Lady in Waiting: a song of the seasons

The Masque of the Four Seasons (Walter Crane - 1903)

The lady's in waiting —

biding her springtimes, stumbling into a March gale,

willow eyes gazing from behind percale to the pale, pale of the moon.

Crystal jewels nestle in her gold-flecked hair.

(An April rain rests there.)

Soon a May sun twirls the strands into honeyed braids.

Green permeates the voice, yellow, the laugh.

A careful gaze will disclose the bells in her eyes.

The lady's in waiting —

carrying with her the summer scent of lemon peel and mint leaves.

Glancing cooly into wind-chimed nights.

Is she a disguise for June evenings? with buttercups 'crosst her breasts,

elm branches in her palms, tea roses tangled in her lap,

and clover 'round her ankles?

Shining and lithe, a needle waltzes deftly with her ivory fingers

as crewel flowers unfold and an old owl appears.

Soft summer moons ride her shoulders into fall.

The lady's in waiting —

holding the last limp fieldflower,

the moss around her lips making her September smiles earthy and brown;

She peers from her tower to the amber forest where Autumn is hating the birch.

Moorish gusts tumble her thoughts and curls,

their russet patterns like the descent of a brittle leaf.

She surrenders her flowery thighs to the October fog.

Her fingers press against the hesitant heart of an oak.

A late November thunderstorm washes her neck and wrists.

The lady's in waiting —

waiting out her winter.

Gazing from a mantle of ginger nuts and beaver,

her snowy walk a whisper of satin footfalls, holly dangling over a cold ear.

Glinting like seaglass, her eyes search out a snowbird,

his frosty flight holding her crimson attention.

A slow blink flicks a snowflake from her eyelash.

A slow smile sheds December's fire and ice from her cheeks.

Candy canes dissolve now where once lemon ice melted.

She sits with her curtains parted to your gaze,

her galaxy eyes brimming over with the sun,

her enchanted forest mouth wooded with pine.

Lady Everything.

If only in my mind...

What I see when I stare at my office files.....

Spring's miniature bounty

Now that Spring has arrived in earnest here in New England, we have our usual share of 'small' flowers to pick.... white and purple Violets, Grape Hyacinth, Scilla, Myrtle, Pot-of-Gold.  Diminutive visitors who venture out after so many months of grey and cold, their color and greenery a welcome carpet underfoot, growing more lush and verdant with each sunny day.

Spring's pleasures are not only small but also sumptuous—the fecund Andromeda hangs like bunches of grapes, casting its scent over the pergola as I sit and drink my first 'outdoor' cup of tea of the year; the Forsythia, filtered by sunlight, casts a golden glow over the pavement; and the Viburnum sends its intoxicating aroma onto the verandah each night.  I pluck small pieces now and then, adding height, color and scent to the tiny arrangements I sprinkle throughout the cottage. 

Once May has lengthened and the sun rides higher in the sky all this will change of course. The delicate garden will be overrun by greenery, and the once sparse carpet of blue and lavender will be hidden by waves of Phlox, Yarrow, Evening Primrose, Russian Sage and Loosestrife. Even now I see the signs:  the Catmint is up and will soon provide a bushy haven for my neighbor's cats; the Iris are setting buds and their purple flags will unfurl like a delicate honor guard along the front pathway; the Bleeding hearts are about to open, shedding a pink arc of color over the nubs of Hosta that are waiting to unwind; and the rose hedge is rapidly greening, ready for the tiny buds that will appear along each thorny branch.
All in good time.  But for now?  Now I delight in the small gifts of spring. Her miniature bounty of doll-sized flowers, gathered each morning to nest in salt shakers, cordial cups, and inkwells. Hunca-Munca bouquets to fill the house with promise. Or hang on a neighbor's doorway.

Loveliest of trees....

 

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

 

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

 And stands about the woodland ride

 Wearing white for Eastertide. 

from A Shropshire Lad by Alfred Edward Housman

When Women Were Birds

When Women Were Birds - Fifty Four Variations on Voice

I am fifty-four years old, the age my mother was when she died. This is what I remember: we were lying on her bed with a mohair blanket covering us. I was rubbing her back, feeling each vertebra with my fingers as a rung on a ladder. It was January, and the ruthless clamp of cold bore down on us outside.  Yet inside, Mother’s tenderness and clarity of mind carried its own warmth. She was dying in the same way she was living, consciously.
 

“I am leaving you all my journals,” she said, facing the shuttered window as I continued rubbing her back. “But you must promise me that you will not look at them until after I am gone.”

I gave her my word. And then she told me where they were. I didn’t know my mother kept journals.

A week later she died. That night, there was a full moon encircled by ice crystals.

On the next full moon I found myself alone in the family home. I kept expecting Mother to appear. Her absence became her presence. It was the right time to read her journals. They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful clothbound books; some floral, some paisley, others in solid colors. The spines of each were perfectly aligned against the lip of the shelves. I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It, too, was empty, as was the fourth, the fifth, the sixth—shelf after shelf, all my mother’s journals were blank.

The next 6 pages of the book are blank... as if to instill in the reader the sense of panicked emptiness she faced as she turned the pages of one untenanted journal after another. 

With this startling beginning, Terry Tempest Williams brings readers on a remarkable, magical, thought-provoking, soul bearing quest.  Her book is set down in small pieces: Fifty Four Variations on Voice.  It is a number that corresponds with her age at the time of her mother's death. Coincidence?

While the chapters are no more than a few pages long, their brevity is misleading and I found myself reading these close-packed morsels over and over, wanting to savor each word and let the impact of what she was saying soak into my mind and heart, finding different meanings with each reading.  As she guides us (and seemingly herself) along on her journey, it becomes apparent that her mother's empty journals put her on the path to finding her own voice. 

I do not know why my mother bought journal after journal, year after year, and never wrote in one of them and passed them on to me.

I will never know.

The blow of her blank journals became a second death. 

Williams is a marvelous storyteller, setting down recollections of her childhood in an unsentimental but entirely evocative manner. Each ‘chapter’—both the long and the short—ends similarly: with a reflection on what her mother’s journals meant, what they symbolize, what they didn’t mean. Tempest’s conclusions shift, dance-like, as the book progresses...  deeper  and more pointed here, sympathetic and illuminated there.... each one reflecting her own growth in the multitudinous ways she comes to interpret her mother’s blank pages. She speaks eloquently of silence, of space, of what is needed to find one's voice, and how important it is to recognize and then fulfill the need to write down what we think and feel.  

When I opened my mother’s journals and read emptiness, it translated to longing, that same hunger and thirst Mother translated to me. I will rewrite this story, create my own story on the pages of my mother’s journals. 

If I had the money I would buy this book for every woman I know... my mother, my child, my friends, my aunts. There is not one woman who would not be moved, and changed, by this treatise on what it means to discover, develop, and use one’s voice.

Lockdown

My son-in-law and grandchildren are behind locked doors in Boston. 

All Boston public transportation is suspended. 

Boston Schools are closed. 

My daughter is in lockdown at Beth Israel Deaconess hospital.  

(The first bomber is currently lying in her morgue.)

As Margaret Hamilton once said:  "Oh what a world, what a world...."

Hanging Out Day - April 19th

The sweet scent of clean laundry. 

The touch of the wooden pegs in your fingers. 

The sound of the breeze snapping the sheets and pillowcases. 

The way the clothes look as they hang in the sunlight,

like colorful pennants or sweet white flags of surrender.

The cool freshness of the dry clothes as you fold them. 

The heft of the willow basket as you carry everything back into the house.

The hypnotic pleasure of hanging, waiting, taking down, smoothing,

and then folding everything in piles.

(This one is ironing, this one gets folded and put away, this one is put on a hanger...)

And the energy you save by letting your laundry dry in the sweet Spring air.

National Hanging Out Day April 19th

Don't forget!