Category Archives: Fun

Dear Readers (1)

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photo of two wild white irises from the yard and two purple flower volunteers and two red succulent blossoms
Beltane flowers from my mother’s yard

Dear Readers,

Well, I’d hoped (planned?) to have posted my first post while being 64 about three weeks before today. And, of course, to have already posted at least three posts by now, to become marvelously consistent throughout this coming year of mine. (Sigh. Grin.) I told myself, per the About page here, that I would not “hold myself” to needing each post to be a postcard, but I love this idea so much, and I think I stalled myself because of this, because I didn’t want to let go of my first post being a postcard.

So today I decided I needed to say hello to you even though I don’t have my first postcard ready to go yet. And yes, I know, it would have been fairly easy to use one of the postcards I’ve bought in the past. I have a nice one from San Francisco and a couple from my desert home. But I began a sketch for a postcard I plan to send to my (dear) friends Marylou and Richard. I used the new watercolor pencils my (dear) friend Moses gave me for Christmas. I have started on a roadrunner, though he is a bit goofy and his tail is too short. (I looked up the maximum size for a postcard online, then cut a sheet of the watercolor paper Moses gave me, too. But then it was hard to fit him properly and proportionately onto the little rectangle. I may have to rethink my methods!)

Still, even just beginning to draw the bird was a big delight. It was one of the first clear impulses I’ve had toward hands-on art in ages, and a good sign, I think, that my “plan” of not making myself do anything I don’t have to do may be beginning to bear fruit. I hope so. I want to tell you, too, that in recent weeks I have not been stuck in anger for days at a time. I’ve noticed this with gratitude and relief and a little bit of gentle pride in the last couple of days, so of course this morning I found myself stuck in self-hatred and anger, and was afraid I had jinxed it, this long-running streak. But somehow I have found my way back to softness again, so maybe not stuck. (Oh please oh please.) I have been truly kind at least three times since my second tantrum this morning. Toco madera.

I hope whatever you are being challenged by softens for you, too, even as you read this. (If you are like me, it is the turning toward myself with a more tender heart that can do the trick. May you each have an ease in this turning toward that I am not always able to find!) Thank you for reading my blog and for waiting for me. I believe I still owe you a song, too. :)

Wishing you all good things, my dear readers. Happy Beltane. Happy May Day. Happy turning of our world.

My Turning World (63)

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Tonight my eyes are getting heavy and my heart lighter. It’s the first day of my month, the eve of my birthday, the ending of my year of blogging and this last week or so of crazed posting before I turn sixty-four. Like other important eves of the year, this one has me looking back. My last birthday was hard. It was harder to be connected to myself than it is now. And I was completely cut off from my own home, but now I am tethered to it again, and the song of my white-crowned sparrows and the young mama hummingbird taking a bath and the new generation of lizards there in my courtyard are all part of the fabric of me again even though I am still living away from them. Now I get to visit. I get to know they don’t all think I’ve abandoned them anymore. And now I have lizard friends here, too, and my red-tailed hawk family, my two ravens and the Cooper’s hawk. I even have my mother’s white-crowned sparrows here, though they never serenade in the same way. Tonight I feel a little silly for not being able to let go of it but so glad, too, that I did not abandon my blog after all. And I feel hopeful for the year to come. And grateful, always, for each of you, coming by to read my work—and caring.

Will You Still Need Me? (59)

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Not the way I dreamed it, of learning to sing the whole song so I could sing it all year while I was sixty-three. But here is my little slightly off key (or more than slightly??!) snippet of “When I’m 64” by the Beatles.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RJHdQhCgeNX0RoGtJys9UC2QCjl8rAoX/view?usp=sharing

Greetings (56)

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I have returned to my yoga. I’d been afraid to try for a long time after my fall. My wrists were still healing. The first time I try my sun salutes, I am caught off guard by how much the bottom of my palms hurt, not just my wrists. Today is the third or maybe the fourth time I try, so I am not surprised by the pain, and now I know it will ease up if I keep going, slow and gentle. When I swoop up to standing at the end of each salutation, head thrown back, I see the fat, white crescent moon above me in the daylight sky. With each ending, there she is, her happy greeting a delight. And then when I stand again, there is my gal circling above me, my mama red-tailed hawk, as if she is waiting for me to know she is there, and the papa hawk, too. They circle twice more, an affectionate, lingering check-in, and off they go. I can’t stop grinning.

Hawk, Moon (55)

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I hear an unusual sound, a familiarity that calls to me, and I look up. The Cooper’s hawk is sitting in the just-budding branches of the liquid amber, maybe eight feet above my head. I never would have known he was there is he hadn’t talked to me. It’s the first time he has. I trust he is the one who comes for our birds at the feeder. I haven’t seen him snag one yet, but twice now there was evidence of his success in the piles of feathers left behind and in the absence of birds. I stand still, talk to him in a quiet voice. And then behind him I see the moon suspended just above the ridge in the daylight sky. It seems to come into focus on its own, like turning the knob on binoculars. The waxing crescent, fat and polished white. Oh, I think, standing below the tree, the hawk and the moon. Both of you together.

Enthroned (51)

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I sit down on the Adirondack chair, on the little raised deck like a dais, my bottom sliding over the wood, surprising and smooth as if it had been polished. (Now I want a chair like this.) I am on a ridge at Descanso Gardens, looking north over La Cañada and the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. I breathe, sigh, stretch my neck and shoulders, so tight these days. I try not to feel uncomfortable as people come into view and spot me sitting there. (I am so close to the intersecting paths.) I am glad when they all disappear again, and I remain. I rub my hands across the arms of the chair, soft against my palms. In the stillness of this almost-wilderness, I am the grateful, quiet queen of my domain.