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You can say that now. Because I felt like writing to you. And you decided you felt like reading.

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Bricks in a Curve, Tamarind, and a Velveteen Couch

By

Dear—

I woke early this morning, to welcome a mason who is taking apart (and hopefully putting back together) my front stair, which is a lovely but complicated brick arrangement with a slate top that is so heavy it took three men to lift it. As you might imagine, the pounding I am just now listening to is not quite conducive to writing to you.

But this week I am trying to remember my own advice about writing with the ingredients at hand. A crumbling step, new bricks stacked in a curve waiting to be placed and mortared, strawberry plants I tried to keep from underfoot (but am not confident will survive the day’s work), and a life that feels like it has no space: these are what I have at hand.

Last night I sat right where I am sitting now, on the muted brass-colored velveteen couch, which conjures up wishes about having my own velveteen rabbit worn with love, but the couch is not all too comfortable. My older daughter wrote a poem about it, in fact, that begins “I love my couch! It’s like a wall.”

Sitting here with my younger daughter last night, on the velveteen couch, we had just listened to a draft podcast of my couch-poem daughter talking to the people at WNDYR about work and legacies and so forth. We were mildly amused that a young woman who illustrated a bedrock story of women and freedom had told the interviewers she wanted to leave the next generation with these skills: cooking and sewing. You could almost, almost hear the interviewer fall off her chair. This was not an answer anyone probably expected from a “Gen Z guest.”

I have to admit I hadn’t expected that answer either, Dear. And I also thought all the podcast listeners would suspect I had spent my days simply schooling my daughters in domesticity. How quaint, I could just hear them thinking, in a world where legacy is supposed to be about saving the world with the next big tech solution.

Outside, the pounding has tuned itself to a more fine sound of chiseling, though I’ll tell you it isn’t any less distracting, as it goes. Saving a woman’s step is no easy job. And it’s not a quiet endeavor, either.

On the wood and glass table beside me is my morning tea. A ceylon from Sri Lanka that is so strong I can’t drink it after noontime. I learned this the hard way several nights ago, as I lay awake into the wee hours, wondering what my legacy would be. I told someone recently, and maybe this will surprise you, that even though I have “tech skills” I could put to use for financial gain, I just really want to cook for the people I love and bring beautiful work to light. That is all.

Before I sat on the couch with my younger daughter last night, I had cooked an evening meal of either Lebanese or Persian or Moroccan lentils and rice (we aren’t sure, as the cookbook is a fusion of the three). I am embarking on something I’m calling Morocco in May, and food is one of the centers of the experience. The rice was actually supposed to be bulgar, but I had none on hand. And, besides, my older daughter has recently decided to try going wheat-free. The recipe called for three red onions that I later decided must have been for sweetness. I had used up my last red onion the previous night, so two shallots and a yellow onion had to stand in. Next time, if red onions are scarce, I’ll add a half teaspoon of sugar to strike a better balance. I did happen to have tamarind paste in a jar. Tamarind, I rediscovered, is smoky sour (thus the need for a balancing sweetness). Since I actually had a bit of this molasses-black substance, I used it instead of lemon, which was the alternative for a kitchen that might not have a legacy of spices and colorful ingredients from around the world.

I’ve been thinking that whenever I have traveled, there are two things I look for: beautiful buildings and beautiful food. My younger daughter looks for beautiful clothing. She has always had a fascination with designing it and has recently taken to teaching herself to sew lavish or eclectic creations using fabrics and notions she gathers from the most surprising places. Etsy is her favorite haunt. As is the old trunk up in the attic. Poshmark and Depop are a close third. One day, for a Gish challenge, she made a pair of patchwork overalls from a dress I wore years and years ago, plus pieces of old jeans, and antique lace that was my grandmother’s. My girl looks lovely in the self-fashioned outfit. It’s adorable and totally unique.

At the door, there has just been knocking. The men outside want to power up a machine they are using to cut the bricks. As I told you, fixing a woman’s step is no easy job. Mine? Even less so. The stair height, if it is to fit with the other two, requires one line of bricks to be cut in half. Who knew that brick-cutting was a thing? I did not.

My ceylon is half gone now. The rest is in need of reheating. A lone cardamom waits at the bottom of the teacup. Did you know you can use a cardamom several times over and it will still give quite the burst of flavor and fragrance to your tea? It will.

“As my legacy, I would give people communication and mediation skills,” says my younger daughter. “Empathy, too.” She and I then remember the first (and only, to date) interview she had with a woman who did not seem to think she’d be capable of handling a big crowd of rowdy kids at a local theater group. “You’re quiet and gentle. I think she underestimated you,” I say. “I think she underestimated what kids need,” my daughter returns. Then she shares a story of being with a child who told her some secret sadness on the side, at the end of a busy day at the school where she once volunteered. At some point, amidst all this talk of skills and interviews and legacy, my daughter tells me, “I loved that food tonight, Mommy.”

I loved it too. The depth and heart of it. The mix of flavors. The gentle collision of history with my unique kitchen. The way it has given my daughter something she wants to bring to this velveteen couch.

Outside, the pounding has stopped. There’s a knock at the door. Rain has begun to fall. I can see that the step is put together afresh, but now it is wrapped in plastic. So I cannot, as yet, see the total result.

And now I am thinking of you, Dear—. I don’t know what you need, but if I could, I would cook and sew it for you. If you needed me to build you a stair, I might need to learn a new trick or two. A curve of bricks, the depth of tamarind, a little velveteen, I would use whatever I could to give you space for your sadness or your joy. And remember, when you’re ready, I’ve got cardamom for you, too.

As always,

L.L.

Of Sourdough Tears, a Desert Driveway, and the Taste of Paper

By

Dear—

This morning I cried over sourdough.

Well, not sourdough exactly. But the smooth white slightly-waxy bag it came in, stamped with LMNOP Bakery in faded Baskerville letters on the front. I’d gone—curbside pickup style—to Fable Farms, for sweet corn and dark cherries and little deep yellow squashes that look like tiny flying saucers. I’d gone for olive oil, rosemary infused, which they ended up not having, so I went away with plain olive oil.

The words plain and olive oil really don’t belong in the same sentence. Olive oil itself is infused with tenacious fruiting from tenacious trees, harvested with attentiveness and, sometimes, crushed with stone that is generations old. I love olive oil almost enough to cry at the taste of it.

Eating sourdough with olive oil, especially LMNOP Bakery’s sourdough, could revive you from a life of flatness where you feel like that smooth white bag that brought me to tears just an hour ago. I had asked for two loaves this time, knowing what I was happily in for, and I had gotten the pair. Thankfully they were not out of it.

At the moment, I am drinking Buddha’s blend tea, infused with mullein I’d let grow in my driveway. I have not really gone anywhere since March, so my driveway thinks it is not a driveway anymore, but perhaps rather a garden for wild things. In fact, the other day I heard the woman next door, the one who always wears some variation of tiara in her hair, even large tiaras that look like they belong on a bride…I heard her walking by with her little blond son, and she said to him in a conspiratorial tone, “This is where the wild things grow.”

I was almost sad to harvest the mullein, but my tea and my body needed it. Mullein is good for bronchial suffering.

When 2020 began, full of hope, I did not know I would need mullein more than once. In March, when I suffered what may or may not have been The Virus that flattens us to the floor, I had none, because I’d neglected to harvest it last summer, thinking it just a weed that made my property look vaguely Southwestern, with its rosette softness that reminds me of the patterns of succulents and the single, tall, very tall cylinder of lemon flowers it eventually reaches to the sky in a way that says this is all I’ve got, in a hard parched place, but I’m making it reach and blossom in any case.

On Friday, I saw someone’s wish on Instagram. She was feeling flattened, all insular and empty, and wanting that feeling to fold itself over into something more like inspiration. This caused me to ponder.

I will not recount to you my losses since the beginning of this year. You’ve had enough of thinking about the suffering of the world. Plus, you’ve had your own. This is part of why you (and I) feel flattened.

When I think of flatness, I think of the two dimensions of A Wrinkle in Time, in which, at one point they accidentally get propelled to a place where they cannot expand, not even a little. It’s painful. Only a fast escape, a shift in magic to a different dimension, allows them to once again breathe, to feel whole and full and rounded with life, though their dark journey is not nearly over.

After I folded the LMNOP Bakery bag into a perfect rectangle I could hold and easily smooth between my hands, I remembered the workshop I’ve picked up and put down creating for the last six years. Day 1 is about breathing and holding. I decided to try it myself, not for the purpose of writing anything, but simply to try it, and because I wasn’t ready to discard the sourdough paper bag.

This was when it happened.

I closed my eyes and took in the fragrance of fresh-bakedness. I ran my fingers over the paper and felt its crinkles here and there. I heard the sound of softness, rustling. And my grandmother came to mind. Her land, ten acres of corn and dark cherries and flowers growing wild. No olive trees, but there were mulberries. And there was tenacity. And the attentiveness of love. The humid air, the way I could almost taste the paper of the patterns she cut with care and pinned and fashioned into dresses for her and for me.

It has been a long time since I’ve written to you here. I noted that the last entry was in the season of wineberries, which I now see was in July, from a year that feels like it was surely seated in another world, though it was only twelve months ago, right here on Earth, and on this very porch where I am yet again sitting with my feet resting against the dark brown Adirondack chair. I was drinking jasmine tea. Today, it’s peach-fragrant white and green.

Sometimes, Dear–, it takes many months to unfold, to find, again, our fullness. But sometimes, if we close our eyes and breathe, and hold, it takes just a moment for the taste of paper to tesser us to memory. And that opens us back up to reaching with our words.

So that is what I wish for you today. The taste of paper. Or dark cherries. Or sweet corn. The startling moment when something old unfolds—into something newly-born.

As always,

L.L.

Wineberries, Journalists, and Jasmine Tea

By

Dear—,

It’s been a while, I know, and you are patient with me.

This morning I have made you a little dew pot of jasmine tea. I am not sure why this tiny periwinkle pot is called with such a fanciful name, but I like it so. Have you ever held a teapot that fits perfectly in your two hands? This one does. And its smoothness makes you feel that all is well with the world, and always shall be.

I had forgotten about the consolation of wineberries. And of making a date with myself. Until yesterday.

Do you have children? I do. And they are no longer young, but they are not yet old. In the way, I mean, of somehow looking at you and understanding you have feelings too. Well, sometimes they do, very much. But sometimes they very much don’t. Yesterday was one of those days.

I went on a date by myself, because the wineberries are in fruit. Wineberries, I told a friend recently, when I wrote a little note one lazy Sunday afternoon, could save the world.

Yesterday I had also read this article I really liked, about a woman who mostly gave up being a journalist to mostly be a farmer. Apparently this is a thing now. To exchange our bottled-up indoor, techie existences for the solace of earth.

I’m not giving up my indoor existence anytime soon, but I do (mostly) have a healthy outdoor existence as well. Especially when the berries come.

Starting in late spring, it’s red currants. As the days grow warmer, they give over to blueberries and bush cherries. And then I’ve got my hands full (rather literally) for weeks on end. Just when my hands seem to be approaching idleness, the wineberries come, too. And, if I remember to go find them, I cannot empty the world of their abundance. There are simply more than anyone could ever need. More than the birds and the deer and, if there were bears here, more than the bears could eat, too. Wineberries, like I said, could save the world.

The article I liked, about the journalist farmer woman, had this phrase in it about wrestling food from the earth. I believe that’s what she’s doing. It’s what many farmers have set out to do, in growing exactly what people want when they want it. This I understand. And I depend on it.

But wineberries need no wrestling.

There is an Adirondack chair here on the side porch with me. I am putting my feet on its seat. My jasmine tea, in fine china rimmed with navy and gold is on one arm of the chair. A small white bowl (not fine china—perhaps stoneware?) is on the other arm, and it is filled with wineberries. Chilled. Yesterday, when I picked them, they were warm beneath my fingertips. So very warm. And the day itself was almost unbearably hot, except that there is a special consolation to walking through endless fields and beneath the cool of trees, in search of the best set of bushes with the biggest, sweetest berries, minus the poison ivy that sometimes likes to grow beside this edible treasure.

Wineberries look like jewels. Red, and almost lighted from within. Like fire opals. Or those glowing emeralds that people used to think were animated with a god at their heart. And no matter what has gotten you down on any given day, wineberries will cheer you with their jeweled sweetness. They simply will.

The other thing I read yesterday was a poem I decided not to acquire for Every Day Poems, because I thought that even though the poet had a good point about language being a chalice for grief, I also thought that her idea about nature being indifferent meant this: she was looking at Gerber daisies on a day when maybe it would have been best to seek the consolation of wineberries. And, if the wineberries were past season, or not yet in season, she would have felt instinctively that nature itself was a little sad, with those red arcs of wineberry canes, all thorns and prickles, not currently giving their gift to the world.

There are days when I really feel all will not be well with the world. And days when my own little world most definitely feels tilted and turned. So there is this: when the wineberries are in fruit, I must remember them. These treasures that grow in sun or shade, with no wrestling required. (Though, Dear—, you must take care for the thorns. They do ask of you care.)

So whatever you are facing today, Dear—, whatever kind of day you are having, I wish you wineberries, maybe even graced with morning dew. They are the best consolation. Or, they can be simply a gift to crown your day, if your day is already going well. And, if you’ve never had a wineberry, I wish you a future where you will.

As always,

L.L.

On Questions, Moss, and Domino Towns

By

Dear—,

Let me say, this is what happens when you tell your older daughter you are “going bookless.” She is 21 now, and she gets the verbal joke, and she gives you a sweetly wry smile. She also eyes you with a look on her face that is part fascination (“What in the world is my mother up to now?”) and part doubt (“How long will this last? How will if affect you and me? What happens now that we won’t be bonding through the shared identity of ‘avid reader’? Is the world falling out from under our feet?”).

This is only the beginning of the questions, because you yourself now have them, too. Some of these mirror your daughter’s: questions of timing and identity and loss. But some are more along the lines of, well, moss.

Before you decided to go bookless, you had planned to pick up Kimmerer’s thoughts on the subject. If they were anywhere near as good as Braiding Sweetgrass, you knew you’d be in for a lyrical treat, not to mention some delightful learning about this soft volunteer that has taken up residence between the bricks on your front steps, as well as outside the curve of your little herb garden, just next to the shells you’ve collected from various ocean- and riversides over various years.

Will going bookless mean going mossless? You do not want that. But you also decided to swear off reading for a while, so here you are, wondering what will happen next.

Your other daughter has questions, too. Do audiobooks count? Can you keep listening to Harry Potter, which you are only halfway through? She invokes the weight of promises and says that regardless of whether an audiobook counts as “reading,” you might need to keep listening, come the day when you start driving her to college again on an almost daily basis and are alone in the car on the way back, which is the perfect time to re-invite Harry to your world. This is only weeks away, and you don’t know yet. Do audiobooks count? Will you keep your promise to her? What happens when promises collide? Technically, you’ve promised no one you’ll go bookless, but your own soul has asked for it, at least until your own soul stops asking for it. Conundrum. Already.

On Sunday, you declared it your official Day 1, even though you stopped reading in December. It felt like a New Year’s thing to do. It felt like a challenge. Or maybe an invitation. You love a good chance to become something unexpected, to test the limits of your comfort without careening down mountains or jumping out of airplanes. Identity runs deep. It might look like nothing to the outside world for you to go bookless. But books are who you are. They are what you do. They are how you start revolutions.

And they can give you the secrets of moss.

But now it is Sunday, and you don’t have Kimmerer, and you don’t know how long until you can rely on her, and you suddenly realize how books have inserted themselves between you and the world. Plato (Socrates?) was right. In some significant way, you lost something when you began to rely on the book, above all, to touch your world.

On Day 2, you played dominoes with your daughters. You never played dominoes before, but you’d given them for Christmas, and you couldn’t read books, and you weren’t (yet) in the mood to play the piano (you started this on Day 1, because you had so much bookless time on your hands), so you emptied the dominoes box and learned how to do more than topple and stack these black-dotted ivory bricks.

After you finished playing dominoes, you made a domino town with them, because the other thing you did on Sunday was begin to sketch, starting with moss you plucked from near the herb garden, and now you wanted to sketch the dominoes and it seemed whimsical to organize them into a town in order to do so. Just like on Sunday, when you drew moss together, your older daughter went off on Day 2 to get her sketch book, and, in silence, you drew dominoes. She drew the box. You drew the town, including the little moss “tree” you made when you put a few stems into a Tabasco sauce cap on Sunday.

Sunday is when the other questions started: the ones about moss. It looks, remarkably, like seaweed. Are the two forms of vegetation related? You wondered. And, when the few little leaves on the—What are they called? Stalks? Spindles? Stems?—began, almost immediately, to shrivel, you placed their ends in the miniature Tabasco sauce cap and sprinkled the tiny greens with water. You got to watch the leaves literally move, as they revived themselves by drinking from the cap.

From there, it was probably inevitable that you’d go searching for a magnifying glass, but you could not find one. A jaunt to the basement produced, instead, the microscope that you and your daughter used to use to explore the world together while you were home educating her so long ago. This was further than you’d meant to go. Now you were looking through special glass, at jeweled kingdoms. You were peering inside walls you hadn’t expected to peer into. You and your daughter did this together, and you sketched together (hers the more colorful and beautiful), and you laughed together.

I wanted to tell you, Dear—, this is what happens when you tell your daughter you are going bookless. And then you do. And the world comes to you. I am not recommending you do what I’ve done. But, if you take a break from books, say, for a week, I wish you the world, rich as a page beneath your fingers.

As always,

L.L.

P.S.: I promise I will share some of my Bookless sketches and other photos with you in my newsletter. Then you can join the journey with me, to domino towns with Tabasco moss trees.

Almonds, Pizza Dough, and the Cessation of Reading

By

Dear—,

I am going to stop reading.

I tried this out in December. Books I’d put on hold at the library, then stocked here for the holidays, went back today, unread. I am going to make a thing of not reading, because of the almonds.

Once, I almost died from almonds. Okay, that’s a little dramatic. I could breathe. But my hands swelled so much that I had to take off rings to save my fingers.

Another once: Very distinctly, a few years back, the thought came into my head—”Reading will save your life.” In some (dramatic) ways it probably has.

Today, I made pizza dough, which I have not done in a long, long time. It was something to do with Sandra’s Together post, about cooking. But it was also something to do with my walk, on which I thought about the almonds and how good they were until they weren’t good.

Reading is good. It is so good that I ask us to emphasize it at Tweetspeak. A lot.

But reading has become almonds for me, in its way. What happened with the almonds was this: I was enjoying, immensely, a stint with raw food “cooking” and there were all these delicious recipes for almond dips. I made them and ate them. And ate them. And ate them.

Then, one day, I was suddenly removing rings to save my fingers. For three years after that, I went without a single almond, until I got brave and began to introduce them little by little back into my life.

For the better part of this year, I’ve been trying to figure why I am so overwhelmed. There are, doubtless, multiple reasons, but it has suddenly occurred to me that reading is one of those reasons. After all, I start revolutions out of my reading notebook, and revolutions are costly endeavors, even if they are inspiring and fun.

It’s more than that, though. Reading fills my mind with ideas upon ideas upon ideas.

I recently put all my ideas and to-do’s onto a condensed list, categorized by home, business, etc. The condensed list filled eight pages. Each item on the list has its own set of associated ideas and to-do’s. Almonds! (I can almost feel the ideas and to-do’s cutting off my mind’s circulation.)

Then there’s the pizza dough. So many delicious things sit by unexperienced when my life is filled to the brim with ideas and no time to process them or bring them to life. I just don’t have the energy for putting my hands to things. But I also don’t have the energy to live inside my own head with all those unprocessed ideas and to-do’s. So there I am: no pizza dough days and not much progress on my ideas and to-do’s, either.

Throughout December, I did not read any books (except, which surprised me, a book I’d been needing to edit and hadn’t been able to approach yet). I did read poetry. And I will continue to do that, because poems are more like experiences and less like idea-generators. I will probably follow along with the Tweetspeak book club titles, too. Of course I will read the posts at Tweetspeak and participate in the community commenting. I might not read much email. I might not read articles, whether online or in magazines I have at home. I can’t say how long this will last, though I have a vision for a somewhat alternate life for the coming year.

One of our 2019 themes at Tweetspeak is going to be the Renaissance, as in the time period, but also as in being a “renaissance person.”

Books, oddly, keep me out of the loop from other parts of life—it’s not just that I don’t clean out my cabinets (I did this over the holidays, in lieu of reading!); I also don’t do other things, the way a good renaissance woman (or man) would. Music, writing, art, math, sport, and such, sit by unexperienced, along with that pizza dough I’ve been telling you about. (It was delicious, by the way.)

Now, when Megan asks for our reading lists each month, I am not going to have much to say, unless she allows comments such as, “For the past few weeks, I read the world through my fingertips: pizza dough, mosses on my walks, pastels on paper, piano keys and flute.”

Is this its own kind of revolution? Maybe. Though I don’t feel the need to plan it out or make it happen or create even one associated to-do list.

But how about you, Dear—, is there something that has become almonds in your life? If so, I wish for you the wisdom to discern that and put it aside… if that’s what you want to do, if only for a while. Almonds are good, sure, (I had some roasted ones today), but so is pizza dough, homemade. And I do so want that for you.

As always,

L.L.

 

Pumpkin Blooms, The Leaf on the Glass, and the Most Delightful Toy Store

By

Dear—,

I am writing to you again from the retreat center perched on the edge of the Hudson River. On the glass, between me and the empty courtyard, is a single leaf that is tipping and tilting in the wind. I’m not sure how it’s attached there. Possibly by the slenderest thread of an industrious spider who wanted a little red roof above her spinning.

From where I sit, I cannot see the river. The river which, if I had to choose something to signify the most contented pulse of my life, is running on under a silver sky, past towns and bridges, out, eventually, past New York City, and to the Atlantic.

Beside me, there are the funniest little pumpkin-gourds, made of paper, I think, sporting autumn blooms—silk nasturtium, eucalyptus, golden rod, and something that resembles a Gerber daisy.

Do you ever feel tired, Dear—? As if you are that leaf, red with hope, but only attached to the glass by the slenderest thread? Sometimes, these days, this is how I feel.

Today, I saw a quote from Henry David Thoreau, from Walden Pond. “I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side,” said he. And I asked myself, what is it my feet wear a path to that is as life-giving as that pond? I am not sure.

Last week, I made my way downtown with my girls and we had tea at a little place we’d never been to before. Tea and scones. The scones were sugared, the big crystally kind of sugar, and very buttery. One had blueberries. Another had pumpkin seeds, dried cranberries, and the tiniest chocolate chips. There was a woman at a circular table, meeting with artists and writers, the whole time we were there. I was happy it was she who was meeting with artists and writers, not me. I was happy to simply be drinking Paris tea, which I’d taught the barista to decaf (just dip the bag in for 30 seconds, discard the water, then steep for the requisite five). I was happy to be with my girls.

When we left the tea place, I was ready to simply go home, but my 19-year-old begged: “Let’s take a walk.”

Always, these days, I have too many cares. I told her no. But she persisted. “Okay, just to the end of the block,” I said.

We passed a plumbing store. All the fanciest tubs and sinks and showerheads. Beautiful. But somehow, these too just made me tired, thinking on renovations and change. A few stores down and my girl suddenly exclaimed, “A toy store!”

And so it was.

Inside were the most beautiful toys I have ever seen. Wooden toys. Colorful puzzles. A unicorn notebook (which I went back and bought a few days later). My girl bought herself a stuffed animal. Frivolous? It was so soft. So needless. We took the newly-named “Rosie” home.

I ask myself, what is it, besides my many cares, that I want my feet to wear a path to each day, each week, each year? I don’t have answers. But I am thinking about the most delightful toy store, about the river, about my girls, the leaf on the glass, and the pumpkin blooms. And I am wishing, for you, Dear—something delightful today. And answers if you need them. Or, just a question to begin you on your way.

As always,

L.L.

At the Window, White Shells, and the Grey Dress Tree

By

Dear—,

I am writing at the window, because someone asked me to. But I am also feeling as if Charlotte is onto something (which she will share with us soon at Tweetspeak), so I am going to speak as if watching, or speaking mythically, which is part of what happens when a writer moves into the second person.

Second person is the name of the viewpoint, but the use of it also, uncannily, creates the sense of a second person being in the scene. A listener, a watcher, a prophet, or maybe a priest. Someone who is one step removed from the writer, but strangely intimate with the workings of her inner mind as well. Someone who might help the writer ferry from one shore to another, on a drift of once-removed words.

Enter the ferryman. The switch. Here we go. I will herewith be “you” as I continue this letter. Bear with me. Or, would that be, bear with you?…

You are writing at the window, because someone asked you to. But you are also feeling as if Charlotte is onto something. You are going to speak as if watching yourself, or speaking mythically. You might become your own prophet, or priest. You might ferry yourself from one shore to another, on a drift of once-removed words.

You used to care more about the past, how it formed and shaped you—the stepfather who fed you hunted deer, the mother who planted geraniums every spring, how she dressed the glass sliding door with crystal beads of jewel-like colors, how he nailed you out of the house at every window. These people, these acts, these days long lived at the edge of the woods, maple and fir mixed, under the full moons and the Northern lights— they held a kind of power over you, because, within you, you still had, like Cisneros’s Rachel 11, 10, nine, eight, seven, all the years down to when your mother first held you in her arms and named you Laura (against your father’s will, who wanted you to be a Laurie), though your mother had also considered Susan, your eyes were so black, like the wildflowers she’d loved since she was a child.

You used to care about writing this past. But it’s been a long time, and many words, and now, at the window you are more interested in what is right before you and how it is framed. Sometimes you spend whole afternoons looking out this particular window, the one you are looking out at four-o-clock in the afternoon, this window with its Moorish side arch and center point, open to the air, to the maple and the hemlocks and, past house and house and house and house, to the river beyond.

You went to the river earlier today, and looking out this window now, you can find your way back to the leaf-cupped shore, where tiny white shells, clean as a brilliant linen and water-soft, crowded the shore beneath your feet, each one carrying their past upon their backs, but each one also blissfully collected in pockets and ridges of eddied sand as if all that mattered was right here, right now. Tomorrow they might be carried out to sea. Except, of course, the few you collected.

You collected, too, what you named “the grey dress tree,” tried to memorize its every curve and curlicue, watched the way its bronzed leaves lightly clapped with the wind, clapped against each other, and looked remarkably like little turnstiles which, every so once in a while would detach, then fly into the river, to join the journey of the little shells. If, you thought, some designer made a dress with the pattern of the grey dress tree, and it’s moveable leaves, like flat bronze bells or little turnstiles, you would accept it as a gift if someone wrapped it up for you in paper as light and smooth as the day’s wind, in paper as subtly silver as the river that lapped and lapped with a sound as mythic as forever and mirrored a sky of smoke and pearl.

Yes, you used to care about the past, about how the windows, looking out, or looking in, could recall something that seemed important to tell to the world. But now it feels like the best thing you could do is memorize the changing world, and, like your mother before you, love it, and call it by name: silver river, white shells, grey dress tree—and simply open each day new.

As always,
L.L.

P.S. Speaking in the first person now, Dear—, I wish you a day of windows onto the gifts of this beautiful, beautiful world. Yes, beautiful, despite the many cares of its people. If I could give you a grey dress tree (or a grey suit tree, for you, Sir), a handful of white shells, a silver mirror of water to ferry your soul to somewhere you need to go, I would. Here, now. Here is my open hand, full with the vision of it. Take it, if you wish and will.

Oolong Pearl, Waterfall Baths, and Pools of Peace

By

Dear——,

It is a singular strangeness when a writer cannot write. I’ve been feeling singular (or strange) all summer. It’s not that I’ve written nothing at all. But there’s a lack of significant momentum. So I go nowhere, again and again. Yesterday I decided that is okay.

And, last week, I decided to coach myself. Beginning with emptying. Once, to a friend on Facebook, I called this process “making pools of peace” and she told me this image inspired her (enough to begin creating her own).

I’ve been considering my absolute love of water lately. I’ve been considering the need for pools of peace. There is the bath, and that is worth something. In fact, if I were more ambitious (or more willing to write about bath time), I would even propose a book to a publisher out there somewhere. I would travel the world to experience peace in tubs like the one I recently saw in a glitzy travel magazine. It overlooked Lake Luzerne, from the privacy of a hotel room perched high above that body of water. The window over the tub was from edge to ceiling—a full view of exquisite blue and mountains and serene clouds. The tub was square and large and reminded me of a Roman bath, except it was private (the way I like my baths to be), and it had its very own waterfall, which I thought might be worth traveling the world for (and writing a book about, along with many other baths I might find here and there and everywhere).

But, I am going nowhere. Which is, I understand, an actual choice.

So I look into my tea. Another, strangely to me, I just realized, body of water. Maybe this is part of why I love it every single day. The tiniest pool of peace, I can hold right in my hand. Peace with names like silver tips jasmine and oolong pearl, thé à l’opéra and, when I am feeling like a long-ago memory of Harrod’s, earl grey.

What they forget to tell you is that coming by a pool of peace is not always a peaceful process. I discovered this yet again (for I really do know this and have for a long time), when I engaged in my coaching assignment: emptying. I have been creating pools of peace around the house, by emptying corners and misused bookcases and inexplicable proliferations of paper and goodness knows what else across my lovely red oak floors.

My “nesting” daughter cried when she came home and saw the result of my hard and (for me) needful work. A waterfall’s worth of tears. And my shirt and shoulders were bathed with her sorrow over my pools of peace.

Yes, they forget to tell you this: one woman’s peace does not always come easily where another is involved.

Today I have been in my room all morning, looking out at the river, with my jasmine tea in hand. The sky is blue, the mountains bluer. Maybe later I will take a bath. Last night my daughter presented me with two kinds of ice cream she bought with her own money. Little vanilla and chocolate peace offerings. It was something she could do, and so she did it.

For peace comes dropping slow…

That’s William Butler Yeats, whose “Innisfree” I memorized earlier this summer, when my “nesting” daughter had to face a fear that’s been lifelong: the fear of doctors and hospitals. “Tell me the poem, Mommy,” she’d said, as she walked laps and laps around the recovery area after the absolute terror of a delicate surgery had been faced, and peace, slowly, returned to her world.

I will arise and go now…

Laps. Water. Pools. Tea. A morning overlooking blue. Poetry. Emptying. It’s all a-swirl in my mind, but I can feel the promise dropping from the veils of the morning:

And I shall have some peace there…

Dear––, in your own morning space today (which has now given over to afternoon), I wish you pools of peace, a kind of Innisfree, with its nine bean rows and its midnight all a glimmer and its noon a purple glow. Of course I hope that coming by it won’t require a waterfall’s worth of tears. But, if it does, then I wish you tea, as well. Silver tips, jasmine, pearl, or whatever feels most comforting when you hold it in your hands and close (or open) your eyes to the blue or grey outside your window. I hope you feel it—peace—in the deep heart’s core.

As always,

L.L.