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For Ellen

For Ellen

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We grew up nine years apart with two brothers in between, and — we like to joke — in two separate families, our memories, mindsets and approaches to life are so different from one another’s.

But we are no more divergent than many siblings are. And in many ways, the important ways, we are alike.  When I need her, she’s there. She is like a best friend, only so much more.

Today is Ellen’s birthday, and as good a time as any to tell her how much she means to me.

Ellen and her three beautiful daughters.

The Same Path

The Same Path

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On a walk through the meadow the other day it dawned on me that my path was made possible not only by my treks but also by Tom’s. A trail is born of frequent footfall, and the two of us, though separately more often than we’d like, give the Folkstone routes a pounding.

It is a strange sort of togetherness that I celebrate here, then, that of walking the same trail at different times. But that is often the way of marriage, both in a practical sense (you watch the kids now and I’ll do the same for you later) and an emotional one. We come to terms with life in our own time, but we share in the great labors of child rearing and home creating. We are stronger because we’re together — and because we’re together, we don’t have to stride in lockstep.

Today, Tom and I celebrate 25 years of walking the same path — and it is still a grand adventure.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day

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On Saturday, I sat in a small church and listened to 1 Corinthians 13. This bible verse was read not at a wedding but at a funeral. Perhaps because of this context — or because it had been a while since I heard these words — they surprised me with their depth and power. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I reprint them here:

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Wind-Walking

Wind-Walking

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It may come as no surprise that I take parenting advice with a grain of salt. But I do think about one bit of wisdom I once heard — that to raise children these days you have to walk against the wind. I’ve been doing a lot of wind-walking lately, both literally and metaphorically. Which is perhaps why it was strangely satisfying to pound the pavement this cold morning.

Yesterday the bitter cold took me by surprise. I was out early, had only one tissue in my pocket, and I sniffled and snuffled and tiptoed over icy patches all along my route. My hands were so cold I had to ball them up inside my thin gloves. I never hit my stride.

Today I was better prepared. More layers. Ears covered. Thicker gloves. Still only one tissue but hey, life isn’t perfect. It felt good to walk against the wind today. A shivering dose of reality. Always better when faced.

A Ritual

A Ritual

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“Here, Celia, you usually like to hang this one, right?” said Claire last night, handing her sister a bright pink high heel slipper ornament with glitter and feathers.

“I remember when I got this ornament,” Celia said. “It was one of those parties where you exchange gifts and people can take them from you and I wanted this one so bad.” And she got it.

Meanwhile, Suzanne found her cello ornament and attached it to a heavy branch while Claire hunted for her “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament.

Decorating the tree is a holiday ritual with little courtesies and observances I didn’t even realize we had until we did them all over again last night. Each one is precious.

At points last evening I found myself floating at the edge of the hubub, as Tom, the girls and their friends laughed and talked and decked out our full, fragrant fir tree (which, we all agree, is one of the most beautiful trees ever). I wanted to be enough on the edge of things to be aware that I was part of them. But I also wanted to be in the moment because such moments are rare. So I busied myself stuffing tissue back into the ornament boxes and carrying them downstairs. Even from our storage room I could hear the laughter — it was as clear and silvery as a Christmas bell.

Photo: wallpaperhd.org

Morning After

Morning After

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A house rises and falls on waves of conversation. When the words are flowing, as they were last night, all creation seems borne forth on a mighty tide. Together we can figure out what’s wrong with the economy (hah!), the school system (double hah!) or (the most complicated problem) when we can find time to get the Christmas tree.

The morning after a good conversation is peaceful and calm. Hopeful, too. As I write I hear the sound of a tiny bird chirping. Maybe a chickadee or a nuthatch or one of our other winter residents. Maybe it had a good conversation yesterday, too.

For Celia

For Celia

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Today is Celia’s birthday, my brother Drew’s too. They are in good company. Winston Churchill was born on this day, as was Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift and Lucy Maud Montgomery, who wrote Anne of Green Gables.

Reading up on Twain a bit this morning, I learn that he loved cats. Celia is an animal lover in general and a cat lover in particular. So in her honor, here are some of Twain’s thoughts on cats:

When a man loves cats, I am his friend and comrade, without further introduction.
-“An Incident,” Who Is Mark Twain?

A cat is more intelligent than people believe, and can be taught any crime.
-Notebook, 1895

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use.
– A Tramp Abroad

Of all God’s creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
– Notebook, 1894


Mark Twain’s cats
photo by Elmira photographer
Elisha M. VanAken, 1887
[Photo from the Dave Thomson collection]

Eastern Light

Eastern Light

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Here on the outer edge of Eastern Standard Time the sun is late to rise. But when it does, it floods the backroom with morning light. That’s what it’s doing right now.

A riot of rays spills in from the east, silhouetting the lamp and globe, which turn into out-size back-lit shadows.

It dawns on me that I can make hand puppets in this light, and I do, a long gangly goose that laughs and quacks his way into the morning.

The light promises a good day, a freshening season. No Black Friday for us. We are after sunshine and ice-skating, the three-mile trip downtown (yes, we can handle that, we suburbanites), and a little more family time.

Template and Canvas

Template and Canvas

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Today is the birthday of the British writer George Eliot, author of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, who was sent away to boarding school at age 5 but who was still able to write these words: “We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.”

It’s an observation no one else I’ve read has made in quite the same poetic and pithy way, that the sights and sounds of growing up become the template and the canvas upon which our love of the natural world is painted.

I think of it often, remembering the awe of my early years in the world, the way an empty lot could become a fairy meadow, or a scraggly woods the forest primeval. It’s an awe that lives in me still and surprises me from time to time, the rallying cry of beauty.

Here’s Eliot again. I’ll end with her because she says it best: “Our delight in the sunshine on the deep bladed grass today might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us and transform our perception into love.”

The Heart of It All

The Heart of It All

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This is a weekend of anniversaries for us. Tom and I have always celebrated the anniversary of our first date, October 22, as well as our wedding anniversary, and yesterday was a big one for us.

Today is Suzanne’s birthday. She came within two hours of being born on “our day.” And while back then I was rooting for this to happen, now I’m glad she waited. It’s good that October 22 is just for us.

It’s easy to forget — yet wonderful to remember — that our romance, friendship and love are the heart of it all.