Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized | Tags: Cats, signs and omens, spirit walk, Unearthly visitor, vision quest
Saturday morning, blessedly cooler, the humidity gone. The insects sang with the birds and I sat outside with my coffee watching the cats’ lively play, invigorated by the reprieve from summer’s hammer. They charged up into the Golden Rain Tree and swiped at each other from their perches. I grabbed my phone to take their portrait. Down the hill on the lane that runs in front of my house, a man walked by. He talked softly to himself, looked up and saw me there looking down to him. I waved, as I do. He waved, stopped walking and started talking to me as he turned to climb up through the old lily beds and ornamental grasses of my yard. I couldn’t follow what he was saying, something about trying to get up this way every year to do a bit of work, something about picking broccoli spears in Shelby County. He was a white man with long graying hair and a beard, both of which were red once. Perhaps he was in his sixties, perhaps older. He wore loose jeans and a zipped up jacket the color of earth and moss, both of which looked to be worn a long time though not dirty. It was startling how he climbed right up into my yard, ignoring boundaries most folks wouldn’t consider crossing. The dogs rushed down to him, giving him a friendly welcome, and he greeted them with pats. Still he continued his climb toward me, his hands restlessly picking and pulling leaves and branches as he passed. Some were weeds, some were plants dying off at the end of summer, but some were not. He snapped off a branch of the Golden Rain Tree and the head of a sedum that was fixing to flower. His hands had their own will, a need to be picking and snapping as he worked through the farm rows of his mind. Soon he was upon me, right up on the patio bricks by the little fish pond. I was more puzzled than alarmed.
“How about I walk you this way down the path” I said, hoping to lead him back toward the road.
“A path is alway good” he said. He followed me but looked over his shoulder toward my house and its door open wide to the living room inside. “You have a nice house. I bet you have a bedroom.”
There was nothing sinister in his voice, just a simple kind of wistfulness.
“Yes” I said. “Here, this path leads back down to the lane.”
“A path is always good” he said again. But instead of following it, he kept walking into my neighbor’s yard, turning to continue his ascent up the hill.
“It’s good that there are still Indians in this place” was the last thing I heard him say as he made his way, pulling and snapping plants along his way up to the little bit of wood we have behind our houses. I watched him until he was gone.
Was there something I ought to have done for him? He asked for nothing. He seemed to be simply passing through, a visitor from another world following a path I could not see, and as I write this, I am suddenly doubting that it really happened at all.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: adoption, Baptism, Leaving for COllege, motherhood
Cleaning out the attic eave storage space this summer, after the possum frat party that had been raging there all winter, I found many treasures I had stowed away. Some that still cause pain, some that are bittersweet, but many many that are simply sweet. I’ve set some sweet ones on my desk to look over when I need them, like tonight as my daughter is downstairs packing her things to leave for college for the first time.
I found that poem again. It has been pinned to my bulletin board above my desk. And I found again the words I wrote for her baptisms, for she did indeed have more than one. The first took place in the church I grew up in, Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Ky. The second was in my Chicago church home- Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ.
From the Kentucky baptism:
The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. I did not know what to pray for, what to hope for. I tried to live with the idea of never having a child of my own and I found I could not. But I did not know what path to take or what path to make. I didn’t even know who to ask. Then between projects, I took on work as a nanny through a service. My very first job I walked into an apartment to find Katie, a 2 1/2 year old girl adopted from an orphanage in China. I became dizzy, the ground moved under me and I quite literally saw a curtain open in front of me and I heard the words, I really really did, “This is your future”.
See, the miracle is not that the bush burned without being consumed, the miracle is that instead of running away from a brush fire, Moses stopped long enough to notice that fact. The miracle is that absorbed as I was by my own fears, my own despair, my own feeling of being abandoned, I was able to look at Katie and see that curtain open. I was going to adopt a daughter. There was an answer to my wordless prayer, and I was the answer to hers. A motherless child and a childless mother, and now we are we.
And from the Chicago baptism:
Three years ago on this day I was a couple of months away from my epiphany, still grappling with myself, wrestling the angel to the ground to demand my blessing. Two years ago I had gathered my demand for a blessing into a dossier that then sat on a pile of such demands in some Chinese official’s In basket. A year ago today I held the little photo of the blessing in my hand and today my arms and heart are full of blessings, full of her, my daughter, my gift from God.
Her name came to me long before she did. At a time in my life when I was particularly alive to everything around me, especially the natural world, I was struck by the name of Jessamine County, Kentucky. It was early spring and I was driving through it a couple of times a week, commuting to Eastern Kentucky and those blessed mountains. Jessamine. And then from somewhere another word attached itself- kindred, one of the most beautiful words I know. Jessamine Kindred, the daughter I dreamt about, my secret child whose name I wrote in places that no one else would ever see. And now that name appears beside mine on a piece of paper that says we belong to each other, and on her very own Social Security card, and on this church bulletin. My eyes still can’t quite believe it. The daughter I dreamt of. The name that she was given when brought to the orphanage was Meng Ai. It means “Dreaming of Love”.
We both dream of love still, conjure it everyday, make mistakes, try again. “I am from those moments where my mom and I walked hand in hand looking for new adventures”. Now it’s time for her to walk on her own and it’s breaking both our hearts, but golly I’m grateful. She’s healthier, she’s ready, it’s time.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized, Writing | Tags: Art of the Day, Saturdays
God bless the young rabbit
with the early morning sun
shining through its ears.
God bless the chimney swifts and mourning doves,
the adolescent robins
careening from branch to branch.
God bless the red tailed hawk
enduring the harangue
of the self righteous jay.
God bless the fox who knows
the back way,
slipping safely home.
God bless the runners
(god knows why they run),
moving as one down the empty street.
God bless the orphans
waking up to their free morning,
the caregivers who planned for it all week.
God bless the thirsty grass,
The parched trees and shrubs,
the flowers that bloom anyway.
God bless the old dogs
with their busted knees
and their young hearts.
And God bless the mother
who dallies on the hilltop
for a moment, just a moment
before launching into a list of chores
that would bury a regiment.
Another Saturday morning dalliance.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Writing | Tags: Art of the Day, Frogs, Hawks, Spirit Animals, wishes
There is strange energy at work, a churning sort of energy. Walking the dogs these past few days, my head has been crowded with old unhappy thoughts of lost love and betrayals, large and small. A male Cooper’s Hawk has been sitting vigil atop the dying ash tree in the lane and yesterday I spoke to him as I set off. “Hello old friend. I see you. I do wish you would leave me one of your feathers.” And early this morning, there it was, laying on the gravel- one of his tail feathers. A few more steps and there was a feather from a Blue Jay, then a small taupe gray feather from a Mourning Dove. Then I saw a neighbor being led down the street in handcuffs, the mustached officer gingerly carried her pretty pink handbag as he held her arm. He was leading her gently and she had a curious little smile on her face as she climbed into the backseat of the cruiser. Then I found more and more feathers, black ones perhaps from crows or grackles or starlings. I picked up fourteen feathers in all, an extravagance of messages and prayers. Evidence of growth, evidence of someone’s demise.
Then at home I saw what I had been suspecting- that a frog has indeed made its home in my little fish pond. I saw it sitting on the rocks by the waterfall, and just now, I saw a second frog there! Two frogs in the pond that has not known any for two years. I have been wishing for frogs, sorry that I’ve not tried bringing in tadpoles these last two years. And here they came all on their own. So now, like the greedy Fisherman’s Wife, I am wishing for all kinds of things. I’m wishing for my daughter’s mental health to improve, wishing for a successful transition to life at college. I’m wishing for my own daily commitment to writing, carving out time and space for it, protecting it from interruption. I’m wishing for success and prosperity. I’m even wishing for new love and friendship to come into my life. Because what the hell. There is something afoot.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Writing | Tags: Appalachian, Hindman Settlement School
Hindman. All of us are mourning the end of the week, all of us are facing the return home. So it seems from the social media posts and the sudden rush of friend and follow requests I’ve gotten. We are sorry to leave with good reason. It is a holy place, a place where one feels whole. So many people have passed through there or have settled and made lives there, and all of them have had one ambition- to become better. To learn. To teach. To grow. Teachers, students, artists, musicians, writers, historians, activists- a hundred and seventeen years of people finding their voice and losing their fear to make it heard. The old cabins, the new buildings, the paths, the hills, the trees, the beloved footbridge over Troublesome Creek – the place is soaked in spirit and we are thirsty for it.
But it is also us. I am using the plural pronoun because when I go to Hindman I become part of we. We come to know each other quickly, outside of the context of the roles we play in our families, outside of where we live, how we live, the jobs we do in the world. We know each other through our writing, our soul’s desire to come to terms with life, made manifest on the page. We share meals (never underestimate the power of three well-cooked meals served punctually in the life of a writer), we share sleeping quarters, we walk to class together, discuss our work there, listen to readings of other people’s work, we sing, stay up all hours swapping stories and do it again the next day. We find that for at least one glorious week, our work matters. And that is what we want to hold fast to, that is what I want to defend from the demands of my workaday life. We are all sorry to leave that place, but grateful, oh so grateful to know it is there.
On Friday night, Dorothy Allison (oh my god, oh my god in heaven, Dorothy Allison) sent us off with this benediction: “Now get the fuck out of here and go shout!”
How to Eat My Mother’s Caramel Cake:
Let the whole cake sit in front of you for an hour while you pretend it isn’t there
Or at least that you don’t care that it’s there.
Pretend the candles refer to a variety of ketchup.
Sneak a crumb of icing when no one is looking.
Light the ridiculous candles and sing.
Because there are only three of you, sing too at the top of your lungs.
Cut yourself the smallest slice, too small to be of any notice,
Certainly too small to be called a serving.
Press your fingertip into the crumbs that fell off the slice,
Let the taste spread through your mouth.
Use your fingers to break off a real bite, careful to take some of the caramel frosting.
Put it in your mouth. Sigh.
Let all the memories of eating this cake in years past come flooding back
Like a movie montage.
Break off another piece, make sure you get more of the frosting.
Let the frosting break over your tongue in wonder.
Sigh again.
Eat the rest of it as quickly as you can.
Drink some water.
Now that the appetizer is over,
Cut yourself a real slice.
Use a fork now,
Marvel how the simple combination of flour, eggs, sugar and butter
Can taste so very differently from cake to cake.
From bite to bite, judiciously divide that frosting.
Reflect how you are not even a frosting person,
How you scrape it off those poor cousins, the grocery store sheet cakes.
Admit to yourself that you’d slap away the hand of even your own child
If they were to try to take that best bite,
the one that holds the motherlode of frosting-
That T-shaped intersection between top and bottom layer and the outside.
Let that bite sit last on your plate as you write this account.
Then take a deep breath, eat it.
Close your eyes, say a prayer:
Long life to Nonna. May there be many more cakes.
Calculate how soon you might justify coming back for another slice.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Uncategorized | Tags: Art of the Day, Circles, Cycles
6/1/19 Early morning. I’ve been thinking a lot about circles, all the orbits we make, all the beginnings, the middles, the ends that lead right back into another beginning. So I sat outside last night and drew it as best I could, in the little piece of green that I have the care of, the “bit of earth” that is my own secret garden. The end of another school year, the start of another summer, the end of J’s secondary education, the start of her collegial learning, the sun sets at the end of another day and I go to sleep solid in the belief that it will rise again.
I thought a lot about Mom’s grand birthday party so lavishly hosted by my brother and sister, celebrating her 80 trips around the sun and 60 trips for my cousin Bobby. A carousel of photos, some almost 80 years old themselves, played over and over on the big screen in the corner, the past made present in front of our eyes. There were so many friends there, so much family, she hinted that this might not be such a bad send off if she were to pop off in the night, but of course we aren’t done with her yet. She doesn’t have our permission to go. That’s what we like to think, that death requires our permission, that we are somehow in control our endings. Maybe sometimes we are, but mostly the carousel stops and we sigh because the ride is over. We hop down off our horse and go find the next ride.
There were beautiful toasts at the party, my brother’s of course, and old friends and that of my beloved nephew who surprised his Nonna in a grand Hallmark moment by coming through the door when she wasn’t expecting him, thinking he couldn’t get leave from the Air Force base where he serves. The look of wonder and disbelief on her face as he walked through the door with his arms open wide! The same look on his mother’s face when he gathered her up in a hug. Only my sneaky sister and her husband were in the know- how they laughed with the pleasure of it. That party was a great gift, a chance for us to come together from all over, a chance to be together in happiness.
We sang happy birthday by the light of the only two candles that Mom would allow- one for her, one for my cousin- led in song by the jazz singer my brother hired. For once that tiresome song was a joy and not the dirge it usually bogs into. And at the end of the night, there was dancing. One of mom’s high school friends stood up and asked her to dance. He had always been the best dancer, Mom tells us, the best escort to any debutante ball. There they were, gracefully, joyfully dancing to “What a Wonderful World”, the song I chose nine years ago for Dad’s funeral. It was perfectly right. It was as if Dad were suddenly there. How he loved to dance with his Florence Lee.
Filed under: Art of the Day, Eating Disorder aka Edie | Tags: eating disorders, fledglings, high school graduation
5/9/19 Tomorrow is J’s last day of school before finals. Tomorrow is the ceremonial clean out your locker and walk down Memory Lane, a hallway lined with photos and tearful parents. I can’t stand it. I can’t even believe it. Kindergarten barely feels like it belongs in the past, how can we be here? Last day, last day, last day, rings in my head as I walk the dogs, feeling too full to hold it all. I turned into the gravel drive to go to my prayer spot. There was a dove on the ground with two little doves beside her, foraging. We startled them. Mama flew just up to the near branch of the tree overhead. After a hesitation, one of the young ones followed- unsteady, unpracticed, but up it went and landed on a branch, wobbling to find its balance. The last little dove on the ground watched a moment, gathered her courage and launched herself, even more unsteadily than her sister, almost floundering- would she get enough lift? I held my breath- yes. Up to the branch she flew, landing, teetering and then still. Secure. Spring fledglings. Time for them to fly. Just what I needed to see.
5/14/19 Evening. A pressing unease all day, yesterday too, a pressure, a sense that disaster waits just around the corner there. Out of the corner of my eyes I think I see fleeing shadows of something menacing. Do other people see things like this sometimes? Why can’t I shake it loose from me?Maybe it’s my cousin Louise not waking up. Her visitation was today. She just went to read in bed and then didn’t wake up, didn’t show up for work. Louise so full of goodness and laughter. A cardiac event it’s being called. A non-event, I’d say. Her heart simply stopped. Maybe it’s finding out that Jess failed to turn in her Angela Merici project for theology and without it she will fail the class and will not be allowed to graduate.The teacher will accept it late, she has until Thursday. She still hasn’t started it. Maybe it’s the ED behaviors trying to gain a foothold: skipping meals, defensiveness, body obsession. Maybe it’s money. Her graduation is coming- I hope- and I’ve nothing to give her. No new car. No old car. No grand gesture. Maybe it’s feeling lousy, tired, a little ill, a cold virus. It’s trying to wrap things up for the school year, knocking out the end of semester play productions- last week the dreaded seventh grade play, the 8th grade play Friday night, the 6th grade play Thursday morning. It’s the enormous pile of things untended on my desk. It’s my left shoulder, disintegrating, the pain in my arm, the bad sleep. It’s trying to prepare for J’s party at my cousin Debbie’s house, Mom’s giant birthday party on the 25th. It’s Mom not feeling great in her head, the tumor detected there, the unknown. It’s her turning 80 yesterday. It’s too many jobs, not enough money. It’s being alone at a time in my life when I was certain I’d have a life partner. It’s the goddamned heron eating all my fish.
And yet when I walked the dogs this evening, I ran into one person after another, loads of children, all who wanted to talk, neighbors, strangers, a Walden student, a lawn guy. I was walking around feeling low and alone, but the world was saying- here, look at this, talk to her, to him, laugh. Here, look at all these friends. A beautiful evening. Why do I still feel so blue?
5/17/19 J has done it. Three A’s, two B’s. She got an A in college algebra, the class she failed first semester. She turned in the religion project, ended with a B in that class. These are the best grades she has ever gotten in high school. I would not have even imagined, did not imagine it possible last December. She is graduating. It is going to happen.
5/18/19 I have remembered something. I do have a grand gift for J, one I had made for her many years ago and set aside for the future. An official Kentucky Derby sterling silver julep cup with the winner of the year she was born- Monarchos 2001, her name engraved on the back. These cups are not even made anymore, the jeweler closed up shop some years ago after generations of making julep cups. It’s been wrapped up snug in its green felt sleeve at the back of the cupboard for 16 years or so, waiting to be gifted. This makes me happier, I don’t feel so shabby. I am amazed and grateful for my foresight. Good girl.
5/19/19 White dress, unbound hair, white shoes, white cap and gown. Time ticks. Her boyfriend arrives. Her long time best friend arrives. I am so very glad to see her. So very glad that she and J have reunited after this awful year. Nonna picks us up down front. We are well on our way when J discovers that she has forgotten her tassel. We turn around. I’m nervous even at this late date that something will go wrong, there was a mistake somewhere, a blank piece of paper where the diploma ought to be, her name not called. We get to Knight’s Hall, loads of Sacred Heart fledglings dressed in white, but with a blue yoke thingy, where is J’s blue yoke thingy? Why does everyone have one but her? I see the panic rising in her, in her it manifests as grumpiness, nastiness. She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go. Clearly we have missed a step. But then she sees Sister Lorna, the kick ass nun. Sister Lorna leads her and another panic stricken fledgling where they need to go, J waves us off as she goes.
We find seats, wonder if we’ll be able to see her at all. J’s godfather is speeding down from Chicago just for the ceremony, then heading right back north again to work in Wisconsin. Madness. The kind I’ve come to expect from him. I watch the clock, wonder if he’ll make it, the worry of it hijacking my brain in the old familiar way. Mom talking to me on one side about the people walking by, how scandalous certain outfits are. Time is speeding by and I just want to sit and think and write in my journal- the moment is here, it’s here, she did it. Everything is changing. The earth under my feet is shifting. It’s five minutes away. The text comes in, miraculously Fa is here. I rush out to get him his ticket, there he is outside the glass doors, perspiration beading on his head and face. We rush in, he is grateful there is air conditioning. Hello, hello, how are you- no time to talk- it begins. A piano march, the girls in white evenly spaced, processing in with their identical everythings. We watch for J. We are high up on the side, she will not be able to see us. They were instructed not to look, we were all instructed not to holler- and then there she was, with the blue yoke thingy and rose bouquet like all the other girls. Click click click, the soft reassuring sound of Fa’s camera with the long lens. Beautiful photos are his gift to us. Click click click, there she goes to take her place in the row, the last time she will be an indistinguishable SHA girl.
Sister So and So, president of the Ursuline sisters, stood up to give the remarks and any thought I had of crying went out the window. “I recently came across something in my reading that I want to share with you- that all of us bear the marks of God’s fingerprints, we all of us are covered in the fingerprints of God, we are smudged with God’s fingerprints” Ewww, I am immediately thinking, what a gross image. “And I want all of you graduates to know and to feel that you are also smudged with the fingerprints of all your many teachers and counselors from SHA” What the hell?? Have Catholics learned nothing? Get your hands off my daughter! ” And what’s more, you bear the fingerprints of our Foundress, St. Angela Merici”. Dang these girls are all filthy with fingerprints. It made me want to shower, the metaphor. What about free will? Individuality? Have they no choice at all in who they wish to become? Don’t they get any credit for the making of their character? I longed to stand and shoot my finger into the air “I protest!” being the protestant that I am. Did this nun not run this speech by anybody first? What unfortunate imagery. All those identical girls in white irreversibly smudged.
Time for the reading of the names and the handing out of the diplomas to the 175 smudgy girls. We were sternly warned not to cheer or clap until the last name was called, to preserve the solemnity of the occasion. Maybe now the tears would come. Being early in the alphabet, we did not have to wait long. The assistant principal, who was a tremendous help in navigating this last year, called her name with what seemed to me to be special warmth. J crossed the stage, was handed her diploma and a sister then shook her hand and gave her a hug, whispering something in her ear. No other girl was hugged by this sister, so we believed J was somehow special to her, but when I later asked who she was, J said ‘I have no idea’. What did she whisper to you? ‘Something about God, I wasn’t really listening.’
It took us a while to all reunite in the crush of people exiting. J was so very happy to see her unexpected Fa. We moved off to a green space and he took photos, different groupings. Then Whoosh, he was gone. Back on the road to get to his job. The rest of us loaded up into Nonna’s car and headed to the party at my cousin Debbie’s house. J brought a change of clothes, but ended up wearing her cap and gown all night. It was a beautiful party. Full of friends and family, my sweet cousins Debbie and Bob made their house so lovely, full of all good things. J felt special, like a queen.
My brother gave a moving toast, he’s good at them, and then J stood up. She had prepared a speech, one she’d been working on for a couple of months it turns out. There she stood in her cap and gown, poised, confident. She gave thanks to everyone who helped her on her journey and then gave special thanks to two people, first to Nonna. She thanked her for always being there for her, for putting up with her vile moods, especially when she was “hangry”. She said lots of funny, sweet things. She made herself cry, she made us cry. Then she turned to thanking me and cried even harder. She talked of the awful, terrible year, her changed behavior, how hard she fought against recovery, how she didn’t want it, how super human I was through it all, making sure she survived and got help. We were all laughing and sobbing at the same time, my brother loudest of all. In a pause, the voice of my nephew who has autism came through- “It’s very scary in this room” allowing us all to laugh some more. My goodness what a speech. My heart. It was like one of those cheesy Hallmark movies where great revelations are made and everything resolves into love.
I know it’s not over. The illness hasn’t just magically disappeared. But she owned it, she said “Here I stand in recovery, ready to go to college, when I really didn’t think it was possible. It’s possible.” When the dark times return, and they will, they already have, we both have this moment to hold on to. And we have it on video.
Filed under: Art of the Day | Tags: Art of the Day, coyote, grief, Jean Ritchie, May Day
Cold and dark the winter
In March it snows again
Through the rains of April
Spring comes stealing in
Smiling o’er the meadow
The rising light of day
Beauty is reborn again
Every first of May.
For when I’m walking with my darling on a May Day day
Walking with my darling on a May Day day
Oh there’s nothing much a doin’
And little for to say
But oh my heart is happy on a May Day day
Folks are cold and distant
The world’s about to freeze
Never has the world known harder times than these
Suffering world forgive me
Grant me just a day
I cannot help but hope again
Every first of May.
For when I’m walking with my darling on a May Day day
Walking with my darling on a May Day day
Oh there’s nothing much a doin’
And little for to say
But oh my heart is happy on a May Day day
-The May Day Carol, Jean Ritchie
May 1 journal excerpts. Morning Coffee. Dad.
It caught me by surprise, sudden grief. Spooning the coffee beans into the grinder, enjoying the smell of them in the 6am darkness, I remembered the moment Dad realized that he was never going home again. I remembered his anguished cry, saying how much he loved his home, how he loved waking up and going down the hall in the dark to make his morning coffee. I wept at the kitchen counter. I’m crying now as I write outside in the evening light, everything so impossibly green, everything so impossibly beautiful.
The coyote was again in his spot on the hillside, laying in the grass, soaking up the evening sun. He lifted his head now and again to look around, smell the air, before laying back down. Not time to hunt yet, he hits the snooze button. It’s the same coyote I’ve been tracking since Easter. White muzzle, shaggy winter coat coming off in clumps. From my prayer spot on the Field Avenue side of St. Joseph’s I can look over the valley to the top of the hill beyond and see him with my binoculars. Without them, he just looks like a bit of brown in the grass. You wouldn’t notice him at all unless you were looking for him, even with binoculars. He’s tricky. Yesterday he was sitting up, he watched me watching him. He doesn’t need binoculars. I waved, but he didn’t wave back. I wonder if he comes to my yard at night, maybe takes a drink from the fish pond. Every evening I say a prayer for his safety, and I pray for the safety of my night prowling cats.
Dad’s been gone almost nine years. I’m waving from my prayer spot.
The Fox at Dawn 