Comfort at the End of a String

I found a kite, in its original packaging, under the bed last week.

That explains the flying dreams.

I can’t recall the moment in time long ago (still well into my adulthood) when I thought I needed one, or where I bought it, why I picked this particular design and style over others, or how it ended up under the bed. But I think I was supposed to find it this summer, right after Patrick mowed that section of the grass that runs parallel to the uncut and wild old corn field. No electric wires or trees there; just the remnants of a potato garden now overgrown and dotted with hopeful sweet gum saplings that are easily on their way to a small forest (gifts from our friends Mike and Deb five years ago, dug up from their place and transplanted one chilly day-after-Thanksgiving before we sat down to butternut squash soup and sweet conversation). It’s good and breezy today, a most welcome addition to the unblocked sun as it pulls the red line of the thermometer upwards toward the low 90’s. Perfect kite conditions.

I haven’t been on the operator’s end of a kite string since I was still celebrating single-digit birthdays. In those days (triceratops and gigantic ferns only recently extinct, har har) we were glad to make our own kites from long thin pieces of balsa wood and leftover gossamer dry cleaning plastic bags. My brother, Mike, was the supreme kite architect, sometimes taking an hour or two in the morning to actually sketch the design in blueprint fashion before gathering the raw materials and setting about to constructing it. Fidgety and bored with this step in the process, I wandered about doing other youthful single-digit aged things (these did not include folding clothes, cleaning my room or offering to help mom with the breakfast dishes) until he finally put down his pencil and picked up the first slim piece of balsa. I wanted to watch him cut the notch in the spine where the spar would intersect, creating that magical nexus point that would bear the wind’s strong breath and resist it as one of us held fast to the string-wrapped stick dangling at the long and far away end of the kite’s bridle. They’re a bit elusive now, the visuals of this memory, but I think some kind of vaporous glue was involved, squeezed more or less judiciously from a crinkly aluminum tube. Even in a well-ventilated area like the patio out back, we still got slightly buzzed and dizzy (is this where “high as a kite” comes from? I’ll have to look that one up…).

Whatever transpired after that, once the glue had dried and it was Time to test our homemade kite assembly prowess, I remember absolute giddiness and joy, that something we created by hand worked as it was intended. Even if it snagged on a tree branch a while after takeoff, it was worth it.

I wonder what other precious and cherished childhood pursuits I’ve pulled out from under the metaphorical bed, dusted off and set in motion again in my adult years? There’s a lot of that going on lately, as we continue to navigate these relentlessly scary days of ours. The almost-panicked and frantic search for comfort is now a daily ritual; we soothe our bad news-saturated nerves with whatever reassured us in our formative years—Dick Van Dyke Show and MASH reruns, baked chicken on Sundays (insert any food here—we’re baking and cooking like it was just invented), and we’re stitching quilts and trinket bags and pillowcases as if our Home Ec teacher was grading us. Every day, we stack these like sand bags against the rushing waters of an unknown future, protecting the one commodity that will see us though to the other side—our individual and collective emotional grit. We’re resilient at our core—we know this—and it’s unsettling to feel the continuous push of everything beyond our control. Our hearts and fingers reach for the familiar (I’ve given up on “normal”) and grab tight for as long as it lets us. Just get me through today. It’s both plea and unflinching directive.

Even threadbare and tentative, I think it’s working most days. I asked a dear friend recently, as she faced down an onslaught of Whack-a-Mole family crises, how she triaged her mental health through it all. Without a trace of shame or embarrassment, she admitted to letting herself fall apart in hysterical, dramatic and cleansing style. Then she picked the crisis most in flames and got on with it. She also sews and has a menagerie of pets to turn to, some of whom sit nearby while she unleashes the storm, which as any pet owner knows, is some of the best therapy around (for the price of a few vet visits and some foil pouch treats. Nice.). I am heartened by her strategy, and grateful for her vulnerability.

For me, in this tiny sliver of The Present Moment, a freshly-mown grassy runway and a nylon kite at the end of a long taut string will do it.

There’s also some leftover homemade peach galette in the fridge.

Bonus!

Last Stars, First Birds

Venus was insanely bright in the East this morning at 5:38 when I reluctantly left the cool sheets of our bed and stiffly descended the steep stairs to find the bathroom and my daily dose of levothyroxine. Lucky for us, the bathroom window faces that sunrise direction, giving us plenty to look at while we’re…waiting to finish the first job of the day. I couldn’t stop looking at this bright and shiny last celestial gift of the night sky before a persistent sun bathed the field in yellow. Another star sat dimly just to the right and down a few steps, and was slowly swallowed in pale blue as I watched. On the other side of the window screen, a mockingbird offered the day’s audible opening act, beginning with a nailed-it impersonation of a blue jay and continuing through a repertoire that included finch, shrike, oriole, catbird and killdeer.

I hope I’m a morning person until my final breath and heartbeat.

Theres a tender and blurry place in those moments between the sky’s last call for constellations and the hoisting up of dawn’s first light. It feels wistful, having to let the night and all its wonder fade into the background as the day’s sounds and colors emerge. Suspended in this cosmic hammock of not getting quite the sleep I wanted and the upright tasks awaiting me downstairs, I delay being upright for as long as I practically can. Last night’s dinner dishes in the sink can wait as I hear a cardinal (the bird variety, not the cleric) sing its way to the empty shepherd hooks that will soon be dressed with suet and seed feeders (we take them down at night because our local raccoons have been known to scatter them about the ridge during their after-dark feeding frenzies). Joining the cardinals are catbirds, mourning doves, chipping sparrows, titmice and purple martins all noisily telling me breakfast is late and I’d better get a move on. Sigh. I have no alarm clock, and haven’t for years. It’s simply stopped being necessary when the hummingbirds started hovering at eye-level on the other side of the pane, giving us the tiniest of winged admonishments.

But I long for a way to stop time (I have a friend who is able to do this. I’m serious—it’s a gift given to him by some other Being, and I’ve sat in his presence while he has kindly and magically pushed the pause button) and move about unencumbered by the promise of productivity to just be in that middle place, that space of not yet. I strongly suspect there are quite a few of these spaces and opportunities in our lives and days, and lately, I find I’m looking for them rather hungrily. Philosophically, I suppose we could accurately claim that we’re in a constant state of Transition, accompanied by its twin, Transformation, and I welcome your comments if you’d like to noodle off in that direction. For me, the tasty marrow of life is in those in-between places, where we still have a view of what’s about to drift past us and get smaller behind our shoulders and can also see with emerging clarity what’s approaching, growing ever-bigger right in front of our eyes.

Someone far wiser than I’ll ever be told me at precisely the best teachable moment that “every choice is a loss, every choice is a gain”, and while it didn’t bring me immediate comfort as I faced down a dilemma of Great Discernment, having that phrase handy in my toolkit has soothed many a furrowed-brow situation, as I chose to embrace the gain and not mourn the loss any longer than was necessary. I’m sure we’d go mad if every option was clear and visible to us during our waking hours. I’m glad for the simple choices of eggs or yogurt for breakfast and a rumbling stomach urging me to pick one and get on with it. Today it’s yogurt (with strawberries winning out over peaches or blueberries). Maybe tomorrow I’ll put eggs on the plate. If the sun comes up again, I’ll do my best to be mindful of that gift first. Time spent mindfully in the “in-between” helps me make better choices, especially when the options weigh considerably more than eggs or yogurt.

So what’s it going to be today, now that the sun has arced its way to mid-point in the sky? The wrens are chattering happily, full of millet and sunflower seeds, and the stars above do whatever stars do as they wait behind the blue and yellow curtain for tonight’s encore against a velvety black backdrop. I think I’ll keep swinging in that cosmic hammock fastened to bright Venus at one end and the unstoppable joy of a mockingbird at the other.

For once, this choice is all gain.

By Hand

The weeds have found their opportunity—small narrow crevices where the wooden sides of the raised beds don’t quite meet the edges of repurposed cardboard boxes flattened out and placed all around each bed like sashing on a quilt top. Greenery I don’t know by name is pushing up with Herculean determination, ensuring I’ll still have my gardener job when the sun comes up tomorrow. I could harvest the kale, of course, but two people can only eat so much of that in a week before we’d buy more shares of the company that makes Imodium. Between planting and harvesting (and we’re talking weeks-sometimes-months) it’s all about the weeding.

We do own a gas-powered monster affixed to the end of a two-handled pole designed to lay them out flat in a blink, and watching Patrick suit up to use it brings to mind a climber preparing to ascend Everest. I’m sure I’d enjoy its efficiency, but I grab my stained leather garden gloves and an old kitchen throw rug (to use as a kneeling mat) and flex my fingers as I walk the distance between the mudroom door and the scraggly-fringed boxes that hold our hopes for pasta sauce and chutney.

The quackgrass and plantain had best put their affairs in order.

Like running confidential but no longer useful documents through a shredder, there’s instant gratification pulling weeds from the ground. I know they’ll return, and I don’t have any delusions about one day being unemployed in my gardening role that way. But I can clear a patch by hand in less than thirty minutes, cover the bare earth in cardboard or grass clippings or a cartful of old straw from the barn and feel like I’ve earned the right to sit outside with a glass of Cabernet in my hand, showered and smelling better before dinner. It’ll be a while before a tiny shoot of something bright green shows itself again, and with the tan dried grass as contrasting background, I’ll spy it and pluck it out by the roots. The soil will let it go easily. Another glass of Cabernet please.

It’s also rhythmically meditative, kneeling on the ground (I mentioned a mat but that’s truly optional), the scent of good rich dirt reaching my nostrils as I rock back and forth tugging at a tenacious plug of tall fescue. I learn patience at the feet (rhizomes?) of a plant whose only crime is location. My goal is the same; I simply adjust my time frame to accommodate this tender battle of wills . “Winning” is redefined, and humbly so, especially when I have a go at it without my gloves and a rough-edged blade of grass slices my palm like an office paper cut. The nearby cherry tomatoes will be grateful for the absence of competition for water and sunlight, which in the garden is the whole point of being down there on my knees in the first place. While I’m in that reverent position, my thanks drift upward where two mature bald eagles catch a summer’s day thermal. No amount of gas-powered convenience could have matched the glory of that now-indelible image.

I know you know this already: in our “gotta-have-it-now” existence, convenience trumps quality, and we’re in such a hurry to get into the Next Important Thing, we don’t look over our shoulders to see what we might have missed. I’m as caught up in it as everyone else most days, but when I choose a slower path to get where I want to go, the rewards always—always—exceed the fleeting satisfaction on the other side of speed. It’s the difference between a plate of buttery sautéed fiddlehead ferns and a Cup o’ Noodles (artificially flavored with “shrimp). I’ll wait while you decide.

As my recent vacation transitioned me back to work, I’d left one rather large to-do list project unfinished—reorganizing my studio. A collection of various media for creating quilts and hand-bound books and beadwork and watercolors had wildly outgrown their respective containers. I plunged into it with great energy the first day, disgorging cabinets and storage totes of their contents, sorting by type and color and even age. By the second day, I admitted defeat, grateful I could close the door against the disarray until I caught my third, fourth and fifth winds. I’ve been chipping away at it since, discovering rare and discontinued cotton prints, bits of sparkly vintage jewelry, and a half-finished hand-embroidered panel depicting a seashore scene with sand-colored beads painstakingly sewn to a scrap of upholstery fabric one at a time. Who was I when I started these projects, and who have I become since putting them away for another time? Clearly, it wasn’t about production line assembly or speed. I have a sewing machine and I love it, but there are some things that just do better with the touch of a patient and dream-filled hand. Tending to the weeds indoors, I whispered to myself.

Theres no convenient work-around to that, no gas-powered puce if equipment to flatten it in a blink. Not one that I’d trust, anyway.

Time, Off

When the first day of your vacation starts with a massage/acupuncture session, the remaining eight days are fragrant with new and unexplored interpretations of the word “relax”. To be unstrapped from the clock and a schedule is a most delicious state of affairs for which one might almost need a confessor. Or a cigarette. Or both. I’ll get back to you on that.

Driving home that first day, muscles and pathways improved and cleared once more, I looked my agenda-less day square in the eye and let loose the hedonist within. Which means, I had a popsicle for breakfast alongside a handful of blue corn chips dipped one at a time in salsa, and thought about hand-pulling some of the weeds that fringed the raised beds’ burnt wooden frames. I thought about it. Then I lost track of time until just a few hours ago, having promised our granola customers I’d be waiting for them in a grocery store parking lot an hour from our home for a no-contact drop-off of their pre-paid orders. A slight creeping back in of a work agenda, but it did not involve a copier, conference call meetings or drafts of documents needing to be proofread or spell-checked. The purist in me stamped her approval of this humble business transaction and let me get on with it.

It’s a strange feeling to disconnect from a routine that involves so many other people, and tasks that really can’t be accomplished in the company of bees and trees. Over time, I’ve learned how to do it immediately or, like a high school senior at the beginning of May, divest a bit early but still retain some sense of productivity. We prepare in advance for so many life events; can’t vacationing be one of them? I don’t mean packing or making hotel reservations or changing the oil in the truck. Those will get done, of course, but what about the gear-shift of the mind? The mental calisthenics of putting down and turning away from the undercurrent of others’ expectations and letting a day stretch out in front of yourself so wickedly random, so free that it resembles, well, nothing comparative in your current existence so far? I can only speak for myself—I have stringently few days like that, and I’ve clocked in for a few decades now. Relaxing into an open-ended day is a bit unsettling at first, but it gets easier to slide into with practice. Which is why the first thing I do my first day back at work is submit my next time off request. It’s a shrewd and practical self-care strategy I recommend to everyone still framed by a clock, some HR policies and an office (or cubicle). Doing so keeps one’s outlook wider than the computer keyboard and monitor waiting for our obedient (and recently-massaged) fingers to do their duty. Please hear this clearly: I’m grateful every day to still be employed and have all the faculties necessary to be successful in my field and my office, but it’s not the core of me. It’s not what plunges me happily down the wooded paths of promise that today might actually be the day I spot a cedar waxwing eating a berry from a branch hanging over the creek. Work makes vacation possible, and vacation makes work the proper size in one’s life. It’s important to remember that.

Now fully six days into my vacation, I’m trying to call up some of the things I’ve done, and so far, most of them involve food. Day one is a happy blur, and I’ve mentioned the culinary high points (popsicle, blue corn chips, salsa). Day two involved a call to a possible new dentist, a modest attempt at downsizing all the fabric in the sewing corner of my studio and then leaving piles of soft color underfoot for sorting tomorrow (does that day ever come?), and a spectacular dinner made from our own Lacinato kale and five-color silverbeet leaves (chard) wrapped spring roll-style around sesame-ginger seasoned TVP and plant-based meat crumbles, minced onions and garlic, cabbage, carrots and zucchini, dipped in a spicy peanut sauce. How we managed to have leftovers, I can’t tell you. Days three through six are back to somewhat blurry, but if I sat still long enough, I might remember setting up our market canopy outside and falling asleep under it. Several times. I have forgotten what my office looks like, and recall mostly first names of co-workers.

Given the history of Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline in my immediate family, I realize that someday, being unaware of what day it is will not be intentional nor paid for by the company that signs my checks. If it comes to get me, I can only hope to spend my final days pleasantly confused and mildly entertaining to the nieces and nephews who come to visit. For now, I am completely and blissfully immersed in the unfolding of time as experience, not numbers on a clock, and sense I’ll be better for it when Patrick reaches over in the middle of some gentle yellow and blue sunrise to remind me that I was supposed to be back at work yesterday.

I’ll have my apology rehearsed by the time I cross the parking lot.