Renewal

Renewal: 15 April 2023

 I’ve wasted an inordinate amount of time over the past three days trying to find a Mary Oliver poem containing a line I can’t quite remember. Internet searches have all failed. I can’t find my treasured paperback of Oliver’s collected poems, dog-eared and underlined with small slips of paper bristling the top edge. I looked through the volume I do have, but it’s a special one with no markings and only a couple of small bookmarks. I didn’t find the poem, but it was a joy to scan through this book. I ordered it secondhand years ago. I was surprised to discover it came in its own matching box. Not only that, but the title page declares “This is number 85 of a limited edition of 150 copies, signed by the author” and there at the bottom is her lovely signature.

 Anyway, I spent lots of my allotted blog-work time in a frustrating spiral of failure—not finding the book, not finding the poem, not writing the blog. Partly because writing is hard and abstract, and diving into a quest is easy and concrete, even one that ends in failure.

 So frustrating! But maybe instead of being frustrated that the one month I finally start writing days early and yet still end up writing on the 15th, writing about renewal of all things, maybe, I think, maybe this IS the blog. The fits and starts of trying to do something, encountering setbacks, moving forward anyway. Accepting the imperfection. Maybe this is renewal.

 Here I am outside on this beautiful morning after the rain. Everything shimmering a thousand greens, light bouncing off the raindrop-silvered leaves, a few chickadees upside down on the red bud’s branches, a few others piping their fee-bee fee-bay from the swaying cherry.

 Mama’s transplanted peonies sprang up a few weeks ago and now their tight buds are just beginning to show a little color. The confederate jasmine is certifiably deceased and its unsightly carcass needs removing. Weeds are rejoicing in the beds along with the lavender and the lemon verbena. A mother waits at the stop sign for her young son, who is struggling to carry an unwieldy scooter. An ant is carrying a fly carcass across the brick patio. Lots of people and dogs walking, some waving, some deep in conversations or concentration. Someone a few blocks away is busy with a blower. Squirrels are pruning the magnolia. Grady has flopped himself bonelessly sideways and appears unconscious, but his busy ears and nose belie the repose.

 I notice a pencil Emma dropped on the driveway. I wonder whether I should change out of pajamas. I watch the leaves twinkling in the breeze.

 Some trees, like our sweet gum and dogwood, jettison their leaves early in the Fall to get rid of dead weight; to keep from putting resources into things that no longer serve—they’ve stored up the benefits of photosynthesis throughout the warm sunny months and will go a little dormant and pull on their reserves through the winter. Sometimes it’s easier to regrow useful parts than to keep repairing old, damaged ones. Sometimes it’s better to let systems rest a while, to avoid exposing yourself to the harshest parts of the cold season. This year I’ve jettisoned habits of distraction and self-doubt and I’m working on regrowing some self-care.

Other trees, like our grande dame Magnolia, retain their glossy green leaves year-round, shedding old ones and welcoming new ones each Spring, sometimes with the help of squirrels. This year I’ve retained habits of meditation and exercise and writing, making myself ready to welcome new growth, sometimes with the help of friends.

 Still other trees, some oaks and our majestic beech, keep their castanet leaves throughout the winter. While other trees shed leaves, the beech just cuts them off, so that the leaves turn a beautiful copper, and stay on the tree, rustling in the winter winds, as place holders.  Perhaps, one theory goes, they protect the leaf buds. Then, when the Earth returns closer to the Sun in the Spring, the new growth pushes out the old leaves, so that the branches are never truly bare. Keeping the leaves until the Spring also allows the late-shed leaves to form a mulch around the tree base (unless you live near humans who move the leaves), which provides a Spring boost of nutrients to the tree and may deter browsers, like deer, from stripping new leaves. This year I’ve held on to some protective layers, pondering things in my heart, while I wait for the new growth to emerge, and to feel strong enough to share it.

 So many ways to overwinter. So many ways to be renewed.

 The poem I’m searching for expresses Oliver’s beautiful interiority. She sits, quiet, and still, and observes. She writes something like, “I have felt the heartbeat of a pebble,” or maybe “slow heartbeat of a stone.” I’m reminded of the meditation guidance, I think of it as Buddhist, because I think I first heard it in a Tara Brach meditation, to sit and let the world live around you. I practice sitting like a stone, solid, unmoving, unnoticed, and yet observant. A part of all the lively activity of the birds and insects, and, from a stone’s perspective, moss, and plants. While I’m thinking this, here comes another ant trudging the patio expanse shlepping the carcass of a roly-poly. Life, death, renewal.

 Overhead the sky is a vast air ocean, a calm silky blue. Occasionally a cloud foams into existence above the cherry tree, surfs the unseen currents over to disappear behind the white oak. There goes a wispy chariot sailing by, morphing into a buggy, now a unicorn head and finally a question mark, leaving a deeper blue behind.

 This is renewal. The time to notice the ants and the birds, the neighbors, and the path of the sun, now prodding me into the shade. The time to help Jack juggle school and sport and scout responsibilities. Time to play putt putt in the park with Mark. Time to scroll TikTok, have another cup of tea, listen to podcasts, make Hot Cross Buns for Easter breakfast. 

Time to take a break from writing and spend four hours helping Emma take everything except furniture out of her room; clean the room; change the sheets; sort the art supplies, books, stuffed animals, shoes, and clothes. Time to rest afterwards.

I’m trying to cultivate calmness. And to differentiate it from inaction, or laziness, or any other way we describe a challenge to our always on, always more, never good enough culture. This is renewal.

I’ve followed the sun around to the back porch. My bare feet enjoy the soft wool rug that Mark and I put down yesterday. We bought it more than a year ago in Oaxaca from a 9th generation weaver. We met his son and grandson, too—11 generations! The rug is gorgeous and intricate, woven with wool hand carded, spun, and colored with natural, local dyes. It is filled with Zapotec designs representing the cycle of life; Ojo de Dios; the sacred necklace of corn, beans, and squash; lighted candles flanking the door to the spirit world, agave, and more I don’t know. It is a woven prayer of noticing, remembering, giving thanks. Life, death, renewal.

I’m practicing what it feels like to be calm, to be in stasis, to let the world continue around me while I hold a still center, noticing. And even if I never find the poem, it’s on my bucket list to feel the heartbeat of a pebble.