Day 165 (200 more to go!)

Scratch and Sniff
Common Milkweed bursting into blossom.

Each stage of the pink bud opening is portrayed in this image, these beautiful scented flower-globes. They are little five-cornered gifts being unwrapped, unfurled.

What a bright start to the morning, and it was a good day today.  Except that my husband left for Texas for a week.

There was a little spider eating what looked like a mosquito - Go little spider go!

Public speaking is not my forte.  I am fine in front of a class full of my students, but in a large hall of parents, I tremble with anxiety -  What am I going to say? How are they going to perceive me? Will I suddenly become inarticulate? 

At the annual awards ceremony I have to present the award for excellence in Visual Arts, and one year I practiced my speech too many times, which resulted in a ridiculously nervous woman standing on stage tongue-tied and trembling. 

So today I decided not to even think about what I would say.  I just enjoyed the whole event. The beautiful children singing.   The beautiful childrens' singing (what is it about children singing that is so evocative? I suppose one harks back to one's own childhood).  The happiness on the faces of just about everyone, not just those who received awards.  The sweetness of all these youngsters, aged 11 - 14, still babies really.   And when it came time for me I just went up and spoke, and it was EASY.  It just flowed out of me and people even laughed when I wanted them to.  Tomorrow night I have to do it all over again at the 12th grade graduation, so this method is definitely worth trying again!

Last year I chaperoned a trip to Six Flags Roller-Coaster Park, which is ridiculous really because I am pathetic when I see roller-coasters and find that I have no desire whatsoever to go on one. 

The students scattered excitedly, so I just saw a few fleeting glimpses of them throughout the day, they could all have caught a plane to the Bahamas for all I knew.   I sat and drew, which was a pleasant way to spend the day, but I didn't really have to go all the way there (3 hours on the bus) in order to do that.   This is one of my images from that day. 

I am going to Canobie Lake Park with the grade 6's and 7's on Wednesday, which is a much tamer roller-coaster park, and there is a dragon ride there that I love, for very small children and me!

Day 164

My very good husband.  In my very lovely meadow.  On a very beautiful day. 


I ran 5.29 km today in 38 minutes.  We have had several days of off and on rain, so everything is damp and rather radiant.


It was the monthly beekeepers' meeting this afternoon, and in the summer we have the meetings at the houses (and bee-yards) of members who have volunteered to host the meeting.  A year ago we had everyone at our house and it rained as well! 

It is an interesting group of people, and generally a gentle group, because I think you have to be fairly kind and caring to be a beekeeper.  This afternoon the youngest person was a gorgeous little dark-eyed girl of about five or six, sitting on her chair with her snack in hand, and an ipod's earphones over her ears, probably telling her a story, from her rapt expression!  (The very young are plugged into technology from birth.)  And the eldest was an interesting old man with bleary eyes and long teeth when he chuckled.  He doesn't keep bees anymore because it is "too much work" for him now. 

Some members have been keeping bees for more than four decades, which is a great deal of experience.  During the discussion on the vast number of swarms we have had this year, one person mentioned that he loves this part of the meeting, because whatever problem he has he will always come to a meeting, ask his question, and get an answer.  Someone piped up "At the very least, you'll get ONE answer."

The landscape driving home was soft and indistinct, reminiscent of the old man's face.  

My youngest son is heartsore over a girl and has been sad for days now.  Which is very unlike him, he has always been an easygoing kid. But I think he gives his whole heart to every project, including a girlfriend. And he has been reading a book called Revolutionary Road, which has had a profound effect on him.  It is a rather depressing book about relationships between people in 50's suburbia.  

So amazing to watch time metamorphose your dear chubby little baby into this thoughtful young man.  He still has that baby's huge eyes though.

Day 163

A hole in the sky.

I ran 5.92 km today!  I thought I was running 5 but I must have run an extra circuit by mistake.  The sky grew blacker and blacker so that every time I entered the forest road it was the dark forest, the darker forest, the darkest forest. 

Funny how we are such creatures of habit.  Like sleeping on a particular side of the bed.  For years couples sleep in the same pattern, the man on the left, the woman on the right, or the opposite.

And my babies, the twins, each chose a breast they liked, and wouldn't drink from the other side after a few months. Nick got so fat that I thought his breast was giving creamier milk than the other, so I tried to swap them, to serious refusal from both tiny people!   I think Nick just did all his growing very quickly after he was born, because the big round laidback Matthew had been lazing on top of him, crowding him in the womb!

And if you go to a conference, or a classroom, people tend to come in each day and sit in the same spot they sat in previously, it's where we feel safe.  And if the facilitator or teacher tries to move people out of that place they become very insecure.

The reason why I did not have a km planned out for such a long time was that when I began running seriously my circuit looped on the road at the point where it curved downhill and everything got very slippery and icy in the snow, so that it was dangerous to go down further.  When the snow had gone I just continued turning around and running back up the hill at that spot, because that is what I had done for some months, it had become my habit! 

Running is hard but I love it.  As I run I am sometimes aware of how the physical frame is put together, all the joints, the mind pushing the body on, the brain and the anatomy striving together to propel this body forward, the industry of the muscles, the endeavour of the will.  Sometimes I find myself arching my back to get the maximum length to my lungs, my diaphragm, the air getting pulled into my mouth, down through all the little tubes and bronchioli, my good dependable heart pumping, pumping the blood, keeping the arteries elastic, flowing through the muscles. 

My legs automatons of my brain, my elbows flying above my loose hands.  Elbows are such strange things, wrinkled and tough.  One morning long ago, cuddling in bed with the little boys, Matthew was stroking my arm and telling me his dream, when he suddenly asked, "Mom, are your elbows older than you are?"

Coming out of the wooded road into the meadow for the last circuit, I surprised and was surprised by a deer hurtling away from her perceived danger - my running figure.  I thought she had gone off towards the 3rd meadow, but after I had circled the meadow and was re-entering the forest at a fast pace (I always try to sprint the last 200m or so), I was astonished and delighted to find her suddenly to the right, just a short distance from me, running neck and neck down the home stretch for a few meters, until she without warning decided to cut across right in front of me, leaping high like the road signs, her bright white tail the last I saw of her as she disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side of the road.   

Day 162

Another washed clean day after the damp endless rain of yesterday.  These are some of the survivors of the Evil Plough. 

See the pink coming on the milkweed?  Soon it will be a scented globe of pink delights. 

The red bug is a male milkweed bug or Oncopeltus fasciatus.  They feed on the milkweed but don't seem to harm it. 

The daisy opens like the eye of a sleepy baby, lashes slowly uncurling.

And this bumblebee's nest was not destroyed.

Today was the beginning of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa.  Yesterday we watched parts of the opening concert online.  Danny Jordaan repeated "The Waiting is Over" in a deadpan way, many monotonous times.  I'm not sure where he found the cojones to organise this world cup.  They were not in evidence last night.

Desmond Tutu, on the other hand, displayed his natural charisma, in a wonderful speech in which he sang, danced, referenced evolution "Africa is the cradle of humanity... We are all Africans Ho! Ho! Oooh Hoo!  So we welcome you all home!", compared South Africans to "ugly ugly caterpillars" who are now turning into "beautiful beautiful butterflies", laughed his high-pitched lovely laugh, all the while bearing a strong resemblance to a garden gnome, standing there in the chilly air in his green and yellow outfit, with the pointy green and gold beanie the finishing touch!

I love this man of such integrity.  I had the honour of meeting him in the 80's, when I was teaching at Nombulelo secondary school, and shaking his hand (for a long time), feeling myself part of that warm enveloping love that he exudes with his smile.  He deserved his Nobel prize, whereas Obama did not. 

He has always been outspoken in his criticism of injustice.  Nelson Mandela called him the "moral conscience" of South Africa.  As head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid ended, he ''played the role of healer, confessor, comedian, politician, proctor and even grammarian" correcting white lawyers pronunciation of black names.  He wept several times after hearing graphic details of murders.   An admirable man. A small man with an enormous heart.  A huge life.

I didn't feel like running today, after my marathon 5km yesterday, so I didn't.  I walked a long way with Mollytheblackdog, in the beautiful day, feeling somewhat happy, in spite of everything. 

Tonight I have used an old self-portrait I did when Jess was a little smiley baby who had shown me that love has no limits, and my husband and I had decided to get divorced.  1982 - I was young and brave.  I hadn't met Tim yet, I hadn't even been back to live in Grahamstown.  Amazing, how we have no idea what is in store for us.

Day 161

Little Fig Tree Growing.

The roots draw up all the good things, water and minerals create sugars, food for the new growth, the meristems with their primordials, where wood cells called xylem, elongate and divide, creating new cambium, while the bark cells called phloem take the food to the extremities, where the leaves begin, the green green leaves, wide open to the sunlight and carbon dioxide that are magically converted into more food, sugars and starches.  Plants store starch for the long winter sleep.  When the tree feels the spring urge, starches begin the perennial waking up process.

It is difficult to live consciously in the world and be happy.  As we grow older there seem to be more and more awful things that we hear about and that we then keep in our heads and look at every now and then, even if we don't really want to.   How do we balance these images with good ones, and with being able to forget?  I find watching this little tree somewhat helpful.

Some things are so huge they are impossible to be rid of.  I have this terrible feeling that it is already too late for the earth, this gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is just the beginning of the end of the ocean as we know it.  There are smaller gushers which have been found more than 100 miles away from the main BP one, so it seems as though they might have ruptured something which can never be fixed.  So much life affected, it is heart-wrenching to try to comprehend.  Entire ecosystems can disappear because of one missing link, like plankton.  This is the worst oil disaster ever.  Everyone is going on about the money, the money that BP must pay out to each fisherman, every hotel owner, any person who has lost income due to this catastrophe.  But I don't think enough is being done with regard to the ocean itself.  How and if it can be saved.

And people are so disappointingly despicable.  There is a theory as to why it has taken so long to find any sort of solution (and what they have done now is not a solution by any means), which is that BP was trying to find the best way to cap the well so that they could collect the most oil.  This was their primary motivation, not just to stop it!  And, incomprehensibly, the fact that other boats are purposely spilling waste oil and dirty oil-laced bilge water into areas already fouled by the BP spill, hoping not to get caught!  Dumping like that is cheaper than having tanks pumped out and cleaned properly according to government regulations when they get to shore.  And the reason they know this is that the Coast Guard have a forensics lab in Connecticut which is for the exclusive analysis of oil samples found on beaches.  The oil washing up on Florida beaches right now is not from BP's Deepwater Horizon!

When I was 16 the Wafra oil tanker went aground off Cape Agulhas, and I volunteered many hours at the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) cleaning African penguins.  They were forlorn, covered in oil, refusing to eat, standing in the pens looking so woebegone, their little flightless wings the saddest thing about them.  I don't know how many we saved, but the lessons gained from our experience went towards the recovery of oil-covered animals in all subsequent spills

Between 15 and 20 000 barrels of oil went into the sea in that case, but it was a finite amount.  As was the case in most of the other spills where tankers ran aground, including the terrible Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska twenty years ago.  That coastline and its ecosystem with orcas, river and sea otters, seals, and numerous birds, has still not recovered, in fact has taken much longer to recover than scientists predicted.  In the BP disaster, millions and millions of barrels have already streamed into the Gulf and are still spurting strongly, 52 days later.  (The word "spill" sounds like a glass of milk which you accidentally push over, we need a bigger word.)

Six months into my quest, today, a day of cold and drizzle, I worked out a 1km circuit, so all I have to do now is run five of those and I have my 5 km distance, which has eluded me.  It took me 45 minutes to run 5.13km, which is very slow really, and for the first three km I coughed and hacked away, probably due to the damp air.  Ended with a 200m dash, and clean lungs.

The robins love the soft ploughed field, stalking along, alert, pulling up worms and bugs in their orange-breasted stick-legged kind-of joyful way.

Day 160

This dog stared at me outside the library with great intent, its perceptive ears tuned to my careful voice.  I think it was friendly.

Molly the crazy black dog ran off on Monday just before I had to go to school, so I left water outside and asked the neighbour to look out for her and let her in if she came back.  Sometimes she does this, although it is rare now as she is nearly ten years old. 

I speculate about where she went and what she ate, as she arrived home lame, her coat matted, and left sloppy deposits for the shocked boys in their rooms yesterday which they found upon their return from school.  (And we still love her.)

On the first lap of our run this morning, Molly lay down as she sometimes does to rest, and then she usually crosses the field when she sees me come abreast with her again on the other side.  I was all the way around and about to enter the forest road at the end of the field when I looked back to see her still lying in the shady grass.  She came running only when I called, she was that tired today.

And I am that tired right now.  I ran 3.2km this morning, through the muggy morning air, struggling over the bare earth where my path has been ploughed through.

Before we went I fed the birds.  The screechy bluejays arrive as soon as I stand next to the peanut feeder.  They are bold, and will dare one another to fly down and grab a peanut before I leave.  And eventually one does, and after this brave one there are more and more.  There is much deception and subterfuge used amongst these bluejays, in order to get food.  Sometimes they pretend they are babies and flap their wings to look pathetic, so that the adults will feed them, even though they are fully grown fledgelings, or even grown-up relatives.  They make so much noise that all the other birds and animals realise that it is feeding time and so they all converge on the site.  The little chipmunk that I named triangle is first, and managed to stuff an entire peanut into its pouch, and then looks up at me as though expecting me to laugh. 

And then I turn around to Molly, the big black bird waiting on the deck, waiting patiently for her two peanuts, which she munches down with a great deal of enjoyment, shells and all!

So tonight I am too tired to draw, so here is an image of me and my first best dog Timmy, my loyal companion, my hero.  Timmy, killer of cats, Timmy of the impossibly large bladder, who had the record out of all the dogs in the neighbourhood for the most pees in one block, Timmy of the good heart, the great soul, who chose us one day, following my sister home from school, leaving his life of running behind a donkey-drawn vegetable cart.  Timmy who loved us.  Timmy whom I loved with that deep first love you have for a dog when you are a child.  Timmy of the long and happy life. 

Day 159

Students drawing in the Chinese House gallery at the Peabody-Essex Museum.

There is an entire 200 year old Chinese house which was taken apart, piece by piece in China, brought here and erected in the Peabody-Essex museum.

Such a defensive design:  two double-story halls built facing each other with a central courtyard, just two or three tiny barred windows, the only real light coming in from above the narrow courtyard.  The rooms were tiny, with entire families sleeping in them (and no windows!).  I would have died of claustrophobia, let alone being attacked by bandits or disease or whatever.

The life of women was shockingly oppressive.  The women had to move to the complete stranger husband's house when she married, which was often far away from her mother's house.  In the galleries is clothing which was worn by the families which lived there, often multiple generations, and some were those awful tiny shoes worn by Chinese women, whose feet were bound and broken to satisfy some weird male fantasy.  The practice went on for 1000 years!  It is horrifying that women could do this to little girls.  Girls' toes were broken and pressed down to the soles of their feet, their arches were broken too, then the foot bound tightly.  All this with no painkillers of any kind.  It would result in complete deformity, lifelong pain and suffering and the inability to walk very well.  But supposedly it made the woman very desirable, particularly amongst the aristocracy, which always seems to generate deviance.   

Funnily enough, the women of the family who lived in this house all seemed to have lived much longer lives than the men who were merchants. 

The Chinese also have beautiful picturesque names for things, like Autumn chrysanthemum month, or the 9th month of the year.  And in the courtyard are two beautiful stone tanks with koi fish in them.

When I was little I designed a circular house.  I can't quite remember all the details, but here is another circular design, and in the very middle would be a fountain with koi fish swimming delightfully.  There is a garden for the bees and birds and us.  A salt-water swimming pool with a slide and a diving board, all for when my grandchildren come to stay.  There is a studio, a double garage with a sod roof and garden on top.  On the house itself are enough solar panels to run everything.  There is a bee yard and a honey house for processing the honey from frame to bottle. And all over the house, green plants, inside and out.  And sunlight coming in everywhere.

Day 158

Woman with tattoo.

This sweet woman was one of the people I met at the PowWow yesterday.  The tattoo is in honour of her brother who died, a face crying with a pool of tears below it.  She showed me her other tattoos, one of which is for her son, the symbol for his name, and the other on her back a large hawk-like creature, for her husband whose name is Sky-flier if I remember correctly. 

I love all their names, Sly Fox, and Thomas Cloudwalker, all names which paint images in your mind.  If I were Native American I think I would like my name to be Birdsong Skypainter.

My first eighth-grade class was despicable today, I was warned by the teacher who had them the class before, and perhaps then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, you kind of expect the worst, so that's what you get. 

When there are many years between you and your own Std 6 (grade 8) experience, you become exasperated with bad behaviour, you can't understand how kids can be so thoughtless, so wasteful, so rude, so..... But when I think back I was probably one of the naughtiest girls in my class, if not the very worst!  I remember my Afrikaans teacher would just walk into the classroom and throw me out before I had uttered a word, just because she had had enough and couldn't bear the sight of me, no doubt.  Which is how I feel about one particular boy in that class! 

And then you can carry on an amazing conversation about art and what makes a good artist, with a group of kids from the same class, ten minutes after you have ejected the disrupter.  They are like a bunch of molecules just hanging around, and a crazy molecule bursts in and jiggles them all, so that they all bounce around for a while, until the crazy molecule is taken out and everyone slowly relaxes and stops jiggling and becomes a good 14 year old student sitting in a classroom paying attention.

Self-portrait running through blue.

Day 157

Native American couple at PowWow

Under a lowering sky, then hot sun, then darkening from the west, then blowing over, a typical New England crazy-weather day, we attended a PowWow of many nations in Ipswich.  We met Cherokee, Nipmuc, Wampanoag and Penobscot.  There was a group of young drummers who were wonderful.  They used flat round drums which they left near the sacred fire to firm up before they played. 

Gender plays an important role in Native American music.  In the Northeast women play less of a role, but in the south and the west women's music is very important. Most Native American tribes were matriarchal and matrilineal until the Europeans arrived.

Only men play the drums here, the women stand behind and guard the sacred circle.  The woman who explained all this to me said that it wasn't discriminatory, just the way it has always worked, that being a guardian was as important  as a drummer, but that is like saying that the supporting cast is as important as the main actor, and of course they are, but the main actor is the one everyone watches, isn't he?  And if the drummers are standing and they are men, the women behind them will almost always be shorter and so will not even be seen by any spectators.

But what I love is the way in which every dance, every interaction, mentions Mother Earth, stresses how we are all inter-connected.  I know it is wrong to generalise, but the people we met all seemed very patient and good-natured, laughing and joking with one another, friendly, warm. 

Tim and I stumbled upon Masconomet's grave a few years ago, which is just a few miles from our house.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/bowtoo/2238316354/

Colonialism has a lot to answer for, all around the world.  It always amazes me how one group of people could believe themselves so superior to another group of people that they could treat them as animals or worse.  Or cheat them of their land, or try to exterminate them.  And it seems that so many of the native peoples were entwined with the earth, even worshipped it in different ways, like the Aborigines of Australia, the San of South Africa, the Native Americans of North America.  And that progress always involved raping the earth in some way, and damning the easygoing people who stood in the way, alien to the colonists, 'savages', 'barbarians'.

I remember being gobsmacked by a paragraph in Helen Gardiner's Art Through the Ages, talking about the defeat of the Minoans, a superior civilization in almost every way, one which had a sophisticated sewage system, beautiful art on an unprecedented scale, with a portrayal of joyfulness not seen before.  But they had almost no defense system, so that they were easily overrun by a people with superior weaponry, which fact has, of course, allowed armies to defeat people over and over throughout history.

I ran 2.08 miles (3.4km) this morning, through drenched grasses, muddy ploughed land, found three bumblebees waiting to die near their buried nest.  I tried to dig it up but couldn't find it, so moved their cinder-block (with them clinging to it) to a safe haven, though it will not help them in any way.  At least it is not a housing development going up there, or something worse.  I should be happy that things are going to grow there, and of course today I do feel better about it, but still, so sad to see all the pushed-over grass and some flowers striving to stand up straight for the sun.

I have so many report cards to do still that for my portrait tonight I am using a photograph Tim took of me dancing in the sacred circle today.  We were all encouraged to dance, but Tim thought that everyone there would just take me for a Native American anyway (probably because of my big nose!). 

Day 156

Middle School Hawaiian Dance

Snapshots from two days

The Dance
Slow music.  Short boys and tall girls (all the same age) are attracted like magnets - music ends and they drift apart, the magnets turned around to repel, released by the end of a song.

Giggling girls tell stories about boys, their heads close, like a bunch of flowers tied together.

Some kids completely at ease in their new bodies, moving to the music, excited with the thrill of it all.  Others lost, drowning in this rousing, scary environment of the dance floor.

The View from the Deck
A grackle carefully extracts a peanut shell from the feeder, flies down to the birdbath, where it deposits the shell in the water, has a few drinks, then carefully bobs the peanut up and down a few times, like a rusk in coffee, until it is saturated and opens easily with a few jabs of the beak, holding the soggy peanut in its claws.  The extracted peanut also gets dunked and then eagerly munched down (in as much as a beak can munch something down). 

Miscellaneous
Raccoons also like to wash their food.  This morning there is a dead raccoon at the side of the road near the house, driving by is a shocking experience each time, the maimed body, teeth in a last snarl of fear and pain. 

The Meadow

Morning meadow of beauty, wildflowers, butterflies, the first dragonflies of the season, and the wonderful discovery of a bumblebee nest in a cinderblock in the middle of the meadow, ringed by all these vast intersecting circles of life, a veritable flurry of Venn diagrams, a vast garden. 

Afternoon meadow walk to check on bumblebee nest, to find devastation, the field has been ploughed, everything bowed down, broken, buried!  A white-tailed deer walks aimlessly along the edge of the fractured earth.  Bumblebees searching for their lost queen, their little society. 

A weeping woman who loves this meadow with great passion, armed with a wheelbarrow and spade, kneels in the rich brown soil, trying to pull upright and save some of what has been ploughed under, daisies still peeping out with their strong white faces, celandine blurred yellow, milkweed withering already.

Day 155

Africa points west.

Molly and I ran 2.28 miles (3.7km) in the morning meadow, with the sun getting hotter and hotter.  Molly actually lay down at certain points to rest and then cut across to meet me, she was so tired.  "Oh my god, are you seriously going down that road AGAIN?" and she would wait at the top until I turned around and came back up. 

Last night I went to the Baccalaureate at the boys' school, because Nick sang in the a cappella group as part of the entertainment.  I love these kinds of traditions.  It is saying goodbye to the seniors, a little ceremony before the actual graduation.  It involved a couple of speeches from the students and one staff member, a few musical numbers by various students in the school, a slide show showing all the seniors as chubby babies and gawky little kids, demonstrating how far they had come in the world, and lastly a candle-lighting ceremony and procession outside.  Just all beautifully done.

The seniors choose the speaker, and she was actually an administrative assistant at the school.  She gave such a wonderful heartfelt talk, using analogies to urge them to be themselves, not to conform, to listen to their inner voices, and never to let anyone make them feel unwelcome, because no one has the right to do that. 

I loved that, because I had volunteered (again, foolishly) to help with the setup of the cafetaria with refreshments etc for afterwards.  So I dutifully arrived at 4 o'clock with my tray of brownies, and then asked if anything needed to be done.  I broke open big packs of bottled water and chucked them in coolers, then broke open ice packets and threw them on to the bottled water, then recycled all the cardboard because the school is big on recycling, they actually won an award for the greenest school partly because of their recycling programme.  Then I asked the little group of  4 or 5 women standing there if anyone needed more help.  I was told that the only thing needed was the punch and someone had gone to buy ingredients.  So I wasn't needed anymore, but thanks anyway.

The women who do this kind of thing are very rich and live in the wealthy town of the two town region.  They were the "mean girls" when they were at school.  The are all perfectly coiffed, perfectly blonde, with perfectly ironed pink capri pants and tanned ankles, and the rest of their clothing, perfectly complementary coloured pastel shades, even down to their shoes. 

And here I am, the riffraff from the poorer of the two towns, in my brown cargo pants and my purple top, my old black flip-flops which belonged to Jess and have seen better days.  And I'm sure they all think I smoke pot or something, but I know that I am just too alternative for them ever to be my friends.  So they made me feel unwelcome, but I didn't let it get me down, just walked out into the beautiful late afternoon light and admired all the new additions to the school grounds, fully formed trees, and grass seed all around, all starting to look lovely.

Day 154

Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children all gone!
All except one, and that's little Anne,
And she has crept under the frying pan.

My dad called me Anne-pan, perhaps after this rhyme.  I loved hearing him say that.

I was always rather annoyed with Anne for being such a twit as to hide under the frying pan where she would most likely expire from heat and smoke, whereas everyone else used their wings (duh) to fly away from the danger!  (I would have flown away.)

In America they call them Ladybugs, which is not as pretty, and if you see them fly in slow motion, they actually have massive wings and flap them like birds.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S77SYgOZXfg

I forgot to mention my run yesterday.  I forced myself to do the extra lap, and so ran 1.96 miles (3.15km).  As I came into the meadow for the first time a huge hawk took off, beautifully, perfectly graceful.  I also found an owl pellet, and ran along thinking of the owl who sat in the tree above my path and digested its food. I hope it was a Great Horned Owl.  If you look at the pellet, it is a whole mouse reconstituted, a mouse without the goodness, just mouse fur and bones.

But today I just had no time, and the only time I did have, when I had actually planned to run, there was a huge thunderstorm, and so I couldn't.  But Molly and I had a long walk this morning. 

Why I shouldn't bake

For some weird reason I sometimes volunteer for things about which I have not the slightest idea.  Like the secretary of the Beekeepers' Association, which is a two-year appointment!  And like today, I had to make brownies for the Seniors' Baccalaureate celebration at the boys' school.  I have never made brownies before, but Matthew made them the other day so I thought I would probably manage. 

Brownies are basically butter and sugar, with a bit of cocoa and a number of eggs thrown in, then baked so that they stay a bit soft in the middle.  Nothing to it!  The recipe said that you can just mix it with a wooden spoon, but mine soon became too thick, so I took out our electric mixer which Mary and Jim gave us about 8 years ago to help Tim with his banana-bread. 

When I was finished mixing, I pressed the button to release the mixing beaters, which promptly fell right into the mix, vanishing without a trace, so that I had to haul them out and lick them clean immediately, before I could get them across the kitchen to the sink. 

I poured the mix into two pans, and then carefully scraped the sides of the bowl with that special scraper thing which I actually brought from South Africa, and, as I was balancing the heavy bowl with one hand to scrape out the remnants with the other, the entire bowl slowly but inevitably slid into one of the pans, like a duck easing itself off a rock into the water.  Molly was very interestedly licking the sides of the cupboard and the floor, and now I had to try to get the mixture off the outside of the bowl as well!

Eventually most of the mixture was in the pans, and as I turned to the recipe to check the last steps, my hair flicked to the left and stuck to the outside of the sticky bowl, wrenching me off balance, so that I just stopped myself from falling! 

I got the pans into the oven, then turned to the washing of the sticky chocolate-soaked hair.  And the cleaning up of the sticky chocolate-soaked counter and floor and part of the kitchen drawers.  And Molly's fur on her left shoulder.  And the bowl and utensils.  I licked the bowl clean, that mixture is delicious, a coronary in chocolate disguise. 

I sprinkled a soft dusting of icing sugar over the final product.  They were pretty and so tasty and I felt the pride of someone who is good at baking as mine was the first plate to completely empty at the celebration tonight. 

But I feel a bit sick after eating about 6 since 1 o'clock this afternoon!  And Matthew said that there's nothing like box-mix brownies!  "I mean", he said, "that yours are very nice, but they don't really taste like brownies!"  Maybe because they are all so used to the synthetic chemical taste of brownie-mix in a box!

Tonight a doodle-patchwork-bird.

Day 153

My three best boys again.

Today was an auspicious day - Nick, on the left, received two awards at his school's award ceremony, one for Excellence in Painting and Drawing and the other for US History.  (Matthew, on the right, has received an award every year since 7th grade, but not today.)  I am so proud of them both, and of the one in the middle, Matt P., who is off to Colorado next week to be a Summer-camp photographer!

And, even more auspiciousness: today is the birthday of my eldest daughter, who turns 31!  Life goes by very quickly.  Which is why you have to grab the moments that matter, every day, and hold them up to the light, examine them, remember them.

I think all mothers remember their children's actual birth day, every year the day comes around.  It is the most shocking, momentous event in a woman's life, and you are irrevocably changed by it, metamorphosed into a mother, without much time to pupate.

My first birth took place in an unpleasant hospital, with a mean doctor I didn't know because I was a hospital patient, being a penniless student at the time.  I wrote a poem about it, which ends like this:
...
In and out, darkness jabbed
Light grazed wounded eyes

All scars broken, open,

Bleeding tears, howling hurt 

Until at last my struggling child slipped

Suddenly from between my legs

Slipped loudly out into the harsh air

Bedraggled, bloodied, my daughter.

But I was far away by then.

Only later could my fingers kiss her,

Could my breathing send the blood coursing

Through the small body, the newborn

And how you fall in love with that tiny creature, how beautiful, utterly beautiful, they are, their little ears, their exquisite skin, their new round toes.

And you stay in love with them no matter what, even when they behave badly in restaurants, even when they pout and spoil the family photograph in which the entire extended family is assembled, which event only happens every 10 years or so, even when, completely exasperated at their rudeness, you stop the car and sternly order them and their surprised teenage friends to walk the rest of the way up the steep hill to the concert at the Monument.  

In fact, you almost forget those bad times altogether, you find that you have put them in a room in your head and locked the door, because these dear little babies, after many roller-coaster years, grow into adults who become your friends, the one you want to phone when you are feeling down, the one you think of to share in your delight, the one who sometimes gives you a shoulder to cry on.

When Emma was 11, for some reason, she desperately wanted to see a terribly violent movie called "Natural Born Killers".  We didn't even let them watch the news on tv because of the violence in the country which was being reported on.  So of course we were outraged that she even thought there was a remote possibility of seeing this movie!  Her protestations grew louder and louder until she was eventually sent to her room, where she came to the historic decision that she would never talk again because we were so mean, and all her wrath was actually directed towards Tim, who had put his foot down on the matter. 

She wrote this letter to him, in sign language with explanations below each drawing of hands making the signs.  I kept this for years and eventually thought it worthy of a frame, so it is surrounded by images of Emma from when she was just a little bald thing to the present day.  It is a testament to her passion, her outrage, her creativity, her sense of self, which all remain with her to this day.  And it is very funny.

So happy birthday to my darling dancing girl who made me a mother for the first time, and from whom I have learned so much.  Thanks for 31 years of love, some tears, much delight, and a lot of laughing! 

Day 152

Bumblebee ballet.

The Rhododendron is fading, but still attracting the occasional butterfly or bumblebee.  This little bumblebee seems to be practicing for her grand jeté.

It was very hot and humid today, and there were big noisy wet thunderstorms which worked hard to wash everything clean.  The cars, the deck, the outside chairs, the windows, the railings, and all the leaves of the forest, have been covered with yellow pollen-dust for days.

This evening everyone was out for a couple of hours, so I put on a curry to simmer and went for a run on my lovely newly mown track.  My recovering lungs protested at the beginning, but after a while they began to enjoy it more, and, together with my striving legs, my courageous heart, my swinging arms and breathing mouth, managed 1.44 miles (2.31km).  I have to build up my fitness again, amazing how it gets lost so quickly.  Halfway along I started singing my rhythm song, "Land of the Silverbirch" and I noticed that it dragged somewhat, due to my slow struggle of a stride. 

The meadow was washed clean too, everything green and dripping, tall grasses bent over with the weight of water, soil soft and giving.  And a still damp sky above me, so that soon I was soaked.  Lovely water, lovely to be wet when you are hot hot hot from running and from the 90% humidity and 85F (29.5C) temperature.

Today was a faculty in-service day at school, so lots of meetings.  I have had my fair share of meetings to last me the rest of my life, and am not very partial to them, so to survive them, I have a habit (like many people) of doodling my way through the time.  My fellow teachers liked this page so much that I thought I would use it for my posting!

Day 151

One man went to mow... went to mow a meadow... One man and his dog... went to mow a meadow.  

I learnt this song when I was very little, from my brother who was a cub-scout. For years I thought Mo was a person, and his last name was Ameadow!

Tim mowed my path through the meadow today, as it had become completely overgrown. What a kind man!   It was a beautiful warm day, although very hazy and smoky. Apparently there are forest fires in Quebec that are running out of control and the prevailing winds have brought the smoke all the way down here!  There was an environmental warning for people with respiratory disorders to remain indoors, so I didn't run today, although I didn't remain indoors.  So sad, the land of Canada is covered with snow for much of the year, and then it warms up just a little and these horrific fires begin!

We all had a holiday today as it was Memorial Day, when we remember soldiers who have died in wars.  

So tonight I will remember the soldiers in my family who didn't die.  

My South African 'Pop', a tall, gangling man of limited affection, probably because he had lost his entire family when he was only 6 years old.  He served as a pilot in the Royal Flying corps in the First World War, but he couldn't drive a car, my dad taught him that.  

And my 'Gramp' in England, the long-boned twinkle-eyed man with the moustache, who went to fight in the trenches in France, was subjected to mustard gas which does various terrible things to the human body, including damage to the bronchial tubes, which resulted in his suffering from asthma for the rest of his life. 

They each came back from the war, and found women they loved, or thought they loved.  

Pop, whose real name was Gerald,  found a girl in England, from Cumberland, small fragile Gracie, and they returned to South Africa, where my mother, Joan, and her sister, Nora, were born.  But Gerald and Gracie were not very happy, although they did try very hard to love one another.  It was because of his lack of being loved when he was little, I believe, and in the first years of their marriage, my mother and her sister were taken back and forth several times between England and South Africa, whenever things became too bad between their parents. 

Gramp, named Arthur, was a farm laborer, who made the governess, Alice Emily, pregnant with my dad.  Which fact my father only discovered when he was 60 years old.  It made him very sad but it kind of explained a lot.  Arthur was a hardworking man who loved the earth and his "Em" was a loving mother but rather manipulative.  Their marriage lasted more than 60 years.

Then there is my dad, Jack.  Born at the end of the first world war, he was training to be a pilot in the second world war when he contracted meningitis, after which he was declared unfit for the pilot programme.  So he became a fitter and was in charge of fixing airplanes and making them fit to return to the fray.  On a ship diverted as a result of being torpedoed by german subs, he happily found himself gazing up at Table Mountain and it was love at first sight between my dad and South Africa, and also between my dad and my mother, who was handing out uniforms. 

And Joan and Jack were also married for more than 60 years, during which time they fought and laughed and loved and worked and traveled and, in the early years, produced three children, the last of which was me. 

And here I am, very ambivalent towards war and everything to do with it.  I despise the glorification of it all, the way every little boy wants to be a soldier, the way so much is still solved only by might, not negotiation.  But I also know that Hitler, for example, had to be stopped, and I'm not sure how else it could have been done, but it seems to me there is far too much violence and acceptance of it, in our world.   In games, in movies, and in days like today.  

Human beings, Homo Sapiens sapiens, have lived on earth for about 40 000 years and we have used our brains to learn so much, to know our planet, our bodies, why perhaps we evolved as we have done....  But as far as war is concerned we don't seem to know much more than we knew in the beginning. 

So here's my Memorial Day portrait:

Day 150

Angelina and her doting dad.  She loves playing "Leaf".  Here she has just floated down, wafting from one side to the other on the gentle breeze of her father's hands.

Her family came for brunch today and at 5 months now, she continues to charm everyone, including the three 17-year old boys who were in our house this morning.  She has a sweet nature and a kind of serenity about her already, like an old soul.

And I am going to get to babysit in a couple of weeks' time!

I have not been running again since Thursday because I coughed and coughed after that, and my sister said that I must wait to be completely better, so I am listening to her because she is a wise nursing sister.  I do visit my meadow every day with Molly.  The grasses grow taller each day, and the common milkwoods have tiny green notions of flowers within their tips.

Tim and I went for a walk around the Magnolia coastline, near where we used to live.  It is very beautiful there and we saw cormorants sunning themselves on the rocks, hanging out their umbrella-like wings to dry.  Eventually Tim went too close and they took off, heading for their island sanctuary, Kettle Island, where the boys had kayaked earlier for a picnic with a group of friends. 

I think of all the birds, I would love to be a cormorant, because they live at the sea and they can swim and dive and fly! There are only a few creatures on earth that can do that.  They also have turquoise eyes.

So here I am as a cormorant-woman.

Day 149

Tired old grys-baardjie (grey-beard).

Putting away the pots and pans yesterday, a folded paper fell from inside the top of the cupboard somehow, as though it had been hidden there, carefully stuck in place.  And I unfolded it with anticipation, with all kinds of thoughts and feelings going very fast through my mind, to the effect of it being a treasure-map of some kind. 

All our debts would be paid, our mortgage, the house would belong to us, we could get the girls over to live here permanently, we could put the boys through college without them having to incur massive student loan debt, we could have a retirement plan, go on vacations, give money to those of our friends and family who require assistance, never have to worry again.....

It was a diagram for how the burners on the stove-top were piped with gas.

An interesting perspective:

Day 148

Prom night!

All the beautiful children who are nearly there, nearly adults.  Gorgeous girls, handsome boys.  All looking scrubbed clean, newly minted, pretending to be grownups.

So strange sometimes, to notice my boys grown so tall.  A suit seems to add about two foot to every boy, all their friends suddenly towered above me, all these youngsters I have known since they were 11, which is still quite little really.

I remember being 17.  You think that you are the first person in the world to think so hard, to suffer so much, to love so deeply.  And so naive!  This generation at least has a better idea of how the opposite sex works.

It is 1am and I sit here in the almost-dark-but-for-the screen in our attic bedroom, Tim fast asleep in our bed, Lily moaning every now and then, asleep under my bedside table, very disgruntled to have been removed from "her" Lily-lounge.  Downstairs are about 20 or more 16 and 17-year olds, having an after-prom party.  They will eventually fall asleep at about 5am, I believe, but at the moment they are all singing along to loud music and telling funny stories in a circle of friends.

So my self-portrait, in the wee hours, in the dark where I can't draw anything, is a poem that I wrote for Tim for our 23rd anniversary, a few years' ago.

Anniversary

Was this the day it all began
I really can't remember
I know it happened at the beach

And that it was December

You took my feet into your hands

Such warmth and slow unraveling

I had not felt like this before

My senses all were traveling

I felt like I had always coped

It’s how I was taught to be

Divorce, with two blonde little girls

I’d thought, no one will love me

And then you came along one day

Driving that funny old car

You cared for us, you did your best

And you became our star

So on that day, with salty skin

I felt, I don’t deserve this

But then, I let myself unfold

You leaned in with a kiss

And consciously, with my whole mind

I fixed upon a choice

Destiny looked me in the eye

I found I had a voice

You trembled so, your lips abuzz 

The song our bodies sang

Together still we harmonize

More constant than when we were young

So come to me, my John the Baptist

My silver cloud in the rain

My blue-sky boy, my shining knight

That day, you were my gain

 

Day 147

Bells in the meadow.

The meadow and the woman

The meadow wondered if the woman would come today.

The raccoon had reported seeing her pale face reflecting the moon one night as she trailed behind her giant noisy sons up the path to the house.

The newest chipmunk had given an account of a dearth of seed, even though they could see her shape travelling past the windows.

Occasionally in the mornings she had come to the edge, where the road empties into the grass, and coughed a bit, but then had turned again with the black dog for home.

The meadow missed her.  It had grown accustomed to her presence at some time each day, had felt her firm feet muffled by the soft blanket of winter snow, magnified by drought-packed summer earth, rippling through the many-coloured leaves of autumn, and avoiding young milkweed shoots in spring.

It had enveloped her in its arms when she sat crying on the old bench.  It had made certain that the occasional falls had not been bad ones, she had broken no bones.  It had shone and sparkled with her on her sunny days.

And here she was at last!  Entering the meadow in her sky-blue shoes, looking around her amazed at a week's developments.  The meadow hastily put on its best behaviour:
Grasses waved gently at the woman, some caressing her waist. 
Little star flowers shone amidst the greenery.
A bush of white daisies appeared out of nowhere to delight the woman.
Birds flew across and across again, swooping and soaring and revelling in their flight.
Other birds stood high on their narrow legs, singing their green songs. 
Frogs croaked at her from their luscious pond.
Celandine enchanted her with its careful yellow and green covering of the old dry ribs of another plant.
The birches stood tall and white-barked, telling her their old old stories.
The abiding great oak quietly beckoned her to rest beneath its shadow.
Buttercups glowed like nebulae in the shady grass, little lanterns for her feet. 
And the sky turned slowly and contemplated the woman as she jogged her circuit three times.

And at last, reluctantly, the tired woman slipped out of the circulating eddies of the field and started for home.  Once again she had been woven into the meadow's memory.  She looked down at herself, discovering that she was like a bee, dusted all over with pollen, quite golden.

Day 146

It was 95F (35C) today, and all furry creatures (and also largely hairless ones) felt very hot and lethargic.  Lily the cat spent many hours in the slight breeze afforded by the passage.  Matthew came home and said, "Oh look, it's a rug."  Because she is so old and diminished that she is just about flat when she lies stretched out!

I went to the opening of the art exhibition at the boys' school, and it is always interesting to compare it with my school. 

This is the first year for the boys in the beautiful new school building,  the 'greenest' school in Massachusetts.  There are three art teachers, each with their own huge fully-equipped studio, Photography/Graphic Design, Ceramics and Painting/Drawing. There is a data-projector and smart board in each room, an ipod jack with surround sound speakers, just everything state-of-the-art.  It is a public school, so it is free.   Apart from the ceramics, which we don't have, I think their art is of a similar standard to ours.  Instead of ceramics, we have quite a lot of sculpture.  And we are getting our own permanently mounted data projector installed over the summer!

Interesting also to see how they get people to attend the opening.  There is something called the National Art Honor Society, to which all high school art students can belong.  So each year they have a little ceremony with the induction of the new members, of which there are many. Members of the society do community service so it is a valuable society in many ways.  They also had a speaker this year, in the form of my friend who is an amazing commercial photographer.  He had a wonderful slideshow about which he spoke, evoking laughter and appreciation.

At our 'vernissage', we have children who give musical performances and little theater performances to try to draw the crowds.  Also, everyone here lives in one of two small towns so no one has far to come, whereas at my school people have to come from all over the place, sometimes from a location more than an hour away. 

The tradition at the boys' school is for the more senior members to provide cakes in the form of a famous artwork.  So tonight my portrait is the cake which Matthew made in the form of Shepard Fairey's Andre the Giant stencil, for which I provided all the ingredients, the supervision, and the encouragement, and which was the only cake to disappear completely in a matter of minutes.