It occurred to me. . .

. . .when I was out walking this morning, in my pajamas and down vest, that maybe you hadn't had a chance to get outside.  That maybe when you were in the shower, the sun wasn't even up yet, and maybe over cereal, the light was just dawning.

Maybe you didn't get to see the buds just out on the maple. . .

Or the tumescent purple iris. . .

Maybe you missed the morning's kiss on the water. . .

You might have been driving by the time the light held the ferns, teasing them into unfurling. . .

Maybe that which is in your care today kept you from hearing the pear tree, calling your name. . .

So I did it for you.  . .
Thank you for tending the world you are tending.  In return, I offer you this. . .

Farewells. . .

It started two weeks ago, Tuesday the 8th - well not really -  but let's just start there.  I said farewell to my workout appointment, as, walking out of the house, I happened to check email, and read a frantic and apologetic cancellation. That was all right, I would have more time to get ready to leave town that afternoon.

I said farewell to the possibility of leaving town that afternoon, as the car and I, all prepped for a two-day adventure of dinner and meetings, reached the corner.  I said hello to my exclamatory dashboard and then hello to my driveway, still warm from egress. I said hello to the mechanic and hello to everyone I needed to call to cancel and hello to an unexpected evening and morning at home.  I then said farewell to all the appointments for the rest of the week as we said farewell to the farm truck, our back up vehicle, as its fuel line sprung loose on a garbage run.

On Monday the 14th, still vehicleless, I said hello to all the people who were supposed to come to my house on Friday the 18th, for a weekend Art Camp, in an email about who was going to bring what.  Then Tuesday the 15th,  I said farewell to the possibility of help with the cleaning as that person had said hello to extra intensity in her life and I said hello to the extra tasks.  Then, still without car, I said farewell to my husband who was flying away and  hello to all the extra emails and the lovely visits and phone calls that came in on Wednesday, so at the end of the day, I said hello to some increasing anxiety about getting it all done.

On Thursday, I said farewell to the possibility of getting it all done with the care and attention that I normally would exercise, and said farewell to being able to serve freshly roasted coffee and homemade brioche and said hello to the toilet brush and the vacuum and clean sheets on the extra beds.  Thursday night, I said hello to my re-arriving husband and to dinner and to a shrinking list of what absolutely had to be done.

On Friday I said farewell to more on that list and hello to my house guests and hello to my sister and to all the groceries she fetched on her way and hello to letting it be as it was, however it was.  I said farewell to the possibility of the two people who couldn't make it and over the weekend, we said hello to a coffee machine malfunctioning, and on a woods walk, I said farewell to my glasses, and only on the third search did I say hello again.

On Saturday, my cross-the-street neighbor said farewell to the 2 p.m. pony party arranged for her four-year-old daughter and many mini friends.  It seems that before coffee the pony was discovered stiff in the barn.  Anticipating a large group of tiny ones expecting pony rides and getting death instead, she frantically arranged burial late morning while getting her hair cut and colored.  She also arranged a replacement pony but he turned out to be terrified of children, so farewell it was to the whole concept.  Luckily, nine baby chicks and the rabbit, as well as the run of the fields, turned out to be entertainment enough, and a good time was had by all.

Then on Monday, the same daughter squatted down and pooped while they were returning (for store credit only) the uneaten dead pony food, so a discreet farewell to her underpants. . .fine with the daughter, who proceeded to celebrate her new freedom by intermittently flashing bystanders as they finished their errands.

I remember months ago saying farewell to the idea of taking a boat to Louisiana to help rescue animals from the oil spill.  My sweet husband gently reminded me that, as upset as I was, as desperately as help was needed, a) we didn't have a boat; b) even if we borrowed one to lend, I didn't know how to drive one. I had a booth at the Farmer's Market, I did know how to bake, so I just put up a sign and the money went to the Red Cross.  Not much, but something, and we all felt a little bit better, for a little while.

I can feel some of the same chasm between my reality, my neighbor's reality, and the realities in Japan, the letting goes required in this neighborhood and the images of those gentle, stunned people,  in shelters, everything they own, irradiated.  Or everything they own, destroyed.  Or family and friends, vanished.

I keep flashing on butterflies, and the theory that when they move their wings, the breeze reverberates throughout the world.  It makes me wonder if, in my world, if I'm able to say my farewells and hellos in peace, if I can watch what arises and departs without too much attachment, without creating a fuss one way or the other, does this spread too?  Is it possible that this helps there be an iota more calm halfway around the globe?  I don't know, but I'm willing to test it. Clearly I have plenty of opportunity, and clearly, across that chasm, there is infinite need.

The Water. . .an Homage to Japan

So how does it happen, I wondered, as I stood under the flow of warm water this morning, my muscles relaxing under its caress, how does it happen that this same water, this same brilliance without which there would be no life as we know it, how does it happen that it turns deadly?

As I absorb yet another village, now rubble, hear the death toll mount, shiver at our folly revealed by precarious pools of radioactive wastes, what do I do with the mysteries?  I watch, from the warmth of my intact home, go to the sink, which is still where I left it, to get a glass of water, which still flows calmly from the tap, as it did last time.

I remember Hurricane Fran, its brief, intense fury.  I remember looking out at our back yard in Wake Forest, NC and seeing a new vista, giant oaks now horizontal. Our neighbor's house, crushed.  Another neighbor's, they still in their bed, their roof in the next county.  The world as we knew it, stopped. No running water, except in the streets.  No electricity. Nearby towns flooded.  Yet that was nothing compared to this, except that it is over there, sort of.

It is over there and isn't.  I've been fortunate enough to have visited Japan, not that long ago.  I remember its intense beauty, its careful use of its scarce land, the sense of ancient wisdoms contained in its architecture, the spare bones of its people. Much of that land, now covered in debris; architectures ancient and modern now piles of used material, many of its people now gone.  How will their ancient wisdoms speak about this unfathomable event?

I remember that during the days and weeks following the hurricane, our whole identity changed.  All former expectations were immediately absurd, even the most mundane ones, that one would bathe regularly for example, or what one would and wouldn't eat.  All of us, as a community, ate what was most thawed, as power wasn't restored for weeks, and not because nuclear reactors were damaged, threatening far worse fates. We bathed rather randomly, as I recall, grateful for the chance.

I remember when my father was in the various hospitals, dying as quickly as we would allow, as we could comprehend his true condition and release his technological supports, one level at a time. I was no longer who I was previously. I was a person whose father was dying, and grounded there, was attempting driving, or ordering a coffee.

Maybe it is from here that I can connect with the Japanese people, their culture dazed by its most recent history, by the history to come.  Maybe it is from what I found to be true, from within hurricanes and death and the eerie quiet afterwards: that is, that stillness follows.  There is collapse into the essentials. From here, releasing my God-given urge to understand, I can be quiet instead, acknowledge both the power and the blessing of the water, send my check and ground my prayers into the silence.

Maybe I can start here. . .

A little pleasure. . .

There are times, when mamas are falling, and computers are crashing, and plans are collapsing and cars are riding the last few miles to the shop on a prayer. . .that pleasure is called for.  Just pleasure, no excuses, no justifications, just pleasure.  Here are some of the ways it shows up at Briarpatch:

A large brioche, ready to be shared. . .maybe with some coffee?

A Moka Kadir expresso blend, roasted for a poet friend. . .maybe a cookie is the right go with. . .

Birthday cookies, created for a 79-year-old whose weakness is Little Debbie's. . .

Now, don't we feel better?

Mama - Part Two

[For Mama of the First Part - See Everything Shifts; the World Narrows below]

My mother is now settling back into what is normal at her house, buffeted with new prescriptions - bronchitis - and a (temporary?) wave of night sitters, in addition to increased help during the day.  All of us who love her are moving back into our lives, resuming abandoned tasks (taxes come to mind), each of us elsewhere.  The too-familiar wave of heightened concern that these health crises generate has begun to - once again - dissipate.  The deeper questions were - once again - put on hold while the acute situation crested with visits and phone calls and unaccustomed rides back and forth to the hospital.  The deeper questions: Is she safe living alone? Can she dispense her own medications any more?  Underneath all this: What is our responsibility - now?


There is part of me that stands back from this scenario, arms crossed, eyes widened, and says, barely containing herself:  Are you crazy?  Of COURSE she can't live on her own anymore.  Of COURSE it isn't safe for her to mix up her own chemical cocktails.  How much more evidence do you need?


Then there is the part of me sitting quietly over on the couch, who says,   So true.  How very true. . .  And maybe we want to think about this as well:  how much of her life energy comes from being in this house where she raised her children, loved her husband, where she has walked down the same hallway for 53  years to make her coffee in the same kitchen, perhaps now a little unsteadily.  What happens if you take this away?  What is left of her sense of herself, of her history, of her value?


There is no question that her physical self would be more reliably tended.  But what about the rest of her?  Not so easy, these questions.

Not so easy.  Meanwhile, with increased attentiveness from family and hired help, we four "children" watch warily from a distance, calling more frequently, letting these questions seep into our bones, wondering if we really have the luxury of doing so, starting when the phone rings in our own homes.

Mom's 88th birthday is April 25th, not so far from now.  I wouldn't have known this life without her.  I haven't known this life without her.  My father's leaving eight years ago was an earthquake, sudden, cataclysmic.  My mother, as is more appropriate to her personality and role is going more slowly, taking her time, and ours.  My father was always in our lives in short dramatic bursts.  We leaned back into my mother, assumed my mother, absorbed my mother, grounded ourselves through her, slowly, organically, automatically.  In some ways, we still do.  As her roots into this world of form continue to dissolve, we feel a bit lost, unmoored.  Or at least, I do.

How do we navigate these unknown waters?  I don't know. Perhaps we begin by holding her hand, and each other's and listening a little more deeply, expanding into the question.

Everything shifts; the world narrows

I had been cooking something else for this blogpost, something abstract about the blogging scene in general, in and around the commercialism of private life, the gradual blurring of private and public that we are witnessing as virtual voyeurism becomes de rigeur.  (Here's the link to the article that started all this musing: www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27armstrong-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine).

But that was before the phone calls.  The two on Sunday night, four hours apart, to let me know my mother had fallen, once, then again.  Each time, gratefully, she was OK.  Each time, gratefully, the blessed neighbor was home and came over to help her get up. As these occasions initiate, there was a flurry of calls and emails involving my mother, her sainted caretaker, and my mother's four children: two men, two women.  We all live at least four hours from my mother; we all love her beyond words. We have all been dreading the day when the "what if" conversation we have repeatedly attempted would materialize as our necessary decision, a decision bound to be against her will.

We all tried to believe the superficial story, to start with:  yes, she had fallen, but she was fine really, nothing was broken. Yes, she has fallen before, in fact often, but nothing has ever broken. It will be fine. But then each of us began to absorb the rest of it.  About the chest congestion that started last Friday, about the Delsym that she added to her list of powerful prescriptions (hydrocodone, Wellbutrin, sleeping meds, etcetera) every four hours instead of twelve.  About the furnace fan that broke at 2:30 in the morning (thank goodness the caretaker decided to spend the night and could take care of it).

Her doctor, who prescribed an antibiotic on Monday, but nothing for the congestion, is the same one who didn't catch my father's congestion eight years ago, the congestion that developed into pneumonia in the hospital when he broke his hip, the pneumonia that killed him. We sibs are wary of pneumonia, wary of this doctor, this doctor to whom my mother has been loyal for decades, as she has been loyal to her house, the house she raised us in, the house she doesn't want to leave.

There are so many of us now, this community of adults who only a few decades ago would have had our parents close, in the same house, in the same neighborhood, certainly in the same town.  And we prepared for that, as many of you know: renovating space in this house to my mother's specifications, handicapped accessible, and then she refused to come, begged to be allowed to stay where she is.  I grew to have compassion for her refusal to pull up roots.

This morning as I sit here, startled each time the phone rings, wondering if I should be packing, I am struck by the sense of my mother's recent life as a cascade, the consequences of one event bearing down upon the next, growing weightier and more intransigent with each eruption, each lava flow, settling in, cooling into stone. I know that prayer can move mountains. I know that stone is sacred too.

I am aware that being healed doesn't mean the same as being cured.  I am aware that all this is but a pinprick of light in the Great Mystery, that my mind is not equipped to understand but a tiny angle, but that surrender, somehow opens it all up. And my surrendering parts are all mixed up with my fearful parts, that are all mixed up with my Pollyanna parts. And all of them want my mother to not be afraid, and not to suffer, and to be back like she was thirty years ago, laughing and walking so freely.

...And, I just received an update.  Mom and Sonja with whom we are all so blessed, her caretaker, are headed to the hospital. . .And, another phone call.  Mom refuses to go, has gone back to bed. . .

An aside, perhaps;  My laptop got congestion about the same time Mom did, is operating as if molasses had been poured into its works.  I am working on this on the desktop, the computer we bought for her, with the big screen, when she was coming here to be with us.

Everything has slowed. . .we are waiting. . .