Endless Summer

Endless Summer

Comments 0 Comment

There was a freeze warning last night, and the furnace is humming as I type these words. Time to remember warmer weather. 

I’m thinking of a beach: salt air, gentle surf, an inquisitive egret strolling through the waves, eyeing the bait bucket as he passes a fisherman on the shore.

I’m remembering the way my body feels in the sun, loose and warm and grateful to be alive.

I’m reliving walks under palm trees, fronds clicking in the breeze and the air heavy and full.

As the season turns, the mind can mutiny, can claim for itself an endless summer. 

Parental Equinox

Parental Equinox

Comments 0 Comment

Today is the birthday of our oldest daughter. I realized, as I counted the years, that today also marks a parental equinox of sorts for me: I’ve been a parent as long as I have not. 

What do I see from this perch, from this fine balance? Strangely enough, I see continuity. For me, becoming a mother didn’t mark a revolution of caring but an expansion of it. Parenthood has been a way to give back the love that was given so freely to me by my own parents. It is the completion of a circle. 

I can’t imagine a life without motherhood. I’m grateful beyond measure to have become a parent. But I’ve tried always to live as not-just-a-mother, to honor dear friends who live full lives without children, who are wonderful aunts and uncles (honorary and by blood). I hope this message got through to my daughters; I think it has. 

Most of all today, I’m thinking of the baby with a V-shaped mouth who seldom slept, who sang before she talked, who took us to places we never thought we’d go. She has grown and flourished. She has studied and learned. She has traveled to the other side of the world — the dusty red-dirt roads of the Sahel — and back. She has given us three other wonderful people to love: her husband and children. Because of her and her sisters, our hearts are full. A parental equinox, yes. But if I had to pick one side of the divide to live in always, I know which one I’d choose.

(Three-year-old Suzanne holds her baby sister, Claire.)

Aloft

Aloft

Comments 0 Comment

Wind whips the leaves off the witch hazel tree, sets them spinning down into a pile of gold. 

Wind bends the tulip poplar and the bamboo, which is taking bows outside my office window.

Wind sets the jets on an alternate course, sends them scudding, like the clouds, over this house. 

Trees, planes, clouds — may all that belongs aloft … stay that way. 

Accumulation of Misery

Accumulation of Misery

Comments 0 Comment

There is something to be said for writing these posts early in the morning, before I’ve fully inhabited the day or, especially these last two weeks, read the newspaper. 

This morning’s news was no more disheartening or sad than any other day of the last two weeks. 

It’s just the accumulation of misery that’s making it hard to concentrate on the golden leaves of the witch hazel tree, the last few blooms of the climbing rose. 

Autumn Afternoon

Autumn Afternoon

Comments 0 Comment

A late walk through the woods, along the lake, over the bridge, and back to where I started from.

No question what time of year it is. If the leaves didn’t clue me in …

the peg-legged skeleton pirate did. 

But there are still patches of green, remnants of summer left behind. 

Bottom Lines

Bottom Lines

Comments 0 Comment

For many years my professional goals were closely tied to the wages I needed to earn. I made a living from writing articles, editing a magazine, telling the stories of an organization. 

Now I’m glimpsing a different way of being, one where pen and keyboard are no longer expected to bring home the bacon. 

Both ways are worthy. Both ways work. They’re just very, very different, that’s all. 

(To be continued…)

The Zucchini

The Zucchini

Comments 0 Comment

The world is in turmoil. Winter is right around the corner. Time for some positivity, which comes today in the form of a vegetable.

I’ve mourned the trees as they’ve fallen. Now to celebrate the sunniness that has come in their wake.

There’s no better proof of this than the plump zucchini that managed to thrive in the back garden. In fact, it became so large that the only palatable way to eat it will be grated in bread or pancakes.

Still, this is a milestone. I’m not yet rushing out to plant a vegetable garden, but I’ll begin to think of the backyard not as a shady place … but as a sunny one.

Toddler Time

Toddler Time

Comments 0 Comment

To see the world through the eyes of a toddler — what riches that would bring! A kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells and textures. A riot of color. What a boon for a writer, to experience such raw sensation. 

The next best thing? Perhaps to follow a toddler around. A lively experience, of course, but difficult to document.

To capture a toddler in motion is like photographing a hummingbird. Too much movement to contain. Only when there’s deep engagement can you move in and snap a shot. Luckily, that happened yesterday.

 

Every Verse

Every Verse

Comments 0 Comment

“Second verse, same as the first,” goes a line from an old Herman’s Hermits song. 

Two verses used to be the limit for the processional and recessional hymns at my church. But there’s a new music director in town, an organist no less, and he plays all four verses of every entering and leaving song.

Is it my imagination, or is there a certain restlessness as we plunge into verse four of the entrance hymn, a narrowly avoided temptation to glance at the watch? 

As for the recessional, people are voting with their feet. This morning, about half the congregation left before the last notes of “The Church’s One Foundation” sounded and the postlude began, organ chords thundering down from on high. 

This is how we’re supposed to leave the sanctuary, I thought, as I made my way to the holy water font and out the door — caught up in a marvelous swell of sound. 

(This organ is from San Bartolome Church, Seville, Spain, not my church. I wish!)

Walking Bass

Walking Bass

Comments 0 Comment

When I need ballast and rhythm, when I require that steady beat, there is usually one composer I turn to — J.S. Bach. I cue up the Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 because it has the peppy piccolo trumpet I once heard can pop the blood vessels of its players, so high are its notes, so forcefully must one blow to make them sound. 

But also because, like its confreres, No. 2 has a steady walking bass line, the solid quarter notes perfect for pacing one’s self, for staying in line, for moving along. 

Although now associated with rock or jazz, the walking bass line has long-ago origins. Some theorists consider Bach its early master. And while this is important for musicians to know, it’s equally essential for walkers. We need a beat that will pulse all the way down into our metatarsal bones. 

Although the trumpet notes of Bach’s Brandenburg No. 2 dance around on high, underneath them is the dependable meter of the walking bass. It’s a winning combination: the flourishes of the former, the steadiness of the latter. Together, they keep me going.

(Can’t imagine walking very far with this bass!)