Under the heart

Did you know that you can touch the underside of your heart with your breath? Yes, its true! You can move the breath up to the top of the diaphragm then into the back part of the lungs right up underneath the heart. What you might find there can be startlingly, old cobwebs of memory, bright sunlight, grace. I find it peaceful there and safe.

It had been several weeks since I was weepy and sad and missing my father in a desperate way. Then, grief snuck up on me and caught me unawares. I didn't know it was my tiring friend come to visit at first. I just felt anxious, in a fog, needing-to-get-out-of-my-skin itchiness. It seemed like some chocolate fudge might be just what I needed to feel comfortable again; but that was a mistake. Rich chocolate or yeasty foods seem like comfort but mostly just offer up empty calories and a depressingly short sugar high. Then I told someone, "I think I am missing my dad," and the acknowledgment by a sweet friend melted my heart enough so I could drop back behind it again and mourn.

I had to get out of the house (my daughter was sick for two days and I had been cooped up at home) and went to our local coop for dinner. They are so friendly there and the food is so good and beautiful. I had a splendid simple meal then coffee (free refills!) The cafe is painted a soft burnt orange. The walls were lined with fall themed oil paintings from a local artist of places I liked to visit. A severly disabled man was celebrating his birthday surrounded by loving family and friends. He got so excited, clapping his hands, when someone brought the cake to the table. It was comforting to watch life happening all around me without my having to participate. I could penetrate the sadness, hold it in my chest, then let it dissapate. I am continually surprised at how grief feels, unlike sadness or depression, but lighter, more disorientating, and otherworldly. I am surprised at how much time it takes up in my life to sit with it, feel its textures, make sense of death, illness, loss.

I hope we do more backbends in yoga tomorrow to open up my heart in all its rich dimensions.

The Waltons

I want to move in with the Waltons. My daughter and I have been watching nightly episodes of this old show and I am struck with Walton lust. Firstly, I have a wicked crush on John Boy whose homegrown country innocence I long to pierce. But even more than that, I am drawn by the world created by Olivia and Grandma filled with daily home baked pies, and breads, lusty stick-to-your ribs meals served with a smile three times a day, hand made jellies, dresses, shirts, and sweaters. Olivia is a font of kindness and gentle wisdom. The seven children walk to the one room school house, sometimes barefoot, hardly quarrel, and do daily chores without complaint. Grandpa smokes ham and works the sawmill with Pa who hunts for extra food with Reckless the dog. Nobody drinks too much or yells. Olivia serves the children fresh baked cookies and milk (from the cow out back) when they get home from school. The children roam the forests, streams, and lakes, fall in love, write poetry, help any strangers.

The Waltons carbon footprint is small. Isn't this the life we are striving for now? They have one truck that often fails so end up walking alot. There is NO garbage. Food scraps are composted or reused, paper burned, no plastic wrapping or paper napkins. They make their own soap from natural ingredients, can tomatoes from the garden, share ONE bathroom (that's for 11 people!! Maybe Grandpa uses the outhouse out back for privacy.) Despite living in Virginia during the depression, the Waltons show no signs of racism or anti-semitism and hope that all of their children go to college someday; even the girls.

But, is this back to the land life what I really want? Somedays, grandma must have to skin squirrels and possums for her famous stew. Olivia makes her own sausages, cleans the butchered hog, plucks chickens clean before roasting of the wood stove. Wet laundry is pulled through rollers, hung to dry, then ironed; not only dresses and shirts, but underwear (when lucky enough to have), towels, and sheets. Hands must get chapped in winter. We hardly ever see Olivia or Grandma outside of the house. Oh, how I would miss reading which we also never see the women doing. And what about those seven children, all born at home, with nothing but grandma's herbs to ease the pain.

I'll take the homeade bread, air laundered sheets, John Boy and fresh cream but not without my books, yoga classes, feminism, and tofu (not possum) stew.

Letting Go

On Sunday, my daughter and I and some friends went on a hike up to ridge outcropping that looks out over the entire valley. It was windy, breathtakingly crisp. So quiet, except for the dogs who didn't like being away from us. We had tied them up to a tree afraid that they might fall off of the cliff. So, we let them free to be near us and to have quiet. There was so much to see out in the valley and surrounding hills; greens, reds, oranges, yellows. My friend dreamed of making a quilt of the scene. My daughter let her proud mane of hair blow in the wind. Then, I saw the tiniest of spiders hanging out over the cliff. She wasn't any bigger than this a. I couldn't see her thread. She seemed to hovered in mid air still until a swoop of wind swung her out then back again. Such courage to have flung herself out over the cliff, off of a high branch, hoping that the filament would hold. And after alot of swinging, dipping, spinning, she found a place to land (!) miraculously on a shrub of a cedar rooted in the side of the cliff, the tree itself perilously sprouting from a stone. Some days, I feel like that spider and wonder if the filament will hold, if I have enough courage to jump, or reach just a little bit further off of solid ground. No, no, Id rather stay in bed this day...but, then, what if the wind is just right for flying?

Voice

I am thinking about what I love about some writing. It seems to come down to writing with a unique and clear "voice". One that rings out in the cold crisp air with clarity and accuracy. Its not lazy but words, sentences, paragraphs, metaphors are chosen deliberately to evoke the truth of the character, the setting, the story. I get lazy with writing. Oh, this is close enough to what I am trying to say. I need to step back and let the story sit on the shelf while I compost, marinate, figure out on a deeper level what it is exactly I am trying to say. Peeling the onion with revision after revision. Honing my skills with language and craft to actually move the story in the direction I want it to go in. Or maybe its more like letting the seed of the story, some hope, dream, feeling I want to portrait, blossom through careful attention to the seed (watering, fertilizing, sun, shade). There will be time for growth, some decay, letting go of what is holding the blossom back, fruit, harvest, composting.

In these hands

Yesterday, the children in my daughter's fifth grade class visited with their elder buddies. The children made "squeezies" for their buddies which are balloons filled with wheat berries that are good for squeezing. "Abbie" had the most magnificent smile. "Its nice" she told her buddies when they placed the red balloon into her spindly hands. I pressed my hand around hers and told her to squeeze. "Doesn't' it feel good," one of the children said to her. Her hands were cold. The squeezing caught her attention. I imagine it felt good to loosen her clenched fingers around the soft ball, move blood into her tight writsts and forearms.

A. reminded me of my grandmother who also sat for many years in a wheelchair in the activities room of a nursing home or in the room she shared with one or two other old woman. Her cheeks were like ivory, smooth and full. She wore a watch on each wrist, ironically, since time had long stopped moving in a singular direction. Her hands mostly rested now in her lap no longer busy stirring sauce, sweeping floors, folding laundry. I sometimes wear her silver two piece diamond wedding ring and am reminded of how much she did with the beautiful hands that I wish I could hold again.

When the children left the activities room, the space grew suddenly silent. The woman resting in their chairs sat in a large circle carving out a wide cavern in the still space. All movement had ceased. For those not sleeping, blue, green and brown eyes darted around the room.

People on the Street

I live in a small town and frequent the downtown cafe's to do my writing. I see alot of the same people every day and have gotten to know some of them just by watching and sometimes talking to them. A woman who eats lunch at my currently favorite cafe moves very slowly. She dresses in bright scarfs and beaded jewelry. She reads the NYT and with a shaky hand pulls an oversized cup of hot cocoa to her mouth sometimes spilling it onto her batiked pants. Another woman I see is a poet who seems to spend the day wandering from cafe to cafe talking to herself as she goes. She also moves in slow motion on unsteady legs. She writes poems about the river that winds its way around our town. She rolls her own cigarettes. Her hair is matted and long. Whiskers sprout from her chin. "Sandy" pulls himself along the sidewalk and into the cafe with hand-held crutches. "I'm so tired," he told me one miserable rainy spring day. "I wish I could fly to a Caribean Island and just sit in the sun." He has Cerebral Palsy and has never been out of the state.

White Mountains

Yesterday, I got to hike with my dog in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Its been five years since I was here last. BP (Before Parenting), we would go hiking many times each year. But even though we have been away a long time, the trails around Franconia Notch, North Conway, Gorham are as familiar to me as wood path I walk my dog on each day. "Oh, there is the path we took in March when the snow was up to our hips and we swore each time we plunged into the snow with our heavy packs." "How did we every climb up and down Mount Washington in one day several times in our young lives?" "How about when we slept in Madison Hut when it was full, bunks stacked 4 high and filled with smelly exhausted hikers just like ourselsves!"

Yesterday, I picked a "modest" hike since I didn't want to tire out "penny" who has never hiked more than a couple of hours before. And she doesn't feel so comfortable on rocks so this trail was mostly in the woods. Still, the Seven mile round trip took us to a beautiful outcropping that gave views of the entire presidential range. The mountain tops were shrouded in fog and ice. Down below, the leaves were blazing red, orange, and yellow. We met only four people the whole day even as the valley below is filled with leaf peepers. We were both very tired at the end. "Penny" had some yummy leftover salmon for dinner. We slept long and deep.

Hoping for many more mountain retreats in the months and years to come.