Walking It Out

Monday morning, 8:00 a.m.

I take a last swallow of black tea, carry my mug and cereal bowl to the kitchen sink. I shrug into my jacket, reach for my shoulder bag, kiss my husband if he hasn’t already left for the gym. I hurry down the narrow back staircase, step onto the back stoop. I adjust my purse and tote bag, snap open my umbrella if it’s raining. And I walk.

Wednesday, 12:15 p.m.

I push my chair back from my computer, dry-eyed after a morning of moving words around on the screen. If I’ve brought leftovers for lunch, I retrieve them from the office fridge and stick them in the microwave. I eat at my desk, reading a few pages of my current novel, sipping water from the tall plastic cup I refill all day long. As soon as the last bite is gone, I stand up, grab my purse and jacket. And I walk.

I’m over at TRIAD magazine today, writing about the walks that bookend my days. Join me over there?

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My teatime ritual

Strong black Yorkshire Gold with milk and a spoonful of sugar. Bergamot-tinged Earl Grey with a swirl of milk. Sachets of black tea flavored with orange peel, stone fruits or cinnamon, brewed strong and drunk unadorned. Paper bags of peppermint or lemon-ginger tea drunk plain, with a squeeze of honey added if I have a sore throat.

Teatime. It’s my morning-daytime-evening ritual.

I grew up in hot, dry West Texas, the land of endless summers and pitchers of dark, strong Lipton iced tea. I am still one of the only Texans I know who will turn down a glass of iced tea for a sweating glass of ice water. I like my tea hot, in a ceramic mug, and it had better not be Lipton.

I’m over at TRIAD magazine today, talking about my several-times-a-day tea habit. Click over there to read the rest of my essay.

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Messenger: The Poetry of Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

I have never met Mary Oliver, but I consider her one of my teachers.

A published poet since 1963, Oliver has written hundreds, probably thousands, of poems during her lifetime, producing more than 25 books of poetry and three books of nonfiction to date. She writes about early morning walks in the woods or along the shoreline; finding the footprints of animals in the forest or near a lake; the tension between the fleeting beauty of the natural world and its undertones of violence, death and decay. She harbors a deep love for the world we inhabit, and a deep sadness for the ways humans mar or destroy the quiet, lonely places where animals and plants live.

I doubt Oliver ever cared much for clothes and fashion, but if she did, she gave up that particular passion long ago. She has learned what is worth caring about, and what she can easily ignore:

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.

This is what I need to learn, amid my distracted and often scattered life, amid my commute and my day job, amid the relentless pull of social media and relationships online and offline. I need to learn to pause, on my front porch or in the park or even on the subway platform, and pay attention to the
natural world, to the details that astonish.

I’m over at TRIAD magazine again today, sharing my thoughts on Oliver’s poetry. Please click over there to read the rest of my essay.

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A Bit of Earth

This was my fourth summer growing a balcony garden. And I’m feeling a little guilty about it.

My roots are on two Midwestern farms, where I spent my childhood summers watching cows graze on quiet hillsides and riding in the tractor cab with my grandfather. I spent hours shelling peas and snapping green beans into stainless-steel bowls, pulling dinner – or at least part of it – from the earth outside. I learned about how the land fed us, how in turn we tended the land. How our hard work and care, combined with rain and soil and light, produced the vegetables and meat that ended up on my grandparents’ table.

These days, the most I can manage is a row of pots on a balcony.

I’m a city dweller now, living above the land instead of on it, in a second-floor flat on a suburban street in a bustling town just south of Boston. My husband and I have yet to own any of the places we’ve lived; we are renters, tenants, temporary residents with a lease, not a deed, to our names.

There are perks to this way of living, of course: when a faucet sprouts a leak or an electrical circuit shorts out, we call the landlords (who conveniently live downstairs) and let them deal with it. But since we live upstairs and don’t own our place, the yard – the land – doesn’t belong to us.

Most of the time I don’t mind, but sometimes I wish we could have a garden. I wonder if it would help ground me, help me feel connected to the city I’ve lived in for three years but still hesitate to call home.

I’m over at TRIAD magazine today, talking about my balcony garden. Please click over there to read the rest of my essay and see Kristin’s gorgeous photos of my plants.

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Standing on the Edge of the World

I grew up on the plains of West Texas, under vast skies that blaze orange and golden at sunset, stretching high and blue above during the day. Those plains stretch for hundreds of miles, the view broken up only by spindly telephone poles and by curving pump jacks rocking rhythmically up and down. I am used to landscapes that make me feel small.

As a native of that dry land, though, I have little experience with bodies of water bigger than a lake or a backyard swimming pool. My first views of oceans were mostly of the bird’s-eye variety: I had flown back and forth over the Atlantic Ocean half a dozen times before I found myself standing on the edge of it.

It was a bright, blustery day in September, during the year I spent studying for my master’s degree in Oxford, England. A lifelong friend of mine was spending the semester in Galway, Ireland, and I flew out to visit him for the weekend. The day after I arrived, we boarded a ferry to Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran Islands.

Dotted with weathered, picturesque cottages and crisscrossed with ancient stone walls, the Aran Islands – Inis Mór, Inis Meáin and Inis Oírr – float in the mouth of Galway Bay, just a few miles off the western coast of Ireland. Sparsely populated, they attract a steady stream of tourists but still remain green and quiet. We checked into our hostel, then rented bikes and rode all around Inis Mór, stopping to pick blackberries by the side of the road and occasionally pulling aside to let a horse-drawn cart pass.

Eventually, we found our way to Dún Aonghasa, a ruined, tumbled pile of stones that crowns the island’s highest hill. The tiny visitors’ center gave us an idea of the structure’s previous life as a fort, used by the islanders to protect themselves from invaders approaching from the west. We made our way out into the sunshine, eager to see the ruins and the view for ourselves.

I’m over at TRIAD magazine (run by my friend Kristin) today, writing about my experience on the Aran Islands. I’d love it if you’d click over there to read the rest of my essay.

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