Pandemic Care for Self

Posted on April 30, 2020 by of-the-essence blog

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Water swirls. Do we get pulled into it, or do we observe from a place of strength, like the yellow coltsfoot flowers on the left? Mariaville Lake, NY, April 2020.

In this pandemic at-home time, I don’t want to lose track of my days and experiences. To get to the absolutely vital, I need some sort of accountability, some kind of checklist that comes out of these questions:

How do I organize my days?

How do I take care of myself?

Gosh—What is most important?

How do I live this time kindly and gently?

Very importantly—How do I manage my day job at home (often with overtime) without over-doing it or under-doing it?

****

I am a list maker.

Even as a young teenager, I mimicked my mother’s “Jot it down—you don’t want to forget; mark it off, isn’t that satisfying?”

As a college student with a heavy course load, I organized my days in two hour blocks of time. They ran from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. six or seven days a week, in order to get all of the studies and papers completed with revisions and any technical glitches—which at the time involved a portable typewriter and carbon paper—and short breaks for meals.

My desk sized calendar was covered with tiny smeary black pencil scritches of lists, time periods, what was left to do. Complete with panicked exclamation points!!!! and underscores for emphasis (and more exclamation points!). My body ached for movement and relaxation and something other than school. The lists kept score and I persevered.

Looking back now—the lists were brutal and effective. But not sustainable.

Lists can often scream at you only about what you have not accomplished, until out of desperation you write down things like Get Up, Make Bed, Eat Breakfast. Some days that is all you can do, for various reasons.

Especially right now.

***

Six weeks ago, I created a list. Called it A Check List. Then A Care for Self Checklist. Finally, I had to mention the Pandemic—that there is an overarching shift in the world that has to be acknowledged as I take on this Care for Self.

Pandemic Care for Self Checklist.

Bold type, 17 point font on my paper. These are big things, for big challenging times.

JOURNAL. YOGA. WALK. CREATIVELY WRITE & PHOTOGRAPH. JOYFUL HOUSEHOLD. CONNECTION. COOK. READ. RUB A BODY PART. DAY JOB HOURS WITH GENTLENESS. INDULGE/RELAX.

I use the back to jot down those “gotta remember” things, as well as exciting meal ideas from what I have here at home, future Zoom meetings, and projects I intend to tackle in small bites. However, those are not requirements with a due date necessarily; they are written to relieve the heaviness in my mind, loosen it for other things, like letting go of the list.

I spend time crying and laughing. I do completely unexpected things.

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Stickers can make things so much more fun! The spots on the list are reflections from the window as morning sun pours in.

***

There’s a lot to write about this list. It has grown and shifted over the weeks.

But for now, I toggle between these various actions that feed me. I don’t expect to get every one of them done every day. I note and delight in any accomplishments—and there are quite a few, especially ones that wouldn’t normally make it onto a list.

What is on your Pandemic Care for Self Checklist?

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This sunset photo was part of WALK, CREATIVELY PHOTOGRAPH, CONNECTION (with a friend, six feet plus apart, both of us masked) and INDULGE.

Crocuses and Optimism

Posted on March 26, 2020 by of-the-essence blog

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Mid-March crocuses.

I am an optimist. A belt-and-suspenders, prepare for the worst and be glad when it’s not optimist, raised by people only half a generation out from the Great Depression–but nonetheless, an optimist. I look for signs of hope while I choose not to downplay the suffering and unfairness that exist intertwined with that hope. I acknowledge the immensity of so many good things I’ve received, earned or not.

That’s been helpful during these days of up and down realities and feelings, the strange watchfulness and anxiety—what my fellow writer E.P. Beaumont has described to me as “Big Crisis combined with No Big Motion.”

All the motion I can do is walk.

***

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Sky over Sage College, Troy NY, March 2020

Six days ago, I set out for the Sage College campus under a rain-brooding sky. I found my first spring flowers–popped up in a corner bed: crocuses, so perky and open. Some of them relaxed back, complete with raindrop sparkles (like those too-artful portraits with a single tear on the cheek).

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Picture perfect spring crocus

A few nights later it snowed long and steady here in the Hudson Valley. Six inches or so of moist snow sounded like styrofoam squeaking as I shuffled through it. An umbrella protected from the plops and blops, let go from overloaded trees in the dark.

I thought of my crocuses and found them, as expected, buried and flattened under the snow.

Such a sadness. Did it portend or just reflect the horrors we are facing?

I noted what I found, felt it, and went on to tromp through the snow some more; I wondered at the thick white frosting on spring budded trees and even smiled at the usual landmarks softened in golden streetlight glow.

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Other spring bulbs weighted by the snow

In daylight, the weather warmed and the snow melted away almost entirely. I went back, concerned at what I might or might not find.

There they were: beaten, torn, down in the mud. MY crocuses; it hurt to see them damaged, some flowers not coming back.

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Flattened and bruised.

However, the mud, often disparaged, is for growing. I found another bunch of bulbs that had sprung back with vigor.

Some of the flowers will not return. Some will come back next year. Some are already OK.

I hear the message: appreciate what you can while you can. Feel what you feel, move your body, hold both the optimism and the bad news.

And dammit, take the precautions, be belt-and-suspenders! Do not weary of what will keep ALL of us vulnerable humans (those tender purple petals, every precious last one!) safe and able to blossom again.

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We’re in the middle of the storm. Keep the lamp on for each other.

Baby (Snapping Turtle) Steps

Posted on April 23, 2017 by of-the-essence blog

Look at its determined eye. At John Boyd Thacher Park (North), 2016

This newborn snapping turtle, along with its siblings, had come out of the nest in the gravel not a minute before we walked up on it, on the yellow Perimeter path at Thacher North. Coated in wet clay from under ground, it scrambled quickly for the nearby pond. Though only an inch and a half long, this baby was already fully itself, and on its way.

That’s me.

Right now I feel messy, roiling in the gunky mud of fears and expectations about the unknown. Half-baked, incomplete. But I will trust it’s about perspective: I am a baby snapping turtle, destined for size and strength I cannot imagine from my sticky clay birthing place, called to a future of sun-warmed water.

***

For the last eleven months I have been working half time.

In May of last year, a week or two before I leapt in to that job, I finished my initial Forest Therapy Guide training. On duty at the local library, I learned to scan and shelve materials, while at home I concentrated on the six month certification process, and graduated in November.

Back then I was pretty worried about taking those twenty hours a week for paid work away from my well established practices, and then the addition of the Guide training. Was I crazy? For almost seven years, I had had a much freer schedule, during which I became a serious writer of memoir and nature essays and a serious photographer. I also worked as a personal chef, accompanied a friend who was dying, trained as a yoga teacher, and created workshops for writers and artists.

Yes, I was pretty worried eleven months ago, but those who know me well were right. It all turned out fine—and in fact, excellently. Not only in my job, but in figuring out balance, even if it wasn’t the fully realized balance I so desired. Questions popped up, and I answered them as they came.

How to write? Request a work schedule primarily noon to 8 pm and then do the vital observations and editing while most of the world sleeps, between 4:30 and 8 am.

How to continue and increase my nature connection? Walk alone before dawn. Make walks and photo sessions with my hiking partner a happy requirement. Walk with friends sometimes at dinner break (mid-afternoon), and observe the seasonal changes in my city.

How to manage the inevitable exhaustion? Alternate those days of dinner walks with dinner nap days! Cry as I needed to, which turned out to be a lot.

Nesting eagle pair, Peebles Island State Park, glimpsed on a sunset self-care walk with a good friend.

***

The past eleven months, I haven’t posted any blog essays.

But I remind myself I am closing in on completion of the final draft of my first book-length manuscript.* I have written poetry for two small collections and for myself. Two of my photographs were chosen for the Thacher Nature Art Show this March, even though unfortunately I was too sick to attend the opening, see the exhibition, or even publicize it. This summer, I plan to be offering forest therapy walks in at least one place. And finally, I kept my promise to myself and posted this essay today.

I’ve been persevering, with self-compassion. Yes, alternating with panic and frustration and fallow periods, but those freak-outs allow me to come back, repeatedly, to self-compassion.

April’s first Oxalis (shamrock flower) with its fuzzy stems, searching out sun at Thacher North.

***
Now, next week—tomorrow! I begin a full time job with the state of New York.

I am feeling those same anxieties as when I started my half-time job last June: about performance, self care, managing my tendency to perfectionism, creating a new balance with forty hours a week gone, plus a commute by car now.

This challenge has been taking up quite a bit of time and energy, as at first I delved into the test taking within Civil Service, then interviews and decision making—while I maintained that half-time job.

This is not a place I ever intended or planned to be, taking an office day job in my mid-50s. I’ve loved my decades of creating a personalized daily and weekly schedule with its many layers of paid and unpaid work. I loved to be a parent, then a homeschooling parent, to run a massage therapy business and before that a tutoring business, manage a household and house and rehab of said house, cook nutritious local food tailored to multiple dietary requirements. And as part of the fabric of my life, to organize and work for social justice and community.

But in those early years, I also left no space for myself as writer and naturalist—didn’t even know I WAS either one—or for myself as a physical being who needed much more regular exercise and connection with the outdoors, along with moving meditation.

I took care of many people but not enough of myself.

When I started my half-time job I was very afraid of returning to that place of self disregard. Again, I acknowledge than in almost eleven months, I’ve done pretty well.
I also had some unexpected surprises.

I fell in love with my community again, through people I met as they came for books, DVDs, and music. I fell in love with my historic and struggling town again, through those walks before dawn. At the library I got to glory in organization and creation of order, in the quiet and in the chaos of deliveries from other libraries. I experienced kind, patient, and interesting co-workers.

A wide variety of humanity walked through the heavy wooden doors of our building and gasped at the Tiffany window behind the circulation desk. They also fought with their children, suffered daily frustrations without some of the skills I’ve been lucky enough to develop, showed me patience and compassion, and thrilled with their first library cards.

I handled a lot of books but didn’t read many at first. Then I took out piles of them, like raiding the candy store. Now I’ve settled into 20 to 30 books out at a time, and gotten to enjoy popular items along with dusty volumes pulled from the stacks. After a couple years of illness and depletion and a very sad inability to read long-form writing, I can stick with a whole book and read it over time or in an afternoon.

I hope to still work some hours at the library, because of these gifts I have found.

Post-March blizzard, curls of heaped snow compete with the curlicues and angles of the library’s 1897 architecture.

***

Now I’m going into this full time day job. I was fretting, anxious, anticipating the worst, as I pursued the actual getting of the job. I was also able to observe, feel, analyze what spoke to me, what didn’t, and know I had a choice—not something I’d really felt before.

I hate that I’ve been so wrapped up in learning these balances I haven’t been able to do the essay writing, finish all books I’ve been writing, sort and enjoy my photos.

I try to listen to those around me, those who love me, who again say I will be fine. I return to leaving behind perfectionism and fear of Armageddon brought on by my own mistakes. The details of learning how to follow all my goals will be familiar AND unexpected. I will attempt not to anticipate all the problems or things I might dislike, and be open to the surprises.

In the muck to come, I will remember my turtle-ness and my snapping-ness. My completeness and my newness. I will remember that I’m just starting on this part of the journey, and that I am well on my way.

I will hike and take photos and guide walks. I will do yoga and meditation. I will do my personal writing and my creative writing. I will travel, close in and far away. I will cherish my friends and beloveds and attend to my own wisdom.

The pond awaits.

And the sky above….

*I am presently editing the first book of essays, poems, and photos that Carole Fults and I are co-authoring, gathered from years spent together at Partridge Run Wildlife Management Area, in Berne, NY. More news soon!

Doing this book editing, I realize—I have been through all this before. For example, my blog post entitled “January Thaw.” Guess what! I have been stuck in my writing when my attention just had to go elsewhere, my creative energies spread into a job search, a business build, a health crisis. I forget. Then I return to myself, and remember. Thanks to my readers, for waiting and for encouraging me in the remembering.

Landing: A tale of very late spring

Posted on June 21, 2016 by of-the-essence blog

Meadow at Hebert Arboretum, Pittsfield MA, one site in my Forest Therapy Guide Training.

In late May, I experienced the first part of my Forest Therapy Guide training: seven cold but beautiful days in western Massachusetts woods, gardens, and farms.

Initially, I had a hard time settling in. I was distracted by calls from my regular life and then my A-Plus Student thoughts barged in.

I knew enough to confess at the start, so in our opening circle I stepped forward.

“I don’t feel like I’ve mentally landed here yet. One of my big challenges is to overcome perfectionism. Please help me make mistakes. I know life is about falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up, and I am still scared of both of those.”

Later, one of my fellow trainees, Stana, wrote on rocks for each of us. She gifted me with the message Perfectly Imperfect.

I landed.

***

One of the deep and unexpected pleasures of that week was to experience the outdoors like a little kid.

—I “broke the rules” (whose rules? I ask now) when I took off my shoes and squished my toes into a huge patch of shiny green moss.
—Then I floated my feet in the cold early spring water of a mountain stream.
—Doing that, I splattered sticky mud all over myself and then wiped my numb feet dry on my pants. On my pants!
—I got amazed all over again by the shape of leaves, the sparkle of seeds flying, and the glow of dandelions in a meadow. I poked out my tongue to taste the wind.
—I let myself touch trees and sit quietly for long periods of time.

To see leaves from a different angle, differently lit.

When I returned home, I felt full, maybe overfull—not just of natural connections but also because I’d met and deeply interacted with almost twenty new people.

My apartment door opened onto piles of winter clothes to be put away and a layer of dust on everything. The workload of the six-month certification process multiplied then roiled in my imagination like a thunderhead, and finally, a brand new part-time job started, which would squeeze twenty hours a week out of my already constricted calendar. My thoughts turned dark.

Of course, life always changes and gives us experiences; some times are simply a bit more intense. So I kept returning to that yoga mind to observe, ask what does it feel like? and not attach future-meaning to anything.

Landing back home was bumpier than landing in Massachusetts.

****

Luckily the forest—and my hiking buddy C—called. We were weeks overdue for an outing.

Partridge Run was our destination. “I wonder how the ponds are?” C asked, after a quick hug hello.

Spring ferns unfurled–just enough for that quick hug!

We started out on one path and ran into the same damned poison ivy we’d seen the first time we’d spring-hiked it. We backed out carefully, as if the reddening leaves might rear up and attack us, and chose another route.

We wandered the edge of Hidden Pond, where algae bubbled. Tiny azure flowers winked at us—-it was birds-eye speedwell (common field veronica) dotting the grass along with dandelions.

Birds-eye speedwell and dandelions, Partridge Run, Berne NY.

I was busy with the flowers and what floats in late spring water, when she hollered, “Look! Look! A dragonfly! And I think it is brand new!” I looked over and the creature was so recently emerged that it was still drying, still unfolding.

Iridescence of appendages new to the air.

The wings were like stained glass panes, but clear, and bent-angled as they opened to flatten as we watched. You could see how the wings had folded into that tiny grasshopper-shaped exoskeleton—and how they expanded now.

I’m no entomologist, but thanks to internet image collections, I’d identified these brown casts—the exuviae—in my photos before.

What is left behind.

I knew to look for the white threads that had until recently been attached to the digestive organs. Sure enough, just under our glorious new orange dragonfly was the dry discarded shell it seemed to have come from. After taking many pictures, I moved the grass back to partially cover the dragonfly; we didn’t want it eaten by predators because of us.

Right away I started studying the pond edge. “I want to find one, too!”—but instead saw a second exuviae. Then a third, and fourth.

Finally, dozens of exuviae were revealed, but no live dragonfly.

“Our buddy seems to be a late bloomer,” C commented. I’d been seeing dragonflies all morning along the ponds and paths, and now realized where they had probably come from.

As I wandered farther away from C’s initial find, I couldn’t help smiling over the sloughed off insect larvae skins, and my inability to find anything else. However, I continued to seriously search.

C called me over: “More! more!” She was practically jumping up and down.

In that moment, there was no chaotic apartment pulling at me, no fighting A-plus student worry about studies to come. I found myself bounding like I was five or eight, like myself.

My pack thumped my back, and swung back and forth, as my excited legs pumped me over.

To ask, “What? Let me see!” To hear my pal thrill and laugh. To joyously kneel down and then slow my breathing. To find a smaller, multicolored dragonfly uncurling wings, its slightly furry body moving in the novel light.

See the unfurling, straightening, bent wings?

I didn’t have to find the sparkling insect. My friend did. In fact, I am now calling C “the dragonfly whisperer,” to let go of my need to be the one in charge. I can experience and be grateful, let go of distractions and anxieties, and trust that all will be well.

I am starting to land again. As I do, let me be perfectly imperfect, a late bloomer.

Let me be an end-of-May dragonfly.

Another fine gift of that May morning: the first scarlet tanager I’ve ever seen in the woods.

A Surprising Summer Sabbatical

Posted on April 24, 2016 by of-the-essence blog

Dahlia readying to bloom.

This spring of 2016 has been a little strange—and it’s not just the weather.

In the cold days of February I did not venture to the beautiful new Capital Roots Grow Center to dig through bins of donated seeds.

In March, I did not plan out sections for chard, arugula, carrots, blue borage—or any novel plants, either.

I did not go to the April workday at my little plot; in fact, I did not even pencil the date into my calendar.

This spring, after six years, I am taking a sabbatical from Community Gardening.

My first community garden plot, in 2010. You can spy arugula, chives, tomato plants, butter crisp lettuce–and a hose–amongst the horrendous weeds. I had a lot to learn.

***

I call the time off gardening a sabbatical because, like a traditional academic sabbatical, this seventh season will concentrate on studied time outside of my usual setting. A pause enables me to focus on other things and will include a little required travel. Whenever I might return to community gardening, it will be with a refreshed perspective.

In particular, I am beginning a six-month Forest Therapy* certification in May. During the time I would have spent digging up my plot, fencing, planting and weeding, I’ll be reading about relationships between natural experiences and human health, learning our local ecosystems in more depth, taking a seven day intensive course, sitting under the forest canopy, and leading guided meditation walks.

Beforehand, I’ve started with a series of classes about wild edible plants. They are led by Dave Muska of Ondatra Adventures, and held up at Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center.

For example, I now know that these trout lilies have edible leaves and bulbs, though proper plant identification and sustainable harvesting techniques are required before ingesting.

***

This summer I also want to finish dozens of pieces of writing about the garden, and about my life. In addition, I am wrestling with three book manuscripts stuck at various stages (hence the increasingly intermittent posting here on the blog). Finally, I anticipate moving into the world of the day-job very soon.

The richness of the outdoor life not only grounds me, it can distract as well. There is always more to do, more to experience.

Strange as it sounds to say, in order to focus on the beauty and meaning of the natural world, I have to decrease the amount of input. Or at least choose which forms I can take in right now.

On the hill, a much more organized and bountiful garden, 2014. (Still more weedy than I would prefer.)

***

I have very mixed feelings about the sabbatical, like any choice to step away from a beloved activity.

Community gardening is part of how I have defined my summer life and myself, since I moved to upstate New York. It’s felt intrinsic to the new life I have created. My plan, therefore, is to pay attention and be open to how it feels to NOT work this garden.

I ask questions.

What emotions do I feel? Where do they come from? What do I miss?
What do I NOT miss? (Aside from woodchucks.)
How do I get out in the dewy world of early morning sun, that feeds me so well?
How do I meet my body’s craving for hands and knees in soil?
What other repetitive jobs do I find meditative and soothing?

I sit with my thoughts, long and patiently. As I have learned to do with my writing–let them steep like tea, simmer like soup, rise like dough.

Then the meaning behind the meaning has a chance to show its shy self to me.

One beautiful sweet pepper, ripened to red in its own good time.

***

Some questions we can all ponder:

What feeds you?

Which are the “bare minimum” self-care activities that you know you need?
What do you want to leave —and just be done with already?

What do you desire to take a sabbatical from?
What would you concentrate on if you did?

End of season plum tomatoes, ripening in the kitchen, 2015.

****

*Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. In Japan it is called “shinrin yoku,” which translates to “forest bathing.” I will be leading some meditation walks, required for my training, in the summer and fall so if anyone is interested, information will be available on my business blog. More information about Forest Therapy is at shinrin-yoku.org

Part the Eleventh: Wherein winter continues, but Color intervenes—Endings and Beginnings

Posted on June 25, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Winter sky rainbow, The Crossings of Colonie (Albany NY)

Friday, March 6. Winter and weeping are wearing me down, along with the monochrome light, and dirt-infused precipitation on everything. I used to say Chicago street snow looked like the bottom of an ashtray. After this long winter in upstate New York, innumerable cigarette pellets of gunmetal ice and ashy road salt line our avenues–and spirits.

Even where the snow is still blank white, it has grown dull to my eyes. It’s been months since the amaryllis bloomed, and a week since my pale yellow butterfly faded away.

I travel in search of color, to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA). Once again I am surprised by serendipity.

Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Mass MOCA Winter 2015

Swirling, spraying, wiggling: wall after wall after wall of gorgeous and intense paint by Sol Lewitt swims around me.

More Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Mass MOCA Winter 2015

Liquid looking gold and black (Teresita Fernandez) flow over me.

Teresita Fernandez: As Above So Below, Mass MOCA Winter 2015: window reflections in her black and gold sculpture.

On the way to Massachusetts, a friend and I crunch through snow to meditate in the icy stillness of a small temple at the Grafton Peace Pagoda.

Golden peace cranes at the Grafton Pagoda temple.

We are surprised by a Japanese Buddhist nun wearing a headlamp, who pops out from behind the altar where she’d been organizing items. She is startled by us. So cold! So cold! Come and have tea when you are done.

After sitting zazen in the frigid air as long as we can stand it, we find our way to the kitchen, where we nibble a cookie, sip hot brown Kuchika Twig tea and get to know her—Jun-San. We speak of peace walks and meditation and the essence of the Lotus Sutra.

My companion says, Ever since I first heard Na-Mu-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, I have wondered what the words meant.

She answers that it comes from the Buddha’s last teaching, where he moved from the internal, concentration on just the self, to concentration on the other, the community (something about the Golden Rule). She added: But really, you should not look to others’ translations because then the meaning does not come from within.

The acts of chanting, breathing, sitting with its sounds reveal the sutra’s message for each individual.

We laugh over it later: Here you spent forty-some years pondering, in search of what you thought was a mysterious, erudite, complex and distant definition, and she tells you you’ve had it inside all along!

My acts of weeping, seeking color, meditating on life, breathing, walking and sitting with moments regardless of their pain or joy—reveal the meaning of those acts and moments for me. Wisdom inside of me all along. Color inside of me all along.

Now my stomach and heart don’t go sour when I see the gray light over the gray hills and gray snow. Spring will come.

Buddha statue at Kripalu, October 2013. The answer is inside of you.

****

Accidents happen. Living long doesn’t always happen.

I think of the children who come into our lives, how we are often trying to save them, sometimes not able to: horribly, sadly, naturally. We have saved them so many times to start with, watched over them, cared for them, taught them. And if they live, if it all goes as it often does—they can grow into gorgeous young people we adore, full of creativity and angst and love.

We are called to pay attention to each day and moment, and to love: love and care for our individual selves as best we can, love the people we love, deeply, honestly; and not search way-out-there for meaning but find it right here next to us, in us, shining through us with unexpected color.

Spring comes. But sometimes it is bittersweet.

****

In memory of one Dainty Sulphur, who appeared unbidden in my apartment on February 11 and exited on Feb 28.

In memory of a creative soul I never met except through his mother: photographer, student, beloved son, brother, and more, Max Maisel, who went missing Feb 22, whose memorial service was March 27 and whose body was finally recovered April 17.

Winter bittersweet.

Part the Tenth: Wherein the butterfly lands

Posted on June 18, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

The amaryllis I theorize brought the Dainty Sulphur into my winter apartment.

The amaryllis I theorize brought the Dainty Sulphur butterfly into my winter apartment.

The bud formed…

…then the flower…

…which blossomed into gorgeous color…

…and caused me to study the tiny details intently, while I could.

Friday, February 28. I put her in the yoga room, the sacred space, two days ago on the 26th, resigned that she was almost gone—but yesterday, I literally leapt for joy; she’d only had her antennae tangled! Parts of her were not in as bad a shape as I had thought.

Of course one of her legs was still detached, and her energy very low. Then last night I couldn’t find her. I looked under the radiator again, all over the floor, worried I’d step on her accidentally. Finally I figured she was, well, gone. This morning I found her in the stones again—was she there all along and I couldn’t see her? or did she go someplace and then come back?

However, she was barely there, not responding much to air movement or things around her.

Later, nothing: the end. Death.

Dainty still faced the sun, wings folded, but slightly fallen over. I’d felt such surprising happiness the day before; just to have her there, alive, made me feel hope about the missing boy, too. But then the next day–today–she’s done.

It is empty in the kitchen by the window. It is empty in the bedroom. It is quiet, as quiet as it was before, but different.

I live alone, again.

Yes, there are plenty of bugs in my house I don’t see. Outside: squirrels and starlings, crows and chickadees; robins yet to come.

But no one else just showed up uninvited, spent time alongside me, and gave me so much to think about in the iced over, snowbound, super chilled air of this February.

What feels miraculous, and is yet usual: life, and death.

***

Max is still missing. I ache for his family, I ache in their exposed place—exposed in the media, in search of possible information—exposed in their pain and mixture of hope and dread. I admire their courage and ability to appreciate those who assist and accompany them.

I fear writing the saccharine, the simplistic. I don’t know what this feels like for them.

I dance around the edges of it, and even that makes me stagger in grief.

Even where snow has melted, frost covers everything. (Laingsburg, MI)

Part the Ninth, wherein hope waivers on multiple fronts

Posted on June 12, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Winter sun, and winter sun, and winter sun.

The bowl of winter sky and winter sun and winter trees and winter snow, when it was at least warm enough to get outside.

Thursday February 27. Oh my god I am so tired, and everything feels a mess. I stomp around my apartment because it’s too cold to hike; I’ve pulled out papers to sort and they are scattered all over the floor and dining table and front room and I am so mad and sad. My logical mind knows that Max probably drowned, falling off the pier into the lake. He might have accidentally slipped; it could have been on purpose. Regardless, he has not been found, and I feel worn out by the weight of all of it.

I want to get ready for another friend’s upcoming visit, but I can’t cook anything, even with that new equipment I bought the other day. Instead, I cry.

What do you do, as a parent, thinking of another parent’s pain? I Google-chat with my son across the country and he is ok and I’ve texted my daughter and she’s fine, and now I sit with my dying butterfly.

Fallen sideways, scraggly like the window paint and the snow outside.

Struggling against the cold, scraggly like the window paint and the aged snow outside.

Dainty was at the window, fallen sideways and I offered her sugar water on a Q-tip but she wasn’t interested. I noticed she was missing an antenna, maybe one of her mid-legs too, and she could still flap around but is clearly leaving this life.

So I brought her into the yoga room, a sacred space and a warmer one too. She is resting in the rocks of my newly blush-tipped holiday cactus. Dainty still wiggles her remaining antenna around and holds onto some pebbles while propped up slightly by others, facing the window where there is only gray clouded light, as there has been all day.

I hate the metaphorical consonance, of the butterfly fading away and this young man and where he might be. The thousand thoughts of what might have happened to Max bombard me, shred my breathing. He wasn’t meant to be like a butterfly, and he wasn’t meant to die before his parents.

I feel trembly with fear and uncertainty, on so many levels—for his mom and dad and siblings, even for myself and my own future. I have to wander my living space or just watch the world out the window, and in this moment, not worry about getting work done.

Yes, the sun rises over the hill. Every morning.

The blizzard of papers has blasted my household white inside to match the outside world: a bin or two of memorabilia, trips taken and ticket stubs from movies, but also official forms for insurance, old records from my divorce attorney and previous illnesses and surgeries, a health care proxy yet to be filled out. Wondering about choices, mistakes, missteps, amid the things that just happen.

My mis-steps, Max’s mis-step. Things-that-just-happen.

Concentrating on seeing the beauty in the dark and white: Chance blows snow this way, melts it that way, hardens it into curves and blops.

When I first brought the butterfly in the yoga room and then left, she must have fluttered and fallen to the floor. I brought her back up to the light. I hope that wasn’t too meddling; just didn’t want her in the dust and dirt, in the dark. Can a butterfly sense such a thing in the same way we do? Does it yearn for light, instead of seek the shadows to die?

I smile that she has her single antenna up strong and even moving a bit, feeling the air, moving her fore-legs slightly. She is alert, in the world, yet. BE-ing. Even as she is dying.

Aren’t we all, as we age and change and become “less able,” still very much here?

Aren’t we all, as we develop into elders, crones, and Wise Ones through our aging, becoming masterful and more able in other ways– and still very much here?

Even if we aren’t “very much” presently, we HAVE BEEN, and ARE here; we create ripples in the world, into the time when we are not here.

My candles are lit, and I continue to sit with aching muscles and aching heart.

The blur of butterfly in the dark, and a fallen cactus flower.

Part the Eighth, wherein the outside world grows harsh, and I must remind myself of lessons already learned

Posted on May 21, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

February morning sun, deeply clouded, over the hill.

Wednesday, February 26. My mind whirls, I am weeping. I tell myself to listen to my body and spirit, and be gentle, to myself and others.

My mind whirls, frenetic and shocked: the college-age son of a yoga colleague of mine is missing, has been since Sunday, last seen at a favorite pier on the lake. My mind whirls in circles with and for Meg and her family and her son Max.

This news makes everything feel minuscule and unimportant, like I have been wasting my time on frippery. Isn’t that odd? Learning how to be in the moment, to write and practice how to live fully into my life is somehow frippery?

My activities are vitally important, don’t warrant justification.

I answer angrily to this self-compassionate voice: But you haven’t been out saving the world, doing Big Things; instead, you have concentrated on butterfly anatomy, meditating and stretching your muscles—even yesterday, you shopped for silly kitchen tools!

Stop. Breathe.

Think more about accompaniment. It’s easy to talk about death and loss in the theoretical. Though it’s not like I haven’t had serious loss, and some deaths. But I can be too philosophical, I worry, or it feels that way right now. (Remember how you wrote last time Worry is a Waste of Time? Easy to say, hard to live.)

Pine needles on snow, under snow, at the Plotterkill Preserve.

Pine needles on, in and under tree-shadowed snow, Plotterkill Preserve.

What to do, how to accompany? The butterfly first, and now this situation with my colleague. How can I not be torn apart by all the loss and pain that surrounds me? I want to sit in the center of it, not not-affected, but myself; whether that is calm, or sad, or screamingly angry.

Meg was so kind to me at yoga school, encouraging along with the rest of our sangha community, to modify my learning when I got sick, and later when anxiety and exhaustion were high for all of us. I can only encourage her now from afar.

You see, Meg and I are not friend-close, don’t write or talk, but shared a deep experience together, this yoga training; having shared that, we can and have slid back into its intimacy when we return for teacher conferences and trainings. For now, I write a brief note; I send support through friends who live nearby.

Monk's Pond at Kripalu, the fall when we were together last.

Monk’s Pond at Kripalu, the fall when we were last together.

I am so impressed with her and her family—their willingness to share publicly, and then their gentle firmness when they didn’t want to. Their most recent, clear-eyed statement, the acknowledgment of what others and they know; and yet they will hope, and yet they know.

My butterfly rests. I await news. I weep more. I accompany them all.

Morning after morning, trees and clouds obscure the sun.

Part the Seventh, Wherein I Leave Town, Discover Mistakes I Have Made, and Worry

Posted on May 4, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Dawn in bitter, bitter February: one window to the right glimmers warmly.

February 21. Right now I am out of town for a few days and in the course of deeper online research, discover I have been wrong—wrong!! Now I am kicking myself.

The appropriate recipe to feed a rescued butterfly: sports drink or sugar, soy sauce and water.

Will it be like when my kids were little, and I made what felt like grave errors? Or will the butterfly, like my children, be just fine? I am trying my best! I want to say. I didn’t know she needed electrolytes!

Was I more concerned about anatomy and theory, than the actual care of my Dainty? What about the potential exploitation (can you exploit a butterfly?) spending more energy in being excited, and telling people about it, than knowing what I am doing?

I was brought up to never make a mistake, because mistakes could be (probably would be) fatal: I was trained to pursue perfection while the attainment of it slipped further and further away. What a tightrope, and how exhausting!

Worry is wasted energy.

Lately instead I let go of worry, learn from missteps what to do next time, and concentrate on maintaining a sense of humor and curiosity.

However, I still can fixate about messing up, asking, “How could I have avoided this mistake?” when sometimes we can’t avoid, no matter what we do.

Away, snowshoeing to the base of the frozen sixty foot tall falls at Plotterkill Creek.

Away, snowshoeing with friends to the base of the completely frozen, sixty foot tall waterfall at Plotterkill Creek.

I acknowledge the ultimate end of the butterfly and the call to not be so attached. Not to be cold, but to be reasonable. I ask: What does “accompanying” mean? How far do we go? How do we hold onto who we are, and who/what the other person/creature is, and not inflict our beliefs about how things “should be”?

The Dainty Sulphur is in a holding pattern right now. If it flies away to where I can’t see it and then dies while I am gone, I will not know what has happened—like with so many people and creatures in our lives. If I find it dead, then that was its life; I will thank it for the gifts it gave and go on living myself.

February 25. I’m home again. Dainty was in the bedroom, ruminating on the rug.

This morning I moved her on a Q-tip into the sun-splashed kitchen, to the red dish-drying mat. She warmed up and opened her wings, but I don’t want to disturb her any more; already once she flew to the ice-cold window and beat her wings against it. Over and over the butterfly determinedly goes to the window, driven to get out. At least this afternoon she is sitting in the sun, wings out to absorb its heat.

Dainty lists a bit against the red mat.

She flies violently against obstacles to the outside world: the rug, the red mat, the glass. She is weaker, aging. But I can’t do much except offer food, and help here and there when she seems in a bit of trouble. Maybe she needed to clean her wings off or warm up. Looks like she’s kneeling against the window, into the light. Perhaps that is all she needs.

I hear birds chipping and twittering, like chickadees I saw in the pines the other day, chasing each other. This sounds like a bunch of sparrows or robins. I can’t open the window to look, since the butterfly is there. Is spring perhaps on its way?

Dainty flaps and flaps against the glass. I startle at the intermittent flitting beat of her wings, a soft sound. The warmth of the strong February morning sun enlivens her.

Meanwhile, plants on the sill silently absorb sunlight into their deeply green leaves, veins visible and almost pulsing, like the insect veins visible in the yellow of her wings.

She is so small on the windowsill.

The butterfly glows in the sun, near the plant that is glowing. She flutters, stops, flutters-flutters-flutters, stops. Is this an end-of-life push or just the brightness that draws her to move?

I can’t see it yet, but I feel drawn as well, to the possibility of snow melt and vegetation greening–out of the brown that waits unseen, underneath our current drifts of white.

February bird in snow, outside my window

February starling in snow, outside my window

Of-the-Essence

Building a life, moment by moment. Including yummy food.

Category Archives: Life Changes

Pandemic Care for Self

Crocuses and Optimism

Baby (Snapping Turtle) Steps

Landing: A tale of very late spring

A Surprising Summer Sabbatical

Part the Eleventh: Wherein winter continues, but Color intervenes—Endings and Beginnings

Part the Tenth: Wherein the butterfly lands

Part the Ninth, wherein hope waivers on multiple fronts

Part the Eighth, wherein the outside world grows harsh, and I must remind myself of lessons already learned

Part the Seventh, Wherein I Leave Town, Discover Mistakes I Have Made, and Worry