BRATTLEBORO — A sudden summer storm.
We have come to expect the unexpected - abrupt changes in weather. Wind and clouds and rain and snow are no longer predictable. One can almost feel the earth rumbling beneath us, pits of fire and sudden sinkholes in which creatures that have never seen daylight drift slowly through black seaweed and wavering reeds.
I lean out the window streaked with rain and stare at the battened-down buds of the daylilies as heavy rain slashes across the pavement of the parking lot.
Dark, shining river rivulets wind sinuously across sidewalks. The mottled white birch shivers in a gust of wind.
I wonder what we might do without cats, and gardens to care for, to watch, to be attentive to subtle miraculous, incandescent changes. I watch the leaves of the birch flip like silver coins tossed in the gust of wind. I think of petals in the moonlight that flutter like birds in the gentle breeze.
* * *
I live in a box like all the others. We live in decorated boxes and think our decorations define us, but they are boxes nonetheless.
This front window overlooking the garden opens into light and air, twigs and leaves, stems crimson and creams, violet blues, and smiling yellows.
I find myself spending more and more time hanging out the front window, watching the garden and its wildlife. The robin who hops gingerly looking for seeds. The squirrel nudging his small, furry head into the ground looking for the almond and cashew bits I sprinkle.
One bee so much bigger than others I have seen. The monarch butterfly that balances on the edge of a crimson petal of the daylily. The sparkling drops of dew that shines in early morning: green and golden red and blue crystals dancing on leaves.
When I was 5 years old, I thought the dewdrops were jewels I could pocket, but nothing can be pocketed. Even our memories are subject to change.
* * *
I woke up this morning to thin rays of golden sunlight streaming across the pale yellow walls.
Light changes everything. Perhaps that is why light is used as a metaphor for spiritual awakening.
If I can accept the minute changes in the garden, deadhead the flowers, faithfully water the Shasta daisies (and the ivy, the hostas, the daylilies, the wild violets, the yellow primroses), if I can accept nature's subtle changes without judgment, I must surely do the same for friends.
For each friend is like a unique flower. The shape might not be pleasing at times, or the colors might be harsh and not as soft as I love, but friends are gifts one learns from, and one learns the most important things in life through intimate relationships.
* * *
When I was in my 20s, I carried my ego like a huge, red, shiny nest egg, always stroking and petting it. Any words that fed it felt like manna.
In my 60s, I perceive the foolish, poor ego struggling to assert its strength, power, uniqueness against others as if any one of us can be the winner of the race.
In my 60s, I doubt there is a race, except the ones we invent. What a waste of time to judge others or compare myself to them. I have no idea what lessons they are here to learn. One might as well judge flowers or weigh seasons.
Caring means being kind and not right. It is possible to feel excruciating pain when love ends.
Paul Simon's words from his album Graceland come to mind, the ones about the wind blowing through the hole in your heart and how others see how truly you are blown apart. Yet with age, one sees that time is a flowing river that changes current and direction each instant we breathe and that nothing can be retained inviolate and intact in its full beauty.
The cream bud of the daylily opens one week to show a yellow smile but is tinged at the edge with sadness; in spite of daily watering, the petals fade to a ghostly, paper-thin white like the fluttering wings of a dying angel; the petals shrink into tiny wrinkled stalks that slip off the stem with ease and drift through the air to the ground or stick like translucent paper to leaves of other plants.
* * *
We are often told to forgive others for the pain they have intentionally or inadvertently caused us. Christ said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”
I look at the news on Huffington Post and try to read between the facts that scream horror: daily massacres, war, starvation of thousands of children on the Horn of Africa, the precarious existence of species like the gray wolf, and requests by the Sierra Club to stop the massive shooting of them.
I look at the flower, the wolf, myself.
I sit, hands folded, as still as I can, in blue light and wonder how many lifetimes it takes to become conscious.
Becoming conscious, as Adrienne Rich declared, is painful and difficult, but only by endeavoring to become conscious and work on our selves can we alter the world.