Epiphany Plus One

Many years ago, I heard Isabel Allende speak. One of the things she shared with her audience is that she always starts her novels in January. I'd remembered that she started on January 6th - Epiphany, and I carried that date with me as a significant date for serious writers until just now, when fact-checking brought it to my attention that she starts on January 8th, not the 6th, and not because of Epiphany but for her own personal superstitious reasons. 

So today marks a point between my false memory and my new knowledge. Which sounds symbolic, right? What is each day if not a marker between insufficient data and new input? I wrote the below this morning, or some slight variation of it. It's a little about the dangers of not-quite-forgetting something.

You missed Epiphany this year.

This seems telling.

You knew it was coming, that day

of marking something – was it the wise men

reaching their destination, finding it,

as Eliot suggested, “satisfactory”?

Or was it God incarnate, holy infant flesh and blood,

as impossible to conceive

– you can’t help the pun –

as dark matter at CERN?

There are things you haven’t taken the time to ponder,

and you are left feeling stupid

as a foreigner who cannot speak the language.

Stranger in a strange land in a new year,

the miracle approaching,

the miracle passed,

and you with a crick in your neck

from looking back too suddenly.

For Want of Will

The end of a stressful day is ugly; intentions and ambitions are thrown aside in favor of self-indulgence: puzzle, food, sleep. Even calling to mind those who are no longer here to speak their truth and do their good work doesn't shame or inspire me into making better use of the time I have. So I'm left with this: the cycle of disappointment, guilt, forgiveness, confession.

Blessing

It's a blessing to have friends, even for (or I think especially for) an introvert like me. I have few friends, but they are so very important to me. My friends have kept me from going insane more times than I can count. They put things in perspective, support me, offer encouragement, empathy, a sense of perspective, a sense of humor. I owe a great big "thank you" to my dear friends for their patience and kindness, today and every day they've been part of my life. If you're reading this, you should know who you are.

Thank you. 

It's Been Ten Years. How about a New Look?

Besides being dated, my old blog template was no longer as functional as one might want. So I've traded up to another basic boilerplate template. While it may not be ascetically striking, exactly, it does work and feel like something fresh and new to me.

Also, as an exception to the pattern from the last week or two, I'm posting this entry while the sun is still shining, before even the shift to twilight has brought out the sickle moon that D. takes a proprietary interest in. Last night, while on his way to OSH or Home Depot or some such place (he can correct me when he reads this) he phoned home to say that there was a gift in the Western sky for me. I went outside and braved the coming cold, and there it was - that fine curve of light that he used to capture often enough in airbrushed night-scape paintings in the late eighties and early nineties that it was almost like a trademark.

I'm a fan of the quarter moon, the half-cookie shape on its way to waxing or waning - at the tipping point - and me not knowing, most of the time, which direction it's heading. The sickle moon seems almost gone. The quarter moon is a still point in the pendulum. A pause, a balance, even if its just an illusion and no more permanent than any other phase of the moon.

Maybe if I gardened as guided by the Farmer's Almanac, or studied astronomy, or had a 2014 calendar, I'd know whether tonight will be moonless or slightly brighter than last night. As it stands, I only know that night is when we start the fire in the wood-burning stove, and put the lame chicken in the rabbit hutch, and when I crane over the jigsaw puzzle in a gluttony of piece-placing, trying to forget the burden of my 9-5 job (which is really a 6-4, most days). Thank goodness like the okapi, the moon takes care of itself without my attention.

Here's the Thing

I didn't know about okapi until very recently. It turns out really next to nobody really knew about the okapi until not that long ago.

Here's what they look like:


This is the way synchronicity works in my life. Giraffes have been my favorite animal since I was very young. The Okapi is the only member of the giraffid family apart from the giraffe itself. Okapi were brought to the attention of the world outside of the rain forests of the Congo region by Sir Henry Morton Stanley (of Stanley and Livingston fame) at the tail end of the 19th century. Stanley was born in Wales.

When I learned about the okapi, it prompted the following poem (not yet a final draft, I don't think), which I'd read at the poetry brunch the other day:

Here’s the Thing

                                                                                                                                

All the dark matter we cannot ken, or the notion

that the cosmos may be a sheen of bubble

or someone else’s dream, or that our sharpest senses are flotsam

fifty leagues above the iceberg tip of what can be perceived;

that our most grand endeavors (I mean Giza, the Great Wall, man on the moon)

are no more than one ant carrying one seed husk one foot.

I am telling myself this while telling you –

not to alarm or enlighten but as comfort.

Take the okapi, for instance.

We didn’t know about them for the longest time.

But ignorance did not impact them all that much.

Okapi by the thousands were born, mated,

died the deaths of  grass-eating creatures

and it was all right. I’m trying to say

it’s all right. Our knowledge

of a thing neither prerequisite

nor responsibility. You, for example,

could be anywhere including dead

or wherever one goes after that

and until just now I have forgotten

to set that burden down.

The Annual Puzzle

It's been a few years since I started the calendar with a jigsaw puzzle, but this time it's a 2000 piece landscape that sits in the middle of the living-room on a large board that D. brought back from his shop.

I think puzzles appeal to me because they employee my finding skills, entertain my OCD tendencies and allow for a sense of resolution otherwise lacking in life. How can I say no?

A Year Of Poetry

I'm stealing this post from my poetry blog, abashed that I hadn't put it in place when I thought I did.

The year has started well because of former Sonoma County Poet Laureate Terry Ehret's poetry brunch, where over three dozen people met to begin 2014 with aspirations that we put out into the world and to read and listen to poems. I read something newer that may not be in its final form, but it was good to try it on out-loud. And it was wonderful to hear such a fantastic range of poems from others.

There were themes of memory and darkness, life and death, beginnings and history and mystery and science. The northern lights. Carl Sagan's "little blue dot." Western New York in the winter, Sonoma County in the Autumn, San Francisco with the beat poets, skating a pond the midwest under bathed by the lights of the aurora borealis.

I've been reading Mary Oliver's Blue Pastures in the last month or two and have found so much inspiration and education in those pages, I feel it has changed my life.

Welcome, poetry read and written. Welcome, New Year.

Goodbye 2013, Hello 2014!

The house is more than toasty thanks to the wood-burning stove.
The kids are at their respective parties up north and I'm writing by the light of the Christmas tree.
Running out of time for a long, careful retrospect of the year, especially when I'm wanting to hang out with D.

But Happy New Year, one and all!

The Last Grand

I received a card from my birth father today saying that his mother had passed away on the 21st. She was 93 and I'm so grateful to have met her (for the first time) in September of this year.
She is the last grandparent I had left (adopted or biological), and while I'd like to post more about all that, for now I just want to add this picture.

So This is What They Mean

Saw S. off today at the airport for a flight to visit our friends at their new farm up north. Here's why it may have been challenging for me:

a) she herself is nervous flying
b) it's her first solo flight without friends or family
c) she's my youngest
d) I'm already experiencing holiday stress
e) all of the above

But for the first time I had a taste of the difficulty I've heard people describe for years when they talk about letting go and letting a child head out into the world alone.  For whatever reason, I didn't experience this anxiety in the past when my elder daughter went off on adventures or to college, or when my younger was at camp, for example. But it hit me this time, and I stood at the window watching the Southwest plane roll away from the gate fervently wishing the pilot, co-pilot and crew a safe and simple flight.

I had calmed considerably by the time I received the "Eagle has Landed" text our friend sent when she arrived, but still it was a relief to know she's safe and sound.

Now to wrap up the old year and start the new as well as possible!

Almost Not Saturday

It was worth working the shift to get slightly caught up at work but it did mean that the weekend part of the day was postponed until the afternoon.

D. is fixing the back awning that had blown away during the last windstorm, and he worked on that while I weeded and pruned (a great compulsive activity) and the chicken hopped and pecked at the dirt as only a lame-chicken might. There was a moment of lovely domesticity before the waning light and a trip to the gym put everything back into its usual slingshot trajectory.

I could get used to that: two people puttering (or, really, getting things done) in a yard, with a chicken wandering around, the dog watching with great interest from inside the house - so the chicken can hobble freely - the air warm enough, the neighbors quiet enough. Everything, just, enough.

Bottom

Hit bottom in terms of the holiday binging tonight. Nowhere to go but back up toward healthy from here. Worked an eleven hour day. More tomorrow to try to finish up the month strong and to help pay for college tuition for R. Too tired even for the jigsaw.

Boxing Day

Boxing Day always reminds me of the wonderful post-Christmas parties our friends Kate & Becca used to throw. Too bad they’re now on the other side of the map in snowy New England!  The only thing I saw to mark the day was a kick-boxing class taking place at the gym. I don’t think that counts anymore than S’s wry comment that the rappers on the radio were appropriate for Christmas Eve – “Get it, Mom, it’s the day before Christmas, so they’re busy “rapping”?”

Worked a ten-and-a-half-hour day. Unwound by starting a 2000-piece puzzle. Working a 1000 piece puzzle was a New Year’s tradition for me for many years but it’s been a while, so why not start up again with something that has too many pieces to fit on the card table?

Nadolig LLawen!

Which is "Happy Christmas!" in Welsh for you non-Welsh speakers.

Had wonderful artwork from the girls as Christmas presents, and other thoughtful and practical gifts from my in-laws and friends. A Child's Christmas in Wales is playing, the fire is burning to warm the house, chickens have been put to bed and the New Year's puzzle is out of the box awaiting work. It feels like a blessed evening, and as though I've consumed more calories in the last 48 hours than I consumed in the 2 weeks leading up to them!

Twas the Night Before....Zzzzzz....

Santa arrives some time in the middle of the night between the hours of when I first go to bed (often early) and when the rustling of presents being opened awakens me in the morning (often early).

This year, the stockings are being stuffed with chocolate coins, marzipan, the ever-practical toothbrushes, cheese and cocoa mixes and lemon curd, bath salts and candy canes, and the annual ornament. There are socks from Santa and consumer electronics from the parental figures. The dog and rabbit each are receiving carrots in their respective stockings. The newly adopted lame chicken gets a Christmas free of being low-hen in a murderous pecking order.

While the day was less relaxing and calm than I'd wanted, especially because of an ill-timed bass lesson (we arrived an hour later than the teacher had expected us due to some misunderstanding between her and D.) and a search for R's lost cell-phone, the evening was fun, having dinner with D's sister and her husband and their friends in Vacaville, catching up a little with D's dad ("Beau Pere").

Christmas next!

Christmas Eve Eve

As sometimes happens when I work a 12-hour day, I had a hard time turning off tonight. I came home after putting chickens to bed for my neighbor and stopping to get firewood, and then proceeded to make fudge and shortbread and watch part of a Lord of the Rings movie with the kids. The red couch and fire got the best of me by around 9pm, however, I was fell asleep yet again in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. So looking forward to two days off - completely off! - in a row.

The Joy of Down Time

I found myself experiencing HAPPINESS today, simply because I had a loose agenda and was able to forget about the stressful side of work (mostly) without the use of even a drop of alcohol. Imagine that!

A Long Day before the Longest Night

Between being at work at 6am and arriving home from a party at 10:30pm, I took 8 teens and young adults (caravanning in 2 cars) to the Dickens Fair and drove from Petaluma to Novato to Petaluma to South San Francisco to Petaluma to San Rafael & home. Whew! Actually, D. drove the last 2 trips in the evening so I shouldn't complain.

The Fair was great fun, and the party was also nice, especially caroling with a group that knew most harmonies from Catholic choir. I also managed to make fudge to go with the shortbread I'd made yesterday.

Did you know shortbread is the Anti-Paleo treat? Its ingredients are solely three of the things one is not to eat while on the "Paleo" diet: sugar, butter and flour. Even making it felt like a rebellion when I'd spent October and November (and a tiny bit of December) trying to adhere to a diet of fresh food: fruits, vegetables and lean meats. In theory, anyway!

Thanks, I Needed That

I left work early, not feeling well but also because I needed to pick S. up from school for "early release" (which sounds like something I fisherman might do). Then when, at 2:30, I told S. I was going to take a nap for "about an hour" we both laughed, because those naps often last longer. This one lasted eight hours! So apparently I needed the rest to fight off whatever I'm still trying to fight off. The end result, however, is a stretch of four hours of being awake in the middle of the night. Tidying the house. Baking shortbread. Gathering costumes for tomorrow's foray into the Dickens Christmas Fair. Since I'm working 6am-10am tomorrow before the Fair (yes, on a Saturday), and am going to a party after the Fair tomorrow night, it's just as well I've had the sleep!

Christmas Countdown

46 Christmas cards sent to date
 9 boxes shipped to 2 countries and 5 states
Tree up & decorated with lights and a handful of ornaments
First batch of shortbread cookies baked
Gifts for teachers taken care of
Gifts for family 5/8ths done
And all with virtual no credit card usage (yet)

I may survive this holiday yet.