trees of our fathers

While walking today I noticed that part of the gloom of an Ohio winter is provided by the trees. Not the bare ones that shiver pathetic little straggles of leaves out on the furthest branches. It' s the sometimes majestic but mostly misplanted Norway Spruce.

Pices Abies grows to 150 feet in the northern Baltic region it is native to and is frequently seen at 75 to 100 feet tall here in Ohio. Unfortunately what is majestic in a northern forest setting does not look that way when paired with a 50's tract house in Cleveland.

The pioneers of the Western Reserve brought the Norway Spruce west with them to provide shelter from the winds off Lake Erie. Soon their lacy dark green fronds marked homes everywhere. A lonely farm in the middle of a field and a city bungalow. Actually, the spruce looks kind of nice and unassuming when it's planted at about 12 to 18 inches tall. At about 4 years it starts to take shape as a baby Christmas tree. By the time it is 10 years old it is, if professionally sheared, the perfect pyramidal tree to enhance a holiday living room. Glossy and dark green with slightly drooping branches, some Christmas tree growers are planting these trees for future harvest because they look nice and grow reliably fast. Unfortunately they also tend to lose needles faster than their relatives the White and Blue spruces which can be a problem if you want to keep your tree up past Christmas so the lights will make you forget the gloom of January.

In their zeal for "landscaping" the old homestead, people generally buy those cute little potted trees and either plant them 3 feet away from the foundation or if they are particularly flush, plant a whole line of them on 6 foot centers down the edge of a driveway. That's what the previous owner of my old childhood home did-marked the driveway with a nice little conga line of spruces. The lady that lived next door, a longtime gardener herself, tried to get Mr. Ware to plant the trees further apart. "Six feet is too close, they'll grow into each other before you know it and take over the yard, not to mention the drive." she told him. So, the trees grew and probably looked quite fetching when they were younger, growing into a nice green line marking the gravel drive. Ah, but we all tend to look fetching, if not green, when we are young. It's when we keep on growing past our limits that there is trouble. Too many chocolate chip cookies and ice cream sundaes make our waistlines bulge past the boundaries and planting the Norway Spruce on six foot centers tends to make for a short life for a long green line. The stronger trees take over and leave the others stunted and warped looking until the unfortunates wither away. The whole process can take forty years or more (Norway spruces should be planted on 20 foot centers), leaving a raggedy line with the trees on the end (and maybe one in the middle) towering over wizened little creatures in between.

Of course, there's the other guy. The one who thinks that a little pine tree on each end of the house will define it from the rest of the little boxes on the block. Which is great. Until a few years later, when the trees are approaching 50 feet and simultaneously growing into the foundation and dwarfing a modest little ranch, making it look like the victim of a double Godzilla verde.

So where does that leave us on this drab January day? On a sodden street pockmarked with grossly overgrown forest trees that overhang little gardens and filter through the bare branches of other (unclothed) forest trees. No sun, no proportion. Just a runaway forest in a long-ago cow pasture filled with row upon row of little boxes .

At least the wind sounds nice whispering through the old girls in my parents yard.

caught in a corner

This morning as I was feeding the cats in their various little territories it occurred to me that we are all warped by the jobs we work, the places we live, the country we live in, the friends and family that surround us (or don't). Which puts us all, humans and other animals in the same category as those cypress trees you see pictured in the Sierra. The trees are trained by the wind. We are trained by each other for the most part since very few of us (myself included) are strong enough to fight the winds that surround us. It is easier to give in.

Last night I started reading "The Four Day Win" by Martha Beck. It's a book on dieting (which of course I would have no use for) and also on changing your whole outlook on life--four days at a time. According to the author, the Rule of 4 seems to be hardwired into the brain--she found that if she could get a client to do anything consistently for four days--writing, exercising, eating a certain thing-an internal barrier seems to fall and progress is made--progress that sticks to the psyche.

So maybe I have found a new tool to fight the winds around me. I don't want to die in this miserable little hole. I don't want any more of my little cat friends to die without tasting freedom and a wide blue sky above them. I want to be able to see the sky myself, and have time to enjoy the wonder of a full moon night and the vastness of the stars.

Will I be strong enough for this battle?--maybe--four days at a time. The author says we can only truly win in increments. If you try to take on the whole set of problems the mind shuts down in despair. I've dealt long enough with despair. It makes for a difficult life. A life without options. A life without life.

Martin Luther King also knew of the wisdom of this process. He said, "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step."

back again

Catchy title, Back Again. But when I received the news that the cancer was back two days after Christmas, being the optimist, I naturally thought that this was the end. I keep forgetting that somebody else is calling the shots.

I've been through the surgery, awaiting chemo or radiation or whatever they decide but relatively at peace. Got to take my first real shower in a week (it's the little things that really do count) and took a walk on the bike path this afternoon--freedom! Even thoough it was only about 10 degrees outside the sun felt wonderful. We're not used to too much sun up here in Ohio during the winter. Spotted two red-tailed hawks which I took as a good sign. The hawk is a kind of symbol of the connection I feel with this area and the people and animals who inhabited this space in the past.

The two hardest things in life are waiting--waiting for results, Christmas morning, a baby, a vacation to begin, a vacation to end. The second thing is letting go--letting go of old friends, children, and fear. I keep remembering learning to swim--my uncle kept telling me to let go and float--don't worry about going under--just relax and float, relax and float. So naturally I would flail away and sink. And fifty-five years later I still haven't learned to float, to trust in the forces underneath me.

There is no real safety anywhere. George Bush promised to keep this country safe from the terrorists and maybe on the surface he has succeeded, but at what cost. We are building democracy in the Middle East while at the same time tearing it apart here in the homeland. Our economy is in shreds and the general feeling is that we're all on this sinking ship together. So where is the captain and crew?

I keep thinking that this is all illusion. There is no real up or down. It's time to learn to float.

It's still January, but the days are getting longer

Since my last post things have changed on the political and personal fronts. Obama and Huckabee are no longer shoe ins and the cancer has returned but this time they caught it before it has spread (they hope). I managed to shove the cancer out of my mind after the biopsy but the thought was still there so when the results came back, it all came on with the strength of a flood. Getting that diagnosis the second time was definitely worse than the first. The first time you don't know what's coming at you, the second time your imagination expands on the memory.

So now, I will just wait for the surgery and just go on day by day which is all any of us can do.

Went for a walk this morning and the day was still gray--it's amazing that in this part of the country at this time of the year how dominant gray is. The sky and the horizon all seem to blend into one monochromatic--this morning there was a light frost that layered itself over everything so that it was hard to see where the sky started and the horizon ended. Edwin Teale, the naturalist wrote a book titled "Walking Through Winter", so I've made up my mind that this is just another winter to walk through and observe, while all the time counting down the days til spring.

There was only one deer this morning, down by the bridge. Thankfully, she decided to run back into the woods instead of trying to cross the road. I could hear the chickadees and cardinals starting to chip chip in the brush but no one was coming out in the open. No hawks, no sleepy owls only a squirrel who was still active in the oak tree outside the apartment window. I miss having a bird feeder. It would be nice to be able to watch all those little lives again--the minor skirmishes and the stoic wisdom of enduring the bad days and the sheer pleasure a ray of sun can bring.

the gray season

It's a gray gray day here in Ohio. We each sit in our snug little boxes waiting for spring while the rest of the world rages around us. That's what it means to be an Ohioan. To be an edge hanger, part of the periphery, hanging out in the mist where no one will see us, acknowledge us. Part of the rust belt, the has-been state.

Just what makes us so? A people who grew used to having a piece of the good life and forgot to watch as freedoms slipped away from us piece by piece. Politicians who made choices based on the expedient, forgetting that they are supposed to represent the people back home. They don't even know the people back home. We don't exist in their world.

I met my congressman for the first time last October. We were redistricted at least 5 years ago, but this guy is rather elusive and tends to stay with his own kind in DC. You know, golf outings and occasional forays to the office to decide on a bill. I was used to my old representative, Sherrod Brown, who was at least good for an occasional debate (in public with the unwashed many no less). Of course now that Sherrod Brown has gotten into the Senate, all that has changed. Now he votes for funding an ill-thought-out war without batting an eyelash. The status quo flows on.

But Steven LaTourette is a different animal (or potbellied middle aged man). He doesn't really listen to the people that comprise most of his district--mainly because they stay silent. Silent and compliant. Steven knows best. At least he's changed his mind about the war--even though he hasn't changed his vote. But the pity is that he is for the most part unaware of the little guy out there, the one who has found the ground slipping beneath him. He is part of the majority of the Congress (doesn't matter which party) who listen to the wheeler dealers and the money men and have forgotten the ordinary people who look at their paycheck and hope it will stretch to pay $3 gasoline and $4 milk.

Congress needs to come back to the real world. The world of pinching pennies and doing without and always living with that pit of dread. Trillion dollar deficits to fund an empire are not part of reality. Lockstep with an overgrown frat boy who knows nothing about running a country for the people is also not part of reality. Just a few more months and the bubble will burst, things will change hopefully for the better. In the meantime we will sit huddled in our gray mist waiting.

I think I'm going to bake some bread. You know the kind where you knead and pound at the dough to make the finest texture possible. Every four years, my bread baking reaches new heights. Kneading and pounding. Kneading and pounding and raging. Kneading and pounding and plotting a future.