Acts of Trust

Because it’s good to pause and remember once in a while.

Putting your child on a school bus in the dark.

Eating food you didn’t prepare, from a plate you didn’t wash.

Online banking.

Pulling out of your driveway and into morning traffic.

Apologizing.

Waiting in the emergency room of any hospital.

Giving your keys to the valet parking attendant.

Closing your eyes as you lean in for that first kiss.

Falling asleep.

Sitting on the edge of an exam table in one of those paper gowns.

Saying “I do.”

Getting pregnant.

Walking barefoot in clover in the summertime.

Eating the egg you just gathered from the chicken coop.

Closing the door to that chicken coop at sunset and walking back to the house until morning.

Installing a ceiling fan.

Signing a DNR.

Writing a blog.

Eating yogurt two days past its expiration date.

Listening to your gut.

Asking a stranger for directions. And following them.

Driving a rental car.

Swallowing your prescription.

Letting your toddler sleep with you.

Participating in a clinical trial.

Sleeping in a tent in another state on a grassy slope near the ocean.

Closing your eyes and making a wish.

Delivering a eulogy.

Letting a phlebotomy student draw your blood.

Getting your hair cut.

Eating street food in another country.

Voting.

Stretched out like that, such a list of common and daily activities takes on a new meaning. We hand over the keys to our lives so easily, to people and circumstances we haven’t fully vetted, and when all goes as we expect, we move forward to the next encounter coming at us and keep the trust-flow going—proceed until apprehended. And when that flow is turned off abruptly or shatters, we slog through a series of questions born of self-doubt and renewed determination not to be fooled again.

And then we set our alarm clocks for the next morning’s routine, confident they’ll buzz or sing or morning-news us awake the next day. Back to normal. Business as usual.

We also take the long road to trust with some of these, and with good reason. Saying “I do” or bringing a child into one’s life tends to work out better with a bit of reflection and some studying. It’s ok to take the slow path toward these milestones, filled with just enough information to cross the line into New Responsbilities. No one would argue or push from behind impatiently. No one who’s wise, anyway.

On the trust continuum, you’ll also find Assumptions, Taking Things for Granted, Innocence, Foolhardiness, and Evidence. They all share some common ground as markers of the human experience, and we shake hands with them frequently in the span of our lives. All are valuable, some make us wince more than others. All are teachers.

Just for today, pause the trust response. Not to check it’s integrity, but to appreciate its fragility. And to give thanks for anyone in your path who makes you want to keep handing over those keys to most of what matters to you.

Moving Parts

At the top of a 50’ quaking aspen that dug in and sent its roots far below the creek bed, a single leaf is flapping and spinning madly in an invisible thermal, while all of the other leaves, each and every one, remain still as if painted and suspended in time. It’s the sort of gift and spectacle of nature for which I will gladly pull up a lawn chair and sit enthralled until the plot shifts and another story line emerges—a broader gust of wind catching the crunchy and curled leaves on the ground, moving them through the meadow as one, a brown-and-tan low-riding flying carpet. Like any wise person, I’m on my feet in a one-person standing ovation, clapping delightedly for a solid two minutes.

It seems selfish to call out “Encore!”, but my heart speaks it anyway.

I woke up around 5 o’clock today (I love sleeping in, don’t you?), and quickly became the human version of that singular and madly spinning leaf atop the tree of my new day, while the rest of the house lay still. Three loads of laundry done and hanging on the line just as the sun crested the horizon, dishes done and drying in the rack, living room straightened, stray things back in their rightful places and the hot pot simmering on its way to a crescendo-ing boil for my Sunday cup of Earl Grey sweetened with fresh maple cream. Then off to tackle the box of supplies we take with us each Saturday to the local farmer’s market, sorting each of the granola flavor signs, restocking the paper cups we use for samples, thinning out the number of pens we keep in the money bag (seriously, more than two is extravagant, if not redundant) and questioning why there are so many empty plastic baggies doing nothing more than taking up space. Add more business cards, more postcards inviting people to visit this very blog site (folks frequently ask where the granola is made; “Welcome to Naked Acres” gives a depth and breadth of context that far outstrips their simple curiosity, I’m sure), and a fistful of different-colored ceramic hearts that we give to the market’s younger visitors for free. Another checkbox on my to-do list ticked and tucked away.

Settling down on my side of the dual recliner unit, a freshly-peeled hard boiled egg in a Japanese condiment dish with bunnies on it, a bowl of yogurt with a heavy-handed sprinkle of Raspberry Vanilla granola, and that patient cup of Earl Grey cooling until its just the right temperature to drink without scalding my alimentary system, I exhale into a simple morning routine that includes a triumphant go at the New York Times mini crossword puzzle (in 45 seconds; 19 is my personal best and record so far) and listing five things I’m grateful for on my Facebook page. Of course I’m going to think about what else needs to get done today.

Fast forward to twelve hours after I woke up and that “what else” included cutting down one of several trees at a co-worker’s home that were offered up as free firewood, loading what would fit in the bed of the red Tacoma and driving off with a promise to come back and chip away at the rest over the next few weeks. On our way home, we stop at the little general store in Homer to restock the humble inventory of granola that the owner, Jean, gladly sells for us, and get to talking with a customer who saw the logs and branches piled in the truck, and offered us another pile of cut wood on the edge of his land. Turns out he lives behind us on the other side of our woods, so today, we met another neighbor. That’s nice. We shake hands, make plans, and finally get home, where we drive out to the sweat lodge area to unload the truck.

Why am I telling you all this? In the most gracious part of your hearts, dear readers, I pray you’ll receive it as a simple report of the day’s activities working its way toward some Point, and not a swaggering account of how efficient I am as a self-described morning person. When I slow it all down in writing and fill in the details, I truly wonder how I’ll handle retirement and the eventual idleness that comes with an aging body. While I’m grateful for the continued ability to move about and get things done, there are as many projects and tasks that go undone, and sometimes it’s wearying to confront that. As I write this, I realize that I still need to make the bed in the guestroom (the sheets were on the line all day, as the wind snapped and blew them into smooth submission—nature’s ironing board and iron), pick out what I’m wearing to work tomorrow, pack my lunch so the morning isn’t a mad dash through the house, and both litter boxes are due for a deep cleaning. Those are all noble and good, as to-do list items go, but honestly, I’d really rather be making a new customer-recommended flavor of granola—carrot cake, with yogurt raisins to carry in the cream cheese frosting element. Tired as I am, that still sounds like fun.

Little leaf in the thermal, I can relate.

So I practice being quiet at the end of a busy day. Let my to-do list gather a bit of dust until tomorrow. I sit on the porch and face the west as it takes my accomplishments below the tree line in a gentle glow of orange and pink. But even when the body sits in stillness, the heart still moves to its beating rhythm, sending blood moving through our veins, and cells reproduce, and air comes in and out of our lungs and thoughts connect to one another and ideas evolve and…it just keeps going. We need pauses between the action, of course, but we never really stop moving, do we? The secret to managing all of this lest we go mad is to adjust the speed at which it all unspools off the source. We can let things go undone. We have divine permission to focus on one of those breaths of air our lungs receive. We can register the movement of a single leaf, and sink into the sunset’s colors while the sheets to the bed in the guestroom wait to be re-employed. And the litter boxes can wait until tomorrow.

But as I think of what I’ll have for breakfast, I’d like to reconsider that new batch of granola.

Of Monarchs and Pawpaws

One summer at The Lake (meaning, Marble Lake in Quincy, Michigan, where we summered in rented cottages since I was eight. We’ll come back to that in a future post—lots of great stories there), I don’t recall how old I was, but definitely young adult-ish and filled with the college experience, I spent the night on our boat dock watching an orb weaver spin it’s web from start to finish. I had that kind of time then. I saw her connect each singular strand and silken filament into a sticky wheel-shaped work of gossamer art, and then settle all eight legs and a round body into the web’s center, suspended over the water between two dock posts. And wait.

I’m sure I napped more than slept that night (a thin sleeping bag and a throw pillow from the couch were not even in the neighborhood of plush), taking out my pocket flashlight ever so often to see if she’d caught anything, hearing the occasional and sudden splash of a fish, and crickets that had no sense of the word “intermission” during their ratchety symphony. When I dragged myself up the hill around 4:00am to use the facilities, it was with a sense of real outdoors woman pride that my bladder and I had made it that far into the night undisturbed. But I kept my head in a humble place as I realized I’d never work as hard for a single meal in my life as that spider had, and sent up a silent promise to refrain from complaining about “all the prep” involved in making a simple salad. I’d just been schooled by a creature most of us fear will crawl up the leg of our pants and kill us with a single tiny bite. Sometimes we just don’t get it.

Fast forward to this afternoon and our friends’ invitation to join them gathering pawpaws at their friends’ place about a half hour away. Could we be ready by 12:30? We were game for sure, having never eaten, much less gathered, pawpaws (it’s worth noting that two-plus hours away, our state’s annual pawpaw festival had ended and its planners were most likely still taking down the tent canopies over the makeshift food court next to the campgrounds). When we arrived at their friends’ home, a lovely eight-acre retreat just off a two-lane connector between a couple of larger townships, the lady of the land was beaming with excitement about a monarch butterfly chrysalis that hung from the railing of their deck. It was about to break free, it’s black and orange wings visible through the tight papery covering that held it fast. We clustered around the railing from a respectful distance as nothing happened (as far as we could tell. No doubt all sorts of soon-to-be butterfly momentum was building in its tiny captive heart), and then retreated carefully toward the creek where the pawpaws lived. Our friends, new and old, showed us how to give the thin saplings a quick shake as the fruits rained down upon our heads to the shaded ground beneath our feet. We snatched them up, sniffing the ripe ones to take in their almost-fermented aroma. I held onto one that was particularly soft, wishing I’d brought my pocket knife for peeling.

Our friends’ friends’ land was beautiful—a meandering and magical woods with a dry creek bed snaking through it, tall black walnuts sharing space with random pawpaw stands, mature cherry trees and the odd dead ash leaning against a tolerant pine. We’d gathered more fruits than any of us world be able to eat by week’s end, and made our way back to the house for shared plates of mild cheddar and homemade artisan seeded bread. We checked the chrysalis on the porch—nothing had changed. The ripe pawpaw I’d been carrying had a small nick at one end; my friend started peeling it so I could take a bite. It was creamy and sweet, like a buttery mango-y banana, and I ate it down to where the peel started again, still without my pocket knife. No matter—I had just enough thumbnail to keep undressing it, plucking out the flat brown seeds and sucking them clean. I tried to join in the conversation happening on either side of me, but kept getting lost in the delicious task at hand. I hoped I didn’t come off as rude or aloof, just absorbed.

Until…I glanced up, no apparent reason, and saw black and orange wings slide out in one gentle movement from the chrysalis hanging from the deck railing and pointed with one sticky hand. “Look! It’s free!” Bread and cheese and pawpaws forgotten, we got up from our lawn chairs as one and tiptoed to the porch to see this fresh transformation unfold its wet and delicate wings to the gentlest of breezes.

Another first in less than an hour.

In the time between my midnight web spinning vigil at The Lake and today’s monarch miracle, I’ve sat front and center to myriad other wonders, laying my head to rest those nights with a gratitude that sank into my dreams. I know what it is to be awed, to lift my gaze upward as my jaw drops, the architecture of the human head naturally assuming the “amazed” position whenever we look at the Milky Way or the clouds, or the colorful bursts of fireworks. I may not recall the full details, but I am anchored in the feelings they summoned forth, and it’s that affect that watched a monarch butterfly come into existence this afternoon as I licked my pawpaw-sticky fingers clean.

Sometimes, dear friends, life’s wonder is a simple matter of showing up and paying attention once you get there.

My Mind’s Wandering Eye

Let’s just say I’ve got an active inner life and leave it at that.

At some point last night, I couldn’t remember where I’d put my glasses. I had them on all day, and would take them off ever so often to rub the bridge of my nose, or place them in my shirt pocket while I tackled the multiflora rose that snaked it’s way up the tree next to the wood pile to the north of the sweat lodge. For that particular job, I’d set them down on the arm of a trash-picked glider bench that fits perfectly in the grassy and pine-shaded area of the lodge circle, making more than one mental note to retrieve them once it was time to head back to the house.

Which I thought I’d done, but wandering from room to room through the house as dusk grew thicker outside, I couldn’t remember putting them back on my face, or having them on when I came up the path to the mudroom door. I walked back out to the lodge twice before resigning their location to the darkness outside, or worse, the darkening edges of my memory. I won’t lie—it unsettled me more than I wanted to admit last night, my late father’s final dementia-wrapped years still fresh and occasionally raw in my mind. At what point did he start to notice a few missed details to a familiar story? How often had he retraced his steps looking for his own glasses?

At the end of a physically taxing day, all I wanted was a good long soak in the tub with a couple of Mary Jane’s Farm magazines from 2016 and the scent of eucalyptus and spearmint bath salts surrounding me in a gentle steam. But without my specs, I’d just be sitting there looking at blurry photos an arms length away from my face. I had an old pair, a three-year old prescription with scratched lenses and really kicky frames (I mourned the passing of these as my daily pair—I felt so Eileen Fisher model-like in them, and now used them as jazzy safety glasses for dangerously fun tasks involving power tools and flying wood chips); they’d do in a pinch for candlelit bath-time reading, but I couldn’t wear them all day without getting a headache. I put them on and hoped the current pair would turn up before work on Monday.

Just having a second pair through which I could still make out the finer details of a photo and the caption below it puts me on the “rich” end of the socioeconomic continuum. With the devastation from hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas still hours old, it was natural to take another at look at my circumstances and know in an instant that I’m damn lucky. I realized this before the sun went down. Scratched as they were, this back-up set would have gotten me through the workday and back to the eyeglass store where I’d have ordered a replacement pair that would arrive in 7-10 business days. For such convenience, I’d push through a mild “wrong prescription” headache because I’d know it was temporary.

And even as troubling as it was to not recall the exact moment or location where I’d put my glasses down and then became fully present to something entirely different, I knew in my gut that I wasn’t at Alzheimer’s doorstep quite yet; by the time the sun disappears below the tree line to the west and I’ve gathered my tools and dumped the last load of branches for the day, I’m tired enough to make fifty-some years of English my second language. I’m not thirty anymore. I’m just grateful that my limbs still know the dance of hard work and my mind knows when to call it a day. It’s an inner signal I’m learning to obey, and willingly. I buffed the scratched lenses of the back-up pair with a soft cloth, read a few more recipes toward the end of the July-August issue and fell asleep. Rich indeed.

In the morning, when the sun had cleared the tall stalks of goldenrod, I put on my yellow chicken boots and made a third trip out to the sweat lodge, all the way down the path asking the Creator to have pity on my not-thirty-year-old eyes and help me remember where I’d put my glasses. Near the trash-picked glider was a pile of mouse-chewed blue and black utility blankets, the kind you can buy from the U-Haul when you’re renting a box truck to move your stuff. Patrick said he’d shaken them out gently last night—maybe my glasses had fallen from the armrest and landed somewhere among the quilted folds. But he found nothing, and that was that. But I hadn’t checked there and maybe he missed something in the gathering darkness. I pulled the first one carefully from the top of the pile and out tumbled my glasses, the lenses dotted with drops of dew, but not a scratch on them. Huh. A grateful smile spread across my face, and, head down, I sent my thanks upward and across the field.

So my only pair of glasses had a little adventure last night—so what? Did the raccoons in the old pasture take turns putting them on and mimicking the way I called the chickens to roost for the night or squinted into a patch of clover looking for the elusive four-leaf ones? Were the Spirits teaching me a lesson about possessions and carelessness? Or was I just tired from the day’s work, my mind turning off the computer and lights and clocking out until morning? Magical thinking, all of it, I know. But I enjoyed writing the ending of this tiny chapter in my life at the same time I was living it.

I’m rich enough to own two functioning pairs of glasses, sharp enough to know where I’ve put them, and humble enough to take neither of these for granted.