Extending Family

Pink nectarine ‘Fantasia’ flowers on the tree in early Spring

The two least predicted are the two most in need of a trim, and they are the plum trees – one Sunburst plum, and one Bluebird plum. I originally thought that they would struggle the most because of their penchant for sandy soil over clay, but perhaps the leftover patio sand tossed into the bottom of their planting holes fooled them. They are currently out-of-control renegades whose craggily arms attempt a ghoulish canopy over the driveway.

The other two more refined individuals in queue for a weekend trim are the two apple trees out back offsetting the short winding path to the patio. They are the Harlequin apple – rounded and plump like an upturned apple itself, and the Liberty apple, whose limbs grow straight out, then boast right-angle offshoots straight up. Two of a kind, but completely different in shape and growing pattern.

Our fifth tree was the heartbreaking casualty of the five and it was all my fault. She was a nectarine tree with the most beautiful flowers of them all. We lost her last summer to my enthusiastic over-pruning too late in the season.

The trees were our gift to each other four years ago for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. We picked them out at the co-op and planted them that spring. They are Harley, Libby, Reenie, Sunny, and Toby, named after the strain of fruit they each produce, and they are – coincidentally – in alphabetical order from east to west. Four of them produce beautiful blossoms that beckon to birds and insects in spring and summer, then evolve into a delicious banquet for the squirrels come fall harvest. Reenie still adds woody contrast to the lot in her own way.

This weekend will be the first spell outside with spring attention in mind and heart, and that is a welcomed thing. Pruning, puttering, and pondering about how much, what to plant, and where.

Prune, putter, ponder.

Apportioned peace.

Worth a Brake

“Stop the car!” Mom demanded.

“What?!?” Dad questioned. “Here? Now?”

“Yes! Just pull over!”

Glancing in the mirror he deftly braked while steering the car to the right, breaching the white line and spraying gravel, pinging and spitting under the tires. We rolled to a rapid stop on the side of the highway, cars whizzing by us. All six of us in the back – who moments ago had been in various stages of daydream or slumber – riveted our attention to the urgent matter unfolding between our parents up front.

Mom flung open the passenger side door and got out. “I’ll be right back!” she blurted.

We watched in stillness, six sets of eyes squished to the right side windows, peering from the tangle of blankets and pillows in the far netherworlds of the Vista Cruiser wagon, plus my Dad’s eyes up front, too. She side-stepped and slipped down the grassy embankment and eventually stopped way in there, waist high in spring vegetation. What was she doing? We knew it wasn’t a bathroom break. Our mom could easily drive from New Jersey to Michigan without a pit stop if she put her mind to it. Public restrooms were far below her nursing standards of acceptability for cleanliness.

Vegetation swashed and swished around her as she tromped and hunched through the swaying detritus, occasionally wrestling with some unknown something. We could see her only from the shoulders up. Periodically, we looked at Dad. He turned the engine off, returned the look, and shrugged.

We silently watched and waited.

Eventually she emerged. Her arms were full of brown, twiggy stalks dotted with soft, plump nubs of velvet gray.

Pussywillows.

Flushed with happiness, she opened the passenger side door, and angled her tall frame back in, gently propping the very tall bundle of branches upright between the two of them on the front seat. “They’ll be just beautiful in an arrangement on the dining room table,” she beamed.

She smiled at my dad, and he – well he just looked at her, and then wordlessly facing forward, turned the key. The engine thrummed to life and we pulled off the gravel strip and back onto the highway, pointed toward home. In back, we sank into a familiar mosh of entwined limbs, worn blankets, soft pillows and breath, and the familiar cadence and hum of our car on the road.

Pussywillows.

I saw them just yesterday in a water-filled bucket next to a sign at the local grocer.

Three bundles for $12 – as easy as that.

Because of my Mom, I just had to have them.

I Used To, But Now I

I held my third grade school photo up, showing my class the me of many decades ago: a scrawny, gap-toothed, pig-tailed girl – roughly the age of my current students – one who is just so happy to finally be in third grade.

“That’s YOU?!?”

“It is.”

Lifting the yellowed 5×7 photo next to my face to encourage comparisons, I toss out a few seeds of impromptu poetry, formatted for cultivation in the very near future – inspirations taken from Wishes, Lies, and Dreams by Kenneth Koch.

“I used to have blond hair, but now I have brown hair,” I say.

I used to be thin, but now I am, um……..not so thin,” I concede.

I used have freckles, but now I have wrinkles (sigh).

I used to wish for earrings, now I wear earrings every day.

I used to be terrible at math, but now I am better at it.

I used to want a horse, and now I have my dog.

I used to be a student, but now I am a teacher.

Our annual poetry exploration has me wondering how I would fill in those lines today – just ten days shy of the day our lives were upended by the closing of our school. As losses go, there are countless that are devastating and overwhelming, for some much more so than others.

In terms of irreparable personal damage, I count myself as one of the lucky ones. Yet – and perhaps for all of us – moving forward in a positive light is a search for hope and grace. I am emphatic about teaching my cohort of students how to navigate transitions with optimism, resilience, and poise, so why not me, too?

I used to not worry about getting sick, but now I think about taking good care of myself.

I used to visit my family, but now I hold them dear in my heart until I can see them again.

I used to see close friends in person, but now see faraway friends on ZOOM.

I used to go shopping, but now I save money.

I used to be tired, but now I go to bed earlier.

I used to be too busy, but now I have time to do things I like.

I used to forget how special a day is, but now I know that every day is precious.

As a creature of routines and schedules, I recall the parade of successful transitions that the past twelve months has demanded, and recognize that they are indeed accomplishments. They are also decisions on the part of each individual – student, teacher, parent, citizen – to move forward with gumption and grit. Though transitions are our new ongoing, evolving, frequently adjusting normal, I am still not fond of them, but at least I can now add one more line to my poem.

I used to not be good at changes, but now I say, “We got this.”

Prism

I was amazed that something so simple could offer unexpected solace, especially since I had given up on it. I had bought the teardrop prism – about the size and shape of a fresh fig – this summer, stealing the idea from the decor of the tiny house we rented for a week at the shore. The skylight prism there provided a dazzling spectacle every evening at the start of sundown.

My prism wasn’t working. I had tried it in several different sunny windows at different times of the day, but got nothing. In defeat, I hung it in the only window in our study, conceding that the blinds in the window would probably thwart any potential light waves that could be useful. It wouldn’t matter anyway, I had already tried the prism in that window with the blinds up with no positive outcome.

Slow things take time, a friend of mine sometimes reminds me.

Slow things take time.

Weeks later, summer break had waned to nothing and the start of an uncertain school year loomed in the immediate future. Our schedule was to be vastly different this year as were to be our routines, modes of teaching, habits of interacting, and our confidence in remaining healthy on the job. Nothing seemed the same. Nonetheless, I went upstairs to get ready for school – at least that was familiar.

Entering the study, I twirled open the blinds and sun cascaded into the room. A glint bounced off the prism, and light pebbles in every color spilled onto the four walls. I gave the prism a gentle nudge with my finger, and orbs of light swirled around the perimeter in quiet splendor.

The low rising sun of encroaching fall was perfectly angled for the prism to do its trick.

Although much was unknown, the laws of light refraction were still reassuringly intact. That was suddenly of great comfort.

That, and remembering slow things take time.

Treehouse

If I had been a few feet taller I could have peered inside to see who lived there. With luck, maybe even lifted myself up and in, dropping onto soft mulch and humus that surely lined the yawing hole in the old silver maple. Instead – as usual – I settled for the low-hanging branch on a nearby dogwood, walking feet up the trunk at a dangle, swinging a leg over and hefting myself up and onto the mottled branches above.

There have been many other trees. There was the cherry that overhung the back side of the house. It was an easy climb; its raised scar-like ridges making temporary impressions on my bare hands and legs, and lasting ones on my memory. It was best up there when the serrated leaves were deep green and the yellow cherries were ripe to pick, even though birds and squirrels always claimed first fruits.

One summer the whole gaggle of us neighborhood kids lived in a copse of trees up on the corner. Each claiming a perch, we embellished leafy territories with makeshift thrones of remnant boards and fistfuls of nails hammered home into accepting limbs. Stretching gangly appendages up and around redolent limbs of wood, our adventures unfolded in a hidden world, suspended between earth and sky over days and weeks.

Nowadays, sentinel branches beyond the frosty windowpane offer a striated view of the wintery world two stories below. Soon red buds dotting twiggy limbs will yield to leaves, and our small corner bedroom will disappear behind living green lace, a perfectly familiar hideaway in imagined secrecy of sorts.

A treehouse never gets old.

Page Particulars

The bargain book bin near the checkout line at the supermarket reels me in every time. While strategizing about the fastest line – less people, but fuller carts, or longer queue but less items? – I stop there to see what the offerings are. At $3.99 a book, it’s hard to go wrong. If there is historical fiction by Jeff Shaara, I pick that up for my dad, and then I pick through the pile for me, settling on Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout – the Times 100 Noteable Books emblem on the front endorsing my choice. While hefting the groceries from cart to trunk out in the parking lot, I catch a glimpse of the book in one of the bags, and revel in the beauty of purchasing a portal to a new world for merely $3.99.

This week began my spring break and with it time to delve into Ms. Strout’s drama. It all went along swimmingly enough until page 125 which was nonsensically followed by page 142, ensued by page 127, then 144. Having just finished teaching number patterns to my second graders, I deftly noticed that my left hand pages were skip counting odd numbers by twos, while the right was ascending by twos on the evens, but 18 pages ahead.

I began flipping pages hither and yon, following the story of Mary and her daughter Angelina and their four-year reunion in Italy on the even numbered pages, not to be outdone by Pete and his sister Lucy at her book signing in Chicago on the odds. Not being a big multi-tasker to begin with, following the two simultaneous threads became a heroic effort – not to mention the math involved. After working my way through a good parcel of pages and wondering if I could continue to makes sense of the jumble, I landed on page 141, which miraculously flowed seamlessly into page 142.

Ah, the things we take for granted!

It never occurred to me that reading books with consecutively number pages was one of them.

But now I know it is.

Embrace

we only have today

and that will never change

to fret portending clouds of gray

to scurry ’round and rearrange

for what might happen up ahead

instead of living here instead

is losing now

so might you see

the present is

the place to be

so set your worry on a shelf

and cease that stealing from yourself

by squinting yon when you’re in now

is ceding time – so why allow?

revel in this moment here

invite yourself to stay

for in the end

it’s crystal clear

we only have today

Mandatory Music

On the eve of my penultimate slice, it occurred to my that I never sliced about one thing that has remained a constant source of joy throughout life and challenging times.

Music.

Consistently uplifting, always enhancing, oft preferred over talking – good music makes everything better.

I can do chores for hours unscathed if I’ve got the “Awesome Road Trip” playlist on. I can clean out a closet, wash windows, or pack away summer clothes for the upcoming winter (worst job ever) as long as I’m listening to favorite tunes – and singing along, of course.

Doing the dishes becomes fun.

Folding laundry? Voila!

I almost don’t want it to end when accompanied by my favorite artists on the job.

And driving? Forget about it!

Below are some of my current favorites. My playlist is in perpetual rotation with selections being deleted and added as preferred. Keep in mind that I was a child of the sixties and seventies, so these choices may not be to everyone’s enjoyment. I will say however, that my tastes dip into many genres, and even my young-adult offspring admit to liking my Spotify playlist.

I humbly claim to have expanded their musical purviews considerably.

Although challenging to narrow down the choices, for the sake of brevity I managed. Here are my current top ten choices from my “Awesome Road Trip” playlist, in random order:

Don’t Know Why – Nora Jones
Redemption Song – Bob Marley and the Wailers
Harvest Moon – Neil Young
I Say a Little Prayer – Aretha Franklin
Just One Look – Linda Rondstadt
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
The Wood Song – Indigo Girls
Have You Ever Seen the Rain – Creedence Clearwater
Orange Blossom Special – Charlie Daniels Band
Into the Mystic – Van Morrison

What are you top ten?

Can you add them to your life this week?

I suspect they might make everything just a little bit better.

Earthen Treasure

Today we found something that has been missing for 17 years.

We moved into our current house in 2003 with three young children and the mass of accouterments that accompany three small humans. We unpacked over the following weeks and months and settled in to our new home. It was during the first holiday there that we realized we didn’t have our fancy dishes – our Royal Doulton “Lisa” place settings that were given to us by friends and family as wedding gifts ten years prior.

We searched everywhere for them over the course of many years.

In the attic?

Nope.

Garage?

Nope.

Closets?

Nope.

Cantina?

Nope.

What had happened to the dishes? We were dumbfounded. Having rented a truck and moved everything ourselves, we couldn’t have lost them in transit. And our former landlords had been good friends of ours; surely, they would have told us if we had left a box behind.

We searched all of the places in our home numerous times over the years and eventually gave up – swallowing the loss of a gift of significant value in dollars and even larger value in sentiment. Some years later, I spied a set of china slightly reminiscent of ours in a thrift shop, and bought the whole collection for pennies. It would have to do.

Today my husband decided to tackle the cantina.

The cantina is the enclosed 100-square-foot concrete space under our front porch that is accessed by an elfin wooden door in the basement wall – a cold cellar of sorts. We keep canned and bottled non-perishables down there along with cooking gadgets that we can’t fit in our kitchen. Our burgeoning surplus of sundries for the coming weeks had overflowed into a subterranean, conglomerate mess. The weekend project was to organize it and clean it up.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“Are they closed?”

“Yes.”

He placed something gently on the dining room table next to where I was entrenched in schoolwork.

“Okay, open.”

“Ohhhh,” I gasped.

There was a china teacup. A wedding gift from 27 years ago, in front of me on my table.

“You found them!!! Where were they?” I asked, elated.

“In the cantina- in a box.”

“Wha-a-a-t? Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“What box? There was no box! How could we have missed it all these years? We looked everywhere, multiple times. I don’t remember a box in the cantina at all…”

“They were there, in a box.”

So there they were, and here it is – a little Lisa teacup, hidden for 17 years and discovered for some reason, today.

How strange to look for something for so very long only to find it right where you were looking – right where you couldn’t see it.

I still don’t know where that box was all the other times we looked for it, and I don’t know why he found it today.

I wonder what makes it the right time to find something you’ve lost?

I don’t know – but something does.

When it’s time to find it – it might be there, right under your toes.

Reprieve

A delightfully impudent book character shoves a dastardly note and drawing of her teacher into her teacher’s bag after being punished for a transgression in school that day. After dismissal – she opens her own schoolbag to find not only a note of forgiveness from her teacher, but a consoling snack as well. With that discovery, she instantly regrets her cheeky behavior and is desperate to take it all back.

Too late.

Much to my chagrin, I have been in Lily’s shoes more times than I care to remember, today being one of them.

A few months ago I ordered and received a new floor lamp for our dining room, only to discover that the design of lamp was flawed and it could not be assembled properly. Annoyed, I boxed it all up and returned it, disappointed that the lamp I had finally found to match our needs and the decor of the room was not to be.

Did I mention that in my extreme irritation I also wrote a scathing online review of the lamp?

Well, I did.

Just call me Lily.

One would think after prior regrets that I might have learned not to act in haste. I have always thought that, “Respond – don’t react,” was a very good mantra. The problem is that it rarely comes to mind in the heat of the moment.

So, back to the lamp.

Weeks went by in which time I got my refund and kind of forgot about the whole incident. That is, until I got a note of apology from the lamp company explaining their wish to send me a replacement lamp free of charge in addition to the full compensation I had already received .

Humph! I’ll see it when I believe it, I thought.

Lily strikes again.

So today, the new lamp came. It assembled quickly and easily and it is exactly what I was hoping for. Just perfect!

Well, not really. It’s perfect except for that nagging, caustic review…that nasty note I shoved into the teacher’s bag.

If only I could take it back – If only I hadn’t been so impulsive, if only I hadn’t been so righteous, if only…

Lily’s recalcitrant wail echoed in my mind:

“WHY DOES EVERYTHING ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME?”

Desperately I grabbed my phone to dash out another review, a glowing review, a redemptive review – a frantic attempt to undo the harshness of my first judgement.

I quickly clicked to “My Account,” clicked to “My Orders,” clicked to “Write a Review,” clicked to “Open,” and there it was – my original review, written in all of its indignation, penned in bold fury – still there, untouched and most importantly – unsent.

I HAD FORGOTTEN TO HIT “SUBMIT!”

The review had never been sent.

A tumult of relief WHOOSHED over me. In the moments that followed I wrote a thoughtful, measured, heartfelt review for the lamp and the company that stood behind their product.

I consider this merciful reprieve a plaintive plea from the universe: “Respond – don’t react!”

even in the heat of the moment.

Lily – I love you dearly, but let’s keep it fiction.

Okay?