For the Boirds

In bed this beautiful spring day listening to the birds.  A particular bird whose song sounds like the opening of Beethoven’s 5th.  Da da da dum.  Da Da Da Dum.

Robin, who is a formidable whistler replies:  da da da dum.  Back and forth they go and I am imagining an orchestra of feathered instruments all pitching in;  the chickadees, the woodpeckers, the sparrows of all stripes, towhees, juncoes, robins, the juvenile eagles with their hovering mothers, the crows, the mourning doves (what are they mourning?), and the less frequently heard, the pheasant.

Glorious sounds heard from a warm bed in the morning.

 

Innocence and Experience

Experience. Look at trees as you walk through the woods. See how they grow. Are they straight, do they look like bent elbows, are they tortured looking , or do they seem perfect, perfectly aligned, perfectly symmetrical?

All living things react to their environment. Perhaps that is why I hate contorted tree varieties—they have been contorted not by the environment but by human intervention. They seem to me to be ugly stunted things.

Nothing that has been shaped by nature seems ugly to me. When you look at a beach pine, torn to bits, stunted, low growing, I think that’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it describes a interaction between the earth and one of it’s denizens.

People are shaped in much the same way as trees. The reason I am writing this is because I was thinking about how my experience with my environment has shaped me.

For ill or for good, we are all shaped by what happens to us.

I was talking to one of my daughters yesterday . She is in the process of trying to understand why she is the way she is and how she can change and grow beyond the storms of her childhood.

This made me reflect. I too have spent long years picking apart my childhood, my early adulthood and the ways in which I developed mechanisms of coping which leads me to who I am today.

So often our coping contorts us, leading us away from who we are. It is hard after awhile to differentiate between what we might have been to who we seem to be.

But, this is the randomness, and the awful beauty of nature. We work on it, it works on us.

We become. We are becoming until we die.

 

More Dick

Dead-eye Dick.  Thinking about my Dad this morning.  The hairy eyeball.  When my Father looked at you in a certain way, that pale blue Germanic eye did not rest on you lightly.

His look carried gravitas and censure.  I felt the same way I do if I’m stopped by a cop.  I may not know exactly what I’ve done, but I’m sure I’ve done something.  Confessions spring to my mind and they go back years.

I used his look at work in dealing with wayward children.  Just a look, no language, no emotion.  Stopped them dead in their tracks…for a minute.

I tricked my Father at the end of his life.  He was living alone in the condo after my mother died.  My brother John and sister Jane would come over and handle all his doctor’s appointments, and were responsible for his care.  My sister Chris and I would come as we could to provide respite care.

As my Dad’s health was increasingly compromised, though, it seemed as though he needed someone to be with him all the time.  That was too much.

Dad did not want to move to John’s house.  We didn’t blame him, none of us blamed him.  He was a man used to his own rhythms.  What seemed like a small life to us, was enough life for him.

I came down from Bainbridge and picked my Dad up knowing that I would be bringing him to John’s house and I would not be bringing him back home.

We knew Dad would fight this.  We knew he would rage.  I did it anyway.  We got to John’s, we ate dinner, we hung out and I told Dad that I would not be taking him home.

That was the last time I saw the hairy eyeball.   That furious blue eye stabbed me to the heart.

Shame on Me

Just now I was thinking,  “What the fuck do I know?  that is, WTFDIK?”

A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson “…may your reach exceed your grasp” had flown into my mind as I looked at the pictures of Rob and Wilder.

What does that mean?  Does that mean always be reaching beyond what you can grasp?  Does grasp mean grab, so it’s a statement against materialism, i.e.,  greediness.  Does it mean reach for the stars?  Is that silly?  I think that is silly.

I read a lot of Emerson when I was getting my degree in Literature.  I did a paper on the transcendentalists and was just mad about them for a while.

Then they got tiresome.  They didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.  They seemed rather grim for a bunch who were reaching for the stars.  Folks who reach should also jive it seems to me or they are just going to overextend themselves.

Be on the earth.  Be grounded, and then reach.

Here he is, looking his transcendental best.  I just started reading some of his essays and decided that he’s pretty darn good.

Listen to this :  “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”

Another:  “The earth laughs in flowers.”

And another:  “The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing.  The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.”

 

 

So you see what happens.  I get locked into his quotes and they go on and on.  It’s like hanging out with my grandmother.  He’s good, he’s wise, but he’s an addiction.  After a while I find myself thinking with quotation marks in my head.  STOP.  STOP.

Under that stiff collar and tight cravat, beat the heart of a good man, a wise man.

But, I’m sorry, Ralph,  I can’t pick you up again.  You may have jived, but I can’t live with air quotes.  One piece of your mind candy and I need to walk away.

 

Taxes

Robin:  “I was very shrewd this year.”

Me:  “What?”

Robin:  “I didn’t earn anything this year.”

Thinking all the time.

The indispensable thing

I suppose some people might think that last post was gushy.  I don’t mean it to be.  I’m not usually a gushy person.

When you’ve been through all kinds of personal shit in your family, when you’ve been dropped to your knees and all you can do is pray, you welcome the respites.  You welcome the grace.  You say “I will share this love, this joy, these simple celebrations.”

We never know how long the good times will last.  We know that pain and sorrow are around the corner, if not for you for someone you love.  Share the light when you have it, cup it in your hands and let it warm and guide you, because darkness is on the other side of the hill.  It waits as you walk along sunlit roads or drink wine at a favorite cafe in the sun, or just revel in a Spring day.

Joy is ephemeral, and hopefully, so is pain.  So sail through both, but share the joy.

Wellspring

Rob and I went to Edmonds on Tuesday night so we’d be up and ready to babysit our grandson Wilder early Wednesday morning.  I don’t write this for credit.  I write this to say how having a grandson (and he is grand), has changed the tenor of our marriage.

I am not quite sure how.  Robin glows when he sees Wi and Wi glows right back at him.  Their faces light up like Christmas trees.  Their joy in each other opens me up like nothing ever has.

When I feed him his bottle, or these beautiful little purees they have now, Wi studies me and I study him.  Our regard is serious, less fireworks; more deliberative.  “Who are you?   You sound like my mother but you aren’t my mother.

I can be pretty territorial—mine, mine.  But I don’t feel this with Wi.  Rob’s love for his grandson increases my love for him and my grandson.  It’s like we’re wrapped in a love burrito and we can’t get enough of it

When Rob and I had our own kids there was just so much pressure and stress.  This is stress free parenthood where you can do a day and walk away.  We can bathe in the arms of familial love without getting strangled by familial and interpersonal needs.

What joy.  I am so grateful.

Teaching Wilder to reach, then crawl.

Lyft Up

Rob’s foot and his overall health continue to limit his ability to walk comfortably, so we were dependent on Lyfts in Boston and Washington.  Travelling by Lyft is travelling the world without leaving home.

Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Uzbekistan, Russia, El Salvador, Guatemala.  In each of these cabs we were transported both to our destinations and to their countries.  Especially in Washington D.C., we heard stories of great hardship and hope.  Human stories on a familial level and on a political and global level.

America is still a place of hope.  The West is the destination for pulling yourself into a better life.

The El Salvadorean came with his two brothers and two sisters having left the oldest sister to take care of their mother.  They live and work communally.  They are painters and construction workers, nannies and house cleaners. In their off hours, they do Lyft.

They send money home to their sister, they get together and help one another make it and survive in this strange new world.  They work and hope for better things.  They celebrate holidays both the new ones and the one’s they brought from home.  They do not have their own families yet but they hope to have them when they are better established.  The next generation will be on firmer footing then theirs.

They are the very spirit of America.  They are immigrants and they lift us up.  The tide that brought them to our shores will lift us all.

MLK and the the Beloved Community

Rob and I were in Washington this past week which coincided with the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assasination.

We went to his Memorial and as I walked around the looked and listened and just took all of it in,  I thought that the idea that such a man and such a soul could exist on our planet is a sign of hope.

It was a rainy and blustery day.  The cherry blossoms were in full swing and across the Tidal Pool, you could see the Jefferson Memorial.  School children in brightly colored uniforms screamed and raced around the Memorial.  They were celebrating Spring and being out of overheated and antiquated schools.  There was pride there.  Great pride in a great American.

Two buses pulled up and disgorged Christian pilgrims and religious spirituals flooded from the speakers high above it all.  All in all, a glorious cacophony.

I had an odd impulse (odd to me at least) to fall on my knees and pray to him to save us.  What do you do at a Memorial?  It was like being at a huge outdoor Church with all of the faithful gathered to listen and learn and mourn and pray.  A place of worship.

“As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way!”

Show us the way…We are all looking for a resurrection.  We want someone to save us.  I want someone to save us.

What a horrible burden for any man or woman to take this weight.  It is asking someone to die for our sins.  We exalt them and then we crucify them.  Martin Luther King knew he would die.  He said “I may not make it with you…”, but he was willing to take up this burden and carry it for all of us.

Change will come when each of us reaches out to become more like the heroes we revere.

We must save ourselves, we must drive out hate, we must be the history that curves toward justice.

No one man is enough.  No one woman is enough.   Grow your own salvation.  Get up off your knees and do the work.