A Grandma's Comfort

These are weird, scary days.  I know that the holiday seasons are upon us, but it seems more likely that the Mayans were perhaps right after all.  I was shopping yesterday and the holiday atmosphere was muted with the tragedy that has overwhelmed us all.  It seems wrong to be anticipating joy and happiness at this time of year when so many others are devastated.  I find myself at times with an overflowing heart and tears spilling over. The endless cycles of "why?" and "what now?" play themselves out again and again in my brain with no ready answers or even suggestions for a way forward in this messed up world.

I am at a loss.  What is a person to do against such reckless hate? The problems are complex and the answers will likely be even more so. But thanks to my husband and some mite-infested straw, I at least found some comfort, a quiet anchor in a violent sea.....my grandmother's afghan.

I have a few afghans that were knitted and crocheted by my grandmothers.  Both of them crocheted one during the second World War using bits and pieces of yarn that they had around so they are hodge-podge collections of different colored yarns.  They did it to keep themselves busy while they worried about loved ones overseas and in harm's way.  My maternal grandma once told me that as long as she kept working on that blanket, then she felt like everyone was going to be okay.  This blanket chanced to come out of the closet the other night because Keith had happened to sit in the straw with our little pigs and only later realized that he was extremely itchy. With a little deductive reasoning, he determined that it must have been from the straw that was with the pigs.  Unfortunately, he had happened to sit on our bed while wearing those pants and the itching issue spread, thus necessitating the entire removal of all sheets and blankets to the wash.

Old farmhouses in winter can get pretty chilly at night when the fire goes out, so I needed a warm blanket or two and Grandma's was on top.  It is a little long and rather narrow, but it would work to keep our feet warm, I thought.  However, as I threw that afghan out onto the bed and felt the weight and heft of it, I was instantly reminded of Grandma.  She put all her love and released all her anxieties into that blanket and it still continues to provide comfort and warmth. I crawled under it and pulled it up over me and for the first time in days, felt safe.

So what does one do in the face of such reckless hate and constant worry?...small things, apparently...small kindnesses, small steps - and one stitch at a time we attempt to create, either metaphorically or literally, a warm, comforting blanket that one day perhaps, our own descendants can climb under and feel safe - if only until they too can find their own small steps forward.

My steps forward? I contemplated them at length while curled under Grandma's blanket - I will write and speak, as often and as much as necessary to help move the dialogue in this country forward to a more civil one, if possible.  The alternative is to simply do nothing, and clearly that has not worked out well for any of us ...especially those families in Connecticut.  I think it is time to make changes, find common ground, and work toward mending the moral fabric of our age.  I know that I look back on the time that my grandparents had to struggle through and I respect them for what they had to do....for what they had to survive.  I can only hope that, some day, my own grandchildren will be able to sit awhile with their thoughts of me and feel comforted that I had the determination to make a difference and the belief that, if I only keep working on it, we will all be alright.

Welcome To The Jungle - Random Thoughts While Weeding.

I find myself having to stop, midway through weeding the gardens for the thousandth time, and remind myself that this is the time of year that I dream about in January - hot, humid, and green.  And yet, when I am in the midst of it I am too hot and it is too humid and way too green!  The corn is about 4 feet over my head, the beans are stringing all over the place, the peas are getting totally lost amid all the weeds, my flower gardens are horribly neglected and the sweet potato vine has taken on the personality of Audry II in Little Shop of Horrors.   The list of vegetables and flowers to try to save from the assault of the weeds gets forever longer and my back and shoulders become ever more sun burnt from being stooped over pulling weeds all day.  Thankfully, there are a few plots of vegetables - namely potatoes and squash that were mulched well with straw and newspaper that don't require much work other than to pull out the occasional errant weed, but the other seemingly endless beds of plants needing my attention are enough to make anyone wish for a sudden, yet definitive frost.

I often channel my grandmother when this sense of being completely overwhelmed strikes.  Her motto for cleaning her house - which was a large four square and a lot of space for an elderly lady to tackle - was to "clean one corner per day"  At the time she told me this I was probably about 15 and thought 'that's crazy - it would take weeks to get the house clean' not realizing at the time the wisdom of my grandma.  The hardest part is always starting.  A task too big will put just about anyone into procrastination mode, but to set the goal of cleaning just one corner....that is do-able and so you begin the task and before you realize it, the entire house is cleaned because you naturally progress from one corner to the next and so on.  I apply the same thought process to my gardens although it is modified slightly to  "save just one plant from the weeds". 

This particular mindset came about when I was about 8 months pregnant with kid number 4 and I couldn't bend over anymore to get at the weeds - those were long, hot days indeed - but plant by plant I continued to weed.  Some days I literally did save just one plant at a time before having to go inside and take a break, but these days I start with one plant and slowly drift from plant to plant to plant until I look around at the carnage of weeds around me. I was so proud of weeding my entire tomato patch the other day that I just sat on the dirt as though it were the nicest sand of the beach and basked for a few minutes - actually looking up at the sun and letting the front half of my body have some exposure to the light for once.

I think of my grandparents often when working in the garden.  Things my grandma used to say, poems she taught me, the lives they all lived.  One of the things that I most enjoy is knowing the favorite flowers of my grandparents  - for my Grandpa George it was Marigolds, for Grandma Syl it was Petunias and for Grandpa Dave it was Four o'clocks.  Grandma Vera had so many favorite flowers and grasses that I don't think she could ever pick just one.  I grow all these flowers in my garden and have found that most of them will self seed year after year, which gives the feeling that my grandparents are with me all the time.  That connection, however abstract it may be, is very comforting and I will find myself mentally talking with my grandparents periodically as I go about saving one plant or another from hostile takeover by weeds - I imagine what they would say about current events, the kids, my old house.  All of my grandparents were farmers in South Dakota and lived through the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  Imagining what those times were like - how difficult, how frightening - makes my own stress about current events slightly more bearable.

 Weed, weed, weed......drifting about the gardens thinking all the while.....it is incredibly hot right now and I know there are many that consider me crazy, but we don't have air conditioning and I like it that way.  Again, I think of my grandparents that lived (and enjoyed) their lives without the benefit of air conditioning. The trick is to cool the house off at night by opening all the windows and then closing them during the day to contain the cooler air.  It works well, no expensive air conditioning needed.  We have become a society of wimps - addicted to our televisions, iPhone and air conditioning.  There is a way to becoming energy independent....it's called 'not using it'.  Given the current state of society, it will never happen. 

Weed, weed, weed.....sorting through flowers and weeds and came across the season's first Preying Mantis.  Very small - only about the length of my little finger and very quick.  She doesn't realize yet that she is the top of the insect food chain.  I won't even dare to hurt her because she is too valuable for eating unwanted bugs.  I will perhaps move her to a more desired hunting location, but I wouldn't think of harming her.

The worst part to all this weeding is collecting and disposing of the weeds afterward.  Inevitably, while raking up all the weeds I will spot a few thousand more and it will take me another half hour before they are all raked up and thrown into the compost bin where they will be quickly broken down into something far more useful than the weeds they were.  The jungle still lives on, but at least one corner of it is now more under control.