The second day of snow falls as the afternoon light lowers into a Friday night with a city closed down. This morning there was a break, and I went out to sweep in front of my doorway. The little junkos, sparrows and towhees come looking. I scour my cupboards to find something for them, these valiant little beings in a cold world. I throw poppy seeds from summer flowers and soy flower. It takes them a few hours to find the spot, but as the day wears on more and more arrive.
I have firewood, and my warm space inside. I look out the windows at the second blizzard. The air is in white-out form, reminiscent of the white-out on the summit of Mt. Hood many years ago, when I climbed it with the man I loved. We scaled the mountain for his 23rd birthday and camped on the summit for 2 nights. He would be 60 this year if he were alive.
The snow piles up, and I make soup. The beans and corn carry me back to summer harvest. The season of warm air, the time of gathering garlic to dry, shucking the beans, picking corn, making tomato sauce. It seems like another world from this white mountain tonight.
There is an acceptance of being stuck here, of having the usual diversions cancelled. Suddenly the time is only now, this moment with the birdies and the the soup simmering over the woodstove. In only one day I celebrate a birthday, my 58th. I don't remember ever having a snowstorm to mark my birthday. Some years it has even been sunny. Mother nature has her way. This pleases me. It gives everyone the little reminder: our world is not our world, it belongs to the cosmos, and we belong to it.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Friday, January 17, 2014
Woman Born With Her Eyes Open
My little grand daughter, Kaitlyn, she, baby of the world
Born with her eyes open two days before
the full moon.
Her small face looking at her parents, a recognition, yes, there you are now,
We all meet face to face
she held her beautiful and perfectly shaped head up and took in this air, this stark place
a room full of love
two gramas, an auntie, an uncle,
3 midwives, two white Husky doggies,
and holding her, an enraptured Mom and Dad.
Kaitlyn Jean, baby of the world,
I awake thinking of what world you have, of how you see and feel this -
this place of your beginning.
Your first breath a slight cry, so small to wake no night birdies
Barely a call, from the deep beyond of the womb
A call into this new air, this place of light and sound.
I knew you in my heart before you came.
I saw your face and, ah, of course.....you.
You have always been there.
Always
Born with her eyes open two days before
the full moon.
Her small face looking at her parents, a recognition, yes, there you are now,
We all meet face to face
she held her beautiful and perfectly shaped head up and took in this air, this stark place
a room full of love
two gramas, an auntie, an uncle,
3 midwives, two white Husky doggies,
and holding her, an enraptured Mom and Dad.
Kaitlyn Jean, baby of the world,
I awake thinking of what world you have, of how you see and feel this -
this place of your beginning.
Your first breath a slight cry, so small to wake no night birdies
Barely a call, from the deep beyond of the womb
A call into this new air, this place of light and sound.
I knew you in my heart before you came.
I saw your face and, ah, of course.....you.
You have always been there.
Always
Friday, December 13, 2013
Baby Shower
Friday night, I am stirring
German chocolate cake frosting
for cupcakes
for the baby shower tomorrow
for the woman who
carries my grand daughter
That fact, by itself, is far too
cosmic
to
contain.
Thirty years ago from today
was the last month of my pregnancy with
this future baby's father,
born the day after Christmas while the grand parents,
and all the aunts and uncles
were still around.
We had a party
He was forever then my baby of the world,
the little chief
born on the Elwha Indian Reservation
caught by his father
blessed by Grama Sampson
held by all, his sturdy, agreeable baby self.
In January he will become a father
And so I bring hand rolled cigars from Mexico
to the shower
as well as the favorite cake for his wife
German chocolate
And I have bought, on a whim, little plastic
baby theme ornaments for the cakes
pink baby shoes (yes, she is a girl, there are fewer mysteries these days)
and little teething bracelets
I see the shoes have space, so
I will write a hoped for quality on a bit of paper
like a fortune,
and slip one in each little pink shoe..
what do I wish for this little girl child?
Strength and courage,
Radiant health,
Curiosity and wonderment,
A kind heart,
A deep love of family,
And plain old good luck.
and for me I wish she will have
many days hiking in the wilderness with her Grammy...
my own special wish-
Given up to the same unviverse which gave me
Her father, her mother, and now...
My own grand daughter, my own little love.
German chocolate cake frosting
for cupcakes
for the baby shower tomorrow
for the woman who
carries my grand daughter
That fact, by itself, is far too
cosmic
to
contain.
Thirty years ago from today
was the last month of my pregnancy with
this future baby's father,
born the day after Christmas while the grand parents,
and all the aunts and uncles
were still around.
We had a party
He was forever then my baby of the world,
the little chief
born on the Elwha Indian Reservation
caught by his father
blessed by Grama Sampson
held by all, his sturdy, agreeable baby self.
In January he will become a father
And so I bring hand rolled cigars from Mexico
to the shower
as well as the favorite cake for his wife
German chocolate
And I have bought, on a whim, little plastic
baby theme ornaments for the cakes
pink baby shoes (yes, she is a girl, there are fewer mysteries these days)
and little teething bracelets
I see the shoes have space, so
I will write a hoped for quality on a bit of paper
like a fortune,
and slip one in each little pink shoe..
what do I wish for this little girl child?
Strength and courage,
Radiant health,
Curiosity and wonderment,
A kind heart,
A deep love of family,
And plain old good luck.
and for me I wish she will have
many days hiking in the wilderness with her Grammy...
my own special wish-
Given up to the same unviverse which gave me
Her father, her mother, and now...
My own grand daughter, my own little love.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Shani Waves Goodbye
Shani Waves Goodbye
Hay una nina pequena - there is a little girl - se nombre es Shannara - her name is Shannara, Shani for short.
I see her still, standing in the doorway of her Grama's house in Patzcuarto, Michoacan, Mexico. Her young Mom, Gaby, holds Shani while she waves goodbye to us. She waves like young children do, opening and closing her little brown hand, her eyes focused in a serious tone, as though she realizes now that she will miss us. These 2 guests leaving, who speak oddly, whose skin is not the same lovely warm brown as hers, who like to smile and play with her and her boisterous brood of little cousins, who eat her Mama's beans and soups at the family table when her Papa comes home. Her beautiful, funny Papa, el dentiste, the dentist, full Perhepecha Indian, with a smile and a sense of humor as long as the day he puts in at his office in town, and the other small pueblas he visits in the week.
Shani's Papa is our dentist now. We travel 2000 miles to have him work on our teeth because he is a wonderful man, and we have no U.S. insurance. His family takes us in, gives us a place to stay and keeps inviting us to eat. We sit with the whole family on a Sunday and eat 'impossible' cake Gaby baked especially for one of the children's birthdays. We talk about food, family, language, music, work - everything.
On the last day Gaby makes us lunch, calda y frijoles - soup and beans. Shani sits on her lap eating frijoles entero - cooked beans whole. I watch her small fingers take one bean at a time from her bowl, as she looks out with her deep brown Perhepecha eyes. She looks like her father I think, she has the indigenous features like those on etched into ancient artworks. With the small earring in her tiny ear, she takes on a wizened countenance. I take a photo, and she will not smile, but that is OK, she has a gorgeous face for a child of 14 months. Something about her stare goes beyond the place, the day, the time. I long to come back and talk to her, years from now. She will have something to say to me.
Shani, the descendant of those peoples of the lake who drew designs of trout - trucha - into their pottery. Those peoples who were so difficult for the Spanish. They ran off into the woods and hid, or hung themselves rather than be enslaved by Cortez's brutal machine.
I step into the little white rental car w/my boyfriend, whom they call "Ella espoza" her husband. It is almost inconceivable to them that people of our age are not married, so we go along.
I think of our destination (Mexico City) and say to Gaby, "Yikes! La Ciudad!" and she smiles knowingly from the cobblestone street in her Puebla. She laughs her soft Mama laugh, much older than her 22 years, and smiles her blessing upon these 2 wayfarers she has fed for 5 days. She is the new matriarch, the one who is always in the kitchen, who watches everyone's children in the family, who never raises her voice, and looks so forward to her Baking classes in the evenings.
We drive away and they wave. I follow them until the final turn as they disappear from us, and we from them. Shani stays long in my heart, a little ache, a small light. Someday I hope she will meet my grand daughter, who will be less than 2 years younger. Someday we might all sit in the warm Mexico sun and talk a Spanish/English mixture, laughing hard because words will fail us.
Hay una nina pequena - there is a little girl - se nombre es Shannara - her name is Shannara, Shani for short.
I see her still, standing in the doorway of her Grama's house in Patzcuarto, Michoacan, Mexico. Her young Mom, Gaby, holds Shani while she waves goodbye to us. She waves like young children do, opening and closing her little brown hand, her eyes focused in a serious tone, as though she realizes now that she will miss us. These 2 guests leaving, who speak oddly, whose skin is not the same lovely warm brown as hers, who like to smile and play with her and her boisterous brood of little cousins, who eat her Mama's beans and soups at the family table when her Papa comes home. Her beautiful, funny Papa, el dentiste, the dentist, full Perhepecha Indian, with a smile and a sense of humor as long as the day he puts in at his office in town, and the other small pueblas he visits in the week.
Shani's Papa is our dentist now. We travel 2000 miles to have him work on our teeth because he is a wonderful man, and we have no U.S. insurance. His family takes us in, gives us a place to stay and keeps inviting us to eat. We sit with the whole family on a Sunday and eat 'impossible' cake Gaby baked especially for one of the children's birthdays. We talk about food, family, language, music, work - everything.
On the last day Gaby makes us lunch, calda y frijoles - soup and beans. Shani sits on her lap eating frijoles entero - cooked beans whole. I watch her small fingers take one bean at a time from her bowl, as she looks out with her deep brown Perhepecha eyes. She looks like her father I think, she has the indigenous features like those on etched into ancient artworks. With the small earring in her tiny ear, she takes on a wizened countenance. I take a photo, and she will not smile, but that is OK, she has a gorgeous face for a child of 14 months. Something about her stare goes beyond the place, the day, the time. I long to come back and talk to her, years from now. She will have something to say to me.
Shani, the descendant of those peoples of the lake who drew designs of trout - trucha - into their pottery. Those peoples who were so difficult for the Spanish. They ran off into the woods and hid, or hung themselves rather than be enslaved by Cortez's brutal machine.
I step into the little white rental car w/my boyfriend, whom they call "Ella espoza" her husband. It is almost inconceivable to them that people of our age are not married, so we go along.
I think of our destination (Mexico City) and say to Gaby, "Yikes! La Ciudad!" and she smiles knowingly from the cobblestone street in her Puebla. She laughs her soft Mama laugh, much older than her 22 years, and smiles her blessing upon these 2 wayfarers she has fed for 5 days. She is the new matriarch, the one who is always in the kitchen, who watches everyone's children in the family, who never raises her voice, and looks so forward to her Baking classes in the evenings.
We drive away and they wave. I follow them until the final turn as they disappear from us, and we from them. Shani stays long in my heart, a little ache, a small light. Someday I hope she will meet my grand daughter, who will be less than 2 years younger. Someday we might all sit in the warm Mexico sun and talk a Spanish/English mixture, laughing hard because words will fail us.
Friday, November 1, 2013
Dia de los Muertos, Cuetzalan, Puebla, MX
This humid evening
I hear the church bells continuous toll,
metal to metal, for all the dead.
The laundry hangs on rooftop lines
the children play and run in the street below.
Shedding clothes wet from
famous waterfall pools, I luxuriate in an evening where
I am not required to be anything or anywhere
I Light this candle to James, his brother and
all the grandparents.
To the good leaders who advocated peace and justice
and to
the innocent.
My offered candle is small here, 3 pesos
My heart however is, I hope, expanding into
jungle hillsides, viney damp
to little kids asking for money in the streets,
To all the vendors and food preparers, to all those walking slowly
carrying a heavy load up these steep hills
My spirit and my heart I am inside
before and after I arrive and then leave,
closing into winter at my own house.
This humid evening
I hear the church bells continuous toll,
metal to metal, for all the dead.
The laundry hangs on rooftop lines
the children play and run in the street below.
Shedding clothes wet from
famous waterfall pools, I luxuriate in an evening where
I am not required to be anything or anywhere
I Light this candle to James, his brother and
all the grandparents.
To the good leaders who advocated peace and justice
and to
the innocent.
My offered candle is small here, 3 pesos
My heart however is, I hope, expanding into
jungle hillsides, viney damp
to little kids asking for money in the streets,
To all the vendors and food preparers, to all those walking slowly
carrying a heavy load up these steep hills
My spirit and my heart I am inside
before and after I arrive and then leave,
closing into winter at my own house.
Friday, September 27, 2013
We have just passed the autumnal equinox, and the weather has quickly changed to cool and wet. Tonight as I cook dinner, a downpour falls and I worry for all my neighbors, the grape growers. This heavy wet will wash off the natural yeast, and water down the fruit. It will, most likely, not be a good vintage because of the last month. Tomorrow we go to pick at the Schaad family vineyard, a tradition now since living on Chehalem Mt. I hope the rain waits a bit.
I haven't posted anything in months now. I've been working at emptying my parent's home of 46 years and all the stuff accumulated in their married life. The experience is so often surreal - cleaning the dust from a piece of furniture, turning to pick up a wrapped pack of envelopes containing letters my parents exchanged before they were married. Correspondence exchanged over the many miles while a world war was raging on. They waited to marry until things settled down, my Dad in the Air Force, my Mom studying classical piano at Mills College in Oakland, CA.
A few years after the end of the war they married at last. I can only imagine their young selves, full of hope for the future as they embarked upon raising a big family. For 23 years my mom was open to becoming pregnant, what she told me God meant for her. This news was the way I was introduced to the 'facts of life".
Nine children and 5 miscarriages seems hard for anyone to fathom. It was always a strange struggle my educated and idealistic parents waged in the daily life of our household. Cleaning now I encounter years of dust mites and the allergy inducing mold accumulated on and in boxes of old baby clothes, their parents things, our baptismel candles, papers and programs from concerts, school materials, books from their college years, papers and papers never ending. The sum total of a family's life and not much was ever thrown away, not by them anyway.
This experience causes my siblings and I to evaluate our own lives. After a long days work my sisters and I drink chocolate wine I found at the bottom of a dusty pile. We burn my Dad's tax returns from 15 years past, and talk about the family. Which one had the power, which one had the passive aggressive fears which translate into power. We ready ourselves for the next day of haggling with the folks who show up to our sale, who want take away our parents cherished things for 10 cents on the dollar, or less. At moments I just have to say a blunt "no" to some of them. No you cannot take away this chipped hand painted dish with my great Aunt's name painted on the back 100 years ago for a mere $5. How can they not understand what being cheap with our things means? I'm sure this is a metaphor for what divides humans in politics, religion, relationships... all of what our current political and economic struggles embody.
George Carlin's words ring more true than ever, and I paraphrase: "We've got stuff and shit. Why does it always seem like my stuff is "stuff" and your stuff is shit?" Thank you George, that comic refrain comforts me when some bitter person glares at me because I won't let them walk away with some perfectly nice item already a $5 bargain, for $3 instead so they can feel that victorious sense of getting something really cheaply.
Give me, instead of stuff, fresh herbs from my front yard gracing tomato sauce from my friend's gardens simmering on the stove. Hearty soup, red and thick, packed with thyme, basil, bay, garlic and oregano I had to brave the rain to pick. Give me even this dense cloud hovering over the mountain and the sound of dripping over the greenhouse roof. Give me the children with whom I read and discuss stories, their eyes lighting up at the words "train trip". Thank heavens for stories. A story is a much easier thing to store, to share, to lend and then to pass along when one must finally downsize. A story is the true treasure of a life, lived to the last moment with no more than a fading sigh.
I haven't posted anything in months now. I've been working at emptying my parent's home of 46 years and all the stuff accumulated in their married life. The experience is so often surreal - cleaning the dust from a piece of furniture, turning to pick up a wrapped pack of envelopes containing letters my parents exchanged before they were married. Correspondence exchanged over the many miles while a world war was raging on. They waited to marry until things settled down, my Dad in the Air Force, my Mom studying classical piano at Mills College in Oakland, CA.
A few years after the end of the war they married at last. I can only imagine their young selves, full of hope for the future as they embarked upon raising a big family. For 23 years my mom was open to becoming pregnant, what she told me God meant for her. This news was the way I was introduced to the 'facts of life".
Nine children and 5 miscarriages seems hard for anyone to fathom. It was always a strange struggle my educated and idealistic parents waged in the daily life of our household. Cleaning now I encounter years of dust mites and the allergy inducing mold accumulated on and in boxes of old baby clothes, their parents things, our baptismel candles, papers and programs from concerts, school materials, books from their college years, papers and papers never ending. The sum total of a family's life and not much was ever thrown away, not by them anyway.
This experience causes my siblings and I to evaluate our own lives. After a long days work my sisters and I drink chocolate wine I found at the bottom of a dusty pile. We burn my Dad's tax returns from 15 years past, and talk about the family. Which one had the power, which one had the passive aggressive fears which translate into power. We ready ourselves for the next day of haggling with the folks who show up to our sale, who want take away our parents cherished things for 10 cents on the dollar, or less. At moments I just have to say a blunt "no" to some of them. No you cannot take away this chipped hand painted dish with my great Aunt's name painted on the back 100 years ago for a mere $5. How can they not understand what being cheap with our things means? I'm sure this is a metaphor for what divides humans in politics, religion, relationships... all of what our current political and economic struggles embody.
George Carlin's words ring more true than ever, and I paraphrase: "We've got stuff and shit. Why does it always seem like my stuff is "stuff" and your stuff is shit?" Thank you George, that comic refrain comforts me when some bitter person glares at me because I won't let them walk away with some perfectly nice item already a $5 bargain, for $3 instead so they can feel that victorious sense of getting something really cheaply.
Give me, instead of stuff, fresh herbs from my front yard gracing tomato sauce from my friend's gardens simmering on the stove. Hearty soup, red and thick, packed with thyme, basil, bay, garlic and oregano I had to brave the rain to pick. Give me even this dense cloud hovering over the mountain and the sound of dripping over the greenhouse roof. Give me the children with whom I read and discuss stories, their eyes lighting up at the words "train trip". Thank heavens for stories. A story is a much easier thing to store, to share, to lend and then to pass along when one must finally downsize. A story is the true treasure of a life, lived to the last moment with no more than a fading sigh.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Grandmother Moon
Tonight Grandmother Moon is a little over half full, and waxing. As I walk up my driveway carrying my mail in the warm dark, she shines her light at me. I think, next year I can be walking up this hill holding my almost 6 month old grandchild. We can be looking at the moon together, entranced by the white lit ball in the night sky just as the child's daddy was 30 years ago when he couldn't sleep.
I will be a grandmother, I tell the moon. We will be grandmothers together. You can teach me what you know, and I can show your light to a child who will be in awe of the universe before ever entering a science classroom.
I will be a grandmother, I tell the moon. We will be grandmothers together. You can teach me what you know, and I can show your light to a child who will be in awe of the universe before ever entering a science classroom.
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