Life-place

I guess that's another word for home.  This morning, a rainy one, I began reading my daughter Jenna's masters thesis for her degree in environmental studies.  In it, she uses five Hermann Hesse novels to explore the ways in which home (or our sense of it) contributes to the way we think and act and relate to both people and our environment.  I love the idea, and one chapter in, I am captivated.

By learning the intricacies and messages of the natural places that surround us, we learn how we fit into the landscape, ecology, and culture of a place.  We learn where our home is and we learn how to find that home again after a departure.  We learn to reinhabit a life-place.

Reading this thesis on a rainy day presented a problem.  I wanted to get outside and revisit the places that resonate within me, the places that held meaning when I was young and might impart some wisdom to me now.  I still live within a mile or two of the place where I grew up, and it seems that makes me a rarity.  Although I know some folks around here who are "natives" as well, most of my friends now are people who moved here from other places.  And so the premise behind Jenna's study takes on a different perspective.  Where is home?  Where is your life-place?  Can you revisit it?  Can you reinhabit it?  Is preserving it in memory enough?

I always believed that I was fortunate to grow up in a small town.  I am not a city person, and I do not think I could ever be happy living in an urban environment.  That's just me.  I know many people who would say the opposite.  But that begs the question:  are we born into the right place?  Or do we have to find it?

I know that my life-place is here.  As much as I enjoy traveling (and I probably do it more than most), I am always grateful to return home.  Of course, my actual house is part of that comfort, but it is also in the winding roads and the farmlands along the side of them. It is in the rivers and streams and ridges and glens and waterfalls of my county.  It is in the cornfields across the street and the woods behind my house.  This is my life-place.  And I am in love with it all over again.

Memory Lane

I had lunch today with a friend I met almost fifty years ago.  (Just typing that truth freaks me out a little.  How did this happen?)  We talked a lot about retirement, foreign places, road trips, art classes, and mutual friends.  And then we went to that place where all old friends eventually go . . . our memories.  Or maybe our perceptions of memory.  The further removed we become from our past, the more difficult it is to call it up with any certainty.  Did we ever have a class together?  We're not sure.  Did we each know that the other was smart?  Not really.  What was the name of that guy you went out with?  Hmm . . .

But there are some things we remember with certitude, as unbelievable as they may seem now.  A year behind me in high school, her class was the first one in our school in which girls were allowed to wear pants in their senior year.  That's right.  As a member of the Class of 68, I had to wear a skirt or a dress to school every single day of my time in public education.  It was the rule.  Not only that, but I was subject to the humiliation of having to kneel down on the tile floor to make sure the hem of my skirt was below the knee.  In other words, if the hem of the skirt touched the floor, I passed muster.  An equivalent "test" for boys was to do a deep-knee bend with hands in pockets.  If the rear seam of the pants split while doing so, the pants were too tight.  And the "correction" for that rule-breaking was to be sent home to change pants . . . which one had to do anyway as the pants were split wide open in the seat.

Still on clothes, we recalled wearing nylons and garter belts.  Crazy little contraptions, but they were part of our "uniform."  We thought how much simpler our lives would have been if we could have just put on a pair of pants to go to school.  Like the boys did.

We both wondered if we might have participated in a sport in high school . . . if there were any.  Years before Title 9, giving girls equality in sports offerings, we had a couple of alternative choices:  cheerleading or twirling.  Actually, I recalled being on both the girls' field hockey team AND the girls' soccer team my senior year.  How could I be in two fall sports at the same time?  Because each had only two games!  We were also banned from taking certain classes, causing us to wonder if our career paths might have been different if we had had access to more options.  I wanted to take Mechanical Drawing my senior year but was told pointblank: Girls can't take that.  And I said, "Oh."  It was 1967.  Career choices for girls consisted of teacher, nurse, secretary, or hairdresser.  That was about it.  And we said, "Oh."

So why am I in love with this trip down Memory Lane?  Because we remembered that we felt safe.  We felt free.  We didn't worry about terrorists or computers crashing or dropping our cellphones in the water or debit card debt or having our identities stolen.  We didn't have to keep up with technology; there really wasn't much.  We didn't have to pay for our phones or cable TV or Internet access; we could spend our money on after-school Cokes and fries and the juke box.  Gas was 29 cents a gallon, so we could "tool the town" for hours and hours.  And being seen around town was our number one pastime.

Simple.  Life was simple.  And I love remembering it.

Myrtle

When I was a kid, there were certain names (always female) that seemed less-than-appealing to us.  They were "old lady" names.  My mother had one of them:  Ethel. Seriously, does anyone name their kid Ethel these days?  Other names on the Undesirable List:  Gertrude, Beulah, Myrtle. 

And I am here today to tell you that I am in love with Myrtle.  I'm really talking about Creeping Myrtle or, more familiarly, Vinca Minor.  Gardeners will know it as a perennial groundcover with purple flowers.  Several years ago, my friend Jim helped me plant Myrtle in some difficult areas, places where landscaping demands were complicated.  And for the first couple of years, I questioned our choice of groundcover.  Growth was sparse at best, although the purple flowers were lovely.

It is now a decade later, and Myrtle has reigned supreme.  She is among the first blossoms of spring, and her purple and green growth is luxurious.  But . . . . she creeps.

Yes.  I had a four foot swath of pathway between the Black-eyed Susans and the Myrtle, and little by little, Myrtle was closing that gap.  By the time I got out there this week, Myrtle had creeped in enough to leave a two foot path.  And it all happened without me paying any attention at all.  Broke my heart to rip out the rootings that Myrtle had planted along the stone path, but when I did, and the path was reclaimed, I felt like I'd just cleaned house.  The path became new and clean and beautiful.  Which is not to say that Myrtle isn't beautiful!  She is!  But her beauty must be tamed!

And there it is.  For something to be beautiful, sometimes it must be tamed.  I love the wilderness as much as anyone, but we view the wilderness more clearly when it is tamed, don't we?  I am thinking of the redwood groves in northern California.  Untamed, we would not be able to meander through that beauty.  But, when tamed, golden pathways lead us through the splendor and we are changed.  I know this to be true.

And so I tame my Myrtle.  She recedes under my command, and I am able to walk through what might have been a wilderness with ease.  But her beauty is still there, asking to be loved.   And I love her wildly and without restraint.

 

Patience

I am going to fall in love with patience in the hope that I will acquire some.  I feel like so much right now is demanding patience, and I am afraid I am falling short on delivering it.  Waiting for warmth, waiting for an email, waiting for seeds to sprout, waiting for the sun.  (Cue: The Doors)  I am well aware of the adage Patience is a virtue.  Indeed.  I do not think I have ever been a virtuous woman.

I know I am not alone in thinking that my patience is wearing thin.  This winter has taken a toll on all of us.  I was grousing to my friend Jeff on the phone today, revealing that I had a hard time keeping the depression gods at bay this winter.  He immediately assured me that I was not the only one.  And so I am wondering if those who live further south of here have more patience?  Could it be?  And then, what does that say about geographical choices?  Would I have a better shot at happiness if I relocated further south?  It is something worth considering.

Or not.  Patience is a virtue.  Cultivating virtues is a good thing, right?  Well, if that is the case, goodness is in my DNA!  So I win, right?  Except it doesn't feel that way.  I am angry and ornery and resentful in my impatience.

And then I go out to the greenhouse to check on my seeds and lo and behold, kale and eggplant and chard are emerging.  In the beds already, carrots and beets and snowpeas sprouting up one by one.  And best of all, asparagus!  They poke their little penis heads up in glory!  I am reminded of the number one rule of gardening:  patience.  All good things in due time.  I am humbled by what Nature can teach us . . . if only we will listen.

And then I call up a memory of the past week.  The ocean.  Ever patient.  The tide comes in, the tide goes out.  Patience is part of the rhythm.  I am soothed by the rolling tide and its never-ending patience.  I will try to steal this rhythm and incorporate it into my own life.  Starting now.

iPod

I have tried very hard NOT to fall in love with material things in this blog.  And other than Paint and Vinegar, I've managed to avoid it.  I mean, I don't ever want to post that I am in love with a Coach purse or a Jaguar (which, by the way, will never be possessions of mine . . . not that I wouldn't like a Jaguar, you know . . . ), but I suspect it might become harder and harder to avoid this as the year goes on.

I am allowing myself to post about a material thing, my iPod, today, but it isn't the thing itself with which I am in love.  It is the thing that it contains, which isn't really material at all.  Obviously, I am in love with the music that my iPod holds, but I cannot dismiss this little marvel of an invention that allows me to select my own music and take it with me wherever I go.

I have a couple of iPods (mostly my kids' rejects) but I prefer the Classic iPod.  Although I have not updated my iTunes library in awhile, I have 2042 songs on my iPod, but here's what I think makes my iPod different from yours, maybe.  Every single song on my iPod was hand-picked by me.  In other words, I do not put an entire CD on my iPod; I select the songs from that CD that I really like and I let the others go.  Doing this is a labor of love.  I will purchase certain songs from iTunes, but not entire "albums."  Why is this important?  When I am listening to my iPod, I like every song that comes on shuffle and I don't have to skip or fast-forward through the ones that don't knock my socks off.

While I am a public radio fan Monday through Friday, their weekend line-ups often leave me unsatisfied.  My iPod to the rescue.  Today is such a day.  It's rainy outside on this Saturday, I am wasting time on the Internet, and my iPod is reminding me how much I love music.  My music.

On the flight home last night, I closed my eyes to reflect on the days spent on the beach, earbuds in place, soothed by the music I love.  I did not hear that child crying a few rows back, nor was I annoyed by the too-loud conversation of the people across the aisle.  If and when the FAA allows cell-phone use on flights, I know that I will have the means to shut out those conversations and thereby avoid being arrested for accosting a fellow passenger.  What's not to love about that?

One Quarter

This is my 91st post, which means that I am one-fourth of the way to completing my challenge of falling in love every day for a year.  Are you amazed?  I sure am.  This tiny marker provides some further inspiration and incentive to keep going, while at the same time, it frightens me with the daunting task ahead.  I'm ONLY one quarter of the way?  You mean I have to find 274 more things with which to fall in love before I complete my goal?

And now it is obvious to me what is wrong with that last sentence.  Do you see it?  Have to find?  Like it's a job, a chore, a requirement, an obligation, an albatross around my neck?  No, no no!  That is not what this is about!  Falling in love, appreciating the world around me, contemplating the value in all that I encounter here . . . these are not chores; these are privileges.

Being a sucker for markers of time, I feel compelled to assess what this experiment has offered me so far.  (First, though, I must reference a favorite quote by the character Miles Dentrell of Thirtysomething:  "The decimalization of time is so arbitrary."  I agree.  But nonetheless . . . )

There have been days when this challenge has been easy.  Something strikes me early in the day and I make a mental note, "Yes!  I can write about this today!"  And throughout the day, my ideas about it are percolating, just waiting for their time at the keyboard.  Other days, there's a sense of dread hanging over me:  "Crap!  What am I going to fall in love with today?"  I sometimes feel like I am reaching and falling short on those days.  You can probably tell which posts fall into that category.

But the best days are the days when I sit down at the blank page on the computer screen with no idea what the subject will be and just start typing.  I begin the text without even a title.  And because I believe in the magic of the written word, whatever is in my subconscious traverses the veins in my arms and escapes through my fingers, onto the keyboard and up on the screen.  Love.

And those would be the days when I most feel what this blog is teaching me.  There is love all around, and sometimes, instead of searching for it, it finds you.

A few days ago, I came upon some dead flowers on the beach.  I have no friggin' idea what the meaning of that discovery is, but I'd like to put a picture on this post, so here they are:

Cousins

We claim kin says my cousin Mary to my girlfriends.  And within minutes, it feels like we've all known each other forever.

Although Mary and I knew one another marginally growing up in the same county in New Jersey, a couple of years' difference in age and a less-than-close relationship between our parents meant that cousin was an endearment that lived in heart more than practice.  But happenstance brought us together fifty-plus years later when my daughter began grad school in Mary's southern town.  And now, less than two years later, we never miss an opportunity to get together when I visit.

Tonight was one of those occasions.  Mary and two of her daughters and I and my two girlfriends dined and talked and laughed for a couple of hours at an outdoor table in lovely Mizner Park.  By the time the sun set, we were full . . . of food and stories and contentment.  We were all kin.

Mary suggested that perhaps her mother (my Aunt Georgie) and my father (her Uncle Val), sister and brother, had arranged this happenstance of geography from afar.  I'm willing to buy that.  My father, an often cold and angry man (from my viewpoint anyway), missed the opportunity to let his children form close bonds with their cousins.  Perhaps he is now righting that wrong?  One of my favorite pleasures from this new connection with my cousin is listening to the stories her mother would tell her about her little brother.  I think I have learned more about my father, the boy, than I ever learned from him.  He just didn't tell me any stories.

We have much to look forward to.  Not all of our combined seven adult children have met one another yet.  But they will.  We will see to it.

I know you are reading this, Mary.  Thank you for so graciously allowing my children and me into your life.  I am in love with my cousins . . . for real this time.