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Of Autumn

September 22, 2014 by Cynthia

Nights are cool, leaves are changing, autumn arrives this evening.

After a hard spring, it was a good summer.  With a focus on soil health,  the garden thrilled as never before.

Flowers blossomed, vegetables and children grew.  As a Monarch butterfly Waystation, our garden enjoyed the summer-long company of Monarchs and a bumper crop of their caterpillars.

Still gathering tomatoes, I unloaded another basket in my kitchen just now.  To my surprise, I found a darkening Monarch chrysalis attached to the side of a fully ripe tomato.  I carefully replaced the tomato in the garden.  Along the siding of the house, I spotted another chrysalis.  With luck, both butterflies will emerge soon to begin their southward migration.

Years ago, a late-blooming Monarch butterfly named Longshot was unable to take to the skies by the time it emerged. Here is hoping these two make it.

Flowers, butterflies and humans – they all have a better chance of emergence when the conditions are right.

I will keep you posted.

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September 11

September 11, 2014 by Cynthia

Lest we forget.  Fare thee well.

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8:03

September 9, 2014 by Cynthia

8:03 AM, the big orange school bus rumbles by.  Just tall enough to see out our living room window, my oldest talks about when he will ride that bus to school.  My youngest is an infant.

8:03 AM, the big orange bus stops routinely now, picking up both my children for school.  While we wait, we play basketball, ride scooters or throw baseballs, sometimes snowballs in the winter.

A decade later, the big orange school bus trundles by.  The bus driver who piloted bus #1 for years, who knew and protected my children, retired last year.  My children still ride a bus, it stops earlier, for older students.  The new driver on this route has no memory of the stop in my driveway, or of those who rode into the world from here.  My oldest now stands taller than me.

Working at home does not make me wealthy, but in every minute I spent helping my children on the bus and off, I became quite rich.  I am grateful.  Each school day morning, the rumble of the big orange school bus reminds me.  8:03.

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You say tomato…

September 7, 2014 by Cynthia

Summer’s end signals the presence of ripe tomatoes in my overgrown garden.  Different types, heirlooms grown from seed, vines slide slowly to the ground under the weight.

Fall feeling day, hummingbirds pay me no mind as I move my garden hod through the vines, picking up large tomatoes, many blemished, fine by me.

Blanched, peeled and processed, there is a fine tomato soup in the future, especially when I push past some friendly weeds to find the basil planted earlier this summer.

Early evening, sun in the west window, kitchen is aglow.  Cleaning up, a solid field of tomato seeds and membrane covers the bottom of my white porcelain sink.  Bright red, and red orange, floating with dun seeds,  a moment of extraordinary color that took a summer to grow.  So common, so rare.

Hard to know what we are here for, if not to notice moments such as these.

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On grief

August 26, 2014 by Cynthia

The commonality of sudden death leaves me wondering about those who wake, days or months after the passing of a loved one, to a stark landscape – rearranged but never restored.

I have little standing to mourn the Keeper.  Never married nor lovers, not related in any way except by the stunning and lucky recognition of a common mind decades ago.  Good friends are forever – except when they are not.

In a life where death is assured, grief has an odd role.  It is to be dealt with, gotten through or over, and its light grey coloring of the world overcome.  There are many commentators more artful than me who can describe the textures of its peculiar, forced friendship.

Grief delivers liminal  space.  A place where life washes over itself like water tumbling around stones in the finest mountain stream of your memory.  Ever the same as you watch, but lost when attention shifts.  Is anyone ever really gone?  Hard to keep up with the coming, and the going.

One thing is certain. The Keeper, along with most loved ones, would likely prefer to be fondly remembered, rather than mourned.

I am just not there yet.

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Rows

August 16, 2014 by Cynthia

On a farm yesterday morning. Walking acres of orderly vegetable rows with the rising sun.  Rooster sounds in the distance.

Taking photographs for marketing purposes in exchange for gorgeous, chemical-free produce.  A sweet deal and a good trade, at least for me.

Corn, cabbage, beans, abundance.  Hard work, sweat, blighted tomatoes, it is all here.  A gift.

Focus ahead. Rows of seedlings give way to lanes of mature onions and cauliflower.  Row upon row of varied texture, size and color, convergence out of frame.

I get the shots.

Looking back, I am startled at the view just passed.  Similar order, but striking difference in look and feel.

Try it sometime.

Oncoming views are new only once, but the mutable nature of the past remains constant.

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Live Wire

June 23, 2014 by Cynthia

Life burns.

Consumes, invigorates.  Paradox.

Death is cold, empty.

My father passed away suddenly two weeks before the Keeper.  Hard spring.

The day before my father’s service, I stood at his gravesite.  Plywood pieces rough over a clean rectangular hole.

A glance into the grave.  The earth — deep, alive and waiting.

Next day, nearing the open casket of my father, I felt the nothingness. Waxen facade drove home the vivid perversity of preservation.

At the cemetery, staging, 21-gun salute, veterans who knew how to deliver death to the bereaved.

My father died at the end.  My friend died in the middle.

Life is a fist-sized beating heart. When it is done, so are we.

Live wire,  get it while its hot.

 

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The Keeper

June 6, 2014 by Cynthia

In the span of a lifetime perhaps we are lucky enough to know a handful who count.  Not to say that all others are without meaning, but simply, real keepers are few.

To the Keepers we entrust soul and story, sadness and sweet wisdom.  In turn, they hold, know, witness and Keep.

Keepers can be old or new, but oftentimes they appear at the beginning, willing and able to share the elusive and changeable quality of Time.

Like the venerable Oak, they offer shade, support, silence and deep conversation decade after decade.  Because they Are, we can Be.

A brilliant Keeper in my life passed away suddenly just a week ago today.  Mortality is a deep flaw of the Keeper.

With him went the better part of me, which he had been slowly returning to me after long years in a poorly made marriage.  For I knew him long before.

I do not believe I kept his life as he kept mine.  I have not that depth, and his support of me was not exclusive.  The Keeper loved and mentored many.

The Keeper was a truly great man, one much needed.  He is gone too soon.

Yet he is not.  The Keeper is out there, in the wind, moon and stars of the Big World.  For that is very much his Nature.

For he was, and forever will be, a keeper.

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After the storm

May 12, 2014 by Cynthia

Fertile wet after a thunderstorm passes.  Luxuriant shades of every green. Mauve, purple.  Grey sky deepens the color. Saturated.  Peeper frogs sounding – even in the morning. Wind gently strokes a full bed of Tall Bearded Iris set to bloom later this month. Pillow talk.

Another thunderstorm, another impulse on its way, a wave to rise and fall. Spring.

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Birds and broken bones

May 8, 2014 by Cynthia

Four Baltimore Orioles, one Flicker, one Blue-Jay, one Goldfinch, two squirrels.  One Cardinal, three Robins, two Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, a wild variety of richly colored sparrows, a Downy Woodpecker – one Cowbird.

The view out the picture window at the office of the physical therapist.  Inflexibility may have its seasons, but distraction has its day.  Grateful for that.

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