Betting Against the Sky

The shifting orange and red mass on my phone’s weather app crawled menacingly closer to the pulsing blue dot that marked our place on the map of those areas doomed by the approaching band of storms. The description was grim: 60mph wind gusts, quarter-sized hail, power outages and downed tree limbs, take shelter immediately.

I headed outside to hang a load of laundry.

We had decided to come straight home after the market instead of meandering around the city, warm containers of phad Thai carryout in hand, having our usual post-market date. The weather guessers kept changing their predictions throughout the morning, pushing the expected storms from early evening back to late morning, then to maybe mid-afternoon. What did they care? They wouldn’t have to wrestle a 10’ canopy into a soggy ripstop nylon carrying case and heft folding tables into the back of a pick-up truck between showers. Patrick made fun and casual conversation with our customers, offering odds on when the day’s fortunes would shift from dry to wet. While several insisted the storms would arrive at three p.m., he held fast to the hour of five o’clock, dismissing the little cloud-with-rain icon next to 11 a.m. time slot on the app’s hourly tracking display. We packed up at noon under hazy skies, dug a bag of vanilla chai granola from one of the totes for a last-minute customer and pointed the truck toward home. Fifteen miles out, Patrick announced he was going to cut the grass.

I hope it’s not arrogant of us to test the grand and natural scheme of things with our piddly little household and land chores. We have no misconceptions about Who is in charge of such things and arrange our work accordingly. With our heads bowed, we try to think of it as planning ahead while living a bit close to the edge, where sensible meets reckless. We can hang laundry inside, thanks to a retractable clothesline installed in the upstairs guestroom, but the hot sun and increasingly strong winds almost begged to help dry and iron the clothes we would wear to work in the week ahead. I couldn’t resist as I kept one eye on the kitchen clock and the other on the skies. Storms have skirted around us before; anything was possible. In the distance, I heard the mower slicing an even three inches off the walking paths and open field east of the ridge. Patrick was having a ball.

Laundry hung and blowing parallel to the ground, I took a seat in one of our green reproduction vintage metal lawn chairs on the front porch just under the overhang to watch the unfolding show. Thick, dark gray clouds from the southwest were swallowing the blue skies in great gulps and I could see the silver backs of every leaf on the cottonwoods that stood in their creek bank sentry positions. Just a few hours ago we were on a patch of hot asphalt, handing out samples and wiping our brows between sales (in one exciting moment, a gust of wind slid our canopy, sand weights and all, a good six inches across the parking lot and nearly into the neighboring artisan cheese vendor’s stand; Patrick grabbed the canopy’s metal framing overhead as two market patrons passing by ran to steady the metal poles. See? People are still good and want to help). Unmoving and peaceful now in my perch on the deck, I closed my eyes as a sister wind mussied my hair, thunder rolling and rumbling in the distance. The droning of the mower’s motor was fading as Patrick cut deeper into the meadow and toward the fields near the woods.

When I moved from my chair to the deck’s wooden steps so I could put my bare feet on the freshly cut grass, I felt the tiniest of raindrops land on my arms. An hour had passed since I hung the laundry; might be wise to check it, but no rush. Warm spring days are meant to be savored. I strolled leisurely past the flowerbed in front of the living room windows on my way to the clothesline behind the house, noticing that the bleeding hearts were finishing up their sweet pink and white blooms for the year and the bloodroots beneath the maple had no intention of going anywhere soon. More drops of rain. I took my time plucking the damp clothes from the line, balanced the wicker basket on my hip and headed upstairs in complete disobedience to the “touch nothing twice” rule of work efficiency. Most of the clothes were in dry and foldable condition (thank you, Wind and Sun).

I found my place back in that metal chair on the front deck as flashes of lightning lit up an ever-darkening sky. The sound of the mower grew slightly but not reassuringly closer as the rain increased, filling in the dry patches on the wooden planks. Patrick cuts the grass will full ear protection over ear buds that deliver one of his favorite podcasts or playlists. I’m sure he could feel the rain on his bare forearms but wasn’t confident that he heard the thunder or noticed the lightning. One large BOOM! later, and the sound of the mower grew louder as Patrick came quickly into view from around the back of the house, racing (responsibly) toward the open door of the barn. He made it to the shelter of the deck just as the skies opened up, drenching the grass clippings and launching the cats from their hidden positions in the weeds beneath the bird feeders. Before we could comment, three cracks of lightning punched the sky with simultaneous cannon shots of thunder. If the windows had shattered, we wouldn’t have been surprised.

The hands of the kitchen wall clock sat comfortably at 4:45pm.

Well played, Patrick. Well played.

What Spring Does to an Open Heart

In the back of the Tacoma last Friday, two Black Tartarian cherry saplings rested on their sides, their tender slender trunks crossing each other as I took the last corners of the ride home more gently than I usually do. Here we are, twenty-three years later on this generous and patient piece of land, finally planting fruit trees. I don’t know what we were waiting for. A peach tree will soon join these two in the cut field to the east, where we used to pasture our meat chickens in the years when we had that kind of time.

Spring gets us all riled up and we foolishly reach beyond our capacity with wild dreams about that Country Living photoshoot of a garden, only to wind up with bindweed climbing the t-posts that barely hold up the orange snow fencing around the tomatoes and beets. We’re suckers for this season and she knows it, smiling indulgently upon our ferocious weeding sessions, all the while carrying on some secret arrangement with the stickseed and sumac shoots lurking just beneath the soil. We laugh together about it all and shake our heads, wondering when we’ll learn our lesson (so far, the answer to that is a resounding “never”). We know that fruit trees need a sort of semi-constant surveillance and some babying at the start, and we are motivated by the thought of our first cherry harvest to get us off the couch to cover them with netting when the first fruits appear. With summer approaching, I’m even considering pitching a tent to keep watch through the night.

My uncle’s recent gift of about forty tulip bulbs, descendants of my Opa’s collection that he meticulously tended during the last century, has me swooning and focused on their daily safety and welfare, the closest I’ll ever come to raising children (except for the cats, but they can live outdoors for days and no one will call the local authorities on us). I planted exactly ten on the northern edge of the new potato patch (still waiting for potatoes) and have seven left. Someone with paws or hooves neatly removed three of them in the night, not even trying to backfill the holes with any dirt. Three of the remaining seven have either bloomed or are about to burst forth in all their parrot-variety glory. It’s all I can do to not call in sick for work and camp out to witness that moment.

The other thirty are growing nicely in front of an old railroad tie that borders the mulched flowerbed in front of our living room windows. As if signaling some numerical significance, three of these stand in full bloom, lemon drop-yellow cups atop bright green stems. They are perfect and I can’t stop smiling at them. Only yesterday I noticed that the petals had begun to turn orange-y red on the edges and this morning, one is fully blushing with random red streaks (probably all that attention she’s getting…not used to it, I suppose). I remember reading in an “all things tea” magazine that tulip blooms are edible, and a photo display showed a tray of robust red and yellow ones filled with tarragon chicken salad. The accompanying article reassured the reader that the taste would be bland or at least delicate and I found the presentation quite elegant. But I’m not sure I could ever eat one…it feels too extravagant and I’m simply not done admiring them as they are yet. Maybe if I had a field full, I’d feel differently. I’ll keep you posted.

In other springtime land news, the morning walks are leading me to an eventual summer, as evidenced by the increasing number of silken spiderweb strands that crisscross my face as I make my way up the Hill on the western path that is quickly becoming its customary tunnel of green—sycamore and black walnut saplings entwined with voracious brambles. A spider’s real estate dream, every thorn an anchor for that first thread and once they get a-going, it won’t be long before I walk straight into a full-spoked spun wonder that will keep me blinking rapidly (and pointlessly, for nothing adheres to one’s lashes better than spider silk) until I get to the open field again. Most mornings it’s me and my two walking sticks but on occasion, I get this ambitious idea that I can singlehandedly free up each tree from its tangle of blackberry and grapevines on the strength of two swallows of rooibus tea and a pair of lopers. If I just did one each morning, the woods would be un-brambled by August. Yeah, right. I hear the distant laughter of some wiser and sentient being who seems eager for a front row seat to such folly. Of course I’ll oblige them and a good time will be had by all. We signed off on that agreement twenty-three years ago.

As the day’s agenda stretches out before us (and some of it already in the rearview mirror—three trays of granola cooling in the fridge, awaiting a late afternoon bagging and restocking session for the market), I fully expect more of this delicious season to work its way under my skin and fingernails until I’m all entwined like a sycamore sapling.

I hope no one with lopers thinks I need to be freed up anytime soon.

Getting There

A few years ago, in a pebble-textured blue sketchbook I bought at the local indie bookstore, I practiced using a new set of colored pencils. I drew simple images, like daffodils on a rolling green hill, abstract angles and curves framed in rainbow dots that quickly wore the newly-sharpened tips of said pencils down to nubbins. A few turns on the pencil sharpener I inherited, the one that Dad had mounted on the wall near the door of his downstairs workshop at the family home, and I was back at it, shading in the distinct outlines of a tulip’s red petals and alternating between yellow and black for the bee making its way across the page.

Somewhere, though, my attention span (never really long to begin with) turned in another direction and I began to write, in short phrases and appropriate single words, the story of my journey from fear to compassion for the people who had made life difficult for me. It took the shape of a spiral. Hard to read (you have to keep turning the book in a circle and it made me nauseous after a few go-arounds) but no other physical arrangement of the words would have captured such an important and necessary outpouring. In the center of it all, I had glued a small circular piece of mirror that needs no further explanation.

I was rearranging the shelves in my studio a few months ago when I found this book—hadn’t gone looking for it—and sat for a moment in silent respect for the depth and breadth of these two pages. My fingers traced the edges of the tiny mirror and smudged it a bit as I recalled the years of abuse and bullying at the hands of a family member, the men who raped me, the therapists who reassured and released me from their guidance when the time was right, the husband who saved my life—literally—twice, and the days when sweet peace wasn’t just within reach but sat comfortably in my lap, no plans to go anywhere. None of these experiences moved in a one-way linear direction. My feet have doubled back on lessons I needed to learn more than once (usually in front of a couple of people), carrying me forward into healing and heartache in equal measure. And isn’t that how it goes? Just when you think you’ve got something sorted out, a sudden yank of the rug beneath your feet and there you are, staring upward from your vantage point on the floor, humbled and blank slate once again. Rinse and repeat say life’s instructions on the back of the bottle. I get up, towel off and head into my day. Like Dad used to say, “self-revelation is not for the squeamish.”

Neither saint nor victim, I considered what the spaces in between the carefully selected words and phrases held in their invisible silence. What choices had I made that moved me from “shame” and “righteous anger” to “sympathy for the enemy” and “necessary separation”? I recall a stretch of indifference that gave me a break from all the work of trying to understand the mind of a bully, the logic of an abuser. I came to understand denial as a valuable coping skill until I found my more confident feet and could stand sure-footed once again. And in an undefined, unchronicled moment, I introduced myself to the practice of compassion and forgiveness, finding a path to liberation and release. Some days it’s easier to get there than others, but I keep trying. I have forgiven the one who intimidated and controlled with fear and fists, the ones who took violently without asking, wondering what their lives must have been like to select, from all the tools in their toolkits, the most hurtful and abhorrent options. Even on my worst days I can still do better than that.

Two pages of graphite and a circle of mirror can certainly pack in a lot.

The story isn’t finished yet, and I don’t mean just because I’m still alive and typing these words. It’s good and healthy to look over your shoulder now and then to see where you’ve been before strapping on the backpack and heading into the next leg of the trip. I think about the current State of Affairs, with so much distance between us and our better selves right now, who we were created to become and what we’ve settled for as a human species. I wonder what my own personal experience of compassion and forgiveness could look like on a larger scale, if such a thing is even possible. The folks up the road with their “***k Biden” signs and Putin orchestrating chaos and horror more than five thousand miles from my spot here on the couch…how can I possibly touch that in any meaningful way? I don’t have an answer for that yet but compassion says to keep looking for it, so I do.

I have no idea what shape that part of the story will take, but one thing’s for sure—I’m gonna need a few more blank books and a heck of a lot more pencils.

In Good Company

I have exactly twenty-two dish towels.

I only know this because today is all about the kitchen. I’ll be in it for several hours, restocking a few of our granola flavors for the market and in the flurry of gathering all the necessary supplies, I couldn’t resist a bit of tidying up. I opened the drawer of the Hoosier-style hutch where they live (alongside a stack of handmade cloth napkins) and touched each one, counting as I went.

Of these twenty-two dish towels, I purchased only five; the rest were given to me by dear friends and sisters or inherited from my mom when the family home was sorted and emptied of its tangible memories. We use each and every one of them at some point in the calendar’s unfolding. Small as our house is, the kitchen is rather roomy, second only in square footage to the living room, and there are strategic places to hang these towels after wiping down the long countertop and antique wooden kitchen table. Our stove can hold three of them from its oven door handle, as long as they’re folded lengthwise in thirds. So far, the kittens have resisted the temptation of playing with these dangling soft toys, distracted instead by food and each other’s tails. A damp one (towel, not kitten) drapes nicely over the stand mixer to the right of the sink to dry.

It’s gently surprising, in a comforting sort of way, how their presence cheers me. Laundry days are that much brighter for their presence among the line-dried pile waiting to be folded, because I remember the occasion that brought them into our home, the women friends who carefully selected each one before wrapping them up and handing them over as a thank you present for that evening’s dinner invitation. They sport mostly bunnies and bees, chickens and sunflowers in various designs from vintage to contemporary, and the holiday collection…well, those rich blue, burgundy and gold colors make a humble space look extraordinary any day of the year (I’m not a stickler for seasonal decorating; the ones with winter scenes of deer and snow-covered trees are as welcome in August as in the weeks leading up to Christmas). Function and decoration are the dish towel’s two-handed contribution to our daily rhythm and if you asked, I could tell the story behind each one.

What catches me today, though, are the feelings of warmth and appreciation for the women who gave them to me. When I hang the one Jen gave me that reads “Find the place that fills your heart and nurtures your soul, settle in and you’re home!“, I think of her baking prowess and creativity for her girls’ birthday cakes and how many other love-filled meals we’ve eaten at their table. My sister, Peggy, found a set that perfectly captures the vibe of our house in wintertime—a simple red clapboard house embroidered near the hem while snow falls softly around it, represented as a postage stamp. Peggy is all about hospitality and one glance at these towels puts me right in her generous presence. Jackie and I used to haunt antique stores together, so the ones that look like old feed sacks must have caught her eye at the Amish hardware store up north where she lives. The black outline of a rabbit rests atop a slogan for flour against a primitive tan background and it charms me every time I see it. My sister, Jane, brought us whimsical bees stitched on the border of a cream-colored towel whose texture is honeycombed. I know she wouldn’t mind that this towel has been loved through more than a few pasta dinners, as evidenced by the slight pinkish tinge to one of the bee’s wings after I hastily dabbed some tomato sauce splatters from the stovetop. We keep using it because we like bees and we love Jane. Patrick’s late aunt Gracie hand-embroidered sweet begonias on a set that she gave him at her ninetieth birthday party. Those will never see pasta sauce, I can assure you, but they do come out when the kitchen is all clean and begging for those bright yellows and greens as a finishing touch.

Of course, none of them match, not in theme or colors, and that’s the beauty of such a collection. Our days are an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of events and moods that would quickly outstrip the blandness of a monochromatic stack of pure functionality. We dress our kitchen accordingly, randomly and with memories that keep bringing us joy, wash after wash. But today, even more wonderful than all that, I will get to bake with Jen and Peggy and Jackie and Jane just a hand’s reach away, cheering me on as I measure, chop and stir, and Aunt Gracie overseeing it all in unblemished splendor.

I am surrounded by women who know what our kitchen means to me and it feels good.