Landed!

Landed!

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We flew in long and low, not far above the whitecaps, as the jet circled into position to land in Funchal. We bounced and tilted, I held my breath. And then, quicker than I thought possible, we were on the ground.

The capital city of Madeira is nestled between the mountains and the sea, and the runway of the nearby airport, it’s said, is built partially on stilts.

I believe it, just as I’m starting to believe everything I’ve heard about this place, this jewel of an island with red tile roofs atop buildings of pink and yellow, with homes terraced up the hillsides and a jumble of streets leading down from them.

A jumble of streets I’m itching to explore…

Taking a Leap

Taking a Leap

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It’s Leap Day, a bonus, a gift, an intermittent reminder that we live in a universe with rules of its own. Yes, we can parcel our annual passage around the sun into 365 tidy intervals, but there will be hours left over, almost six of them. Adding an extra day every four years keeps our calendars in sync with the seasons. 

This year I’ll experience fewer of these extra hours. Jet travel will erase them. 

Still, it’s not a bad way to celebrate Leap Year: by leaping into the future, embarking on a journey, landing in a place I can scarcely imagine but will soon (I hope) see. 

(Lisbon is our first port of call, but only to catch a connecting flight.)

Madeira!

Madeira!

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Tomorrow we take off for the Portuguese island of Madeira, which is situated in the Atlantic Ocean about 320 miles west of Morocco. 

It’s a rugged, mountainous place, with drop-dead-gorgeous views (see above) — and paths to take us to them. Some of these trails are not for the faint-of-heart, but others are tame enough that I hope to hike them. 

It’s a grand adventure, and like every travel adventure, it comes with to-do’s that must be checked off ahead of time.  Most of my to-do’s are to-done — or they will be soon. They have no choice; they have to be!

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

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I never put the garden to bed last fall, so last weekend I opened the chickenwire enclosure used to keep the deer at bay and waded into the tangle of old growth. There were the tall stalks of zinnias and dried coneflower heads. There were the long stems of Siberian iris and the hollow-core canes of day lilies. 

This can be a melancholy task to perform in autumn, less a harvest than a confiscation. But done in late winter, when green shoots are already pushing up from the soil, it’s a hopeful and much-needed clearing, a spring cleaning. 

As I pulled and tugged and gathered, a familiar scent tickled my nostrils. It was mint: the plant is already growing. I picked a few tiny sprigs to have in my iced tea.

Can summer be far behind?

(The garden in early July.)

Effort and Ease

Effort and Ease

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I often get ideas in yoga class. Breaking my concentration to write them down seems most un-yogi-like, though, so I try to file them away to retrieve later. 

Last week the inspiration arrived during shavasana, the final, resting pose, when you spend a few minutes lying down and (at least for me) trying not to fall asleep. The teacher read us a passage about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with gold lacquer, celebrating the cracks rather than hiding them. Obvious post potential in that, but I’m saving it for another day.

Today I want to explore a suggestion I heard in class several weeks earlier: the need to balance effort and ease in each yoga pose. While some contortions seem more effortful than easy, I can see the wisdom in maintaining these two poles. If you’re slacking, pick it up. If you’re hurting, tone it down.

Some of us find it easier to slack, others to overdo. But neither attitude gets us where we want to be. To find freedom in movement requires attentiveness and relaxation, strength and flexibility, effort and ease.

Surely this isn’t just advice for yoga, but for life. 

Moon Landing

Moon Landing

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To continue with the theme of wonder, there is now a U.S. spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1972. It landed Thursday on the lunar surface, near the south pole. 

The space craft was built and flown by a Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, with NASA equipment on board. There were some tense moments at first due to issues with the craft’s navigation and communications systems. But those appear to be resolved and the robot lander, Odysseus, is now transmitting signals.

Surely it’s worth a song. I’m imagining this one set to the tune of Yusuf/Cat Steven’s Moon Shadow. 

We’re being treated to a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing. 

Leapin’ and hoppin’ with a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing.

And if we ever lose our way, tip our craft, botch our stay. 

And if we ever lose our way — let’s hope we can launch once more. 

Witness to Wonder

Witness to Wonder

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It happened at 6:50 p.m. the night before last. A burst of light in the sky, a fireball or meteor, a visitor from space, vanished before those who glimpsed it even knew what they were seeing. 

What was I doing at the time? Swapping out the old red plastic egg crate toy bins for new cloth ones? Or had I already come upstairs to fix dinner? One thing is certain: I was not outside looking up. 

I’m thinking of Bruegel’s famous painting The Fall of Icarus, and Auden’s poem about it, how human suffering can be obscured by the ordinariness of life. The same can be said of wonder.  How often we miss it. Our heads are down, focused on the page or the skillet, the task at hand. 

Most of the videos sent to the American Meteor Society are from home security cameras. There’s no one around to see the meteorological marvel. But one of them shows a man taking out his garbage. You see the falling star with its long tail. You see him see it. He stops in his tracks, trash bag in hand. A witness to wonder. 

(Photo: Wikipedia)

A Model Life

A Model Life

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In The Book of Charlie, journalist and author David Von Drehle tells the story of his Kansas City neighbor, who he first sees across the street in his swimming trunks, washing a car. The man was Charlie White. The car was his girlfriend’s. Charlie was 102 at the time. 

Von Drehle would have seven years to get to know the man — and what a man he was. He was born before radio, commercial air travel and a worldwide pandemic (not Covid 19, the Spanish flu). Despite early adversity (he was eight when his father died in a freak accident), he put himself through college and became a doctor. Though his two first marriages ended (one in death, another in divorce), Charlie married again and became a father in middle age.

Throughout his long and amazing life, Charlie White changed with the times. When World War II came, he served in the medical corps and came out with an anesthesia specialty.  He lived with simple precepts: he took life as it came and always tried to “do the right thing.” 

Charlie White: They don’t make them like him anymore. They almost never have.

(Book jacket photo courtesy Simon & Schuster)

This Old Door

This Old Door

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It’s installation time: the long-awaited day when the new back door becomes a reality — and the old wooden one becomes history. That one is in such bad shape that I won’t even include a photo of it in its entirety. But it’s served us well and is worth a backward glance.

The old door wasn’t professionally installed, but for decades it has shielded us from snow, cold, wind, rain and heat. It has kept pets and small children inside, or swung open to let them run across the desk and down the stairs. 

The door has been slammed by teenagers — and snuck through by teenagers too, although they preferred the basement window for their late-night escapes. 

It has been gouged and scuffed by pets, starting with our old cat, Basil, whose claws were much sharper than his sweet temper, followed by our dear departed doggie, Copper, who might scratch the door a dozen times a day to keep us apprised of his needs. 

In other words, the years have not been kind to the back door. The glass is mottled and wind whistles through a gap at the bottom. But it’s our door, and in some strange way, I’ll miss it when it’s gone. 

The Work of Childhood

The Work of Childhood

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For many years I wrote articles about children and families. That these were the same years our own children were growing up wasn’t entirely an accident. I had, believe it or not, planned it the way. But the result was an intense combination of lived experience and professional pursuit. I wasn’t always in agreement with the experts I interviewed, but on one point I concurred. Over and over again I heard that play is the work of childhood. And is it ever!

I thought of this yesterday when the kiddos were over for a visit. First they biked and ran down the street, the youngest chuckling in delight as she raced to keep up with the three-year-olds. Next they swarmed inside where they pulled out the toy bins and dug in. 

There were doll houses to decorate and jack-in-the-boxes to crank. There were toy trains to zoom across the floor. There were adults nearby, but we tried to fade into the background. Because the kids were losing themselves in the “work” of play — and our job was to leave them alone.