Like a stunned piano, like a bucket of fresh milk flung into the air or a dozen fists of confetti thrown hard at a bride stepping down from the altar, the stars surprise the sky. Think of dazed stones floating overhead, or an ocean of starfish hung up to dry. Yes, like a conductor's expectant arm about to lift toward the chorus, or a juggler's plates defying gravity, or a hundred fastballs fired at once and freezing in midair, the stars startle the sky over the city.
And that's why drunks leaning up against abandoned buildings, women hurrying home on deserted side streets, policemen turning blind corners, and even thieves stepping from alleys all stare up at once. Why else do sleepwalkers move toward the windows, or old men drag flimsy lawn chairs onto fire escapes, or hardened criminals press sad foreheads to steel bars? Because the night is alive with lamps! That's why in dark houses all over the city dreams stir in the pillows, a million plumes of breath rise into the sky.
Friends, tomorrow is June. June! Which means the students I didn't teach these past months are celebrating their freedom, the crab apple blossoms I blinked and missed this year are ripening into fruit, the thunderstorms I love—the big and juicy ones—are crackling on the horizon, and I must sneak in one more post before spring turns to summer, if only to share a few green-season quotes with you from Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. Quite by chance, it was the first book I read after Elliot was born, and I can't imagine I'll ever forget that serendipitous match. I read this story of Mary and Colin and Dickon when I was a young girl, of course, but I had forgotten how much truth swirls off every page. There were grand intentions of writing an essay about it, or at least a poem, and sharing that with you all, but instead I have become a master at the art of clipping small fingernails and mining out ticklish spots between the delicious rolls of my son's squishy skin. A fair and easy trade.
I hope these words nourish your spirit and inspire you to step outside and savor something—the wind on your face, the pebble in your sandal, the perfection of clouds at dusk rippled with light.
***
from THE SECRET GARDEN
"She flew downstairs in her stocking feet and put on her shoes in the hall. She unchained and unbolted and unlocked and when the door was open she sprang across the step with one bound, and there she was standing on the grass, which seemed to have turned green, and with the sun pouring down on her and warm sweet wafts about her and the fluting and twittering and singing coming from every bush and tree. She clasped her hands for pure joy and looked up in the sky and it was so blue and pink and pearly and white and flooded with springtime light that she felt as if she must flute and sing aloud herself and knew that thrushes and robins and skylarks could not possibly help it. She ran around the shrubs and paths towards the secret garden." (Chapter 15)
"The wind swept in soft big breaths down from the moor and was strange with a wild clear scented sweetness. Colin kept lifting his thin chest to draw it in, and his big eyes looked as if it were they which were listening—listening, instead of his ears." (Chapter 20)
"One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes." (Chapter 21)
"Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow." (Chapter 27)
I'm not sure what I thought would happen exactly after I did this thing called giving birth. I knew I would be called mother. I knew I would have a son or a daughter. I knew my husband and I would be parents. But as concrete as these words are, from the other side of now-knowing, I can say they feel like shells, shells full of light, but empty of the true weight that fills them when a baby that was hidden is brought into the visible world and placed in one's arms. I look at my son, and daily I think, pregnancy was work, birth was labor, but it was easy, so easy, far too easy for the fact of him, that he is real and really here.
What had I heard would happen exactly? Loss of sleep, a lot of diapers, warmth, deciphering cries, learning to soothe, learning to dress and bathe and feed someone small, and love--letting a new kind of love in. And each of these things has occurred, over and over. Yet they are not what has happened, not really.
What has happened is I wake in the deep of the night, less now, as Elliot is three months old, but still at least once, and I hear him next to me, stirring. Sometimes he is dreaming, or working with all his might to free his fists from his sleep sack, or raising his legs straight up just because he can. I touch his hand then, now fully free, and he clutches my finger in a way that is familiar to both of us, and often, seconds later, he slips back to sleep. When he is hungry, I scoop him up and I smell his hair, and if I think about it, amazement floods me. That I have entered us into the circle. That he exists in the way that I exist in the way that the earth is finally, beautifully green.
What has happened is that around 3:00 every afternoon exhaustion settles on my shoulders like twelve pounds multiplied by three months and I look at my son and I say, I love you, child, but is it fine if I don't sing? if I don't read you another book? if I don't lift you to your feet and let you stand between my hands, which is something you adore, but which in this moment would be too much? What happens is I lay him on his blanket and I reach out my hand, and he takes my finger, and I close my eyes for just a little while. And when I open them, he's still all right, still beside me, soaking up my face with a curiosity that is all his own.
What has happened is there's a third person living in the home my husband and I have made. This person is happiest when peering over our shoulders, like a bird. He stares and stares at the ceiling fan. He talks and talks to Panda. We say Good Morning, and with his tongue and his saliva and his throat he trills back through a smile as wide as the slats of sun coming through the blinds. What has happened is that I hold a piece of orange up to his nose, and his eyes get rounder. The ukelele or guitar comes out, and he is entranced. The breeze on the deck touches his face, ruffles his hair, and it is a wonder for me to see it: the moment of meeting some part of the world for the first time.
What has happened is that my wrists ache in a way I never anticipated, but as Eva Cassidy's voice sweeps us into another dusk, I hold my boy anyway, and we twirl and we spin and we sway, and I hold him and hold him and hold him.
I'm not sure what I imagined would happen exactly after I became a mom. The truth is, my husband talks about Mother's Day, and I think about my mother and his mother and our grandmas, and not myself, not right away. Maybe this will change when Elliot starts to speak, claiming me. Maybe it will happen next week: some feeling that I am not who I once was, that everything is different. Or maybe not. Maybe I am the same. Maybe I have always been the Emily who holds Elliot, who shares the smell of oranges, who tires in the afternoon, who wakes in the night deep from a dream. Sometimes I forget that he is a boy, by which I mean, sometimes I forget that he is not me.
What has happened is three months ago George and I said hello to a child and he is a part of our lives now. And whether we change or just become a wider version of who we've always been really doesn't matter. What matters is him and him and me, and the delicate and definite moments of our days.
Whether you're a caretaker of children, animals, or the earth,
This is just to say that the days are getting longer and our windows all are open, and the house feels thicker, full-lunged, porous, bare-kneed.
This is just to say that we skipped spring here, went straight to summer, sweaty t-shirts and pink brows, bicycles and bicycles and bicycles.
Mostly, though, this is to say that on the first hot day of this new season, I walked with my son to the lake where I'd told him it was time to arrive, and when we came home, for the first time in his life,
Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance and comfort.
Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.
But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen
and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage
of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.
Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.
Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?
For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.
And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,
I don't even want to come in out of the rain.
-- by Mary Oliver
~~~
What a gorgeous poem, yes? For those of us who get a little drunk by a walk through the woods, Oliver's words are a perfect pocket companion.
Which leads me to a request: can any of you point me to your favorite "place-infused" poem? I'm gearing up for The Poetry of Place workshop I'm leading in May, and I'd like to put together a reading list that hovers with inspiration. Thanks for the help, friends!
It is officially spring and physically winter in this northern sweep of land before me, but honestly, these cold months have marched through my life so quickly this year that I'm astonished at all the growth that is soclose, that April is a hop-skip-and-jump away. It's with those wide eyes, then, that I steal a photo from twelve months ago and point you toward a poem of mine over at Every Day Poets. It calls up this same sweep of northern land, but all yellow and green and wild. For those of you with me here in the frozen climes of a long winter, I hope you read it like a promise. And in the mean time? There are always snowmen to make. :)
A snow "event" is tapering off outside my window, dropping perhaps ten inches of new white, and where half the state's population is elated and the other half depressed (a friend reminded me it was 80' right around this time last year here), my mind has never been more inside, less focused on coats and boots, more in tune with another body's breath. I have decided that late winter is the perfect time to welcome an infant into the world. All there is to do is cuddle.
Elliot is wonderful, friends, and I hope each of you know how much I've appreciated your support and positive thoughts throughout his journey here. Right now he is beside me, asleep. This means I should start dinner. This means I should fold some clothes. This means I should call the insurance company. This means I should actually unload the dishwasher, which was a task I began this morning and got as far as, oh, opening its door. I'm learning that there are a lot of things that should but don't get done with an infant at home, because they just don't matter, not enough. Food, yes. It is important to eat, I suppose, but have I mentioned how much hair Elliot has? Can I just tell you how much of a spiky mess it is right now, which makes it all the more tempting to constantly touch? And it is what I've been touching. Not the dishes. Not the laundry. My son.
It still feels amazingly crazy to say/write/think that.
Anyway, I meant this as a general update post, and also as a way to say, hello, I'm here, and I will write and take photos and post again with regularity at some point down the road, but it just can't be right now. And can anyone speak to that? How to be a mother or father while at the same time being a writer/artist/creative, because wow, does that seem currently out of reach. These days have been a sweet fog of action verbs with very few pauses in between, and the pauses are where I catch my breath, not speak. You know? So: any insights from those who have come before are most welcome!
That said, I linked myself to a few events before Elliot swept in, for which I am thankful, as they'll force me to fly at least a few times from our little family nest and stretch these individual wings. I mention them here because I know some of you are local, and I think these events, unlike snow events, would be enjoyable for all who read this blog.
I'll be presenting in the afternoon on Saturday, April 6th, with two other local bloggers at the Chanhassen Library's Writer's Fair. We'll be discussing blogging and the myriad ways it can improve one's writing. Come and say hi! I'm excited to talk with others who've found success and inspiration with this form.
On Saturday, May 18th, I'll be co-leading a Poetry of Place workshop with Minnesota's fabulous poet laureate Joyce Sutphen. The workshop is hosted by Prairie Oaks Institute in Belle Plaine. Prairie Oaks is located on a beautiful stretch of land, and I'm already excited about the wandering, musing, and writing the day will no doubt inspire. Check out the above link for registration info.
I have a few poems and writings coming out in publications over the next few months, and I'll do my best to link to them if they're online. Truly, I always appreciate feedback on my work. It helps me grow. It's one of the reasons I created this Landing on Cloudy Water space, and why it's survived.
Well, the babe is stirring, and in the middle of these paragraphs I did put a pot of water on the stove which I'm sure has boiled down to less than what I need for soup. But thank God for soup. I have found that such food thrives on imperfection and passing dashes of what-I-have-in-my-hand. This sums up life at the moment, and with a bit of crusty bread, some butter, and the sweet sounds of my family, it is, I've found, all a body really needs to be satisfied.
Right now the side of his face rests against my belly, skin to skin, his warmth magnified by mine. It is a wonder, an absolute awe-filled thing, that just days ago he was on the other side of me, tucked away and unseeable, a secret.
Elliot. Elliot with the head full of hair. Elliot with the fifty-eight eyelashes. Elliot with the rounded nose that dips into rounded cheeks that slope to the tiny chin that quivers when he cries, lifts when he smiles in his sleep. A landscape. Elliot. Tiny boy so like and unlike all the other boys who have been born before. So like and unlike whatever small person I imagined my own son to be. Perfection is a rare if not impossible thing, but how could he not be, right now, so young, so soft, exactly as he is here, breathing in and out, making the sounds that all mothers and fathers know as first-speak.
Secrets. He is revealing them to me, unspooling them by the minute, by the number of his sighs, and they tangle around my legs and body until I am warm and rooted to the spot where everything is new, everything is a whisper. My thumb slides through his hair. I trace his eyebrow. He is sleeping. And I am wide awake.
When I think back to these final days before your birth, I will remember several things: the cayenne pepper I mixed generously into every soup and onto every entree I made; the yoga ball I bounced on while your father put the groceries or laundry or Chunky Monkey away; the quiet powdery snow that came several cold nights in a row, perfect and smooth, leaving one or two new inches for us to discover at dawn; how I stopped dreaming of you, and instead talked with you during the day, the hours coated with my pep-talks, my explanations, all my hopes I knew you were hearing. In the dark hours I would lay on my left side, a pillow between my knees and under your weight, your father wrapped around us both, and he and I would close our eyes, so warm, as the world outside went on and on and on and we waited to enter it with you in our arms, too.
There were also daily walks where I tried my best to coax you, rock you into trusting the air. On a 12’ afternoon I bundled us up and trekked across the snow-covered sidewalks toward the trails surrounding Lake Susan. The water in the bottle I carried eventually formed ice crystals, my corduroys were perhaps a bit too thin, and I came home an hour later with a wind-whipped red in my cheeks that didn’t fade. A few times I slipped on ice patches, and when, on the last quarter mile I circled back to my original boot prints in the snow, I was startled at how small they were, how slight were the marks I left on the earth even while carrying a million moments of your future.
Your father furrowed his brow when I returned through the door, touched my face and took the mittens off my hands. Had it been safe to be gone so long? Were we okay?
We. I haven’t been anywhere without you in nine months, in 41 weeks. And where I’m eager for your birth, for you to meet your father face to face, blink up at your grandparents and aunts and uncles and all the good people who already love you, I might keep you with me, just me, for another month, if it were safe, if we would be okay.
For thirty years I’ve walked alone, my pep-talks for myself, my explanations taken down in a tiny print that only I read, my great hopes gossamer echoes I set floating in internal landscapes only. Solitude brought many things: insight, peace, appreciation. But it never brought the experience of that walk along Lake Susan. How I murmured about all I was seeing, to you. How I noticed the chickadees, pert and yellow on bare branches, for you. How the squeak of my boots on the snow and the pounding of the blood from my heart coalesced, made some music, some lulling melody, for you, until I was singing under that crisp-aired sky, until it was you and me and the birds and the frozen ground and the sky and the snow and the crackling ice and all the space ahead of us we were stepping into. For you, I kept thinking. For you. Look how my life is already changed, how it has already flipped inside out. Which is why I’m unsure what form I will find myself in when you leave.
You could slip from me in hours or a few more days. I do not know. Just as I will never know again in the same way that you are safe, that you are okay: always within reach of my fingers. I will welcome you into the world, this place of frost and softness, and it will become more about trust than I could ever imagine.
These days of cayenne pepper and yoga and easy nights in your father’s arms--they will be clear and beautiful memories, full of aching and outlines and wide-open promises that go on and on and on. They are our memories, yours and mine. They are the song I am singing, for you. For now, they are the way I hold you, the way I whisper into the folds of your skin, the way I kiss your eyelids. They are for you in the way that you have been for me. New and old. So new and ancient. A language as deep as time, as pure as the grip of your hand.
