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| January into February 2008 The rains are here again this week-sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, soaking, awakening all the wild grasses that come with the wetness of our minimal winter. After several consecutive days of rain the ground is quite supersaturated. Small lakes keep forming in and around the meadow only to disappear in the breaks between the storms. Popping up amidst the wild grasses in the soggy meadow are the lacey green clumps that will soon put forth brilliant orange poppies and the spiky leaves of returning volunteer artichoke plants. Such a contradictory season is winter in southern California: chill temperatures yet filled with all kinds of new green growing things. The rains began just the day after I'd planted several starts of winter veggies in my container garden: chard, bok choy, red and green mustards along with lots of giant pansies and a new rosebush to replace a 22 year old favorite that has struggled without much success these past two years. The soaking rains are such a blessing for the new plantings. The whole garden is now in its crew cut season. One of my January rituals involves pruning back all the roses and other flowering plants in my garden. Some years it's a struggle to let go of the wild tangle of lushness that overflows the pots. This year the process just took me over quite unexpectedly one morning shortly before I was to leave for my latest trip to the east coast. It was a long sunny day of cutting and hauling that was filled with exuberance rather than the melancholy that sometimes colors the cutting back to bare bones. When it was all done, I wandered around the unfamiliar minimalist landscape feeling a rush of excitement at all the opened space, the room for new growth. I so didn't want to leave but I did. The trip this time was an eight day jaunt: some days in Florida for my sister's magical 60th birthday celebration and for hanging out with my favorite aunt, then on to see my parents and cousins in Maryland. I did much better with the challenges of traveling, being in other people's worlds and being away from home this time around. Most importantly, I found a better way to be in my step mom's world-if I only do what she asks me to do, she feels supported rather than undermined or criticized by my help. This seems to have ended her testiness with me and restored our earlier easier way of being with each other. I'm learning to hold my tongue, to not question, offer information or suggestions or get in the middle of her way of doing things with my dad. None of that feels like anything but interference to her and upsetting her is definitely not what I want to be doing. Though she may not do things the way I might, she is, at 89 and a half, amazingly savvy, competent, assertive and an extraordinary caregiver for my dad who is having more and more health and short-term memory challenges. My commitment is to be as supportive as I can to her in ways that actually feel supportive to her. This time I was also more able than ever before to let go of trying to engage my very quiet dad in dialogue. He seems happy just to have me around and to simply be a spectator to whatever tales or conversation unfolds in his presence, offering only an occasional comment or one liner or wisecrack. Though I wonder how he feels with and about his increasing debility both physically and mentally, I accept that he prefers not to talk about that or much of anything else, really. He does say how much he enjoys their new life in the senior community and he certainly seems less depressed than before. So, I live with my questions and choose not to burden him with them. All of it is much easier than I would have thought it would be. My mantra is that it's their life and none of my business unless they ask for my involvement or offer their reflections. As always, it's been a joy coming back to my sweet, quiet corner of the universe, to my wild and wonderful young kitties and things all exactly the way I most like them to be. A few of days of re-entry, a couple of long days of work and then the rains came and made for blissful cozy hibernating, cuddling with my two furry friends, reading and napping by the fire. I abandon sleeping outdoors when it rains; the chilling damp overrides the yearning to sleep on the earth. The bonus of sleeping indoors is having the kitties sleep close by. It's wonderful knowing that I won't have to do any cross-country traveling till mid April. Even at their best, these trips feel daunting and like work, something I do because it means so much to my dad to have me physically present in his world. Until I took a road trip to northern California in December (for my friend Karen's 50th birthday at the amazing Mountain Home Inn on Mt. Tamalpais in Mill Valley), I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy traveling when it meant being on the road in my own little cocoon drifting in my own timelessness through breathtaking California landscapes. Those old trips were journeying with myself out of my usual world seasoned only lightly by time with people. My travels these past many years have been only by plane and only to be with family; all people-time with no real spaces to be by and with myself away from my usual world. The road trips were time out of time that nourished and refreshed me, that allowed me to come back to my regular life with new eyes. This month I realized how much I miss that experience, how much the traveling that I do these days depletes rather than invigorates me and leaves me with neither time, nor energy nor inclination to do any of the old delicious adventuring. Maybe the nostalgia will open me to finding some way to bring that back into my life. Slowly, I complete the myriad tasks and rituals that mark the closing of one year and the opening of the next. Because of the trips in December and January, the chores have been spread over a longer period than usual. It feels different, not quite so defined a turning time as usual, a bit odd and disconcerting. Yet, now I'm up to the last of it, getting figures and receipts organized and prepared for my February tax appointment. In a strange way, the New Year doesn't officially begin for me until this final closing out of the year past is done. So, at the moment I feel in a suspended, between space-not there but not fully here as yet. More and more, my practice is to be in the between places until the next wave comes to move me forward. I rest and putter until the energy calls me, trusting that it will when the moment is right and ripe. It's funny to watch myself making the to-do lists that used to drive me into non-stop action until everything was done. Now the lists simply take the thoughts out of my head and then hang out on my desk without exerting any pressure at all. I can know what needs doing without having to do it until I'm organically called into doing it. I've learned that those moments will always come without my having to hover over myself. It makes life feel so much softer. To visit the Bulletin Board Archive Table of Contents Site Directory (for non-frames viewing)
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