On a walk at the reservoir, I came upon this tree decorated in the woods hung with bird feeders and ornaments with the names of loved ones, including pets. A woman came by and I asked if she knew about the tree. She said it was the third year that people have spontaneously done this. She hung an ornament for her Mom and we stood for many moments watching little birds feeding. This is why we are on this planet. To feed each other.

 

 

Lafayette Reservoir, Lafayette CA 

FIELD NOTES: Of a different sort....

Shutting Out Joy Prolongs Despair 

     Singular snowflakes fell in playful flurry, red cardinals fluffed up at the feeder and the school hallways smelled cookie-sweet. It had happened to Scrooge and George Bailey and The Grinch. No matter how they tried to suppress, ignore or squelch goodwill, it still came back to the surface.
     Although I have always been able to find roses among thorns, it has been more challenging here, near Newtown, Connecticut, being a teacher of young children. Just before Christmas break, the Mayan calendar threatened and closed school a day too early. We were cheated further. And we continue to cheat ourselves.  
     I recently had to call a neighbor and because my number was unknown to their caller ID, the phone was answered with a relay of whispered “who-is-its?” It struck me. Is this a side effect of technology? Are we now conditioned to be suspicious of any ringing phone or doorbell because it must be pre-screened? I am not criticizing. I am in the mix. I am Pavlov’s dog. 
     It is no longer possible to walk into work and exchange pleasantries or selectively share information because thanks to social media, we all know what we’ve been doing on the weekend. It is deflating to regularly be answered with ‘yeah, I already know that’. Are we evolving into people with strong fingers, but weak voices? Do we constantly want the ‘next big thing’ because we cheat ourselves out of those small, daily discoveries? Do we have so much information about each other that we really don’t know ourselves at all? Have we turned into the ubiquitous car alarm that is so commonplace no one pays attention to it anymore?
     In fact, after Newtown, I can’t walk into my workplace any more. I arrived early for a staff security meeting with officials from the town police department to which I had been invited, but since I am employed by an outside education agency, I cannot be issued a key card. There is a buzzer and a security camera. I buzzed three times. I knocked. I watched other school employees proceed to the library for the meeting, but they weren’t authorized to let me in even though I have been affiliated with the school in some manner since 1993. I understood, but it also struck me that if I had anger issues…or an undetected mental condition…or a sledge hammer or…a gun…on that day…I still could have gotten in quicker.
    I’ll absorb as much technology as my aging brain can handle. I wouldn’t go back to my days of pounding a Smith-Corona, toting around a hefty dictionary and getting paper cuts in the library card catalogs. That was the ‘old normal’. But the ‘new normal’ needs more than the random acts of kindness that most editors and commentators have been wishing us for the New Year. I am not a fan of that catchphrase, though I appreciate its sentiment, because I should like to see it refined. As most people around here, I have been asking myself why. Not only why do bad things happen, but why do good things happen, too. What motivates my kindness?
     It has been acknowledged that giving makes us feel good about ourselves. Nothing wrong with that. They need. We give. They get. We glow. A happy cycle revolves. But I have been wondering about more. It’s almost time for Turbo Tax. What happens when I check off that I donated to NPR, the local emergency services, the library and Goodwill, among others? Should acts of kindness be random? I won’t take up space with a recitation from Dictionary.com on the many uses of the word random, but the Slang section is food for thought if you’re interested. My wish for the New Year and beyond, are the dictionary antonyms for random: constant and conscious.
     By profession, I am a teacher, but I write more as a student than as an educator because I am grateful for what I have learned from those I have met along the way. In one of my early office jobs, I thought one woman aggressive, overtly ambitious and curt. When I learned she had a non-life-threatening medical condition that was inconvenient and sometimes painful, it improved my demeanor and hers as well. I never pre-judged again. As a young working wife and mother, I did a lot of housekeeping and anticipated compliments. You can guess that did not happen, but when I looked at it differently, my satisfaction improved. I take my shoes off when I walk in the door and enjoy clean floors for yoga and large art projects, so I reasoned to take pleasure in cleaning the floor for me. If there were residual benefits for my family, then all the better. I was no longer doing it for them, I was doing it for us. My mood lightened, as it does to this day, when I mop.
    Yes, conscious acts of kindness. Conscious that I am doing it for the greater good and for unanticipated return. And I do mean unanticipated, from me to you to the guy next door to the cable company to Congress. No tax deduction, no cup of coffee, no name in the church bulletin or on a plaque, no brownie points, no votes, no pork, no dividends or personal profits, not even so much as a thank you from my spouse. I may in fact get all these things – they are pretty little trimmings that do make life more pleasant - but do not let that be my unconscious motivation or cause for my disappointment or my deposit of guilt. And the nastier someone is to me, I will be all the kinder back. Maybe they are having a bad day. Maybe they will pay it forward. Maybe they have a gun.

VISUAL POETRY: Christmas Remains

Life IS like a box of chocolates...eat it ALL!

Bridgewater Chocolate

 

A Story of Thanksgiving for Christmas...or The 1st Thanksgiving:

Navigating new territory with no device on the dash...

             It is not until I come up to that familiar hill that the idea of it all strikes me; I am going to my parent’s house for Thanksgiving, as usual…but, there will be no parents there. I have an inkling that perhaps a professional colleague was right: maybe don’t go there…order a package deal from the grocery store…or go out? “Or hop a cruise ship and eat Spam?” I replied with tongue in cheek. But my youngest brother had suggested “the house” (which now legally belongs to my oldest brother) and so I took great pains for the day, trying to think of everything my mother would have thought of…and the men would not…and then some:

            I had started with what I knew best: pies. There was Mom’s “secret” piecrust recipe for my homemade mince that my oldest brother anticipates yearly, and my crumb-topped French apple and the pumpkin adorned with shiny hand-cut leaves. They turned out to be works of art this year – inspiration from heaven. The second thing I knew best: ambiance (my brothers told me it was all mine!). I inherited the family silver, but all the china remained at the house. Tablecloth? Centerpiece? Candles? Napkins? Condiments? Servers and potholders and pots and pans? A mixer, a masher, a gravy boat? My list was sounding like an old-fashioned nursery rhyme and I packed it all up like a Conestoga wagon with cloth carry bags and baskets and Rubbermaid containers.  Like moving up a company ladder - ready or not - I found my usually relaxed pace of a holiday morning transfigured and I would not know until I got there if I had packed too little…or too much…

            I arrive at the house; my brother says he spent the entire day yesterday vacuuming and dusting. The dining table is out; its brown table pads are lying naked like a patient waiting to be attended to. My tablecloths are too short for the table leaves - my brother doesn’t know where Mom’s tablecloths are – but like experienced stagehands, my elder son and I make scenery appear. I go to my mother’s kitchen, her cabinets still familiar to me even after all these years, albeit my brother has had the fortitude to throw out the burnt, the broken, and the hopelessly obsolete. I discover that somehow, as the only daughter of an only daughter, instincts and tradition suddenly kick in on automatic pilot. And without much compunction, I ease in some changes. I stand at my mother’s sink peeling organic yellow potatoes, smiling about how hers were lumpy and ordinary because they were too-much-work-why-else-would-they-have-figured-out-how-to-put-them-in-a-box? She also puzzled annually about how to keep food warm at the table, but eschewed my idea of purchasing warming dishes like she was going to come up with an easier way for an easier way without buying something new. As if to tease my critiquing, a little gray mouse motored across the floor but I chided him in return by informing him I used coupons to buy the warming dishes…so there!

            What’s more, I tell the mouse, I have been kindly ushered in by strangers to this new way of celebrating holidays. At Bed, Bath and Beyond, I had circled around the island display of serving dishes, electric and candle-powered, setting my sights on a white ceramic set that matched my French White Corning ware at home. They would be perfect – and practical enough for Mom – but the shelf was empty. A store worker came by and seemed only too glad to help. He searched around the stock shelves, wheeled two over and gave me the cart. My face must have lit up; I thanked him and he added cheerfully “It was my pleasure! I hope you enjoy your holiday!” which is what I expect store workers are trained to do, but he appeared much more sincere than that. Then, at the grocery store, as close to Thanksgiving as I dared, the path to the deli was gridlocked, an elderly woman was proceeding like a slow-moving vehicle in a passing lane because another pair of women were chatting obliviously on the shoulders; the man that had entered the store about the same time I did joined in this bumper car venue along with me. He edged his way to the number dispenser, pulled out a tag, turned around and handed it to me with a smile. I was taken aback, not by his action, but by the doubt that perhaps I had not appeared as outwardly phlegmatic as I had thought. With straightened shoulders, I put in my deli order expediently. Later, while looking over the squash, the man touched me on the shoulder and with his well-padded cheeks up to his eyebrows, said “You have a nice holiday now.” Two men, two different skin colors, neither one with mien that would turn a lady’s head, perhaps appearing like Clarence Oddbodies to remind me of something lost.

            At the end of the day, nothing important is lost. After a cooperative (if not disquieting) search it is my oldest son who triumphantly holds up the yellow gravy boat from where my mother had put it last. I remember to check the high cabinet in the stairwell for the tablecloths. And like new heirs we sit in our parents’ chairs: one brother in my father’s, I in my mother’s.  We say grace and most heartily thank our parents for being our parents. My grandmother would promise every year to do something in the next, God-willing, and with a collective, not-evolved-yet groan, we would push her crystallizing words away like a snowball down a hill, not cognizant that she was (in her very Polish way) molding a handle for us to take with natural grace. We start passing plates; I am here by inertia, like a vending product filling the empty slot up front.

            There is one more thing to do. The dishwasher conked out long ago, my parents believing a new one at that point in their lives unnecessary, and I ceremoniously wash the china and silverware in the sink, distracting my brother with small-talk. My mother shooed away would-be assistants, and I remember seeing her back as she faced the yellow-flowered wallpaper under the fluorescent light in an almost meditative glow. What did she think about?

            I am warm with satisfaction on the drive home. I think about doing a good thing for my brothers. I think about getting this first holiday “just right”. I think about my parents giving us the thumbs up.

            I can’t think any farther than that…

Christmas "Health Food"?

I can't believe I made all these...NOW EAT THEM!

FIELD NOTES: Halloween Soup

Recreating Gramma's pumpkin soup with potato dumplings in my happy blue pot...

except I cheated by using pre-cut butternut squash...needs more flavoring, too....

A RECIPE: Hers, Mom's, Mine & Theirs

Dumplings: 

2 c. grated potatoes with or w/o skins,

1 egg, 1 c. flour, dash salt, tsp. sugar

Grate potatoes and remove excess moisture by squeezing & draining. In large bowl, beat egg; add salt, sugar and flour; add potatoes; consistency should be able to form small balls by hand to drop into boiling water. Coat hands with flour if sticky.

Soup: 

20 oz. pumpkin* or butternut squash, peeled, cut into squares

2 c. water + 1 1/2 c. water

 1/4 c. butter or margarine

1 1/2 c. milk or cream (your choice)

In large soup pot, cook pumpkin in 2c. water until soft (15-20 min.); drain, reserving water, then mash pumpkin in another bowl. Return reserved water to soup pot, add another 1 1/2 c. water to pumpkin water, bring to boil to cook dumplings. Drop dumplings in for several minutes until dough is cooked, then immediately add mashed pumpkin, butter, and milk. DO NOT BOIL milk. Finish with seasonings of choice: salt, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg.

*Try canned pumpkin or squash

   

FIELD NOTES: So what exactly happened under that blue moon on New Year’s Eve?

Catching up on a Sunday morning

...to answer a question with more questions…what looks like busywork, but isn’t? A spider spinning? A bee buzzing? A bird building? A woman cleaning?...I went to my studio in the basement. It had become coated with dust not from neglect but from a certain unfortunate condition of busyness. Relatives were preoccupied with other things, but apart from that, it just happened that I was feeling more reflective than social and, moreover, was willing to embrace it even though that eve is intended for partying. The word ‘evening’ may mean the closing part of the day and the early part of the night, but the word ‘eve’ is not merely its shortened form; it brings with it other connotations. A second definition - its commonly acknowledged sense - is “the period just before some important event” or “a period of decline”. Imaginings of last light, owl-light, twilight, dusk, nightfall, soiree, sunset and the poetic gloaming are conjured. Who has not experienced how differently things look when you are in the dark?...I grabbed a bottle of Bellini, piped in some dusky jazz and pulled out an onerous bin filled with fabric scraps…probably some thirty years worth because I used to sew everything: shirts, skirts, gowns, pants, jackets, purses, pajamas, curtains, cushions, even dolls. The bin turned into a magician’s hat with endless strips from the striated layers of my life that I could color-date. A heap lay before me like a new map or fitted sheet impossible to return to its container once sprung. Midnight was on the march. Should I: Discard it and not look back until I discover I have nothing to show my grandchildren and no memory of my handiwork? Give in to burden and hang onto it like someone hiding in their obesity?...Neither...Though the blue moon ended up being hidden by cloudiness, it illuminated my night. I gathered the expensive or exotic specimens into a sequestered group, then folded the useful pieces that were big enough to actually be made into something and placed them strategically back into the bin. I took a sample swatch from everything that remained, editing this economically industrious period of my life into a small box. Before the ball dropped, I turned out the light, went upstairs and opened a bottle of champagne. The box of swatches will be reincarnated into a collage…perhaps…under the next blue moon…

FIELD NOTES: I am not fascinated by the moon for its science…

Last Sunday in December, 2009

...but for its mystery…and rhythm…for the comfort of its constancy and its reminder of a celestial presence far beyond my human comprehension. Under the moon I find illumination like no other…I indulge in imagination and folklore…I hope for the future and enjoin the idea that someone who is important to me (or perhaps will be important to me) is looking at it the same time I am…is thinking and feeling the same things I am…is as uncertain (or as optimistic) as I am. I try to think primitively, to empathize with ancients who explained the inexplicable with stories and assigned names in the absence of technology either to calm fears or wield power and how their images and words have stayed with us. On this New Year’s Eve the Full Long Nights Moon will occur, the second full moon in a month, and we still call it a Blue Moon. I like to use the moon as the pivot point of a drafting compass, scribing a perfect circle around the world where the reflection of the unseen sun is directed down in a cone of white light. On Christmas Eve, the moon with its top half covered in the first quarter peeked out like a flashlight from under the covers…covers where someone was reading secretly…silently…hungrily...forming their own hypotheses…making their own discoveries…in private, but for all the world to see.

FIELD NOTES: Sweet nothings...

...from a Sunday morning...

...hadn't filled the feeder on the deck for some time since the raccoons made off with the can filled with about 30 pounds of black oil sunflower seed...but a storm was brewing and I was missing my wild "pets"...so I loaded up on seed and suet...and they came! There they were...all of them: the tufted titmouse, black capped chickadee, nuthatch, wren, sparrow, downy woodpecker, flicker, a cardinal couple and, of course, the spoiler blue jay whom the male cardinal lost his patience with and flew up from the deck post to claim a turn. They hadn't forgotten me...

...and then on the TV (yes, the intrusive TV!) came a sweet nothing from the past, the early 1970's to be exact...R.O. Blechman's delightful animation...(please, treat yourself)

Never forget the things that make you smile from the inside out...they don't forget you...Joyeux Noel!

FIELD NOTES: A Story of Pie

First Sunday of December The kitchen is quiet except for the clearing of her throat and the squeak of the table as she works. The old sash windows draw the pale November sun through its panes, filmy with the environment, and strain it onto the blue, cracked-ice Formica tabletop with the chrome trim. The Spry shortening is measured out using a cup filled with water, then drained and plopped into a big bowl as the kettle on the gas stove is working up a boil. An eyeballed tablespoon of milk is splashed onto the shortening directly from the bottle. The stainless steel sifter is filled with the correct proportions of King Arthur Flour and Morton Salt. The kettle’s whistle is answered and a quarter cup of its contents is poured into the mixing bowl. She tilts the bowl, raises her fork and with the precision of a fan blade begins whipping the concoction until it rises up into peaks. It is doubtful if even a fire could call her away from the next step of quickly cranking the sifter and covering the mixture in a blizzard of powdery white. In a miracle of kitchen chemistry, within minutes a soft ball of pie dough is rounded up and delivered into her bare hands. Sprinkles of water are flicked from her fingertips onto the Formica. A crisp sheet of waxed paper is snapped, serrated and suctioned to the moistened tabletop. The warm, pliable dough ball is coaxed down onto the paper and another sheet is used to cover it. A heavy wooden rolling pin squeals pleasurably as she rocks it back and forth over the sandwiched dough. Every now and then the rolling pin is silenced; her fingers, creased now with age and the labors of the hand, feel around the waxy, unctuous layers testing for consistency in thickness, estimating if the current circumference will sufficiently drape a nine inch pie plate. Now the moment of truth: As if a button on a remote has been pushed to change the channel, the blue tabletop is gone and I am in my own kitchen. My hands are the hands making the pie dough in a November light. The heavy wooden rolling pin is here, as is a stainless steel sifter, King Arthur flour and the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, but there is a CD playing and a microwave beeping. It is still the moment of truth: the wax paper is re-positioned and the top sheet is discarded. In a confusion of bravery, faith and dexterity, the circle reaches its target, the paper is peeled away and the dough settles gratefully into the plate to officially become Crust. Knuckles, fingertips and the round handle-end of a fork flute the edges unconsciously. This handcrafting is impossible to translate into any recipe. It must be observed, it must be practiced and it must be failed before it is perfected. I am the third pie maker and I get to choose the fillings now. My brother gets his homemade mince of light & dark raisins, candied lemon & orange peel, apples and spices, complete with a good dose of rum and a pie bird vent stuck in the middle to prevent the copious juices from spitting out into the oven. There is pumpkin simply for the reason that there must be pumpkin (whether one likes it or not) with a maple leaf shape cut from the dough trimmings. This year I got adventurous and made Bosc pear with ginger and lemon. Then there is the apple: French Apple from Cortlands with a single crust and a crumb topping (straight from Betty Crocker’s All-Time Favorites, copyright 1971). When I measured the sugar, my hand got a little heavier because I realized I didn’t have to hold back for the diabetes any more. My dad was the Pie man; even on his birthday, he wanted pie. I thought of leaving a slice at his resting place, but he would have thought it a waste of a good pie! My story of pie is sweet and warm and full of strong hands and colors and kitchen music. It is a wonderful story of pie. Spry Water Whip Pie Crust Recipe

FIELD NOTES: My head cold has been replaced with a new malady….

Sunday morning musings

…fall festival overload. Unlike summer, fall does not unfurl like a satin runner down a long aisle, affording the opportunity to smile and wave as you step, lightly-clothed, down its path. Autumn, especially in New England, bursts overhead like a comet; you catch its full beauty only if your timing is right. There are so many ‘festivals’ available this weekend, that yesterday I woke up with a headache and, after managing to tutor a student for several hours in the morning, took a 3 hour nap on a sunny bed. As if to prove there was nothing wrong with me, I got up and mowed the front lawn, stopped to rake the pine cones and needles covering half of it, then roasted a chicken for supper, listened to Prairie Home Companion and Thistle & Shamrock before hunkering down under the covers with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, my latest book club selection. There…that’s about as ‘twittery’ as I’ll get…and only to emphasize the point that I have ‘festival overload’. My town has been going through an identity crisis for the past decade or so as it tries to transition from agrarian to touristy and also to meld the two. Every group and organization wants a piece of the apple pie which usually includes fund-raising and/or merchandising. When I was growing up a few towns over, there was no need for farm festivals; if you wanted to see farm animals or needed to buy some corn or squash or pumpkins or apples or cider, you stopped at one. Fall wasn’t advertised, it just happened. Just about every other house in my neighborhood has a version of a scarecrow on a stick purchased at the store for $4.99…including yours truly! To revive creativity, we had our preschool class stuff some extra kid’s clothes in our classroom with paper leaves, tape a ball on for the head, prop him in a little rocking chair and they named our ‘new student’ Macy. It was refreshing to see them excitedly take ownership of this half-planned activity. I love fall…I guess it’s just too brief…it’s time again to clean the patio & garden and put away all their charming accessories. There is urgency unlike summer because, ready or not, winter can now strike at any time putting an abrupt end to autumnal tasks…and pleasures. Not a good year for tomatoes, the prettiest things in my vegetable garden are the pinwheels I weaved into the wire fencing so, in the afternoon that promises to be a gorgeous fall day, I will break it down and take a trip to the local farm shop to decorate it with some mums, ornamental cabbage, straw bale and maybe a pumpkin or two. In the end, it is not the fall festivals that I am actually critical of; it is not having enough time to enjoy all the nooks and crannies of the season. If the workday talk after this long Columbus Day weekend begs the question “How come you didn’t go the _____ festival?” I will say I did…at home…

6pm Postscript: 'round about 3 p.m., I had lots of company outdoors...the rev and lurch of tractors and mowers, the rhythm of rakes, the whoops of little boys filled the air...it seems everyone was done with the festivals...and it turns out we all have similiar needs...especially in New England...

FIELD NOTES: America's got talent....

Red, White & Blue

...so much so that I found myself entertained late in the evening with choreographed bungee jumping, intuitive engineering and delicate balance, not on the television, but across my front door. Determined to have my new front door painted bright red for Independence Day (my favorite front door color), I had locked the storm door with the top screen down to let the paint dry overnight and, in the light of the hanging lantern, discovered at work a sizable spider…more sizable than one usually cares to have inside the home. To be repulsed or impressed, that was the question, but lucky for me deep fascination trumped instant rejection and I was treated to a free show. My fifth grade teacher gave me the wonderful gift of E.B. White in Charlotte’s Web…insight and judicious writing all in one place…and now this night, some forty years later, I could reap a benefit. The spider’s dramatic downward dives caught my heartbeat, popped my eyes and canted my head. She moved with such complete confidence, determined and adept in weaving her own safety net, that she took my amazement to some level of envy. She instantly responded to a vibration and from the center of the web, speedily sidled out on a spoke and shrink-wrapped a meal for herself in a matter of seconds. As I prepared myself and the house for sleep, I kept checking on Charlotte and saw that her web spanned the entire width of the door. I left the front light on for her and the new American flag I had hung to go with the new door. In the morning, the flag was briskly flapping in a beautifully crisp breeze…at last, a break in the weeks of daily rain storms…but alas, the web was pathetically disheveled like the morning after a wild party. But, come nightfall, Charlotte climbed down from the gutter and saw opportunity…again. I texted my younger son to use the basement entry instead. In the morning, I found a sticky note on the kitchen table from my daughter that read “There is a big ass spider in the front door!” and she explained she had to turn the light off because it “grossed” her out. Her younger brother on the other hand, just walked through the front door as usual. But, Charlotte keeps working, after all, she has to make a living…and this is America …and America’s got talent…naturally. Today’s sticky note is from my oldest son: “Spider made a new web. Don’t destroy it this time.”

FIELD NOTES: Memorial Day tradition...

The Garden: Day 1



Garden Friend:



Ready to Go:

FIELD NOTES: Maybe it is a feeling of history repeating itself...

Thanksgiving, 2008

...the dizziness of bobble-heads with lessons not remembered wobbling around Wall St. and beyond, that it has occurred to me for the first time in my fifty years to ask how my grandparents celebrated Thanksgiving when their children were young, when there was the Great Depression. But my grandparents are all dead. I find that my parents and their remaining siblings do not remember celebrating Thanksgiving as children. President Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863, but it was only randomly celebrated until FDR fixed it at the fourth Thursday of November in a controversial move to create more shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I see commercialism has been around for a long time, the economy being at the heart of everything – that is, the heart of the machinery - the “everything” that keeps the manmade world in the constant motion of production, decline and redevelopment. Thanksgiving up until now has had no beginning and no end for me. It always was…and now I find…it wasn’t always. My grandmother was fond of repeating her favorite advice to “not get old” but I try to counter that with words from one of my favorite James Taylor songs “the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” I step outside to fill the birdfeeder with black oil sunflower seeds and look up at the sky – yup, still there.…a constant in the heavens and constant thanksgiving…

FIELD NOTES: Just a week ago, I wrote about planting a 'memorial garden'...

June 1, 2008

...and it is in more ways than one, not just as my Memorial Day ritual, but as a memory of many things - of earth, of my maternal grandmother and even of me. I have a habit of gardening in flip-flops. I do end up destroying them which is why I sigh to myself when I’ve forgotten to slip out of my good flip-flops and into the two dollar ones from the drug store. I don’t do it on purpose, I run out just to do water maintenance and, before I know it, I’m pulling a weed which turns into a hundred weeds. My nails fill with dirt and dinner is delayed, but no matter, it’s summer and dinner can be eaten at eight without much consequence. And that is the memorial to my grandmother who, in the days before jellies and crocs, fashioned her own backyard footwear out of flip-flop bottoms and ruffled elastic lace from the five and dime store because she did NOT like a thong between her toes. She trimmed her toenails with a pocket knife that fascinated and startled me at the same time and her size six shoes were just right for little girls to play dress-up with. I remember her feet brown with soil from walking around her make-shift gardens – the sunny strip behind the garage where green beans crawled and horseradish, rhubard and sour grass for schav (Polish sorrel soup) squatted wherever they could and at the end of the hedgerow atop the steep bank were tomato plants or little cukes in old metal tubs. By memory or design, I pretty much grow the same stuff. And my feet sink into the soft fertile earth, my toenails fill up with garden dirt and I swing my feet, one at a time, into the bathroom sink to scrub them. It would be easier to wear sneakers or garden boots, but it wouldn’t feel nearly as good, it wouldn’t have that glorious connection to ancestors, to earth…to me. It happens to be my fiftieth birthday…and it feels good.

FIELD NOTES: There is never enough of what we love best...

Memorial Day, May 26, 2008

...early morning is too brief in my case. Especially at this time of year when cardinals (and company) wake me and sunrise is just the right temperature for those of us who have perpetually cold hands and feet. I don’t celebrate Memorial Day the way I used to or, by some standards, the way I should. I sleep a little later and am not fond of public gatherings in New Milford that invariably require a plan of travel, where to park and how to jockey for a seat from which you can actually see something. Our town harbors the delusion that it is still small, but an event here is more like the privilege of saying you were at a ball game or concert in person and yet coming away having seen and heard less than if you had watched it on TV. When my children were little and we lived on Main Street in Terryville across from the town green, they played with their toys in the living room until we could hear the marching band up the street. Then we’d grab some chairs and go out on the front lawn with our elderly landlady. My late uncle, one of a dwindling group of World War II vets, would march by practically within touching distance, wink at us and we’d wave back. The parade was just long enough for the attention spans of my children and to get the point across, then we’d usually have a picnic at my parents’ house at the other end of Main Street. Saying that, I just now realize that it is possible to live inside a Norman Rockwell painting! As a school child, Memorial Day in my hometown of Terryville was a key event. All of us scouts lined up with our troops at the grocery store parking lot in the north end of town. It was a big deal who would be asked to carry the flags for each troop and who would get to read the poem Flander’s Field when parade participants and spectators stood in respect around the war memorial on the town green. Back then, the parade took a much longer route around town (several miles that were unkind to the 1960’s penny-loafers we all wore with our Brownie skirts and white ankle socks) and after the reading of the poem, the older scouts would continue on to the cemetery to hear Taps. If you made it through all that and still had your uniform on, you could go down to the Eagle’s hall where they handed out free vanilla Skippy cups with wooden spoons. Today, I will observe Memorial Day perhaps not so reverently as I have in the past, but in the closest way I know right now at this place in my life. I will plant a garden. I will regenerate, protect and perpetuate. I will try to be a soldier for our earth. I will try to be a good one.

FIELD NOTES: It is the night after the Full Cold Moon...

Christmas Eve 2007, through the window

...and as we travel under its ‘special effects’, we remark over and over how unreal this moon looks, unreal because it looks like something in the movies and we all know in the digital age we can no longer rely on what our eyes can see. My subconscious eye conjures an image of a great beach ball floating far on the horizon of an endless ocean with a figure on the shore; the figure in contentment faces the beach unaware that it will not be able to retrieve the ball at its convenience, not because it hasn’t the wherewithal, but simply because it isn’t paying attention. It has forgotten that the ball is in motion and miscalculated how far it must travel to meet it. One day a year, we strive, crave, hope for perfection in the special effects we call Christmas – we get only one take – but here before us in our man-made capsule, nature has trumped our feeble attempts, neither LED, incandescent or fluorescent can duplicate the illumination above us. A contrail shoots out to the right of the giant, glowing moon and I squeal with excitement that it must be Santa! It MUST be! I have chosen to forget that the children accompanying me are 17, 19 and 22…and so have they. I say the word ‘moon’ like I’m saying it for the first time…”Look at the Mooooon!”….like I have just unwrapped a surprise gift. Tonight, the moonlight is a surprise and a gift to all the earth and even though it is so very far away, I do believe in what I think I see.