Shell Shatterday

Despite a strange midsummer torpor, I took a 4 mile walk last night. I took a familiar long route around my neighborhood, and by the time I was almost home dusk was in full effect. In fact, it was probably fully dark, but my eyes were accustomed to the gloom.

I was walking past a house that had a evergreen tree with low hanging branches in the front yard right next to the sidewalk. In the low light, something pale and shiny on the ground caught my eye, and I bent down to investigate.

It was the pale blue curvature of a robin’s egg. I couldn’t tell if it was a piece of egg cast off by a new chick, or a whole egg, so I reached out to gently touch it, to roll it on its side.

I thought I was being gentle, but what turned out to be an empty half of an egg shell shattered into tiny fragments at my touch. I let out a little “Oh!”

I was heartbroken that it was broken, and that it was my fault. In retrospect, I think those feelings are displaced from other things. But in that moment, I wasn’t just a woman on a summer evening walk. I was the destroyer of beautiful things. I felt horrible.

Is this how I am going to feel about my life today? That I can’t be trusted with it or it will break in my hands? No matter how gentle I am, I am sure to shatter?

And like that eggshell, I feel small and hollow. My baby bird has left the nest, and my restless heart turns over shell fragments and calls into the dark.

One Syllable is all Ye Get

In a lot of ways I always thought I was more like my grandmother than other members of the family, but lately I have noticed some of my grandfather's mannerisms creeping into my personality. Or at least I am being made aware of the ways in which I am similar to him.

Gramps was very emotionally reserved. He never said "I love you" to anyone that I saw. But the love was there, for sure. The above photo is the two of us when I was around 2-3 years old. He taught me to appreciate nature from an early age. He loved trees, especially, and seemed genuinely delighted whenever I brought him an acorn. We planted quite a few that later became beautiful oaks that now tower over that little brick house.

I never doubted that he loved me, even though he never said it, not even when he was dying. He did little things for me all the time that let me know he was thinking of me. He brought me British toffees and hand knit wool sweaters. On my last visit when he was still up and around, I had gone across town to see my father, and when I got back to the house he had already gone to bed, but he had left me a little note in the kitchen. It said "Have a good night", and sitting on top of the paper was the biggest, most perfectly shaped and succulent nectarine I had ever seen in my life. I just knew in that moment that he had taken time to select the very best one, looking each over to see which had no bruises and just the right blush. I felt a flush of love for him, and nectarine in hand, went to his room, not to wake him but just to look at him. He was snoring peacefully. I padded back to the kitchen in bare feet and bit into the fruit. Standing over the sink was a good idea, as the juice ran down my chin onto my hand and down to my elbow. Perfect. He didn't need to say the words, I could taste it.

He was kinda funny though about people's names. No matter how long your name was, it had to have a "for short". One syllable was all you got. I was obviously "Stace". In fact, so many people call me "Stace" that I don't even notice. You were lucky if you had a one syllable name to begin with, although almost none of us did. He shortened names that didn't easily shorten. Eileen was "Leen". I do that to people all the time, shortening their name to one syllable, said with affection.

I have started to do things like that, or maybe I always did and just now notice it. I do tell people that I love them, and that is a big difference. But I find that for me, saying it seems so inadequate. The words "I love you" seem to not be able to hold how I feel. I need to do things, too.

I wonder if people get it when I take a picture of a goose paddling lazily in the river and send it to them, or bake them cookies, or grasp them in an extra long hug or call just to say hello. They seem like such small things, but I don't do that for everyone, just the people I care deeply about.

I am a very poor judge of whether my love sinks under the skin of other people. Maybe I am not so adept at feeling it when they love me back, either, since I seem to need reassurance of it often. The juice of it really needs to run down my chin for me to get it, I guess.

Seems Pretty Simple

I was just outside in the courtyard at the hospital, sitting on a park bench, when I witnessed a hasty date between a pair of what I am guessing were Mountain Chickadees like the one pictured above. Well, the male looked like that, anyway. They were sitting side by side on a length of pipe.

In the space of about a minute, he mated with her like 6 times, until he knocked her off of the pipe. She looked at him for a second, ruffled her feathers, and then took off.

He sat there chirping for a minute, trying to get the attention of another female. She pecked around on the ground near him for a while, but ultimately did not succumb to his charms and flew away.

He repositioned himself in a nearby tree and kept trying, bless him. He's probably out there working it still.

Pine Cones

I found a pine cone similar to this one sitting on the windshield of my car a few weeks ago and immediately palmed it. It is currently sitting on my desk at work, where I periodically pick it up and examine its beauty.

Whether it is the aesthetically pleasing spirals laid out in perfect divine proportion, or the sentimental feelings evoked by the fact that it is a pine cone and therefore reminds me of childhood camping trips with my grandparents, all I know is that it moves me and I enjoy looking at it.

I'm not too shy about admitting that mathematical concepts make my eyes glaze over, but the idea that there is a golden ratio that, if employed by artists or architects, enhances the beauty of an object is very compelling to me. If you want to look at the math, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

The golden ratio is expressed in nature, especially in plants. Look at the way the petals of an open rose form layer after layer of pentagram. Then look at the way branches arise out of trees. Look at my pine cone. Lovely spirals that are so precise, it is fascinating to imagine that the DNA of that tree is coded to express its reproductive capability in such a way. That natural selection favors the tree that can "apply math" to itself and selects against a tree that perhaps puts out abstractions of that design. Going more micro yet, the genome itself arranges its nucleotide bases according to the golden ratio. That is for the tree and for us.

So I have something in common with the pine cone, the tree that made it, the chambers of a nautilus shell, and DaVinci's Vitruvian man. The same power that made the proportions of the bones of my hand made the pine cone that rests in my palm. Meditating on that even for just as long as it took to write this blog entry has already brought my blood pressure down. It takes me out of my own head long enough to allow me to envision myself as part of the grand design. Even if I can't see it from my perspective, I probably fit.

Even if I don't fully comprehend the math, I AM the math. That has to mean something. Maybe if my hand is in yours at some point, it might be as lovely and wondrous as a pine cone to you.