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. 

Being Still

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Last month, as summer ended and fall began, monarch butterflies visited the purple butterfly bush in our back garden. One day, when I stayed home sick with the sore throat and chills that seemed to be sweeping across our campus, I ventured out into the backyard in pajamas, wishing for the sun to heal me. 

I noticed three monarchs at the butterfly bush. They would move around, weaving through the branches, and then settle on a bloom for a while. I walked up as close as I could without startling them.  As I watched their busyness, I stopped for a while. I stood completely still.

Stillness is what I have yearned for all through October, the month that seems busiest in the academic year and when the long weekend around Thanksgiving feels far away.  I have raced from one deadline to the next, still enjoying watching my students learn, very much enjoying the communities coming together in the classroom.  And stopping and being still when I can. 

On a recent afternoon in Meadowbrook Park, I  walked around a curve and was offered another invitation to be still. 

Iris on a Monday in May

Yesterday afternoon, my shoulders were tight and achy from calculating final grades for the spring semester--and from the decisions, transitions, and good byes involved in the end of an academic year.

I needed a break. So I went out on the deck for a few minutes to eat my lunch. As I sat in the sun and felt its warmth, my body relaxed.  

Nearby, the iris swayed in the breeze, bringing to mind Wordsworth and his dancing daffodils. 

I took a photo and returned to my work, feeling grateful for that moment.

New Harmony in the Spring

On the grounds of the New Harmony Inn.  We always stay in a room facing the pond.

When Marilyn and I want to get away to somewhere quiet and peaceful, we head south to New Harmony, Indiana.  Sometimes, we stop for ice cream or pizza in one of the small eastern Illinois towns on our way.  Driving on, we predict when we will round the turn and encounter rows of bright green John Deere tractors available for sale.  Then we know we are getting closer.  We look forward to entering the familiar, sleepy, historic small town of New Harmony--population 850--where we always stay at the New Harmony Inn and always eat at least one meal at the Red Geranium Restaurant. The predictability is soothing.  

On March 21, as spring break began, we headed south again.

We found out that New Harmony is celebrating its bicentennial, and the weekend we were there, there was a "spring fling" with artists and other vendors in the small downtown.  "There are people on the street!" I exclaimed, laughing, as we walked around in the cold sunshine on Saturday.This brochure shows a design that incorporates the labyrinth, a landmark of this town founded by Utopians in the nineteenth century.

 

To show you how small the town is, I'm including the enlargement of the town center, which has the flashing stoplight marked prominently.  As we drove around when we first arrived on Friday evening, we were the only car in the town center, other than the Sheriff's patrol car parked on the corner.  Once we arrive, we don't drive either.  We can get everywhere we want to on foot.

This photo was taken in the small, round chapel off of the Great Room where breakfast is served.  Even when the Great Room is full of conversation and clatter, this chapel feels like a place for meditation.

Just outside the chapel, we encountered this piece, which we coveted for our backyard. Art like this is scattered all around New Harmony.

  

This was carved into the back of a bench outside the town post office.  I love writing and receiving letters, so I had to photograph this.

We saw our first daffodils of the season!

I love the red door and white walls of this church.  (These are also the colors of our house).

This log house, next to the Red Geranium Restaurant, was built in 1814 and restored in 1959-60.

On Saturday afternoon, as the sun streamed into the Great Room of the Entry House, Marilyn worked on a quilt while I finished knitting the hat I had begun in January. 

We saw more signs of spring on our walk around the pond on Sunday morning.

Poetry can be found around New Harmony, too.  This was along a trail.  Auden wrote, "The trees encountered on a country street/Reveal a lot about a country's soul./A culture is no better than its woods." 

This is "Shalev: Angel of Compassion" by Tobi Kahn.  It is made of South Dakota granite and bronze.  In the distance, you can see the Wabash River.

Before we left town on Sunday afternoon, we walked the labyrinth.  These are our shadows.

Snapshots of Winter

This winter, the weather has been the story: sub-zero temperatures alternating with frequent snow falls. We joke that 20 degrees Fahrenheit feels warm. The snow cover makes an otherwise dark time of year feel blinding at times. Nothing feels "average."  

Last night, as the local news announced yet another winter weather advisory, I said to Marilyn, "They probably have that recorded and just play it every three days."  

Today, our college, which rarely has a snow day, closed at 1 p.m. because the travel conditions were deteriorating.  

All through this remarkable winter, I have been taking photos.  Here are some of them.

Over MLK weekend last month, we went to Chicago for three nights, to rest, to get away, to read in a quiet room in the bustle of the city. We arrived just as the snow began on Friday night.

 

                 This was our view on Saturday morning.

On Saturday, we walked around in the slushy cold with ice chips flying at our faces  As we ate lunch, we smiled at the snow outside the window, happy not to be driving.  By afternoon, the snow was heavy.  

We finally made it to the Museum of Contemporary Art because it was close to our hotel.  We laughed as we trudged through snow to get there and were wary as we looked up the long flight if stairs leading to the museum entrance. This photo and the next two were taken after we had made it inside.

Back home again, I woke to this sunrise on a weekday morning.

I laughed when I saw this sign as I drove home from downtown on a recent  Saturday morning.  The temps were in the single digits.  I was wearing long johns again--long johns that I used to wear a few times a year but which I have had to wear several times a week this winter.  Still, it was a reminder that summer will come.

On Valentine's Day, Marilyn left this plant for me on my desk at work.  It made me think of our rose bush in the back garden, of walking along the path lined with ajuga and daisies.  Yes, summer will come.

In the meantime, staying inside means plenty of time for knitting.  I recently went on a retreat where I learned to cable.  This is the hat I'm making now, one of the few things I knit that I will keep for myself.  I look forward to working on it every evening.

Pockets of Rest

After a writing retreat with NatalieGoldberg in 2010 in Taos, New Mexico, I was moved to create a writing practice group.  We meet on Tuesday evenings twice a month, sip on tea, laugh a lot, and write in ten-minute blocks in response to prompts we create.  When the timer goes off, we stop writing and read out loud to each other.  I wrote the piece below during a session with my group in response to the prompt “pockets.”

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Pockets are resting places—for our hands, for our keys, for the ticket stub not to be parted with just yet. 

Pockets are openings that hold.  Sometimes they can hold us.

Pockets of time.  Is that even an expression?  I wish to inhabit a pocket of time. 

It would be soft and worn, a pocket in an old apron.  The fabric would be a faded calico, the apron worn by a woman like me, only taller, bigger, older—my solid, calm alter ego.  She would be stirring a large pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, her grey hair pulled back out of the way, some of it curling around her face in the steam from the pot. 

Her pocket would be a resting place, a place to be invisible and quiet.  A place to pause.  I need to create such a pocket of quiet contemplation and rest. 

Somehow, doing laundry last weekend was a kind of rest: being able to wash a whole load of towels without checking whether it was sunny out because we once again have the luxury of the dryer, the steady, rotating thump and hum.

On Sunday evenings, when I shower and get into my pajamas and then come downstairs to the aroma of dinner, then the living room feels like a pocket, a cocoon away from it all. 

These pockets of time allow me to be in touch with the solid, no-nonsense part of me, the one that knows it is all okay.  That I’m doing my best, that in this moment, I am always okay.