pelicansandprose

I step outside with about an hour of daylight to spare. The chill in the air reminds me that winter still has a few days left until it’s officially spring. Map My Walk tells me that I haven’t recorded a walk in a year. I’m okay with that. There have been reasons, but today, I start again.

I head down Cottage Street and am aware that my shoulders are tight, my neck is stiff, and my legs don’t want to move very fast. “That’s okay,” I assure myself. Baby steps.

I walk about a half mile before turning right onto Tapawingo. I like that name and think I should try to find out its story. Maybe another day. As I walk down this street, I see my long shadow and realize it has been a long time since I noticed my shadow. I recognize that my senses are awakening.

I hear so many birdsongs and wish I could identify the birds making them. Without seeing them, I don’t know them. A group of six robins hop around on the grass nearby. But they aren’t the ones singing the evensong.

I hear basketballs bouncing and see a trio of 5th or 6th grade girls headed to the playground. That cheers me. I hope more children will get outside and rediscover play and nature while out of school.

I smell dinners cooking. Someone is grilling tonight. Yum. My mouth waters thinking of steak. I amble on and step aside as a couple passes by. They also step aside. We keep a safe distance with a brief hello.

I smell daffodils and hyacinths, and the pungent scent of freshly spread mulch. And then, the strong, clean smell of someone’s dryer vent drying laundry.

The sights are beautiful:

I love the contrasts I see here:

The spring beauties have closed for the day.

The blues and grays of evening’s approach soften everything around.

When I turn right from Park Street onto Kingsley, I see a flower and hear my father singing:

Little purple pansies touched with yellow gold,
Growing in the corner of the garden old,
They are very tiny, but must try, try, try,
Just one spot to gladden you or I.

I smile as I remember how I loved it when he sang. He had a song for nearly every occasion, and if he didn’t, he made one up. (The forced rhyme and incorrect grammar of this lyric didn’t bother me as a child, but I cringe a little bit now.)

I touch the pine needles and arborvitae and feel the ground under my feet as I notice the calm in my body. I see beauty in new spring growth and in winter’s debris.

My “sensory walk” is a reminder that it is through the body we experience joy. It is through re-entering awareness of all our senses that we can be truly present. It’s amazing how calming and grounding it can be to just get outside, and I’m grateful.

When I began writing on this blog seven years ago, I had no idea what impact writing would have in my life. I had always enjoyed writing, but I had never made any of my writing public. The first few years every blog post began with the day’s date. I found titles intimidating and was reluctant to commit to a title.

After a few years of doing the SOL challenge, I decided that I needed to take a step forward and began to title my pieces. It was hard at first, but then I began to enjoy the process.

But this month, or at least today, it seems like the date is again the best choice to document this strange season. Right now, I’m feeling pretty paralyzed with anxiety and my mind is going a million directions without the structure of Saturday chores before Sunday church before Monday work. When entrenched habits are not possible, what new habits need to be created?

I look at my overflowing bookshelves and can’t decide what I might be able to read with any concentration. I look at all my knitting and sewing projects that need finishing. Then I think I really should be cooking, but how much soup or stew can two people eat? I eat a few more M&Ms. And then I think that I really should be thinking of how I can serve my neighbors and friends. Social media just makes the burden of “should” worse.

Is anyone else finding it hard to think of small moments that don’t involve empty shelves at the grocery store?

It feels like a snow day, but there is no snow about.

It feels like a spring day, but the ball fields are empty.

It feels like I should do something, but where and what?

It feels like Friday, but is there a weekend without a work week?

It feels uncertain.

It feels surreal.

It feels like a gift of time, but not really.

Five good things about today:

My sister had a birthday.

I talked to my daughter and her son.

I bought myself a Ben&Jerry’s ice cream cone.

I sat in on an interview and the interviewee remembered me. She was my daughter’s best friend in elementary school. She moved, and I hadn’t seen her since 1993 when she was in 6th grade. I love small world happenings.

So far, I have not become ill. I’m grateful for Vitamin C, whether or not it actually helps.

Good thing #6:

I accepted my challenge to myself to think of 5 good things. Blessings to all.

I don’t feel safe saying I have a runny nose and a tickle in my throat.

What will people think?

I don’t know if I should take Mucinex, Sudafed, Zyrtec, or Tylenol.

Is it allergies?

Am I sick?

I don’t really want an answer.

I’m going to bed.

I teach a group of four 4th graders who were reading on a first grade level at the beginning of the year. They have moved into second grade level reading through 3 hours a week of direct instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling. They have experiences daily with controlled text as well as additional guided reading lessons.

I think these students are so brave. In my classroom, they work so hard at what is hard for them. They make mistakes and they struggle to see the patterns that seem so clear to me. They have become a tight little group and are patient with each other. They know if I’m giving wait time to a friend to respect it. They know the next time it could be their turn to be given time.

Today was a packed lesson full of identifying syllable types in single syllable words, analyzing two-syllable words, listening to vowel sounds, and reading a one-page text applying the word knowledge they have. The 45 minutes went so fast.

Near the end of class, one boy quietly said, “Mrs. M., are we going to get coronavirus?” Then another boy said, “Yeah, they said that we are getting coronavirus because they put bats in the soup.” That took me by surprise. I was taken a bit off-guard, but I assured them that adults would take care of them. Most of all, I was pleased that my room was a safe place for questions about things that matter.

In this time of uncertainty, I’m grateful for the trust in my little classroom with four brave 4th graders.

Many of my early memories are of running through the woods with the kids in the neighborhood, stopping fast to throw rocks in the creek, or sometimes finding a turtle or salamander. The older kids told whoppers, warned us of quicksand, and dared us to cross the creek without getting our feet wet.

On this gorgeous March day, I finally got out to take a walk. I love to look at the trees as I walk and measure the new growth with my eyes. Every tree seemed to be yawning and stretching in the warm afternoon sun. I felt a resurgence of connection to the natural world. I’ve missed that for quite some time. I’ve been craving the out-of-doors.

My neighborhood is actually named Vienna Woods and is full of oaks, maples, sycamores, redbuds, dogwoods, and tulip poplars. The builders were perhaps kinder in 1959. They built along the natural creekbeds leaving bands of forest on either side. The streets wind and curve following the path of streams flowing to the Potomac River. I like to imagine the landscape without the buildings. The rise and fall of the land is so beautiful.

My neighborhood is also going through transition. Many houses are being knocked down and are being replaced with very large homes that I could never afford. It seems like another house goes down around me every day. On my walk, I noticed that the very large trees had been cut down on one property down the street. Those trees were huge and healthy. It will take half a century or more to grow a tree so fine. Will they plant another?

The thing I crave the most is time.
It’s always there, but I never seem to have it.

The thing I fear the most is time.
When time is no longer structured by workdays, how will I choose what to do?

The thing I love most is time.
Time with my family or by myself.

The thing I hate the most is time.
Too early, too late, too slow, too fast.

Racing the clock and calendar,
I have learned

How powerful are the words:
“It’s time.”

Imagine how I felt when I received Maggie’s story a few days ago. Maggie will be five in a few weeks.

She wrote: Maggie was skipping along on the tall grass. She stepped in a muddy puddle. The weary wind was rushing by.

How does an almost five-year-old know the weary wind?

Pure magic.

Interior decorating is not in my wheelhouse, but that’s not entirely my fault. It didn’t start with me, but I’ve forgiven my mom. It wasn’t her strong suit either. Our house was always neat and clean, but pretty boring to look at. It was home. I never really thought much about it. Then I got married, and somehow I was supposed to know about stuff like that. I didn’t.

Our first couch was a 1950s hand-me-down from my mother-in-law. It was a dusty rose color, weighed a TON, and was scratchy on the skin. We had it a year-and-a-half. I have a vivid memory of a similar turquoise couch we had when I was five and spent a few days on it recuperating from chicken pox.

When we bought our first little house (for the “huge” sum of $44,000), the carpet was multi-colored with brown, orange, and rust. Dusty pink wasn’t going to work. It was the 70s. A “new” fabric called Herculon was popular and inexpensive. So we bought a couch and chair to go with the carpet. I think the couch was $100 from Levitz. It survived the move to our 2nd house and lasted well into the 80s.

But when the piping started to separate from the cushions, we had four small children. A new couch didn’t seem likely. I was staying at home; money was tight. However, my nesting awakened when I had a friend who offered to make drapes for my house. I just had to supply the fabric. I thought, “If I can save so much on the drapes, I’ll be able to afford a new couch.” It will be so pretty! I bought a lovely Waverly fabric on sale. The drapes were so well-made and I loved Camille for her generosity. (When she died of cancer 2 years later, I was heartbroken.)

The intention was to buy a new couch and chair to go with my beautiful drapes. I don’t remember what the financial setback was, but instead of getting new furniture, we inherited my parent’s couch. The combination of colors and competing patterns couldn’t have been worse. Even I knew it was awful. I consoled myself by convincing myself that it was only temporary. You might recognize it as the couch on the program,”Married with Children.” Temporary lasted about 10 years.

In the meantime, the drapes got old and my dreams of ever having anything that matched vanished. One day, my son took a flying leap onto the couch and the frame broke in two. Disaster or good fortune? Both, because…

That’s when my neighbors put a couch out on the curb for free. It was in better shape than what we had, and the color worked better with the old drapes. The next thing I knew, my husband had me out after dark inspecting their couch with a flashlight. We hauled that couch half a block to our house in the dark. I only hoped the neighbors weren’t watching.

In 1995, I’d been married 20 years and felt I deserved new furniture. I went to a local store, picked out the fabric and ordered a couch and two wingback chairs. The chairs worked out great, but my fabric choice for the couch wasn’t the best (as my sisters both informed me.) The hardest part of this purchase, however, was that I stupidly kept it secret. Then, my father died suddenly. New furniture arrived a few days later. My husband was furious; I was deeply grieving. Unfortunately, those pretty chairs always made me a little sad.

Time went on with raising children, going to school, getting a job, kids getting married, etc. When I couldn’t really stand the 1995 couch any longer, my daughter had a co-worker who wanted to sell her furniture. She convinced me that it could be our temporary couch until she moved out and had her own place. Somehow, when she moved out and got her own place, she didn’t want that couch anymore. It is really the most uncomfortable couch unless you are lying down. That’s where I am right now, on this dumb old couch writing perhaps a dumb story about dumb furniture.

But what I’m really trying to say is that after nearly 45 years of marriage, new drapes are ordered; a new couch and two chairs are coming tomorrow. I picked them out myself, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll soon have a pretty space to call my own. I’m looking forward to spring break when, if my plan works out, the living room will have a fresh coat of paint, and new carpet for my new furniture.

This history of love in 7 couches wouldn’t be complete without the understanding that couch is a multiple-meaning word. For me, this new couch is more than a couch.

noun: couch; plural noun: couches

1. a long upholstered piece of furniture for several people to sit on
   • a reclining seat with a headrest at one end on which a psychoanalyst’s subject or doctor’s patient lies while undergoing treatment.

verb: couch; 3rd person present: couches; past tense: couched; past participle: couched; gerund or present participle: couching; noun: couching

1. 1.express (something) in language of a specified style.”many false claims are couched in scientific jargon
2. LITERARY lie down.”two creatures couched side by side in the deep grass”
3. ARCHAIC lower (a spear) to the position for attack.
4. HISTORICAL treat (a cataract) by pushing the lens of the eye downward and backward, out of line with the pupil.
5. (in embroidery) fix (a thread) to a fabric by stitching it down flat with another thread.”gold and silver threads couched by hand”

Phraseson the couch — undergoing psychoanalysis or psychiatric treatment.

Origin

Middle English (as a noun denoting something to sleep on; as a verb in the sense ‘lay something down’): from Old French couche (noun), coucher (verb), from Latin collocare ‘place together’ (see collocate)

Origin

late 16th century: variant of quitch