“My message is that we’ll be watching you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”
They say there is no going back, not in time or otherwise, yet we all feel that pull to see it as we once did, whatever that it might be. Perhaps the core of this is best expressed in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, in Act III, during that iconic graveyard scene when the dead speak.
EMILY: But, Mother Gibbs, one can go back; one can go back there again . . . into living. I feel it. I know it. Why just then for a moment I was thinking about . . . about the farm . . . and for a minute I was there, and my baby was on my lap as plain as day.
MRS. GIBBS: Yes, of course you can.
EMILY: I can go back there and live all those days over again . . . why not?
MRS. GIBBS: All I can say is, Emily, don’t.
Warnings aside, we did just venture back to an ancestral place, one that will always have a place in my heart, and although I did discover how powerful the draw to return to one’s past can be, the present is always available, and exactly that, a gift.
My summer officially starts tomorrow with the lighting of our Solstice fire. I like to think I align like that, all celestial and heavenly, but even if it’s total coincidence, I’m claiming the divine timing. Regardless of when my summer or yours starts, it is certainly time to exhale, stroll around the yard, peer into the blooms, discover what is needed to remember yourself as a creative, healthy, strong adventurous being. How about your summer goals? How do you plan to connect to you?
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This day, when our seniors cross the stage to receive their diploma, always causes me to reflect on the meaning of Graduation. Meaning that I find monumental and liberating but also frightening and paralyzing. I watch with a degree of envy as the Class of 2019 steps out of the solid world they have known forever to embrace all the newness of tomorrow. From time to time I consider my own ‘graduation’, although a few years off, certainly on the horizon. I wonder, how will I step forward? How will I face inevitable challenges and happy surprises? All the unforeseen and unplanned despite my best calculations? I watch each high school senior mount the stage, study the surety in their stride, follow their upward gaze, listen as they cheer each other on, and wonder, can I emulate their optimistic adventuring spirit? Can I be that audacious? Smile at each dawn?
Come May we are overwhelmed by fragrance and color, flowers popping everywhere. Seems like every year I suggest the same, that we all take a moment to enjoy every vibrant aspect of the season. You’ll be so glad you did.
Right out my front door the brilliance of the azalea causes me to pause, take a deep breath, observe their magnificence, and then, slowly, move into the day’s demands. For Spring is fleeting bursts of brilliant blooms that blossom for oh such a short time and then blow about in the blustery breeze vanishing before your eyes.
No matter your geography, I hope you can smell the sweet sweetness in your backyard, park, or neighborhood…From the low lying tiny blooms to the grandiose flowering trees, Spring delight is everywhere you find yourself.
I encourage you to take in the delicacy of the bloom, the aroma of the spray, and the blush of the plants photographed from my backyard and revel in this ephemeral season for a brisk moment.
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Just about at every corner of my yard, pathway into the woods, or view across town is brightened by various buds and blossoms from dandelions to trillium and everything in between. Red and blue and yellow are all back, as is every shade of green. Seriously, living with flowers is just good livin, right?
This week I’ve been drawn back in time through memory and face to face, spinning into decades ago when I didn’t focus on my future but ran with a few dealing with the very immediacy we were facing. The day to day. We were late to college, already having babies, divorcing and reconfiguring, shifting apace with the swift seasons. We leaned heavily on each other each and every hour. Generally desperate to laugh or write or cry or paint or sort out a way through life’s obstacles. Our twenties and thirties are woven into a shared crazy quilt that binded all our loose strings. Last weekend, after decades apart, we were us once more.
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Creating something everyday, but not always posting about it because life is just too sweet!
by Ann Ittoop
