English Weather, English Tea

The chill has returned. I put on my "tete d'artiste" beret and wound my scarf around my neck. Shoving my hands into my pockets, I set off this morning at a brisk pace.

Halfway down my usual path, I noticed an unusual sight: one of the live oaks had been decorated with long strands of red and green beads. Looking more closely, I saw that each strand had a small mirrored disco ball dangling from one end.

On the other side of the driveway, candy canes surrounded a small plastic Santa holding his belly.

Back home, I took my favorite Japanese bowl out of the drainboard, the pink one with a fat cat and tail on its sides, and prepared to pour tea. It wasn't until I went to lift to the bowl to my lips that I noticed I had serendipitously placed it so that the kitty on the inside of the bowl faced me, its eyes closed in pleasure, a small bell around its neck.

I too closed my eyes while sipping.

Where Doves Rest During the Day

Yesterday I took my time rising. When I went out for my walk, the air had warmed from the cold snap earlier in the week, though the sky was still gray.

On one of the wider streets, I looked up into a tree and found a long slender branch, the thickness of my thumb, had grown from the third lowest branch and meandered its way upward, winding around the tree's trunk.

As I tried to follow its path, I found the treetop filled with mourning doves. Most swayed with the wind, one fluttered to a new branch.

Later, after I'd returned home, I heard a rushing sound. Going to the door, I discovered a steady rain.

The Respite

This week I went to the country. Two nights and a day on a small ranch near a small town in Texas. It was near dusk when I arrived but still I stopped at the small body of water near the gate and took photographs of the dried reeds, the rippling reflection of tree tops.

The next day I took walks and drank tea, read an old New Yorker and watched home makeovers.

When I left the following day it was still overcast and drizzly. I stopped for coffee but got a peppermint hot chocolate. Back on the road, I turned on the windshield wipers and listened to Christmas carols on the radio.

Bare trees lined the way, limbs bending earthward. Everywhere colors were muted: brown fields and gray skies.

Crossing a bridge, I glanced down. Mist hovered over the river.

My Mother's Recipes

This morning I set out to make cookies for my brother. Unable to find my own notes, I went to my cookbook shelves and, for the first time in a long time, pulled out a small wooden box of recipe cards. I had expected my grandmother's handwriting, but opening it, I began to thumb through card after card in my mother's hand.

Seeing her familiar writing, I remembered the years this recipe box had stood in one kitchen or another of her houses. I flipped past a recipe for "Trudy's Bran Muffins" but stopped briefly at "Scripture Cake," where each ingredient had its own passage from the Bible, and which was written in what was most likely my great-grandmother's hand, since the notation read "copied 1893."

I made a mental note to come back and investigate the typewritten letter, from my grandmother, no doubt, nestled in among the cards. "The lawyer said she would be unable to take the strain if Jensen did want to come home," read the fragment that caught my eye. (On the other side, a recipe, also typed, for rhubarb crisp.)

I put the recipe box back onto the shelf. A small wooden box, now leaking dust, crammed full of instructions on recreating memories.

The Lasting Joy of A Brief Miracle

Two nights ago it snowed. I have lived here for eighteen years and in all that time this is the first time anything I would call "snow" has fallen.

I walked from the lighted house into the already dark evening to find large white flakes floating down from the sky. As I drove, I watched the graceful dance of flakes too numerous to count. An endless falling of an endless curtain.

Watching them, I was taken back to my college apartment, to a time where I would sit and watch this same silent show.

Often I would wrap a scarf around my neck and brave the cold to lift the heavy sash, open the window wide. By listening intently, I could hear the sound of snowflakes as they fell and fell, and then, with a sound like the contented sigh of a child after play, nestle into the bed of flakes that had fallen before them. It was a hushed sound, like listening to the footsteps of God.

Back home from my errands, I push open my front gate. On the top support, snow is piled an inch deep. It has stuck no where else, melting as soon as it hits pavement.

By morning, I know, the fence snow too will be gone.

Black Hole

Last night I took my walk after dark. We emerged from our Thanksgiving cocoon of turkey and television, husband and I, into a night still warm from an Indian summer that had lasted far into autumn. The pavement was damp but no drops stood on our windshield. Less a light rain than a heavy fog, now gone, had passed over us while we, unaware, had dolloped whipped cream and sipped hot Turkish tea.

I stood on the sidewalk, momentarily alone. I looked across to a neighbor, and immediately all her lights snapped off. We walked the empty streets. It's late November, he murmured to me, his tone low, in keeping with the softness of the evening air.

After a while, I turned to him. That's the third house that's gone dark when I passed. He looked up at the nearest street light. It had dimmed at our approach and was now completely spent. Halfway down the block, he turned to look back and chuckled in surprise. I turn around. The light was full bright.

We finish our walk. We cross two women walking a dog. At our porch, I hesitate, one foot on the bottom step.

Under the blind of the next door neighbor, the blue light of a television flickers.

Strings

This weekend son the elder had a guest over. Hearing a fearsome noise, I traced the sound to his bedroom. I opened the door to find both boys, musical instruments in hand, in full-throated form.

Son the elder was dressed in a bright green down vest (borrowed for the occasion) and yellow tinted granny glasses. Long hair flying, he had his (new) violin tucked under his chin.

His friend was playing the guitar. His back to me, he took longer to notice my arrival.

There was something in how son the elder looked at me. Violin still in place, bow resting on the strings, he grinned at me.

It was a smile of pleasure and a smile of one caught in the act of cutting loose. And it was, in its own way, a knowing smile. A smile of recognition, a smile of complicity.

I backed out of the room, closing the door gently behind me. I headed down the stairs, a little surprised by what I'd learned about my son, and very grateful for him and for the friend who'd brought out this little known side of him, this part of him that is joyous and is free.

Pears and Cardamon

I've spread the dining table with the Thanksgiving tablecloth, orange and maroon turkeys on a black background. Last night we had roast chicken and afterward, while the children and their guest cleared the dishes and set the table with rummikub, I sliced pears, ripe but firm, and cut butter into oatmeal.

After husband had won the the game and the children had thundered upstairs, I made a pot of strong tea and brought in the crisp, studded with small points of cardamon. Together we watched "Bad Education" by Almodovar.

I watched the beginning twice, so struck was I by the opening credits. "Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown" too had striking credits. The final credit in the opening sequence is on an image of women printed in Technicolor - the camera pulls back to reveal the wall on which the image hangs, the room in which the wall stands, the dwelling of which the wall is a part.

Everything is part of a whole.

Fall Lingers Late in the South

The weather report says that a cold front is coming. But today is t shirt weather. Wash your car weather.

Driving to Starbucks, my reward before the work, I listen to the radio. A flute quartet by Mozart.

The trees have all turned. Yellow leaves against a bright blue sky.

The clouds are fluffy, like the whipped cream on my coffee.

This afternoon everything floats.

We are the Bridge between Past and Future

This weekend I went to see a play, Las Nuevas Tamaleras, a funny and touching story of three friends and cousins who set out to make tamales -- and create a link to past generations of women. From the great-grandmother who spoke only Spanish and who had known only one man, one who had not treated her kindly, to the great-granddaughter, who moves easily between two languages and finds happiness with her husband, we see more than the exchange of recipes, more than a discussion over whether to spice the masa, the cornmeal paste that holds the meat filling.

We see both the hard work and the deep satisfaction of preparing that which sustains.

In November the Skies Turn Gray

I went for my walk late today. Along the way, I found a neighbor had planted flowers along the edges of his ditch. Blue daze, lamb's ear, and varigated lariope. If I were to put my nose to the pink and white dianthus, they would smell like clove.

On the way home, it began to rain. The drops fall softly on my face and hair.

Rhythm in the Air

Yesterday I was late in picking up my son. When I got to the school, the playground was nearly empty. I saw him at once. He waved at me but continued to swing. Leaning back, his feet strain for the sky. When the swing begins its backward descent, he drops his head forward, his hair a curtain over his knees.

Just as I begin to lose patience, he makes a flying leap from his perch at its apogee. His legs pump air for a moment, then break his fall in the soft mulch. He rolls neatly onto his side and climbs quickly to his feet. He brushes his clothes and hoists his backpack to his shoulder.

As he comes toward me, the sunlight of the late fall afternoon catches in his hair.

The World Begins and Stops at the Edge of My Bed

We are enjoying a glorious Indian summer, with warm afternoons, blue skies, and turning leaves.

But mornings there is a slight chill in the air - just enough to warrant a blanket for sleeping. I wake early - a side benefit of the switch in daylight savings. The cat hears me get up and scratches at the door.

Husband stirs and I slip back under the covers to nuzzle. In the room above our heads, steps of son the younger. They move down the stairs, and into our bed. He too slips under the covers. I pull the blanket up over his shoulder and rest my hand on it.

Husband strokes my ear with his nose. The cat joins us on the bed, settling in the space between my son's back and my belly. He lies across my arm, a warm weight.

The breathing of son, husband, and cat slows. Husband's fingers twitch within my palm, then lie heavy.

In the sound of their respiration, I feel the universe expand, then contract.

Post-Hurricane World

Storm winds visited us recently. At four a.m. I woke to darkness within and an odd pressure without. Moving to the front of the house, I watch and listen as trees bend in half, windows rattle and walls shake. My bare feet step in the cold water of a small puddle. Wind has pushed rain under the door. I push back with a large towel. Husband and the children, in the newer part of the house, slumber on. I too climb under the duvet and huddle, waiting for the storm to pass.

The winds eventually die away; the rain remains a steady drizzle. Tree limbs litter our yard, lay across power lines in the alley. Rain has flooded our street, and my car. We don slickers and walk the neighborhood. Many streets are blocked. Here an ancient tree has shattered. There a tall cedar, a warrior in its prime, has fallen. I bend over to touch it, pay my respects. When I leave, I take a branch fragment with me, cones still green.

Everywhere we look, we see downed trees. On the corner four streets away, we see a roof line cloven in two, people packing their car to seek shelter elsewhere. Could have been worse, we all say to each other.

In the rain, we clear our yard, and yards adjacent. We stack limbs and branches, rake up loose pieces, sweep the road of leaves and pine needles. Then we lay down our rakes and walk some more.

It will take time to survey the full extent of the damage. For now, we walk and as we walk, sometimes our hands bump.

Clearing out the Underbrush

This weekend husband and I worked in the yard. Wild trees had grown up in the lobelia. Morning glory had killed a flowering bush. The gardenias had died a mysterious death after a neighbor did work on the fence. Plants grown familiar through repeated weedings choked the rose bushes and the black-eyed susans.

I sat on the front sidewalk and pulled out the runners of St. Augustine that blanketed what used to be mulched flower bed. I reach my fingers in between the stems of the four o-clocks to single out the stalks of wild grass. Husband wields a shovel, digs deep to uproot what does not belong.

We work in separate parts of the yard, a fence, and more, between us. He flops on the grass, his face red under his hat. I pause, scissors in one hand, a rose cane in the other. A reluctant gardener, I still cannot bear to see him wilt. "Do you need me to get you water?"

"No, I have some," he says. And if later anger makes my hands shake, when I go outside again there is a sense of openness, of space cleared of what kept new things from growing.

The possibility of a new landscape.

Water and Sky

Labor Day has come and gone and with its passing, so too the heat of the summer has eased. Mornings now are cooler - the heat holding off until 10 a.m. or later.

The children and I went to Brazos Bend State Park. The heat started early that day and we took refuge in the Nature Center, where we petted a week-old baby alligator. We walked around a lagoon with its coterie of ducks and the occasional egret. We hid from the afternoon heat in a nearby gas station, where we ate french fries and ice cream.

By the late afternoon, the heat was more forgiving and the breeze had picked up. We walked to the far side of the lake and sat on a bluff, on the narrow end of the water, where the reflection of trees lined both sides of the lake and the far end. As we sat, the noise of the cicadas rose and reached a crescendo. A bass jumped once, twice, and kept on going. Son the younger counted seven circles of ripples. A magical number. The number of intuition meets the symbol of fearlessness and freedom of movement.

Later that night we peered through telescopes at Saturn. A night of the new moon, the sky was deep and endless.

The Wind Lifts Both Prayers and Tones

Yesterday I passed by one of my favorite houses. It used to be a grocery store, back in the 1930's. Today an artist has made it his own. The double doors are turquoise. A child's red tricycle is sculpture.

I noticed that the tree had been trimmed, allowing me to walk down the sidewalk without ducking. As I passed the house, I stopped. Strung between two branches was a light line. Hanging from the line were five unusual prayer flags. Roughly four inches square of heavyweight raw silk, the flags bore haikus or other messages. "Be the peace you wish to see," said the central flag. Each flag was partnered with a small Tibetan-style bell, the size of my thumbnail.

Just inches above, a third branch thrust a pair of pinecones and a clutch of long needles in my direction.

Rinsed

This morning I woke to the sound of rain. All day long the soft patter and heavy, gray clouds cocooned the house. The children slept late.

Early morning I drop off the car and walk back home. On the way, I find a stand of phlox, white petals set with a ring of purple. I stoop to inhale their fragrance. The odor reminds me of my grandmother, of the stem or two of phlox, sometimes white, sometimes lavender, that graced her summer breakfast table.

Storm warnings keep me home all day. I float through this day that has no schedule. A gift of time.

Late afternoon, I step outside, into a street cooled by the downpour. The air smells of mint, freshly washed.

The Herald

When I pulled up in front of my house last week, a heron waited in my driveway. I had never seen one on my street before, let alone one on the ground.

I drove past my house cautiously. The heron did not move. I parked on the other side of my house and walked back to my gate. As I approached, the heron moved away slowly, stilts picking delicately through the grass. I opened the gate and then closed it behind me. The heron merely walked to the far side of my yard. Only when I climbed the steps to my porch, did it take flight.

Google tells me that the heron was considered a messenger from Athena. For Christians the heron was a symbol of contemplation. For Native Americans the heron totem reflects the need for self-determination, the following of one's own, unique path. The Chinese consider the heron and the crow to be symbols of the yin and yang, the unity of opposites.

When I come out of the house later that afternoon, a crow stands watch over the yard across the street.

Quartet

This morning I went walking early - at that hour when, although light, the crickets still sing and birds fly low.

At a corner, I cross the street to stand where the spray of an in-ground sprinkler system will reach me. Four small black cylinders, inches off the earth, direct streams of water in long arcs that sweep the lawn in slow motion.

Like soldiers, hollow black square posts surround the house. An unfinished fence.

I wait near the street, where large, damp rocks separate grass from gravel. The water takes its time in arriving.

The far nozzle splatters first on a tree, then on one of the fence posts. In reply, the nozzle nearest me does likewise. The other two nozzles have only posts with which to make their music. The cadence is such that some nozzles are still replying while others have begun their next phrase.

The sound of the water hitting the posts is soft at first, increases in volume, then fades away. It is the sound of brushing metal, as if keys were being made in the next room.

The water reaches me finally. A few drops, then a rush, then a parting pat-pat.

As I walk away, the sound follows.

Sound and Spirit

Earlier this week, not far from my house, I discovered what I call a trumpet tree. Its height slightly exceeded my own and the flowers, pale pink trumpets that hung bell -down, were each the size of my hand. They did not have much of an odor but the fragility of their color - the hint of pink that heralds the dawn - and the sheer number of trumpets covering the tree, held me for several moments.

Farther down the block, I started to walk past a telephone pole but movement at the top drew my gaze upward. A long and leafless double strand of vine climbed to the top of the pole where it exploded, a wild welter of green leaf and orange trumpet flower, like the ivy crowns of the Maenads. But although a breeze lifted leaves and then allowed them gently to settle, this was not the movement that had caught my eye. I waited. One, then two hummingbirds made an appearance. Their wings ablur, their beaks needle-sharp.

Continuing down the street I spied a bird cage hidden near the trunk of a large bush. Its wire frame was rusted from exposure to the elements; the inhabitants, two small ceramic birds, refugees no doubt from some yard sale, seemed no worse the wear from sun and rain. In the same garden, a tree limb had been painted the blue of the robes of the Virgin Mary and planted in the side yard. Each of the many branches held a cobalt blue bottle.

The bottle tree is a familiar Southern feature. It is said that the bottle tree originated in Africa, where it was believed that evil spirits would be first attracted by the light glinting off glass, then trapped in the bottles.

In my yard too, there is a bottle tree. In addition to bottles that once held water, also cobalt blue, there are bottles the color of the shallows of the Mediterranean Sea, bottles that once held gin, Sapphire Bombay. The fence behind my bottle tree is painted blue, ocher, and brown, its inspiration taken from the painted houses of the Basotho in South Africa.

Basotho women in South Africa and Lesotho paint their prayers. Brilliant splashes of color and striking geometric designs decorate the outside walls of their homes. When the rain washes away the color, it is said, it means their prayers have been successful.

So it is that what at first appears to be mere whimsy may hold a deeper meaning, the line between the sacred and the profane determined by the maker's intent.

A Flash of Scarlet

This morning I was scarcely out of the house before a blur of red caught my eye. Turning, I saw a cardinal perched on the limb overhanging my neighbor's sidewalk. I walked cautiously to the driveway. Blue jays are common on my street; cardinals are rare.

As I tried to get a better view of him, the bird tipped his head from side to side, trying perhaps to get a better view of me. It did not take him long to reach a decision.

He jumped from twig to branch before taking flight and disappearing from view. As I continued down the street on my walk, I thought about the bird. About its movements, quick and bright. About the color of its wings and breast, that of a gerber daisy rather than a rose. About how that flash of carmine had snapped me into the present, and about how the day, already underway to judge by the heat instead of the hour, had begun well.

It is not often that we begin the day truly awake.

A Delicate Line

This week while out on my walk I stopped suddenly in the middle of the block. It had not rained in several days but the ditch still had water. On this block, the ditch was grass-lined, small points of green sticking up sharply from water that reflected the blue of the sky above.

Reflected too was the breast of the egret I had stopped to watch. It stood delicately on one leg. Neither of us moved for a long while. A breeze stirred the branches of the tree that shaded us both.

Eventually, I eased my way down the sidewalk, turning my head to keep the bird in view. It too turned to watch me. Visible now, the feather attached to the crest of its head arched out and down, toward its shoulder.

I stopped to admire the line of feather and the bird took flight, its long legs trailing.

Into the Sun and Out

On a walk earlier this week I came across two groups of dragonflies. The first was near a shaded pond, on the grounds of an elementary school.

Dragonflies always remind me of my father. While he lay dying, the hospital parking lot was filled with what seemed like hundreds of dragonflies. Now when I see a dragonfly, I always feel that is it a messenger, a sign that my father is near.

When I think about dragonflies, I remember that my great-grandmother's broach was a dragonfly. I do not know its story but I know she wore that pin every day. When we were small, she would pretend that the dragonfly could "bite." We would advance a nervous finger, she would hide a smile as she covertly aimed the sharp end of the stickpin. At her unexpected jump forward, we would all dissolve into complicit giggles, a rare moment of connection with this woman from a different time.

What I have loved about dragonflies is their iridescence, the veins of black in the transparent, barely-there double wings. Just recently I read that some Native Americans consider the dragonfly a sign of renewal after a period of great hardship. A rainbow that flies.

The second group of dragonflies hovered high above a sun-dappled street. I stop to count. Five, no, six. I stand for a long time, watching.

They dart into the sun and out.

Perfection

I've been out walking this week. If I leave the house early enough, a breeze keeps the air moving.

I've been noticing the trees. Each tree inhabits its own space, claims the area around it. Each tree projects its own aura, defines the character of its patch of ground. Here a tree is jaunty, there welcoming, like a greeter in church.

Each tree has its personality, its own nature. The rough bark, a vertical version of a dry and craggy landscape. Limbs feathered with delicate shoots of fern.

It is the limbs themselves I notice. The twists and sudden turns. The unexpected appearance of a bough. No one, I read somewhere once, ever suggests a tree would be more beautiful if one of its branches were higher or placed on the other side. A tree is appreciated for what it is.

Elsewhere I've read that this is God's attitude toward us. In God's eyes, the author writes, there is nothing wrong with us, and, moreover, never has been.

I count four nests in one tree. Somewhere, high up, an unseen bird sings.

Teaching is Just the Sharing of Your Heart

Last Friday we had guests for dinner. Husband was out of town so it was just me and five boys. We had our traditional roast chicken dinner, mashed potatoes, and what according to son the older is the best part of the meal, my gravy.

Afterward, we replaced our standard Shabbas Table Talk, our weekly study of ethics, with a reading of a prayer which hangs on our dining room wall. Each boy took his turn reading aloud.

May this home blossom with love and learning. May those who dwell within treasure goodness and generosity. ... May happiness, hope, and good health nourish all who enter and all who depart.

I had left out the drums from our Monday night lesson. Son the younger demonstrated the rhythm he had learned. One of the guests sat at the second drum and took up the beat. Another guest went to the piano and added to the music. Each boy took his turn demonstrating and encouraging, learning and teaching.

I stood in the kitchen, washing dishes and listening. A warm happiness in my heart.

May creativity and kindness be valued within this loving environment.

Rain and Rumi

Last week I headed down I-80 in the opposite direction, toward Iowa City. Nervous, both over the destination - a writer's workshop - and the journey, a heavy rainstorm.

As I drove, I listened to a recording of poems by Rumi. Halfway to Iowa City, the storm turned electrical. As a bolt of light tore the sky in half, illuminating the crest of my road, Rumi said "love is both lightning and the "ah" we say after."

The Laying of Flowers

When my sister and I were young, one afternoon around Memorial Day we would help our grandmother load mason jars of peonies and black-eyed susans, roses and sweet peas into my mother's car and go to the cemetery.

There, along with my brother, we would lay on our bellies and watch the fish in the pond while my mother and grandmother brushed grass clippings off the tombstones of my great-grandfather and my mother's sister, who died before my mother was born. My grandmother would send us to a nearby faucet to fetch the water with which she would fill vases set deep in the earth before dividing her flowers between the graves.

Today my sister and I made our annual trip to the cemetery together. Now there are many more graves to decorate: my great-grandmother, my grandfather, and my grandmother herself, as well as my mother and my step-father. As we work, my sister and I, to brush clipping off the tombstones and fill vases with water and flowers, my sister tells me family stories. I listen, marveling that she has collected the lives of people I only vaguely remember.

Before we leave, my sister offers to show me the grave of my grandfather's stepfather. I don't remember ever visiting it before. We find it finally, on the far side of the large tree rather than the downhill side. It is a simple white stone with his name and dates of birth, 1860, a year before the outbreak of the civil war, and death, 1913 (of an accidental overdose of morphine).

A few feet away we find a stone marked simply BABY, a family name, and the dates June 25, 1925, and August 25, 1925.

After the heat of the afternoon pushes us toward the car, my sister tells me that there was an epoch in which she and her husband spent the summer traveling from cemetery to cemetery, to visit the graves of the hundred or so relatives in the area.

One of the cemeteries is so old, she says, that almost no one remembers that it exists. At this cemetery, she continues, she and her husband had learned of the grave of a small child and had adopted it, visiting it and decorating it with flowers. "No one but us even knows it's there," she said, getting into the car.

In the newer part of this cemetery, behind us now as we drive out, there is a section reserved for babies. Wind chimes hang from trees, pinwheels stuck into soft ground turn furiously in the breeze. Balloons tug at their strings, straining for the freedom of the sky.

I think this way of people, the living and the dead. Both anchored to the earth and heaven-bound. And that we all, the living and the dead, like to have the clippings brushed from our gravestones, and to have our lives, however brief, remembered.

Released from Skins Grown Too Tight

Today I went to the hospital. I work there on Fridays. I am an artist-in-residence. I go from treatment room to treatment room, offering materials for small art projects and, upon occasion, a listening ear.

Today's patient was a cheerful woman , serene even as the nurse tried vein after vein, looking for one that would hold the needle. Once she was settled, with both the chemo and the hot pink fabric I'd given her for making a spirit doll, she told me a story.

About the same time that the nurse was vein-hunting, the children and staff at her school had commemorated the life of another teacher, one who had lost her battle with breast cancer. "I had this idea," she told me as she moved her sewing needle in and out of the flecked fabric, right sides together, of releasing pink balloons in memory of her colleague.

"We sold them for fifty cents a piece," she said, "and in the end sold one hundred and thirty of them." She looked up from her stitching. "They sold so many the balloons wouldn't all fit in one car."

She handed me the needle for rethreading. "That phone call was to tell me when they released the balloons, they all stayed together in one clump and rose straight toward a cloud." She took back the needle. "It was a sign to all of us that she was there."

I felt a tightening at the base of my throat and a small sting behind my eyes.

She fastened a ribbon around the doll's waist and then held it up, strings of beads swinging, a tiny pink butterfly on each one.

Butterflies, I said, a symbol of transformation and resurrection.

Going In, Coming Out

Mondays I have a half hour between dropping off son the elder and teaching my first class. Not far from my Monday teaching assignment is a church with a labyrinth. Tucked into the L of the church, the labyrinth is open to trees and street on the other two sides.

It is gravel with small pavers set into the earth to mark the spiral path leading to the center. Shaded by the building's shadow, the air is cool. The street is quiet. I see rather than hear the wind moving tree limbs.

The crunch of small stones under my feet is something I feel as well as hear. It is satisfying somehow. Like some kind of inner resistance breaking down, giving way.

As I walk, I imagine a small blossom springing up behind me, one in the trace of each footstep.

Once in the center, I face the four directions. My hands empty at my sides, I ask myself to truly see what there is to be seen.

Walking out, I am carrying a small bubble of space inside me.

No matter when I finish, I am always right on time.

The Power of Light

A few weeks ago the family and I went to a festival. At a booth that sold crystal sun catchers, we chose beads and crystals and stood watching as the vendor tapped and twisted, chatting all the while.

It is a small ornament, two tiny teardrop crystals and an amethyst bead. Husband hung it from the passenger-side visor of my car.

After weeks of overcast skies, the sun came out this week, sending small rainbows flying around the interior of my car.

At the fairy camp I run every summer, I have a small sun-powered crystal that rotates slowly, sending rainbows darting and flying across my floor. When a child is hesitant about entering, unsure whether to leave mother at the door, I take her hand. "Come see the fairies dance."

Tadpole Weather

It rained cats and dogs this weekend; the lightning and sound of falling water woke me in the wee hours. When I opened my eyes next, it was just becoming light. As I came awake, I became aware of a gentle pressure against my hip. Our black cat had curled himself into the small of my back. His warmth and the almost imperceptible movement of his breathing reminded me of my children as infants. Their tiny bodies heavy and smelling of milk. I fell back asleep, careful not to stir.

An hour later, as I climbed the three steps to my house after feeding the neighbor's kitty, I heard a woodpecker tapping nearby. I stopped in the cool morning air to listen. After the rain, the air was fresh and the ditches full.

Mon Oncle

This weekend I watched Jacques Tati's "Mon Oncle". Son the elder and his film buff friend floated in and out of the room. "Mon Oncle" revisits the character of "Monsieur Hulot Goes on Holiday." Still the hapless bumbler from the earlier film, in "Mon Oncle" Monsieur Hulot takes us into his sister's family. Ostensibly poking gentle fun at those who live in ultra-modern houses (and what fun it is fifty years on to see what the "modern life" purported to be), "Mon Oncle" is in many ways a lyric paen to small town life. Dogs run through streets, a streetsweeper engages in conversations that he cannot end, children play pranks on heedless adults.

Although Monsieur Hulot himself has his own encounter with automation run amok, it is the house itself which is one of our main characters. The kitchen is so modern that no one can get himself a glass of water. A living room so cold and unfriendly that the family lives outdoors. Yet there are hints of warmth. Round windows are two great eyes that open and close.

And if the city and its train station come with a brash jazz soundtrack, the return to the dogs and the children and the sound of a nostalgic accordion remind us that we have come home.

And Our Neighbors Wove Ribbons Around a Maypole

Yesterday was May 1st, May Day,and the fairies came to our street.

They made small mussy-tussies out of construction paper, stickers, and ribbon. They filled these with flowers from our yard: white lobelia, tiny, pale pink roses, white and purple violets from the north side of the house.

And in the early morning, just barely light but late enough that cats sat waiting for their breakfast, they stole through the neighborhood, leaving spring greetings hanging from front doorknobs.

As the mussy-tussies move gently in the morning air, violets nestle closer to sprigs of rosemary, tiny purple features looking out of white faces.

Kitchen Witches

Yesterday a friend and I made jam. She had steeped the strawberries overnight in sugar and rose geranium leaves. I slit open the green husks of cardamon pods and emptied the fragrant black seeds into her white ceramic mortar, crushing and cracking them with the pestle.

She put a judicious amount of the cardamon into one heavy pot and lemon verbena in another. As the strawberries bubbled and foamed, we dried jars and talked of dancing and the easy, intimate rapport we had with our bodies when we took class regularly.

When the syrup had thickened, she ladled the steaming dark ruby into our waiting jars and wrote out labels while I made a fresh pot of tea.

We carried our cups to the table and she read my tarot. Later, as I was leaving, I took a jar of honey from the window ledge near the front door. She had infused the honey with cinnamon and stacked the clear jars where light from the setting sun would catch their dark amber contents and make them glow, like jewels.

Continuity

This weekend I got up early and headed out in my car. The morning was cool - a cold front had blown in during the night - and gray.

Turning on to the street at the end of my block, I startled a heron sitting in the middle of the road. It took flight, its large wings beating slowly but powerfully to lift it into the air. At the next intersection, it wheeled and flew over the outstretched branch of a live oak, bark carpeted in silver-gray lichen.

The live oaks are majestic trees. In this neighborhood, they are all at least one hundred years old. Some are much older.

There is a heron nest nearby, saved from a developer's bulldozer by neighbors who banded together and bought the property back. I have a friend who lives on the other side of the boulevard and she too has a heron nest in her live oak.

The herons return every year. Neighbors out for a walk often stop and stare up into the trees.

I like to think of something passed on here. The ancient instinct of the birds, called back year after to year, to nest and regenerate. The neighborhood too stirring and coming together. And the live oaks, every year their fur a little shaggier, their branches a little more sheltering, their roots a little deeper.

Leavetaking I

Leaving the first of two galleries I visited last week, I paused on the landing to look out over the neighboring field. The stair to the third-floor gallery was on the outside of the building. Afraid of heights, I averted my eyes to avoid looking through the metal lattice-work to the ground below. Instead, I looked out and over. The sky had turned gray and the wind had picked up. Rain was in the air.

I looked out at a skyline of old industrial buildings. Above me a tree bent and straightened. A train was passing. Boxcar after boxcar lurched past, the metal-on-metal grinding rhythmic, hypnotic. I listened to that sound a long time, hair in my face, my jacket billowing.

Working with the Elements

Yesterday I went to see the work of Cang Xin. Cang Xin is a photographer and a shaman. He is someone who believes that all things have spirit.

His color photographs in the series Man and the Sky Series 1 and 2 are pictures of Chinese landscape populated by men (and a few women) chest-deep (or deeper) in holes or lakes. In several of the photos, we see large circles of fire with a human buried chest-deep in each center. We see magical numbers: seven circles, eleven. We see seven rows of seven men each.

In one photo, humans stand chest-deep in water, rocks held high above their heads. In some cases, only arms and the rock appear above the water. In another lake photo, the men are holding tree branches.

In some photos, the men are in a trance-like state. In others, they look back at the viewer, as curious about us as we are about them.

The Absence of the Subject

Earlier this week I went to see Michael Somoroff's "The Absence of the Subject." In this series of photographs and video installations, Somoroff has taken the photographs of turn-of-the-century German photographer August Sander and removed the people, the subject.

What remains is a haunting sense of waiting. A table set for tea, an open gate, a pot on a stove.

Yet the sense of something missing is largely unconscious. If we had not known the human faces had been removed, would we still react to their absence?

In the video installation room, three photographs have been animated. Pages of open books subtly lift and fall, the leaves of ivy rustle. And where once, according to the original photographs outside the gallery, a pater familius stood surrounded by his large brood. a lone butterfly meanders across an empty expanse of lawn. Tips of branches bend into the frame, and out again.

In my clear vase, I see the flower stems

This morning I went outside to cut some roses for my dining room table. I spent the first fifteen minutes snipping off decayed blossoms, deadheading. Several of the blooms had one, two, or three petals, still vibrant in color, still clinging to the hip. Some were nestled cheek by jowl with tight-in-the-bud flowers-to-be. Others were the sole occupant of a lonely stretch of stem. In neither case could I bring myself to end this small burst of deep pink. Later, when the wind and rain have battered them naked, and the sun has shriveled them dry. Then, will I return and snip the branch clean.

I cut two stems of rosemary and a single rose. They sit by me now, on my right hand. The rosemary stalks curl upward; the head of the rose nods.

Bike Ride

Yesterday afternoon son the elder and I went for a bike ride. I lifted my face to the warming sun. To my right, an orange trumpet vine climbed a long-needled pine tree, the many tiny roots of each sucking "foot" fingering its way deep into rough bark.

The tires sing against the road. Up ahead, son the elder puts both of his feet on the handbars and swoops down into a grass-lined ditch and out again.

Awaiting Rain in the Early Evening

Yesterday while stopped for a red light I glanced up at the sky. The setting sun shone from behind passing clouds. Spokes of sun framed the largest cloud, like a Russian icon. The stoplight changed and I drove on, only to pull off the road moments later. Bumping down an unpaved sidestreet, I chased clouds the color of pewter and tarnished silver.

The trees cleared and I stopped the car. For long moments I watched. The distant sky still a deep blue. In the foreground, a series of pale puffs formed a stately procession, emerging from the trees, marching across the horizon as majestically as elephants, and disappearing behind the skeletons of houses-to-come.

In the middle distance, two clouds linked arms and embraced. In each, a small opening through which poured burnished bronze, ruddy with the day's last glow . As they pulled apart, the small opening elongated, narrowed, and, finally, became two.

Flowers in My Kitchen

This week, finally back from Fotofest, I bought myself some tulips. They are the color of a child's cheek, flushed from play, and as delicate as the breath on your neck from a child asleep on your shoulder.

I put them in a handpainted vase striped green and white, the green the color of tulip stems. They arc gracefully over the countertop and the basket of apples sitting near by.

The basket is woven bamboo; the apples are green. Amid the apples is one large grapefruit.

If I were to cut it open, its flesh would be the color of a child's lips, just before it reaches the age of walking.

Bright, with Rain and Cold by Morning

Today driving home from dropping off son the elder at school, I passed a house with a fresh coat of white paint. Adorning the rail of the porch was a row of white pots, each with a bright red geranium.

Later, on the way to Starbucks, I passed a house with purple shades, the color of the stripe on Senatorial togas.

Then and Now

Yesterday my Dubliners CD arrived. I'd gone looking for some Irish music with which to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with my tiny students. The Dubliners brought back memories of a second story apartment in an old house in Omaha, Nebraska. Two doctors shared quarters, one Irish and the product of a Jesuit education, a repository of rude limericks, and the maker of one mean beef and lime curry.

As I started to sing along with familiar lyrics, I found myself caught up in the rhythm, my feet tapping out a jig of their own invention. A fiddle, a banjo, and whiskey-rough voices softened by the lyric sound of Eire spun me and waltzed me and set me back down, a little lighter on the Earth than I'd been before.

Pamplemousse

This morning I dug out a bottle of face cleanser I hadn't used in a while, the one I can't buy any more. A creamy foam that left my face feeling smooth and clean.

I squeeze out one of the last drops of a sample moisturizer, the one I haven't bought for myself yet because it's forty dollars an ounce. The fragrance is "pamplemousse," French for grapefruit. It glides over my skin, leaving a citrus perfume in my nostrils.

I open the bottle of my favorite body lotion, the one they've discontinued. I put a small dollop of "bergamot coriander" on my wrist and transfer it first to the other wrist, then to my temples.

I go to the kitchen to make myself some tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Surrender

This morning son the older and I had a tiff. He was having trouble with a piece of equipment, and I, eating breakfast and reading the paper, was annoyed at the interruption. I too had a bit of trouble with the recalcitrant hardware but with a moment of focused attention resolved the issue. You just didn't try, I said.

I walked out on his cry of outrage, only to walk back in a moment later. I'm sorry, I said, I shouldn't have taken on your problem. The next time I know you will find the solution yourself.

He goes to the piano then and plays for a while. When he stops I go to him. He is still upset. I wrap my arms around his unyielding body. I hug harder, then step back to look him in the eye. I pour all my love into my gaze and after a moment, his shoulders relax and he steps into my embrace, puts his head on my shoulder.

I lean my head against his and we stand for a long moment. His hair against my cheek, he breathes into my neck.

Rivers and Tides

Last weekend husband and I watched "River and Tides," a film on the work of artist Andy Goldsworthy. Twigs, leaves, icicles, and thorns. Water and stones. These are the materials of his sculptures.

The icicles and leaves last but a few hours in the sun and wind. A fistful of crushed rock explodes into color as it hits the surface of a mountain stream, then is diluted and washed away as the river continues its journey.

The cairns, the stones stacked in the shape of an egg, a "seed" he calls it, are more durable. At times, though, he builds them on the beach at low tide. He waits nearby, to view and document the arrival of incoming water.

The work was not made to be destroyed by the sea, however. It is instead a gift to the sea. "The sea has taken the work and made more of it than I could have ever hoped..."

The real work of art, he says, is the change. The transition from one ephemeral state to another.

He pulls reeds from the ground, each stem blackened below the point where it was still surrounded by earth, where the contact between plant and earth has changed the plant. Evidence of heat.

Spring, he says, starts deep in the ground.

Vois sur ton chemin

Last week son the older and I watched a French film, Les Choristes, a story about a music teacher and a boarding school. This week the soundtrack arrives in the mail.

That evening son the older fills the kitchen sink with water, then puts on the CD, cranks up the volume, and, lyric sheet on countertop, sings along as he washes the pots from dinner.

The next day he sits at the piano and tries out chords. My son, the self-taught composer, at work.

(And I, the mama, so proud to see a seed, secretly planted, begin to sprout.)

Offerings of Love

Yesterday the weather turned warm (again). I went out on the front porch to find sunlight glistening on the grass. I fetched a pair of scissors and cut a single rose from the corner bush and a curve of rosemary that had started to bloom.

Back inside I gathered my silver tray, some incense and a scrap of bread. In Bali, the people prepare offerings to the gods every morning. Every morning, they place a flower, some incense and a small ball of rice on a leaf. Every morning, after a short prayer, they leave the offering on the steps to their house or on the sidewalk.

In the larger hotels and other business establishments, they have people whose job it is to walk through the building with these offerings. I light my incense and walk through my house, circling each room. I look anew at the familiar surroundings and give thanks. Give thanks for the shelter, for the beauty, for the family I love.

In the kitchen, I stop and give special thanks for the roses dear husband gave me for Valentine's Day. Their pale coral warms the seafoam of the kitchen walls.

When I have finished, I take the tray and leave it on the porch floor, at the top of the stairs. In a short while, the sun will reach it and sun will glint off the silver, steal through the petals.

Needlewomen

Last night we had guests over for son the younger. I hand out glow sticks and they rush out the door, into the dark of a late winter evening. Whoops of excitement fill the air. It grows quiet as they head down the block. Moments later they return. Glow sticks blue, green and orange are now crowns, necklaces. They adorn forearms and climb calves like the laces of Roman sandals. Neon colors dance in the black night air.

Inside I sit doing needlepoint, pulling soft wool through the stiff canvas. On the television, Jane Austin's crisp dialogue crackles with irony and early nineteen century manners. In country drawing rooms, in those days before television, men read aloud and women stitch.

I clip my yarn and secure my empty needle in a corner of the canvas. Now upstairs, the children are quiet, engrossed in video games. Their faces illuminated by a flickering light, like the hearth fires of days gone by.

New Moon

Tuesday night I went to a women's new moon celebration. I came almost straight from work but arrived very late. I did take time to put on a saffron shalwar kameez, with turquoise and purple embroidery at the hem of the bouffant pants, a sheer purple and silver skirt, and a belt of silver jingles. I knew I would arrive near the closing ceremony, I tell one woman, but I came anyway, just so I could wear my costume.

The room was lit with candles, the altar laid with a maroon sari, flecked with gold. A small tortoise shell has a place of honor. Women dance with scarves. I am sorry to have missed the chanting.

Leaving, the wind catches and brings back to me the scent of my perfume, Casimir. I feel a fine rain upon my face.

Subtle Music

Saturday friends come to dinner. I make a fish curry; Elizabeth a pound cake with grilled fresh pineapple and a brown sugar rum sauce, the pineapple a perfect complement to the spicy fish. I wear a jeweled "bindi" on my forehead and jeweled sandals on my feet. I listen to Indian music as I cook.

Sunday Leslie comes to walk my yard with me and discuss gardening plans. We talk of bamboo. At times invasive, we are nonetheless beguiled by the subtle music of canes rubbing and tapping in the breeze.

This evening as I come home from work, I stop in mid-stride just steps from the car. The sound of cicadas fills the air, like the roaring of lions at sunset. I am struck that it was not until I heard them again that I realize they had been silent.

At my front steps, I look over into my neighbor's yard. A palm towers over his house; the fronds rustle in the wind.

Spring Comes Early in the South

It warmed up nearly 30 degrees overnight. This meant that the morning was foggy. When I went out to get the paper, the street light, a replica of the old-fashioned gas lights, glowed softly behind the neighbor's tropical plant. Three palm-like trunks silhouetted against a yellow mist, their leaves dangling like swords.

This morning was a "special breakfast." Croissants, son the elder's favorite, and sweet, milky coffee, special to son the younger.

On the drive to school, the trees and bushes in the distant park glistened silver in the light of the rising sun.

Home again, I stopped at the front gate, listening to the sound of the earth awakening.

Think Pink

Today I bought some freshly baked palmiers, a heart shaped cookie of many buttery layers, a crisp confection that never fails to remind me of Paris. I whip heavy cream into soft peaks, adding powdered sugar and strawberries. This rosy mousse I ladle into white ceramic dishes, the ones I use for creme brule and souflees. I place a cookie, tip down, into each dish, each dessert the color of a child's blush. I give my heart to each one. Valentine's Day comes early to my house.

Yesterday when I showed up to teach dance class, a sea of pink leotards and dance skirts washed around me. I kissed little heads and rubbed little bellies. I have two sons, I tell people, and 250 little girls.

Animal Crackers

The cold wave continues and I find it hard to change out of my fleece jammies. They are in fact my dance pants but since they have little white lambs on them, it is clear someone thinks they are jammies.

I make a coloring page with a bear in a tutu and type on it "We're crackers for Ms Claire's dance class!" I take the coloring pages and some animal crackers to all my classes. The children spy them the moment they walk into class and their eyes grow bright. We wag our tails like dogs, arch our backs like cats, and float our arms like swans. At class end, they fall over themselves like puppies, eager for their gifts.

Two days later it is the weekly "donut day" at our house. I get out my Christmas gift from the boys: a china cup and small china plate. They are pink with an sophisticated black cat on the side and, near the handle, two small black paw prints. Reading the morning paper, I drink my hot tea and eat my chocolate glazed donut with rainbow sprinkles.

Upstairs, the children tumble and jump. Outside, the wind blows and trees bend.

Cold, this wet morning

This morning I woke to the sound of rain. An irregular but continuous stream of water hits my back deck. At my feet, the black cat stretches, jumps lightly down to the floor, and makes his way into the kitchen.

I make my way too, to the other side of the bed, where I throw one leg over husband's belly. My other leg travels down along side his until it slides into place like a puzzle piece. My feet cradle his. My arm rests on his chest, where it rises and falls with his steady breathing.

Now, the rain sounds different. Now, I hear small drops falling on the broad elephant ear leaf just outside the window. The sound is taut, like a drum. In the distance, a train whistle. Husband stirs and turns to slide his arm under my head. "My favorite sound," he murmurs. And in the dark whispers to me the remnants of his dream.

Outside the rain slows, then stops. I rise to make tea.

New Year

My Christmas tree this year was especially beautiful. The blinking lights I bought the year I did Christmas for my mother, the year she was diagnosed with cancer. There are ten or twelve settings, including "running," blinking and a slow fade. There are three spools of a dark burgundy and gold ribbon. Two spools wind around the tree. The other spool is shared between the garland over the front door and the garland over the arch between living and dining rooms.

I also used some of this ribbon to make a new bow for my front door wreath. I buy a fresh cedar and pine wreath every year, adding my bow and the bell that used to hang on my grandmother's back door every Christmas season. Her door "stuck" a little so that the rough push needed to open it always sent the bell crazy, chiming the announcement of every arrival. Now it is my front door, and the push needed to close it, that sets the bell to dancing.

Over the years, of course, I have collected ornaments. There are the cinnamon dough stars that the boys and I made many years ago, still smelling faintly of spice. There are the gold and clear plastic suns, announcing the return of the Sun. There are the orange slices I dried for one of the first Christmas trees after my return to the States. There are the golden glitter beads I bought in Europe.

A few years back I went lavish and bought boxes of ornaments in coffee, mocha, and burnt orange. And last year began a new tradition: an ornament gifting which has netted us four new ornaments in the past two years: cowboy boots, a cactus, an elephant, and a suitcase. The golden browns and deep greens complement the tree and the images pique our imaginations.

In the New Year, we pulled up the arbor that has held up our climbing rose bush these past twelve years. For the first time, March will not bring small white roses to our side yard. Soon, we will have a "moon gate" and new plants. But for now, there is a patch of dark soil and a clear view of the iris.

Soon, too, there will be a new bike rack and four bikes ready for use. But for now the bikes live on the back deck or in our living room. We bike the neighborhood, checking out old warehouses and new construction. Our cheeks grow rosy as even in Houston, the air holds a chill. We bike to Starbucks, and then home, where waits for us the Sunday New York Times, and in the evening, another episode of Black Adder.

"Sir," son the younger tells me the next morning, "I have a cunning plan...."