March 20, 2021
Today is the vernal equinox, the sun crossed the equator at 2:37 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time. The sun suspended over our questions for this phase of our lives, and oh, glorious ever changing moon, give us surcease, you that silver faced glimpse of who our Mother Earth might be, you, guardian and steady while we, tormenting, fomenting, forgetting, remembering, struggle still here for what is right, true, accepting of all.
Last night I watched a documentary called Amend: About the 14th Amendment. It was so beautiful and powerful I want everyone, everyone to see it. The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.”
In the past year, how time flies even as it seems to stand still: My new left hip still still needs to walk more. I painted a number of terrible watercolors outdoors in the woods; camped in the tall cedars, rode my bike and watched spring sprout into summer and fade into fall. Took off for the east coast in mid-October. My physical therapist had introduced me to the author, Michael Connelly and his detective, Harry Bosch; thanks to them I’m listening to jazz more often and I really like the album, by Sonny Rollins, “Falling in Love With Jazz” which I never would have found without Harry Bosch.
In the past three weeks I’ve travelled from Gautier, Mississippi, to St John, Florida, to Myrtle Beach, to Little Pee Dee State Park, and Andrew Jackson State Park in South Carolina, then to North Carolina where I stayed somewhere…..hmmm, do I have to remember everything? Oh yeah, Medoc Mountain, I like never to have gotten there, cheesh, but it was lovely in the late afternoon sun.
Then on through Virginia, and a long day driving north to Annapolis. My daughter had just had her second vaccination and was out of it for a day and a half. It seemed too quickly over, the visit, so sweet - granddaughter, funny son in law, and the big noisy dogs, a couple of nice hikes. The weather, so dreadful across the country left my plans in a lurch – no one says that much anyone, to be left in a lurch – what’s a lurch anyway? Why it’s an abrupt, unsteady, uncontrolled movement or series of movements. Well, that’s been the weather for sure and when you think about it this whole last year has been a series of lurches.
It’s not a good time to drive west across the country, too risky. Snowball will get a little vacation in Annapolis, the neighbors kindly offered space for her storage. There she will disappear under a blanket of yellow-green spring pollen and be on hand for the big 17 year hatch of the mighty cicadas. Hang in there, Snowball, I’ll be back at the end of May.
After a week of unpacking and packing, I hop on the airplane and fly through Minnesota to Seattle. Sleep almost instantly overcomes me on both stretches of the flight; perhaps behind the two masks, the plastic face shield and my warm wooly winter clothes, I was slowly asphyxiating.
In Seattle I took the shuttle to Enterprise car rental and in a jiffy, had a Nissan speedster of some sort that after months of lumbering along in my camper, Snowball, seemed dangerously wild and reckless like a horse just out of the spring barn. Daffodils are in bloom now, such yellow against the purple heather below the heavy gray blanket of wet cloud. Up ahead, going north, clouds hovering like the arms of old sweaters hung by Mother Nature to rain-wash the winters’ sins away. This is awesome really, to come home after five months away; my daughter said on the phone today, “You missed the worst of it,”
meaning the weather of which she has said more than once, “I don’t think I could do it again. Too dark.” It’s the old wet sweaters in the sky, the constant drip.
Speaking of old sweaters, on Saturday I went to the Alger Seed ’n Swap, a rural cooperative organic milieu behind the fire station, by the creek under tall Douglas firs. Here, lots of hand knit wool; women in the smoky corners of the community hall knitting up a storm; honey, wreaths, jams for sale while outside under white canopies, plants and shrubs, spring’s tempting in the still wet cold. Old friends seeing old friends, some of us pretty old actually, needing to introduce ourselves because of scarves, winter hats, steamy glasses and double masks. “Oh, it’s you!”
In the last 8 months I’ve driven through 17 states, through dozens of small towns and villages, past hundreds of acres of farmland, past beautiful vistas, been caught in a blizzard, watched two planets merge, seen our values violently clash in a spectacle that took our breath away. We’re still masked and wary unless we’ve lost our marbles and think this is still a hoax. At the organic garden seed swap, by the wood stove indoors, a friend and I shucked fava beans from their dried black shells, chatting and catching up.
Children ran around soggy from playing in the mud. I witnessed a sad scene as a young woman I know had to confront an older man who refused to wear a mask as he shouted, “Health, I think of health! Not disease!” And her disappointment and worry about just that, his health, as she asked him to please leave this gathering of which he’d been a stalwart supporter for years. How difficult this time has been for so many, in countless ways. In this small cooperative community, it is worrisome indeed when someone veers dramatically from one’s accustomed path. Will he be OK? We share a collective responsibility to look out for one another, made more acute this year in our isolation.
There is the telephone; long phone conversations more and more a blessing. Staying connected, for each of us, the tangled threads of love stretch wide beyond what we can see of one another. The heart’s love doesn’t stop. When the man, distraught and angry about a mask shouted, “I think of health!” My young friend said, “I think of love! And I love you!” The woman knitting across from me said, “He hasn’t been himself since this started, this past year. We all suffer in different ways.”
Speaking of telephones, it’s worth a trip, if you’ve a mind and time to go, to visit the Alexander Graham Bell museum in Cape Breton, Canada. Actually, I am thinking of going, not quite that far this summer, but to Maine again. I still need to photograph the post office in Lubec, Maine, having missed it after the trip to Cape Breton in 2016, thinking Calais, Maine, was the eastern-most post office, but no, it is Lubec. The traffic then at the customs’ booth was such a snarl, I went on past it to Campobello. (By the way, it’s high time for another Eleanor Roosevelt.) I might as well try again for Lubec. What else am I doing with my life, but this wandering? Photographing post offices, painting messy watercolors in the forest………I wonder as I wander out under the sky…Time for another Woody Guthrie, too.
I started out this evening saying, “Yoo-hoo, I’m home.” How easy it is to meander from the plan, the page, the purpose. A drink, dinner cooking, a look outside at the puddles and heavy sky, the plum and cherry trees in soft bloom. More than fifty years I’ve lived in this northwet corner of the country always chilled to the bone this time of year. All the hopeful flowers and fields of daffodils belie the damp that seeps bone deep. The first year here I waited and waited for spring and in July said to the dairy farmer at the row of mailboxes on the rural road where we lived, “Mr. Mesman, when is spring coming?” “Honey,” he said, “Spring has come and gone, this is summer.”
Summer! It was 50 degrees and raining. It mattered not, the tulips, roses, the flowering quince, lilac, and rhododendron, apple blossoms, it was cold, no blast of humid heat that lingered into an evening cricketed with song. How many times did I say, “When are we getting out of here?” Reminded again and again of Mark Twain’s quote: “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer on Puget Sound.”
What is it we call home when our parents are gone? (I can’t imagine myself moving back to Newton Highlands, Massachusetts). Our children now moved away with families and jobs and worlds of their own? And yesterday, at the Seed Swap Meet I bought a new blue wooly beret to hide my neglected overgrown winter hair. My daughter said on the phone, “I didn’t want to say anything, but I would have cut it for you.” So this morning, I chopped it off and feel better already. One thing about this pandemic is that many of us have learned to cut our own hair and now, we enjoy wearing hats. Now if the sun would just make an appearance.
One of my friends said on the phone the other day, “I thought if I came home to where I grew up, to my roots, that I would be happy, but after my mother died, what am I doing here?” Time left vs time spent, these are the questions we ponder.
And the aging questions, what do I do now? What is the creative spark? How it varies and changes, with the season, the weather, for those of us with many different interests the spark ignites something one day and the next fizzles rather than burns. Out upon it, I’ve been home three whole days together and have been glued to my comfy chair. Did I get really lazy on my journey, staring into the bayou, walking through the woods of a morning, watching birds and squirrels, and the two armadillos snuffling through the long pine needles, listening to my thoughts rattle around in my mind, reading another Harry Bosch detective novel? Perhaps today I am still lacking oxygen and need to get out for a walk. Get moving!
Looking back, I don’t know about South Carolina. Lindsey Graham needs to ride the outback of his state, do something about the litter along the highways and byways, what an image, Lindsey, stop with adoration of you know who and get your own state in order. Lest you think I am one sided, what’s the deal, Governor Jay Inslee, about the homeless in Seattle? I was shocked, I’ll have to say shocked, at the state of things under the freeway going north from the airport. Ragged tents perched precariously on muddy slopes circled by piles of soggy trash, wet cardboard boxes. I know it is not the governor’s fault, but the image of such despair doesn’t bode well for our collective future. Nowhere else on my travels did I see such messy destitution. In some communities the homeless are hidden, not so in Seattle. We need to face this inequity. Bootstrap pulling is a lot more complicated than you think. How easy it is to be judgmental when we see something we don’t like.
You can talk to four or five friends and they’ll all have a different take on the situation. I have a friend who receives food supplies that people deliver to her porch. She bakes muffins, hard boils eggs; others come to her door to retrieve and deliver her contributions to the homeless. Another friend, a young girl, sets out boxes, socks in boxes for homeless. Others send money. Most in-person volunteering stopped a year ago and now our giving has taken different forms. The problems have not gone away. When I mentioned a tiny house project the other day, my friend said, “It’s complex, everyone is unique, you can’t
put people into little boxes.” This great experiment called democracy leaves us baffled and confused, ever mindful that as we struggle to put food in our own pot, others go hungry. How do I help? Can I make a difference? Remember Bob Dylan? Are the times really changing or do we keep recycling the same themes?
“Now you don't talk so loud, Now you don't seem so proud About having to be scrounging your next meal, How does it feel, how does it feel? To be without a home, Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”
Yes, it is most complex, we all roll along, weather be damned, pollen making us sneeze and wheeze. We are all different, but all alike in so many ways.
With thanks to you, special daughter, Sarai Stevens, for excellent conversations; your commitments to community and family are truly remarkable.
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