9.5.13 With Morning Came That Sense of Fall

With morning came that sense of Fall

The hint of a shift;  clear, brisk on skin

A small song about summer passing by

Here , the mosquitoes  thankfully come to an end

Small clouds of other innocent someones

Cluster in the yard, ruffling in the midday air

The Hawks begin their gathering time

Calling out, all day, greeting and preparing

And just this evening  far down in the darkened back field

Comes the  yip yipping of  coyotes;

they wander in closer,  ancient instinctual preparation

Young ones, older ones, nearing the season

Of cold and hunger and the test of abilities

On the telephone wire  a crow feeds their young

One surviving;  fluttering  small effervescent feathers

With their request; and as I watch

I wonder how it is humans think that

Only we have challenge

9.3.13 Wouldn't Trade That Day For Anything

There are all kinds of days. Good days. Bad days. Short days. Long days. They come in all kinds of flavors, rousing us out of our presumptions of what we deserve- what is fair, what day is good enough; what if we ignore this day and wait for a better one. To come on by and offer itself up to our ever so deserving selves. 

So many flavors of days, of lives, of ways of feeling about the life we hold in our own hands today, wherever we are, what ever on earth we are doing and feeling about the day and the life we are 'having'. 

I have quiet days now. I am 61. I am on a leave of absence from work. Its tight, being on a leave of absence. Not everybody gets to do it, even when their health requires it. So I am lucky. Somehow I do. And while  I mix together herb formulas here and there for my Apothecary and fill orders and make capsules. As I clean up the morning dishes and vacuum the dog hair  off the floor and fold clothes and sit outside playing a new song that birthed itself this morning over Rooibos tea, out in the back garden, so I had to go get my 12 string and sit, sipping and strumming and singing while hummingbirds came still (!)  round the herb garden, and the conservation field was sopped with dew and the sunflowers finally  deigned to join us, I think back to other days. Other  days I have had. So very different than the ones I seem to 'have' now. Puzzling, the concept of 'having' days. But no matter. Here is a visit to another time, another flavor of a day. 

I wake up getting bounced upon by a kid with a poopy dripping diaper and another who is whining about the huge knot in their hair and the older one who comes in kinda defensive and you just know they forgot a homework assignment and the dogs are jumping to go OUT and you let them out and lo and behold there is in this not twilight of mornings a skunk out there in them hills and of course the dogs have a moral obligation to chase the skunk and get sprayed and come back blinded and drooling and pathetically miserable and apologetic (that's the tail between the legs part,not the swollen shut eyes or the drooling mouth). 

And you change the diaper and cuddle the crabbylittlewherethehelldidthiskidcomefromanywaygodhelpme kid and manage to talk them out of pjs and into clothing and then do a stand up job getting the guy who shares your bed and kids and dogs to cajole the little pain in the butt just long enough to look all sweet and kind while you brush gently out the parts that WILL brush and then sing a song that gets a bit louder, eyeing the guy holding the kid, giving them the heads UP to bump the kid around while smiling like a complete idiot, (which makes for the sexiest human, the one who would do anything wonderful for a kid. Yeah. True.) 

And as he is looking like a complete idiot making faces and bumping the pain in the.....kid around, snip    yup you cut the stupid huge knot out without a clue, the kid is. Clueless. And now you and the guy are just over the moon, despite the two moaning dogs at the front door and the diapered creature who is pouring out the 50 million dollar natural dry cerael all over the kitchen floor with the dogs eyeing it regretfully, up on back legs on the sunporch, peering over the dutch door into the kitchen, and the 10 year old is in his corner, towel round his neck, shoulders peripatetically rubbed by imaginary trainers, as he takes a practice jab and jumps about, getting UP and ready for the 'Confrontation about the not done homework with the parents'. 

Yeah, I see him there, now that the little pain in the ...delight is dressed and there is a huge gap on the back of her head and if anyone...anyone....DARES to mention it..sib, teacher, little sweet kid at school, I simply will not promise not to annihilate them due to what my kid will DO if she happens to hear someone talking about  a hairless patch and puts her small hand up and feels it. I mean, its all over for all of us, then. 

So yeah, the guy goes and scoops up the expensive stupid natural cereal back into the box, much to the evident chagrin of the waiting stinking dogs, whose skunk stink is enough to make me gag at this point, but for the kids I pretend I have no clue what they're talking about when they go on and on about the STINK permeating the kitchen , because now we are on to the CHAMP who is eyeing us from his corner, ready for our approach.

 I eye the guy; he eyes me, we have our pjs on and hair askew and the guy has put the diapered one up in the baby seat with the proper warmed homemade organic baby food, trying in vain to get some into the kids mouth while suppressing hysteria as he watches me prep my self for the approach to the champ. As the diapered one cranes his small neck because even HE knows something is about the come down. As the one with no knowledge of the hairless blotch on her small head is sitting up to her own carefully oh-so-good-for-you breakfast (that will help a little bit make up for the weird things they all will insist upon eating when they are older). 

So there I am, my stomach growling with hunger, the poopy diaper in the one and only toilet waiting for some adult to squish their hands all over it and then flush and flush again (that's how we used to do it. Cloth diapers. No bowel movements in paper and plastic and chemicals filling landfills and growing terrible microbes. Nope. Just sitting around squishing your kid's crap through your fingers while leaning over the very place you sit to.....oh well. So what. )

And he begins first, I cock my head to the ideological bell that has been hit...as he begins his nonchalant walk from living room into kitchen, his notebooks for classes in his arms, his backpack casually slung over a shoulder, his look relaxed and yet powerful, as he glances at me, as I lean upon the counter just waiting, arms folded over chest, as he pauses in his own apparent focus to let us know that...there was a big project and , uh, he began it. He DID!!! And got some of it done. Yeah. Oh, and he had to do it with some total lazy jerk who did NOTHING. NOTHING!! 

And now here he is and its the due day and last night while he played video games after purportedly finishing all homework, he just forgot all about the project, which by the way, is totally stupid and worthless and he suddenly is now realizing as he stands here in the kitchen with the tantalized audience of two smaller people and the two stinking drooling dogs up and down scarping nails down the nice rust paint of the dutch door, he suddenly has an epiphany! Which is that this teacher is, actually, a TOTAL jerk. Yeah. Right? An  unreasonable jerk. A terrible teacher. Yeah. Who has favorites. And teaches the stupidest (is that even a word I ask myself silently) things...and he goes for it.

I gotta hand it to him. He goes for it, his trainers in the corner cheering him on, towel ready to mop his brow, ready to pound his shoulders with encouragement, and he looks up at us to gauge the response, to check the meter of....well, of many things. Parent exhaustion. Parent-so-worn-out-ready-to-be-cheesy-and-irresponsible-and-pretend-this-is-ok.  Or how about Parent-trying-to-be-good-understanding-parent-and-work-with-cheesy-kid. 

Now the guy feeding the small ones is getting pissed off. I can see the smoke coming out of his ears, the bulging eyes . A no-brainer. Maybe its a guy with a guy kid thing? I don't know. But an additional pain. What I don't get then is that there will be a girl with a female parent thing following along nicely, right behind.Lucky me. Lucky him. 

So I hup to, and ever so  easy going, but with that edge of parental control and authority  right?? (You have to practice this stuff in the mirror when they're asleep, or I'm telling you, you're sunk. ) I walk over , catching sight of said subject and notebook, and quietly slip it from his pile, a bit fast,so he can't object or turn and obstruct my grab, and I open it to the last written on page and check the deal out. I check it out and verbally provide a relaxed summary for all listening (stinky dogs, two small people, the guy who is late for grad school and the classes he teaches) and just sum the whole deal up. 

Ok, there is a summary written, it isn't legible because somebody (my kid) didn't copy it on the computer and print the thing out...instead was enthralled in the indubitable universe of World of Warcraft. But the summary is here, and it looks pretty good. Lots of material, my finger following down the page, scanning, seems cohesive and linear and somewhat thorough content. It's due today. If it gets submitted tomorrow, 35% off the grade. 

The guy and I are feelin' it now. Ouch. Crap, parenthood. Kids. Forgetting to check up on a project in the works. Forgetting to make the kid put something about the deadline on his calendar upstairs for the Monday before, and then the night before. Crap for us forgetting to put it on the calendar downstairs. Crap crap crap.

So while catching sight of the frown and shaking of the head of the guy across the room who is managing to both dress the diapered one and himself at the same time, brush teeth all around and wash faces and hands plastered with that oh-so-good-for-you-food, and EVEN gather up his carefully prepared school bag himself, I am making deals with my self, fast deals, crisp deals, convincing deals, about how it will just be this one time, a swooping rescue, a honorable one, and then never ever ever again. And I'm putting my arm around the 10 year old and jogging down the hall toward the old time computer we all used to have in those days, pushing the on button, as the guy in the kitchen sinks with both relief and dismay, as the small ones begin to whine and the dogs give up completely out on the sunporch.

And in lightening speed I commandeer his assignment, holding his summary (and making a few excellent, if I do say so myself, improvements) and speed typing the whole thing in maybe  20 minutes, while having a fake conversation with him to pretend he is involved in this search and rescue operation I have taken flight with...and coming down to the finish line, yes yes, yes it's DONE. There. Whew.

So I throw it at the kid, grab him by both shoulders, say something fast about how THIS WILL HAVE TO CHANGE and all that, which it partly will and partly won't but we'll try, we do try, and then he jumps into the car with his dad, some small person screaming they didn't get a kiss so I grab both small ones and run past the stinking dogs and out to the low hanging car with the dead shocks and kisses all around as the snoopy neighbors hide behind the curtain next door for the 'our family show', their bellies showing while their heads are hidden, 

as I wave good morning to them, grab those two small ones, retreat inside to the battleground left behind, and begin to wipe poor dog eyes, finally let them in and give them water, stick them on the porch again til 12, 

when I will stuff the lunch fed kids into another old car, into car seats,  hand them juice-water bottles, and begin driving around, enlarging my carbon footprint, absolutely desperate for them to fall fall fall fall fall asleep, stopping guiltily off at a convenience store, staring at them the whole time, really I race in and grab a candy bar and race back out and jump in the car, driving off past hill and dale, putting on the car fan for a bit so I can open the wrapper without starting World War 3, and carefully sneak small bites of something so full of sugar it could thrust the next space ship into the outer sphere....or whatever it is, as it is doing with me,while the small ones finally finally become sleepy as I drive here and there, spewing my exhaust wherever I go, as in the rearview mirror I see one and then the other's eyes begin to droop..YES! 

To drop closed, struggle to open, drop closed again, then the head lolls to the side, the mouth becomes slack, and suddenly in the middle of my  day, in the midst of my life, there are two sleeping beauties in my back seat. Yes. 

I am zooming on sugar now, as I slide quietly into the driveway, leaving the gas guzzling machine ON while I carefully pick up and hold close to me one small person, lugging them in the house and through the messy kitchen and toy strewn living room, up the dark stairs to the enormous family bed (yeah. you got my number now, right??) 

And lay them carefully down, removing ever so slowly the shoes and the coat and hat...and covering them with a blanket. Then out to the car to release the bigger small one from the car seat, their eyes flutter open, I just about expire, then hold them close and firmly, as their eyes close again, the snooping neighbors at the side window hiding again, my arms too busy to wave Hey Hullo anyways, as I get the (oomph getting heavy) sweet kid in the house, through the rooms, up the stairs, onto the hugest bed in the world, my poor husband, lay them down, remove their coat, their shoes, hat, and then  lay a blanket upon them, now standing at gazing at both miracles for a moment. 

Before going back downstairs and tossing one poor German Shepherd and then one sweet Aussie in the bathtub, no tomato anything to be found, but I use my shampoo and some other stuff and though they stink, it's really ....really not so bad. And besides, their hair is so shiny!! And then I towel them off before they race through the house, rubbing on sofas and rugs and walls....aaaaccckkkk. 

And then I start up the stairs, closing the door on the , and tip toe up to my son's bed, slip off my shoes, and ever so slowly lay myself down , curling onto my side while I pull his bedspread round me,for a moment of sleep. A moment of nothing happening. A moment of would-not-trade-this-nutso-life-for-anything.

9.1.13 In The Neighborhoods, Summer Storms

What a cracking, thunderous, slamming, then torrential storm we all had in the midst of last night, fiddling around approaching for so many days, then finally BAM and it's arrived, that's for sure, waking up the neighborhood.

So many times our bones or our eyes or our devices tell us rain is coming, but it did seem to be an ambiguous presence that would hover for a few days, wind blowing it through to cascade down upon some other town some place further down the line. 

So I went ahead and watered the gardens round the apothecary; then too, the beckoning  herb gardens at home. Parched, the farmers fields were.  Here, the grandmother Aster warning me with their browned lower leaves. The Skullcap had been announcing its dry displeasure with its brown tipped leaves. 

In the shaded North garden, Wood Betony has been gently letting go their lucid purple blossoms as the summer careens into fall, nourishing its leaves that ease the stagnant headache and digestive related spinal pains.  As their small tender roots sat  waiting for a cool drink of something to ease their thirst. So much from such a small quiet someone. 

Heuchera standing by, effervescent in its pink with greens, blossoming time over, watching for hose or violet cloud,as the truth of it is,  either one would do.

In garden and home I have been turning some of the Gwen's Magic Oil into a wound oil for the coming year, so to its golden liquid I slowly add plants picked  from the gardens and lands about us;  the bright yellow and orange, antimicrobial  Calendula blossom, 

the soothing, mucilaginous Plantain, the St. Johnswort of antiviral and nerve pain calming  ways, the Comfrey that can cover and dominate the old herb garden at Hampshire College like an invading army, never ever to be vanquished -  but whose leaf and root knit up a wound, a bone, a sinew,  like grace on a go-to-meeting morning. The Echinacea that silences small microbes in their tracks, in your scrape, your gash, your inflamed mosquito bite. 

So these and a few more friends are slowly being added together to sit quietly, the Slippery Elm bark powder and the Rose Hips precluding unwanted growths and the blessing of longevity, as the oil slowly becomes infused with the separate gifts of each small plant. 

In the night we awoke to the final burst of the storm as it shook the windows of our small house, lighting up the fields, its thunderous booms and cracks resounding across the range.

 Crinkly eyed, the pup followed me about the house, stumbling sleepily, as I thunked windows down, unplugging computers, then  sat and watched, him up close against me, his big boy weight, as we perched on the hall stairs, peering out into the dark then light then dark of the wild ways storm. 

 I soothed him with the stories we tell young ones. Of storms in the summers, oh how clouds gather up moisture from ocean and mountain, how cold and hot encounter each other, how the thirsty lands do then receive the life giving floods of this clean rain. Of childhood imaginings,  of bowling pins in the Adirondacks,  of a cleansing wind sweeping through, washing  forest and field.  Leaving behind the staid damp lands we discover when we wake this  morning, slip on flip flops, and venture out to the satiated lands.

But still,  in the night, we sat together , as the old, deaf dog slept and sputtered -  as the cats perched on windowsills watching, I imagine, some nocturnal scurrying, with grand interest, and I held the  young furred one  and muttered reassuringly about  all about the way these storms come, and the way these storms then do go on their way

 




Reassured, he climbed back on the bed, but there was no sleep for some time, only sitting quietly now, light on, cats filling the room with their acquiescent presence, the pastels calling to me with their creamy vibrancy, the guitar snagging second place as a song began to scamper up into consciousness. Spread out, the black shining young one kept his head upon my foot, his back up against the reticent old dogs, and kept vigil, as he is wont to do, begin a Shepherd. Poor boy, up whenever we do not sleep.

And as I, 61 with children all grown, so no young two footeds climbing into my bed, or crying out, or waking and ready to roll, got to sit up, drawing languid things with crusty brightened pastel sticks covering my hands and eventually nightgown with their smooth polished powders, as torrential rains poured upon parched farmer's fields round our valley, rains that fell like buckets upon the land, through thirsty rooted trees, our vapid, lazy streams I knew now filled  and rushing as I sat and drew in the night, the storm come to change all that.

The felines repositioned themselves, silently and subtly, as they do, all about the room, taking up places on a journal here, a pillow there, my lap filled with a stretching white and pink creature whose blue eye and yellow eye opened and closed in luxury while I sketched and smoothed and curved colors,






 until finally sleep wandered back into the room, and, turning light off, everyone sighed with relief as I eased us back into darkness, as the rain pounded the roof rhythmically, as we all curled into each other once again. And here, outdoors, maybe at your home too, continued something wild and ageless and full of earth's grace.

This morning we slept in, even the tired watchful pup, as the soil drank what was given last night, as the spiders began the reweaving of their intricate miracle webs.

 As crickets peered out from beneath rock and leaf to continue on
with late summer feeding and growth, and the butterflies awaited the drying of wings, resting beneath broad branches, the sun something reticent and unapproachable in the late morning hours.

Til finally the air did warm, the wings dried, and outside they danced about with delight, the new smaller ones today,

feeding greedily upon fragrant Hyssop and rabid Phlox as Echinacea and BeeBalm finished up for the summer, the small Skullcap blossoms and deep blue Salvia and reaching squash with its moon like white blossoms a pleasant breakfast for all.

Then up the wetted drive we wandered, the old one and I, her magnificent delight in all after-storm smells, as she would stop stock still, head 

raised, nose catching all that I cannot, passing by like a neighborhood song, in the morning breeze.