The Morning Blue Jay

Queedle, queedle! Queedle, queedle! Waaaaahhhhhhh! Jay! Jay! Jay! Jay! Jay! Queedle!

It must be 7:00. The blue jays are here.

Some people have schoolchildren walking by their houses on their way to the bus stop. Others have carpooling SUVs rumbling into their driveways to transport a batch to private school. Neighbors are walking their dogs in the frigid air of this early January morning.

We get the blue jays. They apparate when the coffee pot goes on, then land lightly on the deck railing to leer into the kitchen window.

‘WHERE ARE THE PEANUTS?”

I put my coffee cup down, slide the deck door open, pick up the bag of peanuts and step onto the deck in only my fleece robe and slippers. It’s the same thing every morning. After flinging a few handfuls of peanuts into the yard for the squirrels, I roll several dozen onto the deck railing from one corner to the other. Though we live in northern New Jersey, squadrons of blue jays seem to zoom in from all over the globe, hailed in by the crinkle of a peanut sack. They adorn the bare tree limbs like animated Christmas lights, dipping and hopping from one branch to another.

I finish placing the peanuts on the rail and step back. They know the signal. A jay plops onto the rail, crest at full alert and pins me in place with his black bead of an eye. I don’t move. He picks up a peanut, hesitates, then drops it. He picks up another and hops a few steps, then drops that to the ground too. He finally plucks another, and satisfied, darts to the nearest branch and jabs into it with his bill.

Within seconds, my vision is a swirling blur of blue and white wings. The flock no longer cares if I am there or not. They come from east, west, north, south. Wingsilver sounds fills my ears, intense, magical. Winter is serious business. No time to waste when there is food to be had.

A tiny gray Titmouse lights on the corner, eyes wide at the sudden cacophony in his airspace. He tilts his head, timid before the roiling blue jays, then cobs a peanut the size of his head. He flies into the thick junipers to pick his prize in private.

Within minutes, the circus is over, too late for the cautious crows that have just flown in like avian ambulance chasers. They watch, their intelligent gaze measuring the distance between danger and desire. Occasionally, one will brandish its way onto the deck, but only after I am back indoors and out of sight.

Which I am now, to continue my morning routine, and on to the workday.

Good morning!

Green Rites

Close the ice box door!

Don’t let the water run!

Turn the light off!

Use a rag, not a paper towel!

As a daughter of parents who grew up during the Depression, my three sisters, brother and I were living green more for financial reasons than environmental ones. But the concept is the same.

Don’t waste stuff.

We dusted the furniture with hand-me-down clothing that softened into gauze from laundering. No specially treated throwaway cloths.

The kitchen floor was scrubbed by hand with a mop, rags and soap. The rags were washed and put back in the hall closet to use again. No preloaded plastic bottle and disposable pad.

Left-over meals were scraped onto the plate for the dog, until my parents could afford dog food to mix in. Skippy lived until he was 16 years old.

My father cut the lawn with a push mower. We pulled weeds with our hands instead of spritzing poison. There were no little flags on the front lawn warning people not to stroll across it for fear of glowing in the dark. The lawn was green because of whatever decided to grow there, not because of what was forced upon it. If it was green, it stayed. If not, it fizzled in the July sun while we slurped frozen grape Kool Aid ice cubes on the front porch.

Now living green options have expanded. Now you can die green, which must have our ancestors guffawing and slapping their knees. ("Look, Mabel, they finally figured it out!") Having eschewed the idea of embalming, coffins and concrete vaults, I have always claimed that when it is my time to go, just dig a hole in the woods and toss my body in, as is, and pile in the dirt. Then, plant a native fruiting tree that will support wildlife, as nothing would please me more than to have my body fertilize a life that will itself impart life to others. My body will come full circle, just like carbon and energy are supposed to do.

Guess what? You can actually do this now! There are a few places popping up. My choice is Greensprings Natural Cemetery in the Finger Lakes Region in New York.

“Greensprings offers a sustainable and beautiful alternative to conventional cemeteries. It is a place of meadows and woodlands, where you may choose native trees and shrubs for planting on your gravesite, helping to restore the land to it natural state and providing shelter and food for wildlife.” http://naturalburial.org/

Not only is it geographically closest to me, it is also my preferred choice of habitat: maples, pines, and oaks; grasslands, fields, meadows. No manicured monoculture lawn, no towering chunks of granite. Just me and the sky, just me and the sun, me and the wind, me and the birds and bats and deer and bears and ants and mice and…life.

The Red Horse: Sometimes It's the Getting There

I have three days off from work. Three sun-drenched, glorious days away from meetings and deadlines, expectations and responsibilities. In my mind, I hear the clatter of a chain slip from a gate. The gate creaks open.

“It is time,” the voice beckons. “You can go now.”

I stumble out of bed. Comb my hair, plug Mr. Coffee into the wall, scoop Fancy Feast into bowls for the cats. My suitcase yawns on the stand. I start tossing: bird book, butterfly book, wildflower guide, binoculars, camera, film, notebook, pens, water, cheese, crackers, wine, and oh, a pair of pants and two tee shirts. Pack it all into the red Camry and kiss my husband goodbye. I am off to Elk Lake Lodge in the Adirondacks, my favorite place of retreat and renewal.

I push the garage door button. It rattles back in its tracks to reveal a brilliant morning. Suddenly, there is a strange silence. Is something wrong? I turn to look at the car. It was fine yesterday. All gassed up, oil changed, washed and ready to go. What could be the matter?

Then it happens. Before my eyes, the Camry slowly transforms itself. From the routine car driven blandly to work every day, the Toyota draws itself together and slowly, warily, shifts. The black tires lengthen into slender, powerful limbs. The scarlet hood narrows and arches into a muscled neck. The headlights blink and glisten with intelligence. Amazed, I watch the car morph into a seething, snorting red steed. Sparks fly as hooves paw at the concrete floor. By the time my husband comes downstairs to the garage and offers me the keys, the Camry has become a gleaming crimson charger, a powerful mare packed and ready for battle.

My husband doesn’t see this.

I grab a hank of mane and throw myself into the seat. As the key slides into the ignition, the mare gathers her bulk onto powerful haunches, ready to spring at my command.

I kiss my husband. “See you in a couple of days; I love you!”

“I love you too, be careful!

We trot primly up the driveway and slip past the hedges. The neighbor waves as she picks up her morning newspaper. I rein left. The mare responds, knowing what is to come.

We jog down the street and onto the local highway. A right turn onto the New York State Thruway North. There is no holding the mare back. I drop the reins to the buckle. She picks up the pace and stretches her legs into the growing strides that will eat up miles in minutes. She gallops hard and fast, her chiseled head held high as she scans the horizon, her tail a banner of joy. She bucks out once, twice, for the sheer thrill of her strength. I ride her lightly, the wind whipping my hair. I touch her flank with my leg, asking a question.

Her answer is immediate. She lowers her head into the reins and grabs the bit. Her back flattens beneath my weight and I grin, knowing this is the moment we have been waiting for. I lean down into her neck. We are of one body, one spirit streaming up the highway.

An explosion of power flashes from the red mare’s flying hooves. There is nothing to stop our flight or match our joy. Birch trees melt into maples and the maples into the towering white pines of my beloved north woods.

We gallop for hours. We speed past lumbering tractor trailers, SUVs, summer campers, motorcycles. We race by towns and hamlets, streams and rivers. Only the threat of a state trooper drops the mare into a light canter before she snorts back into her flying stride.

We pull off at Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and slow to a trot through the town, then pick up the pace along Route 9 to our final destination. Hemlocks feather the highways. A loon laughs as the sun climbs higher in the sky.

Thus we arrive at Elk Lake Lodge, where everyone thinks I am driving a red car.

Winter Break

Of Books and Birds

Uuuluuuuuluuuuuwhoooooo….

Loons!

I did not know they would be here.

Standing before Elk Lake, I closed my eyes and waited. I had come to this vacation lodge in the Adirondacks to step off the world for a few days. I came to lose myself in the pungent pines, to relish the rush of a mountain stream after a storm. I came for solitude. I was not expecting the magic of loonsong.

There were five of the birds: a mated pair, their young and two others swimming nearby. As they hunted for small fish, they kept track of each other through long ululations that called forth a wild vestige in me, some deep memory of what it was to hunt naked through the woods and call for a mate left behind.

I turned to watch a woman walking barefoot to the lake and carrying a small book. She turned the pages as she stepped onto the beach.

“Look,” I said, pointing out to the middle of the lake where the birds were swirling, “The loons are right there; you can see them clearly with my binoculars. Would you like to use them so you can see them better?”

She glanced up at the lake, then back at her book.

“Oh, no,” she answered, pointing to the binoculars. “I’m no good at those things.” She held her book up and offered it to me instead.

It was a small picture book about loons. She flipped forward a few pages, pausing a moment over a female bird with a loonlet curled on its back. The photographs were ripe with color. Creamy pages told the story of loon life with dramatic paragraphs about their imperiled life. There were descriptions of the effects of habitat destruction, and about how lakes like these were critical to their survival. The woman pointed all this out, then called her companions over to show them her prize.

I wanted to shout: Wait--Here is the real McCoy, right in front of us! Put the book down and be part of a moment that will never happen again. Let us be with the loon trumpeting in the twilight and share in this mystery together. But the group moved off, marveling over the book and its photographs.

The diamond backs of the birds glinted in the sunset. Three of them circled the dock. They held their bills like lances as they sailed directly at each other, almost touching before diving again. A distant yodel halted their circling. They vanished underwater, only to reappear closer to the beach.

The woman with the loon book was showing it to another couple at the dock. A man pointed at a picture.

Behind him flashed the brilliant glistening of wet loon.

A page turned.

The loon dove.

There were comments about wing patterns.

Another loon spread her wings and flapped at the darkening sky.

The book was passed around. A male loon half rose from the water and arched his neck, displaying his white necklace.

The crowd chatted on as the sun set. The birds circled farther out, shrouding themselves in darkness.

I stood still in the shadows, for one cannot lose themselves to loons while standing upright in a human world, but must surrender quietly in anticipation of a soaring yodel across all time. I saluted them silently, bade them good hunting and safe haven, then returned to the lodge in gratitude.

Segue

Segue. This word intrigues me. I heard it for the first time at a meeting. I thought it was spelled segway and looked it up in the dictionary, but since you have to know how to spell a word before you can look up how to spell it, I could not find it until I skimmed around and found it tucked in near the binding.

Segue, spelled segway, is a self-motorized scooter for the busy pedestrian who has no time to walk but enough to hop on a motorized version of a skateboard. Spelled this way, segue is segway. I don’t yet see the relationship between the meaning of segue and a segway, but then, I may be dull. It’s happened before.

Segway as segue means “to make a smooth transition from one item or topic to another”. In music, it is “to continue at once with the next musical section”, so there you have it—segue is a kind of graceful transition, a bridge, a carry-through to another topic.

“Nice segue” served as a wry reminder to me that there was none, as my friend pointed out when I coveted (out loud) a pair of earrings she was wearing when she was discussing the current political climate of their state capital. It’s not that I wasn’t listening, the earrings just grabbed my attention like a cat to a canary. I just pricked my ears and jumped.

My friend tells me they struggled in teaching their son how to move along in a group conversation without getting behind in his own thoughts, then jumping in and scaring everybody with something completely off topic. (She scared herself when she understood how he got there). But she felt it important enough that he learn this particular social skill so that he could come along in his little boat of conversational give-and-take without crashing alone on shore and being left abandoned. He was taught the need for “segue,” an introduction to what he was about to say, or at least an acknowledgement of the topics at hand before sailing forth with his own.

Segue seems to be following me around, leaping out from behind posts and from under tables like leprechauns. Now you see me, now you don’t. I’m wondering if it’s calling me to a transition of my own, a kind of nested segue, drawing me into the heart of a change in my life, or attitude, or maybe, I just need a new wardrobe.

White Bread

My husband and I have been married almost 14 years, which is still novice territory compared to my parents’ 63. Nevertheless, every anniversary is a milestone of love, friendship and the doe-si-doe of living with the same human being now for 5,110 days in a row. Give or take.

Some of the rough edges have softened. Early in our wedded bliss, he pointed out that I did not do a very good job of vacuuming. It broke my heart, but I handed over the Oreck and every week suffer silently as he undulates it under the dining room table and behind the sofa. And while I consider myself a pretty good cook, we all have our days of misery, so when he jokingly said after a zero dinner, “You’re fired!” I jumped up and shouted, “OKAY!”

He quickly recanted. I am still the chief cook.

My husband loves football. I love birding. He likes to putter around the garage, I like to go for long walks around the lake. We give each other space, which has gone a long way toward our longevity as husband and wife.

But I have a confession. There is one area where neither one of us has budged since the day we met. He is on his side of the fence; I am on mine. We both refuse to change. We don’t even meet halfway. We do not even try to understand the other’s view. There is NO compromise.

Here it is: we are not bread-compatible. If our marriage depended upon gluten choices, we would not be able to stay in the room together for one hour. Ken loves white bread. Pretty much any white bread, but he is partial to the brand that sags like limp leather. When he does the food shopping, he picks up the plastic bags of the brand he grew up with. “It builds your body 12 ways!” he laughs.

Give me a nice, chewy semolina to dip into garlic-infused olive oil, or a thick slice of beery pumpernickel. Offer me a rich rye with caraway seeds clattering onto the plate. Or cinnamon-raisin toast for breakfast with melting sweet butter streaming over your fingers. How about a steaming sour dough roll straight from the oven, or a fat slab of a Russian black? Pull off a chunk of a crusty baguette to dip into a hot chicken soup and slurp it into your mouth. Now, that’s bread worth bragging about!

My daily answer to Ken’s styrofoam? Gluten-free Ezekial bread, which is made from sprouted grains. No wheat or sugar. It’s no soggy sack of sponges either, but a loaf of robust, solid bread that’s ready to make a commitment. I have found it in two flavors: raisin and sesame (my favorite). You will find it in the religious section of your local supermarket freezer. Try it toasted—don’t forget the sweet butter.

Model Hands

More than eyes, the “windows to the soul," hands tell. They can be light and graceful, long and tapered, stumped and blocky, but like a favored pet, they take on the personality of their owner. They become the work they do and carry their own history in the process. The sandpaper palms of the bricklayer, the steely calluses of the fireman, the leather fingertips of the guitarist. “Surgeon’s hands” depicts the deft digits of a highly trained physician, while the long fingers of a performing pianist unfold like the fan of a peacock.

I recall a recent newscast where the host inteviewed a hand model. She reluctantly removed her protective cotton gloves and held her snow-white hands aloft, shifting them deliberately before the camera like doves struggling to be freed. Perfectly shaped fingers caressed each other in self-absorbed adoration, mystically astounded at their own beauty. The model watched this slow dance before her, fascinated that she alone possessed the Hope Diamond of Hands.

The interviewer struggled with amused annoyance at the woman’s undisguised conceit, and finally asked her to stop her ethereal performance so the camera could focus on its subject. She complied briefly. As she described her daily life, which was dedicated to hand protection, her palms pillowed open and her fingers spread open slowly like the wings of a swan. Her hands reigned over everything she did, or rather, didn’t do. She neither cooked nor cleaned; she carried exactly nothing, neither an umbrella when it rained, nor a sack of food when she was hungry. She never held a child’s hand, caressed a furrowed brow, or flicked a crumb from a loved one’s shoulder. She had never permitted an icy snowball to drip through her fingers, or grabbed at the rough bark of an oak tree while climbing through its branches. Those hands never folded warm towels from the dryer, nor did they know the velvet softness of a baby’s face. Her tapered fingers never wrapped themselves around a steaming cup of tea on a winter’s afternoon, and most assuredly, the fragrant loam of a sun-warmed garden had never soiled that petal-soft skin. Lovely hands atop the model’s pedestal arms, she carried them through the world like twin princesses on a bier.

To maintain the translucent paleness of her skin, the model held her hands above her chest, as if her heart were somehow unworthy and had to be kept on the other side of town. She could keep her hands available at all times, and respond quickly should any ointments, creams or worship be needed. This anemic position also eliminated any veiny, ropey signs of age, and, evidently, wisdom.

The interview ended with the model gazing rapturously at her starry anatomy. The disgusted newsman smiled dutifully into the camera, trying to keep his eyes from rolling to the top of his head. The session, with both the model and her hands, was finally over.

Crossover Souls

At first glance, I thought the woman kneeling in the weeds at the side of the road was petting a dog. Her hand stretched over a tawny lump as her hair swept across her face. So far, my morning had been routine. I was on my way to work. The unexpected sight of a woman kneeling in the bush made me pause. Was she hurt? Had she accidentally hit a dog? What a horror. It seemed to be a big dog; perhaps someone’s pet had gotten loose over a busy stretch of this commuter road. It is almost impossible to stop in those instants when an animal darts out in front of you. You sicken before it happens because you are about to feel a thump as your speeding tires strike a soft body. You think, if only I had been driving slower, or faster, or had stopped to put the cup in the dishwasher, pick the newspaper up from the driveway. Something, anything to change the bizarre march of time when suddenly two beings collide at the same moment in the same space. Coincidence. Maybe. What are the chances? And we shrug and say helplessly, stuff happens.

I felt a bond with this woman. She might need help. I spun my car around and raced back up the hill to find another woman had already stopped. She hurried out of her car and tucked her long blond hair behind her ears as she settled in the grass on the other side of the animal. A smear of mud stained the hem of her Ann Taylor pants. She reached out a hand also, looking for life.

It wasn’t a dog. It was a young doe. Her jaw leered at an impossible angle. The side of her face was bloodied. A liquid eye stared straight ahead. Her lean body was stretched out in the grassy bier as if in mid-leap. The two women had their palms on the doe’s shoulder and were stroking the coarse fur. They examined her ribcage, hoping for the rise and fall of life, then peered into her eyes, not wanting to see death. I knelt behind the first woman, placing one hand on her back and the other on the clean flank of the doe, completing the circle.

“I thought it was a dog,” the blond woman whispered.

“Me too,” I said. “I have a leash and towels in my car all the time, just in case.”

The blond woman glanced at her SUV. “I keep a crate in my car.”

The red-haired woman looked up, tears streaming down her face. “I have leashes too.”

She continued: “I didn’t hit her. As I drove up the hill on my way to work, she came staggering out from the woods on the other side of the road. I could see she was bleeding and pulled my car over, but then she fell here. Someone must have hit her and continued on when they saw her run off.”

We sniffed and nodded, examining the doe. There were old nicks and bite marks where the hair had not grown back, old scars from a life in the wild, but not a life far enough away from humans and traffic to be safe. Tufts of soft gray fur clung to our spring jackets.

“We should pray or something,” the red-haired woman wept. “This is so awful.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “We can pray.”

There was no question about religion, about what we should do or who should say something. There were no special garments beside the mud we were wearing, no gestures, no introductions. We were already kneeling. The only hope we had to move into the next moment of the day was to somehow make this one right.

So there we were; three of us, strangers kneeling in the grass and united in silent prayer, each with a palm upon an animal that had never before felt the touch of a human hand. We offered up the spirit of this doe to a greater soul, to a greater love, to a magnificent understanding. It was one of those amazing moments when souls crossed over, doe to woman, woman to woman, woman to God. An instant where you know exactly what to do, where to move, what not to say. An unexpected turn when three strangers unite and turn over their grief and vulnerability in order to trust each other in the moment. We mourned the loss of something innocent and beautiful and in so doing, became innocent and beautiful ourselves.

Do You See What I See?

On or around your 40^th birthday, the written word fades away. At the same time, your arms become shorter. Friends and family make snide remarks when asked to read the menus out loud. To avoid these unpleasantries, you must resort to the same solution used by your grandparents: Bifocals. And if you inherited the right gene, or spend hours staring at a computer monitor, you might even be forced into another layer called trifocals.

This is one of the most visible signs of having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. Trifocals mean you are old, man. But here is the good news: Great technological advances have been made to satisfy the blind and the vain. You can now buy these glasses without the horizontal Venetian blind look. They are called progressive lenses. Anyone looking at me will note I do not own a pair.

To be fair, I tried them. They made me dizzy. They gave me a headache. My peripheral vision was blurry unless I rocked my head up and down like a horse on a short rein. I went back to the store. It turns out the salespeople have heard these complaints before.

“Point your nose directly at what you want to see,” they advised. “In a few weeks you will adapt to them. “

Now, this seems to be a fine example of getting people to adapt to the product, rather than the other way around. Hurray for the manufacturer, who got us all to point our noses in the same direction. But when I am out walking, I really want to know if I am about to be creamed by an SUV without having to point my nose at it like a good retriever.

After a few more dizzying descents down our front stairs, I exchanged my new progressive lenses for the kind you can actually see through.

“A non-adapt,” the store owner pronounced. That did not sound good. I consoled myself with a decision to buy new frames.

I perused the display, and picked up a purple pair with lenses shaped in a gentle oval. The saleslady rushed over.

“Only old people wear those”, she hissed, “Don’t even think about buying them!”

I had to promise not to, just to try them on. Sure enough, they were light, airy and comfortable. I had to think about this. The eighty-year olds the saleslady so dreaded were the same people who survived World War II, the Holocaust, the dropping of the first atom bomb, Korea, Vietnam, terrorism, and clothing malfunctions. That said something about choices and the people who made them. It made me think the 80 year olds wearing these glasses might be on to something.

I left the store, but am looking forward to the day when I am 80 and still looking out at the world through a pair of purple trifocals. Being old and still smiling at a cruel world is an attitude worth adapting to.

Diabetic Cat?

Can you get diabetes from eating cat food?

The answer is yes, if you are a cat. It’s not caused by the cat food, either. Like people getting older, it can be one of those treats that are in store for all our aging bodies.

Wahoo.

Simba, our cat of questionable parentage, came into our lives as a ball of fighting fury 13 years ago when I discovered him shivering on a curb. After years of coddling and whispering sweet nothings in his ear, he has become our prince of peace. Simba is the one to greet me at the end of a workday. Simba is the one who comes first when I call, “Cookie time!” with the rest of the gang springing in behind. He is our Lion King, our knight errant, our 10 lb sugarloaf on four legs.

With diabetes.

We whisked him off to the vet as soon as we noticed he was not himself (when my husband or I will lie half-dead on the couch before calling in a doctor). He had slowly been losing weight and become a tad lethargic. He hadn’t raced across the ceiling in weeks. But he’s older now, we reminded ourselves. Older cats can’t do the same things they used to (sound familiar?). But when he developed a maniacal craze to sip water from the bathroom tap, we said, off to the vet!

The vet called within 24 hours with the results of the blood test. “Simba is trying to be a diabetic,” she said. “We’ll try to manage it with his diet first. If that doesn’t do it, we will use a little medication. If he still doesn’t respond, we can use insulin injections, like people do, which is very easy to do in cats.”

I must digress here by saying that I have been using vets for my dogs and cats for over 30 years, and have decided I am going to place myself under their care. I can usually get an appointment that fits my schedule, am rarely left waiting for long periods of time, everyone is respectful and courteous and knows my name as well as the name of my pet, and I can hop up onto the table just fine. The biggest advantage is that I don’t have to wait a week or more for the results of a blood test. I get them from the vet THE VERY NEXT DAY.

So we are monitoring Simba with his food intake, not easy when you have half a dozen indoor cats zooming around. But he is the Lion King, and we, his lowly minions.

Will diet be enough to turn his health around? Stay tuned….

Blogging is Something Other People Do

Blogging is something other people do. Blab your troubles, your thoughts, your joys out to the universe for all to see~why would anyone do that? Share the privacy of your mind, your personal experiences, your day-to-day ramblings? Oh no. Not me.

But I have been reading them, more and more. Astonished at what goes on, amazed at the creativity, laughing at the funny photographs, crying at sad stories, marveling at incredible events, checking in for updates. Rare birds in the nest, coyotes dozing on embroidered pillows, recipes for stews. It makes you think miracles are happening all over the place.

Like me writing a blog.

You just never know what might come out of the oak in the seed.