Cardinals and Snow

As I gazed at my Starbuck’s latte and pondered what I would say in the Christmas letter this year, I noticed a phrase printed on the side of the cup: “We invite you to LISTEN to your DESIRES and to RENEW your HOPE. To see the world not as it is, but as it COULD be. Go ahead. WISH. It’s what makes the holidays the HOLIDAYS.”

This contrasts with the Buddhist philosophy to neither hope nor fear, to let go of longings and be mindful of the joys available in the present moment. Can one let go properly (the lesson I keep working to learn over and over again) and yet retain hope and optimism? It seems that in order to renew hope one must begin by paying attention to the present moment and being mindful of all there is to be grateful for, here and now. And there is an optimism perhaps in Max Ehrmann’s phrase from Desiderata: “no doubt life is unfolding as it should.”

If a therapist were consulted, she might say that the first part of the Starbuck’s exhortation, the part about listening to one’s desires, is a very good plan, especially for those who have a tendency to try to make sure everybody else has the oxygen mask in place during the plane emergency and end up almost passing out from oxygen deprivation themselves.

A meditation on one’s own desires seems selfish and not in keeping with the holiday season—unless perhaps you have lost hope and you need to find a way back to the vision in the shining child’s eyes, seeing a Christmas morning where all wishes come true. For the Christmas book this year, my book club chose “A Redbird Christmas” by Fanny Flagg (also the author of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café”). This is an unabashed fairy tale in which good people and a young child hope when it seems that all hope is lost, and end up with a Christmas miracle beyond their wildest imaginings involving redbirds and snow in the Deep South.

I have always associated red cardinals against a snowy background with Christmastime. I remember when I was around seven my mother wrapped a package especially for me and taped a red cardinal to it, carefully cut out from an old Christmas card. I don’t remember what was in the package, but I remember the love and thoughtfulness represented by the cardinal decoration. I also remember watching all the birds, including the cardinals, flock to feast on the sunflower seeds my Dad placed out on the upper deck bird feeder during the coldest, snowiest days of winter at our Sugar Lane house back in Southern Indiana. Those birds had reason to hope each year and also seized any opportunities in the present as well. So I will have my cake and eat it too, combining hope with mindfulness of the present. No doubt events are unfolding as they should.

So I wish that everybody who reads this has a great holiday. May all of you take a deep breath, be present, and renew your hope in the coming New Year.

Spring Snow in Boulder

Mist shouds the Flatirons after a spring rain turned to snow last night in Boulder. Earth, plants, trees soak up the moisture thirstily--it has been so dry for so long in Colorado and the previous 18 inches of snow a little over a week ago had pretty much melted. I'm always grateful for snow and rain after memories of one terrible summer of drought when we used "gray water" collected from the bathtub after showers to water the flowers and watched our lawn die. Water is one of the essential life forces and should never be taken for granted. Water is gentle, yet strong.

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong." - Lao-Tzu (600 B.C.)

Deer Valley Road After Christmas

On the day after Christmas the sun is brilliant on the new snow and the sky is Colorado blue. I dress in numerous layers against the 10-degree chill and pocket my camera. The snow is crisp under my boots and makes that crick-crick sound as I head uphill, across Broadway, up Dartmouth to Deer Valley Road. On the way up an elderly lady ventures carefully down her drive and onto the newly shoveled sidewalk in front of her house, walking stick in hand. We say hello and agree that it is a fine morning if you don’t have to shovel. I tell her of my plan to take some pictures of the snow-covered foothills further up. She is impressed that I have already walked this far up the steep hill from the other side of Broadway. Her son is coming to get her in awhile and they plan to drive around taking pictures.

As she ventures further along the sidewalk I say, “Be careful on the snow.”

She says, “That’s what this is for,” and smiles as she gestures with the walking stick. “Have a good day, my dear.”

And with that benediction from a wise woman, I feel blessed. I wish I could sit down with her over a cup of tea and have a long conversation and learn all she has to tell me. One day will a young woman somewhere wish that about me? I continue to the top, and the foothills are beautiful, covered in thick white. The camera can never capture the sparkle of sunlight on snow but I try anyway.

Joggers and dogwalkers join me in admiring the beauty of the day. I have discarded my sunglasses because I want to soak up every bit of sunlight possible. I walk back down the hill to Caffe Sole and order a skinny latte, double shot, in a real glass. I like Caffe Sole because it is not a chain, so it has little unique touches like a self-serve “express coffee” station with a hand-lettered sign posting prices for various sizes and $1.25 if you have your own cup, with a jar where you leave your money on the honor system. Two guys sit next to me over coffee discussing an on-line business venture. Two women my age at a nearby table are having a heartfelt conversation and seem to be enjoying each other’s company. A very beautiful young woman with long blonde hair wearing a gray knit cap with a bill talks to a besotted young man who wears his hair burr short with several tiny braids sprouting from the back of his head.

I feel very present, and suddenly am sure that any fear or sadness I feel is purely my own doing. If I can just stay awake and remember that one idea, I will be so much happier in 2008. So much more will seem possible. I am getting some perspective with my time off, apparently. Reading “The Four Agreements” again is helping – it still makes a lot of sense, even though the style seems kind of rough around the edges.

Winter is icumen in

I have taken an extra day off from work before the Thanksgiving holiday, and Boulder has received its first real snowfall of the season.

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.

Ancient Music, Ezra Pound

M and I had a brief but fervent argument the other day about the author of the above poem. He said it was Robert Frost (hah!); I knew that it was Ezra Pound due to my excellent education in English literature at Indiana University hundreds of years ago. During this discussion at Heidi's Brooklyn Deli on Pearl Street, I ended up proving that I was right with a brief Internet search using my Blackberry. I am particularly proud of this small victory because M has given me no end of grief over the years for somehow earning a degree in English without ever reading Melville's Moby Dick cover to cover (which he believes to be the finest American novel ever written – global before its time, yada yada). I have tried. But I can’t seem to get past the endless chapter in which water flowing from mountain springs, down creeks and streams, into rivers, and eventually into the vastness of the ocean, is described in detail as yet unmatched in all my subsequent literary perusals.

To see the radical difference between the poets, I recommend reading Robert Frost’s wonderful poem, much preferred in tone to Ezra’s, and one I quote frequently:

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

A statue of Robert Frost sits in front of the Old Main building on the University of Colorado campus. Once, CU was doing some construction work around the statue and put up a protective fence to be sure that it would not be damaged. Very quickly a sign appeared on this cage: “Free Bob.”

M has headed out to shovel our sidewalk and buy last-minute Thanksgiving supplies at King Soopers – and I have informed him that I will be blogging about his gross literate error. This has earned me the title “Evil Bloghead.”

I am indeed looking forward to the holiday, and the snow is welcome; it gives me a cozy feeling as I sit here typing away by the window. Oddly enough, "Winter is icumen in" also has always given me a cozy feeling – something about the inevitability, and therefore comfort, of the seasons. Not what Ezra had in mind, I am guessing.

Strawberries in the Snow

One of my indulgences in the coldest days of winter is strawberries. We buy the clear plastic one-pound containers in grocery store, and I slice up the plump berries to provide the only sweetening I allow myself for my shredded wheat breakfast.

As I was slicing ‘em up this morning, I realized that one reason I like them is that they remind me of my father’s garden back in southern Indiana. My Dad was a master gardener. The son of a Professor of Botany, his own gardening was anything but academic. It was a heartfelt, sweat-laden work of love each summer.

Early in the spring, he would hire someone to plow the garden, and then use his rototiller to further prepare the ground. I am not talking here about a small plot. His garden was vast, with several rows each of the perennial asparagus, green onions, tomatoes, green peppers, eggplants, lettuce, rows of corn stalks, and of course the strawberry patch. Not to mention the gladiolus, snapdragons and chrysanthemums. He did not select certain ones of these each year to plant in his garden—he always had all of them because Dad never did anything half way. He also had some rows of persimmon trees at the end of the garden that would drop their fruit for us to collect and make into persimmon pudding in the fall.

Don’t tell anybody, but near the very edge of the woods there was a hidden patch of cannabis.

Dad loved the garden. He could be observed from the back of our deck after a long day at work, heading up to the garden to water, putter, plant, weed and contemplate. He suited up in gray work pants and a perspiration- and dirt-soaked white t-shirt, along with a bandanna tied Indian-style around his forehead to keep the sweat from dripping into his eyes. On weekends it might well be a full day of gardening with my mother occasionally sending us up with iced tea or after 5 pm sometimes a Manhattan. If my father made his own Manhattans they would be in a large Hellman’s mayonnaise jar with a lid to avoid accidental spillage. At around 5:30 or 6:00 we would be sent up to give him the 60-minute warning that dinner would be served soon and he should come down to the house to shower and change.

Dad always kept a saltshaker up in the garden, because there is nothing in this world more delicious in the heat of a summer day than picking a ripe, warm tomato or green pepper, liberally salting it, and munching it on the spot. Those who came up to volunteer for weeding and other chores would often be offered this as their reward and well worth it.

Dad had a stone gnome attached to a tree that overlooked the garden with a somber yet bemused expression. We called it his garden gnome.

He kept a shotgun on the back deck sometimes, because all was not paradise in the garden up by the woods, and deer, rabbits, raccoons and other creatures felt a certain ownership for the delicious vegetables. Dad would shoot from the deck on occasion when encroachment was observed. Since I don’t remember ever seeing any dead bodies I would like to think he just scaring them.

One of his greatest pleasures was to take baskets of flowers and vegetables to his friends and neighbors. He also made a habit of delivering flowers to various nursing homes and hospitals. His great generosity at these times is a joy to recall. The warm strawberries from a summer day in his garden can never be duplicated, but at least I can buy a pound once in awhile in the cold of winter at the grocery store and remember.

Blizzard of 2006

Here in Boulder we are digging out from under the blizzard of 2006, with more than two and a half feet of snow on the ground from Wednesday’s storm.

The tiny lighted deer under the maple tree previously mentioned in my Christmas Letter are a little worse for wear. The one who lifts his head as if to sniff the air is now up to his neck in white stuff, and the one who grazes under the tree looks like she’s performed a face plant in a snowdrift.

Enchanting as all the snow is, it has caused some major headaches in the metro area, with DIA closed down and all the roads impassible. Digging out is hard work for 50-somethings; Mark and I are nursing our sore muscles and backs after a couple of days of it. The local news shows feature stories of good Samaritans driving around in their all-terrain vehicles rescuing stranded motorists. I finally understand all those truck commercials during the football games—the ones that feature manly men in their very large trucks exuding strength and competence. That’s a lot easier to do if you have the right truck—and it feels good to be strong enough to help other people out. Let’s hear it for random acts of kindness. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.”