Birthdays

In the 19-aughts, my grandmother, born 99 years ago today, was a tiny girl in a midwestern town, no doubt doted upon by her homemaker mother and executive father.

In the teens, she grew up and went off to board at the Columbus School for Girls.  Somewhere in that time period, maybe a year or two later, she met her future husband, on a golf outing with their respective fathers.

In the 1920s, she was graduated from a Seven Sisters College and married my grandfather on the same day.  She was by all accounts a brilliant student, but largely untouched by the movement that had just resulted in women's suffrage.

By the end of the 30s, she was the mother of three sons, living on a quiet street in a small town, my grandfather's and great-grandfather's business ("Hay-Coal-Seed-Fertilizer-Water") having scraped through the Depression.

She and her family waited out World War II in the 40s and her sons, too young for the military, went off to school in New Hampshire. (Insert: A Separate Peace.)

In the 50s, her grandchildren began to arrive and her new home, built on a picturesque hillside in the country, became a haven for little people.

In the 1960s, tragedy began to strike, with the loss of a daughter in-law and grandson (my family) to a car accident. The 60s also saw the beginning of my grandmother's career as a world traveler, always accompanied by grandchildren.  She gave up on my grandfather, who wouldn't set foot on a plane or a boat, and eventually made it to Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.

In the 70s she lost two more daughters-in-law in rapid succession.  She was beginning to age, but her home, with its brick patio and lemonade under a maple tree, was always the most welcoming place in our world.

In the eighties she became a great-grandmother and lost her husband.  She listened  to  her granddaughter, though, and had a hip replaced and managed one last trip, a birding jaunt to Trinidad and Tobago, before depression and deafness began their evil incursions into her life.

As the 90s passed, she aged rapidly.  She moved into an assisted living facility and her house was turned over to various members of the younger generations as they went through miscellaneous life transitions. She is a shrunken version of her former self, her bones as brittle as bones can be and her skin like paper, easily bruised and torn.

Today,  her still-keen mind trapped behind the veil of blindness and deafness, she struggles for meaning in daily life.  Help her on with her coat and help her feel her way to her walker, and she speeds down the hallway like a demon, eager for the car ride that will release her from the confines of her physical life.  But much of her time is spent alone, encased in darkness and silence.  She is much burdened by the knowledge that her middle son has been widowed a third time, and frustrated by her inability to understand what her great-grandchildren are up to. 

I read last night that only 1 in 10,000 Americans makes it to the age of 100.  My grandmother -- who told me when she was 80 that "there is just no point to this hip operation -- I'll be dead in two years!" -- seems to be on her way.

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On another note, my journal is ONE year old today.  I have never before in my life managed a journal for more than a few consecutive days, so I think a little celebration is in order.  Happy Birthday to Me, Too!

99

My grandmother will be 99 tomorrow.  A tough one for her, I think -- she has so little interaction with others, due to her dear-blindness and near- deafness -- and I know that she wonders how she could have lived so very long, when she has lost her husband, four daughters-in-law and a grandson.

I have been living with my sorrow over my stepmother's death for the past two weeks, and with many questions about what enhances life and makes it worthwhile, and what diminishes it to the point that it is not.  I have a picture in my bedroom of my grandmother in her 70s, on an African savannah with zebra grazing behind her.  But overseas adventure notwithstanding, she has lived for at least the past ten years within the confines of two small rooms, increasingly unable to recognize or converse with those of us who love her. 

My father has begun the inevitable process of questioning his and his wife's decisions about her medical care, raising issues that my brother and I tried without any success to discuss with them, and creating intense internal regret on my part for my utter failure in that regard.  (I reserve my fury for her doctors.)  And, of course, we are bombarded at every turn with Terry Schiavo's tragic existence.

Birthdays are just not what they used to be.  And the hibiscus blooming in Florida right now are many miles and months from here.

Easter Morning Moon Setting

When my son and I left the house around 6:00 this morning to walk to the cemetery for the Sunrise Service, the full moon was low in the sky.  I have learned from the author of Ruth Store that this one is called the Moon of the New Grass and, sure enough, the new grass is making its appearance amid all the slush and mud.  I thought I'd post this photo tonight in case anyone wants to look out early tomorrow morning and catch a glimpse of the tidal pull toward spring.

My day was kind of off kilter.  I didn't have nearly enough sleep last night so I napped a lot, with a break in the middle to take the boy to the airport.  I'm going to have to work intently this week to make up for a week-end of lethargy.  My daughter still has a week of vacation left, with nothing much planned, but her college acceptances are trickling in so at least there's a bit of news every day or two.

Back to sleep for me.

At The Last, A Victory!

Sunrise Service, about 6:45 this morning.

Cases of Mistaken Identity

First, earlier this week, I did one of those ubiquitous online quizzes (courtesy of Patrick's Place) and learned that, contrary to my real-life Leo-ness, I am more in line with 

I'm not an astrology afficionado, so I had to google Pisces to find out what this new revelation might mean.  Having spent most of my life content in the assurance that I am in fact a Lion, I was somewhat discomfitted to discover that I might be more akin to a Fish.  And I can assure you that I am never, ever, indecisive or self-pitying.  Moi? I think not.

A couple of days later, this time thanks to Sistercdr, I learned that, in my medieval phase, I am a PRIORESS:

(You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a belief in the goodness of mankind, you will likely be christened a saint after your life is over. )

I am pretty much 150% sure that the actual nuns I know, along with everyone else, will be dumbfounded to learn of my incipient sainthood.  I like the blue outfit, though.  Goes with the water that my new fish-self inhabits.

However, I am not yet done transforming myself.  I had mentioned to Theresa one day that, while in my former-ambitious-lawyer-life I had always come out as an ENTJ, I seemed to be emerging as someone else.  So when Sister also published a hilarious list of Meyers Briggs Prayers and several of them spoke to me, I decided to do a quickie online test and lo! I am emerging as an INFP.

My prayer?

Lord, help me to finish everything I sta

Well, yes, it did take me four or five hours to wash the kitchen floor yesterday, due to numerous self-inflicted interruptions.

I was a little surprised to discover that I have an introvert side.  Maybe all this writing is rearranging the folds of my  brain.  I did check my other possible prayers, of course, and they are:

ENFP: God, help me to keep my mind on one th – Look, a bird! – at a time.

and, my personal favorite,

ENTP: Lord, help me follow established procedures today. On second thought, I’ll settle for a few minutes.

By the way, Sister found the test at Ian's Messy Desk, whish is a new blog to me and looks to be an intriguing one.

This little diatribe on my shifting self (no. . . NOT shiftless) was prompted by a comment in my previous entry, a very generous comment from a reader who thinks my name is Celeste.  It's not, of course, any more than I am a selfless and moral introverted fish, but I googled that one, too, and it means, as I thought, "Heavenly."

So now I am a fish in the sky.

Productivity

I'm reading Jim Wallis's new book and hoping that members of the media are, too.  It did seem to me toward the end of the last election that there was a sudden collective, albeit limited, recognition on the part of the august fourth estate that the far right wing of the Republican party does not have a lock on the Christian faith.  Early on in the book, Mr. Wallis notes a reporter's comment  that he had always reported religion from the point of view of the "right" simply because it had the loudest voice.  I think that many reporters, who are themselves on the whole a notoriously secular group, have been surprised to discover that there are vast numbers of deeply faithful Christians whose views are much at odds with the current administration.  Anyway, there's nothing much new in the book for those who share the thoughts that Jim Wallis has been articulating for years in Sojourners, but it's a useful compendium for those who have relied entirely on the mainstream media for their understanding of the Christian message and the people who try to live it.

I'm also reading one of those sweeping historical novels that I find so absorbing when I have a to-do list a mile long.  I am weeks behind in grading student assignments, I don't have that chilled wine in the frig that I mentioned a few entries back -- not to mention the shining floors, clear windows, clear counters and organized stacks -- and I have to do reams of research on the dome of St. Peter's for my own class -- so naturally I am about to go back to bed to curl up with a saga that begins in the land of the druids and is going to take me forward about 1000 years.

A friend is IMing me, trying to get me to go for a walk, and the phone that I can't find is ringing, so I think I'll go back to bed and read.

Beach Beach Beach Beach Beach

 

Why?

The beach at St. Augustine is calling me.  The pull is intensely powerful this time of year -- March after March we took our children to the beach and, when I wake up before six on a morning in early spring, I know it's time for a walk on the beach.

But I live here and, while I've got that stuck-in-the-mud feeling I talked about earlier, a feeling that seems to be shared by many, there are reasons we haven't picked up and moved.  Since I was feeling so fused to my locale the other day, I decided to make a conscious effort to remember some of them:

I have at least eight close women friends right here, most of them within a few blocks of me, whose lives and friendships enrich mine beyond measure and on whom I can count for anything, anytime of the day or night.  

I have wonderful next-door neighbors with whom I have shared the joys and trials of parenthood for 20 years.  

I can walk half a mile to the grocery, a drugstore, a bookstore, and two ethnic restaurants.   

I can walk half a mile the other way to my drugstore of choice, several more restaurants, and a group of funky shops.  

My immediate neighbors are Irish, Lebanese, German, Democrat, Republican, Bosnian, Hispanic, gay, straight, black, white, married, divorced, single students, Christian, Jewish.  

I can walk 2-3 miles to a natural area with two lakes and thousands of migrating birds in the spring and fall.  

I have known  my ob-gyn for more than 25 years.  

I live in a community that has established a domestic partner registry.  

I live in a community where we vigorously debate EVERYTHING, from the aforesaid registry to the destruction of trees for a soccer field on public school property.  

I belong to a wonderful church where God's love for all is taught practically every minute.  

My house has very cool woodwork and French doors and built-in cupboards and a library with a fireplace and pathetic plumbing -- all available in any number of houses here.  

My children were able to go to terrific Montessori schools minutes away from preschool through eighth grade.  

I can walk to world class museums and concerts and a major university and medical center.  

I live in a community where people who could easily live elsewhere have made a conscious choice to live out the power of diversity.  

The sun shines here at least ten days a year.  Really, how greedy should one person be?          

Saturday Satire

Questions via Patrick's Place:  

1. You know company is coming:  do you panic and immediately begin cleaning house or do you sit back and relax because your place is already clean? 

I walk calmly to the kitchen and take out my best wine glasses and the wine that is already chilled, always ready for company.  Fresh flowers already adorn my living room; I cut them from my extensive garden every morning just in case someone drops by.  My windows sparkle and my floors shine.  There's neither a speck of dust nor a trace of errant paperwork to be seen, and you couldn't find the cat box if you were a bloodhound.  I consider it my highest calling in life to maintain my surroundings to the utmost in perfection.

2. Which was a bigger surprise for you:  
a) Robert Blake was acquitted
b) Martha Stewart did jail time
c) Scott Peterson was sentenced to death
d) The Michael Jackson trial began at all

That anyone knows or cares who any of these people are?

3. What was in the last package you received in the mail?

I'm sure it was that set of IPods that I purchased to match the decor in each room of my house. 

4. What commercial annoys you the most at the moment?

I can't even begin to fabricate an answer here.  I never watch commercials.

5. What charity was the last one to call you to solicit a donation?  Did you give them money?  Why or why not?

The college attended by one of my sons.  Of course I gave them money.  Why not?  They already have the furniture, the rugs, the vacations, the plumbing we can't afford to repair and the drive we can't afford to replace.  Why not a little extra cash, too?

6. What common household product do you hate to run out of the most?

Laundry detergent, the center of my existence. 

7.  My own question:  What would you most like to find?

My glasses.  They've been missing for two months and I can't see anything when I get up in the morning.  Now this one is for real.

Another Life

When I was a girl and lived in the country, I imagined that my adult life would be much the same, only a bit more expansive.  For a long time, I thought that I would live in the country and own horses.  I guess I thought that my career as a famous writer would support my animals.

I am often surprised by how things turned out.  I love where we live, but it's not anyplace that I ever envisioned until I realized we'd been here for more than a decade.  When I was very young, I expected space and wild places, most likely out west, and instead I live on a tiny suburban lot near a large midAmerica city.  I expected to have large animals all over the place, but instead I have had citified (sort of) dogs, cats, gerbils, and birds.

I was reminded of those long-ago dreams this past week-end.  We stayed way out in the country, and my son and I took a walk the first evening and saw a beaver meandering across a lake and horses rambling across a field. 

I'm not sure that I could manage a life like that anymore.  I haven't been on a horse in maybe eight years, and I would miss the ease of city life.  But it's something to think about.  Could I change everything about my existence?  One of my friends is looking at new homes as she prepares for a major move and, while I never imagined myself in a house built in the last 50 years, much less in the last few months, I am entranced by the photos she has sent.  I am thinking that I have become a total stick-in-the-mud and that perhaps we could live completely differently than we do now.

A Week

I'm really, really tired.

There was one day last week when, in the course of an hour, I planned assignments for an 8th grade history class, located music for my daughter to sing at the funeral, and organized a group of recalcitrant seniors headed to the art museum for a class picture. 

The days just went on and on.  With family coming in from New York to Florida to California, the funeral was scheduled for Saturday, nearly a week after my stepmother's death.  My sons came home on Thursday, grouchy after a week of finals, and we hit the road Friday morning.  There was a crowded visitation at the funeral home Friday night -- I'm from a small town where my stepmother has four siblings, one of whom is the mayor -- and the funeral itself, a graveside service, and a church luncheon on Saturday.  In between all that, I took a  few moments to visit a friend whom I have known practically since we were born a week apart 50-odd years ago; her mother had also died last week-end.  (And then I came home to the news that a law school classmate and mother of students of mine had lost her mother this week-end.)

Over everything hung the tensions inherent in families steeped in death, divorce, and remarriage: stepsiblings and half-siblings, people once but no longer related through the generations by marriage, people who have never met each other, people who try to pretend that they have never met each other, people who are delighted to meet each other for the first time.  And over all of that a fog of loss and sorrow draped itself, as the sure knowledge that a woman who once met the canoe trails of backcountry Canada with gleeful abandon was with us no more.

Yes, I am really, really tired.

 

Death Comes When It Will

This morning as I walked to my father's house, nestled in the woods above a creek bank, a red-bellied woodpecker made its insistent whirring cry above me, a pair of mallards flew over the roof, cardinals called, and nuthatches zipped about. 

"She would be sorry to miss this, " I thought to myself.  "The first decent weather in weeks, and sounds of life ringing through the woods."

On Sunday, a series of phone calls indicated that my stepmother had begun a precipitious decline and was probably nearing the end.  Stunned by her mental confusion and physical agitation, my father had called a young relative to put her in the car and driven off to the hospital.  Tests showed that initial fears -- pneumonia or brain bleeds -- were unfounded, and anti-anxiety meds helped to calm her, but I decided to go anyway.  I'm not sure why, but I thought maybe she needed me to help her let go.  She certainly had no intention of leaving, either this life or my father.

I arrived at about 3:00 a.m. after a long drive across a quiet state.  A once vital and elegant woman lay in the hospital bed, breathing roughly but otherwise completely unresponsive.  Since I've always been told that people can hear voices even as everything else is shutting down, I sat down, told her I was there to help take care of her, and began to stoke her hand.  Her jagged breathing began to calm and I told her, my father's intrepid canoeing partner, to lie back in the canoe and let the sun shine on her face. 

Within a few minutes she was gone, quietly and peacefully, my father on one side, I on the other.

I will never know whether she heard me, or whether her breathing was simply the last physical manifestation of someone who hours earlier had moved on.  But I like to think that, as she died, she could hear gentle waves lapping and the loons of the North Woods calling her to journey to a more peaceful place.

Stolen Goods

If you've heard a version of this already, then you probably won't mind remembering it.  If you haven't, you'll probably "get it" before you reach the end.  But it's worth thinking about anyway.  It was part of the presentation at that retreat I went to last week-end:

So a lady pulls into a gas station on the edge of a little town.  The attendant comes outside, and she says that she's moving to town and wonders what it's like there.  He asks her what it was like where she came from.

"Oh, it was awful," she says.  The people were selfish and obnoxious and incredibly irritating.  I couldn't wait to get out of there."

"Well," says the attendant, shaking his head, "I'm afraid you'll find this town is pretty much just like that."

As she drives off in disgust, another car pulls up.  The driver leans out and says, "Hey -  I'm moving to this town next week.  What's it like here?"  The attendant asks her what it's like where she lives now.

"Oh, it's great!" she enthuses.  "The people are so friendly and generous, always willing to help you out.  I'm so sorry to be leaving."

"I think," he grins, "that you find this town is almost exactly the same."

On Behalf of My Father

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  (Marcel Proust)

My father is unlikely ever to read this.  He's drained and exhausted from four months of 24/7 care of my dying stepmother and, while he still feeds his birds everyday, he has no time for sending out messages from the environmental front.  So I'll do this one for him.

Marigolds2 asked me to refer folks to her entries on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  As I write this, only the first one is finished, so I urge you to keep checking back as she presents the Administration's plans for imminent attack.  And, in case you don't make it over there:

This is the place we're talking about.  Far away -- FAR way -- from most of us.  Most of us won't be going there.  I've been working on our household budget all day, a budget for a household that will support three college students next year.  I don't see a trip to ANWR in my near future any more than most of you do.  No reason to preserve it so that I can make a visit.

Here's a more geologically/terrain-oriented map:

Looks a bit foreboding, huh?  Probably can't do one of those family camping trips there, at least not the kind where you transport the contents of the entire L.L. Bean Outdoor Equipment catalog along with a few coolers of beer and a tv that plugs into your car lighter.  On the other hand, if you COULD get up there, you would see this:

And if you emerged from the safety of your vehicle, you might have an encounter like this (from a safe distance, one would hope):

Or not.  Maybe these things don't interest you at all.  Maybe, like many Americans, you prefer to drive your SUV without contemplating that it must be fueled either by purchases via international relationships from which  we should be disentangling ourselves or by the destruction of habitat which we cannot recover after it's gone.  Maybe, like many Americans, you have a comfortable existence with so much stuff that you could probably live well with only occasional ventures from your home and car.

I can't claim superiority in any of these areas.  My husband, who carts around a lot of equipment for the soccer teams he coaches,  leased a mini-SUV a few months ago.  I was NOT HAPPY, but he told me it's more fuel-efficient than my six-year-old van with 125,000 miles on it, and he's probably right.  And we have a house full of stuff.  And we recyle those things which our community makes it easy to recyle, but we don't go much beyond that.  So no, we don't live environmentally sound lives.

But I can claim two things, and those are attentiveness and appreciation.  I think that if we start with a cultivation of those qualities, we cannot help but try to slow down on our personal purchases and national policies.  There is no question in my mind that we have the talent and capacity in this country to develop long-range solutions to our energy demands that will enable us to demand far less and to acquire it in ways that do less harm to our planet.

We need both.  We need our vehicles and our other conveniences to live the way that we want.  But we need places like ANWR, too, whether we get there as individuals or not:

You must have certain noble areas of the world left in as close-to-primal condition as possible.  You must have quietness and a certain amount of solitude.  You must be able to touch the living rock, drink the pure waters, scan the great vistas, sleep under the stars and awaken to the cool dawn wind. You do not play ping-pong in a cathedral. (Ansel Adams)

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The following is from the website of the Northern Alaskan Environmental Center.  You can click on "Arctic" and then on "Arctic Action" to read more.

This week, the House and Senate budget committees split over whether or not to include proposals to allow drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be included in the federal budget.  The Senate is poised to vote next week on whether or not to allow the drilling provision to stay in the budget.

***

Arctic Hotline for Capitol Hill: 1-888-894-5325 or go to http://capwiz.com/awc/dbq/officials/ and click on your state to get the direct number for your Senator.  You can call the Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121

·        Ask your Senator to vote “Yes” on the Cantwell amendment to keep drilling in the Arctic Refuge out of the budget.

Gilead Revisited

A friend of mine emailed me a few days ago to let me know that Marilyn Robinson, the author of my current favorite novel, Gilead, was going to be on the Diane Rehm Show this morning.  I just started to listen to it and decided that, as I am getting sick and not feeling too upbeat tonight, this isn't the time.  Marilyn Robinson had begun by talking about how the main characters had just come to her: an old father and a young son, whom the father would not live to see grow up.

That storyline and its themes of loss, anticipated and sorely felt, is part of why the book appeals to me so much, I'm sure.  My mother was a young mother who never got to see her children grow up.  So young, in fact, when she died, that I was too young to give any thought to what it might have been like to grow up with a mother.  Oh, I eventually acquired Cinderella's stepmother, but she didn't count insofar as the idea of growing up with a mother is concerned and, after she, too, died, I abandoned thinking of my father's wives as mothers.  (I care deeply for my current stepmother, who is dying now, but I was taken aback when my father referred to me as her daughter a few nights ago.  I haven't thought of myself as a woman's daughter since I was seven.)

As a child growing up, I never had and never expected a mother to talk with me about my ideas, my dreams, my periods, my dates, my schooling, my prom, my career, my wedding, my pregnancies.  No Gilmore Girls there.  I can remember a couple of my friends in law school getting into huge fights with their mothers over wedding plans.  I was dumbfounded.  Did mothers have anything to say about the lives of 25-year-old daughters?

I know better now.  I'm sorry to say that my family was so successful in its grief-saturated elimination of my mother's memory from our lives that I didn't think much about her until two babies landed in my arms.  I will never forget looking down at them when they were a couple of days old, after the grogginess of my in-a-haze-of-drugs delivery had worn off, and thinking, "Oh my God.  There was someone in my life who felt this way about me."  I had no idea.

Ever since then, I have thought of my mother often.  All those events that I got to witness and participate in that she missed:  Kids learning to swim.  Kids going off to camp.  Kids at their first recitals.  Kids with the chickenpox. Kids running up and down soccer fields.  Kids in plays.  Kids struggling against heartbreak.  Kids making terrible mistakes.  Kids achieving triumphant successes.  Kids getting on planes without me and getting off planes to come back to me.  Kids graduating.  Kids calling and emailing aboout college successes and missteps.

One day, several years ago, we were all tubing together on a narrow and gentle portion of the French Broad River in North Carolina.  My oldest son, who was about twelve at the time, had a bowl-cap of blond hair that looked like white gold in the sunlight as his inner tube made circles in the water.  

Another time, a few years earlier, his younger brother had stood at the edge of a small pool and waterfall in the Adirondacks, screeching at the top of his terrified little lungs, "My body wants to jump in, but my mind won't let it!" 

Last week my daughter, a high school senior, was stretched out on my bed for a late-night conversation and, as I wondered aloud whether I had become a bit too lax in my attentiveness to her evening whereabouts, said, "I wouldn't worry, Mom; you've got a firm grip."

Thousands of moments like that. Some terrible, some good, some beyond any description of glorious.  I am SO glad that I got this life, that I have gotten as far as being a very middle-aged mother of almost adult (defined loosely) children.  I had no idea.

This Is Not A Real Entry. . .

. . . but it will be someday.

One of my frustrations will AOL Journals is that there is, to my knowledge, no real kind of index anywhere of journals by topic.  I suppose that I could ask the powers-that-be to start one, but that would deprive me of the pleasure of doing my own, just exactly the way I want it.  Plus I want to include non-AOL journals.  So that's what this beginning and ever-expanding entry will be.  I'm just going to keep adding to it, bit by bit, and I would love to receive recommendations for new additions.  And I am going to shamelessly limit myself to blogs that stick to topics of particular interest to ME.  I would be happy, though, to link to anyone else who wants to do this for topics of interest to them.  And it means that journals like my own, which bounce around from topic to topic, don't qualify -- unless I decide someday to start a category for the Eclectics among us.

For today, just categories and a few links:

PLACES

Beside Dry Creek (Colorado)     

Blue Ridge Blog    

Inscribed on the Forest Floor (Yellowstone Photography)    

Dispatches from France      

Spruce Pine Cottage (Florida Panhandle)

THE GREAT OUTDOORS 

Danielle's Den  

Eagles in Maryland 

Wrenaissance Blog

Nomadic Musings

READING AND WRITING    

About Me- Books: Spirituality, Journals, & Transformation

Theresa Williams - Author   

The Biblio Philes 

A Mindful Life

PHOTOGRAPHY 

From Every Angle   

Photo Friday

Photo Journal   

Jersey Girl

Rural Life Photos

PROGRESSIVE/LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY   

Kinesis: Life and Faith in Motion

Dylan's Lectionary Blog

Tread Lightly on the Things of Earth

Art Strikes

The week's Week-end Assigment (Number 50!) asks us to talk about a work of art that's had a significant impact on us.  So here it is - Ansel Adams, Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

I took a photograph like this once -- a photograph of the moon rising over the distant mountains as we drove from Jackson back to Grand Teton National Park one night.  My photograph is a brilliant work of art -- solid black, nary a moon nor mountain in sight.  Okay, so I have a ways to go before I even reach technology kindergarten.  I'm fine with that.

Seriously, this is a photograph at which I think  I could gaze for hours.  This is the photograph that tells me that spending hours trying to produce a print that says exactly what you want is worth the effort. 

It's also a photograph that brings to mind the dozens of times I have celebrated full moons with my children:  at home, over the desert in the Southwest, over the Atlantic Ocean, over the lakes of Algonquin in Canada, over the summer Piazza Vecchio in Florence, over the winter Seine in Paris.

It's also a photograph that was taken before the atomic bomb was tested in the desert of the southwest, and yet the astonishing rendition of light in the sky seems almost to foreshadow that awful morning in New Mexico when physicist Robert Oppenheimer watched his destructive creation come to life for the first time and said, quotingthe Baghavad-Gita,  "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."   The New Mexican desert was one place in 1941; it was another after the summer of 1945.

A work of art -- a slice of beauty and technical mastery in itself; a reminder of precious personal moments, both humorous and poignant; a connection to geography and history on a grand scale.

L'Chaim

My father called very late last night, which he never does, to tell me that the doctors have finally advised that my stepmother move from their care to hospice care.  After four months of grueling chemo and radiation, four months in which she has barely left her couch (and amost never without assistance), they have concluded that they have no more tricks up their sleeves.

The third eagle chick has hatched at Blackwater.

My stepmother was canoeing in the Algonquin backcountry with my father and sons in September.  After her diagnosis, she insisted on following the doctors' treatment schedule to the letter, even though her chances were almost nonexistent and the hour-long trips (one way) to the hospital and the drugs administered there left her exhausted, often physically sick, and sometimes mentally disoriented.

The third chick is a few days later than its siblings and therefore comes into the world with the distinct disadvantage of being much smaller than its competitors for food.

I've already explored my feelings about the path my father and stepmother have taken, here and here and here and here and here and here.   I don't think I would have made the same choices.  I know I would have asked more questions.  But I have to honor my stepmother for being a woman of incredible grit and determination, and my father for his exquisite care of her.

The eagles don't ask questions.  There is the next day, and the next, and the next.  They sat on a nest for weeks, even when they were buried in snow.  For the next months, the mother will be a dedicated nurturer and a ferocious defender, and the father will be an exhausted provider.  In the summer, given hours and days and weeks and months of unremitting attentiveness, with some luck tossed in, five eagles will soar over the nest and the Blackwater refuge.

Despite the fact that I would have liked to have seen the hospice folks called long before today and despite my personal view that death is best anticpated with openness, in community, I feel a terrible weight of sadness this morning as those things are all about to fall into place.  My stepmother is a woman of vitality and vivacity and my father is a man of great gentleness and love for the created world.  It was surprising that they even encountered each other, but it's not surprising that in the aftermath of painful endings to prior marriages, each would conclude that the other offered hope for a new life and risk falling in love again.  They have that, that surprising and life-affirming love, to celebrate now. 

I won't see them in person, but I feel a great joy when I wake up in the mornings these days and remember that I can come downstairs and, with a couple of clicks, see what the Blackwater eagles are up to.  The adults are nurturing beginnings, entirely devoted to the prospect of filling our skies with magnificence.

L'Chaim -- To Life.

Credibility - Something to Think About

I spent Saturday at a church leadership retreat.  It was a long day, made longer by the fact that we Presbyterians are a verbal lot -- give us a chance to reflect on a  question and we go at it with gusto! 

One of the topics we addressed was credibility.  Here are two questions for you all:  (1) Identify one world and one  ministerial leader whom you believe has exhibited credibility with their people and (2)  What primary characteristics do you believe are responsible for that credibility?

My leaders were President Jimmy Carter and Sister Xavier, a nun whom I knew as a teacher, mother superior and, in my adult years, as a good friend.

The characteristics I came up with were:

Authenticity

Expertise

Committment

Gentle Guidance

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In the meantime, I "borrowed" a photo of the Blackwater eagles on  Saturday.  It seems that the third egg isn't going to make it, but the two surviving chicks look robust and hungry!

 

Eagles, Big and Small

Many years ago, more than 25!, I became a regular volunteer at our Museum of Natural History, which was involved in an eagle hatching project.  At that time, eagles had almost vanished from our state, and the state DNR was trying to mate captive eagles, hatch the eggs in captivity, and then move the little ones to the nests of wild pairs.

It was an involved project!  Most of the details have faded from memory, but I do recall the first year that the Museum had an eagle who produced a chick who then moved, with the assistance of state officials, to a wildlife refuge-area nest.  The parents would be quite willing to accept the eaglet; the trick was making sure that the chick never saw the humans who were feeding it, so that it would not bond to the wrong species.  It bonded to a giant eagle-head glove and successfully made the transition to the wild.

Somewhere around here is a picture of me in the office of the museum guy in charge of the project, holding a tiny eaglet in my hands. 

In fact, I just remembered precisely what that picture looks like and where it is:  I was pregnant with my twins, so it was taken almost exactly 21 years ago!

No wonder I feel an affinity with eagle mothers.

Over the years, we have seen eagles here and there.  There are a few more nesting pairs around now, and you can find them if you know where to look.  I used to watch some in a distant but no doubt huge nest across the Matanzas River south of St. Augustine.  Every once in awhile in Florida an eagle will speed overhead when you're on the highway.

My birding has been considerably constrained in the past few years.  I did go out with a friend to see some eagles about a year ago, and maybe we need to do that again soon.  In the meantime, I am thoroughly enjoying the arrivals of the Blackwater eaglets, who are reminding me several times a day that there is a vast world beyond mine in the city.

I've quoted Henry Beston before but, as eaglets and great horned owls begin to hatch, as hawks soar in their mating dances, and as passerines and shorebirds in South America begin to feel the internal restlessness that will soon propel them northward, it's time again:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals.  Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion.  We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves.   And therein do we err.  For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.
The Outermost House

Sunshine II

Exhibit A:  Christian Science Church Tower about 7:30 this morning.  That is BLUE in the sky, and it's there because to the east there was a bright shiny golden sphere beaming just above the horizon. 

Not a great photo, because le chien was wriggling all over the place and I couldn't hold the camera still. But I couldn't resist recording this unusual weather phenomenon.

I have had a really busy day but I have taken a lot of mini-breaks to check out the new eaglet (see previous entry).  It seems that in our enthusiasm, we viewers broke the isp for the eagle cam -- but there's a link there to another viewing site.  The eaglet looked pretty perky this morning, and papa brought mom a duck for breakfast -- which seems to have been entirely consumed.  I wouldn't have been so thrilled if my husband had shown up with an unplucked duck the morning after the arrival of our children, but I have to figure the eagle knew what he was doing.

An Eaglet Has Landed!

http://www.friendsofblackwater.org/camhtm.html

Snow and Cold and Ice, Oh My!

OK, so fine, whatever.  I was too optimistic about that whole spring idea.  No go.   I guess I was completely undone by the six hours or so of sun that materialized during the last week of February.

It is SO cold and blustery out there.  Every time you step outside you get smacked in the face with a shower of little icy bits of snow.

On the positive side, my daughter has been ecstatic since learning yesterday that she's in at one of the colleges she really likes.  There's nothing like an acceptance letter to turn things around for a high school senior.

It is NOT, I might add, snowing at said college.  The folks down there suffer through the occasional hurricane, but they skip the winter thing altogether.  If she decides not to go there, I'll be happy to take her place.