Kinds of Honey

So much changes when you are in the company of good friends.

I have left many dear ones back in the Midwest and I can’t help feeling the distance. I am making new friends here and they are great. But there is a difference between old and new that can’t be made up for quickly.

When my friend Heather and her husband Jeff came to visit a few weekends ago I felt some old part of me open up again. There was familiarity and comfort. I became at least for a little while less awkward in this state – this state I am still trying to like and belong to.

They adventured on their own for a few days while I chugged along at work. Saturday I got to go play with them. We started with a lazy late brunch at The Huckleberry and then Jeff found a place to snowshoe that was once a train route, with the trailhead just outside the eastern entrance to the Moffat Tunnel. You can read more about the history here. It’s fascinating.

I especially like the tiny yellow church down in the valley. It stands out like a bright reminder of history and hope. See it?

The day was the perfect kind of warm-sunny where you can tramp along in the snow in light layers, and as you heat up with exercise you can even get down to short sleeves for a little while.

It was wonderful to be surrounded by the evergreens.

Jeff left this trail of snowshoe-prints. He went on ahead when Heather and I took a moment to sit on the mountainside and rest. To catch up on stories. To talk as we used to, ideas old and new.

How good it is to have friends who understand who you are, who in some ways are so similar and yet in other ways different enough so that you challenge each other, and complement each other.

We stopped in Nederland for lunch at the Black Forest Restaurant. With its German architecture and menu and the old-Hollywood-movie music piping through, we felt as if we were in The Sound of Music. Outside turned blue into darkness, then black night, with the little lights of the mountain town twinkling through the glass. Coffee from a silver pot. Red-and-white china. Apple strudel, and red-swirled mints to finish the meal.

What a blessed day. To eat well. To talk and explore. To be outside and together.

They sat weaving dreams

amidst the tall grasses,

leaning against a gray

silo half full of grain.

.

Everything could happen.

Honeysuckle grew wild in

the silo’s shade. They pinched

its nectar into their mouths.

.

Late-day sun slid down bare

legs, landing on dandelions

yellow and moon white.

.

Across the gravel drive

four red heifers looked up.

One flicked an ear.

.

How could they know?

These girls in ponytails,

the wonders they would

make and miss and find.

.

Or how the measure of

each blade of grass, slipped

to squeak between fingers

and woven around wrists

.

was part of all that mattered.

So much would come back

to here. To the long metal

gate, to the staring heifers, to

the floating tufts of dandelions.

I do not enjoy that my weekends go so quickly. I do enjoy filling them well.

Yesterday I played with horses, in a workshop for volunteering with a therapeutic riding program. I was surprised to find myself pressing my eyelids to avoid tears. My older brother participated in such a program when we were kids, back in the Minnesota days. He has autism and mild cerebral palsy and I remember him thrilled with the way the movements of the horse allowed his body to move as well. I was jealous (I, after all, was the officially horse-crazy ten-year-old) but also happy. And I got to come along, to pet “his” horse on the nose, to smell the good smell of hay and horses. My response at the workshop of course was different: another reminder of his struggle, and persistence, and thankfulness for the people who have joined in working with him towards yet another measure of freedom. I expect more freedom will come. We always pray for his healing. Wait for it!

The riding center ultimately is a place for encouragement and growth, and worth giving up my lazy Saturday morning. In the late afternoon I met with a friend so she and I and her new baby and my good dog (who’s actually been very naughty lately) could go for a walk. The day was delightfully cloudy – oh how I crave the cloudy days in sunny Colorado, just for the reflective quiet they encourage.

I love walking and talking. I love it. It feels good in my body and good in my spirit, connecting with a friend, considering the world, appreciating and encouraging each other. Being outside. It is one of the best forms of multi-tasking.

Aren’t these fabulous trees? How Wyeth-like, the grays and blues and tans of this day.

Miss T. does not talk but she does swim. Happily our walk was along a creek, so she she (undeservedly) had the privilege of being let loose from the leash to get in. She generally trots up to her knees at first, pauses, wades around, then goes deeper and lowers her body down. You can practically hear her sigh, “Aaaaah,” as some of us would on a hot August day, or upon slipping into a hot springs after a long hike with sore muscles.

And after that she plays and jumps and runs and attacks sticks. As you can see.

T. and bliss.

Today, Sunday. Morning toast before church.

Cinnamon sugar. Butter. These are gifts in my small world. Miss T., do not beg! This is all for me. She knows she will still very likely get the dry corners. Lucky, she is, and a mite spoiled, still she is mine and well and always near.

I am in that split-ness of being between churches and it’s a little unsettling. But God shows up in warmth and power in these places; I can’t explain so much as invite. Basic structures become His cathedrals of worship, His temples of healing. It’s the sort of thing you have to experience. Not just words but presence. He is. He loves.

The world seems a series of obstacles and troubles so often. This is a weekend of gratitude.

Oh tummy troubles. I have cuddled so many little ones through them, with stories and hugs and gentle foods.

One of the downsides of being a grown-up is that you don’t always have someone to comfort and care for you when you’re having an off-day.  No one to call the principal or bring you soup or find a nice pile of books to take your mind off of how yucky you feel.

These days my first thought is how much money I’ll lose by not going to work. So I go. I think of blankets and couches until the hours pass and it is home, finally. Still it would be nice to have a hug to return to.

Today I returned instead to loose soil all over the floor, and half my seedlings demolished by two mischievous dogs.

After putting the dogs outside and vacuuming and glad I was too tired to really lose my temper, I went to the kitchen and its near-empty cupboards. This is not good for a tummy that feels very particular about which foods it can handle.

And then I saw a quite full container of yogurt. Creamy top, smooth, plain yogurt.

The good-for-the-gut kind of food. The “off-ness” I have felt all day suggests, in fact, that whatever is going on in my stomach is something that could use a punch of probiotics. Happy helpful bacteria.

So I poured the yogurt into a ramekin with a dollop of honey and a dusting of buckwheat flour. Normally I’d use oatmeal, but I’m all out, and the finer flour is gentler, anyhow.

Honey to heal. Yogurt to balance. Buckwheat for substance and a little bit of dark flavor.

I ate and it’s at least one nice little reversal of things. Sometimes God and I have a difficult time but I love how He gives us food with its wonderful capacity to nourish and nurture.

Walking. The grasses are yellow.

Dry as straw still in the ground.

.

You don’t walk barefoot through these

grasses, not like the ones back home,

where the rainfall is hardly ever

lacking. When spring comes

.

there the wide and lively rivers

might flood their banks

thanks to many winter snows.

.

You are jealous of the drifts

that friends complain about climbing over

in city streets to get to their cars.

.

Above the yellow grasses, smoke drifts

from a mountain fire. It smells like

camping and the north woods.

.

At night, the ice maker clunks

muted from the kitchen. You walk

across linoleum in your socks, and

toss a cube to the dog, and the other dog.

Two for you, no, three.

.

Let the dry cubes melt into icy water.

Lick the moisture

from the curve of your hand.

Today is the first day of spring.

My little plants started coming up in the middle of the week.

Yesterday, I went snowshoeing in the mountains with friends from Iowa. We dressed warmly and gradually lost the layers, hiding coats and mittens in bushes. Sunshine, snow, a farewell-to-winter, hello-to-spring day right before the vernal equinox. With that glorious close moon in the evening. (More to come on that fun.)

Today my roommate and the dogs and I are off for a hike. The dogs will scamper and run and I will want to skip alongside them like an eight-year-old. There’s just that something in the air!

My friend and roommate from my Oxford semester used to say that spring makes her twitterpated. And that seems the exact right description for this feeling. Except the twitterpated-ness is not in regards to any particular men so much as this season itself, of warming breezes and new greens and the smell of wet soil.

I can’t help loving the eagerness of these seedlings. Yes, I know they are leggy. Hungry for the sunlight in this unfortunately northwest-facing apartment. They are graceful, beautiful, yet fragile in their fast-reached height.

I had hoped I might get by without having to invest in a grow light, as it doesn’t fit well within the new churchmouse budget I’m on. But I will need to replant these hard-working babies a bit deeper, cross my fingers, and wisely start new seeds with more light made available to them. There are ways to innovate, and I like to play. This is trial-and-error, this apartment gardening.

The seedlings seem to be willing spring as much as the rest of us. I stretch for the light. We go again outdoors. Happy Equinox! Happy spring.

Japan. Lives and homes disappearing into earth and sea.

The Middle East awash in riots. My mother’s childhood home.

These are places I have never visited – but the stories of others have drawn them into something vivid and nearly tangible for me. There are scenes of pools in Lebanon, hiking paths to temples in Asia. Flowers, foods. Communities. People.

So much loss, fear, anger, despair.

Everyone has something to say. The footage of course says the most.

I can only say a little about things so far away, things so big, things I don’t know enough about.

And it is but a wish: that grieving, troubled, distraught spirits would find a moment of calm in all this horrid frenzy. That, there, they might gather remnants of hope.

And prayers go heavenward. Hands go to help. Funds are collected, sent forth.

Despite everything, good shall reign.

World. Be loved.

Dangle your feet over

the edge. Beyond,

.

a glow rises

warm as fire.

.

You only want it

to be the shimmering

.

waters of dreams,

that you might slip into

.

and swim within, like

a porpoise, like a blue

.

dolphin. It will wash gold

through your hair, light bronze

.

in your eyes, and when it rolls

and tosses, may you laugh and ride.

.

But.

.

Here, dangling your feet – you

don’t know. You don’t even know

.

if you can swim.

Seven brown eggs

that March morning.

Around the yard,

the birds flapped

and clucked, their feet

reaching like claws

to grasp the ground.

.

In that same yard,

children from Paris

wore fat mittens and

shiny, puffy coats.

School was fun today!

So they ran squealing

after the strutting birds.

.

I, the American, stood

still in old clothes, my

mother’s striped wool hat,

glancing now and again

at la maitresse, the teacher,

too shy to try out my French.

She spoke so quickly, so curt.

.

I found the quieter ones,

the girl with tender, curious

brown eyes, the round-

cheeked boy who hung

in corners and yet released

a huge smile when he

saw me smiling back.

.

Together, we collected

the eggs in a green plastic

bucket. Inside the shed’s

shadows, straw, fallen

feathers. And this place

far from all of our homes

.

became home. Ours.

For that short moment

these were my children

and my chickens, this

barnyard mine, and theirs.

.

Smoothing our fingers over

the fawn-brown eggs,

handing them one to another

watching them nestle in

the bottom with bits of straw

.

and counting: Un, deux, trois,

quatre, cinq, six, sept! Sept oeufs!

We beamed, without speaking,

as if we had laid them ourselves

while the others raced around

squawking and laughing

on our little Normandy farm.

Saturdays are my favorite for stretching out the morning time. Little Miss T. wakes me up at 7:00 or so to go outside. And then back into the blankets and sheets. I love that she settles right next to me. Lazy and still and I can’t help daydreaming, making up stories about what life might have looked like, or might still look like, things I might create or make happen. And so we doze, in and out, until 10:00.

While I want a family someday I do know that this is something mothers don’t get to experience much, if ever. So I savor it without guilt.

Just as I savor caramel pudding and bosc pears for breakfast. Dark coffee with a drop of cream balances the sweetness.

Sugar melting into amber. Milk, cold, mixing in. Bubbles of sugar. Caramel. Vanilla. Pudding!

I like bosc pears a with a little crunch still left in them; these were almost at that point. I will let the others ripen for another day or so. These pears have always been so richly beautiful to me – that bronze-gold color and that clean white flesh.

The bosc pear wants to be photographed. It wants to be framed.

It is beauty with total ease. Effortless.

There is the reach of soft sunlight on a cloudy day. Pudding reminds me of England; pears of France; I am happy in Europe-love. Memories. Future travels. And for now, here, a morning’s sweetness.