Peonies in the Kitchen During Finals Week

Three weeks ago, as I was entering finals week at Parkland College, where I teach English and Humanities, I turned to flowers to ground me. Marilyn, my spouse, had planted a new peony bush in front of our two older ones. The new bush had two deep crimson blooms, and they were already opening when the old plants’ pink buds were still tightly closed. I cut those two flowers and placed them in a vase on the kitchen counter, where I saw them every time I looked up from grading papers. 

That week, in addition to the usual grading marathon, I was also saying goodbye to students to whom I had grown attached. My classes had become genuine communities; students chatted with each other instead of staring at their devices before, during, and after class, and we often laughed together. I had grown to love them and often been inspired by them, these students who came from so many different places: a night-shift at the hospital, thirteen years in the army, successful treatment for depression, a mental-health break from the U of I, a job lifting boxes for UPS. The semester was ending, and they were moving on: one transferring to Columbia College in Chicago, another to the University of Missouri, most returning in the fall for more classes—but not to our class. Our communities were temporary by definition. 

I was exhausted, ready for summer, and I was also sad to be saying goodbye. 

That week, I found myself checking in with the peonies each day, burying my nose in the petals, inhaling their fragrance, and taking photos. As the week went on, the peonies opened fully, then started to lose their petals. Eventually, the fallen petals dried up in a small pile around the base of the vase. But I wasn’t ready to let the flowers go. Finally, a couple of days after I had submitted grades and the semester was officially over, when Marilyn asked me yet again whether I was done with those peonies, I said yes. I photographed the dried petals; even at that stage, the peonies were beautiful, and then I said goodbye. 

 

Two of my South Asian Cultures (HUM 109) students working on a rangoli together in class. Rain kept us indoors, but a sense of discovery and play filled the room. These two students had not worked together before. Their creative collaboration was typical of that class.

[I read this reflection during the annual Flower Communion service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana-Champaign on Sunday, June 2, 2019.]

A Gentle Reminder

Recently, at the start of a busy day, I went out to the back garden. Marilyn had asked me to take a photo of the zinnias she had planted from seed. 

"They are taller than I am!" she had said. 

I wandered in the backyard, watching butterflies among the zinnias, then strolling to the cannas by the peace pole. These tall, red, blooms came from our friend Jen's garden. In the same bed is a sedum from a neighbor and a hydrangea that was a gift in memory of Marilyn's brother Mo. 

After a few minutes, I went back in the house and began an eleven-hour day of helping students with papers, attending meetings, preparing a workshop, and planning classes for the next day. 

All through the day, though, my mind would rest now and then on a monarch butterfly alighting on a zinnia, the sun on the flowers, the green of the grass. 

These images were gifts, arriving unexpectedly now and then and refreshing me--making me think of a poem I memorized in the sixth grade, back in India: William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," his meditation on daffodils. The poem ends, 

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The stroll in the garden reminded me that being outside and being really present for even a few minutes in the morning could provide a respite from busyness later in the day, the memory of those moments quietly and unexpectedly bringing beauty. 

An Offering of Flowers

Earlier this week, I walked around our gardens just before sunset. I noticed the exquisite intricacy of petals and leaves, the way the evening light made the colors pop.

I had come out into the backyard feeling horrified by the news from Charlottesville and sickened by the response from the White House. I had already been on edge from the escalation of tension with North Korea the week before.  

Walking around the gardens, my shoulders relaxed, my footsteps slowed. For a moment, the larger world receded, and I felt comforted and strengthened.

We are going to need comfort and strength in the days ahead, so that we can keep speaking up, keep keeping on. I offer you these flowers. May they bring you peace, too. 

Retreat

This drawing--a souvenir of an afternoon alone to catch up with myself, time to take a long walk, to ignore the clock, then to retreat to my study with a withered tulip in a blue, glass vase and to play with pastels, enjoying the freedom of not knowing how to use pastels well, knowing only that I want the satisfaction of making marks on paper, of messy hands, of being lost in a process, of looking up, eventually, to find the delightful illusion of three dimensions on flat paper. 

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How do you slow down and catch up with yourself? 

Celebrating My Flatland Home

I visited some lovely places this summer including Saugatuck-Douglas on Lake Michigan and Peggy's Cove on the rugged coast of Nova Scotia. I relished being by the water. I was present, I was appreciative--and I was always glad to come back to my flatland home. Familiar walking paths, enormous skies, and corn along the roadways welcomed me back to the unassuming Midwest and grounded me. 

Here are some photos taken in one of my favorite places in Champaign-Urbana, the Idea Garden along Lincoln Avenue:

This photo and the next one were taken in the Idea Garden in 2014, during a plein air painting class I took through Community Education at Parkland College. The class was a lovely invitation to pay attention.

Double Vision and Second Sight

The first pot of the summer, as seen through our front door.

First, I noticed that traffic lights looked like three-leaved clovers, but aglow and blurry.

Then, driving east at dusk, I noticed the rising moon looked double, one white disk overlapping the other. I thought of the haunting Isaac Asimov short story I had read in college about a planet with two suns. More recently, I had watched the engrossing and disturbing film Another Earth, in which a second Earth appears in the night sky; leaving the movie theatre, I had examined the sky warily.

On this more recent evening, I knew I wasn’t really seeing two moons, but I was troubled enough by this double vision that I called my eye doctor and also, of course, looked up WebMD. 

It didn’t take long before I read that double vision was a common symptom of cataracts. So was second sight, the phenomenon of temporarily improved near vision which would then get worse.  That explained my wanting to look at my phone over the rims of my glasses, which had progressive lenses to help me see both close by and far away. 

I was young for cataracts, only forty-eight when they were diagnosed. I was given a new prescription for my glasses and told to wait a while.

A year and a half later, driving was more difficult and the moon was triple.  Grading papers was becoming challenging, with the text starting to float on the page. I found myself enlarging the font on the computer screen so that I could read and write emails. I was ready for cataract surgery.

Before my first surgery,
with my surgeon's initials above my right eye.

The surgeries were scheduled for earlier this month, one week apart, immediately after I turned in grades for the spring semester. I was nervous about the idea of the surgeon going at my eyes with tools, even though the surgeon is my eye doctor, whom I have known for years and trust completely. Nervous enough that I don’t remember what I read about the tools used.  I just repeated to myself that it was a routine surgery with a high success rate, and that since only one eye would be operated on at a time, I would not go blind as a result of the surgery. And not only would my cataracts be removed, but also the new lenses would give me near-perfect vision.

A drawing from my art journal after the first surgery.

The day after my second surgery, with my surgeon's
initials faded but visible above my left eye.
(I love accessories and am delighted I can now wear sunglasses without a prescription!)

Well, both surgeries were successful. I now have the remarkable experience of opening my eyes in the morning and seeing: the white embroidery on the white curtains, the print of a Derain painting on the wall between the windows, everything—and without glasses. I had been shortsighted since the fourth grade and needed progressive lenses as soon as I turned forty. Now I can see things far away and can see these words on a computer screen—all without glasses. This is new.  Startling. And wonderful.

The week after the first surgery, when I came home with 20/20 vision in my right eye, I would close my still-shortsighted left eye and marvel that I could see the purple iris in the backyard from the kitchen window without glasses. After the second surgery, I wandered around the gardens taking photos, in awe that I could see all that color, all that detail, all that glory without glasses.

When we first discussed cataract surgery, I said to my doctor, “You help people see! Don’t you feel like God?” I am an agnostic, but that was the best analogy I could manage.  After surgery, I feel like I am living inside a miracle. “Second sight” has a whole new meaning.

I feel fortunate that my surgeries were done just as the peonies bloomed.

I couldn't get enough color, so I took out my watercolors and played.