Monumental Tooth

My last post was honest, difficult to write, depressing as all get-out and necessary. It can't remain as my home page, though. Why not?

Here's why not:

I dare you to look at this picture and not at least smile a little bit. Besides the hilarity, besides the casual arm flung around her little brother, look at my jBird's giant front tooth. That, my friends, is a monument.

It is a monument of tooth-bone to change, to growth, to shedding childish things, but not quite growing into the permanent things, either. I love that huge, solitary front tooth and sometimes I just want to touch it. My jBird is a patient girl, but she rarely indulges me in this. I don't blame her, but still. Look at that thing!

Her teeth will all eventually come in and straighten out (hopefully without a whole lot of orthodontic intervention) but for now, I secretly cherish this giant front tooth that is so awkward, so strange and out of place in her face, but a talisman of more big things to come. For now this is more beautiful to me than any movie-star-perfect smile in the world.

These two - with their life and their energy and their constant vibration - these two wear me out and they worry me and they drive me straight up a wall sometimes. But look at how they laugh. They lean into each other and laugh. With their messy hair and hand knit sweaters and heads full of nonsense and of course the giant tooth, they laugh. I can fume around and stew and boil about things that are so much bigger than they are, but you know what? These are the biggest people I know. They have virtually no control over their lives, they have very little say in the things of the world; they get told what to do, where to go, how to behave and to go and pick up all their Legos. Their mother is moody and somewhat unpredictable, she's intense and she's insane and she loves them with all her heart. And still they laugh. With eyes closed, without self-consciousness or guile - so hard, they laugh. This is their default mode.

And that monumental tooth. Well, you know how it is. It brings me to my knees and it makes me laugh, too. So hard. 

Tending My Peonies

One of my ladies from last year

My peonies are about to bloom. I say "my peonies" but I am only their custodian. They were planted long before my tenure here and they don't belong to me. I supervise them and trim them and watch them for rot and growth and tend to their needs, but they aren't mine.

They are about to bloom, though. They are a rich and vibrant pink. Deep, almost red in their centers, and showy, bright and lush. In March, the leaves come back and the stems grow long and supple from the brown and worn out wreckage from last year. In April they grow their buds. These small, hard green golf balls of possibility. They sneak in suddenly among the riot of the loud-mouthed daffodils and tiny, brave crocuses. When the flash and hoot of early spring color starts to fade, they are there with their buds, waiting patiently to crack and open.

In a week or so, they will unfurl. An impossible clown car of petals and fragrance unfolding from the buds. Their beauty will be so heavy, they will bend their stems with exhaustion and lay their heads down on the grass to catch a bit of sun and take a break from all that brilliance. They will smile hello to me as I walk up my front steps and they will wave their petals when the kids run past. A few of them will be invited to come inside and sit in a crystal throne on my table.

In a few more weeks, those petals will start to fade and drop. They will make small throw rugs, hot pink against the green grass. They will eventually be odd bald stems, with tiny stamen hairs sprouting from their crowns. For the rest of the summer, they will be dark green foliage, almost black against a backdrop of other colors whose time has come. I miss them and bemoan their passing, but wait until the fall to hack back the tired stems and leaves nearly to the ground.

Next year, it will happen again and the delight and surprise will repeat. These grand old ladies of mine know some things. They know that there is a time for resting, a time to let the quick and noisy ones take center stage. They also know when it is their time to open large and resplendent; to bask in the spotlight and accept their due. They know that time is fleeting and only part of the whole of things. They know when it's time to shed their finery and store up reserves for the winter ahead. They are as comfortable with brown and bald as they are with enticing and lush. They know this. They know that ending is part of beginning again, that pruning is part of growth, and that decay is part of nurture.

They are not my peonies. I do not own them. I tend them and trim them, enjoy them and love them. Most of all, I try to listen to them.

The Gift of a Tenacious Pear

The tree is older than the house and twice as tall.
The house is a hundred years old.

It's a remnant. A towering reminder of the orchards that covered our neighborhood before working-class Norwegians built sturdy, yet modest houses.

In the spring it's a three-story herald of warmer days to come. Magnificent in its blanket of tiny pinkish-white blossoms. Those warm days come and the tiny petals flutter down like sweet-scented snow, leaving a scene like the day after a wedding in our back yard.

When the pears start to appear, it means it's almost time to go back to school and the light in the afternoons will  have a bit more of an edge.

By the time the pencils are sharpened and the lunch boxes are filled, the pears will be ready. Ripe and voluptuous with their broad hips and dainty shoulders.

Don't let them fool you, though. These ladies are tough. Their skin is thick, their flesh is firm and dense, they are coaxed to tenderness by only the most ardent flames, tempered with some spice and the dark and yielding sweetness of brown sugar. They are not for the faint of heart.

They wait patiently on their boughs for little climbing legs to chase them, tiny hands to grab them and bring them in. But with the first winds of autumn, they who haven't filled their dance cards come raining down with heavy, impatient thuds only to be snatched up by squirrels and raccoons bedding down for the winter.

And then my tree is bare again.

Except for this year. Except for one tenacious pear.

It hangs right in front of my kitchen window. It has kept me company all these many months. I watch it every day as I go about my business. It is one of hundreds this season - thousands in the life of the tree - but this one caught my eye. I keep tabs on it. It keeps tabs on me.

It is small. Just larger than a baby's fist. It has steadfastly refused to join its sweeter, juicier sisters in developing. I have watched it and cheered. I am a quiet collector of the small, the odd, the different.
It, by virtue of its smaller size, has avoided the rain, the wind. It has clung to its bough in defiance of squirrels, of season, of gravity.

It hangs there: tough and hard and small. It is my champion.
It has taken the things that make it different and used them as tools of survival.
It is not conventionally pretty. Its skin is a little darker, a little speckled; it's too narrow for any traditional use. But it is beautiful in its strength, its courage, its tenacity.

They're predicting a hard winter this year.
But that's all right.
I've got my talisman. My tenacious pear.