Memorializing

To Memorialize means to remember those who have departed this earthly plane. Today, I’m thinking about my dad, who, were he still alive, would have been 104 last May 13.

His service in the military lasted only six months. He was allergic to everything, so was given medical discharge.

I know nothing of his service to our country.

My Uncle Larry, on the other hand, who has been a constant in my life since I was born, has shared many stories of being in Czechoslovakia, France and Germany during WWII. He just turned 91 on May 10.

Older brother Mel gave six years in the Navy during the Viet Nam war. He’s still walking this good Red Road of Life, not the Blue Road of Spirit. I can remember him today, even so.

May you and your best beloveds enjoy a day of remembrance and eat well!

The Garden of Eatin’, Prayin', and Lovin'

Gardening is one of my greatest joys. I love the earth beneath my feet, mud under my nails, pulling weeds, preparing the soil for food and flowers to grow.

Metaphors abound beneath the soil.

What needs to be cleared away in order for there to be space to grow what we intend to grow?

How do we support the conditions for optimal harvest?

Supposedly, planting just before the new moon begins to wax toward fullness again, invites the plants to be drawn upward gently by Earth’s Silvery Daughter’s increasing gravitational tug. Who knows if it’s true? I like the idea of unseen support, so I try to act accordingly.

The best I could do, for this most recent foray into gardening, was to plant two days past new moon.

I had purchased a Hummingbird Hyssop six weeks ago, and a Grandmother White Sage plant a month or so ago at a local Farmer’s Market. I'd set out the pots to experiment with the light and proximity to the big pines - to see if the plants liked their proposed places to grow.  A couple of weeks ago, I rooted some potatoes, onion, and lemon grass for planting. The store-bought plants needed holes dug; the rooted-in-the-kitchen ones required potting soil and containers.

Before we ever saw this wonderful home, where we moved in December, both front and back yards were covered in three to six inches of redwood bark. Just beneath the bark, a thin film of permeable black plastic mesh had been spread, ostensibly to discourage the growth of unwanted plants. Mesh is no match for tenacious grasses, dandelions, wild oats, poison oak, and a variety of nameless weeds that keep poking up from beneath it.

Sunday, when I began to dig holes for the store-bought tubs and a Meyer Lemon tree given to us as a house warming, I discovered that beneath the black mesh is CLAY! Even with Mark’s help, it took a while to carve deep enough holes for the potted plants. Tree roots, rocks, and odd bits of cement were challenging to the blade of the spade and tines of the pitchfork, but with persistence, we triumphed, and all were planted.

The final hole we dug was at the far corner of the backyard for a sweet Mourning Dove who flew into the living room window and seemingly broke her neck. Her demise must have happened while I was out front. I’d carried a tub full of gray-water from the sink, to the back to water the pines, and the bird wasn’t there yet. When I returned to the backyard, after placing the rooted plants in the front garden, I found her on her back, feet clenched, feathers ruffling in the stiff breeze. She was absolutely still, but still warm. I watched closely, but saw no sign of pulse or breath. By the time her grave was ready, she was cold. We said Thank you, Bird, for your beauty and work and song. May you return as another vibrant and lovely life form. We wrapped her in white toweling, and placed her tenderly in the clay.

If I am to interpret all the signs in the garden as shamanic messages, I wonder what to make of the death of a winged one while we’re trying to nurture the lives of rooted ones. 'Tis a puzzlement.

If it isn't one thing...

…it's your mother!

To all who were born, to all who gave birth, and to all who have created your own life as best you could, with your own sculpting, caring, articulate hands, to those who suffer the curve balls Life throws, to all who are mourning persons who are gone from our sight, or yearning for the survival of Our Mother, who art beneath our feet and supporteth us, holding us to her breast, to the mothers whose child is ill, or bent, or broken and requires you to give more than you ever thought possible to give, to all Earth's Children…

May your Mother's Day have been spent with a moment of reflection on the amazing odds that we exist at all!  I'm so glad that we do!

With thanks to the creative urges that pushed us down the tube and into this impossibly rich, complex, and ordinary miracle we call LIFE! May you thrive and flourish as if yours was the good-enough mother who has, does, or will beam her unconditional love at you, to envelop and surround you always.

I give thanks for the daughters and granddaughter, who flowed through me, and for the opportunity to witness their courage, creativity, and caring. 

I am full. I give thanks.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

Knowing we would be at camp for the Mother's Day Weekend, being Abuelo y Abuela for twenty one families, I wrote the following before we left early Friday morning:

If you don’t hear from me for weeks, months, years even, please don’t take it personally.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten you.

Don’t think you don’t count or matter to me.

Chock it up to life moving at warp speed, spinning me into a different dream that requires every synapse I can muster, every fiber full throttle, every every passion net catching hold of as much of the dream as it, and I, can possibly hold.

Writing holds my attention these days. Sometimes I poke my head above the spinning to catch my breath and realize that months have gone by since I’ve connected with you, or called, or written an ordinary letter or email.

There’s a stack of unanswered notes, cards, and, can you even believe it, Christmas Cards? For Christ’s sake! Probably, Christ would have me answer you, but how much did HE write? And I will one day answer you. It goes in spurts... getting out five or six responses in one afternoon, then drought again. 

How many friends? How many cousins, nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews, siblings. Some of the nearest and dearest have been to visit our new digs; some have not. I doesn’t really matter, but I would love to give all a glimpse of this new life - this new city, neighborhood, view, and friends, colleagues, family we rarely saw, when we lived in Southern California... I’d love for all to see, to know, to understand what holds sway now... in this new chapter. 

What this fresh page has offered me is the chance to discipline myself to put B. I. C. (Butt In Chair) to write; to ask for support for that to happen on more than the occasional one-off writer’s get-together, but rather on a regular basis... weekly, which requires me to write daily to keep the momentum going... to keep the characters alive and whispering into my ear from somewhere under the desk or under the house, or under the world or next solar system over. I love when they do whisper. I love when they tell me where they’re going and who’s going with them. They introduce me to the wildest places, people, thoughts, and outlandishness. All of the characters seem quite familiar. It’s as if they have always been part of the family, and are only just now stepping out of the shadows, making their full presence known and prominent in my psyche. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

My Grammy found her step-father soon after he’d hung himself in the garage. She had to report it to her mother, and witness the melt-down, in slow motion, like dominoes falling, un-preventably. Life is stranger than fiction.

This is the stuff of which the writing is made. BIC. PTP (Pen to Paper) and FTK... Fingers to Keys... not to be confused with WTF!

practicing peace. practicing presence. practicing phrases. practicing paying the piper. 

Writing takes time. Energy. Commitment. It takes everything I know how to give and more that I have yet to learn. It takes, to use a yogic phrase, counter poses. That doesn’t mean that I write at a counter... although, sometimes I do write standing, just to keep writing without my sad, sorry B.I.C, but rather heart opening poses, balancing poses, back-bending poses, and lunge. Don’t leave home without Lunge!

Please forgive my absence in your life, and know that I am in labor. I’ll let you know when the birth is over... the rearing has begun and the all night diner has mercifully closed it’s faucets, and the baby is toddling around on its own... 

My friend Jaimsyne wrote a cunning charmer about letting the dust bunnies collect, the bills go unpaid, the phone go unanswered... Writing takes that kind of social isolation.

SO, I’m finding. And, at the same time, every housework task becomes its own meditation... if I let it, when the characters chide, or tan my hide and deride the scenarios in which I’ve placed them. They are course correctors, bill collectors, benefactors and detractors. I love them all... the smarmy, the charming, the darning with faint praise... all of them!

Someday, you’ll meet them I hope. Someday, not today, you’ll love/hate/curse them as I do. Or you’ll enjoy their presence in your pre-falling-asleep hour and ask them to accompany you into your dreams. What they've got to say has helped me, these characters who present themselves to be written down and memorialized.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for understanding my intermittent absences.

You are loved. Most especially by me. 

I wouldn’t be here, but for you. I wouldn’t have come this far along my writerly path without your gentle nudging, listening, course corrections, and encouragement.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank YOU!

All in Good Sport

Who knew there could be so many sporting events on one night?

Saturday night in Napa found me and a high school buddy, who lives in Santa Rosa, in “Lucy,”one of the tonier restaurants at a hotel where my new Oakland neighbor Clint Imboden has a couple of sculptures on exhibit. I invited Judy to accompany me on the trek from her home in Sonoma valley, over the mountain via twisty-turny Trinity Drive, to the quaint town of Yountville in Napa Valley. The views of both valleys from the road were spectacular. Sunset doesn't happen until nearly nine O'Clock this far north.

During our exploratory tootle around the grounds of Hotel Bardessono, we saw neighbor Clint’s out door wood sculpture - a lovely mahogany Jupiter-like structure called “Spheres.” We also toured the orchard, herb, vegetable, and flower gardens, as well as multiple water features surrounding the immaculate, lovely, and private grounds. A trio of mini Stone-Henge-esque arches created a beautiful, though noisy fall of water in one of the inner courtyards. Not sure I’d like to have the room nearest that feature. Nor am I certain how much longer the California drought will allow such extravagant water usage. One of my favorite features was sitting on smooth monolith benches in the cool of the evening. They had absorbed the sun all day. Mmmmm… a sensory feast of smoothness and warmth.

We were lucky to see Clint’s indoor sculpture in the bar area. His “Half Globe with Screw-Drivers" was just under the Bar's TV. We ducked to get a close-up view, trying not to disturb the flat-screen focus of a dozen or so wine-enthusiasts, who were equally glued to their wine goblets as to the two or three different events- one featuring horses, another, Giants and Dodgers, and the third, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. 

Mimicking the televised events was a shi-shi wedding. We saw, in our wanderings, the bride and groom just ducking-in to their bridal suite to freshen up before joining the reception party. Several pair of five-inch stilettos clacked along the cement walk ways on their way to being shed, I'm sure, during the dance part of the dinner. One gallant escort deftly supported his gal's elbow, so as to take some weight off her screaming toes. All were there in celebration of the young couple. Mother of the bride was in full Kimono, Obi and traditional Japanese coiffure. Her foot attire, while it still wouldn't allow her to field a ball, were at least flatter, so more sensible, even though they were equally clacky. What sort of warm-up is required to brutalize one's feet so extremely? Seems sort of like a voluntary mammogram for feetsies! OUCH!

It was clear to see, in the blushing bride’s eyes, that she thought her honey had hit a home run. In his eyes we could see that she had won the race to his heart. Judy and I are hopeful they’ll never resort to pugilism... not even if there’s a hefty purse involved!

Our dinner was delicious - Baby Carrot salad and Sea Bass for Judy; Duck Breast with Baby Turnips and Bok Choy from the garden for me.

Our dining companions at the next table were a couple from Orange County, there for a different wedding the day before. They have a second home in Napa. Whenever there was a roar from the bar, he dashed to see the score. From her, we learned about the joyful nature of their Golden Retriever, Gunner, and the not-so-joyful demeanor of her ex-husband.

I kept thinking how lucky I am to be in love with my beloved these forty three years after we said, "I DO!" Lucky am I, that when he does go to camp event weekends, I can call a buddy and have new and sporting adventures.


Only an hour or so north, Napa and Sonoma are beautiful counties… fit for an American Pharaoh.