Afternoon adventures

The town we live in (pop. 87,000) is a pretty "normal" town. People on the streets are pretty "normal" people. 47% of the population is Asian, 35% is Hispanic and 13% white so that might not be quite typical of the rest of the country's demographics. But aside from the fact that most of the signs around town are written in Chinese and Spanish, the town looks fairly average middle-class American and I feel pretty much at home.

Pete had been encouraging me to come to Santa Monica some day (his office is there) and spend the day enjoying the shops, the lovely public library, the beach and (if I came on a Wednesday) the Farmer's Market. Yesterday was shaping up to be a beautiful and quiet day so late morning I hopped in the car and headed over there. It's about 25 miles there but light years in atmosphere.

SM isn't a bit like the town we live in. There are lots of lovely shops and interesting places but the people on the streets are definitely different. I strolled into the Farmer's Market minding my own business and just looking at the merchandise, not intending to buy anything because (a) I knew it would be hours before I went home and (b) I didn't want to carry anything heavy around all day. I heard someone yelling, "Hey, girlfriend!" and after a few calls, turned out of curiosity to see who was calling. To my chagrin, there was an enormous man wearing a fez, propped on a stool at a booth and he was beckoning to me! I smiled, shook my head and kept walking as I was in the middle of the street and well past the booth. He immediately started venting imprecations at me. I was mystified - what had I done to merit vilification?

On my second turn through the market I saw two men dressed in pale pink robes. They were both wearing unusual haircuts and one was handing a book to a vendor. I overheard a snatch of the conversation as I walked past: "...this is what we do: we take food, and then we prepare it with a much love as possible, and then we offer it...." My mind was already jumping into the conversation, "That sounds just like what I've done two or three times a day for the last 31 years!" Then I began to wonder about that little phrase "as much love as possible". How does one quantify how much love is possible? I don't doubt the young man's sincerity but his words somehow had an empty ring in my ears.

Later I took refuge in a good book, seated at a table in the sun-drenched courtyard of the public library. There is a small cafe' there and a lovely little stream that bisects the courtyard, making it a wonderful spot to rest and read. An older gentleman shuffled past me toward the cafe'. I glanced up and then looked again. He was wearing a brimmed canvas hat, the kind fishermen wear to stick their tackle in. Instead of tackle, he had all kinds of huge feathers of every hue sticking straight up out of the top of the hat. I was mesmerized - how had he got the feathers to stand up so straight? Would he make it through the door without knocking them off? Were the ends of the feathers poking his head inside the hat? Where did he get such a feather collection? I was tempted to open a conversation with him to ask about the hat but then I remembered Mr. Fez from the market and decided to let the gentleman just mind his own business. I don't know - maybe he would have enjoyed talking about his hat. I would have enjoyed hearing about it.

I guess the moral of the day is, next time I feel the need for a dose of the bizarre, I know where to go to find it.

Back to the blogging board

My last post was on Dec 14 and three days later our grandson, Micah, was born. Since then, although the "muse" has occasionally visited in the night or odd hours of the day, I've been somewhat preoccupied in Babyland. And the longer the break, the harder it is to get back to blogging. But life is equilibrating again and I'm back at the keyboard.

We are approaching our 7th month-iversary of our relocation to sunny southern California. Spring is in full swing here and everything is lush, green and blossoming. Citrus trees, jasmine, honeysuckle and something-pink-I-don't-know-the-name-for are loading the air with inebriating smells. I just walked out to the mailbox and the air is heavy with beautiful fragrance. One sunny day follows another.

A very interesting book I read this winter was Last Child In the Woods by Richard Louv. The author lives in the San Diego area and he made an interesting comment about life in southern California (or SoCal as it's often abbreviated around here). He said that southern California captures the body but not the soul. He hit the nail on the head. What's not to love about a climate this warm and sunny? But the extreme urban environment doesn't do much for the soul. Pete and I often escape east to the desert for some solitude.

Of course grandparenthood has been an incredible adventure. I'll write more about that some other time; four months of experience doesn't equip me to say much with authority on the subject except that we're loving it.

Time for one more juicy orange (bought from a street vendor at $4 for a huge bag-locally grown and sweet as nectar) and a walk through the neighborhood. I'm back to wearing my pedometer and striving for those 10,000 steps/day!

On My Window Sill

On my kitchen window sill there are two juice glasses that have avocado seeds suspended by toothpicks on the rim, the seed bottoms soaking in water. My mother used to do this when she (very infrequently) bought an avocado - there is just something about a seed that massive that begs to be sprouted. I remember as a kid that it seemed to take forever but Mom had several avocado plants in pots as proof that it could be done.

I was doing my morning purge of kitchen detritus and in my "putz wut" (German: cleaning fury) was just about to dump those seeds when I noticed a crack in the bottom of one of them. Sure enough, a rootlet is starting to poke through! Their status instantly changed from "imperiled" to "protected". Life stirs, silently, slowly.

There's a thorny little question I've been chewing on lately and getting impatient for an answer. Somehow seeing that crack in the avocado seed gave me hope.

Pethuel

The end of the year is approaching so in my Old Testament reading I'm at the minor prophets. The language is often beautiful and poetic, even though the words to the peoples are quite frightening at times. I have to admit that with my limited historical knowledge (and short memory) I often have to grab a commentary to help me understand exactly to whom the prophets were speaking and what the context is.

So the other day I was reading Keil and Delitzsch's introduction to the book of Joel and came across this little gem:
Joel is distinguished from other men of the same name, which occurs very frequently, by the epithet "son of Pethuel" (which means 'the open-heartedness or sincerity of God").

I got to thinking about that little parenthesis and it just blew me away. Most of us, if asked to describe God, would probably not come up with the term "open-hearted" right off the bat. Pethuel's parents (Joel's grandparents) must have had an experiential knowledge of God's open-heartedness toward them, so much so that they wanted to declare it to the world through their son's name.

Recently I was talking with someone about the scars left in our lives by relationships in which the person's "love" for us is conditional, where their approval is withdrawn or withheld whenever we displease them and we spend a lot of time trying to earn that love back. I think most of us have this experience at some point in our lives because as flawed human beings, our love is also flawed. To even come up with the idea of a love that never fails seems to me to simply be outside the realm of probability, given our own experiences.

So that brings me back to Pethuel's parents. I am consumed with curiosity to know what they experienced about God's open-heartedness and sincerity. Certainly some significant event or insight must have made them want to declare it to the world through their son's name. And certainly we, who celebrate God's open-heartedness demonstrated at Bethlehem, have reason to rejoice and be open-hearted and sincere ourselves. I want to be a Pethuel, too!

Lessons from a Pot

Shortly before we moved, our friends, the Bayless', gave us an enormous and very beautiful glazed ceramic pot. This pot is big enough for a tree and must weight close to 80 lbs. Google obligingly moved it out to California with all our other stuff and on arrival we manhandled it out onto our balcony. Even before the boxes were all unpacked I went in search of the perfect occupant for this pot. I knew I wanted a citrus tree of some kind and was delighted to find a lemon tree appropriately called a "Meyer lemon". I brought it home, poured in several bags of potting soil and planted my new little tree. After studying it for a few days it's shrub-like appearance began to bother me so I took matters into my own hands and pruned it, judiciously I hoped, but with some trepidation as I have never owned a citrus tree. Now it looked more like a tree anyway.

About a month later, as if to announce to the world that it found it's new pot to its liking, the tree began to sprout flower buds. Not just a few here and there but enormous clusters of blossoms at the end of every branch I hadn't lopped off. I, of course, watched this development with growing delight but one problem niggled at my brain. Pollination. There are myriad citrus trees in yards all around us that are heavy with fruit so I knew there had to be some pollinators out there. But would they find my diminutive little tree in the sea of concrete that makes up our complex? The balcony is only 6 feet wide with a 7 foot concrete wall around it. I figured if worse came to worst, I could pollinate the blossoms with a brush but hoped that some insect would find it, even though insects are rather rare out here ("no bugs!" is the mantra of everyone who moves here from the Midwest).

I was sitting at the kitchen table sewing the other day when something on the balcony caught my eye. A beautiful green hummingbird was flitting (is there any other word to describe a hummingbird's flight?) around the lemon tree! He worked the blossoms quickly, darting from branch to branch, then zoomed away over the wall. Aha, I thought - Mother Nature wins again! I wasn't sure if a hummingbird's visit would pollinate the blossoms but it was a hopeful sign.

Yesterday I was having lunch and reading a book out on the balcony, basking in the sunshine. Mentally I was miles away in rural England but a familiar noise began to penetrate my brain and brought me back to California. I looked at the lemon tree next to me and there was a BEE! Not just one but three beautiful bees, busily working every blossom on my tree. What a welcome sight! I looked at them closely and sure enough, they were plain old honeybees, Apis mellifera. Either there are feral colonies of bees out here or someone within a few miles of here has beehives. Each little bee was wearing his yellow pollen pantaloons and now I KNOW that my blossoms have been pollinated. What joy. I could have hugged them, blessed little bees that reminded me of home.

So even amidst the concrete and asphalt with only tiny, manicured yards and no wild spots where nature is allowed to run rampant, God's creatures prevail. I'm blessed to witness it and learning to keep my eyes open for the wonder of it. Thanks for the pot that is teaching me, Tom and Tee!

Still chuckling...

Pete and I have been blessed with the most delightful daughter-in-law. Not only is she beautiful and wise but extremely quick-witted. At the moment, she is also very pregnant.

I've been kind of concerned for her, since she works in downtown LA and takes the bus to work and home each day - not the most comfortable mode of transportation in her condition. I have volunteered to be her personal chauffeur for the duration, driving her to work and picking her up. I reminded her again of my offer the other night. She thought for a moment as if visualizing this and then said, "Yes, and I could sit in the back seat and ask you the meaning of life."

I laugh out loud every time I think about it!

Laugh Lines

I was talking to my daughter Rebecca a while back and relating to her an incident that Pete and I had found hysterically funny. After we had finished laughing together she said to me, "Mom, my favorite sound in the whole world is the sound of you and Dad laughing."

I thought of that frequently over the next few days. For most of our lives both Pete and I have not laughed enough. We are pretty intense people; sometimes, I'd have to admit, we are almost pathologically intense. Add to that a decade of life in Germany, a culture that isn't exactly known for it's lightheartedness and sense of humor, and well, you can see why our laugh lines were developmentally delayed. This kind of focus, though, has it's downside - that of losing some of the peripheral vision that brings balance to life.

The last decade has brought a lot of progress, though. Now I'd say we do laugh a lot. Oftentimes we find ourselves laughing over something before we ever get out of bed in the morning. One of the things age teaches you is that you have less control over things than you thought you did. Your well-intentioned intensity is pretty much useless in a lot of situations. And there's a ream of truth to the admonition to "don't worry, be happy". I'm proud to say that Pete has some of the happiest and most beautiful wrinkles around his eyes - those that come from smiling a LOT.

So from the funny video on Ocean Spray's website to the hilarious email a friend forwarded to me to the turkey-wrestling woman on the TV commercial we're finding our laughs all over the place these days. We're making up for lost time...