“watch for toads sleeping”

the sign said

it could have said

“step gingerly”

that is exactly what we did  

the note was written on a plant identification metal sign

and stuck in the pebbles walk leading to the house

 a little brown toad sat or slept

it was hard to tell

slow stepping

another time and place

the novice monk

took us walking after a rain

he said the same

don’t step on the baby frogs

they were the size of a quarter

slow walking in either case

mindful walking

we giants to them

 at Upaya it was the snails on the wooden walk

after a rain

watch

no crunching

then what about the centipedes nearby

 I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge

and passed a couple of dead gulls

and two living ones sitting on the railing next to the sea

is there a truck that comes by to collect the dead

are they tossed into the sea for fish food

then here on vacation

we are walking around with a fly swatter in our hands

I find out things in this time of the virus through impromptu street visits with neighbors I used to merely wave at from my car as I came and went. This is how I came to know the story of Tristan and Jimmy, the Excavator Driver.

The day this story happened was during the pandemic.  It was another bonus day, but this one really no kidding.  Bonus because it is real.  Bonus because it is a surprise profound connection.  Bonus because I was present and not in a hurry or distracted by many errands and important conference calls.

It involved the luck of stepping out to the street to get ready for the trash collectors who come every Wednesday for the trash and every other Wednesday for the trash and the recycle. Gray bin for trash, green one for recycles.  

Bonus because it was Tuesday, get ready for the trash collection day.

Also, there is yard waste pickup except not during the virus. Since forever ago, they stopped collecting all of our prunings and bags of leaves. It was good news when they announced they would restart collection. Good news, but somehow, they petered out and we were loaded up with yard waste at the sides of our streets.   Limbs, leaves, sticks all piled up. Two months’ worth of yard waste sitting there. 

That’s when I got the fire pit idea. I could gradually load my wheelbarrow and bring the yard waste around for an evening fire in the backyard fire pit and sit and watch it with a glass of  red wine.  

I live alone and enjoy these nightly fires and meditations. Maybe sitting with a novel and a flashlight on my book. Looking up, watching the fire. Enjoying this sweet moment in the evening.  Sometimes listening to a dharma talk from Plum Village on my iPhone. Or listening to a zoom choir sing “Hallelujah”, Handel’s or Leonard Cohen.  My evening ritual.

Lately it has been cold, so I wrap up in a blanket.

I was outside explaining this to my neighbor Palmer and collecting some of his short limbs, sticks and leaves, having already burned mine the night before.

We were talking about the plan and gathering his sticks into the wheelbarrow when Tristan and his brother Stefan showed up to visit.  Both in their 20s. 

Tristan enthusiastically told us, while pointing down the street near the traffic light at Park Road, that “This is their last day; they are leaving!”  We looked down the road at the lot where the house at the light had been torn down and the excavator was leveling the lot to get ready for two new houses.  

Tristan is a hugger and homeschooled. He loves his big brother Stefan. He isn’t allowed to go to the construction site alone. He shifts from foot to foot with his arms folded to help him remember that he can’t hug anyone during this social distancing. 

We loved the minute this family moved to the neighborhood and invited us to come to the “welcome to the neighborhood” party. They had a food truck on the street at the end of their driveway and drinks in coolers on their porch. I didn’t know them but went because of the flyer in my door.

I walked up the driveway to introduce myself and Tristan gave me a big ol’ unembarrassed sweet full hug and asked me to come inside and see his room and his sports memorabilia although I think he called it stuff.

His mom explained his brain malformation, called smooth brain.  His language is good.  His motor skills are good enough to run and play catch with his older brother, Stefan.   We immediately connected because we had William my grandson who lived for 8 years with an energy disease.  At first there is worry and sadness that turns into the blessing of having a special needs child in your family.  So much love, so much self-expression and delight along with the seizures and other issues that scare the daylights out of you.

Nobody could have told us  how wide open and big our hearts would get.  We miss Tristan’s hugs right now. That’s what we miss during this pandemic. And we miss William’s cooing, gone forever except for our videos of him. William didn’t have the muscle tone or strength for hugging.

“This is their last day, they are leaving!”  

Tristan and Stefan explained to Palmer and me that Jimmy, the excavator driver, had let Tristan climb up into the excavator and even operate it. 

Stefan showed us the photograph and video on his phone of the event.  He got to move the digger scooper thing up and down. Running the machine with Jimmy standing up on the big tire next to the cab of the giant machine. Up and down. Moving the levers. 

Tristan has had lots of best days in his life given how enthusiastic and lit up he is about life. I think this may have been one. 

Two weeks earlier, Stefan’s band had played on the front porch.   Stefan on guitar and there was someone on drums and someone on keyboard.  They sounded like Pat Matheny.  When I told him that, he said they both went to the same school, Berklee College of Music.  His band, the QuiltTop, which is surely another story, played for 2 hours while the neighborhood milled around keeping our distance, bringing our own drinks and putting money in the tip jar.  Lots of twenty-dollar bills.  

Palmer was there.  Tristan was there grinning, not hugging.  And I ran into some old friends I hadn’t seen in forever who live on the street and we talked about what we are watching on Netflix.  

Caroline came down and I gave her a bag of cedar balls to pack around her wedding dress from the wedding 50 years ago. I had been there several weeks ago to see her dress and she could actually get in it.

She made coffee.  I brought lemon pound cake.  Nell brought flowers and Caroline held them and walked down the hall in her dress and kissed her husband, Roger.  And son Matt found Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary on his phone and played it as she walked.  Grinning big.  I wished we had had rice or rose petals to throw.

So all that happened in the neighborhood before the excavator bonus day.

Jimmy has texted Tristan and Stefan to let them know where his next demo job is, Stefan or Mama Lisa will take him, and the joy goes on.

Oh and the city sent the yard waste people to get our stuff, so I am on a break from my firepit.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness and good moods of hugging and climbing in excavators.

Come before his presence with singing and playing music on front porches.

Have tip jars for the musicians, making the joyful noise as cars pull over and stop.

Sit in the back yard, hear the music from two doors down.

Watch the fire, wrapped up with a blanket, sing Hallelujah.

Filled with joy and gratitude for this day.

We could all be like Tristan.

Each day the best bonus day ever.

Reading my novel, studying the writer’s mind as well as enjoying the story. 

A Gentleman in Moscow by  Amor Towles. 

He writes, “He is someone you should commit to memory, for years later he will have great bearing on the outcome of this tale.”

That was a footnote from the writer to the reader of the tale.

Writing in the omniscient voice of a narrator who knows what people are doing and thinking and knows their pasts and their futures before the reader but in this case, don’t forget Prince Petrov. Even though he casually appears here in this chapter, he will show up profoundly in the future and “have great bearing on the outcome of this tale.”  All this comment in a footnote on page 102. 

So now, we are on the edge of our seats.  Wondering what Prince Petrov is up to in the unknown future.  I read this footnote over and over to understand the content as well as the writer’s tool in a novel, to pause and talk directly to the ready and admit that this is, in fact, a tale.  I can imagine Granddaddy in the middle of his story, pausing to tell us something we needed to know, then back to the story. Often with writing or telling a story, we start in the third paragraph and the reader or listener is confused or interrupting trying to catch up.  When listening, I have learned to just listen and not interrupt the storyteller and it will work itself out and even if not, it is a pleasure still to be quiet and wait. Who have I committed to memory?  Who did I meet, or am I meeting today that figures in my tale now?

As I arrived in Davidson for the fire pit social distancing during the pandemic  (April, 2020) whisky sour visit, Phillip, my grandson college freshman, 18,  came to greet me with open arms but no hugging and Thomas his father as well as my son to help me unload the car of what I had brought, 6 steaks I received from Omaha Steaks and a blanket to wrap up in on this cold April night next to the firepit, 2 vases and some marbles left over from the whatchamacallits at Christmas. 

I lost that word temporarily like my earring last night in the bed (note: when you lose something, say it out loud, tell someone even if they are not here, and you will find it).

That was my footnote, parenthetical statement.

Whatchmacallits are narcissus bulbs that I used to force every year, my mom showed me and now Phillip’s mom, Stephanie,  the same.  They end up tall white fragrant and falling over. 

Anyway, I arrived with the steaks, the blanket, the vases, the marbles, and a basket with my knitting in it for Stephanie’s sister’s Christmas stocking going like gangbusters because of all of the Zoom video meetings and classes I am in these days.  Knitting in my lap, off camera, in a Zoom business meeting. 

Phillip walked up to me and said I have been thinking about our trip to California a lot lately.

He said, “I don’t know why, I think it’s because I can’t travel now during the pandemic and  I think about where  I have traveled and that was one of the best trips we took.

“Do you remember it?

“Do you remember the man, the stick man at the coffee shop selling sticks on the sidewalk, the homeless man that you bought a stick from, I think his name was Carl?”

“Yes,” I said.

And he said, “Do you remember the redwood trees and how tall they were?”

And I nodded enthusiastically all the while walking together down to sit next to the firepit.

I said, “I remember the drone that you took with us. It went all the way to the top of the redwoods, and we could see the forest that we couldn’t see from that perspective,  from the birds’ perspective on the ground.”

“Do you remember Peter Verbiscar-Brown?,” he said, “and hanging out at his house? His wife, Noni made a big production,  a Dutch baby pancake in her cast iron pan, so delicious.  

“Yes, I said, “and you went back for more and she was so happy.”

“Do you remember the kayak in the ocean and the caves we went in and out of?,” he said, showing me on his phone, the cave video.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

He said, “and the drone video I made of the seals sitting out on the rock and in the video they are looking up at the camera, wondering what the sound is, what is that thing over their head, so innocent and curious, just looking.”

“Yes,” I said, “and do you remember the story I have told over and over about your getting me to get in that kayak with you when I was uneasy and you asked me why as I am an adventurer and good swimmer and surely a good companion in a kayak.”

“I told you, I will hike in the park and you said no come in the kayak, what are you uneasy about and I said bending my knees that deeply to get in and get out, I can’t hyper bend my knees or squat to get out and up and you listened, really listened and said so your knees won’t hurt IN the kayak, right?  Right, just getting in and getting out.  Right, so it will hurt 2 times?  Right.  Okay, let’s go,  you can do it.”  

I met you as a little baby 19 years ago.  Your weeping filled-with-joy father came out to the hall where we were all waiting and said, it’s a boy and his name is Robert Phillip and we are going to call him Phillip.  I met you an hour later.  I didn’t know like meeting Prince Petrov how much you would figure in my tale.    I didn’t know California and I didn’t know New York with you.  I didn’t know Anderson Cove with you, catching and cooking and eating crawdads. I didn’t know Mervil’s pond with you.

After I am forever gone and you are a grandfather, you will have an amazing 19-year-old who will figure in your tale too.  Isn’t that amazing?  You have someone yet to meet and hold that you will love to the moon and back like I love you.

I could wake up early and jump naked in the pool even all year around or at least take a cold shower the way the monks do.

I could have a glass of water with lemon juice, vinegar, and cumin like my friend does every morning.   The actual tonic is lemon juice and water plus 2 t. organic cinnamon.  Some recipes call for apple cider vinegar and honey.

And then there is, of course, meditation and yoga first thing there for the taking.

Instead, I have coffee, read the paper on my iPad and try not to get hooked into the 11-year-old in Peru who had a baby or was it the one about the  89-year-old mother?  Or something about a movie star couple or the royals or even go back to another James Baldwin interview, somewhat better than the royals, but still, out of control, not disciplined. 

I may watch a little of a Netflix movie about being black in Atlanta, or French village occupied by Germans,  or the Buddhist nuns in Tibet. That last one about a group of Western women who went on a pilgrimage there and filmed the trip.  In a jeep, then on horseback, then on foot.

But still and yet, back to my idea of being a good person.

Get a shower, a warm one and then do yoga or Pilates.

The Pilates is, well both, are on line, live with teachers.

The Pilates teacher says, beautiful, very good and I bask in his encouragement.  I got a gold star in Pilates!

The yoga teacher, says this is your time, and that posture is beautiful, and at the end, peace be with you.

Such simple language that makes a huge difference.  Love and encouragement and listening for the best in people makes an immeasurable difference.

I set the camera on my computer so the teacher can see me lengthwise on my mat on the floor. It is amazing to get up and down off the floor again. My doctor gets credit for my arms and shoulders that work so well, better than my knees for getting up and down.  He and my physical therapists, Kelli and Arja.  I wrote their clinic thank you notes, one for each practitioner.

But I am writing about if I was a good person what would I be doing?

The windows would be washed and the woodwork.

Well it is.

Alexander, my grandson,  came and took the storm windows off the 4 porch/living room windows and washed the windows and all of the woodwork outside and now if they get a little dusty, or polleny or a worm dies on the window sill, I am there not because I am a good person necessarily but because I walk out to sit in the rocking chair on the porch or I walk out headed to an errand or doctor’s appointment and turn around and go inside and get the 409 and a paper towel and there you are.  They are sparkling white.  I remember my mother and her bucket of suds washing woodwork inside the house regularly.

I have chocolate because I choose it.

I wash the sill because I wash them.

I dilly dally in the morning because I do..

And I have had years and years and years of being on the mark with little babies and toddlers and teenagers to get to school and planes to catch and early morning 6 am runs with Harold preparing for our 10-minute mile marathons.

Harold and I had good long talks on our runs, everybody else running 8- or 9-minute miles ahead of us.

We knew where the water stops were and even the pooping woods if we needed them.

He told me he and his girlfriend didn’t get married because they loved each other and didn’t want that convention, then they didn’t have sex for the same reason, that it kind of ended the inquiry, the spiritual development of sitting and looking into each other’s eyes.

Later, I heard from Mary that she didn’t like to look at the person when she had sex, that it was kind of weird.

And I said, Well, that is weird.

Maybe that is what Harold meant, that sex closed the door of just being .

This is a longer essay. 

I can see it both ways.

Same with talking, it kind of closes a door.

But on the other hand, if there is listening it opens one.

That is a big IF though.

Forget the good person essay and just listen.

And jump naked,

Sex closes a door

Closes the door of friendship and looking at each other

Same for talking.

Is that a haiku?  Or this one?

A good person would be thin and fit and a great cook.

A good person would be organized and not have too much stuff.

A good person would not wonder whether they were a good person.  She would just be. He would just be.

I wonder what your version of a good person is and how hard on yourself are you.

This question is a question with no answers.  The need to be good a bottomless pit. 

Or it could be a question for contemplation and wonder, what is a good person and how are you manifesting good today?

How are you being a gentle, decent and brave messenger today?

How are you following your calling now?

Are you loving your life? No matter what?  

I went to get my booster shot; third vaccine and also the flu shot.

They told me to sit in the red chair and wait.

I was at the CVS on Arrowood Road.

So I read my book, News of the World, about  a man traveling to Texas on horseback reading the paper to the people in each town, for a dime.

And didn’t notice the comings and goings until another customer waiting in another red chair, said, “She’s talking to you. She likes your shoes.”

I looked up and saw a big smile and she saying you have a light free spirit to wear those red shoes.  I said yes.  I only wear these New Balance but look for colors.

Bless you she said then went on about how she was done with husbands and she had been in the shelter.  At a devotional they had there in the living room, she saw her guardian angel pass through and the angel told her everything was gonna be okay, she had everything she needed, all the rest is want.

All the rest is want.

Then the pharmacist came and gave me two shots and Blessed Angel went to the counter to take care of what she was there for.  I stood up and thanked her for her message.

She say I am so sorry I didn’t even ask if you was a Christian.

I thought of my daddy and that time in Alais house in Eluai, Tanzania when he asked me that question.  His wife had made a beaded cross for me.

I wanted to tell her it didn’t matter, her message went over all religions and people

But I said, oh yes, I am.

Can I say it in 3 lines?

Red shoes lit up her soul

Provoking saying hello

Bless you sister for your shoes

Good fall day

Still mosquitoes here

Have on my red shoes

Done with husbands she says

Guardian angel visits

Guides her to know all is well

All the rest is want

Getting my booster shot

She visited me

We both had masks

could see smiling though

Who will be my blessed angel today and where? At the park? On the Zoom? Who will be with me? Who will I be with? Not distracted…Just there, Just here. I am happy I met you, I said, then added, I am happy I saw you. I could have met you and still missed you.

Friday was my errand day.  

Goodwill to drop off and pretend hug Carolyn who works there, in the winter, she sits in her car to stay warm and gets out when I show up and hollers and grins and says, “you okay?!”  This is the middle of the pandemic and we are all watching out for each other a little more than usual.   Kind of like my favorite 3-lined poem I use as my signature on my email.

Farm country back road:
just like them I lift one finger
from the steering wheel
      Tom Clausen

Then on to the framer’s to get my finally finished way overdue embroidery of the alphabet in flowers framed to give Julia, my newly embroidering-on-sweatshirts granddaughter.

And next is Brownlee’s Jewelry to get my mother’s diamond necklace repaired for my daughter, Alice-Lyle, to have it.  We are finishing up at the front counter looking at silver necklaces for my Red Cross charms.  Then I heard this.  Though I did not understand it.

GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR!” he yelled.   The man with the hammer.  I didn’t’ understand what was happening in the split second.  I saw two men, one with a long-handled hammer.  Say what?   I was stunned into dumbfounded-ness and didn’t’ know it.  

I stayed standing. 

I turned back to the clerk.  He had, by this split second of time which seemed like hours, he had his hands up in the air and said, “My hands are in the air, sir.”  I didn’t’t see it but behind me there must have been a man with a gun.

Then the clerk, by now my Zen master,  turned to me and calmly said, “Ma’am, get down on the floor!”

I knew him by this time and just did what he said.  I am sure, I would have done anyway even if there were no men yelling in the store.  He had been very helpful, and I liked him.

So I went down on my knees and got into my familiar yoga class “child’s pose” curled  up like a ball, my face down on my folded arms, my purse and jewelry I was having repaired in my arms,  and stayed there while I heard glass breaking.  Over and over glass breaking.  I figured that is what the hammer was for.   And two guys yelling at each other to hurry up.

I was at my favorite jewelry store and the only customer and then all hell broke loose or you could say for the robbers all hell broke loose, the rest of us quiet and calm and biding our time, doing exactly what they asked.  I had the thought and relief that I was not recovering from shoulder surgery or knee replacement as I surely could not have gotten down on the floor. I was even happy, believe or not, about my fitness in that moment of being able to just do what I was told.

Then it was over.  The glass breaking ending and the yelling ended. I heard the doorbell sound as the door opened and closed.  Then silence.   I thought of the soldiers hearing helicopters after being in Vietnam and being anxious.  I wondered if I would feel the same about glass breaking over and over.  The silence, the PRECIOUS BEAUTIFUL SILENCE lasted a long time, though probably 2 seconds.

Then, in the quiet, clerk/teacher said I could get up .  I will take him a plate of cookies and this essay and learn his name.

Sometimes I am grateful for electricity and running water.

Today, I am grateful to be alive.

Electricity, running water, being alive. I take for granted.  

And I have my mother’s necklace which clerk/teacher repaired.  It is a Christmas present for Alice-Lyle.  My mother loved Alice-Lyle.

He said, get down on the floor and then the clerk said it too ma’ am, get down on the floor

And I could.  Repeated this over and over as I tell it.

Out of context, did these men at the jewelry store standing there with a gun and a hammer and then this man across from me with his hands in the air saying sir my hands are in the air and then saying to me to get on the floor, did they even know how good I am at getting on the floor and getting up again?

Eating homemade pasta with great tomato sauce made from backyard tomatoes.

That is what I am doing.

And a homemade French loaf of bread and freshly grated parmesan cheese and an amazing Navaro wine.

And that kale salad with dates and pistachios and red  onions I took to the picnic last night to have an alternative to the BBQ but had that anyway though on the plant based diet.

So beginning again and again my 3 weeks.

Or just taking it as I go

as I am eating practically no meat.  Some fish.

And well then,  there WAS that Reuben sandwich with Caroline.  Corned beef.  My mother loved to get that at the Green Hills Deli in Nashville.

What are we doing with our lives?

Anne Lamott mentions the “uncooked-egg part of us – wanting people to fail, using people, holding on to resentments, our sense of entitlement.” 

Then she got married after so long single and had grave reservations.

She writes, “but he had a depth of kindness that is the answer to all spiritual questions and the appropriate response to all problems.”  After having lived with him for a year and dated for 2 years, she said yes to his marriage proposal because he said yes, they could have a cat.  In spite of his allergies.  She had to marry that kind of kind man.

What are we doing with our lives?

Striving for kindness.

The police too.

Their brains and bodies don’t know what to do when threatened and afraid and taken over by adrenaline so in the split second, yearning and striving for kindness is not quite in the adrenaline rush.

Is kindness enough?  Maybe not, but it is immediately available.  Just with training and intention, and a will for it, a desire for it, to be that human who can be that kind, can and will.

Last night at the Celtics – Warriors NBA game, it was lovely to see the Celtic help the Warrior up off the floor after the play when the Warrior went down. The commentators commented.

What are we doing with our lives?

Helping each other up after we have knocked each other down.

Saying  I am sorry. I was mistaken. I am sorry I laughed at you. I am sorry I yelled at you.

I am sorry I pushed you away.

I am sorry I left.

(Although there might be some things you are not in fact sorry for.)

What are we doing with our lives?

And is being kind, apologizing, looking for our wrongdoing, not yours, enough? 

This week, two things, where I saw their wrong doing, or at least bad manners, then let it go.

One, I had made a meal, stayed up late to get it done for my friend just out of the hospital and her boyfriend, live-in , had mistakenly said yes to someone bringing dinner by and didn’t tell me until I walked in the door with my meal, even though he knew the conflict in plans early in the afternoon.  I had stayed up late the night before cooking .  He is stressed and I let it go and came back home and had the meal myself.  Then walked back over just for the visit and crawled in bed  with my recovering from surgery friend and talked about Niki de Saint Phalle’s work now at the MoMA in Queens.  Worth a trip to New York just for this exhibit.  Maybe late summer, go there AND go see my kind Pilates teacher, who says everymorning in our class on Zoom, “How are you coming today?  How are you coming to your practice today?”

What are we doing with our lives?  Let it go.

The other, my friend, didn’t show up for yoga and I had set up the video to screen share with her  and I waited, then called, no answer .  I had missed my live yoga class to do the video with her.  Finally found her, she laughed and said she was in the yard visiting with a neighbor, laughed off forgetting, laughed off my worrying about her, laughed it off.  I didn’t let It go.  I say I didn’t know if she was old or just bad manners.  No problem forgetting,  problem with laughing and taking my time and my offer to do yoga with her for granted.  Still a little sore, no pun, about this , again not the forgetting, the laughing.

 So writing  practice is for sorting things out, these little things

The dinner I prepared not needed.

The waiting for the yoga to start .

This is what a life is made up of and  can I have a depth of kindness?

And not have the adrenalin?

In Norway, the police do not carry guns, though neither do the people.

If we did not carry guns, we would have to talk it through. 

What if talking it through was the choice?

Do I choose that?  

Talk it through with one I want to leave because it is so difficult to talk it through.

Or listen it through.

This is what turning the other cheek is.

What are we doing with our lives?

Turning the other cheek.

Can we understand an executive’s propensity for yelling?

And now a Broadway producer, “To Kill a Mockingbird,”  “The Book of Mormon,” “Hello, Dolly!,” apologizes for his abusive behavior, not sexual, but angry and throwing things and pushing people. That is something, the apology.  He resigned too and didn’t take his money away, just himself and is seeking anger management therapy and or coaching.  That is something.

What are we doing with our lives?

Apologizing.

This starts here in the chair I am sitting in.

I keep writing about this but haven’t produced a Rumi – like ecstatic relationship with god, but a damned good kale salad with dates and pistachios and a dressing made with lime juice, tahini and garlic and olive oil.  There was ecstasy in that.

And I took for my hostess gift,  tiger lily bulbs I got at the bird sanctuary plant sale.

What are we doing?

I squinted one eye closed and returned to the moment.

And took a deep breath and another and another.  Be still my soul.  Jesus shall reign where e’er you roam.  All things bright and beautiful. All creatures great and small. Songs she sang as we used to walk together.

Return to the moment the moment of holding her swollen hand.   How will they get her rings off?  Took a picture of her hand and engagement ring and wedding band on one and a sapphire surrounded by diamonds on the other.

Return to the moment, kiss her forehead, and put a fresh washcloth on her forehead.  She is getting ready to go and I am saying good-bye.  Kiss her forehead.  Rub her head.  Sing a song.  Thank you for giving me this life, this ability to love.  Thank you for giving me this moment and goodbye.

And she did take another deep breath and waited and paused and was still.  Then another deep breath and then pause and another one and no more breaths.

My mother is having no more breaths.  No more laughing so hard with her sisters she wets her pants.  No more making big birthday suppers of whatever we wanted – fried chicken, green beans cooked with fat back, mashed potatoes and gravy, no more sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise.

No more days lying in bed next to me.  

I took a deep breath and went to the door to get the nurse and returned to my chair, didn’t open the door after 3 times back and forth.  I settled down and sat next to her and sewed on William’s Christmas stocking beads and left an empty space forever for her on his stocking.

Stocking - she loved to watch my hands move and we would sit for hours together her watching me sewing just like she had once with her mother.  He mother who played the piano and sang hymns and who took her last breath when my mother was 24 and had a little baby, my sister, Alice who was and is now still my big sister.

Take a deep breath and return to the moment.  Moment of love and her hands.

Her hands, the rings on her hands.  Did the funeral home cut her fingers to get them off? Was a weird thought?  My mother is dying and that in itself is weird. I asked if we needed a receipt for the jewelry and they said no. They would handle it. 

I used to arrive at my mom’s to visit her and somewhere in the visit sit next to her close and do her nails.  By the time I got there every month they had become long and witchy, not the well-groomed hands of my mother.   She was a little afraid of the emery board and clippers. 

Even the sound of the clippers made her wince.   It was as if the fingernails themselves had nerve endings.  

I would turn on something on the TV, Turner Classic Movies or Classic Arts Showcase and get her pink crescent shaped spit-up plastic container and get denture cleaner tablets from the nurses station and put them in the warm water and soak her hands a while, one at a time,  to loosen up the dirt and decaying food as by now she was eating her meals with her hands managing a fork just a little too much.

Her hands.

Made homemade bread.

Knitted ski sweaters.

Drew designs for houses.

Scratched my back and made my special creamy scrambled eggs.

Put on her red lipstick and painted her fingernails.

What is an onlooker?

And is an onlooker an actor, a player in the action, in the drama?

It seemed as if Derek Chauvin with his hand in his pocket and his knee on George Floyd’s neck was an onlooker watching the crowd gather and he watching and seeming so clueless and passive and he knelt there.

Charlottesville parade and subsequent riot over taking down Robert E. Lee’s statue there and 

then George Floyd’s murder, some would call merely his death, not a murder.

He died in police custody while black.

Are you shopping while black?

Are you jogging while black?

Are you boarding the plane while black?

Are you giving blood while black?

And driving your car on a country road while black?

Are you safe in your apartment while black?

How about while building your new house in the upscale neighborhood while black?

I walk around the block and neighborhood while white.

I cross the do not cross tape next to the bulldozer/construction while white.

I use a bad credit card at the restaurant while white.

And go  5, even 10 miles over the speed limit while white.

I ask for ice at the hospital while white, no, we will bring it to you, they say.

And they do within minutes.

Everywhere is a white institution.

The neighborhood, the restaurant, the street, the hospital, the bank, the department store, the airport, the school.

It is mine and I belong here.

Even in the Minneapolis neighborhood outside Cup Foods convenience store at 38th and Chicago Avenue belonged to the white officer.  Though he is accused and on trial for what happened, still and yet George Floyd is dead, a father, a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a friend,

Each is dead.

It is a tragedy that this loved man is dead.

And it is a political issue.

Not a tragedy.

It is politics vs. what is right.

We are on one side or the other.

When there is only one side.

Even this essay will be something to agree with or disagree with.

This police intervention could be a mistake or accident now being defended. In fact, the ultimate in being defensive.

Some states are now allowing police and doctors to apologize without meaning they incriminate themselves.

So he was overbearing, a mistake, an accident, not intentional, let’s even allow that interpretation, let’s have an apology.  

Defensiveness is rampant, easy to come by.

Apology is hard to find.

No matter what the incident.

Let’s look to apologize.

It doesn’t take away the situation, it happened but still it is something.

This is not a transformation but a transformation wanting to happen.  A transformation in the making.

It started with my observation of Sarah at the retreat at Zion National park. Sarah quite overweight and in charge of lighting the candle at the beginning of meditation while the rest of us sit and watch. This ritual of candle lighting and bowing happened three or four times a day for seven days.  I watched her and I loved her, and I loved her reverence for the ritual, not in a hurry. Each time she invited someone to light the candle and bow towards the altar with her. Followed with a bow towards each other.  I did this with her a couple of times.  As I sat and watched this same ritual over and over again continuing to be fascinated with the process and be fascinated with the curves and the power of her body as she bowed.  The power of her owning her body just as it is.

I wanted to write about it and give it to her including noticing her big stomach and its curves and also noticing that noticing her big stomach seemed wrong although unavoidable.

I’ve been thinking about the things that are there but not to be spoken about. Like someone in a wheelchair or blind,  don’t speak about it.  And then there is a man’s scraggly beard or pompadour that distracts me but don’t speak about it or if I do speak about it why is it any of my business.

Then there are tattoos or talking with your mouth full or leaning over your food with your left arm on the table or  not speaking up so that the whole table can hear you or at least I can hear you.

And then there’s all that I do as a white person that I am unconscious of that has an impact or is noticed by a black person, rather a person of color. Diana and I debriefed my Thanksgiving dinner party and the times of whiteness. And lack of listening to her or thinking we know what she’s talking about. We don’t know the black experience.

We don’t know the young person‘s experience and act like we do because we were young once but we’re not young now.

I went to book reading on unconscious bias in the schools by a new colleague, Tracey Benson,  introduced to us by Kathy Minardi. He is a professor at UNCC.  Focus on race and culture and social justice and nonwhite culture, a former high school principal,  brilliant,  focused and disciplined in his field. 

At the book signing I said I think there’s unconscious bias everywhere not just white teachers towards black students, rather students of color. That I have unconscious bias and that he has unconscious bias about many things, and we don’t even know because it is unconscious. Then I told him that’s how we begin our work with executives, and they are at first offended and defensive but not for long because it is so obvious that they have a point of  view whether it is about someone’s hair, weight, or wheelchair.

You could have a room full of all white 50-year-old New York bankers and they would have an unconscious bias towards each other for the way they process ideas, or for the way they listen, or for how quick they are to get a joke or slow they are. He saw a new access for working with teachers who say they are not racist, or they defend the reason they call on the white students, it’s because blah blah blah.

So now I am still working on the essay about Sarah and lighting the candles and loving her just the way she is  and me just the way I am.

I used to have a place at Beech Mountain that was my parents then mine for a while where I read and studied and hiked.

Also, I go to the beach and have a family reunion, take lots of books and writing materials and then don’t really do any of it. I think I could go back to the beach or the mountains and just rent a place for a week and see what happens, will I write that much and read. Read Ruth Ozeki again A Tale for the Time Being.   And see what happens to my mind with her mind this time around.

And the books based in Cairo by the Egyptian writer, Naguib Mahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize
Palace Walk and Palace of Desire
both books assigned by Natalie Goldberg.

Both she and Fernando Flores read and suggest books, his mostly nonfiction.

What would a life be like if I lived true to Natalie’s teachings and listening to Upaya Zen podcasts and just read?

Cook a big pot of vegetable soup and read and write what gets provoked by the reading
And devote myself to that exploration. That comfort that knowing that peace

Is it the place that brings forth creativity?

Or is it what?

I loved being at Beech Mountain by myself and spreading out over that long dining room table with piles of papers and books and I didn’t have to clean them up overnight and could just settle down to William Faulkner, Ruth Ozeki and now my new book about trees, The Overstory that Bill recommended and the new one by Per Peterson based in Norway

Taking me to another time or another place

One in Norway about the resistance and the people smuggling people out of Norway, Jews, over the border to Sweden where they would be safe.

Or another about the Lofoten islands up north where you had to row to school as school was on a different island than the farm. I gave that book and another to our lousy guide know it all who lives in Denmark and goes back and forth to Norway to take Americans up and down the coast to visit farms. He is bright but a know-it-all and I didn’t enjoy his company nor he mine.

I am a know-it-all about him being a know it all. Similar to my proclivity to be annoyed with people who are so easily annoyed by traffic, politics, food, noise, etc.

I have written about place
A studio
A place to write like Norman Mailer for 8 hours, no distractions, no email, no devices.

This is in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac today. I recommend subscribing to this.

Mailer was incredibly productive and stuck to a strict writing regimen. He wrote every day from 9 to 5, up until his death at the age of 84. For the last 27 years of his life, he shared a studio with his sixth and last wife, Norris Church Mailer, an artist and writer. They each had their own space. Mailer sat on a wooden chair looking out at the Provincetown Bay — he liked to be near water when he wrote — but he closed the curtains when he really needed to concentrate. Mailer and his wife ate breakfast and lunch on their own schedule, but they would meet up at 6 p.m. to drink wine and eat dinner.
The routine worked for most types of writing, but he couldn’t force his novels. He said: “A novel is more like falling in love. You don’t say, ‘I’m going to fall in love next Tuesday, I’m going to begin my novel.’ The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.” He carried a small, spiral-bound notebook with him at all times, in case inspiration struck.
He wrote by hand — he usually wrote in the morning and then typed it up in the afternoon or gave it to an assistant to type. He said: “I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing I ever did there was work. It was perfect. I was like a draft horse with a conditioned reflex. I came in ready to sit at my desk. No television, no way to call out. Didn’t want to be tempted. “

A reading room, a writing room where I am not also doing laundry and answering the door, my biggest fear at being in the retirement home is answering the door and seeming aloof and unavailable.
Maybe I could have a writing studio there in Davidson, uninterrupted loft over Main street or Depot street, maybe a room in the Birdsnest Music studio are they using all that room?

It isn’t about place
It is about schedule

It is about being devoted to the story
And letting it come and come.