Iris

Blue is the color of you.

Like water, the Puget Sound

all crystalline and endless shimmer. 

I remember driving up Highway 101 with you

the Sound to our left, east-like

a giant never-ending plate of glass

as cobalt and honorable as your eyes.

Funny sounding Native names 

like Chimicum

dotted the roadside and old pine 

firework stands sat rotting away in April's rain.

Almost to Port Townsend

a lake on the right, to the East where

hundreds of Canadian geese flocked 

and flew 

and lived,

and here a place

you found joy.

I remember when you made this discovery

how excited you were

and we drove there together

and we watched them fly in

great aerial waves of white and silver and cerulean,

swarming above, a great
silent blessing.

I never cared much about birds before,

let alone Canadian geese. But you had learned 

to love them then,

to see the beauty in their winged dance.
So too then, did I.

And then,
then you died...

and there they were.

Everywhere above me,

all of sudden it seemed the geese,

and the pidgeons, and

the seagulls and 

the blackbirds.

All of them

flew by me, in front of me,

around me and above me in large swoops and 

V formations and I wondered then what I know now,

was it a sign?

Maybe you were still nearby. 

Tonight I sat in the bathtub 

thinking about what a hard winter it's been.

Feeling slightly lost, confused

and alone.

I wasn't thinking about you right then,

not really. I was reading 

one of my many dozen poetry anthologies

and I came across this poem

and then I thought of those Canadian geese

and of birds

and of you

and I felt again like I do whenever I see 

them flying above me, that 
maybe you are here somewhere after all, 

taking away my breath
and guiding me home...

Not Swans

by Susan Ludvigson

I drive toward distant clouds and my mother's dying.

The quickened sky is mercury, it slithers

across the horizon. Against the liquid silence,

a V of birds crosses-sudden and silver.

They tilt, becoming white light as they turn, glitter

like shooting stars arcing slow motion out of the abyss,

not falling.

Now they look like chips of flint,

the arrow broken.

I think. This isn't myth-

they are not sings, not souls.

Reaching blue 

again, they're ordinary ducks or maybe

Canadian geese. Veering away they shoot 

into the west, too far for my eyes, aching

as they do.

Never mind what I said

before. Those birds took my breath. I new what it meant.

February 18th...

is, or should I say, was, my great aunt Larry's birthday. She was my grandmother's sister and died at least a decade ago; I can't really remember now. She lived in Chicago all of her adult life in an apartment with her brother, who has also long since passed, and waited tables almost until the day she died. She was in her late seventies when she passed, I think due to complications from a stroke. I can't remember what year this was' all I can seem to recall how sad my mom was. She and Aunt Larry had always been close as my mom didn't always get along with her mother very well. At the time of Aunt Larry's death, my grandmother had recently lost her husband of many decades to a heart attack and was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's. After Aunt Larry died, a few years later, my mom too. And then, three years after the death of her second daughter, both of her children having died in automobile accidents, my grandmother, then sufferning from late stage Altziemers, exhaled her last raspy breath and let death come too.


Today all that remains of this side of my family is my brother and I. Neither my Aunt Larry or her and my grandmother's brother had children or families of their own. My mom's birthday is the day after Aunt Larry's and i twas only after both of them had died that I could remember who's birthday was the eighteenth and who's was the nineteenth. In any event, tomorrow is Aunt Larry's birthday and Friday would have been my mom's 57th birthday. It's strange to think that it's been several years now since she died, and that I've almost gotten used to her being gone most of the time. It's strange to think about those months and years where thoughts of what I imagined in my mind the accident to have been like and of her last living thoughts were all that invade my mind most every waking minute. It's strange to think that I have gotten used to seeing little things ten thousand times a day that remind me of her and it's strange that when one of my regular customers who has hair that looks just like my mom's did comes in, that I do a double take to this day and stare at her from behind when she's not facing my directions for minutes on end.


At church there is always a big bouquet of flowers at the front of the sanctuary that differs from week to week. Congregants donate these flowers in memory or celebration of loved ones and a note is put in the order of service sharing who the flowers are for. This Sunday I will be bringing a giant bouquet of tulips in memory of my mom. I wasn't sure of what sort of flowers to bring, only thinking that I wanted them to be colorful because my mom was vibrant and lived life to it's outermost edges on most days her body existed. A friend suggested tulips, reminding me of how in high school my mom ordered 500 tulip bulbs and planted them in our front yard, creating a floral sea people from all over the neighborhood would walk by at dusk to stand for several minutes and admire the beauty before them.


My mom had a way about things; beautiful things. She loved and appreciated beauty in all it's forms... and I like to think I inherited this from her.  She saw the beauty in everyday things, big and small, and was beyond gifted at being thankful for these things and for being in the moment and forcing those around her to be as well (I'm still working on mastering this). In the last five or so years of her life, just like the tulips she so loved, she bloomed so beautifully that to those of us who knew or came in contact with her, it was blinding at times. She continued doing the things she had always done to make the world a more beautiful place such as gardening and volunteering and baking for friends and painting and singing in the community choir and teaching art to children and sailing to troubled teenage boys... but she did even more. She moved to a new town, in a new state. And she made new friends; a lot of them. She danced took up folk dancing and started soup dinners and play readings with her neighbors. She had boyfriends! She discovered after more than two decades of trying, how to love her autistic son in the ways that he needed and after years of strife, she became his best friend. While always having been a lover of learning and people, she became adventurous and courageous in a new way and it was here in this place of wild abandon and courage, that she found herself.


When I think about my mom being taken so suddenly and so violently from the life she so loved, and from us, the people who so loved her, I truly do believe that she was at peace with the world. Yes she had her frustrations, things she was unhappy about or annoyed with, but she had found that place that so many of us spend our lives searching for; that place off deep inner peace and solace and happiness that cannot be budged or eroded but unhappy occurances or circumstances. She had become that woman who walked into a room and people gravitated towards. She had become the person she was put on the planet to be after years in an unhappy marriage and a career which brought her more frustration than joy. I tell myself that because of this, because of the fact that she had become so self-actualized, it was okay in some respects for her to go. She had succeeded in making the world a better place and she had found inner peace and joy in doing so.


My mom had one sibling. A sister named Gail. When Gail was twenty one she was killed in a car accident; just like my mom was at fifty. A lot of times I worry this will be my fate too.  My mom never talked of Gail and when she died, I remember telling someone that I would always talk of my mom and never let her memory die like she had with Gail. But I don't talk about her really. There are only a few souls on the planet but with whom I broach the subject of my mother, probably because it is the most precious subject in the world for me. I have this fear I think that when I talk about her, little pieces of her that I have held onto so tightly with all my being, might escape my grip and I will lose her. 


On Friday Ro is taking me out to dinner. I think I will have a piece of cake for desert in celebration of my mom and maybe toast to her and all the many gifts, in addition to life, that she has given me. I will think about her wearing that sweatshirt she loved dearly that embarrassed me endlessly as a teenager; a sweatshirt that said, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." I hope that if you are lucky enough to still have your mom nearby, or a phone call or email away, for my mom's birthday and for me, you will tell them how much you love and appreciate them or at some point in your day Friday, practice a random act of kindness in memory of my dear old mom. 


Namaste.

February 16th, 2000 and ten.

Just another Tuesday morning at Richmond Manner...

Breakfast...

Yoga Pants...

A dog and his friend...

Jewelry, perfume, chocolate...

My favorite green bowl. 

It's February already, and almost halfway through this funny month of differing days. I'm sitting at a coffee shop in the hills far from home thinking about spring coming. Last week we saw a few days of sun and as much as I expound to hate the heat, the warmth on my skin felt good. It felt fresh and new and exciting. It felt like something thick and heavy had been lifted and it brought a sense of hope, a sense of faith in the goodness and the transformative power of a season's change. One of my customers who's garden is the stuff Better Homes and Gardens magazine spreads are made of told me of some sort of bulbs coming up in his garden. Around town, little spots of green can be seen poking out through the soil, ready to brave another year. I have retired my wool jackets for the season mostly and purchase a lovely lightweight grey number than just might be one of my favorite jackets ever a few weeks back. So I will try to relish this time. These few months when every day's weather is a suprise sometimes even from hour to hour, and not try to think about the depression that is sure to follow when the weather goes from cool and sunny to just plain hot. Hot and sticky. Last summer had some hot, most miserable days and I spent several nights sitting in a bathtub of cold water trying like hell, and in vein, to cool off even just a bit.


The thought of days like these make me want to move north somewhere, anywhere. I don't remember Portland ever being humid before and last year it just seemed to feel sticky most of the time. Gone were the 75 degree days of my childhood, to be replaced by temperatures over ninety on many days, humidity dripping heavily in the air. In any event, here I sit in my new grey jacket enjoying a hot americano and looking out the window at little bursts of pink popping up on the tips  of tree branches across the street. Yes, today, I will just try to look out the window at today and not worry about last year or the coming summer or anything of the sort. Instead I will focus on this exact moment as it happens, on the dogs walking by outside, the folky Natalie Merchant song I've never heard creeping from the speaker above me, the heat radiating from the fireplace next to me, and the quiet, calm company of a room full of strangers. May you take some time to do the same.


Namaste.