The crust of sleep is broken Abruptly— I look drowsily Through the wide crack. I do not know whether I see Three minds, bird-shaped, Flashing upon the bough of morning; Or three delicately tinted souls Butterflying in the sun; Or three brown-fleshed, husky children Sprawling hilarious Over my bed And me. ~Jeanne D’Orge “Matins”(published in 1917)
This morning I broke through the misty tides of my dreams, surfacing to cool morning air and prelude of a dawn bird chorus.
Today I wake imagining who I might be from a myriad of dreams…
Sometimes I wake as if once again a young girl, sun coming through frilly curtains to shower my face with a warming light.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a sleep-thirsty student, hoping to snooze another 15 minutes before class.
Sometimes I wake once again as if a new mother, dripping and leaking at the sound of my baby’s cries.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a weary farmer, up much of the night with a laboring mare and slow-to-suck foal.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a preoccupied physician, mentally reviewing the night’s phone calls and concerns.
Today I wake as a grandma, wishing my bed would bounce with a pile of birds and butterflies and jubilant children, wishing me good morning and eager to see me up and at ’em.
So who am I?
I was, I am, I will be all those things, as I hang tight to the bough of morning.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
All that summer the sun refused to open On the sky, and the river carried rain-spots Down and over the weir, and by the footbridge Swans’ eggs chilled in their nest. I saw them, rained on, Blue and dead as the moon the clouds were hiding Every night when I looked to find it. What could Live, neglected like that? The wind, cold and green With the smell of the hawthorn flowering, came Brooding over the fens, but what could it bring me, Who had chosen to view the world with sadness, Or had taken its sadness into myself, Gift and charism? One day, though, I saw them, Triple vee-wakes on dark tree-printed currents: One ahead of the others, big and whiter Than the cloud-pale sky. Two cygnets, gray, living, Broken free from the death I’d assumed for them.
Well, their ways are not my ways. The next summer, Walking that same towpath, heavy with a child Who had come to me after years of asking — Who was taking his time just then, head downward, Happy where he was — I saw them paddling Under the bridge, where it laid out its shadow, Current-rumpled. The same swans? Or three strangers Hummed down onto a river pricked with sunlight, Strange and new as the season? I can’t say now. I remember the baby’s head engaging, Heavy, ready, real, an impending pressure. I remember the wakes widening, the river Flowing down in the sun, and by the footbridge, Gray, empty, the mess of twigs, leaves, and feathers. ~Sally Thomas “Swans”
Decades ago, there were several years when I took sadness into myself, feeling empty and barren with no hope that could change.
Sorrow became the bridge I walked across, unaware what I would find on the other side, assuming only it would be more of the same.
If I had listened to my own tearful prayers, I might have understood –even the most comfortable nests are abandoned when it is time to break free from the sadness.
I gave up my timing and my plans to let things be according to His will.
And life happened. And sadness no longer found a place in me. The empty was filled, the sorrow overwhelmed with blessing. Babies born, grown, now flown away to a life and babies of their own.
All from the one nest, emptied, as ever it should be.
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We’re captive on the carousel of time We can’t return, we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game… ~Joni Mitchell “The Circle Game”
those lovely horses, that galloped me, moving the world, piston push and pull, into the past—dream to where? there, when the clouds swayed by then trees, as a tire swing swung me under—rope groan. now, the brass beam, holds my bent face, calliope cadence—O where have I been? ~Rick Maxson “Carousel at Seventy”
On thin golden poles gliding up, sliding down, a kingdom of horses goes spinning around.
Jumper, Brown Beauty, Dark Thunder, Sir Snow, a medley of ponies parade in a row.
Settled in saddles, their riders hold on to reins of soft leather while circling along
on chestnut or charcoal, on sleek Arctic white, on silver they gallop in place day and night.
Such spinning is magic, (to dream as you sail) with lavender saddle and ebony tail,
whirling to music in moonlight, spellbound, galloping, galloping, merrily go round. ~Rebecca Kai Dotlich “Carousel”
Under its canopy, in the shade it casts, turns a world with painted horses, all from a land that lingers a while before it disappears. Some, it’s true, are harnessed to a wagon, but all have valor in their eyes. A fierce red lion leaps among them, and here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.
Even a stag appears, straight from the forest, except for the saddle he wears, and, buckled on it, a small boy in blue.
And a boy in white rides the lion, gripping it with small clenched hands, while the lion flashes teeth and tongue.
And here comes ’round a snow-white elephant.
And riding past on charging horses come girls, bright-eyed, almost too old now for this children’s play. With the horses rising under them, they are looking up and off to what awaits. ~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Jardin de Luxembourg”
A fewJuly memories:
Sixty-five years ago, I was a five year old having her first ride on the historic carousel at Woodland Park Zoo before we moved from Stanwood to Olympia. Fifty-four years ago — a teenager working in a nursing home as a nurses’ aide after three days of training. Forty-nine years ago – returned home early from my studies in Tanzania after four chimpanzee researcher friends were held hostage for ransom and eventually released Forty-three years ago — deep in the guts of a hospital working forty hour long shifts, thinking about the man I was soon to marry Thirty-four years ago — my husband and I picking up bales of hay in our own farm field, two young children in tow after accepting a new position doctoring at the local university Twenty-seven years ago — raising three children and completed farm house remodel, supporting three parents with health issues, raising Haflinger horses, helping design a new clinic building at work, playing piano and teaching Sunday School at church Twenty-whatever years ago – life spinning faster, blurring with work at home, on the farm, at clinic, at church. I begin writing to grab and hang on to what I can. Sixteen years ago — one son about to move to Japan to teach and the other son to teach at Pine Ridge in South Dakota, daughter at home with a new driver’s license working with migrant children, a mother slowly bidding goodbye to life at a local care center, farming less about horse raising and more about gardening, maintaining and preserving. Ten years ago — two sons married, daughter working as a camp counselor so our first summer without children at home. Perfect time to raise a new puppy! Five years ago – A two year old granddaughter and two new grandsons! Daughter teaching, engaged to be married. Two years ago – completed forty-two years of non-stop doctoring so I bid it goodbye. Now – Three more grandsons! Two retired grandparents! Big garden on the farm but we’re slowing down.
The puppy’s face and our hair are turning white…
O where have I been? We can only look behind from where we came and await what is ahead.
The decades pass, round and round – there is comfort knowing that through the ups and downs of daily life, we still hang on. If we slip and fall, there is Someone ready to catch us.
Looking behind you, where have you been? What awaits you where you are heading?
AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
What does it feel like to be alive? Living, you stand under a waterfall… It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.
I had hopes for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world’s surface, and exit through it. ~Annie Dillard from An American Childhood
I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when a storm took over the afternoon. My god, I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet. ~Ada Limón from “The Raincoat”
Mothering can be like standing under a waterfall, impacted breathless by the incredible 24/7 responsibility of birthing and raising children. And a mother does whatever she must to protect her children from also getting soaked in the barrage of each drop of time, knowing they too can feel overwhelmed by the rapid passage of life.
As I tried my best to keep my children covered and dry until it was their turn to raise kids and stand under the same waterfall, my own rough edges have been impacted, smoothed and soothed by the flow of time.
I’m well aware rough edges still surface, unbidden and unwarranted, ready to cut a hole in the world for an escape hatch from troubles. So my children and grandchildren polish me even as I still try to protect them from inevitable downpours.
No longer is my reach enough nor must it be.
Life keeps pounding away, but oh so gentler on grandmothers. I know it is still ruffing and buffing me — each drop of time passing over me becomes a mixed blessing.
Each moment so precious, never to come again, yet leaving me forever and wonderfully changed.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
It started before Christmas. Now our son officially walks to school alone. Semi-alone, it’s accurate to say: I or his father track him on his way. He walks up on the east side of West End, we on the west side. Glances can extend (and do) across the street; not eye contact. Already ties are feeling and not fact. Straus Park is where these parallel paths part; he goes alone from there. The watcher’s heart stretches, elastic in its love and fear, toward him as we see him disappear, striding briskly. Where two weeks ago, holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow, he now is hustled forward by the pull of something far more powerful than school.
The mornings we turn back to are no more than forty minutes longer than before, but they feel vastly different–flimsy, strange, wavering in the eddies of this change, empty, unanchored, perilously light since the red hat vanished from our sight. ~Rachel Hadas “The Red Hat”
You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. ~ Frederick Buechner
As a child, I lived just outside of city limits in a semi-rural area, only a half mile from my elementary school on a country road. By first grade, I was allowed to walk to school and home again, then when I was older, with my younger brother in tow. I don’t remember my parents watching me as I made the journey, but I do remember some practice walks on a weekend, to reinforce how to safely cross the roads and where to walk alongside the drainage ditch.
I don’t remember ever being worried about what might happen to me outside of my parents’ presence, and nothing scary ever did happen. I’m sure my parents were worried, but both as children had walked to their rural schools on their own – it simply was how things happened in the 20’s and 30’s.
For children growing up now, it feels different.
Our three children grew up on a farm seven miles from town, so rode a school bus or were taken to school by a parent or grandparent. They didn’t have that early independence that I did. Our grandchildren, especially those living in large cities, are even more protected. It didn’t hamper their desire to explore the world – they have traveled all over.
The difference is the anxiety of the parent, watching that child disappear around a corner on foot, or bike or eventually in a car. It is that empty feeling of letting go before one is ready, but when you know you must.
The heart stretches to encompass one’s child out in the world, out of sight, no longer anchored at home. After all, we are that elastic and that resilient.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Opening the book at a bright window above a wide pasture after five years I find I am still standing on a stone bridge looking down with my mother at dusk into a river hearing the current as hers in her lifetime
now it comes to me that that was the day she told me of seeing my father alive for the last time and he waved her back from the door as she was leaving took her hand for a while and said nothing
at some signal in a band of sunlight all the black cows flow down the pasture together to turn uphill and stand as the dark rain touches them. ~W.S. Merwin “Sun and Rain” from Flower & Hand.
All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know look at the old house in the dawn rain all the flowers are forms of water the sun reminds them through a white cloud touches the patchwork spread on the hill the washed colors of the afterlife that lived there long before you were born see how they wake without a question even though the whole world is burning ~W. S. Merwin “Rain Light”from The Shadow of Sirius
We want so much to leave a legacy for our children that will carry them through their lives, long after we are gone. Then they pass that on to their children, and on and on, like the strands of DNA we leave behind in our descendants.
But words and rituals of faith and covenant can be lost so quickly from one generation to the next. Our DNA passed down is a given, but nothing surpasses the teaching about the eternal love of God and His purpose for His people.
This day, three of our young grandsons are baptized by their church, ushering them into a life in fulfillment of God’s promise within them. As children, they may not yet fully understand how this manifests in their lives, but with the love and guidance of their church, parents, extended family and godparents, they will know His Love as they witness it in His people.
The washing with water from God’s creation, like rain from heaven, gives me hope for the future.
Though the world may be burning, Jesus is right alongside us through it all – I know our children and grandchildren will be all right.
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
I’ve fallen many times: the usual stumbles over secret schoolgirl crushes, head-over-heels for teen heartthrobs. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen so many times: tripped down the aisle over husband, daughter, son. Madly and deeply, I love them all.
I’ve fallen again and again: new friends, a mentor, a muse, numerous books, a few authors, four dear pups and a stranger, or two. I loved them all.
I’ve fallen farther, fallen faster, now captivated, I tumble— enthralled with my grandchildren. I love them each, ever and all. ~Jane Attanucci, “Falling” from First Mud
Six grandchildren in less than seven years brings a bounty of baby hugs and snuggles.
With each one, I fall farther and faster than ever before.
In a lifetime of falling head over heels for those most precious to me, a loving husband, two sons and a daughter, dear friends and mentors, numerous pups and ponies…
still none could prepare me for this ~
the blessing of loving our children’s children, their smiles and giggles and arms wrapped around us
these have become most cherished each, ever and all.
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“
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
A pot of red lentils simmers on the kitchen stove. All afternoon dense kernels surrender to the fertile juices, their tender bellies swelling with delight.
In the yard we plant rhubarb, cauliflower, and artichokes, cupping wet earth over tubers, our labor the germ of later sustenance and renewal.
Across the field the sound of a baby crying as we carry in the last carrots, whorls of butter lettuce, a basket of red potatoes.
I want to remember us this way— late September sun streaming through the window, bread loaves and golden bunches of grapes on the table, spoonfuls of hot soup rising to our lips, filling us with what endures. ~Peter Pereira “A Pot of Red Lentils” from Saying the World
I cherish the moments that are most basic, plain, and simple and have the best chance of happening again. I’m not talking about exotic travels, nor the extravagant meal out, nor the once in a lifetime experience. My most cherished moments are quite everyday, and I store them up to fill the decades full.
Most cherished of all is “that look” that says “I want to look into your eyes forever and get lost there.”
I am lucky enough to know what that feels like. I get that butterfly in the stomach feeling anytime it happens. My husband held my eyes with his from across a room early in our relationship, and nearly forty four years later, he still holds them when he looks at me, even over bowls of soup at the kitchen table.
And I look at him just that way as well. The eyes say what words cannot. The eyes don’t lie. The eyes never change even though the years bring gray hair and crow’s feet.
It is what endures. I want to look at you forever, just like this, just as you are, wherever you are because of who you are.
42 years ago today…
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Barnstorming 