unweaving the nest

comfort in a bowl

There a few things that my daughter asks for now and again that I can never refuse. One is for me to make her favourite soup. When my kids were little it was sometimes a struggle to get them to eat their veggies, which is no doubt a familiar plight for all parents now and again. I tried lots of tactics, but one that seemed to work was re-naming plain old vegetable soup after one of our most loved storybooks: Peter Rabbit. 

It's a rainy day here in Western New York and my girl has been a little out of sorts lately with the pressure of finishing up her senior year, getting her driver's license, thinking about a summer job and making decisions about her next steps in her education. And of course there is the senior prom and all that entails, too. I try to keep my weeknight evenings quiet and here at home with her, and sometimes my work schedule makes it hard to be together for any kind of proper dinner...so it's good to have something that she loves ready for us to share when I work late now and then. If you ask her what she wants for dinner it is very likely she will answer "Peter Rabbit Soup." And it's perfect for these darker, cooler wet days we seem to have in these parts every spring. 

I made it this morning and it looked so pretty in the bowl that I ladled it into for my lunch. I was inspired to take a photo and share the way to make it. It not only tastes yummy, but it's pretty good for you, too. It's different every time, depending on what veggies we have, but it's always comfort in a bowl.

Peter Rabbit Soup (or sometimes..."Look What Farmer McGregor Dug Up in the Garden" Soup)

Chop a couple of handfuls of any veggies you have into bite-sized pieces. In a heavy soup pot, heat a big tablespoon of butter and the same amount of lovely green olive oil. If you have veggies that like to be sauteed (onions or celery, zucchini, stuff like that) then give them a couple of minutes in the pot. Fill the pot with about 9 cups of spring water and then put the rest of the veggies in. I like the flavour and colour of Rapunzel brand veggie bouillon cubes (with sea salt and herbes) and I use 4 cubes per 9 cups of water. Let the soup simmer for about 20 minutes before adding a handful of finely chopped fresh herbes...whatever you like. Today I had parsley, so that's what it got...but any herbes you like are wonderful. Turn off the soup so the veggies don't overcook and then boil some tiny pasta, like ditalini or orzo, or even some grains like brown rice or barley, and then keep them aside to add in when you eat it. If you cook the grains or pasta in the soup and you don't eat it all right away they just get mushy. And of course sometimes you might not want anything but the veggies anyways.

So there you go... Peter Rabbit Soup, lifetime favourite of my favourite girl.

xo

why is happiness unforgivable?

 I recently enjoyed a memoir by the poet, Donald Hall, called Life Work. The main theme of the book is work, in all of its nuances. There are many vignettes of his grandparents' work on their farm in New Hampshire, his father's dairy business, his childhood spent between suburban and rural life, and of course of his own work as a man of letters, but there is one sentence that has stuck with me and that has me picking the book up again and again to reread the chapter that contains it. 

When talking about the great pleasure he finds in his work on the best days, he stops and asks "Why is happiness unforgivable?" My first reaction was, "Is it? Really?" He was talking about when a more melancholy reader might pick up his book, and say "Enough already! My life sucks! Yours should, too," at least that is how I understood it the first time through, but I didn't feel that way at all, and I can be as melancholy as the next gal. Hey, if someone is happy, I'm happy for them. If they are fulfilled by a day's or even a lifetime's work, that's just fine by me. Because I know, I KNOW, that even the most cheerful, most successful among us has plenty of their own moments of glumness.

Happiness, like the grey smoke of incense, is fleeting. It lingers just long enough to fill our souls with ample sweetness to know that it's a good idea to carry on. Life, by nature, is hard. If we come upon any kind of happiness it should be relished...either our own or that of others. The more I thought about Hall's question, the more I realized that very often it is the happiness of others that helps to nurture my own moments of contentment. Just think, at any given moment there might be hundreds of happy people within walking distance of your home. ;) Even the thought of it can cajole a smile, if I allow it.

I'm not sure why Donald Hall's sentence struck me so hard. Maybe it's because I didn't believe he really felt that way. His own life has been brim with struggles and sorrows, more than anyone should have to bear, and yet he has also written about knowing profound joy through his work, through his second marriage, through his children and grandchildren. He is one man who seems to know what it means when the philosophers preach "You can't know joy unless you know sorrow." I guess it made me think that he doesn't have a lot of faith in his readers if he didn't trust them enough to know that he has a right to claim his deep happiness in his work. He's earned it. It gives me great hope, as another human being forging her way through life, to see that people, no matter how grave things can get, have the spirit to carry on...and even be happy. Happiness is not unforgivable. What would be unforgivable is to not give it its due praise. 

unexpected gifts

Hello out there...it's been a while. Since I posted last I've had my final trip to the doctor until my next surgery in July, I have gone back to work, and I have finished and sent out three poems into the big wide world. And there have been other things occupying my days and nights..but that is not what I am here to write about today. 

The photo above was taken a week or so ago on a lazy morning by the pond at the farm next door. It's a special spot for me, kind of unruly, and that tree is like a touchstone for days when nothing seems quite touchable. Some days I see it as a praying tree, on its knees. Other days it's as thirsty as I am and I see it bow to drink its fill. And some days it's as broken as can be, prostrate and weeping, too heavy with despair to get back on its feet. On those days I talk to it about my own despair, and I can sometimes see in the mirror of pond a kind spirit reaching its many hands up to keep the tree's tired limbs above water. If I'm lucky, before I leave for home I realize that if nothing else the ground beneath me will support me...but really what I know is that the people in my life that I love and that love me are the real support.

This morning I had an unexpected visit from one of those people and it was a beautiful beginning to my day. And when she left I had another unexpected gift, an email from a reader far away thanking me for the words I write here and sharing some of her own very personal rays of light that get her through the darkness. What a validating thing it is to receive the grace of another spirit. Nourishing and generous with hope and kindness. 

One of the things she said in her email reminded me of one of the lessons I have learned from having cancer. The lightning strike. I have had other lightning strikes in my life; the most profound of them was when my first son was born so sick and died three days later. Things can storm into your life with hardly a notice at all. Sometimes they are good things, but often they are not. It's the things that are not so good that are worth the most, it seems. The things that hold us up for measure...that shock us into realizing that we are only very human after all. And being human means being fallible, fragile, and a living breathing miracle as extinguishable as the ant that finds itself under your careless shoe. 

Being alive on this earth is a miracle and a gift. A daily gift. And once the lightning has struck, even if it takes several strikes, it tends to make one realize the vulnerability and preciousness of what it really means to be alive. What I am trying to say is that most of the time I have a deeper appreciation for my singular life and how it is no less or no more important that the life of any other plant, animal or mineral on this earth. It allows me to every now and again really understand that there is no such thing as "why me?" Good and bad will fall on every living thing, and at any given time. The ant toils to build its hill only to have it stepped on or even kicked to dust by a curious child...and then it gets right back to work, building it again. Being alive means work. Being human means we are at a disadvantage next to all other living things...because being human means we have the ability of discernment, and sometimes that means we choose to give up. An ant would never choose to give up. The grass in the field will die every year and will never have the choice of whether it desires to spend all that energy and time to grow tall again. The garden spider will weave again and again, despite a heavy rain or the careless shears of the gardener which cuts the stalks that spider had built upon. 

Shit happens. Nothing is perfect. If you are lucky enough to be alive in this world you will sooner or later take a fall. And who knows why some will fall harder and more often than others. It is those people, the ones who keep on getting up, that fill my heart with awe and respect. They are the salt of the earth that bring me thirst enough to find water in the driest desert. They make anything seem possible. 

I have always believed in silver linings, but not as much as I have learned to believe in the beauty of sheer determination to get up and carry on. Not nearly as much as I believe in the grace of having those special people in our lives, those we know intimately and even those we have never seen face to face, that help us to see it through.

(Thank you, Siobhan, for your email this morning. It meant a great deal to me.)

holding it up to the light

Before you read any further, may I ask you to read THIS? While you are there, listen to it, too.

Did you like it? 

It's what I want to write about today, on the first day of April, National Poetry Month. Now, I am by no means an authority on poetry, and these thoughts are very personal to me. They come from my love for it, not from my knowledge, which is novice at best. Another poet or lover of poems, or scholar of poetry may have a completely different view. So be it. These musings are important to me, and solely my own.

So often, almost always actually, when I am speaking with someone other than a poet about poetry, the same thing comes up right away, "I don't understand poetry. It's pretty and all, but it seems pointless to read it if I can't even understand what the writer is trying to say."

I can understand that sentiment, I really can. But the thing is...it doesn't matter as much what the poet is trying  to say any more than it matters which recipe the cook uses to make the soup. If it tastes good, if it makes you feel satisfied and nourished...that's all that matters. Maybe that is not the best analogy, because of course it MATTERS, but I think you can get what I'm trying to say: a poem is a wish to connect with others, on a deep level that we may not ever understand, about inward things. Things that have no words to stand up for them or bring them to light...things that can't be named or held in your hands. And a poet uses images to evoke those feelings in us. A good poem has clear images, concrete images, even if it does not have a clear narrative story for us to follow along with. If you read or hear a poem and you come out the other end having your senses engaged by clear images...it is the feelings that those images evoke in YOU personally that make poetry what it is. It's an individual experience, as well as a universal experience, and it has been the soul food for humans since long before any other form of literature. Poetry feeds us. And from the looks of sales of poems in this country, we must be getting pretty near starving. (That is a topic for another day)

Poetry is also a way to celebrate the intricacies of the world: the beautiful and the ugly, the joyful and the sorrowful. Poets observe the world around them closely and reveal the every day particulars in ways that may startle us, or soothe us. In ways we may have never seen or considered before. Poetry makes us pay closer attention and feel more fully alive. Metaphor and simile, meter, cadence, and all of the tools of craft are used by the poet to make us feel something. Perhaps to make us question something, or look closer at ourselves and the world around us. It asks of us to take a moment of stillness and to allow for wonder. 

Do we need to understand something in order to feel it? In order to fully experience it? I don't believe so. But there is a comfort in poetry when nothing else seems to bring clarity. Maybe it is just taking the time to breathe and feel. To really pay attention. 

Reading a poem can be like a deep breath in and a long, soft exhale out. The images of outward things that form in me become symbols and road maps to the inward things I so often have trouble expressing or even beginning to understand. But somehow, when I read a good poem at the right time, I am mysteriously renewed. Changed.

If you are not already a reader of poems I'd like to challenge you to give it a try. And don't try to decipher all those words and lines and stanzas. Read it quietly to yourself, and then read it aloud. Poems need to be read aloud. Read it a couple of times and put it away to read again in a few days. Let the images in the poem form in your mind and let your body feel them and smell them, taste them and hear them. And let it be just that. Sometimes it takes a while to find a poet that really stirs the feelings in us. I suggest starting with Billy Collins if you appreciate a humourous, yet profound approach to life; Mary Oliver if you look to the natural world for illumination and comfort; or Jane Kenyon if you tend to lean towards the spiritual side of things. There are so many wonderful poets to explore, and these are just three that top my own list. You can Google  their names and find some of their work on-line. For a greater variety, you can also subscribe to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for a daily poem in your inbox, or to the daily poem email from Poets.org, which also has wonderful resources on discovering poetry in general. Garrison Keillor also has a wonderful anthology of poems that is a perfect place to start exploring different poets.

If you do take the time to discover poetry, I would like to know about your experience. As someone who counts on poems as much as I count on air at times, it saddens me that we as a culture do not give poets a place of importance on our night stands or bookshelves, or in our daily lives, like we used to. It also makes me happy to share what I love about it with others and to hear about how they fall in love with it, too.

spring has not sprung...just yet

I have a bone to pick with the vernal equinox. I know, I know, it is very scientifically based on the date that daylight and night are equal partners, and that's really great. But I get a little edgy when it claims to be the first day of spring. I don't care if the weather of the 19-21 of March is sunny and warm or freezing cold, dreary and wet---they have got to be the ugliest few days of the year up here in the northeastern US of A. When I think of spring I think of flowers, the return of songbirds, and the thousands of shades of green that come only when the foliage is new. But this week? This week is mud, mud, drab looking lawns, mud, remnants of snow plows digging up yards, salt stained roads, and more mud. We may be gaining daylight, and there may be a confused robin poking about, but you just can't call it spring. Not yet. 

I think spring should open on May 1st. The first week of May is always spectacular. By the 7th of May almost every tree is in some form of awakening with a haze of burgeoning leaves in yellow or pale red or green. Blossoms abound. The ground has firmed up after the cleansing month of April, and things look fresh and promising again. There have been enough pleasant days to get outdoors and clean up our yards. You could probably even push me back to the last week in April...but anything before that? Winter's last hurrah...mud-season. The only thing good about mud-season in the northeast? Maple syrup. Other than that, give me two feet of snow, or give me abundant flowers.

One of my favourite modern American poets wrote a poem about mud season. Jane Kenyon lived in the northeast for most of her adult life. Like me she was a transplant, but she grew to love this part of the country as her own. This is her poem about that ambiguous time between winter and true spring...

Mud Season

Here in purgatory bare ground

is visible, except in shady places

where snow prevails.

Still, each day sees

the restoration of another animal:

a sparrow, just now a sleepy wasp;

and, at twilight, the skunk

pokes out of the den,

anxious for mates and meals....

On the floor of the woodshed

the coldest imaginable ooze,

and soon the first shoots

of asparagus will rise,

the fingers of Lazarus....

Earth's open wounds---where the plow

gouged the ground last November---

must be smoothed; some sown 

with seed, and all forgotten.

Now the nuthatch spurns the suet,

resuming its diet of flies, and the mesh

bag, limp and greasy, might be taken

down.

Beside the porch step

the crocus prepares an exaltation

of purple, but for the moment

holds its tongue....

It's interesting, spring is the most celebrated and written about season by poets. Most of them drunk with the strewing of flowers, the theme of rebirth, spiritual resurrection. But one of my favourite poems about spring takes a different view.

Spring

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not here to bash any season. I love them all (winter best) and it's just the naming of the equinox as the first day of spring that bothers me. After a Buffalo winter we are all ready for the longer days, and that in itself is something to celebrate...but spring? It's just not quite here. Maybe we could just say that the vernal equinox is like giving mother nature the green light; it's time to start thinking about spring, but let's not abandon the remnants of winter too soon. (The photos in this post were taken while visiting Joe Meyer, Norm Kehl and their friends and family at their sugar shack in Bennington, NY, which only confirmed my opinion that maple syrup is the best thing about mud season.)

land of counterpane

I have had many surgeries over the years, beginning with a fairly major one when I was 10 months old to remove hemangiomas from my head and back. I don't recall that one of course, but I do remember having my tonsils removed when I was perhaps 10 or 11. One of the best parts of having your tonsils out is that you get to eat ice cream and Popsicles for breakfast, lunch or dinner. One of the other best parts was all the love and attention and snuggle time in your cozy bed. But my earliest memory of recovering from surgery was when I was maybe 6 or 7 and I had to have reconstructive surgery on the scar on my head. I don't remember anything about the actual surgery, but I remember coming home to my cozy pink bed and my mom giving me a special book of poems: A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Oh how I loved that book. This was what mine looked like:

It is the 1970's version illustrated by the Provensens, and I treasured it for years. Somehow I lost it along the way of growing up but I scoured eBay several years ago until I found another copy for myself. I spent hours reading from this book and enjoying the pictures and my very favourite was The Land of Counterpane.

The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was sick and lay a-bed,    I had two pillows at my head,    And all my toys beside me lay    To keep me happy all the day.        And sometimes for an hour or so      I watched my leaden soldiers go,    With different uniforms and drills,    Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;        And sometimes sent my ships in fleets    All up and down among the sheets;   Or brought my trees and houses out,    And planted cities all about.        I was the giant great and still    That sits upon the pillow-hill,    And sees before him, dale and plain,  The pleasant land of counterpane.

If you have ever read Stevenson's beloved poems for children, you know how vividly he can capture the imagination, sending a young and even an adult mind to marvelous places beyond the walls of your room. I took my book down from the shelf today, brought it to my bed and spent an hour or so remembering just what it was that captured my heart so many years ago. These were the first poems I committed to memory, and not because I tried to...only because I loved them enough to read them over and over again. Another favourite is Bed in Summer, and this one:

which ends like this:

I called the little pool a sea; 
The little hills were big to me; 
For I am very small. 
I made a boat, I made a town, 
I searched the caverns up and down, 
And named them one and all. 

And all about was mine, I said, 
The little sparrows overhead, 
The little minnows too. 
This was the world and I was king; 
For me the bees came by to sing, 
For me the swallows flew. 

I played there were no deeper seas, 
Nor any wider plains than these, 
Nor other kings than me. 
At last I heard my mother call 
Out from the house at evenfall, 
To call me home to tea. 

And I must rise and leave my dell, 
And leave my dimpled water well, 
And leave my heather blooms. 
Alas! and as my home I neared, 
How very big my nurse appeared. 
How great and cool the rooms! 

I have been spending a great deal of time on my bed the past few days. After such a great start to my recovery I've had a little set back. At my appointment on Wednesday my nurse practitioner Anne Marie (I really love her) gave me the first fill in my implant...it has not stopped hurting since. They did not remove my drain because I am still producing too much fluid, and I am very swollen under my arm where they removed the three lymph nodes. The past two days I have been having muscle spasms around the clock: if I lie perfectly still they will subside, but as soon as I move...ouch. It feels like when I was in labour with my daughter and my abdomen would contract and push down...except it is on my chest. The implant gets round and very hard and raises up to a ball. And it stays that way. I just don't think that is what is supposed to happen and I am hoping that my body has not decided it doesn't like having it in there.

It's been a little different, staying in bed all day, than how I remember it as a child. Not so delicious. I'm tired and when I try to read my eyes cross. My friend brought me some audio books and those have been wonderful. I think I've only missed a few chapters when I've dozed off now and again. But oh I had such plans of catching up on reading, and of writing lots of things I've been wanting to write. It just hasn't happened. While the pain is certainly not unbearable, it is ever present and wears me out.

But back to The Land of Counterpane...I am hoping that tomorrow will be a more imaginative day for me while tucked into my nest with my three cats and piles of books and pencils and crisp white paper. And my laptop, of course. I'll bring my book of childhood poems along again..two copies. You see, several years ago my mom gave me a copy of A Child's Garden of Verses again. This time a first edition copy illustrated by my very favourite, Tasha Tudor. It is my most treasured book and sits in my bookcase right next to my desk always. 

It was published in 1947 and has that beautiful patina of a well-loved and often enjoyed old book that I love so much. Tasha Tudor died this past June in her beautiful home in Marlboro, Vermont. The first time I drove through the little town nestled in the Green Mountains I called my mom to tell her where I was. I was so excited!  Tasha was 92 when she died and lived most of her life in New England in the manner of a nineteenth century farm wife. I have just about every book written about her; she lived a magical life. For over 70 years her illustrations elicited wide admiration. In 1941 The New York Times stated: "her pictures have the same fragile beauty of early spring evenings." I could not say it any better.

P.S. My daughter took the photograph at the the top. It is just one of the beautiful, beautiful bunches of flowers that have been given to me over the past two weeks. I have been spoiled by all the flowers in my house. I adore them. Thanks to all who brought them to me...