jars of springwater

"Jars of springwater are not enough
anymore, 
Take us down to the river".... Rumi

Rumi was probably alluding to wider renewal or loftier goals, but the word springwater always takes me back to my mother and her stories of the springhouse - her growing-up refrigerator. And the few memories I have of Grandma Weaver's springhouse were of enveloping quiet, liquid, stone coolness. Another world.

On my trips to PA along Rt.15 there is a farm with a springhouse that I have been greeting, coming and going, for three decades of traveling. And there is a small rounded-arch stone bridge on the other side of the road. Those two echoes from the past, catch my attention every time and I smile and hug my heritage to my heart.

so let the new sun shine in

I heard the weatherman say that we could be looking at a rain pattern for the next 10 days! That got my attention! I suddenly realized what a gift all these days of sunshine were! The world looks so much different in sun-shot blue than lowering gray! And while I really don't want to believe my spirits are dependent on the weather, I really believe they are!! Not really, of course, but the sunlight releases, impels, illuminates all the colors of the world - and to some extent, the heart. 

So buckle down, soul-mates and dig for a new source of inspiration for a bit!

Last month my book club tackled Tender is the Night and if you haven't ever read it, it's worth the effort.

In the summer of 1925 along the French Riviera, amid the flounce of flappers and smooth wail of jazz, a party of Americans and Europeans gather on the beach to lick their idle wounds. Hosts Dick Diver and his wife Nicole entertain old friends and garner new ones, their charm radiating to the edges of the group, illuminating all in their merry orbit. To this scene, Rosemary Hoyt arrives, fresh from the Hollywood success of her new movie, Daddy’s Girl. The presentation of her beauty, prestige and youth tilts the gathering – accentuating both their insecurities and her naivety. At 18 she naturally falls in love with the charismatic Dick, envying his social graces while woefully unaware of life’s realities.

For behind the shining wall of manners, all is not well.  Born into a wealthy family, Nicole lost her mother to illness at a young age and was left in the care of her father and sister. Unfortunately the bond of father and daughter which had been lovingly supportive turned sexual and nothing ever was the same in Nicole’s world.

 Dick, on the other hand, had grown up in rural New York, his father a clergyman, his mother of modest inherited means. He had excelled academically and eventually majored in psychiatry, ending up in European Freudian environs at a colleague’s clinic where he meets Nicole, a schizophrenic patient. Through a series of meetings and letters they become acquainted and drawn to each other – Nicole fascinated by his assurance and charm, he intrigued by her beauty and vulnerability. Despite much trepidation of friends and family, they marry and thus begin their golden arc of gaiety.

Fitzgerald splashes his canvas with color – physically and metaphorically. Through the soft, tropical breezes and champagne haze, his characters dance themselves in and out of each other’s lives, incongruously littering along the way a murdered Afro-American shoe- shine maker, an early morning duel at 40 paces where both men miss, several rounds of assaults and consequent bail requirements, a masquerade party, a speakeasy deadly beating and a trail of social bigotry.  All the while the participants rollick and play, assessing each other with the wily, searing dread that the measure of their lives is short.

Throughout their marriage, Dick’s interest in other women, particularly Rosemary, whether real or imagined, triggers episodes of ranting illness for Nicole and always there is a suppressed fear of complete collapse. Yet Dick somehow balms her way back to sanity. Their co- dependence volleys back and forth until suddenly the balance shifts and Nicole begins taking tentative steps to independence unsettling Dick, who consequently begins to assuage his new discomfort with alcohol. And thus the seesaw of wholeness tips the other way until finally we see Nicole in a shaft of sunlight and Dick merging into shadow. And all the other players “strut and fret their time upon the stage.”

Sometimes Fitzgerald strokes his golden people forcefully, sometimes with a feather’s touch. For below all that lovely wealth and dissipation beat hearts that break, heal, love, despise, envy, regret, and hope.

Rather like you and me.

Redemption

“What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another. Nothing can replace this.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, This Must Be the Place

So to all of us who have ever been loved by son, daughter, father, mother, spouse, friend - revel in the moment. We are blest.

freedom

This morning's walk yielded
 pink hollyhocks tucked into the greenery beside the lake,
 great blue heron waiting,
 geometric splashes of gold on the leaves beneath the trees,
 a man and his dog curled into the morning at a lakeside bench,
 and bolts of blue sky overhead.

 Once again,
 I gave thanks
 for nowhere else
 to be.

one step at a time

I have lived in Reston since 1979, but at that time the boys were young, I soon worked full time and life spilled over at the edges. Much later, empty nested but still employed by the library, about five times a week I walked around the lake before breakfast. That jaunt was about 1 1/2 miles and certainly a great boost to mind, body and soul as a start to the day.

But since retirement I have been walking 4 miles faithfully each day - with a few exceptions here and there of course. But suddenly with this investment of time and space it has become abundantly clear to me how beautiful my surroundings are! Now I feel as though I am almost literally consuming the birds, the trees, the sun-laced shadows, the pools, the stone walls, the wooden architecture sprinkled through the parks, the flowering hedges, the splash of day lilies, the lakes, the poised heron, the inscrutable blue sky. I can't believe it was mine all along for the taking!

I hope if I lived elsewhere that I would be dedicated enough to walk on hot sidewalks past belching cars if I had to, but praise all that is holy, I don't need to test that option!

So I say with Gerard Manley Hopkins:

"Glory be to God for dappled things….."

and Reston trails to walk.
  

While meandering back country roads last week with my sister, we passed a small home where we both immediately recognized it as being the childhood source of peaches and watermelon in the summer. The man, Walter, had some kind of growth on his face that drew a wanting-to-be-polite child's eye like a magnet. I didn't want to stare, but it was inevitable to peek continuously! 

The other fascination of a trip to this fruit market, was that he had a walk-in freezer and coming from a typical PA summer day into that freezer that breathed gusts of icy air, clashing with steamy July- August, we stepped gratefully - for a minute. Soon our bare legs (we wore dresses of course) were shivery and what had seemed so welcome quickly became bone-chilling. Good for the watermelon, but not so good for small bodies!

But after sixty plus years of chin-dripping juices from the peaches and watermelon, I still harken back to that Walter wart-thingy.....um....how did that come to be and why didn't he move heaven and earth to get rid of it? Inquiring minds still want to know!

he did right

A childhood friend of our boys posted a note on Facebook that his father passed away today and in the midst of his comments was this line, "although it was complicated, he did right."

I smiled. And then reflected that perhaps that sums up life for a lot us, "it was complicated" but it seems the highest accolade to put that with "he - you - me - we did right."

Amen.

scent of meadow

Sometime in my childhood, my father bought a rustic cabin near the Conestoga Creek down at the bottom of our village. The cabin as I remember it, had one room and a porch, but the glory of it was the location. We would go down on holidays - and other weekend days too - and have a meal outdoors on the wobbly long wooden table and wooden benches. We'd bring lawn chairs and after some luscious meal - I mainly remember potato salad and chocolate cake! - the adults would sit and visit and the kids would clamber through the meadows and into the creek. Tall glorious trees shaded us from the summer's throbbing heat, and always the scent of meadow tea (mint) on the breeze. The cabin was less than a mile from our house, but in that change of scenery was a real change of pace. A break. A bit more air to breathe. Endless chores momentarily shelved. 

Today is one of those days when I'd give a lot to hear the babble of the creek as it rushed along through the grove. Air-conditioning is great, but I miss the green cool smell of meadow.