Development

One of the places my husky-dog rescue mix Lily likes to go for her walks is a pond about 2 miles from our house. There is a paved pathway around it which is interesting enough, but Lily much prefers to  go off-road so to speak. She has found several wooded paths that lead above this pond into a thicket where some neighborhood atv-drivers have carved sandy roadways.

The smells are better up there. She often chases a lizard or stops to inspect a deer hoof-print. She dives into the brambles after –? a rabbit? fox? something that always manages to evade her.

Not long ago we noticed surveyor’s stakes, so I asked a fellow-walker what that was about.

“Likely an extension of the greenway,” replied one. “Probably just clearing underbrush,” mused another.

Neither is true. After a few days out of town recently we returned to find everything cleared. Probably 5 or so acres denuded of trees, saplings, wild blueberries, underbrush where we heard a covey of quail last summer amiably whistling to each other… bob-white? bob-white?

Development. Progress. Civilization.

We much prefer wilderness.

Small towns, big cities

After quietly listening this past weekend to my son and sister-in-law debate better, faster routes through the city for several minutes I said, “I can’t imagine living anywhere that people talk more about streets and highways than each other.”

This stopped the conversation, and the car remained silent for the rest of our drive.

So that was it? Their most important conversation consisted of whether 290 was faster than some other road, how to get to 610, or which exit would be less congested than another?

Evidently. With no more words forthcoming, nor any laughter at my observation it became sadly apparent to me that people hide from each other behind the trivial. It is so much easier to talk about the objective or inanimate than what we think or need. About our hearts. Our souls.

Why?

I moved to a smaller town a year ago and immediately felt the non-claustrophobic closeness, that it would matter  to me if someone preferred a balsam tree to a spruce. I really do not care how I get anywhere so long as I do eventually get there, and whatever I encounter along the way though it may be frustratingly slow or congested gives me opportunity to hone my maneuvering skills or think about comments someone made, a friendly conversation, or simply to notice wildflowers that might be growing on the roadside. No one here I find is the least bit concerned about speaking their mind, or giving an opinion solicited or not, or simply pontificating on the virtues of Florida oranges over California ones. If I miss a church service and happen on a friend later that week they wonder how I am, where I’ve been.

It matters.

I have heard people comment or complain about a new road being built and the trees they took out for it, or some landmark now gone and that it was where their grandfathers greeted each other of a Saturday afternoon, on the porch or over a woodstove. But not about travel routes. People here are not afraid they might impose if they show that they care.

We each make our own way in this life and hopefully help each other. Our strengths and vulnerabilities make us who we are, not what we do or how we get there. We share our stories and laugh at our foibles. But which highway or short-cut does not matter.

The journey is not about the conveyance but we who convey.

Downside-up

Usually it’s  upside-down. The difference for me is the upside is still up, the downside is trying to be up without all the life work that goes along with it.

I’m sick of hearing these whiny ivy-league and other college students complaining that they are the reason colleges and universities exist. Really?? You mean by virtue of the grace of your presence or your (often government-paid) tuition payments? Or do you mean your fresh outlook that no one has ever thought of before because you just did and don’t realize that your thought has been disproved through the millennia which is why it is not really a fresh thought, only to you.

Guess what? Remember when your mom said not to touch that hot burner on the stove and instead of taking her word for it you touched it and got burned? That’s what happens even when you get bigger. So you’re in college now. Well, good for you. And you did this all yourself, right? Wrong, dearie. Your parents fed, clothed, sheltered, protected and educated you throughout your entire life. Sure, maybe your brain processed it all but without their tender, loving money and care would you be where you are?

Not likely.

You may believe you are something special and a gift to the world. In a way yes, you do have gifts, abilities unique to yourself. But so does everybody else. The thing is we all offer them back after so many years of having been cared for, fed, clothed, sheltered. That’s how it works. And if we are fortunate enough to be good enough we actually even get paid for our abilities: teachers, architects, writers, economists, accountants, landscapers, whatever we find we enjoy doing and are good at.

So, back to that stove. Be careful how far out on the limb you elect to crawl. Everything has a breaking point.

You’d hate to find yourself with nothing left to cash in. Then you’d really have to go to work.

Quandaries

So I was enjoying a peaceful retreat in the mountains last week. It’s a good place to come away, be with my thoughts, let snarls untangle themselves with no distractions.

My first morning I hiked to the mountain summit. Usually not a difficult climb, this time I felt as though I was behind myself, pushing. I took a different road up, generally considered to be more gradual and less steep but I found myself huffing and panting as much as when I walked the steeper path. So another year older, that wouldn’t make any difference? Maybe it’s all in my mind.

Still the day was clear, sunny. A gift when so often there are unexpected storms any time of year there.

So often our days present themselves open, unhindered to be filled by our fretting anxious thoughts. Racing hither and yon, frantic to complete tasks, errands that when we really look at it, are not essential.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” (1)

“It is only with the heart that one can see, rightly.” (2)

So why, at the end of each day, have we no recollection sometimes of the freshness we knew at the first of it? Why do we need to go away, get out of sight of the familiar to appreciate the familiar?

Sometimes a different environment resets our heart, our mind. Gives us a new focus so when we return to our familiar lives we are not the same.

Sometimes.

(1), (2): Antoine de Saint-Exupery: The Little Prince

Lists

We don’t usually start making these until we grow up. Except of course the lists we made for birthday presents, holiday gifts, stuff we wanted to see when our families went to the beach. Those were important.

Then we’d have the best friend list. These were usually torn and smudged from erasing and changing the names so much.

We got older. We now make grocery lists, lists for other people’s gifts, lists for meeting agendas, lists of questions we need to ask someone, lists to remind us how to close down a server, or turn the server on, or back the server up. To-do lists we make for our jobs, for our families, our pets. Lists of ideas for something we want to write about, a paper and pen by the bed if we wake up with some amazing idea for a million-dollar patent, or a paper and pen in the kitchen for a running list of errands to run.

Then I have another list. My sleeping list. I won’t say this is a no-fail because there are the rare times it does not work, but on the average it works quite well. This is a list I make when I wake in the middle of the night and can’t go back to sleep for the thoughts ping-ponging around my head. Something someone said that hit me wrong, something I forgot to do, things bothering me, things I need to take care of and keep putting off, things I wish I’d said but didn’t, and so on.

Like I said, this doesn’t always work but generally after I empty my head of these little nagging anxiety-makers I am usually blank enough to be able to fall asleep.

Usually.

Oh, to have those simpler days back where as soon as my head hit that pillow the day was over. When next I opened my eyes it was a new day. A fresh start.

When did we lose this? Maybe some never do.

Almost a Sunday snicker

Just Cruisin 2

We say almost because this installment isn’t funny. But
we think you’ll like it anyway.

A old cowboy went to a barbershop to have his hair
cut and his beard trimmed. As the barber began to
work, they began to have a good conversation. They
talked about so many things and various subjects.
When they eventually touched on the subject of God,
the barber said: “I don’t believe that God exists.”

“Why do you say that?” asked the cowboy.

“Well, you just have to go out in the street to
realize that God doesn’t exist. Tell me, if God
exists, would there be so many sick people? Would
there be abandoned children? If God existed, there
would be neither suffering nor pain. I can’t
imagine a loving God who would allow all of these
things.”

The cowboy thought for a moment, but didn’t respond
because he didn’t want to start…

View original post 168 more words

Weeds

Half of my garden is weeds. Seriously.

I intentionally planted cornflowers which is chicory. Spiderwort, goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, mullein, all of which can be pulled out of the roadside. Now I actually went out and paid money for cardoon.

Globe thistle.

I am going to have this all over the neighborhood if I am not careful. It’s like planting clover on purpose. Anybody who is proud of their lawn knows this nemesis. I didn’t plant any but before the weed/feed application a few weeks ago (right before flooding rains which thus rendered weed/feed useless) I am certain I saw the familiar creeping three-leafed formation in my front yard, of red clover. I also have some oxalis which cannot be eradicated, I don’t care how much you pull it out or use herbicide (which I will not use, only white vinegar).

I am not a weed hater. When you think about it most of the plants we love (especially natives) were once weeds until somebody liked something about them or found herbal healing properties and made it popular. So even dandelions if the leaves are large enough find their way into a salad of mine or wilted-greens casserole. My son has been known to caution acquaintances never to accept anything I pull from the ground. I do vaguely recall when he was very young on a walk one Saturday afternoon I spotted some wild lettuce and fed us each a bite of it. Upon returning home we slept the entire afternoon. Looking it up I discovered it has somnolent aspects.

But I digress. Many weeds have lovely flowers. St. John’s wort for instance has a bright sunburst flower that cheers even on the soggiest of days. It can’t help its invasiveness. Who wouldn’t want to share all that sunshine? I had a neighbor though who was terrified of snakes and certain every single one she saw was hiding in my blanket of shining golden stars. Nevermind that she still saw snakes even after I pulled out all those lovely healthy plants.

Most plants, when I first move to a new house I leave alone to see what they turn out to be. This proved disastrous in New Mexico one summer when I returned home after an extended time away to over-the-head weeds with unpleasant prickly stalks. It took about 6 hours to cut them all down, by hand each one, and then a healthy sum to have the piles carted away.

It’s alright. They were there first.

Friends

Friends are gifts we never know where we will find them, nor they us. Sometimes they are neighbors, sometimes chance meetings along the way– at the park, on committees, a fellow-supporter during a 5k, at work, walking our dogs, in the grocery store.

Each of us is a veritable trove of life… anecdotes, encounters, experience. Once that chord is struck when you just know this person will understand there you are with a bond, hopefully, for a long time if not for life.

Friends are more than simply allies or buffers or supporters. Friends help us find a completeness that, without them we are seeking for something in that friendship’s place. No matter how far away or how long since we have seen them they are always with us in some strange cosmic way. We remember things said, stories shared, situations experienced or resolved. So when we lose one it is deeply felt.

Oh we don’t lose the memories or the character they helped build in us. It isn’t as though we have to return the life they gave us when they are gone. There is simply no more to come.

I lost a friend.

She was my supervisor at the last library I was in charge of. But far more she was my mentor, and my friend. She had a dignified strength about her and the wackiest sense of humor imaginable for a nun, which she was. I last spoke to her mid-September, she was in hospital for a cancer which she did not share, only that she was concerned with a pneumonia that was developing. She at the time was at a rehab facility where she planned to overcome this blip, then resume her treatments.

She died 10 days ago.

So though she will always be a part of me for what we shared in this life I can no longer hear her voice except in my memory, can no longer “catch up”, can no longer hear her laugh.

I will miss her.

Another birthday

Each one spins by faster than the one before. This year my son came here to visit me. We did a lot of things but mainly we spent time. It cost him, yes– a plane ticket, time away from an important deadline at work, he is still recovering from his surgery a few weeks ago, but he came to spend something that cannot be bought or borrowed or hoarded. He gave me his time.

How often do we think of what someone does out of love for us as a gift? How often do we take it for granted or (far worse) feel it is deserved?

So much of life is a gift and I am saddened to the point of tears at times to realize how long it has taken me to understand how much I have that I did not work for, did not earn, didn’t even ask for but it is right in front of me, all around me.

It also makes me wonder because of the glut of richness in this life– not just the colors of the earth or the softness of a fawn’s eyes or the sound of wind in the trees or waves on the sand or laughter of a child –we do not truly see, nor do we hear. Some of us are so busy with amplifications or distortions of some sort or our selves that we can only see and hear no further than our own parameters.

My son had precious time, and he chose to share it with me. He went beyond himself, the rim of his existence. I hope he received something in return, my love, my joy at his gift.

Floods

So we didn’t really have one, not right where I am anyway. But the Cape Fear River as of two days ago was still at 2-1/2 feet above flood level. And this was not a result of Hurricane Joaquin either which was too far east of us to make any impact. This was predicted before that storm.

But it didn’t stop raining. For 4 days.

I have never seen it rain so much, continually. I don’t know what a monsoon is like but this probably came pretty close only it isn’t spring when everything is just waiting for those rains to come so they can go on and bloom. It wasn’t consistent, either. While we got over 14 inches of rain points south suffered much worse. In Charleston some said the rain was worse than Hurricane Hugo in 1989 (a category 3 storm when it hit there). Mid-state South Carolina there were 2 dams that failed and flooded huge areas.

Nature will always reclaim itself. We lose things. Some people did not survive this because they decided to drive around to see what damage was done. It’s hard to see how deep flood water is or how fast it’s moving.

My brother called during all this.

“Have you lost power?” -no-
“Are you prepared?” -what, sandbags??- >laughter< "No, groceries" -yes-
"Do you have an evacuation route?" -I did but they closed 10 miles of the interstate for flooding, and then Ocean Boulevard, the only ways out-

So we sat and waited. My husky-mix rescue Lily and I. At one hiatus we ventured out a short way to a nearby park. Closed.

So we hunkered down. And waited. Finally, the sun shone but we are still waiting for the ground to dry out.

Wish I'd had a few rain barrels.