Category: Seasonal Musings

Food Memories from a War Zone

The postcard sized menu is typed out on beautiful stock paper. It still looks good after 32 years. The Bosnian crest is top and center. The word MENU is all in caps. Cauliflower soup. War steak. Cooked vegetables. Pudding. Red wine. Dated: Sarajevo, February 12, 1993. This lunch meeting was fancier than we expected.

It felt surreal to step past the ubiquitous sandbags, enter the Presidency building and climb a red carpeted, grand staircase to a dining room with one table elegantly set. It was only my boss and I and the man we were meeting with who must have been high up in government. I didn’t make a note of who he was and don’t remember what the food tasted like. I remember hoping that War Steak meant fake meat or some kind of alternative as if that might assuage the guilt I already felt for all this fanciness in the middle of a city under siege. It was meat. I was pretty sure that Sarajevo’s citizens were not eating like this. The war had been going on for almost a year. It would last for three more. 

I looked in my journal to check for more details. I see that lunch at the Presidency was just one of the events I went to that cold winter day with my boss Victor. I was his assistant, accompanying him to meetings with humanitarian organizations, civilian and military leaders including, as he called them: bandits. I scribbled copious notes and wrote up reports. Earlier that morning we’d driven in our armored UN car just beyond the city, through checkpoints to meet with a Serb archbishop who I thought was pretty militant for a supposed spiritual leader. I remember that from where we were, we had a wide view of a large part of the city. I knew that many shells were being lobbed from here and felt sick.

My journal has no description of nor do I have any memory of how the war steak tasted. Nor questions about what animal it came from. I am sure I made a point of not leaving anything on my plate.

Under the Geneva Convention, a venerated document that is now regularly disregarded by our administration and other militaries supported with our tax dollars, food must never be used as a weapon in war. We can now watch on our telephones as communities are starved as well as slaughtered by weapons supplied by our government. This was being done then too. Food and water – both were in short supply for Sarajevo and other surrounded towns in Bosnia where roads and the airport were closed to all but United Nations and NGO traffic. Often, humanitarian assistance was blocked.

This is how I met my husband Neil. He was working at the time for the International Committee for the Red Cross, and drove his boss Philippe, to a meeting outside of Sarajevo at a defunct Coca Cola factory. Serb women had been blocking the road for days, not allowing humanitarian organizations to deliver food into Sarajevo. A few days earlier, when Victor and I spoke to the women in the street, they said their demand was the release of their men who had been taken prisoners by the other side – in this case, the Bosnians. Initially, I was excited by their protest, imagining a kind of Antigone movement where women might be the ones to stop the war. This notion was dispelled days later when a meeting was organized and I was the only woman in that cold and smoky room.   

The international community, were well fed at UN bases. Even when the food wasn’t great, we ate for free. Our UN ID was enough to get meals across the countries of former Yugoslavia where battalions were located. I ate with Czechs, Kenyans, Nepalese, Ukrainians, Russian and French peacekeeping troops – including the Legionnaires. The most delicious meal was not at a base but rather a dusty outpost of the French army set up near a local checkpoint. Sitting on camp chairs in a tent on a summer day by the roadside, I enjoyed multiple courses for lunch: Juicy steak with a pepper sauce, salad and even aged soft cheese. All with wine and followed by a perfect demitasse of coffee. Served to our host, a young French Major and us UN civilian guests by the dashing soldiers under his command. It’s one of the few meals I remember from my four years there.

A year and a half after Neil and I met at the Coca Cola factory, we traveled from Zagreb back to Sarajevo to get married. We celebrated in the evening at the oldest restaurant in the city. On that August night in 1994, we gathered in a cobbled courtyard set with a long table. We made toasts of champagne poured from pitchers lest the local authorities decided to pop in to enforce the no alcohol in restaurants rule of war-time. I don’t remember what we ate – or if I even did. After all, I was the bride.   

To Wonder Like a Child

In my writing group, we use prompts to inspire our weekly essays. Last week we were each to choose and open a book to a specific page and line to use as our first sentence. I had to go through a number of books before I found a sentence that resonated. Here’s what I landed on:

“As artists, we seek to restore our childlike perception: a more innocent state of wonder and appreciation not tethered to utility or survival.” (From The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin)

The spirit of this sentence reminded me of my early 20s when I studied in Kentucky with a sculptor and profound teacher, Mike Skop. Back then, Mike’s teaching awakened a lot of wonder. I am doing my best to remember and reclaim this way of being in the world.

For almost 30 years I was focused on day-to-day survival with my shoulder to the grindstone. My life was punctuated by traumas including living with my husband’s addiction and finally, suicide. No surprise: ‘wonder’ sometimes eluded me. I lived in a cloud of to-do lists around my job and raising my daughter. While I remained appreciative of the magnificence of life, a sense of ‘wonder’ was often obscured. That has changed this past year.

Recently, on flights to and from Los Angeles where I went to visit my daughter, I kept the window shade up so I could look out. I always thrill at the NYC skyline and as we lift up higher and higher, I love to watch the world through the clouds. Like a little kid, I crane my neck, nose pressed against the window, trying to see more. It’s a marvel, being above the world, watching the landscape of this country change with the hours and miles. The endless wooded stretches of Pennsylvania, and a checkerboard of farmland is Indiana. At some point over Kansas the light was hitting what might have been a string of ponds or small lakes that from my angle in the plane, looked like an abstract painting, splotches in grays and yellows. 

When I visited my daughter last year, I passed directly over the Grand Canyon. It was all I could do not to squeal with delight. This trip, while the flight map indicated that we were flying over Flagstaff, I saw only smaller cuts in the earth, not the very grand Grand Canyon. Still, the landscape was magnificent and exotic – buttes and red earth, snowcapped mountain ranges, houses in the middle of nowhere. I remember last year that the hills around Los Angeles were golden and dry. (I was there shortly before the disastrous fires.) This year, thanks to the late autumn rains, these same hills are green.

I kept comparing my view from the window to the video-map in front of me, trying to figure out what towns we were flying over. I imagined what we looked like from the ground. And I thought about the lives below me. Did any of them notice us? Sometimes, I look up from my yard or a parking lot and think about the people on the planes I see overhead. I look around the plane cabin and see that no one else has their shade open. Is nobody interested in looking at this remarkable landscape? Is anyone else marveling at the distance, the space, the phenomena of being so high up here? I understand. While remarkable, the idea of being in this massive piece of metal so far from the earth is also bloody terrifying. Sometimes I scare myself thinking about it and will choose sleep, reading or a movie. But not these last trips across this country. There is. so much darkness when I think about what’s happening – I like to be reminded of the sheer physical beauty of this place.

Safely on earth, on a cold winter morning, I see the waning moon fading in the dawn light. I think of the vast distance between us – the moon and earth – and yet, how close we are. For a few minutes, I think about our planet spinning through space, how incredible the universe is – in spite of us. I feel that wonder. Like a child. Who would have thought this gets easier with age? 

What to Save from a Fire (Nothing to Steal Here)

Last January fires devastated communities in the Los Angeles area. My daughter Molly lives five blocks from where the recommended evacuation area was. Besides the threat of flames, toxic smoke hung heavy in her neighborhood. Molly and her roommate fled to a friend’s apartment in a safer part of the city. In tears, she described how tormented she was having to choose a few possessions to save from potential loss. She took things that had been her late father’s: jackets from movies he’d worked on like the blue satiny Superman bomber with his name embroidered over the heart.

I barely remember feeling that sense of preciousness about things. I’m at the stage of life when caring about objects fades daily. And yet, I’ve never had so many possessions. Don’t get me wrong – I would hate to lose my house and what is in it but where I am ultimately headed, there’s nothing I can take. This is my time for downsizing and I’m not being great at that. It is mostly my laziness that prevents me from purging, whittling down my life to lessen the future clean out for my daughter. 

But it’s also my awareness that my daughter wants to hang onto things. I recently mentioned to her that I was exasperated with my younger self for shipping two large sculptures from Japan that I’d carved. They are too heavy for me to lift alone. Titled ‘Relic’ and ‘Seed’, they sit – giant dust collectors in the corner of my living room, barely visible behind the television and plants.

“They are my inheritance,” Molly says. 

Her future headache, I think. Even if I could move them, I would not bother to save my well traveled sculptures from the threat of flames. In fact, perhaps that’s what I should do with them. I’m sure this well seasoned camphor wood from Kyoto would burn nicely in my wood stove. 

Letting go of possessions can be difficult for some of us. When I was in my late twenties to early thirties, I rented a room in a house by the beach in Connecticut. I escaped from the city on weekends to my sweet space on the third floor. The house was owned by Tom who became a beloved friend. He was in his 80s by the time I moved into his rambling home overflowing with a lifetime of memories. Many of the rooms of the house were unusable because they were so full of things. There were boxes and boxes of Tom’s belongings, his deceased mother’s and other long-gone family. The 5 or so of us who lived there as ‘roomers’ had clear spaces. Almost in reaction to Tom, our rooms were sparsely furnished and neat. The kitchen too, was always clean and organized although Tom was known to eat expired sandwich meat. 

We all became friends and regularly gathered in the cluttered but manageable front room for cocktail hour with Tom as our generous host. He’d offer drinks to all, make himself a martini and always had plenty of Molson’s and wine on hand. We’d find space on the couch and other perches around the room, filling it with laughter. Sometimes Tom would crank up the player-piano from the adjoining living room – too full of boxes and treasures to sit in. Living there was casual and easy, the evenings of warmth and friendship sustained us as did Tom’s love. We became an oddball little family and barely noticed the clutter around us. His home was an oasis. I loved it there.

While not as much as Tom, I have my own lifetime of stuff – the value of which is primarily sentimental. A thief who looked in my window would pass on making the effort to break in. No fancy sound system, jewels or likely valuables in this house, they might easily assess. Only memories. Nothing to steal here. 

In Praise of Second Hand

Tis the season to buy things and this year I haven’t. Not much. My daughter Molly, my main recipient, is staying in California and I’ll be visiting her in the new year so no crazy holiday traveling for me. Nor gift buying. I’ve never really operated well under the seasonal pressure of giving presents. Working in a bookstore I used to give a lot of books. I’ll still happily give books, but unless you’re a little kid, who needs more books? I am now an avid library user. I’ve also been tackling my shelves — filled with unread titles. I bet yours are too, right?

I don’t hate shopping per se. I usually enjoy food shopping and I like wandering through hardware stores. (Lowes – never Home Depot) But I love thrift shopping. I have been a thrifter since high school and still find it an adventure.

Currently in my living room, these are the things I purchased new: television, vacuum cleaner, this computer, the carpet, woodstove and one small chair. That’s about it. Everything else has been thrifted, found at tag-sales, scavenged, and given to me by friends. The same is true for every other room in this old house. The things I own have stories – and only some of them are mine. Pre-owned, they came to me with their own history. 

I look around my living room. A Boston fern I transplanted a month ago to give it more room, sits on a plant stand I picked up off the street while walking in the neighborhood. Someone’s reject. The simple wood stand could use a fresh coat of paint; a task that may take me a while to get around to and sometimes, I just don’t. But right now, the plant and wooden stand look lovely in the light of the wood fire burning in my stove. I am burning wood from the oak tree I reluctantly took down this summer. I salute each log as I put into the fire, grateful for the years of shade and now the heat it brings me. I carry the wood in from the porch in a wire basket that Molly spotted at a tag sale a few years ago. 

A blond, Swedish-design coffee table sits in the center of the living room as it has for years. This and matching chairs were a gift from Mary, formerly a beloved neighbor who gave us some furniture when she moved out. Only the table still remains. The solid, deep and comfortable couch was my friend Nina’s. She told me it hosted countless naps and gatherings of her big family of mostly boys – now all grown. It’s a better piece of furniture than I would purchase new and each soft crevice feels like love. Now, it’s where I sometimes snooze.

In the corner is a metal stand that 30 years ago my friend Hendrik designed and welded for me to display one of my sculptures on. During the winter months, I move the sculpture and give this indoor stand to one of my Gardenias plants. It seems happy in its warm corner. 

I prefer used and older furniture, clothes, garden and kitchen tools – almost anything. New things rarely have the grace nor substance of older pieces. While I admire beautiful couches on display in upscale stores and funky themed showrooms, I am not interested in stretching my limited budget to pay for them. 

Years ago, when I was living in NYC, a guy I was dating said to me, “You live like a refugee.” In fairness, I think he was referring to the jerryrigged cinderblock bookcase. I knew my life in the city was transitional – that I wouldn’t stay living there forever, so why put down roots? And besides, I love other people’s old stuff and my books sat happily on those improvised shelves. I haven’t changed much.

Although I now have more stuff. And real bookcases. Yet I cannot resist visiting my favorite thrift shops. ‘It’s only $15’ I said about the tall metal chair that provided a tall perch on the porch all summer. Now it sits by the window inside. I tuck the heavy winter curtains behind the chair to let the light in. Sometimes I sit there for a different view of my space. Worth $15 for a change of perspective, no? 

My favorite are church thrift shops run by volunteers but sometimes I’ll stop into my local Goodwill, usually shopping for something specific. Most recently my mission was to find large enough dishes to put under all the plants I was moving inside for the winter. I found just what I needed plus a sweet plant stand with spindle legs that now sits at the bottom of the stairs, home to a Mandeville plant with its last red blossom from summer still hanging on.

This afternoon I am going to make a cake that requires a loaf pan. I searched in all the cabinets, looking behind pyrex and clay cookware. How do I not have any loaf pans? But I do not. Dare I venture out to shop on the last Saturday before Christmas? I think Goodwill should be fine! 

May your holidays be beautiful!

PS – Walked down to Goodwill and found these!

Still Time – A Beach Sunset

5:30 PM at the beach. There is a small sailboat hugging the distant shore. It’s going out while most boats head back in under a cloudy sky on this late Saturday afternoon. A patch of sea grass is all I can see of the sandbar where I kayak to. The tide is moving out and in a few hours, I know the sandy spit will emerge again.

I am sitting on a beach chair. I rarely do this – sit in a spot on this beach alone – at least not on a chair I’ve brought with the intention to sit. I usually come to kayak or walk, never just to sit. When I walk, I will pause and look out at the water, pick up a stone or shell I drop after a few steps. Today I am on a patch of sand where people regularly sit – often the same people in the same spots. They set up their chairs to read and roast in the sun away from lifeguards and families. It’s not a place to swim as sea grass blocks access to the water. 

A string of small waves is rolling in caused by the speeding motorboats heading home. Perhaps these boaters are hungry for dinner after a day spent on the water. This is what I imagine. Otherwise, the water is calm and I think about kayaking. It’s tempting. My kayak is on the nearby rack and my paddle and life jacket are in the car. I love being on the water although I’m a lazy paddler. I don’t go far. Mostly just to that sandbar not currently visible. It should emerge in another few hours, a small stretch of sand where the oystercatchers hang out. I like to sit and swim there.  

I took a walk before setting out my chair. I walk at this beach often.There are many serious walkers intent on achieving their steps. I am a little like that but I also come here to dream and stare at the horizon and take deep breaths. Before sitting, I walked past where my kayak sits on a rack, then out onto the pier where fishermen lean with their rods and beers. I usually stop for a few minutes at the end of the pier to look down at the water and out at the stretch of Long Island blocking the Atlantic. 

I pass the playground. I spent countless hours here watching my daughter climb the ropes, the slides and the wooden boat replica with bells to ring and a wheel to turn. She’s 30 now and lives across the country. I walk through the tree-lined path where we once celebrated her birthday with her middle school pals. Rob and I cooked on the crusty grill there.The kids wandered off down the beach away from us chaperones. Molly remembers it as one of her best birthday parties and we did nothing but cook hot dogs and hamburgers and let them be wild. 

I walked across the beach to be closer to the water lapping the shore. I come across multiple horseshoe crab carcasses upside down – legs up and still. I flip them over to make sure they’re dead. One afternoon I walked this shoreline and came upon over a dozen of these prehistoric looking creatures upside down with legs flailing. I flipped them over as I went along and watched as they moved their armored bodies back into the waves. Today, none of them moved.

The sun is breaking through a schmear of clouds. The sky below, a lemony yellow, readying for sunset. The days are shorter. While today had the warmth of a summer day, the sense of autumn prevails. I can see it in the light, the quality of the air. There’s always a poignancy to the season changes, isn’t there? I love summer and don’t like being cold but I am sure if I lived in a warmer climate I would miss these changes I have lived with all my life. I am happy to visit my daughter in California during winter to get my fix of humming birds and year-round flowers. But there’s something that balances me in these changes in light, leaves, temperature – the temporary freezing of the earth. I take none of it for granted anymore and feel challenged to meet the seasons. Even in winter I come here to this shoreline, bundled up against the winds to follow the tides and sunsets through the season.

Just beyond a small boat house is an event space and I can hear the sounds of a wedding and the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, being introduced. Now, as if on cue from my thoughts, a guitar/vocalist begins to sing a Carole King song: Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall – all you’ve got to do is call and I’ll be there. 

I look out at the water. There’s a kayaker next to the grass near my still submerged sandbar. They are not paddling, just floating. Like I do. Hypnotized by the movement of the grass, I relax as the boat lifts and lowers, rocking gently. I cannot see from here but I imagine the kayaker doing what I do: I let my hands fall alongside the boat and into the water, still warm from summer. Are they letting the tide bring them back to shore? I watch and see they are drifting, pushed away from the gently waving grasses of our sandbar. Not paddling. I recognize the sweetness of giving it over to nature, waiting until the last moments of the sun’s light before returning to shore.There is still time.

Changing Gears: A Writing Conference

It’s been 4 months since I stopped working and I still marvel that every day is all mine. I was a responsible employee and 8 AM to 5 PM belonged to the company. I could have been a goof-off since I worked from home but my boss trusted all of her team and I honored that faith. I confess I cooked up the occasional soup and definitely scrolled through my phone too much but I did not go shopping or have lunch with friends on the clock. My time felt owned. I needed to stop working to reclaim my consciousness. It was time to find my own rhythm to the days before there are no more left.

I’d been doing advance planning for a year or so before my last day of employment. Like riding a bicycle up hill, a biker needs to anticipate the slope and shift gears as pedaling gets harder. Before I stopped working in December, I did a lot of adding up income vs bills, I joined the YMCA so I’d have an exercise routine, planned trips and read a lot. 

I read for inspiration on how to live a rich and creative life over a certain age. This is how I found Oldster Magazine (https://oldster.substack.com/) – an online publication created by the writer and editor, Sari Botton. Oldster includes a great interview series with interesting and off-beat people I can relate to, about what it’s like to age, to be – old! Sari was one of the instructors at the Southern Vermont Writers’ Conference (https://greenmtnacademy.org/pages/southern-vermont-writers-conference) that I just attended. She had posted in Oldster about scholarships for writers over 65. I applied for and won one! What a gift! I returned a week ago Friday, from a nourishing and inspiring 5 days in Manchester VT. I’m still processing the experience but here are some thoughts –

There were two other workshops on offer but I signed up for Sari’s 5 day workshop on Writing Compelling Personal Essays. I struggle to describe what feels like a time of alchemy, especially in that windowless hotel conference room of our workshop. Sari asked big questions and used prompts to get us to go deep in our writing. And we did. In those 5 morning sessions, our little group grew braver by the day, writing pieces that made everyone else cry. Hearts were shared in all their broken beauty. The writing was superb.

Initially I wanted to shy away from writing about what I think of as old pain as if sadness and sorrow can be packed away in the closet like clothes that no longer fit. The 8 of us in Sari’s group wrote about profound losses, heartbreaks, struggles – and created beauty. Pain cracks us like nothing else, opening our senses up to the profound, the stuff of life. This is what interests me and what I want to be doing – mining the riches that live even in the darkness. There, like the bottom of a compost pile, is where fertile material lies.

By the end of the week this group felt like a tribe and remains a goal post for me to be honest and go deep. Being open, seeking and truthful feels like resistance these days and I’m all in on that. Each paragraph of writing shared, set another stone for the way. Comments were insightful and generous. We listened to each other carefully, honoring and following each others voice. There was humor, sass, sexiness, gentleness, tears spilled for ourselves and for each other. A kind love grew in our mornings together under Sari’s gentle, smart guidance. 

I didn’t arrive or leave with a specific intention about writing, I only know that writing compels me and a day feels better when I do it. I don’t want to write in a vacuum. Having readers and getting comments, (thank you!) enriches me as does working with other writers. Life might feel solitary but we are not alone. What reader doesn’t find that to be true after reading something that resonates? Perhaps, someone will find comfort, solace in my writing, may feel less alone.

Caren and Kim, who launched the Southern Vermont Writer’s Conference, created something wonderful by bringing together this group of writers and instructors – weaving together a community of strangers, many becoming new friends. If you write, check them out – they’ll be doing it again next year. You’ll want to be there!

Pruning Fruit Trees and Intent

Peach and pear trees in New England should be pruned in late winter while still dormant. The trouble with this schedule is I am also still hibernating. However, I recently managed to brave the cold and tackle my 2 pear and 2 peach trees. I waited until most of the snow melted to avoid injury. Other than the odd branch poking me in the face, I came away unscathed.

Even after giving away cut branches to other hopeful souls willing to gamble on blossoms emerging from sticks, plenty remained. The wattle fence from last year turned out to look a bit ragged but was useful and effective, not only in preventing visitors from stepping off the front deck onto dangerously wobbly steps, but also providing me with kindling all winter. I just burned the last of it and have prepared the new branches to create another natural barrier. Hopefully this one will be pretty as well as practical.

Still to be cut are a few higher branches that require a ladder to get to. Last year it crossed my mind that I’m getting too old to be climbing my trees. This year I intended to enlist a pal to stand by in case I fell while swinging my handy little electric saw around. But who has time for that? I felt safe and stopped at the first glimmer of self-doubt or weariness. I’m stubborn but careful. I did wait for the snow to melt, after all.

I wrote about pruning and making my wattle fence last year (click underlined link above to read) and maybe I will again next year. Maybe the trees and I will both be around. This is a wish and a hope. I think it’s important to send hope out to the universe while also nurturing it in our own hearts.

Pruning is a kind of hope and commitment towards the future. Otherwise everything goes to shit. Cutting off what’s not needed requires attention and care and can’t be done willy-nilly. I’m hanging on to that. Sometimes I feel the darkness encroaching so I look for light. Sometimes that means forcing myself out in the cold to trim my trees.

Amazingly, as hard as last year’s cuts were, more branches grew back even longer. I have 7 foot pieces in my pile. Last year I wrote: “I know that these harsh cuts were necessary if the trees are to thrive.” While true, that sentence now makes me a little uncomfortable. We hear some version of this from the liars as they gut our government. One difference: we don’t hear the word ‘thrive’. They are not interested in us thriving or in some cases, even surviving. These guys are in it only for themselves. They are not doing this for you or me. We are the serfs.

I recognize the importance of cutting back. I am all for getting rid of waste, increasing efficiency and finding fraud but skill and best intentions are required for making cuts. Fraudsters should not be doing that job. These are nefarious men driving us deeper into debt as a country and individuals as they scheme and get richer and richer. It’s obscene. We’d get rid of the deficit and pay for health care, education – basic human rights – if these same creeps would pay even just their fair share of taxes. Nope. That’s not in the cards. We need a new deck of our own.

We cannot give up hope, nor stop speaking up. Make sure your representatives are really representing you and let them know if you think they’re not. It gets easier to make calls and the young people answering the phones are great.

I suggest signing up for daily emails from the link below. Craven is a very smart activist who suggests different simple acts of resistance. It took me less than 5 minutes to make calls working off easy scripts provided in this beautifully titled site: chopwoodcarrywaterdailyactions@substack.com

By the way – the peaches and pears mostly get eaten by the wildlife. It’s nature’s way and there is enough to go around – we need to share.

Keep the faith, make the calls and don’t lose sight of your joy!

An October Saturday Report

Chickadee Breakfast

Wrens, sparrows, robins, blue jays and the rest of the gang stopped by all summer to splash in the bird bath but for the first time since spring, I’ve starting filling the bird feeder again. For months, there’s been no shortage of berries and bugs for them to eat but now that cold weather is creeping back on us, I want to them to know I’ll be here for them.

Saturday was a glorious warm October day and I spent time sitting on the front porch watching the feeder action and soaking in the sun. A few squirrels foraged for seeds in the fallen leaves with the mourning doves, who prefer the ground for eating – their unwieldy bodies challenged by my vertical feeder. A blue jay noisily announced it’s arrival before gorging on sunflower seeds. Nuthatches and chickadees skittered about joining in with lots of peeping, other jays squawking and squirrels chattering – when they all suddenly quieted. After the audible mass flutter of wings as everyone took off, the yard was silent. There must be a bird of prey around, I thought and briefly looked up at the sky and through the branches. No sign of anything. I returned to staring at my phone and drinking my tea. Whoosh! On the lounge chair a few feet away from me, landed a gorgeous and very large hawk – facing me – both of us wide eyed.

We gazed at each other in shock before it took off with a few flaps across the yard. No hunting in this neighborhood, at least for now! The moment was thrilling and I’m glad none of my feeder-friends became lunch. And what a fantastic cooperative security system they have!

Sound and Seagrass

Around 3, I took the kayak out for what might end up being the last paddle of the season. The sun, still deliciously hot, warmed the wind that made paddling tough but caused no chill. While the water looked relatively calm on the surface, the current was pushing me in directions I didn’t intend so I abandoned my intent to go straight across to the island about 20 minutes away. Instead I lingered near the sandbar that disappears at high tide. I floated, listening to the wind rustle through the sea grass. That was enough.

Sunday Worship on the Isthmus

While driving to the beach on Sunday, a trio of young women caught my eye. They were hurrying towards St. Thomas church, I suspect, a little late to 9 o’clock mass. I glanced at my dashboard clock – 9:10 and the church doors were closed. I was a child the last time I made a dash for mass. My relationship with organized religion ended shortly after my confessional encounter with a ‘father’ whose priest name I forgot along with the prayers he’d assigned me as penance for my venial sin. Nothing from that religion ever stuck again.

When Molly was about 6, Neil and I explored a few churches in the neighborhood – me grasping at straws in search of a miracle or at least guidance in navigating the tortuous road we were on. Also, I figured my daughter should get some religious exposure in spite of my own ambivalent faith. We landed for the longest period of time with the Unitarian Church – about the least churchy of all churches. Molly went to religious instruction celebrating the fun holidays of all major religions and that was enough for her. Neil and I both adored the minister who grappled with questions and peppered his contemplations with poetry. The walls were glass and in the warmer months, opened to bird songs and the rustle of leaves, scents and breezes wafting through. There were some fleeting moments of healing there.

Photo courtesy of Molly

I am no longer quite as church-averse as I used to be. I appreciate the value of community and a gathering of like minds toward a peaceful end can be powerful. I feel rich in friendship from different times and circles in my life and treasure shared meals, walks, adventures, laughter, tears. But for contemplation, I have long been content to retreat to my own space – loving the solitude of a kayak on the Sound. But that might be changing. Perhaps it’s my recent yoga-camp stints that opened my mind about finding a community for shared reflection. And prayer? Maybe. But not yet. I will wait to explore this when I’m done with working. For now I have freedom only on weekends and am loathe to sign up for anything that feels required. Yes, that Catholic stuff is hard to shake.

Another by Molly – taken on her recent visit!

I started this with the intention to write about being on the water, not to plunge into my spiritual journey! And yet, as I paddled away from the shoreline across the calm water with only the odd early fisherman speeding by in a motor boat – I exclaimed – this! This! THIS is my church!

Working on my miracle skills. photo credit – Molly

My paddling was strong and the sun felt good – not yet the glaring heat forecast for the afternoon. I quickly made it to a favorite sandbar. An isthmus of rocks and shells. It’s here that the start of the Norwalk islands begins for me and usually as far as my paddling ambition will take me. This morning, as I reached the sandbar, I pulled my plastic boat over the slippery rocks, took off my life-vest, glasses, hat and plunged into the cold water. After a few underwater strokes, the hum of the Sound in my ears, I popped my head out of the water with a gasp as much to express my elation as to gulp in air. This is my baptism! My first swim of the season out there on my own little beach for as long as the tide stays out.

Within hours, this isthmus disappears, rocks and shells clicking and clacking against each other in the waves as the water shifts. The sandy spot and others like it, will emerge and vanish, over and over again, the land shape and me changing with the tides.

Bird Report

The birds are up early these days and on a recent morning, so was I. At least long enough to open my Cornell Merlin app to identify who was trilling away at 4:30 AM. (Robin.) I easily identified a Crow-cawing in the distance. These days there have been an abundance of Crows and sometimes Ravens flapping and gabbing dramatically around the neighborhood. They seem to like the dead trees and look particularly fantastic high up on the bare branches. Ravens are larger than Crows and have a different pitch to their song – if you can call the noise they make a song. One expert describes both birds as having complicated lives and I translate that to mean interesting and welcome them and all feathered creatures. Cats sometimes wander through my yard on hunting sprees and I tell them that they can go after the rodents (chipmunks don’t seem as cute as they used to) but please leave the birds alone.

I don’t judge the eating habits of the natural world as us humans have nothing to brag about. Still, it made me sad to find a swirled cushion of grass on my lawn. As I got closer, I saw the nest wreckage of blue eggshells nearby. I doubt these were hatched. There’d recently been lots of Robin screeching and wing flapping drama as momma and poppa Robin fended off a Blue Jay. Either the same Jay or a Crow or some other culprit ultimately succeeded in breaching their defense.

More joyously, a few weeks ago I was standing on my porch surveying my estate (haha!) with a cup of coffee in hand, when a huge bird flapped low across the yard directly in front of me clutching a snake in very large talons. I stepped off the porch to follow this massive bird and… wait — does it have a white head? It landed on a high branch in a neighbor’s tree and I saw clearly – it was an American Eagle! Gobsmacked, I walked closer but it took no notice of me at all and seemed only mildly annoyed with the Crows squawking and circling madly above. Did they want the snake? Was it territory they were defending?

I knew that there were Eagles around these past few years but had yet to see one in the wild. And here it was! Regally, as if showing off for me, it let me admire its perfect profile. Twice it let out a high pitched, gull sounding-screech in answer to the harassment of the crows. I whispered my exclamations to nobody. (I can still conjure the thrill!) I have no pictures – not wanting to miss a moments sight of this beauty to retrieve my phone from the porch.

I’m currently on my porch on this overcast Sunday afternoon. A teeny song Wren briefly stopped by to sit so close I might have touched it. House Sparrows boisterously tweet from some nook I can’t spot and a pair of sweet Cardinals are silently popping in and out of the hedge. I can hear a Mourning Dove sounding lazy and sweet. My app notes a Gray Catbird – one of my favorites – but there’s no sign of it. Catbirds, like Blue Jays are fantastic mimics. According to my app just now I was listening to an Osprey and then a Hawk – but the app was fooled by Mr. Blue Jay trying to impress us or scare the smaller birds. Or just for fun? Are they mean? The rich lives lived in the leafy summer branches of my trees is mostly invisible to me but I listen to them. I don’t feed them much in the summer, but every day I fill the bird bath and I think they love me for it although not as much as I love them.

Happy Summer!

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