dear plants on my balcony: on slowing down

Dear Plants on My Balcony,

I know you probably don't care about this {How could you? You're plants.}, but 2014 is my year of paring down. By limiting how much I do and schedule, I'm trying to slow down my life, a thing I very much need in this busy world.

You may not know this {again, because you're plants and the world you interact with is a constant one of soil, sun, and water}, but our world has become increasingly frantic, disjointed, and harried.

This is proven by our 24-hour news cycle that jolts us from story to story in 30-second chunks: Are we unable to focus now?

Our disjointed world is proven by a new syntax that is developing because Internet. That was it, by the way—the new way of speaking that chops out words and snappily contains these sardonic concepts. Even Hemingway himself—he the great papa of shortened, punchy prose—would look verbose and flowery in this world of fragments and odd punctuation. All. The. Time. {Why so many periods? Why such a need for emphasis and full stops? Is our new punctuation trying to tell us that we need to take more pauses?}

Our frantic world is proven by our hyperbole that pairs so well with that new way of talking and writing. Every experience, interaction, meal, vacation, weekend, video, song, Facebook post is so. Over. The. Top.

Because clicks.

Because likes.

Because feeling popular.

We toss around phrases like "the most amazing ever," and why is that? Is it because we are ever looking for that emotional high, that smooth, easy, enviable life promised us by movies and Hallmark commercials? Are we tricked into describing everything as better than best because we're frightened of appearing boring, let alone being bored?

And think about this: If that pizza you just ate is "amazingly awesome," what phrase will you use when you see the red rocks of Utah on a perfectly blue sky day? Or when you feel the ocean rush in around your calves as you look out at the sunrise and think about how deep and wide that ocean is? What will you say when your baby smiles at you the first time?

What words do we have left when our language is so bulked up with superlatives?

Beyond diminishing those big experiences, this hyperbole can also make our small moments seem just that: Small. Unworthy. Not enough. If we're always looking for the next best, will we overlook that moment sitting on the balcony in the summer twilight as the fireflies are blinking—little stars here on earth—as the cicadas are singing?

And we're back to the balcony, dear plants, which is where you come in—or more correctly, where you are.

You're probably confused as to why I just went off on a rant about syntax and the Internet {when you were expecting a nice welcome letter, maybe}, but it all does relate to you.

Every summer since I moved in to my condo six years ago, I have tried to grow bright, cheerful flowers on my balcony. Some years have been moderately successful, but most years have involved brown leaves, flowers that don't thrive, and much disappointment.

I go into the season dreaming contentedly of being surrounded by color and life as I do the Saturday morning crossword and drink French press coffee. It may just be a balcony, but I believe every year that I can make it feel like an English garden: Structured but inviting, tended but with just a touch of wild.

Then July comes, and I'm sorry to tell you, my plants, but I kill you. I have killed your cousins or best friends or whoever, despite my best intentions and hard work and desire to be a good gardener.

This might seem really meta, but here's a letter I wrote to my flowers a few years ago {a letter within a letter!}. You can hear my disappointment and bewilderment, as well as my realization that even if you oh-so-fervently desire something, it might not come to pass. I might not be a good gardener, and I need to accept this.

So here we are in the year of paring down, and I'm applying it even to my balcony foliage. Look around you: There are no flowering plants among you, you ferns and succulents. When I went plant shopping this year—Monday night after work, a night when it looked like it was just about to rain and then it never did—I looked only for tags that said "Easy Care!" or "Low Maintenance!"

I'm writing you now, green plants, to say that—no pressure—but you're part of my slowing down plan. In our frantic, disjointed, harried world, I'm trying to create space that is low-pressure, calming, and doesn't demand much. When I sit out on my balcony, I don't want to see something I should be trying harder to manage and take care of; instead, I want to admire verdant life as I sit with a glass of wine.

In summary, PLEASE don't die on me, my dear plants. I will give you water, and I've put you where you can see the sun. I'll tend you as best I can, which is all any of us can ask.

Now let's all relax, slow down, and have a non-dead plant summer, one where I sit surrounded by your green life. If you'd like, I'd even read to you from books that resound with the beauty of our language, ones that echo with true things, so that we can remember that our world wasn't always too busy to take the time to express a good idea slowly.

Ever yours,
Kamiah

and wow {a poem}

The world is drenched and then
it begins anew.
Rain falls for 40 days and 40 nights
{should you build an ark?}
Careening from the sky,
wildly exploding the gray-brown drudge
that is winter.

----------

The world has been singing a dirge and now
it begins to dance.
A staccatoed beat on the roof
and the bare branches sway in time
to the rain.
Earthworms climb out of the ground,
ready to curtsy and cavort.

----------

There's a spot up on Elm
where tulips grow along the sidewalk,
as if when you crossed the street,
you stepped into Holland.
It's rained so much, a small stream
sprang up along the curb.
Pretend that's a Dutch canal, and
you are hit with a longing to read The Diary of Anne Frank,
which is not a normal longing.

----------

But
the world is a mix of pain and beauty and wow,
it showcases both in spring.
Cold rain gives way to warm-hued blooms
and don't ever let yourself forget
the green smell of the earth as it
fights back from being frozen and drowned.

early morning: the spring {a poem}

Early Morning: The Spring

In the early morning, I rise
from my bed by the window,
flannel sheets with orange flowers,
my winter set I have yet to change.

There are sometimes flowers
on the the bedside table.
There are pens and cards for writing,
and always books.

The window look out
over the garage,
and always up
into the first hint-of-day sky.

----------

Whenever I can, I listen to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac podcast, and by that I mean: when I remember to plug in my iPod and let it download all the recent episodes, I'm more likely to actually listen to the thing.

I caught up on the Almanac, as I've never called it until right now, last Friday when I took little pug on a long walk in the early spring. Every day, Garrison reads a poem, and in his voice is everything good and relatable about poetry.

Listening to him read is like being wrapped in a blanket by the fireplace. It's like the first crocus of spring, and it's like the first snowfall. When he reads poetry, you remember why we write poems in the first place: to get across a feeling, an emotion, a thought, an idea. We write them to relate to each other, and when Garrison reads poetry, I feel like all is right with the world.

During my podcast blitz on Friday, Garrison read a poem called "Morning" by Frederick Smock. {You can read it here on the Writer's Almanac site.}

And something in the three short stanzas that described a very normal morning inspired me. It made me think about what I love so much about the morning and why I always smile when I say I'm a morning person: It really is my best time of day.

So I wrote a poem in homage to that Frederick Smock "Morning," and there it is up above. I took him one better and made it about the early morning {I'm so competitive}—specifically, the early morning during spring since that's what I wake up to every day right now.

You should maybe scroll back up and read it again in your best Garrison Keillor voice. That is, by the way, the voice I hear in my head when I read my own poetry. He makes it sound so much more monumental, of course, when really all I'm doing is trying to get across a feeling.

we wait for spring

Upstairs from me, a sweet retired couple lives, and on March 1, the man, Hal, declared to me: "My winter ends today."

We were standing outside, having met on the sidewalk—me coming in from my morning walk with the little pug, and he heading out to his volunteer position as the crossing guard for the local elementary school.

The first time Hal told me that he was a crossing guard, I wanted to ask him if he got to wear the reflective belt—the one that loops over your shoulder and then wraps around your waist. I remember that from my crossing guard days at Grimes Elementary, and I also remember always getting it twisted, which rather limited its reflective abilities.

I didn't ask him that but assumed he was the lucky guy who gets to hold up the stop sign and wave at the cars as they drive by.

On March 1, Hal, on his way to be a crossing guard, had on a stocking cap, wool mittens, and a parka, and yet he declared to me: "My winter ends today."

He went on to explain, "See, Kamiah, I say every year that winter is over on March 1, even if it doesn't really happen until later in the month. But I like to believe that spring comes earlier, so I just say that winter is over."

He's told me that several times since then, and I can tell he tells a lot of people that. It gets him a laugh, and there is a practiced patter to how he says it. "So I just say that winter is over," he always concludes, and then he laughs, a quick ha-ha, at his own joke, as he zips up his parka.

I find these kinds of conversations comforting in their predictability. When it comes down to it, we all have something to say about the weather, and the very fact that on March 25, I woke up to flurries is indeed something to comment on.

The sky is falling, and we are all waiting for spring. Real spring, I mean, not the kind that comes just on the calendar or when an old man declares he's had enough of this Midwestern cold and gray.

I hope I see Hal tonight on my walk with little pug. I want to tell him that this morning, I saw a crocus pushing up through the earth, dotted with snow, but there all the same. Winter is ending. It really is.

a second spring

My mother sent me an email today to tell me that she'd thought I'd like this quote:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Albert Camus said that, the great French existentialist.

How beautiful and how relatable, which isn't something I often associate with existentialism.

I more associate it with the glib phrase: my existential crisis, that panic that often hits in the mid-twenties when you're trying to figure out who you are and pay your bills on time and make new friends in an unknown place and realize that your paycheck is the only gold star you're going to get.

Who am I? What am I doing here? How did I become someone who works in a cubicle?

The questions come pounding in, and you freak out.

That is the existential crisis, and you get through it—partly by doing things like noticing that every day has something good in it, something to be thankful for, something worth paying attention to.

Right now, it's the fall leaves. Every one of them is a flower, and I plan on noticing them this year, don't you?

quebec: so french and yet

Quebec City truly is a slice of France in North America, although there are these—almost jarring reminders that I'm not actually in France.

I can be walking down a cobblestone alley and it seems so much like I'm back in France, from the just-washed streets in the early morning to the sidewalks that never seem to give enough room for two people to pass each other.

And then I can turn a corner and run into a shop selling hockey jerseys or even football jerseys: this is not France, I have to tell myself. Not France, not France, not France. Repeating it helps me remember.

Seriously. Outdoor cafe. Flowers. Cobblestones. How is this not France?

Plus, the cars are all wrong for this to be France; French cars are smaller, and of course there's the whole different makes/models thing. Here, it's all the same cars as in America on streets that look very French.

This morning on my run, I passed a Jeep Liberty, a Ford F-250, and a Land Rover. Where are the Opels and Renaults? How does an F-250 navigate the back alleys? Not France, not France, not France.

Also on my run this morning, I saw the Chateau Frontenac and plotted ways to move there permanently. This is a diverting way to spend a run when you're doing more hills than you, a person who lives in Illinois, has seen in awhile.

I go back to France every other year or so and the French part of me gets to come out. That's the part that knows what it feels like to have my powers of language stripped down. It's the part that feels triumphant for making it through small talk and the part that knows that if you need help, you have to ask for it, even if you don't know how to say it.

The French part of me knows that loneliness will hurt but it won't destroy you.

And my French side is, in some ways, my writer side because I did so much of it when I lived there—perhaps a by-product of having lost my main form of communication.

That simultaneous feeling of panic {what if I can't get the words out?}, triumph {I did!}, and a need to document it all {what a world we live in!} is something I very much associate with France because that's where I was the foreigner and that's where I tried to make a life, if only for a little while.

To come to Quebec, then—where it looks so much like France and where they do, indeed, speak French {with an accent, although I, of course, also speak French with an accent}—but to have so many things double-signed in English and to hear English so frequently...well, it feels a little topsy-turvy to my French self.

It feels like I've stepped into a blend of France and home—but maybe that's a good place to be.

Chez Temporel: where I had dinner tonight. There was quiche, red wine, chocolate cake, and espresso. I chit-chatted with the people sitting next to me, and they complimented my French, saying I sounded more French than American in my accent. I then asked to be their best friend/if they could call my friends in France and repeat that.

to try with the pug

Really Awesome Idea to Try with Little Pug

I can wear a pretty dress.

She can row the boat.

Just-picked flowers are essential to this idea, as is that hat.

I don't know, though, if I can pull off looking so bored. I'll be ON A BOAT. WITH A PUG. AND FLOWERS.

I bet tucked under that brocaded-blanket {seriously, it looks like curtains} is a copy of a Jane Austen novel—or maybe it's "The Lady of Shalott." Maybe I could have my own Anne of Green Gables re-enactment while I read "The Lady of Shalott." You know, like here:

And then Little Pug could rescue me.

These are the kinds of things, by the way, that you think about when it's such a glorious May day outside your office window.

dear trees that flower in the spring

Dear Trees that Flower in the Spring,

I love you so much.

My, such a bold way to begin this letter to you, but I cannot contain my joy and abounding love when I see you every spring.

If I could hug you without crushing your blossoms, I would. Instead, I'll just stand under you and look straight up. From that angle, it looks like the whole world has become spring.

And standing under you and looking up, I'm sure I look a little odd to the rest of the world, but you know what, Trees that Flower in the Spring? Just being near you makes me feel like Anne of Green Gables when she's driving through the White Way of Delight with Matthew for the first time, even though you come in more colors than white.

You come in pink and purple and mauve and a kind of magenta, but I still feel like Anne when I'm near you. Thank you, dear Trees, for reminding me that I don't always have to act like a grown-up. I can be a wide-eyed girl taking in all the world has to offer.

I do, however, have two little requests for you.

One, could you arrange it to always be outside my bedroom window, no matter where I live? When I lived in Normandy, if you recall, there was a the sweetest tree outside my window that blossomed pink in the spring. After surviving a rainy Normandy winter, being able to wake up every morning to a pink tree made up for those months of lonely shivering. If I could always have a Tree that Flowers in the Spring outside my window, I would always remember that I can survive soul-scratching kinds of times.

Two, could you flower all the time and not just in spring? Or maybe you could just flower all the time until the fall and then presto magic, you could flip out your glorious and rich autumn colors.

I realize I'm really messing with nature here, and I also know that if you were here all the time, I wouldn't appreciate you as much. You'd become like grass, which is a deep, beautiful color {assuming there isn't a drought} and always feels so cool on the feet. But by about April 15, when it's greened up for the season, I stop seeing it and appreciating it: it's just another thing in the world.

And I guess I don't want you to become another thing, Trees that Flower in the Spring. Thanks for being such a special thing.

Ever pretending to be Anne of Green Gables,
Kamiah

in celebration of my irish catholic roots

My family on my grandma's side was so very Irish Catholic.

Irish Catholic as in when you look at the family tree, it's a mess of Katherines and Annas and Bridgets.

Irish Catholic as in there are nuns in those branches of my family tree, and when you think about it, it's funny to imagine a nun in her habit climbing a tree. Or even just hanging out on one of the branches.

Irish Catholic as in farmers from County Waterford who were not quite rich enough to afford that lovely Waterford crystal.

Irish Catholic as in go to Mass every day and say the rosary and keep a crucifix next to your bed.

But I am not a nun {climbing a tree or otherwise},
nor do I go to Mass every day {although I do go past a Catholic church every morning on my walk with Little Pug},
nor do I own any Waterford crystal {so I guess my ancestors and I have that in common},
and next to my bed is a stack of books and a lamp shaped like the Eiffel Tower {not at all like Jesus}.

Here I am, just two generations down from my grandma, and we are so far from our roots. Our roots have now crossed with the Protestants, which makes some sort of hybrid tree.

I don't know much about trees, but I do know a little bit about wine, and when you create hybrids of vines, it can make for a complex, wonderful, drink-this-with-soft-cheeses kind of wine.

I assume this crossing makes us more complex and wonderful, but a newspaper story I found about my great-grandmother makes me think she wouldn't be so enamored of our complex and wonderful hybrid of a family tree.

My hometown newspaper, The Hawk Eye, did a profile of my great-grandma because she had taken to knitting mittens and socks and scarves for the less fortunate.

{When you come from a small-ish town, these are the kinds of things you get in the paper for. I was once in that very same paper because, as an 8-year-old, I started attending the Des Moines County Historical Society meetings. I loved history—still do—but I remember being rather disappointed that there weren't more meetings where we got to talk about porcelain dolls and how fun it was to dress them up in historical clothes.}

So Anna Anderson took to knitting, and she said the kind of things you'd expect a hardworking, no nonsense Iowan to say: "If you keep busy doing worthwhile things for others, you will have no time for self-pity."

Even though I never met my great-grandmother, I can safely say that attitude of hers has trickled down through the family.

Unlike her Catholicism. No, that has not trickled so much as gotten diverted and then run dry.

She also said in the article:

I laugh a lot when I am working with orange yarn, for I recall how my father [Hugh Brady] detested that color. He was Irish Catholic. Orange always reminded him of the Orangemen [the Protestants] of his country. Not one speck of orange was allowed in our home and that meant, too, that we couldn't have even one single orange flower growing in our gardens

So Hugh Brady didn't allow any orange in his house, but when my parents re-did their living room a couple of years ago, they chose this very warm, very rich shade of orange.

How very Orangemen of them, not that they were thinking in terms of Catholic and Protestant at that point; the decision was more swayed, I think, by what would look best in that sunny room overlooking the Mississippi.

And no orange flowers? Please keep this in mind when you—any of you—buy me a bouquet. {Unsubtle message: Would someone please buy me flowers?}

Oh, yes, how far we've come from our Irish Catholic roots—in a complex and wonderful way that allows me to celebrate my Irish Catholic roots on Saturday and go to an Anglican church on Sunday.

Maybe I'll wear orange.

the promise of spring

I woke up this morning to the smell of hyacinths and rain.

I opened my eyes this morning to see daffodils almost ready to burst forth.

And I thought: what beauty, such an almost scandalous level of beauty, to be in the midst of as I start my day.

How can a day go wrong when it starts with unblemished sweetness?

When it starts with the promise of spring?

part II: flowers {a short story}

Part II of my short story, Flowers.

Read Part I. {Plus, if you read that, you can get a little background on why I decided to write this story, and how this story is a celebration of Bloomsday.  If you don't know what that is, you should really click that link for an explanation.}

-----

But outside, even with all its detractions, has fresh air, not this Subway air of mayonnaise and bread. I’d rather be out there, outside.

Because even with the fumes in the strip mall, there is still something of inspiration in the air. Something of change, but I know that the change coming is nothing but winter. The bland brown leaves, the crackly remnants of summer and life, will cascade to the ground, leaving sticks in the sky. Arthritic fingers reaching out from trees, stark against the gray clouds of winter. Gray: the backdrop to frozen life, to life on hold, to life waiting for the next.

There is change coming, and it's winter.

But then. Then there will be spring.

Life warmed-up, life on fast-forward.

But yes, life still waiting for the next, always waiting for the next.

Why am I thinking of spring now? Why, when just last week, I nearly climbed a tree to get closer to the fall? To autumn, I mean, not the capital F fall, like the Fall of Man.

Just last week, I smelled a bonfire as I took a walk after dinner, and I wanted to bite the air. Take in a mouthful to remember that moment, and here I was spitting that mouthful out. Saying: I do not want this anymore. I want what's next. I want spring.

Spring. Flowers. Daffodils. Tulips. Crocuses (croci? Should it be croci? How do you pluralize that?). Lilies. Redbud and magnolia trees in bloom.

All the pretty flowers.

And here I am, back to flowers, back to thinking of flowers.

I will buy them myself (for myself) when I go to Trader Joe's after work. I will buy them for the simple reason that I want beauty, even ephemeral beauty, in my apartment.

Last spring, I watched this show on PBS about tulips in Holland. It was a Saturday night, and I was tired.

You can make fun of me if you want:

i wrote a short story: flowers

For class this week {I'm taking a writing class: have I mentioned that yet? Well, I am}, I decided to do a short story.

I decided this for several reasons {you can skip all of this and scroll down to the beginning of the story, if you want}:

• I wanted a challenge. I'm not so good with the fiction, and so I set a goal for myself of writing a short story during this class. So why not get it out of the way early in the semester?
• I'm inspired by MFK Fisher, that lady I wrote about the other day. The one who writes about Aix-en-Provence just as I want to write about Aix. She has a very charmed-by-life tone, but it's more than charm. It's descriptive and educational and engaging, like you're being taught by someone who knows all the clues and wants you to play the game, too.
  
  MFK Fisher reminds me of my favorite short story writer, Laurie Colwin. It's that tone: that "come with me for a flight into someone else's rose-colored—but somehow still realistic—mind" tone. I want that kind of tone in my stories, so I decided to practice it here.
• I already had the beginning of a short story, but I wanted to do more with it. You can read the original here: it's third-person, and I transferred it into first. As someone forever fascinated by the writing process, it's interesting for me to see the similarities and differences in the stories. What stuck in the re-write? Why did that line get to still resonate?

And a few caveats:

• No, this isn't autobiograpical. There are elements I pulled from my life, yes, because I'm not that good at making stuff up. So here are the true things: I eat at Subway sometimes for lunch {it's just down the road from my office}, I watched the PBS show referenced in here, and I own pink plaid pajama pants.
  
  I hope this is enough of a teaser for you to want to read this, if only to find out how those three things are related.
• This is stream-of-consciousness. You know, like Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway or James Joyce in Ulysses. We're talking I typed with my eyes closed for part of this, just let the word fly—and then added nuances in the editing process.
  
  Bonus Detail: June 16 is Bloomsday, the day literary nerds celebrate Ulysses—a book that takes place entirely in one day {June 16, 1904} and mostly in the mind of one guy, Harold Bloom.  The book is something like 700 pages long and was one of those groundbreaking works that most English majors have to read. Let's pretend I wrote this as a stream-of-conscious homage to Joyce—instead of the reality, which is that I stumbled upon the fact that Bloomsday is coming up after I had started the story.

And now: the story.

------

I decided to buy the flowers myself. For who would buy them for me?

The thought wasn't even out of my mind, had just danced beyond the cusp of the mushy gray matter, and I realized that I was plagiarizing. No, not plagiarizing. Paraphrasing. I was paraphrasing, in my head and almost without realizing (how can you think a thought without realizing it? Where does the thought come from then?).

Virginia Woolf. “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”

A beautiful beginning to a novel, the kind of beginning where you're in the middle of the story before you even know you're reading. If you haven't read Mrs Dalloway, you should.

You should stop reading this story and go read that one, which seems like an unlikely thing for me to recommend, I know. I should want you to stay here and read about me, but that makes me sound so self-centered, so like a girl used to being the center of attention. And I'm not. Not used to that and not the center of attention.

I'm just a girl sitting alone in a Subway on my lunch hour, eating a sandwich and looking outside and wishing I could be sitting there.

But no. No, that isn't possible today, this first day when the air feels like fall instead of Indian summer. When the leaves no long blaze but instead are grayed-out versions of themselves.

And why would I want to be outside this Subway in a strip mall?

Outside, a silver Volvo whizzes by, exhaling fumes of burning money.

Outside, there's one table, a plastic table with a crack in the middle and dirt from generations of slobby diners—I imagine them as slobby, although I can't tell you why. I see people with uncombed hair grinding their elbow grease into the table as they shove in club sandwiches and three meat trios and the occasional vegetarian option.

Outside, there are horns interjecting and brakes arguing with engines and even the cement seems to have a noise. It's the noise of paved-over nature, of unnatural paths leading you on your journey, of hard facts.

(I'm reading too much into that, I know, but once I get Mrs Dalloway in my head, my thoughts tumble out in gymnastic confusion, in profusion. When Mrs Dalloway is in my head, I look for meaning in everything, even in the car horns and cement.)

But outside, even with all its detractions, has fresh air, not this Subway air of mayonnaise and bread. I’d rather be out there, outside.

Because...

-----

Yes, I'm stopping there. For now.

You can read Part II here.

oh, tulips

Every spring, I notice something new. This is slightly different from Anne of Green Gables' thought that every spring, everything is new.

What I mean is: every spring, I notice something new in all the newness of life around me.

Of course it isn't really new. Redbuds aren't new. But this spring, I've been looking at them as if I've never seen them before.

Have these trees always been here? What a silly thought. Yes, they have, but for years, my eyes must've glossed over them. Skipped straight from bare branches to small green buds to full leaves creating shade and dappling the sidewalk underneath with cool repose.

I've been stopping and staring so much at the redbuds this year that, for the first time in 3 years, I was late to work one Thursday morning.

I couldn't take the hurrying anymore, off to the office, off to the day, off to the projects. And so I'd walked a little more slowly, breathed a little more deeply on my morning walk with little pug.

The price of those 5 minutes was a look from my boss—you know the one—but that's a small price to pay. Insignificant when you realize that you bought more pleasure, more joy, more life with that one look.

But I never miss the tulips in the spring.

I have never not noticed tulips popping up red and yellow, black and white. Like daffodils, they are spring to me.

Daffodils are spring's first hint, first promise; tulips are its full celebration, a cacophony of unnecessary color.

For the tulips today—tulips dressing up this gray day—I have two homages:

A picture I took on a sunny morning walk.

And a poem from William Carlos Williams, that master of capturing small charms of the everyday life.

I hope you like them. I hope they make you feel springy today.

The Tulip Bed
William Carlos Williams


The May sun—whom
all things imitate—
that glues small leaves to
the wooden trees
shone from the sky
through bluegauze clouds
upon the ground.
Under the leafy trees
where the suburban streets
lay crossed,
with houses on each corner,
tangled shadows had begun
to join
the roadway and the lawns.
With excellent precision
the tulip bed
inside the iron fence
upreared its gaudy
yellow, white and red,
rimmed round with grass,
reposedly.

with God on our side

Because I'm an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person, I didn't hear President Obama's speech about Osama bin Laden live.

Instead, I found out at 5:30 this morning when I took little pug out for a walk. The Chicago Tribune was waiting for me on my doorstep, just as it always is but of course the headline was 10 times the size it always is.

U.S Kills Bin Laden

I read the paper on my walk, pausing occasionally to say, "Oh my, Miss Daisy, the world isn't the same as it was yesterday."

It's a touch of crazy, I know, to talk out loud to your dog, especially about world affairs, but as I looked at the rising sun and the bed of daffodils by the library—things that feel new and promising every day—I wanted to...

I wanted to recognize that no, the world isn't the same as it was last night when I went to bed.

There is a man who was here yesterday and who is no longer here today. And he was a bad man, responsible for many deaths.

His death, though, doesn't heal all the pain from those deaths, nor does it justify them, nor does it extinguish evil.

The world isn't the same as it was yesterday, but Osama bin Laden's death isn't total victory in the wars we're in now, nor is it the total triumph of good over evil.

It is death, and as I looked at the pictures in the Tribune of people chanting "USA" and singing "The Star-spangled Banner" outside the White House, I did feel a wellspring of patriotism.

And when I saw the pictures of New York City firefighters in Times Square, the marquee above them announcing bin Laden's death, I almost cried.

But I couldn't bring myself to rejoice in his death, and the rest of today, I've been thinking of this Bob Dylan song—"With God on Our Side." {You can see Joan Baez singing it here, or down below, I put in the lyrics.}

It addresses that belief that we will beat whatever we're fighting because we have God on our side. We are the chosen nation, the Christian nation. God must approve of what we're doing, and he'll show it by making us powerful and victorious and right.

But that's a messy argument when you factor in people, actual people. When people get involved—and we're all a mix of good and evil, of sin and redemption—it's harder to be able to claim God's approval so confidently.

At least it is for me.

Yes, I believe that we should seek the will of God. And I believe that we should work every day to love him more by loving those around us more.

But I don't believe that we should rejoice in someone else's downfall—as natural as that is for us humans.

This rule applied in elementary school—when we all learned that it is not right to laud a good grade over someone who didn't do so well, even if they deserve it because they rubbed it in your face when they did better on a test.

You don't get to feel smarter just because someone else did worse.

And you don't get to feel more righteous just because an evil person, your enemy, even, died.

This isn't a chastisement of the celebrations, nor is it a callous take on what was a very successful, very hard-earned mission.

It's more me working through the maelstrom of emotions that swelled up this morning on the walk with little pug. Osama bin Laden is dead, and I'm thankful for that.

And now, Lord have mercy on the state we humans find ourselves in.

With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan

Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.

The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns on their hands
And God on their side.

The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.

I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side.

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.

hosanna, hey-sanna, sanna, sanna-ho

At Palm Sunday, I always want to sing this:
Hosanna, hey, sanna, sanna sanna ho
Sanna, hey, sanna, hosanna
Hey, JC, JC, you're all right by me
Sanna hosanna, hey superstar!

But seeing as it's from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar, I don't think it'd be the most worshipful beginning to Holy Week.

It's catchy, though, and that's why, as I watched the procession go past today, I wanted to belt it out as I waved my palm branch.

It includes that rather accessible way of praising Jesus: Hey, Jesus, you're all right.

It's like saying casually to him, "Oh, hey, Jesus, you're pretty cool, you know. Nice, friendly, good listener, really a giver. Yeah, you're all right."

And while all that's true, of course, it's not enough for me—not enough recognition of his kingship and how he is the Lord and how he was there when God created light and flowers.

But I must confess, that "Oh, hey, Jesus" is more how I live my life and my faith.

I say every week at church that I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light.

I profess my faith in that way on a Sunday, but come a normal Wednesday afternoon, Jesus is in the back of my mind.

We mostly have a casual relationship, Jesus and I, one where I usually think of him as a really good friend who does stuff for me when I ask and who also listens to me when I have something to process.

Oh, and he died for my sins and loves me despite my sins.

Although I'm well-aware of his sovereignty and although I often pause to marvel at his creation {oh, how a tiny bud on a tree can make me praise him for his goodness}, I don't take time every day to marvel at his kingship.

So that's why I like Palm Sunday. That's why I like Holy Week.

It is time to worship him for his sacrifice and kingship.

Sometimes, I need help being guided through emotions. Any emotions, not just faith-related ones—I'm not a natural crier, so if I need to cry, I will watch Rudy, which has the peculiar effect of making me cry every time I watch plucky Rudy run onto the field to play for Notre Dame. I don't understand this, but I will take what emotional release I can.

Holy Week guides me through the emotions of recognizing what Jesus has done for me and then worshiping him for that. It starts with the joy of Palm Sunday—and it's not hard for me to get swept up in joy when the procession goes past, banners flying, kids dancing, everyone singing about the King of Glory.

I like to say Palm Sunday is a pep rally for Jesus, the kick-off to Holy Week. That may seem a bit glib, especially coming after this "I need to recognize his kingship" talk, but it's true.

The whole point of pep rallies are to get you fired up, and Palm Sunday does that. It lets me dance with joy, wave a palm branch with abandon, sing hosanna to the Son of David.

It gives me the words to praise him, a deep praise welling up from knowing what will happen in just a few days, when we remember his crucifixion.

Hey JC, JC, you're more than all right by me: you're the King of Glory for me.

a long walk and then a reward

The old couple walks towards me, he with a cane and she in a green spring jacket.

They're familiar to me, and if you've read this, they're familiar to you, too. It's the older couple I see almost every day on my walk with my little pug in the early morning.

When I wrote about them before, she had a brick-red winter coat on. It was cold, but now, there are daffodils springing up and waving their cheery heads at us and so she's switched to her green jacket.

"Well, there's my Daisy!" he says to little pug, and she sticks up her squished-in nose for a pat just where she likes it best, under the chin.

He bends down—carefully, he's carrying a cane, you know—and scratches his Daisy, who then shows her appreciation by licking his knee. For some reason.

"Oh, I see you have running shoes on," he says to me. "Are you a runner, then?"

They both look at me expectantly and with smiles of pride already itching at the corners of their mouths. Even if I weren't actually a runner, I would lie to them, just to see them smile, I think.

They are the kind of people who make you feel full but at the same time hungry for more of the day, for more people, for more smiles, for more conversations. I don't know how they do it, although I think their secret is in old age, a life spent together, and a good walk every morning.

"Yes, I run," I tell them, and she claps a little.

She really does. She throws her head back and she throws her hands together, and she says, "Oh, that's so wonderful for you!"

I tell them about my 10-mile race coming up and we have a little moment imagining Daisy trying to run with me, and then she says, "Yesterday, we walked all the way to the school on Main Street. You know which one I'm talking about? That was like a marathon for us. But then we got to have a bagel."

And that sounds like a good day to me: a long walk and then a reward.

It can be a long anything, you know. A long day at work. A long run. A long conversation. A long to-do list.

And then a simple little reward: I like this idea.

"All right, we have to get to church now," they told me, and Miss Daisy and I turned, our shadows stretching long in front of us as we walked away from the morning sun.

april in paris

Continuing my trip down memory lane, here's another snippet from my time in France. I guess I should say this is a trip down la rue des souvenirs, if I want to be all French-y about it.

I wrote this for my hometown newspaper, too—you can read another piece I wrote for The Hawkeye here—and it's the only piece my editor suggested.

"Write something about April in Paris," she said, and this is what came out.

-----

Now it’s April and thank goodness I don’t have to live through the normal adage “April showers bring May flowers.” J’en ai marre de la pluie; I’ve had it with rain because it’s been raining since November. I want more of the sun, that brilliance of the day you can hear in Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong crooning “April in Paris.”

It’s impossible to be in France in the spring and not think of that song, even if you’re not in Paris.

I think of it almost every time I look out my window of my room here at lycée Jeanne d’Arc.

April in Paris
Chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the tree…

Although I have to confess that I don’t know what a chestnut tree looks like, I’m convinced that I have one just outside my room. Chestnuts in blossom, as the song says. I open my big windows first thing in the morning and lean out to smile at the charm of spring, saying, “Salut, France!”

Because it is only April, the early morning air still catches in my throat, that briskness you know will grow into the fullness of a spring afternoon.

My tree has sweet pink flowers that cluster as a palette: light pink like a girl’s Easter dress, rosiness like a blush, mauve like a glossed-lip grin. The flowers hang on a blue canvas, the colors so delicate and whisper-like that I hold my breath against all this spring explosion.

But April in France is a taunt.

The weather goads you to not carry your umbrella, your constant fashion accessory, but those blue sky days are quickly followed by mean days of rain that you hoped had gone away.

In Normandy, they have a saying: En avril, ne te decouvre pas d’un fil: In April, don’t take off even one thread of clothing.

It may seem like spring, but don’t believe it until June. When I came to school in a skirt and flip-flops, my natural response to sunny days, I was lectured by many French women at lycée Jeanne d’Arc who think they are my French mother and therefore have the right to nag.

The world over knows that you can’t trust spring weather and that you have to enjoy it while you can.

So April in France is an excuse.

Wear a kicky new skirt with a spring pattern of flowers that you bought at full price because you had a weak moment. You walked by the shop window on a sparkling Wednesday afternoon and lost a little self-control in the immense possibilities of spring.

Looking at the sun’s rays highlighting the cathedral spire and listening to the accordion man play “La Vie en Rose” for the tourists, you were grabbed by the feeling that life is—is—isn’t it too much sometimes?

You had an urge that didn’t come from inside you but more from the sun, spire, flowers, cobblestones, sky: skip along the Seine with your arms held wide to hug the spring, a city-tied Maria from The Sound of Music.

But that’s silly, an urge to repress just like the want to scream in a very solemn place.

And so instead—

dancing with the daffodils

He showed up at the precisely appointed hour. Right on the dot. If I had a chiming grandfather clock, it would've been chiming. Six o'clock.

I have come to expect this, but I did not expect daffodils.

In my mind, I quickly thought: Did I tell him that I love daffodils? That I rarely fight the urge to buy them every time I see them? That I once sat in a field of daffodils in Belgium at Easter time?

Did I tell him that daffodils make me happy, just by their yellowness? Did I mention the Wordsworth poem?

In my mind, I was smiling this huge, silly grin because I wasn't sure I had told him all that, but here he was, standing with a vase of daffodils on my doorstep. My spring flower. My happy flower. My dare-to-remember-that-it-can-be-warm-outside flower.

But apparently, my face did not smile.

Apparently, my face said: Oh dear Lord, what is that pitiful bouquet? Where are my two dozen roses, the overdone flower of affection?

But that is not it. That is not what I meant at all.

Face, get it together. Communicate what the rest of us is thinking and feeling. That's your job.

Now, looking at these daffodils on my dining room table—looking at them, my heart with pleasure fills / And dances with the daffodils.

That's from a poem, by the way. Which I'll just go ahead and put in here because I'm fairly rippling with excitement that spring is next week. Spring is less than a week away, actually. Spring is in six days. We should have a countdown.

And I have daffodils to remind me of this springtime goodness.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

take comfort

It's the first of the month, and I can't help but think of my friend Lauren, who is, most likely, sitting in a cafe at this very moment reading the newest issue of Real Simple.

I know this because that's her tradition. She subscribes to Real Simple and so she gets the next month's issue two weeks or so in advance. And then she saves it until the calendar page flips.

I've never discussed this particular part of the tradition with her, but in my head, when she pulls that magazine out of the mailbox, days and days before she will actually read it, she doesn't even deign it with a glance. She averts her eyes, shoves the magazine to the bottom of the mail pile and becomes quite taken with everything else that came that day: bills, flyers, the passing paper of daily life.

I see Lauren wanting to crack open the magazine, just take the littlest peek. Especially at this time of the year—when November's issue arrived in mid-October, who wouldn't be giddy to think ahead to that very autumnal feast of Thanksgiving, followed quickly by ornaments and wrapping paper and gift lists you should get started on in, say, mid-October?

But she doesn't.

She gives herself a treat every month, right there at the beginning of the month. She schedules a bit of break in her busy life, and from the outside, it's just this small thing.

It's a magazine.

It's a Starbucks in suburbia.

It's learning new uses for old things and plotting easy weeknight meals.

It's just a cup of coffee, surrounded by other people who are busy, too.

Oh, but it's more than that, and Lauren, more than anyone else, has taught me joy of everyday ritual. She's a mentor of mine in that way, although I'm sure, as she's reading this, she's laughing out loud, a practically-shouted "HA!" She thinks she doesn't have anything to teach me, but we all have something to learn from the people who criss-cross our lives and criss-cross our hearts.

Lauren is the kind of person who, when I told her that the flowers on my balcony weren't doing so well this year, said, "Oh, K!" That's what she calls me, an abbreviation usually preceded by that OH, which makes it feel like she's constantly reassuring me. I like that.

"Oh, K!" she said. "Maybe this is just your year for mums. Maybe your garden will be best in the fall."

And just like that, I laughed. I felt better about my flowers, and I started to anticipate {more than I normally do} fall. Maybe it would be my year for mums. Such a thing to look forward to!

Lauren has mastered this, this looking forward to what other people may classify as mundane. And that means that her life is filled not with the mundane {although inevitably, there are slices of it here and there} but with small flashes of anticipation. It's all in how you see what's coming your way.

She gets excited by Mondays because they mean a new week is beginning and you never know what may happen in a week.

Her favorite holiday is New Year's, not because of the crazy party, but because it's all about looking ahead and dreaming about what the year could bring.

When she comes to visit me, she doesn't need to be taken into the city, out to a swanky bar, charmed by the theater. What she wants is to see what my daily life is like here in this niche I've carved out for myself. She wants to meet my friends and hang out at my favorite cafe and go grocery shopping.

{This makes planning for her visits very simple.}

There's that Starbucks ad campaign going right now: Take comfort in rituals. For a country looking for familiarity and connection and reassurance {my positive spin on the current election season, which will, thankfully, be over tomorrow}, that slogan pulls.

It reminds us of the big rituals, our cycles of routine: of children trick-or-treating dressed as fairy princesses and Luke Skywalker and of Thanksgiving turkeys and of mistletoe.

And those do bring comfort.

But it's the little rituals that get us through another Monday, another month, another challenge.

It's stopping for your morning coffee, wherever that may be. It's meeting a friend for a quick workday lunch at a sandwich shop halfway between your offices. It's having a favorite TV show. It's the smell of just-dried sheets and the sound of your furnace kicking on.

It's Real Simple at a cafe on the first of the month.

I just saw that Lauren called while I was writing this; in her message, she said, "It's November 1st, and I bet you know where I am!"

I do. I sure do.

And now I'm thinking: What are small traditions I could create out of the everyday? What are small traditions you could create?

when words aren't necessary