Category Archives: Mindfulness

Winter days

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Winter days drift slowly. On bright days, sun pours in the front windows of the house IMG_0856and I bask in the light. More frequently, the windows frame a dark green, gray, and white landscape. On the railing out front I’ve placed a blue pot filled with branches of red berries. I put it there wondering if birds would like the berries but they ignore it so I’ve hung a feeder from the plant hook where a fuschia lives in summer.

A week ago we had warm and rainy weather before the onset of cold temperatures again. The accumulated snow from previous storms melted in the rain and I walked around the gardens last Saturday, snipped branches off my discarded Christmas tree and used them to insulate the crocosmia from the predicted low temperatures.

I used to interact with winter more, plunge through the snow to fill distantly placed bird feeders, strap on my snowshoes to explore the field behind the house or rake snow off the roof. But gradually, a combination of aging joints and weather patterns that bring mixed icy precipitation has kept me inside more, viewing the world through glass panes, scurrying from house to car to office or store then car and home.

My only New Year’s intention this year was to show up in my life, but I’m not sure what that means in winter, when the pull is toward hibernation.

I look for things that delight my senses. Hot chocolate made with a dark chocolate cocoa mix and drunk from my red mug. The feel of the cat’s soft fur, her warm body weighting my legs. A dark red poinsettia in a dark blue pot. The smell of a new book when I first open it. The sharp hot bite of chili. Music, like this piece from Caroline Shaw, which both startles and satisfies me.

I saw a short video recently, The Monolith, about the NYC artist Gwyneth Leech and her response to several losses, including a skyscraper being built right outside her studio window, blocking the view that had been inspiring her art for years. She came to terms with the “monolith” by seeing it as colors and shapes and painting all the stages of construction. It’s a story about the creative process, about loss, about life, about showing up.

“…to be alive is something holy, fierce, and precious,” Jena Schwartz writes in a FaceBook post. Through the short winter days and long nights, I try to remember those words.

A good walk

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I went for a walk yesterday afternoon at around 5, taking advantage of lingering light at the end of daylight savings time. I tried to stay in the moment as I walked, seeing, noticing—a pattern of fallen leaves on the road, a few quince lingering on a bush and one salmon colored flower, a flame red shrub. But the act of noticing and naming took me out of the moment and I started this blog post in my head. Often as I walk, drive, simply sit on the couch looking out at the trees and sky, words swim in me, swirl, settle, and swirl again.

I set out on my walk planning to goIMG_0802 to the end of the block then turn left and left again and finally home, all on a level route that’s easy on new knees. But at the first turn I looked right and saw the sun bright and golden through a crack in dark clouds and turned toward it, up a hill then down to a road that borders a field and the clouds, streaming sun, distant hills.

It was a good walk, an image and word filled walk if not a mindful walk. I want my days to be full of such moments, weaving in and out of present time, noticing, appreciating, sometimes choosing the harder route, breathing it all in.

Recovery land

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I’m sitting on the back porch, with my right leg elevated on cushions and an ice pack draped across my newly replaced knee. I’m beginning week four of recovery and hitting all the milestones. Straighten leg—check. Activate quadriceps muscles—check. Bend beyond 90 degrees—check. Walk with a cane and a normal gait—check. Walk without a cane—check. Wean off pain pills so I can drive again—in process.

I tell friends that I’m an impatient patient. But “patient” is the wrong term. We were told in the pre-op class that we should not view ourselves as ill and were encouraged to bring street clothes to wear on the hospital unit. I was up and walking a few steps on day 1, walking up and down the hall on day 2, climbing stairs on day 3, and then sent home to recover.

I don’t feel ill—it’s more a feeling of being suspended in time. This is partly due to pain meds, which make me sleepy, content to mindlessly surf around the Internet and let time drift by.

Or at least that was the case in the first couple of weeks. Now that I’m reducing the pain meds and regaining energy, restlessness has sidled in.

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I’ve been nesting on my back porch daybed, which gives me a limited view of the world—the rhododendrons that flank the east and north side of the porch, an occasional bird that lights there, preens, sings, and flies off. If I turn my head to the left, I see the pink bloom of filipendula, grass, evergreens. Occasionally a critter of some sort scampers through—squirrels, groundhogs, rabbits, one day a spotted fawn. My gardens are blooming and thriving but seen for now from a distance. Soon I’ll venture out for a closer look but that feels like a next week activity.

My days have a rhythm. Morning means coffee and toast, the welcome coolness of morning air, easy contentment as I slowly wake up, maybe write a little, check Twitter, look at an online newspaper, ease into the day.

Afternoons stretch longer and desire clashes with reality. Mind and spirit want to go and do—body is not quite ready.

I pace around my small house. I might venture out for a walk down the driveway, across the street and down a ways, mindful that however far I go, I need to do the same distance on return.

Now, the sun is out and the air is steamy. Ten minutes ago, a thunderstorm raced through, a few loud claps of thunder, brief torrential rain. Another storm is on its way—I hear thunder in the distance. There are lessons to learn about accepting the present moment, whatever that moment brings.

I hear myself thinking, ah, I’m missing out on summer but of course I’m not—I’m just having a different summer than usual. A porch summer, a recovery summer, a summer to ease back into my busy life, slowly, one degree of bend, one step at a time.

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My cruising around the Internet sometimes takes me to delightful places, such as this clip of Natalie Merchant and the Kronos Quartet. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbxwa_ie3dQ

Listen. Breathe.

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On Tuesday, I check into the hospital for knee replacement surgery and my stress levels are rising as I try to finish up at work, get my house and life prepped, go to myriad medical appointments, shop, see friends. Ah…I’m getting breathless just typing all that. Life these days is all about doing and distracting.

I haven’t been spending enough time simply listening to the world around me.

Sunday afternoon. I’m on the back porch, ceiling fan spinning, grackles noisily doing what grackles do, adult voices and kid voices from next door, breeze in the trees.

Silence. Listening. On Twitter earlier this week, a quote from Wendell Berry arrived like a small gift: “Make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.”

I imagine words dropping into a pool, sending out ripples, sinking, disappearing.

IMG_0413A couple of weeks ago, Robert Macfarlane asked: “What is the place or landscape to which you most love listening?”

I immediately thought of Maine, the cottage on Back Cove where my sister and I went for a couple of years, early morning light, distant boat motors, bird call, occasional plop and ripple of water as acorns fell or birds dived for fish.

Or Pemaquid Point, with waves crashing against rocks and gulls calling.

Or here, now, the porch, the trees, the kids, the birds, the cat crying from inside the house, the dog in the distance, sounds of a summer afternoon.

Listen to the small sounds, I tell myself, the here sounds, now sounds, inner and outer sounds.

Be silent, listen, breathe.

Be. Listen. Breathe.