I took a break from
everything. Mothering, teaching, managing meals around our family's various activities schedule. It’s
been great. I took a LONG weekend (nearly a week) to spend some time with my
parents in Idaho. My dad had open heart surgery a little over a month ago and
my siblings and I have taken turns going out to stay with them. I think I
planned it out just right though—my brothers and sister have done all the hard
work of getting their farm and house ready for winter and I mostly just spent
time with them.
Part of me is still here in in this place.
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| Sunrise from the deck |
My dad is limited in
what he is supposed to do, and my mom is limited in what she can do only because
she is, contrary to what some might believe based on what she accomplishes on a
normal basis, human. And she has to keep Dad from doing too much. They are the
hardest working people I know, and they live off their land. They can make
anything grow. Anywhere. They have two big gardens, a gigantic berry patch, and
a large orchard.
This is their retirement. They live on a hill above the lake I
spent my summers at when I was a kid-- just up the hill from where my
grandparents lived.
Have I been a little anxious about how all my boys are holding up back home? A little. And I miss them. I’m so thankful for Brian being so supportive of my decision to come out, and for taking care of the boys all week. But this is the place I need to be right now. And it’s so quiet.
We always come here in
the summers, but then it is busier. There are all the summer boaters and
swimmers and it's very much a vacation-y time for me and for my family, as well
as for most other people at the lake. Now it is quiet and chilly. There are a
lot of fall colors in the orchard and in the brush along the roads. I’m rockin’
my flannel shirt. The deer smell hunting season coming. Most everything in the
garden has been harvested. The old raspberry canes are stacked up to burn. All
the apples and pears have been picked. I picked the last apple tree the other
day and helped my mom and dad press cider and make applesauce.
The earth is getting
ready to sleep under blankets of snow.
I got to watch playoff
baseball with my dad, the one who taught me to love baseball when I was little.
The highlight of that was seeing the Yankees get eliminated. I got to go
kayaking on the still, blue lake, roast s’mores over a fire with some cousins,
and visit my grandparents’ graves. I picked herbs from my grandma’s herb garden
for her and Mom picked various noxious (but flowering) weeds and some pine tree
branches for Grandpa, from his fields and woods. I went to water aerobics with
Mom and some old ladies. It wiped me out, except for my biking legs, that held
up fine. :)
I helped my mom cook a
ton of tacos and burritos for their church’s Awana kickoff night. I did a fair
amount of paper grading at the table while watching sunrises. Now that I type
this all out, it seems like I did a lot. But it felt very laid back and
peaceful, and like I said, quieter than my normal life.
It has put me in a
poetic mood, but I haven’t come up with a poem I’m happy about sharing yet, so
I’m sharing one I wrote the summer before last about being in Idaho at my
parents’ house. The power of place interests me. How people can become so much
a part of a certain place. I have lived in Virginia nearly as long as I lived
in Idaho, but there’s something about those formative years that leave an
imprint on a person. I do love Virginia and could (and should, actually…good
idea) write a poem about Virginia too. But for now, here is what I wrote about
being part of a place and a place being a part of me.
Here
In summer dry air
In cool blue mountain shade
In prickly yellow wheat fields,
always whispering, never heard
It’s Here.
In quiet gravel steps
In calm rows of
cabbages and corn
In dust ribbons rising
behind trucks,
dancing away, never
remembered
It’s Here.
In slender pine tree
needles
In silver blue green
water
rippling on a lake
born of glaciers
always moving, never
changed
It’s Here.
In still moonshadows
at the garden gate
In crickets’ midnight
songs
In silent zig zag
lights of a car descending a mountain
always inching, never
stopped
In pink purple clover
blooms
In tangled orange
honeysuckle
In ditches of milkweed
and teasel,
always growing, always
spreading
I’m Here.
I’m the little girl in
braids
you almost see
skipping under sweet
cherry trees
shoulders pink from
sunshine
Always Here, never
gone
And now, when my plane leaves from Denver, I'll be on to my noise. My beautiful, beautiful boy
noise, which is another place where a very large part of me is.
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| apples from the last apple tree |
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| cider! |
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| applesauce |
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