It’s been so so so so so sooooooo long since I wrote here, actually nearly a year, which feels so shameful. But I’ve been working hard to break into magazine work and (to my delight) have kind of done it – at least, a little bit.
But I miss this space so much, and really I miss being creative for no reason at all other than to create. And I’ve been reading a load of great writing lately which always makes me feel like, “Hey…I wanna do that!”
It’s spring in Asheville, which really means that absolutely everything is exploding with new life. Last week, evidently, was the week in this country that the most birds are active in their migratory patterns, so the bird watching is out of sight. We have two (!!) different bear families tromping through our back yard this year: one mom of three yearlings (we saw those same cubs as teeny tinies last year), and another, younger mom of two little cubs. The bear sound is distinctive and my ears are trained for it now: squirrels and birds throw off whatever the equivalent of an audio misnomer is as they loudly flit around the bamboo forest floor, but bears sound slower, more intentional, and heavier-footed as little twigs snap under their weight. More ominous in the best way.
There’s a house finch who’s tunneled her cylindrical nest into my geraniums, just outside and to the left of my back door. Her five brand-new baby birds, who were eggs just a few days ago, are now blind little downy squeak-balls hollerin’ for their mama. She’s very judicious about when she goes over. She won’t approach the nest if anyone is watching her. She’ll flit from perch to perch so she can always see it, but if she sees me trying to sneak a peak (no matter how still I am, and please feel free to laugh at the mental image of me trying really hard not to move or make eye contact with a bird), she waits until I am safely behind glass to make her move. I still have yet to see her feed them, but I can hear when she’s there because the chorus of five little bird heads announces her comings and goings.
This morning, there was a lone duck swimming across the surface of an otherwise perfectly still lake, fresh after a rain storm, with grey clouds hanging around the mountain peaks in the distance. Glassy surface except for the little triangular ripple from behind one creature making waves, the evidence of its movement spanning wider and wider the farther back I looked.
There are bright red cardinals – the younger, the brighter – learning how to position their frills just right to attract a mate.
And the flowers, good GRIEF. After the unseasonably cold temperatures late into the year froze off the completely ethereal cherry blossoms, I was feeling nervous about what we’d get. But the roses, the snapdragons, the TULIPS standing up at attention, the billion different shades and hues (somebody teach me the difference between those one day, k?) of green, my mom’s peony garden which is, as you can imagine, just plain stupid in its beauty. The little petals that look like torn crepe paper, the dahlias and honeysuckle and lilac…I knew none of these flowers except for the obvious ones before moving here because nature really just Wasn’t My Thing. What a dummy. Thank God for learning.
My hydrangeas were impacted by that pesky freeze I mentioned a second ago and despite my very tender care of them over the last two years, I was forced to cut them all the way back to their stumps this year. There probably won’t be any flowers, but I’m encouraged to see that they’re producing big, lush, green leaves anyway. Sometimes I go talk to them and tell them they’re doing a great job.
There are so many metaphors in here about new life in a weary world, but the world is, in fact, too weary sometimes to make those connections. My husband would say that means that this one’s “just for us,” which is something he says when we’re witnessing a moment we wish we had a camera to capture, but don’t have one handy. It also reminds me of the song Rosie’s requesting most often right now, Just Around The River Bend from Pocahontas, which begins: “What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice: the water’s always changing, always flowing.”
There’s some metaphor about cutting back for new growth; something about mis-hearing something and something else magical happening instead; something about the exquisite essence of the profoundly temporary; something about protection and watching and waiting; something about trusting and singing. Something about blooming. Something about dying. Something about not having anything to record it and just doing it anyway. Just to do it.
Just for us.
