The Cat's in the Cupboard and Can't See Me

Valley hiding from everyone in the hall closet.

I was walking toward my bedroom last week.  Everyone was home.  Caleb was picking up his toys and smacking them against the tile floor.  The percussive "Crack!  Crack!  CRACK!" made it hard to hear the TV, which was turned up to be heard over Caleb's racket, vied for most irritating noise ringing throughout the house.  Charlie was barking at someone he thought was at the door.  Nathan was playing a video game in another room and the "Thud-thud-thud-thud-RATATATATAT" added to the din.  

I would add that the dishwasher was augmented the level of noise in the house--but we have a dishwasher that, when it is going, I can't even hear if I'm standing right next to it.  The clothes washer and dryer are in the garage--so I couldn't hear them either.  It was late afternoon--so no one was mowing the lawn or edging outside.  

Even so, the house pulsed with sound and the energy of five adults and one 10 month old grandson.

As I passed the closet in the hallway leading to my bedroom, I noticed that the door was half open--and a quiet "mee-u" caught my attention.  With everything going on in the house, Valley had sought refuge in a place I had never seen her before.  She looked at me, "mee-u".  I reached in and stroked her head.  In a whole house of bedrooms, a cat tower, hidden window ledges with an outside view--she had retreated to the relative safety of a place where Charlie wouldn't bark at her, Caleb couldn't grab at her, and no one would try to pick her up.

I had to get a picture.

*********

It is 10:35pm and the entire house is quiet.  Brent, Nathan, La, Roberto, Caleb, Charlie, and both the cats are still and sleeping.  It is now that I like best to sit and write.  

Brent used to ask me why I stayed up so late after everyone had gone to bed.  Classes, kids, errands, appointments, chores all began early in the morning.  When the kids were younger I used to go to visit friends who had been sick or just had a baby--when they opened the door they stared at me and then exclaimed "Come in!  Come sit down!  You look so tired . . . are you OK?"

Being awake in the late night hours, though, gave me the assurance that everyone was safe.  They were all under our roof and sleeping.  Everyone was here--but no one needed me to do anything for them.

When Meg and La were very small--during the years when Brent was in law school--they played happily with each other as I cleaned the kitchen and mopped the bathroom floor.  I could make beds, take dirty clothes down stairs and bring clean clothes back up.  I could put away books, file papers, answer the phone--no problem.  As soon as I sat down, however, I was fair game.  

I would sit at the kitchen table to type a paper for class or start to grade papers my students had written--and "Whoosh!!" they appeared--on my lap.  I would sit on the couch to read a book for class or sit at the piano to play a piece of music and "TaaDaa!" I had two small bodies squirming on my knees.  I couldn't even go the bathroom without the two of them needing me to hold them on my lap and read them a book.  

When they were asleep, however, I could read textbooks, prepare lesson plans, write out checks to pay the bills, write a letter, type a paper--even sit at the table to eat something--and neither Meg nor La would materialize out of thin air between me and what I had started to do.

Of course, now that Meg and La are both married with their own children, my lap is more often invaded by one of our cats--both of whom are easily dislodged with a determined poke of my finger.  I can sit and watch TV all day or scan bills and old photographs into computer files that will float out in space for the rest of eternity--if the eternities have iCloud.  I can even lay down and take a nap in the middle of the day, undisturbed until it is time for dinner and Nathan comes in, wanting to know what's planned for that night.  

The odd thing about my life now is that even with all the time I have, I have more money than time.  It is much easier to pay someone to come and clean the kitchen or mop the bathroom floor.  Nathan will do the laundry if I will sort the dark from the light colours, and put the whites in a separate pile.  And there are no stairs to carry anything up or down.  

At the State Fair on Wednesday, we waundered into a room where the prize winning quilts, crochet wall hangings, knitted baby sweaters, and needlepoint projects were all displayed.  The county quilting club was set up with someone demonstrating how to quilt, information about their organization, and a beautiful quilt that was being raffled to help raise money to support the charity work that they did.  It was a stunning wall display quilt with squares featuring birds and wildlife from the area.  It was intricately stitched and edged.  Since raffles are a kind of gamble (albeit a benign kind), I asked if I could just donate without receiving a ticket.  The response was "I don't know how we handle that sort of thing."  I guess it wasn't a common request.  In the end they graciously accepted my $10.  As they thanked me, I mentioned that I was in a place that made it much easier to give monetary support than to actually spend time working for worthy, charitable projects.  It seems like such a cowardly way to feel that I am "serving my neighbor."  

I look back on the things I did when Meg, La and Nate were in school--and I am amazed.  I had energy and strength and patience and TIME . . . that, somehow, have disappeared.  One friend, also a grandmother, said that for her "the days dragged, but the years flew."  I am still puzzled by that.  I remember times when I had to sit and wait for a doctor appointment or stand in line waiting for my turn to take a driving test--and wishing that I could save up that time and use it later when I was doing something that I loved to do.  Especially during college, during the freezing winters, walking to class--I really wanted to take that time and save it for something else.

Time doesn't save, though, does it?  Ideas, goals--art, garden, school plans--all these can wait for later.  Standing in line at the grocery store, sitting and waiting for a meeting to begin--these things demand that time be taken THEN.

Very often, when things I don't really want to do dictate how I spend my day, I feel like Valley--and would creep off to an obscure place to wait out the commotion if I could.  Later coming out--as Valley does at night--when it is still and my time is my own.

Portrait of a Neighborhood

I'm starting with this image because it is so out of proportion.  It is a long, bigger-than-life panorama. The majority of my photos concentrate on the little details around me. This, in contrast, is a 200 degree view of a beaver dam.  It runs parallel with one of the small bridges located by the lake near Meg's house in MD.  The dam itself isn't what really amazes me--the fact that there are beavers living and maintaining their self-styled habitat in the middle of a huge metropolitan area--THAT is what amazes me. 

It is what Meg and her family love about living in a tiny townhouse with no backyard, front yard or privacy . . . which would drive Brent and me crazy.  She knows just about everyone in the area she can access easily by walking.  When I am there, she introduces me to everyone by name--then tells me interesting things about them after they have passed by: how many children they have, how long they've lived there, if they are outgoing or reserved, and even the food allergies of those on her block.  She regularly makes things or drops off fresh baked bread to her neighbors.  They frequently reciprocate. (In contrast, I do not even know the names of the neighbors on either side of me or across the street--and I would be hard-pressed to pick them out of a line up.)

Last year she decided that they would sell ice cream cones in August to raise money so that their family could buy a cow for someone in a foreign country through Heifer International.  Long after the ice cream cone sale, neighbors would stop and ask how much they made and then make a donation so that Meg's idea could come closer to fruition.

It has just occurred to me that I should have stepped back so that the railing (visible on the left and the right edges of the photo) would have been complete--giving the viewer a continuous frame of reference.  In this photograph, I have to look carefully to realize that it is an image visible from the railing of a bridge . . . next time I'm in MD . . .

On the corner across the street from Meg's, the power company cut down a diseased sapwood tree.  The trunk diameter was easily four feet across.  I would have had trouble putting my arms all the way around it. 

What fascinated me, though, was the uneven growth of the outer rings.  The living vascular cambium layer bulges out, then dips in toward the heartwood of the tree.  In school the tree trunks in the diagrams are always concentric circles--some layers smaller and some bigger than they actually are in relation to the other layers of the trunk so that they can be more easily identified.  On this sapwood tree, the heartwood layers of the tree are even--but as the tree got older, the outer layers became more uneven.  

This ragged outer edge caught my imagination.  I took pictures and then, then I saw how difficult it was to make out the rings in the photograph, I walked back across the street and got a pail full of water and a broom from Meg's house.  I rinsed off the tree stump and then scrubbed at it with the broom bristles.  The photographed image wasn't perfect after I finished, but it was much easier to see each ring.  

As I was dousing the tree trunk with water and scrubbing it down, a car stopped.  There was a stop sign on the corner beside me, so I didn't notice the car at first.  Then, when it didn't move--I looked over and the driver was waiting, watching me.  

"What are you doing?  Why are you washing that?"

I explained that I wanted to get a clearer image of the tree rings.  

"Why?"

I then added that my daughter home schooled her children and that the picture of the tree rings would be a great teaching tool when they were studying plants.

"Is you daughter from around here?"

I told him that she lived across the street, and that she had two children.

"You mean the woman with the little boy and girl?"

"Yes."

"I know them! Have fun! Good bye!"

This conversation was repeated several times, except that some of the people were walking by instead of driving, and others, when I mentioned that my daughter lived across the street added:

"Do you mean Megan Rytting?  Are you her mother?"

. . . .

Small town feeling in a huge metro area.

This photograph is one of my best.  It was across the street from where I spent time swinging (see previous post "I Guess We're Stuck With You . . .").  The dark night and the glow from the street light fit my mood.  I like how the photo is framed.  If I were to sell my work--this would be one that I would use.

I think I may have published this--or one like this--before.  While with Meg, I went to Cosco and found these bigger than softball, perfectly formed and evenly coloured pomegranates.  There were four of them--two of which I immediately pulled apart to eat.  Meg wanted to save two of them to give to friends who had food allergies.  But she never got around to it . . . instead she had a baby. Since she didn't get time to deliver them, I eventually also pulled the seeds out of the other two.  By then the fruit had begun to go bad in spots and so there wasn't quite so many of the seeds to eat.  

What I loved about this section of inner pith was the pure white of the flesh and the startling red of the two remaining seeds--and then I noticed a tiny, albino seed.  Like a tear, it quietly remained behind to mourn the destruction of its home.  

Not really, but it did look like a large tear--one that an anime character would have drawn coming down her face to illustrate her anguished cry of frustration and sorrow.

On of my days in MD, I went on a long walk in a wild wooded area and found this tree.  

There are paved tracks around the nearby lake and other paved pathways between the houses and the backyards of homeowners' yards that lead from one end of the neighborhood to the community center--a youth  center and gymnasium, artists' studio, a large co-op store, an indoor pool (an outdoor pool that was closed for the winter) and a small number of bistros and cafes that served odd (it seemed to me, anyway) kinds of foods.  

This part of the forest had no paved pathways, only a deer trail that lead along a small creek--too wide to get across without getting wet.  I followed the river bank, sure that if I stayed next to the river I could not get lost.  (THAT was stupid of me--she who can get lost going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.)  As I waundered about, trying to return to Meg's house, I eventually got to an area that, at one time, had been sectioned off as government property with a giant chain link fence topped by lines of barbed wire stretching as far as I could see.  

Now, though, there was no attention paid to keeping the area secured from trespassers.  The barbed wire had snapped and hung uselessly along the inside of the fence line.  The chain link was rusted--in some places laying, limp, next to the ground.  

And there was this tree, not too many years from being a sapling, that had grown up and through the fence.  I feel a deep sense of loss when I observe a tree trunk or thick branch from a bush that has been deformed by a section of fence.  What should have been able to flourish and grow freely, has, instead, been deformed, hindered from what should have been a clear path to the sky.   

It is also a warning of who and what I allow to become part of my life.  The tree above, when the fence falls down, or is replaced by new chain link, has no option but to die.  Its life is already shortened and its ability to produce seeds and reproduce has been seriously, if not totally, compromised.  

It all comes across as over-dramatic--but I feel the same emotion  as if I found a wild creature that had been caught in a trap and maimed for the remainder of its life.  

There was, for almost two years, a sandhill crane that frequented our area--and that came daily to eat crushed corn and seeds that I provided.  I carried the feed out of the garage in a white milk carton with the bottom cut off so that it worked as a scoop.  The stark white colour made it stand out against the continual green of our landscape--and when cranes saw it, they would hurry (as much as cranes ever hurry) to come and eat from my hand.  This one crane had gotten a strip of plastic jammed high onto its upper beak--almost completely closing off its nostrils.  To breath it had to open its mouth, which meant that it became dehydrated more easily.  She never was able to find a mate--always coming by herself to feed.  I know that she didn't consciously think "If only I could breath better, I'd be able to keep a mate and have chicks."  But I'm sure that, at some level, she felt lonely.

Here are two trees that grew right next to each other--probably seeds from the same tree that landed together and then sprouted.   One is much bigger than the other and the smaller one shows a bole--the effect of insects infesting or a mold infecting the tree and causing a huge, round outgrowth, covered with rough bark. Because the two trees are so close together, the burl grew to connect them.  Not sure how I interpret this image--rather the smaller tree was supported by the larger or the smaller tree weakened to the point that it became susceptible to insect or mold.

It is striking, though.

I had a hard time finding what kind of fungus this might be.  There are two that are listed as common to the area:  Fairy Fingers (Clavaria fragilis) and Coral Fungi (Ramariopsis kunzel).   As I look at it more carefully here, I think that this is the Clavaria--the white stalactites are straight--rather than interconnected to look like a coral.  Either way, it is an amazing thing to see this bright, white fringe hanging under a dead log fragment.  It was startling enough to catch my attention from half a mile away.  I didn't realize that it was edible--and I know that Meg and her family would have found it a wonderful treat to taste something that grew wild just a few miles from their home.

  

The closing image of this entry is an oblique angle shot of the front of Meg's home.  It reminds me of the perspective I get when looking at railroad tracks converge as they disappear into the distance.  I like it very much.

"I Guess We're Stuck With You, Huh?" "Yes, I Guess We're Both Stuck With Each Other."

At the top of the big slide, my heals lift just a bit so they don't slow my fall to the ground.

When I go down a slide for the first time, it always feels as if I am about to free-fall to the ground.  I am alone at the top--since I am an adult I rarely go to kids' playground areas when the kids are there.  My purpose in being there is not because my mom or dad brought me--or because I am hanging out with friends from school and we don't have anywhere else better to go.  I go because I want to feel apart from the rest of the world.

It is most often early morning or late at night.  It is most often because I am trying to work out feelings that I don't want to feel or am having a hard time dealing with.  I readily cry at sad movies and often cry when I read a book whose story touches me.   

Feeling angry or frustrated or . . . well, REALLY angry . . . is harder for me to come to terms with.  I want to cry because I feel sad--as if I've lost something or someone has taken something from me that I held close to my heart--but I can't let myself do it.  

Last month I got to visit with Meg--both before and after the baby came.  They didn't really need me for anything specific.  I swept and mopped the floors, washed and folded the laundry, helped Meg finish some projects she had started for their home, did the dishes and tidied the kitchen--and augmented the kitchen appliance collection so that making toast was easier for me.  Mostly I just helped the house to run smoother.

I did get to do some cool things--like work with Jon and Kate on their home school projects; build Legos with Jon; make a movie of Kate jumping on their mini trampoline; explore KIDS museum with Jon; go with Kate to an indoor collection of bounce houses where she jumped and climbed and explored places she's never seen before.  I got to hold Gloria when she was just six hours old and talk with Megan for hours.  When Anton's sister Jenny arrived, I got to play the piano while he and Meg and Jen sang Christmas carols.  

I became a fixture in the home--something like the living room couch.  Jon and Kate came to regard me as someone they were "stuck with" (Kate's words, not Jon's) when Meg and Anton were gone.  I was not a guest, not quite a parent, sometimes my rules counted, sometimes they did not.  It did feel as if I were in my own home--I padded about the house in the morning in my pajamas, ate what and when I wanted to, and used Megan's sewing machine to mend clothing.  I sat with the family on the upstairs' hallway floor and heard Anton read scriptures and had my turn saying family prayer.

I was special--but not really.  Sometimes that got to me.  It is hard to live suspended in ambivalence--and one night I left just as I had finished preparing dinner and went for a long walk in the dark.  It was cold, but not too cold.  I had my phone with me, so I wasn't cut off from family--but I turned the ringer off so it just vibrated if someone wanted to talk with me.

I found a small park playground across the street from an old elementary-school-turned-church.  In the windows along one side there were pictures drawn on cream-coloured, thick paper taped to the windows.  I could see the light squares as I sat in one of the swings in the park.  

At first I just sat there.  Not many people walked past.  Those that did pass me, didn't look up as they were hurrying home, their faces hunched up inside scarves wrapped around turned-up collars.  

I sat there for awhile, waiting for the tears that wouldn't come because my frustration was real, but not justifiable--but still REAL.  I finally thought around my feelings enough that they began to settle and as they did so, I began to pump with my legs.  I levered my body back and forth until I was high enough that I could see over the top swingset bar when I was behind it.  I wished that I could take a picture of me, so high that the swing "hiccuped" at the apex of my arc, as I paused for just a fraction of a moment before I pushed my legs out in front of me again and began the long curve down.

I saw myself in the bottom hemisphere of a unit circle--traveling from the 180 degree mark through 270 degrees and up to 360 degrees.

And who said you'd never use anything you learned in Algebra or Trig?
Math is a fourth language for me.  It gives me a specific way to look at the world that is unique--and, to me--beautiful.
My first language was English, then music, then Spanish--then math.*  

I kept swinging, at first not thinking about anything except how my body felt as it covered the range from near-weightlessness to almost too heavy to bear--over and over again.  Like the pendulum of the grandfather clock my own father built, I hung in space--measuring each beat of my heart against the physics of momentum and the laws of inertia and friction.

Then I began to wonder how long I could stay there, moving closer and then farther from the ground.  I thought about how circus acrobats didn't stop their swing at 180 and 360 degrees--but continued completely around the circle--traveling a constant path, unencumbered by the need to slow to a stop at the edge and then descend before wafting upward again.

A strange, cramped circular stairway around a pole--leading up and down from the top of the slide.  With my big, grown-up feet, I have to take cautious steps to get up or down.

Such an eternal continuum is not for mortals on earth.  My thoughts are not lofty, profound ones--but tiny pin pricks of what to do, why to do it, when to do it, how I hate to do it, why I'd like to do something else . . . I do not feel as if I rise in a heavenward gyre, borne on invisible thermals that support eagles in the sky.  

I am, rather, balancing unsteadily at the top of a strange terrestrial ladder--watching each step to see how close I am to falling every time I begin to move.

And that is enough for me right now.  Bit by bit, step by step--waiting for the time when I can move on to unending arcs of flight.

*I hope you liked my drawing.  It was the vision I saw in my head as I was swinging.   Some people see the clouds in the sky, others see the dirt on the ground--I see the degree tics around the unit circle I memorized in Trig.  In radians a 45 degree angle is imaged as the pointin an x, y plane.

Now I've used another thing I learned in Trig.