Stark angles
Dark windows No color Only black and white and gray. Nothing growing Nothing green Trash bags on the sidewalk Nothing to see here. No homeless people No down and out With no place to go They’re invisible. The sidewalks are clean No debris No cigarette butts No sign of life. Just two trash bags Neatly tied Hiding all signs of life Inside. My animals misbehave
The cat goes on a rampage A chicken pecks me because I didn’t give her worms I am not raising animal children My husband touches cupboard doors with sticky fingers And leaves dirty marks He doesn’t see them I clean them up He’s often late He doesn’t consult a watch The passage of time is meaningless When he’s doing something else He’s messy He doesn’t make the bed He doesn’t tell my I’m pretty Or compliment my cooking But he notices when my car is dirty And washes it And vacuums it And doesn’t say anything He notices my gas tank is nearly empty and fills it With the kind of gas my car likes When he could be doing other things And doesn’t say anything He cuts roses and lavender and other blooms when he is puttering in the garden And brings them inside And puts them in a vase And doesn’t say anything He puts cards on my desk or on the kitchen counter A countdown In advance of events And doesn’t say anything He buys me earrings because he knows I like them He hid a diamond ring in the Christmas tree And waited for me to find it And didn’t say anything He does so many things for so many people And doesn’t think of himself Because he wants to give So he doesn’t say anything He’s messy He’s late He’s thoughtful He’s perfect The photo on the home page is my yard and koi pond. These are my fish.
Louis is a bit myopic. His eyes look slightly out of focus. I wonder if one can fit a koi with glasses. But, he can see well enough to swim and to spot me when I walk by with food. Louis is gold and white. He was named for Louis XIV, the Sun King. He’s the oldest fish in the pond, but he’s small. And, he’s a glutton. He’s always the first in line for food. Shadow Fish is very handsome. He’s gray on top and bright orange on the bottom. He’s also very cautious. He swims below the other koi, watching to see what I will do. He hasn’t trusted me since I thought he had a fish disease called Ich. I caught him and put him in a bucket with fish medicine. He was not amused. And he hasn’t forgotten. Ghost Fish is Shadow Fish’s mate. She’s light gray and has a girlish koi figure. She likes to flirt with Shadow Fish. She also likes swimming at the surface of the pond. I worry about her getting sunburned. Do fish get sunburned? Victor-Victoria has a large red V on his/her back. We aren’t sure whether he/she is male or female. I’m going with male. He knows he’s handsome. He swims with authority. F Minor is the biggest fish in the pond. She’s named F Minor because she has scales… and she’s a fish. Not all koi have scales. Her buddy, F Major, died last year. I hate it when koi die. We have a koi graveyard in our garden. F Minor isn’t the first in line for food, but she eats the most. She makes me think of an old woman in an easy chair greedily gobbling chocolates. Antonia used to be Antonio, before we figured out she is female. She’s named Antonia because she wears a black mask and when we bought her I had just seen Antonio Banderas in Zorro. Sorry Antonio. She’s the old lady in the pond and I think she’s the one who spawned last spring. Then we have the Three Musketeers. They’re babies. We added them to the pond last summer. Tigre is orange with black stripes. Skelator is yellow with a black skeleton on his back. Horton is orange with black – Giants baseball colors. He’s named after a Tigers baseball player from the 1960s. And finally, there’s the goldfish. Paige won him at a fair 12 years ago. She dumped him in the pond, and we didn’t see him for a year. How long to goldfish live? He’s bloated and misshapen. He swims along beside the koi but doesn’t mingle. He isn’t one of them. I root for him to keep going. I wish I remembered his name. The drone of a lawn mower on a summer morning
When I’m just beginning to wake. The happy chirp of a hummingbird. The meadow lark’s song. The length of the cat stretched across the bed. How can he be that long? The rustle of leaves in the gentle breeze. The spicy-sweet smell of sweet peas. The earthy smell of newly harvested lettuce The peppery smell of ripe tomatoes. The citrusy smell of fresh basil. The picnic basket is packed. The tangy smell of the ocean. The constant roar of the waves. The gritty feel of sand between my toes. The dance and call of sea gulls before they try to steal my lunch. The woodsy smell of a newly lit grill. The sizzling sound of meat being cooked. The hunger pangs that come from nowhere. I didn’t know I was hungry until I smelled the cooking meat. Wet towels. Sandy children. Sunburned cheeks. The warm linty scent of clothes in the dryer. Boneless babies. That’s what my husband calls them. Children who have been having fun all day. And are done. The small flying insect that drowned in the glass of wine I poured in anticipation Of sitting in the garden And watching the sun go down. The waves of fog spilling over the coastal hills. The breeze cools the air. Everybody is hungry again. There’s pie. Night is falling. The crows fly to their nests. The stars start to twinkle. I am happy to be home. I don’t know why I find something romantic and charming in the image of a woman sitting in the shade of a porch shelling peas. I don’t even like peas.
It has something to do with hot days and the smell of old wood in a hot house. Comfort. Cold ice cream. A swim in a cool lake. I never had these experiences. I don’t know why they speak to me. But every time we have a heat wave and my old house smells hot, I think about sitting on a shaded porch on a swing shelling peas. The fan drones behind me as I sit in my office, writing. I prepped dinner, but my husband got stuck at work. Food is on hold. That’s fine with me. It is too hot for hot food. The pasta with steak and veggies will taste just fine cold. Better cold than hot today. I harvested snow peas today, as I did yesterday and the day before. It is too hot for snow peas. The plants are suffering. I sliced them and sautéed the snow peas with mushrooms and tomatoes in olive oil and butter. They’re sitting in the skillet waiting. The tomatoes aren’t growing as they should. I was happy when they sprouted from seeds so quickly. I babied them but I knew they wouldn’t grow until it got warm. Cold skipped to hot. It is too hot for anything to grow. The heat shuts down photosynthesis and water absorption. Plants wait for cooler temperatures. They don’t produce leaves or flowers or fruit when they are shocked with such immediate hot weather. That ‘s what I remember from by botanist days. My mother used to cook canned peas. She said she like peas. But she boiled them to a slushy khaki mess. She can’t have really liked peas. I couldn’t swallow those slushy things she called peas. I sat at the dinner table more than once long after everyone else left because she said I had to eat my peas. I smeared butter on saltine crackers and ate those instead. That’s my experience with peas. I woke up early this morning. The sun was just coming up, sending pearly light peeking through the shades.
It wasn’t the sun that woke me. It was the cat. “Feed Me! Get up lazy person! The sun is up and it’s time for breakfast.” I opened my eyes and told the cat to talk with Marc. He’s the breakfast chef. I do dinner. Then I pulled the covers back over my head and tried to go back to sleep. “Feed Me!” “Now!” Marc was already downstairs. Breakfast was already in the cat’s dish. But the cat didn’t care. He didn’t want me to sleep when he had needs to be met. He wanted an escort to his food dish. He has people. We don’t have a cat. I threw off the covers and swung my legs over side of the bed, working my way towards being awake enough to stumble down the stairs to the kitchen. “Hurry Up! I’m Hungry!” Paws batted at my ankles. “I’m up. I’m coming. I’ve only got 2 legs. You’ve got 4. You’re faster than me.” The cat circled my legs. “Don’t trip me.” We paraded downstairs, the cat in the lead. “Look,” I bent over and pointed to his food, “breakfast awaits.” “I changed my mind. I don’t want food. I want to go out.” I opened the back door. The cat streaked out. Crows cawed. Car doors slammed. An early morning bee buzzed by. Dew sparkled on the roses. The mist was already burning off in the morning sun. A new day. A satisfied cat – for the moment. Everything I read teaches me something. To be honest, sometimes it is a lesson not to waste time with mindless or inane writing. (Although sometimes that type of writing is a good escape.) More often, I take away new ways of thinking, notice a style of writing I like, or learn something about a person or a subject.
I am reading “Great Small Things” by Jodi Picoult. This isn’t the first of her novels I’ve read. She takes her characters on painful journeys of awareness with amazing gentleness. With this book, I appreciate the gentleness. It’s a hard book to read. I won’t give away any spoilers, but on the surface, the book is about a black woman who is accused of killing an infant and is put on trial for murder. More importantly, it is a book about racism, discovery, injustice, and the complications that occur when we judge people because of appearance or beliefs. The world is not black and white. That is not a reference to skin color. It is a reference to justice and equity. This book makes me wonder if I am an inadvertent racist. That thought disturbs me. A Lot. Scales have fallen from my eyes. I grew up in a mostly white community. When I was young, I played with kids from the Native American reservation near our home. I played with kids from migrant farming families who traveled from Mexico to pick my uncle’s strawberries. I wasn’t aware of the differences between us. I was a kid. But my parents were aware of the differences and made sure to keep a distance. I just didn’t realize it. I wasn’t aware. I lived in a house that my father built. Those girls I played with lived in reservation buildings or dormitories provided by my uncle. My family didn’t have a lot of money, but they had less. I didn’t care about material things when I was a kid. I cared about playing and imagining and being outside. I thought everyone was equal. But, I was naïve. I wasn’t aware. When I got older, I was harassed because I am a woman. I was told I wasn’t qualified for a job because it would be distracting to the men working there. That was a huge insult and an injustice, but it is nothing compared to being told you can’t work somewhere or live somewhere because of the color of your skin or the way you worship or who you love. Because of who you are. I am of Scandinavian descent. My skin is light. I have never been judged because of the color of my skin. I have never been afraid that someone would shoot me on sight or haul me off to jail because they assumed I did something wrong because of how I look. I can’t know how that feels because I’ve never been black or brown or male. But, until now I haven’t thought much about white privilege. My family has struggles, and some of them are very difficult. I expect people to help when needed. Some people can’t expect help. Jodi Picoult has made me face my white privilege. The only thing I can say to her is THANK YOU. Can we end distrust of those who are different from us? Can we accept and appreciate the differences between us? Is there hope for us? I wish we could be color blind, religion blind, love blind. That isn’t realistic. We haven’t walked in each other’s shoes. But, we each have one heart. We all have one heart. Mom. Creative, imaginative, attractive, sexy. She had a great sense of humor. A cousin described here once as a deer. Beautiful, but wary. It was an apt description. Mom gave me my love of art, beauty, music, books. She loved to read. I grew up being read to, sung to, danced with, introduced to classical music, nurtured, and – most of all, loved. What can be better?
I miss Mom. But she lives in my heart and I still feel her arms around me when I need them. Grandmothers. I have a child’s memory of my grandmothers. I loved and adored my paternal grandmother. She was strong, brave, resilient. She loved to garden. She would don my grandfather’s old jeans and work shirt, pull on gloves and a hat, and work in the dirt. Then she would clean up, bake, and serve delicious cakes and cookies on elegant serving dishes. Her elegance was real, not affected. She would have laughed at being called elegant. I thought she could do anything. She had to. She homesteaded as a young married woman, traveled west in a Model A truck in the 1930s, and worked hard all her life. I don’t think she had a clue how much influence she had – and still has - on me. I always felt loved and accepted by my maternal grandmother. She smelled like roses. She wore face powder, but no jewelry other than her gold wedding band. She wore her white hair in a bun. She dressed in flowered chiffon. She didn’t flinch when Marc and I rode up to her house, unannounced, on a motorcycle after camping for two days. She saw me, hugged me, and invited us in. She showed me to her bathroom where I could shower. Her second husband Henry (my grandfather’s brother – they married after my grandfather died.) was just a welcoming. He took Marc down to his shop in the basement and they talked about building stuff for hours. I never felt judged. I felt loved. Embraced with roses. I am a mom. It’s a hard job. The hardest imaginable. But with the greatest rewards. I love my daughters and admire them. They have both become amazing women. I think about the morning each was born. Looking into their eyes and wondering who they were. My first daughter frightened me. I was not prepared to be a mom, and she had – has – deep blue eyes that see everything. She’s an old soul. I am so happy to be her mom. My youngest has a bright soul. She was born dancing and bringing joy. I am so happy to be her mom. And, I have 5 grandkids. Wow. I love them all. They live too far away for me to be part of their daily lives. And, I didn’t know 4 of them until they were kids. I wish I could have known them all as babies. Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Grandmas. Happy Mother’s Day. I am haunted by oranges. I have oranges in a bowl in my kitchen, and blood orange ice cubes in the freezer. They may be behind this orange insanity. Those blood orange ice cubes can call all they want. I can ignore them. I am saving them for future recipes.
A couple weeks ago I made a very involved flour-less orange cake that I love. The recipe requires simmering whole oranges, skin on, for two hours and then whirring them in the food processor – skin and all until they look like pumpkin puree but smell like oranges. That part’s a little disconcerting. The recipe calls for almond meal and lots of eggs and it is cooked in a spring form pan. Involved, but delicious. Especially a couple of days later when the slightly bitter flavor dissipates, and the cake is moist and yummy with a cup of coffee. On the day I bake the cake, I serve it with chocolate sauce – a fantastic combination. Joy of Cooking has a good recipe for a chocolate Cockaigne sauce that is sublime. Last weekend, I made a very involved orange-chicken salad to take to a party. The first step is to Supreme 3 oranges, squeeze out as much juice as possible from the membranes, and save the orange segments to top the salad. You poach the chicken in the orange juice, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and more ingredients. Then let it cool. Then shred it. Then combine it with shredded cabbage, red bells, scallions, cilantro and almonds. I Supremed, squeezed, cooked, shredded, and sliced for 3 hours to make this salad. It was delicious. Was it worth 3 hours of effort? I don’t know. Cooking is grounding for me. Healing. But involved recipes remind me that sophisticated, complicated flavors require much more effort than most of us realize. I have fun pretending to be a sophisticated cook, creating symphonic, operatic meals. But to be honest, I much prefer cooking simply and letting fresh, local ingredients sing their songs. Simple melodies. Folk songs. Satisfying songs. Delicious songs, like the song of the orange I am going to peel and eat right now. Do clothes make us who we are?
Are clothes important to our image? Or do they give us something to hide behind? But why do we hide? Why do we hide behind how we dress? Is it really so hard for us to love ourselves for who we are? Naked, we are stripped to our essence. Our true selves. Nothing to hide. Naked, we aren’t dressed for success. No faking it until we make it. We are just who we are. Naked, we present no pretty package Neatly pressed or cozily wrinkled. No colors that match our eyes. Naked, we can’t hide. It takes courage to show ourselves as who we are. Being naked in public is the stuff of nightmares. Clothed we can hide Behind a beautiful sweater Or a favorite pair of jeans. But what are we hiding? And why do we hide? Are we hiding from ourselves? Is it really so hard for us love ourselves for who we are? |
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