Circle

Every spring and fall I go through the same routine:  houseplants out, houseplants in.  I move them to different sections of the patio and yard after a winter spent indoors hovering in the space between life and death.

The process started innocently.  I had some empty rooms, a small budget and little kids, so on cold, rainy days I’d take a drive to the indoor nursery where the caged parrot lived.  It might as well have been the Garden of Eden; I dreamed as I strolled through the humid, sunny rooms, breathing in the brief respite from the drab brown winter outside, imagining the ease with which I would transform my living spaces into green. It would be just the thing I needed to fight off the blues. My kids talked to the parrot, who talked back to them, while I tried to remember which rooms had sun in my house as I read the Latin names.

At some point, I’d settle on a large leafed plant with minimal requirements and then head over to the clay pot section and choose something that caught my eye.  Then I’d try to find the right size saucer that fits underneath the pot, though every time I went the size I’d need would be sold out.  Suffice it to say, my yearly purchases of houseplants did little to fix my decorating problems. In fact, usually the plant I ended up with had requirements just beyond my reach.  Either my house was too dry or too dark, or some combination of both.  Sometimes white sticky patches would find their way to the leaves by springtime, at which point I’d be sure they’d be dead before fall.  And although most people would agree that half dead plants do not improve the aesthetics of a room, I repeated this optimistic journey yearly.

Until now. 

It is fall again and as I stared at the plants in the yard last week, I knew in my heart that I could not bring them back in.  I don’t know why, but suddenly I could not look at them in my house any longer.  I could not go through the process of finding them a space in a room in which they no longer quite fit between the drums and piano; I could not go through the realization that I forgot to water them again last week by the look of the leaves.  I could not face the fact that they were daily not getting what they really needed—sun, humidity, a person who understood the actual meaning of their Latin names. Though I can raise kids, chickens, cats and dogs, I admit finally to myself that I cannot raise houseplants. 

So there I am in the yard with the pots and plants and this miserable decision I’ve made.  I have to send the poor tropical plants to the cold winter woods.  I think I have to get it over quickly before I change my mind and I walk with my goal but without my heart.  I quickly turn the first pot over to dump out the plant that has suffered with me all these years and nothing happens.  The plant doesn’t dump out.  It is stuck to the pot.  I pull.  I tug. I push.  I am sweating.  The irony, I think –all this time when I thought I had barely kept the plant alive, I realize now that my plant was indestructible. I head to the shed and get a garden shovel that is slightly bigger than the pot---so when I use my weight to strike the dirt I miss and hit my hand instead.  And now I bleed.

But then finally, finally, the plant lets go and hits the ground.  I breathe a sad sigh of relief and head back to the house for bandaids.  I don’t look back.  I tell myself I am making my life simpler; I tell myself letting go of possessions will make me free.  I wishfully hope my plants will magically take root in the dirt and forgive me.  Most of all I wish I could stop thinking about the poor plants that I betrayed.   And then on my way, I notice some flowers I planted in the summer.  Surely, I think, they will die in the frost.  Instinctively, with my shovel still in my hand, I dig them out of the ground to rescue them.  A few minutes later, I have set them in the window of the dining room, wondering if they will have enough light.  I have never tried this spot before.  Maybe it will be better.

Heirloom

I was standing at the kitchen sink today, washing and rinsing out my blue Le Crueset pot when my mind wandered back to my nana’s kitchen, around 1975.  She was making my favorite dinner-which was some kind of baked chicken that no one else knew how to make.  It sounds so simple, baked chicken, but she did something secretive that made it really stand out.  My mom had a few theories about what it might be.  She claimed it was the generous amounts of butter my nana used.  That explanation held little weight, however, when my mom tried to recreate it herself on Monday nights many years later.  I would complain that it just never tasted the same.  On those evenings, she blamed the chicken itself.   She pointed out that chickens had changed through the years and no longer were they the free roaming ones of the 70’s when the taste matched their liberty.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t try to get to the bottom of things myself.  In fact, on my nana’s deathbed, I pressed the issue.  A few minutes before she took her last breath, I took the plunge and just asked her straight out about her secret. Of course, I felt very awkward asking at that moment, wrestling with the decision a little too long.  When I finally got up the nerve to ask, she was already drifting off, and only just sighed when I at last blurted out the words-- as if I should have known better.  I still hold a fair amount of guilt that I didn’t say something more meaningful in those last moments.  But I was still on the youngish side and I had heard that common phrase  “she took the recipe to her grave” so often that I was just trying to prevent more lost information.   My nana never wasted anything, she was too practical for that.  I still remember the rinsed out plastic bags hanging by the sink.   Why should this have been any different? 

When it was time to clean out her house my mom was responsible for making sure everyone had something to keep.   I was still in college but my mom would relay her weekly progress to me.  One cousin got the silver, another the dining room rug.  The rocking chair struggled to find a home. Eventually, most of the odds and ends of a long-lived life found their way into other people’s lives.   On one particular day, my mom called to let me know she was saving me the chicken pot.  I sensed some earnestness in her voice that conveyed to me the significance of this.  I later determined it was, in fact, her ultimate theory as to why my nana succeeded where others had failed.

It turns out that a simple pot holds quite a bit of potential.  It is a link to childhood; to relationships, to time and place of being.   The blue pot I washed today, for instance, is the host to many savored meals--among them turnip soup and sourdough bread.  This pot will be responsible for the vivid memories of warmth, taste and love.   I will wash it well.

Confession

I was packing up for our annual family camp trip and considering some options in case of rainy days.  I had two new books I was excited to read and those were in. Other years I had brought my guitar along with piles of sheet music that I was struggling to learn --but it had been more than a few camps ago that I finally gave up my quest to be even passably proficient.  No matter how cool I felt driving up there with a guitar blocking my rearview mirror, it was not meant to be. One should never underestimate the talent found at family camp where rookies are supported but not necessarily encouraged.  In retrospect I realize now that childhood dreams of being like Paula in the Magic Garden, circa 1970 are just not realized in one week.   But it took a long, long time to let go of what for so long I believed was my true calling—storytelling on a tree swing, guitar in hand.  I idolized her.

The true issue that was nagging away at me was the problem with my knitting bag.   Just recently, a couple friends came to me with their daughters who wanted to learn. This was no problem.  I loved helping people begin new projects.  But, then, as sometimes happens, one of the moms got encouraged to try as well and she texted me the day before camp—“would I teach her?”    “Sure,” I texted back.  This meant I should pack up some knitting supplies as well.  I pushed that thought to the back of my mind while searching for flashlights, towels, sheets and book lights.  I was out of time and my knitting bag was, literally, a tangled mess of half completed projects, and plans.  In order to collect supplies, I would need to face my demon of procrastination.  I didn’t have time to deal with it.

Departure morning came.  We loaded up the car; I wiped down the counters and rearranged the pillows on the couch lest the house sitter get a poor impression of my home making skills.  My teenage son fumed while I rearranged the countertop tomatoes and vacuumed up.  He was ready to go, and couldn’t care less about my interest in leaving a good impression.  I headed out to the porch to lock the doors, and say goodbye to the cat when I looked over to the corner and spotted my knitting stuff, all while knowing there were more projects in the cabinet.  Bummed that I remembered, and could not now turn away, I pushed myself over to the doors and took out the abandoned pieces. I threw them into the bag without looking and into the car’s trunk.  Coming face to face with neglected projects is a hard thing to do.  It reminded me of the pen pal I abandoned in sixth grade only to link up with her many years later in Europe on a backpacking trip.  Back then I breathed out a little apology to her about being busy with life (seventh grade was intense) and now, 20 years later, I apologized silently to my yarn.

The Rainy Day came, and I was ready. The chill in the cabin did not dissuade me—I just I crawled back under the covers, even though it still morning.  And as warmth gathered into my space, I settled in.  I could hear the sounds of camp carrying on—we were positioned across from the rec hall where a sequence of activities followed one after another. First came aerobics for the adults, then an indoor soccer game for the kids.  I read Unbroken, completely taken in by Hillenbrand’s account of Louis Zamperini’s life as an Olympic runner and WWII prisoner.

The rain continued on into the afternoon.  My eyes grew tired and I found myself skipping over passages that I wanted to read and absorb.  I set the book down on the bed and closed them.  The sounds of the camp continued and I started to feel restless and isolated under the sheets, now, not even able to read.  What was I doing in bed?  Looking around the mess of the cabin that only 8 boys can create, my little corner with the knitting bag was no better.  I decided to take a shower and head up to the main lodge, where there would be the Euchre tournament and board games, neither of which interested me.  I grabbed my knitting bag reluctantly, as a last resort.

Up at the house, I sat down on the couch with my bag next to another camper—as luck would have it, one of the most incredible knitters I know.  (Remember, never underestimate the talents of family camp.)  Her projects were works of complicated art—knitted pieces that I never even came close to trying or imagining.  When her sister breezed through the rain with a beautiful scalloped shawl, I didn’t even have to ask, though I did.   And I am quite sure that she did not need to rearrange the pillows on the sofa before she left for camp, because things in her life were just not astray. So there I found myself, in a new quandary; how was I to get my knitting out of my bag without her seeing the untidy state of affairs, without her seeing my shame?

I did not succeed.  I had no sooner reached into my bag when I noticed her raise up her eyebrows and glance over.  I dreaded the next question.  “What are you making,” she asked.  “Oh, just finishing up a scarf for a friend, my yarn is a little tangled,” my voice drifted off.   She just couldn’t resist, it was not in her being. Within seconds, she had my bag exposed, completely.  I was naked.   My excuses got lost in translation. She asked if I minded if she just untangled the knots.  I didn’t even try to resist. 

And then, a curious thing happened.  As I sat there watching her cleaning up my bag, and getting things organized, I got those shivers down my spine like when I used to play “x marks the spot” with my childhood friends.  It was that good sensation of letting someone you trust cross that boundary and make letters on your back.   I never knew it could happen with a knitting bag; with the admittance of vulnerability in adulthood, with taking the risk of being honest about how I let things become a mess; with letting someone else untangle the knots.  She freed me up that afternoon on the couch.  My knitting bag has accepted my apology.

Sidewalk Cracks

I knew where I was by the cracks in the sidewalk.  Some were longer. Some had weeds.  Some had entire chunks missing, some were patched together, some had heaved from endless thaws and winters.  

“Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back” my friends and I would chant on our walks home and in some places you would have to jump, and in other sections you could fit in three steps before the next one.  One had to pay attention to keep their mom safe.

Many times I walked alone--though my close familiarity with the sidewalk kept me company. I would know when I was getting close to home by the changing patterns that endlessly held my attention. Certain cracks actually evoked feelings; initial weariness on the new sidewalks at the edge of the elementary school but happiness and anticipation on the last worn stretch to home.  I watched for the repeating patterns with every trip, literally and figuratively, my touchstones.   About a half mile from my house the sidewalk ended.  Here I walked on the side of the street and the only noteworthy part was where we would stop and stare at the house with the monkey in the window.  It didn’t feel unusual then—a live monkey in a window, it was just part of the walk home and it was a good day when the shades were open.

Sometimes, on Fridays, I got to walk to my dad’s office, requiring a turn at the crossing guard.   Here was an entirely different sidewalk, one that had much more variability due to its age.  It was on the oldest street in town.  There were narrow spots, a curve around a tree (that’s when I was very close) and lots of moss between the stones.  I loved this path.   On very lucky Fridays, a friend who happened to live in a house on that street walked with me.   She was a girl with an air of mystery living in a family of artists.   In our conventional town, her parents were not—their Victorian held long dark hallways with nude photography and paintings.  I saw them one day when she invited me over to watch “Return to Witch Mountain” in her parent’s bedroom.  Her mom had long black hair and very straight posture that held a bit of aloofness—and I think it was actually her in some of the photos, but I can’t be sure.   When the girl brought me down two staircases to see the studio, she whispered something to me about it, which for the life of me, I cannot remember.

On rare occasions, I got to walk to my nana’s house across town.   This was an entirely different walk, with unexamined sidewalks at every turn, an adventure as big as they came for me.   On my first trip there (I was probably in first grade), my brother was instructed to walk with me.  Of course older brothers run ahead without supervision when offered freedom, and this is what he did.  Not one to be left behind, I ran right after him, starting up the hill with great determination.  But, I was outdone and promptly tripped and fell down, scraping both knees.   Bloody and stunned on the sidewalk, I remember crying in disbelief.    At this point my brother was way too far ahead to have noticed.  I had no choice but to pick myself up and carry on.  With no familiar cracks for landmarks, I remember an overwhelming sense of loneliness.   When I finally reached the house, he was in quite a bit of trouble, having arrived without me.  I knew however, it wasn’t really his fault.    It was because I was on a brand new sidewalk.  I had forgotten to pay attention in my eagerness to catch up with him; I didn’t even know about that crack that tripped me up.    

It was just unfamiliar ground.

Some Final Thoughts on the Rooster/Life & Art

Late winter 2014 will ultimately be defined in my mind by the unexpected care taking of a rooster.  I won’t forget trying to hand feed a moody chicken; carrying him to the warm garage each night during the sub freezing temperatures and then, watching curiously as he regained his health, slowly, over the course of a couple months until it was spring.

I think, in retrospect, it was an attachment to the process of saving the rooster that added distinct meaning to those winter days.  And, in fact, by the time spring arrived and I walked out to the coop each day, the rooster had established itself in the correct order of things-the king of the coop.  He became ravenous, growing larger by the day, the only remnants of his story being his occasional shaky legs.  So when the fox came and took the rooster, thus completing the natural order of the nature, it became an end to our tale.

Elevating a single rooster to something worth caring for and about reminded me, simply, of art.   It reminded me of the time I was visiting a friend and, in her house for the first time, I sat down on her couch waiting for her to finish up in the kitchen.  There was a little side table next to me and on it was a bowl of elegant, beautiful rocks.   She later told me they were just random stones found, cleaned and collected over time by her and her kids; but now,  they were not just rocks, they, too, had been transformed by care- to meaning-to art.

It can be the same with food.  I’ve been in a sprout growing phase-- which is as easy as rinsing some seeds, setting the jar on the countertop and covering it with a dishtowel.   The only caveat is remembering to take care to do this each day.   Over the course of the week the seeds evolve continuously, like some slow moving English love story where nothing happens at once but a lot is happening over time.   My kids like sprouts on their sandwiches, which, not surprisingly, caused some suspicion at the middle school lunch table.  Someone asked Andy what was on his sandwich.  When he replied, “sprouts,” the next question further gave him pause.

“Where do you get sprouts?”  his friend asked.

At which point, Andy realized the interest in his sandwich was about to take a further complicated turn.   In the context of sandwiches, this one had some meaning.  

And, finally, I found myself meeting a knitting student in the back of my car yesterday at the baseball field.    It was a “knitting emergency”—my eight year old student was trying to finish up a mother’s day gift and knitting class was unexpectedly canceled.   She only needed a yarn needle and some brief sewing instruction.  So there we were, sewing things up so she would have it ready for Sunday.   I looked out from the back of my car while she sewed it together, and thought about how she had transformed some pieces of wool into flowers for her mom.  It took about a month, an eternity for a girl of her age eager to get it done.   But I think, she too, will remember the process of making it; of sitting in a trunk of a car learning to sew; of eagerly awaiting the surprise of giving this little piece of art to her mom.   It turns out most anything can have a story, can have meaning, can be art--it just needs the opportunity.