Late February Haiku

thousandth dim snow day,

ever-empty cat perch.

pink petals, come soon!

And End of October

Six hours after beginning to write this, I remain stymied by it.  Mike's mom called Saturday morning to ask if we were okay.  Mike was still in bed when she called so had no idea what she meant.  Had we both been up and ready to go out to breakfast an hour sooner, we would have been on the street of the synagogue shooting while it was happening.  This is our Saturday routine.  The synagogue's street is one I regularly do my long walks on so has been pictured in many of my "out on my walks" posts here over the years.  It is where I take almost all of my fall leaves photos.  It intersects with my beloved cobblestone hill, aka The City Street We'd Love to Live on Someday.  Our Dunkin' Donuts is two blocks away from the synagogue.  The theater where we just watched A Star Is Born is also nearby.  (A surreal sight is the movie theater, drugstore, public library, and ice cream place in the background of news coverage of a neighborhood vigil.)  The yard of the little stone ranch house across from it is planted every summer by what seems like a million dollars' worth of rainbow-hued flowers.  (Another surreal sight has been that of a CNN anchor reporting in front of it.)  The survivors of the shooting were taken to the same hospital where Mike's dad died a few years ago.  Some of the victims' funerals were held across the street from our apartment.  Coworkers and neighbors have more direct connections to the synagogue and are suffering more significant losses than these this week, of course.  For us all, this hits home.  I took my little gingham ribbon-wrapped bouquet of orange roses to the synagogue this morning, to honor this neighborhood, its first responders, the lives changed in it, and the lives lost in it. 

One coworker took her kindergartner twins shopping Saturday afternoon and was asked by one if someone would shoot at them while they were out.  Another coworker reported that her own synagogue was protected by officers in two strategically-parked police cars Saturday. . . .How many other cities have been through all this before, of course--the sidewalk memorials, the news coverage, the outrage, the questioning, the seeing-one's-own-town-in-and-on-the-news, the traffic detours, the funeral-after-funeral-after-funeral, the "victims identified" horror, the "victims' stories" sadness, the President's visit, the calls for donations, the announcements of blood drives, the defiant t-shirt slogans and signs, the city-wide vow to come back from it even better. . . .We are far from the first to go through this.  I lived in Baltimore, an hour from D.C., during the September 11th attacks and had lived in New York City the September before, and the heaviness felt here this week brings back the memories of that time.  It is our turn here now.  I don't understand hatred.  And I see this week that I don't understand it any better now than I did seventeen autumns ago. 

Meanwhile, it was a perfect fall morning here, with all the sunshine making the trees glow.  

The leaves are beginning to change color, and the sidewalks are every day taking on more of that scattered-jewels look I love. 

My sweet cobblestone hill is coming into its fall glory-- 

--even though police tape and memorial stars now line one end of it. 

This beauty and these signs of solidarity have to be my focus this week, though.  Forget the police tape, Val.  All the kindnesses will carry us.  A Boston hospital had a huge pastry order delivered to a local hospital this weekend with a note that read "We stand with you. . .Stay strong."  A neighborhood collection was taken up to have a bunch of pizzas delivered to the local police and fire stations located three blocks from the synagogue.  Local museums and attractions have offered free admission for families this past week.  "Need a friend or a shoulder?" our breakfast spot's sidewalk placard read by Saturday afternoon, I later learned.  "Coffee is on us today."  May I collect goodness and do my own part to spread it, all my days. 

God, make me brave for life: oh, braver than this.
Let me straighten after pain, as a tree straightens after the rain,
Shining and lovely again. . .

God, make me brave, life brings such blinding things.
Help me to keep my sight; help me to see aright
That out of doubt comes light.

-Author unknown, from Prayers for Healing, edited by Maggie Oman

♥

~Sit. Feast on your life.~ Derek Walcott

At 39, Val realized she didn't have to save the treat of edible flowers just for others.  ♥

On August Walks

 

 

 

I've been walking in the late afternoon and early evening when shadows are long.  Heading out first thing in the morning feels so much better but is too hard to coordinate with my work schedule, so I instead slather myself in SPF 100 sunscreen and hope for low-humidity hours between 2-6 pm. And no matter how disgustingly slick from sunscreen and sweat I am each time I arrive back at the apartment, the walks themselves are always therapeutic.  They are precious minutes of thinking, of praying--Grandma once shared the poem "Out in the Fields with God" with me, and it comes to mind during my walks--of telling people how pretty their dogs are as they bound past me, of admiring gardens and shadows and rock walls and faster-moving and better-looking bodies, of encouraging children as they wobble along on bikes as their parents jog along behind them, of breathing deeply, of being grateful for my health (because no matter how much slower or older I am than the Super! Toned! Twenty-Somethings! I am healthy enough to walk, period, and that's worth saying "Thank You" for), of wishing Mom were here with me so I could show her this sweet cottage of a home I'm hoping to get a good picture of without being spotted and shooed away by its owner; of remembering that between the tremors and other Lyme issues, Mom couldn't walk at this pace or for this long anymore anyway--and so then I just carry on a conversation with her in my head as I walk, the way I carry on with Papa and Grandma and Sommer and other loved ones I have to be content to hold in my heart since hand-in-hand is no longer an option, and the entire walk feels that much more like a prayer.  It's the Ivy that makes this house so sweet.  It's the dome shape that does it for me, Vally.  I love the Ivy, though.  Aunt Laurie had those beautiful bay windows, remember?  Yes.  I loved that house.  Love, love, love.  One of my college professors once told me that he thinks one of the keys to life is to be passionately in love with something every day of your life--a person, an idea, a cause, a flower, the moon, the ocean, a poem, a book, a movie, just something.  There is wisdom in that.  My younger brother and I would play a game of my invention on even car trips when we were kids:  We would have to come up with something--at least one thing--we liked about each house or yard we passed.  There we would sit, half-turned in the backseat of my parents' car, straining to take in the sights of fast enough to find that hurry!-just-one-thing! before it would pass from view.  Oh, yes, this is a Val game, for sure!  But I play it even now when I'm a few years shy of forty, and I hear us wildly laughing as little kids again as I find myself shouting out "That snowball bush!  That rock wall!  The way the sunlight's hitting that chair on their front porch!  That DOG!!!" in my head as I walk each afternoon.  And this week I think of dear Robin Williams and some of my own lowest lows, having struggled with depression for two-thirds of my life now, and I say prayers for him too as I huff and puff up the heights of hills and stairs.  Each return to the apartment sees me marking my mileage onto a calendar in the bathroom and awarding myself a pink "Thank You!" sticker for that day's walk.  "Who exactly are you thanking with these stickers?  Most people would do gold stars," Mike teased me the other night as I proudly slapped a new one into place.  But the "Thank You!" stickers suit me, and I enjoy seeing the strips of them I keep on the desk for this post-walk ritual.  I am thanking God, of course, and I am thanking myself for making the effort.  I am thanking neighbors who plant pretty flowers for no reason other than to add a little more beauty to life.  I am thanking animals and birds for existing.  I am thanking the children for being children--and their parents for giving them good childhood memories.  I am thanking my own parents and brothers and grandparents and friends for being there, period, and for all the love.  Oh, love!  Love, love, love!  I come back to it and come back for it and come back with it, over and over, day in and day out, and that is my biggest "Thank You!" of all.  

From Februaries Past

This is one of my most-treasured photos and was taken at my grandparents' house in February 1998 after a special dinner that Grandma had made to celebrate her and my two February-born brothers' birthdays. My family was getting ready to leave, but I insisted on a few pictures, and thank God: I love that this moment was captured on film. I was a few months shy of 21 here, and Papa had turned 86 a few months prior. I recently reread something I'd written in my journal years ago in which I mentioned that for awhile after Papa died in 2001, I would sleep holding one of his old shirts. I had forgotten that. I do remember working off and on for years on a poem about him that I began months before he died and never was able to finish to my satisfaction. "You were my first hero, Papa," it began. "...The first man I ever said 'I love you' to." Eleven Februaries later, those are still all the things that first come to mind when I think of my grandfather: We made each other laugh, I was devastated when he died, he was my first hero, and he was the first man to hear my "I love you." And I could not have been any more blessed.

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.)

 

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best. ~ William Thackeray

 My friend Sommer would have turned thirty-one today. Every night as I settle onto my pillow and prepare to sleep, I see her forever-teenage-face reflected in my now-thirty-year-old one. I keep a favorite picture of her framed over my side of the bed, so her giggly smile is always one of the last things I see each day. I have never thought of her as a "guardian angel."  To me, she remains "just" Sommer, "just" my best friend, "just" an awesome soul I have been blessed enough to love, but I am cannot help be comforted by the belief that she somehow still loves me and looks out for me. 

A Rod McKuen poem I found a few months after Sommer died still speaks to me tonight just as it did in the summer of '95:

"...And now I love you
and I live you as well
because of you
I am larger than myself 
I am as big as both of us
I live because I love you"

I would have preferred, of course, to have had a lifetime of "in-person time" together, but some people never have a Sommer in their lives at all, so I try to recognize my blessings as such and to be grateful for them. The older I get, the more often I look at that picture above my bed and find myself thinking, "My gosh! I got to love this giggly and sweet person! I got to be one of her friends! How awesome is that!" It is Sommer's birthday, but as the saying goes, her presence is my present. 

♥

Missing My Grandma

♥

"I loved my friend.

He went away from me.

There's nothing more to say.

The poem ends, 
soft as it began--
I loved my friend."

--Langston Hughes

I slice cantaloupe once a week in the restaurant kitchen and am reminded every time I scoop out the goopey seeds of how my grandmother always saved cantaloupe seeds to place on the bird feeder--a simple wooden plank on a pole outside her kitchen window--for the Cardinals who always visited her and Papa's yard.

Yesterday as I walked home from work in the snow, I remembered the afternoon at Papa and Grandma's that found me and Grandma sitting together at the kitchen window watching the snow fall. I was trying to keep track of individual snowflakes as they fell to the ground when Grandma smiled and said conspiratorially, "Sometimes I try to keep my eye on just one snowflake from the time I first see it until it lands on the ground." I turned to her and exclaimed, "I do that too!!! I was doing that just now!!!" And she laughed and seemed so happy to hear that.

I just miss Grandma so much lately. "Little" memories like the cantaloupe seeds and snowflakes have choked me up a number of times in the past couple weeks: The Christmas I got a Cabbage Patch Kid and got so upset with Grandma when she said my doll was ugly. (She was comparing my dimple-cheeked and single-toothed doll to the kinds she had thought beautiful when she was a child.) The good laugh she, my mom, one of my aunts, and I had when Grandma pulled her roasted chicken out of the oven and I pointed out that she had unknowingly arranged the onion slice-rings into a smiley face on top of the bird. "Ohhhhhhhh! Count on my little artist to notice that!" she said, and we all laughed together some more as we carried the side dishes and the "grinning" chicken out to the dining room. How every Christmas, a Cardinal-red Poinsettia plant, an annual gift from one of Grandma's nieces, would sit in the same windowsill in Papa and Grandma's dining room.

Every few days lately, I walk around the display of red, cream, and pink Poinsettias at the grocery store and think about how I'd never really liked Poinsettias much until this year but how now when I see them, they remind me of Grandma and her niece and how real love lasts and can be relied on--distance and time apart be damned.