Tilling the Garden of My Mind
This beauty just opened yesterday. So lovely!
It’s that time of year here in the northwest when the flowers and trees are going crazy at a pace matched only by the allergy sufferer’s running eyes and noses. All the stores have their spring flowers out and the remaining hanging baskets from the Mother’s Day bonanza fill the shops. It is a torrent of color and wonderful smells. It pleases me. This time of year always fills me with hopefulness and that great possibility of the what if.
Yes, I love gardening.
Or, to be more honest, I love creating a garden.
There is something calming to my way of thinking when you take a piece of land in wild disarray and turn it into something of beauty. Perhaps you’ve tilled it into a vegetable garden, or sown wildflowers via seed bombs. Or perhaps you’ve weeded a flower bed of the plants choking out the flowers. No matter what, you have created something you find beautiful.
When I bought my first house, I spent many hours one summer turning the square lawn into a space with gently curving flower beds filled with perennials planted with height, color, and bloom times all taken into account and mapped out. (Jenny, if you are reading this, sorry I ignored you while I was toiling away in my garden beds. I suck.) It was hard work under that Minnesotan sun to turn a thirty-year old lawn into sculpted flower beds, but the potential for color and texture and scents was worth it.
Years laters we sold that house and I presented my accurate and to-scale maps of the front and back yards to the new owner who’s eyes glazed over. Finally I stopped yammering on about how the lilies would bloom at the precise time to best complement the bush in the opposite corner and simply asked her to water them.
Thousands of hours of labor and dollars in bulbs and plants, left in the hands of the uninitiated and uninterested.
Now I’m in my third home and I’m back to standing, hand on shovel and pondering xeriscapes. But now my interests lie more in the direction of creating order. Lasting order.
Because now as much as I still want color and texture and scents, and butterflies and hummingbirds, I don’t have the luxury of the time it takes to maintain that kind of garden. So all the bulbs I carefully moved from one area of my yard to another and which grow badly in their new spot…all getting ripped out and given away. In their place, hard to kill and requiring very little attention hostas.
I was collecting newspapers in preparation for this huge project and got thinking about my current love-hate relationship with gardening. As much as I love the act of gardening, the act of creating beauty, I hate maintaining that beautiful garden. My gardens, flower and vegetable alike, serve as reminders of my life: excitement and enthusiasm worn down by the daily drudgery of it all.
I simply cannot maintain things in a way I want. And by things, I mean not just the gardens around my house but the things within my house. In fact, I mean the things even in my own head.
There is so much potential for beauty and bounty within me, but it’s all in danger of being choked out by the weeds that exist within me as well.
So what’s this girl to do? Do I rip it all out and plant only hostas? Or do I embrace the weeds as hardy perennials and mourn the deaths of my more high-maintenance but beautiful plants? I’ve already stopped performing stand-up to focus on writing, but is writing any more hardy than comedy? Do I shrug my shoulders and put all those creative outlets aside until I’m no longer the parent to three young children? The garden in my mind needs a balance between bloom times!
For now, I’m hoping some hard work, back bent beneath the hot northwestern sun, will cultivate not just more tidy gardens but to-scale maps for a long term plan.
For I am a garden, inside and out, begging for tending. I am filled with hopefulness and the possibility of what if. I am a newly bloomed rose bud that will unfurl and then fade away but be breathtaking at least for a day.
Like this:
The Long Memories of Elephants and Hearts
I like to be reminded that the world is a mysterious place and its inhabitants are just as mysterious. It seems to be a given. Mind you, I like that reminder to be positive and leave me filled with happy-happy-joy-joy but another given is that those reminders come in all sorts of ways. This past weekend I was reminded, in both joyful and tearful ways, of the mysteries of life.
As folks in the United States know, it was Mother’s Day on Sunday. I had a lovely day with my absolutely favorite four people in this world and that was a lovely gift in and of itself. And then last night, I ran across a link that stopped me for a bit. The story broke of the “Elephant Whisperer” Lawrence Anthony’s death and the apparent mourning of his death by the elephants he fought to protect. The article does a nice job of giving the history of Anthony’s work with the elephants as well as the mystery of how they knew he had died.
I love the times when we recognize that there is much more at work in this world than what we put into motion. Yes, we may have those nifty opposable thumbs and all those other perks to being the type of mammals that we are. However, I think we too easily overlook something powerful just because we can oppose those thumbs of ours.
We are all connected.
I visualize that connection as if all lives on this planet are connected to one another, much like how we can see the root system of a strawberry plant connecting plant after plant after plant. All individual plants and yet all connected by stolons. (In case you are curious, these new plants are actually clones of the original plant.)
Yes, I realize I’m a bit of a softy and I also look for reasons to support my life-long-held belief that all life is connected. But over and over I have found that the ripples of one life are destined to impact other lives. If you are open to seeing the ways we are all connected, you will see those connections. So when I read about elephants traveling miles to suddenly show up at the home of a man that cared for them, I see that as the powerful energy in the cosmos reaching them across their version of the strawberry’s stolon.
Most people I know admit to having some experience where (s)he has felt an odd connection to another person and acted upon it. Perhaps he felt a family member was with him in spite of that family member’s recent death. Or perhaps she reunited with a long-ago relationship because of a dream. In my case (well, one of many), I woke up one morning with a strong need to phone my grandmother. She was dying of throat cancer at the time and I “knew” I needed to talk to her that day. She died not long after that. Experiences such as those remind me that we are all connected at a deeper level even though we often do not act upon those connections.
But in our day-to-day lives we feel those connections as well. We are pulled to other people; we are pulled to connect with other people. Those connections lift us up and help us through our rough patches.
I recently got word that a dear little boy is facing some potential health concerns. Living in the technological era that we do, his mama texted me. I was so thankful I always have my phone on and usually on my person. I spent this morning with her and her sweet boy and was reminded how much I value the connection there – two moms who worry over their babies.
While I spent my Mother’s Day with my happy and fairly healthy kids, she had spent her first Mother’s Day in the hospital. I smiled and laughed several times yesterday. She cried.
This morning, my heart felt so heavy for her.
And yet, I find peace in my heavy heart. Because without it I would have no proof of the connection I have to her. Like elephants traveling the distance, we humans also feel for one another and because of one another.
When I told Littlest that I was going to go be with my friend and her baby this morning, he reminded me of what he had said when I first got the news. “Mama, I will hold him in my heart.”
Which is where we hold all our loved ones, including the ones we love as part of our larger family. We hold them in our hearts and in our thoughts.
They say that elephants have long memories…let it be the same for all of us as well.
Like this:
Connecting a Talisman, Cleaning, and Writing
Last week at this time I was at a much higher elevation, both geographically and intellectually. Not to go all whoo-whoo on you, but I’ve long believed that people and events come into our lives at precisely the right moments. Sometimes those intersections look way more like crap floating down the river of our lives than butterflies in our meadows, but those intersections between people, events, and places are usually more than they originally appear.
On my way back through one of the nation’s high places, I stopped for lunch in Frisco, Colorado. And while I was unable to find a fully gluten-free lunch, I did manage to find food, more coffee, and this little thing. I’ve decided it makes a fine talisman.
After all, who doesn’t need to be reminded to be fearless?
I rather like the combined effects of this bit of shiny. First off, it’s a puzzle piece. Secondly, one side is engraved with “I am” and the other with “Fearless”. When I spied it, it was like one of those hokey ray of sunshine Hallmark card moments. Like the proverbial powers that be were reminding me that if I want to figure out this puzzler of life, then I’d better find out what I’m made of and then figure out how to be a bit more fearless.
I’d like to think that the fact I was even there on a road I’d never before travelled was a nod to my ability to be a bit more fearless.
But the fact is I am not good at being fearless. Heck, some days I barely manage the “I am” aspect of the equation.
All those crap-moments that have floated down my stream over the years has created a fearful little ole me. And how crappy is that?
Do you remember when you turned fearful? Was it a person or an event or just a whole lotta crap coming down the river at you? For me, the answer is Yes.
And, of course, the ultimate answer is me.
Because in order to become fearless, I must remember that I am.
After two flights which made me mildly panicked, I arrived home. And I’m still buried in all the stuff I normally do everyday but which didn’t happen while I was gone. You know, like the two loads of laundry that have to happen everyday. That kind of stuff. The stuff that is only important when you realize there are no clean undies in your drawer or the hardwood floor becomes fuzzy.
And when the dust bunnies and laundry and dirty floors get to this point, I am totally overwhelmed. Instead of getting anything done, I just want to curl into a fetal-shaped ball and take a nap. A messy house makes me fear-full like whoa. But like most fear-filled moments, there is only one thing to do…get through it. In this case, it’s setting a timer for 15 minute increments and working through the chaos until I get through it. One freaking dust bunny at a time, one 15 minute rotation at a time until I get the house clean enough to invite someone over so I don’t stew in my own sad-panda juices. (Yes, I am aware that this makes me seem a bit left of normal, but I also know I’m not alone in this.)
The best thing about my trip to a writer’s retreat was not just the camaraderie or the locale. It was being refueled with the ability to write. I think most of us writerly types get to a spot in our stories where the words might be there, but the way to align them is gone. Or perhaps the way is there, but we cannot see it due to the dust and life-debris obscuring our view. Being with other writers was like being handed a map through the chaos. It also reminded me that the way to fix this novel is the same as cleaning my house: set the timer, work like a mad woman, and move on. It may take more rotations than I want, but eventually I’ll get it cleaned up until it’s ready to be shared with others.
Amazing how a different pair of eyes can see what we so easily overlook.
So I’m back home, doing the dishes and the laundry, and the writing. My house and my novel are both heading in the right direction…tidy enough to be shared. The house cleaning and the words are never really done, because the living in them happens. Both are messy, requiring effort and time and the reminder to fearlessly share the results.
Like this:
Ghosts, Girls, and Other Things That Make Me Shiver
As I said on Friday, I was at the Hand Hotel in Fairplay, CO for the YA with Altitude writer’s retreat. Talk about a wonderful experience. Not only was our moderator Courtney Koschel fabulous, but she put together a really helpful retreat. Both Sarah Ockler and Heidi R. Kling shared a wealth of information with us. It’s hard to believe but I actually left feeling like I now have an idea of how to write my pitch and query. And if you’ve ever had to write either of them, you know just how shiver-worthy that is.
But I know you are really curious about the ghosts of Hand Hotel. I don’t put myself in the “disbeliever” category. Instead, I’m a fan of the “why not?” category. There are folks who think the hotel most definitely is haunted (UFONUT) and others who think such an idea is ludicrous. Me? I left thinking that most likely the hotel had more guests over the weekend than visible.
Now perhaps you think my belief in the Hand Hotel ghosts comes from my fantastic imagination. To some extent you’d be correct. After all, there were no wavering faces in my bathroom mirror aside from my own. But during one of our sessions the swinging doors seemed to open and close in response to what people were saying. Could it have been the wind? Sure. But is it possible that while a group of writers shared the meanings in their novels, unseen folks were inspired to respond? I’m going with yes even though it gives me a wee bit of the shivers.
Another shiver-worthy aspect of the retreat was the presence of a wonderful group of women (and three men!). Saturday night we donned our pjs or otherwise more comfy waistbands, chocolate and wine (for some of us) and we hung out before the fire trading tales and simply enjoying the company of once-strangers who are now more than that.
As a writer, I feel like I wear my heart not simply on my sleeve but in all my words. Sharing those words, the raw and unpolished, is fairly terrifying at times. To let someone read what I write and am unsure of is quite a bit like how it would be for me to climb the ladder to the high dive, hold my breath and then leap off the board. Since I can’t swim, it would be quite a leap of faith. To drag my bedraggled self out of the pool would take more strength for me than for some others. But to stand there shivering and be handed a towel and a smile…it would make it all worth it.
And that was what happened for me over and over during the course of the writer’s retreat. I took risks and other writers supported me.
This morning when my alarm dragged me back to the land of the wakeful, I was both exhausted and energized. My body meekly begged for a few more hours and my brain jumped up waving pom poms, ready to get to work on turning my novel into the novel it can be.
Mister Soandso asked me last night “so how much longer until you are done?” I laughed.
And I am still laughing. Because a writer is never done with their novels. We simply get them to a place where they make us shiver with anticipation instead of fear. Then we send them into the world where they can make others shiver.
A big thank you to Courtney, Sarah, Heidi, Jessi, Ingrid, Anne, Jenny, Amy, Stacie, and Xochilt. You “girls” are delightful. And totally shiver-worthy.
Like this:
I’m Not Here
Today, instead of being focused on you and my normal world, I’m focused on me. Which is a fine thing, right?
I’m at the Hand Hotel in Fairplay, Colorado at the YA with Altitude Writer’s Retreat. The hotel is purported to be haunted and while I haven’t yet had any overtly corporeal experiences, let’s just say I’m open to it. Read more…
Like this:
Missives posted on Mondays and Fridays. Unless the coffee and chocolate run out...
Copyright © Kristina Martin and Ten Minute Missive, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kristina Martin and Ten Minute Missive with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
