Tag: Marriage

Preparing the Heart: The Petals in Your Pocket

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“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:
~where can we find one like her?
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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freezedriedrose

What Endures

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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 from “A Pot of Red Lentils”

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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 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 over thirty five 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.

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Let Me Remember

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danfield
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Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.
 
The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.
 
Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.
 
Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.
~Sara Teasdale “September Midnight”
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When time stands still,
and it does, for an instant
before moving on, relentless,
I balance barely on that moment~
tipping backward to what has been,
leaning forward to what will be,
and forgetting this, now, here
until I look long into your eyes
and know you too are
now, here, this-
locked together,
leaning in
so we won’t fall
as winter comes,
so we will remember.
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A Commonwealth of Joy

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What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you.
~Wendell Berry from “The Country of Marriage”

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And so again we find ourselves alone together ~
planted in each other so deeply
we cannot always know
where one ends and another begins,
a commonwealth of shared everything,
the joy and the tears,
no matter what comes next.
Mine is yours.

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Inhabiting

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“I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.”
~Margaret Atwood from “Variations on the Word Sleep”

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For Dan’s birthday:

In this journey together,
we inhabit each other,
however briefly;
you are the air I breathe,
though I may not know it every moment~~
you are as necessary,
and that loved.

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Illuminated

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cowmorning

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Only six months ago
on a winter morning
waking dark to part
From your warm side,
leaving behind my soft imprint,
I wrapped up in robe
to walk the gravel drive
for the newspaper.

Our hilltop farm
lies silent amid fallow fields
moon shadows
broad across my path
star sparks overhead
tree lined yard shields
the house from road.

In ink of early morning
I walk noiseless;
step out to the mailbox
then turn~ startled~
a flashlight approaching on the road-
an early walker and his dog
illuminate me in dawn disarray
like a deer in headlights:
my ruffled hair,  my sleep-lined face
uncovered in the darkness:
exposed.

Today this summer morning
wakes me early to streaming light
poured out on quilt and blankets.
I part from your warmth again
readied for this ritual walk.
Dew sparkling below
rich foliage above
road stretches empty
for miles east and west

Crossing the road
I reach for the paper
suddenly surrounded by
a bovine audience
appreciative and nodding
riveted by my bold approach
in broad daylight.
They abruptly scatter, tails in the air
when in rumpled robe and woolen slippers
I dance and twirl, illuminated
in hilltop celebration of such
an ordinary life
and extraordinary love
exposed.

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To Catch the Sunset

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cupolawatson

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…he says
let’s walk up to the field and catch the sunset
and off we go, a couple of aging fools.

I hope, he says, on the other side there’s a lot
less work, but just in case I’m bringing tools.
~Maxine Kumin from “Chores”

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When I pull open the barn doors
every morning
and close them again each evening,
as our grandparents did
one hundred years ago,
six rumbling voices
rise in greeting.
We exchange scents,
nuzzle each others’ ears,
rumble grumble back a response.

We do our chores faithfully
as our grandparents once did–
draw fresh water
into buckets,
wheel away
the pungent mess underfoot,
release an armful of summer
from the bale,
reach under heavy manes
to stroke silken necks.

We don’t depend
on our horses’ strength
and willingness to
don harness
to carry us to town
or move the logs
or till the soil
as our grandparents did.

Instead,
these soft eyed souls,
born on this farm
two long decades ago,
are simply grateful
for our constancy
morning and night
to serve their needs
until the day comes
they need no more.

And we depend on them
to depend on us
to be there
to open and close the doors;
their low whispering welcome
gives voice
to the blessings of
living on a farm
ripe with rhythms and seasons,
sunrises and sunsets,
as if yesterday, today and tomorrow are
just like one hundred years ago.

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Acres and Acres

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I never met a man who was shaken by a field of identical blades of grass. An acre of poppies and a forest of spruce boggle no one’s mind. Even ten square miles of wheat gladdens the hearts of most.
No, in the plant world, and especially among the flowering plants, fecundity is not an assault on human values. Plants are not our competitors; they are our prey and our nesting materials.

Fecundity is anathema only in the animal.
“Acres and acres of rats” has a suitably chilling ring to it that is decidedly lacking if I say, instead, “acres and acres of tulips”.
~Annie Dillard from “The Force That Drives the Flower”

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This time of year our farm is brilliantly lit by sun and teeming with fecundity.  The cherry orchard blossoms have yielded to fruit and the pastures are knee high with grass.  By this time in June, the daylight starts creeping over the eastern foothills at 4 AM and the last glimpse of sun disappears at nearly 10 PM.   So many hours of light to work with!

I yearn for a dark rainy day to hide inside with a book.  Instead the lawnmower and weed whacker call my name, and the fish pond needs cleaning and the garden must be weeded.

It’s not that things don’t happen on the farm during months like this.  It’s just that nothing we do is enough.  Blackberry brambles have taken over everything, grass grows faster than we can keep it mowed down, the manure piles spread on the fields in May are growing exponentially again.  The fences always need fixing.

The weather has been hot and the hay is ready to cut but no string of days has been available for harvest – we are low on the priority list of the local dairy man who cuts and bales our hay.  We no longer breed our Haflinger horses, so we are feeding and caring for a retired herd.

Suddenly our farm dream seems not nearly so compelling.

We have spent many years dreaming about the farm as we hoped it would be.  We imagined the pastures managed perfectly with fencing that was both functional and beautiful.  Our barns and buildings would be tidy and leak-proof, and the stalls secure and safe.  We’d have a really nice pick up truck with low miles on it, not a 35 year old hand me down truck with almost 250,000 miles. We would have trees pruned expertly and we’d have flower beds blooming as well as a vegetable garden yielding 9 months of the year.  Our hay would never be rained on. We would have dogs that wouldn’t run off and cats that would take care of all the rodents.  We wouldn’t have any moles, thistles, dandelions or buttercup.  The pheasant, deer, coyotes, raccoons, and wild rabbits would only stroll through the yard for our amusement and not disturb anything.  We’d have livestock with the best bloodlines we could afford and a steady demand from customers to purchase their offspring at reasonable prices so that not a dime of our off-farm income would be necessary to pay farm expenses.   Our animals (and we) would never get sick or injured.

And our house would always stay clean.

Dream on.  Farms can be back-breaking, morale-eroding, expensive sinkholes.   I know ours is.  Yet here we be and here we stay.

It’s home.  We’ve raised three wonderful children here.  We’ve bred and grown good horses and great garden and orchard crops and tons of hay from our own fields.  We breathe clean air and daily hear dozens of different bird songs and look out at some of the best scenery this side of heaven.  Eagles land in the trees in our front yard. It’s all enough for us even if we are not enough for the farm.  I know there will come a time when the farm will need to be a fond memory and not a daily reality.  Until then we will keep pursuing our dream as we and the farm grow older.   Dreams age and mature and I know now what I dreamed of when I was younger was not the important stuff.

We have been blessed with the abundance of one another, with the sunrises and the sunsets and everything in between.  This is the best of fecundity.

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Reflecting Back the Light

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cavortingbuttercups

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With the close approach of Mars this week (maximum size in the sky will be May 30), I recalled a similar time a few years back:

It was a treasured late summer evening when temperatures hover around 70 degrees, there was a slight cooling breeze, clear starlit skies, and barely a mosquito buzzing.  We had just returned from a lovely evening outdoor wedding for two special young friends,  with a special message from our pastor about the profound mystery of marriage, not just for newlyweds, but also for those of us married for many years. We are blessed in the knowledge we depend on God’s grace every day, trying to reflect it back to our children, our community, to each other.

We decided to hike up to the top of our hill after dark to catch the best view of our neighbor Mars before we brought our Haflinger horses in for the night.  Mars was there to see, orange and bright in the southeast sky. But the Haflingers seemed to be afflicted by strange Martian fever, or perhaps it was simply because we rarely wander out into the field in the dark with flashlights in hand. There was no moon yet when we were out –simply starlight and the far-off lights from Vancouver,  British Columbia to the north and Bellingham to the south.

The Haflingers started running in the dark, kicking and snorting and bucking with the joy of a starlit, Martian-lit summer evening. Only all we could see of the Haflingers were their ghostly white manes and tails moving across the fields, jumping and twisting and cavorting.

I’m sure over the generations, in the alpine meadows of the South Tyrol, there must have been some starlit moonless lights when the Haflinger herds would run together, and all you could see in the dark were floating disembodied white manes and tails.

Perhaps that is what enchanted the mountain peasants the most about their sturdy reliable golden companions—at night they become spirit and light. They shine like the stars, even from the ground, reflecting back the lights from the heavens.

And so, in our companionship with each other and with God, do we glow with His light and reflect it to those around us.

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Tepid

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I know what my heart is like
      Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
      Left there by the tide,
      A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Ebb”
My mother was a few years younger than I am now when my father left her for another woman.  For months my mother withered, crying until there were no more tears left, drying inward from her edges.
It took ten years, but he came back like an overdue high tide.   She was sure her love had died but her tepid pool refilled, the water cool to the touch, yet overflowing with unimaginable grace and forgiveness.
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