living things

A friend's father is dying.

I learned this just a few days ago and it immediately took me back over a decade to my own father's last days. The coincidence did not escape me: I had my ticket to the flower show that year and then had a call from my mother. My dad was seriously ill. The ticket stayed in my wallet when I drove to their home, but I didn't leave for another week as we all tried to come to grips with what turned out to be a terminal diagnosis.

I spent half of what ultimately became the final month of his life with the two of them, involving hospice and supporting in the only ways I knew. If you've been through this, you understand. My challenge was to be as involved as I could while not trying to make decisions that were not mine to make. The day we took Dad to the hospital for diagnostic tests, I found refuge in the bathroom where I cried in the stall before rejoining my mother who sat and waited.

Throughout those seemingly endless and also swiftly passing days, I also found solace in my journal. It was the place for me to indulge my anguish and pain so that I could keep walking through the entire experience with my folks. It let me have that experience in my own way and still be able to function -- to accept my helplessness in the situation. Ultimately I remember describing that final journey with my dad as exquisitely painful. Again, if you've been there, you know.

Now my friend and her family are going through the same thing. And outside the winter is beginning to lose its grip on the landscape (and our psyches). I expect in years to come that the signs of spring -- wet earth, softer air and the urgency of emerging crocuses -- will forever be associated with this period in my friend's family's lives. It has been so in my own.

And this week I will go to the flower show, immersing myself in what is vital, alive and a celebration of that which goes from seed to flower and fruit, then seeds for the future, and ultimately to die. I'd like to invite my friend, who's an avid gardener, to join me if she would like the respite. It might be too much right for her right now, but I'll try. It was her dad who taught her how to make a garden. What a gift.

wintertime and the livin' ain't easy

At the risk of stating the obvious, it's snowing again, but I'm holding onto the faint hope that spring is on the horizon -- just behind those storm clouds and a week away.

It's a good day to stay in and continue plowing through the mounds and drifts of paper that I've justified keeping for so long. I can see incremental progress, but also realize that will stop if I stay on here long.

Perhaps the only disappointment is that my inroads won't be readily apparent to others. Once the obvious piles were whittled down, the rest of the glut was still hidden in file drawers. Happily, however, I've finally awakened to the fact that files are for retrieval not storage -- a mantra chanted by organizers. Having turned that landmark corner in logic, I'm now able to cut deeper and wider swaths and the recyling bin is rapidly filling. So forgive the mixed metaphors and my waxing poetic, but this recurring paper conundrum has been a source of confusion, frustration and embarrassment.

Enough. That cascade of white outside my window reminds me that it's time to get back to culling, sorting and shredding for a while more. The reward for my diligence is a jaunt into the New England Flower Show this week. I'll probably faint in the unfamiliar warmth and humidity. Not such a bad way to go, hmm? And I promise not to tote catalogues and brochures home.

whose footsteps?

Today nearly passed unnoticed until I heard some mention of it on the radio. I'm probably not the only one to have nearly ignored this day and its implicit pause to reflect, remember and perhaps revere women.

I googled International Women's Day and found that it has quite a long history. "Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights." You wouldn't know it by the lack of attention, at least in my part of the world.

It had not escaped my attention, however, that March is Women's History Month and at our monthly journal gathering, I posed the question: Whose footsteps are you following? The free-flowing testimonials that came were heart-warming and inspiring.

I thought of my paternal grandmother Min, whose life was pretty much a hard-scrabble one. She raised three boys and tended to her husband (sounds like a pioneer woman, doesn't she?) through the Depression years and saw all three of her sons serve in and survive World War II. I found myself wondering what dreams she might have had as a young woman. Even as I called her up in my imagination, I realized that I really didn't know her. She was my "Gram" and I loved her for simply that (and her scrumptious baking), but I wondered if anyone had ever truly known her.

Poet and novelist May Sarton also came to mind. As much as any writer truly shares herself with her readers, I had been inspired by her "Journal of a Solitude." When I was lucky enough to meet her in person several years ago, I thanked her for showing me that it was possible to live an authentic life. (I was struggling in a job that was killing my spirit and I couldn't conceive of any alternative.) I was amazed when she told me -- with some amazement of her own that I'd missed it -- that "Solitude" had been about her own experience with depression.

Can you believe that I hadn't see that? I had instead read it as a chronicle of someone who had made her way in the world without compromising. No one's life is that uncomplicated, but it was how I'd interpreted it at the time. Maybe a part of me -- then shrouded in despair and lacking hope for my own circumstances -- had simply followed her story without consciously recognizing the parallels. By the time I met her, I'd amazingly left that creativity-stifling situation behind and needed to thank the woman who'd been a companion throughout that sometimes tortuous passage. What struck me at the time was just how small she was. I'd expected a large imposing woman, but there she sat: a huge spirit in a tiny body.

These women could not have been more dissimilar, at least in the outward details of their lives. Yet each inspired and instilled in me a perseverance and determination beyond hope that I could live an authentic life -- one that more truthfully reflected who I am. Well over a decade later, it's still a day-to-day experiment in living.

I appreciate having days or times like these dedicated to remembering, commemorating and reflecting. If not for Women's History Month, I might not have thought of the question...and certainly hadn't anticipate my answer. And if not for IWD, I might not have mentioned it here.

In whose footsteps are you walking?