The Ann's at My Table

"Stare at something beautiful. Stare for a long, long time."

This is the first Ann. The one who reminded me months ago to slow down.

She is practical. She gives me ways.




The first Ann's words resonate with the words of the second Ann. The one who reminded me just a few short days ago to be "happy in all these little things that God gives." The second Ann is leaning over cheese curls with her camera, when her husband walks in the door.

"I do feel foolish," she says. "I mean, it's curls of mozzarella and cheddar piled high in a pond of golden day."

These Ann's, both a part of my fast-paced online world. They visit my thoughts, accompany my moments. Slow down. Note the sunlight. Note the curls of time, the secret tucked-in places.

I decide to stare at something beautiful. How hard could it be?




My first thought is to cheat the experience, work from memory. I know what my great-grandmother's table cloth looks like.

Don't I?

My second thought is to set a timer. But what constitutes a "long time"?

Forget the details, I decide. Just jump in (mosey in?).




I feel the linen between my fingers. The weave is uneven, as I suppose all linen is. What is linen? I realize I don't know.

I don't know if my great-grandmother used a pattern for this table cloth, or if she dreamed it up herself. Oh goodness, are these grape leaves and grapes? I hadn't noticed. Ah, communion sewn into the cloth—a silent, spiritual poetry that sat under dishes and glasses, time and again.

And there is more I don't know. So much more. Is this the lesson of beauty? How much we don't know? Is this what moves us to awe? The ache to know?

I don't know how she chose the thread. It is strong yet silky. Did someone peddle it to her door? Did she walk to a shop on some German market street? Who made this thread that has lasted through time?

The stitches are small, so so small. How many hours did she work to make them? Did her fingers hurt as she moved the needle through nights and days, stitching a love gift for her daughter's wedding? Did she work by gaslight? Electric? Did she get bored, or did this work soothe her spirit?

I don't know. All I know is, thanks to my sweet Ann's, I have looked for a long time. And beauty has left me with questions.




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Thanks to...

Ann Kroeker, author of Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families

Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

On, In, and Around Mondays: White Windows

I turn to put a white plate in the white dishwasher. But I can't help looking out the window on my way. White snow catches my eye.

Or, more truly, it is the shadows on the snow. No other time of year lays itself out quite like this, a sparkle canvas to be blue-shadow painted.

I go outside.




Earlier, we had a guest, spontaneous invitation to our table just now covered with white linen cloth. We ate nachos, salad, broccoli... got talking about creative genius Bill Strickland, who works with the poor, bringing them art, music and good jobs with good pay.

"I can't remember how he got his vision for his amazingly beautiful Center."

"He looked out the window," my Eldest answers me.




Evening comes. I serve French toast. My Eldest touches the table cloth, moves it between her fingers, notes that she had put it on upside down.

"Too bad," I say. "Our guest didn't get to see the beautiful handiwork."

"Is it homemade?" she asks, now tracing the tiny taupe stitches that surround delicate cutouts.

"My great grandmother made it as a wedding gift for my grandmother."

We notice that a few of the cutouts never got made. Cloth stretches blank like closed windows we can't look through.




I think to cut the cloth she did not notice. But they were her windows she forgot to open. I decide to let them be.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

Cherry Blossoms in January

All yesterday the Japanese music played. It calmed my daughter, helped her do her school work, and later put her in the mood for writing.

I wanted to write a poem about the music. It's not the best poem, but sometimes it's the writing that matters most.

When I think about cherry blossoms, I think of yesterday's music. I think of my little girl too. Twirling pink.


Japanese

wooden flute, bells,
weep and drift—
cherry blossoms
pink against
the ever darkening
night.


Little Girl Whirl photo, by L.L. Barkat. Post in honor of One Shot Wednesday.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Figuring

"Everything is terrible!" she wails, and leans into my arms.

Everything is not terrible.

There are worse days, worse places, worse lives. But to her, in this moment, everything is terrible. She is our sensitive child. And maybe the past few days of mini crisis, the weeks of us-too-busy-for-her, have piled up.

I understand. I myself am in a time of "figuring." Looking for some way to feel a sense of space. It always comes 'round to this. I empty my life, I fill it back up. I feel burdened. I must re-figure.

Walk away, I think.

So on Friday I go skating .



On Saturday I don't write (thus my lateness here today), but instead keep a promise to make a blog for my Eldest.

On Sunday we go walking. I laugh at my Youngest's way with the world. She is making snow hats for every fire hydrant we pass (and in my laughter I forget to take photos, which is a small regret).





On Sunday evening we take time for my Youngest, the fire-hydrant-snow-hat girl who thinks everything is terrible. Time to figure how to make a Japanese tent (is there such a thing?) that she actually fills with Chinese items. We find some Japanese music and download it; we change my plans for French-toast dinner and order-in Japanese.









Lights down low, she is finally smiling. I am still figuring. But for the moment everything is suspended.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

On a Friday Snowing, for Wednesday, On Tuesday

I wrote this on Friday, when I read the Random Acts of Poetry prompt. It's for One Shot Wednesday, but I'm posting it today. Tuesday. Why not? :)

Friday Afternoon

It is a gentle smothering,
this snow, this day
falling out
of a gray-white
sky, gently
eclipsing
concrete stairs,
which are all the wrong
sizes anyway.

On, In, and Around Mondays: Kitchen Table Optional

I usually write on Saturdays, but this past weekend I found myself in the car for a total of seven hours. Four up (we missed our turn and accidentally pointed towards Canada) and three back.



As the miles passed, I watched snow. Snow, snow and more snow. Snow on orchard trees and baby pines, on Douglas Firs and golden swamp weeds, on russet-colored bushes and mountains in the distance.



For all the daylight hours I watched, and never tired of the snow.





Later, returning in the dark, I watched the sliver moon diffused behind clouds. Now the snow was blues and grays, barely glowing, and the mountains were a suggestion against the night. If I could have walked the 150 miles home, I would have. The moonlit snow was an endless invitation to awe.

Somewhere along the way I got to thinking about Capon's (and Ann Kroeker's) Heavenly Onion. I know our lives do not permit this kind of attention for every task. But there are moments when we have an hour (or seven), and then we have a chance to be in awe over snow, or an onion, or the soft face of a person we love. I thought about this too, and wrote a poem (probably just along where we missed the turn— and now you see how awe can derail a day, so you must be prepared for that eventuality).

Anyway. I was thinking of Capon's instructions, but I was without an actual onion or a kitchen table. So, as I said, I wrote a poem instead.

Says Capon...

Now take one of the onions (preferably the best looking), a paring knife, and a cutting board and sit down at the kitchen table... You will note, to begin with, that the onion is a thing, a being, just as you are. Savor that...

Assignment (Kitchen Table Optional)

Spend an hour with an onion—
Spanish if you like—
feel it round in your hand
before you uncover it
against itself...
knife slicing, piercing
towards the heart
through paper, water, paper, water,
releasing heat
that could make a grown man
cry.




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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

We're reading The Spirit of Food together at TheHighCalling.org. Join us? Also, we're accepting poems (random is fine if you don't want to write for the prompt); mine today is random. :)

On, In, and Around Mondays: Edge of the New Year's Orchard

She wrote of challah dotted with raisins. In The Spirit of Food, Hathaway spoke of the moments making this heavenly braided bread for the Sabbath.

I thought about all the times I have tried to make bread—her idyllic description compared to my reality. There was no comparison.

This has been a year of admitting things like, "I can't make bread very well" and "I will probably never have a garden that results in actual vegetables." This year, I have left behind more than a few Wendell Berry/Laura Ingalls dreams.

So that, reading The Spirit of Food, I felt a sense of disconnection and slight sorrow. My realities are far from the visions of sweet homesteading and tomato vines overrun with fruit, of jams bubbling on the stove and land calling my name (as if I could do it justice with the turn of my unskilled shovel).

I came to the end of my assigned reading. Challah was baking, raisins plumping. And she, the successful baker, failed to keep her bees. Bees? It had been a new, hopeful endeavor that year, but the hives emptied, and the honey dreams disintegrated.

Wild bees came, in time, took up residence, redeemed the emptiness and her efforts. I think I was supposed to be comforted by this. But it was something else that caught my attention.

Little girl in the orchard, reaching.

Charlotte runs ahead, scampering through the bramble at the edge of the orchard to pick low-hanging fruit. When we catch up, Bea, her baby fingers grasping at everything, pulls at leaves, twigs, finally an apple.

This vision promised to turn my whole year around. Year past, and maybe year forward too.

I want to be the little girl who reaches for low-hanging fruit. I can make bread if I will let myself do it with a bread machine and a mix. I can grow rosemary and sage (but not thyme) in my garden, and gather tomatoes from the farmer's market. The whole orchard may never be mine, but an apple is waiting. Now I must simply reach. At the edge of the orchard. Reach.





Photos by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

<a href="http://seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5083/5217906589_c7120874ca.jpg" width="308" height="69" alt="On In Around button" />

We're reading The Spirit of Food together at TheHighCalling.org. Join us?