PORTALITY

I like to get on my treadmill for a 30 minute session of making my heart beat a strong rhythm. When I walk and jog, I blast my favorite tunes and close my eyes imagining that this hampster wheel excersise is moving me toward light...a lighter weight, a lighter attitude, a lighter sense of perspective...heck an incredible lightness of being. I dedicate my 30 minutes to the Creative Spirit...or God if you wish...whatever you call it, its the great orderly flow that my own cells are made from. I guess its rather like a form of moving meditation and I would probably be smart to do it before I write instead of after, because I always get some kind of new awareness. Today...it comes in the form of a new word. As I contemplate my mother's mortality, I encounter a relationship with portality...a through the glass darkly phenomenon...a slide down a tunnel or a rabbit hole...a secret door that I can finally open. Over the last two years mortality has been sitting on my shoulders. Intensely. First, Stephen required quadruple bypass surgery in May 2010 and that was a long intense dance with the unknown. Then came Priscilla passing in March 2011. And now Mom and her very bad fall in September. It dawned of me as I treaded my mill that these are the 2 years that I have recieved a particular gift...the gift of being able to devote myself full time to my garden. Actully it began in 2009 when Stephen tilled me up the beds and fenced in my space because there were so many deer roaming about. He put that fence up and I began to feel like a baby in her playpen. My friend April taught me to refer to my garden time as playtime and as a result, I found an unquenchable thirst for spending my energy in that spot. So for three years, I've spent spring, summer and fall 100% committed to my garden...planting, weeding, tending, watering, pruning, pinching, picking, putting up, preparing and serving. For the first time in my life I've been focused on one thing. What a rare and amazing luxury. And I'm not sure I fully GOT IT until now. What a simple pleasure to tend one's own back yard. And what has it given me? Besides food...good healthy pestiside free food that seems to love me as much as I love growing it? Well...the more I ponder it, the more I see the gifts.

First...I've learned that when I don't think I can do one more thing...I can. I can always go a little further than I think I can and that thought has been lifechanging. Perhaps the original prototype for this lesson was set in motherhood because I always thought I couldn't take one more minute and I always took many more. Ha. So much for limits.

Second...No matter how much the weather and the bugs and the diseases thwart my growing efforts, there is always something that does well...and I don't need to hover over every tender shoot because that fearful hovering can cause a person(me) to overwater and encourage superficial root systems. A little neglect is healthy.

Third...the whole world seems to plot against maintaining focus. As a lifelong member of the ADHD club, I became ,with my teachers full support, just one more human being who knows a little about alot but who loses focus easily...so easily that finishing things is a rare occurrence. Before moving to Maine, I remember grieving the fact that everytime I planted a garden, I missed the harvest. The seduction of distractions has always been a personal difficulty. And I'm a master at distracting myself. So...the luxury of focus and follow through have been gifts of my garden.

And fourth? Tending my garden...working for Mother nature...doing what needs to be done and doing it all for the sake of the satisfaction it gives as opposed to doing it for money...well that is a first. So my garden is not just a garden...it is a portality. It is an opening I can slip through to become more of what I am...an amazing female mystery and it gives me exactly what I need right now to support my aging mother as she faces her mortality and end of life choices. Writing brings me to the opening...allows me to see the connections...and peering through the portal...what do I see? I'm growing a portality. And who cares if it isn't a word. Its my word.

FOR THE LOVE OF TREES

I'm home from Salem after spending nearly a full week at my Mom's house for holiday sharing but also to spell my sister who is shouldering the lion's share of her care since she fell and was discharged from rehab. Last night I had trouble sleeping. The nightmare that disturbed my sleep was of me, stepping outdoors to find men with chainsaws cutting down immense pine trees. As I stepped through the door, I began screaming and crying at the top of my lungs and I couldn't quite identify where I was...I wondered if I was here at my home or if I was in the front yard at Cambridge Street. Both places have grandfather pine trees nearby. In fact it was a huge old pine that was removed from the sunny side of our house here in Maine when we were preparing to move in 2008. At that point in time, I had a dream that suggested that the removal of the tree would be acceptable. I still felt terribly guilty because it was immense and the reason it was being cut down was to allow for more light to penetrate the building. I dreamed that the base of the tree would become a totem pole to honor the life of the tree, the people who had lived here prior to us and to give respect to the animals who have become so important to our family as totems, friends and neighbors. I had a vision of the tree trunk and where the trunk split into two trunks. I requested the men who were cutting it down to make sure they left several feet of trunk above the fork because I could see the Bald Eagle that would be at the top of the totem with it's wings spread and carved from the two separate sections. Somehow, the art form of honoring the tree's life in a totem pole made it OK with the universe that the tree's life would come to a sudden end. My heart felt peace. It's a growth I've had since leaving Marblehead...making peace with killing meat for food and cutting down trees for light. The spring before my Dad passed away, I was working as a crossing guard at the Tower School corner. The school was preparing to add a large addition to the school and preparations were underway that included cutting down trees. I was born a tree-hugger...long before the term emerged, my soul was a bird that loved and depended on trees in ways that I couldn't comprehend consciously. That June I stood at that corner with my stop sign crying my eyes out as the saws took down tree after tree. The kids stared at me but seemed to understand my deep sadness for the loss of life. I wrote a poem about it and sent letters to the newspaper but it didn't matter. I think of that time now as I try to get a sense of what my dream last night was telling me. I love trees. I care about their lives and I thrill inside when the birds return and the bare tree limbs can feel the little scratchings of birdclaw arrival in late spring.

As I've been writing this blog entry, small brain firings illuminate connections. I feel the act of writing allows some bridgebuilding in my brain and aha's happen like a cerebral shower of stars. I feared I might be short with my mother. Especially when overtired. I never sleep well at her house. The night shadows and lights, the sirens and sounds of city...the unfamiliar feel of the bed and the hypervigilance of wanting to be awake for her every move. I expected to be moody and emotional. Instead, caring for Mom gives me a deep peaceful feeling. I feel so grateful to be able to spend all this time with her. I feel grateful my sister has opted to live with her and I feel totally committed to providing her repite with my visits...it's all so right. I've had some really hard conversations with her about her end of life desires. This weekend it was a conversation about moving her bedroom downstairs. It seems the most natural place for her to sleep given the inevitability that in the near future she won't be able to manage the MacIntyre staircase that is a challenge for even the unchallenged. As I wrote my dream above, I remembered helping Mom down the stairs twice after Thanksgiving. As we descended the spiral staircase, she looked intently at me and said...Dear...do we know where I am? I said, I don't have a stairway like this at my house Mom, so we aren't there. And she said...you mean I'm right in my own home? Yes Mom. You are right at home. That moment in time created a portal...a portal I passed through when I couldn't figure out if I was at home or at Mom's in my dream last night. It makes me wonder...if I can be so passionate about the life of trees, so sad about their end of life, so moved to honor them in song and art, what will it feel like when Mom slips through the final portal and her life on Earth ? Will I step out and weep and scream and send out a wave of fury into the universe? Or will her passing open my home to more and more light? And will her soul still visit me in imagination and in dream? Will she come to me...a tree, and alight with a soft brush of feather or a sweet scratching of claw? I don't know. And I won't know. Until it happens.
Meanwhile, I savor the fragrance of her confused but radiant presence. Perhaps it is the unnessesary, irreverant removal of life for the convenience and wastefulness of humans that causes me to dream of screaming outrage ...or perhaps I am simply giving voice to the dying trees.

BONSAI CHRISTMAS

I've been pruning our family celebration of Christmas for years. I think I've just about got myself a holiday that resembles a Bonsai...a miniature holiday...a tiny essence of yuletide...a suggestion of Christmas that focuses primarily on the returning light and the beginning of a New Year full of unlimited potential. The first "things" to go were the traditions that required buying things. I wasn't quite brave enough when my kids were small and I worked hard to have a holiday with homebaked goodies...filled stockings, candies, a gingerbread house, a cause to donate to or a child to give gifts to that was not a member of our immediate family...visits with both sides of the family, Christmas cards to all who lived a distance away, a yearly family ornament, a creche, a Christmas Eve visit from Santa, photos at the Mall, a real Balsam Christmas Tree and a mountain of gifts beneath it. I began my insane robot imitation the day after Thanksgiving and the battery went dead just about New Years Day. I wandered into the New Year completely exhausted, depressed and tearful...having missed some of the best moments with my kids cuz I was such a frenzy of activity preparing my nativity. And by January...I had a bad case of BITCH. And I wondered why. Slowly, over the years since the boys flew the coop, these traditions have passed into light. This year, my favorite custom occured before Thanksgiving. The making of the wreathes. This year we had a rare midweek visit from Sam and Cass and for the first time EVER, I had pals to make wreathes with. We took Sadie down to the river and up back into the woods to collect interesting boughs and branches, seedpods and dried flowers. We spent all morning gathering whatever we could find that seemed beautiful in it's bony November state...milkweed pods tossing up snow fairies, hydrangea blossoms gone gold, about 6 different kinds of evergreen branches exuding their fresh aroma, bright orange mushrooms with velvet undersides and the bright yellow red sparks of bittersweet that the winter birds love to steal once the snow flies. That took all morning and then we pulled out the potting table and set up shop...Sam built a bonfire while Cass and I began our whimsical approach to making the wreathes. Of course I think about my Mom as I wind the vines into a circle. She is in her November of her life. The dried pods, the seed pouches, the dried goldenrod and browning hydrangea all in the geriatric stage of their lifecycles...not alot of vitality left...but still beautiful. I pick them up and work them into the circle with gratitude. The milkweed stood as nursery to the monarch caterpillars and fed the chrysalis to the point of emergence as a butterfly. The hydrangea fed the hummingbirds and bees and any other bugs that stuck around to make their magic in my garden. The dead sunflower heads fed the goldfinches and lifted their heads to the sun as it made its daily journey around my garden. All these bits and pieces of dead nature had given all they could in life...and yet even as they stand lifeless and ready to become one with Earth when the first snow flies, there is joy to their presence. The milkweed pods look like birds if you turn them upside down...and the soft silky seeds take to the air like fairies and you know you have sent a seed into an unknown future...of life and growth. Last year, I made November wreathes out of all the dried stuff...they are really gratitude wreathes. And after Thanksgiving, I made evergreem boughs and circles to afix them to...the evergreens reminding me of that which is always a part of me...the people of my family that came before, the love that is ever green and nurturing me as I pass through the stages of my life. There is a lot to making a wreath! Then Sam took a photo of me looking through the wreath and I was struck by the wreath as portal...a place of entry that celebrates that which has passed, honoring the life of the nature filling my year by treating the dead with love...and awareness of the beauty that remains. That circle of remains afixed to the boughs of evergreens makes a doorway I can slip through into the New Year. It has become my favorite celebration by far. But in order for that day to happen...I had to snip away all the commercial "have tos" in my brainwashed mind. Even some of the main limbs had to be pruned. Its taken several years but I have come to the place where giving away and getting rid of is way more fun to me than recieving storebought stuff that suits no real purpose.When I remember the day I brought my boys home from Christmas dinner at my folks. They had recieved huge Tonka trucks from my Dad...the earthmovers...2 each. Dumpers, dozers, cranes...when we got all the stuff up to our third floor apartment at Middle Street, I wept because there was so much stuff from Christmas that we couldn't even walk across the room. That was my wake up call.

Now here I am. Damned if I'll go to the mall. I'll take my Christmas tree from the side of the new garage because eventually, we need to clear that area so the white pine may be Charlie Brownish...but it is tax free and it whispers to me about being celebrated by bringing it in and decorating it and on January 6th...we'll burn it in the fire pit tied with our prayers for the healing and peace of the worldwide family. I love Christmas. I gave birth to a child on the Winter Solstice. Will slipped through the portal to this life as a Caswell and has turned me into a tried and true pagan...celebrating the first day of the increasing light and the love of family and friends with a heart full of gratitude...and happy to share all I have. But like my Mom has mentioned time and time again, her greatest legacy and gift to humankind, is the gift of her children

MAKING LIGHT

Light changes everything. When the clocks go back and the day darkens long before supper, and the people sensitive to the short light begin to feel sad for "no reason"...there is no switch to turn it up or on or make it burn because you want it to. Or can you? I often think about the nature of light. It makes a skyscape holy or a night sky eerie and mysterious. Light brings colors alive and makes us feel like jumping out of bed. Sometimes the way the light touches our surroundings makes it seem like spirits are present or like God is reaching down through the clouds with lightfingers to give us a hand. Light is the way you look at something too. If you consider a certain issue one day under a certain light, you read it a particular way and if you look at it another day, under a different light...a problem's solution becomes visible. Artists revel in light play and a great artist can portray the magic of light for everyone to see and appreciate. I wish I had been born an artist. I just adore the creative process and find in it, my most resonant example of the sacred spirit that lightens my burdens as I make my way through life. Light is the shining light as well as the lifting of weight or the setting of flame. It is fleeting. Momentary. Everchanging. And changing everything. A camera is my friend and gives me the opportunity to catch the slant of light or the refraction that casts a pink spell over my heart. If I can't capture the unique and passing beauty of a certain light in art...in paint or drawing...at least the camera gives me a tool to share my vision with others. I use it gratefully. It has captured an image that has captured my imagination that has captured knowledge that has shed light on how I read the deeper meaning of my life. In seeking light I find insight. In making light, I find I can let go of baggage that weighs heavy on my shoulders. In appreciating light, I am better able to see and funnily enough...I am better prepared to feel a sense of comfort in the darkness because it is really just another transitory state of light...or no light. When life brings the ultimate challenge to sit on my lap, I no longer despair. That...my friends...is a huge change. I hope it has something to do with age. Because if it does...then aging becomes something of a treasure. I am watching my 86 year old mother navigate her end of life and I am horrified by the prospect of being in the same state some day. I encounter a crouching coward in my heart who prays for a quick end at a not too old age so I can be spared of the indignity of feeble old age. I don't want my sons to have to help me to the bathroom. I don't want to become lost and confused and befuddled by daily tasks. I may not be brave enough. And yet my mother laughs at herself. She roars over her confusion and weeps with mirth at the twists and turns of her injured brain. She has become so dear...and her great gift is that she takes herself lightly and that makes people want to spend time with her reminding her of what she's doing and where she's going. Just when her condition tempts a response of despair, she has come up with a certain slant of light...and she is laughing. Now thats a light I would like to turn on in my darkness.

There is a tunnel and through it shines a light. I used to see the portal as a spinning eddy of water pulling me down and under. It's nature was to pull me deep into darkness and depression...despair and decay. Youth is a time when we take ourselves so seriously and I found myself deep in a dark doom reality more times than I care to recall. Aging changes the slant of light and one learns to change the frame...my portal has become more of a doorway and sure enough...it opens to a broad expanse of light that feels warm and welcome and energy giving and all I need to do to lighten my load...to turn on the lights...to see things differently...is to walk through. Maybe it could be that easy. I am a grateful daughter. I am even grateful for the gift of time to spend with my mother ...brain injured or not. The love is unconditional. My gratitude is huge. Now...instead of a swirling eddy of darkness sucking me into my grief, I am swimming in a pool of light. By choosing to focus on that light, I amp it up. I turn it on. I step into the light. How bout you Mom? Wanna join me?

RED GEESE AND BEAR HAIR

I don't know about you but when I set out for the woods or a walk in nature, I try and get into my Zen brain and listen to my environment as if it were talking ...no, whispering, in my ears. Sometimes I'm just awake and my reception is sensitive after  waking up from sleep. I always feel just a little softer and fuzzier around the edges with my dream images hovering just beyond my brain's ability to grasp them into conciousness. It's the tween times when the veil between worlds becomes thin and translucent...the time when rabbits dance and deer step out into a clearing...it's the time when spirits draw near and messages from ancesters can be heard...a magical, crepuscular time and it can come daily, weekly or quarterly. Tween times also happen at edges where one landscape feature changes into another...like a field that gives way to forest...or a lake to a mountain. The possible tween times can be tween places where a doorway to an altered reality opens and anything you imagine can happen. Call it a border...a door...a bridge...a portal or a pathway. Any opening into another state creates a tween time. This morning I woke up with Sadie perched atop my bladder looking furtively into my face with that obvious I want to go out look in her eyes. I don't know how they do it but our animals make themselves clear without language as humans know it and real communication happens. No words to trip over or misunderstand...no multiple meanings to complicate intention. My eyes popped open and I fled to the bathroom myself. She had put the pressure on my bladder and I just had to get up. I struggled into my clothes and gave up trying to catch a thread to my dreams to take her outside for her bathroom needs. It was about 6:45 with daylight well underway. Here in the mountains, daylight comes way before you actually get to see the sun. This morning it felt more like September and I walked up onto the hill to toss the ball and get her moving. A gorgeous morning. A blue cloudless sky and a breeze coming down the river and suddenly the sound of honking geese...a swarming gaggle...in fact it was a huge double V headed south honking up a storm. Even Sadie stopped and looked skyward. It was special. The sun was just coming up and was lighting the underside of the geese with dawns red light. They flew in formation colored red by the rising sun and I couldn't stop looking at the double V of red geese. All day I've pondered what to make of it. Was it a sign? Maybe. Maybe it was a simple reminder to pay attention to the power of a slight shift in the angle of light...how it changes everthing and turns the everyday thing you see a million times over into a life affirming miracle. It has always been the magic of light that whispers for me to capture it. Of course, I never really can. As an artist, I am no realist. I admire the talent of those that can render the real view to share with others but I just get frustrated. The beauty I want to communicate eludes me and my paintbrush. My only satisfaction has come from my point and shoot camera. When I get the setting right, I've hit the mark a few times and captured a beautiful light event to share...rare but doable.

I took my red camera with me on my walk with Sadie later in the day. I am slowly learning to cherish my freedom and to realize that the gift of my present moment includes the luxury of some free time for which I need not feel guilty. Even though unemployed, I work hard. But the garden has been put to sleep. All the fruits of my labors have been put up and the freezer is stocked for winter. The wood has been stacked and the plants brought in. Granted my house is filthy due to so many sunny days but I've been a busy productive little farm girl. I'm standing at a doorway...summer and fall are behind me and winter still lies in the future. This is the magic of the tween times...there is nothing well defined. I can walk with a light heart and there is no pressure to get to the next thing. The clock doesn't determine my agenda and for once, I can revel in unplanned moments. As Sadie and I walked up the Farwell Mountain Road at mid day today, there were deer prints everywhere...mostly does and young but their impressions were hard to miss. My eye fell on some black hair and I had to stop for some reason. I picked it up and smelled it. Mmmm. It's black bear hair...I can tell by the wild gamey smell...a faint hint of urine, probably something the bear rolled in. I kept it. I carried it home feeling a sense of spirit presence. Bears at the portal make me think of hibernating...going within and resting...and I feel reassured. I am currently finding myself in a very introspective place and I somehow feel supported in that by the smelly bear hair in my hand. I know. I sound ridiculous...I've always been told I make ridiculous connections. But in my ridiculous connections...in the red light V of honking geese and the strength of a hair of the bear..I find myself embedded in Nature...a part of my Mother earth and not at all apart from her. And tween you and me...my life is lit with meaning.

FALL REFLECTIONS

My 86 year old mother is at home now recovering from a fall she took on September 12th. It was a lulu...and it's left her brain injured. I just returned home after spending 10 days with her because the doctors have decided she needs supervision 24/7. I think they would have preferred that we put her into some kind of long term care but she has always maintained that she wants to die at home. In fact she would never even consider the possibility that she might not be able to live at home until her death. It was surprising how easy it was to hang out with her for 10 days. I have grown countrified inside and out. I am not always able to call up my old Massachusetts driver. My skills for city living have atrophied and though I miss several people that live down in the Salem/ Marblehead area, there is very little that excites me about urban life. Given my penchant for the open spaces, I thought I'd hate being in Salem for so long. I actually enjoyed myself. Mom is like a 4 year old...she's highly distractable and easily becomes confused as she sets out to go to the bathroom and notices something out the window and before you know it she has forgotten what she got up for. But she is actually quite pleasant to spend time with. She can mask her confusion with stories from long ago and as long as she can keep her focus, she can be entertaining and appear pretty sharp. She can use the toilet and she is not taking medications except for vitamins. Consequently, she doesn't seem like a nursing home candidate and the assisted living model doesn't quite provide her with enough attention. Everyone at the rehab stressed her need to be safe. I think about Priscilla who was in a nursing home...she couldn't talk or toilet or even walk around. Her care was so far beyond our abilities to provide but she still took daily falls at the nursing home. Mom may fall even with someone supervising her whether she is at home or at a home. What was amazing was how strong she became when she came home. Sleeping in her own bed and eating home cooked food, being surrounded by the things of her life...she became more of herself when she got home. When I look back at her cognitive changes, I can see that she had started to fail over a year ago. When I encountered neighbors of hers in salem, they commented on how unsteady on her feet she had become. I didn't really notice that. As far as I could tell, she was walking to work and all her appointments as usual. Had I known would I have done anything? What could I do? If I had told her she couldn't go out walking she would have anyway. I couldn't stop her then and I doubt if I can stop her now when I am on duty. I can't live in constant fear and hovering over every move she makes. She needs to do things by herself so she maintains functioning. When I leave her alone, she endangers herself because she becomes disoriented. Twice, in the middle of the night I was woken up by her flushing the toilet. She had wandered into the bathroom even though she had a commode beside her bed because she went to the bathroom from her bed every night for 50 years. I lost a lot of sleep wondering if I'd hear her up and around...hypervigilance exhausted me. Whether she is in a home or at home with a sitter...the truth is she will fall again. There isn't a situation that can keep her from endangering herself. All we can do is do our best to give her support and love the time we have left. The laughter and the stories and the warm feeling of "I'm here for you" can give the heart wings but only if I can keep my balance by being there for me too. Because when I come home...I too am strengthened.