Ten minutes before heading out the door to have brunch with friends, I heard a pop against the large picture window that sits above the central staircase of our house. It sounded like a sharp tap – almost like a fingernail snapping against the window – and it was followed by an almost imperceptible bump. A sparrow had flown into the window and was lying on the deck, wings spread, chest heaving.
In the last twelve months, I have buried two other birds who didn’t survive similar crashes. One was a blue jay who hit the front door and snapped its neck. When I first saw it, the adult jay was splayed on its belly, brilliant blue wings perpendicular to its body. It looked like an avian savior on the cross, and it gave a great, slow-motion heave of its wings. I thought it was alive, and shouted out to Leigh that it was okay. It wasn’t okay; after that last valiant gesture, it died. The hummingbird may not have hit a window; Leigh found it on the porch, possibly the victim of a neighborhood cat or perhaps having succumbed to its own super-fast heart rate. Hummers go into a state of torpor at night; for some, getting that heart revved up in the morning doesn’t work and they expire. It looked like a little jewel, like I could stick a pin in it and wear it on my lapel.
In addition to those two deaths, dozens of birds have hit the windows and survived. When I hear them crash, I usually go outside to see what kind of shape they’re in. In the past, some have looked pretty bad and I feared they’d not make it. A warbler last year took nearly two hours to regain its bearings. I sat at its side, worried that a larger bird or one of those cats might spot a tempting lunch. I watched the bird breathe, blink its eyes, and occasionally try stretching out one of its wings. Eventually it hopped a few paces from me, and ten minutes after that proceeded to hop across the lawn. I still worried its wing might be broken, but the warbler finally gathered its composure and flew off.
I don’t think today’s bird will be as fortunate. It hit hard, and its right wing appears damaged. It can’t stand; every time it tries to right itself, it tips onto its side. I’ve spent 30 minutes with it, and now have to head over to my friend’s. I’ve built a kind of low fortress around the bird, a windbreak made of towels, so that it’s partly camouflaged but can still hop out, if it comes to that. I don’t think it will. I think that sometime over the next few hours, while I’m laughing over brunch, the sparrow will die.
*
When we got home, it was still breathing. I thought about moving the bird into the garage, where it would be absolutely safe from predators, but worried that if it tried to fly, it’d do further damage. Left it alone for the night.
*
It’s morning. The sun is a cold disc in the eastern sky. The sparrow is dead. Over the first few hours of morning, I hear two more crashes. Neither are casualties; both birds shake themselves off and fly away.
*
This afternoon, I will bury the sparrow beneath a maple tree. If sparrows have spirits, and if those spirits have an aesthetic sensibility, this one will have a view of thousands of trees and a winding creek, will hear the local owl at night and the geese at dawn; will hear, at times, the howl of a coyote or the whistle of a distant train. I’m beginning to think we live in a bird cemetery, but that’s probably only the start of it. Nature is full of the marvelous, for sure, but it’s brimming over with death and dying. Even now, at the start of spring, I’m noticing which trees survived the long winter, which will not bloom due to ice damage, disease, or other mysterious and terminal CODs. I watched the gallant attempts of the crocuses to survive several days of snow and wind; they didn’t make it. And now I will be nursemaid to the birds, talking quietly to them after they’ve hit a window, hoping they can recuperate, burying them when they don’t. Elsewhere, I will remind myself, a friend is trying to decide whether to keep her cat alive by giving it daily injections. “She’s my longest relationship,” the friend writes, having lost both her parents last year. I will remind myself of another friend, who is in the process of learning how to say goodbye to her younger brother, dying of cancer. And another friend, who is relearning his life after surviving a brain aneurysm. And another friend, who has endured two years of fruitless tests, all attempts to diagnose an illness that has sapped her of her strength, energy, and creativity. These are the people I am closest to in the world, individuals I consider my family. Of them, right now, I am the luckiest.
I hold no formal faith, believe in no true god, but when I place a rock on the grave of the sparrow later today, I will whisper a prayer.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Close up
I spend a lot of time looking at things close up. For much of the winter and now into these weeks of early spring, I’d go out to the driveway, for instance, and stare at crow tracks in the snow, notice where small stones were visible beneath a patch of ice, study the juxtaposition of un-raked leaves against burgeoning shoots of grass. I took a lot of photographs, because much of what I saw was beautiful; I wanted to remember what it looked like, and I wanted to continue to study the photographs. I have frame after frame of abstract compositions; anyone looking at them would be puzzled at the subject matter. I might have to point out the thin layer of ice, the bubbles caught in and beneath its surface, the array of flattened vegetation or pebbles visible just below the crust. I’m intrigued by what is often overlooked. We are, as a species, capable of a narrowness of focus. This is often a favorable trait; intensity of focus helps us concentrate, helps us accomplish. But every day we overlook thousands of incidents, scenes, interactions, and conversations – many of which are of little consequence. But we also overlook distress and grief in those we care about. We overlook catastrophes of great magnitude. We overlook, for years and even lifetimes, entire continents of suffering. It is a survival mechanism. It is a necessity.
When I was a kid I read Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who. In it, Horton, an elephant, notices a sound coming from a speck of dust. That speck turns out to be an inhabited planet. Horton heroically pays attention, even in the face of ridicule and imprisonment. Not only does Horton notice the planet, he does something for the inhabitants. He takes action.
Although I believe that human beings are inherently good, I also believe that we regularly fail to act. We might notice, we might pay extended attention, we might speak about our beliefs, we might speak up or out when it is difficult to do so. All of that is well and good and, at times, even admirable. But most of us, most of the time, fail to do anything. We might send a check, volunteer a few hours of our time – I felt bad for those tsunami victims, those displaced by Katrina, those going hungry in the nearby shelter. Some of us show up to dish out dinner every Sunday or help hang drywall for an afternoon. Lots of us do good deeds when we can.
But look around. Family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, co-workers, neighbors – a lot of people are overlooked. They are ill, they are stressed, they have lost or soon will lose a job, they can’t cope with the burdens of a long winter, they are lonely, they are afraid, they are confused, they are invisible.
We know this, don’t we? There’s nothing new here. Nothing new here, either: we look away.
When I was a kid I read Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who. In it, Horton, an elephant, notices a sound coming from a speck of dust. That speck turns out to be an inhabited planet. Horton heroically pays attention, even in the face of ridicule and imprisonment. Not only does Horton notice the planet, he does something for the inhabitants. He takes action.
Although I believe that human beings are inherently good, I also believe that we regularly fail to act. We might notice, we might pay extended attention, we might speak about our beliefs, we might speak up or out when it is difficult to do so. All of that is well and good and, at times, even admirable. But most of us, most of the time, fail to do anything. We might send a check, volunteer a few hours of our time – I felt bad for those tsunami victims, those displaced by Katrina, those going hungry in the nearby shelter. Some of us show up to dish out dinner every Sunday or help hang drywall for an afternoon. Lots of us do good deeds when we can.
But look around. Family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, co-workers, neighbors – a lot of people are overlooked. They are ill, they are stressed, they have lost or soon will lose a job, they can’t cope with the burdens of a long winter, they are lonely, they are afraid, they are confused, they are invisible.
We know this, don’t we? There’s nothing new here. Nothing new here, either: we look away.
I like to stack small, flat rocks. I don’t know why. I like the way they look. I have little stacks all over my study. Sometimes a passing truck or slamming door will cause them to topple. I re-stack them, carefully. To me, they are beautiful. For the most part, I neglect them after I stack them. Cobwebs form, and after a few weeks I might notice and dust them off, or just blow the cobwebs away. I can’t say that I pay much attention to these beautiful things I create, beyond the moment of composition. I say that I love them.
In much the same way, I think of my friends, my family, my students, my colleagues. I would say, in many cases, I love them. But I don’t pay enough attention. I sometimes look away. I often fail to act. This is done knowingly, willfully. The same might be true of you.
Today, all I can do is study this picture. I am caught up in the tilt of the rocks, I am a little mesmerized by the strands of the cobweb. The light draws me in. There is a kind of sadness in the photograph that is quietly appealing. Looking at pretty pictures is a nice way to spend an afternoon. But I wish I were doing something else. I wish I believed that tomorrow would be different. I wish we were all a little more like Horton.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Laid Low
The crocuses avoided the barrage of wood, then withstood a day of April snow. But forty-eight hours of heavy winds finally laid them low, literally. Even so, they’re still beautiful. And, with or without the verticality of the crocuses, spring approaches. In two weeks, we’ll have daffodils. In three, hummingbirds. In seven, I’ll turn fifty.So much math.
So much, so much.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Boxes
Once a week, rain or shine, whether we have lots of snow or less snow, we pack our trash into Leigh’s station wagon and make a visit to the Oswego County Transfer Station. That’s a neutral-sounding euphemism for the dump, which is actually half dump and half recycling center. We hit both sides, usually two bags each. On the recycling side, we deposit one bag’s worth of newspaper and junk mail, and one full of cans and jars. On the dump side it’s just, well, garbage. There are satisfying aspects to the dumping of the trash, in part because it’s cathartic – a temporary freeing up of space – and in part because it’s physical. You literally throw the bags over the side of a giant bin; depending on what’s below, you might hear a satisfying thunk or bump or clunk. Off in the corner of the recycling area there’s a place for shredded paper, a material for which I hold a weird attraction. I like shredding it, I like looking at it – it’s confetti-like, almost festive – and I like thinking about the tangible remnants of lost secrets. In the back of my mind I think it would be fun, spy-like, to take all those pieces of shredded paper and reconstruct them, rebuild all the words and numbers. Find out what was so important that it needed to be destroyed.
There’s a metal area, too, and although we never use it, it intrigues me. People leave old washers and dryers, rusted bicycles or dirt bikes, tools, various deformed exercise machines, and an array of misshapen and mysterious metal. I always spot at least one tackle box or tool box – the old metal kind with sturdy locks. I imagine that they belonged to men whose children have given them new ones as gifts. Maybe they are the tackle boxes of the dead. If they recently belonged to someone still living, I suspect that they parted with them reluctantly. My father loved his old tackle box and luckily as kids we never had the money or the wherewithal to replace it. His tool box seemed sacred, too, something that would last a lifetime and grow more important and meaningful with age. But week after week, there in the corner of the dump, I’ll spot one, sometimes a whole heap of them. Today there were two old boxes; they looked like a long-married couple. One was a little bigger than the other, both were well-rusted but still functional. Next to one was a collection of ancient tools, probably a dozen or so. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone willingly parting with them; my father, again, would sooner part with a finger than a long-held hammer.
Tackle boxes and tool boxes can be purchased online now. They have some fancy contraptions as far as tool boxes go, including some that unfold up and out to two winged tiers with plenty of shelf space. They come in fire-engine red or silver or black; they’re generally rectangular with silver hardware. Some of them look as though they’d weigh 80 pounds if filled with tools, others are more compact. The tackle box industry seems to be booming – there are plastic boxes that look like little briefcases, others that fold out to look like staircases, see-through tackle boxes, even tackle bags – all in a variety of colors and shapes, including fluorescent green and pink.
I can’t imagine my father carrying a plastic box or one with colors or ever considering a tackle bag. It might not be a true equivalent, and I doubt my father would make the comparison, but maybe his tackle box and tool box were like my library, or what passes for my library. (Planks, wooden blocks, lots of books…) They’re each a kind of sacred space, a personal and private place. I arrange my books in the order I like, sometimes alphabetical, sometimes by subject, sometimes just one author I think might like another author right up against each other. (It’s like being a book/author matchmaker.) There are certain books I want nearby, and others that I believe have magical powers. I have one book by Michael Burkard and one by Anne Carson that WORK for me. I open them, I read a line, a word, a whole poem… and I am immediately inspired to write something myself. They have never failed me, and I haven’t abused their powers. If anything, I consult them more rarely – I don’t want to wear them out.
Those relics I saw today seemed to hold the remnants of someone’s secret life. What old hammer rested in one, what series of handmade lures in another? Were they full of little compartments, or drawers; had someone’s father sat her next to one, decades ago, and taught her how to bait a hook, how to use a socket wrench? If I could, I’d steal those old boxes. I’d open them up and imagine the lives of those who opened them before. I’d give them personalities, maybe even names. I’d cluster them into friendly groups, then neighborhoods. I’d have a whole room full of castoffs. A whole barn full of new junk, transferred from one station to another.
There’s a metal area, too, and although we never use it, it intrigues me. People leave old washers and dryers, rusted bicycles or dirt bikes, tools, various deformed exercise machines, and an array of misshapen and mysterious metal. I always spot at least one tackle box or tool box – the old metal kind with sturdy locks. I imagine that they belonged to men whose children have given them new ones as gifts. Maybe they are the tackle boxes of the dead. If they recently belonged to someone still living, I suspect that they parted with them reluctantly. My father loved his old tackle box and luckily as kids we never had the money or the wherewithal to replace it. His tool box seemed sacred, too, something that would last a lifetime and grow more important and meaningful with age. But week after week, there in the corner of the dump, I’ll spot one, sometimes a whole heap of them. Today there were two old boxes; they looked like a long-married couple. One was a little bigger than the other, both were well-rusted but still functional. Next to one was a collection of ancient tools, probably a dozen or so. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone willingly parting with them; my father, again, would sooner part with a finger than a long-held hammer.
Tackle boxes and tool boxes can be purchased online now. They have some fancy contraptions as far as tool boxes go, including some that unfold up and out to two winged tiers with plenty of shelf space. They come in fire-engine red or silver or black; they’re generally rectangular with silver hardware. Some of them look as though they’d weigh 80 pounds if filled with tools, others are more compact. The tackle box industry seems to be booming – there are plastic boxes that look like little briefcases, others that fold out to look like staircases, see-through tackle boxes, even tackle bags – all in a variety of colors and shapes, including fluorescent green and pink.
I can’t imagine my father carrying a plastic box or one with colors or ever considering a tackle bag. It might not be a true equivalent, and I doubt my father would make the comparison, but maybe his tackle box and tool box were like my library, or what passes for my library. (Planks, wooden blocks, lots of books…) They’re each a kind of sacred space, a personal and private place. I arrange my books in the order I like, sometimes alphabetical, sometimes by subject, sometimes just one author I think might like another author right up against each other. (It’s like being a book/author matchmaker.) There are certain books I want nearby, and others that I believe have magical powers. I have one book by Michael Burkard and one by Anne Carson that WORK for me. I open them, I read a line, a word, a whole poem… and I am immediately inspired to write something myself. They have never failed me, and I haven’t abused their powers. If anything, I consult them more rarely – I don’t want to wear them out.
Those relics I saw today seemed to hold the remnants of someone’s secret life. What old hammer rested in one, what series of handmade lures in another? Were they full of little compartments, or drawers; had someone’s father sat her next to one, decades ago, and taught her how to bait a hook, how to use a socket wrench? If I could, I’d steal those old boxes. I’d open them up and imagine the lives of those who opened them before. I’d give them personalities, maybe even names. I’d cluster them into friendly groups, then neighborhoods. I’d have a whole room full of castoffs. A whole barn full of new junk, transferred from one station to another.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Edge of April
I haven’t been much of a cheerleader lately. My capacity to look on the bright side, cheer someone up, even offer a few words of encouragement has been just about wholly depleted. Winter is always tough here, and this winter was worse than usual. I found out, just a few days before Christmas (the worst gift ever) that my job was in jeopardy; several friends have been enduringly and scarily ill; my partner underwent surgery and toughed out a long recuperation; and, well, that was enough.
It seemed, in my mind, that all of these things coincided with challenges in the world outside the scope of my little world as well. The chaos in the economy, in particular, has underscored my personal uncertainty and fear in a way that has been hard for me to endure. The resultant stress knocked me for a loop in February, followed by a worrisome couple of weeks focused uncomfortably on my own health. It turned out, after a batch of tests, that I’m “perfectly normal.” More on that dull but welcome assessment later.
What has helped me through the winter has been a love for my job which, despite its precarious state, is a good one. It’s true that I’m underpaid and underappreciated by the powers-that-be, but I have 60 creative, fun, surprising, quirky, intelligent, unique students that never fail to hold my interest during class, never fail to challenge me in comical or legitimate ways, never fail to leave me, at the end of the day, exhausted but fulfilled. Two of my three classes are full of seniors, and I’ve watched them over the last few weeks as they begin to fully acknowledge the end of their college careers. They are excited. And they are scared.
My students feel unprepared for the world that awaits them. They attribute this to the news, to the unrelenting stream of depressing realities broadcast on television, reported in the newspaper, rumored about on Facebook, and displayed in the eyes of their parents and their professors. I want to tell them that every senior class before them has experienced similar fears. But maybe we all want to believe that our situations are unique, that we feel what we feel in ways that are just slightly more enhanced, more acute, more intense, more immediate and, frankly, more important than what anyone else feels. We are all, for a time, as sensitive as poets. One component of wisdom, I think, is learning the falsity of that belief.
The other thing that has helped me through this stretch is simply the world outside my window. The gorgeous trees, thousands of them; the constancy of the skies; the visitations by crows and hawks and robins and the breathtaking streaking red cardinals. I watched the lake as it changed from frozen plateau back to white-capped waves, and studied the snow, which so often is a burden here, but also, so often, is almost beyond description in its ethereal beauty.
It’s perfectly normal to feel overburdened, overwhelmed; it’s normal to be afraid and to wish that circumstances were different, were better. It’s normal to want to trade in this life for some other version of life, one where all our friends were healthy and upbeat, where our studies came to us easily and felt relevant and consistently stimulating, where we knew that two months down the road we’d be financially secure, intellectually fulfilled, and just flat-out happy.
I’m not that cheerleader who can push the facts aside and say hey! That better life is coming! It’s just around the corner! Have faith! But sometimes, in my own quiet corner of the world, I wish that somebody would say, in passing, don’t worry. I want to hear someone say it’ll get better. It’s gonna be alright. I might not even believe the words… but I can’t deny that I want to hear them.
Outside the kitchen, in the back yard, a few patches of crocuses are bearing up nicely under a late spring snow shower. They’re the same flowers that missed being crushed by a dump truck full of wood a few days ago. I don’t know, for sure, if they’ll survive a further dip in our temperatures, but if I have any faith at all, it’s that they will. Everything changes, and everything passes. That’s scary, true. But there is hope in there as well.
It’s normal to want to hear that better days are ahead. It’s perfectly normal to want to slide back under the covers and sleep through the snowfall, sleep through the quiz, ignore the phone, skip class, blink our eyes and magically wake up in a sunnier version of this world. But I’m going to watch the crocuses curl around themselves and live. I’m going to laugh at my students’ jokes and tell them, when I can, that they’re going to be okay. And if nobody’s around to say it, I’m going to chant, like a mantra, in my own tired and perfectly normal brain, that better days are coming.
It seemed, in my mind, that all of these things coincided with challenges in the world outside the scope of my little world as well. The chaos in the economy, in particular, has underscored my personal uncertainty and fear in a way that has been hard for me to endure. The resultant stress knocked me for a loop in February, followed by a worrisome couple of weeks focused uncomfortably on my own health. It turned out, after a batch of tests, that I’m “perfectly normal.” More on that dull but welcome assessment later.
What has helped me through the winter has been a love for my job which, despite its precarious state, is a good one. It’s true that I’m underpaid and underappreciated by the powers-that-be, but I have 60 creative, fun, surprising, quirky, intelligent, unique students that never fail to hold my interest during class, never fail to challenge me in comical or legitimate ways, never fail to leave me, at the end of the day, exhausted but fulfilled. Two of my three classes are full of seniors, and I’ve watched them over the last few weeks as they begin to fully acknowledge the end of their college careers. They are excited. And they are scared.
My students feel unprepared for the world that awaits them. They attribute this to the news, to the unrelenting stream of depressing realities broadcast on television, reported in the newspaper, rumored about on Facebook, and displayed in the eyes of their parents and their professors. I want to tell them that every senior class before them has experienced similar fears. But maybe we all want to believe that our situations are unique, that we feel what we feel in ways that are just slightly more enhanced, more acute, more intense, more immediate and, frankly, more important than what anyone else feels. We are all, for a time, as sensitive as poets. One component of wisdom, I think, is learning the falsity of that belief.
The other thing that has helped me through this stretch is simply the world outside my window. The gorgeous trees, thousands of them; the constancy of the skies; the visitations by crows and hawks and robins and the breathtaking streaking red cardinals. I watched the lake as it changed from frozen plateau back to white-capped waves, and studied the snow, which so often is a burden here, but also, so often, is almost beyond description in its ethereal beauty.
It’s perfectly normal to feel overburdened, overwhelmed; it’s normal to be afraid and to wish that circumstances were different, were better. It’s normal to want to trade in this life for some other version of life, one where all our friends were healthy and upbeat, where our studies came to us easily and felt relevant and consistently stimulating, where we knew that two months down the road we’d be financially secure, intellectually fulfilled, and just flat-out happy.
I’m not that cheerleader who can push the facts aside and say hey! That better life is coming! It’s just around the corner! Have faith! But sometimes, in my own quiet corner of the world, I wish that somebody would say, in passing, don’t worry. I want to hear someone say it’ll get better. It’s gonna be alright. I might not even believe the words… but I can’t deny that I want to hear them.
Outside the kitchen, in the back yard, a few patches of crocuses are bearing up nicely under a late spring snow shower. They’re the same flowers that missed being crushed by a dump truck full of wood a few days ago. I don’t know, for sure, if they’ll survive a further dip in our temperatures, but if I have any faith at all, it’s that they will. Everything changes, and everything passes. That’s scary, true. But there is hope in there as well.
It’s normal to want to hear that better days are ahead. It’s perfectly normal to want to slide back under the covers and sleep through the snowfall, sleep through the quiz, ignore the phone, skip class, blink our eyes and magically wake up in a sunnier version of this world. But I’m going to watch the crocuses curl around themselves and live. I’m going to laugh at my students’ jokes and tell them, when I can, that they’re going to be okay. And if nobody’s around to say it, I’m going to chant, like a mantra, in my own tired and perfectly normal brain, that better days are coming.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Harbingers
Here in Oswego, we’ve been taught, over the course of our lifetimes, not to prematurely anticipate spring. When friends downstate start writing about the robins or the crocuses, when friends as nearby as Syracuse mention that they have their windows open, we’re still a little leery. We know that as soon as we dare to put even one sweater away, or as soon as we put the shovel in the garage or – worst of all – say “I’m so glad it’s finally spring” – we will pay a price. That price might be as innocuous as a few days of snow, it might be a damaging ice storm, or it might be a massive bring-you-to-your-knees-and-make-you-weep blizzard. So we’re generally circumspect, a little reluctant to concede that winter is over. The gods might be listening, and we’ve learned that they have, at the very least, a warped and wicked sense of humor.
That being said, I couldn’t help but notice that a handful of crocuses are sprouting in the backyard. I mentioned it to Leigh, who had already noticed but hadn’t said a word. (I’m not the only superstitious one in the house when it comes to weather matters.) I was visibly happy, which has been a rarity lately, so Leigh felt obligated to add “Well, before you get too happy...” I thought I knew what her next line was going to be – some insight into our weather forecast, an expectation of snow… but instead she said “The wood’s coming today.”
At the start of each winter we have wood delivered. That wood -- four to six logs crammed in a single wood stove every few hours, round the clock -- heats the house for roughly six months of the year. It’s our only source of heat and the house is fairly large – we need a lot of wood. This year, for the first time ever, we ran out. Although it’s nearly April, a time when plenty of people in the northeast are thinking about turning the heat down, we’re restocking. We’ve got plenty of cold nights and quite a few cold days still to come. And so, more wood.
Two cords of wood fill a dump truck, and it takes some tricky maneuvering to get that much wood dropped as near the house as possible. It’s important that it’s deposited close, as it needs to be stacked and nobody wants to have to haul it, piece by piece, in addition to stacking it. Leigh and “the wood guy” have finessed a system that culminates in his truck stopping about two feet away from the kitchen door. What that meant, unfortunately, was that either the truck or the wood would land directly on top of the young crocuses. The only way to avoid damaging them would be to move the wood further away, thereby increasing my workload by, say, a few more pulled muscles, a few extra hours of an aching back. I conceded that the crocuses would have to bear the weight of the wood, but didn’t want to witness them being crushed. I walked away.
An hour later, the wood arrived with a crash. It’s literally an earth-shaking endeavor, and I felt the house tremble, felt the ground rumble. I looked at the clock: 5:45 p.m. Crocus time-of-death.
An hour later I went downstairs. The wood guy had just about finished stacking the wood – a gift from Leigh to me. What took him an hour would have taken me a few; Leigh’s recuperating from surgery and not able to participate in any wood-related chores. I was elated to see the high, orderly piles of fresh-smelling split logs. She slipped him forty bucks and he was on his way. The house will be warm for the foreseeable future.
As we turned our attention to preparing dinner, Leigh looked out the window and said “Hey, check it out.” She pointed to the area where the crocuses had previously been poking through the soil. “Look at the tracks,” she said. The wood deliveryman had maneuvered his truck so that the tires missed hitting the crocuses by a hair. I could see a few crocuses sticking up, then a tire track, and on the other side of the track a few more crocuses. Both the heavy truck and the onslaught of wood had spared the flowers’ lives.
I felt like mine had been spared as well. I opened the window and could hear staggered lines of geese, way in the distance, coming home.
That being said, I couldn’t help but notice that a handful of crocuses are sprouting in the backyard. I mentioned it to Leigh, who had already noticed but hadn’t said a word. (I’m not the only superstitious one in the house when it comes to weather matters.) I was visibly happy, which has been a rarity lately, so Leigh felt obligated to add “Well, before you get too happy...” I thought I knew what her next line was going to be – some insight into our weather forecast, an expectation of snow… but instead she said “The wood’s coming today.”
At the start of each winter we have wood delivered. That wood -- four to six logs crammed in a single wood stove every few hours, round the clock -- heats the house for roughly six months of the year. It’s our only source of heat and the house is fairly large – we need a lot of wood. This year, for the first time ever, we ran out. Although it’s nearly April, a time when plenty of people in the northeast are thinking about turning the heat down, we’re restocking. We’ve got plenty of cold nights and quite a few cold days still to come. And so, more wood.
Two cords of wood fill a dump truck, and it takes some tricky maneuvering to get that much wood dropped as near the house as possible. It’s important that it’s deposited close, as it needs to be stacked and nobody wants to have to haul it, piece by piece, in addition to stacking it. Leigh and “the wood guy” have finessed a system that culminates in his truck stopping about two feet away from the kitchen door. What that meant, unfortunately, was that either the truck or the wood would land directly on top of the young crocuses. The only way to avoid damaging them would be to move the wood further away, thereby increasing my workload by, say, a few more pulled muscles, a few extra hours of an aching back. I conceded that the crocuses would have to bear the weight of the wood, but didn’t want to witness them being crushed. I walked away.
An hour later, the wood arrived with a crash. It’s literally an earth-shaking endeavor, and I felt the house tremble, felt the ground rumble. I looked at the clock: 5:45 p.m. Crocus time-of-death.
An hour later I went downstairs. The wood guy had just about finished stacking the wood – a gift from Leigh to me. What took him an hour would have taken me a few; Leigh’s recuperating from surgery and not able to participate in any wood-related chores. I was elated to see the high, orderly piles of fresh-smelling split logs. She slipped him forty bucks and he was on his way. The house will be warm for the foreseeable future.
As we turned our attention to preparing dinner, Leigh looked out the window and said “Hey, check it out.” She pointed to the area where the crocuses had previously been poking through the soil. “Look at the tracks,” she said. The wood deliveryman had maneuvered his truck so that the tires missed hitting the crocuses by a hair. I could see a few crocuses sticking up, then a tire track, and on the other side of the track a few more crocuses. Both the heavy truck and the onslaught of wood had spared the flowers’ lives.
I felt like mine had been spared as well. I opened the window and could hear staggered lines of geese, way in the distance, coming home.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Tracks
This is a shot of crow tracks on the driveway, up against the neighbor’s dog prints. A small gang of three crows visits on a regular basis but we’ve escaped, so far, “a crow problem.” Apparently they can become quite troublesome if they invade the area, but these three just stop by, scavenge some road kill, have a raucous conversation, then take off. They’re gigantic and black as olives and I’m very fond of them.
Saw a pair of cardinals in the yard the other day, too. Male and female. Smaller than usual, but flashing in and out of the bare trees and giving the almost monochromatic landscape (snow, snow, don’t forget the clouds, snow) a dash of color. A welcome sign of spring.
And: this morning, the first long lines of geese high in the sky. These weren’t the local geese; these were the ones who head south for the winter (coward geese) and now, mercifully, return. There were three long strands of them; looked like a pitchfork in the clouds, or maybe more like a trident. Have my window cracked so I can hear if any more pass by. It’s a balmy afternoon by Oswego standards (40’s), so I’m listening to the last big patches of ice and snow melt off the roof. There’s so much runoff that it sounds like it’s raining.
I’m trying, at least for this afternoon, to appreciate these sights and sounds and not worry, as much as I have been, about the job, the friends who are ill, the stacks of papers to read. Trying to remember that everything goes so fast. Like those tracks in the snow. So beautiful – perfect, really – for a few hours, then gone. John Keats, who knew a thing or two about the fleeting nature of, well, everything: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.” Amen. And as I type that, I swear, I hear the call of the geese. When I look out, I see that it's the local geese. The ones who stay. The ones who give the impression, the strong impression, that some things, against all odds, endure.
Saw a pair of cardinals in the yard the other day, too. Male and female. Smaller than usual, but flashing in and out of the bare trees and giving the almost monochromatic landscape (snow, snow, don’t forget the clouds, snow) a dash of color. A welcome sign of spring.
And: this morning, the first long lines of geese high in the sky. These weren’t the local geese; these were the ones who head south for the winter (coward geese) and now, mercifully, return. There were three long strands of them; looked like a pitchfork in the clouds, or maybe more like a trident. Have my window cracked so I can hear if any more pass by. It’s a balmy afternoon by Oswego standards (40’s), so I’m listening to the last big patches of ice and snow melt off the roof. There’s so much runoff that it sounds like it’s raining.
I’m trying, at least for this afternoon, to appreciate these sights and sounds and not worry, as much as I have been, about the job, the friends who are ill, the stacks of papers to read. Trying to remember that everything goes so fast. Like those tracks in the snow. So beautiful – perfect, really – for a few hours, then gone. John Keats, who knew a thing or two about the fleeting nature of, well, everything: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination.” Amen. And as I type that, I swear, I hear the call of the geese. When I look out, I see that it's the local geese. The ones who stay. The ones who give the impression, the strong impression, that some things, against all odds, endure.
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