The Young Ones

Our niece and nephews just left. I can hear the crunch of the driveway gravel beneath their tires, a slow lingering don’t-want-to-leave sort of crunch, and it makes me smile. To have the privilege of a front row seat at their unfolding from infancy into young adulthood is the closest I’ll come to children of my own. It was Becca’s idea and invitation to see the new Downton Abbey film as a birthday present (she and I happily share the day, a gift from her late mother and my dear friend. See previous post “For Jeannie”, April 1, 2018), an easy “yes” in my decision options that day. Then pizzas-to-go back at the house where we filled the air between us with catch-up talk, giggling, much opening of gifts, and some spontaneous rapping of the Hamilton score. Who wouldn’t drive away slowly and reluctantly from a gathering like that?

Every visit with Andrew, his husband Akira, Anthony (visiting from Chicago!) and Becca is like this, with slight changes to the agenda. Becca’s friend Corey was here too—a most welcome and joyful spirit under our roof. We spent our time together awake and grateful, fully present and moving from one laugh to another. The time passes easily and we’re all better for it. I miss their mother and feel her with us all in one. What fine people these young people have become.

When Jeannie was simplifying her life as her treatments continued, she bravely asked if we would take in Copper, the family cat, all black and in search of yet another lap to call home. Copper’s age was and still is an estimate—at least 13, but maybe 19–a sturdy feline with no intention of going anywhere anytime soon. We all gave it a trial month, and in that time, Copper Raised in the Suburb slowly transformed into Copper the Rural Mouser, and we blended our lives into a seamless respectful existence. When the children-turned-young adults come to visit, it’s a beautiful reunion to behold, as if Copper was now somehow Jeannie’s avatar (Copper does help me with my morning yoga practice, something Jeannie would certainly do if she were here). She recognizes them instantly, and the months since that last visit melt away.

I must say, I wondered how our relationships with these precious young ones would evolve after Jeannie died. It was a delicate dance that balanced respectful distance and space with gentle knocking on the doors of grief, just to see if anyone needed a drink or a memory spoken aloud. I felt young and child-like helpless for a time after my own mom passed, but I was twice Becca’s age when that happened. I can only imagine how I might have navigated my 30’s without my parents nearby. Becca and her brothers are walking that path every day. I would expect some days or moments are easier than others, as evidenced by the way they all carry themselves. I am grateful for the honest presentations of their hearts and remind myself that’s not just a condition of their youth. It’s an invitation to re-set my own inner posture and remove the walls that keep me too much in my own world. Yet another reason to cherish the time we spend in each other’s company.

A few minutes after their car turned onto the road, where the gravel ends and the blacktop begins, I’m pulling the trash bin to the curb and unloading a week’s worth into its thick plastic mouth. The rough cardboard edges of the pizza boxes push against the dark green plastic of the trash bag in my hand, and I smile again, the echoes of that slow and reluctant driveway gravel crunch fading in my ears.

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.