Month: September 2011

Raspberries Release

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Surprisingly the vendors were still selling raspberries this weekend at our local fruit stands.  The late berry season, lamented at first, has now become a lingering fall blessing. It also centered my focus on my return to this blog.  I’ve decided to choose different themes to help me clarify my thoughts, hopefully to sift through ideas worth sharing with friends and family.

Lately I’ve been mulling over Galatians 5:22-23  “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” I’ve been trying to find the spirit of gentleness in everything I do, including being gentle with my writing thoughts. Hence the tie-in to raspberries, because when you pick, wash or simply eat a raspberry you need to apply a trace of pressure, a tad of pinch, but always a careful gentleness.  As I gave way to this “raspberry release” and let my ideas slowly surface, this tumbled forth:
Oh raspberries you wondrous delight! 
Tempting me from your cushioned carton,
Come and enjoy each and every bite!
Pink-purple hues energizing me,
My fingers red-tinged but so tasty!
Raspberries, dear friends from long ago,
Filling up pails for Nana’s big show! 
Always hers to display, hers to tempt,
Eating her custard pies, so content!
Oh raspberries, so fragile but dear,
Grace me with memories drawing near.
As September slowly winds down this week, I continue to water our newly planted raspberry patch in our backyard.  I can picture the transported roots stretching eagerly through the soil as the gentle warmth of these Indian summer days has encouraged them to reach out and nestle in their new abode.  Perhaps they may generate growth next year, perhaps they will remain dormant gaining strength for the time when they will exude enough energy to burst forth and create beautiful berries.

I look forward to the day when I might arm my grandchildren with small buckets sending them to pick the ripened fruit.  I fondly recall my younger days when I would skip through the rows of laden branches that were neatly wound around fence rails at my grandparent’s.

“Don’t eat too many or your tummy will hurt, “ Nana would warn as she gave me a pail to fill.

With stained fingers and lips I would return with my bounty, hoping she was wrong with her prediction.  I wanted to feel good so that I could be the first one to taste her custard pies.  Nearly 50 years later, the scent of baked egg custard sprinkled with nutmeg wafts around me.

As the local berry season surely draws to a close, I am thankful that a small carton full of pink-purple hues has brought back my Nana’s smiles to me.  I see her bustling about her kitchen, her smock apron tied neatly in place.  She has rolled out circles of pie dough in anticipation of the pails I will fill.  She’s rubbing her floured hands on her apron as she laughingly welcomes me back from my picking chore.

“Ach those look gut!  Watch don’t make them all!” I hear her Pennsylvania Dutch phrases as the backdrop for my memories.

Oh raspberries you wondrous delight! Oh raspberries, so fragile but dear, grace me with memories drawing near.

Responding with Reassurance

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Reassurance comes in various forms depending on the situation.  In our house it might wrap around me with a knitted afghan when I need a comfortable snuggle. It might find me as I pull the refrigerator door, pausing to notice a particular magnet I bought on a family vacation.  It might surprise me as I pick up pictures of loved ones while pushing away the dust beneath them.  It might stir my soul as I page through an inspiring book looking for encouragement.  It might trigger my husband’s sense of fulfillment as he slathers peanut butter and honey on a 12 grain piece of bread!

This morning Dusty is declaring his need for assurance by claiming a spot by my side, pressed in as close as possible, trying to tuck himself tightly against me.  Usually he provides some simple supportive care when he senses that one of us feels sad or ill.  However, it’s his turn now, having ingested unknown culprits on his first trip outside; his stomach revolted against him, forcing him to retch the contents in a lump on our kitchen floor.  After cleaning up the mess, I gathered him in my arms, and found a spot on the family room couch.  Since then, Dusty hasn’t budged from his place of reassuring relief.

Thankfully I could pull my laptop within reach and type this message without disturbing him.  As I moderate my movements to a slow and silent pace, I find I am responding as if I were one of his tennis balls that had just rolled in, coming to a stop, resting peacefully.

This morning I am here for Dusty, offering reassurance simply by my presence.

Just dance!

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Not to brag, but then again of course I am; Dusty possesses a keen intelligence.  He learns tricks easily, and has a working vocabulary of words that tests my husband and my ingenuity in how we use our sentences so as not to mislead his interpretations. For instance we keep choosing new synonyms for the word walk, since he now recognizes the way we say, “hike, stroll and run.”  Fairly soon I believe he may begin to understand what we are saying as we spell w-a-l-k, and then we will need to begin speaking in another language!!

We enrolled Dusty in several dog classes to help us gain skills in our discipline techniques and in our training styles.  Very soon Dusty knew that “school” meant that he would be going to a place where he could be in the company of other dogs and expand his repertoire of tricks.  We also began experimenting at home with our own ideas of what we would like him to learn.

We discovered that if he repeated a response to a new instruction over and over again, in the course of 20 minutes he would master it.  Dusty truly enjoys a challenge but he also senses our excitement and pride when he shows his mastery of a new subject.  Sometimes he surprises us by reminding us that he knows a trick that would be perfectly suited to the moment.

Like today when we came inside following an inspection of the yard to see if the morning’s frost had overstayed its “bet you didn’t think I’d stop by” appearance.  I certainly didn’t feel pleased with the signs of the cool-fingered-frost-fellow lingering amongst my September garden.  I came inside sighing, stomping and shaking my head with frustration.  But before I could slip off my sneakers, Dusty hopped up on his hind legs, paws swiping up towards me. He spun himself around, backing up, stretching his paws higher and higher, twirling in circle after circle.

In that moment when I bent down to touch my open hands to his extended paws I forgot about that fickle-frosty-friend, and I remembered how to dance, delightfully with Dusty!  I had taught him to respond to my command, “Are you ready, let’s dance!”  But this time, he reminded me with his, “Paws up Mom! Just dance!”

Facing Fall

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I didn’t think the weekend wind would tug so determinedly and so destructively to leave a deliberate sign that autumn is arriving.  However, there in what should be a sheltered area behind the lilac bushes, a lone Popular stands defrocked of its leaves, in stark contrast to its fellow deciduous trees.   On the ground its pale green leaves lay haphazardly strewn about as if exhausted by their struggle to hold on.

Of course it’s not the first tree to begin brushing branches in silence, leaves no longer rustling, instead fallen or torn away by a frantic, frenzied wind.  The last few days Dusty and I have passed by some scattered leaves along our walking path, a foreshadowing of the future as we all face the fall.

But this morning, this empty, barren tree bothers me.  Its silhouette looks haunting on this cloudy, grey day with the sun somewhere swallowed in the shifting haze.  Perhaps the term Fall is appropriate, even as its arrival is anticipated, it comes along and pushes us, making us fall into it too soon.  Like this tree’s unlucky leaves, falling without warning, before they were ready to change.

It occurs to me that I am like those leaves.  I didn’t expect to fall so quickly to a different place in my life.  The school year has begun, but this year I am not in the classroom helping the resource students to find their potential.  Instead, I am still coping with a vestibular disorder that demands a change in my life.  I tried to return to school, but the vertigo is like the unrelenting wind to the tree in my backyard.  It spins me around as if I’m lost in a maze, it exhausts my concentration as if I am tossed into a lump of confusion.  Like the leaves, I am facing a fall before I am ready to change.

Maybe that’s where this blog is headed without me knowing the coordinates.  I want to write something meaningful that might impact the lives of others.  I want to use my daily life as I explore, observe and share reflections.  Perhaps this year as I find myself facing fall, I am actually facing a new beginning.  I am ready to walk,  (maybe not in a completely balanced way, but who can claim to have a firm grasp of balance in life anyways?); I am ready to find a new way to step out of the confusion of vertigo— and aren’t we all spinning around, creating our own dizzy perspectives of life amidst the daily challenges???

Honestly I do look forward to the signs of September signaling the beginning of a new season.  Here in Springbank, Alberta golden hay bales dot the fields, in haphazard fashion like giant connect-the-dots without the numbers.  I often notice how a hawk will claim one to acquire a better perch to find its next prey.  In the early mornings I’ve spied some antlers poking above the bales, seeming to be tree branches, but on closer inspection revealed as hidden bucks moving through the fields.   In the early evenings these same golden dots sparkle against sunsets weaving together the purple and orange shades of autumn.

Yes I believe it’s time to change my view of those fallen leaves.  I want them to become like the hay bales … a golden promise of what the season will bring.  From my vantage point the leaves look like they were thoroughly tossed, grounded and lumped, strewn and clumped.  So I picture myself walking outside with Dusty to have a closer look.

As I approach the tree I feel a slight cool breeze gathering around my feet.   When I reach the leaf pile, a gust of wind bursts from behind me, blowing leaves into a swirling motion, concentric rings that grow ever higher, and wider.  They catch the current, quickly whisked away above my neighbor’s swaying wild flowers.  Dusty attempts to stop one by leaping toward it, briefly capturing it under his paws, only to see it flip upwards above him.  As it bumps into the barren tree, I notice that the branches create a striking picture. Knowing that the leaves have travelled to a new destination, I appreciate the tree as the foundation, and the wind as the catalyst.

Now I’m not thinking of the leaves ending their time with the tree, I’m imagining their beginnings as they swirl about on the fall breezes.  Yes, I’ve been shaken by a strong gust of change, but perhaps the whirling I feel may be the rising momentum I need to gain a new perspective on this season of life.  I may have fallen into some concentric spinning, but I’m not going to stay in a one-dimensional clump of circles. I’m ready to rise, to find the current that will move me onward, to turn golden while facing fall.

How about you?  Ready to face fall?  More importantly, are you willing to turn golden despite the changes in your life?  Dusty and I are going walking, we’re beginning a new trail, join us along the way as we share our ideas in Walking with Dusty and Dee.