up and turns them, to make sure they are warming on all sides. She settles herself back over them and wiggles and wiggles her body until she feels comfortable on the eggs. Then she pulls up the covers--tugging at the nest, pulling the bits toward her body to protect the eggs from draft. The first eaglet hatched yesterday. It took several hours for it to peck its way out of the egg, with no help from its parents. Like human babies it needs the journey to be strong enough to survive out of the egg-womb. There is now a dead rabbit in the nest (not all of nature is lovely) that the eagles feed the baby--mouth-to-mouth.

You have to watch the nest for a long time to see anything happening; and yet, like in the garden, much is happening that can't be seen. We sit Shiva through Lent, knowing it is happening, but not yet able to see. Happening in the garden and in our lives. Each time I embark on something new, like the eagles rearranging the eggs, it takes a lot of wiggling to get comfortable again. A lot of pulling the covers back up to keep the draft out of the holes made by what is lost. And I trust the One Who is More will feed me mouth-to-mouth when necessary; and let me struggle on my own for the strength I will need, when that is necessary. But always close by keeping me warm.

Death and rebirth continue to happen at work. Change. Holes. It is a difficult week. I learn that Mercury (the planet) is in retrograde. I will take that as explanation. It happens three or four times a year, when Mercury slows down; and, in a optical illusion, appears to stop and move backward (retrograde). It is a time, astrologically-speaking, when things tend to go haywire; when big decisions should not be made. Mercury retrograde gives us time to catch up with ourselves, and to look back. Something from the past might return in a different form--people, ideas, or buried insights that need to surface for us to move forward. It can be a contemplative time, a chance to go over old ground again, to claim what you missed the first time. Lent.

Life continues in the garden. Yesterday I discover asters! I had forgotten that I planted the bulbs last fall. The first tulip is opening. The new roses continue to grow leaves; and the very old, rescued rose bush is as healthy as it has ever been. I look around and realize that what I began four years ago is maturing. The tiny perennials I planted through the seasons look like they have always occupied their space in the garden. The Japanese maple I rescued from beneath the gardenia, towers above it now. Freed to become its own "person." And I have become my own person. I have dug in the dirt these four years; I have planted; I have watered the new life with my tears; I have pulled out that which was root-bound, no longer able to thrive. I have ripped up that which was choking what wanted to be reborn and made space for something new. I have planted seeds and forgotten about them; only to discover them flowering much later. And some of what I planted was not in the right place. I have found more sun for some and let others go.

My dear friend of more years than any other; sister blogger; co-owner with me of feelings, experiences, and moods, wondered in her blog recently if she continues to run from or toward in her nomadic life. In my humble opinion, we are running toward. We leave one place because something ends (whether it be job, location, relationship, or a sense of contentment), moving us forward, always forward, to the next thing. And in between our movements, we sit Shiva. Waiting, re-examining. But like the garden and the eagles, much is happening while we appear to be waiting. The garden and the egg pips are maturing. We are learning to trust the process--it cannot be rushed. I have watched co-workers leave the safety of the nest for something else, without knowing what the something is. But they start it, they lay the egg or plant the bulb, and then sit Shiva. Sitting in the stillness. Waiting, re-examining. "Her running stopped. Her trusting began. And slowly the doors creaked open.”
(Terri St. Cloud) Trust the process, and exactly what needs to happen will happen.


 

Own Your Typhoon

Last year the dogwood didn’t bloom well. That’s just what it was...last year. Digging around its roots to “plant” the three church windows upset it. This year it has recovered to its full magnificence. That’s what it is...this year. I have dug around my roots several times in my lifetime--and others have dug around my roots, not necessarily with my permission. The digging causes stress that it takes a while to come back from. But, like the dogwood, after a settling in period, fullness comes again.

In the news this week: A small town in the American midwest recovers, smaller but stronger, from the tornado that flattened it two years ago. A small town in Japan with a will to live looks toward rebirth from the tsunami that leveled it two weeks ago. Not the expected life. But their life. Wishing it otherwise is pointless.

Some of my favorite wisdom comes from the flight attendant's spiel before take-off. One of those wise bits is "Take care when opening the overhead bin as some items may have shifted during the [journey]." Shifts occur in life. We don't always pay attention and one day we open the bin and look around and realize we are not in the four-color brochure we thought we signed up for. Divorce, illness, lost jobs, tsunami. Bad things keep happening to us. We are in the middle of a typhoon and we can't get out. We growl and cry and ask why yet another obstacle is being put in our path. We scream "FALSE ADVERTISING" and we want our money back. Love in unexpected places, rescuing a garden, new careers. What if they aren't obstacles? What if life is a perfect storm and we are the eye at the center? What if it isn't happening to us, but with us? This is MY life. I will cease to be buffeted about by it when I learn to own it. All of it. The wind that flattens me and the gentle breeze that picks me up and dances alongside me.

As I wander my garden this week, I take special note of the parts of the garden that I have restored and the plants that I have rescued from the overgrowth of ivy and wild roses, over-zealous azaleas, and the enormous gardenia. Two hydrangeas--one transplanted, one left in its home; two Japanese maples that had no room to grow; daffodils, snowdrops, and Japanese iris languishing in the dark under the ivy. All thriving now. But it didn’t happen immediately. They had to recover from their years of smother and re-establish their occupation of the garden. They had become unfamiliar with space and sunlight. They had to adjust to the freedom to be. In one of my gardens, one that holds a special sadness for me, the weeping Japanese maple that I planted in the spot where the rhododendron died, flourishes; layering joy on top of sorrow. Do we experience grief and recovery as interruption, something to just push through; or are they an important part of our life--our perfect typhoon?

I observe the garden residents I have introduced to the garden. The banana tree is especially interesting to me. It rises not unlike the phoenix from the ashes. The new green sprout comes up right through the center of last year's old brown cane. Last year's experience is the foundation for this year's growth. It is a very curious plant; and it gives me pause. I can't wish now dead life experiences had never happened. They are who I am. I am all of them. I observe the Lenten rose and the Carolina jasmine that didn't bloom the first two years after I planted them, but this year they are. And the trillium bulbs that I planted upside down and didn't come up the first year. The second year they came up but didn't bloom. This year they have buds. Life turned upside down has a way of righting itself. But it is not in a hurry.

Many moons ago, after the birth of my first child, I taught childbirth classes. I loved giving the parents-to-be the knowledge they needed to make the bringing of new life into the world the amazing experience I knew it could be. Of course, no two people have the same experience; but I believed that with knowledge they could own whatever path the birthing took. I also had the good fortune to accompany some of them to the birthing room. I was in love. I was pretty sure mid-wifery was not in my future, but for a time I dreamed of being a doula--a helpmate. But that was not to be my path. So last week, when a friend I have never met except through our blogs--hers and mine--wrote a tribute to me in which she called me an "earth doula," that gentle breeze blew across my memory and reminded me of a long-forgotten dream. Out of the dead cane, new life.

Own your typhoon. It is blowing you on exactly the right course. It is quiddity; your essence; your "what it is."


Quiddity

I am mother, daughter, sister
I am all the colors in my garden
I am the peony that doesn't bloom
I am the lorpetalum that does
I am imagination and creativity
I am resourcefulness
I am strength
I am tears
I am trillium patience
I am can't-wait daffodils
I am birds singing in the garden
I am wind--sometimes breeze, sometimes storm
I am the one lonely Lenten rose bloom
I am the full magenta azalea
I am the hawks building a nest together
I am the cooing mourning dove looking for a mate
I am alpine mountain air
I am 35 degrees and 85 degrees, in the same week
I am garden doula
I am friend and sometimes lover
I am all the seasons, round and round
I am the owner of my typhoon
I am life
        this life
              my life

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.

Pentimento

"Pentimento (n). An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, part of a painting, or original draft that is revealed usually when the top layer of paint becomes transparent with age. From the Italian pentimento, correction; from pentire, to repent." It is my new favorite word. It rolls around in my mouth and trips off the end of my tongue. Not as many syllables as my decades-old favorite, onomatopoeia; but easier to spell.

The garden is full of pentimenti. The garden is a pentimento; the old in juxtaposition with the new. When I began renovating gardens at this house, I uncovered dozens of long-buried stepping stones and made new pathways with them. I recreated a garden made of bricks surrounding a decaying stump. I plant annuals in the rich loam of stump and make a work of art with beautiful broken things. Each spring the leaves of a bulb plant grow through the arms of my broken garden goddess. Yesterday I discover this year's contribution to annual artwork. I pause at my new garden gate to look at my collection of artifacts dug up from ground as I have created my gardens over the past four years. They are reminders of the family who lived here before me. Mel, visiting my early spring garden, and I discover shoots of the  emerging giant hosta, pushing up through the layers of decay of last year's plant. (It was Mel who found them last year, too!) The hydrangea canes support dried blossoms from last season and new bright green leaves. The strong leaves of the daffodil push up through the winter-hard ground and  pierce dead leaves at the surface, carrying them up with them as they grow.

I consider the human species as I walk through the garden pentimento in the early dawn this week: all of the what and who we have been are still with us. We cover them up, layer upon layer like the strata in a New Mexico cliff. Sometimes the original is just a draft, as we practice who we are in our forming beings. As we discover the new, and mature in the old, we lay down the layers. Sometimes we repent of who we have been and revise and re-form. Once in a while we overlay something that is sweet and true as we allow bad experiences or relationships to drag us away from our selves. Sometimes we put on layers of protection in an attempt to avoid past pain; and sometimes we allow the pain to become part of us and of our honest relationships with one another. But always, what might have been is covered over by what was or is, as our journey becomes the path, and we lose sight of what we thought would be. Mostly that is inevitable; you know: life is what happens while we are making other plans. We forget our dreams and the person we have been. But sometimes, if we let ourselves empty and live into stillness, we can rediscover our selves and our dreams. I am finding, as I age, I become more transparent--like my mother's translucent skin that allows the life-giving veins to shine through. I recall the alphabetical volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia that occupied the bottom shelf of the basement bookcase of my childhood home. The plastic pages in the "B for body" volume where I turned back the skin page to reveal the skeleton, and it in turn to reveal the muscles, then the internal organs and veins. And then back to the first page to look at all the layers showing through the one on top. I wonder if the internet version of the encyclopedia is quite as fascinating?


I was once in relationship with someone who considered her layers to be like those of an onion. In order to know her, other people, she believed, had to be willing to peel away the layers to get to her true self. I think, now, that it is our true self that pushes from our core outward through the layers; not the other way around. We see it only when we stop moving and create space. And it is up to me to make myself known to others, not others to find me. I don't remove the layers, as I seek rediscovery, because they are part of me. I just seek to make them transparent as I open myself to be known. Pentimento.

So often, along with the pride I feel in having made a life of my own and accomplished great joy in the doing, I can’t quite let go of what is dead. Days later, the daffodil has still not shed the dead leaf, and the green shoot is bowing over; letting the dead leaf form its shape. We carry the old with us. And that is good. Trying to change the past, or bring back the dead, is not. Carrying it in a place that keeps us from healthy movement toward the new, is not. From my window at the cafe this morning I can see a bare tree and a tree full of new leaves and an oak tree covered with dead leaves. We are all so different. Some of us shed the old and wait, empty, for what may come. Others, like the oak tree, cling to the old until something new comes along and pushes away the dead. I often chastise myself for not being able to let go of what is over. But I think I am an oak tree. Maybe that is okay. It all happens in its time.

Yesterday I start my patio project. I have spent weeks poking the ground where I want to build it--under the spreading, cooling branches of the dogwood tree. But that location presents an obstacle: roots; roots close to the surface. I won't be able to dig to the six inch depth recommended to "do it right." And there is the ground cover to be cleared. The dwarf mondo grass I transplanted into holes I filled late last summer is doing really well. It has a flourishing root system that will need to be removed. And then there is the tamping down of the ground; the hauling of gravel and sand; finding and transporting brick; laying bricks. And, of course, I want a circle--the hardest design to get right. But I decide to just do it; to say YES to my patio dream. Nothing good will ever happen if we don't just begin it. As serendipity would have it, yesterday--on the morning I am to begin--I read in Patti Digh's book, Creative is a Verb (I wonder how the world would be different if every person were to read this book) that life is yearning meeting obstacle. "What if," she writes,"the obstacles are the point, the measure against which we can find the depth of the yearning itself?" It seems the perfect time: A beautiful weekend; the ground is softened from the rain earlier in the week; the beginning of daylight saving time will allow for an hour of daylight after work to dig and create. And so I begin. I begin to clear away the sod and the soil, but not the roots. I begin to make an empty space for new things to happen in. I don't have to know the end, I just have to commit to the process. It will be my Lenten practice of creation; of letting go of outcome to see what emerges.

The key, I quickly discover, will be to avoid forcing my body to exhaustion. I am not good at doing things gradually once I begin them; I get in a hurry to bring projects to fruition. I have been watching the dogwood tree for the past three weeks, though. It is my lesson today. Unlike the bluebells and the translucent layers of the Japanese iris that were not there one night and blooming the next morning, the dogwood takes its sweet time opening. I stressed it two years ago when I dug post holes among its roots for my church windows.  It did not bloom well last summer. This year it is loaded with those slow to open blooms. I get the ground cover cleared with a hoe (not a blade of actual grass in the 6-foot circle). I practice ambidextrous hoeing and chopping in an attempt at left/right equal opportunity flab reduction and oblique muscle strengthening. As I begin digging up the dirt at the end of the circle farthest from the roots, I take a "break" to finally throw together a more defined compost area behind the shed (I have been thinking about doing that for four years now). If the patio had been my first project rather than the last, I would have saved a heap of money on dirt; now I don't know where I am going to put it all. I am reaching the point of exhaustion, but except for brief water breaks in the lawn rocker watching flocks of birds flit crazily in the tree tops singing as they work and play, I keep at it. I get to a few of the roots before I finally quit for the day in anticipation of another friend coming to see the garden. I don't have clarity about how the roots will work into the design; I only know I can't risk the dogwood tree by removing them. They are the original painting; they will become part of the patio pentimento.

Saturday is a day of pentimento discovery: along with the giant hosta pushing through the leaf mulch I find the Carolina jasmine that had one bloom last year has dozens of tiny yellow buds peeking from under the leaves on the evergreen vine. A new pot sits on the root of Mary's old holly bush dug up from the new rose beds, waiting in emptiness for a summer trailing geranium. The antique rose bush is covered with healthy new leaves. Lent is now. Spring is coming; slowing rising from the darkness. The old with the new. Pentimento.

People have asked me why I blog. There are many reasons, but one of them is to uncover my self--to push through the layers to find out who I am. To discover my truth; to speak my truth; to live my truth. Peek through your layers, get back to your center, search for what's there. Look for what is not there anymore. Look. See. And see again for the first time. Become a pentimento.