Harvesting a New Life

Motivated by a desire to engage fully in cleaning up the yard and giving purpose to the expanse of grass we call "lawn",  I convinced my son John to help me build a couple of raised garden boxes. He researched the proper size, wood, and construction materials, and we put together three 8' x 4' cedar boxes about 12" high. He found a local landscaper who would deliver a load of soil mixed with mushroom compost and a little sand. The truck arrived one hot afternoon in late May, and we started shoveling the soil into the boxes, a task that took fully three days in the steamy weather. It was so late by the time we finished that I thought I would not be able to find plants to get into the ground, but I was lucky enough to find a local nursery that had loads of green peppers in every variety, four different kinds of eggplant, tomatoes galore, and a few scraggly cucumber plants.

I had started some beans, peas, cantaloupe, and onions in small peat pots weeks earlier, and I nestled those between the larger potted plants. I found blueberries, strawberries, grapes and raspberries and got them into pots and soil. Left over geraniums filled a few remaining pots, and things started taking shape, slowly but surely.

What's the point of all this, you ask? Transformation is a process, not unlike planting a garden, it seems. There was a lot of planning, thinking about the space, the empty areas, the likely amount of sun and shade that each area would need to optimize the season's energy. What would be compatible with other things growing side by side? Which things would need additional support, which would seem to "take over" the space? Which plants would yield the best harvest for the investment of time, money, and effort? Would the final outcome be worth the energy spent?

For weeks, it did not appear as if anything much was happening. The summer was the hottest on recent record, and it seemed as if the garden was sweltering, along with the rest of the city. Morning watering evaporated almost in an instant. The heat threatened to annihilate all of our hard work. In July, I had to leave for a week in Florida for work. When I returned, I could hardly believe that the garden was the same one I had left only days earlier. The transformation had been "miraculous". Suddenly there were lovely purple blooms on the eggplants, bright orange and yellow blossoms on the zucchini and cucumber, bright white florets on the peppers, beans and peas. Everything was alive. The "SEED OF CHANGE" had been planted, and it had yielded its harvest on so many levels. Life in the garden is glorious.

Time Flies

How can so many weeks have passed since my last post? Surely I must have submitted something between January and now? Have my written thoughts been erased, or have I simply let them escape into the ethers of memory?

Spring has come and brought with it so many bright and colorful bursts of energy, the catalyst, if one was still needed, of moving me off the couch. The first order of business was to invest in pansies. Yellow, orange, and violet blooms brightened the porch in early April and welcomed my new international student, Herbert, from Austria for the month.

Sharing the house with another individual was something of a growth stretch. While I thought it would be fun to host a few international students, I was not prepared for a 55yr. old male with impeccable manors and an appreciation for Mediterranean cooking and Chicago jazz. For the first time in years I signed on to have coffee in the morning and cook an evening meal daily for a month, which was a jolt to my accustomed late night, late morning schedule. This was the motivation I needed to scrub the kitchen floor, clean the blinds, paint the upstairs bedroom, tidy the living room, buy new bed linens, and replace the foam plates with china.

Herbert's presence convinced me that my life was fuller and richer when I was sharing it with someone. This was a bittersweet acknowledgement that I missed my spouse's presence more than I had admitted, and it was a signal that it was time to seek some social interactions with normal adults. I joined a Meetup group named "Fun Friends First" and attended a backyard evening potluck. This was such a positive experience that I also signed up for a miniature golf outing a few weeks later. Widows, divorced and single folks met one another and formed teams. At the end of the course, we were all laughing and chatting as if we had known each other for eons. How uplifing an experience this was!

The point of all this is to say that change involves stepping out of our comfort zones and doing something different. It might involve a different way of thinking, an unfamiliar setting, a new group of people, different activities, something we would not typically do. It doesn't take a lot of effort, but it does take some.


  

Full Steam Ahead!

As the hours of light begin to expand each day, the cobwebs in my brain are beginning to clear, and the energy required for productivity is returning, slowly, but surely. The winter has provided the womb for contemplation, for endless hours of rumination..."What is next, what must I do now, what is expected of me, what is my purpose in life now?"........ The quiet and darkness were the necessary and fertile ground that nurtured the process of grieving for my lost life, and the awareness that, while my old life was gone, a new life lay ahead, full of possibilities.

With the increasing light and energy comes the desire to move, to stir, to change things up a bit. A quick glance in the mirror screams "Haircut, trim, clean-up needed- Help!" and I am shaken from the complacency that weeks on the couch enable. Time to do something different, but that "different" has not yet become clear. (This might be a great time for a winter make-over- a day at the spa might work wonders, with a European facial to clear away the dead skin, a massage to invigorate the muscles that have been unused for weeks, a haircut and style to lift the spirits and appearance, and a mani-pedi to clear the cuticles and bring new blood to the extremities.)

What HAS become clear is that I am no longer content or satisfied with the way things are today. Yes, I have worked a little at a time to clean out closets, drawers, and bookshelves. Yes, I have looked into alternative living arrangements. Stay here? Move to a condo? Move to Florida? And yes, I HAVE inserted the "20 Minute Power Workout" dvd into the computer more than once. But I am sensing that I need to choose to deliberately move in a positive direction, to take a deliberate bite, as Persephone did, out of that pomegranate seed, the  SEED OF CHANGE, in order to transition from now and here to the new wherever and whatever that my life is to embrace.

The coming weeks and months are likely to be like Alice's rabbit hole, but in reverse- that passageway from the known and comfortable to the unknown, the unknowable, but the eventual and necessary next step. Was this a hesitation that my lovely heroine, Persephone, experienced before she took the bite of the juicy pomegranate seed? Did she consider the rigors of the passageway that lay ahead as she realized she would no longer be the immortal goddess of youth, but instead, a real woman, growing older, growing in wisdom, growing toward a return to the source of her being?

Loss and Found

Christmas lights still gleamed on Jan. 10 at Our Lady of Angels Church, where Danny Cordrey's service was held. Father Jim noted that Danny loved Christmas, and he kept the lights and decorations displayed for his parishioner and friend. Danny's widow, Angie, thanked Father Jim and her family and friends for their support, and then she blessed God for the gift that Danny had been.

Angie had lost her beautiful, sweet daughter, Erika, just a year earlier, in a freak accident, without warning, without any preparation, and Danny was there to wrap her in his arms and soothe her sobs in the night. And now Danny, her strength, had left Angie's life. She told the mourners that both Erika and Danny had been blessings and joys in her life, and that their love had given her strength and courage. She said she would be strong because of that love.

Loss has a way of making us feel diminished, less-than, "without". But for Angie, loss has brought a sense of inner strength and courage that she didn't recognize, or was not aware of, before. Loss has forged a will to live even more fully, more aware, more intensely than ever before, more appreciative of the gifts that Erika and Danny were in her life, and that they continued to be. Angie believes that their spirits continue to "be", and that she will one day become pure spirit and rejoin them.

Demeter initially mourned the loss of her daughter, Persephone, but when the girl returned from the underworld, was "resurrected" from Hades, the mother's heart was so warmed that the earth immediately flowered and was made fruitful once again. Though she knew the visit would be only temporary, since Persephone had eaten the "seed of change", and become fully human, Demeter was strengthened by the love her daughter left with her mother and the promise of a return in the next cycle. Demeter could bear the separation, strengthened by her daughter's love, and assured that the separation was only temporary. She could full embrace life, secure in the knowledge that Persephone was content with her life as Queen of the Underworld, and the realization that she would see her once again.

If we can be sure that loved ones are content and that one day we will rejoin them, we can embrace life once again with joy and hope, with courage and strength, with energy, and vigor, and we can take "a juicy bite out of life" as Persephone did, with her pomegranate seeds. We can begin to become, like Kore, "fully human", enhanced, enriched, blessed by the gift that loved ones have been in our lives.

New Year, New Life

One of the Christmas cards I received recently described the Christ Child as the "New Light of the World". The days before Christmas are so dark here.... Just before the holyday, we add lights outdoors to brighten the landscape and help us through the dreariness of the winter solstice. We light the Yule Log to brighten the darkest nights and we find inspiration in the flickering flames of the log, as well as in the colorful twinkling lights we see everywhere. Just adding an extra bit of light can make such a difference in the dead of winter.

And so, a New Year begins, a "New Light" fills the dark skies,the sun once again begins her journey to the south, and our spirits are filled with hopes, goals, "resolutions", the opportunity for a new start.  Days become longer by the minute, and we await the return of Persephone so the world can come alive once again.

New starts mean change. The last year has brought so much change, how can I even think about MORE change? But I know that change is necessary if I am to move forward. If not, if I cannot think of re-doing, re-making, re-vising my life, I will not be able to accept the challenges ahead- challenges in aging, challenges in grouping all of my skills into some cohesive whole to try to make a living, challenges in improving my health and weight. If I cannot embrace change, I will remain stuck in the "Widows' Walk". (The widows' walk is the small room. like a small celestory, where women watched the sea and waited for their men to return from their fishing vessels. You can still see these in the homes near the seaside in New England.)

Persephone, my muse, beckons. Her courage and resolve in choosing to eat that single seed, is my image. Persephone chooses to fully embrace life, whatever of it is available to her in her darkened den. She forsakes her deity by "taking a bite of life", and becomes fully human in that single act.

The seed of change. The seed of new life, the image of a personal journey that has begun falteringly, with unsure steps, but made nonetheless. Isn't it notable that the pomegranate is everywhere now, in every grocery store, in abundance. Is it co-incidence that pomegranates ripen in the coldest, darkest months? I somehow don't think it is mere coincidence that we are invited to take a juicy bite of life with this mythical fruit at the very time of the year that represents the dark night of the soul.