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~thankful thursday~ if the weather holds

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A non-exhaustive list of classes I’m currently not getting an A in:

Gratitude

Being a friend

Parenting

Meditating

Karate

The list goes on. Good thing I’m not taking any of these classes for a grade. This will be my last thankful Thursday post for a while. It was helpful for me to document the fast-moving current events of the early phase of the pandemic as a way to keep myself integrated, and now I feel like I’m past the urgent-care emotional triage stage and moving beyond it into that more integrated place. How I write tends to shift with the changing seasons and this year is no different, even though 2020 is very, very different, as years go. Stay tuned for summer, which will not be devoid of gratitude, but will most likely be its flighty, fickle self, rushing by much too quickly for my liking, but I will do my best to still stuff a few of its choicest fruits into the canning jars here.

~Week of 5-22 to 5-29~

I am grateful for the return of beautiful weather. For time spent reading the Outsiders (which Q just finished for school) on the loveseat by the campfire in the yard, then as it got dark just leaning on Rich staring into the flames. I am grateful for the spontaneous dates of early summer: breakfasts, coffees, and cocktails with popcorn outside in our Adirondack chairs by wedding trees. I am grateful for my solid husband who lets me soak his shirt front in tears as needed, so I can get it out and go on. I am grateful for a lovely long weekend extra day – we had cabana coffee to start the day and Caribbean sunset cocktails to end it – a completely fictitious getaway. That evening we had our drink (I had made fruity syrup that day as part of my freezer clean-out effort and mixed it with our whiskey) and sat in the gathering dark watching bats. He got me laughing until we fell asleep. Laughter is antiviral, and has many more benefits besides.

I am grateful for Rich, that every time adversity comes along it makes Us stronger. You name it: moving, road trips, challenging coparents, unemployment, pandemics, everything that can be hard for couples.

I am grateful that every now and then Quinn wants to read to me, instead of the usual where he wants me to do the reading. Then I can just watch him and listen to his voice and soak him in.

During another cocktail hour in the Adirondack chairs by the wedding trees the western tanagers visited, flaunting their bright plumage. A new clutch of robin eggs is incubating under the mama in the nest. And I saw a baby rufous hummingbird in the bayou! I am pretty sure it had just fledged.

Pizza night, a ride on the bay road, gelato and a harry potter movie marathon. I am grateful for the simplicity of the days, the ease of the evenings.

I am grateful to be gardening a bit while the weather holds.

Speaking of if the weather holds… the Indigo Girls and Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach did a live feed together and it was magical. Holy. I have been watching the Indigo Girls do their music live feeds as well, and when they remarked that “this was the most requested song,” I was surprised that it hadn’t been Galileo or Closer to Fine or Power of Two… and then I realized it is also a favorite of this former wooden ship sailor: the Wood Song.

The thin horizon of a plan is almost clear

My friends and I have had a tough time

Bruising our brains hard up against change

All the old dogs and the magician

Now I see we’re in the boat in two by twos

Only the heart that we have for a tool we could use

And the very close quarters are hard to get used to

Love weighs the hull down with its weight

But the wood is tired and the wood is old

And we’ll make it fine if the weather holds

But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point

That’s where I need to go

No way construction of this tricky plan

Was built by other than a greater hand

With a love that passes all out understanding

Watching closely over the journey

Yeah but what it takes to cross the great divide

Seems more than all the courage I can muster up inside

Although we get to have some answers when we reach the other side

The prize is always worth the rocky ride

But the wood is tired and the wood is old

And we’ll make it fine if the weather holds

But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point

That’s where I need to go

Sometimes I ask to sneak a closer look

Skip to the final chapter of the book

And then maybe steer us clear from some of the pain it took

To get us where we are this far yeah

But the question drowns in it’s futility

And even I have got to laugh at me

No one gets to miss the storm of what will be

Just holding on for the ride

The wood is tired and the wood is old

We’ll make it fine if the weather holds

But if the weather holds we’ll have missed the point

That’s where I need to go

 

~Week of 5-30 to 6-5~

I am grateful for:

More beautiful days! A butterfly sighting. My Dad’s birthday. A completely cleaned-out freezer. Rich and I on our knees, weeding together. Twelve quarts of chicken broth tucked in the freezer when I turned it back on.

My work contract is a source of stress. Even when I know there is funding for next year, I will expend an incredible amount of mental energy between now and September when the new one is set to begin, concerning whether I stay with the same or have to switch to a new contracting agency (fill out new hire paperwork, change health insurance plans, add another retirement fund to my already out-of-hand “portfolio”, none of which contains that much money), whether the new contract will go into play on time (or will I have a gap in employment, and health coverage), updating my resume (I save it for days I’m feeling like a badass scientist, and put it away on the days I feel resentful that NOAA doesn’t recognize this by offering me a permanent position). I am not grateful for this stress, but I am very grateful to have a job in these stressful times when so many are out of work.

On the anti-racism front, I am in that uncomfortable space between reading all I can and listening to Black voices more because I need to confront myself, but also needing to speak up, but also trying to keep silent so Black voices can be amplified, but also acting in solidarity. I really can overthink like it’s my job! But seriously, the one uncomfortable thing in my life should be this.

If the weather holds, we’ll have missed the point…

I am grateful the world is awake.

I decided not to do any posting this week at all, in #muted solidarity. Which means next week silence is out, because speaking up is necessary. Studying. Gathering resources.

Worked on my resume all day in between sending emails demanding justice for Breonna Taylor, shot in her own home on a no-knock warrant by police on March 13th. On June 5th, she would have been 27 years old.

I told Quinn I was thinking about going to the Black Lives Matter protest and explained my desire to support the movement. And while it is not entirely safe for us to go out in the world right now, we can do it relatively safely with a mask and while staying 10 feet apart, but Black people live in a world where they can’t go out safely every day. I explained to him that during the pandemic, the inequality that is already present in society only became more extreme, so they are even more unsafe now than they are “normally”‘ and how that version of “normal” isn’t right and never has been. I thought it would take some discussion, but he didn’t hesitate. He wanted to go.

I was selfishly excited to see him and thrilled that he was open to this change in perspective from “the only safe thing is to stay at home” to “some people are never safe and I can do this to show I care.”

So for my own part with educating myself… my normal way of handling uncomfortable feelings is to deal with them as fast as I can so I can put them behind me… I’m in the middle of a few things right now that don’t sit well but with this particular one, it is good and right to sit in the middle of being uncomfortable about it. It’s uncomfortable to think about a whole group of people living in fear and grief every day of their lives, but it’s imperative that I sit with that; it is what we’re being asked to do and I feel that it is quite literally the least we can do.

There are many opportunities for feeling uneasy, for self doubt. Staying open is the key. If we sit with feeling uncomfortable about not knowing how to do it right, and keep that awkward conversation going, maybe we get somewhere.

I stood and marched with Quinn. We held our signs.

I made that mask for him, and gave it to him when he and I hiked on my birthday… the last time I saw him… on April 3rd…

The protest was on June 3rd.

Two months…

It was way too short…. but I was a pretty proud mama to stand with him.

~thankful thursday~ take care

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Saturday 5-9

I am grateful for a beautiful day. Rich worked, but he didn’t go in until 8 so we slept until it was daytime instead of “still nighttime” as I describe normal 4:15 wakeups. After he went to work, I meditated, worked on lifelong learner (13th birthday edition) and then spent an hour in the garden, arranging dahlia bulbs, black eyed susan roots, and moth mullein and chrysanthemum seeds in the freshly weeded yellow terrace. Then I drove to pick up my veggies, stocked the fridge, did some more writing and some more gardening, and got on the video call with Quinn. We read about when the nine leave Rivendell, and their fight with the snowy pass on Caradhras, when they turn back and the men have to carry the hobbits through the snow, but Legolas can walk on top of the snow to bring hope back to all that the journey is one they can endure.

Rich came home mid-day and then we spent the afternoon together in the yard. He mowed while I transplanted pansies, verbena, monarda, nicotiana. I planted some more seeds out in the red terrace – hollyhocks, cosmos, scarlet sage. I found him on his knees in the rhododendron bed we planted a year ago, weeding. I joined in and did the perimeter where lots of new columbines are joining the herd.

Sunday 5-10

While I made breakfast, Rich played George Harrison’s album All Things Must Pass disc 2, which we had pulled out because Sheryl Crow played such a lovely version of Beware of Darkness the other night. We hadn’t played George’s version yet, but I woke up with the song in my head, and when it came through the speakers when Rich pushed play on track one, it merged seamlessly with what was already in my head. Synchronicity.

“Beware of darkness

Watch out now, take care
Beware of the thoughts that linger
Winding up inside your head
The hopelessness around you
In the dead of night

Beware of sadness
It can hit you
It can hurt you
Make you sore and what is more
That is not what you are here for”

Gardened all day on Mother’s Day. Nothing to do but power through. I added ten buckets of compost in the front garden, where the slugs have been preventing any poppies or nicotiana or lilies from growing. I’ve been on regular patrol, and now I have Lauren’s grape poppy seeds on their way to me in the mail to start again. I had a lovely extra visit with Quinn. He showed up at noon after sending me a Sierpenski’s triangle Mother’s Day card, freshly showered and with a button-down shirt on. He dressed up for me.

Monday 5-11

I am grateful Mother’s Day is behind me.

I gardened hard from 6-8am thinking it would rain any second… got lots more compost spread around and seeds are ready for a good soaking. At 3pm there was not really much rain yet, but a wee sprinkle.

Picked up groceries and filled my tank. Just shy of two months on one tank of gas.

Four wilsons! In the bayou. A whole wilson family! And more hummingbird bayou visits to the twinberry.

Tuesday 5-12

Quinn and I started an email story where we each write one line and send it back and forth. It began,

Once there was a boy who lived in a land where

the only things were a chain of islands and the ocean.

I’m excited to see where it takes us!

I am grateful to be starting to learn not to explain myself.

Rich and I went on an errand date to pick up more garden hose, lightbulbs, cat litter, whiskey, and coffee beans, and put gas in the highlander. Then I made nachos, of course. Always grateful for nachos.

Wednesday 5-13

I have been through the abundance meditations twice now and picked favorites. Number seventeen with the flowing stream and bird sounds, “I move through my days lighthearted and carefree knowing all is well,” is good for me to repeat.

Also cathartic is my walk around the rainy yard sacrificing slugs. I’m grateful for balance. Water sounds always help, even if it’s rain. I’m happy about this rain as it is timed very well to soak all the flower seeds I just planted, though I, and the seeds, will be ready for sun again soon!

Yelling also feels good. Playful laugh yelling at Rich’s mischief, yelling at the butthead deer who eat my flowers. Lighthearted and carefree is easier after a good yell.

 

Thursday 5-14

Grateful for music and literature. One of Quinn’s favorite bands, Ok Go, put out a new song called all together now, and I love it, as well as what they wrote. The song references Rebecca Solnit’s piece where we are melted down in the chrysalis, which I also love.

“There’s another analogy that comes to mind. When a caterpillar enters its chrysalis, it dissolves itself, quite literally, into liquid. In this state, what was a caterpillar and will be a butterfly is neither one nor the other, it’s a sort of living soup. Within this living soup are the imaginal cells that will catalyse its transformation into winged maturity. May the best among us, the most visionary, the most inclusive, be the imaginal cells – for now we are in the soup. The outcome of disasters is not foreordained. It’s a conflict, one that takes place while things that were frozen, solid and locked up have become open and fluid – full of both the best and worst possibilities. We are both becalmed and in a state of profound change.

“But this is also a time of depth for those spending more time at home and more time alone, looking outward at this unanticipated world. We often divide emotions into good and bad, happy and sad, but I think they can equally be divided into shallow and deep, and the pursuit of what is supposed to be happiness is often a flight from depth, from one’s own interior life and the suffering around us – and not being happy is often framed as a failure. But there is meaning as well as pain in sadness, mourning and grief, the emotions born of empathy and solidarity. If you are sad and frightened, it is a sign that you care, that you are connected in spirit.”

~Rebecca Solnit

I’ve been thinking about how being able to live with my choices includes not just my decisions about where I go, how I behave, what I do concerning Quinn and our physical safety and the physical safety of others around us, but also how I speak, write, react, how I treat others. It’s not unique to this time, but right now there seem to be so many opportunities to put this into practice. It helps when I can remember The Four Agreements, to not take personally what is coming from other people. My integrity is based on me being responsible for me.

For me, fear is not weakness; bravery is not absence of fear; delving into emotions is not the opposite of courage. I’ve definitely been swimming in the deep end, emotionally. Anything can make me cry; tonight it was the encouraging note from Quinn’s algebra teacher, for example.

But I know that for me, the alternative to stringing these weekly beads of emotional intensity on a continuous strand, is to let the strand tie me up in knots. There is a certain amount of tension in the line I must maintain; too much slack and snarls start to form. I am grateful for the tool of writing, for the way the strung beads can sometimes reflect light when the sun shines again to remind me when I look back over its length.

Friday 5-15

The sun is coming out, and it lit up every spider web in the woods as I went for an early morning walk. Everything is still wet from the rain, and the wet edges of things allow the light to refract so the edges are visible in a new, crystalline, gossamer way. I love the fresh new beginning of the sun after a three-day rain. I love spotting the spiraling new beginnings everywhere around me, bending the light.

Mercies are new every morning.

~rainbow mondays~ columbines of the dragon house

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dusty rose fairy gown columbine (my columbine names are all made up, i have no idea of their real names!)

pink lemonade columbine

gryffindor columbine

“you might belong in gryffindor,

where dwell the brave at heart.”

western columbine (the original wild columbine of our region)

wilson’s warbler named wilson; actually we have a whole wilson family!

dragon above dragon house

purple fairy gown columbine

six-fingered man columbine

 

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~thankful thursday~ three little birds

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Saturday 5-2

It seems like everywhere I turn the talk is of fear; of fears we feel, of fears we reject, of fears we perceive or reject in others. I want to check in with myself and see whether I am making decisions based on fear, but I am still feeling solid that I am making decisions based on information and knowledge, especially inner knowing. I have plenty of fear coming at me on all sides, but the way I think of bravery is that it isn’t the absence of fear, but the willingness to engage with the depths of what is. I am grateful for the ability to revisit my own words a few fathoms back along the unbroken line I keep stringing along to not lose myself, and remember what I said early on about being able to live with the decisions I make now, and that metric still feels right for me. I am grateful for the clarity.

The purple and blue baby quilt on my lap, handmade by my Mom for my baby shower so many years ago now, has butterfly fabric all around the border. Another visual reminder of the internal knowing, the compass within.

I let lots of time go by in between bringing up with Quinn when he will come back. He still says he is staying there longer…. “for now.” The last time I said, “if that means I don’t see you until you’re fifteen that’s a little hard for me,” and he said, “I know.”

I am grateful for the two little yellow birds were flying around the bayou salmonberry patch and the hummingbird who visited and flew just about right up to us (we think he is the juvenile we watched getting fed). They might just be three little birds, but they remind me that every little thing is gonna be alright. That doesn’t mean it will be easy or that there won’t be fearful things. It means this too shall pass.

Sunday 5-3

First swallowtail butterfly spotted in the yard!!! Today I am grateful for a nice long talk with mom while I weeded the patch of yard by the honeysuckle. Beautiful sun. Light on things. Yellow birds in the bayou.

Monday 5-4

Today I am grateful for robin hatchlings! I was outside taking pictures of our blooming lilacs when one of the parent robins landed and I heard Peep! Peep! Peep! And there they were! Three little birds! An auspicious birthday – May the fourth be with them.

I had settled into my lawn chair a little while later with my camera and my laptop to multitask, and a parent bird landed with another worm. It eyed me, stuffed the worm down a throat, and then stared at me, hard. I stopped my camera clicking and sat very still. It leaned forward into the nest again, grabbed something, and flew off.

Oh no! Did it take one of the babies? Is it moving them because I’m here? Is it because of the neighbor’s brush pile burn? Are they moving their babies up wind? Is it the deer repellent Rich sprayed yesterday to stop the buttheads from eating my columbine blossoms?

I continued to watch, convinced it was me. I was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Mom came back with a worm. Three little birds strained to be fed first… wait, one wasn’t gone?

She fed, stared, left.

Dad. Three babies. Fed, stared, left.

They’re still here.

Next time mom came in, she pulled a black object that I could tell was smaller than a baby bird, maybe it was spit-up or poop, and she removed it from the nest when she left.

That must be what I saw.

This pandemic is a house of mirrors, making things seem one way and then another. Making me check whether my instincts are faulty, whether I am removing my child based on a false sense of danger. But no, the danger is not false, and the metric of being able to live with the decisions is still in play. Keep taking it one day at a time.

5-5

My purple asparagus crowns are starting to grow where they were hastily heeled in. I finally order the compost I need to build up the bed where they will be planted.

I am grateful for a beautiful day with lots of outside time, sweating as I weeded, moving my nursery area around (slug intervention). An evening walk and homemade pizza with sausage from the farm and a yummy stout aged in a whiskey barrel. In bed before 9.

Quinn doesn’t want the pressure of thinking he might carry covid from one house to the next. I wonder if he would feel a sense of relief of having the weight of deciding taken off his shoulders. If one of us got sick, the responsibility would not be on him. But that’s not really how I’ve parented him. He is aware of his own inner knowing. So aware that he cannot be distracted from it.

Wednesday 5-6

Today I am back on day 16 of the abundance meditations: today I will remember to be grateful.

My three yards of compost were delivered and I feel grateful for how working with soil helps me get grounded.

Quinn emailed me before bedtime to see if I want to do an extra one hour video call on mother’s day. The wording woke up some deeper fears. Rich researched what the plandemic video was all about. It was not a good time of day for me to overhear it, so I walked outside to check if my makeshift cover for the asparagus bed was still intact. I sat in the Adirondack chair in the gloaming. A chirping bird flew overhead, and as I looked up, I saw that it was chasing a much bigger bird, also flying over, but silently. An owl! It flew straight into our woods and landed. A shadow soaring silently through the shadows. Boy am I peering into the shadows right now. I felt like I was getting a grip today. Got some spreadsheet work done, listened to Brene and Sue Monk Kidd and Jen Hatmaker, and Glennon reading Untamed, planted asparagus, had chili in the crock pot and cornbread baked by the time Rich got home. The day started out with gratitude doodled in rainbow colors in my journal. But I cannot lie. It is ending with a gaping hole in my heart that I am not sure how to reckon with.

The moon came up over the ridge when Rich came outside to find me. He got to see one swoop of an owl through the trees as well, under the full super moon we didn’t even realize would be rising tonight.

Thursday 5-7

Tomorrow it will be eight weeks since I’ve had Quinn home.

Since I had said that thing about not seeing Quinn until he is fifteen, he talked about the concept of dividing that amount of time up into 2 or 4 or 8 chunks of time. I said, “fractions. You’re doing math to it.” A phrase Vi Hart uses is to “do math to it” or “do algebra/calculus to it”. He said, “I do math to it when I get nervous.”

His face. His precious face and the way his lip curved when he said that. Vulnerability. (Still so grateful for video calls.)

It is not resolved but I am not letting myself dwell on it. I am trying to focus on gratitude for how much integrity my kid has that he wants to prioritize long term goals like us all living past this pandemic, and how he is able to recognize that doing numbers is a defense mechanism… the awareness he has. It’s kind of blowing my mind.

Friday 5-8

The robin babies are gone, fledged already. I believe I miscalculated and they actually hatched earlier than the 4th. Now I am seriously empty nesting, bereft of my son and my robin nestlings as I head into mother’s day weekend. I thought I had more time with them. I don’t know why I thought that.

Today I will remember to be grateful for the time I’ve had.