mother's day

“I know I walk in and out of several worlds each day.” 

― Joy Harjo

I sit in the garden with my coffee, the dog, and my camera. It is early, and it is Mother’s Day.
I think about my mom and my kids. I think about all the mothers I know in the world and how each one is worthy of being honored today.
I also know many who are struggling with this day for various reasons, and sit with them for a bit.

I sit and listen as bird songs start to fill the air, knowing soon the lake will be full of summer noises, as the day promises to be warm and summer like.
I sit and watch, knowing the birds will soon come out of the trees to eat, either at the feeder or on the dew kissed grass, looking for worms.
I just sit and listen and watch and think of all the mothers in the world.

I walk in and out of the different worlds I live in throughout each day and have come to understand this shifting is normal, at least for me.
I have let go of hard fast rules of what I will get done. I have let go of the lectures I use to give myself inside my head about how this or that needed to change.
I am learning that each of these worlds have within them their own rhythm. Each are beautiful and deserve my attention, for they are what make up my life.

I watch as the dog gets up and goes back inside, knowing he will go back to bed with my husband.
I turn my camera off, put the lens cap back on and just watch and listen a bit longer before I grab my empty coffee mug and get up.
I walk back into the house, eager to get on with my day for it is Mother’s Day, and I get to spend it with some of my kids and my grandson.

I will take it all in, fill up my heart, and listen with love.I will laugh and maybe even cry.
I will look for bugs with Percy, and eat food two of my son’s have prepared for us to feast on.
I will miss my mom and my one estranged son, so I will no doubt step into one of those other worlds at some point in the day,

but. . .
I will feel all those feelings without scolding myself or apologizing, because these worlds are what make up my life. And I am grateful for all of them..

decorating

““Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living. There's more to life than decorating.”
—Albert Hadley

Over the past week we moved almost everything in our home to two rooms to have new carpet laid. We looked like hoarders. The dog’s ears were sad, as he wasn’t sure where he could lay until we stopped for the day to read or watch some TV.

Picking out carpet was very stressful and with any luck, I won’t have to do it again. There are way too many choices! I know Curtis, the lovely man helping us, got worried every time we walked through the door. All in all, it took about six weeks to tell him to go ahead and place the order.

We also bought a new couch, twice. The first one was gray. . . but before they delivered it, I changed my mind and had them order a brown one instead. It was delivered today.

Some people find this kind of thing fun. I don’t. What I do find fun is going to the yearly Master Gardener’s plant sale with no plan, filling my little, red wagon with odds and ends, without really knowing where they might end up in the garden. But somehow it always works.

The carpet and the couch did too.

Revising

“How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves–all of our selves–wherever we go." 

― Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

I would like to unpack all the past versions of myself and arrange them on a beautiful table to admire one by one. I would allow each of them to have their say, without interruption or judgement, followed by a short question and answer period. The nesting dolls would be in order chronologically, but not necessarily be spaced out in equal increments. Rather they would show up when they felt they needed to be seen and heard. I know there would be some that would bring me such joy that I would not want to go any further; while others would impart such wisdom and astute awareness that I would pause and wonder where she vanished too. There would be some that would be very hard to revisit, tempting me knock them to the floor before they had their say, and some that would just made me role my eyes.

I would place today’s version out on the table with a promise to never give up on her. I would tell her that this was her time now and I am doing my very best to find her, even when it feels selfish or awkward. I would, with confidence, assure her that we have always done our very best, followed our heart and done amazing things, often with a strength we didn’t know we had. Together, we now have a chance to let go of all the regrets, anger, and resentment and focus on love instead. I would suggest we do this wholeheartedly, as a team with all the love we can muster up.

***

“Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do.
Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.” 
― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

Nothing is Ordinary

‘Photography has been my way of bearing witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary.”

-Harold Feinstein

I took these photos on a walk with my grandson around his neighborhood. He brought his little wooden camera along and we compared images as we meandered down the alleys. I am learning there are all kinds of way to see the the world around me. All of them beautiful.

April's Lessons

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.” 

― Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown's Little Book of Wisdom

The April weather plays havoc and we see it all, a bit of snow, hail, rain, thunder, and beautiful sun breaks. But among the havoc green shoots break through the ground, buds swell on the tress and start to open, and color once again enters my small world. I have hard, dark days, paired with ah-ha moments and by months end I find bits and pieces of myself in old haunts and comforting places. I walk into May with fresh eyes and maybe a bit of grace.

***

I took these photos with various lenses throughout the month, most of them in our backyard. The mushrooms however were captured in a drive-by in our old neighborhood, where I learned we can’t go back.
Life is meant to be lived in forward motion.

out the car window

“I stared out the car window and understood that I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

This was the only quote I could find about staring out a car window and I find it to be pretty accurate. (Also, I loved that book.)

I take these photos out the car window. traveling south down Interstate 5. I play around with the settings of my camera as he drives. My window down, and my camera acting as a kind of protective shield after a hard week, I am pleased when I later upload the images. I decide to edit them a bit like film, and think once more about buying a roll or two for one of my old point and shoot cameras.

seeing things new

forget-me-not
sol 45

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.
-Ernst Haas

The focus is tricky and I dig out my camera manual to review my camera settings. I google the various “tricks” my camera might provide me as I play around with bending the lens back and forth, something a camera lens should not do. It is easy to become engrossed as time flies. I have shot a couple hundred images in the past week since the new lens arrived, all of them in our backyard. The process is slow going, arousing my curiosity in ways that are challenging and just plain fun! And that in itself is enough to keep me going. The past few years have been eye opening for me in so many ways, and this practice is part of that growth.