She has a beautifully unique name, but for reasons I couldn’t begin to explain, I called her “Petunia.” She moved in halfway through my first year of teaching with scars on her heart that I would sometimes see evidence of even if I never knew the cause. But more than any of my other third graders, she shared my sense of humor and we enjoyed playful banter during our time learning together. Her name was mentioned many times over dinner along with the other students who brought joy to my days and who made that year so special to me. At the end of the year, she wrote me a little card, in the way that third graders do sometimes, and she signed it, “Betunia,” having misunderstood my nickname for her this whole time.
She kept in touch in the years since, this beautiful flower of a child. With her easy smile and gentle heart she would stop by my classroom to say hello, share a hug and catch me up on what she was doing. Sometimes months would go by between visits, sometimes years, but I only needed to say, “Guess who stopped by today?” and James would know from the smile on my face that I had seen “Petunia” again.
Yesterday, she sent me another email, catching me up briefly on her life. A college senior now, majoring in a well-suited field of psychology, I have no doubt the positive impact she will have on people however she chooses to apply that degree. In her update, she shared that she had proudly bought her first car, including a picture of her beside it, and telling me that she named the car, “Betunia.”
I sobbed the entire drive home, not just for the wish that I could share that with James who would understand instantly what an impact this had on me, but because I’ve been searching for my “why,” searching for my purpose, searching for my reason to stay in teaching or my reason to make a change, and she just handed it to me. Again.
Maya Angelou is credited with very wisely saying, “People may forget what you say. They may forget what you do. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” As teachers, we hear this quote so often it has perhaps lost its impact. Until we turn it around and realize, it’s also how the students make us feel, too.
Petunia’s gifts to me in this life are immeasurable. She tickled me with her third grade freckles and easy laugh and she delights my soul now with her heart of gold. She is my reason for teaching. She and all the students like her are the reason I spend more time at school than is reasonable. She is the reason I agonize over lesson plans and spend hundreds of dollars a year on books for my classroom. She is the reason I can endure the senseless meetings and bureaucracy of the profession. She is the reason why I love my classroom so much.
My sister was replacing some of the bushes on their property and wondered if I wanted their old ones. With a fall to-do list longer than my arm, finding a home on my property for the old bushes wasn’t high on my “yes” list, but I do love adding to my perennial beds and “free” is too good to pass up when it comes to landscaping. Before the day was out, there were four spirea bushes in my driveway on plastic sleds awaiting their new home.
I had been at school for the entire day, working through my school to-do list that was equally as long and so the bushes sat overnight. To be honest, I didn’t have any immediate plans to get them in the ground as there were several more pressing items to take care of, but, on Sunday, when I was unable to fix the mower myself and would have to wait to get it in for service, and when the forecast called for rain by early afternoon, I decided to get them in the ground so that Mother Nature might welcome them to the farm with a slow, steady soak.
It took Trudy and I several minutes of walking around and discussing options before we settled on where they should go. Every place I found meant moving something else or rethinking my original plans for the space, but that’s the way farm projects go. With my canine supervisor right on my heels, I finally decided on a couple of spots and got busy digging.
The bushes went in easily enough and I think they will flourish in their new home, but moving them in did mean moving some other plants around and it wasn’t long before I found myself staring down a task I didn’t want to do. I had two Japanese painted ferns in two different spots that needed to be relocated. They both looked out of place where they were, but my plans for moving them were much more complicated than just digging a hole and relocating the plants. I stood in the lawn, leaning on my shovel, staring at plants that I had more consciously than not ignored moving for months, knowing all that would be involved when I finally came to terms with it. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that nothing would ever make the task easier and so today might as well be the day.
Where The Red Fern Grows is one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read the book more than a dozen times I am sure and every single time I have read the story out loud. The first time I read it was with my son. Jacob was then around eleven years old, and it was our nightly read aloud. We both loved that time spent reading together, curled up under blankets on the couch, reading the story of Billy Colman and his dogs. But when the book ended, tears streaming down both of our faces, my son yelled through his heartache, “I hate this book! I hate this book!” It was, for both of us, one of the first times a book had made us feel a loss so deeply that it was hard to imagine it was a work of fiction. His perceived hatred wasn’t at the book really, it was at the power of a story to wring our hearts out with sorrow. I’ve read Wilson Rawls’ classic book to my students every year that I’ve taught third or fourth grade. I still cry with deep heartache every time, but I absolutely love the story, and I love the lessons it includes for my students. So I continue to share it with that hope that they not only realize some of those lessons for themselves, but that they too, see how powerful books can be.
And so it was today, that I moved three Japanese painted ferns, ferns with beautiful red stems and the closest things I know to a “red fern” to the spot under the maple tree. There’s been a rock there for years, ever since our dog, Eli died. Eli’s sudden death was the first loss James and I suffered together and a heartache that hit us both harder than we could have imagined. Two of Eli’s stuffed animals still sit in front of the stone, untouched by the wild animals that pass through, untouched even by Trudy, despite her shared love of stuffies. There’s a smaller rock, beside Eli’s stone where Beatrix is buried. The only grown chicken we’ve ever lost, James had done everything he could to save her when an egg got stuck, but she didn’t survive. He buried her before I came home, knowing my heart was too tender to see one of my feathered girls gone.
And so today, under a tree James used to tap for syrup, I dug a new hole for the ferns. Between the trunk of the beautiful maple that has doubled in size since we moved in and the stones of my beloved pets, next to the bench that looks out over the pasture, I dug a hole for the ferns. And then I walked back to the house, into the bedroom, and got the urn from my nightstand and then sat on the porch next to James’ empty seat.
For the second time since he passed, I opened up a container that holds the last tangible remains of my beloved and I scooped ashes out. It didn’t feel any easier than when I did the same thing this summer and it didn’t feel any less surreal. I knew James wanted some of his ashes to be spread on the farm and I always knew some would go under the maple tree, but there was still nothing that could make the actual doing of it any less emotional.
Before I planted the ferns in their new spot, I spread the small cup of ashes in the hole. My hope for a heaven feels like just an optimistic wish anymore, but I wondered, as I combined ash and dirt, if Eli had come running when James left this earth. I wondered if all the animals that were loved and cared for by him were there to greet him. I thought about what Billy says in the book when he buries his second dog beside his first. “I buried Little Ann by the side of Old Dan. I knew that was where she wanted to be. I also buried a part of my life along with my dog.” I put the ferns in place and carefully filled the dirt back in around them and I thought about the passage in the book that explains the significance of the title.
“I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.”
The rains never came this afternoon, and so Trudy and I went back out at dusk with a bucket full of water and gave the ferns a good soak before we headed to bed. These ferns might not have been planted by an angel, but I know more than one angel lies beneath them.
Someday, sooner than I want to admit, Trudy might have a spot under the maple as well. An impossibly hard thought for me to even let pass through my mind. All I know is, someday I hope to see all of them come running toward me when we are reunited once again. Someday. But for now, they have a sacred spot under the beautiful maple looking out over Someday Farm.
Yesterday, as a part of a new character-building curriculum, I played a game with my students called “Choose One.” The game gave students a choice of three items and asked them to choose one to be “gone forever.” Created as a way to provide some practice with group dynamics, discussion techniques and how to disagree with kindness, my class debated and discussed the three options on the board with their tablemates and then, as a class, we discussed which of the three we wanted to vote “off the island.”
The first slide had something like shoes, gloves or hats. The second one had yo-yo’s, kites or bubbles. The third was plane, boats or cars. Each time, the students had lively conversations with each other and we spent time talking about the group dynamics and, in addition to the virtues of each of the three choices, we discussed how to include the quieter students in our discussions and so forth. But the fourth slide made me think outside my classroom. The choice was books, TV or music. We, as a class, made the decision that TV meant anything that would show movies or videos and the class resoundingly and almost without hesitation promptly voted to get rid of music. Perhaps it was because their precious video games fell into the TV category, but some of them didn’t even feel like it was a difficult choice. One kid explained it as, “Well, at least books and movies could be educational, but music is just, well, it’s just music.”
I didn’t assert my opinion, I didn’t say anything other than to comment on the kind ways I had witnessed groups interacting with each other. But in my mind I thought of the impact that music has on me, especially right now.
Just a couple hours before this game was played, for example, a colleague down the hall was playing music in her room before the students arrived. She does this every day and it’s always great music from the 80’s that I can hear as I make my way to and from the copier before school starts. But this morning, the song caught me and gave me pause. Michael Jackson was singing, “Billie Jean,” a song that had become an inside joke between James and I. I can’t even tell you how it started but no matter where either of us were, if we heard that song, we would text each other the phrase or sometimes a short audio clip of the song to say, “Billie Jean is not my lover!” Car, grocery story, department store, no matter where we were, the song always made us turn and declared our imaginative disdain for Billie Jean as far as lovers go, or a quick text was sent for the same declaration.
Today, I sat across from my mother-in-law at lunch, talking about both of our late husbands, Sarah McLaughlin’s “I Will Remember You,” played at the restaurant. And while I waited in line at the grocery store tonight, my phone caught the title and singer of a song called, “In the Stars” by Benson Boone, which it then started playing the moment I turned my car on. Let me just say, these songs don’t hold any punches on a day already steeped with emotion.
Today, I might have voted music off the proverbial island just to get some emotional peace, but I can’t say I would agree with my students that it’s something I would want gone forever. I might struggle to listen to Katy Perry sing “Roar,” or Marc Cohn sing “True Companion” or Sarah McLaughlin sing nearly any song she wrote, but it’s because they touch me so deeply that I would never want them gone for good. I wonder at what point my ten-year old fourth graders will turn that corner with music when it becomes all-consuming and their way of feeling heard and seen in the world.
For today, we will hypothetically vote it off, but I hope it isn’t too long before they also feel the power that comes from songs.
I can’t remember the last time I slept well. No matter what time I go to bed or whether or not I take melatonin, I am always awake for some part of the night. It isn’t just that I can’t sleep, even when I do, I have the most vivid, disturbing dreams. People I haven’t seen or thought of in a lifetime play starring roles and many of my dreams are so violent in nature, they remind me of the ones I had when I was pregnant.
Last night, a man I knew in college showed up in my dream. He was the brother of a dear friend of mine and the only blonde, other than Kirk Herbstreit, that I have ever been attracted to. And for one brief moment in time, in all the ways of a naive college girl, I thought he hung the moon. I can’t say today and I’m not sure I could even back then why we never dated. But last night in my dream, he was sitting beside me on a bench somewhere. He said nothing, but he put his arm around my shoulders in a way that my dream-self felt extraordinarily comforting.
Facing me when I woke this morning was a birthday that James didn’t live to have. We knew last year, as we celebrated his 51st, that there wouldn’t be another unless an entire series of miracles occured. But this dream, this ephemeral moment that lingered on my mind as I reluctantly got out of bed, and specifically this gesture by this man so long ago forgotten, reminded me today that sometimes what we hope or wish for isn’t the only path to joy. Even today, knowing the reality of how my dream with James was cut short, I wouldn’t begin to wish any of it away.
I have no idea where this man from my college days is now or the path his life has taken but I would imagine he would feel much the same way. Wherever he is, I am ever so grateful that he showed up in my last night while I slept to remind me of the joy that I found on this path, and to restore my hope that maybe, just maybe, such joy will be found again.
My best friend in college was named Jen. Not Jenny, not Jennifer, but Jen. She was the first vegetarian I knew and she defended women’s rights in ways that were gentle and persuasive. She was completely focused on her studies, a pre-med major, she never dated, didn’t party and was meticulous about her work. Years later, I was invited to a small reception after her wedding to a man she met while in graduate school. Seated at a table with her friends from high school and college combined, I learned that she was known in high school to be quite social, that she loved the McRib sandwich and that she was called, “Jenny”, a version of her name I would never have dared to utter in college. She had reinvented herself when she went to college and it became apparent, seated at that table of friends, that we had known a very different version of her.
There is a version of me that exists in the world right now. “Survival Girl” is the superhero name I’ve given her as she saves me time and time again from situations where I feel like I might drown in my grief. Going out with the girls for music Bingo? Survival Girl is the one who shows up. She can hear all the songs James would have not just sung along to, but how he would have hammed it up, making everyone laugh, probably messing up more than one lyric intentionally or not be the death of her. “Survival Girl” is the one I take with me at the grocery store. She can shop for one without getting overwhelmed by the tangible absence of him there. Every food is a reminder. Every dish I intend to make speaks directly to his absence as head chef of our household. “Survival Girl” is the one who goes out occasionally to a dive bar a town or two away. She sits and listens while others sing karaoke, surrounded by strangers who do not know her story and who let her sit peacefully alone in a crowd satisfying my need to be social without have to actually interact with people in any meaningful way.
But every superhero has their kryptonite and for “Survival Girl” it’s the empty adirondack chair on the front porch. It’s a tough one to face on any given summer afternoon, but pulling up the drive after being at school all day is more than even “Survival Girl” can handle.
James’ work schedule meant he was home by noon every day. He would often work around the farm in the afternoon, but even when he took a much-deserved nap, he always set his alarm to be up by the time I came home from teaching. Weather permitting, he sat in his chair on the porch with Trudy at his feet waiting for me to come home. I can hear him trying to keep Trudy from running right to my car as I pulled in the garage, an effort that was all but wasted on her enthusiasm. I would kiss him as I passed by to my seat on the porch, and leaning in, I’d smell diesel fuel more times than not. He’d have his work boots on and on cool days a plaid shirt over his stained t-shirt. And a hat. Always a hat on his head.
We would sit and talk, or more accurately, I would talk and he would listen for as long as I needed to vent or celebrate or explain my day. When I’d finally come up for air and ask about his day he would dismiss his side of the conversation with the always ironic, “My day? It was nothing. I look at dead stuff.”
Those seats are the reason we canned so much salsa. Our hours looking out over our property often led to a snack and hours later, feeling blessed beyond reason, one of us was bound to make the understated declaration, “Pretty good life we have here, Babe. Pretty good life.” Even “Survival Girl” can’t survive that empty seat. Not after teaching all day and pulling up the drive. It hits me every.single.time.
So instead, I pull into the garage and go straight into the house through the mudroom and I change my shoes and Trudy and I go for a walk. It’s a good change for both of us, even if the empty seat is still there when we come back up the drive after our walk. By then it’s time to come in and start dinner. It’s time to do the things around the house that need doing. It’s time to move forward.
I kept in touch with Jen for a few years after she got married. As far as I know she never went back to eating McRib sandwiches or any meat for that matter. She never changed her nickname or became an extroverted socialite. I don’t know how long “Survival Girl” will exist. I don’t know how long I’ll need to avoid, cease, alter or change my daily habits and routines to ease the sharp sting of his loss. I know that for now, it’s a necessary part of me. It’s the only way I can move forward without him. It’s the only way I can say, “I’m good,” when people ask, knowing I’m often far from it. It’s the only way I can mow the lawn, pay the bills, cook dinner, grocery shop, or just sit on the porch and still hold myself together.
So when I attend Game Night with my friends in a couple weeks, you bet Survival Girl will be the one showing up. She will laugh and smile and play cards and lose at Scattergories using all her superpowers to hold it together, to be funny on his behalf and to be strong despite being alone. Maybe someday I will feel a return to my old self. Maybe I will be able to exist in times and places with people and not tangibly feel his absence. Or maybe this is just how it’s going to be. Maybe “Survival Girl” is the new version of myself that will forever move forward from here. Maybe these changes aren’t just temporary fixes but permanent solutions to survive without him.
An hour ago I heard it, the all too familiar sound of the tractor coming up the drive. For one split second, just one tiny fraction of a moment, my heart skipped a beat. I forgot, in that second that the John Deere was being returned from being serviced this morning and I thought, oh how my heart thought it was him.
Fifty-five minutes ago, I steeled myself at the back door. Having quickly realized my mistake, in the few short moments it took the man to drive the tractor up the rest of the drive, I relived the loss but I shoved the heartbreak down. I walked outside and held a conversation about the repairs without giving any signs of internal struggle but the moment I closed the mudroom door behind me, I lost it.
For forty minutes, I sat on the couch with my back to the front windows, not wanting to see the vacant yellow seat, wishing beyond words that he would walk through that damn kitchen door. It is really something how sounds, glimpses, and even smells can take our hearts to memories.
Five minutes ago, I pulled myself up off the couch. I wiped my tear-streaked face and I grabbed the barn key from the cabinet. I sat on the pew in the mudroom and put my boots on and I opened the door and faced the empty yellow seat. I sat down in the place he spent so many happy hours and I drove the tractor to the barn.
Grief means losing our loved ones over and over and over again. It means reliving the loss, feeling once again the heartbreak. It means facing the emptiness repeatedly. Ask anyone who’s lost someone, “What was the last thing that made you think of your loved one?” and they will tell you. Their loss might be fresh or years gone by, but they will know, there was something, just the other day, something that stopped them and reminded them of the person who they still love.
An hour ago, I was going about my weekly chores without a thought and perhaps in another hour I will be back to the tasks on my list once again, but in the middle is the rollercoaster of loss and mourning. Someday the peaks of my joy will surpass the depths of my sorrows, someday I will be able to move more quickly through the downturns, but for now, I am grateful for the slightest abatement, the smallest of upturns to bring me back to even ground. For now, knowing that every memory that has brought me to my knees, there has been a life force just strong enough to bring me back on my feet again. For now, this is enough.
I don’t post as often as I write anymore. I have more drafts lately than published blogs. I say, “I’m good!” far more times than is true and I show up and laugh and converse even when I want to do anything but. I have come to realize that my grief makes some people uncomfortable. “She should be over it,” is the feeling I get, “She has to move on,” the unsaid judgment. I am moving forward even if people can’t see that. I am learning how to exist in a space that he doesn’t. I am trying, desperately at times, to find and savor joy even in fleeting moments, but I miss him. There aren’t words to do that ache justice. I miss James. And so I write about it, because that’s what I do, but that sense I have from the world, that “it’s been long enough, she has to stop this,” keeps me from hitting “publish.”
Just now, I was writing about my very ordinary day. My day that was as typical as they can be for mid-August. A day that started with sleeping in followed by lazily working on the crossword then moved to spending a few hours outside in the flower beds and time with my chickens. This evening the kids stopped by on the back end of their trip north (mainly to pick up their dog) and we shared a meal and some memories and some laughs and even their visit was as typical as they come. As they were leaving, I finished loading and started the dishwasher and after they left I moved laundry and turned on the TV, so ordinary, so routine, so banal.
And yet, somehow, today felt like anything but. This week has been the hardest in a while, starting with my birthday and including the thirtieth anniversary of my mom’s death. Throw in the fact that school is ramping up and in two very short weeks I’ll be back in the classroom, there’s been a lot to process and work through. But for all those things, I felt prepared, or at least armed. I knew spending my birthday alone was the best thing I could do for me. I knew I would not only think about last year, but for all the years and all the days and I would miss him terribly, but I would come out the other side. I knew Mom’s anniversary would also have an edge to it. Amplified by the loss of James, I knew to give it more berth than I have in recent years, to allow the weight of it to settle back in for a time. And while I knew that returning to school would have its own arsenal of landmines just waiting to go off, all the moments when I would expect a text or think to send one, or how it feels to return home to an empty porch chair, I am as prepared as I know how to be.
It was Mom’s anniversary, though, that reminded me that grief has no end date. There is never a day we “get over” our grief. There is never a time when we can say we are “done” with that phase of our life. There is never a time when the sorrow will be permanently shut off. Thinking about my mom and all the years since her death, I was reminded that the waves of sorrow never stop, they might soften, or come less often, but they never cease.
Even more, I was reminded that the waves don’t just come when we predict them. They don’t just show up on anniversaries or birthdays or other annual events. They show up in the midst of a conversation with the plumber. They come in the opening bars of a familiar song. The loss I feel for James rushes through me and stops me in my tracks as I start the burn pile, notice the length of the recently mowed lawn, or when I put my filthy work clothes in the washer. The grief took over me today on the porch, listening to the birds and the cicadas and Jeff’s tractor across the road. And the tears fell tonight in the kitchen, doing James’ parts of homemade pizza. He is everywhere but he is nowhere. Grief is manageable and predictable and it is overwhelming and catastrophic. Everywhere yet nowhere.
I find it hard to be around our friends because they fully possess that adjective; they are our friends. For all the ways they all try to not make that an issue, it just feels more apparent that something is different, someone is missing and that absence feels tangible and hard and cold. This life that I have is still so full of “we”. I wouldn’t want it any other way – knowing the only way I can hold onto him is in memories, I wouldn’t want to be away from those same memories, and yet. And yet. And. Yet. I have to find a way through. I. Singular. There is no “we” in this grief.
There is no “we” at all.
So forgive me for putting my feelings down and hitting “publish”. Forgive me if it seems too much, too long, too intense. Forgive me if the joy continues to be evasive, elusive, and fleeting. I know no other way but through and “through” has no end date. I will always be working through my grief. Thirty years from now, I will still be grieving his loss just like I do Mom’s. Hopefully most of the time the memories are attached to laughter and joy, but I know, from how much I still miss my mom, that sometimes those memories will knock me down, will take my breath and will give me pause. Because sometimes it’s joy that’s everywhere yet nowhere.
My taste-tester is gone. I, the neophobe, relied on my beloved to sample foods on my behalf and even more importantly, to cast judgment on whether or not I would enjoy the taste myself. He, a neophile, never shied away from sampling. My concern – that I would be stuck with a plate of food I did not like or an unpleasant taste forever lingering on my tongue – was foreign to him. In all our years, I only ever knew him to truly hate one food – a turquoise Skittle of all things, which he promptly spat out the car window. (In full disclosure, he wasn’t fond of quinoa either, but he didn’t say it “tasted like ass” as he did of the Skittle.)
Now, in his absence, I stare at menus, evaluating ingredients and casting personal aspersions at their combinations. My dear child credits me for his wide-palette, citing the fact that I encouraged him, when we ate out, to choose dishes we did not make at home. What was really a broke mother’s way of not overpaying for mac and cheese or chicken nuggets off a kids’ menu inadvertently created a fearless foodie on par with my beloved. During our family vacation to Maine, my then teenage son ordered a fresh lobster dinner half again as large as James’ order. When asked if he’d ever had lobster, he nonchalantly answered, “No, but it sounds good.” To his credit, he ate nearly all of that market-value splurge.
Today, an overcast, on-again-off-again rainy day on the Pacific coast, and with the tide yet too low for some of my scenic destinations, I found myself in want of plans. My stomach eventually asserted itself as Chief Decision Maker and I found myself pulling into a one-of-a-kind, small town eatery. Before going in, still sitting in the safe, uncommitted seat of the rental car, I perused the restaurant’s online menu – my neophobia wanted to at least insure they had some options that were guaranteed to be somewhat palatable. Once so assured, I grabbed my notebook and headed in.
I had parked in the back (due entirely to my complete inability to parallel park) and followed the restaurant’s sign down some rain-worn wooden stairs. For the naysayers who don’t believe in love at first sight, believe me when I say that’s precisely what happened for me. The restaurant’s back, with the help of multiple sets of old, french-style doors, opened to an extended seating area. The small cafe tables were surrounded by wildflowers, herbs, potted and hanging plants – color in all shapes and sizes. If I were to design a cafe, this would be is exactly. Through a closed, glass-paned door, I saw a man chopping peppers. Fearful of walking right into the kitchen, I had to ask people seated nearby if that was, in fact, the entrance (it was). Once inside, I was directed down a short hallway full of the this n’ that’s of a tourist town store and to the host stand who led me to a booth by the front window where I was perhaps a hundred yards from the ocean.
Opening the menu I realized my circadian-rhythm-challenged body had been hoping for breakfast but the restaurant, operating on Pacific Time, was in full lunch mode. I skimmed until I found a category of “brunch offerings.” My relief was short lived, however, when I realized how drastically this limited my options. Not only was my conservative palette a significant factor, but my breakfast preferences run sweet and these three brunch options were all savory. With a vacant seat beside me – read that: no culinary advice forthcoming – this neophobe was going to have to be brave. I quickly chose the spinach and feta frittata for its straightforward, innocuous ingredients and because it came with home fries and toast and I am all about side dishes when I eat. To be completely honest, it was the toast that really sold me on the choice, as with a little jam, it might satiate my first-meal sweet tooth.
When I gave my order to the waitress, she seemed particularly pleased with the choice – especially when I added a glass of orange juice. The menu touted “organic” and “local” and I had no doubt the quality of my meal would be top-notch.
While I waited, I opened my notebook and checked my list of things I wanted to see and do in the area. Confirming my plan for the afternoon, I then turned to a writing I had started a couple days ago. I reread the lines I had written and tried to mentally compose what to write next when the waitress placed the glass of orange juice (and one of water) in front of me. More true to the color than even Crayola, it was the most perfect orange juice – juice that is orange – that I have ever seen. My pencil gave pause, my thoughts on my story faded as I marveled at a simple and yet elegant glass of juice.
Moments later, my brunch plate was placed on the worn table in front of me. “Jam?” the waitress asked. She set an apparently randomly-chosen squeeze -bottle in on the table of an unidentified red jam and I delighted at the prospect of squeezing jam onto my toast. I spread the perfectly softened butter and then swizzled jam on top unintentionally creating the most perfect piece of toast. I placed it back on top of the frittata just as it had been served and then I sat back and savored the moment.
I have spent the last three days (and the next five to come) on the Oregon Coast. It took me nine hours to drive 118 miles yesterday because I pulled over at every chance to savor the view. When booking the trip, the only amenity required for each hotel choice was that it had a view of the ocean. The sound, the beauty, the breeze, it just does something to my soul and I wanted to seize every opportunity to relish it all.
When we pause to savor a moment, a taste, a view, a sound, a smell, when we stop to relish, we make time very nearly stand still. When we are fully present, aware of all our surroundings, when we are mentally still, it is much easier to recognize blessings, to acknowledge gratitude and with gratitude, we find joy.
The breakfast – nay “brunch”- did not disappoint my picky taste buds. The frittata was light and fresh, the organic home fries had just the perfect amount of light seasoning and roasted crispness to delight my taste buds and the toast, the seemingly banal side choice proved, beyond what I had even hoped, as the pièce de la résistance.
I finished writing this on the balcony of my hotel room, again a hundred yards and in direct sight of high tide on the Pacific Ocean. The clouds persisted and the temps remained cool so the beach was all but empty. But during the time I sat there with pencil and paper, I watched dogs frolicking in the water and sand while playing endless games of fetch. I watched parents with small children fly kites in the heavy breeze. I saw couples holding hands while they strolled leisurely along the water and I witnessed swimmers braving the waves and cold to laugh in the ocean. Every one of them made time pause today. Every one of them held still the hands of the eternal clock while they played with their dog, helped their child’s heart soar or crossed a bucket list item off their list. At the end of the day, the vacation or this life, when the questions loom, “What was it all? What did I have? What did I do?” we will have this. We will have all the moments we savored.
Before leaving the area the following day, I stopped once again at the restaurant, this time definitively during breakfast hours. I ate an amazing home-made crepe filled with Oregon pears and huckleberries. I once again, marveled at the glass of juice that defines the color orange and I once again paused to smile at the plants and flowers off the back room. I could retire in Yachats, Oregon and eat at the Drift Inn multiple times a week and want for nothing more. For now, I have these memories to remind me that joy comes in all shapes and sizes – from the orangest of juice to the sweetest of jams – and I am all the better for having savored every moment.
I spent last week driving the Oregon Coast. I spent weeks and weeks researching and planning the trip and I was giddy with excitement to see in person the majesty of the Pacific Northwest. I can say in all honesty, it did not disappoint. It took me nine hours to travel just over a hundred miles last Sunday because I stopped at every pull-off and every state park to soak up the view, the smell and of course, the sound of the waves on rocks.
I witnessed Thor’s Well, The Devil’s Churn, Spouting Horn, Cape Perpetua and all the small coves and beaches along the way where the combination of massive rock and massive wave created jet-like sounds that reverberated in my soul. For seven days and nights I was in earshot of the ocean. The rhythmic tide was my constant companion on this otherwise solo journey. I alternated between the highest cliffs to my toes in the water, back and forth, all day long every day. I was awake as the clouds rolled in over the water and I fell asleep only after the sun had set beyond the horizon.
I sat and watched the endless flow of water to rock and back again, crying for how alone I felt, crying for how small and insignificant I felt, crying for how endless the world is and how short our time here is, crying at the majesty before me, crying in gratitude at being able to see and feel it all. And then, for the last two days of my trip, I dipped down into California to see the redwood trees in Jedediah State Park.
I grew up with woods behind my house. The college I attended was known for all the trees on campus. I moved from Illinois to Pennsylvania mostly for the beauty of the mountains of trees out there and I now live on a farm in Michigan set in the woods. A lifetime ago, I walked through woods while the man I was with told me the scientific names of the trees and showed me how to tell one variety of pine from another. He spoke of the forest as though he were telling stories of his life – as things he knew not just from books, but from his soul. It is a day I have never forgotten because it’s a day when I first realized how much I loved the trees, too. It was the moment when I realized how my whole life hadn’t just coincidentally near woods, but that, from the moment I had been able as an adult, I had chosen the woods, if only in passive context, as where I wanted to be. It wasn’t long after that that the redwoods became the only entry on my bucket list, the only thing I knew with certainty that I wanted to see before I died.
The redwoods were on James’ bucket list, too. We were so busy living our dream here on the farm that we didn’t even talk about bucket list things until it was too late for him to start crossing them off, but the trees were one of only a few things he had jotted down and so my visit to the redwoods wasn’t entirely a solo one. With a small container of ashes in hand, I set off into the woods in Jedediah Park. I didn’t pick the biggest tree, where everyone would stop and take selfies. I didn’t pick the tallest or the most obvious tourist spot in the park.
I chose a tree just off to the side of the path, where the sunlight was shining down through the leaves, but far from any trails or viewing areas. There were ferns and the biggest clover I have ever seen growing underfoot. The air smelled dusty for lack of rain and the blue of the sky was almost impossible to see for all the trees. I brushed aside a pile of needles and leaves and my words and tears mixed with the ashes that I left at the base of the tree. I placed the needles back over the small pile of dust and stood there a long while wondering how a tree can live so long and a man cannot. My tears came from a depth of sorrow I cannot describe but there, beneath the majesty of that tree, I felt the beginnings of acceptance. I hate with a fire that still threatens to consume me, that he is gone, but I am slowly starting to realize that is the reality I have to move forward with. There, with branches reaching to the heavens, I felt a shift towards that acceptance, a movement in my soul to let go of what should have been and just to hold on to all that was. James and I talked about where he wanted his ashes to be. Originally he had wanted them to be scattered here on the farm, but when we realized staying on the farm might not be a permanent choice for me, we revisited the topic. “I want to be wherever you are,” he said. Among the trees is where I will always be, somehow, someway, and so shall he.
I’m a binge-watcher. I really only want to watch a show that has as many seasons already out as possible so I can indulge in multiple episodes without having to think about what to turn on. Easy, simple and void of decision-making (except when the show runs out). Starting a new show is quite precarious. I wish they came with a set of hashtags to tell me what topics will be covered so I know which shows to avoid. #cancer, #loss, #death all feel a little too close to #mylife for comfort and I wish I could avoid them entirely.
The show I was just moderately hooked on, for example (again, it seemed easier to just watch an “okay” show than to spend time hunting for a “great” one) decided to have one of the main characters die of a recurring cancer in the last season. The plot and dialogue got to be so intense and #familiar that I had to quit watching halfway into the series finale. I just could not do it.
And perhaps I should have known, when I turned to a new show, that if it had the title of “Tiny Beautiful Things” (not all that dissimilar to “Blessed Little Things” if you see where I’m going) that I should have known to avoid it like the proverbial plague. And I will admit, first off, (before some of my family goes looking for the show,) that it is raunchy and modern and rough in ways I don’t entirely enjoy, but the writing – oh my dear goodness, the writing just hooked me. I have opened up my notes app and captured portions of the show in just the first few episodes, but more importantly, I have noted the author (the show is based on a book) and will be looking for it at the very next bookstore I come across. The show, using a self-help columnist’s poignant words, guides people in all the ways they find themselves to be lost. Which, feels a lot like #me.
You see, I am lost. I mean, lost. I could list all the reasons why, but if you’ve been here for more than half a minute you already get most of them. But what I have come to realize is that nearly every one of us feels lost. Right now. At all stages of life. Whether you are retired and aging and trying to grasp what is to be the legacy of your life or you are young and starting out and trying to make sense of the dreams you have and all the ways life is pulling you or maybe you are in between, staring down the barrel of a life you feel you lost control of or never had control of and now your map seems muddied and the course unclear.
In an effort to find ourselves, our purpose or our direction, some of us will turn to a higher power to give meaning to our path. Some will maintain that this life is all we get and will try to glean purpose and meaning through other methods. Some will avoid finding their purpose for fear of disappointing themselves or others. And others may never realize the tremendous purpose they served for this world until long after they are gone. Years ago, a pastor advised me that if a choice brought me closer to God, it was the right choice, the right direction. I can’t say that my faith is in that same place as it was then, but I have come to believe that if a choice brings joy, then it should be pursued. I don’t mean momentary pleasure, or indulgence, or quick gratification of some sort, but I mean deep and abiding joy – that should be the compass.
This life, whether it’s all that we have or just a small fraction of a master plan, cannot be entirely about struggle and loss. We need those things to truly understand and appreciate joy, but they cannot be what this life is about. At least I cannot being to find purpose or meaning or even the point of tomorrow if it isn’t rooted in something positive. Hope, afterall, can only exist in optimism.
So while I continue to struggle – to grieve, to feel personally and professionally, emotionally and socially, physically and mentally lost – I am setting my sights on finding joy. Beyond just finding it – savoring it, embracing it, feeling grateful for it and sharing it.
Last night I sat on the porch and spooned some of my husband’s ashes into a container. It is, I think, the most surreal thing I have ever done. With his empty porch chair beside me and tears flooding my face, the dog at my feet, the cat in the yard and our dreams out in front of me, the depth of my sorrow seems to know no bounds. Slowly, with measured breath and a deceptive calmness, I gathered fragments of the man I loved to take with me when I leave on vacation. I cannot go on our bucket-list vacation without him, and if he can’t go see the redwoods with me then I’d at least like to leave some part of him to live amongst them forever. Later, when I had gathered myself back together, brought the dog and cat in for the night, locked up the house and turned down the sheets, I opened the bedroom window, glad for the cool change in temperature. As I lay there, thinking about the days ahead, the dog lifted her head and the cat jumped in the windowsill. Silently, I held my breath and listened for the sound they heard first. It was far off, but it was clear – the owl. And there, with everything I had in me, I grasped onto that joy and I held on tight, feeling that if even for just this moment, I might be on the right path.
Blessed Little Things 