Category: Mothering

I Was All Hers

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives—
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
~Seamus Heaney “Clearances -3”

April 2008 – Vigil at Mom’s Bedside

Lying still, your mouth gapes open as
I wonder if you breathe your last.
Your hair a white cloud
Your skin baby soft
No washing, digging, planting gardens, peeling potatoes,
Or raising children
Anymore.

Where do your dreams take you?
At times you wake in your childhood home of
Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom.
Other naps take you to your student and teaching days
Grammar and drama, speech and essays.
Yesterday you were a young mother again
Juggling babies, farm and your wistful dreams.

Today you looked about your empty nest
Disguised as hospital bed,
Wondering aloud about
Children grown, flown.
You still control through worry
and tell me:
Travel safely
Get a good night’s sleep
Take time to eat
Call me when you get there

I dress you as you dressed me
I clean you as you cleaned me
I love you as you loved me
You try my patience as I tried yours.
I wonder if I have the strength to
Mother my mother
For as long as she needs.

When I tell you the truth
Your brow furrows as it used to do
When I disappointed you~
This cannot be
A bed in a room in a sterile place
Waiting for death
Waiting for heaven
Waiting

And I tell you:
Travel safely
Eat, please eat
Sleep well
Call me when you get there.

______________

Now that I am a grandmother, I seek those tiny, daily, apparently meaningless opportunities to create memories that my grandchildren may warmly recall decades from now, knowing they were all mine, if only for a few minutes at the kitchen sink.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

You Can Never Be Sure

barnstormingblog1 Comment

You never know what may cause them. The sight of the ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you’ve never seen before. A pair of somebody’s old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow…

You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.
~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark

photo by Emily Vander Haak

I’m not paying close enough attention to the meaning of my leaking eyes if I’m constantly looking for kleenex to stem the flow. During the holidays, it seems I have more than ample opportunity to find out the secret of who I am, where I have come from, and where I am to be next.

So I keep my pockets loaded with kleenex, and there is a box ready in every room of the house.

It mostly has to do with welcoming our three children, their spouses, and six grandchildren back home for a few days to become a full-out, noisy, messy, chaotic household again. There will be puzzles and games and music and laughter and unending laundry and constant meal preparation and consumption. It is about singing grace together in five-part harmony before we eat, praying precious words of gratitude. 

It is about remembering the drama of our youngest’s birthday thirty-one years ago today, as if it were only yesterday, when her life was saved by a snowstorm. Now she and her husband bring their own son for visits back to the farm.

It certainly has to do with bidding farewell again, gathering them all in for that final hug and then letting go.

We have urged and encouraged them to go where their hearts are telling them they are needed and called to be, even if that means miles away from their one-time home on the farm. For our oldest son’s family, that means returning and settling in just down the road.

I too was let go once and though I would try to look back, too often in tears, I set my face toward the future. It led me here, to this marriage, this family, this farm, this work, our church, to more tears, to more letting go if I’m granted more years to weep again and again with gusto and grace and gravitas.

This is what I’m sure is the secret of me:
to love so much and so deeply that letting go is so hard that tears are no longer unexpected or a mystery to me or my children and grandchildren. It is a given that Grandma will weep at a drop of a hat, at a hug, or a hymn. My tears are the spill-over of fullness that can no longer be contained: God’s still small voice spills down my cheeks drop by drop like wax from a burning candle.

No kleenex are needed with these tears.

Let them flow as I let them go. It is as it should be.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: Wake Ready for Tomorrow

barnstormingblog1 Comment

The night after she returned from the hospital 
the uneven rumbly liquid breathing of one soon  

to go under kept me at the surface of thoughts 
I couldn’t escape. Clonazepam, Lorazepam, 

not even Ambien could pull or sink me. And in the morning, 
sure enough, we couldn’t coax or shake her awake  

except for a few seconds when someone or thing  
wrenched her eyes open and let her answer no

to every question in a scornful voice we’d never heard before 
before pulling her down to that rocky undertow. 

Through the morning and afternoon every breath, 
a grunt, a rattling that soaked the bedclothes and pillows in sweat. 

Then at 3 pm, she returned—recognizing her two daughters 
speaking her own name and the name of the president. 

The hospice nurse put a line through the word “Comatose” 
scrawled at the top of her chart and for the next few hours 

a light or absence seemed to emanate from her almost 
emptied irises. No sentences. No speech as the white  

nimbus of hair, thick and lively around her head 
nodded yes to sitting up and getting dressed— 

to sweet potatoes and Jeopardy! as though part of her  
remained in that rheumy underwater place 

that took her breath away and wiped out the syntax  
of explanation and inquiry, leaving only 

no I won’t and certainly not and don’t ever wake me up again. 
~Lisa Sewell “The Land of Nod”

Vigil at my mother’s bedside

Where do your dreams take you?
At times you wake in your childhood home of
Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom.
Other naps take you to your student and teaching days
Grammar and drama, speech and essays.
Yesterday you were a young mother again
Juggling babies, farm and your wistful dreams.

Today you looked about your empty nest
Disguised as hospital bed,
Wondering aloud about
Children grown, flown.
You still control through worry
and tell me:
It’s foggy out there
Travel safe through the dark
Call me when you get there
Take time to eat
Sleep sound, ready to wake fresh tomorrow

I dress you as you dressed me
I clean you as you cleaned me
I love you as you loved me
You try my patience as I tried yours.
I wonder if I have the strength to
Mother my mother
For as long as she needs.

When I tell you the truth of where you are
Your brow furrows as it used to do
When I disappointed you~
This cannot be
A bed in a room in a sterile place
Waiting
Waiting for death,
Waiting for heaven,
Waiting for the light

And I tell you:
It’s foggy
Travel safe through the darkness
Eat something, please eat
Sleep sound, ready to wake fresh tomorrow
Call me when you get there.

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song


Wake, Awake for Night is Flying
Let the shadows be forsaken,
The time has come for us to waken,
And to the Day our lives entrust.
Search the sky for heaven’s portal:
The clouds shall rain the Light Immortal,
And earth will soon bud forth the Just.

Of one pearl each shining portal,
where, dwelling with the choir immortal,
we gather ’round Your dazzling light.
No eye has seen, no ear
has yet been trained to hear
what joy is ours!
~Philipp Nicolai
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily ad-free Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: A Column of Light

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Gabriel disembodied,
pure column of light.

Humble Mary, receiving the word
that the baby she carries is God’s.

Not good news, not news, even,
but rather the rightly enormous word,

Annunciation. She knew
they were chosen. She knew

he would suffer, as the chosen child
always suffers. Perhaps she knew

the dearest wish, mercy,
would be ever-inchoate,

like Gabriel: light that carries
possibility, illuminates,

but that can promise nothing but itself.
~Elizabeth Alexander “Tanner’s Annunciation”

Henry Ossawa Tanner “Annunciation”

…to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power –
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love –

but who was God.
~Denise Levertov from “Annunciation”

As the wise men of old brought gifts
   guided by a star
      to the humble birthplace

of the god of love,
   the devils
      as an old print shows
retreated in confusion.

What could a baby know
      of gold ornaments
or frankincense and myrrh,
   of priestly robes
      and devout genuflections?

But the imagination
   knows all stories
      before they are told
and knows the truth of this one
   past all defection

The rich gifts
   so unsuitable for a child
      though devoutly proffered,
stood for all that love can bring.

 The men were old
      how could they know
of a mother’s needs
   or a child’s
      appetite?

But as they kneeled
   the child was fed.
      They saw it
and
   gave praise!

A miracle
had taken place,
   hard gold to love,
a mother’s milk!
   before
      their wondering eyes.

The ass brayed
   the cattle lowed.
      It was their nature.

All men by their nature give praise.
   It is all
      they can do.

The very devils
   by their flight give praise.
      What is death,
beside this?

Nothing. The wise men
      came with gifts
and bowed down
   to worship
      this perfection.
~William Carlos Williams “The Gift”

The uncontained contained
infinite made finite
humble made worthy
a Deliverer delivered
hungry sated on mother’s milk
unsuitable made perfect
darkness illuminated with possibilities
the eternal here and now

How can you measure the love of a mother,
Or how can you write down a baby’s first cry?
Candlelight, angel light, firelight and starglow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn.
Gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!
Angels are singing; the Christ child is born.
Shepherds and wise men will kneel and adore him,
Seraphim round him their vigil will keep;
Nations proclaim him their Lord and their Saviour,
But Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep.
Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger:
Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay.
Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation:
A child with his mother that first Christmas Day.
~John Rutter – words and music

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily ad-free Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

No Longer Homeless

barnstormingblog2 Comments

God makes us happy as only children can be happy.
God wants to always be with us, wherever we may be –
in our sin, in our suffering and death.
We are no longer alone;
God is with us.
We are no longer homeless;
a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us. 
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Today is my mother’s birthday,
but she’s not here to celebrate
by opening a flowery card
or looking calmly out a window.

If my mother were alive,
she’d be 114 years old,
and I am guessing neither of us
would be enjoying her birthday very much.

Mother, I would love to see you again
to take you shopping or to sit
in your sunny apartment with a pot of tea,
but it wouldn’t be the same at 114.

And I’m no prize either,
almost 20 years older than the last time
you saw me sitting by your deathbed.
Some days, I look worse than yesterday’s oatmeal.

It must have been frigid that morning
in the hour just before dawn
on your first December 1st
at the family farm a hundred miles north of Toronto.

Happy Birthday, anyway. Happy Birthday to you.
~Billy Collins from “December 1”

December 1st is not my mother’s birthday;
this was her death day fifteen years ago.

Yet it felt a bit like a birth.

The call came from the care center about 5:30 AM that Monday after Thanksgiving on a frozen morning: the nurse gently said her breathing had changed, it wasn’t long now until she’d be gone. My daughter and I quickly dressed and went out into a bleak and icy darkness to make the ten minute drive to her bedside.

Mom had been wearily existing since a femur fracture 9 months earlier on a cruel April 1st morning. Everything changed for her after nearly 88 years of being active at home. It was the beginning of the end for her, unable to care for herself.

She had been born in the isolation of a Palouse wheat and lentil farm in eastern Washington, delivered into this life in a two story white house located down a long lane and nestled in a draw between the undulating hills. 

It occurred to me as we drove to her bedside: the past nine months had been a different type of gestation, anticipating the end of her life. After nearly dying at age 13 from a ruptured appendix in a pre-antibiotic era, she now was facing her long-awaited yet long-feared transition to death. That near-miss in childhood seemed to haunt her, filling her with worry that it was a mistake that she survived that episode at all. Yet she had thrived despite the anxiety, and ended up, much to her surprise, living a long life full of family, fruitfulness, and faith.

Elna Schmitz Polis – age 87

We arrived to a room darkened, except for the multicolored lights on the table top artificial Christmas tree I had brought her a few days earlier. It cast colorful shadows onto the walls and the white bedspread on her hospital bed. It even made her look like she had color to her cheeks where there actually was none.

There was no one home any longer.

She had already left, flown away while we drove the few miles to come to her. There was no reaching her now. Her skin was cooling, her face hollowed by the lack of effort to breathe, her body stilled and sunken.

I could not weep at that point – it was time for her to leave us behind. She was so very tired, so very weary, so very ready for heaven. And I, weary too, felt much like yesterday’s oatmeal, something she actually very much loved during her life, cooking up a big batch a couple times a week, enough to last several days.

I knew, seeing what was left of her there in that bed, Mom was no longer settling for yesterday’s oatmeal and no longer homeless. I knew now she was present for a feast, would never suffer insomnia again, would no longer be fearful of dying, that her cheeks would be forever full of color.

I knew this was her new beginning: the glory of rebirth thanks to her Savior who had gently taken her by the hand to a land where joy would never end.

Happy Birthday today, Mom. Happy December 1st Birthday to you.

I’ll fly away, oh glory
I’ll fly away in the morning
When I die hallelujah by and by
I’ll fly away

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily ad-free Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

What was Bound to Happen

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
~Lisel Mueller “In November” from Alive Together

It does not escape me~
(I awake every day knowing this)
a disastrous earthquake happened somewhere else,
a war ravages families on both sides of a border,
a windstorm leveled a town,
a drunk driver devastated two families,
a fire left a house in ashes,
a mother nearly died giving birth,
a flood ravaged a village,
a grim diagnosis darkened
someone’s remaining days.

No mistake has been made,
yet I awake knowing this part of my story
has yet to visit me –
I hear of so much suffering,
knowing the heavy heart
that could have been mine
still beats,
still breaks,
still aches,
still believes in grace, mercy, and miracles.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Do Not Look Back

barnstormingblog1 Comment

He loved to ask his mother questions. It was the pleasantest thing for him to ask a question and then to hear what answer his mother would give. Bambi was never surprised that question after question should come into his mind continually and without effort. 

Sometimes he felt very sure that his mother was not giving him a complete answer, was intentionally not telling him all she knew.  For then there would remain in him such a lively curiosity, such suspicion, mysteriously and joyously flashing through him, such anticipation, that he would become anxious and happy at the same time, and grow silent.
~Felix Salten from Bambi

A Wounded Deer—leaps highest—
I’ve heard the Hunter tell—
‘Tis but the Ecstasy of death—
And then the Brake is still!
~Emily Dickinson “165″

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
~Jane Hirschfield from “The Standing Deer”


My first time ever
seated next to my mother
in a movie theater, just
a skinny four year old girl
practically folded in half
by a large padded chair
whose seat won’t stay down,
bursting with anticipation
to see Disney’s Bambi.

Enthralled with so much color,
motion,  music, songs and fun
characters, I am wholly lost
in this new world of animated
reality when suddenly
Bambi’s mother looks up,
alarmed, from eating
a new clump of spring grass
growing in the snow.

My heart leaps
with worry.
She tells him
to run quickly
for the thicket –
find the safest place where
she has always
kept him warm
next to her.

She follows behind,
urges him to run faster,
not to look back,
don’t ever look back.

Then the gun shot
hits my belly too.

My stomach twists
as he cries out
for his mother,
pleading for her.
I know in my heart
she is lost forever,
sacrificed to save him.

I sob as my mother
reaches out to me,
telling me not to look.
I bury my face
inside her hug,
knowing Bambi
is cold and alone
with no mother
any more.

My mama took me home
before the end.
I could not bear to watch
the rest of the movie 
for years.

Those cries
still echo
in my ears
any time someone hunts and shoots
to kill the innocent.

Now, my own three children are grown,
they have babies of their own,
my mom is gone from this earth.
I can even keep the seat from folding
me in half in a movie theater.

I am nearing my eighth decade, and
there are still places in this world where
mothers and fathers
sons and daughters
grandmothers and grandfathers
sisters and brothers
and babies are hunted down
despite the supposed safety of the thicket~
the sanctuary, the school, the grocery store, the home,
places where we believe we are shielded from violence.

There can be no innocence when any of us may be hunted.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Prayer for a Child

barnstormingblog2 Comments

God keep my jewel this day from danger;
From tinker and pooka and bad-hearted stranger.
From harm of the water, from hurt of the fire.
From the horns of the cows going home to the byre.
From the sight of the fairies that maybe might change her.
From teasing the ass when he’s tied to the manger.
From stones that would bruise her, from thorns of the briar.
From evil red berries that wake her desire.
From hunting the gander and vexing the goat.
From the depths o’ sea water by Danny’s old boat.
From cut and from tumble, from sickness and weeping;
May God have my jewel this day in his keeping.
~Winifred Lett (1882-1973) “Prayer for a Child“

photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Anna Blake

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.
~C.S. Lewis

This “prayer for a child” has hung on the wall in our home for nearly four decades, purchased when I was pregnant with our first. When I first saw it with its drawing of the praying mother watching her toddler leave the safety of the home to explore the wide world, I knew it addressed most of my worries as a new mama, in language that helped me smile at my often irrational fears. I would glance at it dozens of time a day; it would remind me of God’s care for our children through every scary thing, real or imagined.

I continue to pray for our grown children and their God-given spouses, and now for six precious grandchildren, the latest of whom was born yesterday afternoon.

I pray because I can’t not pray, and because I’m helpless without the care and compassion of our sovereign God for each of us, especially when we are brand new, completely dependent and helpless.

May I be changed by my prayers and molded into a truly “grand” mother for our half dozen cherished grandchildren, each a jewel in His keeping.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

The Moon-Pale Promise

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

from Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque in memory of my mother

There’s D-flat major at the first and last,
but in between, a haze of harmonies
yearns lightward, though the light has long since passed.

I played the notes; she heard the light. The keys
were mine to coax and animate; their sound
was hers to claim: a shimmer of heart’s ease.

And while my fingers stretched and danced and found
their way through black and white, her ear would find
a prism—her own light parsed and unbound.

She had a knack for joy and was inclined
to wonder. Clair de lune had mesmerized
her, in a spell that left me far behind.

After my mother’s death, I was surprised
I still played it so often; I suppose
the effort occupied and organized

my sorrow-scattered mind. So in the throes
of grief, I practiced, as if I’d impress
a ghost with my devotion. And in those

half-haunted hours, I mastered more, I guess,
than just the notes. I hadn’t thought I’d learn
to hear what she did—but through some finesse

of time and skill and need, I now discern
the half-lit murmurings that no midnight
can mute, the moon-pale promise that can turn

unrest to peace, a star-sung appetite
for breath. At last I share my mother’s light.
~Jean Kreiling “Claire de Lune“

photo by Lea Lozano

I never practiced as much as I could have. Since the old piano sat in the living room right next to the kitchen, my mother endured my wrong notes and mis-timed rhythms, but never said a word of criticism. She was not an avid music listener, preferring radio talk and news, but committed to taking me to piano lessons over eight long years, sitting in the car reading a book while she waited for me.

Though not someone who listened to classical music for pleasure, she did love Clair de Lune, saying she could “see” the moon rise when I played it. Thus encouraged, I chose it as a recital piece so I could play it often for her, flowing my fingers across the keyboard smoothly, steadily, faithfully, like the rise of the moon in the night sky.

I want to feel a connection to a piece of music that so grips my heart and waters my eyes. It happens only rarely when I play – as an average pianist, I never truly progressed beyond technique – hitting the right notes and being true to the timing. But this piece comes close. When I hear it, I am no longer the youngster practicing it over and over, trying to somehow bring light to our dark living room. With age, I can now lose myself in the beauty of what Debussy was trying to convey in his choice of progression of notes, his resolution of harmony and key change, his slowing and flowing illumination of the piano keys.

I begin to hear what my mother must have heard, although I made so many mistakes, over and over.

Even so, the moon still rose for her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LwFI2E1zQk
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Alive and Limber

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Deciding whether or not to trust a person
is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree
because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch
or you might simply get covered in sap
and for this reason many people choose
to spend their time alone and indoors
where it is harder to get a splinter.
~Lemony Snicket from The Penultimate Peril

Heaven knows how many trees I’ve climbed…
when my body was still in a climbing way.

How many afternoons, especially Windy ones,

I sat perched on a limb that rose and fell with every invisible blow

Each tree was a green ship in the wind-waves,

every branch a mast

every leafy height a happiness that came without even trying.

I was that alive

and limber

now I walk under them-cool… beloved….

the household of such tall, kind sisters.
~Mary Oliver “Trees”

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent way to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me.  Truly.

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be.  It’s impossible not
to remember wild and not want to go back.  So

if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.
~Mary Oliver, “Green, Green is My Sister’s House,” from A Thousand Mornings

As a child, I was always very cautious about climbing anything, never trusting my judgement or my balance. Perhaps this was because my mother was very fearful about all risk-taking in her children and instilled that caution in me from the start, discouraging me from ever reaching for the sky or dangling from a branch.

So when the neighbor children come with their families for an evening at our farm, I marvel and cringe at them being drawn as if by a magnet to climb the tall big leaf maple tree in our front yard. I imagine this tree has hosted several generations of children who have scrambled over its twisted trunk, sat in its central saddle to catch the view of the surrounding countryside, and reached its upper limits before being called back down by a nervous adult.

No doubt it is a feeling of incredible freedom to be limber enough to scrabble up a rough-barked branch, placing fingers and feet just-so into perfectly placed nooks and crevices.

No doubt being just out of reach of a fretful parent reinforces independence and autonomy.

No doubt there are leafy heights of happiness up there I’ll never know, way high above my head.

Yet here I stand in the cool shade and breezy evening, looking up, wishing I could be alive and limber like them, praying they will safely make their way down without a trip to the ER, while still honoring my mother’s cautioning pleas to keep my two feet well-grounded.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly