Spring Peepers

I feel an anticipatory, uncomfortable pressure in spring when nature is pregnant with life that has not yet appeared. My husband feels it too, every year. Maybe you do also?

I marvel and get blissed out by plants emerging from the ground and then blooming as my favorite wildflowers. But the beginning of spring is an awkward time. There is an uneasy strain in the flower bulbs as they try to push their stalks up thru the muck. And I feel a little embarrassed for the spring peepers when they appear prematurely and start singing for their mates. (I learned that these small frogs can freeze, thaw, sing; then repeat: freeze, thaw, sing, in a single season. Ouch! That seems painful!)

My antidote for the awkwardness of early spring is to get out and ‘walk through it’ literally and figuratively. Uncertainty is of short duration. We get to the other side soon. My tension lifts when I see that the plants have successfully emerged, and that the baby animals are thriving.  

The scents of tulip magnolias and crabapple blossoms bring a smile to my face, as we enter that splendid and rapturous time that is full spring, leaving the snow behind.

Beauty is not exclusive to youth. (Because I am old.)

When an older lady walks through the locker-room nude I have an urge to catch up with her to express my thanks.

What takes place under our clothing is needlessly frightening and shocking because our culture insists that it be. Our acceptance of body-shame for getting older is ridiculous. It’s small, ignorant and absent of reality. 

I confess that I, too, suffer the shame of which I am speaking. I am working on it. When I am 90, you’ll see me smiling proudly at the bus stop, wearing nothing but a hat.

Who?

I locked eyes with a Barn Owl in the woods this morning. We were quietly bird-watching. Me, casually; her, hungrily.

I had donated my hat to my five-year old for the day. Growing cold, I turned to trek back to the car when a clumsy paper grocery bag with feathers swooped an arc in front of me and sailed onto a limb. I trudged behind her and when she swiveled her head to peer at me with a wide, white face and black eyes, I cried out in delight.

I often feel like a misfit in this world I call home. I feel like an alien being. What about this elusive creature who resembles no one else in the forest and preys on her distant cousins? Not too many friends I suppose.

Perspective from the Middle Seat

I am a middle child. My role in the Road Rambler on family trips was to confine myself to the “diaper”, the narrow strip between the two backseats. This required I contort myself to avoid touching my brother or sister for five hours. My family trip duties en route also included, optimally, not peeing my pants and not reporting their bad behavior.

In adult life, when my husband flumps a limb to my side of the bed I have a violent reaction. The sanctity, the dignity, of my small space must not be violated.

Thankfully, I have overcome the tendency to pee my pants.

Swim Little Feller, Swim.

Spiritual thought du jour: Water Striders (insects) must consider themselves mighty because of the much larger shadows they see of themselves on the sand they float above. Please don’t let me be fooled by my reflection into thinking I’m larger than I am.

Twist-tied

My mother collects used twist ties, carefully straightened and stored upright in an old Vienna Sausage can. Dating back to the ‘60s, her twist ties are ever-waiting, ever-replenished, faithful to any cinching need.

Recently I realized I had carelessly used the last twist tie in my own less-intensive collection. Fighting panic, I pulled my kitchen cabinet drawer out until it teetered to examine its crevices for buried twist ties. I crawled on the floor and scoured the corners of the room, hoping a twist tie lurked there, out of broom’s reach…

I felt a strange, absurd desperation about having used my last twist tie. 

Humble twist ties are symbolic of our human experience. They are astoundingly resilient, and ultimately disposed of. In the scheme of things, I’m little more than a wire twisted around the neck of a bag of Wonder Bread, myself. 

Crawling and scouring for what was gone, I’d been caught taking for granted the reliable presence of my 80-year old mother, keeper of the world’s best twist-tie collection. I had been assuming permanence where there is none.

Monkeys don’t watch the sun rise.

I’ve never seen an animal marvel at a flower or pause to watch the sun come up. Our large spectrum for highs and lows differentiates us from other animals. (Exception: I did once have to put a pet on Prozac.) This breadth gives us great capacity for worry. 

It’s our honor and burden to embrace our despair as fully as our delights. We must courageously cross our baseline into despair so that the two contrasting emotions can be in relationship. Otherwise our experience of joy will be muted.

Shoes that don’t walk

My dad wears shoes that don’t walk. Look at feet in a nursing home and you’ll recognize this category of footwear. These shoes show no wear — except around the laces where they’ve been tied in the morning by a caregiver; and untied at night in the same way. There’s no dirt in the tread. They are thick-rubber soled, no-nonsense, comfort shoes.

I’ve been closer to Dad’s shoes lately than before, since he’s not able to put them on himself now. There’s both honor and humility at shoe-level. Yesterday I lifted his stiff legs and feet to secure them in paddle-rests of a loaned clinic wheelchair.

I knew him through work shoes, steel-toed boots, church shoes and cowboy boots (midlife crisis). Toward the end come shoes that don’t walk.

Home, with kids

I’m home with the kids this summer. Suddenly, three miniature employees staring at me blinking. One sucking her thumb. Hmm. 

It IS like being a Advertising Manager again. The differences are that this team has fewer marketable skills and hopelessly poor time management. And they have to be reminded to brush their teeth.

As a workforce, there’s not much civility. Emerging conflict resolution means they still kick, punch, bash. But they say they’re sorry, hug and hold hands.

There’s little rationality or predictability. One moment it’s all fun, the next, there’s obstinacy and full-throttle screaming.

I’m weary of lunch-hour debates about projectile vomit and the historical relevance of the word “fart”.

One clear benefit of being head-honcho here is that they also mistake me for Queen of the Universe, adoring and worshipping me. I am cuddled with, thanked, praised.

I see myself in these employees, which is alternately sweet and horrifying, but always reaches deep in the soul and keeps me from quitting my job.

And this office has mandatory naptime.

Dead Leaf

I came across a twig lying on top of the snow. I might have trampled it with my big emotionless boot and not noticed. 

But it called. I stooped and gently brought the stick to the sun, examining the transparent leaf it held. Tiny veins, darkened by decay, revealed incomprehensible intricacy.

I considered trying to represent it artistically. A gestural sketch is like a dance. Pencil-tip and eyes work simultaneously as if the artist’s fingertip were slowly moving over the object’s surface. In this case, my attempt would only result in a garbled web of fragmented lines on paper, blurred vision, aching fingertips, and more respect for this twig.

When I finally looked up out of the trance the leaf had on me, the vastness of the woods nearly jolted me off my feet. Simple walk, incredible journey.

A Boy in the Ancient Forest

I trained my son in trespassing today. Must a wonderful, magical, ancient 73-acre forest be exclusive to scientists and educators, as the sign maintains?

He was thrilled by it all, especially the amazing examples of conglomerate rock. Nuts were falling at the rate of raindrops from gigantic 200-year old trees, and it spooked him.

We saw at least seven toads and a large scurrying crayfish. I felt protective of him there, afraid I was introducing him to danger. Is this irresponsible parenting? Yet I sensed this was life-changing in some ways. Important, memorable.

I warned him to not take his friends there, to respect the power of nature’s forces, and to take utmost care to not harm anything.

A 43-year old woman and an 8-year old boy experience even an ancient forest differently and I tried to allow for that.

He climbed down to explore between massive slabs of strewn rock that appeared to have been thrown when a cavern collapsed below it long ago. I perched above, reminding myself a 50-lb. kid is unlikely to be the disturbance that causes a boulder to slide further, that the land would not swallow my boy as I looked on.  But I finally got too antsy to take the chance.

He insists he wants to be a geologist. I’m not going to count on it, although I hope that if he does, he’ll teach me about rocks when I’m elderly.

When we are alone, when I am not distracted by my work, his siblings, my marriage, etc., he reveals himself. He talks. And my listening to him in the woods is time well spent.

Aqua Artifice

I’m spending the day in a hospital waiting area.

Yes, a loved one is having painful surgery, but MY selfish observation is: I feel sick! I don’t do well in a cold, contrived artificial reality. The air smells funny. The texture of it has no place in nature. The fluorescent lighting robs life from me.

Seeking a connection with nature, I introduce myself to the fish in the Waiting Room tank. Fabric seaweed, invisible walls. Their bulging eyes scream desperation. They gather when I approach, but I can’t find a way to get the little guys out of there.

Their tank, my tank.

An Audience for Introverts

I don’t do extroversion well. A life-long natural introvert, I missed the early training. Say stupid and rude things out loud when you are six, not in your 40’s.

I find a safe audience in an unusual place, the cemetery. Adjusting for my intro-extro index of the moment, I can speak out to all, or to smaller groups of graves. The ghosts seem flattered by my company. They listen attentively, never interrupt, and when I am done they send me away with quiet, gentle assurance that amounts to this: “Stop whining! You are ALIVE!”