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Archive for the ‘Reflections on the everyday’ Category

For Sale

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on October 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The Neighbor is moving.  The “For Sale” sign went up yesterday.  Not only is the Neighbor moving, she is getting married.  Big change.

I moved to this neighborhood in 1999.  With child in arms I stood in the backyard and listened to the wind.  The wind is different here, I liked it.  We bought.

Not long after, I got to know the Neighbor when I walked over with just-baked chocolate chip cookies for her daughter, who had recently had wisdom teeth extracted.  I pointed out the cookies were still gooey, the Neighbor said she liked them that way. I knew we could be friends.

Just months after moving here, the Neighbor’s world fell into unanticipated divorce.  A steady and caring woman, she did her best.  She survived and thrived, raised her children well.  There are few women so able.

On October 12, the Neighbor is marrying the Handyman, a fellow of fine stature and character.  Both of them born and raised here, their union does this small town proud.  Heart and soul.

From my worldview, my family landed in this neck of the woods in part to allow me the grace of an acquaintance such as hers.  At no time during my long marriage was my spouse as good a friend to me as the Neighbor.  And as my own marriage ended and divorce turned dark, the Neighbor still walks each step with me.

The strange and hilarious moments we have shared are priceless Neighbor,  I will always be grateful.  And I am grateful to the Handyman, who in marrying the Neighbor, is only moving her one mile to the north.  He got lucky. I did too.

The Neighbor is moving.  After many years, the Neighbor is moving in a big way.  Hers is a good story, deep with loss and gain.  The best kind of life, the best kind of woman.

“For Sale,” I sure hope someone nice moves in.

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Just hangin’ around

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on September 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Perfect autumn day.

On walkabout the landscape is brilliant.  Crystal clear air, forever blue sky, green lush lawns, each tree its own perfect expression.  Every leaf in place.  Pregnant.  Tis’ the season but the fiery palatte of autumn has not arrived.  A secret moment whose arrival is still  known only to the trees.

I thought I heard them whispering, but it could have been the breeze.

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Resilience

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on September 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

There is a googly eye in the street.  I have been watching it.

Wind and rain have passed and the googly eye remains.  There is only one, it gives the blacktop some character, although it does not say much.

Last year I watched an orange sharpie marker, devoid of cap, work its way  through winter months down the street and toward the storm drain.  When spring came, the melt navigated the marker past the storm drain to safety.  More surprising, its cap emerged from the snow just a foot distant.

Now residing comfortably in my pen drawer with a rubber band to correct its loose cap, the sharpie marker still works.

There is a googly eye in the street.  I will watch it.   I admire things that make it through.

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Tarnish

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on September 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Closet cleaning.  That time of the year.  Jewelry boxes stirred my curiosity.

Years ago, bright things attracted me, cloisonne, precious and semi-precious gemstones.  Provenance pulled at me, the story of the thing, the antique dealers knew me.

I rarely wear jewelry now, if at all.  My wedding ring was boxed long before divorce was contemplated.

Today it was earrings and what-not, almost all artifacts without present or future use.  The ornate dragon charm that meant so much, the antique mother-of-pearl silver earrings with matching cuff that are beautiful still.  A strand of pearls from a man who loved me, one diamond stud, its partner lost.  My first pair of earrings and many in-between.

Even as I write, I add to the discard pile.  Knotted chains, a crescent moon with inlaid amethyst I tried to retrieve from tarnish and ruined in the process.  You cannot go back. Bangles I will never wear.  Costume jewelry and red coral, silver and dull gold.

They held something once, said something.  But despite their age, they remain young, unlike me.

What am I keeping?  The diamond stud, the string of pearls, the small gold dragon.  The dangling shell earrings from the 1970’s.  The mother-of-pearl and a few others.  The wedding ring long sold to pay for legal proceedings – a fitting end.

Trinkets and tarnish, if you have one, you get the other.

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An Odd Thing

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , , on September 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Looking at a wall calendar,  it was September before I knew it.  The picture is Zions National Park in Utah, a place I have set foot.

I know the texture of the scrub grass, the look, feel and warmth of sandstone and the terrain it creates.  Dry places interspersed by cold stream or river.  Changing treeline, now deciduous, then coniferous, I have touched those anonymous twisting trunks.  Blue plateau in the distance.  Shape, color and setting unique on the planet.  Even the air, the whiff of sage in the breeze.  Sparse.  Big sky, I can breathe.

We visit places, but if touched deeply, do we ever leave?  Transit through memory of image.  Is it illusion that I sit in a chair, in my home office, washing machine gently chugging, crickets sounding through open windows?  With age I understand no tickets are needed to ride.

I wish I were there.  Maybe I am.

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The Eternal Moment

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged , on September 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

On walkabout, the world appears about as it should, despite the march of the calendar.

A chat with an elderly neighbor, a friendly wave to the trash collector and the UPS fellow.  Leaves changing but weather still warm, dry pebbles working their way out of the roadbed.

The gift of  inconsequence, eternity in the most common moments.  Ordinary is anything but.

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Heaven on Earth

Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged on September 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Full at 7:13 AM,  the view of the moon was nixed by cirrostratus, stratus and altocumulous, a mixed cloud deck that held its place as our planet rotated eastward.

The first hint of the coming sun whispered in glowing pink on the underside of those clouds and progressed through intense salmon into a gold tinged riot of unearthly order.  Seraphim on high as water droplet, light and elevation combined to create a sky more beautiful than the divine dreams of any Renaissance artist.

Available for free, I enjoyed this inspired scene through my windshield as I drove eastward from the daily ritual of taking children to school.  On westward return, a stunning half-rainbow hung in a sky devoid of storm clouds.

Heaven on earth.  Happens most days, just depends where you look.

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A Rose

Posted in Reflections on the everyday, The Garden on September 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

In the late 1800’s, my forebears made their way west from Salina, Kansas.  As a locomotive engineer, the Iron Horse provided my great grandfather a respectable living.  He settled down, built a house and worked hard like his Irish immigrant father before him.  In that place, he grew a wild yellow rose bush, its origin unknown.

Time wound on.  My great-grandfather passed away first and his family in due.  The house my mother grew up in remains, sold long ago, but still inhabited.  When she left or sometime after, my mother acquired a piece of that rose and like any good gardener, made history a part of her landscape.

Years ago she sent me a  piece of that rose and gave story to my garden too.  At first it thrived but fell back as life shaded it.  By the time I moved it to a locale with free view of the sky, it was gone.

A month ago, I returned to her garden – a lifetime in the growing – it is something to see.  But age is crowding my mother, leaving shadows in the memory of a garden once bright.  The rose still thrives, scrambling through tree and bush toward the sun, tough.  While there I snipped some stems and ferried them home.

Despite my efforts, the starts I clipped that day dropped their leaves and browned in the water where I had hoped new roots would grow.  Deciding it should depart in the sun, I placed it in a full south window and waited for brittle sticks of time.

Yesterday I noticed green.  The stems have not further withered, but instead produced a tiny unfolding leaflet.

My mother loves the sun, always did.  So does this rose.  Hopefully the story will play on.  We will see.

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The Date

Posted in Reflections on the everyday on September 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Lest we forget, it is September 11, a date to mark the depths of human cruelty, misunderstanding and heroism.

And lest we forget, it is only one date among too many others that lay behind and before us, that give stark evidence of the destructive capabilities of dark idea and darker action.

When the tumult and the shouting dies, lest we forget.

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Generations I

Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday on August 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

One generation serves the next.  Not just the hardscape, but ephemeral ground.  Patterned land unseen where the future is built.

Ancestors and invaders put down blood and dreams that drive individual and culture forward.

To live is to serve by living it all,  bitter, sweet, deadly.  For the branching creativity when idea makes landfall in the Being of those who understand.

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