New Places (blog prompt 7)

At first, I looked for Dad. I looked for a scrap of his flannel shirt, for an imprint the size of his shoulders on the forest floor. I searched, scared of finding him, but even more frightened that I wouldn’t. At first, my eyes were drawn to the woods in our backyard like a terrible magnet, yet I couldn’t quite go further than my tulip poplar. I felt him just out of reach, just beyond my fingertips. He haunted my woods, my house, my heart. 

Dad and I on our balcony in the backyard on Easter, 2010

But then I stepped into those woods, and they have lost some of their darkness and fear. I can’t say I gaze at them comfortably and with great joy, though their beauty and little bursts of life lift me even on the worst days.  I look into my own backyard now, and still my chest aches at the thought of him. Something in my rib cage hollows out for a moment. Yet, I am quicker to notice the way the sun falls through the branches and the tilt of the most familiar trees. I look down, beneath my feet, and find tiny flowers of purple and violet and blue and white and yellow so sunny it’s almost orange. I am drawn to the greens sprouting in my flower beds, and the birds hiding among the still-sparse bush in my front lawn. 

Then, I leave my house, and there it is all around me: nature. The kind that flowers and tweets, and whistles. The kind that shimmers and rushes and trickles. The kind that laughs and talks and hopes. It’s difficult to ignore, really. Once I found it at home, I found it at the mall and in the city and along the suburban sidewalks. I found it in the park and in a meadow, along a stream, and in other woods. I found it in me, too, because I thought I wasn’t a nature girl at all until I realized nature isn’t about escaping to a remote place. It’s actually about finding it where you are and acknowledging its “otherness” in your own garden, if you must. 

Now, the trees outside my bedroom window are waving gently in a breeze, and I can’t figure out how I ever overlooked them. But I have a feeling that, although home is a part of me and always will be, there are other things I need to see. There are other places to go. When I leave for Peru next month, I will take a notebook with me so I can record the misty drizzle and the heavy, humid air. I want to capture the sound of a different shore and a different language. I want to take pictures of the strangest, two-toned flowers I have ever seen and the banana trees that casually line some streets. I want to tell a story of the way an entirely new continent can actually be home, too.

Let It Be (place entry 7)

This morning, even before 9AM, I sit beneath my tulip poplar and watch the sunlight flicker through the branches. It flirts here and there with the breeze. Even the lowest weeds seem to garner its lovely face as it lights the forest so that the woods become a cathedral. I hear birds trilling, and I see dandelions beginning to pop up. The trees are no longer flowering, though. They have blossomed to leaves, still curled in their infancy, or fruits blushing and twirling away at the attention of the coy sunshine. I sit here still.

            

 What to make of this? What deep meaning can I find in all of this while the forest resurrects whether I am here to see it or not? I try very hard to come up with something to write, something important to say. But I come up empty and end up just looking instead. I am silent in the wake of the wind that has been so insistent these last few days. So, nearby I notice new weeds. They are flowering with blooms so feathery that when I reach out my fingers, I almost don’t feel anything. They are little pink clouds, a substance I can see but barely touch, and I believe they exist. 

 Then, I wander, finding a path that is unobstructed, finding it like second nature the way I knew these woods when I was a child. I don’t fight thorns this time. I just take what the woods will hand to me and meander along, snapping photos as I go. I don’t fight anything anymore. Not dark thoughts, not the idea of my father lying here or here or here. Instead, I begin to wonder what he would have seen. I notice the wood nailed to a tree to form a ladder where our tree house used to perch. I stand beneath tangled bushes turning emerald and look up at the sky beyond. I notice little rosy leaves poking through the forest floor. I peak at the meadow I can no longer reach and breathe, knowing that it does not need me. 

             

And just like that, I know, too, that Dad probably didn’t look for meaning here. He probably didn’t examine a plant and philosophize or create metaphors. He didn’t look for any of these things because meaning came to him unbidden. “This is amazing,” I imagine him thinking. “For all of this life to rise from a tiny seed. Doesn’t it prove the presence of God? Doesn’t it show His wonder?” Then, he would have left it alone because nature, like God, does not need us to become important or meaningful or deep. Perhaps, in the midst of his doubt and hurt, he stepped into nature and knew exactly what he needed to know: God is. Maybe, here, he was simply able to let it be. 

I will too. 

I Am a Little Girl (blog prompt 6)

            I am a little girl. Well, not so little, really. I’m 12, and for pity sake, I can’t believe my parents are just barely allowing me to walk down to the end of my road all by myself! The whole world is large here. The trees look like huge stalks of broccoli waving against that cathedral blue sky. And there’s a trail I just have to explore. Two, actually. One splits off to the left. It’s beyond the end of the road, behind the logs and the metal fence that never kept any one of us out. This trail rolls off into the distance. There are telephone poles every so often, standing forlornly against the full forest. Why are there telephone poles down here? Are there cabins in the woods in need of connection? The other path is cut through tall, tall grass. It’s almost obscured, really, but I can just make it out as I push through the weeds and the lady bugs and the ticks. It disappears into the woods where a more certain trail takes over soon. It winds past whispering springs and is interrupted by fallen logs that I hop over or crawl under or play balance beam on. Yeah, the whole world is big back here. It doesn’t stop. It is endlessly possible, and I am free in it, finally allowed to explore on my own where the little flowers, close to the ground, are the beauties that catch my eye. 

 I am not a little girl anymore. Well, I’m not supposed to be. I am 22, and this is the last place of refuge I can think of. It is the day after…well, just the day after. The house is full of well-wishers and sympathy-givers and “If you need anything, just call.” I almost run, I am so desperate, so hurt, so empty and angry and scared. And when I find these two trails again, the ones I used to think held the entire world between them, the tears come. They spill over my eye lashes and drip down the side of my nose, into my hair at my temples, fall into my collar, and this, the end of my road, is suddenly the smallest and most confined place behind all the blur. I take the trail with the telephone poles. I walk and then run and then stop mid-stride, and something tiny and warbling escapes my throat. It is a whimper, a plea just before it becomes a howl, a long, loud, high, “NOOOOO!” It turns into, “Where the hell were You?” and “How could you leave us?” and “What if I turn out like this?” and “I love you.” It spends me until I am crouched low amidst the tall weeds and the odd, ugly bits of dead leaves. I spread my fingers over the dirt and press down into the ground that will soon hold him. 

I am a little girl again, reduced. The world is huge and cold, and I am small in it.

Pictures :-)

 I tried to insert these pictures into my last post, but I couldn't quite get them to fit right with the text, so I just decided to post them alone.

What the Rain Did (place entry 6)

This is what the rain has awakened:

The wind. You’ll have to trust me. I can’t take a picture, it being all about faith.

The robins. They dance around each other, fluttering here and there, fighting across my yard, bearing their red breasts. 

A garden snake. It lazily draped itself before my front door, not even looking at me when I tossed a rock at it. 

Ladybugs. They crawl patiently across my window screens, and I let them be. I count their domino dots because not a single one is like the last I saw. 

The big, velvety green leaves beneath the tree that divides my yard and the neighbor’s. It is exactly where we have never planted anything at all.

The forest. It is stippled minty green, as if an artist decided we need a little color here and there and just there beneath the thorns where everything has been dry and fragile.

My tulip poplar. Tiny leaves are translucent against the brave blue sky.

The maple trees. They have grown fuzzy, red and orange to tell me they are just about to burst.

The floral, ornamental trees. They flower all over, all dressed for afternoon tea. Some just on top so that they present an offering of adoration. 

Weeds. Some are tall enough in my yard to slap my plaid sneakers. Some are shy, violet, and I try very hard not to step on them. Some are little bells I imagine are tinkling in the sunlight.

Hydrangea. Veiny, deep green sprouts peak from their beds, finally pushing their way past thick, brown comforters. Above, dried parchment paper blossoms, remnants from last year, still wave stubbornly. When will they fall off?

Daylilies. Well, their leafy bases. They will trumpet come summer. I will wake to them every morning because you can’t ignore something so jubilant.

Thorns. They curl into themselves, but somehow manage to reach for me. I push them aside or skirt them. I brave them the way I did when I was a little girl. 

Something else that is not in my yard at all: Tiny, uncertain shoots of trees in the empty woods across from my house. Only, they are not empty woods anymore because the slope is a brilliant green, and tiny cup flowers climb surely up the bushes, and amidst all the open space, coltish limbs reach determinedly to the sky to make up for lost time. 

And one last thing the rain has awakened that is at home in the backyard, but decides to leave every once in awhile anyway: Me. I play balance beam on the logs and kick rusty metal cans away. I want to rush into the woods instead of lying beneath my tulip poplar. I run up the hill of my yard instead of trudge. I smile without thinking about it even once. 

Surprised by Joy (blog prompt 5)

Sit beneath its branches, the Celts believed, and you will find inspiration in the wind whispering through weeping willows. Poets write there, artists find inspiration, psychics dream many dreams. Sit beneath its branches, and you will be enveloped, hidden. Your heart, that part of you that creates, will be played like a harp to some unaccountable melody. Or so they say. 

Never having sat beneath one, I can’t quite be certain. I do know that weeping willows bend, but rarely break. I know that theirs are some of the first leaves to turn green in the spring. I see them often, now, tiny leaves collected on long branches, glowing almost lime green against an otherwise brown backdrop. They ripple, even when I can’t feel a breeze. They dance alone. Around here, I don’t see them by water too often. Yet, they are commonly found by lakes, their roots perfectly at home and content in the soggiest soil, their tops leaning, leaning further to touch fingertips to an almost-still mirror. 

And they weep, you know. Their branches curve sadly, dripping long, flat leaves forlornly. They are drooping heads, slumped shoulders, downcast eyes. They are too heavy to stand up straight, too wispy to fall over. They are sinking into wet earth to reach for life water offers so that somehow, someway, they can survive. They are me when we found out Dad was gone.  They are my back curved, my arms draping over my mother’s shoulder, my head aching, eyes dripping. 

Some flower, though, like the weeping cherry tree. Some blossom delicately and slouch like pouty little girls in pink, fluffy dresses. These are the weeping willows that really enchant me. They are whimsical, story-tellers. I smile at them because they always make me grin, and no matter how many times I see these weeping trees, I cannot look away. They are lovely, loving, lacy. They are so very hopeful, that I perk up. I lift my head, square my shoulders, take in a deep breath, and dry my eyes. They are spring, you see, in all its newness. They surprised me with their joy every single time. 

Thorns (place entry 5)

Memories feel like hunger, carving out a space beneath my rib cage, a place of longing. I feel it the moment I step out my glass sliding door into my backyard. The air is so gentle today, warm and beneficent. Immediately, I am an explorer, pushing through the forest, a child so small the whole world looks big. I remember running back here in the summer with neighbor friends. We’d clamber past rocks and over roots, paving a well-loved path through the thick thorns. Now, the woods in my backyard are overgrown. There are no more children, just me. 

            A garden snake coils before my feet, sleeping in the noon sun. Its black scales shine as if oily, and I decide to enter the thicket a different way. Above me, the Yellow Poplar I sat under after Dad died opens its seeds to the sky. They are woody, splayed, children’s fingers asking for more. I watched this tree give its last in autumn color. I watch its rebirth again and again and again. Maple trees flower nearby, their little red blossoms are pompoms that cheer on the spring. Fleetingly, I recall Dad pointing out these trees to me, crouching to pick up their seeds, shading his eyes against the sun, walking far ahead and fast while we struggled to keep up with his enthusiasm. Now, I explore for him, asking, “What more?” 

            My little forest fights me every step of the way, but I manage to keep bristles from my hair and skin as I walk deeper. The greenest plants are the thorns, ironically. They wind and twist, trapping and snagging. I want to get all the way back, though. There’s a field we used to play in when it snowed. Now that I stand before it, the branches are too thick to fight through. Suddenly, a snapshot comes to mind, unbidden, but warm. These thorns, weighed down with snow, curve like weeping willows so that we can climb through, our snow pants and coats catching all the pickers, not our skin. 

            But it’s only a memory, and I don’t expect I’ll be able to go back again. It is cut off from me, a past I don’t fit into anymore. Birds twitter in the bushes, and the sun is kind, but I’m stuck here, between the middle and the beginning. Little alcoves I loved when I was a little girl are too small for me now. I look, but find it hard to see because, even if I know where he is not, my heart won’t stop searching for him here. Thickets of thorns stand in my way. I am trapped.