Rough Ideas

In my visual childhood sense of the year Summer was at the bottom arc of the year. My older brothers were good at making up rules that shaped my universe. According to them we could go barefoot after mother's day and they could take off their wet suits on surf trips after my birthday. I trust Zoë's visual image of the summer has a different turn. Tonight Zoe and I walked to the top of the drive way at 915 pm. There was still some color in the sky on this summer solstice, the longest day of the year. She vaguely remembered the summer she was in third grade when we celebrated the summer solstice by going out in the row boat on our pond where we lit floating candles and drifted day lilies in the water. that evening  Zoë read us poems she had collected over the year. That was also the year she and her friend Shannon renamed the boat, the butter cup, and we spent long afternoons floating, reading and writing poems.
 


"Go up into the gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock a universe. This is how you spend the afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon."
Annie Dillard Pilgrem at Tinker Creek

I spent the afternoon finishing up my last slabs for the wood kiln. I thought I'd have an early meal and go back to work after dinner. But the long daylight deceives my internal clock, when I looked up it was 7 instead of what I thought was 5pm. The sun was out which felt like a great occasion and the shadows were brilliant.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Zoe was photographing me taking my photograph of the bee balm.I wished I had photos of my mom photographing her plants.


"Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you." Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

"We can look around us those of us who are nibbled but unbroken, from the shimmering vantage of the living. Here may not be the cleanest, newest place, but that clean timeless place that vaults on either side of this one is no place at all."  Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Today is my birthday and from my mother and by contrast, not my grandmother, I have learned to be above board with my age.  When I was little my grandmother always told me she was 108. She thought I would understand that it was a fib. I was oblivious to the concept and asked, "but grandma, by now you must be 109." After that she never told anyone her age. As a result my mother was always honest with her age. On her 75th birthday she told me when she turned 50 she got terribly depressed, she thought she was over the hill. At 75 she realized she was in the prime of her life. At 79 the night before she died she told Ari (a friend) that she looked forward to turning 80.  He sang her a song as a response.  Today I am 51 and I walk the dog feeling nibbled but unbroken. I swam in the pond when I was exhausted at the end of the work day. It may not have been the cleanest water, but from the vantage point of water level the world was timeless and the geologic quality of clay seemed to vault over my momentary questions.