Renaissance • Mr. Darcy + other things

December 30 • 2020

 I woke thinking it's Saturday - okay, it's Wednesday, close enough - and splashed water on my face with my glasses still on. I was daydreaming about things -mostly my plants and writing and taking the dog for a walk. And the word, renaissance which popped into my head on Monday (2 days ago). It feels good to say ~

renaissance 

After drying my glasses, I dug in the junk drawer for the measuring tape to see how much Big Vivie and Little Vivie have grown from a week ago. Big Vivie is now 22.5 inches tall. Little Vivie is 18.5" They're going to burst open into blossom sooner than I expected. 

                                                         

RENAISSANCE is a French word meaning rebirth. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary offered the word's history and etymology (in brief): French, from Middle French, rebirth from Old French, renaistre to be born again, from Latin renasci, from re + nasci to be born

So, yes, I'm thinking a kind of rebirth would be lovely as we leave this year behind. And it's always funny to me because the whole-end-of-year/new year moment is simply one day to the next, yet it has such a hold on us - I go to sleep, usually before midnight, or maybe bang some pots and pans @ midnight on the porch before crawling into my cozy bed. Sleep, dream, lose track of the days, and then wake up and it's a new day - I'm still me, nothing noticeably miraculous happened at the strike of midnight, yet most of us feel the metaphorical turning of a new page. 

We long for the new-ness. I know I do. (and still, I hold onto the familiar)

Like a good Jane Austen story (Claire and I have been deep into them on these winter nights) -Newness and familiar comforts are a marriage, a dance - take Ms. Austen's characters...the dancers barely touch, gaze into each other's eyes as they pass, hands skimming over hands, a gentle skip up the center of the dance floor, circling back under a canopy of lifted arms and hands. A constant give and take. Oh the sexual tension, dear Jane! The unrequited love, words unspoken until a bursting forth usually on the coastal cliffs, wind blowing loose hair, and someone finally speaks their truth! 

Speak up! Share your heart!

(See The Dashwood sisters, Charlotte Heywood...thank you, PBS/Netflix~ )

                   Is it any wonder I wash my face with glasses on? 

                                                                               Oh what a good laugh I had! 

This wandering mind. So many wonders to think on: plants, birds, pink clouds, dogs, children riding bikes, the lone seal swimming at the beach, love, peanut butter and honey on toast, the world of Jane Austen or James Bond? (we watched one the other night)

and then... there are the horrible things. 2020 has been full of tragic, crushing moments. This global pandemic, George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, so many names/say their names, the final days of Trump, conspiracy theories, daily horror and madness and loss. You may have suffered great loss and unwanted changes this year. 

It's so easy to lose hope. But we mustn't. Ever.

Some comfort, some Mr. Darcy, see Pride and Prejudice, who does come around to love Elizabeth but what a tough, weird nut to crack - (even if it is handsome Colin Firth) - and a glass of red wine is perhaps an answer, at least for an evening.  🍷

Comfort is necessary more than ever these days - offer it up to yourself daily.

_______________________

Here's to a renaissance when the clock strikes 12:00.

                 

                     (tomorrow night, Thursday it is!)

For you, 

for me,

for everyone, 

+ for this sweet beautiful old earth.

love always,

b xo

My Kind of Math

This morning I was writing about growing things and overall how much better it makes me feel when I'm doing it. This reminded me of my life as Ms.J, second grade teacher. It made me think about how I spent five days a week in a room full of seven year olds, no aide, no extra help, sometimes parents would come in for a craft, or party, but for the majority of the time, it was me and my kittens. It was a lot of energy in that room with the big windows and wide sills. The cubbies spilling out with folders and pencil cases and snacks. And other stuff the kids would bring to play with at recess. 

They were the most creative,energizing,and exhausting years of my life. 

I loved those kittens. (still do, wherever you are - xo)

Every Christmas my mother gave me a bag of paper white bulbs (oh I miss her) and from that tradition I gave them to my students in the New Year. Each kid got a bulb - well you can read the scratchings in my journal entry (above), written in a flush of memory this morning. A wonderful memory of that big sunny room with all the window sills filled with pots of paper whites. The scent was overwhelmingly sweet once all of them bloomed. In pre-No-Child-Left-Behind and other craziness put in place, I taught math and science using journals and rulers and crayons and plants and other stuff like that. I'm sure we had math workbooks,  good for straight up computation practice, but getting out our science/math journals and documenting the growth of our paper-white bulbs - that was my kind of math. 

It was only 7:30 am

Life is so much more charming and simpler than we humans make it. Especially in the world of education. It's not that f*cking complicated to engage little kids (and ourselves) in life-long learning. For the paper-white project, all we needed was our notebooks and simple tools: 

Kids could be out of their seats at the window measuring, comparing their bulb's growth to a friend's, or going down the row sniffing each one while looking out the window. I was big on bar graphs because visually they're the easiest to understand and you can have a lot of fun doing it in different ways. I'm not sure where I was headed this morning with this one, see below attempting to illustrate my amaryllis, now split into two - Big Vivie + Little Vivie. The proportions are way off, I mean, the pot isn't that big compared to the flowering bulb, and honestly, I shouldn't point this out since I'm writing about second graders, but amaryllis's, at least until the flower blooms, bring to mind a penis, or two - come on, they're totally phallic! Plus I grew up in a house full of naked brothers and to this day, I see us squished in the bath tub together, laughing and carrying on, bubbles for beards and big white hair, plastic soldier's bayonets poking me in my chubby thigh.

not sure what happened with this graph?

You don't need to be a green thumb to grow a bulb. This amaryllis came in a pot with the disk of compacted soil - all I had to do was add water, fluff up the soil, and plant the bulb. Then, find a lovely spot, not too hot, not too cold, for your bulb to follow the light. 

                                                        I measured the two Vivies this morning. 

As illustrated from my scientific, mathematical calculations and life-like drawing - Big Vivie is ten inches + Little Vivie is seven. How many inches taller is Big Vivie to Little Vivie? 

Do the math, people.

As we enter the final week of this year, may your holidays be blessed + safe + healthy. Scott Peck opened his book, "The Road Less Traveled" with this sentence: Life is difficult. We all get that. Yet, we don't have to add (+) to the difficulties. Why not grow something instead?

An idea

A deeper love

(A deeper love for)Yourself

Gratitude

...or a simple bulb in a pot of soil. Maybe start there. 

It's too tiring at this time of year (especially this year) to take on more, don't you think? 

                           

Grow something.

  love b

  XO

 

Tiny Bells 🌠

 

Last week I shared how each semester concludes with students writing letters to me. This is their final. I ask them to include the quote de jour as a touchstone to write about. This year's quote was by Ralph Waldo Emerson (see 12/9/20). I invited them to reflect on all life as an experiment, timidity, getting fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice, and Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble? 

What do you think of this? How does it relate to your own life? Letter writing for me has always been personal, revelatory, and inspiring for writer and reader. 

Tell me what you think.I'll write back. 

I do, to each and every student - with pleasure. 

_______________________________

It's our final exchange of ideas. 

Here's a few gems among many:

My attitude about life is I do not take life seriously; I take serious moments in life seriously. I try things, I make mistakes, and I take action because I feel life truly is an experiment and I want it to be the biggest, fun, and exciting experiment I could have ever lived so that later in life I can look back and say I am glad I did. Emerson is right because you cannot know in advance what will happen through your actions. You can only plan and then take action. - Meghan 

🌀

Failure has never been part of the plan...That being said, I am working on seeing life as an “experiment”. I am trying each day to come to terms with the fact that I may have to be a little lenient with the paths I take to have this dream life of mine. Failure was a negative thing in my household, when in reality, failure just means you have tried. - Morgan 

🌀

And this, from Ann. Returning student, thirty-nine year old mother of four children, a woman who as a first-grader had to translate at parent-teacher conferences for her Spanish-speaking mother. "I always translated the truth," she said. This semester Ann was inducted into the Honor Society on campus:

I failed. I failed. I failed. I failed. I failed and I kept failing until I got tired of failing; then I wanted to win, win for my children, win for my husband, win to glorify God and win for the first-grade kid who had to figure it out on her own. This is my academic redemption story. 

So now, after years of giving up on myself, I decided to wear my F with pride because it was how I started and I can’t forget it. I won’t forget it and I definitely wear my children down with my story. I lived it; they don’t have to. I failed at it, they cannot. I know English. I know how sweet success is and I’m hooked. The old mindset is gone, it was toxic. I’m healed. I’m ready. - Ann 

🌀

Morgan concluded that Failure just means you have tried. 

                                                                                        

And with that, I heard tiny bells ringing in my head.

xo b

Moon and Sun by Claire Collins

Up Again!

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. 

All life is an experiment.

The more experiments you make, the better. 

What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat

soiled or torn? What if you do fail, or get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice?

Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

__________________________________________________

At the end of each semester, I ask my college students to write me a letter. This is their final. The lost art of letter writing. In the letter, among other things, I ask them to share what they think about Ralph's questions ~ Are you timid about your actions? How do you feel about getting fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Do you agree with the idea that life is a series of experiments? The more, the better? What about tumbling? Their letters always amaze and surprise. I know the students surprise themselves.

                                                                                🌀

When I'm holding back, fretting about outcomes, or what people will think (even about this blog) I say out loud: ALL LIFE IS AN EXPERIMENT. Period. 🌠

There is much fear these days, and rightfully so. It's easy to scare yourself into a corner. It's easy to Not try new things. It's a global pandemic, for goodness sake, and the crazy man has yet to leave office and...it does seems best to hunker down. A good book, warm, soft blanket, a cup of hot tea or good glass of Cabernet - I'm happily hunkered. But as this year kinda sorta winds down, and some hope is in the air in spite of all the nuttiness and real frightful things, I want to play, dream of new things, take action.

                     We may be down, but we are still here. 

                      Experimenting can be tiny, a simple-stay-at-home thing. 

                            I started with my used to be white front door. 

                                                                      Up again!

                                                 xo b

These Days

December 2. 2020

Two men in the car next to me, struck me as grumpy, not-smiling people when I rolled my window down (wearing my mask) to ask if I needed to call the front desk to let them know I was in the parking lot with my dog. I think the man in the driver's seat nodded, but I thought, what a gloom-ster. 

John-the-hippy-tech-vet with his long pony tail, smiling eyes behind his glasses and mask, came to my window with a clip board and asked for a bit of patience as they had a tough case that morning. He looked towards the car next to me and said a dog needs to be put to sleep. It's been sick for quite a while. I asked, Oh no, how old is the dog and is it the people next to me here? 

John said, Seventeen and yes. 

He explained that due to Covid, they had to bring the dog out to the family, give her a sedation shot, and give them time to say goodbye before taking her in, without the family. 

 In a little strip mall off of Fallbrook Avenue, Chewy and I (who was there for a painful limp but thought we were going for a car ride) 

watched as a small roly-poly dog wrapped in a blanket was carried out, given a shot curb-side by the vet, and handed to the man in the driver's seat. I concluded the two men were father and son, heads pressed into the dog's fur, mouths moving, both of them wet-faced, crying.

This moment brought back another when Claire and I were driving somewhere in Los Angeles and saw a woman sobbing in the car next to us at a red light. Through the glass and street activity, it was a freeze-frame moment of pain. We were silenced and deeply shook when the light turned green and we drove on to a plant nursery for one of our "field trips" out of the house.

Finally, a young woman came out of the vet's office, mask on, to gather up the little dog. She waited patiently by the door as father and son leaned into the dog, holding her close, stalling the moment. The door opened, the son handed the dog off, and she walked very slowly, a kind of funeral march to the office door. The little dog relaxed in her arms, looking over her shoulder. I was watching the dog, then the men in their car, and silently praying for everyone. Father and son sat for a beat, then started the car and were gone.

These days we are witnessing waves of loss as a country, and global community. It is understandable to want to shut it off, let me live my life, this is all too much. Like the woman crying at the light, I was deeply shook by the goodbye and loss happening in the parking lot on a sunny Thursday morning. Yet I also felt oddly honored to be witnessing this, sitting quietly in my car with my dog, sending love to the men in the jeep, who I had thought of as gloomy upon first sight. 

They were grieving.

🍂

Send peace, to your cashier at the market, the mask-less asshole at the gas pump next to you, the homeless person with a shopping cart, the dog walker, the woman with her baby in a stroller, the doctors and nurses and people who clean the hospitals, people who pack the boxes in the Amazon warehouses, your mail carrier, people in nursing homes you've never met, birds, dogs, fat squirrels, the full moon, the person in the car next to you, your neighbors, your family, friends, yourself ~ and on and on and on.

So many stories unraveling before us, our own and others. 

Love them all. 

                                                                             xo  b