Day 105

Matthew coming in from sailing practice this evening, 3rd from the bow.  They arrive on shore, some freezing, like Matt, the others warm under their drysuits, because they have worn the correct attire for a cold day on the ocean!  How lucky, to be able to sail as a school sport!

I didn't run today because I had to go to school, so just two little walks with Molly, one in the early morning to collect lovely juicy green grass for the piggie, and another in the early evening to replenish the bees' jar of sugar syrup.

I walk through the forest holding the heavy jar of light golden liquid in both hands, like a servant bearing a precious gift for the Honey Goddess.

I smile as I notice all the molehills in the dirt road near the beehives, popping up to see the spring.  Some people hate moles with great passion, but I like them because we found one in the bath in the outside bathroom in Cross Street once.  Emma discovered the poor thing, a beautiful shiny little Golden Mole, and Jess and Emma and I built it a ramp and then a passageway leading to the garden so that it could escape.  It looked very happy to be able to leave its bewildering prison.

My reason for being at school was to attend several presentations by a group of cartoonists who are members of Cartoonists for Peace, begun by Plantu.  An amazing Israeli named Uri Fink, who does absolutely brilliant work, a Palestinian named Khalil Abu Al Arafeh, who churned out wonderful caricatures of students in the audience and then proudly handed them all out to the previously oblivious models!  And then there was Plantu, who has been a political cartoonist in France for many years, recently having his 15 000th cartoon published!  He talked about his life and drew pictures illustrating his story.  (I remember Emma doing this when she was little, starting at one point on the page and then telling a long story and drawing, drawing, until she had filled the whole page with it.)  And it was poetic, how cartooning saved his life.  He didn't speak for a long time when he was a child, but only drew images.  For someone who took so long to speak, he surely has a lot to say now!

After all the presentations, we had lunch together, and Monsieur Plantu sat next to me!  My french had been stretched to its limit all morning, but this was nearly breaking point.  When I drove home a bit later I actually had a headache from concentrating so hard for so long!  It must be very good for my old brain, to be so challenged!

My portrait tonight is of a tree in full bloom which I noticed today next to the churchyard.  The sky had wisps of white which seemed to emanate from the blossoms themselves.

Day 104

The circle of Life

A beautiful cool morning.  I decided to run in socks.  Yes, socks!  My ankles and knees have been painful and I thought that perhaps my hiking boots are the culprits.  I have read that running barefoot is better for you unless your feet pronate terribly.  There is a group of people who run in Somerville, all along the streets, completely barefoot, and an fb friend's husband is training for a marathon barefoot.  So, I can't run barefoot in the meadow because of ticks, but I wore some old socks and it felt wonderful!  Of course every time I rounded refrigerator corner my feet got wet but it didn't matter.  I ran 1.39 miles (2.23km).

Tufted titmouses are all courting, with the strangest little songs which I haven't heard before, and I'm not sure which sex is being flirtatious, but I observed one titmouse frantically beating her/his wings, and then flitting about, up the tree, lilting from branch to branch, and then back down the tree, alighting only for a moment on each twig, lower and lower, with two other titmouses in hot pursuit, a song and a dance!

I was cleaning the counters in the kitchen this morning and found myself singing Shout very loudly.  Last night Nick's a capella group sang this song at a concert at the school and it was beautiful, Nick being the star singer.  They also sang Loch Lomond and Fix You, which both brought me to tears.  Why are some people so pathetically sensitive while others go through life on a much more even keel?  I remember my friend Trish being so impatient with me when I cried at sad or sweet or solemn things.  I had a beloved record that I always listened to, with The Count of Monte Christo on one side, and Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose on the other.   In the latter story, Phillip Rhayader is an artist who lives alone in a lighthouse.  He is wounded in body and spirit and loves a young girl, Fritha.  When Phillip shouts her name into the wind, "'Frith!  Frith!", I would always dissolve into tears, no matter how many times I had listened to it before, it was just so terribly terribly sad each time.  One time we were listening together, and when Phillip cried out "Frith!" Trish cried out "Froth!" and we both collapsed laughing!

But to go back to singing in the kitchen, it is amazing how many times we fill silence with music, either music out of speakers, or music out of our mouths and lungs, old hymns, tunes we learnt when we were children, songs we love now.  My mother would sometimes sing out loudly, suddenly, in a beautiful voice, and often she would just make up a song, using a familiar tune and her own words, or just a random tune which didn't really make sense, it was just her joyful song leaping out into the startled air, enchanting me, the listener.  It is genetic, because Matthew does the same thing exactly.

I enjoyed the pencil crayons (they are called colored pencils here, and crayons couleurs in french) that I used for today's self-portrait.  There is a wide range of colours and you can press hard with them and they are lovely and soft and creamy, with overlays and texture. 

Day 103

Molly in the morning sun and shadows.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the teachers at my school today, about South Africa.  He is very knowledgeable about my country, which is rare.  It is his belief that "money for free" never works.  He said that he ruined his only daughter like that, giving her more and more money, and only when he stopped did she pull herself together and get a job, so that she managed to stand on her own two feet and finally be happy!  He thinks that in South Africa after the ANC took over, the most money should have been put into education, so that if you obtained good grades at school, you were assured of a place to stay and food and clothing.  Not a bad idea. 

I think they should have poured money into education and into police training.  Upgraded every school, as a matter of priority, even the ones way out in the bundu!  And none of this outcomes-based learning, for which the majority of teachers were utterly ill-equipped.  If you educate children from pre-school (or even before pre-school) to be thoughtful, creative adults, your society will slowly and surely change for the better.  There is an interesting story about a Harlem native, Geoffrey Canada, who worked for years to try to rehabilitate teenagers on drugs.  He became so despondent of ever helping anyone, when he had the brilliant idea to get to kids before they are even born, in order to change what happens to them, to make sure they will not be drug addicts, criminals, losers.  When he began his project he would go up to pregnant women and ask them to be part of his "Baby College"!  He has had the most extraordinary results.  http://www.hcz.org/  I love stories like that.

My self-portrait tonight is in high shadow, and a lot of erasing was done, it took me far longer than I had anticipated.  I think it shows being thoughtful.

Day 102

Workers at a railroad crossing in South Africa.

Up to the age of about 13 or 14, growing up in apartheid South Africa, just as I had no inkling of a vast multitude of black people living just a few miles away from us, I also had little knowledge of sexual matters of any form , even though I was an incredibly well-read child.  After all, sanctions had largely cut us off from the rest of the world, we had no television, and we saw about 2 movies a year, the most memorable up until then having been Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music! 

So we really had a long and happy childhood, climbing trees, learning embroidery and sewing, riding bikes all over our suburb, devouring books, walking (together or alone), playing cricket with our cousins, playing day-long imaginary games, painting and drawing, hanging out as a great laughing gang of neighbourhood children, discovering our strengths and our fears, our abilities and our loves.  And our mothers had no idea where we were or what we were up to most of the time, as long as we came home for meals! 

Such a far remove from my children's lives, both in South Africa and here in America.  We were the paranoid mothers, the ones whose children might be kidnapped at any time by one or other evil faction in South Africa.  When Jess was 9, she had to walk home alone from school one day, a distance of about a km, and when she got home she told me that she had devised a scheme for each section of her journey home, in case of attack.  "If someone attacked me on Somerset Street, I would run back to school.  If someone attacked me near Heunis (Building contractors), I would run into the offices, if someone attacked me up Glanville street, I would run to the house on the corner (where an old lady lived), and if someone attacked me in Cross Street, I would run home as fast as I could!"  I was amazed that she would perceive such danger, (we had tried to save them from much of what was happening) and saddened that my little daughter had planned her way home to such a degree of fear.

And all these thoughts have come about about from listening today to the children I am teaching who are aged 11 and up, and every one of them is a completely different child from the children with whom I grew up.  These youngsters were born with a tv remote in one hand and a computer mouse in the other.  They are ferried from one violin lesson to the next soccer practice.  They know which college they will be attending and what they are expected to become.  They are constantly adapting to and accommodating the ever-changing technology which is shifting the very bedrock of our lives in new ways every few months.  They have all watched simulated sex in movies, and simulated violence of a kind I could not even begin to imagine at the same age.  Sometimes it seems as though they have lost their innocence almost before they even had it.

My portrait today is a quick quick drawing, because I am so tired tonight, of that wonderful childhood in Cape Town, and yes, I know I was a privileged white child, but I didn't choose to be that, it was just my life at the time, and it was lovely to me then, in that very innocence of which I have written.

Day 101

I love this lake of clouds.  It all depends on the perspective, doesn't it?  The clouds float in the lake, water ripples the sky.  And the trees in between.

I am taking a short break from running, I'll run again on Wednesday.  I have had bad aches and pains and Tim thinks I should give my body a rest sometimes, not run every day.  When I get up from sitting, it takes my legs a while to agree to walk without hobbling.  I think I will invest in good running shoes which might help, also have a Lyme's disease test perhaps, because the disease can attack your joints.

We spend a lot of our lives cooking.  Sometimes I will enjoy cooking, like a big meal for friends and family which you know is going to be appreciated and around which will rise good conversations, affection, laughter and happy eating.  But I must confess that most of my time spent at the stove I would rather spend anywhere else!  Well, no, not cleaning toilets, but there are so many more things that I would love to be doing instead, like reading.  Today it felt like I wasted my entire precious Sunday afternoon roasting a chicken, and making an apple pie for dessert. (It was delicious, and there was appreciation, as well as good conversation, etc.- see above.)

So this is my creation for the day, an apple pie in honour of spring, with a flowering magnolia for decoration.  In South Africa we called them 'tulip trees'.  There are so many around here, magnificent in their flowering prime right now.

Day 100! (265 to go)

The soppiest of dogs! Lollipops.

1.98 miles (3.18km), with a break near the end to check on the opossum, who is still not there, although I thought I heard rustling, so maybe she has survived.  Strange how different each day's running is.  Yesterday was a cinch, today was struggle from beginning to end!

The wind was cold and little clouds raced across the sky, crisp white hurrying clouds.  Admiring the wide blue sky after all the grey rain of yesterday, I suddenly found myself rapidly plunging towards the ground, where I landed on my knees and then my hands, the momentum taking me right down until my whole body was lying surrendered to the grass.  (It is always better to fall with no one watching, so that you don't have to leap up laughing and pretend nothing has happened, even though blood is streaming down your knees and the palms of your hands are on fire.)

I had hardly any sleep last night, and so this afternoon at about 4.45, I thought I would have a little nap until I had to fetch Matthew from school (he sailed in a regatta in Maine) at about 6.30, or so I thought.  I was on my way upstairs to my bed, when I spotted the little couch in sunshine and felt compelled to enter its warm embrace.  Next minute the phone was ringing and I leapt up in that disoriented state, when you have been floating in dreamland and reality suddenly slaps you in the face.  Still in a trance, I tried to locate a phone in the map of my house in my head, eventually remembering one in the closest room to the aforementioned couch.  I picked it up.  A voice said, "We're just coming past Liberty Tree, we'll be there in 15 minutes." The words swam around my brain for a bit and I almost asked, "Which one are you again?"  And then slowly the voice and the words came into focus and I knew I would have to drag my tired self out to the car and drive to school to fetch Matthew, who was an hour early.

My self-portrait is a photograph of two large noses, my beloved dog and her beloved owner.  (Both photographs taken from the aforementioned couch, which has a lot to answer for today.)

Day 99

Funnel-web spider-web near the bee-hives. 

A misty morning again.   Everything was beautiful, pristine, the grass strewn with jewels, the tips of all the leaves hung with diamonds.

I ran 1.5 miles (2.4km) in 20 minutes.  It was easy running and I could have gone on for longer but I had to leave.  A gentle rain cooled my skin, birds sang, frogs peeped, and there was a brief moment of feeling "All's right with the world!"  A brief moment.

I was treated to lunch by my friend who lives too far away.  Going to her house is like driving from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth!  We women talk and laugh and cry, sharing our histories as they unfold.  An enduring and loyal bond exists through time, stretching and contracting, always abiding.

It is so late that I must use an old picture again, so here is a favorite painting of mine, the lemon tree that I painted 35 years ago.  The lemon tree is part of the sky and light illuminates the branches and the fruit.  And the roots come from the earth and the sun is woven through it all... 

Day 98

Lily of the valley.  They are sprouting everywhere in the forest, right up up through the detritus of dead leaves and pine needles, their pure colour shining up to the sun.

It was much cooler today and I decided to run, chest feeling better.  I amazed myself and ran 2.56 miles (4.1km)!  Coming up Heartbreak Hill I surprised a little blue butterfly which then proceeded to flutter along right next to me for about 100m.  I was grinning like the Cheshire cat, and feeling blessed, when the thought crossed my mind that it was perhaps scolding me for disturbing it, not flying alongside me in solidarity.  Or it got caught in my slipstream.

When I got to the opossum tree, there was no opossum today, and I fervently hope she didn't become a meal last night!  It is strange how we anthropomorphise things so much.  Or not even that, just fall in love with a creature.  The moment I began observing this wild animal, it became dear to me.  As Nick said, "And you say it's your opossum, Mom, but it didn't even know!"  But I knew.  I will keeping looking out for her.  Maybe she's moved trees.

A Cooper's hawk swooped down from the tall white pine to the bird-feeder this morning, but all the birds, chipmunks and squirrels had already scattered.  It flew off looking quite bewildered, a juvenile, I think.  They are exquisite predators.

The trees are nearly all showing signs of leaves, some more than others, and several are still in the Pointillist phase, like Seurat would have painted spring, little tiny dots of colour.  My portrait today is one I often give for homework in spring, "Draw yourself with flowers instead of hair". 

Day 97

Snapping turtle at the Ipswich Y.

We arrived at the Y this afternoon to see two young boys of about 9 or 10 trying to coax this enormous snapping turtle across the parking lot, fending off cars while she made her slow and primitive way across the hot tarmac.  Nick and I joined them and then the boys had to go off to their lesson and Nick to teach, so I promised to stay and see her across the rest of the parking lot and the little road before the river.  Nick told me later that the boys were congratulating each other for saving yet another animal, apparently they had saved a bird and something else before this, and they were very proud of their contribution to saving the ecosystem!

We need more boys like that and my heart is glad to hear and see these sensitive souls.  I remember seeing a young seal sleeping on the beach in Winthrop, where we first lived when we moved to America.  The mother was hanging around in the shallow water while the youngster took a nap in the sun, and Matthew and Nick and I were gazing wonderingly at it from the walkway above the beach.  Enter four boys, whose first action was to begin throwing stones at it! The same reaction as the first sailors to see polar bears - Oh, let's slaughter them.  Huh?  Incomprehensible, indefensible.

These snapping turtles are dangerous to pick up, because they are SNAPPING turtles, they can bite off your fingers if you pick them up in the usual way, on either side of the shell. They will turn their heads and stretch to where your hands are holding them, and casually bite off a digit!   The boys remember all the tortoises we rescued in South Africa, on those long dirt roads in the Eastern Cape, they were always wandering across, and we would carefully pick them up and inevitably get peed upon, and then deposit them in a safe spot in the general direction in which they had been going in the first place.

This old lady was going back to her nesting grounds, apparently they go back to the place they hatched from, which is very sad sometimes because a house has been built there, or lots of roads, and so there is a very high mortality rate even amongst adults.  But the lucky ones can live to be 100 years old!  This one is very large, so pretty old, so a lot of development must have happened in her lifetime.  Such marvellous prehistoric tails they have, they are like little dinosaurs with a carapace on top.  When she finally made it all the way across, she bushwhacked through old stiff stalks and brush, and then just lay down exhausted.  Amazing, just following her nose and her instinct in a straight line toward the water, with infinite faith, striding along on her old old scaly feet.

89F today!  That's nearly 32C (for the rest of the world, except Belize, Myanmar and Liberia)!  Very hot.  I walked about 1 mile today because my chesty cough is not very conducive to running.  And the ticks are out!  I already have 5 tick-bites and it is only the beginning of April!  I detest them and wish to eradicate them from the face of the earth.  They do no good to anyone, only a tiny sector of animals eats them, and all these creatures do not absolutely rely on ticks for their entire diet.  Turkeys, guinea-fowl and egrets are the only ones I know of.  Guinea-fowl eat bees too, otherwise I would acquire some to eat the ticks.  And they do so much harm to so many animals, they really need to go.

So here is my portrait of a Tick Eradicator, a Kreepy Krauly type thing like the South African swimming pool cleaner invention.  Although this is a fuzzy furry thing which rolls around on several wheels in the fields and woods, picking up ticks, who then march like zombies, lured by a chemical smell utterly beguiling to all ticks who simply cannot resist it.  They all then make their way up to a central trapping system which tortures the ticks (no, not really) which just kills the ticks.  Maybe I can patent it!  I really REALLY hate ticks. 

Day 96

Beautiful tree in second meadow.

Thunder threatened this afternoon, but just a few fat drops of rain fell, and it was still quite warm.  I spent the day helping children make wire sculptures.  Amazing, some kids, even though they might never have worked with wire and pliers before, they just run with the idea, and end up producing these beautiful creatures.  Whereas others are constantly demanding attention and aid in forming their animal or figure, they haven't a clue, and are too scared or lazy to try for too long.  The hours just flew by today, and the children couldn't believe it when I told them to pack up and clean up.  When I left this evening there were several exquisite new inhabitants of my art room, jellyfish, a seahorse, two elephants, several horses (11-year old girls and their obsession), a pig, a bear, a tall and dainty giraffe, and a whole table full of miniature people in motion, jumping, pirouetting, fencing, playing basketball, dancing.

When I walk in the door on Monday and Tuesday evenings, there is a black dog barking excitedly and an emaciated 20-year old cat standing expectantly near the door, miaowing at me.  I have to put all my bags down and kneel on the floor and pet and stroke them both for at least 5 minutes. The dog's eyes go soft, and the cat nearly keels over with the ecstasy of it all.   It is as if no one else ever loves them or strokes them or pays them any attention, they are starved for this affection.  "Where have you been all day?" they imply.  If dogs and cats could grin, their faces would each be plastered with one.

Standing outside waiting for Molly, late, in the dark night filled with stars, I hear the shift of trees and creatures moving softly in the still air.  The big green frogs and the little spring peepers are trilling at the pond, and a bird sings a short whistle-song in its sleep.  Something like an opossum or a raccoon waddles away in the darkness.

This is one of the papier-mache figures I made to show children how to do it.   Every time I do a demonstration I end up with another little figure, this one is apt for spring, an orange-tree person, dangling in my citronella geranium, which has almost taken over an entire window.

Day 95

This beautiful sky when I came out of school this evening. 

The earth is bursting into blossom!  Magnolia trees sprout giant tulip-like plumes, red maples are putting forth anemone tendrils of flowers, the glory of yellow forsythia delights the eyes, and everywhere the green returns, little new leaves and stalks of grass burst forth in spring's prolific way.  (Matthew used to think that forsythia was "For Cynthia".)

And my adolescent students are caught up in this fine frenzy, even seventh graders laughing hysterically at silly sexually-toned jokes.  My 9th grade class decided today, as their group-project sculpture, to make a life-sized pregnant woman!  Three boys are sculpting the torso!  Four groups are doing the different parts, 4 people doing the legs, 4 doing the arms, 3 the torso, and 2 the head.  It will be a very interesting-looking sculpture at the end of the project! 

As for my two-hour afternoon class of 10th, 11th and 12th graders, they were a riot of hormones today, all sitting around one long table, setting one another off, laughing uproariously at times, full of the joys of spring!

So spring colours for my self-portrait tonight!  (And understand this: I am not immune myself.  For example, all my children were conceived in springtime.)

Day 94

Matthew holding Angelina

Princess Angelina, dressed in her green frock with pink flowers, given to her by the African contingent at the Easter gathering, i.e. us, again delighted everyone with her smiles and sweet singsong intonations.

I love how snapshots are just that, a moment caught, Matt with the awkward stance of a boy unused to holding small babies, but making an encouraging sound to her, Angelina's softened cheeks and expressive starfish hands, Tim sitting in the background, temporarily engrossed in something to do with his camera.

Sunday morning: I woke up, took Molly out to pee, sat on the steps of the deck and waited for her, half-dozing off I was so tired, then did my daily morning check on ancient Lily to see if she is still alive, which she was, in no uncertain terms, miaowing noisily for her breakfast when she eventually noticed me, as she is stone-deaf.  The boys think she miaows so loudly to try to hear her own voice. Then I took a plate of lettuce, spinach, apple, tomato and carrot up to the elderly piggy, who had also made it through the night, again, noticed the boys were awake and getting ready to go longboarding, so I told them to look out for each other, then climbed the stairs and joined my sleeping husband back in bed.

Sunday noon: 2.07miles (3.4km) run today, temperature 81F (27C)!  I was very hot.  Taking a bottle of water with me, I put it in the shade of an old broken bench in the meadow, and told myself to run until the water was finished.  I poured some over my eager head each time I succumbed to the temptation, which is why I only ran 3km!  My feet were overheating in their woolly socks and hiking boots, my legs in the oven of black sweatpants, and I constantly found myself running with smaller  steps, conserving my energy almost unconsciously.  Even after my cool shower my face still reflected red in the mirror.

My portrait today is a map of my lovely backyard and beyond, showing my own private running track, and all my beloved landscape.  It is like the ancient maps with Jerusalem in the centre and everything radiating out from there, completely useless for travel, just like a picture of somebody's idea, really.

And if you have ever wondered how the utterly unrelated concepts of Easter and bunnies and eggs and such go together, look at Eddie Izzard's wonderful take on that.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XJfRzNOJNE

Day 93

The Lonely Bench 
I saw this bench marooned in a flooded pond the other day.

The weather has been beautiful but there is still a flood-watch for people living next to rivers.

I woke up this morning and wanted to run, the vitamin C tablets that I took must have worked their wonders.  When Matthew was little he called them vitamin seeds.  I expect he imagined them growing whatever was needed to fight off the cold virus, like the avocado pip growing a whole little tree on our kitchen windowsill.

So I ran 1.43 miles (2.3km) today.  It was lovely running through the warm blue-skied meadow, then down the road through the cool forest, to greet the babbling brook, turn around and up the hill through the forest again, until I burst out into the green and yellow meadow, and .....repeat.  Afterwards I went to see my little opossum, and the sun was shining on the grey fur beautifully, but when I tried to turn on my camera it said, "Change the battery pack", which was very disappointing.  

We had a friend over today, a young man who is training to be a nurse. It is always such a pleasure to engage with him and we spent the entire day talking and walking and eating and laughing, and soaking up the sun at times.  He wants to eventually specialize in geriatric nursing, which is admirable.  I don't think I would like to work with very old people, especially when they are confused and don't know who they are, that is the saddest.  When your parents die it forces you to regard mortality, theirs and your own, face to face.  So that if I look forward to old age it is with trepidation for frailty and a firm hope that my body will not outlive my mind.

When it was clear that my dad was not going to live too much longer I took the long trip to visit him for a few days.  He was always happy to see us, his three children, and always recognised us, but then would drift away into strange stories which were half fiction, mixed with memories of his childhood and of the war years.  We were supposed to get him to walk with his walker, and this he gallantly struggled to do, because his heart was no longer the strong and constant crux of his large body.  We reached a little place with soft chairs and benches in the winter sun, and he sat down with heavy relief, holding fast to the chrome frame.  And suddenly my real dad was back, as he said, with the old twinkle in his eye, , "You know what I miss?   .....the throttle!"  My brother and I roared with laughter, at the last joke my father told us.

I have not had time to draw anything today, so here is a picture Tim took on the sunny beach, which was crowded with all the happy people and dogs who have been stuck indoors by snow and wind and rain for months.

Day 92

The end of winter.  These stalks were once proud and green, then autumn sucked them dry, and winter loaded them with heavy snow.  They will soon be subsumed by new growth, but for now they are giving their last stark show, like weathered bones.

My run today was non-existent, as I have caught Matthew's cold, finally succumbed to a virus, after going for more than a year as strong as an ox.  I did walk far though, and played with running water for an inordinately long time, considering my age.

Snapshots:
A crow wading through the soft shallows of a flooded pond, stopping to crouch and bathe, crouch and bathe.
The shadow of a hawk circling above the trees, floating on the parachute of its wings, its keen eye meeting mine, checking Molly and I for signs of  edibility.
My students acting in a play, taking on different roles,wonderful and funny, their personalities vaunting to the surface.
My son, clothed in a strange invention called a drysuit, ready for sailing practice, tousled hair and eager spirit, so beautiful.
The two little arcs forming the perfect mouth of baby Angelina, so mobile, so expressive.
The smile on my face on waking this morning, at the happy realization that it was the last sleep before I again share my bed with my husband.

My self-portrait tonight is again in England, so many thoughts of my 8-year-old self!  I am standing in front of my little garden which is just beginning to sprout, like the memories in my head.

Day 91

I forgot to even mention my run yesterday, but I did run 1.85 miles (2.97km) yesterday, after marvelling at all the water and greenery and birds singing their heads off!  Today I only ran .86 miles (1.3km), in the sun, the wonderful sun!

I remember Tim once remarking that even when a bird is sad it still has to sing its happy song.  Most of them do sound happy, set as they are in a major key.

The Australian zebra finch is the second animal to have its genome completely sequenced, and scientists are studying these genes in order to discover things about humans which are similar.  Zebra finches are one of the few vocal animals to learn their song from their elders.  Baby zebra finches do the equivalent of cooing and gurgling in human babies, and then, once they have learned their song, from their fathers, usually, they keep that song for life, never changing it.  These tiny little birds also weigh less than half an ounce, and mate for life. 

I found this dear little garter snake sunning itself in the morning meadow, not much sun at that stage, and she raised her little head, stretching her neck longer and longer as I moved nearer, very wary of this big tower with eyes.

I quite often see these little snakes, they hide under rocks in the garden and in the woodpile in summer, and you can observe them sunning themselves at times.  They leave records behind in the form of papery sheddings, which are perfectly and uniformly indented with each little scale.

Tom, who works with Tim, thinks that my mystery animal is an opossum, and I think he is right.  I got another slightly clearer picture today, and think I got a little foot too!  She is probably a female about to have babies or has had them already.  Baby opossums are born the size of honeybees, and go straight into the pouch to develop, as they are North America's only marsupial!

It is the  most exciting moment, to see an animal in its den, and not to disturb it, just to observe it.  I felt like Gerald Durrell on Corfu!

I have been thinking about my map in my head, and about childhood, which forms us into who we are.  I remember being 8 and going to England for 6 months with my mother, while she and my dad sorted out their relationship.  This was history repeating itself, as my mother and aunt were taken back and forth to England with my grandmother when she had issues with my grandfather!  I wonder if 8 is a landmark age, as I remember particularly being 8, or if it is just that something so momentous happened to me, going over to a strange country on a huge boat which took about 12 days to get there!  And then all the new experiences there, staying with my mother's friend Joan and her daughter Penelope, going to school, traveling around the British Isles, and then getting on another big ship and sailing back to Cape Town. 

So my portrait today is from that age, I won a prize at the fancy dress on the ship, dressed as a Highland Dancer.  I remember so much about that time, but it is hard to remember being Anne Radford, that little girl with the graceful hand, contemplating the table of prizes.  8-year-old Anne Radford seems like another person in another time, but she is a part of me still, as is that day, that moment.

Day 90

The Ipswich River's Sylvania Dam completely submerged.

Floods, pestilence, the end of the world!    No, just floods. 

There is a peninsula town called Freetown in Massachusetts which is now an island, and a part of interstate highway 95 in Rhode Island is shut down for "a few days", there are flooded basements, broken dams, deep potholes, ponds where there were never ponds before, and rivers bursting their banks all over the place!  We have so many rivers here and lakes (which are mostly called ponds here) shine everywhere you look.  There is so much water that it was at first so strange and unfamiliar to me, coming from a water-starved country, with only about 9 major rivers in the whole of South Africa.  We were raised to be so careful with water.  My parents watered their garden with the rinse water from their washing machine, which they caught in the bath and used buckets to take out to the precious plants.  I have witnessed people here leaving the water running at full speed into the plugless sink while they rinsed one plate at a time before putting them into the dishwasher, where they were going to be washed all over again!  And I am constantly teaching children at my school how to wash paintbrushes using the least amount of water.

I know the flooding has caused a lot of damage, but it was thrilling to see my little babbling brook surging downhill, and to see green creeping everywhere, and, most exciting of all, I finally saw an animal in the tree cavity I sometimes visit right at the  bottom of the 3rd meadow. 

The identity of this animal has always been a mystery, and, I'm afraid to say, remains a mystery, although the boys think it is a porcupine after looking at my photograph, which doesn't show very much, does it? 

Over the years since I noticed this large perfect nest-cavity, I have heard an animal grunting in there quite a few times, and have attempted various methods of taking a photograph.  I have tried to climb/balance on the saplings next to it so that I am high enough to take a photograph, but that didn't succeed as I slid down before I could get a good shot.  I tried tying the camera to the end of the plastic slingshot thing that I use to throw the ball for Molly, but it wouldn't stay on.  I have even dropped Jess on her head (again) in the snow, trying to give her a lift up, camera in hand, and failing miserably!  Once I took Tim with his tripod and fancy camera, but there was nothing in there that day!

The animal has what looks like greyish long fur, which Nick is convinced are quills, and several images on the net would seem to prove his theory.  It was too large for a squirrel, and I could see it breathing, I watched it for quite a time, very quietly, and all it did was breathe and sleep.   

So here we are in the 3rd meadow, with the sun coming out again, with the soggy green and naples yellow patches, and the trees just beginning to put on their new clothes.

Day 89

Frosty morning.  This was taken about ten days ago, and is a reminder that the sun did once shine and will shine again, (hopefully) for all my Massachusetts friends who are tired of being wet and damp and soggy!

School again today, so no running, just a quick walk up the hill with the black dog as the dawn struggled through the drenching rain which is still falling!  We have had two 50-year rain-storms in a matter of two weeks!  The earth is soft and squishy and water rushes everywhere, tumbling down rooves, hurtling out of gutters in spouts, streaking windows, surfing across windshields, crossing the road in torrents at times.  Numerous roads and even part of Route 24, a highway, have been closed!  I wonder about my birds, and all the 'critters', the raccoons, coyotes, and others, what do they do, they have no warm dry houses in which to shelter, poor things. 

Tim is away in San Jose, so I had to do his chores (waking the boys and feeding the cat and cleaning out the litterbox, and, on Tuesday, walking the dog), and feed the piggy, all before I left for school at about 6.40. Amazing how some days you can get everything done in an organised way, and other days things just fall apart!  (Today was an organised day, except for my last 6th grade class, who must all have drunk coffee with mountains of sugar at lunchtime!) 

I had to drive into Boston to pick up my student's artwork from the Boston Globe Scholastic Awards, and forgot Tim's GPS.  I am not a fan of driving in the city but I had a look at the map beforehand and thought I could do it.  Sheets of rain accompanied me and of course on exiting 93N into the city I was immediately lost in Chinatown!  But I didn't allow myself one jot of panic, just calmly drove down streets in what I thought was the general direction of my destination, the State Transportation Building, thinking, how hard can this be really?  Eventually I found a place to stop, calmly took out the mapbook, found my location, and then managed to arrive at the building in a couple of minutes!  I was very proud of myself.

I had memorised the return route but found that when I came out of the parking garage, I couldn't turn left into a one-way street, so again, kind of flew by the seat of my pants and recognised landmarks and streetnames, and places we have often walked, and now I know that I could drive there easily again, with no GPS or directions, the route has joined the Massachusetts map in my head, one of many maps.  This is a downfall of technology, a lot of it tends to 'dumb us down'.  I have been there twice before, following the GPS voice telling me what to do, just following the directions without any thought, blindly, like a mole.  I know that before GPS systems, taxi-drivers in London, for example, actually grew a whole piece of their brains, in the mid-posterior hippocampus, which is associated with navigation in birds and animals,  because of the enormous amount of information they needed to retain in the map in their heads.

So here are some of the maps in my head, a learning spanning fifty-five years, crossing continents and oceans, part of the map of my life.

Day 88

Tim and I went for a walk yesterday evening in the biting cold of Singing Beach.  All our lives together when we walk anywhere, we have often played that walking game where you try to get our two pairs of legs to go in a uniform way.  My way is our outside legs in synch, Tim's is the opposite, with our legs marching like soldiers, right leg, left leg, all together now!  So, in order to get the legs to go your way, you perform all kinds of hops, skips and jumps to try to fool the other person, with much merriment ensuing! 

In Grahamstown, our little town in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, we used to walk home from the cinema, about a mile, and play the game the whole way, finally reaching home utterly giggled out and exhausted, our stomach muscles aching from an overdose of hilarity.  Yesterday evening, Tim started it, and we were soon warm and laughing our heads off along the freezing beach.  Two people began walking towards us, but after observing us shrieking with laughter and falling about, they abruptly turned around and hurried back to their car. 

Water water everywhere - a state of emergency in Massachusetts, as people prepare once again for flooding, evacuations, surging rivers.  It is the wettest March in living memory, apparently, more than 11 inches already!
Water again, the wondrous, awesome (in the true sense of the word), power of water.

So my drawing today is of my morning cup of tea made each morning with water and some help from tea-leaves and spices, honey and milk.  It's a quick little drawing because it is late and I am tired and must get up very early tomorrow morning.

Day 87

If of all thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And two loaves to thee alone are left
Sell, one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

Molly and I ran 2.41 miles (3.87km) in about 30 minutes today, I had a creaky neck and stiff ankles when I began, but everything loosens up after the first km, the arms swing out and back, the feet flex and point, as I propel myself forward in the common running gait of homo sapiens. 

Molly is definitely getting old, even running behind me now is a bit much for her legs, although she is gallant enough and obviously loosens up as I do, but her left front leg in particular is becoming quite arthritic.  There were robins flying up from the meadow-grass into the tall trees and scolding us for trespassing today.  It was warmer, 39F (3.8C)

I met a couple yesterday who are completely tattooed, their entire torsos, with very colourful tattoos, and they were talking about taking their little boy to his swimming lessons at the Y, the parent/child swimming lessons where you actually get into the water with the child.  How people stare at them and feel sorry for their son.  I am intrigued by body-painting, and body-jewelry, but these can all be taken off, can be changed.  But to tattoo your body so radically like that is so permanent, something that lasts for the rest of your possibly very long life. I think I would get so tired of it.  And as your body becomes wrinkled and old, the pictures would change and wither too.

Thinking of the girl with the cats for eyebrows, I was imagining if everyone had animal tattoos on their brows instead of eyebrows, how amazing we would all look.  How we would influence one another, and it could be a rite of passage when children came of age, like a bar mitzvah.  Your spirit animal forever indelibly marked on your face.  So here is my image for today - my spirit animal, of course, an elephant. 

Just think, every time you looked in the mirror the most prominent thing you would see would be your spirit animal, you wouldn't worry about your big nose or your small mouth or your low hairline, your animal would comfort you in its familiarity, it would bind you to the other inhabitants of this earth.

Day 86

Angelina Ballerina!  12 weeks old!

This is a picture Tim took of her smiling at me, standing straight up on her feet in that practicing way small babies do, long before they can possibly hold up their top-heavy bodies on those little frog legs.  Such a dear little thing, completely alert and sociable, interacting with each person who holds her, telling them her stories, vocalising in the universal bird-like language of babies.

Molly and I ran 2.36 miles (3.79km) today, again in freezing weather, 27F (-2C), although it looked beautiful with a bright sun shining, and in the meadow it was quite warm.  But I actually prefer running in the cold, because I get so hot, always ending up just in a vest and sweatpants, my arms bright red from the cold, but feeling strong and warm inside. 

I have been noticing people's eyebrows, and how different everyone's are, like little Angelina's, so perfect and just a thin layer of hairs over the arch of the brow.  And my dad's, big and bushy and curly by the time he was an old man.  Some are plucked out of all recognition, some are archways, others straight as a caterpillar.  Apparently your eyebrows never stop growing, fueled by hormones or the lack thereof, and nor do your ears and your nose, something to do with cartilage growing or losing its elasticity.

But back to eyebrows.  Standing in the shower this morning I marvelled at how my eyebrows protected my eyes from the water at most angles.  Which is one of the main reasons we have them apparently, so that we can plod through the rain.

Also, we have sebaceous glands just beneath our eyebrows and this means that our scent is continually being broadcast via our eyebrows!  So that when a strange dog tries to lick your face in greeting, he is actually trying to sniff and lick your eyebrows!

Looking up images of eyebrows on the internet, I found this girl with plucked eyebrows and drawn-on cats!  Well, I hope they are drawn-on, and not tattoos!