Last week, my fourth-grade daughter played cello in an all-district orchestra concert at the high school. I climbed almost up to the top of the bleachers with my husband, son, mother-in-law, father-in-law and sister-in-law. There we sat, staring down at a basketball court filled young people sitting in folding chairs and holding instruments.
We listened as each grade level performed a couple of songs. Almost all the groups had played when something unusual happened to me. It felt like a panel of white light extended from my legs to my shoulders. I could see the room through the lens of that light. When I did, I was acutely aware of the family around me, especially my son sitting by my side. These people felt solid, strong and warm, like good fertile soil. The full auditorium felt alive as a landscape, and even though the audience was quiet, many bright songs floated in rich layers beneath the melodies of the orchestra.
The brilliance of it all was almost difficult for me to bear. I switched between seeing things as I usually do and seeing them through the lens of this bright panel of light. It was like wearing a pair of sunglasses, lifting them up to peek underneath the lenses, letting them fall back, and then doing it over again. After a while, this got too intense for me, and I was able to make myself stop, although I was still aware of the panel of light.
It seemed to me that the light came from the baby I am carrying. I think it was aware on some level of everything around us, and that is why I could see the room through two separate lenses. In some limited way, I was feeling what it felt.
For the last song of the concert, all the young people played the 1812 overture together. When hundreds of instruments chimed in for the familiar melody, it was so powerful that I started to cry. Then I felt terribly embarrassed about crying. I tried to stop. As I crunched down on myself to keep the tears inside, the panel of light reflected my embarassment.
“You don’t need to crunch down on yourself like that," I told it silently. “Be passionate and brave. I will try to show you how.” I took a deep breath and let the tears fall.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Squash and Salsa
I was reading about winter squash in the Fedco Seed catalogue. These writers add serious romance to their descriptions. After describing the Sweet Dumpling variety’s “inherent buttery richness and sweet-tangy taste,” the catalogue makes this recommendation: “To experience its sweet dry and memorably rich deep orange flesh, make sure your Dumpling is ripe.”
A dry, academic description of these varieties would cause me to light up as I imagined wild rambling vines with big sweet squash swelling into strange and wonderful shapes under a canopy of leaves. I would picture them emerging, steaming from my oven and then sitting on my dinner table like a symbol of everything in the world that makes me feel grateful.
This year, I want to try the Sibley variety of banana squash. It is apparently slate blue and grows to be a foot long. You aren't supposed to eat it right away though. You have to keep waiting for it throughout the winter as it dries and sweetens while sitting on a shelf. Finally, in January, it will come into its own, the catalog says. In the bleakest months of winter I imagine it will be like sunshine that I can embrace by eating it.
The Winnebago Indians apparently developed this variety, and then the Sibley family faithfully grew it for many generations, finally making its seeds more widely available. I felt thankful to these people and was picturing all these diverse generations enjoying this strange wonderful squash in the middle of winter.
As I read and daydreamed, one of my Zumba albums played Latin dance music in the background, and my favorite salsa song began. It starts with a syncopated riff, and then intricate tropical drums layer themselves over it. Horns join in, measured and powerful, and finally the vocalists top it off with another rhythm sung in percussive Spanish.
I had already been hovering near my capacity for delight, and this song pushed me over the edge. My face and ears grew hot, as they always do when I blush, but instead of heating up and then settling down, they kept feeling warmer. They heated up until they were so uncomfortable that I had to set the catalog down, leave the room, and splash my hands and face in cool water.
I returned to the Fedco catalog and the salsa music with a new sense of clarity: For reasons that only partially understand, we should have a large patch of squash this summer and that strange blue banana squash should be part of it.
A dry, academic description of these varieties would cause me to light up as I imagined wild rambling vines with big sweet squash swelling into strange and wonderful shapes under a canopy of leaves. I would picture them emerging, steaming from my oven and then sitting on my dinner table like a symbol of everything in the world that makes me feel grateful.
This year, I want to try the Sibley variety of banana squash. It is apparently slate blue and grows to be a foot long. You aren't supposed to eat it right away though. You have to keep waiting for it throughout the winter as it dries and sweetens while sitting on a shelf. Finally, in January, it will come into its own, the catalog says. In the bleakest months of winter I imagine it will be like sunshine that I can embrace by eating it.
The Winnebago Indians apparently developed this variety, and then the Sibley family faithfully grew it for many generations, finally making its seeds more widely available. I felt thankful to these people and was picturing all these diverse generations enjoying this strange wonderful squash in the middle of winter.
As I read and daydreamed, one of my Zumba albums played Latin dance music in the background, and my favorite salsa song began. It starts with a syncopated riff, and then intricate tropical drums layer themselves over it. Horns join in, measured and powerful, and finally the vocalists top it off with another rhythm sung in percussive Spanish.
I had already been hovering near my capacity for delight, and this song pushed me over the edge. My face and ears grew hot, as they always do when I blush, but instead of heating up and then settling down, they kept feeling warmer. They heated up until they were so uncomfortable that I had to set the catalog down, leave the room, and splash my hands and face in cool water.
I returned to the Fedco catalog and the salsa music with a new sense of clarity: For reasons that only partially understand, we should have a large patch of squash this summer and that strange blue banana squash should be part of it.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Waking up
On Tuesday, I woke up to a world that seemed more colorful than it had been when I went to bed the night before. A fog had lifted behind my eyes, and I could think clearly again. It was like waking up from several weeks of absence instead of waking up from a night of sleep. My first trimester officially ends just about now, so the hormone haze must be lifting.
On Wednesday, I was driving home, and my eyes were drawn to a steep little hill were some oak trees grew in a patch of wildness surrounded by farm fields. This has happened before, in other places. Groups of oak trees growing on undisturbed land force themselves into my attention. My head turns towards the trees, moved by the same reflex that makes a pedestrian suddenly turn to meet my eyes when I watch her silently from behind the wheel of my car. I do not understand this, but when I am drawn to look at the trees, I experience somber expansiveness. I experience grit, and I experience light. I experience something I can only liken to the sound of a voice, and every time my eyes are drawn to a hill full of oak trees, I hear the same aged voice again.
On Thursday morning, my daughter called from her bed, "I have not heard that birdsong all winter." By late morning, the trees outside my house had become a waterfall of chirps and trills. I cannot identify birds, but some of the songs reminded me of the redwinged blackbirds that lived in the cattails around my pond when I was a child. Their dark bodies in the tops of the trees looked like fat buds swelling out of the delicate fringe of branches. I counted 114 of them.
Throughout the day, I cast glances out the window at the woods across the street, aware that when I did this, I felt a sense of vulnerability. I think I am being asked to hold the woods in prayer during a tender time for them. This is unexpected. I have been wondering if I'm hearing my own vulnerable condition reflected by the woods. Maybe not, though. Maybe even the first stirring of spring feels like nausea, fog and uncertainty instead of a miracle.
On Wednesday, I was driving home, and my eyes were drawn to a steep little hill were some oak trees grew in a patch of wildness surrounded by farm fields. This has happened before, in other places. Groups of oak trees growing on undisturbed land force themselves into my attention. My head turns towards the trees, moved by the same reflex that makes a pedestrian suddenly turn to meet my eyes when I watch her silently from behind the wheel of my car. I do not understand this, but when I am drawn to look at the trees, I experience somber expansiveness. I experience grit, and I experience light. I experience something I can only liken to the sound of a voice, and every time my eyes are drawn to a hill full of oak trees, I hear the same aged voice again.
On Thursday morning, my daughter called from her bed, "I have not heard that birdsong all winter." By late morning, the trees outside my house had become a waterfall of chirps and trills. I cannot identify birds, but some of the songs reminded me of the redwinged blackbirds that lived in the cattails around my pond when I was a child. Their dark bodies in the tops of the trees looked like fat buds swelling out of the delicate fringe of branches. I counted 114 of them.
Throughout the day, I cast glances out the window at the woods across the street, aware that when I did this, I felt a sense of vulnerability. I think I am being asked to hold the woods in prayer during a tender time for them. This is unexpected. I have been wondering if I'm hearing my own vulnerable condition reflected by the woods. Maybe not, though. Maybe even the first stirring of spring feels like nausea, fog and uncertainty instead of a miracle.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
I love this town
For the last 10 months, I’ve been teaching Latin dance-based fitness classes at various places around town. My classes are popular among good-humored women who are 50 or older, and so when I teach, I feel like I’m sharing something joyful with extended family. We do Salsa and the Cumbia, and all sorts of dances that involve shaking our hips in a manner that is new to most folks in my class. I dance my heart out, trying to give everyone in the class permission to do the same.
A few days ago, one of my dancers said she was finally satisfied with a hip sway that she’d been trying for almost six months. Her sister, who is also in the class, asked her how she did it, and she replied that it was the same movement she used when a cow leaned against her and trapped her while she was milking. She demonstrated, thrusting her hips quickly from side to side and calling, “Move over!”
I feel like I’ve really come home.
A few days ago, one of my dancers said she was finally satisfied with a hip sway that she’d been trying for almost six months. Her sister, who is also in the class, asked her how she did it, and she replied that it was the same movement she used when a cow leaned against her and trapped her while she was milking. She demonstrated, thrusting her hips quickly from side to side and calling, “Move over!”
I feel like I’ve really come home.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Snowmobiles
Miniature “yield” signs barely peek over the snow on each side of our driveway. At the start of the season, they stood more than 3 feet tall on iron posts, but during the snowy winter, the ditch has filled until only the red and white triangles are visible. It looks as though the signs are tucked into the snow with one corner and secured that way.
The signs are for the snowmobiles that cruise down our ditches. I am not sure how many of the drivers actually see the yield signs, especially on Saturday nights. Little troops of them, approach single file in the dark, looking like bright points of light speeding towards us in the dark. They gather speed in the ditch then vault up the steep little slope that leads up to our driveway. They go airborne. They soar across our drive, thump down on the other side, and speed away down into the ditch in a fury of noise and headlights.
After it snows, a John Deere tractor with tracks instead of wheels laboriously drives down the ditch during the afternoon, dragging some kind of implement behind it to groom the trail. The implement levels the little walls of white that build up along the edges of our driveway. As the tractor heads back down the steep slope from our driveway into our ditch, the implement often goes askew. A patient looking man often hops out of the cab without a jacket, makes an adjustment to the implement, and dutifully pushes on towards the south.
In spite of the care that goes into preparing their trail, the snowmobiles often sound kind of cranky, like children complaining about a home-cooked dinner. When I am outside, I hear small engines whine back and forth in complaining phrases punctuated by silence. Sometimes they join in an undulating chorus that is almost like the howling of coyotes, except it is lower and less ethereal.
After listening to the howling snowmobiles all winter, I again heard the actual coyotes. I am still afraid of those animals, and I am still bitter because I suspect that they ate my beloved cat. When I heard them though, my heart jumped with gladness for the first time, and the eerie tones made me feel more alive. Before I could think, I spoke to the coyotes: “Thank God you're still here.”
The signs are for the snowmobiles that cruise down our ditches. I am not sure how many of the drivers actually see the yield signs, especially on Saturday nights. Little troops of them, approach single file in the dark, looking like bright points of light speeding towards us in the dark. They gather speed in the ditch then vault up the steep little slope that leads up to our driveway. They go airborne. They soar across our drive, thump down on the other side, and speed away down into the ditch in a fury of noise and headlights.
After it snows, a John Deere tractor with tracks instead of wheels laboriously drives down the ditch during the afternoon, dragging some kind of implement behind it to groom the trail. The implement levels the little walls of white that build up along the edges of our driveway. As the tractor heads back down the steep slope from our driveway into our ditch, the implement often goes askew. A patient looking man often hops out of the cab without a jacket, makes an adjustment to the implement, and dutifully pushes on towards the south.
In spite of the care that goes into preparing their trail, the snowmobiles often sound kind of cranky, like children complaining about a home-cooked dinner. When I am outside, I hear small engines whine back and forth in complaining phrases punctuated by silence. Sometimes they join in an undulating chorus that is almost like the howling of coyotes, except it is lower and less ethereal.
After listening to the howling snowmobiles all winter, I again heard the actual coyotes. I am still afraid of those animals, and I am still bitter because I suspect that they ate my beloved cat. When I heard them though, my heart jumped with gladness for the first time, and the eerie tones made me feel more alive. Before I could think, I spoke to the coyotes: “Thank God you're still here.”
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