the gate

Curlicue tendrils, pea green vines, curve around the gate.  The door seems covered, like a secret garden, hidden, forbidding.  She knows not to stop here.  Sure, she’s been here before, halted each time.  Still she knows better.  They’re just vines, she reasons, like in her bean garden at home.  She can snip them with her fingertips, juices staining her nails green.  But she never does.  (8/15/11 from my journal)

I am thinking about the gate because I am up against it now.  I’ve got my back pressed against it, feeling the remnants of last night’s chill air in the iron hinges, although the day is warming quickly and soon the metal will be hot to the touch.  It is locked and impassable as always. Usually I give a decent half-hearted search for the key to open the gate.  I tend to be good at finding things.  “Where was the last place you remember having it?” is the mantra I recite to my children when searching for a favorite pencil or Sam Squirrel or a library card.  And mostly that works.  I also take pride in my ability to think like a lost object.  If I were a key, a rust-flecked key no larger than my thumb, where would I fall?  How would my shape and weight direct my fall on this stone and moss path?  Or would I fall in among the greening grass and clover, maybe nestle alongside a gingery scented violet, snug inside its heart-shaped leaves?  And how would my color, mud-brown-rust-red, hide, or highlight me?  You see?  I really get into the thinking behind a lost something or other.  But this gate!  This gate.  It’s so big and strong and locked and keyless and as old as dirt and twined with ivy vines, and, did I mention big?

So I lean against the gate and scan the grass for a key.  At this point I usually sigh, pick up my notebook and pen, and head home, resigned that the gate, once again, will not open.  Not for me and maybe not for anyone.  It’s possible, I reason, that it’s the wrong gate.  Maybe I’ve made a wrong turn somewhere.  But this seems unlikely since I find myself here so often.

I should tell you a little about this gate.  This gate is my nemesis.  It is a roadblock.  It is my writer’s block.  It is also a gate, a way, a portal!  Whenever I begin a piece of writing that I think has potential, when the words flow as easily as the ink from my favorite gel pen, I pay a visit to the gate.
And what a lovely gate it is, in a very Secret Garden kind of way.  It is tall and sentinel and thick with vines that have almost obscured the keyhole and latch.  I have never seen beyond the gate.  I haven’t an inkling what lies beyond, but I had a dream once when I was 18 about beautiful rolling hills of green, an endless expanse of verdant waves.  I took one look at all this green in my dream, slipped out of my shoes and ran joyfully through the grass.  I’m not saying I think that’s what’s on the other side of this gate, but I might be hoping just a little. 

I also harbor great fears about what lies beyond.  Sometimes I worry it will be a landfill with obscene quantities of bedbug infested mattresses and disposable diapers.  Not a pleasant vision.  I try not to think about that too much.  Mostly I am drawn to the gate and perplexed by it.  Why can’t I seem to get beyond the gate?  And more importantly, why haven’t I really, truly tried?

And so here I am, in this moment, again, and yet it feels new.  It always feels new.  Hope is resilient.  But today is different.  Today I don’t want to leave.  It is just now, in this space of lingering, of allowing the gate to remain closed, that I feel movement.  If I can’t or won’t open the gate, maybe it isn’t time just yet.  What if the gate wants me simply to stay?  What if I lean against the vines and iron hinges all afternoon?  This is where I am now, leaning and listening.  The gate is not just a portal, not something to simply pass through.  The gate has a story of its own and now that I have my senses tuned I can hear whispers made by soft breezes and tales spun from pea vines--a true opening.

crab apple

Fully open crab apple blossoms, swaying on breezy branches; bouyant, bobbing, bowing, blowsy. Bees browsing in their open cups. The breeze is warm, with cool edges that curl around my face, lifting the bits of hair that have come loose from my hair tie. Nose, eyes and throat are filled with allergy, making the crab apple's scent more like something to taste than smell, at the roof of my mouth. Who was that boy who asked me to the U of D junior prom? Peter something. I said no, thank you. The trees were in bloom that day, that evening, as I sat on my parents bed, phone clutched in my sweaty hand as the sun settled west, sending a slant of golden light through the window, across the corner of the bed, ending on the closet door.

fortune

What am I waiting for? Sometimes I am watching for a falling star, or a billboard message, or for the words on a fortune cookie message to speak directly to ME. For something to reveal that I am special. I am unique. I am one of a kind. But today I know that the thing is, the thing is that they always will--as long as I am not carrying the slippery burden of clouds and mist and haze. And the truth is that some days I will. Maybe the trick is knowing that there is always clarity on the other side of the haze.

Valentine

I gave this 5-part tiny watercolor to J as a Valentine yesterday.

soup for a cold and wet day

I don't mind the cold. Bring on the coldest, wintry day and I'm just fine--as long as the sun is shining. But today is one of those chill (45 degrees F), wet, autumn days and I'm cold! When this happens, it's time to bring on the soup.

Today, I foraged through the bountiful contents of my fridge and pulled out carrots (just dug from our garden yesterday evening) and celery (alas, from the store), grabbed a few homegrown onions and cloves of garlic and began to chop. It was beginning to look like a standard minestrone, but I really wasn't in the mood. As the veggies began their saute, I threw in a handful of fennel seed and thought "the fennel!". There was one more bulb of fennel in the backyard garden and I went for it. Thinly sliced and added to the saute, I gathered the missing ingredients: chicken stock, diced potatoes, pre-cooked "Tongues-of-Fire" beans, and pre-cooked whole grain kamut.

The result? A golden-hued soup with hopeful bits of spring green from the fennel, a delicious nutty, chewy texture from the kamut, and the utter satisfaction of fresh-dug potatoes. This soup is a keeper.

Kamut and Fennel Soup
serves 6-8

1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, washed or peeled, sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 TB olive oil
1 TB fennel seed
1 tsp dried basil
4 c chicken stock
2 cups water
1 tsp sea salt, or to taste
black, or white pepper, to taste
2 medium potatoes, washed or peeled, diced
3/4 cup cooked beans ("Tongues-of-Fire" are great in this, but any white bean will work)
3/4 cup cooked, whole grain kamut (rice makes a good substitute)

Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil over med-high heat. Add carrots, celery, fennel, fennel seed, and basil. Turn heat to med-low and cover. Allow vegetables to steam for several minutes, until tender. Pour in chicken stock and 2 cups water and bring to a boil over med-high heat. Add potatoes and simmer about 15 minutes, or until tender. Add beans and kamut, simmer 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

a love list

Snuggle time with T where he reveals his deepest paleontological theories ("...maybe T-Rex doesn't really have short arms, maybe they just haven't found all the arm bones yet...").

Breeze at the garden that makes the pigweed do a twirly dance on the stem.

Pears getting good and ripe on the counter.

Tiny bits of colorful knitting found all around the house (evidence of J's prolific creating).

Calypso beans snug in their crackly cases on the vine, becoming themselves again (from yin-yang patterned, to green, back to yin-yang).

there is rain

There is rain and I feel my soul lapping it up, the parched garden drinking it in. There is Ruckus and inspiration for a game all our own, woodland animal illustrations on each. There are harsh words between sister and brother in the next room and my stomach tightens, feeling pulled, but I sit instead. There are crackers, made and tasted. There is laundry tumbling in the warm cocoon of the dryer. There are hopes and intentions. There are dreams to build a business like a tree house. Limb to limb, layer upon layer, generations of great grand-others holding us up on their strong shoulders, tossing down apples for pie, their stories shared or else imagined.