in less than a month they fly away
My twenty four year-old son sent me a text photograph with a nest full of robin’s eggs. Then he sent a shot of the hatched robins in their nest. Ten days later, he watched the birds fly away. He watched the last bird fall from the nest and fly away, and observed that the nest was truly empty. Continue reading “eggs to flight” »
this is the plant that rules my county
Last year’s Butte fire changed more than the Calaveras landscape. Mountain Ranch was destroyed by fire, and commercial medical marijuana growers bought up burnt land for their billion dollar crops. Billion dollar crops in a county that can’t get out of the red. The new ordinances don’t look very promising for increasing revenue. It’s a trip to watch drastic changes occur in a matter of weeks.
Continue reading “Medical Marijuana rules Calaveras County” »
this glass is from my church
Our family sat on the left Gospel side of the Episcopal church, third row from the front. I tried to keep my back straight up and my posture righteous, because old people needed to rest their butts. I sat beside my grandpa when he visited from Los Angeles, , staring at his left hand with a missing thumbnail resting on top of the pew rail. He’d lost half of his thumb in a sawing accident, so weird. He stood tall, with his hymnal open, singing baritone with all his heart, perhaps recalling his minister dad back in Minnesota when he was a kid, and then growing up to be a deacon in Washington D.C. when his daughters were small and he went with my mom up to New York for all of her operations after she was burned=
My grandpa filled up with strength, surrounded with lush purple energy and blues mixed with gold hills of Tiburon, and the grey of Richardson Bay. I sensed his personal conviction that God was good and loving service to his family and friends made life worth living. He was a good man and his happy heart showed.
My mother kneeled during church prayers, resting her rump on the pew. My mom whispered her hymns, and kept pace with what was going on, but didn’t seem as committed as her dad.
I still go to church and sit in the same spot. Familiarity and common prayer calm me down. The family tradition still matters.
pastels are the best
I was eleven years old when I picked up chalk pastels, and intuitively knew what to do. I smeared creamy sunset colors with my hands onto the back of a piece of cardboard. Gorgeous yellow lit up like real light, and a tiny white dot made the perfect sun, burnt oranges were exactly the color of sky. I used the sides of both my hands to blend purple into the horizon line, like I’d done it a billion times before. I’d made something perfect. Life with pastels was beautiful. Continue reading “art as my truth” »
love those books
The more you read
The more you grow
The more you grow
The more you know
The more you know
The stronger your voice
When speaking your mind
Or making a choice Continue reading “making contact with reading” »
dream image of meeting C
Last week I posted a story that mentioned my sixth grade classroom experience, and the poor girl, C, who picked her nose in front of us. I don’t know what happened to the rest of her life, but I do know she was institutionalized at some point, unable to socialize well.
I had a dream about C last night. The main action: I’m waiting in front of a college building and C comes downstairs. We link eyes, and she walks away, but returns to speak to me. Continue reading “I don’t want to act like a bitch anymore…” »
many people believe alcoholism is a disease
I started sixth grade with every popular kid in the school in my class, but I played on fringes of cool land. Like any class, we had our share of major dip shits, the poor freckle-faced girl who picked her nose and ate it in front of us, just about killing us all. I was hard to ignore, being the tallest kid in the class, five foot-eight inches, shoulder length hair. Girl hair in the mid-sixties was in-between the singers Brenda Lee with the beehive and Cher’s straight long black mane. Continue reading “no more secrets” »
what do we know about time?
Many people believe time is a theory of fourth dimension, like the essence of the hands on a clock. Part of the scientist Newton’s theory was that time was as a flow, a key dimensional role in math and physics, as well as behavior. Time measures change. We live in time. What happens when we die? Continue reading “hermit crab dwelling” »
I hope she climbed onto the rainbow
Aunt Pru was my namesake, my mother’s sister, and she died of lung cancer fifteen years ago this month. I’m remembering her. Our powerful relationship through the years was mostly good, but we had serious confrontations, too. This story is about the mystery unfolding for me at end of her life.
Aunt Pru was a master gardener, and her yard showed her loving efforts with loads of colorful flowers.
The day she left on a rainy Saturday, my seven year-old son, Joey and I drove over to her house that afternoon to say goodbye. I shared a memory about how my cousin and I sang the folk song, “500 hundred miles’ as a duet when we were young, and how Aunt Pru loved to hear us sing it. I wondered whether or not my cousin and I would sing it for her one last time, at her deathbed.
“How many miles to Heaven?” Joey asked me. I still don’t know an answer.
Heading down the hill toward San Rafael, we felt enchanted to witness a massive complete rainbow that extended across the sky, and it seemed to end above my aunt’s house.
She was unconscious when we arrived, and I sort of remember singing with my cousin. I do remember taking my aunt’s hand, saying, “There’s a rainbow over your house right this moment. I want you to get on it.” She passed away later that day, and we still feel her loss.
As I drove to my teaching job the following Monday morning, I was thinking of Aunt Pru, missing her. I also remembered about how much I love lacey old-fashioned white iris and their delicate beauty. I earnestly wished to see some of those beautiful iris on my commute, but didn’t see any, so I thought no more about it.
Five hours later after teaching my last class, I stood at the art room sink, cleaning up after students. One of my students burst into the room, holding an entire blue iris, complete with roots, that he plucked out of someone’s yard on the way to school. He walked over to me and handed it over without any explanation.
In church the following Sunday, my rector gave a sermon. He started it by saying,
“The goddess of the rainbow is the iris.”
Everything lined up for me when he said that. The warm presence of life, the flow of cosmic energy I do not understand. I don’t have to understand.
Truth does pass all understanding.
How about Jerry Colonna?
My dad worked in the radio business, and he brought home a lifesize plastic fake jukebox record player, a fabulous little space man who came to live with us. Its silver plastic chrome lit up bright red when I plugged it in next to the green couch, one speaker blaring. Continue reading “the coolest” »