It has been a simple dream of mine as long as I can remember to have a Japanese maple in my yard... since, probably, I finished college and left the East for good. Every time I came home to visit over the decades, I was captivated by the maple's color and by the delicate leaves as seen through filtered light. I didn't kid myself about those long Minnesota winters, and put the dream aside. I did try to grow a potted one in our tiny San Francisco garden a few years back, but the poor small thing didn't like the winter rains and summer drought enough to master its modest corner. Now here I am, surrounded by more Japanese maples than I can count. Not the small, delicate, umbrella-like trees that I have held in memory, but ones big enough to arch across whole neighbors' yards, ones that whisper against our windows in the rain, and ones that line our little lane, now brilliant in the morning sun.
How lucky we are
How Lucky We Are
From our new bedroom window I watch the virtual onslaught of a Pennsylvania spring - color and light exploding as far as the eye can see, changing by the day, sometimes by the hour. This is what I had forgotten. This is what takes my breath away - distant memory and new experience combined. Today it is the morning light through emerging dogwoods, with a stunning redbud tree behind. Yesterday it was the light through the delicate new leaves of the Japanese maples that hover over our back door, setting them on fire. How lucky we are to have found a place with trees, and light, and memories. How lucky we are to see another spring!
We Are Still the Same
A bit before his fifth birthday, my husband Steve and I pumped son Jesse up with a steady flow of compliments about how grown up he was and how he’d be a really big boy when he turned five. We thought we were doing the right thing in giving him something to look forward to. But on the anticipated day, Jesse stood in front of the mirror in tears. “What’s wrong?” we asked, genuinely surprised. “I look just the same!” Jesse wailed, staring at the reflection of his still-small self. Only a few hours, a new set of Legos, and a piece of cake made him settle back into his more familiar childhood.
That story has come to mind more than once this week as John and I have begun unpacking the many, many boxes that have finally arrived from California. We have spent the last month sleeping on air mattresses, measuring and mapping empty rooms, filling them in our minds’ eyes with all of our favorite things. And somehow in the process, that accumulation of ‘stuff’ over 70 years of living took on more polish and shine in our imaginations as it bounced across the highways of America. Everything we owned was going to fit perfectly and look better than ever. This is a grown-up house, we thought; our belongings would look more ‘grown-up,’ too.
But after the movers left, and we had spent a few hours shoving boxes and furniture around, we found ourselves a bit deflated and confused. It’s not just that we were tired, for certainly we were. It’s not just that the reality of the work ahead was finally hitting, for I think we were pretty well prepared for what will lie ahead in the coming weeks. It was a feeling uncomfortable to admit, a feeling we discovered we both shared: our ‘stuff’ was still our stuff, for better and for worse, and no new house was going to make them different than they have always been; no house will turn us into people different (better?) than we were when this journey eastward first began.
But as our books begin to fill the shelves, and our paintings rest against the walls waiting to remind us of who we are and what we love, we find that we have come to know (with some relief), and are hereby happy to report that we are still the same.