Month: April 2012

Another Anniversary

This is a fraught time of year for me. Vivid morning light, the new green of trees against an impossibly blue sky, porcelain beauty of the Dogwood blooms and the perfume of Lilac in the air are all stunning — but for me, all are triggers. Even before my mind, the cells of my body remember – my shoulders knot, my jaw clenches and my heart beats faster with an anxiety I can’t account for. During these last days of April, an echo begins like a breeze turning into a wind, as vivid and weighted as the light and branches. A darkness hovers even with all this light — leading up to May 1 when my husband ended his life. Even 8 years later.

A friend who has worked with me since that terrible time told me the other day that I was a different person before and after. The wound-up stress of this week reminded me of how I felt before: always wondering what bad thing would happen next. For years I stayed, feeding a hope that seemed impossibly locked away in the sad cage of my imagination – that my husband would get well and our life would be normal. Normal was all I wanted anymore – not extraordinary. My friend said, after his death, I just blossomed – became lighter and joyful. It almost feels wrong to write that – but it is the truth. I felt lighter. Of course there was anger, shock, sadness, anger, anger, and an awful grief — but also relief. His terrible, final act did free me from the awful life he had woven around us in his crazy drug quest. And with time, I felt joy again – joy I’d forgotten could exist. Still, each spring, an ember of sadness – once hope, is fanned by spring breezes and memories of the tortured soul I once loved.

Too Much Sun

Finally – rain! After more than a week of perfect sunny days, today the sky is heavy with the promise of more precipitation. Last night’s showers have left the air sweetly smelling of earth. I planted seeds for an array of garden greens the other day.  The soil was so sandy, I covered each patch lightly with mulch lest the whole lot get blown away. Verging on drought around here, we desperately need this rain.  And I am glad to be forced indoors to take care of neglected tasks.

Today ends a blissful vacation week, mostly spent running my daughter around to look at colleges. I’ve lost track of the days and abandoned my usual schedule. But when I stayed up too late some nights, I just crawled back to bed for an extra hour in the morning if I needed more snooze. I puttered, read, wrote, drove and drove and drove, and wandered around college campuses in all their spring glory. Each day was mine to plan according to needs and desires of me and mine.

I’m melancholy about going back to work – as much as I like my job. And I fantasize about what it would be like not working. That is, not working because I have enough money. (The scenario of losing my job and being unemployed and broke is, of course, not the fantasy.) I fuel this dream by occasionally buying lottery tickets. But perhaps the sweetness would fade, grow dry and dusty like too many sunny days… do you think?

Chicken? Falcon? …Turkey

I’ve thought of calling this blog: Walking the Dog because it’s often where I get my inspiration. Our little neighborhood jaunts together are often the closest I come to meditating. I am mostly internally focused but still aware of the seasons, the little changes day-to-day in the trees, the garden, the woods along my walk. Sometimes, Tetley and I have real adventures like the other night when we encountered a neighbor also walking her dog — and what appeared to be, a chicken. 

It wasn’t really her chicken – so not for the first, nor last time, we got ‘the box’. The box for water, food, the shirt no one wants and the promise of a night in our breezeway. The more we looked at this little guy, the less we thought it a chicken – or any domestic bird. As it fluffed its wings and strutted about on very talon-like feet, we decided it must be a raptor. Except it was awfully friendly.

It particularly liked hanging out on shoes – although I think if it could have climbed into my lap it would have. We called a 24 hour wildlife hotline and the guy said, put it back. So we carried the little bundle of feathers back across the street to the neighbor’s newly mulched patch of a few yards, set it down and quickly walked away. The thing followed us, practically tripping me as I crossed the street. Street. That’s where we found it. Not the woods. Cat-hunting ground. So of course, we did not leave it.

The next morning, still thinking it was a little falcon baby, (we fed it dry dog food moistened with warm water – it ate it) I brought it out and it picked at the grass. I hoped it might try and fly away back to mommy. I kept my eye on the sky looking for the amazing hawk (or whatever it is) I often see in the trees and circling the sky around here. Only airplanes and robins soared by. Finally, shortly after 9 AM, Wildlife in Crisis, a volunteer run organization in Weston that maintains a “nurture center” called me back and said, “It’s probably a wild turkey.” He dismissed our falcon identification because raptors wouldn’t be walking. And this thing was like a puppy under my feet.

So, it’s there now, with other baby turkeys, a full grown deer laying on a stretcher because of a birth defect that left its feet all mangled. (it was expected to live for only a few weeks and instead, has lived as this strange invalid for years. Ah, the power of love) Also perched around the small room are sea gulls, a spectacular wood duck, teeny cages of hummingbirds. And this was just in the reception area – there are other buildings housing other creatures. I’d actually been there a few years ago with an injured sea gull stuck in the B&N parking lot. Such patients are accepted with little fan-fare by this serious crew of volunteers and donations are encouraged.

A Different Color

We are painting the exterior of our house for the first time in the 15 years I have lived here. Actually, to be clear, Rob is painting. While he climbs the ladder, I stand guard and hand him buckets, drenching the roller in the Rookwood-Jade as needed. Like the musician he is, he has composed the entire job to be done, in his head. And dancer-like, he moves around the house, stretching his long arms in fluid movements. The peak is done, and this part, just visible over the hedge, makes it already look like a different house. The happy house it is.

I wonder why we didn’t do this sooner? Apart from the fact that the paint had worn off so much of the aluminum siding (yes, we are painting aluminum siding) that sometimes, the reflection of the sun was blinding, our home begged a new look. For many of the years I lived here, these walls defined a space of pain and sadness. Behind these walls I worried, I railed, I yelled and finally, I grieved about my husband’s addiction, his suicide. Living that way became so a part of me that I fear proclaiming the sweet serenity of now, might jinx it.

But as the shabby-white becomes a meditative green, the house seems to fuse with the landscape –  the lush hedge, the maples and oaks.  Spring is emerging like a profound exhale, and our sweet abode breathes deeply too.

Remembering the Siege


A bitter anniversary: 20 years since the siege of Sarajevo began. For 4 years, my world revolved around that insane war. Terrible as it was, I felt then that I was at the center of the world. At first, I naively thought I might make a difference. Clicking compulsively through links on the internet, reading articles, watching videos marking this anniversary, more than once there are warnings that images might be too disturbing – you must click on them if you want to see them. I do not. I have enough disturbing images in my mind to last me forever. Still, I search, looking for something, no — for someone — surprised at how bereft I feel, remembering alone.

Books to Show Me the Way

I am reading two books that happened to be reviewed in this week’s New York Time’s Book Review. Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.  The reviews are good and I feel glad for the authors for the attention they are getting — as if they are  my friends. Isn’t this the kind of connection and loyalty a good book inspires?

Birds of a Lesser Paradise is a collection of exquisite short stories that I have been savoring for more than a month. Like expensive European chocolate I want to make last. Rather than race through, the book sits by my bed for times I am alert enough to fully indulge. The writing is gorgeous, full of sentences that demand to be re-read. Not to beat the food imagery to death, but lest you think I am talking about bon-bons, these stories are like salty-sweet concoctions. They are deep. Against the backdrop of fantastic landscapes of nature and animals, we glimpse lives of loss and loneliness. Thoughts of them linger long after the story is done, demanding time to fully resonate.  Polly Rosenwaike ends her review of Birds by saying she “… wished it would send us deeper into the woods, and more fiercely stalk the mysteries that elude us, disturb us, tear us apart.” Of course readers’ experiences vary — but I disagree with Polly. For me, it is the subtle echoing quality to these stories that gives them their power. They don’t bash you in the head – they are not fierce. And need not be. And there is also the sheer joy of reading such fine writing.

Dani Shapiro‘s review of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, about a grief-driven, remarkable journey of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an author’s dream. The review is thoughtful, quite moving — and makes me want to drop everything and just read. Forget the laundry, the rest of the Times and curl up with Wild for the rest of the day. I am not quite 20 pages into the book but am already struck by the honesty, the intelligent yet raw writing. And she certainly is fearless: would you head off alone on a 1,100 mile jaunt in the wilderness? The results are riveting. Dani Shapiro writes “”Wild” isn’t a concept-generated book, that is, one of those projects that began as a good, salable idea. Rather, it started out as an experience that was lived, digested and deeply understood. Only then was it fashioned into a book – one that is both a literary and human triumph.” When I read that I thought, “That’s what I want a reviewer to say about my book.”

Bravo to these writers — and thanks for the inspiration. I feel galvanized to go back to my revisions and more bravely bare my heart.

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