Marsh Hens in Love

There are three new families of marsh hens at the lake. Yesterday Nathan and I saw chicks from all three families, but I didn't have my camera. Today as I got near the nests, I heard the pair calling to each other to warn that danger (me) was coming. I could see the chicks moving the grasses around, but couldn't get a clear glimpse of them. I did see, though, this pair of parents who called to one another. The mother checked on the babies and then came to meet her companion. They groomed each other carefully, tenderly. After a minute or so, they then separated--the mother returning to the nest and the father continuing to call warning "Wheewhoot!" until he saw that I had moved away. Cool. Maybe they'll show off their chicks while I'm there tomorrow.

First Day of Summer

Yesterday was the first official day of summer for me. If you look up "signs of summer" on the internet, you find people who tell about birds feeding their young, sudden proliferation of blooms in a garden, temperatures that soar from 70 degrees to 95 degrees over night, and the change of how the earth smells--spring carries a damply-cool scent; while summer is marked by a dry-rose-gardenia aroma. At our house, the beginning of summer is determined by the first day that someone goes swimming in the pool.

All of Florida's short winter, the pool is a frosty 68-to-70 degrees. By the time that summer hits, the pool has only warmed by 8 or 9 degrees--still too cold for Brent or Nathan to even think of jumping in. And, to tell the truth, it is still too frigid for me to consider swimming laps. However, once summer is here, after a few hours of working in the yard, I am so hot that the cold sluice of wet water--layering me above and below in layers of frosty relief--becomes a delicious hunger. It is as if the sweat peels away as I dive in--starting at my fingertips, running up my arms to my face, roiling over my stomach and back, finally pinching off at the ends of my toes. A being that was hot and prickly with exhaustion and dust is reborn: I climb out of the pool as if I had just emerged from a long, musty hibernation. It is the first experience of summer that allows me to imagine something of what a butterfly feels as it breaks open from its cocoon--unfolding wings that will carry its now-nearly-weightless body aloft on currents of invisible air.

I am suppose to be at the photography lab tonight. Tuesday evenings and from 9 to 9 on Friday are all the hours of access I have to be in a lab where I can print from my black and white negatives. Brent has indulged me in the space and costs of developing my film here at home. It is tedious work--a process that requires precise temperatures and measured intervals of change. I do it at night, while I am watching a movie with Brent, so it isn't really something that I mind. After the immediate result of digital photography, though, I GREATLY dislike having to wait to see if any of my pictures turned out as I wanted them to. Shortly after the start of the semester I began to research what a good, used enlarger would cost. I quickly realized that (first) I do not even LIKE any of the black and white prints I have developed (some of which dislike is borne of the fact that I have not [l]earned the patience to perfect this very difficult art) and (second) it would take extensive study for me to determine what a "good, used enlarger" would be. I will be done with the semester in just four weeks, so I have made an executive-type decision to try to make it to as many lab hours as I can and then return full-time to the digital photos that I love working with. ANYWAY . . . that means that I should be at the college right now, elbow-deep in stop bath and fixer. I am too restless inside through. I worked for three hours this morning getting a final, good print of an "architectural detail"--one of our final assignments. One of the buildings I photographed had columns in the front. I laid on my back and took pictures of the tops of the columns and the detailed ceiling above them. I already have finished (to my satisfaction and the approval of my instructor) the "detail and light" and "architecture" (translate: photograph of a cool building) assignments. Earlier today I finished setting up the background for the latest assignment: an abstract self-portrait.

We are to turn . . .

At this moment my 21 year-old son is poking my arm and singing "Whoo-hoo! Do the hokey-pokey! Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!" I imagine this strange slip from his normal, sedate demeanor to be caused by the successful completion of his homework and a 93% grade on a Chemistry quiz today.

. . . in a photograph that expresses who we are--but doesn't really look like us. It is an effort to get us to think beyond the obvious--made more difficult by the fact that since we are THE OBJECT or the photo, we must be creative in finding a way to--at the same time--be the PHOTOGRAPHER OF THAT OBJECT. Not a problem if you have an especially long self-timer or a remote depressor.

We shall see, I suppose.

It is getting dark outside. It is time to get Nate to do another load of dishes and for me to put in a load of laundry. It is time for Brent to begin to think about coming home. Too late for yard work. Too cold for a swim in the pool. Just right for picking out a movie to watch and waiting for Brent to come home to cuddle with me on the couch.

Some of the Images . . . and Events From My Yesterday.

Me--reflected in the night window of my kitchen in Florida.
Honey bee on the blossoms of the Key lime tree in my Florida yard.
Great blue heron at the lake where I walk the dogs.
Sandhill crane smooths his feathers in the driveway in front of my home.

Let me tell you about yesterday, 2nd of March 2010. It was one of those super filled, uber weird days with just about everything in it: sorrow, danger, joy, panic, creation, and death. It was a Tuesday. That morning I went in to take notes for Nathan in his American History class. I learned about the Bill of Rights and Madison's Promise and George Washington and the Constitution and James Pickney and indigo dye and yeomen farmers. Like most lecture classes, it was a fairly calm affair.

The teacher is cool and tells good stories--though he tends to talk a little too fast, which is probably a reaction to years of students about to lose interest in what he is saying. I do the same thing when I am speaking to a group and I sense that someone isn't following the point I'm trying to make. It's almost as if by putting out more words, there is a bigger chance that somehow I'll include the magic words to help my listeners understand better.

After class, Nathan took his car and went to walk dogs for a friend. Just as I'd gotten home and found something to drink, put the bunnies out on the porch and sat down at my computer, I looked at the clock and realized that I had about an hour and a half before I needed to be out the door to go to a funeral--THE funeral of the sister who owns the dogs that Nathan and I walk most afternoons. Realizing that my time was limited, I decided to look at what bills were due.

At that moment, Nathan called me in a panic. It was like one of those 911 calls that you hear the TV news replay when something awful has happened and everyone is all terrified about what's going on because no one can tell exactly what IS going on. Nathan was bleeding . . . there was so much blood . . . he couldn't drive . . . he had the dogs in the back of the car . . . there was blood everywhere . . . the dogs were barking and trying to jump from the back of the Jeep into the seats between them and Nathan . . . "No! Get back you two!" . . . can't drive . . . blood all over the place . . .

I listened for perhaps 30 seconds, until he took a breath. "What happened?"

"I hit a squirrel on the back leg and it was still alive. I got out of the car and tried to pick it up and it bit me. I'm bleeding all over. I can't stand it. I can't drive!"

"Where are you? Are you at the park?"

"No. I'm not there. I've stopped by the side of the street."

"Are you still in the subdivision? Is the squirrel still alive?"

"Yes. I'm just a block from the house. Yes. I have him wrapped up in my windbreaker here on the front seat."

"How close to the park are you?"

"I'm just a few blocks away from their house. I can't drive. There's too much blood everywhere."

"OK. OK. I'm putting on my shoes and getting the keys and going out the door. Just stay where you are and I'll be there in just a few minutes. Just stay where you are and I'm coming."

"OK, mom. OK."

At this point I pull on some shoes and grab the car keys, going through the garage toward the car parked in the driveway. I realized that he will need to rinse off the blood so I run back into the house and pull a case of bottled water from under Nate's bed--left over from the hurricane season supplies. I also look around for some towels--glad that the ones I find the quickest are some of the oldest we have. I open the trunk and heft everything into it--slamming it and jumping into the driver's seat.

Now I am in the car, driving. I take a big breath and let it out slowly. My cell phone rings.

"It's me, mom. I got the bleeding stopped. I drove back to the house."

"Are you OK?"

"Yeah. Just get here as quick as you can, OK?"

"I'm on my way. I'll be there in a few minutes."

"OK. I'll be waiting."

When I get to the house, his car is in the driveway, driver's door open and he is half standing/sitting in the front seat. The dogs have jumped from the back into the middle seats. There is blood on the driveway and he is holding a huge wad of tissues around the fingers of his left hand. The dogs haven't been walked, of course. Nathan is in no state to walk them or to wait for me to take them to the park for the half-hour walk. We decide that I'll take the dogs up and down the sidewalk until they are able to relieve themselves and then we'll take the squirrel to the Wildlife Refuge about 15 minutes from where we are and then I'll go with him to the Urgent Care Center down the street from our house.

The dogs get short shrift that day and Nathan follows me in his car to the Refuge.

Brent calls me and tells me that the funeral is at 3pm instead of 4. He'll leave from work and go straight to the service. I will miss it--the final celebration and farewell to the sister of a dear friend--into whose home I have just returned her dogs, whose front door I have just quietly pulled shut.

I haven't seen the squirrel itself yet. We park and I walk back to where Nathan is just opening his door. I have an old towel and start to transfer the wounded squirrel from his windbreaker into it. Nathan then realizes that he hasn't looked to see if the squirrel is still alive. He carefully opens the cocoon of coat fabric back farther from the tiny nose and mouth. It does not move. We both shake our heads and carefully unwrap and the rewrap the squirrel into the towel. I take the small bundle and drive with it in my front seat to the Urgent Care Center.

We park our cars and walk together into the Center. He signs in and I help fill out the paperwork. They get to us quickly. The nurse is so sympathetic. Her husband once brought back a wounded bird for them to take care of. After the bird healed, they released it back into the wild. She quietly admires Nathan for having a tender heart.

He doesn't need stitches. They give him a tetanus shot and a prescription for oral antibiotics to prevent any infection. While we wait for the pharmacist, I get some zucchini and chicken to saute for dinner. I also find some British ginger lemon cookies that I open and eat as I drive home, Nathan just behind me.

When we get home, it is time for me to leave again.

On Tuesday evenings, the photo lab is open at school. It is the only chance I'll have to make some images for class next Monday. I usually love leaving the house and heading to the local college campus in the evening. It is easy to find a parking place. It is cool outside. It feels like I have been invited to a very select event--in a place where I am able to finally see the photographs I have taken during the past week. I can, and do, develop my black and white film at home. I do not have the enlarger (nor do I even want to look for one for myself--next semester I can take a more advanced photography class, using my digital camera.) at home. I can hold the negatives up to the light and squint at them or use a light board and handheld magnifying lens to peer at them--but there is no way I can tell exactly what image I have captured. Fuzzy, out of shadow, blurred edges, sometimes sharp and crisp--I have learned more patience that I ever wanted this semester.

Usually I go to use the lab with a feeling of excitement for the discoveries that I will be able to make. Today, though, I haven't seen Brent since he prayed over me and left for work that morning. Nathan has had a traumatic, stressful day--with mid-term exams coming in just a few days that he needs to, but can't, study for, when his mind and spirit have been stretched so tightly with blood and death and disappointment. I didn't have time to prepare dinner for Brent. He will come home to a place where Nathan is still uneasy and there is no one ready and waiting just for him after a long, emotional day at work and then a funeral and then back to work.

The lab is quiet--only three and then four and then three of us in the dark room. Out of three hours work and dozens of prints made, I get 4 or 5 good images to take home with me. I call to tell Brent that I am on my way home.

I pull up in the driveway. Nathan and Brent have both had full, stressful days. There is a dead squirrel wrapped up in a towel placed in a quiet corner of the front porch. Animal Control might want to see the body if there is any possibility of rabies or sickness in animals in that area--so the tiny corpse awaits burial (and me) at home.

I open the garage door from the car and gather my supplies to go inside. As I get close to the garage, Brent comes out and gathers me in his arms and lifts me up, carrying me inside. He is so glad to see me, so glad that I am OK and that I had a good time at the lab. I wonder that he doesn't resent me--him having to work all day and then come home to an empty kitchen and a son still slightly dazed by the events of the last 12 hours. He tells me that he is so glad that I have found something that I love doing--especially something that doesn't endanger my health. He reminds me that usually my hobbies include falling from horses or falling over my roller blades or falling out of trees. Finally I have found something that lets me enjoy myself with my feet "on the ground."

It was a full day, yesterday.

And then today . . . no blood, no death, with time to make dinner, time to run errands. From a few hours over-filled with so much emotion to a day filled with a long, easy walk around the lake park with two familiar dogs, calm study with Nathan, quiet petting quiet bunnies--a slow go around the block with Nathan in roller blades--during which I do not fall or bleed or hurt.

It is late. Much later than I wanted to be up. Tomorrow I need to be at the Volvo dealership at 7:30 am so that they can replace the oxygen sensor that was ordered and arrived two days ago. Then I will need to go and take notes for Nathan in Chemistry--and I still need to see what bills have come due. Today seems like yesterday couldn't have been all that it was. But it was. And now it is past.

That is why I write . . . to remember yesterday's events that, today, appear so impossible. It is like the pictures I take--images from yesterdays that I will never be able to see unless I take the time and make the effort to develop, preserve and protect what surrounded me--if only for (and from) a moment.

Photographs from the last month

These are two portraits of me with my latest adventure into pain. I tripped and smacked the edge of our four poster bed. Stitches are out now and it just looks like I put some dark purple eye shadow on the wrong side of my eye.
The squirrel photos and me holding the orange are three that I did for my Photography class.

My son, Nathan, actually snapped these two photographs of Meg and me. (January 2010) I used my Photoshop to finish the pictures like this. I look much better in a fuzzy light.

Photographs from life and from my photography class

I

The Mid-Winter Blahs

It is the middle of February and I feel like crawling into a corner with a good book, Gueradilli Double hot chocolate, and a plate of plain, fresh cake donuts. I am impatient with the cat. She was out of food and so she "Meeee-ow!" at me over and over again. I finally caught on and filled up her bowl. Other times, though, she seems to be bugging me about nothing--she doesn't want to be petted, she doesn't want out, she doesn't want in, she does want to be petted BUT NOT touched. Since she is the most vocal of the pets, she kind of gets the most attention. The rabbits will thump and growl at unpleasant moments in their lives and the lizards are on a happy, but endless trip around and around and around their tank. Sara runs with her belly on the glass and her back against one of the rocks in her enclosure--then she instantly stops--belly flat to the glass and her eyes closed. A few moments later, I can hear her scrabbling around the tank again. I started to clean yesterday. A wild, unbridled furor of sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, throwing away, recycling, repositioning, redistributing and de-cluttering that lasted the whole of one day.

During that time, I got Brent's side of the bedroom clean--spotless actually. Then I had to use the bathroom and went into Nathan's bathroom and immediately closed down. A place that needed immediate and extensive scrubbing and rinsing--overpowered my fragile will to impose order upon my living quarters. My next energy burst will be spent in: algebra homework, organizing the table full of photography stuff that I can't bring myself to actually look at as I walk past, writing and doing the visuals for a "Using Music in the Classroom" demonstration that I will be giving to the Primary Presidents and staff that will be at the Stake Leadership Training meeting this coming Thursday. 20 minutes. I've got 20 hours worth of stuff here--some of it from my own two stints as Primary President (long, long ago)--it's just the winnowing and polishing and Xeroxing that need to be done.

I would also like to get my half of the bedroom cleaned. And maybe the corners of my bathroom and dressing room. Also I would like to be thinner and more athletic and not fall down as often and quit bruising every time the wind rubs against me. augh.

I have loved the cold weather. It is actually a huge relief to have the yard's growth stunted by the extreme freezes we've had in the last month. Apparently the sustained cold killed off all of the iguanas round about these parts. I am sorry for that--one less wildlife form to photograph in black and white.

I have been re-reading (along with two other books and an anthology of American literature) the Twilight series. So much of the prose is stilted and sentimental--but as Bella describes her feelings for Edward, I remember those same words that I have spoken and written to Brent. Both Bella and I bruise at the drop of a hat and fall off and over things on a regular basis. She is a weird combination of self-doubt and bravado and, most compelling of all, has come from the mind of a woman who has somehow experienced prolonged bouts of both mania and depression. It is like reading "An Unquiet Mind" all over again. And like re-reading my own 50 year narrative of letters, journal entries, talks and presentations. She has also, though, been loved by a man who is both Edward and Jacob--and who loved her with the ardor of those two characters combined--even amplified. While Brent is gone most of the time at work or Church callings, I return again and again to Twilight's descriptions of relationships defined by loyalty, friendship, passion and surprise.

Valentine's Day is coming. I have heard the radio ads and seen the stores draped in pink and red hearts. Again, I know that I will never have language sufficient to express to Brent all that he is--that my most prized possession on this earth is the eternal tie that surrounds and supports us. His promises are perfect. His loyalty complete. His vision, thankfully, somewhat rose-coloured when he looks at me. It is nice to know that forever he will love me and think that I am beautiful.

It has taken me 50 years, but I am finally beautiful. I am beginning to become the woman that he saw in me when he asked me to marry him.

Progress. wow.

Inspiration from Facebook

This is the photo I just uploaded on Nat Geo's web site. Cool place. Even cooler picture.

A very wonderful person named Ellen found me through Facebook and regaled me with compliments and a sweet review of our shared past. It was as if we never left for BYU or got married--or that I was pregnant or in Iowa. I just successfully posted one of my photographs on the National Geo web site. I have been taking a photography class--but they make you start with a black and white SLR camera. On the bright side, I have learned to develop my own film here at home. Brent has suggested that we get the materials for me to go from negative to photograph. I don't know that I want to invest in the stuff I'd need. One of the fellows in the class has a father who already has a dark room for printing up photos. Maybe a bunch of us could get together and all put in for the chemicals. Anyway.

Back to Ellen--as she has done, I have also home schooled. I began with Nathan after his break down in 5th grade. Extreme bullying by a classmate and even more egregious idiocy by his teacher and the school administration pushed him over the edge. His efforts to forgive others and defend others and not to get in trouble for disrupting class just quashed his spirit and his heart. It took him years to heal. He will always bear the scars of that cruelty.

He is taking classes at the local college--preparing to graduate in Engineering. Now he's in chemistry classes that will help him decide what field of Engineering he'll pursue. He has Asperger's and panic attacks and . . . and so he won't be able to go on a full time mission. The Bishop and Stake President are working with the Stake Genealogy program to see if he can serve on a full-time-part-time basis; called to be a full-time missionary for at least 6 months.

I am quietly pleased with the parallel lines that both Ellen and my lives have taken. I cannot help but see our children who are bright and kind and observant and careful of those around them. The music that is an integral part of our children's lives came from our own hearts. In fact, I will be using the "Dear Friends, Dear Friends" song, that Ellen taught me, in a workshop for the Stake Primary Stake Training meeting next month. We're talking about using music in the classroom. Neither the President or the First Counselor have much affinity for music, which is not to say that they do not both sing with much energy! They are dear women with family challenges beyond my keen. I love them and love to be involved with them in providing a resource for the Primary leadership in the Wards and Branches in our Stake. I still use at least 2 toothbrushes. I have also begun to string them throughout the house and leave them in all of the cars. If I am running late, I just put a bit of toothpaste on a toothbrush (a new one if I can't find one of my existing ones) and rush out to the car with keys and bag in one hand, books and notes in the other, and toothbrush firmly held between my jaws. I know that it looks ludicrous--but there have been times when I sucked my thumb as I drove through town doing my errands (bad mental/emotional days)--so a toothbrush doesn't turn either Nathan or Brent's heads. I did feel kind of silly a few months ago when I found myself picking out bread in the bakery--while unconsciously, yet energetically, chewing on the head of a toothbrush. Just as wearing pink bunny slippers beyond the driveway is a vividly ridiculous act; chewing on a toothbrush in the bakery department of the grocery store is a thoughtlessly gross thing to be doing around people who are buying rolls and French bread and bagels--all comestibles out in the open exactly where I have been walking about and fiercely masticating a toothbrush between my teeth. That was an extremely long sentence--which means that I am up past my composition bedtime. I love you. People who are meeting me for the first time ask what I do--I answer that the last time I was paid for my time, I taught College composition and literature classes. Since then, I have jumped horses, roofed houses, watched three children grow from infants into incredibly useful adults, had my right shoulder repaired three times and my lower left thumb joint replaced twice. I propagate plants and swim and play with my three dwarf rabbits . . . and try to look good for Brent when he comes home in the evenings. Right now I am also taking an advanced Algebra class and a photography class. What I need to tell them is that I am someone who loves you.

That would say it all.

Love always, Carolyn