It Makes You Feel Fine

This morning the ocean was a khaki green, shining with some internal light; whitecaps floating like lace on the surface.  It glowed against the deep, dark gray bowl overhead that stretched from horizon to horizon.  I love the ocean in all her moods so I decided to sit and see what would happen.  After an hour or so the gray turned to blue with a slight breeze and folks poured out of their houses to sit, swim, walk and do what folks do at the beach. 


The water is warm and slides over my skin like silk, it's so heavy I rest on the surface finding it almost impossible to sink.  Home, the place where all life begins. 


I am afraid of ponds and lakes.  I don't trust the inhabitants:  snakes, alligators, leaches and snapping turtles.  They don't seem to like me any more than I like them.  Growing up on the gulf coast of Florida I know the citizens of the ocean and I trust them.  We give each other room and get along just fine.  I feel safe here in this water that glides over me and holds me up.


My skin smells of salt, sweat and suntan lotion and my hair returns to it's natural state; a mass of thick curls that I can barely get my fingers through.  I settle in and let out a deep breath that I didn't even know I was holding.  Home.

"Yeah, now the sun goes slidin' 'cross the water;
Sailboats, they go searchin' for the breeze.
Salt air it ain't thin,
It can stick right to your skin,
And make you feel fine.
It makes you feel fine."

Jimmy Buffet "Tin Cup Chalice"

We Should Be Dancing

We all walk around in these so very fragile bodies.  It's a miracle we last as long as we do.  I'm at the beach this week and I spent the morning watching people.  We show our story in our bodies.  I am struck by how uncomfortable most folks appear to be.  They mostly don't really inhabit their bodies, they drag them around.  Only the little ones are fully present in their bodies, unconcerned about what they look like or things that hurt.  But I like most the little old ladies, nut brown and wrinkled, wearing huge floppy hats.  My favorites also wear bikinis, not giving a damn what anyone else thinks they should be wearing.  Some of them inhabit their bodies again, moving like the little girls they once were, unconcerned about what the world has heaped on them.




I saw an older couple today sitting on the edge of the surf, legs stretched out in front of them.  They were a bit rolly-poly and I watched them hold hands and lower themselves to the sand.  I could tell they'd known each other a long long time.  Lovely. 




How we stand and move in our skin tells so much about our story.  What we are afraid of, where we hurt, what we try to hide.  Fragile.  We are just so incredibly fragile and we walk around like we don't know it.  I want to go up to everyone, one at a time, take their face in my palms and tell them they are beautiful.  Just go from person to person, in case they have forgotten, which most of us have.  We are beautiful and fragile and perfect.  We should be dancing. 

Let The Rough Side Drag, Let The Smooth Side Show

My soul's been feeling a bit ragged lately so today I ignored everything and took myself off.  I drove the ten miles of snaking swirling roads down to the bottom of a bowl our mountains make and into a two block town called Hot Springs.  It's claim to fame is that the Appalachian Trail runs through it.  Locals know it for the outdoor hot-tubs that sit on the edge of the French Broad River.  On a cool summer evening you can rent one and sit as it fills with hot spring water, listening to the river talk and watching the fireflies light up the trees.  There is also a large grassy field dotted with huge old oaks  and every year this time the Bluff Mountain Music Festival happens.  It's a hidden joy.  The people who come love their mountains fiercely and the Hipster vibe that has taken over Asheville and is encroaching on my little town hasn't made it this far yet.  The people gather with their lawn chairs and sit in the shade, eating barbeque, listening to old time mountain music and dancing.  Everyone dances, whether they know how or not, no matter how old or young they are.  Daddies with little girls, ten year olds and teen agers, and couples in their eighties who circle the floor with complete ease.  Ninety year old women sing the old ballads and tell stories about the mountains and folks who have been playing together for forty-five years add a twenty year old and keep on playing. 


I set my chair in the shade of an oak and settle down, tipping my head back to find the edge of that deep green bowl that we are in, letting the twin fiddles soar over my head, and my soul sinks to the ground.  The edges smooth a bit.  Why don't I come here more often?  Why did I stop learning the mandolin?  And oh, I miss dancing!  Still, those things don't feel like a critique, only thoughts, good ideas to consider once again.  Times like these, I love these old old mountains and the life they contain and have sheltered all these years. 


Coming home I am reminded of an old Jesse Winchester song: 


It's a good thing the sea's not dry
Such a good thing that cows don't fly
What a good thing to make a joyful noise
It's a good thing that beds don't talk
Such a good thing that chairs can't walk
What a good thing that God made girls and boys
Let the rough side drag
Let the smooth side show
While you pull that load
Everywhere you go
It's a good that the air is free
Such a good thing that a man can see
What a good thing the Lord above has done
It's a good thing to be young and strong
Such a good thing we're not old for long
What a good thing that making love is fun
Let the rough side drag
Let the smooth side show
While you pull that load
Everywhere you go
Let the rough side drag
Let the smooth side show
While you pull that load
Everywhere you go
While you pull that load
Everywhere you go
While you pull that load
Everywhere you go

MIracles and Magic

It's been a rough few weeks and I got really scared.  Not scared like when I was a single mom and didn't know how I was going to pay the rent, or when David was sick and dying, or even when I was a kid in a really bad situation.  Then, no matter what happened, hope lived inside of me.  I never doubted that I could make things different.  This was different, I realized that place inside of me where hope lived was empty and it scared me. I didn't know how to live without believing I could make things better. 


I've been stumbling around for a while, trying to figure out what happened and what I needed to do to bring hope back.  I finally admitted to myself that I had no clue and that scared me even more.  Finally, I did the only thing I could think of to do, I told the folks in my grief group that I had lost hope and I was terrified.  It helped to be heard and then on the way home I saw these beautiful and perfect things:


The first of the fireflies.


A few adult geese in a field and all around and among them a tumble of puff ball babies.


And then perhaps the most perfect thing of all:  Looking down a side street I saw a young man riding his bicycle home from work or the university with a beautiful red and blue cape flowing out behind him.  You know, the silky superhero kind. 


After watching the bluebirds choose a nest box, build a nest and feed babies I saw the fledglings take their first flight, something I have never seen before.


I woke up the next morning and that empty spot in my heart wasn't empty.  Hope had come back, quietly at first, but over the last week it's voice has gotten stronger.  The light in the afternoon makes me happy, working in the garden satisfies my soul, and somewhere I believe life will be good again.  I still don't know how it will happen, or what I need to do, or where I will end up but I believe again that I will figure it out. 


It's all miracles and magic and I will be satisfied with that. 

All I Would Ever Need

The redbud sapling in the side yard is set against a backdrop of dark pines and this time of year it glows.  Each delicate heart shaped leaf is illuminated from within with it's own particular shade of green.  It is a glory against the black branches and pine boughs.  At first, I thought it was the sun lighting the leaves, but today with a cloudy start the leaves glow with even more intensity.


I sit with my coffee between two native azaleas that are just in bloom.  They smell like the beach.  I can't even name it any better than that.  It is something of sun and salt and sand, a biting slight sweetness.  Mos of the azaleas are as sweet as honeysuckle,  but these two are Beach.  Planted in just these particular spots for me to sit in my patch of morning sun and sip my coffee.  Pure pleasure. 


But the glowing redbud - that's a delicious surprise.  Every Spring there are surprises.  I don't keep a neat garden and plants rearrange themselves at will.  Every year the Columbine, Evening Primrose, Four O'Clocks and strawberries move around.  They come up in unexpected places, even the driveway.


Unexpected glories, traveling mercies, and inner illumination.  If I could manage those with the abandon my garden appear to, it might be all I would ever need in this life of mine. 

Isn't Life Just Like That?

It rained last night.  That's an understatement.  It poured, and lightening flashed and thunder roared.  This morning the creek is up over the bridge.  It's a good twenty or thirty feet up the road on either side and the force moves boulder and tree trunks.  There is one on the bridge that will take a tractor to move.


The water flows, thick and creamy like milk chocolate, and creates a back wave as it leaves the far side of the bridge.  Watching, it's hard to believe the creek will be calm, clear and blue-green again.  There's a three foot high sapling that is almost under water.  It appeared last summer after a storm and I am almost sure it is what I called as a child, a powder puff tree.  I love it for my childhood memories and I don't care that it's a "trash tree."  It has an orange ribbon tied around it in an attempt to protect it from the men and their tractors. That blaze of orange is just visible over the milk chocolate waters.  It bends with the force but it's still there.  I often wonder about it's story and how it came to be rooted exactly there, a gift from the chaos of a summer storm. 


When David was sick I identified deeply with this creek; how the landscape of it, like our lives, changed regularly.  Normal for a creek is a fluid thing.  For a time it is clear and green and I can see into the deep spots, then it floods and it's hard to believe it will ever have that calm beauty again.  But it does.  There is a new boulder, a new sapling, a sandbar where there wasn't one, but the creek settles into this new landscape with it's old beauty shining through. 


Isn't life just like that? 


I am graced with our farm creek to remind me when fear, chaos, and upheaval sweep through my life:  normal changes, but the essence stays the same.  Water returns to it's state of Grace every single time. 


Isn't life just like that? 

Forever Being Changed

Spring is the hardest time of year for me.  It is such a tender time, new life pushing to be born and being knocked back over and over again.  I ache for every Lilac bloom and new leaf, the fragile Bleeding Heart with it's translucent stem curving into those dripping pink and white hearts, the deep red Peony leaves with their tightly closed buds, the graceful curve of the pink and green Japanese Maple.  I have always said that I hate Spring with it's teasing and endless days of becoming.  I think maybe what I dislike the most is the fact that Winter simply does not let go as easily as the other seasons.  Spring turns into Summer without much fuss and Summer becomes Fall, with it's simple letting go.  But Winter, Winter holds on with a vengeance and just when it seems like we are free of it, it comes back.


I used every sheet in the house last night to protect that new life  just becoming and trying to be born.  I'm not sure it helped.  The blueberries and strawberries seemed to appreciate the cover.  The other tender things are doubled over this morning, their lifeblood frozen in their stems, in spite of my attempts to help.  I can only trust to their inner nature and the warmth of the sun, hoping they will spring up again and sing like the Daffodils did not so long ago. 


Perhaps it is my tender nature that empathizes too much in the Spring.  I want so badly for life to be easier.  For all of us. In the last couple of weeks two friends have lost fathers and two others have had terrifying and life changing diagnoses.  Life turns on a dime, changes with the swoop of the North wind, a flash of light, a phone call.  We hope for "normal,"  for life to ease into Spring the way the TV and magazines show it to us, with sun and bunnies and beautiful flowers.  But here is the thing, there is no normal; we are brought to our knees and if we are lucky and strong and flexible enough we get back up again.  We get back up changed, scarred and perhaps a bit misshapen, but up and on to what comes next.  No one, no one gets out of here without forever being changed.