The other day, a few coins in my pocket sent me back to grade school. It was a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. Instinctively, I lined them up by size, which doesn’t conform to value, a fact which frustrated me even at age six. I remember carrying my size-ordered/value-disordered stack of three coins, wrapped in foil, through the lunch line, and paying the lady at the register: a hamburger, chips, pint of milk (so hard to bend and pry open!), a dish of sliced pears in syrup. Or if I brought lunch, I carried a nice straight, uncomplicated stack of four pennies, just for milk. I loved lunch. I liked filling my burger or my tuna sandwich with potato chips, probably because Lisa Meyer introduced me to this novel culinary innovation. I liked the table chatter, which had to stop if the giant traffic light up front went from green to yellow to red. I still like lunch, but there’s much less chatter. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 258: 164 words, TOTAL = 41,801; 18,199 remaining
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I’m cheating today - my word-heavy poem is my image, my Mother’s Day gift to myself. I’d like to expand today’s maternal tribute. Because not all humans who give birth are good nurturers, and not all good nurturers have given birth, let’s thank all those who mother. I include my husband who keeps lovely surprises secret, and my children who sometimes mother me by sending gifts, sending words, making calls, or showing up unexpectedly to break the hugging rule over Mother’s Day weekend. J Mother (verb): 1.To bring up (a child) with care and affection 2.To give rise to, produce 3.To care for or protect Thank you. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 257: 110 words, TOTAL = 42,637; 17,363 remaining We have unwanted guests. I take up a machete and mercilessly hack, stomp, and yank the impossibly fast-growing bamboo stalks, young and old, that run rampant across our property. How many hours we’ve devoted to keeping nature at bay! Cattails, algal blooms, crabgrass, insidious briars that twine and strangle and grab. If we let up, we’ll be overrun. Only consider the towering, jungled heaps that pepper the landscape of Central America. I’ve seen them in Belize. “Mayan ruins are under there, but there’s no money for the excavations,” said our guide. I pause to rub the scratches on my forearms, wipe the sweat from my face. Hmm. Who is the guest here? Who is the pest? Who’s in charge here? If ever the world made itself clear, it is now. Not just when winter decides to visit spring, or when Nature buries civilizations, healing past wounds inflicted by our species. A virulent virus is scourging the globe. Nature provided it; we disseminate it, authors of our own destruction. Our sense of superiority here is an illusion. Humans have overstepped their boundaries, overpresumed, taken the earth’s offerings as entitlements rather than gifts, forgotten to share. The Earth, Air B&B to a host of guests through the millennia, has the power to evict us at will. We’ve been here for less than a half of one percent of its years in business. If we want to stay here, we’ve got to change our ways. Otherwise, we will be the ones hacked, stomped, and yanked away. Nature is very patient. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 256: 257 words, TOTAL = 42,527; 17,473 remaining I’m forgetting myself. The phrase is needling me. It refers to the rules of polite society, forgetting one’s manners. Deprived of society, it’s no wonder if we forget social niceties. But "forgetting myself” goes deeper than that. During this viral, transformational human experience, we are forced to reassess our relationship with each other as a species. I am forgetting my friend self, my teammate self, my sharing self, my laughing self, my listening self. Descartes’s “I think therefore I am” is incomplete. Thinking, in solitude, is not enough. We are not fully realized without assembling, interacting, pooling our resources, including our thoughts. Our greatest accomplishments all stem from extended collaborations. There might exist a rogue, hermit ant, but ants come in colonies by nature. So do humans. Hermits are only partially whole without their colony. We are social beings, incomplete as individuals. The “me generation” missed the boat (okay, Boomer). It’s time to recognize that we are we. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 255: 158 words, TOTAL = 42,270; 17,730 remaining CORRECTION: Some of you might notice that the daily count has jumped back by a few days. I found three miscounts since January. Sorry about that! I guess I was hurrying my year along. As of today, we’re back on track. Social isolation has had a unifying affect on our neighborhood. We are home more, so we see more of our neighbors. We reach out, rely on, and connect with those people – too often strangers – who live nearby. Not long ago some neighborhood women assembled an uber-local book group. The email list has expanded to include any women in the vicinity, whether they are readers or not. We’ve had gardening questions, offers of fresh-baked bread, alerts about new cats in town. Yesterday I had everything I needed for my dinner recipe except a cup of mint leaves. “Can anyone spare some mint?” I wrote. A couple of hours later, I found a potted mint plant on my doorstep, like magic! I have an herb fairy godsister. It makes me want to find ways to do unto others in that same way. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 254: 140 words, TOTAL = 42,112; 17,888 remaining On the trail the other day I came upon a Woolly-Bear. Every time I encounter one of these creatures, the child inside me jumps around in a little dance of joy. Why is that? There are lots of crawly things in the world. Most of them hold no interest for me; some are repellent; some, I confess, get promptly stomped. Somehow, the Woolly Bear feels like a happy omen, a cute friend, a delightful sighting. Is it only the name? What if it was called “Spike Devil” or had no name at all? The internet says that the Woolly Bear is no pest. It eats almost anything and doesn’t damage human crops. Also, it really does look like a tiny stuffed animal. When it curls up into a ball it makes an intriguing toy to roll around your hand. Shyness abates quickly, then they uncurl and crawl around your fingers, exploring. No wonder many states have annual Woolly Bear festivals. This harmless, charming creature that invites physical contact and close inspection has earned its dear name. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 256: 176 words, TOTAL = 41,972; 18,028 remaining Pre-quarantine life canted heavily toward utility and efficiency, but our windfall of unspent time has bred experimentation and improvisation. Isolation’s fertilizing effects on creativity are manifesting in prolific artistry and innovation. For me, quarantivity tends to brew in the kitchen. Take last night’s chili. It began with the standard onions, garlic, ground beef, cumin, cayenne, chili powder, crushed tomatoes, salt, pepper, and way too many beans (accustomed to cans, I overplayed the soaking method ). Then I browsed recipes and took inventory of ingredients on hand. I kept smelling and tasting. Too bland, too watery, too beany; add this, add that. Resulting additions:
Best. Chili. Ever. Good thing. We’ll be eating it for weeks. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 255:159 words, TOTAL = 41,796; 18,204 remaining ACCIDENTAL OMISSION: 1/3 c. frozen corn
The Field House on Sutton Island (photo credit: C. Jeffery Wahlstrom) - inspiration behind the upcoming book, The Field House: A Writer's Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine. Publication date: May 4, 2021 (May the Fourth Be With You!) When I learned last summer that my book would be published, the flush of shock and thrill floated me through several weeks. However, twenty-two months is a long time to sustain thrill. Inevitably, emotions ebb. Somehow, though, today’s minus-one-year mark feels like a milestone. A tiny upsurge of anticipatory flutters has reawakened. It seemed fitting to share a photo today of the house that gave my book its name. The island home long known as The Field House was Rachel Field’s beloved summer home, her muse, the site that housed her deepest soul-connections, her flush of first love, her loneliness, her flames of poetic, prosaic, and creative inspiration. I, too, arrived on the island in the flush of young love. That same house elicited my own stirrings and literary inspiration, and bound me heart-and-soul to Rachel Field. Others have found inspiration within the walls of the Field House across the years – writers, poets, composers. Some houses seem to hold a beating heart in their creaks and cobwebs; they whisper their secret histories from the dusty corners. This is one of them. I’m anxious to travel out there and awaken the house from its winter sleep. Soon. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 254: 196 words, TOTAL = 41,637; 18,363 remaining I haven’t shared any food photos lately. I don’t know about you guys, but I find food photos deliciously compelling. “Food porn” is a relatively new term for me, but it immediately caught my attention as a perfectly apt label for good food photography. It’s an exquisite Sunday evening; we’ve worked hard both outside and in this weekend. Rather than wax prosaic, I will share some of our quarantine meals with you and leave it at that. Center: fish tacos. Clockwise, starting top left: curried veggie frittata; pesto mozzarella pizzas on fresh bread rounds; green salad with kiwis, colored peppers, and blue cheese; bread boules; blueberries, blue cheese, and bacon salad; cherry cobbler, strawberry-feta salad with sunflower and pumpkin seeds; sesame baguettes. Enjoy! We sure did. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 253: 126 words, TOTAL = 41,441; 18,559 remaining My senior year high school yearbook photo - taken by friend and talented classmate Cathy Jones! One of my high school friends reached out with the idea of a mini-reunion via Zoom. Six of us – rarely in touch – met for an hour-long visit. Most of our conversation was COVID catch-up: Where are you sheltering? Are your kids with you? Is everyone okay? How are your parents (for those with living parents)? How is pandemic-era life? These reconnections are happening all over: with family (close and estranged), college friends, high school friends, long lost friends. When we have time on our hands, when the precarious nature of life is thrust before us, when the perpetual distractions of routine are largely reduced, we look back; we remember these people. Facebook is rife with nostalgia: for long-ago school days, for influential record albums, for memorable milestones. It’s a reawakening of old feelings, good ones. Take note. As we shift out of full shut-down mode, let’s not slip too easily back into neglecting what we most care about; let’s make “normal” something much better, looking forward. My 60th year in 60,000 words Day 252: 166 words, TOTAL = 41,315; 18,685 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
January 2024
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