JUST ONE MOMENT OF TIME

I feel like I'm on a threshold and about to go through a doorway into a new world. It's an unusal time of life and one I feel unprepared for. I guess I always feel unprepared for the biggest changes of life ...marriage, the birth of children, losing people I love. How could it be otherwise? These life changing experiences are all firsts and I'm unprepared because I've never been there before. There is no practice or dry run when it comes to life...the curtain goes up when we're born and down when we die...and the whole show is about improvisation or playing by ear. Some folks have a talent and learn their steps easily. For others, embarrassing moments, broken parasols, and torn tutus are all part of the show. The trick is to simply do the best you can with the information at hand...cause the beat keeps changing and I'm just realizing that we make up the dance as we go. Beauty can be found in the ugliest of moments. It's all how you frame the picture. I've had lots of practice transforming pain into healing wisdom. It is a lesson that I show great strength in. My challenge is that when things are beautiful...going smoothely and the future opens to the boundless, limitless stretch of wild imagination, I experience a dreadful fear. I'm not used to ease or stability and I distrust security. I have a fear of destroying what I love...and so I practice a path of indifference because that way I can outsmart the Universe. If I don't reveal to even myself how much I love something, then there is no way that I can wreck it. I've tried to figure out what the psychology is behind this mental pattern but the root of it all seems to be deep in the dark and a mystery. Suddenly, I am in a place in my life where  there are no obstacles to dancing my own dance or singing my own song. I have always struggled to orchestrate my life to include both a vocation and an advocation, to work while kids are in school, to create when kids are napping....to steal time from Peter to pay Paul. It's been a juggling act and sometimes I'm better at it than others. Sometimes I'm just useless and exhausted. But the moment I am facing right this minute is all new to me. For the first time in my life I don't have to work just for the money and I have the luxury of building a life based on my deepest inner prompting. It is a rare opportunity and I am grateful for it...so why does it stir up such fear? Why is my emotional self still behaving as if the fight for balance is still on? Why am I plagued by the sense that life blocks my motion, when really, it's my own shadow. Last night was kind of a holy night because the baby Night Bloomer that I kept after giving the mother plant way had it's first ever flowering. If you don't know, Night Bloomers blossom once a year. They send out a remarkable bud from the side of a leaf and when it's ready, the blossom begins to open at nightfall. It opens slowly over a few hours and self pollinates before it faints and dies, leaving nothing but a wilted bunch of petals by the next morning. When I worked in Mental Health, an old gentleman told me about these plants and I was enraptured by the story. I wrote a poem to the flower.  In the mid 1990's, a neighbor was pairing down and she felt her Night Bloomer was unweildy, so she gave it to me. That was the mother plant and she was all over the place. Jimmy at Mountain Greenery once told me to ask Stevo to build it an addition. It was funny but almost true and when we moved here, there was no window that could handle it's wild uncontrolled growth. That's when I decided to cut it back and pass that mother plant on to someoneelse. I gave it to the girl who painted our first floor. So one of the 3 babies, the one I kept...had her first flower last night. For once, we were home and not doing much so I took a huge bunch of photos. Then Stevo took my photo. As he did, a bat flew into and around the kitchen. The bat circled and sailed over head...the first bat I've seen since 2009 and right there in my own kitchen. Something about the bat's flight and the fragrant, gigantic blossom spoke to my heart...though pretty ugly, the bat wasn't the slightest bit scary and he really seemed to be enjoying the flowering as much as we were. That one moment in time said it all...and what I heard was...it's all good...and I was moved.

Night Blooming Cereus

CHUCKING THE CHUCK

I have changed. Before I moved up country, I was an animal pacifist. In many ways I still am because I regard life highly...all species of life have a reason to be and for the most part I live in harmony with the critters...but I'm not so extreme. I've learned to see things less in black and white...and more in shades of grey or rainbow colored. I'm unemployed and I work hard to grow, harvest, preserve and prepare the food for our table. I figure it's as good as making money because it benefits my entire family and allows me to be generous even though I'm not bringing home the bacon. Mother Nature is abundant and although I might not have a 100% success rate for all the seeds I plant, the weather, bugs and pestilance that I can't conquer with organic weapons leave me enough for my freezer and plenty to give to my friends. I spend alot of time bent over weeding...bent over planting, bent over cutting and pinching...and I sweat profusely under the hot sun because that is when I can work without too much bother from the mosquitos or black flies. I wander about in my garden with a yogurt tub full of homemade bug repellant smacking the leaves of the borage and beans and muttering die die die to the Japanese Beetles as I knock clusters of copulating beetles into my potion of death. Yep. I do have a streak that enjoys killing. When I was little I had a grasshopper hospital with an elevator made from a jewelry box. I brought the grasshoppers to my hospital to feed them purple sumac berries and nurse their wounds. A few times I even tore a leg off the poor things so they would need to come to my hospital. As a young adult vegetarian and student of alternative healing, I went through a period of deep remorse and guilt for what I did to the grasshoppers. Once I left suburbia, that extremist died. The first sign of it was in my relationship to ticks. The first year we lived in Maine, the ticks were unbelievable...never like that again. Stephen and I had to do checks for every walk and sometimes there were 10 or more ticks on each of us. I began to indulge a guilty pleasure. I found enjoyment in getting the ticks between my fingernails and pulling them apart. I also found I felt no guilt. Mmmm. The next step was potato beetles. They are disgusting...even worse than stink bugs. I made a bug repellant of garlic, red pepper, dish soap and crushed dead beetles because I read online that the smell of the dead of one's own species has a repellant effect. Made sense. But now as I begin my harvest in earnest, I discover a very large woodchuck is beating me to the punch...eating entire squash plants...then pumpkins and all my collard greens. The photo above is last years woodchuck. It was smaller and cute and dumb and we caught it in a have-a-heart trap within 15 minutes of setting it out. This chuck is a granddaddy.
This morning my alarm went off at 6:30...it was Stephen pulling the trigger on his 30/30. I was merry with a holiday joy thinking he got the woodchuck. And then I wondered what I've come to. The curly brown edges of guilt started on my outside leaves. I was actually celebrating a kill...an innocent creature just eating to live and I was declaring war in my heart. Fortunately it did not last long. I thought about all kinds of other animals and I thought about myself as an animal. I realized that when I include myself in the picture of the animal food web, it all makes sense. I'm only being territorial like the male hummingbirds who fight for supremacy at the feeder. Or the juvenile bald eagles fighting over a fish. Thats me...Elise...growing garden girl all pissed off because after doing all the work and planting all the extra, I'm not going to see even one pumpkin from my poor woodchuck eaten plants. I've tried to trap him...I even used gloves to pick the greens to bait him. Fresh carrot tops and spinach...lettuce and peanut butter. A regular spread. But he's too old...too smart...and too damn fat to go into my trap. The plan now is to shoot him...so Stephen hunts three times a day. While I harvested the garlic beside the squash plants, he found his way to another little garden and did a few things in there even after he was shot at. The mission if you care to accept it is to chuck the chuck...and walk away guilt free with maybe one pumpkin  for a Thanksgiving pie. Meanwhile he's got me all fired up.

Cardinal Rules

The cardinal dresses in vibrant red and grazes in the grass, unconcerned that he stands out like a sore thumb. He shows up like a herald of hope, a swatch of brilliance and then he's off again to who knows where. His lifestyle is baggage free and his purpose is unquestioned. He leaves barely a footprint...and his housing is for breeding purposes only...made of all natural materials that dissappear when the fall winds blow. He is a favorite for Christmas cards and there is no mistaking his confident and persistant song, clear and melodious. I love the cardinal. I love the bright male boldness against the green of grass or the white of fresh fallen snow. But the gentle colored female is something really special with her soft peach colored underwings and her colorful orange beak. Her dusky peach helps her blend in with the background but her song is as loud and clear as the male. She may recede into the background with her muted colors and quietly nurture her young but she sure can sing. I recently went to Salem for a visit with my Mom. We spend alot of time reminiscing on the porch about our life as a young family at the house in Salem. We were so lucky to have a double sized lot...a true oasis in the center of the city. Mom is happy there. She's been there for 48 years and she fully intends to breathe her last breath in that house...most likely in her chair or who knows...maybe even quietly rocking on the front porch. We marvel together at the size and variety of trees. When I was a little girl of 10, I would seek solitude from the intrusions of my 4 sisters by climbing the pine tree in the front yard. I would climb to the top of the tree and I would begin to sing quietly to myself...camp songs, negro spirituals, and eventually the songs I heard on the Golden Oldie hour as I listened to the radio before going to sleep. I had a knack for remembering lyrics and I knew lots of songs. As I sang, my voice would grow louder until I was belting out my songs at the top of my lungs. Gosh...that felt good. No wonder the birds sing their hearts out. It's got to be good heart medicine. I wish I had done it more but by high school, I learned my voice was unpleasant...at least thats the message I got when year after year I tried out for Glee Club and year after year I was rejected. All I wanted was to sing. Schools did alot to kill my creative spirit and I have spent my whole life trying to keep that wild spirit alive and healthy. Sometimes it requires so much effort that I lose heart. And I lose heart because some piece of myself remembers all the critical words and before someonelse can use them on me, I use them on myself and talk myself right out of whatever creative endeavor is growing like a seed in my heart. My Mom loved me and she did her best to parent well. But I had frequent nosebleeds that they say indicates a soul who is bleeding for the need of love and attention. I grew up letting my body ask for attention because I really didn't know how to verbalize what I needed. It's strange...but for all the words I use in talking and writing, I am still inadequate when it comes to asking for what I need in the way of love and attention. Instead, I let the stiffness move from my hand up into my neck until I can't fully turn my head before I get a massage. I get sick when what I really need is rest. And worst of all I get angry when I'm deeply sad, pushing love away when I need it most. Thank goodness Stephen knows me and manages to see through my veneer of angry bravado...though sometimes I do frighten him away. I guess God isn't finished with me yet. But I'm getting pretty frustrated trying to get past myself. I cherish the time I have with Mom and while I visited with her this time, a cardinal was hanging around the base of the pine tree where I used to sing. He was there pretty much the whole weekend dosing me up with his brilliant red color and telling me to go ahead and sing my song...and sing it loud and sing it clear and sing it now. So I have made for myself a Cardinal Rule...Thou shalt sing from the treetops and thou shalt do it daily...and I will set that in stone.

GIVE ME A HAND

A baby girl's hand is a thing of softness...a dimpled wonder...a question that asks what will this hand do?Will she give someone a hand? A hand up? A hand out? Will she grasp tightly or will her fist rest easy in  a relaxed and slightly open posture? Who will she clap her hands for? What young love will hold her hand first? I remember when Sam and Will were babies...pondering their hands and what future might be formed from their art of living? They are men now. The tiny hand and foot prints are upwards of size 12 and both are busy fashioning lives from their own hands. Stephen and I spent the July 4th weekend with his cousins in Sandwich NH. We went to the family to share our memories of Priscilla and to spread her ashes in some of the places she made her own. It felt good to sift through memories with others who loved her. It felt good to have her slipping through my hands and mingling with the air, catching the wind and being swirled by the water. She's been in a plastic bag since March and now that she has begun to rest on Earth with other bits of bone and shell and sand, something inside me is relaxing. Though the process won't be complete until we go to Marblehead with the boys and unleash her in the town she called home for much of her life...at least the comingling has begun. We shared in dispersing Priscilla's ashes. We celebrated 2 birthdays...Ginny on the 2nd and Ted on the 4th. But the presence of a baby girl made a circle of perfection. I'm awed by how frequently the passing of one loved one occurs in tandem with the birth of another. There is balance...and joy tempers sorrow.
Since the guys went on their big sailing adventure, I've been coming to terms yet again with being a girl. I must be reaping the Karma of being so judgemental of girlness during my younger years because it keeps coming up. This week it was on account of the tractor breaking down. It simply stopped going...no clunk, no big noise, no obvious reason for damage. I had been mowing under the hot sun and the humidity was heavy and oppressive. Stephen told me I could help him. I just cried. Usually when he tells me I'm going to help, it means I do something totally out of my comfort zone. I didn't feel like I'd be much help...and I couldn't see myself getting the tractor into the back of the truck or being much help even to him. I immediately saw my inability...I'm not handy. I am not like Priscilla who set out to meet challenges with an expectation of eventual success. Nope. I am my mother's daughter...and my father's for that matter. Neither one of them were handy. My mother believed changing a lightbulb was a mans job. My Dad was an artist/architect and though he was adept at making plans, he was over his head in the engineering of the follow through. I feel like a miracle worker hanging art work on walls or putting up curtains. Putting a dead tractor on the back of the truck is simply not in my realm of imagination. Stephen is a jack of all trades and he can fix anything. I heard him speak about Priscilla teaching him not to give up on finishing anything he started. I wondered what I'd be like if I was ever told I was perfectly capable of moving heavy things or fixing broken things. I felt myself cave in...feeling overwhelmed by my limitations. I lack courage. Something inside me feels incapable. Instead of being challenged and open to trying...I was giving up before I started and breaking down and crying. Suddenly I knew that my only obstacle to succeeding at fashioning a hand made life full of satisfaction and self made joy is the mantra I've been repeating to myself all my life...I can't. I said it to the midwife as I was laboring to give birth the first time. Yet I did. Plant that whole garden? I can't...and yet I did. Fill up the freezer with homegrown food? I can't...and yet I do. I may not be able to compete with men for certain feats of strength...but I don't have to.  Perhaps the real change here is not in accepting my femaleness...but rather in letting go of the need to prove myself equal when no one but me is questioning that fact. My right hand aches from grasping to tightly. I hold on for dear life...I have a lot of fear in my right hand. I'm afraid I won't measure up...I'm afraid that comparing and contrasting will reveal my ineptness. But I don't have to believe in the voice that tells me to quit before I've even begun. I might feel weak and unsure...but stroking the baby soft hand is giving me a hand...if I think I can't then well...I can. I just need to edit the 't.