The Reminder

I walk past it most days, though I wasn’t there when it happened.

Just inside the woods that thicken up the north edge of the field, about six yards in, a stand of young black walnut and blue beech saplings holds the body of a much larger fallen ash, suspended four feet above ground. It looks almost staged, an art installation set in place by some invisible human hand.

I first came upon the scene three years ago, the day after a fierce storm flattened what remained of the open field’s goldenrod, thistle and ironweed stalks and left gaping holes in the forest’s canopy, taking out hollowed and vigorous trees alike. I pushed through the brambles and Virginia creeper, approaching it with a respectful curiosity tempered with caution (widow makers like these are everywhere in the woods; perhaps it wasn’t done falling). As I gingerly placed my hand on the grooved bark, I felt the solid heavy length of wood beneath. Wedged snugly in the line of trees that caught it, this gentle giant wasn’t going anywhere. In the morning walks that followed, I tried to find the sheared-off stump and couldn’t, feeding my ever-hungry love of questions that have no answers. The forest had apparently held its own retreat, conducted a trust fall activity for its participants and I got to bear witness to the small group that stayed behind still cradling one of its own. On one particular walk, for no particular reason, I whispered "“hello, Wonder of Physics” as I went by, and this benedictive ritual wove its way into my daily steps, becoming once again prayer and acknowledgement of my place in the scheme of things. Many steps and sunrises later, that whispered greeting has grown into the following: “Hello, Wonder of Physics, Testament to Interdependence, Evidence of Community, Example of Support, Sign of Trust, Thing of Beauty”. I then lower my gaze and ask whatever leaves and wood rot might be listening, “may I be some or all of that for someone today” and keep walking, intent on making that promise stick before my head hits the pillow so many hours later.

Not a bad way to start the day.

Patrick and I live in the belly of a perpetual classroom with endless teachers, some of whom we’ve never met, whose lessons are delivered while we sleep. While our shared existence has no grand and singular Purpose, we are rooted in and pivot from an anchored place of attentiveness as we move through our days. It’s exhilarating and exhausting and sometimes we miss things. But those lessons are always there, on the other side of windows and doors that we try to leave open for as long as the seasons allow. It’s wondrous how the same apple tree on the edge of the meadow has something slightly new to reveal each time I stand beneath her slender branches. When I stop to pat the ring-striped bark of her trunk, I smile and imagine who she’s fed in her lifetime. Who have I fed in my lifetime? No comparison and yet, we’re both doing our best with what we are. Thank you, sister.

I walk on good days and not-so-good days, and I don’t mean the weather (editorial note: the weather is neither, since it doesn’t exist to please us. If we find rain or the endlessness of February uncomfortable, that’s ours to reckon with. The universe isn’t arranged for our convenience). Sometimes, I boot up and step out, all preoccupied and self-absorbed, and the land receives it just as generously as she does my full attention, healing me no matter what I think I need. Troubled thoughts are composted until they become a fresh outlook, a more honest perspective, all of which usually resolves by the time I get back to the house. I feel a slight twinge on the way to work, wishing I hadn’t squandered all my walking time being harsh and judg-y about others (or myself). Maybe I’ll get to try again tomorrow.

When I do get that chance, I slow down on the path as I come to that place of Humility, and now the dead ash’s bark is hanging in strips from the solid wood beneath, on its way to becoming some other being’s home, or breakfast, or day’s work to recycle. It’s still a wonder, still evidence that living things are designed, designed, to support one another and that includes the human community too. Call it luck or burden or both; we are asked to join in and do the best we can. Lessons like these are to be carried forward; this place of majesty, mystery and wonder on the path reminds me to do just that.

Dear reader, whom will you catch in your strong and capable arms today? How will you live up to the Wonder of Physics that you are? Are you willing to be someone’s evidence that community is not just possible but real? And can you claim your own beauty without question, denial or false modesty?

Fellow student of life, I deeply and sincerely hope you’ll consider it.

A Love Letter to Sound

I took my hearing aids for their first walk in the woods the day after I got them, and my brain is still unpacking what I didn’t know I’d been missing.

Apparently, bird communities above my head arrange themselves in layers, hidden from sight most of the time save for a quick flash of wings and teasing me with their throat-filled songs as my head swivels about trying to spot them in the canopy. It’s an audible melange of industrious woodpeckers, taunting crows, the sharp scolding tones of a single blue jay and a handful of laughing towhees. I stand small below their feathers and tiny talons, at the base of trees that will always know more than I do, captivated and reluctant to continue on with the morning walk. Can’t I just stay here, in this green gilded place where time dissolves into the Eternal Now?

And did you know that a wet sycamore leaf underfoot has its own song to sing, a squishy and slurping sort of refrain that settles right behind the speaker nestled snugly in my ear canal while my feet keep sliding forward along the path, kicking more sounds upward to live in my head?

I am overwhelmed and overstimulated. And loving every minute of it.

Twenty some years ago, I had surgery to correct what was at the time significant hearing loss in both ears, caused by otosclerosis, a condition that renders the stapes immovable. The procedure, called a stapedectomy, replaces the smallest bone on earth with an equally small platinum filament that, when successfully implanted, gets right to work, doing its portion of the mighty and miraculous enterprise of carrying sound through our ears to our brains for processing, interpretation and sheer wonder. I had this done twice (once for each ear), six months apart and still recall the moment when I heard the water from a small desktop fountain in the room where I took my bi-weekly massages trickle and whisper down the resin and miniature rocky cliffs to land with a soft splash in the inch-deep reservoir at the base of the device. Face-up on the massage table, I let the tears run down my temples and past the top curve of my ears, enchanted and profoundly, wordlessly grateful. In the days and years that unfolded, I drank in every drop of sound around me. Woodpeckers who lived in the black walnuts and ash trees that lined the creek had been there for years and I never knew. The hum of traffic on Rt 661 a mile beyond the tree-lined farm fields felt loud and intrusive as I turned the corner on the walking path that skirted the western edge of the old cornfield. Patrick, has it always been that loud? I stopped cupping my left ear in conference room meetings at work to hear our soft-spoken medical director offer charting advice to one of the team’s nurses; her gentle tones landed clear and kind from the far end of the oval table.

When I’d noticed earlier this year that I couldn’t hear Patrick’s rhythmic breathing at night while sleeping on my left side, couldn’t hear the sparrows in the mulberries just on the other side of the bedroom window’s screen, I calmly made an appointment with the wizard physician whose skill had brought me back into a louder world all those years ago. The hearing tests confirmed what I’d suspected: my stapedectomies’ warranty had pretty much expired and it was time to consider other options, one of which was to do nothing. That surprised me, especially since the good doctor had discovered a small hole in my right eardrum. “It’s not urgent that we fix that, given its size”, he said. “Just don’t go swimming in any dirty lakes.” All other options were laid out before me, from redoing the stapedectomies to fixing the eardrum to trying hearing aids, each accompanied by a sliding scale of risk and benefits (and expense). Hearing aids intrigued me as the least invasive and most economical, though I wasn’t going to let cost alone drive my decision. I have yet to put an exact price on hearing Patrick tell me about his day or the papery sound of a just-plucked ground cherry’s husk in my fingertips.

So here I am, two weeks and some change from that first extended consultation with the hearing specialist who showed me how to put the almost-weightless apparatus behind each ear and insert the tiny dome-covered speaker into my ear canal, then hold the button for six seconds until the magic began. I now register every click of a coworker’s heels on the laminate wood flooring of our lobby, the piercing beep of the lunchroom’s microwave telling me my leftover cumin noodles and chicken are done warming up. The car groans and rattles in ways I haven’t heard before (a bit unnerving) and I’m certain I can hear two cotton balls rubbing against each other in their resealable bag hanging from the pegboard hooks at a nearby drugstore. Each maple leaf’s rustle in the late summer breeze is distinct, different and almost too much to bear. I suspect it won’t be long before I’ll be able to hear what Patrick is thinking (a prospect that worries us both). And it’s only been two weeks. There’s more to come, I know, and I’m bracing myself for it (eating raw carrots, pushing garlic cloves into the soil for next spring’s harvest, hearing the last of this season’s tomatoes ripen on their vines, the first snowflakes landing on the treated wood of the front deck and melting, the kittens shedding their fur before their morning naps…).

On that inaugural and audially indelible morning walk, the birdcalls and wet leaves and little fallen twigs and crickets who made themselves known to me now live in my head forever. I could have sworn I heard the sun reaching its golden fingers through the grove of musclewood trees as it hoisted up the day in all its cacophonous glory, a rich and still indescribable sound. I will keep walking until I find the words, which I secretly hope never happens as I move through this new adventure, grinning from one sound-soaked ear to the other.

Remembering What Really Matters

I tripped and fell on the sidewalk in front of an Episcopal church last Sunday.

I’d arrived early to facilitate the first of six gatherings anchored in various themes from my collection of essays. It was a hard two-kneed genuflect that left my right knee skinned for the first time since my single-digit youth, and I took my time nostalgically spritzing on the Bactine from the vestry’s first aid kit after the kind receptionist let me in the door. For an instant, I was eight years old again, tending to my own scrapes so I could get back outside and play. I felt strangely invigorated as I hobbled from the restroom to the large space where we’d be meeting to talk about the Transitions in our lives (I am aware that “invigorated” and “hobbled” in the same sentence create some visual dissonance for some of you. I ask your forgiveness, though I’m sure you’ll understand I won’t be on my knees when doing so). I’m not sure there’s a deeper message to be had from this incident, but you’re welcome to speculate to your heart’s content.

Two weeks ago, I was all excited to share that I’d observed a hummingbird in the act of relieving himself while perched on the shepherd’s hook from which his daily supply of sweet nectar swung gently in the summer breeze. Glimpses of these tiny blurred-winged creatures is novelty enough to stop us mid-sentence, never mind seeing one tend to its little intestinal ablutions (I looked it up too—they do have intestines as well as the customary two stomachs all birds have). If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it and for a second I wasn’t completely sure of what I’d just witnessed. The take-away here is that in the nearly six decades I’ve spent on the planet, the last twenty-three on a piece of land that gives nonstop, this was my first hummingbird defecation sighting. Definitely “above the fold” news here, and I was determined to build a reflection from it.

But in the time that has passed since that blessed pooping event, I’ve had a few, um, distractions. Two Thursday evenings ago, our home’s electrical network of hidden wires and a stalwart breaker box started acting “funny”, surging to boost the floor fan’s speed from low to extra-high and making the lights go from dim to bright to dim again without any tactile commands from me. It was when the furnace tried to kick on at random intervals that I called Patrick (an hour away at his mother’s house for the week while his sister got a much-needed caregiver break) for a bit of remote guidance. Our local power company came out in the middle of the night, checked the meter and closed the work ticket, but by morning, nothing had improved. As I flipped on the hot pot for my morning tea, I heard the breakers trip. I pushed them back into the “on” position and immediately registered a sharp smell of burning plastic. Adrenaline kicking in, I herded cats out the front door and grabbed the keys to the truck, thinking it might be wise to move it away from the house should things progress to a five-alarmer. Twenty minutes later, our good neighbors who double as fire crew on the nearby volunteer department swarmed the house, heat sensors in hand, searching every room in the house for hot spots while I paced in the gravel thirty-some yards away.

Not what I’d planned as a start to my Friday, but there you are.

Ninety minutes later, after the scene had been declared safe and the chief recommended a call to the electrician, I sat stiffly in post-afib caution on the couch, watching hummingbirds dart and chase each other away from the feeder in wide arcing swings, envying their absolute ignorance of the morning’s drama. The main breaker now in the “off” position, the house sat ‘round me, silent and unresponsive as I began rearranging my day, which would eventually involve packing up everything from the freezer and fridge, with my sister Peggy’s help, and lugging it to family members’ homes an hour away. By Friday night, none of the five electricians we’d called had the staff to take on the job of restoring our power. It was going to be a long, dark weekend.

A week and some change later, Patrick is back home, the sixth electrician we called came out to assess the trouble and we’ve got some power restored (enough to run the fridge and flush the toilet, thank goodness). But we’re not able to do laundry, are hesitant to use the stove, and hope no monsoons visit us while the sump pump is on holiday in the hole under the house. The fix is a new meter with upgraded connections wrapped in PVC around the back of the house, scheduled for Monday morning. Once that’s in place, then we can call the HVAC folks for a look at the furnace. The electrician is still scratching his head about that part of our story…and in the meantime, I’ve been researching the house’s poltergeist history.

All God’s creatures have their troubles and we’re not complaining, truly, but we are on the edge of weary (taking a shovel and a roll of toilet paper to the field out back at 1:30a.m. gets old after five days) and looking forward to the Return of All Things Electrical. Sure, we’d like the universe to move its bullseye off our heads, but it’s summer, not winter, the garden couldn’t possibly be bursting forth with any more color and nourishment for us and we’re within arm’s reach of each other. The Perseids are zooming across a piece of velvet sky we’ve claimed as our own and friends have brought us jugs of water and bouquets of flowers. After a refreshingly cold dinner of tossed salad and peaches, Patrick and I finish the sentence that starts with “we’ve been through worse”, listing everything we’ve survived so far. It’s an impressive list that gave us the endorphins we needed.

Somewhere between the wonder of witnessing a hummingbird pooping and falling to my knees in front of a church that isn’t even mine, there’s a lesson to be learned. When the power comes back on fully, I’ll turn on a light so I can see what it is.

The Sleep-disrupting Obsession of Tidying Up

I’m flirting with the edges of being fastidious about cleaning, to the point of almost wanting to seek help.

Let me explain.

This morning as I slept in gloriously and well past my usual 4:30-5:00a.m. rising time, I was in a dream where I’d spilled a couple large handfuls of beads on a short shag carpet (side note: the character “Hank” from Corner Gas is with me. Lovely comedy series out of Canada, worth watching if you have Amazon Prime. The beads were his. No idea how he featured in my REM sleep episode). I could feel myself slowly waking up but I tried to push myself back into the dream so I could finish cleaning up the mess I’d made. If you’re an armchair psychologist reading this, I’ve just given you your moment.

I took a rake to the chicken run the other day, just to see the bare soil cleared of the stones and pebbles they displace for their feather-cleaning dirt baths. A few of the neighborhood raccoons also like to climb in there at night and dig like they know where they’re going, leaving ankle-turning divots in random spots between the gate and the coop. Since I prefer to start and end my days without fall or injury, I consider raking the run a safety measure first and foremost (but will allow the full rush of the cleaning thrill to race through me and savor it). Of course they mess it up after I’m finished. I don’t mind. I’ll get to sweep it into a semblance of order again, like one of those desktop Zen gardens with the sand and a little rake. I think I’m onto something here—poultry care as Meditation. Follow me for more life enhancement tips.

On my morning walks, I pick up fallen limbs and branches to save that much more wear and tear on the mower’s blades, basking in the long view of a clear green path that looks like velvet. But when I arrive in the woods and sink into that one place where the deer trails crisscross beneath a grandfatherly black walnut and a grove of blue beech saplings, it’s all I can do not to reach down and move the scraps of bark that litter the forest floor at their feet, scooping them into a tidy little pile for some wild creature to notice and appreciate. Oh, and there’s a branch blocking the path and, while I’m bent double with my face near the mayapples, let me just pick up those twigs and…I stop, drop whatever is in my hands and remember what I’ve read about how every forest makes good use of what the trees give up. What I call “tidying up” is actually displacement for thousands of organisms trying to keep house in their own way. Just walking on their tiny communities is disruption enough. It’s a wonder the woods let me back in at all, behaving all human like I do. Gently chastened, I step slowly and carefully along the path back toward the main trail and head towards the meadow. Surely there’s something I can rearrange there without causing any harm. Sigh…it never ends.

I’m also a clean-as-I-go cook and baker, starting with a full dishpan of soapy water to collect the utensils, pots and pans that have served their purpose in the mixing and folding part of the recipe. By the time the parchment-lined baking sheet is in the oven, the drainer is a monument to dish Jenga, droplets of water sliding down the sides of the large auction-scored Tupperware mixing bowl now happily on its way to “dry”. I can sit at the table with a cup of tea, my elbow inches away from the baking racks where those gluten-free almond chocolate chip cookies will cool nicely, the only chore remaining to lift one to my mouth while it’s still warm. You may call that OCD; I call it peace and cleverness.

If Mom were here, she’d shake her head and insist I didn’t inherit this commitment to clean from her. She’s being too hard on herself. She was a Master Organizer and we learned the art of “everything in its place” at her knee. Measuring cups were stacked neatly and stored in the cupboard, their handles always—always—pointing in the same direction and facing the cupboard door so you could reach in and grab them easily. Repurposed butter tubs and other plastic containers, with their matching and perfectly fitting lids, mind you, knew the same ordered contentment. Her sheet music and songbooks were safely tucked away in the bench of the baby grand piano in the family room; we knew exactly where the olive-green Reader’s Digest Favorites collection was when we needed it for an impromptu sing-a-long. And downstairs beneath the pantry shelves, where cans were arranged in helpful rows by type and size, with creamed corn in the back, hidden by us kids in the hopes she wouldn’t find it (she always did), large plastic trash bins held our Halloween costumes, folded neatly and wrapped in trash bags to keep out any moisture. We might have looked a bit wrinkled on our annual trick-or-treat forays into the neighborhood, but we never smelled of mildew. That’s good parenting, that is.

It would seem I’ve moved those life lessons forward into our own land-based rhythm, perhaps in an attempt to keep such a vast space manageable where the borders of wild and tame shake hands. In a life where our eyes land on projects in process no matter what direction we’re facing, the act and art of cleaning, even a small corner of something, feels like control in the most noble sense. Yesterday’s storm may have scattered cottonwood branches everywhere, but I can walk unencumbered through the living room without tripping on stray shoes or gathering little clumps of cat hair on my toes. We can eat safely from each plate and bowl stored in the kitchen cabinets and see our reflections in the bathroom mirror, our faces unfreckled by dried splatters of toothpaste from last night’s oral hygiene rituals. These days, if it brings peace to a furrowed brow, I’m all for it, no matter how it may appear to a stranger’s way of thinking.

So what if it invades even my most pleasantly quirky dreams? I’m still getting some decent REM sleep and if I awaken with one less mess to clean up, all the better. Now, if you’ll forgive me, it’s time to let the chickens out and I’ll need to fetch my rake for that.