Poetry & Pushpins

~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Poetry & Pushpins

Tag Archives: New England

Living Christmas Trees

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration, Romantic Botany

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Advent, cozy apartment, New England, New Haven

This is the first year I got a Christmas tree for my apartment. After the mayhem of graduate school and locking down a job in New Haven, it seemed fitting to at last claim my rootedness in this space. It’s a live tree—something I’ve always wanted. My family’s Christmas trees were never real because Caspian and Callisto, our family cats, enjoyed climbing branches a bit too much. And the tree smells wonderful: clean and heady, as only pine can smell. Cinnamon spice ornaments and pomanders (oranges studded with whole cloves) further incense the experience. I cannot properly articulate how wonderful it is to come home from a stressful day at the office and breathe in the spicy sweetness of my living room.

And as I inhale, I think about the contradiction of the Advent season here in New England. Its weather is cold but its spirit is warm, it is darkened by early nights and lightened by the soft glow of candles. Yet above all these contradictions, Advent is a time of focusing. Because of the cold and the dark, I think we reach out more intentionally to life, bringing growing things—like Christmas trees—into our homes. Pungent reminders that even in the deathly dormancy of December, there is potential for life and new experiences.

IMG_0115

Advertisement

Balance

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

empathy, grief, Midwest, New England

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some of my life’s most sacred moments.

 

“Hey, Mattie. Thanks for calling me back.”

I sit on a garden bench, behind a mansion-turned-Yale-administrative building, concealed from the casual observer by clematis vines. As I lean further back into my verdant hiding place, my “e’s” and “a’s” ascend up my nose and echo in my nasal cavities. The carefully enunciated speech I use daily at Yale—the speech that others sometimes mistake as an English person’s when I’m either very nervous, or just trying to create polite, social distance at cocktail parties—begins to relax, nestling itself into a warm, Northeastern Ohio twang.

My words instinctively know that I have no need for nerves or polite social distance as I sit concealed by clematis vines. I’m speaking with my younger brother. And, concealing myself from the once little boy, who used to wipe boogers on me, is a very unwise thing to do. Especially, since that little boy is now a competent, gentle young man.

We talk about his forthcoming visit, maritime history, human psychology, and his friends. Subjects we have often touched upon in previous phone conversations. But, now that our Mom has been dead for exactly a year, our conversations also explore something else: family management. We talk about how our Dad and our 93 year-old Grandmother are actually doing, comparing conversations, trading observations, voicing concerns, and brainstorming solutions (if necessary). We also cry (me more than him) while uttering reflections about our Mom. Reflections only we two would understand, because we were her children.

The more we speak to each other in this way, the more I believe that we are creating a form of healthy communication we shall use with each other for the rest of our lives. We will only continue to make decisions about how to maintain and ensure our family’s well-being, property, and monetary assets as Dad and Grandma continue to age. I’m glad that we’re building this strong, open report now. I find that hard decisions become less difficult if you’re making them with someone you love, trust, and understand.

It still sucks that our Mom died when we were both still in our twenties. But, these phone conversations with my brother are becoming some my life’s most sacred moments. For through them, I see time shrink, merge, and fall away. Mattie is 24, and I, 28—a four-year age gap differentiating our life experiences. A huge chasm in our youth, especially during his booger-wiping phase, that is a chasm no longer. This young man on the other end of the phone and I seem to share more and more as we age. Though he has Mom’s coloring and I have Dad’s, we share our Mom’s cheekbones, eye sockets, and weirdly Romanesque nose. Though he is a mechanical engineer that specializes in historical machines and I am a librarian who specializes in Christian theology, we both deal with creating mechanized order and preserving history in our careers. Though he was socialized as a male and I a female, we have socialized each other to appreciate compassionate men and self-sufficient women. And between us, we have cultivated a penchant for Jane Austen, the Sandman comics, video games, British sitcoms, hiking, classical literature, sailing, and history.

But, most importantly, Mattie and I share the deep pain of losing our Mom, and, the responsibility of loving our family well in her absence.

I tell Mattie this, all of this, and he is quiet for a long time. “Well you know Sis, the universe always has a way of balancing itself out.”

It is my turn to be silent as I stare up into the sky, letting Mattie’s words properly seep into my thoughts. The sky is thick and dense with flat gray clouds. Yet, a rainbow gracefully arches across those clouds, its colors made even more vivid by the stark gray background.  A spray of water hits my cheeks, I only now realize it is raining, and I look up—higher—into the sky. This rainbow has a twin. A quiet echo of itself in color and shape.

“Yes Mattie, I must agree with you. The Universe does have a way of balancing itself out.”

photo(1)

Warm Cats and Restless Laps

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life)

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

empathy, learning patience, Midwest, New England

When I was five, my family made the acquaintance of Peppermint, a seven-pound, black-haired, green-eyed cat. One early fall day, Peppermint jumped onto my father’s knee as he worked in our backyard. The tiny cat wouldn’t get off, and so, my father brought him into the house and Peppermint became our family pet.

Peppermint and I rarely lived in harmony when I was younger. Quiet and slow, he preferred the calm, languid sunbeams that warmed the front room’s bay window to my fidgety, kindergarten self. Despite our differences and my total lack of empathy for his disposition, I wanted him to be my friend—but, I always went about it the wrong way. Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Sometimes, and this was always a rare occasion, Peppermint would jump down from the bay window and up into my lap. As he curled into a tight ball, his small body would start to feel like seven tons rather than seven pounds. Seven tons of hot, furry mass pinning me down, keeping me from doing the important things kindergarteners do:  playing in the woods, artistically arranging dolls around my bedroom, dancing to cassette tapes of the Beatles. I resented Peppermint’s presence when he sat in my lap. I resented the time he made me wait for that presence. And most importantly, I resented his inability to be my loving pet when I wanted him to be.

Trying to pet him as he dozed in the sunbeams got me far more scratches than approving purrs.

Twenty-three years have passed since Peppermint first sat in my lap. Now, I’m no longer a squirming kindergartener (though I still spend time in the woods and dance to the Beatles). As I type this post to you, two happily purring cats sit on my outstretched, blanketed legs. They are my neighbors’ cats. I often look after them when my neighbors go out of town. In the beginning, both felines were suspicious of the strange person who chose to occupy their usual humans’ couch. Yet, with the blessing of time and cold weather, the cats finally decided that my lap was an okay place to be.

This time around, I didn’t mind the process. For I know something at twenty-eight that I didn’t know at five: As long as I am patient and understanding and without presumption, even the slowest of cat hearts will eventually open up and take comfort in my lap.

20140311-005555.jpg

Remembering Miss Rumphius

19 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Literature, Pushpins (Daily Life), The Creative Life

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

books, botany, Midwest, New England

Last week, I reconnected with Miss Rumphius, a lovely book from my childhood. A research project from work took me to YouTube, looking for short, inspirational videos. After a few key word searches, my eyes fell into the illustrations of this richly pigmented picture book. I again became part of Miss Rumphius’s story, left breathless by her colorful adventures and dazzled by the thick, spiky clumps of “blue and purple and rose colored lupines” she plants all over her town at the book’s end.

If you haven’t read it, or simply do not have the time to watch the video, let me tell you a little bit about the plot. The story follows the life of Alice Rumphius, a little girl who lives by the sea. When she is young, she wishes to go to far away places. And when she is old and tired of adventure, she wishes to live by the sea. In addition to these life ambitions, her grandfather challenges her to “do something to make the world more beautiful,” the hardest thing for a person to accomplish. So, Miss Rumphius grows up, moves away from home, becomes a librarian, goes on adventures, and when she is old, she lives by the sea, making the world more beautiful as she plants thousands of lupine seeds around her little town.

Listening to her story after all these years gave me an odd feeling–it felt like both remembering a long-forgotten memory and realizing a long, unspoken prophecy. In my youth, her life inspired me, a Midwesterner who had never seen the sea. She was an ideal I could only hope to aspire to: interesting, wise, and full of colorful stories. Now, I feel a strange affinity with Miss Rumphius, rather than a gape-mouthed awe. I feel like I have lived into bits of her essence. Like her, I have traveled to far off places and become a librarian. I also desire to create beauty for this world through writing, relationships, and cooking. Did this story help to shape me for the life I now live? Did this little piece of art help to mold my tastes and desires? In some ways, I think it did.

But in other ways, I think that this little piece of art was a striking story that helped to reinforce the values and life truths of the men and women who raised me. In quiet, unassuming ways, my family and my neighbors chose to create little artistic moments that startled and re-directed the lazy, predictable flow of small town Midwestern life. My grandmother planted larkspur every year in her garden for humming birds. At the beginning of each summer, we would try to guess where new patches of pink and purple-blue would appear, blown by last year’s winds. Where others saw piles of car parts and buckets of spark plugs, my grandfather saw (and would build) purring, rumbling Model T Fords and classic Roadsters. Our family garden, thanks to the efforts of my father, always had heirloom tomatoes in the summer–beautiful, ruby colored orbs whose taste was so rich, so deep, that each bite became a silken caress.

And there was my neighbor Helen, who would keep seed packets in her car, ready for her to open and scatter whenever she came across an abandoned parking lot or patch of dirt.

She was my own Miss Rumphius. Present in my life before I read this book.

Hard R’s and Nasal A’s

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by poetryandpushpins in Pushpins (Daily Life), Religious Exploration

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

England, Midwest, New England

“Alright, sweetie, let’s get ya outta there.”

I bend down, and unbuckle Elliot from his stroller. He giggles in appreciation as I lift him out, then promptly repays my kindness by sprinting towards the park’s icy fountain. I run after him, and catch the toddler in my arms before his little gloved hands touch jagged ice.

“No ma dear. Ya musn’t touch that. It needs left alone.”

My consonants begin to slur, my hard r’s growl from the back of my throat, and my a’s embed themselves high in my nasal cavities. And for a moment, I am no longer in a New England park. I am back in Northeastern Ohio. I am a little girl, trying to touch a glass jar on a supermarket shelf, barely stopped by my mother’s arms.

“No ma dear.” My mother said. “Ya musn’t touch that. It needs left alone.”

My consonants begin to slur, my hard r’s growl from the back of my throat, and my a’s embed themselves high in my nasal cavities.

Five years away from Northeastern Ohio has helped to smooth out my hard, folksy, Midwestern accent. Studying in both in England and at an Ivy League institution has further gentrified it. I say “back” instead of “beACK” on a regular basis now. But, those Midwestern speech patterns and accents do come back. I hear them when I am giving practical advice, I hear them when I speak with friends I love and trust, I hear them when I talk to children. My Midwestern accent comes out when I am relaxed, when I am willing to be completely vulnerable. Hard r’s and nasal a’s are my auditory reminders of home, of parental nurture, of unconditional love.

I am not the first to think this way. Centuries ago, Dante wrote his beautiful sacred poetry in Italian instead of Latin. Though Latin was the scholarly language of the church, Italian was the language of Dante’s mother and father–the language that reminded him of deep, unspoken intimacy and love. A much more intuitive medium for him to explore God’s love for humanity through.

My Midwestern accent comes out when I am relaxed, when I am willing to be completely vulnerable.

Elliot wiggles in my arms, now. He points at his stroller.

“Oh, do you want to go beACK?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, then. Give me your hand.”

He reaches out his small hand, I take it into my larger one, and we walk back to the stroller. Thank God love manifests in many different ways; thank God love wraps itself up in daily word and tone.

20140205-122432.jpg

Recent Posts

  • The Natural Sequel of an Unnatural Beginning
  • Late Summer Spiders
  • Hawks and Walks
  • Process Learning and Pavement
  • Saying Goodbye to Terry Pratchett

Archives

  • September 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013

The Cloud of Unknowing: Tags

Advent Anne Elliot is the best books botany Bronte bashing Burberry Women C.S. Lewis Captain Wentworth Chanel No. 5 Charleston Christian community churches community contra dancing cooking countryside cozy apartment empathy England favorite recipes fiction folk songs friendship gardening grief hawks Henry Tilney Highland Schottishe history human nature Ireland Jane Austen laundry adventures learning patience Lent librarians libraries making mistakes Midwest MIss Fisher Mr. Selfridge Neil Gaiman New England New Haven New Year New York PBS Dramas poetry resiliency Rowan Williams running spiders technology Terry Pratchett the creative process Toupee von Pear vintage fashion World Cup writing

Amazing Writers

  • BeyondWhy.org
  • Daisy C. Abreu
  • Jenny Blair, Freelance Writer
  • Kimberly B. George. Feminst. Writer. Bridge Builder.
  • The Local Yockel

Creators of Beauty: Art & Music

  • Elisa Berry Fonseca
  • Ordinary Time
  • Stella Maria Baer
  • Tawnie Olson, Composer

Publications

  • Hartford Faith & Values
  • Lillian Goes Vintage: The Tumbler
  • The Living Church
  • The Vincent Librarian's Blog
  • Young Raven's Literary Review

Sites of Whimsy

  • Ask the Past: Advice from Old Books
  • The Productive Librarian
Follow Poetry & Pushpins on WordPress.com

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Poetry & Pushpins
    • Join 60 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Poetry & Pushpins
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...