Saying Goodbye

My mother called yesterday, to say goodbye.  The Big One.  The Big Goodbye.  Or that was how it seemed.  That seemed to be the air between her sentences.  Oddly, she was laughing.  But then the vast majority of the time, when on the phone, my 88-year-old mother is laughing.  She is happy, or appears to be, when on the phone with me.  It’s not me, because she can’t hear half of what I say.  Sometimes I suspect that she is happy from a decision that happy mothers aren’t as bothersome, that when their lives have steadily collapsed into the recliner in the living room, when there are only so many questions that can be asked to keep the person on the other end of the telephone line, that happy sounds will extend the contact, if only just a little.  Only just a little is worth it.

Either that, or it is the combination of pain medications, antidepressants, sleeping pills, and the remainder of the complex chemical soup that is her bloodstream now.  The bloodstream that keeps pumping through her oh-so-temporary form, the one that gave rise to mine.

My mother called to say that if she blew away (ha ha), she just wanted me to know she loved me, that she had been thinking about me the whole day before.  It turned out that was the day she was watching the news about Joplin, or what used to be Joplin, Missouri before the tornadoes twisted it into rubble.  It seems that Greeneville, Tennessee, a little town at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, which doesn’t get tornadoes, has been getting tornadoes recently and one was predicted for yesterday.

The one before showed up despite the astonishment of these quiet people, unaccustomed to excitement of any kind, and roared its way through a small settlement in the county.  It touched down in one of those places named after its creek to which we, growing up in town, felt slightly superior, for no discernible reason.  I suppose the fact that “we had”  the county courthouse was reason enough.  They all came to us, the rest of them out there.  We in town had the official answers, the main banks, CPA’s like my Dad, and now. . .the WalMart.

It showed up and roared through, despite the fact that tornadoes don’t happen in this part of the world.  Buildings were flattened anyway, trailers destroyed.  Yesterday, they were predicted again, the day after Joplin, Missouri disappeared.  The same week that the neighbor across the street died when she wasn’t supposed to.

Mrs. Lowery wasn’t supposed to die because people who are fixtures in your life aren’t supposed to just up and disappear.  I am not sure that I ever had a real conversation with her.  And in the 52 years that my mother has lived across the street from Mrs. Lowery, they only had the one.  That was when Mrs. Lowery showed up on the front porch, and asked my mother to make a phone call for her.  This was kind of like answering the door and finding Jesus there, somebody you kept meaning to go see, to have a closer relationship with, but kept falling into simple comfort, knowing that they are there, and having that be enough.

Maybe if we hadn’t heard the gunshot, all those years ago, when Sonny, the middle of the five children, (Phyllis, Patsy, Sonny, Gary, Kathy)  hadn’t had absolutely enough of the abuse. He’d finally had enough at the same time he’d finally gotten hold of the gun.  And right over there, in that front yard, right out our kitchen windows, he’d shot and killed his father.  Maybe if we hadn’t heard it, maybe if it hadn’t happened, coffee could have been shared in one kitchen or another. 

But in which kitchen could it happen?  Our kitchen, where my father came home from his board meetings at the bank, or his Presbytery meetings at the church, where the six of us ate dinner in silence so Dad  could watch Walter Cronkite? Or their kitchen, familiar to Phyllis and Patsy, around whom I somehow felt wary.  Somehow I smelled it on them: they knew things, I wasn’t ever sure what things, but it seemed not quite right.. Kathy was my sister’s age, seven years my junior. And she said out loud, one summer when the two of them were seven, Tough titty, said the kitty, but the milk’s still good.  

She said “titty”, out loud.  It was the first time I’d heard anybody say that word, out loud.  I was fourteen.  She was seven. She came across the street, from her yard to ours, and said titty out loud, big as you please.

Their Dad worked at Pet Milk, and wore a soft cotton uniform, and brought home the discarded cardboard cartons of ice cream mix, a rich mixture to which the milk was later added, and sometimes we would get to help clean them out with our spoons. Why would you shoot a man who would bring home giant cartons of ice cream and stay outside with you, in the yard, with his own spoon?

We didn’t talk about it, of course.  We would no more talk about it, as a family, then we would say “titty”, or “pregnant”.  (Jesus’s mother was “with child.”)

The mother of all those Lowery’s was a gardener and was frequently in that front yard, quietly tending her irises on the bank. In fact, I watched her, during one of my recent visits to my mother, I watched her work her way slowly, from one flowering plant to another, leaning on a cane.  That same front yard, where the shot still echoes. That same yard, always with too many cats, the cats that are never fixed, the ones that come over and wait under my mother’s birdfeeders.

My mother called me last week about Mrs. Lowery and her astonishing demise.  I didn’t know her very well.  I should have invited her over more often, at least once. I don’t know my neighbors, any of them really.  

My Mom’s caretaker, Saint Sonya, was downstairs doing laundry while Mom was on the phone with me.  There was a doctor visit scheduled for later, about the time the tornado was predicted.  Thank goodness the neighbor’s funeral was last week.  That family, with all their mysteries, is now in the next phase of their collective lives. Just in case we are next, my Mom called, to say goodbye.

Returning. . .

I was trying to remember how many years I've made this bread, this oatmeal bread.  The first time was in Wake Forest, in that kitchen full of light, that kitchen we moved into in the mid 1980's, after living in an Airstream camper for two years while renovating.  My dear sister had given me Beard on Bread, a bible at the time by the late, renowned James Beard. I found within it a recipe that sounded intriguing, one of the author's favorites.

I have made modifications over the years, reducing salt, using honey instead of molasses, some whole grain flours.  It has became our "house bread", made over and over in the big yellow glass bowl that was my mother's until my dad modernized her kitchen.  It is a recipe I come back to when I need to get my hands in the dough, when I've been too long away from the gentle rhythms of kneading, of rising, of slow and steady progression to maturity.

My version has the loaves in the refrigerator overnight.  This morning, while the song sparrow does her roosterish chore as she does each morning at 5:30, announcing the day, these cold loaves slowly warm up on the counter.  They will go in the oven when they have quietly become 62 degrees, up from their 34-degree bed.

I noticed when I took them out earlier that their tops looked a little caved-in.  I know why, after all these years.  It is because yesterday, when I was making them, I was careless, and I let the yeast work, more than once, expanding the dough more times than this formula can handle.  I had to stir it down, more than once, forcing it to do its work more than once, because I was too distracted to follow its lead. Those of you who are bread bakers will know what I mean.

But even if you are not a bread baker, you will know what it means when one fights the natural rhythms of something living. And yeast is living, especially when encouraged with honey and flour and a warm kitchen.

There will be bread.  It will taste wonderful, as usual.  But the texture will be different, looser, and there may well be a space between the body of the loaf and the top crust, unusual.  It will work out, differently though, then if I had been paying attention, if I had been more respectful.

Yesterday was the same day I finally planted the seed potatoes that had been growing sprouts in the dark cellar.  It was past time, way past time.  I'm almost embarrassed to tell you about it.  The long shoots just keep growing when it is past time, seeking the light.  This is supposed to happen underground, within the deep rich earth that will give rise to more potatoes, new potatoes.  They aren't supposed to have to wind through air, searching.

I planted them anyway, though it is long past time.  We have had an unusually long, cool Spring, and perhaps it will all work out.  Perhaps there will be more potatoes.  I don't know.

While I was in the garden, overgrown for lack of tending, I picked strawberries and ate emergent pea pods off the pea vines, making their wild way up the trellis.  Or trying to.  Those of you who have grown peas know that they have these sweet tendrils that reach out from the vine to find something to hold onto.  If the gardener isn't paying attention, if she's off somewhere with her red suitcase, instead of helping them find a support, they will wind onto each other, dragging the whole shebang to the ground, a mass of vines and confusion.  I unwound what I could, removed the broken pieces, and apologized to them, silently.  Even though there was no one listening, it just seems wiser to keep it to yourself when you are apologizing to pea plants.

I've been away, you see.  Since we've talked, I've either been away, or changing sheets for houseguests.  As much as I love it, and I do, if I do it too long, too continuously, my roots begin to dry up.  If I water too shallowly, for too long, I start moving to the surface for my nourishment, and I'm increasingly vulnerable to fluctuating conditions: enough water, too much, enough sun, too much.  There isn't the steadiness, the consonant rhythm, the reserve that comes from quiet, consistent tending.

I'm getting back to that.  Slowly.  I can feel it.  I'll let go of this imperfect bread, taking it today to it's intended recipient.  The potatoes will not be as prolific as they would have been, had they had a more loving start.  The peas will be fine, although perhaps not as photo-ready as they would have been in tended columns.

Meanwhile, thanks for waiting.  Thanks for your patience.  It's good to be (almost) back. . .

Here we all are. . .

There are moments when the fabric of your Universe tears, and you stand, open-mouthed, disbelieving.  The moment before, you were skimming along with your list in hand, measuring your day, one checkmark at a time.  Then suddenly - no, with sharper edges than suddenly - there is a hole, gaping, yawning open, speaking in its own indecipherable language.  Nothing is as it was.

I came around the corner, my own street, that same curve I have come around many many times, still fastening my seatbelt. I was on my way to a meeting, a planning meeting actually, planning for the future.  Of course, that is what one does, one plans for the future.  Something different, to the left:  a car teetering on the fence, upside down.  A body in the soft pasture grass, another man standing, rubbing his head.  Two other cars had already stopped. A man on his cell phone, another administering to the man on the ground.  I had no cell phone, nor medical expertise. I drove on, eerily, warily, listening intently for the sound of emergency vehicles.

I watched as I passed car after car on the main road.  How could they not know this had happened? When a thread of the tapestry is pulled so violently, why are we not all instantly aware?

I stopped at the Volunteer Fire Department to make sure they knew.  Yes, another group was on its way, it turned out, but it seemed so slow.  This event, which had happened in an instant, was evidently taking place in a vat of molasses.

I went on to the meeting, a bit shakily.  There we worked on scenarios for seven years out, ten years out, what needed to be done.  At one point, I stopped, told a version of this story, and then other stories were told, of those moments, those cosmic potholes. Then we went on, shaking our heads, planning for this phantom, this future.

The next day,  I got the email.  One of the dearest women in the world had just met with her oncologist.  The cancer is back and has settled in, this time with custom coordinated drapes and bedcovers.  After having both breasts removed and being in remission for fourteen years, this dear dear woman got the news.  She and her dear dear partner got the news:  it is back, it is in her bones.  The Universe rents open.  Please God. . .please.

The week before, a dear dear long-time friend went shopping, a bit bewildered, buying prostheses wrapped in silky camisoles.  Her cancer is back as well, and soon there will be no breast, where her babies suckled, long long ago.

I am just home from a trip over the mountains, a chocolate cake perched precariously, celebrating my tottery mother's 88th birthday, her pile of prescriptions on the kitchen counter.  It was at this same counter that my father stood, Memorial Day weekend, 2003, and then suddenly, was on the floor, his hip broken, which led to the hospital, which led to pneumonia, two more hospitals and the ventilator, and two months later, we were at the church, receiving.

It's fine to sit, early in the morning and meditate and feel suffused with the fullness of life.  It is fine to nod our heads, yes oh yes, this life is temporary, this body is but a temple, we are all animated by the One. Yes oh yes.  All that is true. . .and I honor that.

But right now, right now this minute, I am so pissed off about this temporary shit.  I don't want my dear dear friends to have to go through this again.  I don't want them, or anyone else, to feel the physical pain, the fear, the anguish of it.  I don't want it for them, and if I'm honest, I don't want to feel this either. Right now, right this minute, I mightily protest this temporary shit.  I shake my fists at the gods.  I don't want to lose them. I don't want to lose them.

I just don't want to lose you, any of you. . .any of you.

Those moments. . .

I didn't expect church.  I was already weary, having driven to the mountains early that morning.  I had been sitting all day, in one (lovely, thought-provoking) workshop after another, meeting new people, breaking for meals.  It was now after dinner, in the middle of a tornado-esque storm, lightening splitting the darkness through the window behind him.

The workshop leader had introduced herself.  Heavens, she really had been to prison- twice. She really had been a hard drug user.  When I read her short story, prior to choosing her group to attend, I automatically assumed she was lying, all fiction writers do, and this was particularly good fiction.  But in her story, her description of the dull fear, the interdependence behind those grey walls seemed charged somehow.  I wondered how she had researched it.  It never occurred to me that a successful writer of multiple published novels could also be a convicted junkie.

Wake up, Martha.

Each of the workshops that day followed a format.  The leader would talk for awhile, and then issue a writing prompt, a topic, for a free-write, which meant we all put pen to paper and wrote furiously for about ten minutes. Depending on what came out the end of that pen and how we felt about it, we then had the choice to read, out loud, to a group of strangers: different ages, colors, etcetera, all eager as new puppies.

For this one, the last of the day, our ex-junkie/inmate successful novelist leader asked us to made a list of parts of our personalities that were hidden, for whatever reason, locked up.  The writing prompt was then to choose one of those, and give it voice.  Terrifying.  As I said, one hides these for what seems like good reason, at least mine were/are.

It was then time to read and we went along fine. Some were more moving, more touching than others, some funny, lots of "passes", always testimonial to either the power of the prompt, the power of the response, or the power of hesitation to blow one's cover.

Then we circled around to this older man: soft face, bearded, glasses, the kind you would want as your grandpa, or who would become your favorite uncle.  He began to read, and immediately, his voice broke. When it did, my heart melted. I was newly alert.  As he read, it became clear this was a long, old battle and that he was tired, tired, tired.  He plead with this part of himself to let him "break through;"  the voices that were telling him to pull back, be careful, don't risk it, were rubbing against the grindstone of aging, you don't have that much time left.  Will you leave with your real work undone? 


We all knew, all of us, all ages, all colors, etcetera.  We all knew those voices.  When he finished, there was an audible silence.  We then broke into applause, applause for his courage, for his willingness to speak this voice for all of us, the only time we had been collectively so moved.

I talked with him the next day, outside the Auditorium, thanked him.  He seemed a bit abashed, a bit surprised it had happened. Church is like that, real church.  . .

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. . .