Raking the Ashes for Nails

The line went something like this: "Remember when we raked the ashes to find nails?"

I read that line maybe 45 years ago in a Reader's Digest article about a young couple building their first home with love, ingenuity, and very little money in post-war America. It has stuck with me all these years. In recent days, that line about raking the ashes has been knocking at my mind's door.

It took me a long time originally to figure out that line in context. Why were they raking the ashes for nails? Were they using a lawn rake? Who put the nails in the ashes to begin with? Why didn't they just go buy more nails? It was a long time before I realized the couple was so strapped for cash that, as they built a fire with scrap lumber each night, they realized they could procure a few more nails the next morning if they were careful.

As I got older (I was 10 when I read this article, as I explain in the footnote below), I replaced my image of the bamboo lawn rake with one of a sand rake. Much later, I realized they were probably combing through the ashes with their fingers. I eventually came to understand it was not mere frugality that drove them to this measure, but also a hearty dose of desperation.

Raking the ashes to find nails.

Sometimes we have to rake through our personal ashes for those nails: to rebuild a relationship, to find the courage to make a fresh start, to build a bridge to the next phase of life. Lately, I have been raking through my own long-cold ashes of the past, hoping, praying for just one nail.

Remember when we raked the ashes to find nails?

I still am.

****

Okay, a lighthearted note on why I know I was about 10 when I first read this article. This particular article, about the young couple in Vermont building their first home, stuck with me for a long time in part because it was the first time I had come across the World War II slogan "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." I was so taken with that slogan that I tucked it (and the story) away in long-term memory. The memory of this article was so powerful that when I was a student at Ohio State briefly in the mid-1970s, I spent an hour in the magazine archives searching through the bound copies of Reader's Digest to find the original article. (I know what you are thinking and yes, I am the queen of the geeks.) I concentrated on the volumes for 1966 and 1967. The article indeed ran during those years; I found it, photocopied it, and may still have the photocopy around somewhere. In case you are wondering, the couple survived the hard winter, the house got built, and life was good. For many years, though, I was seized with a desire to move to a mountaintop in Vermont and build a house by hand in the late fall with winter breathing down my neck. I'm over that now.

Time

Rereading a collection of essays by Reeve Lindbergh, I came across this quote by theologian Donald Nicholl: "Hurry is a form of violence exercised upon time."

I liked that quote. I liked it so much that I stopped reading and wrote it down right then.

Hurrying to capture it, as it were.

In the fall months before I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in late 2004, I would get to a point every evening where I would be so cold and worn down that I would fall asleep in the very hot bath I had drawn to warm my chilled and aching body.

That memory is particularly strong these days because lately I have been getting to a point every evening where all I crave is heat and relief for my chilled and aching body. If I am not careful, I doze off sitting on the sofa, clutching a warm corn bag. When I fall into bed at night, it is with gratitude that I do not have to try to be capable of one more act, one more thought.

This winter I have dealt with a multitude of annoying medical matters, most of which turned out to be nothing, but all of which turned out to be inconvenient and tiring while they were occurring. A few, the cholesterol issue in particular, have lingered on into spring. I see both my personal physician, the amazing Pat, and my oncologist, the equally incredible Tim, in April. To the former, I will say "we need to come up with a new approach to the cholesterol." To the latter, I will say "I sure as heck hope the symptoms I am experiencing are related to the statin I am now taking and not to the myeloma."

I think (hope) it is, but I do not yet know. I may be whistling in the dark. Again.

All of this medical stuff, minor as it may be, has sharpened my awareness of time. Again. Time, time, time. How much time has passed already? Lots. How much more time is left? Don't know.

A blogger who writes about his myeloma for The Myeloma Beacon recently wrote about the effects of living with this disease for six years: "Multiple myeloma takes its toll.  A physician once told me that between the disease itself and the treatments, it wears you down.  I am certainly not what I was six years ago."


I know of what he writes. Myeloma, even when it is quiet (like mine has blessedly been), messes with your mind. It messes with your sense of time. 


Myeloma, including the reality of it one day reemerging, makes me want to hurry. Maybe that is in part because I don't know what I have left in terms of time but more likely it is because I know - for real, for sure - that time is finite and limited.  


And then I bump up against Nicholl's words: "Hurry is a form of violence exercised upon time."

I worked a very short day today, finishing off my 24 hour week before 10:00 a.m., before breezing out of the county building and walking home. I conscientiously walked slowly, not hurrying, not rushing. We are in the midst of a warm, early spring and today is more of the same. The air was gentle and every bird on the block was joining in the morning chorus. Crocuses, snowdrops, and daffodils are in bloom everywhere. Forsythia is budding. I walked slowly enough to see a sprinkle of white violets in the yard down the street.

I walked slowly enough to loosen my grip on time and linger in the moment.

Time takes enough of a pummeling from me as it is.  It is time to give time (and me) a break.

Restoration Project

From the blog "pineapple pieces"

Last week was Concert Week, leading up to the BIG concert on Sunday. And it was a BIG concert: a world premiere, a second successful collaboration with the Adler Planetarium, a full stage, a sold out concert hall, and brilliant, exciting music. Afterwards, we hosted a reception for Jaime, Jose Francisco from the Adler, and other friends.

There was food and drink and conversation. There was a lemon tart for Joe and an apple pie, wrapped carefully in foil, for Jaime to carry back home. There was the satisfaction of feeding others and the quiet task of cleaning up after the last guest sailed out the door.

Monday following the concert felt hollowed out from the noise and the laughter and the music and the excitement and the crowds. Warren commented that we both needed an evening off. He had pushed long and hard on this concert project. I had my own full slate of tasks, some of them intertwined with his.

We were both tired, tired, tired.

There were leftovers in the refrigerator. Warren had shifted the percussion room around for the party and could now reach the fireplace. He built a fire - our first of the season - while I pulled together plates of food. And then we spent the entire evening camped out in front of the fire.

An evening of reading. of fire, of dessert, of quiet. An evening of restoration. I was cold, exhausted, loved, and cared for, all at the same time.

Warren read. I read. Occasionally I would look up from my book and stare into the flames. We both munched on almond biscotti.

As the fire died down, I moved closer and closer to the hearth. By evening's end, I had my feet on the hearth, close to the fire. I poked the embers and watched small flames flare up, then subside. Finally there was only one cold blue flame deep in the heart of an ember, struggling before finally dying out.

It had been a successful week, a brilliant concert, and a happy celebration of food and friends afterwards. It had filled me up and drained me at the same time.

Monday night held the crackle of the fire, and the hush of turned pages. There was quiet and renewal. There was companionship and understanding.

And there was love.

The Nature of Light

(c) Patrick Smith, for The Nature Conservancy

It being March 1, I flipped over calendar pages today to the fresh month. This photo stopped me in my tracks.

Photoshopped? Color enhanced? Real? The photographer's notes say he captured the day's dying light in the wet lava sand of a Hawaiian island.

Maybe what he really captured was a glimpse of the infinite.

My formal science instruction stopped with "Rocks and Stars" at Chicago many decades ago. So I am not one to dissect or speculate on the scientific nature of light. The closest I can come to that is to quote Jennifer Tipton, stage lighting expert and MacArthur genius: Light is the measure of the universe. It comes together for one instant--instant after instant.


We are coming back into the days of light here. The equinox is only 19 days away. Back in deep December, the morning sun turned away from its slow path south and started edging its way north again. As of yesterday, it was almost to the gap between the north side of our backyard neighbor's house and their garage. 


Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has written about our fascination with light, particularly when it comes to spiritual belief: At the darkest time of the year, the tiniest bit of light reminds us that we are all literally whistling in the dark and hoping, by these rituals of miracles of candlelight and bulbs on evergreens, we remember the divine presence. 


Maybe all I am doing in whistling in the dark. Who ever really knows? I have been reading works about death by individuals who were dying as they wrote. (I don't mean dying in the sense of being aware that all of us are mortal. I mean dying as in these authors were in the end stages of terminal cancer.) They write a lot about making peace with death. They also capture (heartrendingly so in some cases) the author's awareness and sense of the dying light of one's own life. 


Out of their writings, out of my other readings, out of my own inborn sense of light, I often turn to the words of Thomas Merton: Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time.


The divine was shining on that beach. It was shining in the stars overhead two nights ago when I stepped outside. It is shining at the smallest moments through the smallest cracks.


I just need to look.




Linking up with Michelle at Graceful:  

Another One for the List

As I often vent to my friend Margo, how did I get to my age (almost 56) and not know about this or that book? How, I ask you?

The latest book to add to that list is The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, a Scottish writer in the nineteenth century. MacDonald was a friend of Charles L. Dodgson, and helped encourage him to publish Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. The Princess and the Goblin came out as a book in 1871, the same year as Through the Looking Glass.

1871. This book was long in print before I read it in 2012. As I raved to Warren over breakfast this morning, "Your mother probably read this book. My grandmother probably read this book. Heck, your grandmother probably read this book!"

Note: Warren is a most tolerant man when it comes to listening to me talk endlessly about whatever book has captured my heart at the moment. Add that to the very long list of his wonderful attributes.

The Princess and the Goblin is noteworthy, historically and literarily, for many reasons. I'll spare you that discussion. But I will share something about it that fascinates me, and that is the number of authors whom it influenced: J.R.R. Tolkein, C. S. Lewis, and Madeleine L'Engle among them. It was Madeleine, in fact, who lead me to The Princess and the Goblin, citing it as a very important book in her childhood pantheon.

I have already earmarked a number of books for Baby Sanchez. The Princess and the Goblin just joined that list. I am sure there are more to come. Other grandparents out there may knit blankets or build cribs. Me? I build libraries.

Recently Alise asked me what I wanted to be called when the baby arrived? I laughed at the time, as that question had never crossed my mind. As I peruse my book list, though, I find myself thinking "Granny Books."

Granny Books. Yeah, that has a nice ring to it.

Plenty

We don't go in for Valentine's Day at our house. No flowers, no lace dripping cards, no candlelit dinners. Nothing big or showy, or even little and sentimental. So what I was feeling this morning was distinctly unrelated to the day.

But the fact that it is Valentine's Day probably made me feel more put out than I would have been if it were, oh, say, Groundhog's Day.

It is That Time of Year. The Symphony's BIG concert is coming up fast on the first Sunday in March, and Warren's normally rigorous workweek has shifted into a high intensity and demanding workweek (and work weekends). It is a given that this happens. Normally I take February for what it is: all Symphony all the time.

Yet when Warren called me this morning and gave me a rapid-fire-matter-of-fact-yes-my-schedule-has-changed-I'm-just-leaving-for-Columbus-now answer in response to a text I had sent, I forgot what month it was and hung up in tears. Nothing wrong, mind you, nothing that couldn't be tweaked in my schedule to accommodate the Symphony, but...

And that was where my thoughts jumped off from: but... But for once I would like not to have to be responsible. But for once I would like not to have to be the one trudging in the snow to the office. But for once I would like not to feel guilty about my schedule.

I know, I know. I'm whining. Or I was as the tears fell. I know, I like walking. I know, we are close enough in town that most of the time I am able to walk and I don't need to vie for car time. I know, I have the more flexible schedule. I know, it is February. And for crying out loud, it was just a light snow and the temperature was warm, so it wasn't like it was a hardship for me to walk this morning.

But it stung all the same. So much so that when Warren called me back some 20 minutes later, upbeat and chipper and on the road to his appointment, I couldn't quite match the tone of his mood. I told him so.

When I left for the office five minutes later, I admit it, I trudged. And, I am embarrassed to say, my mood trudged as well.

Last night I read The Country Kitchen, by Della T. Lutes. It was a Katrina book from our great book packing adventure and one that I am grateful she told me to take. Written in 1935, it is the author's memoir of growing up in rural Michigan in the late 1870s. Memories are intermixed with recipes and the entire book is a gentle, comforting read from an era long gone. The last chapter centers around a Christmas dinner that carried the potential for going terribly awry, but which managed to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Looking back, Lutes wrote: It had been a good day, after all. Nothing to make history, but good to live, good to remember. 

I thought of that phrase as I walked. Nothing to make history, but good to live, good to remember.  I tucked the thought away and went through my day, trying not to dwell on my bruised mood, but not entirely letting it go either. It was that kind of day.

Tuesdays are usually long days for me. By the time I got to Warren's office and by the time he got done with the Symphony, the hour was late. I was tired, Warren was chilled from the long day. We came home, we ate a non-memorable late supper, we talked quietly of quiet matters. While I finish typing this, Warren is downstairs working on, yes, more Symphony matters. After all, it is February and the BIG concert is just a few weeks away.

Before sitting down to write this post, I picked up The Country Kitchen from my desk and reread the lines that I had carried with me all day long. I then picked up my notebook of quotes and turned the pages until I came across a companion quote from Matchless by Gregory Maguire: they had the warmth of one another, and enough on which to live, and in most parts of the world, that is called plenty.

It is Valentine's Day, which we don't celebrate, although Warren surprised me with a Valentine's Day card at supper. A thoughtful, sweet, loving card. The BIG concert is almost upon us. And on balance,  it has been a good day. We have the warmth of one another, and that is plenty.

 

Wild With Joy

Everything happens in life. Some of what happens in life is terrible. We know this is true because it has always been true. But there is another truth available, an inexplicable and sometimes crazy truth that is no less compelling. The living of a life, day by day and moment by moment, is also wild with joy. Reeve Lindbergh, Forward From Here.

I have been sitting on this story since Christmas Day at the request of two people very near and dear to me who asked me to keep quiet. But they just lifted the ban, oh, about fifteen minutes ago and it is time to go public.

As I have mentioned before, my dearly loved daughter-in-law Alise is a beautiful writer. So I am going to let her tell the story:

Coming August 2012: Baby Sanchez! That's right, I'm totally incubating as we speak. Saw the little bean on an ultrasound today, and he/she has a super strong heartbeat and is doing water aerobics as we speak. Exciting!

The living of a life, day by day and moment by moment, is indeed wild with joy.