 If I’d told my teenage self that she would one day be married to a 60-year-old man, she would have grimaced, horrified. Naïve thing, she was. Too young to understand that the 18-year-old boy she met in college, with the big biceps, thick hair, and effortless athleticism, would turn into a 60-year-old man, tempered into thoughtful contemplations, able to sit for hours creating beautiful designs on the shell of an egg with a hot wax tool. The beauty of age, of mellowed quietness, of roots grown so deeply intertwined that they promise to support an expanding forest of family future – these things would never have occurred to her at the time. It’s probably just as well not to know when you’re young. I don’t think I had the capacity to hold such a weighty treasure, and might have dropped it. I’m stronger now. Happy birthday, my love. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 177: 147 words, TOTAL = 29,012; 30,988 remaining
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 There were turkey highways all over the property where we spent the last three days. I was shocked at the size of their footprints, equal to my own outstretched hand. “Dinosaur tracks,” my sister-in-law called them. I could almost imagine it, since I never saw them. A local told us that the turkeys hadn’t appeared since Kate and Clara started sniffing around their field. Hard to imagine those massive feet would be intimidated by anything. I’m glad my dogs didn’t have to fend off any dinosaur defense. Back home this morning, suddenly there were signs of dense bird traffic, not the crows, whose feet make trails all the time, but many miniscule trails. At first I saw only faint, parallel lines, a vole on skis? Then I looked up close – spidery little tri-pronged feet. Have my dogs been deterring ground explorations at home too? Who knew my doggies had such power over all these dinosaur descendants? My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 176: 156 words, TOTAL = 28,865; 31,135 remaining  Over the weekend, we were part of a blind taste test. Our host made three identical meatloafs (strictly measuring out every ingredient and proportion) out of real local beef, Impossible Burger, and Beyond Beef. I smugly assumed I would recognize the real beef without question. I did guess correctly, but not without uncertainty. In fact, around the table every meatloaf got at least one vote as the “real beef.” The genetically modified plant-based stuff (Impossible) got higher scores than the non-gmo (Beyond), but not unanimously. The bigger question in my mind is, if we should stop eating meat, shouldn’t we just stop eating meat, and not try to make plants taste like meat? I know, I know. Easier said than done. Up until very recently, I would have told you my favorite food was a cheeseburger. We are a meat-eating nation, and it’s hard to change. Still. Why not just suck it up and get creative with the ingredients that are already okay? My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 175: 164 words, TOTAL = 28,709; 31,291 remaining  winter weekend scene in New Hampshire I used to write individual Valentine’s Day poems for each of my children and another for Jonathan. In recent years, with our growing in-law numbers, one family poem for the nine sometimes has to suffice. This Valentine’s Day I am rather distracted By granddaughter, travel, and book tasks protracted. By no means does that say my love is diminished, And poems for loved ones by no means are finished. I’ll whip off some rhymes for my nine near relations So raptly absorbed in nine fine avocations. I hope you’ll all find a few moments today For some chocolate or roses or nice things to say. Please know at the least that to me you are treasure, A part of a family that’s blessed beyond measure. In the misaligned stars of our floundering nation I’m lucky to be part of your constellation. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 174: 141 words, TOTAL = 28,545; 31,455 remaining  As my grown children live into life as I lived it, as they share more and more layers of the experiences that I have known, I feel a deep resonance connecting us. Then there are those other aspects of their lives that are foreign to me. I have no context to share with them. I can learn new layers to add to my knowledge base, but not my experience base. Hard to say which are more powerful – the shared-known or the revelatory. Each is transformative in its own way. Jonathan and I brought Fiona to the hospital yesterday to visit her mama for lunch – Fiona’s lunch. It saved Nellie a breast-pumping session and gave us more time to visit. I watched Nellie carry on a medical professional’s conversation with her dad while she fed Fiona. Nellie the mommy was fully present, even as her doctor self missed not a beat of the verbal exchange. She nursed Fiona, burped her, held her lovingly, gave her kisses, smiled at her sleepy, milk-drunk expression. I watched in fascination, because I never had a profession while I raised my children, and the beauty of this scene was outside of my world experience. My heart fluttered in wonder as I witnessed my daughter’s graceful balancing of two core identities, so deftly, so gently. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 173: 218 words, TOTAL = 28,404; 31,596 remaining  This morning at around 6:45am, lying semi-awake in Nellie and Mike’s guest room, we heard a tiny noise. Fiona, awake. Even all those nights I’ve seen him called in to the hospital, I’ve rarely seen Jonathan up and out of bed so fast. We’re on grandparent duty today, and he was ready to start, even though Nellie wouldn’t be leaving for work for another hour or so. I am enchanted by my granddaughter, but it’s almost equally enchanting to see my husband, utterly, helplessly in thrall by this little child. She is transformative for both of us, but I sense something bigger happening in Jonathan. With Fiona asleep on his chest, he is like a meditative Buddha. He doesn’t want to put her down. Jonathan turns sixty next week. Tides of change are rolling him around at the wrack line. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 172: 140 words, TOTAL = 28,186; 31,814 remaining  winter has so many faces Even when my mother was living, I often had trouble picturing her face. That troubled me. How could I not see the face of my most beloved person? I was rarely happy with photographs of her either – they never looked like my mother. What I’ve come to realize is that what I saw when I looked at my mother was not how she looked. What I saw was her essence, her interior being, and I suppose I saw it with my heart, not with my eyes. A face reveals a lot, but it can never fully represent a soul. What we see is what we feel in their presence – the love, the devotion, the spark of life, the secret joy. You can’t really capture that -- or maybe a true artist can, by slipping more than photographic representation into their portraiture. I wonder how I would paint my mother if I had the skill. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 171: 154 words, TOTAL = 28,046; 31,954 remaining  Here is the photo I’ll be sending in to She Writes Press to go with my author bio and book summary sheets. My daughter, Anna K. Wood, photographer extraordinaire, performed the photo shoot in her back yard in Michigan. See how she cleverly shot from above, to hide the wrinkles under my chin? I try not to look at it too much. The idea of seeing it reproduced over and over is terrifying. Faces frozen in time can never represent the living animation of a human soul. I’ve mourned the fact that I’ll never see Rachel Field’s face in motion, though I cherish her voice from a radio show recording. Do you ever look at those gargantuan advertising posters on city buildings and shudder at the thought of seeing yourself blown up to 1000x magnification? All you’d see are flaws, cringeworthy details, unmissable. Anyway, this one pleased me enough, as long as I don’t linger. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 170: 155 words, TOTAL = 27,892; 32,108 remaining  We had a wonderful two-night visit from a cousin we rarely see. She is funny, laid back, generous, a good listener, kind. We wondered what might happen if politics came up, knowing she might be a Trump supporter.
I am not wedded to the Democrats (though generally aligned with them), but I’m decidedly anti-Trump and appalled at his presidency. She is a Republican and will vote Republican, even with Trump on the ballot. In her view, I was interested to hear, Trump is an ass who makes her cringe every time he opens his mouth. However, nothing’s bad enough to scrap the Republican party. We tiptoed into politics, keeping an open sense of humor on the table. Mostly, though, we talked about our kids, upcoming weddings, grief over lost parents, health, food, dogs, work, life. We have so much in common. Surely this is true of most Americans on both sides of the aisle. How can we bypass the hype and negativity? Our interchanges were a reminder that the people who disagree with us aren’t crazy or irrational or bad, though media representations often feed that fire. No one likes the in-fighting. Everyone’s troubled and wary of the copious disinformation. Have we outgrown the two-party system? Maybe it’s time to ditch it entirely. Our system of governance is broken, and its representatives seem to willfully ignore the shared humanity of the people they represent. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 169: 234 words, TOTAL = 27,737; 32,263 remaining  some greenery for a wet yuck day I’m cheating today. I’ve been bored by my own blog; must be worse for you guys. Here’s some light verse I wrote a few years ago, just to mix things up. I know that I really should get something done, Accomplish those tasks that I haven’t begun, But none of them strike me as anything fun. I guess I’ll just doodle some poems: here’s one! Two, four, six, eight How do we procrastinate? Set a deadline, mark the date. Make a list then wash a plate. Walk your big black dog named Kate. Check your email, text your mate. Watch the coffee percolate. Quit some thing then reinstate. Bake some brownies; check your weight; Get depressed; self-flagellate. Help your ego re-inflate. Write a poem, innovate! Two, four, six, eight, How do we procrastinate? My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 168: 133 words, TOTAL = 27,503; 32,497 remaining |
AuthorRobin Clifford Wood is an award-winning author, poet, and writing teacher. She lives in central Maine with her husband, loves to be outdoors, and enjoys ever-expanding horizons through her children, grandchildren, and granddogs. Archives
October 2024
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