Midsummer: Peacock Splendor and Bug Repellent

I’m thinking about asking the good folks at Avon to change the name of their insect repellent from “Skin-so-Soft” to “Skin-so-Tasty”, just to be on the same page as the mosquitoes and biting flies that followed me around the field this morning. I was a two-legged walking marinade for them and have the welts to prove it (no photographs, please. Some of you are eating). But the wild blackberry vines gotta be trimmed so Patrick can mow the paths this afternoon without coming back to the house striped in scratches, so…into the woods I go, smelling delicious to a thousand hungry, buzzing relatives. And here I thought I was pretty high on the food chain. Perspective, my dears. Perspective.

Meanwhile, under the bed in the upstairs guestroom I came across a stash of more than five hundred peacock feathers, shed and collected one at a time over seven years when we had a modest family strutting about the acreage, catching us off-guard with their regal beauty. It’s nearly August, and I lean toward wistfulness as the summer turns this corner without that gorgeous flock entertaining us and leaving their plumage behind on the grass like so many beautiful toys at an upscale daycare center. Sparky was our first, left behind by the land’s previous owners, with the real estate agent trying to figure out how to catch him and take him back to his own farm. He gave up as we moved forward to signing the closing paperwork and yes, we wrote Sparky into the contract, taking out a 30-year mortgage on 41.1 acres and a peacock (when real estate agents gather for conventions and conferences, I’ll bet this was one of the “strange but true” stories swapped over cocktails after the day’s breakout sessions).

Sparky roosted in the old dairy barn built at the sloping end of the driveway, perching serenely on the apex of the roof, pointing his tiny crowned head south and crying out at sunset in plaintive hope for a mate. The first time we heard it, we thought a frightened child had somehow become trapped in one of the rusty milking stanchions and ran toward the sound like heroes on their way to a rescue. Over time, Patrick learned to mimic the sound just close enough to set Sparky off in broad daylight, much to the startled delight of visitors and family. The two of them would call back and forth until someone ran out of vocal energy or the laying flock would charge ‘round to corner of their coop to see what the commotion was all about. For weeks, Sparky called out in vain, no one answering his audible personal ad except Patrick, and so turned his attention to those chickens (a bird is a bird, after all) who paid him no never-mind as he splendidly shook out and arranged his glorious feathers into a majestic half-circle fan of iridescent attractiveness. Oh, they’d look up with their beady little eyes and consider the spectacle for a moment, then resume their aimless ground-pecking, leaving Sparky deflated and lonely still. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

But perseverance paid off and one day, a lovely peahen (I named her Claire) came strolling down the driveway looking for the lovelorn vocalist who’d lured her away from who knows what nearby farm with his irresistible siren call. She sized him up, looked about at his land dowry and settled herself in, scouting out her options for ground nesting real estate. She ended up choosing the spot right below the bathroom window, overgrown with lamb’s-quarter, velvetleaf and pokeweed (I suspect she thought the berries would add a touch of decorative whimsy), having already laid her decoy clutch of eggs several yards away in the overgrowth behind the old potting shed to distract any predators from the real deal. We only discovered this ground nest when Patrick was busy with the weed whip, coming dangerously close to decapitating her as she roosted among the stalks. She didn’t budge, even as the snapping plastic string felled the greenery above her head. Patrick jumped backwards when we saw her there, her eye calm and steady, his respect for the protective maternal instinct deepened in an instant. She stayed there until four of the little ones hatched. We didn’t see them until they were old enough to walk safely beneath her sheltering wings and one of them poked its head out of her plumage one afternoon as she walked slowly across the grass below the silver maple on the ridge. We gave her a wide berth as our faces hurt from smiling so wide.

As often happens in the natural course of things, only two of the four hatchlings made it to adulthood—one male, one female. Sparky kept his distance as they grew and eventually took to rearing the young boy (Blue) while Claire kept close to the girl (her name escapes me at the moment but I’m sure it was cute). Blue grew fast and strong as Sparky taught him how to employ his fan to catch what’s-her-name’s eye (with varying degrees of success). We’d often find father and son circling each other in a dizzying game of male dominance while Claire and her daughter browsed alongside the chickens in contented indifference. That indifference must’ve grown some pretty deep roots over the summer because come late August that year, both mother and daughter disappeared into the meadow and didn’t resurface. We never found a feather, a carcass, anything to indicate they’d met an violent end. They just left. I envisioned them picking their way across the neighbor’s soybean field, all their little peahen belongings tied carefully in red handkerchiefs on the end of long walking sticks, chatting about this and that as they set out for their next adventure. Sparky and Blue may have spent a few days looking for them but kept at their circling rituals until Sparky eventually got too old to play. We found him next to the old dairy barn late one summer evening, his feathered body fully intact directly below the spot where he’d perched years ago, calling out for company. Blue took to hanging out near the chicken coop, opening his fan every evening for the girls’ entertainment, like a long-running Las Vegas act. When we finally found his remains behind the old goat barn a few years later, we accepted the end of our exotic peafowl-rearing days. A year later, we started raising Boer goats for meat, but that’s another story.

I remember vividly those hot and sunny afternoons, walking an easy lap from the house down to the barns and the chicken coops, stooping to pick up the long and colorful plumes that Sparky and Blue had shed, marveling at the way the light would catch the golds and coppers buried among the green and deep teal strands, making the feather’s eye even more distinct. I don’t remember being harassed by biting flies or no-see-ums or mosquitoes (though I’m sure they were out there, hungry and searching). Just fantastic color and midsummer contentment. Funny what our minds sort out and focus on…

Five hundred feathers later, I’m perched on the apex of my memories, hearing the echoes of a sky-piercing love call and happy that I had a front row seat to one of the sweetest love stories a flock of birds could offer up.

Looking forward to you, August. And thanks for the flashback.

Forgetting

Someone dear to me is watching her mother disappear into Alzheimer’s one excruciating piece at a time. We reconnected briefly last week after several months and I could hear it in her voice—the mix of hollow fatigue and grateful determination to be that calm landing place, the privilege of blurring the line between daughter and caregiver and bearing the weight of that unusual, awkward role-switching. I kept listening, pushing aside the hard memories of the front seat I had for my father’s similar descent. It needed to be all about her. Nothing else mattered but listening and validating, seeing her and listening more. I nodded as her voice cracked and handed over my heart to her in silent solidarity. There are no words anywhere that would make this better, not even one inch.

I’m humbled and encouraged by her raw honesty, how she’s naming and claiming the emotions that threaten to engulf her and take her far away from her husband and children who also feel her nurturing touch in their lives. Her children are watching and learning. I imagine them remembering as adults the view they currently have of their mother tending to the impossible and showing them what love looks like in that moment.

On my walk this morning, I saw a young buck and a doe on the path parallel to the thick dark green woods. We stopped and considered each other, myriad options for what would happen next. The buck’s velvety rack caught a glint of sunrise while the doe took to browsing for a split second, her eye still trained on me and my two walking sticks. I gave my best imitation of a chuffing sort of snort, like they do when they meet up with their own kind, and the buck immediately leapt into the wall of sheltering trees, swallowed up by their mystery. I didn’t hear his hooves hit the ground or break any fallen branches. He just…disappeared. The doe raised her head, looked at me and then in the direction of her companion and, without panic, moved gracefully to join him. I continued my steps, wondering if I’d even seen them at all.

It wasn’t until I got to the path through the open field-becoming-young-woods that I realized I’d forgotten all about the load of heavy throw rugs I’d tossed in the washer before heading out, and how I’d set up my breakfast things so they’d be ready when I returned. I’d forgotten completely that I even lived in a house, that it and the cars and the cats probably still existed while I was out adding images of this cherished and unimaginably beautiful place to my bank of precious and impermanent memories. To leave sizeable chunks of our daily routines and commitments behind and trust that they’ll be there when we need to call them up again and move on with our lives…the word “gift” doesn’t even come close.

Alzheimer’s takes away what we take for granted—the ability to not be frantically focused on the data streaming at us, trying to sift through it for anything reassuringly familiar, the ease of setting aside even the most important projects and people in our lives to be immersed in the present moment. Some who struggle with dementia eventually cross over into that place of “pleasantly confused” but getting there can be brutal, leaving those of us watching and caring on the sidelines shredded in anticipatory terror that one day, there too we shall walk. It’s all we can do not to look, or run, away.

But love asks that we stay. And so we do. We go with the flow of a muddled sentence trying to recapture a tattered story, agreeing that yes, dad, that’s just the way it happened. We answer the same question eleven times as if it were the first time, with sincerity or surprise or whatever will relax a loved one’s furrowed brow and trembling hands. We no longer put out forks and spoons because it really isn’t any big deal to eat with your fingers (that’s why washcloths were created, right)? And we find a quiet place to cry alone when she can’t remember who we are, her eyes wide as she searches our face for clues that never come. For now, it’s enough just to be together because she’s in there somewhere. We’ll stay and wait and keep looking for her.

In the field this morning, I remembered that I could forget. And I’ll remember that for as long as I can, because this morning, someone dear to me is waking up and doing what love asks her to do.

A Creative Pursuit

I no sooner transferred all the tomato, chard, cabbage and marigold starts from their temporary shelves in the studio’s south-facing window and tucked them into the soil of the garden’s raised beds when my bookbinding supplies moved in with all their luggage—paper for signatures, waxed thread, fresh book board and repurposed hard book covers sliced away from their pages (scavenged from thrift stores), PVA glue and a bone folder for getting the edges of those signatures sharply creased. The book press Patrick made for me sits on the floor at my feet, and the guillotine paper cutter has a place of honor (and safety) on one of the folding tables I pirated from our farmers’ market set-up, its arm locked in place. The shelves barely had a minute to enjoy the absence of the weight they’d borne for the previous nine weeks.

The plan was to dismantle the indoor garden nursery and let the studio breathe into its less-cluttered self for a while, giving me a clear view out of that south-facing window from my relaxed spot on the couch (I need only turn my head slightly left to do this, and have a sweetly framed view of the cottonwoods that line the creek on it way to the Licking River). It never happened. I had lunch with my friend, Marilyn a couple of weeks ago, where she shared an apple-walnut candy with me for dessert. It was luscious and I said so, prompting her to find the box they came in, all the way from Washington state (her daughter brought them with her on a recent visit). The front of the box was charming so I offered to make it into a book, like I often do with someone else’s recycling.

It’s not difficult to make a book by hand; it’s just a process with a few moving parts and the need for space to let the steps of the process sprawl and evolve naturally. If I’m going to set up and haul out the supplies to make one book, I might as well make a dozen while I’m there, and the next thing I know it’s a week from last Friday and journals-in-process are still curing or awaiting their sewn signatures or covers are pressing as the glue dries. When I really get going, the process seeps into the living room where stacks of books serve as weights for book covers just glued up. The kittens enjoy leaping from one tottering pile to the next and I sternly shoo them away into another room but it’s no good—there are piles of books-turned-book-presses there too. At least I can close the door to the studio/guestroom and walk away for lunch or a tea break, hoping the kittens find other things to do.

Grateful as I am to be employed and insured, I think I could walk away from all of it just to sit in this space of creative ambition, hand-crafting books and journals and seeing what a Cheez-its box looks like with pages between its front and back pieces (I’m reluctantly gluten-free now, my last Cheez-it purchase a bittersweet memory, so now I’ll have to scrabble through your recycle bins on Thursdays or whenever you’re scheduled to put them out on the curb). To make it even more alluring, the rain this morning has been coming straight down in gentle sheets, letting me keep the windows open for sound and air—a cozy backdrop to the creative pursuits. It’s still morning as I write this, but looks like a cloudy autumn day, early evening. I could also be napping easily (the farmers’ market yesterday was a four-hour marathon of happy customers and dwindling inventory. I think I’ve earned a nap).

But the siren call of bookmaking has become part of me at a deep and cellular level ever since another friend, Evelyn, showed me how it all works. When someone says “forever indebted”, I have a new understanding and appreciation for what that really means. I also have stacks of hand-made books, all sizes and designs, waiting to be claimed by whoever their new owners will be. I give most of them away rather spontaneously and have recently been encouraged to sell them Somewhere. We’ll see. As long as folks keep eating Ghirardelli brownies made from a boxed mix or thrift stores keep selling hard-cover books for almost a nickel and friends hand over the rest of their long-abandoned scrapbooking paper, I’ll be at that table in the studio, rearranging the pieces into something that will press, cure and be wrapped in waxed paper for gifting at a later date.

Squandering, Reconsidered

Saturday night, 8:00p.m.-ish. I’m on the deck (I don’t say “front deck” as we have no back deck providing truth and the promise of symmetry to that sentence) as the sun pushes another day down into a breezy darkness. I was on the couch with the floor fan set at “3” and no sooner settled in to a great read (“One’s Company” by the late Barbara Holland) when a rather loud and admonishing inner voice scolded me into getting up and moving the whole evening wind-down enterprise outside.

I live in the lap of unbridled beauty. No one can see me or our house unless they do some pretty deep trespassing. The wild black raspberries along the driveway are coming on faster than I can pick them and stain my fingers; the cats are lying flat at my feet trying to distribute the coolness of the deck’s planks evenly across their fur-burdened little bodies. In that split-second, it made no sense and bordered on disrespectful to sit inside on a couch with a fan creating a breeze when the real thing was available at no charge just a few steps away. My inner voice is harsh at times, but she tells it like it is.

I’ve been on vacation for just over a week, with another half-week to go, and this stretch of days will certainly not win any awards for Completing A Most Ambitious Project List. Ashamed to admit it, but I sat inside and scrolled aimlessly and much longer than I ever do, watching my screen reports deliver the bad news of my idleness. I expect when I’m back at the office, I’ll feel more than a twinge of guilt and regret for squandering the days I was given. I plunged headfirst into a well of lethargy the likes of which I’ve never known. I’m a doer, not a sitter. It was strange, uncomfortable, and addictive all at once.

Yes, I painted the living room floor as promised and on schedule. That included all the dreaded prep and put-back work that naturally accompanies most painting projects—emptying bookcases of their slightly dusty contents (vowing to downsize, again), moving lighter pieces of furniture into other rooms (turning them into dangerous mazes when I needed to get a coconut water from the fridge or refill the cats’ food dishes), putting slides under the feet of the heavier furniture and pushing it all onto one side, sweeping and scrubbing the floor before applying that first dubious coat (the second coat always makes me feel better, like I made the right decision on color—Bermuda sand from the creative folks at Valspar), all the while keeping the cats exiled to the great outdoors for two days. They’ve just begun talking to me again. I touched everything much more than once, defying that great rule of Efficiency (“touch nothing twice!”) because it was necessary. When Patrick comes home all sunburnt and full of stories from Sundance, I hope he’ll notice how much brighter and unblemished the visible bits of bare floor look, adjacent to a sweet boho throw rug that takes up most of the room’s real estate. Tempted I was at one point to simply paint around that rug, and the chairs and couch and bookcases and blanket chest that serves as our coffee table. But no—I want to be there when it dawns on him that I moved everything by myself. Twice.

I also ventured outside and sang while I hand-pulled and cut down weeds nearly twice my height in the garden. “Honey, I found the garlic"!” I shouted to no one under the unforgiving sun and kept going because there were onions in there somewhere. I’m not ready to talk about the potato bed, but I did harvest the garlic scapes and put a handful in my morning scrambled eggs with a generous toss of sharp white cheddar shreds. And one morning, when it was cool enough, I made granola and a batch of rich and indulgent keto brownies to go with a kick-ass white bean chicken chili (thanking my friend, Marilyn, for the recipe she gave me after we finished a lovely lunch in her shady three-season room). Of course I made too much but Patrick will eat well when he gets home. I also had my teeth cleaned and my hair cut (short enough to gel and spike it and see if I can get away with that look at the office), and showed great restraint on a visit to Costco.

So…about this lethargy and aimless scrolling. I may need to re-evaluate that assessment.

The pace at the office was a solid seven-week relentless and brutal gauntlet before I hit the pause button and sped away in my car to this perpetual 41-acre retreat where everything good and refreshing happens. Numbing screen time rarely makes the to-do list; I was surprised how I allowed it to ensnare me so quickly. I’m no better a human being for viewing all the swimming pool and construction worksite fails that unspool mercilessly without a shred of dignity given to the poor unfortunates who feature unfiltered in these video compilations. I hold fast to that split-second moment when my conscience spoke up and called me out, literally, offering the wiser choice and change of venue, from couch to deck chair and more nourishing views. That decision gives me hope and reassurance that I’m not lost to the world of the shallow and meaningless. I’m just a good soul with some time off wanting to improve my immediate surroundings and eat delicious food. That sort of agenda is bound to bring on a bit of fatigue (see also “exhaustion”, “weariness”, “burnout” and “drained”) when there’s a steady stream (see also “river”, “deluge”, “gully-wash” and “torrent”) of improvement projects demanding all of my energy and attention and a few trips to Lowe’s.

I will always come off a long vacation wishing I did more, didn’t sit around doing the unvirtuous “nothing”, regretting some of my choices. The saving grace is that on that first day back at the office, I’ll get to return to the place where this vacation happened, always and forever known as “home”, and it will still be as refreshing a retreat as if I didn’t need to go back to work at all. I’ve frozen most of the white bean chicken chili and I can always make another pan of those brownies. In the unscheduled and meeting-free days that remain, I will linger, savor and cherish without passing judgment on all that has been placed at my feet and in my hands to enjoy.

Even those 8 Sweet & Savory Tortilla Wrap Hacks.