Baby somethings

We all know this. Everything doesn’t start out full grown, fully knowing its purpose in life. Everything starts as a baby something… insects have larva, bears have cubs, foxes have kits, dogs have puppies. But there are many of these that we never see as a baby.

Anybody who gardens knows what caterpillars do to tomatoes, cabbages, squash. Then they become some sort of harmless moth, but their babies do a lot of damage to become that moth.

Puppies and kittens, though they do some things we don’t like- basically gnaw on chair legs or eat an entire slipper, are so darned cute we don’t really mind.

Other baby things we’d rather just not see like spiders or alligators.

But I had never, until a few days ago, seen a baby squirrel.

I’d been hearing great horned owls every night for several nights. It’s a welcome, comforting sound to me. Thursday morning my rescue dog Lily and I were returning from her walk when I saw her nosing around a tuft of something in the front yard so I went over to have a look.

I spotted a tiny pink thing and as I walked closer Lily backed away giving me a full view of it. I thought at first it might be a mole or a vole but they aren’t all pink. I picked it up… a perfect little creature though by now ice-cold. Who knows when it had been knocked out of its nest. I looked up and sure enough there in the pine branches was a large squirrel nest. My guess was one of those owls likely swooped on unwary mom or dad squirrel for a late-night snack and knocked junior out in the process. This little thing’s eyes weren’t even opened.

So we brought it inside. No bigger than my thumb, perfectly formed little head, tiny ears, curled tail, even little nails on its paws. I wrapped it in a soft cloth and cocooned it inside a rolled heating pad.

An hour later I checked, still stone-cold. Well, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything final with the little thing so left it wrapped in the pad while Lily and I went out for our morning errands. Upon returning I checked again. Still cold. Well, we tried.

Sad to think it won’t have an opportunity to taunt and frustrate Lily someday, but I  imagine there will be others.

pansies, petunias, peonies…

So gardening. This wasn’t something I’d always loved. I doubt I even noticed those background plants in doctor’s or dentist’s offices. My dad’s company transferred us to New Jersey from North Carolina (culture shock! another blog…) when I was around 15. At that tender age my weekends were sacrosanct. Slogging through weeks on end of school, classes, peers, assignments and all that goes with it I desperately needed my weekends to recoup my social life, sleep, and other essentials, and homework.

Gardening, or tending a rock garden was not in the schedule.

We moved in the beginning of 1971, snow all over the place, more than I’d ever seen in my cumulative lifetime. Gradually as seasons do spring emerged from the frozen earth and uncovered a lovely, meticulously manicured rock garden across the front of our new home.

“Every Saturday morning you’re going to weed and tend this garden,” my father announced one morning at breakfast. A time at that age when I was barely conscious, clearly not capable of processing paternal directives.

Was he kidding?

No. So every Saturday I was rudely awakened at 8:00 a.m., sharp. Dressed, breakfasted and sitting on the walkway beside the little garden, trying hard to decipher what was weed and what was not, I carefully picked miniscule plants, one by one. As the garden came into flower– I would later learn the names of these flowers: creeping phlox, candy tuft, pinks, rock cress, blue star creeper –I was more careful to avoid those and soon learned what weeds looked like (though now so many years later I know one person’s weed is another’s treasure). As summer came into focus I found myself at the little garden not just Saturday mornings but whenever I detected an asymmetry or a wayward strand of vine. I soon loved this little garden and this love has since grown to consume the majority of my present waking hours in the forms of herbs, vegetables, annuals, perennials, various vines, specimen trees, depending of course on season.

During my adult life at places I volunteered now and then: the Fairchild Botanic Garden in Miami; Winghaven Gardens, Charlotte; San Juan Nature Center, Farmington, NM, I have heard occasionally the term “master gardener”. This lofty-sounding title always caused a sense of presence, something I wondered how people even began to aspire to.

After I moved here I understood this is a program in every county of every state with the local agricultural extension service, so I applied. Much to my amazed delight I was accepted into the program and, only being a couple of weeks into it, it is clear that though much information is imparted through lecture, handouts, homework, and  field trips I will never, ever, know “it all”. I may barely scratch the surface of even that which is presently known, but plants are continually being hybridized, fertilizers, methods of cultivation are constantly being improved, changed, and the climate of course is in a perpetual state of flux, whether you believe in global warming or not.

So no, I will never know all there is to know. But the fun is in the growing, and learning, both the plants and myself. That I hope will never end.

A Day at the Beach

It’s been just over a year since I moved here. Husky-mix rescue dog Lily did not like ocean waves at all then. Now she does not mind them much. I had a border collie years ago who attacked waves with abandon. She attacked all water, actually… fountains, garden hose sprays, sprinklers, but she went at waves with relish.

Lily, not.

Now she allows them to come over her feet as she walks, as long as it’s not a rogue wave or one that makes her think she’s going out with the tide. But this day was calm, we were on the south point of this little island where the island curve goes into Mason Inlet to Banks Channel. Not much wave action here at all, especially not at low tide.

But as we arrived we were treated to this–

Not up on my sailboats… maybe a sloop? Anyway something that needed a crew. They all looked very busy, and happy about their venture.

Since I was so taken by this and not paying attention to Lily at all she took it upon herself to take off

but she never goes too far. What, like she’d make her home on the beach with the sand crabs and skimmers? Maybe a fisherman would toss her a fish head? Likely she’d be more inclined to roll in it than eat it. No, she did not go very far before, taking leash in mouth, she came right back

Besides, even though the rules say dogs have to be on leashes it is also understood I suppose that a human has to be at the other end.

Still, I suppose a little exploring never hurts. Besides, those police suvs are pretty audible even in sand.

 

Person/persona

It is not often a book moves me to the point of transformation. Most books today are written for mass market interests rather, money makers. There is a rare occasion where a book is written for its own story and gets so far inside as you read as to become an unchangeable part of who you are, how you think, see things.

Kristen Hannah’s The Nightingale is the latter.

Written from a modern-day (1990s) elderly woman’s life, she has received an invitation to a reunion. A gathering of those who lived in the heart of the muck, the evil, terrifying, humbling, unearthiness of a mobilized, imprisoned small village in France during the second World War. Those who in some way helped the ones who were weaker than even they.

We all have our personalities. It is who we are when we are born. War changes all of this, Most of us today have lived blessed lives. We have experienced turmoils, terrorists and pockets of terrorism. But many or most of us have never experienced anything that consumed our entire lives to the point where our persons or personalities became simply persona. A costume we place upon ourselves so as to protect, hide, unrecognize who our true selves are.

This beautiful, terrible story is written from the raw vulnerabilities of those whose lives are completely displaced by the Third Reich. How they deal with less and less food, less and less mercantile, less and less furniture as that which they have known in their families perhaps for centuries is looted, less and less dignity. We all take so much for granted that, to read a book such as this is to be transported to a place beyond ourselves where we feel actual starvation, actual pain from brutal interrogation, actual humiliation of rape or the loss of dear families, friends until we have nothing but that which is at our very core, that which nothing and no one can take from us. It is almost too painful to read as we imagine it was for those who lived through it. And hard for me at times to remember that this book is a work of fiction. Because all that it describes within its pages were all too real during this war. As the sister of the narrator tells us after she has survived days and days of interrogation, then months in Ravensbruck of this plundering of all that she is except for her soul:

” ‘You know what I learned in the camps?

“Vianne looked at her. ‘What’?

“‘They couldn’t touch my heart. They couldn’t change who I am inside. My body … they broke that in the first days, but not my heart, V. …’ ”

Somehow, no matter how small we make ourselves our hearts where we hide our most precious, inmost selves never, ever completely disappear.

Quote from The Nightingale, by Hannah, Kristin, (c)2015, St. Martin’s Press, pg. 422-423. All rights reserved.

 

 

Strange chemistry

A neighbor where I live gave me a collection of succulents she no longer wanted, one in particular that looked a lot like a Dr. Seuss plant with a long gangly stem and thick lobed petals at the end. A couple of short branch offshoots with more thick-leaved petals at each tip. It does not appear to require much attention so I water it every so often. Not at all pretty but because it is a living thing and was given to me I cannot bring myself to put it on the compost heap. Besides, my neighbor might ask about it.

But it is of great interest to a squirrel that frequents the yard. This squirrel has eaten all the lobes off of one branch and a couple of the larger ones off the main stem. Each time he does he catapults into a few back flips from the flower pot onto the trunk of a tree. I can’t figure out whether this squirrel is a little nuts or the petals of this plant have an odd effect on him.

Where I used to live I would sprinkle bird seed on the railing of the deck off the back of the house. The birds flocked to the seed in winter so not having a deck here I put some seed on the windowsills on the back of the house here. Eventually the birds became braver, particularly the cardinals, and this one squirrel.

I am guessing it is the same one. The first few times it came to feast on the seed it licked the (probably filthy) window screen, copiously. I did notice lately it has stopped the licking, but vacuums up nearly every seed on the window.

So I am making more frequent trips out to replenish the window sill. Lily, my husky-mix rescue dog has recently taken a strong interest in this window. It appalls her that this creature which she generally takes great joy in chasing all over the yard would have such nerve as to practically make itself a houseguest. She will look at it, smugly gorging itself on the sill, then slowly turn her head to me as if to ask, “Are you actually going to tolerate this affront to my dignity?”, and turns just as slowly to stalk the back door I suppose so as not to alert the squirrel to her predation (so far Lily has not caught one yet).

The chase is on, squirrel deftly springing from sill to mid-trunk of a nearby pine tree. Lily chases nothing all over the yard, squirrel now safely in the tree branches.

I suppose Lily has an image to maintain here.

Breathe easy, a cautionary tale

About 6 years ago I was in the midst of looking for a house to move back to my home state of North Carolina from New Mexico. It was not going well at all, my realtor either wasn’t listening or I was doing a terrible job of describing what it was I was looking for. She and her husband went skiing over the New Year holiday which gave me several days’ break from confusing house floor plans, and so I caught a virus.

It could have been flu, but it was not a simple cold. This thing had a fever, chills, aches, and generally left me feeling like the proverbial truck had slammed into me. And a persistent cough.

I did finally find a house to buy, with another realtor, but the cough stayed with me. At Thanksgiving my brother invited me to join his family in Texas and went after me the whole weekend to see someone about this  annoying cough. Annoying to him.

So I went to see my gp at home. He took x-rays. Yes, he said, they saw a spot. More x-rays. Still inconclusive. C-T scan. My brother (a lung oncologist) asked for a copy of the scan which I sent to him. About the same time the tech at home gave me the diagnosis my brother gave the same one: adult-onset asthma.

Now this made no sense at all to me. I’d never had problems breathing. I ran 3-5 miles every morning (still do) with my husky-mix rescue dog Lily. I had never had pulmonary problems of any kind.

Not until this little cough which by now was gone. Too late. I was on the middle of this roller coaster ride.

My gp scheduled an appointment with a pulmonologist who ordered a pft (pulmonary function test) which turned up my breathing capacity at 90-95%. What’s wrong with that? I asked. Well, since we see scarring we want to prescribe something to help keep the lungs open. They can collapse otherwise.

Collapse? A whole lung??

This went on for 5 years. In that time I experienced shortness of breath only once, alone in a movie theater watching a political thriller that was not very good anyway. No sooner had I left than I caught my breath again. Three successful pfts and a new pulmonologist later and I am still running with Lily. Still having no problems breathing. The little persistent cough is so historic as to not even register in my long-term memory.

And I have moved again. So I schedule one last appointment. Another pft. Still breathing 100%. The doctor says yes, I can stop with the appointments but to cover himself or maybe just to appease the pharmaceutical company he prescribes one last emergency inhaler which I do not have filled.

Still running with Lily every day. Still able to catch my breath. And a commercial comes on the television showing a wonderful new asthma drug with the caution: “using this can cause death”.

So glad I am better now.

New

Years ago (those years I could afford one at all) we were fortunate to find places that sold live Christmas trees. One year I bought a 5-foot Norway spruce. I planted this tree outside the bricked patio of our small condo. It grew to a stately, lovely shaped tree. I was an original owner at this subdivision so could do this, also could have 3 dogs if I wanted them. Had I known this at the time, prior to our association hiring a management company I would have likely had 3 dogs. As it happened, no sooner did I move than that beautiful tree was chopped down.

Oh my.

Another year I found a smaller but equally pretty Colorado blue spruce. My father, hailing from Colorado, I decided just had to have this tree at the beach house my mother and he had just built. So after Christmas I loaded this tree into my car and drove the 3-4 hours to South Carolina. The root ball was dry I discovered, and the portion of tree that had been at the window had lost most of its needles but no worries, I just knew it would be so happy to be planted on a native Coloradoan’s property.

Wrong.

We all sorrowfully watched it turn a deep brown as it died a rather slow, painful death. Painful for us I suppose.

I don’t like seeing anything die. Not a flower, or a tree, a pet. Nor a parent, a friend. But it happens. Death is part of life. So in this new year which is simply a connected day to the previous and next days moving onward in the space and time measurements I will meld with life, come whatever may come. I have spent most of my life’s years becoming indignant over small and great slights and upheavals. I have crusaded for causes I was positive could change the course of all life for the better. I have pounded in search of ways to make things better for people, for animals, for the environment. And whatever difference I have made is so small, minor, insignificant I wonder what makes a difference at all.

I am spent.

Not that things do not matter, but so much energy is misdirected, a chasing after the wind.

So I will look for an opportunity to find the trees and let nature take care of its forest. I will wait before acting. Consider, listen before speaking. And most of all deny discouragement, disappointment their victories because nothing ever stays the same. All things become new. An unwritten law that has existed always.

I finally get it.

Grey areas

Christmas Day 2015, its celebration, is now a memory. We hope to carry what Christmas Day is and means, as Charles Dickens said, “all throughout the year”.  My anticipation of this day was heightened by the arrival of my son and his live-in. It would be so easy to say I discount her because she is never going to measure up because no one is as good as my perfect son deserves. That is what most misconceptions are of a mother’s thoughts of her son’s love-interest.

In my case I hope against hope each time that this will be the time this young woman has a light dancing in her eyes indicating she clearly understands how hard this is for both of us. She knows since we both love and adore my son/her boyfriend this will all work itself out, that there are comedies of error around every sticky and difficult situation.

Not this year.

She smiled a bit more at the outset of the visit but as we saw more of each other rather than become warmer and friendlier she became quieter and more distanced. Yes, we have differences of opinion but isn’t that normal?? Yes, she is 28-29 (? I really don’t have a clue, just know she is over 25) and I am some 30 or 40 years her senior, but should that daunt anyone? I truly want to like this girl, to embrace her as a healthy dimension to my son’s life but cannot seem to break down the walls. Whether or not he put them up or she or both did I may never know. I just know that they are there and if I cannot melt their iciness with warmth then it is they who must do the work. Or not.

My sister-in-law chided me that she sees a great fondness for my son from his girlfriend. She also reminded me of what I already well know, that her parents adore him. They have comfortably enfolded him into their routines. I know all of this. Easier for them to have a relationship with him in that they all live in the same city while I am 5 states away.  Sunday night dinners. Visits back and forth.  All I can do is try my best to somehow find a way to fit into their lives. Unless my son decides to cut me out of his life entirely which I recently mentioned to a friend I hope to find some way to be in this picture without having to completely deny who I am.  I am industrious and resourceful enough to manage should there not be a place for me but the sadness will be overwhelming!

I’ll survive, black, white or grey, one way or another.

 

Surprises

Not normally one to like surprises I am of a mixed mind over this one.

My son’s live-in and I have never managed to connect. On any level. First my son said she is terrified of me. Made me laugh, then feel very sorry, then wondered if perhaps she ought to feel so? After all, my son is no longer the free-thinking spontaneous joy-filled young man I not so long ago knew. She has morphed and twisted him into a dour, somber, walking-on-eggshells house boy, either with criticism, manipulation or some other feminine affectation by which I am not familiar or amused at this contortion.

A few days ago running errands, taking my husky-mix rescue dog Lily for her well visit to her vet and delivering some Christmas presents I noticed my son had tried to call. I normally do not know where my cell phone is but had left it in the car this time. It has since again gone missing. So I called him back. Small talk. Weather reports. Bombshell. “Are you going to be home? We have plane tickets, we are arriving Christmas Eve.” Silence. Normally I get a couple more weeks’ notice than 10 days. Normally it is a relaxed interchange where I get to squeal delightedly. This time I felt cornered. Like this is something that has to fit in the picture of some badly illustrated bedtime story.

And I had been savoring my flexibility here. Maybe I’d go back to Texas to see my brother again. Maybe I’d spend my first Christmas by myself, enjoying its meaning, walking along my sandy beach letting the sound of the tide lull me into a summery rest in wintertime.

No. Harshness, insistence, as if someone is pulling his puppet strings which, prior to now he has never had.

So I am beginning to think this also may involve a wedding date. I hope it is also my son’s wish. So far I have not seen or felt the love there.

Maybe I will take that trip to Italy…

Clearing cobwebs

Last week I revisited a shard from a past life.

My dad retired when I was almost finished high school and bought a business in bankruptcy. My freshman year in college I found myself many weekends on a bus headed from Greensboro to Charlotte to help Dad become familiar with the small newspaper and the components that made it run.

A year later my brother graduated prep school in NJ and our family moved back south. That summer before Jon and I went to college our whole family threw ourselves into strengthening this company. We had nothing to lose so we had a blast. Our first office was in a dingy, tiny store-front place with grey-brown plywood-paneled walls, a couple of dusty desks and chairs. One weekend as I sat comfortably in a wing chair at home reading a good book Dad casually tossed a typesetting manual in my lap saying, “Read this. Monday you’re our typesetter.”

Dad moved us right away to a much nicer, well-lit space across from a military recruiting office. Mom, our accounting executive, loved the stories the sergeant regaled her with of potential recruits and their puffed up prowess. Even though the office was larger than the former one I remember one strange afternoon Dad interviewed an insurance salesman. I guess he got tired of all the little pitchers and their big ears listening in because at one point he paused saying, “Here, let’s talk in here,” and he and the gentleman moved into a small closet. Very strange.

Anyway, move forward 30 years. Dad is 95, still running this business up to the day he passed away. My brother and I kept it on until we realized without Dad this was simply too much for us. He had built the little limping business into a solid, strong company and it needed someone far more experienced than I to manage it, so a buyer happened along (who Dad had known and respected inasmuch as Dad, himself a force to be reckoned with, could respect anyone) and the business was sold.

The financial records and sales information have languished in a cold, remote storage facility for eight years. A month or so ago I decided the time had come to go through whatever we had there and decide what to do. Our accountants assured me that we were well past the legal requirement for maintenance of tax documents and records and it could all be disposed of.

So I stood in that enormous warehouse looking at my smallish pile of 12-14 banker’s boxes where I had hastily written the contents on each box. Recalling so much of what Dad had taught me, things I had learned about people and working with them, things I learned about myself, deadlines that stretched into many hours waiting for the last pages of a court calendar, discrepancies resolved, and the year I tearfully realized if I wanted to maintain a healthy relationship with my father I would have to find employment elsewhere. Thus I became a librarian, eventually, after walking through many doors and closing many others.

I distilled what remained into one box which I brought home with me. Nowhere near big enough to hold my memories and certainly not enough to contain the largeness of my father, all he knew and all he did. But somehow I can’t quite let go of it all.

Not just yet.