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Month: February 2023

Out of the Ordinary

Published on February 28, 2023

Saturday morning began with this surprise find … a pretty buttercream daffodil emerging through the brown debris of winter. It is right in my line of vision from my writing chair, which I moved to a new spot after all our remodeling of the past year. This bulb feels like a gift, as if someone was thinking – oh, she’d love to see this! I have no memory of planting this little friend. Was it a present from a kind squirrel? Or did my husband or I transplant bulbs here last fall and my mind is too squirrelly to remember? Whatever. I accept. It’s pretty awesome. 

A few hours later, snow squalls burst onto the scene – the chilled air was now raining sleet and icy cold marvel. We have had a mighty warm winter here in the Mid-Atlantic, so I took this change in the weather as a gift, as well…one little tiny taste of snow before spring takes over. 

I went for a long walk in the midst of the cold, flashing back on my experience with this kind of weather my senior year of high school, when my father was transferred and we moved to the Navy shipyard in Kittery, Maine. The base is located on an island, and snowstorms played out very differently than the same storm some 20 miles inland. The snow would frequently squall, spin, and spiral into a cold spitting rain, sending raw icy pellets every which way. I remember trudging to and from school in the midst of such weather, lowering my face, trying to shield myself.  In Maine, nothing was ever canceled due to such weather; everyone went about their business as if it was just an ordinary day. 

So, I went walking this past Saturday.  And it was beautiful. It was not an ordinary day.

Here are two photos.

What a juxtaposition, this wild wintry weather alongside our tender early spring flowers. I’m so glad that I got to see this – because within just a few hours, the squall passed, the snow and ice disappeared, and the spring flowers went back to standing tall and assertive, as if to say – Spring is coming!!

Today is Tuesday and I’m participating in Slice of Life ; thank you Two Writing Teachers!

Tough news

Published on February 21, 2023

He tells me he is feeling so much better now….

NEWSFLASH – I never even knew he was feeling badly! (Though I worried he might be.)

My son, the clam.

I think one of the biggest fallacies I ever fell into about having children was that it would get easier as they grew up. I didn’t understand that I would wonder and worry about them even as adults. In some ways, the ‘worrying’ is more challenging than when they were young, because they no longer live at home. I don’t get the reality check of ‘seeing’ them – and I can create all sorts of imaginative scary stories in my head. 

In my experience, they’ll

  • 1) tell me nothing and leave me wondering
  • 2) let me know something tough AFTERWARDS, and make me cringe with regret about what I didn’t know/didn’t offer support for, or
  • 3) tell me something tough while it is happening and basically hand the ugly problem to me, leaving me ‘fixing’ it in my mind, looking at it from all angles, when in actuality they already feel so much better simply by telling me. They have dropped the problem with me, much like a ‘relay race’ – I am worrying and stewing and they have moved past the whole thing. 

Has this ever happened to you? 

This has sent me musing about time itself…we are living in different time zones, lol. They are present in something which will be my future. Or, their past is now my present.

What time is it, really? What is time?

We Are From

Published on February 14, 2023

Have you ever written an “I am From” poem? I was introduced to these at a teachers’ pre-service professional development many years ago. The facilitator had each staff member write a poem in this style, and then we shared our poems aloud with each other. These poems were an excellent way for colleagues to get to know one another, generating a great deal of reflection and conversation.

This past weekend, Tony and I went on a couples’ retreat with our marriage enrichment group. We facilitated a workshop – – which is really a bit funny, since we’d never been on a marriage enrichment retreat before. Anyhow, there we were.

We had complete flexibility on our topic, something that would get the couples interacting and ‘dialoguing’ with each other. As we mused about our session, I remembered this fun poem sharing from my teaching days. I decided to change it up a bit – 

What if we wrote “We Are From” poems? 

What if we had everyone think back to how their love relationship began – to go down memory lane? 

What if we helped everyone to ‘brush the dust off’ their marriage foundation, to go deep about what brought them together in the first place…and just hold onto this magic for a bit?

We handed out pens and pads of papers. Each person worked individually, writing down three to five brief answers in a list form to the following questions:

  • Place – where did you meet? spend time? what are characteristics of the place, location, neighborhood, room?
  • Who – was there anyone else there? who else was important or stands out from that time? were the two of you alone? 
  • Food – what did you eat? anything special? homecooked? restaurant? party? add some sensory details, here
  • Music or sounds – what did you hear? listen to? any special songs jump out at you?
  • Activities or games – what were you doing? What was going on?
  • Words – what do you remember being said? Any phrases come back? Funny expressions?
  • Smiles/Laughs – what made you feel joy back then? When you think back to your special connection with one another, what makes you smile?
  • BONUS – look over your list and add in any other joyful aspects that come to mind of this memory…special emphasis on smells, feels, tastes, sights, sounds

After everyone wrote a list of their own, we broke into couples, to discuss the memories privately.  The couples turned their chairs to look directly at each other, held each others’ hands, and slowly read their lists to each other, repeating the phrase – “we are from” at the beginning of each line. This was so sweet!! 

As a grand finale, couples were invited to create one “We Are From” poem together – and to share these with all of us. These stories/poems were absolutely beautiful to hear aloud. 

When we reflected on this exercise, many people noted how their partners offered new memories – remembering different things. Everyone agreed that it was really dear to remember the earliest moments of their love stories.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

This was our view from our hotel window, Kent Island, Maryland

It’s Tuesday and I’m grateful to be sharing with Two Writing Teachers

On ‘ki’ and ‘kin’

Published on February 7, 2023

Last Friday and Saturday, we had record-breaking cold, arctic chill. This was no fun at all. Then, this weather left us quickly and abruptly, leaving us with the shock of early spring: temperatures swinging up into the 50s. Early in the morning, writing at my window, I knew this was a day to be outside. 

The day began 
with this glorious sunshine 
dappling, spotting, kissing
everything in sight
as if to say
Good morning!

Later in the day, my friend and I met for our regular ‘wun’ (walk/run). She had to collect sticks for an art project with her students, so this was truly a walk in the woods  I had recently listened (again!) to Robin Wall Kimmerer  [an OnBeing podcast from May 2022], who shared –

And there’s a beautiful word — “bimaadiziaki,” which one of my elders kindly shared with me. It means “a living being of the earth.” But could we be inspired by that little sound at the end of that word, the “ki,” and use “ki” as a pronoun, a respectful pronoun inspired by this language, as an alternative to “he,” “she,” or “it” so that when I’m tapping my maples in the springtime, I can say, “We’re going to go hang the bucket on ki. Ki is giving us maple syrup this springtime”? And so this, then, of course, acknowledges the being-ness of that tree, and we don’t reduce it — it — to an object. It feels so wrong to say that.

Robin Wall Kimmerer with Krista Tippett, The Intelligence of Plants, May 12, 2022

As my friend and I hiked along the creek, in the midst of bare trees of winter, surrounded by all this beautiful brown and gray, I felt embraced by other beings. I understood what Robin Wall Kimmerer was saying, how it feels wrong to use the label ‘it’ when speaking of a tree or a stream or a cloud above. 

Let me share a little more of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s wisdom, from the podcast –

And I have some reservations about using a word inspired from the Anishinaabe language, because I don’t in any way want to engage in cultural appropriation. But this word, this sound, “ki,” is, of course, also the word for “who” in Spanish and in French. It turns out that, of course, it’s an alternate pronunciation for “chi,” for life force, for life energy. I’m finding lots of examples that people are bringing to me, where this word also means “a living being of the Earth.”

The plural pronoun that I think is perhaps even more powerful is not one that we need to be inspired by another language, because we already have it in English, and that is the word “kin.”

Yes, “kin” is the plural of “ki,” so that when the geese fly overhead, we can say, Kin are flying south for the winter. Come back soon. So that every time we speak of the living world, we can embody our relatedness to them.

Robin Wall Kimmerer with Krista Tippett, The Intelligence of Plants, May 12, 2022

My friend and I decided to practice ‘ki’ and ‘kin’ on our walk. As we picked up sticks, we introduced the stick to each other – look, isn’t ki a beauty? We were surprised by the mental challenge of this seemingly simple change in language. What was unexpected for me was how easily I chose the masculine ‘he’ for the pronoun. I had to slow down and think through this, before I spoke, choosing not ‘it,’ not ‘he,’ but ‘ki.’ 

With this language of ‘ki’ and ‘kin’ at the front of our minds, I noticed that we both became quieter and more observant. We were absorbing the beautiful nature all around us, in that slower, meditative way, that is so good for the heart and soul. We were with kin.

Look at this remnant of a tree – ki appears to have split into wings, ready to fly away

It’s Tuesday and I’m grateful to be sharing with Two Writing Teachers