Blog Your Blessings: Safe as a Baby Goose

Watching the Canada geese goslings have their supper on Wednesday evening, my daughter and I struggled to take their pictures before they ducked around their mom. We kept our distance, but they were well aware of us--especially papa, who stood straight as a guard outside of Buckingham Palace.

Within minutes, the fivel little guys got huddled behind their mother, who was following her mate into the water and away from the paparazzi. The fifth gosling had to struggle to keep up; nobody stopped for him, and there was no going back. In little time, he made it back to the downy fold on their way across the pond.

The image of their sticking close to their mother stuck with me as Adella and I made our way into the woods past the uncurling ferns and blossoming anemone and the very cheerful poison ivy that was ready for business. I thought how the adult geese didn't make a sound and seemed not to pay attention us at all. Still, our being there was enough; with a subtle turn and step, the father was in the water and gone, and the family followed. While we had stood there, mother and babies ate all they could.

You go where you need to be to stay safe and sound. No need to question or fuss. You trust. You go. It's all good; it's OK.

Skywatch Friday: Surf City Slipping into the Night

When I was on Topsail Island a few weeks ago, I made my way to Surf City to watch the sun slip away. The boardwalk over the marsh and around the boat launch and out to the fishing pier made for some peaceful evenings. (Straight out of the camera. I am too dumb to know how to edit.)

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Reelly Now!

Wordless Wednesday

Today's World: Oh, Baby, Baby....They've Hatched!

I was thinking the other evening that Mama Goose sure was doing a lot of sitting around before her recent disappearance. She was up with the dude and the brood on Saturday morning, and they were fun to watch. The little guys disappear completely in the grass and shadows of trees in the early April light.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Good Morning

I sat down in the grass yesterday morning to enjoy just how still the day was. The trees are in flower, and so was the grass (in a way).

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Fissure

Heat of the sun
Deathly winter cold
Rain and snow
The weight of life itself
Over and over:
Birds and children
Animals with night eyes
Creeping and leaping

This rock
Almost as tall as I
Flat as a table
And round

Yielded to the pressure

The fissure became
A crack
Became a crevice
Became a divide

Wide enough to lose
Things in--
Jewelry and coins
Pens and scrapped love letters
Bottle caps

Sunflower seeds
And chestnuts
(You tell me....)

There are stories
Down that space
Where no hand will reach

Wind and rain
Have mulched history
As they have taken the edges
Off this rock that is two rocks.

There is silence
There is story
Sit a while
Imagine what lies
In the dark space between.

There is time.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: Muskrat and Teacher

Yesterday evening I took a long walk along the edge of the swamp near home and shared part of the way with a muskrat. I watched him swim until he came to a tuft of grass. Then he would walk over the grass and slip back into the water. On and on he went until he went deep and hooked a left into the still waters under the shadows of the hills. I didn't expect him to come up where he did, which I think may have been his point.

That's the way to do it, I thought. You do what you do, and when there's an obstacle, it's up and over. When it's time to change direction, then it's time to change direction. You do it. You get yourself to a safe and peaceful place, and you rest.

The little furry dude was my teacher last night.

Lately, I've had a tough time with some difficult, obstructive people who delight in hurting others. I've toughed out sleepless nights trying to figure out why this is and, more important, why they had me so upset. Though these women are pretty rotten, they don't actually occupy a lot of space in my life. But they had me, and they were pulling my strings.

Last night, with the help of a friend, I got to thinking about an earlier time in life when I was in love with someone whose family didn't love me and who worked tirelessly to convince me that I was not worthy of love. They were spectacularly successful; for years I was convinced I was worthless and therefore deserving of their horrible treatment. Climbing out of the hole they dug for me took a long time. This latest bunch of not-very-nice people brought my heart back to the scene of an earlier crime. I got that last night, with the help of the muskrat and a friend.

I didn't want to look. Didn't want to deal with it. At all.

My friend asked, "Why do you think you are not worthy of love?" The candor of this simple, direct question broke the dam that had held me back for so long. I cried like a very hungry baby.

"You are worthy."

And I cried.

"It's not a perfect world. Some people are mean. Some people will try to break down everything you build up. It's that way. But the world is beautiful. And you are beautiful. And you soar. But you are not alone."

Soaring is good. So is swimming like a muskrat--deep into the dusk. Not alone.

Skywatch Friday: Good Morning, North Topsail Beach

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: The Crab Has Alice!

This was wordless, but....

I had fun with this shot after picking up a half a mountain of trash from the beach near one of the public access parking lots on North Topsail Beach. There were some public access garbage bins that didn't get much use the night before, apparently. I spent my last few moments on the beach last week cleaning up after some slobs who were entitled to access but didn't feel obliged to respect the beach when I came across this baby sandal near a crab hole. I had to laugh. The shoe was the only bit of trash I didn't pick up. Alice will need it when she comes back.

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: Topsail = Heaven

I woke up early to a foggy morning on North Topsail Beach, North Carolina, last Sunday. The misty air was very beautiful, and it dissolved into a bright, clear day as I walked. It was wonderful and peaceful and quiet.


The first shot above is a view across the intracoastal waterway to some houses on the beach. The second is a view of some folks who got up before me; and the third, a view of the fishing pier in the solitude that I cherish. Everyone else seemed to have gone. I enjoyed watching the water as the light around it changed. This very beautiful place shows me again and again the wonder of being alive, the privilege of being alive, the joy of being alive. It's all so very simple.

At the heart of all of this, I feel a tremendous gratitude to my parents, who made the ocean a part of my life from an early age. When I was younger, I didn't always want to be there when we would go boating on summer weekends. I am glad my parents did their job and took me there, anyway. They helped me begin a relationship that continues to enrich me. I am a lucky girl. Blessed.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: In a Matter of Time....

These flowers trail along the road between my parents' home in North Carolina and the beach. On the way to the beach one morning, they were dew drizzled buds; on the way back, they were hungrily feasting on the sun.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Mask

No mask,she said.

Not even an eye mask, she said.

No, no,

No....

Though the mask was beautiful

Though it worked so well with the costume

Though it completed the illusion

Though I had made it

For her

And I

Her mother

Said so.

No, she said. I won't.

I am a witch

Dancing in a sea of flames

And this is my cape full of black magic

I am a witch

Grinning

Under the brim of this pointed

Pilgrim's hat

I will look you in the eye and be that.

I can look you in the eye and be that.

No mask.

There's some family history in this one. For most of Adella's life, I have made her Halloween constumes. The year of the witch costume, she did, indeed, refuse to wear the mask. As the tone of this poem suggests, she was adamant and I was annoyed. I am slow seamstress, and the project took a good long while. The word "brat" crept into my thoughts more than once. In the end, she had her way.

Looking back, I realize I was the brat, though. She was telling me something important that I didn't hear because I couldn't get past the time I had put into the making of the costume. She was telling me in her sweet, direct, innocent, uncomplicated way that she could be the witch. Be the witch. Not pretend to be the witch, but be the witch. This wasn't about embracing the contradiction (the witch and the Pilgrim/angel/little sweetheart of my wild imagination) because there wasn't one. She would live the adventure, not pretend to. Her mind did not divide the world into good and bad; her mind embraced the world as it was--beautiful and whole.

Masks disturbed her. She could sit down and paint and decorate one because gluing stuff together was fun, but these baubles were not for wearing. They suggested division and contradiction, concepts that shook her world from the outside; she was not willing then to let them in.

Thinking of masks this week, my mind wandered to the craft store and the plastic masks that look like skins ripped off the faces of department store mannequins. They are vacant, cold. Though the masks of old were intended to convey the thoughts and personality of the characters wearing them, these masks refuse entry to the observer. In this way, they are forbidding. They suggest a divided mind.

Adella's candor, her innocence, her commitment to the truth of her imagination got me to thinking about adults and the masks we create. There are masks of tightly woven words that form suits of armor between the speaker and the rest of the world. There is the mask of the avatar, the image that says something about a person but does not reveal the person. There is the mask of kindness, of friendliness. There is the mask of sarcasm. There's always a way to keep others out.

Look me in the eye; no mask.

One Single Impression

Blog Your Blessings: 'Thunder Road'

The long ride home from North Carolina to Connecticut on Wednesday became a sojourn on E Street, a full-immersion baptism into the music of Bruce Springsteen. That miracle called satellite radio brought me version after version after version of hits such as "Badlands," "The Rising," "Johnny 99," "Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep," and "Thunder Road." There were no repeats; each version was a new experience.

Bruce closed my 13 hours in the car with the words, "I'm just a prisoner of 'Thunder Road.'" Which made me laugh out loud. And smile. And think. This is a song I have never much liked, though I very much like Springsteen. Last night I fell into my bed wondering, how can I like this guy's music and dislike this song that, by his own account defines him?

Back to the miracle of satellite radio. Somewhere along Route 270, I listened to an early version of "Thunder Road," and he sang with such plain passion that I didn't mind at all the line that has been my sticking point all these years--when he tells Mary, frankly, "You ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright/Oh and that's alright with me." How dare he?, I used to wonder.

In Maryland (where I never like to be because it is neither North Carolina nor Connecticut but this Thing in the Way that seems to go on for way too long), I thought, "So what do you want, Sandy?" The answer: a perfect world. Tell her she's beautiful because in your heart you see her that way. Make the magic be there. Write the love poem I have always wanted. Be perfect.

But the magic is in the honesty of seeing her just as she is, saying so, and for all that--not nevertheless--calling her a vision.

You've got to do your time with someone and genuinely love her to say it right--and get her to climb in the car with you. You desire her for who she is and not for some idea of her that suits your ego. This is the love poem I have always wanted--but I didn't get it.

The love that can say that is the love that sticks around, takes the trash out, cleans the bathroom for you, and wants you with a desire that isn't afraid to leave the lights on as it holds you close and looks you in the eye.

I told a friend recently that I knew I needed to climb out of the Sandy boxes--my old ways of seeing and doing things that are comfortable for me but are also limiting (and, way too often, damaging). I realized this need for change when I was looking at my photos from my December trip to Topsail. I noticed that more often than not I zeroed in on what I wanted at the expense of the rest of the world. I robbed these bits and pieces of their context. They are perfect, but what good is that in the middle of nowhere? None at all.

This time around, I challenged myself to take in the big picture even as I focused on one pelican, one heron, one one-inch clam in a puddle.

Looking at those tightly cropped pictures from Christmastime, I realized that that closing in on what I like at the expense of everything else reflected the part of me that can be unforgiving. It's what it's supposed to be or it isn't--and if it isn't, straight to hell with it, and let's by all means turn up the damned heat.

Right now, I am not looking for the perfect world. I am in it. Right now, I want to make it good somehow. Make it real.

Skywatch: The Blue Through Hartford's Concrete Canyons

Skywatch Friday

Sorry for the Spam

I have been away for the past five days, and my email account has been idle. Twice I checked messages while away. Most recently, I checked yesterday, April 13, at supper time. All was well. However, today, Wednesday, I arrived home at 10 p.m. to discover my email account had been hacked and all the email addresses in my address book have received an ad for Viagra.

I am very sorry that persons in my email address book have received this junk.

Over the past hour, I have changed my password, and I have been deleting the addresses of all but a very few persons. Many professional contacts were in that address book, and I am very embarrassed by this intrusion.

Again, I am sorry.

Wordless Wednesday: Lily Got Here Early

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: Bare Big-footed Nike

This ferocious beauty designed by Evelyn Batchelder Longman and erected in 1927 or 1937, Nike, the Greek Goddess of War, commemorates the "valor and patriotism of the Hartford men who served their country" in the Spanish-American War of 1898-99. Her big feet keep her from falling over. (We don't know how Barbie does it.)

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Chase Those Magnolia Blossoms

On Easter Sunday, I went for a short walk in around Waterbury before church. At the corner of Church and Grand, I saw this beautiful magnolia in bloom outside the Chase Building, an architectural gem designed by Cass Gilbert.

One Single Impression: Voyeuristic

Sixth Grade Vocabulary Lesson

What do you think of when you think of comfort?

Comfort?
I think soft. Cozy.

Write that down.

He stares at me.

This is a look

I had once
Taken for
Insolence

Though I learned

Once

That this is the look of
A waiting mind.

Oh. Sorry. S - O - F - T.

I am ready for the next word
On his list, but--

And cozy, miss.
How you spell cozy?

I spell. He writes.
We make our way down a long list

That ends with assuring.

For the rest of the day
My mind will replay the tape
And I will learn again

The meaning of soft

As it came through

The searching eyes
Of a young man

Seeking the comfort

Of knowledge

In a classroom.

I think soft. Cozy.

S - O - F - T.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Queen Anne Bids You Good Night

Walking along the swamp the other day, I could smell the cherry blossoms that were still in the making, and I could see far and clear because the leaves are yet a long way from coming out. The dried relics of last summer stood in stark relief against the sky and all the impending life. Was nice.

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Down at the Swamp

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: My World is Yellow

The daffodils and forsythia have filled my world with yellow light from the ground up. I can't get enough.

My World Tuesday

Happy Easter!

Today's Flowers: Swamp-side Stairway to Heaven

These are some dusk shots of some soon-to-be cherry blossoms. They were some distance from me when I shot them. All kinds of natural debris came between me and them. We have had such warm weather, I will be sure to check them every day. There's nothing sweeter than these guys in full bloom.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Cognizant

Before I was with you

I was with God

My child said this to me

At four.

Other children

At four

Have said this to their mothers.

It is true:

Spirits travel.

Children know and remember,

And they try to tell us

When they chase butterflies

Follow turtles into the cool dark,

Roll down hills, twirl in the grass,

Fall down laughing in the sunshine.

So do I

Though I know nothing

Of God.

I know the butterflies,

Turtles, grass, and sunshine.

I know laughter.

It is the thread running

Through this needle

We call life.

My loose running stitches

Are sloppy.

I know it.

Right now these stitches are my best work.

They fasten me to this world

And to you

Loosely.

I know it.

What can I say.

I am not sorry.

I am laughing in the sunshine.

Be with me

And let it be.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Travelers to the Sky

The white tower is the Travelers Insurance building on Main Street in Hartford, Connecticut.

Skywatch Friday