Gardening

Photo credit here.

 For a moment today, I felt unscheduled, free to sit in the sun or lounge in the shade. I had no “to-do” list, no task pressing me for attention. My cortisol levels dropped precipitously, my mind blank and only open to the present moment.

 

Earlier in the day, we parked a little over a mile from the local botanical gardens, then walked and jogged over to the Japanese garden to catch what was left of the cherry blossoms. On the walk back, we stopped for coffee, meandered across a creek, kept searching for Jack in the Pulpit along every leaf covered hillside. Nothing was pushed or pressing. The temperature in dappled shade fell just shy of perfect, the humidity obviously on Spring Break with everyone else.

 

Currently, J is house and pet sitting, so after our excursion I joined him for the midday release of the pup. The back yard of the house contains a pool, Adirondack chairs, loungers, a cast iron dining set and several large umbrellas. I opened an umbrella up after dipping my feet in the pool, shading my upper body while exposing my legs and feet to the sun. In the quiet warmth of their back yard, all other tasks melted away. 

 

We drove back home for lunch, and my brain cranked back up with the lists: the Work list, the House list, the Yard list, the Trip list, etc. The gift of gardening lies in its absolute insistence – if a garden happens at all, the seeds must be started in the spring or the bulbs must be planted in the fall or the pruning must happen after (or before) the plant flowers. The garden has to have water, appropriate soil, sunlight, spacing. Weeds cannot get the upper hand; mulching will help every plant’s and person’s nerves. 

 

So despite other lists, the Yard list took priority and I spent the afternoon planting seeds for giant sunflowers, Rose of Sharon, basil, cilantro (hope it’s not too late!), tomatoes, carrots, zucchini, okra, and eggplant. I dreamed of where the seedlings may go in the yard and how to create space for them. I took out plants from the basement, so they can begin their spring transformations. I weeded around returning azaleas, hosta, black-eyed susans and crepe myrtle. I doted over returning day lilies, swamp irises and star-gazers. I wondered how best to reign in pushy canna lilies in one part of my yard and how best to spur their growth in another. I hoped the peony at the corner of the porch would bloom this year.

 

By four o’clock, I began to clean up the remaining tools and ended by cleaning up myself. Now, after dinner, I’m sitting on the porch with my vigilant Maltese enjoying the transition from bird song to crickets in the slow decent of the spring sun. 

 

I’m grateful for these days which slip from task to taskless, which whisper promises of bright yellow heads heavy with seeds or the sweet burst of a perfectly ripe tomato, while reminding me to care for what is most important right now. I pray that I am and trust in grace and mercy for the rest. 

 

3/26/26

Trouble

 

Photo credit here.

Writing Workshop prompt from 8/2022: “Did you ever get in trouble at school? What happened?”

 

Ms. Tew was my first elementary school teacher. I don’t remember how many children were in my class, but she chose to set-up her classroom tables in a large square. The space in the middle of the tables seemed enormous to my 6-year-old self. 

 

Our classroom abutted a second-grade classroom which had a reading loft. I yearned to be in the class with the loft the next year and pined for the adventures a loft might bring. Even in first-grade, rumors spread about teachers and their relative kindness, coolness or harshness. The teacher with the loft was known to be cool and kind, which seemed to me a perfect combination. 

 

Our first-grade classroom, much like the arrangement, was square: No mood lighting, no loft – just bulletin boards and chalkboards with harsh fluorescent above. A rectangular floor-to-ceiling window provided the only natural light, but the window faced South.

 

Sometime during the first couple of months of the school year, Ms. Tew received word she had a phone call to take in the principal’s office. She pointed toward the worksheets before us telling us to work on our letters, and she sternly warned us about making too much noise. She also told us to stay in our seats. She would be gone briefly, and we needed to behave ourselves during her short time away.

 

I do not know the nature of the phone call, but seconds and minutes turned into what felt like hours to a classroom of aesthetically starved first graders. I’m sure it started with small conversations between neighbors on the square. A little later, the hyperactive boy sprang up to bother a friend seated across from him. Paper began to be wadded up and thrown. The girls screeched as the boys began pulling hair. Small, and then large, arguments broke out. The decibels grew louder and louder. 

 

At least once, maybe twice, another teacher passed by the room and encouraged us to shush and get back in our seats. But as soon as she left (and they were all she’s), mayhem commenced. Herding cats comes to mind. 

 

My predilection is for rule-following. Given the regular chaos of my home, rules became a safe-haven providing security and defense if needed. While my classmates got out of their chairs, drew scribbles on the chalkboard, poured Elmer’s glue on the tables – I sat trying to focus on my alphabet, keeping my head down and trying to stay out of trouble.

 

When Ms. Tew finally came back, her normally calm demeanor morphed into wild-eyed rage. She yelled while making statements about what she had told us to do, how we were disrupting the entire wing of the school, how we only needed to be still and quiet for a little while. I imagine the floor was covered with pencils and markers, poorly cut construction paper, glue bottles and paper jets with the nose-gear bent sideways. Chairs must have been in array, maybe the tables were knocked askew – but in our defense, she was gone a LONG time, especially for freshly minted first graders. 

 

She had us straighten the room up and return to the square while she found her wooden paddle. She stood the students on each side of the square up in unison, then went down the row whacking our rear ends with the board. “Thwok, thwok, thwok” 

 

I wanted to protest, to tell her I had not participated in any of it. I didn’t want to get paddled. I feared the pain, being lumped in with all the rule-breakers and what if my mom found out! I might get a whooping again for being disruptive. I think I started crying – maybe we all did. All the exuberance of childhood shenanigans squelched thwok by horrible thwok. Replaced by alligator tears and smeared “A’s, B’s and C’s” on our pages. 

 

An event like that did not happen again in all of elementary school (or beyond). I don’t know if Ms. Tew received a reprimand with other teachers forbidden to act similarly. Maybe the rumor mill did its job and scared all of us straight. Who would think the teacher would paddle ALL of us? Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.

 

Still, the event is my lasting memory of first grade and my lasting memory of Ms. Tew.

 

Written 3/25/26

Hometown

Photo credit here.

I never expected to be back in my hometown. When I left it “for good” in my late twenties, I imagined being somewhere close – a neighboring state – but not in the state. I needed the breathing room and the only way I found it was by physical distance. 

 

My grandmother did not understand why I “always left.” Granted, she never asked me to stay, never said she missed me or wanted me close. Maybe she assumed those things were a given. Considering her words now, I wonder if she felt rejected – more of a I was leaving her. At the time, I thought of my travels as exploration and finding myself. Now, I recognize I also needed to leave to make sense of all I experienced. 

 

Growing up in the South, the connection to and expectation of family felt ubiquitous. Granny expected mother to care for her and her needs. Dad expected mother to take care of the household duties (cooking, cleaning, caring for the children). Mom expected her daughters to also clean, cook and listen to her worries and concerns about her projections on other people. The boys took care of yard work and helped dad with various projects around the house.

 

As a family, we had an image to project and uphold, generally, but it’s the South, so a sterling image was most important at church. My sister and I wore dresses or pants to church, absolutely NO denim. My brothers wore slacks, a collared shirt and a tie. Mom expected us to sing in the choir, attend all services and generally behave. She wanted everyone to think our family was “perfect” or at least “doing very well.” 

 

She told me during my college orientation she never said a word to anyone about my brother’s drug addiction, run-ins with the law, suspensions, anger outbursts, etc., until that weekend. She met with the mother of an old elementary school friend of mine who happened to be at the same orientation weekend. Somehow, my friend’s mom provided mother the space to talk and mom told all. What amazed me, even then, was mom’s reticence to show any sign of “unordained” weakness to anyone. If the imperfection came upon her, she might share it with church people; but if the imperfection may have been associated with or caused by her, no one was going to know it. 

 

I was too aware of my family’s shortcomings, but mainly the dangerous dynamic between my brother and my parents. He transgressed any and all rules or lines. My parents, desperate to save him, and save face, tried to smooth over the infractions or to ignore them as if they never happened. My brother took and took and took. My parents never stopped giving (even to this day). 

 

When I got old enough to suggest they allow my brother to suffer the consequences of his actions, my mother gave me the stink eye and then proceeded to tell me they had no other choice than to support him. By that time, however, I knew they had other choices. I realized they would choose him any day, but I was not so sure they would choose any of the rest of us. Ask them, or especially my mother as dad has never been a talker, she would deny this one hundred percent; but by their actions throughout our childhood, they chose him over us one hundred percent of the time.

Once I tasted freedom in college, and especially after my summer in Alaska, I could not return to the family dynamic. I saw different ways to be in the world, and I wanted a different path than the one expected of me by my specific Southern culture. Even so, the culture’s embrace remained and it took years to find release – or a kind of release. I’m old enough to know the difficulty and even impossibility of leaving a family dynamic – parts of it seem genetic – but the travel and distance changed me enough to provide more filters for viewing it and living in it. 

 

I am forever grateful for the opportunities to live in other places and to know people with a wide variety of life experiences who live in cultures different than my own. They provided perspective, opportunity, windows into a thousand ways to be in the world. They helped me discover my agency. 

 

And my agency (as well as my intuition) brought us back home. Home surprises me with its creativity and ability to reinvent itself. This is not the place I left two decades ago and I am not the person who left. I’m enjoying our reacquaintance. J and I are slowly bringing out a new side to the old home place. We have more friends here than we have anywhere else in our married life. My work has a balance I dreamed of back in Memphis. 

 

I never expected to be back in my hometown, but I’m glad we are. 

3/24/26

 

Emergency Room

 

Photo Credit here.

Having just spent 7 hours in the ER with my father (after a fall, which fortunately did not end up with broken bones or bleeds), I am "worn slap out" as my Granny used to say. 

No musings on the ER at the moment, but maybe it will arrive another night. 

Now, to bed.

3/23/26

Different

Photo credit here.

 

3/21/25

Resilience

 

They had taken the metro to the island in the middle of the Dnieper River. The war had not yet begun, the Orange Revolution had not yet shifted the political landscape. The catacombs remained intact, St. Michael’s gleamed golden in the sun, Lady Victory signaled an era which recently passed into history. This moment culminated a few weeks of planning between the English teachers and students which included gathering at the island to experience a cookout in the “usual” Ukrainian style. 

 

By this time the snow had given up and warming temperatures melted what remained. The teachers followed the university students on an unmarked path back into the woods. They found a clearing and a barbeque by magic, and soon, the students were unpacking their backpacks with the different snacks and food they brought. 

 

Potato salad, bread with dried fish, butter and dill; a dish called Shuba (layered fish, carrot, beet, mayonnaise) and Sala (or pig’s fat) came forward one by one. While the other dishes were cold, they heated the Sala a bit, then passed it around. They told stories of how Stalin, during World War II, starved the people of Ukraine. When they could no longer buy meat, Sala provided calories to keep them alive another day with hopes to see Stalin defeated. They were survivors. 

 

The English speakers sat silent – how does one respond to resilience of this magnitude in the face of vicious hate? 

 

With awe and respect. 

The picture was a Writer's Workshop prompt from February of 2023. I gave myself 15 minutes to write on the picture prompt and it took me to my time in Kyiv, Ukraine '98-'99. 3/20/26

The Process of Becoming

Photo credit here.

Little comes out wholly itself.
Even a seed must be formed bit
By painstakingly long bit and
Even then its journey continues.

 

Is it food? 

Does it feed off another?

May it wait for yet another type of seed

Which by combining 

becomes something new.

 

The hazelnut contains the universe – 

The work of millennia formed and 

Transformed into this tiny seed.

 

Give it soil, rain, sunlight – 

The nut transforms into something

Quite different – larger, broader

Containing multitudes of itself

For all of time (maybe).

 

All the tree releases from itself – 

Gases to fill the air, 

Nitrogen to feed the soil

 

As it dies it decomposes into hummus and fungi

Decomposes into 

Soil and spore and molecule.

 

The world below and the sky above

Filled again by what had been

One tiny seed, by what had been

Universe.

 

So what of my short life?

The lesson may be not so much

All my transformation

But mostly I am stardust as much

As I am flesh and

To stardust I will return.

 

The vanity of life

Its crowning glory:

The whisper of eternity

In each breath,

Each turning of a life.

 

Writer’s Workshop, 11/16/25

Visitations

As we prepare for the arrival of our daughter and granddaughters, one more thing can always be done. I remember my mom preparing the house for holidays when my sister and brothers had their own homes, so now visited ours. I did not understand the fuss over getting everything clean or “just right” because they had lived in the space when it was not so. Still, mom insisted on dusting, vacuuming and cleaning everything. I asked her not to make such a fuss for me when I inevitably moved out and returned home. I don’t think she listened.

I get it now – wanting the space to be inviting because we want the kids to come back, to enjoy the space, to associate our home with welcome, fun, love. It becomes obvious the kids have many more activities and interests grappling for their time and they do not have to spend any of it with us. Like my friend’s post a few weeks ago declared, once the kids leave at 18, assuming they can and do, our time with them becomes sparse indeed. When they return, our home needs to have something all the other activities don’t, so we specialize in comfort, cleanliness, food, play and (hopefully) a lot of love communicated in a myriad of ways. 

 

The question on the Lent card today is “where do you need healing?” 

 

I know a fair number of grandparents who live close enough to be babysitters, Little League carpoolers, dance rehearsal chauffeurs and on-call overnight hosts. They see their grands regularly and fall into a pattern with them. Inside jokes and knowing glances grace their interactions. A single expression translates a book of dialogue due to years of spending regular time with each other. 

 

J and I do not live close enough to any of our grands for that depth of ease or knowing. I don’t know if it is something which needs healing, but it is a distance which I pray will be closed with each visit, each game played, each meal shared, each book read aloud. And maybe having the bookshelves dusted, the floors vacuumed and the bathrooms clean will help a little, too. 

 

3/18/26

 

Getting Here

Photo Credit here.

We finished our taxes today – a win on any day. We took a short walk, the sun calling us outside, the wind chiding us once out. We had a nice breakfast, warmed up leftovers for lunch and spent some time with the contractor reviewing the claims process for the roof. After he left, we drove to a CVS to pick up Dad’s Boost and as we curved and swooped around the crest of the hill, J wondered aloud, “How did we end up here?” 

He meant the particular suburb of our habitation – one which grew around the farm land my great grandfather purchased over 100 years ago. While once considered a “dangerous part of town” per an old college minister of mine, the area developed into an affluent section of the larger city. J quipped years ago we would never be allowed to live in this part of town unless we bought newer cars. I don’t know if he ever expected we would live exactly here, in the home of my childhood.

 

By his question, he’s still figuring it out. Or maybe he simply wants to make sense of the aimlessness of retirement or the boredom of home management – how did HE end up here?

 

Only he can tell his story, but as I sit in the room we now call the office, I remember it’s many iterations. When my sister moved into this room, we were a package deal. She read to me at night, fixed my hair in the mornings and put up with my kung-fu theatrics overnight. When she hit her teenage years, I moved to the front bedroom and she had this room all to herself. She painted the walls purple with a zig-zagging rainbow right in the middle interrupted by Garfield and his thought bubbles making sarcastic comments. I thought it was the coolest room ever. 

 

She left to go to college and I inherited her space. I can’t remember if I left the bed on the floor or if I placed the bed on the floor. Because I thought my sister cool, and myself not so much, I’m sure I left it on the floor, catty cornered to the middle of the room. The stereo system sat just behind the bed in the corner and it became my crystal ball. If Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings” or Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” came on at just the right moment, then my crush had to have noticed me that day/month/year.

 

The room has been a place of confession, study, creativity; of prayers, tears, heartache. In the five years since our return, it has served as a TV room, an office, a dance studio and a music conservatory. We have all imposed our wills on this space and place, molding it to our needs, wants, desires. We ended up here because we have made it so. Each decision bending us toward a future we only recognize in hindsight.

 

For me, the decision to leave so many years ago inevitably led me back because I needed distance to discover the edges of myself and now, I need proximity to solidify them. It’s that simple and that complex. 

3/17/26

Horizons

Photo credit here.

When I awoke this morning, the temperature hovered around 50 degrees, by 11 am snow fell curtain-like covering trees and lawns, by 4 pm the scenery was gaslighting me, telling me the snowfall had all been in my head. The temperature whispered, “It was real.”

 

I visited my OB/GYN today. When I entered, the waiting room brimmed with expectant parents, moms with just-walking infants exploring this new world and beleaguered parents (“The schools closed early I had to go get all of my children,” explained the woman in the business suit with her four pink-jacketed girls in tow.). Movement and energy buoyed the space and infused it with vitality. By the time I heard my name an hour later, the space was empty save another woman with an appointment after mine with the same physician. We seemed to share the same life-stage: no young children, no possibility of pregnancy, deep appreciation for stillness and silence.

 

After working out early in the day, I came home, enjoyed drinking chocolate, read a bit about the updated Whole30, then promptly took a nap. 

 

A day full of opposites. 

 

J and I worked downstairs for several hours preparing our basement for the arrival of our daughter and granddaughters on Wednesday. In a flurry of activity, we rearranged furniture, set up a TV, repacked or moved items we had unpacked and left strown across the beds. J cleaned the sheets and remade the beds, vacuumed the floor, dusted; I cleared out cobwebs and provided job oversite. 

 

Then I came upstairs and put away more of my mother’s bells. I could see her in a gift shop, admiring the many souvenirs vying for her money. I imagined her reaching for some lovely, delicate trinket, commenting on how pretty it was, then turning it over to see the price. Her face fell a little, knowing the item too pricey for what money they had and then she turned to the other, mass-produced wares. She scanned them until she saw the graceful lines of porcelain. Picking a bell up, she shook it between her index and thumb and considered its tone as well as its message. “This will do,” she thought, “this will do.” 

 

I’m in the place where the weather changes by the moment – bitter cold and gray to sunny bright and blue (though the temps just don’t feel as warm). It’s not a bad place to be, just a new one: jubilant and curious, aching with the inevitable passing. Another borderland, another edge, another horizon. Time and time again.

3/16/26

Providence

Photo Credit here.

 

A slippery fish

Fighting the pull of current

Yet still pushed along

To some destination yet unseen

 

The steely-eyed hawk

Soaring on the winds

A dance with changing direction

To keep aloft and flying

 

A sunflower

Raising its weighty head

Adores the sun and moves

To communicate its praise

 

And what of me

Fights or soars or adores

Through the flow of my life

Directed by forces unseen? 

 

Tomorrow is mystery

Unfolding in every breath

A past which whispers

“Bidden or unbidden, God is here.” 

 

3/14/26