there is a stillness pulling me into the silence
of a mirrored dawn, it doesn't make a
sound as it gentles the edges of what I see.
there is a stillness that holds me,
buoys me, laps around my heart and softens all
the harsh noises of the day...
there is a stillness so placid and motionless that
when I place my hand beneath the surface I am
not sure where it stops and I begin. even movement
doesn't inform fingers, palm, wrist...hands folded
in prayer...of the boundaries where one
begins and the other ends...
there is a stillness that says "this is you..." this is
your nature, this is what you look like when you
are all I have made you to be...be still, be still,
be still...and know.
there is a stillness that is ever itself, never
the less, consistently constant in its always-ness
a conscious capacity to know...just to know...and
then to observe the ebb and flow of that knowing...
there is a stillness that calls to me...in the blue
light that pushes forward the dawn and the
lavender-edged blush of a maiden as she
pulls in the twilight... a stillness that eddies in
a pool of sunlight...stretching, spilling, splaying
promise along the banks of our living....
there is a stillness that is as weightless as
dew, as heavy as an old quilt on a late November
morning, as languid as moonlight on the
Chesapeake beneath a canopy of stars....
there is a stillness I will dive deep within
myself to find at the center of His kingdom...
the place where He reigns...still
every year there is a new spoon to ponder
the perfect balance of slender neck, heavy handle
and weighted bowl sitting on the fulcrum
of a day when thunderclouds...black and
lowering...seep across the sky like spilled ink
and we dodge into a musty shop avoiding
a downpour we know will eventually wash red
dust off the pediments and lazy stone griffons
that hold watch over a sleepy Colorado town...
later I will stare across the space between here
and there....an endless yawn of sunflowers and
stone posts scattered through the prairie and i
will imagine our laughter, ourwhispered secrets, and
the shared dreams of a couple of little old ladies that we will
someday be. i will balance this spoon on my forefinger
and wonder if the William Penn Hotel knew its
silverware would keep a woman company long after
the aspens have turned to gold and Independence Pass
is closed for yet another winter....
I will sip my tea and see beyond the edge of the world
to where she sits in a valley of rivers and horses and
summers filled with her company...I will gaze into the
distance and imagine a stolen afternoon, this spoon, and
the elegant grace of her friendship...it will be a good
reminder, this spoon that carries the name of an old stranger...
"why are you taking your linens to camp with you..."
my daughters asked as we packed the car for the
long drive across kansas towards the home of our
hearts...a place tucked high up in the arkansas valley
where we lived from june until august...
sheets and pillowslips, quilts and towels stacked on
top of jeans and boots, sweatshirts and bathing suits...
how do i tell them that taking these precious few things
of home with me is as much a part of the summer as
rodeos and swim tests, barbeques and bunkhouse night..
seeing my room draped in tiny white fairy lights, over-bleached
sheets and quilts folded at the end of the bed, makes me feel
like a child coming home to her mother's house...
I open the door to this place that has sheltered my heart and
mended its ragged edges when it shattered into a million shards
of tear-stained sorrow, and it is home...
so, i bring my old sheets, the quilts I have carried back and forth
across kansas like a pioneer wife, and strings of fairy lights, and
something in me is no longer a child without an address to call
her own...
i am home...if only for a few weeks each summer....i am home...
there were roses in her garden...
pale pink roses as full and heavy as
heads of cabbage in july...
she would walk the length of its
cobbled path with a secret smile
that held memories, and promises,
and dreams that all came true....
it was as if these roses were messengers
from a place where he had gone, and
she would one day follow...
as her open hand graced the head of
each bloom with the tenderness of a
mother's hand on her infant's cheek,
her wedding rings, now loose upon her
slender fingers...gave off a sound that
reminded us of distant sleigh bells from
a time when she was a girl and horses
stood tethered to hitching posts beyond the
garden gate...
she is remembering...the scent of
cabbage roses, summer evenings full
of lace, fireflies on the lawn,
and the sound of his voice asking
her to dance....
she weaves through the bramble of summer and
tangled vines of sweet smellling honeysuckle
fifty years of color isolation leaps into action...she
can spot the sugar-dusted dark purple of a blueberry
from the distance of a stones throw across the pond...
the sun-warmed smoothness of their taut skin,
with its tiny tuft at one end, takes her back to
girlhood days spent in this Maine cove where summer
afternoons stretched languidly like colorful beachtowels
along a clothesline of cotton rope tied between a pair of
birch trees outside her grandparents cottage...
plucking one after another she can almost feel the
lard and flour between her fingers while her mother's
voice echoes a reminder that only the coldest water
sprinkled in..only as needed... would make a pie crust flaky
enough to honor this most beloved fruit of summer
holding a single berry, fingers stained with juice the
color of a midnight sky, her hands are the hands of
a girl again...as taut and full of promise as the first
blueberries of summer...
a table waits...two chairs, an old pitcher filled
with daisies and the kettle boiling while scones
bake and robins feather their nests in the
apple tree by the back gate...
she will arrive in the cloud of summer dust that
rises from the long drive leading to the farmhouse
where her memories of childhood stand sentry
like the talk stalks of sweet corn that line the
gravel lane...
she will know she is home by the slap of the
screen door, the whirr of a table fan, the feel
of warped porch steps beneath her bare feet,
the scent of her mother's perfume...her father's
voice as he rounds the barn to greet her...arms
open wide...
her mother will wait just inside the frame of
the back door...her tears too private and her
feelings too new...this daughter is not a little
girl who will rush into her arms...she trembles
with joy, and something un-named....a shyness in
the dawn of this new relationship...
that is until the woman-child crosses the lawn
and buries her tear-stained face in her mother's
hair and for a moment...they are, still...
where are you looking from where you
stand with the sun on your flanks and
the fingers of your beloved woven through
your mane...
is there a place beyond the horizon that
calls to you, or do you just love the way
the pasture dips and rises to meet the sky
what is in the wind...
is there a scent inviting you to dance
along a distant ridge, to prance and leap,
to forge streams and soar over fallen
lodgepole pines scattered below an
avalanche chute
is there a girl with flazen hair that
urges you to fly...and remember days of
meadows filled with wildflowers...
what do you see beyond....
coming in from the shimmering heat of a
dusty summer day...the sidewalk hot enough
to fry an egg or penetrate the soles of our
sandals...we enter a world of dim memories
and the cool dry scent of old quilts and floral
tablecloths in shades of aqua, red and butter
yellow...
our voices lower as we call to one another from
corners filled with someone else's treasures...
sterling soup spoons with generous bowls,
wedding photos of nameless brides and grooms
that make us weep, and wonder: didn't anyone
care enough to save them, or at least write their
names on the back...
then I see it, a battered vintage copy of Julia
Child's "The Art of French Cooking," duct tape
holding its bindings together like something
used again, and again...and cherished long...
I tenderly lift the battered front cover,
and there, on the first page, is this note:
December 25, 1981
Dear Mom -
I hope you enjoy this cookbook as much as
I enjoy your cooking...and contrary to
popular belief -- I do enjoy your cooking.
I hope you'll "share" some recipes with just
us -- your family. And in years to come, I
hope that you'll share them with my family.
Thank you for always giving the best, and
trying your hardest to please all of us.
I love you mom,
katie
oooo
xxxx
I clutched it to my heart and shed a silent tear for
"mom" and "katie"...where are they now? why
did anyone let this treasure, with its
vanilla-stained and flour-dusted pages
filled with comments and notes, out of
their lives...
it is a question I can't stop asking, as I think
of all the cookbooks I have written little notes
in, for my girls..."I baked this cake for the twins'
fifth birthday party...delicious...added an extra
1/4 cup of chocolate powder...frosted it with
butter cream (recipe on page 44) "
she loves to sink her fingers into sun-warmed
rich brown soil...there is something so satisfying
about filling a window box, clear patch of sunlight,
or clay pot, first with something borrowed for drainage
small rocks, or broken shells, or even
the porcupine sweet gum seeds that seem so
pointedly useless when scattered across lawns and
driveways like something that will give birth to
an alien species...
then layers of soil and composted shards of egg shell
and tea leaves...a perfect environment for the tender
seedlings she will carefully nest in holes just deep
enough and wide to welcome young roots...then
ever so gently she tucks them in...pressing the deep
brown quilts and covers, firmly around their shoulders...
water rains like a soft lullaby coaxing them to rest and
grow...grow tall and prosper...grow full and fragrant with
a perfume so perfect it makes men weep...grow thick and
rich with color...gentian blues and the delicate petal pink
of a poppy, the chromium yellow of buttercups and the
lacquer red of a chinese treasure chest...
grow she sings as she kneels before them like a mother
by the side of her child's bed...reach for the sun, and
dig your toes deep in the soil...and grow...
my sister made small pillows from the
empty grain sacks our father left just
outside the barn on saturday mornings
she would sit with her feet dangling out
the hayloft door high above the world below...
cutting and stitching squares of rough cloth
the size of a gentleman's handkerchief
we'd find them tucked beneath the head of
a whelping setter, or lined up along the back
of a porchswing, sitting on a doll's cradle
or clutched in the arms of a weeping child
filled with rosemary, dried alfalfa, sprigs of
lavender, or "borrowed" handfulls of
seed from the songbird feeders by the summer
porch...my sister's pillows, the final seam closed
with her long, running stitches of pale pink
thread...were the perfect spot for weaving
daydreams, watching clouds, and hearing angels....
from the time she was little her dreams
were mine...a dollhouse, a horse, her school
of choice, the dress she imagined...
diaphanous, white, simple and pure...
her dress...
we've walked and talked and window
shopped, always lingering in front of windows
filled with tulle and nothing more...no
sequins or beading, rhinestones or pearls
just acres of ephemera...a billowing cloud of
white on white...
she was the one who slowed her steps,
paused and sighed...I was the one who held
my breath...this was, is, always has been
her dream...dreams that shift and morph and
evolve...as she does...
.walking with her, pausing,
watching her, has always been mine...
ahh, ranunculus, pale cousin of the vibrant
buttercup...you unfold yourself in delicate
layers, papery petals so barely there and
yet so breath-takingly present in your shyness...
such a brief spring and you are gone from
field and garden while your bold relative
languishes in open field and windswept
meadows full of hay and alfalfa drying in
the summer sun...
to capture you when you are neither young
nor old, but mindless of the dawning day or
setting sun, is to know the breath of morning
and feel the cool touch of dew upon the grass
wrap your stems in wide satin ribbon and
you are an honored guest at the wedding
an offering in the quaking hand of a bride,
the something that is both old and new...
your gentle beauty is the blush on a maiden's
cheeks, the first light beyond the dawn, the
rustle of taffeta, the song of a lark, the
whisper of toe shoes....the sound of a kiss....
It was 1952 she told me as she twirled the heavy
gold signet ring on her right hand...Budd Mitchell
was the President of his fraternity and he asked
me to the spring formal....as a freshman, i'd never been to
a fraternity dance and I didn't know any of the other
boys' girls, but i wanted to go anyway....
the years dropped away, her shoulders lifted, her
soft blue eyes brightened and twinkled with mischief
then she straightened her back a bit before she went on...
i didn't love him, but he was kind and strong and i
knew i would be safe...and then, i did love him
but that's another story...she blushes...
i was walking along lake street after working one saturday at
the bakery and i saw it. it reminded me of the pale pink
frosting I'd been whipping, earlier in the day, for a baby
shower cake...and I knew it was the one. a small bell tinkled
as i entered the shoppe and an older woman with straight pins
between her lips came into the room from behind a curtain
may i help you find something....no, i said, that is the one...and
i pointed to the dress in the window....it took her seamstress
magic to make it fit, and four paychecks to pay for it, but it was
it...i was...and now she blushed the same faded pink of the dress...
beautiful...yes, i know you may not be able to image it now, but
i was beautiful....
he said so...
but why would you give her these old things
my daughter asks me, as I lay the linens on
the chair beside the bed in the guest room...
why not the new sheets with two-tone stripes
in shades of cream, or the blue ones with
cabbage roses...you love those, don't you?
yes, i love them...for you...but this is my friend
and like me, she loves the feel of time-softened
white cotton bearing the monogram of a long
forgotten bride, and pillow slips as delicate
as the cheek of a babe...
okay then, but at least give her the new down
comforter, it's filled with soft feathers, as light
as Colorado snow, and the chenille throw...
the color of the sea on a stormy march day
somewhere along the coast of Maine...
no, i will give her what I know she loves...a patchwork
quilt in the colors of yesterday...frayed in all the right
places and singing a story of favorite dresses saved for
patching, tea towels long-loved, and the remnants of
a baby's blanket oft-repaired and now a memory...
these are the linens she will love to smooth across
her lap as we sit, like girls, on her bed long after
you have gone to sleep, and the house is sighing...
these are the linens we will make up stories about
as we drink our tea, and fend off weariness and sleep,
because we don't want the day to end....
dear annie....your father and i are well
and think of you hourly. it is hard for us
to imagine the adventure you have been on
or the man you will find at the end of that
journey, but we pray for your safety and
happiness each and every moment.
to cross the unknown and begin your
life as the wife of a man you have never
seen is very brave and we hope your courage
is wisely vested. reports of indian raids
and prairie winds return in letters from
those who have gone before you and write
to their parents...
since you were not able to take your wedding
dress, or your trousseau with you, I have sent
along this piece of the veil I've been tatting
since you were a girl. I hope it makes you feel
special and that you will know that each stitch
was made with a mother's love.
please write and let us know that you are well
and that the conditions are not so harsh that
you cannot bear them...my friend Emma's
daughter wrote that she has a canary to keep
her company when her man is gone, and to
break the silence of the prairie when there
is no wind...
we love you...mother and father
she was such a tiny thing, all dark eyes and
hair like a papoose...black and straight....longer
than all the other babies I'd ever seen with
wispy blonde curls, or none at all...
she was so quiet, almost as quiet as a forest
creature, and she was mine...or so I thought...
she came home wrapped in a blue and
pink-striped flannel blanket and her first bed
was the box from our parents' new vacumn
cleaner...a Hoover...and the box was strong and
lined with a blush-colored satin pillowslip...in
it she was the most life-like baby doll I'd ever
seen...and she was mine..or so I thought...
at four, all things were mine...and this was the most
beautiful, delicate, mysteriously quiet gift my
mother had ever given me. I wanted to hold her
all day and stroke her soft black tufts of silky hair
that lay across her pale alabaster forehead and above
her ebony eyes...
as she grew, it became clear that her delicacy and
quiet loveliness radiated from a core beauty within, and
behind her eyes, there was wisdom...and strength...
the strength to find her own path, defend her own
dreams, forge her own bonds of love, and soar on
the thermals of her own living...
today she is a mother herself....and she is lovely,
she is strong, patient, wise....and she is my sister...
as I always knew...
her kitchen was simple, filled with
simple things...ironware, jelly glasses
silver spoons, and red-striped linen
dish towels she draped over the
handle of the oven door and tucked
into the waistband of her apron...
rushing in from the car on our visits
to her home in the country, I would
bury my face in the scent of rising
yeast and cinnammon dust she'd used
her towel to wipe from the soapstone
counters where she kneaded loaves of
crusty bread we'd have with soup for
dinner...
long after she left the farmhouse for a
room where she could only bring a
few photos and her favortie quilt, I
found a cache of red-striped dish
towels at a flea market one summer day
and knew they were the perfect shade
of home to match the memories
in her heart...and mine...
it is a warm day in June and they are boys
boys without a mission, but with energy to spare
kansas boys, nebraska boys, boys who are as
familiar with seasons of growth and harvest as
others know goal posts from basketball hoops
they walk, run, mander three abreast
through fields of yellow grain and cornstalks as
tall as an elephants eye, and the talk of tractors
and girls and the price of sorghum
they dive naked into a watering hole surrounded
by cattle they have raised, and horses who's bodies...
strong flanks, long necks, silky manes....
are as familiar to the touch as their own....
the old door to the barn promises shade for dreaming,
and straw for napping before the evening chores give way to
clean shirts, sun-washed hair, and the
promise of junebugs fluttering like angels over
their teenage dreams of a young girl's second glance,
outside the tasty freeze on an oklahoma friday night....
he was waiting by the side of the highway,
just beyond Jericho's holy gates, that foolish
Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus...blind and
foolish, begging...always begging....what will
the master think? a blind beggar his last
memory of our sacred walls...
Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me...
"mercy," what is he thinking, he has gone too
far. the Rabbi does not know his sins, or his
parents', that he can judge his failings and
mete out mercy...what insanity, what boldness...
i know what i know...that this is a beggar, that is
what I know...a beggar who bothers our visitors
and annoys our noble men...day after day he
sits on that bench, and asks for more...always more...
what mercy does he deserve...
but wait, he stops...the master stops, and calls him
to come to him...will his rebuke be fierce, will he
finally tell him to stop his begging....it is such an
embarassment to his family...a good family,
I know them well, they don't desrve this...
oh no... now, he is taking off his clothes and
running naked towards the teacher...
"what do you want me to do," the master asks with
such love in his eyes...that it takes my breath away...
"that I might receive my sight," he answers with
a heart full of hope and expectation and dignity...
standing naked...he has honor...and faith...oh, what faith...
and it is this faith, that the master sees beyond my
blindness, it is this faith that opens my own eyes to the
blindness of my heart...it radiates from Bartimaeus
like the sun...he is whole...he is His...and he leaves
it all behind him...the blindness, the begging, the
darkness...and follows his faith...and opens my eyes
to the greatest light of all...
i come from a long line of architects
a grandfather who saw the devastation of
north africa as a waiting canvas, a beautiful
jigsaw puzzle he would put together from
the broken pieces of minerets, and shards
of stained glass that lay in ruins on the
western front...
i grew up with an uncle who collected stories
of taliesen and falling waters, like an
architectural anthropologist...photographs
and artifacts from prairie style houses
that told the story of craftsmen and simplicity
and a man named frank lloyd wright
a mentor he would name his son after....
i grew up fed on their dreams of transom windows
and coffered ceilings made of quarter-sawn
oak, Stickley chairs and leaded glass in
geometric shapes so pure that to see
light pour through them...felt like a
prayer
i come from a long line of architects...who
dream of light and angles, the modest turn of
a spindled balustrade and a time-burnished
newel post carved by artisans, simple cornices
and crown molding,...the sound of
falling water over slate and stone...the way
sun turns wood to gold...
the light is perfect, she says to herself as
she gazes longingly toward the chair in the
corner...her favorite corner of the room
nearest the garden, where mourning doves
coo and the scent of jasmine floats through
an open window...
this is the time of day when there is nothing
but the stillness of this room, and the slow
music of a small mantle clock tapping out the
minutes without her...
and then there is the book of cummings she left
turned over on the table in a pool of sunlight,
filtered by curtains that billow inward with
each breath of midsummer, calling her to savour
one more verse, just another stanza, a sonnet
to feed her heart in this time of hunger
but there are dishes to rinse, and babies
waking from their naps, a quiche to start and
one more section of the garden that needs to
be weeded or they won't have basil when
the tomatoes ripen later in the season...
but the light is perfect and just one verse
will tend the fire of beauty that smolders
in her heart...."i carry your heart with me,
i carry it in my heart..." sated she returns
and rolls out a perfect crust for dinner...
we didn't always agree, she and I,
she wanted him to date others, I wanted
him to love me, and me alone. she wanted
him to travel, I wanted him to stay nearby
and let me be his world. She wanted him
to spread his wings, I wanted him to use
them to shelter me from all that frightened
me and made me feel vulnerable...
we were young, so much younger than we
knew at the time. younger than springtime
in a lifetime measured by a year. we were
moony-eyed optimists in frayed bell-bottoms
and sandals, with flowers in our hair...ideals
as gauzy as the peasant shirt she helped me
embroider with daisies, and peace signs and
the word "imagine" up one sleeve..
but we agreed on this...he was smart and good
and deserved to be loved, that raspberries
should be eaten warm from the vine, that
children were our future, and that nothing
beat a perfect baking soda biscuit as the foundation
for strawberry shortcake in early June....
she was feisty, and strong-hearted, and
never gave up...or in...she taught me how to
cut shortening into flour, sprinkle ice
water onto the pea-sized bits, and to
mix it altogether without toughening the dough
by too much handling...i think of her whenever
I bake biscuits and watch the juice from
fresh strawberries infuse a perfect shortcake
with summer...and wonder if she ever knew
how much i longed for her approval...
and acceptance...
when he was just a little boy
my brother didn't like to have his
feet in the hot, dry sand of summer,
he would tiptoe across the beach like
a tiny sea cricket until he reached the
cool wet sand at the water's edge...
and then,
he would let the foamy, brackish surf
curl around his ankles and wash under
his toes and through his arches while
he steadied himself against the push and
pull of the the sea's ebb and flow...
gaze transfixed on the horzon, where
water blended into sky and light...he would
dig his toes in deeper and deeper until
the sand reached above his ankles and the
cold seawater splashed against his calves...
he was not a boy who ran in and out of the
waves, he did not build tall castles out of
sand, or bury his sister in a deep hole until
she wriggled herself free from the softly
smoothed hills and valleys above her small
frame that cracked like a sandy chrysalis...
he knew it could not hold the butterfy
she would become...
but my brother focused steadfastly on the horizon
with his feet in the sand, and his eye on the
edge of the sea, watching for the tallship
with brass fittings, teak decks,
and salt-bleached sheets that snapped in
the wind... waiting patiently for the
life purpose, the dreams, he would sail one day...
a hint of tuberose and vanilla, with just
a touch of jasmine....his words more
fragrant than the scent upon my skin...
there is a top note of orange blossoms,
and then, he sighs, it deepens into
something full of warm nights and
amber...Morroco, I think...mmm, not
that heavy, more like Savanna in June
listening to him describe fragrance
is like visiting a spa...warm word stones,
evocative scent-supported similes,
musky metaphors, large heady bouquets
of lilies and bowls of lavender beside
the bed....
close your eyes, he says, let the scent
unfold to you like scenes from an opera
and he is right, I take in puccini, and
exhale verdi...ahhh, I think, to breathe
the rare colors of venice on a summer's nightBlogThis!Share to FacebookShare to Pinterest
they grew around the fieldstone foundation
of the farmhouse...in every shade from snowy
white to the deepest purple with soft mauvey
pinks and aquas in between...
in march, they were like a promise held in a tightly
fisted hand, small as the early spring hail pelting the
red metal of the barn roof, and turning our mother
into a madwoman who rushed into the garden
with sheets and towels covering tiny plants
she had grown from seed, on the wide stone
windowsills, deep enough to capture sun's warmth
in winter
by april they were like pale green dandelion seeds under
a magnifying glass...almost hidden in the dark green
leaves that grew as large as a giant's hands....
by june we knew, which would bloom in soft hues of
pink and cream, blues and aquas, cobalt and a purple
as rich as a king's coverlet on the royal bed...
we'd cut them in july and august...armloads of heavy headed
blossoms to place in mason jars, and pitchers, and once in the
umbrella stand their long thick stems searching for water,
their droopy necks resting on the rim, peering over edge
like tired children along a fence rail...
in september they'd move to baskets or hang from rafters
where they would dry to muted shades of autumn....
another hydrangea season come and gone...
it is the color of my daughter's baby quilt,
stitched by hand, and carried across the sea
to gather around her...like the African twilight
falling on a landscape teeming with birds, and
eyes that glow golden from the dark corners of
the veld...
it is the color of the wide front door on our
butter yellow cottage, a leaded glass
window to see the world through,
it's casement a perfect framing for the
living, ever-changing and evolving
photograph of morning glories climbing
the porch rail in the summer, and icicles
dripping from the eaves on a blue cold
Colorado morning...
it is the shade of blue that catches in
my throat like a perfect poem, the cool
breeze that breathes off Mt. Harvard, and
lifts my hair on a hot, dry Arkansas Valley
day in July, a lyric so beautifully crafted it
resonates like a tuning fork through the
chambers of my being...
it is the perfect french blue of an oxford
cloth shirt, the checked dishtowel carefully
laid over a rising loaf of bread, the scarf
my daughter knit..in careful rows..
last christmas, the breast feathers of a bunting,
a single hydrangea petal....
it is a rare shell washing up on the sands of my
life...a reminder...
of the serendipity of periwinkle...
there is an art to writing letters my grandmother
once told me....you must begin with paper that
you love, and a pen that feels perfectly weighted
between your fingers...
the scent of the ink should be neither sweet, nor
acrid, but something clean and soft upon the
nose...
the way the ink flows from the pen, onto the paper. is
very personal, and very important...
do you like the scratching sound of
an ink-drawn nib across the page, or the silent rolling
of a ballpoint along invisible lines....
once you have paper that makes you want to run
a light hand along it's smooth cheek, find a place where you
can close your eyes and imagine the face of your loved one...
how will he look smiling at your wry humor, or the set of
her brow as she reads your sad news...
then open up the floodgates of your heart and watch your
love, your tears, your laughter flow like a river from head
and heart, through arm and hand.... filling the pen with
words that your fingertips will dance into a trail of love
notes...a symphony upon the sheet of paper you will fold
with care, seal with a kiss, and post in tomorrow's mail...
for how could you even begin to gather together your text
messages, turn them into treasured heirlooms that can be
tied with blue satin ribbon, and kept secretly tucked away
for a granddaughter's finding
her daughter surveys the stacks of beige cloth
neatly folded and tucked into the cedar-lined
shelves of a small closet, hidden under the stairwell
"what was she thinking," this once-a- girl,
now-a-woman, asks aloud to no one in particular,
standing back and appraising "just another"
cupboard waiting to be inventoried, and tagged,
for the estate sale at the end of the week.
how many shades of grayish-brown cloth could
one woman need, or want, she muses, and turns
towards the cabinet under the bay window...where
the silver candlesticks and Wedgewood platters
still wait for a special occasion to strut their stuff...
dismissing the "brown cloth" as undesirable
but i'd lingered with the carefully folded lengths
of linen...fine, soft, crisp, rough, silken...each a
different version of itself...Quaker plain and
Shaker honest....i'd reached into a treasure chest
of simplicity and grace...trailed a fingertip
along their folds and selvage...sigh, and in that
sighing, betrayed my love for a mother that
wasn't mine...
her mother had been a woman who loved nuance....
the subtle shifts in tone, texture, shade, and draping...
a woman who delighted in what was hidden to
the eye of a girl who'd always wondered why her mother
never wore purple, or fuschia, or peacock blue....
" i'd like these," I say quietly...and with the distracted
wave of her daughter's hand, they were no longer orphans...
and in some way...I could never explain... neither was i
seven stones...each a reminder of that summer we
packed the car...just the three of us...and headed east
the beatles "one" CD playing in an endless loop
until we all knew every word and had begun to
choreograph hand dances to "eight days a week" that
made us giggle through the entire state of pennsylvania
singing and sleeping and stopping for ice cream cones
we were mom and the girls on an adventure to the sea
new york, connecticut, rhode island, the bourne bridge
cape cod....bringing you back to the first home you knew
and the sound of gulls, and surf, and the lapping of
water against your ankles.
day after day we walked the beach, collecting stones,
transluscent as alabaster when wet, and soft as marble
in your small hands. mile after miles you would run
ahead, then turn back with a treasure for the small tin
pail we carried...until the sun was high and your skin
was pink...
a stone for the day we were caught in a rainstorm and
discovered the village library with its cozy armchairs
covered in pink chintz, and a section devoted to sea
stories...
a stone for those afternoons when you discovered how
far your hearts could stretch, how deep your love
could reach, and how big your family really was...
a stone for the morning a wave washed my book into the
sea, and you both laughed as I ran in to pull it from water
and dried it in sun...so that I could read those last seventeen
pages all wrinkled and salt bleached.
a stone for the night we sat on the seawall and watched the
moon rise over the ocean and paint a path of light all the
way to the edge of the world....each of you falling asleep
with your heads on my lap and my fingers in your hair
a stone for the day we followed a family of sea lions,
the three of us walking down the beach as they splashed and
wrstled in the water just beyond the breakers...
a stone for the everytime you held eachother as the
foam curled around your ankles and the waves rocked
your bodies back and forth in a dance of love...
a stone for sandcastles, and salty kisses, and the sound of
you sighing in your sleep after a long day of sun and
singing "yellow submarine" for the "millionth time"
a stone for the strength of those memories to carry us
through the storms of adventure, change, and growing
up far from the sea...
stone that I hold when you are not here...when a school
day seems too long to be away from the sound of
your laughter...stones that remind me... that
there was a magical summer when, like lemmings
we made our journey home to the sea and gathered
stones for remembering....
her little dress hangs waiting
on the small wooden hanger
by the wardrobe door
the palest slip of organza
confection, as light and airy
as cotton candy on a white
paper cone...
To be a flower girl is an honor,
she thinks to herself, as mother
ties her soft brown hair up in
curling rags while she sits still as the
bunny on the lawn beyond her
bedroom window
She dreams of nosegays and
white satin...a wreath of tiny violets
circling her curls...a shower of
rose petals fluttering around
her own "someday" wedding wishes
on this summer night under a
new moon....
tornado sirens wail like keening widows
at a wake, while rain falls in sideways
sheets washing windows deep under the
eaves for the first time...ever....
I look out and she is sitting there unhurried
unharried, un shaken...
what does she know, I wonder, as she dips
her beak for one more grain of millet, one more
black sunflower seed...that if she drops it, may
spring into the tall promise of a Kansas prairie
in August...one pixel of summer gold against a
backdrop of heat-shimmering blue Midwestern
sky...
does she know that to be taken by the wind is
to dance unbidden, that to fight the storm is
to deny the power of God to lift her higher, and
higher still, upon the thermals of something
swift and stronger than her own wings could
bear...
what does she know that brings such peace...
as she sits on the edge of the feeder and selects
another tiny seed...what does she know...that
if I listen I might hear...
"a strain, low, sad, and sweet whose measure
bind the power...
...'gainst which the winds and waves can shock
oh, nevermore..."
-M.B. Eddy
my mother had a hope chest made
of fragrant cedar with a small black key
that locked away all of her dreams of
monogrammed pillow slips, Reed & Barton
silver, peignoirs, and old lace...
my mother had a hope chest...a simple cedar
chest that eight children used as a low table for
building with blocks, eating dinner in front of
Ed Sullivan, and for sitting with her on a rainy
Saturday...watching her caress cedar-scented
blankets trimmed in heavy satin, and silver
iced-tea spoons with delicate, long-throated daffodils
for handles...
my mother had a hope chest...it was her place for
dreaming and for sharing her dreams with us...
it was as strong and invincible as her love,
and as full of hope as her dreams for each of us...
there was a time, when she was just
a girl, that I would find her spoon left
lying on the table, the arm of a chair,
the edge of her sandbox...a bowl of cereal
half-eaten lying nearby...and I would
sigh, tired and exasperated,
wishing she'd learn, once and for
all, that used spoons and bowls belonged
in the sink...
that was then...
but today I found a spoon, a bit of milk pooling
in its bowl, sitting on the table in a scattering of
errant sugar...
and smiled...
how could I have missed it then...
those days, not so long ago, days too wonderful
to realize "in the moment"
but seeing that spoon this morning I wanted to
leave it there forever, like a shrine,
to never move it, or let it be washed...to discover
it "left behind" over and over again...every day...
for the rest of time...
and I would still sigh...but this time...
with gratitude...
a random breeze blows in from the east
cool, wet, full of salt and something more
the weight of dark clouds that roll in from
far out at sea and hover just this side of
the horizon...heavy with sheets of rain that
will wash the beaches clean...
but there are no beaches here where corn
grows high and magnolia blossoms linger
into the month of may
and yet, sitting on our wide front porch steps watching
a bank of steel gray replace the midday blue
I can smell the salt-scented air of the gulf coast
and hear the call of gulls dipping towards
the foam-edged surf, looking for their next meal
yes, sometimes when a storm is brewing,
and the air is heavy with the echo of thunder,
I narrow my eyes toward the sound of seabirds and
for the briefest of moments, i can see the place
where the edge of the world meets the sky above
a sailor's tomorrow and beneath the shade of
dogwoods, i feel the white sand of spring break
between my toes...and smile.
it sat in the far corner of her potting shed
a little white step stool peeling from years
of being used in the garden...come rain
or shine.
there must have been a time when it was
taller, a small bedside table perhaps,
one that held a lamp, a clock, a book,
and a glass of water...
but somewhere on its journey from the
bedroom to the garden shed, someone
had cut down its legs, one, always a
bit shorter than the other three, and now
there is a charming lopsidedness,
perfect for the uneven rows of
soft black dirt between the strawberries...
last summer I visited her, and what she wanted
most was warm strawberries, fresh from
her garden, still smelling of soil and sun..
that old step stool fit across the fragile outline
of her narrow hips beneath bedsheets and soft quilts...
as lumpy and uneven as the topography of her garden
a tiny table for holding a saucer of strawberries
the perfect altar for her last morning meal...
I met him at the diner during an early December blizzard
I had just started a new pot of coffee and was wiping down
the counters after the dinner rush. The diner was quiet,
as quiet as the large flakes of snow dancing in the light
from the sign in front of the empty parking lot, outside
the wide windows that loomed above table-top jukeboxes
playing Crystal Blue Persuasion and Hooked on a Feeling...
I saw the headlights from his blue VW beetle slice through
the snow and pull into the space nearest the front entry
he came through doors announced by the sleighbells that
let us know when someone was coming or going...his
the collar of his army jacket pulled up high over a black
turtleneck sweater, jeans, boots and a wooden cane...his limp
as near the sound of a tear falling, as the lump that formed
in my tight throat with each tap along the black and white
tile floor.
His story had been told a million times by a thousand other
boys...the delta, schrapnel, a free ticket home...nothing the same...
his parent's had moved, school friends were in college...he
was different...inside...especially inside...he said with a look
of sad wearines and confusion written on every expression...
I listened until my shift ended and my apron was
hanging on the hook behind the stainless steel swinging doors
stamped with diamond-shaped pattern, each with a
steamed-up porthole window, and that barely masked
the echo of the cook's voice shouting at my replacement in Greek
We sat and talked until my dad arrived to pick me up, but not
before I invited him to dinner that Sunday afternoon....my dad would
like him...a vet and all...we'd talked about the war, and his desire
to move to rural Maine, start a farm, carve wooden toys,
and bake bread to sell at the nearest village store...
And for months, he taught me how....
when I was young the world was small
and my dreams were holdable
a featherbed with soft white sheets and a stack of books,
a lamp that I could turn on anytime I wished
and a nest of pillows to snuggle down in, on a rainy saturday
i wanted a wall, my very own wall for hanging sheets of
notebook paper filled with my own handwriting
poems, and quotes, and favortie definitions copied from
Bartlett's, and Webster's, Browning and Thoreau...
an attic room high in the trees with tall windows that
let in filtered light, and shutters for those bright summer days
when I wanted to pretend i was napping in a forest glen, or
hiding with the tartan-clad wallace clan beneath the roar and splash
of a waterfall deep in the scottish highlands...
I would rise on winter mornings and watch snowflakes, as large
as pure white butterflies, fluttering through a sky flecked with
magic....and take to my bed like a story princess...where I would
dream of a little room, where I was allowed to be me...
saturday morning...the sidewalk from
our house, to the library, is cracked and lifted by
the roots of ancient sycamore, oak, and maple trees.
"eyes up," my mother says, as I try to
finish the last few pages, of the last book,
I'd had stamped a week earlier
by Miss Bonnie, the libraian in the
children's section...my young heart's home...
I was now eight. And "eight" meant you could
take out twelve books at a time...on your own card...
I couldn't wait. I always ran out of books by
Saturday and had learned to pace myself so that
the final page lasted until we climbed the steps
in front of the big brick building in the town square
The air was warm with
the promise of late-spring-into-summer magic...
fireflies and lemonade, sleeping on the summer porch
and going barefoot in the tall grass...
Peonies burst like overweight duchesses after a
royal feast...pink silk and white satin in an endless layer
of petticoats....one upon the other...
But I could only think of one thing...twelve books...
twelves adventures
I would soon enter, savour, devour, and inhabit...
stories about horses, giants, fairies, mermaids,
princesses, knights, forests, and kings...
the scent of paper and the song of a date stamp...
manilla cards with lists of names...those who
have traveled the wizard's path before me...
Miss Bonnie congratulating me as I signed my
name in my best cursive, "you are now a library
patron..."
half a century later
I still am.....
when I was just a little girl
about four or five, we moved to
a farm in Iowa. We had cows and
chickens, and dad planted a big
garden with pole beans, and tomatoes
the size of melons, and potatoes
and peppers, and tiny heads of
cabbage which reminded me of
something that might blossom any day...
each morning I would look out of my
bedroom window while the moon was still
in the sky but the birds were chirping,
and I would see my dad bent over rows
of lettuce and carrots...pulling weeds and
eating warm tomatoes off the vine
as if they were apples plucked from the
highest branch of a gnarled tree.
in his back pocket, barely visible from
my second floor window, was a salt shaker...
he'd pull weeds for a while, reach down and
pour cool water over his hands from the old
wateringcan at his side, then reach across the
rows of spinach and mustard greens, to
pluck a ripe tomatoe from its small green cap...
some mornings it was all I could do to let him
be alone in the garden....but he was happiest there,
and watching him do what he loved most,
was even more lovely than
eating warm tomatoes for breakfast while
watching the sun rise....
we gather like school girls
grown women on a field trip for
tea and chocolate...
there is a tinkling of something light
and sweet, like powered sugar falling
on finely blown crystal and a voice
calls from somewhere secret, "hello.."
we are giddy with anticipation as
the scent of steeping tea and tempering
chocolate wafts through the air.
the crackle of spun sugar and the
someone softly humming from behind the
swinging wooden door....the whisper of
a Viennese waltz...
we are entering the land of confection,
the sacntuary of sweets...a place where
all women become girls, and teddy bears
at the tea party, are replaced by "best friends forever"
who have seen you through, heard your cry,
dried your tears, and told you "you can do it..."
lavender-infused dark chocolate truffles,
sea salt on milk chocolate caramels,
strawberrys and raspberries in fluted petals of
semi-sweet....oolong, earl grey, ginger peach...
and, most importantly, laughter....
laughter and tears...
my childhood was punctuated by
mornings filled with heavy white bowls of
hot cereal...grainy oatmeal or cream of wheat
that plopped and bubbled and simmered
on the stovetop while we set the table
with deep-bowled spoons and jelly glasses
half-full of orange juice we mixed in an
old yellow pitcher with a long wooden spoon.
on cold mornings before the school bus arrived
we held our bowls between cold hands
and let them warm us from the inside out
i liked mine with plump raisins and more
brown sugar than we were really allowed,
sprinkling it in lumpy spoonfuls from a blue-striped crock,
a pat of butter and a dash of salt...
i'd eat as slowly as I could, letting the hot bowl prepare
my small fingers for the chill of a winter morning at
the bus stop...the curve of its round warmth lingering
in the palm of my hand, like the memory of home
on a cold, rainy day at school...
it is just another summer day
but it is our day to pretend we
are girls again, with nothing to
do but play.
we don't know where we will go,
but we leave anyway.
the road is full of promise and
each small town a gift to be opened
as we stroll old streets and
dust-covered shelves of antique shops
and empty used bookstores
talking of nothing...and everything,
or not at all...
we come through doors that ring
like sleigh bells when we enter
and then we part to explore fragile tea cups
and old quilts, first editions, and
small vignettes of embroidered handkerchiefs
and old sheet music, yellow bread bowls
and sepia-toned photographs
but then one of us stumbles across a
wooden box of vintage silver spoons
a small cry of delight draws the other closer
in almost holy communion, like the kind arm
of an older sibling around the shoulders of
a younger child saying, I have found what we
were really looking for all along.
the tines of silver dessert forks,
spooning within the twisted sheets of a slender,
delicate slip of blue satin ribbon,
a handful of teaspoons that once stood erect in
heavy tavern mugs of coffee, a family...a place-setting
...of Rogers' sterling, refusing to be separated by time or
circumstance, estate sales or squabbling heirs.
we caress them, commenting on depth of bowl, intricacy of
pattern, balance of weight on the fulcrum of an exquisitely
designed handle...pure and satisfying as the word "good."
she will leave with a fine-boned tea cup and shallow saucer
kissed with rose buds and sweet william,
a staffordshire stamp in gold leaf on the bottom...
a translucent treasure that settles in the hand
like a perfectly weighted bird,
a feathered creature that coos of summer
when winter rages outside the frost-painted window panes
of her cottage on the high plains
long after I am gone.
I will leave with a sisterhood of spoons engraved with the
name of a tavern in Maine.
they will join a sorority of sterling sylphs i've gathered
into the spoon jar on my farmhouse kitchen counter.
and each time i select one, I will think of mountain days,
a river valley, and a friendship that stands the test of time...
hidden in the nutmeg seed,
a clove of garlic,
bay leaves dried for tomorrow's use...
is the secret that
each have a clear scent, a precise flavor,
a clarity of purpose...
I close my eyes and lift the lid
even before the seed is grated, I
know...
pumpkin soup, and quiche lorraine
i can taste them as surely as if they were
baking, simmering, stewing on
the old farmstove in the corner
the next jar takes me straight to naples and
a cafe near the mediterrenean sea. I can
feel the taunt skin of roma tomatoes and
hear verdi and puccini pouring from
the old victrola in the summer kitchen
the plumpness of a clove of sweet garlic between
my fingers...
and when the third jar releases her rich perfume
I am not a woman standing in an abandoned
prairie farmhouse before a shelf of forgotten
spices and herbs, I am a small girl sitting on the
counter of her own mother's kitchen learning that
brittle bay leaves come alive in red sauce
and that this is where a family is born...
in the scent of bay leaves, and garlic, and nutmeg
...grated for pie, or soup, or sauce...
and in a mother's encouragement
to close your eyes and breathe deeply
so that you will know
where each one fits...
today is my wedding day
something borrowed, something
blue...something old, something new...
my sisters will wear dresses of periwinkle
and no shoes....
i will wear a dress the color of sand....
the pale, sun-bleached sand of a summer's
day....
we will cross the boardwalk and let the
sea call us like baby turtles to our native soil
he will be there waiting with my brothers
and his mother
I have dreamed this day...forever...and a day
his niece will carry a pillow that my grandmother
made from an old pillowslip
one she trimmed with the battenburg lace
her own mother had carried in a small suitcase
from the "old country"...a someday heirloom
she sewed with tiny stitches
and filled with lavender...
all my hopes fill that pillow.
so, for me, hope carries the scent of
old lavender and sun-bleached linen...
this is where I will thread his wedding band
with satin ribbon and tie a soft bow,
then, I will wait by the sea
to slip it free from its anchor on linen
and lace... to place it where it
belongs...where it has always
belonged...
