Four ducks on a pond, A grass-bank beyond, A blue sky of spring, White clouds on the wing; What a little thing To remember for years To remember with tears! ~William Allingham “A Memory”
Tell no one of the wonders of the Mallard duck’s green head, how it glistens in the sun against the gentle red of the Willow branches budding in the golden spring sun, as they paddle through the waters where the creek has come undone.
Tell no one of the beauty of the butterflies that flit through the flowers not yet budding on the little sandy spit, how their wings will keep them searching for the hope that blooms in Spring as they hover over what will be a very lovely thing.
Tell no one of the glory or the warmth of young spring’s sun, of the joy that comes from watching the smallest creatures run, of the life that is teeming in the wake of newborn day, of the power that hope holds over all we do and say.
Tell no one of the miracle that is this daily life, that cuts you to the quick as if with sharpest knife. Tell no one what you notice, into which your wonder delves. Tell no one of these things — let them know it for themselves. ~Elizabeth Wickland“Tell No One”
so much depends upon
a red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
beside the white chickens
~William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939
so much depends upon me riding a red trike chased by my little brother
Before the second summit party began the ascent of the princess of mountains, an ominous black cloud settled slowly around the summit block, persuading us to take a rest day, but morale was good. The next day at seven in the evening, my daughter Devi was on her last pitch, and it took her until midnight to haul up over the final lip. A long day.
Two days later, a blizzard kept us in our tents, but the next morning, Devi was stricken, saying calmly, “She is calling me. I am going to die,” before she fell into unconsciousness. I tried to revive her, mouth-to-mouth, but felt her lips grow cold against mine. We had lost her. My daughter was gone. I and the other climbers wept.
Her fiancé Andy and I bundled her in her sleeping bag and slipped her off the precipice of the North- East face. I said we had committed her to the deep. She had been the driving force behind this expedition, as she was inexorably drawn to her namesake. The Bliss-Giving Goddess had claimed her own. An excerpt from her last diary is inscribed on a stone placed in a high-altitude meadow of Patai:
“I stand on a windswept ridge at night with the stars bright above and I am no longer alone but I waver and merge with all the shadows that surround me. I am part of the whole and I am content.” ~Eleanor Swanson, Last Light on the West Face of Nanda Devifrom Non Finito
Nanda Devi peak, courtesy of Stanford Alpine Club
The ripple effect from Nanda Devi Unsoeld’s arrival as a new junior in Olympia High School in 1970 reached me within minutes, as I felt the impact of her presence on campus immediately. One of my friends elbowed me, pointing out a new girl being escorted down the hall by the assistant principal. Students stared at the wake she left behind: Devi had wildly flowing wavy long blonde hair, a friendly smile and bold curious eyes greeting everyone she met.
From the neck up, she fit right in with the standard appearance at the time: as the younger sisters of the 60’s generation of free thinking flower children, we tried to emulate them in our dress and style, going braless and choosing bright colors and usually skirts that were too short and tight. There was the pretense we didn’t really care how we looked, but of course we did care very much, with hours spent daily preparing the “casual carefree” look that would perfectly express our freedom from fashion trends amid our feminist longings.
Practicing careful nonconformity perfectly fit our peers’ expectations and aggravated our parents.
But Devi never looked like she cared what anyone else thought of her. The high school girls honestly weren’t sure what to make of her, speculating together whether she was “for real” and viewed her somewhat suspiciously, as if she was putting on an act.
The high school boys were mesmerized.
She preferred baggy torn khaki shorts or peasant skirts with uneven hems, loose fitting faded T shirts and ripped tennis shoes without shoelaces. Her bare legs were covered with long blonde hair, as were her armpits which she showed off while wearing tank tops. She pulled whole cucumbers from her backpack in class and ate them like cobs of corn, rind and all. She smelled like she had been camping without a shower for three days, but then riding her bike to school from her home 11 miles away in all kinds of weather accounted for that. One memorable day she arrived a bit late to school, pushing her bike through 6 inches of snow in soaking tennis shoes, wearing her usual broad smile of satisfaction.
As a daughter of two Peace Corps workers who had just moved back to the U.S. after years of service in Nepal, Devi had lived very little of her life in the United States. Her father Willi Unsoeld, one of the first American climbers to reach the summit of Mt. Everest up the difficult west face, had recently accepted a professorship in comparative religion at new local Evergreen College. He moved his wife and family back to the northwest to be near his beloved snowy peaks, suddenly immersing four children in an affluent culture that seemed foreign and wasteful.
Devi recycled before there was a word for it simply by never buying anything new and never throwing anything useful away, involved herself in social justice issues before anyone had coined the phrase, and was an activist behind the scenes more often than a leader, facilitating and encouraging others to speak out at anti-war rallies, organizing sit-ins for world hunger and volunteering in the local soup kitchen. She mentored adolescent peers to get beyond their self-consciousness and self-absorption to explore the world beyond the security of high school walls.
Regretfully, few of us followed her lead. We preferred the relative security and camaraderie of hanging out at the local drive-in to taking a shift at the local 24-hour crisis line. We showed up for our graduation ceremony in caps and gowns while the rumor was that Devi stood at the top of Mt. Rainier with her father that day.
I never saw Devi after high school but heard of her plans in 1976 to climb with an expedition to the summit of Nanda Devi, the peak in India for which she was named. She never returned, dying in her father’s arms as she suffered severe abdominal pain and irreversible high altitude sickness just below the summit. She lies forever buried in the ice on that faraway peak in India.
Her father died in an avalanche only a few years later, as he led an expedition of Evergreen students on a climb on Mt. Rainier, only 60 miles from home. Her mother, Jolene, later served in Congress from our district in Washington state.
Had Devi lived these last 50 years, I have no doubt she would have led our generation with her combination of charismatic boldness and excitement about each day’s new adventure. She lived without pretense, without hiding behind a mask of fad and fashion and conformity and without any desire for wealth or comfort.
I wish I had learned what she had to teach me when she sat beside me in class, encouraging me by her example to become someone more than the dictates of societal expectations. I secretly admired the freedom she embodied in not being concerned in the least about fitting in. Instead, I still mourn her loss all these years later, having to be content with the legacy she has now left behind on a snowy mountain peak that called her by name.
Mt. Shuksan, Washington state
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I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors. All those little feelings and emotions no therapist is interested in, because they are apparently too minor and intangible. The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end. Or when you recognize that you haven’t got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn’t develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion. Or those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that. ~Nina George from The Little Paris Bookshop
Are you so weary? Come to the window; Lean, and look at this — Something swift runs under the grass With a little hiss . . .
Now you see it ripping off, Reckless, under the fence. Are you so tired? Unfasten your mind, And follow it hence. ~Mark Van Doren “Wind in the Grass”
A white vase holds a kaleidoscope of wilting sweet peas captive in the sunlight on the kitchen table while
wafting morning scent of pancakes with sticky maple syrup swirls on the plate,
down the hall a dirty diaper left too long in the pail, spills over tempera paint pots with brushes rinsed in jars after
stroking bright pastel butterflies fluttering on an easel while wearing dad’s oversized shirt buttoned backwards
as he gently guides a hand beneath the downy underside of the muttering hen reaching a warm egg hiding in the nest
broken into fragments like a heart while reading the last stanza of “Dover Beach” in freshman English
Just down the hall of clanging lockers To orchestra where strains of “Clair de Lune” accompany
the yearning midnight nipple tug of a baby’s hungry suck hiccups gulping in rhythm to the rocking rocking
waiting for a last gasp for breath through gaping mouth, mottled cooling skin
lies still between bleached sheets illuminated by curtain filtered moonlight just visible
through the treetops while whoosh of owl wings are felt not heard, sensed not seen.
Waking to bright lights and whirring machines the hushed voice of the surgeon asking
what do you see now, what can you hear, what odor, what flavor, what sensation on your skin
with each probe of temporal lobe, of fornix and amygdala hidden deep in gray matter
of neurons and synaptic holding bins of chemical transmitters storing the mixed bag of the past and present
to find and remove the offending lesion that seizes up all remembrance, all awareness
and be set free again to live, to love, to swoon at the perfume of spring sweet peas climbing dew fresh at dawn,
tendril wrapping over tendril, the peeling wall of the garden shed
no more regrets, no more grief no more sorrow.
This year’s Lenten theme:
…where you go I will go… Ruth 1:16
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I am not resigned to the shutting away Of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,— They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes Than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colors of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone; Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after, Frost with a gesture, stays the waves that dance And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, A width, a shining peace, under the night. ~Rupert Brooke “All This is Ended”
Each Memorial Day weekend without fail, we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce, and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound to catch up with our relatives who lie there still. Some for well over 100 years, some too recent, some we knew and loved and miss every day, others not so much, unknown to us except on genealogy charts, their names and dates and these stones all that is left of them:
the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young, the aunt who was eight with lymphoma, the Yukon river boat captain, the logger and stump farmer, the unmarried teacher who bequeathed an oil well to her church, the two in-laws who lie next to each other but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.
Yet we know each of these (as we know ourselves and others) was tender and kind, though flawed and broken, was beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail, was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.
We know this about them as we know it about ourselves: someday we too will feed roses, the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.
No one asks if we approve. Nor am I resigned to this but only know: So it is, so it has been, so it will be.
Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told Lie all our memories, lie all the notes Of all the music we have ever heard And all the phrases those we loved have spoken, Sorrows and losses time has since consoled, Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes Each sentimental souvenir and token Everything seen, experienced, each word Addressed to us in infancy, Before we could even know or understand The implications of our wonderland. There they all are, the legendary lies The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears Forgotten debris of forgotten years Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise Before our world dissolves before our eyes Waiting for some small, intimate reminder, A word, a tune, a known familiar scent An echo from the past when, innocent We looked upon the present with delight And doubted not the future would be kinder And never knew the loneliness of night. ~Noel Coward “Nothing Is Lost” from Collected Verse
I wonder sometimes how memories are stored in our neurons. Do they sit on brain sulci and gyri shelves in chronological order? Or are they alphabetized, ready to be pulled and leap to the front of our awareness whenever we’re reminded by an (A)pple pie smell or a passage of a (B)ach toccata or the taste of a (C)adbury Creme Egg?
Perhaps, as we get older, they tend to mix and muddle a bit because our brain libraries are getting crowded with too much to recall and subsequently reshelf back into the proper spot. Whenever I decide to do a brain search for some long forgotten memory, it can take longer than it used to, certainly longer than a Google search does on my computer.
Then I start thinking about what can be recycled or (heavens!) trashed to make more room. Except – things get thrown away that I didn’t intend to lose…
But mostly it is all still there, nearly 70 years of recollections, some so insignificant that it is a mere dust bunny in the corner of my brain, and others still as fresh as when they happened over 65 years ago. Some memories I want to spend time mulling over and over and others can stay buried in the stacks forever as far as I’m concerned.
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to store away the present moment with such care that I will find its memory with very little trouble. These are days to recall with warmth and delight. I want to remember them during the long and lonely nights that come unbidden at times when the power goes out. That is when I need to turn on an inner light in order to see where I’m heading.
Sure on this shining night Of star made shadows round, Kindness must watch for me This side the ground. The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health. High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole. Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone Of shadows on the stars. ~James Agee
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More like a vault — you pull the handle out and on the shelves: not a lot, And what there is (a boiled potato in a bag, a chicken carcass under foil) looking dispirited, drained, mugged. This is not a place to go in hope or hunger. But, just to the right of the middle of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red, heart red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company: a jar of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters full, fiery globes, like strippers at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino, the only foreign word I knew. Not once did I see these cherries employed: not in a drink, nor on top of a glob of ice cream, or just pop one in your mouth. Not once. The same jar there through an entire childhood of dull dinners — bald meat, pocked peas and, see above, boiled potatoes. Maybe they came over from the old country, family heirlooms, or were status symbols bought with a piece of the first paycheck from a sweatshop, which beat the pig farm in Bohemia, handed down from my grandparents to my parents to be someday mine, then my child’s? They were beautiful and, if I never ate one, it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy. ~Thomas Lux “Refrigerator, 1957”
My childhood refrigerator also contained a jar of maraschino cherries. They were used only once a year, at Thanksgiving, when my mother would pull the jar out from the depths of the fridge, twist open the top and pull out four bright red cherries.
A sweet potato dish would be warming in the oven, covered by large melting marshmallows placed in the center of a ring of canned pineapple. Mom arranged the cherries, cut in half, on top of each marshmallow and replaced the dish in the oven, until the meal was ready to serve.
That was it. We never saw the cherries again for another year.
Sweet potatoes taste wonderful, all on their own, without a dressing of marshmallows and pineapples. But the special holiday tradition was set. In some magical way, the cherries dressed the dish up to help make a tense family gathering a bit jollier.
I do still have my own jar of maraschino cherries in my refrigerator. I forget why. It doesn’t have anything to do with sweet potatoes which I like to serve up plain for Sunday dinners. I possibly bought the jar out of nostalgia, or perhaps because I think every refrigerator needs a jar of maraschino cherries — kind of like the open box of baking soda that sits in most fridges to keep the odors under control.
Regardless, when I spy the jar every once in a while when rummaging in the fridge for something else, it stops time for a moment of remembrance and sadness. After all, I don’t replicate my mom’s mid-century cooking efforts of many-colored jello salads, bread-crumb-topped casseroles and… maraschino marshmallow sweet potatoes.
Even so, a daughter’s love for her mama remains irreplaceable.
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On the first day I took his class on Native American Mythology and Lore in 1974 at Stanford, a tall, young N.Scott Momaday strolled to the front, wrote the 60 words of an Emily Dickinson poem “Further in Summer”on the blackboard. He told us we would spend at least a week working out the meaning of what he considered the greatest poem written — this in a class devoted to Native American writing and oral tradition. In his resonant bass, he read the poem to us many times, rolling the words around his mouth as if to extract their sweetness. This man of the plains, a member of the Kiowa tribe, loved this poem put together by a New England recluse poet — someone as culturally distant from him and his people as possible.
But grace works to unite us, no matter our differences, and Scott knew this as he led us, mostly white students, through the poem. What on the surface appears a paean to late summer insect droning – doomed to extinction by the desolation of oncoming winter – is a statement of the transcendence of man beyond our understanding of nature and the world in which we, its creatures, find ourselves. As summer begins its descent into the dark death of winter, we, unlike cicadas and crickets, become all too aware we too are descending. There is no one as lonely as an individual facing their mortality and no one as lonely as a poet facing the empty page, in search of words to describe the sacrament of sacrifice and perishing.
Yet the written Word is not silent; the Word brings Grace unlike any other, even when the summer, pathetic and transient as it is, is gone. The Word brings Grace, like no other, to pathetic and transient man who will emerge transformed.
There is no furrow on the glow. There is no need to plow and seed our salvaged souls, already lovingly planted by our Creator God, yielding a fruited plain.
Scott was one of my most remarkable and influential teachers, teaching me to trust memories, to use the best words, and to describe beauty as best I can. I know his words will forever live on.
…<Dickinson’s Further in Summer is> one of the great poems of American literature. The statement of the poem is profound; it remarks the absolute separation between man and nature at a precise moment in time. The poet looks as far as she can into the natural world, but what she sees at last is her isolation from that world. She perceives, that is, the limits of her own perception. But that, we reason, is enough. This poem of just more than sixty words comprehends the human condition in relation to the universe:
“So gradual the Grace A pensive Custom it becomes Enlarging Loneliness.“
But this is a divine loneliness, the loneliness of a species evolved far beyond all others. The poem bespeaks a state of grace. In its precision, perception and eloquence it establishes the place of words within that state. Words are indivisible with the highest realization of human being. ~N.Scott Momaday from The Man Made of Words
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.
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One life, George learns, touches so many other lives. Far from a failure, his life was the glue that held together his family, his business, and his community. In the end, George embraces life, and the people of Bedford Falls gather around him in love, donating the money to restore the Building and Loan that had helped them to achieve their own simple dreams of freedom, independence, and dignity.
George Bailey neither does that which feels good nor asserts his own narrow vision of himself and his role in society. He accepts the responsibility that is placed upon his shoulders and allows himself to be shaped and defined by the needs of others around him. Rather than change the world to suit his own self-centered desires, he changes himself to adapt to the true calling that is upon him.
George Bailey does more than delay gratification. He embraces his true and essential identity and purpose and is strengthened to perform the work for which he was created. ~Louis Markos “Christmas With Capra: Classic Films for Our Troubled Times”
“ZuZu’s Petals” ~Lessons from “It’s a Wonderful Life”~
Our children had to be convinced Watching black and white holiday movies Was worthwhile~ This old tale and its characters Caught them up right away From steadfast George Bailey to evil Mr. Potter- They resonate in our hearts.
What surprised me most Was our sons’ response to Donna Reed’s Mary: ~how can we find one like her? (and they both did!) Her loyalty and love unequaled, Never wavering…
I want to be like her for you. When things go sour I won’t forget what brought us together In the first place. I’m warmth in the middle-of-the-night storm When you need shelter. I’m ZuZu’s petals in your pocket When you are trying to find your way back home.
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