October: Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Thoreau wrote that in winter, but it never fails to come to my mind in the fall.  Glory, glory, this beautiful season!  And may I just say how tickled I am by that photo!  It looks like my shadow is holding a bouquet of flowers in its left arm.  ♥

Oh, fall!  I just love it so much. 

After a couple months of collecting books and book character toys and dolls for the school, I finally walked over to the post office this afternoon to mail everything out.  As I arrived, I ran into my former fellow cook, Warren, from my last job.  Mike and I had just been talking about him last night, as something reminded me of the time a little girl, maybe four years old, came into the restaurant with her parents with a realistic-looking, almost taxidermy-like stuffed frog in her arms.  "She carries that everywhere," her mom explained as Warren and I smiled at the girl and her odd stuffed animal.  Warren asked the girl what the frog's name was, and she replied, "Tony."  :)  He and I made it back into the kitchen before we started laughing, but the more we kept repeating it to each other--"Tony!  Tony the Frog!"--the funnier it became.  Another laugh together on the sidewalk today, then, now seven years later.  ♥  Getting more books and characters to the kids made me happy.  Having a sweet conservation with the post office clerk as she weighed my first box made me happy.  ("You didn't CARRY this here, did you?"  ~  "Oh, yes.  I don't have a car, so I walk everything over here."  [This clerk always comments on how she sees me out on my walks all the time, but she didn't know until today that I walk my packages over too.]  ~  "Well, you GO, Girl!  You'll be building up those arm muscles!  And exercising your legs!  Well, it's all good!"  She makes me laugh, and it's always a treat to see her.)   On my second walk to the post office, a kind man raced to get ahead of me so he could hold the door as I juggled box number two.  That also made me happy. 

I treated myself to a chocolate almond bar on my way home.  As I stopped to snap a picture of the pumpkin display outside the store, another customer asked me if I knew of a good place where she could buy a milkshake.  That I actually had the answer to her question made me laugh--Hey!  Here's someone leaving the store with a chocolate bar and taking pictures of pumpkins!  She must know where good ice cream can be found!  And bingo!  She does!--and the woman seemed to see the humor in it too, which made it even better.  There are days when everyone seems to be on the same pages--the sky is a deep blue, the trees and sidewalks are autumn-awesome, it is seventy-five degrees outside, so let's all just be good to each other and enjoy this life--and today was one of those days.  And this was one of this fall's sweetest walks so far.  ♥

♥

And Then The Yellow Squash Smiled at Me

This sweet face stared up at me before being added to my salad this afternoon.  I had just finished weighing myself in the bathroom where I learned that I've now lost about fourteen pounds so far this summer, so I will take this smile as a sign of encouragement.  :)

The Dad Statue

My aunt Laurie found this ceramic Dad-lookalike at a yard sale awhile back and gave it to my parents last summer.  Mom keeps it in her garden, I can't help but laugh when I see it perched between plants like a distinguished gnome every time I'm home, and even Dad shakes his head at it and says, "I have to admit. . . ."  :)

Too funny.

♥

The Crayon Can

It is funny the material things we consider our treasures.  I imagine it is true for everyone from the poorest to the wealthiest amongst us that when asked which belongings we would save from a fire, we would answer with descriptions of our family photos, our love letters, our journals, and as many of those important-to-us-and-unrecognizable-as-riches-to-anyone-else items as we could gather:  Well-worn stuffed animals.  Stones.  Driftwood.  Handmade afghans.  A chipped tea cup.  Her berry-picking hat.  His soft blue  shirt.  When my grandparents were moved into a personal care home a few months before their deaths in 2001, this metal can that Grandma had always kept crayons in was one of the things I wanted from their house and was immediately relieved to know that I had saved. 

There is nothing obviously exceptional about either its exterior or contents.  It is a Folgers-brand coffee can with a handful of crayons, crayon-pieces, and crayon-niblets inside.  I don't remember ever seeing the can with the Folgers label still on it.  Like meals and decor and most everything else at my grandparents' house, the crayons were not fancy.  No glitter-filled crayons here, no crayons that change colors, and no leftover crayons from a highly-coveted 120-pack.  "Burnt sienna," "copper," and "Carnation pink" are as newfangled as these crayons' names get.  I learned this week that the stub of "green-blue" is a collector's item of sorts since the color was retired in 1990.  And because these things were also in the bottom of the can when I salvaged it from Papa and Grandma's house, I consider them equal parts of its sentimental wonder:  A rusted pair of scissors, a couple scraps of Crayola wrappers and once-clear tape--and a folded paper piece, which I would bet good money was from a cut-out heart.  

But the smell!  The crayon smell inside this can!  I take off the plastic lid, and the decades-old crayon scent works like the magic of an uncorked genie:  It is again a Sunday afternoon at Papa and Grandma's gray-shingled house outside of Punxsutawney, and while they, still safe and vibrant with good health, visit with my parents and aunts after dinner, I sprawl out on their moss-green living room carpet and color pictures.  Sometimes the scent takes me back to the late 1970s and early 1980s and I am doodling on the scrap paper Aunt Vee brings from her secretarial job to their house for just this purpose.  Other times, I open the can and find myself a little older, but with the crayons and scissors still around me, designing cards out of the pages of the Sharp's Penn wallpaper catalogs that Grandma saves.  Sometimes, of course, the scent just takes me back to childhood-in-general, and I can't tell what grade I'm in or whether I'm coloring a Christmas decoration or the blues and greens of water and land on a state map for a homework assignment.  Then there are the times the crayon can's scent sends me straight to Papa and Grandma's foyer to look for a not-yet-colored-in page of one of the few coloring books they keep under the crayon can on the tiered brass shelf beside their front door.  Or the times it takes me back to a summer week I am spending at Papa and Grandma's house, and my childhood Beagle is panting beside me while I draw his portrait on the couch.  There is so much going on inside this metal can, you see.  

I keep the crayon can on a hall shelf with other treasures, and it surely mystifies most who see it, dinged and unlabeled as it is.  As is true for us all, its magic lies inside.  Lately I find myself opening it more than usual as I pass by, breathing in deeply and eventually replacing the lid quite reluctantly, wishing its scent could keep me in its hold a little longer.  May I be granted one more day, please, when sticks of wax are all it takes to make my life colorful and pressing down too hard is my biggest concern?  Life has a way of demanding a wee bit more of us than that, though, and perhaps especially for those of us who began it in awe of these boxed rainbows, it is only natural that we sometimes grow frustrated as we figure out, over and over, how to grow up without losing that sense of enchantment.  No worries, Papa and Grandma, your girl is determined to get it right.  The crayon can holds not only the blue-green and green-blue of the wild seas I intend to learn to surf someday, but also the pinks and reds and yellow-oranges of the roses I want to grow around my home.  I will find the balance, I remind myself.  I will try not to worry as the years unfold.  And I will hope that my grandparents say an extra prayer every time they see me reaching for the lid.   

In Mom and Dad's Yard

Having returned from a brief trip home to Mom and Dad yesterday, I've already enjoyed a big part of my Christmas.  This week's "Merry Early Christmas!" visit, as it's come to be known in our family, at least according to my older niece and nephew's now-traditional greetings, was one of the sweetest ever.  I had so much fun--I think we all did--everyone seemed to be happy with the gifts they gave and received, my newest niece was even tinier than she'd looked in pictures and just as cuddly as I'd imagined and spent a good deal of our meeting asleep snuggled into my shoulder, I did some cupcake-decorating for Mom, enjoyed a lasagna dinner with my parents, brothers, and their wives and children Tuesday evening, and exchanged gifts with my parents while watching the Waltons' Homecoming movie--one of my all-time favorites--until midnight Tuesday night.  Mom and I went to bed at two in the morning then got up three hours later to head to the bus station with Dad.  I said "I love you" to him at the same moment he said "A short Christmas is better than none," and I cried while I watched his and Mom's car pull out of the bus station parking lot a minute later.  All the snow--more than a foot--in their yard added to the magic of this Christmas.  Temperatures are warming up--it's supposed to be in the lower sixties here on Saturday--but while I was home, it was a winter wonderland, and after I'd finished wrapping the gifts I'd had shipped to my parents' address and before my brothers and their families arrived for dinner, I borrowed a pair of Dad's boots and clomped around the yard taking pictures. 

Mom always decorates the back steps.  The only shame of heading outside to take snow pictures Tuesday afternoon was that doing so temporarily scared away all the birds that come to my parents' trees and feeders.  Dad and I both love Chicadees best of all, and we spend a good amount of any wintertime visit standing still at the sliding glass door or one of the kitchen windows watching them flit around.  Chubby loves, they're such dear little birds. 

These are the steps I kept checking and worrying over before baby Bianca was carried up them for this first visit to my parents' house Tuesday.  Dad had kept an eye on them too, and I think they and the yard were more thick-with-snow than slippery. 

The Rhododendrons had had the sweetest cone-shaped piles of snow on top of each leaf cluster Tuesday morning, but by the time I ventured outside, the snow had melted some.  Off and on all Tuesday morning and afternoon, Mom, Dad, and I would call out bird updates to each other as we watched this feeder and a few others that can be seen from the kitchen.  "The female Cardinal's back!"  ♥  ". . .Look to your right"--"I'm still not seeing her"--"She's not the red one, the males are red"--"I know that, Dad, but I still don't--Oh, I see her now, yeah."  ♥  "Look how CHUBBY this one is!  Oh, I love Chicadees!  They look like little wind-up toys!"  ♥  "Mom, move slowly, but look at this Dove.  It's HUGE.  I thought a CAT had jumped into the tree."  ♥  "And there's that nasty Blue Jay, scaring them all away." --"It's so pretty, though, Dad."  ♥  On and on, all day Tuesday until it grew dark out. 

At our last apartment, Mike and I saw birds in our yard and on our fire escape all the time, but not so in this one--a couple Gold Finches spent some time in a tree out back months ago, and that was the last memorable bird-sighting--so it is always a joy to watch the trees and feeders while at my parents' house. 

Magical.  ♥

Such a gorgeous snow. 

One of my parents' neighbors kindly plowed their long driveway while I was trudging around taking these pictures. 

I stepped off to the side to get out of his way and ended up in snow almost to my knees, but oh!  It was all so beautiful. 

The Sumac trees out back are lovely all year long, but their drupes show so vividly against the winter sky. 

I think gardens are every bit as beautiful in winter.  It's easier to admire the tree branches' shapes and the flowers' forms when they're bare but for the snow.

I love winter skies.  Christmas decorations and cards always seem to feature greenery, but it's the bare trees that really say winter to me.  This hill is across the road from my parents' front yard and their view from the living room and my former bedroom. 

'Amazing that this all will have melted in a few day's time. 

From inside the living room--

--and looking toward my former bedroom's windows.

And back inside and looking out the kitchen window before beginning cupcake-decorating and table-setting. 

The one snow picture I didn't get was one I shared with my parents after I came inside:  While the three of us watched the birds for a few moments from inside the sliding glass door, the sun began to set over the sparkling field behind their house, and its last hurrah was to make it and the trees around it glow in the day's first--and last--truly golden light.  For a minute before my brief visit home's Tuesday afternoon became Tuesday evening, the entire backyard was a shining soft yellow, and those moments, while Mom, Dad, and I watched, standing together on the sheets of newspaper beside my dripping borrowed boots, was one of my favorites from this sweet visit.  Photographers call this the "golden hour" or "magic hour."  And it was.  It really was.  Merry Early Christmas, indeed.  ♥

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars. ~ Henry Van Dyke

A bright 

and beautiful

walk home from work this morning.

Now the tree branches are dipping and bowing as the next thunderstorm begins and I get ready to climb into bed. 

Unconquerable

Today is the 16th anniversary of my best friend's death. Last year March 1st passed by almost unnoticed by me, making me think that maybe future March 1sts would be easier than they used to be, but this year the date is hurting my heart the way it used to, and I find myself reliving the play-by-play of the "original" March 1st. Likewise, the one-year mark, back in 1996, actually wasn't too bad--I wrote Sommer a letter in my journal and really felt okay--but the second anniversary found me feeling abandoned by her and again brokenhearted by the loss. Such is grief.

That second anniversary, March 1st of 1997, I was home from college for the weekend. I remember complaining off and on all day to my mom that I hadn't felt much of a connection to Sommer lately and that that was making this day even harder. I had recently transferred to a new college, after having completed my freshman year elsewhere, and I had yet to make any friends at school. It didn't seem like too much to ask, I'm sure I pointed out to Mom, for Sommer to let me know that she was still around me. I had been so lonely that fall and winter, watching seemingly every other student on campus hanging out with their own best friend. So maybe today, two years after her death, there could be a sign of some kind: A whiff of her perfume, a favorite song of ours on the radio, a sense of her hand on my shoulder--Anything.

Sommer had come through for me before since passing over, after all. One afternoon in my high school Spanish class in those first few soul-shattering weeks after she had died--and mere minutes after my teacher had thoughtfully asked how I was doing and if things were getting any easier and I had replied, trying not to cry in front of him, that no, sorry, I thought things were actually getting harder and worse--I wearily flipped open a book of Spanish literature I had been assigned in preparation for my end-of-year AP exams only to find myself looking down at a Pablo Neruda poem titled "The Dead Woman":

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall go on living.
I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.
I shall go on living.
For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.
Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.
When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.
No, forgive me.

If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but

I shall go on living,
because above all things
you wanted me unconquerable,

and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.
 

Upon reading it, I got up from my desk and carried the book back to my teacher, pointing at the poem with shaky hands. "Can you believe this?" I tried to whisper, since it was silent reading time. "Look at this! Have you seen this before?!" He quickly scanned the poem and nodded at me, understanding what I was and wasn't saying. By the end of the class period, I had memorized the poem and its beautiful lines had become my mantras. "If you are not living, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died. . .But I shall go on living. . .You wanted me unconquerable."
 

But two years later, March 1st of 1997 was passing without a sign from Sommer, and long after my parents and younger brother had gone to bed that night, I finally gave up on it and decided to turn in too.  I stayed in bed for awhile but could tell I wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon, so I grabbed a blanket and tiptoed back downstairs to watch TV in the living room. I wasn't much of a TV-watcher then--I haven't been since I was a kid--and I didn't have a TV in my dorm room back at college either, so I had no idea what was on, and I didn't care. The first channel I stopped at was showing a film I hadn't seen or even heard of before, and I soon found that it wasn't by accident that it was on: The movie was Truly, Madly, Deeply.  In it, Nina is grieving the recent death of her boyfriend, Jamie, and Jamie returns to her both to show her that he's still there for her and to help her move on with her life. This is it! My sign! I wanted to scream upstairs to my mom, but the rest of the house was asleep. I settled back onto the couch cuddled up in my blanket, stunned.

And then I was yet more stunned to hear Spanish being spoken in the movie, and to hear Nina saying to Jamie, "I know this poem." As I sat and watched, with a chill moving through me, Jamie nodded back at her, and continued reciting the poem's verses in Spanish while Nina translated them back to him in English.  I knew this poem too:

"If you are not living,
If you, my beloved, my love,if you have died. . .
But I shall go on living."

My spine tingled. This is Sommer. Sommer is here. Sommer is here! This time, I didn't even want to call upstairs to Mom. This was my time with my friend. As loyal as ever, she had not forgotten me, she had not abandoned me, and she had not forgotten how to make me feel better. After the movie ended, I remained on the couch in the dark silent living room, just thinking. Had I come back downstairs to watch TV even five minutes later, I'd have missed it. Before heading back upstairs to go to bed later, I would tear that day's TV schedule page from the newspaper to save as a reminder to myself: Death does not end relationships. All those I've loved and lost are still with me. Love is eternal. And I shall go on living. ♥

(The Spanish begins around the 3:25-mark.)

 

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~ Eden Philpotts

Before being hired for the position I've had the past six months, I spent two and a half years working as a cook. Although I love to cook and bake, the job was not my dream job, and although I knew I was still working toward my goals and doing the best I could, there were days it was all just maddeningly frustrating. Since it takes awhile to realize a pattern is, in fact, a pattern, I don't remember when I first started noticing this, but at some point, I began seeing hearts at work: Heart-shaped soap splashes by the kitchen sink's, one heart-shaped potato chip on the edge of the deep fryer while the rest of the chips had made it into the fry-baskets, a heart-shaped spill of maraschino cherry juice. My supervisor would call out from the walk-in freezer that a container of gravy had been knocked off of the shelf and would I please clean it up, and I would be greeted by a heart-shaped gravy spill before me. I would bend down to pull a red onion from their box and find instead a heart-shaped piece of Romaine lettuce on the floor in front of me. The other cook would bump his hand into my cup and my iced tea would slosh onto the table in a heart-shaped puddle. The daily sweeping and mopping of the restaurant would almost always find me reaching for my cell phone to take a quick picture of the heart-crumb or stain that was suddenly stubbornly stuck to the floor. If one of the hundreds of red potatoes was heart-shaped, it would be I and not the other cook on my shift who would blindly grab it from the bin. 

These moments sound like stretches of the imagination, but they happened so frequently, and only at work, and even then, only when I wasn't expecting them. If I looked down at the counter in deliberate search for anything heart-shaped before beginning to make a waffle for someone, I wouldn't see a thing, but two minutes later when the waffle iron would beep, I'd start to scrape the baked-on batter from around the iron's edges only to find that some had already baked into a perfect heart. I'm sure I was Cliff Claven-ish enough to show my coworkers the heart-shaped potato and chip, but I didn't tell anyone at work just how often this happened to me.



 
I began to believe at some point that all these hearts were not "just" hearts. Granted, they were not visions of saints in toast, but as crazy as it may sound to others--and as it did to Mike when I'd mention over supper that day's latest heart-discoveries--the hearts began to feel like signs to me. All those days working in a restaurant kitchen when I ached to be somewhere else doing something else, just when I thought I'd flip out and scream, I'd be "tagged" again and a heart-shaped bacon-piece would be left over on a guest's plate like a calling card from the universe and bring me some small comfort. It is silly and a bit sad, really, the things that help get us through the hard times, but whatever works, I say. Maybe the hearts were signs and maybe they weren't, but eventually I decided that every time I found one from then on, I'd take a deep breath, thank God that I had a job at all, and recommit to the goals of hanging in there and being patient while working toward something else.
 
What ended up being two and a half years passed, as time always does, and last May, the phone call requesting an interview for my current position finally came. Call me crazy, and point out that I reaaaaaaaally could have used some time off, but I take my magic where I can find it and am grateful for it when I do. I haven't noticed any hearts--edible, spilled, or otherwise--in ages. I found them when I needed them, and I am thankful.