The last day of March. We’re setting a record here. The first time in 132 years that we haven’t had snow in Minnesota in March. I still hang on to the idea that there must be one more snow, if not snowstorm. Donny does too. This was too easy. An Easter week that blesses all of us who didn’t go out of town for spring break. 70 degree afternoons. Not even any mud right now. Rain predicted and yahoo! Ten minutes of rain, and the dry, early-green will pop and be verdant in that way that will hurt your eyes and just about make you cry for joy.
I remember this one year when I traveled south in early spring when all was still a mess here: leftover snow and bare trees. The landscape had gotten stripped of color and everything was looking dirty. When we got to Kentucky and started to see green it was like balm – not a jump up and down joy – but a relieving joy, a grateful joy, a "soaking it in with starving eyes" joy.
We’ve got this beautiful conservatory in St. Paul at Como Park. When the winter gets too long and you can’t take a trip, you go there to feast your eyes. Your nose doesn’t mind either. Rows of garden-like flowers set around pools under a dome, humidity high, lavender and pink and yellow and blue and GREEN and spicey-sweet frangrance. Then you walk to the next room and it is jungle-like beauty and there is moss and ferns and more GREEN almost, than you can bear.
Most mornings lately, I can’t start the day the way I’d like. One thing or another lingers that I “don’t know what to do about” and I feel I’m starving for movement. With the sun falling across the greening grass, such uncertainty coupled with purposefulness feels like more nonsense than it does at any other time. Who cares!
Who cares! You calm down. You start believing that everything comes to you in the right time.
I’d like to say that’s the end of the story but I’m not sure it is. There’s something in that “starving” feeling. There’s something in that I “don’t know what to do about it” feeling that is like a starvation diet where you’re not getting what you need. You feel as if you’re withering away, losing yourself to things undone or matters unresolved, and so the need is there to take small steps…but which ones?
In the lonesome-feeling monochromatic days of the end of winter/beginning of spring, there’s something that makes you go find the beauty your eyes crave. You’ve had enough drab. Your whole system needs an infusion of color. You feel like you’ve been in an Army barracks and surrounded by cement and olive green too long. Or simply in the house with a dog, two cats and two birds and that certain indoor smell that’s not fully relieved until you can throw the windows and doors open and get a cross breeze that refreshes the whole place. You need a CHANGE and you need it bad. You need to walk where the ground is padded beneath your feet, or where the flooring is slate and put together like puzzle pieces of white and pink and gray like it is at the Como Conservatory.
Maybe you can’t rush the change to spring but you’ve got to do something for yourself. Got to feed your soul as well as your eyes. Got to get a feeling of movement going if only just because you know you need it. It’s not that it makes any sense to fret about it, I’m just saying that there’s legitimacy in the feeling.
You let yourself admit your anxiousness for things like the coming of spring, but sometimes don’t admit to yourself those other matters that are also cravings of the soul. You want to say pshaw...let it go...it will come when the time is right.
But there are times when you know you need to do something and, even if you don't know what, you know that action is part of the craving. You need to get yourself where it's GREEN. Get on a green branch (as my friend Mary says). Get going. Get on with things. And it helps to admit it.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The Small View
My eyes got hooked by the waving of the flag this morning. It filled this one corner of this one windowpane, and after a while of regarding it from that angle, there was something marvelous about it: the small view.
Now my flag is a poor specimen of a flag. My dad would not be pleased. The flag is one of the few things he had that “there’s a right way and a wrong way” attitude about.
We had a flagpole in our front yard growing up but not right away. I think we got it about the time I was ten ‘cause I remember him taking me out there – right out in the front yard in full view of the busy street, to learn to fold the flag, one triangle at a time. The wave-able nylon flag was already floating overhead and it was a military issue flag, the cotton kind that they put over the coffins of veterans, that we practiced on. He kept telling me to pull it tight the way you have to do your sheets if you want to put them on your bed without wrinkles, or fold them in your linen closet in that neat way that you see in other people’s homes. I still have to lay mine on the bed to do my folding since I don’t feel the need to call someone to help me pull them tight. But I can remember doing that now and again with the girls when they were young, and the way the sheets would get pulled out of their little hands when I’d try to snap them taut, and that’s about what happened with my dad and me in the yard, and of course, you’re not supposed to let the flag hit the ground.
We’ve got a finer flag pole than my dad ever had and I had a real intention to keep a flag waving in his honor after he died, but for some reason I can’t get too upset over my flag’s frayed edges. The pole stands too close to a couple of spindly trees that nonetheless grow taller every time Donny cuts them back. Then the flag waves and catches on the edges of the branches.
The flag didn’t catch once this morning, just waved and waved, sailing this way and that with what seemed as if it must be a high strong wind even though the trees themselves weren’t doing much swaying. On the ground, eye-catching in a lower pane of the window, a green tarp full of leafs flapped and wiggled like a giant lizard.
It was mesmerizing to watch the day dawn through that one windowpane with the undulating flag, its movement like a symphony. I’d never done it before. I liked the look of the stringy edge, like one of the fashionable silk scarves designed with a trail of fringe, probably for that very feel of movement and lightness.
After a while Henry came in and sat with me. Since the time change he’s been watching the dawning of the day with me fairly often. He bursts into my room announcing that the day is here and then, still awash with sleep, does about the only cuddling he still does, and the only quiet sitting, and he notices when the sun comes up like a ball and when it doesn’t. This morning he, too, noticed the flag.
Now my flag is a poor specimen of a flag. My dad would not be pleased. The flag is one of the few things he had that “there’s a right way and a wrong way” attitude about.
We had a flagpole in our front yard growing up but not right away. I think we got it about the time I was ten ‘cause I remember him taking me out there – right out in the front yard in full view of the busy street, to learn to fold the flag, one triangle at a time. The wave-able nylon flag was already floating overhead and it was a military issue flag, the cotton kind that they put over the coffins of veterans, that we practiced on. He kept telling me to pull it tight the way you have to do your sheets if you want to put them on your bed without wrinkles, or fold them in your linen closet in that neat way that you see in other people’s homes. I still have to lay mine on the bed to do my folding since I don’t feel the need to call someone to help me pull them tight. But I can remember doing that now and again with the girls when they were young, and the way the sheets would get pulled out of their little hands when I’d try to snap them taut, and that’s about what happened with my dad and me in the yard, and of course, you’re not supposed to let the flag hit the ground.
We’ve got a finer flag pole than my dad ever had and I had a real intention to keep a flag waving in his honor after he died, but for some reason I can’t get too upset over my flag’s frayed edges. The pole stands too close to a couple of spindly trees that nonetheless grow taller every time Donny cuts them back. Then the flag waves and catches on the edges of the branches.
The flag didn’t catch once this morning, just waved and waved, sailing this way and that with what seemed as if it must be a high strong wind even though the trees themselves weren’t doing much swaying. On the ground, eye-catching in a lower pane of the window, a green tarp full of leafs flapped and wiggled like a giant lizard.
It was mesmerizing to watch the day dawn through that one windowpane with the undulating flag, its movement like a symphony. I’d never done it before. I liked the look of the stringy edge, like one of the fashionable silk scarves designed with a trail of fringe, probably for that very feel of movement and lightness.
After a while Henry came in and sat with me. Since the time change he’s been watching the dawning of the day with me fairly often. He bursts into my room announcing that the day is here and then, still awash with sleep, does about the only cuddling he still does, and the only quiet sitting, and he notices when the sun comes up like a ball and when it doesn’t. This morning he, too, noticed the flag.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Not Acting
Had a tough day yesterday. I don’t write that much on the good days so if I seem to be a chronic whiner, this might be why (or else I just am, which relates to this story I’m about to tell). No, really, I had such a bad day yesterday that, as I went to bed, I knew I needed Anne Lamott. I needed deep…with humor. Man, did I need it.
I’ve kept Bird by Bird on my bedside floor for years, but when I went looking for it the other day (a sure sign that the “serious” bug bit at least a few days ago), I couldn’t find it. I thought for sure that if it wasn’t there it was in one of my sunroom bookshelves or stacks. When I first looked, I scanned. Still couldn’t find it. Forgot about it.
But last night, tired as I was, I was determined. I went book-by-book through the bookshelves and stacks. I asked Angie if she knew where it was. I looked again, and then trudged off sorrowfully to my bedroom where I then thought, ‘Hell, if I can’t find Bird by Bird, I’ve gotta’ find something else.”
I went and got Traveling Mercies. Whew!
I swear to God just having it in my hand began to lighten me up. As I was getting into bed, taking my nightshirt out from under my pillow, I thought, ‘This is one of the two things I learned from my girls’ dad.’
They came home from one of their infrequent weekends at his house twenty-some years ago, and put their little duds under their pillows because that was the way it was done there. I thought it was brilliant.
It got me trying to remember what we’d done with their pajamas before that solution came along, and what I’d done with mine as a kid. I couldn’t remember either.
My mother actually did her perfect housekeeping so deep beneath the radar that I can’t remember putting pajamas or toys away...ever. Things were set out; things disappeared. This was not the case with me, so maybe the girls’ pajamas would lie at the end of the bed (or under it). I thought I might remember hanging my own gown on a hook of the closet from time to time.
The other thing the girls learned from him (the ever to remain unnamed dad), and passed on to me, was brushing your tongue (as long as you had your toothbrush in your mouth anyway.) I’d never heard of such a thing but it made sense to me. The first time I stuck mine out to examine it, I couldn’t believe all the gung on there. Now there are even toothbrushes with tongue scrubbers on the back (and having a grandson in the house I’m well aware of the tongue scrubbing Oscar of “Shark Tales.”)
Such strange thoughts. Light thoughts. Freeing my mind from “heavy” thoughts.
Maybe it’s one of the reasons you ought to write about your good days more often…or maybe not. My misery wasn’t spiritual angst this time but concern over my grandson’s new pre-school. His mom is starting school herself, and she’d decided it would be a good time (Henry just turned three), to get him in a school environment too. She chose a Montessori School and I fell in love with it. That’s what I could have written a blog or two about – how cool it was.
Watching a little boy, just about Henry’s age, tending the plants. You want to feel your heart just about burst, go to one of these places and watch these kids in their tiny aprons and watch their small fingers as they go about their business so precisely: unrolling a mat, carrying a plant, unscrewing the spout from a real (glass) water sprayer, filling it and walking back with total tightrope or beauty pageant balanced concentration. Turning the plant by inches and spraying all around. Putting everything back where it came from.
Or observe the little girl making art prints. Or hear the hush of children not screaming.
Then…after the falling in love, and after determining it was just the right fit for Henry…THEN it gets revealed that the hours of her school, and the hours of his, don’t mesh.
Now let me tell you that when your grandson has lived with you since birth, and you begin, along with your daughter, the hard work of moving them, and you, along to independence, you feel like an ogre if you want to say, “This doesn’t allow you to be independent!” You want to cry because she didn’t simply go out and find a daycare situation that met her needs, and you want to cry because she found a school that’ll meet her son’s.
When you’re trying to carve out a little time for something like writing (or your life), and you see another something that’s going to whittle that back once again, and then you think you’ve got to balance it with ‘what’s best’ for a three-year-old boy…well let me tell you…you feel it.
This sandwich generation stuff is exasperating.
Simply talking about it makes you feel selfish (at best), especially when your husband still thinks he and you can do it all, and your daughter is making all the appropriate noises about wanting to do it herself. I got myself downright sick over it. I’m still burping as I type.
We managed to work out a reasonable-sounding solution, and I comfort myself with the idea that this is what I’m going for as much as anything else. I’m going for a new and desperately needed “not going along” stance in life…you know…when you begin to say “No” to a few things so you can say “Yes” to a few others…and then, sometimes, you compromise (and hopefully don't have too many things to whine about).
I turned Traveling Mercies to a page with a corner folded down and read about a time when Anne’s son was sick, and her terror, and read that “sometimes when you need to feel the all-embracing nature of God, paradoxically you need to hang out in ordinariness, in daily ritual and comfort.” She talks about friends sitting on the bathroom floor with her (where she went to hide her terror from her son) and how it was like the old days when they were on LSD and “sat close and breathed together.” She says, “It would be great if we could go in and out of this place without needing drugs or Ahab on our trail – go into the mystic or the eternal present or whatever we might call it out here in California. But mostly it seems like we can’t do it when we have our act together, because we can’t do it when we’re acting.”
See why I needed her? This “not going along” thing is like not acting. I needed to work through my feelings for Henry and my feelings for me. My protectiveness of his spirit and mine. I even needed to consider my daughter a little bit. And so today, even though I’m still burping, my concerns are up and out and if it all works out as it was negotiated, Henry will get his time, and I’ll get mine.
Quote from Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, Anchor Books, a division of Random House, 1999, p 167
I’ve kept Bird by Bird on my bedside floor for years, but when I went looking for it the other day (a sure sign that the “serious” bug bit at least a few days ago), I couldn’t find it. I thought for sure that if it wasn’t there it was in one of my sunroom bookshelves or stacks. When I first looked, I scanned. Still couldn’t find it. Forgot about it.
But last night, tired as I was, I was determined. I went book-by-book through the bookshelves and stacks. I asked Angie if she knew where it was. I looked again, and then trudged off sorrowfully to my bedroom where I then thought, ‘Hell, if I can’t find Bird by Bird, I’ve gotta’ find something else.”
I went and got Traveling Mercies. Whew!
I swear to God just having it in my hand began to lighten me up. As I was getting into bed, taking my nightshirt out from under my pillow, I thought, ‘This is one of the two things I learned from my girls’ dad.’
They came home from one of their infrequent weekends at his house twenty-some years ago, and put their little duds under their pillows because that was the way it was done there. I thought it was brilliant.
It got me trying to remember what we’d done with their pajamas before that solution came along, and what I’d done with mine as a kid. I couldn’t remember either.
My mother actually did her perfect housekeeping so deep beneath the radar that I can’t remember putting pajamas or toys away...ever. Things were set out; things disappeared. This was not the case with me, so maybe the girls’ pajamas would lie at the end of the bed (or under it). I thought I might remember hanging my own gown on a hook of the closet from time to time.
The other thing the girls learned from him (the ever to remain unnamed dad), and passed on to me, was brushing your tongue (as long as you had your toothbrush in your mouth anyway.) I’d never heard of such a thing but it made sense to me. The first time I stuck mine out to examine it, I couldn’t believe all the gung on there. Now there are even toothbrushes with tongue scrubbers on the back (and having a grandson in the house I’m well aware of the tongue scrubbing Oscar of “Shark Tales.”)
Such strange thoughts. Light thoughts. Freeing my mind from “heavy” thoughts.
Maybe it’s one of the reasons you ought to write about your good days more often…or maybe not. My misery wasn’t spiritual angst this time but concern over my grandson’s new pre-school. His mom is starting school herself, and she’d decided it would be a good time (Henry just turned three), to get him in a school environment too. She chose a Montessori School and I fell in love with it. That’s what I could have written a blog or two about – how cool it was.
Watching a little boy, just about Henry’s age, tending the plants. You want to feel your heart just about burst, go to one of these places and watch these kids in their tiny aprons and watch their small fingers as they go about their business so precisely: unrolling a mat, carrying a plant, unscrewing the spout from a real (glass) water sprayer, filling it and walking back with total tightrope or beauty pageant balanced concentration. Turning the plant by inches and spraying all around. Putting everything back where it came from.
Or observe the little girl making art prints. Or hear the hush of children not screaming.
Then…after the falling in love, and after determining it was just the right fit for Henry…THEN it gets revealed that the hours of her school, and the hours of his, don’t mesh.
Now let me tell you that when your grandson has lived with you since birth, and you begin, along with your daughter, the hard work of moving them, and you, along to independence, you feel like an ogre if you want to say, “This doesn’t allow you to be independent!” You want to cry because she didn’t simply go out and find a daycare situation that met her needs, and you want to cry because she found a school that’ll meet her son’s.
When you’re trying to carve out a little time for something like writing (or your life), and you see another something that’s going to whittle that back once again, and then you think you’ve got to balance it with ‘what’s best’ for a three-year-old boy…well let me tell you…you feel it.
This sandwich generation stuff is exasperating.
Simply talking about it makes you feel selfish (at best), especially when your husband still thinks he and you can do it all, and your daughter is making all the appropriate noises about wanting to do it herself. I got myself downright sick over it. I’m still burping as I type.
We managed to work out a reasonable-sounding solution, and I comfort myself with the idea that this is what I’m going for as much as anything else. I’m going for a new and desperately needed “not going along” stance in life…you know…when you begin to say “No” to a few things so you can say “Yes” to a few others…and then, sometimes, you compromise (and hopefully don't have too many things to whine about).
I turned Traveling Mercies to a page with a corner folded down and read about a time when Anne’s son was sick, and her terror, and read that “sometimes when you need to feel the all-embracing nature of God, paradoxically you need to hang out in ordinariness, in daily ritual and comfort.” She talks about friends sitting on the bathroom floor with her (where she went to hide her terror from her son) and how it was like the old days when they were on LSD and “sat close and breathed together.” She says, “It would be great if we could go in and out of this place without needing drugs or Ahab on our trail – go into the mystic or the eternal present or whatever we might call it out here in California. But mostly it seems like we can’t do it when we have our act together, because we can’t do it when we’re acting.”
See why I needed her? This “not going along” thing is like not acting. I needed to work through my feelings for Henry and my feelings for me. My protectiveness of his spirit and mine. I even needed to consider my daughter a little bit. And so today, even though I’m still burping, my concerns are up and out and if it all works out as it was negotiated, Henry will get his time, and I’ll get mine.
Quote from Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, Anchor Books, a division of Random House, 1999, p 167
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Our Deepest Fear
My friend Susannah Azzaro did a rewrite (inspired by The Given Self) of a Marianne Williamson quote that a lot of people are familiar with. I'm sharing it below. It's only the second time since I started my blogs that I posted the same thing in two places. I've done that with this because I find it pretty wild and inspiring and funny and deep, and because it's about the kind of radical acceptance that she and I, and maybe a few of you, are cultivating and struggling over. To me, it's the kind of acceptance that sometimes causes us to fall down and sometimes to rise up...and to not always know which it is we've done, and...to begin to be okay with it in our own quirky, worried, or fiesty ways.
Marianne's Version:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
A Return To Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3 (Pg. 190-191).
Susannah's Version:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are powerful beyond measure. Our deepest fear comes from our belief that the crazy goofy shit that comes up for us isn't part of our light. We ask ourselves, What if the feelings I'm having are wrong? Actually, who are you not to have whatever feelings do come up? You are a child of God. Your discounting of your Given Self does not serve the world. There is nothing more enlightened than sharing your funny, goofy, neurotic, radical self with the world. We are all meant to shine in this way, just as children do. The problem is that we discount our feelings, impressions, and experiences if they don't fit in with what we perceive to be the status quo. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us -- and the glory of God can be pretty messy and painful and hilarious sometimes. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own messy, painful, and hilarious light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The last nice day
I feel like a raving lunatic. It’s funny because all the things that I might think made me feel this way were okay as they happened. Not ideal, but okay. A bunch of cooking was going on and there was a baby in the kitchen. It was an overly ambitious project on what’s going to be the last beautiful day for a while.
Donny was going out to Dad’s to work on Ian’s new washer/dryer, and I thought his mom might go out for the ride. I told her, “The weather’s going to turn tomorrow.” But she was determined. In one of those moods where she’s got something on her mind to get done and that’s all there is to it. So I calmly adjusted my expectations and did whatever I was asked in that way you can have of going about things when you don’t know what you’re doing. Just following instructions.
The dish being made sounds like shish luban and Katie wanted it done because she had so much luban in her fridge and it had been made for the purpose of creating this dish, and too much time had gone by (in her estimation) since it was made. So I stirred the luban for about two hours. Katie wanted to relieve me. She said, “That’s a monotonous task.” I said “I’m good at monotony.” Anyway, that went fine even if it was a little chaotic (Cheerios spilt on the floor and crying and yelling and stuff like that).
Then I came home to the beautiful day and the quiet house and didn’t want to leave but I’d told my mom I’d stop by for a couple of things having to do with a shower we’re giving this weekend and from there my plan was to grocery shop. Mom was thinking ahead to all the things we might need – the work to be done, and the TV trays and all that, and I was feeling anxious to get going, which I hate about myself. When I finally got out of there (it was only a half hour or so) I started to rebel about going to the store but had to because Donny’s got corned beef in the crock pot and I said I’d get cabbage and carrots. I’d planned all day to do my shower shopping since I had to go to the store anyway, but by then I thought, “Hell, the weather’s going to turn tomorrow. If I just run in for the cabbage and carrots I can still get a little of the day.”
Of course, the wait in line was one of the longest ever. The woman in front of me with a nametag pinned to her shirt was obviously just off of work and not about to let me go in front of her with my two items. I got in one of my “I hate this” moods, which I get into often in grocery stores, and I was truly appalled that there wasn’t a single express lane for a person like me. I was really pissed to be having to plan my afternoon around food in the first place, even while it crossed my mind to be appreciative of how seldom I have to do it.
I think grocery shopping is much more of a chore than it used to be. Maybe it’s not, but it seems so.
Got home, grated and chopped the carrots as fast as I could, threw in the potatoes that I’d washed yesterday, thinking we were going to have the meal for St. Patrick’s day, which didn’t turn out due to the lateness of the time by which we got started on it, and then calmed down just a tad as I walked the carrot shavings out to the compost pile, which hasn’t been turned since last year. But at least I was out the door.
Then I thought I’d sit in the sun by the back steps since there wasn’t much of it left and the falderal of carting things out to the cabin, where it’s not nearly as sunny, seemed as if it would be wasted effort given the hour (ALREADY 4:00!!). But I couldn’t see the laptop screen at all in the sun, and so I made the trip, and have been typing furiously since, just because I can, with the cabin door open and Sam chewing sticks in front of it.
Whew! It takes a lot to get myself un-riled up – which I got somewhere during the day for no particular reason except maybe a combination of reasons and that feeling of wasting a day that’s going to be the last nice day for a while (according to those in the know). It’s 60 degrees and tomorrow will be 40. That’s enough reason to put everything off that you can…and to not spend ten minutes in the grocery line for TWO ITEMS. (I am in a "typing with caps” kind of mood).
Joe Soucheray (a regular columnist for my daily paper) wrote a column years back about the horror of summer weekends when you try to get in about 25 things so that you can relax. That’s what it reminded me of. Living with a rush that you can’t help but feel.
But I’m far too familiar with it. I do it all the time. Rushing to my quiet room as if I can’t wait another minute to get there, overly stimulated like a kid with one of those labels, but one who knows that they’ll calm down if they can just turn it all off for a while.
Why writing feels like turning it all off I can’t say. You’d think you’d sit in the sun on the back steps after going through such conniptions about being out in it, and it being gone tomorrow and all that, but there’s a need in me to get it out, to just blow my mind through my fingers the way emptying a stuffed nose into a hanky clears my head. And to be perfectly honest I feel deprived if I can’t get my hour for this somewhere in my day. Add it being the last nice day of the month to the mix and you can maybe see where I’m coming from…or not. Doesn’t matter. I feel better.
Donny was going out to Dad’s to work on Ian’s new washer/dryer, and I thought his mom might go out for the ride. I told her, “The weather’s going to turn tomorrow.” But she was determined. In one of those moods where she’s got something on her mind to get done and that’s all there is to it. So I calmly adjusted my expectations and did whatever I was asked in that way you can have of going about things when you don’t know what you’re doing. Just following instructions.
The dish being made sounds like shish luban and Katie wanted it done because she had so much luban in her fridge and it had been made for the purpose of creating this dish, and too much time had gone by (in her estimation) since it was made. So I stirred the luban for about two hours. Katie wanted to relieve me. She said, “That’s a monotonous task.” I said “I’m good at monotony.” Anyway, that went fine even if it was a little chaotic (Cheerios spilt on the floor and crying and yelling and stuff like that).
Then I came home to the beautiful day and the quiet house and didn’t want to leave but I’d told my mom I’d stop by for a couple of things having to do with a shower we’re giving this weekend and from there my plan was to grocery shop. Mom was thinking ahead to all the things we might need – the work to be done, and the TV trays and all that, and I was feeling anxious to get going, which I hate about myself. When I finally got out of there (it was only a half hour or so) I started to rebel about going to the store but had to because Donny’s got corned beef in the crock pot and I said I’d get cabbage and carrots. I’d planned all day to do my shower shopping since I had to go to the store anyway, but by then I thought, “Hell, the weather’s going to turn tomorrow. If I just run in for the cabbage and carrots I can still get a little of the day.”
Of course, the wait in line was one of the longest ever. The woman in front of me with a nametag pinned to her shirt was obviously just off of work and not about to let me go in front of her with my two items. I got in one of my “I hate this” moods, which I get into often in grocery stores, and I was truly appalled that there wasn’t a single express lane for a person like me. I was really pissed to be having to plan my afternoon around food in the first place, even while it crossed my mind to be appreciative of how seldom I have to do it.
I think grocery shopping is much more of a chore than it used to be. Maybe it’s not, but it seems so.
Got home, grated and chopped the carrots as fast as I could, threw in the potatoes that I’d washed yesterday, thinking we were going to have the meal for St. Patrick’s day, which didn’t turn out due to the lateness of the time by which we got started on it, and then calmed down just a tad as I walked the carrot shavings out to the compost pile, which hasn’t been turned since last year. But at least I was out the door.
Then I thought I’d sit in the sun by the back steps since there wasn’t much of it left and the falderal of carting things out to the cabin, where it’s not nearly as sunny, seemed as if it would be wasted effort given the hour (ALREADY 4:00!!). But I couldn’t see the laptop screen at all in the sun, and so I made the trip, and have been typing furiously since, just because I can, with the cabin door open and Sam chewing sticks in front of it.
Whew! It takes a lot to get myself un-riled up – which I got somewhere during the day for no particular reason except maybe a combination of reasons and that feeling of wasting a day that’s going to be the last nice day for a while (according to those in the know). It’s 60 degrees and tomorrow will be 40. That’s enough reason to put everything off that you can…and to not spend ten minutes in the grocery line for TWO ITEMS. (I am in a "typing with caps” kind of mood).
Joe Soucheray (a regular columnist for my daily paper) wrote a column years back about the horror of summer weekends when you try to get in about 25 things so that you can relax. That’s what it reminded me of. Living with a rush that you can’t help but feel.
But I’m far too familiar with it. I do it all the time. Rushing to my quiet room as if I can’t wait another minute to get there, overly stimulated like a kid with one of those labels, but one who knows that they’ll calm down if they can just turn it all off for a while.
Why writing feels like turning it all off I can’t say. You’d think you’d sit in the sun on the back steps after going through such conniptions about being out in it, and it being gone tomorrow and all that, but there’s a need in me to get it out, to just blow my mind through my fingers the way emptying a stuffed nose into a hanky clears my head. And to be perfectly honest I feel deprived if I can’t get my hour for this somewhere in my day. Add it being the last nice day of the month to the mix and you can maybe see where I’m coming from…or not. Doesn’t matter. I feel better.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Cabin Fever
Out in the yard, the snow is gone. Not even a trace of it is left. Henry’s plastic playhouse is propped up. Can’t tell what Donny stuck beneath it – a board of some kind I suppose. Only days ago it needed to be angled for all the snow to melt and run off. It’s green, red, and blue sides, tilted and lopsided now, fill the yard with a rakish air.
Donny’s already had the conversation with me about changing things too. He gets ambitious at this time of year. He wants to move the back yard fence deeper into the woods. I say, “It sounds like a lot of work,” and hope he doesn’t do it. But he can if he wants. There’s a lot more woods than yard.
I might get ambitious toward the end of May. Memorial Day. That’s when you plant. That’s what the old-timers like my dad always said.
The rivers are rising and the first shoots of the perennials are coming up through the leafs and birdseed.
At the convenience store, the Arab gentleman told me the weather would last. I said, “No. We’ll have another snow storm.”
“Is it predicted?” he asked.
“Uh…no. We just will.”
The only other person I’ve said it to is my mother. I don’t want her to get too despondent when it comes. She hasn’t lived here her whole life. It seems to make a difference…as if…by only spending 50 years in Minnesota, you somehow miss it that there’s always a major snow storm in March, usually just after you’ve put your boots away.
Since I have the cabin out back, it gives a whole new meaning to cabin fever. I was out there a week ago and swept her out and washed the floor and the rug, wiped down the desk and the table. It’s one of the more amazing feats of spring that I can go out and find her unchanged…right down to the crumbs on the couch.
You don’t ever get that feeling entering a room in a house. As if the room just sat there and waited for you to return, and was undisturbed during the wait. I’d left the last newspaper article I’d brought with me on the desk. I should have checked the date. It was an announcement for an Anne Lamott, Trish Hampl combo…both of them speaking on the luminous. I never use that word, but I could imagine it as I opened up the cabin that first day, and as I await the snowstorm with a new, but still short pile of books (three), and the Fahrenheat.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Melting
I’m beginning to feel that feeling of having too much on my mind, too many areas of focus, too much involvement in too many things. My feelings have been hurt by someone other than my daughter in recent days. It’s a sure sign of overload. I need some time and space.
Luckily, it’s almost cabin time. I went out to visit her yesterday but only stayed a minute. It was a combination, I suppose, of cold, and things to do, but it wasn’t that cold and there wasn’t that much to do.
Still, at this time of the year, when it’s just topping 40 degrees, there’s a need to prepare the cabin and yourself for cabin time. It’s way too chill to go out in the morning. But if the weather holds, I can tromp through the snow with my heaters early Saturday morning, and spend a few hours there in the afternoon. My soul yearns for cabin time.
The change in the landscape since I wrote last has been enormous…inner and outer.
The snow is melting. I was on the freeway for the first time in a while the other day, and the banks to either side are free of snow. I don’t know if this is due to the steep slope of the hills going down to the freeway trench, or if the major highways have the majority of snow removed all along, but it was startling. There it was – the dirty looking signs of spring. And under the tires the potholes, and in the paper, even on the front page, the beginning of the pothole discussions that will go on until the snow falls again, complete with diagrams that show the anatomy of the hole. I meant to read it but never did get around to it. That’s the way things have gone lately.
This morning there was a hawk perched over the yard, and the attendant crows, but the hawk’s gone now and I didn’t see him leave. That’s the way things have gone lately.
The icicles have melted, the parking lots are almost free of their dangerous patches of dirty ice, the birds are singing, and when the sun shines, people are out in force, walking their dogs or their kids, but I haven’t been out for a walk. I spent last weekend doing taxes. It’s a sure sign of spring, and a sure sign that this coming weekend, I need cabin time.
I’m a little down. I get this way from time to time. There doesn’t have to be a reason, but there usually is, and I usually look for it, and it rarely has little to do with anything other than the feeling of needing time and space. This time there’s the extra component of having given a talk and the doldrums that come after. That is done. I try to move right on to the next big thing on the horizon, but the energy isn’t there….
So I’ll get my cabin time this weekend, and maybe shake off the winter doldrums, and feel the heat of the sun falling through the window onto my face, and remember that the landscape doesn’t change in a flash. There’s a slow melting. While it happens, there’s a refreshing that goes on, but also a few potholes.
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