The smell out in the woods is amazing this morning. It’s damp and just beginning (on my second cup of coffee) to mist real softly. You couldn’t get better conditions for the smell of fall…in the woods…where no rake has ever been. It seems to be the wet leafs that make for the best pungency of this smell. It permeates – like when you’ve got a pumpkin pie in the oven.
I’m so sorry if you’re living in one of those states where the seasons don’t change – just about as sorry as I will be jealous a month from now. Even today, I’m sitting in my down jacket. It’s red and has a hood with black fur. It is not called for. It’s just that I’ve had this cold, and the worst symptom of it has been that I can’t get warm. I walk around feeling chilled to the bone all day. So I haven’t been here in the cabin for a while. I miss it. I know my time (before it is truly too cold to be here) is limited. It’s Saturday morning. How can I resist?
Yesterday, I had the down jacket sitting out so that I could wash it before I really need it (yeah, I know, it’s one of those chores you’re supposed to do in the spring). I wore it out to test the weather in the yard. Today, it’s made it possible to be out here. You feel so dumb about stuff like this. Dumb to wear your down jacket in the cabin so that you can write. Dumb to think it matters. Dumb that you didn’t think of it sooner.
I was in a shop yesterday – one of those convenience store kind of places. I was stopping on my way home from work and as I sat in the car checking my cash, realized I’d left it in the pocket of the last coat I’d worn (a hazard of this time of year – one day you’re in down and the next in a hoodie). After debating going home and coming back, I entered the store. I asked the guy behind the counter, “Do you take charge cards?”
He leaned over the counter, a big Arab guy, and asked quietly, “Why are you whispering? Yes. We take credit cards. It isn’t a big secret.”
I hadn’t realized I was whispering. We both laughed (real quietly). I said, “I left my cash in my other jacket.”
He says, “Everybody uses charge cards.”
I say, “Well, yeah, I know, but I don’t usually use my charge card for this kind of thing. I guess I’m feeling guilty.”
He says, “That’s good. If you don’t feel guilty you’re a perfectionist. If you feel guilty, you’re open for redemption.”
So I guess I’m open for redemption.
It was such a gentle, personal, exchange in an unexpected place that it kind of made my day. Sometimes it seems to me that it doesn’t matter what your philosophy is if you deliver it in a gentle way, in the time and place where the opportunity arises. I thought of it because it’s like feeling dumb for wearing my down coat. These mornings are when I have the gentle exchanges with myself: “You do what you’ve got to do. There’s nothing dumb about it. You’re here. Relax. Savor. Enjoy.”
Showing posts with label leafs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leafs. Show all posts
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Seeing Clearly
All hallows eve. The VA, Halloween 3 years ago. Cub flyers announcing flu shots whipping around the cold parking lot. Dad up on a high floor where the sky was both dull and wild. Calling Lou from there…upset or with an update…I don’t know.
Back in the sunroom again. It’s nearly 7 and there’s no distinction yet outside the window.
On my way to work yesterday, getting off the freeway and beginning the drive to the country, there was this patch of fall trees, all different colors in a row: yellow, magenta, goldenrod, rust, and it was one of those moments when you can be nearly overcome by the multitude, every little leaf colored so different, and each one either moving, falling, swirling, or waving. So this memory of one of our last family trips to Georgia comes to mind. Wish I could still say exactly how it went but it went something like this.
My mom and little brother (about 7 years old) are in back sleeping, dad driving, me keeping him company. Dad was a truck driver. He loved to drive. I do too. It was late. The song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” comes on the radio (remember that one?) And I get inspired to ask my dad for contact lenses.
This was not something one usually did. Big purchases went through Mom. Dad was, in her words, “cheap.” He was cheap on practical matters, generous on the frivolous, or with the “good times” money. I was a vain fifteen-year-old who wouldn’t wear my glasses.
Who knows what it was – the drive or the song – the got him to say yes.
A month or so later, with my new contacts in my eyes (the hard kind they gave you back in the 70’s), I took a walk to my neighborhood park where I walked so much it was like my second home. I had this feel for the place, sort of like I do now for my woods, maybe because it was where I took my emotions for safety (even if it wasn’t always safe). And that’s what the fall leafs along the highway reminded me of – how I walked into that park that day and could not believe what I was seeing or what I’d been missing. The details! The singularity! The abundance of each thing when seen with clarity. All was crisp in a way it hadn’t been in so long. Crisp and clear, dazzling, dizzying.
I was so grateful to my dad. I was getting tears in my eyes with that gratitude, and thinking how I’d tell him about it, about my walk, and about how stunning it was, and knowing he’d appreciate it. He’d think the money (and it was a lot then), was worth it. He wouldn’t chide me that I could have seen it all along if I’d only worn my glasses. He wanted me to look pretty as much as anyone.
I get to my client’s home and he’s not there. I call the office and they suggest that I walk down to the shed. There’s several sheds, and a big barn and a boat house, a patch of roto-tilled soil as richly black as any I’ve ever seen. The ground is almost boggy with moisture, clods of dirt everywhere. Raise your eyes a moment and your foot gets snagged as if by seaweed. Swollen fruit is hidden in the tall grass, and droppings from big animals laced with corn, and along the sides, abandoned cars, and up the hill tall pines. I call out a few times and then fall silent and follow the trail around the barn and out into the field. Coming back, I leave the trail and climb the hill beneath the house, feeling as if I’m walking where no one’s walked in years. I call in to the office to report and head back a different way.
When I hear a car on the gravel drive I return to the house. I tell my companion what a lovely walk I had and how grateful I am.
Back in the sunroom again. It’s nearly 7 and there’s no distinction yet outside the window.
On my way to work yesterday, getting off the freeway and beginning the drive to the country, there was this patch of fall trees, all different colors in a row: yellow, magenta, goldenrod, rust, and it was one of those moments when you can be nearly overcome by the multitude, every little leaf colored so different, and each one either moving, falling, swirling, or waving. So this memory of one of our last family trips to Georgia comes to mind. Wish I could still say exactly how it went but it went something like this.
My mom and little brother (about 7 years old) are in back sleeping, dad driving, me keeping him company. Dad was a truck driver. He loved to drive. I do too. It was late. The song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” comes on the radio (remember that one?) And I get inspired to ask my dad for contact lenses.
This was not something one usually did. Big purchases went through Mom. Dad was, in her words, “cheap.” He was cheap on practical matters, generous on the frivolous, or with the “good times” money. I was a vain fifteen-year-old who wouldn’t wear my glasses.
Who knows what it was – the drive or the song – the got him to say yes.
A month or so later, with my new contacts in my eyes (the hard kind they gave you back in the 70’s), I took a walk to my neighborhood park where I walked so much it was like my second home. I had this feel for the place, sort of like I do now for my woods, maybe because it was where I took my emotions for safety (even if it wasn’t always safe). And that’s what the fall leafs along the highway reminded me of – how I walked into that park that day and could not believe what I was seeing or what I’d been missing. The details! The singularity! The abundance of each thing when seen with clarity. All was crisp in a way it hadn’t been in so long. Crisp and clear, dazzling, dizzying.
I was so grateful to my dad. I was getting tears in my eyes with that gratitude, and thinking how I’d tell him about it, about my walk, and about how stunning it was, and knowing he’d appreciate it. He’d think the money (and it was a lot then), was worth it. He wouldn’t chide me that I could have seen it all along if I’d only worn my glasses. He wanted me to look pretty as much as anyone.
I get to my client’s home and he’s not there. I call the office and they suggest that I walk down to the shed. There’s several sheds, and a big barn and a boat house, a patch of roto-tilled soil as richly black as any I’ve ever seen. The ground is almost boggy with moisture, clods of dirt everywhere. Raise your eyes a moment and your foot gets snagged as if by seaweed. Swollen fruit is hidden in the tall grass, and droppings from big animals laced with corn, and along the sides, abandoned cars, and up the hill tall pines. I call out a few times and then fall silent and follow the trail around the barn and out into the field. Coming back, I leave the trail and climb the hill beneath the house, feeling as if I’m walking where no one’s walked in years. I call in to the office to report and head back a different way.
When I hear a car on the gravel drive I return to the house. I tell my companion what a lovely walk I had and how grateful I am.
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