This monarch caterpillar had been struck with an idea; uncomfortable in its own skin, it turned itself and its life upside down and waited for the inevitable.
By the next morning, the transformation inherent in that idea had begun; in order to gain the wings, the caterpillar had to lose the teeth and the fuzz and let go, trusting the process.
Ten days later found it still waiting, but showing outward signs of the body doing just what it should, unaware perhaps, of any memory of that earlier idea and the life it had shed.
I’d like to think that same intelligence, whatever it is that makes the monarch grow and change and fly, is at work in all of us.
From handsome caterpillar… to jade earring dotted with gold… to the most beautiful mosaic of colors enclosed in the thinnest of skins… to shutter-like wings flaked with fire, waiting on the warmth of the sun. The change complete… beauty to beauty.
A butterfly idea… what could be smaller or more frantic? Or more improbable in the mind of a caterpillar?
Does the butterfly wonder how or why or should I as it readies itself to fly away helter-skelter on new wings?
These pics are from a couple summers ago; I’m just as amazed with the process now as I was then, watching it day to day. Miracles like this play themsleves out everyday all around us. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have a ringside seat. I’ve not found any monarch cats in the garden since that summer, but this one continues to inspire my dreams for daring in the face of certain change.
Category Archives: Small truths
A note of thanks to a client
Dear D.
You humble me.
From the moment we first met, I’ve wondered at you. I’m not surprised anymore with the strength that you show; I’m astounded with it.
You have such astonishing resources of love and emotional resilience.
You let me see behind that mask of confidence on your face today; you admitted you were afraid and you cried long pent-up tears, but all I saw was your grace.
Today was your first step towards realizing some of your goals and I want to thank you for letting me play my part.
You are an exceptional woman. You can’t see that yet, but I hope one day you’ll have pride enough to match that self-confidence. It’s been hard won. You’ve come this far with almost no support from anyone.
I hope you know I’ve been cheering you on and will continue to. You deserve your very own cheering section, I think. I’m so very happy for you.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
This is the note I would’ve liked to tape onto the plant I brought D. as a housewarming gift today. The silly plant made her cry; I can only imagine what this note might’ve done.
Some people just have so much crap unjustly heaped onto their plates; others of us are so very lucky. I’m grateful that my job reminds me I’m one of the lucky ones and that there’s a lot to be learned from the poor and others that society tends to discount.
On second thought, I may just send it… it might be good for her to hear.
Be glad of life
Cape May, December 2007
Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. –Henry Van Dyke
A postcard
Summer has its windows open: listen to the crickets and smell the thick breath of the sea. There’s not a cloud in the sky and miles of warm sun-scented beach ahead. We could walk for hours… leave our shoes on the boardwalk, skip stones by the jetty, trace our dreams in the sand.
That magic place where the sea meets the sky… I want to look at it forever, watch the slow progression of waves and listen to the dune grasses strum, laughter carried across beach blankets, the laughter of gulls rivaling ours, that old longing in me now so familiar as the waves roll in.
My sense of time and distance is lost to the lullaby of the surf, to an egret stalking the salt marsh on angel’s wings, the beckoning breeze and its thoughts of you.
Take my hand, stay for a moment, taste the sea’s kiss on my lips.
A postcard scene… wish you were here.
It rained today, all day.
I daydreamed.
When my hair was straight and white
This post is not at all about my hair, I promise. Except to say that I can remember my mom curling it with rags and an iron for holidays. She did this to me; trained it to misbehave like it does now, passed down this curse of curliness.
😉
I’ve been looking through old photos the past couple days and, as often happens, I’m moved to write by something I find among them. My memory was tickled by images of platinum blonde hair and blue eyes, the cheesy baby-teeth grins, sun-touched skin, one of my brothers often with his hand in mine, a mind and body always moving and full of ideas; the daydreamer I am so obvious then.
I search in the mirror for that little girl now. I want to tell her that she has many gifts to offer and that fine things will unfold for her. She’ll need reminding one day that she’s a treasure, that she’s loved and cherised beyond words, that she’s smart and capable and that it’ll all be ok, no matter what happens.
Somewhere along our journey in life, many of us lose our resilience or forget that we are loved, that we’re not too much, that the world will carry and hold us and keep our hearts safe.
I don’t know what there is to bring back the feeling of being held in the most generous, open-handed of care as when we were children, but I believe that a part of our hearts spends a lifetime trying to get back to that beginning, back to that feeling of self-worth and total acceptance. And that joy; simple and uncomplicated.
Song of the Sea
Some time at the beach this weekend put me in mind of this little verse that I’d carried in my wallet for a while, but now also have as a framed print in my cubicle at work.
Hear the gulls call in the sky,
the tide lap at the edge of the sand.
I hope you learn to pause in this beauty.
I hope you breathe in the gentlest moments.
If there is sunshine, I hope you lift your face to it.
If there is wind, I hope it moves you.
Look how the sand is swept fresh; the sea is all horizon.
I hope you see how each day has this possibility.
I hope you welcome the quiet as well as the storm.
take deep breaths of salt and sweetness both;
I hope you know it’s the truest air.
See how the waves form one after another
(there’s no human rush to do it all at once)
I hope you live your life one moment at a time.
I hope you focus on what you love.
And, although I know the waves will storm you,
Toss you down and spin your heart around,
I hope you never stop loving what can hurt you.
I hope you learn to float when it’s calm.
I hope you laugh whenever you can.
I hope you roll on and roll on…
See the ocean stir with passion.
I hope you have the courage to throw yourself in.
Fullness is so rare and fleeting
(and there’s always some bad weather coming…)
If there’s a sunset, I hope you watch it.
If there’s moonlight, I hope you dance in it.
I hope your heart finds safe harbor;
But, I hope you know your heart is made for more than that.
I hope you remember when the tide goes out,
It will come back in for you again.
When the sea is singing, I hope you listen,
and I hope you sing along…
from gingras
Anyone else carry little bits of found wisdom with them like I do? What is it and where’d you find it?
Do you believe in magic?
My dad was cremated with a dollar bill in his pocket; the same dollar he’d carried in his wallet for some thirty-five plus years. Being sure that dollar stayed with him, even then, was a meaningful act on the part of my brothers and I. A ritual we observed.
The dollar bill was something like a talisman to my dad. It had been given to him as a form of repayment by his first-born son, my brother Neil, sometime before he died as a child from aplastic anemia. My dad never was able to tell me what exactly Neil was repaying him for, without becoming tearful and angry, so that part of the story is lost to me. But I’d always understood the sentiment behind him carrying it in his wallet all those years.
I have a few such talismans myself; physical signs of relationships with people and places and experiences. Symbols of connection and reconnection, union and reunion with what is sacred to me. Carried in a pocket or wallet, worn around my neck or on a finger, secreted away in shoeboxes and drawers.
Parting with any of them would be difficult for me; each has its story, each is connected to some important event or place in my life. Each is the physical proof that I believe in magic; that I honor the ritual of rememberance.
To describe any of it or try explaining it would, perhaps, lessen the magic. Someday though, these keepsakes of mine will be found, and someone will wonder what they were about.
Think about the things you surround yourself with. Look on you and around you. Your closet, the jewelry box, your purse, your wrist, the desk where you spend hours each day. Much of what others might see as simple adornment or, heaven forbid, dust-collectors may really represent the power of love and rememberance. Tokens of an on-going connection, rituals of place and time and people.
I propose that we should choose one object from that treasure chest of memory and share it with someone else… best if it can be a person directly related to the keepsake. Dust it off and polish the memory… tell what it is that provokes your imagination so, tell why it has such power for you, tell what makes it magic.
😉
Why North Dakota?
I’ve always imagined the place we grow up to sink into our bones and set the course for where we feel most comfortable in life. For me, that’s meant the shore and the scent of a salt marsh at low tide… traffic and malls and lots of people. Something, though, has tugged at me to see a place where all the oceans are equally far away; a place where long stretches of land flow for miles unfettered by anything but my imagination.
Other places I’ve traveled to make the world feel small by comparison: the sky hemmed in by mountains or trees or buildings. The prairie is different. The landscape doesn’t shout out its beauty here, but entices you in small ways… the winnowing of snipe overhead, the soft huff of horses grazing in the predawn light, the starkness and loneliness of it, a velvet bowl of ink black sky so full of stars it makes you wonder what it might feel like to count so many, clouds that stumble across an unbelievably big sky, the long soft blur of sunset shadow
s that cross a patchwork of farm fields and prairie: where a few trees and a grain elevator are the only comfort for the eye in all that emptiness.
Maybe I like the challenge of finding beauty where others would see none… the black backbone of road and the faint lines of light at the horizon that mean there’s a town off the interstate, the nothing between me and a three wire barbed fence and a pasture of horses or bison, the wind that carries the grace notes of a meadowlark or a bobolink. This, this middle in the middle of nowhere, is a place of quiet where birdsong and the gentle whistle of wind are the only music and me the lonely audience.
There’s somethin
g here in the intersection of land and light, sky and the ever-present wind, the dark earth and the cerulean water in each and every pothole with its breeding ducks that communicates the language of this place; words of solitude translated by a yellow-headed blackbird hanging from cattails in a slough beside the road or the sight of ancient purple lilacs watching over deserted dooryards. There’s all of this and yet, sometimes, you need to bend close to the ground and pull the soft dusty green sage through your fingers or catch sight of prairie smoke blooming among the short grasses, with kingbirds squabbling on the fencerow behind you, to know that emptiness looks like this and that the place that one calls home need not be the only place a heart resides.
(Written mostly as a response to the cross-eyed glances of friends who wondered why I wouldn’t choose Hawaii as a vacation destination instead of the frozen land of North Dakota.)
😉
More to come…
Momma told me so
I’ve been playing with this forever; trying to get an essay written that I can share with my family and that feels true and right. I even went so far as to make both of my brothers write one, with the idea that their memories might inspire some of my own. Theirs are great and touching, but they didn’t have the desired effect on my own writing… I’m still struggling along with it. One of these days, whenever mine is finished, I’ll share them all here.
Anyway… part of what that template causes you to reflect on are some of the stories that make up the history of your family. That started me thinking along the lines of the crazy things we were led to believe as kids. Those little lies our parents or older siblings told us to fuel our imaginations or to make us behave or to frighten us or even, maybe, to make the everyday seem magical.
The lies parents tell is a popular blog subject, apparently, but this post was a favorite among the many I came across.
I made a list of the things I could remember being told and would imagine that many of you will share a similar list if you were to think of it. Maybe you find yourself repeating the same lies to your own kids for the sake of convenience or whimsy.
– “If you don’t eat something, you’ll blow away in the wind!” (A favorite of my Grandpa’s.)
– “I promise I won’t let go.” – when the training wheels first came off.
– “Of course we leave the hall light on for you all night.” (I was especially scared of the monsters that lived under the bed.)
– “Your teeth will be ruined if you keep sucking your thumb.” (My oldest brother was probably in braces at that point and all those wires and rubber bands looked really scary to 7 year old me.)
– “Your face will freeze that way.”
– Sitting too close to the TV will ruin your eyes.
– “You’ll catch a cold if you go out like that!”
– “You’re too young for coffee… it puts hair on your chest.”
– Fibbing makes your nose grow.
Mostly harmless, right? Little lies. Have any to add?
And then, of course, there were the real lies we grew up believing:
– “If you tell the truth you won’t get in trouble.”
– “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
– “It’ll only hurt for a second.”
– “I’ll be right here when you come back.”
Scents and memories
My mother had one of those mirrored trays with crystal perfume bottles that she kept on her dresser… very shiny and fancy and exactly the type of thing we kids were never supposed to touch. After she passed away my dad tried giving it to me, to put on my little girl’s dresser, and I remember throwing a crying fit because I was so afraid to have it for myself. Imagine if I ever dropped one of those gorgeous bottles of perfume!
Eventually I convinced myself to take it from my mom’s dresser and put it in my own room. It never quite fit with the pink canopy bed and I still haven’t gotten over the ambivalence I felt about that damn perfume tray. It’s probably in storage somewhere or up in the attic. I don’t dare throw it away, but I don’t want to have to look at it everyday, either. Silly how an object can be tied up with so much emotional baggage more than 25 years later. I guess maybe I feel like I still haven’t grown up enough to use anything so… elegant, so classy, so like my mom.
Part of my ambivalence might also be associated with the particular perfume my mom liked. I don’t necessarily remember her wearing it – I can’t remember the sound of her voice, never mind what she smelled like – but I do remember the scent in those bottles.. Chanel No. 5. Overbearing, flowery, full of vanilla … ick. The perfume itself had probably gone over years before and that made it even more awful-smelling and heady.
I’ve never been one for perfume anyway (any wonder why?!) but many years ago I was given the tiniest bottle of the most perfect scent – bergamot and jonquil, jasmine and mandarin… in an understated black rectangular bottle. Perfect. That little bottle went quickly and I spent years trying to find more of it. Turns out it was discontinued. It reappeared a couple years ago at a ridiculous price and I’d refused to buy it. Until today. Today I spoiled myself and bought the big bottle.
I don’t do it often, but it feels nice to be spoiled once in a while! And having that scent on my wrist again makes me smile and feel happy. Happy except that it reminded me of my mom’s perfume tray collecting dust somewhere.
😉
So… any favorite perfumes out there? Any that you love to hate? I’m hoping none of you are big Chanel No. 5 fans.
Please note: Someday this will return to something resembling a nature blog. I feel like I’ve been “off-topic” a lot lately!