Trust in Beauty

I live with the raging, the weeping, the broken, the oblivious.  So, I have to get up early to sit in silence, or else I will spend my whole life loving them at a distance and not up close. 

But sometimes, it's easier to sleep in. Sometimes I wake to another's nightmare and am called into the world, full of trauma, right away.

It was one of those mornings. There was the nightmare, then the lost glove, then the spoon thrown across the table during breakfast, the sick dog, the kitchen that smelled like smoke, the piles of dirty dishes that had somehow appeared in the middle of the night. There was the appointment in 15 minutes that one of them was dreading.

While the morning's drama spun thick through the house, outside, miniature drops of water, loose and runny, rose and lined up like silent marchers along the edges of every branch, even the smallest, most precarious. Then the cold came, and the droplets froze, and the sun spread out and shone on the crystals and there I was, standing in front of the kitchen sink trying to clean up while somebody was screaming-- 

and I looked up and gasped.

What is it, mom? one of them asked, and soon we were all gathered at the window, staring out into the vast, white miracle of hoar frost, until I stupidly tried to provide an impromptu science lesson and told them what it was called and they began repeating it over and over and laughing hysterically: hoar frost, hoar frost, hoar frost--

and then, suddenly, their giggling subsided and it was quiet again, and we all breathed in, long breath, and out, long breath, and the kitchen still smelled terrible, but the glove appeared on the windowsill above the kitchen sink like magic, and we watched the crystals cling and shine and one of them said, "That's what beautiful is, right?" 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mary Oliver's "Goldenrod"

In her poem "Goldenrod," Mary Oliver begins: "On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, saffron and orange and pale gold, in little towers, soft as mash, sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers, full of bees sand yellow beads and perfect flowerlets and orange butterflies." I love the phrase "rumpy bunches." That was the phrase that caused me to remember what goldenrod looked like. Hiking the prairie, the goldenrod are the yellow plants that seem to gather and bend together, old women, golden-headed instead of gray, whispering their secrets. They stink, and they are rugged and disheveled, but they are also beautiful in their own way. I loved the prairie from the moment I moved here, but I learned to love it more because of S, who was so in awe of living in the midst of so much open space when I first got her. She loved to walk with me, noticing plant and snake and bird, breathing in, in, in. Later, walking ...
Read more

Song for Autumn

"In the deep fall/don't you imagine the leaves think how/comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the/nothingness of air and the endless/freshets of wind?" Mary Oliver writes in "Song for Autumn." What does it mean to live a good life, to have a good death? A mentor of mine died a good death recently, loved deeply by so many who visited regularly until the very end. I never went to see him, even though S asked many times that we do so. I had heard from a mutual friend that he'd said, "Let them come if they need to say goodbye," and I didn't. I didn't because the last time I saw him, he had hugged me tightly and told me how glad he was to have worked with me, and I had said the same. We both knew, of course, that he was dying, but in that moment, surrounded by the noise and laughter at a community meal, we didn't have to say it. Before then, S and I had presented him with a painting of his favorite local hang out at his retir...
Read more

SOFA at Our Home!

  To: All-Employees RE: SOFA at our home! We’re THRILLED to be hosting SOFA, the weekly end of week party that travels from home to home, for the first time in many years! If you remember the last time I hosted, please don’t hold that against me (or my spouse, whom I didn't even know at the time)–that was a long time ago! Anyway, we wanted to give you some information about our home to prepare you for what we hope will be an amazing party! We’ve broken this invitation into sections for ease of navigating. Please read them all, even if you don’t think they pertain to you. What You Should Know About Our Vibe Before you enter our home, we’ll be asking you what Zone you’re in, and what your plans are to get back into the Green Zone if you report being in blue, yellow, or (God forbid) red.  Please provide your own fidget and coping cards so you can stay in the Green Zone, because no one at our home is going to share theirs. We will be checking in with you at least once an hour abou...
Read more