Of gardens & deep breaths (& iced coffee!) ~
Lately, I’m trying to refrain from doing FB in the a.m., especially NOT when I first get up! That lovely, vulnerable, sleepy happy that envelops us like soft warm down blankets? FB is its nemesis!
Instead, even as fall deepens into upcoming winter, I go to sit on our patio, 10 feet from the bird feeding stations. 12 from the mixed border beneath the bedroom windows. I watch the little finches jockey for seed, and a portly blue jay crane his neck to reach a feeding hole on the sunflower tube. The sun is like warm honey, and life is very very good.
i have that privilege. No one is going to come round up me, or my beloved, or my family. No one is going to believe evil of me based on how I look (well, I do get blonde & senior jokes!). Seriously? I have a pretty idyllic life.
Which is why I need my garden so desperately these days. I hope that makes sense: I need this place that reminds me we can still grow beauty from seeds (it helps to have a light table, though). That there are still bright, hungry birds willing to share their flightiness & colour w/reasonably quiet observers.
I need to be able to sit, as I am, with the sun on my arm, typing at a patio table as I drink good iced coffee w/cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne, & condensed milk. I need to be forcibly reminded that life will go on. And for me? It certainly will.
But in Puerto Rico, subject to arcane laws put in place to protect corporations, not people without food and water, it doesn’t. In so much of the world, to be a grandmother is hearbreaking, not joyous (if exhausting!). To be a grandmother (or father, or aunt, or other family member in charge of the littles) is to wonder how they will survive. Is to wonder what kind of lives they will be ALLOWED to live…
It’s beyond heart-breaking.
Coffee & garden sun won’t fix any of that. But it will help me get to the next moment, relatively sane & able to go about a day too often fractured by what is happening in our country.
I didn’t grow up with hate. As a verrrry lucky child, I grew up in the most diverse of environments: an overseas school. There were American military brats, expat brats from all countries (my 3rd grade best friend was from Sri Lanka, my 4th from Texas), and a generous double handful of local children. If you look at an old yearbook, you’ll see a UNICEF banner of children, gap-toothed & happy. So this whole white supremacist thing is something I flat can’t understand. What makes white people better than others??? In my world, we often aren’t even as good: we don’t speak any other languages, and we don’t know much about the world outside our hometowns. That’s GOOD???
As frustration begins to rise, I look over at the bird stations, where a crisply black, grey, & white nuthatch is feeding. He’s startled a red-bellied woodpecker off the seed cylinder. I take a deep breath, and reach for my (empty) coffee glass.
Life is soooo confusing. But it’s less so, I promise, if you can make it outside. Into the sun. Somewhere by flowers & birds. With coffee. It’s we who are the world, as the song reminds us. If we can get our own heads & hearts straight, we still have a chance to fix things.