Category — Life

My previous body of poetry consists of the following, penned when I was eight:

Once there was a pickle
Who rode on a bicycle
With tired feet he headed
To the pickle jar which he dreaded

No Mary Oliver in the making, needless to say.

And so it is with trepidation that I offer the poem below, which did not start as a poem, which was not intended as such. But when I wrote the prose sentences, which were meant to set out and examine the contrasts and contradictions I feel (and I am betting most of us do), it felt as if the phrases and clauses needed separation, so I began placing them on different lines. And this happened. Which is a poem? Oh gee, be kind, my friends.

Suppose you crave both adventure and domesticity,
the call of the dirt path
and the gravitational pull of the garden,
the magic of awakening in a tent
and the delight of luxuriating between soft linen?

Suppose you spark to spontaneity
but love making lists?
Suppose you love to go-go-go
but are drawn to stop and wonder?

Suppose you want to lose yourself
but also find yourself,
go out into the world without a backstory
but excavate your own past?

Suppose you want to be visible and invisible?

Suppose you want to be loved but left alone?

                                              Instructions for living a life:
                                              Pay attention.
                                              Be astonished.
                                              Tell about it.
                                          –from “Sometimes,” Mary Oliver

Pay Attention. Hiking a section of the Ridgeline Trail yesterday, I saw a man coming toward me up one of the switchbacks. It was a crisp morning. It had rained the day before, and the forest was intensely, blindingly  green; the air, heavenly. (FYI, petrichor is the descriptive word for that scent.) The birds were not “chirping” or “tweeting.” They were singing songs. As the man approached, I saw that he was staring at his phone. The path is narrow. He would have run into me had I not said “good morning.” He looked up briefly, looked down, continued on.

Be astonished. Every day, I mean every day–I am not exaggerating for literary purposes here—when I drive down the hill into town, I look to my right and see the Three Sisters, part of the Cascade mountain range. More likely during five months of the year, I see a soft landscape of flannely fog or a thick gray layer of sodden clouds that obscure the mountains I know are there. A half-mile later, I look to my left over a deep valley, and I see the smaller peaks of the coastal range. Or flannely fog or thick gray clouds. And I think: I see beauty every day that some people never see. I see beauty I never imagined growing up in a raw suburb carved out of erstwhile potato fields. (My mother dubbed our home “sheetrock rambles, PotatoFields, USA.”) And I say, generally out loud, because I talk out loud to myself in the car: I will never take this for granted.

Tell about it. Um, yes. Here I am.

I read Mary Oliver’s “Sometimes” sitting on a rock on the banks of the Umpqua last week. The river is so clear you can see the rocks beneath the surface. On my side of the river, the forest is lush with Doug fir, hemlock, incense cedar. On the other side, the Archie Creek Fire of 2020, which hopscotched the land and burned more than 130,000 acres, reduced the forest to blackened spears, an otherworldly landscape that has a chilling beauty to it. You can hear the river. There are rapids just a hundred yards away. I sat there for a good, long while. Emphasis on the good. And I also read this poem:

                         We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
                         What a time they have, these two
                         housed as they are in the same body.
                          –“We Shake with Joy,” Mary Oliver

My sadness about “losing” Tom is not what you think.

First of all, I did not lose him. I know where he is. Some of him is in the orchard under the Fuji tree we planted 25 years ago. Some of him is in a wooden bird house/ urn on top of the piano he loved to play and was much better at than he thought. But most of him is…how to describe this without seeming more mystical than I really am?…most of him is just HERE, in the crisp air of the morning, in the warm air in the afternoon, in the garden watching me weed, above the meadow where he straddled the riding mower he had to repair every season, earbuds in, listening to some impossibly dense science-y book, traversing the rocky, rolling terrain. The Lawn Ranger.

Also, here’s something that those of you who don’t know me well (which, in truth, would be everyone reading this other than maybe three people) will find hard to believe or will consider me delusional or distressingly stoic: I am not lonely. Yes, the person I lived with so long that I can hardly remember when we didn’t live together, is not corporeally present. (How’s that for wordsmithing?) But I have always loved being alone, from childhood on. I have always gravitated toward solitary pursuits: writing, reading, hiking, biking, gardening. Thinking.

But as I greet each morning by walking out to the garden, as I examine the fruit trees for signs of this year’s harvest, as I walk around the house and admire the blooming rhodies, as I water the plants around the deck, I think: Damn, you are missing this, Tom. This is the good part. This is the result of all our hard work. We put in a quarter of a century—a quarter of a fucking century—working to make this shaggy five-acre plot of second- and third-growth Doug fir and white oak (with the usual tangle of vine maple and invasive blackberry) into something quite special. Not “park-like,” not overly groomed or meticulously landscaped, but home. Ours. And I am sad because, unlike me, you are not reaping the benefits.

But then, up there, out there, everywhere, maybe you are.

This one’s for you, T.

Driving the backroads through Scio, Sublimity and Silverton, Willamette Valley farmland, green, alive, so quietly beautiful that I have to stop the car by the side of the narrow road to catch my breath (and, okay, dab my eyes). Pastures, orchards, vineyards, little tree farms, sheep, rolling hills. For the thousandth, millionth time since I moved here four decades ago, I think: This is my home. This is my home. I am a Willamette Valley girl.

I remember when I first set foot Oregon. I stayed in a tiny, hand-made cabin at a long-established commune out Fall Creek where the folks made dulcimers and gardened in the nude. They had goats and made goats’ milk yogurt and ice cream. There was an 18-month-old who ran around diaperless and peed everywhere. There was a startlingly beautiful 20-something man who whacked at weeds wearing a flowing dress he had designed and sewn himself.

After a few days, I made my way into Eugene where I strolled down 13^th Avenue. I was walking past the House of Records when I was suddenly overcome with this feeling. It overtook mind and body. Oh, and spirit too. Not to be overly dramatic. But it was overly dramatic. That was the precise moment I felt…at home. That was the moment I said to myself: Ah ha, this is how people feel when they feel at home. I had never felt that before. I had lived various places in New York, Illinois, and California, some of which I had hated, some of which I had liked, none of which I had loved.

Later that afternoon I sat with a cup of herbal tea at Mama’s Homefried Truckstop where a guy with a guitar was singing John Denver’s Country Roads. I didn’t like John Denver. And Country Roads was about West Virginia. But when that guy sang, “take me home to the place where I belong,” I was a goner. To belong. I didn’t know I was (cliché alert) waiting to exhale. But I was. Although I have traveled a lot through the years, although it was necessary to live other places before I was able to return to Eugene, I have never wanted to live anywhere else.

I think, with all due respect to my husband of three decades and the (very few) other men to whom I have said “I love you” –and excluding my children because my love for them comes from an entirely different, unfathomly deep place—it may be that the love affair of my life is with the Willamette Valley, with my home.

I awake in the cool of the morning to birdsongs, and for a long moment I think of nothing. How wonderful this is. I don’t even think about how wonderful this is. I am neither happy nor unhappy. I just am.  I breath and listen. Breath and listen.

And then too quickly, the world rushes in. Of course, it does. And I worry. I worry about a person I care about who is having a hard time. I worry about Henry and his spiky fever. I worry about wildfire season and the war in Ukraine and whether Geoffrey Hinton is right and AI will destroy our species. I worry about the hard right. I worry about the drip line I ran over with the mower yesterday. I worry that my cat is mentally ill. I worry that my agent will not find a home for the new book. I worry that sometimes I forget to worry about things I should worry about. I worry that I worry too much.

And then I hear the birds. And I breath. And for a long moment, I think of nothing.

This, my friends, if you can’t hear the birds in the morning: https://insig.ht/YZyKPuvyfAb

Does sharing an experience make it sweeter, deeper, more meaningful?

When I was part of a bonded pair, when I had Tom, I never really thought about this. So very many experiences were shared—not just the dailiness of life but the epic Pacific to Atlantic camping trip, the Canada to Mexico camping trip, all those European adventures, those months in Crete, the miles we put on exploring Tallin and Riga, getting hopelessly dangerously lost in Istanbul, that magical week and a half in Iceland, that trip to Costa Rica, our last, when Tom was between chemo infusions. But we also took many solo trips, some for research or work, others because we enjoyed different things, had different interests, because we needed a break from each other, because really I don’t know why. We just did.

When I was by myself traveling in central and eastern Europe, when I was invited to spend time in Doha, when I ventured several times to Mexico, I didn’t wonder if I was missing something by being alone. I chose to be alone. I wanted to be alone. I needed to be alone. And I knew, upon my return, someone was there to welcome me home and listen to my stories. Thus, some of those solo experiences were, indeed, shared—in the telling if not in the moment.

Now there is no one sitting at home wondering how or what I’m doing. There’s no one waiting for my stories. Out and about, when I see something—that orange-ringed headless snake on the hiking trail yesterday, that inky storm cloud taking up half the sky this morning—I don’t say to myself I can’t wait to tell Tom about this.

You would think this makes me sad.

But this is not a sad story. Do I wish he were still alive? Of course I do. But his not being here, his not being available to share random moments of discovery or beauty, weirdness, humor, disgust, whatever, means I stay in those moments longer. I inhabit them rather than immediately make stories out of them to share. And so, in this way, the lack of the option to share an experience deepens, sweetens, and makes more meaningful that experience.

This is what I tell myself.

Birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s last words were, “A party! Let’s have a party.”

Physicist, author, musician, and professor Richard Feynman’s last words were, “This dying is boring.”

When murderer James W. Rodgers was put in front of a firing squad in Utah and asked if he had a last request, he replied, “Bring me a bullet-proof vest.”

Who knows, really, how much of this is fiction, or legend. We love this idea of “famous last words,” hoping that those who are about to die can impart some special wisdom. Or offer a glimpse into their soul.

But how many of us have heard the last words of those we love? Most people in this country die in hospitals or other health care facilities. Loved ones may or may not be there at “the moment.” Who knows when “the moment” will occur anyway? Many people die tethered machines or heavily sedated, unable to communicate. Very very few die awake, aware, articulate—and know we are about to die.

The year Tom died, he was one of 238 Oregonians who used legally prescribed medications to end their lives. (383 were reported to have received the medications). He was awake, aware, articulate. He was very much himself. Just himself fatally ill. Years ago, when I had no clue this would touch my life, I wrote about Oregon’s pioneering Death with Dignity legislation for the LA Times, I thought only about how powerful it was for the person with the terminal illness to be able to take control at the end. The force of that, the comfort of that. I did not think about what this might mean to those around the dying person.

So let me tell you: It is a privilege and a blessing. It is something beyond powerful. It is something beyond “’til death do us part.” It is, perhaps, the reason I emerged from Tom’s death not only not broken, but stronger. Wounded, yes, but also simultaneously healed. It is the reason my grieving “process” defied all those “5 stages of…” “6 stages of…”

It is the reason I react so viscerally to those who say, “I am sorry you lost your husband.” Because I did not lose him. I know exactly where he is. He is under the Fuji apple tree. He is in a wooden urn that looks like a bird feeder on top of the piano he loved to play. And he is everywhere.

His last words, said to me and the children, gathered around the bed that evening were (typical Tom science-guy): “Remember, energy is neither created nor destroyed. I am energy. I will be here. Use me.”

Actually, those were his next-to-last words. His final words, right before he drank the first liquid that would put him in a coma (the second would stop his heart 48 minutes later): “I am off on a great adventure.”

*This image was taken (or “made” as photographers say) the morning of Tom’s death.

Spring is an odd time to be writing about loss. Spring is, after all, the season of gain: more daylight, more heat, more color, more wildflowers, shoots and buds and blossoms, more rabbits and foxes and (ugh) deer–and more energy, the special, crazy, optimistic kind that overtakes the backyard gardener who thinks: yes, this will be the year I can grow a cantaloup bigger than an orange; yes, this will be the year the slugs drink (and drown in) beer before they feast on the snap peas.

And yet, the reality of loss does not evaporate in the spring sunshine. Sometimes, unexpectedly, unbidden, the spring sunshine does the opposite: It illuminates the loss. Like seeing the first blossoms on the apple trees out in the orchard, and all of a sudden remembering that year we rented an old-fashioned wooden press and made our own cider. Like out mowing the lawn, and all of a sudden seeing a mirage on the meadow. He is out there riding the mower wearing the only hat that fits his oversized head, the one I bought him at least a decade ago. He’s listening to some audio book to drown out the drone of the engine. One year I gave him a card with a cartoon of a guy on a riding mower, “the lawn ranger.” Like putting on the filthy old barn jacket, his, to go out and check on the chickens and finding a balled up tissue, his, in the pocket (with, according to the New York Times, “copious amounts of [his] DNA.”)

I am re-reading Susan Cain’s Bittersweet. I read it as I eat dinner, most often fish and a plate of the roasted vegetables he hated. That’s the bitter (he’s not here to tell me how much he detests Brussel’s sprouts and that cauliflower is overrated) and the sweet (I get to eat them all I want).

Which brings me to page 227 in Cain’s book and this sentence: “The idea is not to paper over your loss…the idea is smaller than that, yet also grander: that after all the grief and loss and disruption you are still—you always will be—exactly who you are.”

And so I am.

“Woke,” someone recently wrote, is wrong-headed. This was not a MAGA screed. It was an eye-opening criticism of the past tense. Awakening is more like it. This speaks to the truth—and power—of the present participle, the -ing verb form that signals continuity, the ongoing nature of the act. The process.

I am in the process of awakening. It has been hard to awake to the notion of my privilege because growing up female did not imbue me with a sense of privilege. It was/ is about fighting for a place at the table, staying alert to danger, avoiding the male gaze, toeing the line between assertive and bitch. And now, as an old(er) female, whatever privilege I may have somehow gained by “achieving,” by playing by enough of the rules to stay under the radar, that privilege is frail and withered, like our toxic ageist stereotypes.

So, I am awakening, not woke. I am in the (life-long) process of understanding the privilege of my whiteness (thank you, Sterling), the privilege of my heterosexuality (thank you, Shelley), my CIS-genderedness (thank you, Jamie), my “appropriately sized” bodiness (thank you, Roxanne).

This morning, on my (almost daily) hike in the woods, I thought about another kind of privilege: the privilege of geography. This has been written and talked about in important ways: those who live in dangerous places and the privilege of those who inhabit safe(r) environments, those who live in food deserts and the privilege of those with access to healthy food and those. I understand the privilege of geography. I am awake to it on these walks in the woods: spotting the wildflowers, marveling at the profusion of trillia, breathing damp, foggy air, pounding all that needs to be pounded back to Pachamama, the silence, the uncomplicated-by-religion spirituality of it all.

I am overcome with privilege. I am delirious with privilege.

What you are doing right now?

I know one answer: You are reading this essay. Or at least you are reading this sentence that states you are reading this essay.

Did I already lose your attention? In between that sentence and this one, did you:
.Get a buzz on your phone that sidetracked you to a text?
.Get a ping on the laptop that signaled an incoming email that you knew would be garbage, but you had to check it out anyway?
.Have an irresistible urge (meaning you could not resist it, so you did it) to check your Facebook feed?
.And, while scrolling through the heavily curated snippets of other people’s lives, did you find your attention diverted to a reel that took you on a tour of an Emirates first-class cabin? A kitchen hack you will never ever use?
.But was intriguing enough for you to Google it and watch a YouTube?

And then, on your way to the kitchen to brew a cup of tea, you saw out the window, that the cherry tree had popped. So, you had to grab your phone and take a picture. And then, that image was so lovely you just had to post it on your IG account. And as you hashtagged it #springishere, you thought: Shit, spring is here. I need to check out lettuce and broccoli starts at Down to Earth (or whatever your local garden store is). And so, you went to that website.

And now, maybe you are back here, in my literary clutches again. Until I lose you. I mean, wouldn’t it be nice to listen to some music right now? Maybe this? Or perhaps this?

Back again? If I may have your attention for a moment. If we can, in fact, focus our attention for a moment: It is fascinating/ harrowing/ enlightening to focus on how we can’t. Focus, that is. How distracted we are, how easily distracted. How we used to be able to concentrate but find it harder now. How deeply embedded in this non-stop, amped up, constantly accelerating world of information we find ourselves. And how we just have to click over to Zappos right now to see if there’s a big sale on boots because, well, it’s spring. (Yes, I just did that, my friends.)

Here’s a book you may want to read, should read: Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again.

And now, go check that email. Because I am sure it is of vital importance. See you next Wednesday.