The Artist

     Our artist in residence, ten-year-old Girlybird, snapped this close-up photo of a waterfall. It snares my appreciation because it distills for me, that single moment in a clamorous multitude of moments when falling water strikes solid rock in a crescendo of movement and sound like the clash of cymbals in a symphony, and then shatters into countless springing refrains.

     The suspended leap of color, light, motion and texture in this photo are like poetry to me. Oh yes, and did I mention it was my ten-year-old granddaughter who made it?

April Fooling

     My oldest brother loves jigsaw puzzles. As young adults we often had a puzzle-in-progress at family gatherings during Thanksgiving and Christmas. He still puts one together every year during the holidays as, half a continent away, we do also.

     I sent my brother a 1000 piece photomosaic jigsaw puzzle of Van Gogh’s Starry Night for Christmas this year. The photos were of astronauts, rockets, space shuttles, planets and satellites. It took him two weeks to assemble…well, almost assemble. When the puzzle was nearly complete he discovered that it was missing two pieces. He had two extra pieces in hand, but they wouldn’t fit in the last two empty spaces. My husband glibly suggested that, perhaps, he had put the puzzle together wrong.

     A few weeks later we received the puzzle in the mail with a challenge to find the missing pieces. It took us two weeks to assemble, and, strangely, all of the pieces fit. Our live-in daughter snapped a photo and put it on Facebook to prove we had done it. She posted the photo this morning.

     What my brother doesn’t know and won’t find out until he or his wife reads my blog is that I was so intrigued by the puzzle when I bought it for him, I bought an identical one for myself. That is the one we put together hoping that none of the pieces had gone astray. We pulled out all of the stops to finish it by April 1…April Fools Day.

     Do you think he will laugh as much as we did?

Siren Call of Spring

     The Canada Geese were calling. From inside the house, I could hear them shouting joyously to one another, so I went out into the sunshine to listen. Far up in the buoyant blue air, higher even than the planes climbing the sky from O’Hare, hosts of geese were swarming like bees. I had to crane my eyes to see them. Their joy was contagious and I stood in the yard with a silly grin on my face.

     The UPS man, coming up the neighbor’s driveway said: “Crazy isn’t it?” He was smiling too.

     “It’s a sure sign of spring,” I answered.

     “I’ve never seen so many at once,” he added with a trace of wonder in his voice.

     “I have, but only in the spring.”

     Only in the spring.

     When snowdrops spring from the earth at the first touch of warmth, and each day of sun shines like a benison of grace. When ice ebbs and flows into the gutter and down the drain with a sound like singing. When bright buds burst with mirth and a mist of green hangs in the treetops. Spring, falling on the earth in cloudburst and cataract to wash away the wrack of winter.

     It isn't my favorite season of the year, and yet, my heart never fails to rise to the siren call of Spring.

Weed Man

     I found an advertisement for weed control hanging on my daughter’s front door. Pictured on it was a man in a green superhero’s costume claiming to be Weed Man. I suppose if there can be a Spiderman and an Ant-Man there can be a weedy superhero too. I handed the advertisement to five-year-old Punkybean to look at when she came to the door. She wanted to know who Weed Man was.

     “He’s the superhero who kills weeds,” I told her.

     “But I don’t even know what a weed is,” she declared, flinging her arms wide for emphasis.

     That was a new one for me. In the course of life, one doesn’t often find oneself needing to explain the nature of weeds. I hadn’t ever given it much thought.

     “Weeds are the plants that invade the lawn and kill the grass,” I explained, trying to keep to the superhero side of the fence. “They are the bad guys—like dandelions.”

     Punkybean’s face fell. “But I like dandelions,” she said.

     Ooops.

     “I know; they’re pretty aren’t they?” I said quickly. “Lots of weeds have flowers that are pretty, but if you let them grow in the lawn they will eat up all the grass, so Weed Man comes when you call him and eats up all the weeds.”

     I was getting in over my head and with other grandchildren vying for my attention, it was the best I could do at the moment. It was a lamentable way for a five-year-old to find out that some people view dandelions as pernicious; I wish I could have broken the news to her more gently. As I was ordering the troops at bedtime, however, I noticed she had hung the advertisement in pride of place on her bedroom door.

     At the end of the day, superheroes trump weeds.

Bookworms

     My husband has never been one to read much fiction. Until recently. When he began traveling extensively a dozen years ago, he soon realized that a book lasts much longer than a movie on a 17 hour flight and is a more enjoyable way to pass the time. Then, this year, he began reading before he goes to bed at night and discovered that he sleeps better.

     Of course, jet lag is just a part of the baggage he often brings home with him, and I have learned not to plan anything too demanding for a day or two after his return. He recently returned from Indonesia and we spent most of the following day tucked up in our family room reading, drinking tea, snacking and napping. Perfect. Couldn't be better. Or so I thought. When my drowsy husband finished his novel he got up from his leather easy chair, rummaged through the travel pack he had dumped in the corner the previous night and pulled out another paperback novel.

     "Are you going to start another book now?" I asked, surprised.

     "Yes," he said tentatively with that look he sometimes gets when I ask him if he is going to wear that shirt with those pants.

     But the smile that spread over my face was adoring. "I don't think I have ever loved you more than I do at this moment," I said.

     We read until dinner, watched a movie, went to bed and read some more.

Evenings at Home by Deborah DeWit Marchant - "In the  paintings of Deborah DeWit, as in the paintings of Edward Hopper, it often seems that something tremendous has just happened, and we witness the quiet aftermath, the time when all motion stops as a bolt of strange learning passes deep to the interior life."   ~ Kim Stafford ~

Yak Jacket

     That is my yak jacket hanging on the hall tree. More to the point, that is what I wore to the post office today--no hat or hood or gloves, no layers, no down-filled parka, just the lightweight, fleece-lined jacket made of yak's wool that my husband brought home from a trip to Kathmandu.

     Afterward, even though there is still snow on the ground, I went for a turn around the neighborhood to soak up my portion of the sun-scented air. If I were a girl again, I would have been skipping and breaking off icicles to chew. I would have run across the soccer field to leave my footprints in the unbroken snow.

     It was a glorious half hour in which a host of gutters, downspouts and storm drains were singing counterpoint to a holy convocation of cardinals and chickadees.

     My yak jacket and I were reluctant to return home.

We Be Jammin'

     I don't eat dry toast. Why would I? I suppose I could go without the butter if my health were in jeopardy, but I must have my honey or jam--especially the jam.

     But not just any jam.

     Costco began carrying a brand a few years ago that tops my list: E. D. Smith. It isn't called jam; it is labeled as a spread and it comes in two-pound jars. Well, of course it does, because there isn't anything sold at Costco that doesn't come in monster containers. And it isn't patriotic to trade in mere ounces. I like the cherry, wildberry and raspberry. The trouble with Costco is that they often change their product. I haven't seen wildberry and raspberry in the store for a couple of years. Last fall, however, cherry jam returned.

     So I bought ten jars. Yes, ten, two-pound jars. Presumably enough jam to last me until doomsday. A couple of months later I bought two more. Then a few weeks after that I bought another two, because I know that, unless the world ends in six months, I will run out. There are only three of us living here, but we all use it. It started out with just me using cherry jam, but somewhere along the way I have made converts.

     There are whole cherries floating in my jam. I don't like chunks of fruit on my toast, so each time that I open a new jar, I puree it in the food processor and pour it into three pretty glasses that I use over and over again. These make me happy and I pretend that I am making my own jam.

Chalk it up to just another of my little idiosyncrasies.