Category: Seasons

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Yom Kippur

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It’s become part of my Yom Kippur tradition to read my blog posts from past years, then add the current year’s reflections. Can this really be my fourth year of posting Yom Kippur thoughts? The eighth year of celebrating the High Holiday days without Eric?

Yes, this is year four, and yes, Eric still isn’t here.  But life is rich with family and friends. Adrienne, Matt, Emilio and Melia were all here.  Adrienne and I attended Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur services with Mark and Andi, as usual, and as usual had a lot to discuss about what we did and didn’t like in the service, the sermons, our own reflections as we thought about transgressions of the last year, forgiveness of ourselves and others, and intentions to do good and be well in the year ahead.  The afternoon of fasting at home found us gravitating towards the sun on the porch and in the yard, as it always seems to, our hungry bodies wanting at least some of the last warm sun of the season.

Our festive break fast was joined by friends last night.  We began by remembering those who aren’t still here to celebrate with us, then feasted on the garden bounty of three of us at the table and more good discussions about life and art, endurance and jelly fish and tractors, tomatoes and the after effects of fasting.

After dinner, Emilio wanted to go out outside, so he and I walked out on the porch together to watch the last of the light on the western horizon go from pale to dark.  “The sun is going down,” Emilio said.  “But it will be back.”  He nodded his head.  He’s closing in on 3 years old and is constantly putting together more and more about how the world works.

“Yes, it will come back from over there,” I said, pointing to the other side of the house.  “The sun comes up in the east, and goes down in the west, over there,” and I pointed to the horizon of trees now silhouetted against the low light.  Emilio watched me, alert and listening.  “We live in a world that’s like a big ball,” I said and made my arms into a circle.  “The sun comes up over there, and crosses the sky during the day,” now pointing, tracing the arc of the sun with my finger.  “Then it goes behind the other side of the ball where the light can’t reach us.”  And I ran my finger around the bottom edge of an imaginary circle, Emilio and I sitting on the porch in the middle.

Emilio nodded again.  “That’s why it’s dark,” he said.

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On the Subject of Gratitude

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It started with a L’Shanah Tovah greeting from a friend.  “The Year of Gratitude” was the heading of her email.  It resonated.  One way to deal with the inevitable heartaches and troubles of any life, my life anyway, is to be grateful for what is right, what is beautiful, what is comforting and sweet.

As the Jewish year of 5774 starts, I’m embracing gratitude: for the station function on Rdio which delivers an interesting mix of music familiar and new while I move around the house, processing garden bounty, cooking, kneading challah; for the flock of black birds moving through my corner of the physical landscape, flying in a twirling cloud across the yard and into a tall white pine and back into the grass of the pasture across the street, their wings beating in late afternoon sunlight like a thousand lit pages; for my health and the health of most of those I love, especially the almost miraculous continued presence, if not full health, of a beloved sister; for the reappearance of calendula in my garden, which only happened because a dear friend lost a life partner and she loved, the one who died of cancer, these flowers and we were all given packets of seeds at her memorial service in October, and now they’re blooming in my garden again, to my great delight.  I picked a bouquet today when I got home from services and put it on my new table on the porch.  Bright, hardy and simple, my kind of flower.

So gratitude will be my way of approaching another year, after a year in which all the complications of life and love and what needs to be done resulted in me to going to Rosh Hashanah services alone, for the first time, ever.  I cried through much of the service, but that’s okay.  Any truthful contemplation of forgiveness and repentance, of what has been and what might be, deserves some tears.  It’s a New Year.  5774.

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Too Hot to Blog

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I’ve been busy, not that being busy is in any way unusual for me, but there have been deadlines to some of what I’d had to do this past week (consulting work), and getting things done that require paying attention, sitting at a desk, in a hot house, has not been easy.  Normally, I spend an hour or three at a time at my desk, whether writing a grant as a consultant, or doing a webinar, or doing my own work, editing poetry or writing an essay or pulling something together for one of the boards I’m on.  When I get restless, which happens a lot, I go outside and weed my garden for a while, go for a bike ride, a swim, a walk, or pick some of the abundance of wild blueberries this year, something outside and direct and physical.

Not this week.  When I needed a break from my work, I just walked around looking for a cooler space in the house.   Being outside during the day was impossibly uncomfortable and hot.  I did go swimming, but not much else.  I got my work done, went for a swim, then sat on the back deck at the end of the day with David, both of us basically panting, trying to stay cool enough to get through dinner and get into bed with multiple fans blowing on us.  My brain was on semi-permanent melt — work, eat, collapse.  What was there to say that would be interesting for a blog?

But I was paying attention to the forecast (another thing that is not in any way unusual for me) and kept seeing the temperatures predicted for Friday as being the highest of the week.  Early in my week of work, I decided to get what I needed done completed by Thursday afternoon so David and I could have a summer vacation day on Friday.

We did.  We got up yesterday morning and put the kayak racks on the car for the first time this summer, then loaded up the kayaks and a cooler of snacks, and headed for Squam Lake.  Squam Lake is a special place for me.  It was our family vacation spot for all the years from when Sam was a year old until two years after Eric died — 21 years. Kayaking on Squam was Eric’s favorite thing to do, the lake his favorite place in the world.  The day Eric died, as we were trying to figure out how to prepare his body for pick up by the funeral home, Adrienne, Sam, John and I agreed that nothing would be so fitting as dressing Eric in his kayak shorts and water shoes.  We considered putting a paddle beside him, to be tucked into the coffin and buried with him, but knew Eric would object to that as a waste of good equipment.

As David and I turned onto Metcalf Road yesterday, headed for the kayak launch spot on Squaw Cove, a wave of memory passed through me, bringing back all the years of getting ready for a week on the lake, all the years of Eric and I kayaking to favorite spots to swim and pick berries and relax, all the years of dipping our paddles into the clear lake water as we watched the march of the Sandwich Range mountains fading into the haze of summer days on the north shore.

Yesterday on the lake was perfect.  It was viciously hot in most of the country, but fine sitting on the fine white sand beaches of Squam Lake, half-submerged in water.  David and I paddled and swam and read and had a picnic and I wrote in my Island Journal, a memoir I’m writing that I can only write while on islands (more on that in a later post). We went to three islands yesterday.  At one point I asked David how he was doing (not an easy week for either or us, for reasons as easy to ascribe to the heat as anything else) and he said, “I’m great.  This is the essential ‘us.’  Getting out into the world and moving and being and enjoying”

We didn’t leave the lake until dinner time, driven back to our car by hunger.  We picked up sandwiches in Holderness and ate sitting on a dock, watching the light fade over the water.  Yes, maybe it was a week too hot for blogging, a week to hot for anything but getting done what had to be done.  But it was an evening cool enough for imagination, after a week soaked in the sweat of real life and obligation.  Time to let go.  Time to float into a weekend as the cooler air moved in.

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Above the Trees: April

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Notice the title has changed; not above tree line, but above the trees.  David and I got up Sunday morning with the intention of driving to the White Mountains to hike Mt. Pierce, fulfilling our New Year’s intention for April.  But after a busy week of travel for family visits, and an upcoming week of more travel, we didn’t want to spend a good part of the day in the car.  This intention was meant to help us make time to do something we enjoy, not to turn into a chore or an obligation.  We already have plenty of those.

So we climbed Mt. Major, a small mountain south of Lake Winnipesaukee, bare granite at the top because of a long-ago fire, with beautiful views across the lake to the above tree line ridges of the White Mountains to the north.  We decided getting above the trees would do just fine, and it did.

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We were home in time to sit in the sun, out of the wind, and let some of the new season sink in.  We needed that.

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Spring Pleasure Preview

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Traveling south this time of year, into a spring far advanced past its current muddy incarnation in New Hampshire, is a treat.  David and I were in Knoxville, TN this weekend, to be the support team for Sam and his friend Mike as ran they ran their first marathon.  Besides the pleasure of being with two smart, strong and very funny young men as they pushed their bodies pretty much to the breaking point, there was the delight of sunny days with temperatures in the 70s, and lines of dogwood trees showing off their white blossoms against blue skies.  I’m ready for more of that, right here at home.

As we crossed a street on Saturday evening, littered with fallen petals, I thought of this poem, from years ago, realizing I will probably never stop noticing how trees shape-shift through the seasons.

Rising

What is the weight of a flower, the weight
of a tree bearing such blatant intent?
Every mass of blossoms, snow cloud,
exclamation, exuberance of fruit
to come, has a future, a history,

a moment of abandon, petals
splayed wide, drawing pollen to the core.
The wilt and decay towards apple
is hidden in new leaves, riches spent,
riches returned, petals salting the grass.

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Last Ski

Alison and I did a last ski of the season on Sunday.  Okay, maybe it wasn’t classic skiing.  It was more like walking in the woods with skis attached to our boots, including literally walking in big ski steps across the open parts of the trail.  At the height of our climb up Tarleton Road, just below the steep pitch to Neville Peak, there was still a good bit of snow, though it was very soft and wet.

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But further down the trail, there were many spots where the snow was gone, so we skied around grass and sticks and rocks.  At one point coming down a hill, one of my skis was gliding through the wet snow, the other slipping through a mud puddle.  But we were skiing, celebrating a great season of snow.

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A good ski year is always a reason to be grateful, and this year I’m also grateful on behalf of someone I love who has most likely had her last ski, period.  As in she is so sick she most likely won’t be here during ski season next year, and if she is, she won’t be skiing.  She could barely ski this year.  I carry that reality with me, grateful for what I have and what I can do, and holding on to awareness of those I bring with me, those who can’t be out kicking and gliding through the frozen world themselves.

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Spring Skiing

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Spring began at 7:02 this morning, just as it started to snow again.  Scattered flakes thickened, picked up speed and blew past the windows, accenting the black and white world outside.  The flurry only lasted a few minutes, but it added to the 3″ of powder we got last night, on top of the 10″ we got yesterday.

Today is the Vernal Equinox, when daylight and darkness are equal.  Now we slip over into each day being a bit longer than each night, a reason for celebration beyond the treat of having another day of skiing.  I was sure an afternoon ski on wet snow last week was my last, because I knew it was going to rain the next day.  I’m happy to have been wrong.

David and I finished our coffee and headed out to the trail, as we did yesterday.  Thankfully a neighbor was out on his snowmobile last night, so we had the delight of skiing through a few inches of powder on top of a packed trail, rather than having to make our own track which is what we did yesterday.  “I love how storms like this show the horizontal in the woods,” David said and I agreed, taking in the snow draped limbs surrounding us.

A few weeks ago I ran into a friend at the grocery store, and he heard the hesitation in my “Okay,” when he asked me how I was.  When he asked what was wrong, I listed my latest set of worries and troubles.

“Well you never get 100%,” he said.  “So I try to concentrate on the 65 or 75% I do get.”

Today marks 50% daylight, 50% darkness.  And my attention to gratitude for the 75%.

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March Flowers

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Any blossom in March is a blessing.  The pink geranium and oxalis plants have been with me for five years now; out on the porch each summer, back inside to winter over and send out flowers as a counter to the monochrome tones of winter.

But already there’s color in the hillsides of hardwoods, the faint blush of the buds just beginning to let go, responding to the lengthening light.  Here’s a  poem from year’s ago, that wonders about that color and what we see of light and dark.

Consequence

What if you failed to notice
low sun on the south trunk of the maple,
its shadow side already drifting

to dark, the horizon ready to assume
the indigo hue of the hillsides
of hardwood, winter tight buds?

We’re only given one run
at the sequence of consequence
that stems from noticing or not,

from being in the woods past dusk,
watching the sky grow grey,
laced by black maples.

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Above Tree Line: February

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The winter world on Mt. Washington’s eastern slope was in black and white on Tuesday, when David and I fulfilled our intention to get above tree line for February.  We hiked into the alpine zone at the base of Tuckerman’s Ravine, on a wide well-packed trail.  Before we left on our hike we could see we’d be hiking into the cloud cover over the mountain.  The view above tree line was of snow, cloud, and dark spruce trees below, mounded with white.  The monochrome day reminded me of a poem from years ago.

Absence or Everything

Moon laced through cold
curtains, the world
in black and white
since the last storm.

Glass feathers freeze,
skin seeks skin, vision
blurs as if walking
into winddriven snow.

The bedroom pinkens,
yet still, outside,
monochrome
trees, fields, fences, sky.