Same Bugs, Different Ponds

S, a fellow ode-o-phile, invited me to meet her at friends' ponds on another part of the mountain.

Same elevation, different water, same bugs. (Nineteen species I counted.)

We wondered aloud what makes the difference between there and here (I have seen some odes she hasn't, and she has seen some I haven't).

Like the experts, we have no idea.

But we enjoyed the outing, the beautiful weather, and the generosity of her friends.

That is . . . until I helped flush (unintentionally) a newly emerged ode about which she was curious, and a red-winged blackbird snagged it. Only a few feet in front of me. Despite my frantic screaming (cursing, really) and arm-waving.

Sometimes ode-watching hurts.

Just What I Needed

A short but terrific visit with old friends Sue and her daughter Jena. One of us looks slightly crazed, one of us has no lips, and one of us looks just as she is. I'll leave it to you to decide who's who.

No matter. I loved every minute!

A Letter to a Friend

Dear S,

I love the Cambridge garden photos you post, and the beautiful prints that your Iowa artist friend creates of trees, and animals, and flowers. I only wish I could grow such beautiful things, either in the soil or on the page.

Once a year, though, I think of myself as a gardener, or a forester, in spring when the flowering trees I planted all bloom: crabapple, Kwanzan cherry, dogwood, redbud. 

I made these few snaps for you today, just so you can see what are missing here.

I hope your spring is just as beautiful!

Your friend,
R

Shared Histories

A life is lived, especially these days for many of us, not just through time, but also through space and place: shared histories of childhood with family and first friends, with mates in clubs or armed service or causes, with peers in school, at work places with colleagues and clients, associates or students, patients or collaborators, in towns and countries scattered far from first home.

Few in my generation live the long life, spent mostly in one neighborhood or village of one larger city, associating with one large circle of acquaintances and friends through school into adulthood, in varied civic and personal and professional associations.

I thought about that kind of long life today, sitting in a pew next to a high school/college friend, in front of high school school mates, behind camp friends as we and others celebrated the death of a friend's father, friend to my own deceased father, and I dizzied when someone said, "She's Betsy's first oldest friend." 

"It isn't entirely true," I said.

But then I remembered the names of two our forebears carved on the same commemorative First Settlers stone in one 17th-century New England town, and marveled at the lineage we share.

Something More Beautiful Than Bugs

So many bugs today!

But some things are even more beautiful: old friends!

All That Glitters

The Paradise Gardens mirror house dizzies, inside and out. Reflections of reflections and windows on the gardens outside tumble and turn in a kaleidoscope of impressions and memories: a newer friend just beyond holding a bob-tailed orange cat, striped like my first kitten; displayed art in the new addition from a collection owned by friends of a an older friend; and so many visions of friends dead and lost to time and space, all of whom experienced Rev. Howard Finster with me some thirty years ago.

I did not expect the returning beauty of an environment I have long loved.

Nor did I expect the cathartic smack of nostalgia: a million pieces all in one. 

Day 26: Another Day That Changed My Life

There is strange comfort sleeping in my friends' home where love and loss commingle, one coming into focus, then another, like the lace across my bedroom window, while downstairs one cares for the other, and upstairs I think on both.

Day 7 of 40: Another Day That Changed My Life

I opened the door to flowers and behind them smiling faces. "We're your neighbors across the street. Come to supper tonight!" I did and by the time I left (late) I was -- Yes Jesus! as he likes to say -- fambly.

 

At the Halls

like old friends,
daffodils --
veined, thinning --
grow still
more beautiful 
& vibrant 
even as they
age, nod, & fall
over the lip
of vase.

Of Good Friends and Sugar

Each year, my generous New Orleans friends the Joneses, whose three daughters I once taught, send me two generous gifts: a smoked turkey at Christmas and a king cake at Mardi Gras. The sugar blast arrived today, and my first slice (second bite) offered up the biggest baby -- butt first -- I have ever seen. 

I commend the baker for staving off unintended choking and lawsuits, not just by the warning on the package, but by the size of this fat baby. No mistaking this one for a crunchy bit of cake.

I don't do Mardi Gras. (I didn't do it when I lived in New Orleans for more than 20 years, unless one counts completing taxes and trimming the hedge on Fat Tuesday as "doing Mardi Gras.") But I sure do king cake . . . and I celebrate good friends!

Veins

A close friend of my neighbor -- a Mississippian by birth, New Yorker by longest residence, now Tennesseean -- lives only a block from the New Orleans school where I taught for almost two decades and has just published an article about the garden of a country house oustide Nashville.  The wife of the house-owning couple went to summer camp with me.

My neighbor's husband -- a Tennessean by birth, New Yorker by longest residence, and now Tennesseean -- is a book editor, who has been in conversation with a famous photographer about her plans for a memoir about, among other things, her family.  She is my cousin.

Live in the south long enough as my family has -- one side beginning in the mid 17th-century and the other in the early 19th century -- and chances are connections like these are waiting to be seen, like chard veins glowing in morning sun.

Almost magic, like photosynthesis.

About Rain

On Facebook, old friends waxed nostalgic today about memories of our shared summer rains: steady drops popping on the Green River and creek, the smell of damp earth and musty growing things so thick and deep, sitting tucked into a poncho on the ground, the laurels twisted into an embrace above and around.

But the rain here, yesterday and today, brings only pinching melancholy, influenced perhaps by the absence of sharp angles of light to invite my camera. 

Only these, the wild peas sprouting along the Goat Track please me with their teary pink and white satin petals.  Beautiful, yes, but wet and wearing like longing for something of home.  My brother called his daughter, my niece, whom I miss and long to see, "Sweetpea," when she was a child, and it is she I see in these petals: they are beautiful.

Transportation Blues

I suppose I should be grateful: the 12-year-old Nissan Sentra has taken me 200,000 miles at  very little cost.  However, it refuses to move even after $500-worth of repairs only two and a half weeks ago.

Grateful is not the first word to leap to mind.  At least not for my car, but certainly it is for my friend Jill who has let me borrow her truck till the "newer" car arrives.

Sewanee is the kind of place where the transportation blues can be friended away.

My Senses Shook

The air moistening and the sky graying, I thought I should leave the lake without making the full loop, but pressed on anyway.  I think I am glad I did.

On the path to the beach, something rustled ahead, and I looked, glimpsed gray feathers, thought Heron! and tiptoed on, careful not to startle the bird.  Closer, I focused on its head, the one yellow eye, the beak, and thought I could continue to sneak without frightening it.   Only much closer did I realize it seemed stuck in a vine, struggling to get to safety into the woods.  It flopped over, opened its wide wings, closed the left one, and sort of lumped onto the leaves.

Then I knew: it was injured.

I ran to the car, drove to Lynne's house (she had saved an owl and would know what to do).  We went to the lake, and she saw what I had missed: blood along the edge of the path.  She called Margaret (Margaret rescues birds) at two different numbers, found a message at both.  Then she called Lucia, who knew David's phone number, which Lynne called.  No answer.  We drove to David's house, rang the bell, but only Junebug answered with vigorous barking.  Then we went to the shop to get the cell number for Sarah, David's wife.  She didn't know where he was, but she would let him know. 

Within the hour while I readied for work, they returned to the bird.  David picked it up, found the leg torn away right into the bone, and moved the heron further into the woods.  Later, he dispatched it, writing "the heron's end was swift and probably painless.  Let's hope wherever its life goes after here is less broken."

Yes, let's hope.  And let's thank those who came to the rescue as a result of my chance encounter, one that has left "my senses shook," as Richard Wilbur wrote in "The Groundhog."

I shall miss watching that Great Blue Heron fish in the shallows.

Connections, Virtual and Otherwise

Friday: a day filled with visitors.

First, Devon, a former student about to begin his fourth year at The University of St. Andrew's. Three years ago, when he took a reading elective with me, he read all of an epic in Scots about Robert The Bruce. Now, he's living in and loving Scotland. What a good young man he is.

Then, a young woman with two mutual friends. In town for a wedding, she, her husband, and her mother came to the shop for gifts. Somewhere in the conversation, I realized that she was here for Lori Beth's wedding. At that moment, our mutual friend called, and the young woman handed me the cell phone. I challenged Lori Beth to identify me, which she did, and in the middle of our conversation, I realized I didn't know the name of the young woman in front of me. When I asked, she said "Ebba." I laughed and said I know your old camp friend Whitfield. Ebba completed the phone conversation and then said, "Are you Dr. Hood?" Next, she called Whitfield, so I could chat with her. Almost as soon as we finished, Lori Beth walked in the door. What fun!

Third, Catherine and Florence, who arrived, as planned, from Bell Buckle for lunch and a visit. Such delightful women -- funny, smart, kind, active, interested, and interesting. Lunch at the Blue Chair preceded our visit to the university gallery. They enjoyed Julie's Cloudmapping show as much as I did. We moved on to the Community Garden, where they spent time bending and remarking on this plant and the next. (Both are master gardeners.) They agreed that the garden is a local treasure. Finally, they consented to one photograph in front of The Lemon Fair's garden, which they had admired upon arrival. By the time I got home later in the evening after my weekly movie night with Boo, I was reminded of the power of connections that surprise and extend over time and place and break down the barriers of age in ways I could never imagine.

Ain't life grand! as my father used to say?

A Lesson for the Fourth

In 1988, I taught eighth-grade English for the first time. One of my fifteen or so students was a Vietnamese girl who had arrived with her father in the U.S. only about 9 years earlier. She proved to be a fine student and a life-long friend. Now completing her Ph.D. in business, Anh and her friends Tina and Fumi, a couple who marry in a month, spent two nights and a day to celebrate the Fourth of July with me in Sewanee.

Anh is not just a survivor (she and her father were among the "boat people" refugees), but a hard-working, grateful, kind, companionable, and accomplished individual. She and her friends (one Austrian and one Japanese, both new professors) represent one thing July 4 celebrates: our country's strength in diversity and freedom.

An Old Friend and a New One

On an unseasonably cool day, scrambled eggs with onion, cheese, and tomato served enchilada style with homemade salsa, good coffee and cream, a rainbow-striped umbrella, and an old friend and a new one -- these compromise the recipe for a lovely lunch. Eugenie, a former student of mine from 30+ years ago in New Orleans, and Bob (her new husband) traded their porch in the Monteagle Assembly for my deck for an hour or so this afternoon.

The rewards of slow living are many, today's visitors among them.

Hanging Out

There was a time when I enjoyed hanging out with a small crowd -- mostly while I was in college and then after, always with theater friends. People who don't do plays assume that those who do are somehow "different" and "Bohemian." I've always found that they're creative . . . yes . . . but also highly intelligent and normal and stimulating.

Today, in Nashville on an errand, I passed one of my all-time favorite former hangouts: Brown's Diner. Despite the satellite dish on the roof, the old trailer looks just as dingy as it did when I hung out there more than 40 years ago with my Vanderbilt friends.
We drank beer and ate thick chili and talked. We didn't do drugs and we didn't flunk out and we didn't "party" all the time the way many college students do today. We made good grades and worked hard every afternoon and evening at the old Garland Theater. And when we played, we did so with each other. We loved each other like family.

I miss those easy days of college and those old friends. I don't know where most of them are, but I do know that three died young. When I drove by Brown's, though, I could hear their laughter and see their wide smiles and remember what can be special about any greasy spoon.

I'm glad Brown's is still there, and I'm glad others love it, too.

Mango Chutney

A delicious complement to simply cooked chicken (baked or stir-fried) is mango chutney. Mine is homemade and given to a friend (she who feathers her next) for Christmas. Because my friend doesn't like sweet condiments with meat, she gives me the chutney (when she remembers to).
I am grateful for the mango and meat, and for my thoughtful friend, and for hers.

The Nourishment of Friendship

I've been blessed with the nourishing force of friendship over the last several days .

I am now an honorary member of McGehee's Class of 1977, thanks to my continuing relationships with a set of girls I once taught and still love. Their humor and strength as they face a significant age marker have lifted my spirits.
A more recent (though no less valued) friend re-gifted me with a whole, spiral-cut ham, providing thirteen freezer bags of delicious protein when my larder is low. A slice sure made a great middle for my eggs and toast at lunch.
Several months ago, a truly local friend told me about a new Chattanooga charter school (Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy), which sponsored a recruiting session this morning. There, three dynamic women spoke powerfully about the betterment of young women's futures through education. Their passion, vision, and commitment sparked the spirits of every educator in the room.

Taking part in the venture of living: friendship.