Month: July 2012

Hydrangeas

I love hydrangeas.  They remind me of the summer in this part of the world, of faded clapboard houses and halyards snapping against masts and our wedding day.  I’ve always particularly liked blue hydrangeas, and only recently realized it’s because they are basically the same color as a saturated sunny sky (and, also, as my son’s blue eyes).

But I think there are other reasons I love these flowers so.  As Heather commented on my post last week, hydrangeas last and last.  They are sturdy and durable flowers.  And their colors shift subtly as the season turns forward.  The blue gets deeper and then, in August, shifts again, fading to a purplish green.  I love tracing the passage of weeks in the changing colors of the flowers in my front yard.  That love has a hem of sadness in it, though, because the changes present irrefutable proof of time’s passage.

The thing I love best, though, is the way the composition of a hydrangea’s soil dictates the color it is.  As you can see from this photograph (taken down the street from my parents’ house, and upon exclamation by Grace that there were “multicolored flowers!”) sometimes this variation happens within a single bush.  This is tangible evidence of the power of terroir.  I think often of where I’m from, of the ways the thread of the past glints through the fabric of now.  Hydrangeas, blue or pink depending on the pH of their soil, are an irrefutable manifestation of the way the circumstances we grow and live in shape who we are.  And this is, I think, the most beautiful thing of all.

Transition

My childhood was punctuated by a series of transitions as regular as a drumbeat.  They were not easy, thought they were an integral part of the rich and complex terroir in which I grew up.  I learned, early on, about the deep bittersweetness of goodbyes.  My family’s moves, back and forth across the ocean with a metronomic every-four-years cadence, engraved into me a deep fear of change.  Transitions, farewells, and endings all cause me deep discomfort and often tears.  This truth is an essential part of who I am (and I know I’m not alone in this).

A couple of weeks ago in a yoga class, I realized something new about myself and transitions.  As I moved through a sun salutation, the poses as familiar as a long-known language, my breath carrying me like a stream, it occurred to me:

The transition between poses is as important as the stillness within them.

I’ve been practicing yoga, with varying degrees of regularity and commitment, for over 13 years.  And for every one of the thousands of practices those years have held I’ve thought that what I was learning was a lesson about stillness, about holding, about enduring, about breath.

And of course I was learning that.  I’ve learned so much about those things – mostly, about abiding, with myself and others – both in class and in my life.  But suddenly that day I saw, with a flash of insight that almost embarrassed me because it was so obvious, that the moving between those poses that I held was equally as important.  I’ve always liked the vinyasa part of yoga, probably because the being still is so hard for me.  But if I’m honest, “liking it” has manifested mostly as moving quickly through the poses, and I realize that is not the point of the vinyasa.  Instead I need to pay equally close attention as I move my body, my breath, and my mind, up and down and around and through.

I need to honor the transitions just as I do the holding.

I’m sure it’s not an accident that this realization comes right as I feel I stand on the threshold of another transition with my children.  They are so incredibly lovely right now, so full of the golden life that is, to me, childhood incarnate.  And yet I see the end of these days like the storm clouds we watched on the horizon as we drove to Storyland (I hope not for the last time).  I know something else wonderful exists on the other side of that horizon, I promise I do – my own childhood of goodbyes taught me that – but I still dread the change.

And yet.  And so.  The lessons keep coming.  Breathing, breathing, into another transition.

 

Today is a poem

Today is a poem
a pile-up of moments
unspooling words
like urgent
whispers

there is a secret
and you are in on it

be still
for a short time

your life is waiting
for you to notice it
before
it will bloom.

– Samantha Reynolds

I found this gorgeous poem on the beautiful site Bentlily, which shares a poem a day.  I highly recommend it.

They went really fast

We spent several days last week at my parents’ house by the ocean.  It was a wonderfully fluid kaleidoscope of activities and groups; we all wheeled through various permutations from all together to alone.  It was just a lovely few days.

About halfway through, Grace and I were walking alone and talking.  “We still have three days here,” I told her.  “Isn’t that great?”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed and grabbed my hand.  I adore that both of my children still hold my hand when we walk down the street. We admired the range of hydrangea colors at the next house we passed.  And then Grace said, “You know, it does feel like we have been here a long time already.”  I nodded.  “But also not long at all.”

“I know what you mean.”

“When you’re in them, days take a long time.  But then when you look back they went really fast.”  We walked for a few steps.  “Do you know what I mean, Mummy?”  She looked at me, and I stared back into my own brown eyes, blinking back tears.

“Yes, Grace.  I know exactly what you mean.”

 

Photo Wednesday 9: Alone (together)

This summer’s central thrill is the two of them swimming to the rafts at the beach (both near and far) by themselves.  Alone, and together, they swam through the sparkling sun on the early morning high tide last week.

A lone woman was in the water swimming out to the line when Grace and Whit crashed, giggling, into the ocean.  When she came out, I apologized that her swim may have been less placid than usual.  She smiled and told me my children were having a wonderful time together.  “All I could hear was them saying ‘pretend’ and ‘watch me,’ and laughing a lot.”

Isn’t that the essence of childhood?  Pretend, and watch me?