Mission Accomplished

Back in October, while my Mom was still in rehab recovering from a fall that has left her in need of supervision 24/7...my sister decided that the only way to keep Mom home was if she moved in with her. Her presence and a patchwork of willing souls who come in every day to help out so she can keep working, have given Mom this past winter, the gift of staying in her home. To me, my sister's decision to move in seemed huge...too big in fact and I became concerned about her mental state...and offered to come to Mass. every other weekend to sit with Mom so Sue could have some free time to call her own. Every other weekend felt like the least I could do...a piece of cake...after all, I could drive home. I'm always amazed at my mind. It's very quick to jump to conclusions both positive and negative. Before the winter I figured Mom was on her way out. Now she seems stronger...her humor is quick and though she gets confused when she gets up from her chair...she is sharp as a tack when she is sitting in her spot in the TV room. She's like a bird stitched into her environment...perched for flight but comfortable in her favorite tree. I also eventually realized that I had some concern for my own mental state and was projecting my version of reality onto both my Mom and sister. Being torn in half, that was my status for the winter. I flew down to Mass. on a Friday and returned to Maine on a Monday afternoon. As time ticked on, it took me longer and longer to get back into the rhythm of my own life here in Maine before it was time yet again to drive south. I wonder how well I truly know myself. The first stretch I spent in Salem was a 10 day stint right when she came home from rehab. I worked my artfelt landscape...a winter sunset view of looking out my kitchen window with the pink sky reflected in the pink water of the river...a frozen image yet rendering it in wool gave it texture and warmth. I quickly realized that I could sit for hours and even talk while working on the felting. I fell in love with the process. Meanwhile, as I sat with my mother, every hour was marked by the call of a bird from the Audobon bird clock I gave her years ago. The calls never corresponded to the hours and we would laugh and make jokes about owl time or chickadee time. I recalled the clock that we had as children in the kitchen of our home in Beverly Farms. It was a fascination to me because it was a village with houses and people and mountains and stuck to the second hand was a tiny train that passed through a tunnel as it made its way around the circle of life. As a child, I had a terrible fear of being late for school. It had much to do with the woman who was my scary witch-like second grade teacher who would point her fingers at us kids and yell DEAD DUCK if we were out of step with the rest of the class. I would watch the clock obsessing about being late for school to the point where my Dad actually took it down from the wall in the morning before we left for school. I loved and hated that clock...even though I remember it with great affection. The train whistled at certain times too. We had a real train that passed our house at the boundary of the back yard. I listen to one now as it blows its signal and passes through town. Anyway...my lifestyle is very moving...I don't sit long and I spend hours outdoors everyday. The cold is tolerable to a point where most folks would think me immune. As I sat each weekend with Mom, I began felting birds like the one April gave me for Christmas...the chickadee. It was a kit. I'd never even heard of felting before so I began doing research about the history of felting and due to the prohibitive price of kits, I set out to make my own squares and draw my own birds. Each bird now hold memories of conversations I had with my Mom or sister. I opted to arrange the patches in a circle because of the bird clock that chimed a Hoot Hoot Hoot...or some other call to mark the hour. The sound of felting often made Mom drowsy in the afternoons but it kept me busy and sane...and I thank goodness I had the foresight to bring the handiwork with me. I would have gone stir crazy I believe. As much as I love my Mom, I find her life of sitting isn't good for me. And by the time I returned to Maine...I had a backlog of unmoved energy that I needed to deal with or poor Stevo got some outfall. Thank goodness he was watching over me. He noticed my stress before I did. By mid February he was insisting I cut down on my trips to Salem. I made the decision to cut down to one visit a month beginning in April. I completed my promise of everyother weekend through the winter. I grew some self awareness and was successful at fulfilling a commitment. I also learned that it is not an easy task for a daughter to take care of her aging mother because the care comes out of the crevaces of hardened places in the heart. It seeps through the cold and ice that lies like a blanket of snow over the river in Winter...melted by the present moment of cherishing the time we have together, the love trickles into a flow despite the burdensome baggage of a lifetime of perceptions and feelings. I discovered I still held disappointment in my mother...anger at her...and I was forced to sit with it while focusing of bird forms and the promise of a returning spring. Those birds helped me stay above the petty angers in my old suitcase of despair and helped me realize the beauty and freedom of choosing to find love and forgiveness in the the presence of my mothers love. I realize now...it is never too late to love and to forgive, until a person is gone. Now my mission is accomplished. My promise was kept and Mother Nature will keep her promise. The birds will return and the frozen landscape will become green and alive with Eagles, geese, ducks and all manner of songbirds...and when my Mom is gone, I will put my blanket over my shoulders to stay warm in my heart and remember the time we had together when nothing but love flowed freely between us.

TRICKLE TURNS TO FLOW

Mmmm...today is March 23. We've had six straight days of temperatures in the 70-85 degree range. The snow is nearly gone and places that usually wet my feet up to my ankles are bone dry. There is no doubt in my mind that the climate is changing and I didn't need Al Gore to tell me either. Just keep watching NOVA and Discovery, and the changing habitats of the Arctic and Antartic tell the whole story loud and clear. We tapped our sugar maples just two weeks ago and already the run is finished. Our years harvest is 1/3 of the usual sap run. But this year we tapped 2 birches and have been drinking birch sap which is touted as a spring tonic in Russia and the Nordic areas.  We Americans are so focused on consumer use of resources that we don't even think about trees as a food and medicine resource right in our own back yards. Birch sap, if you research it on line, is useful for balancing blood sugars, cholesterol, blood pressure, treating inflammation, helping the body release unnecessary fluids, clearing grit from the liver and kidneys and providing unusual protiens and trace minerals that support a glowing immune system. I also discovered Chaga tea which is helpful in detering the growth of cancer. I'm having a serious love affair with all things Birch and where the sugar maple run is done...my Birch sap continues to run...and I'm along for the ride. The intense heat has made hiking a little treacherous as water is flowing beneath the ice pack and that is thin enough to step through so every step is an adventure...a good motto for living life fully. The usual thin trickle of March waters is a veritable flow this year and as I walk and sit beside the streams and brooks of my habitat, I say prayers for the changes ahead. I fear a hot dry summer because healthy life needs good moisture and our whole humanity depends on water for our survival.

But when I think of trickle...I think of my sister Beth, whose name in the Druidic alphebet means Birch...
she left this life as a beautiful 26 year old with a whole life of unfullfilled dreams ahead of her. The story is long and sad...and her surgeon , when she was in the original trauma of surviving a very bad car crash,   gave her a stuffed Owl as a get well gift. He became important to her as she made her 4 1/2 year journey
from a hospital bed to her creator. She named him Trickle...after the tears that made a constant stream down her pretty cheeks. My Mom still has Trickle. And while sitting with my Mom, after her fall, I got into needle felting and upon felting a Northern Sawet Owl, I then began making tiny baby owls and giving them away. There is magic in metaphor and some how my brain has made a link between Trickle, my owl making, birch sap and Chaga(a fungus that grows on birches), Beth and birch and healing a deep core wound that has prevented me from being a full participant in my own life. What's important here isn't the details of the story so much as the thread of perception that has connected me in my family tree to my sister Beth and the passion I have for Birches...lithe and graceful, sweet and flexible...Beth and Birch and simmering sweet saps of spring have all opened my eyes to the meaning of Trickle becoming Flow. Now to trust...and hope for a thirst quenching beginning to a new and full participation in this un-frozen being

TAKING MY THYME

WOW, March blasted in with a 12 inch snowfall and today it's nearly 60 degrees and the snow cover is vanishing. I came home from my last weekend visit to Salem with some kind of New England crud that immediately went to my chest. I felt it hovering around for the days I spent at Moms but the weather wasn't so great so we ended up sitting in the living room most of the days. Sunday, being nicer, I tried to push a walk...just a little one but it was windy and she feels the cold so much more intensely than I, that I let her turn us around almost immediately. I find it difficult to stay in all day. Most days here at home, I'm outdoors for at least 3 hours and many days are upwards of 6 hours outside either walking the dog, skiing, snowshoeing or even just catching some rays in a chair by the fire pit. When that old tightness in my chest started, I consulted my homemade medicine chest. Back in 2002, I took an Herbal Apprenticeship and learned a lot about different plants both wild and cultivated and I learned how to make teas and tinctures, salves and oils. I chose Thyme...a very good plant for fighting flu and respiratory infection. I began taking it 4 times a day and after only 24 hours, I was aware of a difference in my ability to breathe deeply. I also began having a productive cough rather than a dry irritating one. I had the luxury of time as well because of the fact that I'm still unemployed. I was much quicker to reach for the Drugstore remedies that mask symptoms when I was working. I have been remembering the feeling of being rushed...the pressure of getting to work at a given hour, to be able to accomplish customer service when not feeling well, the polite disgust of customers when you are seized by a sudden attack of coughing. There is something about the way we are conditioned to live and work that honors what we can do for the business we work for...what we are paid to do...that comes at the expense of doing what we most need to do for ourselves. And we do this for our entire lives. It starts with kindergarten where we first beigin to learn that what we want and what we feel is not important if it is not in sync with what the group is doing or with what the teacher says. truly, it's no wonder that some people shrivel up and die when they retire because they have no practice living their life according to their own inner promptings. If they don't have a time clock to punch, they don't know how to structure their day. So for 5 days now, I've been taking my Thyme tincture and whatever was heavy in my chest seems to be gone. My mind keeps playing with the words Time and Thyme...and since saturday nite when we all set our clocks ahead, we have more light if not more time. I realized that taking charge of my own time, and slowing down my pace to accomodate some of the changes aging brings to my body, I have given myself the time to experience the power of Thyme as a healing herbal ally. The rich reward of being unemployed is that I am redefining my relationship with time and my time belongs to me. I have slowed down enough to learn something from taking my Thyme and the medicine spreads to encourage me in my efforts to take my time. I can't describe in words what this feeling is...to lift the plaster of artificial definition and expectation that comes to a small soul at the tender age of 5 with the beginnings of a lifetime of conditioning a person to fit in with the crowd...and the lifetime of the workday world causes that plaster to harden...to become hard, crusty and inflexible. What it feels like to lift off that artificiality is huge...I just can't find words to describe it. So, I'll just keep taking my Thyme...taking my time and know that somehow I will get this pressure off my chest. And with the deep genuine breath of March's soft springlike air, I can begin to feel five again...in my heart of hearts.