Attachments

Sage in the foreground, chives in flower at left. 

 

"I respect you," I said to the armload of thyme plant as I lifted it away from the ground. 

"Thanks for taking one for the team."

I dropped it into its new hole in the garden, at the base of the grape vine, three feet closer to the garage. Moving it was like picking up a pile of books and papers just as it lies on the table or couch and lifting it, unsorted, over to the desk—though the thyme holds together more stubborly. It's a felted mass of tangled stems, tiny leaves and, in late May, even tinier purple flowers, that has been rounding its way out onto the patio and any other empty space it finds. It smells like cooking—the seasoning for roast chicken or turkey or Thanksgiving dressing. In its new home, it needs patting down or maybe a comb-through to pull out the dead leaves from last. It will settle into in its new space soon. I'm pretty sure this mighty plant is indestructible. 

And yeah, I'm talking out loud to an herb, ascribing a personality to it and apologizing for bumping it out of its bossman place. I have attachments to this little patch of dirt.

Moving the thyme made room for last-year's lavender to grow, and for a second lavender plant and a marjoram and the dill that was already half-dead in the pot and might not come back. I'll have to trim the sage back just to be fair but not right now. It's got tall spiky purple flowers, where a few minutes ago I saw a hummingbird. 

I would not want you to think I'm a gardener. On a lot bigger than most of my neighbors' I have less than 40 square feet under control. My lawn is made of dandelion stems, waiting only for a strong wind to seed the neighbors yards. Last week I bought some new hostas for a shady spot next to the house, but there's a significant aching-back worth of weeds to pull out there before I can plant them.

Lots of birdsong in the backyard this morning. I'm just happy to be here with my herbal friends. 

The server is down -- until tomorrow

I arrived at the oral surgery office today, three minutes late for my appointment. When I went to check in at the desk I was told, "The server is down," and then asked, "Have you been here before?" A few minutes later I was told they would have to reschedule my appointment, which, of course, they could not do right then, but only when the server comes back up. 

I wondered what message the office person, in her colorful scrubs, with her pink clipboard and heavily (but beautifully) mascara'd eyes, was getting from the half of my face above the face mask. I'm pretty sure my eyes and forehead conveyed a full measure of irritation and unhappiness. It's not like they were telling me, good news, I wouldn't have to get this tooth pulled after all!  

(If you're asking why computers going down means you can't pull a tooth -- I dunno -- probably something about images stored on the server from an earlier visit to a different office of the same practice.)

By 2:30 this afternoon, the appointment time, I had invested approximately 20 hours of dread in this trip to the oral surgeon. And yes, I am counting hours spent dreading the appointment while sleeping and not sleeping, as well as the usual waking hours. There are many layers to this. I am not new to having teeth pulled (nor to root canals). Dragging myself through this includes the yuck of standing in line at the pharmacy to pick up after-appointment prescriptions with my mouth still stuffed full of cotton. Also, tooth decay and gum disease are reminders of mortality to me. My mouth is dying faster than other parts of me. (Read more: "Dust to dust" from Ash Wednesday 2006.)

It was a beautiful April afternoon -- delicate green leaves just emerging in the trees overhead against a soft blue sky. I am not without blessings, including friends who listened to my griping and returned more sympathy than I deserve. Instead of the milk shake I was planning to have for diner, I've enjoyed a chopped salad, a chocolate chip cookie, and an Edmund Fitzgerald Porter. 

It's been a long year of COVID worry, isolation, and inaction. Just like the seven-year-old version of me, I'm looking for a good ending to this story.  But it's in process; we're barely able to draft the story of how we come out of this, while trying to figure out how we join up that story with the one we were telling back at the beginning of 2020. 

Roadblocks appear -- today, for me, a cancelled dentist appointment, and yeah, much bigger problems in the big world in which I play only a bit part. I guess we wait until morning, when we're back online again, and get back at it. 

Quietness of evening

 

I sat outside for a while after the sun set tonight, through twilight and into darkness. 

At first I was listening. There was lots of birdsong while there was still a bit of light and a blue sky. Not just insistent cardinals, but lots of different sound.

All day the sound of nail guns echoed through the neighborhood, as roofers replaced a roof across the street. They worked until it was dark and finished the job. The pounding faded to the sound of engines idling as they loaded their tools and ladders into a pickup and a van. One drove off, and a few minutes later, the other. I hope they went home to good suppers and people glad to see them.

The birds stopped. Silent dog walkers passed, bicyclists with their headlights glided down the middle of the street, passing an 8pm jogger. I listened to silence all around me and sounds of traffic in the distance. I breathed carefully as I tried to quiet my mind. 

News websites everywhere are full of stories about coming out of the pandemic. Personal growth stuff like how to hang onto the good habits that helped you hang on through the last year. Big picture stuff like has the nature of work changed for good? And much more, as they feed on each other. I click on headlines but seldom read to the end. 

I did follow one thing today all the way through, and I think it's what inspired my evening efforts at quiet: Who We Are Now, in the New York Times, with comments from readers about how they've been changed by the pandemic. Pretty photos float down the page with short quotes and a few longer stories from people who faced fears and worse and who seem to be deciding as they described their lives, to be okay. 

It's takes some work to be quiet, to listen and be still as the darkness falls. More than once I had to turn my phone off and over after restlessly clicking it on and looking for something to get the hit of dopamine. Thought for a minute about getting a bowl of cornflakes to help quiet my mind. (Helpful, I find, when awake at 3am.) I called my monkey mind back more than once to enjoy some peace and positivity before it wandered off again. And of course now, writing, I'm trying to experience that quiet again from my living room chair, wondering who I am now. 

Controlled burn

Good Friday, while on a walk at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, I watched a controlled burn -- fire deliberately set around Meadow Lake, burning away last fall's dried grass and weeds, turning the earth black and covering it with ash. 

The burn -- the bright blue sky, the orange flames, the brown smoke and then the white -- seemed sacred. 

Perhaps it's because everything seems sacred on that holy day -- so dark as we tick off the slow suffering hours Jesus was on the cross, yet so lit with that word of theological judgment: Good.

Watching at a distance, we could see the progress of the burn around the pond. At our feet there was blackened soil -- yesterday's burning, or perhaps last week's? -- dark crowns of plants and bits and slivers of new, faint green shoots. In the distance a trail of workers in their yellow fireproof suits curved around the lake, setting the fire and controlling it as it burned out. A small truck with a tank followed slowly, just in case. We watched as a tall stand of grass flared up suddenly sending bright orange flames ten or twelve feet into the sky. Very exciting, especially for the two small boys standing in front of us with their mother.

We burn away the brush, the waste, the invasive stuff to give the new shoots a chance to thrive. And yet those new shoots come from old roots. In our lives it's seldom a controlled process. But on this Easter Day, we pray that it turns out to be a good one. 

(More about controlled burns in wetlands.) 

(Thank you to Lisa for the photo.)

Day 366

Four sweaters, five shawls, thirteen or fourteen Fair Isle hats, plus two pairs of socks. Those are the knitting projects I’ve completed in year one of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some were knit from stash, meaning yarn bought years ago, on sale, on impulse, on vacation: merino and alpaca in a heathery purple, deep green laceweight Malabrigo, a gray to deep fuchsia gradation. Sweater yarn came in the mail, purchased online at yarn.com. Fair isle hats came in kits from Sievers on Washington Island, to go with the Katie's Kep pattern from the Shetland Islands in Scotland. 

There’s a surprising harmony to the colors when I pile everything together in the sunlight in the living room chair,  brighter and warmer than I remember -- or is that just today's late-winter sunshine? 

Day 366. Your mileage may vary on the number, depending on what day last March you count from. For me it's Friday, March 13, when I wrapped up my office computer in my fleece jacket and carried it to the car. The night before I'd had dinner with my daughter, my son and his friend -- my last meal in a (nearly empty) restaurant. 

Life wound down, flattened down. 

That covid curve we flattened last spring, peaked again and again, while day-to-day life seemed flat and colorless. Flat as a computer screen, dull as dinners of the same four or five home-cooked menus made week after week. (I live with a very picky eater.) 

Flat also because of not wanting to cry. Or not believing in joy. Just trying to get through until dinnertime, bedtime, morning. 

Day 366, ten days past my second shot. I went out to do some Saturday errands this morning -- the hold shelf at the library, the drive-up window at the bank, curbside pick-up for food. It's a beautiful day, the kind of Saturday that a year ago would have found me poking through thrift stores or buying stuff I had no idea I even needed at Marshall's or Home Goods. The past year has taken the edge off shopping. A year of looking at all the stuff already in my house has left me pretty sure I don't need more. I drove on home.

And then my daughter and I went out for a bike ride this afternoon, which means she rides her adult trike, "the best birthday present ever" from last December, while I walk in front, in back, or alongside on the grass. We were headed north down one of the streets in our neighborhood when we heard and then saw the Fitzgerald's Community Truck Concert stopped on the other side of the street a few houses in front of us. We listened to "Wild Mountain Thyme" and two more songs, with a live singer and guitar. Neighbors gathered, bike-riders got off their bikes and sat on the curb, people came out of their houses. Grown-ups, children, listening, grateful, socially distanced. 

A live landscape that was not flat at all.

Razzle-dazzle 'em

I mark the anniversary of The Perverse Lutheran on or around Transfiguration Sunday every year, rather than on the specific date of the first post in 2006. So we'll call today, Transfiguration 2021, the 15th anniversary of my blog, even though it's two weeks before the actual date. 

I read that first post a few minutes ago and did not find it embarrassing, which is my standard for judging my writing from the past. I'm not sure if it's a low standard, or a high one. Did I step around cliches? Do I sound honest? Not too eager to please? Not too desperate for attention? Is there a little bit of originality in there, even if it's just a smidge? 

That first post -- on banishing the alleluia during Lent -- is not too bad. I'm not cringing here in 2021. In fact the post ends up with a rhetorical question that works ieven better in 2021, especially if you substitute "the pandemic" for "Lent":

How could we go through Lent if we didn’t know that we can still get that alleluia out when we need it? 

It's crazy cold here in Chicago and the snow and winter weather advisories just keep coming. Leaving a warm bed in the morning for another day of the same old going nowhere feels heavy, hard, and never-ending. In my view Ash Wednesday should carry a whiff of spring or come in the middle of a muddy February thaw. Not this year. I have a new understanding of C. S. Lewis's Narnia, where it's always winter but never Christmas.

Today in Sunday School I told the story of Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop, with Luke open in my lap but with frequent interjections and questions. Why would you go up a mountain to pray? Who are Moses and Elijah? What does "dazzling" make you think of? 

And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. (Luke 9:29)

Shiny, said one girl, Bright, said another child. Good answers, I said, but privately I was thinking, gosh, dazzling is not a very heavenly word. A honky-tonk beat from the musical "Chicago" played in the back of my mind: "Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle, razzle-dazzle 'em." The song doesn't make your toes tap so much as it makes your shoulders shimmy and your feet snake along the stage, maybe with a little wink at the audience. Because in this context razzle-dazzle is what you do when you've got some skill but maybe haven't got a lot of substance to work with. 

Dazzling -- it's a word for something that leaves people wide-eyed, gaping, wordless. Dazzling displays of derring-do. Dazzling lights of Broadway. Dazzling displays of bravado or speechifying or driving to the basket in an NBA championship. 

"His clothes became dazzling white." So often for us, Jesus in paintings and illustrations is already dressed in white, pristine white for holiness. It also makes him stand out in the crowd. Maybe for James, John and Peter "dazzling white" was totally outside their experience, so that when they told the story later they chose an unusual word that now gets translated with the zip and electricity of "dazzle." Jesus and his band of disciples would have been dusty and dirty most of the time, didn't often get their clothes washed. A poor carpenter's grimy garments transformed into dazzling white was a whole new reality, way beyond an illustrator's convention. Dazzling. They saw his glory.

And later, they saw his suffering. There, too, on the cross, it was God's beloved, dazzling son. 

Here's our Sunday School project from today, Jesus' hands raised in blessing. (Thank you, Mrs. Modrich, for the photo.)

At the end of my words

What other writing prompt would a person need besides a pale blue sky, six minutes before sunrise on a January morning? Icicles on the gutter outside the window are bumpy, knobby from freeze and thaw. Thin clouds over the houses on the east side of the street brighten slowly, warm white at their centers, with lavender edges. Scan the lacy black trees and you see clumpy old nests holding memories of last summer, waiting, maybe, for inhabitants' return.

I've been awake since shortly after five. Read the New York Times in my bed cave, under flannel sheets and warm comforter. I flipped through this: an art lesson on collage, cubism and the early 20th century, presented online, mobile-friendly, as an immersive experience. Close-ups to draw your attention to this and that in the image under study. And pulling back into the world around and beyond the object to talk about information overload in Paris pre-World War I.

Oh, art. 

People explaining paintings can capture my attention, but only to the point where they don't explain too much. Tell me what the artist is doing. Where's the break with reality? Where's the window into more reality? Don't try to tie it all up in a box with Meaning printed on the wrapping paper.

Because there are too many words in the world right now. Maybe that's because, confined to our homes, we experience one another through screens. Through recordings and Zooms and national media, Facebook posts, tweets, verbal battles in virtual worlds, crafted selves (like this one, in this blog). Words fail us when we look for something more real. Or at least they're failing me. 

What nonsense she's writing this morning! 

The nitty-gritty of life in an America pandemic, circa 2021: the dreary hunt for vaccination appointments, which requires keeping track of passwords for this or that app, this or that website. Words in headlines tempting you to click, to read repetitively about the tiny advances made over yesterday's mess. Words in thought pieces trying to make sense of the same things I'm trying to make sense of. Words that make a shell that few words, if any, can pierce. 

Blue sky, clear today, snow tomorrow. There's a crazy patch of light on a pile of snow across the street. Crazy -- I looked to see what strange spotlight or headlight could make that glow at that angle. I don't understand it, but it must be, somehow, the sun, which I can't quite see yet. Forty minutes past sunrise it's still hidden behind the houses on the east side of the street. But it's there, making that crazy patch of light, moving now across the sidewalk to the street. 

With the sky, it's enough. I'll use no words to wrap it up, no words to hold it in.